Too Hot to Handle: Branded

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

They started in 1988 with a 27-year old “senior pastor” named James MacDonald and a couple hundred interested Christians and seekers gathered in a Chicago high school auditorium. Today, they are known as Harvest Bible Chapel, a megachurch with campuses all over the Chicago area and over 100 affiliated fellowships in North America and internationally.

Tom: Today, the mother church is being investigated for alleged financial shenanigans.

Burning Down the House

No, I’m not going to break into the Talking Heads’ 1983 pop hit.

I’m tempted, but I’m not going to. You really don’t want to hear me do that.

But nothing raises the temperature in a local congregation faster than any suggestion we change the music. Countless battles have been fought, and whole congregations have divided over that sort of thing.

That’s really a pity.

The Commentariat Speaks (37)

A passage in 1 Timothy sets a Reddit commenter’s teeth on edge:

“This verse has frankly been getting under my skin for the last two weeks. Why would Timothy put such an emphasis on the subordination of women at that point in early Christianity, especially if the spread of the gospel was paramount? Wouldn’t forcing women into submissiveness during church turn women (and possibly men) away from the new religion?”

These instructions in Timothy concern Christian sex roles, both in church meetings and at home. The commenter is not the first Bible reader to whom a question along these lines has occurred, and will definitely not be the last. Let’s see if we can help.

I Said, You Are Gods

“Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your Law, “I said, you are gods”?’ ”

Bible commentators often say the New Testament (NT) interprets the Old (OT), not the other way around. This principle is generally solid, though it can be taken to extremes; for example, by erroneously concluding that we cannot interpret any OT scripture properly without reference to the NT. Manifestly, we both can and should.

Anonymous Asks (392)

“What are the windows of heaven?”

We find the metaphor “windows of heaven” several times throughout the Old Testament. It describes how God responds to the actions of men in two very different ways.

What they have in common is abundance.

Open in Judgment

In the first book of the OT, the “windows of heaven” describes the outpouring of rain during Noah’s flood. In Genesis 7, the windows of heaven were opened. In Genesis 8, the windows of heaven were closed, and the rain ceased to fall. Forty days and forty nights of rain is what we might reasonably call an abundance, but it was an abundance of judgment. God used it to destroy a wicked world. Nobody wants that sort of abundance. You wouldn’t pray for it, and God has promised never to do it again.

Knocking Over the Hurdles

Lately I’ve been reading a lot about how important it is not to put barriers to Christian faith in the way of the unsaved. I certainly don’t want to do that, and I’m very sure you don’t either.

Archaic language and holy jargon can be hurdles. Arguing about the age of the earth can be off-putting, as can paternalism, denominational conflicts, smugness, and a host of other far-too-common attitudes and practices that needn’t and shouldn’t get in the way of the knowledge of Christ.

These things are unnecessary, and it’s shameful to see someone shake his head and retreat into the darkness of ignorance and eternal loss over the bad manners and misplaced priorities of the messenger, over mere tradition, or over form.

No King in Israel (45)

There’s no getting around it, I hate this part of the story. When I’m preparing a chapter-by-chapter book study like this one, my morning Bible reading consists of a chapter of the Old Testament twice through, a chapter of the New twice through, plus the chapter of the book I’m working on for the study twice through, usually in that order.

This story is so distasteful that I had to switch my reading order around for the past few weeks or go into my prayer time feeling slightly defiled. I needed a Psalm and a chapter of Matthew to wash the taste of Judges 19 out of my mouth.

Too Hot to Handle: Does Your Building Matter?

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Tom: I’m prowling the Internet, as is my wont, and encountering discussion on the subject of whether a church building can impede one’s efforts to grow a local church. Take for example this meditation, from Abby Stocker at Christianity Today:

“Our worship spaces matter. The music, preaching, and community obviously influence our church experience, but building styles also communicate something to the congregation about what is proper in worship. A central stage outfitted with a drumset probably means the music will be emotional and modern. Feel free to wave your hands, dance, however the Spirit leads you. Kneelers will probably be dedicated to congregational, possibly liturgical, prayer. Space for a mosh pit signifies ... you’re probably not at, say, a small intimate gathering based primarily on discussion of a text.”

So here we are, left to consider how the apostle Paul might have felt about a mosh pit. Immanuel Can, please help me out here.

(Re)Making Music

I’ve heard it said that the quickest way to split a congregation is to change the hymnbook or repaint the walls.

Well, I have no feel for interior decorating, so that second one’s not going to be a problem for me. But like most people, I have more definite tastes when it comes to music. Some of the songs that my local church sings, I love; others, I confess, make me cringe.

A Little Consistency, Please!

Book III of Psalms begins with Psalm 73. The superscriptions over the next 11 psalms tell us a man named Asaph wrote them. Asaph was a Levite singer and musician commissioned during David’s reign. Among other things, he was a harpist and a cymbal player. He and his fellow Levites sang and played David’s psalms as well as their own.

Most psalmists were prophets. Orthodoxy accepts that without question. Asaph too was a prophet, as his psalms establish beyond any reasonable argument to any reader using consistent interpretive principles.

I Thought That Looked Familiar

I’ve been following a fair bit of online discussion about ‘spiritual abuse’ and leaving churches, a trek through the interwebs that took me to The Wartburg Watch 2024. The website looked eerily familiar and the writing tone and subject matter rang a distant bell, so I did a little research. Sure enough, a decade ago I wrote a post about the biblical roles of the sexes prompted by something John Piper said that TWW reported.

Since early 2009, Wartburg has documented and debated cases of spiritual abuse, theological fads, controlling pastors and other church issues, as their mission page declares.

Anonymous Asks (391)

“Is the ‘Name It Claim It’ philosophy biblical?”

I had to look up this phrase since I’m entirely unfamiliar with the concept. A Google Ngram search shows it began appearing in English literature just prior to 1980 and took off in popularity post-2000, peaking after 2020. Having established that, I looked for a book by that name in hope of finding a popular proponent of the teaching. The one that crops up most frequently is a 2008 publication by Dag Heward-Mills entitled Name It! Claim It!! Take It!!! (with all those crazy exclamation marks), available since 2024 as a free PDF online in what I think is its entirety.

Prosperity Gospel by Another Name

The book certainly falls within the Ngram timeframe, but late enough to suggest the phrase probably did not originate with Heward-Mills. TV evangelists like Kenneth Copeland have popularized the concept to the point that it may not be possible to figure out exactly where it came from. For our purposes, it hardly matters one way or another; the basic teaching has been around for centuries.

Sparrows, Oxen and Infinite Bandwidth

An infinite God can concern himself with matters great and comparatively insignificant. There are no time constraints when you dwell in eternity and no detail, no matter how microscopic, is ever overlooked. The Lord Jesus taught that the Father sees the falling of a sparrow and numbers the hairs on the human head. That’s the kind of God we have. He misses nothing, big or small.

Infinite bandwidth will do that, with no degradation of appropriate priorities.

No King in Israel (44)

English translations of the Bible call the tribe made up of the children of Benjamin either Benjamites or Benjaminites. Literally, the Hebrew is “of Benjamin”. The numerous English versions extant split about 60/40 in usage, with the older versions like the KJV mostly leaning toward the truncated form of the name. At this point, neither is really right or wrong.

I’ll go with the shorter version here because it’s … shorter. Having read Judges 19 as many as thirty times in the process of preparing this series, I’m inclined to dwell on the evil men of Gibeah as fleetingly as possible.