The Blue Trinitarian Bible Society Greek New Testament or Scrivener’s Greek New Testament
Someone said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. When I hear a critique of the perfect preservation view, standard sacred text view, or verbal plenary preservation view, it almost always focuses on ‘which text is the perfect text of the New Testament.” In the White/Van Kleeck debate, White asked this kind of gotcha question, which Textus Receptus edition is identical to the autographs? A person then waits for the answer.
In the Van Kleeck/White debate, White asked Van Kleeck whether Scrivener’s TR is the perfect Greek text. He said, “Yes.” I’m not saying it’s a good argument, but it works well with a certain audience.
I watched a critical analysis of Van Kleeck in the debate, and the podcast started with the moment White asked Van Kleeck that question. The critical analysis is essentially ridicule of the most inane variety. The young man in the podcast with three other men simply repeated Van Kleeck’s answer and then summarized it with a mocking voice. They didn’t explain why Van Kleeck’s answer was wrong. It just was. Why? Because it is so, so strange and ridiculous.
The critical text side does not have a settled text. If the question were reversed, that side would say it doesn’t know, unlike it’s proponents might say about knowing the 66 books of the Bible. They would say that’s knowable, even though the oldest extant complete twenty-seven book manuscript of the New Testament dates to the fourth century. Books are knowable. The words are not. Why? No biblical reason, only naturalistic ones. The same reasons could be used to debunk any doctrine of the Bible.
I believe Van Kleeck said that Scrivener’s or the blue Trinitarian Bible Society Greek New Testament is identical to the autographs of the New Testament because that corresponds to His bibliological position. If someone says he believes the biblical and historical doctrine of scripture, his saying there is a perfect text conforms to that belief. If he did not know what the text was, he would also admit that he doesn’t believe what the Bible says about itself or what churches have believed about what the Bible says about itself. An alternative is to change the historic and scriptural doctrine of bibliology to fit naturalistic presuppositions.
A biblical methodology that proceeds from a biblical bibliology must fit what the Bible says about itself. Because of this, it believes that the agreement of the church is evidence. This is the unity of the spirit. I’m not going to continue through every aspect of a biblical bibliology but all of those components combined lead to an agreement on one text. Van Kleeck had the audacity to utter it with confidence. I’m assuming that his confidence and assertiveness comes from faith that comes by hearing the Word of God.
Van Kleeck attacked the presuppositions of White in the White/Van Kleeck debate. He wanted to expose the naturalism. White wouldn’t answer the questions and the moderator would not require an answer. White also took the offensive by saying that the audience also was offended by the questions. It’s a common tactic of the left, when they “channel” everyone in the United States by speaking for “the American people.” Van Kleeck asked if there was even a single verse of the New Testament that was settled, guaranteed never to change with a future find of older manuscript evidence. White would not answer.
A vast majority of the opponents of the biblical and historical view on the preservation of scripture say the Bible doesn’t say how God would preserve scripture. I like to say that the whole Bible describes how God would do it. The Bible is very clear about how God said He would preserve what He said. If He told us how, that castigates all the means other than how He said, which includes modern textual criticism.
Very often, even among the standard sacred text proponents, they will not say what the perfect edition is. They anticipate the reaction. They ready for the ridicule. If it isn’t that blue Trinitarian Bible Society textus receptus, then what is it?
The Peter Van Kleeck/James White Debate on the Textus Receptus Being Equal to the New Testament Autographa
I’m happy to say that the biblical and historical position on the preservation of scripture is making headway across the world. Today people refer to this viewpoint or doctrine by different names, including providential preservation view, standard sacred text view, confessional bibliology view, verbal plenary preservation view, and the perfection preservation of scripture view. I think some even use a different label than those. Over twenty years ago now, our church published Thou Shalt Keep Them: A Biblical Theology of the Perfect Preservation of Scripture to provide an exposition of this position from scripture.
About a month or so ago, Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio contacted me to debate James White in Pennsylvania. I was glad he asked. This debate, I told him, I wanted to do, would probably do it, but I wasn’t sure if his date would work out for me. I asked him a follow-up about the costs of lodging and travel The next day he told me he needed to know right away so he asked Peter Van Kleeck, who agreed to the debate. I believe it was God’s will. I still want to debate White and wish I could have then, but I was happy that Van Kleeck would be the man to do it.
Along with his dad, Peter Van Kleeck Sr. (Brother Van Kleeck is Jr.), he helps the cause of this doctrine online and many various ways. Several men right now are writing excellent material to read along with what Thomas Ross and I write here and then in our book on preservation. I believe Van Kleeck easily won the debate against James White. I watched it all and have not been able to make the time to critique what occurred, but I don’t want to keep waiting to post the debate, which is right below here.
Every one of the primary defenders of this doctrine, who have contributed much to the defense of the biblical and historical doctrine, would probably do a little bit different in his approach, strategy, or tactics. James White did not answer Van Kleeck’s arguments. His arguments stood and since he took the affirmative, he won. I’m not going to say anymore except that I wish to include below this paragraph the takeaway of Jeff Riddle over the debate. What he said was so close to what I would have said or written about the debate that it could be identical. I don’t think I need to write more than what he said. I might say or write more in the future, but this is good for now.
After having completed this post, I began to listen to the Van Kleecks, dad and son, analyze the debate, starting and stopping and commenting. It is a very helpful exercise, so I’m going to include their videos so far here. They so far have spent two parts on Dr. Van Kleeck’s opening statement and then two parts on White’s opening. Here they are in order.
Two Approaches to Reality, One of Which Is True: Either Construing or Constructing Reality, Pt. 2
Only one reality exists. That reality is transcendent. It proceeds from God. Men must receive that reality by faith, that is, they must receive what God says. This does not ever contradict science.
The one reality is the truth, the goodness, and the beauty. God wants men to construe that reality and receive it. God’s truth is the truth, His goodness is the goodness, and His beauty is the beauty.
In his rebellion against God, man, speaking of mankind, constructs an alternative reality. It isn’t reality. As a noun, it’s a construct of reality.
Today people say that man constructs his own reality. If man constructs all reality, then anyone can construct his own reality. His truth is his truth, his goodness is his goodness, and his beauty is his beauty.
The rebellion of man proceeding from his sin nature authors a new reality. He becomes God. Rather than construing reality and receiving it, he constructs his own in rebellion against God.
As part of a growing rebellion against God others must receive a construction of reality and at least tolerate it. This rejects the truth, goodness, and beauty for a human construct. It validates man’s pride and lust.
Man will find out his constructions of realities are all lies, as part of “the lie.” The lie is the Satanic lie in rebellion against God, that takes on different forms or vessels, but with the same contents. When I was young, Avon sold perfume in a variety of containers, all the same scent.
In the end, God will unveil or unmask the lie and all the individual lies. They will all stand naked before His judgment. God will not receive them. He will say, Depart from me, and into eternal separation from Him.
Churches should bring God’s light to reality. They should manifest reality, the truth, goodness, and beauty. Instead, today churches associate with and accommodate the lie by receiving man’s construction of reality. They even call this love, corrupting the love of God and their neighbor.
People today use the terminology, “alternative reality,” which speaks of fiction. No one wants to hear that he believes in fiction, but he still assigns to his fiction a designation of reality. He wants what he wants, so he calls it reality, when it isn’t. This is a construct of reality.
Because in postmodernism all reality is a construct, then every reality should be tolerated. This toleration is now love. All reality is tolerated except for objective reality that has objective meaning. This is transcendent reality. All truth, goodness, and beauty comes from God, who is transcendent. You can’t receive God and reject transcendent reality, which is to say, reject reality itself.
One of the lies of the lie is that someone has his reality in the gospel, while rejecting reality. Does someone who rejects reality receive the gospel? Can a gospel extricated from reality be the gospel? Is its God, the God? Is a God removed from reality the God of the gospel, the God who saves?
More To Come
Two Approaches to Reality, One of Which Is True: Either Construing or Constructing Reality
Let’s say that I’m on vacation to Turkey. I want to look at Asia Minor and the geographical locations of the Apostle Paul’s churches there. In addition I’m interested in Istanbul and the history of the Eastern Roman Empire. While touring, I’m grabbed, a gunny sack pulled over my head, and thrown into the back of a dark cargo van. The next thing I’m sitting on a metal chair in a crumbling urban brick building with a camera pointed at my face.
Moslem terrorists rip the sack off my head and through very bright light I see several swarthy, angry men each with AK-47s. One of them puts a crumpled paper in my hand with English text, that says I must admit confess that as an American spy I reject the Republican form of government and pledge my allegiance to Allah.
I look up from the script my interrogators gave me and tell them that I can’t read this, because it isn’t true. One of them punches the side of my head with the butt of his rifle and I see a flash of bright lights. I shake out the cobwebs and everything looks blurry. As my brain starts to clear again, I feel a stream of blood down the side of my head. As everything starts to clear, I look at the script and reassess whether I might go ahead and read it.
What’s on the piece of paper isn’t true, even if the audience believes it. The kidnappers constructed a reality. It isn’t true. I don’t believe it. I reject it. Someone else wrote it. Saying it or writing it more doesn’t make it any more true. What they’ve constructed is not reality. The language on the paper means to construct a new reality.
Maybe you’ve heard that perception is reality. A person can create his own reality based on his perception, one which might not be true. A person with perceptions will call it reality, when it isn’t. This is a reality again of his own construction, perhaps based on his misconstruing his own reality. Perception is reality, is not reality. He could perceive reality, but his perception does not make it reality. Very often it is not. Even though it isn’t reality, he forms language to construct a reality as he perceives it.
Construct or Construe
A popular postmodern notion today is that people construct their own realities. Reality is what people want it to be. Therefore, they reject objective reality and/or objective meaning.
For the sake of discussion, I am saying that construing reality is describing reality as it is, as it really is. Constructing reality describes reality as we want it to be. God alone constructs reality outside of our own perception. At most, we construe it. If we truly construe reality, then we describe it as it is. If we don’t like the reality God constructed, out of rebellion against him we might construct our own reality. It still isn’t reality though.
Postmoderns say men constructed the patriarchy, that is, the patriarchy is a social construct. They constructed the patriarchy using language. They say language is powerful. Language constructs reality. Language also changes reality, so using language they construct a new reality, an egalitarian one. Construction of a new, different reality starts with deconstruction of the old. Then using language, they construct a new one.
The patriarchy is reality. People’s job is to construe reality. People might not like the patriarchy but that does not change the reality of patriarchy. Since God constructs reality, reality is objective and, therefore, meaning is objective. Our life only has meaning if it describes reality as it really is. Someone construes reality only when he describes it or understands it as it really is.
Is patriarchy construing reality or constructing reality? It construes reality. It construes what God constructed. Why do people then construct reality? Objective reality, what we should call “the truth,” contradicts people’s lusts. They then construct a reality that conforms to their lust and call it their own reality. Also, they call it their truth. They use language to construct their own reality. This is why language becomes so important in secular institutions. They reject God, leaving themselves to construct their own reality.
The Idolatry of Using Language to Construct a New Reality
In the beginning, God constructed reality out of language. John 1:1-3 read:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
The Word made all things. With Him was not anything made that was made. God alone did this or does this. When a man constructs his own reality using language, it is a form of idolatry that proceeds from pride and lust. Therefore, he worships and serves the creature rather than the Creator (cf. Romans 1:25).
Rejecting reality, that is, not describing it as it really is, also rejects God. It is a more subtle and significant way to eliminate God or to dethrone Him. God created everything for pleasure. Man deconstructs reality and constructs his own reality for his own pleasure.
Scripture reveals the reality God constructed, using language. God spoke the world into existence. He upholds all things by the Word of His power. God’s Words construct reality.
Those God created are responsible to construe reality based upon scripture. No one is neutral. When they don’t receive what God said, they will construct a new reality with their own language in defiance of God.
More to Come
A Hot Thing Today in Evangelical Hermeneutics Is Now To See Social Justice All Over the Minor Prophets
Was God angry with Israel for its lack of social justice? No doubt God was angry with Israel and through His prophets He warned them. The Bible, including the Minor Prophets, doesn’t mention “social justice.” It mentions just “justice.” Those who point out social justice in the Minor Prophets, or “The Prophets” as the Hebrews referred to it, say that God punished Israel for its social injustice. What they most often don’t say is that social justice itself is injustice according to its definition:
Social justice refers to a fair and equitable division of resources, opportunities, and privileges in society. Originally a religious concept, it has come to be conceptualized more loosely as the just organization of social institutions that deliver access to economic benefits.
Many different factors change the economic and social outcome of individuals. Scripture and, therefore, God doesn’t guarantee equality of resources or privileges. God doesn’t ensure equal opportunity. Bringing social justice into the Minor Prophets alters the meaning of justice, reads something corrupt into scripture.
When I say, “justice,” I’m speaking of the Hebrew word mishpot, found 421 times in the Old Testament. Translators translate mishpot both “justice” and “judgment.”
Evangelical social justice warriors use a prophet like Amos, where in 5:7 he says,
Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth.
“Righteousness” (tsidaqa) in the second half relates to “judgment” (mishpot) in the first half. A warning occurs later in verse 15:
Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.
“Establish judgment” (mishpot) and the “LORD God of hosts will be gracious.” Same chapter, verse 25, was a common refrain from civil rights leaders, used according to what became called “liberation theology,” which spiritualizes these Old Testament passages with a form of amillennialism.
But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Social justice advocates now use these verses in a wide ranging manner, that is hardly justice. The “judgment,” that is mishpot, is the judgment of God. How does God judge what occurs? Israel doesn’t follow God’s laws, which are His righteousness. Israel falls short of the glory of God.
Micah is another prophet who confronts the same theme as Amos in such verses like 3:9:
Hear this, I pray you, ye heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that abhor judgment, and pervert all equity.
“Equity” at the very end isn’t a contemporary understanding. The Hebrew word means “straight, right, level, or pleasing,” as in pleasing to God. Israel was making crooked what was straight. That’s injustice.
When some people get away with lawbreaking because they’re rich, that is injustice. It’s not judging like God does. When that occurs, the straight becomes crooked. It’s also allowing people to get away with such activity.
Today the social justice warriors are championed by the rich, who get off the hook for their injustice. They cover for criminal evidence on a laptop of the President’s son. They tear up public property in Seattle and Portland without arrest. Illegals flow across the border. A homeless man urinates on the street without justice. Yet, all of this is “social justice.”
A verse in Micah equal in fame to Amos 5:25 is Micah 6:8:
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?
People “do justly” or they don’t. In other words, they characteristically do what pleases God or they don’t. Justice relates to God. Doing justice means no one gets away with unrighteousness, which is what God says it is. If he does break God’s law, he repents. When a boy dresses like a girl or a girl dresses like a boy, that’s not mishpot. Abortion violates mishpot too. I can keep going a long time with such examples of the transgression of God’s law.
Calling the contents of the preaching of the Minor Prophets “social justice” perverts the point and meaning of the Minor Prophets. It sounds like impressive exegesis to a woke audience. It panders to that group. However, it corrupts justice. It makes the straight crooked in contradiction to Micah 3:9. It promotes redistribution of wealth, taking from those who earned it and giving it to those who didn’t, a form of thievery. This corresponds to a now famous statement by President Obama when he ran for reelection in 2012, speaking of small business owners, “You didn’t build it.”
The prophets preach repentance too. Amos 5:4 says, “Seek ye me, and ye shall live.” 5:6, “Seek the LORD, and ye shall live.” 5:9, “Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion.” 5:14, “Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the LORD, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.” The road to justice starts with personal repentance, seeking the LORD and, therefore, His ways.
Perhaps the greatest abuse of justice is idolatry, elevating man’s lust above God. False worship. Rather than loving God, loving your self. None of this is mishpot. This isn’t justice. This isn’t seeking after God.
Could There Be Practical Reasons Why Some Evangelists See More or Better Results than Others? Pt. 3
Every time I begin to consider the problems in this country and then the world, I go back to the gospel. Whatever path you ponder, it comes back to necessary conversion. Someone can make moves that might postpone the inevitable, but the actual solution is the gospel. Everything else is “peace, peace, when there is no peace.”
Last Monday I wrote two reasons and Wednesday a third on why some evangelists see more or better results than others. Here’s a fourth.
4. A Difference in Diligent Work
Scripture emphasizes work in evangelism, diligence, as if it would make a difference in the salvation in men’s souls. Jesus said in John 9:4: “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.” Even Jesus saw the need for urgency in getting something done sooner than later. This was an example from which the lyrics to a song come (here verse 2):
Work, for the night is coming: Work through the sunny noon; Fill brightest hours with labor: Rest comes sure and soon. Give every flying minute Something to keep in store; Work, for the night is coming, When man works no more.
The Apostle Paul also talked about the diligence to his work. He explains in what I call his “how-to book for the ministry” in 1 Thessalonians 2:9: “For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.” You read there, “our labour and travail: for labouring night and day.” Paul connected this to his success.
Even as I wrote about Paul, I thought about Philip the evangelist, when he evangelized the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. This is one of the most well-known, famous evangelism stories in all of scripture. Here are the last two verses in the chapter:
39 And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing. 40 But Philip was found at Azotus: and passing through he preached in all the cities, till he came to Caesarea.
Almost anyone else would have gone back to his lazy-boy and had an iced tea. He put in his 1.5 hours of evangelism for the week, time to head home. Not Philip. After the Ethiopian eunuch was saved, a great evangelistic moment in history, Philip “preached in all the cities” from Azotus to Caesarea.
What I’m describing is related at least to love. The 1.5 hour person is the one who is the legalist. Don’t get me wrong. I do think that having a habit, temperance of a fashion, putting it on the schedule, is and can be good. It’s not enough when it’s love. It isn’t laboring for the night cometh when no man can work. It isn’t labor and travail, laboring night and day. It isn’t preaching in all the cities. Everyone has other things to do. I agree things need to be done.
Every little bit helps. I’m happy when someone at least does evangelize. I’m writing about how some see more than others and in a legitimate way, true evangelism. Diligent labor is another difference.
Could There Be Practical Reasons Why Some Evangelists See More or Better Results than Others? Pt. 2
In the parables of the lost coin, lost sheep, and lost son in Luke 15, we see that God seeks for the lost and heaven rejoices even when one soul repents unto salvation. It says heaven rejoices at the repentance of the lost soul, not when a believer evangelizes the lost soul. Does Jesus tell us this and then not provide any way to experience anything more than faithful evangelism without conversions? Is there any way to increase numbers of conversions through evangelism? God seeks. Do you?
One whole Old Testament book puts the emphasis on going as that relates to increased conversions: Jonah. God loves the Gentiles too. He wants them saved.
If you are somewhere difficult with hard, thorny, or rocky soil, you will see less conversions than where good soil exists (cf. Mt 13). All things being the same, one person might see more conversions than someone else. I can’t remove giftedness from the conception of greater results. God does gift some in a unique way to evangelism. I’m not writing that in this series as something you can do, because the Holy Spirit divides severally as He wills, not as you will. If you could do it, you might allot yourself that gift. I’m writing here about factors within your control. You can see more conversions, and I gave two distinctions in part one of the believer who does see more: (1) A Difference in Love, and (2) A Difference in Spirit-Filled Boldness. Are there more?
3. A Difference in Knowledge
Evangelism requires spiritual combat with the sword of the Lord (Eph 6:17). Scripture is the spiritual weapon, not a carnal one, that pulls down the strongholds in people’s minds that keep them from conversion (2 Cor 10:3-5). Knowledge is also a requirement for salvation, which can be under or over valued. Head knowledge doesn’t save, but knowledge is required. Scripture reveals an intellectual aspect of faith. Jesus is Jesus. Belief is belief. You’ve got to get the points of the gospel right. Wrong thinking gets in the way of salvation.
You will do better at evangelism when you know more Bible and you know more how to use the Bible you know. This doesn’t mean evangelism is winning a debate, but you’ve got to know what to say. When you deal with a particular false religion, it helps that person for you to pinpoint with the sword the falsities of it.
When I got to Utah a year ago, I read four books on LDS. I’m reading another now. I’ve read several good and appropriate articles. I toured the LDS history museum and paid attention. I wrote two tracts on LDS. I didn’t stay with the same approach I used the first time. I changed. I listened. I learned. I’m still learning. I’m growing as an evangelist to LDS. I can tell what the strongholds are and I deal with them using the best verses or passages in the Bible that are appropriate to each stronghold. What I’ve done helps me. I would or will see more LDS converted because of this.
I also know the Bible. I’m trying to improve my Bible knowledge for evangelism. Before I debated a Church of Christ preacher many years ago on eternal security, I read the entire Bible looking for everything in the Bible on eternal security to prepare for that debate, marking up a brand new Bible for that purpose. I understand and am practiced at talking to people about a number of varied false doctrines that are prevalent in the world, which keep them from salvation.
Whenever you struggle with a problem in evangelism, go back and study. I grew more from this than any other reason why I have grown. I put myself in stressful situations that were tough, knowing that trial would strengthen me. Avoiding them won’t help. It’s like avoiding a barbell when you want to gain muscle.
Many professing Christians get into a rut in their evangelism, because they don’t work at it. They learned a few things years ago and they do it again and again with little improvement. Perhaps a majority of professing believers in the United States think this is fine. They know four Romans Road verses. They repeat those and take every single person down the same path. This is wrong. In the long run, you will do more harm than good when you approach the lost this way. I’m not saying don’t know those verses in Romans. Sure, know those. But those are far from enough to do what God wants you to do.
I’ve said that all of these points interrelate to one another. Men don’t grow in their evangelism, because they lack the love for God and others to do so. Some of them will use excuses. They don’t know enough. Others are smarter. Meanwhile they get much better at all of their hobbies. Why? They really love those. This also relates to boldness. You won’t be as bold when you don’t know enough to know what to say to someone. Boldness relates to preaching something you know. When you don’t know it, you can’t be bold. Being filled with the Spirit parallels with letting the Words of Christ dwell in you richly. A Spirit controlled person speaks the Word of God with boldness, which is a person filled with the Word of God.
To Be Continued
Could There Be Practical Reasons Why Some Evangelists See More or Better Results than Others?
When I say, “evangelist,” for purposes of this discussion, I mean men preaching the gospel, perhaps in missionary status but also men preaching in their own churches. Over my thirty plus years in full time preaching, I have won many to Christ, saw them baptized into the church, and then discipled. I did this without a smidgin of pragmatism or gimmicks. It was pure preaching, dependence on the gospel.
On the other hand, I saw men who rarely saw results. They still do not see very many results. They go years, even decades without discipling one person. Some see many. Some see very few to none. Could there be practical reasons why this occurs? I believe so. I want to enumerate reasons not necessarily in order.
1. A Difference in Love
Some men are faithful to do evangelism. They do it all the time. These men have knocked on many doors. They do what God wants in that way. In one sense, you could say that they are loving God in that they are keeping His commandments on evangelism.
At the end of Jude, Jude talks about having compassion, making a difference. Jesus very often in the gospels is said to looking at the people with compassion, connecting His success to that attribute. Paul mentioned how much he cared again and again.
I’ve noticed that men treat people like they are objects of their preaching. They very often go about the task like they are putting in the time, and the sheer time-spent counts as loving faithfulness.
It’s important to be faithful. It is very good to persevere. I’m thankful for those who will do this. However, you’ve got to love the people for whom you are reaching. This includes wanting them to be saved, not just limiting yourself to accomplishing the task. People know when you care about them. They can tell when you are going through the motions with them.
Some love people enough that they take record of those with whom they’ve talked. They remember their names. These unique individuals will pray for those they evangelize. They go back and visit them.
Have you ever had someone talk to you, and it seemed like it was an exercise in hearing their own voice? I know a few pastors this way. You exist for them to preach to. You’re there for them to supply their pearls of wisdom. When you talk to them, you’re not sure if they are listening. When they talk, it is not personable. It sounds like a speech written off of a script. They don’t make a connection in a relationship because they don’t show that they care.
Compassion makes a difference in the results of evangelism. I know some reading here think they love people. They’ve convinced themselves. They rarely see anyone come to Christ, baptized, join the church, and made disciples. Perhaps you should consider that you don’t care enough. That’s the reason why.
Both of the churches I started, what I’m writing made a huge difference. Those people knew that I loved them. They still do. Some missionaries act in many ways as pure place setters because they lack the love they need to see more occur than they already do.
2. A Difference in Spirit-Filled Boldness
Many men are easily turned away. A person shows resistance and they move on. This is related to number one. They can’t get through those situations because maybe they don’t care enough. They don’t love enough. They give up on the person very quickly.
Sometimes men will dance around what needs to be said. They don’t get to the crucial point toward salvation, the particular stronghold, because they don’t want to say it. They are either too fearful or they don’t want to look bad. Both of those are similar but slightly different.
The Apostle Paul in Ephesians 6 and Colossians 4 asks the churches to pray for his boldness. That is an important evangelism prayer. When the Holy Spirit fills someone, Acts 4 says that they preach the Word of God with boldness. This is a significant manifestation of Holy Spirit filling.
Having or not having boldness might mean speaking or not speaking. Some don’t get to the evangelism because they don’t have boldness. They don’t have boldness because they are not filled with the Spirit, that is, controlled with the Spirit. They also might not be praying for boldness. Boldness relates to results someone will see.
Many, many times I have gone out with someone else evangelizing. He talks and he’s done with a person. He doesn’t get to the gospel. I pick up the conversation where he left off and I get through the whole gospel and with great conviction on the person. Boldness is the difference in these situations.
When I write this, I’m as far away as 1-2-3 pray-with-me as a person can get. This is not manipulation. I’m writing about practical, biblical differences that result in someone seeing more or less results. I’m not guaranteeing results, but there are scriptural reasons some will see more than others, even why someone will never see any results and he should check his heart because of it.
Obviously the two, love and boldness, relate with one another. Love is fruit of the Spirit. When the Holy Spirit fills someone, he speaks with boldness. When I preach boldly, the Spirit bears witness with my spirit that I am a child of God.
To Be Continued
A Tip to Cure Insomnia, Getting Sleep on a Sleepless Night
Many people today use chemical sleep aids because they can’t sleep at night. It might be that they have a bad hip or shoulder or knee, some painful body joint, perhaps osteoarthritis pain. I feel your pain on physical pain. I have that too, not to the degree that I can’t sleep at night, but I have one bad hip that hurts. It doesn’t keep me awake.
I don’t know if you have insomnia. Many do. They take a sleeping pill or some supplement to help them sleep. I know many people who do that. I read about melatonin and relaxium that are not a sleeping pill. Doctors will say that once you take sleeping pills, you will keep taking them. You have to have them then. Maybe you’re there already.
In general, through my life I’ve never had a problem sleeping. As some might describe, I have slept like a baby. For the last couple of years, that changed. My sleepless nights come because of my mind. I’m thinking about something and I can’t stop thinking about it and that keeps me awake. Maybe you relate to that description. You can’t sleep because your mind won’t shut down and so you lay there and you can’t sleep.
I wear a fitbit that my wife got me. For you that like wearing no watch or a more significant watch, the classic look, you might cringe at the sight of a man with a fitbit. I understand. Nevertheless, I like looking at the stats from my fitbit on my phone: how many steps, the number of calories burned that day, my resting heart rate, mileage, zone minutes for peak aerobic, and my sleep score. Fitbit gives me a sleep score. If you wear one, you know what I’m talking about. 90 plus is excellent, the upper 70s and 80s it says is good, and below that is fair. To me, a fair night sleep is a bad one. Even with a moderately good night sleep, you’re not getting much deep sleep, the kind that refreshes you and keeps you with physical energy during the day.
If your mind, your rapid thinking, the brain not shutting down, keeps you awake, that’s why you can’t sleep, I wrote this post for you. I found something.
As you read this, perhaps you suggest, pray or quote verses. Praying and quoting verses do not shut down wakeful thoughts for me. Don’t get me wrong. Like Peter, James, and John I could fall asleep praying. When I pray at night, I do fall asleep praying. When I’m thinking about scripture, I fall asleep thinking about scripture. Prayer and thinking about scripture though are not what put me to sleep. They just didn’t keep me awake. I need something different than those to put me asleep when my brain won’t stop rerunning the wakeful thoughts.
For me, words don’t stop my mind from working on things that keep me awake. Prayer involves words mainly, so does scripture obviously. Words can’t stop the thought patterns that won’t let me sleep. So what do I do?
To get to sleep, I must replace the thoughts that keep me awake with other thoughts. Scripture talks about replacing thoughts or imaginations. You know that. You’ve got Philippians 4:8 and Romans 12:2: think on these things and be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The only way for me to replace thoughts is to think about something else that won’t keep me awake. How do I do that?
Two nights ago I couldn’t sleep the whole night. I rested. My sleep score was fair. It was in the upper sixties on the fitbit. I have a pretty low resting heart rate for my age. My body was resting. I didn’t feel too tired all day, but that kind of sleep does leave me sluggish in certain ways. Two of those in a row would start to debilitate. A string of 3 or 4 would cause harm.
I was very tired when I went to bed last night, because of the bad sleep the night before. I prayed and then I was going to read (right now the biography of Brigham Young by John G. Turner), but I was too tired to read. That was good news for me. I couldn’t stay awake reading because I was too tired. I turned off my bed lamp, rolled onto my good hip and shoulder and began the process to sleep. My mind began to work and work. If steam could come out of my ears from my brain, it would have been happening. What did I do?
Most nights, my wife and I take a walk for about thirty minutes. It’s about 3500-4000 steps on my fitbit. We talk. Sometimes we walk silently. We hold hands. It’s good exercise, but it’s mainly social, I would say. We take the same path so many times that I have that path memorized.
It was midnight last night and I was still awake. I decided to take the walk with my wife in my mind. What was powerful was that it was not words. It was imagination and mental activity. I blocked wakeful thoughts with pictures. My mind could easily take the whole walk in my mind and then start it over again. I did that. When the negative, sleepless thoughts started trying to enter my brain, I focused on the pictures, the imagination of that walk. It worked. The next thing I knew, it was morning. I had fallen asleep. The thoughts did not keep me awake.
As is usual, this procedure I used has a name: thought-blocking. Yes, someone thought of this already and I didn’t know it. I haven’t tried what others have said. I used what I wrote about here, and it worked.
If you can’t sleep for some reason, you know the power of sleeplessness. When you get up and you didn’t sleep, that changes your day. If you do that all the time, it changes your life. I haven’t had much of a problem not sleeping, so this is new to me in many ways. I think this is going to work, so I shared it with you.
Debunking of Nine Marks Dual Church View: Both Universal and Local Churches, Part Three
Nowhere does scripture make a connection between an earthly church and then a final heavenly church. Neoplatonic Christianity or professing Christianity invented this idea, one borrowed by Jonathan Leeman in his article, The Church: Universal and Local, for the 9 Marks parachurch organization. A believer in a salvific way has a citizenship in heaven and has a seat in heaven in the sense that God reserved it for him, which is like someone seated in Congress without physically being there. Because He saved me and keeps saving me, Jesus anchors me in the heavenly holy of holies. The seating of me and the anchoring of me there does not mean I am there in the present. It is a blessed guarantee of my salvation.
Universal church ecclesiology uses neoplatonic language. It says the true church is all believers, the apparent “universal church,” which manifests itself in a visible church, the local one. It finds reality in the ideal or the mystical. Leeman says the universal church becomes local by gathering. A church is a gathering. A gathering doesn’t become a gathering by gathering. The not-gathered thing is not a gathering. This is also how all of the New Testament reads. It’s not called a gathering or an assembly when it doesn’t assemble. It isn’t an assembly then. The only reason why Leeman talks about the church as universal comes from neoplatonism.
Jonathan Leeman writes a unique ecclesiology. The dual church view isn’t unique, but his attempt to keep an attachment to the literal meaning of ekklesia, “assembly.” 9 Marks and he see the damage of the typical universal church teaching, that becomes easily untethered from the biblical practice of the church, which is only local. The typical universal church teaching creates free agents without accountability, living how they want yet continuing to call themselves Christians.
The attempt to keep congruity between assembly and universal church keeps Leeman in the mainstream of evangelicalism, which loves its universal church. It keeps alive a multitude of boards, conventions, associations, colleges, universities, and other parachurch organizations. Someone can live and work in that parachurch world as if it is Christian ministry without anything like it in the Bible. It is unhelpful, but mainly untrue. Whatever kingdom-like quality Leeman wants to attribute to the church, the mixture of the universal undermines the authority that the kingdom of Jesus Christ possesses.
As one might expect, Leeman’s system of interpretation effects his outcome. He fails to mention, however, his system — amillennialism. That system must see a universal church, which is a synonym with the kingdom. It erases a line between soteriology and ecclesiology. It results in reading his conclusions into scripture.
A Kingdom Argument
Leeman uses a doctrine of the kingdom to argue for a universal church. Some truth exists within the framework of his argument. As a representative of His church, Jesus gives Peter the keys to the kingdom in Matthew 16:18-19. That does not mean the church is the kingdom, which emerges from amillennialism, an eschatology of Roman Catholicism and Capital Hill Baptist Church, Mark Dever, and 9 Marks. The church and the kingdom interrelate like the church and the family of God do.
Leeman says the church provides the way to say who citizens of the kingdom are. He compares church membership to the means of possessing the passport into the kingdom. To know who they are, Leeman postulates baptism and the Lord’s Supper as the means. He says these are covenant signs of the new covenant, so they express the entrance requirements into the kingdom. Nothing in the Bible says this. It is nifty inventiveness to attempt to prove a point, while having nothing to do so. It’s another way of my saying that it’s a stretch by Leeman.
The article further argues the kingdom/church concept with the language of “binding” and “loosing” in Matthew 16:19 and 18:18. Churches are doing kingdom work. They are not the kingdom. They represent the kingdom on earth. God gives the church — churches — heavenly authority to judge who is in and who is out. I’m sure that Leeman knows that doesn’t mean that the church kicks people out of heaven or out of the kingdom.
Jesus characterizes the extent of the judgment of the church in Matthew 18:17, “Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.” The church regards a person as heathen. He may not be heathen. The man under church discipline in 1 Corinthians 5 proved himself to be a kingdom citizen, even though the church loosed him. The Lord Jesus Christ gives to the church, which is visible and local, the earthly judgment of heavenly or kingdom citizenship.
It’s true that someone, who isn’t baptized, doesn’t take of the Lord’s Table, won’t join a church, doesn’t submit to church leadership, and won’t gather with a church, the church should judge as not saved. Christ gave that judgment to the church. This doesn’t mean the church is the kingdom. It’s been given the authority of the kingdom. The King of the kingdom is Christ and the Head of the church is Christ.
The Bible offers a distinct soteriology and a distinct ecclesiology. They are distinct doctrines. However, they also relate to one another. Church membership requires salvation. However, it also requires baptism. Baptism isn’t salvation. It isn’t a “putting away of the filth of the flesh” (1 Pet 3:21). According to the New Testament, a church can have unbelievers in it, a mixed multitude, and will very often have unsaved church members, who should examine themselves whether they be in the faith (2 Cor 13:5). Most reading here know that church membership is not the same as salvation.
Terminology like church, temple, and body relate to the church. Words like kingdom, family, and saint relate to salvation. You can be in the kingdom, family, and a saint without baptism. To be in the church, temple, and body, you must be baptized. Scripture shows some relationship between terms of the church and of salvation. However, Leeman takes this further than what scripture teaches in order to vindicate his false universal church teaching.
Historical Argument
Leeman attempts to justify the universal church with a historical argument, using the patristics and the Protestant Reformers. He portrays a pendulum swing between an emphasis on the local church then the universal church and then back to the local church, meanwhile both churches existing with his dual church view. He writes the following:
Yet among Baptist groups the risk now would be to shift the weight of the body entirely onto the other foot, where Christians would give all their attention to the local church and little to the universal. Certain strains of Baptist churches, such as the Landmarkists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, would in fact argue that only the local church exists. They would also refuse to share the Lord’s Supper with anyone who was not a member of their own church. Gratefully, such strains were rare.
He charges Baptists with overemphasis on the local church, especially those he calls and others label, “Landmarkists.” He attacks closed communion, unwillingness to share the Lord’s Supper with someone not a member of his church. I would contend that the Landmarkists brought ecclesiology back to scripture and communion back to its “communion of the Lord’s body,” which is local only. Christ gave communion to His church, which is local only.
The Landmarkers rose out of the Southern Baptist Convention, when Protestants shared their pulpits and partook in their communion. Baptists distinguish themselves as separatists. They separate from false doctrine such as infant sprinkling. Further, Southern Baptists allowed modernism or liberalism into the churches and rejected church perpetuity in their seminaries, leading to ecumenism. Landmarkers brought the Convention back to scripture and historic Baptist doctrines.
Leeman uses a kind of smear tactic, because his knowing what readers may have heard about Landmarkism. It’s like calling someone “flat earth” or “election denier.” It’s a rhetorical tactic. It doesn’t make a true historical or biblical point. He assumes people will think Landmarkism is bad, so they’ll associate local only ecclesiology then as bad too.
I agree that men through history believed in a local church, a universal church, in only a local church, and in both a local and a universal church. You can find all of those ecclesiological positions through history. However, we know a church is local. Where is the universal church in scripture and did it develop through history? Did it arise from neoplatonism?
Forced Universal with It “Showing Up”
Leeman says the universal church shows up in churches, which are local. He says that happens when churches cooperate with another in common service or labor for the Lord. Yes, churches all have the same Head if they are true churches. That doesn’t make a universal church. It is a generic church. It is an institutional understanding of church. Each true church has Christ as its head. This is not the discovery of or a doctrine of a universal church.
Churches either fellowship based upon the same doctrine and practice or they separate from one another. When they fellowship, that isn’t a universal church concept. That is just fellowship between two churches, like existed between the Jerusalem church and the Antioch church.
The universal concept of church seems to require churches cooperating. It leads to diminishment and corruption of true doctrine. If there is to be “no schism in the body” (1 Cor 12:25), and the body is universal, then no church should separate from one another. However, “the body” in 1 Corinthians 12 is defined as local in v. 27, when Paul says, “Ye are the body of Christ,” speaking of the church at Corinth. If it was universal, Paul would have written, “We are the body of Christ.” He doesn’t. Schisms exist between bodies. They are not to exist in the body.
The unity that Jesus prayed for in John 17 (v. 22) is found in separate churches that fellowship one with another based upon the truth (John 17:17). Unity is required in individual churches (Eph 4), not between separate churches. Separate churches attempt to have unity like Jerusalem and Antioch tried in Acts 15. True unity requires separation.
Evangelicals like Leeman do not teach biblical separation. They don’t write on it. They talk about church discipline, but they don’t teach on separation from other churches. Their false universal church teaching fuels this, which will mean apostasy for their churches and their movement. Every New Testament epistle teaches the doctrine of separation, which depends on a right view of the nature of the church.
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