The Second Mistake?

by Frank Turk

OK – so we have started answering the 12 mistakes from last week’s post, and here’s the second mistake from the list:

The Mistake of Only "Salvation in Heaven," not "Kingdom on Earth"

And you’d think I could keep it brief this week because Phil has already unloaded on this one pretty well over the course of the last month or so. But I really haven’t been blogging much since my so-called hiatus (for which many of you are grateful, right?), and I have a couple of things to say on this subject which I think are worth airing out.

Let's start here: we have to understand the importance of the word "only" in this affirmation. If you omit that word, and the statement goes, "The Mistake of ‘Salvation in Heaven,’ not ‘Kingdom on Earth’," (comma on the inside, Dan, but on the outside of the original quote marks) we get the emergent/liberal/social gospel gripe that Jesus was preaching a kingdom of this world rather than something which requires a plan, as they say, from before the foundation of the world.

What I read this complaint to mean, then, is that it is not either/or – it is not only "salvation in Heaven", nor is it "only" "kingdom on earth". It is both salvation and kingdom. So as we assess the critique as a so-called "mistake", we need to frame it as the complainer frames it and not like the fish in the barrel we intend to shoot.

And in that complaint, there is on the one hand, a lot to complain about. For example, part of the "salvation + kingdom" model is local church. Another part is doer of the word and not hearer only. Stuff like love one another and cup of cold water. Being a saved person doesn’t just make a "not yet" promise, but also an "already" promise and implies some "already" responsibilities.

The question is at what place have we replaced the Gospel – the proclamation of what God has done, in Jesus Christ, for His own purposes – with cultural idolatry? In spite of some real kvetching lately in some circles about Mark Driscoll’s sermon which kicked off his current series on Philippians, he makes a great point in his prologue there which is summed up in this way: in our search for joy, we often fill in with stuff, people and religion when in fact we need to be filled in with Jesus. As another wise man has said, the Gospel is the solution to Culture and not a slave to culture.

So when we start making a big deal out of the Kingdom matters – the "already" matters – of the Gospel, we have to be certain we aren’t confusing a result with the cause.

You know: saved people will act differently – because they are new on the one hand, declared righteous, and because they are, on the other hand, grateful for being new and declared righteous.

So maybe a better way of making this objection is to say The Mistake of "Salvation in Heaven," without "Kingdom on Earth". It speaks to the matter of both/and more clearly without rejecting, for example, the eternal nature of God’s plan, the transcendent nature of God Himself, and the metaphysical nature of man’s plight (that is, a problem which is not merely a symptom but actually a disease).

And here's the thing: a metaphysical problem requires a metaphysical solution. What that doesn't mean is that the problem is non-corporeal and therefore some kind of invisible pixie dust is necessary to solve it. What it does mean is that the the fundamental nature of who and what we are requires more than a band aid, more than a witty saying or a slogan. What it requires is some kind of solution by the Creator to turn it from car wreck to Chrysler 300.

And that solution is wrapped up in the death and resurrection of Jesus, which is not a dualistic solution, but a holistic solution for mankind. It covers all the bases.

I tell my adult Sunday school class that Paul himself hangs pretty much everything on the Resurrection – the whole Gospel is in the balance of whether Jesus really left an empty tomb. He says it this way in Romans 1 (ESV):

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ

Notice, without violating and conciliar affirmations which we agree with and also affirm, that Paul doesn’t say that the virgin birth is what declares Jesus to be the Son of God: it’s the resurrection which declares this of Him in power.

No resurrection: no Jesus who can give grace and apostleship or fulfillment of the holy Scriptures.

But we say that to say this: the resurrection doesn’t just point to a future state or a future fulfillment. It points to bringing "the obedience of faith among all the nations". That’s something that has to happen now.

But how that happens now is not hardly for the sake of becoming a better you, or by obtaining your best life now. It’s not about being rich or healthy. In fact, it is often presented most vividly when we are afflicted or unable to manifest what the world would call "success".

Paul ended his life chained to a pillar in a cave or a dungeon, and he told his dear friend Timothy not to be ashamed of his own afflictions, nor of the cross, nor of the persecutions all who lead a Godly life must experience. He said, instead, that this is how and when the Gospel is preached – in faith in spite of trials.

And this, dear readers, is the meaning of "Kingdom on Earth". Our sovereign is Lord of All, and we ought to act like his subjects when we are in all circumstances. Yes: preach a salvation from sin which delivers from the final judgment, but live here and now for the sake of demonstrating that Kingdom which is to come.

If missionary agencies aren't delivering this message, using these means, they are definitely wrong. The Gospel is not either salvation or kingdom: it is both. And may Jesus come quickly.

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The other deadly "works"

by Dan Phillips

And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” (Luke 4:5-7)

You recognize this as Satan’s temptation of the Lord Jesus. Isn’t it interesting that Satan says that all the power and glory of the kingdoms of the world,“has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will”?

Is this simply a lie? It surely seems like it. In almost the same language, we read that “the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will” (Daniel 4:32). This accords with many other Scriptures.

Or is some bestowal of earthly power delegated to Satan, “the god of this age” (2 Corinthians 4:4), “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31), in whose power the world lies (1 John 5:19)?

Or is it a half-truth: Satan gives it, but it isn’t to whomever he pleases?

I actually think these questions are beside the point of the passage. What is interesting to me is that the Lord does not contradict Satan’s claim.

Now, I don’t take that in itself to constitute an affirmation or a denial. I take it to mean that it doesn’t matter to Jesus. It doesn’t matter whether or not Satan can deliver on his promise.

Jesus simply refuses, flat-out. No Sale.

Why?

And Jesus answered him, “It is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’” (Luke 4:8)

Do you see what a devastating rejection this is? Had Jesus said, “It isn't yours to give,” His refusal might have seemed ambiguous. That is, some (— Satan, for instance) might have imagined that His refusal hinged on Satan’s inability to “deliver.” But (some might foolishly have imagined) if Satan could have delivered on his promise, then he might have been able to close the deal with Jesus.

But Jesus’ rejection is more sweeping and categorical. He does not even take up the question or whether or not this power and glory was Satan’s to give. It simply does not matter to Him. Whether or not he is offering what only God can offer, Satan is in fact demanding what only God can demand: worship.

To Jesus, doesn’t matter whether it “works,” in the short run. What matters is that it is not of God. It puts God out of place. God is the all-glorious center, acme, pillar, ground, summum bonum and sine qua non of the universe. Nothing is worth more than He.

Is there any lesson for us in this?

Of the many applications of our Lord’s example, I take this: we need to give up the all-consuming idolatry of pragmatism, of what Works. We’ve become addicted to what makes us feel better now, feel happier now, feel more powerful now; to what gives us our best life now; to what makes us look cooler, seem "edgier," be more popular, have a larger church. Whether in youth ministry, general pastoral ministry, marriage, business, politics — when we get bitten by the pragmatic bug, we’re bitten.

Then gradually, we care less about what tends to God’s glory, and more about what tends to ours.

And we find ourselves open to the world’s oldest sales-pitch…

…if we think it might Work.

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Smells Like Teen Spirit

Here we are now. Entertain us.
by Phil Johnson

t last June's Founder's Conference, Roy Hargrave delivered a powerful message that got me thinking about why so many churches lose their young people. (That wasn't the theme of Dr. Hargrave's message, but he brought up the subject in one of the points he made.)

Here's a really brief summary of some of my thoughts on the matter:

The very strategies many churches adopt to try to keep their young people involved in the church are the main reasons they lose so many of them. The dominant philosophies of youth ministry today are spiritually lame or worse—and almost completely counterproductive.

Specifically, it's time we faced the fact that systematically dumbing down the teaching ministry and ramping up the party atmosphere while isolating our young people from the rest of the body is not a very good strategy for increasing the rate of retention among our youth.

Think about it: Youth ministries (not all of them, of course, but the vast majority of squidgy evangelical ones) deliberately shield their young people from the hard truths and strong demands of Jesus. They tailor their worship so worldly youth can feel as comfortable in the church environment as possible. They squander the best opportunities of those formative student years by minimizing spiritual instruction while emphasizing fun and games. They let their teens live with the false notions that believing in Christ is easy, sanctification is optional, and religion is supposed to be fun and always suited to our liking. They fail to equip their high school students for the rigorous defense of the faith they will need in college. They neglect to integrate them as young adults into the adult community of the church.

And then they wonder why so many young people abandon the church about the same time they leave home.

How hard can it really be to understand why the "Youth Specialties" approach to student ministry has been such an enormous failure?

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Bodily Resurrection

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Resurgam" (Latin for "I Shall Rise Again"), a sermon preached Sunday morning, 1 April 1860, at Exeter Hall, London.

he doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is a doctrine peculiar to Christianity. The heathen, by the feeble light of nature, were able to spell out the truth of the immortality of the soul. Those professors of religion who deny that immortality, are not so far advanced in learning as the heathen themselves.

When you meet with any who think that the soul of man may possibly become annihilated, make them a present of that little catechism brought out by the Westminster Assembly, which bears the title, "Catechism for the Young and Ignorant." Let them read that through, and begin to understand that God hath not made man in vain.

The resurrection of the body was that which was new in the apostolic times. When Paul stood up on Mars hill, in the midst of the learned assembly of the Areopagites, had he spoken to them about the immortality of the soul, they would not have laughed; they would have respected him, for this was one of the sublime truths which their own wise men had taught, but when he went on to assert that the flesh and blood which was laid in the tomb should yet arise again, that bones which had become the dwelling place of worms, that flesh which had corrupted and decayed, should actually start afresh into life, that the body as well as the soul should live, some mocked, and others said, "We will hear thee again of this matter."

The fact is, reason teaches the immortality of the spirit, it is revelation alone which teaches the immortality of the body. It is Christ alone who hath brought life and immortality to light by the gospel. He was the clearest proclaimer of that grand truth. Albeit that it had lain in the secret faith of many of the ancient people of God before, yet he it was who first set forth in clear terms the grand truth that there should be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and of the unjust.

As far as I know, the doctrine has not been disputed in the Christian church. There have been some few heretics who have denied it at divers times, but they have been so few, so utterly insignificant, that it is not worthwhile to take any notice of their scruples, or of the objections which they have urged.

In order to affirm this, the ancient Christian church was in the habit in their creed of adding a sentence to the Article which runs thus:—"I believe in the resurrection of the dead." They added, in Latin words to this effect:—"I believe in the resurrection of the dead, of this very flesh and blood." I do not know that the addition was ever authorized by the church, but it was continually used, especially at the time when there was a discussion as to the truth of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

The very flesh and blood that is buried, the very eyes that are closed in death, the very hand which stiffens by my corpse, these very members shall live again—not the identical particles of the same matter any more than the self-same particles of the wheat spring up to make a blade, and to make full corn in the ear. Yet shall they be identical, in the true sense of the term, they shall spring up from this body—shall be the true result and development of this poor flesh and blood, which we now drag about with us here below.

Ten thousand objections have been raised against this, but they are all readily answerable. Some have said, "But when men's bodies are dead, and are committed to the grave, they are often digged up, and the careless sexton mixes them up with common mould; nay, it sometimes happens that they are carted away from the churchyard, and strewn over the fields, to become a rich manure for wheat, so that the particles of the body are absorbed into the corn that is growing, and they travel round in a circle until they become the food of man. So that the particle which may have been in the body of one man enters into the body of another. Now," say they, "how can all these particles be tracked?"

Our answer is if it were necessary, every atom could be traced. Omnipotence and Omniscience could do it. If it were needful that God should search and find out every individual atom that ever existed, he would be able to detect the present abode of every single particle.

But it is not the identity of the matter that will make positive identity. Are you not aware that our bodies are changing—that in about every ten years we have different bodies from what we had ten years ago? That is to say, by decay, and the continual wearing away of our flesh, there is not in this body I have here, a single particle that was in my body ten years ago, and yet I am the same man. I know I am precisely the same.

So you. You shall have been born in America, and lived there twenty years; you shall suddenly be transferred to India, and live there another twenty years; you come back to America to see your friends—you are the same man, they know you, recognize you, you are precisely the same individual; but yet philosophy teaches us a fact which cannot be denied—that your body would have changed twice in the time you have been absent from your friends; that every particle is gone, and has had its place supplied by another; and yet the body is the same.

So that it is not necessary there should be the same particles; it is not needful that you should track every atom and bring it back in order that the body should preserve its identity.

Have you never heard the story of the wife of Peter Martyr, a celebrated reformer, who died some years before the time of Queen Mary? Since his enemies could not reach his body, they took up the body of his wife after she was dead, and buried it in a dunghill. During the reign of Elizabeth, the body was removed from its contemptuous hiding-place; it was then reduced to ashes. In order that the Romanists, if they should ever prevail again, might never do dishonor to that body, they took the ashes of Peter Martyr's wife, and mixed them with the reputed ashes of a Romish saint. Mixing the two together, they said, "Now these Romanists will never defile this body, because they will be afraid of desecrating the relics of their own saint."

Perhaps some wiseacres may say, "How can these two be separated?" Why, they could be divided readily enough if God willed to do it; for granted that God is omniscient omnipotent, and you have never to ask how, for Omniscience and Omnipresence put the question out of court, and decide the thing at once. Besides, it is not necessary that it should be so. The life-germs of the two bodies may not have mixed together. God has set his angels to watch over them, as he set Michael to watch over the body of Moses, and he will bring out the two life-germs, and they shall be developed and the two bodies shall start up separately at the sound of the archangel's trump.

Remember, then, and doubt not that the very body in which you sinned shall be the very body in which you shall suffer in hell; and the body in which you believe in Christ, and in which you yield yourselves to God, shall be the very body in which you shall walk the golden streets, and in which you shall praise the name of God for ever and ever.

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Doug Pagitt on the forevermore life

by Phil Johnson



'm in Jupiter, FL, where Marc Wragg is being ordained this weekend. Marc served with me in GraceLife and worked at Grace to You while he was in seminary, and I owe him a lot for all the ways he helped me in those years. (He's a longtime reader and sometime commenter at PyroManiacs, too.) So I'm here at his request to be part of his ordination council.

Being on the road means I have very little time to write or comment on the blog, but I want to write a quick post this morning dealing briefly with something that's already two weeks old. Since people are still talking about it, I wanted to add my two cents.

I don't know if you heard Todd Friel's interview of Doug Pagitt on Way of the Master Radio a couple of weeks ago, but if not, you ought to listen to it. I've referred to it once or twice in our comment-threads, and a number of bloggers here and there have remarked about it, too.

Rob Willman, who occasionally comments in our meta, has made a transcript of the whole interview, and another Pyrocommenter, Tim Bertolet, has analyzed Pagitt's remarks pretty thoroughly.

Todd Friel was savaged by several commenters at Justin Taylor's blog for the way he interviewed Pagitt. One of them compared the interview to "a metaphorical burning at the stake," and another (with typical postmodern "charitableness") anonymously called Friel "an uncharitable bully."

I heard the interview the day it was broadcast and thought Friel was extremely polite (though he was obviously shocked and dismayed, as I was, with Pagitt's refusal to affirm that heaven is a real place). Friel even held his temper despite Pagitt's hectoring him about what an unbelievable dunce Friel was for speaking of heaven as "an individual place that you go." Friel repeatedly addressed Pagitt as "Sir," and (I thought) went out of his way to be respectful. OK, he interrupted Pagitt a couple of times when Pagitt was being deliberately evasive, but this was a live radio interview where time is of the essence. No good radio host is going to allow an interviewee to filibuster in order to evade a question. Todd did not "bully" Pagitt.

What struck me as I listened to the interview, however, is an issue that seems fairly important: I wonder how someone can deny that heaven is a place without implicitly denying the bodily resurrection of Christ.

Notice that Pagitt himself began the discussion of the afterlife by saying, "I think we best understand that through the—through the resurrection of Jesus." And then he refused to speak of heaven as a real place. So what is he saying about understanding the afterlife by understanding the Resurrection? If Jesus rose bodily and ascended bodily and will one day return bodily, and if our vile bodies are going to be changed so that they are like His glorious body—then how can heaven not be a place where those real, tangible, corporeal, bodies exist in perfect glory?

Not to mention the fact that Jesus Himself said, "I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also" (John 14:2-3).

(Silent pause.)

Pagitt (incredulously): "There?"

(unintelligible mumbling.)

Pagitt: See, here we—Oh, boy. Here we go again. This is just not working.

I suppose Todd Friel would have looked like a real Torquemada if he had raised the question of whether Pagitt really believes Christ rose bodily. But it would have been interesting to see what Pagitt's response would have been in a live interview.

He might have played postmodern word games with the meaning of the word "bodily." That's what his performance in the interview itself would lead me to expect.

On the other hand, if he had plainly and unreservedly affirmed the bodily resurrection of Christ, he would have had to drop the ridiculous and feigned incredulity that anyone but a muddled Platonist would think of heaven as a "place."

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The fruits of repentance

by Dan Phillips

The subject of repentance could be approached from many angles. Today, let's just focus on the Baptist's words: "Bear fruits in keeping with repentance" (Luke 3:8a).

That's how the ESV has it. The Greek ποιήσατε οὖν καρποὺς ἀξίους τῆς μετανοίας (poiēsate oun karpous axious tēs metanoias), more woodenly, would be "Make, therefore, fruits worthy of repentance." The phrase ἀξίους τῆς μετανοίας (axious tēs metanoias) is variously rendered:

• "worthy of repentance" (KJV, NKJ)
• "consistent with repentance" (CSB)
• "in keeping with repentance" (NAS, NIV [surprising pairing], ESV, NJB, MLB)
• "that proves your repentance" (NET)
• "that answer to your repentance" (Moffatt)
• "as evidence of your repentance" (NAB).
• The NLT goes all paraphrasey (surprise!), with "Prove by the way you live that you have repented of your sins and turned to God," and...
  
• ...so does J. B. Phillips (no relation): "See that your lives prove that your hearts are really changed!"

So, whatever repentance is in itself (—and I would argue that it is a transformative change of mind ["root and branch," Treebeard might say], as opposed to a mere shift in opinion), we know this: true repentance is productive. The claim to repentance in itself means little; fruit is what balances the scales and indicates reality. Fruitless repentance is a vapor.

But from the fact that John issues the imperative {"Bear fruits!"), I deduce that the fruits may not appear instantaneously nor automatically. John appeals to their wills. The prophet calls them — he commands them — to bear fruit answerable to the repentance they claim to have in their hearts. "If you have genuinely repented, as this baptism signifies," says John, "then prove it. Show visible evidence for this invisible quality."

Nor does the New Covenant obviate the parenetic imperative. In English, I mean that Acts 26:20 says that even in these days of grace we still have to tell people to produce fruit answerable to the repentance they claim to have.

Calvin, in his commentary, says that "the repentance, which is attested by words, is of no value, unless it be proved by the conduct." Similarly, Alexander Maclaren comments,

Repentance is more than sorrow for sin. Many a man has that, and yet rushes again into the old mire. To change the mind and will is not enough, unless the change is certified to be real by deeds corresponding.

As a younger Christian, I'd been taught that repentance was proper only for Jews. This is nonsense, of course; Paul preached as John did (Acts 17:30; 26:20).

At minimum, then, we have to say that repentance that is not visible is dubious at best. Repentance may or may not be a work; but genuine repentance produces works.

Let's imagine, then, a scenario.

A professedly Christian man (Bud) is infuriated with his longtime best Christian friend (John). John's crime? He is learning from the Bible, he shares what he learns, and he tries to practice it. For the sake of the illustration, we'll stipulate that John isn't doing anything obnoxious. He's just being a growing Christian who's trying to walk his talk.

But our professor isn't reading his Bible much, and he isn't growing. Accordingly, sins are starting to take root, the flesh is flexing its rotting muscles — and the mere fact of John's practicing the Biblical faith that Bud claims to have is sand in his speedos. It makes Bud feel bad and, he thinks, makes him look bad. It points up Bud's own sins and failings

So finally Bud tells John that, if he doesn't quit this pious garbage, he won't be his friend anymore.

John is stunned. He prays for Bud, he reasons with Bud; he bears with him, pleads with him, does everything he can to reach out to him in God's name. But Bud is increasingly proud, arrogant, resistant. He digs in his heels. He calls John a legalist and a Pharisee. Bud sneers that he's come to a much higher plan of Spirit-led Christianity, and doesn't need John's book-religion. He stops reading his Bible, he stops going to church; yet he insists that he is not only still a Christian, but a much better one than John.

John is completely sucker-punched.

Then one day, Bud shows up wearing a new T-shirt. It bears John's face on the front — with a big red circle around his likeness, and a slash through the circle.

Bud wears the T-shirt everywhere. Unbelievers they've both talked to about Christ see this picture. Slanderous lies start spreading about John, which Bud does nothing to counter. John is deeply hurt. But John can think of nothing to do but bear the pain and the shame, and pray for his friend.

Fast-forward a few months. Bud shows up at John's door. Tersely and unexpectedly, he tells John that what he did was a sin, and he's sorry for the pain it caused John. He wants to be friends again. John is startled, happy, and cautiously hopeful. He starts thinking glad thoughts about their restored friendship.

Just one thing puzzles him.

Bud is still wearing the T-shirt.

But John is gracious and patient, and figures things can take time. Repentance is a process.

Bud starts wanting to get together, again and again. He acts as if nothing happened. But he's always wearing the T-shirt.

So, reluctantly, John brings it up. Bud retorts that John really made him mad with how John handled the whole Bible-reading thing. John's puzzled — did Bud think he'd sinned? Yes, Bud says stiffly. Does Bud regret what he'd done? Would he do it again?

Now Bud begins to dither and hesitate and double-talk. He won't say "No." He won't utterly disown and kill his sin. And the T-shirt stays — the T-shirt Bud created and donned only because of Bud's sin.

So, has Bud repented?

Here's the thing: sin is born of pride, and begets more pride (Psalm 10:4; Proverbs 16:18; 21:4). We sin because we're proud; our pride moves us to cling to our sin; our pride will try all it can to stay on the throne. It's a deadly cycle. Even if we are forced to admit that (technically) our sin is sin, pride will still find a way to make it a special sin, will want to qualify, extenuate, excuse, temporize, and rationalize. Pride will not nobly commit seppuku, like a shamed Samurai. It wants to live, whatever the cost to its host-organism.

If our sin is to die, our pride must die.

And that's where the fruits accompanying repentance come in. The repentant person begs forgiveness of the wronged party, makes no excuses for his kill-Christ sin, leaves it no "wiggle-room." He sets out to make his wrongs right. He does not dictate terms to the wronged party, but invites terms, asks what he can do. He humbles himself.

The fruits of repentance set out to burn bridges to sin, and to right wrongs. We have been overcome by our own evil; now we seek to overcome our own evil with good (cf. Romans 12:21). The purpose of these fruits is both to signal that the pride/sin complex has died, and deal death to it. The fruits of repentance pour Roundup on the weeds of pride, so that the sin and all its survival mechanisms will die.

So that we can live.

"Be killing sin or it will be killing you" (John Owen)

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Meta policy change

by Phil, Frank and Dan

We've usually left the comments open forever. The downside of that is that, after various posts slipped off of our radar-screens, "certain men crept in unawares" and spattered various kinds of noxious nonsense.

Given that we are simply unable to go back over each and every meta day after day, and since we're not sure what L'Abri would do, we're adopting a new policy.

Other things being equal, we'll give each new post a few days for comments, and then we'll close the meta. If we opt to do so, we may leave it open until it is about to slip off the front page, then we'll close comments.

As you were.

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12 ways centuri0n can get himself in trouble

by Frank Turk



You’ll all have noticed that I didn’t really post anything last week except for my d-blog exchange with Jesse on the necessity of the charismatic gifts, which is now over and you can read for yourselves. I’m sure many of you will have breathed a sigh of relief that I didn’t post at TeamPyro last week because you’re tired of me beating you up over you and your local church.

Yeah, OK: I get that.

Because Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat, I’ll change subjects for you slightly. Alert reader Joel Griffith e-mailed me a link to this article about world mission agencies, and it culminates in an interesting list of mistakes, thus:

12 Mistakes Western Mission Agencies Make:

1. The Mistake of Starting Bible Schools, Not Universities
2. The Mistake of Only “Salvation in Heaven,” not “Kingdom on Earth”
3. The Mistake of Congregations Sending Missionaries, Not Using Mission Agencies
4. The Mistake of Whole Congregations in Direct Involvement, Not Professional Missions.
5. The Mistake of Insisting that Devout Followers of Jesus Call Themselves “Christians” and Identify with the Western Church
6. The Mistake of Sending Only Money, Not Missionaries
7. The Mistake of Sending Short-Termers, Not Long-Termers
8. The Mistake of Not Understanding Business in Mission and Mission in Business
9. The Mistake of Healing the Sick, Not Eradicating Disease Germs
10. The Mistake of Thinking “Peace” Not “War”
11. The Mistake of Assuming Science Is a Foe Not a Friend
12. The Mistake of An Evangelism That is Not Validated and Empowered by Social Transformation

I asked the handful of journeyman readers of my blog (which has not fully recovered from my hiatus in spite of my really cool new blog template) to take a poke at this list of 12 mistakes, and I liked the idea so well that I decided to take a poke at the “12 mistakes” myself here at TeamPyro under the heading of “missiology” or some such thing.

As you read this list, some of the items will pop out at you and you will say, “that sounds suspiciously familiar," and other parts will be completely alien to you. And no doubt: you will have some kind of opinion about every one of these randy statements because you are quite an assortment of readers.

So today I’ll address Mistake #1, and we’ll try to make this a 12-part series ...

Is it a mistake of mission agencies to establish Bible Colleges and not Universities?

Here’s the mistake, which is in the presupposition of the question: the mistake is assuming that there are two kinds of education – secular and “Christian”. There is only one kind of education proper, if we define education as “development mentally, morally, or aesthetically especially by instruction”, as m-w.com does.

And to get this, I want you to think about something: someone who is a great baseball player obviously plays a lot of baseball. In fact, he probably does more baseball than anything else because he wants to be great at baseball. But here’s the truth: he also does other kinds of conditioning in order to be a better baseball player. He may be a runner; he may lift weights; he may play other sports which have related skills. And some of these guys realize that they aren’t going to be hitting a hard ball with a hardwood bat for the rest of their lives, so they also develop other skills like the ability to speak in public, or run businesses, or manage money, or write copy for sports news, or maybe leadership skills which a coach will require.

So in summary, a baseball player may know baseball best, but he doesn’t know baseball exclusively. He knows other things because baseball isn’t everything even if it relates to everything.

And in education in general, the fundamentalists on all sides of the ideological rubick’s cube make the same mistake: they fence themselves into a pen with other ideological livestock just like themselves, and they all make the same cattle noises – whether those sound suspiciously like the Gaither Vocal Band, or Nine Inch Nails, or David Crowder, or Michael W. Smith, or whatever – and they believe that they have established a culture by which all other cultures ought to be measured. In that conclusion, they start to believe that they are the only ones who have anything useful to say.

But what education ought to be is something a little more frankly humble. But humble toward what?

Well: humble toward the fact that we are all created beings.

Now, the naturalist/atheist is ready to check out of this discussion, because by G... um, by his troth, he’s not created: he’s just part of an eternal universe of matter and nobody made him – or maybe everything made him, and therefore there’s no intention in what he is, so the word “created” is anathema to him.

Yeah, well: that’s what I’m talking about.

Even the atheist ought to have the good sense to admit that he didn’t make himself, and he didn’t spring out of nothing like some kind of subatomic particle: there was something before him which caused him to be born, and then to grow, and then to know something that he knows. None of us are self-caused, and we are a consequence of something prior to ourselves.

And this, dear readers, is a foundational premise of education.

Now, since I have just crested page 3 in WORD here, I’ll not rant too much farther on what education is. I’ll instead apply it to mission agencies and what they ought to be doing when they set up school for missionaries.

Listen: there is a secular counterpart to the “Bible college” which helps line out the problem here. It’s called a “trade school”. And without offending anybody – or intending to offend anybody – there’s a reason there’s a difference between college and trade school. And in order to avoid offending, I’m not going to detail that any farther than this: the key difference is breadth of knowledge and ability to work outside of a narrow band of experience.

It’s a fine pursuit, I think, to “major in Bible” as they say at a 2-year school. But while most people at a bible college are doing that, all the rest of the world is having a radically-different world-changing experience at college (and not all of it good, in case you wanted to ask). But the people in college are (allegedly) reading books which they wouldn’t have otherwise read; they are encountering (allegedly) ideas which are not their own, and testing them (allegedly) to see if they are better than the ones they came to college with.

And if you come out the other end of your Bible college with a very denominationally-informed survey of the Bible and some basic homiletic skills, you have the problem of being connected to no other culture but the denominational culture you started in. And how many lost people (in theory, anyway) is that going to reach?

You know, my pastor coined a term which I highlight at my blog: The Gospel is the Solution to Culture. But what that means is that the Gospel has to come in contact with other cultures to “solve” them or offer the Jesus solution to the people inside that culture.

And the current problem of post-modernism in the church, frankly, is not something which happened 6 years ago when McLaren published a New Kind of Christian. It happened decades ago in the 60’s when Derrida started writing his ridiculous screed and there was nobody in the Christian church who was equipped to answer him on his own terms.

Intellectually, we are a bunkered-down people. It may be nice to have me instead of Dennis Miller, but the problem that we cannot engage the culture because we don’t really grasp the intellectual foundations of the culture has to cause us to ask more questions of what it means to be a people tasked with the great commission.

We don’t have to be the smartest kids on the block; we don’t have to be riding the intellectual equivalent of $5000 racing bikes. But when everyone else has a 3-speed 2-wheeler, there’s no way we can keep up if all we have is our homejob skateboard.

And I dare you in the meta to tell me I have denigrated the sufficiency of Scripture to say that Christian education ought to be more than memorizing the Bible.

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The More Everything Must Change, the More the Truth Remains the Same

by Phil Johnson

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Proverbs in the high desert

by Dan Phillips

As I previewed, I had the great privilege of being the keynote speaker at the South Arizona Grace Bible Conference on the weekend of October 27-28, 2007. The topic was (what else?) "Insights from Proverbs," and it was hosted by the Sovereign Grace Baptist Church of Rio Rico.

"Where," you inquire, "is Rio Rico?" I'm glad you asked. It is in very very south Arizona. To wit:

One of the more thrilling emails I received last year came in mid-December. It was a letter from Jim Kirby, the pastor of Sovereign Grace Baptist. It ended with this question:

BTW, are you available for conferences? Let me know. We have a Bible conference each year [that] needs a keynote speaker.

Am I available? Oh boy, yes. So I wrote Jim right back in the enthusiastic affirmative, and shortly we were planning to devote a conference to one of my for-decades favorite subjects: the Proverbs of Solomon.

So that conference was alternately at the back, middle and fore of my mind through the year. I had to get some more books on Proverbs (of course!) and ramp up my studies. My dear wife graciously saw to it that I had all the time I needed. Then the time came, and off I went.

Pastor Kirby took me to the church early....

...and I got the lay of the land before anyone else showed up.

Then the folks came, and we began. I didn't ask anyone's permission to put his or her picture up, so I won't presume.

But I will presume to show you a bit of the fine spread they laid out for lunch:

This was in fact one of two really good meals the church put together for the two days.

But the food, wonderful as it was, was nothing to the joy of fellowshipping with the good folks who came to feast on the Word. What a gracious lot of brothers and sisters they were: eager for the Word, and responsive. They made me feel right at home. I was blessed to have the privilege to begin to get to know them. Pastor Jim Kirby and his wife Paulette were very gracious and hospitable.

It was a joy to bring this portion of the Word that has been so instructive to me through the seasons of my life.

And then, near my motel — roadrunner!


The only down-side is that that cleared my "dance-card." Now I'm looking to the next challenge, project, or opportunity.

NOTE: Some of you expressed interest in the conference. All six sessions are available online, thanks to Sovereign Grace Baptist Church, as are the outlines and bibliography I provided. Topics include: Understanding Proverbs, God in Proverbs, Wisdom and Folly in Proverbs, marriage, children, and the fear of the Lord. Enjoy!

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Already vs. Not Yet

by Phil Johnson

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Are We Too Heavenly Minded?

by Phil Johnson

"And let me tell you 'Kingdom of God' language is really big in the emerging church."—Doug Pagitt

o anyway, yesterday in GraceLife I spoke on 1 Peter 1:3-5, where Peter writes to saints in exile under the threat of persecution and encourages them with the hope of heaven.

Then last night I started reading Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change and in the opening chapter, he says this:

More and more of us are realizing something our best theologians have been saying for quite a while: Jesus' message is not actually about escaping this troubled world for heaven's blissful shores, as is popularly assumed, but instead is about God's will being done on this troubled earth as it is in heaven. So people interested in being a new kind of Christian will inevitably begin to care more and more about this world, and they'll want to better understand its most significant problems, and they'll want to find out how they can fit in with God's dreams actually coming true down here more often.

. . . and I was struck by the utter disconnect between what McLaren says and what the Bible teaches. I can easily think of a dozen key places in Scripture where we are told to set our affections on things above and look forward eagerly to heaven. And most if not all of those passages are set in contexts where saints are either being encouraged in the midst of trials or admonished against the sin of worldliness.

Worse yet, McLaren uses an ill-defined notion of "the Kingdom" as a jumping-off point to introduce a series of stylish, environmentally-sound, and politically-correct sociopolitical issues he thinks ought to consume Christians' thoughts more than the hope of heaven: environmentalism, poverty, the threat of global war, and "the failure of the world's religions, especially its two largest religions, to provide a framing story capable of healing or reducing the three previous crises."

I think Christianity already has a perfectly good "framing story," and it includes a number of truths McLaren dismisses out of hand, including the hope of heaven.

What do you think? Talk amongst yourselves.

I'll be back this evening.

"...because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel"—Colossians 1:5

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."—1 Peter 1:3-5

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To Those Who Thirst for Dreams and Visions

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from the sermon "A Word with Those Who Wait for Signs and Wonders," preached 31 October 1869

here are some, and these are generally the most uneducated, who expect to experience remarkable dreams or to behold singular visions.



I am sometimes astonished that there should linger amongst our population still a notion that a certain kind of dream, especially if it be repeated a number of times, and if it be so vivid as to remain upon the imagination for a long period, is an index of the divine favor. Nothing can be more grossly untrue, nothing can be more baseless and without the shadow of evidence to back it up; and yet many imagine that if they, I was about to say, suffered so grievously from indigestion that their sleep was spoiled by vivid dreams, then they could put their trust in Jesus Christ.

The notion is so absurd that if it be but mentioned to rational men they must ridicule it, and yet I have known many who have been, and still are, slaves to this delusion.

Not very long ago, after preaching in a remote country village, I was earnestly sought for as a spiritual adviser by an importunate letter from a woman who ascribed to me much greater wisdom than I ever claimed to possess. I wondered what her spiritual difficulty was, and when I went to her house and found her very sick, I was saddened to find her the victim of a superstition, in which I fear her minister had comforted and so confirmed her. She solemnly informed me that she had seen something standing at night at the bottom of her bed; she was in hopes that it was our blessed Lord, but she could not see his head; as I knew so much of spiritual things, could I tell her who it was?

I said I thought she must have hung up her dress on a peg on the wall at the bottom of her bed, and in the dark had mistaken it for an apparition.

Of course, that did not satisfy her; I fell at once in her estimation to the dead level of a very carnal-minded man, if not a scoffer, but I could not help it, I could not dally with such ridiculous superstition; I was obliged to tell her it was all nonsense for her to hope for salvation because she was silly enough to fancy that she saw Jesus with her bodily eyes, for the saving sight was a spiritual one.

As to the question of the supposed apparition having a head or not, I told her if she would but use her own head and heart in meditating upon the word of God, she would be in a far more hopeful condition.

There may have been, I will not deny it—for stranger things have been—there may have been dreams, and even apparitions, which have aroused the conscience, and so led to the commencement of spiritual life, in some rare cases where God has chosen specially to interfere, but that these are to be looked for, and to be expected, is a thing as far from truth as the east is from the west. What if you did see anything, or dream anything, what would that prove? Why, prove nothing whatever except that you were in an ill state of health, and that your imagination was morbidly active.

Put such things away, they are superstitions fit for the uncivilized, but they are not fit for Christians of the nineteenth century: I do but mention them, not because, I think: any of you may have fallen into them, but that you may deal with them always very rigidly wherever you meet with them. They are superstitions not to be tolerated by Christian men; yet there are some who actually will not believe Christ's simple gospel unless some such absurdity as this can be joined into it.

God deliver you from such unbelief.

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Something "Nice"?

Part 2 of 2: Why I think Charismatic Doctrine Is to Blame for the Overabundance of Craziness in That Movement
by Phil Johnson

    prodigious wacko fringe has always been one of the charismatic movement's most prominent features. In little more than a century, the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements have spun off so many bad doctrines and bizarre characters that I have a thick dictionary in my office just to help me keep track of them all.

Furthermore, I'm convinced it's not just some kind of fantastic cosmic coincidence that has loaded the movement with an unusually high number of charlatans and heretics. I've suggested on more than one occasion that a major reason the charismatic movement has produced more than its fair share of aberrant behavior is because the distinctive doctrines of charismatic belief foster gullibility while constantly seeding the movement with all kinds of whimsy. Specifically, the charismatic belief that it's normative for Spirit-filled Christians to receive extrabiblical divine revelation through various mystical means has opened the door for all kinds of mischief.

I would not for a moment deny that there are some relatively sane and sensible charismatics who love Scripture and generally teach sound doctrine while avoiding most of their movement's worst errors. I think they represent a fairly small minority of the worldwide charismatic community, but they do exist. A few of them are good friends—even longtime friends—of mine. I have friends (for example) in the Calvary Chapel movement, which is mildly charismatic in doctrine but whose worship is generally more Bible-centered than even the typical non-Charismatic seeker-sensitive church. As a matter of fact, my chief concern about the Calvary Chapel movement would not even be their advocacy of charismatic views, but their increasingly aggressive campaign against Calvinism.

That's not all. I have warm affection and heartfelt respect for most of the best-known Reformed charismatic leaders, including C. J. Mahaney, Wayne Grudem, and Sam Storms. I've greatly benefited from major aspects of their ministries, and I regularly recommend resources from them that I have found helpful. I've corresponded with the world-famous Brit-blogger Adrian Warnock for at least 15 years now and had breakfast with him on two occasions, and I like him very much. I'm sure we agree on far more things than we disagree about. And I'm also certain the matters we agree on—starting with the meaning of the cross—are a lot more important than the issues we disagree on, which are all secondary matters.

But that is not to suggest that the things we disagree on are non-issues.

Candor, and not a lack of charity, requires me to state this conviction plainly: The belief that extrabiblical revelation is normative does indeed "regularly and systematically breed willful gullibility, not discernment." Even the more sane and sober charismatics are not totally exempt from the tendency.

Remember that Paul Cain and the Kansas City Prophets found an amazing amount of support from "Reformed Charismatics" on both sides of the Atlantic, even after it was clear to more objective minds that the "prophets'" were regularly and systematically issuing false prophecies.

And that fact ought to have been clear very early. In 1989, the senior Kansas City prophet, Bob Jones, acknowledged that he could claim an accuracy rate of no higher than two-thirds. By 1991, Jones was utterly discredited because of his own sexual misconduct with women who came to him seeking prophetic counseling.

Shortly after that (in early 1992), John MacArthur, Lance Quinn, and I met with Paul Cain and Jack Deere in John MacArthur's office at Jack Deere's request. Deere wanted to try to convince John MacArthur that the charismatic movement—especially the Vineyard branch—was on a trajectory to make doctrinal soundness and biblical integrity the hallmarks of Third-Wave charismatic practice. He brought Cain along, ostensibly so that we could see for ourselves that Cain was a legitimate prophet with a profound gifting.

But Cain was virtually incoherent that day. Lance Quinn remarked to me immediately afterward that it seemed as if Cain had been drinking heavily. (In retrospect it seems a fair assumption that this may indeed have been the case.) Even Deere apologized for Cain's strange behavior that day, but Deere seemed to want us to assume it was because the Spirit was upon Cain in some unusual way. They both admitted to us that Cain's "prophecies" were wrong at least as often as they were right. When we cited that as sufficient reason not to accept any of their prophecies at face value, they cited Wayne Grudem's views on New Testament prophecy as justification for ignoring the errors of prophecies already proven false while giving credence to still more questionable pronouncements.

That meeting was extremely eye-opening for me. Deere was unable to answer basic questions about certain practices Lance and I had personally observed him participating in at the Anaheim Vineyard just a few weeks before that meeting. Specifically, we asked him about two "prophets" whose public words of knowledge in the morning service were flatly contradictory. (The dueling prophets were apparently using their "gifts" to air out a dispute over some decision the church's leaders had recently made.) Deere acknowledged that the prophecies that morning were contradictory. And he could not explain why John Wimber let both prophecies stand without a word of explanation or clarification. (He seemed to shrug off our concern by speculating that perhaps even Wimber wasn't sure which prophecy, if either, was the true one.) Again, he appealed to Grudem, perhaps the most theologically sound of all charismatics, as justification for accepting the two prophets' gifting as legitimate anyway.

I left that meeting amazed that anyone would give credence to such "prophets." But several of the best "Reformed Charismatic" leaders—all citing Grudem for authority—continued to give credence to Cain, the Kansas City Prophets, and others like them for a long, long time. Some of the Reformed Charismatics who lent Paul Cain undue credibility did not really renounce him as a prophet until about twelve years later, when his personal sins finally came to light.

(And it may be stretching things to say everyone concerned actually "renounced" Cain's supposed prophetic gifting even then. He has lately made something of a comeback.)

As long as Reformed charismatics justify the practice of encouraging people to proclaim "prophecies" that are unverified and unverifiable—and which frequently prove to be wrong—I'll stand by the concern I expressed: even the very best of charismatics sometimes foster unwarranted and unreasonable gullibility, and gullibility about whether God has really spoken or not is seriously dangerous.

When a false belief is truly dangerous and comes replete with the kind of long and dismal track record extrabiblical revelation brings with it, it's not "uncharitable" for those who see the danger and are truly concerned about it to sound a warning rather than humming a gentle lullaby.

My charismatic friend, Dr. Warnock, insists that I have been uncharitable because I have stated my opinion about the dangers of charismatic doctrine without explicitly exempting him and others whom he likes from my warning against gullibility. It makes him "uncomfortable" to read such things on our blog as often as we post them (even though the vast majority of our recent posts on the charismatic issue have actually been made at his behest).

I have to say in reply that his appeal to how our posts make him feel, while he declines to give any rational or reasonable explanation for why he thinks our candor must be motivated by a lack of charity, is an echo of the very tendency that I think is so dangerous in the charismatic mindset.

I do realize some people are uncomfortable with such a firm stance against the charismatic position. I'm equally uncomfortable with the charismatic position itself. Let's both remember that our respective comfort levels are not a reliable gauge of our brothers' charity (or lack thereof), and let's try to focus on the actual issue under discussion.

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