Interview with Difference Maker, Part 1

2 Jan

First let me apologize for my extended absence.  It’s been over four months since my last post — and it has been one whirlwind four months on the personal side.  Victories and trials aplenty.  In reality, at least for a while, my posting will remain infrequent but I do hope to post now and then until my family gets through some of the events happening in our lives right now.  (Is that all ambiguous enough?)

However, I think I have a jewel of a post today, leading off a bit of a series.  Today I am posting an interview with Karsten Miller, aka Difference Maker from Difference Maker Bible Study.  Karsten’s blog is rich in spiritual content, often in video form for you vlog lovers.  He has a Facebook page, a Twitter page, and a YouTube channel.  He has developed a number of Bible studies over the years, including expositions of James and Galatians.  He also links to some other rare (IMO) gems in the blogosphere and sermon world.  I commend his blog to you as a daily stop.  By some odd twist of fate, he is both a Baltimorian… and a Cowboys fan.  Go figure!

I tapped Karsten about doing a short interview series because of his interesting background.  Karsten is about as biblically solid as they come, but he comes from a somewhat eclectic religious background, having spent long stretches in the Charismatic and Word-Faith (WoF) movements.  It is his insight in these areas that I wanted to explore, and to use his “in-the-trenches” experience to highlight some of the dangers of these movements.  Prayerfully, this interview will serve as a resource for those who are involved in these movements and to inform those who are curious about them.  So, without further ado:

Karsten MillerTell us briefly how you became involved in the Charismatic and Word of Faith movements.

I came, as a Christian, to the WoF and Charismatic movements because of my own desires for more outward “manifestations” of spirituality, believing these manifestations were the avenues to true growth in Christianity. The United Methodist church I attended prior did not provide experiences of manifesting the so-called gifts of the Spirit. These other churches did. I left the United Methodist church along with my wife (when I say left, I mean did a lot of church-hopping) and searched for a church which fit my experiences. I honestly thought I could hear audibly from God Himself, as well as through dreams and visions, and speaking in tongues (which I believed I could interpret by saying some things that I thought sounded super spiritual). So I found churches through friends which met such criteria. Usually by word-of-mouth men tell you which churches are promoting such genre. Also, the television (TBN, Daystar) plays an important role in finding these edifices. Their false prophets and teachers masqueraded daily on these channels offer every opportunity to taste of the devil’s pie.

When and how did you realize that you didn’t want to be a part of it?

Truly, God used His Word (the 66 books of the Holy Writ) to convince me that the path I was traveling was not the way of the Lord Jesus Christ. Mainly, my derailment came through a true understanding of prophecy. I used to prophelie (to prophecy lies). I believed that God would tell me things, so I determined I had the gift of prophecy. In particular, in 2003 I prophelied about a couple not marrying but the couple got married. My loving wife began to question whether what I was saying was truly from God. I searched and searched the Word diligently, trying to find where a prophet ever prophesied incorrectly. Never found it. The scripture which brought me to repent of my sin was: “Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.” (Proverbs 30:5-6)  I realized from this point, all the things I had been declaring were blaspheming the Lord Jesus Christ, so I repented and threw all my books and so-called written prophecies away; never to return to them. I left the churches which had entertained me for about 5 years and turned to searching for a biblical church.

I must admit that coming out of these circles is by the grace of God. The love of Christ truly runs deep for His church (Ephesians 5:25-27). This doesn’t mean the effects of those teachings just brushed right away. These teachings ruin marriages, relationships, and require one to carefully examine the biblical text in order to be free from its reigns. It took the Word of God to convince me of my strong desire to follow after these imaginations. I will advocate that there two major entities enlarging these WoF movements: the devil and the flesh.

More soon!
Tom

Book Review: Reclaiming Adoption

15 Aug

Reclaiming AdoptionReclaiming Adoption is a collection of essays compiled by Dan Cruver, the director of the national Together for Adoption ministry.  At 107 pages, it’s a small book and you’d think you’d just kind of breeze through it.  But the subject matter is a bit more dense so I found myself pausing often, meditating on what I just read.

In short, the book walks you through the various aspects of the theology of adoption and its implications.  The essay chapters are pretty short but they pack a lot of information into them.  This book really deserves to be twice as big because a lot of the ideas merit being fleshed out a good deal.  (Note: I suspect this is not entirely the authors’ and editor’s faults.  Cruciform Press, the publisher, attempts to keep its books in the 100-page range.  The authors work well within these constraints.)  While the doctrine of adoption itself is sorely undertaught or mis-applied in our churches and this book attempts to “reclaim” it, the book also takes some things for granted.  For example, Cruver’s chapter “Adoption and Our Union with Christ” says this:

Personally, I suspect that Paul intentionally used “adoption” as a shorthand or code word for our union with Christ.  Adoption and union are that closely joined.

  • If we can be adopted without being in Christ, there is no need for Jesus.
  • If we can be in Christ without being adopted by the Father, there is no Trinity.
  • If adoption and union with Christ are not essentially the same thing, there is no gospel.

(p. 51)

Now those are some very bold statements but, unfortunately, the ideas aren’t fleshed out – at least not fully.  The context helps me understand what he’s getting at but these statements almost seem as though they are just tossed in there to support his larger point (the prominence that adoption should have in the gospel).  On the other hand, maybe I’m just being lazy.  The book did cause me to pause and process it on my own rather than nodding my head through it.  Even so, I found myself nodding anyway!

The book is loaded with some insightful gems and causes you to look at the gospel and your relation to it in challenging ways.  In that same chapter, Cruver says, “Our missional engagement as Christians is not an imitation of Christ and his mission.  It is a participation in Christ and his mission.” (p. 53)  Several pages later, Richard D. Phillips says, “If we will fully embrace what God’s Word teaches about what we have been saved to [not just from] – the structure, content, privileges, and obligations of our personal relationship with God – our experience of the gospel will be revolutionized… We have been saved to God through adoption.” (p. 58)  These types of statements, really, are quite life-changing because, like any gospel-saturated statement, it places the emphasis squarely on the person of Christ.  They change how you look at your salvation and your missional calling.

Generally speaking, adoption is given a hand-wave in our churches.  We really just don’t quite “get it” – what it means that we were spiritual orphans, brought together under one Father as a family, and called to engage in his family business.  It’s given so little attention that, at first, it’s hard to swallow how ingrained it is in the gospel but the authors do a good job of bringing that truth to light.  Reclaiming Adoption explores what it means to adopted, to understand our identity as a child of God, and the impact that should have on our view of “true religion” – caring for orphans and widows.

Tom

Gods After Their Own Fashion

8 Aug

Norman Rockwell Self-Portrait

Source: Saturday Evening Post

How many conversations have you had that go something like, Jesus the only way? No, no way — he was a great teacher and a really moral person but… he’s not God.  There’s no proof he resurrected or anything.  But I believe in God and that if you’re good enough you’ll go to heaven.  Never mind the fact that this person is a theologian in denial — do you see what happened there?  Such a person believes there is a god, that there’s a heaven. He even describes (however ambiguously) how this god decides who comes into his Heaven.  Underneath all of this is that he believes that, in some sense, he will be at Heaven’s gate.  Yet he rejects Jesus and the resurrection out of hand.

Before we explore how statements such as our friend’s is self-defeating, let’s revisit an important little passage buried in the middle of the New Testament:

Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised ; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.
(1 Cor 15:12-19)

Paul is dealing with the resurrection naysayers.  He makes the resurrection paramount in the gospel, that if there is no resurrection, we’re all still damned and the Christian’s faith is useless.  Now here’s where I’m going with this: how can someone deny the impossibility of a resurrection out-of-hand – even Christ’s who, above all men, “deserves” a resurrection – yet in the same breath affirm an afterlife?  This is as paradoxical as it is hypocritical.

We live in an age where humanism is dominant.  We demand evidence; miracles are impossible because evolution and naturalism are true.  Yet there are those – many!  even so-called Christians! – who affirm a mostly naturalistic worldview and yet cling to some ambiguous notion of Heaven!  By even saying there is a heaven, let alone that you’ll be there, is itself a belief in a resurrection, that you (or some part of you) will last beyond your heart’s last beat.  It’s a belief in eternal life.  What’s more, such a belief is, in naturalistic terms, unsubstantiated.

Yet when a Christian gives some meat and substance to the semi-naturalist’s wishful thinking by describing how man is an image-bearer of God, the problem of sin, the solution in Christ, and the necessity of his resurrection, it’s met with condescension, scorn, and mockery at how such a person could believe such a thing in this modern age.

Such naturalistic agnostics are inconsistent, unable to account for their own “faith.”  Really, it should tune their ears more to the truth of the gospel.  If there is a heaven, wouldn’t you want to know what the One who created has to say about how you get there?  About what he has to say about himself… or about you?  Or are such things impossible?  If you say such a revelation is impossible, then you ought to drop your own beliefs.  If you say it is possible, then what real reason do you have for rejecting the resurrection of Christ?  You are content with an imaginary god you have formed after your own fashion — that is why.

The Christian is to be most pitied if the resurrection is false, but that doesn’t let the non-Christian off the hook.  But since the resurrection is true, I would argue that those who wish for heaven but ignore the overtures of the gospel are to be the most pitied.  Heed the resurrection of the One who has the power to save!

In Christ
Tom

Proving Your Metal

1 Aug

Crash Test

Source: AutoBlog.com

Ah, trials.

Who couldn’t use a big fat trial right about now to grease the ol’ gears of the sanctification process?  I know I could!  Yessir.

Except that’s not how we normally think, is it?  We might be able to use it – but that’s not the same thing as wanting it, is it?  The reality of life for the believer is that God uses trials to refine us and glorify himself.  Divorced from the truths of the Bible, that’s a tough pill to swallow.

I am convinced that one reason trials as a reality of life are such horse pills to us is because we do not understand the difference between being tested and being tempted.  These are both very biblical concepts with very different meanings and purposes, yet we not only conflate the two terms, we conflate their sources.  We may never admit out loud that God tempts us, but that’s how we act when we begrudge our trials and wonder “why?”  We know the Bible says that God does not tempt (James 1:13) yet we act as though he does.

Is it comforting in any way to know that while God does not tempt, he does test you?  For example, as King Hezekiah became exceedingly rich, “God left him alone only to test him, that He might know all that was in his heart” (2 Chr 32:31).  When God led the Jews out of Egypt, he gave them the Sabbath ordinance “that I may test them, whether or not they will walk in My instruction” (Exo 16:4).  Abraham was tested by God (Gen 22:1) when commanded to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice; afterwards God told him, “Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me” (v12).

All of these were trials, even when things seemed like they were going good, and God was using the trials to test them.  Testing, in these contexts, has to do with proving the quality of something.  Manufacturers test their products.  Your car would not be considered safe unless it had been put through rigorous tests to make sure it would hold up under specific conditions.  The point of the tests is not to destroy the product, but to prove how much it can withstand.  Just like when you see those ads where they run a car into an immovable wall to test whether the car will protect the dummy passengers, God uses trials to test our faith.  Like Hezekiah, he tests us to know all that is in our hearts.  Trials are our litmus test.  James says that the “testing of your faith produces endurance” (James 1:5).  Peter told his suffering readers that the reason for their suffering was “so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:7).  The testing refines us; it proves what we are made of.  True gold will endure the flames; fake gold will melt away.

Yet trials are also temptations.  Temptation is not interested in ensuring quality; its purpose is to destroy and corrupt.  Using our previous example, if testing is driving the car into the wall to ensure passenger safety, then temptation is driving the car into the wall for sheer delight, watching blissfully as those dummies are tossed through the windshield.  While God tests to ensure quality, it is Satan (Matt 4:1-3; 1 Thes 3:5; 1 Cor 7:5) and our flesh that tempts (James 1:14).

A trial is simultaneously a test and temptation; they are two sides of the same coin.  To give into temptation is to fail the test; to pass the test is to resist temptation.  And therein is the beauty: God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able (1 Cor 10:13).  Paul’s point to the Corinthians is not that God will always get us out of the trial, but that he will equip us to endure it.  Perhaps even more beautiful is the fact that when we do fail tests, God is still faithful (1 John 1:9; Php 1:6).  He uses those failures to notify us of his need for him.  Indeed, our time on earth is one giant trial consisting of many smaller trials.  Failure in a smaller trial does not constitute failure in the larger.

Master Lock

Source: MasterLock.com

What better example is there of this duality than Job?  In Job 1:6-12, we see these two principles at work in full force.  God is not interested in seeing Job sin.  He delights in his righteousness (v8), yet also wants to sanctify him (which we see later in chapter 42).  Satan, on the other hand, is interested in seeing Job curse God (1:11).  Ultimately, Job endured a great trial while being both tested and tempted.  Though he stumbled and struggled with grappling with his reality, God equipped him to persevere.  By God’s grace, Job’s quality was proven.  Job was a true believer, and his endurance proved it.

Though, like Job, we do not fully grasp the depths of our trials, we can take heart that God has quickened us to endure and persevere.  He is conforming us to his image, not destroying us.  He himself has been tempted and knows how to rescue us from temptation (2 Pet 2:9).  If you have a root, you will endure.  It is only those who have no root in Christ that will be blown away by temptation (Luke 8:13).  Ultimately, it is our endurance that proves who we are in the first place (Heb 3:14).

Christian, let God work his perfect work (Php 1:6; James 1:4).  Let us see that testing explains any circumstance.  Let us pray to see our trials as God sees them: as opportunities to hold fast, to glorify our Master, to prove the will of God (Rom 12:2).  Let us not yield to the temptation to curse God.

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
(James 1:2-4)

In Christ
Tom

The “L” Word in the Passover

25 Jul

One of my favorite Christian artists is a guy named Shai Linne.  He has this song called “Mission Accomplished” from his album The Atonement.  Here’s a sample:

Here’s a controversial subject that tends to divide
For years it’s had Christians lining up on both sides
By God’s grace, I’ll address this without pride
The question concerns those for whom Christ died
Was He trying to save everybody worldwide?
Was He trying to make the entire world His Bride?
Does man’s unbelief keep the Savior’s hands tied?
Biblically, each of these must be denied
It’s true, Jesus gave up His life for His Bride
But His Bride is the elect, to whom His death is applied

The theological term that Shai is dealing with here is Limited (or Definite) Atonement.  Limited Atonement is the third cog in the Doctrines of Grace wheel, perhaps the most controversial of the five points.  It teaches that Jesus Christ only died for those who have been chosen by God, and not all people.  In other words, the atonement of Christ is limited in scope to a particular people: his children.

One might wonder if this is something “new,” a doctrine birthed during the Reformation because it necessarily fits in with the other elements of TULIP.  While the Reformation might have put a label to it, I would submit that this is a teaching that transcends time.  It was foreshadowed in the Old Testament just like the other Doctrines of Grace (Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints).  Which leads me to this:

Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and take for yourselves lambs according to your families, and slay the Passover lamb. You shall take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood which is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and the two doorposts ; and none of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning. 23 For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians ; and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to smite you.”
(Exo 12:21-23)

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the ordinance of the Passover: no foreigner is to eat of it; but every man’s slave purchased with money, after you have circumcised him, then he may eat of it. A sojourner or a hired servant shall not eat of it. It is to be eaten in a single house; you are not to bring forth any of the flesh outside of the house, nor are you to break any bone of it. All the congregation of Israel are to celebrate this. But if a stranger sojourns with you, and celebrates the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near to celebrate it; and he shall be like a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person may eat of it.”
(Exo 12:43-48)

Blood on the DoorpostsI’m going to assume that we all agree that the Passover lamb is a type of Christ, that we can see more or less that it was the sacrifice of the Passover lambs that allowed them to escape the slavery of Egypt, and that this foreshadows the fact that Christ’s sacrifice allows us to escape the judgment of God and slavery to sin.

With that in mind, take a look at what God is communicating to the Israelites in these passages and ask yourself these questions.  Who are these sacrifices for?  Are there specific people in mind?  Are these sacrifices, in any way, meant to spare those outside of the households?  What conditions must be met by those desiring to be saved?  What happens to those outside of the households with blood on the doorposts?

I believe as you answer these questions, the point becomes clearer: these sacrifices, like Jesus’, were intended to save a particular group of people in a particular way.  When the time of judgment came, the Lord looked for the blood of the lamb; if it was there, the household was saved; if not, the firstborn died.  In all cases, however, something died – it was just a matter of who (or what), either the lamb or the firstborn child.  Those who wished to be spared had to be circumcised, which further showed that the blood only protected those who submitted to God’s way.  In no way did the blood of these lambs cover, protect, or enable those outside the households.  It was completely ineffective for those outside the homes of the Jews.

Further, we see God’s sovereignty in this.  Those who applied the blood to the doorpost were those whom God had chosen.  Why did he choose the Jews and the foreigners under their roofs?  Because he foresaw their obedience?  No – to glorify himself.  He did it simply because he loved them.  “The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”  (Deut 7:7-8)  The blood of the lambs that the Israelites swabbed on their doorposts was God’s sovereign way of protecting them from his wrath.

And so it is with us.  God’s ways have not changed.  He still chooses his people.  He still loves us because of his sovereign will.  He still actually saves; he doesn’t just hand us the keys for us to stick in the ignition ourselves.  The Passover lambs were slaughtered for his chosen people; likewise, the Lamb of God was slaughtered for his children.  This is not new.  God is the same yesterday, today, and forever!  So let’s let Shai remind us:

It’s true, Jesus gave up His life for His Bride
But His Bride is the elect, to whom His death is applied

Amen!

In Christ
Tom

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