The Osama Bin Laden of Christianity?

[Commentary by Greg Albrecht - Plain Truth Ministries]

On the "700 Club" television program last week Pat Robertson said that Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, should be assassinated before he turns his nation into a safe haven for Communists and Muslim extremists. Robertson said that removing Chavez would be "a whole lot cheaper than starting a war…and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop."
Reaction from virtually all quarters has been overwhelmingly negative to Robertson’s latest outburst, though a few ministries have remained silent. According to the latest reports spokespersons for ministries that are politically active to the point of resembling political action committees have said that they were too busy to comment. Robertson did back into an apology by saying that he also said that the United States should "take out" Chavez, and that "taking out" did not necessarily mean murder (he explained that kidnapping might be part of what he meant by "taking out").
The vast majority of the Christian world expressed shock, and distanced itself from Mr. Robertson’s comments. Some are concerned about the safety of Christian missionaries (as well as Americans in general) in Venezuela.
Many have asked how a Christian leader can apparently have little regard for the teachings of Jesus. As Newsweek columnist Patti Davis asks, "Shouldn’t people like Pat Robertson just go start their own religion and leave Jesus out of it?" It’s another black eye for Christianity – as those of us who believe in the Jesus of the Bible and the authentic Christianity he preached must again explain what we do not believe before we are allowed to express what we do.
It’s another field day for those who lampoon Christians in general and for those who look for any reason to excuse themselves from the moral imperatives of New Testament Christianity. One political cartoonist depicted Pat Robertson’s car with a "WWJA" bumper sticker – Who Would Jesus Assassinate?
One of the lessons we can learn from this sad episode is that not only should we thank God that religion is protected from the state, but we can be thankful that the state is protected from religion. For several decades an increasing number of leaders within Christendom have seen themselves in a role somewhat like Old Testament prophets. That was Old Testament Judaism – that was then, Christianity is now. For almost 2,000 years Christian attempts to convert the state have generally left Christianity besmirched and sullied by the process (the book of Revelation offers commentary in this regard).
Christian leaders are not elected or selected for their foreign policy expertise. Christian leaders should avoid the trap of offering political commentary – they possess neither training nor information to render wise judgment about geo-political matters (the track record makes this point abundantly clear). We search in vain for any commission from Jesus telling his followers to be as politically outspoken and polarized that some Christians seem to believe they must be.
PTM believes that Jesus is being left out of many parts of Christendom. The authentic, fundamental Christ-centered faith taught by Jesus seems to have been minimized, ignored, or perhaps even overwhelmed by religion – indeed, Bad News Religion is a reality within Christendom. The last thing Christianity needs is a counterpart to Osama bin Laden – the world is troubled enough with the suffering and misery instigated by the original Osama and his followers. We need more Jesus and less religion.

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Small Church

We find many large Christian churches today, some institutionally connected and some individual non-denominational churches. People tend to equate a large size with success. But, in actuality, a large size congregation of God’s children presents a unique problem.
The common meeting place for the early Christians was none other than the home. Anything else would have been the exception. Note the following passages about “church in the house”: Acts 2:46; Acts 8:3; Acts 20:20; Romans 16:3,5; 1 Cor. 16:19; Col. 4:15; Philemon 2; 2 John 10.
The above Scriptures amply demonstrate that the early church had its meetings in the simple, ordinary, hospitable homes of its members. But does this suggest that it is not appropriate for a church to gather in any other location? No, it does not.
On occasions when it was necessary for “the whole church” to gather together, the church in Jerusalem met in large settings such as the open courts of the temple and Solomon’s porch (Acts 2:46; 5:12).
But such large group gatherings did not rival the small home location for church meeting, which was the house. The large group settings simply accommodated the “whole church” to bring it together for a particular purpose.
In the beginning days of the church’s existence, the apostles used such locations to hold special ministry meetings for the vast number of believers and unbelievers in Jerusalem (Acts 3:11-26; 5:20,21,25,42).
The concept that we see here is that there were two kinds of church meetings. There were large evangelistic meetings designed to preach the gospel to unsaved Jews for their salvation.
But the primary function of the church meeting is for the mutual edification of believers. This function can be somewhat accomplished in large meetings but the small group environment is the best for the edification and growth among fellow Christians.
Large church meetings serve the functions of 1) corporate worship, 2) evangelism, 3) sermons on the faith and 4) overall fellowship. As strange as it may seem, the New Testament never envisions these reasons as being the primary purpose of the church meeting.
There is a place for corporate worship, evangelism, sermonizing, and large group fellowship. But according to Scripture, the governing purpose of the church meeting is mutual edification — that is, one on one, face to face contact among believers. This can only be achieved in small groups.
1 Corinthians 14:26 puts it plainly: “When you come together...let all things be done for edification.” Hebrews 10:24-25 also states: “And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together but encouraging one another...”
The meeting of the church envisioned in Scripture allowed for every member to participate in the building up of the Body (Eph. 4:16). Mutual encouragement was the hallmark of the gathering. “Every one of you” was its most outstanding characteristic.
Each believer who possessed a word from the Lord had the liberty to supply it through his or her unique gift. As Paul pulls back the curtain of the first-century gathering in 1 Corinthians 11-14, we see a meeting where every member is actively involved. Freshness, openness, and spontaneity are the chief marks of this meeting. Mutual edification is its primary goal. Again, this can only be achieved in a small group setting.
Christ was fully preeminent in the early small church meeting. He set the agenda through the Spirit leading of the group. His invisible Spirit directed what took place and how it took place.

The Lord Jesus was free to speak through whomever He chose. And in whatever capacity He saw fit.
The New Testament small home church was based upon the “round-table” principle. That is, every member was encouraged to function. This would be chaos in a large church meeting where the congregation is divided into the active few and the passive many.
In the large church meeting, the sermon and the preacher are the center — and this is good for the function desired. But the small home group of Christians reflects a flexible spontaneity where the Spirit of God is in utter control. Each member of the early church came to the meeting knowing he or she had the privilege and the responsibility to contribute something of Christ. An open freedom and informality marked the gathering.
Note that the idea of mutual ministry envisioned in the New Testament is a far cry from the pinched definition of “lay-ministry” that is offered in the modem church. Most churches offer a surplus of volunteer positions for the brethren to fill - positions like ushering, parking lot attendants, greeters at the door, singing in the choir, leading the worship team, etc. And these are all good service functions needed and encouraged.
But these restricted positions are light years away from the free-and-open exercise of spiritual gifts that is afforded to every believer in the small group setting.
So why did the early church meet in this way? Was it just a passing cultural tradition? Did it, as some say, represent the early church’s infancy, ignorance, and immaturity? Not at all! The early small church meeting is deeply rooted in biblical theology. It made real and practical the New Testament doctrine of the priesthood of all believers — a doctrine that all evangelicals affirm with their lips. In Paul’s language, it is the idea that all Christians are functioning members of the Body of Christ.
From a pragmatic standpoint, the small group meeting is the biblical dynamic that produces spiritual growth - both corporately and individually (Eph. 4:1-16).
Granted, believers can and should function outside the small group meetings. But the gatherings of small groups are especially designed for every Christian to express Christ through his or her gift.
For this reason, churches where there are few or none of the small groups are essentially a nursery for overgrown spiritual babes. It habituates God’s people into being passive receivers. It stunts their spiritual development and keeps them in spiritual infancy.
The Reformation recovered the truth of the priesthood of all believers. But it failed to restore the necessary practices that embody this teaching. Hierarchy control of church services continued. Free and spontaneous small group meetings were not encouraged. In the typical institutional church the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is no more than a sterile truth. The truth of the priesthood of the individual Christian continues to beg for practical application and implementation in the life of the Lord’s people.
God’s eternal purpose centers on forming Christ in a company of people. Significantly, there is nothing more conducive to the culture of spiritual life than the open small group meeting that is depicted in the New Testament.
While multitudes of clergy have made common use of Hebrews 10:24-25 quoted above to stress the importance of “attending church,” verse 26 indicates that mutual, every member, encouragement (not hearing a pulpit sermon) is a deterrent for willful sin.
Does your church break up into small groups?
Do you take part in a close knit, interacting,
Spirit-spontaneous, loving, and encouraging
small church group?
WE NEED EACH OTHER! Small church groups are designed by God.

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Enjoy Being Yourself

The religion I practiced for my first 40 years told people what they ought to become. Everyone in authority told me I've "got to become," so that’s what I tried to do.
Do you know what that kind of religion is like? It's like a bunch of us who all bought new shoes which were too tight for us. We paid so much for them, we thought we had to smile. But all the time we were smiling, our feet were killing us.
You know what? I got tired of people telling me what I "ought" to do. I really did try to smile, because Jesus was supposed to be so good. But it was painful. I came to the place where I began to think that God wasn't a God of love. He was a tyrant. Do you know why I thought He was a tyrant? Because every time I got a little close to Him, He seemed to pull back a little bit. I'd get near, and He'd draw back and say, "Now you've got to work a little harder to get this next step." And about the time I'd get there, He'd point to the next step and say, "Now you got to work a little harder if you want to get there." And I could never get to Him. I could never reach Him. The Bible says, "Draw close to God and He will draw close to you." But it never seemed to happen.
I'd scratch my head sometimes and say, "What's going on? We're worshiping a God of love, so why can't you ever get to Him?" I always longed to hear that "Well done, good and faithful servant"; but I never did hear it. While I sat in the pew at church I heard: "You ought to confess your sins. You ought to try harder. You've got to work hard to become a saint!" But it looked as though the prize was always just out of my grasp.
There are so many things that popular church teaching, such as I received all those years, pushes on into the future. People talk about, "Oh when I get to that place in heaven, I'll have peace!" But you need it now! "When I get to heaven, I'll have continual joy!" When you need joy is now! Right now is when we need peace, joy and all of the other fruit of the Spirit.
Of course, this message left me in a quandary. I was still as self-centered as ever after all these years of trying to follow Jesus. I was terribly sin-conscious. "Is that the right thing to do, or is this the right thing to do?" "Should I have said this, or should I have said that?" "Lord, forgive me for this, and forgive me for that." And I would repeat the process over and over again, trying to make the right decision, making the wrong one, and then asking forgiveness for my sins.
Every morning I would say something like: "Now, Lord, I want to be a good Christian today. I want my language to be clean, my thoughts to be pure, and to live a good life." Then when night came I'd say, "Lord, forgive me for not doing it." If I could get today into the past, I could get it forgiven because the blood had cleansed my sins. But this kept me on a treadmill, and the attention was always on me. How am I doing? Am I succeeding? Am I failing? Am I really imitating Christ? Is He really my Lord? Am I in His will?
I decided if I couldn't make religion work, I'd drop-out of religion. I was outwardly and inwardly "bothered". I praise God for that time. That's the way he got my attention. He used that to reach me.
It was during this period that I met a man who knew Galatians 2:20 as a living reality. What he had to say had an enlightening effect. It became real to me. I saw it for the first time as a possibility now. "Paul isn't talking about an ideal situation," I said to myself. "He isn't talking about something I'm going to get when I die." Galatians 2:20 became a theme verse in my life.
As I listened to this man unfolding the mystery of "Christ in you, the hope of glory," it was so clear that it was real to him. "That's what the gospel is all about," he said. In my spiritual life, all that had really grabbed me up to this point was the fact that Christ died for me, and I could trust Jesus for the forgiveness of my sins. This was the basic message I had heard in church outside of some special sermon for Mother's Day, or a sermon on giving, or on other topics. But regardless of what the subject was, it always seemed to get back to the blood side of the cross.
Then I discovered that we don't really get moving on with God until we can just forget ourselves. Because as long as we are preoccupied with ourselves we really see ourselves as a liability to God. As long as you still have the attention on yourself, imagining that there's still something that needs to be done to improve yourself, you see yourself as God's liability. "Oh, I can't really do that, because I haven't conquered this yet." "I can't do this because I don’t have enough love." "I can't do this because I don't have enough faith." I think we would all agree that this kind of living doesn't measure up to the biographies of the great believers of God in the Bible.
It wasn't until I got hold of the reality of Galatians 2:20 that I could take old Lou, put him on the shelf, and forget him. Only then could I begin to say, "I'm not God's liability – I'm God's asset."
I'm not bragging, but the truth is God has got to have Lou! Why? To reach Lou's world. You can't reach my world, and I can't reach your world. God has to have me to reach the world that I come in contact with. So I'm His asset. He has to have a vessel, and He needs the kind of vessel that sees himself as O.K.
If I end up acting like you, then I've lost contact with the world God wants me to reach. He wants my warts – the things that look like my failures – so that His strength can come through. We are all ministers, in all our different walks of life, and that's the way God means it to be.
Why do I stress that we need to get the attention off ourselves? Because there is so much emphasis on the self in our churches. Crucifying the self, for instance, rather than enjoying the uniqueness of myself. We are all meant to be used by God through our individual soul-personalities.
The key is recognizing that God has actually put His nature into us. I think one of the difficulties Christians have in believing that Christ already lives in them as a present reality lies in the difficulty they had believing that Satan's nature ever lived in them. Most of us at one time thought of Satan as "out there," so that he just had an influence on us. We really thought we were independent people, but that Satan could have an influence on us and God could also have an influence on us. But we never really knew that from the time of our human birth – from the dawn of the human race when our first parents took the wrong fruit – we were born with Satan's nature. You don't find many people who believe that the nature of Mr. Sin, Mr. Phony God, Mr. False Way, Mr. Self indwelt them before their conversion. No, we weren't merely under the external influence of evil – Jesus rightly said that we were of our father the devil and fulfilled his lusts from within (John 8:44).
I didn't like to hear that at first, because there were some days when unbelievers didn't seem so bad. But then it dawned on me that whether they were good or bad, everything they did was from unbelief. Everything was based on self. Finally I saw the folly of the "good and evil" game. You can be just as good as you want to be, but if you're indwelt by the wrong nature you are lost! The "good and evil" game still amounts to evil.
We're talking about Christ having replaced the nature of Mr. Sin in us so that He now lives His holy, blameless, unreprovable, perfect life through us. This is a replaced life. It's not Christ and me, or Christ with me, but Christ in union as one with me. Not that Christ is Lou or that Lou is Christ, you understand, because I'm just the vessel to contain Him. But, as I allow Him, He is evidencing His love life, His concerned life for the world – my world – through me.
This is what Paul saw. He was an extension of Christ. It wasn't Paul living. It looked like Paul – people called him Paul. But it was Christ, the hidden One, living out His concerned life for the world as Paul.
When this dawned on me, when God told me I had died, I stopped disagreeing with Him. When God said that He had buried me, I agreed with Him. And when He said that He had raised me, I said, "Yup, You raised me!"
I see myself in so many biblical characters. Take the woman at the well. She asked where to worship – in Samaria, or in Jerusalem. Which is the right outer place? Which is the right religion? What is the right thing to do? "Well I'll tell you, "Jesus said to her. "The day is coming when you won't worship here and you won't worship down there. You'll worship in here, inside you, in your spirit! Because you don't have to worry whether God is out there toward the north, east, south or west – He will be in you!" This account in John 4 really helped me to get the spotlight off the outer me.
Until that light breaks in on us through the Holy Spirit, we still want Him to be a "me" lover. So we run to services looking for blessings. We still say, "Bless me, bless me." But when you see the truth of Christ living your life, the bless-me days are over. The blessing will come "naturally" as you see your life poured out for others. Because that's the world-lover in you. He's not a "me" lover. He loves you because He's got you – and He's got you because you chose to be "gotten". God's basic formula worked for you, and now He's got you, and as He lives in you, you forget about yourself.
From this point on you don't live from need, from shortage, trying to get a blessing. You have total Sufficiency in you. There's no shortage in Him. You quit saying, "Lord, give me, give me, give me." No wonder some of your prayers don't seem to be answered. God gets tired of body-fussers. You begin to look for God in every situation. As Jesus said, if your eye is single your whole body is full of light. You are full of light because you see only One person operating in all of life's situations. But as long as you are asking, "Is this good? Is this bad?" you are in darkness. To call it God if it looks good, and to say it isn't God if it looks bad, is darkness. "It looks like this," we say, "but wait a minute (or maybe longer), because God is coming."
"Christ in you, the hope of glory." Yes, glory now, just as they saw the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God intends for others to see the glory of Christ in us. Don't you look for it. It isn't yours to see. It's for someone else to see, and those God means to see it as they cross your path will see it. They'll by drawn to the One who is in you, thinking they have been drawn to you. But you know it isn't you, it's Him in union with you – two, yet one – probably the greatest mystery of God for our finite human minds to understand.
Don't short-change yourself or they couldn't be drawn to you. Don't call yourself a liability, because you are God's beautiful asset. And don't be so concerned about sin-consciousness; instead be consumed with Christ consciousness. Get on with the glory of life because Paul said that He has not only justified you, He has glorified you.

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A Scientific Approach To the Genesis Creation

I have been trying to figure out the first chapter of Genesis all of my life. I believe that a Creator God did the creating. But the structure of the chapter into creation “days” was hard to understand.
Were they real 24 hour days? Was Adam’s creation therefore about 6,000 years ago? Where did the dinosaurs fit in? How about the process of evolution of species as taught so prevalently?
For a good section of my life, I did believe that Adam was created 6,000 years ago, and that Noah’s Flood had to have been about 2,350 BC. What about the dinosaurs? I just wasn’t sure - were they before Adam or after Adam?
I tried to harmonize all the geological strata with the Flood. I even tried to say that God must have created the universe with the “appearance” of age - that is, trails of light from distant stars and galaxies were not really that old. After all, God created Adam, not as a baby, but with adult maturity so why not the whole universe the same way?
But in the last few years, I have changed my approach to Creation completely. I have been greatly influenced by Dr. Hugh Ross who is a Christian astrophysicist. He firmly believes in the Creator God, in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of the world. And he also firmly believes in the “Big Bang” event about 14 billion years ago. He has written a number of books showing how the whole universe is anthropomorphic - that is, it has been designed and structured specifically for the benefit of the human race. He has a list of 150 things that had to be fine-tuned just right in the universe so that man could live on the Earth. If any one of these factors were just a percentage point or two different one way or the other, there could be no mankind on the Earth.
I want to present to you now Hugh Ross’ concepts about the Genesis Creation which I have come to accept as my own.
The Hebrew word yom translated “day” in Genesis One can have three meanings: 1. The daylight hours (roughly 12) 2. A whole 24 hour day or 3. An extended but finite time period. Here is a model for the “days” being an extended time period as proposed by scientist Hugh Ross.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth [the whole universe] (Gen. 1:1)

14 billion years ago - the “big bang” creation of the entire physical universe.
13.5 to 5 billion - star and galaxy formation (a necessary foundation for the formation of the Earth's heavier elements which formed from star formation and disintegration).
4.75 billion - the Earth is formed.
4.5 billion - the moon is formed from collision of unknown planet with Earth.

And the Earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Gen. 1:2)

DAY ONE: And God said, Let there be light and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. (Gen. 1:3-5)

4.5 to 4 billion years ago - clearing of the interplanetary debris and partial transformation of the Earth’s atmosphere so that LIGHT from the heavenly bodies now penetrates to the surface of the Earth’s ocean.
4.5 to 4 billion - heavy bombardment of Earth by asteroids.
4 billion - the Earth’s crust in ruin until then.

DAY TWO: And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament - and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. (Gen. 1:6-8)

4 to 3.8 billion years ago - formation of water vapor in the atmosphere under conditions that establish a stable water cycle.

DAY THREE: And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so. And God called the dry land earth; and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas; and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth, and it was so. Gen. 1:9-11)

3.8 to 3.5 billion years ago - formation of continental land masses together with ocean basins.
3.5 billion - production of plants and the oldest fossils appear.

DAY FOUR: And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years… and God made [appointed - they had already been made in DAY ONE] two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night…and God saw that it was good. (Gen. 1:14-18)

3.5 to 1 billion years ago - lights in the sky when the sun, moon and stars become visible by a transformation of the atmosphere from a translucent condition to one that is at least occasionally transparent.

DAY FIVE: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales and every living creature which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and the winged fowl after their kind. And God blessed them saying, Be fruitful and multiply… (Gen. 1:20-22)

1 billion to 1 million years ago - lower vertebrates and swarms of small sea animals formed.
500 million - Cambrian explosion of vast numbers of species as found in fossils.
250 million - prairies emerged from ancient seas.
250 to 65 million - Dinosaur period.
50 million - sea mammals and birds appeared.

DAY SIX: And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beast of the earth after his kind; and it was so…And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish, the fowl, the cattle, and over every creeping thing upon the earth. So God created man in His own image, male and female he created them. And God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it… (Gen. 1:24-28)

1 million to 35,000 years ago - specialized land mammals capable of interacting with the future human race appeared.
150,000 to 40,000 years - the age of sub-human Neanderthals.
50,000 to 35,000 years - somewhere in this range, THE CREATION OF MAN.

DAY SEVEN: And on the seventh day God rested from all His work which He had made. (Gen. 2:2)

35,000 years ago to the present and out into the future (The “Sabbath” of God will never end.)

30,000 to 25,000 years - European cave art and Australian aborigines.
25,000 to 20,000 years - Somewhere in this range, Noah’s Flood.
20,000 to 14,000 years - somewhere in this range, the scattering of nations from Babel.
14,000 years - passable land bridges between East and West.
9,000 to 8,000 years - organized agriculture in Mesopotamia.
8,000 to 6,000 years - cultures developed in Persia, Nile delta, India and Greece.
6,000 to 5,000 years - central Europe, the rest of Egypt, southern Russia and Arabia developed.
2015 BC - the birth of Abraham - after this follows the biblical dating of years accurately.

You may say that this sounds a lot like evolution to you. But notice that God created the “kinds” or species of the creatures - there is no evolution of species. The time element based on the geological scale is the same as evolution uses, but there is a radical difference in that there is a supernatural intervention by God all along the way.
Again, I say that everything that science is discovering on a day to day basis shows that man is God’s supreme creation. The universe and man’s location in it is all set up for the life and survival of man. God has a precious love for us. He purposes us to be children in His supernatural Family.
WHAT A GLORIOUS CREATION!


Dr. Hugh Ross’ website is:
http://www.reasons.org

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Eulogy For My Best Friend

You have been hearing from Jim’s family.
Well, I am Jim’s brother.
I am Jim’s brother in Christ.

I just want to say a few words about Jim and I.

Jim was my best friend outside of my family. I met Jim 15 years ago at Grace Church – St. Louis, and we hit it off great from the start. We had a common commitment to Bible study and liked to exchange back and forth over the meaning of particular scriptural verses. We liked to speculate about things outside of the basic Christian doctrines which we both agreed upon.

Jim was the kind of guy that made you happy just to talk to him. His sense of humor always livened up conversations.

My wife, Joyce, who I shared 50 years of marriage with, died 4 months ago in much the same way as Jim – of lung cancer.

You know – I can just see Jim and Joyce up there looking
down on us now and smiling.

Jim used to always say that when he got to heaven, he was going to ask God about this thing – or that thing. Now they both have all the answers.

As I celebrated my wife’s passing to be with the Lord, I am also celebrating my best friend Jim’s arrival to be with her and Jesus.

I miss you Jim, but one day we will compare notes about God again.

Thank you, Lord – for Jim Drainer.

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The Grand Inquisitor

In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) tells the story of The Grand Inquisitor.
In the story, Jesus Christ returns to earth at the time of the Inquisitions in Spain, healing the sick and comforting those who mourn. Dostoevsky pictures Jesus coming to the people of Spain who were afflicted and encumbered with man-controlled religion as much as the Jews to whom Jesus came in the first century.
The story relates how Jesus was received by organized religion, whether it was first century Judaism or 16th century religion posing as Christianity. It’s a parable of the ongoing battle between man-made religion and God’s true Christianity of grace.
The day after nearly a hundred heretics have been burned alive in the town square, Jesus is walking by the cathedral in Seville just as a funeral procession is leaving, bringing with it a little white coffin. The mother of the child who has just died appeals to Jesus to raise her little girl from the dead. Jesus does so.
Just at that moment the Grand Inquisitor passes through the crowd, coming to the doors of the cathedral. Dostoevsky describes him: “He is an old man, almost ninety, tall and erect, with a withered face and sunken eyes, in which there is still a gleam of light. He is not dressed in his gorgeous cardinal’s robes, as he was the day before, when he was burning the enemies of the Roman Catholic Church – at this moment he is wearing his coarse, old, monk’s cassock.”
The Grand Inquisitor orders his guards to take Jesus and throw him into the prison of the Holy Inquisition. Dostoevsky paints a picture of the war between hierarchy-power religion and Jesus. In so doing he sets the stage for a confrontation between the Grand Inquisitor, representing visible religion, and Jesus, who is the head of the visible and invisible body of Christ on earth.
The Grand Inquisitor visits Jesus in prison, and in a monologue explains how he once believed in the glorious grace of the gospel, but eventually came to see that the only way to control humans is to take away the freedom of God’s grace. He tells Jesus that the Roman Catholic Church rules over the people in Jesus’ name, and that it is a good thing that they do.
The Grand Inquisitor admits that he tried to follow Jesus in his youth, but as the years went by he concluded that Jesus’ gospel was impractical. The masses will never follow Jesus’ ways, he says.
The Grand Inquisitor concludes that Jesus’ return to earth is getting in the way of the mission of the church that bears his name, and that he will have to be burned as a heretic in order to control the people. Jesus does not audibly respond, but instead kisses the old man, who is so moved that he releases Jesus from the prison. Grace responds to grace.
The big issue for legalism is control. Religion has its grand inquisitors today who seek to control you and your life. Legalism is so successful in keeping people under its thumb that many do not want to leave the “earn your way to heaven” in which they exist. Dostoevsky has his Grand Inquisitor explaining to Jesus that humans are anxious to hand over their freedom and are easily persuaded into believing that true freedom comes through submission to human religious authority. He tells Jesus that the masses long to obey, and will sell their freedom for bread. For the Grand Inquisitor, the humans he rules are his slaves.
Grand inquisitors still roam this earth and continue, in Christ’s name, to deceive and seduce the masses who gullibly believe their corruption of the gospel. The masses want to believe that they must earn God’s favor – some try as hard as they can and become frustrated with themselves, and others refuse to even try to please God because it interferes with their own lifestyle.
Some people are so beguiled and mesmerized by performance-based religion that they simply cannot leave. They are comfortable. They like their status quo. They don’t know any other world, other than the narrow and restricted performance of the ideology that controls them.
I am thankful for God’s grace and the fact that He has not appointed any special private religious investigators or grand inquisitors to help Him. God’s grace is sufficient. God’s grace is all we need.
Because human beings have made such a mess out of misrepresenting God, should we all head for our own subjectively determined theological hills and find a cave where we can get away from all of the sin in the world? Should we all subjectively determine what we need by picking and choosing elements we like from a variety of religious traditions?
Don’t let bad experiences sour you on God. Don’t let human beings who have given God a bad name (and that can include all of us, at one time or another) cause you to decide that everything in God’s name is corrupt and perverted. Don’t give up on God because someone did a less than adequate job of representing Him. There are church congregations out there where you will hear lots of sermons about grace. Listen and look for grace. You will even witness and enjoy some gracious behavior there. You will see and hear Jesus, not “earn your way to heaven by trying to please God” type of religion. The health of a church is directly related to its emphasis and insistence on God’s grace.

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What Is "From God"?

Most people aren’t really looking for truth. They are looking for quick and easy fixes – based on four or five points that they can see and remember - soundbites that will give them a “breakthrough” or even a justification to enable them to do whatever it is they want to do. The big problem comes when people apply the same ideas to spiritual enlightenment. They don’t want to study and ponder for years. They want enlightenment now. A breakthrough. A shortcut. Perhaps a quick, repetitive prayer that promises to “enlarge their boundaries.”

Many people don’t want to read slowly and study through the Bible. They want it pre-digested and spoon-fed to them. And so they run out and buy every book that comes along that offers them oversimplified “solutions” in their spiritual growth – and then they buy the next one and the next one.

In other words, many Christians often don’t want to take the time to do the serious work required to confront serious issues. Or - another way of stating it - we don’t have the patience to let Christ do His work of growth in us.

The New Testament does not reduce our relationship with God to a few easy points. Instead it points us to the person of Christ so that we may come to know Him. He is, of course, of infinite depth. It takes time - years and decades - for us to come to fully know comprehend, apprehend and appreciate Him. And because we are not infinite, in our flesh we can never completely or perfectly know Him. That’s why our salvation is based on Christ knowing us (see Galatians 4:9). But we might say that our spiritual maturity is based on us knowing Him.

Here’s a scriptural case in point. The book of 1 John tells us how to know what spirits are from God. How can you tell a “false prophet” from a “true prophet?” Is there a list of questions you can ask? Is there a stack of doctrines for which you can test? Is there statement of beliefs you can request? Can the question be reduced to a simple series of points?“

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world” 1John 4:1.

I must confess that this passage has baffled me a little. Is this really the only question you can ask? Shouldn’t the criteria be more extensive? Shouldn’t there be a formula or checklist? In fact, just the opposite is true. If John had reduced this major question to an easy-to-remember series of points, he would have oversimplified it. In fact, John tells us, the one big question to ask for spiritual truth is - has Jesus come in the flesh? In other words - Is Jesus God? Did He come to earth? Did He live among us? Was that Him who died on a cross? Did He rise again and does He live His life in us today? That’s the criteria for spiritual truth. It’s not an easy criteria. It’s not a shortcut. It’s not an easy, simple, 1 – 2 – 3 thing.

It’s the person of Jesus. And the person of Jesus is by no means a simple thing. The person of Jesus is the road to understanding the complex issues of spiritual maturity.

Remember the words to that old Christian hymn:

In Christ alone, I place my trust.
I find my glory in the power of the Cross.
In every victory, let it be said of me:
My source of strength, my source of hope,
Is Christ alone.

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Equipped For High-tech Society

By Hugh Ross, Ph.D

Human beings seem vastly “over-endowed” for hunter-gatherer or agrarian existence. For tens of thousands of years humanity carried intellectual capacities that offered no discernible advantage. From a Darwinian evolutionary perspective, such capacities would be unlikely to arise and, even if they had randomly emerged, they would likely have been eliminated or minimized by natural selection. From a Creation perspective, however, these special capacities make sense. They serve the highly specialized needs of a technological society, benefiting the life quality and longevity of all humanity.
Three anticipatory endowments – among others – equip humanity for peak performance in a high technology environment.
First, the dexterity of the human hand certainly gave the human race an early survival advantage. Humans could craft more elegant tools and weapons than other bipedal primate species. However, the ability to type faster than a hundred words per minute seems to have offered no particular survival advantage until the twentieth century. Likewise, the remarkable ability to play a Liszt piano concerto had no utility until the invention of the piano.
Secondly, the intelligence quotient of the human brain gave the human species a huge survival advantage in that they could invent new implements for hunting, farming, cooking, building, and even governing. But, again, not until the twentieth century was any use found for the phenomenal capacity of the human brain to perform such higher mathematical functions as nonlinear tensor calculus, relativistic quantum theory, and higher dimensional geometry. These abilities come at a cost however: 35% of the entire blood flow in the human body services the brain. Moreover, to make room for the brain lobes that support mathematics, logic, analysis, and communication, the lobes that support some of our senses (smell and sound in particular) and of our muscles were reduced. Thus the human brain comes equipped for higher functions beyond the demands of mere survival.
Third, many biologist have pointed out that when humans are compared to other mammals, they are dramatically over-sexed. The human sex drive is unusually strong and is virtually continuous. Whereas the females of other mammal species are sexually receptive for only a few days out of the year, human females are ready to mate throughout the year. This tremendous capacity for sex explains how the human race was able to multiply to six billion individuals in a relatively short time period. This rapid reproduction of humanity was God’s specific goal and is explicitly laid out in Genesis 1 and 9.
Extraordinary capacity and drive for sex is particularly critical in a high-tech society. Both affluence and technology work against human reproduction by providing humans with powerful diversions. If it were not for exceptional sexual capacity, the human species could not survive a high-tech environment.
In conclusion, humans, unlike any other species of life, appear to have been equipped in advance for a life far different from the one they experienced when they first appeared. Such equipping of humanity, while puzzling from a Darwinian evolutionary view, points to a Creator God with foresight and a special plan for the creatures who bear His image.

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Personal Persuasion

How do you answer the following question: “If there are strong arguments in support of Christianity’s actually being true, then why aren’t more people, particularly intelligent, well-educated people, persuaded as to its truth?”
Here is my answer.
It is true that some highly educated people are not persuaded of the truth of historic Christianity. However, many leading intellectuals in the world from various academic and professional fields do embrace historic Christianity as a rational and viable world-and-life view.
Early twentieth century Christian writer G. K. Chesterton makes this comment about those who reject Christianity: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
When it comes to the “ultimate issues of life,” persuasion involves more than exposure to rational arguments typically presented via the public educational system, even higher education. It is important to distinguish between arguments on one hand and personal persuasion on the other.
People come to their beliefs about reality and truth based upon various factors, some rational and some nonrational. A good argument provides reasonable and truthful support for its claim. Just because a person is not persuaded by a given argument doesn’t necessarily mean that the argument is somehow logically defective. Nonrational factors such as ignorance, bias, self-interest, fear, or pride may stand in the way of a person genuinely understanding and feeling the full force of a powerful argument and this being persuaded by it.
A person’s belief-forming faculties are seldom as neutral, detached, and coolly objective as many people – including especially “intellectuals” – would like to think. This predicament of self-interest or egocentricity is shared by all people, regardless of educational level.
The apostle Paul knew about this and shared it with the Romans in his epistle to them:
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.”
(Rom.1:18-22 NIV)
“But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of His divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat Him like God, refusing to worship Him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life.” (Same verses in the Message Bible.)
Persuasion, then, seems to be “person-relative,” and no single argument will likely persuade everyone – especially when it comes to the big issues. And simply because some questions are hotly contested does not mean that all positions on them are equally valid and none superior; so the importance of the biblical argument to put beliefs to the test (1 Thes. 5:21; 1 John 4:1; 2 Tim. 3:16).
It would be fair to say that few people accept or reject Christianity based purely upon rational factors. After all, human beings are far from purely rational creatures. Scripture indicates that a person’s coming to (or conversion to) faith in Christ is never a solely intellectual decision (Acts 13:48; 1 Cor. 12:3). God’s saving grace works in remarkable ways to draw people to Himself (John 6:44, 65).
So in conversation with unbelievers, one might ask why they reject specific Christian truth-claims. Is their unbelief based upon rational or nonrational factors? Instead of a reasonable faith, it may be that unbelievers have, in effect, AN UNREASONABLE LACK OF FAITH.

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