Confessions of a New Version Addict. by A.W.Tozer

Since shortly after my conversion to Christ as a teen-ager I have been addicted to the habit of acquiring and being disappointed with new versions of the Scriptures, both revisions and new translations.

It is a habit I cannot shake off. In spite of a long record of frustrated hopes and cruel disappointments, to this day I have but to hear a new version of the Scriptures has come out and I am off to the book-seller to pick up a copy. As Ponce de Leon, otherwise a sensible enough fellow, knocked about the world looking for a nonexistent fountain of youth, so I continue to look for the new version that will make any other new versions unnecessary by bringing out the meanings of the Holy Scriptures as sharply as the developer brings out the details of the picture on a photographic plate.

But it never works out that way. After poring over the new book for a few days or weeks and finding that it is just one more version, I put it aside and return to my first love, the familiar King James Bible. I know its mistakes very well, its mistranslations and confused tenses; I should, for the Bible teachers are forever correcting it in public and the introductions to the new versions never tire of pointing out these flaws in the grand old English Bible.

It has been my experience that the new versions make at least one mistake for every one they correct, so by the time the trusting reader has reached the last chapter of the Book of Revelation he is back where he started and just goes out by that same door where in he went. And in the meanwhile he has lost the incalculable benefit of constant and intimate mental association with the clearest, richest and most beautiful English to be found anywhere among the libraries of the World, the Authorized Version.

I believe that my error has been that I have nursed the hope, perhaps subconsciously, that my dullness of spirit and coldness of heart are the result of not hearing the truth expressed clearly enough in the common language of the street; that if I could hear a promise or a commandment couched in different words it would be easier to believe and obey.

But this is a gross fallacy. Words are only arbitrary symbols to convey meanings, and the meaning is all that matters. God would impart an idea to mankind, so He employs a verbal symbol which the reader can understand. That is what language is for, and that is all it is for, unless, as I have suggested above, the language becomes a thing of beauty in inself and so exerts a cultural influence upon those who read it and hear it spoken. But that is secondary; the primary purpose of language is to express truth, and it is before the bar of truth that we must all stand at last.

Mark Twain, when asked what he did about the passages of Scripture he could not understand, is supposed to have replied that these did not bother him. "But the ones I can understand," he said, "often make me sweat."

I believe that there is serious danger that we ignore the plain truth (which, incidentally, is about the same in all versions) while we search for novel meanings and more modern expressions of old truths which we know well enough but make no effort to obey. The chief purpose of the Word of God is to reveal saving truth, to bring men to Christ, to make them holy, to draw them into loving communion with God and to teach them how to do good to all men, especially to them that are of the household of faith. Let a man study prayerfully any of the generally recognized versions, done by proficient and responsible scholars, and the Spirit will quicken the truth to his heart and lead him toward the ends God has in view for him. Almost everything depends upon his response to the Spirit's workings.

While it is important that the translations be accurate and faithful, yet better versions do not make better men. And this brings us to consider those translators who think to do God service by packing into the English text every possible shade of meaning the word will bear in the original. The synonyms are put in brackets and the reader, apparently, just takes his choice. This would never do anywhere else. Imagine reading to a child.

"Twinkle, twinkle (blink, wink, shine intermittently, sparkle), little (diminutive, small, wee, tiny) star (heavenly body, luminary, orb, sphere),
How I wonder (question, puzzle over, dubitate) what you are (be, have identify with, belong under the description of),
Up above (atop, opposite to down, contrary to direction of gravity) the world (the earth, the abode of human-kind) so high (elevated),
Like a diamond (gem, precious stone, crystallized carbon) in the sky (the heavens, the firmament, the empyrean)"

Yet this is the latest religious word game in evangelical circles and we are all urged to play at it. For myself, I cannot keep serious while reading such a version, so I just pass up these uncertain translators and turn to one who can make up his mind. I have a secret love for decisiveness. It is quite natural for us humans to ignore the high moral intent of the Holy Scriptures and get lost in verbiage. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,"says the old version, and multitudes over the centuries have knelt in pentitence and tearfully sought to know true poverty of spirit; lately the fad seems to be to try to find shades of meaning for the words and to express them in more colloquial language. I wonder if anyone benefits by having the same thing said several different ways for him.

A few hundred years ago it was considered very much the thing for ministers preaching in English to interlard their sermons with frequent Greek and Latin words and phrases, always left untranslated by the speaker. His hearers were no doubt duly impressed with his learning but they had not the faintest notion what he was talking about. He has now been displaced by the preacher who knows enough Greek to make him uncomfortable and can never resist the temptation to turn every sermon into a classroom lecture. I have sometimes thought (and I trust not uncharitably) that the knowledge of a little Greek is a great convenience to such a man, for the Greek being a remarkably accommodating language enables him to preach anything he wants to without being challenged.

All this is not to cry down true scholarship nor to discourage honest attempts to put the Bible into modem speech. It is rather to confess that I have not become a holier man nor a better preacher by my incurable addiction to new versions of the Scriptures. I find that if I am failing to live in accordance with the will of God, I get no relief by reading about that will in a new translation. As soon as God shows a man the way, it is his duty and happy privilege to walk in it. If he refuses or neglects to walk in it he may seek some temporary consolation by looking about for some version that will say the same thing to him in a different way. While he is jockeying about for new shades of meaning his conscience may get a bit of rest, but I am sure that a faithful God will not let him escape.

Sometime he'll have to face up to the meaning of things, no matter in what version they are expressed. As I write I can see fifteen versions before me without turning my head and there are many more stashed about here and there. And they all say the same thing to me; namely, that I must trust Christ Jesus the Lord as my Saviour, love God with all my heart, soul and mind, and my neighbour as myself. They all say that I must be holy, humble, obedient, prayerful, pure, kindly, courageous and faithful. They all say that God is my Father and the Holy Spirit the inhabitant of my nature through the mystery of the new birth. And they all end with the cry for Christ's returning. I really don't need any more new versions, but I'll probably buy the next one that comes out.

Maybe someday I'll find something sufficiently different to justify the expense. But I haven't up to now.

Could This Be Our Most Critical Need?

"WHEN VIEWING THE RELIGIOUS scene today, we are tempted to fix on one or another weakness and say, "This is what is wrong with the church. If this were corrected, we could recapture the glory of the early church and have pentecostal times back with us again."
This tendency to oversimplification is itself a weakness and should be guarded against always, especially when dealing with anything as complex as religion as it occurs in modern times. It takes a very young man to reduce all our present woes to a single disease and cure the whole thing with one simple remedy. Older and wiser heads will be more cautious, having learned that the prescribed nostrum seldom works for the reason that the diagnosis has not been correct. Nothing is that simple. Few spiritual diseases occur alone. Almost all are complicated by the presence of others and are so vitally interrelated as they spread over the whole religious body that it would take the wisdom of a Solomon to find a single cure.

For this reason, I am hesitant to point to any one defect in present-day Christianity and make all our troubles to stem from it alone. That so-called Bible religion in our times is suffering rapid decline is so evident as to need no proof, but just what has brought about this decline is not so easy to discover. I can only say that I have observed one significant lack among evangelical Christians which might turn out to be the real cause of most of our spiritual troubles. Of course, if that were true, then the supplying of that lack would be our most critical need.

The great deficiency to which I refer is the lack of spiritual discernment, especially among our leaders. How there can be so much Bible knowledge and so little insight, so little moral penetration, is one of the enigmas of the religious world today. I think it is altogether accurate to say that there has never before been a time in the history of the church when so many people were engaged in Bible study as are so engaged today. If the knowledge of Bible doctrine were any guarantee of godliness, this would without doubt be known in history as the age of sanctity. Instead, it may well be known as the age of the church’s Babylonish captivity, or the age of worldliness, when the professed Bride of Christ allowed herself to be successfully courted by the fallen sons of men in unbelievable numbers. The body of evangelical believers, under evil influences, has during the last twenty five years gone over to the world in complete and abject surrender, avoiding only a few of the grosser sins such as drunkenness and sexual promiscuity.

That this disgraceful betrayal has taken place in broad daylight with full consent of our Bible teachers and evangelists is one of the most terrible affairs in the spiritual history of the world. Yet I for one cannot believe that the great surrender was negotiated by men of evil heart who set out deliberately to destroy the faith of our fathers. Many good and clean-living people have collaborated with the quislings who betrayed us. Why? The answer can only be, from lack of spiritual vision. Something like a mist has settled over the church as "the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations" (Isaiah 25:7). Such a veil once descended upon Israel: "For their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts" (2 Corinthians 3:14-15). That was Israel’s tragic hour. God raised up the church and temporarily disfranchised His ancient people. He could not trust His work to blind men.

Surely we need a baptism of clear seeing if we are to escape the fate of Israel (and of every other religious body in history that forsook God). If not the greatest need, then surely one of the greatest is for the appearance of Christian leaders with prophetic vision. We desperately need seers who can see through the mist. Unless they come soon, it will be too late for this generation. And if they do come, we will no doubt crucify a few of them in the name of our worldly orthodoxy. But the cross is always the harbinger of the resurrection.

Mere evangelism is not our present need. Evangelism does no more than extend religion, of whatever kind it may be. It gains acceptance for religion among larger numbers of people without giving much thought to the quality of that religion. The tragedy is that present-day evangelism accepts the degenerate form of Christianity now current as the very religion of the apostles and busies itself with making converts to it with no questions asked. And all the time we are moving farther and farther from the New Testament pattern.

We must have a new reformation. There must come a violent break with that irresponsible, amusement-mad, paganized pseudo-religion which passes today for the faith of Christ and which is being spread all over the world by unspiritual men employing unscriptural methods to achieve their ends.

When the Roman church apostatized, God brought about the Reformation. When the Reformation declined, God raised up the Moravians and the Wesleys. When these movements began to die, God raised up fundamentalism and the "deeper life" groups.

Now that these have almost without exception sold out to the world—what next?" (A.W. Tozer, We Travel An Appointed Way, Chapter 38, emphasis added)

Francis Turretin on Preservation of the Bible

"Unless unimpaired integrity characterize the Scriptures, they could not be regarded as the sole rule of faith and practice, and the door would be thrown wide open to atheists, libertines, enthusiasts, and other profane persons like them for destroying its authenticity...and overthrowing the foundation of salvation. For since nothing false can be an object of [saving] faith, how could the Scriptures be held as authentic and reckoned divine if liable to contradictions and corruptions? Nor can it be said that these corruptions are only in smaller things which do not affect the foundation of faith. For if once the authenticity...of the Scriptures is taken away (which would result even from the incurable corruption of one passage), how could our faith rest on what remains? And if corruption is admitted in those of lesser importance, why not in others of greater? Who could assure me that no error or blemish had crept into fundamental passages? Or what reply could be given to a subtle atheist or heretic who should pertinaciously assert that this or that passage less in his favor had been corrupted? It will not do to say that divine providence wished to keep it free from serious corruptions, but not from minor. For besides the fact that this is gratuitous, it cannot be held without injury, as if lacking in the necessary things which are required for the full credibility...of Scripture itself. Nor can we readily believe that God, who dictated and inspired each and every word to these inspired...men, would not take care of their entire preservation. If men use the utmost care diligently to preserve their words (especially if they are of any importance, as for example a testament or contract) in order that it may not be corrupted, how much more, must we suppose, would God take care of His Word which He intended as a testament and seal of His covenant with us, so that it might not be corrupted; especially when He could easily foresee and prevent such corruptions in order to establish the faith of His church?" (Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I:71. )

John Owen on Preservation of the Bible

"The sum of what I am pleading for, as to the particular head to be vindicated, is, that as the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were immediately and entirely given out by God Himself, His mind being in them represented unto us without the least interveniency of such mediums and ways as were capable of giving change or alteration to the least iota or syllable; so, by His good and merciful providential dispensation, in His love to His Word and church, His whole Word, as first given out by Him, is preserved unto us entire in the original languages; where, shining in its own beauty and lustre (as also in all translations, so far as they faithfully represent the originals), it manifests and evidences unto the consciences of men, without other foreign help or assistance, its divine original and authority." (John Owen, The Works of John Owen (The Banner of Truth Trust, 1979), XVI:349-350.)

The Wrath of God: What Is It?

It is rare that there is anything good in human anger. Almost always it springs out of unholy states of heart, and frequently it leads to cursing and violence. The man of evil temper is unpredictable and dangerous and is usually shunned by men of peace and good will.

There is a strong tendency among religious teachers these days to disassociate anger from the divine character and to defend God by explaining away the Scriptures that relate it to Him. This is understandable, but in the light of the full revelation of God it is inexcusable.

In the first place, God needs no defense. Those teachers who are forever trying to make God over in their own image might better be employed in seeking to make themselves over in the image of God. In the Scriptures "God spake all these words," and there is no independent criterion by which we can judge the revelation God there makes concerning Himself.

The present refusal of so many to accept the doctrine of the wrath of God is part of a larger pattern of unbelief that begins with doubt concerning the veracity of the Christian Scriptures.

Let a man question the inspiration of the Scriptures and a curious, even monstrous, inversion takes place: thereafter he judges the Word instead of letting the Word judge him; he determines what the Word should teach instead of permitting it to determine what he should believe; he edits, amends, strikes out, adds at his pleasure; but always he sits above the Word and makes it amenable to him instead of kneeling before God and becoming amenable to the Word.
The tender-minded interpreter who seeks to shield God from the implications of His own Word is engaged in an officious effort that cannot but be completely wasted.

Why such a man still clings to the tattered relics of religion it is hard to say. The manly thing would be to walk out on the Christian faith and put it behind him along with other outgrown toys and discredited beliefs of childhood, but this he rarely does. He kills the tree but still hovers pensively about the orchard hoping for fruit that never comes.

Whatever is stated clearly but once in the Holy Scriptures may be accepted as sufficiently well established to invite the faith of all believers; and when we discover that the Spirit speaks of the wrath of God about three hundred times in the Bible, we may as well make up our minds either to accept the doctrine or reject the Scriptures outright. If we have valid information from some outside source proving that anger is unworthy of God, then the Bible is not to be trusted when it attributes anger to God. And if it is wrong three hundred times on one subject, who can trust it on any other?

The instructed Christian knows that the wrath of God is a reality, that His anger is as holy as His love, and that between His love and His wrath there is no incompatibility. He further knows (as far as fallen creatures can know such matters) what the wrath of God is and what it is not. To understand God’s wrath we must view it in the light of His holiness. God is holy and has made holiness to be the moral condition necessary to the health of His universe. Sin’s temporary presence in the world only accents this. Whatever is holy is healthy; evil is a moral sickness that must end ultimately in death. The formation of the language itself suggests this, the English word holy deriving from the Anglo-Saxon halig, hal meaning well, whole. While it is not wise to press word origins unduly, there is yet a significance here that should not be overlooked.
Since God’s first concern for His universe is its moral health, that is, its holiness, whatever is contrary to this is necessarily under His eternal displeasure. Wherever the holiness of God confronts unholiness there is conflict. This conflict arises from the irreconcilable natures of holiness and sin. God’s attitude and action in the conflict are His anger. To preserve His creation God must destroy whatever would destroy it. When He arises to put down destruction and save the world from irreparable moral collapse, He is said to be angry. Every wrathful judgment of God in the history of the world has been a holy act of preservation.

The holiness of God, the wrath of God and the health of the creation are inseparably united. Not only is it right for God to display anger against sin, but I find it impossible to understand how He could do otherwise.

God’s wrath is His utter intolerance of whatever degrades and destroys. He hates iniquity as a mother hates the diphtheria or polio that would destroy the life of her child.

God’s wrath is the antisepsis by which moral putrefaction is checked and the health of the creation maintained. When God warns of His impending wrath and exhorts men to repent and avoid it He puts it in a language they can understand: He tells them to "flee from the wrath to come" (Matthew 3:7; Luke 3:7). He says in effect, "Your life is evil, and because it is evil you are an enemy to the moral health of My creation. I must extirpate whatever would destroy the world I love. Turn from evil before I rise up in wrath against you. I love you, but I hate the sin you love. Separate yourself from your evil ways before I send judgment upon you."
"O LORD,…in wrath remember mercy" (Habakkuk 3:2). (A.W. Tozer, Man: The Dwelling Place of God)

Discerning the Manuscript Traditions

Quite often a return to confessional Christian belief results in clarity. My Baptist friends should not now immediatley dismiss the following article from Credenda Agenda. The historic Church has always had confessions, catechisms etc....long before the Roman Church ever existed or thought about the same.

The following article may be found at:

http://www.credenda.org/issues/10-1.php

The entire issue of Credenda is most helpful. Read and enjoy and thank the Lord for Doug Wilson, et al. Notice the difference in the manner in which each of these men address the issues. That is as revealing as anything! (Editor)

Volume 10, Issue 1: Disputatio
Discerning the Manuscript Traditions
Douglas Wilson and James White

"I am of NIV," some say. Others say, "I am of NASB." Still others say, "I am of KJV." Is it simply enough to respond to these various armies that they may water, but God gives the increase—so quit squabbling? If the translation one uses does matter, which should it be? And which of the ancient manuscripts should be used as a base for translation? In what follows, Douglas Wilson, editor of Credenda/Agenda, and James White discuss whether one manuscript is superior to another and how we might know that one is superior.

James White is the author of the book, The King James Only Controversy: Can You Trust the Modern Translations?, and the book, Letters to a Mormon Elder. He is the Director of Ministries for Alpha and Omega Ministries.

DW: The historic Protestant position on the manuscript tradition of Scripture is that God had divinely inspired the writing of the autographs and had providentially preserved the tradition of the apographs down to the present time. But with the advent of modernity, this simple faith was not scientific enough and independent textual critics began to work with the Scriptures as though they were just another collection of ancient books, subject to the same treatment. Conservatives like B.B. Warfield were concerned about these unbelieving encroachments, and so resolved simply to defend the autographs alone, a well-meaning but disastrous strategy. While rejecting the know-nothing approach of fundamentalism, historic Protestants need to return to the reformational doctrine of sola Scriptura.

JW: The central issue for any believing Christian when it comes to the text of the Bible is this: what did the original authors write? We must remember that the ultimate goal is to know what John or Paul wrote, not what a scribe, or group of scribes, or even a group of theologians, think they wrote. We must never forget that at times in the history of the Church certain texts have become enshrined by tradition rather than by force of historical verity. To be truly Reformed is to always test one's traditions, and this is no less true when we examine the issue of text types and manuscript traditions.

DW: Agreed. But if we are able to know what the original autographs contained, and we do not have the autographs themselves, then we must have a reliable tradition or bridge of some sort which connects us to the original autographs. Since we agree that such a traditional bridge is necessary, then the debate concerns which manuscript tradition, and not whether we will have a manuscript tradition. It concerns which scribes are reliable, not whether intervening scribes are necessary. This means the "force of historical verity" is simply another way of referring to accurate tradition. And it appears to me that when we use this "force" as the standard, the textus receptus measures up quite well.

JW: Some have counted as many as one hundred different editions of the TR, so which one is being referred to is a major question. The most popular TR differs from the Majority Text in over 1,800 places, and contains obvious errors (such as those at Luke 2:22 or 2 Timothy 2:19). The early editions of the TR (the editions of Erasmus) were created on the same basis as modern texts, as Erasmus' own comments make clear. The TR is an "artificial" text, just as all modern texts, in that there is not a single manuscript in the tradition that reads word-for-word as the TR.

DW: If a problem with the TR is variant readings, then how does it help to expand the field so that we have thousands more variant readings? The "errors" you cite are a wonderful example of the power of paradigms. How is "Christ" instead of "Lord" a mistake? Or Mary's purification? The issue is not whether careful scholarship goes into the formation of the text, but rather who is qualified to do that scholarship, and who is responsible for authoritatively receiving it. The Church has been entrusted with the oracles of God, not autonomous scientists. We have agreed that a traditional manuscript bridge is necessary. Who stands guard at the bridge—the Church or autonomous science?

JW: It is a myth that the TR is the "received text." The Church has never convened and compared one tradition against another and made that determination. Yet, there are many parallels between the arguments once used by Rome in favor of the Vulgate and the arguments used by some to support the TR. As to the errors cited, the issue is simple: just as I don't accept the Vulgate's renderings due to their "common use" for centuries, so I ask of the TR the same question: is that what Luke or Paul originally wrote? In both places, the TR gives a reading that stands against even the Majority Text.

DW: But the historic Protestant church did make that determination. Protestant theologians of the Reformation era asserted the autographs and the apographs in the original languages were both the breath of God. This was made a confessional issue at Westminster, where it was plainly asserted that the inspired Scriptures were "by [God's] singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages" and were "therefore authentical." Which text family? Clearly the answer should be found in the one they were using. I grant that the modern evangelical church has not made this a confessional issue—that is why they have lots of variant Bibles, and are working on more. But we should return to our confessional roots.

JW: This assumes an authority for the confession that the confession itself does not claim. I don't recall any in-depth textual study taking place at Westminster. Even if there was, by what Protestant paradigm do we exclude further information that has come to light since then? This argument is Trent all over again—an argument rejected by the Reformation. No ecclesiastical authority has the right to change Scripture. If one asserts that we should read "her" instead of "their" at Luke 2:22, that is changing Scripture, for no one reading Luke in Greek for the first 1400 years of the Church would have seen this "new" and novel reading.

DW: Certainly ecclesiastical authority has no right to change Scripture—we agree. We differ over whether any authority has the right to change Scripture. I want to deny the privilege to priestly scientists as well. The assertion that the classical and scholastic Protestant approach to the text is really Tridentine is curious. Classical Protestants wanted a fixed Word throughout church history, while the Roman church is the one that has always been willing for more "light." Given your argument, on what basis can you consistently hold to the closure of the canon? Or are we only to be open to more light if it is a word or a verse, and not a book or two?

JW: I do not know what a "priestly scientist" is. Nor do I remember a Protestant "council" defining "the classical and scholastic Protestant approach to the text." Who has ever claimed the authority to define such a thing? When did they claim it? Rome tried to fix the text with the Vulgate, and failed. Others wish to do it with the TR, but again, that fails, as it contains errors, as its original compiler (Erasmus) admitted. My reference was to further information in regards to the text itself as it existed in ancient times, not to "new light." Will you, or can you, deal with Luke 2:22, and the TR reading?

DW: Your point about Luke 2:22 is only pertinent for those who claim absolute perfection for one TR form. Certainly textual sorting work must be done, but not by "neutral" scholars. Unbelieving criticism says that words, verses, pericopes, and books are all up for grabs. To grant this legitimacy with the first three, while drawing the line to keep 66 inspired books, is like being a little bit pregnant. 2 John has 301 words while the last twelve verses of Mark have 260. At what word count does the authority of science becomes illegitimate? I return to my question: who does the work we agree needs to be done—autonomous science or the confessing historical Church?

JW: This presents a tremendously false dichotomy. First, the confessing historical Church is a nice phrase, but means completely different things to different people. What, specifically, is it, and how does it make textual decisions? Second, I, and many others, do believing study of the text. Am I a part of the Church? Is my work "autonomous"? Your paradigm doesn't seem to leave room for my existence. Since you admit error in the TR, how does this fit with claiming the "confessing historical Church" is to make textual decisions? Has the Church "decided" on Luke 2:22, or Mark

DW: Confessing refers to creeds and confessions, and historical refers to the providence of God as He has protected and led the Church over time. Thus the confessing historical Church has determined that the Bible contains 66 books and that Mark 16:9_20 is in one of them. A few readings remain to be settled, but the settling is to be done by the confessing historical Church—not Zondervan. Individualistic efforts may be believing work, and yet not submitted to the authority of the Church. Secular canons of academic text criticism do not require ecclesiastical review. Incidentally, admitting that no one form of the TR is perfect and admitting error in the TR are two distinct things.

JW: When did "the Church" "determine" the canon? Did the church do so infallibly? When did the Church say, "Mark 16:9_20 is Scripture"? Is mere usage over time the final test? Since the TR contains readings unknown for 1400 years, what did the Church do in ancient times? What process was used to "determine" that Mark 16:9_20 is canon? When did the Church add the Comma Johanneum to the canon (1 John 5:7_8)? And could you please show me the TR, since it seems to be a very fluid, undefined, yet "ecclesiastically approved," item? And if readings still remain to be settled, who will settle them, and by what process? Are the final decisions infallible?

DW: You are not recognizing the "inescapability factor" in this. Given human agency, either the Church authoritatively recognizes the text, or some other entity does, or there is no text. We both accept the Bible as the self-authenticating Word of God—therefore we agree there are canonical books (along with canonical contents). That leaves us with the first two options in our recognition of this canon. I am maintaining that the Church has the responsibility to recognize that canon through her discipline (e.g., defrocking a minister who claims that Romans is spurious). Now if you deny that the Church has this authority, it means that you must grant it to some other entity. What is that entity?

JW: Romans is not a variant reading at Luke 2:22 or elsewhere. While related, canon and textual variations involve separate issues and methodologies. We know Romans as a body of text that is canonical. It does not follow, though, that we must accept a textual addition, unknown for as many as a thousand years, just because the reading becomes "popular" through use. The fact remains that the key issue is what was written by the original writers. While the Church has indeed said, "Romans is Scripture," it does not follow that she has said, "the Byzantine textual tradition of Romans is the canonical text." That goes beyond history.

DW: You began by praising "the force of historical verity," but despite repeated requests, you never told us who is to be responsible for establishing that verity. Why were you unwilling to state that it must be the science of textual criticism, located outside the confessing Church, which is responsible to discover the content of the autographs? Rather, the historical confessing Church has this responsibility, and has in the main discharged the responsibility well. The task of sorting out the remaining textual problems is entirely manageable. But the science of autonomous textual criticism, far from establishing verity, has only managed to establish thousands of variations and increase a generally destructive confusion about the text of Scripture.

The Importance of Sound Doctrine

"It would be impossible to overemphasize the importance of sound doctrine in the life of a Christian. Right thinking about all spiritual matters is imperative if we would have right living. As men do not gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles, so sound character does not grow out of unsound teaching.

The word doctrine means simply religious beliefs held and taught. It is the sacred task of all Christians, first as believers and then as teachers of religious beliefs, to be certain that these beliefs correspond exactly to truth. A precise agreement between belief and fact constitutes soundness in doctrine. We cannot afford to have less.

The apostles not only taught truth but contended for its purity against any who would corrupt it. The Pauline epistles resist every effort of false teachers to introduce doctrinal vagaries. John’s epistles are sharp with condemnation of those teachers who harassed the young Church by denying the incarnation and throwing doubts upon the doctrine of the Trinity; and Jude in his brief but powerful epistle rises to heights of burning eloquence as he pours scorn upon evil teachers who would mislead the saints.

Each generation of Christians must look to its beliefs. While truth itself is unchanging, the minds of men are porous vessels out of which truth can leak and into which error may seep to dilute the truth they contain. The human heart is heretical by nature and runs to error as naturally as a garden to weeds. All a man, a church or a denomination needs to guarantee deterioration of doctrine is to take everything for granted and do nothing. The unattended garden will soon be overrun with weeds; the heart that fails to cultivate truth and root out error will shortly be a theological wilderness; the church or denomination that grows careless on the highway of truth will before long find itself astray, bogged down in some mud flat from which there is no escape.
In every field of human thought and activity accuracy is considered a virtue. To err ever so slightly is to invite serious loss, if not death itself. Only in religious thought is faithfulness to truth looked upon as a fault. When men deal with things earthly and temporal they demand truth; when they come to the consideration of things heavenly and eternal they hedge and hesitate as if truth either could not be discovered or didn’t matter anyway.

Montaigne said that a liar is one who is brave toward God and a coward toward men; for a liar faces God and shrinks from men. Is this not simply a proof of unbelief? Is it not to say that the liar believes in men but is not convinced of the existence of God, and is willing to risk the displeasure of a God who may not exist rather than that of man who obviously does?

I think also that deep, basic unbelief is back of human carelessness in religion. The scientist, the physician, the navigator deals with matters he knows are real; and because these things are real the world demands that both teacher and practitioner be skilled in the knowledge of them. The teacher of spiritual things only is required to be unsure in his beliefs, ambiguous in his remarks and tolerant of every religious opinion expressed by anyone, even by the man least qualified to hold an opinion.

Haziness of doctrine has always been the mark of the liberal. When the Holy Scriptures are rejected as the final authority on religious belief something must be found to take their place. Historically that something has been either reason or sentiment: if sentiment, it has been humanism. Sometimes there has been an admixture of the two, as may be seen in liberal churches today. These will not quite give up the Bible, neither will they quite believe it; the result is an unclear body of beliefs more like a fog than a mountain, where anything may be true but nothing may be trusted as being certainly true.

We have gotten accustomed to the blurred puffs of gray fog that pass for doctrine in modernistic churches and expect nothing better, but it is a cause for real alarm that the fog has begun of late to creep into many evangelical churches. From some previously unimpeachable sources are now coming vague statements consisting of a milky admixture of Scripture, science and human sentiment that is true to none of its ingredients because each one works to cancel the others out.

Certain of our evangelical brethren appear to be laboring under the impression that they are advanced thinkers because they are rethinking evolution and reevaluating various Bible doctrines or even divine inspiration itself; but so far are they from being advanced thinkers that they are merely timid followers of modernism—fifty years behind the parade.

Little by little evangelical Christians these days are being brainwashed. One evidence is that increasing numbers of them are becoming ashamed to be found unequivocally on the side of truth. They say they believe but their beliefs have been so diluted as to be impossible of clear definition.

Moral power has always accompanied definitive beliefs. Great saints have always been dogmatic. We need right now a return to a gentle dogmatism that smiles while it stands stubborn and firm on the Word of God that liveth and abideth forever. " (A.W. Tozer, Man: The Dwelling Place of God)

Textual Criticism?

Let a man question the inspiration of the Scriptures and a curious, even monstrous, inversion takes place: thereafter he judges the Word instead of letting the Word judge him; he determines what the Word should teach instead of permitting it to determine what he should believe; he edits, amends, strikes out, adds at his pleasure; but always he sits above the Word and makes it amenable to him instead of kneeling before God and becoming amenable to the Word.

The tender-minded interpreter who seeks to shield God from the implications of His own Word is engaged in an officious effort that cannot but be completely wasted.

Why such a man still clings to the tattered relics of religion it is hard to say. The manly thing would be to walk out on the Christian faith and put it behind him along with other outgrown toys and discredited beliefs of childhood, but this he rarely does. He kills the tree but still hovers pensively about the orchard hoping for fruit that never comes. (A.W. Tozer, Man: The Dwelling Place of God)

Forget That They Told You to Shut Up!

"Why do we not capture the divine illumination of Jesus Christ in our souls? Because there is a cloud of concealment between us and the smiling face of God!"

I CANNOT HELP BUT BELIEVE that in our generation there is a great, concealing cloud over much of the fundamental, gospel church which has practically shut off our consciousness of the smiling face of God.

Textualism, a system of rigid adherence to words, has largely captured the church, with the language of the New Testament still being used but with the Spirit of the New Testament grieved.

The doctrine of verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, for instance, is still held, but in such a way that its illumination and life are gone and rigor mortis has set in. As a result religious yearning is choked down, religious imagination has been stultified and religious aspiration smothered.

The "hierarchy" and the "scribes" of this school of thought have told us and would teach us that we ought to shut up and quit talking about spiritual longing and desire in the Christian church.
We have already seen the reaction to this among the masses of evangelical Christians. There has been a revolt in two directions, a rather unconscious revolt, like the gasping of fish in a bowl where there is no oxygen. A great company of evangelicals has already gone over into the area of religious entertainment so that many gospel churches are tramping on the doorstep of the theater. Over against that, some serious segments of fundamental and evangelical thought have revolted into the position of evangelical rationalism which finds it a practical thing to make its peace with liberalism.

This is why the message of spiritual perfection and longing after God sounds so strange to our generation. On one side the masses proclaim, "I have accepted Jesus—whoop de doo! Let’s go and have fun!" On the other, serious and reverent men are thinking their way perilously near to the borders of liberalism. Meanwhile, the New Testament message, objectives and methods are allowed to lie dormant, spurned and forgotten. I have read for many years in the old devotional classics of the desire of the saints of God to keep the candles of their souls burning brightly, day by day. They sought to feel the divine fire in their hearts, to experience the blessedness of reconciliation with God. They are on record as always willing to renounce everything worldly in order to possess the treasure buried in the field of their hearts.

This is not new doctrine and it ought not to sound so different and strange to us. Has not Christ made full atonement for us, and should we not renounce everything that would keep us from the conscious experience of knowing and receiving the Kingdom of God within us?

God’s face is turned toward us. The famed Lady Julian wrote long ago, "The precious amends our Lord hath made for man’s sin have turned all our blame into endless honor!" Paul said it in this way, "Where sin increased, grace increased all the more" (Romans 5:20b).

It is glorious knowledge indeed that the smiling face of God is turned toward us. Why, then, do we not capture the wondrous, divine illumination of our Savior, Jesus Christ? Why do we not know the divine fire in our own souls? Why do we not strive to sense and experience the knowledge of exhilaration of reconciliation with God? (A. W. Tozer)

Are We Evangelicals Social Climbing?

Today we evangelicals are showing signs that we are becoming too rich and too prominent for our own good. With a curious disregard for the lessons of history we are busy fighting for recognition by the world and acceptance by society. And we are winning both. The great and the mighty are now looking our way. The world seems about to come over and join us. Of course we must make some concessions, but these have almost all been made already except for a bit of compromising here and there on such matters as verbal inspiration, special creation, separation and religious tolerance.

Evangelical Christianity is fast becoming the religion of the bourgeoisie. The well-to-do, the upper middle classes, the politically prominent, the celebrities are accepting our religion by the thousands and parking their expensive cars outside our church doors, to the uncontrollable glee of our religious leaders who seem completely blind to the fact that the vast majority of these new patrons of the Lord of glory have not altered their moral habits in the slightest nor given any evidence of true conversion that would have been accepted by the saintly fathers who built the churches.

Yes, history is a great teacher, but she cannot teach those who do not want to learn. And apparently we do not. (A.W. Tozer, Warfare of the Spirit)

The Waning Authority of Christ in the Churches*

*This article appeared in The Alliance Witness May 15, 1963, just two days after the death of Dr. Tozer. In a sense It was his valedictory, for it expressed the concern of his heart. Because of its wide acceptance it has been included in this selection.

Here is the burden of my heart; and while I claim for myself no special inspiration I yet feel that this is also the burden of the Spirit.

If I know my own heart, it is love alone that moves me to write this. What I write here is not the sour ferment of a mind agitated by contentions with my fellow Christians. There have been no such contentions. I have not been abused, mistreated or attacked by anyone. Nor have these observations grown out of any unpleasant experiences that I have had in my association with others. My relations with my own church as well as with Christians of other denominations have been friendly, courteous and pleasant. My grief is simply the result of a condition which I believe to be almost universally prevalent among the churches.

I think also that I should acknowledge that I am myself very much involved in the situation I here deplore. As Ezra in his mighty prayer of intercession included himself among the wrong-doers, so do I. "O my God, I am too ashamed and disgraced to lift up my face to you, my God, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens" (Ezra 9:6). Any hard word spoken here against others must in simple honesty return upon my own head. I too have been guilty. This is written with the hope that we all may turn unto the Lord our God and sin no more against Him.

Let me state the cause of my burden. It is this: Jesus Christ has today almost no authority at all among the groups that call themselves by His name. By these I mean not the Roman Catholics nor the liberals, nor the various quasi-Christian cults. I do mean Protestant churches generally, and I include those that protest the loudest that they are in spiritual descent from our Lord and His apostles, namely, the evangelicals.

It is a basic doctrine of the New Testament that after His resurrection the Man Jesus was declared by God to be both Lord and Christ, and that He was invested by the Father with absolute Lordship over the church which is His Body. All authority is His in heaven and in earth. In His own proper time He will exert it to the full, but during this period in history He allows this authority to be challenged or ignored. And just now it is being challenged by the world and ignored by the church.

The present position of Christ in the gospel churches may be likened to that of a king in a limited, constitutional monarchy. The king (sometimes depersonalized by the term "the Crown") is in such a country no more than a traditional rallying point, a pleasant symbol of unity and loyalty much like a flag or a national anthem. He is lauded, feted and supported, but his real authority is small. Nominally he is head over all, but in every crisis someone else makes the decisions. On formal occasions he appears in his royal attire to deliver the tame, colorless speech put into his mouth by the real rulers of the country. The whole thing may be no more than good-natured make-believe, but it is rooted in antiquity, it is a lot of fun and no one wants to give it up.

Among the gospel churches Christ is now in fact little more than a beloved symbol. "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name" is the church's national anthem and the cross is her official flag, but in the week-by-week services of the church and the day-by-day conduct of her members someone else, not Christ, makes the decisions. Under proper circumstances Christ is allowed to say "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened" or "Do not let your hearts be troubled," but when the speech is finished someone else takes over. Those in actual authority decide the moral standards of the church, as well as all objectives and all methods employed to achieve them. Because of long and meticulous organization it is now possible for the youngest pastor just out of seminary to have more actual authority in a church than Jesus Christ has.

Not only does Christ have little or no authority; His influence also is becoming less and less. I would not say that He has none, only that it is small and diminishing. A fair parallel would be the influence of Abraham Lincoln over the American people. Honest Abe is still the idol of the country. The likeness of his kind, rugged face, so homely that it is beautiful, appears everywhere. It is easy to grow misty-eyed over him. Children are brought up on stories of his love, his honesty and his humility.

But after we have gotten control over our tender emotions, what have we left? No more than a good example which, as it recedes into the past, becomes more and more unreal and exercises less and less real influence. Every scoundrel is ready to wrap Lincoln's long black coat around him. In the cold light of political facts in the United States, the constant appeal to Lincoln by the politicians is a cynical joke.

The Lordship of Jesus is not quite forgotten among Christians, but it has been relegated to the hymnal where all responsibility toward it may be comfortably discharged in a glow of pleasant religious emotion. Or if it is taught as a theory in the classroom it is rarely applied to practical living. The idea that the Man Christ Jesus has absolute and final authority over the whole church and over all its members in every detail of their lives is simply not now accepted as true by the rank and file of evangelical Christians.

What we do is this: We accept the Christianity of our group as being identical with that of Christ and His apostles. The beliefs, the practices, the ethics, the activities of our group are equated with the Christianity of the New Testament. Whatever the group thinks or says or does is scriptural, no questions asked. It is assumed that all our Lord expects of us is that we busy ourselves with the activities of the group. In so doing we are keeping the commandments of Christ.

To avoid the hard necessity of either obeying or rejecting the plain instructions of our Lord in the New Testament we take refuge in a liberal interpretation of them. Casuistry is not the possession of Roman Catholic theologians alone. We evangelicals also know how to avoid the sharp point of obedience by means of fine and intricate explanations. These are tailor-made for the flesh. They excuse disobedience, comfort carnality and make the words of Christ of none effect. And the essence of it all is that Christ simply could not have meant what He said. His teachings are accepted even theoretically only after they have been weakened by interpretation.

Yet Christ is consulted by increasing numbers of persons with "problems" and sought after by those who long for peace of mind. He is widely recommended as a kind of spiritual psychiatrist with remarkable powers to straighten people out. He is able to deliver them from their guilt complexes and to help them to avoid serious psychic traumas by making a smooth and easy adjustment to society and to their own ids. Of course this strange Christ has no relation whatever to the Christ of the New Testament. The true Christ is also Lord, but this accommodating Christ is little more than the servant of the people.

But I suppose I should offer some concrete proof to support my charge that Christ has little or no authority today among the churches. Well, let me put a few questions and let the answers be the evidence.

What church board consults our Lord's words to decide matters under discussion? Let anyone reading this who has had experience on a church board try to recall the times or time when any board member read from the Scriptures to make a point, or when any chairman suggested that the brethren should see what instructions the Lord had for them on a particular question. Board meetings are habitually opened with a formal prayer or "a season of prayer"; after that the Head of the Church is respectfully silent while the real rulers take over. Let anyone who denies this bring forth evidence to refute it. I for one will be glad to hear it.

What Sunday school committee goes to the Word for directions? Do not the members invariably assume that they already know what they are supposed to do and that their only problem is to find effective means to get it done? Plans, rules, "operations" and new methodological techniques absorb all their time and attention. The prayer before the meeting is for divine help to carry out their plans. Apparently the idea that the Lord might have some instructions for them never so much as enters their heads.

Who remembers when a conference chairman brought his Bible to the table with him for the purpose of using it? Minutes, regulations, rules of order, yes. The sacred commandments of the Lord, no. An absolute dichotomy exists between the devotional period and the business session. The first has no relation to the second.

What foreign mission board actually seeks to follow the guidance of the Lord as provided by His Word and His Spirit? They all think they do, but what they do in fact is to assume the scripturalness of their ends and then ask for help to find ways to achieve them. They may pray all night for God to give success to their enterprises, but Christ is desired as their helper, not as their Lord. Human means are devised to achieve ends assumed to be divine. These harden into policy, and thereafter the Lord doesn't even have a vote.

In the conduct of our public worship where is the authority of Christ to be found? The truth is that today the Lord rarely controls a service, and the influence He exerts is very small. We sing of Him and preach about Him, but He must not interfere; we worship our way, and it must be right because we have always done it that way, as have the other churches in our group.
What Christian when faced with a moral problem goes straight to the Sermon on the Mount or other New Testament Scripture for the authoritative answer? Who lets the words of Christ be final on giving, birth control, the bringing up of a family, personal habits, tithing, entertainment, buying, selling and other such important matters?

What theological school, from the lowly Bible institute up, could continue to operate if it were to make Christ Lord of its every policy? There may be some, and I hope there are, but I believe I am right when I say that most such schools to stay in business are forced to adopt procedures which find no justification in the Bible they profess to teach. So we have this strange anomaly: the authority of Christ is ignored in order to maintain a school to teach among other things the authority of Christ.

The causes back of the decline in our Lord's authority are many. I name only two.

One is the power of custom, precedent and tradition within the older religious groups. These like gravitation affect every particle of religious practice within the group, exerting a steady and constant pressure in one direction. Of course that direction is toward conformity to the status quo. Not Christ but custom is lord in this situation. And the same thing has passed over (possibly to a slightly less degree) into the other groups such as the full gospel tabernacles, the holiness churches, the pentecostal and fundamental churches and the many independent and undenominational churches found everywhere throughout the North American continent.

The second cause is the revival of intellectualism among the evangelicals. This, if I sense the situation correctly, is not so much a thirst for learning as a desire for a reputation of being learned. Because of it good men who ought to know better are being put in the position of collaborating with the enemy. I'll explain.

Our evangelical faith (which I believe to be the true faith of Christ and His apostles) is being attacked these days from many different directions. In the Western world the enemy has forsworn violence. He comes against us no more with sword and fagot; he now comes smiling, bearing gifts. He raises his eyes to heaven and swears that he too believes in the faith of our fathers, but his real purpose is to destroy that faith, or at least to modify it to such an extent that it is no longer the supernatural thing it once was. He comes in the name of philosophy or psychology or anthropology, and with sweet reasonableness urges us to rethink our historic position, to be less rigid, more tolerant, more broadly understanding.

He speaks in the sacred jargon of the schools, and many of our half-educated evangelicals run to fawn on him. He tosses academic degrees to the scrambling sons of the prophets as Rockefeller used to toss dimes to the children of the peasants. The evangelicals who, with some justification, have been accused of lacking true scholarship, now grab for these status symbols with shining eyes, and when they get them they are scarcely able to believe their eyes. They walk about in a kind of ecstatic unbelief, much as the soloist of the neighborhood church choir might were she to be invited to sing at La Scala.

For the true Christian the one supreme test for the present soundness and ultimate worth of everything religious must be the place our Lord occupies in it. Is He Lord or symbol? Is He in charge of the project or merely one of the crew? Does He decide things or only help to carry out the plans of others? All religious activities, from the simplest act of an individual Christian to the ponderous and expensive operations of a whole denomination, may be proved by the answer to the question, Is Jesus Christ Lord in this act? Whether our works prove to be wood, hay and stubble or gold and silver and precious stones in that great day will depend upon the right answer to that question.

What, then, are we to do? Each one of us must decide, and there are at least three possible choices. One is to rise up in shocked indignation and accuse me of irresponsible reporting. Another is to nod general agreement with what is written here but take comfort in the fact that there are exceptions and we are among the exceptions. The other is to go down in meek humility and confess that we have grieved the Spirit and dishonored our Lord in failing to give Him the place His Father has given Him as Head and Lord of the Church.

Either the first or the second will but confirm the wrong. The third if carried out to its conclusion can remove the curse. The decision lies with us.

The Responsibility of Leadership

The history of Israel and Judah points up a truth taught clearly enough by all history, viz., that the masses are or soon will be what their leaders are. The kings set the moral pace for the people.

The public is never capable of acting en masse. Without a leader it is headless and a headless body is powerless. Always someone must lead. Even the mob engaged in pillage and murder is not the disorganized thing it appears to be. Somewhere behind the violence is ,leader whose ideas it is simply putting into effect.

Israel sometimes rebelled against her leaders, it is true, but the rebellions were not spontaneous. The people merely switched to a new leader and followed him. The point is, they always had to have a leader.

Whatever sort of man the king turned out to be, the people were soon following his leadership. They followed David in the worship of Jehovah, Solomon in the building of the Temple, Jeroboam in the making of a calf and Hezekiah in the restoration of the temple worship.
It is not complimentary to the masses that they are so easily led, but we are not interested in praising or blaming; we are concerned for truth, and the truth is that for better or for worse religious people follow leaders. A good man may change the moral complexion of a whole nation; or a corrupt and worldly clergy may lead a nation into bondage. The transposed proverb, "Like priest, like people," sums up in four words a truth taught plainly in the Scriptures and demonstrated again and again in religious history.

Today Christianity in the Western world is what its leaders were in the recent past and is becoming what its present leaders are. The local church soon becomes like its pastor, and this is true even of those groups who do not believe in pastors. The true pastor of such a group is not hard to identify; he is usually the one who can present the strongest argument against any church having a pastor. The strong-minded leader of the local group who succeeds in influencing the flock through Bible teaching or frequent impromptu talks in the public gatherings is the pastor, no matter how earnestly he may deny it.

The poor condition of the churches today may be traced straight to their leaders. When, as sometimes happens, the members of a local church rise up and turn their pastor out for preaching the truth, they are still following a leader. Behind their act is sure to be found a carnal (and often well-to-do) deacon or elder who usurps the right to determine who the pastor shall be and what he shall say twice each Sunday. In such cases the pastor is unable to lead the flock. He merely works for the leader; a pitiful situation indeed.

A number of factors contribute to bad spiritual leadership. Here are a few:

1. Fear, The wish to be liked and admired is strong even among the clergy, so rather than risk public disapproval the pastor is tempted simply to sit on his hands and smile ingratiatingly at the people. "Fear of man will prove to be a snare" (Proverbs 29:25), says the Holy Spirit, and nowhere more than in the ministry.

2. The economic squeeze. The Protestant ministry is notoriously underpaid and the pastor's family is often large. Put these two facts together and you have a situation ready-made to bring trouble and temptation to the man of God. The ability of the congregation to turn off the flow of money to the church when the man in the pulpit gets on their toes is well known. The average Pastor lives from year to year barely making ends meet. To give vigorous moral leadership to the church is often to invite economic strangulation, so such leadership is withheld. But the evil thing is that leadership withheld is in fact a kind of inverted leadership. The man who will not lead his flock up the mountainside leads it down without knowing it.

3. Ambition. When Christ is not all in all to the minister he is tempted to seek place for himself, and pleasing the crowds is a time-proved way to get on in church circles. Instead of leading his people where they ought to go, he skillfully leads them where he knows they want to go. In this way he gives the appearance of being a bold leader of men, but avoids offending anyone, and thus assures ecclesiastical preferment when the big church or the high office is open.

4. Intellectual pride. Unfortunately there is in religious circles a cult of the intelligentsia which, in my opinion, is merely beatnikism turned wrong side out. As the beatnik, in spite of his loud protestations of individualism, is in reality one of the most slavish of conformists, so the young intellectual in the pulpit shakes in his carefully polished Oxfords lest he be guilty of saying something trite or common. The people look to him to lead them into green pastures but instead he leads them in circles over a sandy desert.

5. Absence of true spiritual experience. No one can lead another farther than he himself has gone. For many ministers this explains their failure to lead. They simply do not know where to go.

6. Inadequate preparation. The churches are cluttered with religious amateurs culturally unfit to minister at the altar, and the people suffer as a consequence. They are led astray and are not aware of it.

The rewards of godly leadership are so great and the responsibilities of the leader so heavy that no one can afford to take the matter lightly. (A. W. Tozer, God Tells the Man Who Cares, Chapter 11)

The Era of an Absentee God: WWJD?

The current WWJD fad is very interesting: what would Jesus do.....if he were here is the presumption. Presuming the absence of God has led to much being done in the name of God which is no such thing. A. W. Tozer has the following perspective. (Editor)

"THERE ARE OVER MANY WHO HAVE MUCH KNOWLEDGE and little virtue,” said the blind saint, Malaval, "and who often speak of God while rarely speaking to Him."

These words were written a long time ago; whether they were true of Christians in Malaval's day I am not able to say; we have but his word for it. But I can testify that they describe vast numbers of Christians today.

The Bible teaches plainly enough the doctrine of the divine omnipresence, but for the masses of professed Christians this is the era of the Absentee God. Most Christians speak of God in the manner usually reserved for a departed loved one, rarely as of one present; but they do not often speak to Him.

Since errors are not equally harmful I suppose it is better to think of God as existing in some remote region of a lonely universe than not to think of Him at all or, worse, to deny outright that there is any such being as God. But truth is always better than error, and with the inspired Scriptures before us we need not think wrongly about such an important matter as this. We can know the truth if we will.

An Absentee God is among other things inadequate. He does not meet the needs of the being called man. As a baby is not satisfied away from its mother, and as life on earth is impossible without the sun, so human beings need a present God, and they can be neither healthy nor satisfied without Him. Surely God would not have created us to be satisfied with nothing less than His presence if He had intended that we should get on with nothing more than His absence.

No. The Scriptures and moral reason agree that God is present.

Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. Their fear and chagrin for the moment overcame their conscious need of God. Sin never feels comfortable in the divine presence. Jonah, in his determined refusal to obey God's command, rose up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, Peter, with a sudden acute consciousness of personal guilt, sought not to flee from the Lord's presence but begged the Lord instead to depart from him. Men need God above everything else, yet are uncomfortable in His presence. This is the self-contradictory moral situation sin has brought us into. A convinced atheist is more logical than a Christian who tries to worship an Absentee God. The atheist can ignore all moral and religious precepts without fear because he believes that there is no God to call him to account. His mental state is the same as that of a burglar who has talked himself into the belief that there are no policemen, no courts and no jails. Both may enjoy peace of mind for a while—till the truth catches up with them.

The notion that there is a God but that He is comfortably far away is not embodied in the doctrinal statement of any Christian church. Anyone who dared admit that he held such a creed would be considered a heretic and avoided by respectable religious people; but our actions, and especially our spontaneous utterances, reveal our true beliefs better than any conventional creed can do, and if we are to judge by these then I think it can hardly be denied that the average Christian thinks of God as being at a safe distance looking the other way.

One advantage gained from thinking of God as being absent is that we may assume that He is pleased with whatever we may be trying to do, as long as it is not downright wicked. There would seem to be no other way to account for the vast amount of religious nonsense being carried on these days in the name of the Lord.

Ambitious persons burned up with desire to promote the kingdom hatch up religious schemes so moronic as to be altogether beyond credibility, and which would never be believed by serious-minded persons if they were not put on display in every city, town and hamlet throughout the country.

Since Protestants have no pope to keep them in line and since God is too far away to be consulted, the only limit to our modern religious folly is the amount the people will stand; and present indications are that they will stand plenty and pay for it, too. That the divine method and manner for evangelizing the world and conducting public services are set forth in the Holy Scriptures never seems to occur to the busy planners whom an Absentee God has left in charge of His affairs while he is away.

At the far end of the spectrum are the conventional churches. I think it is the deep-seated notion that God is absent that makes so many of our church services so insufferably dull. When true believers gather around a present Christ, it is all but impossible to have a poor meeting. The drabbest sermon may be endured cheerfully when the sweet fragrance of Christ's presence fills the room. But nothing can save a meeting held in the name of an Absentee God." (A.W. Tozer, GTTMWC.)

The Voice of God Speaking

"I THINK IT MAY BE ACCEPTED AS AXIOMATIC that God is constantly trying to speak to men. He desires to communicate Himself, to impart holy ideas to those of His creatures capable of receiving them.

This divine impulse toward self-expression may account for the creation, particularly for God's having made intelligent and moral beings who could hear and understand truth. Among these beings man stands at the top, having been created in the image of God and so possessing purer and finer organs for the apprehension of whatever can be known of God. The Second Person of the Godhead is called the Word of God, that is, the mind of God in expression.

Concerning God's speaking to men there are two views, opposed to each other, it is true, but alike in that both are erroneous. One is that God spoke the holy Scriptures into being and then elapsed into silence, a silence that will not be broken till God calls all men before Him to judgment. God will then speak again as in olden days, but in the meantime we have the Bible as a deposit of embalmed truth which scribe and theologian must decipher as they can.

This view is held by the majority of evangelicals, allowing for some variation in detail, and is extremely injurious to the Christian's soul. It is injurious because it contains two false notions, one that God is no longer speaking and the other that we are shut up to our intellects for the understanding and apprehension of truth. According to this view, God is far away and wholly noncommunicative; and we, whether we like to admit it or not, are forced into a kind of evangelical rationalism, since according to this notion the human mind becomes the final arbiter of truth as well as the organ for its reception into the soul.

Now, the blessed fact is that God is not silent and has never been silent, but is speaking in His universe. The written Word is effective because, and only because, the Living Word is speaking in heaven and the Living Voice is sounding in the earth. "And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."

That the creative voice of God is constantly sounding throughout the creation is a truth forgotten by modern Christianity. Yet it was by His word that He called the world into being and it is by His word that all things are held together. It is the still voice of God in the heart of every human being that renders everyone culpable before the bar of God's judgment and convicts of sin even those who have never been exposed to the written Word.

The idea that the only mortal sin is the rejection of Christ and that men are not held accountable for sin in those parts of the world where the gospel has not been preached is a monstrous error. There is a light that lights every man that comes into the world. It is sin against light that destroys men, not the rejection of Christ, though that rejection leaves the sinner desolate in his sin and shuts him out forever from the forgiving love of God.

It is written that Christ upholds all things by the word of His power; and the word that upholds all things is the power-filled voice of God sounding vibrantly throughout the creation. The Bible is not, as some appear to think, God's last will and testament; it is, rather, the written expression of the mind of the Living God, inactive until the same breath that first inspired it breathes on it again.

The other and opposite error for the God-has-once-spoken error is that held by various kinds of liberals. It is that since God is vocal in His universe, there is no such thing as an inspired canon of Scripture containing a full body of revealed truth that can serve as the one final source of doctrine and practice. According to these gentlemen, the two ideas contradict each other. If God is still speaking, then we must keep our minds open to further revelation given, it may be, through poets, philosophers, scientists and novelists, as well as religionists of various kinds. Wherever new truth is discovered or new and advanced ideas are brought forth, there God is speaking again as He once spoke by the prophet and seer in olden days.

Certainly we must grant these men the right to believe what they will, as well as the right to teach what they believe. But one thing is settled: Whoever, for whatever reason, denies the finality of the biblical revelation and insists upon a continuing revelation having the same authority as the sacred Scriptures has shut himself out from the name of Christian. He is simply not a Christian in the scriptural and historic meaning of the word.

Between the ideas of a fixed biblical canon and a constantly speaking God, there is no contradiction. In the Scriptures God has caused to be written a full and sufficient body of truth. Holy men were moved by the Holy Spirit to record the words God knew would be best suited to teach doctrine, and to reprove, correct and instruct in righteousness. The point I make here is that if the living voice of God were not speaking in the world and in the hearts of men the written Word could have no real meaning for us. Because God is speaking in His world we are able to hear Him speak in His Word." (A.W. Tozer, God Tells the Man Who Cares, Ch. 2)

No April Fool's Joke

"We of the nonliturgical churches tend to look with some disdain upon those churches that follow a carefully prescribed form of service, certainly there must be a good deal in such services that has little or no meaning for the average participant—this not because it is carefully prescribed but because the average participant is what he is. But I have observed that our familiar impromptu service, planned by the leader twenty minutes before, often tends to follow a ragged and tired order almost as standardized as the Mass. The liturgical service is at least beautiful; ours is often ugly. Theirs has been carefully worked out through the centuries to capture as much of beauty as possible and to preserve a spirit of reverence among the worshipers. Ours is often an off-the-cuff makeshift with nothing to recommend it. Its so-called liberty is often not liberty at all but sheer slovenliness.

The theory is that if the meeting is unplanned the Holy Spirit will work freely, and that would be true if all the worshipers were reverent and Spirit-filled. But mostly there is neither order nor Spirit, just a routine prayer that is, except for minor variations, the same week after week, and a few songs that were never much to start with and have long ago lost all significance by meaningless repetition.

In the majority of our meetings there is scarcely a trace of reverent thought, no recognition of the unity of the body, little sense of the divine Presence, no moment of stillness, no solemnity, no wonder, no holy fear. But so often there is a dull or a breezy song leader full of awkward jokes, as well as a chairman announcing each "number" with the old radio continuity patter in an effort to make everything hang together.

The whole Christian family stands desperately in need of a restoration of penitence, humility and tears. May God send them soon." (A. W. Tozer, God Tells the Man Who Cares, Chapter 1)

The Gift of Prophetic Insight

“The critical need in this hour of the church’s history is not what it is so often said to be: soul-winning, foreign missions, miracles. These are effects, not causes. The most pressing need just now is that we who call ourselves Christians should frankly acknowledge to each other and to God that we are astray; that we should confess that we are worldly, that our moral standards are low and we are spiritually cold. We need to cease our multitude of unscriptural activities, stop running when and where we have not been sent, and cease trying to sanctify carnal projects by professing that we are promoting them “in the name of the Lord” and “for the glory of God.” We need to return to the message, methods and objectives of the New Testament. We need boldly and indignantly to cleanse the temple of all that sell cattle in the holy place, and overthrow the tables of the money-changers. And this must be done in our own lives first and then in the churches of which we are a part.” (A. W. Tozer, The Gift of Prophetic Insight, Part II.)

The Old Cross and the New by A. W. Tozer

All unannounced and mostly undetected there has come in modern times a new cross into popular evangelical circles. It is like the old cross, but different: the likenesses are superficial; the differences, fundamental.
From this new cross has sprung a new philosophy of the Christian life, and from that new philosophy has come a new evangelical technique—a new type of meeting and a new kind of preaching. This new evangelism employs the same language as the old, but its content is not the same and its emphasis not as before.
The old cross would have no truck with the world. For Adam’s proud flesh it meant the end of the journey. It carried into effect the sentence imposed by the law of Sinai. The new cross is not opposed to the human race; rather, it is a friendly pal and, if understood aright, it is the source of oceans of good clean fun and innocent enjoyment. It lets Adam live without interference. His life motivation is unchanged; he still lives for his own pleasure, only now he takes delight in singing choruses and watching religious movies instead of singing bawdy songs and drinking hard liquor. The accent is still on enjoyment, though the fun is now on a higher plane morally if not intellectually.
The new cross encourages a new and entirely different evangelistic approach. The evangelist does not demand abnegation of the old life before a new life can be received. He preaches not contrasts but similarities. He seeks to key into public interest by showing that Christianity makes no unpleasant demands; rather, it offers the same thing the world does, only on a higher level. Whatever the sin-mad world happens to be clamoring after at the moment is cleverly shown to be the very thing the gospel offers, only the religious product is better.
The new cross does not slay the sinner, it redirects him. It gears him into a cleaner and jollier way of living and saves his self-respect. To the self-assertive it says, “Come and assert yourself for Christ.” To the egotist it says, “Come and do your boasting in the Lord.” To the thrillseeker it says, “Come and enjoy the thrill of Christian fellowship.” The Christian message is slanted in the direction of the current vogue in order to make it acceptable to the public.
The philosophy back of this kind of thing may be sincere but its sincerity does not save it from being false. It is false because it is blind. It misses completely the whole meaning of the cross.
The old cross is a symbol of death. It stands for the abrupt, violent end of a human being. The man in Roman times who took up his cross and started down the road had already said good-by to his friends. He was not coming back. He was going out to have it ended. The cross made no compromise, modified nothing, spared nothing; it slew all of the man, completely and for good. It did not try to keep on good terms with its victim. It struck cruel and hard, and when it had finished its work, the man was no more.
The race of Adam is under death sentence. There is no commutation and no escape. God cannot approve any of the fruits of sin, however innocent they may appear or beautiful to the eyes of men. God salvages the individual by liquidating him and then raising him again to newness of life.
That evangelism which draws friendly parallels between the ways of God and the ways of men is false to the Bible and cruel to the souls of its hearers. The faith of Christ does not parallel the world, it intersects it. In coming to Christ we do not bring our old life up onto a higher plane; we leave it at the cross. The corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die.
We who preach the gospel must not think of ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ and the world. We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, the world of sports or modern education. We are not diplomats but prophets, and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum.
God offers life, but not an improved old life. The life He offers is life out of death. It stands always on the far side of the cross. Whoever would possess it must pass under the rod. He must repudiate himself and concur in God’s just sentence against him. What does this mean to the individual, the condemned man who would find life in Christ Jesus? How can this theology be translated into life? Simply, he must repent and believe. He must forsake his sins and then go on to forsake himself. Let him cover nothing, defend nothing, excuse nothing. Let him not seek to make terms with God, but let him bow his head before the stroke of God’s stern displeasure and acknowledge himself worthy to die.
Having done this let him gaze with simple trust upon the risen Saviour, and from Him will come life and rebirth and cleansing and power. The cross that ended the earthly life of Jesus now puts an end to the sinner; and the power that raised Christ from the dead now raises him to a new life along with Christ.
To any who may object to this or count it merely a narrow and private view of truth, let me say God has set His hallmark of approval upon this message from Paul’s day to the present. Whether stated in these exact words or not, this has been the content of all preaching that has brought life and power to the world through the centuries. The mystics, the reformers, the revivalists have put their emphasis here, and signs and wonders and mighty operations of the Holy Ghost gave witness to God’s approval.
Dare we, the heirs of such a legacy of power, tamper with the truth? Dare we with our stubby pencils erase the lines of the blueprint or alter the pattern shown us in the Mount? May God forbid. Let us preach the old cross and we will know the old power.

On Christians Contending For Their Faith by John Wycliffe

“All Christians should be the soldiers of Christ. But it is plain that many are charge­able with great neglect of this duty; being prevented by fear of the loss of temporal goods and worldly friendships, and apprehensive about life and fortune, from faithfully setting forth the cause of God, from standing manfully in its defense, and if need be, from suffering death in its be­half. From the like source comes that subterfuge of Satan, argued by some of our modern hypocrites, that it cannot be a duty now, as in the primitive church, to suffer mar­tyrdom, since in our time the great majority of men being believers, there are none to persecute Christ to the death in his members. But this is, without doubt, a device of Satan to shield sin. For the believer, in maintaining the law of Christ, should be prepared, as his soldier, to endure all things at the hands of the satraps of this world; de­claring boldly to Pope and Cardinals, to Bishops and Pre­lates, how unjustly, according to the teaching of the Gos­pel, they serve God in their offices, subjecting those committed to their care to great injury and peril, such as must bring on them speedy destruction. All this applies, indeed, to temporal lords, but not in so great a degree as to the clergy; for as the abomination of desolation begins with a perverted clergy, so the consolation begins with a converted clergy. Hence we Christians need not visit pagans to convert them, by enduring martyrdom in their behalf; we have only to declare with constancy the Word of God before Caesarean Prelates, and straightway the flower of martyrdom will be ready to our hand!” (The English Bible by H.C. Conant; p.58-59)

The Great Evangelical Disaster

"Here is the great evangelical disaster -- the failure of the evangelical world to stand for truth as truth. There is only one word for this -- namely accommodation: the evangelical church has accommodated to the world spirit of the age. First, there has been accommodation on Scripture, so that many who call themselves evangelicals hold a weakened view of the Bible and no longer affirm the truth of all the Bible teaches -- truth not only in religious matters but in the areas of science and history and morality. As part of this, many evangelicals are now accepting the higher critical methods in the study of the Bible. Remember, it was these same methods which destroyed the authority of the Bible for the Protestant church in Germany in the last century, and which have destroyed the Bible for the liberal in our own country from the beginning of this century. And second, there has been accommodation on the issues, with no clear stand being taken even on matters of life and death.
This accommodation has been costly, first in destroying the power of the Scriptures to confront the spirit of our age; second, in allowing the further slide of our culture. Thus we must say with tears that it is the evangelical accommodation to the world spirit around us, to the wisdom of this age, which removes the evangelical church from standing against the further breakdown of our culture. It is my firm belief that when we stand before Jesus Christ, we will find that it has been the weakness and accommodation of the evangelical group on the issues of the day that has been largely responsible for the loss of the Christian ethos which has taken place in the area of culture in our own country over the last forty to sixty years. And let us understand that to accommodate to the world spirit about us in our age is nothing less than the most gross form of worldliness in the proper definition of that word. And with this proper definition of worldliness, we must say with tears that, with exceptions, the evangelical church is worldly and not faithful to the living Christ." (Francis A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, Ch. 1)

CHRISTIAN MORALITY IN LEADERSHIP

The Character of a Good Ruler – 1694

Now that all these may be just, it is firstly required that they have a principle of moral honesty in them and swaying of them; that they ‘love righteousness and hate iniquity’; that they be ‘men of truth.’ Exodus xviii, 21. For every man will act in his relation, according to the principle that rules in him: so that an unrighteous man will be an unrighteous ruler, so far as he hath opportunity.

“They must also be acquainted with the rules of righteousness; they must know what is just and what is unjust, be ‘able men,’ Exodus xviii., 21. For, though men may know and not do, yet ‘without knowledge the mind cannot be good.’ Ignorance is a foundation for error, and will likely produce it, when the man applies himself to act; and if he do right at any time it is but by guess, which is a poor commendation.

Again, he must be one that respects the cause, and not the persons, in all his administrations, Deut. i., 17: ‘Ye shall not respect persons in judgment,’ etc. If his affections oversway his judgment at any time, they will be a crooked bias, that will turn him out of the way, and that shall be justice in one man’s case, which will not be so in another.

Furthermore, he must be one whom neither flattery or bribery may be able to remove out of his way, Deut. xvi., 19: ‘Thou shalt not wrest judgment, thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift;’ and hence he must be one who hates both ambition and covetousness; Ex. xviii. 21 ‘Hating covetousness,’ which word signifies, a greedy desire, and is applicable to both forecited vices; for if these rule over him, he will never be a just ruler.

Finally, he must be one who prefers the public benefit above all private and separate interests whatsoever. Every man in his place owes himself to the good of the whole, and if he doth not so devote himself, he is unjust; and he who either to advance himself, or to be revenged on another, will push on injurious laws, or pervert the true intention of such as are in force, is an unjust man; and he is under the influence of a narrow spirit, will be ready to so, as occasion offers.

Nor is this justice to be looked upon as separate from the fear of God, but as influenced and maintained by it. He therefore that ‘ruleth in the fear of God,’ is one who acknowledgeth God to be his sovereign, and carries in his heart an awful fear of him; who owns his commission to be from him, and expects ere long to be called to give an account of his managing of it; which maketh him to study in all things to please him, and to be afraid of doing any thing that will provoke him.

And accordingly he is a student of the Law of God, and ‘meditates in it day and night;’ making it the rule which he ultimately resolves all that he doth in his place. We find that in the old law, the king was to write a copy of it in his own hand, and to make use of it at all times; Deut. xvii. 18, 19.

If he hath any thing to do with the making of laws, he will consult a good conscience, and what may be pleasing to God, and will be far from ‘framing mischief by a law.’ And if he be to execute any laws of men, he will dare not give a judgment for such an one as directly crosseth the command of God, but counts it ipso facto void, and his conscience acquitted of his oath.

Yea, the fear of God will make him not to think himself lawless; nor dare to bear witness, y laws and penalties, against sins in others, which he countenanceth and encourageth by living in the practice of himself. But to use utmost endeavors that his own life may be an exemplification of obedience, and others may learn by him what a veneration he hath for the laws that are enacted for the good of mankind.

In word, he is one that will take care to promote piety, as well as honesty, among men; and do his utmost that the true religion may be countenanced and established and that all ungodliness, as well as unrighteousness, may have a due testimony borne against it at all times. So he resolves, Psal. lxxv., 10: ‘All the horns of the wicked also will I cut off; bbut the horns of the righteous shall be exhalted.’

The above excerpt is by Samuel Willard 1640-1707 as published in Library of American Literature by Stedmon and Hutchinson, 1889. (The Christian History of the Constitution of the United States of America: Christian Self Government, Verna M. Hall, Foundation for America Christian Education, San Francisco, CA, 1966, pp. 396-397)

What Happened to Biblical Authority?

"To reform the Church a sufficient authority had to be found to replace the all-embracing authority of the medieval Church. It had to be absolute and unquestioned, having its source in itself and not in the Church which had determined its precise form. It was John Wyclif who persuaded those who were willing to hear that the Bible was such an authority, and this conviction of his came to be accepted by the leaders of the Reformation in the sixteenth century." John Stacey, John Wyclif and Reform. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1964, p. 87.

Much discussion goes on these days, especially in fundamentalist circles, about the reliability of the Bibles we use and their faithfulness to the original Hebrew and Greek Texts. There is a difference in the underlying texts that are available today: one stream that has been preserved by believing men and one stream that is the product of unbelieving "scholarship." Caveat emptor.

I am convinced that the lack of authority in American evangelicalism and fundamentalism can be traced back to this issue: real doubt regarding the reliability, authenticity and infallibility of the book they hold in their hands and call God's words.

Evangelicals and Fundamentalists have been duped into accepting as legitimate "scholarship" which finds its beginning, middle and end based on humanistic rationalism. As they clamor for acceptance by the world...to "be like all the other nations..." they cut their own throats and display an arrogance unsurpassed in modern history. They become subject to the cultures around them, as Israel in the book of Judges, at the hand of God and are oppressed by them...and they wonder why.

There must be an external, authoritative immutable point of reference which is the judge of all men and their actions, as Stacey says above, an authority not determined by the church and not subject to it. Otherwise, as has happened here in America, Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism becomes the shill for greedy, immoral American corporate leaders whose one goal seems to be the exploitation of any and all who can provide the resources for the succes of their pursuit of profit. (I watched The Constant Gardner last nite. If you really want to see what our right-wing, conservative politics produces take a look at this film.)

Corporate American exploitation and global imperialism must end. American Christianity must get a grip on reality and return to the authority which is unchangeable, is not "right-wing," does not originate in Texas, does not mouthe adherence to Biblical precept and with every act and action show itself for what it truly is: gross avarice and greed.

So why all the fuss about having a Bible which one can be sure contains the words of God? Well, we were commanded to "keep (guard and preserve) that which is committed to thy trust (deposit), avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called (pseudo-science): Which some professing have erred (deviated) concerning the faith (truthfulness of God). Grace be with thee. Amen." I Timothy 6: 20.

John Wyclliffe believed that the Church could and should be reformed so as to align again with that eternal standard which is the measure of all and the judge of all. To know what God thinks we must know what He has said...

Wycliffe...On Giving An Account

“Further, since all Christians, as the apostle teaches in 2 Cor. v. 10, must stand before Christ’s tribunal and give and account of all the gifts He bestowed upon them, it is necessary that all the faithful should know those gifts and their use, so that their answer may be plain. No answer by a prelate or attorney will then avail, but each will be required to answer for himself.”
John Wyclif, Speculum Secularium Dominorum, (as found in John Wyclif, Select English Writings, Edited by Herbert E. Winn. London: Oxford University Press, 1929, P. 6) P. 74.

On The Seeker Friendly Church

God is trying to tell us that our current popular version of Christianity - comfortable, humorous, superficial, entertaining, worldly-wise - is exposed for the irreverent presentation of the Gospel of Christ that it really is. A preacher is commissioned to give people - not what they want - but what they need. No man has any business walking into the pulpit to entertain. He is there to present Calvary in all it's fullness of hope and glory.--Alan Redpath

Mega Church Model: 'Em I Blendin', Baby?

The start page for msn.com today has a slide show entitled An Anatomy of Megachurches: The new look for places of worship. (posted Oct. 10, 2005; Witold Rybczynski). It is a very interesting discussion of the architecture styles used in building the Mega Churches of today.

The author seems to understand that there is a definite approach to designing the new Mega church buildings as compared to church buildings in the past. The author marvels that there are no overtly religious symbols used on the new Mega church buildings and in fact the new Mega church monoliths more resemble corporate centers or performing arts centers than churches.

The key statement made in this presentation that I find absolutely epitomizes the entire philosophy of the Purpose Driven Church/Schuller/Hybels/Warren mentality is this quote:

"The largest religious assembly space in the country is the recently completed Conference Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in downtown Salt Lake City. It was built to accommodate 21,000 people for the Semiannual General Conference of church members, but it also houses the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and is used for church pageants. The approach of the architects, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca of Portland, Ore., shows the influence megachurches have had on mainstream religions. The ecclesiastical imagery is confined to the giant pipe organ. The arena seating, the mainstream decor, the profusion of lighting and television broadcasting equipment, as well as the surrounding lobbies and vestibules, are distinctly secular. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

The exterior architecture of the Conference Center is more architecturally ambitious than most megachurches. It recalls Depression-era stripped classicism, the sort of thing that Paul Cret did—with much more conviction—in buildings such as the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Federal Reserve Board Building in Washington, D.C. What is remarkable about the Salt Lake City building, however, is the landscaped roof, which includes stairs, terraces, fountains, and reflecting pools. The design, by the Olin Partnership, is not historical and contains no religious symbols. Yet, like most parks, it has a contemplative, quasi-religious atmosphere. The central features are a three-acre alpine garden, dramatic views of the surrounding mountains, and the spires of the Salt Lake Temple. The landscaping, which steps down the walls of the building, shrouds it in a veil of greenery. And it provides an answer to the question of how to design a megachurch: Make it disappear."

I live in southwest Georgia. The folks here have a very unique and soothing southern drawl and my step-father is no exception. Due to physical limitations he is unable to turn his head any more that fifteen degrees in either direction. When he and my mom are out driving and enter a part of the street or highway where they must merge with oncoming traffic he will turn to my mom and ask:

"'Em I blendin', baybay?"

I think the mega church masters have stolen my step-dad's idea as it seems this is their goal as well with all this Purpose Driven madness: to blend until they disappear!

Whether they are cognizant or not, the mega maniacs, if followed, will accomplish their goal of "making the Church disappear" with their "blendin'" techniques and philosophy. What makes this doubly tragic is they are laughing all the way to bank with the millions they are making on the sales of all of their "Jesus Junk." (i.e. t-shirts, coffee mugs, book markers, Study Bibles, devotionals, fridge magnets, doilies, etc...etc...etc...)

What a marketing marvel the Purpose Driven Church movement is...! I wonder if Peter Drucker is proud?

On Adapting Worship To the Tastes of Culture

On Adapting Worship to the Tastes of Culture

“Jesus taught his disciples that God wants to be worshipped in spirit and in truth (John 4: 23). A great deal can be said about the spirit of modern Christian worship, and we shall turn to it later. But here truth is at stake. It ought to be clear that we cannot have both syncretism and truth in worship. The two are mutually exclusive. Syncretism is a part of the twentieth-century mood, but truth is part of the nature of God. If we want our worship, or attempts at worship, to mean anything, we have to strive to conform it to the nature and will of God, and not to the mood or taste of the twentieth-century.

In twentieth-century America, with its millions of well-intentioned but fuzzy-minded “good Christian people,” we rejoice—in certain circles, anyway—when church attendance rises, and are concerned when it declines. This is a mistake. Throughout our fair land, a good many of our churches are in the position of the Philistines’ temple at Ashdod. They are trying to worship two or more deities, which are not mutually compatible. The God of the Bible cannot coexist peacefully in the temple with a Dagon----either Dagon will wind up in pieces, or God will leave, or both….

It is often warned that the doctrinal foundations of Christianity are under severe and prolonged attack, and that we must rally to their protection. That is true. The neglect of doctrine is fatal. But even sound doctrine must be put into practice---that is its whole purpose---and from the nature of Christianity it must be put into practice in the worship of God. Until we recognize and act upon the principle of truth in worship, we are in danger of creating a new Ashdod instead of the New Jerusalem.” (Brown, Harold O. J., The Protest of a Troubled Protestant, Arlington House, 1969, pp. 31, 43.)