In Part 1 of the look at the History of the Renewal Movement, I posted the first half of my notes from my first talk at the Last Days Bible Conference, covering the pre-Renewal era as well as the first of four historic periods (1901-1947).  Now I’ll provide the rest of the notes, covering  the three remaining historic periods.

1947-1965 – Faith Healers and Prosperity Preachers

 1. The era started with many significant events:

a. World Pentecostal Conference.

i. This marked an increased time of organization, inter-denominational cooperation and Pentecostal recognition.

ii.  This also showed the world that the Pentecostal Movement was a vast and global force, not just some goofy little organization of sporadic North American and British churches.

b. The healing ministry of William Branham took off.

i. Branham was an uneducated fellow from Kentucky who struggled through 1946.

ii. His rise to fame came when in 1947 he hired Gordon Lindsay as his manager.

– Lindsay hired others to speak (i.e. well-known faith healing teacher F.F. Bosworth), but let Branham do the healing part.

– In 1951, despite the huge amount of money that he was making, Gordon Lindsay quit due to all the abuse he got from Branham.

iii. Once Lindsay left, people saw why Branham previously didn’t do the speaking at his own crusades:

– He pronounced himself to be Elijah.

– He taught annihilationism.

– He taught that women were sub-human.

– He taught that Eve had sexual intercourse with Satan and gave birth to Cain, and the offspring of Cain invented science and education (both of which were “evil”).

– He taught that denominations were the “mark of the beast” and anyone in a denomination was unregenerate.

– He taught that he was the messenger to the church at Laodicea.

– He taught that the Devil invented the doctrine of the Trinity.

– He taught that the second coming would be in 1977.

 c. The Latter Rain Revival seeds were planted.

i.  In Nov. 1947, some professors from Bethel Bible Institute in Saskatoon (Saskatchewan, Canada) went to see William Branham in Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada).

– Branham confirmed their suspicions that demons were behind every disease and also that the gospel should be accompanied with signs and wonders.

ii. They resigned from the college and moved to North Battleford (Saskatchewan, Canada), where they started a school.

– After several months of fasting and praying for the signs that they witnessed under Branham, in 1948 the students “fell under the power” and were slain in the spirit.

– They experienced healing, tongues, mass singing in tongues, healings, etc.

iii. They had some strange teachings.  They taught that:

–  Their movement was the “true Pentecost” since tongues, healing and also the 5-fold ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers were restored.

– All denominations as apostate

– They had received a new “revelation” about impartation: Faith healers taught that they could transfer faith and/or healing by the laying on of hands, but the Latter Rain folks taught that they could transfer both spiritual gifts and the Holy Spirit himself via the laying on of hands.

This was a distinctive change because previous to the Latter Rain movement, people would only get the gifts/the Spirit by tarrying (praying and waiting).  The idea of imparation was a shortcut to getting both spiritual gifts and the Holy Spirit himself.  Instead of praying to receive tongues (or any other gift/manifestation) for weeks on end, a person simply had to be touched by someone else who had it.

iv. The Latter Rain revival spread all over North America rapidly.

v.  The Latter Rain movement was quickly opposed and suppressed.

– It was officially condemned by the Assemblies of God in 1949.

– The Assemblies of God put tremendous pressure on people to distance themselves from the Latter Rain movement.

– Though the movement essentially “went underground” due to denominational pressure, the practice of impartation via laying hands is definitely still around (in fact, it’s a rather explicitly mainstream Renewal practice). The Latter Rain proponents popularized the practice.

 d. Oral Roberts started his healing ministry in 1947.

i. Branham was the most famous faith healer of his era, but Oral Roberts was ultimately the most successful.

ii. Roberts is best known for a few things:

– The Prosperity Gospel: He taught the principle of “Seed Faith”, where a person “sows a seed” to a ministry (i.e. gives money) in order to “reap” a blessing (with Roberts, it was health or answers to prayer…it quickly became money.)

– He is known for prayer cloths and direct mailing, but those were around before him (Smith Wigglesworth used prayer cloths and direct mailing was a technique adopted by Roberts for soliciting ministry funds)

iii. Oral Roberts also had more savvy than most of his other competitors in the faith healing circuit.

– He started the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship with Demos Sharkarian in 1951.

– When all the faith healers were discredited by negative press in the 1950’s (i.e. when “man of God” A.A. Allen was arrested for drunk driving in Tennessee in 1955 and then claimed that he was kidnapped by people seeking to discredit him and had alcohol forcibly poured down his throat), Roberts wisely distanced himself from the “faith healer” scandals by shifting his focus strictly to evangelism in the 1960’s.

– He cultivated friendships with other powerful evangelicals who weren’t Pentecostals: namely Billy Graham and Carl Henry.

iv. He was one of the pioneers of televangelism.

– He started on TV in 1954 and was on 130 stations by 1958.

v. He started Oral Roberts University.

– ORU has become one of the most influential Christian universities in the World.

– The ORU board of directors & board of reference is a “who’s who” in the modern Renewal circles…as well as a “who’s who” in Prosperity Gospel/NAR circles.

 2. The era also saw new acceptance of the Pentecostals.

a. In 1958, Billy Graham said “The Pentecostal movement can no longer be considered a fringe group in Protestantism for it is the fastest growing movement in Protestantism today and must be taken within the fold of Protestantism.”

b. In 1959, Thomas Zimmerman, general superintendent of the AOG was elected the president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

– This may not have marked the full-blown acceptance of the Pentecostal Movement by broader evangelicalism, but Pentecostals were now in charge of the main organization of evangelicalism.

 3. This era also saw the overflow of Pentecostal theology and practice into non-Pentecostal denominations: The Charismatic Movement.

a. The Charismatic Movement ultimately began in August of 1959 when Dennis Bennett, a priest from St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, CA spoke in tongues.

i. Bennett didn’t share his experience with his church until April 3, 1960.

ii. The outrage was so extreme that he resigned in the 2nd service.

iii. Bennett quickly moved to St. Luke’s Episcopal in Olympia, WA and that church grew from a few dozen to over 2,000.

iv. From St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Bennett shared his Spirit baptism with Lutherans, Presbyterians, and other mainline Protestants.

 4. The reason I selected 1965 as the closing year for this period was three-fold:

a. William Branham died in 1965, marking the end of the era of the Faith Healers.

b. Chuck Smith started at Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, CA.

c. John Wimber spoke in tongues for the first time (Not that he influenced anyone at all).

1966-1982 – The Chapel plants a Vineyard

1. In Catholicism

a. In 1966 two professors from Duquenne University (a Catholic university) secretly attending Pentecostal meetings to learn about what happened.

b. On a retreat in 1967 the professors and students sought the baptism of the Spirit and received it: they spoke in tongues, were slain in the Spirit, got holy laughter and rolled on the floor.

c. That kicked off a series of revivals that grew exponentially in Catholic circles, including some huge Charismatic revivals at Notre Dame.

d. Oral Roberts, David DuPlessis and Vinson Synan were all instrumental in eventually gaining acceptance for the Catholic Charismatics in Pentecostal denominations.

e.  This is far more significant than one might think as approximately 1/5 of the global Renewal is Catholic (i.e. 100 million plus, including the current pope)

 2. In Pentecostalism

a. The Independent Pentecostals and the denominations all experienced tremendous growth in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

i. The televangelists built colossal empires worth hundreds of millions of dollars.  People like:

– Rex Humbard

– Pat Robertson

– Oral Roberts

– Jim Bakker and Paul Crouch (co-founders of Trinity Broadcasting Network)

– Jimmy Swaggart

ii. By 1971, the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship had grown to 300,000 members in 87 countries (all of whom were directly influenced by people like Oral Roberts).

iii. The Jesus Movement of the 1970’s was an evangelism explosion that led to millions of people joining churches in all denominations.

iv. This was the era where the main prosperity gospel preachers all got popular: Kenneth Hagin, Keneth Copeland, Oral Roberts, Frederick K.C Price, Jim Bakker, Paul Crouch, Jimmy Swaggart, Morris Cerullo, Robert Tilton, John Osteen, etc.

 3. In Calvary Chapel

a. Calvary Chapel started when Chuck Smith left the Foursquare church due to their charismatic excesses, started pastoring Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa (25 people), and started targeting the hippies for evangelism (with some rather amazing success).

i. Calvary Chapel would be the beginning of a far more bible-oriented strain of the Renewal: tongues speaking without all the outlandish manifestations and craziness.

ii. Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, grew to be a gigantic church (10,000+) but also planted dozens of churches that grew to be monster churches.

b. In 1965, John Wimber first spoke in tongues as he was working at a Quaker Church in Yorba Linda, CA.

i. In 1977, Wimber joined the Calvary Chapel.

ii. After some preaching and study, Wimber realized that signs and wonders needed to accompany the proclamation of the gospel.

iii. Wimber soon had his first healing and in 1980, he had a revival where hundreds of people fell, shook, sobbed, spoke in tongues, etc.

iv. Within 2 years, Calvary Chapel, Yorba Linda, was several thousand people.

v. In 1982, Chuck Smith and other challenged Wimber on the wild practices going on in Yorba Linda.

– Once Wimber wouldn’t budge on its focus on healing and spiritual manifestations, Yorba Linda was asked to drop “Calvary Chapel” from their name.

– Wimber’s church took the “Vineyard” name and started a new denomination when 30 other Calvary Chapels, and 8 other churches, joined the new “Vineyard” movement.

– The 1982 break with Calvary Chapel is the break of this era since when John Wimber was liberated from the restraints of the Calvary Chapel movement, he was free to pursue his own theological ideas without hindrance.

– Wimber had been previously working with C. Peter Wagner (both teaching at Fuller Seminary) for years, and they would move far away from the theologically cautious positions of their Calvary Chapel associates.

 1982- Present- Meltdowns, Fall Downs and Beat Downs

– The next 30+ years were marked by many scandals, growth, and an emphasis on revivalism that got out of control.

1. The Scandals. (Here’s a small sampling)

a. In 1987, Jim Baker went to prison for fraud, having sold tens of thousands of lifetime memberships for people to stay for at his 500 room hotel in Heritage USA (a technique previously used by Rex Humbard…though slightly more successfully).

i. Also, it was revealed that he had paid $279,000 in hush money to Jessica Hahn, a woman with whom he had an affair.

– I’ll never forget watching the news and seeing Jim Bakker, crying his eyes out, being taken into custody by US. Marshalls.

b. In 1988, Jimmy Swaggart was involved in a sex scandal involving a prostitute. He was removed from the Assemblies of God, but did it again in 1991.

c. In 1989, Oral Roberts’ medical school closed after he raised the money for it in 1987 by sharing a vision where Jesus threatened to kill him if he didn’t get the money.

 2. The Growth

a. The Calvary Chapel movement kept growing in the 1980’s, becoming the largest denomination in California.

b. The Vineyard sprouted off several church movements and continued to spread around the world.

c. The Renewal exploded around the world in this era as well, with the Charismatics in Africa, South America and the Pacific Rim growing to numerically surpass the Charismatics in North America.

i. Though Lakewood Church in Houston, TX. has around 45,000 members, there are several churches in other countries that are far larger.

 3. The Revivals

a. The Argentinian Revival (1982-? – I’m not sure when it “ended”)

i. After the Falklands War ended in 1982, an Assemblies of God pastor named Claudio Friedzon held some crusades and his church grew to 2,000 by 1986. Now, it claims to be over 100,000 people.

ii. Steve Hill worked in Argentina under Friedzon for 7 years during this time.

iii. The revival in Argentina was marked by healings, tongues, laughing, being slain in the Spirit, and weeping in the Spirit.

b. Carpenter’s House Revival in Lakeland, Florida. (1993-94)

i. Karl Strader was the host pastor

ii. Rodney Howard Browne was the visiting speaker.

iii. This was the “laughing revival” where people would laugh uncontrollably, as well as get “drunk in the Spirit” and get stuck to the floor with “holy glue”.

iv. After Carpenter’s House, Rodney Howard Browne went to Kenneth Hagin’s Rhema Bible Training Center in Tulsa where he imparted the laughing anointing to Randy Clark, pastor of a Vineyard church in St. Louis.

(Here’s a little glimpse into what exactly was going on: Howard Brown is the guy with the microphone telling jokes in tongues)

v. Randy Clark then took that anointing to Toronto, where he imparted it to John Arnott.

c. The Toronto Revival (1994-2000)

i. John Arnott was the host pastor.

ii. Randy Clark was the visiting speaker.

iii. After being prayed for by Benny Hinn (over 50 times, with no lasting effect), John Arnott went to Argentina in 1993 and had Claudio Friedzon lay hands on him. Friedzon got the impartation from Howard Brown and passed it on to Arnott, but it didn’t work.

iv. Arnott then heard that Randy Clark had Howard Browne’s impartation and invited him to bring the anointing to Toronto.

v. January 20, 1994 with meetings led by Randy Clark and that impartation produced the revival.

vi. The revival in Toronto was known for its distinctive elements: barking (at the start) and gold teeth/gold dandruff (at the end).

d. The Brownsville Revival (1995 – 2000)

i. John Kilpatrick was the host pastor.

ii. Steve Hill was the visiting speaker.

iii. Started Father’s Day, June 17, 1995

iv. It was known for people jerking and quaking.

v. It lasted until around 2,000.

e. The Lakeland Revival (2008)

i. Steven Strader (son of Carl) was the host pastor.

ii. Todd Bentley was the visiting speaker.

iii. Started April 2, 2008

iv. Was known for Todd Bentley’s stories of him kicking and punching people.

(Watch it for yourself)

v. It was considered the first “internet driven” revival…and likely the most documented fraud in history.

vi. Claims were made galore, but not a shred of evidence was brought forth for any of it.

vii. Effectively ended August 11, 2008 when Todd Bentley left due to scandal.

4. The NAR

a. In 1998, C. Peter Wagner wrote a book on what he considered New Apostolic Churches.

b. He did a bunch of research into church growth both in North America and internationally, and invited those whom he considered influential leaders to share what was making their churches grow with such magnitude.

c. In essence, the N.A.R. is a combination of all the worst elements of Renewal theology:

i. The Shepherding Movement.

ii. Prosperity Gospel.

iii. Obsession with signs and wonders

iv. Willful ignorance of history.

v. Theologically Insane Spiritual Warfare.

d. In a telling move, Wagner moved his Wagner Leadership Institute headquarters to to New Life Church of Colorado Springs shortly before then pastor, Ted Haggard, was fired for doing crystal meth and “getting massages” (or so he claimed) from a homosexual prostitute for three years.

How’s that for an authenticating sign of C. Peter Wagner’s claims of being an apostle and prophet?

So right now, the New Apostolic Reformation is the big new “move of the Spirit.”  The NAR is composed of churches that unite old heresies in new packaging and there’s no shortage of Renewal celebrities & leaders that are either endorsing or conveniently ignorant of it.

Next to nobody is speaking out against it, and the next post will start to explain why.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Trying to be objective, but slipping up a few times near the end…” Unger

Thus far, I’ve posted the notes from my first lecture at the Last Days Bible Conference, generally covering the history of the Renewal Movement.  Those notes were broken up into Part 1 and Part 2, and now I’ll post the notes from my second lecture.

When I was originally asked for the titles of my lectures, I had some tentative titles in mind but I hadn’t done most of my research.  I had originally entitled my second lecture “The Heresies and Heterodoxies of the Charismatic Movement,” but as my research progressed, I realized that I needed to change the direction of the lecture.  As I was working, I realized three things:

1.  Listing out all the various bad and downright heretical ideas within the broader Renewal Movement would lead to a list of 40+ ideas, which would have made a 45 minute talk totally unbearable.  That’s 1 minute per idea with 5 minutes combined for introduction and conclusion. Talk about an overload.

2.  A long list of bad and downright heretical ideas wouldn’t really serve anyone well since I wouldn’t have any reasonable amount of time to explain why the ideas were bad or heretical.  It would have just been a list of “here’s a bunch of ideas that are heretical…for reasons that time won’t permit me to explain.”

3.  Many of the ideas would likely never be encountered by many people in the Renewal Movement, let alone people outside of it.  Sure, everyone encounters the concept of “hearing the voice of God” in some manifestation, but there’s not a whole lot of people outside of very specific circles that encounter the concept of the Abishai anointing or the concept of a salt covenant.

So, I changed my lecture to deal with more foundational problems with the Renewal Movement.  I dealt with five “fatal flaws” and organized them with the acronym K.N.I.F.E.  If you were at the conference, I said that I would be providing citations for all the points…but as I’ve been working through my notes and editing (they were in point form with lots of acronyms and improper English, and needed to be turned into proper sentences), I realized that footnoting every point would take several hours per post.  I have included a few citations for some quotes, but much is left without citation (especially in the previous history post).  If there is any specific question, I’ll look up any specific reference that’s requested.  That being said, I’ve included a few hyperlinks to content that I didn’t pull out of books (and remembered to write down).  Editing, formatting, linking and adding pictures to these notes has taken around six hours per post, so I hope those who were expecting 100+ footnotes per post will grant me some slack.

Now, here’s the first half of my notes:

Five Fatal Flaws of the Renewal

1.  Knotted (twisted) Hermeneutics

Almost every Renewal author I read handles the Bible in one of three equally errant ways:

a. Interpretation via concordance.

i. The practice of suggesting that multiple verses are talking about the same thing or related because of common English words, which is equally wrong.

ii.  This often manifests in preaching where people string together passages on the basis of word association.  The passages aren’t talking about the same thing, but they’re connected on the shallow basis of a common English term.

– Jack Hayford (The Beauty of Spiritual Language, 44) writes about the practice of lifting up hands in corporate worship and says:

“Looking into the Bible, support for the uplifting of hands in worshipful praise was profuse. Beginning with Abraham (Gen. 14:22) to David (Ps. 63:1-4) to Paul (1 Tim. 2:8), the Word of God encourages this most natural and appropriate expression of laudation.”

– He just strings three verses together that contain the idea of lifting hands and concludes that Christians should do this in a church service.

That’s Jack Hayford, the guy officiating Benny Hinn’s remarriage to his ex-wife after Hinn cheated on her [with Paula White] and blamed his infidelity on her 15-year prescription drug habit…

 b. Interpretation via the Spirit.

i. The practice of having the Spirit unveil completely nonsense interpretations of scripture.

ii.  This is often portrayed as something “prophetic” and a mark of spirituality.

– Bill Johnson, of Bethel Church, had read Revelation 19:10 and couldn’t figure out what it meant. He figured it out and writes:

“It was particularly this last sentence—the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy—that had just exploded in my heart, and I knew it had powerful implications extending far beyond the context of John’s encounter.

For the next few moments I meditated on this phrase, asking the Holy Spirit to help me understand what He meant. A few hours later, the answer walked right through my office door. One of the men in the church, whom I’ll call Jim, stopped by to share a testimony of how God had powerfully restored his marriage. After he finished the story he said, “Bill, you have my permission to tell this testimony to anyone you know who needs to hear it.”

This statement suddenly connected the dots for me. Testimony and prophecy had always been important elements of the Christian life, but in this moment I realized that this man was telling me that I could use his testimony to prophesy over people. (Prophecy either foretells the future or causes a change in the present. A testimony then becomes catalytic in its ability to bring about a change of atmosphere in the present, making room for a supernatural release.)”

Bill Johnson is the elderly gentleman in the glasses. The grave is that of Smith Wigglesworth, early Pentecostal faith healer. The second and fourth comments give you a hint for what’s going on.

Bill Johnson is the elderly gentleman in the glasses.  The grave is that of Smith Wigglesworth, early Pentecostal faith healer.  The second and fourth comments give you a hint for what’s going on.

c. Interpretation via original language abuse.

i. The number of people in the Renewal who are competent in the original languages are few and far between, but the amount of people using Hebrew and Greek to pull rabbits out of a hat are far

ii. Hebrews 4:14 says “Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.“

– Regarding this, Kenneth Hagin writes,

“The Greek term for “profession” means “saying the same things.” We need to say the same thing that Jesus says about our redemption, taking of our sins, and bearing our diseases.”

– In Hebrews 4:14, the word in the Greek is homologia, and it’s not even a verb.

– Now it’s true that the word is made up of homos (same) and logos (word), but Hagin’s error is two fold:

– It’s a noun, and it refers to the content of what someone professes, not the act of professing.

– He takes the verse to mean “let us relentlessly keep on saying bible verses out loud in order to gain whatever promises are in them, ” which is not even in the same area code as the historical/grammatical meaning of the passage.

– Kenneth Hagin is just blatantly wrong.

– His error is a foundational element in his whole book Exceedingly Growing Faith:  When you don’t find that God’s giving you whatever you think he’s promised you in whatever scripture you’re reading (and grossly misunderstanding), just keep on repeating those same scriptures aloud until God buckles and gives in.

iii. That same error pops up in almost every faith healing book I read.

Hagin has Mark 11:24, his “life verse” on his crypt…I’ve often wondered why he didn’t just follow his own teaching and ask Jesus to not let him die?

2. Novelty Obsession.

a. The entire Renewal movement started a restoration movement, focused on the fabulous “new” restoration of the Spirit that God was doing.

i.  On the second page of the very first issue of The Apostolic Faith, William Seymour explained why they named their movement “the Apostolic Faith Movement”:

 “The Apostolic Faith Movement stands for the restoration of the faith once delivered unto the saints…”

– The term “restoration” is quite significant.  That is a subtle way of insinuating that, before their movement, the “faith once delivered unto the saints” was lost and needed to be restored.

ii. This idea has been a component of the Renewal from the beginning and still is.  Speaking of the New Apostolic Reformation in his 1998 book New Apostolic Churches, on page 18 C. Peter Wagner explained why he calls it a “reformation”:

” I use ‘reformation’ because, as I have said, these new wineskins appear to be at least as radical as those of the Protestant Reformation almost 500 years ago.”

C. Peter Wagner: “I once cast out a demon this big…”

b.  There is a constant fascination with “new” things in Renewal circles:

 i. New Moves of God.

Every 2-5 years we have some big move of God”

– Right now it’s the Bay Revival.  The Bay Revival is already dwindling, since it started in 2010, but if there’s something new and equally large, I’m unaware of it as of right now. The guest speaker is Nathan Morris, a British evangelist, and the host church is Church of His Presence in Daphne, Alabama. It’s run by John Kilpatrick, who milked the Brownsville Assembly of God and left it in 2003, after running the church into the ground to the tune of millions of dollars.

– Before the Bay Revival was the Lakeland Revival with Todd Bentley, (which occurred in an Assemblies of God church), started in 2008 and was over five months, but not before 400,000 people from 100 countries had come out. That whole revival ended in Todd Bentley stepping down due to adultery and his alcoholism.

– Ironically, Todd Bentley spent his “recovery time” at Rick Joyner’s Morningstar Fellowship Church in Charlotte, NC. While Todd was there, the worship pastor Jason Hooper (of Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey fame) got in a drunk driving accident in Australia after slamming shots of scotch.  His blood alcohol limit was four times the legal limit, which is only made worse since the blood alcohol limit for international drivers in Australia is ZERO.

How’s that for a good friend to help you through rehab?

– Before Lakeland, we had the simultaneous revivals at Brownsville Assemblies of God (“the quaking revival”) and the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church (“the barking revival”), from around 1995-2000.

– Before that, there was the “drunken revival” at Carpenter’s Home Church (an Assemblies of God church pastored by Karl Strader), started in 1993 and led by Rodney Howard-Browne (the “Holy Ghost bartender”).

– That “revival”, known for “getting drunk in the spirit” as well as “holy laughter”, was shut down prematurely when Strader’s son was sent to prison for 45 years on 238 felony counts of selling the securities without a license to 75 “investors”. It ended in the church falling into massive debt and ultimately selling their 10,000 seat building to pay off their debts…and that didn’t last too long either.

– Before that was the revival in Kansas City that was led by the “Kansas City Prophets”. The three main prophets there were Mike Bickle, Paul Cain, and Bob Jones. Bob Jones was disciplined out of the Vineyard Church because he used his prophetic office to get into young women’s pants. Paul Cain did the same thing, but with you men…and he was also an alcoholic. Mike Bickle washed his hands of everything and started IHOP when the dust had settled.

 – The list keeps on going back, but I imagine you’re seeing the same pattern than I’m seeing.

Things are not as they appear.

 – You’d think that if there were legitimate prophets in these movements, someone would be able to see through the frauds in their midst…but the problem is that the prophets are the leaders and the prophets are the frauds.

 ii. New worship songs.

–  This is incredibly important since there is an idea in Renewal circles that the Holy Spirit is present in worship services, namely the musical part, in a way that is key to effective evangelism.

– It’s a way of getting unbelievers to experience the effects of the Holy Spirit prior to getting saved, and is the “bait on the hook” so to speak.

 – In his book Worship His Majesty (pg. 60), Jack Hayford writes of when he discovered this amazing idea:

 “I had also begun to see that since worship is for people, it could also be the key to evangelism. It followed that if God were to “move in” – if He truly wanted to be present in power and bless His people at worship services – then people would be drawn to Christ. The question was, would previously unyielded hearts sense the reality of His presence and open up to Him?

 The laboratory of pastoral experience has verified that they do indeed!

 We have found that worship is the pathway and the atmosphere for people – the saved and the unsaved alike – to discover

* their royal calling in Christ,
* their high destiny in life,
* their fullest personal worth and
* their deepest human fulfillment.”

– Just process that for a moment.

– The key to successful evangelism is music.

– Not the Holy Spirit, or the biblical gospel…but music.

– The presence of God is marked by music.

– Not the proclamation of the Gospel, or the teaching of the scripture, or holiness, or repentance, or any number of other things…but music.

– The key to softening sinful hearts is music.

– Not the grace of God, or the work of the Holy Spirit, or the verification of the proclamation of the Gospel when accompanied by love…but music.*

iii. New Spiritual Gifts.

– Peter Wagner has completely fabricated the “office of intercessor”, which is another name for a “prayer warrior”.

– I’d argue that the tongues, prophecy and healing are entire novel spiritual gifts too, at least when judged by the definitions of Scripture. I’ll prove that, as best I can in the time I have, in the next talk (or post).

c. That obsession with “new” leads to a frightful disconnection from history in Renewal circles.

i. The constant focus on what’s “new” also insulates people in the Renewal from paying any attention to their history.

ii. None of the ideas are new, as are none of the shocking practices either:

– Smith Wigglesworth was healing people via physical violence 80+ years before Todd Bentley, 70+ years before Heidi Baker and Rodney Howard Browne.

– People were “barking in the Spirit” centuries before that activity ever showed up at a Vineyard church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

– Charles Cullis was writing about “sowing and reaping” 7+ decades before Oral Roberts ever published a word on the idea.

iii. If people studied the history of their own revivals and realized that they were constantly being sold a bag of smoke by charlatans who were all clearly morally disqualified from being elders or deacons, they might be a little more reticent to jump on the bandwagons.

*****

That’s as far as my notes went on the second point.

In the next post, I’ll point out three more “fatal flaws” in the Renewal Movement.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “the Evangelical Nigel Tufnel” Unger

So in my last post, I posted the first half of my notes from the second talk I gave at the Last Days Bible Conference.  I dealt with the first two (of five) “fatal flaws” in the Renewal, as organized by the acronym K.N.I.F.E.  The first two flaws were “Knotted Hermeneutics” and “Novelty Obsession.”  Again I’ve included a few hyperlinks to content that I didn’t pull out of books (and remembered to write down).

As a reminder, the five fatal flaws are foundational issues that are fairly widespread in the Renewal Movement.  If I were to nail the flaws down to just one, I’d point to the first issue regarding the hermeneutics (interpretation of scripture).  One might suggest that all the other issues flow out of that, but they’re still significant root issues for large numbers of people in the Renewal Movement.  Not every flaw is equally problematic for everyone; the streams of the Renewal Movement that intentionally push closer to a consistent historical/grammatical hermeneutic (i.e. the Calvary Chapel or ex-Sovereign Grace folds) tend to have less struggles with the other “fatal flaws.”

For example, folks in Calvary Chapel tend to see Satan and demons behind far less than folks in the Victory Church (a generally small, but…er…”theologically fawlty” denomination in Canada).

So without further wildly obscure euphamisms, here’s the second half of my notes:

3. Imitation Gifts.

 The problem is that the contemporary gifts are categorically different than what we find in the scripture.

 We will talk about this more in the next talk.

 a. The modern manifestation of tongues is most frequently ecstatic speech, and the tongues in the Bible were nothing of the sort.

i. The early Pentecostals knew that tongues had to be earthly languages, hence the revival in Topeka had someone speaking and writing Chinese, and the revival in Azusa had people speaking and writing in multiple languages.

ii. The tongues of 1901 and 1906 weren’t real languages, and the minute people got overseas they learned that really quick.

iii. The tongues that aren’t ecstatic speech aren’t real tongues either (that will be explained in more detail in the next post).

iv. The question then becomes what do you do with a movement whose major verification of authenticity rests on a demonstrably fraudulent claim?

b. The modern manifestation of prophecy involves fallible prophecy that is almost always wrong and covers it’s penchant for error in being absurdly vague.. Like it or not, that one change has completely undermined the Bible:

i. Smith Wigglesworth tells a story of the 1920’s:

“Not long ago a meeting was being held in the town hall of a certain city in England. In the foyer of the hall was a large display of religious books for sale. A friend of mine, wanting a Bible, approached one of the attendants.

 ‘I would like to purchase a Bible,’ he said, ‘but there are none on display.’

 The young man responded, ‘Oh, we don’t sell Bibles. We don’t need them now; we have the Spirit.’ “

ii. This attitude is rarely displayed so openly, but Charismatic literature is always heavy on testimonial evidence and shockingly short on exegesis.

– The underlying framework of providing testimonial evidence as opposed to biblical exegesis is one where exegesis, doctrine and practice are ultimately validated by personal experience rather than Scripture.

 iii.The low regard that most Renewal folks have for the Bible is demonstrated in their mediocre exegesis of Scripture as well.

– Charisma magazine is “exhibit a” in the substantiation that many people in Renewal circles (though not all) have an shocking low regard for Scripture as seen in the continual lack of interest in the proper understanding of Scripture (you can start here).

c. The modern manifestation of healing is not the same as it is in the Bible, and everybody knows it.

i. Every single Charismatic Faith Healer has to make excuse after excuse for why they don’t heal like Jesus did, in the same manner and degree.

ii. The ones who claim to do what Jesus did never can produce actual proof.

 – Healing stories never come with names and dates and methods of verification.

– We live in a world where everyone and their dog has a cell phone with a video camera on it, and yet all we see are healings that could be easily faked!

– Where are the blind eyes visibly clearing up on camera?

– Where are the shriveled limbs instantly regenerating on camera?

– Where are the lepers healed spontaneously on camera?

Show me the “healer” that instantaneously and totally heals a leper like this desperately needy soul and I’ll recant everything I’ve ever written on this topic.  Jesus healed guys like this it regularly.

iii. If anyone in the Renewal really was able to heal in the manner that they claim, the whole debate about authenticity could be over in a matter of hours.  All it would take is some names, dates, and authenticated medical records.

– I even know of people who have been healed miraculously (in response to prayer) who could provide that sort of data, but they’re not claiming that any sort of “faith healer” was involved…nor are they teaching “sowing and reaping” or “covenant rights” or any of the same theological sewage that the faith healers and prosperity preachers are teaching.  They’re just individuals whose story is “people prayed and God graciously chose to act miraculously!  Praise his name!” folks.

 4. Fearful Spirituality

a. Fear of divisiveness.

i.  This was the second biggest complaint made against the Strange Fire Conference in 2013.

 – The biggest complaint was about the Broad Brush that was used: how apparently 500 million Charismatics were condemned to Hell.

 – The second complaint was related to how divisive it was to the Body of Christ. John MacArthur was lambasted by everyone for suggesting that millions of professing Christians weren’t Christians.

https://twitter.com/johnmacarthur/status/390983332839710720

(Sure, without context, I agree that this looks really divisive…until you realize that it’s talking about Bill Johnson at Bethel Church in Redding California, and is specifically talking about the type of folks who claim that gold crafting glitter falling from air conditioning ducts is actually the shekinah glory of God.)

 – The bizarre part is that in the Renewal, anyone who claims to be part of the body of Christ is considered “in” and anyone who challenges their blind acceptance of heretics is seen as divisive.

ii. Yet absolute insanity is tolerated in Renewal Circles in an effort to keep unity.

 – For example, the Assemblies of God put out an official paper in 2,000 on Endtime Revival that condemned many of the practices of the Brownsville and Toronto Revival, as well as the doctrinal ideas coming out of IHOP. Regarding the most outlandish “manifestation” of that era, the report says:

 “We must admit that an omnipotent God could place gold fillings in teeth and gold dust on individuals. But can such events be empirically demonstrated? If it is for a sign to those present, the reason for the sign should be evident. But to run after such signs and wonders makes us little more than the Pharisees who came to Jesus asking to see a sign from heaven (Mark 8:11). The same attitude should guard believers, no matter what the unnatural sign might be. Judging from a distance on the basis of second hand reports is dangerous.”

 b. Fear of quenching the Spirit

i. If people are “getting saved” and lives are being changed, that’s considered sufficient proof that anything is a work of the Holy Spirit.

ii.  People in the Renewal Movement are allergic to questioning the teaching or practice of any fast-growing movement because, if numbers equal divine fruitfulness, then any opposition is most likely “quenching the spirit” and possibly committing the “unforgivable sin.”

 – A perfect example of that is the 1949 debate about the Latter Rain movement. Without going into massive detail, the movement that started in North Battleford was highly controversial: The leaders were unfathomably arrogant men who openly laughed at any effort at correction, their “manifestations” were clearly just copied from other ministries (or were obviously not even close to biblical in nature), and they doctrine condemned the entire Pentecostal movement that preceded them as utterly apostate.

 – In 1949, Assemblies of God pastor Charles W.H. Scott evaluated the fruits of the Latter Rain Movement and said that

 “that the revival was not, after all, new at all, but rather the reappearances of enthusiastic mysticism common in church history.”

– His evaluation led to the 1949 response to the Latter Rain movement by the AOG in their national conference. They condemned the “excesses” of the Latter Rain revival as not being “of God.”

 – What was the main response? Stanley Frodsham, a man of no small influence in the AOG, wrote:

 “It has been so grossly unfair to link up this new revival which God is so graciously sending, where so many souls are being saved, where so many lives are being transformed, where God is so graciously restoring the gifts of the Spirit with the fanatical movements of the past 40 years”

 No mention of the doctrinal critique.

– The only thing that mattered was that people were being saved, lives were being transformed, and spiritual manifestations were occurring.

– Since those are considered the mark of a move of God, Frodsham simply didn’t care about, or just glossed over as insignificant, the heresies that were being spread in the Latter Rain Movement.

c. Fear of Satan.

 i.  Inversely, verses like John 10:10 (“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy“) often become a mantra in many Renewal circles.

ii.  The idea of “spiritual warfare” ends up in many Renewal folks thinking that Satan is out to steal their blessings and God is trying to show them how to hold on to them…but Satan comes at believers with almost innumerable tactics.

iii.  This is one of the reasons why so many books on “spiritual warfare” are written; Renewal leaders are continually uncovering new and previously undiscovered avenues of Satanic attack.

– For example. Jentezen Franklin writes about a demon spirit, the Spirit of Python, and says:

 “A python is after one thing: breath. It slowly coils itself around its victim and begins to squeeze the life out, little by little; as its grip gets tighter and tighter, it chokes and suffocates its prey until all the air is expunged from the prey’s lungs.

 You might be wondering why I think it is so significant that the python’s goal is to suffocate the breath out of its victims. Let me explain. Breath, air, and wind are symbols of the Holy Spirit in Scripture. For example, in John 20:22 Jesus breathed on His disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” In Acts 2 the Holy Spirit came as a mighty rushing wind; in Genesis God breathed the breath of life into Adam, and he became a living soul. God breathed breath into man.

 Guess who’s trying to choke and suffocate the life out of us? Satan is after one thing; like a python he is trying to extract the breath of the Holy Spirit and His anointing from our lives. Just as a python hates the breath in his prey and will do anything he can to eliminate it, Satan desires to squeeze the Holy Spirit life out of our churches and personal lives.”

 – Franklin says later that the Spirit Python is the reason people lose their passion for the Lord, for the Bible, for prayer, and for church.

 – Franklin says that the Python Spirit could be behind your problems at home, in your marriage, in your family, in your finances, and in your workplace.

 – In other words, if you have a problem anywhere, it’s likely the Python Spirit.

– You had better buy his book and learn how to beat the Python spirit or Satan will have you for breakfast!

5. Experiential Verification

a. Verification of the movement itself

i. The biggest arguments in favor of the authenticity of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements have always revolved around numbers. When people talk about judging something by its fruit, the “fruit” is almost always numerical growth.

 ii.  In the 1950’s, the Pentecostals were accepted into Evangelicalism simply because of their size.

 – In 1958, Billy Graham quoted Dr. Tim VanDusen as saying,

 “The Pentecostal movement can no longer be considered a fringe group in Protestantism for it is the fastest growing movement in Protestantism today and must be taken within the fold of Protestantism.”

 – No mention of why it was considered on the fringe.

 – Nine years later, Billy Graham endorsed the faith healers & prosperity preachers when he spoke at the dedication of Oral Roberts University.

 iii. In the 1980’s, the Charismatic Movement, specifically among the Catholics, was accepted by Pentecostalism simply because of their size.

 – In the May 16, 1980 Assemblies of God minister’s letter (Called to Serve) regarding their response to the spreading of previously exclusively Pentecostal spiritual manifestations into Catholic circles, the Assemblies of God spoke of some upcoming ecumenical conferences and wrote:

 “In view of the widespread outpouring…it is felt this series of conferences can help us as a Movement to maximize our involvement in the current visitation of the Holy Spirit.”

– The authentication of the Catholic manifestations of the Spirit was primarily found in their substantial proliferation.

iv. Now, the New Apostolic Reformation had been welcomed by everyone because their churches are growing like crazy.

 – In 1998, C. Peter Wagner spoke of the New Apostolic Reformation and wrote,

 “In virtually every region of the world, these new apostolic churches constitute the fastest-growing segment of Christianity.”

 – The NAR people are everywhere in Renewal Circles now. You see some of their big figures popping up all over the place, and they will only become more prominent as the baby-boomer generation continues dying off.

 b. Verification of truth.

i. Most questions of Charismatic doctrine ultimately rest on a small amount of biblical evidence and a lot of testimonial evidence.  Testimonial evidence, as a rule of thumb, isn’t reliable evidence.

Too many folks with $2,000 shoes and impossibly white teeth  have made a whole lot of money because an alarming amount of people don’t know how to evaluate the credibility of “evidence”claims…and three out of four of the folks in this picture have written best-selling books on theology.

ii. They definitely attempt to use the Bible to support their ideas, but when your ideas contradict their own, they tend to respond with a story rather than a hypothetical argument.

iii. This is why Charismatic folks can seem immune to articulate exegetical arguments.

– Godly men can disagree on Bible interpretations, but you can’t argue with their interpretation of their experience.

– You must tackle their interpretation of their experience.

iv. This is also why Charismatic people get angry or insulted when you challenge their theology.

– Their theology is rooted in their experience of it, and challenging their ideas also implicitly is challenging their experience.

– Saying “that’s not true” is like saying “that didn’t actually happen”; it’s calling them a liar and questioning their salvation.

 I would argue that the Renewal would look very different if Renewal folks would:

1. Strive to interpret the Bible with consistent historical/grammatical hermeneutics

2. Shift the focus from new manifestations and movements to discipleship and spiritual maturation.

3. Biblically define the gifts of tongues, healing and prophecy and bring their practice into consistency with those definitions.

4. Seek to cultivate an understanding of the sovereignty God and a biblical understanding of Spiritual Warfare.

5. Evaluate their experiences by the Bible.

If those things happened, the Renewal (as we currently know it) may even cease to exist.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Fatally Flawed but Supernaturally Saved” Unger

Today I’m going to be posting up the the first half of my notes from the third talk I gave at the Last Days Bible Conference.  That talk was about a biblical understanding of tongues, healing and prophecy.  Much of the content was already available on this blog, but some of it was found in other things I’ve written (that aren’t online) or was original (or spontaneous).  My main objective in addressing the subject was to try to give, from the Bible, a definition of tongues, healing and prophecy as practice by Christ, the prophets and apostles.  There are always innumerable questions regarding these things, but a majority of them are adequately addressed by dealing with the issue on a definitional level.

The questions are always phrased: “well, such-and-such occurred, so how does your definition explain that?”

The proper question should always be: “The Bible says this is the definition of what we’re discussing, so how does such-and-such measure up against the Bible?”

Probably 90% of the questions on these subject come into existence because people assume a wrong definition (that conveniently fits their expectations or experience) and then twist the biblical data to conform to their assumed definition.

Today, I’m sharing my notes (with a bit of commentary) on the subject of tongues.

Here we go!

TONGUES

The definition of tongues can be built in walking through every occurrence of glossa (the Greek term for “tongues”) in the book of Acts.

1. Acts 2:4-12

– vs. 4 tells us that the speaking in tongues (though we don’t know what that means yet) was a work of the Spirit; the Spirit was the one doing the speaking through them.

– vs. 5 tells us that the audience who heard the tongues was composed exclusively of Jews who were devout and from all throughout the nations.

– vs. 6 tells us that as these devout Jews heard the sound of the “speaking in other tongues”, they went to it. When they got there, they were bewildered. Why?

– Each individual Jew heard someone speaking in his own language (the Greek here is dialektos, meaning “dialect”.

– This isn’t just a generic language, but a regional dialect.

– The Spirit not only made the tongues-speakers speak another language; he made them speak it like a local.

– vs. 7-8 tell us that these Jews (from all over) who heard their own regional dialect were astonished because they knew that the people speaking to them were all from one distinct local area: Galilee.

– These Jews (from all over) all expanded their statement of wonder when they said to one another “how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?”  The Greek here actually says “in our own dialect, (the one) into which we were born?”

– Some say that tongues was a gift of hearing, but that’s wrong. Tongues was a gift of speaking.

-These Jews could talk to one another about the matter since they were at least functionally bilingual, if not trilingual (as most people had to be back then).

– They all heard the tongues speakers speaking (what seemed to be) gibberish, but as they talked with one another they realized that the gibberish was the individual languages of the people standing around them.

– If tongues were a gift of hearing, they would have each heard only one Galilean speaking in their own dialect and the rest of them would have sounded like they were speaking Galilean. Nobody would have thought people talking normally were drunk.

– In case someone would suggest that each listener heard every tongues speaker speaking in their own dialect, again nobody would have thought people talking normally (in their dialect) were drunk.

– vs. 9-11 tells us where all these Jews (from all over) were from, and it tells what exactly they were hearing: “we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God”.

– The phrase “mighty works” carries the idea of “great things”, meaning these tongues speakers were talking about all the great things that God had done (though the text doesn’t say what these “mighty works” were…but these Galileans weren’t preaching the gospel.  That came from Peter a few verses later).

– It’s also worth noting that in vs. 7-8 the listeners refer to “dialects” (the Greek being dialektos) and in vs. 11 they now refer to “tongues (the Greek being glossa).  There’s no hint that they’re using the two terms in anything but a synonymous way.

– vs. 12 tells us (again) that they were “amazed”, but then also says that they were “perplexed” (the Greek being diaporeo, meaning “entirely at a loss”).

– Flowing from their perplexity, they asked each other “what does this mean”?  They recognized it as a divine sign, but they didn’t know what the sign meant (i.e. what it was pointing to).

– In vs. 13, some of the listeners propose an answer to the question of meaning: these Galileans are drunk.

– In vs. 14-36, Peter proposes another answer to the question of meaning: this is the fulfillment of prophecy before your eyes and divine attestation to the fact that Jesus Christ, the one whom you crucified, was the messiah!

Now, this leads to a few questions.

Now in Acts 2, is there any idea of ecstatic speech?

No.

Was there any idea of a private prayer language?

No.

Was their even a missionary gift that involved preaching the gospel in an unknown language to foreigners?

No. The gospel came from Peter preaching, not the tongues speaking.

– People may want to argue that the “mighty works of God” was the gospel, but that begs the question as to why Peter needed to then re-state the gospel.

– If the tongues speakers preached the gospel, why did the Holy Spirit not cut the listeners to the heart (as mentioned in vs. 37) the first time?

– Why did it take him two tries to convict the audience?

Acts 2 tells me, repeatedly, that tongues were distinct and real earthly languages.

Acts 2 gives me no reason to suspect that there was ecstatic speech, a private prayer language, or even a missionary gift of tongues that involved miraculously preaching the gospel in a language previously unknown.  So the question then becomes “when was tongues redefined?” or maybe “when was the definition of tongues expanded to include those other things?”

Besides Acts 2:6 & 8, the term “dialect” appears in Acts 1:19, 21:40, 22:2 and 26:14.  In each of those passages the term is uniformly used to refer to an earthly language.

Let’s look at the 2 other occurrences of glossa in the book of Acts: 10:46 and 19:6:

 2. Acts 10:36 .

– In Acts 10:9-16 has Peter’s three visions of the unclean animals where God says “What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:15).

– In Acts 10:17-23 Peter is perplexed at the meaning of the vision and Cornelius’ servants came to get Peter.

– In Acts 10:23-33, Peter and several fellow believers meet Cornelius.  Cornelius invites a large group to hear Peter and Peter finally makes sense of his strange vision: “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection. I ask then why you sent for me.” (Acts 10:28-29).

– Cornelius relates the story of how he came to summon Peter (Acts 10:30-33).

– In Acts 10:34-43, Peter delivered a gospel proclamation to Cornelius and the rest of those who had gathered there and closed off with showing that the visions revealed the inclusion of the Gentiles in the church. Peter says that “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” (Acts 10:42-43).

– This is a massive change.  Peter is, in response to direct revelation from Yahweh, overturning thousands of years of Jewish religious tradition by announcing that the Gentiles will be partakers in this New Covenant by faith in the Christ. This massive change would be difficult for his companions to believe…

…So, in Acts 10:44-48, God bore direct witness to the truth of Peter’s words:

“While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. For they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter declared, ‘Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to remain for some days.”

So the Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius and the crowd and we notice several things:

(a).  The inclusion of the Gentiles into the church (and new covenant) was confirmed.

(b).  The Gentiles received the Holy Spirit with exactly the same manifestation of tongues as the Jews did.  This last point (from vs. 47) certainly seems to declare, quite clearly, that the nature of the tongues hadn’t changed since Acts 2.  It was exactly the same manifestation of the spirit that the apostles themselves received, fulfilling a separate purpose.

If there’s any doubt, Peter himself says this in Acts 11:1-18 when he reports the events to the church in Jerusalem. In Acts 11:15, Peter says “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning.”

Peter says something similar in Acts 15:7-9:

“Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.”

– It’s worth noting that Peter’s main argument was 2 fold:

(a). God chose the Gentiles to be saved by faith (like us Jews).

(b). God bore witness to this fact by giving them the Holy Spirit “just as he did to us” without making any distinction.

The manifestation of the Spirit was identical, hence their salvation was identical.

There is absolutely no redefinition of tongues is found in Acts 10.

It’s the exact same gift as was in Acts 2.

3. Acts 19:6 –

– In Acts 19:1, Paul was traveling in Ephesus and found some disciples.

– In Acts 19:2-4, Paul learned that these believers had only received John’s baptism and weren’t even aware of the giving of the Holy Spirit.

– In Acts 19:5-6, Paul then baptized the disciples in the name of Christ, laid his hands on them, and the Holy Spirit entered them and produced the signs of both tongues and prophesy.

So this was a relatively short and passing reference to tongues, but it seems fairly clear that there was no redefinition of the gift of tongues here.

It’s also worth nothing two things:

a. Acts 19 comes after Acts 18 (and 25+ years after Acts 2), where Paul spent over a year and a half establishing the church in Corinth.

b. Acts was written after 1 Corinthians was written. Acts covers the entire missionary career of Paul. It presents a more mature, post-Pauline perspective (post letters, not death) on the church than is presented in the book of 1 Corinthians.

This suggests that the tongues that the Corinthians learned were identical to the tongues that were practiced in Acts 2 & 10; namely earthly languages.

Absolutely no redefinition of tongues is found in Acts 19.

Every time tongues appears after Acts 2, it’s the same as it was in Acts 2.

If we had time, we could get into 1 Corinthians 12-14, but we don’t have the time and it’s somewhat unnecessary. If the definition of tongues in consistent throughout the book of Acts, including after Paul’s establishing of the church in Corinth, you’re faced with two questions:

a. When did the definition change?

b. If it didn’t change, where are the modern manifestations of tongues that fit the definition in Acts?

***Explanation for those who listen to the audio***

In the conference, I made a statement about being a “Leaky Cessationist” since someone challenged me about how the idea of Cessationism involves some form of Cartesian certainty (meaning, 100% with no possibility, however microscopic, of doubt).  Does the bible clearly state that tongues, as defined in Scripture, have ceased forever, never once occurring after the death of the last apostle?  No.  Of course not.  The Bible gives me good exegetical reasons to suspect such is the case, but there I don’t technically have 100% certainty.  I have 99.9% certainty, so the technically appropriate statement about the Cessation of Tongues is:

“Tongues haven’t ceased, they’re just not around anymore since the majority of the ‘manifestations’ that claim to be tongues aren’t anywhere close to fitting the biblical definition of ‘tongues’ and every modern claim I’ve encountered is demonstrably fraudulent.”

Could it technically be that somewhere in church history, out in Africa (it’s always Africa, right?), there has been an authentic instance of tongues?

Yes.  It’s possible.

But generally speaking, is the activity that claims to be “tongues” that we see everywhere actually the same “tongues” as occurred in the Bible?

I’m talking about the non-English speaking and singing that you hear coming out of Heidi Baker’s mouth (and out of the crowd) between 3:30 and 9:30 on this video:

There is no way that is what the Bible calls “tongues”.  Not for a second.

I’ve never heard anything other than that, and all stories I’ve ever heard of that refer to “missionary tongues” (where someone, by the power of the Holy Spirit, spontaneously speaks an earthly language that they previously didn’t know) are just that; stories.  I’ve never met a single person who has personally witnessed an incident of xenolalia (tongues that are earthly languages).  Every account I’ve ever encountered has been at least second hand; the original witness either couldn’t be found or, when contacted, wasn’t actually sure about what happened.

Now that we’ve got that straightened out, I’ll wrap up this post before it gets too long!

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Tongues of Mennos and Angels” Unger

Today I’m going to be posting up the the second part of my notes from the third talk I gave at the Last Days Bible Conference.  That talk was about a biblical understanding of tongues, healing and prophecy.  The previous post I put up was about tongues.  Today, I’m going to be posting the notes about healing (specifically apostolic healing).

Aimee Semple McPherson: founder of the Foursquare Denomination…and “faith healer.”

Again, my main objective in addressing the subject was to try to give, from the Bible, a definition of tongues, healing and prophecy as practice by Christ, the prophets and apostles.  In the past, I’ve referred to apostolic healing as opposed to divine healing.  Apostolic Healing is the type of healing as practiced by Jesus and the apostles where as divine healing is the type of healing performed by everyone else (i.e. where God heals directly, without any human mediator, in response to prayer).  Again, I hope to take on a majority of the questions on the subject at a foundational level since a majority of people assume a wrong definition (that conveniently fits their expectations or experience) and then twist the biblical data to conform to their assumed definition, leading to many questions.

Here we go!

HEALING

The Modern Claims of Healing Don’t Match the Apostolic Example in Four Ways:

1. The manner in which the healing occurred in the NT isn’t occurring.

– Healing, as performed by the apostles was (a) instantaneous, (b) unchallenged, (c) public, and (d) complete healing of (e) outwardly manifest physical infirmities via a human agent, (f) without prayer (which sets New Testament apostolic healings apart from similar Old Testament prophetic ones; healings performed by prophets in the OT were dependent on prayer).

– Modern healings are partial, gradual, or simply fabricated stories. You never see someone healed of leprosy or paralysis in modern “healing” revivals; there’s never obvious physical infirmities (atrophied limbs spontaneously regaining muscle mass, cataracts spontaneously clearing up, etc.).

– Modern healings often regress over a short period of time (often because they’re psychosomatic in nature).  On the contrary, there were no healing in the scripture that “didn’t take” or only worked for a matter of days or weeks.

– Modern healings are almost all testimonial:

a. Testimonies of healing that occurrences of healing. When we hear the stories about of resurrections and people getting healed of cancer, blindness, AIDS, etc., it always is happening somewhere else. Over here, it’s mostly tennis elbow, sore backs, stomach trouble, etc.

b. Testimonies of illness. In modern “healings”, an overwhelming majority the diagnoses are made by the patient and the healings are verified by them too. In Jesus day, people could often see what was wrong or everyone knew the crippled/diseased person.

– In their positional paper on Endtime Revivals (page 6), the Assemblies of God says:

“Valid healings can be confirmed and verified by medical records. Adherents of some religions claim to have seen strange appearances of Jesus, Mary, and symbols of the death of Jesus. Without empirical confirmation, we are skeptical of such reports. Unconfirmed reports of unbelievable happenings in revival services discredit rather than advance the cause of Christ.”

I agree.

Legitimate healings can be medically confirmed.

Without empirical confirmation, I’m skeptical (and you should be as well).

Unconfirmed reports of unbelievable things do actually discredit the gospel.

(One may why, given their position on the issue, the Assemblies of God seems so utterly reticent to take a stand against all the fraudulent faith healing that is occurrs in their own denomination…you know, for the credibility of the gospel and all.)

2. The manner in which the healers were empowered in the NT isn’t occurring.

 – Scripture never records an instance of healing that wasn’t done by an Old Testament prophet, a New Testament apostle, or Jesus Christ himself.

 – Everyone in the New Testament who healed in this way received the authority to do so directly from Jesus Christ (Luke 9:1; 10:9).

 – This wasn’t just a power to heal, but also to harm (Acts. 13:11), which also worked to establish continuity with the Old Testament occurrences (2 Kin. 6:18), showing that the power behind both was the same.

 – The apostles are dead and scripture gives us no reason to believe that they passed off their power to their successors.

 – Also, it’s often missed that Jesus and the apostles didn’t’ pray before healing someone (though prayer  normally preceded healings in the OT).  Jesus and the apostle were given an allotment of divine power to heal,  and they used that power at will.

3. The extent of the healing in the NT isn’t occurring.

– Charismatics and Continuationists cry “foul” when cessationists ask for an example of someone, anywhere, going and cleaning out a cancer ward.

 – Jesus and his apostles did that regularly (Matt. 4:24, 8:16, 12:15; Mark 3:10; Luke 4:40, 6:19; Acts 5:16, 8:7).  Well, there weren’t cancer wards in Jesus’ day (obviously), but he healed everyone who was brought to him, regardless of what afflicted them.

 – Jesus healed people of blindness, paralysis, open wounds that were chronic problems over a period of years, leprosy, etc.

 – Yet with modern “healers,” every wheelchair that goes into a healing crusade comes out the other side (contrary to their deceitful advertising)…and they never clear out a hospital ward.

Ever.

 4. The verification that occurred in the NT isn’t occurring.

 – Jesus sought out witnesses to throw his healing in their face. He healed in front of huge crowds of skeptics regularly and had Luke, a medical doctor and his disciple, write one of the gospels.  Jesus went out of his way to make it impossible to challenge the veracity of his healing miracles.

– Luke would have also been familiar with the ministry of Jesus, having likely followed Jesus’ ministry (since Jesus would have put him out of a job for a little while…).

 – Nobody ever challenged whether or not Jesus healed people.  His healings were too public, too numerous, and too obvious.  Jesus often healed well-known people with well-known infirmities.

– In response to Jesus’ healings, the only question that ever came up was “what does this mean?”

– The answer to that question was always found in his teaching (i.e. Luke 7:18-23).

***Extra thought***

As I was editing these notes, I thought of a fifth way the modern claims of healing don’t match the Apostolic example:

5. The healing wasn’t the drawing card in the NT.

– In the New Testament, people came to Jesus in order to see his healing and miracles but he didn’t use them to acquire an audience.  Rather, Jesus performed miracles to confirm his teaching and also condemned his faithless audience for seeking miracles and signs. John 6:26-66 records a long and somewhat humorous interaction with the crowd and Jesus.  They wanted free food and Jesus instead confused them and drove them away, for they were seeking a free meal rather than really listening to his teaching.  Other passages contain outright condemnation of sign seeking, like Matt. 12:38-39, 16:1-4; Mark 8:11-13; Luke 11:29-32; John 12:37-43.

– Unlike Jesus and the apostles, modern “healers” shamelessly use the healing/miraculous as the drawing card for their events.  The message isn’t some variant of “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near” but rather “Come and get your healing!”  It’s telling how, if a person watches a 3+ hour healing revival service, the healing follows the teaching.  With Jesus, this order was reversed: the teaching followed the healing since the teaching was the pinnacle of his ministry, not the healing.

That’s right: John Osteen. Father of Joel “You’re Best Life Now” Osteen.  The absolute nicest way I can say this is that in the phrase “Great Gospel Miracle Festival,” the terms “Great” and “Gospel” modify the word “Miracle.”  John Osteen’s Crusades included a “gospel,” but gospel was an accessory to the “miracles”.

Also, I found this footage of a “Noches de Gloria” healing service from Carlos “Cash” Luna, the Guatemalan equivalent of Creflo Dollar/Benny Hinn (as if the name isn’t a clue).  I don’t know what he’s saying, but you don’t need to know Spanish to know that he’s challenging pastors to pick up his Bible and they’re all overcome by his “anointing” (and if anyone who reads this speaks Spanish, feel free to correct me in the comments).

Does anyone honestly think that Luna is structuring his event around the the teaching?

To put it as simply as possible, Cash Luna’s “crusades” are about the “miracles”, not the message.

The same goes for most of the other “healing evangelists” in the Renewal circles.

Their “ministry” is the total opposite of the ministry of Jesus.

I know that for some, this will be difficult to stomach and come across as (insert hyperbolic negative adjective).  Consider the scriptures, work through them, and then bring serious questions into the comments.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Cashless” Unger

Today I’m going to be posting up the the third part of my notes from the third talk I gave at the Last Days Bible Conference.  That talk was about a biblical understanding of tongues, healing and prophecy.  The previous post I put up contained my notes about healing, and the one before that contained my notes about tongues..  Today, I’m going to be posting the notes about prophecy.

I’m talking about Biblical prophets, not the fortune cookie rip-offs that are running around these days…

As in the previous two posts, my main objective in addressing the subject was to try to give, from the Bible, a definition of tongues, healing and prophecy as practice by Christ, the prophets and apostles.  Though there are plenty of questions regarding prophecy that come up in contemporary evangelicalism (though people don’t always realized that the question they’re asking is about prophecy), I hope once again to tackle a majority of the questions at a foundational level since a majority of people assume a wrong definition (that conveniently fits their expectations or experience) and then twist the biblical data to conform to their assumed definition, leading to many questions.

Here we go again!

PROPHECY

In sorting out questions of prophecy, we only have three questions:

1. What is a prophet?

– The first occurrence of the Hebrew term “prophet” (navi in Hebrew) occurs in Genesis 20:7, but it’s a passing reference to how Abraham is a prophet.

– The next occurrence of “prophet” is in Exodus 7:1, and that’s where we see a prophet acting as a prophet. Exodus 7:1-2 says,

“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh…’ ”

– Moses stood before Pharaoh as if he were God, speaking through Aaron.  It’s worth pointing out how Moses isn’t the prophet, but Aaron was the prophet of Moses.  Moses was to tell Aaron what he wanted to say, and Aaron was to tell Pharaoh.  Moses’ words were given to Aaron; Aaron spoke Moses’ words for him.

– Remember: when Pharaoh didn’t heed Aaron’s words, the Egyptians were punished for disobeying the command of God, not disobeying the command of Moses or Aaron.

– If there’s any questions about the relationship of Moses and Aaron, Exodus 4:14-16 sets the record straight. In the passage, God said to Moses regarding Aaron,

“You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him.”

– As Aaron was Moses’ prophet in Exodus 7:1. Moses spoke to him and “put the words in his mouth,” and was “as God to him.”

– Just as God actually places his words in the mouths of his prophets, Moses placed his words in the mouth of Aaron.

– Aaron’s job was to pass those words onto whoever was to receive them.

– God was revealing his divine oracles through both men. To disobey a prophet is to sin, because the voice of a prophet and the voice of God are the same thing.

– A “prophet” is a person who speaks God’s words from their mouth. Every prophet speaks with God’s moral perfection and divine authority/power behind their words.

– This understanding of “prophet” continues on throughout the Old and New Testaments. Balaam spoke God’s words as if he were God himself (Num. 24:10-13), as did Elijah (1 Kin. 17:8-24), Jeremiah (Jer. 28:1-29:14), Ezekiel (Ez. 2:7-3:11), Elisha (2 Kin. 7:1-2, 16-20), Isaiah (2 Kin. 20:1-11) and all the rest.

– There was absolutely no concept of semi-reliable or semi-fallible prophecy; when true prophets spoke and people didn’t listen, divine punishment and even death inevitably followed.

– Also, death accompanied false prophets as well. Claiming to be a prophet was a serious matter.

– A prophet who taught heresy was a false prophet (Deut. 13:1-8) and a prophet who got predictions wrong was a false prophet (Deut. 18:21-22). The judgment for false prophesy was death (Deut. 13:5, 18:20; 1 Kin. 18:40; 2 Kin. 23:19-20), since God treats falsely claiming to speak for him as a rather serious offense .

– If people truly understood the seriousness of the offense against God represented by the thousands of false prophets in the Charismatic Movement, people would literally run from the churches in which false prophets are found.

– Also, It was common in the NT and OT for prophets to be verified via miracles:

– Moses was given validating miracles (Ex. 4:1-9).

 – Elijah was validated by predicting the famine in Israel (1 Kin. 17:1-2), the perpetuation of the widow’s flour and oil (1 Kin. 17:8-16), the raising of the widow’s son from the dead (1 Kin. 17:17-24), the fire from Heaven on Mt. Carmel (1 Kin. 18:36-40), etc.

 – Elisha was validated by the parting of the Jordan (2 Kin. 2:8, 2:14-15), the healing of the well (2 Kin. 2:19-22), his cursing of the mocking youths (2 Kin. 2:23-24), the prediction of the pools (2 Kin. 3:16-17, 3:20), the prediction of the defeat of Moab (2 Kin. 3: 18-19, 3:21-25), etc.

 – Jesus also produced a few miracles too, and Christ himself spoke of how they were God’s testimony to his authenticity (John 5:30-38, 10:25-38, 14:8-11).

2. Did the defintion of “prophet” change in the New Testament?

– No. Charismatic intellectuals try to change the definition of prophet to water it down:

– Sam Storms (certainly one of the more biblically savvy among the more eccentric element in Renewal circles) says that “prophecy is ‘the human reporting of a divine revelation.’ Prophecy is the speaking forth in merely human words of something God has spontantously brought to mind.” (Beginners Guid to Spiritual Gifts, 110).

– Sam Storms then comments on “fallible prophecy” and says:

“We must remember that every prophecy has three elements, only one of which is assuredly of God. First there is the revelation itself, the divine act of disclosure to a human recipient. The second element is the interpretation of what has been disclosed, or the attempt to ascertain its meaning. Third, there is the application of that interpretation. God is alone responsible for the revelation.” (116)

– Storms then says that “the revelation often comes in the form of words, thoughts or perhaps mental pictures impressing themselves upon the mind and spirit of the prophets.” (119)

– Sam Storms’ definition is entirely arbitrary and doesn’t seem to correspond with what we actually see prophets doing in the New Testament.

– NT Prophets act just like the OT Prophets:

– Mark 13:11 – Jesus, talking about the future trouble of the apostles, says: “And when they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.” (Luke 12:12 says something similar)

– Luke 1:67 – Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied.

– Acts 13:1-4 – “Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. ² While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” ³ Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off. ⁴ So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.

– Acts 21:11 – “And coming to us, he took Paul’s belt and bound his own feet and hands and said, “Thus says the Holy Spirit, ‘This is how the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.’”

– Acts 28:25 – ” The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet:”

– Eph. 3:4-6 – God reveals his mysteries now to his holy apostles and prophets…

– Heb 3:7 – uses the phrase “The Holy Spirit says” before quoting Psalm 95:7-11.

– 1 John 4:1-6 – Prophets are still tested by what they say and whether or not they conform to previously received revelation.

– 2 Peter 2:1 draws a hard parallel between false prophets of the Old Testament and the false teachers in the New Testament.

– Rev. 10:9-11 – “So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. And he said to me, “Take and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.” ¹⁰ And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter. ¹¹ And I was told, “You must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.”

– Rev 11 – The two witnesses are verified by miracles: they can breathe out fire (11:5), cause drought, plagues, and turn water to blood (at will) through the divine power that is given to them (11:6), and rise from the dead and ascend bodily into heaven (11:11-12).

– Even though they’re in the distant future, they’re not a different type of prophet.

– Rev. 19:20 – The false prophet performs lying signs.

– If the prophets became fallible in the New Testament, we don’t actually see that happening anywhere…except for a singular example that gets constantly trotted across the wasteland:

Acts 21 and Agabus’ “error”:

– The main argument here is that Agabus said that the Jews would bind Agabus in Acts 21:11, but Acts 21:33 says the Romans were the ones who bound Agabus.

– The whole “the Jews didn’t bind his hands” line is just naive. Acts 21:32-32 says that the Jews were attempting to beat Paul to death.

– Homicidal mobs generally don’t fight fair.

– The fact that the text records that the Romans bound Paul with chains (Acts 21:33) doesn’t mean that the homicidal mob didn’t have the basic sense to bind the hands of the man they were attempting to kill.

– The NT prophets were “prophets” just like the OT prophets. There’s no change of definition or some sort of 2 levels of prophecy in the NT.

Where are all those kinds of prophets?

– It seems pretty obvious that there’s nobody in the entire Renewal that is willing to try to pass the OT tests for being a prophet.

– The mark of prophets in the Renewal is one of unadulterated error, both in prediction and doctrine.

– It seems strange that the people claiming to be prophets in the Renewal say the stupidest things, are the worst at interpreting scripture, and are the worst heretics.

– When Cessationists pick out the “bad apples”, the Renewal folks cry foul since we’re judging the movement on the basis of a few…but the bad apples are all the spiritual giants.

Two Other Points:

“Hearing the voice of God” is functioning like a prophet.

– If a person “hears God’s voice” and it’s not equal in authority with Scripture, it’s not the voice of God. God is not an impressionist; he cannot speak as if he’s Ba’al. God can only speak with his own voice, and that voice is one of untainted truth and authority.  This doesn’t mean that contemporary revelation needs to be added to Scripture for there is an important difference between spoken and written prophecy.   This does mean that all words of God carry his full weight of authority; there is absolutely no such thing as sub-biblical divine revelation. Sub-biblical revelation is false revelation. Sub-biblical prophecy is false prophecy.

– There’s a rather large difference between the specific guidance and propositional revelation. The Holy Spirit leads (i.e. Acts 15:28, 16:6-10; 2 Cor. 2:12-13) and providentialy orchestrates the affairs of life (i.e. Ex. 1:15-2:10), but sensing that the Spirit is placing Taco Bell on your heart isn’t the same as him saying “God to Taco Bell.”

Focusing on dreams and visions is a mark of a false prophet.

– False Teachers actually have often receive what they think is revelation that comes in the form of lying dreams/visions from their imaginations (Lam. 2:14; Is. 9:15; Jer. 14:14, 20:6, 23:16, 26, 27:9-10, 14-16, 29:8-9, 21, 31; Ez. 13:2-9, 17, 22:28; Zech. 13:2-6; 2 Pet 2:3).

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “I made it through without a single prophet/profit pun” Unger

And now a temporary break from our regularly scheduled blogging for a slight change of pace!

Over the past few months, a piece of scripture has come up in conversations several times and I’ve wanted to toss something in writing about it, so I’m just making time to get something written down.  The passage is Matthew 25:31-46: the judgment of the sheep and the goats.  Seeing that this is meant to be a short post (that’s what “Bible Bites” are supposed to be), I’ll just jump right in!

The passage opens with Matt. 25:31-32: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”

– Without getting into various and sundry debates about the many related issues around the end times, I’ll just point out that the opening phrase states that the events that follow will occur “when the Son of Man comes in his glory” along with the angels and sits on his throne.

– Whatever that is, it’s certainly in the future and sometime at the end of history.

The passage continues on with the process of separation.  Matt. 22:33 reads, “And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.”

– So continuing the metaphor, when the shepherd returns in all his glory, there will be a separation.  Pretty straightforward.  Those who are sheep will be separated from those who (sorta) look like sheep.

Then we see the outcome of the separation for the sheep in 22:34 as Jesus says, “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

– So this separation is at the end, and at the time the sheep are separated from the goats, the sheep get the kingdom.  So ignoring debates about the nature of the kingdom (which I’ve pounded through extensively here and here and here), at the time of the separation the sheep get the kingdom.  That’s clearly not now, but some time in the future.

Why do the sheep get the kingdom?  Jesus answers that in 25:35-36 when he says, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”

– This is interesting, more because of what’s not said.  Jesus doesn’t mention the Gospel.  It’s all a list of external actions, and many undiscerning folks have taken this as some text that sanctifies social justice and acts of kindness as being somehow meritorious, or worse: synonymous with sharing the Gospel.  If you pay attention to the next passage, there’s a subtle hint that such isn’t the case.

25:37-39 contains a legitimate point of confusion.  The sheep say, “Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ “

– Notice how the sheep are now called the righteous.  That’s not a trivial change of terminology.  In this passage, the category of “sheep” is synonymous with “righteous.”  Those righteous folks (who have heard the Gospel and received Christ’s righteousness, which is the only way one can be called “righteous”) don’t understand Jesus’ claim of having received care and provision from them.

Jesus explains his strange statement in 25:40 when he says, “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ “

– Now it makes a little more sense (though if you’re paying attention, you should have some serious and urgent questions by now).  Jesus identifies himself with his brothers (namely, other sheep) so much that serving any one of them is quite actually synonymous with serving him.  Caring for any one of them is quite actually synonymous with caring for him.

Then Jesus comments on the other half of this separating event in 25:41, saying “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.‘ ”

– Again, if there’s any confusion as to when these events are occurring, this should help clarify.  The goats not only are told to depart from Christ, but they’re told to go “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

Why do the goats get the eternal fire?  Jesus states why in 25:42-43, saying, “For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”

– Again, this is more interesting due to what’s not said.  Like in 25:35-36, it’s just a list of external actions.  There’s no mention of the gospel.

Like the sheep, the goats are confused.  25:44 states, “Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ ”

In Matt. 25:45, Jesus says, “Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ ”

– Notice how the phrase “my brothers” is missing?  Jesus isn’t talking to the sheep now; he’s talking to the goats and pointing at the sheep.  Like before, the Son of Man is so identified with his brothers (the righteous sheep) that caring for them is caring for him.  Feeding them is feeding him.  Clothing them is clothing him.

Jesus closes off the passage restating the destiny of both groups, saying, “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

– Just for emphasis, he mentions that the goats get eternal punishment and the righteous sheep get eternal life.  It sure seems strange how Jesus never mentions how one becomes part of “the righteous” in the passage…though it’s not like he hasn’t said anything about that elsewhere.

If the post isn’t about how one becomes righteous, then what is it about?

This is where I cannot help but start talking about some issues related to the end times.

Sorry.

I’d argue that the passage follows the Olivet Discourse in Matt. 24, as well as the two warnings to prepare for the second coming (in Matt. 25:1-13 & 25:14-30), so the “coming” of the Son of Man must be understood in the immediate context.  The “coming” is most likely the coming Jesus spoke of in 24:30, and the gathering of the sheep and the goats is likely the gathering Jesus spoke of in 24:31.  That means it follows the events of the “great tribulation” that is worse than any period in history (24:21), involving the coming of false Christs (24:4-5), wars (24:6-7), the persecution and execution of Christians (24:9), the falling away of false brothers (24:10), the coming of false prophets (24:11), the death of love among many (24:12), the proclamation of the gospel to the world (24:13), the darkening of the son and the moon (24:29), the falling of the stars from Heaven (24:29), etc.

All of that stuff hasn’t happened yet.

In other words, the judgment of the sheep and the goats seems to come at the end of the seven-year tribulation as part of the transition into the millennial reign of Christ.

So, at the end of the tribulation, the world will be highly religious.  Matt. 24:15 mentions the abomination of desolation, which takes place in the temple, and 24:24-26 also mentions the false christs and false prophets who perform signs and wonders and deceive many.  It should seem obvious that people claiming to be Christ and people claiming to be a prophet are likely quite religious folks.

Also, the tribulation will be a period marked by the worst tribulation in history (24:21).  It will be a time when Christians will frantically flee to the mountains due to the persecution they face (Matt. 24:16-19). People will betray the Christians they once claimed as “brothers,” and that betrayal will result in death (24:9-10).  I’d dare suspect that in conditions like these, many Christians will believe the gospel and be killed that very same month, week, or even day.

In other words, there will be a whole lot of believers that understand the good news about the death and resurrection of Jesus, but possibly not much else.  So how does God differentiate between true and false Christians in a scenario like that?

Easy.  The same way he always does.

There’s no doctrinal test administered.

There’s no “basic Christian belief” quota.

There’s no question asked of the sheep at all.

In fact, the sheep are the ones confused and asking questions, since they pass the test and aren’t exactly sure why.

What’s the test?

It’s a heart test.

The test is whether or not they have a changed heart.

That test is administered during a era when “many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another” (24:10) and when “the love of many will grow cold” (24:12).

In that era, the changed heart that loves one’s fellow Christians in selfless ways will be the one reliable test of who are really sheep and who are counterfeits. That changed heart, a heart that loves fellow believers and cannot help but love them, cannot be faked.

That heart that loves an unknown believer enough to welcome them into your home, in a time when believers you know are being betrayed unto death by “fellow believers,” cannot be faked.

That heart that loves a fellow believer enough to give them food and drink, in a time when believers are all living in famine conditions, cannot be faked.

That heart that loves a fellow believer enough to give them clothing, in a time when believers are all unable to participate in commerce, cannot be faked.’

That heart that loves a fellow believer enough to visit them in illness, in a time when believers are all likely unable to get actual medical care, cannot be faked.

That heart that loves a fellow believer enough to visit them in prison, in a time when believers are imprisoned for being believers, cannot be faked.

The test of a changed and love-filled heart, as manifest by selfless acts of sacrificial and risk-taking kindness, care and philanthropy, is the test administered by the Son of Man.

It’s the test that separates true believers from all the other religious people at the end; people who likely think they’re “Christians” too…in some strange sense.  I mean, if there are “false christs” all over, it seems reasonable that those who follow them would (wrongfully) think of themselves as true Christians.

The more I think of it, the more I realize that it’s a harsh passage for several reason:

1.  Claiming to be a Christian means nothing.

It’s not that the Gospel isn’t necessary, but rather that profession is not proof.  The proof lies in the presence of a changed heart, and a changed heart cannot help but love fellow believers.

2.  There is no doctrinal test that authenticates one as a true believer.

That’s not to say that one can consciously have heretical beliefs and still be a true believer, but the true test of regeneration is whether or not the heart is regenerated.

In other words, there will be many orthodox theologians in Hell but no heretics in Heaven.  Knowing the right answers to all theological question is not the mark of being regenerate.  Having a regenerated heart is the mark of being regenerate.  One can even have a regenerated heart and be ignorant of many of the right answers (though true believers won’t willfully and consciously reject the teaching of scripture).

I don’t know about you, but if there WAS a doctrinal entrance exam for Heaven, I fear how I’d do…

3.  Preparing for the life to come involves knowing that leads to doing.

We live in an era where, thanks to the internet, the average person in the pew has more access to theological resources than any pastor who lived as recently as two decades ago.  Sadly, this tends to mean that many of us have doctrine that far exceeds our practice.  In other words, there are a lot of people in our churches who can argue about the fine points of eschatology but don’t know how to be gracious to an unbelieving neighbor.

Just some thoughts on a text that is often utilized as a proof-text for the social gospel but missed for what it actually says.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “I just wanna be a sheep” Unger

Today I’m going to be posting up the the first part of my notes from the fourth and final talk I gave at the Last Days Bible Conference.  That talk was about the Prosperity Gospel.  Today, I’m going to be posting the notes about the Word of Faith movement and how it sets the theological stage for the Prosperity Gospel.

I hope to make things clear and I want to help people understand the theology (as best I can) of the Prosperity Gospel.  Just to be clear, not all people in Word of Faith circles believe or teach the Prosperity Gospel.  Jim Bakker is a prime example of someone who holds to Word of Faith theology but doesn’t take it to the extent of embracing the Prosperity Gospel (and in the 1980’s he was the prince of Prosperity Gospel preachers; it’s amazing what a decade alone with a Bible in prison will do for a person…).  Sadly, Jim Bakker doesn’t speak for all people who are part of the Word of Faith Movement.

That being said, the Prosperity Gospel doesn’t really make much sense outside of a Word of Faith framework, though I’m well aware that there are people peddling the Prosperity Gospel in many churches that aren’t part of Word of Faith denominations or organizations. Still, I’d actually suggest that the Word of Faith Movement isn’t much better than the Prosperity Gospel.  My research will help you understand why I’ve come to that conclusion.

Here are the notes:

WORDS, FAITH and PROSPERITY

– We’re talking about the theological dark side of the Renewal.

– Sadly, this has also become the main face of the Renewal, at least globally speaking.

– Oral Roberts University is a stronghold of prosperity gospel, and the New Apostolic Reformation is a prosperity gospel movement.

– As in all movements, there is a wide variety of diversity.

– People in this movement certainly associate with one another, but if one person in the movement teaches some bizarre heresy, the rest will simply dismiss the heresy as an aberration and claim to have no clue what you’re talking about.

-Still, I’m going to offer some simple definitions, a brief summary of their teaching, and some biblical refutation of the twisting of their key proof-texts (in the next post).

– So here’s some broad categories:

A. Word of Faith:

– This is the theological framework that is foundational to, but not identical with, the Prosperity Gospel.

– This is, to sum it up succinctly, a belief in “Christian magic”; I call it ChristCraft (magic performed in the name of Jesus).

1. The main idea is that the universe operates to divine law:

– Robert Tilton – “The sinner is the person who doesn’t know how to operate in spiritual laws.” (The Power To Create Wealth, 29)

– Oral Roberts talks about how the law of sowing and reaping is an unchanging, eternal law. (The Seed-Faith Commentary on the Holy Bible, 12)

– Jerry Savelle writes,

“For you to never experience financial increase in your walk with God is a violation of spiritual laws. There is absolutely no way you can walk with God, keep His covenant, and not experience financial increase.” (Increase God’s Way, 16)

2. God himself is subject to divine law, as is Satan.

– WOF teachers portray the world as victim to a power struggle between God and Satan due to divine law:

One picture. So much theological confusion.

– Frederick K.C. Price says,

“Adam handed over all authority over the earth to Satan with his act of rebellion-disobedience. The dominion of the earth passed, in order, from God to Adam to Satan. For God to legally act in this world, He has to act through mankind, who were originally given dominion.” (Prosperity: Good News for God’s People, 70)

– Paul Yonggi Cho says that the starting point of prosperity theology is to recognize that God is good and wants to bless you, but the Devil is the one who steals and destroys. Jesus came so that we might have life and abundance. (Salvation, Health & Prosperity: Our Threefold Blessing in Christ, 12).

3. The law revolves around thinking, words & faith:

– Words are expressions of thinking and containers of power:

– Joyce Meyer says,

“Words are so awesome. Words are containers for power. They carry either creative power or destructive power. For example, in my conferences I speak words, and those who hear those words receive life – life in their relationships, in their ministries and in all kinds of areas that God uses me to speak to them about.

“Jesus said that his words are spirit, and they are life.  But people can also speak death to you by speaking things that put a heaviness on you.

“Proverbs 18:21 is a Scripture that I am very familiar with, but I always get blessed by it every time I read it.  As we saw, it talks about death and life being in the power of the tongue and how those who indulge in it will eat its fruit, either for death or for life.” (Eight Ways to Keep the Devil Under Your Feet, 87-88).

– Lisa Comes (Joel Osteen’s older sister, and the actual bible teacher at Lakewood Church) says

“When you plant the Word of God IN YOUR HEART—you begin to think like God thinks.” and “When you speak the Word out of YOUR MOUTH in faith—you agree with God—and it shall be done! (Armed And Dangerous! Part II.  Online)

– Oral Roberts said that the roof of Job’s problem was that “He became negative in his thinking and believing and filled his mind with fear. He doubted God’s goodness.” (Deliverance from Fear and From Sickness, 11)

– The power behind words is faith and that power can be used positively or negatively.

Props to whoever gets this reference without having to use a search engine!

– David Yonggi Cho writes,

“Faith is like a gear in a car. When the car is in forward gear, the car moves forward. But when the car is in reverse, it moves backward with the same power. Likewise, if you believe that God is a good God, success will come to you; if you do not believe that God is a good God, you will encounter fear, unrest and despair. Your faith can be positive or negative. It is up to you.” (Salvation, Health & Prosperity: Our Threefold Blessing in Christ, 15)

– Kenneth Hagin says,

“It is not the storms of life that defeat you. It is not the devil who defeats you. If you are defeated, you have defeated yourself by your wrong thinking, wrong believing, and wrong talking.” (You Can Have What You Say, 8)

– T.D. Jakes writes,

“The power to get wealth is in your tongue. You shall have whatever you say. SO if you keep sitting around murmuring, groaning, and complaining, you use your tongue against yourself. You speech can keep you bent over and crippled. You may be destroying yourself with your words.” (Woman Thou Art Loosed, 146).

4. The law involves a strange version of “faith”.

Some say that faith is actually some sort of spiritual matter (substance).

– Creflo Dollar comments on Hebrews 11:1 and writes,

“The next remarkable thing these verses teach us about faith is that it is a ‘substance.’ ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for…’ In other words, faith is a literal, unseen material. It is ‘stuff.’ ” (The Divine Order Of Faith, 8)

Others say that faith is some sort of impersonal force:

– Kenneth Copeland writes,

“In the reborn human spirit there are four major forces. There is inborn in your spirit the force of faith and underneath the force of faith is the force of patience. This is an important force, and you could almost say that it is the fifth major force. Actually the force of patience is an integral part of the force of faith. In the New Testament they are always coupled together, patience and faith, patience and faith, patience and faith. They are the power twins. Next is the force of righteousness, then the force of wisdom, and last is the force of love.” (The Force Of Faith, 10).

…Well, your pastor is right Anakin.  Midichlorians ARE faith…

Either way all beings, including God, utilize the material/force called “faith”:

– Kenneth Copeland also writes, “God is a faith being. You are born of God. You are a faith being. God does not do anything outside of faith.” (The Force Of Faith, 16-17)

– Frederick K.C. Price says, “Our God is a faith God. Whatever He does is done through faith.” (Prosperity: Good News for God’s People, 23)

Faith is produced in people when they hear (and believe) the word of God.

– Kenneth Hagin comments on Romans 10:17 and says, “God has also told us how to obtain faith” (Exceedingly Growing Faith, 11).  Quite literally, when a person hears the Bible read or quoted aloud, that produces the substance of faith in them.

5. Words are what releases and directs the power of faith.

– Kenneth Copeland says,

“The force of faith is released by words. Faith-filled words put the law of the spirit of life into operation. Faith-filled words dominate the laws of death and its forces ruled by Satan since the fall of Adam.” (The Force Of Faith, 18)

– Joseph Prince says,

“Perhaps you are suffering a sickness that doctors say you have to be on long-term medication for and your heart’s desire is to be healed. Or maybe you have a debt that you need to pay off. These are needs that God has taken care of through Jesus’ perfect work at the cross. So instead of talking about how bad the situation is, start speaking life into your situation. Say, “Sickness, be plucked out by your roots and be gone from my body in Jesus’ name! By Jesus’ stripes I am healed!” Instead of worrying about your debt, say, “I call my debt supernaturally cancelled in Jesus’ name. My God supplies all my needs according to His riches in glory!” If you want to see good days, then keep your tongue from speaking unbelief, and release the power and life of the Lord through your mouth into your situation!”

This time, Mr. Potter, I won’t forget the “in Jesus name” part!

-The Word of Faith Movement has a strange and mechanistic understanding of God, law, and faith.

When the Word of Faith theology first appeared, it was only applied to physical healing.

Word of Faith theology, when applied to money, gives you the Prosperity Gospel.

B. Prosperity Gospel:

1. The application of Word of Faith teaching, specifically the law of sowing and reaping and the law of tithing, to health and finances.

– F.F. Bosworth, who preached for William Branham, taught in 1947 what Charles Cullis did in 1887: the word of God is the “seed” that one plants and the thing that is “reaped” is physical healing.

– Oral Roberts changed the “seed” from being the word of God to money, but the “reaping” was still physical healing.

– Frederick K.C. Price talks about all the lies that the Devil has spread regarding health and poverty and writes,

“We didn’t get a change in these deceptions until some fifty years ago, when Oral Roberts first broke through into mainstream Christianity by emphasizing the healing promised to believers through our new covenant. Once ministers started to look at healing and began to see that it was indeed a promise – something all Christians had a right to – they began to look for other rights under our covenant. Only then did you start to see people discovering that prosperity on God’s terms was one of those rights.” (Prosperity: Good News for God’s People, 131)

-Then, all that one had to do is notice that “like produces like” in Genesis 1

– Plants with seed produce after their own kind, and you take this as some sort of universal principle.

– If you sow money, you’ll reap money.

I don’t think this is what the hymn “Showers of Blessing” was originally talking about…

2. New Apostolic Reformation Churches also are all prosperity gospel churches.

– C. Peter Wagner comments on their distinctive beliefs about money and says,

“First, generous giving is expected. Tithing is taught without apology, and those who do not tithe their incomes are subtly encouraged to evaluate their Christians lives as subpar.

Second, giving is beneficial, not only to the church and its ministry in the kingdom of God, but also to the giver. Tithes and offerings are regarded as seeds that will produce fruit of like kind for individuals and families. Luke 6:38, which says that if we give, it will be given to us in greater measure, is taken literally.” (The New Apostolic Churches: Rediscovering the New Testament Model of Leadership and Why It Is God’s Desire for the Church Today, 23-24)

The “Faith Healer” T.L Osborn writes, “Faith is believing that God will do what you know that He has said in His Word He would do. Faith is believing that God didn’t tell a lie.”

He’s likely more right than he knows.

Sadly, the Word of Faith folk and the Prosperity Preachers (which are basically the same folks) are trusting in lies.

In our next post, I’ll prove that when walk through a handful of the key supporting texts and examine what the Bible actually says regarding these issues.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “To the Scriptures!” Unger

Today I’m going to be posting up the the second part of my notes from the fourth and final talk I gave at the Last Days Bible Conference.  That talk was about the Prosperity Gospel.  Last post, I gave an overview of Word of Faith theology and attempted to show how it set the stage for Prosperity Gospel theology.  In this post, I’m going to be posting the notes that engage many of the standard proof texts of the Prosperity Gospel Movement.

Now in the talk I gave, I had hard time limits so I was only able to deal with some of the main Scriptures that are used in defending Word of Faith and Prosperity Gospel theology.  Still, if you have any exposure to informed Biblical exegesis, I’m hoping that my explanations will make sense to you.  If you have any actual education in Biblical exegesis, I’d only encourage you to look up the passages used by Word of Faith or Prosperity Gospel teachers and read them in context, since the popular “Biblical” arguments put forth by the Word of Faith and Prosperity Gospel folks don’t exactly hold much water.

Here are the notes:

Let’s look at some of their key proof-texts:

1. Does God wants you to prosper financially? – 3 John 2

The king James says “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.”

The term “beloved” refers specifically to the single person to whom the letter is written: Gaius. 3 John 1 says “The elder unto the wellbeloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth.”

Even though the term “beloved” is used in other places in the New Testament to refer to believers, it does not refer to “believers in general” here.

This is made even more clear seeing that the Greek pronouns (the word “you”) in verse 2 are singular, not plural.

3 John 2 is John’s specific prayer for his friend Gaius, and he desires that Gaius would be blessed in person as he is blessed in spirit. Even if it is a prayer for financial blessing, it’s a prayer for 1 person alone.

2. Is faith a substance? Heb. 11:1 –

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

This whole confusion lies in the fact that the term “substance” in the KJV is used in a different sense that is assumed.

The term is a combination of “sub” & “stance” or “that which is beneath”.

The Greek term is hupostasis and the idea is one of certainty, or solidity. Faith is what supports that which we hope for.

It’s telling that out of the 5 occurrences the of the Greek noun hupostasis in the NT, 3 of them are translated “confidence”.

3. Does faith comes by hearing the word? Rom. 10:17

“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

Does faith come by hearing the word? Yes.

Is faith some sort of substance or power? Not for a second.

Rom. 10:13 says “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” and then 10:14-15 asks several questions:

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?
And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?
And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

So Romans 10:17 is talking about saving faith, not some sort of generic faith or any other type of faith…and the type of faith that the Word of Faith people proclaim doesn’t even exist in the first place.

4. Is faith is what heals? Mark 5:34

When reading the gospels, it’s important to notice the larger structures. Jesus clearly did more and said more than is in the gospels, so the question should be “why did Mark include this in this way”.

In Mark 3:22-30, the Scribes who had heard about, and witnessed, Jesus’ healing and exorcisms had to give an explanation for how he could do those things. They couldn’t challenge whether he was performing amazing miracles, so they said that his power came from Satan.

In Mark 4:1-9 Jesus begins his parabolic ministry, in Mark 4:10-20 he explains that the purpose of parables is for judgment of the Jewish leaders (as well as the meaning of his first parable), in Mark 4:21-34 he tells 3 more parables, and then he commences performing miracles again.

In Mark 4:35-41 he performs a different type of miracle: he shows immediate power of nature itself.

Then in Mark 5:1-20, Jesus casts out a herd of demons from a single man, but it’s interesting that the demons recognize him (5:7). The story closes with Jesus telling the man to go and tell his friends how much the Lord has had mercy on him (5:19).

Then, in Mark 5:21-43 he raises a dead girl, but on the way he heals the woman with ongoing bleeding.

The sequence is important. He performs miracles in all 4 spheres of existence: nature, the spiritual realm, the body, and death itself. If anyone has missed who he is now, they have no excuse.

Then, in Mark 6:1-6, he’s rejected in Nazareth, of all places!

Now in Mark 5:25-34, Mark clearly structures the story in a telling way. Jesus is on the way to lay his hands on the sick girl (5:23), but the sick woman lays her hands on his garment (5:27).

Did this same Jesus, the one who read the minds of men, not know who had touched him? Of course not.

She came forth in 5:33 and told what had happened so that the people could see who it was. She would have been known as a chronically unclean woman, having bled for 12 years, and Jesus wanted everyone to see that she understood who he was.

When Jesus says “your faith has made you well” in 5:33, it’s idiotic to say that the faith was the healing agent. Mark 5:30 says clearly that the power of Christ (not God the Father) is what did it.

5. Can you have what you say? Mark 11:23-24

Kenneth Hagin said “…if Mark 11:24 doesn’t mean what it says, then Jesus told a lie.”

The passage says,”Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

If it means what it says, any Christian with faith should be able to move mountains.

I’d love to see anyone do that.

If the passage is being taken in a woodenly literal fashion (and it is), then Prosperity Gospel preachers should be able to actually move mountains.

By that standard, there’s not a single person in history who has ever had faith.

The Word of Faith teachers take 11:23 as a metaphor but not 11:24.

Why is that?

It’s obvious.  The passage cannot possibly be taken in a woodenly literal fashion…therefore the “whatever you ask in prayer” cannot include the absurd.

Clearly this isn’t a recipe to “write your own ticket with God”, as Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin have both said.

6. Do words have power? Proverbs 18:21

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.”

Proverbs 18:18-19 both speak about ending quarrels

Proverbs 18:20 says “From the fruit of a man’s mouth his stomach is satisfied; he is satisfied by the yield of his lips.”

Those 4 proverbs are thematically linked; the immediate context is quarreling.

Beyond that, to suggest that one’s words can *actually* grant life or death is simply stupid and clearly a metaphor.

7. Is sewing and reaping an eternal law?

No. Gen. 8:22 is specifically talking about farming, and that in the context of God promising to never again curse the ground or kill every living creature as long as there is the earth, farming, seasons, days and nights, etc.

What about Gal. 6:7-8?

“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”

Gal. 6:9-10 explains: “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

What about 2 Cor. 9:6?

The passage reads, “The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”

So what is being sown? 2 Cor. 9:7-9 says it’s money.

What is being harvested? 2 Cor. 9:10 – “He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.”

8. Is there a divine formula for getting money?

Luke 6:38 – “give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

Luke 6:37 – “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven”

We’re not talking about money, in the slightest!

9. Do all the Old Testament promises apply to the Gentiles through Jesus?

The typical expression of this idea is Heb. 13:8 + Gal 3:14 + Deut. 28 = MONEY!

What about Heb. 13:8?

The passage says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

Oh really? In the Old Testament he was the angel of the Lord. Is he still the angel of the Lord?

Is anything going to change for Jesus between now and the eternal state? OF COURSE!

The whole idea that God hasn’t changed one bit is difficult when it’s taken as a blanket statement meaning “nothing in God’s dealings with the mankind has changed.”  If that’s the case, one has to wonder what Prosperity Gospel folks do with the new covenant?!?

So what about Gal. 3:9-14?

This cannot even be serious. Just read the passage.

“So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.¹⁰ For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” ¹¹ Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” ¹² But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” ¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— ¹⁴ so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”

This is clearly and specifically talking about justification and the Spirit, not the blessings promised to Israel in Deuteronomy 28.

Biblical Corrections and Thoughts:

1.  Thoughts on Health and Wealth:

Health and daily provision are benefits of common grace (Psalm 73:3; Matt. 5:45), but they’re not promised to be given, in any special measure, to people who profess Christ in this life.  Jesus will provide those things to believers, certainly, but that will occur in the life to come (Matt. 19:29; Luke 16:25; Is. 65:17-23; Rom. 8:23; 1 Cor. 15:35-53; Rev. 21:4).

 Jesus overtly warned about the dangers of chasing wealth: he commented on how it would choke the message of the gospel from producing fruit in someone’s life (Mark 4:18-19), he warned against seeking money for such pursuit reveals sinful priorities (Luke 12:15-21), he taught that chasing wealth as antithetical to serving God (Matt. 6:24), he even taught how loving wealth was a barrier to salvation (Mark 10:17-27). One of the distinctive marks of the Pharisees was that they loved money (Luke 16:14).

 The rest of the disciples/apostles spoke out harshly against chasing/loving money as well.  Luke mentioned how the attempt to use money to acquire spiritual blessings was the mark of a wicked heart (Acts 8:18-23). John the apostle wrote about how wicked men will attempt to gain money under the guise of righteous ends (John 12:4-7). Paul referred to it as being synonymous with idolatry (Col. 3:5), a mark that disqualified a man from serving as an elder in the local church (1 Tim. 3:3), a mark of wickedness (2 Tim. 3:2) and spoke of a desire for wealth as a snare that plunges people into ruin, destruction and apostasy (1 Tim. 6:9-10).  The author of Hebrews wrote that the Christians’ life should be void of the love of money and rather characterized by contentment (Heb. 13:5).

 What’s more is that both John the Baptist and Paul continually taught that the poor should seek generosity and contentment as opposed to more money (Luke 3:10-14; Rom. 12:8; 2 Cor. 9:6-15; Phil. 4:10-20; 1 Tim. 6:6-8), and Paul held himself up as an example of such behavior (Acts 20:33-35, 1 Cor. 4:11-12).  Beyond that, Paul didn’t give poor churches a pass on serving and generosity because they were poor and he certainly didn’t tell them to “claim God’s provision” (or however you want to phrase it).

 2. Does God promise believers money and financial success as a reward for faithfulness, anywhere?

Is it even a part of the equation?

The whole concept betrays the consistent teaching of the New Testament.

– Jesus was homeless (Matt. 8:20),
– The apostles were poor and homeless (1 Cor. 4:11-12; 2 Cor. 6:3-10; Phil. 3:8)
– The churches in Macedonia that were financially generous while living in extreme poverty were held up as an example of spirituality to be copied (2 Cor. 8:1-5), but the rewards they reaped were not financial.

3. Why does this make me so utterly furious?

Jesus was actually more upset than this. He didn’t cleanse the temple; he prophesied its destruction.

 a. This is so infuriating because the Prosperity Gospel is so utterly wicked; Jesus condemned it in his day in the harshest of terms.

 In both Mark 12:38-13:13:2 and Luke 20:45-21:6 one sees the same event recounted. Jesus warns his disciples about the Pharisees, who “walk around in long robs” (dressed in a way to show off their financial status) and ” love greetings in the marketplaces” (public recognition of their spiritual position) “the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts” (being honored before men).

 Why did Jesus warn his disciples about the Pharisees?

 It was because “devour widows’ houses” (gain their wealth by abusing those that they were supposed to care for) and “for a pretense make long prayers” (are verbose in their prayers due to pride, not piety).

 Instead of being seen as examples of righteousness, Jesus stated that they would receive a more serious condemnation because of their wicked attitudes and actions.

 After Jesus warned his disciples, Jesus had an illustration of the problem appear right before him.

 As wealthy people were offering large sums of money at the temple, a widow gave 2 copper coins (the smallest sum of currency in that era). Instead of contributing out of her abundance like the wealthy, the poor widow basically gave her grocery money to the temple with expectation that she would be blessed for her “sacrificial” giving.

 The widow was not an example of piety, but rather a horrible illustration of how wickedly the Pharisees victimized those who followed their teaching.

 Instead of helping the widow (which in the Old Testament was always a mark of true spirituality and a changed heart – Ex. 22:2; Deut. 10:18, 14:28-29, 24:17, 24:19-21, 27:19; Ps. 68:5; Prov. 15:25; Is. 1:17, 1:23; Jer. 7:3-7, 22:1-5; Ez. 22:6-7; Zech. 7:4-11; Mal. 3:5), the Pharisees were eating their food by literally taking the grocery money from the poor.

 After this scene, Jesus pronounced the destruction of the temple and gave what is known as the Olivet Discourse.

 It is very interesting that the thing that inflamed Christ’s heart to the point that he pronounced the destruction of the temple was the victimization of the widows in Israel.

 Those same widows (and fatherless, and poor) are now similarly victimized by means of the promises of the most popular counterfeit “gospel” on the planet: the Prosperity Gospel.

 b. The Prosperity Gospel insures that Christians remain in a self-perpetuating immaturity:

God’s main medium for cultivating spiritual growth is purification by means of discipline/suffering (Rom. 5:1-5; 1 Cor. 11:29-32; Heb. 12:1-14; Ja. 1:2-4; 1 Pet. 1:3-7; Rev. 3:19).

Christians share in Christ’s sufferings as a normative part of the Christian life (2 Cor. 1:5-7; Phil. 3:7-11; Col. 1:24; 2 Thess. 1:4-5; 2 Tim. 2:1-4; 1 Pet. 4:12).

c. When people are deceived by the Prosperity Gospel, they trust God to keep promises he has NEVER made and call foul when he doesn’t keep them.

Among other things, Christians are promised persecution in this life (2 Tim. 3:12).

Though there is some comfort/relief/blessing in this life for believers (1 Pet. 5:9-10), the comfort/relief/blessing that believers are promised will ultimately not be in this life (2 Thess. 1:5-10; 2 Tim. 2:8-13; Heb. 10:32-39; Ja. 5:7-9; 1Pet. 4:13-19).

Your best life is in the future, not the present.

That’s the end of the notes, and the end of this short series.

I hope that this has been somewhat helpful, but remember that these notes are supposed to accompany the audio of the conference.  The notes are basically almost exactly what I had in the pulpit, so listening to the audio with the notes in hand should help you follow more closely and catch all the stuff that I said too quickly to write down.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “I hope I said something noteworthy!” Unger

Here’s an edited version of my response:

An articulate understanding of God and the gospel is the only thing that can make sense of the exclusive claims of Christianity.

If you loosely follow evangelical apologetics circles like I do, you’ve possibly run across the name Mike Licona.  A few years ago he was involved in a kerfuffle when he questioned the historicity of Matthew 27:51-54 in his book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach.  He commented on “that strange little text in Matthew 27:52-53, where upon Jesus’ death the dead saints are raised and walk into the city of Jerusalem” (548) and wrote:

“it seems to me that an understanding of the language in Matthew 27:52-53 as ‘special effects’ with eschatological Jewish texts and thought in mind is most plausible. There is further support for this interpretation. If the tombs opened and the saints being raised upon Jesus’ death was not strange enough, Matthew adds that they did not come out of their tombs until after Jesus’ resurrection. What were they doing between Friday afternoon and early Sunday morning? Were they standing in the now open doorways of their tombs and waiting?” (552)

Licona closed of his discussion of Matthew 27:51-54 writing, “It seems best to regard this difficult text in Matthew as a poetic device added to communicate that the Son of God had died and that impending judgment awaited Israel” (553).  How did that idea fare for him?

Not so well.

Upon being challenged on his view of inerrancy by none other than Norm Geisler (he has a whole section on his website dedicated to Licona…including support from the clearly unbiased voice of Ergun Caner…*cough*) and Al Mohler, Licona responded with his own letter including a list of scholars who didn’t think he was challenging inerrancy…and the battle raged on as my disinterest grew exponentially.  After the dust settled, Licona lost his job with the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board and resigned (mysteriously) from Southern Evangelical Seminary, but quickly got hired by Houston Baptist University.  After all, Mike Licona isn’t some blazing heretic; he’s a rather capable apologist with a flaw common to most apologists; he defends the Bible but has precious little training in it’s proper interpretation (a flaw that is common of many popular apologists).

I don’t bring up all this old news to trot through all the various issues or take a cheap shot at apologists. The church is definitely blessed by the work of many apologists at defending the historicity and reliability of the text of scripture.  Apologists are just not the guys I would normally go to for their work at interpreting the text of scripture (at least beyond a surface level).  When it comes to making sense of the text, their typical training rarely gives them the necessary tools.

It seemed like Mike Licona couldn’t figure out what relevance Matt. 27:51-54 had to the surrounding text, so he made a leap and attempted to explain it’s inclusion into the pericope by suggesting that it was cryptically illustrative.  He made that leap on the basis of arguing that it was of a different genre than the rest of the surrounding text (a difficult sell, to say the least).  I’d like to take a stab at addressing the same conundrum without resorting to such inventive explanations.

I’ll do it fairly quickly too.  Let’s look at the setup in the previous section of 27:45-50:

⁴⁵ Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. ⁴⁶ And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ⁴⁷ And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” ⁴⁸ And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. ⁴⁹ But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” ⁵⁰ And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.”

Here’s some quick observations:

–  In 27:45, there was an eclipse, or some other condition resulting in darkness, that was three hours long.  This is certainly significant, especially in relation to the Messiah, but I’m not going to work through this specific detail right now.  In a nutshell, darkness during the day is a sign of divine judgment (Is. 13:9-11, 24:21-23; Jer. 15:9; Ez. 32:3-7, etc.) as the sun is too ashamed to “look” upon what’s happening.

– In 27:46, Jesus quotes Psalm 22:1.  This isn’t a statement that God had forsaken him, but rather a proclamation of victory from the cross itself.  The rest of Psalm 22 is quite indicative of the blessing that Jesus anticipates from the cross; in his brutal agony, Christ knew that God would still keep his word (i.e Ps. 22:19-31).

– In 27:47-49, people didn’t understand what was happening and didn’t understand (or weren’t really listening to) what Jesus was saying so some put words (and wine) in his mouth where as others simply made fun of him (i.e. Jesus knew the frustration of social media 2,000 years before it existed – Heb. 4:15 anyone?).

– In 27:50, Jesus cried out with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit, fulfilling John 10:17-18.

– So as a summary:

a.  Creation understood what was happening (God was keeping his promises).

b.  Christ understood what was happening (God was keeping his promises).

c.  Creatures didn’t understand (and somehow thought Jesus was an idolater)

d.  Christ understood what had to happen (and kept his promises).

This then leads to the following pericope: Matt. 27:51-54 (though I’ll include up to vs. 56):

⁵¹ And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. ⁵² The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, ⁵³ and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. ⁵⁴ When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, ⁵⁶ among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

Here’s some quick observations:

– In 27:51, the curtain of the temple was torn.  Some have thought that this “curtain” was the curtain to the Most Holy Place, but it is hard to say.  Without getting into the frustrating debate that surrounds this question (for starters, feel free to investigate The Veil Of the Temple in History And Legend by Daniel M. Gurtner – JETS 49/1, March 2006), I’ll just say that I loosely lean towards the idea that the torn veil was likely the outer curtain that separated the court of the men from the temple.  The obvious reason being that if the curtain into the Most Holy Place would have torn, nobody would have seen it (the veils were quite likely in front of wooden doors – see 1 Ki. 6:31-34, 7:50 + Ex. 26:33, 2 Chron. 3:14 + Heb. 9:1-5 all suggest this likelihood).  The Pharisees would have likely not told anyone and covered up that strange (and possibly damning) sign, seeing that they covered up the resurrection and replaced all the veils every year anyways.

I have other reasons for my loose suspicions on this matter, but that’s certainly not the purpose of this post.

– Either way, after the way into the temple was opened for all (we’re a kingdom of priests with open access to God, but only Christ is the high priest and only he enters into the Most Holy Place), the creation confirmed the momentous nature of the death of Christ with an earthquake (another symbolically important event).

– Then, in 27:52-53 there’s an indication of the meaning of the death of Christ.  This is seen in the physical resurrection of many “saints who had fallen asleep.”  Now many tombs were split open (possibly the rocks which were split were tomb-sealing stones), but only the “saints who had fallen asleep” were raised, emerging from their tombs after Christ rose from his.  Some have thought that those raised saints were raised when the tombs were split and “sat around” all weekend, waiting for Christ to be raised, but that’s forcing the text.  The tombs were split at the same time as the veil, but the saints came forth after Christ.

In other words, the death of Christ opened the tombs and lead to a resurrection…not the promised resurrection, but a little foreshadowing of it.  Seeing that only a small number of dead saints were raised, this resurrection was likely a demonstration of Christ’s power to keep his promises regarding the final resurrection.

Not only were the dead saints raised, but also something equally important happened in the following verse.

– In 27:54, the centurions who were with Jesus and keeping watch over him, saw the earthquake and pronounced “Truly this was the Son of God!”  That statement is a statement of belief in the person and claims of Christ; it’s a proclamation of faith…and that faith isn’t the logical response to an earthquake.  That faith is a product of a sovereign work of the Spirit of God in the heart of sinful men.

What the passage is laying out is that Christ not only has the power to raise dead saints, but also dead sinners.

In other words, Christ brings life to all…but that’s not the end of the passage.

– There’s that strange little extra passage in 27:55-56 where it mentions the women who were watching from a distance.  They’re the ones who had “who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him.”  There’s the Mary, his disciple.  There’s Mary, his mother.  There’s Mary, the mother of two of his disciples.  They’re all there when none of his other disciples are (according to Matthew).

I’d dare suggest that there’s one final, and powerful, point being made here:  Christ sustains his own.

Those women, the ones who had watched him die and seen the aftermath, were still around.  That’s really important to catch.  I mean, his disciples were gone but their moms were still hanging around.  Christ sustains his own by his own power, not because of their own boldness or gifting or strength.  They remain and there’s no real explanation why…short of some sort of divine power that’s keeping them going.

So, I’d suggest that Matthew 27:51-56 is a very interesting text; it’s recording an event that foreshadows the coming teaching of both the disciples (this happened before the gospel accounts were written, remember) and the apostles (namely Paul).  It’s a little glimpse into how God was already pointing to the good news about Christ in the very scene of his death.

God was orchestrating events to illustrate the very meaning of those same events; namely that in Christ, life is available to dead saints and dead sinners alike.

Somebody give me a pulpit!

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Feel Some Preachin’ Comin’ On!” Unger

When it comes to rebuttal against all the various attacks against the Biblical teaching on issues related to gender, sexual morality and marriage, there is no shortage of Christian responses.  Folks like Drs. Robert Gagnon, Michael Brown, James White, Albert Mohler, etc. have provided the Christians with no shortage of scholarly and popular level apologetic work against the onslaught that is coming against the Bible from the “Christian” QUILTBAG mafia.

In reality though, the type of rhetoric that one runs into on Facebook is pretty simplistic; it’s not the stuff that Gagnon and Brown are responding too.  Those guys are writing stuff that engages the arguments from writings like James Brownson’s book Bible, Gender, Sexuality.

Though many of the popular arguments come from guys like Brownson, not a whole lot of people you’ll be talking to will have actually read guys like Brownson.  In the internet game of telephone, once the ideas pass from person to person they’re often changed, watered-down, or simply misunderstood.

I was recently tagged into a Facebook interaction where a rather large load of long-standing Christian friends were passionately engaging the topic.  A fellow had commented on how 1 Cor. 6:9-10 and 1 Tim. 1:8-11 clearly articulated that homosexual practice is sin.  Then someone posted this “tear-down” response:

“…those passages don’t really refer to homosexuality. The ancient Greek word for same gender sexual relations, paiderasste, isn’t used in either verse. Instead, Paul made up his own word, arsenokoitai (arsen = adult male, koitai = bed) for the 1 Cor one, and it isn’t used anywhere else in the Bible and rarely in other ancient Greek texts, all of which reference sexual acts between both men and women (Aristides of Athens in 138 CE, Eusebius in 340 CE, and Patriarch John IV of Constantinople in the 700s CE). This word has been a real problem for translators and scholars and has roughly 2 dozen different attempted meanings, including, but not limited to, pederasty, masturbation, effeminate, and adultery. Paul was likely referencing an earlier Scripture about men sleeping with people that weren’t their wives (temple prostitution). The understanding of this word has changed over time and REMAINS very problematic.The Timothy reference is likewise vague, as the word used is a very common one, malakoi, which means “soft”. I couldn’t even begin to tell you what this has to do with homosexuality. Some scholars speculate it might have something to do with masturbation. Maybe it has to do with soft-faced young boys of the institutionalized pederasty of the Greeks. You have been the victim of a translator with an agenda, my friend.”

Some of the readers were shaken up at the thought that their Bible was unreliably translated over and against every shred of historical evidence.  Apparently the Alexandrian cult (for those who know about such secret societies) is also anti-gay.  I was tagged into the thread by a friend and asked to respond.  Here’s my response.  I hope it’s helpful to others who face these same questions regularly:

Let’s look at some individual arguments:

1. Paul would have used “paiderasste” rather than. “arsenokoites” if he was talking about homosexuality.

Not for a second.

Paul speaks Greek but he’s a Jew. That’s rather important to this all. He’s not speaking or writing from some sort of pagan mindset (and the Jews regarded the Greeks as pagans, not some form of “religiously neutral” people). Paul was a prophet of God, writing by the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God invented all languages and didn’t bow to Greek social convention with terminology. The Spirit wrote in harmony with what he had previously wrote (which is important to remember).

Another thing that is important to remember is that Paul, and the other committed Jews of his day, were conversant with their scriptures and held them in rather high regard (i.e. they believed that their writings were actually the oracles of God himself, written down by God himself, via his prophets). When it came to pagan philosophy and theology, the explicitly rejected all of it as foolishness. Paul did invent a word (arsenokoites), but that word would have had an obvious meaning to every Jew that heard it for a very simple reason:

Leviticus 18:22, in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament that Jesus and his apostles’ read), reads καὶ μετὰ ἄρσενος οὐ κοιμηθήσῃ κοίτην γυναικός· βδέλυγμα γάρ ἐστιν.

I’ll transliterate it to help make the point – kai meta arsenos ou koimethesei koiten gunaikos bdelugma gar estin.

The word “arsenos” (man) and “koiten” (bed) can be easily seen in Leviticus 18:22, even if you don’t know Greek (look for yourself – https://www.academic-bible.com/…/c1fcad2f0717ef6fa5267…/ or there’s a parallel here: http://www.ellopos.net/…/gree…/septuagint/chapter.asp…)

The Jews knew that arsen and koiten appeared together in Leviticus 18:22 and also in Leviticus 20:13.

The terms “arsen” and “koiten” also appear together in 2 other passages in the Greek OT: Numbers 31:17-18 and Judges 21:11-12. Both passages are similar in that the term is used to differentiate between virgins and non-virgins; the differentiation is made as those who have and have not “known man (arsen) by lying with him in a bed (koiten)”.

The usage of arsen + koiten together in the OT was both rare and uniformly sexual, in the sense of sharing the “marriage bed”, in nature.  Once a woman had been in that bed with a man, she was (by definition) no longer a virgin.

So, when Paul (a Pharisee of Pharisees who had committed the Old Testament to memory) puts “arsen” & “koiten” together to create the word “arsenokoites”, the Jews would have clearly understood what he was getting at. He was manufacturing a word to describe an action that was (basically) based on the two explicit condemnations of that action in the Old Testament.

In other words, Paul didn’t define the term because Leviticus already did. No Jew would have been confused. Only modern “scholars” who are desperate to chuck the Bible out the window, claim some form of ambiguity.

Scholars might claim to be confused on the meaning of arsenokoites, but then again, there are “scholars” out there who think just about anything. Not all scholars are created equal…

…and not all are honest.

The ones who try to make a case that Christians can willfully embrace sin are liars (1 John 3:4-6).

2. Arsenokoites is rare in Ancient Greek literature, and all of the occurrences of it are in “reference sexual acts between both men and women.”

Well, this is just blatantly irrelevant.

The Bible decides what the Bible means by the terms it uses, not some pagan writers who come centuries later. The inscripturated writings of the Apostle Paul (you know, prophet of Yahweh), aren’t redefined because someone a century after him doesn’t understand what he meant.

Beyond that, this is also false.

Here’s the translation of the relevant section of Aristedes Apology 13, from Newadvent.org (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1012.htm):

“When the Greeks made laws they did not perceive that by their laws they condemn their gods. For if their laws are righteous, their gods are unrighteous, since they transgressed the law in killing one another, and practising sorcery, and committing adultery, and in robbing and stealing, and in lying with males, and by their other practises as well.”

I don’t know where to find a free copy of the Greek text online, but here’s another translation: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/aristides_02_trans.htm.

The context is a sin list, and in the original the term is likely just tossed out there, without definition.  That assumes that it’s using a previously established definition.

That would suggest that the usage of the term is in harmony with the previous uses of the term in the Bible (1 Cor. 6:9 & 1 Tim. 1:10) as well as outside the bible (Sibylline Oracles 2:70-78, the Epistle of Ignatius to the Tarsians [which is a citation of 1 Cor. 6:9], The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians [again, a citation of 1 Cor. 6:9], the Acts of John 36, Clement of Alexandria’s Instructor 3.11 [again, citation of 1 Cor. 6:9]).

For only $140/yr, you can subscribe to the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae and look all that stuff up for yourself (https://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/index.php). I’ve provided the citation locations for those who want to look up whatever free English translation is available, and those citations show a pretty clear pattern.

The uniform usage of the term in the early church was homosexuality (as in two guys lying in bed and attempting to do what husbands and wives do when they’re in bed) since a majority of the usages of the term were simply citation of 1 Cor. 6:9 or 1 Tim. 1:10.  There was neither confusion nor reinterpretation of the terms in those passages, at least as seen over the first few hundred years of the church.

3. Was Paul “likely referencing an earlier Scripture about men sleeping with people that weren’t their wives”?

Not even close.

Daniel A. Helminiak or John Boswell, whichever suggested this argument originally (I forget), was simply making stuff up. Making blanket statements about what Paul was likely talking about, while ignoring the Jewish context of Paul’s writing and the Jewish scriptures that underlay his worldview, is called “using your imagination.”

I’ve already explained this in point 1. Paul (the Pharisee, trained by Gamaliel and writing by the Holy Spirit) was clearly and inescapably referencing the two prohibitions in Leviticus.

***Note that I didn’t include in the original post***

The Greek word for “men sleeping with people that weren’t their wives” is either moicheia (if the men were married) or porneia (if the men weren’t married).  Paul would definitely not have manufactured a term when there was a perfectly good Greek term available that communicated the specific nuance he wanted to get across.  Moicheia appears in the writings of Paul in Gal. 5:19 (though other derivatives of the term appear in Rom. 2:22, 7:3, 13:9) and porneia appears 10x in his writing (a word study of porneia appears here).  Paul was familiar with the terminology needed to communicate the idea of “men sleeping with people that weren’t their wives” and used it in other places.  As a rule of thumb, it’s a good idea to assume that the inspired writers of Scripture were not idiots.

4. “The understanding of this word (arsenokoites) has changed over time and REMAINS very problematic.”

Again, no. The fact that some folks claims something is misunderstood doesn’t make it so.

The fact that a billion Muslims (and thousands of Muslim “scholars”) claim that Jesus didn’t actually die on the cross doesn’t make it so.

This is simply untrue and revisionist history based on the work of a handful of pro-homosexual scholars who are suspiciously ignorant about the Bible and willfully (if not gleefully) misrepresenting history.

The meaning of arsenokoites is laid out in Scripture and Scripture hasn’t changed one iota.

5. The word used in Timothy is “malakoi” and this means “soft”.

That’s absolutely not true.

Malakos doesn’t appear in 1 Timothy at all. The word in 1 Timothy is arsenokoites, just like in 1 Cor. 6:9

Malakos appears in 1 Corinthians 6:9, and seeing that it’s paired with arsenokoites, and follows after “pornos” (which refers to sexual activity outside of marriage) and “moichos” (which refers to sexual activity in violation of marriage), it is clearly in a sexual context.

Some people claim to not know what the word means, but that’s more likely because some people have a rather myopic agenda when it comes to this stuff; the conclusion necessarily precedes the facts.

It’s also not a common word in the Bible at all. It only appears elsewhere in Matt. 11:8 and Luke 7:25, both of which are talking about soft and luxurious garments.

The idea is straight-forward. Someone who is “malakos” is the submissive partner in a homosexual relationship, where as the one who is “arsenokoites” is the dominant partner.

That’s why the ESV translates both terms together as the single category of “men who practice homosexuality.”

So out of the 5 arguments that were examined, none are left standing after some light scrutiny.

I know that many readers are highly disinterested in technical discussion like this…but this is the level of the debate now.  Your churches will have a handful of “intellectuals” in them that are dropping Greek and history references, quoting Boswell and Brownson, and generally painting themselves as humble thinkers who are wanting the church to embrace the truth and general ethos of the teaching of Christ.  Unless you or your pastor know how to respond to them, your church will be overturned by those workmen of Satan (2 Tim. 2:24-26) who arrogantly “delude you with plausible arguments” (Col. 2:4).

Be prepared.

I know that there are a few dozen other questions, but I was only addressing the post that I was asked to engage.  I’ve previously written on the term Arsenokoites, but here I’ve provided a little more information.

I hope that it is helpful.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “And Such Were Some Of You” Unger

Minutes after it hit the internet, a friend sent me this link.  Sadly, it seems that the pressure of the QUILTBAG assault on society has cracked the moral resistance of another evangelical leader: Tony Campolo.  I’ll admit something though.  When I found out about Campolo, I was surprised.  I wasn’t surprised because he, like a rapidly growing number of professing evangelicals, had buckled on the issue of Christians and homosexuality.  Instead, I was surprised because I thought he already had.

I guess I was confused.  I was partly confused due to various previous news about Campolo, like when his son decided that he was an atheist (technically he became an agnostic…as if God respects our rhetorical distinctions).  During that event,Tony Campolo expressed his lack of concern for his son’s eternal destiny since “the God I believe in doesn’t send people to hell for eternity for having the wrong theology.”  Tony Campolo essentially admits that he doesn’t worship the God of the Bible but instead has created a silly caricature of “god” who amazingly agrees with Tony Campolo on matters of theology (as if that sort of idolatry is anything new). I just assumed that the other “unpopular” ideas (i.e. the biblical teaching on homosexuality) had already been jettisoned by Campolo.  Also, considering that the homosexual issue was part of what drove Bart Campolo away from the faith, and seeing that Tony Campolo’s wife has been an LGBT advocate since at least 2003, I think my suspicions were justified.  For those that are interested, Tony and Peggy actually spoke on the issue of homosexuality in 2003.  Here’s the audio:

Tony Part 1
Peggy Part 1
Tony Part 2
Peggy Part 2

Tony wasn’t exactly strong on the issue back then, so I guess I foolishly made the assumption that he had buckled on the issue by now.  Apparently, on June 8 2015, some 12+ years later, he finally admitted that he held the position I thought he had already held.  In some rather convenient timing with regard to the acceptability of his position, Campolo posted a letter on his website.  I’d like to interact with that letter, since it has spawned no shortage of questions.  I’ll post it in it’s entirety on here, and I’ll interact in red (as well as in a few memes).  Let’s look at Campolo’s statement, shall we?

As a young man I surrendered my life to Jesus and trusted in Him for my salvation, and I have been a staunch evangelical ever since. I rely on the doctrines of the Apostles Creed. I believe the Bible to have been written by men inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit (aka – the Bible isn’t inspired, hence Tony doesn’t really have a problem with tossing certain parts of it out the window). I place my highest priority on the words of Jesus, emphasizing the 25^th chapter of Matthew, where Jesus makes clear that on Judgment Day the defining question will be how each of us responded to those he calls “the least of these” (Not only is he a “red letter” Christian, but he selects specific red letters that he prioritizes over the other ones.  No reason really…he just willfully admits that he’s making Jesus into the social activist that he wants Jesus to be.  Also, it’s quite convenient that Jesus isn’t addressing marriage or sexuality in Matthew 25.  Well, I’m guessing that Campolo ignores 25:1-13 where Jesus talks about a wedding.  Those letters probably aren’t nearly as red as 25:31-45…except for the talk about “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” in 25:41 and “eternal punishment” in 25:46.  Those letters are likely a light shade of taupe.  Not red at all.  This whole “selective red letter” thing must be exhausting…).

Living the words of Jesus…well, some of them…well, a handful…

From this foundation I have done my best to preach the Gospel (he said “the Gospel” but he meant “the gospel of Matthew 25:35-40″), care for the poor and oppressed, and earnestly motivate others to do the same (and sadly, many people think that Romans 16:17-18 is a hypothetical warning). Because of my open concern for social justice, in recent years I have been asked the same question over and over again: Are you ready to fully accept into the Church those gay Christian couples who have made a lifetime commitment to one another? (which he hasn’t answered firmly and publicly until now…when Matthew Vines and other similar ψευδάδελφος are now selling lots of books.  Convenient timing, no?)

While I have always tried to communicate grace and understanding to people on both sides of the issue, my answer to that question has always been somewhat ambiguous (see previous comment). One reason for that ambiguity was that I felt I could do more good for my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters by serving as a bridge person, encouraging the rest of the Church to reach out in love and truly get to know them (aka -he admits that he’s been openly and maliciously manipulating the church to accept the gay agenda). The other reason was that, like so many other Christians, I was deeply uncertain about what was right (and by “right”, he means “a position on the issue that won’t hurt my book sales”).

St. Nicholas, warming up his heretic slapping hand

It has taken countless hours of prayer, study, conversation and emotional turmoil to bring me to the place where I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church (in other words, he saw what happened to Jennifer Knapp, Ray Boltz, etc. and decided to keep his trap shut until Christian culture was more apostate).

For me, the most important part of that process was answering a more fundamental question: What is the point of marriage in the first place? For some Christians (not Campolo, but some…somewhere…), in a tradition that traces back to St. Augustine, the sole purpose of marriage is procreation, which obviously negates the legitimacy of same-sex unions (and when he says “St. Augustine,” he means “some Catholic theologian I read decades ago whose name escapes me…”). Others of us, however, recognize a more spiritual dimension of marriage, which is of supreme importance (though he’s not thinking of scripture that directly addresses the idea…). We believe that God intends married partners to help actualize in each other the “fruits of the spirit,” which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, often citing the Apostle Paul’s comparison of marriage to Christ’s sanctifying relationship with the Church (Eckhart Tolle is currently talking to his lawyer to see Campolo has committed any actionable plagiarism). This doesn’t mean that unmarried people cannot achieve the highest levels of spiritual actualization (that’s why Jesus died on the cross: to help facilitate our “spiritual actualization”) – our Savior himself was single, after all – but only that the institution of marriage should always be primarily about spiritual growth.

In my own life, my wife Peggy has been easily the greatest encourager of my relationship with Jesus. She has been my prayer partner and, more than anyone else, she has discerned my shortcomings and helped me try to overcome them (like manning up and admitting his support of full QUILTBAG inclusion into the church). Her loving example, constant support, and wise counsel have enabled me to accomplish Kingdom work that I would have not even attempted without her, and I trust she would say the same about my role in her life. Each of us has been God’s gift to the other and our marriage has been a mutually edifying relationship (“actualized edification of spiritual fruit” is the foundation of every convoluted relationship).

One reason I am changing my position on this issue is that, through Peggy, I have come to know so many gay Christian couples whose relationships work in much the same way as our own (His totally irrational assumptions about how sinners couldn’t be nice, believe it or not, were unable to stand up to the test of reality). Our friendships with these couples have helped me understand how important it is for the exclusion and disapproval of their unions by the Christian community to end (the fact that his friends were hurt by his unbiblical bigotry now means that other people, who have convictions derived from actually reading the Bible, need to change). We in the Church should actively support such families. Furthermore, we should be doing all we can to reach, comfort and include all those precious children of God who have been wrongly led to believe that they are mistakes or just not good enough for God, simply because they are not straight (the shame people feel cannot possibly have something to do with the sin that defines their existence or their own conscience that testifies against them continually).

As a social scientist, I have concluded that sexual orientation is almost never a choice (not that social science could ever actually prove that) and I have seen how damaging it can be to try to “cure” someone from being gay (amazingly, overcoming sin by human effort is impossible…it’s not like Jesus didn’t address that repeatedly.  Oh wait.  That’s not in Matthew 25.  Never mind…). As a Christian, my responsibility is not to condemn or reject gay people, but rather to love and embrace them, and to endeavor to draw them into the fellowship of the Church (where it’s Tony’s job, as a Christian, to inform them that Christ will condemn them for their willful rebellion against him…no wait.  He doesn’t do that either…). When we sing the old invitation hymn, “Just As I Am”, I want us to mean it, and I want my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to know it is true for them too (because serious Christians build their theology based on church music, not Scripture, right?).

Rest assured that I have already heard – and in some cases made – every kind of biblical argument against gay marriage (not that his reasons for abandoning the biblical teaching show a hint of familiarity with it), including those of Dr. Ronald Sider, my esteemed friend and colleague at Eastern University . Obviously, people of good will can and do read the scriptures very differently when it comes to controversial issues (Episcopalians, United Methodists, PCUSA, United Church, etc.  No wait!  They all just admittedly ignore it too!), and I am painfully aware that there are ways I could be wrong about this one (but seriously, not really.  I’m Tony Campolo BABY!).

However, I am old enough to remember when we in the Church made strong biblical cases for keeping women out of teaching roles in the Church (which he didn’t realize was actually a debate about the biblical office of “elder”), and when divorced and remarried people often were excluded from fellowship altogether on the basis of scripture (cause “shunning” and “excommunication” are the way the Bible commands one to deal with marital unfaithfulness right?). Not long before that, some Christians even made biblical cases supporting slavery (Tony couldn’t tell you who these apparent Christians were, nor could he tell you why they were unquestionably exegetically defeated by Christian theologians and pastors, nor even articulate the most basic differences between American slavery or ancient Jewish slavery…). Many of those people were sincere believers (which makes their biblical positions equally weighty), but most of us now agree that they were wrong (again, he doesn’t know anyone who still is pro-slavery, but just sayin…). I am afraid we are making the same kind of mistake again, which is why I am speaking out (and given the trajectory I’ve just outlined, in 200 years we’ll realize that we were wrong about the deity of Christ, the resurrection, the Trinity, Heaven, Hell, and who knows what else!).

I hope (in the face of all reason) what I have written here will help my fellow Christians to lovingly welcome all of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters into the Church (without ever giving them the gospel.  My message is the same as Jesus’ message:  “Come as you are, however wretched and depraved, and stay that way.”).

So there we have it.

A weak-sauce social-gospel activist with basic theological confusion who tossed the Bible out the window has continued down the trajectory he started on a long time ago.

Big shock.

What’s sad is how many people will see this as some sort of example to follow, simply because he’s Tony Campolo and he’s already done their thinking for them.

Hosea 4:1-6.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Ad Scriptura” Unger

Time for some links that I forgot to share!

While I was in Calgary in April, I preached at GraceLife Church in Calgary.  The pastor is a long-standing friend of mine (and if you’re looking for a good, Bible-teaching church in Calgary, I cannot recommend GraceLife enough) and I preached on 1 Kings 18:20-40 and putting sin to death.  Seeing that I seem to preach about 3-5 times a year right now, I am pretty out of practice (embarrassed face), but if anyone enjoys my offerings, I hope you’re blessed.

Second, I was a guest on the EchoZoe Podcast last month and I spoke about the history of the Renewal Movement.  The show is available here and you can download the program directly with this link.

I want to thank EchoZoe for having me on!

Third, if anyone is in Vancouver BC in the next few weeks, I’ll be speaking at Victory Baptist Church in Port Coquitlam on issues related to the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement.  I’ll be speaking Jung 14, 28, and July 5th, and if any Vancouver friends are around, I’d love to see you!

Finally, I’ll be speaking at Oaklands Chapel in Victoria on July 12 and would love to see any Victoria friends.  The pastor there is also a good friend and if anyone is looking for a church in Victoria, I cannot recommend Oaklands highly enough!  I’d love to see you there!

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “The Guest Preacher” Unger

Ever since the beginning, Christianity has been a religion of the supernatural.

Christianity started with some rather amazing claims regarding healings and resurrections, and those claims continued throughout the New Testament era (and writings).  All Christians are open to believe claims made in contemporary times regarding miraculous events, since Christians are, by definition, supernaturalists.  The real debate revolves around the legitimacy of modern claims, and what sort of evidence is required to authenticate modern claims of supernatural events (like a miraculous healing).

There are those who claim to be skeptical believers but blindly swallow anything as evidence; all claims made by anyone are equally reputable and true until proven otherwise.

There are those who are skeptical believers and look for some reason to believe the claims; not all evidence is equally compelling, and the Bible should provide a framework for evaluating claims of supernatural events.

Then, there are those who are skeptical unbelievers and unwilling to listen to any evidence whatsoever; there is no such thing as evidence for any supernatural claims.

Often, the people making the claims want to toss all skeptics into the third category.  This category is that of the Facebook atheist.  The “Facebook atheist” camp is composed of the type of guys who troll creationist organizations on Facebook and Twitter, looking to fling dung like a chimp and then run away.  These folks love to lure people into a debate on some nonsense point of theological confusion that they’re obsessed with and are immune to rational argumentation.  They’re the fellows who left the church in their early teen years and think that they’re the educated critics of Christianity simply because they endured years of Sunday school and youth group level instruction.  These are the folks who mock the Bible because they do things like manufacture Biblical contradictions or sensationalize textual critical information, based on wildly absurd assumptions or unvarnished ignorance and lying.

They’re not really a problem though as their philosophical bias and manufacturing of “facts” is obvious as it is stupid.  For those of you who have never encountered the Jesus = Horus stuff, don’t panic. Read this and this and this.

So what type of skeptic is the real problem?

The real problem is the people in the second category: those believers who are skeptical and look for some reason to believe (not disbelieve) the claims.  This is the category of the “please convince me” crowd; the level-headed folks who don’t assume every claim is legitimate.  These are the folks who recognize that Christians worship a Jewish carpenter who claimed to be YHWH (and was telling the truth), healed innumerable people, raised other people and himself from the dead…but also recognize that he also warned about people who would fraudulently come in his name, lying about both bringing his teachings and performing his miracles.  His apostles warned us that there would be frauds, and the people in the second category take those warnings seriously.

Those warnings weren’t given in vain, and they’re not to be taken lightly.  For the sake of a small reminder, consider that some of those warnings include:

1.  Spiritual frauds will claim to be workmen of God (Matt. 7:21-23, 2 Cor. 11:12-15).

2.  Spiritual frauds may indeed perform miraculous signs (Matt. 7:21-23, 24:24; 2 Thess. 2:9-10).

miraculous signs unquestionably verified by self-perception of pain?!?

3.  Spiritual frauds will come from within the church (Acts 20:29-30; 1 Tim. 3: 6-7, 6: 9-10; 2 Pet. 2:1; 1 John 2:19; Jude 4).

4.  Spiritual frauds appear to be convincing (Rom. 16:18; Col 2:4, 8; 2 Tim 4:3).

5.  Spiritual frauds will deceive believers and destroy them (2 Pet. 2:3, 18-19; Titus 1:9-14).

In other words, it’s important to cautiously and critically evaluate any teacher or authority who comes to us bearing the name of Christ.  For a fuller exploration of the biblical teaching on false teachers, feel free to read my in-depth 2 part exploration of the topic (part 1 & part 2).

Sadly, cautious and critical evaluation isn’t the flavor of the day in contemporary evangelicalism.  In fact, that sort of critical evaluation is not just unpopular; it is actively suppressed altogether.

Next post, I’m going to present an fairly recent example:

Robby “Resurrection” Dawkins.

Until then, that’s a wrap.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Waiting for the final resurrection” Unger

In the previous post, I commented on the three types of skeptics and mentioned that the church is in a bad scenario in the current era.  The bad scenario comes with the combination of Jesus’ warning against spiritual frauds and the modern distaste for any biblically cautious and critical evaluation.  I closed off the article with the statement that “critical evaluation is not just unpopular; it is actively suppressed altogether” and mentioned that I would take a look at a fairly recent example: Robby “Resurrection” Dawkins.

Now, it’s time to explore that example.

Robby Dawkins is a highly sought-after speaker in the Vineyard church who hails from Illinois that has come to recent fame (and fortune) due to his claims of performing a resurrection.  Dawkins’ claims are reported by the none other than the wonderfully imaginative Jennifer LeClaire.  Leclaire has reported his claims in an article and also a full interview at Charisma magazine.  Leclaire is also a busy woman.  Not only does she write for Charisma Magazine, but she also runs a “ministry” that has an ironic homepage:

This is her home page, as of June 18th, 2015.  She even quotes Matthew 24:24.

Seeing that LeClaire is in the middle of this all, and her website encourages me to exercise discernment, I’m going to take my cue from her.  I’m going to apply a little discernment to Robby Dawkins’ resurrection claim that LeClaire is using her global media outlet to promote.  In this post, I’ll present the facts as best I can.  In the next post, I’ll offer a little biblically cautious and critical discernment.

Don’t blame me.

I’m just taking my cue from Jennifer LeClaire.

In the account I’ve assembled from both interview and the article, the event occurred as follows:

1.  In April (actually March 9-10 2015), Robby Dawkins was speaking (at Inglewhite Congregational Church) in North England.

2.  He had spent the morning praying for healing for the people of the church.  Dawkins speaks of that morning saying,”we saw many healed, even some children at a church facility experienced healing and God’s presence with heat and tingling.”

3.  Just as Dawkins was about to speak, a man named Matt Catlow started having contortions of the face.  His mother (Heather) started screaming that Matt was having another stroke (he had apparently had one around a year before).  She called for someone to get an ambulance.

4.  Catlow was jerking and twitching severely, and Dawkins claimed to see “a strong demonic presence over him.”

5.  Dawkins ran over, “put his hand on his chest and forehead” and “started binding demonic powers and commanding his body to be loosed in Jesus’ name.”

6.  It didn’t produce the desired effect as Catlow’s lips started turning blue, and his body went stiff.

7.  A doctor joined him in prayer, as did several other people.

8.  Dawkins had his hand on Matt’s chest and felt that he had a strong pulse, even though he was having labored breathing.

9.  Dawkins proceeded to forbid Satan from attacking Matt and started “binding the spirit of infirmity.”

10.  Dawkins and the others “laid him on the floor and began to rebuke the spirit of death.”

11.  Catlow’s pupils became fixed and dilated and then Dawkins claimed “he heard the death rattle—the sound a dying person makes when fluids accumulate in the throat and upper chest.” Apparently Dawkins knew about the “death rattle” because he witnessed it when his mother died.

12.  The doctor checked the pulse (but didn’t say anything one way or the other), and the mother screamed “he’s dead.”

13.  The Lord spoke to Dawkins and said “What happens next is something I am breaking off of this whole area and country.”

14.  Dawkins got angry and refused to give up praying.

15.  Dawkins continued to pray and spoke to the ‘spirit of death’ saying, “You can’t have him!”

16.  Dawkins “began to declare the resurrection life of Jesus Christ over him.”

17.  The man started breathing, his pupils recovered, and his color returned.

18.  Dawkins started speaking to Matt, but Heather (Matt’s mother) said he couldn’t speak because of a previous stroke.

19.  Dawkins said that within minutes, Matt began to speak and answer him coherently.  His mother rejoiced, yelling “He can speak!”

20.  The people tried to get Matt to sit but instead he wanted to stand.

21.  Matt looked at the crowd and asked “What are they looking at?”

22.  Dawkins then says,

“I turned him towards me and pulled him into my chest—like a hug—and declared a full impartation of life. He let go and then embraced me again,” Dawkins says. “I did this because I had a friend who had raised the dead and said there is something about the chest-to-chest connection—like in the Bible—that seems to impart life. I continued to pray and break off the enemy’s assignment against him. Some men helped him to the back of the church to wait for the ambulance.”

23.  The pastor called the people back in, and Dawkins preached and then healed five people.

24.  The following day, Dawkins went to see Matt.  Matt had apparently fractured his shoulder, and it needed surgery.

25.  Dawkins asked Matt if he could pray for the shoulder.  Dawkins did, and the pain went away.

26.  After Dawkins had prayed for the shoulder, the medical staff re-evaluated the shoulder and said that the surgery wasn’t needed.

27.  Dawkins admits that this was his first performance of a resurrection.

So that’s quite the tale for Robby to add to his repertoire!

This event happened in a western country and somewhere in the vicinity of 200 people were apparently present.  There should certainly be some video evidence or credible witnesses or any number of people and facts that can corroborate the story.  Apparently, there are at least two corroborating witnesses.  I directly contacted Robby Dawkins to inquire about some of that information.  He said precious little but forwarded me the following corroborative witness accounts:

The doctor’s account of the incident was provided on the Facebook page of Dawkins’ ministry.  The account reads:

Hi Robby,

It’s The Dr. who was behind Matt tonight. You wanted me to write what I saw, so here goes!

You had just started speaking and I was sat in the chair behind him. He was sat upright then started to fall back slowly, twitching, like he was having a fit. The lady next to him – his mum? – started shrieking “He’s having another stroke – he had one last year” and shouted, “someone call an ambulance” as well as crying loudly and saying other things.

He then started to go further back and you started to come over. He started going blue and developed laboured breathing, but he wasn’t sweaty initially. I helped lift him down to the floor.

You started to pray and Matt started to go purple. However, he still had a strong regular carotid pulse, so this was not a faint leading to a fit (which is called a “reflex anoxic seizure”). His breathing started to become even more laboured, and he started to froth at the mouth. I was holding his airway open as much as I could. You put your hand on his chest and assured his mum that his heart was still beating. You started to pray against the spirit of death and as you did so, his pupils became fixed and dilated (as they do when people have died) and his breathing became much worse: this was “agonal breathing” (breathing that people do around death – a bit before and a bit after).

In other words, he was dead.

I was on the point of psyching myself up to do mouth to mouth (he didn’t need heart massage), but as you continued to pray, his breathing recovered and his colour started to return very slightly – or rather the lips that were purple/black started to get less dark. His eyes stopped being fixed and dilated and started to move. We rolled him onto his side at that point to allow his tongue to fall forward, but he was starting to come round.

Very gradually he started to improve his colour and his breathing became less laboured, and twice he rolled back onto his back. He was starting to respond to my voice and then after a few seconds you started to speak to him and he started to answer you, coherently in complete sentences. The strange thing is that his mother stated (and verified by many there) he had lost his speech ability after the stroke.

He then started to get up, initially kneeling and then trying to stand, we tried to get him to sit in a chair but he wanted to stand, looking rather vacant. You hugged him and prayed for him and continued to break off the enemy’s assignment against him. We got him to sit down and then eventually helped him to the back of the church to wait for the ambulance. (I thought the way you handled it pastorally was brilliant – I was learning!!)

So, reflections:

1. This was not a faint: he was red, not sweaty and with a strong pulse.

2. He went very blue/black: this is not that unusual in a faint, but the speed of him going black while having a strong pulse & still breathing was surprising.

3. He went from fitting to signs of being dead very quickly. To look like that with pupils that became fixed and dilated (I saw them go) from a fit is extremely unlikely. It could happen with a bleed in his head or a blockage of a cerebral artery or some other catastrophic “stroke”. It would therefore have qualified as a “SUDEP” (Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy), however, these tend to happen in people with severe chronic epilepsy.

4. To get up, talk and walk about afterwards, even though not coherent wasn’t compatible with a faint and is unlikely after a fit: and certainly not compatible with some massive brain insult!

In hospital training (I was training to be a hospital physician before swapping to General Practice) I have seen a lot of people have a cardiac arrest, a few people have a brain stem death while I watched, loads of people fainting and a lot of people have fits. This however was weird!

So, enough of the medical reflection! It was amazing!!! I’m sure you’re right that this was a spirit of death and that was resurrection power right there! If you hadn’t waged war against that spirit of death and called him back, Matt would be still dead – or at least I would have ended up having to do mouth-to-mouth until the paramedics came: thank you for saving me from that!!! Anyway, the chances of successful resuscitation from that situation with the length mouth-to-mouth that would have been needed is almost nil with a non-cardiac death!

Thank you Jesus – what a great demo of the power of God, and yes, I fully intend to raise the dead!

Thank you so much Robby for your courage and also explaining the fury that you felt against this attack of the devil: also, your thought process on how to pastor this at the same time as feeling furious: it was so helpful to be mentored like that!

Bless you,

(no name included)

Also, Dawkins has provided a video of another testimonial from someone at the event:

In that video (starting around 2:45), the testimony more or less says that he saw the events occur and doesn’t exactly know what happened, but takes Dawkin’s account of it as reliable.

So that’s the evidence, straight from the horses mouth.

It seems like those testimonies pretty much settle it, right?

Not so fast.

What about Matt Catlow?  Surely he has an opinion on the matter, right?

For some reason, he’s not talking, but his sister sure is.

I contacted Rebecca Colley (Matt’s real name is “Colley,” not “Catlow) and got a little (hesitantly provided) information.  Apparently, she has attempted to contact Robby Dawkins, as well as the reporting media, regarding Mr. Dawkin’s claims, but to no avail.  Apparently she has a wildly different story to tell, but her efforts were met with her comments being deleted on certain relevant Facebook pages.  So, she made a Facebook page that strongly repudiates the claims of Mr. Dawkins.  Rebecca (sitting in the middle) has written the following:

Matthew had a stroke about a year ago. Physically he was not effected. His speech and communication unfortunately were effected and although he is 10 times better at communicating than he was a year ago (prior to the meeting, because of all the hard work he has put into re training his brain) Robby saying that his speech is 100% improved is a pure lie. He did not know Matthew before hand and therefore unable to comment on whether his speech had improved or not.

Regarding the ‘death’… what Robby is telling everyone is not true. It has since been MEDICALLY proven that Matthew had suffered an epileptic seizure which often can display similar signs of someone dying. TWO nurse family friends of ours both had their hands on Matthew throughout and not once lost his pulse. So no, Matthew did not die.

The preacher from inglewhite church has been so thrown by all of this that on Sunday just gone he stood at the front of church and apologized to his congregation for allowing Robby into their church. The doctor who was also there is said to be apologizing to them next week for all the pain caused through this unbelievable encounter that he had given and the shock that all this had been broadcast on Facebook by this coward of a man who will not face up to the actual truth.

Anyway. What you choose to believe is up to you. But as his sister who has known him for 30+ years, i know I’d prefer it if people choose to believe the truth rather than someone who had met my brother for all of half an hour.

Hmm.

That’s not all.

The sister has also written the following about her brother’s current state:

He is struggling right now. More seizures. Very low. And everytime he sees something on fb about RD, and that night, and the promises that were made to him to be healed, it gets him down. He just needs to put it past him and to concentrate on getting back on the long road to recovery.

If it was down to me, I’d tell the world about that night… i could write a book… (!) but at this time my brother’s health comes first.

Robbie Dawkins has had these facts made known to him.

On his official Facebook page, this is how he has responded:

There were several people that witnessed what Happened and the report you read from a good and reputable Godly Dr before. I heard his mother is very relieved and thanking God for her son’s life back. Several from the church said she is very happy.

A couple of family members who were not present at the meeting when this event occurred demanded that the post be removed and picture taken down renouncing what happened and was reported (Keep in mind This man is a 39 year old man and not a child). Again they were not there to see it as eyewitnesses.

There was a nurse who was not hands on but witnessed but couldn’t say he had passed because she only felt his pulse after he revived another nurse who said she was also checking his pulse (she never identified herself to me) said he never lost his pulse but I heard she did acknowledge the dilated pupils.

I was put under a lot of pressure (by the few 3 people only) to deny this report of this man coming back to life.

My response? Based on what I saw (and many support), Praise the Lord He has conquered death again!!!!!!!

So clearly Mr. Dawkins is aware of the comments being made by Rebecca Colley.

Clearly, Mr. Dawkins has not taken the course of action she desires.

Beyond that, here’s something else that Mr. Dawkins has said about this whole affair:

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “I believe, help my unbelief” Unger

1. Matt Colley had previously had a stroke though he had recovered somewhat from it.

2.  Matt Colley appeared to experience an incident that led to his temporary death on Marth 9/10, 2015.

It seems that the only symptoms that were used to reach the conclusion that Matt Colley was dead were the dilation of his pupils and his labored breathing.  See the following note.

3.  Robby Dawkins intervened, along with a doctor and at least one nurse.

Robby Dawkins (possibly unwittingly) admitted that there were two nurses present, just like Rebecca said, and at least one of them was helping attend to Matt Colley.  Rebecca Colley claimed that both nurses were “hands on” with Matt.  Robby Dawkins stated that the first nurse didn’t check Matt’s pulse until he revived, but the second nurse did monitor his pulse, which she claimed did not stop.  Dawkins stated that the second nurse “did acknowledge the dilated pupils,” which appears to be the only agreed-upon diagnostic criteria for the pronouncement of death.

It’s also worth noting that Robby Dawkins didn’t admit that both nurses were present until after Rebecca Colley pointed out that information.

4.  Nobody confirmed that Matt Colley’s pulse stopped at any time, and at least one person claims that it did not stop.

I’m not a medical expert, but I imagine that a constant pulse probably means that someone is not dead.  It’s not proof per say, but it seems fairly self-evident that corpses do not have a pulse.

5.  The account from the doctor seems to sound like Matt Colley didn’t stop breathing.

Again, I’m not a medical expert.  It would seem fairly reasonable to suggest that labored breathing is still breathing.  So given that Matt Colley was breathing (albeit with great difficulty) and still had a pulse, it sounds like the pronouncements of death were premature.

Even if his breathing stopped for 30-90 seconds, that’s not “dead”.

6. Robbie Dawkins claims to have resurrected Matt Colley, on March 9/10 2015, at Inglewhite Congregational Church (I don’t know the precise date).

And here’s the rub.  It seems like Robby Dawkins was caught up in a high-intensity moment where people didn’t know the medical history of Matt Colley and weren’t sure what was happening.  It also sounds like the event was over as quickly as it started.  It seems unavoidable, given the facts that Robby Dawkins has admitted, that there are significant reasons to believe that Matt Colley was not dead.

That’s a serious problem for a claim of a resurrection.

That’s not all.  There are some other things that make this whole affair suspicious:

Then, there’s the whole elephant in the room: Robby Dawkins’ theological explanation of what transpired…

1. Even if it occurred, it would be a resuscitation, not a resurrection.

Jesus is the firstborn of the dead (Col. 1:18, Rev. 1:5) and there is only one coming resurrection.  False teachers wrongfully claimed that this had happened in the first century (2 Tim. 2:18).  The apostles (who had resuscitated dead people) looked forward to this event even near the end of their lives (Acts 24:15, 21; Rev. 20:5-6).  People coming back to life before that event weren’t said to be “resurrected.”  Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead (Matt. 9:18-26; Mark 5:21-43; Luke 8:40-56), as well as Lazarus (John 12:38-44), but they both died again.  Dorcas was raised from the dead (Acts 9:36-43) though she eventually died again.  Eutychus was also raised from the dead (Acts 20:7-12) though he eventually died again.  People who are properly resurrected, like Jesus, don’t die again (Rom. 6:5-9).  People who die and come back to life before the final resurrection are resuscitated, not resurrected.

I’m guessing Robby, who started pastoring at 12 but was apparently headed towards ministry from the age of 2, doesn’t exactly have the theological training needed to understand the biblical nuance here.  It’s strange that God gives this sort of miracle-working power to someone who’s so biblically and theologically undeveloped.

Paul and the apostles sure weren’t seen that way.

2.  There is no “spirit of infirmity” in the Bible, and certainly no “spirit of death.” 

Generally speaking, sickness isn’t caused by spirits.  Some folks look at some somewhat cryptic verses (i.e. Matt. 4:24, 8:16, 9:32-33, 10:1, 12:22, 17:14-20; Mark 1:32, 6:13, 9:20-25; Luke 6:18, 9:1, 11:14; Acts 5:16, 8:7, 19:12) and make a flawed leap.  They think that because people in the New Testament were healed of their infirmities and had demons cast out of them, the demons were somehow related to the infirmities.  There’s no reason to think that most the people who were sick were the same people who were afflicted by unclean spirits.

Of the few instances where the afflicted people were also sick (i.e. Matt. 9:32-33, 12:22, 17:14-20; Luke 11:14), there are a few points to consider:

– There is also reason to suspect concurrence, as opposed to causal relationships, between demons and sickness.

– There’s some question as to what precisely was wrong with a miniscule number of demon-afflicted people.  For example, Matt. 17:14-20 says that the boy was selēniazomai, which means “moonstruck”.  Modern Bibles translate it as “lunatic” or “epileptic,” but the  broad banner of “moonstruck” covered a whole lot of conditions.  It’s hard exactly what modern illness or condition would correspond to that broad term.

– There’s no reason to suspect that demons were behind every instance of being “moonstruck”  let alone sick/afflicted with anything else.  Seeing that the time of Christ was an era of unprecedented demonic activity (both affliction and exorcism – there’s more demonic activity recorded in the 3 decades of the ministry of Christ and his apostles than there was in the 3,000 year period of the Old Testament), there’s an honest and serious question of historical continuity.  Are demons as active in modern times as they were during the few years of the ministry of Christ and the apostles?  They sure weren’t that explicitly active in the Old Testament.  Seeing that the casting out of demons by Christ and the apostles served the common purpose of authentication (i.e. Mark 1:21-28; Luke 4:31-37), one should be hesitant to suggest that the frequency of demonic activity (and exorcism) during the ministry of Christ and the apostles must be normative.  I’m certainly saying that demonic activity doesn’t happen or never causes sickness/infirmity, but it’s a far different position to suggest that demonic activity is the normative cause of sickness/infirmity. The simple fact that a statistically overwhelming majority of illness is cured by modern medicine, rather than exorcism, begs the question.  Demons aren’t cast out by antibiotic or antiviral treatments.

As for the question of demons and death, Romans 8:2 mentions “the Spirit of Life” as another name for the Holy Spirit, sure.  Still, there’s certainly no inversely corresponding “spirit of death.” Death isn’t caused by demonic spirits that Christians can overpower through the power of the Holy Spirit.  If death is caused by any spirit, death is caused by the Spirit of Life removing that life (i.e. Acts 5:3-10; 1 Cor. 11:29-30).

Robby Dawkins has a frighteningly confused demonology that has more in common with Buddhism than Christianity.

3.  Christians cannot give an “impartation of life” to anyone; that’s strictly the domain of Christ alone.

Remember that Dawkins said “there is something about the chest-to-chest connection—like in the Bible—that seems to impart life.”  I’m guessing he’s thinking of Elijah (1 Ki. 17:21) or Elisha (2 Ki. 4:34-35).  That’s not exactly a normative expression of how one raises the dead.  Beyond that, it’s unfathomable hubris to place oneself at the spiritual level of Elijah, Elisha, or Jesus Christ.

So there’s the unverified nature of the death, the suspicious nature of the facts, and the Biblically absurd nature of Dawkins’ claims.   For those three reasons, I find it difficult to believe Robby Dawkins’ explanation of whatever occurred at Inglewhite Congregational Church on March 9/10, 2015. Robby Dawkins’ claims lack sufficient medical credibility and any biblical credibility.  He may claim that he tried to do what Jesus did, but his claims don’t stand up to scrutiny.

It seems most fitting to suggest that whatever occurred (and something certainly did); it was neither a biblical resurrection nor resuscitation.

So there we have it. An extended exploration of what’s considered an “open and shut” example of a modern resurrection.

Not nearly as straightforward and unquestionable as Mr. Dawkins might want to suggest…but that’s not surprising.  The Charisma Magazine crowd makes a whole lot of claims that don’t stand up to rational scrutiny, let alone biblical scrutiny.

If you have any disagreements, think I’ve been somewhat unfair, think I missed some key information, or think I reached wrongful conclusions, feel free to bring up your objections or challenges in the comments.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “Longing for the Resurrection” Unger

June 24th Update – I don’t think Robby Dawkins is worried enough about issues of credibility.  I just saw this:

That’s Joshua Mills (the guy who gets “Holy Spirit Oil stigmata” and gold dandruff…seriously), David Herzog (the guy who went to heaven and learned the secrets of Holy Spirit hair renewal and instant weight loss…seriously), Sid Roth (whose picture appears in the dictionary under the term “insane”), and Robby Dawkins.

Those guys (Mills, Herzog and Roth) are to Christianity what Frank Chu is to journalism:

Why exactly is Robby Dawkins hanging out with that crowd?

Seeing that I’m preparing for upcoming speaking engagements and travel,  I’ll just toss something on here as a filler to keep this blog from becoming too dead (though I have a new and top secret project that I’m working on which will be available sometime in the future…maybe…).

Some folks shared a video with me on Facebook recently.  It was a video of a typical “America needs to return to the Lord and stop legalizing all this sin!” sort of videos that tend to trend on places like Charisma magazine.

I didn’t have much time to watch it but I finally did today while I had lunch, and I commented on the page in which it was shared.  Folks like my comment, and I then shared it on the page where the video came from.  Not 5 minutes had passed and my comment was deleted, and I was blocked.

Wow.

I’ve had disagreements with a few people online, but I’ve never been silenced that quickly!

Some folks cannot take any disagreement at all.  What seems ironic to me is the speed and aggression with which my voice was removed from the conversation when the video is about how Christians aren’t speaking up on important issues.  Laire Lightner treated me exactly like the secular media treated Christian voices on the issue of same sex marriage.

“Agree with us or SHUT UP!”

So, for those folks who didn’t get to see the video and my comment, here’s the video (by ‘prophetess’ Laire Lightner):

And, here’s my interaction with it:

Now I understand that most will not agree with what I have to say.  Few do.

Still, for those that get it and understand that legislated moralism isn’t the gospel, or that being “biblish” isn’t the same as being biblical, it’s important to point out and articulate the ‘almost Christian’ worldview that comes out in videos like this.  This sort of “2 Chronicles 7:14″ type of ‘Christianity’ isn’t actually Christianity.  A return to morality isn’t a return to Christ.  It’s religious traditionalism at its worst, coming at us from a sincere woman who cries in the video and appears very passionate.

She cries.  How can anyone say anything negative about someone who’s so passionate about something that they cry about it?

Don’t forget:

“Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the house of the Lord, and behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Then he said to me, ‘Have you seen this, O son of man? You will see still greater abominations than these.’ “

– Ezekiel 8:14-15

Truth isn’t decided on the basis of emotion, sincerity or even tearful devotion to God (or a close approximation).

Truth is revealed in the Scripture, and that truth is uncovered by actually reading and rightly interpreting the Scripture, not having dreams about it.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “trying to get away from these sorts of issues…honest!” Unger

***Update – June 31st***

Apparently someone posted a link to this post on Mrs. Lightner’s Facebook wall.  The link was deleted, the person was blocked and then sent a message:

Interesting.  I’m apparently a Calvinist; those nefarious people who are responsible for making Laire Lightner a…false prophet?!?

Beyond the fact that Calvinism is one of a small number of issues I haven’t tackled on this blog, the video was referred to me when it was posted in a Calvinist group on Facebook by Laire’s husband, David Lightner (who apparently lied to get into the closed group so that he could post the video).  He then condemned the entire group as “legalists who are absolutely miserable!” when they didn’t all mindlessly embrace it as a true prophecy.  So, pretending to be a Calvinist in order to share the video with Calvinists before complaining that Calvinists are attacking?

Uh…Seems Legit.

The largest irony of this all is that Laire Lightner is actually brainwashed by her secular culture.  She has bought into a strain of thinking that no reflective Christian should buy into; characterizing reasoned disagreement as “hate.”

Someone disagreeing with you isn’t “hate.”

Someone saying that you’re in serious and demonstrable error isn’t “hate.”

Saying that someone is twisting the scripture isn’t “hate” if a person can substantiate the accusation.

BUT,

Calling for Christians on Twitter to kill themselves for protesting the current cultural morality is “hate” (i.e., like the examples here – explicit language warning).

Online, I get slammed by commenters all the time, but I don’t think they’re simply venting hatred at me.  I understand that they’re disagreeing with me, on a propositional level.  Some people do so ignorantly, but rarely hatefully.

In fact, I have some friends who I disagree with rather excessively (especially when they show up on my Facebook wall and come after me repeatedly), but I recognize that “hate” doesn’t even really enter into the equation.  On certain issues, we’re have irreconcilable differences.  On other issues, we’re in wonderful agreement.

Like the fact that forcing someone to listen to Coldplay should be classified a war crime.

So the irony continues: Laire Lightner condemns Christians for embracing the cultural morality when she embraces the morally relativistic (that’s another way of saying “postmodern”) thinking that fuels that morality.

Is there an object lesson here?

Feel free to toss your thoughts in the comments!

If you’ve been online for more than a few weeks, you’ve probably gotten into a debate with someone about something.  If you’ve been online for more than a few months, you’ve probably gotten into a debate with someone about something bizarre; an issue where you thought there was no debate.

In other words, you’ve likely run face-first into the realization that we live in an age of unbelievable skepticism.  I’m guessing that you’ve been surprised at just how many ideas are doubted by someone, somewhere.  The annoying thing about the internet is that it unites all the someones and somewheres and gives them an equally public forum for their ideas.

Given that fact, it’s not really surprising that a lot of people doubt everything from the existence of God to the the idea that the earth is round.  Beyond the theological reasons for the wild-eyed doubt everywhere (i.e. the suppression of truth in unrighteousness, i.e. Rom. 1:18-30), people are flooded with information via the internet.  People often lack the ability to filter out truth from error, and that filtering is made more difficult when there are clever, irrational, or even willfully deceitful people stringing together ideas into conspiracy theories.

How confusing can things get?

Let me give you a hint.

Some people are skeptical enough that they don’t just doubt the existence of people who lived 2,000 years ago and did amazing things.  Some doubt the existence of anyone who’s ever done anything amazing, whether it’s writing poetry or rising from the dead.  Sadly, some of those people have constructed elaborate and confusing theories that seem overwhelming to most common folks.

Bizarre skepticism, about things that seem to be almost common sense, is all over the place.

So what is a person to do in an increasingly pagan age where far too many people will believe anything?

What hope for Christians is there?

Remember two things:

A. People have always been irrational skeptics.

“Then a demon-oppressed man who was blind and mute was brought to him, and he healed him, so that the man spoke and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, ‘Can this be the Son of David?’ But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, ‘It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.’ ” – Matt. 12:22-24

“And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’ ” – Luke 16:27-31

B.  Belief in the gospel is a divine work of God.

“For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake” – Phil. 1:29

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” – Eph. 2:8-9

In our modern era, where a scary amount of people think they have a PhD in all things from Google U, nothing has really changed.

God’s word still penetrates hearts and God still redeems rebel sinners.

Until Next Time,

Lyndon “God’s wisdom is greater than our ignorance” Unger