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Things that Peep and Mutter

Written by Rick Shrader

Things that Peep and Mutter

by Rick Shrader

“And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?  To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isa. 8:19-20).

 

The problem of believers seeking information from extra-biblical sources is certainly not new.  About a hundred years ago, chief of Criminal Investigation of Scotland Yard, Sir Robert Anderson, wrote, “Tidings reach us from all lands that earnest and spiritual Christians are being deluded, and thrown into a frenzy of exultation, by the meaningless mutterings of what is called the ‘gift of tongues,’ or by other proofs of a spiritual presence from the unseen world.”1 Nor do such conclusions about the canon of Scripture come from one particular denomination or theology, and certainly not just from fundamentalism or dispensationalism.  In the early 1800s Andrew Fuller wrote, “I concluded that we ought not to look for any new revelation of the mind of God, but to rest satisfied with what has been revealed already in his Word.”2 Around the same time John Newton wrote, “Now as God only thus reveals himself by the medium of Scripture truth, the light received this way leads the soul to the Scripture from whence it springs, and all the leading truths of the word of God soon begin to be perceived and assented to.”3 Jonathan Edwards wrote, “But now, when the true religion is long since introduced and the canon of the Scripture completed, the use of miracles in the church ceases.”4 Charles Spurgeon wrote, “The canon of revelation is closed: there is no more to be added.  God does not give a fresh revelation, but He rivets the old one.”5 And many more such quotes could be added.

Today we have the same problem with a more “Christian” dress.  The longing for more revelation from God is not limited to the cultic writings of self-proclaimed prophets such as Mohammad or Joseph Smith, nor to the flippant emotionalism of Pentecostals, Charismatics, and Third Wave experientialists. Now this hankering for a fresh word from God is quickly becoming the norm in main stream Evangelicalism.  Fundamentalists play with the same language but usually lag a few years behind until it is accepted well enough not to be criticized.

The new peeping and muttering comes from phrases like casting a vision, hearing God’s whispers, having the gift of prophecy, or experiencing God’s miracles.  The use of these has gone beyond the innocent everyday language of years gone by.  Most Christians have probably used such words to describe a spiritual moment or leading of God.  But it is becoming obvious that many authors mean something different when they use these terms.  A writer may use  terms such as “I have a vision” or “God told me” and the reader thinks he merely means spiritual understanding or human insight, but these days the writer may mean much more than that.  While using a common expression he is probably referring to a more supernatural communication with God.

A recent Barna poll6 confirms these concerns.  American believers believe God communicates with them in the following ways.  52% by connecting with their emotions; 41% through a Bible passage; 36% by providing a sign; 34% through a sermon; 31% through miraculous or inexplicable circumstances; 31% through someone speaking for God; 18% through secular material; and 16% through an audible voice or whisper.

In a recent series of articles on the differences between cessationists (those who believe miraculous gifts have ceased) and continuationists (those who believe they continue today), Central Seminary President Kevin Bauder rightfully comments,

Once an allowance is made for the continuation of phophecy, how can anyone say whether any particular prophecy is actually from God, short of its explicitly contradicting Scripture?  This is not merely a hypothetical question.  In 2009, David Wilkerson prophesied that an earth-shattering calamity was about to engulf New York City, spilling over into New Jersey and Connecticut.  In response, John Piper opined that Wilkerson’s prophecy ‘does not resonate with my spirit,’ that it doesn’t ‘smell authentic,’ and that elements of it seemed ‘too prudential.’  These words exhibit the kind of dilemma in which some continuationists find themselves.  On the one hand, they cringe from crediting this kind of prophecy.  On the other hand, they cannot simply dismiss it.  The result is that their criteria for judging prophecies give every appearance of being made up for the occasion.7

This same dilemma is forced upon all believers when they have to decipher common language used in equivocating ways.

 

The Whisperings of Bill Hybels

In a 2010 book titled, The Power Of A Whisper:  Hearing God.  Having The Guts To Respond,  mega-church pastor and author Bill Hybels claims that God has always whispered answers, directions, and words of encouragement to him.  At times Hybels seems only to mean what anyone may mean when they think God is directing them.  For example he says, “Although I hadn’t heard an audible voice, the refrain of that impression washed over me again and again that day.”8 Yet on the next page referring to the same incident he says, “What we did have was the confidence that stems from receiving a clear whisper from God” (94).

At one point in the book where Hybels is explaining whispers, he says plainly, “God Speaks.”  This is followed by these words, “Not only does God draw near to his children and seek them out when they’re having a rough go, but also he speaks words to them—words of comfort, insight and peace” (156).  Two pages later he says, “I received my begged-for direction in ten profound but simple words.  Syllable by syllable, here is precisely what the Holy Spirit laid on my heart that day:  ‘You are a treasured child of the most high God’” (158).  The book is filled with such ambiguous statements.  At one moment it is just a “prompting” or something that he “sensed.”  At another moment it is something God “revealed” or specifically “said” to him.

Chapter 4 of the book is titled, “How To Know When You’re Hearing From God.”  Here he gives five “filters” for discerning whether your whispers are really from God.  #1, “Is the Prompting Truly from God?”  seems like a bit of begging the question!  #2, “Is It Scriptural?”  would appear to be the most important.  However, later in the book Hybels tells of the process his church went through when the leadership decided to allow women ministers.  Two hundred families were leaving the church over it.  But the example is used in the book because in the midst of this controversial time he records, “God whispered a much-needed message my way,  ‘You might take a hit for what you’ve advocated, Bill, but every little girl growing up in Willow’s family for generations to come will be the beneficiary of your strong stand.’” He then adds, “It was precisely the assurance I needed, from the only One whose approval I sought” (151).  Of course, my own thoughts went directly back to filter #2, Is it Scriptural?  But what we learn is that to the person receiving these kinds of “revelations,” their experience takes immediate precedence over any other revelation God has given (a Christian version of the Islamic rule of abrogation—the last thing that was said is the most authoritative).

The concern here is the mixture of traditional Christian ways of saying that they felt “led of God” or similar things, and the crossing over the line of the supernatural reception of revelation from God.  If God has actually spoken in whispers or by other means, we may have to apologize to Joseph Smith, Muhammad, and the rest.

 

The Visions of Andy Stanley

In the same vein as whisperings, I have had a long time concern with the newer uses of the word vision.  I was first alarmed in reading George Barna’s many books where he would urge leaders to seek their own personal vision from God for their ministry.  In Andy Stanley’s 1999 book Visioneering:  God’s blueprint for developing and maintaining personal vision9, the case is made for leaders to seek a “personal vision” from God which will be that person’s special direction from God for his ministry.  The handy thing about this new doctrine is that the leader can’t be judged by any other authority including chapters and verses.  If God has given him his own personal information, who can disagree or oppose him in his ministry?

As with Hybels’ whispers, the word vision has been used in many ways by God’s people.  Generally it has been used to mean an idea or a plan for a certain project.  At first Stanley talks in terms of “your destination in life,” and where you go “on purpose.”  But quickly, by page 24, he is speaking of “a divinely ordered vision” and “your personal vision” and “God’s vision for your life.”  He says, “All divinely inspired visions are in some ways tied into God’s master plan.  Whether it is loving your wife, investing in your kids, witnessing to your neighbor, launching a ministry, or starting a company, every divinely placed burden has a link to a bigger picture” (26).  Notice the combining of divine revelation and mere burdens.

As a footnote, I’ve also been amazed at how evangelicals use mother Teresa as an example of God working through us.  Stanley (p. 186) and Hybels (pp. 109, 157) both do this.  Are we to evaluate God’s revelation by a Roman Catholic nun?  In explaining “vision casting” Stanley says, “She cast her vision to the Vatican and two years later the Missionaries of Charity was officially sanctioned by the Church” (186).  This is another example of an immediate revelation from God taking precedence over Scripture itself—unless evangelicals are ready to accept Catholic doctrine of ongoing revelation as biblical.

Because space prohibits, allow me to only briefly give two more.

 

The Prophesies of Wayne Grudem

Theologian Wayne Grudem, in his book, The Gift of Prophecy10, presents the idea that God is still giving prophecy to people today.  To guard against being aligned with outright charismatics however, Grudem proposes that God divinely gives revelation to people, but He doesn’t protect the dissemination of that revelation.  Therefore the modern prophet is not protected from error and the modern recipient is not sure whether he has received it from the prophet as God gave it to the prophet.

The Miracles of C. Peter Wagner

Peter Wagner was the partner of John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard movement.  Wagner believed that God gave miraculous power to believers today in order to combat the power of Satan (“signs and wonders”)11.  Wagner (and others) proposed that “Western” Christians don’t see the “excluded middle” tier of supernatural phenomena that takes place all around them.  Only those from an oriental “mystical” culture understand such things.  That’s why most of us do not take advantage of the power over demons and other Satanic authority.

And So . . . .

Cessationist Ernest Pickering wrote, “While theoretically God could bestow any spiritual gift He wished, He does not and will not do so in contradiction to His revealed purposes.”12 The struggle for a clear, once-for-all revealed Word of God continues today.  The issues will become cloudier rather than clearer.  The Bible believing Christian must be discerning!

 

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Hiding The Gospel From Faith Alone

Written by Rick Shrader

Hiding The Gospel From Faith Alone

by Rick Shrader

No thinking person likes it when a salesman beats around the bush before explaining the reason he’s talking with him.  Who likes to get those dinner-time calls asking for someone by name, as if it were an old friend, that turn out to be telemarketers?  Beating around the bush, bait and switch, hawking one’s wares, have always been seen as distasteful measures.  But sometimes I wonder if that isn’t what happens in many of our evangelistic churches.  I grew up in one of those “fastest-growing Sunday schools” in the 50s and 60s.  The pragmatic methodologies were well known for building a large church.  Then, in 1995, when I read and reviewed Rick Warren’s larger book, The Purpose-Driven Church,1 I responded, “what’s new here?  This is the same old philosophy with newer (and I think much more harmful) methods.”

Pragmatism always breeds slowly creeping humanism into churches which eventually acts as the anodyne to compromise.  I remember how, as a teenager in that large church, it angered me to hear the evangelicals criticizing the fundamentalists for their “nickels and noses” methods of building big churches.  But it’s been an interesting phenomenon fifty years later to see the evangelicals, who now have the bigger churches, defending the very things they once criticized.  In fact, they have gone so far beyond what the fundamentalists used to do in methodology that it pales in comparison.

Paul was plain in saying, “For we are not as many, which corrupt [lit. “hawk”] the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ” (2 Cor. 2:17).  “But we have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully [lit. “adulterating”]; but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Cor. 4:2).  To the Thessalonian church he wrote, “For neither at any time used we flattering words, as ye know, nor a cloak [lit. “pretext”] of covetousness; God is witness” (1 Thes. 2:5).  Millard Erickson, writing about the dangers of our own postmodern culture concluded, “We should therefore expect to find that we cannot simply make Christianity completely compatible with postmodernism, or completely postmodernize Christianity, without thereby distorting the Christian message to some extent.”2

I’m trying not to write just another article on methodology.  I am trying to make a specific point that I have noticed by watching these changing methodologies:  that perhaps we use these because we really don’t trust the effectiveness of our own faith.  I don’t know anyone who has criticized new methodologies who would say that all human help or persuasion is wrong.  But it seems to me that for various reasons we simply do not trust that the gospel by itself, or the local church by itself, or the Word of God by itself, would be sufficient to win anyone to Christ in our culture.  So we  try to draw them in and keep them by methods that actually do more to hide our faith than to propagate our faith.

It may be that we don’t really like Christianity much in its unvarnished form.  Churches have always gone about dressing up the faith with sights and sounds more pleasing to the natural man.  Perhaps we don’t trust that the gospel itself has enough power to draw people to Christ.  And worse, perhaps we secretly need affirmation from lost people that our faith is OK.  There is a reason John had to warn, “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you” (1 Jn. 3:13).  I have never seen such a day in which the church doesn’t like church and the brethren do not like brethren.  Today’s average believer goes out of his way NOT to appear as a believer, and the average church goes out of its way NOT to appear to be a church!  And (supposedly) all of this is done for the unbeliever’s benefit.  It’s a good thing we have learned so much about effective evangelism since the apostles’ day!  Today’s preachers make national talk shows famous, the apostles only made prisons famous.

 

We do not draw people to our churches with our faith

By camouflaging the Christian faith from the world (and from ourselves), we actually draw people by some means other than our faith.  By so doing we may actually be presenting a path of non-belief to people of the world.

 1) We design our services for people who don’t believe our faith.  Why do we do this?  I don’t expect the grocery store to try to appear as a car dealership because I like cars.  I don’t want the fast-food place to remove its sign and let me guess which kind of fast-food I would be getting if I went inside.  How do we know that people are coming to us with any gospel interest when we have hidden the gospel from them in order to get them in?

Myron Houghton, in updating Ernest Pickering’s book on Biblical Separation wrote, “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.  The separatists who struggle for a pure church will not mix the ideas of unbelievers with the teachings of the New Testament.”3

2) We hide our purpose from people who are looking for our faith.  We should ask ourselves how we would feel if we found ourselves drawn in to some venture under false pretense.  How many of us have accepted a free night in a condo, or a free gift of some sort, only to find out we had to sit through a high-pressure sales pitch?  Do you remember that feeling?  Saying “no” was difficult because you had already accepted something for nothing.  Property may be sold that way but can faith be attained that way?  Testimonies of powerful conversions (Bunyan, Newton, and Spurgeon would suffice) more often show an extended period of wrestling with sin and grace until the time of acceptance.

3) We motivate people with things contrary to our faith.  Most contemporary methodology is geared toward entertaining the lost soul with things it already likes.  How will the Holy Spirit then bring conviction?  This is where the worldling merely signs on for the ride.  “This isn’t so bad,” he figures, “this is the way I’ve always thought Christianity should be.”  Any conviction of sin has to come in spite of that, not because of it.  Somewhere the preacher or teacher is going to have to spring the surprise on the victim that these things aren’t the way Christianity really is.  “We knew you wouldn’t understand the real nature of our faith, so we dressed it up a bit.”  But the real problem comes when no differentiation is made between the world and the faith and it is left to suppose that this is the real faith.

4) We remove the labels (“brands”) that identify our faith.  I have always thought we would regret the day we began dropping our denominational names as well as when we began remodeling our sanctuaries into performance halls.  I doubt that the average church visitor these days has any idea what kind of church he is in.  What is a “Worship Center” or a “Family Life Center” or a “Gathering”?  Is there any difference in their services due to what they believe?  Does the preaching reflect any doctrinal distinctions among them?

Isn’t it most likely, that in almost any kind of “Christian” church, a visitor would find a thirty minute emotional concert, followed by a felt-needs message that could come from almost any motivational speaker?  After years of visiting visitors that come to our church, this has been the most common testimony of what they have seen in churches they have attended.  The invitation plea (if indeed one is given at all) probably has little to do with what the church actually believes.  A lost person wouldn’t know the difference between a cult and a true gospel church.  All truly helpful signs have been covered or removed.

 

We do not retain people in our churches with our faith.

Not only do we hide our faith from visitors coming in the doors, we also camouflage our faith from our own members so they won’t get bored and leave.

1) We continue to motivate people with things other than faith.  It has been said many times, you win them to what you win them with.  Even when we have offered them the bait, we still find it hard to make the switch.  If they were really converted, would they leave if we dropped the carnal motivations and went back to relying solely on the faith for motivation?  Was divine regeneration not enough to also sanctify?  Will the Word and Spirit not be enough to draw the new born child of God to further growth?  Evidently we don’t think so!  Whole industries have been built on using everything except the faith to retain new converts.  Dick Keyes, in a book called Chameleon Christianity, said, “What works in marketing may actually destroy the church and turn it into a lifestyle enclave.”4 How true that has been in our churches.  The lifestyle enclave of the average youth department is proof enough!

2) We continue to reward people for activity rather than faith.  We develop a Sesame Street mentality from childhood.  “Entertain me and I’ll learn.”  “Reward me and I’ll do the work.”  In 1985, Neil Postman wrote, Amusing Ourselves to Death in which he coined the phrase “Sesame Street” generation as applied to education.  “If we are to blame Sesame Street for anything,” he writes, “it is for the pretense that it is an ally of the classroom.”5 Fun ceased to be a by-product and became an end in itself and this has affected nearly every aspect of our growing years.  The corollary is, of course, “Take away the fun and I’m out of here.”  In our lifetime, this wave of “Entertain me and I’ll learn” has rolled through the church from the nursery to the Junior Church to the Awana circle to the youth department to the church auditorium.  Does anyone find the exercise of his own faith to be fun?  Would church attenders remain if we took away the secular motivations next week?

3) We continue to seek growth in numbers rather than in faith.  The major standard of church growth continues to be the size of the audience.  Again, my own memory goes back to my naïve teenage years when our large church had wild-West shootouts in the parking lot, famous athletes giving sports demonstrations on the platform, and Santa Clauses handing out candy on the buses.  Have we grown out of such an entertainment mode?  Just click on the website of any mega church and watch the videos.  Or watch the so-called Christian concerts held around the country by various Christian “artists”  and you will see the same pragmatic mentality.  Can a mega church stop this and still maintain its numeric stature?  Would we even have a mega church movement at all if all we had to offer was the gospel?  If most of the people would actually leave when these things ceased in our churches, how do we know if faith is real or contrived?

 

And So . . . .

We might ask ourselves, what is required of the average church member (or attender) in order to remain in his/her church?  I would venture to say almost nothing!  It would take the most egregious sin for anyone to be removed from a church today.  Rather, the tables have been so completely turned about that today the average attender requires certain things of the church which it had better offer or they will remove themselves from the church!  We have so motivated people with worldly things that faith alone has little or nothing to do with why they attend a church or why they remain in a church.

Methodologies that motivate are not bad in themselves.  But they become harmful when they replace the motivation that can only come from the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.  Christianity is a conviction of our own sinfulness and a reception of the righteousness of Christ.  If those things were allowed to happen in a human heart, no other motivation would be needed.

 

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The Bema Seat of Christ

Written by Rick Shrader

The Bema Seat of Christ

by Rick Shrader

The Bema Seat of Christ is the Judgment Seat of Christ.  “Bema” is the transliteration of the Greek word and “Judgment” is the usual English translation of that word.  Paul appeared at Gallio’s bema seat in Corinth (Acts 18:12), at Herod’s bema seat in Caesarea (Acts 23:35), and at Nero’s bema seat in Rome (Acts 25:10).  He now awaits the only bema seat that really counts, the Bema Seat of Christ.

The Bema Seat of Christ is where all believers will appear after Christ returns to take His church home at the rapture.  It is mentioned specifically as “the judgment seat” in Rom. 14:10 and 2 Cor. 5:10, and is also described specifically in 1 Cor. 3:11-15.  It is alluded to in many other New Testament Scriptures as this article will show.

This doctrine is taken most seriously by pretribulational premillennialists who are also dispensationalists (which is this author’s view).  Unless one is a premillennialist, this doctrine will be minimized into a general judgment for all believers at the end of the world.  Premillennialists who are also pretribulationalists see this happening in heaven immediately after the rapture (the casting of crowns earned takes place in Rev. 4:10, very early in the seven-year tribulation period).  Dispensationalists see this as the judgment for the church only and as a preparation for Christ’s bride before His millennial reign as Rev. 19:7-8 shows, “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come (aorist tense, “has come”), and his wife hath made herself ready.  And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness (literally plural, “righteousnesses”) of saints.”

 

Summary facts

A few things should be noted about the Bema Seat of Christ as we begin.  First, this judgment is for believers only.  Every context of these major texts involves motivation for the churches.  Paul says that no foundation can be laid except upon Jesus Christ and that even if a person’s work is burned up, he will still be saved (1 Cor. 3:11, 15).  Also, this judgment is not a judgment for the guilt of our sin.  That judgment was completed on the cross of Calvary (Col. 2:14).  John Walvoord writes,

Here, as many other times in the Pauline letters, the church is challenged to labor for Christ in view of the necessity of ultimately giving account to the Lord after He comes for His own.  It is a judgment which relates to Christians only and has to do with the matter of rewards for faithful service. . . . It should be clear from the general doctrine of justification by faith and the fact that the believer is the object of the grace of God that this is not an occasion in which the believers are punished for their sins.1

Also, as has been noted, this judgment takes place in heaven during the tribulation period and is therefore for the raptured church.  Lastly, this judgment is where the believers of this age will give account of the stewardship of their lives.  Paul says, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10).  These works will translate into “gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble” (1 Cor. 3:12) depending on their good or bad quality.  Paul summarizes to the Romans, “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:12).

 

A Current Attitude

Teaching on the Bema Seat seems to have waned in recent years.  This may be due to a number of factors.  If  preaching on the second coming of Christ has waned, so has preaching on the Bema.  Other popular views of eschatology place little or no emphasis on this doctrine or on the premillennial return of Christ at all.  Also, today’s “no judging, no losing” mentality may have made a doctrine like this unsavory to many Christians.  Coupled with this is the belief that after death nothing in the believer’s life will matter any longer; all will be erased and we will all be perfect in Christ.  This, of course, mixes the fact that the guilt for our sins is completely taken away with the fact of the accountability of our Christian stewardship.  If there can’t be a difference between these two things, how can we account for present chastisement by God (or church discipline) of his forgiven children?  Others may write off this doctrine as someone’s “guilt trip” placed upon believers, perhaps for control or power.  Still others may actually care little about rewards (“crowns,” “robes,” etc.) as long as they will be saved, miss hell, and go to heaven.  Those rewards may seem trivial compared to eternity.  Though it seems hard to imagine such Christian attitudes, they no doubt do exist.

 

Gold, Silver, Precious Stones

These things represent reward rather than loss of reward.  Perhaps the analogy is used to show things that God makes compared to the things man makes; or most probably to show things that will burn in fire and things that won’t.  If a man’s work remains after the fire, “he shall receive a reward.  If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss” (1 Cor. 3:14-15).  Leon Wood notes, “The criterion for judging will be the good pleasure of God.  Those labors which please Him, the works which make a proper contribution to ‘God’s building,’ will be declared ‘gold, silver, precious stones’; but those which displease Him, which do not so contribute, will be judged ‘wood, hay, stubble.’”2 A few  things more can be said about these rewards.

They reflect Christ’s glory at His coming.  After we spend seven years in heaven and receive our rewards, we will return with Christ (Rev. 19:14) and will bring glory to the returning King; “When he shall come to be glorified in his saints” (2 Thes. 1:10); “That the trial of your faith . . . might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:7); “That when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy” (1 Pet. 4:13).  Dwight Pentecost writes, “It may be that the reward given to the believer is a capacity to manifest the glory of Christ throughout eternity.”3

It is possible to lose our reward.  Since our rewards depend on our faithfulness to Christ, we may lose them by unfaithfulness.  Jude says, “Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward” (Jude 8).  Paul says, “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshiping of angels” (Col. 2:18).  Jesus says, “Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown” (Rev. 3:11).

We will cast our crowns at Jesus’ feet.  As I’ve already mentioned, this heavenly service (mentioned only once in Scripture) happens early in the tribulation, showing that the Bema happens immediately after the rapture.  The future tenses (“Shall fall down,” “Shall cast their crowns”) point toward a specific time, but the conjuction “whenever” (hotan) in vs 9 and the active voice (“shall be casting”) in vs 10 indicate an ongoing action.  The crowns are real but they are also tangible symbols of our millennial reward.  That will be mentioned last in this present list.

Our good works become our white robes.  Just prior to the glorious revelation of Christ when the church returns with Christ in the air to the earth, John writes, “And to her was granted that she would be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints” (Rev. 19:8).  The word “righteousness” is in the plural and means “righteous deeds” or just “righteousnesses.”  As with the crowns, the robes are symbols of our good works and their reward.

Our rewards reflect a future blessing in the kingdom of God.  If, as I believe, the marriage of the Lamb and His bride takes place in heaven (Rev. 19:7) and the marriage supper is actually the kingdom of God on the earth (Rev. 19:9), and that we will live and reign with Christ with certain authority (Rev. 20:4, Matt. 19:28), then our rewards translate into positions of authority in the millennial kingdom.  This could be the reason, in the parable of the pounds (Lk. 19: 12-28), faithfulness over money turns into rulership over cities.  This could also be the meaning of the “keys of the kingdom” which Jesus promised to His church (Matt. 16:19) when we will bind things over which we have rule.

Wood, Hay, Stubble

A few things can also be pointed out about the loss of reward.

This is not a loss of salvation.  Paul specifically says, “If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire” (1 Cor. 3:15).  The man who sinned and was disciplined by the church lost reward but not salvation, “To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5:5).  Peter says, “And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” (1 Pet. 4:18).

Much of our loss will be things that only God can judge.  Though we cannot judge motives nor see into another person’s heart, God can.  Paul says, “Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God” (1 Cor. 4:5).  This is also Paul’s argument for giving a brother the benefit of the doubt in such things.  “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:12).

The possibility of loss causes us to fear God.  The Bema Seat ought to be a great motivator to good works for the Christian.  Right after introducing the subject, Paul writes, “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11).  The word “terror” is the normal word for “fear” (phobos) but terror is a good word here since the Bema is obviously given as a deterrent to sin.  John said, “And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1 Jn. 3:3).

Loss of reward will bring shame before Christ.  John finishes writing to believers by saying, “And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming” (1 Jn. 2:28).  Wood writes, “The person will not receive a crown, and this will result in a sense of shame and loss that he did not better use his time on earth.”4 It may sound unsettling to some that the believer could experience shame after he/she is taken to heaven at the rapture.  But what is the purpose for the Bema Seat of Christ at all if not to avoid loss and shame?  Our thinking will be so much in line with our Savior’s that we will desire what He desires and disdain what He disdains.  Finally we will hate our sin as much as He does.  However, the shame will be turned to joy that, at last, all things have been set right in His presence.

 

And So . . . .

Personally I will be glad when my life has been exposed and corrected.  For the first time I will be 100% right about everything!  I would do well to be striving toward such a condition now—“That I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ” (Phil. 3:12).  That is, that my sanctification might better match my justification.  I don’t know when that great reckoning will take place but I know that it will.  It could be momentarily by rapture, or it may be by and by in death.  This means that I only have the rest of my life, whatever that may be, to serve Christ.  Eternity itself won’t afford me an opportunity to redo or add to this life.  I am confident that the reality of seeing my Savior will unveil to me an urgency to life about which I will have come greatly short.  I am also confident that His smile will quickly drive the tears away.

Younger years and older both have their earthly challenges in Christian service.  Bringing the body into subjection at both ends of life is a struggle that requires supernatural help.  May God help us all to stand before Him with rejoicing.

 

Notes:
1. John Walvoord, The Church In Prophecy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980) 145.
2. Leon Wood, The Bible & Future Events (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 1973) 50.
3. Dwight Pentecost, Things To Come (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 1969) 226.
4. Wood, 51.

 

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Will The Church Be The Church?

Written by Rick Shrader

Will The Church Be The Church?

by Rick Shrader

I have written much lately about the church being the church in today’s world.  It has been my contention that the local church of Jesus Christ needs to be about doing the Father’s business and not the world’s or the government’s or the devil’s business.  The local church of Jesus Christ is God’s instrument on earth in this age of grace to be the disseminator of the gospel, the revealed mystery once hid but now made manifest to the whole world.

Historically, God’s institutions have operated successfully when they have not strayed from their divine constitution.  God established the family in the Garden of Eden but it has often strayed from its moorings.  Our day is witnessing a struggle for the very existence of the family as God designed it.  Human Government was given by God after the Noahic flood as a means of rule, replacing the immediate intervention of the Holy Spirit during the dispensation of conscience.  Governments have come and gone, due primarily to the selfish and often evil bent of their rulers.  Both the family and human government exist today as God’s instruments on the earth.  They are sometimes good and sometimes bad but they are God’s institutions nonetheless.  Israel was and is God’s chosen people.  To them belong the promises and covenants yet to be fulfilled at the return of Jesus Christ.  Due to Israel’s rejection of the true Messiah, Jesus Christ, God has set them aside until the time of the gentiles is fulfilled and they are again restored to their intended purpose as the world-leading nation in the Kingdom of God.

The Church is God’s program for God’s people who live in this dispensation of grace.  The people of God are to assemble themselves into local churches where they live and carry out God’s Word in life and worship.  They will still uphold the traditional (provided that remains “Biblical”) family, obey the civil government, and recognize God’s future for Israel.  Yet, without violating any of those, they will live as the people of God, strangers and pilgrims though they be, communicating God’s Word to a lost and dying world, and walking in the light of that Word by covenant and conviction.

Can the church do this?  Will the church do this?  Both questions are connected.  The answer to the first is definitely “yes” but the answer to the second remains unknown.  The seven churches in Revelation all had the same advantages, all lived in the same time and place, and each faced unique challenges.  Some of them failed and some of them succeeded.  This has been true in every age and yet it has never been more challenging and critical as it is today.  The church has all it needs for both success and for failure.

The church has all it needs for success

Edward Hiscox, the well-known writer of Baptist polity, wrote, “A Christian Church is the most perfectly constructed society known to men, and its system of government the most simple and complete.  As each member on entering it, solemnly covenants to maintain, defend and abide by these regulations, so he should consider himself bound by the most sacred considerations to honor and keep his covenant inviolate.”1  Peter said that God “hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue” (2 Pet. 1:3).

The Holy Spirit.  Since every believer has received the Holy Spirit from the moment he/she was saved, the local church may be said to possess the Holy Spirit.  “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body” (1 Cor. 12:13).  This Holy Spirit immersion enables us  to understand God’s Word, to enjoy Christian fellowship, and to bring before God spiritual sacrifices that are well-pleasing to Him (Heb. 13:15-16).  This is not some charismatic-generated source of new revelation.  In that case there would be no permanent and comprehensive ground for truth in Christianity.  We have been placed into Christ and have been made to hear and understand the Word of God “once for all delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3).  The Holy Spirit is God’s gift to each believer in that He regenerates, seals, baptizes, indwells, fills, illuminates, and leads us.  Through Him we have success.

The Word of God.  The church of Jesus Christ knows that God has revealed Himself.  But we also know that such “revelation” came “at sundry times and in divers manners . . . Unto the fathers by the prophets” (Heb. 1:1).  We also know that “in these last days [He has] spoken unto us by his Son” (Heb. 1:2).  We further know that the only revelation available for us today is the Bible, the written, inspired, infallible, Word of God.  Peter assures us that this Scripture is “a more sure word of prophecy” (2 Pet. 1:19) than those that had passed away.  Further, Paul says that “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).  All that the church needs can and must be found in the written word of God.  This IS God’s prophecy for today; this IS God’s incarnation for today; this IS God’s sure Word for today.

We don’t ask for God to reveal Himself to us today.  He HAS revealed Himself and ONLY reveals Himself in His Word.  We don’t ask God to show us His Word for this church and then His Word for that church.  He HAS shown us His Word for all churches in the Scripture.  Any other searching for a new word or a further word is a plain lack of faith and only causes confusion among the churches and an insecurity as to what God’s Word really is.

The gospel of Jesus Christ.  Will the church ever lack for a message to give in this age of grace?  No! It will not.  All the various commissions to the church (Matt. 28:19-20; Mk. 16:15-16; Lk. 24:46-49; Jn. 20:21-23; Ac. 1:4-8) contain the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Paul made the gospel the opening subject in the great book of Romans, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, (which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy Scriptures,) concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord”  (Rom. 1:1-3).

The church’s job is not political or social (except within the confines of the order and service of the local assembly) but is spiritual and exclamatory.  We truly believe that this world will come to an end and eternity awaits every human being.  Heaven and hell are the only alternatives and the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only hope for any soul that will miss hell and gain heaven.  Though we are not calloused to the plight of people on this earth, the high-calling of the church is to prepare people for eternity.  When that day comes, nothing else will matter.

The field.  Jesus said that our field is the world (Matt. 13:38).  This world (kosmos) is the totality of people living at any given time.  Every local church has had a field within which it must work.  Jesus saw the field in His day white unto harvest.  Paul explained that we are workers together with God in our field and that our job is to plant the seed and water it until the time of harvest (1 Cor. 3:6-9).  Our field will have both wheat and tares growing in it (Matt. 13:24-32).  They will be separated by the angels of God at the harvest.

The church is not to use civil force to separate the tares from the wheat but is to let both grow together until the time of harvest.  This is not a mixed multitude in the church but in the world.  It is the way the field is and must be until Jesus returns but it is our field nonetheless.  The field doesn’t have to love us or care that we have this ministry, but it does have to receive seed when it is cast.  We remember that Jesus said that only a fourth of the soil will actually produce fruit (Matt. 13:10-23).  That is not discouraging but encouraging because it matches with the reality we find.  It is not our job to convert the world but rather to give seed to the world, and to let God give the increase.

The Blessed Hope.  Among many other ingredients for success that the church has is the imminent return of Jesus Christ in the rapture.  This is called a “catching up” by Paul (1 Thes. 4:17) and a “blessed hope” (Tit. 3:13).  Though only the last generation of the church will experience it, every member of the church has the responsibility to look for it and to “wait for his Son from heaven” (1 Thes. 1:10).

This looking for our Savior at any moment is a great motivation to service and a deterrent from sin.  Some have ridiculed the doctrine for these very reasons, but let the moment come and all things will be made manifest, even the hidden things of darkness and the counsels of the heart (1 Cor. 4:5).

The church has all it needs for failure

Again, the question is not whether the church can succeed, but whether it will succeed.  The church has the ingredients it needs for success but also for failure.

The old environment.  Ironically, our field in which we work is also the very thing we are not to love—the world (1 Jn. 2:15).  In preaching peace to those in the world, we are at the same time in danger of falling back into the old life ourselves.  Peter warned that “the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles” (1 Pet. 4:3), as Paul also says, “In the which ye also walked sometime, when ye lived in them” (Col. 3:7).  We must work in it but not be part of it lest we become disqualified ourselves (1 Cor. 9:27).

The old nature.  The church is made up of people who are regenerate but also who retain their flesh which they inherited from Adam.  This flesh fights against the Spirit and the Spirit against this flesh (Gal. 5:17).  This flesh must be put to death daily or it will rule in our hearts to the detriment of God’s work (Col. 3:5, Rom. 8:13).  Many today mistake our inordinate affections for positive cultural acuteness, and destroy the church of God through the human nature.

The old enemy.  The church faces the world, the flesh, and also the devil.  He is the adversary to the work of the church (1 Pet. 5:8) whom we must resist.  His demons have complete doctrines ready for the church’s destruction (1 Tim. 4:1) and false apostles who appear as angels of light (2 Cor. 11:13-15).  We spend too much time belittling him and not enough time learning to resist him.  We allow his work among unbelievers to creep into our own fellowships and feast with it without fear (Jude 12).  Only discouragement and defeat can come of such carelessness.

The old question.  The serpent asked Eve, “yea, hath God said?” (Gen. 3:1) and he has been asking the people of God the same question ever since.  The Word of God, when properly treated, can be the very source of strength and success.  But when the Word is doubted and twisted to fit our own purposes, it becomes our own excuse rather than God’s revelation.  John Newton wrote,  “Now as God only thus reveals himself by the medium of Scripture truth, the light received this way leads the soul to the Scripture from whence it springs, and all the leading truths of the word of God soon begin to be perceived and assented to.”2

And So . . .

The church will be the church if we will follow the Lord in all things and not allow the wilderness of the world and the old life to encroach upon God’s work.

Notes:
1. Edward Hiscox, The New Directory For Baptist Churches (Grand Rapids:  Kregel, 1970) 164.
2. John Newton, The Letters of John Newton (Edinburgh:  Banner of Truth Trust, 2000) 15.
 
 

 

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Politics, Social Issues, and the Church

Written by Rick Shrader

Politics, Social Issues, and the Church

by Rick Shrader

How much should the churches and their pastors be involved in politics and social issues?  The points of view on this have changed dramatically in my own life-time due first of all to the rise of the Moral Majority in the early 1980s and now again with the obvious secularization of American culture, including government, the military, education, and the current political correctness.

Added to this is our own “red-blooded American spirit” that loves God, country, and pick-up trucks (in my case, Farmall tractors).  Whether every American founding father was a born-again believer is not really the issue.  The fact is that no other gentile nation in this age of grace has been built with such Biblical principles in mind and with the Christian faith at the forefront.  For those of us who grew up praying in school and other public venues, listening to evangelistic preaching in and out of church, enjoying Christian symbols displayed in private and in public, it saddens our heart to see these great religious advantages systematically being removed and discarded, or should I say profaned!  Our parents were WWII veterans, the “great generation,”  who paid a heavy price for the freedoms we enjoyed and who tolerated no disrespect for God, mother, or country.  We also grew up with great religious freedom to speak of and witness for our faith in public; to attend religious services in church, in the park, or under a large tent at the fair grounds.  Veterans were heroic and missionaries were angelic.  Presidents, senators, and congressmen were to be respected and teachers were to be  emulated.  Officers were to be obeyed and preachers were to be believed.

The American experiment was welcomed by our Baptist forefathers because it was a system where the civil government could not unnecessarily restrict religious freedom nor the free gathering for sectarian worship.  Roland Bainton said, “These views are on the North American continent among those truths which we hold to be self-evident: the voluntary Church, the separation of Church and State, and religious liberty.  From the days of Constantine . . . These principles, to us so cardinal, had been in abeyance.”1 It is for this religious liberty that my generation has been thankful to God all our lives.

At the same time, we have enjoyed a relatively good and moral culture.  I mean relatively good compared to the Biblical culture of the local church which ought to always to be good as well as Biblical.  But in recent years we have seen abortion legalized, prayer exorcised, and homosexuality normalized.  We have seen the air waves polluted, the screen adulterated, and the internet fornicated.  The same natural tendency within us which would defend our country is ever present to defend moral right in the face of immorality and debauchery.  But how much of this can we do as Christians and/or as churches?

The question is not how much can a Christian citizen be involved in politics and social issues.  Christians have their feet in two worlds and have always felt the liberty to act as earthly citizens in whatever way was necessary as long as it was Scriptural, moral, and legal.  As a matter of fact, Christians have always made the best citizens.  They vote, pay their taxes, obey the laws of the land, willingly join the military, make an honest living, raise obedient children, build hospitals and rescue missions, and basically raise the tide of any national culture which raises all other boats in the cultural harbor.

The local church of the New Testament, however, collectively operates  differently than its individual members.  The ministry, worship, commission, and work of the local church is inextricably tied to New Testament precept and example.  The church is to be the church in whatever time and place and earthly nation it finds itself.  An individual member may find his calling to be in the banking business or a military career, but the church would not because no such calling is described for it in Scripture by text or by New Testament example.  The question remains, then: what about “the church as the church” in matters of politics and social issues?

As the pressure mounts on our society due to the loss of political freedom and the decline in moral standards, churches and their representative pastors are being pressed to get more involved in these areas because they usually hold a lot of public sway in a community.  Unfortunately this pressure often comes in the form of challenging one’s manhood, calling one out of the safety of his church office, asking one to take a stand, not abandoning one’s calling, accusations of cowardice, and a host of other irrelevant motivations.

Hugh Hewitt, writing for Townhall.com, said, “As our great country accelerates its slide into economic and moral hell, be careful whom you blame.  The present boldness of liberals and timidity of conservatives are only the secondary causes.  Much of the blame can be placed at the foot of the church . . . . Our country is failing because too many believers have abandoned their calling.”  Chuck Baldwin of V-Dare.com writes, “As a result of America’s preachers’ indifference (and that of the Christians they influence) our country is on the brink of becoming an oppressive and tyrannical state—and it’s the preachers’ fault!”

I would actually agree with Mr. Hewitt and Mr. Baldwin, but not in the way they think.  They seem to think that our country is in moral decline because the church has stayed inside its four walls and not become involved in politics and social issues.  I believe our country is in moral decline because the church has become involved in politics and social issues and has not stayed inside its four walls.  It is not that the business of the country is so important that the church must stop doing what it has been doing.  It is that the business of the church is so important that it must not stop doing what it is doing, lest individuals, families, and also the country suffer the loss of the only influence that can really make a difference.

The reasons given for the church to become more involved in politics and social causes are usually predictable.  I heard one well-known public speaker say, “If the Ship of State goes down, our little compartment goes with it.”  But can any Christian really believe that?  Do the millions of Christians in Communist China believe that?  Did the millions of Christians in the Soviet Union believe that?  Where does the New Testament say that the church’s life will depend upon the strength of the State?  If Jesus builds His church, not even the gates of hell can stand against it.

Usually someone will give the Old Testament prophets as examples of preachers who stood up to the governmental rulers.  Nathan stood up to David; John the Baptist stood up to Herod.  But do we understand the difference between a theocracy with its prophets, priests, and kings, and the New Testament church which lives in all nations, cultures, and under all forms of governments?  Do we want to live under a theocracy?  Do we want the prevailing Church to wield the sword of  the civil authority over the citizens of a country?  Ask John Bunyan during his years in Bedford jail about a union of church and state.  Ask translator John Rogers, Bloody Mary’s first candle to burn at Smithfield, about the church’s influence over the state.

The most embarrassing fact for those seeking the church’s involvement in politics and social issues is that the church of the first century, the church of Peter, James, John, and Paul, lived under the terrible Roman Empire and yet we find absolutely no command or example of political or social involvement.  Surely, if this were the business of the church, we would find that first church engaged in it.  But we do not, to the embarrassment of many.  But then they say, if Paul would have lived and ministered in a democracy, he would have been involved.  Thus implying that some Biblical principle of involvement is latent within the Scripture (perhaps some form of Theonomy, Christian Reconstruction, or Dominion Theology) that will inevitably come out when the circumstance presents itself.  In that case, welcome to the Jeremiah Wright doctrine of politics and religion!  No!  God sent His Son and wrote His Book in the fullness of time.  He knew what context in which to put the Biblical model just as He knew every situation in which His precious people would live and apply it over the next two thousand years.  His martyrs (“Of whom the world is not worthy”) did not fail in their stewardship, but overcame “by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death” (Rev. 12:11).

There are a few related things in the New Testament.  There is an unyielding loyalty to the future state:  the coming millennial kingdom of God.  That is the believer’s real Fatherland and it is that to which he is entirely loyal.  There is an unrelenting commitment to the saving gospel of Jesus Christ.  That is still the only thing that can change a person’s life and values.  There is an uncompromising separation of the truth from untruth and unbelief.  An occasional compromise, even for the sake of patriotism, will not be entertained.  There is also a total commitment of the believer’s life to the ministry and fellowship of his/her local church.  It is within this “sectarian” environment that real godliness and, yes, good citizenship is produced.  It is here that believers in the age of grace have been schooled in a world-changing culture.  That is why Paul commands us to pray “for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.  For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior; who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3-4).

We can give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s by doing as Jesus instructed—paying our taxes and being good citizens; but we cannot give unto God the things that are God’s without strong and vibrant local churches within which we build up the saints on the most holy faith for the work of the ministry in this world and the edifying of the body of Christ.  Salt and light must be different than meat and darkness if they are going to accomplish anything positive.  We have spent too much time allowing the church to be like the world that it can no longer effect the world for righteousness’ sake.  Yes, we are also earthly citizens of a country with certain rights and privileges of citizenship.  We may exercise those rights as believers and we will be able to do what citizens can do.  But if we are not first and foremost Christians who possess the Spirit of God and the Word of God in the church of God, we can do no more than that.  The local church is the most powerful force for good the world has ever known.

A sports team cannot play well on the field if they do not first retreat to the practice field.  That practice will be designed for the players, not the spectators.  It will require commitment and hard work.  It will require common agreement to follow the coach’s instruction and the play book.  It is not designed for non-players, fans, or critics.   It is designed for only one purpose—that the team will win on the real field on game day.  The gathered local church is the Christians’  practice session.  We must do it well if we are going to affect our world.

In their book, Blinded By Might, Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson concluded that their work in the Moral Majority in the 1980s was a failure due to many reasons.  They write, “The church that belongs to Jesus is not part of anyone’s agenda.  In fact, people who belong to him provide the only agenda that ultimately counts. . . . It is the only force that can make an enemy into a friend, a criminal into a saint, a biological father into a real parent.  And it makes the most ambitious political agenda we can possibly imagine look trivial by comparison.”2 Darryl Hart agrees:  “To use Christianity for public or political ends fundamentally distorts the Christian religion because it is essentially an otherworldly faith.”3

May God give His church the faith and courage to be the church in our generation.  May we live by the faith we profess and faithfully proclaim it throughout this lost and dying world for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ and His coming kingdom.

Notes:
1. Quoted by Leonard Verduin, The Reformers and their Stepchildren (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 1964) 91.
2. Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson, Blinded By Might (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 1999) 97.
3. Darryl Hart, A Secular Faith (Chicago:  Ivan R. Dee, 2006) 16.

 

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Separation: A Christian Perspective (Pa...

Written by Rick Shrader

Separation: A Christian Perspective (Part 2)

by Rick Shrader

In the second part of this article I want to apply the Biblical doctrine of separation to seven areas of our Christian lives.  We continue to focus on how we can be in the world without becoming part of the world.  John Newton, the English pastor and song writer, wrote the following answer in a letter to a friend:

In our way of little life in the country, serious people often complain of the snares they meet with from worldly people, and yet, they must mix with them to get a livelihood.  I advise them, if they can, to do their business with the world as they do it in the rain.  If their business calls them abroad, they will not leave it undone for fear of being a little wet; but then, when it is done, they presently seek shelter, and will not stand in the rain for pleasure: so providential and necessary calls of duty, that lead us into the world, will not hurt us, if we find the spirit of the world unpleasant, and are glad to retire from it, and keep out of it as much as our relative duties will permit.  That which is our cross, is not so likely to be our snare; but if that spirit, which we should always watch and pray against, infects and assimilates our minds to itself, then we are sure to suffer loss, and act below the dignity of our profession.1

It should be noted also that separation is not argumentative or caustic by nature, though many separatists have been so by personality.  The separatist separates.  He walks away, unless there is Biblical reason to admonish.  His course of action is not dependent on whether others do right but only on his own faithfulness to Biblical living.  When God says, “Come out from among them” (2 Cor. 6:17), that is what he does.  Dr. Clearwaters used to tell us, “The liberals never built anything, they took over everything they own.”  Whether that is 100% true, I don’t know, but his point was that separatists have always been willing to leave when staying was a violation of their conscience.  The testimony of many liberal schools and churches that were once fundamental might prove the statement largely true.

Personal Separation

Every believer can follow Christ whole-heartedly.  God does not ask us things that are impossible.  Most admonitions to holy living in the Bible are directed to the individual.  We all have a space (“my space,” if you will) for which we will give an account one day.  Two millenniums of martyrs is testimony enough to the fact that if you believe strongly in your convictions, no one can make you act against them.  Oswald Chambers wrote, “When once the protest is made where your Lord requires you to make it, you will soon find where you stand — exactly where Jesus said you would, outside the synagogue, called purist, narrow, and absurd.”2 Paul earnestly wrote to the Thessalonians, “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thes. 5:23).

The most well-known passage on personal separation is Rom. 12:1-3.  It contains a negative and a positive command.  We are not to be “conformed” to the world.  This word is from the word, suschematiz?, from which we get the word “schematic.”  It is the outward drawing or representation of what is inside.  We are not to use our very bodies as an advertisement for the world but rather for a living sacrifice to God.  But we are also to be “transformed” by the renewing of our mind.  This word is the word, metamorpho?, which means to have a metamorphosis occur from the inside out.  When we think holy, we will begin to live holy.

Family Separation

The next larger circle of fellowship for the believer is the family.  We may not think of separation taking place within the family but it does quite frequently.  Children may come to Christ within a lost family; a spouse may get saved but the other does not; or children may rebel against the faith of the family and forefathers.  Many faithful believers in such situations are forced to make critical decisions concerning their faith.  D.L. Moody wrote, “Anything that comes between me and God — between my world and God — quenches the Spirit.  It may be my family.  You may say:  ‘Is there any danger of my loving my family too much?’  Not if we love God more;  but God must have the first place.  If I love my family more than God, then I am quenching the Spirit of God within me.”3

If the family is united in their convictions, they will seek a life-style that is not only pleasing to God but agreed upon by all family members.  Areas of entertainment, music, television, the internet, will have agreed upon rules and limits.  The world is against the Christian family and today’s choices are as critical as ever.  It is time for Christian families to again abstain rather than indulge.  Concerts, theaters, dances, and many internet social sites are controlled by godless unbelievers and rarely offer anything uplifting or spiritually positive.

The families of our churches are raising the future leaders in our churches.  If we are eroding the very moral and spiritual foundation upon which the churches will be built, the future will not be positive.  Parents need to take back the leadership in these areas.

Local Church Separation

Individual believers and families made up of individuals, ought to seek a place to worship where their convictions about holy living can be lived out.  This involves the documents of the church which reveal doctrinal beliefs and practices, the reverence of the worship service, and the life-styles of the leadership and membership.  This will also be affected by the sister churches and associations with which the church participates in meetings, camps, retreats, and other forms of fellowship.

Ernest Pickering wrote, “This is the very point.  The issue of separation does not involve the believer’s relationship in an invisible church.  It involves believers’ relationship to visible churches.  The local visible church is a voluntary society.    While membership in the Body of Christ, the so-called universal church, is by the sovereign disposition of the Spirit, membership in a local congregation is by the free choice of a believer as he or she responds to what the Scriptures teach.  Freedom of association is at the root of separatist practice and teaching.”4 The believer, therefore, will separate from a local church which he cannot join, or may have to separate from his own church if it is not practicing according to his Biblically based convictions.

Universal Church Separation

I mean by this that when a believer separates from other believers, those who truly belong to Christ, he is separating within the sphere of the whole  body of Christ.  Paul told the Romans, “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them” (Rom. 16:17).  Paul also told the Thessalonians, “Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us” (2 Thes. 3:6).  These verses apply to discipline within the local church and also, by logical inference, to any other brother in Christ who is walking in a way in which fellowship with him would be harmful (1 Tim. 1:20; 2 Tim. 2:17-18).

Rolland McCune wrote, “Ecclesiastical separation is the refusal to collaborate in or the withdrawal from a working relationship with an organization or a religious leader that deviates from the standards of Scripture.”5 This may involve leaving an organization but it may also simply mean the impossibility of joining or fellowshipping in various circles of Christian ministries.  This is why believers choose to be in one denomination rather than another, or why even within denominations, some churches would or would not join a certain fellowship, association, or convention.

Professing Church Separation

We often call this Christendom.  There are many religious people who do not know the Lord as Savior.  Liberalism has taken the gospel message away from many people who are in apostate denominations, churches, and cults.  They call Jesus Lord, but in works they deny Him.  We may work around them, live next to them, share a meal and witness to them, even go to church across the street from them, but we cannot bid them “God speed” without being partakers in their “evil deeds” (2 Jn. 10-11).

Commenting on Psalm 129:8, “Neither do they which go by say, ‘the blessing of the LORD be upon you: we bless you in the name of the LORD,”  Spurgeon wrote, “When persecutors are worrying the saints, we cannot say, ‘the blessing of the Lord be upon you.’  When they slander the godly and oppose the doctrine of the cross, we dare not bless them in the name of the Lord.  It would be infamous to compromise the name of the righteous Jehovah by pronouncing his blessing upon unrighteous deeds.”6

The book of Jude as well as the second chapter of 2 Peter were written to warn us of unbelievers creeping into our churches and fellowships.  Not only must we separate from such apostasy, but we must also admonish the brethren to do so.  Biblical writers used the strongest terms in describing apostates (wolves, accursed, false apostles, deceitful workers, ungodly, mockers). For a believer to continue to say “God speed” to them, is to be a partaker of “all” their deeds and to become himself disorderly.  From such a brother, other brethren should separate.

National Separation

The church of Jesus Christ is a spiritual nation within a physical nation.  We take on earthly citizenship and participate in the nation’s activities including commerce, neighborliness, and good citizenship.  As individual believers, we exercise citizenship as the apostles did in a Roman nation.  We are its best citizens when it comes to being law-abiding, honest, moral, and productive.  We may be involved in politics, the military, education, or a number of professions.  In this way we affect the culture positively.

Many conservatives have noted that the Bible is void of any social or political mandate for the local church.7 Considering the Roman Empire of the first century, if the Bible was ever going to command the local church to change the culture, it would have been then, but it didn’t.  The church gathered must be about doing what it is commanded in Scripture to do:  build up the saints to live godly in this world.  Then when those saints leave that safe retreat, they are prepared to go out into a hostile world as good soldiers of Jesus Christ.

World Separation

Surely we know that we are not to love the world nor the things in the world (1 Jn. 2:15).  If a believer becomes the friend of the world, he becomes the enemy of God (Jas. 4:4).  But this doesn’t seem to be the case with many Christians.  They have tried every way they can to soften the godlessness of the world, and to find ways to indulge themselves in the world and still be a friend to God.  It just can’t be done.  In fact, John wrote, “If we say we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth” (1 Jn. 1:6).  We are not talking about the globe as the world, or even the people to whom we are debtors with the gospel, but about the kosmos, the culture created by the sinful nature of lost people.

And So . . . .

“It is a matter of most solemn import that, whereas here and elsewhere in Scripture he who would walk with God is called to separate himself from unholy associations and the fellowship of the mixed multitude, even though it be found in what calls itself the Church.”8

Notes:
1. John Newton, The Letters of John Newton (Edinburgh:  Banner of Truth Trust, 2000) 163.
2. Oswald Chambers, Biblical Ethics (Grand Rapids:  Discovery House, 1998) 44.
3. D.L. Moody, Spiritual Power (Chicago: Moody Press, 1997) 125.
4. Ernest Pickering, Biblical Separation (Schaumburg:  RBP, 1976) 226.
5. Rolland McCune, Promised Unfulfilled (Greenville:  Ambassador Int’l, 2004) 125.
6. Charles Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, vol. VII (Grand Rapids:  Baker Book House, 1978) 58.
7. See McCune, part 7, “Social Involvement.”  Also, Darryl Hart, A Secular Faith, especially chapter 8, “The Dilemma of Compassionate Conservatism.”
8. H. A. Ironside, Holiness, The False and the True, (New York:  Loizeaux Brothers, nd) 72.

 

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Separation: A Christian Perspective (Pa...

Written by Rick Shrader

Separation: A Christian Perspective (Part 1)

by Rick Shrader

The Bible teaches a doctrine of separation.  Biblical separation is not a mere occurrence as politeness or rudeness.  Separation is something that is commanded by God in the Scripture and something that was lived out by prophets, patriarchs, and apostles, as well as the Son of God Himself.  To be “holy” as God is holy, or to be “sanctified,” means to be set apart unto God.  It is only then that He can be a Father to us and we can be sons and daughters to Him (2 Cor. 6:18).

The apostle Paul brings forward Israel’s requirement to be a separated people into the church when he quotes Isaiah 52:11 as an absolute requirement for the believers in Corinth (2 Cor. 6:17-18).  He does the same when he quotes God’s command to Abraham in Gen. 21:10 in order to instruct the Galatian church to “Cast out the bond-woman and her son” (Gal. 4:30), meaning, obviously, to separate themselves from the false doctrine of legalism.

It has always been a struggle for the church to grasp how she can practice separation as Israel did being a theocracy, a national entity, and yet be the church which is not a theocracy nor a nationalized entity.  The church cannot retreat to a mountain top or a commune, but must somehow be in the world while not being of the world.  Paul was still teaching this principle to the Corinthians in the midst of their church discipline when he wrote, “I wrote unto you in an epistle not to 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 out of the world.  But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such a one, no, not to eat” (1 Cor. 5:9-11).

Vance Havner said it this way, “The Christian has been saved out of the world.  He is in the world but not of it and he is sent into the world to win others out of the world, which is his business in this world.  He must keep separated from its defilements, yet he must be in the midst of it for the salt must be mixed with whatever it is to purify.”1 However, salt can only purify when it is unlike meat.  Light can only illuminate when it is unlike darkness.  But this “unlikeness” has become distasteful to many Christians and separation has become the nadir of popular Christianity.  More than that, separatists have been made to be the enemy of God’s grace rather than the biblical result of that grace (see Tit. 2:11-12).  Ernest Pickering responded to this when he wrote, “This is one of the laments made by anti-separatists—that the doctrine of separation, premised as it is upon the ideal of a pure church, lends itself to repeated separations.  This is true in a sense, because every generation must fight its own battles and the war is never won.  The culprit, however, is not the prickly fundamentalist who cannot live at peace with his brethren, but rather the never-ending maliciousness of Satan.”2

In this first article, I want to lay out what I believe to be the biblical basis for separation.  This basis is seen intertwined in the very nature of no less than six other important Christian doctrines.  In the second article, I want to apply the doctrine of separation to seven areas of the Christian life.  This will begin with personal separation and work its way outward in concentric circles to family, local church, universal church, professing church, the nation, and the world.  Here, we begin with the over-arching doctrine of God’s holiness and proceed on to the future reward and high calling of all believers, heaven itself.

The separate nature of God’s holiness

“Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; 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. 1:13-17).

God is unchanged by the sinfulness of this world.  It is only by His grace that He is longsuffering and willing to restore sinners to Himself before He destroys the whole fallen world with fire.  In eternity He will not have compromised His holiness in any way.  The only way for any part of His creation to abide with Him eternally is to become as He is—holy.  J.N. Darby said, “Separation from evil is the necessary first principle of communion with Him.  Separation from evil is His principle of unity. . . Wherever the body declines the putting away of evil, it becomes in its unity a denier of God’s character of holiness, and then separation from the evil is the path of the saint.”3

The degrading nature of man’s sin

“This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness” (Eph. 4:17-19).

J. Gresham Machen wrote, “Everything in the Bible is concerned with the fact of sin; the relationship in which man as man stood to God has been broken by transgression, and only when that barrier is removed is there sonship worthy of the name.”4 The whole world has gone “in the way of Cain” (Jude 11).   Do we understand the offense our sin is to God?  Fallen man is a mere shell of his former glory when Adam was the king of Eden.  Now a flaming cherub separates man from the tree of life, and only death can repair the breach.  Fallen man has no moral connection with God even though he remains a creature in His likeness.  He is “in Adam” (1 Cor. 15:22), and must be in Christ if he is to be accepted at all.  “Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (Jas. 4:4).

The radical nature of our redemption

Redemption is of Jesus Christ, “who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30), and not of ourselves!  “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation . . . But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 1:18-19).  It took the blood of the holy and righteous Son of God to purchase us from the slave-market of sin.  And when that happened, we were radically changed: positionally in an instant and relationally in a progression.  We are not only a new creature, but a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation that we should show forth the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9).

It would be a biblical contradiction for the new creature in Christ to remain like the world.  Charles Ryrie wrote, “Separation from the world, or nonconformity, is being unfashionable, and this is a necessary characteristic of the dedicated life.”5 William Newell, writing of Abraham’s pilgrim faith, said, “But now, also in Abraham, the principle of strangerhood is first seen: Abraham is called out; for the world had left God.  So God’s people are to leave it today.”6

The progressive nature of our sanctification

“For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication” (1 Thes. 4:3).  Though we are positionally in Christ, and that secures our eternal salvation, we must not neglect, as many do, the on-going nature of this sanctification process.  Only on purpose could one miss the biblical admonitions to grow in grace and to progress in holiness while in this life.  So Peter says, “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul” (1 Pet. 2:11).

This progressive nature of a growing holiness brings with it an antipathy from the world.  The more we grow into the likeness of Christ, the more the world becomes unsympathetic to our life-style.  This is what the weak Christian does not like and seeks to avoid, yet the only way to avoid it is to avoid holiness.  “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Tim. 3:12).  “And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold” (Matt. 24:12).  Jesus said, “These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.  In the world ye shall have tribulation” (Jn. 16:33).  The problem of too many today is that they want peace in the world and so they find tribulation in Christ.  Spurgeon said, “You cannot grow in grace to any high degree while you are conformed to the world.  The life of separation may be a path of sorrow, but it is the highway of safety, and though the separated life may cost you many pangs, and make every day a battle, yet it is a happy life after all.”7

The urgent nature of our evangelism

Perhaps the most tragic result of a lack of separation is a lack of power for evangelism.  The love of the world is powerful enough to convince the weak Christian that worldliness is actually better for evangelism.  The offense of the cross becomes an offense to the believer rather than to the world.  This is the very crux of the matter.  Jesus said, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (Jn. 12:32).  When will we learn that men must come to Christ by way of the cross?  It is the weary path of the penitent that opens to the bright sunshine of grace.  Jesus said, “They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mk. 2:17).  We have become so busy making the gospel palatable to the world that we are now trying to call the righteous to repentance.  If Jesus could not do it, neither can we.

It is that separation, that apartness from the world, that God uses to draw sinners.  John was on his way to Patmos when he wrote, “They are of the world:  therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.  We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us.  Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error” (1 Jn. 4:5-6).

The forward nature of our calling

C.I. Scofield wrote, “The church is everywhere said to be heavenly in calling and destiny, and exhorted as pilgrim and stranger to walk in holy separation from the world which hated Christ and will hate the faithful disciple of Christ; her one mission, the preaching of a crucified Christ to a lost world.”8 We are the called of God and that calling calls us all the way home as a father who stands at the door and calls his children home for supper. This calling pulls us outward and upward the further we walk in life.  The outward man may be perishing, but the inward man is renewed day by day.   Holiness becomes us the more we become like Him. “Who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling” (2 Tim. 1:9); “For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness” (1 Thes. 4:7).

It is in this way that we live in the world and yet become more separated from it.  As we do, we become more and more effective in the cause of Christ.  Oswald Chambers helps us see, then, how separation from the world has a powerful effect in the world, “The things that used to be ends in view have not only ceased to be ends, they have ceased to have any interest for us at all; they have become tasteless.  This is the way God enables us to be fundamentally dead to the things of the world while we live amongst them.”9 Soon we will live and reign with the King of Righteousness and we will wear a crown of righteousness if we are among those who love His appearing.  If we have this hope in us, we will purify ourselves as He, whom we are about to see, is pure.

Notes:
1. Vance Havner, All The Days (Old Tappan:  Revell, 1976) 181.
2. Ernest Pickering, Biblical Separation (Schaumburg:  RBP, 1979) 190.
3. By Pickering, p. 116.
4. J. Gresham Machen, What Is Faith? (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 1979) 85.
5. Charles Ryrie, Balancing The Christian Life (Chicago:  Moody, 1994) 83.
6. William Newell, Hebrews (Chicago:  Moody, 1947) 380.
7. Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 1948) 107.
8. C.I. Scofield, Addresses on Prophecy (Greenville:  The Gospel Hour, nd) 25.
9. Oswald Chambers, The Moral Foundations of Life (Grand Rapids:  Discovery House, 1998) 168.
 

 

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New Testament Heralds

Written by Rick Shrader

New Testament Heralds

by Rick Shrader

This article appeared in the Spring 2003 (Vol 13, No. 1) issue of The Baptist Preacher’s Journal

Introduction

Perhaps the most seldom used title in the Bible for the minister is “Preacher.”  It translates the noun form of the word kerux (kerux) which means “a herald.”  Though the English word “Preacher” appears four times, one time (Rom 10:14) is actually a verb, and another (2 Pet 2:5) refers to Noah, an Old Testament character.  So the title “Preacher,” referring to the New Testament minister is only used by the Apostle Paul to describe himself.  Once in 1 Timothy 2:7 and again in 2 Timothy 1:11, Paul says that God ordained him to be a preacher.

The job of a herald was a duty-oriented job.  He was employed by a king to announce what the king gave him.  He could not alter the announcement to fit his own whims.  It was the message of the king and it must be delivered exactly as it was given.  The herald was not a Groucho Marx who used to say, “Those are my principles!  And if you don’t like them . . . . well, I have others.”  No, these were the king’s principles.

The disciples were often asked to perform tasks like a herald.  All four gospels include the story of the triumphal entry when Jesus commanded two of His disciples to go into Jerusalem and untie someone else’s donkey and bring it to Jesus.  If the owner asked why they were taking his donkey, they were to reply with the exact words of Jesus: ”the Master has need of them.”  Mark records that the two disciples said unto them even as Jesus had commanded: and they let them go (Mark 11:6).  The king’s words would be the authority for the herald’s words.   Similarly, in Acts chapter nine, Ananias was commanded to go to Saul, put his hands on him, call him “brother,” and say that Jesus had send him.  The words of Jesus would be enough to overcome Ananias’s fear of the former persecutor.  He found it to be so.  Heralds are not merely witnesses who tell what they have seen.  Neither are they instructors who elaborate on the material being presented.  They are more like stewards who are responsible for what has been placed in their hands.

Though the word kerux (kerux) appears only three times as a proper noun (“preacher”), it appears a number of times as the action (”preaching”) and sometimes as the message (“the thing preached”).  Kittel’s Theological dictionary devotes 35 pages to its definition.  There are some clear observations concerning a herald:  1) Every king had one.  It was his ordained means of getting a message to the people.  2) They were untouchable.  If someone attacked the messenger, he would suffer punishment as if he had attacked the king himself.  3) They were sworn to exactness.  Gerhard Friedrich, writing the article in Kittel’s, says, “It is demanded then, that they deliver their message as it is given to them.  The essential point about the report which they give is that it does not originate with them.  Behind it stands a higher power.  The herald does not express his own views.  He is the spokesman for his master.”[i]

According to Kittel’s, the Greeks recognized three heralds:  1) Hermes was the interpreter of the gods.  In Lystra (Acts 14), Paul was called Hermes (Mercurius) because he was the chief speaker (vs 12).  2) Birds were considered messengers of the gods, especially the rooster who announced the new day and various watches of the night.  3) The philosophers were considered heralds and called “messengers” with the word angelos (angelos). This is why the New Testament pastors can be called “angels” and it was understood as heralds.  Paul wrote to the Galatians, you received me as an angel of God (Gal 4:14).  In Revelation 2-3, Christ gives His message to the “angels” of the churches and when they deliver the message, the Holy Spirit applies it to whomever has ears to hear.

In the book of 2 Timothy, Paul uses all three forms of the word “Herald.”  In 1:11 he writes of the kerux (kerux), the preacher, messenger.  In 4:2 he writes of the keruso (kerusso), the preaching, or messages.  Then in 4:17 he talks of the kerygma (kerygma), the thing preached, the subject of the message itself.

 

I. The Preacher (the Messenger)

2 Tim. 1:11 Whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.

The apostle Paul tells Timothy that he was “appointed” to this high office by the Lord.  This is the word Jesus used when He said to Paul, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth (Acts 13:47).  Again, Paul says, But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts (2 Thes 2:4).

First, God’s herald doesn’t have to be a great man, but he does have to be a man of God. Paul again says to Timothy, But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness (1 Tim 6:11).  I don’t believe great men ever wanted to be great, they just wanted to be men of God and God used them in great ways.  One problem today in our ministerial schools is that we are teaching young men to want to be great men without first being men of God.  Vance Havner wrote, “What our forefathers were without knowing it, we want to know without being it.”[ii] Savonarola said, “In the primitive church the chalices were of wood and the prelates were of gold; today the prelates are of wood and the chalices are of gold.”[iii]

A tourist group, visiting birth-places of famous people, passed through a European village. One of the tourists asked a local man standing on a corner, “Were there any famous leaders born in this village?”  “No,” the man replied, “Just babies.”  Sometimes young people want the things of greatness without paying the price of greatness.  John Bunyan was born into a tinker’s home—one of the lowest status occupations of the time.  But Bunyan became a man of God and a powerful preacher.  Armitage tells that, “John Owen heard him preach, probably at Zoar Chapel, and when King Charles expressed wonder that a man of his [Owen’s] learning could bear to listen to the ‘prate’ of a tinker, he answered, that he would gladly give all his learning for this tinker’s power.”[iv] Bunyan titled his autobiography, “Grace Abounding To The Chief Of Sinners.”  If more of us would desire to be known as the Chief of Sinners, rather than the Chief Executive Officer, we might have more power with God.

George Whitefield cried, “O, grant I may, like a pure crystal, transmit all the light Thou pourest over me, and never claim as my own what is thy sole property”[v] J. Vernon McGee tells about G.Campbell Morgan’s call to the ministry:

“Dr (G. Campbell) Morgan tells how he wrestled with this problem of calling.  He was a school teacher when he was called as a minister.  It was a very solemn moment for him.  He felt that the Lord was saying to him, ‘You have been set apart definitely for the ministry of the Word.  Now do you want to be a great preacher or do you want to be my servant?’  The first thought that Dr. Morgan had was, ‘I want to be a great preacher.’    That ought to be a wonderful ambition, but after a while the Lord began to press it in upon him, ‘Do you want to be a great preacher, or do you want to be my servant?’  Finally Dr. Morgan came to it.  He saw that he had to make a choice.  Finally he said, ‘Oh blessed Lord, I would rather be Thy servant than anything else.’”[vi]

Second, God’s herald must have the mind of Christ, not the mind of the world. Paul was insistent on this qualification for a minister of Christ.  For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Tim. 1:7 ) Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; (2 Cor. 3:5 ) For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Cor 2:16)  It was Demas who had the mind of the world.  For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; (2 Tim 4:10).  God’s heralds cannot be as Jannes and Jambres, men of corrupt minds (2 Tim 3:8).  Friedrich says, “Heralds adopt the mind of those who commission them, and act with the plenipotentiary [full power] authority of their masters.  It is with this authority that the kerux (kerux) conducts diplomatic business.”[vii]

Our authority as preachers of the gospel comes from the Spirit of God within us!    That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us (2 Tim 1:14).  R.C. Sproul wrote, “We can be skilled preachers without the Spirit.  We can be theological geniuses after the flesh.  We can be silver-tongued orators apart from grace.  But the only source of the fruit of the Spirit is the work of the Holy Spirit within us.”[viii] Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “To me there is nothing more terrible for a preacher than to be in the pulpit alone, without the conscious smile of God.”[ix]

John describes the preacher with the worldly mind contrasted with the preacher with the mind of Christ:  They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.  We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us.  Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error (1 John 4:5-6).  Too many of God’s ministers are busy winning themselves to the world rather than winning the world to Christ.  It is because they have the mind of the world.

Old A.C. Dixon helped formulate the “Fundamentals” that gave us our name at the turn of the last century.  He had pastured both Spurgeon’s Tabernacle and Moody Memorial Church.  He writes,

“Every preacher is, or ought to be, a prophet of God who preaches as God bids him without regard to results.  When he becomes conscious of the fact that he is a leader in his church or denomination, he has reached a crisis in his ministry.  Shall he be a prophet of God or a leader of men?  If he decides only to be a prophet insofar as he can without losing his leadership, he becomes a diplomat and ceases to be a prophet at all.  If he decides to maintain his leadership at all costs he may easily fall to the level of a politician who pulls the wires to gain or hold a position.  He who would prophesy or speak forth the message of God is careful of none of these things but only that he shall speak the message that God gives him, even though he be in a lonesome minority.”[x]

George Liddell, who helped compile the famous Liddell and Scott Lexicon, wrote,

“Give me a man of God—one man, whose faith is master of his mind, and I will right all wrongs and bless the name of all mankind.

Give me a man of God—one man, whose tongue is touched with heaven’s fire, and I will flame the darkest hearts with high resolve and clean desire.

Give me a man of God—one man, one mighty prophet of the Lord, and I will give you peace on earth, bought with a prayer and not a sword.

Give me a man of God—one man, true to the vision that he sees, and I will build your broken shrines and bring the nations to their knees.”[xi]

 

II. The Preaching (the Messages)

2 Tim. 4:2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.

Here Paul exhorts Timothy to action!  Now he is to pay attention to the way in which the message goes forth.  “Herald the Word”  This is the way in which the prophets of old delivered their message.  Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. (Isa 58:1).  Paul wrote, We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; (2 Cor 4:13).  This is one methodology that cannot be changed or amended!

First, the urgency of the situation requires it.  Here our word for “herald” is not only a verb of action, but is in the imperative.  It is a command to preachers of the gospel.  “Be instant” Paul says.  The kerux (kerux) is always ready with the kerusso (kerusso).  Charles Finney was invited to preach for an entire summer at Five Points in Lower Manhattan by Lewis Tappan.  Finney questioned whether they would receive him in such a sinful place.  Tappan replied, “A place admirably located for the destruction of souls is equally well located for conceiving them.”[xii] Finney preached that summer to about 2000 people a night in the Chatham Garden Theater.  Finney describes his method of delivering the message as a herald:

“You breast yourself to the work like a giant.  You open the attack with Jupiter’s thunderbolt.  You take the doctrine for a damning fact—declare you know it—raise your voice—lift high your hand—bend forward your trunk—fasten your staring eyes upon the auditors—declare that they know it to be God’s truth; that they stand upon the brink of hell’s gaping pit of fire and brimstone . . . unless they repent forthwith.”[xiii]

Paul reminded the Corinthians, For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ. (2 Cor 2:17).

Second, The message of the King guides it.  It must be “the Word” which the herald proclaims.  When we decide to change it to fit the situation, we have betrayed our King.  D.L. Moody said, “When a minister or a messenger of Christ begins to change the message because he thinks it is not exactly what it ought to be, and thinks he is wiser than God, God just dismisses that man.”[xiv]

By now we all recognize that this is a postmodern society.  We are finding it more and more difficult to speak the message of our King in a straightforward manner.  Our audience has a hard time accepting anything without a “hermeneutic of suspicion.”  They can say one thing and do another.  They can say one thing and believe another.  They can even say one thing and intend another, and they believe all of us are using language and media the same way!  Benjamin Woolley, a postmodern writer, said, “Artificial reality is the authentic postmodern condition, and virtual reality its definitive technological expression . . . . The artificial is the authentic.”[xv] Millard Erickson describes our difficulty in this way:

“I have a T-shirt that I bought from the American Philosophical Association, of which I am a member.  On the front is printed the following: ‘The sentence on the back of this shirt is false.’  On the back, however, this appears:  ‘The sentence on the front of this shirt is true.’  Now it may be possible to believe either the front or the back of the shirt, or to believe both, but at different times.  It is not psychologically possible to believe both at the same time, and in the same respect.  It simply cannot be done, while retaining one’s sanity.”[xvi]

As ministers of Christ, and as heralds of the gospel, we must not let our preaching fall to such a low estate.  Paul said, But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay . . . . For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God (2 Cor 1:18, 20).

 

III. The Preached (the Message itself)

2 Tim. 4:16 through 2 Tim. 4:17 At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. 17Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.

Here Paul admonishes Timothy to guard the message that is preached.  This form of the word is our English word “kerygma” (kerygma).  Webster’s dictionary to this day still defines this word as “The apostolic preaching that Jesus is the Christ.”  In the great resurrection chapter of First Corinthians 15, Paul uses this form and the verb form:  Now if Christ be preached (kerusso, kerusso) that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?  But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching (kerygma, kerygma) vain, and your faith is also vain (1 Cor 15:12-14).  You can have all the action and commotion in the world, but if you’ve lost the content, it is in vain.

Today we play with symbolism over substance to our detriment.  We are worshiping worship as a substitute for a real Holy Spirit experience.  We have faith in faith rather than the faith once for all delivered to the saints.  We have a kerux (kerux) who is busy with the kerusso (kerusso), but we are quickly losing the most important thing—the kerygma (kerygma)!  Two things are certain from this final chapter of Paul’s life.

First, When you stand by the truth, the Lord will stand by you!  Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching (kerygma, kerygma) might be fully known (verse 17).  Though all his friends had forsaken him, Paul was not forsaken.  When Paul stood at Gallio’s Bema seat in Corinth, the Lord appeared and said to him Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee (Acts 18:9-10).  When he stood before Herod’s Bema seat in Caesarea, the Lord appeared and said to him, Be of good cheer Paul: for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome (Acts 23:11).  Now before Caesar’s Bema seat the Lord is there to deliver him from the mouth of the lion.  But Paul was most concerned with appearing before Christ’s Bema seat, Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him (2 Cor 5:9).

Second, When you stand by the truth, the lost will know they should stand by you.  By the faithful proclamation of the truth, the kerygma (kerygma) might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear (verse 17).  There was no “stealth” in Paul’s presentation.  He did not coax them in with one method and then sometime down the road reveal to them what he was really all about!

I hope that at our church we preach the same whether the congregation is full of teens or whether it is full of seniors.  The truth is the most effective tool for them.  Paul wrote to Philemon and wished, That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus (Phile 6).  Paul knew what was effectual in the preaching of the message.  He reminded the Corinthians,  If therefore the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad? 24But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: 25And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth (1 Cor 14:23-25).

The old song goes:  “Tell me the story softly, with earnest tones and grave; Remember I’m the sinner whom Jesus came to save.  Tell me the story always, if you would really be, in any time of trouble, a comforter to me.”  That is the need of the world!

Third, When you stand by the truth, the Lord will deliver you.  And I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion (vs 18).  The Lord may deliver His saints in the way He chooses.  It may be by life or by death.  Either way, He will not let us be devoured by the Lion.  Once when Vance Havner, nearing 80 years old, was speaking to ministerial students, he described his busy life and schedule.  One student said to him, “Why, if we kept that schedule all of the time it would kill us!”  Havner replied, “Who said you can’t die?”  Is not heaven the greatest deliverance from the Lion?  According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death.  (Phil 1:20).

 

Conclusion

In his book Twice Told Tales[xvii] Nathaniel Hawthorne writes of the Spring of 1689 and the tensions that had developed in the new country over control from England.  It was a time when “the Puritans were all dead, and the Methodists had not been born.”  Sir Edmond Andros, the king’s hand-picked governor marched his troops through the streets of Boston, slowly approaching the colonists who shrunk from the fearsome militia.  The pastors (who were usually singled out for display as examples) stood protected by their congregants and looked piously from behind the cover.

The rightful governor, Simon Bradstreet, stood far away near the court house steps and gave instructions to the people not to provoke the situation.  Many of the older men remembered when they were young and would have taken action themselves, but now they could only stand aside and hope for stronger wills.  Just then, “the figure of an ancient man, with the eye, the face, the attitude of command appeared on the street, dressed in the old Puritan garb” and began approaching the soldier’s line.  “Stand” the older warrior-saint commanded.  “The solemn, yet warlike peal of that voice, fit either to rule a host in the battlefield or be raised to God in prayer, was irresistible.  At the old man’s word and outstretched arm, the roll of the drum was hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still.”  With prophetic accuracy he predicted the deposing of Andros before dark and the turning of the tide of the Glorious Revolution.

“Who was this Gray Champion?”  Hawthorne asked near the end of the story.  “I have heard that whenever the descendents of the Puritans are to show the spirit of their sires, the old man appears again.”

In our Baptist movement, and in our Baptist churches, it is time for the spirit of our sires to show themselves again.  Will Elijah’s mantle fall to the ground?  Will no Timothy’s die at the hands of this world for preaching truth?  But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. . . . The Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit.  Grace be with you. Amen (2 Tim 4:5,22).

 

[i] Gerhard Friedrich, “Kerux” Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol III (Grand Rapids:  Eerdman’s, 1978) 687-688.
[ii] Vance Havner, From a personal collection of quotations.

[iii] Savonarola, “On the degeneration of the church”  Orations: Homer To Mckinley, vol III, Mayo Hazeltine, ed. (New York: P.F. Collier and Son, 1902) 1281.

[iv] Thomas Armitage, Baptist History, vol I, (Watertown: Maranatha Baptist Press, 1976) 479.

[v] Quoted by Harry Stout, The Divine Dramatist (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 1994) 58.

[vi] J. Vernon McGee, II Corinthians (Pasadena: Through The Bible Books, 1981) 59.

[vii] Friedrich, 688.

[viii] R.C. Sproul, The Mystery of the Holy Spirit (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1990) 165.

[ix] Quoted by Tony Sargent, The Sacred Anointing (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1994)17.

[x] Quoted by Vance Havner, In Times Like These (Old Tappan:  Fleming H. Revell, 1969) 103.

[xi] Quoted by J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership (Chicago: Moody Press, 1971) 15.

[xii] Quoted by Charles Hambrick-Stowe, Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eeerdman’s, 1966)135.

[xiii] Hambrick-Stowe, 55.

[xiv] D.L. Moody, Spiritual Power (Chicago: Moody Press, 1997) 14.

[xv] Quoted by Douglas Groothuis, The Soul In CyberSpace (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997) 27.

[xvi] Millard Erickson, The Postmodern World (Wheaton: Crossway books, 2002) 85.

[xvii] Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Gray Champion,” Twice Told Tales (New York: The Modern Library, 2001) 3-10.

 

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Richard V. Clearwaters

Written by Rick Shrader

Richard V. Clearwaters

by Rick Shrader

This article appeared in the October 15, 2001 issue (Vol. 52, No. 3) of The Baptist Bible Tribune.

“There is no tangled skein of life too difficult for His divine fingers if we are willing to cast it into His lap.”1 That was the way Dr. Clearwaters began his autobiography.  From a sharecropper’s home in the Kansas wilderness to a nationally known figure among fundamental Baptists, “it is God’s testimony He is protecting, and not you.”2 For those of us who sat under his ministry, there was never any doubt that he believed that with all of his heart.

Humble Beginnings

Richard Volley Clearwaters was born in Wilmot, Kansas, on June 28, 1900, the fourth child of Guy and Hannah (Poe) Clearwaters.  Four younger children were added to the family but the youngest son died in a farming accident at just ten years old.  It was a hard land and a difficult life in turn-of-the-century Kansas.  In 1901 the territory of Oklahoma was opened for homesteading and the Clearwaters family moved to 160 acres near Nellie.  To qualify one had to be “free” and committed to staying at least five years.  They lived in a dugout with boarded sides and a roof with drains to keep the water out.  It was not until years later that a house was constructed over the existing structure.

Though very young, Clearwaters could recall the one-room schoolhouse with eight grades together, some of the farm boys being twenty years old.  “I was naturally left handed.  Professor Thomas was not satisfied with that, so he tied my left hand behind my back during that exercise, and sure enough, I got so I could write with my right hand.  The trouble was, you couldn’t read either one, the left or the right.”3 Sundays were reserved for church meetings and sometimes “protracted” meetings in a large brush arbor.  Each family brought one lantern for the night meetings and hung them on the poles that supported the roof.  Family altars were expected and Guy always read to the family from the large family Bible.  These things brought conviction, but no conversion would take place until many difficult years later.

In 1907 the Clearwaters family took an emigrant train to Spokane, Washington where they finally purchased an eighty-acre farm (for the sum of $3,000), which had a small house and barn.  Purchasing a near-by sawmill, they were able to build the additional buildings they would need.  After a few years of making the farm into a suitable home for a large family, Guy decided to advertise it for sale.  But upon reviewing the lengthy description of the family farm he remarked to Hannah, “This is just the kind of place I have always wanted!”  The farm is still owned by the Clearwaters family.

The Prodigal Son

When Richard was sixteen, being bored with school, he rolled up a few things in a mackinaw coat and hid them beside the road.  The next morning, rather than going to school, he picked up his belongings and caught a train to Canada.  He was there for five years as a prodigal son.  He slept in flophouses, traveled in boxcars and worked in coal mines and paper mills until he injured his right arm and was hospitalized.  Providentially, the nurse that took care of Richard recognized the family name, being a past friend of the family, and contacted Richard’s mother.  Richard got a letter from his mother who included in the letter the words, “The way of the transgressors is hard” (Prov 13:15).  The words convicted Richard who agreed to come home but only for a short time.  “Prodigal sons form habits, acquire a vocabulary, do things that are not very fitting for a Christian environment.”4

During this time at home, circumstances worked on Richard to bring him to salvation.  The first was a most tragic one.  Richard was driving a large lumber wagon with a team of horses and Weldon, his brother, was riding on the seat next to him.  When Richard stood up to urge the team of horses, Weldon fell off the side under the wagon wheel and was crushed.  He died a day later.  Richard went into a time of great depression as he saw the sorrow his life had brought his parents and family.

The second circumstance that God used to call Richard to salvation is described in the autobiography:

After this experience [the death of Weldon], when I would go back to my window to gaze out into the darkness, the only cheer I could get for my sorrowing soul was the song of the cricket singing in the night.  There was a little brook of water that ran in front of the house, and the frogs and the crickets were the only sounds we heard in the night.  I recall now as I look back at a line in the poem, The Acada by Huxley: “Oh, thou harper of the night.  I heard thy voice and hoped again.”  Imagine someone so depressed that the only joy they could think of was one of the most insignificant of God’s creatures singing in the darkness of the night! . . . To keep me reminded of these days, a metal cricket has adorned my desk for years.  I’ve never killed a cricket since I was saved.5

The third and final circumstance in Richard’s conversion came a year later when a Holiness Methodist Preacher came to hold a two-week revival meeting at the Moran Prairie Methodist Church in Spokane, Washington.  After two weeks no one had been saved and a snowstorm threatened to close the services.  In spite of the difficulties, they decided to continue the meetings one more week.  That week a teenaged girl named Wilma Goodrich and Richard Clearwaters were gloriously saved!

Surprised by Education

Though Richard always considered himself the poorest pupil of the family, his call to the ministry and its preparation was quick and definite.  He heard his mother singing in the kitchen The Ninety and Nine.  When she sang the verse, “I will go to the desert to find my sheep,” the Lord seemed to say to Richard, “Will you go?”  Without hesitation his answer was “Yes!”  He hurried to the cemetery where his brother Weldon was buried and knelt down and said, “Lord, I’m not very much, but what I have and what I am, I’m willing to give to you.  Thank you for salvation.”6

Richard had a brother-in-law who had attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and after consultation with him he decided to go there to begin his training.  He had only been a Christian six weeks and was advised to wait at least six months to determine if this was really God’s will.  He recalls,

You know, there’s nothing more dangerous than for someone to wait when the Lord has talked to them.  The devil can talk you out of it, and he can use born-again Christians to talk you out of it.  He can use someone who loves you very dearly to talk you out of it.  There wasn’t any chance in the world that I would wait six months.  If I had waited six months, I perhaps would never have come into the ministry.7

With $17.20 in his pocket Richard landed at State and Madison streets, to that day, the busiest corner in the world.  He became a dishwasher in the school kitchen and a busboy for about $6.00 a week, enough to make ends meet.  His days at Moody were positive and challenging.  During those years, thanks to R.A. Torrey’s book How To Work For Christ, Richard memorized one tenth of the New Testament.  He learned that a Bible Institute stresses three things that are vital for building churches: the English Bible, gospel music and personal evangelism.  He never forgot those foundational truths throughout the rest of his life as a pastor and educator.  These foundations were strengthened by hearing great men preach such as Robert Dick Wilson, R.A. Torrey, G. Campbell Morgan, Griffith Thomas and Billy Sunday.

From Moody Clearwaters attended Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Chicago when the school was only thirteen years old.  There he heard A.H. Strong, A.T. Robertson, Robert Mantey, James Moffat and H.A. Ironside and graduated with a Th.B and B.D. degrees in 1928..  From there he earned a scholarship to Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan and graduated with a B.A. degree in 1929.  He attended Chicago University and earned an M.A. degree in 1933 under E.J. Goodspeed in New Testament Greek and was a few hours short of a Ph.D when time and money became prohibitive.  In addition, Clearwaters held three honorary  doctorate degrees.

The Early Pastorates

Clearwaters always knew he was called of God to be a pastor.  While a student at Moody he became the pastor of a Federated Church in Wilton Center, Illinois.  He would leave after classes on Friday, have prayer meeting Friday night, visit on Saturday, hold services on Sunday and be back in Chicago for classes on Monday morning.  When he moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, he pastored the First Baptist Church of Lawton for nine months and then Bethel Baptist Church in Kalamazoo.

While at Bethel Baptist Church he met an R.N. named Florence Welch who worked for the City Health Department.  Clearwaters worked a lot with the indigents during the depression times, and that brought him in contact with many benevolent agencies.  The two were introduced after a chance meeting during a hospital call.  They were engaged but waited a year to marry due to the hard times and busy schedules.  Florence became Mrs. Richard Clearwaters on April 17, 1935.

When schoolwork was done, Clearwaters sought the Lord’s will in finding a permanent pastorate.  He describes how the Lord led him:

I had three opportunities, all were open pulpits.  My covenant was, “Lord, whichever one of these offers me the first open door, that’s where I’ll take it as your will I should go.”  I believe the Lord is more anxious to lead us than we are able to be led.  And usually we miss the Lord’s leading because we are not absolutely surrendered.  If we are surrendered, we are winning souls to Christ—that’s why He saved us, to serve . . . . Cedar Rapids, IA was the first offer.  The church had a six thousand dollar mortgage on a wooden-frame building for which the wrecking company had offered them five hundred dollars . . . . We were immersed there, my wife and I, for four and a half years, in the ministry of preaching the Gospel and evangelism.8

That church was in the American Baptist Convention.  Clearwaters was soon elected President of the Iowa Baptist State Convention. This gave him his first acquaintance with national leaders with whom he would be engaged in the future years.  It was in 1939 that the pulpit committee of the Fourth Baptist Church of Minneapolis contacted Pastor Clearwaters.  During this time Clearwaters had met opposition in the Cedar Rapids church over plans to build.  He took this as God closing the door in Iowa and opening the door in Minnesota.  They accepted the church’s call and moved to Minneapolis on January 1, 1940.

Fourth Baptist Church

The Fourth Baptist Church was organized in 1881 and moved to West Broadway Street in Minneapolis in 1918 where it remained until 1998 when its present pastor, Dr. Douglas McLachlan, relocated the church to the Northwest suburb of Plymouth.  Dr. Clearwaters pastored the church from 1940 until his retirement in 1982.

Fourth Baptist is a member of the Minnesota Baptist Association, which, in 1940, was an adjunct of the Northern Baptist Convention, later to become the American Baptist Convention.  By the 1940s, due to growing concerns of liberalism, a group of fundamentalists, including W.B. Riley, had organized a Fundamental Fellowship within the national convention.  In 1943 the Conservative Baptist Association of America was formed with Dr. R.V. Clearwaters as its first President and Dr. B. Myron Cedarholm as its Executive Secretary.

During these years Clearwaters also served as a trustee of the Northwestern Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, which had been founded (as Northwestern Bible School) by W.B. Riley, pastor of First Baptist Church, in 1900.  Clearwaters and Riley had a close relationship until Riley’s death in 1947 at which time Billy Graham became president of the school.  In 1956 Northwestern discontinued the Seminary and Bible College, which were combined into Northwestern College.

Clearwaters still felt the need for a fundamental seminary and organized Central Baptist Theological Seminary in 1956 with thirty-one students.  It remains today as a leading Fundamental Baptist school with new facilities in Plymouth, Minnesota and under the auspices of Fourth Baptist Church.  Clearwaters also rescued Pillsbury Baptist Bible College from the liberal side of the Convention.  In 1957, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the Minnesota Baptist Association could choose the trustees and officers of the school.  Thus in the same year Clearwaters became President of the college, a position which he held until his retirement.  In 1963, Clearwaters led the Minnesota Baptist Association to withdraw from the Conservative Baptist Association.

As pastor of Fourth Baptist Church, Clearwaters continued to build a large church with a broad ministry.  A Bible Institute was added in 1958, a youth camp in 1963, an FM radio station in 1965, a Christian School in 1966, and in 1973 a 2400 seat auditorium was added to the Broadway Street location.  Dr. Clearwaters simply called these ministries, “the lengthened shadows of a man.”  Many of us in the ministry today benefited from those shadows.

It may be hard to visualize the influence great men of the faith had on fundamental, conservative Christianity.  Speaking of the men who frequented his ministry Clearwaters wrote:

Lowell Thomas said once, “There were giants on the earth in those days.”  I feel I have lived through an era when there were giants on the earth.  One of the blessings I have had is that our home has been blessed with such people staying overnight and for dinner as Dr. Ironside, Gypsy Smith, Homer Rodeheaver, Louie Talbot, Bob Jones, Sr. and many others.9

The Last Years

Dr. Clearwaters retired as pastor of Fourth Baptist Church and as President of Pillsbury Baptist Bible College in 1982.  He retired as President of Central Baptist Seminary in 1987.  Florence preceded him in death in 1989 and “Doc” went home to be with the Lord on September 30, 1996.  Associate and friend, George Dollar wrote of him, he was an “able preacher; Baptist Fundamentalist and knowledgeable pastor.”10

W.B. Riley, in a personal note to Dr. Clearwaters in 1947, wrote, “This can be nothing but the last days.  Your ministry will suffer more severe tests than mine has ever known.  I know that you will be found faithful.  I have never seen you waver.”11 May the Lord continue to give us such unwavering giants for the days still ahead.

1 Richard V. Clearwaters, On the Upward Road:  An Autobiography (Minneapolis: Central Baptist Seminary, nd) xi.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid, 7.
4 Ibid, 16.
5 Ibid, 18.
6 Ibid, 24.
7 Ibid, 27.
8 Ibid, 50-52.
9 Ibid, 98.
10 George W. Dollar, A History Of Fundamentalism In America (Greenville, SC: BJU Press, 1973) 312.
11 In “The Warrior”, Fourth Baptist Christian School paper, October 25, 1996.

 

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A. T. Robertson

Written by Rick Shrader

A. T. Robertson

by Rick Shrader

This article appeared in the Baptist Bible Tribune, January, 1999

A.T. Robertson was born on November 6, 1863, at Cherbury, the family home near Chatham, Pittsylvania County, Virginia, where he spent the first twelve years of his life. Though spending a few short years in North Carolina, and the rest of his life in Louisville, Kentucky, Robertson never forgot he was a Virginian. From the son of a gentleman farmer to world-renowned scholar and grammarian, this giant among Baptists always retained his humble and warm enthusiasm for the gospel that came to him in his earliest days. Of his own work he wrote, “Perhaps those who pity the grammarian do not know that he finds joy in his task and is sustained by the conviction that his work is necessary.”1

The Ante-bellum Years

“Archie” (as his mother called him) Robertson could trace the Scottish family name (“Son of Robert”) back a thousand years to Robert of Athol. He was born, however, to John and Ella (Martin) Robertson during the turbulent Civil War years in the American South. The Robertsons managed the fifteen hundred acre farm inherited from Thompson Robertson, A.T.’s grandfather. Part of the inheritance had gone to a surviving sister who, as well, married a grandson of Patrick Henry.

A.T. was born the year the slaves were set free and Appomattax was looming on the horizon. The first twelve years of his life saw rising debts, Reconstruction Days and Hard Times. He wrote, “As I came to notice life about me I found myself in a home of beauty and sadness.”2 He would never forget nor forgo, however, the Southernly manners and deportment of his early upbringing.

Salvation and Baptism

The Robertsons moved to the solidly Presbyterian territory of Statesville, North Carolina in 1875 and bought a small farm that had to be cleared and plowed before it could produce a living. At the same time, a Baptist missionary of the Baptist State Mission Board, Rev. J.B. Boone, held services in the Court House once a month. The Robertsons attended the Presbyterian services for three Sundays and the Baptist services on the fourth Sunday. A Baptist church was soon started with the assistance of A.C. Dixon, pastor at Asheville (who later pastored Spurgeon’s Tabernacle in London). In March of 1876 revival meetings were held by Rev. F.M. Jordan and young Archie received Christ as his Savior. Archie, his brother Eugene and his two sisters were all baptized by Rev. Boone as many of Archie’s playmates mocked the strange sight of total immersion. Boone was to become a Paul to the young Timothy, greatly influencing Archie to consider entering training for the ministry. Under Boone’s tutelage, Archie was already learning Latin and Greek grammar. He was licensed to preach at age sixteen in the Southern Baptist Convention.3

The Student Years

Robertson entered the Southern Baptist college of Wake Forest in 1879, a sixteen year old southern boy with a rare but blessed gift of understanding languages. He excelled in the literary societies as well as in debating. As a freshman he was reading the classics in Latin and Greek. Interestingly, Robertson missed winning the coveted Greek Medal by a single vote in his senior year, a crushing disappointment to him at the time. He later wrote, “It was hard for me to be reconciled to the decision. It’s all right now. I do not need the medal. . . . I have never regretted the work I did for the Greek Medal. Without knowing it I was laying the foundation for my future life work.”4

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary had reopened in 1865 at the close of the war and moved to Louisville in 1877. Eight years later A.T. entered the seminary and was immediately noticed by its Greek professor, Dr. John Albert Broadus. Robertson soon became his prized pupil as well as his teaching aide and, and by the time he was twenty five, his fellow professor. Later, Robertson would marry Broadus’ daughter, Ella.

The Teaching Years

In 1888, before Dr. Broadus died (1895), he appointed Robertson assistant professor in Greek and homiletics. One fellow classmate recalls the immediate affect A.T. had on the seminary:

I can never forget the day Dr. Broadus discovered young Robertson. This Wake Forest student showed such a grasp of Greek that the great teacher’s thrill and satisfaction were manifest to all. Thereafter, in questioning the class, he would close the discussion with, ‘and now what does Brother Robertson think about it?’ Really, his discovery of Robertson was like one discovering a diamond mind.5

This illustrious career lasted for 46 years and affected the lives of nearly six thousand students. It was not without its difficulties, however. Due to his meticulous study habits, and nine exhaustive years of study as a college and seminary student, Robertson suffered a nervous breakdown during his first year of teaching. He had to resign the small church which he had been pastoring as a student and which had ordained him. With a summer of rest, Robertson resumed his work in the fall and continued for the rest of his life.

Being a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary also had many benefits, not the least of which was the acquaintance of great preachers of his day. He heard Moody and Torrey from Chicago; Maclaren, G. Campbell Morgan, F.B. Meyer and Spurgeon from across the seas; and would later develop a working relationship with Maclaren and Morgan. When Dr. Broadus died, Robertson wrote his biography, the first in a long list of books which he authored.

The Classroom

Robertson conducted his classroom in an old seminary style, much like our beloved Noel Smith at Baptist Bible College. Gill, throughout his pages gives glimpses of the daily routine:

Students all remember how abruptly he would enter class, comment on the ventilation, castigate janitors in general, pass right on to ‘Let us pray’ . . . . The prayer over, he turned at once to the calling of the roll and to the reading of any excuses that might have been placed on his desk by men who had not prepared their lesson and feared they might be called on. . . . Then calling for books to be closed, he scanned his class roll, while the students waited in suspense to see who the first victim would be. Running his eye down one, two, three pages of his roll book, he at length fixed upon a man who had either not been called on that quarter or had done quite poorly on his recitation.

Having fixed upon his man, he would say with the solemnity of a judge summoning a prisoner to his feet to be sentenced, ‘Mr. Blank, will you recite?’ Brother Blank stood, bracing himself for the worst.

‘Brother Blank, what is the title of the lesson?’

Brother Blank, clearing his throat for time, replies weakly, ‘The lesson is about the healing of the man who was let down through the roof.’

‘Yes, but what is the title of the lesson?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Well, did you ever know? That will do.’

Mr. Blank sits down in mortification and with not a little resentment, as Dr. Bob records a mark against the name of Mr. Blank as all the class can see. There is no question in any one’s mind that it is an F—a failure. . . .

Nothing would arouse his indignation more than for an unprepared student to rise, when called upon to recite, and pretend that he had studied the lesson, probably with the hope that by a lucky guess he might ‘get by’ . . . There were few, if any, cases of a student committing this error twice.6

The Whitsitt Controversy

William Heth Whitsitt (1841-1911) was elected professor of church history at the seminary in 1872. In 1895 he succeeded Broadus as its third president.7 He was a product of the seminary and also had studied abroad in Germany. The “Whitsitt Controversy” arose in 1886 when Whitsitt published an article in Johnson’s Universal Cyclopedia affirming that the Baptists as a denomination had emerged from English Separatism in the early 1600s. At this time, many Southern Baptists were divided between this view and that of J.R. Graves who, in an effort to refute a growing Campbell movement, espoused a view that Baptists found their origin in an unbroken succession of churches back to the apostles. The controversy was such that Whitsitt was forced to resign as president of the seminary in 1899.

Robertson took a leading role in defending Whitsitt, along with other young professors such as John R. Sampey.8 Robertson wrote an article in the Western Recorder of Louisville, KY as well as in the Courier-Journal of the same city. This article was widely distributed throughout the South and aligned Robertson, as well as the seminary, with the Whitsitt view. Though Whitsitt had to resign, neither the faculty nor the seminary were obliged to change their view and the Louisville school became one of the major opponents of Landmarkism in the Convention.

The Speaker

Throughout his illustrious teaching career, A.T. Robertson never lost his love of evangelism. Though hindered by a speech impediment from birth,9 he was a commanding speaker who was constantly in demand on both sides of the Atlantic. On one occasion he served as a counselor in a revival meeting held by D.L. Moody. In 1905 Robertson helped organize the Baptist World Alliance, a Bible conference that “would pass no legislation, [but] would allow opportunity for Baptists to grow in fellowship and learn much from each other.”10 The first meeting was held in Philadelphia with such noteable speakers as Alexander Maclaren, J.H. Shakespeare, F.B. Meyer and John Clifford.

Robertson’s part in the Baptist World Alliance made him a sought-after speaker, not unnoticed by Mr. W.R. Moody, director of the Northfield Conferences. From that time on Robertson became a regular speaker at the conferences which were also graced by such eminent speakers as D.L. Moody, G. Campbell Morgan, J. Stuart Holden and R.A. Torrey.

The Author

In addition to his regular classroom schedule and his growing popularity as a speaker, Robertson found time to author forty-five books, almost all in the field of New Testament Greek. In addition, he wrote numerous articles for publications such as Hastings Dictionaries and the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Perhaps the most used books are his Word Pictures in the New Testament and Harmony of the Gospels.

His magnum opus and his major life’s work, however, is his Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, commonly called his “Big Grammar.” When Robertson was twenty-five, John Broadus had proposed that they revise Winer, a standard grammar that, by then, lacked the more recent comparative philology for which Robertson was becoming widely known. Due to Broadus’ failing health, the project became Robertson’s to which he gave himself for the next twenty-six years. The work was finally published in 1914, followed by four editions in the next nine years. The first editions contained 1360 pages which were expanded in later editions to 1500. Dr. James H. Moulton of Cambridge called the Big Grammar “The final on the New Testament.”11

The Last Day of Class

On Monday, September 24, 1934, A.T. Robertson met with his Greek class in the morning and expounded on the hapax legomena of “daily bread” in Matthew 6:11. Uncharacteristically, he dismissed the class early that day to go home and lie down. That afternoon he went home to be with the Lord. George Truett is quoted as saying that if he had a billion dollars he would gladly exchange it for Dr. Robertson’s knowledge of New Testament Greek.12 As much as any man in recent history, A.T. Robertson blessed students, readers and the world with richer knowledge of the New Testament and its language.

Footnotes:
1. A.T. Robertson, A Grammar of the New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (Nashville: Broadman, 1934), x.
2. Everett Gill, A.T. Robertson: A Biography (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1943), 6.
3. J.D. Douglas, Gen. Ed. Twentieth Century Dictionary of Christian Biography (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), 323.
4. Gill, 49.
5. Gill, 62.
6. Gill, 109, 118, 134.
7. H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1987) 446.
8. Gill, 85.
9. Bill J. Leonard, Ed., Dictionary of Baptists in America (Downer’s Grove: IVP, 1994) 238.
10. McBeth, 523.
11. Gill, 176.
12. Gill, 176.

 

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