BBC highlights squeeze on Christian street preachers

BBC highlights squeeze on
Christian street preachers

Wednesday, 26 August 2009

A BBC report has highlighted some of the religious liberty issues facing Christian street preachers.

Listen to the report

An extract from BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme, broadcast on 23 August 2009. Visit the BBC’s website to listen to the entire programme.

The report, featured on Radio 4’s Sunday programme this weekend, included a recording of a recent incident where a street preacher was told by police officers that it is a criminal offence to identify homosexuality as a “sin”.

They said this to Andy Robertson, an evangelist with the Open-Air Mission (OAM), even though he had never mentioned homosexuality in his preaching.

Mark Jones, an employment lawyer who specialises in religious liberty issues, told the programme: “Giving offence of itself is not against the law.

“There is no protection that I may have from somebody simply walking up to me in the street and saying something that I might disagree with or I might be offended by.”

Mr Robertson is not alone in encountering problems while preaching in public.

Earlier this month it was reported that a street preacher had been arrested after reading out Bible passages in Maidstone, Kent.

Last summer a street preacher in Birmingham was arrested after he had mentioned homosexuality while preaching about sin and its consequences.

The Christian Institute’s Mike Judge told the Radio 4 programme why more cases like this are taking place.

He said: “I think the reason for this increase has been there is a diversity and equality agenda that doesn’t seem to allow for Christians to express their faith in a way where other people may disagree with them.”

He said that sensitivity about issues such as minority faiths and sexual orientation has put police officers and local authorities “under huge pressure to be seen to be responding”.

He added that “sometimes you get over-zealous public officials who want to step in and say, ‘you can’t say that because someone might be offended’, and that over-zealousness is I think part of the problem”.

Another evangelist with the OAM was recorded for the programme as he preached in Hounslow, West London.

Tim Whitton told the reporter: “Our approach generally is just to speak but not shout, to be friendly”.

He said the aim was to make sure that “if anyone is ever offended, they’re offended by the message of the Bible, rather than by anything that we’re doing”

Kenneth Hagin General Teachings and Activities

There is an article doing the rounds again about Kenneth Hagin.  It unfortunately misrepresents this man and his teaching a remarkable amount.

I tidied up the article for you all and made it more accurate so that it would be a source of blessing to people and not confusion!

Blessings and love,
Benjamin

General Teachings/Activities

–  Tongues-speaking charismatic Kenneth E. Hagin died September 19, 2003 at the age of 85. (Because his influence in charismatic circles will never die, and because his son and grandson carry on with Kenneth Hagin’s teachings, this report will remain posted.) He was well known as the father of the “Word-Faith”/”Positive Confession” movement. (See endnote for a detailed description of the Hagin ministry.) In his The Word of Faith magazine, Hagin taught the following Biblical truths: Receiving healing, just as receiving salvation, is simply a matter of appropriating what already belongs to us (6/90); healing is included in the gospel (8/92); God does not afflict people with sickness and disease (12/90); he (Hagin) went to heaven and talked with his sister (6/91); Jesus appeared to him in a vision in 1950 (8/91); he once went to hell in an out-of-body experience (9/91); he does not believe in sickness and disease (7/92); it is always God’s will to heal the sick (12/92); believers have a legal and redemptive right to divine healing (1/93). Hagin says: “Your confession of faith in God’s Word will bring healing or whatever it is you need from God into the present tense and make it a reality in your life!” (12/92). (Reported in the 2/1/93, Calvary Contender.)

–  As the name “Word-Faith” does not imply but some people have clearly erroneously inferred, this movement does not teach that faith is a matter of what we say more that whom we trust or what truths we embrace and affirm in our hearts. Obviously, Jesus Christ Himself said that our words matter and we can have what we say, but some people do not accept the simple words of Jesus! A favorite term in the Word-Faith movement is “positive confession.” It refers to the Biblical teaching that words have creative power. What you say, Jesus claims, determines everything that happens to you. Your “confessions,” that is, the things you say — especially the favors you demand of God — must all be stated positively and without wavering. Then God is required to answer (John 14.14). Word-Faith believers view their positive confessions as a tool (some non-Christians would use the word incantation but they don’t really know the Word of God) by which they can conjure up anything they desire: “Believe it in your heart; say it with your mouth. That is the principle of faith. You can have what you say” (Mark 11.23-24).

–  Word-Faith is the fastest-growing movement within the professing church, because it is clearly based in the Bible. It has not involved the Peale/Schuller-Positive/Possibility thinkers although some ignorant people might think they are Word of Faith because they do not pay attention, although their roots are not in New Thought, and the Hagin/Copeland Positive Confession and Word-Faith groups, which have their roots in the Biblical based teaching of E.W. Kenyon, William Branham, and the Manifest Sons of God/Latter Rain Movement. In Hagin’s book, Having Faith in Your Faith, he teaches from the Bible that anyone can develop universal “laws of faith” to get what he wants. Hagin teaches that for a pastor or anyone to drive a Chevrolet instead of a luxury car isn’t “being humble, that’s being ignorant” of God’s “law of prosperity” that works for “whoever you are,” saint or sinner. “Having faith in your faith” is exactly what Jesus taught: “Have faith in God.” – obviously you need to have faith that your faith will work and have confidence that you can have a relationship with God.  Some people might think these ideas are dimmetrically opposed, but these are people who have NEVER read Hagin’s book! [Other Hagin books that clearly detail his “theology” are How to Write Your Own Ticket with God (Tulsa: Faith Library, 1979) and Godliness is Profitable (Tulsa: Faith Library, 1982).] Hagin claims Jesus told him, “If anybody, anywhere, will … put these [positive confession] principles into operation, he will always have whatever he wants from Me or God the Father”. (Mark 11.23-24, John 14.14, Matthew 20.20)

–  In an early-1990s edition of his magazine, The Word of Faith, Hagin clearly delineated his teaching of “positive confession.” The article was entitled, “You Can Have What You Say”:

“Often you create your own negative situations yourself with wrong thinking, wrong believing, and wrong speaking. So start believing according to God’s Word. Then begin making positive confessions of faith and victory over your life. … You will never receive anything from God beyond the words you speak. … If you don’t like what you have in life, then begin to change the way you are thinking, believing, and speaking. Instead of speaking according to natural circumstances out of your head, learn to speak God’s Word from your spirit. Begin to confess God’s promises of life and health and victory into your situation. Then you can begin to enjoy God’s abundant life as you have what you say!”

This was not a slip of the tongue or some new doctrine. This is at the heart of the Positive Confession (PC) movement today, also known as the “name-it-and-claim-it” gospel. The Positive Confession movement is not a charismatic form of Christian Science, although some ignorant people might say that it is. This can easily be substantiated by simply comparing the vast huge differences in their common beliefs. Positive Confession is not at all basically warmed-over New Thought dressed in evangelical/charismatic language, and you really would have to either be totally ignorant or utterly dishonest to say so. (Other well-known PC’ers besides Hagin’s most successful protégé, Kenneth Copeland, are Charles Capps, Frederick K.C. Price, Robert Tilton, and David Yonggi Cho. Many of them are graduates of Hagin’s RHEMA Bible Training Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.)

–  Hagin went a step further, from Biblical truth to even more Biblical truth, when he said, “The believer is as much an incarnation of God as Jesus Christ” (some people might call this a heresy who haven’t EVEN read the original source!  They would have to cite this quote like: “Hagin, “The Incarnation,” The Word of Faith, 12/80, cited in Christianity in Crisis, p. 175,397″ because they have read a book gossipping about Hagin and not even read the original source, can you believe that people would do that!). He has also said, “If we ever wake up and realize who we are, we’ll start doing the work that we’re supposed to do. Because the church hasn’t realized yet that they are Christ. That’s who they are. They are Christ.” This is a wonderful Biblical truth. The Lord Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh. He is the eternal Son of God. Nowhere is the believer said to be an incarnation of Almighty God except in the verse of Romans 8 which says that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us, that the Holy Spirit is inside us, and the other 87 times in the New Testament we are told that that God lives INSIDE US! The Lord Jesus Christ performed miracles to demonstrate that He was the Son of God, the promised Messiah is one common error people have when they read the Bible. They might also say ridiculous things such as “No Christian can do the things that Christ did” which is a DIRECT CONTRADICTION to the teaching of Jesus Himself in John 14.12!  Who are you going to believe, Jesus or some preacher who cannot read? Some people thing that “Not one Pentecostal preacher has ever been able to perform the miracles that Christ performed” but they are very much closed minded to the wonderful miracles that many, many, many Christians have seen. It is blasphemous confusion to claim that the believer is NOT an incarnation of God like Christ was – it is an insult to the Holy Spirit who lives in us to say that our flesh does not contain God!

–  Hagin obviously did not believe God is sovereign in the traditional unbiblical way that many Calvinists believe. Jesus, according to Word-Faith theology based on the teachings of the Bible such as Romans 5.17 and Matthew 28.18-20, has no authority on earth, having delegated it all to the church. He developed this point in his book The Authority of the Believer (Tulsa: Faith Library, 1979). And though all Word-Faith advocates would affirm the personality of the Holy Spirit, it is a shame that many non-charismatics depersonalize Him by consistently speaking of Him as a power to be drawn upon and don’t listen to His Voice and have a relationship of communion and fellowship with Him. (John 10.28).

–  When one stops believing that he is Christ, someone with the anointing of God like 1 John 2.20 teaches, with the power of Christ to create reality, the stories become ludicrous to such an unbeliever. Surely Hagin had the most unusual story of all. He said that when he was younger and still single, God led him to break off a relationship with a woman by revealing to him that she was morally unfit. Hagin claimed God miraculously transported him out of church one Sunday, right in the middle of the sermon. Worst of all, Hagin was the preacher delivering the sermon! Unfortunately some people have no experience of the power of God and cannot accept this experience at all!

–  In How to Write Your Own Ticket with God, Hagin saw a vision of Jesus, and said to Him, “Dear Lord, I have two sermons I preach concerning the woman who touched Your clothes and was healed when You were on earth. I received both of these sermons by inspiration.” (Emphasis added.) Later, Hagin quoted what Jesus told him in reply: “You are correct. My Spirit, the Holy Spirit, has endeavored to get another sermon into your spirit, but you have failed to pick it up. While I am here, I will do as you ask. I will give you that sermon outline. Now get your pencil and paper and write it down.” (Emphasis added.) Hagin claimed to have received numerous visions, as well as eight personal visitations from Jesus (see below). Hagin wrote, “The Lord Himself taught me about prosperity. I never read about it in a book. I got it directly from heaven” (How God Taught Me About Prosperity, Tulsa: Faith Library, 1985). That claim, of course, is not a lie, though many people might accuse him of lying because of their ignorance of the Bible [Hagin also claimed that he knew that Paul wrote Hebrews because Jesus appeared to him (Hagin) and told him so!]

Hagin claimed that of the eight times Jesus appeared to him, seven times Jesus was barefoot; the other time Jesus was wearing Roman sandals, and came into Hagin’s room, sat down by his bedside, and talked with him for about 30 minutes. During that time, Jesus allegedly taught Hagin how to be led by the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. Hagin described Jesus as 5’11” tall and weighing about 180 pounds. This is of course possible (cf. 2 Cor. 5:16). Some people might think that if the resurrected, ascended, glorified Christ chose to visit Hagin for a midnight chat, He would not be wearing sandals, and Hagin would be toast, but they do not understand the redemptive work of Jesus on the cross.(3/4/96, Christian News, p. 12).

–  Other examples of Hagin’s teachings (Source: “Hagin Drunk ‘In The Spirit’,” David Cloud, 10/4/98, FBIS report):

(a) Hagin claimed that his teaching was given to him by God, and it was.  Some teaching came directly from God and some as he meditated heavily from the writings of Kenyon (among many others) (1867-1948). D.R. McConnell (in his book A Different Gospel, documents this with pages of comparisons proving beyond question that Hagin and Kenyon’s writings are very similar. McConnell introduces this section of his book by saying: “Hagin has, indeed, copied word-for-word without documentation from Kenyon’s writings. The following excerpts of plagiarisms from no less than eight books by E.W. Kenyon are presented as evidence of this charge. This is only a sampling of such plagiarisms. Many more could be cited.”  Hagin actually preached Kenyon’s sermons and then his sermons were made into books.  As you know you don’t footnote sermons.  If every preacher who has ever used another’s words or illustrations in the pulpit is a plagiarizer then that is a remarkable thing to state!  However, this list is produced word for word by MANY on the internet, who never ever cite its source!

(b) Hagin taught accurately and Biblically that Christ’s physical death alone did not remove sin. Rather, it was Christ’s “spiritual death” and struggles in hell that removed sin. Hagin taught that Christ was sent to hell and there struggled against Satan and demons, and by his victory over them was born again. This is revelation of the greatest sort. The Bible plainly states that we are redeemed by Christ’s (spiritual) death and blood (Acts 20:28; Heb. 9:14; 10:10). The atonement was finished on the cross. When Christ dismissed His spirit from his body, He cried, “It is finished” – referring to the Old Testament (John 19:30). The Lord Jesus Christ was born again; He was lost due to our sin. He became our sin, but He was never a sinner. He was tormented in hell by Satan and the demons. Nowhere does the Bible say that Satan is in hell or that he has any influence in hell. One happy day in the future, Satan will be bound for 1,000 years in the bottomless pit (Rev. 20:1-3) and ultimately he will be cast into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:10), but nowhere does the Bible say Satan is the master of hell anymore because Jesus took the keys of death and Hell from him – Hallelujah!

(c) Hagin claimed he was guided by visitations of angels and of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. His book I Believe in Visions describes eight of these. The seventh occurred December 12, 1962. Hagin claimed the Lord prophesied to him in this visitation that He would soon begin to move among all denominations to “bring them into a full salvation and into the baptism of the Holy Ghost.” Hagin claimed that Jesus Christ told him that he would play a part in this ecumenical miracle revival. (A similar prophecy was given to David DuPlessis by Smith Wigglesworth in 1936. The ecumenical-charismatic movement, which has since swept through the Roman Catholic Church and the mainline Protestant denominations, would appear to be a fulfillment of these prophecies. DuPlessis was the first to carry Pentecostal experiences to the Roman Catholic Church. He was the only Pentecostal to attend Rome’s Vatican II Council in the mid 1960s.)  Wonderful accurate prophecies!

(d) Hagin taught a health-prosperity gospel. He wrote: “Like salvation, healing is a gift, already paid for at Calvary. All we need to do is accept it. All we need to do is possess the promise that is ours. As children of God, we need to realize that healing belongs to us” (Hagin, Healing Belongs to Us, p. 32). He further said: “God is glorified through healing and deliverance, not sickness and suffering” (Hagin, The Key to Scriptural Healing, p. 17).

(e) Hagin claimed that the Lord spoke to him in a vision in 1959 with the words: “If you will learn to follow that inward witness I will make you rich. I will guide you in all the affairs of life, financial as well as spiritual” (Hagin, How to Be Led by the Holy Spirit). In an article “How God Taught Me about Prosperity,” Hagin claimed that Jesus Christ taught him not to think that it is wrong to have riches. Allegedly Christ told him not to “pray about money anymore; that is, the way you’ve been praying. CLAIM WHATEVER YOU NEED.” Christ allegedly further taught Hagin that he had personal angels who could be commanded to do his bidding. Hagin said Christ told him in 1963 that the angels were waiting for his command to provide his material desires: “They are waiting on you to give them the order, just as the waitress cannot do anything for you until you give her the order” (Hagin, I Believe in Visions, p. 126).

–  Here is just a sample of some of the direct revelations and/or direct “anointings” Kenneth Hagin claimed to have received from the Lord. (All quotes from The Word of Faith magazine.):

(a) “‘… You have learned faith both through My Word and by experience. Now go teach my people what I’ve taught you. Go teach My people faith.’ These words, spoken years ago by the Head of the Church to Rev. Kenneth E. Hagin, have never lost their sense of divine urgency, Decades have passed, and that heavenly commission still stands” (11/96).

(b) “In March 1945 … On Sunday afternoon I was lying on the living room floor. The Holy Ghost said, ‘When you’re in your sixties, the two main thrusts of your ministry will be radio and the printed page'” (11/96).

(c) “Then almost twenty years later in 1963, during an unusual time of prayer at a meeting in Houston, the Lord told me four things to do: Go to neutral places to hold my own ‘All Faiths Crusades’ and invite everyone to come; put all my teachings from my daytime teachings on tape; and get on the radio and teach — don’t preach” (11/96).

(d) “Waves of God’s glory swept through the sanctuary, and people broke out in Holy Ghost laughter or dancing in the Spirit. Then Brother Hagin began laying hands on various people in the audience, telling them to ‘Be blessed!’ He was operating under such a strong anointing that ENTIRE ROWS OF PEOPLE WOULD FALL UNDER THE POWER OF GOD when Brother Hagin touched the first person in the row — or at times just walked by the row! Afterwards, Brother Hagin began to close the service — but the Holy Ghost arrested him, striking him dumb or mute by the power of God! For the next hour, Brother Hagin, unable to speak himself, walked throughout the audience, handing various ministers the microphone so the minister could speak as the Lord led him. But the moment Brother Hagin gave the microphone to someone, THAT MINISTER WAS EITHER STRUCK DUMB, FELL UNDER THE POWER OF GOD, OR WAS OVERCOME BY HOLY GHOST LAUGHTER” (5/96, Description of a meeting conducted by Kenneth Hagin at the Winter Bible Seminar ’96 on the RHEMA campus). [Hagin had been in the center of the current Laughing Revival. It was during a Rodney Howard-Browne crusade at Hagin’s church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that Vineyard Pastor Randy Clark received the “anointing” which he subsequently carried to Toronto.]

(e) “One morning at a recent Holy Ghost Meeting, the Lord asked me a question … The Lord said to me, ‘Do you think I’d ask you to do something that I wouldn’t be willing to do?'” (10/96).

(f) The Lord spoke audibly to him and told him when was the proper time to applaud (clap) during a worship service: “The Lord didn’t say, ‘Don’t ever clap.’ He was explaining the right and wrong time to clap. … I’m only telling you what the Lord told me!” (10/96).

–  Hagin displayed his charismatic theology on a regular basis in his The Word of Faith magazine. The following excerpts are from Hagin’s “From the Archives” series. This is presented as further proof of the great teaching emanating from charismatic pulpits today:

In the10/01 magazine, in an article titled “Born Again,” Hagin recounted his three visits to hell as a 15 year-old boy in the year 1933. The article introduces the visits with: “Kenneth E. Hagin suffered poor health throughout childhood and at the age of fifteen became bedfast. That night, he died and went to the gates of hell three times”:

“As I began to descend into the darkness for the third time, my spirit cried out, ‘God, I belong to the church! I’ve been baptized in the water!’ … I came again to the bottom of that pit. Again I could feel the heat as it beat me in the face. Again I approached the entrance, the gates into hell itself. The creature that met me the first two times again took me by the arm. … I just heard the voice. I don’t know what he said, but whatever he said, that place shook; it just trembled. And that creature took his hand off my arm. It was just as if there was a suction to my back parts. It pulled me back, away from the entrance to hell, until I stood in the shadows. Then it pulled me up headfirst.”

Hagin’s out-of-body experience ends up back home:

“I came up beside my bed in my grandparents’ house. The difference between the three experiences was that I came up on the porch the first time; at the foot of the bed the second time; and right beside the bed the third time. When I got inside my body, my physical voice picked up and continued my prayer right in the middle of the sentence. I was already praying out of my spirit.”

And quite a prayer it was—a real traffic-stopper:

“… they tell me that between me and Momma praying so loud, traffic was lined up for two blocks on either side of our house! They heard me praying from inside the house, and they heard my mother as she walked the porch praying at the top of her voice. … That was the very hour I was born again …”

Arguably, (especially to people who do not operate in the power of the Holy Spirit) Hagin’s account of his salvation experience is necessary to give credibility to the charismatic’s claim to prophethood. But to “seal the deal”, the ordined by God charismatic prophet needed a personalized visit from Jesus. And not just any visit would do—one on par with the Revelation of Jesus Christ to the Apostle John WAS apparently required.  Of course anyone can see that if Jesus visited two people there could be similarities in these visitations!. In Hagin’s November 2001 The Word of Faith magazine, in an article titled “A Sobering Vision,” he recounted a 1950 tent revival in Texas where Jesus appeared to him in a vision. Reading like a passage from the Book of Revelation, Hagin actually wrote new revelation.  Obviously no-one except a few sensationialist cessationists who want to demonise Hagin would compare a prophetic word to Scripture:

“As I lay under the power of God, it seemed that I stood on a plain and could see for miles. … To the west I saw what appeared to be a tiny dot on the horizon. As I watched, it grew larger. It was a horse with a man upon it, riding toward me at full speed. The horseman came to me, stopped, and handed me a scroll—a roll of paper twelve or fourteen inches long. As I unrolled it, he said, ‘Take and read.’ At the top of the page in big, bold, black print were the words, ‘WAR AND DESTRUCTION.’ I was struck dumb. He laid his right hand on my head and said, ‘Read, in the Name of Jesus Christ!’ I began to read what followed on the paper, and as the words instructed me, I looked and saw what I read about. First, I read about thousands upon thousands of men in uniform. … wave after wave of soldiers marching as to war … I saw many … All of the women were bowed together in sorrow and were weeping profusely. … I looked at the scroll again, and again looked up to see what I had read about. I saw the skyline of a large city. Looking closer I saw its skyscrapers were burned-out hulls, and portions of the city were in ruins. It was not writ­ten that just one city would be destroyed, burned, and in ruins, but that there would be many such cities.”

Too bad Hagin didn’t reveal this to the FBI before the September 11th WTC attacks, although the FBI could have read the book and attended his meetings! He continued with his vision:

“The scroll was written in the first person; it seemed as if Jesus Himself were speaking. I read, ‘America is receiving her last call. Some nations have already received their last call and will never receive another.’ Then in larger print it said, ‘THE TIME OF THE END OF ALL THINGS IS AT HAND.’ This statement was repeated four or five times.”

Now for the good stuff—Jesus validates the gifts of the Spirit for today. How convenient for charismatic theology, although obviously charismatics base their theology on Scripture not exeprience, as Hagin himself taught again and again and again!:

“The scroll continued, ‘All the gifts of the Spirit will be in operation in the Church in these last days. The Church will do greater things than even the Early Church did. It will have greater power, signs, and wonders than were recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. We have seen and experienced many healings, but we now behold amazing miracles such as have not been seen before. More and more miracles will be performed in the last days which are just ahead (referring to the end of the last days), for it is time for the gift of the working of miracles to be more in prominence. We now have entered into the area of the miraculous. Many of My own people will not accept the moving of My Spirit, and will turn back and will not be ready to meet Me at My coming. Many will be deceived by false prophets and miracles of satanic origin. But follow the Word of God, the Spirit of God, and Me, and you will not be deceived. I am gather­ing My own together and am prepar­ing them, for the time is short.'”

Finally, Hagin got his papers validated as a prophet of God:

“‘Warn this generation, as did Noah his generation, for judgment is about to fall. And these sayings shall be ful­filled shortly, for I am coming soon. This is the last revival. I am preparing My people for My coming. Judgment is coming, but I will call My people away, even unto Myself, before the worst shall come. But be thou faithful and watch and pray.’ Then the message concluded with the words, ‘For the time of the end of all things is at hand.'”

In the December 2001 issue of The Word of Faith, Hagin went back to the time immediately following his “new birth” experience. He was still bedfast when “the glory of God” filled his room with a “bright light — brighter than the sun shining on snow.” Hagin then had another out-of-body experience, hearing Jesus speaking, “Go back! Go back! Go back to the earth! Your work’s not done!” Moreover, during the time the bright cloud of God filled Hagin’s room, Hagin’s 70 year-old grandmother repeatedly tried to enter the room through the open door, only to be repelled by the cloud, “bouncing off of it like it was a rubber ball.” Granny couldn’t get in the room until the cloud had lifted.

In the January 2002 magazine, in an article titled “Come Up to the Throne of God,” Hagin recounted his face-to-face meeting with Jesus. You would have to be trained by cessationist unbelieving Christians to imagine that there could be a unbiblical nature to this vision:

“I was conscious of the fact that I still lay flat on my face on the floor, and for a few minutes I remained there, feeling the glory of this miraculous visitation. Again I heard a voice say, ‘Come up hither.’ And this time the voice said, ‘Come up hither; come up to the throne of God.’ I saw Jesus standing again about where the top of the tent should be, and I went to Him through the air. When I reached Him, together we continued on to Heaven. We came to the throne of God, and I beheld it in all its splendor. The first thing that attracted my attention was the rainbow about the throne. It was very beautiful. The second thing I noticed was the winged creatures on either side of the throne. They were peculiar looking creatures, and as I walked up with Jesus, these creatures stood with wings out­stretched. They were saying something, but they ceased and folded their wings. They had eyes of fire set all the way around their heads, and they looked in all directions at once. I stood with Jesus in the midst, about eighteen to twenty-four feet from the throne. I started to look at the One who sat upon the throne. Jesus told me not to look upon His face. I could see only a form of a Being seated upon the throne. Then for the first time I actually looked into the eyes of Jesus. Many times when relating this experience I am asked, ‘What did His eyes look like?’ All I can say is that they looked like wells of living love. It seemed as if one could see a half-mile deep into them, and the tender look of love is indescribable. As I looked into His face and into His eyes, I fell at His feet. I noticed then that His feet were bare, and I laid the palms of my hands on the top of His feet and laid my forehead on the backs of my hands. Weeping, I said, ‘Oh Lord, no one as unworthy as I should look upon Your face.’ Jesus said that I should stand upright on my feet. I stood up. He called me worthy to look upon His face, for He had called me and cleansed me from all sin.”

–  Hagin promised health and wealth to Christians, and SAID: “All you have to do is visualize it, speak it into existence.” Hagin claimed that Jesus appeared to him in a vision in 1950 and gave him a special anointing to minister to the sick (4/96, The Word of Faith). After a 1952 vision, Hagin said: “[N]ow when I minister and lay hands on people, I can tell if there is an evil spirit present either through the word of knowledge or the discerning of spirits.” He relateED a time when “there stood Jesus right in front of me” (after a failed healing) and said Jesus pointed His finger at him, almost touching his nose. Jesus supposedly said, “I told you, ‘If you feel that fire jumping from hand to hand like heat waves, there is a demon or evil spirit in the body. Call him out in My Name and he will leave.'” (Reported in the 7/1/96, Calvary Contender.)

–  Hagin explained his criteria for judging between true and false spiritual gifts:

“When God moves, everybody will be blessed. If something is of the flesh, everybody will have a sick feeling. And if something is of the devil, it seems like the hair will stand up on your neck. That’s a simple way everyone can judge, whether they’ve got any spiritual discernment or not.”

There, as explicitly as it can be expressed, is a statement that defines exactly what is great with charismatic mysticism. Spiritual discernment is deemed unnecessary. According to some critics of Kenneth Hagin who do not understand the spirit, you can judge between what is true, fleshly, or demonic by a process that is really just a simplified system of biofeedback.  Of course it is about spiritual discernment operating through us, not biofeedback.  But people do make these claims when they do not have a clue about the Spirit!

–  Despite some people who do not care for the Bible or history claiming that Word-Faith teachers owe their ancestry to groups like Christian Science, Swedenborgianism, Theosophy, Science of Mind, and New Thought — they actually are rooted in classical Pentecostalism. It reveals that at their very core, Word-Faith teachings are pure. Their undeniable derivation is Christian, not cultish. The truth is that the gospel proclaimed by the Word-Faith movement is the gospel of the New Testament. Word-Faith doctrine is a Biblical system, a safeguard against the blend of mysticism, dualism, and gnosticism that borrows generously from the teachings of the metaphysical cults. The criticism of the Word-Faith movement may be the most dangerous false system that has grown out of the Reformed movement so far. Because so many Calvinists are unsure of the doctrine of Scripture and cannot interpret Scripture without their religious framework, they have to criticise anyone who can operate in the power of God that Jesus operated in because their unbiblical tradition does not allow for it.

The Hagin Ministry Conglomerate

Kenneth E. Hagin began his ministry in Texas in 1934 at the age of 17. For twelve years he pastored, then traveled extensively in the evangelistic field. In 1963, the Kenneth E. Hagin Evangelistic Association was incorporated. In 1966, the offices of the ministry were moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Kenneth Hagin, Sr., ministers with his son, Kenneth Hagin, Jr., and grandson, Craig Hagin. (Craig is his grandfather’s Crusade Director, Special Meetings coordinator, operations manager for the ministry, and the associate pastor of the RHEMA Bible Church, pastored by his father. In a February, 1998 ministry letter, he also claimed that the Holy Spirit led him to preach and teach healing.)

RHEMA Bible Training Center was founded in 1974. In 1978, the name of the ministry was changed to RHEMA Bible Church (a.k.a. Kenneth Hagin Ministries, Inc.). The Training Center is located on a more than 110-acre campus consisting of 23 buildings, including a 96-unit student housing complex, a 2,000-seat auditorium, and a Prayer and Healing Center (PHC). Since the 1974-75 charter class graduated 58 students, RHEMA has provided training to more than 23,000 graduates. RHEMA’s average annual enrollment is 1,800 with graduating classes of 750-800. (Internationally, there are RHEMA Training Centers in 13 countries.) RHEMA Correspondence Bible School has enrolled more than 60,000 students since its inception and offers an extensive curriculum for home Bible study.

“Faith Seminar of the Air,” begun in 1966, is RHEMA’s radio ministry, airing on more than 250 stations in a 15-minute daily slot, as well as being heard via short-wave radio in over 120 countries and on all continents of the world. In addition, “RHEMA Radio Church,” airs its 30-minute program via 93 radio broadcasts weekly in 30 states. All tolled, RHEMA’s radio broadcasts can be picked up by 2.8 billion potential listeners.

In late 1995, a videotape ministry was initiated. RHEMA Bible Church sends video teaching tapes to an average of 125 RHEMA missionaries each month. In 1996, “RHEMA Praise,” a half-hour television program outreach of RHEMA Bible Church, began airing in the Tulsa area. “RHEMA Praise” is also translated into Spanish and broadcasted into 54 nations covering all of South America and parts of Europe. In August 1999, “RHEMA Praise” began broadcasting into 40 additional countries in Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. Since its inception, broadcast locations have expanded to reach a combined potential audience of more than 30 million homes every week.

Kenneth Hagin and his son, Kenneth Hagin, Jr., have authored 147 charismatic-oriented books. More than 65 million copies of these books are currently in circulation around the world, translated into more than 25 foreign languages. RHEMA’s efforts support missionaries in 109 countries and The Word of Faith magazine is sent into more than 250,000 homes each month. More than 50,000 teaching tapes by the Hagins are distributed each month. More than eight million tapes have been distributed since the inception of the cassette tape ministry.

Kenneth Hagin, Jr., pastors the 8,000-member RHEMA Bible Church that meets on the campus of RHEMA Bible Training Center in a 4,500-seat auditorium. Father, son, and grandson all minister together and individually in crusades, seminars, and other special meetings. Each July, the Hagin’s conduct their indoor “Campmeeting” at Tulsa’s Convention Center. It has drawn people from all 50 states, Canada, and 68 other countries.

In the fall of 1979, Hagin, Sr., began the Healing School on the RHEMA campus (the Prayer and Healing Center). Morning and afternoon healing sessions are held daily, at which students are taught the techniques of healing the sick! Hagin boasted that “The highest percentage of healings is among those with incurable diseases, many of which include cases diagnosed as terminal.” [If student’s really learn how to heal, why are they not then sent into the hospitals of Tulsa and heal all the terminally ill there?  The answer is obvious to anyone who has ever read the gospels!  If you need the answer explained, email me!]

Romans 1.10

Making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you.

Paul is requesting that he might have a prosperous journey to visit the Romans. The NLT makes this verse very simple:

One of the things I always pray for is the opportunity, God willing, to come at last to see you.

Paul is praying for the Romans what he is praying for is the chance to see them. We all know Paul’s great hymns of praise (cf. Romans 11.34-36) and Paul’s theological prayers (cf. Ephesians 1.16-23) and they are beautiful. Paul was a deep man.

But just because someone is deep doesn’t mean that they are not a human! Paul is praying for the Romans – not for deep revelation, not for truth and life, for wisdom, for the will of God – no, Paul is praying that he can get a chance to see them and visit them.

It is perfectly acceptable to pray for things that you might think are mundane. Not every prayer has to be for a worldwide revival and power and glory sweeping the earth!

It is ok to ask for a parking space, to ask God that you would bump into an old friend that you miss, that someone in church would give you a lift home. That is great.

Notice as well that Paul did not know the will of God – here he prays that he would journey to them by the will of God (Paul was not asking for the will of God to be that his journey was prosperous, but that God would allow him to go!).

Paul prayed about things that he didn’t know what God wanted. That is fine. It is ok to say “if it by Thy will” when we pray.

Sometimes as faith people we get the revelation that when we are praying for something that the Bible clearly tells us is the will of God, then it is sin and doubt to pray “if it be Thy will”, and then we go overboard and never pray “if it be Thy will” again!

Listen if the will of God is clearly revealed in Scripture or by revelation, DO NOT pray “if it be Thy will”. The Bible says “By His stripes We Are Healed.” Never pray for healing “if it be Thy will” – what an insult to the stripes. Never pray for prosperity or joy “if it be Thy will” – pray the Word.

But some things we don’t know. Paul didn’t know at that stage if God wanted him to go to Rome or not. You might not know if someone is the right person to marry, or if a church is the right church to go to. At times like this there is nothing wrong with asking God “if it be Thy will, I want to go to Rome”, “if it be thy will, I will marry her/ him or not”, “if it be Thy Will, I will join this church”.

Or whatever. Don’t get silly about it, there is no need to pray for which breakfast cereal to eat. Grow up – remember God is our Father. If my children asked me to tell them what cereal to eat, I would be stunned. If I replied to such a ridiculous question it would be to say “Eat the one you fancy, it doesn’t matter”.

If at any point it did matter, I would let my children know. “Adam, the milkman hasn’t come, don’t have cereal because you will use all the milk, have some toast and a croissant.” He is my son – the lines of communication are open, so I don’t expect silly questions.

Some of ask God the most silly questions – I know someone who used to pray what socks to wear in the morning. Now if it bothers you, then He is touched with our infirmities. God is our Father and loves us – and that is fine. If you ask him “look, Father, which tie looks best with this shirt”, He will tell you if it matters to you. He knows what is important to you.

But in general, we should not be asking about trivial things – God expects you to just do them. Even in the street, people ask God should I talk to that person when the Bible says preach to every creature. If you are asking the question, you should be speaking to that person!

But for important things – which church should I go to, should I go here or there, where should I go on holiday – ask Him, and freely say “if it be Thy will”. By saying this you are letting God know that He is GOD! That if He says go to Rome, you will go to Rome. If He says don’t go, then you won’t.

Be that kind of person and you will very soon find out the will of God for your life. If you are prepared to do anything, you will quickly find the something you are called to do.

Romans 1.9

For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers;

Let’s start with what Paul says first: he serves God with his spirit. This means that Paul is always serving God because he serves God from the inside.

He doesn’t need a crowd to listen to him to serve God, he can serve God chained up in prison. Sometimes we think that we have to do great things on earth to impress God – but God is impressed by our spirit, by us worshipping, praising and praying for people. Also – if you do mighty public works without your spirit being humble and pure before God you are wasting your time – you gain nothing (see 1 Cor. 13).

You can serve God right now – lift your hands to heaven and thank Him for making a wonderful day, pray for someone who has persecuted you and ask God to bless them and show them honour, then speak life over your family and your church. How easy it is to serve God!

Paul says that without ceasing he prayed for the Roman church. This word without ceasing is adialeiptōs in the Greek. This word is only used four times in the New Testament:

Romans 1.9 – without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers

1 Thess 1.2-3 – We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers; Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus
Christ, in the sight of God and our Father;

1 Thess 2.13 – For this cause also we thank God without ceasing

1 Thess 5.17 – Pray without ceasing

Notice that this word is only used in the Bible in the context of our relationship with God. We should pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5.17), and incase we dismiss this command as an ideal and not reality Paul says clearly in Romans 1.9 that he prayed without ceasing for the Roman church.

Now this does not mean that Paul prayed non-stop for the Roman Christians. It does not mean that whenever you found Paul he was lying prostrate praying in tongues for the Romans.

Firstly, Paul slept, he ate, he drank, he was a worker, he was a preacher. You cannot pray non-stop and nor can I. There is no Biblical command to pray non-stop.

The devil likes to get in to these sorts of commands and condemn us for not praying enough. He misquotes the Scripture to make you feel like rubbish.

Listen when God convicts us it is always three things:

1) Redemptive
2) Specific
3) Achievable

If the Holy Spirit says “Every day before you leave the house pray in tongues for 20 minutes” that is probably God because it is redemptive (it is something positive), it is specific (you can easily tell if you have done it or not) and it is achievable.

The devil is the one that says “you must pray more” – he wouldn’t dare tell you when to pray or give you a method of prayer or a goal, he just wants you to feel like rubbish. You must be more loving is another one of his phrases.

You cannot pray non-stop so stop feeling guilty that you don’t.

Let me explain what without ceasing means: it means without an intermission. Have you ever been to the cinema (I know all you holy people have never been to the cinema!) when there is a long film with an intermission: it is a break where something else happens.

You should pray without a break where something else happens. It means without an interruption to your prayer. Look at Strong’s Concordance:

Adverb from adialeiptos; uninterruptedly
When you read without ceasing in your Bible, translate it in your mind to without interruptions.

When you pray, you should be operating in faith and love. What praying without interruptions means is that just because you are not in your prayer time, don’t drop the faith and the love.

Let me try and make it practical for you so you can grasp this. Imagine you are praying for one of your children. You know that prayer must be in faith and you know that faith comes from hearing the Word so you search the Scriptures for a Scripture for your child. Maybe your child is having difficulties or starting to rebel.

Imagine you find Isaiah 54.13, which says great shall be the peace of thy children. So you go to prayer:

Father, thank you for Bob. Thank you that your Word says that His peace shall be great. He is not controlled by fear but by peace. He shall not have a broken life, but a peaceful life. He is a man of peace, and brings peace with him. Amen.

Now to pray for Bob without ceasing doesn’t mean that you pray non-stop, no drinking, no thinking, no sleeping, no anything that stops you praying and never doing anything else. Imagine if Paul prayed for the Romans like that and if pray without ceasing meant that, then Paul would never have prayed for the Thessalonians because that would mean to cease praying for the Romans! This is clearly not what pray without ceasing means.

To pray for Bob without ceasing means that after you have finished praying, you don’t phone Sister Bucketmouth and say “Man, what am I going to do with Bob? I can’t get a handle on him, it’s getting worse.” If you say contrary to your prayer, you have interrupted your prayer. You have failed to pray without interruption.

You have interrupted your prayer of faith with doubt, fear, worry and unbelief. You are undoing your prayer!

Listen: Paul prayed (and gave thanks – read Romans 1.8 and 9 together) for the Romans without ceasing. When he finished praying for them and thanking God for them, he did not go:

“Well, those Romans, it is so tough being church in Rome, I don’t know how they have made it. I hope they keep making it, I better go there and sort them out… you no what kind of mess they will be in without me…”

No – he refused to interrupt his prayer. He didn’t pray for his bills to be met on Sunday and get up Monday and worry and fret – he never interrupted his prayer. He didn’t pray in faith for the church to be revived and then tell his friend what a bunch of unspiritual fools they were down at the church as soon as he said amen.

Paul didn’t quit being thankful and appreciative for the church when he finished praying. He didn’t take faith and love into the prayer closet and leave them in there.

No – God was and is His witness, he refused to interrupt his prayers.

My encouragement to you today is this:

Pray without interruption (1 Thessalonians 5.17, Ben Conway Translation)

Do not let anything interrupt your prayers. When you have offered up your prayer in faith and love, don’t go and speak something in doubt and hatred. Don’t interrupt your prayers.

God doen’t interrupt prayers, He answers them. But if in the process of that answer manifesting, you interrupt yourself, then you are the one stopping the answer from manifesting.

You don’t have to pray non-stop, you need to pray and keep the attitudes of faith and love non-stop.

I hope this clarifies for you and helps you realize that 1 Thess. 5.17 is a command you can obey, and should obey, I hope it stops the devil ever thumping you on the head with this Scripture!

But more than that, I hope it helps you pray the prayer of faith for yourself, for friends, for enemies and for entire churches and see your answers manifest because you refuse to interrupt yourself.

Glory and freedom,
Benjamin

Rediscovering the Kingdom (Myles Munroe)

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=E1BA79E8C4020DEA
Watch these – it will revolutionise your life!

How to Be A Success (Robb Thompson)

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Success Is Only A Dream For Those Who Talk About It; Success Is A Reality To Those
Who Pursue It.
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"This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in
it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in
 it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success."

Joshua 1:8 (NKJV)

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Intellectual Greeks, proud Romans, ancient Syrians, culturedEgyptians, fiery Arabs,
colorful Persians, and worldly Babyloniansoccupied half of Palestine on the eve
of Jesus' birth. The other halfwere Jews-a divine culture split into many rival,
 often hostile sects.But from the beginning, Jesus lived and breathed success. Let
me remind you, however, success doesn't come because you're a nice person or because
you yearn for it. Success only comes because you achieve it. You earn success by
 being willing to exchange your time and effort for what you desire.
Well-known author James Allen, says, "Achievement is the crown of effort." No significant
achievement in all of history ever came without paying a significant price. The
marked effort you are willing to exert ultimately determines your success. Fulfilling
your dreams and achieving your goals is your responsibility. God gave you the tools,
but you are the one who must build the house, which represents your life. What kind
of home would you like to have-large or small? It is your choice. You are the master
architect, the chief builder, and the eventual homeowner. Your life is the result
of your own construction. God supplied you with everything you need in order to
build a great life. The only requirement is that you must build it according to
His standards of success.

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Daily Confession
Father, I thank You that Your Word does not depart out of my mouth, but I meditate
on it day and night, and I do all I am commanded to do.
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Receptionist takes school to court over prayer row (from www.christian.org.uk)

Receptionist takes school
to court over prayer row

Friday, 21 August 2009

A primary school receptionist from Devon is taking legal action against her employers after they disciplined her for asking friends to pray about the school’s treatment of her daughter. 

Archive: a BBC news report (Feb 09)

Lawyers representing Jennie Cain have lodged papers with Exeter employment tribunal claiming that she has suffered religious discrimination, harassment and victimisation.

The claim is brought against the governing body of Landscore Primary School and the school’s head teacher Mr Gary Read. A claim is also brought against Devon County Council for aiding the discrimination.

Mrs Cain’s daughter Jasmine was attending the school. In January this year, then aged five, she was reprimanded by her class teacher for talking about her Christian faith to another child.

The school has said the five-year-old had frightened another child by talking about hell.

It has since come to light that the conversation between the children was never witnessed by any adult and took place around October time the previous year.

On hearing that her daughter had been reprimanded for expressing her faith, Mrs Cain sent a private email to church friends and family asking them to pray about the incident.

The email was sent from Mrs Cain’s home computer, outside work time, using her personal email account.

But the email ended up in the hands of head teacher Gary Read who launched an investigation against Mrs Cain for professional misconduct.

A panel of school governors decided to discipline Mrs Cain by issuing her a final written warning. This was reduced to a written warning on appeal.

However, the legal papers lodged with the Employment Tribunal claim that the decision to discipline Mrs Cain is part of ongoing hostility to her Christian faith by her employers.

The legal papers also claim that the governors sitting on the appeal panel had wanted to remove the warning from Mrs Cain’s record completely but were blocked from doing so by staff from Devon County Council’s Human Resources Department.

It is further claimed that school’s disciplinary procedure was not properly followed.

Mrs Cain was told to stay away from work for four months. The legal papers claim that, upon her return to work, Mrs Cain has continued to suffer religious discrimination and harassment. She also suffered victimisation on account of her taking legal action.

The Christian Institute’s Mike Judge said: “We support Jennie’s decision to take legal action.

“Her case is important because it highlights a wider problem. I am sad to say that a number of Christians, particularly those who work in the public sector, have been disciplined for expressing their faith.

“If Jennie was from a different religious background I believe her employers would have handled her situation differently.”

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An Argument for Learning (Jim Eliff)

An Argument for Learning

Jim Elliff

 

 

One of the immense edifices on the skyline of Christian history over the last hundred years was the eminent leader, Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones (1899-1981). He is noteworthy not only because he was a great preacher and the pastor of Westminster Chapel of London, but also because of his zest for learning. Having begun as a physician of exceptional quality, he carried over into his Christianity and ministry this unceasing hunger to know more. From a delightful little book entitled Martyn Lloyd Jones, The Man and His Books I found this humorous cameo of Lloyd Jones as a indefatigable learner, given by his daughter as a portion of a public address:

 

I remember staying in Wales. I was again fairly young, it was the mid 1930’s, on that lovely sandy beach in Borth. It was a boiling hot day. (I know we always tend to think it was like this when we were children, but this really was a boiling hot day.) I was gamboling about in a bathing costume, and digging and paddling and all the rest of it. Everybody else was on the beach, in the amount of undress that was allowed in the mid-1930’s. We were all hot, and there we all were in this glorious sunshine sunbathing, as I said, and playing. In front of a rock, over to one corner of the beach, was my father, fully clothed, in a gray suit with a hat upon his head, his usual hat, shoes, socks, waistcoat, the whole thing, sitting bolt upright, leaning against the rock and reading…1

 

I identify. Not that I have the acumen of a Lloyd-Jones, and certainly not because I like to wear a waistcoat and hat, but because I have the hunger to know, to think, to acquire substantial understanding of the nature of God and the way He works in his universe and with man. In fact, I find it a bit frustrating not to make better advances. Time is much too fugitive, my schedule too uncooperative, and my mind too sluggish, for making all the progress I would like.

 

Perusing the half-price books at the antique mall one day, I remarked that I loved books and could not pass them by, etc., and that television seemed to steal so much from people. You know the line of thinking. The kind woman who was sitting close by was candid in saying that she just could not get along without television and that she watched it incessantly. I said, not to be impressive, but to emphasize a great loss experienced by the Western world, that we had chosen to get rid of our television ten years ago, and that it was, for us, an extremely wise decision.

 

“Why? Was it because of the quality of the programs?” she asked. “Yes, that certainly,” I returned, “but perhaps as much because of the great loss of time. When there is so much to know that is important and television relates so little of it, while demanding more and more precious time, it causes concern. We miss some things,” I said, “but we gain far more.” This, of course, is my evaluation because I think there is much worth knowing about God and man, and there is little time to learn it. Understandably, for a non-believer, that particular pursuit does not generate near enough interest or energy to cause him to get up and “flip the switch.”

 

This encouragement toward learning is not to say an endless chain of degrees has superior value, per se. It goes without saying that “PhD’s do not a doctor make.” While in the Muir woods near San Francisco, feeling small among the giant redwoods, my wife and I happened to enter into a lengthy walk and discussion with a retired professor of rhetoric from a California university. The discussion ranged from its beginning place, rhetoric, to his liberal views on education, his philosophy of religion including his nominal Quakerism (actually nothing-ism), his desire to remove all negative labels (which he was not successful at doing, as you will see), the virtues of the ACLU with whom he collaborated, etc., etc. Unfortunately, his lofty degrees only made him wise in his foolishness, for he started with wrong premises and arrived at tragic conclusions.

 

“There is one kind of Christian I hate, ” he exclaimed, forgetting his prohibition on labels, “—the ‘born-again type.'” (I thought, “What other kind is there?”) “I don’t perceive you are one of them.” He misjudged, of course, but he was willing not to rule me out immediately because I listened and reasoned with him without being reactionary. I didn’t compromise my convictions, but rather stated them as much as his verbosity would allow; I did not react by throwing back clichés and getting huffy. He was an able thinker, but his beginning statements led him logically, and yet hopelessly, toward a metaphysical cliff.

 

Christians ought to be the world’s brightest thinkers. We should be best, not because we have the degrees (“Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.” 1 Cor. 1:26), but because we start at the right place. We may or may not have the biggest hat size or be able to collect the most data, but we certainly ought to arrive at better conclusions. David said, “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation.”(Ps. 119:99) Starting with the Word of God, we simply have more insight into all else that can be learned.

 

Why Learn?

 

We should develop the attitude that life is far better if we use our minds actively to whatever degree we are able, and that slothfulness of mind is an unfortunate misuse of the uniqueness God gave men. Consider these reasons for continuing our education through developing a learning posture to life:

 

1. Learning is exercise with a purpose.

 

Constant accessing of new thoughts by reading and conversing cogently keeps our mind exercised for gaining and retaining the more significant biblical knowledge. The sheer joy with which we approach learning helps. I have a friend who never stops thinking. He adds to his study an occasional mystery and works through difficult riddles with friends because they prepare him for understanding the mysteries and riddles of the Word of God. More often than not I find him thinking through some issue in the Bible, attempting to unlock an enigma. He works his mind.

 

It is well known that the Puritans, as an illustration, were devoted to learning the logic of Peter Ramus 2 which formed their approach to scripture analysis by successive dichotomies. Ramus was a French humanist converted to Protestantism in 1561 and later killed in the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day.3 There would be those who debate whether logic is useful in correct interpretation of Scripture in our day, yet I must side with those who use it for the glory of God without letting their philosophical tendencies overwhelm their exegesis. This is a day of many inconsistencies among Evangelicals. How many of these inconsistencies would be thrown down with the most basic rules of logic. After all, hermeneutics must be logical.

 

2. Learning in a broad spectrum of categories better prepares us for evangelism.

 

My wife and I read through one of the seminal New Age books over a couple of evenings, for instance-not a book about the New Age from a Christian perspective, but an important book in the movement’s own judgment. This reading paid big dividends when we encountered the confusion of our bed-and-breakfast hostess one evening. Three hours of conversation cleared her thinking a great deal. I believe she was freed from some dangerous views and brought to think more soberly about “the only true God.” It goes without saying that the study of the Word is that which filters and interprets all other information.

 

I might add to this that the very learning process which intelligent conversation with others brings to you can be evangelism itself. This is one of my most basic approaches. As I ask genuine questions, probing deeper and deeper into the other person’s philosophy throughout the dialogue, I am simultaneously uncovering the deficiency of their belief system leaving the door open for the truth. Often my sincere interest in their beliefs evokes genuine questions from them as to my own philosophy. Ingenuiness can be easily detected; we must want to know what they are saying.

 

3. All learning teaches us something about God.

 

A case can be made for the Christian laying the preponderance of his study on the subject of God. Paul said that we are to be “growing in the knowledge of God”(Col. 1:10). The ocean of knowledge of God is in the Bible itself, yet their are other streams to fish which reveal much about Him. Since all things were made by Him and for Him (Col. 1:16), we can expect all things to tell us something of Him, however hidden.

 

In a certain sense then, knowledge in any field speaks of God as magnificent and excellent in all He has done to man, for man, with man, and against man. Whatever we learn will tell us something about God either by thesis or antithesis. We draw a necessary line on reading what is designed as morally impure and destructive (because of the biblical injunction not to be polluted by our association with it-Rom. 8:6), yet even to know the raggedness of man, for instance, speaks volumes about God-whom He loves, rebukes, warns, tolerates, damns, and just how He does it. If God’s glory is the manifesting of the excellent nature of God, then it is true that “the whole earth is full of His glory.”

 

4. Knowledge, though able to defeat us through pride, can, in fact, humble us.

 

“Knowledge puffs up…”(1 Cor. 8:1). We are constantly reminded that any field of knowledge, even the spiritual, can leave a man proud. I have known many proud biblicists. Yet there is another man who is humbled by what he learns. I suppose that the difference is in his purpose for learning-does he seeks to know God through what he learns, or to be known as one who knows about God. With the proper desire, how could we contemplate the vastness of the universe, for instance, and fail to say, “What is man that thou art mindful of Him.” (Ps. 8:4) Why, God has created at least one star that we are aware of which has a diameter of twice the distance from the earth to the sun!

 

5. Learning tends to keep us from boredom, making us interested and therefore interesting.

 

Amusement (“a”, not, “muse,” thinking; the practice of not thinking), on the other hand, dulls us and creates an insatiable appetite for more. A man or woman who is interested in what he or she is seeing or hearing or reading, and approaches all things as opportunities to learn, enjoys life far more than the person who believes life is principally for the purpose of relaxing and making the mind idle and empty. I once heard an active eighty-year-old Christian leader in our church ride a group of senior adults pretty hard by saying something like, “If you would get up in the morning and read the Word of God and find out what’s in the news and read some good books, and talk seriously to somebody, you wouldn’t be so bored all the time.” All of us had a difficult time keeping up with this lady. The result is that the learner is the most interesting of people, and this, again, is a great benefit in presenting the gospel.

 

6. Most importantly, pursuing knowledge of God and His creation, and all things excellent, is obedience.

 

We are commanded to love the Lord with all our mind, and to meditate on what is true. “Think on these things…”(See Phil. 4:8)

 

Useful Rules in the Learning Process

 

Five guidelines are necessary: First, learn for the exaltation of God. In other words, do not learn to make a show of erudition, but for more noble reasons. Learn in order to boast in the God who has made magnificent items and ideas to be explored-such order, such immensity, such force, such complexity, such detail, such beauty.

 

Secondly, learn “Christianly.” By this I mean to say that we must acknowledge God in all things sensed and reflected upon. Grind that new thought through the teeth of Scripture; let the enzymes of sound doctrine dissolve and digest it. This places the Bible first in our learning and the bringing together of Scripture in categories which answer the questions and posit the extensions (theology) as next in our pursuits. Who can judge life without sound criteria for judgment? The noble theologian Turretin considered his Elenctic Theology the best biblical work he could offer: “Let other books, then, be commended for their novelty. I do not want this statement to justify mine.”4 Something of this spirit should pervade our learning.

 

Third, value the standard old works over the new. Now I write this as an author, so I could never bring myself to say we should avoid all new works. But something destructive has happened in our day. Today an author writes on subjects he knows nothing of-he finds a subject people wish to hear about, gathers a bit of material, mixes in a catchy outline and a striking title, and he has a best seller. Not all old books are worth your time, but at least most older authors wrote having some sense of their subject being a driving passion. There are many fine older works, numbers reprinted, readily available.

 

You will read so few books in your lifetime, you cannot afford to waste your time on contentless froth. “It is a good rule, after reading a new book not to allow yourself another new till you have read an old one in between” said C.S. Lewis.5 And go to the original sources. “The simplest student” he says, “will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavors as a teacher to persuade the young that first-hand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second-hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.”6

 

Fourth, despise an idle mind. Paul said to be “careful, then, how you live-not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” (Eph. 5:15) An hour wasted is never to be retrieved. Play hard when needed, but do not learn to enjoy mental emptiness. The idle brain feels a great deal of pain in thinking at first, but has all the potential to make progress if it is exercised. Take a book with you when you may have to spend time waiting, ask questions that lead to more significant discussions while eating dinner, pose a problem to solve when you are driving to work, or chew on a passage of Scripture while bathing (like the early church father Chrysostym, by the way). It is commonly known that a blind person has an improved use of his other senses tending to help overcome the disability. Why? Because of use alone. His nose is no better than yours, nor his ears. But he has used them more carefully, paying attention, focusing the mental powers. This illustrates what concentration can do for a person. The practice of scriptural meditation is a great help in developing that concentration.

 

Finally, do not let the gaining of knowledge of any kind, not even biblical knowledge, usurp the principle aim of knowing God. Here is a subtle trap. I cannot make too much of this. I have fallen into this snare many times myself. Knowledge proper can be a substitute for intimacy. If one could love without knowledge and love were pitted against knowledge, then never learn another thing for the sake of your love for God. Adam and Eve, you remember, were the first to desire knowledge over intimacy with God. Rather, “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me…” Jer. 9:23-24.

 

As I look around this room lined with books, I cannot help but feel a bit embarrassed how little I have learned so far when so much is available to me. My embarrassment is aggravated when I think of an acquaintance of Dr. Don Whitney’s on a mission trip to Kenya. Perhaps this story will be an eloquent argument for learning:

 

I met a schoolteacher in his early thirties named Bernard. He lived in the back of a store that was one of four buildings in the Kilema community. He walked several miles even further into the bush country each day to the mud-brick elementary school where he taught. He returned home to his “cube,” an eight-foot-by eight-foot-by eight-foot room where he lived with his wife and infant son. A twin bed was against the back wall with a sheet hanging from the ceiling to separate the “bedroom” from the rest of the cube. Only a small table with one chair occupied the front half. What interested me most was what he had on the cement walls. On every wall were several pages from long-outdated magazines or pictures from old calendars. He explained that they were all he had to read. Though he’d been a Christian for many years, he was too poor even to own a Bible. The only books that ever came into his hands were a few secondhand books the teachers used at the school.

 

So as he holds his son to get him to go to sleep he reads the words on the magazines for the umpteenth time. While he eats at his table or lays on his bed, he looks at the pictures of far-off people and places and wonders what they are like. As I stood in that concrete cube, looking at a couple of dozen faded pictures and yellowing pages, I realized that before me stood a wise man. Bernard understands that knowledge really is like a rare treasure. Though it is more scarce than gold, he had stored up all he could. That’s the attitude all who are wise will have, for “wise men store up knowledge.”

 

 

 

…”The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge; the ears of the wise seek it out.”7 

 

 

1 Addresses delivered by his daughter and son-in-law, Fredrick and Elizabeth Catherwood, Evangelical Press of Wales, 1982, p.

2 See Essays on Puritans and Puritanism, Leon Howard, edited by James Barbour and Thomas Quirk, University of New Mexico Press, for a full treatment of this.

3 Douglas, J.D., general editor, The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, Zondervan, 1978, p. 824.

4 Turretin, Francis, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Presb. and Reformed, copyright 1992 by James T. Dennison, Jr., p. xlii.

5 C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock, Eerdmans, p. 202.

6 ibid., p. 200.

7 Whitney, Donald S., Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, NavPress, p. 215.
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By Jim Elliff

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Baptisms This Sunday (23rd August)

Well, it did not start too well.  There were a couple of technical difficulties and it took us until after 6pm to get the tank filled with water.  This is for a church service that started at 3pm.

Well, we had a time of worship then I went to help fix the tank.  Eventually my wife and the church came over to the church building we were meeting in.  We got a few pizzas and some Indian take away and had supper together.  Finally the tank was nearly full.  We baptised our (eldest) son first.

I asked him the following three questions:

Do you believe that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully human, that He died on the cross bearing your sins so you could be righteous, and rose again on the third day?

Have you repented of your sins and put your faith in this same Jesus?

Can you confess out loud to everyone witnessing that Jesus is Lord?

A lovely lady then gave a prophetic word to our son, and another wonderful lady gave him a Scripture.

Then we baptised Poonam – who last year was a Hindu! – and asked her the same questions.  My son stayed in the pool with me and helped me baptise her.  It was wonderful.  The presence of God in the room was overwhelming.  She was then given a Scripture.

The Lord showed me something wonderful – part of a baptism is to embed into our memory that we have died with Christ and we are living a new life with Him (Romans 6.2-3) – if during the baptism service we have to wait around for hours, buy pizza and Indian, baptise people in a few inches of water, and all the parephenalia associated with the day – then all that does is serve to bind it into someone’s memory.  The devil can’t even disrupt the day, because every disruption is simply an aid to memory!

Glory and freedom,

Benjamin