Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, part 7 of 7

Wrap up the series on how to evaluate whether a conspiracy theory has merit in my newest blog post here. 

Ranking the Worst Things Happening In a Given Year

Someone said that they don't like 2022 because it's 2020 two times.  Get it.  Twenty-twenty two.  Twenty-twenty two-times.  They were being funny.

I remember when we got the call that said we had to cancel school and in a real hurry in March 2020.  We went to zoom classes.  Putting an entire school on zoom in a week was huge.

I know people and churches that had really bad things happen for them in 2021.  I'm not going to name them, but you know or know of people who died in 2021, maybe a loved one.  We wish they were here still.  They're not.  I know several from just this year, two I was very close to.  I know emergency room nurses who've had a very difficult time.

This is the end of 2021 and men and groups rank events, books, politics, music, movies, and people.  Did last year's predictions come true?  What will happen in 2022?  People rank the best.  They rank the worst.  Now that we have the internet, it's a good way for someone to get traffic, especially if they post a separate page for every number in their list.

I want us to consider how we make a list of the worst things that happen in a given year.  How does a Christian determine that?  What is actually really bad?  What hurts the most?  Who or what causes the most damage?  The media evaluates events for us.   They look at an event as the end of the world, the next year it happens again, and they don't mention it, because they don't want to shame the one who did it.

When we read the Bible, God doesn't mention national freedom as an important issue.  It's important in the United States Constitution, but not scripture.  If something causes you to violate God's Word, God addresses it.  Daniel had a mandated diet in Babylon.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had mandated worship of an idol.  Then Daniel had mandated that he could not pray.  Daniel ate.  The three Hebrews did not bow.  Daniel prayed.  The mandates were less the concern as much as what saints did with each mandate.

Jewish leaders mandated Peter and John, don't preach.  They answered, we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.  We obey God rather than men.  The worst thing to happen wasn't mandating not preaching.  It was preachers not standing when told not to preach.  That didn't happen in that case.

Not obeying what God said, that's one of the worst things happening in a given year.  Is there anything worse?  I think there is.  Changing what God said and eliminating it as something He even said; that's worse.  Perverting biblical doctrine and practice so that people are hearing sometimes the opposite of what God said, that's worse than not doing what God said.  They are similar, but if the doctrine and practice of God's Word is still safeguarded for future belief and practice, that's more fundamental in importance.

Twitter feeds and social media said in 2021 the worst thing was either the vaccination or those not getting the vaccination, and then masked or unmasked.  The country was split right down the middle on this issue.  Perhaps worse than that was that the vaccination or the mask was such a big issue.  While people are mocking government policy on Covid-19, something far worse could be happening.  Or is that the worst?  Maybe you could argue for that.

When we decide the worst things happening, we could compare events.  January 6 at the U.S. capital or the murders in Chicago?  January 6 at the U.S. capital or the protests in the previous summer?  Abortions or children who live and hear a false gospel, damning their souls forever?

Here's my attempt at a list of the worst things that happened in 2021.

5.  A significant percentage of young people left biblical churches.

Studies show a significant increase in people in their twenties leaving church.  This is close to seventy percentile.  I don't like the fads and philosophies I see embraced by young people, but giving up is the worst.  That influences all the other decisions they make.

I watched a chapel service for Bob Jones University and the speaker said to the congregated group of young people that the crowd would split right down the middle between liberals and conservatives.

4.  Self-centered, materialistic, and superficial living increased in magnitude among all church members.

For years church leaders try to keep their people with social activities and fun.   Church growth means adding more people, not true conversion and disciples.  In the minds of the church members, this is fellowship.  More than ever, professing Christians cannot endure sound doctrine.  Lives are filled up with temporal things.  Biblical doctrines conform to a casual, comfortable lifestyle.  Normal biblical doctrine, practice, and standards are now too offensive.

The worship of churches is very often entertainment, and the people can't tell the difference.  The people are more worldly than ever and you can't distinguish between the church and the world.  What the world was not long ago, the churches are today.

3.  The number of churches preaching a confused, watered down, or false gospel increases.

Churches either remove repentance from their doctrinal statements and plans of salvation or they redefine it so that it isn't repentance anymore.  This affects also what these churches teach on sanctification, because believers aren't expected to live according to the Bible.  More than ever when you ask a professing Christian what the gospel is, he or she cannot tell you.

If someone does something akin to "pray this prayer with me" and gets a salvation statistic, that does not result in someone saved.  It results in someone more fooled than he or she even was before.

2.  The number of churches active in preaching the gospel reaches an all time low.

If a tree falls and no one hears it, did it make a noise.  If a church has the gospel, and no one preaches it, does it have the gospel?

People are so distracted with their phones, social media, politics, and what's happening through the media, that less gospel preaching occurs.  More than ever, people are so filled with doubt and then lacking in confidence, that they don't have the assurance to be bold.  The less gospel preaching, the less salvation and more are lost.  Increase in eternal death is worse than increase in physical death.  Average life expectancy dropped in 2020 more than any time since World War 2.  Less gospel preaching results in less eternal life expectancy.

1.  True worship of God decreased.

True worship gives God what he wants.  What people want clashes with what God wants.  God created the world for His pleasure.  True individual worship decreased.  True corporate worship decreased.  Just like the worship of God decreased in apostatizing Israel, it is across the world.  Rather than giving God what He wants to hear, God received what people wanted more than ever in 2021.

The natural consequence of not preaching the gospel or preaching a false and watered down one is that true worship also decreases.  It results in greater apostasy, turning from the true God, and God receives less worship.

Honorable Mention.  Honorable mention for 2021?  Abortions have dropped since their high in the 1980s, 2017 the lowest since Roe v. Wade was passed.  Still, however, the murder of thousands of innocent babies is the worst physical event every year.  It just can't compete with spiritual and eternal events, as worse than them.

Also honorable mention, increased role confusion.  Role confusion increased significantly in the world, more effeminate men and more masculine women.  This affected the abortion rate.  The lack of reproduction that comes from man and woman relationships results in less abortion.  There are less babies to abort.  God designed the family to pass along the truth to the next generation.  When families break up, this results in less truth, less worship, less preservation of what God wants in the world.  Role confusion breaks up the family as much as any one cause.

Those are the worst of 2021.  Natural disasters, pandemics, and political issues can't compare with the spiritual and eternal ones.

What Does God Say Is Cured By the New Covenant? The Blame Game

People have their favorite verses in the Bible, beloved ones they commit to memory.  They know them well.  Every verse, every word of the Bible is important, but there are key passages in it.  If you think of Jeremiah, certain texts stand out.  One of those is Jeremiah 31:31-34, the classic location for the new covenant.

I read Jeremiah again recently in my Bible reading.  Something else stood out.  If you google, "new covenant," the first paragraph of the first link, which is the Wikipedia article, reads:

The New Covenant (Hebrew ברית חדשה‎ berit hadashah; Greek διαθήκη καινή diatheke kaine) is a biblical interpretation originally derived from a phrase in the Book of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31-34), in the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament in Christian Bible).

To provide a definition of the new covenant, Jeremiah 31:31-34 appears as the only reference in the first sentence.  Here are those verses:

31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: 32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: 33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

Many years ago now, when I was in graduate school, I traveled and stayed with a family, whose wife and mother was Jewish.  In giving her testimony of salvation, she said she received Christ from reading Jeremiah 31:31-34.  It impacted her to that degree.

 

A faithful reader can explain the whole Bible accurately using the various biblical covenants, including this new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-34.  The covenants are a system of interpretation of scripture, a grid through which to see it all.

 

A diligent Bible student can divide scripture into two well-known covenants, the old and the new, more well known as the Old and New Testaments.  I refer to the new covenant as a corollary to the old covenant.  God promises blessing to those obedient to His law, which cannot occur without a transformation of an individual heart.  Then God fulfills the blessing promised in the old covenant through His new covenant.

 

It's easy to see Jeremiah 31:31-34 as its own isolated segment and stop considering the verses right before and after.  The new covenant cures something.  It cures a lot, when one considers that it represents salvation from all our sins.  However, what does Jeremiah mention in the verses immediately preceding the new covenant?  Let's look at those in verses 28-30 of Jeremiah 31.

 

28 And it shall come to pass, that like as I have watched over them, to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch over them, to build, and to plant, saith the LORD. 29 In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge. 30 But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.

 

Verse 28 makes mention of the curse on Israel under the old covenant. God plucked up, broke down, threw down, destroyed, and afflicted.  Like God did the cursing, in the future God will build and plant instead.

 

What in part has occurred that would lead to this building and planting, versus the old plucking, breaking, throwing down, destruction, and affliction?  They would stop making excuses for themselves.  They would stop playing the blame game.  This is directly related to their cursing in contrast to blessing.

 

As soon as man fell in the Garden, he started blaming someone else (Genesis 3).  This is not the path of restoration to and with God.  Since it is what occurs so early in the Bible, one could say it is typical of lost mankind.

 

In future days God will watch over His people to build and plant.  They are days when a people will no more say, "The fathers have eaten a sour grape and the children's teeth are set on edge."  It's not a day of some kind of national punishment, where people pay for what someone else has done.

 

The whole nation of Israel went into captivity, including the godly people.  Jeremiah himself suffered despite his godliness, something that his amaneuensis Baruch complained about in Jeremiah 45.  Why should Jeremiah and he suffer for what others did wrong?  They did not cause this predicament.

 

Representative of the behavior the new covenant would cure is an adult child blaming his parents for how he now lives.  This is a common excuse backed by modern psychiatry, essentially Freudians and behavioral psychiatrists who see man as an animal.  Future blessing will come to those God cures of the blame game.

 

Of all the practices God could mention before such a pivotal passage for all history, God puts his finger on this following point.  'My parents ate sour grapes, and that's why my teeth are set on edge.'  It's a figure of speech, and it represents an important reason why people do not get back on the path of blessing, the way of righteousness.  People will never receive the new heart, a changed one, that results in the blessing of God, when they blame other people for how they live.

 

In that future day from the perspective Jeremiah, everyone will die for his own iniquity.  When Israel fought Ai, many Israelites died because of the sin of Achan.  When a church today goes to the Lord's Table, the unrepentant sin of a church member kills only him, not the whole church.  Everyone dies for his own iniquity.

 

Personal responsibility is the message of Ezekiel 18, the soul that sinneth, it shall die.  No excuse will work when someone stands before God.  The one who eats the sour grapes, his own teeth are set on edge.  God punishes him for his own sin, not his parents.  He takes responsibility for his own sin, not his parents.  It is injustice for someone to pay for what someone else did wrong.

 

Irresponsible, sinful behavior, essentially someone walking after his own lust, scoffing authority, like one sees in 2 Peter, this does not characterize someone under the new covenant, someone who has received a new heart.  We're in the new covenant era.

 

If you do you, you're going to pay for it alone.  You do whatever you do because of you.  But you also can escape you.  God offers the power to be what He wants you to be.  Because God gives a new heart through His saving grace, you can do Him instead of you.  You're not doing you any more.  Now you're doing Him.

Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, part 6 of 7

Continue to discover Biblical methods of evaluating whether a conspiracy theory has merit in my newest blog post here.  

Can Anyone Be Effeminate? Consider the Chinese

As I begin to write this post, it feels like something canceled on twitter, youtube, and facebook.  No one must think this or this way.  It must not be said or written.  Perhaps a future reeducation camp in store for someone who crosses this boundary.

I was speaking this week to someone from China and the subject of effeminate Chinese men came up. This story made the news at the beginning of September 2021.  You can find articles at major news outlets, such as ABC News and the Washington Post, reporting that as Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), starts a third term, the government cracks down on every sector of society with a "rectification" campaign.  As part of pressure to align with the government's vision of a powerful China and a healthier society, the CCP has banned effeminate men on television.

Apparently the trend or growth of effeminate men in Chinese society spread across the border of China through South Korea.  South Korean and Japanese singers influenced Chinese pop stars toward unacceptable "niang po," a Chinese insulting slang for effeminate men, which means "girlie guns."  The National Radio and TV Administration said that broadcasters must “resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal esthetics.”

In a positive way, China's government has ordered its broadcasters to encourage masculinity, a practice just the opposite of that of the United States.  Its government says it wants to put a stop to abnormal beauty standards.  The Washington Post article quotes Rana Mitter, an Oxford professor of modern Chinese and politics as saying:

The party does not feel comfortable with expressions of individualism that are in some ways transgressive to norms that it puts forward.

China does not see a future without two clearly delineated roles between men and women.  Where does China get that idea?  China wants effeminate women and masculine men.

Is there hope for any country that forsakes the God-ordained or natural roles of men and women?  1 Corinthians 11:14 and Romans 1:26-27 read:

Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.  And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

China sees something abnormal or a transgression of natural norms and stops it.  The United States encourages it and prohibits discouragement.  Listening to a podcast a few weeks ago, Jordan Peterson in an interview seemed to bemoan or mourn the illegality in Canada of conversion therapy.  Not long ago society required masculinity and the fulfillment of the male role in society.  Now it's bullying to do so.

Churches now cooperate with the perversion of men, ignoring effeminate behavior.  Imagine someone in a church telling a boy to stop acting like a girl.  Churches now exalt soft-spoken, effeminate sounding and acting men, calling their mannerisms the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  Today's tone police cancels masculine tone.  Churches need their own rectification campaigns.

Will men do anything?  Will the ostensible godly men of churches do anything?

If the Lord tarries and you live, prepare for world takeover by the Chinese, the country with the last men standing.

************

Other articles from What Is Truth on the subject.

Refreshing Honesty from “Desiring God” on Men Acting Effeminate

Noticeable Increase in Effeminate Sounding Men

Ability to Judge, Standard of Judgment, and Judging Effeminate Behavior (and Separating from It)

Act Like Men, Not Like Girls

Beauty, Worldly Lust, Effeminate and Truth in the Real World

No Reason to Fret the Harry Styles Vogue Cover Unless Designed Gender Distinction or a Male and Female Item of Clothing

God Designed Roles, Their Symbolism, and Sodomy

The Conflicting, Perplexing Calvinistic Doctrine of Free Will (Part Four)

Part One   Part Two   Part Three

 A Hebrew word for "repent" in the Old Testament is nocham and it's mainly used of God.  It first appears in Genesis 6:6:  "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart."  The Old Testament makes those kinds of statements several times.  Compatible with that, consider the last two verses of the Old Testament (Malachi 4:5-6):

5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: 6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

Elijah comes, who is John the Baptist, and preaches to Israel.  The LORD motivates Israel with His coming and smiting the earth with a curse.  If they listen, God withholds the curse.  If they don't listen, the curse comes.  The curse may or may not come.  This is a warning.  So what happens?  A relatively few listen.  The rest are cursed.  This isn't predetermination.  This is how the sovereignty of God works.  God does intervene with the warning and then later with the curse or punishment.

To read Malachi 4:5-6 any other way, complicating it with a wrong view of determinism, would pervert the plain meaning.  The two ideas of Genesis 6 and Malachi 4 are complimentary:  (1)  God repents of what He was going to do because of what men have done, and (2)  Men repent and God changes what He was going to do.  Both of those concepts, which are in scripture in multiple places, speak of men, including unsaved ones, having a free will.  They can make choices.

Men making choices doesn't limit God.  God makes up the rules, His laws, and He uses the responses of men to orchestrate His will according to providence.  Man is not the determiner.  He doesn't make the rules or the laws.  The Lord uses the wrong response by man and the right response by man both to still accomplish His purpose.

God does predetermine events.  He knows everything.  He has the power and wisdom to do whatever He wills.  His will is perfect.  Because all of this, God has free will to the greatest extent.

The Influence of Calvinism

Calvinists say, "Man doesn't have free will, he has natural will, which is not free."  There are many ideas behind it, but nothing in scripture backs it up.  The idea, that I read, is two main influences on the Protestant view of free will, Augustine and then later Luther's writing, The Bondage of the Will.  The Bible will get you a certain distance toward the point of Calvinism about free will, but it doesn't get you all the way.

Calvinism, out of what seems like desperation, crafts a title, like R. C. Sproul uses, the "humanist view of free will."  He surmises this view is the majority view of believers, but when I read the view, I can't imagine anyone believes it.  Is this a scientific study based on poll research?  He defines it this way:

[T]he choices we make are in no wise conditioned or determined by any prior prejudice, inclination, or disposition. Let me say that again: this view says that we make our choices spontaneously. Nothing previous to the choice determines the choice—no prejudice, prior disposition, or prior inclination—the choice comes literally on its own as a spontaneous action by the person.

Every choice comes because of prejudice, prior disposition or inclination.  A high enough percentage thinks there is prior inclination or disposition, that I would say everyone believes that, just the opposite of what Sproul says.

The Bondage of the Will

Just because someone acts on the basis of his strongest inclination at the moment of that choice, terminology used by Jonathan Edwards in his work, Freedom of Will, does not contradict freedom of will.  An unsaved man lacks in moral ability, but there are other means by which someone can choose Jesus Christ.  He has the freedom to choose.

Romans 3:10-12 say man neither seeks after God nor understands God.  Ephesians 2:1-5 say the lost are dead.  I read though that the truth sets some free from being a slave to sin (John 8:32-36).  All these though say to me that man can't initiate the salvation.  That's also what I read in the Bible; we love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Can there be spiritual death and bondage to sin and free will?  I'm writing, yes, but it's also because it's what I read in scripture.  If man can't do anything, because he's in bondage, then he's not responsible for anything.  Yet, he is responsible.  He's responsible because God does reveal Himself to man.  I read this in Romans 1 among other places.

When men asked Jesus in Luke 13:23, are there few that be saved?  His answer put it on man and his obvious not striving to enter into the narrow gate.  Everything fits this way.  You read the parable of the soils in Matthew 13.  Jesus starts teaching in parables so as not to harden their hearts.  A less hard heart results in greater reception to the seed.  The truth can harden a heart.  Jesus talks about four types of hearts and all of these are about reception of the truth.

The Word of God, God's Revelation

The Word of God, God's revelation, is the supernatural cure for spiritual death and bondage to sin.  Hebrews 4:12 says the Word of God is powerful.  It is the sword of the Spirit (Eph 6:17).

Revelation that defeats bondage and spiritual death starts with general revelation, which is general in its audience.  This is the grace of God that appears to all men (Titus 2:11).  Jesus said the truth is what sets someone free (Jn 8:32).  Determination isn't what sets people free.  Regeneration isn't what is said to set people free.  Jesus freed dead Lazarus from the grave with His Words (Jn 11:43).  God said, let there be light and there was light (Gen 1:3).  Paul wrote, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God (Rom 10:17).

Faith is not a work.  It is a gift.  Philippians 1:29, "For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake."  It is given to believe on Christ.  2 Peter 1:1, "Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ."  These saints obtained like precious faith.

God gives faith.  God gives it by means of His revelation.  He gives it by means of the Word of God.  Without revelation and without the Word of God, someone cannot believe.  God initiates salvation.  Salvation is of the Lord.

Tension

I don't mind the claim of "a tension."  I think there's a tension.  The tension comes with two possible questions.  For the Calvinist the question concerns why someone or who is predetermined to Heaven or predetermined to Hell.  For a non Calvinist at least like myself the question concerns why someone responds to God's revelation and some don't.  I have many verses behind the tension that I believe.  All of scripture fits that tension.  The Calvinist says something like, God is sovereign over everything and He doesn't have to answer, like the Potter doesn't have to answer to clay.

I can agree with the Calvinist about tension.  God can do whatever He wants, and it's always righteous.  He's always righteous.  We are clay and He is the Potter.  However, the Potter gives answers all over His Word.

Let's say you're the parent and your child asks why?  You answer, I'm your Dad, that's why.  That's true, but that's not the kind of answer that we get again and again and again in scripture.

I would say that man's will is in bondage.  Maybe I and the Calvinist agree.  Perhaps it's just how the bondage is removed.  Scripture says that God's revelation is the delivering agent.  Since the Calvinist believes in determinism, it seems to me that he makes up this regeneration by the Holy Spirit that precedes faith.  I'll leave it at that.

Faith pleases God and faith comes by hearing the Word of God.  God isn't glorified by adding something to scripture even if it's for the purpose of glorifying God.  I've noticed with Calvinists today, that for apparently completely depending on God's sovereignty, they use Finney-esque new measures to accomplish church growth.  I can listen to most Calvinists and hear them tie church growth success to human methodology.  This is where I tell them I'm more Calvinistic than the Calvinists.  I'm not trolling them.  I think it's true.

In another ironic turn, I say, the truth shall set you free.  The Calvinistic view of free will is not biblical.  It is not the truth.  I have often heard and read Calvinists say that they just got their Calvinism from scripture.  I can't imagine anyone reading the Bible and getting a deterministic position.  Unlike the Bible, it is conflicting and perplexing.  From the very beginning of scripture to the end, the Bible tells a story in which men make choices based on free will.

Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, part 5 of 7

Continue to read my series on how to evaluate whether a conspiracy theory has merit in my newest blog post here. 

Pragmatism, Playing Games, and "Recovering from Fundamentalism"

 If you look at a picture of the attendees of a professional baseball game during the 1940s, you see the crowd filled with men in suits and ties.  I don't know if they called them fans then, but were they legalists?  Anyone who would wear a suit and tie to a baseball game must be a legalist.  That's what I've heard about men today who wear that to church.  They're legalists.

On the other hand, if someone now wears skinny jeans and a t-shirt while he preaches, that, my friends, is, what I've been told, someone who understands the grace of God.  He's also recovering from fundamentalism.  Maybe you didn't think it was that simple, but that's how men, who refer to themselves as "recovering fundamentalists," do characterize those who wear a suit, shirt, and tie, when they preach the Word of God behind the pulpit.

Men who wore suits to ball games in the 1940s had their reasons.  They didn't wear suits everywhere they went and doing anything they did.  Men for similar reasons in the 1950s wore suits when they traveled on an airplane or other kinds of public transportation.  In many instances still today, men will wear a suit to a wedding or a funeral.  This was a way to show respect in a culture that put a premium still on showing respect.

Some still consider events and places sacred.  You've heard the question, "Is nothing sacred any more?"  Events and places once treated sacred are not any more.  A culture where little is sacred surrenders its means, its symbols and expressions, for treating anything sacred.  It blurs the distinctions between the sacred and the profane.

More than ever today being comfortable and casual is more important in priority than respect and sacredness.  Men come as they are.  In 1 Corinthians 13:5, Paul teaches that love does not behave itself unseemly.  Something unseemly is unfitting of the occasion, like having bad manners.  If something can be unseemly, it can obviously also be seemly.[

 

Personal comfort is about yourself.  "You do you."  Respect, which relates to something else besides you, is less important, of lesser value, than you.  Love is fruit of the Spirit.  Love seeketh not its own.  That's God and not you. Many, if not most, worship the idol of "you."

IFB Off-Ramp

In a very recent youtube video entitled "The IFB Off-Ramp," Mark Ward interviewed, whom he identified as one of the "recovering fundamentalists" (RF), whom I don't know.  His interviewee had debated a Ruckmanite IFB over "KJV Onlyism," also abbreviated KJVO.  Behind the RF in the interview was a piece of modern artwork with a row of varied abstract headstocks of guitars, promoting also a kind of modern music.

 

The RF says he wants to help and encourage men to be scriptural.  The commonality between Ward and the RF was replacing the King James Version with a modern version.  In the comment section, John Brock, perhaps the former academic dean of Maranatha Baptist University or a close relative, wrote:

Mark, good vid. I appreciate your spirit and the work you do.  I would love to see Nathan's organization change its name to something less demeaning to the IFB faithful.  "Recovering" is commonly used for sinful vices and applying the term to Bible believing Christians/churches is more apropos to the enemies of the cross.  Your ministry is special and done so well.  I appreciate the sensitivity that you have.  The average believers in fundamental Baptist churches are sincere brethren and demeaning them with broad strokes is unhelpful and can be unloving.  I also would tend to respect the common dress expectations of a church (when invited as a speaker) rather than to parade differences on things of lesser significance.  Keep placing the emphasis on lovingly, respectfully but courageously affirming the truth regarding our precious Book.

Mark Ward answered also in public:

I totally understand where you're coming from. I think I've made my peace with the name, because as an internet writer (blogs and YouTube) I have come—a bit reluctantly—to realize that some amount of "clickbait" in one's headlines is part of the game. I say some amount because me and my old editor at the Logos Blog agreed we would never promise something that didn't come true. But we knew we were fighting for eyeballs. You can see that in my video title here: "The IFB Off-Ramp." That's probably a bit more attention-getting that strictly necessary.

Brock presented at least two criticisms:  (1)  Change the name of RF because of wrong aspects especially about the meaning of "recovering" and how it demeans independent Baptists, and (2) respect the common dress expectations of a church.

 

Ward dealt only with argument one.  He justified to Brock the titles Recovering Fundamentalist (RF) and IFB Off-Ramp because they were (1) clickbait, (2) part of the game, and (3) fighting for eyeballs.  You get a bigger crowd if you use the methodology.

 

Mark Ward didn't answer either of Brocks points.  He essentially said that you've got to do certain means and methods to reach a certain end.  The end justifies the means.  Some might be familiar with this as pragmatism.

Pragmatism?

Do modern version advocates, most often critical text proponents, follow scripture as the basis for what they do?  Both Ward and the RF say that's what it is.  I don't hear anything scriptural in particular coming from either of them in the interview, except for Ward's brief reference to 1 Corinthians 14:9 and his intelligibility argument.  I'm not going to address that again here.

From my observation and many others', IFB has been steeped in pragmatism.  They've used gimmicks or carnal means to attract crowds.  They've been doing that for decades, because it was a good way to get eyeballs.  It is proverbial "clickbait" and "playing the game."

 

This IFB pragmatism also either followed, led to, or paralleled a superficial, 1-2-3 pray-with-me "gospel" for numbers.  The two feed off each other.  You can't keep a crowd attracted by superficial means with an in depth presentation.  It also must carry with it certain characteristics fitting of the spirit of this age.

 

When almost the entire infrastructure and happenings around an apparently serious dealing with scripture is modernistic, worldly, compromising, and casual, that affects the message.  As someone famously wrote:  the medium is the message.  All of the surrounding and environment and context affect the understanding.  It's like blowing an uncertain trumpet.  The message will lose its intelligibility.  This all relates to Christian worldview.

 

What does it mean to recover from this brand of fundamentalism?  Does it mean going to more that is superficial, like the modern art, pop music, and casual and worldly dress?  Many adherents to evangelicalism want a church with a modern version.  It's a prerequisite that goes along with all the other pragmatism that is used to get eyeballs.  Most everyone in the theater seating doesn't care what the underlying text is.

 

Mark Ward is willing to associate and fellowship with Recovering Fundamentalists.  The real deal breaker would be if they used only the King James Version.  On the other hand, if someone preaches a true gospel, evangelizes in a scriptural way, and has a reverent assembly with robust expository preaching, even using the original languages, but it uses only the King James Version, that divides Mark Ward.  The RF are Mark Ward's bedfellows.  These are his people.