GO FIGURE
A lady is talking about the preachers she loved. She uses the word, “love,” so I know she really likes to listen to them. I’m interested in the two for whom her ears were itching, but I don’t have to ask—she tells me immediately that she loves Charles Stanley, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Atlanta. Then she told me that she loves Kenneth Copeland, and after searching her mind for a bit, she says that she loves Gloria Copeland too.
YOU WHAT?
This raises an important issue, so let’s look at this in a bit of detail. By any fair examination, Charles Stanley and Kenneth Copeland are as opposite as William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal were, or to go further back in history, as opposite as the Hatfields and the McCoys. Neither would send a Christmas card to the other.
Kenneth Copeland is a heretic who preaches, “You are a god.” (The same message that the serpent had for Eve in that she could become like God); the same message of cult after cult. In a sampling of his heresy, we see that it’s blatant:
“You don’t have a god in you. You are God. ‘Force of Love,’ audiotape Kenneth Copeland, 1987
“‘Don’t be disturbed when people accuse you of thinking you are God … They crucified Me for claiming I was God. I didn’t claim that I was God; I just claimed that I walked with Him and that He was in Me. Hallelujah! That’s what you’re doing …'” – ‘Take Time to Pray,’ Believer’s Voice of Victory, February 1987, p. 9
“Now Peter said by exceeding great and precious promises you become partakers of the divine class. All right, are we gods? We are a class of gods!” – Kenneth Copeland, ‘Praise The Lord’ TV Show, Feb. 5, 1986
“You really cannot ever come to that place were you let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who thought it not robbery to be called equal with God. Let this mind be in Kenneth Copeland, Oh my goodness, Ah! that thinks its not robbery to be called equal with God.” – Kenneth Copeland, Believer’s Voice of Victory, Monday 29th January 2001, GOD TV
“When I read in the Bible where God tells Moses, ‘I AM,’ I say, ‘Yah, I am too!'” – ‘The Force of Love,’ Kenneth Copeland, tape BBC-56
“Jesus existed only as an image in the heart of God, until such time as the prophets of the Old Testament could positively confess Jesus into existence through their constant prophecies.” – (Kenneth Copeland, The Power of the Tongue, pp. 8-10)
It’s not necessary to give examples of the teaching of Charles Stanley to show that he and Copeland are extreme opposites.
GO FIGURE
Yet, the lady loves, listens to, and maybe contributes to both of them. Go figure. No discernment. What’s going on? Can a person be that blind? Is she listening to them? Maybe she is. Maybe the problem is what we see all around us: People are not “enduring sound doctrine.” They hear and see the difference, but they don’t care, as stated in this article in the Chafer Theological Journal:
"Although it is enjoyable and beneficial to pray with believers from diverse backgrounds, it has likewise been disconcerting to hear commonly used statements such as, “Doctrine isn’t important,“All disagreement is junk”, and “We leave our doctrine outside before we come in so we can pray together in unity.”
"One believer even prayed, “Lord thank you that you have taught me that doctrine isn’t as important as unity.” Most Christians would agree that some of the petty differences that divide the body of Christ are unfortunate and grieve the Spirit. But to assume that all doctrine is unimportant is strange to Scripture."
Maybe that’s it; in this postmodern age, there is no truth, each has his own truth—Copeland has his, Stanley has his.
What a mess!
WITHOUT COST
Friday, August 25, 2017
Friday, August 18, 2017
PASTOR LARRY LEGION
One apostle, Peter, writes of another apostle, Paul: "As also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction."
Going by the date of the writing of II Peter, We can be certain that Peter had read all of Paul's epistles. (Surely the apostles were in touch with each other as they carried out the Great Commission.) The letters of Paul contain truths that we've been studying for 2,000 years, as all of the epistles, Peter's included.
A SKYPE QUESTION
A group of us were involved in a Skype session. ("What will they think of next?" said the pioneer woman in 'Shane' as she examined a can of fruit in the general store.) One of the participants told a story and posed a question for us.
TURN YOUR RADIO ON
He said he was listening to the radio and on the station was a preacher who was speaking about God's absolutely free gift of salvation, "Yes, it was totally free," the man said. When he came to the conclusion of the program, and what's called, "The Invitation," he told the listeners that salvation comes when a person trusts Christ as Savior, feels sorry for his sins, confesses those sins, abandons those sins, and dedicates his life to Christ. So much for "absolutely free." That's not free; that comes with a price tag.
Then our Skyping friend posed the question: "How can someone say on the one hand that salvation is free and then on the other hand tell all the things a person must pay to get it, and not see that he's contradicting himself?" That is a poser, isn't it, or, as they used to say, "That's the $64,000 question."
YOU'VE HEARD IT
If you've ever listened to sermonizing on the radio, TV, or in person, you know the radio pastor's name: it's "Pastor Larry Legion." He's all over the place with his false gospel, chewing up vocabulary and spitting out false teaching. Yet, people by the thousands sit in their appointed pews listening to the Larry Legions and never bat an eye upon hearing such a passing parade of illogical verbiage. They go farther: they reach for their checkbooks and finance his nonsense. They keep him going. They are a partner in it. And that's serious.
Those Skyping that day offered several answers to the good question: the satanic blindness of II Corinthians 4:4 was one answer; our culture was another. By answering, "Our culture," it was meant that Pastor Legion's invitation has been the norm for generations and, "If my parents and grandparents adhered to that old religious jargon, it's good enough for me." By "Our culture" is meant that such an presentation is ingrained in our ecclesiastical psyches, that's what we've heard since our days in the cradle roll, world without end, amen, so the nonsense just rolls right by us as it flows trippingly, off Pastor Legion's tongue. It's as illogical as the man who said, "It's bad luck to be superstitious."
BUT IT WAS EVER THUS
The baseline of what's happening is that both pulpits and pews don't know the definition of grace. Grace is hard to understand because of the blindness and the culture.
Grace is unmerited favor; grace recognizes no merit and no demerit. What's happening is that we're raised with the idea, "If you want it, work for it; earn it." "If you don't work, you don't eat," and as a restaurant named itself "Tanstafle," (There's No Such Thing as A Free Lunch), that's the way people think of going to heaven.
Paul ran into the same thing, people misunderstanding grace, so what did he do? He knew he had to expound on it and not just leave the word lying out there undefined and by itself. So he wrote, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." Notice how he clarifies grace, it's "not of yourselves," it's "not of works," it eliminates bragging on yourself. (Eph. 2:8-9) He has to explain it because grace is a hard concept to grasp.
In Titus 3:5, he explains: "He saved us, [here comes the explanation] not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,"
In his classic work, Romans, Paul explains that salvation is "apart from the Law," "apart from works" three times and cites twoillustrations to prove it--Abraham and David.
Grace is something"hard to understand." That's why Paul asked for the prayers of the believers in Colosse, so that "I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak." What he wanted to say clearly was what he wrote in I Cor. 15 about the gospel of grace: salvation is free to anyone who believes that Jesus, the God/Man, died for his sins and rose from the dead, trusting Him and Him alone for forgiveness of sin and eternal life. That's the grace way of salvation, the only way is the way without cost to the sinner.
Grace is the final message of the Bible, so as to nail it down one last time: "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.' And let the one who hears say, 'Come.' And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost."
Going by the date of the writing of II Peter, We can be certain that Peter had read all of Paul's epistles. (Surely the apostles were in touch with each other as they carried out the Great Commission.) The letters of Paul contain truths that we've been studying for 2,000 years, as all of the epistles, Peter's included.
A SKYPE QUESTION
A group of us were involved in a Skype session. ("What will they think of next?" said the pioneer woman in 'Shane' as she examined a can of fruit in the general store.) One of the participants told a story and posed a question for us.
TURN YOUR RADIO ON
He said he was listening to the radio and on the station was a preacher who was speaking about God's absolutely free gift of salvation, "Yes, it was totally free," the man said. When he came to the conclusion of the program, and what's called, "The Invitation," he told the listeners that salvation comes when a person trusts Christ as Savior, feels sorry for his sins, confesses those sins, abandons those sins, and dedicates his life to Christ. So much for "absolutely free." That's not free; that comes with a price tag.
Then our Skyping friend posed the question: "How can someone say on the one hand that salvation is free and then on the other hand tell all the things a person must pay to get it, and not see that he's contradicting himself?" That is a poser, isn't it, or, as they used to say, "That's the $64,000 question."
YOU'VE HEARD IT
If you've ever listened to sermonizing on the radio, TV, or in person, you know the radio pastor's name: it's "Pastor Larry Legion." He's all over the place with his false gospel, chewing up vocabulary and spitting out false teaching. Yet, people by the thousands sit in their appointed pews listening to the Larry Legions and never bat an eye upon hearing such a passing parade of illogical verbiage. They go farther: they reach for their checkbooks and finance his nonsense. They keep him going. They are a partner in it. And that's serious.
Those Skyping that day offered several answers to the good question: the satanic blindness of II Corinthians 4:4 was one answer; our culture was another. By answering, "Our culture," it was meant that Pastor Legion's invitation has been the norm for generations and, "If my parents and grandparents adhered to that old religious jargon, it's good enough for me." By "Our culture" is meant that such an presentation is ingrained in our ecclesiastical psyches, that's what we've heard since our days in the cradle roll, world without end, amen, so the nonsense just rolls right by us as it flows trippingly, off Pastor Legion's tongue. It's as illogical as the man who said, "It's bad luck to be superstitious."
BUT IT WAS EVER THUS
The baseline of what's happening is that both pulpits and pews don't know the definition of grace. Grace is hard to understand because of the blindness and the culture.
Grace is unmerited favor; grace recognizes no merit and no demerit. What's happening is that we're raised with the idea, "If you want it, work for it; earn it." "If you don't work, you don't eat," and as a restaurant named itself "Tanstafle," (There's No Such Thing as A Free Lunch), that's the way people think of going to heaven.
Paul ran into the same thing, people misunderstanding grace, so what did he do? He knew he had to expound on it and not just leave the word lying out there undefined and by itself. So he wrote, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." Notice how he clarifies grace, it's "not of yourselves," it's "not of works," it eliminates bragging on yourself. (Eph. 2:8-9) He has to explain it because grace is a hard concept to grasp.
In Titus 3:5, he explains: "He saved us, [here comes the explanation] not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,"
In his classic work, Romans, Paul explains that salvation is "apart from the Law," "apart from works" three times and cites twoillustrations to prove it--Abraham and David.
Grace is something"hard to understand." That's why Paul asked for the prayers of the believers in Colosse, so that "I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak." What he wanted to say clearly was what he wrote in I Cor. 15 about the gospel of grace: salvation is free to anyone who believes that Jesus, the God/Man, died for his sins and rose from the dead, trusting Him and Him alone for forgiveness of sin and eternal life. That's the grace way of salvation, the only way is the way without cost to the sinner.
Grace is the final message of the Bible, so as to nail it down one last time: "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.' And let the one who hears say, 'Come.' And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost."
Friday, August 11, 2017
THE PRISON
There are prisons with wardens and walls, bars and barbed wire, cement and cells. Then there's a prison without those things--without guards and guns, without bed checks and bulls. This prison is one of the intellect, one to which a man goes of his own free will and locks himself inside.
HELLO, DARKNESS, MY OLD FRIEND
His prison is a universe without a known cause other than his attribution of it to the impersonal + time + chance. Although he longs to believe that the great drama of his life has an Author and a noble end, he lives locked inside thinking that the impersonal + time + chance "laboriously produces man, mind, and devotion only to snuff them out in the maturity of their development." (Will Durant)
When he turns to science, he finds it gives him great power, but diminishes his significance. It gives him no purpose and stands silent on the great questions, "Who am I?" "Why am I here?" and "Where am I going?" When history or the arts try to give him meaning, values, and goals, death cancels them out. They weren't ultimate, only momentary. In this intellectual prison, neither he nor anyone else, nor any loved one has any ultimate meaning.
HIS HOLLOW HOLIDAYS
Every fourth Thursday in November, he's intellectually alone because he has no one to thank. He can't thank the impersonal, time, and chance, that would be like expressing gratitude to a rock.
Christmas is a hollow holiday, it's just the end of the year for drinking, hangovers, headaches, nausea, giving gifts without knowing the Ultimate Giver.
YET, HE HAS TO WORSHIP
The tragedy is that he's put himself in this prison in spite of clear and understandable communication to the contrary. He's chosen to to reject the 24/7 attempts of the God of the Bible to communicate with him. Instead of worshiping and wanting to know more about Him, he decides to worship himself, an animal, a tree, or his bank accounts. (Romans 1:18ff)
The odd thing he's adamant in wanting others to join him in his incarceration. They say that misery loves company, so he spends his time arguing with others, trying to get them behind bars as soon as he can. Yet, we get the feeling that he's really arguing with himself to keep his cell locked.
INSIDE THE WALLS
Inside the prison, he searches for something to make him happy. In this search, C. S. Lewis delivered a profound insight into the psychological engine that drives the drama of history: “All that we call human history — money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery — is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” )We can add to that list terrorism and abortion.)
NOBODY SINS IN A VACUUM
But such a quest for happiness comes at a cost to others. The search doesn't occur in a vacuum. "So what happens when [you] seek joy and must use someone to get it? You must oppress. You must step on toes. You must wound and offend. And you come face-to-face and eye-to-eye with other such atheists seeking personal happiness at your expense. You get used. Paradoxically, these desires attract us to one another, making the impact even harder, like an inevitable head-on collision between freight trains." (Tony Reinke)
Fallen man is a freak: he locks himself in prison and becomes vehement that others join him.
HELLO, DARKNESS, MY OLD FRIEND
His prison is a universe without a known cause other than his attribution of it to the impersonal + time + chance. Although he longs to believe that the great drama of his life has an Author and a noble end, he lives locked inside thinking that the impersonal + time + chance "laboriously produces man, mind, and devotion only to snuff them out in the maturity of their development." (Will Durant)
When he turns to science, he finds it gives him great power, but diminishes his significance. It gives him no purpose and stands silent on the great questions, "Who am I?" "Why am I here?" and "Where am I going?" When history or the arts try to give him meaning, values, and goals, death cancels them out. They weren't ultimate, only momentary. In this intellectual prison, neither he nor anyone else, nor any loved one has any ultimate meaning.
HIS HOLLOW HOLIDAYS
Every fourth Thursday in November, he's intellectually alone because he has no one to thank. He can't thank the impersonal, time, and chance, that would be like expressing gratitude to a rock.
Christmas is a hollow holiday, it's just the end of the year for drinking, hangovers, headaches, nausea, giving gifts without knowing the Ultimate Giver.
YET, HE HAS TO WORSHIP
The tragedy is that he's put himself in this prison in spite of clear and understandable communication to the contrary. He's chosen to to reject the 24/7 attempts of the God of the Bible to communicate with him. Instead of worshiping and wanting to know more about Him, he decides to worship himself, an animal, a tree, or his bank accounts. (Romans 1:18ff)
The odd thing he's adamant in wanting others to join him in his incarceration. They say that misery loves company, so he spends his time arguing with others, trying to get them behind bars as soon as he can. Yet, we get the feeling that he's really arguing with himself to keep his cell locked.
INSIDE THE WALLS
Inside the prison, he searches for something to make him happy. In this search, C. S. Lewis delivered a profound insight into the psychological engine that drives the drama of history: “All that we call human history — money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery — is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” )We can add to that list terrorism and abortion.)
NOBODY SINS IN A VACUUM
But such a quest for happiness comes at a cost to others. The search doesn't occur in a vacuum. "So what happens when [you] seek joy and must use someone to get it? You must oppress. You must step on toes. You must wound and offend. And you come face-to-face and eye-to-eye with other such atheists seeking personal happiness at your expense. You get used. Paradoxically, these desires attract us to one another, making the impact even harder, like an inevitable head-on collision between freight trains." (Tony Reinke)
Fallen man is a freak: he locks himself in prison and becomes vehement that others join him.
Friday, August 4, 2017
DO YOU SPEAK CHRISTIAN?
I was talking to a bank employee the other day and she kept referring to the "G. O. It was G. O. this and G. O. that. I asked her what she meant by the "G. O." and she told me that meant "The General Office." It was then that our conversation started making sense.
Every organization has its own shorthand, it's own code words those in the group use in their everyday interoffice communication.
DO YOU SPEAK CHRISTIAN?
We have our Christian code words; For example, we might say, "Mosaic Law." We know what that means but do you think everybody does? In days gone by, believers referred to "hitting the sawdust trail," "laying before the Lord," and "the mourner's bench." More up to date code words, are "stewardship Sunday," "born again," "discipleship," and, unfortunately, "grace."
The military uses code words to keep their operations secret from the enemy: the invasion of Europe in WWII had its own code, "Operation Overlord" (a reference to D-Day) which only those in the know knew.
The Secret Service has code names for those it protects. On November 22, 1963, the code name for President Kennedy was "Lancer," his wife was, "Lace." VP Lyndon Johnson was "Volunteer," his wife was "Victoria," and "Crown" was the White House mansion. There were and are reasons for code words and they don't all deal with national security.
A BENEFIT OF CODE WORDS, BUT . . .
Code words save us time. They're like shorthand. If a Bible teacher didn't use our Christian code, we'd be listening to him for hours one end as he explained every term.
But one thing code words don't do is communicate with outsiders. This hit home with me one day when I was in an interminable deacons' meeting. I made a reference to the fact that salvation was free, a person doesn't have to try to give up sins to be saved. I pointed out that trying to give up sin was a work. One of the men in the august group got so riled up, that he shot back, "You make works sound like a dirty word! Giving up sin is a work?" he asked incredulously. He was getting angrier by the second.
Looking back on that eye-opening meeting, it occurred to me that even "work"/"works" can be code words because many don't understand what we mean by "work." The madder-than-a-wet-hen-man didn't.
So, maybe what we need to do when telling someone, "salvation is apart from works," is define it. Just what is a "work?" What makes a work a work, biblically speaking? Some might answer, "Well, you know, that is . . . . well, everybody knows a work . . . is . . . well, it's, you know, a work." But, as any good English teacher will tell you, you aren't defining a word by using the word you're trying to define. That's a no-no.
WHAT MAKES A WORK A WORK?
So, just what is "work," that is, what does something have to be to be classified a work?
A work, to be a work, has three characteristics, according to Dr.David R. Anderson:
1. It must be observable.
2. It must be performed by a human being.
3. It must be accomplished by physical means.
This is why Paul said that circumcision was a work. Therefore, if circumcision is a work, so is confession with the mouth; so is baptism; so is trying to give up sin or even actually giving up a sin. Confessing sin to a priest or to any offended party would be a work. With this simple definition, anyone can, biblically, know and understand if something is a work. Now we can see whether or not someone is subtly (or not so subtly) importing works (that which is observable, performed by a human being, done by physical means) into grace and adjudge him (or her) as a false teacher.
We need code words among ourselves, but in evangelism, we need to be finely tuned to recognize that the unbeliever has no idea what we're talking about, but is only politely nodding. We're talking about the "grace of Christ," and he thinks we're talking about the attractiveness of Christ.
In using code words with the non-Christian, we're talking past each other. And that means "evangelism" (a code word itself) has not occurred.
Every organization has its own shorthand, it's own code words those in the group use in their everyday interoffice communication.
DO YOU SPEAK CHRISTIAN?
We have our Christian code words; For example, we might say, "Mosaic Law." We know what that means but do you think everybody does? In days gone by, believers referred to "hitting the sawdust trail," "laying before the Lord," and "the mourner's bench." More up to date code words, are "stewardship Sunday," "born again," "discipleship," and, unfortunately, "grace."
The military uses code words to keep their operations secret from the enemy: the invasion of Europe in WWII had its own code, "Operation Overlord" (a reference to D-Day) which only those in the know knew.
The Secret Service has code names for those it protects. On November 22, 1963, the code name for President Kennedy was "Lancer," his wife was, "Lace." VP Lyndon Johnson was "Volunteer," his wife was "Victoria," and "Crown" was the White House mansion. There were and are reasons for code words and they don't all deal with national security.
A BENEFIT OF CODE WORDS, BUT . . .
Code words save us time. They're like shorthand. If a Bible teacher didn't use our Christian code, we'd be listening to him for hours one end as he explained every term.
But one thing code words don't do is communicate with outsiders. This hit home with me one day when I was in an interminable deacons' meeting. I made a reference to the fact that salvation was free, a person doesn't have to try to give up sins to be saved. I pointed out that trying to give up sin was a work. One of the men in the august group got so riled up, that he shot back, "You make works sound like a dirty word! Giving up sin is a work?" he asked incredulously. He was getting angrier by the second.
Looking back on that eye-opening meeting, it occurred to me that even "work"/"works" can be code words because many don't understand what we mean by "work." The madder-than-a-wet-hen-man didn't.
So, maybe what we need to do when telling someone, "salvation is apart from works," is define it. Just what is a "work?" What makes a work a work, biblically speaking? Some might answer, "Well, you know, that is . . . . well, everybody knows a work . . . is . . . well, it's, you know, a work." But, as any good English teacher will tell you, you aren't defining a word by using the word you're trying to define. That's a no-no.
WHAT MAKES A WORK A WORK?
So, just what is "work," that is, what does something have to be to be classified a work?
A work, to be a work, has three characteristics, according to Dr.David R. Anderson:
1. It must be observable.
2. It must be performed by a human being.
3. It must be accomplished by physical means.
This is why Paul said that circumcision was a work. Therefore, if circumcision is a work, so is confession with the mouth; so is baptism; so is trying to give up sin or even actually giving up a sin. Confessing sin to a priest or to any offended party would be a work. With this simple definition, anyone can, biblically, know and understand if something is a work. Now we can see whether or not someone is subtly (or not so subtly) importing works (that which is observable, performed by a human being, done by physical means) into grace and adjudge him (or her) as a false teacher.
We need code words among ourselves, but in evangelism, we need to be finely tuned to recognize that the unbeliever has no idea what we're talking about, but is only politely nodding. We're talking about the "grace of Christ," and he thinks we're talking about the attractiveness of Christ.
In using code words with the non-Christian, we're talking past each other. And that means "evangelism" (a code word itself) has not occurred.
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