Bio

Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, the author of Truthspeak and his new book, The Gospel of Grace and Truth: A Theology of Grace from the Gospel of John," both 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 to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."

Comments may be addressed to michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net.

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

Thursday, July 28, 2016

THE BEACH BALL

Robert Frost is the author of a famous poem, "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening," its closing lines are:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   
But I have promises to keep,   
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

If you watched the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, you heard one promise after another by the two candidates. It would be a difficult and tedious exercise to keep a numerical count of all the promises the speakers made, all the speakers, including the two nominees. One candidate is promising free tuition to all in-state students whose families make less than $125,00 per year. In addition said candidate promises to make health care affordable to more people, in addition to equal pay, affordable child care, and paid family leave. By the official count of The Washington Post, the other candidate has made more than 76 promises. All those promises to keep and the candidates will go miles and miles before they sleep. It's exhausting, a wear and tear on body and soul.

Of course, you and I know from experience that they're not going keep all those promises; they can't; no one can. (Some they make, the President can't do by himself, like abolish the income tax.) But, every four years, people like to kid themselves and pretend they can.  We keep looking for the Wizard of Oz, but he's not behind the curtain.

WHY ALL THE PROMISES?

That aside, I'd like for us to examine the fallacy that's the underpinning of all those at-least-for-the-moment-earnest-pledges.

Beneath all those promises is the philosophy that man's basic problem is his environment. It's the belief that a person does what he does and is what he is because of poverty, a lack of education, bad parenting, etc. and therefore, if we change the environment, we can change his character and shape his destiny.

All utopian schemes are built on that philosophy: change the environment and you change character and destiny. In other words, you can program people to be as you want them to be and the programing is done through changing the environment. (This is often a mistake of Christian schools--that the students' environment, if controlled tightly enough, can mold good Christians, sort of like an assembly line, and at the end of the conveyor belt is a good Christian.)

 Karl Marx constructed his philosophy of communism on that premise. He told us that when we changed the environment to eliminate private property, then a Utopia on earth would come and man would live in harmony with the world and with others. Marx believed that the environment of private property made men bad.

BUT LISTEN TO DAVID H. 

David Horowitz was a dedicated third generation communist who grew up in Brooklyn. His parents were educators who were members of a communist cell and so tight with others in the party that they were close friends with a woman who had a part in engineering the assassination of Trotsky.

When David was a boy, his father would take him for walks around the city; he would point out street names and tell David, "When the [communist] revolution comes to America, we'll change the name of that street."

But when David grew up, married, and had four children, he began to notice that the communist philosophy in which his parents had raised him had some serious problems and what helped to convince him of that was right under his nose, at home--his children.

David noticed, "The children we spawned were all so different in character and disposition that they posed a challenge to my radical worldview. [My] children were already so different than each other--Jon and Anne so aggressive and sociable, Benjamin so shy and emotional, Sarah so gentle and accommodating--that it was hard to see that our parenting had anything to do with these results.

"Each of them seemed to be distinct persons in embryo, even before they emerged to breathe the air. Observing my own children, I was compelled to acknowledge the potency of the human soul, the power of its DNA over my conscious efforts to create a progeny in one's own image. There was something irreducibly given in their characters which created an independence that you could not reach . .  . You could encourage your children, set an example for them, provide them with opportunities and support, but you could not program them to a desired result."

SO THERE IT WAS!

So there it was, right under his nose, the God-designed refutation of his humanistic, utopian, and communistic philosophy that had led him into wasted years and years of dedicated service to the party's cause. The refutation had been there all along, built into every human being; he'd seen it all along--he's seen that his own children, having the same parents, the same home, the same upbringing, yes, the same environment, were different in personality, destiny, and disposition.

It is as Romans 1 says it is, the truth is written in our hearts and even in the starry heavens, but in their rebellion, unregenerate men  will always be trying to suppress it. Nonetheless, like a beach ball we struggle to hold underwater, it will repeatedly keep surging toward the surface. We can choose to recognize it or keep fighting to submerge it.

 

Friday, July 22, 2016

HOW DID WALTER DURANTY LIVE WITH HIMSELF?



 To most of us Walter Duranty (1884-1957) lies in the dustbin of history. Say his name and the response is, “Who?”

But say his name in the 1930’s and there would have been instant recognition; he was the most well-known journalist of his day, working for the most prestigious newspaper in the world, the Grey Lady, The New York Times. Walter Duranty was the eyes and ears of America in Russia and his thirteen articles from Moscow won him the most prestigious award a journalist can receive, the coveted Pulitzer in 1932. His editors loved him, his readers believed his every word. His articles influenced people in high places, people like President Roosevelt who recognized the Soviet Union.

But Walter Duranty was liar who deceived them all.

Excepts from his dispatches from Moscow to The New York Times include the following statements:

“There is no famine or actual starvation, nor is there likely to be.” (11-15-1931)

“Any report of famine in Russia today is an exaggeration or malignant propaganda.” (8-23-1933)

“ . . . the youth and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin’s programs, believes it to be worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding.” (12-9-1932)

Those dispatches were lies, and blatant ones at that. 

At the time Walter D. wrote this, millions died because of the famine caused by the Soviet government. Stalin had launched a collectivization to bring socialism to the countryside. He sent troops to confiscate the farmers’ land and goods and that turned into a war, big time. The farmers resisted the troops. To keep the government from getting their crops, they burned them; to keep them from stealing their tools, they disabled them; to keep them from getting their livestock, they killed 30 million cattle and  a hundred million sheep and goats.

Stalin’s troops of socialism confiscated their grain and shipped it out of the Ukraine, leaving the population to starve to death. When it was all said and done, socialism had killed more than 10,000,000 and sent 10,000,000 to slave labor camps, men, women, and children. (From “Radical Son,” by David Horowitz)

During all this carnage, 25,000 people a day were dying of starvation in the Ukraine. No wonder Malcolm Muggeridge of The Manchester Guardian, called Duranty, “the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in fifty years of journalism.”

What was happening was that Duranty had so dedicated his life to preserving the reputation of Stalin as “Uncle Joe” and preventing a stain from appearing on socialism that he lied and deceived. “Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne,” as long as it’s for a “good cause.” He knew 10 million men, women, and children had starved to death because of a government caused famine, yet he covered it up.

All of this didn't come to light later. The horror story of Stalin’s rampage was known in Russia while it was occurring. When other reporters asked Duranty what he was going to report, he said, “Nothing. What are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant. This is just an incident in the sweeping historical changes here. I think the entire matter is exaggerated.”

CENSORSHIP

What is this? This is censorship by omission and it shows just how far a person will go to champion a cause to which he has dedicated his life. Stalin was the head of “the most through-going, ruthless and bloody tyrannies ever to exist on the earth” and Duranty lied, misled, and deceived thousands in order than no one know that. (Muggeridge)

"Through-going, ruthless and bloody tyranny" is the historical record of nations which, like the builders of Babel, seek to build a heaven on earth. Every back-to-Eden-enterprise unleashes demons it can't control. Man cannot be his own god without bloodshed.

Yet, such is the way of the world-system, a system organized by Satan to leave God out. Duranty wasn’t the only one: playwright George Bernard Shaw and Hollywood screen writer Dalton Trumbo were Stalin apologists as were authors, academics, and intellectuals. How could they be so blind, so willfully ignorant, that they would give cover to the man who murdered millions? It was all in their vain pursuit of an idea: man by man’s efforts will be able to bring a millenium on earth and if he has to murder millions to do it, so be it; it's for the cause.

As a postscript: Further degrading himself, Duranty accepted the Pulitzer Prize for the articles he knew were lies. You can’t get much lower than that.

In defense of The New York Times, in 1990, the paper hired a Columbia University history professor to make an independent assessment of the reporting of Duranty. His conclusion: Duranty’s Pulitzer should be rescinded because of his ''lack of balance'' in covering Stalin's government.

Has the prestigious award been rescinded? Short answer: No.

Friday, July 15, 2016

WHAT ABOUT DALLAS?

In 1924, two rich, educated American teenagers had plotted the perfect crime for 7 months. Nathan Leopold (18) and Richard Loeb (17), decided to kill a kid just for the thrill of it. They picked out Bobby Franks (13), kidnapped him, and immediately killed him with a chisel in the get-way car. They poured acid on his face and hid his body then sending a ransom note to Mr. and Mrs. Franks. They didn't need the money; their fathers were millionaires, one a retired vice-president of Sears and Roebuck. They wanted the crime to be perfect so as to prove their intellectual superiority over everybody else.

THOSE GLASSES!

Their perfect crime wasn't so perfect; Leopold dropped his glasses near where they hid the body, a pair of glasses with a special frame hinge that had only been sold to three people in the Chicago area where they lived. The other two were easily eliminated as suspects by the police and this led to them to Nathan Leopold. The newspaper stories of Leopold and Loeb was all over the world, billed as "The Crime of the Century."

ENTER CLARENCE D.

The brilliant boys confessed under pressure and their parents hired the most famous defense attorney of the day, Clarence Darrow to save their boys from the hangman. It was an open and shut case: guilty as sin. Leopold himself had said, "It is just as easy to justify such a death [as Bobby's] as it is to justify an entomologist killing a beetle on a pin.”
 
 Darrow entered a plea which shocked the D. A. and the world: "Not guilty." When the witnesses for the defense took the stand, they were "alienists" (the word back then for psychiatrists) and doctors who'd examined the defendants. Darrow believed the new idea, as did they, that was just coming into vogue that the human being is what he is and does what he does because of influences and forces beyond his control. Therefore, the youths were the products of their parents, their nannies, the society around them, and the Jazz Age. This defense had never been tried before and it stunned everyone when the theories of Sigmund Freud were brought into court. According to Darrow, there was no free will for the human being, so the individual is never at fault. There were other arguments he presented as well, they're youth being one of them.

Darrow was the champion of the anti-capital punishment crowd, so he had taken the case. In all of the dozens and dozens of criminals he'd defended in his long career, only one had wound up executed--the very first one of his 60 defendants.

Darrow had waived a trial by jury; his surveys of the citizens of Chicago indicated that an overwhelming majority were in favor of executing the boys. Therefore, the trial would be argued before a jury of one--the judge. A brilliant move on Darrow's part; now he would have to convince only one person, not twelve.

Darrow carried the day. His concluding speech took 12 hours over three days and he called it the finest speech of his career. One writer called it, "Shakespearean." Leopold and Loeb were sentenced to life in prison. Darrow had shifted the blame from the boys to the society,  to the age in which they lived, to their parents, and to their nannies. Mission accomplished. The fallacy in all of this is that, going by Freud's theories, nobody is ever responsible for anything because if Leopold's and Loeb's parents were at fault, then they really weren't at fault because their parents were and so on and so on and so on.

Loeb was murdered in prison by a fellow inmate in 1936. Leopold was released in 1958. He died in 1971.

DALLAS 1963

In 1963, shortly after November 22, the drums were beating. The unthinkable had happened--Lee Harvey Oswald had gunned down the President of the United States. When lots and lots of people heard the news from friends or passersby on the streets, they thought it was a joke, but when they heard it over the radio or TV, they knew it was true.

We heard the drumbeat from the commentators on TV and radio, then we read it in newspapers and later, books. The sound of the drums was all over the place; there was no surcease. There was no way to escape it. It was so ubiquitous that it became embedded, ingrained, embedded, and cemented in our brains: Dallas, the newly-named City of Hate, did it.


Wait. What? A city did it? That's what the experts, the social scientists, the authors, the commentators told us, and we believed it, hook line and sinker. People vandalized cars with Texas license plates. The city of Cleveland placed armed policemen on the upper portions of their stadium because on the Sunday after Friday November 22, Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys played the Browns. It Cleveland and in every other city where Dallas played on the road, they booed and booed and booed at the very name, "Dallas."

Nobody asked, "What did the Cowboys have to do with the assassination of the President?"

A Texan, traveling out of state on November 22, had stopped at a gas station when the news came over the car radio of the assassination. After he paid for the gas, the attendant threw the change in his face.

Nobody asked, "What did the traveling Texan have to do with the assassination of the President?"

The mayor of Dallas, Earle Cabell, received a letter in which the anonymous writer said, "Dallas, the city that virtually invited the poor insignificant soul who blotted out the life of President Kennedy, to do it in Dallas."

Nobody asked, "How could a city invite someone they never heard of to kill the president?"

THE PAST IS PROLOGUE

In Shakespeare's "The Tempest," Antonio says to Sebastian, "What is past is prologue." We might paraphrase the Sweet Swan of Avon to say, "Ideas are prologue," meaning, "Ideas have consequences later on."

To blame a city for the actions of one man takes the responsibility off the individual and puts it on a group. David A. French has written: "Remember always that the primary blame for any criminal or wrongful act lies with the perpetrator and his or her confederates. . . and [we should not] take an individual crime and turn it into a group indictment."

But that's what we've done for years now--we shift the blame from the individual to a group or an entire segment of society. We've seen this in operation recently: a Muslim terrorist kills and kills at a night club, but the experts blame Christians. Such a shift blames a segment of society numbering in the millions as the killers. The New York Daily News blamed the National Rifle Association in spite to the fact that the killer wasn't a member of that organization. When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Federal Building in OKC, then President Clinton blamed Rush Limbaugh.

When a certified nut who was obsessed with the idea that NASA had been faking space flights shot Gabby Giffords, they blamed Sarah Palin and the much maligned NRA. Sarah Palin has her faults, but shooting G. Giffords wasn't one of them.

This blame shifting happens so often, it's gotten ingrained in our national psyche.

When Dylan Roof gunned down the pastor and nine other members of the congregation at the A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, sociologists shifted the blame from him to the Confederate Flag, and so removals of the flag began all over the place. Those who flew the flag were somehow at one with Roof in the murders.

This brings us back to Dallas: This month, Micah X. Johnson killed five police officers in a planned attack. Dallas police chief David Brown said that the perpetrator clearly “planned to injure and kill as many law-enforcement officers as he could.” Johnson, who appears to have been the lone gunman, had written on Facebook, “ATTACK EVERYTHING IN BLUE EXCEPT THE MAIL MAN." The murders came about as a result of Johnson's reactions to the recent officer-involved shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn.

The blame-shift began. In Phoenix, agitators hurled rocks at police and chanted, "We will kill you."


In like manner, CNN commentator Sally Kohn thinks police are to blame for the sniper-style ambush that killed five Dallas police officers.

But the commentators aren't asking the questions, "What did the five dead officers have to do with the deaths in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights? What did the police force in Phoenix have to do with the incidents in Louisiana and Minnesota?" They're not asking the questions because the answer is obvious: Nothing whatsoever. If the officers involved in the shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota are guilty of murder, they should be held accountable, but to blame "everything in blue except the mailman" doesn't make sense, so it's nonsense.




WHAT'S THE CAUSE AND WHAT ARE THE RESULTS

The cause of all of this is the rejection of the Bible and of a principle therein from cover to cover. Romans 14:12: An individual is responsible for his actions--"So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God." We call it individual accountability, a long lost concept today.

But the opposite idea is that individuals aren't responsible for their crimes, groups are. Result?-- division of one group against another; large segments of the population arraying themselves for battle against another segment; one segment doesn't trust another segment and all are divided.

The consequence of rejecting the Bible: the nation is torn apart. Ideas have consequences in Dallas and everywhere else. The price is high. We're paying it.




Friday, July 8, 2016

NO WAY OUT?

The average church is pockmarked by business meetings, Roberts Rules of Order, motions, seconds of motions, arguments, votes by secret ballots, the raising of hands, and shouts of "Aye," an "No." How many times have you sat in church business meetings and heard the inevitable words, "All in favor say, 'Aye.' (Pause) "Those opposed say, 'No.'"?

What follows the votings are hurt feelings, scars, the nursing of grudges, and the marshaling of voting blocs for the next meeting of the members. The business meeting leaves new members aghast, disgusted, and sometimes in tears at what they've seen at their first business meeting of the members, while new Christians are left hurt and wondering at how the people they once respected could act so badly. Some battle-scarred veterans of these disasters finally do the right thing and vow never to attend another business meeting or leave the church. They can't take it any more.

THEY DON'T ACT THIS WAY ELSEWHERE

Why do normally sane people allow this to happen, not once, not twice, but so many times over the years that they've lost count? People who rant, rave, and vent their lava at church business meetings, never do that at a company meeting and the reason is simple: they can't get away with it there; if they tried it, they'd be in the unemployment line faster than they could say, "Fort Ticonderoga."

THEIR REASONS

Answers to the question of why keep on having battling business meetings are varied. Some say, "We've always done it that way," that is, "We don't know any other way, and besides, our parents and grandparents did it that way--they met, made motions, seconded motions, argued, and voted." But is that a good reason?

They may also answer, "Because that's what our church constitution says we're to do." But that's begging the question. (Begging the question fails to prove anything other than what is already assumed. It's therefore unpersuasive.) That answer leads to the question, "Why does the church constitution say that's what we're to do?" Usually, no one asks that question.

Another reason churches resort to voting, thus politicizing the church, is because that's the American way. We Americans settle things by debate, argumentation, and voting which is a euphemism for the rough and tumble, no-holds-barred-world of politics come to call. Churches adopted this method of settling issues because it's like truth and justice; it's the American way that Superman fought for. So we bring this Trojan horse into the church and the damage has gone on for a few hundred years. This amounts to nothing less than the world's influencing the body of Christ. This Americanizes the church. It's our culture. 

LOOK AT JULY 4TH

To get a picture of what's happening, let's go to the discovery of a roving reporter who roamed the beaches in San Diego, asking the question of young adults, "Why do we celebrate the 4th of July?" He got blank stares. The answers ranged from "I don't know" to silence. When he asked, "When was the Declaration of Independence signed," the answers were, "1870-something." He got so many blank stares, that he began to spice up his question: "In addition to Jesse Ventura and John Wilkes Booth, who else could you name as one of our Founding Fathers?" One person answered, "Lincoln," another said, "Jeremiah," others had no answer at all.

He added more spice and asked, "Since on July 4th we celebrate our victory over the Nazis in World War II, what are you going to do on that day?" The most common answer was, "Party." The respondents seemed ignorant of Nazi part. Phrasing the question another way, he asked, "Since on July 4th, we celebrate the North's victory over the South in the Civil War and the freeing of the slaves, how are you going to celebrate that day?" Most popular answer: "Party with friends and family."

A CORRELATION?

Maybe the same thing is happening in both the church business meeting mess and the 4th of July ignorance. The cause of the 4th of July ignorance came to light in a recent study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni titled “What Will They Learn?” This study found that students actually learn very little when it comes to vital subjects such as economics, literature, and history. The study of 1,098 colleges’ and universities’ graduation requirements found that just 18 percent of them require a basic American history course. (This runs counter to columnist George Will's promise that if he were made King of the World for a day, he would pass a law that all students had to major in history.) What's happening is a deletion of American history courses.

NO WAY OUT

That's happening to cause both problems, the church business meeting mess and the 4th of July ignorance. In the 4th of July matter, history courses have been effectively deleted so as to become almost non-existent. In the case of the church business meeting mess, the average church does not know how to exist without membership, business meetings, and voting. They know of no other way to do it (and if they did, would most likely reject it). They see no way out of the bloodletting of business meetings; for them, there's no alternative; they are under the tyranny of the business meeting.The way out (no membership, no voting, an Acts 15 formatted meeting) has been deleted from their thinking.

THE UNIVERSITIES

Let's expand our thinking, connect the dots, and apply this to another situation. On many college campuses and in those businesses linked to government, one must be aware of microagressions, that is, "brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.” (Columbia professor Derald Sue)

For example, the University of North Carolina warned the students not refer to the "Christmas vacation" as such because it would constitute a microagression. As the list directed, "The mention of any Christian holiday, stating that celebrating Christmas further centers the Christian faith and minimizes non-Christian spiritual rituals and observations." We're all familiar with the various prohibitions of saying, "Merry Christmas" by businesses and schools. therefore: Christmas? Deleted.

A roving reporter in New York asked passersby during the month of March, "What holiday comes this Sunday?" (Answer, "Easter"). 50% couldn't name it (answers included, "Memorial Day" and "Father's Day") and respondents didn't know why we celebrate Easter (answers ranged from "to celebrate the opening of the womb of a new mother," to "I don't know," to "the Easter bunny bringing eggs Jesus laid," to "the birth of Jesus." One lady identified the story of Jesus' life on earth as being in the Old Testament. Easter? Deleted.

SINISTER?

Maybe what's happening is more sinister than just a blocking of information. Maybe it's a blocking of information with a purpose, the purpose of tyranny, as stated by Allan Bloom in his book, "The Closing of the American Mind:" ". . . freedom requires the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities."Therefore, if there are no alternatives, there is no way out.

This correlates with Luke 8 where Jesus explains the parable of the Sower and Seed that fell on rocky ground: "The seed is the word of God. Those beside the road are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their heart, so that they will not believe and be saved." It also correlates with II Corinthians 4:4: "[Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God."

Could it be that the satanic conspiracy of the microagression madness is to remove "the awareness of other possibilities" such as any information connected to Christ (Christmas, Easter, the gospel) especially the information that Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead and whoever trusts Him alone has eternal life. 

NO WAY OUT?

The church members have business-meeting-blood on their hands because they see no way out of membership and ballots. Those ignorant of the 4th of July operate without any information. Those who have no clue as to the significance of Easter have no alternative information. Deleted, deleted for a purpose.

But there is a way out: you and I and the Bible--lights in a dark, dark place. 



 




Friday, July 1, 2016

THE STANDARD

How should we judge the performance of any President of the United States? How would we know whether or not a President should be impeached and removed from office? Would it be on the basis of whether or not we liked him? Would it be on the basis of our party affiliation, that is, if he were a member of the other party, should we throw the bum out? Of course not.

Brion McCalanhan, historian, Ph. D in American History from the University of South Carolina, and co-author of four books, says that we already have the standard by which we should judge every President and by which we should or should not impeach and remove him from office. (Impeaching and removing from office aren't the same thing, but that's another discussion.)

We ask Dr. McCalanhan, "Just what is that standard?"

He replies, "The standard is the oath of office he swore to uphold when he assumed the office of the presidency."

And we query, "What is that oath?"

He answers, "The completion of that oath is what ends one President's term and begins the next. It's required by the Constitution that before he can assume the office, he must take that 35-word oath."

We'd say, "You sound like a professor. Tell us, exactly, what is the oath?"

He knows it by memory. He recites: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

There it is, the standard by which we should judge the current and all past Presidents, be he Democrat, Republican, or Whig: Did he preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States?

That's refreshing; Dr. McCalanhan's proposed standard simplifies things and makes the standard objective, not subjective. Simplifying things is unusual for academic types; they love to complicate things because it makes them look intelligent while we look like dummies

THE GOSPEL

Now, what about the gospel? When we ask, "What is the gospel," there's confusion and a lot of it. What we need is a standard, simple, to the point, and easy to understand, free from the explanation of  the garrulous academic. And the good news is that we have exactly such a standard which meets all of those qualifications.

We find the standard in I Corinthians 15:1ff: 

"Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand . . . For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures . . ."

The content of the gospel is that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for our sins, and rose from the dead. This content presents the 1) need of salvation (we are sinners) 2) the basis of salvation (the substitutionary death of Christ which paid the total penalty) and 3) the means of salvation (faith alone, "receive")

CRITICAL THINKING

Critical thinking should not be confused with being argumentative, rude, or critical of other people. (We already have enough of those "thinkers," so don't become one.)  Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe. It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking.

Let's apply critical thinking to the question, "What is the gospel as defined by Paul in I Corinthians 15 and ask questions based on Paul's statement that salvation comes by faith in Christ alone.

1. Is a person saved by walking down an aisle? No (The apostles never asked anyone to walk down an aisle.)
2. Is a person saved by being baptized? No.
3. Is a person saved by making Christ the Lord of his life. No.
4. Is a person saved by keeping the 10 Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount? No.
5. Is a person saved by feeling sorry for his sins? No. ("Repent" in the Greek means, "Change your mind.)
6. Is a person saved by turning from his sin? No. (Impossible)
7. Is a person saved by forsaking all and following Jesus? No.
8. Is a person saved by praying a prayer? No. (Did the apostles ask anyone to pray a prayer to be saved?) No. There is no "Sinner's Prayer" in the New Testament.)
9. Is a person saved by making a public confession? No. (That has to do with being a disciple.)
10. Is a person saved by asking Jesus into his heart? No.

The critical thinker will evaluate every gospel invitation by I Corinthians 15 because that's the standard, just like the oath of office is the standard by which we should evaluate every President of the United States.

Therefore, when you read a Sunday school quarterly, read a tract, listen to your pastor, read VBS literature, watch a TV preacher, or listen to your Sunday school teacher, you evaluate their gospel presentation by I Corinthians 15.

APPLICATION OF CRITICAL THINKING

A critical thinker is able deduce the consequences of his thinking and make use of that thinking. For example, a critical thinker will evaluate the following gospel invitation of America's most popular preacher:

" We never like to close our broadcast without giving you the opportunity to make Jesus the LORD of your life.

“Would you pray with me? Just say -

“LORD Jesus, I repent of my sins. Come into my heart. I make You my LORD and Savior.”


According to I Corinthians 15, the critical thinker understands why this "gospel" is a false gospel and saves no one. (The preacher does not mention of the death of Christ or the resurrection of Christ, both of which Paul says are part of the gospel. The pastor adds works to the gospel by telling the person that he must feel sorry for his sins, that he must pray a prayer; there is no mention that Jesus died to pay for the person's sins and that it's by faith alone in Him alone that one is saved. He also adds elements to the gospel the apostles never did, such as telling someone to ask Jesus into their heart and make Him lord of their lives. (Making Jesus the Lord of one's life is an act of discipleship, not for salvation.)

A critical thinker won't be a hypocrite; he'll act on the understanding and implications of his thinking. Once the critical thinker understands the implications of the definition of the gospel, he will not sit under nor write a check to someone who is presenting a gospel that saves no one. He will in no way encourage, help, attend, listen to, or recommend the ministry of such a person because that person falls under Galatians 1:6-9.