In the kitchen of our church building today I watched a toddler girl stick her hand into the trash, pull out a piece of soggy food, and bite into it before her mother could stop her.  I’m sure there was something nutritional to that bite.  Maybe it was a decent leftover that had just hit the top of the heap.  Even though I laughed, I understood her mom’s disapproval.  It’s not acceptable to pick through the garbage for food.  That’s also how it is to find something good in the Kanye West, Jesus Is King, album.  Whatever good nibbles are in there, and there are a few, are ruined by everything around them.  They do not testify to the heart and life of a saved person, which is reinforced by what Kanye said in interviews in the weeks around the release of the album.

Considering all the lyrics and their medium, they’re common and profane.  They aren’t worshipful, solemn, or reverent, requirements for biblical worship.  They are not holy or acceptable unto God.  They are conformed to this world.  They’re not good either.  They are lustful, childish, silly, and inappropriate.  They are on the level of Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham, which isn’t even right for children’s literature, except as a joke.  They are not transcendent, substantial, or beautiful.  They are trite and trashy.

Kanye writes:

What have you been hearin’ from the Christians?
They’ll be the first one to judge me
Make it feel like nobody love me
They’ll be the first one to judge me
Feelin’ like nobody love me
Told people God was my mission
What have you been hearin’ from the Christians?
They’ll be the first one to judge me
Make it feel like nobody love me

I’m going to use the second person often through the rest of this piece.  We love you Kanye.  Paul wrote the church at Thessalonica, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”  Your album is not good.  That’s what you be hearin’ from this Christian.  If Christians do say your album is bad, and Brad Pitt, Katy Perry, and David Letterman say it is good, you should pay attention to the Christians.  Don’t expect Christians to give approval to false worship and continued sin.

Leave the public eye like the Apostle did after he was converted on the road to Damascus, if you are really converted.  Follow the description of repentance in 2 Corinthians 7:10-11 and the example of Zaccheus in Luke 19.  Spend time first getting distance from your former life.  Move off of the entire licentious, pornographic scene. Stop promoting yourself.  Learn your Bible and what it teaches first.  You don’t know it.  Your theology is bad.  Much of what you say is unbiblical, but it’s also disrespectful as a proclamation of worship.

Rap is more than just another genre, unlike your “pastor” told you.  You were much closer to the truth, when you told him, “Rap is of the devil.”  It isn’t fitting as worship of God.  God doesn’t receive it.  It isn’t lovely.  Stop saying things like the following in Jesus the King:

I’ve been tellin’ y’all since ’05
The greatest artist restin’ or alive
That’s on L.A. Reid, that’s on Clive
That’s no Jive, that’s on God
Off the 350s He supplied
The IRS want they fifty plus our tithe
Man, that’s over half of the pie
I felt dry, that’s on God
That’s why I charge the prices that I charge
I can’t be out here dancin’ with the stars
No, I cannot let my family starve
I go hard, that’s on God

To start, who complains about the IRS in a worship song?  God has more power than the Internal Revenue Service of the United States.  More so, the “on God” concept of your lyrics, Kanye, is blasphemous.  Jesus said in Matthew 5:33-37 in His Sermon on the Mount:

33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:  34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne: 35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. 36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.  37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

This is a flippant use of God’s name, that is, God’s name in vain.  Not only are you not “the greatest artist restin’ or alive,” but it’s proud to say it.  Just saying these things you do and enunciating the name of God along side of them is profane.  Consider the following verses of scripture:

1 Chronicles 16:25 says, “For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised: he also is to be feared above all gods.”
Psalm 48:1, “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.”
Psalm 145:3, “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.”

Your music isn’t great, Kanye.  It isn’t appropriate for God.  It isn’t holy.  It isn’t sacred.  It isn’t even gospel, like you and others claim, even though “gospel music” itself is not historic, biblical worship.  It arose in the late 19th century as a means of manipulation and pandering to a fleshly crowd under the guise of promoting the gospel.  The gospel is to be preached, not sung to an audience, like what you are doing.

Somebody who is saved has all the power of the universe within him.  Scripture doesn’t teach like your choir sings:  “Sing till the power of the Lord comes down.”  The believer yields to the Holy Spirit, Who, as God, has all power.  Singing won’t bring the power of the Lord down.  This is a perversion of the power of God.  This is “second blessing” experience promoted by the same charismaticism that originated from the same source as “gospel music.”  The way your choir Kanye swings its hips fits more into this ecstatic charismatic “worship,” then true biblical worship, acceptable to God.

Watching a young man give Kanye an only positive review on youtube, he brought forth the idea espoused by Charlie Pride that there are “three basic ingredients in American music:  country, gospel, and the blues” — which isn’t true.  Country, gospel, and the blues are not sacred and sacred music exists in America, is truly the original music of the American people.  Perhaps someone could say those other three are the foundation of wicked, worldly pop music, but those are not the basis of sacred music, which isn’t popular music.  Those three and all the genres proceeding from them are not sacred and not fitting of the nature of God.

The music of the Pilgrims wasn’t country, gospel, or the blues.  It was sacred.  The churches of early America sang sacred music, hymns and psalms.  The very first book published in the entirety of British North America was the Bay Psalm Book, first printed in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The title page reads:

Whereunto is prefixed a discourse

declaring not only the lawfullness, but also

the necessity of the heavenly Ordinance

of singing Scripture Psalmes in

the Churches of God.

The churches of God in early America sang Psalms.  Someone filled with the Spirit will sing to God psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:18-19, Colossians 3:16-17).  Jesus the King does not fit that teaching.  It doesn’t read like anything close to the music God’s people have used to worship Him.

Something gospel is also not, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “greedy of filthy lucre,” and as Peter taught, “making merchandise of you.”  But as Rolling Stone reported:

At Coachella this year, you could buy $50 socks emblazoned with the phrase “Jesus Walks.” At four Jesus Is King: A Kanye West Experience events held in Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, in honor of an album that missed two release dates, he sold Christian-inspired sweaters for $140. 

This isn’t about — “I can’t let my family starve.”  Laced through your lyrics and in your interviews is a prosperity theology in which you declare that being a Christian is a way to greater monetary gain, when Jesus called it, “Deny thyself, take thy cross, and follow me.”  Nobody begrudges a Christian of earning a living.  He should earn a living, but no one should profit off of God.  God isn’t a commodity.  The Apostle Paul said it confuses the gospel.

In the positive review of Kanye I referenced earlier, the deceived or rebellious young man said Kanye will bring unity to the country with his Jesus Is King.  Radio host Glenn Beck said with complete seriousness that he thinks that Jesus Is King might be the start of another Great Awakening.  No and no.

Unity and great awakening arise from the truth of scripture practiced in a biblical manner.  They will start with being poor in spirit, mourning over sin, and yielding to the control of the Lordship of Christ.  Unity includes biblical separation, because Jesus came not to bring peace, but to bring a sword.  When God destroyed the earth with a flood, eight people only were in unity, and that was all the unity, the only unity God would accept.  He killed everyone else.  God has chosen the foolishness of preaching to save them who believe.  That is the way to unity.  So much is lacking and mostly contradictory to biblical unity and spiritual life coming from Kanye West.

The content of this post is now available in the study of:

1.) Evan Roberts

2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905

3.) Jessie Penn-Lewis

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.

I’d never heard the word, ghost, until a few days ago. Well, no.  I heard “Holy Ghost” in the King James Version, and Casper the friendly ghost.  I’ve heard the term, ghost, used in varied other ways, and I wouldn’t have made this up.  I went to RealClearPolitics, and read “The Conflict Avoidance Generation” by Noah Rothman at Commentary.  The subtitle is “Comfort First.”  Here are the first three paragraphs:

My two young children adored their babysitter. For about eight months, she watched them when my wife and I couldn’t, and she was good at her job. A recently enrolled student in a local community college, her schedule didn’t always include time to work for us. But when it did, she was punctual and professional, and her services were well compensated. And then one day, she disappeared. 

It occurred to us only after several weeks of radio silence that falling off the face of the earth might have been her way of severing our professional relationship. In retrospect, this maneuver was, perhaps, in character. Her preferred method of declining the opportunity to sit for our children when her schedule did not permit it was just not to take our call. So, resolved to find a new sitter, my wife and I conducted a handful of interviews and settled on a replacement relatively quickly. We introduced the new sitter to our children and established a prospective starting date in about two weeks. That was the last we saw or heard from her. Once again, we were “ghosted.” 

Our experience appears increasingly typical for employers seeking talent among young professionals entering the workforce. “Ghosting,” in the popular vernacular, is the practice of closing off all communication without any forewarning or explanation. This discourteous practice was once exclusive to the dating world, but it is now being applied to all sorts of interpersonal relationships, including those that are entirely professional.

“Ghosting” is defined as “the practice of closing off all communication without any forewarning or explanation” (this article lays out what it is too very well).  As you continue to read, you’ll see that “ghosting” has become a regular practice by a surprising high percentage of “Generation Z” (22 and below) — 43% just vanish when they don’t want the job anymore.  In addition, 25% of millennials (23-38) bail on their employers.  What is going on here?

Some have studied this new trend, and Rothman calls it “an ideological obsession with avoiding all forms of trauma and distress—even the emotional sort.”  He further describes:

The path of least resistance is to avoid potentially conflictual interpersonal engagements. Compulsive conflict avoidance is, however, not only rude but unproductive and unhealthy. “Ghosting” isn’t just ignoring a problem in the hope that it will go away or changing the subject; it’s a complete cognitive and emotional shutdown.

Rothman references an article in The Atlantic that turned into a book of the same title:  “The Coddling of the American Mind,” which has this sentence in the subheading:  “In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like.”  The article is worth reading.  I give both articles a full disclaimer, but I have both seen and experienced “ghosting” numerous times.

“Ghosting” disobeys the frequent biblical command to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”  No one wants someone with whom he relates to just “drop off the face of the earth” with almost no warning and with no opportunity at reconciliation or mediation.  If you do this to someone, you are wrong.  Jesus says this is as much as murdering someone (cf. Matt 5:21-26).

Social media provides the practice or pattern of ghosting.  Someone makes an even moderately negative comment, perhaps just unaccepting, and it is deleted immediately, the person blocked permanently.   A non-affirming relationship is rejected.  This is. not. Christian.  I see this as the norm in social networking and then it becomes a pattern for behavior in the real world.

Someone ghosting is practicing an unscriptural form of separation, separation in the worst, most harsh, hateful way.  It doesn’t try to keep a relationship going.  It doesn’t care about the person it ghosts.  I hear the generation Z and millennials talk about unity, especially since there is so much division in the country, but they do not understand unity.  Unity isn’t the absence of conflict.  Jesus did not come to bring peace, but a sword, and no one brings unity more than Jesus.  They practice this nuclear form of separation that scorches the earth all around its object, like Rome with Carthage.

“Freedom” isn’t the ability to say or do what you want without rejection.  Real freedom gives confidence to face adversity.  The truly free person can stand up to scrutiny.  It’s even part of being an adult, which is one reason I see this being the behavior of young people.  It’s also because they have been coddled, like the article says.

When a conflict arises in a relationship, scripture teaches reconciliation, and mediation if necessary.  Tough conversations must be had.  This is love.  Pushing the eject button isn’t love.  It is selfishness.  Ghosting is “vindictive” a word used four times in the Atlantic article.  He calls it “vindictive protectiveness,” followed by this sentence:  “It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse.”

Don’t get me wrong, generation Z and millennials don’t think they’ve been coddled (overly protected). They think they’ve been abused.  They’ve “had life very hard” — not.  This is the generation where dodge ball, the teeter totter, and the monkey bars went extinct.  Two words:  hand sanitizer.  Almost everyone in my generation of parents over served their children.  They gave them too much, protected them from too much. They had life too easy.  They don’t think so.  They think they had it hard, but no generation of people had it as easy as those 35 and younger.  More coddling isn’t the solution to their problem.  The future looks already very dim, but if this doesn’t stop, that trajectory downward will be even worse.

The audio for the meeting will be at https://www.wordoftruthconference.com

The video for the meeting will be at https://www.youtube.com/user/BethelElSobrante

Oxford reads and quotes Thou Shalt Keep Them, our book on the biblical theology of the perfect preservation of scripture.  Someone alerted me that The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America quoted me, and upon review in an unfavorable manner.  Our book appears in the bibliography and a chapter I wrote in particular is supposedly “quoted” — exactly three words.  I’ll get to those.

I am said to be quoted in a chapter by Jason A. Hentschel, the senior pastor of the Wyoming Baptist Church in Wyoming, OH.  As a little tip, if you go to the church website, the most recent sermon came from Dr. Emily Hill.  It is an American Baptist Church.  His chapter, however, is entitled, “The King James Only Movement.”  The first page of the chapter starts with an illustration of a “Reverend Martin Luther Hux” lighting a Revised Standard Version on fire in the bed of his pick up truck in North Carolina.  Almost every possible advocate of the King James Version (KJV) is lumped in with the burning RSV.  Showing his absolute lack of a grasp of the issue, he traces blame to evangelical J. I. Packer.

Hentschel bemoans the underlying presupposition of certainty among the proponents of the KJV or the textus receptus Greek text behind the KJV New Testament.  He says these evangelicals, who support the KJV, must save it from history or escape from history to take their position.  A tell-tale sentence from Hentschel reads:

Of course, we must ask at this point why it is assumed we must have certainty of faith, why we must be certain that what we know to be true is really true.

Overall, whatever his problem with a KJV only position and even what that means to him (because he doesn’t explain it), his real problem is with the idea that professing Christians are either certain of the Bible or they receive certainty from it.  His view of faith is one in which God retains a mystery unfettered by the bounds of a book.  The definition of faith itself depends on uncertainty, so that one’s view of God transmogrifies amoeba-like just out of touch of anything concrete in the imagination.  This isn’t the God of the Bible, which makes the Bible always a problem for one with God as comfortable abstraction.

The “quote of me” comes within the following portion of a paragraph:

For these in the King James Only movement, to chase after ancient texts or to pretend that scholars can piece together lost autographs with any measure of certainty is a fool’s errand, the unmistakable mark of an unbeliever.  As Edward Hills contends, if God has left his word so vulnerable, then the Christian faith and Christian orthodoxy “would always be wavering.”  Or, as another follower put it, there would be nothing left but “despair and doubt.”

Okay.  Hentschel says those last three words are a quote of me from Thou Shalt Keep Them, the chapter titled, “First Century Textual Attack.”  Apparently, I get one less word than his quote of Edward Hills’s, “would always be wavering.”  First, “despair and doubt” are three words on page 150, which is not in my chapter on first century textual attack.  Nope.  It’s in the following chapter by Thomas Corkish, titled “Pure Words of God.”  I apologize to Dr. Corkish for no mention for writing those three words.  I’m sure most people are not going to check the accuracy of his endnotes.  I didn’t write them though.

In the chapter written by Corkish, not by me, Hentschel is quoting from the last sentence of a section of the chapter:

All Christians must take hope in a preserved and infallible Word, or despair and doubt will fill their hearts.

This sentence ends a paragraph that references Psalm 12 and its promise to the poor and needy there.  The words are like a contract. God refers to the surety of His words like He does the surety of His promise to the poor and needy.  If the words are unsure, the contract is, and not anything on which to depend.  In the very passage, God makes the fulfillment of His promise dependent on the surety of the words.

If God’s words cannot be trusted, how can God be trusted?  This is not to say that scripture is bigger than God.  Even if scripture is lesser than the greater, the actual fulfillment of God’s promise, then despair and doubt do proceed from the untrustworthiness of scripture.  This point can be made from the text.  It’s either true or it isn’t.  If it isn’t, isn’t that attributable to God?  God Himself is saying that it is attributable to Him.  He is saying that if we cannot trust His Word, then we cannot trust Him.  Yet, we can trust Him and His Word.

Hentschel doesn’t deal with the point of the quote in its context.  I’ve found this to be normal for all manner of the left, including the theological left.

Part One     Part Two

In the third post in his series (one, two, three), Michael Riley at Religious Affections Ministries (RAM) argues that the degradation of the English language at its present state does not stop the modern versions from being conservative in consistency with being a conservative church with conservative worship like RAM teaches.  It seems that pastors in the UK when Scott Aniol visited there brought this as an argument against, that a translation into modern English conflicted with conservatism, unlike the King James Version.  Riley to his credit sympathizes with the argument and shows understanding of it for the first five and a half paragraphs before disavowing it.

I don’t know what arguments the UK conservative pastors bring about the inability of the present English language to represent the original text of the Bible.  I have my own thoughts about it that are not what I would consider to be akin to very poor and even false KJV only style arguments.  I’ve written a lot about it recently because of the new book by Mark Ward, where he argues that the English of the KJV is unable to communicate sufficiently to a contemporary English audience — they won’t get most of it because of various reasons, especially what Ward calls “false friends,” words or phrases that people do not understand anymore, yet that they think they do understand.

Riley agrees that English has degraded.  The almost entirely English audience that reads English has also taken a major decline with a steep trajectory downward.  Linguists with no skin in the issue of the translation of scripture have agreed that modern English has lost the ability of past English to communicate a formal social standard — a particular structure, seriousness, and governing of rules of discourse.  Is the English of today a craft that can transmit adequately or appropriately the content of scripture?  Is there an interchange in priority from God to man, a diminishing of divine character by a casualness and commonality past suitability?  Even if the modern English hasn’t become incongruous with the Word of God, is it so close to being so, should the godly of the culture put on the brakes to further erosion?

The new translations have not arisen from church agreement to the degree that a standard, single Bible could come from the unified effort, proceeding with reverence, respect, and holy motives.  In the opinion of many, they have reeked of pragmatism and pandering.  Do those doing the work not see the damage done by producing multitudinous translations?  Is all the variation and the plausible subjectivity of it an even worse friend than the apparent false friends?

Lawyers still understand the need for the precision of formality, that functions according to certain codes that do seem to proceed from natural or moral law.  We still follow the same Constitution of the United States without calls of updates.  We don’t modernize the Declaration of Independence.  If we do change the Constitution, add an amendment, it is very difficult and so also very seldom.  Amendments read like the original, keeping it in the same spirit with a similar tone.

The Bible is a document of exponentially greater value than any other book or literature.  It deserves the veneration of scarce change.  Modern versions don’t give it that.  Modern translators fiddle and fiddle as if they were Nero and Rome burned.  They scamper through the graveyard across the burial plots of sorts.  It contributes to lack of respect like we see in almost every institution.  If we can’t take scripture seriously, when God is of highest value, then everything else will be lost as well.  This all flies in the face of conservatism.

Part One

I agree with almost all of what Religious Affections Ministries (RAM) and Scott Aniol, its general director, write and then say about worship.  I’m also very sympathetic with the concept of “conservative churches.”  However, to be conservative, it’s important to be consistent in that position.

A few weeks ago, one of the writers at RAM, a pastor of a Baptist church in Michigan, Michael Riley, started a series in which he defends the critical text and modern versions (CT/MV) as consistent with conservatism (now three parts:  one, two, three).  I’m glad Riley is giving it a shot, because it says that inconsistency is on the radar of RAM.  As I pointed out in my part one, Riley reports that Aniol heard from conservative evangelical churches in the UK, while he was there on a sabbatical, that his conservative position on worship clashed with his support of CT/MV (I had already written about that point, linked in part one).

In my part one of a rebuttal to Riley, I introduced four principles or propositions that especially show why a critical text/modern version belief and practice clashes with conservatism.  I will be referring to that list as I analyze and expose his presentation, maybe also bringing others to those four.

Riley starts his part two by asserting that a critical text position on the preservation of scripture doesn’t conflict with conservatism.  Even though he is a critical text advocate and uses a modern version in his church, he understands the textual receptus (ecclesiastical text, ET) position is a good argument and defensible.  He’s not arguing against the ET, just that it doesn’t mean that holding CT/MV negates conservatism.  His first argument is that CT/MV better reflects apostolic writing, which I’m assuming he means, the New Testament.  He begins his next paragraph stating his “core argument”:

My core argument is this: our chief task in textual criticism is to discern (by whatever methods we believe best) what the text of Scripture said when originally penned under the inspiration of the Spirit.

Riley then parallels for several paragraphs an advocacy of ET with one of paedobaptism.  He says that both might fit better in church history, but they clash with scripture, and a truly conservative position will proceed from the Bible.  He concludes:

[T]he goal of textual criticism is to discern what the text of Scripture originally said. That is a flatly conservative position: to discard innovations that have accumulated in the church, to hold to that which was handed down in the beginning.

I applaud Riley for admitting that CT/MV is not historical.  Although he doesn’t write this, it would also be to say that the ET position arises from a totally apostate bibliology.  The church for centuries strayed from scripture, only to be returned by CT/MV.  Is that true?  In addition, does scripture show that a true doctrine could be ahistorical?  On biblical grounds, I reject ahistorical doctrine.  The true church has never been in the majority, but it continued, the gates of hell not prevailing against it (Matthew 16:18).

The Bible is still and always sole or final authority, so I agree that to overturn historical doctrine, someone better show some excellent exegetical basis.  I don’t see that at all with CT/MV.  It doesn’t proceed from history or exegesis.  A tell-tale part of Riley’s core argument is in the parenthesis, ” by whatever methods we believe best.”  ET contends that the method itself must proceed from biblical grounds.  The methods themselves matter and this stands at the root too of conservatism.

Let’s say that someone believed that to find the correct text, he should use dowsing, also known as the divining rod, a superstitious means of finding ground water, which arose, it seems, in the 16th century.  That was a method people believed for finding water, but not an acceptable one.  Methods matter, and “whatever methods we believe best” isn’t the standard.

The actual means God gives for recognizing His Words is the church, the accepted means also of the canonization of the twenty seven books of the New Testament.   Just like God uses a confluence of divine and human for inspiration and even sanctification, He uses the same in canonization.  This is not human authority standing over scripture, but a divine means of recognition of what God inspired.  The rejection of a multiplicity of non-canonical books occurred by means of the church.  Canonicity of books follows from a biblical teaching of a canonicity of words — the lesser, books, surely following from the greater, words.

The biblical means of preservation also should follow a biblical expectation.  Paedobaptism isn’t biblical.  We know how this unscriptural practice arose in history.  Infant sprinkling always had those rejecting it in the true church.  CT/MV parallel more with paedobaptism, because neither comes from that “excellent exegetical basis” that I mentioned above, when it arose in church history as an innovation.  CT/MV is truly the innovation, because it relies on a naturalistic and unreliable means for the recognition of scripture.  Its results do not match a biblical expectation of a settled, authoritative, and available text.

CT/MV assumes neutrality to modern textual criticism, not a conservative assumption.  The method of identifying the true text springs from God, just like moral law and transcendent beauty.  It bypasses man’s lying eyes and trampled crime scene for faith, which emerges from the pure mother’s milk (1 Peter 2:2) of God’s Word.  CT/MV is a leap from the dark.  It is the apostle Paul’s, “wisdom of this world” and of “the wise men of the flesh” and the “noble” (1 Corinthians 1).  The “foolishness of God is wiser than men,” so that “no flesh should glory in his presence” (also 1 Corinthians 1).  A temporal, humanistic, naturalistic means should be rejected in light of a scriptural method.

If no method were given, as is very often asserted falsely by CT/MV, I would consider the “whatever methods we believe best” as a kind of Christian liberty or adiaphora.  Those “reformed” people of whom Riley speaks were not holding their position in a vacuum though, like they were on paedobaptism.  They were standing, immersed in scripture.  Their grounds for their method were scriptural.  The work of God toward an authoritative text didn’t end with inspiration.  The Bible also teaches a work of the Holy Spirit in canonicity and in preservation.

A striking characteristic of CT/MV is its paucity of biblical underpinning.  In essence, it’s founders are unbelievers, who reject orthodox bibliology.  Not until recently have CT/MV advocates gone searching in hindsight for some biblical basis for what they do.  It’s the wrong order.  Most of the same advocates for CT support a translation philosophy (MV) that contradicts scriptural principles.  Like with the text, its proponents have only recently began digging to find their “presuppositions” in the Bible, inventing new doctrines in the history of the church.  I read this as a transparent attempt to persuade those who needed scriptural grounds for change and then to bludgeon opponents for sinning if they won’t change in response to first-time scriptural arguments.

The presuppositions for CT/MV versus ET especially distinguish the conservative ET position from the non-conservative CT/MV.  The same category of presuppositions spoils most worship of CT/MV churches.  Both lack in transcendence.  The same debased foundation produces their bibliology and their worship.  This is why RAM is such an outlier with the contradiction between and bifurcation of the two.  RAM attempts to straddle the unstraddlable.

The content of this post is now available in the study of:

1.) Evan Roberts

2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905

3.) Jessie Penn-Lewis

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.

Our church operates a traditional Christian school with several fine, godly teachers, who are members of our church.  They are all different, so much so that none of them are even similar, except that they believe and practice the Bible — different personalities and different styles.  At the same time, different children do better with a certain style of person, leader, or boss.  A particular child gets along with a teacher, moves to a different class and that teacher is just. not. the. same.  Is it a problem with the teacher?  Some parents will complain.  Their child isn’t doing as well because of the teacher.

What I’ve always told parents is that having different types of teachers and authority is good for your child, because that is the way it will be in the real world, when the child grows up and has varied bosses or people in charge of them.  It’s not just that.  They’ll have a wife, children, neighbors, so many different types of people to get along with.

Parents shouldn’t “deliver” a child every time he’s having the difficulty I’m describing.  It would be good to help a child learn to deal with the varied types of leader and learn this valuable life lesson.  I’ve seen adults, those former children, who wouldn’t learn this, continue with difficulty with most of the bosses they have, and they almost never think it’s them.  They just. can’t. find. the. right. boss. and they blame it on everyone else.  It is pathetic.

I’m not writing about a leader who is sinning in his leadership, but even if he does, which he (or she) will (he or she is human), he’s still in authority.  Enter what the Bible says about authority, and the classic passage, Romans 13:1-3:

1 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. 2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.

Authority in scripture, so authority period, since there is no power, authority, but of God, is hierarchical.  This point can be made from all over the Bible, but obedience to authority is obedience to God, and it does start with obedience to parents, to begin the second table of the law.  It is always right to obey authority, except in one instance, that is, if it means disobeying God, even as Acts 5:29 says, “We ought to obey God rather than men.”

I’m going to address this to you.  Since authority is of God, you obey authority.  You don’t have liberty to disobey authority, unless it means disobeying God.  There ought to be the fear of God (actually it says “terror” and “be afraid”) as Romans 13:1-3 reveals.  “Be subject” means to place yourself under the authority.  God is at the top so that disobedience to anything under Him is also disobedient to Him.  If you are thinking otherwise, just because you don’t like that person, get that out of your mind.

Ephesians 5 and 6 help with the understanding of the hierarchy with phrases such as “as unto the Lord,” related to the submission of the wife to the husband, “in the Lord” with children to parents, “of the Lord” with the authority of the Father over the children, and “as unto Christ,” “as servants of Christ,” and “as unto the Lord” as it relates to the employee to the employer.  Work your way through that section, because it relates all obedience to authority in every area to obedience to God.  As long as it is permissible to do, obedience should take place.  When it doesn’t, it is against God, because all lack of submission to and disobedience to authority is against God.

Someone might think, this leader has done wrong things, or I don’t like his style, the way he talks, or how he looked at me, or he just wasn’t nice, didn’t spend quality or quantity time, or didn’t accept what I like to do, my preferences — ad infinitum.  Usually it’s somebody, who wants his or her way, and it’s not being accepted.

People who simply hate to be obliged to obey complain about legitimate and valid authority-bearers in the same terms as those complaining about genuinely abusive authority-bearers.

— Dan Phillips (Grown Zygote) (@BibChr) October 14, 2019

I’d like to say this politely, in the most conciliatory manner possible: if your first and primary concern regarding the exposure of error is the tone in which the error is exposed, you’re doing it wrong.

— David M. Doran (@Grace4Motown) October 22, 2019

You are not in the will of God when you disobey authority.  You are not justified disobeying authority.  You are not better off disobeying authority.  You are in trouble disobeying authority.

Someone disobedient to God isn’t right with God.  That’s not a success.  The Old Testament calls that not dealing prudently.  It’s the opposite of how Jesus lived, Who was always obedient to authority.  It’s not following Christ.

On the positive side, and this is how it has been for me.  First, I want to know what’s right.  Doing what I’m told is right.  It’s also a simple thing.  I just do it.  I can have a good attitude.  How can I?  I know it is “as unto the Lord,” since the powers that be are ordained of God.  I don’t have to be worried at that moment that I’m doing wrong.  It’s what God wants me to do.

Here’s another example.  Let’s say that you don’t think it’s wrong as a woman to wear pants.  You don’t like it when someone tells you to wear a dress or a skirt, because you don’t believe it.  It’s not wrong to wear a modest skirt or dress.  If authority says, wear a dress, you wear it.  You don’t have liberty not to wear it, because wearing a modest dress or skirt is not disobedient to God.  It’s not even out of left field for a woman to wear.  It’s feminine.

If your teacher gives you homework, do it.  Your dad gives you a chore, do it.  Your parents tell you that you can’t go and you’ve got to stay, you do what they say.  The church says, “No.”  That’s a no.  Unless it is disobedience to scripture, the one exception.

If you get in trouble, you get a bad tone, even terror, you deserved it, if you didn’t obey authority.

Forms of “know” in the Bible occur 1,580 times.  Knowing is expected or assumed.  Knowing something implies certainty.  Men can and should and do know.  Scripture says it.

The first time the English word “know” appears in the New Testament is Matthew 6:3 in the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus says:

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.

A rudimentary truth of the verse is that the left hand can know.  Jesus commands for the left hand not to know with the implication that it will know.  Next, and in the same sermon, Jesus says in Matthew 7:11:

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

People, even being evil, know how to give good gifts.  They do know.  It’s not in the Bible and they still know it.  There is not a list of good gifts to give to children and yet Jesus says “ye know how.”  Further in the same sermon, Jesus says in Matthew 7:16,

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Ye shall know.  We should assume that we will know things, because God, Who created us, knows we can know.  Christianity is based upon certainty, surety, represented by either the words, often used by the New Testament writers, “we know” or “I know.”

Romans 7:14, For we know that the law is spiritual
Romans 8:22, For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
Romans 8:28, And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God
1 Corinthians 8:1, Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge.
2 Corinthians 5:1, For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
1 John 3:14, We know that we have passed from death unto life
1 John 3:24, And hereby we know that he abideth in us
1 John 5:2, By this we know that we love the children of God
1 John 5:18, We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not
1 John 5:19, And we know that we are of God
1 John 5:20, And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding

The expectation is knowledge.  Salvation is itself called knowledge.

John 17:3, And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
2 Corinthians 4:6, For God,, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 3:8, Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
2 Peter 1:3, According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: