Shameless Insistence

I was struck by a couple of lines in the blog update for Stephanie Vest recently (http://stephanievest.com/ ). “Please pray loudly, boldly, on your knees, with cries, tears, whatever it takes… we need Stephanie’s lungs to heal. It is OK to ask God for the same miracle multiple times - in a day, in an hour, and even in a minute! So keep the prayers comin!” [They now need her heart to heal further too, I might add, before they can continue the chemo treatment she needs so desperately.]

If Christ’s apostles needed instruction on prayer, maybe we do, too.

Obviously the pagans had a different idea of prayer than God’s people (1 Kings 18:26,28; Matt 6:7). Even among God’s people, the Pharisees had a different idea than the Publican (Luke 18:10-13), and even than Jesus (Matt 6:5-6). But the Bible’s instruction on prayer is not given by precept but by practice. Consider.

Paul’s judgment was that David was a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22). Take all the requests David made in Psalm 119, make them your requests, and now you are praying with the heart of God. Or further, take the Lord’s praying in John 17, occupy your own heart with his requests, and you find out something about how to pray.

Human nature, contemporary culture, and our skewed or missing view of God’s kingdom all contribute to our ignorance about true, biblical prayer. There are also the false-prophet (profit?) faith persuasions that blame your lack of faith for the failure of their “word of knowledge.”

So how can we learn how to pray? Study the “Lord’s Prayer” in Matt 6 and Luke 11. Its focused requests about the kingdom balance praise with daily bread, and receiving forgiveness with forgiving others.

Study the stories. Jesus taught on prayer by talking about the friend at midnight and the father who gives his children good gifts. He taught us how to process personal injustices by narrating the tale of the widow and the judge. But maybe the lesson most apropos to our societal situation is the contrast between the self-focused absorption of the Pharisee and the smitten self-awareness of unholiness in the Publican.

Pray loudly, boldly, on your knees, with cries, tears (see Jesus in Gethsemane). It is OK to ask God for the same miracle multiple times (see the story in Luke 11 of the man who asked with importunity—earnestly with shameless insistence).

Continue praying for Eric and Stephanie and their kids. Healing her is like God delivering no more than a loaf of bread. But it is receiving more than a loaf of bread to us.

Scan the Plan, Stan

Want to avoid confusing contradictions in scripture? Make sure you read each part of the Bible, keeping in mind the whole.

The background starts in the beginning. Genesis 1-11 covers 2000 years in 11 chapters. Genesis 12-50 covers only 400 years in 39 chapters. Beginning in Gen 2, Adam and Eve were in innocence in the Garden of Eden. That age of innocence ended in failure with the fall into sin.

Next, in Gen 3-6, God dealt with the growing human race by leaving them to act according to conscience. But it got so bad that God wiped out the entire world except for Noah and started over with him and his family.

So in Gen 7-11 God dealt with humanity under a system of human government. Government failed to fulfill God’s plan and went totally in the opposite direction (Gen 10), so God came down in judgment, confused the languages and separated the nations.

So starting in Gen 12 God does something different again. He takes one individual (Abraham) and makes him a promise based on Abraham’s faith. God begins to fulfill that promise miraculously with the birth of Isaac. So now God begins a process of redemption that starts with one family, to redeem the whole human race.

By the time you reach the book of Exodus, that family has grown into a nation. God now deals with them according to the law through a sacrificial system. As you read the rest of the historical books of the OT, you see that nation fail under the priests (in the book of Judges), then under the kings (Kings and Chronicles) and finally under the prophets (the last 17 books of the Old Testament).

So when Christ arrives in the "fullness of time," at least five different ways of dispensing salvation have been tried (five “dispensations”) and each one ended in human failure. God’s answer is to take it upon himself to redeem mankind, and he does so when Christ comes. This begins the dispensation of grace.

Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the promise of a Jewish Messiah. So he first had to go to the Jews to offer them the kingdom. The four gospels record how they rejected both the kingdom and the king, and crucified him. God simply turned that into part of his plan, and inaugurated a “mystery,” which he explains to Paul as “the church age.” In the dispensation of the grace of God, the kingdom of God is spiritual, and the blessings of the new covenant are given to Gentiles without them having to fulfill any Jewish obligations.

Paul explains this in Romans 9-11 as God’s way of making the Jews jealous in order to draw them back to Christ. This will be successful, but not until the end of the church age, after the church (which is the body and bride of Christ) is raptured to be with him before the Second Coming.

Maranatha. Even so come, Lord Jesus.

Commander's Intent

A soldier's every move is predicated upon hours of forethought and planning. After the commander-in-chief approves the order of battle, a soldier will find his personal orders specifying the scheme of maneuver and field of fire. Each battalion is told what to do, what materiel to use, and how to set up supply lines to replace its munitions.

There's only one problem: no plan survives contact with the enemy because the enemy always gets a vote. Consider the variables: weather changes, a key military asset is destroyed after it is deployed. In short, the enemy is unpredictable. Churches fail like armies fail. They put their effort into creating plans that become useless once the enemy is engaged.

So in the 1980s the US Army reinvented its process by instituting a concept called Commander's Intent (CI). CI is one succinct, clear and concrete statement that appears at the top of every order. It specifies the plan's goal. It diagrams the end-game and gives the ultimate objective. It is not just the desired outcome, but the ordered one.

CI: Break the will of the insurgency in Anbar Province.

CI: Put Third Battalion in Saddam City to clear the neighborhood of insurgents so political leaders are secured.

The beautiful thing about knowing the CI is that it means your plans are never rendered obsolete by the unpredictable. You may lose the ability to execute the plan (involving the timing of men and materiel), but you never lose the responsibility of executing the Commander's Intent. So if there is just one soldier left in Saddam City, he'd better be doing something to protect the political leaders as they pass through it.

CI manages to align the behavior of soldiers at all levels of the army without requiring detailed instructions from the High Command. If you know the intention of the order, you are free to improvise to arrive at its fulfillment. If people know the intent, they can engineer their own solutions to accomplishing the task.

Boo-yah! That's why we have church buildings, Sunday School classes, and pass offering plates, even if some of the early churches did not. And this is why I get questions about discipleship like:
· Why doesn't Paul use the word discipleship in his epistles?
· Is the Matthew 18 Great Commission for the church today?
· Are we wrong to build entire ministries geared toward making disciples?
· Can we model our discipleship ministry after Jesus without violating any dispensational boundaries, or is Matthew 28:18-20 just for Jesus' Jewish apostles in their immediate post-resurrection ministry?
· Isn't discipleship more of a "Kingdom" (with a capital K) idea for the apostles, than a "mystery" idea for the church...yadda yadda?

The fact you are asking the question shows you missed it. Matt 28 (and this is not the only place) is the CI. Watch!

"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen." Matthew 28:19-20

What is the Commander's Intent? Not going. Going is only a plan. Why? Because it does not survive contact with the enemy.

Still don't agree? Then go. Going in itself accomplishes nothing except putting you in another place. So while that is part of the plan, it is not the CI. Neither is baptism. A lot of "churches" baptize as the centerpiece of their sacraments, but that doesn't even make someone a Christian.

Only when you "teach all nations" (make disciples of everyone, not just Jews but also Gentiles) are you fulfilling the Commander's Intent. The CI is discipleship. Then why doesn't Paul talk about discipleship in his epistles? Because Jesus is dealing with the descriptive, but Paul is talking about the doctrinal.

Four words in the Hebrew and four words in the Greek are all there is to describe discipleship. The descriptive approach will note that the word disciple is used proportionately almost as much in Acts as in the Gospels, but is not used after that. Don't get seduced into the Dark Side of the dispensationalist Force by believing the Great Commission was strictly a Kingdom (of heaven) approach.

Add-in the methodological because discipleship is the CI from Gen 1:28 on down. If Paul did not repudiate a concept (as being incompatible with "the mystery of the revelation of the gospel of the grace of yadda-yadda"), then it is still valid today. If you do not take that approach then you end up building a theology based on inference. The verses don't say what you say they say, but you infer certain things to be true so that it will all make sense to you. Things like two bodies (or two churches—Kingdom and Mystery), or yadda yadda.

The Commander's Intent is discipleship. That is why, in Acts, Paul and Barnabus set out for the regions beyond to "make disciples" of all nations. In the epistles, theology and methodology have not changed, but Paul now calls the disciples, saints. Why? Because they were a different audience! In Paul's epistles he is dialoguing in the Greek mindset. So Paul morphs Jewish rabbinical practice into a Gentile, biblical "in the church" principle.

Discipleship is now saintship, and that is the Commander's Intent. It is not so much that dispensations have changed, but the makeup of the church changed because of the dispensations. So we focus on saintship and build ministries focused on making saints. But Jesus mostly called that discipleship because that's what rabbis did. But that wasn't inconsistent with the original commission to multiply and replenish the earth with the goal of recovering dominion (CI).

Paul did not know Jesus after the flesh. That is why in the epistles he calls us Gentile disciples, "saints," instead of disciples. Hope this makes sense, because since Paul didn't need to reinvent the wheel, he knew we were smart enough to read the gospels for ourselves and be able to recognize a methodology (in Jesus) that did not conflict with his (Paul's) theological descriptiveness.

But maybe more than just theological descriptiveness, because Paul was dealing with Gentiles, and they had issues that the typical Jew did not. So besides the doctrinal descriptiveness, what Paul did was to wrap discipleship (sainthood) around the idea of the new/old man, putting on/off, and what I call "the vices in his verses" (Paul's several "vice lists"). This is how the CI is translated down into the actions of the individual soldier!

So in Matt 28 Great Commission terms, Paul's "going" (of which he did a lot, along with baptizing and teaching where he went) was in order to use evangelism as a tool to make disciple-saints and form them into churches. Making babies alone is not fulfilling fatherhood. So evangelism without discipleship is not really making saints.

All discipleship is, is making saints through spiritual parenting. That is the Commander's Intent, and it turns evangelism and discipleship into two sides of the same coin, just like repentance and faith, trust and obey, etc.

I asked a hyper-diaper one time, "So what part of the Great Commission do you not do? As far as I know, you are still baptizing (though some hypers do not), and yet you still say 'I doesn't believe in the Great Commission' because 'it is not for the church' and therefore, 'we [KCBT-ers] are not taking a stand on the word of yadda yadda.'"

The CI transcends dispensations. How did the hyper-diapers miss that, all these years?

Boo-Ya!

We move from evangelical overreach by the political "right" to evangelical underreach by the "theologically right." One of our Shepherd School students who is also an international student studying at a university in Kansas City asked me a question recently.

“I cannot find a good explanation about 2 Samuel 24:13 and 1 Chronicles 21:12. First one says seven years of famine, and second one says three years.”

He goes on to say, “I’m reading Basic Theology by Charles C. Ryrie. He believes in the inerrancy of the Bible, but I don’t think he has the same opinion about manuscripts and translations of the Bible as we believe. His book says ‘The Septuagint translation says three years in both places, so likely the figure in 2 Samuel is a scribal error. (It has been changed to say three years in some versions, including the NIV.) Though copies were very carefully made, errors inevitably crept in. This seems to be one, but it is not an error in the original—that was inerrant when it was written, but inerrancy cannot be extended to the copies.’

Really? So the same Spirit that gave us the originals through inspiration cannot be relied upon to preserve an inspired text of what he gave? How wonderfully existential. Now Charles, since I know you eschew crystal balls and that sort of thing, how do you KNOW the original did not say it just like we see it today? Just because you think it is a contradiction and an error? Did it never occur to you that it might be correct but that you just haven't figured out how to reconcile the two statements?

This created a dilemma for our intrepid student, who then asks, “I would like to know how I should understand this. Charles Ryrie tries to explain this is not a contradiction of the Bible, however, I believe God can preserve His word accurately. I cannot agree with his interpretation about this. The KJV says seven years and three years in these verses.”

Well, I hate to contradict C.C. Ryrie, because his body is 90% brain, but it is better to contradict him than contradict the Holy Ghost, AND I think there is a much better answer than the one he gives. He relies on the solution proposed by the ancient Septuagint (the Greek translation of these Old Testament Hebrew verses, which dates to the fourth century or earlier) and accepted by the NIV. That solution is to simply change one place to match the other and say the scribes copied it wrong.

There are a couple of “just so-so, okay” answers that would keep you from getting into the dilemma that Ryrie and the NIV do. Ryrie says he believes in inerrancy but admits he does not have an inerrant Bible; ...and he refers directly to the NIV in this camp. Some of these “scholars” are just too smart by half.

First, God could have talked to David more than once before David finally decided.

Second, the seven years concerned “thy land” specifically, whereas the three years were simply a general famine.

But the best answer (simple, elegant, and the one that Ryrie and the NIV translators missed by giving-in to the perfect scholars, imperfect scribes, and the Bible critics) is that four years of famine had already preceded David’s dilemma (2 Sam 21:1 = three years of famine plus a month more in verses 9-10 plus nearly a year to number the people in 2 Sam 24:8).

Boo-ya! So the seven years was three MORE years to make a TOTAL of seven. Maybe Ryrie missed it because he’s not so good at math. I don’t know what excuse to give for the NIV. Not completely God’s word, maybe?

Overreach of the Evangelical Right

I usually don’t comment on politics, but this is July 4th and on some occasions politics and religion do collide to provide fireworks. Such was the case last week when James Dobson watched a two year-old speech by one of the Presidential candidates and decided to take umbrage at it.

Most people are familiar with the Democratic Party’s (and their nominee’s) position on the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion. That Focus on the Family founder Dobson disagrees with this is not news and does not create any sparks, and from what I could tell was not his only criticism against Obama.

My attention would probably not even be drawn to the exchange except that in channel-surfing on June 24th I let the remote land for a few moments on Anderson Cooper 360. CNN’s Cooper was interviewing a panel of three people about the controversy between Dobson and Obama, because everyone thinks the evangelical right will swing the election (and “evangelicals” seem none too enthusiastic about McCain, either). The panel included Roland Martin, Rev. Al Sharpton, and the President of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins.

Perkins defended Dobson by stating in the Anderson Cooper 360 blog before the show: “Dobson said, ‘What [Obama is] trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.’ Obama’s statement reflects the Democratic Party’s pre-2008 position, which is that you must check your faith at the gate of the public arena. Now that Democrats appear to have gotten religion, Sen. Obama is saying that while he is a Christian, he doesn’t think that faith or the Bible should have any role in shaping public policy. There’s either a disconnect between Sen. Obama’s faith and the policy positions he holds, or his theology is off.”

That was Perkins quoting and defending leader of the evangelical right, James Dobson. Anderson Cooper then played for Perkins an actual clip of Obama’s speech (which Dobson was criticizing) where Obama says, “What I am suggesting is that secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. So, to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of our morality, much of which is grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

Anderson Cooper: “That doesn’t sound like they are saying there is no role for religion in the public square.”

Rev. Sharpton eventually chimed in: “I don’t understand why we are reading things [into Obama’s speech] that clearly [were not] said in his speech.”

Let me reserve my criticism for my own camp (evangelicals). It is amazing me how Perkins and Dobson picked this fight and did it by distortion, and then when confronted with that distortion by Cooper (who Perkins later in the show said he had concern for his eternal destiny), Perkins would not admit it. He didn’t even blink. (Watch him whenever he contributes to CNN’s commentary; he is perpetually shaking his head, No, like he is afraid they will make a bobble-head doll based on his likeness if he ever assents agreement to anyone else.)

People get crazy over politics. But it makes me ashamed that those who are known as evangelicals do so, because there is clearly a disconnect between what Obama said and Dobson’s issues with it.

Much of Dobson’s rant is ideology, not theology, inasmuch as in the statement above he (apparently deliberately) did not correctly represent the view he was opposing.

Then I got to thinking biblically about the exchange. Did Paul tell disciples and saints it was necessity to espouse certain “moral” positions on social, public, or political policy? After all, there is a difference between bringing the church into politics on the one hand, and on the other hand dragging political issues into the church just because all decisions are moral choices.

You say, “But Rome did not have a participatory democracy like we do, so he couldn’t tell Christians to do that.” Yes, and did you notice that every Roman politician that really got to know Paul actually like him? Hello somebody! So why overreach to the extent that Dobson does in his religious zeal?

Much fell into focus for me on July 1st when I received an email from Tom Minnery of “Focus on the Family Action” that stated, “in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s aggressive attack on Dr. Dobson last week, the liberal media are piling on with more blatant falsehoods about Dr. Dobson and pro-family Christians.” Wait! Did Obama attack Dobson last week? Why do I wonder if somebody has gone senile here?

“All that Dr. Dobson had done was respond to a widely circulated speech by Obama comparing Dr. Dobson to Al Sharpton.” Really? Dobson and Sharpton were mentioned in the same sentence but actually, Obama was drawing a contrast between their two theologies.

How strange. Why would you send out inflammatory email making false charges? Just to strike up sparks for the Fourth?

“Focus Action is going to continue raising questions...but to do so, we need your help.” Ah so. I wonder, by “help,” do you mean money? “In the past few weeks alone, Focus Action has spent tens of thousands of dollars…”. Let me guess. On your salary. “…and we are dependent on the support of friends like you.”

That puts it all in Focus!

Redemptive Purpose

Thursday and Friday
(Our trip Blog was written by Jackie Dorsey)

We said goodbye to our host Dr. Simmons Thursday morning as he returned to Kansas City. That left us somewhat on our own to get around town from the hotel to the worksite and to the university for meals. Thankfully Jody had her Blackberry with her so, you guessed it, the Blackberry started talking to Alan, and got us everywhere we needed to go. Shakespeare said there are sermons in stones; we all got a Blessing from the Blackberry.


We were glad to find that the electrical contractor had finished most of the new wiring in the house by Thursday morning, so we were able to make a lot of progress in our last two days. Our team installed insulation throughout Deborah’s three bedroom, two bath home, and put up dry wall in all three bedrooms. Although the team was tired, we were also determined to finish these rooms for her, so she could really see and have a sense of progress and moving closer to her goal of finally being able to be back home in New Orleans.
Thursday evening while some of us were seeing more of the city, we were shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of our brother Jason Bradley. He was a close friend to several on our team and a member of our Career Class. Our hearts and prayers were with Jason’s family and our KCBT family even as we were fulfilling our mission. Jason had experienced the ultimate home going and while we will miss him we are comforted in knowing we will see him again soon.

New Orleans was an experience I’m sure our team will not forget. I for one went with the intention to give—time, strength, encouragement and hope. I truly believe I received far more than I gave. The people we met and the spirit of faith and hope we felt ministered to us even as we ministered and served.Our team returned Saturday morning exhausted but blessed. Everyone on the team did their unique part with a spirit of unity and oneness of purpose. Redemptive Purpose.

Roots Run Deep

Wednesday

Today we visited the home of Herbert Gettridge who will turn 85 years old on August 31st. This spry man and his bride of 68 years greeted us warmly in their restored home. Mr. Gettridge, a natural story-teller told us of his Katrina experience AND his experience of Hurricane Betsey in 1965 in the same home. This was the house he built for himself and his wife from 1949 to 1952.

During Hurricane Betsey he was able to provide shelter to 31 of his family and neighbors in his attic. They had 6 feet of water during that flood and the house stood. Katrina was a different story. He and his wife left New Orleans for Madison, WI while the flood waters rose to 19 feet, at least a foot above the roof of his house. He told us that one day he saw his house on a TV news broadcast while in Madison, and told his wife, “that’s our house” and decided then to return to rebuild. Three years later they have their home back, redeemed.

The first person that showed up to help him was Dr. Simmons. Mr. Gettridge is a man of deep roots, a sign outside his home proclaims that to the world. This is a man of wisdom, who choose to build his home against conventional methods and use 4×4’s instead of 2×4’s like most. That is why his house, unlike many others, withstood Katrina’s flood. Like the wise man in Luke 6:48 he digged deep and laid the foundation on a rock. This is a man of faith and meeting him and hearing his story had a major impact on our team.

We worked today at Deborah’s house, pulling more electrical wiring, pulling old floor tiles, salvaging more bricks and prepping for tomorrow’s work on insulation and dry wall. Some sightseeing in the French Quarter, dinner and the last night of the revival rounded out the evening.

Enriched Tradition Engaged Community

Tuesday

This morning we had our first of several meals at Xavier University and then our first real chance to see the damage of Hurricane Katrina. We drove through the 9th Ward area hardest hit by the flood waters and saw abandoned house after abandoned house. Our hosts, Dr. Simmons, Reggie Jackson (from Omaha) and Cornelius Dumas (a local resident and officer in the Louisiana Laymen's Movement) explained what they saw and found when they first began the now three-year ongoing process of rebuilding their homes.

We saw markers on each house, an X with each of four quadrants representing key information for those who would enter: the date the home was searched, the name of the crew doing the search, and in the lower quadrant the number of people found dead inside, if any. Just seeing house after house with this marker gave us a sense of the magnitude of the devastion here and the daunting task of restoration.

Our worksite for the week would be the home of Deborah Cola. She, like so many others, has been working for three years to rebuild. She is persevering to provide a home not just for herself but for her 80+ year old father and aunt living with her. She spoke to us about her experience since Katrina, of the mental anguish that she and everyone in New Orleans continues to experience as they go about the process of rebuilding their homes while going on with the daily burdens of normal life. She urged us to tell people back home that Katrina is not over, the suffering continues. No longer the physical struggle as much as the mental and emotional struggle. Deborah is a woman of faith, hope and strength and is endeavouring to redeem this home for her family. We are blessed to be a small part of the process, part of our redemptive purpose.

We spent the day pulling electrical wires, salvaging bricks, moving dry wall and insulation into the prep area of the home and other tasks to get ready for major work the rest of the week. Dinner and the second night of the revival capped our evening.

Keeping the Faith in NOLA

Monday
(Our trip Blog was witten by Jackie Dorsey)

After eating at New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood we started our week with flavor!

We headed to Zion Traveler’s Missionary Baptist Church for a three-night revival meeting sponsored by the National Baptist’s Layman’s Movement. Dr. Harold Simmons of Kansas City is the President of the Movement and the key speaker. He kicked off the series by asking “What is your Redemptive Purpose?”

As we left the church and went back to our hotel to get rested for our first full day of work we were about to find out.

New Orleans 2008

The mission to help New Orleans reconstruction stretched our faith, showed us new ways to utilize our gifts, and gave us a fresh perspective of our country by moving us out of our community comfort zone. The trip was a work week with evening revival meetings, and some time for sightseeing.

During the trip we

• Met pastors and believers in and around hard-hit areas and discovered the joys and challenges of ministry there

• Visited sites teeming with inspiration, and discovered that "the soul is waterproof"

• Served believers and the lost community in a construction project and praying over their home, church and city

About a dozen people departed Monday, June 9th and returned Saturday, June 14th. We partnered with the Laymen's Movement of the National Baptist Convention to assist with improvements, repairs, and reconstruction to areas of the lower Ninth Ward devastated by hurricane Katrina.

Let Not Thy Hands Be Slack

Last Sunday we took Joshua 14 and broke-out five principles on how to possess your possessions in Christ. Too many Christians are not owning what belongs to them as a result of the cross.

Possession of the promises is according to faith—but we ran into a problem. I did not have time to give you the three things that prevent our possession. Get ready.

Three Problems Preventing Your Possession of All God Promised
1. Slackness, Joshua 18:3

And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, How long are ye slack to go to possess the land, which the LORD God of your fathers hath given you?

I did an etymological investigation of the Hebrew word translated, slack. It is comprised of corrupt ingredients. Can I give you three?

A. To be slack means to be slothful. It is when you are lazy, or just idle (check this: Prov 10:4, 12:24; 19:15).

This is the sin of old churches and old Christians. They become satisfied with what they gained earlier. There is no interest or energy in continual spiritual advance, and that grieves the Holy Ghost.

B. To be slack means to fall short of some stated objective (check this: Josh 1:5).

Failure is a word that should fill every Christian with fear. In Christ we have all power. So to fall short in the day of testing is the saddest experience in life.

2 John 8: Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.

C. To be slack means to delay. You defer because you get deflected, so you put it off (check this: Exod 22:29; Deut 23:21; Prov 23:30; Eccl 5:4; Hab 2:3).

You know the problem with this third aspect? It implies a good intention. You talk about it, but you don't be about it. There is a second problem preventing your possession.

2. Compromise, Joshua 16:10

And they drave not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer: but the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites unto this day, and serve under tribute.

Ephraim could have driven out the Gezers, but it was easier to sign a truce and take their profit. People get paid enough and they are always willing to let the enemy remain in the midst.

Watch! The Devil's attack on Jesus was three times a compromise. Compromise your confidence in God by making your own bread. Compromise your patience by jumping from the temple. Compromise your conscience by bowing to Baphomet. Jesus hurled it back in his teeth every time—no compromise!

Compromise is the besetting sin of postmodern Christians. Hello somebody! We spiritualize the world to make it compatible with us. Cardinal points of carnal compromise. A third thing prevents our possession.

3. Inability, Joshua 15:63 and 17:12

Manasseh “could not” drive out the Canaanites. Judah “could not” drive out the Jebusites. But it’s kind of like my momma used to say: “Can't” never did do anything.

The restriction was in themselves—in lack of faith, in faulty vision, in handicapping hope and therefore power. It is not the will of God that any sin in you should remain unsubdued. Why not change your self-talk in order to change your thinking? Just say,

Phil 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

““Let not thy hands be slack,” live not in vain;
Out on life’s lonely track men toil in pain.
Play thou a brother’s part, strength, love, and hope impart,
Bid thou the fainting heart
Look up again!

“Let not thy hands be slack,” haste to the fray!
Dream not of turning back: life is not play!
Gird thou thy armour on, fight till the battle’s won,
Then shall thy Lord’s “Well done,”
More than repay!

Let not thy hands be slack,” “Fear not! Be strong!”
Cease not to make attack on every wrong.
Press on for truth and right—
Hold high the Gospel light—expel the dirge of night
With heaven’s song!

“Let not thy hands be slack,” the days fly fast.
Lost moments come not back from the dark past.
Then be not slack of hand! Help thou the weak to stand!
Give all thou hast!

How to Spot an Ordinance

Years ago before he died, J. Vernon McGee was doing his program (Through the Bible), and suggested all of his listeners should celebrate communion with him over the radio. He told them that even if all they had was a McDonald’s hamburger and a Coke they could participate. I think that takes the idea of the “universal church” to an extreme.

God gave two ordinances to regulate and order local church membership: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. So inasmuch as the Lord’s Supper is a local church ordinance it should be administered by the pastoral leadership (with the assistance of the deacons or elders) in a local church setting (this is not to say it cannot be administered to shut-ins in their living quarters). For some churches a house may be their local church setting.

Since the Lord’s Supper is an ordinance (not a sacrament) designed to regulate and order a body of people, one side of its function is that it ties them together with simultaneous remembrance of the Lord’s death and communion with him. But the other side of its function is examination of your life before you enter His presence so that you can correct any irregularities in your self, and especially between you and any other member of the body. That is easy to imagine happening if the full body is assembled together for the service.

So just from a practical/scriptural standpoint, I don’t know if “cell groups” outside the local assembly really fulfill the function of the ordinance. Certainly a meal of fellowship can be had without calling it the Lord’s Supper. But it’s kind of like trying to fulfill the commission to make disciples outside the complete local church experience. Have you really made disciples if they are not established in the fellowship of a local body, scripturally defined, and anchored to its structure (including membership, giving, and the accountability of church discipline)?

How to Spot an Ordinance
1) There is sovereign institution and authorization
2) It symbolizes spiritual truth
3) There is a specific command for its perpetuation
4) There is Biblical evidence of historical fulfillment or practice

Four requirements should be fulfilled for someone to take part in the Lord’s supper:
A) Being regenerated
B) Being scripturally baptized
C) Being a current church member (someplace)

Requirements for membership were
1) A credible testimony of regeneration, Acts 2:41
2) Baptism by officers of the local body, Acts 2:41

D) Having an orderly walk

Some churches practice open communion. That means they do not check the credentials of anyone who participates. Some churches practice closed communion. That means they say you have to be a member of their particular local church to participate. We practice close communion. Any other baptized believer from a church of like faith and practice—who is living as he or she should—can participate.

There are multiple evidences of organization of local church membership in the New Testament. Organized membership
1) Met at stated times on the first day of the week, Acts 20:7; Heb 10:25
2) Had officers, Phil 1:1
3) Designated ministers, Acts 20:17,28
4) Recognized the authority of the local church and its pastors, Mat 18:17; 1 Pet 5:2; Heb 13:7,17
5) Exercised discipline of members, 1 Cor 5:4-5,13
6) Recorded contributions of members, Rom 15:26; 1 Cor 16:1-2
7) Granted letters of commendation when changing localities, Acts 18:27; 2 Cor 3:1
8) Had order, 1 Cor 14:40; Col 2:5

Dexter and the Fraud of Freud

The New York Times says the best show on TV is Dexter. Typical. All the best shows (in the world's eyes) box God out.

Dexter is a Showtime series based on the Fraud of Freud. The premise (of the first season) is that two little boys witness the chainsaw death of their mother, and then are left in two inches of blood in a cargo container for two days. The first policeman on the scene adopts the youngest boy, three year-old Dexter. The other child is never adopted and left to rot in foster care and psych wards.

So the older child develops into a psychopathic serial killer, while Dexter works for Miami police as a blood splatter specialist. Oh he also kills, drains blood, and keeps their specimens on slides. However (and this is a big difference in the world's eyes), he only kills those who deserve it.

The Fraud of Freud says that these adults act according to childhood trauma. But the one is adopted into a loving family, and taught a "code" by his adoptive father. His serial-killer tendencies are channeled into becoming a hero, because he only "puts down" the really bad guys. The other child grows up to kill without reason or regret.

What a simple explanation! It ties up loose ends how we like them. When we hear about some heinous murder on the news we ask, "How could somebody do that?" But this show comforts us by boxing God out so that the answer cannot be "for all have sinned...ye are of your father the Devil." Freud's psychoanalytical method of examining the "subconscious" says the answer is the thing(remembered or not) that impacted you as a child. Examine the Fraud of Freud.

1. Freud says you are sick and therefore not responsible, while God says you are a sinner and therefore sick

You don’t get depressed because your momma made you eat black eyed peas. You get depressed because you've been drinking, and alcohol is a brain depressant. So if you want to look for something else to blame for your problems, you need to remember to blame the conditions that you control. We are all sinners in need of God’s grace, but

2. Freud says you need psychotherapy, while God says you need to repent

And I know you don’t like that, because what you want to do is talk about it but not be about it. Oh, you say you want "change you can believe in," but you are not willing to change your mind, your heart and your attitude so that you can believe in change! See,

3. Freud says to diagnose your problem by looking within, and find the solution to your problem by looking outside to a therapist, while God says the diagnosis of your problem is found outside of you in your Bible, and the solution to your problem is made by changing those things within

How’d you miss that, all these years? You need to look outside of you to find the diagnosis, because the Bible is an owner's manual on the human life. The only people that don’t recognize that are Oprah and Eckhart. But once you get the diagnosis from Bible principles, you have to apply those principles within you as your prescription. Oh, I’m going to help somebody out, because

4. Freud says never preach or moralize because you will get guilt, while God says, preach, reprove, rebuke and exhort because what you need to get is forgiveness!

Dexter gives a simplistic explanation for evil in people. And it's an incorrect one because it ignores the sin within all of us, factory-equipped at birth.

Where is the preacher on that show? Nobody is destined to become a serial killer because of what they witness as a child (no mater how traumatizing it is). And anyone, even a preacher or preacher's kid, can turn out to be a murderer if they get far enough away from their Bible.

Oh, I almost forgot. Every really popular show wraps itself around a grain of truth. Dexter gets it right when it says that obedience to the right code can change your character, behavior, and ultimately your destiny.

Black Cab Cuties

Having trouble keeping up with British pop culture? Check this!

I just thought the concept was kind of cool. The Kooks' second song later in the film is better than the first.

In each episode of “The Black Cab Sessions,” a different indie artist gets one car ride and one unedited take to perform a song. The cab becomes a mobile stage for acoustic Dylan-esque performances. Spoon’s Britt Daniel plays a stirring version of “I Summon You” all alone; I’m definitely no fan of Baby Dee, and Daniel Johnston is a weirdo, but you don’t have to tip the driver.

Maybe we should start KC Cab Worship. One ride and one unedited take to perform a praise song.

All Religions Lead to the Same Place

People have sent me links to Oprah’s next big thing. She is pushing a book (and turning it into an online course) by Eckhart Tolle. In the mold of the typical Christ-during-the-Millennium counterfeit, he calls it A New Earth. It’s sort of a spiritual-but-not-Christian Purpose Driven Life.

The hook is on the sixth page: This book can only awaken those who are ready. You may not be ready. So if you don’t get awakened by this book, then you are obviously a SPED, not even in the same league as O and E, and should never, ever consider contradicting the concepts in the book. You just don’t understand.

Eckhart is a non-aligned spiritual teacher who says there is a way out of suffering and into peace. Like Buddha and the Maharishi before him, it has to do with denying the ego and swaying collective consciousness (by becoming conscious of itself).

Now there’s an irony for you. Your self-consciousness is supposed to become more conscious of itself, and yet “you don’t live life; life lives you.” There is no such thing as “my life.” There is just life, and I must lose myself in it. I cannot “lose my life” (despite what Jesus said in Mark 8:35 and Matt 16:26), therefore I am eternal. But after I die, it’s not just that no one knows what is there—nothing is there.

“Thinking isolates a situation or event and calls it good or bad, as if it had a separate existence.” So stop thinking—or else you’ll fragment reality into an illusion. The illusion is anything you can think about. To get to reality, just align yourself with the “higher order” (want fries with that?).

Okay, here’s the hypocrisy. His Holiness (HH) the 14th Dalai Lama is the principal incarnation of Chenrezig (Avalokiteshvara in India), the patron deity of Tibet. That makes him god on earth to his people, someone who had finally escaped the wheel of death and reincarnation, and voluntarily chose to be reborn in order to teach humanity. So he is supposed to be enlightened and understand these things, yet from what I have seen, he is not “in alignment” with what the Chinese are doing to his people. In some interviews the DL gets pretty pissed. He must not really be a “Master,” because ET says “the Master responds to falsehood and truth, bad news and good news, in exactly the same way: ‘Is that so?’” To the Master there is only “this moment,” and this moment “is what it is,” so he does not go tripping on drama. He is at one with whatever happens. Only if you resist what happens are you unhappy. (Try telling that to any holocaust survivor.)

Surf the sitori. Zen is knowing what Zen is without knowing what it is that you know. So increase your consciousness, but decrease your responsibility. Take away your own free-will, determination, and freedom of choice (like the freedom to choose the right path) and replace it with introspection. That is why spirituality in A New Earth

• Values being independt from religious hierarchy
• Crosses social boundaries
• Deals with absorbing each other’s worship, rituals and myths
• Mistrusts authority at the same time it opens itself and willingly submits to some higher power

The Old Spirituality said there was only one right path and all other ways were wrong. On A New Earth all religions lead to the same place. You can take one of the traditional religions, or string a necklace of your own personal religious preferences.

I guess I don’t see what the controversy is. I totally agree with Oprah and E (in their most pluralistic selves). All religions do lead to the same place (Psa 9:17)! They always have (1 Chron 16:26). All religions lead to Hell. There was never any other place for them to go to. And no matter which religion you choose, all people are on the same path. Who didn’t know that?

The universe is not god. The God who created the universe negates all pagan Zen, because he contends neither with a higher realm, nor with competing powers. But, if we defy God, then we deify self. Always.

A MUCH BETTER BOOK to recommend to your friends who say they are spiritually “awakening” is Soul Cravings by Erwin McManus. Somebody needs to tell Oprah’s book club.

Why You Need to Know

I was listening to something by John Piper the other day and it got me thinking (thanks, Rob, for the URL hookup). So much the more so because it dovetails with the History & Heritage of the Bible course I teach (AKA Manuscript Evidence). So here are my

TOP 10 REASONS WHY YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT THE BIBLE IS

Why do we take the stand we do on the King James Bible? Why is it so important to know I have the words of God in the English language?

10. There is a denial of the existence of truth as an absolute standard and final authority
Some in our society deny the existence of truth at all. Certainly people have increasingly moved toward the position that there is no absolute standard to be found and no final authority to be followed outside of themselves and their ability to reason.

9. Secular society criticizes the Bible as a mixture of truth and error
They look at the Bible only as giving us what I would call “morality by mythmaking.” Now, mostly their morals are unzipped and their ethics erased, but they do view the Bible as full of legends that teach us to be loyal to ourselves.

8. When the Bible has been revised in English it has tended to become relativised
Most revisions move us along a line of getting a translation that is more and more contemporary and less and less faithful to the Hebrew and Greek texts. So you go from the NASB (a new text) to the NIV (a new translating philosophy). Then you go from the NIV to the TNIV and NIrV, and versions that use inclusive language and are gender-neutral (or maybe they are transgender?), which further relativises the text and makes what has been said subject to our changing society.

Relativism: the idea that the truth of a matter is subject to some other circumstance or situation. It is not an absolute standard, but dependent on some other idea, and so it can change in certain situations.

7. A body of other “holy books” now competes with the Bible
This would include the Qur’an (which with modern immigrants and students, is much closer to us today than it was a few decades ago), and the book of Mormon utilized by the Community of Christ (old RLDS churches) headquartered in Independence.

6. The Bible becomes the basis of disunity when it is viewed skeptically
I would further state, it is the basis of disunity when it is not viewed dispensationally, because rightly dividing the word of truth is what harmonizes the word of truth and resolves the questions and contradictions it contains. But if you view the Bible skeptically, and you question certain portions, then you end up starting your own religious system. This is the historical basis for the heretical movements of the first few centuries of the church. For this reason,

5. Critics are trying to find a “canon” within the canon

The canon (not cannon, which is something you shoot with) is the body of 66 books accepted as Holy Scripture, genuine, inspired and authoritative. Derived from the Greek word kanonicos, it literally means, relating to a rule (or ruler, meaning the norm or standard of measure).

They cannot simply get rid of the Bible, because then they have no job. So what they do is sit in judgment on the canon handed down to us by the priesthood of believers through history, and try to decide (like the “Jesus Seminar”) which sayings in the gospels really belong to the historical Jesus. And then whatever they decide is what they give themselves to as the “real” word of God. Former evangelical Christian, Bart Ehrman (new book, Misquoting Jesus) is another example of this. So is Luke Timothy Johnson. They do not accept all the books of Paul (for example) as really being written by Paul (now where did I lay down my cannon?).

4. Satan makes sure that old heresies are continually recycled as new creative attacks
Just during 2007 we had three major efforts: The Da Vinci Code, the Tomb of Jesus in Talpiot, and The Gospel of Judas.

3. Eternal life hangs in the balance because only the Bible has the words of life, Ps 115:3-4,8; John 6:68

2. If we spend our life following something untrue, we are of all people most miserable, 1 Cor 15:19

1. The Bible claims to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, truly authoritative, and inerrant—but if we are not certain of the words of truth today, that does not matter

Somebody break out the Bible!

The Emerging Emergent Church

It used to be that the movement called "the emerging church" was so new, so changeable, and so variegated that it was hard to define. I would agree with Mark Driscoll that it has now gelled into three major camps. These "Three R's" provide a rubric we can use to define this phenomenon in contemporary theology.

1. The Relevants
These are pastors and churches that are evangelical but innovative. They are trying to make the church relevant to American society in creative and artistic ways. Into this camp I would put Erwin McManus (Mosaic) and Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz). They are evangelical and for the most part theologically sound, but with an emphasis on contemporary styles of outreach.

2. The Revisionists
These pastors and church leaders are truly “emergent.” Unfortunately, what is emerging is nothing new at all, but the old, theological liberalism and neo-orthodox ideas used to revise evangelical dress. Into this camp I would put the generous Brian McLaren, and also Rob Bell of Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids.

Bell drinks at the wells of N.T. Wright for his view of biblical authority (which is to say that the words of the Bible are not authoritative in and of themselves, but somehow God mediates his authority through scripture). Another quirky thing about Anglican Bishop Wright is that he seems to defend substitutionary atonement and yet deny the doctrine of imputation (imputed righteousness and the like). As a matter of fact, he quite redefines justification and righteousness to include a works aspect (“boundary markers” of those who belong to the faith, he calls them). This allows him to defend (from the Bible, in his mind) the Anglican split-personality of being Protestant in doctrine but Catholic in practice (practices like infant baptism). This stuff severely messes-with certain Presbyterian groups in the US.

Wright is most recently in the spotlight for denying the popular notion of heaven and emphasizing the resurrection. Probably he would subscribe to what some call “soul sleep” for the saints. We do not go to heaven when we die. This world will be our home. But, Wright is an evangelical that defends the historical Jesus and the historicity of a literal resurrection against the infidels, so bully for him.

Back to Bell's inhalation of Wright. Again, the Bible is not authoritative, but God is. That’s the old neo-orthodox dodge to avoid having to submit to a final authority. And because of that theological presupposition, Bell expounds scripture from a “trajectoried hermeneutic.” Here, I can break that thing down in 25 words or less. The Bible doesn’t actually teach certain things, but it starts us out, and if you take the trajectory outside the leather covers, then you can wind up at a “post-modern” conclusion and still be correct.

Okay, you missed that so let me make it real. Is homosexuality sin according to the Bible? Not absolutely, if you accept a trajectoried hermeneutic. Because Jesus started us out on a road of tolerance and acceptance in the Sermon on the Mount, and while he was not able to state explicitly that he was okay with it (it would really bust the wig back on those old Pharisees), we can follow the trajectory down to today and explicitly gather that he would condone it now. Admittedly, the Bible doesn’t lead us to that conclusion, but the “trajectory” that started in the Bible does. (Sorry. I know it sounds like a shell game, but sometimes that’s what emerging postmodern theology is.)

Perhaps this also plays into Bell’s penchant for reading the ideas of later rabbinical Judaism anachronistically back into his interpretation of the New Testament. Even though the rabbis got it wrong. Even though Paul says they were blinded. But it’s as good an excuse as any for repainting the Velvet Elvis.

What about McLaren? He drinks not only from Wright, but from radical, clearly un-born-again scholars under the spell of the likes of Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan. This group sometimes trajectories right over neo-orthodoxy and the old liberalism, and goes all the way back to the practices of the monastic orders and the "church fathers." This definitely doesn’t pass the smell test. It seems like all the forty or fifty-something former fundamentalists like McLaren are having an emerging identity crisis.

Two points I can agree with them on. On deconstruction:
A. The world is changing (Duh!)
B. The old methods are not working (Thursday night visitation and the like)
But I disagree with their reconstruction.

3. The new “Reformers”

They are contextual and controversial but confessional (Westminster Confession mostly). They want to put the text in the context of culture. Into this camp I would put Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Their goals: stay biblically faithful and be culturally fruitful. They are a lot like group one, except that McManus is Arminian and Driscoll is Calvinist. Capiche?

Of Bible Readers’ Reading Bibles

My core study and teaching Bible is an Oxford wide margin. This is the one with Brevier Clarendon type that has chapter summaries. There is another version of the King James wide margin Bible by Oxford University Press that does not have a summary at the beginning of each chapter (it is a Brevier Blackface typestyle with a kind of quirky thing in that all the chapters are numbered). The type of text I have is still in print, but high priced.

Wide margin refers to a type of Bible that is printed with lots of space around the sides so you can write your own notes next to the text. In effect, you begin to author your own study Bible.

Dalona bought me this Bible in 1985. It was originally bonded leather and I have since had it rebound. It has so many notes in it, it is my life. Years ago I photocopied the whole thing because I was making a missions trip overseas to a third-world destination, and I wanted to make sure I had it “backed up” in case it did not return with me. But there are a couple of drawbacks to this Bible.

This edition is not printed on thin “india” paper, but a thicker stock. This makes it an enormously thick Bible compared to the edition you can buy today. That is a plus if you make a lot of notes in ink (like with a Pilot or rapidograph pen). But I don’t. I normally use a 0.5mm mechanical pencil with a darker lead (like B, instead of HB or no.2 lead). Secondly, this Bible has chapter summaries but not Ussher’s dates. (No, no. Usher was dating Tamika Foster but cancelled their wedding last summer. Ussher was Archbishop for the Anglican church in Ireland and he worked up a complete biblical chronology back in the mid 1600s.) Plus, some publishers like Cambridge now make wide margins with a sheaf of ruled paper in the back. Would have been nice.

India paper is bleached hemp and rag fibers, making it thin and strong, but with titanium oxide additives it is nearly opaque. It bulks up to 1,100 pages to the inch, making it perfect for slimming Bibles. It is a premium, long-life paper. The name originated in about 1770 from the fact that it imitated fine papers imported from “the Orient.”

Here are a couple of esoteric ideas for the adventurous. The Newberry Study Bible, and the Companion Bible (198 appendices!) of Bullinger. Now that will blow your mind. But then if you have that much information in the margins, why build your own study Bible?

One time I even found the Oxford "hand-size" Bible that was the basis for my wide margin. So for several years I was able to have my wide margin study Bible, and a reading or preaching Bible with the exact same pages, but without the margins. Also, it was printed on india paper, so it was much thinner. I got it from a Canadian source at the time, because Oxford was not selling all versions of their Bibles in the US.

SIDEBAR: If I want to refresh my theology I have another Oxford Bible I “turn to,” an Old Scofield Study Bible Classic Edition. It is the 1917 version of the Scofied Reference notes. They market it as a “$69.99 Value,” but you can get it quite cheaper here.

My favorite Bibles are ones with the softest, most flexible covers. So my current reading Bible is a Nelson UltraSlim reference bound in something called “English Brown Leathersoft™.”

I have an affinity for Bibles with center column references (in this case, 60,000 of them). But if you only wanted a “reading Bible” with no refs, you used to be able to get a Leathersoft™ version without them. (If you like burgundy, B&N is closing some out for a dozen bucks. I assume that both editions will be soon out of print, but a hopeful sign is here)

One word on method. Last year I chose to read from Bibles that were about 1050-1100 pages in length for both testaments. This allows me to read daily until I reach a page that ends in a zero (10,20...1020) and even with a few days that you invariably miss, still get through the Bible three times a year. I don’t have to worry about counting calories, I mean chapters. Just end on a chapter every ten pages and you get through in under 120 days.


The ideal, dream, “reading Bible” for me would be a King James with a buttery-soft cover that was also printed in paragraph format in a modern typeface. I heard about one once but have never located a copy. It was printed by an outfit in England for Queen Elizabeth's jubilee. Let me know if you run across it.

Politics, Pulpit and Patriotism

Two things characterize Baptist philosophy. We would just be normal evangelicals if it were not for these. Ever since Roger Williams and John Clark founded Rhode Island, Baptists have existed (in America) as a separate sect from Protestants because they stood for liberty of conscience and separation of church and state.

SIDEBAR: Rhode Island was also founded by a woman, who was the unauthorized Puritan minister of a dissenting church. Anne Hutchinson held Bible studies for women that eventually attracted men as well. She played a key role in the development of religious freedom in America.

Roger Williams was banished in 1636 from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his religious views (which were Baptist). He did not think it right for the government to punish people for religious infractions. He believed every individual should be free to follow his or her own convictions according to the Bible.

The first idea is that civil magistrates should not act as ecclesiastical authorities—separation of church and state. The second idea is that people must be allowed freedom of opinion on religious matters—soul liberty. These ideas eventually became the foundations of our constitutional guarantees.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I saw so many evangelicals criticizing Dr. Jeremiah Wright. Because the same baptistic concepts that protect Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, and yes, Dr. Bob Jones and Ian Paisley, also protect him. (Oh, here he goes again, shooting our sacred cows.)

• Dr. Falwell was fined $6,000 in 1987 for using religious funds for political purposes.
• He sold videos that promoted various conspiracy theories related to the President (drug-running, orchestrating murder, etc.).
• He made a big deal about Tinky Winky Teletubby modeling a gay lifestyle because he had a triangle antenna and carried a purse.

• Pat Robertson concurred when Falwell publicly blamed 9-11 on "pagans, abortionists, feminists, homosexuals, the ACLU, and all those who are trying to secularize America." Asinine rhetoric is not indigenous to Chicago, apparently. (I ain't hating, I'm just stating.)
• Robertson also predicted doomsday by the end of 1982.
• He prophesied a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest for 2006.
• He predicted another terror attack in 2007.
• He prayed publicly asking for "more vacancies on the Supreme Court" (which generally only occur at the death of a judge).
• What America is doing to evangelical Christians he compared to what NAZI Germany did to the Jews (citing the Democratic congress, liberal media, and "homosexuals who want to destroy Christians"). No mention was made of Baptist Fred Phelps, who wants to destroy homosexuals.
• He suggested that, "Maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom [the State Department] to shake things up."
• And of course, more recently he suggested assassinating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

• The racism of Bob Jones is well known.

And the really asinine thing (from the evangelical perspective) is that when the above men espouse this philosophy it flies fully in the face of the doctrine of grace they claim to believe. (In 1982 I heard Dr. Ian Paisley pray that God would smite the Reagan government "hip and thigh" for denying him a visa to preach at Bob Jones University—Dr. Bob Jones had already enjoined all the student body to pray that God would smite Secretary of State Alexander Haig "hip and thigh, bone and marrow, heart and lungs and all there is to him, that he shall destroy him quickly and utterly." Last I looked, Haig was still kicking it.)

We live in the day of God's grace. God does not, therefore, send Katrinas to New Orleanians because of their wickedness (nor AIDS to gays because of their immorality). When persons insinuate that he does, they make God a liar (and become a proponent of an Old Testament-Reformed-Calvinistic-Anti-dispensational theology they claim to eschew). We should be very careful what we blame God for.

In contrast to systems of government that prevailed during Bible times, America was founded on different principles. Two of them are central to the notion of the "Christian nation" we find ourselves in: separation of church and state and freedom of conscience. Both were concepts particularly championed by Baptists.

The great "American experiment" of democracy gave Baptists the freedom and opportunity to shape the type of government we would have according to the ideals of a Radical Reformation. Since Baptists were persecuted throughout history (as anabaptists, dissenters, and other proto-Protestants like Montanists, Novatians, Donatists, Albigenses, Paulicians, Bogomils, Petrobrusians, Waldensian churches, etc.), they were insistent on being able to speak and act in "soul liberty." Historical information on Baptistic groups can be found here.

Did they all dip? Mostly. Since they were persecuted they were pacifist. Since they were persecuted by the governments of the lands they lived in they believed in separation of church and state. Since they were always opposed by state-sponsored religious authority, they believed in absolute freedom of conscience under God. That is why Baptist churches are historically independent and autonomous, and subject to congregational rule.

This is why "Gothardism" gives me such a fit. It's the medieval idea of an unbroken "chain of command." And while, in balance, it is biblical, it only works with the assistance of an ungrieved Holy Ghost. Think about that a minute and you will get it. Most Gothardites forget that all human authority is relative authority. Only God's authority is absolute. A husband's authority over his wife is not absolute. A pastor's authority over his parishioners is not absolute. Why? Because Peter insisted on the priority of soul liberty in Acts 4:18-20, and that no authority has the right to tell you to do wrong. There is a higher authority than any earthly authority (whether it be parent, spouse, religious leader or government). That higher authority is God as he speaks to your conscience by the Holy Spirit through the scriptures. How did you miss that, all these years?

So it is that Baptists have always been at the prophetic forefront steering the public conscience. Since many Baptistic groups are pacifist, then this involved criticizing government policy relating to how wars are started and prosecuted.

That is why it was (black) Baptist preachers who were at the forefront of burying Jim Crow. And it was the success of their movement that prevented America from degenerating into a second civil war (sometimes we forget how close we really were, during those months of social insurrection, to what Barry McGuire called the "eve of destruction"). In a participatory democracy, it is the job of good citizens to vote, and it is the job of good preachers to be the conscience of the nation and remind us and our government of where we have fallen short of justice, and what yet needs to be perfected in our union.

The freedom to do so has to be defended as a matter of principle. The very idea of separation of church and state places the church in the position of "loyal opposition" to the state. And as to any given church or pastor, they must be free to speak publicly about public issues according to their conscience.

This is the only thing I ever say of a political nature. This makes us uncomfortable today. Especially when some of those leaders (evangelical and Baptist) make statements that others in the public arena consider asinine (a word the King James crowd borrowed from the Latin and used in common conversation to describe someone who was obstinate like an ass in maintaining a foolish opinion). That being granted, it still contributes positively to the public debate.

So what about the flap over Dr. Wright? When you side with Farakkhan on the origin of the AIDS virus, that is asinine. But no more asinine than other evangelical (and even fundamental and Baptist) church leaders over the years. No more asinine, shall we say, than believing a Catholic conspiracy killed President Kennedy. (Oh, I'm sorry. You missed the History Channel episode that proved Stone was stoned, because it was a lone gunman, and the "magic bullet" fit all the physics after all.)

I have studied "Daddy J's" sermons for several years, even before I knew who Barak Obama was. His remarks have recently been conveyed with absolutely no context. If you were to have asked the late Jerry Falwell, with his strong pro-choice stance, whether, after 1.2 million abortions a year, God looked at America and said "God bless America" or "God damn America," I believe he would have said the latter even before he blinked. Dr. Wright was not making an absolute statement. It had a context, not of abortion, but akin to my example.

Pundits have extrapolated from Dr. Wright's remarks things that were not there. Dr. Wright is no more pro-Palestinian than (for example) prominent evangelical and "Bible Answer Man," Hank Hanegraaff. I did not hear Wright speak negatively of Israel, yet he is being labeled anti-semitic.

One thing the pulpit in America must be absolutely free to do is criticize public policy, otherwise there is no separation of church and state. Separation of church and state is dependent upon pastors and religious leaders being able to speak freely according to their conscience, and even, as a "prophet," to speak truth to power.

Dr. Wright's father was an eminent Baptist pastor. As a shepherd, he took up his congregation's viewpoint in evaluating public policy. Baptist preachers have historically sensitized the moral conscience of the nation and (with St. Peter) maintained the independence of the church over against the institutions of the state.

There is a difference between endorsing a particular candidate from the pulpit and criticizing government policy from the pulpit. The former can endanger a church's tax-exempt status, but the latter must be defended both tooth and nail, especially by Baptists with any self-awareness of their history.

If anything can be said about "Daddy J." it is that he criticizes the Democrats as well as the Republicans, and Clinton as well as Bush (but then, that part of his message was not YouTubed). The really asinine thing is those in the media who benefit from the freedom to air their opinions, yet hypocritically condemn a preacher for airing his. But if you see them limping, it wasn't because God smote them "hip and thigh."

What We Need

He knows what we need: http://awaken2008.com/blog/?p=33

What somebody else says we need :-)
http://www.greg-and-sue.com/2008/03/07/straight-preaching-on-bible-translations/

Are Catholics in a False Cult?

The current candidate flap has it that one of the frontrunners received an endorsement from a fundamentalist: John Hagee. This evangelical San Antonio pastor (of a church of 19,000 members) has a TV show (seen and heard weekly in 99 million homes), places an emphasis on prophecy and support of Israel, and has allegedly referred to the Catholic Church as a “false cult system.” (I don't know why I should use the word “allegedly,” you can watch it on YouTube.) Politics is not my gig, but before you decide what category to put the Catholic Church in, consider this.

BBC News reports that the current Pope, Benedict XVI, is giving plenary indulgences to every Catholic that will visit Lourdes (southwest France) from now till December 8. He says it will lessen their time spent in purgatory.

I am not making this up! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7131088.stm You can redeem this coupon in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Blessed Virgin Mary “allegedly” appearing to a peasant shepherd girl there (sorry, no YouTube for this one).

Conveniently, the Pope has opened direct air service from Rome to Lourdes. What if you still can't go? The Pope assures us that if you pray at any place of worship dedicated to the Madonna of Lourdes (hey, isn't there a “Lady of Lourdes” Catholic church down by Gregory Blvd?) then you can still have your indulgence. Oh wait! That coupon was only good from Feb. 2-11th. It's already expired! Holy crap.

The Pope will take advantage of his own offer when he visits Lourdes in September—although I didn't think Popes needed indulgences. Hmmm.

The decree was signed by American Cardinal J Francis Stafford, who is head of the Apostolic Penitentiary. Holy crap again! As if purgatory wasn’t enough, they have a Penn run by the apostles!

What is an indulgence? Indulgences were made infamous by Martin Luther because they were being sold (instead of gained the old fashioned way—by being earned). To quote the BBC: A plenary indulgence offers full pardon of the temporal punishment (suffering in this life or the next) due to sins already forgiven in confession.

Wait, I’m confused. Already forgiven, yet still being punished for them. Maybe we should consult the Enchiridion of Indulgences (it’s sort of like the Dungeon Master’s Guide for Dungeons & Dragons; or maybe more like the Monster Manual). I think what it really shows is that like a lot of false cult groups (Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, etc.) they use Christian terminology with unbiblical meanings.

Allow me to illustrate that accusation. According to catholic.org, “forgiveness of a sin is separate from punishment for the sin. Through sacramental confession we obtain forgiveness, but we aren’t let off the hook as far as punishment goes.” Whoa, Batman! I believe the Bible would classify that as holy crap.

How does one get an indulgence? Catholic World News (and they should know) says it is when you participate in a mass (where God is cannibalized) and complete certain usual conditions (sacramental Confession, Communion, prayer for the Pope’s intentions, and the absence of attachment to sin. Holy crap, missed it again!). Sometimes partial indulgences are granted just for praying. The standard prayers for the Pope are one Our Father and one Creed—though you’re free to substitute other prayers (just in case you wanted to know). Even making the Sign of the Cross has a partial indulgence attached to it. Don’t ask me what percentage a partial indulgence is, or how much longer you will have to suffer in purgatory if you don’t take the full one or I will send you to the apostle’s prison.

Actually, some pious acts and holy prayer recitations did carry an indication of time like “300 days,” “two years,” “a day after doomsday.” Just kidding on that last one. (This is only on really old prayer cards and books, because they changed the Enchiridion in 1967, since Protestants were calling it a cult system.) So a good Catholic will now only tell you your temporal punishment will be reduced as God sees fit. No guarantees that the coupon is actually worth what you are paying in airfare. (If you read the fine print, their web site says, “it's quite possible that even evidently good people, who seek plenary indulgences regularly, never, in their whole lives, obtain one.” Holy crap!)

Who decides what indulgences to give? The Pope. He decrees them.

What is purgatory then? You're asking good questions. Purgatory is a kind of spiritual waiting room for people who are not good enough to go directly to heaven, but not bad enough to go to hell after they die. Since they have not earned their way in by accumulating enough merit during this life, they must suffer more in order to purify their soul of residual sin.

I know. Fulton Sheen and the Knights of Columbus tell you it’s a doctrine full of comfort for the believing Catholic. Cultic and false? Certainly holy crap.