Make sure you read part one first.  The text of Luke 14:15-24 is there too, to which you can refer.

Origen, third century patristic, developed a system of allegorical interpretation of scripture, and is called the father of it.  Without relying on his writings, many today still follow his methods by spiritualizing God’s Word.  Roman Catholicism took advantage by using the same tactic to read into the Bible many new doctrines, using certain passages especially as proof texts.

A subjective approach, allegorization allows someone to make a text mean what he wants.  He might start with what he’d like the Bible to say or perhaps defend his own thinking by finding a passage to say it. This changes God’s Word as much as adding or taking away from the Words, maybe worse. Sometimes you have men teach a right interpretation from slightly varied words and their preaching is exponentially better than men who have all the correct words, but treat them like play-doh.

Many who allegorize also practice a position on continuationism, where the Holy Spirit “gave” that interpretation to him — told him what it said — so that it can’t be questioned either.  If someone questions it, he is challenging “Holy Spirit preaching” or Holy Spirit enduement.  This is worse in damage than believing that sign gifts are for today.  On top of this often exists a view of pastoral authority that says the critic is “touching God’s anointed” or usurping authority.  This has it’s parallels with Roman Catholicism too, because the preacher becomes a little pope in his given situation.  All this lends itself toward the worst kind of preaching.

Very often, people think twisting scripture like above is better than accurate exegesis, because of the fervor or style in which it was delivered.  Unction is perceived by the yelling and then affected emotions of his audience.  Someone present might say he manipulated people, but the crowd has been trained to judge this as the Holy Spirit, again characteristic of this continuationist belief.  If it’s Bible and what the passage says, it’s said to be dead, but if it is filled with stories while slaughtering the text, it’s alive.  At the end of the mess, many say, “That was good.”  Can anything be more evil?

People in the pew who hear these perversions judge it to be good preaching.  Then they hear exactly what a passage says and they think it isn’t any good.  This shows where discernment goes, and why unbiblical teachings and practices will easily get past these people.  When they go to study their Bible, and find it says something different, they reject it for the party line of the group.  The leadership doesn’t help them learn how to understand the Bible, but helps them learn a tradition that is backed by fallacies that can’t really be called exegetical ones, because little exegesis was attempted. They wouldn’t know exegesis if it bit them on the nose.

Then when you question the wrong preaching, you’re also causing division and maybe even trying to split the church.  If you question it from afar, you are intervening in matters that are solely for that church, undermining its authority and preacher.  Surely you’ve got sinister motives too — you couldn’t be doing it because you love them, even though nothing is more dastardly than what is happening to them.  Your love is called hatred, so love too a casualty.

I still want you to know.  I’m not going to play the game.  I am not going to sit by, while people who pose as though they respect the Word of God, more than anyone, “especially more than those Bible corruptors who want to take away your King James.”  If someone really loves the King James, then he should be careful with it and preach what it says, instead of perverting it.

People who preach like this as a practice shouldn’t be preaching, and yet there are colleges where it is standard fare, what is heard on a regular basis.  The power is in the message of a passage, not in the formulation of a sermon that doesn’t communicate what a passage says.

You might attend a conference today where someone preaches a passage, and most people “amen” often and loudly, and then someone else stands up and preaches something from the same passage entirely different, and the people “amen” that too, as if two contradictory meanings were completely acceptable.  That defines a concept of unity in most places today.  Very often the thinking is that God gave the first man his message and gave the second man his, so who are we to question it?  It’s no wonder the world often thinks churches are a joke whose doctrine is silly.  They often don’t believe it themselves enough for others to see it as worthwhile to believe.  They see the right meaning as optional, not anything to sweat over.  Imagine if brain surgeons or pilots performed that same way.

An important principle for right interpretation of scripture is understanding a passage like those hearing it in that day.  Jesus wasn’t talking to you and me in Luke 14.  He was talking to Pharisees. His story there could apply to us, but it can’t mean something different to us than it meant to them. That story shouldn’t be preached like Jesus was talking to us.  He wasn’t.

What Luke 14:15-24 Doesn’t Say

Just a week ago, I read a publication with the following viewpoint of Luke 14:15-24.  I think there are many others who believe the same way, so we should consider it a sample.  The author wrote that the Lord in Jesus’ story was God — so far so good.  He goes downhill from there. He says that the servant was you and me.  That’s not correct, because you and I didn’t invite Israel’s leaders into the kingdom and salvation like the Old Testament prophets.   You and I couldn’t invite the nation Israel in general up to the time that Jesus was telling that parable.  He says that the supper is salvation, and that would be good too, if that’s what he really believed.

Jesus’ story is illustrating truth.  The poor and the maimed and the halt and the blind picture something.  They aren’t physically poor and maimed and halt and blind.  A literal interpretation requires understanding figurative speech.  Parables use symbolism.  That’s the point of them being a story.  Remember, the supper is salvation.  I agreed with that.  That is figurative.  You don’t say, the supper is salvation, but the poor are the poor.  They are both figurative.

Jesus had been invited to the occasion where He told this story, because the Pharisees wanted to trap Him (14:1-2).  Jesus exposed their pride, because they prioritized an ox fallen in a ditch more than the man made in the image of God, Jesus would heal (14:4), who had dropsy.  They were hypocrites. They said they loved God’s law, but they didn’t love their neighbors, the second table of the law.   This is also seen in a story Jesus tells about a wedding (14:6-14).  Their positions were for money, oxen, and relationships, popularity and power, which was sitting in the best seats of a wedding.   They weren’t humble.  They weren’t poor in spirit, even as seen in the implication of one of them in v. 15.  They would not deny themselves in order to follow the Messiah, Jesus their King.

Jesus refers back to his earlier illustrations (14:4 and 14:6-14) in the excuses of vv. 18-20.  Their lack of humility would keep them out of the kingdom, but there were people who did see their poverty in Israel, a Jewish remnant.  This is not Jesus saying, direct your evangelistic efforts to poor neighborhoods and poor people on a socio-economic level.  Jesus would be contradicting His own commission, that ended every gospel account, to preach the gospel to everyone.

The author of the article focuses on the word “bring” from v. 21.  Even though he says the supper is salvation, he targets “bring” as very instructive.  If the slave is “bringing” someone to salvation, then “bring” is not a literal bringing, as in, picked up physically from one place and taken to some other location.   He makes a point that the poor and maim, etc., didn’t have the monetary means of the first group, who rejected the invitation, so that they could have gotten there on their own.   Meanwhile, he says the maim and the halt and the blind would need to be brought, given a ride, because they didn’t have the means of getting there.

Jesus wasn’t telling someone they needed to physically pick someone up and bring them somewhere. This isn’t anything that Jesus or the apostles did.  If that’s what someone was supposed to do, they all missed it.  Jesus obeyed everything the Father told Him to do, and Jesus didn’t do anything like it.  He went to everyone and preached.  If they rejected it, like an entire Samaritan city, it wasn’t because they didn’t have the money to listen.  He went from Galilee to Judea to Samaria to Perea and to Caesaria-Philippi.  He went to them and preached to them.

The idea of Jesus’ teaching wasn’t, let’s see if the banquet hall could be filled up with rich people first, and if they don’t want that, go to maimed people, and if there aren’t enough of those, then get the out-of-towners. The idea is that anyone who would come, could come.   The audience of Jesus’ story was the first group, the ones who didn’t want it.  Most Jews didn’t want it, not because of their socio-economic level, but because they were too proud — they were not poor in spirit.  Neither is it that the latter two would need to be brought in physically, because they don’t have the monetary means to do so.  The supper is salvation, the kingdom.  We agreed on that, remember. How does someone “bring” someone to salvation, to the kingdom?  He does it by preaching the gospel.  The invitation into the kingdom is the gospel, because someone gets into the kingdom, is saved, by believing in Jesus Christ.  When you get that wrong, because you make “bring” mean something other than that, you have encouraged people to disobey the Bible.

The essay said that the church tried to get people who could drive themselves to church in their own cars, and that group said “no,” so, like in Luke 14:21, the church instead went out and picked up poor people, who couldn’t make it on their own (many of them actually can come on their own, but they send their children instead).  The meaning of the supper shifted from “salvation” to the gathering of a church.  And then the author said that “compel” was to use high pressure or to do anything that is right in order to see people saved, which would include offering food at a rescue mission, medicine by a missionary doctor, or hot chocolate or a trinket to persuade children to get into a vehicle.  The story, however, doesn’t mean any of that, and it can’t, because none of that too was what we see Jesus actually do.

Very commonly in fundamentalism, among independent Baptists, basically revivalists, the banquet has become the meeting of the church, “bring” is give someone a ride in a vehicle, the maimed and blind are poor children, and compel is a bribe, a fleshly allurement that especially children like better than the gospel itself.  This now includes a certain type of music, puppet shows, prizes, and big promotions.  None of those are what Luke 14:15-24 mean.  The author of the article then portrayed those who said something different than this physically bringing and compelling interpretation — the high pressure of hot chocolate and trinkets — as straight from the devil and that people needed to stop listening to Satan and get out there and use this tactic.  He also called this described strategy, the Great Commission.  It wasn’t.  It isn’t.  He also said almost anyone can do it, and then equated the numbers who come with positive responses to the invitation with the benefits of the “high pressure.”

No, the supper is salvation.  Salvation is of eternal value, and it is the motive.  Someone comes to the banquet because he thinks the banquet is better than whatever else is out there to distract him.  No one has to travel by bus or be offered medicine or a meal to get it.  It’s free.  The lord wasn’t charging for someone to come. If someone knows its value, he doesn’t need something of lesser value to talk him into it. “Bring” is preaching the gospel.  The invitation is not to church, but to Christ, to the kingdom, to heaven.  Can anyone do it?  I’ve found that only saved people will do it, and because churches have a lot of unsaved people, they invent methods that anyone can do, even unsaved people.  It’s true that almost anyone can make invitations and give out enticements.

Consider the irony.  A person is invited to church and he says he will not come.  He doesn’t like church.  He likes television or a football game or his sleep better.  If this was what Jesus was talking about, which He wasn’t, then we should just go to the next person, who really would like church.  That would take this false interpretation to its rightful application, but no.  No, if he says, I will not come, with all the modern-day excuses, the slave, supposedly you and I, just offers him something other than the banquet, the supper, to entice him.  “I know you don’t like church enough to come just for church, so how about a kite or a sno-cone or a rodeo or a trip?”  I’ve bought me five yoke of oxen.  “OK, well how about I offer you six yoke, then will you come?”  What I’m saying is that not only is this not what Jesus was teaching, but it is encouraging the opposite.

I recognize that people see these types of perversion of scripture as sort of harmless or even worse, helpful, because they can be used then to get people to do something “good.”  Instead of preaching the gospel to everyone, people invite people to church, so instead of obeying the Bible, they practice a man-invented thing, not only not seen in scripture anywhere, but taught against (cf. 1 Cor 1-3, etc.). It results in thousands and thousands of false professions, the watering down of the gospel, and the gospel itself not getting to everyone, because they’ve replaced preaching it with this alternative method, spawned from a perversion of God’s Word.  People start counting false professions as real and then adjusting their gospel message to fit the method.  All of this is occurring all over and justified with this kind of perversion of scripture.

Wake up.  This is serious.

In comments about the latest Frontline magazine edition on the Bible version issue, Mike Harding wrote this comment at SharperIron:

Just finished reading the articles on preservation in FRONTLINE. Some articles simply asked questions with no definitive answers.  I thought the articles had political overtones as opposed to making the case for preservation and what that preservation means.  The best articles on this subject will be found in the DBTS Theological Journal.  The level of scholarship and detail is very high comparatively.  Again, there was no substantive attempt to recommend other reliable translations of Scripture other than the KJV. It was very interesting to me that Dr. Minnick did not submit an article on the textual debate. Dr. Minnick, a well-respected member of the FBFI board, is perhaps the best textual scholar on the board.  His chapters in “Mind of God to the Mind of Man” and “God’s Word in our Hands” are simply outstanding.  How could the editor of FRONTLINE overlook that?

Pastor Harding is correct in saying that the Frontline edition was ambiguous and political, but isn’t that par for the course?  I’ve found much of fundamentalism to handle these types of issues this way. But is what he says about DBTS journal correct?

Harding says the best articles on this subject are found in the DBTS Theological Journal, because the level of scholarship and detail is very high.  Is that true?

The DBTS journal has one article on preservation.  One.  Then it has articles attacking a King James Only position.  Those are not articles on preservation.  So, when he says “best articles” on the subject of preservation, there is really one article.  One.  That statement then, right out of the box, is false.  It makes a difference in people’s thinking when someone says “articles,” plural, when there is only one, singular.

We need to be honest here.  Honest.   Please.  Don’t call “article,” “articles,” like a lot of work has been done on preservation.  It hasn’t.  I have written many articles and edited a whole book on preservation.  Has Mike Harding read our book?  I don’t know, but I do know what should be considered scholarly, and I want to examine the one article of William Combs based on that consideration.

An important aspect in dealing with a biblical doctrine or subject or is starting with what the Bible says.  If you take a biblical position, you start with what the Bible says, right?  Is that scholarship?  If it isn’t, then I don’t want scholarship.  Please pay attention to this paragraph.  It is very, very important.  Faith comes from hearing the Bible.  Without faith it is impossible to please Him.  If scholarship is not faith, then scholarship be gone.  Agree?  When we stand before God, will He bring up scholarship?  You know He won’t.  He will bring up faith, however, and pleasing Him.

Detroit (DBTS Journal) writes one article on the preservation of scripture as a reaction, not as a basis of their belief and practice.  That is not – I repeat, not – how one comes to his positions in order to please God.  Maybe that is scholarship, but it is not how the Bible teaches to approach issues and it is not how godly people have done this historically.  If what I am writing is true, you should agree.  Politicians probably won’t agree, but God didn’t call us to be politicians, did He?

The order should have been: (1) study the Bible on preservation, (2) come to your position on preservation from the Bible, (3) see if the gleanings from the Bible agree with historical doctrine (previous to the 19th century), (4) approach everything related to the Bible guided by the Bible, and (5) critique other positions based on 1 through 4.  Mike Harding would call this the insane approach, since he calls something that contradicts this, the sane approach.  Is “sane approach” incisive commentary?  Scholarly?  How about biblical?  Non-biblical positions are deluded, and that is what the Bible says about them.

(By the way, because of what I’m writing here, I get many more anonymous comments than others.  And there are people who act like they don’t know me.  But I digress.)

I can’t say that I can put down with complete accuracy the approach of Combs, and those like him.  However, let me list what I think it is as a sort of thought experiment.  (1) Take classes from those who support an eclectic text or read Bruce Metzger or read Mind of God to Mind of Man, which follows Metzger to the “T” and quotes him heavily (less his student, Bart Ehrman, because that looks apostate), (2) look to find agreement from others, (3) relate what you’ve read to what men wrote in the 19th century, (4) look at what others have written about preservation and see if it fits with 1 through 3, and (5) criticize what people have written about preservation that don’t agree with an eclectic text.  Imagine if you did this with any other doctrine of scripture.  We are talking about scriptural doctrine.  I don’t see anyone coming to the right understanding of preservation, using this methodology, one that Harding would see as a “sane approach,” still intimating that everyone else is crazy.  By the way, old earth creationists think young earthers are crazy too.

To be fair, the article by Combs on “preservation” starts by giving away its agenda in the following entire first paragraph:

One of the many issues in the current debate about Greek manuscript text-types and English versions is the question of the preservation of Scripture. In fact, as one analyzes the arguments for the King James only, Textus Receptus (TR), and Majority Text (MT) positions, it soon becomes obvious that the doctrine of the preservation of Scripture is at the heart of many of these viewpoints.

When I read something that starts like that, I conclude that the doctrine of preservation is not at the heart of Combs’ viewpoint.  Why wouldn’t I?  He doesn’t approach the doctrine of preservation until he starts looking at other people’s arguments.  It is not what he started with.  Again, this is the sane approach, and highly scholarly.  It would be akin to me on Sunday morning saying to my people, “Close your Bibles, because I’m going to talk to you today about how we got what you call the Bible.”

In his article, “The Preservation of Scripture,” Combs doesn’t start talking about preservation until page 6.   He doesn’t mention any scripture until page 11.  However, I’m happy Combs at least talks about preservation, because so few others like him do today.  He says that he believes that the Bible does teach its own preservation, unlike the Dan Wallace position that scripture does not teach preservation of scripture.    On page 11, as Combs begins sort of elaborating on the passages of scripture that men use to defend preservation, he starts with the following:

That God has preserved the Scriptures in the totality of the manuscript tradition has traditionally been the position of most evangelicals and fundamentalists on the subject of preservation.

With almost any definition of his terms, that statement is false.  This totality of the manuscripts position is not a traditional position.  It is not historical.  It is an invented and new position that originated with Warfield in the late 19th century.  You would see very few rank and file New Testament church members believing it until the later 20th century.  I would find it interesting to hear what a typical church member thinks the Bible says about its own preservation, even in churches that use new versions.  I think it would turn out like a typical interview of a modern Roman Catholic on the seven sacraments.  They wouldn’t know.  Sadly, I think their pastors and churches are totally fine with that.  Keep them ignorant.  The emperor is wearing no clothes.

On top of the above, I have found that the men, who say they believe in the totality of the manuscript position, don’t even believe it.  They don’t believe we have every word.  You’ll see this in their own books.  I haven’t read one who believes that we have the original wording of 1 Samuel 13:1.  The book, God’s Word in Our Hands (not Words, by the way), says it takes the totality of the manuscript position and then in the footnotes says that it doesn’t believe that position, because the authors don’t believe they have the exact wording of the originals in 1 Samuel 13:1.  Will they care about this? Probably not.  It is a new position, not taken from scripture, so it is no wonder that it is subject to self-contradiction.  But it is “sane.”

Combs begins going through passages on preservation used by those who defend perfect preservation.  The article doesn’t read as an exegesis of these passages, as much as it is an attempt to fit those passages into his totality of the manuscript position.  Harding says it is scholarly, and on the first passage he deals with, Psalm 12:6-7, Combs says the verses teach the preservation of the “poor and needy” and not the “words of God,” and he buttresses that almost entirely on a grammatical argument, that “them” is masculine and “words” is feminine.  He writes:

However, it is more probable that verse 7 (“Thou shall keep them…thou shalt preserve them”) is not even referring to “the words of the LORD” in verse 6. That is, the antecedent of “them” in verse 7 is probably not the “words” of verse 6. The Hebrew term for “them” (twice in v. 7) is masculine, while the term for “words” is feminine.

I’m not repudiating the preservation of the poor and needy in Psalm 12.  However, Combs’ argument is not scholarly by any sense of the word.  He obviously doesn’t understand Hebrew grammar here, because very often the antecedent of a masculine pronoun is a feminine noun.  Very often.  And it especially occurs when referring to the Words of God.  You see it several times in Psalm 119.  That is not very thorough study, and Combs should at least back down on his major argument if he is going to be credible on this.  He doesn’t mention that at all.

What is very ironic in Combs’ article, and should seem embarrassing to him, is that he later gives a whole section to Psalm 119:152, saying that it does teach preservation, contradicting what he wrote about Psalm 12:6-7.  If I did that work, others would call it laughable, and I would be ridiculed more than what I already am by them.  What is sad to me is that there are men that don’t even care that he makes poor arguments.  It doesn’t matter to them.  They don’t care.  I have grown to expect it.  They determine the strength of the argument by someone’s credentials, where he teaches, and if they like the position.  Consider the following verses in Psalm 119:

Psalm 119:111, “Thy testimonies [feminine plural noun] have I taken as an heritage for ever: for they [masculine plural pronoun] are the rejoicing of my heart.”

Psalm 119:129, “Thy testimonies [feminine plural noun] are wonderful: therefore doth my soul keep them [masculine plural pronoun suffix].”

Psalm 119:152, “Concerning thy testimonies [feminine plural noun], I have known of old that thou hast founded them [masculine plural pronoun suffix] for ever.”

Psalm 119:167, “My soul hath kept thy testimonies [feminine plural noun]; and I love them [masculine plural noun suffix] exceedingly.”

I’m probably going to come back and finish this post, but what I’ve written so far deserves some cogitation.  I know some of you will be angry when you read it, but we’re the ones being called insane, so perhaps you could set that aside and just think.  I’m also not the one that with complete dogmatism says that “them” must refer to “poor and needy,” must, because of a faulty antecedent argument.  And it is obviously faulty.

At the beginning of my last post, I ticked off a few future posts I want to do.  I failed to mention another one I’ll be doing, Lord-willing.  The Sword of the Lord sends me its publication and in the last issue, they wrote a horrible piece, entitled, Renouncing Lordship Salvation.  I’ll write a critique of that upcoming.

I’m not going to comment on who is guilty, whether Michael Brown or Darren Wilson, in Ferguson. What piqued me during this event has been the consideration of whether evangelicalism needs involvement in changing social structure or infrastructure for successful integration of blacks into their congregations.  Put another way and in the form of a question, will evangelical white leaders fail at reaching blacks with the gospel if they don’t work in a very public way at making society more fair for black people?  A few ideas sent my thoughts in this direction.

From my vantage point, the most well known black conservative evangelical is Thabiti Anyabwile, and I read what he wrote about the Ferguson situation (here 1, here 2, here 3, here 4).   By the way, I don’t think people understand the plight of black America without knowing the division at the turn of the 20th century between Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Dubois.  This would require reading Washington’s book, Up From Slavery, but even further over twenty years ago I scoured the writings or works of Washington in print that included all of his Sunday evening talks (example) at Tuskegee.  It would also be worthwhile to read the theology of Martin Luther King, Jr. in his writings and the black liberation theologian, James Cone.  I have read all those out of a curiosity and desire to interpret and discuss the issues rightly.

African Americans made a plain choice to follow the path or ways or instruction of W. E. B. Dubois related to Washington dying at a young age without a successor.  A convenient, albeit unsuccessful, “solution” was chosen, which was to rely on government. Since then, the same mistake has been repeated again and again, reminding me of the adage about insanity:  “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  Old Testament principles about government could be applied successfully, if followed, but those are being rejected for something less sure than a full court heave.

In addition, I had preached in the last few months for five or six weeks mid-week about marriage, including 1 Peter 3 and 1 Corinthians 7, which reminded me of the New Testament approach to societal structures.  If God was amillennial or post-millennial, could Peter or Paul each talk like he does in those epistles?  No way.  Christianity is not designed to change social structure.   I would say that New Testament, biblical, Christianity is ambivalent or agnostic to social structure, and even further than that.  The New Testament takes a more extreme view than even ambivalence.

Calvinist amillennialists or post-millenialists interest me, because of what appears to be an obvious contradiction.  If you think that salvation is totally dependent on God, you’re monergistic, how can you connect changing societal structures to reaching a particular segment of the population with the gospel?  And this is where the Calvinist evangelicals are.  They employ rap.  They start food pantries.  They encourage dressing down.  They talk a lot about racial reconciliation.  And contextualization.  This includes the Tim Keller way in New York City with his professorial talks, evening jazz “worship,” and no mention of same sex perversion, all key in getting it done there. They speak and act like all these are necessities to help the gospel along.  Be Calvinist if you’re Calvinist!

Amillennialists and post-millennialists see the current age as the kingdom of God and so recognize the reign of Christ not just in the hearts of believers today, but impacting societal structure change. They brainstorm the dawn of the kingdom (which relates to Augustine and bifurcation of truth that I wrote about), allowing for mission creep.  It’s now not just about the gospel, but commencing functional structures of the kingdom. Amillennialism and post-millennialism trigger the weird cousin of liberation theology, dominionism or reconstructionism.

I believe the position of Anyabwile and those like him in fact hinders the gospel.  Often the same Calvinists who argue that cultural issues, i.e. “non-essentials,” which are merely obedience to the Bible or sanctification, the practice of New Testament Christianity, serve to undermine the gospel, hone in on this cultural issue.  They essentially argue that the gospel will fail without the accompanying support of societal structure change.  This is more than a strain of evangelicalism.  It is mainstream.  It does sabotage the gospel, akin to the new measures of Finney.

1 Peter 3, the whole epistle, and then 1 Corinthians 7:17-24 both weigh in on the relationship of Christians to social structures.  In 1 Peter 3, Peter could tell masters to sell their slaves or propose they run.  Paul could have done the same with Philemon.   But no, to those under oppressive government, he says, “Submit.”  To slaves under masters, he says, “Submit.”  To women under unsaved husbands, he says, “Be subject.”  He elevates conversion of those in government, of the master, and of the husband.  Peter says, we’re strangers and pilgrims in this world, and this is how you act like it.  You don’t attempt to change social structure, because that just confuses people as to where your loyalties lie.

From 1 Corinthians 7, we see Paul’s message that Christianity was never designed to disrupt social relationships.  Folks at the Corinthian church used their Christianity to justify all manner of social change.  Paul corrects that.  The essence of vv. 17-24 is don’t turn Christianity into changing social structure; instead, make sure that everybody understands that spiritual regeneration can exist in any societal situation.  The Bible reveals a right understanding of government and of history, but the New Testament is single in its focus of what Christians should be and do.

We can die a thousand different ways, including that brain eating amoeba in shallow warm fresh water, which most often kills young children.  But Paul had a desire to depart.  Jesus took away the sting of death.  Everyone — blacks, whites, reds, yellows — needs to heed what Jesus said: “Be not afraid.”  Fear God, yes.  But unscriptural fear fuels bad decisions and then philosophies for so many people.  Anyabwile validates a particular behavior motivated by fear.  When someone trusts the sovereignty and providence of God, like Jeremiah in Lamentations, the mercies of God are new every morning, great is His faithfulness.  That’s the message people need to hear.  Not anxiety.

The gospel defeats fear.  Fear of death is a tool of Satan.  And the fear of man brings a snare, one common for evangelicals.  It should be repudiated, but there is a fear of the charge of racism.

Changing social structure merely rearranges the deck chairs on the Titanic.  You might have the best arrangement, but it’s a waste.  Instead, we should be manning the rescue boats.  We’re strangers here.  When Jesus comes, He Himself will change the social structure.  Until then, that practice might seem tempting, but don’t go there.   Instead, let’s act like we don’t belong here.

For the most part, America rejects, shall we call it, the Honey Boo-Boo subculture, whose appeal is not acceptance, but felt superiority.  The culture at large (white culture?) scorns that subculture, mocks it, deservedly so.  Booker T. Washington also proposed the repudiation of the inferior — you read that in his ‘Sunday evening talks’ at Tuskegee.

In this case, black America should join in the disavowal of its own Honey Boo-Boo, rather than embrace and defend.  Evangelicals should stop pandering to this destructive practice with their Christian rap and hip-hop and Jesus Junk and so much more other “Christian” Honey Boo-Boo (this is how they say you get multi-ethnic; not the gospel).   Think of what Peter revealed about conversion in 2 Peter 1:3-4:

[H]is divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:  hereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

Salvation elevates us.  We become partakers of the divine nature.  Jesus came to bring us to Him not lower Himself to our level.  He became a man, yes, but a perfect man.  He has called us to glory and virtue, not the corruption that is in the world through lust.

Booker T. Washington said “build a better brick.”  Build a more beautiful brick.  But first admit the ugliness.  Turn it down.  Shun the Honey Boo-Boo.

A further aside.

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation.  Yes.  Buuuuuuuuuut.  Your church might shrink from a lack of diverse worship styles.  Those styles are not the power of God unto salvation, just the power unto shrinking your church size.  Of course, those are genuinely saved people that are leaving, that you could keep with worship styles.  The gospel has saved them, but they’ve got to have their way on a few things, and you’ve got to make sure they can have it.  There is nothing wrong with what they don’t like, but they’ve got to have what they want as saved people by the power of the gospel.

Worship styles are said to be non-essentials (worship styles are the kind of non-essentials you need a 75% rule for).  This is the one area that Paul didn’t know there could be disunity (1 Cor 1:10).  It is essential that they are non-essential.  You could lose people if you don’t have diverse non-essential styles.  It is essential you try to keep those saved people in your church, who will leave over those non-essentials.  The power of the worship style is greater than the power of the gospel.   Salvation perseveres except in the impossible-to-overcome trial of not getting the worship style you want.  They themselves say that worship styles are non-essential, which is why they’ll leave if they don’t get what they want.  On the other hand, the people who believe there is sacred music, who don’t think styles are non-essential, since they are worship, it is essential they see worship styles as non-essential.  They are factious if they will not allow for multiple, diverse styles, because they don’t care if supporters of diversity will leave the church.  They must see worship styles as non-essential

The 47% need government programs and hand-outs to stay in one party, so there will be programs that redistribute wealth and there will be hand-outs.  You can be very upset at that, because of what it does to the country.  A large percentage of church attenders need their worship style to keep coming, to stay in the church, so there will be diverse worship styles.  The former is pandering, because that is government, but the second you’ve got to act like it isn’t, because that is only church.

When I recently watched a chunk of the Strange Fire Conference, a couple of speakers said that the entrance to the Charismatic movement was the music style.  That received “Amen”s.  But worship styles are non-essential.  They are only an entrance to the Charismatic movement, even though they are amoral.  Get it?

To find the links for all posts in this series and then all the related posts in this series, look at the last post here.  Hopefully, your mind isn’t completely made up about prayer and that you are interested in prayer.  I’m going to be on the road starting late tonight, which is why I have posted this early.  I won’t have anything again at least until Sunday or Monday, but it’s possible later.  Read the posts on prayer.

Related to this series on prayer, as I better understand the other primary position, one different than my own (the scriptural one 😀 ), I am getting a handle on the various iterations of that position, and I’d like to talk about that.  In general, the position is that we pray for what we have faith that God can do.  If we do that, He might hear us and He will answer us with a no, maybe, or yes.  “Praying in the will of God” is praying for whatever God might permit.  It just can’t be a wrong prayer, a sinful one, and if it isn’t, it is in the will of God.  So you can and really should pray for whatever you want, as long as it isn’t wrong and you believe God can do it.  And God can do anything.  As I read through this presentation thus far, I can see why prayers aren’t criticized very much, because that position leads to a very wide latitude.

Now as someone reads the first paragraph, he might say that it isn’t the actual position.  But using the very argumentation of the ones who would say it isn’t, you get that as the position.  However, the iteration that modifies it slightly in a way that will fit Mark 11:24 is the following.  You are allowed to pray for whatever it is that God gives you the faith to pray for.  This is what I’m hearing.  Now, perhaps because I am not well read and I don’t get out much, I had never heard that view in my entire life.  But I have a question for this most conservative version of the other viewpoint.  How do you know that God has given you the faith to pray that prayer and it isn’t just something you want to pray for?

What I am saying is there is absolutely no means of verification of whether God has given you that faith or not.  As I see it, it is the sister or brother of God speaking to you.  What is the verification that God is speaking to you?  When a pastor says, “God told me,” how do you know that God told him?  You just have to take his word for it.  And perhaps there are some experiential manifestations that authenticate his experience, which he can list off.

So.  The reason these men don’t pray for the two blind men in our church to see is because God hasn’t given them the faith to pray it.  However, God evidently has given him the faith to pray for his child with leukemia or the person in his church with a brain tumor.  You can’t question it.  It just is what it is. You’ve got to go with that.  I don’t see this as faith, but as mysticism.  It is entirely subjective and can’t be questioned because it is beyond criticism.  There is little objective criteria for evaluation, only it isn’t wrong to do, it’s permitted to do.  You couldn’t pray to sin, but outside of that, it is permissible. And if he doesn’t pray for every sick person in the hospital, his out on that is that God hasn’t given him the faith to pray for those things.  Subject over.  You’ll have to assume he got that message from God.

“Faith” in this case is a form of extra-scriptural revelation.  Giving you the faith to pray is giving you the knowledge of who to pray for, that is, telling you who to pray for.  You aren’t going to pray for everyone who is sick, so you’ve got to depend on God giving you the faith to do it.  Jesus said God has the power to move mountains, but how many people are praying for the men whose legs have been blown off by an improvised explosive device?  It’s not that God can’t replace those, so why not?

What I also see is that there is something on the degree of answer to prayer in which these who think that almost anything goes themselves will stop.   In many cases, they would say that they don’t pray for new legs for a man, because that is of a category that is not normative in the era in which we live.  You can pray for a barren (infertile) woman, but she has to be in the right age category for God to answer that or give you the faith to pray it.  And all of these are God telling them what faith is and what is not. Do you see the problems here?

Someone might say, “You can’t pray to consume it upon your own lusts.”  OK.  But what is a prayer request that is in the category of “your own lust”?  This is almost impossible to determine when accompanied by an appropriate explanation.  Let’s say you need a new car.   Can you pray for a Mercedes or are you left with a Ford Taurus and an older year of one of those if it’s not “your own lust”?  I want to take people to an African country to preach on a weekly basis, so I want a passenger plane and fuel for every week.  That isn’t for me.  It’s for a gospel work.  It’s not my own lust.  So why is it that is not a permitted prayer?  This is where we might get back to, “God hasn’t given you the faith to pray for that.”  The president  and his surrogates fly all over the world on someone else’s tab, so it might not even be a “miracle.”

Are we limiting God by asking for some of the little things we ask for?  This is where the Charismatics come through.  They do ask and suggest that everyone ask for lots of big things.  What is holding me back from praying for a church of 1,000?  But, really, why stop there?  Why can’t I have a church the size of the state of California?  Is that not possible with God?  He created the world.  The answer: God hasn’t directed in that way.  Why?  No explanation.  He just hasn’t.  On the other hand, the Charismatics would be proud of me if I said I wanted a church the size of Joel Osteen’s.  Way to go!!

And if we do venture out in a prayer that goes beyond what medicine could do (which God created, so He did that too), if it doesn’t get answered, what difference does it make?  You got a no answer.  Again, the no answer doctrine, gleaned from 2 Corinthians 12 by those who take this view.  You can’t hardly pray a prayer that is not in the will of God.  And faith is diminished to something based on what you were moved to do through some mystical feeling that you had.

There are many reasons why I have pointed out the trajectory of this other view, not my own, and one I see as unscriptural, from revivalism and Keswick theology.  It fits right with those.  Nudge it a little further and a person will be Charismatic.  But there are acceptable forms of revivalism and Keswick to varying degrees, sometimes heap fulls of it, among independent Baptists and fundamentalists.  Some would say that it for sure isn’t that with them, because they are opposed to revivalism and Keswick.  And yet I see extra scriptural revelation and mysticism.

All of what I’ve talked about so far would be tempered the exact right amount by Jesus’ model prayer.  I have none of those problems when I use His outline, as if what Jesus would say about prayer would be sufficient.  What other passage in the Bible do you have that actually tells us how to pray?  Jesus says some things about it.  The Apostles say some things that are not and could not be in disagreement with Jesus.  But then we have a few scattered examples, which don’t have complete information.  I am one to assume those are not going to contradict the other passages.

Some have asked, “If we’re praying for what we know we’ll receive, how does prayer make any difference?”  James said that scriptural prayer avails much.  It does make a difference.   When I pray for wisdom, I get wisdom that I would not have already had, because God gives it to me in answer to prayer.   When I’m in temptation and I pray, I get help that I would not have received if I had not prayed, to keep me from sinning.  When I pray for those in authority, God works in a manner in which I have a more quiet and peaceable life.  When I pray for boldness in evangelism, I get boldness that I would not have had if I had not prayed.  These are God’s will in the sense that He will answer them.  I know He will, and I based that on scripture.

Scriptural prayer avails much.  That particular point in James 5 describes what occurs when one prays like I’m explaining.  The unsure, uncertain prayers do not avail, even if they look like it.  I would contend that most of the unsaved people “prayed for” with these prayers do not get saved and of those with deadly diseases, they don’t get healed.  I think the statistical analysis would be something not much better or worse than the statistics for Charismatics.  Something is wrong with a prayer that does not avail.  All of my scriptural prayers avail.  How do I know?  They are based on scripture and God doesn’t lie.  He isn’t going to heal everyone and He isn’t going to save everyone, but He will do all the things He said He would do, that are a basis for our prayers.

What about the backslider?  That question was posed.  When you pray for his love to abound, does it abound?  Is he filled with the knowledge of God’s will?  The backslider is a sort of keswick category of carnal Christian.  When that term is used in the Bible, it’s an unsaved person.  Is there a saved backslider, a sort of Christian who lives for long periods of perpetual carnality?  Sometimes we don’t know how to pray as we ought.  This is not speaking of someone who just ignores scripture.  This is talking about someone who is struggling through the categorization of a particular person.  Is he weak, feebleminded, unruly?  Has he crept in unawares?  Does his disobedience represent the inability of an unsaved person or the struggle of a saved person?   What I’m describing in this paragraph is one reason why the Holy Spirit prays for us, because He does know, when we don’t.  I pray sometimes for a better understanding of how to pray, to know better how to pray.  This is not because I don’t know what scripture says to pray, but because I don’t know the specific need of a particular individual.  Sometimes these types of problems are because we are depending in an unscriptural way upon prayer.  Not everything is solved through prayer.  Paul kept praying for the removal of the minister of Satan sent to buffet him, but the right thing was to take care of it himself — God’s grace was sufficient.  God wasn’t going to do it for him.  He was going to have to obey the means by which God accomplishes these things.

Some may want to extrapolate from the previous paragraph that it represents an uncertainty that opens the door to pray without assurance.  What we pray, we should know the Lord will answer. We know what God said he would do.  We have the Bible.  To pray with wisdom, you pray for wisdom.  He’ll give it if you desire it and ask for it, but the wisdom might require you to do something other than pray.  Sometimes prayer is a cop-out, not the intended path of obedience.  That is why you are uncertain and why you can’t ask in faith, believing.  Prayer isn’t a brainless activity.  You’ve got to think about praying as you ought.  Scripture is sufficient to supply the knowledge you need, but you’ve got to apply it.

Surely you won’t always pray a right prayer.  It won’t fulfill scripture or it won’t be prayed with the fulfillment of scriptural prerequisites.  Sometimes you won’t pray in faith, sometimes you won’t pray with the knowledge that you will receive what you are praying for, sometimes you won’t pray according to God’s will, sometimes you will pray to consume it upon your own lusts, and sometimes you will pray like a Pharisee, who stands on a street corner praying to be seen of men.  Sometimes you just won’t pray.  However, doing it the wrong way doesn’t justify more wrongdoing.  That people don’t pray as they ought is not license to mimic them.

Like some depend on experience and myticism to determine what to pray for, they also decide what constitutes an answer.   To some, when a believer prays for men in authority in order to obtain peace and quiet, if he doesn’t reach 100% peace and quiet, then the prayer wasn’t answered.  If the prayer wasn’t answered, well, then prayer is uncertain.  And if prayer is uncertain, then pray for whatever you want, except to sin, with permission.  A fraction more peace and quiet is an answer to prayer and the prayer was worth it.  I assume it.  I don’t look for some external measurement, but sometimes I “see” what I believe is the answer.  The Supreme Court gave Christian businesses an opportunity for peace and quiet with the Hobby Lobby decision.  That looked like an answer to prayer to me.  My belief that God answered is not dependent on obvious measurables.  When I look for answers, I might see answers that aren’t even answers, but I see them, because I want to see them.  Sometimes I think I see them, but my basis for believing they occurred is because God said they would.

The above consideration goes the other direction.  I’ve heard many stories about the prayer for power. People pray for power, and then they go about doing things that evidence power.  The evidence they produce authenticates the power.  They didn’t get any more power, but they testify they did.  This allows experience to become authority.  This is why, again, you believe it based upon what God said, not based upon your own witness.  Can we say that we have seen answers to prayer?  Sure, but what you rely upon is scripture.

More to Come

More sermons will be posted at our church website.  There are about 15-20 new ones here right now, and we will let you know when there are more.  This is a summer project.  Enjoy.

Last week I wrote a post about the idea of inerrancy, indicating that the idea is changing from what Christians have professed through most of recorded Christian history.  Today we have the idea promoted by Daniel Wallace differing than what is considered by more conservative evangelicals and some fundamentalists to be the historic view, the position of B. B. Warfield, compared then to the position held between 1500 and 1881, pre-Warfield, by Christians, whom we will represent with John Owen, Francis Turretin, Samuel Rutherford, the Wesminster Confession and the London Baptist Confession.  Did you know that historical Christian doctrine goes back to 1881?  Wow, how did that happen?

Enter revisionists.   I mentioned that John MacArthur is having an inerrancy summit early next year. There is a promotional website that is regularly posting inerrancy articles, and one of these is saying that inerrancy is a historical Christian doctrine.   The author writes:

Despite the widespread influence of Sandeen, Rogers and McKim, their claim was historically inaccurate. In 1982 John Woodbridge (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) wrote, Biblical Authority: A Critique of the Rogers/McKim Proposal, to give abundant evidence that the doctrine of inerrancy was the dominant view of the Church before Hodge and Warfield. . . .  Following the example of Woodbridge, it is the goal of this article to give evidence that the doctrine of inerrancy was not the creation of the Princetonians or American fundamentalists. Rather, the original resource material will show that the inerrantist view has been nearly unanimously accepted throughout church history by the Eastern and Western churches.

I don’t want to say that Jonathan Moorhead is being dishonest, so I’ll go with mistaken.  He’s mistaken here.  It’s tough to say mistaken, because it is a whopper of a mistake if it isn’t a lie, but I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Liberals have attacked inerrancy.  They don’t accept it and can’t have it to be true, if they are going to accept what they do accept.  So liberals and their sympathizers have latched on to this idea that Warfield invented inerrancy, but Christians haven’t believed it, that you can’t find the concept in history.  In one sense, they are right, which shows what kind of damage Warfield did.  In another sense they are wrong, because inerrancy is a biblical and historical Christian doctrine, depending on how you define it.  Warfield sort of coined the word “inerrancy,” but he was coming up with a word that would be distinct from what Christians did already believe, to bridge the gap between liberalism and the actual biblical and historical view.

So now when Moorhead and others contradict the idea that Warfield was presenting something new with inerrancy, they are ignoring that Warfield was changing what Christians believed about the idea of inerrancy.   It’s just that it doesn’t work for the liberals and their sympathizers either.  Sure, Warfield kind of coined the term, but the biblical and historical view was an even stronger view that one could easily call “inerrancy.”  There is a conservative criticism of Warfield, mine and others, that says that Warfield kowtowed to liberalism with a new understanding of inerrancy.  There is a liberal criticism of Warfield that says that he came up with the word “inerrancy” and that his view wasn’t historical.  It wasn’t, but the view that is historical is a worse problem for liberals than even Warfield’s, so liberals and their sympathizers should get zero mileage out of their critique of Warfield.

What’s tough here is that we’re dealing with three different definitions of inerrancy, which causes this to be confusing.  It looks like people like having the confusion and ambiguity, because it helps their cause.  This is not reflective of a biblical cause, the cause of Christ, which goes for certainty and clarity.  God is not the author of confusion.  Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.  A faithless view, even if it is more faithful than an even more faithless view, shouldn’t be chosen as superior or advocated.

In the line of the title of this post, there are two key questions I want to explore in this post, if I can finish it.  One, is “inerrancy” really just modernizing, renovating, the old term “infallibility,” the former term of choice?  And two, when we look at Warfield’s “inerrancy,” are we looking at historical and biblical inerrancy?  Is what was before Warfield and what was Warfield identical, so that this is an accurate assessment?  If the answer is “no” to these questions, then the purveyors need to stop saying them.  I’m contending that the answer is “no,” and it is easy to see, and I’ll tell you why.  Perhaps with some kind of noble motive, Warfield was just pulling one on everyone.  And now people bite down on his position, hook, line, and sinker.

My own opinion is that Warfield’s view is a craze inducing one.  It is hardly even practical compared to what Christians did believe in contradiction to his new view.  It’s looney.  My assessment is well represented by the following from Modern Christian Thought: The Enlightenment and the nineteenth century by James C. Livingston and Francis Schüssler Fiorenza.  I don’t endorse what these guys believe themselves, but their historical evaluation of Warfield is spot on (p. 319).

Increasingly at issue was Warfield’s appeal to “the inerrancy of the original autographs.” In 1893 he sought to defend this doctrine in an essay by that title.  The critics had long argued that recourse to the testimony of the original autographs was not only unfalsifiable, since none of these documents presently existed, but also a strain on the belief of the faithful, since it implied that the sources now available to us are corrupted. Many of his Presbyterian colleagues, appealing to God’s providential transmission of the sacred texts, called upon the Church to accept “the Bible as it is,” that is, as it has come down to us in what is called the “received text” . . . . To place one’s confidence in a “received text” would, in Warfield’s estimation, “amount to the strong asservation of the utter untrustworthinesss of the Bible.”  Both parties charged the other with undercutting the confidence of believers in the reliability of Scripture. . . .  On his own terms . . . it is clear that Warfield had an airtight argument.  If textual critics had demonstrated that they could resolve apparent textual variations , Warfield could claim that, indeed, that additional apparent discrepancies would be solved. But if serious discrepancies persisted (my note, they have), Warfield could take refuge in the infallible autograph copy.

Later these authors assert on p. 320 concerning Warfield’s arguments concerning the “original autographs”:

Warfield is . . . proposing the impossible, since [his] demands presupposed access to the original autographs of St. Paul or Isaiah.  And Warfield himself is free from any proof at all, since his assumptions regarding the internal evidence of Scripture and plenary inspiration are circular; they are compelling only to those who already accept his presumptions.

If inerrancy in the original autographs is inerrancy, then so be it.  Is it?  Evidence is not there. Evidence says that’s a modern invention that was truly concocted by A.A. Hodge and Benjamin Warfield.  If that is going to be the technical understanding of inerrancy, I’ll use it like that.  But you can’t revise history then to read “original autographs” into history and then equate the two.  Comprehend?  If you are going to do that, and know you are doing it, then it is a lie.  Lying isn’t good, can we agree?  Christians shouldn’t lie.

The term inerrancy was not used before Warfield.  “Infallible” and “infallibility” were terms used and they had a different meaning in that they applied to what believers held in their hand.  Samuel Rutherford in writes in 1649 his A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, p. 370:

But though Printers and Pens of men may err, it followeth not that heresies should be tolerated, except we say, 1 That our faith is ultimately resolved upon characters, and the faith of Printers.  2 We must say, we have not the clear and infallible word of God, because the Scripture comes to our hand, by fallible means, which is a great inconsequence, for though Scribes, Translators, Grammarians, Printers, may all err, it followeth not that an erring providence of him that hath seven eyes, hath not delivered to the Church, the Scriptures containing the infallible truth of God.

In Twenty One Several Books of Mr. William Bridge from 1657, Bridge writes in a section entitled “Scripture Light, the Most Sure Light” (p. 46):

[F]or Though the Letter of the Scripture be not the Word alone, yet the Letter with the true sense and meaning of it, is the Word…. So if ye destroy the Letter of the Scripture, you do destroy the Scripture; and if you do deny the Letter, how is it possible that you should attain to the true sense thereof, when the Sense lies wrapped up in the Letters, and the words thereof?

On p. 433 of Richard A. Muller’s Post Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2, Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology, he writes:

By “original and authentic” text, the Protestant orthodox do not mean the autographa which no one can possess but the apographa in the original tongue which are the source of all versions. . . .  It is important to note that the Reformed orthodox insistence on the identification of the Hebrew and Greek texts as alone authentic does not demand direct reference to autographa in those languages; the “original and authentic text” of Scripture means, beyond the autograph copies, the legitimate tradition of Hebrew and Greek apographa.

At the end of that page he writes:

The case for Scripture as an infallible rule of faith and practice . . . . rests on an examination of the apographa and does not seek the infinite regress of the lost autographa as a prop for textual infallibility.

In that last part of that sentence, which I wanted to draw your attention to, Muller is speaking about what A. A. Hodge and B. B. Warfield did with the Westminster Confession. They are the ones who use the “lost autographa as a prop for textual infallibility.” He has a long footnote documenting and commenting on that statement, which reads:

A rather sharp contrast must be drawn, therefore, between the Protestant orthodox arguments concerning the autographa and the views of Archibald Alexander Hodge and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. . . . Those who claim an errant text, against the orthodox consensus to the contrary, must prove their case. To claim errors in the scribal copies, the apographa, is hardly a proof. The claim must be proven true of the autographa. The point made by Hodge and Warfield is a logical leap, a rhetorical flourish, a conundrum designed to confound the critics—who can only prove their case for genuine errancy by recourse to a text they do not (and surely cannot) have.

He writes on p. 435:

Turretin and other high and late orthodox writers argued that the authenticity and infallibility of Scripture must be identified in and of the apographa, not in and of lost autographa.

On the two main points, infallibility related historically to perfection of the apographa, the Bible Christians held in their hands.  The biblical and historical view relates to the apographa and not the autographa.  Warfield was creating a new position to head off supposed coming apostasy.  The invention would answer what he thought would be a problem, from a contradiction between the Wesminster Confession of Faith and text criticism, the variations in manuscripts, and the faithless, academic popularity of critical texts.

Making the New Testament book of Acts normative instead of transitional comes from a wrong perspective and interpretation of scripture and explains much wrong doctrine and practice in professing Christianity today.   Some pin the needle on bad doctrine and practice, vis-à-vis the Charismatic movement.  Some of it is bad, but not quite as bad, e.g., revivalism.  Some is all over both professing and actual Christianity in bits and pieces or doses.   I still have some of it in my system, which I’m still getting out, so if I see it in someone else, I’m not ready to pull the trap door on him.