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Crucial to a Gospel Presentation: Explain Belief (part four)
Actual Lord Jesus Christ
For faith to be saving faith, the person must place the faith in the actual Lord Jesus Christ. This means He is the Christ, not an impostor. It is not saving faith if it does not direct toward the saving object, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. Accompanying this necessarily, the faith must attune to the Person of Jesus Christ. He is not Christ if the said “belief” does not acquiesce to the reign and lordship of Jesus Christ and relinquish the personal will and way. This is in essence the offering of “self” or one’s soul to God. Scripture explicates all of this paragraph.
Believing that Jesus is the Christ is not something arbitrary. He becomes the Christ to the person who believes in Him. That means the one believing in Jesus Christ abdicates his throne to Jesus Christ. The person who believes in Jesus Christ is not on the throne of his own heart, but Christ is. When the Apostle Paul received Christ, he said immediately, “What wilt thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:6)
Count One’s Life as Loss or Deny Self
When the Apostle Paul later testifies about his conversion, he says that he counted everything as loss and dung that he might win Christ (Philippians 3:8). Paul is saying that you do have to count you and the best of you as loss and dung. This is the denying self of Luke 9:23. You can’t believe in Jesus Christ and yourself. Jesus can’t be put on an altar with all someone’s other gods, including himself.
The way of Jesus Christ is in contradiction to the way of you. You’ve got to leave you in order to have Him. You can’t have both. This is the same challenge of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:16-22 (Mark 10:17-22, Luke 18:18-30). You don’t need to give all of your money to the poor to be saved. No, but if you believe in Jesus Christ like he said he did, then you can give up everything for him. If you don’t, then you don’t believe in Him. You can’t serve idols and Jesus both.
People conflate what I’m explaining to “salvation by works,” even “frontloading works.” Works aren’t involved at all. This is just biblical faith. Saving faith is exclusive. It must be in Jesus Christ, so He must be Jesus Christ. If He is Jesus Christ, then He is Christ and He is Lord. Christ and Lord means control and ownership. You are giving yourself up, so that He is the owner. This is the commitment of believing that is the volitional aspect of faith.
More Than Intellectual Assent to Facts
Faith is more than intellectual assent to facts, essentially head knowledge alone. This is like the check in the box. As I explain the above and state that saving faith is not just intellectual or even worse, just emotional, what is different about faith that includes volition? This goes along with two things Jesus said that are parallel or synonymous with saving faith: (1) Follow me, and (2) Lose your life for my sake. Jesus said among other places in Matthew 16:25:
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.
“Lose it” or “shall lose his life for my sake” is not meaningless. It’s not that we can’t know what Jesus is talking about. We should assume we can know. This is that relinquishing of your will or your way. It dovetails with repentance. You can’t keep going your way and get to heaven. Anyone who comes after him must deny himself (Luke 9:23).
When Jesus talked about the gospel or salvation with the woman at the well in John 4, He told her that God the Father sought such to worship Him and to worship Him in spirit and in truth. What does worship have to do with salvation? The first act of worship is the offering of your soul to God, what Psalm 23:3 and Psalm 19:7 call the restoring of the soul or the converting of the soul. God takes the real you and restores you or converts you, but to do so, He must have you. He wants you. Faith offers the soul to God. This is believing He is Christ and Lord.
More to Come
Zeitgeist: The Divine Requirement to Discern the Spirit of the Age
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is a German or Germanic term found in books going back to the 18th century. Within a translation of the German Philosophisches Journal in 1794, the English translation reads on page 302, “Zeitgeist also works on the national spirit. Every age has its own imagination.” Zeit is the German word for “time” and geist is the German word for “spirit.” Combined it means, “spirit of the time or age.” The Oxford Learner Dictionary defines zeitgeist:
the general mood or quality of a particular period of history, as shown by the ideas, beliefs, etc. common at the time
The term was popularized in philosophical usage by the German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. On August 27, 2020, Antje Allroggen writes in DW (Deutsche Welle), which is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster:
[I]t is generally agreed that Hegel was the first philosopher to recognize and address the dimension of change, which he termed “becoming” (“Werden“), in all its fullness. He believed everything in the world was in constant motion: every individual life, nature, history, society. This results in each epoch having its own particular zeitgeist, or general spirit. One historic epoch is not randomly followed by another; instead, there is a principle of logical evolution.
The concept of zeitgeist is a scriptural concept that is in fitting with the terminology, “this world” (touto aion) or “this present world.” Aion (“world”) is “age” or “epoch,” speaking of a characteristic period or time. That’s how zeitgeist fits into the “spirit of the time.” “This world” is found 38 times in the New Testament. “Present world” is found twice, but very representative of zeitgeist in those two instances. I would contend that the philosophical thinking that arose defining zeitgeist, started with the concept which was in scripture.
God’s Requirements
God requires man, and especially genuine believers, to understand or discern the spirit of the times or age, the zeitgeist. In order to obey God, follow Him, and represent Him according to His will, one must discern the zeitgeist. This is an implication or assumption of scripture. People can and should know this. I would contend that many do, but they embrace the spirit of the age. They lap it up and luxuriate in it rather than obey the God ordained relationship to it.
Jesus first uses “this world” in scripture in Matthew 13:22, when He says:
He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.
The thorny ground is an unbeliever in this context of the parable of the soils. “The care of this world” chokes the word with this person. Instead of embracing God’s Word, he embraces the spirit of the age, the zeitgeist. Unsaved people choose the zeitgeist over God’s Word, will, and way.
The Opposite Happening
Many churches today offer the spirit of the age to their church goers or attenders. They lure people with the zeitgeist. They fill up a trough of the cares of this world for their church people to lap up. In church growth seminars, the leaders promote or offer to their audience this as a means of church growth. They give away thorn seed for thorny ground to ruin the soil and damn souls, all the while saying that this is God at work, deceiving these people. These church leaders promote this kingdom instead of the next and then call it the work of God.
In another parable in Luke 16:8, Jesus says:
And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.
Children and God of This World
The Lord Jesus distinguishes the children of light from “the children of this world.” These are the children characterized by the spirit of this age, something unfortunately and diabolically that churches promote today and yet call it “light.” Jesus says in John 8:23:
And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.
True believers, like Jesus, are not of this world. Those “of this world” are not believers. Instead of following Jesus, they follow the “god of this world,” who is not Jesus. In 2 Corinthians 4:4, Paul says:
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
Be Not Conformed to this World
A classic passage in a pivotal context in Romans, the Apostle Paul commands in Romans 12:2:
And be not conformed to this world.
This is crucial. Someone conformed to the spirit of this age is not presenting himself a living sacrifice unto God. His sacrifice is at least rejected by God. He will not receive just any offering, just like He disrespected Cain’s offering in Genesis 4:5. God will not accept something that smacks of the spirit of this age.
To not conform to the spirit of the age requires knowing what is the spirit of the age, that is, what conforms to “this world.” Genuine believers should and will know the zeitgeist and reject it. Scripture assumes we can know this.
As the Gentiles Which Know Not God
Other phrases, texts, and contexts communicate the required discernment. Paul, writing to the church at Thessalonica in his first epistle, says (1 Thessalonians 4:5):
Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God
The Thessalonians and every other church are not to obtain their life’s partners “as the Gentiles which know not God.” There is a way that the world thinks and does things that is different than what the church or godly people do. It isn’t just doing something or having “the lust of concupiscence,” which is intense fleshly lust, but a way that corresponds to that. Believers acquire their spouses in sanctification and honor. That way is vastly different than “the Gentiles which know not God.” Those two ways cannot be the same, or even close. So what’s different?
Strange or Foreign
Scripture doesn’t say what is different, but the two ways have a nature, characteristics, or attributes that believers can and should discern. True believers through history have been doing this, discerning these differences. A word that characterizes “this world” in the Old Testament is “strange.” That is a King James Version word that means “foreign.” Sometimes something on your plate doesn’t look like part of the food served. It is foreign or strange, so you don’t eat it.
Whatever is “strange” in the Old Testament doesn’t fit with God’s people. Zephaniah 1:8 says:
And it shall come to pass in the day of the LORD’S sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king’s children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel.
What are these princes or king’s children doing in this verse that God will punish? They wear strange apparel or clothing. The passage doesn’t say what it is. It assumes that someone can and should know. God requires application of such principles. This assumes that God’s people can and should know.
The Application Required
“Strange apparel” is clothing that embraces or smacks of “the spirit of the age” or “this world.” Do believers know what this is? People who profess to believe have known this through the centuries. Professing believers seem to have become unable or ignorant for discernment of these differences or issues. God will still judge and punish. This principle is throughout scripture. It has not been renounced or rescinded like some of the dietary restrictions in the Old Testament.
Do you reader understand what I’m talking about in this post? Many churches don’t get it anymore. Why? Leaders don’t teach it. They act like the spirit of the age can’t be discerned. If it isn’t spelled out in exact language, then it is ‘beyond what it is written’ (cf. 1 Cor 4:6), which it isn’t. Scripture teaches this. Someone might “play dumb,” but that game isn’t true and it won’t work in the end. God requires the discernment of the spirit of the age and to act appropriately.
More to Come
Fried Preacher
Early Personal Considerations
When I was a child, growing up in an independent Baptist church, I thought God dropped pastors down from heaven, at least something like that. Even when I was in high school and college, I regarded these men with reverence. God was infinitely higher and greater to me, of course, but they topped everyone else. As I became a pastor myself, despite still highly regarding the office, I held lower estimation of the men in the office.
For one, when I became a pastor, I knew for sure pastors weren’t dropped from heaven. I knew I wasn’t. Then spending more time with several other pastors in closer relations, I had to reevaluate my lofty estimation. I don’t write this to engender any disrespect for the man or his office. I still love pastors and have a better understanding how difficult the job. Many pastors are friends.
Pastor As Sunday Afternoon Meal
The idea of fried preacher relates to a Sunday afternoon meal. In the spirit of fried chicken, a church family after church instead serves up a delectable main entre of “fried preacher.” I read someone explain: “My mother would always say we were having fried preacher for dinner.”
If you grew up in church, maybe you fried your preacher sometimes for Sunday afternoon dinner. My parents never did. I never heard one foul word about a preacher in my home from my parents. It amazes me, because my parents had negative things to say about people. Their preacher was never one of them. It happens though.
The Apostle Paul himself became fried preacher by the Athenians in Acts 17:18:
Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.
They called Paul a “babbler.” This portends a great pastime of criticizing a preacher and his preaching. I don’t think Paul was bad. Maybe no better preacher ever existed.
Pastors Say and Do Wrong Things
Prove All Things Preached
People might say true things about a preacher and his preaching. They are sometimes right about him. He did things and said things wrong. Preachers also sin.
When someone hears preaching, he should consider whether it is true. To do that, he judges it. Paul commands this practice in 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22:
21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 22 Abstain from all appearance of evil.
What To Do with Error
When someone tests or proves the preaching and finds something bad, what does he do next? Does he criticize the preaching to others, maybe at home at Sunday dinner? No. Scripture reveals a certain way to deal with the error of someone else. The goal is restoration or reconciliation (Galatians 6:1). You help someone get it right, when he’s wrong. That’s God’s will.
If bad preaching becomes the pattern, this necessitates a stronger reaction. The deficient preaching should be obvious. Very bad preaching occurs all over today. Probably more bad preaching exists than good. When I say good, I’m talking about when in general the preaching is good with a small minority of duds or awful preaching mixed in.
Dealing with Bad Behavior
Every preacher will also behave badly. Hopefully that’s not normal for him. 1 Corinthians 13:7 says love “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things.” You hope the best. The goal isn’t to let a preacher get away with doing something wrong, but it is to believe the best about him. That approach doesn’t tend toward frying the preacher. Fried preacher doesn’t sound like love, does it?
It is hard to talk to certain pastors. Like many other men, they don’t take it very well. They could go further than that and say it’s mutiny, worthy of church discipline, heresy, or dishonor. Some might try to destroy the critic, like Diotrephes, cast him out of the church, even without any due process.
Preachers Frying Preachers
Conference Cuisine
Preachers are also notorious for fried preacher. No one can fry a preacher like another preacher. Maybe the experience of frying prepares him to fry so well. Preachers conferences can provide a kind of industrial sized instrument of frying.
I know another preacher who in recent days attended a preaching conference. When he returned, he reported to another preacher friend of mine that the conference was a major and constant frying session of a non-attending man. It was long, high temperature frying of this third party. They disintegrated him — “for the Lord.”‘ This kind of gang-style muckraking, one could even call, ganging up on someone. Fifteen to twenty on one pouncing on him in a dark alley.
In Absentia
The crispified pastor wasn’t there to enjoy the benefits of this “helpful” criticism. It was all out of his presence. His critic preachers sat at meals doing so, identifying him by name. It was all very fun and entertaining. Sinful, but at the same time, in public they gave the impression they were in special alignment with God.
The conference attendees didn’t say anything to the preacher. I know the preacher they fried. He had no opportunity for self-defense. He wasn’t there. Fried preacher only occurs with the preacher gone. Every preacher knows that.
The Prayer Request
In the fried preacher recipe book, the best chefs call fried preacher a prayer request. Pray for preacher so and so, because he’s blah-blah-blah-blah-blah. “Help me with my prayers. What else can you say about him?” Nothing to see here, they’re just praying for the guy. Nothing to smell like fried foods. You can smell that aroma from three blocks away.
Getting Caught
Fried preacher is a whole lot of fun in a conference setting. The closer proximity brings a bonding among the participants, what some call a benefit. If you can’t find doctrinal or practical unity, you could find a common enemy to bring everyone together. It take just one person to report in order to cool the fry temperature. Everything just turns soggy then. Maybe you try to find out who reported to make the subject of your next gathering.
Accuser of the Brethren
One might wonder if anyone needed to say anything negative about someone who wasn’t present. Scripture says a lot about the habit of this. Everyone does it at some point. Sometimes, people need to talk about a problem with another person. When it spreads to an all-out gossip convention, this requires a commercial kitchen for such a fry fest. This cannot, is not right. Ever. It requires at least a food service license in most states.
Revelation 12:10 says:
And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven,, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.
Who is the “accuser of our brethren”? God doesn’t need any “help” from the accuser. This is Satan obviously. Satan is the master chef of fried preachers. To mix my metaphors, nothing is gained by backing up the dumpster and practicing demo-day on an absent fellow brother, stripping him down to the studs.
What Is Fried Preacher?
What is “fried preacher”? About one hundred percent of this cuisine is personal aggrandizement. It accomplishes lowering of the one fried and the supposed elevation of the fry chef. Psalm 52:4 says, “Thou lovest all devouring words.” Words are the oil in which a fried preacher fries.
The nature of the flesh, it loves hearing the scoop about someone when he isn’t there. The flesh of someone loves gossip, except when it’s about him. Then it’s something insidious or evil.
Is it ever wrong to say anything critical or negative about a preacher? People must say the truth at times in a certain setting and in a particular way. It usually starts with trying to help the man with whatever they think worthy of frying him. Warning of the danger of a man or his teaching could come if a man is dangerous. He should have heard about the kind of danger he is, first, at least from someone.
Men can expose false teaching in a public presentation. They review the material and point out the error. So then it becomes two people with public positions, who both interacted in public. Both are now open for review, which includes criticism. No one is anonymous. This isn’t fried preacher.
For talk to be gossip, it must be without the target of the gossip present. If he’s there, then it isn’t gossip. That would be something akin to admonishment or exhortation. Also, saying nice things about someone isn’t gossip. Only disparaging comments about a missing person fit into the definition, even if they’re true. That’s Fried Preacher.
Paul Stands Against Peter and the Subject of Authority (Part Three)
Authority of Scripture
To obey God and His Word, one must first believe in His authority and the authority of His Word. I believe in God’s authority and the authority of His Word. True New Testament churches submit to the Bible as their final authority. God and His Word also function through a hierarchy of authority. He uses men. In the first century, God spoke and ruled through apostolic authority. Peter and Paul were uniquely God’s instruments.
The Pharisees and Sadducees opposed the authority of Jesus. Jesus also attacked their faux authority. The Pharisaical view of circumcision and eating with Gentiles arose from their traditions, not from God’s Word. Jesus said, They “teach for doctrines the commandments of men” (Mark 7:7). Their teaching was devoid of God’s authority.
In spite of their insubordination to scripture, Jesus did not debunk the office of the Pharisees, just the opposite in Matthew 23:2: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.” According to Jesus, the Pharisees still sat in Moses’ seat. They held the office. They lost authority, however, by not obeying the Word of God, including that written by Moses.
In Galatians, the gang of false teachers, who traveled to Antioch from Jerusalem and said they associated with James, borrowed from the Pharisee’s tradition. These men mixed certain rituals and traditions with a true gospel to concoct their false one. The Apostle Paul writes against them in Galatians 2. They had no authority, either scriptural or ecclesiological, to overturn the doctrine and practice of the Jerusalem and Antioch churches. They looked out for themselves, not for God’s will or pleasure.
Pastoral Authority
God gives pastoral authority. Pastors need it for fulfilling the important God-ordained task of overseeing a church. God instructs members to obey pastors, assuming in scriptural and even non-scriptural matters. Pastors shouldn’t expect obedience to something unscriptural. Someone in a church may view a practice of the church to be unscriptural.
Our church did fundraising for our school. A church member challenged a method we used. He thought it was unscriptural. Our principal didn’t think so. I wasn’t sure. We dropped the method and lost money. It was the right thing to do.
When a pastor says, “I want everyone there at 9am,” that is a non-scriptural matter, but he has authority in it. 9am then means 9am. A member should take that seriously. If he wants everyone there at 9am, everyone should put their selves under that authority, the idea of “submit.” This unifies a body, all the body parts working together. Defying the authority as a pattern fits the definition of factious, even for not showing up on time.
Some of what I’m addressing relates to a pastor dealing with a pattern of disobedience. He wants to help someone. To do so, he comforts, exhorts, instructs, intreats, warns, and admonishes, the approach depending on the person and his response.
To deal with a matter well, a pastor must listen. He must hear a matter before he answers it (Proverbs 18:13). And even then, he wants to edify, correct, strengthen, and restore. Jesus said, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth,” praying to God the Father. The goal is to rely on God’s Word.
Forum for Challenge
Proving Everything
Depending on the Word of God does not mean depending on an opinion about the Word of God. “A pastor thinks this, so it is true.” It might be. I hope it is. However, scripture also says (1 Thess 5:21-22):
21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 22 Abstain from all appearance of evil.
Paul also wrote in 1 Corinthians 14:31-32:
31 For ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted. 32 And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.
The spirits of the prophets were subject to the prophets. A forum for challenge exists in a church. The Bible is the final authority.
Helping People Change
Room to Grow
Certain times I led toward a change of position in our church. Just because I took a new position, I knew that didn’t mean that everyone would believe it. It might take time for everyone to come along. Unity also matters in those occasions. Our church had taken a different position for awhile. I wanted everyone to change, but I didn’t require everyone to change. The bottom line during those times was not causing “divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine” (Romans 16:17).
Opinions and what Paul calls doubtful disputations (Rom 14:1) necessitate sorting. Not everyone applies scripture exactly the same. Sanctification occurs and tweaks viewpoints. Every disagreement is not a threat to or defiance of authority. It’s not rebellion. When it takes even pastors years to change on something, they can’t turn around and expect someone else to change in days or hours.
Harmful Approaches
Through many years, I have listened to numbers of various positions of pastors. We almost never agree on everything. Nevertheless, pastors will talk with great confidence and authority when they state their positions. Pastors might treat an issue like they’re Teddy Roosevelt after just climbing San Juan Hill. They’re raising the flag at the top of Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima. Bluster and bravado or a stern countenance don’t equate with authority.
I may hear a man mock my position in his preaching, sometimes setting up straw man arguments. I might smile at the audaciousness of it, but mockery is not especially convincing. Calling people a liar definitely doesn’t persuade. Neither does characterizing the difference in an extreme or insulting manner.
Sometimes someone says God gave him peace. He may add, “I prayed about it.” Or, “I fasted over it.” If you disagree, somehow you oppose answers to prayer and the practice of fasting. A man expresses a feeling of peace. Scripture nowhere uses a feeling as a harbinger of truth.
Pastors can find many various means to provoke change. Someone might notice a modulation in the tone of voice. Cheeriness is missing. It isn’t friendly now. The eyelids are half mast. A pastor can send a message in the spirit of mean girl syndrome. Someone in is now out. If a person was a fish, he can’t swim in the small pond anymore. He’s relegated to the smaller adjacent puddle until he apprehends the message sent.
Longsuffering and Patience
“God is longsuffering toward usward” (2 Peter 3:9). “Charity suffereth long” (1 Corinthians 13:4). I think of the fellowservant in Jesus’ story in Matthew 18:29, who cried, “Have patience with me!” I don’t see a biblical pattern of cutting off people with a different position, cancelling them with little to no due process.
A kind of political cancellation and making phone calls, applying social and economic pressure, is not the method of pastoral authority. People will have difficulty seeing Jesus in an environment of possible expectation of punishment. Scriptural conviction can motivate loving service that will please the Lord.
God gives and uses authority. Romans 13:1 says, “For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” At the same time, “My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation” (James 3:1). Especially church leaders should know that the final judgment of Jesus Christ, that’s what matters. “Ye masters,” forbear “threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven” (Eph 6:9).
Everyone of us will give an account to God (Romans 14:10). And God says, “destroy not him for whom Christ died” (Romans 14:15). Christ didn’t give authority to take His place as Lord or destroy the people He died for.
More to Come
Greece, Biblical Christian Tour (Tutku Tours) Can You Come?
Lord willing, from March 15, 2024 to March 23, 2024 we will be on a Christian history tour of Greece with Dr. Mark Wilson and Tutku Educational Tours, visiting the ancient sites associated with the Apostle Paul’s journeys in Greece, as recorded in Scripture, as well as other sites of historical importance, such as the oracle at Delphi.
As the trip brochure indicates, we are scheduled to see places including:
Neapolis, Philippi, Amphipolis, Thessaloniki, Berea, Kalambaka (Meteora), Delphi, Athens, Corinth, and Cenchrea
Part of what is scheduled to take place is as follows:
[We will visit] the port city of Philippi … Paul landed by boat and first brought the gospel to Europe. … We follow the Via Egnatia which the apostle took into the city. Here at Philippi Paul preached his first sermon in Europe (Acts 16:13-15) and baptized the first Christian convert in the continent, a “certain woman named Lydia.” … Extensive Roman and Byzantine ruins have been uncovered and there is a crypt where it is believed Paul and Silas were imprisoned. We leave Philippi and continue to follow the Via Egnatia to Amphipolis (Acts 17:1) to view the Lion Monument that Paul would have seen as he traveled by this city. We pass by Apollonia (Acts 17:1) and return to our hotel in Thessaloniki … Paul spent a number of weeks in Thessalonica during his 2nd Missionary Journey establishing a church (Acts 17:1-9) to whom he would a short time later write two letters (1 & 2 Thessalonians). Visit the Roman Agora (marketplace), where a mob was formed against Paul and an ensuing riot started in the city (Acts 17:5) as well as the Archaeological Museum. … We leave Thessaloniki for a brief visit to Berea (modern Veria), the place whose Jewish citizens “received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11). After viewing the Bema— the spot where tradition has Paul teaching the Bereans—and the beautiful monument dedicated to the apostle[.] … [We visit the] Delphi Museum, whose impressive collection includes an inscription concerning the governor Gallio (Acts 18:12), which plays a crucial role in establishing the chronology of Paul’s life and ministry. … Paul visited Athens during his 2nd Missionary Journey (Acts 17:15- 34). We’ll see the Agora (“Marketplace”) of ancient Athens where the apostle dialogued with the Athenian citizens and philosophers (Acts 17:17) and also at the Areopagus (“Mars Hill”) where Paul addressed the city leaders (Acts 17:19-33). … [We] proceed to nearby Cenchrea, one of the two harbors of ancient Corinth from where Paul sailed on more than one occasion (Acts 18:18) and which was also the home of another early church and an influential Christian woman, Phoebe (Rom. 16:1). We then visit Corinth, the place where Paul ministered for 11⁄2 years (Acts 18:1-18) and [to whom he wrote] 1 & 2 Corinthians). … Extensive ruins of Corinth are visible today, including temples, water fountains, shops, various public buildings, the largest Agora (“Marketplace”) in the ancient world and the Bema, where Paul likely met before the governor Gallio (Acts 18:12-17). The Corinthian Museum contains many significant artifacts, several of which have a direct link to events, items and people mentioned in the New Testament.
We have travelled with Tutku before to Egypt and to Turkey, and they have done a very good job. The scholars that they have guiding their tours are excellent. For example, Dr. James Hoffmeier, with whom we visited Egypt, is a leading evangelical Egyptologist. We recorded numbers of videos with him of things that related to the historicity of Scripture, some of which we have posted online (and others which still need to get live). I would definitely recommend Tutku for those who wish to visit Israel or other countries with significant sites for Biblical history.
The tour is at a discounted rate and is designed for pastors, professors, and others who might at some point lead a tour or point others to a tour. So you are also likely to meet interesting and knowledgeable people on these tours. If you are actively involved in Christian ministry (even if you are not an ordained pastor), it is quite possible that they would let you come. The price is quite reasonable, and if you can take care of your own airfare with credit card points or miles it becomes even more reasonable.
Would you like to join us?
–TDR
Revivalism or Fake Revival, Jesus Revolution, and Asbury
Other Work By Me On This Topic (Here1, Here2, Here3, Here4, Here5, Here6, Here7, Here8, Here9, Here10, and Here11)
What do you think is worse? Fake Revival or No Revival? I would say, fake is worse. I’ve got, I think, good reasons for fake being worse than no revival. Fake revival does far more damage than nothing happening. True revivals through history occurred. Probably more fake ones though.
Jesus Revolution and Asbury University
In recent days, attention focuses in the United States among religious folk especially about an apparent revival in the 1960s, called the Jesus Revolution in Time Magazine. Descendants of Calvary Chapel made a movie, which is in mainstream, secular theaters. Another apparent revival presented itself in Asbury, Kentucky, at Asbury University, a historic Wesleyan/Holiness institution. I see it as a great interest that these two so-called revivals dovetailed like they did.
Revival moved up as a conversation topic. Conservative podcasts even among non-believers discuss the two, Jesus Revolution and Asbury. I think Fox News mentioned the two in various instances. Because Emmy award winner, Kelsey Grammer, starred as Chuck Smith in the Jesus Revolution movie, that brought greater coverage and consciousness.
Asbury reads as Woke or somewhat woke, which modified its revival in the traditional sense. In the history of the United States, historians point to two revivals they call “the First Great Awakening” and “the Second Great Awakening.” Before the second, the first was just the Great Awakening, like the first was just the Great War until a second World War occurred.
The two, the first and second Great Awakenings, were much different in nature and in effect. A big chunk of professing Christendom rejects the second Great Awakening and says only the Great Awakening in colonial America actually happened. I would be one of those. I agree the Great Awakening was a revival. The second was a fake one.
Controversy of Calling Something “Not a Revival”
Calling a professed revival, not a revival, is as controversial as denying the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. People who accept the revival, like those who say the Covid vaccinations were wonderful, want to hear only positive affirmation of their revival.
Questioning a revival is very close to questioning salvation, which is taught in scripture. If you read either 1 John or James, those two epistles among other places in the Bible, you see challenging or questioning a salvation profession. John does it. James does it. Paul does it. And Jesus does it. Some will stand at the very Great White Throne before Jesus, professing salvation, and He will say, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”
Revival, as I see it in scripture, is a larger than normal flurry of true conversions. The idea of revival indicates something dead becoming alive, which speaks of regeneration. People are getting really saved in large numbers and based upon true gospel preaching.
The Asbury leaders say that God brought a revival there starting on February 8. They also say they can’t stop it, since God brought it, even though they did stop the regular meetings there just this last week in part because of a case of measles. As you might comprehend already, I don’t think the Asbury “Outpouring” or the Jesus Revolution were revival. I don’t need to wait to see on those two. I’m saying right now. They’re not.
My Experience
School Camp
As a senior in high school, I experienced my only gully-washer so-called revival experience. My academy had school camp, which it also called “spiritual emphasis week.” We got revivalistic style preaching morning and night. In long and emotional invitations, weeping students knelt at the front. Thirteen made professions.
The week ended with a session of emotional testimonies. Then we headed home. It did not translate into anything lasting. Not long after, it was the same-old, same-old with rebellion, apathy, and lack of biblical interest. The effects of school camp and spiritual emphasis week, despite the “revival,” didn’t continue.
Jack Hyles
When Jack Hyles was alive and in his heyday, in many instances I was in meetings where almost everyone in massive auditoriums came forward at his invitation. They streamed forward with only a few people left in their seats. I would think that Hyles could easily vie with any revivalist in his production of effect. If immediate outward manifestations measured revival, Hyles did better than anyone I’ve ever seen and on a more consistent basis.
At one point, independent Baptist, revivalist churches in the Hyles movement were the largest churches in the world. Huge crowds gathered to hear a line-up of revivalist preachers. They were pragmatic and doctrinally errant, but people felt intense closeness to God. I’m telling you that I’ve seen it.
Jack Hyles compared his gatherings to the Day of Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This recent “revival” at Asbury University its advocates also call an “outpouring.” This reflects a particular viewpoint about the Holy Spirit, that since the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, more outpourings of Him might occur.
Mexico
I took a trip to Mexico after my Freshman year in high school, and we drove into remote mountain villages around Monterrey to hold revival meetings. I didn’t know Spanish except for six or so verses I could quote then. Dozens and dozens made professions of faith with the pragmatic, emotional manipulation that occurred by my group. I would contend that much greater fake revival occurred in the 60s and 70s through revivalists than the Asbury one. These revivals did not get popular media attention of Asbury or the Jesus Revolution, but they resulted in explosive numerical growth as significant as the Jesus Revolution and much greater than Asbury.
Revival?
In listening to a few evaluations of the Jesus Revolution, a significant effect of this revival, mentioned by supporters, was the rise and popularity of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) and informal or casual dress in church attenders. I could add others from reading and observation. I’ve read Calvary Chapel Distinctives and the Philosophy of Calvary Chapel. I got especially interested, because of one of the largest evangelical churches in the state of Oregon is in Applegate, very close to where we started our church in Jackson County there. Many people involved with the movement, it’s obvious have no true conversion and don’t even understand the gospel.
I listened to at least one of the revivalists running the Asbury revival in one of its earlier video recorded services. I would not characterize what I saw as revival. I wouldn’t call it gospel preaching. It was so shallow, superficial, sentimental, worldly, woke, and Charismatic that I would have nothing to do with it. I hope someone gets saved through it, like Paul hoped in Philippians 1 with men who opposed him. Of course, I would want the salvation of people in Kentucky in the Asbury vein and through the Jesus Movement out of California. I believe both hurt the overall cause of Christ like any fake revival would.
Many years ago, Ian Murray wrote the classic Revival and Revivalism, distinguishing between true revival and only revivalism. Almost everything today is revivalism, which is fake revival. People want God to do something. God is doing something. Instead of being so overtly concerned that He does something, they should surrender to what He has done, is doing, and will do in the future.
More to Come
Men Seek Signs and Wisdom, But God Saves by the Foolishness of Preaching the Gospel
1 Corinthians 1:18-32: The Foolishness of Preaching
In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul said God uses the foolishness of preaching to save. God saves people through the foolishness of preaching. Paul started out this section in verse 18 by saying that “the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness.”
It’s not that the cross is foolishness or that preaching is foolishness. People think it is foolishness and Paul is saying, “That thing they think is foolishness; that’s what God uses to save.” God uses a means that does not make sense. Because people think the gospel is foolishness, they become offended from it.
Of all the offenses of the gospel, Paul gives at least two. (1) The Cross, and (2) Preaching. The cross is offensive. It is this way also in at least two ways. (1) Someone on a cross needs saving. Saving comes by a powerful means. (2) The cross would be to say that Jesus is the Savior or the Messiah. I’m not going to write about that in this post. Instead, preaching.
Rather Signs or Wisdom
Paul in essence asks, “Why use preaching when Jews seek after signs and Greeks after wisdom?” (1 Cor 1:22) He divides all men into these two different methodological categories. Jews and Greeks need signs and wisdom, not preaching. In my thirty-five plus years of ministry, I agree that every audience of ministry breaks down into those two general categories.
When you think of signs and wisdom, that might seem like two items people should like and want. They are two biblical words. In a very technical sense, a sign is a miracle. Almost exclusively, I think someone should view a miracle as a sign gift. I will get back to that.
Wisdom. Isn’t Proverbs about wisdom? We pray for wisdom. How could wisdom be bad? Proverbs 4:7 says, “Wisdom is the principle thing.”
Signs and Wisdom
Signs
Signs are something evident in a way of supernatural intervention. If there is a God, won’t He do obvious supernatural things? “If He doesn’t do those, why should I believe in Him? I want to see some signs. Wouldn’t He give me those if He really wanted me to believe in Him? That would be easy for Him, if He really did exist. If God did give me signs, I would believe. Since He doesn’t, then I won’t believe or I don’t need to believe.”
The absence of signs is not that God is not working. He works in thousands of different ways in every moment. They are all supernatural. We even can see how God is working in numbers of ways.
People would say they want more than God’s providential working. That isn’t enough. They want God to make it easy for them to believe by doing something amazing and astounding like what they read that Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, and the Apostles did. People desire direct supernatural divine intervention.
Churches feel the pressure to fake signs, because people want them. They aren’t signs, because they’re faking them, which redefines even what a sign is. Churches also conjure up experiences that give an impression that something supernatural is occurring. People can claim a sign from a lowered expectation of what a sign is. Even if it isn’t something supernatural, people want to feel something at church that might have them think the Holy Spirit is there. This is their evidence for God.
Wisdom
Wisdom in 1 Corinthians 1 isn’t God’s wisdom, but human or man’s wisdom. This could be what people call “science” today. It is scientific proof or evidence. They need data or empirical evidence. This is very brainy arguments.
God is working in the world. It is good to talk about that. This is known as the providence of God. He upholds this world and all that is in it in many various ways. I love that.
A lot of evidence exists out there for everything that is in the Bible: archaeological, scientific, psychological, logical, and historical. People will say that’s what they need and that’s what makes sense to them. Even if they’re not saying that, it makes sense to believers that they need intellectual arguments.
Jews and Greeks in 1 Corinthians 1 represent all apparent seekers in God. If churches and their leaders are seeker sensitive, they would provide signs and wisdom. In a categorical way, that’s what they do. They use the preferred ways of their audience, rather than what God says to do. Apparent seekers are not the source for a method of salvation. God is.
You could give analysis as to the place of signs and wisdom as categorical approaches for ministry philosophy. Churches are rampant with both. Paul is saying, eliminate those as methods. Use the God-ordained method only.
God wants preaching as the method of accomplishing salvation. People are not saved any other way than preaching. Many reasons exist for this, some given in 1 Corinthians 1 and others in other biblical texts.
The Requirement of Censorship with the Separation of Church and State: The Truth of the Bible Requires Institutional Adherence
Recent Twitter Files reveal widespread and coordinated censorship there. Where vile language acceptable, those speaking truth have lost their jobs. Long before, state institutions censored the most important truths in human history without recrimination.
Before you continue, I offer you a guide. This post will move outside of most people’s box. I ask you not to delve into the establishment clause of the first amendment of the United States Constitution. Before you jump to practical ramifications, consider the truth of the post.
The Truth, the Logos
When you read Genesis 1 in the Bible, you are reading the account of the beginning of all time, space, and matter. Everything originates with God out of nothing. That is the explanation for everything. It does not even exist without Him, but He also sustains it.
The Bible record is truth as well as is the truth. Scripture presents itself as the truth. Jesus, God the Son, said to His Father God in John 17:17, “Thy Word is truth.” It might make you feel good and help your life, but that is just a byproduct of its truth. It works because it is the truth. The truth is one, because God is one. Nothing in this record contradicts any other part. God does not deny Himself.
God created man in His image and with His likeness. He intended man to reflect Him in his nature. Men should treat and look at the world in every aspect like God would. They should follow what God says, the truth, for and about everything. God expects men to view the world, see it, like He does.
Modernists speculate a fully naturalistic origination and continuation of all things. They opine this as progress from the superstition of ignorance. In fact, the premoderns had it right. It never was a natural world. The Greeks were right in their concept of cosmos, which they called logos, an intelligence that permeated all space and matter and in contrast to random and chaotic naturalism.
People in John’s day understood his Logos in John 1:1, who He said was Jesus Christ, was the source for this cohesion, intelligence, and order. Paul wrote that in Christ were hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3) and that by all things consisted (1:17). That was the Logos.
No Bifurcation of Truth
Paul was also emphatic in the truth of Christ’s bodily resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Jesus showed Thomas the wounds in His hands. He was one, whole Person. A physical body was the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Both body and spirit glorified God. This contradicted a pagan dualism, that separated truth into separate spheres of the spiritual and physical.
This New Testament presentation matches the Old Testament concept of truth, “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). Every aspect of knowledge falls under the purveyance of God’s truth. Even though someone may divide the truth into various fields such as government, economics, math, and biology, it still is one cohesive, orderly truth proceeding from the one mind of one God.
Whatever field or region under the sovereignty of one truth splinters from the one, or whenever it does, it becomes distorted, superficial, meaningless, and subjective. The greatest advancements today in philosophy and science come in what Stephen Meyer calls “the return to the God hypothesis.” The universe is fine tuned. A cell is irreducibly complex. In philosophy, only God explains the existence of everything that exists. It’s impossible for something that exists not to have a reason for its existence.
Separating the truth from government, art, music, and economics, leaves any one in chaos and moral relativism. The gospel does not stand apart from all the truth of the Bible. And the gospel itself cannot and should not be divided into separate components of different degrees of subjective value. For instance, it is good for social reasons and perhaps psychological ones but not to reconcile to God and appease His holy wrath.
Religion the Truth, Equal with Facts
The state is good with religion as long it isn’t the truth. If it becomes the truth, it is equal with facts, science, math, and engineering. True religion cannot just stop with the true definitions of a man and of a woman. Next it says you go to Hell if you reject Jesus Christ. Even worse it limits your marijuana use.
Much of the philosophical conversation today revolves around what I here write. One faction, even considered conservative now, bemoans the loss of Western Civilization and its advantages. It is the water in which we swim, even if no longer Judeo-Christian ethics.
Classically liberal intellectuals warn readers and listeners. They won’t like the disappearance of Christianity, hearkening Nietzche’s prophecy about the death of God in the 19th century. However, if you remove the resurrection, ascension, and second coming of Christ, the consummation of all things in the future literal, physical reign of Jesus Christ, you eradicate all of Christianity. It is a whole that cannot be separated into disjunctive parts.
Total Truth
For a long time Christians self-censored by backing away from total truth (the title of Nancy Pearcey’s book). They stopped bringing the truth to all the subjects and every institution, all ordained by God. The dismissal of one is the dismissal of all.
A moral statement is either true or false. True moral statements come from the Word of God. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, nothing else the Bible says is true. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 15. You cannot chop the Bible up like that. The moral values become meaningless without the truth of the history and the scientific declarations.
The table of nations in Genesis 10 is the truth. The prophecies of Daniel 11 are the truth. What scripture says all over about men and women is the truth. These are not subjective and relativistic. They are objective. They are true. All these writings should be taught everywhere as truth, not in religion class as an alternative along side the lies of other religions.
The separation of church and state, which is not in the United States Constitution, necessitates censorship. Anything church related is only church related and stays in the church. Only state stuff belongs in the state, which as many of you know, includes everything in the world, including biblical issues like marriage and parenting practices. Then the state labels all of theirs science and facts and outside of the state, unless cooperating with the state, subjective, private, and even conspiracy. If it is truth, it is your truth, subjective truth, which is fine as long as you keep it outside of institutions.
Take Moses into the Supreme Court Building
For awhile the state has been fine with a sculpture of Moses with the two tablets on the Supreme Court building. It is a decoration. It is a ritual. Maybe it’s even an archetype into which you read whatever you want. They cannot use it as grounds for decision making, even if its self-evident truths form the basis for logic, argument, and morality.
Perhaps a government and big business or oligarchical complex now joins in widespread censorship. Let’s just say that complex does censor the citizenry of the United States and other Western countries. Christians already censored themselves by segregating themselves away from God’s world and keeping the truth away from its institutions, whose very existence arises from that truth.
God requires more than talking about the truth at church. He requires adherence to the truth in every institution. This is the teaching of all nations. True discipleship requires national adherence. Churches at least should adhere, but their goals are further than that. They want the knowledge and dominion of His truth everywhere.
Could There Be Practical Reasons Why Some Evangelists See More or Better Results than Others? Pt. 3
Every time I begin to consider the problems in this country and then the world, I go back to the gospel. Whatever path you ponder, it comes back to necessary conversion. Someone can make moves that might postpone the inevitable, but the actual solution is the gospel. Everything else is “peace, peace, when there is no peace.”
Last Monday I wrote two reasons and Wednesday a third on why some evangelists see more or better results than others. Here’s a fourth.
4. A Difference in Diligent Work
Scripture emphasizes work in evangelism, diligence, as if it would make a difference in the salvation in men’s souls. Jesus said in John 9:4: “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.” Even Jesus saw the need for urgency in getting something done sooner than later. This was an example from which the lyrics to a song come (here verse 2):
Work, for the night is coming: Work through the sunny noon; Fill brightest hours with labor: Rest comes sure and soon. Give every flying minute Something to keep in store; Work, for the night is coming, When man works no more.
The Apostle Paul also talked about the diligence to his work. He explains in what I call his “how-to book for the ministry” in 1 Thessalonians 2:9: “For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.” You read there, “our labour and travail: for labouring night and day.” Paul connected this to his success.
Even as I wrote about Paul, I thought about Philip the evangelist, when he evangelized the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. This is one of the most well-known, famous evangelism stories in all of scripture. Here are the last two verses in the chapter:
39 And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing. 40 But Philip was found at Azotus: and passing through he preached in all the cities, till he came to Caesarea.
Almost anyone else would have gone back to his lazy-boy and had an iced tea. He put in his 1.5 hours of evangelism for the week, time to head home. Not Philip. After the Ethiopian eunuch was saved, a great evangelistic moment in history, Philip “preached in all the cities” from Azotus to Caesarea.
What I’m describing is related at least to love. The 1.5 hour person is the one who is the legalist. Don’t get me wrong. I do think that having a habit, temperance of a fashion, putting it on the schedule, is and can be good. It’s not enough when it’s love. It isn’t laboring for the night cometh when no man can work. It isn’t labor and travail, laboring night and day. It isn’t preaching in all the cities. Everyone has other things to do. I agree things need to be done.
Every little bit helps. I’m happy when someone at least does evangelize. I’m writing about how some see more than others and in a legitimate way, true evangelism. Diligent labor is another difference.
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