The King James Grammar Nazi

Posted on 08/29/2014 by Paul Pavao

I am sent by King James 1 on behalf of the king’s Elizabethan English. I am come to defend our language from misguided American Christians.

Today’s post is in sport.

talent whither marquee

This church marquee puzzleth me. Whither goeth this unused talent? Whence and wherefore is it come? Traveleth it hither and thither like the tongue of an American?

Afore have I believed that a talent unattended would wither or be stolen. Henceforth shall I know that it withereth not, but departeth, though whither is not yet revealed.

Note: This is a simple misspelling, but I’m guessing that a church marquee is much more likely to have a misspelling like this because of how many Christians either read or are familiar with the King James Version of the Bible.

Some Elizabethan Grammar

I am not fluent in early modern English, but here are a couple things that might help if you ever want to feign the language of King James’ crew of Bible translators or the works of the great bard, Shakespeare.

  • “Thou” is singular and verbs used with “thou” end in -est.
  • The third person singular is the only other pronoun that takes an unusual ending. He, she, and it add -eth to the verb.
  • Neither I nor any of the plural pronouns get unusual endings. We, ye, and they all allow verbs to remain infinitive, just as in modern English. We run, ye have, and they clap are all correct.
  • Like today’s English, early modern English has many irregular verbs. “To be” is conjugated with I am, thou art, he/she/it is, we are, ye are, they are.
  • Oddly enough, “may” is an irregular verb in Elizabethan English. It is conjugated as thou mayest, but he may, rather than mayeth. I’m not sure why.
  • “Ye” is used as a subject of a sentence. If it’s the direct or indirect object, then it’s “you.”
  • The same is true with “thou” and “thee.” “Thou” is a subject, “thee” is used when the person you are addressing is the direct object. Thou hittest me, but I hit thee.
  • That shouldn’t be that hard. We already do that with I/me, we/us, he/him, she/her, and they/them. People say that choosing between who and whom is hard, but it is actually no more difficult, and follows the same rules, as I and me or he and him.

Just in case you were interested.

Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Solid Teaching and How It Happens

Posted on 08/26/2014 by Paul Pavao

I’m reading a book on house churches that says that if a house church isn’t teaching regularly, then it would be better to go to an institutional church with solid teaching.

Uh huh. Where would I find one of those?

You want solid teaching? It’s going to require some honest evaluation of our current teaching.

Look around, folks! Protestantism is divided into tens of thousands of sects.

Tens of thousands!

And no one cares!

When the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he gave them some encouragement at the start, and then he launched immediately into a problem. They had a lot of problems, but Paul spent at least the first three chapters focusing on just one.

Division.

Paul said that as long as the Corinthians were saying “I’m of Paul” and “I’m of Peter” and “I’m of Apollos”–and even “I’m of the King (Christ)”–then they were carnal and behaving like humans.

Does it really take an insightful, spiritual teacher to recognize that when we say “I’m a Baptist” and “I’m a Methodist” and “I’m a Pentecostal,” we’re doing the same thing?

Where’s our “solid teaching” when it comes to issues like these?

Jesus said that the world would know that the Father sent him because of our unity. Everyone knows that the Protestant Church is known for its division and bickering.

Where’s our “solid teaching” when it comes to issues like these?

Dodging Reality

Almost 30 years ago I walked into an (English language) bookstore in Germany. It was an unusual bookstore. It was small, but it had all of Watchman Nee’s book in it. Nee’s books were on one wall in wide hallway that separated the two small rooms that made up the store.

On the other wall were the typical books that you find in a Protestant bookstore.

I remember standing in the hallway looking at the two walls and wondering, Do these people know that the books on Nee’s wall teach that the books on the other wall are carnal, lukewarm, and of little spiritual value?

Recently, I read “The Old Cross and the New Cross by A.W. Tozer again. Tozer’s books are popular, but much of his writing condemns almost all of modern Christianity. The tract to which I just linked does not specifically mention “seeker-friendly” Christianity, so it can’t directly condemn it, but the tract nonetheless directly teaches that seeker-friendly Christianity is an offense to Jesus our King.

Do we pay attention to these things?

For the most part, we do not. Many Protestants know about these problems, but they consider them unsolvable, so they do nothing.

Reality and Solid Teaching

The book I’m reading recommends a church with solid teaching.

I assert that in Protestant Christianity those churches are nearly impossible to find because no one pays attention to the problems I mentioned above and the hundred others like them.

It’s just too costly to fix the problems.

Despite these problems, most of us think that “solid teaching” means repeating the same old things that have been taught in Protestant churches for centuries (though no more than five centuries since Protestantism is only five centuries old).

The very teachings that have produced the myriad of horrendous problems in the Protestant churches are just parroted as “solid teaching.”

Why? Because they’re Biblical?

Are you kidding? Oh, wait. You’re not kidding. You haven’t looked at the problems, so you don’t think they need a solution. You just go merrily along thinking that Protestant “solid teaching” is justified because some part of Protestantism has taught your doctrines for one-fourth of the church’s existence.

Okay, let me try to help you with this.

The book that recommended finding a church with solid teaching was written by a group of house churches that has “the doctrines of grace” as their primary, number one consideration.

“Doctrines of Grace” means that they believe that everyone is so totally depraved that no one would ever choose to believe the Gospel on their own. They believe that God randomly (“unconditionally”) chose a small percentage of the human population to believe before the creation of the world. Those randomly selected people are the only ones capable of believing the Gospel, and they will believe the Gospel, no matter what, because God’s grace is “irresistible.”

Believing all this, they conclude that Jesus only died for the “elect,” those randomly selected few. They also conclude that the elect must persevere to the end or they wouldn’t be elect. On the last day, every one of the randomly chosen will be justified by the blood of Jesus before the judgment seat of Jesus.

Those who were unfortunate enough not to be chosen will be tormented in hell forever for not being selected.

Makes The Hunger Games seem positively utopian, doesn’t it?

How anyone could derive these ideas from a book that says things like “He is the atonement for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world” is beyond me. Knowing that the men who made these doctrines popular were familiar with the earliest writings of the church puzzles me even more.

I once read a “systematic theology,” a book which analyzes a number of theological ideas, which had a chapter on “soteriology” which advocated “eternal security.” That means that those who are once saved are guaranteed, by the promise of Jesus, to go to heaven after dying and live their eternally in the presence of God.

The end of that chapter listed some verses that “seem” to contradict the idea of eternal security.

It listed at least 50 verses.

FIFTY verses that “seem” to contradict what the book taught.

That kind of thinking is the habit of Protestants. It is normal, not unusual.

The Catholics point out to us that James said that salvation is not by faith alone. That’s true, but we write them off because we know Catholics are deceived by works salvation. The apostle Paul knew better. He taught that salvation was by faith apart from works.

We don’t think about the fact that this means we’re saying James is as wrong as the Roman Catholics are.

I don’t know why we don’t think about that. Martin Luther did. He solved the problem by saying that James had nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it. “A right strawy epistle,” he called it.

Witness Lee was equally bold. He explains in his Recovery New Testament that James did not understand the “New Testament economy.”

What else? It’s those horrible Jehovah’s Witnesses who point out to us that Jesus called the Father the one true God (Jn. 17:3).

Now that’s one is easy to handle. The JW’s are a cult, and we can find dozens of verses that tear apart their doctrines.

Um, but what about John 17:3? It appears that we can just ignore it as long as we can silence those cults that bring it up to us.

My wife grew up in a Southern Baptist church. Now that is a church that would definitely have solid teaching. They are by far the most popular Christian denomination in the US besides Catholicism.

As we got to know each other and marriage became a real possibility, I decided I had better talk to her about 1 Corinthians 11.

1 Corinthians 11? Why would I be talking to her about the Lord’s Supper?

Actually, 1 Corinthians 11 has two subjects. One is the Lord’s Supper, and the other is women covering their heads (and men not covering their heads or having long hair).

After more than a decade of being a devoted, faithful member of the Bible-believing Southern Baptists and a faithful reader of the Bible herself, she had no idea that the Bible talked about a subject like women covering their heads.

No problem. The rule we Protestants would never verbalize, but which has been ingrained in us by long practice, is that if no one brings up the verse, we don’t have to deal with it.

Maybe the rule could be better written this way: “If a book somewhere explains why a verse that seems to contradict what we believe doesn’t really contradict it, then we never have to look at the verse again.”

Baptism is always an excellent example of this problem. We know that baptism is only a symbolic, public testimony because salvation is by faith only, and baptism is a work.

  1. Jesus said that the one who is baptized and believes will be saved (Mk. 16:16). Ah! But he adds only that he who does not believe will be condemned. This, then, proves we’re right. It is not those who are baptized and believed who will be saved. It is those who believe who will be saved, and they will also be baptized, which of course will have nothing to do with salvation.
  2. Peter told the Jews to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38). Hmm. We know that can’t mean what it says, so this is a really tough one. Fortunately, dishonesty is always an option when defending Protestant doctrines, so a couple of Greek scholars have kindly helped us out by telling us that the Greek word eis could possibly mean “because of” in that verse. (For the record, that’s simply not true, and Robertson and Wuest both ought to know that.)
  3. Paul said we are baptized into our King (Gal. 3:27) and into his death (Rom. 6:3). No problem, we have invented a new baptism. Now there is a baptism by the Holy Spirit into Jesus that is different than a baptism by a preacher into water and also different than Jesus baptizing us into the Holy Spirit.
  4. Peter said that the flood saved Noah and his family from the old world as a figure of how baptism now saves us (1 Pet. 3:20-21). Again, no problem. Peter added a parenthetical statement telling us that baptism does not save us, so that the passage should read, “… baptism now saves you (but it doesn’t save you).”

I could on and discuss being born of water in John 3:5 or the washing of regeneration in Titus 3:5. I could point out that from the earliest writings of the church until the rise of Pietism in the 17th century everyone thought that those verses meant what they say and that being born of water or washed for regeneration is a clear reference to water baptism.

I am not going to.

I am going to return to the start of this post and ask you to look around.

The Problems

We are known for our division. Jesus said that our unity was his proof that the Father sent him (Jn. 17:20-23), but few seem to care. Paul was confident that the work of God would continually grow in his disciples throughout their lifetime (Php. 1:6). Most of us know that the majority of the people in Protestant churches don’t read the Bible regularly, don’t pray very often, nor have any solid commitment to obeying all the teachings of Jesus.

Rather than fix these things, we excuse them. Charles Stanley, the famous pastor from Atlanta, taught publicly that we would be forgiven by God even if we don’t forgive others despite the fact that Jesus taught the opposite (Matt. 6:14-15). He had some brilliant excuses based on different types of forgiveness, but in the end, he simply denied this Scripture and taught people it did not apply.

I listened to a Sunday school teacher try to address Galatians 6:7-8 once. That passage says that if you sow to the Spirit you’ll reap eternal life, but if you sow to the flesh you will reap corruption. The teacher made a joke about the possibility of losing our salvation, then moved on.

The teacher was an acquaintance of mine, so I wrote him a letter telling him that even if that verse did not refute eternal security, it is nonetheless a warning, and he had not passed on that warning to his hearers.

My “brother” in the King turned my letter over to the pastor, who called me in to his office and asked my why I dared talk to one of “his” Sunday School teachers about this. (When he couldn’t intimidate me, he got somewhat bewildered about what to do.)

People “converted” to the Protestant Gospel fall away much more than they continue. Those who do continue generally find that they stop growing before too many years have passed. As a result the large majority of our church members are lukewarm at best.

How is it possible, then, that Protestant teaching could ever be solid?

The Route to Solid teaching

When a set of churches has problems as great as those I have been describing; when they refuse to address those problems because they are too difficult to address; and when they have to excuse and ignore multiple portions of Scripture to defend their doctrines, they do not have solid teaching.

There are two routes to solid teaching.

1. Stop ignoring the problems, stop explaining away verses from the Bible, and struggle through rejection, loneliness, confusion, and long periods of not knowing what is true, all the while crying out to God and searching the Scriptures.

Sometimes that works. You will know if it has worked if the problems go away and are replaced by unity, holiness, and the common growth of all or almost all of those that you are in fellowship with.

That’s a really hard route.

2. Find someone who has done the above and join yourself to them.

You will know if they are worth following if they are not alone, if they are united in love, living as the family of God, and are growing together in obedience to the commands of Jesus.

Posted in Bible, Early Christianity, Evangelicals, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Intelligent Fool

Posted on 08/22/2014 by Paul Pavao

Your IQ does not measure your wisdom, just your intelligence.

Reprove a wise man, and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser. Teach a righteous man, and he will increase his learning. (Proverbs 8:8b-9)

How many intelligent men (or women) are so proud that they can’t be reproved; that they can’t be instructed; that they can’t be taught?

That proverb goes on to say, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

It’s too easy to talk about the fear of the Lord without understanding what it is. A person who fears the Lord wants to know his will. A person who fears the Lord does not trust his own knowledge.

No matter how intelligent you may be, no matter how high your IQ, God judges wisdom by your response to criticism. Your response to criticism reveals your regard for the will of God. If you return insults for reproof or dishonor for correction, then God considers you a wicked scoffer, not a wise man (Prov. 9:7-8).

Note the words that God considers synonyms:

Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser. Teach a righteous man, and he will increase his learning.

“Wise” and “righteous”; they are synonyms in the eyes of God.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. (Prov. 9:10)

Posted in Holiness, Miscellaneous | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Trinity in History

Posted on 08/18/2014 by Paul Pavao

I’m frustrated one more time by the ridiculous claim that the churches couldn’t decide on a proper description of the Trinity until the Council of Nicea. It’s one thing when modern gnostics or those deceived by them invent history and slander Christians. It is quite another when Christian historians do it.

I have always said there a very small difference between the Trinity as taught by the early Christians and the Trinity as taught in Catholic and Protestant churches, perhaps nothing more than semantics.

I’m beginning to question that. If that is so, then why do historians consistently teach the inconsistency of early Christian teaching on the subject when there is no inconsistency? What about the teaching of the early churches is so objectionable that we refuse even to acknowledge it exists?

I don’t have the answer to that last question, but now I have run across an even worse description of the doctrine of the Trinity in the early church. The book is called Turning Paints: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity. It says:

The broader issues at stake [at the Council of Nicea] involved questions that had been asked for at least 150 years. The central question was how to define Jesus’s special status as … “the Son of God,” the “Word” or “Logos” of God, and the Savior who was “one with the Father.” Any number of solutions had been proposed to this question. Yet many of the best-known efforts to define precisely the nature of Christ’s divine character had been clearly unsatisfactory. (p. 40, emphasis mine)

The author goes on to present a couple versions of monarchianism as ideas proposed by the church. He doesn’t mention that the leading monarchianists were excommunicated. Monarchianists, more commonly known as modalists, believed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all one person, not three. They rejected the teaching that there could be three persons in the divinity, yet only one God. Since the churches were agreed that the one God had a Son who shared his divinity yet was a distinct “person,” monarchianists were excommunicated for heresy.

The author then goes on to list Origen’s teaching on the subject as though it were different from other early Christian writers on the subject. It is not. It is only different from our teaching on the subject.

This is all very frustrating to me because the only way I can prove this to you is by showing you the teaching of Justin, Theophilus, Athenagoras, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullion, Origen, Dionysius, and Alexander, all of whom wrote extensively on the Trinity.

That’s not possible in a blog, so I have done it elsewhere. There are three ways you can get your hands on the consistent teaching of the churches on the relationship between the Father and the Son, which was later confirmed at the Council of Nicea.

1. You can read my book, Decoding Nicea, which is now available on Kindle as well.

2. For those of you that don’t have the time or inclination or money to read the whole book, you can read the two chapters that discuss the teaching on the Trinity prior to Nicea online at http://www.christian-history.org/support-files/chapter-16-17.pdf. (You can also right click and download this .pdf. My gift to you.)

3. You can read the following telling quote from Philip Schaff, the noted 19th century church historian and author of the 8-volume History of the Christian Church. In his introduction to Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, found in the first volume of the second series of The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, he writes:

That Eusebius [of Caesarea] was a decided subordinationist must be plain to every one that reads his works with care, especially his earlier ones. … The same subordinationism may be clearly seen in the writings of Dionysius of Alexandria and of Gregory Thaumaturgus, two of Origen’s greatest disciples. … Eusebius in his earlier writings shows that he holds both [the divinity of Christ and his subordination to the Father] … but that he is as far from a solution of the problem, and is just as uncertain in regard to the exact relation of Father and Son, as Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Dionysius, and Gregory Thaumaturgus were.

Understand that being a “subordinationist” is not a good thing in modern eyes. Being referred to as a “subordinationist” means, to modern apologists, you do not understand the equality of the persons in the Godhead. (Godhead, by the way, is a middle English word for Godhood, and it simply means divinity.)

Subordinationism

Note: I’m not all that sure what “subordinationist” means. My understanding is that it means that the Son is subordinate to the Father. Since the Father always sends the Son, and the Son always does the Father’s will, I can’t imagine why anyone would object to subordinationism. I think, based on the alarm with which apologists and historians reference subordinationism, that they understand it to mean that the Father is in some way greater than the Son. Even that is indeed a teaching of the early Christians. It seems odd that anyone objects to it, since Jesus said himself that the Father was greater than him (Jn. 14:28), and also said that the Father knows things that he does not know (Mk. 13:32). You might want to see my article on the subject at Is the Nicene Creed Heretical?.

You can get a hint of scholarly opinion of subordinationism in this review of the first edition of Decoding Nicea. Despite this well-known apologist’s delight in my book, he remains horrified that I spoke of subordinationism in a positive light.

But look at the people who are guilty of subordinationism!

1. Eusebius of Caesarea: Eusebius is the only eye-witness of the Council of Nicea who has described the proceedings. (Athanasius has some comments about the behavior of the Arians, but no real description of what went on there.) He was very likely the presiding bishop at the council. Really, it ought to be impossible to question the beliefs of Eusebius without questioning the Nicene Creed itself.

2. Origen, Dionysius, and Gregory Thaumaturga: These are two of Alexandria’s most famous bishops, with Gregory succeeding Dionysius in the mid-third century. It is true that they were likely influenced by Origen, who was considered the greatest teacher of his time and who was an older contemporary of Dionysius.

3. Tertullian and Hippolytus: Tertullian’s main works were written while Hippolytus was a child or young man. Tertullian hailed from Carthage, close enough to Rome to look to Rome for apostolic authority. Hippolytus was from Rome and eventually split the church there when he rejected the election of Callistus as bishop. Despite Hippolytus being remembered as “antipope,” his writings are highly regarded for their historical value and witness to the practices of the church in Rome in the early third century. Tertullian was the first early Christian writer to use the Latin term Trinitas, and there is no clearer exposition of the early Christian view of the Trinity than his Against Praxeas.

Schaff goes on to say:

The logical consistency of the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Son … must in time overcome this decaying remnant of the ante-Nicene [before Nicea] subordinationism.

“Decaying remnant of ante-Nicene subordinationism”?

Where does the Nicene Creed mention subordinationism, much less reject it?

The worst part of this last quote from Schaff is the insinuation that the ante-Nicene churches either rejected or were ignorant of “consubstantiality.” I assert they were not only aware of it, but explicitly taught it, even as early as the second century.

We acknowledge a God, and a Son, his Logos, and a Holy Spirit, united in essence. (Athenagoras. A Plea for the Christians 24)

How Important Is This?

Honestly, I still wonder how important all the above is, except …

It frustrates me that truth is hidden from so many Christians. Worse, it frustrates me that so many Christians don’t care. Even in the midst of the disputes and divisions that are so rampant in modern Christianity, the majority of Christians are satisfied with the traditions they were raised in. It’s impossible to rouse them from their comfortable wanderings through this world even with Scripture, much less to get them to examine the history of the church and learn “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.”

That problem is surely the much greater problem, but it is exacerbated when historians, equally bound by their own tradition, write books that dodge the critical differences between the faith taught by the apostles to their churches and those that are espoused by our modern churches.

At the very least, please tell us the truth. Let us know the differences exist, and present them fairly.

I know that the idea that the doctrine of the Trinity developed until it reached its zenith at Nicea is so popular that it is difficult for any Christian, historian or not, to find out the idea is not true without reading all those writers for themselves.

My contribution to this is to provide you with the most extensive set of quotes on the subject of the Trinity that you can find in our modern world. You can find it in my book, if you care to buy it, or you can read it online, free, in these two chapters from the book. Those two chapters are 68 pages with explanations and quotes on the various facets of the early Christian view of the Trinity.

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What Is Salvation?

Posted on 08/08/2014 by Paul Pavao

I want to strongly disagree with something true …

because it is in the wrong context.

At this moment, God commands all men to repent and believe that today is the day of salvation, that you are to flee from the wrath to come, from the Law of Moses that condemns you, into the city of refuge who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Run to him.
   Repentance is simply giving up: to stop fighting against God and to stop attempting to gain your own salvation through your own works; to literally give up and fall upon Christ. That is salvation.

I’m not going to tell you who said this, but he is famous. I like him, so I’m not mentioning his name. Some of you will know who said this, please avoid naming him in your comments.

Let’s analyze these statements by the Scripture.

“God is commanding all men everywhere to repent.” That is true. It’s even preached by an apostle as part of the Gospel (Acts 17:30).

But this preacher’s definition of repentance? Good heavens, where did it come from? Certainly not from Jesus or his apostles.

God commands us to flee from the law of Moses that condemns us? What apostle ever preached this? Paul did tell the synagogue in Antioch of Pisidia that Jesus could justify them from everything that the Law of Moses could not justify them from (Acts 13:39), but can this really be interpreted as “flee from the Law of Moses”?

Paul himself was not fleeing from the Law of Moses. In fact, he kept the Law most of the time along with most Jewish Christians (Acts 21:21-26).

When this preacher gets to his definition of repentance, he gets even less Biblical.

Paul said that he preached everywhere that people should repent and do works worthy of repentance (Acts 26:20). I don’t know how you interpret that statement, but I certainly wouldn’t interpret it as “give up and stop attempting to gain your own salvation through your works.”

Search your way through the sermons in Acts. Only these messages are preached to the lost about salvation and the kingdom of God. The letters that we love to quote, and rightly so, are written to Christians, not to the lost. In the apostles’ proclamation of the Gospel to the lost, you are not going to find anything remotely resembling “stop attempting to gain your own salvation through your works.”

Here’s a better summation: “There is a new King, anointed of God and proven to be God’s anointed by rising from the dead, a resurrection we [apostles] witnessed. Repent, wash your sins away in baptism, and enter his kingdom.” (Shameless plug here for my booklet, The Apostles’ Gospel.)

The message is that Jesus, God’s Anointed, the King of God’s Kingdom, is now going to rule over you. One does not begin that message by telling people that they can’t obey him!

Obedience

You most certainly can obey him! You need to repent and start obeying him because he is the author of eternal salvation to all who will obey him (Heb. 5:9). Those who do not obey the Gospel will see wrath and indignation and fiery vengeance (Rom. 2:8-9; 2 Thes. 1:8).

In the right context, we do need to be told “apart from [Jesus] you can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5). This should be told to people who have agreed to leave everything because they have believed, not that they should flee from the law of Moses, but that they should believe the Gospel of the kingdom, that God has raised up a King, overthrowing death in the process, and we must repent before him.

Once you have submitted and agreed to obey him and entered his kingdom by washing away your sins and rejecting your old life in baptism, then you will encounter the wonderful news that in this new kingdom, everyone receives the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:17-21; 38). The grace that comes from the Holy Spirit transforms you into a new person, an entirely new creation that is formed by God to do good works (Eph. 2:10).

This is the Gospel. This is salvation. Don’t believe all that stuff about your inabilities. The reason God is commanding you and everyone else to repent (Acts 17:30) is because you, and everyone else, CAN REPENT. Not only can you repent, but you can do works befitting repentance.

Unless of course you think the apostle Paul was wasting his time telling everyone to do works befitting repentance.

Enter in! You are not going to accidentally fall upon salvation. As Justin the martyr put it a couple thousand years ago, “The demons subdue all who do not make a strong opposing effort for their own salvation.”

Jesus said the same in different words: “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force” (Matt. 11:12).

Count the Cost

Count the cost (Luke 14:26-33). Decide whether you can pay the cost of everything to purchase the kingdom of God.

Everything is a remarkably cheap price. Ask the pearl merchant what he thinks (Matt. 13:45-46). Ask the farmer turned treasure hunter what he thinks (Matt. 13:44;).

Note: I don’t actually know the guy who found the treasure was previously a farmer. I took poetic license.

Talk about your Passover discounts! This Passover discount is that you get the forgiveness of sins, the Holy Spirit, life everlasting in the kingdom of God, and favor with both God and his Anointed King, all for the low, low price of everything you own and your life.

I’m being humorous—without promising that the humor is actually funny—but the message is absolutely true, and it is the one taught by Jesus and the apostles. “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into the King were baptized into his death?” (Rom. 6:3).

Paul was puzzled by a Christian who had not yet figured out the cost, much less paid it. “Your life’s over, man,” he was saying.

In what context? The context, from the verse before, is, “How shall we, who are dead to sin, live any longer in it?”

So don’t be deceived. God isn’t calling you to flee the Law of Moses. He isn’t saying anything about the Law of Moses. He is telling you that you had better get on your knee before the King of all eternity because one day he is going to judge you and every other person, living or dead. He is going to strike the nations and terrify the rulers and governments of this world, and God highly recommends (well, no, he commands) that you be on the side of the Son before that day arrives (Ps. 2).

When you do, you will find out that you no longer have to flee the Law of Moses. By the Spirit of God you will fulfill the Law of Moses (Rom. 8:4), just as Jesus called you to (Matt. 5:17-20).

Note: For those of you that might think I just gave a plug for the false teaching of the Seventh Day Adventists and other sabbatarians, please see Law of Moses or yesterday’s post, The Law and Sound Doctrine.

Posted in Gospel, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Paul Washer and Repentance

Posted on 08/07/2014 by Paul Pavao

I’ve been listening to Paul Washer for a few minutes. A friend of mine listens to him regularly. I haven’t really wanted to, mostly because I had heard his style while overhearing others listening to him.. I hadn’t really heard anything he’s said, but I did know he is famous for his hard-nosed preaching. I consider that a great plus, but I didn’t think his style was worth wading through.

My mistake.

Really good sermon, especially in light of the abundant ignorance and tradition in the church today. He could do with a little clarification from the early churches, but really no one ought to be able to complain a guy who can get to the point like Mr. Washer does in this video.

YouTube

If you want to watch it here, and it works on your browser, here it is. Otherwise, you’ll need to use the link above.

Posted in Evangelicals, Modern Doctrines | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

1 Timothy 1:8 – The Law and Sound Doctrine

Posted on 08/06/2014 by Paul Pavao

Sound doctrine is a mystery to most despite being thoroughly explained in Scripture.

As I return from my tour of various odd forms of sickness—heat exhaustion, immunization reaction, and a stomach bug or food poisoning—it is time to return to 1 Timothy. We did verses 1-7 … on July 20. I guess this was a long hiatus.

1 Timothy 1:8-10

We were introduced to sound (literally “healthy”) doctrine in verse 3, though Paul did not call it that.

Stay at Ephesus … so that you may charge some to teach no other doctrine.

In verses 8-10, Paul clarifies the problem with that “other doctrine.”

The Law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners … etc. … and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.

Contrary to Sound Doctrine

What is contrary to sound doctrine? Is it Calvinism? Is it an incorrect view of the atonement? Is it amillenianism?

No, what is contrary to sound doctrine is murder, immorality, hating your parents, homosexuality, kidnapping, lying and the like. It is those things that will keep you out of the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21).

As an interesting aside, let me point out the Sermon the Mount. There is nothing in it about Jesus’ return, even though Jesus does talk about his return in other places. There is nothing in it about predestination, even though the Jesus and the apostles do talk about the Father’s call, foreknowledge, choosing, and predestination. There is nothing in it about the atonement, even though the atonement is central to the teaching of the churches.

Despite all that is lacking in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes the incredible promise that if you do the things he taught in that sermon, you will stand through every trial (Matt. 7:24-27).

Even more exciting is the context of his promise. He has just got done telling us the difference between true teachers and false teachers (vv. 15-20) and the difference between those who enter the kingdom of God (those who do the Father’s will) and those who don’t (those who work miracles but practice iniquity).

Thus, we can safely conclude that if we quit worrying about money, stop lusting, stop parading our religiosity, don’t resist evil, quit hating, and in every other way live a more righteous life than the pharisees, then nothing will overthrow us and that we will be given an “abundant entrance” into Jesus’ eternal rule (2 Pet. 1:8-11).

It appears then, that Jesus had the same idea of what was “contrary to sound doctrine” that Paul did.

The Law

Paul mentions the Law here. Look at what he thinks the Law teaches. He doesn’t think the Law is much concerned with circumcision, food laws, the Sabbath, and sacrifices like most Jews would. He thought it was about the same thing Jesus thought it was about.

“Are you without understanding, too? Don’t you understand that something that enters a person cannot defile him? … That which comes out of a man, that defiles him. From within, from out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, sexual immorality, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, greed, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:18-20)

Jesus tells us that if we think the food laws are about pork, we are “without understanding.”

The food laws are about the things he listed in Mark 7.

We are the ones who must be clean. He doesn’t care if our food is clean.

Foods for the stomach, and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. (1 Cor. 6:13)

It’s probably worth adding that the rest of that verse is: “Now the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body.” He may not care about food, but God does care about sexual immorality. Pork will not defile your body, but living like an uncontrolled animal will.

One more time, there in 1 Cor. 6:13, the Scriptures turn a discussion of clean food into a discussion of clean Christians.

The food laws are not abolished. Jesus said he did not come to abolish the law, and if we teach people to ignore even the most minor commandments, then we will be called least in the kingdom of God. (That’s a comfort. If we have forgotten apostolic teaching on the subject, the teaching once known by all the churches, we won’t be banned from the kingdom, like the greedy and sexually immoral will be, we will merely be called least in the kingdom. Sad era we live in.)

So, don’t mess up the food laws, nor any other. If you want to be clean, pork has nothing to do with it. You … yes, you … must be clean.

You must be a ruminant. You must not eat the Word of God indiscriminately. You must not simply empty what you’ve eaten “into the draught,” having extracted only surface nutrients from it. You must ruminate on it. Bring it back up from your heart, chew on it, and get every nutrient you can squeeze from it before you let it pass on into your memory to be replaced by the next day’s food.

This reminds me of an Amy Grant song:
 
I know a man, maybe you know him, too
Never can tell, he might even be you …
His spiritual tummy, it can’t take too much
One day a week he gets a spiritual lunch
On Sunday he puts on his spiritual best
And gives his language a spiritual rest
He’s just a fat little baby
He wants his mama and he don’t mean maybe
He sent for solid food once or twice
But he says doctrine leaves him cold as ice

You must not only be a ruminant; you must also be a doer of the work (Jam. 1:25). You must have a parted hoof. This represents your parting from the world, for only in doing so will you be accepted by God (2 Cor. 6:17-7:1).

It is not just here in 1 Timothy that Paul appeals to the Law. He does so as well in 1 Cor. 9 where he treats the Law just as Jesus taught us all to treat the Law. God is not concerned about ceremonies. He is concerned about us and our behavior.

Feasts, New Moons, and Sabbaths

As an aside, he is also not concerned about our literal interpretations of the Law of Moses and our love for ceremonies like the new moons, feasts, and Sabbaths. The true circumcision is the circumcision of the heart, and if you want to be a Jew before God, then circumcision of the flesh will do you no good at all (Rom. 2:28-29). You must have your sinfulness cut away by the circumcision that is done without hands (Col. 2:11).

In the same way, the rest that you must enter into is not a one day a week thing. The Pharisees had that righteousness, and Jesus could barely tolerate their presence. They were his enemies, and thus they were the enemies of God.

No, our righteousness must exceed theirs. God has offered us the rest that is in Jesus. He calls us into kingdom in which we serve under a yoke made particularly for us, carrying a burden carefully chosen for us by God, the Father of our King. The life he calls us to is a life of perpetual rest (Heb. 4:7).

At one time, all Christians knew these things:

The new law requires you to keep perpetual Sabbath, and you [Jews], because you are idle for one day, suppose you are godly, not understanding why this command was given to you. If you eat unleavened bread, you say the will of God has been fulfilled. The Lord our God does not take pleasure in such observances. If there is any perjured person or thief among you, let him cease to be so. If any adulterer, let him repent. Then he has kept the sweet and true Sabbaths of God. (Justin. Dialogue with Trypho 12. c. AD 150)

I guess we’ll stop there. Only three verses today. Really rich verses when you didn’t previously know what Paul was talking about, aren’t they?

Posted in Bible, Modern Doctrines, Teachings that must not be lost, Through the Bible | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Repeating History

Posted on 08/04/2014 by Paul Pavao

Sorry for being missing in action. I played a charity softball game, and our softball team was in serious need of charity. We were old, slow, and out of practice, so we were out in the field for the first inning for a half hour or more. The second inning wasn’t too bad, but the third inning was another long one. It was 92 degrees and humid.

I don’t go out in the sun much because a little sunshine can cause GVH, where my replacement immune system attacks first my skin and then, if not controlled, my organs after that.

This was a charity softball game, so I slathered myself in 100-SPF sunblock and played with everyone else.

In the middle of the third inning I had to walk off the field because of the heat. I tried to drive home, but the car wouldn’t accelerate right. It took me three tries to accelerate and almost a minute before I realized I was hitting the brake rather than the accelerator. I was still alert enough to figure out that this was a really bad sign and that I shouldn’t be driving.

I parked under a tree and turned the air conditioning to maximum, but that made me so sleepy I knew I had to do something. I was a little scared to just go to sleep with the car running, so I set a text to one of my friends on our happy but pitiful softball team.

Amazingly, he and his wife volunteered to drive me over an hour back to my home in Memphis. He drove my car, and his wife followed in theirs. They put me in bed, then drove and hour and a half to their home.

I have really good friends.

I didn’t recover until Thursday (three days ago). On Wednesday, Vanderbilt called me up to tell me that they had checked my “titers” (no idea what that is) and that three of my immunizations didn’t take. I needed to be re-immunized.

I got that done on Thursday. I don’t know whether my body thought I had Hepatitis-B or the flu, two of the immunizations I got, but I was horribly sick on Friday.

It’s Sunday morning, and I seem to be recuperated. I have about 15 blogs in my mind from laying around exhausted all week, but I haven’t had the energy or time to write any of them.

Nor have I only been laying around. I have been in two very important church meetings to help a couple brothers, one back at Rose Creek Village, an hour and a half away. I had to go into work to get our end of month done while my bookkeeper was on vacation, and while I was at it I did interviews for a marketing job for our fledgling publishing company.

So that’s my excuse for not blogging as well as a little insight into the somewhat stressful and very wonderful life that I live.

Here’s another insight into my life, the result of one of those church meetings I mentioned. I posted this on Facebook, but it really ought to be a blog. This is actually the result of two meetings, one with the church, and one with the brother who needed help.

Here’s the story as I posted it on Facebook:

*****************

Many centuries ago, the churches did not allow actors. This was not because acting itself is a terrible thing to do but because of what acting was in Greek theaters. Boys were raised to be effeminate so that they could play women when they were older. The whole field was inherently immoral.

One Christian man was a trainer of actors and he asked the church whether he could be a teacher as long as he did not act or participate in the immoralities of his profession. The church wasn’t sure what to do so they wrote to Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage. This was in the 250’s.

Cyprian told them that if acting was wrong, then it was wrong to train actors as well. But that is not the end of the story.

Cyprian told the church there that they needed to support this man until he could find a new job. Then he told them that if they did not have the resources to do so, they could send the man to Carthage, and the church at Carthage would support him.

I have always loved that story, but this morning I had the possibly once-in-a-lifetime privilege of sending a similar letter. In order to extricate a brother from a business that is crushing him, we are going to get involved, fix a couple financial problems, and get him out of the business. I got to write the church not far from here, ask them not charge him rent for two months, and to offer the services of the church here in Memphis to take care of all his other expenses and needs until we can get him into his new job.

Very cool. Those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it, but sometimes those who do know history get to repeat it to the glory of God.

So happy.

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1 Timothy 1:1-7

Posted on 07/20/2014 by Paul Pavao

In the introduction to 1 Timothy, I explain that Timothy and Titus are apostles, not pastors. That is important to remember as we go through the book.

Verses 1-2

Trinity

I get blasted every time I say that the Athanasian Creed contradicts the Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed, the Christian writings from before those creeds, and the Bible itself. Nonetheless, it is true.

The line I particularly object to is:

So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet they are not three Gods, but one God.

This is the most popular modern way of describing the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but there is nothing scriptural or historical about it.

The other two major creeds (Apostles and Nicene) use much different terminology:

We believe in one God, the Father … and one Lord, King Jesus, the Son of God … and the Holy Spirit.

This is the same terminology used by Paul:

For us there is but one God, the Father … and one Lord, Jesus the King … (1 Cor. 8:6)

We see an example of this at the start of all of Paul’s letters, and 1 Timothy is not an exception.

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and King Jesus our Lord.

You will never find Paul or anyone else saying, “Grace to you from God the Son and the Father.” Nor will you ever find any biblical reference to “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.” The Son is regularly said to be seated at the right hand of God, but the Father is never said to be seated at the left hand of God.

For further explanation see Definition of the Trinity, or get my book Decoding Nicea, which is the most thorough review of the early Christian explanation of the Trinity, primarily using their own words, that you will find anywhere.

There is an order in divinity. There is only one divinity, and it comes from God the Father. The Son shares the divinity of the Father, but the Father is the source. The illustration the early Christians used was that of a spring and the stream that flows from it. They also used a root and the tree rising up from it and the sun and its sunbeam as figures of the relationship between the Father and the Son.

The Holy Spirit? It appears to me, and to many others, that the early Christians were all over the place in discussing the Holy Spirit, and their statements are as difficult to put together as are those of Scripture. The Council of Nicea, after many descriptions of King Jesus, the Son of God, ended its creed (since added to): “… and in the Holy Spirit.” No explanation at all was attached.

Blessing

Those who know me know how seriously I take the concept of blessing. Like most people in history, I believe blessings have power. A “Bible believer” believes blessings have power by definition because the Scriptures regularly teach that blessings are effective.

Paul starts and ends his letters with a blessing. I don’t think the blessing was rote. I think Paul had chosen the blessing he thought was best.

This was later in Paul’s life, so maybe he added the “mercy” along the line, but in all his letters he blesses his readers with “grace and peace.” A run through the apostles’ writings looking for those two words will make it clear why he chose them to bless the churches with.

Yes, only the churches. Paul blesses with peace only those who “love the Lord Jesus in truth” (Eph. 6:24).

Call No Man Father

Jesus told us not to call anyone father, but here Paul says Timothy is his “true son” in the faith. In other passages, he claims to be a father to the Corinthians, not just a teacher.

There are people who object to Paul or anyone else being called “father.” We Protestants like to pick out snippets of a verse, a verse out of a passage, or a chapter out of a book to teach things that violate other verses, passages, or books (of Scripture).

The Protestant interpretation of Matthew 23:8 is not just false; it’s hypocrital. We excoriate Catholics for calling their priests “Father,” but we are as much violators of Matthew 23 as they are.

  • We have isolated only “father” in that passage, ignoring rabbi and teacher.
  • We ignore the obvious context of the passage, which applies as much to Pastor Jones as it does to Father Martin, and I think even more so to the “Right Reverend” Thornton. (Names made up.)

Those were not real names.

The context of Matthew 23:8—I don’t have to prove it; you can see it yourself without trying very hard—concerns titles and receiving honor for your title. Thus you can be called Teacher Jones, Evangelist Jones, Deacon Jones, Reverend Jones, Paster Jones, Father Jones, or the Mighty Apostle Jones, and you have taken on yourself a title of honor that Jesus told his disciples neither to take up themselves nor to give to others.

Timothy’s Apostolic Work

Traveling Pastors in Church History

Canon 15 of the Council of Nicea states: “On account of the great disturbance and discords that occur, it is decreed that the custom prevailing in certain places contrary to the Canon, must wholly be done away; so that neither bishop, elder, nor deacon shall pass from city to city.”
   Tertullian adds that those who presided over the churches in his day were appointed for their proven character, not a seminary degree from some far away place (Apology 39).

Timothy is a traveler, not a pastor.

Verse 3 tells us that Paul left Timothy in Ephesus for a purpose. He stayed to instruct certain ones not to teach falsely.

Paul does not say to silence them, as he tells Titus (1:11), and he doesn’t say that these are divisive people who need to be rejected (Tit. 3:10). The problem in Ephesus appears to be that they got bored and are entertaining themselves with “myths and endless genealogies,” and whatever else promotes “speculations.”

We Americans need to take that warning to heart!

Verses 5-7

I said in the introduction that I love the letters to Timothy and Titus. They were written late in Paul’s life (though by my reading, they seem to be among the earliest quoted letters by the early Christians), and he was (in my opinion) tired of Christians not getting the central message. As we say today, they were majoring on the minors.

To me, the letters to Timothy and Titus shout: “HEY! IT’S ABOUT GOD CHANGING YOUR BEHAVIOR. DON’T GET OFF TRACK. ALL THIS OTHER STUFF IS USELESS.”

Jesus had similar things to say to the Ephesians (Rev. 2:1-7). They were doing all sorts of good things which Jesus commended them for, but they had departed from the main focus. They had lost their first love. Don’t get confused, though. Their first love was still all about actually DOING something. “Repent and do your first works over again” was Jesus’ advice to them.

Well, command, actually. When the King shows up, it’s not a suggestion. Ignore his “suggestions” and you wind up blotted out of the Book of Life (Rev. 3:5), spewed out of his mouth (3:16), losing your candlestick (2:5), and even having Jesus fight against you! (2:16).

His yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matt. 11:30), but that sort of ease, power, lightness, confidence, mercy, and peace is for those who know he is the King and have bowed their knee to him in utter submission, losing all other worldly ties.

Anyway, the point is that Jesus and his apostles don’t want us wandering from this eloquent teaching to that one. Paul tells Timothy that the purpose of our teaching is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a faith that is not pretended.

Some people have deviated from this purpose, Paul tells us, and they are producing “meaningless talk.”

Well, that’s long enough for today. This trip through the apostles’ writings could take years!

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Proving the Gospel: Counterfeit and Real Churches

Posted on 07/17/2014 by Paul Pavao

In a recent post I discussed the proof that the apostles offered for the Gospel and the proof that we have today.

  • The apostles were witnesses of the resurrection, and the resurrection was their proof that Jesus is God’s Anointed King and begotten Son.
  • The apostles are no longer with us, but Jesus has left us a testimony nonetheless, our love and unity.

That’s both a wonderful and a scriptural theory. In practice, however, “the church” is not known for love and unity but for division, bickering, and condemnation.

What do we do?

Real Churches

There is an obvious answer that seems impossible to implement. We need to raise up churches that can produce the fruit Jesus said would cause the world to believe.

How do we do that?

There are examples of successful churches that are like the early churches. Their testimony is powerful, and they grow, together, both upwardly and outwardly. They are using the same methods the apostles used.

  • Go somewhere, find a man of peace as a beginning. (Luke 10:3-6)
  • Stay with that person only. (Luke 10:7)
  • Preach the Gospel of the Kingdom and heal the sick. (Luke 10:9)

I need to stop here and tell you that I know of ambassadors (of God’s Kingdom, not earthly ones) that have healed with miracles, with medicine, with simple training about hygiene, with donations from Christians in other cities or countries, or with a combination of all of these. I’d love to tell you that all ambassadors of the King go forth with miraculous healing power, but they don’t. Some see a lot; some see less.

  • Make disciples of the converts by teaching them to obey all things that Jesus commanded. (Matt. 28:19-20)
  • Appoint elders once the Spirit has raised them up. (Acts 14:23; Titus 1:5)
  • Move on, but pray, care for, and visit the churches you have raised up.
  • Rejoice as you see your churches reproducing themselves among neigboring villages, communities, and cities.

This is all really happening; all over the world.

The Existence of Counterfeit Churches

So am I saying churches like fit the description I just gave are the only real churches?

Pretty close, though not quite.

A real church produces real fruit. It is a testimony for Jesus, not against him. It is a plain, true, undeniable fact that overall, the churches of our day, in the United States, are a stain on the name of Jesus, not a benefit.

People complain all the time that I say it, but it is simply true that the churches of the United States are far more well-known for hateful behavior, bickering, and division than they are for unity and love.

You can’t fix a problem unless you admit it exists.

I am arguing that the problem is not that the church is corrupt, but that what we know as the church is a counterfeit: a replacement for the real church. No matter how good the replacement is, it nonetheless stops us from ever pursuing the one and only real church.

The Traits of a Counterfeit Church

  • A counterfeit church can be built or reproduced by renting a building and hiring clergy.
  • A counterfeit church is a club. In organization it is just like any club, such as the Boy Scouts, the Moose Lodge, or the Masons.

These two issues are sufficient to make a church counterfeit.

A counterfeit church can share many similarities with the real church. It can have disciples in it, mixed with those who are not disciples. It can design its meetings to mimic church meetings. It can design its buildings to mimic buildings that the church has used in its past. It can title its staff with the same names the church uses to refer to its leaders.

It can even copy the church’s Gospel yet remain a counterfeit!

The church is a family, and people are born into it by the transformative power of God’s Spirit. They do not join it in membership drives.

The church’s unity is spiritual, created and maintained by God, subject to immediate dissolution when the Spirit of God departs. A counterfeit can go on forever after the Spirit of God departs because it is just a club.

Once you have built a building, hired clergy, and then called it a church and looked for people to join it, you have created a counterfeit. No matter how much you improve that counterfeit, fill it with Christians, obtain God’s blessings on your activities, you are still a counterfeit. You have still both lost and hidden from others the deepest and most central traits of the church.

The Family of God

The church is a family that people come into. We understand family. Anyone who has grown up in a well-adjusted family knows why, when I was growing up, it was okay for me to insult my brother in anger, but I would punch you in the face if you spoke ill of him. That’s how family is.

In the church, of course, we don’t punch our critics in the face. We are, however, fiercely loyal to one another, bound together by the Holy Spirit into the closest family on earth. Those that did not grow up with a decent family learn quickly in the church what a decent family is because they are cared for like newborns and grow up with hundreds of brothers and sisters.

Didn’t Jesus say this was GUARANTEED to us? Mark 10:29-30 says:

Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one that has left house, brothers, sisters, father, mother, wife, children, or lands for my sake and the Gospel’s except that he will receive a hundred times as much, now in this time; houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and lands, with persecution, and in the age to come, eternal life.”

Is this your experience of church?

It ought to be. Until the time of Constantine it was.

Maybe it wasn’t always a hundredfold. Most of those hundred mothers, brothers, houses, and lands were in other parts of the Roman empire, but locally, suddenly you had several mothers, brothers, sisters, and houses that were yours. You were family. You didn’t knock on the door, you walked in like a son or daughter. When your plow broke, it was no disaster at all because some brother would be able to share his, while one of the many sons in the church would find time to repair your plow.

That’s church life. I’ve lived it. I’m still living it.

I don’t plow, but I do remember the day I realized that I owned three pickup trucks! I had always wanted a pickup truck, but it was never practical for my family. However, now, if I needed to make run to the lumber store, there were three members of my family who gladly loaned me their pickups as needed.

Pickup trucks are nothing. It’s the fathers, the mothers, the brothers, the sisters, the children that are the really great hundredfold return.

What Is Standing in the Way?

The counterfeit churches!

The counterfeit churches are standing in the way. They have snatched the loyalty of the disciples away from the family of God to their club.

Most Christians in the United States have not the slightest clue of what God offers in the church. They quote Scriptures about the church and don’t realize that they possess nothing remotely like those Scriptures.

For example:

[God] gave [the Anointed King] to be the head over the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Eph. 1:22-23)

The church is “the fullness of him who fills all in all”? Do you look at the churches in the United States and say, “Boy, that is the fullness of God alright”?

He who has begun a good work in you will finish it until the day of King Jesus. (Php. 1:6)

Is that your experience in your church? Here’s the experience of Christian researcher, George Barna, and probably what most of you experience in traditional US churches (of any stripe) as well:

Casual Christianity is faith in moderation. It allows them to feel religious without having to prioritize their faith. Christianity is a low-risk, predictable proposition for this tribe, providing a faith perspective that is not demanding. A Casual Christian can be all the things that they esteem: a nice human being, a family person, religious, an exemplary citizen, a reliable employee – and never have to publicly defend or represent difficult moral or social positions or even lose much sleep over their private choices as long as they mean well and generally do their best. From their perspective, their brand of faith practice is genuine, realistic and practical. To them, Casual Christianity is the best of all worlds; it encourages them to be a better person than if they had been irreligious, yet it is not a faith into which they feel compelled to heavily invest themselves. (Barna.org. Accessed July 14, 2014.)

There can’t be too many people like this, right? Barna says, in the same article, dated May 2009, that “Casual Christians” comprise 66% of the US population.

Yeah, correct. Not 66% of Christians, but 66% of the US population!

A Gallup poll tells us that in 2012, 77% or the US claimed to be Christian. A quick bit of math will show that this means that 6 our of every 7 professed Christians are “Casual Christians” as described by George Barna above.

Philippians 1:6 isn’t working in the counterfeit church, folks, no matter how much it tries to mimic the true church.

Note: Since writing this I have listened to large portions of the audiobook, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life by Willam Law. It is a much better description of a “casual Christian” than Barna’s. A powerful, convicting sample from that book can be found on my Christian history site. That passage will convict the most committed of us and spur us on in devoting ourselves to King Jesus.

A lot of other things do not, and cannot, work in a counterfeit church.

Why? Why can’t a counterfeit church work?

Sons of the Devil

We don’t have enough appreciation of the influence of the devil.

The whole world lies in the wicked one. (1 Jn. 5:19)

In time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the atmosphere, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience. (Eph. 2:2)

Do not be deceived. The one who practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous. The one who practices sin is of the devil. (1 Jn. 3:7-8)

Be sober, be vigilant, because your enemy, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, looking for the ones he can devour. (1 Pet. 5:8)

Notice the following in the verses we just looked at.

  • The devil is looking to devour us.
  • The world is under his sway.
  • Prior to leaving the domain of darkness for the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, we, too, were moved by the same spirit that moves the sons of disobedience.

As a result, the sons of disobedience/sons of the devil/sons of Belial are open doors into the church for the one who wants to devour us, if we let his children into the church. That is why Paul warns:

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers, for what sharing is their between unrighteousness and righteousness? What fellowship does light have with darkness? What agreement does the Anointed King have with Belial? What part does one that believes have with an unbeliever? “Therefore come out from among them, and be separate,” says the Lord. “Do not touch the unclean thing, and I will receive you.” (2 Cor. 6:14-17)

Whew. That’s hard-nosed. That’s sharp and draws some sharp lines.

Yeah, and we don’t really have any choice but to follow because it’s an apostle who taught us this.

We don’t mind quoting this passage in reference to a marriage or a business partnership, but is that really what Paul is talking about in 2 Corinthians 6 and 7? It doesn’t look like it to me. It looks more like he is repeating what he said in his first letter to them: “Purge the leaven … Put out that wicked person from among you!” (1 Cor. 5:7,13).

General Tendencies, Not Absolutes

At this point, everyone always brings up the wheat and the tares. I could point out that in the parable of the wheat and the tares, the field is the world, not the church. I could point out that the harvesters represent angels, not men.

I won’t, though, because the point is true enough.

The church is not full of perfect people. We are all on a path, and we are at different places on that path. The church is a hospital for sinners, and the strong have to help the weak, which means the weak are in the church. Christians fall away, and sometimes it takes a while to even conceive of the idea that this former saint has really gone bad. We bear with them, plead with them, warn them, pray for them, and hope for them, sometimes to avail and sometimes not. While we are doing all this, they are in the church.

This is not only okay, but it is good and right.

The examples of the the church we see in Scripture are not perfect. There are hypocrites. “Hypocrite” is one of those untranslated words. The Greek is hupokritos, and it actually means “actor.” Sometimes those actors are pretty good, and they hang out in the church pretending and deceiving the rest of us for years.

There is absolutely nothing we can do about this but wait for our Lord and King to judge.

This weakness, inherent when working with humans even in the divinely empowered church, does not justify a counterfeit system designed to yoke believers with unbelievers.

Almost no counterfeit church has any system at all for knowing all their members, much less watching over them enough to follow the commands of Paul not to allow the sons of the devil into the congregation. When have you ever been told to guard the loaf that is the church from leaven except insofar as purifying yourself?

Never. It doesn’t happen.

The counterfeit churches we have today are specifically designed to include the sons of the devil. That is what they were made for 1700 years ago, and that is what they were made for today.

Spiritually, it is impossible to unite a Christian and a non-Christian. It is the spiritual unity and love, poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, that makes the church. That cannot be done with a person who has not had the love of God poured into his heart by the Spirit of God. It is impossible.

Worse, every time you try to build the church with someone who does not have the Spirit of the Anointed King, you separate and weaken the wall of the building—the one composed of people—because the perfecting bond of unity does not exist between that stone and the others. Insert enough stones that cannot be bound to the others, and you can send the building crashing to the ground.

Counterfeit churches pander to the world in the name of evangelism. Churches, real churches, are not clubs. They cannot simply sign up new members. Membership in the church is a supernatural event, sealed in baptism. They can proclaim the Gospel outside the family, inviting others to come in through the doorway of the new birth and baptism, but they cannot bring the sons of Belial into the house of the Lord.

Counterfeit churches do it all the time because they are not organisms, but organizations. The family of God is the body of the King. It is like the human body in that it has an immune system consisting of spiritual members. It will eventually recognize, surround, and then eject the foreign invader.

Real Churches Using Organization and Structure

Real churches use structure and organization as tools. They use buildings as a tool. Having structure or an organization does not make them counterfeit. Beginning with structure and organization, rather than people, make them counterfeit. Only people can be the church, and only people can be the house of the Lord. Referring to a building as “the house of the Lord” is a violation of clear New Covenant teaching, and it is a cloak that hides the truth of the church from disciples that might otherwise be enlightened, joined to one another, and perfect in love as the testimony to the world chosen for the church by our King himself.

My Closer

All sales pitch have a closing line. You have to clinch the sale or at least tell the buyer the response you are asking from him.

I am asking you to end your alliegance to the counterfeit churches. I am asking you to look around and become uncomfortable and afraid. God has a picture of what the church is, and the vast majority of American Christians, even the real disciples, have never been told about it. They have never noticed that those people they have been told to work with and encourage and pray and hope for are really sons of Belial, sent by the devil to separate them from the next real disciple, 9 or 10 seats down the row. They have no idea that if they were join themselves to that disciple, their love and unity would bring a demonstration of the Spirit of God that would drive away or convert those 8 or 9 people sitting in between them.

That’s probably too much for most of you to swallow. I wish I could say it better.

This plan is not simple, safe, or easy, but until we “come out from among them and be separate,” it is impossible.

You may be satisfied with the counterfeit. It has some benefits, many of them described by George Barna above. It is comfortable. It’s not enough for us. For the rest of you for whom it is not enough, This post was to help you know why the system does not work and cannot simply be improved, and to invite you to come join us.

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