Questioning Christianity Because Of What One Sees Occurring In the World or From People Who Call Themselves Christians
My Christianity isn’t tethered to what other people are doing or have done. Christianity is the truth. If I were one of eight remaining believers on earth, it would still be true. I don’t doubt it when people don’t live it. I feel sorry for them, but they haven’t affected what I think about Christianity itself. My Christianity is tethered to the Bible, God’s Word.
I’m writing about this, because of an article in Newsweek that came out on Tuesday this week, written by Issac Bailey, “I’m Struggling with My Christianity After Trump.” Something with that title in a major publication would be a head scratcher, except that most “Christianity” today and probably for most of history isn’t and hasn’t been actual Christianity. No one should be surprised about counterfeit Christianity. Bailey says he got his doubts about Christianity itself from the reality that professing Christians voted for Trump. I’ve heard other people say this.
According to scripture, anyone who leaves actual Christianity was never saved in the first place. Nowhere says a true Christian can lose his salvation. He can’t leave it, because he’s kept by the power of God (1 Peter 1:5). A believer cooperates with what God does in saving him, but it is God who keeps him saved. Scripture is clear on this. Many passages teach the eternal security of a believer, but two verses are definitive on the point that, if a professing believer defects, he was never saved in the first place: first, 1 John 2:19.
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
Second, 1 John 3:6.
Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him.
Read both verses. The first one says that when someone does not continue, he never had salvation in the first place, that is, he was “not of us,” said twice in the verse. If he was “of us,” he would “no doubt have continued with us.” No doubt. The second verse says that a person who sins as a lifestyle, as seen in the present tense, “sinneth,” “hath not seen him, neither known him,” that is, a person who takes on a lifestyle of sin never saw or knew Christ in the first place. A true Christian can’t walk away from Christ. As Jesus said in John 10:28-29, no man, including himself, can pluck a true believer out of either Jesus’ or His Father’s hand.
If you read the Bailey article, you can see he doesn’t have biblical Christianity. I’m not saying that to be unnecessarily offensive or condemnatory. People call themselves Christians, who are not, because there are many various forms of popular “Christianity” in the world. That could be a whole separate article, all the different types, that aren’t Christianity. They are fraudulent perversions of the real thing. There is more false Christianity by far than there is true Christianity.
Most Christian denominations don’t even preach a true gospel. You should know that. They are preaching a false gospel. Most professing Christians to whom I talk don’t even know the gospel. I repeat, they don’t know it. Churches are not clear on the gospel. Even the ones who might believe a true gospel are more concerned about having a bigger congregation and so they do more to pander to people than tell them what they need to hear. There has been a cumulative and comprehensive erosion of the gospel in the United States for awhile and for a number of reasons.
In the first paragraph, Bailey says his “faith is in tatters.” Before I provide an assessment of what he says in his article, I have an opinion about what he’s doing. I don’t think he’s going to leave his spurious version of Christianity. He’s threatening to leave it like a child threatens to hold his breath until he dies if his parents don’t give him what he wants. True Christians are concerned that their testimony could result in defections from the faith. Jesus said at the beginning of Matthew 18 that it would be better to put a millstone around your neck and jump into deep water than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.
Bailey is saying that Christians are sending him into apostasy because of their vote for Trump. This is meant to strike fear into Christians, so that they at the least become non-political or disengaged from political action. Bailey will keep supporting actual murderers greater than any holocaust in the history of the world, the same people who booed God at their party convention, but a vote for Trump will send him off the deep end. He’s already off the deep end. His party is the party against divine design of the family, which is the most rudimentary and rebellious form of opposition to God in existence.
The people Bailey addresses specifically are the pro-life supporting Christians, implying that there are non-pro-life Christians. You can be a Christian, a true one, and not be pro-life. There is only pro-life Christianity. Everything else is an impostor. Sure, it might take a new Christian some time to get up to speed on this point, but he will get there, because he is indwelt by God the Holy Spirit, if he is really saved.
Many of the Trump voters, who claim to be Christians, are not. They do have a different Jesus. That includes some, if not all, of the people in the picture posted in Bailey’s article. As a matter of religious or theological comparison though, these pseudo Christians have a lot in common with the type of Christianity Bailey represents. They both have a novel fabrication or improvisation of Christianity, that is very loose with scripture. They put more authority in their own experience than the Bible, relying more on allegorization than exegesis.
For all of Trump’s many flaws, in a political way he represented to a lot of Americans and most true Christians, a last opportunity to save the federal government from a trajectory of progressive, oligarchical totalitarianism and globalism. Of course, that’s just a conspiracy theory, wink wink. There is no new world order planned for the future of the United States with no borders and the eradication of Americanism. Christians would like to keep their freedoms, freedom of religion and of speech. They would like to stop the present course of the elimination the nuclear family, something basic like a father and mother of opposite sex with the authority to raise their own children. The support of vouchers for education is about the freedom to educate their children in Christian values away from the humanistic, pseudo-science of gender fluidity.
It is not accident that today you hear the left use words like “cult” and “worship” as it relates to Trump. I’m sure they’re seen as effective propaganda. No Christian wants to be seen or known for being in a cult or worshiping a man. Bailey among many others uses this terminology. I don’t know anyone who follows Trump, let alone worships him. I understood why Christians would attend the rally on January 6. I know some people who were there and none of them knew anything about breaking into the capitol building to stop the counting of the electoral votes. I’ve explained this in previous posts, but they see both their voice and their vote being taken away. It’s obvious to them that a two tiered justice system already exists, where a true Christian can be prosecuted for not baking a cake for a same sex wedding and yet left wing anarchists can take over a large area of an American city without opposition. The mainstream of the media applauds it, likes it, has no problem with a Trump voter bleeding in the street.
Much of what Bailey wrote just isn’t true and other parts are misrepresentations, slanted in a dishonest way. He might just be deceived, but I believe he knows what he’s doing.
- True Christians don’t pray to Jesus. They pray to God the Father like Jesus taught.
- The group filmed “praying” in the front of the Senate chamber, it’s obvious, don’t represent biblical Christianity.
- True Christianity isn’t white or black, as in “white church” or “black church,” as Bailey represents it.
- All the things that Franklin Graham said about Trump are true. Graham doesn’t represent biblical Christianity, but I understand why a Christian would appreciate the list of accomplishments he mentions.
Look at the Trump years, 2017-2020, compared to the previous ones. This belies what Bailey writes, his assuming, it seems, that no one would fact check him, if it even mattered. Despite Bailey’s twisting of the meaning of pro-life, nevertheless, more civilians were killed in Iraq in 2014 during the Obama presidency than during the entire four years of the Trump presidency.
- Bailey blames Trump for the murders at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. No president has been more pro-Israel than Trump. Israel says this. There were fourteen mass shootings during the Obama years. It’s sheer political opportunism to blame mass shootings on a president. Was Trump also to blame for the 2017 Las Vegas shooting at a country western concert? Those were mainly Trump deplorables getting gunned down.
- Another argument Bailey makes is that abortion rates go down during Democratic presidencies, because of government programs. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were higher unintended pregnancies when Democrats are president, because of greater support for contraception, most of which is abortifacient. Those aren’t called murders, but they are. Since 1965 over 11 million have been murdered by abortifacients, that don’t show up as abortions. That would be a good explanation for lower abortion rates too.
Pro-life people, of course, want to end all abortion, so the rate would decrease to nothing if they had their way. Instead, with the support of Bailey, almost 70 million have been murdered in the United States, which would be enough to cause a Christian to defect, except that’s impossible for a true Christian. True Christians are happy about slowing down the abortion rate. They don’t, however, support contraception as a way of getting there. A true Christian opposes fornication and all sexual sin that results in an unintended pregnancy. For a biblical Christian, an unintended pregnancy is by definition one outside of marriage. If Bailey is a Christian, he should support the biblical position, which is abstinence. That would also end the AIDS epidemic.
- Insurrection occurred all summer with BLM and Antifa, doing far more damage and causing far more death than the capitol “riot.” Is that justified to Bailey, because he agrees with socialism and actual fascism? When you see the picture of unarmed crazies in costumes, a truly thinking person doesn’t see the comparison. One of the five “killed,” used as a statistic by the left, was an unarmed woman, who threatened no one with violence. Where is the outcry? Three Trump supporters died of natural causes. The one police death has hardly been covered. What happened there? Why isn’t there more coverage of his death? Not his funeral, not the way he’s been used politically, but what actually happened to him?
Bailey says that 60% of white Catholic voters voted for Trump, implying that Catholics are Christian. He lumps them with evangelicals who supported Trump. This is the most tell-tale evidence that he doesn’t understand biblical Christianity. He is pro-abortion. He is against the death penalty for murder. If you are a Christian, you support what God supports. You believe the Bible. Bailey does not.
The crucial aspect for a lasting faith, which is actually a saving faith, is the object of that faith. My faith doesn’t stand in men. The object of faith is Jesus Christ Himself, and He never fails. I believe the Bible. My faith comes by the Word of God. 1 John 5:4-5 say:
4 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. 5 Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
My faith has found a resting place,Not in device nor creed;I trust the Ever-living One,His wounds for me shall plead.I need no other argument,I need no other plea;It is enough that Jesus died,And that He died for me.Enough for me that Jesus saves,This ends my fear and doubt;A sinful soul I come to Him,He’ll never cast me out.My heart is leaning on the Word,The written Word of God,Salvation by my Savior’s name,Salvation through His blood.My great Physician heals the sick,The lost He came to save;For me His precious blood He shed,For me His life He gave.
Reason for So-Called “Genocide,” God’s Commanding Israel to Utterly Destroy Canaanites: Separation unto Godliness
In a short debate I posted a few days ago, the late Christopher Hitchens attacks God, the Old Testament, and Christianity by saying, “There is no commandment saying that parents are to be nice to their children. Why is this? Because in the next chapter, the so-called children of this terrifying God, who exacts compulsory love, are going to be ordered to commit genocide against the Amalekites and the Midianites and the Moabites.”
A few errors stuck out in Hitchens’s statement. I’m going to skip his part about being nice to children, because that’s not the point of my post, so, one, God did not order this judgment in the very next chapter after the ten commandments, either Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5. Two, He didn’t order the annihilation of any of those three groups in either Exodus or Deuteronomy, where He gives the ten commandments. God ordered the protection of the Moabites, who were not in the land of Canaan. In Deuteronomy 2:9, God said, “Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle.” Hitchens was doing what might be called, blowing smoke. That can be seen in a lot of what he says that doesn’t correspond to the Bible. He’s making it up and then counting on people not knowing what scripture says.
Genocide is a loaded word. Men came along to originate the word and the concept. There is an ethnic or racial component in the invention of the word. The idea is that a particular race deserved annihilation, complete eradication, as when the Nazis committed genocide against the Jews, just because they were Jews. Genocide necessitates a racial or ethnic component. Hitchens applies this man-made word to God to position God under the judgment of man, as if God is a criminal under the trial of utterly sinful men such as Hitchens. While Hitchens breathes God’s air and eats His food and exists only by God’s power, He uses those gifts to insult and blaspheme God. He’s not the only one. Billions do the same every day.
If you read the Old Testament, the reasoning behind the destruction of the Canaanites was not because of their race. God doesn’t have a problem with any race. Race isn’t even a thing in scripture. God saved and blessed Rahab. He saved and blessed Ruth. He exalted the Queen of Sheba. God ordered Jonah to Nineveh to preach repentance to the Assyrians, because He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11).
God’s destruction was because of unrepentant behavior. God also has unique knowledge. He knows whether a particular people are even redeemable, even as seen in His own destruction of everyone on earth between Genesis 6 and 9 with a worldwide flood.
Everyone is going to die, based upon the righteous judgment of God. When people die can relate to what they believe and practice. They may die earlier. If they are not going to stop believing and practicing a certain way, based on God’s purpose, He will penalize them with the death earlier than what they could have died. This all relates to the purpose of God’s creation. He is God. God didn’t have to create men in the first place. He gives men an opportunity for eternal life and blessing, despite man’s rebellion against God. Hitchens wouldn’t do the same, if he were God.
The purpose of the eradication of certain groups by God, different than their punishment, according to God is because of their influence on His people. He wants His people committed to the same belief and practice He is committed to, and this is seen in Israel’s participation in the destruction of those people. God’s people should associate with Him in judgment.
God will destroy people to fulfill His purpose. We live in a society today that tolerates what God is against, and what’s worse to almost all of them, especially the young people, is when someone is rejected or punished for believing and doing something different than what God says. It’s the worst sort of self-righteousness, exalting itself above God. It’s what Paul says in Romans 10:1-3, when he says they establish their own righteousness and do not submit themselves to the righteousness of God.
Consider God’s reasoning in Deuteronomy 7:2-4:
2 And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: 3 Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. 4 For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.
Then read how God puts it later in Deuteronomy 20:16-18:
16 But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: 17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee: 18 That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God.
It’s worth it for God to have these people killed so that they will not be a bad influence on His people. It is the ultimate in separation. That is how serious God is about His people doing what He has taught them to do.
God is so serious about separation, that we know that one reason He killed everyone on earth with a flood was to separate them from Noah and his family. That was what Peter meant by “saved by water” (1 Peter 3:20). Noah and his family were saved from the world. Eternal life itself is being saved from this present world, a world of sin. Jesus expressed the same in His upper room discourse in John 14-16 and then in His high priestly prayer to His Father in John 17. If any one loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him (1 John 2:15-17).
People are not as serious at staying away from the influences of this world as God is. People are more serious about adding 30-50 years to this earthly life, years spent walking after lust and serving themselves. They think God should be fine with that, because everything is poured into their little lives, their little kingdoms. They think they’re so important. They can’t leave their lives of lust early, so God would be wrong to cut them short. They judge God to be wrong in this. He must let them live. So.
Let’s say that God allows people to live out their lives in a seemingly ordinary way. People die at various ages of different maladies or crimes or diseases. They reach an average age of 70 to 80. They worship idols. They take on devout atheism. Some give themselves to a religion of their choice, not the truth. Now they die when they would have died of mostly natural causes. Would this satisfy Christopher Hitchens and those who agree with him? Their god would still need to knuckle under their demands from them under their judgment. It wouldn’t change anything, because actual God won’t. He shouldn’t. He is one hundred percent just.
God sees a separating death from a different perspective. His desire is holiness. He created man in His image. His purpose was a life characterized according to Him, which is a better life and the life God intends for man.
Still today, it doesn’t surprise me that an entire nation or group of people could have alienated themselves from God without exception. Their coexistence with the offspring of the righteous does and will ruin many, and after several generations turn them into the unrighteous. Scripture and history evinces this. God’s Word warns about it. It is so sure that it is axiomatic. It is of the quality of a natural law, it is so self-evident.
Separation is required to keep a people holy and in the will of God. Everyone should assume that without the intervention of God’s grace, the human race would eliminate itself. Only God’s grace keeps men from such evil that they would kill themselves off without the aid of God’s commandment of His people to cooperate with Him in doing it.
My wife and I visited historic Williamsburg, the capital of colonial Virginia. Next to the jail was a hill with a gallows for execution of thieves, adulterers, and murderers. The point of such a public showing was to deter these practices. More people overall would live and with a better life for all if such activities were threatened. It also eliminated bad influences. Criminals produce more criminals. Toleration of ungodly behavior will result in more of it. Toleration supports the bad behavior.
In the age in which we live, God still requires separation. Every New Testament book teaches it. To preserve a godly group or culture, it must separate from the ungodly.
Straining at Gnats, Rearranging Deck Chairs, Fiddling While Rome Burns, and Trading Your Birthright for a Mess of Pottage
Can you agree that life is seventy to a hundred years, sometime less and very seldom more, and it goes by fast? We know it goes by exactly sixty seconds a minute, but the point is what James wrote: life is a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. On the other hand, eternity is forever. Even in a lesser, albeit significant way, the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a thousand years.
The title brings two biblical metaphors and two secular ones. Let’s go through them. They relate to the first paragraph. Please think about it.
The first one says, you “strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel” (Matthew 23:24). It’s from Jesus. The gnat was the smallest unclean animal in the Old Testament dietary restrictions, and the largest was the camel (Leviticus 11:4, 42). Straining something was the use of a filter. When you went to drink something sweet that attracted gnats, you made sure you got your gnats out with a filter in order to eliminate the unclean thing. There’s obviously hyperbole here, because the filter should get a camel too, but in this metaphor, it doesn’t.
The gnat metaphor compares to Paul’s teaching to Timothy that bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is great gain. Everyone on earth has to focus on physical things, living in a physical world, but these physical things are temporal things, like bodily exercise is. I watch people, who call themselves Christians and they take care of the gnat, but they miss the camel. Their focus is on this life, on temporal things, even when it comes to the problems in this world. How do you see it?
You can see the wrong emphasis on social media. It’s all about this life, and it isn’t important. What are you eating? What car are you driving? What kind of fashion are you wearing? All of this is less than gnats. They are nothing. They are the dung, the Paul uses for a kind of temporal things in Philippians 3:8.
Let’s move on. The phrase, “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic,” describes a futile, meaningless activity in the face of doom or catastrophe. The Titanic compares to the real catastrophe, lost souls going to Hell. Most of mankind missing Paradise, the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and heaven. Greater than that, men please themselves and not God, because they do not receive His Word.
Rearranging deck chairs brings some temporal order and symmetry perhaps, better than what it might for the next cold few hours before the ship disappears in the icy ocean. Imagine while the ship is sinking, the person taking charge of deck chairs announces to signal his virtue, that “he’s going to rearrange the chairs” messed up maybe from the new tilt of the deck. This is the kind of virtue being signaled today. Look at me, I’m tithing of mint and cummin, my little garden herbs (Matthew 23:23), while souls all around are going to Hell, and not once is the gospel ever mentioned, let alone preached.
Nero apparently fiddled while Rome burned. Shame on Nero. It reminds me of Jesus’ allusion in the Sermon on the Mount, not casting pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6). Pigs can’t appreciate the beauty and significance of pearls. Appreciating pearls takes a minimal level of discernment. A particular brand of baseball cap or footwear supercedes eternal life for a lost soul. Is my hair in style? Did I purchase the appropriate brand name of trousers? Are they ripped enough? Can you see the right amount of skin? Rome is burning, and you’re talking about your play list of pop rock tunes, sensual and worldly. This is insane like Nero. There was a reason he was fiddling. You’re fiddling too. Think about it.
Esau famously in Genesis 25 sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, essentially some lentil stew. Sure, he was hungry. Sure, he wanted to tour Europe. Sure, he wanted to fill his bucket list. Sure, he wanted more instagram followers. What about God? What about his parents? Obedience to them? Honoring them? What about the Word of God? What about the work of the church? What about the things that God loves and He wants you to value? This is where the terminology arises, throwing your life away. Esau threw his life away. You are throwing your life away, but posing like your mess of pottage matters.
The Apostle Paul instructed (Ephesians 5:16), “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” What are you doing with your time? Are you just straining at gnats, rearranging deck chairs, fiddling while Rome burns, and trading your birthright for a mess of pottage? You don’t have to. Turn to the Lord now. Like Paul, count these other things as dung for the knowledge of Christ Jesus.
Dealing with Typical Atheist Arguments Against God As Represented by the Late Christopher Hitchens
At one point about a decade ago, before he died at age 62 of esophageal cancer, Christopher Hitchens was included in a group of atheists titled, the four horsemen, ironically after the characters in Revelation 6. They were also associated with what was termed, new atheism, still around today. Hitchens had written a book, God Is Not Great, mainly a contradiction of a misstatement of an expression in Islam, God is great, which is actually, Allahu Akbar, “Allah is Greater.” With his book title, Hitchens was more poking the eye of the religion of Islam than Christianity.
To boost the sales of his book, Hitchens toured the United States to debate all comers, especially in the Bible belt. In a short period of time, he debated every one of the most well known evangelical apologists of theism, including William Lane Craig and John Lennox. Someone of less prominence in debate, Douglas Wilson, also took on Hitchens in a series of debates from which a documentary film was made, Collision. To promote the film, Hitchens and Wilson appeared on a television talk show hosted by Joy Behar. The two made a nine and a half minute appearance on her show for a brief mini-debate, moderated by her.
The short interchange between Wilson and Hitchens offers a nice sample of arguments in particular coming from Hitchens, the professing atheist. Someone will not get much different or even more from him if he had spoken two hours on the subject. Even by his own assessment, Hitchens, one of the four horsemen, is not giving proof that God does not exist. Wilson represents Hitchens’s arguments in this snippet in the sense that they’re only persuasive to someone already an atheist. They’re already atheists and he says things they want to hear. I want to take us comment by comment through the interview by Behar for the purpose of evaluation.
Behar introduces the two men, explains why she wanted this interview, New York City subway ads confronting belief in God, informs of the Collision documentary, hopes they won’t just rehash their debate, to which Hitchens says they won’t, and then she starts by asking Wilson for a nutshell case for God. Hitchens does rehash the debate, because what he says is the same as he always does.
To begin, Wilson does not give a case for God. He says that one of the things he would want to do is ask what you’re starting point is, who has the burden of proof. He asserts that since the existence of God is self-evident, that burden is upon the atheist, the one denying. Between the two points of view, both sides will assume their person has won. Maybe Wilson preplanned his opening no matter what she might ask, because he doesn’t answer her question. I wish he had instead given a nutshell case for God like she asked. I think it is true that the burden of proof is on the atheist, but that isn’t how you win the debate. You take the burden of proof upon yourself, even if you are a presuppositionalist, which Wilson is confessing. God is self-evident in this world, but Wilson could take the role of a travel guide, explaining self-evidence.
Then Hitchens enters to call Wilson circular reasoning, and that atheists have no burden to prove God’s existence until there is extraordinary evidence of this extraordinary claim of the supernatural. He says he doesn’t want to shirk a burden before he goes ahead and shirks it completely. This may be what Wilson anticipates, that Hitchens isn’t attempting to prove God doesn’t exist. Wilson believes neither are neutral and both operate based upon presuppositions, just that the burden of proof is on naturalism, not supernaturalism. Wilson’s anti-theism then voices scattered, cherry-picked mockery of the biblical record.
Mockery works as a means of persuasion. Naturalist apostates, who don’t want God as their boss, mock to make their point (2 Peter 3:3). It’s not evidence. It’s a kind of emotional coercion, taking advantage of people, who either don’t want to be stupid or just want the ridicule to stop. In order, Hitchens references the biblical teaching of “eternal punishment,” “snakes talk,” “virgins bear children,” “and dead men walk.” He says there’s never been evidence or a convincing philosophical argument, the latter of which can’t be true, since Hitchens was sent packing by the cosmological argument of William Lane Craig in their debate (watch it here).
None of Hitchens’s references relate to the truth. Hitchens says everything comes about by accident and he says this is more beautiful than supernaturalism. Why? It defies science, because it violates second law of thermodynamics among other scientific laws. Once someone can receive Genesis 1:1, everything is downhill for all the points to which Hitchens refers. Someone can reject eternal punishment, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s harder to believe all of this order came about by accident and there is proof that isn’t true in DNA, irreducible complexity, and the fossil record.
Behar sides with Hitchens by asking Wilson if he really does believe in the talking snake and all the animals on the ark. I don’t think Wilson believes people are animals, but his answer is, we’re animals and we can talk. That really stumps Behar, which is why Wilson used it, but it’s not true. Wilson borrowed from her view to illustrate absurdity. I don’t think it was good, even as seen how Hitchens retorts with the recent acquiescence of Presbyterians to this view and the Big Bang, which also contradicts what Wilson says next about splitting the difference between faith and unbelief, muddling both. Wilson should accept that supernaturalism means animals could talk, like Balaam’s ass, another example.
Joy Behar asks Hitchens about Jesus, and he says Jesus was not the Son of God, not virgin born, did not raise from the dead, and even if He did, it would match other mythological figures. It is tough to answer these claims in less than nine minutes, but it is worth it to be able to do that. It’s worth it to develop a few sentences that can answer the skeptic, like Hitchens came armed to shake up the Christian. I believe the best route of attack is to go on the offensive against the impossibility of everything being an accident, and dovetailing that with the plan of God recorded in scripture.
When Behar asks Hitchens about Einstein’s belief in God, he deflects by saying that Einstein did not believe in a biblical type of God, but a pantheistic or deistic one, not one that we be involved in the details of one’s life. Einstein is a bit of a red herring, not worth going down that road, but deism doesn’t mean that God wasn’t in charge of the details of someone’s life contrary to Hitchens. Someone could make that come back, but God isn’t of the deist or pantheist view. He just isn’t, so it’s not worth taking that tact even though some ground might be gained there.
Then Behar asks Wilson about the sky god, who might be interested personally in her television show. Wilson takes a good path of quoting Jesus and explaining how that someone could believe in God’s omniscience or omnipresence without it being self-absorbed.
Hitchens ridicules Moses and the ten commandments, saying they’re more ridiculous than a talking snake, and that the teachings were around before then. Wilson does well with this in explaining the ten commandments compared at least to the secular laws of other people. He adds the argument of the necessity of police departments and armies to enforce them. Hitchens just ignores those to say that the laws go on to treat women like animals and to justify genocide. These are difficult to argue in a short period of time, but they aren’t representing what the Bible says. One would need to start by denying that what Hitchens says is true, and give just as succinct version of the truth as Hitchens does error.
I’m not writing to say that it’s very important to win these short debates with atheists. I am saying that it’s a good exercise to be prepared for what they have coming and give the best answer possible in the shortest period of time. That’s what occurred with me for over thirty years going door-to-door in the San Francisco Bay Area. To win the debate, you’ve got to go on the offensive. Wilson didn’t do that. Hitchens did. However, what Hitchens reports is not true and given enough time, easy to swat away. It isn’t easy in just a few minutes, so it would have been better to have kept him occupied with enough strong argument that Hitchens couldn’t have answered it in the time he had. Instead, the reverse came true.
Are there grounds for going on the offense? Yes. Look at the spiritual armor of Ephesians 6. All the pieces are offensive. They are not meant for retreat, but for battle. The Word of God is used as a sword. Jesus was not a mythological figure and you should develop a statement from the Bible that is persuasive that He lived, He lives, and He’s coming back some day. The shots that Hitchens takes are not proof for atheism, but an emotional appeal very much like what a school yard bully would use. You can’t bring a knife to a gun fight. You’ve got to take an aggressive approach and keep him so busy with your points from scripture, that he doesn’t have time to bring his emotional coercion.
It isn’t very likely that someone like Hitchens would ever engage you other than in a public debate, where he thinks he might be able to embarrass you and make Christianity look bad. He probably wouldn’t even talk if you met him door to door or in some other forum. The goal, despite the unbelief, is to preach the gospel, not win a debate. However, the points that Hitchens brings with his arguments are not close to enough to detract from or undermine the truth of scripture.
The Tragedy of Young Women Taking Their Clothes Off in Public
One of the earliest moments of the whole Bible is God clothing the man and woman with a modest garment as opposed to nudity and their fig leaves. Their coats God made are a Hebrew word for tunic all the way to the floor and long sleeves. This is the same word used to describe the priestly robes. Genesis 3:21 says, God “clothed them.” God wants people clothed.
Why in particular do young women want to take the will of God on clothing in a different direction? God wants them clothed, but they want to take their clothes off in front of people. Even when they’re wearing clothes, they’re tight. I’ve walked behind so many males and females in these colder winter months, both wearing pants. Two were in front of me at the bank today, and consistently young women wear leggings, a garment that could be mistaken for paint, leaving nothing to the imagination. The male usually wears loose fitting trousers and the woman has some kind of very tight pants, which is mostly what differentiates them from what the man wears.
Young women are wearing their underwear in public, tiny little things that barely cover anything. They are scriptural nudity. They leave a lot of their skin and body parts uncovered on purpose. They are going for people seeing their legs, their breasts, their navel, their bellies, and many other things in between. When they choose a skirt, they on purpose choose one that is well above the knee. They also stand in a manner, one leg in front of the other, for a fuller exposure. The shoes, whatever kind and if any, accentuate a bare leg.
All of what I’m describing, that young women are doing, is wrong. That’s not why I’m writing this. There are many biblical arguments against young women dressing like they do today, and sadly how professing Christian women are dressing, or worse undress, especially because churches are not teaching on it. They don’t preach biblical dress standards or enforce them, even defend or justify unscriptural dress for young women. I’m writing this to explain the tragedy of the undressing of the young woman.
The first tragedy is that God isn’t pleased. He isn’t being honored by these young women because of their dress. God’s angels cover themselves in His presence. An argument for modesty for a woman is shamefacedness, which relates to the presence of God. The pure in heart shall see God. These young women are not pure in heart. They are not ashamed. They glory in their shame. They snub the holiness of God.
Also while I was standing at the bank today, a woman twice in exclamation said the two words, “holy ___________,” the latter word a crude word for excrement. She said it to a younger woman, while looking down at something together. The nature of those words is what these young women are doing with their undressing. They are made in the image of God and they are profaning that image with their immodesty.
The second tragedy is that these young women are defrauding their fathers. Their fathers or their brothers may not care. I say brothers, because I think of the Shulammites brothers in Song of Solomon chapter eight, who protected their younger sister by guarding her modesty and her virginity. If she was a wall, they would reward her, and if she was a door, they would enclose her with boards of cedar. Instead of enclosing her, some fathers and brothers are exhibiting her in her nudity today.
Today the young woman may say that the brother or a father, which seems to be absent, would not have a right to enclose her with boards of cedar. That is for her to decide. What scripture says is that when she is a door, that is, she gives intimate access to herself, that she is defrauding her father. He is to give her away, not her giving herself away. 1 Corinthians 7:36-38 says that she belongs to the father to give away. That’s a joke in today’s culture, a joke protected by the actual me-too movement.
A young woman, who undresses herself in public, is giving herself away to everyone. She is intimate to everyone. She is defrauding her father of that right, but she is also defrauding her future husband, profaning herself, making herself common. She isn’t special any more. She isn’t unique. She is a trampled garden in the parlance of what the brothers were protecting. They were saving her beautiful garden for a future husband. She would have greater value. So, third, she’s defrauding a future husband.
Fourth, the unclothing young woman forsakes future intimacy when she takes off her clothes in public, related to what I said in the previous paragraph. She isn’t the gift she once was and by her choice, so, fifth, she has become easy for someone, who will not have to be a man or show manly qualities. He can avoid a father, because she has given herself to not just him, but everyone who sees her. She has done this because she wanted to. She loses this. She can get some of it back, but once she’s out there, she can never get all of it back. She’s lost something. This matters too, because it will never be as special now. She’ll never know.
Related to the previous paragraph, she is opting for less of a man or not a man at all. A real man would only go through her father. A real man would have the confidence to do so. She has narrowed her pursuers to those who need it easy for them. She has made it easy. Those so-called men who take that easy road will have an easy woman. She has made it that way.
Seventh, is a comparison to fly paper. Fly paper attracts flies. Everything sticks on it. The young woman who undresses might have in mind who she wants to look at her skin, objectifying her, making her a mere object of lust by her choice. However, she’s going to have everyone else sticking to that fly paper as well. Every creepy minded and practicing person will be in on her show.
Someone might say that the above undressed young woman just lacks the confidence to wait, the satisfaction with God, with Jesus Christ, what is characteristic of a true Christian, to stay covered and wait for the right person. That’s all true too, but she’s getting the lust of every man in public. Maybe she thinks that is high praise, that men like seeing skin, her skin and body parts. That doesn’t require anything but lust and sin.
Eighth, the young woman who takes her clothes off in public is encouraging more of that with others. She is offending one of these little ones. She might not be taken advantage of to the extent that someone else is, but she will be partly at fault for it. She is downgrading the culture. She is turning it into Sodom and Gomorrah, a place for a righteous soul to have his soul vexed and for unbelievers to be made twice the children of hell they once were. She is doing that.
I’ve given you eight reasons explaining the tragedy of young women taking their clothes off in public. There are actually many more than these eight and those are all bad too. None of them are good. There is no good reason for young women to take their clothes off in public. You can take some time to meditate on these eight. They are enough reasons to stop this practice.
Is Piercing One’s Self or Having One’s Self Pierced Compatible with God?
In the history of the world and then the more specific history of the United States, new beliefs and practice begin that differ from what was previously believed and practiced. Those beliefs and practices are either corrections or improvements to what was previously occurring or they are perversions, corruptions, or deterioration to or from what was previously occurring. What is unique to United States history more than most cultures in the history of the world is that the United States culture has been shaped by the Bible. If they are corrections or improvements, someone should go to the Bible for the defense or change. The present belief and practice is bad and needs to be changed and this is why.
When I say, “piercing,” it’s this:
a form of body modification . . . the practice of puncturing or cutting a part of the human body, creating an opening in which jewelry may be worn, or where an implant could be inserted.
Piercing in the United States is a change of belief and practice. You have not seen piercing in almost the entire history of the United States. It’s not that piercing never existed. It wasn’t accepted in the colonial America and the United States. So, is it a correction or improvement, or is it a perversion, corruption, or deterioration? When people began piercing themselves, did they go to the Bible to find this new belief and practice, or was it a movement of rebellion or paganism?
Someone might observe that changes occur all the time in a culture, for instance, something like handwriting, to typewriter, and now to computer. It’s a silly argument, but I’m going to deal with it, because it is the normal kind of argument piercers might use. Using a computer for word processing is an improvement to handwriting. It is faster and neater. However, that isn’t a cultural change that one can deem is right or wrong. It’s not wrong to handwrite or type or word process. It is a better or easier way of doing things. It has no inherent meaning if what you are reading is in handwriting or through word processing, any more than reading something on a tablet or on paper.
Piercing isn’t an improvement on the human condition like the polio vaccine. It isn’t a better, more secure window. that keeps out the rain and the cold. Piercing expresses something, means something, that is a departure or deviation. We know from scripture that these types of practices arise from belief. They are filled with meaning. God warns about such practices. They aren’t neutral. They reflect on a worldview. In Leviticus 19:28, God warns:
Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I [am] the LORD.
This could apply directly to piercing, and is surely the reason American culture had an aversion to piercings.
If I see someone with piercings, I don’t think that pulling the implement out will bring a right relationship with God. Not piercing doesn’t get someone to heaven. Obviously, the heart yields this behavior. The piercing manifests on the outside something on the inside. I’m more concerned with the inside, but that doesn’t mean ignoring the outside. If a person has it right on the inside, you’ll know it by the outside. The former precedes the latter. The latter, however, will necessarily follow though.
The new covenant is a corollary to the old. God still wants obedience. It’s enabled by a new heart. Piercing is a manifestation of the old heart. This is a person who says he has faith, but piercing is not showing that faith by his works. It matters. It isn’t turning from idols to serve the living and true God. You can’t serve both God and mammon. Piercing is mammon.
I see professing Christians, who call themselves Jesus followers, propagating their piercing more than they do Jesus, if they do Him at all. They are ashamed of Jesus Christ, but proud of their piercing and other forms of worldly expressions.
God created male and female. He created them obviously different. He did a good job by His own perfect assessment in Genesis 1. He expects male and female both to wear things, even as God Himself made garments for Adam and Eve to put on for the sake of modesty. God doesn’t tell either male or female to pierce. That didn’t start with God. Mankind started piercing itself on its own. Is it right for people to pierce themselves for whatever purpose they have for doing so?
Piercing is more than a form of jewelry, but it is a form of jewelry. God doesn’t promote jewelry, but it is regulated in scripture. Not all of it is right. 1 Timothy 2:9 instructs:
In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array.
Here Paul says, not, “not with . . . gold, or pearls.” When the Bible says something about it, it says, not. This is not that women can’t wear jewelry, but the problem is with wearing, not with not wearing. The same is seen in 1 Peter 3:3:
Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold.
These texts never even regulate men, because men are assumed not to be wearing these decorations. Why are men wanting to decorate themselves like women with jewelry? Think about it. Women wear these things, not men. That is in scripture. That’s why in the United States, men would never consider wearing an earring. This didn’t originate with godly men.
Piercing is new in the history of the United States. Even as recent as when I grew up, it was controversial for a woman to be pierced and no men were pierced. I remember men being pierced for the first time when I was a teenager in the 1970s. Girls were never pierced. They would only be pierced as a kind of point of reaching womanhood and then only once in each earlobe, and even then it was disputable among Christians.
Jewelry itself is not prohibited. It is regulated. It is an adornment, an accessory, like a decoration. The goal is to allow the beauty of God to shine through. This is where the simple single earring in the lobe of each ear has become acceptable in a mere supplementary way. This is not to make a statement or express a philosophy. It is for a woman and pertains to beauty within the nature of a woman: feminine, dainty, delicate, splendid, and ladylike.
Multiple piercing and piercing all over various body parts is new in the United States and it corresponds to an ungodly trajectory in the culture. It wasn’t spawned by a growth in godliness. Even for women, piercing only once in each earlobe even was frowned upon until the 1960s. Men being pierced associated itself with the unisex movement. It was entirely rejected by churches.
When I see a man with piercings, I still reject it as both unisex and pagan. Personally it makes me sick. I abhor it, when I see it. Multiple piercings are significant of reprobate culture and depravity. Amanda Porterfield in an entry within Religion and American Cultures: an Encyclopedia of Traditions, Diversity, and Popular Expressions reports that after World War 2, piercing began increasing in popularity among the gay male subculture. That’s where piercing of men started in the United States.
Piercings obviously mean something. People want them. They get them. When they do, they’re sending a message. Even the world says that the piercings mean rebellion. If you google the two words, piercing and rebellion, you’ll get almost three million results, and dozens of articles. It’s a self-attesting truth. A male piercing and all multiple piercing is a kind of rebellion, even according to the world. Is this what should characterize a Christian? Is it sacred? Does it distinguish someone as profane and worldly, characteristics to be avoided for a true believer in God? Does it matter if a Christian is worldly and presents himself in a profane way? Of course it matters. It dishonors God.
Many times children growing up in a Christian home start piercing in contradiction and in rebellion against their parents. Apparently, they are showing their liberty or authority. They don’t have to do what they’re told. They want to embarrass or shame their parents with their appearance. That’s a big reason they’re doing it. They might still say they’re Christian, especially with the state of evangelicalism today. They have left the belief and practice of their parents. They should consider what God told Moses in Leviticus 19:1-3:
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 2 Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy. 3 Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his father, and keep my sabbaths: I am the LORD your God.
Gender-Neutral Language in Bible Translation is Unscriptural
Many modern Bible versions employ what they call “gender neutral” language. So, for example, the Authorized, King James Version of John 1:9 reads:
κἀγὼ ἐὰν ὑψωθῶ ἐκ τῆς γῆς, πάντας ἑλκύσω πρὸς ἐμαυτόν.
kagō ean hypsōthō ek tēs gēs, pantas helkysō pros emauton.
The masculine form of pantas is properly rendered “all men.” The NKJV alters the text to the more feminist “all peoples” to prevent “man/men” from being the generic word for mankind (oops, excuse me, “humankind”; using “mankind” might have been a microaggression and evidence of systemic racism and sexism). Note also that here, as in vast numbers of other places, the NKJV is not simply updating archaic and hard-to-understand language in the KJV; “all men” is not hard to understand in the least.
αὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐρεῖ αὐτοῖς, Ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἐφ᾿ ὅσον ἐποιήσατε ἑνὶ τούτων τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου τῶν ἐλαχίστων, ἐμοὶ ἐποιήσατε.
ai apokritheis ho basileus erei autois, Amēn legō hymin, eph’ hoson epoiēsate heni toutōn tōn adelphōn mou tōn elachistōn, emoi epoiēsate.
The plural adelphon, “brethren,” is from the Greek word adelphos, “brother.” The “and sisters” is simply not contained in the text, but has been added in by the NIV translators to make their version more feminist.
When the New Testament writers, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, translated the Old Testament, did they follow the practice of modern feminism and transform the inspired Hebrew Old Testament into something more “gender neutral”? Or did the New Testament specifically use “man” as the generic term for all people–does it specifically make the male the representative of generic humanity?
Romans 11:4 is referencing 1 Kings 19:18:
1Kings 19:18 Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.
Notice that the word “men” is not specifically contained in 1 Kings 19:18, but it is in Romans 11:4. Furthermore, Romans 11:4 does not use the Greek word anthropos, which is commonly a generic word for “mankind” or the entire human race, but the word andros (lexical form aner)–“men” as “males.” So when the New Testament, under inspiration, makes reference to the Old Testament, it is so far from removing masculine terms and making the Scripture more gender neutral that it specifically states “all men” in translating a less-specific original language reference.
The Lord Jesus Christ does the same thing as the Apostle Paul. Consider Matthew 12:41:
Matt. 12:41 The men [andros, “males,” from aner] of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.
The Lord Jesus is referring to Jonah 3:7-8:
And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man [Hebrew ‘adam, properly rendered “man” but frequently a generic word for the entire human race, not for “males” in particular] nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: but let man [Hebrew ‘adam again, frequently a generic term] and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
When Christ refers to the Old Testament, He takes a more generic Hebrew word for “mankind” or “humankind” and employs the word aner, the word specifically for a “male … in contrast to woman” (BDAG). Christ, speaking in Greek, does not make the Hebrew Old Testament “gender neutral.” He does exactly the opposite. Luke 11:32 indicates this fact as well.
So, what does the Bible teach? When the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, it translates and paraphrases the Hebrew in such a way that the text is less gender neutral, not more gender neutral.
In light of the inspired and infallible practice of translation modeled by the sovereign, all-wise God, we should:
1.) Reject modern Bible versions influenced by feminism and gender-neutral language, from the New International Version to the New King James Version, and cleave to the Authorized, King James Bible.
2.) Reject gender-neutral replacements for classical terms for humanity. We should retain expressions such as “all men” and “mankind” if we are engaged in the holy practice of Bible translation ourselves.
3.) We should continue to use “man,” “mankind,” and such like terms in our own speech when reference is made to the entire human race. We should follow the practice of Christ and His Apostles instead of bowing to anti-Scriptural feminism in our language.
4.) Recognize that feminists know exactly what they are doing when they seek to make the English language, and even more importantly, God’s infallible Word, less patriarchal. They oppose patriarchy, while the resurrected Lord and Son of Man, Jesus Christ, their Creator, taught patriarchy Himself and led His prophets and Apostles to support it through what He dictated to them through the Holy Spirit from God the Father. Let us consciously agree with the Father, the Son of God, the Holy Ghost, the Apostles, and the infallible Word of God, and support male headship in our common language and in our English Bible version.
Learn more about Bible texts and versions by clicking here.
–TDR
Leviticus 10:8-11 and Its Conformity to the Two Wine View
It’s obvious in scripture that some wine is permissible to drink and other is not. This relates to alcohol. Scripture prohibits alcohol (Proverbs 23:29-35). However, all wine and strong drink is prohibited to the priesthood in the performance of their duties. I’m reading through the Bible twice this year and moving through it the first time, I arrived at Leviticus 10:8-11 earlier this week:
8 And the LORD spake unto Aaron, saying, 9 Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations: 10 And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; 11 And that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the LORD hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.
It was so important for Aaron and his sons not to be under the influence of alcohol that they were to take extra precautions by refraining from any wine or strong drink. What does drinking any alcohol do? If they were to be drinking alcohol of any amount, it would threaten their ability to do their job as a priest.
The drinking of alcohol could result in the execution of the priest by God like Nadab and Abihu were killed by God earlier in the chapter. God commands Aaron and his sons not to drink wine or strong drink, so that they would not be punished with death by God Himself. Leon Hyatt writes in his commentary on Leviticus:
Obeying this command would assure that they would not die for performing their duties incorrectly, but that assurance definitely implies that they would die if they disobeyed the command. The same stern penalty would result from disobedience to this command as from any other deviation from the instructions of Jehovah to the priests.
Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!
Nothing has more power to blur the sharpness of moral and religious insight than even a small amount of alcohol. God must be worshipped with clear brain and naturally beating heart. Not the fumes of wine, in which there lurks almost necessarily the tendency to ‘excess,’ but the being ‘filled with the Spirit’ supplies the only legitimate stimulus to devotion. Besides the personal reason for abstinence, there was another,-namely, that only so could the priests teach the people ‘the statutes’ of Jehovah. Lips stained from the wine-cup would not be fit to speak holy words. Words spoken by such would carry no power. God’s servants can never impress on the sluggish conscience of society their solemn messages from God, unless they are conspicuously free from self-indulgence, and show by their example the gulf, wide as between heaven and hell, which parts cleanness from uncleanness. Our lives must witness to the eternal distinction between good and evil, if we are to draw men to ‘abhor that which is evil, and cleave to that which is good.’
Luther and Zwingle on the Lord’s Supper, part 1 of 4
What are the differences between the Lutheran and Reformed positions on the Lord’s Supper? Do you know? If you talk to Lutherans or people influenced by the Calvinist wing of the reformation, you should. I would also commend to you the pamphlets Bible Truths for Lutheran Friends and The Reformed Doctrine of Salvation to give to Lutherans and Reformed people to whom you preach the gospel, or with whom you work, or who are family, and so on.
The dialogue below between Luther, Zwingle, and a few other theologians who take their (respective) parts should be enlightening. Luther firmly holds that “This is my body” means that one literally eats Christ’s body in the Lord’s Supper, while Zwingle argues that one eats Christ spiritually in the Supper. The excerpt below is about the Marburg Colloquy of October 1529, quoting H. Merle D’Aubigné, History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century:
On Saturday morning (2d October) the landgrave took his seat in the hall, surrounded by his court, but in so plain a dress that no one would have taken him for a prince. He wished to avoid all appearance of acting the part of a Constantine in the affairs of the Church. Before him was a table which Luther, Zwingle, Melancthon, and Œcolampadius approached. Luther, taking a piece of chalk, bent over the velvet cloth which covered it, and steadily wrote four words in large characters. All eyes followed the movement of his hand, and soon they read Hoc est Corpus Meum. [“This is my body.”] Luther wished to have this declaration continually before him, that it might strengthen his own faith, and be a sign to his adversaries.
Behind these four theologians were seated their friends,—Hedio, Sturm, Funck, Frey, Eberhard, Thane, Jonas, Cruciger, and others besides. Jonas cast an inquiring glance upon the Swiss: “Zwingle,” said he, “has a certain rusticity and arrogance; if he is well versed in letters, it is in spite of Minerva and of the muses. In Œcolampadius there is a natural goodness and admirable meekness. Hedio seems to have as much liberality as kindness; but Bucer possesses the cunning of a fox, that knows how to give himself an air of sense and prudence.” Men of moderate sentiments often meet with worse treatment than those of the extreme parties. …
The landgrave’s chancellor, John Feige, having reminded them in the prince’s name that the object of this colloquy was the re-establishment of union, “I protest,” said Luther, “that I differ from my adversaries with regard to the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, and that I shall always differ from them. Christ has said, This is my body. Let them show me that a body is not a body. I reject reason, common sense, carnal arguments, and mathematical proofs. God is above mathematics. We have the Word of God; we must adore it and perform it!”
It cannot be denied,” said Œcolampadius, “that there are figures of speech in the Word of God; as John is Elias, the rock was Christ, I am the vine. The expression This is my body, is a figure of the same kind.” Luther granted that there were figures in the Bible, but denied that this last expression was figurative.
All the various parties, however, of which the Christian Church is composed see a figure in these words. In fact, the Romanists declare that This is my body signifies not only “my body,” but also “my blood,” “my soul,” and even “my Divinity,” and “Christ wholly.” These words, therefore according to Rome, are a synecdoche, a figure by which a part is taken for the whole. And, as regards the Lutherans, the figure is still more evident. Whether it be synecdoche, metaphor, or metonymy, there is still a figure.
In order to prove it, Œcolampadius employed this syllogism:—
“What Christ rejected in the sixth chapter of St. John, he could not admit in the words of the Eucharist.
“Now Christ, who said to the people of Capernaum, The flesh profiteth nothing, rejected by those very words the oral manducation of his body.
“Therefore he did not establish it at the institution of his Supper.”
Luther.—“I deny the minor (the second of these propositions); Christ has not rejected all oral manducation, but only a material manducation, like that of the flesh of oxen or of swine.”
Œcolampadius.—“There is danger in attributing too much to mere matter.”
Luther.—“Everything that God commands becomes spirit and life. If we lift up a straw, by the Lord’s order, in that very action we perform a spiritual work. We must pay attention to him who speaks, and not to what he says. God speaks: Men, worms, listen!—God commands: let the world obey! and let us altogether fall down and humbly kiss the Word.”
Œcolampadius.—“But since we have the spiritual eating, what need of the bodily one?”
Luther.—“I do not ask what need we have of it; but I see it written, Eat, this is my body. We must therefore believe and do. We must do—we must do!—If God should order me to eat dung, I would do it, with the assurance that it would be salutary.”
At this point Zwingle interfered in the discussion.
We must explain Scripture by Scripture,” said he, “We cannot admit two kinds of corporeal manducation, as if Jesus had spoken of eating, and the Capernaites of tearing in pieces, for the same word is employed in both cases. Jesus says that to eat his flesh corporeally profiteth nothing (John, 6:63); whence it would result that he had given us in the Supper a thing that would be useless to us.—Besides, there are certain words that seem to me rather childish,—the dung, for instance. The oracles of the demons were obscure, not so are those of Jesus Christ.”
Luther.—“When Christ says the flesh profiteth nothing, he speaks not of his own flesh, but of ours.”
Zwingle.—“The soul is fed with the Spirit and not with the flesh.”
Luther.—“It is with the mouth that we eat the body; the soul does not eat it.”
Zwingle.—“Christ’s body is therefore a corporeal nourishment, and not a spiritual.”
Luther.—“You are captious.”
Zwingle.—“Not so; but you utter contradictory things.”
Luther.—“If God should present me wild apples, I should eat them spiritually. In the Eucharist, the mouth receives the body of Christ, and the soul believes in his words.”
Zwingle then quoted a great number of passages from the Holy Scriptures, in which the sign is described by the very thing signified; and thence concluded that, considering our Lord’s declaration in St. John, The flesh profiteth nothing, we must explain the words of the Eucharist in a similar manner.
Many hearers were struck by these arguments. Among the Marburg professors sat the Frenchman Lambert; his tail and spare frame was violently agitated. He had been at first of Luther’s opinion, and was then hesitating between the two reformers. As he went to the conference, he said: “I desire to be a sheet of blank paper, on which the finger of God may write his truth.” Erelong he exclaimed, after hearing Zwingle and Œcolampadius: “Yes! the Spirit, ’tis that which vivifies.” When this conversion was known, the Wittembergers, shrugging their shoulders, called it “Gallic fickleness.” “What!” replied Lambert, “was St. Paul fickle because he was converted from Pharisaism? And have we ourselves been fickle in abandoning the lost sects of popery?”
–TDR
What Is It To Be a Witness? “Ye Shall Be Witnesses”
In the first eleven verses of Acts, the Lord Jesus Christ appears for the last time on earth until He reappears in the book of Revelation. That section is a transition between the gospels and the rest of Acts. Acts goes along with Luke like one big book of the Bible with two huge halves. They make a case for Christianity. It grew to the entire world because Jesus was the Messiah for everyone, not some regional figure accepted among just an insignificant and small population in a meaningless backwater territory.
The beginning of Acts 1 reads like a final checklist from Jesus for His followers with the keys to success. The talking points were the first two verses, what Jesus did and taught. Luke referred to his own gospel, which was the record by which Theophilus, a Gentile removed from the events, would be persuaded of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Acts would continue the attestation, explaining the worldwide spread.
Recent Comments