Part One

As you read through the New Testament, you read phrases like the following.

Acts 8:1:  “the church which was at Jerusalem”
1 Corinthians 1:2:  “Unto the church of God which is at Corinth”
Galatians 1:2:  “unto the churches of Galatia”
1 Thessalonians 2:14:  “the churches of God which in Judaea”
2 Corinthians 8:1:  “the churches of Macedonia”
Revelation 1:4:  “to the seven churches which are in Asia”
Colossians 4:15:  “the church which is in his house”

Those all fit into what we know ekklesia, the word translated “church” in the King James Version, to mean, that is, assembly.  Assemblies are in particular locations.  An assembly is always local.  Then you read the New Testament, and you can see that churches are local.  You would have no reason to think that church is anything but an assembly in a particular location, in a town, like “at Jerusalem,” “at Corinth,” “in Judea,” or even “in his house.”  Nowhere does the Bible define the church as otherwise.

David Cloud, however, says “there is more to Christ’s church than the assemblies.”  He says that he has “examined [1 Corinthians 12:13] repeatedly, and the only thing [he] can see [t]here is a Spirit baptism and a spiritual body.”  His first actual argument is that Paul uses “we,” including himself with the church at Corinth, so he must be part of the same body as the church at Corinth.  There are a lot of arguments against 1 Corinthians 12:13 speaking of Spirit baptism, but as an argument for Spirit baptism, his “we” argument doesn’t hold up.

First, I agree that Paul is including himself with the church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 12:13 when he says “we.”   Paul was baptized into one body, just like the Corinthians were.  The point of “one,” however, was not one in number.  “One” is being used as one in unity.  1 Corinthians 12 is about the unity of a church, using the analogy of a body.  It is a common usage of Paul.  He says, “one mind,” “one mouth,” and “one spirit,” and uses those, not to say that there is only one in number, but that they are one in unity.  Does anyone think that when Paul writes that a church has “one mind” that is he saying that they have one in number?  Cloud calls this verbal gymnastics, but it’s actually just syntax.  Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:16-17:

 What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.  But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.

Here is a similar usage of “one body.”   A man is joined with a harlot.  Are these two now numerically one body?  Of course not.  They are one body in unity during the time they are physically joined, yes, but not one in number.  Two physically unified people are now one.  And then the Lord is one Spirit.  The saved person is one spirit.  But they are unified into “one spirit” through salvation.  They are still two in number, but one in unity.  The verbal gymnastics are on the side of Cloud.  They have to be, because scripture doesn’t teach what he is saying.   To do so, the Bible would contradict itself in numbers of different ways.

Just because 1 Corinthians 12:13 says “one body,” doesn’t mean that there is numerically “one body” on earth.  If you are going to use that as some kind of grammatical rule, then consider 1 Timothy 3:12, my favorite example of this:

Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife.

Is anyone going to think that there is only one woman in the world who is married to all of the deacons in the entire world?  To be consistent with Cloud’s logic, there would have to be.

Cloud is in trouble in 1 Corinthians 12:27 with “ye are the body of Christ,” Paul excluding himself, especially after Cloud has himself stuck with his “we” understanding.  The way that he deals with this is by saying that “body” is used in two different ways in the same chapter, so that body means two different things there.  Cloud is saying that in the same chapter there is a universal, invisible body and then a local, visible body, and you know it simply by Paul’s usage of pronouns:  “ye” means local and then “we” means universal, according to him.  Paul says “the body of Christ” — “the body,” not “a body.”  He doesn’t write, “Ye are a body of Christ.”  That point seemed to be lost for Cloud.  It is tell-tale.  Anyway, I would wonder at what point Paul made the switch between the supposed “two meanings of body.”  That would be some good information to know.  It’s, of course not available information, because it does not exist.

The analogy of the “body” that Paul uses is local.  A person uses “body” as an analogy because he wants to communicate something local.  It’s a body because it actually is in one place.  Bodies are in one place.  You don’t have a foot in Kansas, an eye in New York, a hand in Oregon, and a knee in North Dakota.  You’ve got them all in one place by the very meaning of body.  If you want an idea that is non-local, you don’t use body to get it.  God uses body as an analogy to show the unity of a church, it’s oneness.  There is diversity in a body, many body parts, but a unity in that those body parts are all there together, attached, working together.

There are other issues for 1 Corinthians 12:13.  “Baptism” is only water everywhere in 1 Corinthians up to 1 Corinthians 12:13.   Even greater, 1 Corinthians 12:13 doesn’t fulfill the model or prediction or prophecy for Spirit baptism in Matthew 3:11, Mark 1:8, Luke 3:16, and John 1:33.  In every instance of the model for Spirit baptism, Jesus does the baptizing, already saved people are being baptized, and the Holy Spirit is the medium.  1 Corinthians 12:13 doesn’t read that way, because it isn’t Spirit baptism.   1 Corinthians 10:2 says, “And were all baptized into Moses.”  Is that Spirit baptism?  Were all of the children of Israel placed into Moses at that moment spiritually?  Even if you are looking for Spirit baptism, you don’t find it in 1 Corinthians 12:13.

I understand that universal church advocates “find” a universal church in 1 Corinthians 12:13.  I understand David Cloud believing that it is in there, because so many people have taught that.  He, however, did not come to that position from solely reading and studying the text.  He was influenced by universal church teaching to come to that position.

More to Come.

David Cloud takes a lot of grief from people for no good reason.  Most of what he has to say is good and true and the people attacking him on most occasions take cheap shots.  I think some of his biggest detractors agree with him on 90%, but they don’t like him for three reasons alone, and in the following order: King James Version, music, and non-Calvinism.  The same people who attack him often fellowship with continuationists and give them a pass.  It’s the KJV issue — the third rail of fundamentalist and evangelical politics.  I’ve been attacked many times because I have linked to Cloud and have supported him in different ways on various occasions.  Even when I do disagree with him, I don’t usually answer him in public, because I don’t want him to take any more than he already gets.  If you read Cloud, you are generally, almost exclusively, going to be helped.

I think I’m consistent with how I deal with David Cloud.  I quote and link to people with whom we have less agreement than David Cloud.  Every link comes with a disclaimer.  I supported Cloud in his issue with West Coast by writing here on his behalf.  I’ve known that I disagree with Cloud.  I’ve often thought that if I did sit down with Cloud and had a long talk that on some of our disagreements, he might change.   Would I change?  Sure.  I’d be willing to change to his position too, if it were biblical.

But now I’m going public against something David Cloud just recently published.  He knows that everything he posts online or sends out in his news service is open game.  He has to know that many of his supporters think he’s wrong, but he’s decided to go ahead and put it out there anyway.  He says that he already had it in his encyclopedia since 1993, so it isn’t new.  That’s fine.  But more people read his online material than read his published material — by far.

I’m going to deal with what he wrote in bite sized portions that will encourage someone to keep reading.  A lot reading this will already be sided with David Cloud, because more evangelicals are universal church than are local only.  Some will see this as an intramural skirmish, because they completely ignore a local only position anyway, act like it doesn’t exist.

Despite some of the tone of Cloud’s post, I want to keep it as civil as possible, just dealing with the issue, and not with what I think of Cloud writing it or the level of scholarship that went into the post.  Let’s just see if the Bible says what he says that it says.  However, if he says something that I don’t believe is true, I’ll point it out, as nicely as possible.

So let’s begin.  His article is dated September 17, 2013, and entitled, “Are You a Baptist Brider or Local Church Only?”   Right off the bat, anyone reading should know that he’s not asking either/or.   He is renaming “Baptist brider” with “local church only,” as if they are the same position.  My opinion up to this day is that “Baptist brider” is generally a pejorative meant to disparage local only ecclesiology.   The two titles are not the same.  They are not identical.   What I’m saying is that technically and biblically you can be local church only and not a Baptist brider.  He should know that.  Perhaps he does.  If he does, then he shouldn’t write that “local only” means “Baptist bride,” because that would mean he’s only taking a shot.

The first part of the article is personal, where Cloud explains how he came to his position.  I’m happy to hear that when Cloud understood that he was on the wrong track with a belief, or that he didn’t understand it, that he would study it on his own.  That’s a good thing.  I’m going to assume that Cloud didn’t take a position that would make him more popular with a particular camp, that this is what he actually does believe based on his approach and study.  I’m also really happy to hear that Cloud thinks that his work should be church work, based upon the Bible.

OK, it’s at this point that Cloud starts making arguments for his position, including some scripture references.  He said he looked at “Matthew 16:18; 1 Corinthians 12:13; and Ephesians 2:13-20″ and couldn’t fit those into a local church only position.  I’m going to take Cloud completely at his word, so I’m going to critique what he wrote here.  He shouldn’t try to fit the Bible into a position, but take a position that the Bible teaches.  If he was looking to fit the passages into a particular position, that’s a tell-tale indicator of how to come to a wrong one.   I don’t think Cloud is a novice, and that’s a bit of hyperbole to even bring that up, as if he’s firing that preemptive warning shot across the bow.  Again, let’s assume that Cloud understands hermeneutics.  Proving him wrong isn’t personal.  It isn’t an attempt to degrade him completely because he has it wrong on this one position.  Instead, we can look at this arguments, and see if they match up with the text of scripture.

I’m not going to call what he’s written so far an argument.  He’s saying he can’t fit “local only” into three passages.  He doesn’t tell us why he can’t, just that he can’t with good conscience.  No argument has been made so far, unless being David Cloud is an argument, which we will assume he doesn’t believe.

He makes an argument in the next paragraph.  His argument sounds like the following, and you can read it for yourself to see if I’m representing it properly.  The gates of hell would not prevail against Jesus’ church (Mt 16:18), and since David Cloud has seen the gates of hell prevail against individual churches in his experience, the church in Mt 16:18 must be something other than local.  Cloud has been to the location of the 7 churches of Revelation 2 and 3 and they’re not there, so the gates of hell prevailed against those congregations, leaving with no alternative but to see Mt 16:18 as talking about something other than local.  That’s his argument.  I don’t think I’m  wrong here, but that is not an exegetical argument.  It’s perhaps slightly better than the “I’m David Cloud” argument, but not much.

There is something that David Cloud does not talk about in his article that could clear some things up for him on this.  I don’t want to assume that he doesn’t know this, but if he is going to make that type of argument for Matthew 16:18, then he would need to show that he understands this, and yet he doesn’t show it.  It is basic grammar.  It is looking at the actual words and deriving a teaching from them, allowing the Bible to stand as the authority.

“Church” (ekklesia) in Matthew 16:18 is a singular noun.  That does not mean there is one of them in the entire world.  If I say, “I answered the phone,” I’m not saying there is only one phone in the world, since I wasn’t referencing a particular phone.  The singular noun can only be used two ways: a particular or a generic. Often, the singular noun is used in a generic way in the New Testament.  It is used that way all the time in Greek and in English and in many other languages.  This is very basic.  When Jesus says, “I will build my church,” we don’t assume that He means there will be just one.  He could be talking about the church generically.   I think that He was, but it isn’t easy to conclude whether it was a particular, the Jerusalem church, or His church as an institution, the generic use, by the context.  It could be either and could be both.   We certainly shouldn’t make any conclusions about what “church” means from a passage ambiguous in its context.

What would be good to do is to look at how Jesus uses the word ekklesia in His 20 other usages of it in the Bible, and what you will find is that the other usages are plainly local.  That is good hermeneutics, that is, taking the ambiguous usage and interpreting in the light of every other single usage by Jesus.  There is no reason to believe that Jesus wasn’t using ekklesia in Matthew 16:18 like He was in the other 20 usages, beginning in Matthew 18:15-17.  And if ekklesia was ever supposed to be an entity other than local, where is the passage that explains that usage of the word.  Where?  There is no where, and the reason is because it has only the one meaning.

A generic use of the singular noun doesn’t change the meaning of the word.  An ekklesia is still an assembly, the way that Tyndale translated the word in every usage of it in his translation — “congregation.”

When Jesus said “my church,” He was distinguishing His governing institution from others.  This was His.  His ekklesia was different than the meeting of the Greek city state, the Sanhedrin, the congregation of Israel.  He would be the Head of this one.  However, it was still an assembly.  Assemblies assemble.  If they don’t assemble, they are not an assembly.  If it isn’t a particular assembly, then Jesus is speaking of it in a generic way, which is common in the New Testament.  Cloud doesn’t mention this, perhaps because he doesn’t know.   If he did know, he should at least have talked about it.  If you don’t know the two usages of the singular noun, you can be confused when it comes to interpreting singulars.

There is no mystical or spiritual or platonic usage of the singular noun.  You’ve got two choices:  particular or generic.  If Jesus was using it as a generic, that doesn’t change the meaning of ekklesia.  He is talking still about an assembly, not just a particular one.  He’s talking about it as His institution.  If I say, “I will write with my pen,” “pen” doesn’t suddenly become universal and mystical without warning.  It retains the meaning, even though it isn’t talking about or distinguishing a particular pen.  It is “my pen,” so that narrows it down, but it doesn’t create something that is a different meaning of pen.  It’s still a pen.

Cloud doesn’t argue with exegesis.  His argument is experiential.  And it doesn’t prove anything, especially since he doesn’t exegete.  In the end, he eisegetes.   Just because individual churches are gone doesn’t mean that Jesus’ church is gone.  Every single assembly in the world would need to be gone for the gates of hell to prevail.  That has not been the case.  Jesus’ church will exist as long as there is still one of His churches.  It doesn’t even have to be a good one or the best one to be one.  If it is a church, then His church has not been prevailed upon.

More next time.

Let’s just admit it, the critical text position doesn’t believe the Bible.  God said He would preserve every Word.  Anyone taking the deserted island interpretation, where you just take the Bible at face value, as if you were picking it up and reading it on a desert island with no outside effects, knows the Bible says that about itself.  God promised to preserve all the Words and make them accessible to His own.  If the Words aren’t accessible, that is not, um, preservation.

I do find myself boggled with the people who try to spin the Bible into saying something else about it besides perfect preservation.  What good do they get from having it not say it’s preserved?  Less faith.  More doubt.  Less certainty.  More disobedience.  Is that what they want??  They might say, “It doesn’t teach that, at least like you’re saying!”  But theirs is a new viewpoint.  Christians have thought it did say that.  You read it and it says it.  The Bible says it and Christians have thought and said that it said it, until along came textual criticism.  We wrote a whole book about it, that was mainly attacked in very crazy, off-the-wall ways.  When you read the criticisms, you know their position is in trouble.  A lot of the criticisms are insane.

I want to give you a recent example.  I’m going to have to review this guy’s book, because in the main it is a book to bash our book.  I don’t want to give any attention to his book, which is my main negative to not reviewing it.  One more person might read it and entertain accusations that should not be considered.  The book was pushed along and encouraged and then the preface was written by the great scholar Bob Hayton.  I would say that Bob has an axe to grind.  A big one.  Most people don’t know how big of an axe Bob Hayton is grinding.  They don’t know what motivates his material.  It’s easy to see if he was a member of your church, like he was ours, and you saw what he did and then what he later said about it.  Bob knows our position.  He was in our church.  He accepted our position.  He didn’t oppose it.  He asked questions about it, but gave no sign that he didn’t believe it.  I write all this about Bob, because Bob knows a bold faced particular lie in a recent published book is not true.  He knows it, and he says nothing about it.  It’s a mean, evil, very scummy thing.  And he’s good with it.  He brags on the book, knowing this lie is in it.  The book isn’t very good, and I’ll talk about it at some point, but I’m going to talk about this one whopper of a lie first.

When I read the left, I have noticed that they have no moral compunctions against lying to get their point done.  It is “end justifies the means,” a philosophy of utiliarianism and pragmatism that came out of the age of reason.  God is diminished, man is at the center of things, and lies become acceptable.  You know for sure then that they are not interested in the truth.

I’ve been preaching through 2 Corinthians and I know it isn’t new.  Paul was attacked in the most scandalous ways by false teachers to discredit him, to ruin his reputation, so that the false teachers could have their way with the Corinthians.  You’ve got to expect it.  You saw the Pharisees do it with Jesus.  So what are you to think when you see these critical text people do this?  I have to say I get it now.  It’s sad.  I wish it weren’t true, but it is.  They will use whatever they want, whatever it takes for them, to destroy the truth on this.  It’s their way at almost any cost. It’s just the way it goes, I guess.  I don’t want to believe it’s true, but I’ve just seen it too much.

Jason Harris in his new book, called The Doctrine of Scripture (highly misrepresentative really), mainly just attacks the perfect preservation view.  It’s not any kind of quality, well-researched, scholarly, studied-out book on the doctrine of Scripture.  It’s just a hatchet job against the doctrine of the preservation of Scripture, regularly making outlandish statements without any documentation, asserting what it cannot prove.  He doesn’t present any kind of historic, established, or exegetical view himself of this.  He just smears the perfect preservation position and assaults the people who believe it.  He lumps all sorts of different positions together as if they are one, not distinguishing between them.  The people cheering him on wouldn’t care about such inaccuracy.

In a section on 1 Peter 1:23-25, Harris deals with the notion of people who believe that someone can only be saved by means of the preaching of the King James Version.  In that section, he quotes Jack Hyles as having taken that position.  It’s true that Hyles took it.  Our book was very clear to say that position was wrong.  I wrote a footnote in that chapter and the first line of it reads:

There is enough of God’s Word (at least 93%) in the CT that a person could be born again by means of that text.

And then the rest of the footnote backs up that initial statement.  That is an unequivocal statement that would deny anything that Hyles wrote.  Even further, I write:

As strong as this text is in relating salvation to the purity of the Bible, it does not go so far as to teach that conversion can only occur through the King James Version.

But Harris can’t leave it alone.  He has to somehow connect us with this false position.  It’s the strategy that false teachers do, who don’t have the truth on their side.  They misrepresent people to harm their reputation and their credibility.  Of course, Bob Hayton knows we don’t believe anything close to that, but he likes to have us smeared, even if it takes a lie to do so.

After dealing with Hyles in his footnote, he quotes three different people in our book:  Gary LaMore, Dave Sutton, and then me.  His quote from LaMore was saying nothing more than we are dependent on God’s preservation of His Word in order to be saved.  Are we to assume that Harris believes that we can be saved without the Word of God?  Are we?  Should we assume that?  Perhaps I could write a book that says that Jason Harris believes we can be saved without the Bible.  I’m not going to do that, but why would he attack LaMore, who said nothing more than that?

He quotes Dave Sutton with a big bracketed statement in it as an attempt at mind reading from Sutton’s chapter on the phrase, “it is written.”  Here’s what Harris writes, first quoting Sutton with his own bracketed material included:

“The doctrine of salvation is dependent upon preservation.  If there were no preserved Words [he’s implying preservation in a particular text], then there would be no preached Word, and man could not believe on Jesus Christ; for ‘faith cometh by hearing.'”  Following this logic, if one does not have the right “Words” (i.e., the text Sutton holds to) how can he be saved?

No, that is not Sutton’s logic.  It isn’t what he was thinking or writing.  He’s actually writing what he means.  If you don’t have the Words, then you can’t preach them, and people are saved through hearing them preached.  That’s what Romans 10 says.  Is Harris saying that you can be saved by Words that are not in fact God’s Words?  If one can be saved by any Words, Words that are not in God’s Word, then why would someone need the Word of God?  This is what Harris is denying by attempting to smear Sutton.  I don’t think it’s worth it to have so much disdain for someone else’s position, that when you go after it, you risk orthodox doctrine yourself.  That’s what Harris does.

Then he quotes my chapter on Deuteronomy 30:11-14 and accessibility or availability of God’s Words. People use the unavailability of scripture as an excuse for not obeying God.  God says the Words will be there for us and Paul quotes this passage in Romans 10, a salvation passage.  I’ve preached through the whole book of Deuteronomy, studying it in the original languages, and I know what Deuteronomy is all about.  I talk about the layout of Deuteronomy in my chapter, and I don’t think that Harris understands it.  I’m not going to say he didn’t read it, but he writes like he didn’t read the chapter.  If he understood the chapter, he would know that agreement to obey all that God said is equated with salvation in Deuteronomy.  That’s how Deuteronomy reads.  Harris quotes one line from that chapter.

Belief in Christ assumes the reception of all God’s Words.

From that line, Harris extrapolates a truckload.  He says:

This statement implies the dangerous error that belief in Brandenburg’s understanding of preservation is necessary to salvation.

Really?  That’s what that line implies, especially in light of the teaching of Deuteronomy and the instruction in that chapter?  Remember, I wrote that footnote to LaMore’s 1 Peter 1:23-25 chapter.  The first line said that people can be saved through the critical text.  I edited the book.  I wrote that line in the footnote. Why try to read into something that I wrote something that I clearly said that I don’t believe?  Harris is very, very loose with the truth.  He is so eager to discredit us that he’s fine lying about us.

There will those who will be fine with Harris’s lie, because he’s lying about me, and that’s fine.  He’s smearing me, so that’s good.  That’s how they roll. That is their method of operation.  They’ll be fine with it.  They will defend Jason, attack me.  I’m expecting that people will say, “You lied about me!”  And then they’ll make up things about that too.  Of course, if they are concerned about lies, then they wouldn’t want someone lying like that, but they aren’t concerned about lies, but about a position that they appreciate, adore, support, like, or love being defended and believed.  If lies are what it takes, you use them.  The lies you oppose are the ones that hurt your position, but you’re not really interested in the truth.

Should I assume that Harris believes that someone can deny God’s Words, the ones He doesn’t like or agree with, and still believe in Jesus Christ?  In other words, can someone be unrepentant of rebellion against teaching of God and still believe in Jesus Christ?  Is Harris into easy-believism?  All I would need to do is ask Harris if that’s true.  That wouldn’t be hard.  And that’s what Harris did with me, rather than say that I believe this “dangerous error” that he says I believe.   No.  He doesn’t ask me.  He just makes the statement without proof.  It’s horrible.

I can guarantee you that the rest of the book is the same.  I’m not saying it is bereft of truth at all, but it is full of these same types of problems all over.  I’ll be dealing with them, but this is representative of the kind of effort that he is willing to produce.

There is a lot of this that I read from critical text people.  Many are fully willing to do this kind of twisting.  You know their position is in trouble when it’s propped up by blatant lies.

The Corinthians were shutting the Apostle Paul out because of the influence of unbelievers.  The prescription was a command in 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.”  Then Paul spends several verses giving reasons why to obey this command.  It’s a command from God. It’s also axiomatic in light of the rhetorical questions Paul asks immediately following that command.

[A] present state of justification does not guarantee a future state of justification. What Scripture makes clear is that justification is mutable. Your and my state of justification can be lost.

God doesn’t accept lipservice, people who say they’re something when they’re not or who say they believe something when they don’t.   If someone says he believes in the sovereignty of God, then he would believe what God said about His own sovereignty.  God is sovereign, so He’s sovereign over His sovereignty too.  His sovereignty is what He says it is.  Turning God’s sovereignty into something that we say it is, and that He doesn’t, acts as though we’re sovereign over Him.

The people who believe in sovereignty as God reveals it in His Word, I’m going to call The Sovereignty People.  They are the ones who really believe it.  Others might have a name that they associate with believing in sovereignty that’s only a name, because they just give sovereignty lipservice.  The Sovereignty People actually trust in the sovereignty of God, over which God is sovereign.  If you don’t trust in the sovereignty of God, you are not one of The Sovereignty People.

The following are some examples, not in any order of priority, that I ask you to consider.  Again, people claim God’s sovereignty but don’t actually trust it.  They like to talk it, but manifest in obvious ways that they don’t trust it everywhere.

The Church

I was reading a decent article on church versus parachurch.  I say “decent” because it had much good content, but wasn’t right on.  It did a masterful job of ticking off many of the problems that arise, but ultimately left room for the parachurch organization.  There were a couple of tell-tale statements (emphasis mine):

Can anyone see a parachurch organization in the NT? If not, I still wouldn’t conclude that there’s no place for them, any more than I would for organs or guitars or pews.

A kid’s at a secular college for some time, and a parachurch organization provides some on-campus fellowship, encouragement, instruction, camaraderie. I completely get that.

Why does someone conclude that there is a place for them or get why they are needed?  The reason why they cause many problems and why they suck energy from churches is because there is no place for them and they’re not needed.  They’re not.  They don’t serve the church.  Jesus didn’t start parachurch.  He didn’t promise anything for them.  There’s nothing to guide them.  They’re sheer human innovation, saying that what God designed wasn’t good enough.

So what does this have to do with the sovereignty issue?  Well, these people would claim to be sovereignty people.   But here God isn’t sovereign to them.  They can’t just trust what God said.  What He said was sufficient.  He didn’t start parachurch, didn’t mention it.  Is His way not good enough?  Did He not equip the church with enough to do what He wanted?   These additions are a faithless lack of trust in God.  They are the equivalent of David’s ox-cart.  It isn’t like using a computer instead of a typewriter, but like Caan’s vegetables instead of an animal sacrifice.

God is glorified by what He said.  When we invent something to “help” what He said, He isn’t glorified.  When we don’t trust what He said, we’re just giving His sovereignty lipservice.  God said what He said, and we should operate within that framework and then just allow Him to work how He works.  When it isn’t like we think it should be, we shouldn’t be starting something to supplement what He said because what He said doesn’t work.  We should wait on Him.  That is trusting in His sovereignty.

The idea of parachurch is a supplement to the church in some way that church is insufficient.   The advocates usually say, “Churches just can’t….”   God is omniscient.  He sees and knows what we can’t see or know.  He foreknows.  If He didn’t include something, He knew it wasn’t necessary.  And even if it were necessary, He wants to be trusted.  He wants His way to be used.  He wants the credit for how it was done.  That is someone who actually trusts in the sovereignty of God.

The Bible

We might not feel saved, but we believe God is sovereign over His salvation, from which we get assurance.  People who say they believe in sovereignty might say that they believe in His sovereignty over salvation.  They talk about that again and again.  Saints persevere because God preserves the soul.  His Word says it, so they believe it.  Fine.  God knows His Word.  He knows what He inspired.  Every word.  And He promised to preserve every one of His Words.  Will we believe that?  Do we believe He is sovereign over His Word?  Most don’t today.  They only give it lipservice.  What they really believe is that man is sovereign over God’s Word through textual criticism.  Man determines what the Words are by “recovering” them through archaeology and then criticism.  This was another innovation to make up for something God didn’t do.  I would say God couldn’t do, but they’ll say, “No, we haven’t said, He couldn’t, just that He didn’t.”  But He said that He would.  And now those preservation texts are being challenged to fit the presuppositions.

Men talk about the “version issue” or the King James Onlyism.   Generally, those two are red herrings.  We’re talking about the doctrine of God’s preservation of His Words.  In the past, men who claimed to believe in sovereignty also believed He was sovereign over His Word, and so they also believed in the perfect preservation of Scripture.  It’s not a matter of a preference for a translation or a particular translation philosophy, but whether we can know what His Words are.  Christians once believed we could and did know, and this was even before the publication of the King James Version.  It’s not a version issue, because we mean the original language words.

The big issue here is the existence of textual variants.  I believe that the soteriological equivalent are man’s sins.  Can or does God not keep man’s soul because of sins?  Yes.  Does God not keep His Word because of textual variants?  No.   See the inconsistency.   Sins are less of a problem than variants.  Why?  It isn’t because of the power or wisdom of God, but because of the unbelief of men.  They say it’s evidence.  No, it’s faithlessness.  We believe either one of these because God promises them in His Word.  Whether we believe God is sovereign is whether we believe He has followed through on what He said.

Methods for Church Growth

The worship wars may not in fact be about worship.  They’re instead about church growth.  How does a church grow or at least sustain its own numbers?  You would think that those who believe in God’s sovereignty would say through biblical methods, but that is most often not what you hear from them.  You hear that a particular church is dead because of a music style that it uses.  If you believe God is sovereign, you also believe that His methods of church growth in scripture are sufficient. There are thick manuals on church growth authored by those who say they believe in God’s sovereignty, and what they present is not solely what God said in His Word.  The Bible isn’t enough.  You also need some marketing strategy and social programs.  These are people who are not OK with God being in charge.  There’s got to be more to it to them.

There are many more examples than these., but what I am seeing is that people do not in fact believe in the sovereignty of God, because if they did, it would be more than just lipservice to them.

The idea of being gospel-centered is new.  It is pseudo-argumentation for new measures with continued popularity with the world in view, which is ironic, because you would think the gospel would be the reason for growth with something gospel-centered.  No.  Instead, it’s rock music, casual, androgynous, or immodest dress, entertainment, and recreation.

The trajectory was like the following.  Christian churches were built on the gospel.  Then two things happened.   One, the world became more pagan and Christians more different.  Two, churches started to shrink because people didn’t like being different.  Instead of getting smaller, the churches changed how they operated.  The churches that capitulated were criticized by those who didn’t.  They came up with gospel-centered to explain their approach.  They weren’t going to talk about the cultural issues, because the gospel is what’s important.

Question:  What’s the purpose of the gospel?

I now want to explore that briefly by considering 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 (I risk being gospel-centered by using the King James Version [don’t try to figure that one out]):

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. ¹⁸ And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. ²⁰ Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. ²¹ For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

The purpose of the gospel is to reconcile man to God.  Why does man need to be reconciled to God?  So that he can glorify God.  That’s what man lost because of sin.  How is man reconciled to God?  Paul explains that in this passage.   Reconciliation occurs through transformation.  Transformation?  Yes.  That’s what the passage says.  Verse 17, “all things are become new.”  Next verse, “And all things are of God.”  What things?  Becoming new is what reconciles us to God.  How are we made new?  We are made new through imputation of our sin to Christ and imputation of His righteousness to us.  Yes.  But it isn’t imputation and justification without transformation.  The point, again, is to reconcile us to God.  To God.  God doesn’t keep putting up with the old life, the former life, the way we were — that’s not what reconciliation is.

Something gospel-centered is transformational, turning us into something of a divine nature.  Our music and dress and entertainment become honoring to God.  If it doesn’t, it isn’t the gospel.

So how do they claim gospel centered?  They claim it.  That’s just it.  They’re not it.  They just claim it and then pose like it’s true.  It’s a gospel pose.  The gospel changes your dress and your music, so that you are honoring to God in this world.  The gospel doesn’t excuse your dress and your music.  The gospel reconciles you to God through transforming you.  Not being transformed isn’t gospel.  It’s a gospel pose — that’s it.

Here’s what happened recently at Northland.  Their numbers were shrinking.  They were laying off faculty and staff.  It’s too bad.  They look at the landscape, much like the overall trajectory I described in paragraph two.  The numbers are bigger in evangelicalism by far.  They’re not bigger because of the gospel.  They’re bigger because people like the world.  They’re comfortable with it.  And the evangelicals for awhile have been pushing a gospel that forgives all your sins without changing you.  How you feel when you’ve been saved is relieved.  You’re not going to Hell anymore.  What a great deal!  And now you’ve got a whole new group of friends too in a new social club called the church.  Math tells you that if you move that direction, you could get a whole new clientele.  The kids like it better.  They’d rather wear casual clothes.  They like rock music.  But you’ve got to somehow fit all that into your doctrinal statement.  Gospel-centered is what works.  You say that scripture doesn’t say anything about whether it’s right or wrong to play rock music.  And you’ve never seen the kids “praise God” with such feeling as they do when they’re doing their Joan Baez and Peter, Paul, and Mary impersonations.  It seems so authentic, the euphoria, the ecstasy.  And then you also explain that what was happening before was an immature look at the gospel, because it was all about making rules and regulations, lacking in freedom, attempting to put new wine in old bottles.

In a recent rant of someone who supports the changes at Northland, he said that the old Northland put the emphasis on form, like the Pharisees.  If the old Northland was interested in form, the new Northland is obsessed with form. You’re not gospel-centered unless you look just like a sixties rock band with the drummer, the guitarists, and a female folk singer, everybody on his microphone, looking authentic? Where is the harmonica, the saxophone, the jaws harp, and the washboard? If I want to dance with a mad frenzy, spinning like a bull fighter, why am I not free to do that? Why is freedom only looking just like almost everyone in evangelicalism today?

Everybody’s free, so now they can burp out loud, smack their lips, show their half-chewed food to everyone else, forget the napkin, and toss the biscuits if someone asks. How do you know you’re free? You can grow facial hair in all matter of designs. How do you know you’re free? Two words: blue jeans. It is also possible that kids like rock music and casual clothes and it has nothing to do with what God likes. Is all of this the key to the gospel exploding to those who’ve never heard?

Uh-huh.  Right.

This isn’t new care about the gospel and it isn’t gospel centered.  I’ve read that the churches that keep the “old form” are “dead.”  By “dead” you mean that they are smaller.  Ya think?  People have a choice to go to The Adventure with the band and the The Jungle for kids with a skate boarder park.  The other place is reverent and serious.  Which do you think will be bigger?  Why do you think Joel Osteen is so big?  The biggest?

It’s really a matter of where actual saved people are, if you’re going to be about numbers, about numbers like Jack Hyles and the Hyles movement.  The “gospel centered” really are no different than Hyles.  They’re using a worldly strategy that will work.  That’s what Hyles did.  And he called it the power of God.  Hyles’s strategy didn’t work everywhere.  If you keep tweaking it though, you can get to something like these new evangelical churches with their big screen TV, movie clips, and undulating bodies during “worship.”  They aren’t held back by “form.”  That’s the “freedom” of the “gospel.”  They are gospel-centered.

It’s all just a posture.  It’s not gospel-centered to ignore or disparage cultural applications of scripture.  Reconciliation is transformation unto God.   The imputed righteousness changes your culture.  It doesn’t leave you the same.  And if the crowd grows, it grows because of conversions, because of the gospel, which is a miracle of God that defies worldly methods.

When I say RAM, I’m not talking about random-access memory, but about what is called Religious Affections Ministries, which is essentially Scott Aniol, with some help from a few like-minded men he has recruited to help with blog posts.  Scott has written at least two books on the subject of worship, and one of them is required reading in a class I have taught.  Recently online a RAM truckload of criticism has been dumped on RAM (so far here and here), which RAM has answered (so far here and here).  There are a lot of background occurrences that have stirred this recent flurry of conflict, so I’m going to weigh in on everything, because I have some analysis that could be helpful, I believe (after I started writing this, I noticed that Aaron Blumer has provided a pretty good background for the conflict here).

Part One, Yesterday

Those reading yesterday’s post didn’t answer in the comment section, but I’m guessing that it’s partly because of how easy the answer is.  It seems kind of like an insult to the intelligence.  I understand.  Some may say, “Well, no one answered, because no one is reading your blog.”  Fair enough, except that I get more hits on average than I have ever had here.  Ever.  Just wanted to preemptively pop that balloon.

OK, back to the question(s).  “What does it in fact say?  What does God tell us to do?”

It tells us to mark and avoid.  I don’t want anyone to make this a personal thing about John Piper or any other evangelical.  When I talk about these things, I use real names because this should be applied in the real world.

Alright, so Charismatic doctrine is unbiblical.  I run into Charismatics all the time going door-to-door (I’ve written a very helpful tract to give them too, that we hand them), and they are not only contradictory to the doctrine of our church, but also the doctrine of the church period.  The young evangelical I referenced chose to call it an “odd ball view.”  Odd ball view?  It’s false doctrine.  It contradicts scripture.  That’s bad enough. We could stop there, but it does far more damage then that, and John MacArthur himself, this young man’s pastor, has written a scathing book against the odd ball views.  It was one of MacArthur’s early books, that went into a second printing, and he makes it look very bad and dangerous and hurtful.  He’s correct on all fronts.  Bravo John MacArthur in your true exposure of these false doctrines!

Writing a book is fine.  But what does Romans 16:17 and 2 Thessalonians 3:6 tell us to do?  It says “mark and avoid” and “withdraw ourselves” from these.  I’m not nitpicking.  I’m talking about applying what God commanded us to do.  Talk to God about it.  He’s the one that said it.  Are we nitpicking if we report what God said?  If so, well, then I guess I’ll be nitpicking.  And then he implies that we lack discernment, and that’s why we can’t have guys like Piper preach for us.  If he came, we’d get all confused and not know what we believe.  Right.  No, it really is wanting to obey passages of Scripture—that black stuff on white paper, those words.  That’s how we’re sanctified, is by the truth.  It’s in those pages we see the face of Jesus, which changes us into His glory.  Are we changed into His glory when we don’t do what He said?  No.

Association is important in the Bible.  Paul talked about association in 1 Corinthians 10.  He said that when you ate of the food offered to the idols, you were making an association like you did when you ate of the Lord’s Supper.  Associations are made and they are serious.  But that isn’t a main argument against not having Piper preach for you.

At this point, I want to consider though, why it is an evangelical would say that he doesn’t obey Romans 16:17 and 2 Thessalonians 3:6?  He’s got excuses.  What’s ironic to me, is that they definitely take stands on things that come out of left field.   Kevin Bauder has just recently written well about this in an article at SharperIron about The Gospel Coalition doctrinal statement.  (Wow.  I’ve been linking to people I don’t fellowship with.  Isn’t that risky?  We don’t have discernment, after all.  Oh, that was a straw man argument.  Thank you.)  Almost everyone today wants nothing to do with someone who exclusively uses the King James Version as his English translation.  That’s the kind of doctrine that men really bow up their backs and take their stand.

The problem for the evangelical and really for the fundamentalist too, as we’ve talked about again and again here, is their view of unity.  When they separate they cause disunity.  Follow me here, OK?  You are not causing disunity when you separate over doctrine.  The one causing disunity is the one with the different doctrine.  You, by dealing with him, are the one trying to get unity.  Unity is not some free floating, amoeba-like idea out there.  Unity is based on the truth.  It is based on God.  Jesus had unity with the Father.  Look through the book of John.  He believed and practiced everything that the Father did.  That’s how He sanctified Himself (another evidence of the deity of Christ, because only God can sanctify Himself).  We, on the other hand, are sanctified by the truth.  Our unity with each other is dependent on the truth.  We don’t have unity when we disregard doctrine (see 1, 2, and 3 John on this too, lots is written on this in our book, A Pure Church).  That is a fake unity, the kind like you  might have at the family reunion, where you must keep the subjects to the weather or the weather.

So evangelicals and fundamentalists keep up the facade of unity.  They take a cannister of something that isn’t unity and put a unity label on it.  In the real world, that doesn’t work.  Unity must actually be unity.  If I had John Piper preach for me, I would get to unity by disregarding lots of doctrines (or as Fred Butler calls them, odd ball views.  Why would you, incidentally, have a guy preach for you that has odd ball views?  He says because they were college students.  There we go.  Your young people need people with odd ball views.  They are the ones with the most discernment in the church, so it’s no problem for them.  Yes.  But you have C. J. Mahaney for your adults.  They can sort through more.).  But Romans 16:17 and 2 Thessalonians 3:6 isn’t obeyed.

The above really does get us to the next point, and that is, you start saying, will-nilly, that certain doctrines aren’t that important.  Romans 16:17 and 2 Thessalonians 3:6 don’t say anything about that.  And the latter actually sort of blows it away, because the specific example of its practice is a guy that wouldn’t work.   Bodily resurrection.  Virgin birth.  Blood Atonement.  Guys gotta work.  Fundamentals.  No, that idea of unity and that idea of separation isn’t in the Bible.  You don’t get to treat anything that God said like the tomatoes falling out the back of a produce truck.

And so the incessant argument is “what’s important,” “what’s essential,” “what’s worth separating over”?  Except for the evangelicals.  They don’t talk about separating over anything.  God is separate, but they aren’t.  There is a sad irony there.  But this is a regular argument, and different guys move their thing into the essential category.  This argument originated with the Pharisees, who argued over the greatest commandments, because they had reduced the law to something they could keep.  They kept unity by determining the essentials.  This disrespects God, His Word, the perspecuity of His Word, the authority of His Word.

Evangelicals and fundamentalists deal with someone who takes more than a short list of stuff seriously as a hyper-this or a hyper-that—the family reunion equivalent of the uncle who wants to talk about something more than the weather, so he rocks the boat.  He’s persnickety.  He’s a hand wringer.  And then they go into conspiracy theories, a type of paranoia, like the young evangelical.  These men are dictators.  They draw unscriptural boundaries.  They put you on a guilt trip.  They’re the ones who send respectable believers over to the emergents.  Blah, blah, blah, blah.  Deal with the verses!  Stop the red herrings and the straw men!  Please.  They’re just excuses for disobedience to what God said.

More later.

Attending a fundamentalist college, I heard some teaching about separation.  In hindsight, it wasn’t anything clear or systematic.  I was never required to read one book on it.  Now I know that there was little written on it anyway, maybe one book that dealt with it in any serious way, written by Ernest Pickering (since then, perhaps two or three others were written). Nobody understood separation when leaving the institution from which I graduated.  It was assumed, however, that you would be a separatist, whatever that might be.  Now I get why it was so ambiguous.  We weren’t being taught biblical separation.