Category: Evangelism

The following excerpts are pulled from this link,

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33807907/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/

The shooter in the Fort Hood incident, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s exchanged e-mail with Anwar al-Awlaki, once a spiritual leader at a mosque in suburban Virginia where Maj. Hasan worshipped. Those e-mails indicate that the troubled military psychiatrist came to the attention of the authorities long before last Thursday’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood, but left him in his post.

Mr. Awlaki, an American citizen born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, wrote on Monday on his English-language website that Mr. Hasan was “a hero.” The cleric said, “He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.”

He added, “The only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.”

At another site we learn,

Several former colleagues have come forward to say Nidal would tell them: “I am a Muslim first and an American second”.

The reason I note these snippets are as follows,

1.) Mr. Awlaki, Major Nidal’s former cleric insists that the inconsistency of a Muslim fighting against Muslims is what pushed Major Nidal to resolve the contradiction in the direction of killing Americans at Ft. Hood instead of killing Muslims in Afghanistan.

Major Nidal understood there was a contradiction between being a Muslim and being an American soldier in a war killing Muslims. Now, what Major Nidal did was reprehensible and justice will only be served if he gets the death penalty but it does cause one to ask why American Christians in military can not see about themselves what Nidal saw about himself, and that is that they proclaim to be adherents to a faith but they are in an organization dedicated to snuffing out the faith they say they adhere to. Christians by being in the US military are supporting an institution (US government) that is committed to snuffing out the Christian faith. I’m saddened that Christians can serve in an army that is a instrument of a government that is at war with the individual Military Personnel’s own Christian people, without the slightest pangs to their Christian consciences.

The truth of the matter is that most American Christians don’t feel the contradictions that Nidal felt because they have compartmentalized their faith. For example, did any Christian serviceman feel the contradictions between being a Christian and bombing into oblivion Christian Serbia? For example, did any Christian servicemen feel the contradiction between their involvement in Iraq and the reality that that involvement led to the necessity of the indigenous Iraqi Christian community having to flee from Iraq for their safety due to the oppression they were suffering — an oppression that had official US government sanction? For example, did any Christian servicemen feel the contradiction between serving in Afghanistan and knowing that their Chaplain corps were destroying Bibles so that their usage wouldn’t be offensive to their host Muslim country? Instead the American mindset is, “Jesus saves my soul and that being so it doesn’t matter that I am one of those that the State uses to implement its humanist agenda in order to build an anti-Christ globalistic tower of Babel.”

2.) Is it really so surprising that Major Nidal would say, “I am a Muslim first and an American second?” What would we expect any true son of Allah to say? I would hope that Christians in the military would say, “I am a Christian first and an American second.” The difference is, is that Nidal saw the contradiction between being an American and being a Muslim while most Christians, being imbued with a kind of “Civil religion Christianity,” never pause to consider the things that Nidal considered.

I shouldn’t have to write next what I’m going to write, but just so as to ward off the kooks, I’m not saying that Christians in the military should start shooting up the place like Maj. Nidal did. I am saying that Christians should think long and hard about joining the US military as it is the enforcement arm of a government that is four square in favor of building up a anti-Christ globalist humanist Kingdom.

It’s just a shame that Maj. Nidal didn’t have a Muslim version of R2Kt that he could have used to resolve the contradictions between being a Muslim and being an American. A Muslim version of R2Kt would have allowed to be at peace with being Muslim while acting in a non Muslim fashion as he followed the magistrates orders.

Periodically, I have to reminds myself just what a minority Reformed people are. I need to remind myself because sometimes I tend to think that all my posting and argumentation matters. The Reformed world is a backwater pond to the ocean of Christian expression. The current ocean of America Christianity is Pentecostalism. And so going to a Pentecostal revival service reminds me of the smallness of my voice and the smallness of the Reformed voice as compared to the larger voice of Pentecostalism that is what most people hear when they hear the voice of Christianity in their heads.

Pentecostalism in one form or another has crept in seemingly to a great number of historically non-Reformed denominations. For example, while on Holiday I saw the influence of Pentecostalism on the Church I attended when I lived in Maine. There was the ubiquitous pentecostal praise music accompanied by the swaying hand raised attendees. In the denomination I serve Pentecostalism, in its “Third wave” expression, received an official favorable report. There are Charismatic Catholics and tongue speaking Lutherans.

Anyway, having said all that I attended a Pentecostal revival service this evening that was featuring Steve Hill who was one of the main actors in the Brownsville Revival. Several years ago I did some research and reading on Brownsville as well as Toronto Airport and the Kansas City Prophets. As such I thought I would go to hear and see Steve Hill.

The service was just about what you would expect. It opened with 45 minutes of a band playing contemporary praise choruses. The music was simple, repetitive, and as with most of these services there was the ability to reach crescendos at just the moment when the joint voices reach their fevered prayer pitch in the congregation. I’ve always wondered how they manage to do that.

Steve Hill’s message was random and scattered. His methodology was entertainment Oprah like oriented and was filled with personal anecdotes and story telling. He had a real ability to connect with the audience. He told stories about how when he was doing in ministry in Chili he had the foot traffic in a community park and the auto traffic that went by the community park come to a complete and total standstill because the spirit fell on the park. He noted how he went from stopped car to stopped car to tell the drivers and passengers that what they were all sensing and feeling was the Holy Spirit and that they needed to repent. He noted how one business woman stood stock still for four hours straight because the Holy Ghost was upon her. The emphasis fell on conversion by Spirit’s work over conversion by proclamation of the Gospel though Steve did mention that he told people they must repent.

Steve started the message by showing a USA Today piece that reported coming hate laws speech in America. Steve suggested that the way that the only way America can avoid coming hate laws that will stifle Christian speech is for Americans to get saved. He spent about 5 minutes on sin and 3 minutes on Jesus dying for sinners and then he went on to what people need to have in order to succeed. (Hey, I said it was random.) He noted that his listeners need to avoid negative people and negative people were defined as anybody who doubts how continuing revelation comes to individuals. Clearly the emphasis on this part of the service was the validity of current expressions of gifts, signs and wonders. This was underscored by his insistence that we need the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This power is known by having supernatural occurrences in our lives.

Steve pushed for the necessity of an encounter with Jesus. I think he was emphasizing the personal relationship with Jesus necessity. It reminded me of something I read recently from Gordon Clark challenging the way Evangelicals have typically talked about a “personal relationship with Jesus.”

Steve gave us the Pentecostal Word of the Lord routine. He started the service by telling us that someone here is ________ and God told me to tell you this evening that _______. He informed us that the Jesus died for everybody. He told us that God was much more exacting in the Old Testament than He is today suggesting that OT penology isn’t for today.

The most important part of the service though was the altar time. Steve gave a typical altar call and then proceeded to slay people in the Spirit. Women were falling left and right, caught by the assigned catchers. The air was filled with the sounds of “heavenly languages.”

Somewhere in the mix we had an offering where Steve said with a straight face, “The small bill is of the Devil and the big bills are of God.”

On the positive side I really believe that God uses Pentecostals in the way of common grace. Pentecostalism does a wonderful job of supporting traditional Christian morality. It is long on emphasizing certain behavior patterns even if it is short on building a sound theological foundation under those behavior patterns.

In the end though it remains far to prone to measuring truth by means of emotion and experience. It remains far to little concerned with the life of the mind. Because of that its adherents are far to easily swayed by every wind of doctrine that blows. Were real Reformation to visit our country one sign of it would be Pentecostals becoming a little less existential and a little more Word oriented.

Dear Brother Hillary,

Here is an article that has had a significant influence on my thinking in the area of covenant children. Maybe you will find it profitable as well.

http://www.faithtacoma.org/doctrine/covenant.aspx

I’ve also read Lewis Bevins Schenk’s book, The Presbyterian Doctrine of children in the covenant, which has had a profound impact on me.

I only mention these in order to let you know what has shaped my thinking on the post on “Parents & Children — Cause and Effect.”

In order to support the overall contention of Flavel I would appeal to Ex. 20 when it clearly states that

I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Both God’s condemnation and his salvation tend to run generationally … and yet not without exception. Praise God!

Now certainly Acts reminds us that this covenantal arrangement en-grafts those who had been strangers and aliens to the covenant when it teaches, “And the promise is for you and for your children, AND AS MANY AS ARE AFAR OFF THAT THE LORD OUR GOD SHALL CALL.” Praise God that in this age of grace many, like myself, who were afar off, the Lord our God called, calls and continues to call.

Also the NT teaches that the nations will come in and swell the Church. However, I honestly believe that the norm was to be that they would come in by nations and not so much that we would pick off people one by one in a kind of individualistic approach to Evangelism that is current today.

However, having gladly rejoiced in the certainty that God will save the nations, I wonder how long that will happen in our lifetimes as the church continues to lose her covenant seed at the rapid rate that is happening? Will God save the nations as He loses His own covenant seed? How long can faithful evangelism so that the Nations might be saved happen if the Church continues to redefine the Gospel in order to accommodate those unfaithful covenant families in their midst with a message of “peace peace, when judgment and discipline is swirling around us?”

I guess I find my optimistic theology in the hope that those few that God snatches will be obedient and be ones who will be fruitful and multiply to the point that greater are their numbers than the numbers of those, and their seed, who will make a covenant with death by turning aside from Christ. My hope lies in the reality that those who God does snatch will become a people who will raise up large families in the way of God’s covenant promises. My hope also lies in the realization that no pagan people can prosper long and avoid destruction who try to build personal lives and culture apart from Christ and the real reality that only Christianity reflects. After all, Babel still speaks. Babel will continue to fall with the result that Christianity will always flourish again.

Given your admonition I will write something soon that supports evangelism and great expectations of God’s harvesting those fields that remain white unto harvest. I do believe that God can send and has sent seasons of Reformation and Awakening, but, I think this must be a “both and” matter. We must have our families and Churches thinking covenantally again and we must continue to say to those outside the covenant, “Be ye Reconciled to God.” It strikes me if we fail at one we will fail at both. I don’t need to tell you that our families in our Churches are very spiritually sick. Is it possible to proclaim a covenantal gospel when there are so few covenantally minded Churches that remain so that we can fold those who come to Christ into a place where they will receive covenantal nurture?

With God all things are possible.

I’m sorry if I communicated despair. That wasn’t my intention, although I must admit there are times I wonder if we should be like Jeremiah and just proclaim the judgment that is upon the visible church in the West and is coming upon the visible church in the West with the reminder that once we pass through judgment (and discipline for the invisible Church) there will be times of refreshing ahead. The Church in the West seems so utterly past reclamation and the culture is in a state of trauma because of it. Yet I know that the Omnipotnent Lord Christ is greater than my sinful, and often repented of, despondency. Forgive me brother when by despondency shows more than my repentance. I do believe the Church’s best times are yet ahead of it! Just maybe not in my lifetime.

I know, that there have been periods in history where the Church was supernaturally shaken from her spiritual lethargy to be about obeying both the great commission and the cultural mandate. In light of that I pray daily that God will, in Wrath, remember mercy. I so love the Church in the West. Though never all that she might have been she has been mighty in the things of God over the centuries. My heart breaks at her loss of her first love.

Thank you for your admonition and your reminder that God has every intent of building up the fallen tent of David by bringing in the Nations so that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

My love to you and your lovely bride,

Bret

“(The Apostle Paul) saw that it was paradoxically through the narrowing down of his redemptive acts to unique singularity of one single man — the Messiah, Jesus, that God opened the way to a universal offering of the grace of the gospel to all the nations.”

Christopher J. H. Wright
Knowing Jesus Through The Old Testament — pp. 52-53

Try to imagine the Gospel as dense matter getting smaller and smaller, and yet at the same time increasingly concentrated, with the passing of redemptive history. Jesus arrives on the scene and with the confluence of redemptive events that characterize his life completed, the dense matter Gospel explodes, and goes super nova, having a re-creating effect wherever the impact of the explosion is felt. This is the book of Acts chronicling the initial fulfillment of the OT prophet’s foretelling of the streaming in of the nations to serve the Lord (cmp. Acts 15:15-17).

The Church, for the Glory of God, impelled by the Spirit, preaching up Christ crucified, is still to be God’s supernova re-creating institution. The Church should still have the expectation that God will use it as the agency whereby the nations and their cultures know and experience redemption. The church is not waiting for some cataclysmic end for the cataclysmic end, with its promise of a new heavens and a new earth, has already come in the death, resurrection, ascension and Pentecost of Christ. The old Judaic order has passed and God’s new Kingdom order has come. In order for that present new Kingdom to progressively come as a reflection of its definitive arrival we must be adorning the Gospel w/ beautiful community life, proclaiming the crown rights of King Jesus, and commanding all men everywhere to repent. Because of the Supernova Gospel we have been given a Kingdom that can not be shaken. This Kingdom is destined to make the places of this current world that are arid and hostile deserts (The lands of the Son’s of Allah, The land of the Jews, The lands of the humanist) which are the last outposts of the falls resistance into beautiful and flourishing gardens of the Lord.

However before any of this happens the church has to awaken to what it is as members of the age to come, and what the seed of the serpent is as it holds membership in this present wicked age. Until we understand this eschatological antithesis we will forever be putting up garden wallpaper on the desert spots and deluding ourselves that it has been changed by the supernova Gospel.

“Israel existed at all only because of God’s desire to redeem people from every nation. But in his sovereign freedom he chose to do so by this particular and historical means. The tension between the universal goal and the particular means is found throughout the Bible and cannot be reduced to either pole alone….Now when we consider Jesus in light of this, the vitally important fact is that the NT presents him to us as the Messiah, Jesus the Christ. And the Messiah ‘was’ Israel. That is, the Messiah was Israel representatively and personified. The Messiah was the completion of all that Israel had been put in the world for — i.e. God’s self-revelation and his work of human redemption. For this reason, Jesus shares the uniqueness of Israel. What God had been doing through no other nation he now completed through no other person than the Messiah Jesus. The paradox is that precisely through the narrowing down of his redemptive work to the unique particularity of the single man, Jesus, God opened the way to the universalizing of his redemptive grace to all nations. Israel was unique because God had a universal goal though them. Jesus embodied that uniqueness and achieved that universal goal. As the Messiah of Israel he could be the savior of the world. Or as Paul reflected, going further back, Jesus became a second Adam, the head of a new humanity (Rmns. 4-5, Gl. 3)”

Christopher J. H. Wright
Knowing Jesus Through The Old Testament

Put a hour glass on its side. From the left broad end to the middle point where the sand pours though you have the Old Testament with it particularizing motion serving the universal end of making God’s glory known to the nations. As OT redemptive history unfolds the motion becomes, like the hourglass increasingly particular. At the broad end we find the Nation of Israel but eventually that is narrowed down to the tribe of Judah and eventually that is narrowed down to the household of David and that is finally narrowed down to the Messiah Jesus. In Jesus we find the culmination of what it was supposed to mean for Israel to be a Kingdom of Priests unto God.

With the Death of Jesus, the particularizing motion of Scripture ceases and we start reading the NT accounts moving from the narrow to the broad end of the right side of the hour glass. Jesus has accomplished OT Israel’s task and now the nations become to come in. On the day of Pentecost the Spirit falls on representatives of all the household nations. In the book of Acts the broadening of the Gospel is seen in the march of the Gospel from Judea to Samaria to the uttermost ends of the earth. In the book of Acts we see the Spirit fall on the Jews, the God-fearers, and the Gentile Ephesians. What is being communicated here is that now the Church is to be to the nations, under the power of the Spirit, and w/ the commission of Jesus what the Jews were to be the nations in the OT.

The goal in all of this was and is the re-creation work of God whereby, by the power of the Gospel the World repents much the same way that the Assyrians repented under the Gospel ministry of Jonah. If Christ is a faithful recapitulation of what faithless Israel was supposed to be, then following the head and body metaphor, the Church is to likewise be a faithful recapitulation of what faithless Israel was to be. The Church is now the Kingdom of Priests representing the nations to God and her task is to reveal God’s work of re-creation in her midst in a world that still suffers and pursues the Fall’s attempt at de-creation. Just as the first Adam, in submission to his dominion mandate, was to push the garden boundaries so that the garden of the Lord covered all the earth, so the Church has been commissioned again with a dominion mandate (Mt. 28) to bring God’s re-creative Gospel news with the expectation that the glory of the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the ocean.