Hi brightmorningstar,
I wouldn't be too hard on aspen, as he has mixed with those who do not hold scripture in high regard in their hearts. But, I believe he has an honest heart towards God, and has been sequestered in the philosophy we have challenged, not out of making a conscious choice between believing God's word and believing this world's philosophy, but being unconscious of that first possibility, he's received the presentation of a choice between believing this world's philosophy, or, this world's representation to him, of the Bible's message. Many, many people are drawn into the belief they've made an informed choice. In fact, I would say aspen deserves credit for understanding the need for victory over sin, and doing his best to achieve that.
I well remember the immense difficulty I had for years, as my blinded mind struggled to believe connections existed for me to find as others had done, but I found prayer much more use in my sense of connection to God. Nevertheless, it did me immeasurable good to worship with people who believed scripture and could expound it. I could understand what God was saying to me through
them, and God spoke to me
many times - far more than my own Bible study produced in those days. But, eventually, having prayed about my 'intellectual' difficulties specifically, the Lord led me through a number steps, out of my confusion, and cleared away the mental fog - miraculously, it seemed - so that I've lost all doubt that
God speaks to me from those pages. All of us who have read the Bible closely over a number of years, know how many times God has surprised us with revelation from a verse or narrative which we had never 'seen' before. Bible reading is quite a simple pursuit on the surface, but once the Holy Spirit begins to show us the connections God has hidden under the surface, the Book is transformed in our hand.
Paul Washer describes some of the philosophical issues at work today, in one of his addresses. I'll post his comments next.
Extract from transcript of this message by Paul Washer:
http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=1021081230111
'First, I want to talk to you about this. When we look at Romans 1:16 we understand that
Paul was not ashamed of the gospel. That might seem something unusual to us that he has
to make that statement, being an apostle, a principal carrier of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
But I want to tell you that Paul’s flesh had every reason to be ashamed of the gospel
because the gospel he preached contradicted everything that was believed to be true and
everything that was believed to be sacred in his culture.
Now just really quick I want to say this. Paul makes no attempt to become relevant to his
culture. He makes no attempt to make treaty with his culture, adapt his message to the
culture, repackage the message or any of the other nonsense that has become so
prominent in the evangelical community today.
To the Jew the gospel, Paul’s gospel was the worst sort of blasphemy because it claimed
that the Nazarene who died on that cross accursed was the Messiah and the Son of God.
To the Greek it was the worst sort of absurdity because it claimed that this Jew from
some out of the way place was actually God in the flesh. Therefore, Paul knew that
whenever he opened his mouth to speak the gospel he would be utterly rejected and
ridiculed to scorn unless the Holy Spirit intervened and moved upon the hearts and minds
of his hearers.
Now this is what he knew. This is what you should know. If you are properly preaching
the gospel, it will be scandalous and if you try to make it less of a scandal you no longer
preach the gospel.
Now I just want to quote from a few contemporaries of primitive Christianity. Pliny the
Younger writes, after examining the beliefs of two Christian slave girls under torture, he
says, “I discovered nothing but a perverse and extravagant superstition.”
In The Dialogue Octavius by Minucius Felix he derides the Christians saying, “Their
ceremonies center on a man put to death for his crime and on the fatal wood of the cross.”
He goes on to say that Christians put forth sick delusions, a senseless and crazy
superstition which leads to the destruction of all religion.
I know I may offend many on this, but most modern day church growth strategies used in
evangelical churches, their main focus is to get around the very thing I just read.
An oracle of Apollo preserved in the writings of Augustine in response to a man’s
question about what he can do to turn his wife away from the Christian faith says this.
“Let her continue as she pleases persisting in her vain delusions and lamenting song of
God who died in delusions, who was condemned by judges, whose verdict was just and
executed in the prime of life by the worst of death, a death bound with iron.”
Lucian - he was basically the Voltaire of antiquity - mocks Christians in his
De Morte
Peregrini as poor devils who deny the Greek gods and, instead, honor that crucified
sophist and live according to his laws.
In Origen’s work
Contra Celsus, Celsus declares, “What drunken old woman telling
stories to lull a small child to sleep would not be ashamed of utterly such preposterous
things.”
Now in our day, the primitive gospel is no less offensive, for it still contradicts every
tenet or ism in our culture: Relativism, Pluralism and Humanism. Now let’s just look at
these for just a moment.
We live in an age of Relativism, a belief system based on the absolute certainty that there
are no absolute certainties. We hypocritically applaud men for seeking the truth, but call
for the public execution of any man who believes he has found it. We live in a self
imposed dark age. Why? The reason for this is clear. Natural man is a fallen creature. He
is morally corrupt and he is hell bent on autonomy or self government. He hates God
because God is righteous and he hates God’s laws because they censor him and restrict
his evil. He hates the truth because it exposes him for what he is and troubles what is left
of his conscience. Therefore, fallen man seeks to push the truth, especially the truth
about God as far from him as he can possibly remove it. He will go to any extent to
suppress the truth even to the point of pretending that there is no such thing as truth or
that if it does exist, it cannot be known or have any bearing on our lives.
Realize this about the gospel. It is never a case of a hiding God, but of hiding man. The
problem is never the intellect, but the will. I do not believe that the Bible gives any room
for Atheism. There are liars and God haters who push the truth out of their minds, but
there are no such thing as Atheists. For although they knew him, you see, like a man who
hides his head in the sand to avoid a charging rhino, modern man denies the truth of a
righteous God and moral absolutes in hopes of quieting his conscience and putting out of
his mind the judgment that he knows must come.
Now the Christian gospel is a scandal to the man involved in Relativism and his culture
because the Christian gospel does the one thing that man most hopes to avoid. It awakens
him from his self imposed slumber to the reality of his falseness and rebellion and calls
him to reject autonomy, self government and submit to God through repentance and faith
in Jesus Christ.
Now we also live in an age of Pluralism, a belief system that puts an end to truth by
declaring everything to be true.
Now do you understand what I am saying? When everything is true, when contradictory
statements that are diametrically opposed, when both of them are labeled as true, you
have the death of truth.
Now it may be difficult for contemporary Christians to understand what I am about to
say, but the Christians living in the first few centuries of the Christian faith were marked
and persecuted as Atheists and you will be, too. If a revival doesn’t break out in this
country, this is one of the reasons you are going to go to jail.
Now, the culture surrounding the Christian was immersed in Theism. The world was
filled with images of deities and religion was a booming business. Men not only tolerated
one another’s deities, but they swapped them and shared them like baseball cards. The
entire religious world was going on just fine until the Christians showed up and declare
that he gods made with hands are no gods at all. They denied the Caesars the homage
they demanded, refused to bend their knee to all other so-called gods and the confessed
Jesus alone to be Lord of all. And, therefore, they were labeled Atheists.
The entire world looked on such draw dropping arrogance and reacted with fury against
the Christian’s intolerable intolerance to tolerance.
Now I want you to look at something. Look at these words. Jaw dropping arrogance. The
same scenario abounds in our world today. Against all logic we are told that all views
regarding religion and morality are true no matter how radically different they are or
contradictory they may be.
The most overwhelming aspect of all of this is that through the tireless efforts of the
media and the academic world, this has quickly become the majority view. However,
pluralism does not address the issue or cure the malady. It only anesthetizes the patient so
that he no longer feels or thinks.
Now the gospel is a scandal because it awakens man from his slumber and refuses to let
him rest on such an illogical footing. It forces him to come to some conclusion. How
long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him and if Baal,
follow him. The true gospel is radically exclusive.
I never thought I would have to say this in front of a bunch of evangelicals. I never
thought there would come a day when I would have to say such a thing to evangelicals
that the gospel is radically exclusive. I never thought that we would begin to lose Christ
as the only way.
Now listen. The true gospel is radically exclusive. Jesus is not a way, but the way and all
other ways are no way at all. Now listen to this very carefully, because this is what is
happening today. If Christianity would only move one small step toward a more tolerant
ecumenicalism and change the definite article “the” in “the Savior” for the indefinite
article “a” or “a Savior” the scandal would be removed and the world and Christianity
could become friends. Do you realize that? If we would simply say that Yahweh is a god
we would have no persecution on our hands. If we would simply say that Jesus is a
savior, I would be on the Oprah Winfrey show. Do you realize that? All the scandal
would remove if we just said he is our savior. You have yours, we will have ours. We are
not going to impose anything upon you. We are not going to wrangle in dialog. Nothing.
If that is your way, you go with that way and I will go with mine.
If we would only do that, we would never be persecuted. But if we do that, Christianity
ceases to be Christianity, we cease to be Christian, Christ is denied and the word is
without a Savior.
We live in an age of Humanism. Over the last several decades man has fought to purge
God from his conscience and his culture. He has torn down every visible altar to the one
true God and has erected monuments to himself with the zeal of a religious fanatic. This
is not Secularism against religious mind thinking. Don’t think that, because the secularist
has a religion. And often times he is much more fanatical in his religion than any
Christian ever pretended to be.
Man has managed to make himself the center measure and end of all things. He praises
his own inherent worth, demands homage to his self esteem and promotes his own self
fulfillment or self realization as the greatest good.
Now if you don’t think that hasn’t crept into Christianity, then you have not read the
bookYour Best Life Now, because that is exactly what that is about.
He explains away his gnawing conscience. You see, you can’t get rid of that. It is there to
stay. He explains away his gnawing conscience as the remnants of an antiquated religion
of guilt, Christianity, and he excuses himself from any responsibility for the moral chaos
surrounding him by blaming society or at least that part of society that has not yet
attained to his enlightenment.
Any suggestion that his conscience might be right in its testimony against him or that he
might be responsible for the almost infinite variations of maladies in the world is
unthinkable. For this reason the gospel is a scandal to fallen man because it exposes his
delusion about himself, it convicts him of his fallenness and guilt. This is the essential
first work of the gospel and this is why the world so loathes true gospel preaching,
because the true gospel ruins man’s party, rains on his parade, exposes his make believe
and points out that the emperor has no clothes.
Now the Scriptures recognize that the gospel of Jesus Christ is a stumbling block and
foolishness to all men of every age. And I am going to say this later. It is not just a
scandal. It is supposed to be.
Who was one of the older revivalists that said, “How could the world not get along with
the holiest man who ever walked on the planet, but it can get along with us?”
We are supposed to be a scandal. Now we don’t have to live like a bunch of fanatics. We
don’t have to do a whole bunch of crazy things to be a scandal, just be faithful to this one
proclamation. Jesus is Lord of all.
Now to seek to remove the scandal from the message is to make void the cross of Christ
and its saving power. We must understand that the gospel is not only scandalous, but it is
supposed to be. Though the foolishness of the gospel God has ordained to destroy the
wisdom of the wise, frustrate the intelligence of the greatest minds and humble the pride
of all men to the end that no flesh may boast in his presence, but just as it is written, let
him who boasts, boast in the Lord.
Paul’s gospel not only contradicted the religion, philosophy and culture of the day, but it
also declared war on them. Not a political war, not a military war, but a spiritual war of
truth.
It refused truce or treaty with they world and would settle for nothing less than culture’s
absolute surrender to the lordship of Jesus Christ. Even to every thought of our mind
being held captive to Christ. We would do well to follow Paul’s example. We must be
careful to shun every temptation to conform our gospel to the trends of the day or the
desires of carnal men.
One of the things about missions. There is all kinds of missions in this world. We don’t
need more missions. It is just most of them aren’t biblical missions. Let me share with
you something, those of you who are budding missionaries. Missions is to be defined by
the exegete and the theologian, the student of Scripture, not by the anthropologist,
sociologist and those who are experts in the new cultural trend. We do missions and
evangelism according to the sacred writings of Scripture and we need no help from Wall
Street. We have no right to water down the gospel’s offense of civilize its radical
demands in order to make it more appealing to a fallen world or carnal church members.
Our churches are filled with strategies to make them more seeker friendly by repackaging
the gospel, removing the stumbling block and taking the edge off the blade so it might be
more acceptable to carnal men. We ought to be seeker friendly, but we ought to realize
that there is only one seeker and he is God. If we are striving to make our church and our
message accommodating, let us make them accommodating to him.
If we are striving to build a church or ministry, let us build it on a passion to glorify God
and a desire not to offend his majesty.
To the wind with what the world thinks about us. We are not to seek the honor of earth,
but the honors of heaven.
Now another thing I want to point out before we go to the preaching. Our message is not
only scandalous, it is unbelievable. I want you to know that. It is an unbelievable
message. As we have argued, Paul’s flesh was not or Paul’s flesh had every reason to be
ashamed of the gospel he preached. Yet there is still another reason for fleshly shame.
The gospel is an absolutely unbelievable message, a ludicrous word to the wise of the
world. As Christians we sometimes fail to realize how utterly astounding it is when
anyone believes our message.
In a sense, the gospel is so far fetched that its spread throughout the Roman Empire is
proof of its supernatural nature. What could ever bring a Gentile, completely unaware of
Old Testament Scriptures and rooted in either Greek philosophy or pagan superstition to
believe a message, such a message about a man named Jesus? He was born under
questionable circumstances to a poor family in one of the most despised regions of the
Roman Empire and yet the gospel claimed that he was the eternal Son of God who was
conceived of the Holy Spirit in the womb of a virgin. He was a carpenter by trade, an
itinerant religious teacher with no official training and yet the gospel claims that he
surpassed the combined wisdom of the Greek philosopher and the Roman sages of
antiquity. He was poor and had no place to lay his head and yet the gospel claims that fed
three years he fed thousands by a word, healed every manner of illness among me and
even raised the dead.
He was crucified outside of Jerusalem as a blasphemer and an enemy of the state and yet
the gospel claims that his death as the pivotal event in all of human history and the only
means of salvation from sin and reconciliation to God. He was placed in a borrowed
tomb, yet the gospel claims that on the third day he arose from the dead and presented
himself to many of his followers and 40 days later ascended up into heaven and sat down
at the right hand of majesty on high.
Thus, the gospel claims that a poor Jewish carpenter who was rejected as a lunatic and a
blasphemer by his own people an crucified by the state is now the Savior of the world the
Lord of lords and the King of kings and at his name every knee will bow including
Caesar’s.
Now do you have any idea how impossible it is for anyone in Paul’s time to believe this
message? It is impossible. Who could have ever believed such a message except by the
power of God? There is no other explanation. The gospel would have never made its
way out of Jerusalem, let alone the Roman Empire and into every nation of the world
except that God had ordained to work through it. The message would have died at its
birth had it depended upon the organizational abilities, eloquence or apologetic powers of
its preachers. All the missionary strategies in the world and all the clever marketing
schemes borrowed from Wall Street could have never advanced the gospel, the foolish
stumbling block of the gospel.
Martin Pengel writes on the ancient scandal of the cross, “To believe that the one
preexistent Son of the one true God, the Mediator at creation and the Redeemer of the
world had appeared in very recent times in out of the way Galilee as a member of the
obscure people of the Jews and, even worse, had died the death of a common criminal on
the cross, could only be regarded as a sheer sign of madness.”
Now this truth brings both encouragement and warning to those of us who preach the
gospel. First, it is an encouragement to know that the simple faithful proclamation of the
gospel will ensure its continued advance in the world.
Secondly, it is a warning to us that we not succumb to the lie that we can advance the
gospel through brilliance, eloquence or clever church growth strategy. Such things have
no power to bring about the impossible conversion of men. We must cast ourselves with
hopeful desperation upon the only biblical means of advancing the gospel, the bold and
clear proclamation of a message about which we are not only not ashamed, but we
believe in and glory in because it is the power of God until salvation for everyone who
believes.
Now I want to finish by saying this. We live in an unbelieving and skeptical age. Our
faith is ridiculed as a hopeless myth and we are portrayed as either narrow minded bigots
or weak minded victims of a religious rouse. Such an attack often puts us on the
defensive and we attempt to fight back and prove our position and relevancy with
apologetics.
I want to say this. I agree with apologetics. Although some forms of this discipline are
quite helpful and necessary, we must realize that the power still lies in the proclamation
of the gospel. We cannot convince a man to believe any more than we can raise the dead.
Such things are the work of God’s Spirit. Men are brought to faith only thought the
supernatural working of God and he has promised to work not through human wisdom or
intellectual expertise, but the preaching of Christ crucified and resurrected from the dead.
We must come to grips with the fact that our gospel is an unbelievable message. We
should not expect anyone to give us a hearing, let alone believe apart from a gracious and
powerful working of God’s Spirit.
How very hopeless is all our preaching apart from God’s power. How very dependent is
the preaching upon God. All our evangelism is nothing more than a fool’s errand unless
God moves upon the hearts of men. However, he has promised to do just that if we
faithfully preach the gospel.'
He then begins his preaching, from Ezekiel 37.
