Rebelution

Posted on 10/20/2008 by Paul Pavao

Okay, I borrowed someone’s word, but since I’m going to give them a rousing advertisement, I think it will be okay. You can find The Rebelution at http://www.therebelution.com (don’t forget the “the” if you intend to memorize that for later).

A couple of twins, sons of Greg Harris, the noted home school leader of a couple decades ago, spawned The Rebelution. They call it a rebellion against low expectations for teens. They started a blog, it caught fire, and they ended up being called on by an Alabama State Supreme Court justice to come work as interns there at the tender age of 16, completely unqualified except for their experience as skilled debaters (and thus researchers). It was a great success, and they followed by working or campaigns for Alabama Supreme Court justices. (I guess those aren’t appointed the way US Supreme Court justices are.)

The ladies of our house are using the book Do Hard Things, written by these remarkable young men, for devotions at breakfast. I’ve only heard the first chapter, but I have read several of the Harris’ youths blogs and web pages, and I unhesitatingly recommend anything they do. If you don’t have the book, you should run not walk to your nearest bookstore and get it.

We have 70 or 80 useful years on this earth nowadays. That’s a lot, but it’s not a lot. It’s a lot to do things with, but it’s not so much that we ought to waste those years. It’s not just teens who should be rebelling against low expectations. I’m 47, and I have no intentions of settling down and earning enough money to retire on. My life’s worth more than that to me than that. There’s still plenty of time to change the world–or at least a few people around me.

The Scriptures say, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has prepared beforehand for us to do” (Eph. 2:10). We’re not just created for good works. We’re created for good works that God has prepared in advance for us to do. There are things lodged in your heart, that neither you nor anyone else can make go away. You can let them sit there and die while you don’t fulfill your purpose, but they’re always there, waiting to be aroused. When you wake them up, they will push you along a path that you were made for. Circumstances and situations will fall in place, your deepest skills–things you didn’t even know you had–will awaken, and you will fulfill what you’re made for. It may not look like that to you, and it may not feel like that to you, but that will be the result. It’s not supposed to be easy, but it is supposed to work.

There is tons of advice out there for finding out what it is that you, deep down inside, want to do and are made to do. I won’t give it here. Do Hard Things has some of that advice. It’s directed at teens, but why shouldn’t you borrow advice that works for teens? You’ll have to do your own searching for more of that advice, but I’ll give you the first step. Help people. Look for ways to serve. If you want to be great in God’s kingdom, you have to become the servant of all. So serve and help. That will be the foot up you’ve always needed.

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The Pope and Apostolic Succession in the Early Church

Posted on 10/19/2008 by Paul Pavao

I put a teaching on the pope in the early church up on youtube. I can only load videos up to ten minutes long, so it’s in five parts. I also just finished editing a teaching on apostolic succession, kind of a corollary to the one on the pope, that will go up in four parts, hopefully today sometime. Part one is right here, and there’s a link below to go to the rest of them.

Part one is here, and you can link to parts two through five from there.

I also put those up on godtube, but I don’t know when they’ll show up. I’ll put up another post when the teachings on apostolic succession go up.

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Bible Commentary

Posted on 10/14/2008 by Paul Pavao

Today I started a twice a week Bible study at the wonderful hour of 5:30 a.m. for just half an hour. There was just a couple of us this morning. We’re going to go through Paul’s letters. I think I want to post the highlights of our studies, because today’s was awesome. The writeup might be better than the actual study. I don’t know how that happens. Writing’s easier for me.  However, I don’t want to post it here, but on my web site. So today’s blog is just a link to:

http://www.oldoldstory.org/commentary/rom1-1.html.

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The Creed of Nicea

Posted on 10/10/2008 by Paul Pavao

Okay, I’m posting this right away after my last blog, so you probably haven’t seen the previous one yet. If you have the time, make sure you read it, though this one can be read by itself, too. It’s not really a part two, just a different approach to a question asked by Craig Allerts in A High View of Scripture? The question is “Does it make sense to say that the fourth-century church was making very good decisions about the Bible but mostly poor ones about everything else?”

Again, as I mentioned in the last post, his point is that Evangelicals today accept the books of the Bible that were set in the 4th century but they believe the 4th century church was corrupt. Does this make sense? Allerts believes that the Scriptures and the church are inexorably tied together, which of course they are. However, the 4th century church didn’t really pick the books of the Bible. They just picked from among those used by their predecessors, then attempted to nail down the collection of books of Scripture so that it could not be changed.

In the last post, I addressed the issue of the canon of Scripture. In this post, I want to address something more specific, which is the councils that addressed the canon of Scripture.

It has always amazed me that apologetic groups (i.e., those specializing in defending the faith, usually anti-cult groups), like the Christian Research Institute (CRI), claim to hold to the historic Christian faith, and then they mention the “great creeds” of the church. There are so many contradicting ideas involved in these claims that it’s hard to know where to start.

The first contradicting idea is the one Allerts points out. The Councils that gave us all the “great creeds” were held by ecclesiastical bishops representing churches that Protestants would consider cold, corrupt and Roman Catholic (though they were by no means ruled by Rome yet). If I were to produce the writings of the bishops present at these councils and ask Protestants to review them, they would disagree almost as thoroughly with those writings as they would with the writings of modern Catholics. Why, then, would CRI point to the “great creeds” as emblematic of the historic Christian faith?

As an aside here, I once wrote CRI and asked them about this. I pointed out some major doctrines that were believed from the 2nd century through the time of the councils, and I asked them if they believed those doctrines, which I knew they didn’t believe. They said no, of course, so I asked them why they said they accept the historic Christian faith, when in fact they really disagree with it. They replied that whatever the Bible says is the historic Christian faith, which makes a joke of their use of “the historic Christian faith” to refute the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons.

The second contradicting idea is what they mean by the “great creeds.” An article on their web site (http://www.equip.org/site/c.muI1LaMNJrE/b.2708569/k.B787/JAE1001.htm), written by the note apologist Norman Geisler, says that there are three creeds: the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. The Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed are pretty much the same creed. There’s very little difference in wording. There’s an official Creed from Nicea, and there’s a later creed, only slightly adjusted, that’s probably wrongly attributed to the Council of Constantinople in 381. That later creed is the Apostles’ Creed. In between those two is the Athanasian Creed, which contradicts the other two. However, we’ve turned the Trinity into such a “mystery” that everyone pretends like they don’t contradict. I’ll explain the contradiction under the next point.

Finally, CRI and the other apologists, along with the Roman Catholics and almost everyone else DO NOT AGREE WITH THE NICENE CREED OR THE APOSTLES’ CREED! (Sorry, I really try to avoid caps, but this is a such a ludicrous thing, it’s worth shouting about.) HELLO, HELLO! Is anyone paying attention here? Catholics and Protestants alike recite this creed. CRI calls it an essential of the historic Christian faith, BUT THEY DON’T AGREE WITH IT.

The Nicene Creed (and the Apostles Creed) begin with “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty . . .” (The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus I:5). The wording is exactly the same as 1 Cor. 8:6. It does not say, “We believe in one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” On the other hand, the Athanasian Creed does say that. It reads, “So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet there are not three Gods, but one God” (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02033b.htm).

It was not until after Nicea that our modern idea of the “mystery” of the Trinity existed. In the early church, the Father was the one God, and he had a Son. The Son, they explained, is the Word of the Father. He always existed inside of the Father, but at some point in eternity past, the Father birthed the Word from out of himself in some way we cannot comprehend. They loved to quote Psalm 45:1 (LXX), “My heart has emitted a good Word,” and Prov. 8:22 (also LXX), “The Lord has created me the beginning of his ways for his works,” in reference to this eternal begetting of the Word.

The Word, they explained, is like a beam coming from the sun. It is of the  same essence and nature as the sun, not of a different nature. Thus, the Word of God is made of divinity, of the divine substance. Angels, ourselves, animals, the sun, moon, stars, and the earth were all made from nothing. They are all formed of a created substance we can simply refer to as “matter.” All matter had a beginning. It is not eternal, and it is not divine. The Word of God, however, is not made of matter. He is from the divine substance, because he is the Word of God, who  has always existed inside of God. Thus he is divine and can be called God.

However, for us, as 1 Cor. 8:6 says, there is but one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. How do we resolve this “mystery”? Tertullian, referred to as “the father of the Trinity doctrine” by historians because he was the first to use the word Trinity (in latin; Athenagoras used the Greek word Triad), explains it this way:

If the Father and Son are alike to be invoked I shall call the Father “God” and invoke Jesus Christ as “Lord.” But when Christ alone [is mentioned] I shall be able to call him “God” . . . For I would give the name of “sun” even to a sunbeam, considered by itself; however, if I were mentioning the sun from which the ray emanates, I certainly should at once withdraw the name of “sun” from the mere beam. For though I do not make two suns, still I reckon both the sun and its ray to be as much two things and two forms of one undivided substance as God and his Word, as the Father and the Son.

You will find that this practice of Tertullian’s is the consistent practice of the apostles in Scripture, as well as the practice of all the other Pre-Nicene Christian writers. If the Son is mentioned alone, he is called God. If he is mentioned with the Father, then the Father is called God and the Son Lord. This is because, as the Scripture repeatedly says, and as the Nicene Creed affirms, there is one God, and that one God is the Father.

While the Jehovah’s Witness version of John 1:1, which calls the Word “a god,” is not correct, neither is our translation, “The Word is God.” I have both read books on the subject and sat through a lesson on John 1:1 in Greek class. According to literally everything I’ve seen, in the last clause of John 1:1 the word “God” is used as an adjective. One book I read suggested the best translation would be, ” . . . and the Word has the character and nature of God.” Really, though, it seems apparent to me that the proper way to translate God as an adjective is to use the adjective form of God, which is “Divine.” John 1:1 should read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was Divine.” The Word, as the Nicene Creed confirms, is of the substance of God. He is like God, not like creatures. He is the Creator and not the created.

This is what the Nicene Creed means by “God from God, Light from Light, very God from very God.” It adds that he is “begotten, not made” and “one in substance with the Father.”

In the end, the important thing to note is that the Nicene Creed, unlike the Athanasian Creed, says, “We believe in one God, the Father.” It is this simple affirmation that CRI and most Protestants do not agree with. They do not understand the doctrine of the early church, and they don’t want to. They don’t want to understand what the Nicene Creed says the early church believed because they don’t want to deal with the fact that they don’t agree with it.

There are ramifications to this unreality (I hesitate to call it dishonesty). Jehovah’s Witnesses get to walk into people’s homes and point out John 17:3, a prayer by Jesus that reads, ” . . . that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” “See,” the JW says to the soon-to-be-ensnared soul, “you have been deceived by Christendom. There is no Trinity. The Father is the only true God.” Who can answer them? This is Jesus Christ himself saying that the Father is the only true God.

Unlike the modern Protestant view, the Jehovah’s Witness view did exist prior to Nicea, and it was rejected by the church both before and at Nicea. The JW view is that the Son was created from nothing, like the angels. Thus, he had a beginning and is not eternal. The JW’s say that God somehow made the Son to be god, but not Almighty God, like the Father. The result is that they have two Gods: one major God and one minor, created God. There are two divinities in the JW system: one uncreated divinity of the Father and another created divinity of the Son. This was exactly the teaching of Arius that was rejected at Nicea. To the early church, there is only one divinity. The Son, being the eternal Word of the Father, who always existed inside of the Father, is of the same substance–the same divinity–as the Father (“one in substance with the Father, God from God . . . “). He is not created, but born (“begotten, not made”).

On the other hand, we Protestants–and the modern Roman Catholics as well–have no room to talk to Jehovah’s Witnesses. Our view, that the one God is three co-equal persons, wasn’t developed until after Nicea. It was a merger of modalism (Jesus only: the view that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all the same divine person filling three roles, like an actor), which had been common in the early church at least as far back as the 2nd century, and the Nicene view.

Nor are we convincing to those who hear us argue with JW’s. We look bad when they point out John 17:3 or 1 Tim. 2:4 (“There is one God and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus”). They have been able to make a booklet on the early Christian view of the Trinity, where they pull quotes written from the Nicene viewpoint, but they make them look like they represent the JW/Arian viewpoint, the same thing they do with Jn. 17:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; and 1 Tim. 2:4.

I recommend reading through Tertullian’s Against Praxeas. Some of it is hard to understand, but some of it is extremely insightful into the early Christian view of the Trinity. It’s not a long booklet, and it’s representative of everything else you’ll read in the early Christian writings on the subject. You can also try Athenagoras’ A Plea for the Christians, which is a somewhat longer work generally defending Christianity, but it has a lot of insightful and helpful comments about the relationship of the Son and the Father. Both can be found for free online. You can always look at http://www.ccel.org for any early Christian writing.

Oh, you may be wondering what I’m going to say about the Holy Spirit in reference to Nicea. I’m going to say what the Council of Nicea said, nothing more and nothing less: “We believe in the Holy Spirit.”

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The Bible and the Church

Posted on 10/09/2008 by Paul Pavao

Well, I’m still reading A High View of Scripture? by Craig Allert, and I’m still it in random order.I’m in the middle of the third chapter, but I’ve read the end and beginning of it already. He brings up a very interesting point I’d like for any of you who might happen to read this to consider.

Quoting a writer named Frederick Norris, he says, “Does it make sense to say that the fourth-century church was making very good decisions about the Bible but mostly poor ones about everything else?”

The point he is making is that it is the 4th century church that established the canon. With the exception of the Muratorian Fragment, which the author points out is disputed (as to date), all the lists of books of the Bible are fourth century and later. If it is the fourth century church, the author argues, that chose the books of the Bible that we agree with, how can we think that the 4th century church was corrupt? They were corrupt, but they chose good and inspired books of the Bible, anyway?

I felt compelled to answer his question because I believe the 4th century church was very corrupt. I’ve written often on the difference between Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, which covers the period from the birth of Christ to A.D. 323, and Socrates Scholasticus’ Ecclesiastical History, which covers the period from A.D. 323-75. The latter is full of violence, political intrigue, and corruption. So how could a corrupt church pick the right books for the Bible?

The fourth century church didn’t pick the books of the Bible. They did make the determination that they needed to make an exhaustive and exclusive list of which books belong in the Bible–well, not in the Bible, per se. They’d never heard of the Bible. They were simply making a list of the books which could be read as authoritative in the church, and they based their list on the determinations of their more holy predecessors of the Pre-Nicene era. Thus it was not the corrupt 4th century church that chose the books of the Bible; instead, they chose to actually make a list of the books of the Bible and attempt to exactly define the canon, an attempt that I definitely do not think was good.

They didn’t succeed. Even in the fourth century, those canons varied slightly. To this day, the Roman Catholic (RCC) and Orthodox churches that recognize the fourth century councils as authoritative disagree on the books that belong in the Bible. The RCC has 7 books in its Old Testament that the Protestants don’t have. The Orthodox churches have even more. It’s hard to get an Orthodox Christian to tell you what books belong in his Bible, but it often includes 3 and 4 Maccabees and 2 Esdras, neither of which are in the RCC Bible (there’s a list at http://orthodoxstudybible.com/uploads/BibleBooksChart.pdf). On top of this the Assyrian Orthodox Church, which is basically the “Catholic” church of Iran and has three English speaking congregations in the United States, has a Bible that ends at 1 John. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church includes 1 Enoch (a book which is quoted in the book of Jude in our New Testament).

The writer of A High View of Scripture points out that the word canon, which means the authoritative list of books that are Scripture to us, meant something different to the early church. A canon is a measure or rule. To the early church, the canon was not the list of books of Scripture, but the “Rule of Faith.” The Rule of Faith was a short creed that each church had, which was memorized at baptism and required for each Christian to believe. Tertullian points out that Matthew 28:19 is such a baptismal creed (De Corona 3), requiring faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The creed of Tertullian’s day (c. A.D. 200) had become somewhat longer. By the early 4th century, the Rule of Faith of the church of Caesarea, with slight (but historically significant) adjustments, would become the creed of the Council of Nicea, which by our time is known as the Apostles’ Creed.

It is this basic set of beliefs, plus a strict desire for a holy life, that kept the early church on track. We Protestants are really no different, though we fool ourselves into thinking we are. We have a basic set of beliefs, a statement of faith, barely longer than the Rule of Faith of the churches of the Nicene area. The Bible sure isn’t going to move us from those beliefs. The very center of the faith for most Protestant denominations is “salvation by faith alone,” yet the only occurrence of the words “faith alone” in the Bible is in James 2:24, where we are told that justification is not by faith alone. It is a good thing that Protestants weren’t allowed to set the canon themselves, because Martin Luther, the most well-known of the Reformers, would not have included James for that very reason. Since he could not exclude James, he limited himself to introducing it in his translation of the New Testament as an epistle of straw with nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it. Clearly, Martin Luther’s canon, his rule of faith, was not the 27 books of the Protestant New Testament.

Unfortunately, the Protestant rule of faith differs from the early church’s in one very important area. The early church was very careful to base their rule on traditions they had received from the apostles. Protestants are forced to hope that their tradition is correctly interpreted from 2000-year-old writings, translated from another language, based in another culture, and mostly short letters addressing problems. We can’t agree on how to interpret those writings, not in almost any area. Salvation, eternal security, baptism, the gifts of the Spirit, the baptism of the Spirit, the return of Christ, the literalness of Scripture; pick any area, and you will find Protestant churches which disagree with each other over it.

So, my answer to the question of why I would trust the decisions of a corrupt 4th century church is that I wouldn’t. I don’t think the canon should have been closed. The 4th century church chose the books it did because of what was accepted by the earlier churches. As a result the choices they made were pretty good ones. There was no way, of course, to know for certain what to do with books like Hebrews, Jude, 1 Clement, and the Shepherd of Hermas, because there was no consistent pattern in the 2nd and 3rd century churches for these books. So they guessed. No problem, though, because we’re not really Bible believers, anyway. We, like the early churches, have a statement of faith that we believe instead. So if our denomination holds to eternal security, then we simply ignore or explain away Scriptures like Hebrews 6:2-6. If our denomination believes you can lose your salvation, then we read Hebrews 6:2-6 at face value. In like fashion, how we interpret “that which is perfect” in 1 Corinthians 13 will have nothing to do with how we read that verse, but only with what our denomination teaches us to believe.

Sounds like a mess, doesn’t it? I know I’m taking a really hard shot at the Protestant motto of “No creed but the Bible.” I’m arguing that not only is this not true, but it shouldn’t be. Craig Allert’s book takes an even stronger shot at it because he’s got more space than me. But what are we to do? The early church had tradition handed down by the apostles in the recent past. Their leaders were given the specific task of preserving that tradition, and they carefully chose godly replacements with the same commitment to preserving that tradition. They didn’t pay their elders, but supported them in the same manner as the widows and orphans. They chose those elders from the midst of the congregation based on their holy and committed lives. They had other apostolic churches to consult and compare with. Thus, they had good reason to believe that the Rule of Faith to which they held was apostolic, inspired, and reliable.

But what about us? Our statements of faith are disagreed upon from church to church. Some of our most basic tenets were inherited from a man who said that it was impossible to reconcile Paul and James. Two of the three major Reformers (Luther and Zwingli) refused to unite, and two major and separate movements were formed from the very beginning (Reformed/Calvinist and Lutheran). If it is not the Bible that will support our statements of faith, what will?

God knew that Christians, being human, would never be able to agree on interpretations of spiritual writings. Religious people, from the time of Israel until now, have never agreed on those things. The world, the Scriptures say, will never know God through wisdom (1 Cor. 1:19-21). The early church left room for this, picking issues of holiness, commitment to God, and a few basic doctrines as the places to draw lines. What will we do?

There’s a rather amazing promise made in 1 John 2:27. It says that we don’t need anyone to teach us, but that the “anointing” will lead us into all things, and it will be true and not a lie. That’s an amazing promise, but we miss something as English speakers. The “you” in 1 Jn. 2:27 is plural. We don’t notice because there is no difference between a plural and singular you in English. In most other languages, including the Greek that John wrote in, there is a difference, and John used the plural you.

Jesus promised to be with his disciples, wherever two or three are gathered in his name. Thus, what we have today is what mankind has always had. We have God. Our only hope is God. Our hope, as I hope you can see above, is not in a book God wrote; it is in God himself. If we will deny that tendency of our flesh towards “schisms, divisions, and factions” (Gal. 5:19-21), and join together in abandon to God–because you can’t be his disciples unless you deny yourself and lose your life–we have hope. We have promises that he will be with us and that his anointing will lead us into what is true and not a lie. The church, the Scriptures say, is the pillar and support of the truth. We have tried to make the Scriptures the pillar and support of the truth, but it will not work. It says the church fills that role. The church the Scriptures know of is not the Baptists, Assemblies of God, or the Roman Catholics or Orthodox. It’s those two or three disciples gathered in his name, where Jesus is. They will find themselves, in their utter submission to God, not only standing on, but being, the pillar and support of the truth.

I’m always writing blogs that are too long, but I have to add one last point. God is never going to guide you into a systematic theology. Even the expanded Rule of Faith that the early church had was short. It’s a paragraph, not a book. Our experience at Rose Creek Village is that God regularly guides us into what we ought to do, not into a good rule or belief that we can rely on the next time we need to know what to do. No, we need the guidance of God every time. God’s not near as interested in knowledge as we are. He wants us to constantly depend on him, and we can.

This is not to say that the Scriptures are not to be relied upon to learn from. They are able to make you wise for salvation, says Paul, and so I have been trying to use them in this last section to show you how to be saved from today’s bizarre system of Christianity and return to what the apostles founded. The Scriptures, however, according to the Scriptures, are for “rebuke, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16,17). Do you notice any consistency in the things mentioned in those verses? Rebuke–reproof–correction–instruction in righteousness–equipped for every good work; not one of these things has the least bit to do with systematic theology. Everything has to do with righteousness and good works. The Scriptures are supposed to be used to rebuke, reprove, and correct us and help us correct each other. They are supposed to instruct us in righteousness, and equip us so that we can actually do righteousness rather than just know what it is. We are missing the boat when we use it to teach doctrines in seminaries and Bible schools.

Oh, this was originally about the canon and the 4th century, wasn’t it? That being the case, I should add this. You really ought to read some of those books that didn’t make it in, but almost did. You ought to read 1 Clement, the Didache, and the Letter of Barnabas. You definitely ought to be familiar with 1 Enoch, which is quoted in Jude. Things like the Wisdom of Solomon and other books of the Catholic Apocrypha should be read, too. And you’re simply missing great stories if you haven’t read the Roman Catholic’s chapters 13 and 14 of Daniel, called Susanna and Bel and the Dragon. They are all available free online. Forget about those people who told you we ought to wrap up all those letters and books into a bound edition called the Bible and who left out books that were precious to your holy, united, and powerful predecessors of the 1st and 2nd century.

I want to talk a bit more about Craig Allert’s question that I started with, but from a different tack. I’ll do that in the next post.

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The Canon and the Crowbar

Posted on 10/02/2008 by Paul Pavao

First, let me remind any who read this and don’t know that I also have a web site at http://www.oldoldstory.org. Rose Creek Village’s home page is http://www.rosecreekvillage.com. We are having a “writers guild” meeting on Oct. 14, and we will be working to make updates to the RCV web site more common. Hopefully, you’ll be seeing weekly updates there by mid-November.

The Canon and the Crowbar was the working title of a book I wrote back in 1991. Scroll Publishing was going to publish it in 1992, but I had a falling out with them in the summer of that year. The falling out was mainly because the president of Scroll Publishing was going to join one of the Catholic churches, and I wasn’t willing to join with him. I never shopped that book around to other publishers because not long after that I decided that the book’s approach to reviving an honest and committed Christianity was the wrong approach.

However, the title applies well to this post. I am reading A High View of Scripture? by Craig D. Allert. I’m in the chapter about the Bible and the church. It’s chapter three, but I’m not reading the book in order, so I may have read more than three chapters. I’ve just been skipping around in the book; it’s been more fun that way.

The author doesn’t do a great job of starting out the chapter. I don’t blame him; I blame the editors. He appears on the first three pages to be arguing that the Pre-Nicene church (before Nicea in AD 325) didn’t believe in verbal inspiration. I couldn’t understand how he could argue this; they clearly did believe in verbal inspiration. By the fourth page, though, it becomes clear that what he’s really arguing is that the “Bible” of the early church was larger than ours. He writes, “In reality, using the fathers’ reference to Scripture . . . forces us to adopt a wider canon than Protestants currently hold.”

Keep in mind this is a Protestant author. The book is part of a series of resources for Evangelicals put out by Baker Academic. It’s very well done. The author know what he’s talking about, even if the introduction to chapter three is somewhat–well, a lot–unclear.

In order to make his point (which is extremely easy to make if one has actually read the early church writers) he mentions things like Polycarp (d. A.D. 155) quoting 1 Clement 5:4–well, rats; I just looked that up; that’s a really poor example. No one would agree that Polycarp’s quoting Clement there. Good grief. Well, now you know why you should always check your sources.

Let me give you a better example. It is clear in the writings of the early churchthat they read 1 Enoch. In fact, we don’t have to go to the 2nd century. We can go right to the Bible. There Jude, of course, quotes 1 Enoch directly (1:9 or 2:1, depending on which version you reference).  You probably already know he quotes the person Enoch there, but you may not have known that he’s quoting word for word from a book that’s still available. He is, and all of the early church writers were at least familiar with it (in my opinion).

One of the most unusual places I found a reference to Enoch is in Justin’s writings (c. AD 150).  He writes:

 But the angels transgressed this appointment, and were captivated by love of women, and begat children who are those that are called demons; and besides, they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, and partly by fears and the punishments they occasioned, and partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices . . . (2 Apology 5)

Here he tells us that the demons are the children of the angels that transgressed, the “giants” or “nephilim” mentioned in Genesis 6:4. In another place, he speaks of those “who are seized and cast about by the spirits of the dead,” and he refers to these as “demoniacs” (1 Apology 18). This teaching is from the book of Enoch. In 1 Enoch the children of angels and the women they married were giants. The giants were judged by God, and their spirits were condemned to wander the earth till the judgment. This would explain their desire to possess people’s bodies, and it also might explain “Legion’s” request to Jesus not be sent out of the local area (Mk 5:10).

Whether you agree with Justin that demons are the spirits of dead men or not, there is no doubt that he was familiar with and believed 1 Enoch. There is no doubt that the letter of Jude, which is in the Bible, quotes 1 Enoch directly. Even to this day, the Ethiopian Orthodox church has 1 Enoch in their Bible.

There’s much more, of course. There are numerous citations from the Roman Catholic Apocrypha in the early fathers, and there’s other citations–given as Scripture–that we have no idea where they came from. 2 Timothy 3:8 references Jannes and Jambres, from the no longer extant book called, not surprisingly, Jannes and Jambres. Hebrews 11 references Isaiah being sawn in two, which Evangelicals know as “tradition.” However, that tradition didn’t come from nowhere. It came from the book The Martyrdom of Isaiah.

The fact is, everyone knows the Pre-Nicene church didn’t have a close canon. There was debate about James, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation. The Assyrian Orthodox church ends their NT at 1 John to this day. 1 Clement, The Shepherd of Hermas, and the Letter of Barnabas were all referred to as Scripture by at least one early Christian writer.

I remember having a discussion with my 1st year Greek teacher (the only year of Greek I took) about 1 Enoch. His logic was dizzying. Basically, he said that since the Bible quotes 1 Enoch 1:9, that one verse is inspired. The rest isn’t, however, and, worse, he said 1 Enoch wasn’t written by Enoch. When I asked him why Jude said the quote is from Enoch, he said, again, that only 1:9 was spoken by Enoch. The rest isn’t from Enoch and isn’t inspired. Simply amazing.

So why does any of this matter? Well, for one, because it’s fascinating. Admit it, if you are a Christian, and you love the Scriptures, don’t you want to know these things? The only reason you wouldn’t want to know it is because you’re scared it will overthrow some belief you have about the Bible. If you’re not scared, however, and if you love the Scriptures, you have got to take delight in knowing how our current Bible came to be formed.

Secondly, this information matters because Christianity in the 21st century is an awful mess. Division and worldliness are rampant. Christians only deny this when they feel attacked. When they don’t feel attacked, however–like when they’re talking to each other–they admit it readily. Chuck Colson, in his book The Body, tells us a story–which he says is true–about a fistfight between the pastor and deacons of a church in Massachussets. He’s citing it as an example of the problems rampant in modern Christianity. One paper we received, writting against us but to friends by a pastor in Florida about 10 years ago, comments about the backbiting that is “common” in evangelical churches (and comments that love and care for one another is what his friends found with us at RCV; nonetheless, he didn’t like some doctrinal things, so he called us wolves).

So Christians know there is a problem–a big problem–in Protestant churches. Problems are solved by changing things; by doing things differently. Take the same actions, you will get the same results. Plenty of evangelical churches have tried “trying harder,” and overall it has not worked. Something has to change.

This little page is not written to say what needs to change; however, if you want to change, you have to accurately assess your current situation so that you know what needs to change. When a company has a financial problem, they don’t shoot in the dark. They audit their current situation; they find where the problems lie; then they make changes that fix the problems. Making random changes in hope that one of them will be successful is not a good way to go forward.

So Evangelicals need information. We (even with all my complaints about evangelicalism, I feel that we align most closely with them) need to make changes, and we need to know where to make those changes so they will be effective. The very best way to do that is to mimic those who are successful.

The 2nd century church was successful. When persecution came, they stood. When people spoke evil of them, they were able to boast that Christians live righteous lives and even submit to and support the Roman government that persecuted them. They succeeded in many areas where we wish we could succeed. It’s worth asking why.

And if it’s worth asking why, it’s worth knowing that the 2nd century church did not have a closed canon. Craig Allert says that evangelical writers “assume that the overriding concern of the church was to form a written collection . . . so that it might have a solid rule by which to govern its faith and life.” Evangelicals assume this about the primitive church because it is true about us. Evangelicals refer to the Bible as “the rule for faith and practice.” The early church had a “rule,” too, but it wasn’t the Bible. They called it “the rule of faith,” and it was a statement of basic beliefs. In the 2nd century, it was very short, but as heresies developed it grew a bit. Eventually, in the 4th century the “rule of faith” of the church in Caesarea was expanded by a couple words and became “The Apostles Creed,” which is repeated weekly in many churches to this day.

Think about the benefit of this. In the 2nd century church, that basic creed was the only required belief. In other areas, Christians were free to explore, learn, and argue. Such a policy would stop the Baptists and Pentecostals from dividing over spiritual gifts, the Church of Christ from dividing within itself over whether its Scriptural to have a church-run orphanage, and even the Methodists and Presbyterians from dividing over predestination and free will.

Of course, we all know that just adopting the Apostles Creed as the rule of faith for all churches would not cure the divisions of Evangelical Christianity. A lot more would need to be done. However, it is important to know that the holy, united, and powerful 2nd century church had as one of its traits that it’s “rule of faith” was short, and they did not split over interpretations of the whole Bible. In fact, they didn’t even agree on what the whole Bible was, because it was not collected into one book yet. There were a number of Scriptural books that were believed by the early church to be inspired. It would not hurt us a bit to learn from some of the ones they used, such as 1 Clement and The Epistle of Barnabas. The tract, “The Way of Light and Darkness,” is an excellent discussion of the Christian life that all of us could learn from, and it’s found in both The Epistle of Barnabas and The Didache (or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles).

2 Timothy says that all Scripture is inspired by God. We all know that, but it would do us good to note what it says Scripture is for. It is to make us “wise for salvation,” and it is to equip us for every good work. Too often, we have used it to give reasons that we don’t have to do good works, and too often we have used it to equip us for some very bad works, such as dividing from one another, an offense that “the Bible” says will keep you out of the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:19-21).

We Evangelicals are believers in salvation by grace. Let it be known that grace is that influence from God that breaks sin’s power over us and teaches us to be “zealous for good works” (Rom. 6:14; Tit. 2:11-14). When our focus is on walking in grace in this way, the love that is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (upon those who obey him [Heb. 5:9]) will keep us from dividing over whether our hands are raised in the air in a Sunday morning church service. In fact, that love might very well prove to those who doubt that Jesus is really the Son of God (Jn. 17:20-23).

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obeying God

Posted on 09/28/2008 by Paul Pavao

The following isn’t a carefully outlined teaching, just random but extremely important thoughts. Really, it’s just comments on things Watchman Nee said in the book Spiritual Authority.

The greatest of God’s demands on man is not for him to bear the cross, to serve, to make offerings, or deny himself. The greatest demand is for him to obey. (p. 13 [New York: Christian Fellowship Publishers, Inc.] 1972, paperback)

As people, descendants of Adam, we like the idea of having our life outlined for us. We want to know what to do. We want to study the Bible, and we want to have a principle to follow for each situation. This is not what God wants, however. “As many as are led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God,” says the Scripture (Rom. 8:14). We are to know how to be a spiritual people.

The Bible says that if righteousness came by the Law, then Christ died in vain (Gal. 2:21). Often this is misinterpreted to mean that God doesn’t care about our works at all. Of course he cares about our works. One day he will judge us by our works, and we are told to fear that judgment (2 Cor. 5:10-11; 1 Pet 1:17). Paul described his ministry as going around testifying to us Gentiles that we should repent and do works that befit repentance (Acts 26:20).  He most certainly was not telling us in Gal. 2:21 that our works don’t matter!

Instead, Paul is trying to tell us that the Law will never produce righteousness in us. He says that if the Law could have produced righteousness, then righteousness would have come from the Law (Gal. 3:21). However, because of the sin that is in our flesh, the Law is too weak to produce righteousness in us (Rom. 8:3).

So what will? The answer is that walking by the Spirit can produce righteousness in us (Rom. 8:4). Jesus did not just die for the forgiveness of our sins. He died to give us the Spirit of God. The mark of the new covenant is that everyone from high to low, old to young, and ruler to servant will receive the Spirit (Acts 2:16-21). The Law’s requirements are righteous, but they will be produced by our walking in the Spirit of God, not by our following the old Law nor any new set of rules or principles.

May God give us both revelation so that we can understand this and boldness so that we are willing to carry it out.

This is important. It is possible to give all your possessions to the poor and give your body to be burned, yet not have love and obtain no profit for your great sacrifices (1 Cor. 13:3). It is likely–because the Scriptures say this will happen to many–that you (uh–yes, you; it’s you that are told in 1 Pet. 1:17 to be afraid and you told in 2 Pet. 1:5-11 to learn and grow) will prophesy, work miracles and cast out demons in Jesus’ name, but be denied entrance to the kingdom of God.

The will of God is the absolute thing; the cup (that is, the crucifixion) is not absolute. (p. 14)

This was fascinating. Watchman Nee is very defensive of Jesus in the story of Gethsemane (thank God for men who stand up for Jesus). He says that Jesus’ prayer in the garden was not out of weakness. He prayed that the cup might pass from him, but he did not pray that he could be out from under God’s will. If God’s will could be different, if the cup of the crucifixion did not need to be drunk, then Jesus was asking if it could pass. However, if God’s will could not be different, then there was no question at all. It is always the Father’s will that must be done.

We can feel whatever we feel. We can ask whatever we might ask, but we must be subject to the will of God. The will of God must matter to us as it did to Jesus. He prayed in agony for hours while his apostles fell asleep in order to know the will of God. He did not walk away from the garden wondering. Instead, he got up saying, “Let’s go. The one who betrays me is here” (Matt. 26:46). He got up knowing what was going to happen to him. He had found the will of God; it was the cup, and now he would drink it.

It was a neat picture. May we care as our Lord cared about the will of God.

To serve God we are not called to choose self-denial or sacrifice; rather we are called to fulfill God’s purpose. (p. 15)

Eph. 2:10 says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do.” We are not called to do just any works. We are called to do the works God has prepared for us to do. We will  only find those works by the Spirit, not by following rules and being strict disciplinarians.

David Wilkerson wrote a book called The Cross and the Switchblade about going to New York to minister to gangs there. The trip to New York was not just some good idea that he got. He laid it before God, agonized before God in prayer, and put tests before himself to see if this were really the will of God. It was. So God preserved, protected, and empowered him there. Not only did it produce direct fruit in the 1960’s when it happened, but to this day Teen Challenge, which came out of that ministry, is acknowledged even by the U.S. government as the most effective ministry, by far, to drug addicts in America.

This alone is work in obedience to God’s will, that which originates with God. We are not to find work to do, rather we are to be sent to work by God. Once having understood this we shall truly experience the reality of the authority of the kingdom of the heavens. (p. 16)

Do you want to really be effective? Go where God sends you. Do what God calls you to do. Those who prophesied and cast out demons in Matthew 7, but were rejected by God, did not experience the blessing of God, despite the things they did. How could they? They were unknown to the Lord. Even so, there are many today holding great crusades and describing great miracles, but leaving no changed lives and no churches behind. This happens because they are not doing what they are called to do.

Satan laughs when a rebellious person preaches the word, for in that person is dwelling the satanic principle. (pp. 16-17)

Like begets like. Natural gives birth to natural and spiritual to spiritual. Ministers who have chosen their own principles and their own ministry in order to preach the word will give birth to unspiritual disciples who do not know how to follow God. God will not be able to use them. We see this principle working in far too vast of numbers in the United States. So much ministry is ineffective. Churches have no impact on the society around them. On the contrary, society not only influences the churches but eventually overthrows them. There is no power to continue. Older Christians warn zealous new Christians that their zeal will disappear after a few years. Their warnings are usually correct.

Christianity is supposed to be a spiritual religion. Like Adam in the garden we are supposed to be walking with God, not living by our knowledge of good and evil. Let us obey the command to walk by the Spirit, for it is by the Spirit that we will put to death the deeds of the flesh (Rom. 8:12-13) and only as we are led by the Spirit that we are not under the Law (Gal. 5:18).

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Questions and Complaints

Posted on 09/21/2008 by Paul Pavao

I had 30 spam comments this morning on my blog, which is why the comments are moderated. The spam comments are all very similar. There is a nonsense sentence followed by links. Who would do this? What are they trying to accomplish? I’m having trouble thinking of a scenario where someone would actually click on those links.

This post is called “Questions and Complaints” because those are where most of my writing ideas come from. Either someone asks me a question or I’m complaining about something I don’t think is right or don’t agree with. This post is on the complaint side, a hodgepodge of responses to things I read this morning.

I got up early this Sunday morning, read Discover magazine a bit, then got online and googled “the church,” hoping maybe to find some interesting, committed group of people that understands the importance of the church. I found out that there’s an Australian rock band called The Church, and it’s also a popular name for bars, both in America and England. However, I also found a number of sites of churches.

It fascinated me to find a group in London that has a web site just beginning. The one page they saw fit to have up on their site was their beliefs page, which was arranged, of course, like a statement of faith with numbered points. Point number one was their belief in the Bible as the “word for word” revelation of God. They even saw fit to describe the Bible as the “complete” revelation of God.

Should this really be point number one in a statement of faith? The early churches had a statement of faith that over 300 years developed into the Nicene (or Apostles) Creed, which never mentions the Scriptures, despite the fact that the bishops at Nicea had a strong belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures (the books of which were not yet defined; several were still in question). These bishops had such a strong attachment to the Scriptures that the greatest difficulty at the Council of Nicea was a struggle over adding an extra-scriptural word to the statement (they called it a “rule”) of faith they were developing. Nonetheless, the only reference to the Scriptures in the creed they came up with, which is still quoted weekly by many churches today, is in the line “. . . rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”

The next church page I went to was http://www.thechurchofgod.com. Their front page has only one paragraph on it. It begins with “Welcome to the official website of the Church of God. We are fully committed to the Bible . . .” That’s nice. How about God? Are you committed to God? Can you be? Or is he unknowable, and is it dangerous to try to follow him?

That’s my greatest objection to all these statements about following the Scriptures. Do you know that the Scriptures say they can’t be followed unless you’re first following God? The Word of God is foolishness to the natural man, and the natural man cannot comprehend them. God–yes, God, that being that runs the universe–must reveal the things of God to you in order for you to understand them. Examine away! Study the Scriptures! Make sure you’ve carefully checked out everything you’ve been told! In the end, unless God gives you revelation, you will be deceived.

What should you do about all these voices calling out to you? How do you decide between all the various groups claiming to be the church and all the various messages coming from Christian denominations? Check it out in the Scriptures, right? That’s not what the Scriptures say. The Scriptures say that you will know a prophet by his fruit. Only a good tree can produce good fruit. Bad trees will produce bad fruit.

That’s the teaching of Christ. I wonder if we believe it. I am in possession of a 19-page refutation of Rose Creek Village written back when we were “The Church in Bethel Springs.” The pastor who wrote it gave a glowing testimony of our fruit here. He said that the testimony of all the brothers he knew who had visited was that we were everything a church ought to be. His conclusion? This great fruit was produced by a bad tree. How did he know it was bad? He disagreed with Noah and me on a couple interpretations of Scripture. Worse, he couldn’t even present any good arguments for those interpretations of his. All he had is that his interpretations were more common than ours. Surely Scripturally it is not a very good argument that there are a multitude of people–a broad path–that agree with you, especially when you acknowledge in advance, as this pastor did, that his own church and others like it are prone to backbiting and half-heartedness.

Let me give you a different message. If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you have some idea where I’m coming from already, you are open to it, and you will look at what I’m saying Scripturally and agree. However, if you’re just passing by and found this blog on a search, there’s little chance you’ll agree with me no matter how clear the Scriptures are on the following subject. American Christians like to honor the Scriptures with first place on their statement of faith, but actually believing the Scriptures when they disagree with that statement of faith is of little importance to almost any Christian. Really. I’ve talked to thousands of them all over the world. It is a rare Christian that can look at a Scripture verse honestly if it disagrees with his or her church.

Okay, so here’s that different message. It is the church that is the pillar and support of the truth. People who believe that the Scriptures are the pillar and support of the truth really don’t like it when I say that, but it’s simply a Scripture quote (1 Tim. 3:15). There’s a similar statement made in 1 John 2:27. If someone is trying to seduce you, John says, the safety you have is that “you don’t need anyone to teach you, but the anointing will teach you all things, and it will be true and not a lie.” The “yous” in that verse are all plural, not singular. There’s no promises that God will guide an individual into truth in this manner–in fact, there’s promises to the contrary (Heb. 3:13)–but 1 Jn. 2:27 does promise some sort of infallibility to an obedient church.  History testifies that this guidance into what is true comes with stops and starts, mistakes and corrections, but it is nonetheless a guidance into truth, and it is a promise of God, a promise he has repeatedly fulfilled.

If you really want to follow and believe the Scriptures, you need to follow and believe the anointing of God with other believers. Can you imagine a statement of faith that began with, “We believe that all the truth and revelation we have has been humbly received from God by the anointing of his Spirit because we can’t trust our carnal minds to interpret Scripture without that revelation”?

I promised a hodgepodge of issues, but I got carried away with this one, and this post is long enough. I’ll address the other major issue I wanted to cover in my next post. I think it’s important to cover the issue of trusting God’s anointing over and over and over again. Many American Christians are stuck in dead and powerless tradition, and those who are not don’t have a clue about the power and importance of the church. Thus, they are stuck in a system that keeps them in fellowship with dead and powerless Christians, pouring themselves out in ministry to them, until they become burned out, exhausted, and sometimes unbelieving. They have no idea what God wants to bring them into, the joy and power of the unity of disciples. They have no idea of the ministry God will automatically create if those who have given their lives up for God knit themselves together as God’s people, having the candlestick of God’s approval in their midst (see Rev. chs. 1-3), and becoming the city of God whose light cannot be hidden. It’s far more important than people realize. Just because Christians gather together doesn’t mean that God calls them a church. It is possible to have your candlestick pulled (Rev. 2:5), yet wind up together trying to be a church without realizing God has departed from you. We quote Rev. 3:20 as a salvation verse, but it is a statement to the church in Laodicea that Jesus is now on the outside, knocking to come in, rather than being in their midst, all of them being joined to him.

Posted in Bible, Church, History, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Leaving Everything

Posted on 09/11/2008 by Paul Pavao

I started to write  a blog last night, and I decided I wanted it permanently on my “Rest of the Old, Old Story” web site. You can read it at http://www.oldoldstory.org/teachings/leaveitall.html. Sorry for linking you to a “blog,” but this seemed to work. Leave me a note (your back button will get you back here after reading it) if you have comments. It’s a lot to chew on. It was a lot for me to chew on, and I wrote it!

Posted in Bible, Church, History, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Inspiration

Posted on 09/02/2008 by Paul Pavao

This is part two of “Dealing with Bible Errors the Right Way”

All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for good works. (2 Tim. 3:16,17)

The authority of the inspired scriptures resides, not in an intrusive control of the writing process, nor in an error-free presentation, but in a reliable expression of the faith in the unique period of its earliest gestation. (James Tunstead Burtchaell CSC, in Alan Richardson and John Bowden, A New Dictionary of Christian Theology)

Yesterday we—well, I—discussed whether the existence of errors, real or imagined, left us with no more inspiration than “a reliable expression of the faith in the unique period of its earliest gestation.” I am not satisfied with that, and I am reasonably certain that the apostle Paul, in his second letter to Timothy, meant far more than that.

Today, there as an awful heresy that none of us recognize as such. It is a denial of the inspiration of the Bible that the apostles and early Christians knew. It is the false and damaging teaching that “a text without a context is a pretext.” What that means is that if a sentence or passage of Scripture is quoted out of context, then it is being misused. If this were true—which, thank God, it is not—then it would disqualify most quotations of the Old Testament that are found in the New.

Let’s begin with the virgin birth. If you believed the heresy that all Scripture use must be “in context,” then you would have to reject the New Testament use of Isaiah 7:14 (Matt. 1:23). In context, Isaiah 7:14 is a prophecy to King Ahaz of Judah that a maiden, in his day, would give birth to a child named Emmanuel. Before Emmanuel became old enough to tell good from evil, King Pekah of Israel and King Rezin of Syria, who were troubling Ahaz, would be removed from their thrones. That’s the context, and Matthew completely ignored both context and translation in using Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy of the virgin birth of Christ.

It’s only the LXX, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, that refers to the mother of Emmanuel as a virgin. The “original” Hebrew calls her a maiden, which can refer to a virgin, but is not necessarily one. Good thing, too, since we don’t believe in two virgin births. We believe that the mother of the first Emmanuel, the one born in Ahaz’ time, was not a virgin. Only the mother of Jesus, the true Emmanuel, was a virgin.

Because we don’t understand inspiration, and because we’ve believed the heresy that “a text without a context is a pretext,” skeptics like to point out that Matthew pulled Isaiah 7:14 out of context—way out of context. Shoot, they might as well start wandering through all the prophecies quoted in the New Testament, because most of them are out of context.

Take Hebrews 1:5, for example. While the first portion of that verse, taken from Psalm 2, works quite well in its original context, the last half doesn’t work at all. It is taken, not very well, from 1 Chr. 28:6, where God tells David, “Solomon thy son shall build my house and my court, for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be to him a father” (LXX, the version seemingly used by the writer of Hebrews).

Let’s look at another. In Romans 10:13, Paul quotes Joel 2:32, which says, “It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (LXX). However, in the original Hebrew that’s not just any Lord. In the original Hebrew, it says whoever calls on the name of Yahweh shall be saved. Then it gives a “because,” which means it explains why “whoever calls on the name of Yahweh shall be saved.” That “because” goes like this: “For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as Yahweh hath said, and in the remnant whom Yahweh shall call” (Joel 2:32, KJV with LORD changed to the original Yahweh).

So why does Paul feel free to apply this to Jesus? Clearly, it’s addressing Yahweh, the God of the Jews, and it says that we’ll be saved by calling on Yahweh specifically because salvation shall be in Mt. Zion and in Jerusalem. In other words, it will be in Israel’s holy city. To have people calling on Jesus, even if you use the more accurate Yeshua or Yahshua, in any old city, outside of Judaism, as Paul is suggesting, is hardly in context!

Worse, Paul presses on and in v. 18, he quotes from Psalm 19. He says, “Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world” (Rom. 10:18, KJV). For the last few verses, he has been talking about calling on the name of Jesus and preaching Jesus in all the earth. In v. 17 specifically, he has said that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Then he suddenly says that people have already heard because “their” sound went into all the earth.

Whose sound? In context, in Romans 10, you’d have to assume he meant the preachers he’s been talking about for four verses. “How shall they hear without a preacher?” he asks in v. 14. However, he can’t be talking about preachers, because Psalm 19, from which he is quoting, makes it quite clear that “their sound” is the revelation of the glory of God given by the skies. The skies declare the glory of God; they certainly do not reveal the name of Jesus, which is “the only name given under heaven by which man must be saved,” according to Peter (Acts 4:12).

We could go on and on. I found those by flipping around in the New Testament for just a couple minutes. It seems ironic to me that we Americans speak of God’s inspiration of the Scriptures, a highly spiritual and mystical process, and then look for it to be manifested intellectually with Scripture carefully used in context and scientific accuracy, completely irrelevant to the message, being divinely bestowed on primitive people. Scripture was never meant to be used in this method, and our defense of “verbal, plenary inspiration of the Scriptures” has little, if anything at all, to do with real inspiration, and it cripples us and makes us, in the Bible’s words, foolish.

Just as God’s message goes into Scripture by inspiration, so it comes out by revelation. The Scriptures never subject themselves to man’s intellect. “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent” (1 Cor. 1:19). So much for the reliability of everything you learned in Bible school. Paul had a different method for preaching the Gospel. “Not with wisdom of words,” he said, “lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect” (1 Cor. 1:17).

Can we really use a prophecy pulled out of context from Isaiah, then use a Greek translation that doesn’t exactly match the Hebrew? Of course we can. The prophecy does not prove the event. The event proves the prophecy. So God used an unusual route to let us know he knew in advance of the virgin birth. However, Isaiah 7:14 does not prove there was a virgin birth. The virgin birth proves that the LXX translation of Isaiah 7:14 was a prophecy.

Todd Burke, a missionary to Cambodia and author of a book whose title I don’t remember, told a story about arriving in a poor area of Cambodia. He was sleeping on a 1/16th of an inch thick mat, like all the Cambodians, but his birthday had arrived. He had the money to go down to the store and buy a mattress; not as nice as an American mattress, but a mattress nonetheless. He and his wife got up that morning and prayed about whether it was okay to purchase that mattress.

After they prayed, they opened their little daily devotional called My Daily Bread. The Scripture for that day? “Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” They laughed and laughed, but they took it as a word from the Lord, and they did not purchase the mattress.

This isn’t silly. The God of inspiration is the God of revelation. Rather than reveal his whole plan to Isaiah, who surely could not have handled the entire picture of the Messiah, he gave Isaiah prophecies containing bits and pieces of the whole picture. In Isaiah’s prophecy to Ahaz, he breathed in a subtle clue that when God came to earth (Emmanuel, God with us) he would come through a virgin. In other places, he breathed in not-so-subtle testimonies of a suffering Messiah.

We at Rose Creek Village have had our own experience of the subtle inspiration of God: a testimony that God was thinking of us thousands of years in advance. In 1995, several families from the church in Geneva, Florida came to Bethel Springs, Tennessee to proclaim the Life of God. Wanting some time to discuss these things, one of the sisters in Bethel Springs suggested retreating for a week to a national park some five hours away called Standing Stone. Why Standing Stone? To this day we do not know, except that God had things to say to us. There were many parks closer and just as beautiful.

It was a difficult weak, and there was much opposition from the enemy. The brothers and sisters from Geneva cried out to God. On the very last night, they were ready to end the day when one of the sisters came out to say, “We need to sing one more song. Let’s sing ‘Awake.’”

Everyone gathered. They began to sing, and the Holy Spirit suddenly began to move. Faces changed, hearts lifted, and many who had wondered opened their hearts to the message of God. In one moment the church in Bethel Springs was born.

It was months later when we ran across the passage in Genesis that describes Jacob’s vision of a ladder stretching from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending upon it. Then the Scripture says:

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep … and Jacob rose up early in the morning, took the stone that he had used as a pillow, and stood it up like a pillar and poured oil on top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel.

Now perhaps you think it pure chance that God used the song awake to pour the oil of the Holy Spirit upon us at a place called Standing Stone in order to begin the church at Bethel Springs, but we cannot. We know that for the God of the Scriptures to be thinking of us 3,000 years ago or more is not strange. It is simply the way God works. It is a normal experience for those that live by revelation.

Inspiration has nothing whatsoever to do with scientific accuracy or a memory jogged by God to remember insignificant details like whether bystanders saw a light or heard words (Acts 9:7; 22:9). Nor does inspiration have anything to do with whether the days of Genesis are literal 24-hour periods or eras consisting of thousands, millions, or billions of years. Inspiration has to do with the fact that it was God’s influence that made Moses use “greater light” and “lesser light” rather than “sun” and “moon” in Genesis one. The greater and lesser light, more importantly than representing the sun and moon, represent Christ, the light of the world, and the Church that, with no light of its own, reflects the glory of the Son.

Those who understand inspiration are ever learning, always being taught by the revelation of God. Who told Paul that Abraham’s two sons are really two covenants, one bringing freedom and one bringing slavery? We can debate until we pass into eternity whether there was a literal Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in a literal garden being eaten by a literal man. It will do us no good. It is far more important that we receive the revelation that we, like Adam, will be barred from the rest of God found in his garden if we live by the knowledge of good and evil. The flaming sword turns every way to bar the life of man from the garden of God. Even so, only those who will lose their life may enter eternal life by eating the Tree of Life found in the garden where live all those who find their rest in God alone.

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