Al Tosap Al Davaraiv

THE COMING CHANGES IN AMERICAN LIFE--Violent Revolution or Change of a More Subtle Kind?

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 02:49:00 +0000

CURRENT AND SCARY
Why are gun sales so increased since the last election? Can folks with a Judeo-Christian worldview live with homosexuals who demand approval from all their neighbors?

For some time now there has been a sense among regular folk in my part of the country that our nation needs fixed and the solution can't be effected politically. Freedom for folks with traditional values is the issue.

Sound far out? As you may recall, last December the world was introduced to Russian scholar, Igor Panarin. Panarin has been predicting for ten years the possibility that the war of words and ideas between secularists and Judeo-Christian religionists in America concerning social values, morals, and worldviews will turn into a victory for the secularists, meaning a moral collapse and civil war in 2010. (1)

Might Panarin's notion simply be a reheated rant from Nikita Khrushchev, who predicted the US would fall from its own decadence? Maybe, but in Panarin's defense, he's a respected scholar and in the past few months we've seen the lives and safety of those who voted for Proposition 8 in California threatened by homosexual activists. (2) (3) (4) (5) In Montana, there's a new law passed by the legislature, awaiting the decision of the governor, banning the Federal government from control, registration, or even knowledge of the production and ownership of firearms within the state's borders if those firearms are produced and remain inside Montana. (6) (7) Think the implications of that one through. Whether or not the new law will survive the court challenge or the Supreme Court will again deny the States and their citizens their constitutional right to defend themselves from each other, foreigners, or a tyrannical government who wants to tell us how to eat, think, and raise our kids, it's an indication that something serious is afoot or at least that some would want it to be so. (It's sad when bad things happen to good sentences.) This would go a long way toward doing away with any Federal gun control and it could possibly decentralize the production of weapons, leading to all sorts of freedom and technological innovation in that area sans Federal snoopervision.

Finally, to bolster the case for the Panarin scenario, the Federal government's Department of Homeland Security, under the new administration, has declared to all law enforcement that individuals who tend to vote and live conservatively are enemies of the state, likely to be dangerous, and should be watched. (8) This isn't racial profiling. It's political and religious profiling. America, the land of the surveilled, home of those brave enough to report their neighbors for what they read, think, and watch?

WHAT ABOUT THE FUTURE?
I think Panarin is unnecessarily exact with his time line, but accurate in his assessment of current trends. The choices are three.

1. Continue on the path toward secularization or polytheism. (I'll explain that later.)

2. A revival of religion--not necessarily Christianity. (I'll explain that, too.)

3. Civil war or cessation of parts of the country.

We are on a train toward civil war or cessation. And that train can only be stopped by choices 1 or 2.

The trends toward polytheism and secularization are actually two paths to one place and that's why I see them as both compatible and essentially serving the same end. The goal of both is the end of the Judeo-Christian worldview. As long as there is no longer an insistence on biblical ethics in public policy, education, and entertainment secularists are happy. The secularists aren't as secular as they are anti-Christian. Hence, the puzzling attitude of atheists and the ACLU toward other religions is explained.

This is what I mean: If one prays a Christian prayer in school, secularists complain. If, however, there's a class requiring the kids to role play and do Muslim things or Wiccan things, that's okay.

Practical polytheism achieves the same thing. Modern Evangelical player Ravi Zacharias recently prayed at the National Prayer Breakfast. He was asked to not name the name of Jesus. He complied and prayed a prayer that fits with just about any religion. Like the Romans we are now being required by the tolerance-Nazis to be polytheistic at least in our outward actions. You can be a Christian, but don't say Jesus is the only way. As long as you do that, the secularists will leave you somewhat alone.

And so, atheists and theological liberals and other non-Christian religionists are comrades working toward the same end with different tools.

A revival of religion could again unify the nation, but Christianity isn't likely to be the religion that does it. That's the point of the polytheism we see today. Most of us would like to stay religious, but without all the moral restrictions biblical Christianity demands. American Evangelicalism is dead, both spiritually and as a meaningful movement. In its place practical polytheism has rushed in, allowing religion without distinction. Spirituality's okay. So is faith. The problem with that is any intellectually amorphous system of thought can't be effectively transferred to the next generation for four reasons.

First, under the currently ascending secularism/polytheism males have no defined role and many rebel in order to exercise masculinity outside of the prescribed bounds or replace that worldview with one that makes a role for males. Either usually leads to a masculinity that is exaggerated and grotesque, likely to be violent, sexually outrageous, or both. Hence, today we see many young men moving toward Islam, a religion that, if nothing else positive, is very masculine. And who has moved there the most? African American men. That makes sense because they have been excluded from the main stream of society much more than most other groups, though that has changed and is still changing.

Second, the youth can't find inspiration and motivation in a belief system that has no sharp edges. What young person with leadership potential wants to be distinctly indistinct? Or, who will follow the nebulously undefined? And who among us is attracted to ideas that have little content or illogical content? Most have no inclination to cheerleading when no team is on the field.

Third, it's actually very hard to pass on a body of knowledge without cognitive handles. And this may be of as much importance as the other three factors in this list. That is to say a belief system whose ideas have been dulled in order to be as inoffensive as possible is actually hard to communicate. And anything that is hard to communicate because it's extremely conceptual is hard to remember. The transfer from person to person is difficult even if the motivation is high.

Fourth, those who may be eligible to enter such a worldview will lack motivation for the simple reason that a worldview which has been designed or modified in order to be acceptable to others currently outside it usually says a lot of what those others outside it already believe. It has to or it would offend them. If nothing I say is new or different to my hearers, why will they listen?

The simple answer is they won't. They already believe what they're now hearing. This forgets the dictum that says any publicity is good publicity, as the current rise of Islam in the West so succinctly attests. So, go ahead and offend. At least you'll be heard.

Those four reasons are why practical polytheism, including the different forms of liberal Christianity, will have a short shelf life and even while it's still in force, it lacks the character to enforce morality of any kind, except a mindless tolerance of all things non-Christian even if it means great harm to society. (Christianity is the greatest evil to them.) So, while secularization and/or practical polytheism may stop the rush to a violent end to the America we once knew, it won't long stand without being replaced by another religion, tyranny, or civil breakdown of some sort.

Panarin is right for now. However, the problem with extrapolating current trends into future predictions is it assumes that all existing trends will continue essentially unchanged until the end state is achieved.

But then, I don't see the brake pedal. Do you?

In Christ,
Phil Perkins.

(1) http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/world/15011-russian-professor-forecasts-us-break-up-
(2) http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/local&id=6479861
(3) http://thenextright.com/proud2b4family/hate-on-8-recipient-of-prop-8-death-threat-blogs-the-experience
(4) http://www.worldmag.com/webextra/14613
(5) http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/mar2009/prop8-donors-fear.html
(6) http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/04/29/greenslade.htm
(7) http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2009/01/22/montana-brings-a-gun-10th-amendment-to-a-knife-interstate-commerce-fight/
(8) http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/041609_extremism.pdf

STILL TO COME--THE LOST DOCTRINE--Part V Righteousness Versus Holiness--So What's the Difference?

HITTING, MISSING, AND APOLOGIZING

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 11:33:00 +0000

I would like to apologize to some of my regular readers. This is my busy time of year, working six and seven days a week, ten to twelve hours a day or longer. So, I've been a little absent. This will probably last until the end of May, possibly longer.

Sorry.

I have some saved posts up my sleeve, though, and will be editing and posting them weekly for a while. And I am still absolutely jacked about the series on holiness, the lost doctrine. This is the most important doctrine of Scripture.

In the Holy One of Israel.
Phil Perkins. PS--I will also be publishing course descriptions and syllabi for the upcoming classes.

THE LOST DOCTRINE--Part IV The Holiness of Holiness in Four Forgotten But Important Places

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:49:00 +0000

THE UNIQUE HOLINESS OF GOD.
The first three installments of this series reintroduced us to the biblical centrality of holiness, without which we cannot understand just Who God really is. Holiness is the very essence of God. Unlike all the universe, He is outside space-time. He is uncreated. He is non-contingent, needing nothing to be, to continue to be, and to be happy. He is so unlike all the rest of reality expressed by a special adjective He gave us to describe Him--Holy, Holy, Holy. Holiness is that characteristic of God that names this vast difference from everything else, this enormous apartness, this gigantic otherness.

There is no way to describe Him. We can only describe created things like Him.

Then I discussed the place of holiness among the other characteristics of God. God is righteous, loving, holy, all powerful, all knowing, prescient, present everywhere at once, eternal, wrathful, merciful, etc. There are two common views of the place of holiness among the attributes. First, is the idea that holiness is one among a number of attributes. God is this, God is that, God is the next thing, and one of those things is holy. This is the older of the two, but it is wrong. The second common view of holiness among the attributes of God is the newer and even worse idea that love is the highest attribute of God. All other attributes are subservient too love. Love conquers all, including all the other attributes of God, it seems. As a result of this view, God orders all things in His program for mankind to achieve the goal of love and attributes like righteousness, holiness, and wrath are downplayed or omitted completely in the minds of many church--goers and preachers.

Still older than the two views mentioned is the biblical view that holiness is the chief attribute of God. All other attributes are governed by holiness, can only be properly understood in light of holiness, and are originated in God's uniqueness--His holiness. There is none like Him.

THE UNIQUE HOLINESS OF HOLINESS AMONG THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD.
Still reviewing, I discussed, also, the fact that even as an attribute all in its own right, apart from its status as an attribute of God is holy. Yes, holiness is unique--holy among the other attributes. Every other attribute can be balanced by it's opposite without being changed in its essence. Righteousness can be balanced by mercy. That is what the atonement was about. The Righteous One became merciful without being one iota unrighteous. Even the Lamb remained righteous in essence, when my unrighteousness was imputed to Him so that He could experience the wrath of the Father. Power can be balanced by self-control, without weakening the power at all. Love can be balanced by wrath and remain loving.

Some may ask, "Can't holiness by countered by mercy, since the holiness of God demands justice?" This is a mistake that is rooted in the fact that holiness is often mistaken as another word for righteousness. Holiness is often mistaken this way simply because we live in such an unrighteous world that the righteousness of God is in stark contrast to the unrighteousness of the world around us. God's holiness includes righteousness, but it also includes His power, His love, His knowledge, and so forth. All these attributes are holy unto God because no one has power, knowledge, and love like His. Holiness is much more than righteousness. It is all that God is. All that God is is different, set apart, unique, separated--in a word holy. God's God-ness is His holiness.

Holiness, on the other hand, isn't like the other attributes. Apartness, disappears when it joins. Purity is ruined by mixing and dilution. There is no counter to the attribute of holiness that doesn't destroy it. It is, thus, unique among the attributes. Indeed, holiness is the only attribute by which God will swear and expects people to do the same. He swears by His Name and by His holiness. Recall that the personal name of God, Yahweh, indicates His holiness strongly, as laid out in Part III. Also, read these passages:

"Once I have sworn by My holiness; I will not lie to David."--Psalm 89:35

"Nevertheless hear the word of the LORD, all Judah who are living in the land of Egypt, 'Behold, I have sworn by My great name,' says the LORD, 'never shall My name be invoked again by the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, "As the Lord God lives."--Jeremiah 44:26

"Then it will come about that if they will really learn the ways of My people, to swear by My name, 'As the LORD lives,' even as they taught My people to swear by Baal, then they will be built up in the midst of My people."--Jeremiah 12:16

THE HOLINESS OF CHRISTIANITY AMONG RELIGIONS.
The concept of the holiness of God is unique to the religion of Scripture. While all religions, to my knowledge, have a concept of holiness, only the religion of Scripture has a holiness like the holiness of the God of Scripture. True, this is still a review, but I want to go further here. I have written already in passing of the God of Scripture being outside space-time. That may sound pseudo-hip and modern, like a clever adaptation of modern scientific language retrofitted onto a religion of the past--a cute lie to disguise the obsolescence of an old religion.

It isn't. As early as Augustine the idea of Yahweh being outside space and time was discussed. Augustine lived from 354 to 430. He said that before creation there was no time. God created both space and time. Sound a bit Einsteinian? Well yes, it does, doesn't it? One more proof that the Scripture is reliable, predicting something so counter intuitive that it's truth wouldn't be discovered by the brightest human minds until millenia later. No other religion speaks of the beginning of time and space.(1) In fact, no other religion speaks about a god who is outside space-time.

THE HOLINESS OF THE SCRIPTURAL GOD'S PEOPLE.
"Be holy because I am holy." God's people are called to be holy for a specific reason. It isn't to gain favor or to gain heaven or to set a good example for the kids. They are to be holy because God is.

This brings with it a question? Just what kind of holiness should we have? Is it to be the holiness of other religions--kind of different, but not qualitatively? Gods of other religions aren't different from creation qualitatively, but quantitatively. That is the gods of other people are made of stone, metal, wood, or flesh, but much bigger or more powerful. If none of this is true of a particular god, that god is never considered outside space-time, but operates within space-time just like we do. Their gods are just like them or quiet similar, but bigger, wiser, more powerful, invisible, or some such thing as that. Only the God of Scripture is wholly different, outside time and space. He is qualitatively different and more so than any god conceived by men.

This being so, isn't our holiness to be radical? We aren't to be like the Catholics, Buddhists, or Mormons, but more fervent. We are to be entirely different. As the God of Scripture is hated and was even killed when He became flesh, are we to be different from Him or different from those around us? We are to be so different that it is hard for us to live in peace, according to Scripture. If we aren't hounded and hated, we aren't His. But more on that in later installments.

In Christ,
Phil Perkins.

(1) D'Souza, Dinesh; What's So Great About Christianity; Tyndale House Publishers; Carol Stream Illinois; 2007; p. 125.

NEXT TIME: Holiness and the problem of evil--Bad things happen. Are we concerned or just whining?

AND: If a radical holiness is the foremost quality of your God, what should yours be?

JUST THE BIBLE ACADEMY MISSION STATEMENT

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:55:00 +0000

This fall will be the beginning of something new I'm doing. God willing, I'm starting something I call Just the Bible Academy. It will be unaccredited and unofficial. It will be an alternative to going to seminary or Bible college. It will give the student a better understanding of the original languages of Scripture than most seminaries. It will give the student a MUCH better understanding of Scripture than most Bible colleges and seminaries. It won't leave the student in debt. It will be done live and interactively over the internet, available to individuals and churches. It will be centered on two things: The Bible and how to study it for yourself.

Here is the mission statement in embryonic form. I will publish it again with a fuller explanation of the twelve things I've listed here.

FOUR OBJECTIVES.
1. To replace of the education of pastors by faceless, unaccountable institutions with the discipleship by pastors and godly men in the churches, as the New Testament example demands.
2. To return the education of pastors to biblicity of content.
3. To educate Christians in the languages of Scripture.
4. To offer in-depth, systematic Bible study and the training to study the Bible in the original languages to the entire church.

EIGHT BENEFITS OF THE FOUR OBJECTIVES.
1. Pastors will have more knowledge of Scripture.
2. Pastors will be more accountable, because other men in the congregation will be more informed in Scripture.
3. Trainers of pastors will be more accountable, because they will be in the local church, not financed by the local church, and working in a distant city.
4. The resources of the local church will be saved to reach their own city or support missionaries, rather than supporting teachers and campuses unnecessarily.
5. Money won't be the motivation to train pastors. Love for God and the disciple will be the motivation.
6. Pastors will be more free to be biblical because they can be free from financial obligations.
7. More men will be able to train for the pastorate because they won't need money, opening the pastorate to men of God's choosing, whether rich or poor.
8. More Christians will be able to evaluate modern translations, many of which aren't honestly done.

THE LOST DOCTRINE--Part III The Names of God and the Great Lie of Modern Evangelicalism

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:51:00 +0000

I AM. Yahweh of Armies. The Holy Spirit. Son. Holy, Holy, Holy. Love. The Truth. The Way. The Life. Father. Holy Father. Creator. Lion. Eagle. Bridegroom. Husband. Judge. King. Lawgiver. Warrior. Physician. Builder. Maker. Shepherd. Lamb. Hen. The Sun. Shield. Light. Salvation. Defense of My Life. Fountain of Life. Hiding Place. Root and Offspring of David. Bright Morning Star. Lamp. Temple. Rock. God of Faithfulness. Strong Tower. The Most High. The Almighty.

GOD'S NAMES SPELL HOLINESS.
Not love. Not power. Not mercy. Not knowledge. Not righteousness. God's names almost all breath holiness. I believe all do when understood in context.

Above are a few of God's names, starting with His actual personal name. In Part II, I discussed the fact that holiness was part of God's personal name. I AM is a name that no one can claim but Him.

In addition, God has a number of other names or titles that describe Him in one way or another. All the titles highlight a specific thing about God. "God is Yahweh of Armies." Most translations say "Lord of Hosts". That means something specific about God. It is a mention of God's power and status as a warrior leading other warriors. A conqueror. But George Bush can say that. He lead a nation in a war and conquered another nation.

So are George and God warriors in the same sense? No. George had to tax millions of people for money for the war. He had to recruit thousands of young men as soldiers, sailors, and airmen. He had to get thousands of others to train these young men. He did nothing much with his own power.

God's power is nothing like that. All the power of God's army is from God Himself. George has no power against another nation. He borrowed power.

In addition, George fought vicariously through young men, borrowing their power, to defeat a nation of men who were made of flesh and blood just like his flesh and blood. Not so God. He fights no one like Him, because there is no one like him. He is a Spirit who can speak all flesh out of existence. No flesh now lives without His powerful arm supporting it and His omniscient mind ordering each vibration of each sub-atomic particle in each molecule of every cell. Anyone in His army exists just because God makes him exist and his power is borrowed from God.

In short, God is the leader like no other of armies like no other.

The same sort of thing can be said about all the other names. "God is love" doesn't mean the same thing that "Phil is love" means. It means that God is a loving being. Well, so am I. I love my wife. I love my dogs. I love reading the Bible. I love my family. Each of these things and people I love are things that cause me to love them. I fell in love with my wife because she was and looked a certain way. I love my dogs for certain reasons, too. I love God because He first loved me. My love is selfish and caused. His love is unselfish and uncaused.

The LORD appeared to him from afar, saying, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness."--Jeremiah 31:3.

And He said, "I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the LORD before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion."--Exodus 33:19.

All of God's attributes are one of a kind and separate from the some sort of attribute possessed by any other being. Everything in reality is created, except God. Remember, holiness is differentness, called-outness, unmixedness, outsideness, uniqueness, purity. Only God is uncreated. All else is created and derived. My love is some capacity God created within me. His love is outside created reality and cannot be compared to mine in many ways. My power is created, derived, and limited. His is uncaused, unlimited.

All power, all love, all righteousness, all compassion, all mercy, all wrath, all justice, all intelligence is created, unlimited, and derived. Except God's. His love, power, justice, mercy, knowledge, is unlimited, uncaused, uncreated, underived, and unknown to us except by His gracious revelation. He doesn't know like we know. He doesn't love like we love. He doesn't exercise power like we do.

ALL GOD'S OTHER ATTRIBUTES ARE GOVERNED BY THE HIGHEST ATTRIBUTE--HOLINESS.
When I was young, I was taught that there was a great God and He had a number of attributes. They were all His attributes and there wasn't a real order of importance given. They were all equally His, none higher than the other, unless by the emphasis given by a particular preacher. It looked a lot like this:

MEism (Modern Evangelicalism) typically sees it another way. "God is love" seems to be the ruling principle that governs all other things about God. His wrath is governed by His love, so it is often said God doesn't send anyone to hell. (So how do they get there, I wonder?) It looks like this:

While this scheme isn't often formally articulated, it seems, by the teaching, the preaching, and the beliefs of folks in the pew, God's love is His foremost attribute. Love governs all else. He wants everyone saved and happy. Love limits His power, His wrath, and His sovereignty.

This isn't biblical. Holiness (uniqueness, differentness, apartness) isn't just one of the attributes. It governs all the others. God's love, being underived and uncreated, is unique from the love of all others. Their loves are derived from the creative hand of God. On the other hand, God's uniqueness (holiness) isn't anymore loving than it is powerful or wrathful or merciful or sovereign. But His sovereignty is indeed holy, different and unique from all others. All His attributes are uncaused, underived, uncontingent, independent in their very essense. So, the biblical scheme looks like this:

HOLINESS IS THE VERY EXCELLENCY OF THE DIVINE NATURE--A. W. Pink.(1)
Isaiah 6 tells us that the Lord of hosts is holy, holy, holy. Why is this sort of statement stressed less that "God is love" from I John? Never is God called love, love, love. In Psalm 89:35, we see that God swears by His holiness. He never swears by His love, does He? Mr. Pink called the holiness of God "an excellency about all His other perfectgions" and "the glory of every perfection in the Godhead".(2)

The highest attribute of God is holiness. God's holiness is powerful, but it is also meek. His holiness is loving, but it is also wrathful. His holiness is sovereign, but humble. However, the opposite isn't true. His love is holy, but not impure. His power is holy, but not unholy. His sovereignty is holy, but not mixed with the common. All the attributes of God are balanced. Love and anger. Power and control. Mercy and justice. Righteousness and compassion. Knowledge and the determination to impute righteousness and forget sin in His beloved. Even His sovereignty humbles Itself to use the will of man to carry out the decree God made in whatever was before the foundation of the world. Not so holiness. Purity isn't balanced with impurity. It's ruined. It's no longer pure, but impure. Uniquensess isn't complemented by conformity. It is sullied. It's no longer unique. God is just holy, holy, holy.

YAHWEH IS THE ONLY HOLY GOD.
All other religions have a concept of the holy. That seems to be implanted in us. However, Yahweh is the only holy God. Other gods may be called holy by their followers, but they really aren't. They are very like the creation. First, they're created. Usually by man. We make them up or we follow created demons and call them gods. Second, their attributes are just human attributes exaggerated. They aren't seen as outside of time-space. They live in time-space. Yahweh is eternal and omnipresent. That means He is outside time-space. Apollo looked like a man and did things with his arms and legs just like you might do them if you were a cartoon. That's why idols are often statues. We take what little we know and rearrange it just so and call it Fred, God of Gerbals, Kangaroos, and Giraffes. And our neighbor makes Nora, Goddess of Bathwater and Navels. Another man takes a half horse and half man and creates something else in his imagination. Worse, a person goes to church and imagines a god who only loves people, never hates them for their sin, gets a job preaching and tells folks that he found this god in the Bible somewhere.

Our God is holy, holy, holy. Nobody is like Him.

Be holy,
Phil Perkins.

(1)Pink, A. W.; The Attributes of God; Sovereign Grace Publishers; Lafayette, Indiana; copyright 2002 by Jay P. Greene Sr.; ISBN 1-58960-320-6; p. 43.
(2) ibid. p. 44.

THE LOST DOCTRINE--Part II The Highest Attribute of God and the Death of Western Christianity

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:31:00 +0000

IS GOD LOVE?
Being raised in Modern Evangelicalism, I was taught the greatest attribute of God was love. Not much Scripture was given as evidence other than the old see-saw "God is love" and the two passages where these words are found in I John.

But how does Scripture label the trinity? God is love, according to I John, but is that the entire story? Is it the crowning characteristic? Is it even the main charachteristic? Or have we been short-changed? Have we misunderstood? Have we been lied to? I've been reading Pink lately, so here's what he said about the issue:

The unregenerate do not really believe in the holiness of God. Their conception of His character is altogether one-sided. They fondly hope that His mercy will override evertything else.--A. W. Pink. (1)

What is God? Starting with His name as revealed in Exodus, He is "I AM". Does I AM speak of love or of something else primarily?

Then Moses said to God, "Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I shall say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you.' Now they may say to me, 'What is His name?' What shall I say to them?" 14 And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'"--Exodus 3:13-14.

What is the point of such an odd name? I'll list several.

1. God is eternal. "I AM." He can't tell us when He began or when He will complete. He simply is. No creature can say this. He is other.

2. God has no possible reference by which to describe Himself. He can't point to a clan, city, nation, or race. I am Philip Perkins of Billings, Montana. By saying this I define myself by things larger than I (city, state, nation, family)--something of which God isn't capable. He isn't from anything or any place. Even in terms of space-time, God is other.

3. God has no substance or essense that can describe Him familiar to human experience. I am a human, made of human flesh, blood, and soul. This is how I describe what I am. I can refer to other beings, processes, events, substances. God can't do that. He is other.

4. God can't describe Himself as shaped by any experience, since all history is cause by His very decree. I am the fellow who grew up on a farm, was raised by a certain family, went to certain schools, married a certain lady, acquired a BS in psychology and an M. Div. in theology, has owned a small business, designed a number of pieces of equipment, learned welding, machining, and some basics of mechanical engineering on my own, and am self-taught in Latin. God can say no such thing. He isn't the best carpenter in Nazareth--or the worst. He decided and there was wood and hands to shape the wood. He's God and that's about all one can say. He needs no experience because He knows all things. No experience can shape Him, because He is unchangable. He cannot be improved because He is perfect. He can't lose any perfection or have even one tarnished in the slightest degree because He is God. He can't say "I AM" shaped like this and so, and was changed by this experience. All He can say about His growth is "I AM" because He has had no progress to make upward because He is perfect and He can make no downward progress because He is God. No one else and nothing else is like that. He is other.

In God's own personal name, His otherness--His holiness is demonstrated as especially important. No one but God, when asked, "Who are you?" can actually say "I AM". Anyone else would have to identify himself/herself with references. God is the great reference point. All the other points come from His plan and His creation.

WHAT HOLINESS IS
There is little difference between the Greek and Hebrew words for holiness, so let's just stick to the English words involved for now. Depending on your translation the verbs meaning to make holy will be words like dedicate, consecrate, or sanctify. Other terms that are similar, but not cognates of the root words in Hebrew and Greek for holy will be words like separate or dedicate.

Nouns that indicate the process or act of becoming holy, the process or act of making something or someone holy, or the state or condition of being holy are words like holiness, dedication, consecration, and sanctification.

The actual words that translate directly from the Greek and Hebrew words for holy are holy and saint. These are descriptive terms called adjectives. Consecrated, dedicated, and sanctified are verbs that act like adjectives and are common in Scripture, but holy and saint are the first words to consider. While saint appears as a noun in the English, it's an adjective in the Greek and Hebrew. It means holy man or holy person. It's use is much like the English term the rich. Rich is an adjective and usually occurs in phrases like the rich people. We shorten that phrase, letting the adjective stand in for the entire phrase, saying the rich instead of the rich people. Saint translates the exact Greek adjective as holy. The biblical writers shortened the phrase to just the adjective just as we do in English with the poor, the tall, etc. Saint means holy man. Sanits means holy people.

The root words from the Greek and Hebrew are hagios in the Greek and qdsh, nzr, and hnkh in the Hebrew. The most important and common Hebrew root is qdsh. The denotations have a range that include separateness, separation, differentness, difference, set-apartness, or the quality of being dedicated for a certain role, function, or position, unmixed, apart from, untainted--in a word holiness.

HOLINESS AS A MAJOR THEME OF SCRIPTURE--Gentlemen, start your concordances.
I've already asked if the reader has heard a sermon on holiness lately. It's almost a joke, isn't it? Of course not. Many church goers have never heard a sermon on holiness and I'd be confident that the average church contains members, none of which have ever read even a small book on the subject. Go to your local religious book store and ask where is the section on sanctification. The fellow waiting on you won't even know what you mean.

So isn't holiness just another of the virtues God expects of us, along with about a dozen more? Isn't holiness just somewhere in the group. Certainly love is the crowning virtue of all virtues, right?

What if I told you, "No, holiness is the highest attribute of God and the highest virtue of men. You would reply, I suppose, that the two greatest commandments are to love God and then to love men. That's a good reply and a biblical one, but there is a problem with that thinking as it is practiced. The problem has to do with exactly what love is. I'll handle that in the next installment of this series, God willing.

For now, I'd like us to consider something that may shock many of you. Holiness is a small or non-existent theme in MEism, but it's actually a bigger theme than love in the Scripture. The words I listed as translations of the Hebrew and Greek roots for holy, holiness, and to make or be holy occur more times in the Scripture than similar words for love, loved, beloved, loves, and loving. Using an electronic concordance of the NASB, I found the words concerning love occur 731 times, while the words expressing the theme of holiness occur 830 times.

So what? Those are just numbers. Well, pick up an ME (Modern Evangelical) book and read. Listen to ME radio. Listen to ME sermons. Is the ratio in modern preaching, writing, songs, and church services even close to just one to one? Is it close to two to one? Ten to one?

Nowhere close.

We are out of balance with Scripture.

"But," you may object, "holiness is a major theme of the Old Testament, not the New Testament. These days are days of grace, not holiness and judgment." While that objection is certainly typical ME, it's NOT BIBLICAL. Out of the 611 occurences of holy (including saint), 422 occur in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is 72-73% of the Bible. Now, to be just propostional at 72%, the OT SHOULD have 440 occurences of holy.

That means that you are more likely to find the word holy more quickly reading in the New Testament than in the Old Testament!!!!!! Yet, how many times have we been taught that holiness, righteousness, law, and wrath are the purview of the Old Testament?

We've been lied to.

Be holy,
Phil Perkins

(1)Pink, A. W.; The Attributes of God; Sovereign Grace Publishers; Lafayette, Indiana; copyright 2002 by Jay P. Greene Sr.; ISBN 1-58960-320-6; p. 46.

COMING FRIDAY:
PART III OF THE LOST DOCTRINE--The Names of God.
God is love or God is holy, holy, holy. Since God is both, Why is His Spirit called Holy? Why isn't He called the Loving Spirit?

THE LOST DOCTRINE--Part I The Attribute That Defines God

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:30:00 +0000

UNHEARD OF.
You've seen the word in Scripture if you read the Bible. It's a doctrine/practice that is neither taught nor practiced in the Modern Evangelical church. This Lost Doctrine is so essential that the biblical concept of God's people isn't possible without it. When God brought the people out of Egypt this doctrine/practice was the reason for it. Even the concept of the biblical God isn't possible without this Lost Doctrine. A. W. Pink said this doctrine is the premier attribute of God and all other attributes of God are governed by it. (1)

Almost certainly, you've never heard a sermon on this doctrine. In fact, if you're a pastor, you'll be ridiculed roundly in the ME movement if you preach this Lost Doctrine. You will be avoided and black balled in many circles of "Christians". Your congregation is likely to be much smaller than if you ignore it and you will be hated very deeply by others in your chosen profession.

This doctrine is so pervasive in biblical thought that if one were to cut out all verses which refer to it, many biblical stories would be unintelligible. The books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy would be destroyed. They would be much shorter, too. This doctrine and its practice is essential to salvation and without it, no one will ever know God and the Bible uses just that sort of language about it. This practice is the very mark that shows who belongs to God and who doesn't.

This doctrine is huge in both Old and New Covenants, but its practice was changed from the OC to the NC.

I've called this the "Lost Doctrine" because it has been forgotten by many older lay people and many younger ones have never heard of it, but it might be better called the Ignored Doctrine. Beginning with the emergence of the ME movement, the practice of this doctrine has been systematically opposed by many clergy and religious leaders.

If you think I'm starting to sound like Joseph Smith, bringing in new doctrines that I SAY were forgotten but I really made up out of thin air, ask yourself this question: When was the last time you heard a sermon on holiness? Can you articulate the New Covenant practice of holiness? I don't ask questions like this to make you feel bad or stupid or inferior. I ask to make you worry and to motivate you to study the Scripture for yourselves to see if I'm right and if all you've heard and been taught is right. And I ask questions like this to make you distrust all teachers, including me, and check the Bible. Paul liked that sort of thing. Remember the Bereans?

THE ATTRIBUTE THAT DEFINES GOD.
It isn't love. It's holiness. Sound familiar? Not if you've spent a lot of time in MEism. MEism says it's the other way round. God is love. Legalism is the summum baddum of all of life. Soft is good. Harsh is bad.

The definition of holiness is pretty much the same, Old Testament or New Testament. At root, it's separateness, otherness, different-ness. By both logical and natural consequence it is also purity. (2) (3)

In all of reality nothing and no one is more other than God. Only God is non-contingent, self-existent, and uncreated. Only God is without limit. All creatures know by conforming their thoughts to reality. Only God knows by creating reality that is absolutely conformed to His thoughts. Creatures are righteous when they conform to a moral law outside themselves. Only God is independent of all laws. Only God has righteousness because He is righteous. All creatures have righteousness by imitating God's character or by imputation. That is to say, God has no need to conform His character to a moral law. Moral law is moral because it conforms to His character. Righteousness is described when one describes His nature and righteousness is righteous because it is how God is. A common misconception that is easily made is the confusion of righteousness with holiness. This is natural because to be holy to a righteous God, will cause the holy creatures to be much more righteous than those creatures not holy to this righteous God.

God's omnipotence is part of His otherness. His omniscience is part of His otherness. His otherness is Him. He can be nothing but other because everything else is created by Him, dependent upon Him, judged by Him, and has no purpose other than the purpose He gives it. Any creature that seeks its only glory is evil. God seeks His own glory because He is worthy of glory just because He is God.

If you have a copy of A. W. Pink's The Attributes of God, take a few minutes this evening to read the chapter on holiness. It will be a good reminder for us older folks, an introduction for you younger folks.

Part II will deal with holiness as the attribute of all the other attributes of God. This will be a very long series, with other posts in between. Patience will be needed, but this doctrine is key to understanding God properly as He revealed Himself to us. It is also key to the restoration of the gospel in the West. Why don't we fear God? Because we forgot His holiness.

In Christ,
Phil Perkins.

(1) Pink, A. W.; The Attributes of God; Sovereign Grace Publishers; Lafayette, Indiana; copyright 2002 by Jay P. Green, Sr.; ISBN 1-58960-320-6; p. 44.
(2) Erickson, Millard J.; Christian Theology, vol. 1; Baker Book House; Grand Rapids, Michigan; 1983; ISBN 0-8010-3391-8; pp. 284-285.
(3) Grudem, Wayne; Systematic Theology; Zondervan; Grand Rapids, Michigan; copyright 1994 by Wayne Grudem; ISBN 0-310-28670-0; pp. 201-202.

AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM IS A MENTAL GHETTO--Part X

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:47:00 +0000

For the shepherds have become stupid And have not sought the LORD; Therefore they have not prospered, And all their flock is scattered. The prophecy of Jermiah, chapter ten, verse twenty-one.

He slumps at the bar. Or he laughs too louldly by the pool table. Or he flirts too much with too many of the girls at the bar. He intended to drink only two or three beers. It's quarter to one and he has to be at work at six. He turned of his cell three hours ago so his wife can't call him again.

FINALLY THE END--Part X.
When I started this series I was like the drunk. I thought it'd go two, maybe three installments. But as I dug and thought and read, the devastation done by the avoidance of precise thought in favor of the emotive and mystical has weighed and weighed on my mind. It's a desparately evil thing. I hope I've exposed well a tooth or two of this animal. I hope I've motivated one or two to strive to think biblical thoughts in biblical categories with biblical vocabulary. I hope I've comforted one or two who have been persecuted for doing it. I hope I've helped all of you to laugh at the Swami of Smarminess at prayer meeting or Sunday School. I hope you laugh up your sleeve the next time the church lady (or the fellow who wished he was more like a lady because he thinks Jesus was) looks down her long, stiff Pharisee nose at you and says you're not nearly as loving as she thinks she is------I hope the next time that happens you have a hard time not laughing. I hope the next time someone tells you that doctrine isn't important you ask them where they found that doctrine in the Bible and if they think it's really important to believe the dontrine-isn't-important doctrine. Then I hope your accuser gets embarrassed for saying something so stupid. I hope you ignore anyone who tells you this sort of thing as irrelevant. I hope you pray that their influence be quenched. I hope you pray that such folks get saved. I hope you fall more in love with Scripture and the God Who revealed it every day. More and more and more and more and more.

That's why I couldn't shut up.

THE MENTAL GHETTO ONE MORE TIME.
For those of you who may be new, this is the tenth and last of a series on the MENATAL GHETTO. You can read about it by following the link provided. Briefly, the MENTAL GHETTO is the idea that doctrine isn't important, sensitive is better than true, feeling is better than knowing, and the praise band is a ministry. I call it a ghetto because it's like the real ghetto in most American cities. It's a horrible place to be, but getting out means turning off the TV, putting away the bong, taking a shower, and filling out jobs aps. As long as a pittance of money stolen by government from working people comes in, it's tolerable. In the MENTAL GHETTO, everyone knows they don't know much about the Bible, but pastors, other congregants, even our closest friends don't hold us accountable. Few church goers can name six of the ten commandments, but never will you hear anyone rebuked for this appalling ignorance in an ME (Modern Evangelical) institution. We get away with it. Studying the Bible is hard. What's even harder is the change that biblical knowledge will require from those who come to possess it. So folks stay in the MENTAL GHETTO.

It's easier.

SENSITIVITY AS A SIN IN SCRIPTURE--MALACHI.
The clergy need their faces smeared with manure. Who would make such a vulgar suggestion? God said that. Malachi's job was to pass this message along to the folks and their shepherds, the Levitical priests.

In Malachi 2, God addresses the shepherds of Israel. Like all the prophets dealing with the descendants of Jacob, Malachi was an officer of the court. God sent Malachi to serve papers on Israel, but this section is not to all of Israel. It was just to the Levites. The papers served usually named the ways in which the people of Israel or Judah had violated the Covenant of Sinai. The papers for the Levites had to do with the covenant God made with Levi's descendants. He promised them the priesthood. In Numbers 3 God told Moses that only the Levites could attend to the tabernacle. All others would die if they tried. In return, the Levites were to be completely owned by God through Aaron, in Numbers 3:9. This special favor and wonderful privilege was to be repaid with absolute fidelity.

The Levites had broken the contract. They were not exact in the instruction of the Law of God. Here is Malachi 2:1-9 in the NASB:

1 "And now, this commandment is for you, O priests.
2 "If you do not listen, and if you do not take it to heart to give honor to My name," says the LORD of hosts, "then I will send the curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings; and indeed, I have cursed them already, because you are not taking it to heart.
3 "Behold, I am going to rebuke your offspring, and I will spread refuse on your faces, the refuse of your feasts; and you will be taken away with it.
4 "Then you will know that I have sent this commandment to you, that My covenant may continue with Levi," says the LORD of hosts.
5 "My covenant with him was one of life and peace, and I gave them to him as an object of reverence; so he revered Me, and stood in awe of My name.
6 "True instruction was in his mouth, and unrighteousness was not found on his lips; he walked with Me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many back from iniquity.
7 "For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.
8 "But as for you, you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by the instruction; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi," says the LORD of hosts.
9 "So I also have made you despised and abased before all the people, just as you are not keeping My ways, but are showing partiality in the instruction."

By the time of Malachi, the judgment had been set. This was not a prophecy of warning. Judgment was ordered. The time for repentance was gone. The Hebrews were about to go through 400 years of silence from God. These were probably His last words to that generation and the first nine verses of chapter two were His last words to the clergy before their damnation came upon them. Read the first two verses. "I have cursed them already, because you are not taking it to heart," God said. What had they not taken to heart? The first part of verse two tells us. "...you do not take it to heart to give honor to My name..."

The priests had another priority and it didn't involve being wholly given to God. Any preacher who preaches for any reason other than to glorify God by being absolutely faithful to His word is sinning the sin of the Levites of Malachi's prophecy.

I don't get to preach much in churches. The story is always the same. "You're too harsh." "Can't you be positive?" "Why do you always preach judgment?" In short, I'm not sensitive to the feelings of my hearers.

The preacher of God isn't supposed to care about the feelings of his hearers. He's supposed to be given precisely and totally to God. The Levitical Covenant in Numbers puts it this way in verse nine: "You shall thus give the Levites to Aaron and to his sons; they are wholly given to him from among the sons of Israel."

See the words "they are wholly given"? Literally, word-for-word, it could be rendered, "...given ones, given ones are they..." THAT'S emphatic. That's pointed. The next two phrases are important, too. First is "to him". "Him" refers to Aaron. In other words, the Levites were given to the work of the ministry. Then comes the contrast, "...from among the sons of Israel." The idea here is that there is a distinct consecration of the Levites. Men called to minister are distinct from others. They are not the same. Are all the saints given wholly to God? Yes, but there's a special responsibility preachers have that no one else has. Their job isn't to be given to the congregation. They're God's. Only God's feelings are the preacher's concern. Men are incidental. And that's appropriate even if only the love of our fellow man is considered, since the very Word of God is life to the soul. The feelings of a man are no more important to the preacher than the pain of a patient to a surgeon. The limb must be amputated or the man dies. For the man of God, only the accurate preaching of God's word is a concern of real consequence.

Going too far? See another passage having to do with the work of presenting God's truth to men. The task of the prophet is delineated in Deuteronomy 18. This is a key passage for understanding all of Scripture, but one ignored by far too many. The reason it's so important is it's centrality to the understanding of just how any man is to relate to the word of God, preacher or not. This passage is pivotal and precursive to II Timothy 3:16 and 17. Without II Timothy 3 and Psalm 119, we would still have the doctrines of the sufficiency of Scripture, the inerrancy of Scripture, the authority of Scripture, and the necessity of Scripture in Deuteronomy 18. It even gives the foundation for order in the church. All that needs to be added to the plain teaching of Deuteronomy 18 to achieve all this is the inspiration of Scripture.

Let's take a look at just a wee bit of this passage. Verses 18-20 read like this:

18 I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. 19 And it shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him. 20 But the prophet who shall speak a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he shall speak in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.

Did you notice the part about how the prophet is to consult the feelings of his hearers when deciding what to say and how to say it? I didn't either. There is one and only one criterion for deciding what to say: "...he shall speak to them all that I command him." There isn't much to consider, is there? Just say what God has said. That's all. It's simple. Either you do it or you don't.

Back to Malachi--the Levites were under God's coming judgment simply because their guiding principle was something other than God's glory. That other agenda was the "lifting of faces". Look at verse nine. The NASB and most translations say "showing partiality". Literally, it's "lifting faces". Their sin was lifting faces instead of giving honor to the name of God as prescribed in verse two. That, by the way, is the essence of the declarative side of the gospel. Bragging about God is an essential part of evangelism. See Psalm 145 for that and cross reference the first verses of I Corinthians 15. (The imperative side of the gospel is the command to repent and believe.)

"Showing partiality" isn't a bad translation. It's appropriate since that is the idiomatic meaning of "lifting faces". "Lifting faces" is commonly associated with taking bribes, too, in Scripture. See Job 34:19, Proverbs 28:21, and II Chronicles 19:7. I think it's interesting, though, that the Spirit chose the idiom "lifting faces". The Hebrews understood something. We read each other. When we please someone, they look up and their eyes brighten. As one who has taught, I can tell you with confidence a teacher knows when he has his audience. When the faces are up and bright, your audience likes what they're hearing.

But there's often a trade to be made to get this result. Men who respect the feelings of others don't fear God and don't know the wonder of God. They don't know God. Verse five. And in verses six through eight, we read that such men no longer speak the truth to men.

The dishonest preacher preaches based on what will lift the faces of his audience. It can be very manipulative. Malachi tells us just what God thinks about such men. He will smear feces on their faces, disrespect their religious service, curse their children, and throw them away with the feces produced by the eating that took place at their feasts. Verse three says, "Behold, I am going to rebuke your offspring, and I will spread refuse on your faces, the refuse of your feasts; and you will be taken away with it." This a picture of being thrown in the dump outside of the city, a biblical figure of damnation.

Of course this is figurative. Yet, just how nasty a picture must God paint for us to understand His hatred for those who shade the truth to please others? How disgusting a story must He tell to make us understand the damnation that awaits the pastor who is nice, but not true? Evil preachers preach to make congregants look up and smile.

What a small bribe to accept for your soul!

EXAMPLES OF SENSITIVE HYPOCRITES.
I thought I'd end this series with just three examples I've had right here at this blog and some of the blogs I've read lately. These are Evangelical "Christians" who have become very sensitive and been lead into all sorts of sin as a result. I won't give their real or full names, because I don't want to confuse the issue. Chances are you could easily give dozens of similar examples, too, so I'll make it short--just be assured that you're not crazy all those times you wondered why such sensitive folks hate so much. You're not alone.

In the previous section we looked at some Scripture having to do with sensitivity and how it can actually be a sin. "But the passages had to do with paritiality, didn't they?" Yes, but excessive sensitivity is just part of partiality. The two are inseparable and that's part of the hypocrisy of the sensitive. As these examples will show, sensitivity is seldom blind. The preacher who pleases men will always please the most important men. That's how they get and keep their jobs, after all. Even if sensitivity to the feelings of men could be practiced with complete equality among the hearers of the preacher, the preacher is supposed to be partial to God, not men. When God tells us to speak and we change what we say to accomodate men are we not being partial to men over God?

Be that as it may, the sensitive (in my experience) have never been truly even handed. They are never sensitive to the feelings of those they deem intolerant and insensitive. Demonstrate a love for biblical truth over human relationship as Scripture commands and watch as your character is assassinated, ridiculed, and all the wonderfully sensitive hate you and your family. They have a cause and anyone who opposes it are to be despised, no matter how they feel about it.

Example 1.
After my post exposing the doctrinal problems of Henry Blackaby, "Anonymous" called me and all who read my posts "fools". In those posts, the underlying biblical doctrine I defended against Blackaby was the sufficiency of Scripture. That's pretty basic. Yet, "Anonymous" chewed me out good. I should get back to "basic Bible teaching", according to him.

How basic can you get? "Trust the Bible alone" is where one starts when teaching the Bible isn't it? Pretty close, I'd say. "Anonymous" accused me of being insensitive and called me a fool. No hypocrisy here, huh? Then he ended with a request. He wanted to know if the Bible allowed for a special sexual sin he had interest in. According to "Anonymous" the answer to whether or not we could find a way to approve of his lust was "basic Bible teaching". The adquacy of the Bible isn't.

Mind-boggling.

Example 2. I recently nailed a false teacher very popular among some in the Evangelical community. He has publicly held the "Wider Mercy" doctrine for decades. That doctrine says that one doesn't have to even hear the name of Jesus or know what the gospel is to be saved. Buddhists can remain Buddhists and go to heaven. The same is true of Mormons, Muslims, and atheists. A fellow named "Randy" was very offended. I wasn't sensitive. I was wrong. I emailed him with passages of Scripture laying out the problem with that position and quotes from the false teacher. He actually admitted I was right, but told me I shouldn't say it because it made too many people too mad. When I asked him if he thought it was consistent to tell me I was right, but shouldn't be allowed to say it, he hung up on the conversation and made it clear I was not welcome in his life.........EVER.

Interestingly, "Randy" claimed to be in full time ministry and offered that as evidence that he was right, or at least that I should be sensitive enough to him to let him remain in his sin. But when I checked his profile, he works in government.

How does this happen?

Example 3. Related to the story of "Randy" is another. In this story "John" had plugged a member of the ministry team of the false teacher mentioned above. I had read "John's" blog regularly. I enjoyed his defense of the faith against doctrines like the "Wider Mercy" doctrine advocated by the likes of theological liberals and Emergents. He has done so for a long time with good humor and frankness. However, when one of his heroes believed the very same false doctrine pushed by the groups he rightly opposes, I was not allowed to object against the very doctrine "John" so correctly hates. I wasn't sensitive to a hero of his.

Sensitivity is almost always sensitivity for only a special group. It is always partial. It is never honest. But it does very well at stopping biblical and logical thought. Is there a biblical role for sensitivity? Yes, in our personal dealings. But it can never make a difference when we speak truth.

THE LAST WORD AND A WARNING.
I hope you've profited by this series. I have, simply by digging in the Scripture and thinking things through.

Here's a warning that I'd like to humbly offer: After all this talk of precise thought and achieving biblical knowledge, it's good to remember that smart doesn't equal righteous. The most effective false teachers are geniuses. NEVER look down your nose at someone who may or may not be as smart as you are. If you're right and that person isn't as sharp as you, remember two things. 1. That person is your brother or sister. Be kind and care for them. Gently teach them, pray for them, and respect them. 2. If they're more faithful to what they do know than you are to what you know, you'll work for them in the next life. God ain't partial.

If you've read any of this, thank you. I consider it a privilege to be heard. God bless you and yours.

Be holy and pray that I do, too,
Phil Perkins.

THINK BIBLICAL THOUGHTS IN BIBLICAL CATEGORIES WITH BIBLICAL VOCABULARY!

UPCOMING EBATE?--Frank Turk Might Not Defend

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:35:00 +0000

Some time ago, Frank Turk came here to defend the practice of changing gender references in Bible translations for no linguistic reason at all. For instance, some translations have changed "brothers" to "brothers and sisters". This is a very new practice, not indicated by the language or the text and some say it's motivated by pleasing feminists, female pastors, and homosexual groups. In fact, Frank used to say that. But now one of his friends thinks it okay. So, Frank thinks it's just fine now and if you have a problem with it, you're a stupid fundamentalist who drools in your grits wears a straw hat, lives in some rural place not nearly good enough for learned folks like him, walks barefoot, chews stems of wild grass, and deserve to die a slow and painful death because you smell bad, couldn't possibly be educated, don't know the languages, only read the King James, and aren't nearly as cool, hip, and spiffy as he is, and you're messing up the gene pool too, YOU STUPID HILLBILLY, YOU!!!!!

Oh, yeah--you're an unloving bigot, too, and he's not.

Well, now he doesn't seem to want to debate anyomre.

Hummmmmm.

Oh, but wait! He REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY DOES WANT TO DEBATE!!!

Yeah, he really does. He says so..................as long as he runs the debate and has control over how much evidence I can bring in. Too much evidence in his words will make it a "feud". So evidence is bad. Yup, only bigoted, stupid, bakka-chewing, snake-hanlin, fundies git all stuck on eveedents, I guess. What really smart folks want is as little evidence as possible. It allows much more freedom of thought, you know.

Hummmmmmm. What to do, what to do...

So this is my public request for Frank Turk to be man enough to keep his word.

Frank, I don't mind if you're too busy right now or if you'd like time to do research. That's absolutely fair. We can schedule it a year from now, but keep your word or admit you don't want to keep your word. I haven't hidden or run from you.

Phil Perkins. PS--If you call yourself a fundamentalist or not, you're welcome here any time you wish. You won't be derided, subjected to the bigotry of folks like Frank Turk. The same goes for anyone. The only people derided here are those who purposely lie, no matter what they call themselves or even believe.

AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM IS A MENTAL GHETTO--Part IX The Sin, the Outright Hypocrisy of Sensitivity.

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:39:00 +0000

SOME INTERESTING DEFINITIONS. (From The New Lexicon Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, copyright 1992.)
sen-si-tive adj. 1. able to respond to a stimulus, sensitive to light 2. able to respond to a very slight stimulus, a snesitive instrument 3. keenly aware of the moods and feelings of others 4. easily hurt emotionally, too readily affected by the feelings or imagined feelings of others in regard to oneself, sensitive to criticism...

sen-si-tiv-i-ty n. the state or quality of being sensitive

sensitivity group n. participants in a therapeutic group designed to promote understanding of personal emotions

sensitivity training n. a program designed to sharpen individual awareness

touch-y adj. 1. apt to be easily offended 2. apt to cause offense, a touchy subject

SENSITIVE OR TOUCHY--A Lesson in Logic, Language, and Lying.
Here's a lesson in human nature, language, and logic all roled into one. Notice definitions, 3 and 4 of sensitive. They're the same except that number four admits the negative side, meaning the same as touchy. We do this all the time. Big boned or fat. Challenged or stupid. Complex or immoral. Mistake or sin. Simpler times or back before we all became self-centered lechers. Teenage struggles or rebellion. Pro-choice or in favor of killing kids. Liberal or socialistic. All these pairs can be used synonomously, but they give quite different vibes, don't they?

There's a difference between denotation and connotation. A word, term, or phrase denotes its dictionary definition. The connotation is quite different, though. Connotation is the subtle, emotive sense that comes along side the word's definition, often connoting moral value.

We choose our words carefully to protect our egos and sooth our consciences. It's human nature. We're sinners and we don't like saying it or hearing it. One needs to look behind the language to what is being said in simple, factual terms. Sometimes it pays to take the time and say the same thing with different words. Sometimes it'll shake you to your toes.

Pro-choice and in favor of killing the unborn both denote the state or quality of being pro-abortion. But their connotations are vastly different. One connotes open-mindedness, freedom, and liberality. The other calls someone a murderer. Look for this sort of thing and your discernment skills will be vastly enhanced.

That's what unbelieving church-goers have done. Self-centeredness of the basest, most immature kind is now called "sensitivity". Jesus said that we're to deny ourselves. MEism says we're to worry ourselves about our self-esteem and that of others. Sensitivity is the attempt to never hurt anyone's sef-esteem. It is the worship of the emotional--the deification of the heart.

God hates it.

Jeremiah said the heart is a liar in 17:9. Now no one can call another a liar because it hurts our hearts. We feel bad and that fact is enough to stop any reproof, except the reproof of the reprover.

SENSITIVITY IN SCRIPTURE.
So, are we ever told in Scripture to be sensitive to the feelings of others. Yes, we are. But it isn't a major theme of Scripture. In fact, valuing another's feelings over their spiritual welfare is often the most unloving thing one can do. Jesus told everyone He met they were sinners in need of repentance to avoid God's eternal punishment. That was His theme. Matthew 4:17. He never went preaching sensitivity. In fact, He hurt so many feelings they killed Him.

The insidious effect of today's emphasis on sensitivity is to squelch factual communication of truth. It stops thought in regard to sin, righteousness, and judgment. If sensitivity is all important, then every statement about sin can be trashed because it hurts someone's feelings. Every commandment God has uttered is subject to man's commandment to never hurt the self-esteem of anyone. There is no commandment that can be uttered that can't be objected to under the color of sensitivity. All egos must be protected from the commandments of that nasty, insensitive Hebrew God.

Facts don't matter and thought stops.

And that's the point.

SENSITIVITY HYPOCRITES--The New Pharisees.

Who were the Pharisees? They were those lousy old men who were such white-knuckled Bible-thumpers that they hated Jesus because Jesus wasn't so uptight about following every little thing in Scripture. Right? They were all legalistic. Right?

No. That's a lie.

Jesus said that the Pharisees did two sins in Matthew 23 and neither had anything to do with being too in love with God's Laws or His Scripture.

1. Jesus said the Pharisees were hypocrites, saying things that may be right, but not doing the things they asked others to do. They were hypocrites. He said, "The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things, and do not do them."

2. Jesus said the Pharisees enjoyed holding themselves up as superior over others. He said, "And they tie up heavy loads, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men..." Holier than thou is now softer than you.
Doesn't that sound like the Mother Superiors of Sensitivity? "You're harsh!" "Don't judge!" "Be sensitive." They judge; you're not supposed to. They judge you for judging them because judging is wrong, unless you're one of them. They're loving. You're not. You just can't measure up. You're just not sappy enough. You're legalistic. They're not. Remember that. It's a law of nature in their world.

The Tolerance-Nazis really are hypocrites, too. And the whole idea is to prevent one from actually thinking. Tomorrow I'll end this series with three examples of the Sensitivity Police and how they act when they think now one's listening. You can decide if they keep their own commandments or not.

In Christ,
Phil Perkins. PS--For a humorous look at these new Pharisees, read here.

WHY WE NEED ODMS

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:33:00 +0000

I recently did a series on the sins of ODMs, not as an enemy. I tried to make it clear why I think ODMs are right to do what they do. They serve a very real purpose and the work they do is godly. We ought to thank them.

However, there's a very real reason we can't do without them. That reason is the speed with which false teachers are appearing on the scene. When Walter Martin wrote his books, books were enough. Books did the job well. That's not possible any more. Now we need something fast to publish and faster to read.

And THAT'S why we now need the ODMs.

Just a thought.
Phil Perkins.

AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM IS A MENTAL GHETTO--Part VIII The Sins of Intellectual Freedom and Lazy Preachers.

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:09:00 +0000

REVIEW.

If you've not read the articles on the MENTAL GHETTO I define the Mental Ghetto as the condition common in Evangelical America. That condition is the purposeful ignorance of biblical things. I call this on-purpose ignorance aphronism. The folks in the pew like this condition because hard thought and study aren't required. Clergy like it because they don't have to strive for accuracy and they are allowed to teach just about anything. Corporate "Christianity" likes it because they can keep selling books, music, t-shirts, conferences, and baubles that biblically-informed folks would never touch. So the Ghetto Bosses have a lot to lose if the folks in the pews get wise. And those folks seem to like napping. The ghettos in American cities are populated by folks who get money to stay there and do so because they are lazy. Their enablers are politicians who sell the tax money of hard working folks for votes from lazy folks. The Mental Ghetto is populated by folks who'd rather watch TV than do Bible study. The enablers are preachers who don't want to hold them accountable or be held accountable by them. The pimps are Corporate Christianity in the form of pulbishers, conferences, the music industry and preachers who thrive in an environment where the market is full of folks who don't know much about Scripture and don't care much about the little they do know.

THE SIN OF APHRONISM IN THE PULPIT. Mentally lazy preachers dishonor God and deceive the folks.
A. W. Pink lived from 1886 to 1952 and he disrespected his preaching peers greatly for the sin of aphronism. He said that he and others like him made "the same charge against the majority of the preachers of our day, and against those who, instead of searching the Scriptures for themselves, lazily accept the teachings of others." (1) So, too, I disrespect the typical ME preacher. Only a very few are godly men doing God's work.

Too strong? Let me lay out some facts from my own experience, many of which you will be able to confirm from yours with only a little reflection. The best preachers preach out of the Greek or at least study the passages for their sermons in the Greek. And when we hear fellows like this, telling us what the text means in the original, we all know we are hearing one of the better workmen filling our pulpits. But wait.

Why only Greek?

Simple. Greek's easier. Greek covers only 27% of Scripture. The Old Testament is written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Why ignore 72-73% of the Bible? The pattern is skewed for our young preachers-to-be. They hear the Greek expounded, never the Hebrew. As a result, the language many of our schools offer is the Greek alone. They do this to get enrollment up. Money and numbers matter more than obedience. If they demanded that young men learn to read the entire Scripture, some would flunk and some would go to another, easier school. Fewer students means fewer dollars and a lesser stature in their denomination and the ME "church" in general. So they're not about to do the right thing. Isn't it logical to learn Hebrew first? The first Scriptures were written in Hebrew. In order to properly understand the New Covenant, don't we need to know the Old Covenant? How do you recognize a Hebraism in the NT if you don't know Hebrew literature? Indeed, most ME preachers don't understand ekklesia (church) because they've never studied qahal and eydah. A common error is that God's church started in Acts. I didn't. It started in Exodus. But since the OT is seldom sermonized or studied, few know that. The old time commentators knew that. Why don't we? Ancient Israel was constantly called God's bride and spoken about as the wife of Yahweh, committing adultery when she openly sinned. Yet, if you ask the typical ME preacher or member when the bride of Christ started or what it is, they will answer the "church", meaning the believing Gentiles from the time of Acts. They've been told that by lazy preachers who know neither their Bibles nor their history.

Did you know that the bride metaphor occurs only once in the NT, but many times in the OT? Probably not. Blame your pastor. Correct him at your own risk.

And if you think misunderstanding the Hebrew nature of the concept of ekklesia isn't important, you're wrong. Because many see the church as Gentile, many deny the restoration of Israel or even practice spiritual or political antisemitism. We aren't better than the Jews, nor are we their replacement in history. We are'nt a new thing. We are grafted into the old thing. We serve the Hebrew God. WE'RE the redheaded stepchildren, not the Jews. Read Romans 9-11.

Worse still, there are many, many pastors who learned Greek and/or Hebrew in school, but have allowed them to become rusty. I can't even relate to these guys. What are they doing in their study time? Having been given the privilege and responsibility to speak for God to men, they're nonchalant? Why aren't they straining every nerve to be accurate? Inaccuracy was a capital offense in the OT. Read Deuteronomy 18. How can a man be indifferent to that and pretend to be godly? Is this not a sham? It's worse than a sham. It's fraud. When a young man comes to a church and gives his credentials, which include the languages, he ought to use the languages. If he gets hired with these claims, and then doesn't even use the languages, he is defrauding the folks hiring him.

Even worse than "worse still", there are many preachers who've made no effort to learn the languages at all. If God called them to preach, fine. But, in a day when one can buy a grammar and get to work or even learn on the internet, why are they still reading only translations instead of Scripture itself?

There is even need for a caution about expositional preaching. Expositional preaching is an effort to mine the word of God. There's nothing wrong with it and the motivations that have popularized it in so many circles are the most godly imaginable. Preachers and pastors who do exposition from the pulpit are some of the finest we have. However, there's also a danger.

The danger in expositional preaching is an accidental myopia. The nature of the NT epistles is compact and doctrinal. Indeed, a preacher can easily find one verse that could be preached for months without exhausting it. But, it's wise to remember three things. First, even the epistles were letters to be read to a congregation orally. The aim, then was to present a doctrinal argument, detailed as the epistles are, in a single reading. That being so, it cannot logically or biblically be said that a simple reading of chapters or entire books at a time without comment to a church isn't profitable. The congregation will be spiritually fed and served if all that is done is a reading of Romans. Of course, it's quite a question if there is any congregation in America so interested in just Scripture that they'd listen long enough to do that.

Second, most of the Bible isn't compact doctrine, but narrative. Some is poetry. Some is apocalyptic. OLD Testament narrative is full of doctrine. Exodus doesn't expound a single doctrine. But it puts on brilliant display the doctrines of sovereignty, the holiness of God, corporate holiness, individual holiness, redemption, salvation, mercy, forgiveness, the responsibility of man under the sovereignty of God, and even the doctrine of the church. As a result of doing only expostion, some preachers seldom teach from the Old Testament, Acts, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Proverbs, the Prophets, OT history, or the Gospels. This has led to deficits like the one mentioned above.

Third, even in the compact, doctrinal epistles, the overview is often lost on the congregation. The end result is two-fold. 1. The listeners often remain ignorant of the theme or general argument of a book and its place in the historical narrative and theology of Scripture even after hearing the preacher expose the entire book. 2. The listener actually learns to view a particular verse without reference to its immediate context, its context in the argument or narrative of the book, and the place it holds in the context of Scripture as a whole.

I'll end this section with a story. I know someone whom I consider one of the best in MEism. He is in full time ministry. I have urged him from time to time to "think biblically". And from time to time he has told me of his irritation with hearing that. Yet, he didn't understand the parable of the wheats and tares. Many preachers have misapplied the parable from Matthew 13 to mean that folks can't be kicked out of the church. What happened? He listened much to other preachers without reading the parable and Jesus' explanation later in chapter 13, just like A. W. Pink said most preachers did even in his day. And Pink was right to call it laziness.

There are many things plain to our forefathers which seem mysterious to ME preachers. How many could name the covenants? How many could tell you when the church began and get it right? How many could easily tell you accurately the doctrine of sanctification?

But lots of them can tell you quotes from Spurgeon and all about spiritual formation.

THE SIN OF INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM.
Charleston Heston fibbed to us. God's assembly was established in the book of Exodus and that book says lots and lots about God's people being freed from Pharoah's Egypt and the slavery there. And we've been taught that God told Pharoah, "Let My people go." That's a lie. He didn't say that at all. He said, "Let My people go that they may serve Me."

See the difference?

And God didn't say this once. He said it over and over.

Let My people go that they may celebrate a feast to Me in the wilderness. Exodus 5:1.
Let My people go, that they may serve Me in the wilderness. Exodus 7:16.
Let My people go, that they may serve Me. Exodus 8:1.
Let My people go, that they may serve Me. Exodus 8:20.
Let My people go, that they may serve Me. Exodus 9:1.
Let My people go, that they may serve Me. Exodus 9:13.
Let My people go, that they may serve Me. Exodus 10:3.

I'd say that's a theme.

When I was in college, I wasn't saved, but I was very religious and I went to Campus Crusade. A coed that also attended was preparing to go to seminary. When I asked her about her career plans for after grad school, she said she wanted to be a pastor. I brought up the instruction of Paul concerning men, not women, as overseers. I can remember her answer to this day. The reason I remember it was because at the time I was disturbed by all the church goers who just seemed to be ho-hum toward the strictures of Scripture. It seemed to me that many saw biblical interpretation as a game, as if asking, "What sorts of different positions can I come up with and choose from?" They seemed to consider it quite clever and intellectual to discuss, but not decide. And as long as an argument could be proffered, any position was legit.

That's why I remembered my friend's answer. I don't even remember her name after all these years, but I remember EXACTLY, WORD FOR WORD, her answer just like she said it. When I mentioned that Paul said only men should be pastors, she said, "You can get around that."

Oh.

Does the Bible give us that sort of intellectual freedom? Is this intellectual freedom or just old fashioned lying? The Bible says we're slaves. Before regeneration we're slaves of sin and Satan. After regeneration we're slaves of righteousness and God. The issue isn't freedom as conceived by most Americans. It's a question of who your master will be. Romans 6:16 says, "Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?" This is important in the Mental Ghetto because intellectual freedom is used as an excuse so often that it's hard to understand just why studying is all that important if life in Christ is multiple choice non-test on almost every issue.

Paul wrote specifically and directly to our thought life. We have no freedom except from the tyranny of man and Satan. (And against that tyranny, WE ARE TO BE RADICALLY REBELLIOUS.) God is our Master. II Corinthians 10:5-6 says, "...destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete."

Notice two things about that passage:

1. Speculation is a "lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God". Imagination, speculation, subjectivity, and "listening for God's voice" internally have no place in Christianity.

2. Speculation and NOT being an intellectual slave to God's revealed will in Scripture is worthy of punishment. That is why we shun false teachers and those who follow them and strive for biblical accuracy in our own lives.

Be holy,
Phil Perkins.

(1) Pink, A. W.; The Attributes of God; Sovereign Grace Publishers; Lafayette, Indiana; copyright 2002 by Jay P. Greene Sr.; ISBN 1-58960-320-6; p. 27.

PS--Sorry for going too long. The sin of sensitivity and the hypocrisy it breeds will have to wait for next time.

Comiing in Part IX:
THE SIN OF SENSITIVITY.

SENSITIVE HYPOCRITES.

A QUICK WORD ON THE DANGERS OF MEN LIKE HENRY BLACKABY.

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:45:00 +0000

If you haven't read my last post, Part VII in the series AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM IS A MENTAL GHETTO, I' really like you to, please. It's hard reading, but more important than just about anything I've ever said. I wrote about what I believe is the most insidious and successful attack on sola scriptura in MEism. The attack is the emphasis on "feeling" the truth, instead of knowing the truth. MEs substitute their feelings by "listening" to emotions during personal devotions and group worship and judge one another based on how they make each other feel while interacting.

A man who did much to popularize this sin is Henry Blackaby. His starting point, as I pointed out in that post, is that the ancient Hebrews didn't consider they knew anything unless they had an intimate, personal experience with it. I pointed out this is a lie and we can know so easily by just a quick reflection. That is to say, the Hebrews, like anyone else, had to have lots and lots of things they knew, not by intimate, personal experience, but simply by being told verbally. For instance, if a shepherd asked a merchant the price of a tent, the merchant simply answered with the number of shekels, homers of wheat or what not. He wasn't likely to ask the shepherd to roll around in the folds of the tent and surmise the price by feeling the qualities of the tent.

I want to give one observation about this whole situation and then ask three questions.

The observation:

The problem isn't Blackaby. Anybody could be Blackaby and anyone could have written a book that promoted feelings as the primary way of coming to an intimate knowledge of God. The condition that made it possible for this man to make millions of dollars hoodwinking the church is the MENTAL GHETTO conditions in the pew. How is it that so many Evangelicals could listen to someone in a Sunday School class say that the Jews didn't know anything simply by reading it without being at least disturbed enough to raise a hand in class and ask some pointed questions? We have been trained to receive uncritically. Criticism and questioning is judgmental and bad (unless, of course, you're questioning and criticizing the one asking the critical questions--then, JUST LIKE MAGIC--it's okay). The attitude that we're in a ghetto, receiving from on high and questioning is bad allows nonsense like Blackaby's to be said regardless of the fact that there's no biblical evidence for it. Indeed, in Blackaby's case, there are boat loads of evidence against it. Common sense ought to have taken over when folks read or were told in Sunday School class that they couldn't know anything until they had a mystical experience. The teacher should have been laughed out the door. Indeed, he would have been if the class had to do with stock investing, chemistry, or calculus. Only in matters of the spiritual are we supposed to become mental slugs, feeling our way alone the sidewalk of life until we find something that makes our antennae wiggle just so, hoping we don't get stepped by the boot of truth.

The questions:

1. If the ancient Hebrews didn't think knowledge could be had simply by cognitive study, why did Moses and others write the Bible or pass on God's words to others, spoken or written? (In fact, why speak or write at all, since the deconstructionists are right?)

2. If real knowledge is possible only by direct personal experience, why did Blackaby write a book to read and study?

3. If, as Blackaby pretends, his teaching is biblical, then he came to this knowledge of God by studying the words of Scripture. Isn't this trying to have it both ways?

Just asking,
Phil Perkins.

AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM IS A MENTAL GHETTO--Part VII The Sin of Subjectivism

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 04:38:00 +0000

SPEAK, GOD! SPEAK! Sinning the sin of subjectivism.
I want to announce to the world that I've been having some queasy spells, intermixed with giddiness and even a little euphoria. So if God hasn't been speaking to me, He's at least mumbling a little. Anyway, just last weekend I felt something running up my leg and whatcha know! Just like Jesus gave the disciples the Lord's prayer, He gave me the Pastor's Prayer. It's to be prayed on Saturday night. Here it is:

Speak, God, speak. No, don't roll over. Speak. I have a sermon to give tomorrow and, well...I need to spice it up, so I need You to say something profound or at least funny. Come to think of it...funny actually works better. All I've got is the passage I said I'd preach about last Sunday and, well...it's all doctrinal. Why in Your Name did You have to put so much doctrine in the Bible? Don't You know how hard that makes my job? I need funny and I need it now.--The Pastor's Prayer.

Oh, yeah--um--ingeezusnaymuhmen. Huh--almost forgot.

If someone actually acted like that, it'd be fairly blasphemous. Lots of MEs do act like that.

There was a time when, unless you were in a seriously pentecostal church, never would you hear any preacher say "And God told me...yadda yadda yadda..." The reason's simple. The Hebrew Scripture makes it clear that anyone who claims to have heard from God who hadn't actually heard was very evil. He was to be killed at the hands of the first folks who heard him say such things with stones. The entire nation was to witness the execution. God sees this sin as so heinous that the OC (Old Covenant) called for death and the NC calls for expulsion and shunning. We aren't even to eat with someone like Pat Robertson.

Now, however, not only do preachers claim this sort of thing all the time, but folks in Sunday School classes and Bible studies stake their little plot of turf in God's revealed truth all the time and no one even challenges them. The goal of this post is to get you to tell anyone who sins this heinous sin ever again in your presence that they are no Christians at all and they are to leave your church, Bible study, or small group because they will infect the rest of us with a filthy slime that isn't welcome here--ever. They sin the sin of subjectivism.

WHEN GOD SPEAKS, HE DOESN'T MUMBLE.
Among the many sins of my generation in the ME movement, it's hard to pick the worst, but this has to be close to the top of the list: Devotions. It is one side of the quadripartite sin of subjective practices made popular by my generation--subjectivity in personal worship, subjectivity in group worship, subjectivity in personal relationships and subjectivity in determining truth (actually a devaluation of truth--as in "doctrine isn't important"). Devotions as practiced today isn't a biblical practice and I doubt that it ever was. Even if "devotions" was practiced as the biblical habit of studying and memorizing the Scripture, the name "devotions" is a name that seems to indicate something else. It seems to deal with the emotional, not the intellectual. It's like the term "inspirational". "Inspirational" side steps truth for the emotional. "Devotions" doesn't deal with truth. Just as one can be inspired by anything true or false, one can be devoted to anything, whether true or false.

True doesn't care if you're inspired or devoted. True's true whether you have a shimmy up your leg or not.

Stop having devotions. Crack the Book and start learning.

WHAT IF GOD SPEAKS TO ME?
Get over it.

What is often called a "word from God" isn't. Unfortunately, today's MEs believe that God's word comes to us in feelings we get at special times, like devotions or group worship. This idea isn't an ancient idea from the Bible, but a recent idea from men who failed to obey Scripture as final. The man who popularized this sin most recently was Henry Blackaby in his famous book, Experiencing God: How to Live the Full Adventure of Knowing and Doing the Will of God. This idea wasn't all new with Blackaby, but he did a lot to popularize it among MEs in the 1990s.

A BIT OF HISTORY CONCERNING SUBJECTIVISM.
I wrote earlier that the practice of claiming that a feeling contains a "word from God" is new and not biblical. That was only half the story. This sort of thing is dealt with severely in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 18:20 says, "But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die." Notice four things about this passage.

1. The first act is to presume. The Hebrew zud means to act presumptiously, rebelliously, or proudly. If one of us is to speak a word that God hasn't given we first must decide that it's okay to act in proud rebellion against God--take the authority of a prophet just because we want it. So, while you may think you're innocent reporting to the folks at your Bible study that God said something to you with a feeling you got last Wednesday at the park, perhpas you may wish to slow down a little and think.

2. The message is always verbal. Let's be precise. "Verbal" in the English doesn't mean spoken. It means having to do with words. Verbal communication is communication in language, spoken or written. "Oral" means having to do with the mouth. Hence, an "oral" exam is one taken face to face with an instructor who asks questions and expects spoken answers and "oral" surgery happens at the dentist's office. The false prophet presumes to speak a word he hasn't received. Both "speak" and "word" are from the same root. Dabar means a message or individual word and the verb form means to speak. God isn't in the business of communicating with feelings. Never in Hebrew Scripture, to my knowledge, do either of these have to do with anything other than communication in words. I read the Hebrew Bible in the Hebrew once a year. Dabar may mean a matter or thing. But when it means a message, that message is in words, not feelings.

So was Moses really taking on subjectivity here? Not entirely, but it's included. Let's look at some background. During the rebellion of Miriam and Aaron, this pair challenged Moses. The complaint was that Moses had married a Cushite, but God didn't address that. Instead, He addressed their desire to be as important as Moses. Moses was the law-giver. Evidently, they wanted to speak for God, too, with a law of their own about the Cushite lady, though God had said nothing about the situation. They presumed. In Numbers 12:6, God tells all three of them how to know if you're a prophet and speak for Yahweh. He said, "Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream."

Visions and dreams are times when God is actually seen and/or heard. Notice, too, "Hear now My words..." WORDS. Not feelings. And notice "I speak to him in dreams." If God doesn't speak to you in actual words, you're not a prophet.

If you have a tingle down your spine, tell your chiropractor.

3. Those who spoke for Yahweh without specific, verbal communication from Yahweh, were to die just like other false prophets who spoke for completely different gods. Notice the two kinds of false prophets--the one who spoke presumptuously for God and the one who spoke for other gods. No difference. If you speak for God based on a feeling, you're no better than a Buddhist priest, a Scientologist, a JW, a shaman, or the oracle at Delphi. You're a false prophet.

Think THAT over. And while you're thinking about that, think about this: If we shunned all who did this sort of thing, how many ME books would be on the market? How many ME televangelfrauds would still be on the air? How many ME book stores would be in business? How many pastors would still have a job?

4. Notice the word "commanded". The prophet is to speak only the word Yahweh has commanded. A feeling isn't a command. A command is verbal. With a man's life on the line, one would think that man would be certain before he spoke. How can you be sure of a feeling? Wouldn't that man wait for a clear command? Today, one says God said this. Another that. Is God really contradicting Himself or is someone pretending to be sure of something no more solid than a feeling?

Despite the clear teaching of Scripture, seeking something that can be called a "word from God" has a recent history, too. Friederich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was the grandson of two pastors and lived at a time when philosophical rationalism, resulting from the Enlightenment, was dominant. In reaction, he turned to a group who emphasized the mysterious, imaginary, and subjective. Schleiermacher attempted to find a middle path between the philosophical rationalists and the Reformers, who based their doctrine on Scripture alone. Naturalistic philosophers wanted to reach a knowledge of God by way of nature and human reason applied to nature. They called this natural theology. Schleiermacher's "positive theology" was an attempt to ride the fence. As in our time, critics of the gospel disliked the miraculous. So Schleiermacher decided that the Bible wasn't an account of actual acts by God in history complete with miracles and resurrections, but a record of internal religious experiences. The experiences were important. Facts about actual historical events were unimportant. Thus, Schleiermacher could keep the Bible, flawed as it was in his opinion, and avoid the harsh criticism of those who would call believers intellectual obscurantists. The essence of true religion was in the religious experience, not the facts of the Scripture. It was emotive, not cognitive. Subjective, not objective. (1)

Clever huh? Haver you ever heard someone say that Christianity is a matter of faith, not evidence and reason? Sound familiar? This is why in the 1800's and 1900's we see words like "inspirational" replace words like "true".

The next really big name among those who normalized the sin of subjectivity is Karl Barth (1886-1968). Barth was learned in the tradition of classical religious liberalism in which the Bible was regarded as a collection of religious writings to be criticized, not believed. Barth wasn't satisfied with liberalism. Liberals talked little of God and much of man. He had a breakthrough when reading Romans which dealt harshly with man as a sinner.

Yet, Barth couldn't make himself believe Scripture. Barth's god was a transcendent god who was "Wholly Other". The problem came, though, in Barth's rejection of the reliability of Scripture. His god was so high He could have nothing to do with anything on earth, not even the words of Scripture. Thus, the word of Barth's god came down to man as a revelation that this god gave as a personal experience a human had while reading the Bible under the influence of the "Holy Spirit". Sound familiar? (2) Barth's ideas initiated the school of thought called "dialectical theology" or "neo-orthodoxy". (3) Eventually, Barth fell into an actual apathy toward factual reality, whether physical reality in the present or historical reality. The mysterious revelation of his god was all that really mattered. Both his god and his experience were personal and untestable. (4)

Of almost no intellectual significance is Henry Blackaby and his book, Experiencing God: How to Live the Full Adventure of Knowing and Doing the Will of God. However, this book made the rounds of ME churches with the same sort of dependence on the subjective that Schleiermacher and Barth advocated, but in popular, not scholastic, form. So for that reason Blackaby is important. Churches, schools, and denominations who would never have been guilty of teaching the subjectivism of Barth or Schleiermacher embraced the Evangelical language and style of Blackaby. He was a Southern Baptist preacher, so most couldn't imagine that he was liberal. But he was heretical.
Most Southern Baptists are cessationists. In other words, they don't believe the "sign gifts" are for today. These "sign gifts" include tongues, healing, and prophecy. This is why it's so amazing that Blackaby's teaching was accepted. It was a true watershed moment when non-Pentecostal Evangelicals adopted the belief that God was still speaking today outside of the verbal revelation in the Scripture. Whether MEism had fallen so low that sola scriptura was passe and the teaching of a heretic like Blackaby was welcome, or whether the teaching of Blackaby provided the push to send MEism down the stairs isn't important. Just realize the idea that our feelings are a major source of revelation from God is recent, not biblical.

Experiencing God sold 4 million copies and was translated into 45 languages. (5) And if you think only I and other Blackaby critics see Blackaby as a mystic, read this gushing article by a fan. The first paragraph calls him a mystic in disguise--an accurate assessment.

Blackaby's main influence was to convince many that God was revealing His will to folks right now in the same way He spoke to the Old Testament prophets. (6) However, what Blackaby taught as God's method of speaking wasn't what the Old Testament describes. It's mystical; it's internal; it's non-verbal. So, Blackaby's disciples don't have a clue about how God spoke to the prophets. Just why it's assumed that God spoke through the mystical isn't explained. It's just an assumption.

And a bad one.

Remember the passages we looked at? Well, here's the common pattern found in the books of Moses: "And God spoke to Moses, saying..." He spoke, saying. No mention of feelings. God didn't say, "And God gave Moses a back rub, making Moses feel this way or that..." or "God sent a warm, wet, goose-bumpy tingle up Moses' right arm and down his left..." Please check to make sure I'm not lying. Pick any page in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, or Deuteronomy. That is always the pattern and it happens once or twice every chapter or two. "...spoke...saying..." What could be more clear?

How did we decide that a feeling was "speaking"? We didn't get that from the Bible. Do we ever speak like that when involved in any other subject? Do we feel the truth about history, biology, or math? NO! So why do we shelve our brains for knowing God? Is it any sillier to do that for chemistry than for studying God's revelation?

While many MEs see the feel-talking god as a spiritual enhancement, it's not. That idea and Blackaby's teaching made a frontal assault on Scripture. Read what he said in the first few paragraphs of his book:

...for a Hebrew person--like Jesus--knowing something entailed experiencing it. In fact, you could not truly say you knew something unless you personally experienced it...So it is significant that, when Jesus spoke about knowing God, He was speaking like a Hebrew. (7)

There is only one problem with this reasoning. It's a lie. Hebrews weren't genetically different. They were perfectly capable of knowing intellectually, just like you and I. They had scribes, didn't they? They communicated with words, didn't they? The ladies exchanged recipes, didn't they? Indeed, personal, intimate knowledge of God is the goal, but faith comes by hearing, according to Paul, not by feeling. Cognitive, academic knowledge precedes and is a necessary element for intimate knowledge. You can't intimately know a friend until you are first aware that he exists and is present to BE experienced. Even salvation depends on hearing words and understanding them with the mind. Then the Holy Spirit brings the intimate knowledge.

I'll end with a question. If I test my feelings to find out what's true in the spiritual realm or to find my future, how is that significantly different from a witchdoctor who throws chicken guts on the floor or reads tea leaves? Tell me the difference.

Think it through.

Be holy,
Phil Perkins.

(1) Brown, Colin; Philosophy and the Christian Faith; Intervarsity Press; Downers Grove, Illinois; 1968; ISBN0-87784-712-6; pp. 109-111.
(2( Van Til, Cornelius; Christian Apologetics; P&R Publishing Company; Phillipsburg, New Jersey; 2003; ISBN-10: 0-87552-511-3; pp. 170-172.
(3)ibid.; p. 32.
(4) Brown; pp. 250-260.
(5) http://www.churchcentral.com/article.php?id=2100
(6) http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/BookReviews/exp_god/blackaby.htm
(7) Blackaby, Henry, Blackaby, Richard, and King, Claude; Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God, Revised and Expanded; B&H Publishing Group; Nashville, Tennessee; 2008; ISBN-10: 0805447539; p. 10.

UPCOMING E-BATE--Frank Turk Defends Gender-Altered Bible Versions

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 02:38:00 +0000

And I'll present the biblical view, God-willing. Mr. Turk has defended the practice of lying about gender references in translations of the Bible as just another translation "philosophy". Look for further announcements as this debate will start in three to four weeks.

AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM IS A MENTAL GHETTO--Part VI Sliding Down the Lexicon Into the Gutter.

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:20:00 +0000

WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Meditate. What does that mean to you? If you've been in the American church for more than ten years it doesn't mean what it used to mean for most of us.

Butchering words...
It's said that a rose by any other name is a rose. The flower stays the same whatever you call it. But what if it wasn't the name that got changed? What if the name stayed the same, but the flower was changed? Then what? Is a meat cleaver dulled and softened if we called it a pillow?

When dealing with ancient literature like say...the Bible...one must be aware of a phenomenon I call lexical slide. When reading a word in an old text, one should be careful to remember it isn't what the modern speaker or reader means by that word, but what the author meant. For instance, if my great grandfather said he saw a line of cars go by, he was probably standing by a railroad. That's not what I mean when I say "car". "Ah, but we don't read the ancient texts. We read modern translations and the translators worry about that so we don't have to," someone might say.

Here's the problem: Modern English translations are stuck in a quickly changing religious culture and the religious language is changing rapidly. For instance, we used to talk about being "evangelistic". Now we want to be "missional". We used to want "sanctification". Now we want "spiritual formation". "Love" used to be fidelity to God and our brothers and sisters. Now it's not hurting anyone's feelings. So too, biblical meditation isn't the "meditation" currently taught in ME churches, seminaries, conferences, and books. All these changes are negative. Paul warned of wrangling about words. but my topic here is a deviation that has lead to a divergence in doctrine and practice.

Let's start with a lexical study. First, the Hebrew and Greek. The verb "meditate", in its various forms occurs much more often in the Hebrew Old Testament than in the Greek New Testament, and that's not just because the Old Testament is much bigger. The Old Testament comprises about 72-73% of Scripture, but contains all but a handful of references to meditating.

Two Hebrew verbs are commonly translated "meditate". First, is hagah. It is a word that attempts to sound like the activity or thing it denotes, like "yip" is used to denote the bark of a puppy. It's supposed to sound like the growl of an animal or the sound made by a man under his breath as he mutters or groans while considering something vexing, deep, or difficult. Holladay defines it as to growl, to moan, to read in an undertone, to ponder, to plan, or to speak. The noun forms are haguth, which means the act or process of thinking or planning and higgayon, which means talk or mockery or the act or process of thinking or planning or the act of playing an instrument. The second word is siach and it means to become concerned with or to give one's attention to. It's noun form is sichah. It means the occupation or concern of one's thoughts or mind.(1)

Brown, Driver, and Briggs says essentially the same thing, but adds to muse (to think reflectively) and to spell a word to the lexical range of the two verbs. (2) But even more important than what the dictionaries say is what the Bible says the word means. The Bible does define it for us, but I want to get into the current misunderstanding of what "meditation" is.

...in order to slaughter the innocent.
The BIG NAME in bringing the new "meditation" into MEism is Richard Foster. His book Celebration of Discipline, the Path to Spiritual Growth is the classic textbook used in seminaries and Bible colleges across the nation to inseminate young preachers and missionaries with practices such as unbiblical meditation. Foster doesn't stop there, though. He also instructs young heads full of tapioca in the fine arts of using the palms of one's hands to achieve certain inner spiritual states,(3) the use of the imagination to "experience God",(4) and studying the writings of heretics like Thomas a Kempis and Brother Lawrence, equating their writings with Calvin's Institutes.(5) First copyrighted in 1978, it hit with such a jolt a new category of seminary and Bible college courses was invented to make room for it. These are usually called "spiritual disciplines" classes. Don't send your son or daughter to a college that has one. The more conservative among us disliked the book and later editions were pruned back to appear less unorthodox. Still, the 1998 edition is heretical. While I was still teaching in a Southern Baptist college, it was being used to my great dismay.

Foster has two defintions for "meditation". They are contradictory. The first definition is almost biblical but leaves two loopholes he'll later use. The second one, just two pages later, is heretical outright. But if someone's going to lie to you, he'll start by getting your trust first, right? That's why they're called con(fidence) men. Imagine a man ready to cut your throat in order to rob you. "I've got a good sharp knife here. Could you lean your head back and loosen your tie a bit so I can get to your neck?" "Sure! How's this?" It doesn't happen like that.

The first definition is on page fifteen. He even starts with the two Hebrew verbs I listed for you. He wrote, "These two words have various meanings: listening to God's word, reflecting on God's works, ruminating on God's law, and more."(6) Reading this innocently and not discerningly, it seems great. It's not. Meditation isn't listening. That's significant as we will see. It's in there for a devilish reason. And the "and more" opens all sorts of possibilities. Foster has more, for sure, but not for better.

His second defintion says, "Christian meditation, very simply, is the ability to hear God's voice and obey His word."(7) Take a look at this definition. Nothing Foster does seems accidental. Notice "God's voice" is different than "His word". I don't believe this is redundance with different terms for color or clarity. It's a difference he'll use like a prybar.

Contrast biblical meditation against Foster's meditation in these ways: 1. Biblical meditation is an activity. Foster's "meditation" can be a state of being--an "ability". 2. Biblical meditation has as it's object only God, His Word, and His works and these are seen as objective things--real things, not imaginary. Foster's "meditation" can be imaginary, ideally seeking "God's voice" by means of the imagination without any objective input through the senses. He even calls finding God through one's imagination "more humble" than studying the objective revelation God has given us in Scripture.(8) So not only is Foster writing to stop us from thinking, but he counts on us not thinking much in the first place. He actually expects us to believe depending on God's Word isn't humble, but exalting our imaginations to the office of prophet and oracle IS humble. Can someone explain this to me?

I will cover, God willing, the problem of objective vs. subjective perceptions of God in the next installment. Look for the Pastor's Prayer.

BIBLICAL MEDITATION DEFINED BY THE BIBLE.
If we're going to argue about what a term in the Bible means, shouldn't we listen if the Bible is actually nice enough to tell us what it means? The following are some passages in which the Hebrew uses the words hagah and siach: Gen. 24:63, Josh. 1:8, Ps. 1:2,4:5,27:4,63:6,77:6,77:12,104:34,119:15,119:23,119:27,119:48,119:78,119:148,143:5,145:5, Is. 33:18.

The following are some verses in which the Hebrew uses the noun derivatives of the two verbs listed above: Job15:4, Ps. 19:14,49:4,104:34,119:97,119:99.

In none of these passages, is there any hint of dreaming or imagining. All these passages have a real, tangible object of the meditation--God, His laws, precepts, judgments, and Word in general, or His works ranging from nature to His miraculous judgments and deliverances.

Furthermore, due to the nature of Hebrew poetry, there are passages in which the terms are listed as synonyms with the following:

1. Fear of God in Job 15:4.
2. Looking at in Psalm 119:15.
3. To delight in in Psalm 1;2.
4. To behold the beauty of in Psalm 27:4. Additionally, the word translated "meditate" in this verse is baqar. It means to search, seek, or inquire.
5. The fountain of godly speech in Psalm49:3.
6. To remember in Psalm 63:6 and 77:6.
7. To ponder in Psalm 77:12.
8. To regard in Psalm 119:15.
9. The result of godly understanding in Psalm 119:27.
10. To love something in Psalm 119:97.
11. The source of great knowledge in Psalm 119:99.
12. Something to look forward to with great anticipation in Psalm 119:148.
13. To ponder in Psalm 143:5.
14. A source of evangelistic fervor in Psalm 145:1-6.

So where's the imagination in that? There isn't any at all. In addition the meditation of David's heart was a concern for him. He was worried that it should be acceptable to God in Psalm 19:14. If meditation is about imaginary things how can it be deemed acceptable or unacceptable. There is no objective standard in imagination.

THE BIG LESSON.
The big lesson is this: Today's love of spirituality without content leads away from thought. It leads to the ghetto. Biblical meditation leads to a solid knowledge of God through cognitive activity in and around His Bible, His Person, and His Works. It is objective and cognitive. Today's meditation is imaginative and subjective.

Today's meditation isn't Christian.

THE BIGGER LESSON.
Foster isn't the main story here. He's just an example. MANY are subverting the faith by introducing new, unbiblical language or changing the old definitions of biblical language to introduce unbiblical concepts. Beware. The words may be right, but the concepts can be very, very wrong.

Stay holy,
Phil Perkins.

(1) Holloday, William L.; A Concise Hebrew and Aramic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Based on the First, Second, and Third Editions of the Koehler-Baumgartner Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros; E. J. Brill and Wm. Eerdmans Publishing Co.; Grand Rapids, Michigan; 1988; ISBN 0-8028-3413-2; pp. 76 & 551.
(2) Brown, Francis, Driver, S. R., & Briggs, C.; The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon; Hendrickson Publishers; Peabody, Massachusetts; 1996; pp. 211 & 967.
(3)Foster, Richard J.; Celebration of Discipline, the Path to Spiritual Growth; HargerCollins Publishers: New York, New York; 1998; ISBN 0-06-062893-1; p. 31.
(4) ibid. p. 25.
(5) ibid. p. 72.
(6) ibid. p. 15.
(7) ibid. p. 17.
(8) ibid. p. 25.

AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM IS A MENTAL GHETTO--Part V Size and Scope of the Problem in Four Categories

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:43:00 +0000

CATCHIN' UP.

Today's post is part of the series, AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM IS A MENTAL GHETTO. Find the first installments here. I describe the ME (Modern Evangelical) "church" in America as a Mental Ghetto because, like most American ghettos, the folks who stay there are able to get out, but staying is easier than getting out. Watching TV and getting high is more fun than taking a shower and doing job interviews. Going to the soccer game with the kids is easier than studying for an hour and sitting the kids down to tell them a Bible story. And many clergy actually like it that way because they get something out of it, too. I call them the Mental Ghetto Pimps. And I am going to use the example of a Pastor Dan Jarrell and the crew at Family Life Today as the Mental Ghetto Pimps.

MORNING SICKNESS.
This morning I had some around-town chores to do. So I did something I should probably do more often just for general information, but it's painful. I tuned to the local religious radio station and my ears began to bleed. I hate that such stuff is called "Christian". The first thing that turned my stomach was an ad for "Our Daily Bread", the monthly devotional booklet whose purpose seems to be to sooth our guilt for not reading our Bibles by means of little, three-paragraph essays with a Bible verse for a pretext and a witty quote at the end--all of which takes 45 seconds to read top-to-bottom. And that's if you go REALLY SLOOOOOW. But what the heck? You've had your "devotions", right? No muss, no fuss.

And no God.

The ad ended with the invitation to come along with them and "explore the world of spiritual meditation". That's right--spiritual meditation. I suppose the folks selling it think it'll raise fewer eyebrows than selling Ouija Boards or prayer labyrinths.

Radio Bible Class gives us this little gem. Once orthodox, RBC is now pushing mystics. (1)

Keep in mind, here, that I only listened to the station a total of probably less than five minutes total, intermittently between stops. It was certainly less than ten. Yet there was another incident during that time. The second was hearing a "Pastor Dan Jarrell" bludgeon the parable of the talents from Matthew 25. From the snippet of the conversation I heard, it seemed that Pastor Dan applied this somehow to marriage. That parable has nothing to do with marriage. It's about obedience to do God's work with the time and resources God has given each of us.

But that's just the start.

Here's the really ridiculous part: In verses 26-30 the fate of the servant who did nothing with what was given him was assigned to torment. It reads, "...and cast out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Pastor Dan told us that the place where there is "weeping" is where you "feel sorry for yourself", and the place where there is "gnashing of teeth" is where you "blame everybody else".

Here's the question we MUST answer:

WHY DOES ANYONE CONSIDER THIS SORT OF THING EVEN REMOTELY CHRISTIAN?
The depth of the problem makes this possible. It is in each of us individually, with a few exceptions, and it is in our institutions. I believe the depth of the problem comes to flower in four categories of collective sin.

CATEGORY ONE: BIBLICAL IGNORANCE.
How can Dan Jarrell say such things and still be taken seriously by anyone who calls themselves "Christian"? The short answer is the folks who take him seriously probably aren't Christians themselves or they'd know better because they'd have spent lots of time pursuing God through the Scripture. But that discussion is too big to get into here.

In order for Dan Jarrell to say such a thing, he has to have practiced, not just innocent ignorance, but the sin of outright aphronism. Being a "pastor", he's had time in the study to read the book of Matthew and if we give the benefit of the doubt (I wouldn't and if someone wants to know why, ask in the comment thread, please.) and say that he didn't actually lie purposely, then one can only imagine just what mental tricks this man has done to come to the interpretation of Matthew 25:30 he presented. It had to be purposeful ignorance, not innocent ignorance--lying to himself. I call it "aphronism".

In addition to Dan Jarrell's efforts to make the fantastic sound reasonable, he has to have accomplices. The people running the host program, Family Life Today, have to turn their heads to the lie. The folks at the local radio station, KURL, in Billings, MT have to turn their heads, too. I've contacted both Family Life Today and KURL in the past about such things and both have responded with anger.

So, there are Dan, FLT, and KURL, but there's someone else that has to remain in biblical ignorance for all this to work. THE AUDIENCE. There have to be enough MEs (Modern Evangelicals) out there who don't know their Bibles for this to be sold. It's a Mental Ghetto, where everyone is happy to remain ignorant. And they all get something for their ignorance. The audience gets to feel religious without actually dealing with God, studying His Word, or dealing with their own sin in light of His commandments and the threat of hell. As long as the audience stays stupid, KURL has an audience and can sell air time, FLT gets to "give the gift of hope" at $200 a couple (2), and Pastor Ignorant gets paid to spread his heresy.

Recently, forty-five students of Wheaton in their SENIOR YEAR were asked to list the ten commandments in their words (NO EXACT RECITATION). Only one could do it. (3)

This is raw sin.

CATEGORY TWO: IGNORANCE IN GENERAL KNOWLEDGE.
What does general knowledge have to do with biblical knowledge and what place does it have in the church? Aren't we supposed to be guided by faith?

No, we aren't to be guided by faith. At least not the kind of faith of MEism. I'm not writing about the content of faith, but the kind of faith. The content of a faith is what is actually believed. The kind of faith is how and why one believes. Christianity is a faith, but not ignorant faith. Obscurantism isn't biblical faith, but that is a discussion for CATEGORY FOUR.

Apply all the knowledge you have to your faith. Taking the example of Mental Ghetto Pimp Dan Jarrell, he counts on the fact that no one in his audience would apply even a tiny bit of literary interpretation or common horse sense to what he was saying. He counted on the fact that most of his audience wouldn't ask the simplest of questions concerning his claim about Matthew 25:30. How is "weeping" interpreted specifically as feeling sorry for oneself? How is "gnashing of teeth" analogized into blaming other people? What are the clues in the text or the context? How does this fit with anything I know about biblical doctrine? Was Jesus really thinking about self-pity and antagonizing others? Where are those subjects first taken up in the text so that we can reasonably read them in here?

Pimp Jarrell has to assume that his audience is of a mindset of switching off all their general knowledge about anything at all when engaged in things of the "faith". This is both moronic and unbiblical. It's moronic. In what area of human endeavor is progress made toward truth by means of purposely being mindless? It's unbiblical. What happened to all the reasoned arguments of the epistles and Jesus' request for Thomas to examine the evidence? Or Paul's commendation of the Bereans for examining all they heard by the Hebrew Bible or its translation, the Septuagint?

Not only should Christians strive to be logical and apply their knowledge, it's a part of Christian tradition to achieve intellectual excellence. Yet, we actually hear preachers say things like, "I'm just a simple preacher."

Then resign from the pulpit. You aren't qualified. You're in sin. And your sinful attitude has infected the entire church. Shame on you. May God deal with you for what you are.

For an example of how ignorance of general knowledge often leads to direct sins of other sorts as well, consider the following bumper sticker I got off of a "Christian" web site (4) this morning:

Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.

And what is the sin? NO. What are the SINS here? Gossip, cowardice, and bearing false witness. The Puritans, by way of the strong connection between "Puritanism" and "Puritans" are falsely said to be unhappy about others being happy. Curmudgeons. Since the Puritians are dead and gone, they can't defend themselves. Hence the dual sins of cowardice and gossip. And actual history tells us the Puritans weren't anything like that. If the author of these words knew better he was lying about the Puritans. If he didn't know any better, then he lied by pretending to a knowledge he had not.

And if confronted with this, I'll bet dollars-to-doughnuts, the reprover will be accused of being picky. But how would the author like it if he was so slandered?

CATEGORY THREE: IGNORANCE OF HOW TO THINK.
Jesus disciples were tax-collectors, carpenters, and fishermen, with a doctor thrown in. I wonder if they were even literate when they met Jesus. Nevertheless, they became men of oratory and letters. Remember Peter? A blustery fisherman became the author of biblical books, capable of recognizing that Paul's writings were divinely inspired Scripture.

Why?

Why did blue-collar men become educated in ancient literature? Because that's how God communicates. The gospel is spoken and written, not felt and grunted. Nor is it communicated by a stirring chorus repeated ad nauseum. Most MEs believe that truth can be measured by how one feels. And my generation is the one who perpetrated this lie. If you think me wrong, simply go to some of the ODM sites. Find a comment thread and read. A heretic named in the post will be defended by a commenter on the basis that the commenter "knew" the figure named. No facts will be brought to bare by the commenter except one. He "knew" him. In other words, they had a simpatico. Feelings.

In the seventies CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) came into being. The emphasis seemed to be on the music, not the lyrical content. Some exceptions are worth noting, such as Keith Green. But the same generation who started CCM is the generation who said doctrine isn't important. And the distinguishing characteristics of CCM were the new style of music and the fact that it was mostly content free.

In fact, some songs actually advocated the sin of aphronism. Not only was this a doctinal position--can't we all just get along?--but it was good marketing. For Corporate Christianity to work, sales can't be limited to just the Reformeds or the Charismatics. We need the whole enchilada to make a prophet.

Chuck Girard is a prime example of pimping for a prophet for himself and the record companies. Read the opening lyrics from his 1974 song, "Think about What Jesus Said":

Think about what Jesus said
Before you let your mind reject Him
Listen to your heart instead
And you will accept Him (5)

Get that? Thought bad. Feelings good. In fact, it's worse than that. Thinking will damn you. Feeling your way along like a slug on the sidewalk of "faith" will save your soul. Is that a biblical view of man? Is that a biblical view of epistemology? How is it that Chuck was considered a Christian? He disobeyed Christ's words severely. Chuck hates knowledge. Jesus said He came to bring light to the world. Don't these two oppose? Yes, they do.

Which brings me to the fourth category.

CATEGORY FOUR: IGNORANCE ABOUT THE BIBLICAL COMMAND TO PRACTICE PRECISE THOUGHT.

Stop having devotions and don't meditate anymore. Replace devotions with serious study, not a quick time of going through religious activity, hoping you can "feel the spirit". And stop having moments of silence. Instead, take what you learn in your study and think those things over and over during your work, during your evenings, at night, in the morning.

Current private practices aren't biblical. The ME "church" is returning to mysticism, contrary to biblical injunction. While my generation passed the mystical baton, previous generations were running hard, too. For instance, the word "inspirational" has been used for decades to stand in for the word "religious". Inspiration can be anything that engenders positive religious feelings. A devout Mormon can feel inspired. It has to do only with the feelings and nothing to do with the content that was used to achieve those feelings.

My generation used to argue with itself about being too feelings-oriented in worship. Biblical content lost the argument.

And this generation is paying the price.

In Christ,
Phil Perkins.

(1)http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/index.php?p=924&more=1&c=1
(2)http://www.familylife.com/site/c.dnJHKLNnFoG/b.3204559/k.F5BB/Attend_a_conference.htm
(3)http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1817838/posts
(4)http://www.chuck.org/jokes%20bumper%20stickers.htm

(5)http://www.delusionresistance.org/christian/chuckgirard/1974%20finaltouch/ft04.html

COMING IN PART VI OF THE MENTAL GHETTO. What is biblical meditation? And the biblical commands about our minds and our thoughts.

FRIDAY IS CORRECTIONS DAY

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:44:00 +0000

A lot has been said, done, and controverted on this blog this week and four corrections have to be made.

1. Solameanie, aka Joel Griffith, over at Seventh Sola, brought something to my attention. In Part III of THE SECRET SINS OF THE ODMs and Part IV of AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM IS A MENTAL GHETTO, I mentioned Moody Bible Institute in a very negative light. Moody Church isn't connected to Moody Bible Institute either through funding or governance. So, whatever is done or not done at MBI, it shouldn't reflect at all on Moody Church. (Lessinacorse sumbuddy knows sumpin I don't. Majun that.)

2. I mentioned Paul Washer without saying two things that need to be said. He's great. And you can hear his sermons at sermonaudio.com. Washer is definitely worth a listen--okay, lots of listens. Enjoy.

3. Unfortunately, due to my failure to correct an ongoing accusation, some have asked if I believe that anything but a word-for-word translation is a sin or incorrect. No, I don't. In fact, some of my readers are multi-lingual, so I know that they know there is no such thing as a word-for-word translation unless the document is very short. No two languages have vocabulary with a one-to-one correlation and no two languages have identical grammar and syntax. Literal, word-for-word translation is preferred, but never possible in all situations.

4. Frank Turk said he doesn't google himself. I said he did. I'll let you decide. Here's my evidence: a. He showed up here within hours of his name being mentioned. b. This is a pattern among some bloggers, using search engines or friends to monitor the net to keep tabs of all us and what we say about them. c. Frank is a very dishonest fellow. In fact, I had to cut him off after he repeatedly pretended to be able to judge translations, but refused to say whether or not he even knew the languages. d. He is soooo obsessed that he actually sent FOUR COMMENTS in LESS THAN 30 MINUTES------AFTER HE WAS CUT OFF. e. Even before I cut him off, he answered every comment I posted within very few minutes, so he does monitor things pretty closely, at least after he knows where to look.

On the other hand, he has evidence, too: He SAYS he doesn't.

See you all next week,
Phil Perkins.

THE SECRET SINS OF THE ODMs--Part III

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:16:00 +0000

Writing this post (Part III of the series) has been very hard. When I started I thought this would be the easiest of the three parts. It's the hardest. There is SO much to say. And it's so important. Here is my attempt:

THE PROBLEMS.
Parts I and II of THE SECRET SINS OF THE ODMs revealed four areas of sin that are altogether too common in online discernment ministries. They were being generally unethical, refusing to separate from other ODMS and ODMers in unrepentant sin, breaking the second commandment, attempting to associate themselves with Reformers and famous preachers of the past with whom they have little in common--a pretentiousness.

All of these sins cut to the heart of what discernment is about. Discernment is all about honoring Jesus Christ by staying pure. Pretention makes me a liar. Fellowshiping with "believers" in open sin makes me impure. Deciding to make up the sort of god I want makes me the same as all the false teachers whom I say I'm exposing. Lax ethics make me just plain sinful.

THE CHALLENGE AHEAD OF US.
The road ahead if we are to get to a reformation will require three things.

1. STOP COMPETING.
In Numbers twelve we read the story of Aaron and Miriam and their complaint. They accused Moses of being in sin, when he was innocent. It was an interpersonal sort of sin. The sort of sin that occurs when folks are competing for notoriety. When jealousy comes. When competition is rampant. When pride is king. Miriam said Moses had done wrong when he married a Cushite lady. The sons of Israel were still in the wilderness. In chapter sixteen, we read of the rebellion of Korah. Both were rebellions and both complaints had at their root, not the specific charges brought by the complainers, but jealousy.

In fact, I fear that some have become ODMers because they simply don't like those who lead Modern Evangelicalism. Many of us are little folks given little roles by God and we don't like that. Get over ourselves. That isn't to say that MEism isn't apostate. It is. But ask yourself just why you're here in the ODM movement. Are you here because you're torqued at certain folks or because you're burning with a fire for God's Name and its glorification among the nations?

If you're here because of the first reason, don't leave just yet. Instead, get in line with God's word. Then go back to doing God's work for God's reasons whether in the ODM arena or elsewhere.

Competitiveness is also within the ODMs. That's why you see so much of the sins I mentioned. Supposedly godly men keep tabs on what everyone on the net is saying about them. Why? You KNOW why. There seems to be a competition to say things in the most profound way possible. Find a cool quote. Why? Snarky criticism of others is the currency. Why?

Stop it.

Going back to the stories in Numbers, when Miriam was sick and white, she had to go through ritual purification. The sons of Israel had to stay in camp and wait for her until she and the priests dealt with her sin.

Don't think for one moment that sin in our camp won't cause God to take His hand off our work and stop our progress. It will. God doesn't change. Not even for us "good guys".

2. GET OVER "BIG".
Of HUGE CONCERN to most ODMers is the loss of formerly "Christian" institutions, like denominations, colleges, and seminaries. Did you know that God isn't concerned about it?

No, He isn't.

In previous articles, I mentioned that schools like Wheaton and Moody are gone. Go to Lighthouse Trails on my blogroll. You can look up folks like Wheaton. While you're there look up Regents and Cedarville, too. Go to Al Mohler's blog to an article of a week or two ago. He's on my blogroll and I'll leave him there for you to look at for a couple weeks. He proudly announced that his school, Southern Baptist Seminary, is now offering a doctorate in spiritual formation. Yes--Al Mohler's gone. Remember Billy Graham? He now denies the faith. I could go on for pages and pages. A book that catalogued all the fallen bigwigs and institutions of just the last five years would be very thick indeed.

Could it be that God is stripping His remnant in America of the props that have corrupted us in the past? (I'm not a prophet or the son of a prophet. I'm just asking.)

Even our country, the US, is falling. But the Americanization of the gospel in MEism is another topic for another time. I'll just say this--If you have an American flag in your church, shame on you. You're supposed to pledging your allegiance to Jesus Christ, the God of Israel. Remember, "Christian" churches in Germany once flew the swastika.

GOD DOESN'T NEED OUR INSTITUTIONS AND HE DOESN'T NEED US. Here are all the passages in Scripture that require Christians to build seminaries (write them down, please):

Get all of those?

And here are all the passages in Scripture that require Christians to build church buildings:

Get all of those? There'll be a quiz on Friday.

Jesus worked for the furtherance of one earthly institution and one only: His assembly. That actually takes a lot of pressure off of ODMers and our ilk. (It also explains why so many ME pastors preach the tithe.) I used to sweat the demise of the Southern Baptists. I don't anymore. God never has worked like that. Did your denomination save you? Did a fancy building on the corner of Self and Smug save you? Did a seminary save you?

No. In fact, the most heinous heresies have come in the name of "BIG". The early theological liberals came out of Germany and they wanted to broaden the appeal of the gospel by getting rid of the miraculous. Only a few Europeans were Christians and if we could persuade scientific minds that the Bible wasn't all that full of miracles, we could reclaim much of the culture. (Sound familiar?) They wanted "BIG". The Emergents want to take the moral certainty out of the gospel to get "BIG". MEs want to make the gospel "relevant" so we can get more folks and get "BIG".

Want to be like Christ? Then, get over "BIG". He gave a sermon on sovereignty in John 6 and lost almost all His followers. "TRUTH" trumped "BIG". If you value "BIG", you're not following Chirst. "BIG" or Jesus. Take your pick.

Think back, if you're a regular reader, to the last several posts. I called several ODMers and bloggers into account. One showed up here as soon as his name was mentioned. Did you notice the first sentence in his first comment? It was derision for not being "BIG". And he pretended to have expertise in the languages, but refused to offer his credentials. Where are you today? Are you "BIG"? If not, here's something you ought consider: Many of the "BIG" boys think you're second class. Why do you want to be like them? Don't. Men like Frank Turk are liars. They hate God. Jesus' ministry was miniscule compared to the Frank Turks of his day--the religious leaders. Frank would look down his nose on Jesus, too. If your website isn't like Frank's, you're not up to snuff. Frank said so, remember that?

3. CONCENTRATE ON BEING LIKE CHRIST.
NOT like some Christian celebrity.

Get to the basics. (Notice I didn't say "back".) Read the Scripture like you've never read it before. Spend hours a day buried in it. If your job is too much for that, then take all day Saturday. Do it. Yes, it costs, and even your wife may need to be informed that she, too, will have to carry some of that cost. Seek purity before you ask others to. Logs and specks.

Get your information from good ODMs and go back to your churches and put it to work protecting the flock. Many of us ought to concentrate, not on ODMing, but on spreading the gospel. Look at Paul, for instance. He did offline ODMing, naming liars and warning of false teachings in every letter. (Yes, if you're an ODMer you have quite a brotherhood.) Many are ODMers for the pure motive that few even look for false teachers, including most ME pastors. (And that biblically disqualifies a man from the pastorate, too, by the way. A pastor is a shepherd and shepherd who doesn't even care to look for wolves should be fired.)

This is a pure motive. This is good, but remember that Jesus spent most of His time with folks who knew they were sinners, not the religious. In fact, if Jesus walked around your town, would He even be recognized as a pastor? He was. But your church probably wouldn't recognize Him as such.

Which brings me to something I've decided this week. I'm changing Al Tosap. There'll be a new emphasis on teaching Scripture, God willing.

CONCLUSION:
Do your thing in the way God has equipped you and we'll see you soon enough at the feet of God. Stay holy.

In Christ,
Phil Perkins. PS--pray for me and my wife. We're witnessing on the streets and starting a home church. Pray for our holiness.

THE SECRET SINS OF THE ODMs--Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:15:00 +0000

CATCHIN' UP.
ODMs (online discernment ministries) are an important tool today. False teaching is flowering like dandelions in the lawn. Only the lawn is gone. There are clumps of grass among the weeds.

The fault lies with folks like myself who, in our younger years, decided that doctrine wasn't important. I tell young folks they must reject almost all my generation gave them. Stick to your Bibles and be suspiscious.

Nevertheless, there are some in the ODM world who aren't even saved. The proof is in their lives. Part I dealt with two sins currently rampant. One is a general looseness in ethics. Plagiarism is common and shoddy workmanship biblically and logically go unchallenged. As long as there is an argument against the heretics, it doesn't seem to matter if the argument is right or wrong. It may be pure insults meant to hurt or it may illogical. That seems okay. Just blab it out there.

The second sin is rooted in team spirit of a sorts. I was recently told by a fellow ODMer not to expose Ravi Zacharias because he was "on the same team". I couldn't disagree more. There is a difference between orthodoxy and regeneration. But that's a long discussion. Additionally, there seems to be an implicit admission on the part of many in the ODM movement that we can't count on God. We need big organizations. We need to stick together and support each other. We can't break from someone just because they're in sin. We need them. Or perhaps, we don't want to believe a friend is on the wrong side. That will cost too much.

STARTING WITH THE HOUSE OF GOD.
What exactly do all false teachers have in common? What is it they do that is repugnant to God? Think particularly of the Emergent, because they come right out and say they're doing it. Rob Bell said he and his honey were "rediscovering Christianity" as an Eastern religion. (1) Remember that? Many go even further. The word is "reimagining". Reimagining the Christian faith is currently in style. We ODMers just can't abide that, because the Scripture is abundantly clear. The faith is the same as was first delivered to the saints. Truth has no room for imagining anything. Whether or not they would use that same language, all false teachers commit the sin of abandoning Scripture, either in part or in whole, to pursue doctrines and opinions not secured in Scripture.

How is it then that so many of us feel so free to break the second commandment? Paul Washer has become quite popular among young folks and many ODMers. He has railed against many of the sins in the Evangelical church, including the breaking of the second commandment and I think we need to heed his warnings. He's right.

I've made the mistake of gently and softly trying to tell a number of ODMers that this commandment is real and serious. And that I, like them, once kept pictures of fellows who posed for paintings which were then hung and presented as if the fellow was Jesus.

Here is the second commandment in the NASB:

Exodus 20:4-6 You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

I, like a lot of my generation of Evangelicals, was raised to ignore this commandment in regard to pictures of different men who were painted up to represent Jesus. So I want to be gentle here, knowing that some who read this aren't going to take it well. Just read and see for yourself. I was where you are.

"But we aren't worshipping the picture, it only represents Jesus," you might say. Do you remember the story of the golden calf? Go back to Exodus and read it again. The bull was to represent Yahweh. Read what Aaron said in Exodus 32:

Exodus 32:2-4 And Aaron said to them, "Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me." 3 Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aaron. 4 And he took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made it into a molten calf; and they said, "This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt."

The calf didn't exist before that day. Yet, Aaron said it represented Yahweh, Who brought them out of Mitsraim. Just like the pictures "represent Jesus".

"But we are innocent, because it's just how we conceptualize Jesus." I hear that all the time. In fact, I've heard it from the folks who run the blogs here and here. But isn't that what the Emergent is doing? Reimagining God? And we have God's permission to do that, but the Emergents don't? And isn't that just what the second commandment forbids? Fantasizing about what God is like?

Lest you think me wierd, I would like to remind you that most of the ODMers are calling right now for a reformation or a return to the reformation. The Reformers wouldn't have anything to do with many of us. They'd call us "idolaters" and shun us.

Which leads me to the next section.

DROPPING NAMES AND CLAIMING A BROTHERHOOD THAT ISN'T THERE.-- Shooting some Quayle.
An otherwise good man got caught in a childish lie on October 5, 1988. His name is Dan Quayle. He didn't speak the lie. He implied it. He was running for vice president of the US and he'd been accused of being short on experience for the job of president if the president should die and he became president through succession. In a debate with Lloyd Bentsen, his rival, Quayle compared his experience with that of Jack Kennedy.

The dynamic here may be lost on some of you younger readers and some of you who aren't American. Kennedy was a Democrat and Quayle was a Republican, so the two would have been adversaries if Kennedy was alive, but at the time, Kennedy was revered as a heroic figure. So Quayle was happy to compare himself to Kennedy, instead of a Republican of similar background. I remember the time and it felt uncomfortable when he said it because everyone knew that Quayle was pulling a fast one. He wasn't like Kennedy at all and everyone knew it. Bentsen was simply the first to call Quayle on his charade. Read how Bentsen taught Quayle a lesson in honesty:

Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy: I knew Jack Kennedy; Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy. (2)

The place roared and it was the most embarrassing moment that I can remember in American politics. HE WAS CAUGHT.

Similarly, most of us realize that few in the ODM movement measure up to our fathers. And we need to stop faking it. I've read Charles Spurgeon, and many ODMers are no Charles Spurgeon. NOT EVEN close.

But this is more than a mistake or a simple thing explained by zeal if one really understands just what these men believed. I've already written in Part I of the issue of biblical separation and how some ODMs don't obey what we want others to do. The fathers would have very bad things to say to us about that, but I'm not even going to get into that today.

Let's just look at what the Reformers and some of the fathers taught about the second commandment. They thought those who had images weren't their brothers at all. They would call many of us idolators, just like we call the Emergents false teachers. There is no difference in the mind of men like Spurgeon. Want proof? Spurgeon heartily endorsed Matthew Henry. Read what Spurgeon said about Henry:

First among the mighty (commentaries) for general usefulness we are bound to mention the man whose name is a household word, Matthew Henry. He is the most pious and pithy, sound and sensible, suggestive and sober, terse and trustworthy . . . he is deeply spiritual, heavenly, profitable; finding good matter in every text, and from all deducting the most practical and judicious lessons . . . It is the Christian's companion, suitable to everybody, instructive to all. (3)

And see what Henry had to say about the second commandment in Matthew Henry's Commentary of Exodus 20:4-6:

The prohibition: we are here forbidden to worship even the true God by images, v. 4, 5. [1.] The Jews (at least after the captivity) thought themselves forbidden by this commandment to make any image or picture whatsoever. Hence the very images which the Roman armies had in their ensigns are called an abomination to them (Mt. 24:15), especially when they were set up in the holy place. It is certain that it forbids making any image of God (for to whom can we liken him? Isa. 40:18, 15), or the image of any creature for a religious use.

And what about other historical Baptists and others leading to Spurgeon's era? The Baptist Confession of 1689 relied heavily on the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Westminster Larger Catechism says this about the second commandment:

The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counselling, commanding, using, and anywise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshipping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them, all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretence whatsoever; simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed.--Answer to question 109.

The same is said in fewer words about the second commandment in the Heidelberg Catechism, question 96. And the reason the Protestants were so big on this is in the language of the second commandment. See what is said about "any image of anything". It's clear.

The conclusion is inescapable. Our fathers in the faith and the Reformers would have nothing to do with those among us who break the second commandment. Is it not hypocritical, then to identify with men who would put us out of their churches and use their words as if we were brothers with them?

Earlier I gave two links to websites that are accepted by other ODMs or call themselves ODM. They are Faces Like Flint and Thinker Up. I contacted both. Faces was some time ago. Perhaps two years. All I got from "Sirrod" was anger. I recently found out that Thinker Up was breaking the second commandment on their front page. Reason didn't help. And Kenny Oliver over there was once a close friend, but he has added a picture of a jesus and that's that.

Faces is actually promoted at Christian Research Network. I haven't contacted anyone there except one and I'm pretty sure not all realize what's going on. So, I don't want to cast a bad light on all of them, but the one I did contact responded only with anger. No argument was given, only anger. Read and understand this:

If you're an ODMer, and fellowship with folks in unrepentant sin or break the second commandment, don't quote Paul Washer or Charles Spurgeon, or Calvin. Don't be a Quayle.

Please remember, most folks in the ODMs are great people, doing just exactly what needs to be done. They are under appreciated, scorned, and hated. But not by God. These sins are the sins only of some. Pray for purity.

In Christ,
Phil Perkins.

(1)http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/november/12.36.html
(2)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senator,_you_are_no_Jack_Kennedy
(3)http://www.monergismbooks.com/Matthew-Henrys-Commentary-on-the-Whole-Bible-p-16504.html

COMING TOMORROW IN THE SECRET SINS OF THE ODMs--The Challenge Ahead of Us.

O-D-M-s and E-G-O-s--Frank Turk Googles Himself.

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:43:00 +0000

Something happened today that actually made me start a new blog post category. For a long time I've had STUPID THINGS EVANGELICALS SAY. Today I offer you, my three readers, the first post in the new category, STUPID THINGS EVANGELICALS DO.

Most of us can remember someone, usually a girl, from our childhood who was constantly showing off her shoes or new outfit or bicycle. Or she actually ASKED if you thought she was pretty. Remember her?

I know you don't want to, but try.

Even at a very young age, most thought such behavior was childish and narcissistic. Of course, few of us could pronounce "narcissistic", let alone know what it means, so we just said she was "conceited" or some such thing as that.

So it's natural to expect that, in the humble and godly world of Evangelical bloggers and church leaders, no one (and I mean NO ONE) would ever, ever do such a thing. So, here's my question:

WHY DO SO MANY OF THEM GOOGLE THEMSELVES TO SEE WHAT THE REST OF US ARE THINKING ABOUT THEM?

Grown men, who expect you to think they're godly, pretending to be godly, often using pretend names like kids playing fort, pretending to do all they do for the glory of God, actually look the internet over to find what folks are saying about them. Not looking out for God's reputation, but looking out for THEIR reputation.

This is how I know they're doing this: If a name is mentioned in a post or in a comment thread, the person named will often just show up at a blog they don't ever follow. Or, at times, a representative for them or for their organization does so. They're either monitoring or they are paying someone on staff to monitor what you say to see if you like them. Yes, some of the big guys actually take money from honest Christians who give it for the glory of God and use it for their glory.

Here are some recent examples I've come across in the last few weeks: Tim Challies showed up at Surphside here to once again assure everyone that he didn't say what he said. Yes, all our screens were lying. (Perhaps it's a virus.) Rick Warren apologist, Richard Abanes, showed up here to defend RW and so did Ken Silva to add what he had to say. And then there was another who had a shill show up at another site, but I'll refrain from naming him. Finally, Frank Turk turned up on the comment thread of yesterday's post here at Al Tosap.

I was wondering if Challies would show, but I'm not surprised that he didn't because when he showed up at Surphside, I asked if he googled himself. He didn't answer.

I don't blame him.

When one is writing, it's really like self-employment. One has to consider just how to spend the hours. And if one is blogging a Christian blog, one would think most hours would go into writing articles that help others to better understand Scripture and live a godly life.

So this demands an answer: FRANK TURK, WHY ARE YOU SPENDING TIME GOOGLING YOURSELF?

And do you still call yourself "Centurion"? What about your keyboard? Do you call your key board "Stallion" or "Charger" or "Silver" or "Steed"? Is your router "Lassie" or "Rin Tin Tin"?

Just asking,
Phil Perkins. PS--I know this isn't the post I promised. A pregnancy in the family took most of my day, twice to the clinic, three trips for prescriptions. So Part II of THE SECRET SINS OF THE ODMs will come tomorrow, God willing.

THE SECRET SINS OF THE ODMs--Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 20:19:00 +0000

ODMing THE ODMs?
Online discernment ministries (ODMs) are indispensable because the brick and mortar churches refuse to carry out the biblical command to warn the flock of wolves and informally (but forcefully) forbid anyone in their midst to do so, as well. Frustrated but resolute, these Christians do what they can to research and expose religious figures involved in deception. One look at my blogroll here at Al Tosap will attest to the fact that I make constant use of them to keep myself informed. The men and women who do this sort of thing are precious soldiers of Christ. We ought to appreciate them. We ought to support them.

They support us.

However, over the last two years, I've come to see that we in the ODM arena aren't without spiritual peril. Nor do I, for a moment, believe that everyone in the ODM community is actually regenerate. I'd like your patience as I list and explain four sins rampant in the ODM world that are hidden, but deadly.

AN OFFLINE EXAMPLE
Now, I'm sure that some of you three who read that last paragraph are thinking something like, "Phil sure is off the deep end. He's calling ODMers unsaved." Well, not really. Only that there's no assurance that all are saved and plenty of evidence from Scripture that within any group of Christians are some wolves. (C'mon, now. If you're an ODMer or if you read ODMs, you major in this stuff.)

I'm sure that many of you are aware of the sad story of Ravi Zacharias. For years I listened to RZ every Sunday evening at 7PM. He was a great Christian apologist. Today he's gone. He's pushing the mysticism against which he once defended the faith. (1) I remind you of this sad, sad saga because it still hurts and because it shows us that...

...anyone can be a wolf.

ETHICS ETHICS ETHICS
Calling others to intellectual honesty with regard to the Bible is an awesome calling, but some ODMs are ethically loosy-goosy in their own right. Plagiarism and sloppy Bible handling are too common. One example of ODMers not doing their Scriptural homework is the wishy-washy way Matthew 18 is treated. The Matthew 18 protocol is misapplied or selectively applied. A ploy of the Emergents is to call into question the reproof of an ODM on the basis that Matthew 18 requires the reprover to first confront anyone named as a false teacher privately before going public with criticism. Matthew 18 doesn't teach this, but I've more than once seen ODMers respond in kind, demanding that the Emergent apologize for their challenge of the ODM on the same basis.

No matter how the ODMer understands Matthew 18, he ought never require of the Emergent what he doesn't also practice. Not only is this sloppy handling of the Word of Truth, but it's ethically duplicitous. "But," you might say, "didn't the Emergent start to use the protocol selectively for his own advantage, too, since he registered his complaint publicly?" Yes, you're right. Ungodly folks do ungodly and dishonest things. We ought not. Winning points in an argument isn't all there is in life. Obeying and loving God is. Let's win our enemies without a word, if need be. Righteous purposes aren't served by sinful means. We lose credibility when we lie and rightly so.

Plagiarism shouldn't be an issue in our circles. It's theft of the work and ideas of another without proper attribution or payment. I'm not the only one to whom this has happened, but I know my own story and it's a shocker.

I had been corresponding with a writer on one the really huge ODMs. He's a guy who really puts everything into his work. I won't name him because I don't want to do the cause of Christ harm. He read some of my stuff on an old blog that's still up, but hasn't been updated for a year now. We even collaborated on one article. The last article I posted there said this:

Not long ago, I wrote an article accusing the Emergent of being full of pot heads. I admitted I had no evidence other than the way they acted, talked, and thought (if you can call what they do in their heads "thought"). It was a really spooky thing to do, making an accusation like that without any real evidence other than the sense I got from their manners. So I made sure to make it clear that I was working on a strong impression, not evidence.

BUT........just about two days ago, I was gathering information for a friend. He wanted to know what the Emergent was. So I told him that I would get some Emergent websites listed for him and some sites that were anti-Emergent so he could know just what it is I am talking about all the time infiltrating the church. Among the Emergent sites I listed was theooze.com. When I went over there to cut and paste the url onto the email to my friend, I found this article by Gordon Duncan. He was complaining about what ought to be done with all the potheads he knew, including a lot in the "church."

Yes, totally by chance I found an obscure, off-the-front-page web article confirming a long held suspicion. It was a one-in-a-thousand chance that I got there. Yet, within a couple days the same story (in different words) citing the same web article I found was on my friend's web site. The chances of this being a coincidence were astronomical, especially since he'd been reading my site at the time. When I asked for a simple acknowledgement for doing the leg work to uncover quite a coup against the Emergents my friend no longer was my friend.

He was just hot.

Could this have been an honest mistake brought about by accident? Yes. But if that was so, why not be gracious? Why the hostility? I'll let you decide.

TIES THAT BLIND--He ain't guilty. He's my brother.
The great thing that ODMing does is to name false teachers and calling the body to refuse them. But if those calling for separation from falsehood won't separate themselves...we HAVE A PROBLEM.

ODMing is lonely for many of us and without reward. Often the only real moral support we get is from friends we meet on the web. And losing a friend hurts. You know that, don't you? The kind of isolation this sort of soldiering brings makes that hurt even harder. But there comes a time...

More than once I've confronted over the phone or in email an ODMer with news that someone he is supporting has strayed. Almost every time, I get arguments that can only be explained by purposeful ignorance. We can't expect folks to listen when we ask for a purity from them that we won't practice ourselves.

Not long ago Tim Challies voiced approval for an audio version of the New Testament portion of the TNIV. For those of you who may not know, the TNIV is a gender-altered Bible version. Gender-altered versions are versions which are purposely altered to make certain groups happy. They do so by changing masculine references to neuter or feminine. Those who like this practice of changing what God said call it being gender neutral. (Which begs for the question, "Just what is so neutral about erasing one gender and inserting another?") Challies is promoted by Phil Johnson on Team Pyro. As many of you know this crew is wildly popular, so the isolation excuse certainly doesn't apply. There IS no excuse for this.

The audio is called The Bible Experience. Challies said this about it:

I did not listen to the entire series of CDs (there are nineteen of them for the New Testament) but the portions I did listen to, primarily from the gospels, were really quite well done. This product is certainly different, but I can see nothing inherently wrong with it! (2)

Despite the obvious approval Challies gave the piece, when I and others asked him why he puffed a sinful attempt to change what God has said in Scripture, he said this in the comment thread:

I didn’t say that I would recommend using this for devotional or church purposes. (2)

What? Yes, he said that. If you think I'm lying go back through the provided links. He says one thing and then says he didn't say it. Does he think we're stupid? He must. Personally I didn't fall for it. Did you?

I told you that story in order to tell you another story. And I'll tell you that story in order to help you understand just how pervasive this sort of friends-covering-up-for-friends is in SOME (the SOME part is important here) Christian and ODM websites.

Here's the second story--I'll be brief: When I saw that Team Pyro was shilling for Challies, I warned Phil Johnson, Frank Turk, and company of the sinful things Challies was doing. Instead of thanking me and checking it out to make sure I wasn't lying, they immediately gave me the you're-too-stupid-to-live treatment. I was called a fundie, told I don't know the languages--a wrong assumption on their part stated as fact (that's called lying)--and told I was rude. Yet, all I asked is why it's okay to purposely change what God has said and report it as true. I asked it over and over again. I was told I was stupid. I was told they couldn't answer until they got an example. (Yeah, they said that.) I was told I was rude. I was told I should shut up about it. I just was told everything but an answer to a very simple question.

Let me tell you just how hard these guys squirmed to defend their friend. I cited the passage from Deut. 18 in which we are told that a prophet who says God said something He didn't should die. In answer, Frank Turk said, "Deu 18 is talking about false prophecy -- not about (for example) translating the Bible from Hebrew to English, or into any language." In other words, changing what God said is okay as long as you're not a prophet. In fact I asked him if that's what he meant and he wouldn't answer. (3)

Of course not. He was caught just like Johnson was caught. He couldn't answer the question without admitting he was making things up as fast as he could just to win an argument. Johnson couldn't answer the first question without admitting his friend was sinning.

And we surely can't have THAT now, can we?

Here's the point of those two stories: One of the great sins in the ODM world is a simple lack of purity. It's true that Team Pyro and the Challies site aren't ODMs per se, but Pyro is among those sites who call themselves Christian and who correct others and call those others to purity.

Yet, they remain impure and hope you don't notice. This sort of blind-eye-turning doesn't pay. Where is Challies now? Still sliding. He's now toying with new age stuff. (4)

Oh...and yeah...he's still on Phil Johnson's blogroll, too.

In Christ,
Phil Perkins.
(1)http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/index.php?p=1341&more=1&c=1
(2)http://www.challies.com/archives/churchmerch/churchmerch-the-2.php
(3)http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2007/02/sectarianism-and-separation.html
(4)http://surphside.blogspot.com/search?q=Challies

COMING IN PART II OF THE SECRET SINS OF THE ODMs
STARTING WITH THE HOUSE OF GOD.
There is a sin of sins currently in the ODM community and it isn't being addressed.

DROPPING NAMES AND CLAIMING A BROTHERHOOD THAT ISN'T THERE.
Some ODMers use the names of Reformation fathers and famous preachers who wouldn't have anything to do with them because of the sin in their lives. That's lying.

THE CHALLENGE AHEAD OF US.
Now what?

AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM IS A MENTAL GHETTO--Part IV Size and Scope of the Problem

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:20:00 +0000

BREADTH OF THE PROBLEM IN THREE CENTERS OF RELIGIOUS LIFE.
1. The Schools.
Things have changed. There was a time when "Christian" seminaries and colleges were institutions that not only trained their students, but they filtered them. The filtered out those who didn't have the mental chops to learn the material and, most importantly, they filtered out those students who were heretical. No longer. Now they filter out all students who are intent in living holy lives.

As a seminary grad and a fellow who taught for five years part time at a "Christian" college, I am sad to say almost all graduates coming out of "Christian" colleges and seminaries aren't to be trusted.

Sound preporsterous? Not only is this true, but many of the schools work very hard at making sure you don't know what many of you are supporting with your money and the lives of your sons and daughters. And it's been my experience that, when shown the truth about the sorry state of "Christian" higher education, many pastors and folks in the pew wish to remain ignorant. So this part of the post is for those of you brave folks who aren't staying the Mental Ghetto.

First, my experience. I taught at a small school called Yellowstone Baptist College. Its president is Dr. William Phillips. At the college, textbooks were used that were indecent. Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline was used. It is full of new age mysticism. As late as just last year, Howard Clinebell's Basic Types of Pastoral Care and Counseling was the text for the pastoral ministries. Mr. Clinebell's book approves of homosexual marriage and ridicules any moral code that is solid and unchanging. In addition, for a number of years, that school employed a fellow named Bruce Gourley. Gourley taught that the Bible was full of errors, that anyone who held to inerrancy was an idolator and that women were to be pastors.

So I exposed some of these things. I was a hero, right? No. I was fired and put out of my church. The Mental Ghetto is full of folks who don't like knowing things because knowing these things would require doing something about them.

And this isn't a one-time, odd thing. It's common for colleges and seminaries to have courses in the new age practice of spiritual formation. And it's all the way to the top. Big time schools are corrupt. Moody Bible is heading for the trash heap. To see how the new filter works, read this from Lighthouse Trails about a young lady who wished to maintain biblical holiness, but wasn't allowed to at Moody:

Lighthouse Trails has been contacted by the family of a young Christian woman who was enrolled at Moody Bible Institute, where she hoped to obtain her nearly-reached degree. This week the young woman learned that the college (and at least one of the classes she was registered for) was promoting contemplative spirituality. Upon learning this, she spoke with various school officials about the situation. After coming to the conclusion through these meetings that Moody would at this time continue in the direction it was going, the young woman prayerfully decided she could not compromise her faith by receiving a degree from an institution that was promoting these teachings. This week, she withdrew herself from this fall's upcoming classes and will now search for another Christian college. We commend this young Christian woman for her courage to stand. Although her words may have fallen on deaf ears, we believe the Lord has seen her faith. We pray that the leaders and professors at Moody Bible Institute will also take a stand to defend the faith by renouncing contemplative spirituality.

Two of the books being used by MBI that the young woman challenged are In the Name of Jesus, by Henri Nouwen (in which he says we need to move from the moral to the mystical and that Christian leadership should turn to contemplative for direction)and Captivating, by John Eldredge. (1)

So the young lady in this story wasn't able to finish school, but what does that mean for the pulpits in America? This lady could have finished Moody, but she would have had to sin to do so. She would have had to fellowship with false teachers, sit under their teaching, help pay their salaries for spreading their false doctrines, and actually worship and pray with them in chapel. She wouldn't do that and now there is quite possibly a godly young lady who WON'T MAKE IT TO THE MISSION FIELD. And why? Because Moody filtered her out.

I can tell you from my own experience the same is happening to young men. The only ones who make it to the pulpit are compromisers. Think about this: BECAUSE OF SCHOOLS LIKE MOODY, ONLY MEN WHO HAVE CHOSEN THEIR RELIGIOUS CAREERS OVER OBEDIENT LIVES WILL MAKE IT INTO AMERICAN PULPITS.

Think that through...and weep.

But Moody isn't the only big time used-to-be-Christian school to sin in this fashion. Wheaton College near Chicago, once a stalwart among giants in the land, has had Emergent and pro-homosexual speakers brought to campus. If you give to Wheaton, ASK FOR ALL YOUR MONEY BACK. And doesn't that raise quite a moral question? While parading as still-orthodox, these organizations accept money from conservative churches and individuals. And they get their kids, too. Isn't this fraud? Shouldn't these folks go to jail? If I take money from you for a pension and spend it on something else I go to jail. If Wheaton takes money from folks who expect to see it used to teach young people the Scripture and spend it teaching things of which the donors don't know or even approve, isn't that lying to obtain money?

Let's call fraud in the name of God what it is--fraud. Most of our schools are no better than Benny Hinn or Bernie Madoff.

The list of Wheaton guest speakers reads like a who's who of religious rogues. In February of 2008, Wheaton welcomed Jim Wallis, a left-wing ME advocate for homosexual causes, calling the topic of special rights for homosexuals a "justice issue". (2) Earlier Wheaton actually invited "gay Christian" Harry Knox to speak. (3) In 2006, Wheaton had Tony Jones of Emergent Village. (4) He was back again in April, 2007 to say that orthodoxy is and event and occurs inside a person. It's not objective. (5)

Interestingly, if you check out the documentation, each of these speakers was brought to Wheaton by its Center for Applied Christian Ethics. IRONIC.

So then, no one recently graduated from Wheaton has kept themselves clean. Those who would live holy lives are filtered out by schools like Wheaton and Moody Bible Institute. Only the charlatans and the morally weak are left to climb into the pulpits of ME churches.

2. The Pulpit.
ME preachers today don't know God.

What? Yes, I mean that. I've considered it for years. I believe it and I'm not exaggerating at all.

"You're just saying that for shock value," you may say. It's shocking, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.

Symbiosis is the process in which two organisms thrive by living off of each other or off the product of the other's activity. When preparing this section of this post I needed an example of a symbiotic relationship. I wanted something like maggots cleaning the wound of a wildebeest. The wildebeest doesn't get gangrene and die. The maggot lives and multiplies. Win win. On the list I found this interesting item as an example of a symbiotic relationship: humans and domesticated animals. An animal is domesticated when you can have it on your property and live in daily interaction with it and it doesn't bite you, gore you, or maul you. The schools start the domestication process.

ME preachers don't know God. And that's true for two reasons and in two ways that correspond with those reasons. First, they don't know God intellectually. They haven't put in the man hours with Scripture. Who's at fault? The preacher mainly, but also the schools who spend the vast majority of class time on things ovther than Scripture and learning to study it, and folks in the pew who don't demand excellence in the pulpit. The interplay of all these factors is so complex and SO profound that it's not possible to discuss this well here. God willing, I'll post an article on that in this series. However, until then, ask any preacher these two questions: What is the proper understanding of "Don't judge..." in Matthew 7? What is the point of the parable of the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13? You will almost certainly get at least one wrong answer. The easiest one to check out is the parable. The answer you will almost always get is "Don't put folks out of the church". But simply reading the rest of chapter 13 will reveal that Jesus said the field was the world, not the church, so the point is an explanation for why the wicked live as neighbors with the righteous and will do so until the end of the age.

The second way ME preachers don't know God isn't intellectual, but emotional and personal. They don't have a personal knowledge of God as a Father, Friend, and Potentate. They FEEL God is gooey, not righteous, mistaking sentimentality for scriptural love. More on that in the future post mentioned above.

3. The Pew.
As in most organizations or bodies of people, the real power is in the population. We in the pew want a domesticated dog, not a smart dog. He must roll over and play dead upon command. He must never be harsh. He must always be affirming and demure.

And THAT is the ME preacher. Many go to ME schools with zeal for Christ, but come out unable to bring themselves to name and denounce our sins. They don't bite. BUT the preacher is groomed for the crowd at the dog show, prancing with long, flowing hair cut and combed and a nice bow perched upon his head.

And that works well in the Ghetto.

In Christ,
Phil Perkins
(1) http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/index.php?p=786&more=1&c=1
(2)http://americansfortruth.com/news/wheaton-college-invites-lefty-evangelical-jim-wallis-to-speak.html
(3)http://www.onenewsnow.com/Education/Default.aspx?id=67733
(4)http://www.wheaton.edu/CACE/ejournal/ejournal0106.htm
(5)http://theologica.blogspot.com/2007/07/tony-jones-on-orthodoxy.html

STILL TO COME IN THE MENTAL GHETTO:

Part V More on the Size and Scope of the Problem
DEPTH OF THE PROBLEM IN FOUR CATEGORIES OF INTELLECTUAL LIFE.
1. Biblical ignorance.

2. Ignorance in general knowledge.

3. Ignorance in how to think.

4. Ignorance about the biblical command to practice precise thought.

AND Part VI of the MENTAL GHETTO Pulpits, Parishioners, and Payoffs.

AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM IS A MENTAL GHETTO--Part III Some Folks Who Profit By Keeping You Uninformed

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:19:00 +0000

SO, DO I REALLY THINK THERE ARE EVANGELICAL INSTITUTIONS AND LEADERS WHO WANT TO KEEP YOU STUPID?

YOU BET I DO!

If you recall Parts I and II a mental ghetto is a place where folks stay uninformed because it's easier to stay stupid than to put in the mental work to study. As long as no one in the ghetto becomes informed, then the rest are happy. They haven't been shown up. And some outside the ghetto actually are ecstatic that Evangelicals stay uninformed because they get power and money on the backs of the folks in the ghetto.

BAUBLES AND BIBLES.

Recently, ads have appeared on television for the "Prayer Cross". It's actually sold as a "spiritual accessory" here. Like the TV ad, the website has a narration. Music starts and the deep-voiced representative says, "'Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name...' These words begin one of the most important prayers in all of Christianity. And now this very special prayer can always be kept close to your heart with the Prayer Cross from the Montibello Collections. This one of a kind cross features a secret center stone which, when held up to the light, reveals the entire Lord's Prayer, right before your eyes. Watch as people gaze in amazement as they experience the magic of the Prayer Cross for the first time. Each Prayer Cross is hand crafted, using genuine Austrian crystal and solid sterling silver, creating not only a magnificent piece of jewelry, but a one of a kind spiritual accessory. When held up to the light, the entire Lord's Prayer becomes instantly and almost miraculously visible..."

Stop rubbing your eyes; you saw right. "Spiritual accessory".

Now lest you think the Prayer Cross is a fake--don't worry. Each one comes with a certificate of authenticity, certifying, I suppose, that the folks selling it to you certify it.

Yee haw.

"Austrian crystal" is nothing more than a particular type of Rhinestone, but some of the suckers listening don't know that. And that's what counts.

Few who read this would fall for such a pitch, but the truth is some ME institutions count on you not knowing all sorts of things. Think I'm kidding? Did you know that Wheaton College, a citadel of orthodox Evangelicalism for decades, recently had a number of pro-homosexuality speakers. I'll save that for Part IV on Wednesday, though. And don't worry. I'll provide documentation, too.

Back to the more mundane, though. When was the last time you took wifey and the munchkins down to the local "Christian" book store for Bibles, baubles, and bunches of really cool t-shirts that will be a "witness"? (Are there laws against spiritual child-abuse?) Thanks to all the LIPS (liars in pulpits) most think there is such a thing as life-style evangelism which actually saves folks without us having to actually say the gospel and get laughed at as though we were some sort of stinking fundamentalist scum. So, we get our favorite rap or rock "Christian" group on a t-shirt and that means we're active in Evangelism. Never mind the fact that we only wear it to church. And only to youth group. And Dad gets a chrome-covered plastic fish, peels the protective paper off the stickum, puts it on the back of the car, careful to place it high enough on the back so the pastor notices and low enough so the neighbors don't.

PROPHETS OR PROFITS?

In Part II, I discussed some of the money tossed around in Corporate Christianity, especially the religious publishing world. There are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. Selling lots and lots of books is success. Selling true books is optional. Something I didn't realize until recently, is that many of the books in your corner religious book store aren't even written by the authors the publishers claim they are. Ghostwriters are common in religious publishing. (1)

So what does this have to do with the Mental Ghetto? It's a demonstration that the ignorance of just one biblical doctrine can be exploited by the ghetto enablers. In this case the forgotten doctrine is the sufficiency of Scripture. According to the apostle Paul, the Bible is all that's needed for the Christian life to be lived and taught to others. II Timothy 3:16-17. We've forgotten that, though. And now many religionists feel they must read the latest book from the religious publishers to stay hip--cutting edge. As a result there is a demand for new books from the biggest names in the ME world. But they're all busy doing conferences, speaking, and writing other books as well. So that the publishers can publish more and so the big names can make money without much work, no-name writers are hired and folks like D. James Kennedy, Billy Graham, and Gary Smalley put their names on them. (1) That's right, if you go and buy a book at the store by Billy Graham, it may be a complete lie, written by someone who may or may not have had some good ideas, but didn't have the name to sell. If you knew a book was written by it's real author, you may have passed on it, but it said it was written by a celebrity and you thought you were reading Billy Graham.

Like that?

This is such a plague one can actually google "Christian ghostwriters" and get folks selling their services. (I wonder if they have a red light in their window at night.) One religious ghostwriter actually advertizes that she has a degree in spiritual formation from Wheaton College. Yes, she has an education in new age spiritualism from a known ME institution and is willing to be paid to lie on a national scale, in print. (2) Last year a ghostwriter was honored as the Holy Ghostwriter" by Christianity Today. (3) This seems to be the state of "Christianity" today.

At least the ME version.

In Christ,
Phil Perkins.
(1) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_30_16/ai_64426330
(2) http://www.inspirationalghostwriting.com/ghostwriters.htm
(3) http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2007/003/6.14.html

BLESSED NEWS--I guess.

noreply@blogger.com (Phil Perkins) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:41:00 +0000

This is really great news. I've recently noticed that when I leave comments on some blogs they get saved right away. FANTASTIC!!!! The thing that worries me, though, is that they never seem to progress. They never get sanctified or baptized. No progressive sanctification.

Pray for my comments. I think they're carnal. Maybe they just prayed the prayer but weren't really sincere.

Hoping,
Phil Perkins.