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The Small Church in Today’s Culture

Written by Rick Shrader

The Small Church in Today’s Culture

by Rick Shrader

This isn’t an easy time for small churches.  In today’s culture, small often means inadequate, unsuccessful, non-visionary, and unexciting.  By today’s cultural standards those descriptions may be right.  Our culture sees bigness and excitement as marks of success.  By God’s standards, however, any size church may be successful or unsuccessful and may seem boring or exciting.

I grew up in the large fundamental Baptist churches of the 50s and 60s.  My home church had around 8,000 in attendance with 100 buses running every Sunday.  I liked the church and was drawn into it in my teenage years by a loving youth group (they didn’t even have a youth pastor in the early days) and by an abundance of activities.  I later served as youth pastor there in the mid 70s.  By then the attendance was half of what it had been in the 60s and churches of other stripes were becoming large with newer and more innovative methods than we were using.  When I visited the church again in the mid 80s it was just an average church struggling to keep around a thousand people in attendance.

The church I attended during my Bible College days (1968-1972) had an attendance of 2000 and more with a live, weekly television broadcast.  It was not until I went to seminary that I experienced small church life.  During those three years of schooling in Minneapolis I served in a church of about 50 people on the west side of St. Paul.  It was a new experience for me but I was in ministry and enjoyed it.

I could easily make a list of good things and not so good things about that little church.  I could also make a long list of good things and not so good things about the larger churches I had known.  I have found that most fundamental Baptist churches will be somewhere in between those extremes in attendance.  I have also found that small churches will be limited in some areas where larger churches are not, and that large churches will be limited in some areas where smaller churches are not.  Most of us, however, will live and serve the Lord in smaller churches.  These churches receive many criticisms that I have found to be somewhat unfair, and also, the many good things about small churches are often overlooked.

Criticisms of the small church

I have heard dozens of criticisms of small churches in the last thirty to forty years.  I must admit I have heard many criticisms of the larger churches also.  Having experienced (and worked in) both, however, my heart is with the smaller churches.  Though some of the criticisms of large churches are unfair also, I want to use this space responding to the criticisms of the small churches.

The small church can’t offer enough.

I think this is perhaps the most valid complaint about small churches.  This is just the way it is.  If the small church is a new church and just getting started, it may be in a rented facility with limited space, limited manpower and limited funds.    A large family with small children has a need for nursery, classes, a youth group, or junior church.  A small church, especially a new church, may not be able to provide all of those.

However, when we think this way we are thinking as moderns, not necessarily as New Testament believers. Charles Ryrie wrote, “Indeed, one receives the impression from the New Testament that the Lord preferred to have many smaller congregations rather than one large group in any given place.  And there seemed to be no lack of power that stemmed from lack of bigness.”1  Our desire to have more things offered for our family stems more from our convenience-based society than from what we read in the New Testament.    After all, there are those who argue for doing away with children’s ministries all together but I think that is an over-reaction.  We ought rather to be willing to put up with these inconveniences and make up the difference in our own family time if our convictions tell us we need to be in such a church.  When people are looking for a school for their kids, they are happy that the ratio of teacher to student is small and that their child will receive more one-on-one attention from the teacher.

The small church is boring.

This argument may hold weight with our entertainment-based culture today but I doubt that it holds much weight with God.  By today’s standards reading is boring, conversation is boring, listening is boring, and certainly preaching is boring.  But this is mostly the fault of the one who is bored, not the one who seems boring.  C.S. Lewis, as a young atheist, described his attitude toward church as, “Oriental imagery and style largely repelled me; and for the rest, Christianity was mainly associated for me with ugly architecture, ugly music, and bad poetry.”2  But after his conversion Lewis described Christianity as “delightfully humdrum.”3

Being bored is not a sin.  Eutychus (Acts 20:9) was certainly bored enough to fall asleep in church but I doubt it was the preaching of the apostle Paul that was at fault.  This is not to say that we should purposely be boring or not strive to interest our hearers.  But most things that are worth learning start out to be boring and gain in interest as one gets more familiar and skilled.  G.K. Chesterton once quipped that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried.4  Where the Spirit and the Word are central, the believer should not be bored.

The small church is afraid of change.

This charge has been a charge against traditional churches and a defense of contemporary Christianity all my life.  It usually means that Christians who resist the newer fads are fearful of losing power, or influence, or some such thing.  But small churches may have decided not to change things out of conviction, while larger churches may have changed something out of mere pragmatism.  To say that those who have not changed a particular thing were afraid to, however, is judging beyond what one really knows.  Change for change’s sake is not a virtue either.

The greatest change a person makes is to leave the world and come to Christ.  When that happens old things are truly passed away and all things become new (2 Cor. 5:17).  I have found that older people are saying that they went through this change long ago when they were converted.  They do not understand why a younger generation does not change in the same way.  To them (the older saints), it is the younger generation that is afraid to change, afraid to leave the old life behind and be changed into the image of Christ.  Profession of faith without a changed life is at epidemic proportions today.

The small church doesn’t care for the lost.

The argument from this perspective is that if the small church really cared about people getting saved it would change its methods in order to attract more people to hear the gospel.  This goes hand-in-hand with the belief that methodology is always morally neutral and can, rather should, be changed if a better method comes along.  Small churches are more often conservative churches that usually retain things on purpose:  hymn singing, choirs, song books, expository messages, invitations, and so on.  I would argue that it is not our methods that draw people but the Spirit of God Who is pleased or displeased with our methods.

To be “relevant” is to be what God would want us to be in our place and time in history.  That is, our relevancy is to God, not to the world.  That is why McCune says, “Ultimately the Gospel is relevant to the true needs of men and for us to try to debase the good coinage of the Gospel by vitiating it so that we can make it more attractive to men is to lose the Gospel and make it irrelevant.”5  Myron Houghton says, “Traditional Bible-believing fundamentalists believe that what a church ought to be and how it should function must not be determined by unchurched people or by the prevailing culture.”6  Therefore, the church that really cares about the lost will be careful to please the Spirit of God in all things in order to be as effective as possible in preaching the gospel.

Advantages of the small church

Having experienced both the small and the large churches, I believe there are many great advantages that the small church has because of its smallness.  This is not to say that larger churches cannot have the same, but that it is easier and more natural for the small churches to offer these things.

The small church is vitally connected with our Baptist history.

It has not been the norm for Baptists, who usually have been of the separatist persuasion, to be the large church in town.  It would be hard to argue that the churches of the New Testament were very large (especially by today’s standards), the early Jerusalem church notwithstanding.  Of course, Baptists have produced some of the most dynamic preachers in history and those men attracted large crowds, but they seem to be the exception not the rule.

When we travel to England we visit Spurgeon’s Tabernacle but we soon realize that most other Baptist churches in English history were quite smaller.  In the museums of John Bunyan (in Bedford) and William Carey (in Moulton) one may look at the rolls of the business meetings and see twenty or thirty names.  Yet what greater things could be accomplished for Christ than what these two men alone did?  It is not the size of the church which makes a man but the depth of his conviction.

The small church creates a good reality.

Not that reality amounts to largeness or smallness, but I mean this in the sense that our current culture is filled with artificial reality.  The television program, the video game, the commercial, the online “socializing,” all do more to separate us from reality than to create it.  Carl Trueman, in describing his search for reality, said he “saw the old opium of the people, religion, appropriating the new opium of the people, bland commercialized pop culture.”7  Arthur Hunt, describing how our culture is turning from a word-based society to an image-based society wrote, “Postmodernism is a turning from rationality, and at the same time an embracing of spectacle.”8

Having been in both, I believe the large church lends itself more toward the spectacle than the small church, sometimes very overtly.  The small congregation is forced to present a more “real” atmosphere simply because it cannot put on the spectacle.  The congregants must be the special music, live with the lack of professionalism, use their imagination, make more effort to speak to people.  In other words, they are forced to be what they ought to be.

The small church is family oriented.

This has been an age-old observation of families looking for churches. They want to be involved with other people and have their children involved, and, as with their search for a school, they want more one-on-one attention paid to their children.  The large church may have the advantage of providing more activities and programs, but the small church has the advantage of providing personal contact, concern, and participation.

In addition the small church offers the opportunity for children to learn what body life is all about.  Tozer wrote, “The church is called the household of God, and it is the ideal place to rear young Christians.”9  I have watched my two-year-old grandson stand among adults in the church lobby and wave good-by to the older folks as they leave.  He seems to think that is what you are supposed to do in church.  There is no better place on earth for children than in a church where everyone is in close contact and Christian fellowship.

The small church provides personal pastoral care.

When I was a youth pastor in a large church with well over one hundred in the youth group, those teens seldom had interaction with their pastor.  For all practical purposes I was their pastor but that is not how it should be.  To grow, however, this arrangement was important.  This problem of the “CEO” pastor vs. the “Shepherding” pastor has come to the fore in recent years.  For a generation now we have been told that the reason the small church doesn’t grow is because of its inherently poor administrative model.10  But though a more business-like model may cause growth, the question remains, which is the New Testament model?

If the pastor is instructed in the Scripture to personally care for the people of the flock as God’s undershepherd, then he must do that regardless of its positive or negative effects on growth.  This is not a head-in-the-sand mentality.  This is a personal stewardship issue.  As a pastor I must pastor the flock, which means caring for those who have placed their membership here.  A “hub and spoke” model may not be the best for growth but it is the best for the people who have placed their accountability under my accountability (Heb. 13:17).

The small church honors senior saints.

Honoring our elders is a Biblical imperative that easily becomes forgotten in our youth-oriented age.  Whether we desire it or not, our seniors tend to get lost in the large church or relegated to the senior saints group, or even to an early service where few others will attend.  But “honoring” elders is not just something on a to-do list, it means letting them give direction, have an important voice, be prominent, give advice.  This may be one of the greatest challenges to our age.  Samuel Rima wrote, “These older parishioners frequently become nothing more than irritating roadblocks to the great church we want to build, and subconsciously we may label them ‘traditionalists’ or ‘complainers,’ who threaten to block our dream.”11

But Zacharias is right when he says, “The older you get, the more it takes to fill your heart with wonder, and only God is big enough to do that.”12  In the small church one is almost forced to rub shoulders with these older saints, hear their prayers, shake their hands, be patient with their physical challenges, and appreciate their wisdom.  Paul knew that though the outward person is perishing, the inward person is being renewed daily (2 Cor. 4:16).  The closer one gets to this inward man, the closer one gets to Christian character first hand.

 

The small church is well-suited to reaching the average person.

The average man on the street and the average family living the average life have much in common with the life of the small church.  I think people can have unjust complaints about the large as well as the small church when it comes to friendliness or boldness in witnessing, but I think there can be no doubt that the plain atmosphere of the small church is more like the atmosphere of the normal family and that form is the form we really look for in this world of extravagant imitation and conformity.

We should remember also that the world is full of average people who need Christ.  We sometimes become myopic about the fashionable, avant-garde, culturally astute persons and direct our entire efforts at reaching them while ignoring the very ones who may be closest to accepting the message and life of the church.  The local fellowship of believers is divinely designed to do just that.

Conclusion

The Puritan John Flavel said, “Carnal men rejoice carnally, and spiritual men should rejoice spiritually.”13.  All churches, large and small, should be striving to worship God in Spirit and in truth.  I believe that the small church today is much like the average church of the New Testament and well equipped to do just that.  We should not be discouraged at our small size but rather encouraged at our fitness to be the pillar and ground of the truth.

 

Notes:

1. Charles Ryrie, Balancing the Christian Life (Chicago:  Moody Press, 1994), p. 20.

2. C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York:  HBJ, 1955), p. 172.

3. C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids: WM. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1994), p. 20.

4. G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With  the World (San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 1994), p. 37.

5. Rolland McCune, Promise Unfulfilled (Greenville: Ambassador International, 2004), p. 310.

6. Ernest Pickering and Myron Houghton, Biblical Separation (Schaumburg: RBP, 2008), p. 177.

7. Carl Trueman, Reformation:  Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, Kindle version, 1528.

8. Arthur W. Hunt, III, The Vanishing Word (Wheaton:  Crossway Books, 2003), p. 188.

9. A.W. Tozer, Born After Midnight ( 113.

10. In 1993 Leith Anderson wrote the first four entries in Vital Church Issues, (one of Kregel’s Vital Issues Series, 1998, by editor Roy Zuck), in which he criticized the “hub and spoke” model of small churches as opposed to the “delegation” model (p. 36) of the larger churches.

11. Samuel Rima, Rethinking The Successful Church (Grand Rapids:  Baker Books, 2002), p. 16.

12. Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God? (Dallas:  Word Publishers, 1994), p. 89.

13. John Flavel, in Mayo Hazeltine, Ed., Orations from Homer to McKinley, vol. IV  (New York:  P.F. Collier & Son, 1902), p. 1599.

 

 

 

 

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Questions of the Modern Mind

Written by Matt Shrader

Questions of the Modern Mind

by Matt Shrader

It has been a long while since young-earth creationists have made such an international appearance. On February 4, 2014 Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis debated with Bill Nye from Bill Nye the Science Guy. Many in the scientific community tuned in to see how the debate would go. Countless churches and schools organized viewings of the debate. This author turned on the online stream which allowed me to conveniently pause and restart as needed. Many billed this as the second Scopes Monkey Trial. Interestingly, several prominent scientists excoriated Bill Nye for even debating. Many of the world’s leading atheists, including Richard Dawkins, objected to even giving creationists (let alone young-earth creationists) a podium from which to speak. For such scientists there is nothing to debate because creationism (and theism for some) has lost its day. This suggests that there is something bigger at play here, and it stretches back past the Scopes Monkey Trial of the 1920’s, past the publications of Darwin of the late 1800’s, and more precisely to the central questions which have come from the “modern” critiques of Christianity. Such questions predate that time period, but they were never presented with such tenacity, penetration, and widespread acceptance than they did at that time.

The central question of the Ham-Nye debate was this: “Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?” That is a great question, and I am glad that it gained some international news attention. I agree with those who have pointed out that the central question must inevitably turn not just to scientific data, but also to issues of how we can know anything (epistemology), what is our ultimate authority, what does it mean to exist, what do you do with the questions your viewpoint will inevitably create, and is there a Creator God that we can know on a meaningful level? Those questions reveal where the real differences reside.

The debate was not really about evidences. If the debate was all about which model presents the best explanation of the evidence then their could have been a more focused debate over the evidences. Instead both debaters referred the listeners to various resources to check their statements. And truly, the debate over the evidence is nothing new and there are myriads of explanations for either viewpoint answering the other viewpoint. It is well worth the time and effort to evaluate those evidences. These issues had to come out to answer the central question of the debate but they could never fully satisfy that question because the question points to those bigger issues I mentioned.

If you watched the debate, and it is surely still able to be accessed online, then you may have gotten the same feeling that I did: these guys live in very different worlds from one another. Furthermore, Bill Nye and those who agree with his point of view had to look at Ken Ham with an air of complete consternation. Ken Ham kept pointing to the Bible as his authority, an authority which Bill Nye repeatedly referred to as an old book come to us through countless modifications resulting in its utter unreliability. Bill Nye even pointed to certain ideas which he saw as morally reprehensible in biblical theology (theodicy questions) as well as rejecting any kind of non-natural explanation for human consciousness (psychology). Those questions all point to the central idea.

Bill Nye, who also happens to be a former student of Carl Sagan, could not understand why someone would reject not just the critiques of modern science on the Bible but also the critiques offered in the areas of psychology and moral theory and biblical higher criticism. I half expected Bill Nye to stop and respond to the major question by saying: “Viable??? Mr. Ham, don’t you know that the Enlightenment and modern critiques of religion have happened…and you lost?” In essence, how can anyone accept biblical explanations of anything (such as science) when they consider the huge body of modern religious critique?

I would like to take this article and explain a little bit of where such a question comes from by giving a historical survey of the modern critiques. I think we must also make the point that these questions are extremely significant to many. And I want to talk to how the current conservative Christian who accepts biblical authority and inerrancy can start to respond to such questions. But to answer a question we must first understand the question.

The Modern Challenges to Religion:

The critiques of the modern mind began in the time period called the Enlightenment, a period which stretched from the post-Reformation religious wars (ca. 1648) until  the French Revolution (1789). “It is the age which brought together the humanistic spirit of the Renaissance and the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century and thereby ushered in what we call the ‘modern world.’”1 This time period brought about revolutions in science, philosophy, anthropology, and also religion. Instead of an understood reliance on theological authority from the Bible or the Church, the modern man looked elsewhere for a foundation. Autonomous humanity was the central cry. Reason as the authority dominated especially the 1700’s. There was a trust in the ability of humanity to understand nature and inevitably progress, an understanding which produced much optimism. Other Enlightenment ideas such as toleration and the scientific method were also presented as a result of this newfound foundation. For Christianity, the options were whether they should accommodate to these changes; how they should adjust to these changes; or how they could resist these changes.

David Hume (1711-1776) was one of the first (and perhaps the best) of the modern critics of religion. He essentially destroyed any attempt to build a religion on pure reason alone. This was a blow to that Enlightenment idea but also a blow to those theologians who were attempting to build a natural religion which appealed to nature and reason apart from or in concert with special revelation. Now theology could no longer make appeals to its old authorities and neither to pure reason. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) then put forth what he understood to be the new boundaries of religious discourse. This left religion reliant upon central moral laws inherent in humans (Kant’s categorical imperative). Because of these philosophical critiques Christianity was allowed to operate in fewer and fewer places with fewer and fewer potential foundations.

As the Western world came to grips with the philosophical programs of the Enlightenment certain solutions were offered by Christians (and they are quite diverse). Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was the most important of the early liberal theologians. He sought to provide an exposition of Christianity that could fit within these bounds. The title of one of his most important books reveals exactly what the modern Christian felt they had to do: On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers.

The critiques, however, were not finished. David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874) began the study of the life of Christ and attempted to determine what could be actual history and what was mythical or religious. Essentially, Strauss started the historical critical movement which subjected the Bible to the foundations of the modern mind and did not accept miracles or supernaturalism. Among subsequent modern theologians, simply accepting the trustworthiness of the Bible in matters of history, science, and other areas has not been entertained as a serious option since Strauss inspired biblical higher criticism.

In an entirely different vein Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) began to envision what the true nature of Christianity must be and concluded that God is simply the projection of our own failures in life (and so God is the perfect we always fail to be). Christianity (and any religion) was simply a tool of the past that can and should be discarded because of the discoveries of the modern mind. This idea influenced significant modern thinkers such as Karl Marx, Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche. It was Nietzsche (1844-1900) who then critiqued Christianity’s morality because it hindered humanity from embracing the truths of the modern world. Nietzsche’s parables about the “death of God” began to question why culture had not moved on past religion. With Feuerbach, Freud, and Nietzsche Christianity was questioned as to the viability of its anthropology, psychology, and morality.

Daunting as these critiques were, perhaps the scientific work of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) challenged the Bible’s trustworthiness even more fundamentally. The very origins and makeup of humanity and indeed the entire physical universe was radically rethought following his books. Any type of Christian theology that appealed to nature as clearly and undeniably pointing to God was now theoretically answered by the modern mind.

These are but a few of the critiques that have been and are being leveled at Christianity. When Bill Nye is asked to respond to whether a biblical creation account is viable or not he must be a bit puzzled at the supposed unlearnedness of those who do. As I noted above, Bill Nye questioned the Bible’s trustworthiness (as did Strauss), the Bible’s morality (as did Feuerbach and Nietzsche), the Bible’s explanation of consciousness (as did Feuerbach and Freud), and of course the Bible’s views of science, nature, and anthropology (as did Darwin). Bill Nye is committed to only natural evidence and human reason, as is any child of the Enlightenment.

All this begins to show the questions of the modern mind. And I am speaking of those beyond and behind the explanation of scientific data. I might summarize these as: “What is the truly religious person supposed to do with their religion considering the full barrage of challenges and problems that have been presented by the Enlightenment?” The postmodern also asks these questions. They may add other issues such as skepticism, relativism, and truth because they have not accepted the modern solutions to those questions. What we must see is that to the modern and postmodern the issue of existence becomes central. What am I? Am I alone without God? What can I know? What does it mean to be and exist?

I hope that you see the incredible weight that is on the person who truly asks these questions. They are basic and unsettling. And that is one point that should not be missed. For a Christian to simply cast off such questions as “impious” or “off base” can be harmful. When you discard such questions, the modern thinker (and even a postmodern is an heir of this Enlightenment) takes your brushing off as a disinterest in them as a person because they think you do not care about their existence.

So what does the Christian do? How can the Christian respond? I believe that there are answers and I believe that the old truth is powerful even in a new day. We answer these questions for the sake of the truth (aletheia) but also for the sake of the person who needs the truth.

Answering the Questions:

The answers provided by modern theology since these questions have been asked are incredibly diverse and certainly not equally valid. They range from a rejection of Christianity as a necessary form of religion to an intentional return to a pre-modern understanding of the questions and of Christianity. My response to these questions comes from a conservative cultural and theological stance. There is no way to give a comprehensive treatment to those questions in the remainder of this paper. Theologians have given their entire lives to writing about these answers and still wish they could explain and answer more. Part of what we do with the continual publication of a paper like this is to give various and multi-faceted answers to these and other important questions. And so as a start let me give six things to remember.

Stand for Truth. This is simply to say that “Truth” exists and it is important. It is not to say that we infallibly know truth, but we may know it well because of God’s divine accommodation in Scripture and through the works of the Holy Spirit in the individual Christian. This is truth not only as the Bible speaks but also as humans speak and interact. We believe that there are things that are true and thus things that are false. We desire to encourage true beliefs, true speech, and truth in all endeavors. And of course, it is the truth of the gospel that is at the center: a truth which has come to us through God’s revelation in the Scriptures. Today many do not even believe in the existence of God which leads them to deny or radically redefine the idea of “Truth.” We must be sharp in our apologetics, find the questions that are at the heart of each person, and never give away the idea of truth.

Expose the bankruptcy of skepticism and relativism. An incorrect response to the critiques of Christianity is to slide into skepticism or relativism. Skepticism refuses to allow that there is any way to know knowledge and relativism is the related denial that there are any universal truths. As Christians we cannot agree to those ideas but we surely admit we make mistakes and may need time to answer questions and so we should be understanding and humble. I think that diversity is a good thing but I do not agree that this means that every kind of diversity is good (then any idea is acceptable, even eugenics for example). We should recognize we are fallible and that we have questions that are hard to answer but we should still insist that there are answers and that certain answers are better than others based on their adherence to truth.

Love your neighbor. All Christians must recognize their responsibility to love their neighbor and to fulfill the Great Commission. We should be winsome and approachable and civil in our discussions. We should also speak the truth and seek to convince others of the truth. This point should not be confused with weakened convictions or timidity to approach hard subjects or a lack of militancy for truth. We care for those around us and so we are careful that we do not drive them away with something other than the truth. We see all peoples as worth reaching with the truth.

Preach the Gospel. It is the power of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God that is behind the preaching of the gospel. To change someone’s mind concerning ultimate matters often means a change of that person’s heart. This is, of course, the ultimate answer that many are seeking when they ask the questions of existence. This is what we want for them. I also believe the Bible teaches that the regenerate Christian is able to see truth for what it really is because they have experienced the change of the new birth. Romans chapter 1 reminds us that the unbeliever will suppress the truth in unrighteousness and so we must seek for them to be believers. Evangelism is a command and it is also the most powerful convincer of truth.

Know that you are a pilgrim and sojourner. We are not Christianizing the world, but we are being salt and light. We are not staking all things on forging a world that is free from sin and error, but we do accept our responsibility to speak prophetically against sin and error when we see it. We seek to better the world we are in and to do whatever we can with the stewardship that God has given us. This may mean that we find ourselves in the cloud of witness that have suffered for their faith, a position that is truly glorious for its association to Jesus (Acts 5:41). As pilgrims and strangers we realize our permanent residence is elsewhere and realize our stewardship responsibilities even now.

Trust God. We can never forget that deception can convince anybody. Sin causes us to suppress truth. We rest in the truth of Scripture and we rely on the regeneration, illumination, and filling of the Holy Spirit. We trust God’s word and love and find our ultimate delight in God.

Is creation science viable? To answer we must first answer the bigger questions about God, revelation, authority, human ability, and human existence. Is faith viable? Yes, it has been and it will be (and everyone exercises it).

Today, people want to know what they can trust about these ultimate questions. Christians point to God’s sovereignty over all the universe past, present, and future. Notice that when the apostle Peter responded to those who scoffed and doubted the coming of Christ and saw no indication to accept it, he said remember creation, the flood, the coming of Christ, and the absolute reliability of God’s promises. God has not forgotten and God has not failed to accomplish his purposes.

(2 Peter 3:1-15, ESV)

This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, 2 that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, 3 knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. 4 They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, 6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. 7 But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. 8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.  9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.  10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. 11 Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, 12 waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! 13 But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. 14 Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. 15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation.

Let the Christian see our present battles and God’s waiting not as reason to doubt His faithfulness, but as reason to be diligent. And let the unbeliever see God’s waiting not as evidence God is not there or that He does not care, but as His patient longsuffering giving opportunity for salvation.

 

Notes:

1. James C. Livingston, Modern Christian Thought, Volume 1: The Enlightenment and the Nineteenth Century, Second Edition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 5.

 

 

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Worship and Culture

Written by Rick Shrader

Worship and Culture

by Rick Shrader

In the twenty years that I have been writing Aletheia articles, perhaps nothing has been written about more than worship and culture.  Worship has become the description of how we “do church,” and culture has become what we are, not what we should strive to become.  Ravi Zacharias wrote, “Culture has become like a dress code, varying with the time of the day and presence or absence of the elite.”1  Os Guinness wrote, “Compared with the past, faith today influences culture less.  Compared with the past, culture today influences faith more.”2 A sad commentary on today’s faith and church life.

To this modern milieu  of cultural expression in our churches, Harold M. Best has written,  “Hence, in this culture in which experiential narrative has preempted concept and proposition, in which language has become circularly relativized, and in which a musico-visual matrix turns out to be the communal glue, the last thing any worship model should do is to modify the centrality of the Word simply because culture does.”3  But it seems that this is exactly what contemporary worship models often do.  Yet let me quickly add that the avant-garde churches of any generation no doubt have done the same thing.  A 60s church built on gospel quartet concerts  and ice cream cones may have been no different than a 2014 church built on CCM concerts and lattes.

The operative word here may be “built.”  Jesus used the word, of course, when announcing that He would build His church (Matt. 16:18), and though we probably don’t have a better word for the business of evangelism and church planting, we have to be a lot more careful how we use it.  Professionals of any age have built churches and so can professionals today.  There are ways to get people in the doors and ways to keep them there.  There are ways to raise the funds needed and ways to advertise for more.  There are ways to get oneself known around the world and ways to get a place at the associational table.  If a church (or school, or organization) grows in size and influence, especially if it can show numerous “ministry” opportunities, then it has been “built.”

I will be 64 years old this year.  By now I have done more than I will do from here on.  I have made my decisions about what paths I will take in my ministry.  I have attended and worked in mega-churches and have attended and pastored in small churches.  I have been a youth pastor in a large church but now I pastor a small church which has a truly great group of senior saints.  Though I defended my youthful ways when I was young, now I understand the ways of senior saints.  I don’t believe senior saints in a smaller church want to “just sit and do nothing” any more than middle aged saints want to do that in a big church.  In fact, I find the seniors more involved, especially considering their physical limitations, and willing to work, than I see from many younger saints.

I do find that I have narrowed my focus of ministry as I grow older, not just because I am older, but because I think I see more clearly what is important.  At this point in my life I must worship.  I find that this is not optional.  I won’t short that for any other reason, nor do I need to.  First, I have become convinced that we do not come together to worship, we are worshipers who come together.  Jesus Christ is my High Priest Who ever lives to make intercession for me.  That worship service which He performs for me before the Father in that heavenly tabernacle never stops.  If it would, I would have no plea for my sins.  He is my Advocate, my Propitiation, my Shepherd.  I am not the active one in that worship, He is.  Therefore, I will live my life, private and public, with the full knowledge of what is going on.  I cannot acknowledge the culture when it contradicts that worship.

Second, I will come together with other believers to do what believers are supposed to be doing when they come together.  I have grown firm in the determination that I will be just as blessed with three, thirty, or three hundred other believers.  It makes no difference to me.  Jesus has promised to be in the midst of such gatherings by His Spirit regardless of size.  However, I must strive to do this without compulsion, show, hypocrisy, division, or worldliness.  That isn’t always accomplished, but it has to be the norm.

I cannot be a part of worship which copies the world.  It is false worship that speaks like the world so that the world hears (1 John 4:5).  That kind of worship does not draw people to the Savior though it may draw people into a room.  The Holy Spirit cannot be pleased with it since it is He Who wrote that to be a friend of the world is to be the enemy of God (James 4:4).  In the world the pop singer and the frowning athlete are the same—worldly.  And so is the Christian singer, minister, or performer who copies it trying to influence people.

I have been blessed in corporate worship in a congregation of 2000 voices singing the great hymns of the faith, and I have been blessed in the Wednesday prayer meeting of 10 people, hearing the weakened voice of a grandma blended with the untrained voice of a child.  “The cries of the lambs must mingle with the bleating of the sheep, or the flock will lack much of its natural music.”4

I want the documents of the church to define what the corporate worship ought to look like.  Sure, the New Testament defines it, but since different churches interpret it for themselves (a must in Baptist churches) it should be known to all what that interpretation is.  The narrower the better.  Why?  First of all, I have to live with myself.  That is the narrowest of all social circles.  Then I have to live with my family.  If I have been wise, I married a woman who wants to worship as I do, and we will try to raise our children to want the same.  But the next circle is the local church.  We want to join with other families who, as much as possible, want to worship the same way we want to worship.  The more alike that is, the better.  The documents of the church are the official declaration of what that worship will believe and how it will practice.  A mission church or a new church may take time to mold itself into that stature, but the growing period is always rewarded in adult life.

Brethren, we are the salt of the earth.  If we lose our saltiness we are good for nothing but to be thrown into the streets (Mark 9:50).  I fear we would rather become “old salts” who have learned to get along with the language of the world.  But salt is an irritant to its surroundings.  So is light.  Accept that or admit you are going a different way. If we are not willing to actually lose our lives, if we would rather keep our lives in this adulterous and sinful generation, then we will lose it in eternity (Mark 8:35).

 

What about evangelism?  Surely we all care about the lost soul and realize the danger of eternal fire.  I have always felt that those old evangelists whom I grew up hearing, who gave long invitations, who also reaped many tares among their wheat due to an easy believism, always loved the souls of men.  And I will accept the same about those who are performing more modern evangelistic gymnastics today.  But have we not also said that we are doxological before we are soteriological?  Have we not also committed ourselves to the holiness of God as an absolute which we must not offend even by our evangelistic techniques?   If we perform this bait-and-switch to draw the lost person, explaining later what Christianity really means—the loss of one’s life for the glory of God—are we not being dishonest?  The degree to which I bend this conviction is the degree of my non-commitment to the Word of God.

I am not a very good Calvinist.  I would rather be more than I am, I could easily let a lordship view of salvation explain away my poor evangelism, but I am not that either.  I believe in “means” for the gospel’s sake (as many of my more Calvinistic friends also do) mixed with a healthy dose of the free will of sinners to accept or reject.  But I do believe this, that the Holy Spirit has to draw and save every sinner who comes to Christ and, that though the gospel doesn’t make demands (as in works for salvation), grace does make demands for which a person has to count the cost.5 Will a person seek forgiveness without a burden of their own sin?  Will a person turn to God without turning from his idols (1 Thes. 1:9)?   Repentance is not a work for salvation, it is a sorrow and release from guilt when accepting joy and forgiveness in Christ.  My point is that evangelism is much more about me being in a place to be used of the Holy Spirit than it is about my headiness in the methodology of this world.  “The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord” (Matt. 10:24).

 

There are real consequences for thinking like this, but at this time in my life I am beyond caring too much.  I won’t have a big ministry that will be viewed with approval by, well, whomever.  I won’t be invited to speak at the national pastors’ meeting where all must be positive and uplifting.  I won’t be given a place at the table of the movers and shakers of my movement.  I may even be considered narrow, legalistic, pietistic, in the box, unloving, uncaring, et.al. by family, friends, and fellow ministers.

Now before you think I’m having a pity party and enjoying a martyr’s complex, let me say that this is actually a great relief in my life.  It’s too bad it has come so late.  Young ministers of my generation have grown up with a tremendous burden of being a success or failure in the ministry.  Our schools have been busy teaching us how to be great men and do great things.  It’s taken me until now to see that great men never wanted to be great, they just wanted to be men of God, and God used them in great ways.  But also, the ministry has always been filled with men whom no one ever knew, who never had a place at the so-called “table” and never missed it.  To all of them I say I’m sorry I didn’t realize who and what you were.  We’ll never know the front line men of Normandy, we just know they were great men.

This is the great thing about being old, at least by comparison.  I don’t care about my “brand” in a world of branding.  I care little what the young people think of me now as much as I care what they will think of me in their old age when the time of thanks is gone.  “Time like an ever rolling stream bears all its sons away, they fly forgotten as a dream dies at the op-’ning day.”  I have learned from those older than I that the nearness of seeing the Lord, by death if not rapture, is a great motivation in life.  But we learn it when life’s physical struggles really begin, and when the inner strength is all that we have, when the years draw nigh and you have little pleasure in them.  What an irony!  The outward man is perishing but the inward man is being renewed day by day!

What if!  What if a generation of young men and women would love God more than the world?  What if young ministers would lead a movement to honor God and His Word above the applause of men?  What if there were churches that would live out their convictions at the cost of popularity or success?  What if our Bible colleges and seminaries would ask for those who wanted that more than they wanted a fun time, or a comfortable room, or even an accredited degree?  What if there is still a young William Carey somewhere who would say, “I go to mine for souls, you hold the ropes?”  And what if there were young Andrew Fullers and John Sutcliffs who would do it?  For the rest of their lives! We can always hope.

I heard such a young man preach this passage last Sunday night:

5 I have considered the days of old, the years of ancient times.  6 I call to remembrance my song in the night: I commune with mine own heart: and my spirit made diligent search.  7 Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will he be favourable no more?  8 Is his mercy clean gone for ever? doth his promise fail for evermore?  9 Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? Selah.  10 And I said, This is my infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the most High.  11 I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old.  12 I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings.  13 Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary: who is so great a God as our God?  14 Thou art the God that doest wonders: thou hast declared thy strength among the people.  15 Thou hast with thine arm redeemed thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah.

(Psalm 77:5-15)

 

Notes:
1. Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us From Evil (Dallas:  Word Publishing, 1996) 5.
2. Os Guinness, Dining With The Devil (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993) 16.
3. Harold M. Best, “Traditional Hymn-Based Worship,” Paul Engle and Paul Basden, Editors, Exploring the worship Spectrum , 6 Views  (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004) 236.
4. C.H. Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s Prayers (Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2002) 158.
5. See Myron Houghton, Law & Grace (Schaumburg: RBP, 2011) 120.
 

 

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ABM–20 Years of Leadership

Written by Rick Shrader

ABM–20 Years of Leadership

by Rick Shrader

In the December issue I gave some of the history of Aletheia Baptist Ministries but I did not tell it all.  From the beginning in 1997, when Dr. Peter Slobodian started the original mission board called Baptist Global Mission, this ministry has been blessed to have been led by godly and qualified men who have served on the board of directors.

Dr. Slobodian’s good friend Rev. Dick Steinhaus (and mine) served as the first chairman of the board for ten years.  He loved Dr. Slobodian’s desire to take the gospel to Russia and Ukraine.  During those years also we were privileged to have serve as the first board of directors, Dr. Lance Ketchum, Elbert Dean, Rev. Roy Chestnut, and myself.  In 2001, Rev. Don Cox joined the board and served until 2009.  He was a good friend and overseas traveling companion with Dr. Slobodian.  In 2004 Terry Conley joined the board and, upon Rev. Steinhaus’ resignation, became the second chairman of the board, which position he still faithfully holds today.  In 2010 Bill McPherson joined the board and remains on the board today also.  Others who have served from time to time are Rev. Bernie Augsburger, David Curry, and Rev. David Zempel.

 

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What Happened To Christmas?

Written by Rick Shrader

What Happened To Christmas?

by Rick Shrader

Now that it is January and Christmas is over until next year, I can risk sounding like Scrooge or maybe even the Grinch.  I have to confess that I labored through the Christmas season moaning and groaning at Christmas store commercials, Christmas television movies (the new ones anyway), Christmas network specials, Christmas online ads, Christmas news, Christmas concerts,  Christmas decorations, and even Christmas church specials.  And when it was finally December 26, I asked myself in amazement, whatever happened to Christmas?

The one bright spot of the whole season was brought to us by a left-over, sorry-looking, crudely spoken but evidently born-again hippie named Phil Robertson.  When America, the greatest country in the age of grace, was brought so morally low and bankrupt to the point of cowering to the shameful sin of our day, Robertson was interviewed by liberal hate-baiters at GQ magazine and old Phil said it plainly and truthfully:  homosexuality is a sin and an unnatural perversion for any of God’s creatures.  He even made an attempt at quoting 1 Cor. 6:9-10, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”  What Phil didn’t have a chance to explain is why these verses so plainly show that no human being is born a homosexual.  God does not exclude any person from His kingdom because of how they were born, but only for how they practice, which this list of sins makes abundantly clear.

However, I want to go back to my grinching.  Doesn’t anyone any longer know what Christmas is all about?  Is it really all this complicated?  Sure, there has been a war on Christmas in this free country.  Any public figure, politician, businessman, athlete, news pundit, talk show host, et al, is scared to death to mention anything concretely having to do with Christianity for fear of repercussion.  Akin to this phobia is the fear of speaking morally, as Phil Robertson did.  No doubt the bottom line is fear.  You will be hurt in one way or another if you dare cross these lines in our society.  If we continue to let Islam take over America as it has done in our motherland, England, the repercussion will indeed be physical.  But for now the penalty for speaking plainly is loss of job or position, defamed character, name-calling, ridicule, and slander.

But I don’t think that even these fears are the problem with Christmas.  The problem with Christmas is humanism.  That’s right, that old liberal nemesis that used to be so bold as to have its own manifesto and creed, has now morphed into Christianity through the convenient season we call Christmas.  In the public square, humanism has won the old battle over sin and redemption.  We are no longer sinners. We no longer need a Savior to save us from anything but a bad attitude.  All that stuff about a pre-existent Christ Child, a virgin birth, a natal star, etc., (and especially a sinless life, a substitutionary death, and a bodily resurrection) are not only old-fashioned but entirely unnecessary.  The Grinch offers you three proofs.

Proof #1.  I will start with the easiest and most obvious loss of the Christmas message as seen in television programs and made-for-television movies.  I will call these Nick-flicks.  The real person of the new-meaning Christmas is St. Nick.  And before I lose all my cool on this re-made, historical, yet make-believe elf, let me confess my own sin of watching too much of all of this anyway.  These “shows” offer the viewer predictable plots, typical characters, and annoying emotions which is all easily figured out in the first ten minutes.  The only worthwhile lesson to be learned is the answer to the question, “why did I ever watch this?”  The real meaning of Christmas, according to these sage productions, is the existence of Santa Claus.

The plot will fall somewhere in the realm of some poor slob who is mad at the world or tied up in his job and needs a real emotional adjustment.  Then there is the typical Tiny-Tim character who has everything against him/her and is about to lose hope in the goodness of humanity, friendship, the joy of giving, or some-such humanistic attribute.  You might add a picturesque setting like a fir tree farm or a mountain lodge, and then mix in a conflict between the fair but despondent maiden and the grumpy but handsome unbeliever.  Now all you need for this story to be a Christmas story is the recovered belief in St. Nick so that the positive feelings of the season can be brought out of the infidel and he can show all kinds of human kindness and good works at the end.  But this is all too easy.  I only offer it as proof because of the ubiquitous nature of television in everyone’s life.  If you must watch movies, never watch anything made later than, say, 1979, when John Wayne died.

Proof #2.  The Fox News Christmas Special.  I must also first confess that I am a Fox News junkie.  In fact, if it weren’t for Fox News I’d have to settle for fix-ups, food, or pickers.  Good Grief! I can’t stand reality shows and I’m about done with the antics of professional athletes (right after the Super Bowl and March Madness).  So I know the good guys and the bad guys on Fox and which hours are worthwhile.   We’re all glad when Fox News champions equal time for Christmas and answers the attacks on religion and morality.

Yet according to Fox News the real meaning of Christmas is patriotism, conservatism, morality, and the bravado it takes to say Merry Christmas on the air.  I enjoy hearing carols sung but I must confess I am really tired of the interpretive style of singing that makes me watch the vocal cords of the singer (even a nice looking serviceman) to wonder how in the world he could fluctuate between all those notes in a single stanza.  The wise men never traveled so far in such a short amount of time.  But then the wise men and their Objective were never really the point.  There were the stories of our war heroes for which I am a great sympathizer, the little children with presents, even Cardinal Dolan giving the evening devotional thought.  Yet I don’t think the name “Jesus” was even heard.  The real meaning of Christmas to a television station seemed to be the guts it took to put on a production with the name “Christmas” in it.  I guess that’s a real victory in our PC culture, but it left me still searching for a message of salvation and hope.

Proof #3.  The three wise men.  I think that these men may all have been on the Fox News special but I can’t remember, I was so enthralled by it all.  But in this season I have seen interviews from each of them.  Let me say first of all, that I do not doubt the born again nature of these men (with the definite exception of the second).  I also can sympathize with the difficult task of talking specific Biblical doctrine on the air on any program.  (But I remember that old prophet Adrian Rogers scolding the young Bill Hybels after the latter schmoozed his way through a Presidential Prayer Breakfast without confronting a sinning president.  “Perhaps thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this,” said the older preacher.  So we cannot excuse the lack of clarity in a preacher at such a critical time as this Christmas).

From the west came Rick Warren.  And what is he offering the waiting public at this needy time of year?  A book on dieting.  This may actually be a great benefit now that the time of Christmas partying is over, but I missed any straightforward message of incarnation and redemption from “America’s pastor.”  From the Mid-West came Joel Osteen.  And what is he offering us at this Christmas season?  I can confidently say I have no idea except a lesson on how to smile or do your hair.  Frankly, I have never heard this man give an explanation of the gospel.  No Christmas message here.  From the east came Andy Stanley, an unusual appearance for him (now that his father is lesser known to this generation).  A born-again man I am sure, yet what was his new book about?  How to use your money as a Christian.  Good enough I suppose for a pastor to his people, but I was listening for the real meaning of Christmas and didn’t hear it from this preacher either.

The wiser man I usually appreciate when he is interviewed is Franklin Graham.  He at least tries to interject the gospel.  But he is busy with his gifts to the needy and no chance was given him for the gospel on the air either.  So much for my last hope of hearing the real meaning of Christmas from the men who are supposed to be wise and speak God’s truth.  Where have all of us been in this regard?  I may have fared no better in a public setting either.  Would you?  Have we as God’s people lost our boldness when it comes to the message of the most important time in the world’s history?  Maybe.

There is a final irony to my quest for the historical Christmas.  I mean, the real meaning of Christmas.  On the Sunday before Christmas day, half the nation was kept from coming to church due to the worst ice storm in years.  Many of us had to stay home like pagans and search in vain for a message somewhere else.  But maybe this is a good reminder of something good and precious at the Christmas season—the local church of Jesus Christ is still proclaiming the real meaning of Christmas.  Outside of God’s born again people there is no hope of hearing that message.

The churches, having the Word of God in our hands and the Spirit of God in our hearts, rightfully proclaim our Savior’s birth.  He is the divine Son of God Who existed from all eternity, Who took upon Himself humanity at the very conception of the virgin Mary, Who lived a sinless life satisfying all the law which none of us could ever do, Who then gave His life on the cross for the sins of the whole world and was resurrected by the power of God, Who will accept anyone who will willingly put his/her faith and trust in Him as Savior.  There was no other hope for this sinful world.  God loved us and gave His Son for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity.  That is the meaning of Christmas.

Our local church resumed services on the Sunday after Christmas with hymn-singing, carols, and a nice presentation by our music people.  It was simple and nice.  Real.  No false humanism.  Just the truth of our Savior’s incarnation.  Praise God for His unspeakable Gift!

 

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The Virgin Birth of Christ

Written by Rick Shrader

The Virgin Birth of Christ

by Rick Shrader

There is no more precious doctrine in the Scripture than the virgin birth of Christ.    The truth that the God of all creation, the Holy One of all eternity, the One Who loved us and became a man in order to redeem us from our sin, is the greatest thought of the human mind.  The fact that the world will not receive it and shuts out all testimony to it, especially at this time of the year, is a testimony to its truth.  If we were not sinners there would be no need for such an incarnation, and the lost world knows this and would prefer it to be that way.  But fact is fact, and there is no ignoring it—Jesus Christ came from heaven to redeem us.  “And thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21).

Christ’s incarnation is testimony to the fact that life in the womb is precious.  Human life begins at conception and is a living, eternal soul from that moment on.  Christ, however, existing from all eternity, entered the womb as the eternal Son of God without ceasing or beginning to be.  Gabriel said to Mary, “thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.  He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest . . . . Therefore also, that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:31, 35).  Son of God, of course, is a term for deity, the second Person of the Godhead.  One of the attributes of God is eternality, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending.  For Jesus to be our Savior, He had to be divine, and to be divine He had to be eternal, and to be eternal, He had to exist before, during, and after the birth in Bethlehem’s manger.  The life in Mary’s womb was the Eternal Life that would light the world!

The Pre-incarnate Christ

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2).  Jesus is the Word because He speaks God’s thoughts to mankind.  ”Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Heb. 1:2).  “In him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4).  The “Word” of verse one is the “Him” of verse four.   Three things are said in this magnificent introduction to John’s gospel.

The Word was eternal.  This Word “was.”  The imperfect tense means an ongoing action, what L.S. Chafer called “the eternal present.”1  Luther said, “Something was before the world and the creation of all things.  That must be God.”2  In that familiar Christmas verse from Micah it is said, “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting” (Mic. 5:2). 

The Word was preexistent.  This Word was “with God.”  Eternality goes hand in hand with preexistence but they are not the same.  The Son and the Father (and the Spirit) dwelt together in perfect unity, three persons but one God.  The Word was “with” God.  This little word, pros, means to be face to face with someone.  The word for “face” is pros?pon.  F.B. Meyer wrote, “The face of the everlasting Word was ever directed towards the face of the everlasting Father.”3  This was the Angel of the Lord of the Old Testament, the One Who met Moses at the burning bush and Who conversed with Abraham on the plains of Mamre.  The Angel never appears again after He became flesh in Mary’s womb. 

The Word was deity.  This Word “was God.”  It cannot be translated any other way, as unbelievers attempt to do.  The article goes with the subject in the nominative case, and for emphasis the Greek puts the predicate noun first, “and God was the Word.”  That is like saying, “the boy was a good student, and David was the boy!”  But the proper meaning is, “the boy was David.”  This is what caused Charles Wesley to write,

Christ by highest heav’n adored,

Christ the everlasting Lord:

Late in time, behold Him come,

Off-spring of a virgin’s womb.

Veiled in flesh the God-head see,

Hail th’incarnate Deity!

Pleased as man with men to dwell,

Jesus our Emmanuel.

Hark! The herald angels sin,

“Glory to the new-born King.”

 

The Prophesied Christ

The Old Testament prophecies of Christ leave no doubt that the baby in Mary’s womb was the eternal Son of God.  The angel quoted Isa. 7:14 to Mary that a virgin would “conceive.”  Whereas humans pass on their seed through a woman and a man so that it is impossible for a virgin woman to conceive, the eternal Son of God came into Mary’s womb through “the power of the Highest” overshadowing her (Luke 1:35).  She was just the channel for the Word to take on human form from a preincarnate state to an incarnate state.  The Son that the virgin would conceive is Immanuel, which, Matthew interpreted, means “God with us.”  He had no beginning and will have no ending.  He is Alpha and Omega.  He did not begin life at conception, much less at birth!

Isaiah’s prophecy in 9:6 includes the wonderful news that this baby is the “Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”  Again we read that the eternal God simply took up residence in the womb of a human girl for a period of time. 

He is the Mighty God of creation as John had also said of the Word, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3).  Paul said to the Corinthians, “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him” (1 Cor. 8:6).  He upholds all things that He made by the word of His divine and almighty power (Heb. 1:3).  He is also the “everlasting Father,” not that there is any mixture of the persons of the Father and the Son, but, as the older writers term it, “the Father of eternity, as if even everlasting duration owed itself to his paternity.”4  The prophet is clear, the eternal Being was in the womb of the virgin and would soon be born into the world.

The Psalmist revealed that God had called Jesus “a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (Psa. 110:4).  Whereas the Old Testament priesthood was served by priests humanly born of parents and therefore serving only a life-time, this Priest has no such limitations.  The writer of Hebrews uses this powerful argument for the ending of the law, and describes Melchisedek, king of Salem, as “without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life” (Heb. 7:1-3).  This of course is applied to Christ literally when he writes, “And it is far more evident: for that after the similitude of Melchisedek there ariseth another priest, Who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life” (7:14-15).  

In the last and great prophecy of the book of Revelation, Jesus appeared to John on the Isle of Patmos in His eternal splendor and said, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, said the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8).  It is not enough to say that He is the Omega without saying that He is also the Alpha.  These terms mean that He has neither beginning nor ending.  And if He has no beginning, He was existing eternally at His conception in Mary’s womb waiting to be born nine months later, taking upon Himself the garment of human limitation.

The gospel of Christ

“But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Gal. 4:4-5).  The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a gospel of example from one human to another.  Jesus was not a good man who showed us how to live and die.  If that is the case, we need not bother ourselves with sin and hell, or with a divine Savior and redemption by His blood.  But if we are sinners by birth and face an eternal punishment in hell, then we need a Savior Who is more than we, a Savior Who is human but divine, a Savior Who knows our humanity but rises above it in sinless perfection.  We need an eternal Savior. 

Lenski writes, “The Son’s going out from God on his mission is seen in his becoming man.  He did not cease to be the Son of God when he became man.  He did not drop his deity, which is an impossible thought.  He remained what he was and added what he had not had, namely a human nature, derived out of a woman, a human mother.  He became the God-man.”5  Paul’s description is that of Isaiah’s, a virgin born Son, “made of a woman” and not of a man.  And note that this all happened “in the fullness of time.”  “Late in time behold Him come,” not early in time, not the beginning of His existence, but late, when time was at its fullest, when this eternal One took up residence in Mary’s womb. 

Why do we have no gospel without a virgin birth?  Because we do not need a human-only savior who is but a good example.  We need a Savior Who can be the sacrifice for our sins, accepted by a holy God as our Substitute.  When the Pharisees were accusing Jesus of having an earthly father He replied, “I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins” (John 8:24).  He meant that they must believe that He is the I AM, the eternal Jehovah, the Angel of the Lord, Who met Moses at the burning bush.  John uses this expression again in 18:5 at His arrest in the garden.  At the mere mention of this title, the soldiers fell backward to the ground.  He had said before, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).  This Jesus can be your Savior.  This Jesus is God in the flesh.  This Jesus died, was buried, and rose again for you, coming out of the grave with the same eternity with which He came into this world.

And So . . .

Jesus said “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). 

If words like these came from the greatest, holiest, best of men, we should fling them back with indignation.  But they are the words of Him by whom and for whom we were created; of Him who spoke from Sinai, and knows the guilt and penalty of sin; of Him to whom all judgment has been committed, and who can anticipate the decrees of the Great Day; of Him-let us not forget-who ‘took part of flesh and blood,’ and knows our burdens and our toils.  And when spiritual men dwell upon His words, with thoughts like these filling their hearts, they do not sit down to frame a Christology; they cast themselves at His feet and worship Him.6

Notes:
1. L.S. Chafer, “The Preexistence of Christ,” Vital Christological Issues, R. Zuck, Gen. Ed.(Grand Rapids:  Kregel, 1997) 13.
2. By Hengstenberg, The Gospel of John (Minn.:  Klock & Klock, 1980) 16.
3. F.B. Meyer, The Gospel of John (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, nd.) 14.
4. Albert Barnes, Isaiah (Grand Rapids:  Baker Book House, 1980) 193.
5. R.C.H. Lenski, Interpretation of Galatians (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961) 199.
6. Sir Robert Anderson, The Lord From Heaven (Grand Rapids:  Kregel, 1980) 51.

 

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Pilgrims and Strangers

Written by Rick Shrader

Pilgrims and Strangers

by Rick Shrader

As believers in a country that is fast becoming ungodly, we are at that point where we are wondering what freedom will actually look like in the near future.  It is difficult to follow all the details in the news about how the government works and what the issues are that affect us.  What seems to be obvious is that the leaders of government who are in control of things feel they can do whatever they want regardless of what the constitution says and that those who disagree cannot oppose them, even if they follow the constitution, without being unloving and uncaring.

Right now our governmental leaders are giving people whatever they want.  This is how they get elected and stay elected.  And right now people want the most selfish and immoral things they can get.  So if women (and men) want to be promiscuous, they need to be able to kill the babies they produce rather than quit being immoral or they insist it is their right to have society pay for their birth control.  If anyone disagrees he/she is un-American.  Why?  Because he/she would be denying someone what they want.  To be American today is to be free to do whatever one wants and have whatever one wants to have.  The constitution is irrelevant.  If a law exists that would limit this freedom, it must be opposed.  If someone objects, he must be opposed.

Liberal thinkers in government are spending so much it can only be considered dishonest if not immoral.  No honest individual could spend his own money in such a way.  If  the constitution says they should make a budget and live by it, it really doesn’t matter.  If the constitution says the debt must be paid before entitlements, it doesn’t matter.  It is more important to make sure people are getting things they want from government than to pay our debt.  If conservatives point out that the constitution demands the debt be paid first, even and especially if only one of the two can be paid, they are considered un-American.  Why?  Because they want to do something that limits someone’s freedom even though it is “constitutional.”

It is interesting how people see their own desires as trumping all other laws or morals.  The rule of law can only be the law of the land if people are humble and see their own fallibility and need of law.  In a country like ours (at least these days), people cannot tolerate the rule of law because that would put a limit on their desires.  Politicians who feed those desires in people become patriotic and those who oppose them become unpatriotic.  The constitution is irrelevant.

Benjamin Franklin is the one who protested that if people sacrificed liberty for freedom they deserved neither.  If that is true, then Americans do not deserve the freedom they insist upon nor the liberty that brings it to them.  It was Alexis de Tocqueville who said that America is great because America is good, and when America ceases to be good America will cease to be great.  At this point it seems that America is good only in theory because, as a democracy, it can vote to fund its most base desires.  A minority might object, for various reasons, but basically America is what the majority of people say it is.

The Christian response in such a time of national turmoil is varied.  There are the hawks and the doves.  There are those who name anyone a coward who doesn’t believe he should become more politically involved.  These usually believe that if the American ship of state goes down, our Christian compartment goes down with it.  Others are very aloof in their concern over America’s problems and don’t seem to care what happens.  I believe that there is some leeway for disagreement.  But I also believe that the Scripture is clear about how a Christian should be living and reacting in the secular culture in which we find ourselves.

We are to be strangers and pilgrims in the world.

The believer is a citizen of two worlds.  He has a foot in each one.  This is simply because, though a regenerated child of God, he must live out his time in the flesh as a pilgrim and stranger passing through a world that has now become a wilderness to him.  Yet at the same time, he is looking for a city that has permanent structure for him whose builder and maker is God.

This is a life-style change for the believer.  The change happened when we were converted.  Rather than being at home here, we’ve become foreigners.  Even Abraham, after God called him away from his earthly home, became a traveler until his death.  When Sarah died he had to beg for a burial plot.  “I am a stranger and a sojourner with you,” he said, “give me a possession of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight” (Gen. 23:4).

Peter “beseeched” his readers as “dearly beloved” to consider themselves as “strangers and pilgrims” even though they were also elect. (1 Pet. 2:11)  “Strangers” (paroikous) are people  “without a house,” the same word translated “sojourners” in 1:17.  “Pilgrims” (parepidemous)  are people  “without kin.”   Though conversion changes everything for the believer in wonderful ways on the inside, it is not always wonderful on the outside.  Depending on the country and people around us, we can either be accepted or rejected.  This does not change our pilgrim standing with God.

We are to obey laws and submit to authority.

In this journey, the new believer finds that he has become an adversary to his former friends rather than a partner, “Whereas they speak against you as evildoers” (1 Pet. 2:12).  “Evildoers” here means criminal.  The early Christians were considered enemies of the state and therefore potentially harmful to the peace of the country.  They were enemies politically because they spoke of another King, Jesus; they were enemies religiously because they could not participate in the ubiquitous idolatry; they were enemies ethically because they would not live the immoral lifestyle so common in a Greek/Roman world.

Peter again says, “For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries:  Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you” (1 Pet. 4:3-4).  Again, they consider you to be an enemy of the state and of society.

Peter and Paul make it especially plain that such is our new lot in life and, rather than look at this new situation as a detriment, we should consider it an open door for witness.  “They may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation” (1 Pet. 2:12).  This conversion of the unbeliever will most likely happen through the believer’s willing submission to the very people who are hostile to him.  To the believer, there is no such thing as “civil disobedience.”  That is an oxymoron in Christian vernacular.  “Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation” (Rom. 13:2).  To “riot” is never a Christian option.  Not to do so is to witness of the grace of God.

We are to be salt and light in a corrupt world.

The Lord’s admonition to be salt and light comes in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:13-16) and is open to various applications.  No doubt Israel failed in their stewardship as a nation to have such effect on themselves and the nations around them.  Jerusalem was the city set on a hill, Zion, to which all nations will flow one day in the presence of their King.  Yet the Christian believer is also to let his “speech be always with grace seasoned with salt” that he may how he ought “to answer every man” (Col. 4:6).  The believer was also “sometimes darkness” but now is “light in the Lord” and he is (we are) to “walk as children of light” (Eph. 5:8).

 G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The saint is a medicine because he is an antidote.  Indeed, that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. . . . Salt seasons and preserves beef not because it is like beef; but because it is very unlike it.”1  Separatists have often been accused of retreating into a monastic type of life rather than affecting the culture as they should.  But this is not verified by history.  Separatists have always known they cannot escape the world but must be in it and walk through it.  Paul admonished the Corinthians, “I wrote unto you in an epistle not to keep company with fornicators.  Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go of the world.  But now I have written unto you not to keep company . . . “ (1 Cor. 5:9-11).  The problem is not when the ship is in the sea, but when the sea is in the ship.  Then the salt no longer seasons but is mere sand that must be thrown out and walked upon.

In Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian travels through the town of Vanity which is having a Fair.  The people at the Fair look with disgust at Christian and bid him to leave for two reasons:  his speech and his clothes, neither of which fit in with the others at Vanity’s Fair.  Bunyan, writing from prison himself, would not have considered having his pilgrim change his clothes and speech in order to appease the crowd.  Rather Christian kept pressing toward the Celestial City.

We are to be worshipers in a heavenly tabernacle.

With all the talk about worship today, it is a wonder that this perspective could be missed.  Some have proposed that God acts as the audience while He watches us perform worship; that our artistic abilities open the door to God’s throne and bring His smile upon us.  But the whole point of the book of Hebrews is that our Advocate, Jesus Christ the Righteous, ever lives to make intercession for us (7:25).  By His own blood He is before the throne of God forever so that we may have eternal redemption (9:12).  This is why Paul emphasized to the Ephesians that we are a heavenly people, “seated together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6).  Charles Wesley expressed it this way,

Five bleeding wounds He bears, Received on Calvary.

They pour effectual prayers; they strongly plead for me.

“Forgive him, O, forgive,” they cry.  “Forgive him, O, forgive,” they cry,

“Nor let that ransomed sinner die.”

The Father hears Him pray, His dear Anointed One;

He cannot turn away, the presence of His Son.

His Spirit answers to the blood, His Spirit answers to the blood,

And tells me I am born of God.2

 I have often said to my folks, “We do not come together to worship, we are worshipers who come together.”  We must remember that Jesus is continually performing the true worship within the true tabernacle, and we are observers of that in our daily lives.  Corporate worship is not our performance but His.  For us, when we come together, it is a recognition in Spirit and Truth of what we know to be the case through Jesus Christ.

We are to be church members in our locality.

We recognized, as noted above, that the whole Church of Jesus Christ is constantly dependent on the atonement made by Him, and that we will all make up the Bride of Christ in the rapture and at the bema seat.  Yet, the New Testament speaks more about the gathering of ourselves together with other believers of like faith in the place where we live.  The word for “church,” ekklesia, appears 115 times in the New Testament and well over 100 times it refers to the local church.

Hebrews 10:25 commands us to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together even though that is the manner of some, even some who may name the name of Christ.  One such command is all we need, if we understand it in its proper context.  The purpose of such gathering is the subject of most of the New Testament written to the local churches.  In Hebrew 10:21-25, it is for drawing near to God in assurance with a clean conscience; for holding forth the profession of our faith; and for provoking one another to love and good works.

In this “brotherhood” of believers, we are to do what believers do.  We invite any who would come to stand beside us and try to understand what it all means, but we do not do it for them.  We often make the mistake of thinking that we will lose the person if they are not happy, or entertained, or comfortable.  In actuality, that would be a detriment rather than an asset.  If it dawns on the lost man what we are doing, he will, by Holy Spirit conviction, be the most uncomfortable man in the room.  Our nervousness about that shows our lack of trust in the Spirit’s work.

We are to be heavenly minded if we would be any earthly good.

We would not be good pilgrims if we did not have more thought of our destination than of our present circumstances.  “For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.  And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned” (Heb. 11:14-15).  It is not possible to be too heavenly minded to be any earthly good.  Jonathan Edwards said,

We ought to be continually growing in holiness; and in that respect coming nearer and nearer to heaven.  We should be endeavoring to come nearer to heaven, in being more heavenly; becoming more and more like the inhabitants of heaven, in respect of holiness and conformity to God; the knowledge of God and Christ; in clear views of the glory of God, the beauty of Christ, and the excellency of divine things, as we come nearer to the beatific vision.3

C.S. Lewis wrote, “Those who want Heaven most have served Earth best.  Those who love Man less than God do most for Man.”4  We are to be looking unto Jesus because He is the “author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2).  In a race, the starting line is often also the finishing line.  We start out at that point with energy, but we approach it at the end almost spent.  But if we will look at Jesus, Who endured His cross, we will finish our pilgrimage well.

We are to be holy as He is holy.

The premise for Peter’s first epistle is built on this proposition, “[Live] as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:14-16).  In some cases we have the English word “conversation” as our politics (Phil. 1:27, 3:20).  Here, however, the word means our citizenship or deportment (anastrephō, to turn back, to settle).  While we are on this earth, we must be as He was when He was on this earth.  As short as we may come of that objective, it is the only worthwhile and justifiable goal.

There are those who cringe at the word holiness.  For them, it is too often used as a hammer to punish people who lack expectations.  But if we see our own unworthiness, and we realize the depth of our own sin, and how utterly hopeless we would be in our own effort, how wonderful the holiness of Jesus Christ becomes!  He is our righteousness.  He is our standing before a holy God, and not we ourselves.  We are pilgrims to that end.

Notes:
 
1. G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas (New York:  Image Books, 1956) 23.
2. Charles Wesley, “Arise My Soul Arise.”
3. Randall Pederson, Day by Day with Jonathan Edwards (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2005) 348.
4. C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns (New York: HBJ, 1986) 80.
 

 

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Our Bible Is The Word Of God (Part 2)

Written by Rick Shrader

Our Bible Is The Word Of God (Part 2)

by Rick Shrader

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This is the second part of a two part article.

We have a preserved Bible

The doctrine of the preservation of Scripture has become controversial within Christianity especially among many conservatives.  While it is abundantly true that God has preserved His Word and that God’s people, in hundreds of languages, have the Word of God in their hands, some have limited preservation to one language group, even to one translation within that group.  Having grown up in the midst of that controversy, I have heard good and gracious men on both sides, and unkind men on both sides.  The wonderful preservation of the Bible should not divide us but rather unite all who name the name of Christ, in whatever language they may speak, and with any translation which faithfully translates those original languages into their own language.

McCune touches the real issue  when he says, “The work of preserving Scripture has been and basically is a providential, as opposed to a miraculous, work.”14  This has been a dividing issue within the doctrine of preservation.  If we have a perfect, errorless translation today then preservation would have to involve the miraculous.  If preservation, however, is a matter of God’s providential protection, using fallible men who make errors, then we cannot expect a perfect translation.  That is why the translators of the KJV wrote, “But the difference that appeareth between our translations, and our often correcting of them, is the thing that we are specially charged with.”15

The treatment of the preservation of our Bible is therefore partially negative and partially positive.  For those of us who still use the KJV, we must realize that it is not a perfect translation (indeed none are), but at the same time rejoice that God’s Word has been preserved in this and other faithful translations.  I will give five reasons why I think this view of preservation is correct.

1. Miraculous preservation  contradicts Biblical cessationism.  Most conservative Bible believing people believe that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit such as healing, tongues, prophecy, and infallibility, ceased when the New Testament was completed.  This has been our interpretation of passages such as 1 Cor. 13:8-13.  The revelatory and sign gifts ceased with the passing of the apostles including the miraculous inspiration of Scripture (see 2 Cor. 12:12).  This is why we do not allow charismatic gifts in our churches and also why we do not accept cultic claims that more/other Scripture has been written.  If we allow miraculous preservation beyond the completion of the New Testament, we have nothing to say to Mohammad or Joseph Smith when they claim to have received a miracle from God.

Jude said that the Faith was “once for all” delivered to the saints (Jude 2).  Like the Incarnation of the living Word, the written Word came once as well.  In Psalm 68:11 David wrote, “The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.”  God gave it through miraculous inspiration but it is published through men who are called “great” but not infallible.

2. Miraculous preservation obviously did not happen.  This is a fact with which all of us must grapple.  There is no perfectly preserved manuscript or translation of a manuscript.  That is, of the 5000+ New Testament manuscripts that exist, no two of them are exactly alike.  Of all of the English translations of the KJV or any other translation, no two editions of them are alike.  The documentation for this statement is abundant.  For example, D.A. Carson says, “no manuscript agrees perfectly with any other.”17  Daniel Wallace is referenced by Ed Glenny pointing out that the most similar manuscripts disagree six to ten times per chapter!18  No text family, including the TR, can claim unanimity either.  Even in the TR, no two manuscripts agree.

This forces us to ask some pertinent questions.  Did God miraculously preserve all the manuscripts with all their differences so that every one of them is perfect?  Yet how could even two things that differ both be perfect?  Did God preserve only one manuscript out of the 5000+ and it alone is the perfect one?  If so, no Bible is based on it.  And which one would that be?  Which one of the thousands of manuscripts that make up the TR is the perfect one?  This seems unlikely also.  In addition, did God preserve one English translation perfectly?  Again, which one would that be?  Even in 1611 there were two editions of the KJV and those differed in over 2000 places.19

It is not enough to say that such differences were printers’ errors and obvious mistakes.  To say that is to admit that God did NOT miraculously preserve manuscript or translation, and that we must practice textual criticism at any level of preservation.  What is also clear is that if any one of those manuscripts or translations is perfect, then nothing before it or after it was or is perfect since nothing before it or after it agrees with it in every detail.  Therefore, miraculous preservation cannot be sustained by the historical evidence.

3. Miraculous preservation is not presented in any Biblical text.  Does the Bible actually say that God will preserve His Word in a particular manuscript or translation?  It would not be hard to find the word “preserve” in a verse, but the question would be whether that verse is talking about miraculous preservation.  For example, Psalm 12:5-6 is often quoted because it mentions “the words of the Lord” and also the word “preserve.”  Yet it is begging the question to conclude that this verse proves miraculous preservation of the Bible.  It is actually promising preservation of the people of God as God’s Word has promised.  Matthew 24:35 says, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”  But does that mean miraculous preservation?  It is actually a promise to tribulation Jews that God’s covenants with them will not be rescinded in the midst of tribulation judgments.

Kutilek is right when he says, “A careful examination of the ‘proof texts’ set forth in support of perfect preservation in the KJV demonstrates that NONE of them is talking about the copying or translation process of transmitting Scripture.”20  This is where many believers choose to differ because we all have the right to interpret for ourselves.  But I have had to also consider this with the previous point and ask myself, if these verses promise a miraculous preservation, where is it?

4. Miraculous preservation is not the historic position of the church.  Although one may find a believer somewhere in history that held to miraculous preservation, it would be fair to conclude that such a position has escalated among a few in the late twentieth century.  My experience has been that some are uncomfortable unless their position is farther to the “right” than anyone else’s and this position seems to make one more conservative than others.  Perhaps this position seems to make one identified with the good fundamentalists at the turn of the century who fought against the liberals for the integrity of God’s Word.  But miraculous preservation is not what the early fundamentalists stood for.

The voices of fundamentalists have been quoted by a number of writers on this issue.  Rolland McCune concludes, “Historically, fundamentalists have held that the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible pertained to the autographs only,”21  There is an informative booklet published by Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Greenville, SC that quotes well-known fundamentalists and conservatives on this issue.22  Space does not permit me to quote each of these men but the list of 31 men includes John Smyth, John Owen, John Wesley, F.H.A. Scrivener,  C.H. Spurgeon, A.T. Pierson, D.L. Moody, F.B. Meyer, Alexander Maclaren, C.I. Scofield, Oswald Chambers, R.A. Torrey, G. Campbell Morgan, H.A. Ironside, Noel Smith, John R. Rice, Bob Jones, Sr., and Bob Jones, Jr.  Bob Jones, Jr., writes, “There are other good translations in the midst of all the bad ones.  Unfortunately, there are no perfect ones, including the Authorized Version, as evidenced by the many corrections and amendments that have been made through the years.”23

5. Providential preservation, however, is abundant in Scripture and history.  If we can understand the preservation of Scripture in the context of God’s providence, we can affirm and rejoice in the fact that God indeed has preserved His Word and that we can call our Bible the Word of God.  Through His control of history and people, God has seen to it that we can have confidence in proclaiming any good translation as the Word of God.

The Scripture does promise this kind of preservation.  Rolland McCune presents what he calls “sufficient preservation.”  In referring to Matthew 5:17-18 on the “jot” and “tittle” he writes, “Here the references to the ’smallest letter’ . . . are hyperbolic, indicating the inalterability and thus the continuing authority of God’s entire revelation. And, if this revelation has continuing authority, the implication is that the text will be sufficiently preserved so that it may continue to govern each generation of believers.24

In addition to Scriptural promises, the facts are clear that no other book even comes close to the reliability of the Biblical text, whether Hebrew, Greek, or English.  We can be more sure of what Jesus said than any other figure in history.  Geisler and Nix give this example:

Next to the New Testament, the Iliad has more extant manuscripts than any other book (543 papyri, 2 uncials, and 188 minuscules for a total of 643).  Like the Bible, it was considered sacred, and experienced textual changes and criticism of its Greek manuscripts.  While the New Testament has about 20,000 lines, the Iliad has about 15,000.  Only 40 lines (400 words) of the New Testament are in doubt, whereas 764 lines of the Iliad are in question.  Thus the 5% corruption of the Iliad stands against the less than 1% of the NT text.25

J. Gresham Machen, who loved and used the KJV, showed in his writings that it was not a perfect translation.26 Concerning the preservation of Scripture he went on to say,

No, my friends, these things did not come by chance.  God did these things.  He did not do them by a miracle.  But it was just as much God that did them as it would have been if He had done them by a miracle.  He did them by His use of the world that He had made and by His ordering of the lives of His creatures.  Very wonderfully and very graciously, according to our view of the Bible, has God provided for the preservation, from generation to generation, of His Holy Word.

What is the result for you, my friends?  The result is that you can take down your Authorized Version from the shelf, the version hallowed, for many of you, by many precious associations, and be very sure that it will give you good information about that which stood in the autographs of the Word of God.27

We have a translated Bible

Translation is the process of transferring the meaning of one language into another.  If the meaning is properly transferred into the second language, we may say that we have what the original writer intended to say and therefore have his words.  At Pentecost, when the people from 18 different countries heard the disciples speak, each in a different language, they replied, “we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God” (Acts 2:11).  They did not hear with the same letters, words, and syntax, but they heard the meaning in each language’s letters, words, and syntax.

The translators of the KJV wrote in their preface,

The very meanest translation of the Bible in English set forth by men of our profession . . . Containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God: as the King’s speech which he uttered in Parliament, being translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Latin, is still the King’s speech, though it be not interpreted by every translator with like grace, nor peradventure so fitly for phrase, nor so expressly for sense, everywhere.28

Our English versions, and all other language versions, are translations done by fallible men who do their best to transfer the meaning from the original languages into another language.  The original writing, done by the hand of original writers, is what was inspired.  That was the miracle of God which gave us the very Word of God without error.  Each translation is good in as far as the meaning of the original is transferred.  Therefore any translation that faithfully gives the meaning of the original writers is and should be called the Word of God.

In 1876 a Baptist pastor in New York named John Quincy Adams printed a book titled “Baptists Thorough Reformers.”  Spurgeon used the book as a text in his Pastor’s College.  Adams wrote, “Let it be remembered, that the Bible which we possess is a translation.  The words of our English version are invested with Divine authority, only so far as they express just what the original expresses.”29  Adams warned of a growing error in his day, “In England and America the English version, which is acknowledged to have many defects, is made the standard, instead of the original.”30

Conservative believers, especially Baptists, have always understood what a translation is.  It is not the original manuscript nor can it be.  Those were written under miraculous inspiration in original languages.  A translation is a human attempt to transfer the meaning, as best as fallible human beings can do, into languages that people now speak.  When this is done in a good and honest way we should rejoice that we have the Word of God in that language.

And So . . . .

The words of the great prince of preachers, C.H. Spurgeon, should suffice as a conclusion.

No Baptist should ever fear any honest attempt to produce the correct text, and an accurate interpretation of the Old and New Testaments.  For many years Baptists have insisted upon it that we ought to have the Word of God translated in the best possible manner, whether it would confirm certain religious opinions and practices, or work against them.  All we want is the exact mind of the Spirit, as far as we can get it.31

From the revelation to the inspiration to the preservation of God’s Word, God’s people can rejoice in the reliability of our translations.  No other book in the world has ever come close to the credibility of this Book.  No other book has been so studied, scrutinized, criticized, translated, printed, and read as the Bible.  You can hold high the translation you use and say, “thus saith the Lord.”

 

Notes:

14. Rolland McCune, 49.

15. The Translators To The Readers, The Bible, Authorized king James Version With Apocrypha (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) lxiv.

16. This fact is noted in almost any book on textual matters.

17. D.A. Carson, The King James Version Debate (Grand Rapids:  Baker Books, 1979) 18, 26, 56, 119.

18. Roy Beacham & Kevin Bauder, Gen. Eds., One Bible Only? (Grand Rapids:  Kregel, 2001) 76.

19. Doug Kutilek,  ”The Error of Verbal Plenary Preservation,”  As I See It, 12:11.

20. Kutilek, Ibid.

21. Rolland McCune, “Doctrinal Non-Issues in Historic Fundamentalism,”  Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal, Fall 1996, p. 171.

22. Trusted Voices on Translations, Mount Calvary Baptist Church, infor@mountcalvarybaptist.org.

23. Ibid.  p. 11.

24. McCune, 51-52.

25. Geilser & Nix, p. 181.

26. Machen, p. 38.

27. Machen, p. 42-43.

28. Translators, Ibid.

29. John Quincy Adams, Baptists Thorough Reformers (New York:  Backus Book s, 1980) 129.

30. See chapter VIII on “The Establishment of the Correct Principle of Biblical Translation.”

31. Trusted Voices, p. 5, quoting the Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit, vol. XXVII, pp. 342-343.

 

 

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Our Bible Is The Word Of God (part 1)

Written by Rick Shrader

Our Bible Is The Word Of God (part 1)

by Rick Shrader

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This world is no friend of grace and it is no friend of the Book that brings us grace.  As the centuries have come and gone it seems that all controversies over the Christian belief in God, in Christ, in salvation, eventually come back to the reliability of our Bible.  Surely such will be the case as we approach the end of the age.  Already we can feel the animosity and antipathy from the world when we speak of the Word of God, or speak as though we were speaking for God Himself, as Peter admonished us, “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God” (1 Peter 4:11).  The unbeliever chafes at the idea that someone might actually have the very Word and therefore the very authority of God to tell him of his soul’s destiny.

Many have said, in effect, that the Bible is something in which a child can wade and an elephant can swim.  Rabbi Eleazer’s words are often quoted,

If all the seas were of ink, and all ponds planted with reeds, if the sky and the earth were parchments and if all human beings practiced the art of writing—they would not exhaust the Torah I have learned, just as the Torah itself would not be diminished any more than the sea by the water removed by a paint brush dipped in it.1

Perhaps that was the inspiration for one of the most beautiful verses of hymnody,

Could we with ink the oceans fill,

and were the skies of parchment made;

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

and every man a scribe by trade;

To write the love of God above

would drain the ocean dry;

nor could the scroll contain the whole,

tho’ stretched from sky to sky.2

 

It is enough that we face all the forces of Satan in this world against the Bible without having to face disagreement and controversy from within Christianity.  We must first read the Bible.  Statistics abound which point to the fact that Christians who say they believe the Bible is the very Word of God spend precious little time reading it.  We must also believe it.  The present age demands that we have confidence in this Book as we face such critical unbelief.  We must also understand what we read and believe about this Book, that though it was given by inspiration once years ago, and though it has been handled by human hands over the centuries, it remains the Word of God spread over the whole globe, translated in scores of languages, and preached by faithful men in all cultures.

We have a revealed Bible

When we speak of biblical revelation we mean that God has made known to us things which we could not have otherwise known.  Paul makes it clear to the Corinthians,  “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.  But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10).  If God is the God of Whom the Bible speaks, then such revelation is not only possible but probable and necessary.

Revelation is usually divided into two areas:  general and special (or non-miraculous and miraculous).  General revelation refers to  how God has made Himself known in nature.  “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Psalm 19:1); “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). Though nature does not delineate the gospel of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ it does reveal enough about God to leave man without excuse.

A second area of general revelation is man’s conscience.  Conscience isn’t a complete revelation either, but it is God’s witness to us about things we should know.  “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:  Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another” (Rom. 2:14-15).

When speaking of Scripture, however, we usually speak of special or miraculous revelation.  We understand that God has revealed Himself to humans many times throughout history.  We only know some of what God spoke to Adam when they walked in the garden.  The same could be said for Enoch who walked with God, or any of the prophets who wrote some of the things they heard from God.  Miracles, dreams, visions, and the like were also various means of revelation, as the book of Hebrews begins, “God, who at various times and in different ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets” (Heb. 1:1, NKJV).

There were two magnificent and final ways in which God revealed Himself.  The writer of Hebrews continues to say, “but has in these last days spoken to us by His Son” (1:2).  The incarnation of God in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ was the greatest revelation of God to man.  “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18).  When the disciple Thomas asked Jesus to show him the Father Jesus answered, “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?” (John 14:9).  This incarnation happened only once.  Jesus resurrected and ascended back into heaven with the same fleshly existence which He gained by His journey to earth.  His post-resurrection appearances only showed the truth of His incarnation.

The other great and final way God revealed Himself was through Scripture.  As we will see next, inspiration was also a one-time event, that is, though it was accomplished over a fifteen hundred year span, it is finished and no more inspiration has happened since John finished the book of Revelation.  This was indeed a miraculous revelation, as 1 Cor. 2:9-10 above shows.  To claim that God again opened the gift of inspired written revelation would be as serious an error as claiming that the Son of God was again incarnated.  Neither revelation had to happen twice for either one to be authoritative, final, and a powerful truth that transforms lives throughout the rest of history.  Jude called Scripture, “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3).

We have an inspired Bible

Paul wrote,  “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:  That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).  The claim of having the only book in the history of the world that is completely without error and therefore completely truthful does not sit well with this postmodern, deconstructive culture.  Yet that is exactly what we do claim.  The miraculous writing of the Scriptures was as perfect in every detail as the incarnation of the Son of God.

It is common to use the words “plenary” and “verbal” to describe the process of inspiration.  “All Scripture” is inspired, the apostle said.  That is, it is “God-breathed.”  God made man a living soul when He “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7).  “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth” (Psa. 33:6).  So God created the Scripture when He breathed into them by His Holy Spirit the very words He wanted on the paper.  This process happened sixty-six times so that they were all, “plenarily,” inspired yet making up only one Book with inspiration extended to all its parts.  J. Gresham Machen described the process of various writers with various talents and vocabulary as many musicians blending their various instruments together into one great harmonious song.3

That the Bible was inspired in a plenary fashion speaks to its broadness.  The Bible was also inspired in a verbal fashion which speaks to its narrowness.  Verbal, of course, means pertaining to the very words.  The word “scripture “ comes from the word graphe, which means writing, or the marks on the page.  David declared that “the words of the LORD are pure words” (Psa. 12:6).  The mind of God could not be made clear to us merely by thoughts.  W.H. Griffith Thomas said, “Surely inspiration cannot mean an uninspired account of inspired thoughts.”4  He also quoted Abraham Kuyper as asking if we can have music without notes, or math without numbers?  Neither can we have a meaningful inspiration that does not pertain to the words.

This process of inspiration was for the purpose of giving us the Word of God.  When that process was complete the miracle of inspiration ceased.  That’s why Jude said it was “once for all” given to us (Jude 3), and why Paul called it a “perfect” thing (1 Cor. 13:8-13) which when it came, incomplete things would be finished.

Rolland McCune offers three reasons why inspiration pertained only to the original documents or autographs.  First, God’s direct involvement with the text was only with the originals, seen in various texts which state that God spoke by the mouth of a certain author (Acts 1:16; 4:25; 28:25).  Second, the Bible’s various warnings about adding or subtracting from the text “presuppose” that only the originals were guaranteed from error and not subsequent copies.  Third, there are warnings about corrupting the meaning of a text because that would not properly represent the text as originally written (Mk. 7:9; 2 Cor. 4:2; 3:5-6).  “Therefore,” McCune says, “to tamper with meaning one must corrupt the original revelation’s words, presupposing again the complete, uncorrupted state of the original.”5

We have a canonized Bible

When we say this we mean that the “canon” is complete, i.e., the number of books God intended to have in the Bible are all in the Bible and none others.  We can’t expect the unbelieving world to accept this concept either because it would take an unmistakable, providential work of God to put together such a book.  They would rather believe that the Bible was an invention of man from beginning to end.  To them, some men with an agenda made the Bible with these 66 books and eliminated books that would have contradicted their purpose.  To this end, every generation throughout the church age has resurrected this old canard in an attempt to discredit the Bible.  Dan Brown’s make-believe book, The Davinci Code, is built upon the theory that the doctrine of the deity of Jesus Christ was fabricated by the established church, and if they would have allowed other books into the Bible they would have to admit that Jesus had a child by Mary Magdalene who carried on the secret bloodline.  It is always interesting to see unbelievers opt for the most fantastic things so long as they don’t have to believe the Bible.

It is for the above reason that W.H. Griffith Thomas says, “The Bible is not an authorized collection of books, but a collection of authorized books.”6  He means that the canon was not made by men but was recognized by men to be from God.  This field has been studied, critiqued, investigated, attacked, and vindicated as much as any field of study.  Therefore, good men write about it from a variety of profitable ways.  Almost all speak of the tests that were applied to the Biblical books.  Ryrie uses authority, uniqueness, and acceptance by the church.7  Geisler and Nix ask, were the books authoritative, prophetic, authentic, and dynamic?8  Thomas says, “The basis of our acceptance of the New Testament is what is called in technical language, ‘Apostolicity’; because the books came either from Apostolic authors, or through Apostolic sanction.’  Our view of the Old Testament [also] corresponds to this.”9

We can also place the process of canonization into different stages.  The first stage would be the self-authentication stage, i.e., when the books were being written and recognized by the church.  Ryrie says, “The books were canonical the moment they were written.  It was not necessary to wait until various councils could examine the books to determine if they were acceptable or not.  Their canonicity was inherent within them, since they came from God.”10  That’s why Paul could begin the book of Galatians by saying, “Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” (Gal. 1:1).

To Timothy Paul says, “For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.  And, the laborer is worthy of his reward” (1 Tim. 5:18).  It is significant to note that Paul quotes Moses from Deut. 25:4 and also Jesus (and therefore Luke) from Luke 10:7.  Before the whole New Testament was even completely written, Paul calls the words of Jesus and the writing of Luke, “Scripture.”  In another example of self-authentication, Luke 11:51 says, “From the blood of Abel, unto the blood of Zechariah, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation.”  The blood of Abel is recorded in the first book of the Old Testament (Genesis 4), and the blood of Zechariah is recorded in the last book of the (Jewish) Old Testament (2 Chronicles 24).  In this way Jesus was including all of our 39 books of the Old Testament in the canon.

The second stage of canonicity would be debating authentication, or the time after the first century when the church affirmed our 66 books to be the canon of the Bible.  Of this Ryrie says, “People and councils only recognized and acknowledged what is true because of the intrinsic inspiration of the books as they were written.  No Bible book became canonical by action of some church council.”11  This stage of the canon was complete by the council of Carthage in 397 A.D.  There seems to be no serious question about the canon after this time.

The third stage could be called ongoing authentication.  Throughout the history of the church, no other books have been able to lay any serious claim to authenticity.  From Carthage forward books were categorized as homologoumena (accepted by all); pseudepigrapha (rejected by all); antilegomena (disputed by some); and apocrypha (accepted by some).12  But in all of this, only our present canon remain as the 66 books of the Bible.

Geisler and Nix summarize by writing that “the vast majority of the New Testament books were never disputed from the beginning.  Of the books originally recognized as inspired but later questioned, all of them came to full and final acceptance by the universal church.”13

This article will be finished in the next issue as we talk about preservation, translation, and interpretation.

 

Notes:

1. I have this quote even from the French skeptic Jacques Derrida in his Grammatology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) p. 16.

2. Frederick M. Lehman, The Love of God, verse 3.

3. J. Gresham Machen, The Christian Faith in the Modern World (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 1947) 53.

4. W.H. Griffith Thomas, How We Got Our Bible (Chicago:  Moody Press, 1926) 89.

5. Rolland McCune, A Systematic Theology of Biblical Christianity, vol. I (Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, 2008) 94-96.

6. Thomas, 25.

7. Charles Ryrie, Basic Theology (Wheaton:  Victor Books, 1987) chapter 15.

8. Norman Geisler & William Nix, From God To Us (Chicago:  Moody Press, 1974) chapter 6.

9. Thomas, 22-23.

10. Ryrie, 105.

11. Ryrie, 105.

12. See Geisler & Nix, chapter 10, for a thorough discussion of these terms.

13. Geisler & Nix, 125.

 

 

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The Second Coming of Christ

Written by Rick Shrader

The Second Coming of Christ

by Rick Shrader

As a sixteen year old boy, the thing that drew me back into church more than anything else was the study of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  Jesus plainly said  to His disciples these words before He died,

 

 

             “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there you may be also”

(John 14:1-3).

Here was a reason, a cause if you will, that I could put my whole self into.  Not just that I was going to go to heaven when I died, or that Jesus was with me wherever I might go, but that the same person Who came to earth two thousand years ago was going to appear the second time, and that He would cause me immediately to rise to see Him, and be with Him forever more!  I might not make it through algebra class the next day.  I could be taken to see Him at any moment.  I’m sure I was a happy addition to the youth group.  I attended a public high school some forty miles away. I was highly involved there and well known through sports and other things.  But this was going to change my life.  I had been saved when I was eleven but our family, being so far from a good church, didn’t attend very much during my early teenage years.  For the last two years of high school, however, I would be a Christian on fire for God. 

I remember that I loved those line graphs that the Sunday School teacher would put on the board when explaining prophecy (this was a church of thousands and there were no youth pastors in those days).  Maybe that’s because I did much better in geometry than in algebra, but I still use those lines and graphs and charts whenever I have a surface to write on.  “Here is the cross, then a long space for the church age, then a reverse arrow for the rapture, then a double three and a half years for the tribulation, then the big arrow coming down to earth, followed by a large space for a thousand years.  At the very end is a chair-like thing which will represent the White Throne Judgment.”  I think I have reproduced that line graph a thousand times.

I found that the expectation of an imminent return of Christ will motivate the believer to worship (Heb. 10:25); to holiness (1 Jn. 3:3); to duty (1 Cor. 15:58); to ministry (2 Tim. 4:1-3); to consolation (1 Thes. 4:18); and to endurance (Rev. 3:11).  I also found that it encouraged me in witnessing to my high school friends.  There is nothing so attractive about our faith as an enthusiastic faith.  Imagine a teenager telling a friend at the lunch table not to worry if he disappeared before they were done eating!  “If I do, here is a tract that will tell you where I went.”

Of course, I was also in for various disappointments.  Not everyone else was as excited about the doctrine as I was.  Even my mother, the English teacher at the school, had to throw some cold water on my enthusiasm now and then.  This was in the sixties and teenagers were being pressured in many ways besides religion and morality.  My Catholic coach rolled his eyes when he found me sitting around the whirlpool with some other guys reading about Jonah and the whale.  He later became a good life-long friend.  I saw many of my classmates make professions of faith and soon realized that not all of them would follow through on those verbal commitments.  I had a hard time understanding that.

I remember many Bible conferences at our church by many well-known preachers, but I always loved the prophecy conferences best.  There seemed to be an excitement in those days about the coming of Christ that has waned a lot over the years.

Like many doctrines in the Bible, the truth about the Rapture does not appear all at once.  Revelation about it was given progressively through the first century as the New Testament was being written by inspired writers. 

The fact about the Father’s house

The words of Jesus the night before He died (John 14:1-3) were spoken about AD 32 and not written down until almost AD 90.  However, the apostles were the first hearers so they had first-hand knowledge of what was said.  The events revolving around the coming of Messiah and the resurrection of the dead were known from the Old Testament prophets.  What was new to the disciple’s ears was that He was going away and yet would come back to get them, that they could be where He was going. 

How many times have we quoted, “let not your hearts be troubled?”  Yet we seem to live a life of trouble and worry.  We are afraid the government won’t do right, or that the culture will get worse and worse, or that apostasy in the church will grow—all of which will happen the closer we get to the great promise of rapture.  Rather than being troubled, we ought to be expecting to see the Lord at any moment.

“Ye believe in God, believe also in me.”  What further proof of the deity of Jesus Christ do we need than that?  Who would say a thing like that who was not either crazy or truly equal to God?  “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”  Many good expositors understand “the Father’s house” to be the same as the New Jerusalem described in Revelation 21.1  John saw the city descending from God out of heaven, where it evidently had been dwelling.  If this four-square city is truly the Father’s house, which it seems to be, its approximate 6000 mile circumference would cover half of the United States, just for one city!  Plenty of room for “many mansions” regardless of how one may want to describe the “dwelling places.”  I’ve never tired of singing “I’ve got a mansion, just over the hilltop,” and precisely because the song is old and takes me back to a time of more direct application of the Scripture to prophetic things.

The promise is that Jesus will come again and receive His church to Himself and take us to the Father’s house.  No other detail of how and when was given at that time.  It would not be for another twenty years until Paul would receive further revelation.

Those who will go to the Father’s house

Paul was on his second missionary journey in the city of Corinth, recorded in Acts 18:1-17, when he would be inspired to write a letter to the Thessalonian church, about AD 52.  He had just been in Thessalonica for three weeks (Acts 17:1-9) and had taught them concerning the coming of Christ.  They seemed, however, to have a question.  When Christ comes to receive believers unto Himself, what will happen to those brethren who have died?  Will they miss it.  Will they be taken later?  The great passage in 1 Thes. 4:13-18 answers that question.

Paul uses the great euphemism that Jesus introduced at the grave of Lazarus:  “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep” (John 11:11).  Paul wrote, “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep . . . Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him . . . We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent (lit. precede) them which are asleep.”  This is not some soul sleep as some have suggested.  No one who has died, saved or lost, is in an unconscious state.  The rich man died and was buried, “and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments” (Luke 16:23).  On the other hand, for the believer, “to be absent from the body [is] to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8).  This is the sleep of the body only, until at resurrection it is reunited with the spirit.  Paul said that the believers who have died already, would be resurrected just prior to when the living believers will be “caught up” and then they will all rise to meet the Lord in the air.  This is the clearest teaching on the Rapture to this point.

In verse 14, “Those who sleep in Jesus” is literally “through Jesus (dia).”  If you have died with previous faith in God through the Lord Jesus Christ, your body will rise at that time.  Then again, in verse 16, “the dead in Christ (en)” refers to the fact that all Christians from Pentecost to the Rapture are “in Christ” by virtue of Spirit Baptism and will rise as His bride.  “Shall rise first” (vs. 16) means literally “to stand up.”  Imagine being the lawn mower in the cemetery when the trumpet sounds!  But, actually, we find later in 1 Corinthians that all of this happens in the twinkling of an eye.

When will believers go to the Father’s house?

Paul remained in Corinth long enough to hear that the Thessalonians were being taught that they had already missed the Rapture.  He immediately wrote to them again, the book of Second Thessalonians.  It is amazing that there were those among the churches so early in its history who were pretending to write Scripture like the apostles.  In 2 Thes. 2:1-12 Paul tells them not to be shaken in their minds or troubled, “neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, that the day of Christ (lit. “the Lord”) is at hand” (vs. 2).  They had been taught that they were already in the tribulation period, that the “Day of the Lord” was “at hand” (lit. already begun). 

Paul had a quick and easy answer to their fears, “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition” (vs. 3).  The Day of the Lord cannot begin until two things (mentioned in this verse) happen first.  The first is the “falling away” or “apostasy.”  Pretribulationalists (I was a happy teenager when I learned I was one of these) take this to be one of two things.  Most take this to be a falling away from the faith in the latter days just prior to the coming of Christ (see 1 Tim. 4:1, 2 Tim. 3:1).  Very few would deny that such sinful days will come and most of us think we are seeing them already.  Some others take the  word “apostasy” to mean “a departure” which the word often means in Scripture.2  If this is the case, this is a definite reference to the rapture and an absolute proof for a pretribulational rapture.  I happen to agree with this but either view explained here maintains a pretribulational rapture. 

The second thing that will happen before the Day of the Lord begins is the revealing of the antichrist.  Daniel predicted that in Dan. 9:27, describing the tribulation period officially beginning when the antichrist signs a peace treaty with Israel.  There obviously was no such treaty signed in AD 52.  Israel was being scattered and the “Times of the Gentiles” were in full swing.

In vss. 6-7 Paul adds a third reason why the church cannot enter the tribulation period.  The Holy Spirit, the “Withholder,” will be taken out of the way before that time begins.  Of course, the Holy Spirit indwells the church and if the church is taken out, the Holy Spirit goes with her.  Myron Houghton sees this, and the following verses, as a restatement of the first two reasons (departure of the church and revealing of the antichrist).3 

The point of 2 Thes. 2:1-12 is that the rapture is imminent, meaning that it could happen at any moment.  The Tribulation Period is not imminent because these two (or three) things must happen before it begins.  This and one more important fact about the rapture was made known to the church a little later in Paul’s life.

How will believers go to the Father’s House?

Paul returned to Jerusalem after his second missionary journey but did not stay long.  He immediately left on his third and final journey spending over two years in Ephesus in about AD 54-55 (Acts 19:1-41).  The major challenge he faced on this journey was the trouble in the church at Corinth and Paul wrote two letters to them on this third journey.  Part of their trouble was their misunderstanding of the resurrection and Paul devoted a long chapter to that doctrine.  At the end of that chapter he turned his attention to the subject of the rapture (1 Cor. 15:51-58).

He began by writing, “Behold, I show you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed” (vs. 51).  This is a profound statement!  Jesus told us we would go to the Father’s house with him; Paul told the Thessalonians that the dead would go when the living go; and he told them that this must happen before the Tribulation Period; but now he also explains that “all” believers, dead or living, will be changed into an existence fit for the Father’s house.  This, Paul says, is a “mystery,” something true but not yet made known.  They knew what change resurrection entailed for deceased believers, but no one knew yet what change rapture entailed for the living believers. 

Since, “we shall not all sleep,” or die, before the rapture happens, living believers will be taken directly to the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, then on to heaven.  Now, I once jumped out of an airplane with a parachute, but that’s as high as I want to go without some supernatural help.  Paul said, “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”  The raptured saints will be “changed” exactly as the resurrected saints will be, so that we can all live in the Father’s house.  We will be there for seven years and then return with Christ to reign with Him for a thousand years.  It seems probable that the Father’s house, the New Jerusalem, will be above the earth during that time and accessible to those of us who are in incorruptible and immortal bodies.  In this way, death is truly “swallowed up in victory” and that victory is “through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

And So . . .

I have often heard or read of an old Civil War illustration that someone observed long ago.  In a snowy camp, some soldiers were sleeping, covered with a perfect blanket of white snow.  Others were walking around with snow on their head and shoulders.  Suddenly, a trumpet sounded and every soldier jumped into action.  Those who were sleeping quickly stood up with those who were on guard, while all shake off the snow and then run after their commander—A unique picture of the resurrection/rapture that will take place when the last trump sounds!

The word “sleep” comes from the word koima?from which we get our word “cemetery.”  A grave yard is like a dormitory with many sleepers.  When the morning bell sounds, all will have to rise.  Scripture explains that there is a first and second resurrection (Dan. 12:2).  “Marvel not at this for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice.  And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28-29).  Only faith in the Lord Jesus Christ will make one qualified for the first resurrection.  And who knows, we could hear the shout and the trumpet before we even sleep!

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

 

   Jesus may come today, Glad day! Glad day!

   And I would see my Friend; Dangers and troubles would end,

If Jesus should come today.

 

 

Notes:
1. See J. Dwight Pentecost, Things To Come (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1969) 575. Also, John Walvoord, The Revelation of Jesus Christ (Chicago:  Moody Press, 1974) 312.
2. Such writers are E. Schuyler English, Leon Wood, Kenneth Wuest, Myron Houghton, J. Vernon McGee.  Dwight Pentecost says it is “possible” (Things To Come, 332) and John Walvoord says if true, it would “definitely place the rapture before the tribulation” (The Thessalonian Epistles, p. 119).  See my March, 2012 Aletheia article supporting this view.
3. Myron Houghton, “The Rapture in 2 Th. 2:1-10” in The Faith Pulpit, April, 2002.

 

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