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Judging Music: You Can and Should, Here’s How

October 22, 2018 / 12 Comments on Judging Music: You Can and Should, Here’s How

I wrote a book on music in 1996: Sound Music or Sounding Brass. Below is not an excerpt.

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The Academy of Awards announced it will no longer judge best actor or actress, because no one can know how to judge acting. Furthermore, the Academy testified that there is no means to differentiate good acting from bad acting. And no, that hasn’t happened. People do know in the important judgment of movies whether something is well acted. People don’t doubt that they know when they see something cheesy or what seems fake. Good acting is good acting, but some is better or more difficult than other. People, and especially Christians, can judge music too, especially compared to acting.

In many a discussion about or in commentary below posts about music, people question the criteria for and the ability to judge music. Very often they either feign the throwing up of their hands or they really mean that they can’t know. They don’t know how to judge what’s good or bad. They can’t go any further than saying that musical style is personal taste or preference only, there is no objective means of judging between the good and the bad.

People say that they think there is good and bad music, exempt from the words, but they don’t have an explanation for the standard. They would say it’s not like judging something that you might do, which comes with a clear standard. Scripture never says that this or that particular music is bad. This difficulty then moves music into the category — to them — of Christian liberty. They may prefer a certain music, but they don’t have the authority to say that some musical style is wrong.

Here are some quotes expressing the above in a recent discussion in the comment section:

I have yet to see something that makes very clear biblical judgment of the music itself possible. And, I’m fairly convinced it’s not a solvable problem (in general). . . . Absent a clear standard from scripture, that’s the very definition of a Romans 14 issue.

I too agree that music apart from lyrics has moral value. I just want . . . someone to tell me how to determine that value in a subjective way and not by answering my question with more questions. Please. Anyone? I sincerely am looking for simple answers to apply to making music choices. I’ve been looking for a long time. . . . . I decided to walk away from the confusing admonitions of others and be content with having a good conscience before God until I get some clearer instruction.

Personally, I’d never allow rap or rock in a worship service. But, I have no objective basis for that – it’s my own subjective opinion.

That is the sixty-four thousand dollar question. When you can offer a clear, objective standard to determine this, please let me know. Otherwise, it pretty much boils down to whatever I say it is.

Is all music of equal quality? Not in my opinion. Is all music helpful and edifying? Not in my opinion. I think we both agree in general that music itself, apart from the words, can be sinful, or at least come pretty close to that category. But how to define that objectively? I don’t know. How to define that Scripturally? I don’t know. And because I can’t do so, I shy away from imposing my opinions upon others.

I’m not saying music doesn’t communicate on its own, but I’ve yet to hear a plausible way to tell clear truth or error from notes and rhythms.

I’ve yet to hear a good, scripturally-based objective reason for choosing not to use music.

And then you’ve got comments like this:

Given that the Scripture says nothing about time signature, whether music is on or off beat, major or minor keys, or structure of music, I’m going to ~~go out on a limb~~ keep my feet firmly attached to the ground and suggest that no reasonable interpretation of Scripture could endorse, or reject, any genre of music, any particular instrument, or any particular singing technique. The closest we can come to a Biblical description or prescription of music is found in Psalms 149 and 150, where Scripture clearly references and recommends percussive instruments and dance as something God wanted Israel to do.

Not holding my breath for the cultural fundamentalists to interpret those Psalms as written, to put it mildly.

These were made by five or six different people, but they are the same, most common argument for the amorality of music. “Music isn’t amoral, but I don’t have an objective basis for saying it is moral, so I have to treat it like it is amoral.” They say uncertainty is the major basis for the amorality of music. Another word for uncertainty is doubtful, as in doubtful disputations of Romans 14. If it isn’t certain, then it is a matter of liberty.

A corollary to above for amorality of music, and, therefore, not judging musical style is that there isn’t a specific verse against any particular musical style. If a person judges something with no scriptural basis, he’s adding to scripture, which violates sola scriptura, someone might say. In fact, not judging, using scripture, breaches sola scriptura.

What is the scriptural, objective, certain standard for judging music or musical style? Can someone, so should someone, judge musical style? Does scripture require judging music?

WISDOM, APPLICATION, OR SECOND TERM

I’ve talked about this before, but most application of scripture, which is called wisdom or prudence (Eph 1:8), to which God saves us, requires the utilization of a second term. It works like the following:

First Term: Scripture prohibits corrupt communication.
Second Term: Four letter words are corrupt communication.
Conclusion (or application of first term): Scripture prohibits four letter words.

What if I used a particular heinous four letter word through this post to spice it up, show anger or passion? When you said that I used corrupt communication, I retorted with almost any of the above comments against scripture saying anything about music. The four letter words are not supplied. Some might say that the judgment against a particular four letter word then is subjective. Someone saying, “it isn’t objective,” isn’t objective. What is subjective is deciding yourself what you want to be corrupt and what you don’t want to be corrupt. Just because you say it isn’t corrupt, because there is no list of four letter words, doesn’t mean it isn’t corrupt. You are still going to be judged by God.

A FIRST MOVER PROBLEM

The problem here one of fear on the part of those required to apply scripture. I heard someone recently use the terminology, “first mover problem.” You’ve got a terrorist threatening a whole airplane with a knife. You’ve got an evil dictator threatening a whole country. A small number of people can intimidate a much larger group because of a “first mover problem.” The first mover might die, and he’s got to be motivated by someone or something greater than himself to move.

In this case, the first move is saying that certain music is corrupt. People will be upset if they lose their carnal, worldly, entertaining, pleasurable activity. They often become angry, like a dog that has its food taken back. The first mover sees himself excluded, looking silly or whatever temporal motive is there. It’s not just this issue where there are first mover problems, but many different applications of scripture, including what people have diminished by calling them “cultural issues.” They have deemed the cultural issues of either greater uncertainty or lesser importance to “doctrinal issues,” like the Trinity, even though scripture doesn’t treat non-doctrinal issues as uncertain or lesser.

The first mover problem has spread to many other cultural issues, including calling a boy a boy and a girl a girl, even using gender specific pronouns. It also might by saying you think evolution is a lie. You don’t want to stand out by saying whatever it is that runs counter to convention. It usually is accompanied by ridicule. When most everyone who professed to be a Christian went the complete opposite direction, people joined the opposition to certain musical style and with complete certainty. Someone didn’t need to make the first move. Now you will suffer for rising against what’s easy to support, that is, unmitigated musical style.

PRINCIPLES OF APPLICATION

The strange woman wore the attire of a harlot (Proverbs 7:10). If I said, don’t dress like a prostitute, no verse tells us what a prostitute dresses like. It requires a second term. We know how a prostitute dresses. More women now dress like prostitutes, including many professing Christian ones, because of the same unwillingness to apply scripture.

Let’s say that a parent said to his child, “Get that look off your face — it’s disrespectful.” The child answered, “What verse says my look is a bad look or disrespectful, because that just seems disrespectful?” Can no one know what is the ‘eye that mocks his father’ is? Scripture assumes we can judge disrespect. When people ask if there’s anything sacred any more, it relates to this subject matter. A culture that will not put any difference between that which is common or profane and that which is sacred, can’t love or respect or worship God.

Children learn A-B-C on a line of letters. They can get it. It takes recognition of meaning. People know meaning. They fit music to scenes based on an understanding of meaning. It’s basic like A-B-C. Those who refuse to judge are willful. They can say, “I didn’t get it or understand it,” and God won’t excuse it. It is first grade understanding. They are playing games. Scripture and history show that people play these type of games, and call them arguments. God is not mocked.

The Bible has a lot of verses that would prohibit certain musical style as worship and then some of the same verses prohibit for Christians musical styles on their musical play list. For this post, I’m just introducing them. Everything else in this post has been necessary.

THESE THINGS DISHONOR OR DISOBEY GOD

Fleshly Lust (1 Peter 2:11)
Worldly Lust (Titus 2:12)
Conformed to this World (Romans 12:2)
Provision for the Flesh (Romans 13:14)
Profaning the Name of God (Leviticus 18:21)
Fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts (1 Peter 1:14)
Ecstatic (1 Corinthians 12:1-3)
Sensual (James 3:15)

THESE THINGS HONOR OR OBEY GOD (GOD IS DISHONORED AND DISOBEYED WHEN THEY ARE NOT DONE)

Reverence (Leviticus 19:30, many others)
Solemnity (Leviticus 23:36, many others) [the opposite of reverent and solemn are superficial, foolish, thoughtless, vapid, flippant, trivial, etc.]
Holy (Romans 12:1)
Spiritual (John 4:23-24)
Lovely (Philippians 4:8) [the opposite is unlovely or ugly]
Gender Distinct (1 Corinthians 6:9)

All of these can be judged or they wouldn’t be in scripture. God will judge us for doing what He said, and He wouldn’t judge us for something we could not be sure to understand. I’m not saying that this list is an exhaustive list, but it is certainly enough to start with. We should assume that we can know and know what these are. In future posts, I will make brief application of them to music.

The Delusion of the Fundamental of the Faith: Relating It To Rocky Top at Bob Jones University

October 17, 2018 / 26 Comments on The Delusion of the Fundamental of the Faith: Relating It To Rocky Top at Bob Jones University

Back in the day, I sat in Baptist Polity class (we had that where I went to college), and I remember then Dr. Weeks (what we called our instructor) bringing up the fundamental pie. He drew a circle with five pie slices on it and for each piece, because my pie was too small to start, I drew a line with an arrow to the inside of each slice and wrote out each of the “fundamentals” in each one. It’s something I never questioned at the time, because that was typical, accepting without question. After that I proceeded to memorize the pie, including drawing the pie. Later it occurred to me, “Why is it a pie?” Why not just a list with 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 fundamentals? That would be the list of fundamentals, instead of a pie.

I have revisited the pie in my mind, and maybe it’s a pie because each piece is part of a whole. There are five, get that, five, fundamentals. Not four. Not six. Not ten or twelve. Five. Making up pie for a nice tidy pie chart. The 9 Marks guys have to be shaking their head at the number five. Nine is it. I’m now saying, Nope. I don’t even know why it is five. It does remind me of the argument the Pharisees had about what the was the greatest of the laws. Their discussion. Pharisees. Jesus could reduce the whole law down into two parts, because you could put all the laws into to two categories, two legitimate ones as spoken by the Lord Jesus Himself.

Today we return to the Pharisaaical attitude of numbering the fundamentals for, I believe and believe I can prove, many of the same reasons as the Pharisees. You reduce everything down to a few number because you’re not prepared to have more than that. You can hold together, maybe, a coalition with the number five, even if it does deny literal twenty-four creation or baptism by immersion for believers only. Is God pleased with five? Does God want five? Does God even want us making up lists of fundamentals? I’m saying, no. Take seriously everything that He said. Listing fundamentals is a basis for not doing that.

When men start making up a list of fundamentals, you should think that a major premise of such a list is making room for not doing something that didn’t make the list. God didn’t make the list. He exterminated Ananias and Sapphira for something not on the list and killed Nadab and Abihu for something not on the list. That’s more like how God thinks. He killed numbers of people for the numbering of people.

What got my attention on this — again — is another “fundamentalist” bringing fundamentals up as a bogus argument. I’ve got three words now I can use every time that someone says something isn’t a fundamental as an argument for pandering or capitulation or obfuscation or just plain disobedience, sometimes out of cowardice: same. sex. marriage. In a nicer way, maybe it’s just deceit or ignorance. Delusion is defined as the misleading of the mind. The Greek word translated “delusion” in the New Testament (plane, basis for the word “planet”) is most often translated “error,” and the portrayal of the Greek word is something wandering off the beaten path.

The recent president of Bob Jones University, Steve Pettit, played Rocky Top with a professing Christian musical group. SharperIron linked to this occurrence and a long discussion ensued (at 62 comments at this writing [there will be more]). Many questions could be asked about Pettit’s activity with the knowledge that he represents this fundamentalist institution in the most obvious way with its long, long time stand and standards on music, both for worship and personal listening, the latter as a matter of Christian living. People should ask and in public, since it is public.

I know that this should not be considered a good quality of me, but I am very able at ridicule. By testimony of others, I have been often judged to be quick-witted. Well crafted mocking comments come to my mind. I think they are best left unsaid and tamped down. A high percentage of the commentary at SharperIron toward any criticism of Pettit was ridicule by some that think they’re good at it and that it must be a good way to deal with criticism, their mockery. That isn’t a fundamental either in the fundamentalist pie, that is, whether it is right or wrong to mock critics.

A lot of mockery or ridicule occurs at SharperIron with almost no moderation. It’s typical everywhere, not just there. Much of it continues there because it isn’t moderated for whatever reason. I see it as either a fear of a mob, the desire to be one of the cool guys, or the tendency to capitulate to the left. The targets are deemed, it seems, worth the ridicule and in this case they are advocates of traditional or conservative music. I think it would be better for them if they could be put in their place by defenders. Answering them in kind wouldn’t be allowed, so they continue on with their unfettered scoffing. The scoffers are actually low hanging fruit themselves with their unmoderated attempts to diminish critics with this method. If that’s the way things are there, more power to them. I don’t think it is the right or even best way to deal with criticism. It is the best a mocker can do, very much like the apostates in 2 Peter 2-3.

I want to get back to the idea of “fundamentals,” but first playing Rocky Top or even the place of blue grass among Christians. The song Rocky Top expresses the virtues of wild fornication and desperate drunkenness, enjoyed and without judgment. Someone might say, “It’s just fun; let it go.” Meats for the belly and belly for meats. If you watched, you saw singers and instrumentalists participating with great support and gusto. They loved it (1 John 2:15-17). It’s one thing to be attracted to it because it titillates the flesh, but another thing to push and promote it. If this is a Christian liberty, as some people judge it to be, which I don’t believe it is, even then it violates many of the limitations Paul requires of liberty in 1 Corinthians 6-10.

The big argument about judging such activity, which scripture says to judge and you should judge if you take the biblical and historical view of sola scriptura, is that it isn’t worth judging and that it isn’t a fundamental worth separating over. They are really both the same argument. Something isn’t worth judging because it isn’t a fundamental.

Scripture says everything is worth judging and God kills people for violating things not on the list of fundamentals. It’s a replay of the practice of the Pharisees, ranking truth as a basis for what will be tolerated and what won’t. It’s not how God operates. It isn’t following Christ. He doesn’t do it. It’s also an attack on the perspecuity of scripture and the biblical understanding of unity (1 Cor 1:10). Unity isn’t disregarding biblical teaching to maintain a coalition. I know they would say they aren’t doing that, but the denial rings hollow — they are in fact doing that.

Someone in the comment section of SharperIron, G. N. Barkman, a pastor who is a regular contributor there, writes in two separate comments (here and here):

Fundamentalism, historically speaking, is about defending the fundamentals of the Christian faith against those who attack and erode them. In the “old” days, the attackers were called Modernists and Liberals. Now, they are just as likely to be called Evangelicals. Along the way, cultural issues began to take their place as part of the definition of Fundamentalism. That, in my opinion, is when things began to go off course. Cultural issues are, for the most part, too subjective to defend or decry Biblically. I have my opinions and preferences, and you have yours. I will not break fellowship with you over yours, and expect you to do the same with me. Liking or not liking a particular style of music is not a fundamental of the faith. Let’s keep God’s Word central, and allow Christian liberty where clear Bible doctrine is not the issue.

But back to the original premise. Do you consider music styles a fundamental of the Christian faith? How many other fundamentals do you include? I believe that when everything becomes a fundamental, nothing is a fundamental. The word “fundamental” indicates something of greatest importance. If everything is equally important, nothing is of greater significance.

Barkman barks up the wrong tree. Protecting fundamentals is a delusion, not intended to protect truth itself. There are no “fundamentals.” Where is this list? I get the original idea, meant to gain a widespread defense of Christianity against liberalism, to attempt to salvage something. I don’t agree with it. I just get it. But it’s taken on a shape of its own, mutating into deformity. Fundamentalism is nothing scriptural to defend. Defend scripture. Defend truth. Defend Jesus. Defend the church. Fundamentalism at the most was a means to an end, an unscriptural means that led to a less than scriptural end. No one should be satisfied with it.

You can read the comments and there’s no scriptural basis. He leaves himself some deniability with “for the most part,” which I’m assuming is to deny things like same sex marriage and smoking crack pipes. Those are not fundamentals though and so the list expands and then you see truth as subjective, just conventional thinking. It’s true because you cobble enough support for it to be true. Every Christian was against rock music at one time. Every Christian was against shorts on women. Now it’s no longer conventional, so it’s only a preference. We’ve already arrived at effeminate male behavior, rampant in churches today. God expects different from us.

The “fundamental” is now a tool for capitulation and pandering. Rocky Top panders. People who support it are pandering. They want approval. It’s the days of Noah, marrying and giving in marriage. Just move along, nothing to look at. Five things are worth looking at.

Read the first chapter of Ephesians. The purpose of salvation, the reason we were chosen, what we read in the first three and half verses are “that we should be holy and without blame before him in love” (v. 4b). Being holy and without blame in love aren’t fundamentals. The adoption as children to Jesus and the redemption through Christ’s blood abound toward “all wisdom and prudence” (vv. 5-8). In other words, true doctrine, what might be “fundamentals,” you know, what you’re really supposed to be parking on, are there to produce the right application of the knowledge of His will (v. 9), which is “wisdom” and then thinking straight, which is “prudence.”

Holy living, living without blame, loving behavior, the right application of knowledge, and thinking straight are tied to “the fundamentals.” They are the purpose. If you have “bad music” and “wrong dress” and all these cultural issues, that’s part of not knowing and doing the will of God, which necessarily proceeds from right doctrine. The first three chapters of Ephesians, the doctrine, are about the last three chapters of Ephesians, the practice.

Paul ends 1 Corinthians in v. 22, saying this: “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.” It seems loving Jesus is a fundamental. Yet, it isn’t on the list or in the pie. Can you love Him by singing to Him like He’s your boyfriend or girlfriend? Barkman would say that’s not a fundamental and its a cultural issue, so it’s impossible to judge. You have to know what love is to love. If love is actually lust, so someone isn’t loving the Lord Jesus Christ, then that’s Anathema Maranatha. A curse is on that person. Churches are full of a lack of affection for Jesus Christ. They have passion produced by ecstatic experiences, choreographed by rhythm and syncopation, other atmospherics and instrumentation and suggestion. It isn’t reverence and sobriety required by God from those who worship Him and love Him.

Dismissing the cultural issues as preferences is not prudent or wise. Christians are here to say “no” to Rocky Top. The world isn’t going to do it.

Church Decrease Movement (CDM): Faithful Numerical Church Decrease

October 8, 2018 / 45 Comments on Church Decrease Movement (CDM): Faithful Numerical Church Decrease

Numerical growth of a church isn’t hard. Most of the people I’ve met who see swift numerical growth aren’t either smart or knowledgeable. They haven’t discovered some secret. They shouldn’t be rewarded, as they very often are. Churches with big numbers are the most emulated in the United States. Their tactics are also the most likely to be sent to foreign countries. The most notable standard for success is still size.

Before I left graduate school, the dean of academic affairs at the college from which I graduated told me to go out there to California and outgrow, essentially beat, Jack Trieber. I remember the moment, and I smiled and didn’t answer. I had an early conflict within between perceived success and what I knew scripture taught. It was in my nature to compete and win something, to be bigger than everyone else, to do something better than everyone else. What was winning though? Do we win in this lifetime or the next? What did scripture say?

When I got started in California, there were dueling intentions for me, perhaps three different ones that clashed with each other. One, I wanted to see people saved. I wanted them really to be saved, although it may have been in actuality to see lots of professions of faith. Two, I desired to see quick growth. It was my goal to become self-supporting by the first year and quit my job. My wife and I didn’t come to California with even half support, perhaps less than 25% of even what was required to live in the most expensive housing market and the hardest place in the country. The support we received helped us, but it wasn’t close to what we needed. I never went on deputation. I preached at a few churches and a few supported us, but it was never my intention to get support first. I was coming to California and didn’t need it. Third, I wanted to preach the Bible, expositional preaching, and the latter was more important than the other two. It was also the enemy of the other two as time progressed.

My wife and I arrived in California in August 1987, me 25 and her 23, and our first service was October 18 that year. We came without a stick of furniture and almost no money. I remember early on, in the first few months, having about three hundred dollars in the bank and being conned out of it by a “preacher” whose “car broke down” on his way to a funeral. I was not a big city boy. I didn’t think we grew quickly. I was expecting something faster. However, we grew fast enough that I could quit my job by January. My wife still worked at a bank. We were self-supporting after a year and a half.

After about three years, we were averaging about 175 a week with a big day of 330. How did we do it? Promotion. Big days. Give-aways. Exciting jr. church. We had a Spanish group of about 70. In the summer, we had what we called a neighborhood kids crusade and over 500 different children came in for the week. We put on what I labeled the mother of all puppet shows with every day a cliff hanger. It’s easy for people, workers, to be motivated by numbers. They see it as an indication that God is working and they are succeeding. They’ll keep doing this “work,” because it is easy. You offer people something tangible and temporal and they come.

One favorite story was buying a 25 passenger shuttle bus from gypsies. I literally went to a home with a large palm of a hand on a sign out front, made the payment in cash, after which I was invited to a pig roast. I walked out back with the gypsies and they had a very large pig, head and all, in their backyard turning on a large home made spit. This was right in town in the city and I’m sure it was illegal to have a large fire in your backyard even to roast a pig. I did not have my palm read.

Again, I’m saying it wasn’t hard to do what I was doing except for one thing. I knew it was wrong. I didn’t know it at first, but I felt guilty most of the time in everything that we did, attempting to motivate people with what we were using. I was following the examples I had been given. I wasn’t even pedal to the metal on these strategies. I could have done far more than I was doing. I knew others were. What held me back was the guilt. I tried to tamp it down, justifying it by the fact that many others were doing it and doing more. It was bringing “results.” Several people encouraged me to do more and were happy with what we were doing.

As all the above was happening, I was also preaching through books. In Sunday School, I taught through scripture. On Sunday morning I preached through John and then Acts. I didn’t see these as the methods of Jesus. They clashed with what Jesus did. This was not good for the people in the church.

The key for a “Spanish ministry” was having everything in Spanish (of course), allowing it to be separate from the English, and providing a lot of social opportunities, meals especially. Many of the Spanish couples were not members. They couldn’t join. They weren’t married. They were living together because getting married would bring in the government. Some of them wanted to be baptized and join anyway without being married, but I wouldn’t allow for that. I took a “stand” there. There was no intention of almost any of them to integrate with the English. Except for one or two of them, they had zero motivation to evangelize the people of the United States, except for people in the country like they were. Their children were growing up in homes that did not speak English, but they were learning it in the public school, causing a kind of division between the parents and the children — two different cultures.

We had about 15-20 deaf. The key for the deaf was constant pandering, keeping them busy with activities, and food again. They didn’t want to come if you didn’t have something for them, so you just always had something for them.

A lot of what I led with church growth conflicted with biblical methods, the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, and biblical evangelism. Even if I believed in a true gospel, the way I did things wasn’t lined up with the gospel of the New Testament, which is the only gospel. In many instances, I would preach passages that did not line up with what we were doing to get bigger. We were, however, seeing a lot of professions of faith, and many would have said God was working through these means.

I had a mix of biblical and unbiblical practices. I was convinced of discipleship, believed the Great Commission was making disciples. I wrote a thirty week discipleship. We started attempting to take every new “convert” through the thirty weeks. I taught a 25 week parenting course that was ongoing. I wanted true conversion and was constantly tweaking personal evangelism to fit a scriptural model. My preaching became more and more dense exegesis of the Bible.

I never decided to get smaller. I would, however, conform our belief and practice to what I was preaching from scripture. I allowed exposition of the Bible to change our church. Every change decreased our numbers. The goal was to honor God with faithfulness to His Word. Success was to conform everything to God’s Word. Our church changed and got smaller and smaller. In fact, the actual church didn’t get smaller by what we did. Our church never was very big when we tried to get big. We had a lot of people, but the church wasn’t big. Our church, the actual church, is bigger now. Our expectations changed.

We do more evangelism now than we did before. Our goal is to preach the gospel, thorough and accurate. We want to do it a lot and everywhere, and we do. So now we have around 70-80 people when everyone is in town and healthy. We don’t count. We know who the people are. If we count, that’s where it is. I understand that I’m not a success. I would be if we kept on the former path. Not really a success, but considered to be one.

Understand this: we do more ministry now than we ever have. A true gospel is preached more. More actual discipleship occurs. More biblical worship takes place. We are a greater success, even though the trajectory we took has led me not to be a success.

When I look at the churches that do what we did a long time ago and even worse today, I understand that they get credit for doing these things. People want to know their secret. They look to them for ideas for how to make their church bigger. I’m disgusted by what I see. I understand the damage their techniques cause. I said it wasn’t hard to do what they do. It isn’t, but at the same time it is impossible. How do they look at themselves in the mirror, knowing what they are doing? I don’t get it. The lack of discernment is astounding. How can they be saved? I don’t think they are. We at least do not regard them as saved people.

In every sector of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, even among unaffiliated churches, the size of the church is the most accepted and practiced criteria for success. The leaders of the largest churches get the most mention among others and have the most influence. It is easy to see. Men have a difficult time criticizing them for what they do, because they don’t want to get out of favor with them. Those churches also very often have the biggest or most buildings and the most money. Even among the conservative evangelicals, size is what is rewarded. You have to be a kind of success that even the world would say is successful. They do not, I repeat, do not promote men with small churches. A man with a small church is not a success.

Young men know that success is getting big and this is true everywhere. Something is wrong with you or you are doing something wrong if your church is small. Men know this. It then affects the way that men practice, and, therefore, believe. You are better if you are big. You are less significant and somewhat a failure if you are small. Again, men know this. This affects everything. It needs to stop. The idea needs to be torched. The truth is the truth. The truth itself is success. Conforming to it is success. We have less conforming to the truth and sadly, because conforming to the truth isn’t rewarded by the leaders in America of every segment of evangelicalism and fundamentalism.

Even among the people that would say size is not the right evaluation of success for church, they still promote size. They contradict themselves. They say that size shows superior giftedness. I’ve seen it again and again. And then the proof is in what occurs then. The men of the bigger churches are considered better. I can tell you that when my church was bigger, there was more widespread acknowledgement of my success. It couldn’t immunize me for my guilt. It couldn’t convince me that what I was doing, had been doing, was biblical. I also have known that the more popular you are, because of size, brings a kind of credibility when you say something. You can say the truth and it is ignored. You can say an untruth and it gets attention, if you have widespread influence especially because of your compromise.

People pay attention to those who have a big following, even if what they are saying is crazy. Even the more conservative evangelicals give credence to the one who has seen bigger success, very often through compromise. There are numerous examples of this. If kooks criticize them, they deal with it, because the kook has a following. If the small pastor criticizes them, they ignore it, even if it is the truth. The truth doesn’t matter. Size matters.

We need a movement of church decrease. Like Paul, men need to count what they are doing and what they have done as dung. Believe God. Obey God. Depend on Him. Look to God for relevance. Or accept that you are not relevant, but that biblical success is actually success.

Do I think a movement of church decrease will occur? Churches will decrease, mainly because of apostasy, something like we see has already occurred in the United Kingdom. Much of the apostasy has already started in the United States as manifested by acceptance of same-sex marriage and then the embrace of “social justice.” Among revivalists, there is an increasing “emergent” flavor or worse. Effeminate men are rampant and not confronted. When they are confronted, those confronting are rebuked by millennial mobs, pandering parents, and clueless women.

What we need is strength. We need solid scriptural teaching. We need courage. We need men. I don’t think we’ll get it. Maybe you can prove me wrong.

Lead, Guide,and Direct: What is This?

October 3, 2018 / 2 Comments on Lead, Guide,and Direct: What is This?

Part One Part Two Part Three

True or not, whatever Christianity you grew up with had a lot of influence on what you believe and practice. I wasn’t taught much to anything on biblical prayer. From my memory, it wasn’t very good — a lot of “be with me,” “bless so-and-so and bless so-and-so,” “help this person or that person,” and “lead, guide, and direct.” People are usually sensitive about having their prayers criticized. It’s a good environment for a church to have prayers up for analysis. I believe a main reason for group prayer is to agree on the will of God. Agreement also assumes some disagreement.

Nonetheless, my focus here is on “lead, guide, and direct.” What does someone expect as an answer to that prayer? If someone wants God to lead him, guide him, and direct him, and maybe the varied parts of that little cliche are just synonyms, how does God do that? People say that it happens in answer to that prayer, but I never received instruction on that. It was assumed that God just did it, that someone was guided, led, and directed without explanation. Has anyone every explained it to you?

I decided to look up whether “lead, guide, and direct” was used in a book in the 19th century. Total, 15 times. I was surprised it was any, but one of the times it was a Latter Day Saint book. Once used in the 18th century.

Besides my doing this series on this subject, something got my attention this week when a hard-copy of a publication came by snail mail. This is a regular mailing. In it, the author talked about the direction of the Holy Spirit. He said it a few times in the article. That is not unusual to read from someone in fundamentalism or evangelicalism in my lifetime. I’ve often heard a sentence, such as, “We need to rely on the direction of the Holy Spirit.”

The words “direction of the Holy Spirit” I found four times in books in the 19th century. One of them was from the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ. You don’t get the exact words anywhere, but you can read the direction of the Holy Spirit in the Bible. In a book called An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, Thomas Hartwell Horne wrote:

Maintaining that the apostles were under the infallible direction of the Holy Spirit as to every religious sentiment contained in their writings, secures the same advantages as would result from supposing that every word and letter was dictated to them by his influences, without being liable to those objections which might be made against that view of the subject.

That’s right. One of the other four were quoting Horne. The one other quote was strange, speaking about the Holy Spirit directing the priests in the tabernacle and temple, written in 1880 by Dougan Clark, a Quaker.

If you go back to the 17th century, of the only five times we read “direction of the Holy Spirit,” one is from Jonathan Edwards in his Treatise on the Religious Affections, where he said that the Psalms “were by the direction of the Holy Spirit penned for the use of the church of God in its public worship.” This is identical to Horne’s usage. Samuel Mather, son of Cotton Mather, in 1723 also writes “that not so much as one sentence is to be found in it, which was not inserted by the special direction of the Holy Spirit.”

Edwards, Horne, and Mather talk about the Holy Spirit directing the human authors in the writing of scripture. By extension, the Holy Spirit directs someone’s life who obeys scripture. This is how the Holy Spirit works — through the Word of God. The Holy Spirit is not still talking to people or giving them impressions or sensations. Scripture is sufficient.

Believers, true, genuine Christians are led by the Spirit of God, and not their flesh. Believers are led by the Spirit. The New Testament doesn’t tell believers to be led by the Holy Spirit. It says that they are. You can tell that they are by the way the Holy Spirit manifests Himself in their lives.

Just because scripture uses the terminology, led by the Spirit, doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit still talks to people. That isn’t how He directs. He directs through the already completed Word of God. Believers who “let the Word of Christ dwell in them richly” (Col 3:16) are “filled with the Spirit” (Eph 5:18).

It’s not good to replace what the Bible teaches about the Holy Spirit with something made up by a man. The Holy Spirit isn’t directing that. You’re not more spiritual because you’ve got something mysterious, which is impossible to confirm. People might think you have something, because they think they should. Nobody can question these things without –ironically — questions of his love, his desire for unity, and the power of God in his life.

The Oracle of Delphi, Preaching, Power, and Sensing God

September 26, 2018 / Leave a comment

Part One Part Two

In upper central Greece along the slope of Mount Parnassus resided the ancient city of Delphi. The ancient Greeks considered Delphi to be the center of the world, the world personified by the mother earth goddess, Gaia, and Delphi her navel. Delphi comes from a Greek root, which means “womb.”

The story was that Zeus had found the origination of the earth at Delphi by sending out two eagles to search. Later, Apollo, the brother of twin sister Artemis (Diana) and the son of Zeus, the Greek god, slew Python or Drako, a serpent that protected the navel of Gaia. The legend was that the Pythia was the original priestess in the worship of Gaia. When Apollo slew Python, its body fell into a fissure at Delphi, releasing fumes that intoxicated Pythia, sending her into a trance and allowing Apollo to possess her spirit. Then she prophesied, becoming his oracle.

The Greek author Plutarch, who himself became an actual priest at Delphi in the first century A.D., wrote about the oracle of Delphi and described how a woman would enter a small chamber in Apollo’s temple and inhale sweet-smelling vapors (“pneuma”) from a fissure in the mountain before entering a state in which she would provide responses to seekers’ inquiries posed to her mediated by priests, who interpreted her pronouncements.

Delphi is 123 miles away from Corinth. It doesn’t look very far on a map. Today it’s about a three hour drive around the Gulf of Corinth. In ancient times, people travelled great distances to ask the Pythia questions. In 1 Corinthians 12-14 Paul confronts a case of paganism mixing with true doctrine, dealing with ecstatic utterances interpreted as divine revelation, often the more extreme the more likely its credibility (1 Cor 12:1-3), unknown languages (1 Cor 14:1-27), and female prophetesses and their asking the questions rather than being asked them (1 Cor 14:34-35).

Earlier in 1 Corinthians (1:18, 21), Paul said “it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” “Preaching” (kerugmatos) isn’t a style of speech, oozing with feeling and stylistic dynamics, but the content of the proclamation, and this is how the word was used in ancient literature. In 2:1-5 he goes further to emphasize the effect wasn’t in the excellence of the speaking that he did, excellence being the superiority of the person, but in the message, the testimony of God. He spoke the words “which the Holy Ghost” had taught him, or with him as an apostle, in other words, he spoke scripture.

Of all the mentions of “the power of God” in scripture (13 of them and all in the New Testament), five are in 1 and 2 Corinthians. The power of God rests in the Word of God, not in some means of a human intermediary channeling power akin to a Delphic oracle. In another mention, Paul says the gospel is the power of God (Rom 1:16), again emphasizing the message, not the oracle.

When the said power stands in the message, the substance of the preaching, God gets the glory or that “no flesh should glory in God’s presence” (1 Cor 1:29). God’s presence is in the preached Word of God. Later Peter says that God is glorified when a man speaks “as the oracles of God” (1 Pet 4:10-11), which is scripture. You know it is the Spirit of God when it is the Word of God, this being how someone knows God’s presence.

The oracular or ecstatic speech that accentuates the experiential, the euphoria of style, glorifies man. It is not what God has chosen to confound the wisdom of this world. Anyone who hears a “powerful” speech by a dynamic orator could glorify the speaking of that man, but that isn’t how God chooses to persuade men. It makes sense to men, but it isn’t what God uses. When I write this, I’m not saying that a speaker attempts to be as dry and monotone in speech as possible. I’m saying the emphasis is not on human means to sway. Powerful preaching isn’t related to technique, strategy, gesticulation, raving, or passion. It’s not a Billy Sunday pose or the visage and voice of a Billy Graham.

Through history, oracular religion, hearing voices, and then ecstatic speech are all manifestations of paganism. Mormon doctrine says that Joseph Smith was an oracle, given the translation of the Book of Mormon. Part of the doctrine of Roman Catholicism is visions and apparitions. For instance, Teresa of Avila, a Catholic “saint,” in the sixteenth century was a Spanish Catholic mystic and in her own book about herself, she wrote (Life, p. 27): “being at prayer, I saw, or rather (for I saw nothing, either with the eyes of the body or with those of the soul) I felt my Savior near me and I saw that it was he who spoke to me.” She also wrote: “I have rarely beheld the Devil in any form, but he has often appeared to me without one, as is the case in intellectual visions, when as I have said, the soul clearly perceives someone present, although it does not perceive it in any form.” I’ve heard others tell me in many instances one or the other of these experiences Teresa testified to having.

These subjective experiences are supposed to mark supernatural intervention. At the beginning of Acts, Luke wrote to Theophilus that Christianity came with infallible proofs. These were supernatural proofs that God was involved with what was occurring in the story of Luke and Acts in fulfillment of prophecies. Everything and everyone that is going to say it is God or of God must give some kind of supernatural basis that would at least seem to evidence God. In your own Christian life, you want to know that it is real, that it is of God or God working, a true relationship with God. Many, maybe even a majority, of those who claim to be something Christian look to their own personal experiences to confirm that what they have is of God.

The early motto of Apple, used in marketing, was “Think Different.” In the authorized biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, he was quoted as saying:

Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.

Psychedelic drugs, Jobs said, made him think different, altered his consciousness enough to get a different look at the world. I’ve heard several advocate the same since I’ve lived in California. It reminds me of the fumes inhaled by the Pythia before she offered her insight to a visiting inquisitor. This information that apparently comes from outside the body seems elevated to what someone learns with a natural method.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes series of books, also subjected himself to Victorian spiritualism. He believed in it. He believed God sent solace to those bereaved after the death of a family member, using mystical means. Clairvoyance is the ability to see what isn’t physically present, clairaudience is the ability to hear spirit’s voice or thoughts, and clairsentience is the ability to sense what a spirit wants to communicate or to feel sensations from a spirit. The Bible and historic Christianity has rejected these experiences as not of God. They are either someone deceived, someone lying, or a demon.

I’ve heard lots of different personal, subjective happenings to validate someone is operating under the jurisdiction or within the working of God, not unlike the visions and apparitions of Roman Catholicism. It’s heavy in the Charismatic movement, but it’s now maybe just as prevalent among evangelicals of different stripes, who would say they are non-Charismatic. Some are revivalists, and even those who deny revivalism still have some kind of mysticism in their professing Christianity. They say they sense God or feel the Spirit of God. These sensations in almost every case are not verifiable.

We have a completed and sufficient Word of God. It is not to be added to or taken away from. This is how God speaks today. There are experiences that believers have outside of the Bible, but the Bible is the final and infallible authority for the validity of those experiences. They are judged by the Bible, proven by scripture, or tested by the Word of God.

For instance, fruit of the Spirit shows up in the life of a believer yielded to the Spirit of God, which is to be obedient to scripture. Love shows up. That’s an experience. Patience shows up. That’s an experience. These are all defined by scripture. They can be judged by believers according to the Word of God. This is how God wants us to live.

On the other hand, men move outside of the Word of God into their own experiences as validation. This is not living by faith, but by sight. It doesn’t please God. It doesn’t bring glory to God. Many bad practices, against or outside of scripture, are justified by extra-scriptural mystical experiences. False doctrine is taught and confirmed by sensations attributed to God by someone without any biblical means of verification.

Perhaps worse, the voices or calls or feelings explained above devalue scripture, and very often are elevated above scripture. They are viewed as a superior form of relationship with God, more personal than the Bible. Many of those who claim these experiences see themselves as having a higher form of spirituality, or even something of the power of God, not possessed by those who depend only on scripture. Those with just scripture are thought or said to be missing something, a kind of spiritual have-not. All of this is ripe for compounding deceit.

Concocted Christianity

September 24, 2018 / 4 Comments on Concocted Christianity

When I was young in a small Indiana farming community, off and on we owned various black and white televisions and sometimes watched Wide World of Sports on Saturday with host Jim McKay. Then I first saw the Harlem Globetrotters play, Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal. They always played the New Jersey Generals, and won every time. It wasn’t real. Everyone knew it. They defied the rules of basketball, the audience played along, and everyone knew, they knew, that what they were doing and we were watching was concocted. Very little was at stake. It was all just fun.

We shouldn’t take the Globetrotter approach and use it on Christianity. Maybe for some basketball is sacrosanct, not to be touched with such profanity as the Globetrotters. It doesn’t matter to me. However, Christianity is and should be sacred. It can’t be modulated or modified or adapted for whatever purpose. And yet it has been and it is. And different explanations are given for why it is appropriate, even though it isn’t. The contention of this piece is that very little genuine Christianity exists anymore. It’s been given the Globetrotter treatment.

With the Globetrotters, the referees didn’t do their job on purpose, so they were also in on the concoction, turning basketball into something different in nature. All the props were there to give the impression of basketball. The Globetrotters were concocted. Christianity has its referees on earth, the ones supposed to be responsible for keeping it real and true and pure, not making a joke of it and not allowing it to go astray. The rule book is the Bible, it’s plain, and it’s simple. Christianity’s referees have been on the concoction too. Most of Christianity is some concoction now.

There is a lot at stake with Christianity being a concoction. It relates to this life, but also the next. God isn’t pleased. That’s very bad — very, very bad — but it doesn’t stop there. If it isn’t real and true and pure, people will go to Hell, separated from God forever. It should matter to the referees. The pastors, the major leaders in Christianity, should be about keeping Christianity according to the Bible.

Concocted Christianity isn’t Christianity. It is concocted to look like it is, using some of the same terms and relying on the same rule book. The concoction gives the impression or an attempt is made to give the impression that it is Christianity. For most, it’s good enough. It doesn’t have to be the same, just good enough. It fools people, but it will never fool God. He authored Christianity, knows every difference, and isn’t fooled for one moment.

How is a new Christianity concocted? Christianity departs from scripture. You could say, churches depart from scripture. Scripture clashes with the world. If a person, a family, or a church believes and practices the Bible, they’re going to clash with the world. Rather than clash with the world, if an individual, family or church change Christianity closer to the world, to what the world is and does, which will mean departing from scripture, it will clash less with the world or not at all.

The way Christianity functions, according to scripture, which is the only Christianity, not a concoction, is not complicated. It’s clear and simple. The problem is that it clashes with the world. The referees need to keep it in line, but they haven’t. If they say, let’s conform to scripture and clash, it appears they will shrink in numbers and they do. They concoct a new Christianity that doesn’t clash and waylays shrinking. It is akin to the people walking away from Jesus in John 6 and Jesus saying, “Stop, I’ll concoct something different, more in line with what you want, please stay.”

The world mobilizes an array of forces against Christianity. Whatever Satan has in the world system, he uses. Bringing down Christianity is all he has left. He won’t fully accomplish it, but he and the world system do a lot to get as far as possible in this endeavor. It has worked very, very well. Based on most measurements, Satan has succeeded and is growing more and further in that success.

Christianity is about God, but man wants to serve himself. This is the sphere or realm where the departure from scripture occurs. Individuals, families, and the church consider what man wants, what they want, more than what God wants. Romans 1 calls it worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator.

A new Christianity is concocted. What characterizes it is lust. It’s not sacred any longer, profaned by what pleases men, which again is lust. The lust itself, the feelings that arise out of lust, are very often confused as something spiritual, and, therefore, of God. The church becomes more and more like the world and less like God, fully deceived that it is about God.

God Himself isn’t good enough for people, so the Christianity concocted conforms God to what people do want for themselves. The God they want is more like a genie in a bottle, who is there for them to give them their wishes. The message fits what they want out of life. Worship itself is determined by what gives them the feeling they want. The concocted Christianity grows, which is said to testify of divine provision, the approval of God. The feelings are said to be caused by God. Receiving what they want is called blessing.

God is Who He is. Concocted Christianity has a different god, one who approves of what its participants need him to approve. He takes what they give him, even if he doesn’t really. God isn’t whoever we imagine him to be. When concocted Christianity forms its own god, he isn’t God. The Globetrotters isn’t basketball. The god of concocted Christianity isn’t god.

The concocted Christianity has causes used to vindicate it. Certainty is pride, so it fights pride and justifies doubt. It battles division with toleration. It cares more except with sentimentalism, not the deferred gratification of eternal reward. Scripture is used conveniently and flexibly to rule out what they dislike and advocate what they love.

One other major way concocted Christianity attempts to exonerate itself is by saying that it doesn’t ruin major doctrines. At worst, it is claimed that it changes smaller or small ones and the application of cultural issues, keeping most of the framework intact for the most part, which they might also argue is all that should be expected. However, doctrines really do change, including their so-called major doctrines. Another Christianity is not concocted without doctrines being affected. People have a different take, a distorted perspective, on what scripture is, on who God is, on what salvation is, on what true worship is, what church is, what Christian living is, and more. Everything changes and everything has changed.

When the adherents of concocted Christianity compare it to the real thing, they can’t recognize it. The referees, those governing concocted Christianity, tell them Christianity isn’t what’s real. It’s extreme, even hyper — “just keep walking, you’ll be fine.” It looks false to them. It looks too certain, too intolerant, and too strict. They want the safe feeling they get from concocted Christianity, even if it isn’t Christianity. It’s a false sense of security, like the fish swimming in the dragnet, unaware of danger.

One other factor for not knowing that professing Christians are in a concocted Christianity is that they have stopped comparing their concocted Christianity to scripture. They think they’re comparing it to something authoritative and it rings true, but very often it’s just a feeling that they have and then the conjectures of leaders, who have stake in their participants not knowing. Very often it’s just the blind leading the blind. A lot of people are on this road, so they also say, there are so many people who agree with me, so they rely on a new norm that’s not acceptable to God, but they assume it is, because of the numbers they think they see on their side.

When we watch the Globetrotters, we know it’s concocted. That’s how easy it is to judge concocted Christianity. Concocted Christianity is a placebo against the worst possible ills. Even worse it inoculates against the real thing.

The Trip to Europe Continued (Fifteenth Post In Total)

September 10, 2018 / Leave a comment

One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen

I’ve got several posts that I want to write. They don’t run out. There is always something, even if most out there in the readership world don’t think so. However, I want to do a series of posts with a critique or analysis of a book entitled, Worship Wars, by a man named Robert Bakss from Australia. What drew my attention to this book was a post written by Dave Mallinak at his blog, The Village Smithy, with the title, Gone Contemporary. Please read it. It’s excellent.

I haven’t read Worship Wars, but I watched the podcast posted by Dave on his blog between Joshua Teis and Robert Bakss. I won’t write my answer right away here, because I need to read it first, but, Lord-willing, I’m going to. When I went to find the book online, the first link was from a site called Goodreads, and there were written reviews and ratings, and I saw, positive ones. Surprising some, not entirely, but some, even from a recognizable unaffiliated. This is where we’re at. What is unique here is a book by a professing independent fundamental Baptist, defending the amorality of music. He’s saying amorality is scriptural. Many others are supporting this. They want it.

The interview posted by Dave in my opinion is, first, inane, and second, full of one straw man after another. It is face palm inducing and nauseous. It’s also very sad, sad to what these independent Baptists have become. Truthfully, they already preach a false gospel, because if you look at their doctrinal statements, they don’t include biblical repentance. It’s easy prayerism. Bakss talks like what he’s saying is completely convincing scripturally without at all being convincing. It’s hard to think he could believe himself, especially the part about Gnosticism. It sounds impressive, but it is fiction, spoken about as if there some crucial scholarship, when it is a fraud. You can’t just call something Gnosticism without making connections, which they make none.

Anyway, I’m going to cover Bakss’s book a little at a time. I haven’t read it yet, but I will. I know it’s not right, just from listening to him explain. I’ll also come back to “sensing” or “feeling” the presence of God, mainly in answer to comments in the comment section of that one post. I had not finished my coverage of Overmiller’s attack on the preservation of scripture to justify using a modern version. I have other subjects I want to address, but these are going to keep me busy. Now I’m going to write another installment of the trip to Europe. If you want to comment on this editorial, feel free.

As we were leaving our flat on Monday morning to drive to the airport, many problems presented themselves. The first was how strict the airline would be on our luggage. I had never flown to a foreign country from the United States, forget flying from one foreign country to another foreign country. It was a difficult getting out of the airport in San Francisco. It was slow upon our arrival at Heathrow.

We had bought some things that were not fitting in our suitcase. This can be a mini-stressful moment, sort of a first world stress, but I decided to leave a sweatshirt that I didn’t think would be necessary as we moved south. That created the space.

When I left our flat, I had to find our car, which I had parked a long ways away. I’m glad I left early, because I can’t believe how long it took to find it. The streets of Edinburgh are often crooked and narrow, and everything in the darkness starts looking the same. It was not a familiar car. I walked and walked, covering the same ground again and again. I stopped in front and picked them up with no parking available. We stuffed everything in and took off.

We arrived about twenty minutes later to the airport. I can’t tell you how relieved I was not to be driving anymore on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car. We parked the car. I brought the keys to the drop off point, and we kept walking. It felt all over there, but this really was the start of it.

As we entered the Edinburgh airport, we had time. It seemed safe. We had checked in. We were flying Ryanair, a budget European airline. We went through security very well. When we scanned our passports, we went right through. We went in and ate something. Then we got in line, getting close to departure, someone from the airline looked at our paperwork and said we missed something. We needed to go back through security to have our passports checked in person. It was something on signs around, but nothing that meant anything for us foreign travel rookies. I didn’t foresee us making it through security, checking our luggage again. The anxiety and adrenalin were high.

I led the family first into a shop and asked somebody in the shop to watch our luggage. That was a big, no. Wouldn’t, couldn’t do it. We had a friendly conversation at the restaurant with a Scottish couple. We begged them with fear in our eyes to watch our luggage, while we went through security again. They were very sympathetic and did it. They were a life saver. A young Filipino woman was moving with us every step of that way, because she had done the very same thing we did, so she just followed us.

We exited, were shown the way to security. People were helpful. We were running. The plane was already being boarded. It is a pathetic, weak looking run. Our passports were checked easily. We got through security very very fast, because it was still early. Our flight was to leave at 6am. We didn’t have luggage. We met the Scottish family, got our luggage from them, thanked them profusely. The Filipino young nurse was very happy with us, because we led her to success. We were sitting on the front row of the plane. That was nice. You should always thank the Lord, because these things are part of His providence. We did.

Our flight was from Edinburgh to Bologna. We were traveling to Venice, but we flew to Bologna, because overall it was less expensive to go from Edinburgh to Bologna by plane and then from Bologna to Venice by train, then to go the straight shot to Venice. It was more adventurous anyway, because we got to include a look at Bologna briefly.

The flight went fast and we were in Bologna. This was going to be the new experience of a new language on this trip. I didn’t know how much of an effect that would have. I had heard that Europeans knew English, so I wondered. Italian security was easy. The border guards didn’t even look at us as we showed ours. They just stamped them. We got right through. This seemed like a common sense situation that isn’t felt in the United States, It made me happy. Airport security sent us right through because we did not look like a threat.

We made our way to public transportation, which was a bus, actually more expensive than I expected, almost the cost of the train ride to Venice, to travel to the Bologna main train station. We got there and then it was a matter of finding our train. We found out the track number from someone in the middle of the station who knew English. In a place like Bologna, Italians don’t know English. You can’t talk to almost anyone. You need someone helpful in the train station, and you can find it, but you have to look for it.

After knowing the basic information and knowing right where we needed to be at about 1pm or so, we went close by to get food in an air conditioned location, where we could wait. Bologna looks like a third world country, just saying. It doesn’t feel dangerous, but it doesn’t feel that safe either. It’s dirty, compared to what I would like. I have to say that lots of places in the United States are just as dirty or dirtier and have less a feeling of safety, including where I live in California. We have far worse crime. Once you get past the initial look, Italy seems safe. The worse of it are pickpockets and we knew that, but there isn’t the feeling of violence, especially in Northern Italy.

At the little restaurant, something you might see near public transportation, we got Italian food. Every Italian food in Italy is Italian. No risk there. Some is going to be better than other. It was cheap Italian food, but we liked it because it was our first in Italy. It was hot there in June, not like Arizona, but quite a difference from just being in Edinburgh. The jackets and sweatshirts and sweaters were gone. We were to our train in time, right place, right seat, and very comfortable and very fast from Bologna to Venice. We made it to Venice in no time.

The place we were staying in Venice was very close to the Mestre train station just north of Venice. We had planned on going there first. We were tired. We could walk to our place and we did.

This was the most fantastic place we stayed our entire time on the trip. The owner’s name was Massimmo and he himself was a world traveler, who seemed to know every language in existence. We spent time talking to him about Venice and Europe. He was a Venice native and considered Venice to be its own region in Italy, very different than the South. He understood what was happening in the United States very well.

We rested, and if there was anything about this point in our trip, we stayed too long before we got on the train into Venice. I’ll bring that to you in the next post.

How Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism Have Invented and Continue to Reinvent A Socially Acceptable Impostor and Placebo Christianity

September 3, 2018 / 1 Comment on How Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism Have Invented and Continue to Reinvent A Socially Acceptable Impostor and Placebo Christianity

Have you purchased a two by four recently? Two by fours aren’t really two by fours. Most people who buy them know that already. A two by four is really a 1.5 by 3.5. I’m not a seven footer just because I call myself one.

Today a girl can call herself a boy and a boy can call himself a girl. Long before this became possible, a person could call himself a Christian, and yet not be one. He was one, however, because he self-identified. In general, you were intolerant if you questioned someone who self-identified as a Christian. To keep the peace, you were required to accept whatever someone wished to be his or her Christianity.

Most of you reading know how offended someone might become if you question his Christianity. Professing Christians want to keep Christian identity fluid. They can define what a Christian is or isn’t based upon their innermost concept of self without conforming to any established definition. If you perceive yourself to be a Christian, your claim should be accepted without imposed external requirements.

Christianity isn’t popular. Jesus said it wasn’t. It isn’t popular because of what it is, so there are choices. One, believe Christianity and suffer. Two, don’t believe Christianity and don’t suffer for it. Three, change Christianity into a Christianity where you will not suffer.

What do Christians suffer for? The world hates Christianity, because it is light. It is different than the world. To change Christianity, you would need to remove the differences. Make a Christianity with the parts that people might like and leave out the parts that people would not like. However, much, if not most, of Christianity is of disliked components.

The World Chooses What It Doesn’t Like

Christians don’t choose what the world doesn’t like. As you read scripture, you can see that philosophies or practices in the world arise that clash with Christianity, and that becomes what is disliked in Christianity. The world chooses what it doesn’t like about Christianity and that becomes something Christians have to react to. In Corinth, the bodily resurrection was disliked and professing Christians started denying it or attempting to blend a denial of bodily resurrection with the rest of Christianity. That doesn’t mean that bodily resurrection is what causes Americans today to hate Christianity. I don’t find that to be a particularly hated aspect of Christianity right now. so it’s easy to be pro bodily resurrection. Who wouldn’t want to get a new body? The world decides what it doesn’t like about Christians and Christianity and that might change in succeeding areas and in various locations.

Caesar worship isn’t in vogue, but it was a problem for Christians in Paul’s day. There will always be a problem in the world with Jesus as Lord, but Caesar was the competition. The world has its agenda and Christians will conflict with it.

The history of liberalism in the United States relates to what is unpopular or unacceptable in the academy. Naturalism or rationalism became fashionable. It wasn’t the truth unless it had historical documentation of a certain quality. Threatened by unemployment or some kind of intellectual embarrassment, professing Christians bridged the gap between the Bible and naturalism to the degree necessary to remain in the academy. It isn’t actually possible, but they still did it, and this became a new kind of Christianity, a blended form. In general if you didn’t take liberal Christianity or the new harmonization with liberalism, you weren’t accepted. Original Christian positions separated to new institutions, probably accepting lower salaries and less credibility.

Liberalism didn’t translate to the pews of churches. The unpopularity was in the narrower arena of academia. Liberalism was unpopular with church members, but it trickled down and eroded churches over time. The leadership trained by liberal institutions slowly took down the churches of various denominations. False beliefs became more acceptable through various means. If churches stayed true to scripture, they did it by remaining separate and receiving leadership separate from liberalism and blended Christianity.

Was and is blended Christianity, a Christianity harmonized to varying degrees with liberalism or other alterations of the Bible, actually Christianity? Are the various “Christianities” equal or should they be accepted in a form of Christianity fluidity?

The Biggest Clash with Christianity Is In and With the Culture

The biggest clash between the world and Christianity comes in the culture or in the practice of Christianity. The world wants to do what it wants to do without judgment. Christianity clashes with the culture. When you read the Bible, the earliest manifestation of the ungodly line is represented by Lamech’s bigamy. He changed the definition of marriage. He wasn’t advocating for polytheism, but disobeying God’s original teaching on marriage. He wanted two wives, not just the one required by God.

Today’s Lamech might be acceptable because he hasn’t maybe embraced false doctrine. Or has he embraced false doctrine? If you aren’t doing what God says, He isn’t God to you. You don’t get to make up new definitions and self-identify in a different way and still believe in the true God. The third way above, where blended Christianity is Christianity, isn’t true. It might be accepted as true, and then the acceptance itself accepted, but God doesn’t accept it. Or perhaps you could just wait and find out.

The world wants to use whatever language it wants without judgment. It wants to dress or undress like it wants. The world in general operates according to fleshly lust and this characterizes its music, its entertainment, and its recreation. Just like professors conceded to liberalism in academia, churches capitulated to the culture. The women in churches of New Testament times started taking on the features of the new Roman woman. The Apostle Paul sees the world creeping into the church with immodestly or ostentatiously dressed, independent, loose women taking authority for themselves. He goes back to creation order in 1 Timothy 2 to bring the church back in line and commands Timothy to eradicate these distortions with all authority. The same movement has occurred in the United States and now Christians have accepted the new American woman, except they say either scripture doesn’t judge this innovation or it’s a non-essential, non separating issue, not a matter of concern to Christian fellowship.

Christians stick out the most in the world because of their discord with the culture. The easiest way to popularize Christianity is to eliminate the cultural differences, to blend Christianity with society. This has been done now in and by evangelicalism and fundamentalism. They have bifurcated Christian doctrine from Christian practice. The doctrinal positions are elevated to a distant priority from the behavior of Christianity, except where the lifestyle could coexist with the culture. Christianity can still be Christianity and also acceptable to the world.

Several Christian leaders observed the possibility of the coordination of social justice with Christian living. Christians could practice Christianity with social justice and appropriate worldly acceptance. The Washington Post could like that Christianity. It’s also a gospel the world might advocate.

Change in Practice Also Changes Doctrine

The difference in culture between the world and Christians doesn’t quarantine itself from doctrine. God is One and all His truth is One. You can’t pick off Christian practice, leaving doctrine without damage, just like you can’t pick and choose favored attributes of God. If you eliminate one attribute of God, He isn’t Who He is anymore. He is a different God.

If you allow the world to influence the music accepted in churches for worship, God becomes how you worship. Music hasn’t been amoral and isn’t amoral. It has meaning. Your God will be shaped to the music you offer Him. Then when God accepts fleshly lust, the worshiper becomes lustful. The priestesses of Diana or Artemis in Ephesus were prostitutes, holy to their god.

Like the other cultural issues, where Christians have adapted to the world, to take away the unpopularity and the conflict, evangelicalism and fundamentalism has relegated cultural distinctions to non-essentials. In a very noticeable way, now these changes are also changing doctrine. You can’t segregate practice from doctrine in a way that will keep doctrine pure. The two are inexorably connected, mutually inclusive.

Jesus is Lord. Apostates deny the Lord who bought them (2 Pet 2:1). They don’t want a boss. Rebellion most characterizes the world’s problem with God. They might be fine to acknowledge Him if He would leave them alone. It is a volitional problem. The conflict in will between the world and God finds itself most in the culture. Christianity is different than the world. When it is the same as the world, is it still Christianity? Is it really still the same God? I’m saying and wanting to prove to you, no, it isn’t.

This is where I see Christian fluidity preceding something like gender fluidity. The latter proceeds from the former. You can’t be the Christian you imagine in your innermost being, self-identifying as a doctrinal Christian and not a practical one. There is a doctrinal problem still, even if you don’t recognize it. This is a different gospel that doesn’t really repent, even if it claims the word, repent.

In recent years as it had also in the far past, a heated discussion arose over the right understanding of the Trinity, or a correct surmisal of Who God is. Theological hairs were split over God’s nature. Is it three Persons or three Manifestations? Many believed the specifics mattered, but some tried to bridge the gap between views to increase the size of the tent. Christianity had already been negotiating over its doctrine and dropping individual parts to keep the whole, like vestigial organs. The skids were greased by all the approbation of worldly culture.

What isn’t acceptable today in Christianity with the compliance of evangelicalism and fundamentalism is Christianity. Christianity is a whole, not just parts. You can’t take out its parts and have it still be Christianity. It has become for people to judge when it has dipped below the level of being Christian. Now if you don’t advocate for dismissing parts of Christianity, you aren’t a Christian. Toleration has become a major tenet along with the new accompanying doctrines. Unity is now agreeing to disagree.

Before the Lord Jesus Christ ascended up through the clouds in real time all the way up to the third heaven and on to a throne at the right hand of God the Father, He commanded His followers to make disciples of Him among all nations. This is right at the heart of Christianity and of the gospel. Accompanying that imperative were three participles: go, baptize, and teach. In the third of these three participles, which are necessary for the obedience to the one command, Jesus says: “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” You can’t make disciples or obey Jesus’ command without “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever” Jesus commands them.

A disciple is someone who starts following and then keeps following Jesus. Following Jesus is obeying everything that He said either to do or not to do. Evangelicalism and fundamentalism have attacked this indispensable component of the Great Commission and have justified it in many different ways that have also become part of their new creed and confession. They are actually the ones changing the gospel under the guise of “together for the gospel” and “the gospel coalition” and “gospel centeredness.” They have changed Christianity. They have made it acceptable to be a Christian without being a Christian.

If Christianity, the only Christianity, is to be preserved and then propagated, men are going to have to stand against the blending or capitulation I’ve described — all of it. First, they need to understand it. If they haven’t agreed to it, they need to admit that they had it wrong before. They can’t get along. I’m asking you to join me in this. We need men who will do this and stop sitting on their hands, acting like none of it matters, minding their own business. If you read this and it sounds true, or you find yourself being convinced, at least admit in public that you are thinking about it and are willing to consider it.

Men are afraid to today of sticking out. Like the men in the growing liberalism of old, they had to go outside the camp and lose something. Be willing to lose what Paul says is loss. Giving up loss is acceptable. Count gain as loss and loss as gain. Go back to square one, whatever it might mean to your career or your perceived success for the sake of the truth.

A Post Among a Series of Posts by John MacArthur about Social Justice and the Gospel

August 30, 2018 / 1 Comment on A Post Among a Series of Posts by John MacArthur about Social Justice and the Gospel

John MacArthur is writing a series dealing with social justice and the gospel (parts one, two, three, and four so far), and I’m focusing primarily on one of them, part three, which his organization calls part two.

An emphasis on social justice and tying that to the gospel has invaded evangelicalism. MacArthur says that he could see it coming, but now is when he’s saying something about it. I’m happy he is saying something about it.

Some would say, look, see what we’ve been saying, MacArthur deals with important subjects, while independent fundamental Baptists talk about dress, music, and alcohol. He’s doing something about the gospel. As anyone reading here knows, we also deal with the gospel here, including where independent Baptists go wrong on it. I’ve written a lot on it and our Word of Truth Conference has been on the gospel for the last three years, and will be about it this year too.

MacArthur has to deal with the social gospel as related to the gospel because it is affecting those with whom he affiliates. I wouldn’t need to deal with it at my church at all. That’s been clear. In fact, because related subjects, ones that folks would say have nothing to do with the gospel, were ignored, he’s now confronting a subject such as this.

Evangelicals for awhile have pandered to various constituencies in order to get their crowds. They would say that it’s been important so that they could reach these people with the gospel. This is mainstream evangelicalism. They have also kept kicking issues down the road, treating them like their not gospel issues, and then they hit them right in the face as related to the gospel. Evangelicals have been wrong on this. This is not something MacArthur says. He talks about all this like he’s had no problem, has had nothing to do with the problem, which isn’t true. He’s a part of evangelicalism and part of the problem.

Before I write more, I want to say that I really like what MacArthur has written in his part three. It’s worth reading for anyone and important to understand. I agree with MacArthur in what he’s written. I agree with most of the series. I’m on his side in what he is writing. A few things he writes are not exactly right, but I’m with him on the crux of everything that he writes in this series. He’s helpful. It’s sad what has happened to evangelicalism.

MacArthur treats several issues that he relates to the gospel. In his first paragraph, he writes:

Evangelicals as a group have shown an unsettling willingness to compromise or unnecessarily obfuscate all kinds of issues where Scripture has spoken plainly and without ambiguity.

The essence of this statement I support, except for one part, that I believe haunts evangelicalism and still MacArthur. This is one of those aspects where he’s “not exactly right,” to put it kindly. His statement implies that some of scripture is not plain and that some of it is ambiguous. This really is where MacArthur and evangelicals get themselves in trouble and they open the door for denial of the truth and compromise of God’s will. Certain teaching and application of scripture is disobeyed, because MacArthur and others like him give their listeners the strong impression that a good number of subjects that have been clear in the past to Christians, really are not.

I know MacArthur would confess to support the historic doctrine of perspecuity. If pushed, he only goes so far as to support perspecuity as it relates to gospel related subjects. He is saying that the Bible does have plain and non-ambiguous statements, but with his implication that it has some that are not plain and are not ambiguous, he opens the door for professing Christians to do what they want, even on the subjects that he addresses.

Nevertheless, MacArthur says the truth about certain subjects, the ones that he says are plain and without ambiguity. From my reading through the years, with him and some of his associates, the subjects that are without ambiguity are the ones he says are without ambiguity. However, certain subjects have not been with ambiguity until in the last century, and those are ones that MacArthur himself says are ambiguous. His capitulation on some of those have led to many of the issues that he’s concerned about, like the strange fire of Charismaticism, the pragmatism everywhere in evangelicalism, and the role reversal.

The list of plain doctrines or practices MacArthur addresses in the article (part three) and with which I agree with him are the following:

Women Preachers
Marriage Role Reversal
Accepted Fornication
Borrowing from Pop Culture for Worship and Church Growth
Worldly Methods
Seeker Sensitive
Pragmatism
Social Justice

What I’ve read in the past is that some of the above are just non-essential. Some of these are not gospel, so when is it essential, or non-essential? Now I’m getting that something is essential when it is “plain” and “without ambiguity.”

I’m just happy some evangelicals are concerned.

Lutherans and Anglicans: True Gospel?

August 13, 2018 / 6 Comments on Lutherans and Anglicans: True Gospel?

This last week going evangelizing door-to-door I encountered a young family, who attended an Anglican church in San Francisco. I had just been in the U.K. and visited a few well-known cathedrals there, including Westminster, so the Anglicans had been on my mind. I could not remember ever talking to an Anglican in California — Episcopalians yes, and many of them, but Anglicans no.

The Anglicans said they were very involved in their church. The husband and wife had both graduated from Asbury University in Kentucky and lived in California for about 6 months. They claimed to believe the gospel, didn’t think salvation was by works but by grace, and that the Lord’s Table was only a symbol. They couldn’t keep talking at that time, but their church interested me, so I went home and looked it up.

The church of the young Anglican family believed the 39 articles, which date back to 1571. They were better than I thought. From history and my knowledge of Henry VIII, I thought they would be worse. They have good differences that distinguish them from the doctrine of Roman Catholicism. The following article is the biggest problem:

BAPTISM is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or new Birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed; Faith is confirmed, and Grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God. The Baptism of young Children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.

How does this relate to Lutherans? I lived in Wisconsin for 13 years — jr. high, high school, college, and graduate school. We played several Lutheran schools in sports in jr. high, high school, and college. After games, I evangelized players on their teams. They were not saved. I never talked to a saved Lutheran. My next door neighbor, really a rarity in our area, is a Lutheran, conservative one, and not saved. He’s depending on his works for salvation and doesn’t need any help — nice guy but lost.

I follow the Pyromaniacs twitter feed, because I like to look at their linked articles. I noticed that Phil Johnson was at a Lutheran church in Minnesota and preaching at a conference with Lutherans. The mention of Martin Luther at times by these conservative evangelicals has been disconcerting to me. I evangelized many Lutherans when I was in Wisconsin and they were not saved people, not friendly at all to evangelism. The Lutheran Church where Johnson spoke was American Association of Lutheran Churches. It has a short doctrinal statement with these sentences.

The Holy Spirit, through the Word, reveals our sinful nature and God’s perfect, eternal nature. Through Baptism, the Word works through water to bury our sinful nature and raise us to a new, eternal life in Christ. In the Lord’s Supper, the believer receives the forgiveness of sins through the presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in bread and wine.

The church claims to believe the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, which is very similar to the Anglican Church of the earlier young family. That confession says:

Of Baptism they teach that it is necessary to salvation, and that through Baptism is offered the grace of God, and that children are to be baptized who, being offered to God through Baptism are received into God’s grace.

The Anglican statement on baptism might be a little better than the Lutheran one. This is a corruption of the gospel by adding a work to grace. When I have talked to those who believe like Anglicans and Lutherans, I have gone to Galatians 1:6-9 and Galatians 5:1-4.

How many works need to be added to corrupt the gospel? Just one. Adding circumcision corrupts the gospel. Christ becomes of no effect. You replace circumcision with baptism and you’ve got the same, very serious problem. Paul says if someone preaches another gospel, let him be accursed. That’s different than preaching with them. Preaching with them is not saying, let them be accursed.

Evangelicals and Catholics together have violated Galatians 1:6-9. Evangelicals and Lutherans or Evangelicals and Anglicans together do the same.

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