Month: May 2018

The Old Testament is Gone?

So, according to pastor Andy Stanley, well-known pastor/evangelist in Alpharetta, Georgia, modern Christians should “unhitch” their minds from the Old Testament. Yes, he avers, it is inspired, but it is not necessary; in fact, it is a drag on many moderns, including, specifically, modern Christians.

Say this about Stanley: he’s not timid. Only a handful of far-left, literally “outside the pale” theological types have ever suggested such a breach throughout two thousand years of Christian history. 

Personally, since I was saved at seventeen, I have always felt “helped by” not “hitched to” the OT.

But the facts: 

1. Not a single NT author did not quote the OT; that alone should give us pause from throwing it away. Shall we unhitch from their OT quotes? 

2. The websites indicate that the NT has over 250 direct quotations from the OT, with over 1000 references or partial quotations. No unhitching there! 

3. The NT opens, in two of the gospels, with lengthy genealogies, spanning from creation to Jesus, as if to say, “You cannot possibly appreciate what you’re about to read if you don’t take about 1500 hundreds of years of history seriously.” Or “How is it possible to understand the crowning act of the divine drama if you don’t have some acquaintance with His previous fifty acts? You want the denouement of the story without a set-up?” Literature students regularly get flunked for that sort of a thing.

4. Jesus quotes from twenty-four OT books. Too bad He didn’t get the memo from Alpharetta.

5. Many early Jews and Christians memorized the entirety of what we call the OT; what a prodigious waste!

6. The NT explicitly, and often, states that what happened to the people of the OT period are to be “examples’ for NT believers. (I Cor. 10:6, Jude 7, James 5:10, and many others.) How about the entire eleventh chapter of Hebrews with its scores of heroes of the faith—all from the OT?

Interestingly, Pastor Stanley focuses on the church council reported in Acts 15, at which the question as to whether or not converted gentiles should be forced to keep the Jewish law was dealt with. This is where, he says, the “unhitching” occurred. Past tense. The decision was critical, and the issue was a burning one. Is a person saved by faith alone, or by faith plus the keeping of the law? The issue arose often in the early church and was addressed clearly: one is saved by God’s sheer grace by which he comes to believe, savingly, in the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus.

The instructive thing about the Jerusalem council, however, is just this: in the formal declaration which the council sent out, they said no to circumcision, but added to gentile (!) converts: “…that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality.” Two of those proscriptions—“blood” and “things strangled”— relate to OT Jewish rituals, not to NT salvation. They were not legislating, obviously, for all modern gentiles, but they did feel free to mandate that, in that historical context, it would be wise to observe Jewish law. (Acts 15:22f) That while we are free from the OT ritual law, as the NT incessantly states, we accept, in our context, the wisdom of certain OT practices. So much for unhitching the church from OT ritual. 

There is an upside to the suggestion. It would be an ecological plus. No more bulky Bibles, just slim New Testaments. And without the Psalms, because, obviously, they, like much else in the OT, may be “inspired” but are problematic and unnecessary for modern Christians to worry with.  

I have no personal animus toward Pastor Stanley, but it is impossible not to use the words “oceanic stupidity” at his tossing the back-story of our salvation—the incredible richness of the entire story of redemption. 

One wonders how two millennia of saints—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Luther, come immediately to mind—would see the unhitcher. Would they have understood the phrase “theological pipsqueak?”  Seriously. 

Like Amos (yes, I know, an OT irrelevance), I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I offer a prediction: this act by the pastor is not the first time he has walked away from NT truth (his “inclusive” position of homosexuals is well known), and it won’t be the last. 

I am for staying forever hitched and forever helped by God’s entire written revelation. 

The End of Christianity?

Now they’re telling us that we may see an ordinance instituted in San Francisco which will prohibit any reference, in speech or writing, (illegal thoughts will be dealt with later) suggesting that homosexuality or homosexual marriage is immoral.

You didn’t think it would come to this? You didn’t think they were serious? In which sand-pile has your head been buried in?

Let’s go back. Jesus Christ was murdered because the “powers that be” didn’t like his ethics, his view of right and wrong, that is, New Testament morality. That didn’t, however, prevent western civilization from being birthed from his life and teachings. And for two thousands of years, all Europeans (all of them!) built a civilization based on him and what he said and did.

Now, in the twenty-first century, western civilization is in death throes. That is not an exaggeration. Even though homage is paid—wistfully and weakly–to Europe’s Christian heritage, it is largely a formality; churches are increasingly empty, church properties are for sale everywhere, what clergy is left is largely dispirited with many having given up the biblical faith, and a politician who took the faith seriously would be seen as a true oddity. (Check the web on “The Death of Christianity in Europe.”)

America, although “the most religious nation on earth,” seems, increasingly, to be matching the spiritual trajectory of Europe. (a) The mayor of Houston demanded, some time ago, that pastors in her city send copies of their sermons so her staff could check them for “hate” language. (That idiotic hiccup has died, of course; Houston pastors laughed and went on their way, preaching what they wished. It reminds of then senator Stephen Douglas attempting to get a bill before Congress in the late 1850s making it unlawful for pastors to even mention the subject of slavery in a sermon. I hope he produced ten thousand sermons the following Sunday on the evils of human bondage.) (b) The suggestion is made, and lauded, on national television, that the Vice President must be mentally ill because he believes God speaks to Christians today. (c) Mike Pompeo, in congressional confirmation hearings, was harassed about whether or not he thinks homosexuality to be a sin. That tells you absolutely nothing about being the Secretary of State for America; it tells you everything about the political left regarding Christianity in America! (d) The NY press has insisted that a “Chick-Fil-A” restaurant should not be allowed to open in their city. It is, they say, a “creepy infiltration” which is “identified with conservative Christian theology.”

In passing, one should ask why such vitriol is never directed at Islam. Imagine the screaming headlines, worldwide, if it was. The modern left is tolerant of a morality wide as the Pacific, but expresses a tight-fisted, teeth-gritting, iceberg-hearted bigotry against Christianity, and openly so.

The goal of the leftists is to rid America of every vestige of biblical influence. That became public as early as the 50s with “Hey, hey, ho, ho, western civ’s gotta go,” and continues to dominate leftist propaganda at every level. Consider what a well-known university professor, Millard Spencer Everett, wrote about the final citadel preventing such a takeover—which he feverishly desired. It is, he said, “the spell of Jewish-Christian mores” in America. (“Idols for Destruction” Schlossberg, p. 290) The “spell?” As if it is the flu or whooping cough? God be praised for the power and persistence of the that culture-saving “spell!”

What to do?

I. VITALIZE, that is, live out authentic biblical Christianity in your own life. Stop pussyfooting around debating fine shades of disobedience. Get a spiritual backbone. Get right and stay right. Today.

II. VOCALIZE, that is, talk about the biblical faith. Get intentional about that. Tell it to everybody you can. By whatever means you can. For ever as long as you can. Stop being ashamed of your crucified savior!

III. VISUALIZE, that is, stop giving so much attention to your job, house, golf game or vacation. Ask yourself, rather: what am I doing today that will make any real difference a hundred years from now? That other stuff is important, but it is the left hind heel of a gnat compared to saving your culture!

IV. VOTE! You must surely know the right to cast a vote is a rarity in the earth. A pipe-dream for the vast majority of humans. If voting seems dull, it won’t when you can’t. If you cannot vote for a good candidate, vote against a bad one. But VOTE. Exist!

Yes, I know: the devil just told you to believe that you are helpless in the face of the onslaught of history. That you, a single voice, cannot make a difference. But remember: belief is the essential component of worship. Stop worshiping hell.