Apostasy

Because I didn't get enough controversy on my last article, I thought I'd weigh in on apostasy.

26 "Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men.
27 "For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.
28 "Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
29 "I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;
30 and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
31 "Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.
32 "And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
--Acts 20:26--32 (NASB)

When Paul was leaving Miletus, he spoke to the overseers (bishops) of the assembly in Ephesus. Part of his parting speech with the Ephesian overseers was the warning that apostasy was coming "after my departure," that it would come from among the leaders in the assembly, and it would be driven (at least in part) by a desire to build a following.

At the end of his life, Paul wrote to Timothy, who was in Ephesus. He gave Timothy this warning:

1 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.
-- 2 Timothy 3:1--5 (NASB)

But when we get to the later epistles, we have warnings like the ones in Jude:

4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
-- Jude 4 (NASB)

And in 3 John:

9 I wrote something to the church; but Diotrephes, who loves to be first among them, does not accept what we say.
--3 John (NASB)

1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, 2 Peter, and Revelation 2&3 all contemplate apostasy as something that was already underway and widespread. Jude and Peter tell us false teachers already had a foothold in the church, Revelation 2&3 talk about churches already caught up in idolatry (Thyatira), empty formalism (Sardis), and indifference to the Lord (Laodicea). 1 John claims there were many antichrists already, and 2 John warns against becoming entangled with those who denied the Christ.

I mention these to indicate that apostasy is not contemplated in Scripture as something that was going to happen, but as something that had already started. 2 Timothy 3 warns about the "last days," but 1 John tells us "Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour" (1 John 2:18, NASB). Hebrews starts "in these last days" and 2 Thessalonians 2:7 says "the mystery of lawlessness is already at work."

Now, it is certainly true that we expect things to get worse: evil always develops (consider Romans 1), and 2 Timothy assures us that things will get "worse and worse." Apostasy is not simply a state: it develops and grows.

It's also true that there have been revivals, renewals, and repentance in the last 2000 years. The state of apostasy is not absolute in the sense that there is no longer a remnant on the earth: God is still saving sinners. And not every Christian has apostasized. Revelation 2&3 contain a message for the "overcomer" in every church, even Thyatira and Laodicea.

But there can be no dispute that apostasy has been generally the state of things for the last 2000 years, since the Apostles died. Scripture explicitly claims that to be the case, our knowledge of church history concurs, and our personal experience agrees. Apostasy characterizes the Church.

There are a couple interesting points in all the warnings of apostasy:
First, Scripture almost always talks about apostasy as a top-down process. It's not that the people apostasize and that corrupts their leaders: rather, the leaders apostasize and carry the people into corruption. Paul said the "ravenous wolves" would arise from among the Ephesian overseers. John said Diotrophes loved to have the "chief place". Revelation tells us "the woman Jezebel" was teaching. This parallels the Old Testament, where apostasy characterized the kings and priests. Even in the wilderness under Moses, it was the chiefs of the tribes who led the people into rebellion. There are certainly exceptions, but apostasy in Scripture characteristically develops in a top-down direction.

Second, it looks suspiciously like Ephesus would be at least a center of apostasy. There are four epistles written to Ephesus in the New Testament: Ephesians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Revelation 2:1--7. Additionally, we have detailed accounts of Paul's work there, including his speech to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. Apostasy is a central theme among the Scriptures specifically to Ephesus. That's not to say Ephesus is the core of apostasy, nor that it was the only place apostasy occurred. But it seems particularly linked to apostasy in Scripture.

Third, Paul gave the Ephesian elders two resources: he commended them "to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified". This is of enormous importance.

I know I'm going to step on some toes here, but I really feel this needs to be said. The remedy for apostasy is the Word of God. It is "able to build [us] up and to give [us] an inheritance among all those who are sanctified." We tend to try and remedy apostasy with statements of faith, creeds, confessions, church councils, canon law, or fiery preaching. But the Apostle offers the Word of God as the remedy.

That's not to say all those other things are wrong per se, but that they are insufficient. The Word of God was given explicitly to correct, reprove, exhort, and train us. It is the only infallible and authoritative resource we have. To the extent that a statement of faith reflects the Word of God, it is good: but it has no authority in itself, its authority is strictly identical to the extent it is Scriptural.

It has taken me a long time to come to that conclusion.

And to be sure, the Word of God is sufficient, authoritative, infallible, and inerrant; but that's not to say every question of faith and doctrine is simple, obvious, and without sincere disagreement. But in the end, if we allow anything to occlude the authority of the Word of God over us, we are in the process of personally apostasizing: we are leaving the one thing we can count on.

As I'm living down here in a world that's basically on hold until the Lord Jesus comes to establish His kingdom and throne, I've gotten very caught up in all sorts of things. And sadly, a lot of my dabbling in some church or another has really been me looking for the Right Place. It's been my looking for a group I can count on, or an history I can put faith in, or a tradition that is correct. But at the end of the day, I've been having to learn that the Word of God is what God has seen fit to give me. That's the resource He considers sufficient for His people living down here.


Now, apostasy has been used as an excuse for all kinds of things. And while I want to clarify that we ought not to look for an excuse for what's not biblical, it is very true that apostasy changes things. Heh. Ideas have consequences. So I guess we need to look at some of those consequences, but I think this is long enough already for now.

Brick wall

I remember watching Bandits, a movie with Bruce Willis and Billy-Bob Thornton. I wouldn't recommend it for moral reasons, although it was entertaining and terribly funny. At any rate, at some point Thornton says, "The problem with being smart is, I have a pretty good idea how things are going to turn out."

We didn't need to be terribly smart to foresee some problems with our attending an Anglican church--- we expected this---, but I'm not happy that we've hit some of the issues we anticipated.

It looks like our brief time with the Anglicans is coming to a close, but it was a much-needed haven for a time.


I suppose there's a lot more to say, but I'll end with: we're really in need of your prayers right now.

Hitting the books

As I've been trying to walk it out down here until the Lord Jesus comes back, I've had to do some mulling over the role of Scripture in the Christian life. This is not supposed to be a great thesis on the subject: this is just my personal position. Take it as my personal confession on the subject. 

First, I accept the Bible (66 books) as the inerrant, authoritative Word of God. I think the Nicene Council was essentially correct about what constitutes Scripture, but I absolutely affirm that the Scripture was the Scripture before the Nicene Council. The Nicene Council did not make those books Scripture, it simply recognized what was already true.

Second, it is impossible to prove that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. Either you accept that or you don't. I can show you any number of evidences that it's true, but I can't actually prove it. But then, I'm not going to answer to you for my life down here, when all's said and done. 

Third, if the Bible really is what God has said, then it trumps everything else. It doesn't really matter what anyone thinks on a subject: the question is what God has said about it. It is the final test. 

Fourth, the Bible might well be silent on a subject. Get over it. We need to stop trying to read something into Scripture about whatever-it-is-we're-interested-in-at-the-moment. If Scripture is silent on something, then we need to acknowledge that.

Fifth, the Bible was written to be understood. This has been the hardest point to really finalize in my mind. It seems the vast majority of Christianity sees Scripture as something that can only be understood through layers of commentary.  But (and I realize this could reduce to a circular argument) the narratives of Christ commenting on Scripture to the people of His day generally reduce to Him telling them they missed the "plain reading"---the "obvious point"---of a passage. He never took them to task for missing some mystical meaning, nor for using the wrong commentaries: He took them to task for not simply obeying the plain and simple sense of the passage. 

Sixth, the hardest part of obeying the Scripture is to trust that it's sufficient. It's one thing to acknowledge it's inerrant or authoritative; it's quite another to acknowledge its sufficiency. I think it strange how frequently we trust in creeds, dogmas, catechisms, theologies, doctrines, and commentaries when we have the Bible. I admit it's not the easiest book to understand, and it can take some time to compare Scripture with Scripture to figure out how a passage applies, or what it means. But really, if God has spoken, it's worth the time and effort to listen.

I think a lot of this blog really reduces to the question of whether what "we" (for a non-constant value of "we") are doing lines up with Scripture.  

Everyone else is doing it...

I got this comment on an older post this week:

If we get our eyes of [sic] our own needs and what we expect from others and go to the meeting for the LORD and Him alone then God will bless. We gather together for His glory don't we?. Our motives for going to the meeting shouldn't be the people or the speaker. Is not the Lord's presence good enough for us?

The comment was with respect to some comments I had made on a meeting I attended last summer. It was posted anonymously: I have no idea who wrote it, and I'm fine with that. But I wanted to make some points about it. I have no idea where or with whom the commenter meets to worship, but for the sake of argument, I'm going to pretend it was written by someone in an assembly much like the one I left. So you see, I'm not really replying to Anonymous, I'm using this comment as a basis for a discussion. Let me re-iterate that: I've no idea what Anonymous had in mind when s/he wrote that comment; but it resonates very well with many comments I heard in my time among "brethren," and I want to comment on some of those things.

Ten years ago, I might have written the exact same paragraph. But ten years have passed, and I've thought a lot about this stuff in those ten years. And in that time, some things have changed. With that in mind, let's look at this in some depth.

The first thing I notice is the phrase "If we... then God will bless." This indicates that God's blessing is something we earn. Someone else has already said, "God blesses because He is good, not because we are." The Scripture is full of example after example where God blesses those who are not obedient: isn't that the essence of the Gospel? "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

We can't manipulate God. I'm not saying that God's sovereignty infers our actions don't matter: I'm saying that we can't bribe God with our good behaviour. God blesses those He loves, regardless of their deserving to be blessed. God blesses out of grace, not obligation.

My dad used to always tell me, "Clumsy, don't forget that Moses was wrong to strike the rock, but water still came out." There is nothing more common in Scripture than God blessing people who don't deserve it. There's nothing more common than God blessing in spite of the ones receiving the blessing. Ecclesiastes says the race is not to the swift, the battle is not to the strong (Ecclesiastes 10:11). Blessing doesn't come to those who deserve it any more than brimstone rains down on sinners. God blesses out of His overflowing heart.

The day will come when God will judge---brimstone really will fall down on sinners eventually---, but that day is not yet. The goodness of God leads to repentance (Romans 2:4), it doesn't flow from it.


The second thing I notice is the implicit assumption that the Lord is present: "Is not the Lord's presence good enough for us?" This is one of the very points that eventually drove me from the "brethren". The verse that underlies the "brethren" movement is Matthew 18:20, "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (KJV). The "brethren" are confident that the Lord is present in their meetings, because He is wherever "two or three are gathered unto His name."

I've spent some time discussing this elsewhere, but the whole "the Lord is present" thing becomes a rabbit-hole very quickly. The question that really needs to be asked is, how do we know whether there are two or three gathered in the Lord's name? This becomes the crux of the question. If gathering in the Lord's name is a moral thing, then it may be difficult or impossible to determine whether that's really going on. And if it's individual, then it becomes that much harder.

"Brethren" more or less evade the question by reducing it to one of format: gathering "unto His name" essentially reduces to gathering "in the same format as us." If you ask "brethren" what it looks like, they inevitably bring up whether a group has a pastor/priest/clergyman and wether they have a denominational title. In either of those cases, the gathering is "to a man's name" rather than "to the Lord's name." Now, the significance of this is overwhelming. What it essentially infers is, regardless of moral failings or even outright sin in the group, the only real test is format. As long as the meetings are conducted a certain way, then the Lord is present... regardless of how much sin or impurity is tolerated in the group.

Please understand I'm not accusing anyone of immorality here: it's not my contention that "brethren" tolerate evil. It is my contention that their test of the Lord's presence in the group is merely one of format.

But I realized in the last few years that the whole issue of whether the Lord is present really gets turned upside-down when we consider the "gathered in my name" as a moral test. If it really means "because I said so and that's enough for you" (and I believe it does), then there are any number of true believers in any number of places that are gathering "in His name." And as surely as I find a church---any church---where there are two or three such people, then I have found a place where the Lord is present. But by the same token, as surely as I find a place where the format is correct but the moral test fails, then I can no longer rest on this verse as proof of His presence.

Notice I haven't even touched on the issue of whether the verse was ever intended to be the test of where to fellowship. I'm not at all convinced this is true... although it might be.


The third thing I notice is built on the second: the idea that the Lord's presence is "good enough," that I ought to be content to go to the meetings and just be faithful there.

The problem is this: the idea that I can just go to meeting to meet the Lord, regardless of the others there sounds good; but it breaks down under any scrutiny at all. Let's start with the obvious: suppose I just go to the Kingdom Hall to meet the Lord, and because I've gotten "[my] eyes off [my] own needs and what [I] expect from others," is that valid? Can I be sure the Lord is pleased with that?

See, the problem with the line of thinking that says "I don't need to be critical, I just need to go with a right heart myself" is, the logical conclusion must be that any church will do. If what I need to do is "be faithful where I am," then I might as well just go where I like the music or the youth program and be faithful there. It doesn't matter whether it's a Roman Catholic or Lutheran church, whether it's "an assembly" or a cult---so long as I am personally faithful, everything's all right. There is no other conclusion that can logically be drawn from that line of thinking.

In fact---and this applies specifically to "brethren"---"brethren" left the Church of England because they had serious problems with what was happening there. But if the right thing to do is to get my eyes off the other people and be content to meet the Lord, then the "brethren" were wrong to leave. And if I view that through my "exclusive" glasses, then the only right thing for "brethren" to do is to return to the point of departure: they all need to confess their schismatic actions and come back into the Anglican fold.

See, "brethrenism" breaks down as soon as the same tests are applied to it as to everyone else. The double standard is glaring.


Now, the comment Anonymous left wasn't necessarily wrong. In fact, there's a lot of truth there... but there is a certain level of over-simplification. At some point, it matters very much indeed what the others in a meeting are doing. This is not the Old Testament: we don't have a physical place where we've been called to gather three times a year. In those days, this comment would have been right-on. Hannah's faithfulness in praying at Shiloh was not affected by Phineas' and Hophni's immorality. But in the New Testament, the tests we use are moral. We aren't called to gather to a place, but to a Person: that's a moral action. And under those conditions, the moral state of the group matters very much.

One thing we have to deal with these days is, we have multiple options in terms of where we gather. The Old Testament saints had no such options: they were to gather where the altar was. The New Testament saints didn't have this problem either, there was "the church in Ephesus," not "the churches in Ephesus." The Scripture only ever uses "churches" when it discusses a wide geographical area: there is no concept in Scripture that there would be more than a single church in a city or town. But apostasy has set in, the church is in ruin. We now have to discern where we are to gather.

The idea that we gather to meet the Lord, and can just sort of ignore the problems there doesn't hold water any more. It ignores the apostasy and the days we live in. It ignores the moral condition of the church. It ignores everything that's happened since the Apostles. It ignores the fact that there is a corporate identity in the Church: we're not just individuals. And it undercuts the very existence of the assemblies where these statements have been made. If individual faithfulness is really what counts, then there ought not to be any "assemblies" at all: they ought to have been content to be faithful in the Anglican church, rather than starting something new.


Now here's the kicker: I made the vast majority of my comments on "brethren" as an insider. It was not actually my intention to leave, but that's what eventually happened. And now that I've left, I am not in any way saying I won't go back. Yeah, going back would be painful: this blog has already been quoted to me, it would certainly cause me some trouble. There would be a lot of comments made to me, a lot of people would want some sort of public confession and retraction.

I left because I was looking for what guys like JND and JBS were looking for, and I eventually realized "brethrenism" has grown into something else entirely. The vast majority of people there are genuinely looking for the Lord... but I have concluded that we've built up a system that gets in the way of that.


More recently, I've been learning to worship the Lord---to gather in the Lord's name---in an Anglican church. Now that's a move that has prompted a few to question my sanity. And there's been the predictable responses: "Clumsy's got to find himself," "Clumsy's on a spiritual journey"---that sort of thing. And those statements might actually be true. But they fail to acknowledge the larger picture: I started this spiritual journey 20 years ago. I invested a lot of time into "brethrenism," I thought I had found what I was looking for there. But more and more, it became obvious that I hadn't. I've learned a lot of stuff along the way, and there's a lot more to learn. I'm not even close to the end of this one.

One thing I have realized is, what I'm looking for is not to be found in a system: it's to be found in a Person. It's not something I can find in Anglicanism or Brethrenism or Lutheranism. I can't put my trust in a church---any church. I need to put my faith and trust in the Son of God.


The Son of God has come here to die for me. And He's coming back to get me and take me to be with Him: that changes everything.


So I appreciate people who care enough to look in on me and pray for me from time to time. And I really appreciate people who have emailed, called, or discussed this over coffee with me. And Anonymous, I appreciate your commenting.

Collects

So I've been reading The Collects of Thomas Cranmer. It's a great little book: easy to read, thin, with short chapters.

The book is broken out into two-page mini-chapters. Each one starts with one of Thomas Cranmer's collects on the top of the left page, followed by a short historical blurb on the bottom of the left page. Then there is a one-page meditation on the right page.

So for background, a collect is a short, corporate prayer: the word "collect" implies this corporate character. Collects are generally short, centre on a petition, and always have a single theme.

The collects in this book are Thomas Cranmer's: many of "his" collects were revisions of earlier prayers, from the medieval Roman Catholic church and earlier. Cranmer revised and edited prayers from existing prayer books in light of the Reformation in addition to composing original prayers. The history section of each chapter explains where Cranmer got the collect: if it's not an original, it lays out where he got it, and what he changed in his revision.

The historical sections are well worth the weight of the book alone. While a character sketch of Thomas Cranmer is understandably of limited appeal and relevance, this book does a masterful job. But the real value of the book is in the meditations: this guy gets it. The Gospel of God---man is lost and hopeless, but the Son of God came here as a Man to die for us---is presented clearly and concisely. He understands that we have nothing to offer God, but He has given everything freely to us.

So if you get a chance, I highly recommend it.

Lo, He comes

Lo! he comes, with clouds descending,
once for our salvation slain;
thousand thousand saints attending
swell the triumph of his train:
Alleluia! alleluia! alleluia!
Christ the Lord returns to reign.

Well, Advent draws to a close today: time to remember the Lord is coming. Now it's time to remember that the Lord has come.

This [is] a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.
-- 1 Timothy 1:15 (KJV)

Of course, Scripturally speaking, the Lord told us to "remember Me." That includes His coming the first time and the next time. And so we really ought to be expecting His imminent return at any time, just like we ought never to forget that the Son of God came here and died for us.

For thou art our salvation, Lord,
our refuge and our great reward;
without thy grace we waste away
like flowers that wither and decay.

So if you're into that sort of thing: Merry Christmas! If not, keep looking up! remember He's coming back quickly.

Mystery of Love

Christians, awake, salute the happy morn
Whereon the Saviour of the world was born
Rise to adore the mystery of love
Which hosts of angels chanted from above
With them the joyful tidings first begun
Of God incarnate and the virgin's Son

I have taken every imaginable position on the question of whether Christians should celebrate things like Christmas and Easter. I've read The Two Babylons (more than once, in fact): I understand why John Calvin, Oliver Cromwell, Arthur Pink, and J. N. Darby all condemned celebrating these holidays. On the other hand, I understand why Martin Luther and Thomas Cranmer encouraged them.

But in the end, I've come to the conclusion that whether you condemn Christmas or revel in it; there are deep and amazing mysteries that are ostensibly "the reason for the season." If you don't celebrate Christmas, I can accept that. But I will tell you with absolute certainty: if you allow yourself to forget that the Son of God came down here--if you let the wonder of it fade---then you're falling down as a Christian.

Lo, within a manger lies
He who built the starry skies;
He who throned in height sublime
Sits amid the cherubim

I enjoy traditional Christmas carols: partly for the wonderful music, partly because I grew up with them. But I really, really value the sense of wonder they have for the mystery of Incarnation: the Son of God became a Man. You and I can't fathom that: only God can understand what happened there.

Christ by highest heaven adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin's womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel

Of course, the story doesn't stop with Christ coming here. As amazing as that is, a pagan might be able to appreciate that. The real wonder is, He came to die for sinners.

Sacred Infant, all divine, What a tender love was thine
Thus to come from highest bliss , Down to such a world as this

I came to the conclusion long ago that this is a principle difference between Christianity and the majority of religions: many if not all religions try and teach men how to become God; Christianity tells how One who is God became Man. Not with the intention of making us gods with Him, but to make us consciously objects of His love.

Good Christian men, rejoice
With heart and soul and voice
Now ye need not fear the grave:
Peace! Peace!
Jesus Christ was born to save

So if you see me driving by, obviously singing (terribly out-of-key and with not talent at all) at the top of my lungs; feel free to join in. If you don't celebrate Christmas, that's fine---but even then, you ought to be able to appreciate why I'm so obviously enjoying the song.

Then may we hope, the angelic thrones among
To sing, redeemed, a glad triumphal song
He that was born upon this joyful day
Around us all His glory shall display
Saved by His love, incessant we shall sing
Of angels and of angel-men the King

So blessed forever dear Jesus our King
Who brought us Salvation, his praises we'll sing