Wade Burleson

Our Problem Is Authoritarianism and Not Legalism

2012-01-26T10:02:00.004-06:00

I used to think the problem in modern Christianity was legalism. I was wrong. I now see that some Christians flaunt their freedom and taunt their foes while other Christians consult their legal formulas and insult their libertine friends. One man's freedom is another man's sin, but both groups suffer from a much larger problem. The church of Jesus Christ in the 21st century is losing its power because of an infatuation with authority. It is authoritianism, not legalism, that has become the biggest challenge Christians face. William Bausch, church historian par excellence, has correctly written, "No cultic priesthood is to be found in the New Testament. Yet we are importing Old Testament Levitical forms and imposing them on Christian ministry."

The world has established systems of governance with imperial forms of authority, governance similar to that of the Hebrews in the Old Covenant. The Hebrews looked--and the world looks--to positions of authority for their leadership. Webster's defines authority as "the power to influence thought, opinion, or behavior by convincing force or control." Governments have authority. Kings have authority. Presidents have authority. The Hebrew priests had authority. The control or force these systems of governance exert vary, but the authority is similar. Leadership comes from people in higher positions of authority.

The church of Jesus Christ was never designed to operate in this manner. Jesus explicitly taught in Matthew 23:8-11 (read it for yourself to see) that the only person who rules Christian communities is the Lord Himself. Under Him, we are all equals. He emphatically rejected the world's system of top-down governance by declaring, "It shall not be so among you" (Mark 10:43). "The greatest among you shall be your servant" (Matthew 23:11). There is no emphasis in the New Testament on authority that is derived from any "office" or position. Let me repeat that again: Nowhere in the New Testament does it say that a Christian, because of title or position, has moral authority over another Christian. The idea of an 'office' of authority in the church, like that of the office of 'President of the United States,' simply does not exist. Christ alone has the position of authority in the church and He has no vicar on earth but His Spirit, who resides in the life of every believer.

The King James Version unfortunately translates the Greek word diakonia as "office" in Romans 11:13, but diakonia is always elsewhere properly translated as "service" or "servant." Christians serve others and any leadership in the church flows from this selfless service and oversight of others; pagans seek offices that grant authority so that their leadership (lordship) over other people is inherent to their positions or titles. Christians morally persuade others by our love and grace; pagans morally coerce others by their positions of authority. When Christians act like pagans, they turn their homes, churches, and organizations into structures of authority where everybody is coerced to submit to the authority and control of another person in a higher 'position' of authority. The equality of New Covenant believers in Christ is lost because Old Covenant Levitical forms of authority are imposed on Christian ministry.

How does one know if the Christian community or church to which he or she belongs is following Christ's teachings on leadership or is a reflection of the pagan's understanding of authority? What are the signs imperial authoritarianism in the church? The following are ten indicators:

(1). There is never any freedom to question the leader.
(2). The leader often makes claims of having special insights from God, insights that the laity are unable to possess.
(3). Disagreement with the leader is deemed a sign of the devil's influence in one's life.
(4). Events are designed to bring attention and praise to the leader rather than equipping others to do the work of the ministry.
(5). Any concept of equality is immediately labeled rebellion or the end result of a "liberal" denial of the Bible.
(6) Authoritarian leaders are only comfortable around like-minded leaders; thus, there is an unoffical 'speaking tour' where only imperial, authoritarian leaders share the platform with each other.
(7). The measure of success becomes the number of people who follow the leader ("It must be of God! Look at how many come to hear me speak!")
(8). If a person leaves the community or church, the problem is always in the person who leaves, not the leadership.
(9). Leaders who wrongly perceive themselves as those "with authority" insulate their lives by demanding absolute loyalty through giving large financial benefits to their closest 'advisors.'
(10). The ultimate end of this kind of Christian leadership is always more; more money, more power, more followers, more publicity, more, more, more...

The people of Christ are beginning to awaken to the abuses in the modern church. Whereas I thought it important in years past to challenge the legalism prevalent in the Southern Baptist Convention, I have become utterly convinced that the major problem in modern Christendom is authoritianism, not legalism. Ask yourself if you are in a place of worship where there is always a fresh, radical presentation of the freedom and equality of individual followers of Christ. If not, consider leaving, because in the end you will find your Christian community was never really about Christ or His people at all.

The Fatal Flaw Within 'Together for the Gospel' Men

2012-01-23T20:14:00.001-06:00

New Testament writers did not express divine revelation in a vacuum. The koine (common) Greek words used by Spirit-inspired biblical writers carried cultural connotations long before they became part of the sacred text. Take for instance the Greek word hamartia (sin). Aristotle described hamartia as "an action causing unintentional injury to others by one who misses his objective." Bible scholars define hamartia as "missing the mark." In Greek tragedies, hamartia was described as the hero's fatal flaw. The hero intended to accomplish something good, but because of an error in judgment or an unintentional mistake, the hero achieved something disastrous or tragic. This is why a Greek drama with a hero possessing hamartia (a fatal flaw) is called a Greek tragedy.

There is a modern tragedy within the evangelical conservative movement called Together for the Gospel. The men, pictured above, have wonderful objectives. They desire to fellowship around "the joyous declaration that God is redeeming the world through Christ, and that He calls everyone everywhere to repent from sin and trust Jesus Christ for salvation." Amen. We can all agree. Our theological heroes, however, have within them a fatal flaw. They have defined their gospel movement as having "a theological anchor defined by four points." The third major theological point is their fatal flaw. They have insisted that the gospel demands 'complementarian relationships.' This is theological lingo for 'men should always lead and women should always follow.' The absolute absurdity of making this view a major theological tenet is seen in the video answer that John Piper gives to the question, "Should a woman submit to abuse by her man." Watch the video and you will see the fatal flaw within these men. Conservative, evangelical Christians like myself--people who might otherwise fellowship with these men around the gospel of Jesus Christ--find ourselves running from them as fast as possible. The intended desire of these men (fellowship around the gospel) has created the opposite results. Conservative Presbyterians have already put on their spiritual tennis shoes and sprinted away fast. It is only a matter of time before others do so as well.

The At-One-Ment: The Heart of the Gospel

2012-01-19T18:37:00.003-06:00

In 1525 Englishman William Tyndale (1494-1536) began working on the first English translation of the Bible from the Hebrew and Greek scriptures. John Wycliffe (1328-1384) who lived almost two centuries prior to Tyndale, is often considered the father of the English Bible, but Wycliffe had only translated the Latin Vulgate into English. The Wycliffe Bible was highly Latinized and contained many Roman Catholic superstitions that Tyndale sought to correct. Tyndale took the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts and faithfully translated the Word of God into the common English of his day, avoiding Latin and high church phraseology.

Tyndale, the consumate scholar, worked hard to precisely translate the Bible into English. Hebrew and Greek words are much more precise than their English counterparts. For example, one single Hebrew root word kippur and its Greek equivalents katallagee (katallagh) and hilasteerion (ilasthrion) have been translated in our modern English Bibles as pardon, grace, mercy, reconciliation, satisfaction, propitiation, ransom, etc.... Tyndale wished to be as precise as possible in his translation, so he coined (created) a new English word to translate kippur, katallagee and hilasteerion--the word atonement. Let me say that again: William Tyndale coined the word "atonement." If you ever hear a debate about "the doctrine of the atonement," you need to understand what is being debated; it is pardon, grace, mercy, reconciliation, satisfaction, ransom, propitiation, etc... that is being debated, because everyone of these English words translates the same Hebrew and Greek words for which Tyndale created the word "atonement."

At-one-ment. The last portion of the word, the suffix 'ment,' means "the result of a process." In Tyndale's understanding of the Bible, the result of the process of Christ's death on the cross is God and sinners are at "at-one." Tyndale understood that the words kippur and hilasterion pointed to God’s initiative in reconciling sinners unto Himself. Tyndale believed deeply that holy Scripture was preeminently concerned with how a sinner becomes fully accepted by God and thus becomes one with God. Tyndale saw this atonement process as God's work alone. Tyndale believed the Scriptures to teach, rightfully so, that Christ’s death is the event God has chosen whereby sinners receive full acceptance from Him; it is the at-one-ment. Tyndale has a great deal of company in his orthodox views of the death of Christ. William Romanine puts it like this:

“There is no salvation without righteousness, and it is of the Lord’s free grace that he (the sinner) is received as righteous, through the righteousness of Christ imputed to him by faith. Christ’s righteousness can be made ours only by imputation. As our sins were actually imputed to Christ, so His righteousness is actually imputed to us. The Lord laid upon Him the iniquity of us all, and therefore He was wounded for our transgressions, and was bruised for our iniquities. As He thus took our sins upon Himself, so we by faith take His righteousness upon us, and by it are saved" (The Whole Works of the Late Reverend William Romaine A. M., London, 1837, p. 789).

In summary, the cross is God's initiative in bringing sinners into His full acceptance. There is no love of God without the cross of Christ. There is no blessing of God apart from the death of Christ. There is no gospel without the cross. It is in the death of Christ that the mercy and grace of God meet the sin and failure of man and God demonstrates that "He is just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). God makes sinners 'at-one' with Himself in full acceptance of those sinners through the 'ment' of Christ's death. In the next post I will show that Christians can and do disagree over the extent of the atonement. However, it is clear from Scripture that the sinner who denies that reconcilation with God comes through the death of Jesus Christ is spitting in the face of grace and imperiling his or her soul. You may be religious and deny the at-one-ment, but you are without God's favor if you do. Logically you may say God will love me "no matter what," but revelation declares, "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry." To the world this gospel is foolish, but for those of us who are being saved it is the power of God to deliver us from our condemned state (Romans 1:16). The cross is the heart of the gospel and the essence of Christian faith, and without it there no reconciliation with God.

I Pray that My Theology of God Will Never Be More Vital to Me than My Passion for God

2012-01-17T15:19:00.005-06:00

"The African witches surrounded our South African home every day. They placed their ancient curses on me and my family because they didn't like us telling their fellow Africans about Christ. They painted themselves white, conducted blood rituals, and danced in circles as they invoked the dark spirits to do us harm. At first we prayed and asked God to protect us. Soon, there came a settled peace that "He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world." The African witches, however, kept coming to our house. Day after day they showed up to cast their spells. Finally, one of the young Africans whom we had led to Christ and was living with my family read from the Word and said to us, "I see here that Jesus says, 'Bless those that curse you...' We haven't yet blessed the witches!" We watched as our young convert to Christ walked out to the street with some water and said to the witches in their native tongue, "I've come to bless and help you. I commend you for your dedication to your cause. You come day after day to pronounce curses on us, curses that will never work, but you never give up. That's to be admired. Would you like some water? It's hot and I know you must be tired. Please know that if there is anything that you need or if there is something that we can do for you, just knock on our door and ask us. We will help. You are welcome to stay for dinner if you are hungry instead of going home." The witches stared at this Christian who blessed them as they cursed him. Within a few minutes they left our house and have never returned."

The above story was told me this morning by a 31-year-old man named Jeff Reid; the witches were trying to curse him and his family. Jeff lives in South Africa in ghettos surrounding Capetown, ministering to the poor the gospel of Christ. I was introduced to Jeff this weekend by friends and fellow church members Bryan and Tara Riley. Jeff's passion spoke to me. When he was a seventeen-year--old drug addict, Jeff found himself in a California prison for men because of his crimes. One day a prison evangelist came and shared Christ with Jeff. The Holy Spirit took hold of Jeff through the preaching of the gospel and transformed him from the inside out. Jeff went to prison all tatted up, but the biggest tattoo he ever received was from the hands of God when the Holy Spirit tapped his heart. Having only the Bible to read for the next year, and going to prison 'church' with other convicts who had also come to faith in Christ while in prison, Jeff's Christian faith was fashioned in the crucible of America's prison system. Upon his release, Jeff didn't know any better but to go back to his old San Diego hangouts and share Christ with the people to whom he once sold drugs. Eventually Jeff felt God calling him overseas to share Christ with the poor in countries other than America. While in discipleship training sponsored by Youth With a Mission, Jeff met his wife Bethany. They are now ministering in the ghettos of South Africa through YWAM. Jeff speaks of Christ with an intimate passion. Their ministry base in South Africa is a former home of a notorious drug lord who had been the recipient of Jeff's love and "wanted to give to the missionaries" a place to minister. Jeff spoke to several groups at our church this weekend, and the story of the witches cursing him struck me because of the simplicity of taking Jesus at his word and doing it. Too many of us in America's Bible belt analyze, theorize, and systemetize the Bible instead of doing what the Bible says.

Jeff emphasized that sometimes we get so caught up in theology and having all the right answers that we miss the power of the Spirit through intimate relationship. Jeff recounted how at a discipleship conference for YWAM leaders, a prominent theologian sought to demonstrate how to share Christ to antaganistic people. He took a group of trainees into the city and found a pretty rough, cynical crowd of young people. He began telling them of the Bible and Jesus. The theologian spoke at length, using his best rhetorical and intellectual skills. Finally, some guy shouted out, "If the Bible is true and evolution is not, then why do men have nipples?" The scholar, stumped for an answer, said, "You know I'll get back with you on that one." Though I laughed at the question of the skeptic as Jeff told me the story, what struck Jeff Reid was that nobody in the park came to Jesus through the scholar's arguments. He's also pretty sure that had the scholar actually come back with an answer to the nipple question, there still would have been no conversions to Christ.

On the other hand, in the city that same day, a skateboarder who had recently come to faith in Christ was sharing Jesus with his friends. The skateboarder didn't know much theology. He wasn't an eloquent scholar like the theologian, but what the skateboarder did have was a passion for his friends to know Christ. He would simply walk up to fellow skateboarders and ask, "Hey, what would you say if I told you that the marijuana you are smoking to get high on is a sorry substitute for the real power that comes from God and gets you higher than a kite?" Curious, the skateboarders would ask for it to be demonstrated. The new believer would tell his friends what had happened to him when came to know Christ and after sharing the gospel he would take his friends by the shoulders and begin tenderly praying over them and asking the Holy Spirit to do for them what the Holy Spirit had done for him. Soon, the Spirit would take captive the heart of the sinner for whom the skateboarder was praying. Would it surprise you to know that the skateboarder was actually leading people to Christ through his passion to see lives changed while the theologian struggled to find an answer to the 'nipple question' in his passion to see minds changed?

I'm grateful for the reminder today that both theology and passion are important, but theology without passion is worthless. A passion to know God intimately and a desire to make God known personally transform the community around us. My prayer today is that my theology of God will never be more vital to me than my passion for God.

"The Office of President Belongs to the American People and Is Not For Sale" - Harry Truman

2012-01-16T17:14:00.005-06:00

The following information about former President Harry Truman (pictured left with his wife Bess) was sent to me by one of my church members. My friend is always sending me interesting anecdotes from history, and this is one I found quite fascinating. Though I don't agree with all the politics Mr. Truman cherished, I sure do wish a new President of the United States would arise with some of the same personal principles regarding government compensation held by Mr. Truman. Read on... "Harry Truman was a different kind of President. He probably made as more important decisions regarding our nation's history as any of the other 42 Presidents preceding him. However, a measure of his greatness may rest on what he did after he left the White House.

The only asset he had when he died was the house he lived in, which was in Independence Missouri. His wife had inherited the house from her mother and father. Other than their years in the White House, the Trumans lived their entire lives in that house in Independence. When Mr. Truman retired from office in 1952, his sole income was a United States Army pension reported to have been $13,507.72 a year. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an 'allowance' and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year.

After President Eisenhower was inaugurated, Harry and Bess drove home to Missouri by themselves. There were no Secret Service agents following them.When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, "You don't want me. You want the office of the President, and that doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it's not for sale." Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, 'I don't consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise.' As president he paid for all of his own travel expenses and food.

Modern politicians have found a new level of success in cashing in on the Presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Political offices are now for sale (cf. Illinois). Good old Harry Truman was correct when he observed, 'My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!'

I say dig him up and clone him!"

Tim Tebow Represents Well What It Means to Be a Follower of Jesus Christ

2012-01-13T23:11:00.001-06:00

There was a day I didn't like Tim Tebow as a football player. He represented the enemy. He quarterbacked the University of Florida and his team played my beloved Oklahoma Sooners in the BCS National Championship Game. Rachelle and I were in Miami for the January 8, 2009 game, and we arrived at the stadium a couple of hours early. We stood right behind a small barricade outside of the stadium, just in front of the Florida locker room. We seemed to be the only Oklahoma fans in a sea of Florida fans. When the buses pulled up we happened to be the two people closest to the door of the second bus--the one from which Tim Tebow disembarked. He stepped off the bus, not two feet in front of us, and everybody began screaming his name. He glanced at us, saw our Oklahoma garb, and with a little smile on his face, let out a primordial roar that sent the Florida fans into a frenzy. I turned to Rachelle and said, "Uh oh. Oklahoma's in trouble. Tebow's fired up." Sure enough, Florida won on the back (or should I say 'legs') of Tim Tebow. I didn't like Tebow as a football player in 2009.

I have come to love Tim Tebow as a person in 2012. After three years of learning more about Tim Tebow there is a great deal that I've discovered that causes me to admire this young man who is the age of my oldest son. He's bold about his faith in Jesus Christ. He's humble about his accomplishments. He has a solid perspective on what's really important in life. You can't read this article on Tim Tebow, posted yesterday by award-winning sports writer Rick Reilly, and not be moved by Tebow's Christianity. Tebow's favorite verse is John 3:16. In the extraordinary win against Pittsburgh last Sunday Tim Tebow threw for 316 yards. His average yards per completion was 31.6 yards. The Neilson T.V. rating in the fourth quarter was 31.6. Twitter buzzed about the first names of the four referees who called the game--Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It seems somebody else is interested in Tim Tebow's testimony as well. Witches are now lining up to cast their spells against him.

In an age and day when a few religious evangelical professionals are causing Christians some justified shame, Tim Tebow has given us something for which we can be proud--a consistent witness for Christ through both his words and his life. Well done Tim Tebow. Whether you win or lose against the Patriots today, God has already made you a winner in the game of life.

The Frozen Chosen Are Leading the Blind Off a Rooftop Into Hell

2012-01-13T09:30:00.005-06:00

Yesterday I spent my second day interviewing an 82-year-old man who is telling me his life story. Born in 1929 to a poor Oklahoma whiskey bootlegger, losing his eye in a knife accident at the age of three, raised in a home where birthdays and Christmas were never celebrated because of abject poverty, and only hearing the name of God or Christ used in epitaths, this gentleman--and I mean gentle man--has overcome long odds against him to become a highly successful businessman in Oklahoma. I listened yesterday as this man shared with me how Christ changed his life at the age of 26. He and his 22-year-old wife were saved on the same day. How did it happen? A co-worker in the oil fields of New Mexico took the time to share Christ with the young couple. He wasn't pushy. He asked questions of a spiritual nature, but he expressed his love through his friendship toward the young couple. In time, because of the influence of this co-worker, the man and his wife attended church for the first time in their lives. They went at the invitation of their friend to a small Baptist church called Loveland Baptist Mission. "We didn't know what to expect, but the preacher--an older man who had experience in the oil fields himself--began to talk about Jesus Christ. He didn't use flowery words, and he didn't distract us with us with silly illustrations. He spoke from his heart and explained how Jesus Christ came and died for people who have messed up their lives like he had, and how Christ has the power to change the lives of those who will surrender to Him. At the conclusion of the message the pastor invited people to place their faith and confidence in Christ. As my wife and I looked at each other with tears in our eyes, we both knew that we needed Christ. That day my wife and me were both saved. God worked us over from head to foot. We were never the same. It was the most important day of my life!"

As I listened to my aged friend emotionally describe his conversion experience, and knowing the "success" he has (as the world defines success), I was struck by the depth of his feelings about the day of his conversion. You could see it in his eyes. You could hear it in his voice. Christ meant the world to him. I spent the next eight hours typing this portion of his narrative for his family members and arrived home around midnight. I checked my email and found a question from a pastor asking me about my Augustine post (from yesterday) and the feelings I had about Pastor Ed and his wife Lisa Young placing their bed on top of their church's roof for 24 hours to promote their new book on sex called Sexperiment: Seven Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse. I had heard about the promotion for the book, but I decided to log-in this morning and watch Pastor Ed and Lisa--in their bed on the roof of the church--as they answered interview questions about their sex life and the new book. I was still a little tired from the night before, but I listened carefully to Ed and Lisa as they bundled up against the twenty degree temperatures of early morning Dallas. After being given a vivid visual for the phrase "The Frozen Chosen," I found my mind drifting toward the interview I had the day before. My elderly friend had movingly described for me how he and his wife--at the time a young couple in the prime of their lives, the very group Ed and Lisa are targeting--had been transformed by a pastor's message on the person and work of Jesus Christ. A few questions came to mind as I gazed at the LiveFeed of Pastor Ed and Lisa on the roof of their church:

(1). Do people know that even if their sex lives improve, they are still headed for a date with hell, unless they come to place their confidence and faith in Christ?
(2). Do Christian people understand the importance of taking the time to thank those pastors and teachers who instruct us of Christ and His death--a message deemed "foolish" by the world and the cause of much ridicule--but the only message God uses to change lives?
(3). Could there possibly be some eighty-year-olds--sixty years from now--who curse the day they ever fell under the teaching of a preacher who taught them how to have better sex?
(4). Is it too harsh to say that any Christian preacher who spends time, money and effort to encourage people how to have better sex--while in bed with his wife on the roof of his church--may actually be guilty of leading the blind off a rooftop into hell?

When I get to heaven I want to find that pastor at Loveland Baptist Mission, Loveland, New Mexico. Fifty-five years ago he spent a week preparing a message about Christ. He walked into the church building that next Sunday morning and saw a new young couple had been seated on the front row. He didn't try to impress them with his knowledge about anything but Christ. He preached Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That preacher's message led my blind friend to saving faith in Christ and impacted an entire generation of people within the state of Oklahoma. Thank you, my pastor friend, for a job well done. May your tribe increase.

Evangelicals and Excessive Sex: Mark Driscoll and Ed Young from Augustine's Perspective

2012-01-12T09:55:00.009-06:00

There is a proliferation of sex manuals, sex sermons and sex talks within the evangelical Christian community. From Mark Driscoll's sometimes crude and vulgar discussions of sex in his 'exposition' of Solomon's Song, to the extraordinary theatrics of Ed Young in promoting his new book Sexperiment, modern evangelicals seem infatuated with sex. If you intituitively feel something is not quite right with such an overemphasis on the pleasures of sex, but you are not quite sure how to define what you are feeling, then I refer you to St. Augustine.

In the early 5th century Augustine wrote two volumes on sex. In his book entitled The Good of Marriage and a follow-up treatise on the blessings of celibacy called On Holy Virginity, Augustine defends the superiority of celibacy while at the same time maintaining the dignity and genuine goodness of marriage as God intended it. Though Augustine wrote during a time much different than ours, and we would not agree with every argument he makes, Augustine should still be considered by us modern evangelicals as a valid resource on the subject of sex for two reasons: (1). Augustine was forthright and transparent about his own battles with sexual addiction prior to his conversion, an account of which can be read in Augustine's Confessions, and (2). Augustine possessed a brilliant theological mind. R.C. Sproul maintains there has never been a better evangelical biblical scholar in the history of Christendom.

Augustine taught that the pleasures which come from doing things human naturally do, things like eating food and having sex, are good and edifying as long as it does not lead to excess. "Neither activity (eating or sex) is devoid of pleasure for the senses, and when this (pleasure) is regulated and put to its natural use under the restraint of moderation, it cannot be lust," wrote Augustine. But eating food and having sex should always be for a purpose. The purpose of eating is to obtain strength and sustenance to accomplish one's God-ordained work, and the purpose of sex is the proceation of the human race. In Confessions (Book 8), Augustine describes what happens when sex is pursued for the sake of its pleasures and uses himself as an example: "By servitude to passion, habit is formed, and habit to which there is no resistance becomes a compulsion. By these links, as it were, connected one to another (hence my term a chain), a harsh bondage held me under restraint." One would be hardpressed to find a better definition of sexual addiction.

Those of us with an understanding of New Covenant grace would argue that pleasure in and of itself is not sin, as long as the boundaries God established are not violated (i.e. 'sex outside of marriage'). However, we would be remiss if we did not pause and carefully consider Augustine's arguments that the pursuit of the mere pleasures of sex, even within the confines of marriage, will lead one into the bondage of sexual addiction. Augustine calls sex for pleasure within marriage a venialis culpa. Latin is not a strong forte among us modern Christians. In plain English, Augustine is saying sex within marriage for the pure pleasure of it is a "forgivable fault."

Augustine pointed to the words of the Apostle Paul who wrote that married couples "should abstain from sex only for brief periods of time for the sake of prayer. Then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. This I say by way of concession, not of command" (I Corinthians 7:5-6). The concession, in Augustine's interpretation of Scripture, was the absention of sex for brief times. Augustine believed the ideal was abstention from sex for much longer period of times, coming again to the conjugal relationship for the purpose of having children. However, the Apostle makes a 'concession' because of the struggle Christians have with 'sexual lusts' (Augustine's term).

Again, for Augustine sex has a God-given purpose; and without this purpose in the forefront of the mind, the soul becomes deadened by the lusts for sex. When a married person participates in sex for the sake of its pleasures, it becomes like overeating food for the ecstasy of its taste. Damage will occur. Unlike the effects of food overindulgence, the consequences of participating in sex for the sole purpose of pleasure are hidden and unseen. Married couples, according to Augustine, who pursue sex for the sake of its pleasures are commiting a "fault" (culpa). They have substituted pleasurable sex for God. This fault in a married couple is easily "forgivable" (venialis) because of the goodness of marriage itself, but it is a fault. If left unidentified and unresisted, it will lead to further and deeper bondage and more and more movement away from God.

How radically different is Augustine's view to that of Driscoll's and Young's? I am not saying that Augustine is completely right and that Driscoll and Young are completely wrong; what I'm saying is something may be out of kilter with the pronounced advocacy of enormous pleasurable sex from evangelical pulpits. If we are to believe Augustine, the problem is that those promoting the pleasures of sex are themselves addicts--chained by their lusts. I trust that my four children, all of whom love Christ and read what I write, will realize that Augustine is worth considering on the subject of sex as much as he is on the doctrines of grace.

When Jesus Comes for You the Second Time It Is Without Reference to Sin

2012-01-10T16:21:00.001-06:00

We are all familiar that Christ came into the world the first time to die. Christ fulfilled the Law--born during the Feast of Tabernacles, died during the Feast of Passover, rose from the grave on the Feast of Firstfruits, and sent His Spirit at Pentecost to write a new Law in the hearts of His people--and then took away (abrogated) the old Law in order to establish the New Covenant (Heb. 10:9). The promises of the New Covenant in Christ are so much superior than the conditional promises of the Law (Old Testament). Pity the believers who have no understanding of their freedom in Christ. When New Testament churches try to replicate what the Hebrews had-- turning the church into a Temple, the pastors into authoritative priests, and Spirit-led service and worship into obedience to commandmants--then the entire joy of New Covenant living is shattered. "You shall know the truth (notice the definite article "the" truth), and the truth (Christ) shall set you free!" One of the tools some preachers use to keep their congregation subservient and obedient to laws the preacher wishes to impose on God's people is fear. Fear of Christ coming to judge them for their disobedience. Fear of Christ's return to earth when every thought and deed of His people will be revealed for what it is--insufficient obedience to God. It seems that many evangelical preachers know no other means to motivate God's people than through fear.

Hebrews 9:28 knocks the legs out from any preacher who tries to motivate Christians through fear of Christ's second coming. This verse states, "So Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him." The imagery here is powerful. The writer of Hebrews has already explained how Jesus Christ fulfilled the Law in His first coming. He came to earth as the Lamb of God to die. He shed His blood for God's people at the cross. He rose from the grave. He entered true Temple (the one not made with human hands) and presented His blood as the payment for the sins of God's people. He cleansed forever those who place their confidence in Him. He cleanses them by the one-time offering of Himself. Every command God gave the Hebrews to atone for sin--every feast, every festival, every sacrifice, every ritual, every oblation, every offering--finds fulfillment in the first coming of Jesus Christ to deal with sin.

But Christ also is coming a second time to earth for His people, and it is this second coming which is referenced in Hebrews 9:28. The second coming of Jesus Christ corresponds to what the Old Testament Hebrew high priest did after he applied the blood in the Temple to atone for the sins of the Hebrew people--the priest came out of the Temple to bless the people. This blessing brought pure joy and pure delight to the sinners for whom the blood had atoned. The priest made no reference to their sins in his blessing. To hear the actual blessing in the Hebrew language go here.

The writer of Hebrews and the other biblical authors are just as clear that our Great High Priest is coming a SECOND TIME to do the exact same thing for us that the Hebrew high priest did for the Hebrews (Hebrews 9:28). The second time Christ comes, He comes "without reference to sin." When He comes for us, either in death or in His coming to earth to usher in eternity, He will make no reference to our sins. He will say nothing about them. Nada. Nothing. They are lost in the desert of forgetfulness. The scape-goat bears them and the goat cannot be found. Of course, the persons for whom Christ did not die--those who are not part of the many of Hebrews 9:28 --will give an account to God for their sins against Him (see Hebrews 9:27). The judgment they will receive from God for their sins will be just, fair, and right; but this judgment comes upon those whose confidence is not in Christ's death. Christ comes for His people the second time and He will make no reference to their sins at His coming.

Just as the first coming of Christ is typified by the Old Covenant high priest in the offering of the sacrifice, the taking of the blood into the Temple, and the intercession for God's people before the mercy seat of God, so too the second coming of Christ is typified when the Old Covenant high priest came out of the Temple to bless the people. No reference to their sin is made.

Hallelujah, what a Savior!

New Testament Equality Leads to Healthy Relationships and Female Subordination Brings Dysfunction

2012-01-07T11:03:00.007-06:00

When I first started blogging in 2005 I was told that the most effective blogs are those that focus on one predominant theme. I focused like a laser beam those first couple of years on the unethical attempt by International Mission Board trustees to subvert the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole and impose a doctrinal standard on IMB missionaries that that not only exceeded the Baptist Faith and Message, but by its very existence, breached the ethical boundaries of trusteeship and violated the constitution of the Southern Baptist Convention. It was during 2005-2008 (the years I served as an IMB trustee) that I began to see the problems we had in the Southern Baptist Convention went far beyond the International Mission Board. Convention leadership (trustee boards) had left their sola Scriptura convictions, and out of the fear of "liberalism," became Fundamentalists--demanding conformity and agreement on tertiary doctrines that had nothing to do with evangelical cooperation on the mission field. One of those third-stage doctrines is the role and authority of women. I saw with my own eyes the unethical, unbiblical, and godless treatment of women in the Southern Baptist Convention and I vowed to do something about it. Do I consider the equality of men and women a first-tier evangelical doctrine? No; but because the Fundamentalists among us have elevated "the female subordination of women to men" as a litmus test for evangelical orthodoxy, I now focus on their dysfunctional views of male authority and female subordination to help my fellow Bible-believing, conservative, evangelical friends realize the errors being promulgated. Female subordination to male authority is promoted by organizations such as The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Together for the Gospel, and The Elephant Room. I only recently heard that Mark Driscoll has identified "the subordination of women to men" as one of the four key building blocks of his Resurgence Movement. I have addressed the doctrinal fallacies of the Gender Gospel elsewhere, fallacies that plague both liberal feminism and Fundamentalism. In this post, I want to give a few examples of how Bible-believing Christian families, churches, and groups move into dysfunctional, even cultish behavior, if female subordination is allowed to be taught and practiced as biblical orthodoxy.

Most people are familiar with the removal of Sheri Klouda as Hebrew professor from Southwestern Theological Seminary by men who hold to female subordination and cringe at the thought of a woman teaching men Hebrew. What many men and women in conservative, evangelical churches don't realize is that there are Sheri Kloudas everywhere--gifted women who are removed from responsible Christian leadership positions and/or forbidden from speaking publicly, teaching others the Word of God, or otherwise providing spiritual guidance to men because they are women. This absurd position is totally contrary to the Gospel, anti-Christian in nature, and opposite of the teachings of Christ and His apostles. If not stopped, it will plague Christian people with a disease of the soul that is worse than leprosy of the skin. It leads to power-hungry men seeking positions of authority and control, and an almost cultish like god complex. "I am in the image of God. My word is Law. You submit to what I say, and don't dare try to tell me what I should do." This anti-Christ doctrine fleshes itself out in conservative Christian homes and churches in various ways. I will give you three examples.

(1). A well-known Southern Baptist pastor recently told his congregation that he decided to move his family to a new house this year. The price of the pastor's old home ($375,000) and the price of the pastor's new home ($500,000) were appropriately not revealed to the congregation. However, they are relevant to this story because the pastor previously told his congregation that they were not to buy more expensive homes, but rather God desired them to set aside that extra money and give it to kingdom causes (i.e. the church). Please don't misunderstand me. I advocate freedom for all pastors and all congregations to do as the Spirit leads; even the purchase of million-dollar-homes if that is what the Spirit leads them to do. What I find incongruous is the promotion of a so-called "radical Christianity" by those are actually averse to living radically themselves. People should realize one of the prominent New Testament principles is freedom and Spirit-led living. The problem is when pastors place themselves as an authority over the lives of others to tell them how they are to live, while at the same time doing the opposite of that they advocate. It's much better to be silent on issues the Bible is silent about. Anyway, back to the main point. What most people in this pastor's church are not aware of is that the pastor's new home is within ten miles of his old home. Before the move the pastor's wife insisted that the family should not move. She had several very good and valid reasons. However, the pastor informed his wife, that as the man in the home--"the one with authority"--he would make the decision to move and overrule any objections he heard. He said moving was "the right thing" to do, and submission to his authority was "the right thing" for her to do. So the pastor's family moved. I have withheld names, but I do hope the pastor reads this blog and realizes the dysfunctional nature of the argument he had with his wife. Multiply this by hundreds of times in conservative, evangelical homes and you get a picture of the problems created when Christian men have a warped view of their authority.

(2). Lamar Wadsworth recently wrote to me and told me about his mother's funeral. He wrote:

"When my mother died, we were not allowed to have her funeral at the Southern Baptist church where she was an active member for over FIFTY years because I had asked two women to read Scripture at the service. So the funeral had to be held at my home church, the Heritage Baptist Church in Cartersville GA. My church honored my Mother like she was one of their own and gave her the homegoing celebration she deserved. The following November, on All Saints Day--without explanation or comment, my Mother's name was included on the list of members of Heritage Baptist Church who had died in the past year. Bill Leonard said we pulled off the first posthumous transfer of church membership in Baptist history."

Can you believe it? A Southern Baptist Church refuses to allow the funeral of one of the members of their church, a member who faithfully attended and gave to the church for over fifty years, because the son of the woman who died wanted two women to read Scripture at his mother's funeral. Again, the church is not being named in this post, but for our purposes we will call it Ichabod Baptist Church for the glory of God is truly gone from it.

(3). There is now a commentary on the Bible "just for women." Dorothy Patterson and Rhonda Harrington Kelley, professors of "Women's Studies" and "Women's Ministry" at Southwestern Theological Seminary and New Orleans Theological Seminary respectively, are the two women who wrote the Bible commentary "for women." On the back cover, the purpose of the commentary is revealed: "The Women's Evangelical Commentary is designed to equip women to face cultural issues regarding femininity and gender." This is Christianese lingo for "it will help convince all you women that you should teach only women, work only in the home, and find your identity in the man God has given you." I had dinner with Paige and Dorothy Patterson in their home in Fort Worth a few months ago. I have never written the details about our conversation, nor will I, but what that dinner did for me was reinforce my decision to focus on calling out the bizarre and unbiblical views of women that are being taught by our seminary Presidents, their wives, and other 'leaders' in the SBC. If the Spirit of God leads you women to never work outside the home and to focus on having as many children as possible while creating a safe environment in your home for your husband and kids, then go for it! If you are led to the seminary to learn the skills of sewing clothes and folding knapkins for a proper Southern home, then more power to you! If you live your life submitting to what you perceive as "the authority" of men, particularly the husband God has given you, then fine! Just don't dare call it biblical. Call it your cultural preference. Why? Because one day when you die you will not have a man you will call your husband. One day when you die you will exercise your gifts in God-given creative work. One day when you die your entire identity will be in Christ and no other man. One day when you die you will be given a new name, a new place to live and a new purpose for eternity--all based upon who you are as a person-- equal to any man God created. While you are on earth, I hope you find that the teachings of grace and equality in the Bible prepare you for eternity. But if your cultural preference is to find your identity in a man, then just be honest that you feel safer and more secure in the shadow of man's identity, and if equate your submission to God to that of a visible, physical man, then just be honest about what you are doing. Don't call it biblical Christianity. In fact, it's so unbiblical to the Christianity portrayed in the New Testament that it may be people who are as comfortable as you in your cultural preferences will write a Bible just for you. Oh, wait, that's what this post is about.

May I suggest that the Bible you have from God is sufficient?

Well, that's my rant for the day. My oatmeal is getting cold (I should quit writing at breakfast on Saturday morning). Blessings to all my friends, and even my Fundamentalist friends. :) Just remember that since you elevated the gender gospel to a primary test of Christian orthodoxy, you have forced me to focus my laser on you to help end the dysfunctional churches and homes you are creating.

If There Is Just One Biographical Book You Read in 2012 It Should Be Evidence Not Seen

2011-12-28T09:29:00.000-06:00

Our friends Gail and Herman Hackett dropped a Christmas gift by the office last week for Rachelle and me. Included in the gift was a small 200 page book entitled Evidence Not Seen: A Woman's Miraculous Faith in the Jungles of WWII. It is the autobiography of Darlene Deibler Rose, a missionary wife working in the jungles of New Guinea prior to the outbreak of hostilities in World War II. Darlene is from Iowa, and was a young, newly married bride when she arrived with her husband on the missionary fields of Far East, just a couple of years prior to Pearl Harbor. Her well-written and gripping account of being captured by the Japanese, enduring four years of brutal hardship and torture at an American POW camp, and the incredible intervention of God--time after time--to sustain and carry Darlene through her ordeal, is a must read for every Christian. I read it in one sitting, using Google Maps to trace her missionary work, imprisonment, and incredible rescue. I am privileged to be friends with Louis Zamperini, the subject of Laura Hildenbrand's #1 best-selling book Unbroken, and have recommended Unbroken to every person I know. Evidence Not Seen is different from Unbroken in that Darlene assumes the reader knows Christ, understands God's Word and is willing to rest in His promises. For those of you who know Christ and want to be incredibly encouraged that no matter the obstacles you face, God's mercy and grace will sustain you, then Evidence Not Seen is a must read. We live in a soft, comfortable age and think nothing can (or should) go wrong. Suffering sometimes suprises us, and one of the ways to be prepared for whatever comes is to read the biographies of those saints who have gone before you. If there is just one biographical book you read in 2012 it should be Evidence Not Seen.

The Cherokee Treaty of 1817: A Great Jubilee Gift from Paul and Mary Burleson

2011-12-27T16:46:00.000-06:00

I spent Monday, December 26 with my folks, Paul and Mary Burleson, writing down some material for a history that I am working on for our family. Both my mom and dad have some pretty remarkable personal stories and the day was quite enjoyable learning some things about my parents I had not previously known. At the conclusion of the day they presented to me a gift they had purchased for my 50th birthday (December 27th). My mom took a picture of my dad and me holding the gift. Those who know me understand my love for history and my parents' gift 'knocked it out of the park.' It is an original, handcrafted art piece by a Cherokee artesian depicting the consequences of a broken 1817 treaty between the United States and the Cherokees. The government had promised the Cherokees they could live on their lands in Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas. The United States would later break the 1817 treaty and forcibly remove the Cherokees from their native lands and forcibly march them to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) in what is now called the Trail of Tears. Thousands of Cherokee people lost their lives. In the case is a replica of that Cherokee Treaty of 1817 signed by Andrew Jackson, on behalf of the government, and made with the Cherokees in Tennessee, Georgia and portions of the Carolinas. Cherokee signers include McIntosh, Adair, Rogers, and others whose names live on in the county names of the state of Oklahoma. The treaty, broken by the government, is represented by the authentic broken Cherokee spear that is impaled in the treaty. The blood represents the Cherokee lives lost in the Trail of Tears. The Indian on horseback shadow in the background is the national Cherokee symbol and represents "The End of the Trail." It's a really great gift from even greater parents.

What About the Gospel Causes People Offense or Shame?

2011-12-22T13:03:00.012-06:00

Our church auditorium is decorated for Christmas and it looks absolute stunning. The inside holiday decor of our church could have been lifted from a Norman Rockwell painting. Our maintenance workers keep the buildings spotlessly clean, the woodwork polished, the lights illuminated, and the atmosphere festive yet relaxing. People who come to worship this weekend for any of our Christmas Eve or Christmas Day services will feel as if they are walking into the comfort of someone's living room. Plush chairs, moderate temperatures, and pleasing aesthetics will give the worshipper a sense and feel of the beauty of the holiday season. I don't believe Emmanuel is unique. Church buildings and church worship services throughout the nation will be just as beautiful, just as comfortable, just as pleasing. There is nothing wrong with the emphasis churches put on beautiful church grounds or holiday decorating. I think people who only come to church at Christmas time will enjoy what they see. What I'm not sure about is whether or not they will enjoy what they hear. At Emmanuel this Christmas morning, just like we have done each Sunday morning throughout the past year, we will study a portion of the book of Hebrews. As I walked through our beautiful auditorium to my office to print off the outline which will be passed out to worshippers on Christmas, I couldn't help but reflect on the text from Hebrews 9:13-14 and wonder if the gospel of Jesus Christ might be offensive to some this coming Sunday.

In a message entitled "The Ashes of the Red Heifer: The Greatest Gift You Will Ever Be Given," I will show how the Hebrew people sacrificed, burned, and then used the ashes of a red heifer in the Old Testament. The slaying of this young red heifer--a female cow with red skin which had never given birth or been yoked--is initially prescribed by God in Numbers 19. I will illustrate how the Hebrew priest killed the red heifer outside the gates of the city, drained the blood of the heifer into a basin, dipped his fingers into the blood and then sprinkled the blood toward the Temple. I will then explain how the heifer's carcass would be placed on a special altar and burned, with the ashes of the heifer picked up and kept for use by the entire Hebrew nation. If a Hebrew worshipper became ceremonially unclean by touching a dead body, the ashes of the heifer would be mixed with water and sprinkled on the defiled person. After the sprinkling of the ashes, the unclean person would be deemed "cleansed" by God and allowed back into the Temple courtyard to continue the worship of Yahweh through the regular sacrifices of lambs and goats, pigeons and doves, and in some cases bulls. Hebrew worship was not neat or clean. Hebrew worship involved death and blood. Not just a little blood, a lot of blood. Listen to how Charles Haddon Spurgeon described Hebrew worship:

Everywhere blood was sure to greet your eyes. Blood was the one most prominent thing under the Jewish economy, scarcely a ceremony was observed without it. You could not enter into any part of worship but that you saw traces of the blood-sprinkling. Sometimes there were bowls of blood cast at the foot of the altar. The slaughter of animals was the manner of worship; the effusion of blood was the appointed rite, and the diffusion of that blood on the floor, on the curtains, and on the vestments of the priests was the constant memorial. The place of worship looked so like a meat market, that to visit it must have been far from attractive to the natural taste, and to delight in it, a man had need of a spiritual understanding and a lively faith."

The Apostle Paul wrote, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16). There is something in the gospel that causes people to shrink back in embarrassment and shame. What is it? It's definitely not the beauty and aesthetics of our modern worship buildings. Our church buildings often look like 5th Avenue stores. Offense doesn't come from the method of our worship via our video and audio technologies,. We often look more Hollywood than Hollywood. Shame can't come from the church furnishings and decor because our churches are often more stylish and vogue than many of the homes from which the people come. What is it about the gospel that causes people shame?

I propose it is blood sacrifice that causes offense. Specifically, it is the belief that Jesus came to shed His blood. To believe that God planned from the beginning for Jesus to die, shedding His own blood for the remission of our sins, invites ridicule from others. Peter ignored the offense and shame that Christ's death brings and declared at Pentecost that "this Jesus, delivered by the determined plan and foreknowledge of God ... is raised up again, putting an end to the agony of death" (Acts 2:23-24). The Spirit used Peter's message to bring deliverance to 3,000 people from their bondage to sin and death. But when Stephen later took this same gospel message to the religious leaders they stoned him (Acts 7). People in their natural state, even refined religious people, do not wish to hear about the blood-shedding of Jesus Christ. We like our religions clean and neat. But the gospel teaches us that Jesus Christ died as our Red Heifer. God commanded the Hebrews in the Old Covenant to kill the red heifer in order to cleanse them of their defilement, but that ordinance was only a picture and foreshadowing of the Son of God whom the Father was sending to be killed for our cleansing (Matthew 1:21). The death Jesus died should have been the death we died--forsaken by God. But Jesus died as our Substitute. "He (Jesus) who knew no sin, became sin for us" (II Corinthians 5:21) says the gospel, that "we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." He died as my Goat, my Lamb, my sacrificial Subtitute. But whereas the blood of bulls and goats in the Old Covenant could not cleanse the sinner's conscience or put an end to death, the blood of Jesus Christ shed at Calvary does this and so much more. That's the theme for this coming Christmas message. "For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" (Hebrews 9:13-14).

The book of Hebrews shows both the symmetry and the differences between the age of Law (prior to the cross) and the gospel age (this side of the cross). The worship of the Hebrews in the Old Testament looks nothing like the worship of Christians in the New Testament. Even though some pastors erroneously try to present themselves as the new priesthood and many of our non-profit church institutions portray themselves as new Temples, the manner in which God's people worship Him has radically changed since the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The message of the early apostles and disciples of Christ was clear "No one is justified by the Law before God, for 'THE RIGHTEOUS MAN SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.' The Law is not of faith; on the contrary, 'HE WHO PRACTICES THEM SHALL LIVE BY THEM.' Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us--for it is written, 'CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE'--in order that in Christ Jesus the blessings of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (Galatians 3:12-14). The early Hebrew Christians had been steeped in their 'ancestral traditions' of animal sacrifice (Galatians 1:14). After the resurrection of Christ, God's people were no longer required to offer the sacrifices. Animal sacrifice is over. The Righteous Judge had fulfilled the Law for us in His Son. God did not lay aside the Law of sin and death, but rather He fufilled it in Jesus Christ that "He might be just and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus" (Romans 3:26).

The message of blood sacrifice is the message of Christmas. Jesus came to die. His resurrection from the dead means sinners who trust Him will never experience separation from the goodness and love of God. Sin separates. Christ's sacrifice brings an at-one-moment (atonement) between sinners and God. The Creator is good to sinners, but it is only because of Jesus' death and the sinners' faith in Christ. Jesus is the fulfillment of the red heifer sacrifice, and it is His blood that cleanses us. It is this message of blood sacrifice which offends so many, but it is the only message that gives hope to the defiled. When you join your family in worship this Christmas weekend, you will not be bringing a lamb to be sacrificed, because God has provided the Lamb. You will not be bringing a red heifer to the altar, for God has given the Red Heifer. You will not be shedding blood with your own hands, for God has shed His blood for us. Turn your eye of faith toward the shed blood of Jesus Christ and believe what He has accomplished for sinners. Our conscience is cleansed because we rest in Christ. The promise of God's goodness for eternity is ours because we approach God through the merits and sacrifice of His Son. We rejoice in the Father's love because He gave us His Son. Jesus Christ has come, Jesus Christ has died, and Jesus Christ has risen from the grave. This is the message of Christmas. It may offend some, but the truth of this message draws from us our worship of God. It may be ridiculed by some, but it is adored by us. It may cause some shame, but we echo the words of the Apostle Paul, "We are not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes."

How Much Is a Trillion? Figure It Out, Multiply by Fifteen, and That's Our National Debt

2011-12-19T10:24:00.002-06:00

Recently I wrote about the economic theory behind the Wizard of Oz and was a tad surprised at a few of the responses from liberal economists. It seems that some believe that there is nothing wrong with governement budget deficits or national debt as a whole. That belief springs from an assumption that government debt results in real goods and services provided for the people, and with a justifiable increase in taxes on the wealthy and a proper understanding and utilization of the money supply (i.e. the printing of paper money by the Federal Reserve), the country will be in good shape economically. However, I believe the liberal view of economics is built on a corrupt premise. When the medium of exchange (money) is not tied to a precious metal, then the supply of money increases in proportion to the whims, appetites, and desires of the people who control the money supply. If liberals run the government, then the Federal Reserve will spend billions, if not trillions, on social or economic programs with no comprehension of the boomerang effect of inflation caused by the increase in the money supply. I realize that economic theory is something that the average American has little or no understanding of, mainly because most of us live on the premise that if a bank keeps our money on deposit (banks) then our money is actually in that bank. That's not the way it works. Fractional reserve banking is what runs western governments and the fractions having been getting smaller over the years and the reserves held have turned from gold and silver deposits to paper dollars. The Federal Reserve oversees fractional banking and it is through their actions that the money supply increases to allow government expenditures, deficit spending, and gigantic national debt.

Something else that is not understood very well by the average American is the number which measures our national debt--the number trillion. Our national debt is $15,000,000,000,000 (trillion) dollars and growing (watch it grow 5 billion dollars a day on this debt clock). Remember, our country's debt is not the same thing as our annual deficit. A deficit is what the government spends compared to what the government takes in through revenue (taxes) each year. President Obama recently stated that our annual deficits will be over $1,000,000,000,000 (trillion) dollars per year well into the future. That means our annual debt will increase exponentially in the years to come because not only are we NOT paying off past debt, we are rapidly adding to our cumulative debt through deficit spending. If interest rates increase, and they will when too much money is printed, then the amount of our debt will skyrocket through the added interest. Most Americans yawn and say, "Ho hum. So what?" I think the reason for such apathy is because Americans do not understand the number trillion; that number is beyond the comprehension of most. Allow me to help you understand how much a trillion really is.

In Measurements of Time

If a trillion is measured in units of seconds, then one million seconds is eleven and a half days from now. One billion seconds is thirty-two years from now. How big is a trillion? One trillion seconds is 32,000 years from now. Ask me where I will be in eleven days and I can give you a rational answer (in Arizona at the OU Bowl Game). Ask me where I will be 32 years from now and I will have little clue, but I know I'll be turning 82 years old if I'm still alive. Ask me what I will be doing 32,000 years from now and I will think you are either a theologian wishing to discuss heaven or a village idiot.

In Measurements of Space and Travel

Suppose you had a stack of dollar bills and placed them end to end. One million dollars would stretch just under one hundred miles. If you got in your car and traveled that distance averaging 60 miles an hour, it would take you an hour and a half to finish the million dollar stretch. One billion dollars stretched out end-to-end would reach ninety-seven thousand miles. If you got in your car and traveled an average of 60 miles an hour without stopping, it would take you about six months to reach the end of that billion dollar stretch. One trillion dollars stretched end-to-end reaches ninety-seven million miles high which is four million more miles than the distance from the earth to the sun. If you got in your car and traveled 60 miles an hour without stopping it would take you 185 years to travel the distance required to reach the end of the trillion dollar stretch.

In Measurements of Christmas

Suppose you were at Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus and God celebrated by giving you a supply of money and telling you to spend a million dollars a day, but that when your supply ran out you would die. How long would you live if you had a million, a billion, or a trillion dollars in your supply of money? Well, if the supply of money was one million dollars, you would be dead before Jesus was a day old. If your money supply was one billion dollars, at the rate of spending of one million dollars a day, you would die when Jesus was three years old. But if your money supply was a trillion dollars, and you spent a million dollars a day, you would still be living in 2011 and have about another seven hundred years to live.

Now, multiply all the above illustrations by 15 and you will begin to grasp the incomprehensible size of our national debt. Within three years the national debt will be above 20 trillion dollars and climbing rapidly. Some day we Americans will wake up to the fact that the house of cards being built by our government will dramatically collapse. Our nation's fiscal irresponsibility is probably the best reason for why no human being should ever put their trust in governments, countries, political leaders, or earthly things. At some point, they all are destined to fail.

The Problems with Elephant Room II Are the Elephants in the Room

2011-12-17T13:13:00.007-06:00

Christian blogs keep me informed. Enid, Oklahoma is the geographical center of the United States, but it is definitely not the geopolitical, cultural, or religious center of the world. Enid's isolation from major metropolitan areas does not mean that Christians in Enid cannot be kept informed on what is happening in the world at large. The Burlesons have access to Enid's free city WiFi Network and can connect at home to high speed cable Internet. The world and information about God's people and His church are brought to us via the computer. The 21st century has become the 15th century all over again in terms of reformation and revolution. In AD 1440 the German Johaness Gutenberg (1398 - 1468) invented the printing press. Prior to his invention, information spread by word of mouth, a very slow process in a foot and horse age, and by handwritten books. Prior to the 15th century scrolls or books were either written or copied by hand. Only the very wealthy or wise possessed these precious manuscripts. When Johaness Gutenberg invented the printing press the modern information age began. Men like Martin Luther and Erasmus became famous because Gutenberg's press turned their handwritten theological treatises into thousands of books available to the comman man. Luther's handwritten 95 Theses Against the Sale of Indulgences, pinned on the door of Wittenberg Castle, was printed and distributed throughout Europe. The Reformation of the church had begun. The Age of Enlightenment was possible because of the Gutenberg Press. By 1620 English author and philosopher Francis Bacon would write that the press "has changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world." The spread of information became so critical to a fast changing world that the machine gave its name to the very people who informed others of what was taking place--the press.

The Internet is the modern Gutenberg press. Bloggers are the modern press. Powerful information is being spread quickly, seamlessly, and effectively. Religious leaders are being caught in their lies. Sexual predators are being caught in their crimes. False teachers are being exposed for their greed. Powerful religious leaders are being challenged about their desire to control. Religious denominations are being confronted with their hypocrisy. Information is power, and the power has shifted from leaders who control the flow of what they want the people to know, to the people who are capable of bringing down leaders. Christian leaders are trying to adapt, but many are caught off guard by the public criticisms. For men who have cacooned themselves in a protective environment, surrounded by sycophants who fawn over their leaders, the only way to handle criticism is to denounce those who deliver it. Matt Chandler has said bloggers should be dismissed as legitimate critics because "they live with their moms," a surprisingly short-sighted slam by a pastor who should know better. Perry Noble, Mark Driscoll, Stephen Furtick and a host of modern mega-star preachers have said similar things about bloggers. Interestingly, these men and a handful of other Christian leaders are getting together to discuss the modern church in meetings they have come to call The Elephant Room. These meetings are designed for "Any pastor or student or motivated disciple who is serious about theological ideas and how they shape methodology. Not purely pragmatic or theoretical, the conversations hope to stir changes of mind and retrench long held beliefs. A great event for teams and groups, the conversations are a starting point for important conversations." Elephant Room II is being held January 25, 2012 and will be able to viewed in locations all across the United States. What I find interesting is that most of those who are either participating in hosting or leading the Elephant Room discussions have been critical of the modern-day Guttenberg press--blogs. So, with just six weeks left until Elephant Room II, and in the spirit of the Elephant Room's purpose statement, the following questions are designed to point out the Elephants in the Elephant Room.

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(1). Why are you charging $99 for those who view this session?
(2). If 10,000 people from across the United States view Elephant Room II, where does the one million dollars collected go?
(3). How much money do the leaders and speakers of the Elephant Room make for doing the program?
(4). If your purpose is "to stir changes of mind and retrench long held beliefs," why is it that you criticize those who seek to "stir changes of mind and retrench long held beliefs" of your own ministries?
(5). Have you ever considered the fact that your charges against "the establishment" in Christianity are now ringing hollow because you have become the establishment in the minds and hearts of a younger generation, and you have taken up the same practices of former establishments by denigrating your critics?
(6). Would each of you disclose how much salary and benefits you take in from your church and how much money you make in the sale of your books, tied to the messages that you preach at your church?
(7). Do you double-dip your salaries by earning a income from contributions of church members and then keep the royalties of your books that you sale, books that are products of the hours you work for your church?
(8). Why do you consider it God-honoring and biblical when you curse from the pulpit or use sexually vulgar or crass idioms to get a point across?
(9). Does your congregation grow in size because people feel they have been entertained when they leave your church, or are people truly growing in their understanding of the truth of God's Word through your teaching?
(10). Why do the speakers in your Elephant Room all look the same, dress the same, talk the same, and view Christian ministry the same as if there is only one correct way to do Christian ministry in our culture?
(11). Where are the women in the Elephant Room?
(12). Do you consider the message of God's grace through Jesus Christ and His blood redemption of sinners at Calvary an optional message on Sundays?
(13). If you have 30,000 people who come to an Easter egg hunt on Easter Sunday morning, what difference does that egg hunt make in the lives of those 30,000 on Monday morning?
(14). Why do the men in the Elephant Room seem so thin-skinned when it comes to people who question them?
(15). Is it possible that the questions being asked in the Elephant Room are softball questions designed by the people who have created the Elephant Room, and that the actual questions that need to be asked are those designed to reveal the elephants in the Elephant Room?

(Update: Luke McDonald has answered each of my fifteen questions in the comment section. I wish to express my appreciation for his responses and encourage everyone to read what he has to say and note the tone and manner in which he has responded. All of us, including other participants in the Elephant Room, could learn from his example.)
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I can guarantee that the attention of more than a few bloggers are now on Elephant Room II.

"God Has Chosen to Liken Himself to a Female and We Are the Fruit of His Womb"

2011-12-16T09:13:00.010-06:00

Theology has been my passion since seventeen years of age when I memorized the book of Romans. I began collecting theological books in high school and later worked diligently on learning Greek and Hebrew while studying business and finance at Baylor. In 1982, when I was a poor twenty-year-old kid, I entered a pawn shop in Waco for the first time to get some much needed cash. I brought my prized collection of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones books to sell to the shop--fifty books in all. It was a sad day for me. I needed money and my hard cover Jones' books were worth over $500 even back then. It made me sick to have to sell them because of my love for Jones' writings. My favorite Christian authors are John Calvin (16th century), John Owen (17th century), John Gill (18th century), Charles Spurgeon (19th century), and D. Martyn Lloyd Jones (20th century). I now own everything these men have ever written, but back in 1982 my largest collection, by far, was Lloyd-Jones. The pawn shop owner told me he would give me $2.00. Disappointment rose within me and I asked, "Just $2.00 per book?" He looked at me with a quizzical expression and said, "No, $2.00 for the whole lot!" I left that pawn shop and kept my Jones' books, which now form a portion of my library of over 10,000 antiquarian, historical and theological works. Everytime my eyes fall on the colorful dust jackets of the D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones books, I remember my pawn shop experience and I have reinforced within me the biblical truth that "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned" (I Corinthians 2:14).

That story is relevant to what follows because of the subject matter I am dealing with in this post. I have just finished reading the biography of Steve Jobs and author Walter Isaacson writes that Steve firmly believed you can know a person by looking at the songs kept on that person's I-Pod. That's the modern application for the old axiom "you can know a man by his books." I am a conservative inerrantist who values and treasures the Word of God. In 2010 I publicly described my theological views as "Calvinistic in soteroiology, partial-preterist in eschatology, open communion in ecclesiology, and continuationist in pneumatology." To some that sounds like a medical diagnosis, but to those in the theological know, it describes a very conservative biblical framework. Using easier to understand words, I believe that "God saves sinners through Christ, the prophecies of the Bible are fulfilled precisely and completely, the church of Jesus Christ is universal and extends far beyond the walls of any one local assembly, and the Spirit of God continues to work in God's people today as He did in New Testament days." Theological liberals would not agree with my views on the nature of Scripture or the interpretations of the Bible that I hold which flow from my high esteem of the Word of God. Because I belief in the authority of Scripture, I must accept the truth of the Bible. Because I accept the truth of the Bible, I must accept that the invisible, immortal and omnipotent God has female characteristics, and that females were created in the image of God to be co-regents, co-equals, and co-leaders with men over creation,

A Conservative, Bible-Believing Christian Should View God as the Bible Portrays God

This leads me to the reason why I chose the particular title for my post today. Read the title again. "God Has Chosen to Liken Himself to a Female and We are the Fruit of His Womb." I found this quote in my theological library, in a book that was originally written nearly 500 years ago by a conservative, Bible-believing Protestant evangelical named John Calvin. That's right, THAT John Calvin.

In Isaiah 46:3 God says, "Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, you who have been borne by Me from birth and have been carried from My womb." John Calvin comments on this verse by writing "God has manifested himself to be both Father and Mother so that we might be more aware of God’s constant presence and willingness to assist us" (Volume VIII, Isaiah 33-66, page 436). Later in Isaiah, God says to His people: "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!" (Isaiah 49:15). In Calvin's commentary on this verse, the great orthodox theologian writes, "God did not satisfy himself with proposing the example of a father, but in order to express his very strong affection, he chose to liken himself to a mother, and calls His people not merely children, but the fruit of the womb, towards which there is usually a warmer affection.” John Owen and John Gill are just as graphic in their expositions. These men, all of whom lived centuries ago in England and Europe and were considered the greatest Hebrew and Greek linguists in their day, felt no qualms and gave no caveats when presenting the feminine qualities of our ominipotent and sovereign God. Why should they? They believed the Bible.

In Genesis 1:27 it is said, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." The male and the female were created by God. The male and the female both bear the image of God. The male and the female are both included in the Hebrew word adam (man) - "So God created adam ... He created them." Notice what God says about them ... "and let them rule.…” The male and the female were both designed to rule. Men and women are created by God in His image as co-regents of the world He created. Any system, any society, any organization that places one gender as an authority over the other, whether it be patriarchal or matriarchal in nature, is a direct violation of the command and design of the Creator God. Why can women rule in God's creation? Why can women lead in God's creation? Why can women be equal to men in God's creation? Women are created in the image of God, just like men, and when the omnipotent, sovereign and invisible Creator God determined to create man in His image, He created a male and a female, reflecting the very nature of God Himself. This is why there is nothing wrong with considering God as both Father and Mother, as the invisible and all-powerful Ruler of the universe who reflects Himself in both males and females--God is Spirit and the perfections of each gender are seen in God.

George Kwami Kumi, Ph.D. is an Akan Ghanaian Christian and the vicar general of the Diocese of Sunyani, Africa. Dr. Kumi says that the affectionate term Father-Mother God is used among his native people to denote the invisible God of the Bible. Dr. Kumi is himself accustomed to referring to God as Father-Mother God, and he found it surprising to discover a resistance among conservative evangelicals in the United States to acknowledge God in the way the sacred Scriptures present Yawheh. Dr. Kumi has wondered if western conservative evangelicals in the United States have succombed to creating a god in the image of western civilization culture. Dr. Kumi has even called "strange" the practice of some Christians to only view God in male terms. He explains that Akan African Christians have a fuller and more biblical understanding of God as both Father and Mother, precisely because both male and female characteristics are found in the nature of the invisible spirit God. Dr. Kumi also learned the Catholic catechism as a child which states "God is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the differences between the sexes. But the respective "perfections" of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother (Isaiah 49:14-15; 66:13; Psalm 131:2-3) and those of a father (Job 31:18; Jer. 3:4-20) and husband (Jer. 3:6-19)." [CCC 370]. Dr. Kumi is a modern day theologian and conservatives automatically call him a liberal because he dares acknowledge the feminine in God. Were Dr. Kumi to deny salvation by grace through faith, or were Dr. Kumi to deny the authority and infallibility of Scripture, or were Dr. Kumi to deny the deity and humanity of Jesus Christ, you could rightly call him a liberal. However, if a bible-believing scholar holds to the equality of women based upon the belief that the Bible explicitly teaches the image of God in both the man and the woman, then that scholar is not a liberal.

The True Liberals Are Those Who Deny the Clear Teaching of God's Word Regarding Gender

The liberal scholar is the one who denies that both men and women are created in the image of God. Some liberal scholars are self-proclaimed conservative scholars who twist the Scriptures to purport that only man is created in God's image and the woman is the glory of man, not God. Sound strange? To me it sure does. Let me give you an example of this kind of teaching. Dr. Bruce Ware, in a long and bizarre article entitled Male and Female Complementarity and the Image of God writes, "I propose that it may be best to understand the original creation of male and female as one in which the male was made image of God first, in an unmediated fashion, as God formed him from the dust of the ground, while the female was made image of God second, in a mediated fashion, as God chose, not more earth, but the very rib of Adam ... The theology of this is clear ... Genesis 2 intends for us to understand the formation of the woman as both fully like the man in his humanity, while attributing the derivation of her very nature to God's formation of her, not from common dust of the ground, but specifically from the rib of Adam, and so from the man. Just as the man, created directly by God is the image and glory of God, so the woman, created out of the man, has her glory through the man. This much is clear: as God chose to create her, the woman was not formed to be the human that she is apart from the man but only through the man. Does it not stand to reason, then, that her humanity, including her being the image of God, occurs as God forms her from the man as "the glory of the man"? (emphasis mine).

I think this kind of teaching, promoted as the norm at the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, should be called out for what it is. It is liberal theology. It is a denial of the nature of God and the authority of Scripture. From this strange doctrine arise toxic problems within Christian churches and homes. For example, if the male (not the female) is created in the image of God in an unmediated fashion, and the female bears God's image only through the male, then females will be taught that their identity will only be found in a man, not God, and thus ...

(1). Females should always be under a 'protective covering' of a man, either a father or a husband just as men need God's protective covering.

(2). Females should never lead, rule or govern anything but only serve and support the males who were designed to rule as God rules.

(3). Females should be subordinate to the authority of men in the same manner Jesus is eternally subordinate to the authority of God the Father, and even if that authority is abusive at times, the woman should always remain compliant and submissive.

(4). Females should always find their identity and self-worth in the men that God has given to them (fathers and husbands), with home-making and child-rearing being their focus and never working toward any career or identity outside the man's home.

(5). Females were designed by God to be recipients of the leadership, service, and authority of males, and for females to view oneself as equals to males in the home or in the church is rebellion toward God.

I could continue with the toxic effects ad infinitum, but my oatmeal is getting cold and I'm getting a tad nauseated as I think about the damage being done to new church plants, Christian homes, and the kingdom of Christ at large over a very toxic and unbiblical view of men and women. The image of God is in both, and God intends for both males and females to work, serve and lead as His Spirit gifts. Our identity, whether single males or females, married males or females, widowed males or females, or even small male and female children, should be found in who we are as human beings made in the image of God, independent of our relation to the opposite sex. One of these days people will awake to the revelation that when cultures--whether they be religious or secular cultures--promote one gender over another in terms of authority, then the truth of God's Word is being denied. Scripture reveals that both genders reflect the nature of our sovereign, Ruling God. I use the pronouns Him, He, when speaking of God without apology, and I never hesitate to pray as Jesus taught, "Our Father who are in heaven." But when I consider my Father in heaven Who is the invisible, eternal, ruling God of the Universe, I see Him--like the prophet Isaiah, John Calvin, and all my theological heroes--as the God who chooses to reveal Himself as Father and Mother and reflect His image equally in the men and the women He creates. Therefore, I praise God when a gifted woman leads, teaches, prays or takes a position of authority in the presence of men. It's a reflection of God. So, men and women, let's get back to serving one another in the Spirit of Christ with all humility, knowing that our identity is found in our relationship to God.

Trifling with Subtleties while Ignoring Certainties: Turning the Gospel into a Gender Gospel

2011-12-13T16:06:00.013-06:00

Charles Spurgeon began his message on the text "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins" (Hebrews 9:22) with an illustration of three fools. The first fool, Spurgeon said, is the ship's captain who goes below deck during a ferocious storm to read an encyopledia on the nature of Atlantic winds rather than fighting to keep his ship afloat. The second fool is the wounded soldier on the battlefield who asks the arriving medic all kinds of questions about the size, shape and model of the gun that fired the bullet which wounded the soldier rather than asking the physican if his is able to heal him. The third fool is the religious person who is constantly arguing the subtle philosophical questions about the origin and nature of evil while ignoring the clear and certain truth that Christ's blood is able to cleanse his sins (Hebrews 9:14). Spurgeon said all three fools have one thing in common: They trifle with subtleties while they ignore certainties.

I would add a fourth person to Spurgeon's list. It is that Christian leader who turns the gospel of Jesus Christ into a gender gospel. Last week Tim Challies, pastor of Grace Fellowship Church, wrote a blog entitled Men, Women and the Public Reading of Scripture where he defended his view that only men, and never women, can read Scripture in front of men. Challies' view on this matter is based on what he calls the simple reading of I Timothy 2:11-12. Challies writes:

"It is my conviction that these words (i.e. "I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man" I Tim. 2:11) are meant to be read and understood in the simplest sense. Speaking with God’s authority, Paul is saying that women are not to exercise teaching authority over men. In other words, it is men who are charged with authority in the church and the most important component of this authority is to declare the words of God. Men have been called to exercise headship in the home and in the church while women are called to different and complementary functions."

I am accustomed to reading such nonsensical and isolated interpretations of I Timothy 2:11-12 from fellow Bible-believing pastors and theologians and I disagree sharply with them. However, I have not written much on the gender issue in recent months, believing as I do that the ungodly emphasis on gender distinctions within the church is destined to fail by virtue of the fact it is so anti-biblical and ultimately anti-Christian. But there was a comment in Challies' blog that caused me to flinch and placed in me a desire to write this post. A man in Challies' comment section wrote: God's design is for men to serve and women to receive. The commentor has summed up quite nicely the teaching of the false gospel that has infected some Bible-believing churches and seminaries. A reader of Dee Parson's and Wanda Martin's Wartburg Watch blog has begun calling it "the gender gospel."

Even though I may be dangerously close to violating the biblical precept 'answer not a fool in his folly," I feel a rebuttal to Challies' position is needed because there may be few naive and biblically unknowledgeable Christians who believe the teaching that "men are to serve, teach, lead, and women are to receive, listen and follow" is really from God. Nothing could be further from God's eternal truth.

The Absurdity of Promoting a Gender Gospel

Those who follow Challies' interpretation of I Timothy 2:11-12 are, in Spurgeon's term, "trifling with subtleties while ignoring certainties." The overwhelming New Testament teaching of the Bible regarding men and women in the church is clear and certain--"gender differences are irrelevant in the church of Jesus Christ." Class 101 in proper hermanuetics teaches that you always intepret difficult or isolated texts based on the certain and plain teachings of the rest of the Bible. God's people in the New Covenant are called to serve based upon the giftings given them by the Holy Spirit. "I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy" (Acts 2:17). The Apostle Paul says in Galatians 3:27-28 that "All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Paul is emphatic that there is no room in the body of Jesus Christ for racial distinctions, no room for class distinctions, no room for gender distinctions. To forbid a woman to serve, read, lead, or teach (when men are present) is twisting the gospel of freedom in Christ into a gospel of bondage by gender. To restrict a Holy Spirit gifted and empowered woman from edifying other believers through the free exercise of her Spirit given gifts is to resist the Holy Spirit Himself--and qualifies as a very foolish act indeed. What is even more foolish and absurd, at least for Southern Baptists, is the fact that Condoleezza Rice, our 66th United States Secretary of State, spoke to the annual Southern Baptist Convention in 2006. The audience, predominately Southern Baptist men, stood and applauded when Condoleezza explained how we had bombed the Taliban terrorists in Bora Bora to hell. Thank the Lord she didn't actually read a Scripture text about hell. No telling what the SBC pastors might have done had such a blasphemy occurred in their presence.

An ancient Jewish prayer from the Hebrew Siddur (prayer book) went like this: "Blessed are you, Hashem, King of the Universe, for not having made me a Gentile. Blessed are you, Hashem, King of the Universe, for not having made me a slave. Blessed are you, Hashem, King of the Universe, for not having made me a woman." "Hashem" was a Jewish name for the one true God, a name used by Jews in the days of Christ. The same spirit ancient Jews possessed that caused them to believe that only men were created to lead, rule and serve and that women were born to receive, follow and and be there for men, is the same spirit now at work in more than a few evangelical leaders. Interestingly, the rise of the Siddur coincides with the glory of God departing the Temple of Jerusalem in the days of Ezekiel (see Ezekiel 10). Jewish Temple worship continued, but it was during this Spirit-less intertestamentable time period that you have the rise of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and other male only Jewish orders that were constantly focusing on male "authority," male "leadership," and male "power." A preoccupation and fixation on authority (whether it be conservative patriarchalism or liberal feminism), is a sign that the Spirit of God has departed. Jesus Christ explicitly forbids any one individual assuming authority over other adults in the Christian community (Matthew 20:20-28). In fact, after describing the imperialism of political rulers and the authority fixation of religious rulers, Jesus said to his disciples ... "It shall not be so among you" (Matthew 20:28). I would propose that any portion of the body of Christ that is placing emphasis on male leadership to the exclusion of female leadership (or vice-versa) is void of the Spirit of God.

The New Testament covenant of God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ totally turns the world's concept of authority on its ear. The world is concerned about position, power, authority, prestige, control, and ruling over others. Jesus Christ teaches His followers to serve, to love, to express their spiritual gifts to their fullest for the good of others, and to never fear what any person in so-called "authority" can do to them because "All authority ... has been given to Me" (Matthew 28:20). There is to be a mutual equality, respect, and submission within the home between husband and wife (Ephesians 5:21-33). There is to be a mutual equality, respect and submission of men and women toward one another in the body of Christ based upon the gifts that the Spirit gives to each male and female believer who has been baptized into Christ (Acts 2:15-21; Galatians 3:28). References to the churches' teaching ministry and other gifts are found in Romans 12, I Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4 and not one of those passages excludes females from being recepients of any one of those gifts. Let me say that again in a different way. The gifts of the Spirit are never differentiated on the basis of gender in the New Testament -- ever.

But What About Paul's Teaching in I Timothy 2:11-12?

Any student of the Word who reads Paul's Timothy text and draws a conclusion that is contrary to the clear and certain teaching of the rest of the Bible, including Paul's other writings, is playing the fool by trifling with subtleties while ignoring certainties. "But," you shout, "These two verses tell all women everywhere to be SILENT in the presence of men, and to LEARN in SUBMISSION under them." No, kind sir, they don't. Not even close. Were that the case, these two verses would contradict everything the Apostle Paul has written in Galatians, Romans, I Corinthians, Ephesians and every other book he contributed to the New Testament, not to mention all the other books written by Peter, John, Luke, Matthew, and other early disciples of Christ. I have written a foreword to a book entitled What's With Paul and Women and would encourage you to take an afternoon to read Jon Zen's book, a detailed exposition and exegesis of these two Timothy verses. You will never again resist speaking out when you hear gender gospel preachers resist the Holy Spirit and restrict women in the home or the church by claiming for themselves ungodly positions of power and authority.

One of the advantages of being the pastor of a New Testament church where the Word of God is respected, believed, and practiced is that both men and women lead, serve, teach, and shepherd based upon their gifts. The concept of some raw position of power in "elders" is foreign to the New Testament. The word elder means "older." Look to your elders for wisdom. The notion of some raw authority in any office of pastor or elder is foreign to the New Testament. Every believer in Christ is a priest. There is no need for any other mediator other than Christ. Our church has a Leadership Team composed of both men and women. I am called the Lead Pastor. There is, however, no inherent authority in me. I serve people. I love people. I lead people only if they are willing to follow--and frankly, if I do a poor job of serving and loving, they ought not follow. One of these days the church of Jesus Christ is going to wake up to the fact that we have so twisted and corrupted the concept of authority and leadership that what we have abandoned the clear and certain teachings of the New Testament.

The ancient Jews kept women in the courtyard and placed a fence around the Temple grounds lest a woman feel compelled to enter the Holy Place. The sacred rituals were performed by male priests. The sacred services were led by male priests. Modern day conservative evangelicals and liberal feminists have absolutely violated the clear and certain teachings of Jesus Christ and seem to wish to resurrect the Old economy of Temple buildings, gender priesthoods, and religious rituals. Jesus abolished all that Old economy stuff in the New agreement. The Temple of God is no longer a building, it is the soul of a believer (see I Corinthians 6:19). The priests of God are no longer just male, they are both male and female (see Galatians 3:28). The rituals of God are no longer holy days, sacrifices, and feasts, but faith in Christ and love for God and our fellow man (see Colossians 2:16; John 13:3). The body of Jesus Christ is to make no distinctions in race, class and gender. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel that sets the captives free to serve as the Holy Spirit gifts. To revoke the privilege of a gifted, believing woman from reading Scripture to men is to violate the clear and certain teaching of the New Testament and risk having the legalism and religious ritualism of Spirit-less religion that marked Temple worship after the days of Ezekiel and before the launch of the New Covenant. If conservative, Bible-believing, Christ-loving, Spirit-filled, graced people do not speak out when our conservative brothers move into error on this issue, then we become enablers of God's people as they turn the powerful gospel of grace into an impotent gospel of gender. God forbid that we continue to trifle with subtleties while we ignore certainties.

Grace and Truth,

Wade Burleson

P.S. It was my wife's and my privilege to meet these past few days with a couple of remarkable Christian women. Dee and Wanda of Wartburg Watch are from North Carolina. Wanda is graduated from Duke University with an English degree and Dee is a registered nurse. Both women also have an M.B.A. They are both married and have delightful adult children. Rachelle and I were thrilled to be able to spend some time with them. More than a few pastors and Christian leaders ought to listen to what they are saying.

The Wizard of Oz and the Flow of Money: An Allegory Illustrating Our Future Economic Collapse

2011-12-08T11:58:00.033-06:00

One of my earliest memories as a child is being sick in bed and having my mother read to me The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum, a book most people know by its shortened title The Wizard of Oz. This September Rachelle and I had the privilege of attending the award winning West End theatre presentation of Wicked in London, England, a musical that serves as the prequel to The Wizard of Oz. Fellow Oklahoman and Broken Arrow friend Kristen Chenowith played Glinda the Good Witch of the South when Broadway brought Wicked to the stage in New York City in 2003. Most people are familiar with The Wizard of Oz through broadway or Hollywood's classic 1939 film version starring Judy Garland and not Baum's book. The differences between the the book, written in 1900, and the later film and broadway versions may at first seem minor, but as is the case in many attempts to bring written material to life through the visual arts, small changes impact the book's overall theme. For example, in order to showcase new improvements in Technicolor, movie producers changed Dorothy's silver shoes in the book version into ruby slippers for the 1939 film version. Unfortunately this small change caused the public to miss the economic allegories in Baum's book. Many today view the The Wizard of Oz as a cute morality play for children. Frank Baum, however, wrote The Wizard of Oz in the late 1890's as a powerful allegory of the economic problems faced by the United States. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz is to economics what John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress is to Christianity. If you understand Baum's allegory, you will know why America and European countries are in their current economic crises and why we are headed toward a financial panic in America the likes of which our country has rarely seen. To understand the allegorical parts of The Wizard of Oz, you must have some historical background regarding the economic crisis in America during the 1880's and 1890's. You will not regret reading carefully this post, even if you don't like history or economics. Your retirement savings and your economic future are at risk.

In what is now called The Crime of 1873, the United States government took silver out of monetary circulation and went to gold as the standard for the American dollar. From the formation of the United States in 1776 until the year of the 'crime' of 1873, the United States had been on a bimetallic standard. In other words, for approximately one hundred years after America's founding as a country, an American citizen could go into a reserve bank, hand over any amount of paper currency (i.e. $10, $20, $100, $1,000, etc...) and be given either gold or silver in return. You would be given about 15 times more silver than gold in terms of weight (for silver traded to gold at a ratio of about 15 to 1), but you could choose the metal you wished to exchange for your dollars. But in the "Crime of 1873" the U.S. government decided to take silver out of monetary circulation. That meant you could no longer get silver for your dollars. The money supply shrank. Beginning in 1873 the only metal that could be exchanged for dollars in America was gold. Beginning in 1873 the government could only issue dollars and increase the money supply in proportion to the amount of gold it held in reserve. Silver was no longer a reserve metal for dollars, and for this reason, the money supply shrank, meaning the collective pool of money available for the exchange of goods in the American economy decreased. A decrease in the available money supply will always lead to deflation. Less money in circulation means lower prices.

Let me illustrate how a decreased money supply lowers prices. Let's say you are on the game Survivor and you and your fellow contestants have not eaten food for 20 days. On the 21st day you and the other 10 contestants are each are given just $20 to bid on 11 different dishes of sumptious food that have been prepared and brought to the camp. You are also allowed to bid on new bedding materials which will make your night's sleep more comfortable. You see what is available for purchase because it is all laid out in front of you. There's a steak and baked potato, there's a cheeseburger, a chicken salad sandwich as well as blankets, pillows, air mattresses, etc... You are limited as to what you can buy since you have a limited supply of money. Due to the small amount of money in circulation the price of everything goes down! However, if you and each of your fellow contestants had actually been given $100 each instead of $20 each, then the price of everything goes up! Why? Because the money supply has gone up, and when more money is in circulation, the price of goods for cheeseburgers and other commodities soars. Prices always eventually go up (i.e. inflation) in proportion to an increase in the money supply, and prices always eventually go down (i.e. deflation) in proportion to the decrease in the money supply.

This Survivor illustration helps you understand The Crime of 1873. The government declared that silver could no longer be used as government money. Silver was taken out of circulation. It's like contestants on Survivor having a large portion of their money taken away before they can bid on goods. The government decreased the money supply and prices for goods across the nation fell as did the demand for those goods by the American public. For the next 25 years, from 1873 to 1898, the United States experienced an average yearly deflation of 1.5%. The people who were hurt the most by the government's decision were farmers from Kansas and the midwest. The prices people were willing to pay for the farmers' crops decreased. Even worse, because farmers were already in debt (as most farmers are), they were having to use the dollars from the shrinking money supply to pay off their old debts. Think back to Survivor illustration and imagine trying to buy food and bedding materials when you have to pay a past debt with the limited $20 you have in hand. It would be much easier to pay off your old debts if your supply of money is greater. Many farmers in the late 1800's were facing bankruptcy because their debts was high, prices were too low, and there was not enough money in circulation for them to survive economically.

There is an important economic principle that can be derived from the 1873 government decision to remove silver from circulation, a principle that will shed light on today's economic problems and the allegory behind The Wizard of Oz. The economic principle simply stated: When people or nations (governments) are in debt, the more money pumped into circulation (i.e. "inflation"), the easier it is to pay off those debts. The more massive the debt, the more critical the need for a massive increase in money supply. If deflation is occuring when there is indebtedness, then the debtor will struggle to pay old debts with scarcer, more valuable dollars. Debtors always need an ever increasing money supply.

Enter Frank Baum and The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy and her cast of characters represent farmers (the Scarecrow), industrial workers (the Tin Man), and fearful politicans (the Cowardly Lion), and they all need help. They follow the Yellow Brick Road (the gold standard) to the Emerald City (Washington D.C.). Oz is the abbreviation for the measurement of gold (i.e. "ounces" or oz.), and the Wizard behind the curtain represents the politicians pulling the strings to decrease the money supply by using only gold as a monetary standard and not silver, harming all the weary travelers. What Dorothy and her friends need is the addition of silver back into the money supply. The entire Oz narrative is the struggle between the common man and the powerful Washington elites over the supply of money. In the Emerald Palace Dorothy and her friends enter 7 passages and climb 3 flights of stairs ( 73 representing The Crime of 73). Silver is found throughout the Wizard of Oz as the answer to the problems at hand, including the Tin Man receiving "a new ax with a handle made of gold and a blade polished so that it glistens like burnished silver and a silver oilcan to oil himself," a statement by Baum which describes his belief that the industrial worker will be helped with the addition of silver to the monetary supply. And of course, Dorothy's passage back to her farm in Kansas is to click her "silver shoes" three times together, representing that the power to solve the farm girl's problems was there all the time (adding silver to the currency). There are so many more economic principles in The Wizard of Oz, and for further study I would recommend that you read The Fable of the Allegory: The Wizard of Oz in Economics.

Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, was an economic activist. He was considered a progressive, someone we might call 'liberal,' today. One of his political friends, William Jennings Bryan, was the Democratic nominee for President in the 1896 and 1900 Presidential elections. Bryan rocketed to fame at the 1896 Chicago Democratic National Convention where he delivered his famous Cross of Gold Speech. Bryan, who was a devout Christian and went on to infamy in the Scopes Trial, was also a liberal economist, and he closed his famous speech by declaring, "Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." Bryan and Baum eventually got their wish of a bimetal standard for the American dollar, for the U.S. government reversed course early in the 1900's and added silver back as part of the American currency. You probably remember paper bills with the words "Silver Certificate" etched on the top.

When the government increased the money supply in the early 1900's, the motive was to help the western farmers, just as Frank Baum and William Jennings Bryan requested. But for the last 100 years the government has continued to RADICALLY and RECKLESSLY increase the money supply in America. Why? Because the U.S. government began taking on massive debt of its own. With World War I and then World War II the U.S. government became a debtor nation. However, with the addition of massive social programs in the mid-to-late 20th century, U.S. government became swamped in debt. The U.S. government has become the Kansas farmer of the late 1800's. Our national debt has crossed the fifteen trillion dollars mark. How do you ever get enough cheap dollars to pay off that kind of debt while continuing to spend for an annual operating budget? Is it even possible? Do you add another precious metal as a standard to the American dollar? No. The United States government did something mind-boggling.

The United States government decided in the 1970's to move the American dollar OFF BOTH THE GOLD AND SILVER STANDARD. What was once an argument in Frank Baum's day over a bimetal standard (silver and gold reserve for the dollar) versus a monometal standard (a gold reserve only), became an argument and an ultimate decision by our government to remove the dollar completely from any gold, silver or precious metal reserve standard. Frank Baum, William Jennings Bryan and every other 19th century economists--both liberal and conservative--would have never dreamed the U.S. government could or would do such a thing. But it is exactly what our government has done. Try to go into any bank with a $100 bill today and ask to get paid in silver and/or gold for that $100 bill. It won't happen. It can't happen. There's not enough silver and gold in the world to back the number of U.S. dollars in circulation today. The government's decision to move the dollar off any precious metal standard had its genesis in a highly secretive meeting of bankers and politicans in 1910 as they met on an island off the coast of Georgia called Jekyll Island. You may read about the extraordinary results of the government's decision in a highly readable book entitled The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Look at the Creation of the Federal Reserve. What we now have in America is a system where the supply of money is controlled by the United States Federal Reserve and not by the amount of silver and gold we have in reserve to back those dollars. European countries also have this same kind of currency system. The supply of euros is dictated by European Central Banks, all controlled by European governments. There is no precious metal backing. If governments need an increase in the money supply, then governments simply create paper money. Remember that the people who benefit most with the high inflation caused by an increase in the money supply are those people (or governments) who are in debt. Those harmed by an increase in the money supply are the frugal and the savers. In other words, what Frank Baum wanted in 1900 for western farmers in debt, we now have in spades for western governments drowning in debt. Baum wished to add silver to gold as a metal reserve to increase the amount of dollars in circulation, but he never dreamed of a government currency WITHOUT A STANDARD. Now we have NO precious metal standard. The government cannot have the money supply bound by the amount of gold and silver we have in Fort Knox (if in fact any is still there), because the government needs MASSIVE AMOUNTS of dollars in circulation for the government to pay its massive debts.

The American dollar today is what is called a fiat currency. The government prints it. People trust it and use it. If the government wishes to increase the money supply, they do so by simply allowing the creation of more paper dollars, in a process called fractional reserve banking, where the 'reserves' are paper money deposits, not metals! The only thing that guarantees the fiat money has value is the trust of the people in the currency. What happens when people begin losing trust in government currency? It becomes worthless. This is beginning to take place in Europe as people flee the Euro. One day people will lose trust in the U.S. government and turn away from the government's fiat currency if our debt continues. When that happens, the U.S. will face bankruptcy like Italy, Greec and other European countries face it today. The worst possible case scenario is for a government to be forced to pay back their debts in another government's currency. When this happens the money supply of the debtor government shrinks because the debtor country's currency is considered worthless by the lender country. The indebted government is then forced to pay its debts using another country's stronger currency (think China). This is why people find protection in precious metals or a stronger government's currency when governments are swamped by debt. The massive expansion of the supply of money which has no metal standard behind it is recklessly endangering a country's freedom and future. To say what is happening in Europe and America today is ultimately highly inflationary is a gross understatement. Unless massive and painful spending cuts occur, there is coming a collapse of bankrupt governments and national economies. One day soon people will lose complete confidence in their indebted governments. There will either be riots because governments try to get their fiscal house in order and shut down social programs, or in the worst case, governments will collapse. As the Bible says, "The borrower is a servant to the lender" (Proverbs 22:7).

Our problem today is the very opposite of the one Dorothy faced in The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy needed an increase in the money supply. Deflation was ruining the economics of the Kansas farmer. The farmer couldn't get a good price for his crop, and he couldn't pay off his past debts with a shrinking money supply. But over the last forty years we have received as a nation far more than Dorothy (Frank Baum) ever wished. We have had a grotesque growth in the money supply because silver and gold have both been REMOVED as a reserve for the American dollar. With the Feds doing everything in their power to fight off DEFLATION in order to keep money cheap to pay off government debt, there is coming very soon a rate of inflation the likes of which America has never seen. Where are the economic John Bunyan's of our day? Where are the Frank Baum's of our day? Where are the people with enough sense to know that America is in need of being taught lessons that are much more profound than cute children's fables suitable for Broadway and the big screen?

Lessons from Herman Cain: The Blood of Christ Cleanses My Conscience to Serve God

2011-12-06T18:17:00.005-06:00

I have enjoyed the recent articles by Cal Thomas and Al Mohler regarding Herman Cain's suspension of his Presidential campaign. Both men make excellent points. In my readings yesterday, however, I was most moved by the words of a dead preacher named Charles Spurgeon. In a message he preached in 1857 from the book of Hebrews, he described three fools. The first is the wounded soldier on the battlefield who queries the medic about the weapon that wounded him rather than the physician's ability to save him. The second fool is the ship's captain in the midst of a horrible storm who goes below deck to read the encyoclopedia about the source and nature of Atlantic winds rather than working feverishly on deck to save his ship. The third fool is the immoral man who spends his time blaming others for his predicament rather than looking to God for his healing. Spurgeon, in his beautiful and eloquent way, points out that people who think themselves sophisticated will argue about the origins of the universe, the sources of evil, and other intricate questions, while neglecting the certain truth that we are all sinners in need of healing. Jesus Christ shed His blood to heal us. The Bible says emphatically and certainly that "without the shedding of (Christ's) blood, there is no forgiveness of sins" (Hebrews 9:22), which stated positively means "through the shedding of (Christ's) blood there is forgiveness of sins." We all have the nature of Herman Cain. We all have the nature of Jerry Sandusky. We all have a natural tendency toward sin. We all have suffered and caused wounds as the result of our words, our actions, our lifestyles, our decisions, our lusts--our sins. The problem is we "trifle with subtleties while we neglect certainties." We argue with others over why we are the way we are, why we have done what we have done, why we find ourselves in the position we are in. We argue about the source of the winds rather fight to their dissipation. We analyze the weapons that have shot us rather than look for the cure for our wounds. The promise of God is profound: "The blood of Christ shall cleanse your consience from dead works to serve the living God" (Hebrews 9:14). One of these days I would love to hear someone humiliated by public exposure of their sin say something like the following:

"I am guilty. I have been inappropriate with women. I have broken the vows of my marriage. I have sinned against God and my wife. The only healing I can find is in the shed blood of Jesus Christ who died for me. This much is certain: My conscience can only be cleansed by Christ's shed blood. By faith I have turned to Him, and I am now beginning to experience that cleansing within my conscience. That does not mean I will not bear the consequences of my sin in this life or that I (or others) will not bear scars brought by my sins. What my faith in Christ means is that He alone can cleanse my conscience. I must not live my life trying to atone for my mistakes by making you promises. I have no claim on God's future goodness and forgiveness (or yours) by my commitment to reform. I am only cleansed and guaranteed God's forgiveness by the sacrifice of Christ who died for sinners like me. The humiliation brought me by the public exposure of my sin is healthy, for it has reminded me why Christ died. Now, in an ever increasing gratefulness for His cleansing, I am growing in my desire to serve Him. I am a man being changed by the grace of God from the inside out, and if you will be patient with me, I think you will see in the future I will not be the same man tomorrow that I was yesterday. If you find you cannot place your trust in a man whose conduct has been like mine, I will understand, and simply remind you, that one's faith is always misplaced when found in men and not in God."

The Church Is Changing - A Reformation of the Church Based on the Truth of Scripture

2011-11-28T14:36:00.015-06:00

For many centuries established Christian churches have attempted to assume the status and function of ancient Israel's Temple worship. From massive buildings erected to inspire, to stained glass windows or elaborate decor intended to tell stories, from the priesthood of authoritative pastors/leaders who separate themselves from 'laity,' to injunctions to tithe into the storehouse of the church or risk being devoured by the devil, the modern church looks more like Old Testament Israel than early followers of Christ. The crystallization of the institutional church into Jewish modes of worship is not limited to Roman Catholicism or even unorthodox Mormonism. Baptist churches, though shouting loudly 'no creed but the Bible,' have ignored the New Testament teaching on the nature of the true church and have replicated Israel's hierarchy of priestly authority (pastors), Israel's emphasis on worship at a specific place (the sanctuary), and Israel's obligation to an 'if-then' covenant with God ('if we will obey God, then God will bless us'). The freedom of a sinner who personally, intimately and spiritually trusts Christ and experiences the power of God at work within is substituted for a form of behavioral control imposed by a spiritual authoritarian (usually a pastor) who uses Old Testament passages of Scripture to bind believers. The pastor who operates in this manner may not realize that God abolished the Old Covenant system of worship and that the early Christians were known for their radical departure from dependence on a worship place, authoritarian priests, and any religious performance through ceremony, holy days or sacrifical 'offerings.' As Adolph Safir reminds us in his brilliant work on Hebrews: “The Greeks and the Romans were not merely astonished at, but felt irritated by the worship of the early Christians, who without image and altar, without priests and vestments, appeared to them as atheists, men and women ‘without gods’ and at times felt threated by the mysterious power Christians possessed as they rejoiced in suffering and met with calm courage the tortures of death itself” Adolph Saphir.

The simplicity of New Covenant worship 'in spirit and in truth' has been overwhelmed by the desires and the demands of leaders within the institutional church. We pastors, often in an attempt to protect our jobs and salaries (or future job and salary), spiritualize everything about the church. Mega-church pastors are often the worst because the financial needs are the greatest. Tom Rainer's recent poll of Southern Baptist churches in Oklahoma reveals Emmanuel Enid, the church I pastor, is the third largest Southern Baptist church in the Oklahoma in terms of attendance. The greatest danger I face at Emmanuel is the temptation to forget that what is done at the building on Sundays and Wednesdays is just a part--a small part--of who we are as a people. Whether it is giving, serving, or attending other places of worship, our people should have the liberty and freedom to give, serve, and attend where the Spirit leads. On Sunday at 12:00 noon. the church leaves the building, and whatever I do Sunday morning or Wednesday night should be designed to empower and encourage believers to worship in spirit and truth every day of the week. My job, in the role our church consitution calls "the lead pastor," is to lead people in such a manner that they cheerfully give to the Lord through Emmanuel, joyfully serve the Lord through Emmanuel, and willingly worship the Lord by attending corporate worship services at Emmanuel. However, a good lead pastor will always remind God's people that His church extends far beyond the membership rolls of any one church, and worship, giving and serving in other places is just as biblically sound and Spirit-led as that which is done through Emmanuel.

If the Spirit leads our people to give less, attend less, and serve less at Emmanuel, then our budget, our ministries, and our organizational mission efforts will shrink. If the Spirit leads our people to give more, attend more, and serve more, then our organizational ministries will expand. Regardless, the New Testament is quite clear that our church is NOT a new Temple, our pastors are NOT a new priesthood, and our religious activities are NOT prescribed by any law. God's people should give, should serve and should worship as the Spirit leads, where the Spirit leads, and as long as the Spirit leads. It is not the Law that constrains us but the Spirit who compels us. Unfortunately, many modern Baptist churches have taken promises and laws of the Old Testament and attempted to force them into the New Covenant church. The result is a dysfunctional gathering of law worshippers who are more concerned with conformity than a gathering of strong, individual believers who are empowered by the Spirit. I can almost hear objections from some pastors who say, "But the Word of God prescribes bringing the tithe into the storehouse! The Word of God demands that God's people 'touch not the anointed' in the church! The Word of God dictates everything we do at our church!" My response is simple: Which portion of the Word? The Word pertaining to Israel in the Old Covenant or the Scriptures pertaining to followers of Christ in the New Covenant? Read carefully the following verse in Hebrews 8:13:

"When He said, 'A new covenant,' He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear."

The book of Hebrews was written around AD 65, thirty five years after the death of Christ. The writer of Hebrews says in this verse that God’s old agreement with Israel was made obsolete by God, is growing old and will shortly be abolished (disappear). The old agreement God had with Israel is called "The Old Covenant" and it is found within the Old Testament. Old Covenant worship revolved around the Tabernacle/Temple, the priesthood, and the festivals and sacrificial rituals (collectively called "The Law" in the OT). The Law was an "if/then" agreement where God promised to Israel His blessings "if" Israel obeyed the Law. The writer of Hebrews tells us three explicit things about this Old Covenant and the "if/then" promises of God that came with it. (1). The Old Covenant has been made obsolete.' (2). It is 'growing old,' and (3). It will soon be abolished. This biblical truth leads us to ask three questions:

When did God’s covenant with Israel become obsolete? In AD 30 Jesus the Anointed One died on a hill called Golgatha. The night before He was crucified He took a cup of wine and declared, "This cup is New Covenant of my blood shed for the remission of your sins." The next day, on the cross, Jesus cried “It is finished!” Everything about the Old Covenant-- all the laws, the rituals, the sacrifices and the types--were all fulfilled in Christ. The Old Covenant had served its purpose (as a schoolmaster that points the sinner to Christ) and is now fulfilled. God made it obsolete in the death/burial/resurrection of Christ. Just like your old television set is made obsolete by the new wave of communication called HDTV, so too, the old pattern of worship in ancient Israel was made obsolete by the new pattern of worship opened up at the cross. The veil was ripped, so the sinner has direct access to God through Christ. And the good news about this new way is that the sinner who comes to God by Christ is guaranteed that he will 'never be cut off from the goodness of God' (Hebrews 7:25). No longer is worship about Temples, priests and rituals. In the New Covenant, those who truly worship God worship Him in "spirit and truth" (John 3:23).

When did God’s covenant with Israel grow old? For forty years (a Jewish ‘generation’) after the cross, from AD 30 to AD 70, the Temple remained standing. For those forty years the early followers of Jesus Christ came to the Temple to pray, worship, and proclaim the new way to God through faith in Jesus Christ. It was on the steps of the Temple that Peter healed the lame man by saying, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I to you. In the name of Jesus Christ arise and walk." The disciples preached Christ in and around the Temple grounds, but the Old Covenant Temple way of worship was 'growing old.' So too, when the Apostle Paul was converted on the road to Damascus, he eventually came back to Jerusalem and Acts 9 says he "preached Christ boldly at the Temple." The Jews were so furious with this former Old Covenant Hebrew who now advocated the new way to approach God that they sought to have him killed,. The disciples thwarted the Jews plan for Paul by secretly escorting the Apostle out of Jersualem for his own safety. Old Covenant worship was growing old. The phrase 'growing old' must be interpreted within the context and time of the writer of Hebrews. He was living in the mid-60's AD, and for over three decades since the death of Christ, Temple worship among the Jews continued --but it was growing old and would "soon disappear" (be abolished).

When was God’s covenant with Israel abolished? In AD 70 God used the Roman army to utterly destroy the Temple. Just as Jesus prophesied forty years earlier (Matthew 24), the Romans did not leave one stone standing upon another. This destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and the Old Covenant way of worship was prophesied by the prophets and Jesus for centuries. Israel had been unfaithful to the covenant they had with God, and God therefore abolished it and instituted a new covenant. Again, it is not as if there was no good purpose for the Old Covenant. If it were not for the Law (the biblical way of describing the Old Covenant), Paul would not have known sin. The Law acted as a mirror, reflecting back to the Hebrews their sinfulness and God's holiness. In addition, the Law, particularly through its festivals, rituals and symbols, portrayed a coming Anointed One (Messiah) who Himself would take away the sins of the world. When the Messiah came and fulfilled the Law, the Old Covenant was made obsolete by God, grew old in time, and was eventually abolished (disappeared) in AD 70. The Temple was gone.

The dwelling place of God in the new agreement that He has made with sinners, called the New Covenant, is the life of the individual believer. It is the life of God in the soul of man that is the true miracle of the New Covenant. The power of the Spirit of God changes the sinner from the inside/out. We are the Temple of the Living God. For this reason, any institutional church that tries to substitute itself as the old Temple, its pastors/priests as the Old priesthood, and operate by Old Testament "if/then" principles and promises, is denying the truth of the New Testament.

The New Covenant changes the way we worship God every day of our lives. The Old Covenant agreement between God and Israel was a come see religion. Come see the Temple. Come see the rituals. Come see the festivals. The New Covenant is a go tell religion. Go tell sinners of the Savior who has guaranteed the Creator’s goodness to those who trust Him. Christianity is radically spiritual, internal, personal, and trans-cultural (all people). Some of the best worship you can have is with family or a small group of believers around a camp fire at a lake, or at home around the dinner table, or at a backyard barb-e-que. Believers are the church. God dwells in us. Where we are, there He is. We don't behave one way 'at church' and another way everywhere else. We can't do this because we ARE the church. Further, since the life of God is in the invidual sinner who trusts Christ, there is no hierarchical authority in the church. Every believer is a priest unto God.

The New Covenant changes the way we apply Scriptures from the Old Testament. The “If … then” Scriptures are seen as part of God’s promises to the people of Israel. Let me give you three examples of “if/then” promises that Christian people use wrongly.

(Example 1): If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (II Chronicles 7:14). That is a great Old Covenant promise. Israel often failed this condition of humble repentance, and as a result, they were often taken captive by foreigners and there land was destroyed. This verse, often quoted by Christians, is not a New Covenant promise.

In the New Covenant God says that He "is able to do far more abundantly beyond all we even ask or think, according to the power that works within us" (Eph. 3:20). Here is the New Covenant promise. When you come to God by faith in Christ, God resides within you and has begun a work in you that He will carry to completion. Do you find yourself pulled toward addictive sins as a believer? He will eventually break you of them for your good and for His glory. The alcoholic who comes to God by faith in Christ need not worry that a relapse into drunkenness will cause the favor and goodness of God to withdraw from Him. In the old agreement he would have worried, because in the old agreement it was his obedience that ensured God's goodness, but in the New Covenant it is God's goodness to Him in Christ that ensures the sinners' eventual obedience. God is conforming, and He will continue to conform, every sinner who trusts Christ into the image of His Son. It is a guarantee dependent upon His fidelity and strength not your own.

(Example 2)“If you bring the tithe … then I will rebuke the devourer for you” (Malachi 3:10).

This is an often quoted Old Covenant promise by pastors, used as an enticement (and/or threat) for the New Testament believer to give to his or her local church. This promise, given to Old Covenant Israel, is another if/then promise. The rebuke of the devourer is given IF Israel brings their tithes to the Temple. If the people of Israel do not bring their tithe to the Temple, then the devourer is free to reign and destory their possessions.

In the New Covenant, Jesus died and in His death He “destroyed the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). In the New Covenant, the devil will seek to devour you as a 'roaring lion,' but as Bunyan so eloquently pictured in Pilgrim's Progress, the lion is chained. Naturalists also tell us that only teethless lions roar. The truth of the New Testament is quite clear. The "strong man" (Satan) who was once at peace in his home (your life) and was well armed, was disarmed and dislodged by One "stronger than he" (Jesus Christ) who has now taken up residence within you (Luke 11:21-22). As a New Covenant believer in Christ you don't give money to your local church in order for God to rebuke the devourer. Malachi 3:10 is an Old Covenant promise. The devourer is already REMOVED from your life. Jesus is now your Lord. You give as you follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit. The more you comprehend the work of Christ on your behalf the more you cheerfully give, the more you joyfully serve, and the more you radically worship! In other words, in the New Covenant, giving is a matter of the heart, not the Law. As the Spirit leads you to give to ministries that proclaim the good news of Christ, care for the needs of fellow man, and work hard to do kingdom work--then give!

(Example 3): “If you call upon me in the day of trouble; then I will deliver you” (Psalm 50:15).

Again, that is a great Old Covenant promise, but it is nowhere close to the incredible truth of the New Covenant Scriptures. In the New Covenant, God delivers His people even when they find themselves emotionally, spiritually and personally “dead in our trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1). His amazing and agressive love for His people through Christ ensures that He will "never, no never, no never" (five negatives in the original) leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). It is interesting that in the first portion of Hebrews 13:5 says that we should have "the kind of character that is free from the love of money BECAUSE God will never leave us or forsake." We do not live this way IN ORDER for God to never leave us or forsake us. Words are important. In the New Covenant our lives are a response to God's goodness to us in Christ. In the Old Covenant, people lived their lives in order to obtain God's goodness. If you ever find yourself being motivated to do something in order to get God to do something in return, you are living under the principles of the Old Covenant. Unfortunately, the Old Covenant, and Old Covenant churches, and Old Covenant promises will always let you down. However, the new agreement that God has with sinners will never let you down. "He is able to save forever (i.e. guarantee that they will never be cut off from God's goodness) those who draw near to God through Him” (Hebrews 7:25).

The church is changing. There is a reformation taking place. The church has left the building(s). And any pastor who tries to reinvigorate the institutional church through Old Covenant principles is destined to fail.

A Poem Entitled "A Perfect Family" - by Paul Burleson

2011-11-24T09:58:00.001-06:00

A PERFECT FAMILY

A perfect family...
That's what some wish for I'm sure.
But in my mind...
... I'll settle for one that's mature.

A perfect family...
That's how some truly measure success.
But truth be known...
Behind each mask is found a mess.

A perfect family...
No, just people who love and forgive.
And that to me...
Is how our family has chosen to live.

A perfect family...
That's what some pretend to be.
But as the song says...
Our's is close enough to perfect for me.

Well said, Pops! Happy Thanksgiving!

Therefore, Knowing the Terror of the Lord, We Persuade Men

2011-11-21T15:44:00.004-06:00

Those who have read Grace and Truth to You for any amount of time know that this author is persuaded the Bible teaches that the eternal rewards of Christians are those rewards--and only those rewards--which are are earned by Christ. It is Christ's obedience to the will and law of the Father that obtains for God's adopted children our inheritance. It is Christ's perfect obedience which brings to sinners the Father's enduring favor and guarantees for us our position as co-heirs with Christ. As the Apostle Paul eloquently writes, "Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Romans 8:17). Trusting the performance of Christ for God's favor is the most freeing, the most liberating, and the most life-changing doctrine of Scripture. But what about the biblical teaching that God rewards people for good, moral and self-less behavior in this life? What about God judging people for the things done in the body, whether good or bad, and giving to those who have done good the fruit of what they have sown? The Bible teaches that God does judge some people in this manner. He judges sinners apart from Christ in this fashion. Sinners without faith in the Savior will be judged and rewarded by God for every public deed (both good and bad), every secret thought (both good and bad), and every word (both idle and profound). This judgment and reward is for those who are not in Christ. This is why hell will different in terms of punishment and rewards, consistent with how moral a person has been on earth. Hell will not be as severe for some sinners as it is for others (see Jesus' words in Matthew 10:15). The experience of righteous imprisonment will vary in intensity according to the depth and number of unrighteous actions of those who die without Christ. God will not be mocked. Whatever a sinner sows in life on earth, that will he reap in judgment (Galatians 6:7). Hitler will experience the wrath of God in a measure greater than a girl who dies in her teens without Christ. The sinner reaps what he sows. If a sinner is without a personal Savior, then the sinner will be doing himself a favor to live as moral of a life on earth as possible. We've all heard the jokes about homes in heaven being different sizes, but the principle upon which these jokes are founded (the reward for moral behavior), is a principle that is associated with hell, not heaven.

Those who have faith in Christ will never appear at any future judgment of God, or be rewarded for their good behavior. Our sins were judged at the cross, and the behavior for which we are rewarded is Christ's behavior. If a sinner's name is found in the Book of Life--the book which contains all the names of those who have trusted God's Son--then that named sinner is guaranteed that the books that contain the enumerations of his works on earth will be forever sealed and never opened for judgment (see Revelation 20:11-13). The Scapegoat has removed our sins into the desert of forgetfulness (Lev. 16:22). Those in Christ never answer for our sins or shortcomings because "God sees no sin in His people." That does not mean God is not aware of our sins; it means that God has dealt judicially with our sin at the cross of Christ, and all 'the righteous wrath of God due our sins' (the definition of hell) has been born by Christ, and all the blessings and favor and glory obtained by Christ is shared by us. Someone might say, "But I wish to be rewarded for the good I have done as a Christian!" I respond: "The good Christ has done is far superior to your good, and the rewards He has earned are far greater than any rewards you may earn. God makes you a co-heir with Christ because of your faith. It is much better to be a co-heir with Christ than to reap what you have sown on earth." It's more pleasing to sit at a table with nice fine linen than filthy rags for napkins, and your works next to Christ's invite the same comparison. So....

The Biblical principle of God's judgment can be stated as follows: Those without Christ reap what they have sown on earth and those in Christ reap what they have not sown on earth. To be a co-heir with Christ means that you receive from God the inheritance Christ has earned by His obedience during His life, death and resurrection. The perfect righteousness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in His complete and perfect obedience to God's law has obtained for us the unsearchable riches of God's great grace (Ephesians 3:8). Heaven is the eternal unfolding and enjoyment of these riches fpr all the ages to come (Ephesians 2:7). Again: We Christians reap what we have not sown. One of the tell-tale signs of the legalist is the inability to totally rest in the knowledge that the riches of God's favor are earned by Christ's obedience, not his own. It is impossible to be a co-heir with Christ if the rewards of God's people are dependent on our performance. God's favor and our eternal rewards are dependent on Christ. The Savior has guaranteed (to the uttermost!) that we will never be cut-off from God's goodness (Hebrews 7:25). It is indeed an awesome and scary thing to fall into the hands of the living God without a Savior. This is why the good news of Christ is such good news. He saves sinners from the coming wrath of God. It is the knowledge of God's impending wrath and the terror of future judgment for sinners that causes us to be ambassadors for Christ. I make an appeal to sinners to be reconciled to God through faith in Christ.

If you won't trust Christ, I urge you to live the most moral, ethical and selfless life possible to make your future judgment and your subsequent eternal prison more tolerable.

The Prosperity Gospel's Fundamental Flaw Is Its Faith in Faith

2011-11-16T12:23:00.005-06:00

Last Friday night my wife Rachelle and I spent an evening with our friends Gary and Lanna Richardson at their home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ole Anthony (pronounced Oh Lee), pictured to the left, was Gary's guest for the weekend. Gary and Lanna had arranged for several people to meet with Ole and find out more about the Trinity Foundation. The Trinity Foundation serves as a watchdog agency looking out for corrupt television evangelists. Ole is a retired Air Force investigator and a licensed private detective. Since 1987 he has been on a crusade to expose and legally punish the illicit activities and financial fraud of many well-known prosperity gospel televangelists. His first target was the Dallas ministry of Robert Tilton. Diane Sawyer of ABC News teamed with Ole Anthony to air an undercover investigation of Tilton. The program revealed many fraudulent and unethical activities of Tilton's ministry, and Tilton became furious as his annual income stream of $140 million dollars began to dry up. Tilton always played Jesus in his church's annual Christmas Pageant, and at the pageant after the ABC investigation aired, Tilton rode into his church on a donkey that he had named Ole. As Ole shared that story with us, he smiled and laughed a little, but the lines on his face show the angst of over two dozen lawsuits against Ole by the televangelists he has sought to expose as frauds. Ole is by no means a perfect man, and I don't agree with all his tactics, but you must admire any person who shares as powerful of a Christian conversion testimony as Ole. He walked away from a mult-million dollar business, vowed to live on $55 a week among the homeless in Dallas, and works every day to protect God's people from what he calls 'wolves in shepherd's clothing.'

We learned many things from Ole last Friday night. I specifically asked him if anything he shared was confidential, and he responded in precisely the same manner I would have responded. "If it were confidential, I would not have shared it." Many people don't like Ole. Television evangelists have named him "the Anti-Christ" and "Satan incarnate," and other wild names, but I like him. I like the fact that he says it like it is. Though he has taken a vow of poverty, he is comfortable having friends who have not. He also expresses a passion for knowing Jesus Christ and the gospel of God as revealed in the Scriptures. He is dedicated to exposing the false gospel that is often advocated on Christian television. Ole gave us many facts uncovered during his twenty-five years of investigations. Some of his information surprised us, like the factoid that the largest number of homosexual pick-up bars on a per capita basis exists in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Other information sickened us. What Ole has uncovered in his investigations of people like Richard Roberts, Benny Hinn, Mike Murdoch, Kenneth Copeland, Morris Cerullo, Jesse Duplantis, Daystar Network, Paul Crouch and TBN, and other prosperity gospel evangelist and networks is just plain sad. Were it common knowledge, it would damage all Christian ministries, even the good ones. I have no interest in repeating the details of what Ole told us Friday night, but it did lead Rachelle and me to discuss on our drive home what it was about the prosperity gospel that attracted so many Christian people to give large sums of money to people like those named above.

Control.

That's the operative word that describes what people want. We all want control. Christian people want to believe that if they just have enough faith, and then exercise that faith by planting a financial seed (to the televangelist's ministry of course), that they control their futures. They want prosperity, health, and happiness. Its the notion that they can control their future via their faith that drives them to give to the evangelists. Instead of singing "Have Faith in God" the donor should be singing "Have Faith in Faith." Faith, at least in the prosperity gospel, has taken the place of God. The negative effects of this distorted perspective on faith is seen in the teaching of Jesse Duplantis as he describes his confusion and hurt over his mother's continuing illness, even though he was praying she be healed.

"I was confused. I was hurt. I didn't know what else to do. That is when God spoke up, "Jesse, I have a covenant with you, yes. However, I have one with your mother as well. You are praying for her healing. She is praying in her heart for Me to take her home. Now, I will obey My Word. But you and your daddy are battling your mother's will. It is her life at stake. You have Me in a hard place, Jesse. Someone has got to give in. Get yourselves together and tell Me what I am to do! (Jesse Duplantis, "My Experience Doesn't’ Change God’s Word," Article C-Faith)

Oh boy. God is in 'a hard place,' and He needs Jesse and Jesse's mom to 'tell Him what to do." How do you control your future of health? Exercise faith. How do you control your future of financial prosperity? Exercise faith. Faith in what? Faith in faith. Your faith controls God. Your faith controls your destiny. Your faith is the end all. Have faith in your faith.

However, one of these days the markets are going to collapse despite all the faith in the world. One of these days our national prosperity will be gone despite our faith. If that day doesn't come in our lifetimes, we will all come to the place where the world as we know it will be changed for us personally. Our careers will come to an end. Our loved ones will die. Our health will deteriorate. We are not in control of either the world or our lives. But we know the One who is. Your faith will always be weak and insufficient. Your faith will let you down. Thank God that it is not the amount or quality of your faith that controls your future. God does. It is not faith in faith that we need. It is faith in God. He is good, and He is in control.

I wonder how many people who possess the calm assurance that God is in complete control of their futures, regardless of the size or quality of their faith, actually give to televangelists? It's a question I suspect Ole might answer with two words: "Very few."

Remembering Bob Vance and Others Who Have Sacrificed So That We Might Be Free

2011-11-11T11:11:00.237-06:00

Someone once said that "If you can pick up a book and read it thank a teacher. If you can read the book in English thank a soldier." Today I would like to thank the two men to the left for helping me read in English and not German. My paternal grandfather Reed Burleson fought at the Battle of the Bulge and received multiple medals, including the Purple Heart. My maternal grandfather Fred Cherry also fought on the battlefields of Europe, riding throughout France and Germany in his jeep that he nicknamed "John 3:16." Thanks to my mom, Mary Burleson, for the photographs. I am currently working on some background information on my grandfather Reed Burleson, particularly focusing on his landing in Normandy after the D-Day invasion and his movement into Belgium where Hitler's divisions of Panzer tanks turned back from their retreat and put up a fierce fight at the Battle of the Bulge. I pause to remember my grandfathers for their service to our country. I would like to also honor another man, a contemporary of both my grandfathers, a native of Enid, Oklahoma, and a graduate of Enid High School. His name is Leon Robert Vance.

Rachelle and I were in Normandy, France in September. We spent a day at Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery where over 10,000 Americans are buried France's soil. One cannot help but be deeply moved when thinking of all the soldiers who gave their lives in June 1944 as Americans joined Britains, Canadians, Australians and others as the combined Allied Forces invaded Europe to put an end to Hitler's despotism. A very compelling story, told in the exit lobby of the impressive American Cemetery and Memorial is that of Bob Vance of Enid, Oklahoma. Most Oklahomans do not know Bob Vance's heroic actions at Normandy, and that includes most people who live in Enid, Bob's hometown. Everyone has heard of Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Oklahoma, but few know the reason why the former Enid Army Air Corp base is now named after Bob Vance. This Veteran's Day of 11/11/11/ is posted in tribute to my grandfathers, Bob Vance and other American soldiers like just like them.

Leon Robert (Bob) Vance, Jr. was born in Enid, Oklahoma, on August 11, 1916. His father was the principle at Enid's Longfellow Middle School, and his mother was an Enid educator as well. Bob graduated from Enid High School in 1933. He had been an exceptional athlete and an honors student in high school, and after graduation Bob entered the University of Oklahoma and the ROTC program at OU. Bob attended the university for his freshman and sophomore years before transferring to the West Point Military Academy in 1935. Bob would spend four additional years at the Academy, graduating from West Point in 1939, part of the class that Newsweek magazine called in 1999 The Warrior Class because the graduates would go on to fight in WW II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Bob was training to become a pilot for the Army Air Corp (now called the Air Force). While at West Point he met a native New Yorker, Georgette Brown, and the day after his West Point graduation, Bob and Georgette were married at the Academy's chapel.

For the next five years Lieutenant Robert Vance would first be trained, and then train, Army Air Force pilots at various Air Force bases around the United States. He would sometimes wonder if the war would be over before he actually saw combat, but his expertise as a pilot trainer was both needed and rewarded. By 1944 he had become a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Air Force. One of Bob's best friends in the Army Air Corp, having met him early in his pilot training at San Angelo, Texas, was Lieutenant Horace S. Carswell. Carswell was a native Texan who had earned his wings in November 1938 and was subsequently assigned as an instructor in the Air Corp, just like Lieutenant Vance. The Vance and Carswell couples became fast friends. Both Vance and Carswell would eventually leave the Air Corp training program to fly combat in B-24 bombers. Both would arrive in different theaters of combat in April of 1944. Both would earn the Medal of Honor within six months of each other. Both would have Air Force bases named after them - Vance Air Force Base and Carswell Air Force Base.

Bob Vance's Actions at Normandy which Led to His Medal of Honor

Lieutenant Colonel Bob Vance kissed his wife and two year old daughter Sharon good bye and left for England in April of 1944. For two months he trained with other men in a B-24 bomber, preparing for D-Day and the invasion of Europe. Vance's combat mission would be to fly with a crew in a bomber named the Missouri Sue and drop bombs on the German lines located on the shores of France twenty four hours before invasion, softening the beach for the infantry landings that would arrive a few hours later. Early on June 5, 1944, the Missouri Sue took off from England for the bombing mission. The bombs failed to release on the first run over the target, so Lieutenant Colonel Vance ordered a 360 degree turn for a second pass. Somewhere in the process of the second bomb run Missouri Sue was repeatedly hit by German flak, killing the pilot, wounding several members of the crew, and nearly severing Bob Vance's right foot, pinning him to the floor of the plane. The crew fought to complete the mission and then turned the plane toward home. Three of the bomber's engines eventually shut down and the fourth had to be shut down to prevent a stall. The damaged plane showered gasoline throughout the trip back across the channel to England. The bomb bay doors remained open with an armed 500-pound bomb dangling precariously there from. Vance was the command pilot of the craft, and as the plane continued its forced descent from 10,000 feet, he ordered that all the crew parachute to safety. Unwilling to have the plane crash into the English landscape, particularly with a 500 pound bomb dangling from the bomb bay, Vance, still pinned to the floor with his severed foot, piloted the gliding plane back into the English channel where it crashed into the water. The force of the crash propelled Bob Vance from the plane and knocked him unconscious. Somehow he managed to float to the surface where he was eventually rescued. Unfortunately, Bob's career as a pilot was over. His right foot had been severed. The surviving ten men credited the actions of Bob Vance for their safe parachute landing on English land.

Vance's Recuperation and Tragic Death

Vance recuperated in England from his injuries for the next eight weeks. He wrote letters home describing to his wife and family the injuries he sustained, urging them not to worry, and that as soon as he was able, he would be on a medical flight home. His letters were initially filled with excitment and enthusiasm for Operation Overlord (the invasion of Europe), and he expressed pride for what his bombing crew had done in preparation for the landing. His spirits lowered, however, when he left the hospital for the first time, hobbling on his crutches in the streets of London, and was met by a small boy who looked him over, saw his missing foot and said, "Don't worry Yank, you won't miss it!" The emotional impact of realizing he would never fly again was enormous, and his depression increased when word came that his father had been killed in an aircraft accident.

The only thing that kept him going during his eight weeks of recovery was the knowledge that he would soon see his wife and small child. He made plans to leave England on a medical evacuation plane. Just before he left he discovered he had been nominated for the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions. On July 26, 1944 Vance joined other wounded soldiers as they boarded a transport plane for the trip back to America. His wife Georgette and Sharon, anxiously anticipated their loved one's arrival. Sharon, just over two years old, didn't understand much, but she could say, "Daddy's coming home!"

Bob Vance never made it. Somewhere between Newfoundland and Iceland the plane went down. The plane has never been discovered, nor has Bob Vance's body ever been recovered. Georgette received this telegram, informing her that her husband was missing in action. The family was stricken with grief. Just weeks later, the government told Georgette that her husband had been bestowed the Medal of Honor. She requested that offical ceremony be delayed until her daughter, Sharon, was old enough to comprehend what her father had done. Two years later, in 1946, Sharon Vance, Bob's four year old daughter, officially received on behalf of the Vance family the Medal of Honor which the U.S. government had bestowed upon her father, the highest recognition given American soldiers. Later, the Army Air Base in Enid would be renamed Vance Air Force Base.

On this Veteran's Day, at 11:11 a.m. 11/11/11, I say thank you to Bob Vance, my grandfathers, and others like them that when I read books, I read them in English.

In His Grace,

Wade Burleson

Unconditional Love for a Person Means Unconditional Approval of the Person

2011-11-10T15:11:00.010-06:00

This morning I came across a quote on Facebook that perplexed me. Troubled would be too strong of a word to describe my initial feelings when I read it. The quote simply nagged me; it hung on my mind like a piece of dead skin that can't naturally turn loose. So I finally dealt with it by analyzing the point being made and came to the conclusion that I disagree. The quote, unattributed, said:

"Some people mistake unconditional love with unconditional approval."

I think just the opposite is true. Unconditional love IS unconditional approval. If you unconditionally love someone it means that you unconditionally approve of that someone. Approval is defined by Websters' as "the belief that something or someone is worthy of your acceptance."

I think the author of the quote meant, "Some people mistake unconditional love for a person with unconditional approval of that person's actions." If that is what the quote actually said, I would agree. But that is not what the quote says. The object of the love and the object of the approval does not change from person to actions in the quote. For this reason I can't agree with it.

The trouble, in my opinion, is people don't understand that unconditional love of a person is unconditional approval of the person.

An Illustration

I know a father who did not approve of his seventeen year old daughter dating an older man. The relationship, from the perspective of the father, was unhealthy for his daughter. The father unconditionally loved his daughter and unconditionally approved of his daughter, but the father neither loved nor approved of the actions of his daughter in dating this man. The father gave his daughter two weeks to break up with her boyfriend and told her that if she could not, he would break off the relationship for her. After two weeks the daughter was unable to end the relationship, so the father went to the man and told him that he was forbidden to have any contact with his daughter, and if he violated those boundaries, he would be answering to the father. The father was gracious and kind to the man, explaining that this decision to break off the dating relationship was for the good of his daughter, whom he loved unconditionally.

Upon arriving home and telling his seventeen year old daughter what he had done, the daughter flew into rage. She yelled at the top of her lungs, "I hate you" over and over again. The father calmly, and gently told his daughter that he loved her even though she felt hatred toward him. He explained that even if she continued to feel hatred and expressed it verbally to her father until the day she died, he would always love and approve of her as a person. He intervened in her dating relationship because he loved his minor daughter and disapproved of his daughter's actions.

"But what if I run away and marry this man without your approval. What then?"

"Oh, please don't misunderstand sweetheart!" said the father. "You will always have my approval as a person, even if you run away and marry him. The fact that your mom and dad will not financially support you in your decision, assist you in continuing the relationship, or be a part of any wedding plans does not mean that we don't approve of you. On the contrary, it means that we love you. We see your relationship with this man as unhealthy, and if we didn't love you, we would not intervene! We will always unconditionally love you, and if you choose to bear the consequences of running away (the loss of financial support), we will love and approve of you just as I am doing right now while you are filled with hatred for me. Your actions never change our love and approval of you as a person. We unconditionally love you and accept you--period!"

The relationship the daughter had with the young man ended. In time, the girl met another man, the "man of her dreams," and she forgot all about her old flame. The one thing that did linger with her, however, was the feelings of being unconditionally loved by her father that day as she yelled "I hate you!" to him. Years later she would explain to her dad that his warm embrace and tender love for her as a person, even when she was a hate-filled daughter, taught her what genuine love and personal approval was all about.

Love for the Person in the Midst of Sin

Unconditional love--love that is independence of one's performance (agape love)--is THE mark of genuine Christianity. It is by this love that people know we are followers of Christ. Too love like this is a gift of grace. This love is magnetic and transforming. Once experienced, it changes you. Once it changes you, others are changed around you. Unconditional love of a person is unconditional approval of that person. That doesn't mean that you approve of all the actions of the person you love, it means that because you love that person and always approve that person, you will consistently do what is best for that person in the midst of his or her sin. You expose sin, never cover it. You call an action immoral because it is. You turn a person over to police because of a criminal action. In other words, you abhor that which should be abhorred--the action, not the person.

BECAUSE unconditional love is unconditional approval of that person, you find ways to communicate your love to that person in the midst of immorality, while helping to escape from it. You hang in there loving that person, even while turning the person over for his crimes, and even though the criminal makes life very uncomfortable. You risk being hated as you help the one you love identify, expose, and forsake sin. The unwillingness to allow any immoral or criminal action to drive you away is the sign you truly love and approve of a person.

Everybody of sane mind is sickened and revolted by the criminal actions of Jerry Sandusky. I've been wondering the last couple of days who in this world has really loved and approved of Jerry Sandusky the person. I'm not expecting you or me to love Jerry Sandusky; we don't even know him. I'm just wondering who the Sandusky in my life is?

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Why We Should Positively Teach the Gospel Rather than Engage in Polemics with Gusto

2011-11-06T00:00:00.003-05:00

I recently came across a blog post written by Tim Keller on his City to City Blog that spoke to my heart. The application for me and my ministry is clear, and I thought I would pass it on to see if it was as helpful to others. Tim wrote ....

D.M. Lloyd-Jones once had a memorable encounter with T.T. Shields, the pastor of Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto, and a leading defender of orthodoxy against the growing liberal theology of the churches in Canada. Shields regularly attacked other church leaders in both his preaching and his writings. Lloyd-Jones shared virtually the identical theological positions with Shields, but he believed "'that the Baptist leader (Shields) was sometimes too controversial, too denunciatory and too censorious.' Rather than helping young Christians by the strength of his polemics against liberal Protestants and Roman Catholics, Lloyd-Jones believed that Shields was losing the opportunity to influence those whose first need is positive teaching.” (I. Murray, D.M. Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, p.271). We should recall that Lloyd-Jones was quite willing to engage in polemics himself. He and John Stott clashed publicly over whether evangelicals should remain in the Church of England. (Lloyd-Jones said they should not.) And yet Lloyd-Jones opposed making polemics a major part of one’s ministry, and challenged Shields.

In their meeting, Shields asked Lloyd-Jones if he enjoyed reading the works of another contemporary defender of orthodoxy. Lloyd-Jones said that he seldom read the author, because, “he doesn’t help me spiritually.” Shields responded: “Surely you are helped by the way he makes mincemeat of the liberals?” Lloyd-Jones responded: “You can make mincemeat of the liberals and still be in trouble in your own soul.” This touched off an extended debate. At one point Shields said that he was only doing what Paul did to Peter—contradicting and opposing him. Lloyd-Jones responded “The effect of what Paul did was to win Peter round to his position and make him call him ‘our beloved brother Paul’ [2 Peter 3:15]. Can you say the same about the people whom you attack?” For this Shields had no answer. The simple fact was that his polemics were really designed simply to stigmatize and marginalize his opponents, not persuade them. Suddenly the younger Lloyd-Jones appealed to Shields in a bold way. In the 1920s, Shields had expected an appointment to McMaster University, but theological liberals blocked it. Lloyd-Jones pointed out that from that time it had changed the tone of his ministry. “Dr Shields, you used to be known as the Canadian Spurgeon, and you were…but over this McMaster University business in the early twenties you suddenly changed and became negative and denunciatory. I feel it has ruined your ministry. Why don’t you come back! Drop all this, preach the gospel to people positively and win them!” (Murray, p.273)

On the lips of someone else, this could be seen as an appeal to “just preach Jesus” and not care about sound doctrine. But it is hard to accuse Lloyd-Jones of that. Rather, Lloyd-Jones was standing in the tradition of Gillespie and Alexander. Polemics is medicine, not food. Without medicine we will surely die—we can’t live without it. This is why “polemical theology’ must be a required part of every theological curriculum. Yet we cannot live on medicine. If you engage in polemics with relish and joy—if polemics takes up a significant percentage or even a majority of your time and energy—it is like trying to live on medicine alone. It won’t work, for the church or for you. That was Lloyd-Jones’s message.

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Spiritual Scorecards and the Sacred Diadem of Jesus Christ

2011-11-03T15:48:00.006-05:00

There are a few things in professional Christendom that peave me. At the top of the list is the tendency for Christian people to keep score of how holy they are compared to others. It's never outright stated that "I'm a better Christian" than so and so, but you can't miss the arrogance of those who measure their holiness by what they do or don't do in this life. From tithing to abstaining from alcohol, from attending church visitation to avoiding movie houses, the checklists and scorecards for Christians vary from church to church and denomination to denomination. The words "godly man" or "godly woman" are thrown around as if what makes a person godly is their performance morally or religiously. I'd like to show the dangerous consequences of trusting in any personal activities, no matter how moral or good they are, for the guarantee that you will never be cut off from the goodness of God. The Scripture is explicit that there is only One person considered "Holy to the Lord" and this Person, Jesus Christ, is our holiness (I Corinthians 1: 30).

“Make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it as on a seal: HOLY TO THE LORD. Fasten a blue cord to it to attach it to the turban; it is to be on the front of the turban. It will be on Aaron’s forehead, and he will bear the guilt involved in the sacred gifts the Israelites consecrate, whatever their gifts may be. It will be on Aaron’s forehead continually so that they will be acceptable to the Lord." (Exodus 28:36-38).

This golden plate, or the Sacred Diadem ('holy crown) of the High Priest had two Hebrew words enscribed on it. Translated into English these words mean "Holy to the Lord." Or in more precise language, "You alone are holy to the Lord." The ancient High Priest of Israel is a picture (type) of the Great High Priest Jesus Christ. The Scripture is clear that there is none like the Son of God, nor will there ever be any like Him. He alone is holy to the Lord. The High Priest of Israel represented the people of Israel before Yahweh by having their names emblazoned on his breastplate and their names engraved on the precious stones on his shoulders. So too, Jesus Christ, the Great High Priest whom the ancients priests foreshadowed, represents His people before the throne of God. The sacred diadem of Christ reminds us that He alone is holy to the Lord, and therefore we should remember ...

I. The holiness of Christ (the sacred diadem) is the only thing in which we may boast as a believer.

The Hebrew word translated “plate” in Exodus 28 is tsits, elswhere translated “flower” or “blossom” in the Old Testament. Flowers (tsits) adorned the inner walls and the pillars of Solomon’s Temple, adding beauty, grace, and charm to the Temple. So too the holiness of Christ, to which the sacred diadem points, is Christ's glory and beauty. Apart from Christ's holiness, man has none.

Let me show you:

The word tsits is also found in Psalm 103:15: “As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower [tsits] of the field.” Likwise, the prophet Isaiah likens man’s glory to a fading flower and says: “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers [tsits] of the field. The grass withers and the flowers [tsits] fall…” (40:6-8). Whatever glory you perceive in your holy acts is like a flower that fades in direct sunlight.

Your righteous acts are like filthy rags. There is nothing that you do in this life that is not in one way or another stained with sin before God. Everything you do, no matter how wonderful you deem it to be, is in some fashion tainted with your selfishness or some other type of sin. The Bible is very clear that there can be no holiness scorekeeping in the Christian life because we never can get on the scoreboard. We are unholy people. “You alone, my eternal High Priest, are holy to the Lord.” When we come to faith in Christ HE (the Lord Jesus) becomes your holiness. Listen to these verses:

"But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. ²⁸ God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, ²⁹ so that no one may boast before him. ³⁰ It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, our holiness and our redemption. " (I Cor. 1:26-30.)

II. The holiness of Christ (the sacred diadem) is the guarantee of every spiritual blessing we have from God.

The diadem rested on “Aaron’s forehead.” Leviticus 13:42-46 teaches that a severe form of leprosy (a type of sin) appeared on the foreheads of people in the form of reddish-white sores. The infected person had to wear torn clothes and let his hair be unkempt. He was required to put his hand to his upper lip and cry, “Unclean, unclean!” He also had to live in isolation outside the camp or city.

In 2 Chronicles 26 there is an astonishing story of King Uzziah contracting this leprosy. He reigned fifty-two years in Jerusalem and did a great many noble and honorable things for which he was commended by all the people. But spiritual pride took hold of him and he entered the Temple of the Lord to burn incense. The priests alone held the exclusive right to enter the Temple, but Uzziah felt his actions made him worthy before the Lord. Azariah the priest tried to talk sense into the king, reminding him that that the king was unworthy before the Lord. The king became angry. We read:

“And while he was raging at the priests in their presence…leprosy broke out on his forehead…so they hurried him out. Indeed, he himself was eager to leave, because the Lord had afflicted him. King Uzziah had leprosy until the day he died. He lived in a separate house – leprous, and excluded from the temple of the Lord.”

The pride of man is revealed in the leprosy on the forehead. The holiness of Christ is revealed in the sacred diadem on the High Priest's forehead. Christ exchanged his holy diadem for a crown of thorns and bled at the very place mans' sin is revealed. The reason spiritual scorekeeping of any kind is so deadly is because when a man boasts in his actions for the Lord, he is infected with Uzziah's disease. There is nothing worse than believing yourself holy before the Lord when the Lord emphatically has stated throughout Scripture that nobody but His Son is considered holy to Him.

III. The sacred diadem is the reason we are called ‘co-heirs’ with Jesus Christ.

“Now if we are children, then we are heirs; heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (Romans 8:17).

The Scripture does not call us secondary heirs or sub-heirs; the word is specifically co-heirs of Jesus Christ. This means that in this life and in heaven, you are not rewarded as an heir of God based upon your performance. You are rewarded every spiritual blessing due to Jesus Christ and His obedience to God. As a believer in Christ, His holiness has become your holiness.

So, the next time somebody tries to tell you that the favor of God is due to your obedience to any command, you remind that well-meaning person that God's favor is yours because His Son's holiness is yours.

Christ exchanged His sacred diadem for a crown of thorns so that your leprosy might be given to Him at Calvary and His holiness might be granted to you eternally.

A Bible Passage that Provides Help to Those Who Struggle with the Desire to Be Rich

2011-11-02T10:52:00.008-05:00

(6). But godliness with contentment is great gain.

(7). For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.

(8). And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.

(9). But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.

(10). For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

(I Timothy 6:6-10)

I. There is a problem with money that the Apostle clearly defines . . . "they that will be rich" (v.9).

The problem is not those that are rich, but those that "covet" riches or grasp after wealth.

John Gill says of this verse, "Some rich men are good men, and do much good with their riches; and are as free from temptations and snares, and foolish and hurtful lusts as other persons as Abraham, Joseph of Arimathea, Gaus, and others.

(A). The desire to be rich leads to temptation . . . "they fall into temptation" (v.9)

To "fall" into temptation is different from "jumping" into it. The desire to be rich gradually and imperceptably changes character and conduct. .

(B). The desire to be rich leads to a trap . . ."they fall into a snare" (v.9)

The Apostle calls it a "snare" and he uses the same word in I Timothy 3:7 when he speaks of "the snare of the devil." Your enemy sets a trap in order to catch you. It may be a trap where you have to choose between family and riches.

(C). The desire to be rich leads to trouble. . . "they fall into hurtful lusts" (v.9).

You can't blame all your problems on the devil. If you seek to be wealthy, there are "many foolish and hurtful lusts" which will sink you. Over time your lusts for more will lead you into greater trouble. The desire for wealth is never fully satisfied within you. Greed, if not corrected will ruin you, and it will ultimately destroy you ("perdition" speaks of judgment).

II. The are specific pains that come from the love of money that the Apostle vividly describes. . . "they pierced themselves through with many sorrows" (v.10).

Paul gives to Timothy a warning using graphic language of an arrow or a spear piercing the body. In our day, the words of Paul might have been, "Timothy, those who love money shoot themselves in the foot." What are some of the arrows of sorrows that bring pain to the person who is constantly craving after riches or money? In his excellent book The Upside Down Kingdom, Donald Kraybill, offers some insight into the hurts we bring.

The arrow called "STRANGLER" . . . (Luke 8:14).
In the parable of the sower, Jesus says people who hear the word of God, but are caught up in a desire for riches are like seeds thrown onto thorny ground -- "they are choked by the cares, riches and pleasures of life." Do you want your spiritual life strangled? The love of money chokes out the vitality of your spiritual life. Greed is a silent killer, and will destroy you.

The arrow called "WORRIER" . . . (Luke 12:29-34).
Jesus said, "Do not be of anxious mind (about material things) . . . but provide for yourselves treasure in the heavens (relationships) where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Jesus understood that wealth brings anxiety in that the yesterdays bring regrets and the tomorrows bring worry.

The arrow called "BLINDER" . . . (Luke 16:19-23).
In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, we see "There was a certain rich man who fared well . . . but died and was buried. And in hell he lifted up his eyes . . ." Riches have a way of blinding a person to the really important things of life. Greed will blind you like the rich man was blinded. The love of money will cause you to miss what should truly be loved in life.

The arrow called "CONSOLER" . . . (Luke 6:24).
Jesus said, "Woe to you who are rich (spent your loved with the craving to accumulate riches), you have received your consolation" Whereas the righteous will receive their comfort after death, the only comfort the greedy obtain is that which they have in life.

III. There is a principle about money that is delivered by the Apostle Paul which will keep you from falling into traps and pain . . . "godliness with contentment is great gain" (v.6).

The word contentment is the word "self-sufficiency." It implies by Paul that "the person in relationship with Christ is a person that should be independent of outward circumstances, enabling him to maintain a spiritual equilibrium in the midst of both favorable circumstances and those which are adverse" Kenneth Wuest.

How is this possible? How is it possible to not crave after riches? The ability to have contentment in this life is possible when you understand the teaching of verse 7.

"For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out" (v.7).

The phrase "it is certain" (hoti) is better translated "because."

So that what Paul is saying is "we brought nothing into this world, because we can carry nothing out."

Nothing this world gives you adds to your value as a person eternally. No amount of money or the leisure, prestige, fame and power that money brings adds one thing to who you ultimately are as a person. You brought nothing into this world because God is reminding you that you will take nothing out of this world. What you leave this life with is a relationship with your Creator and other people.

That's all you take with you.

That's why we should never desire to be rich in anything other than personal relationships.

On Glass Windows and Curtains: The Psychology of Withdrawing from Public View

2011-10-31T20:08:00.007-05:00

My wife and I watched the 60 Minutes interview with the family members of Bernie Madoff, the man who swindled American people out of 50 billion dollars through an elaborate Ponzi scheme disguised as a top-tier New York investment company. Andrew Madoff and his mother, Ruth Madoff, deny any knowledge of Bernie's twenty year fraud, which is now considered the largest white collar corruption case in America's history. The interview was so riveting that I purchased the book--released today--which compelled the Madoff family to grant their interview with 60 Minutes. Truth and Consequences is the account of life inside the Madoff family from the perspective of Andrew Madoff, Andrew's fiance Catherine Hooper, and Ruth Madoff.

Chapter One, entitled "An Unthinkable Turn of Events" is revealing. Carolyn Hooper recounts the day that her fiance turned his father into the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud. The couple lived together in a posh Upper East Side apartment with Andrew's two teenage girls and Catherine's three year old daughter. The apartment had floor to ceiling windows, common for New York skyline views. When Catherine, who is an expert in helping Fortune 500 companies survive catostrophic events, learned of the extraordinary extent of her future father-in-law's fraudulent activities, she says that the first question that came to her mind was one of survival: "How do we get to tomorrow?"

"The answer came to her (Catherine) almost immediately: curtains.
She would put them up within twenty-four hours; everything else, she would deal with later."

I couldn't help but think of Southern Baptist evangelist Sammy Nuckolls and his family when I read the above two sentences. After being arrested on felony charges, Sammy Nuckolls put curtains up. Sammy is an expert in social media, but within hours of the charges being made public, Sammy's Facebook account was deleted, his Twitter account was deleted, and his web page was deleted. Maybe some would find Sammy's actions understandable under the circumstances, but what is surprising to me is how fast the Southern Baptist Convention's Lifeway Resources, who used Sammy as a guest speaker for SBC summer youth camps for the past ten years, immediately pulled down any web page, Internet article or other on-line information that associated Sammy with the SBC.

The curtains were put up very fast.

I realize that in our litigious society the first reaction of people in trouble, or those associated with people in trouble, is to pull the curtains and withdraw from anyone and everyone. In our Internet age, the on-line curtain is thrown up via the DELETE button.

My question is "Why do Christians do the very thing the world does when trouble comes?" Why do we pull the curtains and keep information from people? Why do we hide the truth of what has actually occurred to try to alter or stem public opinion? Why do we try to act as if things have not really happened the way they actually did? Should we not want all information, for the sake of any potential victims, available for review by the public? Should we not be asking questions like, 'How many victims are out there?' Should not the Executive Office of the SBC issue some kind of statement encouraging those who may have been victims of Sammy's crimes to contact law enforcement? Should not we leave the information of Sammy's involvement with the SBC up for all to see and simply issue a statement condemning his illegal activities and expressing our desire to help potential victims?

I have already attempted to contact Sammy and let him know of my prayers for him and his family. He knows of our desire to help him, his wife and child during this justly difficult time. We will not abandon sinners. However, we will also be open and honest about the horrible nature of the crimes Sammy has confessed to committing. He should go to jail to help society understand the danger of such invasive criminal actions. I do not know the victims (they, rightfully, have not been publicly identified). I am just as concerned for them, and if they read this blog, I hope they know that there are people who genuinely care for them.

Christian organizations must learn how to deal with problems and not put up curtains or the they will find it very time consuming as they constantly attempt to re-hang the curtains that others keep pulling down. The Internet has become a game changer. The professional organizations of the future will get out in front of tough issues--keeping the glass uncovered--and be respected for their actions. Those who continually put up curtains will be seen as organizations with something to hide.

Theological Grace Must Become Practical Grace Or It Is Actually No Grace at All

2011-10-24T10:51:00.006-05:00

Yesterday morning I took as a text Hebrews 7:25 where it is said, "He (Christ) is able to save them to the uttermost that come to God by Him." I pointed out that the KJV word "uttermost" is far superior to the actual meaning of the Greek word panteles than "forever," which is the word chosen by the NIV and NAS translators. It is true that God saves us forever, but the teaching of this verse is that Christ saves us to the "uttermost"--which means "completely" or "totally" or "fully."

The million dollar question is "Christ saves us from 'what' to the uttermost?' I pointed out that Christ saves us from "being 'cut off' from the goodness of God." This is the teaching of Romans 11:22 where the Bible says "Behold the goodness and severity of God" and proceeds to identify in the very next verse the people who continue in God's goodness (those who are in Christ) and then identifies the people who are "cut off" from God's goodness (those who are not in Christ). Being cut off from God's goodness is a very severe thing to experience (thus, the imperative "Behold [contemplate] God's severity"). There is a popular saying that "God is good all the time and all the time God is good." This saying contains only partial truth; God is good all the time to those "who come to Him by Christ." Those who refuse Christ are 'cut off' from God's goodness. By the way, to be "cut off" from the goodness of God is the biblical definition of hell. Hell is not Dante's version of a sadomasochist Creator who tortures sinners. Hell, or rather 'the biblical hell,' is a prison where lawbreakers are 'cut off' from the Creator's goodness.

Jesus Christ delivers (saves) those who trust Him from the severe danger of being cut off from God's goodness.

I cautioned everyone yesterday not to consider God's goodness only in terms of health, wealth and other material or temporal blessings. These things are good and definitely comprise some of the blessings that come from God ('for it is God who gives you the power to have wealth'), but these things are not God's greatest blessings. A rich, healthy, powerful man can be 'cut off' from experiencing God's goodness spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically. The internal knowledge that God is good to you eternally is far superior to the temporal experience of material blessings externally. A believer in Christ can have cancer, lose a job, or experience family difficulties and still be confident that they are smack dab in the middle of God's goodness. Christ delivers us from ever being, in any form or fashion, cut off from God's goodness, no matter how things seem around us.

Sunday Night's Experience of Pain

Twelve hours after preaching that message three times Sunday morning, I am asked to give a death notification to a family in our community. A man in his fifties, a husband and a father, died suddenly of a heart attack. His daughter, a woman in her twenties with two children of her own, heard the news that her father had died from my lips and fell apart emotionally, psychologically and physically. My heart went out to this young lady. She and her husband were recently separated. She had also lost her job as an aid at a hospital this past month, and was without work herself. When I found her to give her the news of her father's death, she was in the process of moving out of her rundown rental home because she and her two kids had been evicted. Her oldest child is autistic and the pressures of her current situation compounded by the shocking news of her father's death caused her to collapse on the front porch. Struggling to breathe, she rasped, "I can't handle this.. I can't handle this..."

I realized at that moment that the message I had preached that morning was completely useless to this young lady. Don't misunderstand; the message of God's grace in Jesus Christ is not useless. It was useless to this young lady at that moment. Theological grace must become practical grace or there is actually no grace at all. Not knowing the truth, it was impossible for her to experience the truth.

On the other hand, there are some who hear the truth at church, but don't put it into practice. Unless we hear the truth of God's grace in Christ, accept it, and then apply the truth in real life situations, biblical truth is just something we learn in Sunday School and church. We preachers have a tendency to spend too much time in the classroom and not enough time in the homes of our students.

Fortunately for both me and this young lady, her grandfather--the very father of the man who had just died--was soon on the porch, offering his warm embrace, gentle comfort, and strong, reassuring words to his granddaughter. The message of God's grace in Christ has made a difference in this man's life. He not only hears it every Sunday, he believes it and applies it ... as evidenced by his reaction to the news of the death of his only son. I overheard him say to his granddaughter, "Sweetheart, this is part of God's plan for us. We can trust Him."

I left that porch questioning my ministry for all the right reasons. Do I understand the mess that many people are in or have made of their lives? Do I truly comprehend the pressures of life? Is Sunday morning more than just a Bible lesson? Could I honestly react to the news of my son dying prematurely in the same manner as the father I had just observed? Is the goodness of God in Christ, particularly when circumstances seem so dark and painful, as easily relayed upon as I make it?

I went to bed thankful for my church member who displayed for me that unless one's theology of grace is actually lived out grace becomes just a word people use in songs and sermons on Sunday.

The Real Problem in the SBC is Formulaic Evangelism that is Cultish and Not Christian

2011-10-21T10:32:00.008-05:00

When the woman with the issue of blood reached out and touched the garment of Jesus, "power" (KJV: 'virtue') flowed from the Christ to the woman and she was instantly healed. When the blind man needed sight, Jesus put spittle in His eyes and the man saw "men as trees walking." Jesus then put additional spit in his eyes, and the blind man was progressive healing was completed. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead he shouted an imperative and the dead man's name -- "Lazarus come forth." But when Jesus raised the little girl from death He gently took her by the hand and quietly commanded, "Little girl, arise." When Christ fed the five thousand His disciples reached into the baskets and perpetually pulled out the meat and bread. However, when Jesus turned the water into wine, unknown and unnamed servants drew the newly fashioned wine from ceremonial water barrels. When the lame man was lowered through the roof, Jesus forgave the man his sins, and only then healed the man of his lameness to correct the misconceptions of the Pharisees and to prove the lame man's sins were actually forgiven. On the other hand, when the crippled man at the Pool of Siloam found himself laboring under the mistaken belief that angels stirred the waters of the pool and the first person into the pool after the stirring would be miraculously healed, Jesus neither corrected the misconceptions nor used the healing to proclaim His power to forgive sins. When Jesus Christ transformed the lives of sinners during His earthly ministry He sometimes spoke during the healings. At other times Jesus healed silently. Jesus would sometimes bring healing immediately and instantaneously, but at other times He would heal progressively. Jesus sometimes allowed people to publicly rejoice over His power, but at other times Jesus demanded that those He healed remain silent about Him.

The power of Jesus Christ to transform broken lives cannot be boxed and bowed in any religious ritual that looks the same every single time.

There are some independent, fundamental Southern Baptists who have left the gospel. They have, for some reason, concluded that the only way Jesus can transform a life is through 'raising a hand' to express a willingness to be saved, to pray a 'sinner's prayer' as a testimony of that willingness, and then 'walking an aisle' during a worship service to 'publicly declare your private prayer.' The notion that people who struggle with sin in their lives and are in need of a Savior are somehow cured by following this peculiar ritual borders on cultic. There is a 'common language,' a 'common experience,' a 'common ritual,' etc... Check out the definition of the word 'cult' and you will see that it is the root word of 'culture.' Southern Baptists have developed a 'culture' of ritual that is ultimately anti-Scriptural and anti-Christ. It makes no difference that there are good motives in the leaders who continue to enforce the ritual upon unsuspecting men and women. Good intentions don't count. When you replace the Person of Jesus Christ with a process, you have lost the gospel. When you cause a sinner to trust in a ritualistic service and not the Risen Savior, you have made the religious convert twice the citizen of hell.

Massive damage has been done in the Southern Baptist Convention through both children and adults being led to believe that their salvations are tied up in something they do rather than in Person and performance of Jesus Christ on their behalf. It is the righteous life of Christ, the substitutionary death of Christ at Calvary, and the resurrection of Christ from the grave that is to be believed. There is power in the cross. "Asking Jesus into your heart" in a formulatic prayer emphasises a prayer ritual. Believing in what Jesus Christ has done for you as your Savior is transforming faith. Faith in Christ saves, not faith in a ritual. Ritualism in Southern Baptist circles is more damaging than ritualists can ever perceive. Dishonor is given to the name of Christ when our evangelism short cuts the work of the Holy Spirit in conviction, illumination and conversion. Southern Baptist ritualistic evangelism is more damning than an open denial of the gospel. To seek to convince any sinner that a religious ritual magically conveys salvation, instead of patiently and lovingly explaining the message of the good news in Jesus Christ and urging the hearer to simply believe on Christ, is turning the gospel of Christ's kingdom into a carnival sideshow at best or a spiritualized death chamber at worst.

We have more than a few independent, fundamentalists within the Southern Baptist Convention who are attempting to identify problems we have in the SBC in terms of evangelism. Until these highly formulaic evangelists turn from their destructive ritualistic methods, their words are empty and powerless.

{W}hole - by Lisa Whittle: A Book Your Small Group Needs to Read and Discuss

2011-10-18T18:25:00.000-05:00

I sometimes find myself cynical when hearing celebrity Christians speak or when reading contempary Christian books. Having learned in my early years about 'the faith once delivered to the saints' from writers like John Owen, Charles Spurgeon and C.S. Lewis, the writings of many modern Christian writers seem peurile and too spiritually sweet and syrupy for my taste. I like Christians who are gritty, honest and transparent; people who don't spiritualize away their weaknesses or act as if their lives are above the doubts and frailties that all Christians experience in their journey. The inspired Scriptures reveal to us weak men and women who find their glory in the power of the gospel. It feels to me like many modern Christians mistakenly believe spiritual power is found in never admitting mistakes.

Lisa Whittle's new book Whole satiates my appetite for a Christian book that speaks the kind of language that rings authentic. She rightly understands that "what happens between Jesus and us in the pages of our earthly journey is our greatest vehicle for showing people the God of transformation." That is our collective story. Or more precisely that is His story in our lives. Lisa's transparent and gritty confession of personal doubt, spiritual game-playing, and failure makes the message of Christ ring powerful. Her gift of writing enabled me to make the transfer from Lisa's own story my own personal experiences and the story Christ is writing in my life. {W}hole helps you understand how God designs the holes in our lives so that He can fill them.

The study questions at the end of each chapter, as well as the study guides, will spark the kind of discussion that grace churches cherish but religious people eschew. They are the kind of questions that get beyond the moral platitudes we so often hear in church, and for that reason alone, your small groups should purchase this book for an eight week study that will lead them to bridge the disconnect between one's confession and experience.

George Barna's recently surveyed fifteen thousand people nation wide, and in his new book Maximum Faith, he reveals that less than one in twenty-five people have ever experienced spiritual brokenness. The gospel writers spoke of Christ residing in "clay jars," meaning our lives--which are fragile and breakable--"to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us" (II Corinthians 4:7). The story of our lives, and every one of us has a story, is a story of brokenness and the power of Christ transforming us through our brokenness.

{W}hole is worth every dollar you spend in getting it for your Sunday School class or small group. Get your copies today.

A Name Change for Southern Baptists Is Not Near as Big of a Deal As Some Would Make It

2011-10-11T20:45:00.001-05:00

It's interesting to read the amount of dogmatism prevalent in the words of those pontificating against a potential name change for the Southern Baptist Convention. The natural remedy for such dogmatism is research. Are there organizations that have successfully gone through a name change? Are there historical precedents that would warrant the adoption of a change in name for the Southern Baptist Convention?

In 1813 Baptist missionary Luther Rice returned to the United States from India for the purpose of coordinating a unified effort among Baptist associations and churches to support "foreign missions." The Baptists whom Rice visited in his tour of the major cities of the United States were overwhelmingly in favor of a Baptist organization to fund missions. As a result of Rice's personal labors and extensive correspondence, a meeting of Baptist delegates from eleven States and the District of Columbia was held in Philadelphia on May 18, 1814. The General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States was duly organized. Soon, however, the name of this missionary convention changed to The Triennial Convention for practical reasons, including the fact that Baptists convened every three years and that the simple two word name was much easier to speak and write. Note there was not even the word "Baptist" in the new name Triennial Convention.

It was not long before the Triennial Convention's southern Baptist churches formed the Southern Baptist Convention (est. 1845), splitting with northern Baptists over the issue of slavery. Within 30 years (1815 to 1845) the Southern Baptist Convention evolved through three name changes. You would be hardpressed to find anyone who could logically claim that one name change for the Southern Baptist Convention within the past 170 years (1845 to 2012) might be excessive based upon an understanding of Southern Baptist history.

One of the first missionaries the Triennial Convention supported was Isaac McCoy. Isaac was a missionary to Native American Indians on the American frontier, sometimes called "the wilderness." McCoy is the man who originally surveyed what we now call Oklahoma as he looked for a beautiful and permanent land to resettle the Indians who were being overrun by white settlers. McCoy regularly corresponded with both Luther Rice and William Staughton, the Triennial Convention's secretary/treasurer. McCoy kept these men updated on his mission work as well as his government surveying work.

Unfortunately, in early 1820 McCoy encountered difficulties in the support Luther Rice and William Staughton had given him for the previous six years. It seems the two men had turned their focus and attention on the Triennial Convention starting a new college in Washington, D.C. The men moved the headquarters of the Triennial Convention to the nation's capital and in 1821 opened Columbian College for the purpose of educating people of all sects, not just Baptist. The non-sectarian policy was written into the founding documents by Luther Rice, William Staughton and other leaders of the Triennial Convention.

The college Luther Rice and William Staughton helped found would change her name to Columbian University in 1873. The university's name would then be changed to George Washington University in 1910. Baptist William Staughton was the first President of Columbian College. The first seven Presidents were all ordained Baptist ministers. Baptist missionary Luther Rice became the treasurer of the university in 1826 and served in that capacity until his death in 1836. It could rightly be said that George Washington University, the most expensive university in America, has more of a Baptist history than Baylor, Samford, Wake Forest or any other Baptist college or university.

George Washington University has educated thousands of well-known Americans. Colin Powell received his MBA at George Washington while serving as a White House fellow. J. Edgar Hoover studied law at George Washington while working at the Library of Congress. Jacqueline Bouvier (later Mrs. John F. Kennedy) finished her bachelor’s in French literature at George Washington while working as a photographer for the Washington Times-Herald. GWU is considered one of the premier universities in the United States.

Whether or not the Southern Baptist Convention should change her name is a question that will be answered by voters of the Southern Baptist Convention. The two arguments that have no place within the current debate are (1). A potential name change for the SBC has never happened before, and/or (2). A name change will have disasterous consquences for the Convention.

History proves those arguments false.

The Test of Genuine Christianity Is Best Conducted in the Crucibles of Life

2011-10-10T11:49:00.001-05:00

A crushed flower

Richard Wurmbrand was imprisoned by the Soviets for smuggling Bibles into communist countries. Wurmbrand would spend years in prison, separated from family and friends because of his faith in Christ and his belief that others behind the Iron Curtain should have access to the Word of God. In the face of horrible persecution and mistreatment, Wurmbrandt never accused his tormentors of injustice, never condemned them for their actions, and never treated them with contempt. Rather, Wurmbrand loved his persecutors unconditionally. This kind of love is supernatural, the product of divine grace. Agape love is the mark of true Christianity. Dee Parsons reminded me today of a quote from Richard Wurmbrand that is worthy of our mental memorization and intentional imitation.

“When you crush a flower, it rewards you by giving you back it’s perfume. When you crush a Christian, he rewards you by giving you back his love.”

The test for genuine Christianity is best conducted in the vexing crucible and not the church vestibule.

The Roots of the Real Red River Rivalry

2011-10-03T22:14:00.008-05:00

This Saturday the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas will play in a ball game the media calls The Red River Rivalry. The game rattles the nerves and boils the emotions of people in Oklahoma and Texas. What most don't realize is that there was a real Red River Rivalry that has lasted for 150 years. The Oklahoma and Texas border dispute which involves the Red River began with a navigating error by a soldier who would become a Civil War general, necessitated a U.S. President calling out federal troops to clear the disputed land of Texans, and ultimately would only be resolved by a decision of the United States Supreme Court.

In 1803 Thomas Jefferson purchased land from Napoleon in a transaction that became known as The Louisana Purchase. The southern most portion of the land, including modern day Oklahoma, formed the United States border with Spain. The 1819 Adams-Onis Treaty with Spain established the Red River, the river that now forms the border between Texas and Oklahoma, as the southern boundary line between the U.S. and Spain. In addition, the 100th Meridian, north from the Red River to the Arkansas River (a river in the territory that would eventually become Kansas), was established as the western boundary of the United States. When Mexico became independent of Spain in 1821, the U.S. signed a treaty recognizing Mexico's boundaries as the same as the 1819 treaty. In 1837, Texas seceded from Mexico and proclaimed itself an independent nation. The following year the Republic of Texas concluded a treaty with the United States, and once again, the United States recognized the same boundaries.

Though the Red River and the 100th Meridian were considered the boundaries between the U.S. and Texas, nobody really explored the boundaries to set definitive markers until the summer of 1852. In that summer, two young U.S. soldiers stationed in Indian Territory (Oklahoma), Captain Randolph Marcy and Captain George B. McClellan, were sent by the government to explore the upper Red River to find its source and mark the 100th meridian. Captain McClellan, who himself would later (1861) become a general and be appointed by President Lincoln as general-in-chief of the Union Army, used astronomical observations to establish the 100th meridian. However, McClellan made a mistake in his navigation. He placed the meridian one degree east of its actual location. This made the meridian intersect the Red River at a point near the mouth of the North Fork of the Red River. McLellan and Marcy followed the North Fork of the Red River north, falsely believing the North Fork to be the Red River.

McClellan's mistake would not be discovered for five years, but by that time, Texans had already taken up residence in the area between the North Fork of the Red River and the real Red River (the light red colored land pictured in the map). On February 9, 1860, Texas called this land Greer County, named in honor of John A. Greer, the former lieutenant governor of Texas. The new county's boundaries were the area east of the 100th meridian and between the north and south forks of the Red River, Texas recognized the true 100th meridian as the eastern boundary of the Texas Panhandle but claimed the North Fork as the main branch of the Red River. Texas argued that General McClellan had claimed the North Fork was the main fork of the Red River back in 1852. Based on McClellan's error, Texas would claim sovereignty over Greer County for almost forty years.

In 1890 the United States sought to establish Oklahoma as a new Territory. A lawsuit was filed by the attorney general the United States to recognize Greer County as part of Oklahoma and not Texas. After hearing all the testimony and after examining all the documents, the Supreme Court held that the central issue was "what did the negotiators of the Treaty of 1819 believe the boundary to be at the time they were presenting the treaty for ratification by both national governments (Spain and the U.S.)." In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that the southern branch of the Red River was the main original border of 1819. As a result, the land between the North Fork River and the Red River belonged to the United States (and Oklahoma) and not Texas. In 1896 Greer County became part of Oklahoma Territory and in 1907 the new state of Oklahoma divided the 1.5 million acres into four counties: Beckham, Harmon, Greer and Jackson counties.

However, the border dispute between Texas and Oklahoma did not end. In 1918 wildcat oil men found oil in north Texas. Wells were drilled by Texans as close to the Red River as possible, peven actually drilling into the river. Oklahoma land owners asserted that oil was being pumped from the Oklahoma side into Texas pocketbooks. Oklahomans demanded royalty payments asserting that the middle of the Red River to the south bank was Oklahoma land. The State of Oklahoma filed suit in the U.S. Supreme Court against the State of Texas. Eventually the courts decided that the entire Red River was in Oklahoma and the state of Texas only begins on the south bank. However, the bed of the Red River expands and contracts through the natural processes of erosion and accretion. The question eventually became "Where is the south bank of the Red River?" Determining the exact location of the south bank required a great deal of legal work and surveying. In 1991 the state legislatures of Oklahoma and Texas created Red River Boundary Commissions and charged them with establishing a fixed and permanent boundary. In the spring of 1999 the commissions decided "the vegetation line along the south bank of the Red River extending on a line from the 100th Meridian east to Lake Texoma as the northern border of Texas." The 1999 agreement required the Oklahoma/Texas border be marked with visible landmarks. Texas Gov. George W. Bush signed the resulting legislation into law on May 24, 1999 and Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating signed the agreement into law on June 4 of the same year. In Washington, D.C., Congress affirmed the agreement, which became federal law on August 31, 2000. 150 years of border dispute was finally resolved at the dawn of the 21st millenium.

The only remaining Red River battle will take place Saturday.

No Man Is An Island: The Great Lesson of Friendship from John Donne

2011-09-26T16:12:00.003-05:00

Rachelle and I are standing before the church that one of my direct maternal ancestors, John Donne, served as Dean (pastor) from 1631 to 1641. The church is St. Paul's Cathedral in London, England and is an iconic symbol of English Anglicanism. Princess Charles married Diana here before a world-wide television audience in 1981. Three state funerals have been held in St. Paul's, Lord Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), The Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852), and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965). This week the Queen made known the state's desire to give former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher the fourth state funeral and burial at St. Paul's. The church was originally built of wood in A.D. 604 in the spot that the massive marbel and stone cathedral now stands, beautifully constructed in 1669 by renowned architect Christopher Wren.

Many Americans know little about John Donne, but Rachelle and I, along with our friends Kyle and Carol, were all afforded free entrance and a personal escort within the cathedral when the staff were told of my lineage. In addition, though photographs are forbidden in the cathedral, the staff gave permission for my wife to take my photograph alongside the iconic John Donne monument (see picture to the right). The John Donne statue is the only monument in St. Paul's to survive the Great London Fire of 1666 unscathed. Though one can still see the black scorch marks of the great fire at the base of the marble, the statue of Donne himself is intact. It seems that John Donne is as iconic to the learned British as the cathedral itself. King James I convinced my ancestor to become the pastor of St. Paul's, even though Donne sought to avoid the Anglican priesthood. John Donne had a very effective pastoral ministry and was considered the finest preacher St. Paul's has ever had (that assessment comes from the senior guide of St. Paul's, not me). Interestingly, John Donne is probably better known for his poetry than his preaching, including the often quoted meditation, even in America, entitled "No Man Is An Island."

"No man is an island, entire of himself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were ...

Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

John Donne wrote the above Meditation XVII while he was deathly ill, still serving as pastor of St. Paul's. It was also during his time of illness that John posed in a death shroud for the sculptor who made the monument that now stands in St. Paul's. As John Donne lay ill, unable to serve his people, he would often hear the funeral bells at St. Paul's toll. He wondered who it was in his congregation that had died. The thought of death, including his own and those he loved, caused him to reflect upon friendship, Mankind, and death.

His renaissance thinking that "No Man Is An Island" unto himself is consistent with the teaching of Scripture. Life is all about relationship with God and with God's highest creation - human beings. I bear a great deal of physical resemblance to John Donne, but my desire is to bear even a closer resemblance to his philosophy of life.

Friendship is the greatest of all jewels, and God has blessed Rachelle and me with a treasure trove at Emmanuel, Enid and around the world.

A Tale of Two Tombs

2011-09-21T17:45:00.001-05:00

Napoleon's Sarcophagus

Napoleon Bonaparte is buried inside the coffin pictured to the left. The massive brown marble contains an oak coffin. Inside that oak coffin are two lead coffins, one inside the other. Inside the lead coffins sits a tin-plate coffin that contains the body of Napoleon. The sarcophagus is located in Paris, France inside a building constructed specifically to house the body of the Emperor of France who was born August 15, 1769 and died May 5, 1821.

Napoleon's Tomb

The building constructed by Parisians to house their emperor's sarcophagus is easily seen as one looks at the skyline of Paris. The ostentatious setting for Napoleon's final resting place is consistent with the Emperor's lifetime desire to shake his roots of poverty and live the life of exalted ruler. Born on the island of Corsica to poor peasants, Napoleon rose through the ranks of the French military during the French Revolution and eventually became First Counsel of the French Republic in 1799. Napoleon would soon believe, however, that absolute power was needed to fulfill his desire to conquer the world. On December 2, 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself "Emperor of France." Europe's royalty gathered in the Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris, France as Napoleon fulfilled his life-long dream of power, authority and riches. During the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800's, over 13 million people died.

Mother Eva's Tomb

Rachelle and I visited Napoleon's Tomb this week on our way back to the states from a week of ministry in Poland. We couldn't help but draw a comparison between Napoleon's life and his tomb and the life and tomb of a German woman that we learned about during a week of ministry in Poland this past week.

Eva von Tiele-Winckler (1866-1930) was born in southeastern Germany (modern day Poland) into a family of nobility and wealth. Eva had a conversion experience at the age of 17 after reading John 10. She established a home called Friedenshort, meaning "an abode of peace," for women who desired to follow and serve the Lord. Forsaking her life of privilege and riches, Eva opened homes for orphans, widows, the poor and the infirm. By the end of her lifetime, over 40 homes had been established in Germany through her labor. Eva also preached the gospel in women's prisons and set up homes where these women could live when discharged from prison. She eventually sent a number of the women whom she discipled to China to serve with the China Inland Mission. Other women under Eva's influence went to serve in Guatemala, Africa, and India. Eva herself was greatly influenced by George Mueller and was personally encouraged by contact with Mrs. Jessie Penn-Lewis, Hudson Taylor, the Welsh Revival, and the Keswick Convention.

The orphans that Eva helped in her lifetime numbered in the thousands. It was these orphans who gave to Eva the name "Mother Eva" for the care she gave to them as if she was their own mother. Mother Eva is buried on the grounds of the old German orphanage she founded. She insisted before her death that name should not be placed on the tombstone and only two Latin words should be etched in the stone: "Ancilla Domini" which means "servant of the Lord."

Very few people know about Mother Eva. Most everyone knows about Napoleon. Mother Eva's life brought eternal life to thousands. Napoleon's life brought death and destruction to millions. Mother Eva sought to expand the kingdom of Christ. Napoleon sought to expand his kingdom on earth. Mother Eva gave up riches for the poor. Napoleon sought riches after being born poor. Mother Eva has a small, unmarked grave. Napoleon is buried in a massive sarcophagus and building that bears his name.

Would to God that we bear the spirit of Eva and not that of Napoleon.

I Swear to Tell the Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God

2011-09-19T00:00:00.004-05:00

Alexis de Tocqueville in his two volume work Democracy in America records the following anecdote of his visit to America in the spring of 1831: "While I was in America, a witness who happened to be called at the Sessions of Chester (state of New York) declared that he did not believe in the existence of God or the immortality of the soul. The judge refused to admit the evidence, on the ground that the witness had destroyed beforehand all the confidence of the court in what he was about to say. The presiding judge remarked that he had not before been aware that there was a man living who did not believe in the existence of God; that this belief constituted the sanction [in law, that which gives binding force] of all testimony in a court of justice; and that he knew of no case in a Christian country where a witness had been permitted to testify without such a belief."

My, how times have changed.

The Fall Preaching Convocation and Workshop with Dr. Joel Gregory, September 26-27, 2011

2011-09-12T00:00:00.006-05:00

Dr. Joel Gregory, Truett's Professor of Preaching

This past week I visited with Joel Gregory. Some of the most memorable messages I've heard preached have come from his ministry. Four years ago I posted about a sermon I heard Joel deliver to prospective pastors. It is obvious to me that the tribulation and scars in Joel's life have only deepened his respect for the message of grace and the gospel rings even clearer from his powerful preaching.

In two weeks, beginning Monday night, September 26, and going through Tuesday afternoon, September 27, Dr. Joel Gregory will be the featured speaker at the Fall Preaching Convocation and Workshop at Truett Seminary in Waco, Texas. The cost is nominal ($30) and includes lunch on Tuesday. Online registration closes on Tuesday, September 20th.

Joel would like to reach out to folks who otherwise might not be here or know about the conference and let those unfamiliar with Truett know that the seminary is a place where the Bible is believed and the Lord Jesus Christ is exalted. Some of what Joel Gregory will deal with will be personal and autobiographical. All of it will be biblical. His message on Tuesday morning will be "Sometimes It Is Good Just To Get Out Alive" (Jeremiah 45) and will be worth your effort to hear.

You may click on the link above, or call the numbers below to register. My wife and I will be returning from Poland and the Czech Republic on that day, but I hope to be able to make the conference myself.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS (Fall Preaching Convocation and Workshop at Truett)

MONDAY - SEPTEMBER 26th

6:30 PM Registration
7:30 PM Worship - Dr. Gregory preaching

TUESDAY - SEPTEMBER 27th

8:30 AM Registration
9:30 AM Worship - Dr. Gregory preaching

11:00 AM Lecture by Dr. Gregory

12:00 PM Lunch dialogue with Dr. Gregory

1:30 PM Lecture by Dr. Gregory
2:00 PM Final dialogue with Dr. Gregory

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

- Online closes on September 20th, 2011.

- Registration for this event is $30.00

(which also includes lunch on Tuesday)

- Registration is FREE for currently enrolled seminary students, however students who wish to attend the lunch on Tuesday will be required to pay $5 by September 20th, 2011.

- A block of rooms has been reserved at a reduced rate at the Residence Inn - Marriott, which is located across the highway from Truett Seminary. To make your reservation, please call:

(254) 714-1386 or (800) 331-3131. Be sure to let them know that you would like the Baylor Reduced Rate for the Fall Preaching Convocation. Note: This special reserved rate is only available until September 16th.

Make checks payable to Truett Seminary and mail to:

ATTN: The Kyle Lake Center for Effective Preaching,
              George W. Truett Theological Seminary,
              One Bear Place #97126,
              Waco, Texas 76798-7126

Sentimental Reasons for the OU vs. Texas Rivalry Continuing Are Outweighed by Reality: Life Changes

2011-09-06T23:29:00.008-05:00

Bob Stoops, coach of the Oklahoma Sooner football team, was asked by a reporter today if the Oklahoma and Texas Red River Rivalry Game would continue if the two schools wound up in different conferences. Stoops responded, "I don't think it's necessary. Life changes, and you've got to change with it, to whatever degree. If it works, great. I love the game, but if it doesn't, sometimes that's the way it goes." Stoops is right. Life does change. Were the Oklahoma Sooners vs. Texas Longhorn football series come to an end next year because of Big 12 conference changes, over 110 years of intense football rivalry would be over. Were the series to end, it would also bring to a close playing football at one of the most incredible venues in competitive sports--the Cotton Bowl.

The Cotton Bowl (initially called "Fair Park Stadium") was built in 1930. The first college football game played in the new stadium was between the Oklahoma Sooners and the Texas Longhorns. My maternal grandfather, Fred Cherry, (pictured here) was a sophomore tight end for Oklahoma University in 1930. Back then players played on both offense and defense, and my grandfather started for Oklahoma and played the entire game. Both teams were held scoreless during the first half. The first touchdown of the game, and for that matter the first touchdown ever scored in the Cotton Bowl, occurred in the middle of the third quarter. According to the Oklahoma Encyclopedia of Football, Oklahoma halfback Bus Mills threw a 55 yard 'bomb' to my grandfather who took the ball into the end zone and gave Oklahoma a 7 to 0 lead over Texas. Though Texas would eventually win the game 17 to 7, my grandfather holds the distinction of being the first player to ever score in the Cotton Bowl. He would go on to play against Texas in 1931 and 1932 before he graduated with a petroleum engineering degree. My grandfather was a personal friend of Kappa Alpha fraternity brother and 1931 Oklahoma graduate Carl Albert, future United States Speaker of the House. However, Fred Cherry would himself leave his job in the oil fields and later quit his job at the state capital in order to fulfill his calling as a Christian evangelist.

I was born thirty years after my grandfather played for Oklahoma University, but I can distinctly remember watching OU football games at his house while growing up, particularly at Thanksgiving. My grandfather died suddenly of a heart attack in 1970 at the age of 58, but my love for OU football continued. In the early 1970's my father and I crash landed upon returning by private plane from watching the annual OU/Texas Cotton Bowl game. We were caught in a powerful thunderstorm and landed in a convention center parking lot where U.S. Senator John Tower was holding a fund raiser. The kind Senator loaned us his personal vehicle to finish our trip home. Over the years I have many, many memories revolving around the Oklahoma vs. Texas rivalry. Yet, as Coach Stoops says, "Life changes." I look at the picture to the left (taken in 1929 at the OU practice field), and notice my grandfather, playing 'left end' that day (to the far right in his three point stance), and then I flash back to last Saturday night as I watched OU's defensive ends Frank Alexander and Ronnell Lewis play on Owen Field in Norman. Just noticing the physical differences in the size and athleticism of the players makes it easy to realize that things have indeed changed at the University of Oklahoma since the 1930's.

Stoops is right. Life changes.

Bring on the Pac-12.

With, or without, the University of Texas.

Marquis James: A Tribute to the Unqualified Master of Understated Metaphors

2011-08-29T00:00:00.004-05:00

Today, August 29, is the birthday of Marquis James. Marquis, raised in Enid, Oklahoma, won the Pulitzer Prize twice. The first Pulitzer Prize was awarded him in 1930 for James' epic biography of Sam Houston entitled The Raven. It is said that President John F. Kennedy was so captivated by The Raven that the book became one of the first gifts he gave to his fiance Jacquelin Bovier. The second Pulitzer was awarded eight years later, in 1938, for the massive two volume The Life of Andrew Jackson. Marquis James would eventually write sixteen epic historical books.

A Yale University textbook of the late 1940's declared, "The greatest masters of the understated metaphor are Marquis James and William Butler Yeats." When told of the quote, Marquis James allegedly replied mildly, "Who is this man Yeats?"

Many of you might be saying, "Who is this man Marquis James?" Before giving a brief review of his life, I echo my agreement with Yale University: Marquis James is a literary giant and a master of the understated metaphor, and it is through reading his books that I have learned the importance of adding the color of metaphor to both speaking and writing. A metaphor is a figure of speech which expresses the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar. For example, the metaphor "love is a rose" takes the abstract concept of love and makes it understandable by using the visible, tangible and familiar rose (i.e. "love blossoms and grows over time, is sweet to the senses, is in close proximity to the pain of thorns, etc...). The imagination is illumined to understand life better by use of metaphors. The best speakers and writers are those who most often and most naturally use understated metaphors. Marquis James was a master, and anyone who speaks or writes for a living ought to be familiar with him.

120 year ago, on August 29, 1891, Marquis James was born to Houstin and Rachel Marquis James in Springfield, Missouri. Marquis' father would leave his bride and young son two years later to participate in the infamous September 16, 1893 Cherokee Land Run. With the services of a swift horse, Houstin James became the 15th settler to file a land claim at the government land office in Enid, outracing between 90,000 and 100,000 other land seekers. Houstin laid claim to a quarter section of land located two miles southeast of Enid on the banks of Boggy Creek (SE Quarter of Section 17 Township 22 N, R6W).

Two months later Houstin's wife and son joined him in Enid. Marquis, called Mark or Markey while a youth, attended the Enid public schools, graduating from Enid High School in 1910. Marquis only attended one year of college at Oklahoma Christian University in Enid (later called Phillip's University) before traveling leaving Enid and traveling the country working for the next five years as a reporter for various newspapers in major cities including Kansas City, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago, winding up in New York City as a rewrite editor for the New York Tribune.

Marquis formal education was limited to his one year of college, but his enthusiasm for self-learning and his natural abilities led him to become a successful writer. Marquis turned down a job at the start of World War One to be the Tribune's war correspondent and he volunteered for the American Expeditionary Force and fought on the front lines in France. Marquis was wounded in battle and received the Purple Heart. Upon his return to the United States in 1919, Marquis took a job as the National Publicity Director for the newly formed American Legion. It was in 1925 that Marquis James and Harold Ross, an editor for the American Legion monthly magazine, joined together to found The New Yorker. Marquis then went to work as a writer for the magazine he helped found.

In 1925, while covering the Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee for the New Yorker, Marquis took a break from the coutroom and went to the local library where he came across a large collection of books on Tennessee's native son, Sam Houston. Reminded that he once met Sam Houston's son, Temple Houston, when living in Enid, and that Temple Houston regaled him with stories about his father, Marquis James determined in that Tennessee library to write a biography on Sam Houston. James spent the next four years researching the life of Sam Houston, and then published his manuscript The Raven in 1929. He won the Pulitzer Prize the following year.

Marquis James eventually wrote sixteen epic books, two of which won the Pulitzer Prize, but his favorite book of all was his autobiography of growing up in Enid, Oklahoma within what was formerly known as the Cherokee Outlet. The book, entitled The Cherokee Strip: A Tale of an Oklahoma Boyhood, was published in 1945, and though it did not win a Pulitzer, it remains one of the finest first hand accounts of early Oklahoma life.

Marquis James died suddenly of a brain aneurism on November 19, 1955 at his home in New York. He was working on the definitive biography of Booker T. Washington at the time of his death. After his death, his wife donated James' original manuscripts of The Raven and The Cherokee Strip to the Enid Public Library, where they remain encased and on display in the Oklahoma Room. One of these days someone is going to write a biography on the master biographer we know as Marquis James.

Happy Birthday, Marquis James. Thanks for illustrating how history can be told in a colorful style with metaphorical flair. We would all be better if we turned off the television for a while and read The Raven or The Life of Andrew Jackson or The Cherokee Strip: A Tale of an Oklahoma Boyhood. Maybe this little birthday wish will point a reader in the right direction.

Louis Zamperini Special Guest at Emmanuel Enid, Sunday Night, August 28, 7:00 P.M.

2011-08-25T11:30:00.001-05:00

Louis Zamperini, the subject of Laura Hildebrand's bestselling book Unbroken, will be the special guest of Emmanuel Baptist Church, Enid, Oklahoma, Sunday night, August 28, at 7:00 p.m.

In May 1943, an Army Air Bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean. The wreckage left three men floating in a raft on an unforgettable odyssey of suffering, resolve, and triumph. One of those men was Louis Zamperini, the subject of Hillenbrand’s New York Times #1 best-selling book. Zamperini, now, 94 years of age, has been many things: 1936 Olympic athlete, Japanese POW, decorated World War II veteran, husband, and all around rebel rouser.

Doors will be open at 6:00 p.m. and guests are welcome.

Michael Is a Name for the Son of God Himself, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

2011-08-17T11:28:00.014-05:00

There has risen a question or two from readers regarding my last post where the archangel Michael in Daniel 12:1 is identified as the Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity. One or two asked if it was "orthodox" to believe that the phrase in Daniel 12:1 "At that time ... Michael shall arise" is a reference to the coming of Jesus Christ to "defend His people." I could quote John Calvin, John Gill, Isaac Watts, Charles Spurgeon or a host of others to show the orthodoxy of such a belief, but it seems that a few readers searched this subject on "Google" and the search engine brought up far more links to articles by heretical Jehovah's Witnesses, who also affirm that Michael is Christ, than any writings of the aforementioned orthodox theologians. It just proves that Christians who try to base their theological beliefs on what they learn from "Google" are taking as big a risk as sick patients who try to get their diagnoses and treatments from the Internet.

Anyone who denies the deity of Jesus Christ is not an orthodox, evangelical Christian. Though Jehovah's Witnesses are in agreement with ancient orthodox Christian scholars that Michael is another name for Christ, they are incorrect in their views on the nature of Christ. Christ is no created being. He is God. However, an orthodox evangelical Christian should not cast away a particular truth of Scripture just because there is a corruption of that truth. For example, we don't throw out marriage just because the Mormons mar the sacredness of it through polygamy. Likewise, we should not throw out identifying Michael as another name for Christ just because the Jehovah's Witnesses have corrupted their view of the nature and deity of Jesus Christ and identifed our Lord as a created being.

Orthodox Theologians throughout the Centuries Have Identified Michael as Christ

Though there are many orthodox theologians of ages past that I could quote to defend the belief that Michael in Scripture is Jesus Christ (Calvin, Gill, Watts, Owen, etc.), the words of the great Hebrew scholar Samuel Horsley should be sufficient to show you the orthodoxy of this belief. Samuel Horsley (15 September 1733 – 4 October 1806), a brilliant linguist, biblical scholar and evangelical pastor of the 19th century, is known for his brilliant defense of the doctrine of the Trinity, particularly in opposition to the Unitarians of his day who taught that the early Christians did not hold to the doctrine of the Trinity. Anyone who is familiar with Bishop Horsely knows of his erudite orthodoxy and clear writings on the subject of the Trinity.

Samuel Horsley also believed that the Michael of Scripture is Jesus Christ. So, to squelch any notion that it is unorthodox, "cultish," or Unitarian to hold that "Michael" is another name for the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal second Person of the Trinity, read the following words of Samuel Horsley, L.LD (Cambridge), D.Theol (Oxford). In his message on Daniel 4:17, Samuel Horsley declared:

"We read of another personage superior to Gabriel, who is named Michael. This personage is superior to Gabriel, for he comes to help him in the greatest difficulties; and Gabriel, the servant of the Most High God, declares that this Michael is the only supporter he has. This is well to be noted: Gabriel, one of God's ministering spirits, sent forth, as such spirits are used to be, to minister for the elect people of God, has no supporter in this business but Michael. This great personage has been long distinguished in our calendars by the title of 'Michael the archangel.'

It has been a long time fashion in the church to speak very frequently and familiarly of archangels, as if they were an order of beings with which we are perfectly well acquainted. Some say there are seven of them. Upon what solid ground this assertion stands I know not: but this I know, that the word "archangel" is not to be found in any passage of the Old Testament : in the New Testament, the word occurs twice, and only twice. One of the two passages is in the 1st Epistle to the Thessalonians, where the Apostle, among the circumstances of the pomp of our Lord's descent from heaven to the final judgment, mentions the "voice of the archangel." The other passage is in the Epistle of Jude, where the title of archangel is coupled with the name of Michael,— "Michael the archangel." This passage is so remarkably obscure, that I shall not attempt to draw any conclusion from it but this, which manifestly follows, be the particular sense of the passage what it may: since this is one of the two texts in which alone the word "archangel" is found in the whole Bible,—since in this one text only the title of archangel is coupled with any name,—and since the name with which it is here coupled is Michael,—it follows undeniably that the archangel Michael is the only archangel of whom we know any thing from holy writ. It cannot be proved from holy writ,—and if not from holy writ, it cannot be proved at all,—that any archangel exists but the one archangel Michael; and this one archangel Michael is unquestionably the Michael of the book of Daniel.

I must observe, by the way, with respect to the import of the title of archangel, that the word, by its etymology, clearly implies a superiority of rank and authority in the person to whom it is applied. It implies a command over angels; and this is all that the word of necessity implies. But it follows not, by any sound rule of argument, that because no other superiority than that of rank and authority is implied in the title, no other belongs to the person distinguished by the title, and that he is in all other respects a mere angel. Since we admit various orders of intelligent beings, it is evident that a being highly above the angelic order may command angels.

To ascertain, if we can, to what order of beings the archangel Michael may belong, let us see how he is described by the Prophet Daniel, who never describes him by that title; and what action is attributed to him in the Book of Daniel, and in another Book in which he bears a very principal part.

Now Daniel calls him "one of the chief princes," or "one of the capital princes," or "one of the princes that are at the head of all;" for this I maintain to be the full, and not more than the full, import of the Hebrew words. Now, since we are clearly got above the earth, into the order of celestials, who are the princes that are first, or at the head of all ?—are they any other than the Three Persons in the Godhead? Michael, therefore, is one of them; but which of them? This is not left in doubt. Gabriel, speaking of him to Daniel, calls him, "Michael your prince," and "the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people;" that is, not for the nation of the Jews in particular, but for the children, the spiritual children, of that holy seed, the elect people of God,—a description which applies particularly to the Son of God, and to no one else. And in perfect consistence with this description of Michael in the Book of Daniel, is the action assigned to him in the Apocalypse, in which we find him fighting with the Old Serpent, the deceiver of the world, and victorious in the combat. That combat who was to maintain ?—in that combat who was to be victorious, but the seed of the woman? From all this it is evident, that Michael is a name for our Lord himself, in his particular character of the champion of his faithful people, against the violence of the apostate faction, and the wiles of the Devil. In this point, I have the good fortune to have a host of the learned on my side."

Too Many American Evangelicals Are Influenced by Medieval Roman Catholic Theology

For those who may still be hung up on the word "archangel," and see it as representing some kind of "created" angel, I submit that you have received your tradition from Roman Catholic tradition, and not the study of Scripture. Further, modern dispensationalists have so twisted the Scriptures to fit their futuristic framework, that they have unintentionally missed the beauty and power of fulfilled prophecy in Daniel 11 and 12, where Jesus Christ is identified as the Incarnate Creator come to earth to deliver His people.

I close this blogpost with words from 19th century orthodox Scottish minister James Farquharson, a Hebrew scholar and member of the English Royal Society of Fellows. His words should reassure orthodox evangelicals that the word archangel is one of the New Testament titles given to Christ and does not represent a "created" angel (as Roman Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses believe). After reading the following defense of the identification of Michael as Jesus Christ, I would urge you to return to the post entitled At That Time Michael ... Shall Arise and see if the prophecies of Daniel 11 do not give you chills in seeing Daniel's predictions of future world events fulfilled precisely as God revealed they would be in the 500 years preceding the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to defend "His people" at Calvary.

"Archangel is a title given, by Jude, to our Lord himself. The only other passage, in which the title occurs, is in 1Thessalonians 4:16. At the first view of that Thessalonian passage, it might seem, that the title is there given to some Being distinct from our Lord. Hence an objection might be raised to the correctness of considering it as applied to him in any other part of Scripture. But when we compare that passage with others in holy writ, we discover that there, too, we must consider it as applied to him.

The words of I Thessalonians 4:16 are, "The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first." Here we must understand the shout with which the Lord himself shall descend, the voice of the Archangel, and the trump of God to signify the same thing,—that is, the summons that shall call the dead from their graves.

As to the shout, the passage itself ascribes it to the Lord ; and respecting the voice, the Lord himself informs us, that it is his own voice that shall raise the dead to life. Jesus Christ says in the Gospel of John 5:19-29: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth : and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son. That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man, Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life ; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation."

Thus, it is not at the voice of any created being, that all that are in their graves shall come forth; but it is at the voice of Him, by whom, Paul assures us, "all things were created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, and who is before all things." (Colossians 1:16-17.) It is the same voice, which said, "Let there be light," "and there was light," (Genesis 1:3) —the same voice, at whose command the tribes of animated beings sprang to life, and which gave the decree for the creation of man,—that shall command the graves to be opened, and call the "dead to come forth out of their graves" (I Thessalonians 4:16). On his own authority, also, we learn, that the trumpet, that shall sound in the day of the resurrection from the dead, is the trumpet of the Son of Man. "Then shall appear," says he, "the sign of the Son of Man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."

It is not said, here, that he shall send his angels to raise a great sound of a trumpet; but he himself shall send them with, or, as it might be rendered, by a great sound of a trumpet. We have thus a proof, drawn from Scripture, that Michael is a name for the Son of God himself. The Archangel, in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, whose voice is to raise the dead, can be no other than our Lord; and in the 9th verse of Jude, the Archangel is named Michael. Although not of "the nature of angels," (Hebrews 2:16) our Lord is their Commander, for "angels, and authorities, and powers, are subject unto him," (I Peter 3:22) and "thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, and all things, were created by him, and for him" (Colossians 1:16).

We observe, further, that the very name, Michael, is an appropriate name for our Lord, and for him alone. The literal meaning of the term Michael is, Who is like unto God; or, supplying the obvious ellipsis, He who is like unto God.

It does not belong to our present subject to illustrate, at length, the peculiar and essential doctrine of the Christian religion, presented to our notice in this literal meaning of the name Michael. Our immediate purpose is, to demonstrate that Michael, the great Prince who standeth for the children of Daniel's people, is clearly no other than Christ.

Confining ourselves here, then, to the proof of this, we observe, that Christ himself, in the passage we quoted from John chapter five, claims like honour to himself as is due to the Father, and says, that "as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself, and as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will." Here then is a claim, on the part of Christ himself, to a likeness to God, in some of the most essential powers and attributes of the divine nature.

The Apostle Paul, in declaring the Divinity of Christ's nature, has often made use of terms that might seem to be professedly translations of the name "Michael," (i.e. "who is like unto God"). In 2 Corinthians 4:4, he says, "the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." In Philippians 2:5- 7, he says, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; But made himself of no reputation.” In Colossians 1:15, he calls Christ-the Father's dear Son, “ the image of the invisible God." And in the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews 1:1-4 he says, God “ hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high."

We might adduce many other proofs to a similar effect, but we trust it is now abundantly demonstrated, that Michael, the great Prince, in this last vision of Daniel, is the same with him who is predicted as the Messiah."