THE SHATTER HEARD ROUND THE WORLD

It's 1947 and a young Bedouin shepherd, one we might call a good shepherd, left his flock of sheep and goats to search for a stray. He's in the region of the Dead Sea where David was once on the run from King Saul and Jesus was tempted "in the desert."

While on the hunt for the one stray, he comes across the crumbling limestone cliffs on the northwestern rim of the Dead Sea and there amid the cliffs, he finds a cave. As most youths, the cave intrigues him, almost as if its singing its siren song for his ears only. He picks up a stone and throws it into the cave. That's when it happened, the shatter heard round the world.

Expecting to hear nothing at the end of the flight of the stone into the dark cave, the sound of something breaking startles him. He goes into the cave and finds a mysterious collection of clay jars, most of them empty, but when he examines a few of them, he notes that they're intact, lids still in place.

When he opens the lids, what he's about to discover is the greatest archeological find of the 20th century. He has discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. But to him, at the time, he's thinking that he's only found some old scrolls, some wrapped in linen and blackened with age.

He and a few friends take the scrolls to an antiques dealer named Kando in Bethlehem who sends the shepherd and his friends back to search for more. They return with seven more. The shepherd sells four of them to Kando and three to another antiques dealer.

Eventually Professor Sukenik of Hebrew University in Jerusalem hears about the scrolls and finds the antiques dealer who bought the three. The professor says that when he started to unwrap them, and when he unrolled them and saw the beautiful Hebrew lettering, his hands began to shake as he realized that he was seeing what no one had seen for more than 2,000 years.

Since that shatter heard round the world, we have found 900 more manuscripts and we now know much more about them.

We know that the Scrolls contain portions of every Old Testament book except Esther. We know that the texts of those Old Testament books line up with 99% accuracy with our Old Testament. What makes this remarkable is that, prior to that time, our Old Testament was based on the Hebrew Masoretic text from the 10th and 11th centuries AD.

But we also know something else, something very, very important.

I mentioned that the Dead Sea Scrolls contain portions of every Old Testament book except Esther, but I didn't mention that the Dead Sea Scrolls do contain one complete book of the Old Testament. That complete book is in 54 columns and contains all 66 chapters of the book of Isaiah and is one of the oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, taking us back a thousand years older than the oldest manuscripts of the Old Testament we had before the discovery of the Scrolls.

 We now have 19 copies of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls and five commmetaries from the Dead Sea Scrolls on Isaiah. (Isaiah must have been the favorite book of the Qumran Community scholars believe was responsible for the the manuscripts.)

 And that's important because within those 66 chapters of Isaiah is Isaiah 53, the most complete and detailed prediction of the penal substitution and resurrection of the Messiah in the Old Testament. Of the 166 words in the Hebrew of Isaiah 53, there are only 17 letters in question. Ten of those letters are only a matter of spelling which doesn't affect the sense of the chapter. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions, like our word, "and." So what we have is that after a thousand years of transmission of the text of Isaiah 53, there are only three letters in question and that one word does not significantly change the meaning of Isaiah 53! (Norman Geisler)

Today, the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Jerusalem in a special place called The Shrine of the Book. The temperature is expertly controlled as is the lighting. Two thirds of The Shrine of the Book is underground. Isaiah is so protected that no bomb yet invented can destroy it nor can it destroy the entire collection of the Scrolls.

Question: Did God superintend the wandering of that stray to the area of that cave?
Question: Did God have that good shepherd, concerned with only one stray, in place over that flock?
Question: Did God direct the trajectory of that stone in 1947?
Question: Does God protect the transmission of His Word?


What do you think?
_________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, and the author of Truthspeak, available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing sue.bove@gmail.com and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."

If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.

Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.

Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:

notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org

Also:

Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/helps_arthur.html#mpzMv1GyXYdlOVbq.99"There is

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/helps_arthur.html#mpzMv1GyXYdlOVbq.99

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/helps_arthur.html#mpzMv1GyXYdlOVbq.99

 

THE DISTURBER

We went out and disturbed people. We did this through our Survey Evangelism at a community wide event that featured, a dog parade, a dog show, and a dog awards program. I saw big dogs,one wearing a collar with protruding spikes and thought it best to keep a respectful distance from the brute. I saw little dogs as well, but I didn’t pal up to them either; animals can   be so unpredictable.

The event planners called it, “The Mardi Growl.” We call it, “evangelism,” but in a sense, we can call it, “Disturbing people.”

As people pass by our area, we disturb them. They are there to enjoy a leisurely half day with friends, family, dogs, and fellow citizens, and then we go up to them and start disturbing their day by telling them (politely, of course), “We’re taking a survey to get the community’s viewpoint on spiritual questions, and we’d like to get your opinions.” We ask if they want to take the survey.

This is an unexpected interruption to their plans, and if they seem taken aback, we assure them, “It’s painless.”

We know that those who say, “Yeah, I’ll take it,” sit at our tables by divine appointment, so we get excited and escort them over, ask them to take a seat, and someone on our team begins the interview. 

BIBLICAL PRECEDENT

We’re like Philip who disturbed the Ethiopian he’d never met when he sat down in his chariot. We’re like Christ sitting by that well disturbing the woman from Samaria. He interrupted her day with a request. We’re like Peter and John as well as Paul interacting with people we’ve never met and, most likely, we’ll never see again. We’re in good company.

THE REALITY

In I Corinthians 1:23, Paul says that every time we witness, three things can happen and two of them don’t seem to be very good: there are those grace has disturbed so much that they are offended and get all huffy about it; there are those whom grace has disturbed them to the point that they find it “foolish.” No matter those two reactions, the gospel has disturbed them.

When Paul went on his missionary trips, there was one disturbance after another. Usually, when we think of the disturbances, we think of the riots, the beatings, the incarcerations Peter, John, and Paul suffered, and that’s true, their message did cause those things.

But we must remember that whether a riot occurs or not, grace is disturbing. This internal turmoil comes because grace violates their traditions of good works that are ingrained in people as they see at least some works as a prerequisite to be good enough to be with God forever.

Grace also disturbs people’s man-centered logic. We may hear people say, “It (having eternal life) JUST can’t be THAT simple!” (They may say it with a sneer and in a most condescending way.)

Grace doesn’t stop with those two ways of disturbing people because grace disturbs their emotions when they figure out that, if gaining eternal life comes by faith alone in Christ alone, and then they realize that their loved ones believed in works as a necessity, then the gospel has assaulted their emotions. And they may raise an unholy howl because grace has wounded them and they’re bleeding emotionally.

THE GREAT DISTURBER

When we get right down to it, the reality is that we’re not disturbing people with the gospel; Someone else is. That’s what Jesus said in John 16: 7-11:

But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper [viz. the Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. ⁸ And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; ⁹ concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; ¹⁰ and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; ¹¹ and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.

Based on John 6:44 where Jesus said, “No man can come to Me except  . . . the Father draw (“woo”) him,” we would say that no one ever trusts Christ as Savior unless, to some degree, he has been disturbed, that is, wooed by the Divine Lover.

It’s like Paul said in Romans 10:14—a person can’t place his faith in the Right Object until, in some way someone comes into his life, that is, disturbs him so that he can hear the content of saving faith:  ^“How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?”

The Holy Spirit is the One who’s doing the disturbing when you and I (“the preacher”) present the gospel; He’s the One enabling people to understand it and He’s wooing them like a lover to trust the Son of God for eternal life. This “wooing is the disturbing.

CASES IN POINT

When the Holy Spirit disturbs people, He disturbs them with a capital “D.” Take for example that person who’s heard the gospel, maybe several times or more. You may not see your friend all that often, but whenever you do, he wants to start an argument about the Resurrection or supposed “errors” in the Bible, or Christians he knows who are hypocrites, or whatever. You don’t have to mention the subject; he will.

This shows us that the Holy Spirit is still disturbing him because you haven’t nagged him or presented the gospel to him every time you’ve seen him, and you find that you might go 5 or more years without talking to him, yet every time your paths cross, no matter how long it’s been since you last saw him, he starts arguing. Amazing, isn’t it?

We normally think of grace as disturbing the townspeople in the book of Acts, sort of ancient history. But grace disturbs people and entire churches today and we find one explosion coming after another as people start and continue reacting just as Paul said they would—being offended or calling it foolishness.

Such people may become obsessed with you because of the good news you’ve brought to them. All of a sudden, you’ve become the subject of their conversation, their meetings, and their malevolent thoughts before they go to sleep at night.

Now don’t get me wrong. 99.9% of those we interview don’t get all huffy with us. They’re polite to the core. But that doesn’t mean the Holy Spirit is not a work.  Maybe they don’t argue with you or think with hostile thoughts about you; they may be a polite unbeliever, and they say “No” to hearing the gospel or after hearing it, they may say, “No.”

Yet, the Disturber-Lover is still at work; we know that for certain.  The Holy Spirit may cause your words to disturb him so much that he begins reading the Bible or that piece of grace literature you gave him or he goes on the hunt for more information.

A refined, polite woman who began visiting our church told me after several months, “I sat there every Sunday morning and mentally argued with everything you said, but you know, you’re right.” She trusted Christ as Savior and is today with the Lord. Talk about being disturbed, and I had no idea I was disturbing her, or should I say, the Holy Spirit was doing it. She was being polite all those Sundays, but she was being disturbed.

The summary of the matter is that the Holy Spirit, using the Word of God as given by the messenger, is THE GREAT DISTURBER.

The question is: Are you letting the Holy Spirit use you to disturb people?

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, and the author of Truthspeak, available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing sue.bove@gmail.com and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."

If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.

Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.

Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:

notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org

Also:

Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582

 

IT TAKES A WORRIED MAN TO SING A WORRIED SONG

John Bookman is worried. Very worried. A person he loves and trusts informed him that he's in danger of losing his salvation and he quoted John 3:16 to Bookman to prove it. Because of this, John B. is losing sleep.

His pastor, Pastor Goodpasture, said so, right from the pulpit last Sunday as he was telling everyone about Nicodemus the Pharisee, and his conversation with the Lord Jesus as recorded in John 3. John Bookman was taking notes on the sermon, and almost dropped his blue-ink Bic pen when Pastor Goodpasture said, "And the Greek verb of this text is present tense, "whosoever keeps on believing in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."

The pastor leaned over the pulpit, and with his bony hand pointing straight at John, said, "So, brethren, if you don't keep on believing everyday in Jesus, you've lost your salvation. So, my advice, just in case, is to keep on renew your belief in Jesus everyday, or you'll lose your salvation."

Mr. Bookman started to worry about his salvation before going to sleep night after night; he would wake up and then tell God he was trusting Christ again for salvation that day. He worried about what happened when he sinned; he figured that was a sure sign he'd lost it all.

Then one day, after he'd finished his watching NASCAR on TV and after boring everybody to tears talking about the race, he picked up his Bible and started reading at John 4, the chapter just after Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus.

He noted again, as he well knew, that in this chapter Jesus was speaking with someone who was the opposite of Nick the Pharisee. First off, the person in Chapter 4 is a female, a Samaritan, a serial monogamist, and someone who, to say it euphemistically, was a bit of a neophyte in her biblical knowledge.

As Jesus skillfully and persuasively turns the conversation from the secular and toward the spiritual and to eternal life, He draws on a common real-life illustration. Since she was daily coming to the town well to draw water, Jesus compares trusting in Him for eternal life to taking a drink of water, then He says, "“Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

"Wait a minute," John thought, "this is saying one drink and that's it. Once a person trusts Christ alone for his salvation, it's done, and done forever.

In the margin of his Bible was a cross reference to Numbers 21, so Mr.Bookman turned to that text and saw immediately that it was the account of the fiery serpents let loose on Israel and the brazen serpent lifted up on a pole by Moses. He read the story he'd heard a bazillion times and noted that God provided the antidote to the venom: "that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived." 

If any man looked to the bronze serpent once, he lived.

John found no reference to a person's need to keep on looking, so it was one look and he lived; there was no command that he had to look more than once, much less a command to "keep on looking at the brass serpent." 

Then John remembered that in John 3, Jesus had referred to this account in Numbers 21 as being a type of Himself, when He would be lifted up on the cross.  

He reread the Numbers account and then went over to John 3:14-15 and read, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life." 

"Since Jesus is paralleling "the look" in Numbers 21 with "believe" in John 3:14-16, it must be that one look in faith alone to Jesus as the Son of God who died for my sins and rose from the dead seals it all," John rightly reasoned. "One drink, one look; that's it."

John Bookman slept well that night and resolved that he would take the lead and free his family from the false teaching they'd been hearing from Goodpasture. 

Although Pastor Goodpasture used the present tense of the verb to "prove" his case of a person's needing to "keep on believing," he either didn't know or he conveniently omitted the fact that just because a present tense is used in John 3:16 does not mean that one must continuously believe in order to be saved.

Other pertinent facts of which Goodpasture was unaware of or deliberately omitted are:

In Acts 16:31 Paul used an aorist (a past) tense to tell the Philippian jailer, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. So, the present tense of "believe" isn't always employed by the New Testament in a gospel context.

The present tense in Greek must not and cannot be translated as "keep on" (a continuous action) in some cases, or the verse becomes nonsense. We see this in John 6 where Christ uses a present tense verb to say that He had come down from heaven (vv 33, 50). He clearly did not mean that He was continuously coming down from heaven.

The present tense can refer to an action that only occurs once, as in Acts 9:34: "Aeneas, Jesus the Christ heals you." Matthew 26:2 uses the present tense: " . . . the Son of Man is handed over for crucifixion." That cannot possibly mean, ". . .  the Son of Man keeps on being handed over for crucifixion."

We must always remember that no doctrine in the Bible hangs only on the tense of a verb.

The formation of true doctrine depends on context and all the Scriptures that speak to the subject. To take the present tense of "believe" and formulate the idea that a person must "keep on believing" in order to be saved contradicts Numbers 21, John 4, Romans 8:31-39, and Ephesians 4:30, (et al.) as well as the context of John 3:14-16.
Let's look at it this way: if you're going to write an invitation to "believe" in Christ which will be an invitation for 2,000+ years, the present tense would be the one to use to show that anyone, at anytime in history, who trusts Christ will be saved; the present tense is the way to go, don't you think?

IF YOU HAVE TEARS, PREPARE TO SHED THEM NOW

Mark Antony is standing before a crowd of stunned Romans. The date is March 15, 44 BC. The reason he's there is because he's about to deliver his oration immediately after the assassination of Julius Caesar. With his words, he'll turn the tables on the conspirators, Brutus and Cassius and the others who did the deed. It is the oration which begins with the famous line, "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears."

Shakespeare wrote the words for his play, "Julius Caesar," and this oration is a famous example of emotionally charged rhetoric by which he shows Mark Antony manipulating the large crowd of mourners, changing them into a rampaging mob against Brutus and Cassius.

In his oration in the play, he says the famous line, "If you have tears, prepare to shed them now."

And that's my advice to you. Read on.

Dr. Jack Deere is brilliant with academic credentials impeccable, a beloved professor in Old Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He's an excellent teacher, a great communicator. As said by one and all, "He's got skills."

Prior to earning his Master's Degree and Ph. D. at Dallas Seminary, he graduated from TCU majoring in philosophy. Dr. Deere was not an ivory tower academic. While at TCU, he worked with Young Life, leading many kids to Christ. While teaching at Dallas, he planted two churches and served in the pastoral ministry. Dr. Deere was "in the trenches," as we say.

During his tenure at Dallas Seminary, Dr. Deere came under the influence of several false teachers who were in no way affiliated with the school. Under their influence, Dr. Deere bought into one of the most dangerous of Satan's false doctrines: he came to believe that God is still revealing truth to us, truth equal to the Bible.

Dr. Deere came to believe that all believers should regularly hear God speak outside of Scripture through various means such as an audible voice, impressions, dreams, and/or visions. This outside-the-Bible-revelation-from-God, Dr. Deere came to believe, is just as inspired and carries the same authority as what God revealed to Moses, Paul, John, and Peter in their writings. So, according to this idea, the revelation a person receives today is just as "right on" as Ephesians, Genesis, and Romans. (Any neophyte in the faith should be able to see how dangerous that doctrine is.)

Because he held to such views and staunchly so, Dr. Donald Campbell, the President of Dallas Seminary at the time, dismissed him, much to the credit of the school. His firing made the news in a special section of the "Dallas Morning News," back then in 1987.

That is a strange and dangerous doctrine, but, trust me, things in Dr. Deere's life began to get more bizarre. He came to believe that God's divine revelation to him included the revelation of specific information about other people, as well as information about past and future events. So, according to this false teaching, we have among us today Isaiahs, Ezekiels, and Jeremiahs, foretellers of coming events with 100% accuracy.

As if that's not bizarre enough, read on.

Deere came to the conclusion that God verbally spoke to him while he was exercising and that God spoke to him at that time through a country western love ballad. He also tells the story of how his mentor, Paul Cain, received a revelation from God via a huge TV screen in the sky. Say what?

An important warning: Be careful who you listen to. We have Dr. Deere listening to some fellow named Paul Cain, a famous "prophet" in charismatic circles. Dr. Deere became so enamored with Mr. Cain that he arranged a meeting between him and a nationally known pastor. A man present at the meeting says:

"Jack Deere brought Paul Cain to a meeting with _______ ______ in 1992. It was instantly obvious to us that Paul Cain was not what he claimed. He appeared to be drunk. He was bleary-eyed and nearly incoherent. He pretended to speak a short prophecy, about [the pastor]—but he was wrong in every detail. When he saw he was getting it wrong, he stopped trying to 'prophesy' and lapsed into sullen silence. Dr. Deere later told us Cain’s behavior was because he was under such a heavy anointing."  

Dr. Deere believes that the normal Christian life today should consist of the same miracles we see in the Bible. What Christ and the Apostles did, we can and should be doing. He goes farther and says that what we see of the miraculous in the Bible should be the norm for us today.

Let's think about this for a moment. If this were true, our clothes would never wear out and we'd never have to buy another pair of shoes and we'd never have to go to the grocery store because our food would be supplied like fresh manna. We'd be seeing axe heads float and virgin births would be occurring . (Dr. Deere would probably say, "NO!" to that last one.) We'd be busy raising the dead. walking on water, and hosting angels like Paul, Peter, and Abraham.

Well, so much for bizarro land. As I said earlier, if you have tears prepare to shed them now as you read the transcript of an exchange that took place between Dr. Deere and a questioner in 1990 at a charismatic conference:

Questioner: I wonder if you might tell me why you felt my explanation of the Gospel given yesterday was defective. [I said that Christ died for our sins, was buried, raised on the third day, and that it is this Gospel by which we are saved.]

Dr. Deere: I am not prepared to talk about that.

Questioner: Well, just offhand, what do you think the Gospel is?

Dr. Deere: I am not prepared to make a formal statement about that.

Questioner: Could you tell me informally what the Gospel is?

Dr. Deere: I am not sure.

Questioner: I find that surprising--that you are not sure just what the Gospel is.

Dr. Deere: I used to be just like you--thinking the Gospel was simply justification.

Questioner: Are you saying that the Gospel is more than justification by faith?

Dr. Deere: Yes.

Questioner: What would you add to it?

Dr. Deere: Deliverance.

Questioner: What do you mean by deliverance?

Dr. Deere: Things like demons and healing and....

Questioner: You would add as an essential part of the saving Gospel things like exorcising of demons and healing?

Dr. Deere: Yes.

Questioner: But you are not sure exactly what should be included?

Dr. Deere: No, not yet.

Questioner: Would it be fair to say that you are in a state of flux since joining the Wimber thing?Could you tell me informally what the Gospel is?

Dr. Deere: We are always in a state of flux--you are....

Questioner: But in the Gospel message? Surely that is one thing we should have worked out. Don't you think we can reduce the Gospel to some sort of summary statement like Paul does in say 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, or 15; or 1 Thessalonians 4, or Romans 5?

Dr. Deere: [No response, except a shrug of the shoulders.]

Questioner: Do you think the Apostle Paul had anything particular in mind when he wrote to Timothy and asked him to guard the Gospel that had been entrusted to him? Are you saying that you couldn't go back into that pavilion and tell those people the Gospel?

Dr. Deere: No, not yet.

Questioner: When do you think you could do it?

Dr. Deere: Maybe five years, maybe ten....

 

As of 1990, Dr. Deere, professor, church planter, and pastor, had gotten so far out in left field that he said, "I'm not prepared to talk about the gospel." How much preparation does a professor of the Old Testament need to "talk about the gospel?"

 

What in the world is going on?  (Insert double emphatic question marks here.) After further prodding from the questioner as to the content of the gospel, Dr. Deere answers, "I'm not prepared to make a formal statement about that." (Insert triple question marks here.) Then Dr. Deere says that he couldn't go and give people the gospel? What's going on with that? He adds that maybe, going by the date of transcript, by 1995 or maybe in 2000, he would be able to give the gospel to others. 

 

 Then he says that he would add casting out of demons to the gospel in spite of the fact that in all the New Testament epistles of Paul, Peter, John, James, and Jude there is no command for the believer or anyone to cast out demons. John 3:16 doesn't add, "cast out demons" to "believe in Him," nor does Paul add that casting out demons is part of the gospel in I Cor. 15.

 

So, here's another warning: reject just one basic doctrine [in this case, reject the fact that revelation ceased once John put the period on the last sentence in the book of Revelation, and there's no telling into what strange and dangerous territory you'll go.

 

Well enough of this. But allow me to ask you a question, the same question the polite questioner asked Dr. Deere:

 

"Could you tell me what the Gospel is?"