Author: theparacleteshammer

You know, it’s quite odd. 


I have heard a lot of debates in the last six or so months concerning the interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2.  And, while they are all fascinating, in the end, I will be honest.  I really don’t care.  


I thought Kent Hovind had a pretty decent line of thinking, despite his tax problems and imprisonment, given one of my minister friends recommended him to me, and then I read about conspiracy theories supported by him.  And brother Watts makes a good comment about just reading the text for its own merits.


I would have said the young earth views put forth by Bob Jones University and Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis, and as taught in our last school’s life science class.  I thought Dake had a decent explanation of the gap theory.  But there were other arguments against that.


Then there are the old earth people and evolutionists…


Does the dubious reputation of people like Hovind, Dake, and others really matter when hermenuting this passage?  I mean, many of us were always taught to “eat the meat and spit out the bones” because so many ministers out there are full of bones.  But perhaps the reputation and integrity of a minister does matter, even when speaking for God about His text.  


The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable, but can one walk in the fullness of all God has for that individual when s/he chooses to walk in a lifestyle contrary to that expounded in Scripture, “a life of holiness without which no one will see God?”  Will the Lord of glory deign to permit our interpretations of Scripture to stand if sin colors our life?  It is quite doubtful, because there is a larger issue in play than just one’s theology.  Morality is connected to theology, because morality is what one practices, and morality/practice preaches more loudly than words.  


But if we found a person or persons of character and integrity whom held to a young-earth view, could we yet trust that individual’s views as being biblically sound?


Perhaps.


I forgot who it was that said, “God has made the Bible so simple that a child can understand it and at the same time so deep a theologian can drown in it.”  Perhaps if our interpretation is so complex that a child cannot understand it, then our interpretation needs revising.  I also like the following two concepts with respect to hermenutics (hermenutics means “interpreting and understanding what the Bible says”)


1) Try to read the Bible for all its worth.
2) Try to get the plain sense of what is being said.


It seems there are a couple of definite places where it seems Jeremiah invokes creationary motifs, such as 4:23-26, and 31:35-37.


Thoughts?

I have no illusions about one of my liberal friends.  He is a believer who happens to be on the left politically.  Yes, fellow Xians on the right who dittohead and think Mormons do a good job commenting on the political scene, there are lefties who are believers.   Tonight, I was told that I was too good to be a conservative, and to step into the light.


I thought about this, because I have had friends take political philosophies and superimpose them on the Scriptures.


And that got me to reply with the following, about which I felt good enough that I thought it worth reposting here.


We can get into all sorts of back and forth over presidential reputations. It’s the political philosophy of liberalism, abortion rights, gay marriage, gun control, public union collective bargaining, Kennedy-Clinton philandering, cure of all social ills and do it better than the church, thrill up my leg, New Deal/Great Society/Planned Parenthood/Car Company/Banks too big to fail mentality, IRS taxation, preserve the Union mentality invasion of states’ rights that started with Lincoln and manifested in liberal political philosophy such as the following

http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/you-dont-like-a-billboard-i-like-infanticide-less/

http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/the-road-to-perdition/

http://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2011/02/23/and-before-long-churches-too-you-watch/

that make my stomach turn.

And ___ is right you know.

And with my work within the church, and my incapacity to make a case for one political philosophy against another, or find arguments for either-or infallibly in Scripture, instead of just letting Scripture be Scripture, and letting it weigh the hearts of men wherever they be found.

And how people on both sides of the aisle want to tell us that Scripture means one thing or another and thus supports their philosophy, that irks me. They treat Jesus like the whore of their political party.

:Jesus was a conservative”-he’d prevent murders of the innocent, and tell you to be a good steward of your finances, even if you did not care for the poor in their various needs

“Jesus was a socialist”-he’d care for all the poor, and spread the wealth, even if it meant you were a crappy steward, and make sure the poor were provided for.

Romans 13 is, of course, true. But we lean to heavily on that for our caring for the poor, and don’t get ourselves jobs (as guilty as I am of this, I have never taken one single handout from the government) to care for the poor as individuals in the body of the church, the only redemptive organization, besides families of believers, and we wonder where the judgment will start. Hint: it’s not with the governments.

And when a government is more broke than many of its citizens…

I have no illusions about the commentators on both sides. I know the major flaws of those on the right, as well as the candidates, but judging from their actions, they all, adulterers and witches (Clinton and Reagan, et al.,) malicious vitriolic hatemongers on the right (Limbaugh with his arrogance, Beck with his LDS, ) and patronizing tweedjackets on the left (Matthews-thrill up my leg, Beck is a hatemonger) and the verbal attacks leveled on women on the right, which I don’t think Jesus would engage. I think He is so far removed from the political discourse honestly with its two-facedness, that I have very little to say, except when it comes to issues.

Even if you disagree with Palin and Bachmann’s rhetoric…what would Jesus have the left say? Do our comments reflect the Father’s heart?


Seriously folks, the truth about political rhetoric is, we cannot assert Jesus would side with left or right wholly, and everything that came out of every talking head’s mouth.  But here is the real question that demands asking as we “step into the Light.”


It’s all about the Light of Christ, as non-fun as that is.


What would He have us say to the left and the right?  What would he have us say to our own political party as well as the opposition?  Sometimes I think God is using Glenn Beck, even if he is LDS.  Others are welcome to disagree, and I can handle that.  Sometimes I think Glenn is just talking out of his butt.  But the bottom line is, it does not matter what Beck and others on the right say, and what Matthews and others on the Left say.  What really matters is what Jesus is saying to us?  And are our thoughts and words aligning with the heart of God the Father, the Father of Lights, before whom we will all stand and give an account for “every thoughtless word.”  I cannot worry about Beck and Limbaugh and Matthews.  Right now, I can only worry about David McNelley, and whether or not his actions and words reflect the Light of the World.  


Are you ready to step into the light.


If we are in the light as He is in the light.  We have true fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sins.


1 John 1:7.

As a general rule, I can’t stand weddings.  With exceptions to people with whom I am already friends who are single, meaning, I would in a heartbeat perform a wedding for you if you were my friend with the proper provisions, I do not like weddings, at all.  Usually ruled by people who think it’s a woman’s day, wedding planners, etc. who know nothing of the humility of the divine Bridegroom who is coming back for a Bride without spot or wrinkle, and manifest all manner of pride, and cannot handle it being about the union between Christ and His Church, weddings are frequently tragic.  Compounded by the current debate over gay marriage, they are made even less fun for those of us whom defend traditional marriage.


Having said all that, I approve of Bob Caldwell’s below sentiments.


Here here.  




My “solution” to gay marriage in church is this: Let the government decide who can be legally married and then churches should get out of the wedding business. Not marriage, but weddings. Way too much money is spent on them anyway and churches always have some level of struggle when people whose status as a believer engenders some doubt wants to get married in the church.

If we got out of the business, then you tell people in the church to go down to the courthouse and get married. Then on a Sunday morning, either during the service or just afterward, the pastor conducts a short simple service that asks the blessing of God to be present in this new marriage. If the couple wants a reception, they can do that anywhere, anytime.

It’s way too radical an idea to ever catch on, but when the day comes that the government requires churches to perform gay marriages if they also do heterosexual ones, then I will dust off the proposal.

I just got done with a conversation with a pastor friend from Kentucky that got me thinking of the Word of God, Jesus.  A bit of what follows I credit to our conversation, and his musings on the Logos, which got me thinking.  So, credit for this post belongs to Darryl Fitzwater of Ashland Independent Pentecostal Church of Christ. 

On the concept of the Theotokos, that Mary was the God-bearer, I take a very simple approach to this.  Mary did give birth to what is the second person of the Trinity.  She did bear God in flesh.  However, Jesus was already divine eternally before His birth.  He just took on human flesh, in order that He might dwell with and among us.  The Israelite faith had a structure that described this reality well.  The Tabernacle. The prophetic foreshadowing of Christ’s work.  The place where God’s presence dwelt among God’s people.


It is not heresy to say God died on that cross.  Jesus, being God, died on the cross.  Jesus, fully man, died on the cross.  The fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily, and in His form, the fullest expression of the Trinity found it’s manifestation. 


And He died.

And He raised from the dead.  He laid down His life of His own free will and then He took it back up.  He did not suffer like a punching bag or whipping post in hell for us.  Rather, by His word, by the Sharp sword that proceeds from His mouth, He pronounced the powers incapable of stinging through death.  He ripped the keys out of Satan’s hands, and pronounced the coming judgement.  This is part of what was behind the statement, “It is finished.”  This is one of the sources of our authority.  The mere fact that He is, roots our authority.  Not only is He, but He is also able.  He is powerful.  With Him, by death and resurrection all is possible. There is a term for this in Greek.  Dunatos.


The life Jesus provides by His atoning death and resurrection in one full of power, abilities, and possibilities.  Dunatos.  Powerful. Possible. Able.


How are you appropriating that power, that possibility, and that ability that flows from Christ?

Speaking of the possibility that the apostolic office can be restored. This Christian agrees with the sentiment wholeheartedly.  Let that office be restored and let us flow in that office as the Scriptures plainly illustrate, through the lives of the apostles…let us return to being an apostolic faith (2 Cor. 12:12).

While reading the letter on fasting that correlated with my reading of Judges today, the thought occurred to me that in many places, the church walks similarly to the nation of Israel, where “there is no king and every one did what was right in their own eyes. Even the leaders, the Judges, with the exception of Deborah, did largely what they saw fit.  


We have lost, by and large, the working of healing and the miraculous.  And, like the letter posted days ago, we accept that this is the norm existence for our lives as children of God, who Himself said that we “would do greater things that these.”


Not in merely demonstrating what is currently in operating, such as delivering a prophecy, or speaking in tongues, but consistently laying hands on the sick and seeing them consistently healed.  The church of this day does not seem to want for teachers, pastors, and evangelists, but it lacks seriously in those who are willing to make the sacrifices to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, and consecrate themselves for the full work to which Christ has called us.  I say all this as a teacher.  


Such a willingness to accept a miracle-free, healing-free, supernatural-free existence as the best God has for His children, who should be walking in realms that bring the Jews to envy (Romans 11) is not just disturbing.  It is downright alarming.


Moreover, I believe there is a correlation, starting with me, between our lack of the supernatural and our lack of persistence and willingness to settle for less than God does have for us. 


Repentance has been grabbing me greatly, and it does as I write this.  Repentance from lack of persistence, lack of faith, idolatry (in my case, of food, Facebook, and intellectualism), and lack of intimacy with God.  


First a qualification on something I just said.  To stop our pursuit of intellectualism, fellow and aspiring doctors of the church, does not mean we stop thinking deeply about the Scriptures and deeply about the things of God, and stop interacting with fellow experts in our given fields.  Rather, it means we stop pursuing and using our ABILITY to do deep thinking as a badge of honor or respectability; a barrier of protection; or bulwark behind which we may hide and then launch our arrows of criticism at those who fail to do the same, whether because they lack gifting or the ability to do so. In other words, it’s not gifted intellect that is the issue. Rather it is the EFFICACIOUS WORTH we assign to that intellect, and the way, manner, and attitude in which we wield that intellect.  When we fail to wield that intellect with humility and in an irenic matter, as Bruce Metzger did, and as Gordon Fee does, to cite two examples of humility in world-class scholarship, we become easy tools for the enemy to hang whole sectors of the church out to dry: sectors which God may very well be using to accomplish his purpose. 


Put another way, swords can be very useful in battle, but they can also damage the owner, if improperly handled.  I have seen in the last several months, examples of denunciation of false prophets turn into downright mean, hypercritical, and vindictive railings.  The denunciation of false prophets is one thing, but it is not central to our ministry.  Acts 2:42-46, Matthew 28:18-20, and Mark 16:14-20 ARE central to our mission, however. And I see far more denunciation of false prophets occurring in the church than I see people working to be used to heal the sick. 




Elucidation on the things of which we in the church need to repent
1. God wants a children who will persist and contend for His kingdom against the spiritual wickedness of the kingdom of the Evil One. 


2. In order for God to show the fullness of His goodness and greatness, which includes his ability, desire, and will to heal at all times, He must have a people who exercise faith, and believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently–persistently–seek Him.  In the last several months I have struggled with believing Him, and if you count my experiences with being spiritual abuse, that would also include believing He wanted me to be completely healed of my own abuse at the hands of ministers.  I know He wants to heal me, and I believe He wants to do that right now.  But there must be a diligence in seeking His face. 


Another qualification here.  Accusing the sick person of a lack of faith, gets the minister nowhere.  The faith that is necessary for healing can have any source.  God will u
se faith of anyone to accomplish the healing, whether it is the person receiving prayer, the person administering prayer, or the people agreeing in prayer for the healing. A lack of faith in one person does not typically hinder God’s choice to heal, but a pervasive lack of faith, or rather, unbelief,  in all persons involved in the prayer can negatively impact what God does in that situation.


3. Dealing with idolatry is a big one.  Forgive me for the following stream of consiousness. In my case, social networking, food, anger, lust, and pride in my own intellect, have been gods to one extent or another.  Not necessarily in that order.  Idolatry is so central to this cause because it does two things.  One, it robs us of intimacy with God, of deepening our relationship with God.  Two, in robbing us of our intimacy with God, it brings us to a place where we develop a deepening and deeper relationship with things we use as substitutes for the vital relationship.  Those things become our God.  We forget what is meant by the concept that “man does not live by bread along, but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God.”  He wants us to know what it means to treat His word with the same value that we treat the next breath we take, specifically those breaths we take that could be our last. 

4. Dealing with idolatry of things, or as Dave Ramsey says, “stuffitis”, is a primary roadblock to our intimacy.  Closeness to God means distance from the world.  It also means our perspective of the things of the world with which we interact (food, money, sexual intimacy, our intellect, etc) changes drastically, and we begin to see them as tools.  The more deeply we go in our relationship with God, the less the things of this world have a hold on us, and as a result, the greater the Lord can pour out His blessings onto us.  We can indeed handle greater worldly and spiritual wealth because they are not our priorities.  We don’t need a government to nanny our individual lives. More on this later. 

AxII4 ~ contending for what should be in the midst of what is ~: 2 Peter 2 (Part One)

From the desk of David Falls. I am in, because I have several ruts. How about the rest of you guys?

Fasting Direction and Instruction

Observation: We are not seeing the power of God poured out upon the church to the extent that the New Testament describes as normal. Supernatural healing is the exception rather than the rule. Many people have been struggling with the same mental, emotional, and spiritual bonds and addictions year in and year out. For a people walking with the all powerful Almighty God, Creator of the universe, we experience a shocking degree of powerlessness. Churches in many 3rd world nations do not seem to have this problem.

If it is available to them it must available to us as well.

Roots I have found that contribute to our current condition:
We are not persistent, we frequently settle for less than God has for us in multiple areas of our spiritual walks. We trust the world’s solutions whenever possible; could it be that we have begun to walk the line of friendship with the World, which is enmity with God. God is a part of our lives, not the center. Many honestly believe that what we are experiencing is the way God wants it right now. This is a deep delusion.

I consider the almost complete lack of God’s healing to be a sign of a more serious spiritual condition. Jesus called healing, “the children’s bread.” If that’s the case then we are half starved. In most situations the natural condition parallels the spiritual one. Generally a fundamental change in one creates a fundamental change in the state of the other. I conclude that our structures are mostly healthy, but we as a people are not. I believe we are a very sick people, both physically and spiritually. The roots listed above are not traits of spiritually healthy people. In the same order the above roots could be called: lack of perseverance (a necessary fruit of the Spirit), lack of faith (without which it is impossible to please God),
idolatry (see the first 2 commandments), and lack of intimacy (if we are His sheep we should know His voice). These are not just God’s lofty hopes for His church; they are His minimum expectations. We are not healthy.

Solution:
We need to repent of the aforementioned roots and actually turn away from them and not go back. We need to break with the attitude of the time we live in and get serious about seeking God.

I have noticed that we experience God’s power in the areas that we have relationship with Him. If we know Him as healer and relate to Him as our healer, we will tend to see Him heal. If we know Him as a warrior, our enemy goes from being a serious threat to just being occasionally annoying. We do not know how to partner with Him in walking in power in many areas. We also do not know how to partner with Him to get answers to prayer in many areas. I believe this is really not a result of a lack of techniques, but rather it is a result of not knowing Him.

We need to admit that we can’t get ourselves to know Him in this way. We have a problem and we have no ability to fix it. We also have been content to stay where we are for a rather long time which puts us in a very deep rut. We need God to break us out of this rut. To that end I am going to start fasting until God removes me from this rut (and keeps me out of it) or I complete 40 days of fasting. If I finish this fast and He still hasn’t answered, I will immediately make the necessary preparations to go on another one.

The situation we are in is this serious. I believe it demands this kind of attention and dedication. Anyone want to join me?

My intent is to take on a liquids only diet for the duration of the fast. I have found I can get most of my needed nutrition through liquids so I can keep up this kind of fast for quite a while. If you don’t have any serious medical conditions (diabetes, pregnant, nursing, on many medications, etc.), I would request you join me on the liquids fast. If you have do health issues and you want to join me do what you can without posing a serious risk to your health. One way or another either we will break through or He will break us through; we just have to decide not to give up.

Blessings,

Pastor David Falls

Deuteronomy is the best book of the Old Testament.
Some thoughts,
My OT professor, Roger Cotton, once told his class the following.

“The heart of the Old Testament (Tanakh) is the law. And the heart of the law is Deuteronomy. If we understand Deuteronomy, we will understand why the prophets rebuked Israel and the nations,”

I would add that, if we understand Deuteronomy rightly…
We will understand:
why David sang..
why Israel responded the way she did to Jericho, Ai, Egypt, the Amorites, and the Amalekites…
We will understand also why G-d used Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and the Greeks.
My best friend once said,

“if you want to understand the blessings [of G-d through obedience] and the curses [that G-d allows through disobedience], you need intimate knowledge of Deuteronomy.”

The church does not understand grace to an extent, because the church does not understand the work of obedience, and the standards of the law.
The law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.
REVISION 11/15/18:
Younger David, really? This is your wise and knowledgeable thought??? “We must be more obedient? Seriously?
You are so stupid.
We do not understand the grace to an extent not only because of obedience and standards, but moreso because we do not understand the nature of the Trinity.

From Dr Railey’s Christian Theology class, part 1.  Concerning God
God’s Attributes
Love-that quality by which God is eternally moved to self-communication.


Translation: 
Because God loves, God wants to communicate Himself, since He is love, to His children. 


It would seem we sometimes perceive, as one of my pagan friends does, the God shown in the Old Testament as a trigger-happy bipolar fruit-bat, especially when we see how he handled multiple scenarios in the Torah and Joshua.  And yet we fail to do two things to help us keep perspective of the context.  1) We forget to measure his response against the attitudes of his children, Israel.  2)We fail to understand the nature of rebellion.  I would say this happens because we judge God by our standards. We make standards for ourselves and then try to apply those standards to God.  There is a problem with that though.  It frequently boils down to our misunderstanding of the nature of God’s sovereignty and holiness.  Now I know at that word “sovereignty,” the ears of some of my Armenian brothers might perk up.  However, as Armenians, we should not fear those words.  We know that God is absolutely sovereign.  When I said a couple of days ago that God “can arbitrarily set things up any way He wants”, I took for granted that my audience does not hold some of the same ideas about God’s nature that I do, which are below.


1) God is absolutely sovereign..  
2) God is the one who sets the standards.
3) God is the standard by which all things are judged.
4) God’s standards are set forth in the Scripture.  These are the explicit parameters by which he operates.
4a) If scripture is silent on how God operates in a particular matter, then as best we can, we draw applications from what is written as best we can, making guesses as to how we think God will operate in a given circumstance, but God is not obliged to adhere to those guesses of His character.  One application of this is the Lewisian concept that, “He’s not safe but he is good.”  God is not obliged to be safe as to how we rate safeness, and even int he concept of good, he is not required to live up to our standards for goodness, since our standards are well-uninformed.
5) Whereas even the most noble and integrated unbeliever cannot and does not apply the standards of good and evil consistently, and only after belief is this possible, and failure still can happen due to temptations or whatnot, God was always consistent and incapable of failure throughout Scripture in the application of his standards, which are amazingly different from ours.
6) Even though we might have certain “benevolent ideals” if those ideals conflict with what is set forth in Scripture, then those ideals are not ideals




In light of all this, God, who is infinitely awesome, holy, just, righteous, true, faithful, and incapable of failing, is infinitely concerned with us, compassionate towards us, loving with us, and is willing to help us on all points. 


That is amazing.  


He is willing even to point the way out for us and help us.


As He did in Numbers 17 following the Korah rebellion.
 ¹ The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ² “Speak to the people of Israel, and get from them staffs, one for each fathers’ house, from all their chiefs according to their fathers’ houses, twelve staffs. Write each man’s name on his staff,





³and write Aaron’s name on the staff of Levi. For there shall be one staff for the head of each fathers’ house. ⁴Then you shall deposit them in the tent of meeting before the testimony, where I meet with you. ⁵And the staff of the man whom I choose shall sprout. Thus I will make to cease from me the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against you.” ⁶Moses spoke to the people of Israel. And all their chiefs gave him staffs, one for each chief, according to their fathers’ houses, twelve staffs. And the staff of Aaron was among their staffs. ⁷And Moses deposited the staffs before the LORD in the tent of the testimony.