This particular Sunday, yesterday, we went to a different church, because I had three of my children who are part of a school choir singing at a different church. So I heard a guest pastor. He was talking about the fact that in America today 4000 churches are closing their doors every year. As a result of that, the church needs to become, at least in his opinion, more and more relevant. If we don’t become more and more relevant, we’re going to loose people. If you’re counting nickels and noses that’s not a good thing! So we have to employ all kinds of edgy marketing campaigns.

A recent pastor series was touted by this moniker “What happens when God gets between the sheets,” or another, “How to use your life in such a way that it has relevance when you live with idiots and morons?” The marketing campaigns have to become increasingly slick, and we have to become more and more like the culture, because if we don’t, we’re going to lose members.

The reality is something far different than that. The way the church grows is when the church embraces basics. This happens when the church unpacks the Word of God, when a pastor under the unction of the Holy Spirit wrestles with the biblical text, and then on Sunday morning unpacks a feast, when the parishioners themselves participate in worship through prayer, praise, and the proclamation of the Word of God, when the parishioners are involved in oneness using their time talent and treasure, for the building up of the body, and when every believer is equipped to share the Gospel and experiences the Holy Spirit moving through them in the process of reaching, touching, impacting, and transforming the world.

I fear the problem today is that the pastor is trying to do the work of ministry all by himself, and as he looses traction and steam, he has to use edgy marketing campaigns to get people to come. The real solution is to recognize that the pastors the coach, preparing people to be involved in the most significant enterprise known to man, who are touching people with the Gospel, producing reproducing disciple makers, extending the kingdom of God, not by might, nor by power, but by His Spirit. The church in American is losing its way and as a result the church in America is in decline.

I was reading an article in the paper this morning, which said that “churches have begun to emulate popular aspects of society.” [1] So were becoming more and more like the culture. Microcosms of the culture as opposed to being change agents in the culture.

______________

1. Josh Duke, “Start-up Indiana Church Uses Sex to Sell Message,” USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2011-02-14-relsex14_ST_N.htm

Think for a moment about what spiritual and secular leaders in our day are now saying. Beverly Harrison, a professor of Christian ethics, says, “Infanticide is not a great wrong.” Ester Langston, a professor of social work, says, “What we are saying is that abortion becomes one of the choices, and the person has the right to choose whatever it is that’s best for them in the situation which they find themselves, be it abortion, to keep the baby, to adopt it, to sell it, to leave it in a dumpster, to put it on your porch, whatever, it’s the person’s right to choose.” Margaret Sanger, who was the original founder of Planned Parenthood, famously said, “The most merciful thing a large family can do for one of its infant members is kill it.” Nobel Prize Laureate James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA—hardly fringe—said, “Because of the limitations of present detection methods, most birth defects are not discovered until birth; however, if a child was not declared alive until three days after birth, the doctor could allow the child to die, if the parents so chose, and save a lot of misery and suffering.”

While pondering this horrific reality, remember that the present-day holocaust is government funded. In other words, you and I are footing the bill. Now I’ve said this before and it made me controversial, but I’m going to repeat it, abortion is not the real problem. Abortion is the clean up operation. The real problem is sexual promiscuity. And sexual promiscuity is the direct result of how people view their origins—how one views their origins, determines how they live their life. If you believe you are a function of random chance, you’re going to live your life by a different standard than if you know you are created in the image of God and accountable to Him. If there is no objective North Star, morals and ethics are determined on the basis of the size and scope of the latest lobby group. When that happens, chaos breaks out in a culture. You have the sovereignty of self replacing the sovereignty of God. You have survival of the fittest, and the struggle for existence. And, yes, you have a sexual revolution that demands a clean up operation, which has led to a multi-billion dollar government funded plan of taking the lives of the most innocent and vulnerable among us. And now, we can even at times have the privilege of experimenting on them.

Do ideas have consequences? Yes! But we are not here to curse the darkness. The Christian Research Institute exists to equip you to make a difference while there is still time. You can make a difference.

Find out more at equip.org.

For further study, please access the following equip.org resource:

DA375 – Annihilating Abortion Arguments

We also recommend the following bookstore resource:

WHOSE ETHICS? WHOSE MORALS?

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Consider, for example, the Lord’s Words in John 2:19. “Destroy this temple,” said Jesus, “and I will raise it again in three days.” The Jews understood Jesus in a wooden literal fashion. They thought He was saying that the temple, which had taken forty-six years to build, could be destroyed in three days, and rebuilt again in that period of time. Jesus, however, spoke figuratively, as the John explained the temple He had spoken of was the temple of His body. Likewise, when the Apostle John describes Satan as a dragon, or variously as an ancient serpent (Rev. 20:2), we’d be seriously mistaken to suppose that he intends to communicate that Satan is literally a smoke spouting snake!

My point is simply this: a literalistic method of interpretation does as much violence to the text as does a spiritualized interpretation that empties the text of objective meaning. So to avoid either extreme, you as a believer, need to adeptly employ the literal principle of biblical interpretation. You need to pay strict or careful attention to what is called form or genre, figurative language, and even the kind of fantasy imagery that the Apostle John uses in the Book of Revelation. Now when we talk about Satan being a dragon, dragons are obviously the stuff of mythology not the stuff of theology.

So you need to exercise your mind to grasp what the author is driving at. Metaphors when we use them, even in common parlance, are used in ways that have significant meaning. They have sharp teeth. It doesn’t mean that when you use metaphorical language that you’re not pointing to something concrete, or something substantive, it means that you have to use your mind to get what the author is driving at. This is certainly true with biblical forms or figures of speech. As a believer you need to learn to read the Bible for all its worth.

It was Ironic, just before I was reading this article I was thinking about some of the persecution I personally endured as a result for standing for truth no matter what the cost. Then I read this article. Immediately, I fell to my knees thinking, “There’s persecution and there’s persecution. Egypt’s Christians are hardly alone in their persecution. “Catholic bishop stabbed to Death in Turkey.” That’s one of the headlines we read not all that long ago.  Here’s another, “Islamist hard-liners in Indonesia target Christians.” Here’s another “Iraqi Christians mourn after church siege kills 58.” Iraqi Christians mourn after church siege kills 58. The Christmas season saw 48 killed in Muslim attacks in Nigeria.On Christmas Day, Iran opened its campaign against conversions by arresting dozens of evangelicals. Bombs left on the doorsteps of Christian homes in Iraq killed two and injured 14 on Dec. 30” [3]. That’s five weeks ago.

The article goes on to say that “the single most dangerous thing in the world to be, right now, is a Christian in a Muslim country…Up to 1.4 million of Iraq’s Christians have fled since the war began in 2003…America foreign policy has been little concerned with religious persecution…Barack Obama has systematically watered down U.S. diplomacy: Where we once demanded ‘freedom of religion,’ a public liberty, we now speak only of ‘freedom of worship,’ a lesser and private right.” It then says, “Nearly every day since Christmas, Christians have been murderously attacked for the simple fact of being Christians,” and “Our willful blindness is shameful, and our inactivity is wrong. The United States must preface every diplomatic exchange with an Islamic country by demanding religious liberty and a halt to persecution. And we need to do it now — while there are still a few Christians left to defend in their ancient homelands.” [4].

All of us, as we participate on the Bible Answer Man broadcast today by listening or calling in need to be aware that even as we speak there is real persecution going on around the world. And we must not only pray for the pesecuted church, whether in Asia, or Africa, or even in America. We must pray for the persecuted church, and we must simultaneously recognize that the church has always been forged in the cauldron of persecution. That’s when real Christianity manifests itself. It’s when real Christianity impacts empires. It’s why in China right now there may be as many as 130 million Christians growing and thriving in the cauldron of persecution, not looking to mere earthly vanities, but elevating their gaze to eternal verities.

It is time for us in America to begin living with eternity in mind and, if we do, we may well make a difference not just for time but for eternity. If we do, we’ll stop listening to the conspiracy theorist, who are concocting all kinds of conspiracy theories on television, watched by millions of Christians, which are the kind of conspiracy theory that titalates. They’re sensational. They’re great for ratings. But they do very little for the cause of Christ.  

__________________

1. Joseph Bottum, “Who will Defend Mideast Christians,” http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-02-07-column07_ST_N.htm

2. Ibid

3. Ibid

4. Ibid

Coyne goes on to say, it is “faith’s certainty that it has a grasp on truth…that produces things such as…opposition to stem cell research and euthanasia…. How much clearer our spectacles would be without the fog of superstition!”[2] Well, it turns out that he has the superstition. He’s still embedded in nineteenth century superstition. In the nineteenth century, people thought that the universe was eternal, unlike Christians who knew that the universe came into existence in a moment of time.

Unlike Christians, he does not recognize that an embryo has full personhood from the moment of conception. That is plain old experimental evidence. So his science not governed by ethics and morals leads to the worst of all quagmires. In fact, it leads to exactly what is chronicled in the newspaper today. And I think people should be aware of this, otherwise we’re going to be like the Germans, who lived in their homes next to crematoriums, and did nothing as the smoke from the chimneys of the crematoriums wafted over their homes. They were blissfully ignorant or not willing to act. And I find Christianity often times in the same place, for convenience sake or non-rocka-boat-tus (Don’t want to rock the boat), we’re not going to say anything about destroying embryos. When you sit, however, as I did, a week and a half or so ago, with a little girl named Alysse, who was a frozen embryo, frozen over two years, thawed, implanted in the uterine wall of her precious mom, who has the same name as one of my daughters, Christina, and that embryo develops into a little girl that I read Bible stories to, you recognize that these issues are not merely abstract ivory tower issues. This is a life and death issue.

How many today have passed by or looked the other way when reading in the newspaper or seeing on television for the first time surgeons have injected a spinal cord injury patient with human embryonic stem cells in a federally approved experiment? Think back to the experiments on human beings in past days, in Stalin’s Russia, in Hitler’s Germany—all for the good of the powerful the weak are exploited. So you have research today using human embryonic stem cells and their taken by destroying five to six day old human embryos. These aren’t my words. This is in the newspaper. This is corroborated by evidence. This information comes out of the Shepherd’s Center. This is an Atlanta, Georgia hospital specializing in brain, spine and related ailments.

And you say, “Don’t you want to help someone that has a brain malady, a spine injury, or some other kind of an ailment?” Yes! But do I want to kill someone in the process? Look, I make this point emphatically, an embryo does not have a fully developed personality; it does have full personhood, from the moment of conception. You didn’t come from an adolescent, you once were an adolescent. You didn’t come from an embryo, you once were an embryo. All human beings are created in the image of God and endowed with the right to life.

It’s not just a Jerry Coyne because he happens to be strong. It’s not about survival of the fittest in the struggle for life. That’s a dogma that flies in the face of ethics and morality. To suppose that it is important that the unfit die as that the fittest survive because if the unfit survived indefinitely they would infect the fit with their less fit genes, is a horrifying notion. All human beings—Black, White, Asian, Latino—all human beings are created in the image of God and they’re endowed with the right to life. That is regardless of size! Whether you are little Alysse, an embryo, or you are Jerry Coyne writing an article for the Forum in USA Today. You are created in the image of God and endowed with the right to life. He thinks religion has nothing to add to science? It is not only absurd, but terrifying. Make no mistake, extracting stem cells from an embryo, kills an embryo. While we should sympathize with those who struggle with debilitating diseases and injuries, cures and therapies must be sought within appropriate moral boundaries. Killing human embryos in the search for cures is tantamount to subjecting one class of people to harmful experimentation for the sake of another class of people. To do that violates the biblical injunction against murdering human beings who are made in the image of God. Why do it?

Thank God that George Bush limited federal funding of research using human embryonic stem cells and it is tragic to know that has now been reversed by President Obama, which has led to the FDA approval of a clinical experiment that is killing human beings, in light of the promising results of adult stem cell research. State funding, federal funding or any kind of funding for the destruction of embryos is not only morally repugnant but it is fiscally irresponsible. Stem cells extracted from non-embryonic sources, like bone marrow, or blood, brain cells, or baby teeth are similar to embryonic stem cells in their ability to grow into all kinds of tissues. While embryonic stem cells used in research have demonstrated a tendency to grow into tumors, adult stem cells have already shown success in human trials for all kinds of maladies. Ideas have consequences, and the consequences of what we are reading by those that hate the notion of ethics and morals by an objective Lawgiver, have something to think about. 

1.        [1] Jerry Coyne, “Science and Religion Aren’t Friends,” USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-10-11-column11_ST_N.htm

2.        [2] Ibid.

I want to read just the opening of this article, and make a couple of comments. Coyne says,

Religion in America is on the defensive.

Atheist books such as The God Delusion and The End of Faith have, by exposing the dangers of faith and the lack of evidence for the God of Abraham, become best-sellers. Science nibbles at religion from the other end, relentlessly consuming divine explanations and replacing them with material ones. Evolution took a huge bite a while back, and recent work on the brain has shown no evidence for souls, spirits, or any part of our personality or behavior distinct from the lump of jelly in our head. We now know that the universe did not require a creator. Science is even studying the origin of morality. So religious claims retreat into the ever-shrinking gaps not yet filled by science. And, although to be an atheist in America is still to be an outcast, America’s fastest-growing brand of belief is non-belief.

But faith will not go gentle. For each book by a “New Atheist,” there are many others attacking the “movement” and demonizing atheists as arrogant, theologically ignorant, and strident. The biggest area of religious push-back involves science. Rather than being enemies, or even competitors, the argument goes, science and religion are completely compatible friends, each devoted to finding its own species of truth while yearning for a mutually improving dialogue.

As a scientist and a former believer, I see this as bunk…[ii]

Now the article goes on, but I can’t get into the rest of it right now, I’ll leave that for tomorrow, and perhaps the next day, I want to point out that here again you have a supposed scientist making a dogmatic assertion rather than a defensible argument over and over and over again throughout the article, failing to recognize that science was invented in Christian universities, and it came out of the notion that reason devoid of revelation always ends up in the blind ditch of ignorance.

So Coyne says, “Recent work on the brain has shown no evidence for souls, spirits, or any part of our personality or behavior distinct from the lump of jelly in our head.”[iii] Kind of reminds me of nineteenth century science, in which a fertilized human egg was though of a microscopic blob of gelatin. We now know it’s among the most ordered complex structures in the entire known universe. But as so often happens in science reporting, the interpretation of the empirical facts is confused by Jerry Coyne with the facts themselves. Although he says recent research on the brain and human cognition proves that there is no material or I should say immaterial soul or spirit, he confuses his interpretation of the facts with the facts themselves. In truth, the recent work in brain research is quite compatible with anthropological dualism or body/soul dualism—it’s the idea that we have a soul or a mind distinct from the brain.

I’m not sure that Jerry Coyne has really thought out the implications of his paradigm from the perspective of logic or legal ramifications or even libertarian freedom. Because, from the perspective of logic we can demonstrate that the mind is not identical to the brain. We can do that by proving that the mind and brain have different properties. The subjective texture of our conscious mental experiences, like the awareness of color, is different from anything that is simply physical. If the world were only made up of matter the subjective aspects of consciousness simply would not exists. I think if Jerry Coyne would reflect for just a moment he would be convinced that the experience of color involves more than a mere wavelength of light.

From a legal perspective, if human beings were merely material they couldn’t be held accountable this year for a crime committed last year, simply because physical identity changes over time. So from a purely material perspective the self who did the crime in the past is literally not the same self who in the present is going to be punished. Legally and intuitively, of course, we recognize a sameness of soul that establishes personal identity over time.

If we were merely material beings, as Jerry Coyne supposes, then libertarian freedom or freedom of the will simply does not exists. Instead, we would be fatalistically relegated into a world in which everything is determined by mechanistic material processes. If I’m merely material, my choices are merely a function of genetic makeup or brain chemistry.

The implications of this worldview chronicled in the Forum in USA Today are profound. In a worldview that embraces fatalistic determinism, I can’t be held morally accountable for my actions. Why? Because reward and punishment make sense only if we have freedom of the will, and in a solely material world, reason itself is reduced to the status, well of conditioned reflexes. Even the very concept of love would be rendered meaningless.

I’ll tell you, I’ve said this many times right here on the Bible Answer Man broadcast, ideas have consequences. When Coyne says that “science is even studying the origin of morality,” he ought to think twice about what he’s talking about. There are all kinds of people buying into his worldview. Everything is a function of blind mechanistic material processes. What then grounds a moral position? There are people, like Ted Bundy, who confess to over thirty murders, who had a conversation with his victim, a girl that he was about ready to murder and rape, and he wants to take this idea, that idea that comes out of nothing producing everything—which is absurd notion—to its logical conclusion. Here’s what Bundy said—again he’s taking about a victim, in fact he’s specifically addressing a victim, think about your daughter, about to be raped and murdered—this is what Ted Bundy said, “I learned that all moral judgments…” in other words he was brought up the school of evolution. He learned that,

All moral judgments are value judgments, that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either right or wrong…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable value judgment that I was bound to respect the rights of others…

Now as I’m recapitulating the words of Ted Bundy, recognize how eloquent they are, how precise they are, how erudite they are. He’s taking something that he’s learned, he’s no dummy, and he’s drawing it to its logical conclusion. He goes on to say,

I asked myself, who were these others? Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more to you—

He says to this girl that he’s about ready to rape,

—than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as moral or good and others as immoral or bad? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me, after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self.

So on what moral grounds can someone like Jerry Coyne provide a response to Ted Bundy? In a materialistic world, how can you say that it was ok to speak out against slavery in Great Britain in the seventeenth century, after all it was completely culturally acceptable? My point here is simply to say ideas have consequences and the horrendous consequences of what people are buying into glibly when they read USA Today like this morning’s “Science and Religion Aren’t Friends,” are dramatic for how we view our world, but more than that what we do in our world. Jerry Coyne the evolutionist is simply wrong; in fact dead wrong; devastatingly wrong.

[i] Jerry Coyne, “Science and Religion Aren’t Friends,” USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-10-11-column11_ST_N.htm

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

I met a little girl named Alysse. She is 4 ½ years old. She was a frozen embryo for two years. That embryo was thawed, implanted in the uterine wall of her mother, and she today is a beautiful, bright, bubbly little girl that I held in my arms, and I was able to read Bible stories to. If I ever had an experience of ideas having consequences, it was this weekend holding that little girl, and seeing that that embryo could have been discarded, except that her parents recognized the reality that life begins at conception. So they got involved in a snowflake embryo adoption program, and little Alysse, 4 ½ years old, is snowflake number 94. I met her, and I told her, “You know what my favorite number is? It’s 94.” And she smiled knowingly.

What an incredible thing to see, a child that came out of a frozen embryo. What a warning to us that we should not in a cavalier fashion discard embryos as though they’re simply microscopic blobs of Jell-O. No. They’re among the most ordered complex structures in the entire known universe. David said it well,

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

When I was made in the secret place.

When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

Your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me

Were written in your book

Before one of them came to be (Psalm 139:14-16, NIV)

This is a warning to Christians, really quite frankly, that we need to know what we believe and why we believe it, because it has real practical implications. It’s not about ivory tower theories. No. What we believe has real practical dynamic and life giving reality associated with it. Know what you believe and why you believe it, particularly when it comes to the sanctity of human life.

The way it’s under siege is significant as well. We have the President of the United States of America saying things that clearly marginalize the Word of God. We have professors who are suggesting that the Bible is riddled with factual errors. And just last week, I was listening to a debate on Anderson Cooper between Pastor Troy Sanders and Ted Haggard. Ted Haggard formally was the very significant pastor in Colorado that got involved in homosexual transgressions, and pastor Troy Sanders is openly homosexual. He calls himself a “same gender loving man.” But what’s significant is that to approve of their practice, they take the Bible out of context. In fact, they marginalize the Bible such that anyone listening to their words would say at the end of the conversation you simply can’t trust the Bible. Why? Because the Bible says that slavery is ok. The Bible says eating pork is a sin. The Bible says sowing garments together from two different threads is a sin. That obviously can’t be true, and, therefore, the Bible can’t be trusted.

Well, Pastor Troy Sanders as well as Ted Haggard are having this conversation. If you missed it, I want to replay it on a clip for you, so that you can listen to it and I can point out its errors directly. The point of doing this is to say that you too should be ready to give an answer. When someone listen to an interview like this, and no doubt millions did, you should be ready to use the diversion of Troy Sanders as a pastor, use his diversion as an opportunity to communicate truth to your friends, family members, children, and neighbors. Here’s Troy Sanders on Anderson Cooper,

I think that there has to be a place in our religious discourse to critique Scripture, because the same Bible—now, the premise that I cannot stand for is that homosexuality is sin or wrong, because the same Scriptures that we used to lift up that said that women could not preach, said that we could not eat pork, or that two twains of fabric could not be in, and that slavery was actually instigated and upheld by that same ancient oppressive text. So, at some point, we have to reevaluate what we believe. And we cannot couch it in, we are all sinners and we all have our shortcomings. No, there are some things that we have to give off, we have to let go of around oppressive theology. And homosexuality and homosexual oppression, homophobia in the church is one of those things.[1]

Well does the Bible really do what Pastor Troy Sanders says it does? Does the Bible say women cannot preach? Paul gives instructions in 1 Corinthians 11 for women to prophesy and pray in public. And prophesying is clearly delineated as exhorting, edifying, and equipping the body of Christ.

As far as sowing garments together from two different threads, this is not something that literally applies to us in any sense whatsoever. Scripture simply uses the object lessons of seeding crops and sewing cloths to illustrate the spiritual and social distinction between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light. In other words, the mixing of different things was associated with the syncretistic pagan practices that Israel was to avoid. Scripture in that way provides a wide variety of illustrations to underscore the principle of undivided loyalty to God.

As far as pork is concerned, there is a quantum difference between enduring moral principles, such as those regarding homosexuality, and temporary ceremonial practices relegated to a particular historical context. The distinction between clean and unclean animals symbolized the distinction between that which was holy and that which was unholy within the context of a theocracy. And remember, Jesus made it very plain, that it is not what goes into a man’s mouth then into the stomach and out of his body that defiles him, but what proceeds out of his heart. And Jesus was talking to the Pharisees in much the way He would talk to Pastor Troy Sanders, “Don’t you see,” in other words, are you blind? Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean? For it doesn’t go into his heart, but into his stomach, and then out of his body. In saying that, Jesus declared all foods clean (cf. Mark 7:14-23).

There is then the notion of slavery. Far from extolling the virtues of slavery the Bible denounces slavery as sin. The New Testament goes so far as to put slave traders in the same category as murderers, adulterers, perverts, and liars. In fact it was the application of biblical principles that ultimately led to the overthrow of slavery both in ancient Israel and in the USA. Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt became a model for the liberation of slaves in general. Read the Bible! You’ll see over and over again that if one supposes that the Bible teaches slavery as something that can be practiced, there is something wrong with God, or the Bible is not divine in origin. But that’s not what the Bible teaches. Ephesians 6 teaches that God is our Master. He is Master to both slave and free, and in God’s economy there is no favoritism, no partiality, complete equality. Go to the Old Testament. When Joseph was sold into slavery, it was considered a great evil, and slavery in the Old Testament was due to economic realities, not to racial distinctions. In fact, in a biblical worldview there is no such thing as race except to “run the race.”

My point in saying all of this is you have pastors—here we have the past President of the National Association of Evangelicals, represents the evangelicals of the world, in a debate with Pastor Troy Sanders, both with a predilection towards homosexuality—what they do is they beat up the Bible. In other words, it’s the Bible that’s at fault. There’s something wrong with the Bible. It’s called an “ancient oppressive text” by Troy Sanders. We live in an age in which the Bible is under siege and will be so until people learn how to read the Bible for all its worth. Sometimes it’s just a matter of reading the Bible. You can’t read through the Bible and think that the Bible teaches slavery. The Bible certainly communicates the reality of slavery, and in most parts due to economic necessities were someone would sell themselves into slaver to pay off a debt, but it never promotes the practice of slavery. Again, always be ready to give an answer, a reason for the hope that lies within you with gentleness and with respect.

[1] Anderson Cooper 360, September 23, 2010

The bottom line of this survey is that we not only do not know essential Christian doctrine, but we don’t seem to care, and certainly are not reading our Bibles. The reason that I am highlighting this US Religious Knowledge Survey, again released today by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, is to say the need for the Christian Research Institute, what we do is more significant now than ever before. We’re in a biblically illiterate doctrinally illiterate culture.

What does that mean? It means that people will fall for the skin of the truth stuffed with a great big lie, over and over and over again, because they cannot discern between truth and error, wheat and chaff, heat and light. It’s time for us to get back to basics. To get into the Word of God and get the Word of God into us.

If you have not yet started on the Legacy Reading Plan, we’re done with the Old Testament as of this month, and next month we start a brand new track, we’ll be going through the New Testament. Again that’s beginning in October we start with the New Testament. We don’t do it as most reading plans do it. We start in John, and after we’ve read the Gospel of John, we read the epistles of John, and then we read the Book of Revelation. Why? Because we want to read the New Testament by author. Every author has unique characteristics. If you read my books, you can see my fingerprints all over them. The same thing is true with the Gospel of John, and John’s epistles, and the Book of Revelation. And then in November, we’re going to read through the epistles; in December, the Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as Acts. But we want to read through the teaching epistles before we read through the historical narratives, so we’ll be able to read them for all their worth.

1.      Cf. The Pew Forum, “US Religious Knowledge Survey,” http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey.aspx

Neither Crouch nor the pastor he made famous apologized for the false prophesy; instead, they employed a tactic that worked for the Watchtower Society some eighty years earlier. Like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who predicted Christ would return in 1994, they proclaimed that their prophecy had come to pass! How? Invisibly.

“In this final decade of the second millennium,” I write back in 1995, “prophetic pronouncements such as Hinkle’s seem almost to have become the rule rather than the exception. A growing cacophony of voices now claim to have discovered the date of Christ’s return.”

Edgar Whisenant said Christ’s second coming would occur in 1988. Do you Remember that? Millions fell for his Scripture-twisting tactics in the runaway bestseller, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. Well, that didn’t happen, so a year later he had 89 reasons why it would happen in 1989.

Do you remember Lester Sumrall? He pointed to the year 2000. In his book, I Predict 2000 AD, he wrote, “I predict the absolute fullness of man’s operation on planet Earth by the year 2000 A.D. Then,” said Lester Sumrall, “Christ Jesus shall reign from Jerusalem for a 1000 years Jesus.” Remember I wrote this fifteen years ago.

Well—I’m going to get to a poignant point here—Harold Camping, he predicted that Christ would return in September of 1994. In a volume titled 1994? he wrote, “When September 6, 1994 arrives, no one else can become saved, the end has come.” How did he know that? Well, he suggested that the two-thousand demon possessed pigs that are mentioned in the 5^th chapter of Mark’s Gospel actually represent two-thousand years. He then adds two-thousand years to the time of Christ’s birth, which he believed to be 7 BC, and he comes up with his prediction that Christ would return in 1994.

Harold Camping is at it again banking on the fact that people have short memories! (We’re talking about something I wrote in 1995. That’s fifteen years ago.) Now in 2010 he says the date is not September 6, 1994, it’s all going to happen in 2011. I’m not making this stuff up. Here’s Harold Camping, telling us in his own voice, he thinks—not 1994 that’s come and gone—2011 is D-Day:

The best place in the Bible that focuses on 2011 is a passage in 2 Peter 3:8 where God is talking about two judgments. One judgment is the judgment of the flood of Noah’s day and the other is the judgment at the end of the world. And in that context God says “Beloved, there’s one thing that I do not want you to be ignorant of, and that is that a day is a thousand years, and a thousand years is a day.” That’s a very, very intriguing statement and it’s very curious that when we—because we know that the flood occurred in 4990 BC, and if we go seven days, that is 7000 years from there, we land on the year 2011….2011 keeps shining through as the probable date for the – probable year that will end this earth’s existence.[1]

Now notice he has thrown in a little qualifier now the word “probable.” But, again, this is what date setters do. They set the date, and when the date starts to arrive on the scene, when we get closer and closer to that date, they start hedging their bets.

So Harold Camping is predicting the return of Christ four months from now—2011. And if Camping wrong, we have another date we can go to, 2012—that’s Jack Van Impe’s date. And there are some other prophecy pundits that have come up with 2014. That is the most distant possible time that it can happen.

Is Harold Camping right—2011? We’re going to find out that prophecy pundits have one characteristic in common—they’re 100% wrong 100% of the time! In fact, the truth of the matter is this: There is no evidence in the Bible whatsoever, nary a clue, as to when Jesus Christ will return. Not one single clue! It could happen a second from now…Well, it didn’t. Or it could happen two-thousand years from now, but we don’t know when it is going to happen. We should be prepared as though Christ were coming this very moment and prepare as though He may not come as yet for another millennium.

2011 will come and go, and were going to see that Harold Camping is once again demonstrated to be a false prophet. Benny Hinn has made all kinds of false prophecies. And the litany continues, and in the end, it isn’t the prophecy pundits that are blamed, it is the Bible that is blamed. The Bible can’t be trusted. Christ’s name is dragged through the mud. Christ can’t be trusted. Of course, this has nothing to do with the Bible or Christ. Neither predicts the time of the Second Coming.

What does all this mean to you? You need to be so familiar with the real McCoy, that when these counterfeits loom on the horizon, you will know it instantaneously. You will not be fooled into today’s world of discordant date setters. As believers, we must abandon sensationalism, and embrace Scriptural truth. The prophecies of the Bible have been fulfilled. Apart from the fact that Jesus Christ will appear a second time, the problem of Sin and Satan will be fully and finally resolved, the dead will rise immortal, imperishable, incorruptible—Jesus says, “Do not be amazed, a time is coming when all who are in the graves will come out, some will rise to live, and some will rise to be eternally condemned,” this universe, which is groaning in travail will be transformed, and the old order of things will be done away with, all things will be come new, that’s what we know about the future. The rest of prophecy has been fulfilled, demonstrating that you can trust the Bible as the infallible repository of redemptive revelation.

Every time we have someone pointing to the Bible or abusing the Bible, to come up with a date, and the date doesn’t produce the event, the Bible is called into question. It’s time for us to call these prophecy pundits to account for dragging Christ name through the mud.

1.       Harold Camping. “Open Forum” Radio Show. June 29, 2004 http://209.10.202.163/english/connect/audio_archive/forum/frame/2004/forum2004jun.html (41min  Into Show)