Our School: Bethel Christian Academy

Alright, I have to admit that I'm prickly on this, but Yellow Pages, which provided the ad because we pay for a yellow page ad for our school, put a 2 second jingle at the very end, when the screen goes to black, that was not music we would approve. That is an ad for yellow page itself to promote itself. We do not approve of it, did not produce it, so separate that from who we are as a school or from what we would do. We're going to try to get yellow pages to remove that little jingle, but it just is not part of the BCA ad.

The Myth of Missional Music

Recently, Matt Olson, the president of now Northland International University (formerly Northland Baptist Bible College), sent an open letter to constituents explaining recent decisions Northland has made. I got a copy of it myself from him in an email. Olson seems to be attempting to convince people that they should not perceive Northland as changing despite its changes. One of its changes, that he would like people to understand is not a change, even though it is a change, is in the music. Here's what he writes:

Philosophically, it (Northland's music) is unchanged. Let me say it again…unchanged. What we have always been trying to do, and will continue to do into the future, is to make sure Northland’s practice of music (as with every aspect of the Christian life) is built principally on clear teachings from the Bible rather than on reactionary, extra-biblical reasoning that has proven to be troublingly insufficient when exported to cultures beyond American borders. We believe the Bible is sufficient to bring us to right and God-honoring positions regardless of time and culture. Even though we haven’t changed our music at a philosophical level, we are changing our music on a missional level. Where you will see changes is in our intent to expand our training to prepare students for worship and music globally. This only makes sense because, as you may have noticed, Northland International University has become more and more an international, global ministry with a passion to take the gospel where it is not proclaimed. Over 41% of the world’s population is still without a Gospel witness. This has become our students’ burden. Our Director of Fine Arts, Kevin Suiter, has recently informed us he does not believe he can take us forward in this way and thus has announced his plans to move on. We wish Kevin and Grace the best and thank them for the investments they have made here.

Among many others, my question is: What does music have to do with a Gospel witness? That is, how does music affect the mission? That is, what is changing music on a "missional level"? I think it is interesting that a lot folks have come out in support of Olson and his "courage" for making this move at Northland. And all of this is for the mission. How could anyone question it or criticize it, if it is for the mission? I'm sure I just don't understand. I can't understand. Oh, I understand. It's clear enough. And the professing anti-Finney crowd is showing favor to what Northland and Olson are doing.

Your choice or style of music, of course, has nothing to do with the mission, unless you don't understand the mission, which, it's obvious, Northland does not. Well, it is a major part of the mission if you read and follow the Purpose Driven, Rick Warren, method of mission. "Missional" is more than a code-word today. Northland is being influenced to a large degree by the modern missional movement, which perverts a scriptural understanding of the incarnation, and it's why Olson thinks the music at Northland must change to be missional. This idea is strongly associated with N. T. Wright, Mark Driscoll, Dan Kimball, Alan Hirsch, Brian McClaren, and others. You will find the following language all over in missional material:

The Missional Church defines itself in terms of its mission—being sent ones who take the gospel to and incarnate the gospel within a specific cultural context. The essence of missionality begins by looking outward.

You'll also read this type of wording:

As missionaries sent by Jesus, every Christian must learn to exegete their surrounding culture, uncovering the language, values, and ideas of the culture. Using this information, they take steps to reach people with the gospel message in the context of the surrounding culture.

At the root of missional is a severe twisting of the doctrine of Christ, especially His incarnation. It corrupts the point of the incarnation, and, therefore, the deity and humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus didn't come to take on our culture. He came for us to take on His. It also deviates a biblical doctrine of salvation. The gospel is not helped along at all by the contextualization of the gospel.

The evangelism part of the mission, after which is baptism and teaching to observe all things Christ commanded (Mt 28:19-20), is preaching the gospel. Evangelism will not at all be aided by acceptance of the music of a particular culture. Evangelism efforts will not be hindered or helped one way or the other with music. Music should not be used in evangelism. It does not have an evangelistic purpose. To bring music into the mission equation shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the effectiveness and sufficiency of the gospel. It is more akin with a Charles Finney "new measure" than it is anything scriptural. Northland is taking something worse than a step of compromise here. And many fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals and other evangelicals are encouraging it.

Northland is also connecting with Grace Community Church and Master's College in Southern California by inviting Rick Holland to preach in chapel. Olson visited with the key leaders there, including Phil Johnson, who has written (an entire series of articles, also consider this Spurgeon quote from him) and preached against the missional movement and strategy. Has it occurred that the new friendship with these above mentioned men and this missional approach clashes with each other, or is it that this particular point is too tertiary to affect their fellowship with one another? I do find it amazing the defense of the language and this movement of Olson. I haven't read anything said in public against this new teaching and direction. Where is the outcry? Where are the Jack Hyles critics?

I believe that it is true that this is likely not a major philosophical shift for Northland, and neither would it be an issue for much of fundamentalism today. Much of fundamentalism has been using music for "evangelism" for a long time. And you've been able to see that with the "evangelists" involved with Northland. The composition (style) and the words of fundamentalist music have long been written with an intent to have some kind of effect on evangelism or revival. Billy Graham and many other Southern Baptists also have fit quite nicely with this idea of missional with their methods and music. Now rap and hip-hop are approved evangelistic methodology even among the reformed in the Southern Baptist Convention (read Mark Dever). All of this ties in quite well with the missional movement.

Some of those praising Olson also would indicate that they are exegetical and theological. If they are fundamentalists at all, they want to be known as the theological fundamentalists as opposed to a kind of methodological or movement fundamentalists. This situation exposes this not to be true. The lack of theological precision here, the sloppiness, and the lack of discernment is astounding. How could this happen? I think it betrays a covetousness for the things of this world. Theology is easily forsaken for what will keep them fitting in with their worldly ways. They think that evangelism, the mission, is at stake if they don't contextualize a little.

Part of the issue with missional relates to urban church planting and foreign missions. America's cities have so far moved away from the reverent and the holy that there is a huge chasm between a biblical culture and that of the city. To the new missional, you don't really care for these inner city folk or for the pagan on the foreign field if you don't take on their culture. You aren't reaching them like Jesus did. You aren't eating with them per se. And you aren't getting in their "sandals." So they ship in their instrumentation and their improvisation and their rhythms, and now, see, they really care like Jesus did. They've been incarnational and missional. The gospel can't get you all the way to these people, so you've got to reach some on your own. Give and take is necessary. You go a little ways, they come a little ways, you go, they come, until you meet somewhere in the middle. That's how it can get done. And if you're not succeeding, not using these methods, this is where you're failing. And it's because you don't love them like the missional people do.

On top of all of this is the deep disrespect for God and the true worship of Him. This movement is so contrived and has targeted the lusts of its audience to work them with their version of the gospel. God is not worshiped in this. He is disgusted with this. It does not at all center on God, Who He is and what He wants, but on what will please people. In so doing, its makers also produce a distortion of true spirituality, leading their adherents into a false measure of their own fellowship with God. True affection for God is at stake. Men with stoked passions mistake those feelings for some movement of the Holy Spirit.

These men involved at Northland have long relied on worldly methods, the ox-carts of men's invention, to reach their religious goals. The ones they used are increasingly either out of fashion or just don't "work" any more. As Olson wrote, now he wants to see "greater things." If you pray for greater things, you don't need the new measures Olson and Northland, among many others, believe are required to have those greater things fulfilled. And the truth is, we already have the greatest thing, the gospel itself.

2010 WORD OF TRUTH AUDIO

We've got the audio figured out for the 2010 conference, so you'll find the sermons and sessions for 2010 HERE now. They'll all be there hopefully by the end of the day.

WORD OF TRUTH 2010, CONFERENCE AUDIO

I mentioned that we have the panel discussion for Word of Truth 2010 online. The whole discussion is now at the link provided in the previous post below. You can start listening to the audio for this year's conference at the conference website, and downloading those sessions HERE. Click on the sermon tab. To go straight to just the 2010 sessions, click HERE. We have a few conference notebooks left at 10 dollars apiece, plus shipping and handling. It has 75 pages of material. Let us know if you want one of those.

Video from Panel Discussion at the Word of Truth Conference 2010

We now have video uploaded on youtube of the panel discussion for the Word of Truth Conference 2010, which occurred from 6:15-7:15pm, Sunday, November 14. Five pastors answered questions on and discussed separation and the purity of the church. At the moment of this writing, four of six parts are uploaded HERE. The sound could be a little better and we will correct that in the future, but if you turn up the volume you'll be able to hear this panel discussion.

The rest of the audio will be available soon for each of the morning and evening sessions for the 2010 Word of Truth Conference, November 10-14. We also may have more video from the sessions as well, so stay tuned. We will give you the link for the conference website and the new audio and video of the conference.

The Biblical Mandate for House to House Evangelism, part 2

Apostolic preaching “in every house” must have referred to house to house evangelism,[i] not to holding church meetings in the houses of the already converted. The context of Acts chapter five involves the apostles preaching the gospel to “the people” (from the Hebrew ha’am), that is, lost Israelites, and v. 42 is a continuation of this action; v. 42 involves the type of evangelistic preaching that had just taken place in Acts 5:30-33. In 5:20, the preaching in the “temple” was evangelism, preaching “the words of this life.” Every residence in Jerusalem obviously did not have believers in it, so preaching in “every house” supports bringing the gospel to the residences of the unconverted. The fact that this evangelistic preaching (euangelidzo) took place every single day (pasan te hemeran) and it was continuing to be so (note the imperfect tense of epausanto) also is more suitable to reaching the lost than it is to church meetings every single day of the year for a long period of time. Furthermore, the same sort of preaching and teaching took place in the temple and in the houses; since the temple preaching, contextually, was almost surely evangelistic to reach the lost, the house to house proclamation would have been the same. Finally, “preach” in v. 42 is not kerusso, but euangelidzo, which indicates that specific evangelizing or preaching of the gospel, rather than the simple proclamation of Biblical truths, is in view in this text; they were evangelizing in the temple and in every house.

Acts 20:20-21 also refers to house to house evangelistic preaching of repentance toward God and faith toward Christ to unconverted Jew and Gentile. “Publickly” refers to preaching in the temple, synagogues, and wherever else a crowd can be gathered; it is mass evangelism of large groups at one time, similar to modern street preaching and tract distribution in public areas. The same word in Acts 18:28 refers to “showing by the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ . . . in the synagogue” (v. 28, 26). “House to house” refers to systematically reaching every residence in an area with the gospel. The Greek structure[ii] in the verse is never used for church meetings in Scripture. Verse twenty-one refers to “testifying”[iii] to Jews and Greeks “the gospel of the grace of God” (v. 24). The overwhelmingly majority usage of the Greek word “testify” in Luke-Acts speaks of evangelism (Luke 16:28; Acts 2:40; 8:25; 10:42; 18:5; 20:24; 23:11; 28:23), and Luke never uses the word to refer to preaching in church assemblies. Acts 20:20-21 indicate that Paul taught the elders at Ephesus to practice house to house soulwinning. To attempt to interpret the text otherwise would require it to refer simply to the teaching of Jew and Gentile elder within the Ephesian church the necessity of daily repentance and every-increasing faith in Christ. It would also make this sort of testifying about repentance and faith in the Christian life the essence of Paul’s ministry (v. 24). It would ignore the fact that the “Jew . . . Greek” distinction is contrasted with the church (1 Corinthians 10:32). It would make Paul’s action in the verse be the preaching of repentance and faith, not to lost people who came to church meetings, nor to normal church members, even, but specifically to the leadership, which, one would trust, would have a very high percentage of genuine converts[iv] and would need evangelistic preaching the least, and which is contrary to the emphasis in his letters to pastoral leadership (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus). Paul was “pure from the blood of all men” (Acts 20:26) because he sought to reach all of them, not just the tiny minority that would want to visit Christian church services. He carefully and clearly presented to the lost the counsel of God concerning their souls,[v] house to house, and he taught others to do the same. Going house to house is God’s will (v. 27).

-TDR

Exegetical Endnotes:

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[i] This is not to say that every reference to preaching in houses involved soulwinners getting the gospel out “door to door” in the pattern of Acts 5:42 and 20:20-21. The churches also met in houses at times. However, this is often assumed for a particular text, rather than demonstrated. For example, in Acts 2:46, when the disciples were “continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,” the temple activity was likely church assembly (or could it be evangelism?), while the breaking bread (cf. Luke 24:30; Acts 27:35) and eating their food from house to house was “regular meals at home” (Robertson’s Word Pictures), not the Lord’s supper in house churches. The simple fact that over three thousand would have been in attendance requires that the houses here were not for church meetings, but for meals, unless there were many exeedingly large mansions owned by these early Christians for them to go “from house to house” in for worship. In addition to the problem of size, there is no self-evident reason why they would not want to simply meet for church in one house regularly, instead of skipping around. Furthermore, the word meat (Greek trophes) in Acts 2:46 is never used in Scripture of the Lord’s Supper (Matthew 3:4; 6:25; 10:10; 24:45; Luke 12:23; John 4:8; Acts 2:46; 9:19; 14:17; 27:33-34, 36, 38; Hebrews 5:12, 14; James 2:15). Nor is the verb eat (metalambano) ever used of the Supper (Acts 2:46; 24:25; 27:33; 2 Tim 2:6; Hebrews 6:7; 12:10). Both words are normal meal words. The view that this verse refers to believers breaking up to eat in various houses is far superior to the notion that the Christians were travelling around having church meetings and celebrating communion in many houses. The church of Jerusalem appears to have assembled regularly in the portion of the temple precents known as “Solomon’s porch” (Acts 5:12; cf. the Zondervan Pictoral Bible Encyclopedia, “Solomon’s Porch . . . [it] was here that Christ walked and talked (John 10:23) and that His disciples seem later regularly to have gathered.”), an area large enough to fit “all the people” (Acts 3:11). This explanation is far more reasonable than to think that, with many multiplied thousands of members, the entire church somehow tried to travel “house to house” to meet in the homes of members that could not possibly fit anywhere close to the entire congregation.

[ii] However, the same Greek phrase, kata + oikos, occurs here in 20:20 as in 5:42, indicating their common theme of house to house evangelism.

[iii] (Diamarturomenon, from diamarturomai, a verb primarily used for evangelistic preaching to the lost in Luke-Acts. Note the connection of diamarturomai with evangelism in v. 24: Paul was constantly to “testify (diamarturomai) the gospel (euangelion) of the grace of God.”

[iv] Of course, not all pastors are truly saved, even as Judas was not, but is it not straining all credulity to affirm that Paul was not taking the Ephesian elders with him house to house and teaching them to preach the gospel in this manner to the lost, so that they could teach their people likewise, but that he was, both “publically” and “from house to house,” evangelizing the elders?

[v] The notion that apologetics and the work involved in learning how to deal particularly with the varieties of unbelief, false doctrines, and religions one runs into because all we need to do is give out a one-size-fits-all sort of presentation of the gospel is not Biblical. Biblical soulwinners sought to “persuade” those they evangelized to be Christians (Acts 18:4; 19:8, 26:28; 28:23), “reasoned” with the lost (Acts 17:2; 18:4, 19; 24:25), and “mightily convinced” (Acts 18:28) them of their errors. Cf. 1 Peter 3:15. The “word of God” which is the “sword of the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:17) must be wielded in a way appropriate to the sort of lost person the Christian speaks to; the specific verses that deal with that individual’s spiritual barriers to receiving Christ must be broken down (cf. 2 Corinthians 10:5). A study of the soulwinning methods of the Lord Jesus and the apostles in the gospels and Acts also clearly demonstrates this truth (cf. Matthew 19:16-21; John 3:1-21; 4:4-29; Acts 2:14-41; 3:12-26; 7:1-60; 17:16-31; 22:1-21—note there Scriptural use of testimony of one’s personal conversion in the evangelism of others; etc.)

The Biblical Mandate for House to House Evangelism, part 1

The book of Acts clearly teaches and models by example aggressive evangelism for every church member; all should go “every where preaching the word” (Acts 8:4), with the goal of preaching to “every creature which is under heaven” (Ephesians 1:23; Mark 16:15), that is, giving clear presentations of the gospel[i] to every single person on the face of the earth. House to house evangelism is the explicit pattern of the book of Acts.[ii] In Acts 5:42 the apostles “daily in the temple, and in every house, [] ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.”[iii] The preaching was persistent (5:42, “daily”) and sought to reach every single person, “every creature” (Mark 16:15), in an area (Acts 21:28). They sought, successfully, to make sure that “all they which dwelt” in the local area would “hear the word of the Lord Jesus” (19:10), something possible only if particular efforts were made to systematically reach every household; if church members only witnessed to their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and whoever else just came along the way as they pursued other matters, having “all” in an area hear would never happen. They did not evangelize in public forums and go house to house only a few weeks a year to advertise Vacation Bible School or a special meeting, but consistently and continually.

Nor did New Testament evangelism rest satisfied if a person made some kind of decision that did not lead to evidence of repentance and a new heart; in Acts, people who made salvation decisions were baptized and continued in the faith even under persecution, so that those who were “saved” were also “added to the church” (Acts 2:41-47). The kind of preaching of repentance and faith (Mark 1:15; Acts 20:21) found in Scripture leads to converts that stick. The modern practice of leading countless people to make spurious decisions actually is doing the work of the devil in inoculating people to the true gospel. In the New Testament, numbers of stand-alone professions were not counted, but numbers added to the church roll through baptism and enduring faithfully in sound doctrine and practice (Acts 1:15; 2:4; 4:4, 32; 16:5). The Holy Spirit works in the saved to join the church by baptism and continue in holiness and true doctrine (Acts 2:47; Matthew 10:22; Mark 4:17, 20; 1 John 2:19). The apostles considered someone who made a decision but did not continue as “labour in vain” (Galatians 4:11; 1 Thessalonians 3:5), in which they followed the practice of the Lord Jesus (John 8:31-32).[iv] They were not considered genuine converts who just never followed their “Lord.” When Paul’s own converts were baptized church members who were themselves “holding forth the word of life” (Philippians 2:16) and by this means “shin[ing] as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15),[v] then the apostle had confidence that he could “rejoice in the day of Christ, that [he] had not run in vain, neither labored in vain” (Philippians 2:16). The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) is to see people born again or made disciples, baptized into the church, and taught everything in Scripture, including the necessity of winning converts themselves and working to see established churches grow and new churches planted. Only when a convert has come to the point where he is himself making disciples has the Comission been fulfilled, and this, not some sort of “decision for Christ” that does not lead to baptism and a changed and consistent Christian life, must be the goal of Biblical house to house evangelism.

-TDR

Exegetical Endnotes:

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[i] Many modern gospel tracts are extremely shallow and contain little information, a stark contrast to the more Biblical evangelistic methodology of earlier centuries. The most important matter in a written gospel presentation is that the message is clearly and carefully communicated. Having glossy paper or nice pictures does not hurt, but a lost person needs to hear the message itself clearly, and have it pointedly applied to his heart and mind. Thus, a good gospel tract will tend to follow the model of preaching in Acts and proclaim “YOU are a sinner, deserve hell, have a Redeemer offered you, and need to repent and believe” rather that “We are all sinners, need to believe, or we will have a problem.” It will boldly and specifically deal with the sins and spiritual strongholds of the unconverted person (cf. Acts 2:23; 4:10; Ephesians 6:17) and plainly preach both repentance (Acts 2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 11:18; 17:30; 26:20) and faith (Acts 10:43; 16:31). A good tract will not make its highest priority preventing a wicked person from being offended, but will strive to boldly and pointedly preach the truth so that the reader will be awakened, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to see his wretched and lost condition and need of the Savior. When people heard apostolic preaching, they were either “pricked in their heart” and brought to conversion (Acts 2:37-38) or “cut to the heart” and determined to kill the preachers and even gnash on them with their teeth (Acts 5:33; 7:54). An unconverted person who reads a good gospel tract will not be unmoved—either he will be convicted and awakened, and thus come to repentance or at least see his need to seek for Christ, or he will be convicted, angry, offended, and hardened. Nor should a tract be overly concerned about having “too much” content. A lost person needs to “strive to enter” into the kingdom of God (Luke 13:24), and must seek and find the narrow gate that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14). The fact that salvation is not by works does not exclude the Biblical fact that an unconverted person must make, by God’s enabling grace, certain responses of listening and accepting the Word of God if he is going to be converted (John 5:39; Romans 10:14). If a sinner is not willing to even read a tract with a lot of verses, he is obviously not seeking or striving to enter into the kingdom. Furthermore, if he will not listen to the Word, he would not be saved even if a dead person came out of hell to warn him (Luke 16:31), for “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). If even a dead person coming from hell to give a personal warning has no converting power in comparison to the Word, why would pictures, glossy paper, and stories, but few verses, be superior in gospel tracts or lead more to genuine conversions than careful and detailed presentations with much Scripture? Tracts do not need to be designed so that every single person who receives one will read the entire thing. The Lord Jesus Himself hid the truth from those who were not willing to listen so that their hearts would not grow even harder (Matthew 13:13). A good tract will have enough information for that minority of lost people who are seeking the truth to clearly understand what they must do to be saved, and will be pointed enough so that such seekers, and those who are careless but willing to listen to written preaching, will be awakened to their sinfulness and need of Christ.

[ii]The pattern in Scripture is going out two by two to evangelize (Mark 6:7; Luke 10:1; Acts 4:13; 13:2, 43; 16:19; 17:10; Revelation 11:3), often with one “chief speaker” (Acts 14:12). There were still converts when Paul, out of necessity (Acts 17:14-15), evangelized on his own without a partner, but not as many (Acts 17:34). Aggressive preaching to the lost everywhere is also the model of other parts of Scripture; “Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city . . . go out into the highways and hedges” and, by powerfully preaching the gospel, “compel [men] to come in” to the kingdom of God (Luke 14:21-23) is hardly fulfilled by churches or saints who refuse to go to “every creature” (Mark 16:15) in their area, but only witness to friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and coworkers. Nor is it acceptable to only occasionally go house to house, or have anything less than a passionate and zealous desire and commitment to very regularly (and would that not be at least weekly?) go to “cold” contacts and preach the gospel; the command is not just “go,” whenever there is nothing else to do, but “go out quickly” (v. 21), and continue to go out until the Lord’s “house is filled” (Luke 14:21, 23).

[iii] Of course, house to house is not the only means of giving out the gospel mentioned in Acts; in addition to evangelistic preaching outside of church meetings (Ac 2:14-40, 3:12-26, etc., a great variety of methods of giving out the gospel appear: see Ac 5:42, 8:26-40, 13:7-12, 16:13-14, 31-32, 20:20-21, etc.). Note as well that to “teach and preach Jesus Christ . . . in every house” implies more than simply seeking to win a man to Christ at his doorstep and then leaving him there, whether he responds or not. A series of home Bible studies which preach the gospel and then disciple converts, in addition to attempts to see conversion “cold” at the door, are at least implied through the inclusion of “teach” with “preach” (cf. Matthew 28:18-20). Acts 17:17 indicates that Paul took inquirers, those who were seeking for salvation and were open to the gospel, and “met . . . daily with them,” a specific basis for repeated and careful contact with the lost in the manner of evangelistic Bible studies. In Acts 19:8 Paul dealt with a lost group for three months, with the result that souls were saved (19:9). He only stopped preaching the gospel to them when those who were still unconverted were evidently hardened and openly antagonistic (19:9). Those who only speak to the lost at their doorsteps often cease to deal thoroughly enough with them, giving up on them or failing to provide them with enough detail before they are clearly hardened, with the result that fewer of them are saved than could be with a fully Biblical methodology.

Churches today that offer evangelistic Bible studies today tend to have much higher percentages of salvation decisions that lead to baptism and church membership (and so are not spurious) than churches that solely seek to lead men to Christ at their doorstep without such a foundation for more in-depth instruction. The five session evangelistic Bible study written available for download at http://sites.google.com/site/thross7 is one recommended for use; study #1 covers the naure of Scripture, #2 the nature of God, #3 God’s Law and the consequences for disobedience to it, #4 the gospel, Christ’s saving work; and #5, repentance and faith; two follow up studies are also available, #6, which covers eternal security and assurance, and #7 which deals with the church—with God’s blessing, after study #5 a seeker will be converted, after #6 he will have assurance, and after #7 will be a Baptist. The four week “Salvation Bible Basics” course by Pastor Doug Hammett of the Lehigh Valley Baptist Church in Emmaus, PA (http://lvbaptist.org) is also good. Pastor Kent Brandenburg of Bethel Baptist in El Sobrante, CA (http://pillarandground.org) has also written a series of discipleship studies, Disciplines for Disciples of Christ, which are good for grounding new converts. Personal discipleship Bible studies subsequent to conversion are not just a natural implication of the verses in Scripture here discussed, and clear mandate of the Great Commission, but also unquestionably simply the part of wisdom.

One common modern methodology for evangelism, that of gimmicking the lost to visit church services by giving them material things such as candy or toys, is entirely absent from Scripture; in Acts, apart from those who wanted Christ for who He was, “durst no man join himself to them [Christians in church services]” (Acts 5:13). This was in accordance with the practice of the Lord Jesus, who did not want people to come listen to Him preach because they received food or other material benefits, but because they wanted to follow Him because of who He was (John 6:26, 66-69). Many bus ministries keep children and others coming to visit services because of material goods that are continually provided week after week, but the Lord Jesus refused to provide worldly benefits to keep people coming to listen to Him preach (John 6:29-33, 66). The apostles likewise did not use a “cloke of covetousness” in evangelism (1 Thessalonians 2:5); they did not trick people (“cloke”) to come to church by appealing to materialism (“covetousness”), then reverse themselves and call upon them to repent of materialism, covetousness, and all other sin to surrender to Christ (Mark 8:34-36). This is carnal weaponry (cf. 2 Corinthians 2:4)—the only Biblical weapon to bring the lost to Christ is the Word of God as empowered by the omnipotent Spirit (Ephesians 6:17). Furthermore, it presents a false view of God to those who are convinced by marketing techniques and give-aways to come to church meetings. It makes it appear like candy or various other material goods are of more value than knowledge of Him and fellowship with Him. By presenting a false view of God, and thus leading men to not glorify Him as God (Romans 1:21), so far are marketing and promotion techniques from leading to more genuine conversions that they are the root, along with unthankfulness, of the horrific cycle of apostasy and evil that is described in Romans 1:21-32. Romans one demonstrates that the misrepresentation of God involved in “evangelistic” marketing techniques is the root sin that leads to idolatry, sodomy, and other sins worthy of death, and of God’s giving men, churches, and societies over to reprobation and their lusts.

[iv] If the Lord Jesus Himself, who knew that He was speaking to true converts (John 8:30-31), gave them assurance based on the evidence of the new birth and new nature (John 8:31—a certainty in every truly converted person, John 17:17), how much the more should His people, who do not know infallibly what has gone on within a professed convert, not tell everyone who claims conversion but manifest no change in life that they have been saved! Nor can John 8:31-32 be used to establish that some sort of higher Christian life as a disciple is in view, rather than a distinction between the saved and the lost; those who do not continue and are not “disciples indeed” do not “know the truth” and are not “free.” All believers know the truth, and no unbelievers know the truth (John 1:17; 14:6, 17; 17:17, 19; and this knowledge leads to a changed life its certain result: “Every one that is of the truth heareth [Christ’s] voice,” John 18:37, and consequently becomes a true worshipper (John 4:23-24), follows Christ (John 10:27), and “doeth truth . . . that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God” (John 3:21). Furthermore, in the immediate context of John 8:31-32 (namely, in v. 36), and everywhere else in the New Testament, being made “free” is an event that takes place at the moment of regeneration (John 8:32, 36; Romans 6:18, 22; 8:2, 21; Galatians 5:1). While the believer is to renew his discipleship daily (Luke 9:23), the call of the Lord Jesus, “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34) is a call to repentance and faith, to conversion: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it [eternally in hell]; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake [repent of his sin and his own life and way] and the gospel’s, the same shall save it [will go to heaven]” (Mark 8:35). Those who do not become disciples lose their own souls eternally in the lake of fire (Mark 8:36). While there can certainly be false or unsaved disciples (John 8:31; 6:66) just like there can be false believers (John 2:23-25; cf. 3:1-21), every true believer is a true disciple, and every true disciple is a true believer.

[v] Note that hold forth (epechontes) in v. 16 a participle of means indicating how the verb to shine in v. 15 (phainesthe) takes place.