Too Hot to Handle: ‘Apostles’ and ‘Prophets’

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

Everybody’s looking for greater certainty these days it seems, even Christians. Our own Immanuel Can has written at length about how the resurgence of Calvinism is evidence of it, and I’ve recently done some reflecting on how Christians often speak about the “call of God” to bolster their confidence in what in most cases are just their own decisions.

Tom: This, though, might take the cake, IC. A new and rapidly-growing charismatic movement mostly off the radar of other Protestants. Independent Network Charismatics (or “INC Christians”) find their certainty in alleged “prophetic” voices and the pronouncements of “super-apostles”.

It’s big-bucks too. Christianity Today notes that the Asuza Now conference in the LA Coliseum drew 50,000 people in the rain, and almost nobody knew about it outside the INC movement.

How’d you like to have the apostles and prophets back, IC?

Just Church (16)

When we left off last week, I was laying out for you the plan for fellowship that we find in the Bible. Our purpose was to get a clear sense of what God is aiming at in creating the church, and how we are to respond to that vision. A key element of this was the Christian response to guilt. We noted that Christians are uniquely vulnerable to the recognition of sin in human nature, including their own, but they aren’t to wallow in misery and self-abasement as a result, but rather to use their realization of their own fallibility as an incentive for humility, obedience, compassion, restoration, gratitude and new unity — a “repentance without regret”, remember?

Chapter 5: A Higher Vision (continued)

A Healthy Reminder

Am I only telling you what you already know? Surely you’ve read these passages, no? But it’s still good for us to remind ourselves of who we are and what we’re aiming for, because we can forget; especially since the world is so busy trying to produce its own kind of unity, but without Christ. The calls for unity from the world cannot fail to penetrate the ears of the church; and if we are going to be fortified against those false doctrines, as Paul hoped, then we are going to have to keep the biblical pattern before us with perfect clarity. As we wade into some of the more sordid details of the world’s errors and illusions (as we shall do later in this chapter), it is going to prove positive, encouraging and healthy for us to take a firm mental grip on God’s pattern for unity.

The contrasts will prove stark.

On Millennial Lifespans

Back in November of last year, our own Immanuel Can recommended a relatively short study guide from Regular Baptist Press entitled Why Dispensationalism Matters. The guide is based on a commentary by George Gunn and edited by Alex Bauman, and I’ve been working my own way through it during the last week in between trips outside to shovel the most recent 3-4 inches of snow piling up around my car.

Having just finished it, let me add my recommendation to IC’s.

Into the Wood Chipper

Christianity Today’s Emily Belz worries, “Is This the End of USAID?”, before launching into a list of all the wonderful things the biggest humanitarian agency in the world does for the poor, sick and uneducated in the Third World. Her article’s title is a reference to Elon Musk’s remarks that certain government organizations would probably be going “into the wood chipper”, USAID among them. Belz quotes a former USAID employee who says, “Pray for what’s happening. People are dying every day because of this.”

Perhaps. It will take a little time and investigation to determine that. At this stage, it’s worth the risk to do the due diligence.

Anonymous Asks (343)

“Was Jesus a pacifist?”

As defined by Merriam-Webster, pacifism is “opposition to war and violence as a means of resolving disputes”, often manifesting in a refusal to participate in military action. Extreme pacifists even exclude self-defense as an option when under attack.

Ready for one of my infamous yes-and-no answers? Okay, here we go …

Five Ways We Deceive Ourselves

Self-deception may be the worst kind of deception there is.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of ways to be deceived, and all can result in grievous errors and long-term consequences that cannot be undone. The lies of a family member, partner or close friend can be exceedingly painful to discover. The lies of religious leaders or respected teachers can be devastating to one’s faith and deeply discouraging to deal with.

No, it’s not the degree of pain it causes that makes self-deception so awful, it’s the difficulty we have exposing it.

119: Qoph

Hebrew sources say the letter Qoph [ק] represents the number 100, the eye of a needle, the back of the head, and possibly … a monkey.

Yes, you read that correctly. Monkeys are not native to Israel or any of its neighbors and scripture mentions them nary a single time. Why ancient Hebrew even had a word for monkey is a bit of a mystery probably related to the commonalities between Hebrew and other Semitic languages (or possibly related to historians and linguists thinking they know more than they actually know about ancient languages).

Either way, I think we can safely say we will not find monkeys in Psalm 119 no matter how long and hard we stare at it.

Too Hot to Handle: Bad Reasons to be Nondenominational

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

Christianity Today reports that about one in six Christians now refer to themselves as “nondenominational”, which is about double the number who did so as recently as the turn of the century.

Tom: Gallup says:

“Increasingly, Christian Americans … prefer to either identify themselves simply as Christians or attend the increasing number of nondenominational churches that have no formal allegiance to a broader religious structure.”

What do you think about that, IC? It’s not all good news, is it?

Immanuel Can: No, probably not. Some of it is.

Just Church (15)

Chapter 5: A Higher Vision

“… we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of people, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, that is, Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”

Ephesians gives us a picture of a congregation unified by a single reality: the dynamic attachment of the entire body to Christ, who is the Head of the Church, through whom life flows to the Body. All members “abide” in the same “Vine”, in constant connection with him; and for that reason, all in connection with each other, too. As you can see, all are growing, becoming mature, walking in the truth, using their gifts and helping one another. This also fortifies them against all winds of bad doctrine, so their unity is not only dynamic but durable as well. This is church unity as God intended it to be.

Note to Substack Readers

Expect a little blog chaos for about ten days starting Saturday, as I’ll be in transit. This should not affect the main blog at cominguntrue.com, except to the extent that I probably won’t be able to post your comments or respond to them.

However, the email versions of our posts from the CU Substack at cominguntrue.substack.com will be delayed unless I can get my laptop to cooperate (which it currently will not), since these are sent manually. Don’t worry, all those posts should eventually end up in your inboxes, probably all at the same time around March 3.

Or you could just visit the main blog, which has all kinds of features Substack does not, including archives going back to 2013, blog search engine and numerous feature pages.

Cards on the Table

Over at Stand to Reason, Alan Shlemon has hammered out yet another post to help Christians work through a thorny question that may arise when a member of the family or a friend is one half of a homosexual couple. Twelve of Alan’s last twenty posts have dealt with some aspect of the LGBT thing, which just seems a tad disproportionate given that Alan has other talents. On one hand, I’ll commend him for highlighting an issue that I’m not seeing dealt with in such detail anywhere else. On the other, well, that’s a lot of posts.

I will say I read them all, which is something.

On Christians and Civil Law

DG Hart is the author and co-author of several books, mostly on the politics of faith. He’s an elder in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania and one of writers at OldLife.org. A post at Old Life just prior to President Trump’s first inauguration entitled “Is Donald Trump Mainstreaming Apostasy?” generated an impressive 568 comments from readers, including many from Hart.

Maybe the clickbait title, do you think?

Anonymous Asks (342)

“What’s the Christian perspective on MGTOW?”

MGTOW is an acronym for Men Going Their Own Way, an anti-feminist online community of men who reject marriage and commitment. It may be distinguished from other much-maligned informal men’s movements like the pickup artists (men who share tips about how to persuade women to engage in casual sex), incels (involuntary celibates) or promoters of men’s rights (primarily divorced dads who’ve had a hard time with the system).

While there are differences between the views and objectives of each of these groups, all have this in common with respect to the opposite sex: defeatism. MGTOW is not the exception.

A Monumental Self-Own

On the recommendation of David de Bruyn — with whom I have a lengthy history of compatible tastes in things spiritual — I am in the process of attempting to read Jonathan Edwards. Hailed as “one of the great classics of theological literature”, the subject of A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections intrigues me and provoked me to order the book. Distinguishing between authentic and inauthentic religious emotions (and therefore true and false conversions) is a critical faculty for all mature Christians.

Though I have little hope of success in this area, it seems to me it might be especially helpful to be able to distinguish real from unreal within the confines of one’s own heart.

119: Tsadhe

The letter Tsadhe [צ] symbolizes justice and righteousness in both man and God. In Hebrew, tṣadîq [צַדִּיק] is the word for righteous, and the very first word in this stanza of Psalm 119. A writer at Hebrew Today says a righteous man is “a person who safeguards and protects his eyes from evil things and protects his mouth and speech from saying bad things”.

That’s certainly part of it, though it leaves out the positive aspects of righteousness.

Too Hot to Handle: Rightsizing the Church

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

On his blog, Karl Vaters considers new strategies for church planting and concludes the body of Christ might well function as effectively or even more effectively with 50 smaller churches than a single megachurch.

Tom: Interesting post, IC. He says a lot of things I agree with that not too many other evangelical pastors are saying, and also makes a few statements I find a little naïve or maybe misinformed. First off, it sounds as if he believes megachurches are planted like regular churches, and grow more or less naturally to their colossal size.

Just Church (14)

Last week we were working our way through the topic of guilt. In relation to the church and Social Justice today, it’s a very important topic. Social Justice advocates weaponize it against sincere and well-meaning people in order to get their way. This is quite demonic: taking character dispositions that are perfectly Christian (humility, longing for justice, willingness to accept responsibility for sin and desire to make things right) and turning them into a miserable, guilt-ridden self-reproachment. Rather than expressing a healthy conscience that induces righteous behavior, such false self-reproach is today used by Social Justice advocates to inject into us an unrealistic sense of personal responsibility for all the world’s ills, present and historical, and a misguided desire to alleviate false guilt.

Semi-Random Musings (40)

“So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day …”

Caleb son of Jephunneh is eighty-five when he speaks these words to his fellow senior citizen and current leader of Israel’s armies, Joshua son of Nun. Joshua and the high priest Eleazar are in the process of dividing the largely-conquered land of Canaan by lot to assign territory to the various tribes. In the middle of this, Caleb comes to ask a personal favor. In the process, he does some reminiscing.

He’s casting his mind back to a particular day forty-five years in the past.

Cutting to the Chase

I recently labored through the first volume of C.W. Previté-Orton’s Cambridge Medieval History, which covers the period from the late Roman Empire through to the twelfth century in a little under 700 pages. I say “labored”, but some parts (the earlier ones) were actually fairly exciting. However, as the venerable historian’s focus shifted from Italy and Greece to Germany, then Western Europe, I bogged down in a morass of what appeared (from my limited and relatively disinterested perspective) to be mediocre personages doing mediocre things.

I’m sure it wasn’t really that way.

Anonymous Asks (341)

“What is the core message of the Minor Prophets?”

Sometimes a question is too general to be useful. That’s not a criticism of the anonymous person who asked today’s poser. He is probably trying to get a clear, simple reply to an area of Bible inquiry he finds interesting. Sometimes that is easy to do. Other times it isn’t.

This would be one of those.

Faith in Strange Places

Almost everybody who’s ever flipped the pages of a Bible has noticed most versions have bold headings interspersed throughout its paragraphs to help the reader navigate what would otherwise be a daunting wall of text. Most also understand that these are not original content, which is to say they were inserted by English-speaking translators or editors relatively recently. They were added for much the same reason most of our blog posts have little orange headings every few paragraphs. They break up the text and give you an idea what you are about to encounter. They help the eye keep moving.

The heading atop Joshua 9 in my ESV reads “The Gibeonite Deception”. That’s not wrong exactly, but it’s sure not the whole story of that chapter. Sometimes you find faith in strange places.

119: Pe

Pe [פ] is the seventeenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It is also the Hebrew word for “mouth” and refers to the power of speech to change one’s world. (Not by coincidence, pe appears as “mouth” in the third verse of this section of Psalm 119, though not in connection with speech or power.) We can see how the word is used in scripture from Genesis forward, creating several intriguing Hebrew idioms. One example: Pharaoh says to Joseph, “All my people shall order themselves as you command.” The word “command” there is pê. What Pharaoh literally said is that all Egypt would conduct itself “according to Joseph’s mouth”.

That’s some pretty powerful speech, but then we worship a God who spoke our world into being.

Too Hot to Handle: Religion by the Numbers

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

Lyman Stone is a Lutheran believer who likes math. So he has built, in his words, “a complete annual dataset for every religious group in America as far back as I could get data”. That turns out to be 1925. If you want to know how your favorite denomination is doing demographically these days, especially compared to how it has done historically, Stone might well be the most informed guy on the block.

George Barna would be proud. Maybe. Assuming he doesn’t mind the competition.

Tom: You’ve mentioned before that you’re not a big stats guy, IC. What is it you don’t like about parsing data?

Just Church (13)

This week, we’re continuing our discussion of guilt. It’s a key tool being used today by the Woke Left to bludgeon Christians into cooperation with the leftist agenda, and bring that agenda into the church. The Christian recognition of human guilt is leveraged to induce a heightened and unwarranted anxiety about us becoming seen as narrow, discriminatory, unfair, or racially insensitive. In this state, we become vulnerable to the recommendations of seemingly-nice false teachers who claim to lead the way to greater justice and fairness in church life.

Let’s unpack those tactics. We might ask, “Why is guilt such an effective weapon against society in the present moment?” and “How is it even more effective as a weapon against the church?” That’s what we’ll cover this week: and next week, we’ll complete the picture by showing how the kind of guilt we are being invited to experience today is unlike godly guilt and repentance, so we can recognize it for what it is — a strategy of the enemy intended to disorient, fragment and demoralize our people, and thus to render them pliable to an ungodly agenda.

A Toasted Kitten Sandwich

As I write this, we’re not even two weeks into Donald J. Trump’s second presidency, and already the opinions are flying online. Evangelicals who voted for him are generally positive about the way he hit the ground running, others are concerned that too many Christians visibly associated with a secular Trump presidency spells trouble for the church down the road. Still others are, for now at least, holding their peace and waiting to see where this all goes.

Let’s not even talk about the reaction from the Left. You’d think the President had just eaten a toasted kitten sandwich live on national TV. (He didn’t. Let me just head that rumor off before someone starts it.)

Oracles of God

“… whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God.”

Assuming we take the word “speaks” to mean “addresses the congregation when believers gather”, it should be evident Peter wrote these instructions to Christians exercising the spiritual gift of teaching rather than the spiritual gift of prophecy, though we know both were present among members of the first century church.

The reasons for this are twofold.

Anonymous Asks (340)

“I have a couple of books on my shelf written by Ravi Zacharias. What would you do with them?”

If you have been living under a rock and don’t know the name, Ravi Zacharias was a highly influential apologist, writer and evangelist, the head of a $35-40 million international empire ... er, Christian ministry. His books sold two million copies and his YouTube videos received hundreds of thousands of views.

He died in May 2020, shortly following which allegations surfaced of repeated sexual misconduct over many years.

A Track Record with the Lord

“But You, Lord, are a shield around me,
My glory, and the One who lifts my head.
I was crying out to the Lord with my voice,
And He answered me from His holy mountain.

Selah

I lay down and slept;
I awoke, for the Lord sustains me.
I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people
Who have set themselves against me all around.”

When David found himself in trouble, he would remember the dealings he had had with the Lord in other times of trouble. He did this with Goliath, remember? He said to Saul, “Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, since he has defied the armies of the living God.” He knew that when he was fighting to rescue “sheep”, the Lord God would be with him, no matter how great the enemy might look. It had been so before; and it would be so again.

119: Ayin

The Hebrew letter Ayin [ע] means “eye” and signifies not just functional vision but spiritual understanding. The words “eyes” and “understanding” appear six and ten times, respectively, in Psalm 119, so we are not surprised to find both in the first few verses of today’s reading, not least because the importance of seeking understanding from God through his word is the major theme of the psalm.

Occasional verses that address others interrupt some sections of the psalmist’s prayer; however, today’s stanza focuses entirely on God.