I really try to avoid posts like this one as I do not desire to be critical of what others may do. And all I am desiring with this is to assert a position and a caution for those who may read my site. Perhaps, for those whom this hits square on the chin, this may be an exhortation. But I do not wish to engage in any form of bashing.Since Friday I have witnessed a couple things in the blogosphere, which do cause me to be further concerned with those around me who profess Christ. My concern is that we, and I mean that in the generic sense, are chasing rabbits when we should be focusing our attention in other areas.

Now I’ll explain. It all began with a post on Pyromaniacs, where they were awarded recognition by Adrian Warnock as being a cut above the rest. Out of curiosity, I decided to check out what all the hoopla was about. In the course of perusing his site, I started to notice much use of the term “charismatic” in various posts and on the sidebar and with respect to certain authors and pastors. And to make things more curious for me, this term was was actually used in combination with another, “reformed”.

Now, there is a chance that I may be the only person in Christendom to be unacquainted with the classification of “Reformed Charismatic”. Quite frankly, I have operated to a stereotype that all Charismatics talk in gibberish, seek to cast out demons and try to heal one another by smacking folks on the forehead. And while I may be exagerating a bit on this perception, I was pretty much certain that there was an absence of any desire to practice sound hermeneutics.

For these reasons I was humbled and thrilled to find my perceptions shattered when I came across this site to find a group of charismatics who actually take study very seriously and who also happen to love the doctrines of grace. I guess my thrill was partly on the basis that I had all of a sudden imagined a body of Christians who knew and practiced the Gospel of the scriptures and who might possess biblical compassion and brotherly love.

There is another reason for my reaction. A few years back I was befriended by a man at Oral Roberts who lovingly helped me with my transition from Arminianism to a more Calvinistic system of theology. He also pushed for me to continue a more formal pursuit of my studies, which I have certainly taken to heart.

Whenever I tried to explain this friendship to others, it immediately became suspect and criticized. I might as well have been talking about unicorn sightings or even Big Foot. Needless to say, finding out I was not imagining things was quite a comfort. It was right up there with finally being able to identify a system of theology, which explained so much of what I believed and why it was very different from the beliefs of many around me.

Needless to say, I did feel a need to write to Mr. Warnock to express my excitement and my appreciation. You can view my letter to him here. To my surprise, he responded within a matter of minutes. This, in and of itself, was an additional surprise. I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried sending an email to someone of this caliber and notoriety. You may as well toss a bottled note into the ocean and expect a response. They just don’t do it unless they actually know you, know of you, or find you extremely controversial. And here I found myself with a very cordial note asking whether I minded my note being published and also pointing me to some very helpful links. And now, as a result of his help, I’m finally enjoying some of the writings of Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

On Tuesday of this week, my note did actually appear as part of a post on Sufficient and Efficient Grace. It was interesting to read what I had said in the context of what Adrian had also to say. And I love the reaction of Dan Phillips when he read the post, “so, wait, you’re the Reformed Charismatic whose email he quotes at the outset?” I just about died laughing when he asked me that question. I’ve been accused and mistaken for so much over the years; but I don’t think anyone has ever mistaken me for being charismatic.

As I read further, I found myself with an overriding concern and it hit me in this statement from Adrian, “This experience of being overwhelmed by the vastness of the grace and love of God is one I believe is right to seek and to cry out to God for.”

Now, I’m not going to launch into the whole argument about whether or not tongues have expired or not. My position is that those gifts, which the Apostles exhibited, were for establishing their credibility and their authority. With the completion of the canon of scripture, I see no need for such gifts to continue on. Do I have overwhelming proof of this? Nope. And I am not placing God in a box and suggesting he cannot dispense certain gifts if he wanted to. I just happen to believe he has provided a perfect and complete work and that there is no need to improve upon it.

What gets me with this whole notion of seeking after such an increase in experience is that it’s a misplaced desire. Nowhere do we find any of the disciples or apostles seeking after signs, asking for prophecy or praying for tongues. We never find it. And even when our Lord prayed in the garden for us, he didn’t find the need to utilize a special prayer language as some suggest tongues are. But we are exhorted to seek after righteousness. And we are taught and encouraged to be conformed to the image of Christ.

Here’s really the point. Everything in the scriptures directs the Christian to do the following things:

1. Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
3. Love your enemies.
4. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved his church and gave himself for it.

Doctrine, therefore, edifies the inward Christian so that we can in fact carry out these imperatives above. Again, I’d like to emphasize that the focus is inward. As a result of our inward man being first regenerated and then slowly conformed to the image of Christ, we manifest the power of God in our lives. This is a proper cause and effect relationship for the Christian as layed out in the scriptures. The problem with Adrian’s statement is that at the heart of it is a reversal of this relationship so that the focus is on the outward manifestation, which does not necessarily result in the edification or conformity of the inward man.

And lest Adrian thinks I’m just picking on his post, which I am not, the problem holds true for others too. Charismatics certainly don’t have a lock on this. I have found the overwhelming problem with the Fundamentalist movement is that they’re so focused on seeing souls saved, that they too are guilty of losing the plot. Again, their focus is effect then cause, which never happens. The net result of their actions is they tend to produce very weak Christians and many tares.

Of course, those who claim to be reformed are not exempt either. Amongst reformed believers, there is an overwhelming pressure towards intellectual knowledge of doctrine and of what others have written regarding such doctrines. If not guarded, the tendency here is a type of exclusivism, which can at times lead to callousness towards other brothers and towards the lost. Scriptures tell us that knowledge puffs us up. And this isn’t to say we’re to be ignorant people. Not at all. But we are compelled to study scriptures diligently and to make application of it to our lives that we might not sin against God or one another. This cause, in it’s proper place, produces a great effect. We should be careful about deriving our convictions and our presuppositions from books about the scriptures. After all, while they may be very helpful tools, they’re not inspired and are therefore subject to error.
So, I do hope I have been clear on this subject of seeking after external manifestations. And I hope that I have not come across as condescending or critical of Adrian or anyone else, for that matter. Even with all that is currently going back and forth between Adrian’s site and Pyromaniacs, I am glad to know Adrian as a brother and I do believe there is much I can learn from him.

And Adrian, if you happen to honor me with a visit, I want you to know that I really do appeciate you and your ministry; and I do not have one dim view of you at all. Rather, I do hold you in high esteem.

May God bless this post.

Okay, so I am still trying to complete my section on Revelation 4:1-11. All of the parsing, etc. is done. But come on, when you’re dealing with creatures with eyes all around, it’s hard to simply blits through it. I find my mind being exercised in a way that makes it tough to concentrate. Perhaps this is primarily due to the coding work I’m trying to work on in my “other” life. For anyone who cares, I’m finishing up some drivers for a highly modified Linux-2.6.16 kernel. Then I have some application work on top of that work. And on and on. Since most of the readers of my blog are non-technical, I’ll let this level of details stand. Feel free to ask more questions if you happen to be an exception.

So, when I finished getting the new site up and running and fixed all the broken links to the Revelation study, I realized I had never done a summary post for a couple of the earlier sections. I’d like to eventually get all of the study covered via this type of post, in addition to the detailed pages where I break things down verse by verse.

Without further delay, let’s look at a church that appears to be misunderstood. Let’s look at the church at Ephesis. This once mighty church is addressed in Revelation 2:1-7 by Christ.

Now, when I previously lived in the fundamental Baptist circles, I use to get quite annoyed whenever someone would come and use this particular passage of scripture for his message. Why is that? Primarily because this passage is typically used as a spring board or as a battering ram for messages concerning Soul-Winning.

You see, most folks, when they recall this passage, they remember the rebuke these elders received for having left their first love. They typically don’t even cover the other verses leading up to this, so it’s tough for them to forget the context. They never had it.

As is customary for all of the individual church addresses in Revelation, this letter is addressed to the elders of the church. And while the contents of the letter were intended for its specific audience, the letter was to be included in this book for all of the other churches to also read. This is important for us for numerous reasons, though I’ll only elaborate on a couple.

Popular teaching has taken these addresses and turned them from literal to allegorical. In other words, they’re not viewed as literal commendations and rebukes to several churches, but as vague descriptions of various church ages. And based on these teachings, the common view is that we are currently living in the Laodicean age. What a bunch of garbage.

These are in fact literal addresses as I’ve already said and as the Lord declared. Hey, don’t believe me, but you better believe Christ or re-check your salvation. They’re important to us because they provide examples of churches that understood doctrine and applied it accurately, as well as churches that didn’t quite understand and made various blunders. As such, they help us to remove some of the guess work in terms of interpretation of imperatives and prioritization of our work here.

John is of course the scribe and messenger of this message and he begins in verse 2 with an understanding of this church’s circumstances. “I know your works, and your hardships, and your perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate foul ones; and put to the test the ones alleging to be apostles and are not, and found them liars.”

Let’s back up just a tad to cover a few basics. Who does this church belong to? Christ, right? And what did the Lord tell his disciples was “the great commandment”? They were to love the Lord God will all their heart, soul, mind and spirit. And do you recall what was the 2nd greatest commandment? That’s right. We’re to also love our neighbor as ourselves. But who else are we to love? After all this covers quite a bit. In other passages, we’re told to love our brothers and sisters in Christ. And these are our brothers in the local body as well as within the universal church. We’re to love all of the children of God. And there’s one more… We’re to even love our enemies.

Now that we’ve got those basics covered, let’s go back to verse 2. Christ empathizes with them. After all, so much wonderful doctrine has come out of the letter from Paul to this church, and it wasn’t in the form of rebuke. So, Christ is giving acknowledgement of this. And he acknowledges their perseverance in doctrine, in the faith, and their subsequent distaste for anything contrary.

But this last phrase should catch our attention. He also notes that they put certain people to the test, who were calling themselves apostles. Hmm. Sounds noble enough. Right? Well, if we peruse the rest of the verses, we find a call to remember where they ran a ground (v.5). Now, the fact they’re not around any longer might suggest they didn’t quite catch the hint tossed to them.

Now, remember how we were discussing that these letters were to be made public? There’s pretty good reason for, and not just for our sake. If the elders in Ephesis had considered what took place at Philadelphia, they’d have seen some commonality. “Behold, I will give up from the synagogue of Satan the ones saying themselves to be Jews and are not but lie. Behold I will make them in order that they will come and bow down before your feet and that they might know I, I loved you [Rev 3:7-13].”

In both cases, they had those walking amongst them professing to be believers, professing to be teachers of God’s truths. But do notice the difference in their actions towards these folks.

Those in Philadelphia held to the truth and never departed from it. And they had some form of power within them, though we’re really not told what it was. Personally, I do believe they exercised prayer for their enemies and for such false teachers. And perhaps this is the power referred to. As a result of their walk, Christ promised to take matters into his own hands. He promised to make them to bow down and to know of his love for them.

Now examine the actions of those in Ephesis. What did they do? Sure they kept to doctrine. But then they sought out these individuals with the purpose of exposing them. And they succeeded didn’t they?

Here’s the deal. As joint-heirs with Christ, we have a wonderful inheritance and truth. And we’re to be faithful to this truth at all costs. Likewise, we’re to expose error, false doctrine and heresy. We’re even told to mark certain individuals who preach such things.

Now, Paul dealt with such practitioners of false doctrine in his letter to the Galatians. He proclaimed that such individuals were even accursed. But that’s about it. He spends the rest of his time proclaiming what is sound doctrine and not going around naming each false teacher. I would imagine the folks in Philadelphia did much of the same.

One of the problems I have witnessed amongst some of the reformed churches, that’s almost the polar opposite of what I’ve seen amongst many of the fundamentalists, is a complete lack of love and compassion for one another, for anyone outside the local body, and for those in their community. Now, I’m not for a second trying to suggest that the “love everyone at the expense of sound doctrine” practice is any better. It yields its own poisonous fruit. But we manifest our faith in our love for one another and for others. And loving is not the same as tolerating and condoning. But our responsibility is to hold and proclaim truth. And we only have credibility within the world when we discharge such responsibilities in the context of that love, which can only come from a regenerated life.

Let us keep this in mind and learn from the example of this once mighty church. Let us lovingly exhort and admonish one another. And let’s never have an excuse for showing hatred towards anyone. After all, we are not Christ and are thusly incapable of practicing such in righteousness.

If you’re coming here from the link on Reformed Chicks Blabbing, welcome. And please, tell Michele it’s chocolate.

Many thanks,

Mike

Well, I apologize for not having much new content over the past week. I’ve been intending to merge my blogger site and my website into one for numerous reasons:

1. I like my domain name as opposed to something.blogspot.com
2. I’ve noticed that most of the folks who would visit and comment on my blogger articles wouldn’t go to my website to view the support textual work
3. I hated the fact that blogger was always experiencing slow times
4. I definitely got tired, quickly, of my last website design
5. Did I mention I like my domain name?

Anyway, it took a while to get this up and running. I haven’t messed with PHP for a few years. And, my MySQL skills were a tad bit rusty. So, this was actually a long, but fun exercise. And I really enjoyed tweaking my style sheet to try to get things working for all of the various browsers. If it doesn’t work for yours, well…

I do hope this new look and design works well for you. I will likely continue to make adjustments as we continue. Plus, I’m looking forward to adding support for the more geeky side of me. There’s much technical “stuff” I’d like to be able to post and share with others in a collaborative fashion.

And thanks again for your patience.

-Mike

I must admit that I was really hoping to have my next section of Revelation up by now. Unfortunately, it’s just not to be. I have been having a number of discussions with friends and folks who appear to be going through rather significant trials.

Some are going through trials of life. And I do not want to minimize this because I think we can all identify with them. And let’s face it, when we go through such trials, ourselves, they seem so immense, like nothing we’ve really imagined before. Eventually these do pass; and hopefully we move on, and our faith is increased.

Others are going through trials as the result of their faith and stance on the word of God. While I could easily provide a number of verses and passages to show how such suffering is normal and called for in the life of the Christian, I don’t believe that’s what’s necessary right now. I don’t think this is a good time to see how many verses I can recall.

When these types of trials come, it’s very easy to feel very secluded, alone, and utterly cut off. The primary reason for this isn’t a doubt of scriptures. And it’s likely not due to a lack of knowledge of what God says about trials. Rather, this comes as the result of self-doubt and self-criticism.

I’m not sure if any of you have been there. I know I have been. In fact, I’m going through a bit of it myself, right now. You see, we question our involvement in the kingdom of God. We question our calling and whether we’re operating according to it or whether we’re stark opposition and God’s trying to effect a course correction. We might question whether God’s trying say something to us and we’re simply too caught up to listen. And the list goes on.

All I can say is this: God is not caught off guard by what is occurring in our lives. And we didn’t just fall off course and out of his will. Sure, our personalities are involved. And sometimes we get frustrated, angry, hurt. But God knows all of that before hand. Yet, he still chooses to place us in certain positions that are uniquely required to conform us more to the image of his son. This doesn’t mean we’re off-base at all. But he is the Potter. And sometimes he needs to simply reshape a little clay. And sometimes he needs to remove whole chunks. But he will perfect his work in us. In fact, he’s doing this because he is faithful.

So, take courage! And do not despair. If you have moments of weakness where you give in to temptation, then pick yourself and keep on going. When a lack of understanding seems to be an unmoveable wall, rely on the things that you do know to do. And, take comfort in knowing that there is no condemnation to all of us in Christ. If there’s no condemnation from our God, why do we fear condemnation from man? And why condemn ourselves?

Do me a favor, if you will. Just because we’re separated by much distance and most of us have never seen one another face to face, let’s remember to lift each other up in prayer. My heart breaks for some of these dear people as I can kinda see what God may be doing through them because I’m detached from their battle. And I too need my friends when I go through such things.

I will try to get the Revelation post up soon. Thanks for your patience with me.

-Mike