Oddities

Lord, Purge Your Church

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It’s the early a.m. here and quiet as a tomb. That silence lends opportunity to think.

I’m pondering the state of the American Church. But then, I never stop.

We live in a world coming apart at the seams. Some say that’s not the case, but as I see it, the deterioration is clear. I wonder regularly how it is that all sense is missing from whichever brouhaha holds our attention this day.

It may not be much on the grander scale, but the fiasco surrounding last week’s notorious conference makes it clear genuine Christians must pray this:

Lord, purge Your Church.

If the Church in America is to have any influence at all on the larger culture and society of the United States, the dross must be removed.

Pray also that you are not the dross.

At this point in 2013, I’m fully convinced that the American Church is thinking too far ahead of itself if it continues to believe it can have such an influence. While the gates of hell cannot hold against the Church as a whole, no assurance is given for any one branch:

Ephesus in ruins

Ephesus in ruins

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. “‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
—Revelation 2:1-5 ESV

We could point to the vitality of the Ephesian Church and its contemporary influence on the world—if it were still around. But the Lord removed that Church’s lampstand and the light went out.

The American Church is at the lampstand-removal phase, if it hasn’t happened already. An opportunity to repent may still exist, but I wonder if it must come down to something more drastic than repentance.

Lord, purge Your Church.

Charismatics, Cessationists, Strange Fire, Logic, and Bible Truth

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Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.
—1 Corinthians 12:4-11 ESV

Last week was something of a new low in the “conversation” between those who believe the gifts of the Spirit (charismata) continue today (charismatics or continualists) and those who claim those gifts ceased as of the closing of the apostolic age (cessationists). It’s almost a fact that charismatics don’t start battles with cessationists. If only the opposite were true, especially on the Internet.

Nadab and Abihu offered "strange fire" to God and were slainThe supposed reason for the Strange Fire Conference of last week was to address and correct “charismania”—out-of-control or flat-out bogus gifts and the people who express them. The authority question arises when the correctors included no charismatics. So much for cleaning one’s own house first or sticking to the log in one’s own eye before finding the speck in your brother’s.

There is no doubt that the charismatic movement is a mess. Most charismatics with orthodox theology will acknowledge this—and there are MANY of us. I know I’m not happy with charismania and have written EXTENSIVELY on it and its practitioners, decrying the nuttiness and flat-out heresy. And MANY of us have loudly proclaimed this.

Which is why it’s frustrating that some folks who reject the charismata waltz into the charismatic house and tangentially proclaim by live streamed conferences that every charismatic is borderline, and if we’re actual born-again Christians, we’re so in spite of our charismatic beliefs. Like I said, a new low. No end exists for the ways in which such reasoning can be reversed and delivered back upon the correctors. But then, most charismatics don’t want this fight and never asked for it.

I was working through a response to a teaching at the Strange Fire conference that was liveblogged by Tim Challies and given by Tim Pennington, “Strange Fire Conference: A Case for Cessationism.” Frankly, I was appalled at the teaching, not only for descending into the very argument types that the group giving the conference would ordinarily savage if they came from others, but also for the teaching’s extensive logical fallacies. In short, the entire teaching has so many obvious problems, it besmirches legitimate Christian scholarship. And I say that with great reluctance and sadness.

I was prepared to blog a response in light of Scripture, history, and logic, but someone else wrote an almost identical rebuttal. I’d say it’s amazing how similar my response would have been, but then that’s how the Holy Spirit works in like-minded charismatics.  😉

Anyway, please do read Andrew Wilson’s “Cessationism and Strange Fire,” as it mirrors my thoughts.

The State of the Miraculous in a World of Unbelief

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One of the hallmarks of the final days, as noted by Scripture, is a horrifying level of unbelief.

Jesus said it Himself:

“Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
—Luke 18:8b ESV

The end of all things depicted in the Book of Revelation shows that even when all of the earth is afflicted by the outcomes of supernatural wrath, mankind refuses to believe:

The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
—Revelation 9:20-21 ESV

There are some today who want to cast aspersions on the Kingdom of God and its many miraculous components, and they want to question how the Holy Spirit works in believers. Oddly, many doing so call themselves Christians. Though they claim to abide by the authority of Scripture and not by personal experience, they regularly challenge the miraculous in the Bible’s pages by asking where all the miracles are today. And they ask why those Christians who still believe in the miracles that are the hallmark of the Kingdom can’t always manufacture those miracles when such is demanded.

These naysayers like to point fingers at the ones who still have faith that supernatural works can occur through the ministrations of simple believers filled with God’s Holy Spirit. When a miracle does not happen, the naysayers often mock those who still believe in the miraculous.

But what the naysayers never take into account is the power of unbelief within a community. They do not ask how it is possible for the Revelation passage above to be true, that despite all the unrepentant have seen and experienced, the recipients of unprecedented levels of supernatural wrath remain in the grips of the powerful delusion that is unbelief.

We turn to the authority of Scripture to explain what happens when an entire community is gripped by unbelief:

[Jesus] went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. —Mark 6:1-5 ESV

Jesus, the Son of Man, who was filled in all His being by the Holy Spirit, who was the sinless Messiah and Alpha and Omega, could do no mighty work in a community filled with unbelief.

When we consider the times we live in and the supposed paucity of miracles we see, do we ever ask if the reason for the lack of the miraculous is because the community around us is mired in unbelief?

Do we ask ourselves what a community of genuine belief can do when all unbelief has been thrown off?Christ and the Community

Do we ever think that the miracle denied the faithful person is because everyone around that faithful person does not believe?

Or do we blame the faithful person?

Or worse, do we blame God?

The question of the miraculous today never takes into account the crippling power of unbelief, especially when multiplied throughout a community. And those who would question the miraculous never ask if their unbelief and the unbelief of those they gather around them is what stands in the way of miracles.