The State of the American Church in 2018

Though many churches elevate Scripture as God's Word and many profess to follow Scripture Alone, the reality is far different. We are surrounded by Churches that have elevated tradition and cultural norms placing them on par with God's Word or in some cases above it. Others have simply given in to the world and embraced its methods to build and sustain God's Church. While we don't doubt their motives, the result has proven disastrous and instead of strengthening the Church, they've created a counterfeit.

Times of Transition and Spiritual Warfare: EW Hengstenberg (1802-69)

For those of you who haven't heard of Hengstenberg he was a German theologian and professor who in the midst of the Higher Critical movement of the 19^th century stood firm in his conviction that the Biblical Text was divinely inspired and worthy of our trust. I can't agree with all of his views or actions but at his core and regarding this most essential of issues, Hengstenberg stands tall.

What about Bible Translations?

The issue of Bible translations has proven to be a very confusing one. Christians are rightly concerned for the text of Scripture and there are legitimate reasons to be wary of most modern Bible translations.

What about claiming Tax-exempt 501c3 status?

Taking on this status allows organizations to collect money and yet be exempt from many of the normal tax requirements. The monies are used in a non-profit capacity. They service the administrative costs of the organization and fund the social interests the organization wishes to promote. Obviously there are restrictions and guidelines as far as what types of activities fall within this spectrum. In the United States religious organizations, churches and ministries are granted this status if they apply.

Dominionism in Dallas and the New Ecumenical Movement

Recently I've been listening to some podcasts put out by Dallas Theological Seminary which if you don't know it already is usually viewed as one of the primary vehicles of Dispensationalism in the United States.

Most of the big names in the Dispensational movement have at one time or another been associated with that school.

Are you opposed to Church buildings?

It depends on what you mean by a 'Church' building. If you mean are we opposed to a body of believers meeting under a roof, then the answer is clearly no.

If you mean, do we believe that bodies of believers should have special set-aside even consecrated buildings with their own special architecture etc....? Then, the answer is no.

The Alternative to Dispensationalism

One of the oldest and perhaps greatest of theological questions is how do the Old and New Testaments relate to one another? Is there total discontinuity, continuity or some combination of the two?

Church Government, Regular and Provisional

These essays are providing quick summaries of our position. They're not exegetical papers. We're not trying to make the Scriptural case here, rather just explaining where we're coming from for those who are interested in figuring out what we're about.

Does identifying as a Bible Church or Fellowship mean you are Fundamentalists?

The term fundamentalist has unfortunately been abused and largely hijacked. While we share the concerns of the early Fundamentalists in combating Modernism and Theological Liberalism, sadly the term has come to be associated with legalistic rigidity and often reactionary Conservative politics.

What about Historic Creeds?

Creeds are helpful as guides both to the past and to the issues which we must wrestle with when approaching Scripture. We cannot divorce ourselves from history and those that try to do so prove not only their ignorance but their pride.

On a practical level, what's different about your meeting? What would a visitor expect to find?

Following the pattern of the Early Church when it largely met in homes our meetings our informal and yet not casual. We seek simplicity and reverence. Everything we do is centered on the Scripture and we are careful to neither add to nor take away from it.

Are We Calvinists?

To answer simply we would have to say both Yes and No. Of course there is also the problem of the many definitions of this term. Not everyone is using the term the same way.

Do we believe in Predestination and Election? We believe what the Bible teaches and we believe the Bible does in fact present this doctrine. But at the same time we will freely admit that many Calvinists have distorted this doctrine and have failed to do full justice to the full picture of what Scripture teaches. The issue is actually more complicated than then simple Calvinist and Arminian understandings of this issue. We believe the Scripture teaches us its own understanding of logic and how to hold to beliefs that sometimes seem to be in contradiction. The problem isn't the Scripture but in how we understand it.

This age old question cannot be answered in a way that will please everyone but it must emphasized that as Christians our duty is to submit to God's Word even if we cannot fully reconcile in our minds the tension between God's Sovereignty and Man's Responsibility.

 

Questions for Christmas Keepers and Celebrants

On what basis do we approach God? On what basis do we petition and praise Him? How do we enter the Throne Room so to speak? What gives us the right to do that?

Dissecting the News and Christian Anti-Intellectualism

I find it interesting that some conservatives are unable to grasp the issues behind the recent racial upheaval. I've seen some are posting stories of white teenagers being killed by black men and then criticising the media for not covering these stories.

Inbox: What about John MacArthur and his theology?

How does he fit into the spectrum of Reformed Theology and the ideas you are presenting?

I've actually written about MacArthur before but I can revisit him again.

Inbox: Acts 19 and Cultural Transformation

The Burning of the Books in Ephesus

Is this an example of cultural transformation?

It points to transformation but it's not the same as what is being pushed on the Church in our own day.

Sometimes the Two Kingdom position is caricatured suggesting that Christians in old India wouldn't be challenged to abandon suttee, or that Christians in China wouldn't be encouraged to do away with foot binding.

This is just that, a caricature.

Inbox: What about Erastus the City Chamberlain?

Isn't this an example of a Christian holding public office?

Yes it is. Paul mentions Erastus the oikonomos of the city at the end of the Epistle to the Romans.

Inbox: Can We Speak of Christian Anarchism? Was Petr Chelcicky a Christian Anarchist?

Can Christians embrace a form of Anarchism? Jacques Ellul thought so, and he's by no means alone. There's a spectrum to Anarchism. Historically it would be placed on the Left emphasizing the freedom of the individual and a principle of voluntarism as the basis for society. But there's also a manifestation that is usually placed on the Right due to its commitment to laissez faire capitalism. This type of Anarchism, or Anarcho-Capitalism is usually labeled Libertarianism and it is experiencing a massive upsurge in Christian circles. In fact it has created a schism within conservative politics.

Law, Systemic Violence and Societal Institutions

A lawsuit is a petition to the court, calling on the court to address your grievance. You're saying that someone has violated a law, or in some cases that a law has violated other laws.

Ultimately you want the court to force the party that has grieved you to change and correct the wrong. The court if it rules in your favour is effectively 'threatening' the other party to make it right. They're telling someone to pay the money owed or in some cases they're telling an entity...a business, a city government or department to change their policy or face the wrath of the court.

Lamech and the Evangelical Culture of Death

I own a few guns but I haven't fired them in many years and have seriously considered getting rid of them. I'm not sure how. For different moral reasons, I don't want to sell them nor would I want to hand them over to the government.

Stewardship and Parable Inversion- Concluding Thoughts

When the Church shifted and was transformed by Constantinianism, many old values and ways of thinking had to be abandoned in order to create the new Christendom, which ended up being anything but Christian. Power and money are always wedded and in order for the Church to embrace a political order it had to change the way it thought about itself in the world.

Stewardship and Parable Inversion

Speaking of terms and terminology it is worthy to note how the term 'stewardship' is used in such radically different ways.

Everyone more or less acknowledges that in a Christian framework our possessions and assets do not actually belong to us but to God Himself.

And at that point all agreement ends.

Pietism, Higher Criticism and the Prussian Union of 1817

Over the years I have encountered numerous Missouri Synod Lutherans who continually rail against Pietism. I mean they really have very strong feelings about it. I was reminded of this recently when I listened to podcast dealing with the Prussian Union of 1817.

Technology Tangles: Ethics, Politics, Euthanasia and the Avoidance of the Real Questions at Stake (Part 2 of 2)

The technology has brought us to a point where we have to ask these difficult and sometimes impossible questions about how far do we dare to go? What is basic to humanity?

Technology Tangles: Ethics, Politics, Euthanasia and the Avoidance of the Real Questions at Stake

Recently there's been a great deal of secular and Christian news coverage, regarding a woman in her late twenties that is planning to take her own life. She has a terminal brain tumor and though she has not yet manifested symptoms, she has been given a fairly short prognosis. Rather than wait until the suffering begins or resort to palliative care she has elected to end her life. She lives in a state that allows doctors to prescribe pharmaceuticals which will permit her to do this efficiently.

Exiles in Babylon: Should Christians Vote? (II)

With bitterness any Constantinian will be forced to admit the New Testament says absolutely nothing about their vision of society. There's not a single verse to support it and many to oppose it. Recently I've seen some desperate attempts to suggest that Paul was engaged in culture war when he referred to the Cretans (by quote) as liars, gluttons and evil beasts etc... and demanded they be rebuked. It is debated as to whether he was referring to some of the Jewish Christians of Crete and their abusive quoting of Epimenides or to Epimenides himself as a 'prophet' bearing a truthful witness of the Cretian character. Regardless, his rebuke is internal, not directed at the larger Cretan society or its governors. Those to be rebuked by Titus are within the Church.

Exiles in Babylon: Should Christians Vote?

As strangers, pilgrims and exiles we view the state as something that is wholly other or outside the Kingdom realm to which we belong.

We understand why the state was instituted and to some degree we are thankful that it exists. And yet we also are painfully aware of both its limitations and dangers.

Prophetic Idiom, Prophetic Perspective and Redemptive-History

(This is a re-post from 2011. The title and context have been changed.) (Editorial update July 2018)

The Pharisees employed a literalistic reading of the Old Testament prophecies, this fueling their concepts of the Kingdom and leading them to completely miss the Messiah and the Spiritual Kingdom He was ushering in.

They misunderstood the prophets who employed Idiom meaning they spoke in the terms of the day they lived in and the administration they were under.

If the prophets had come along and said…be comforted people the day is coming when the temple, the priesthood, the land, all of this will be gone and there will be a glorious new age in which the gentiles are brought into covenant as well….that wouldn’t have been a very popular message would it?

Instead the prophets spoke (by Divine inspiration) in the terms they knew and their people knew. Since the entire Mosaic order was typological of Christ, the symbolism could be used to express the spiritual realities of redemption and the coming glory. They spoke of restoration to the land which in some contexts was indeed about the return from exile, but it also pointed to the New Age when the land, the dwelling place of the Shekinah, the Spirit would be where???? In a geographical locale? No, in the hearts of the believers found in all lands, nations and tongues. It also pointed to the Eternal Glory…the time in which the Elect would be in full union with Christ the true Israel. So the land could be a reference to their immediate situation under the Old Covenant, it could point to the future New Covenant Age which Jeremiah 31 makes very clear…or it could point to the eternal state.

The Apostles indeed spiritualize the reading of the Old Covenant. Paul employs allegory in Galatians, Peter takes prophecies that speak of cosmic happenings and say they are fulfilled in the resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost. James takes prophecies concerning the restoration of Israel and the Temple and applies it directly to the Gentile Church.

Paul in Romans 2 defines what a true Jew is…a believer in Jesus Christ. The Old Covenant people have been set aside in Matthew 23, the kingdom taken from them and given to another. Paul says they were blessed by their possession of the oracles of God and he is in pain for them, but their only purpose is for the tiny remnant of Elect among them to join the True Israel as he defines it in Ephesians 2. In fact like Zacchaeus they need to BECOME Sons of Abraham as Paul explains in Galatians 3….that’s what Christians are…sons of Abraham by virtue of our union with the Seed of Promise, Jesus Christ. The fleshly children are in bondage according to his illustration.

The New Testament defines them as the synagogue of Satan, they are enemies as far as the gospel is concerned. We don’t boast against the branches that were broken off from the ONE Tree, the One People of God, the Israel of God. Anti-Semitism grew out of the desire to create a Christian Sacralist society that created a social Monism…everyone was compelled to be on the same page. This is a grievous error.

The bottom line is those who still look to the Jews as the people of God, those who believe they will be restored to the land have not understood the flow of Redemptive History. They have not understood the message of the New Testament concerning what the Old Testament was about, what it was for and why it is gone and can never come back. Rejecting the treatment of the Old Testament by the Apostles and Christ they continue in the hope of the Pharisees…resting their promises in the land and the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord (Jer. 7).

Insisting on a literalistic reading they refuse to submit to the New Testament’s teaching concerning the Old Covenant and consequently they spiritualize or explain away many clear teachings from the New Testament. They build principles from the Old and cling to them tenaciously even when the New Testament tells them those principles were in fact a misunderstanding of what the Old was about.

When we start with the clear perspicuous passages of the New Testament, those that are clearly didactic and not employing symbolism, alliteration, poetic imagery or typological idiom we can establish the clear teaching of the Apostles and build our foundations there. It is through the lens of clear passages that we interpret those that are a bit hazy or obscured in the language of the prophets or are sometimes even in apocalyptic modes of speech.

The irony is this school that claims to be literalistic, even though they reject the literal teaching of the New Testament and cling to their flawed presuppositions from the Old Testament, turns to spiritualizing and sometimes even allegory in order to make their system work.,

For example insisting the Apocalypse is in chronological order which flies in the face of Old Testament prophetic examples…like Daniel where we find successive repetitious visions, each being slightly modified and emphasized from a different angle. Additionally they allegorize the first four chapters into Church Ages and somehow John in Revelation 4.1 becomes representative of the whole Church and is (apparently in a vision-fulfillment of 1 Thes. 4?) 'raptured' into heaven. This represents a system overtaking the text. It is eisegesis as opposed to any kind of principled or sound interpretation of the text, let alone a literal one.

Because the Church is made into a sort of Redemptive-Historical Plan B, that is to say the Kingdom promise belongs to the Jews and it was their rejection that led to the Gentile inclusion and Church Age, the Church has to be removed in a pre-tribulational rapture so that Plan A- The Jews in the Land- can be reinstated. Judaism becomes once again a valid religion. This is in complete defiance of New Testament teaching.

1 Thessalonians 4 clearly speaks of the last trumpet and the very end of all things, yet to maintain their system, they spiritualize the 2nd Coming and make it into a kind of partial or faux 2nd Coming and place it (this pre-Second Coming or Rapture) 7 or more years before the actual 2nd Coming.

In Matthew 24 Jesus speaks of the destruction of the temple. Like the Old Testament prophets he employs idiom…the end of the Old Order was in a certain sense the end of the world. It was the end of that age, that aeon, that epoch in history. And for the Apostles in their all too oft 'dullard' mode, that was what they would understand…the end of the temple was the end of the world.

And in a sense at the resurrection and enthronement of Christ, the world ended….Already and Not Yet. We are in the End Times, the final era of delay. Everything has been accomplished by Christ. It is Finished! But God is longsuffering, not willing that any should perish etc…. and so in this era the Church labours as Pilgrim Citizens of Heaven living on Earth, building the kingdom not on earth but in heaven. We lay up our treasures there, and bring glory to our Creator by bearing witness, emulating our Saviour in cross-bearing and rescuing the lost from the Evil One. The Holy Spirit is finalizing the victory of Christ through the Wisdom of God at work in the Church, glorified in the weak and pathetic sinners who persevere and overcome evil by the Spirit’s power.

But the supposedly literalistic hermeneutic ‘reads in’ the land restoration when Christ says nothing at all of it. The fig tree parable was just that…a parable. If you read it carefully he’s merely making a point by appealing to nature, there’s no basis that he was somehow speaking symbolically of an Old Covenant-land restoration. That’s spiritualizing the passage..but not based on a New Testament principle, instead such a reading relies on dragging forward Old Testament presuppositions held by the Pharisees, the very notions rejected by Christ and then later by the Apostles.

Do you want to understand what Israel is? What a Jew is? What the prophets meant by restoration to the land, what the promise of the land was all about? Start in the New Testament. The answer is found in Jesus Christ. In 2 Corinthians 1.20 Paul couldn't be any more clear.

All the promises are affirmed and confirmed…yea and amen in Christ Jesus. If you miss this and misunderstand the New Testament’s teaching concerning the Old, then you are left with a host of seemingly unfulfilled passages from the Old Testament…ones that in order to find fulfillment must point to a future restoration not just to the land but of Judaism itself. Missing the New Testament’s message means that we must look to Judaism as a valid religion yet to be restored. This is the hope of the Pharisees, the political kingdom they never got. This position is at odds with Apostolic Christianity….It is Judeo-Christianity and in reality a religion Paul was combating on the pages of the New Testament. Some are inconsistent and only want take bits and pieces of the Old Covenant and bring them forward. No, Romans is clear, it’s all our nothing. Hebrews tells us we’re either under Moses/Levi or Melchisidec. The Old Covenant is either still valid, or it's not. If it is, then by logical implication the old codes are as well. The historical error has been to try and incorporate these elements (piecemeal) into the life and worship of the Church. Dispensationalism is unique in that at least (I suppose) it keeps the Jewish elements with the Jews.

Of course over the years it has encountered many problems. If the New Covenant belongs ultimately to Jews…the restoration spoken of by Jeremiah in the famous chapter 31 passage…then why do we celebrate the Lord’s Supper? If it’s the New Covenant meal and we the Church are not under the New Covenant, then it’s for the future Jewish Millennium. If Jeremiah’s New Covenant promise points to the Church…then you’ve got a problem. Because the restoration Jeremiah envisions doesn’t then point to the land…it points to what? The Church, those in Union with Christ. Jesus solves the issue for us in tying the New Covenant directly to the Church.

Some older Dispensational authors saw this and actually argued that we shouldn’t celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Some even argued that the Sermon on the Mount was for the Jews and not the Church. 

Thankfully Dispensationalism has improved and abandoned teaching different ways of salvation and other positions along those lines, but many stubbornly cling to certain elements of this erroneous system. Though its foundations have been disproven and destroyed, denied even by many of their own, the eschatological system is retained... even though it is without a foundation and without warrant.

Christian Schools in Britain, Social Crisis and the Larger Issues at Stake

There are stories beginning to circulate in Christian circles of a private Christian school in the United Kingdom which is risking the loss of what we would call accreditation due to a lack of diversity with regard to religious instruction.

My Friday Trip to Amishland

I spent some time with the Amish this afternoon. I had to make a trip out to purchase some rough-cut lumber. There are several groups in the larger area but the nearest ones live about 10 miles from me. A lot of them are no longer into farming and we see their construction crews all over our area. They're cheap, but you often have to pick them up and take them home. Some travel amazing distances in their buggies.

Middle Class Aspirations, Globalisation, Huntington's Clash and the Acculturated Church

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdkGZHxxT4g

These types of videos always remind me of Huntington's Clash of Civilizations thesis. Huntington wants to argue that religious and cultural identities will always take precedent. This is to counter the notion that either the world is becoming Westernized or that Globalisation itself is creating a wholly new world culture.

While I will indeed argue that history defines the present and the future, the Huntington thesis cannot properly take into account the way Globalisation has and is changing the world.

Unlike some I do not believe that Globalisation will change the world to the extent that old issues will simply evaporate and we can all move on to or progress toward Free Market Democratic societies. 

Obviously this hasn't proven the case and I don't believe it ever will. This kind of Hegelian optimism was rampant in the early 1990's. Many falsely believed that the supposed American victory in the Cold War would bring about a wholly new paradigm that would render previous historical tensions and concerns more or less irrelevant.

China, Christians, Second-Class Citizenship and Political Agitation

Woe and lamentation.

Numerous reports have come out that there are many Christians involved in and in some cases leading the protests in Hong Kong. While the government in China is indeed a detestable one, this is nothing to celebrate and yet that is exactly what Christian Media seems to be doing.

Charismatic and Dominionist theology are spreading around the world and the coming harvest will spell doom for Christians the world over.

Middle Class Values and the American Church

I've worked for and mingled within upper class circles at many points in my life. The funny thing about the wealthier class is that they don't have anything to prove. You have some that are certainly conceited and smug, others are downright eccentric and thankfully well off because otherwise they're basically dysfunctional.

I've worked for the poor and that certainly is the class to which I belong. I say this as one who grew up fairly well off. I was sent to private schools at different times. One was rather exclusive and geared toward future Ivy Leaguers. There were a lot of very wealthy kids at that school...BMW's and a Ferrari... and I learned a lot of lessons about values and money. I remember being really disgusted with some of the other kids who judged others in terms of clothes or vehicles and yet these boastful adolescents had done nothing in life and their judgment was bred only by their blood ties and the class they believed themselves to be. Living in San Diego and knocking around the streets of Tijuana I saw very hard working but desperately poor people... people I had far more respect for than these spoiled brats of the upper class.

Idelette de Bure and Legitimate Marriage

Idelette de Bure was an Anabaptist who married John Calvin. On more than one occasion I've heard Calvin praised for his graciousness and charity because Anabaptist women were looked on as being of dubious character.

There were rumours of wife-sharing as an outworking of Anabaptist tendencies which tended toward communalism and communism. Shared possessions meant shared wives. So in other words Idelette was probably a bit of whore, but since she became Reformed, Calvin was willing to marry her anyway.

The Failure of the Academy: Politicization of Statistics and Definitions (Part 2 of 2)

We've reached a point where we have to start thinking a bit differently about money and how we live. I'm speaking to society as a whole. I'm hardly alone in this.

But more particularly I'm speaking to Christians.

For years we've been told by the Dave Ramsey's and Larry Burkett's that there's an ethical component to how we handle our money. And not a few will point out that economics was born from ethics.

It's true and yet I believe the modern Church and in particular the Church of the Western Democracies and especially the United States has got it wrong.

We've baptized avarice.