Home » 2019
Yearly Archives: 2019
Adjective Love: Transactional or Unconditional
The addition of “social” to “justice” negates justice. Justice is equal treatment of everyone. Social justice chooses groups for unequal treatment. Justice originates in scripture, almost as old as the earth. Social justice arose in the 19th century. I’m saying that according to a leftist viewpoint the addition of this adjective corrupts justice. It’s not justice anymore.
For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.
For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.
Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
ChristianitySplaining
Today people who do not like Christianity, actual Christianity, biblical Christianity, explain Christianity to actual Christians and in a condescending and patronizing way. Like leftists invented and use the term “mansplaining,” this is Christianitysplaining. From my perspective, which is a biblical one, that takes a grammatical-historical interpretation of scripture, these are unbelievers explaining to Christians their own corrupted version of Christianity. There are two very public examples of this in recent days, but I believe these represent something happening as a culture.
Of the two examples, one came in a tweet from Democrat presidential candidate, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (former mayor of South Bend, IN):
Today I join millions around the world in celebrating the arrival of divinity on earth, who came into this world not in riches but in poverty, not as a citizen but as a refugee.No matter where or how we celebrate, merry Christmas.
— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) December 25, 2019
Joseph and Mary were going to Bethlehem to pay taxes when Jesus was born. They weren’t fleeing anyone. Jesus grew up in Nazareth, where both his parents were from. Buttigieg wraps himself in the mantle of Christianity to pick off other Christianitysplainers.
The next example, days before the Buttigieg tweet, was the editorial in Christianity Today, where the editor, Mark Galli, took a shot at evangelical Trump voters by informing them that “Trump Should Be Removed From Office.” In his first sentence, he Christianitysplains:
In our founding documents, Billy Graham explains that Christianity Today will help evangelical Christians interpret the news in a manner that reflects their faith.
Apparently the call to the new Ukrainian president was a tipping point for Galli, and then also a sentence in the last paragraph: “Some have criticized us for our reserve.” I’m open to scriptural explanations. Galli says that you’re not being Christian if you oppose impeachment. This is akin, according to him, to brushing off the president’s immoral behavior. A constitutional scholar, Galli is not (since the original writing of this post, Wayne Grudem has published an excellent rebuttal of the Galli editorial, worth a read).
Since those two, Buttigieg and Galli, Christianitysplained, a tidal wave of media followed with further Christianitysplaining. The world knows the Christianity it wants and it expects Christians to live it. It’s a kind of feeding frenzy because of what the world sees in the Southern Baptist Convention with its pandering to a new, woke generation of Conventioneers. They smell blood in the water.
The Atlantic Christianitysplains with its article, “Leith Anderson and the Silent Majority,” attempting to shame who they think is an influential evangelical leader. Several dozen articles pummeling evangelicals have followed. I believe the leftist media rightly assess weakness in professing Christianity, especially among millennials. This is the most telling culture change. Very few millennials agree with the preceding generation.
Millennial evangelicals and now fundamentalists, which aren’t even mostly faithful to church, sympathize with all things relevant in the culture. They’re friends with same sex married, who seem just like normal people to them — and who are we to question “love”? They like the idea of admitting to white privilege, the feel of a pseudo-humility that pays personal dividends. They’re cleared of racism. They support egalitarian marriages after years of girl and boy friends. They like suggestive, very emotive music in touch with their feelings, which they interpret as spiritual. Their art is gritty, urban, modern or postmodern, and apocalyptic, what they think is authentic. Most of them have trouble with their parents, several of which like Trump, which embarrasses them. Mothers of millennials often Christianitysplain to the fathers of millennials, hoping dad takes it easy on junior. This is all very fertile ground for the seeds of a woke journalist.
Millennials and their fawning servant leaders have entered a kind of negotiated surrender. Leaders should serve, no doubt, and Jesus served, but this isn’t what “servant leadership” is or at least has become. I believe Douglas Wilson represents it correctly when he writes:
The emphasis placed on servant leadership in recent decades has produced a soft complementarianism, one which adopts egalitarian assumptions for most of human existence, but which tolerates a modified pretend hierarchy in the two places where our trained exegetes have not yet hammered out a plausible workaround for us. In this pretend hierarchy, the leaders are allowed to be leaders so long as they do exactly what they’re told.
Servant leadership is a dirty little phrase that has slipped into evangelical culture like a silk pillow over the face.
It tastes sweet in the mouth, like honey, because who doesn’t agree that men should imitate the Lord Jesus, who came not to be served, but to serve (Matthew 20:28)? But it is bitter in the stomach, because it makes men subservient to those they are supposed to be leading.
These millennials Christianitysplain to their elders on a regular basis, telling them how it should be done, in addition to saying, you’ve got a flawed gospel. What do you mean? I want to know. They Christianitysplain something about freedom. It’s not really new. It is antinomianism, that is very old and described in 2 Peter and Jude among other places, turning the grace of God into lascisviousness.
Christianitysplainers want to splain. They know, they splain, and somehow their Christianity looks less like biblical Christianity and more like the spirit of the age.
Who was Muhammad? David Wood debates Ali Ataie
Isaiah 53 and the False Definition of Freedom as Individual
This is actually part six as well of a series I’ve been doing on Ghosting: part one part two part three part four part five
Isaiah 53 prophesies the future conversion of the nation Israel and chronicles the account of her future repentance. I want to focus on the middle triad of this confession, the apex of the five triads (52:13-15, 53:1-3, 53:4-6, 53:7-9, 53:10-12), in verses four through six and give a miniature exposition before getting to the point of the post, which proceeds from the truth of the last verse of that majestic text.
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
When Israel is saved, those to be saved will confess in lament that the servant of Jehovah (52:13), their Messiah, bore their griefs and carried their sorrows. He was bearing theirs, not His own. He had none. They confess that they esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, that He was being punished for His own sins. This was the very wrong estimation of what was occurring. What a woeful assessment! No, not so! He was wounded for their transgressions, and so forth in verse 5. He wasn’t paying for His own sinning. He was righteous. Just the opposite, He was paying for theirs.
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus my Saviour did come for to die
For poor on’ry people like you and like I
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
That Jesus my Saviour did come for to die
For poor on’ry people like you and like I
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
Sheep wander, like “poor on’ry people like you and like I.” Consider these two lines from “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman”:
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray.
Instead of staying with the shepherd and with the rest of the flock, sheep wander out and away. This is how sheep are. They are helpless and weak, but they are also stupid, so they get away from the shepherd and the rest of the sheep, following their own curiosity. They want to go astray. Instead of going the way, the Lord’s way, with the rest of the flock, they go their own way.
The Parallel or Contrast to a False Definition of Freedom as Individual
Going astray sounds bad. What was that though? It was leaving the confines and safety of the flock with the presence of the Shepherd. It was wandering. It was being a free agent instead of under authority. The authority seems confining, conflicting with freedom. The sheep that could not wander away from the flock doesn’t have freedom.
Wandering doesn’t sound bad. It sounds like someone curious, who wants to venture out further on his own without the restriction of a boundary. To give it a noble significance, it’s like those in the original colonies pushing out into the frontier. This is a trailblazer. But no, it’s a wandering sheep that seizes or snatches individual sovereignty for himself. He doesn’t even have to give an explanation, except that he wants his own freedom to explore. He might also elevate his wandering, which is actually going astray, to “developing his own conviction,” with an emphasis on “his own.” Without the ability to wander and leave the fold, he argues, he doesn’t have the freedom to have his own beliefs.
No beliefs that anyone possesses are “his own.” They are God’s, and there is only one set of beliefs that God gives, not various options. There isn’t a unique set of beliefs, free floating outside of the flock, that someone can reach out and grasp. The church is the pillar and ground of the truth. This is where someone gets the truth and the understanding of it. Those moving outside of the flock are following after their own lusts, such as described in 1 John 2:19:
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us:: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
“Went out from us” and “they went out” parallel with “gone astray.” Is a sheep “free” that cannot wander? Is someone not free unless he can go astray? Or is this assumed or even arbitrary freedom really bondage? The limitation of the flock protects the sheep. It can live. Going astray is death for the sheep. The shepherd and sheep is used as an analogy, but the application itself is real.
Rousseau said that in man’s original “state of nature” he was free, essentially wandering around alone outside of the confines of society. Society is the source of evil. Many like this idea of freedom. The flock confines.
Ghosting is an extreme, unscriptural form of separation, which has been defined as “the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication.” One variety of the ghoster is a wandering sheep. He walks away from his fold without announcement or explanation. He disappears. It doesn’t mean he won’t find another flock, just that the flock he joins functions according to his own way.
The free sheep in the portrayal of Isaiah 53 is the one still in the fold, not the wanderer, the ghoster. This contradicts the conception of lost mankind. He sees freedom outside the fold, where he finds his own way according to his own will. Man’s state of nature confined itself to male and female, husband and wife, dad and mom, and finally church, so within spheres of sovereignty. The wandering is the bondage to one’s own will, which is depraved. This is the same state of nature as sheep, which by nature go astray. This is against the best interest of the sheep, the blessing of the sheep, the thriving of the sheep.
Freedom is not individual. I’m not saying there isn’t individual freedom. There is. However, the individual freedom is preserved within spheres: family, church, and even state — institutions ordained by God. Those seeking freedom outside of these folds are wanderers. They are going astray. They are candidates for punishment by God. The Lord Jesus Christ bore their punishment, not so they would have the freedom to wander, but so that they would stay within the flock in unity with the one will of the Shepherd.
Jessie Penn-Lewis: Inspired “Truth” on Demon Possession (part 17 of 22)
The content of this post is now available in the study of:
1.) Evan Roberts
2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905
on the faithsaves.net website. Please click on the people above to view the study. On the FaithSaves website the PDF files may be easiest to read.
You are also encouraged to learn more about Keswick theology and its errors, as well as the Biblical doctrine of salvation, at the soteriology page at Faithsaves.
A Negative Critique of an Actual Good Statement by Paul Washer
I’ve never met Paul Washer or heard him in person. He has become well known among conservative evangelicals. He has preached at Grace Community Church, Masters College, and the G3 Conference. Often, Todd Friel refers to him on his Wretched program. He is the founder and director of Heart Cry Missionary Society. He was a missionary to Peru for ten years. I’m using him for this post because of good things I hear from and have heard from him.
Paul Washer entitles this presentation: “Churches Using Carnal Means to Attract Carnal People.” I agree with a very large percentage of it. He starts out with this:
Because we have dumbed down the gospel, because we’re not preaching the true gospel, and we are using carnal means to attract people. If you use carnal means to attract men, you’re going to attract carnal men. And you’re going to have to keep using greater carnal means to keep them in the church.
I’m right with him on that. I agree that those could be the two biggest problems going, if not the first and third biggest problems with the second the corruption of the biblical doctrine of sanctification. However, Washer is very concerned about that too, as seen in recent tweets by him (his last three):
The Apostle Paul and James are not teaching contrary doctrines of salvation. Paul addresses the cause of our salvation (faith), while James addresses the result of our salvation (works). From both writers, we gain a comprehensive or holistic view of the work of God in salvation.— Paul Washer (@paulwasher) December 11, 2019
Salvation by faith will result in works or obedience to the will of God. Yet even these works are not to be attributed primarily to the one who performs them but to the God who gives grace — Paul wrote, “But by the grace of God I am what I am” (I Corinthians 15:10).— Paul Washer (@paulwasher) December 12, 2019
Those who have been saved by faith will begin to live in increasing conformity to God’s will, not by their own strength, but because they have been regenerated and indwelt by God’s Spirit. They are God’s work, for God’s glory. They will not be lost because God will not lose them!— Paul Washer (@paulwasher) December 14, 2019
Washer repudiates using carnal means in the church to attract men to church, because it will result in attracting carnal men. I also agree that it will necessitate greater carnal means to keep those carnal men. However, does Paul Washer fellowship with churches that use carnal means? Conservative evangelicalism is full of them. They still use plenty of carnal means in their youth groups (Washer mentions “youth groups”), including the rock music and rock concerts, which are carnal music.
He continues:
We have these large churches fill with unconverted, carnal people. But in those churches we have this small group of people that honestly want Christ, and they honestly want His Word and they honestly want to be transformed. They don’t need anything else. All they need is true worship of the true God and scripture being preached to them and lived out before them. That’s what they want.
Now I want to tell you the great sin of the American pastor. And this has got me in a lot of trouble, but it’s true. This small group of converted people in that local church, all they want is Jesus and all they want to do is the right thing. They want purity, they want truth, they want Christ, but the pastor, in order to keep this larger group of unconverted people, he caters to them. So while he’s feeding these carnal men and women with carnal things, he’s letting the sheep of God starve to death and he’s going to stand before God one day in judgment.
Then Washer gives an illustration to try to motivate people to do something about this, to stand for these people in these churches. This was the essence of everything that he said. You can listen to the rest of it, but I want to comment on the two paragraphs coming from him.
I agree that there are these large churches full of unconverted people. Their pastors have told me themselves that they have mainly unconverted people attending their churches. They know it. They are doing exactly what Washer says. There really are a smaller group of people in these churches in many cases, just like he described. It’s sad but true, what he’s saying. But what’s missing?
Washer calls on people to do something about what he’s describing as very bad, but I have found something else about these people in these churches. These “good people” very often have a church to which they could join that isn’t using carnal methods and is doing all the good things that he describes about a good church. I’ve talked to them many times. I’ve told them about the difference. I’ve been doing this for over thirty years. What do the “good people” do? They stay in their carnal churches using carnal methods.
The “good people” in the churches according to Washer’s description, I’ve met. They don’t want this church described. They want, as I’ve seen it, some fictional church that is halfway between the carnal method church and the one Washer describes. They also don’t want to give up their carnality as much as he describes. What would someone do who wanted it? He would separate from the carnal church, which is a practice of biblical separation.
As well, what should anyone do to rescue these people? Washer says the people who do nothing about it are as guilty as the people doing it. What do they do though? The small group needs to be taught by people like Washer to join another smaller group, one that isn’t using carnal methods. The small group that loves the Lord as Washer describes can leave in a biblical manner. If a Roman Catholic is converted, truly so with a true gospel, he should leave the Catholic church.
I ask, can you worship God in your church? We have a tract with that title. A person who can’t worship God in his church, because it uses carnal worship and doesn’t preach a true gospel or have a true God, should leave that church and go to one that does. Carnal churches are hard to leave. They have friends, sometimes family, carnal music, carnal methods, and the size to provide certain comforts and conveniences. The truth, separation from worldliness, and transformation aren’t as important as these things to most of these “good people.”
The kind of church that stays pure is a shock to the system of the person who has stayed for a long time at a “carnal church.” A church doesn’t stay pure by accident. It requires discipline. It doesn’t draw in the visitors like the carnal church. It’s easier to get people to come and feel that rush of success. What might go along with the purity is a personal separation that the “good people” are not accustomed to.
To wrap this up, Washer doesn’t mention separation. Separation is all over the Bible and in nearly every New Testament book. There is an actual section on separation in most of the epistles, and yet evangelicals rarely make a peep about separation, including the conservative ones. Washer himself hobnobs with evangelicals. Those are his people. I don’t see him with separatists.
On Washer’s website, I saw him preaching to a large crowd of evangelicals filling up a gigantic cathedral in Paris. How did they draw that big crowd in Paris? To get a large group of people together, doctrinal or practical barriers are diminished or removed. That alone is a method. Is it a godly method to decide to devalue doctrine and practice for the purpose of a larger group, finding commonality by moving doctrines and practices into non-essential categories?
If the good people separated from carnal churches, those churches would get the message that they are losing their good people because of their ungodly beliefs and practices. That’s what they should do. Then the smaller, godly, pure churches would get bigger. This doesn’t happen because these good people are not so good as Paul Washer thinks and says. They are not walking by faith, but walking by sight. They won’t “go outside the camp” to identify and suffer with the people of God. Paul Washer himself stays within the confines of the fellowship of that crowd.
Wellness That Isn’t Well
Wellness in the Bible is wellness. Unbiblical “wellness” isn’t wellness. Without biblical wellness, it won’t be well with you. You will be unwell. Don’t think otherwise. You do so at your own risk.
Wellness is a major theme in scripture, beginning with the Old Testament. God wants people to be well (Hebrew, yawtab). God gives the prescription for wellness in the following verses, and scripture is consistent in the usage.
Very often tied into wellness is the prolonging of life, which also conforms to what people might think with “wellness,” even today. Here are the verses and some contain both concepts, wellness and prolonged days or quite simply, you may live.
Deuteronomy 4:40, “Thou shalt keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, for ever.”
Deuteronomy 5:29, “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!”
Deuteronomy 5:33, “Ye shall walk in all the ways which the LORD your God hath commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well with you, and that ye may prolong your days in the land which ye shall possess.”
Deuteronomy 6:1-3, “1 Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the LORD your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it: 2 That thou mightest fear the LORD thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the LORD God of thy fathers hath promised thee,, in the land that floweth with milk and honey.
Deuteronomy 6:18, “And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the LORD: that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers.”
Deuteronomy 12:28, “Observe and hear all these words which I command thee, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee for ever, when thou doest that which is good and right in the sight of the LORD thy God.”
Psalm 128:1-2, “1 Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways. 2 For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.“
Ecclesiastes 8:12-13, “12 Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before him: 13 But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because he feareth not before God.
Jeremiah 7:23, “But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you.“
Jeremiah 38:20, “But Jeremiah said, They shall not deliver thee. Obey, I beseech thee, the voice of the LORD, which I speak unto thee: so it shall be well unto thee, and thy soul shall live.“
Jeremiah 42:6, “Whether it be good, or whether it be evil, we will obey the voice of the LORD our God, to whom we send thee; that it may be well with us, when we obey the voice of the LORD our God.”
Ephesians 6:1-3, “1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 2 Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) 3 That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.“
From What or Where Does the Wrong View or Concept of “Wellness” Come From?
The wellness of scripture, true wellness, originates from God and scripture. Someone is well if someone is aligning with God’s Word. It relates to the pleasure of God, but also the end of someone. How will it go in the end for someone? In what will his life culminate through all eternity? That is of greatest importance.
The wellness of the wellness crowd follows philosophy and vain deceit. It is “bodily exercise profits a lot, a whole lot,” instead of “profits little.” Meats, eats, and whatever diet one takes is of greatest importance in contradiction to the Bible.
More than anything, it’s about how someone feels, so it originates from the subject (subjectivity). His well-being is affected by someone preaching against his sinful lifestyle — that makes him feel bad. If he feels bad because he’s confronted over sin, he separates himself from the one who confronts it, and places himself or herself around only affirming, liking, positive, thumbs up people. God isn’t pleased, and he or she blocks that off by not exposing himself or herself to biblical exegesis. Everything is siphoned through the grid of his or her feelings, which gives him wellness….for 50 years or so, until he or she faces God, where he finds out he wasn’t ever well.
The peace of fake wellness, a major kind of wellness across the world today, comes from lying to one’s self, covering or masking the truth. The decision is made to focus on the short life at the exclusion of the eternal one, and block out the consequences of that. This is part of the wellness, separating one’s self from the criticism of the fake wellness.
It isn’t well with the wellness people, if they are not well with God. God is the author of all true wellness.
“The New Testament Picture of Jesus: Is It Accurate?,” Shabir Ally & Thomas Ross, is now live!
Biblical Alternative to Ghosting
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four
Ghosting is an extreme, unscriptural form of separation, which has been defined as “the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication.” It has become an increasingly more common occurrence among professing Christians in various institutions. I know that the most regular usage of the term relates to the realm of dating in the world, but in its technical meaning it applies to any personal relationship. It’s happening in Christian homes today all over the country with their adult children. Statistics and my own observation show me that. An article entitled, “Ghosting Needs to Die,” reads:
[W]ith increasing frequency, adult children are ghosting their parents. Dr. Joshua Coleman, author of When Parents Hurt, calls it “a silent epidemic.” Sixty percent of parents surveyed on the Estranged Stories site said their children had never “concretely shared” their reason for severing contact. In “Hidden Voices: Family Estrangement in Adulthood,” researchers at the University of Cambridge reported that more than 70 percent of adult children held out no hope for a relationship in the future. They also noted that the adult children were ten times more likely than their parents to initiate the break.
What are the situations for or in which someone could ghost? I’ve read a lot about ghosting and the situations for and in which the world says it occurs. When people ghost, they might either have a good reason or not. As I’ve written in other posts, ghosting is an extreme form of separation. Separation itself isn’t bad in the Bible. It very often is good to separate. It is not always good to separate and sometimes, even when it is good to separate, it can be done in a wrong way.
Is there ever a situation where someone should separate “suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication”? Scripture doesn’t give one example of this. The Bible teaches against the components of the behavior in no uncertain terms. Ghosting doesn’t originate from scripture, so where does it come from? From all that I’ve read, even secular psychologists call it a form of cruel narcissism. I couldn’t find anyone who said it was good. I read one place that said that it would be permissible in instances where the ghosted person is a “toxic” or “narcissistic” person.
Even ghosting implies an already established relationship. I’m not going to address whether it’s okay for a girl to ghost a boyfriend that she finds out is a mafia member. I’m assuming this is a person who will disobey scripture and will not be guided by the Word of God anyway. The right approach would start with preaching the gospel to this person.
Would an actual Christian ghost? Only a disobedient one, and I’m saying a very disobedient one. I wouldn’t keep calling this a Christian, a true believer, without some soon coming repentance of this hideous practice. It really is a person who is rebellious against God’s design. It’s treating the world like it isn’t God’s. This is someone making up his own rules about relationship against God.
In a comment to an earlier post, someone mounted a sort of argument for ghosting of some kind. I could even sympathize with the situations he brought up. There are still no grounds for a Christian to ghost anyone. The Bible contains a wealth of material to deal with perceived situations to ghost.
From my reading on the toxic parent, a concept arising from secular psychology, in most cases a normal Christian parent would fall under toxic parent. He’s just got to want his way of life to be kept by his children, and that’s toxic, even and perhaps especially if it is scriptural. The word toxic turns the behavior of the parent into something criminal, so a child would be justified in protecting himself from criminal behavior. Ghosting is the way out. This is the underlying idea today against most counseling against sinful behavior — that counsel is abusive.
The biblical alternative to ghosting are the scriptural steps to reconciliation. This assumes two parties that want to obey scripture. A biblical alternative doesn’t mean anything to someone who doesn’t recognize the Bible as the final authority for faith and practice. If two parties are at loggerheads in reconciliation, they are submitted to mediation, ultimately the church. All of these steps are in the Bible multiple times.
Not following biblical instruction on relationship, according to the Bible is hateful or unloving. In Matthew 5:21-26, Jesus compares it to committing murder. Murder connotes a strike at the image of God. God created relationship, wants the love of neighbor as one’s self, and so here is a person that is murdering the relationship.
Part of an agreement or will to reconcile would be a will to change based upon scriptural terms. Someone must know what or how to change. Ghosting doesn’t afford that. The one ghosted doesn’t even know what the problem is, so he can’t change until he finds out what could reconcile.
In my observation, ghosting applies to someone who does not care or want to be ruled by what the Bible teaches on relationship. He wants to do what he wants to do almost without judgment. He doesn’t want to face scrutiny on his decision making. He won’t risk the rejection of his lust with even one attempt at justifying it. Ghosting is the invention of a self-willed, lust dominated person. A continuation of ghosting is the practice of a non-Christian. He may say he knows God, but living in this chosen state of perpetual disobedience, he is a liar.
Jesus said, he who has the ears to hear, let him hear. The rejection of ghosting has to start with consideration of how despicable the practice. Someone who is saved will understand this sin sent Jesus to the cross, if he believes Jesus died for his sins. Understanding that salvation is being presented before God as pure and spotless, he will want to obey in practice what he has already obeyed in position, or what the Apostle Paul described in Philippians 3:12, “apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.”
The Seriousness and Divinity of the Doctrine of Separation in Zechariah 5: A Lid Out of a Talent of Lead
The Old Testament book of Zechariah calls for the repentance and faithfulness of the remnant of God’s people based on the promises of God and prophecies of the future. One part of the communication to and through the prophet Zechariah is a series of eight visions. Zechariah motivates his Jewish audience with the record of a series of visions which portray God’s plans for Israel’s future. I’m focusing on of them, what has been called “The Woman in the Basket” (Zechariah 5:5-11):
5 Then the angel that talked with me went forth, and said unto me, Lift up now thine eyes, and see what is this that goeth forth. 6 And I said, What is it? And he said, This is an ephah that goeth forth. He said moreover, This is their resemblance through all the earth. 7 And, behold, there was lifted up a talent of lead: and this is a woman that sitteth in the midst of the ephah. 8 And he said, This is wickedness. And he cast it into the midst of the ephah; and he cast the weight of lead upon the mouth thereof. 9 Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came out two women, and the wind was in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heaven. 10 Then said I to the angel that talked with me, Whither do these bear the ephah? 11 And he said unto me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar: and it shall be established, and set there upon her own base.
This is a very, very simple story. It’s not even much of a story. An “ephah” (v. 6) is a basket, technically the size of a basket, which is today 6.1 American gallons. You can’t make everything in this story mean something, but to stick with the basic, so let’s follow along.
The woman in the basket is the wickedness of the nation, which is obvious for all to see. A lid is put on the basket made of a talent of lead. That’s 75 to 100 pounds of lead sealing the top of that basket. This lead lid means something, and it is an obvious expression of God’s separation of the wickedness, actual wicked people, from the nation. A very heavy lead lid covering a woman in a basket is a serious separation.
Two women take this woman in this basket with a lead lid and with wind in their stork-like wings, they fly all to Shinar and set her on a base or pedestal in a house or temple. The simplicity of it is that God separates the wickedness, the actual wicked people, from the nation of God’s people unto where it belongs, Shinar. Shinar is Babylon, where the wickedness of this present world originated and will also end. It is being disposed of, like taking out the trash.
God wants sin separated. This is discipline. This is personal separation. This is ecclesiastical separation. The sin and sinners are removed. The bad influences are eradicated. When all that offends God is sin, this takes preeminence for a people who want to please God.
The separation will occur. Just like Noah and his family were separated from the world by the waters of the flood, while they were saved in the ark, the nation of Israel is saved by its separation. At the very end of the Bible, the wicked are separated even from the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem. God wants separation. Paul wrote, come out from among them and be ye separate.
What belongs to Shinar must stay in Shinar or be removed to Shinar. Keeping it where we are — the world, the world system, wordliness, the spirit of this age — is not the will of God. The people who do it, John says, the love of God does not abide in them. They will be the woman in the basket. The ultimate removal is being left behind to be judged by God and then cast into the lake fire forever. These do not belong with God’s people, because God’s people are holy.
The motivation of the story is to repent. The separation is not salvation for those in the basket. These are not repentant people. It is judgment. However, the declaration of this message by God to Zechariah and from Zechariah to the people would give them their means of deliverance. Separation would occur one way or another, in the basket or outside of it.
Not only is the vision of separation a call for separation. If they repented of their sin, they would separate. If they wanted deliverance, they would separate. It is also a prophecy of separation. Two-thirds of the nation is separated from the nation and destroyed in the ultimate separation. Israel is saved, which amounts to the one-third of the nation that is saved. Those people are saved, because they turn to Jesus as the Messiah.
If Jesus is the Messiah to you, the Christ to you, you believe in the Christ, the Son of God, and have life through His name, you are separating yourself by following Him. Jesus leads a person to a new life. Israel looks upon Him, whom they have pierced. They repent, the repentance recorded in the confession that is Isaiah 52 and 53. He was wounded for their iniquities. They esteemed Him stricken for His own sins, but He was bruised for theirs. They understand that they were sheep that had gone astray. They were wicked in their nature and they were in need of conversion.
Salvation is separation. It separates in the end the sheep from the goats and the tares from the wheat. It separates the proud Israelite, who will not acquiesce to His Messiah, from the one who is poor in spirit, mourns over his sin, and in meekness hungers and thirsts after imputed righteousness. Instead of building his house on the sand, he builds his house on the rock, Who Is Jesus Christ. In the end, you’ll either be in the basket with the lead lid on it, or you’ll be free through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Recent Comments