The Trip to Europe Continued (Twenty-Fifth Post In Total)

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The Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy in an invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944.  This week marked the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the beginning of the end for the Axis powers in Europe.   Less than a year earlier, on June 20, 2018, Tuesday, I left our apartment in Mountrouge and walked to a car rental business, a Europcar that was in the basement of a parking garage in the Jules-Noël Sports Center there.  Car rental and driving was a greater adventure in England, but France presented its own challenges.

I picked up the car that morning right when the car rental opened and drove it to the front of the apartment to pick up the family and began our drive to the American Cemetery at Normandy.  Almost all of the trip was on a toll road that looked similar to an American one.  I found it hard to gauge the speed limit on these freeways.  The tolls are paid mostly with coinage and sometime a window with a person in it, who does not understand English.  If you are ever making that trip, you better get the proper coinage figured out to put into the machine.  Some of them will take credit cards, but I also found that the credit card wouldn't work on some of these.  The French are not, I repeat not, in general sympathetic to Americans.  Maybe it's everybody they don't like, but one can get the distinct impression that they do not like Americans.

As multicultural as the United States. as leftist as it is in France, France isn't multicultural.  The French like their language and and their culture.  I don't like a lot about it, but it is a culture that the French have, a unique one.  I'm reporting only what I saw.  I'll write more about it.  I don't think I went into it with a bias toward the French.  When we visited the church on Sunday morning, I was blessed to see what I believed to be true conversions and a genuine evangelistic effort there.

It was about a three hour trip by car from Montrouge to the cemetery.  If I was going to compare the northern coast of France to anything that I knew in the United States, it would be closer to parts of the East coast of the Middle Atlantic states than the West coast.  With the time that we had to get there and back in one day, we decided to do two things.  We would visit the American Cemetery and then Omaha Beach, which is right underneath the cemetery, down the bluff.

I've been into military cemeteries.  I've been to burials in military cemeteries.  I've visited Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., Gettysburg National Cemetery where Lincoln gave his speech, and then the military cemetery at West Point.  Nothing moved me like the American cemetery.  The presentation in the museum there was very good.

There is a lot of parking at the cemetery, but there aren't normally a lot of people there to visit, because it's an American cemetery in France.  Mostly people visit from the United States, and it isn't easy to get there.  There are also lots of places to tour around Normandy, several museums and various cemeteries.  Someone could spend weeks there just looking at D-Day related sites.  I can tell you only about the two sites we saw.

We walked first to the cemetery building, which was the museum.  The museum gives an excellent presentation of what happened on D-Day.  It is very well organized to put the events in chronological order.   At the end is a small theater with a very well done film that is very emotional.  I cried all through the museum.

When we left the museum, we walked out to the cemetery, which is kept in immaculate condition.  There are grave stones mostly in the form of crosses, made out of a unique marble.  The rows are so, so straight.  The order and symmetry in themselves, green fields filled with white crosses, moves.  We caught up with a tour that starts with a large map that overlooks the beach below and out onto the English channel.  You can imagine everything from that vantage point.  Then we walked to the variious memorials there and our tour guide, a French woman, who spoke excellent English with an a French accent, talked at every point.  She stopped at certain crosses and told stories about the one whose body rests there.  Tears continued to run with her talk and the sites all around us.

We went back to our car and drove down to the beach and parked there.  There is a memorial on Omaha beach.  There are some symbolic metal objects there.  Besides that, it's just a beach.  It's like someone talking about ground where some major event occurred.  The ground itself is hallowed by the men who died there.  That's the feeling I had even though it was an ordinary beach.

We drove the three hours back and I was able to drop off my family and return the rental car that evening, then walk back to our apartment.  We ate that night at the restaurant on the first floor.  The next day we would visit the Palace of Versailles and the Eiffel Tower.

Jessie Penn-Lewis: Spirit-Baptized Woman Preacher (part 3 of 22)

The content of this post is now available in the study of:

1.) Evan Roberts

2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905

3.) Jessie Penn-Lewis

on the faithsaves.net website. Please click on the people above to view the study.  On the FaithSaves website the PDF files may be easiest to read.

 

You are also encouraged to learn more about Keswick theology and its errors, as well as the Biblical doctrine of salvation, at the soteriology page at Faithsaves.

When Someone Is Said to Be Divisive

Most of the time when someone is said to be divisive, it isn't the person who is divisive.  Don't get me wrong.  Some people are divisive.  But most of the time, it isn't a person who is dividing.  Stay with me.

Scripture talks about divisive people.  It is the heretic of Titus 3:10-11.

A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject; Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.

The term heretick isn't in scripture that much.  It's a word thrown around quite a bit though, usually, I've found, as a pejorative, calling someone a "heretic."  In fact, and I've written about this a few times on this blog, a heretic is a divisive or factious person.  That is who it is in Titus 3:10-11.

I've pastored for 33 years, one year in seminary and 32 years in California since starting the church here, and I've seen the violation of Titus 3:10-11 in a church, like Titus 3:10-11 read.  Factious people enter into a church and cause division.  Usually it isn't doctrinal, but personality based.  Someone doesn't want to do what he's told or fit into the body.  The whole church wants to remodel the kitchen except for one vociferous personality.  Sometimes one person is a regular critic of leadership and it drags everyone down.

The main kind of heresy in a church is personality and pride.  Someone doesn't want compatibility with everyone else.  He wants to stick out and make it about him.  In the few usages of heresy, doctrine also divides.  Someone will divert off the path of truth and try to take people with him.  This could be a perversion of the Trinity, inerrancy, or the gospel.  I think that is the usage of Acts 24:14:

But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets.

When the word "divisive" is used today, I don't see it mainly as almost ever used in a scriptural way, either way.  When someone says that you're divisive, they aren't using it according to scripture.

If a biblical doctrine divides, that’s no fault of the doctrine but of those who defect from it. Doctrine may divide, but biblical teaching can’t be divisive. The divisive are those who defect from the truth. To say a particular doctrinal stance is divisive is misguided rhetoric.

— Mike Riccardi (@MikeRiccardi_) June 5, 2019

I read this retweeted in a twitter feed, and it's something I've been talking about for years.  The "divisive" one, the heretic, is the one who divides off biblical and historical doctrine.  Just because there is "division" doesn't mean that someone is being divisive.  If I point out unbiblical doctrine, I'm not being divisive.  It's the person who has moved off or from biblical and historical doctrine who is divisive.  Usually it's something new.

After Riccardi got my attention with this tweet, I read another one he made within the same week that dovetails.

The first human sin consisted in (1) doubting God’s Word and His goodness, (2) rejecting His Word as the authority for life, (3) asserting man’s own autonomous reasoning as the authority in place of God’s revelation, & (4) breaking God’s law. Every sin since consists in the same.

— Mike Riccardi (@MikeRiccardi_) May 28, 2019

When God confronted Adam and Even for their sin, God wasn't the divisive one.  It is at least a wrong viewpoint.  Jesus came to bring a sword (Matthew 10:34).  In other words, Jesus requires separation based upon doctrine, but He's not the cause of the division.  Adam and Even caused the division.  I want to add to Riccardi's thoughts, because here is how I've seen this claim of division occur the most.  I'm going to use the second person to speak to you.

Scripture stands as authority.  You divert from scripture.  However, you want acceptance.  When you don't get it, you say someone is causing division with you.  You don't want to face biblical division, what Jesus brings and requires, so you pervert and confuse biblical division with a wrong kind of division.  You are calling biblical separation, heresy.

A genuine Christian doesn't want to cause division, since unity is important to God.  God requires unity.  This instinct not to divide is reflected by Paul's writing in 1 Corinthians 12:25, "That there should be no schism in the body."  Schism is the wrong kind of division that is being accused.  I want to further digress and use the second person again to speak to you directly.

You want acceptance, not biblical unity, so you are corrupting the grace of God.  You want toleration of error.  You are saying that the person who won't tolerate error isn't being gracious.  Furthermore, you are saying that contradictory doctrines or positions are both supposed to be accepted.  You are expanding a list of questionable doctrines, the ones you want to disobey and still be accepted.

Some of these newly tolerated doctrines, the ones now accepted to avoid being called divisive, are actually also related to the gospel.  The gospel is being perverted and if someone separates over that, he's being called divisive.  I see this trend in the area of the grace of God.  A person who is truly gracious will accept divergent doctrines, because of newly designated uncertainty.  Riccardi started with "doubting God's Word" (see second tweet above).  Doubt removes authority.  Then a person can believe and do what he wants.  False doctrines not in play are now in play and are tolerated.  If I don't accept them, I'm the divisive one.  Do you see how this is happening?

"Divisive" is weaponized by false or cheap grace adherents.  They can disobey true doctrine and practice and get away with it, even be considered orthodox, because doctrinal diversity is this new unbiblical grace, what its adherents are calling "scandalous grace."  As Riccardi said above:

Doctrine may divide, but biblical teaching can’t be divisive. The divisive are those who defect from the truth. 

My Liking of Jordan Peterson Is Not Fellowship or an Endorsement of Him: Why?

Maybe every next generation is a new and troubling day.  I don't want to overestimate the degree of perversity of the present generation.  However, I think we have taken a unique plunge into the abyss.

You've perhaps heard of Moore's law.  The Wikipedia article states:

The observation is named after Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and CEO of Intel, whose 1965 paper described a doubling every year in the number of components per integrated circuit and projected this rate of growth would continue for at least another decade. In 1975, looking forward to the next decade, he revised the forecast to doubling every two years.

His "law" has proven true, but in 2015 Moore "foresaw that the rate of progress would reach saturation," and said, "I see Moore's law dying here in the next decade or so."

Perhaps as Moore's law has materialized, to the same degree of progress in technology has occurred a parallel spiritual regression.  Moore's law portrays a steep trajectory upward as we have fallen off a cliff in the other direction morally and biblically.  The two might even be interrelated.

In a day such as today, Jordan Peterson could seem to be a bright alternative.  Only in such darkness would he come off as light, when in fact he is a near or sort of modernist.  I've read modernists.  I know how they read.  I hear modernism in Jordan Peterson.  Only in such dark days does a possible modernist seem bright in comparison to postmodernism, nihilism, and political correctness.

I wrote here that I attended a Jordan Peterson speech in San Francisco, and I did on May 2. I had written some things about him since he burst into public awareness a short time ago (here, here, here, here, and here).  Someone gave me his book for a gift for my birthday, which was a little less than a month before the San Francisco speech, and I read it before his speech.  His speech isn't posted at youtube yet, and we were told it was unlawful to record, so I didn't even though I had a digital recorder with me.  I listened carefully and got the gist of what he said, and can remember it.

Someone wrote two critical articles about Peterson at The Federalist that would be worth reading (part one, part two).  I'm not suggesting myself that someone look to Jordan Peterson for his theology or interpretation of scripture.  He's a problem.  I'm glad The Federalist, not a Christian organization, recognized it and allowed the articles they published.

Peterson used Genesis as his authority for his San Francisco speech.  I would not have thought that he would have done that, even though I know he's been renting out and filling a theater for his teaching through Genesis up in the Toronto area of Canada.  His first Genesis lecture is his most watched youtube video.

I agreed with every one of Peterson's points, even though I know he does not have a true or right view of the Genesis account.  The title of his speech was "The Meaning and Reality of Individual Sovereignty."  I think the founding fathers of the United States would have proceeded from similar thinking as Peterson, which some might call "natural law." He said, one, that God created order, two, that God created man in His image with the Word, so, three, God wants man to bring order through the Word just like God.  All that is true.  Everything Peterson says isn't true, but those three points are true, which were the points of His speech.

In addition to Genesis, Peterson mixes in historical thinking and the evidence from other cultures.  He doesn't interpret all of that, just reports it.  I have titled this type of proof, "feeding off the carcass."  I don't think Peterson understands it in a right way, but he is right to promote it.  Other cultures borrowed from the Genesis culture, because they were perversions of the original culture God created.  Based on God's grace, unfaithful people sustained aspects of what God instituted originally with faithful people.  Noah brought a culture to the other side of the flood and was alive at the time of the tower of Babel.  Abraham sent a servant back to Mesopotamia to find a wife for his son, because there was something still there to find.

Peterson explains through his understanding of science, being widely read in peer-reviewed materials. He warns of danger and destruction from departing from ways established and constituted in Western civilization.  They didn't succeed on a whim.  These ways made their way through, revealed in historical archtypes that stand as laws regulating success for people.  Western civilization capitalized on these and in contrast with the failings of the East.  Good enough?  No, and by far not good enough.

From my watching and listening to Peterson, he seems himself like he knows something important is missing in his own life.  He cries more than ever.  Perhaps the internal contradiction breaks him, especially someone who puts such an emphasis on telling the truth.  There is an underlying lie to all of what Peterson says, that is crucial.  One could call it the big lie in contradistinction to little truths that Peterson bravely tells.

The Independent Institute, which sponsored the event in San Francisco with Peterson, asked ticket buyers and members for questions.  In the end, they read none of them, because all of the question and answer time was taken up by a small panel of board members of the Institute and Peterson riffed so long on his answers that he ate up all the time.  Peterson often gives long answers and goes off on related tangents.  However, I sent in this question:

What do you think of what scripture says, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:17, that if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins?  Is not meaning lost with mere symbolism and not historic reality and then fulfillment of Jesus' own saying in Matthew 17:22-23 that the Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men, they will kill Him, and He will be raised on the third day?

I didn't directly quote the King James Version.  I put the question in more modern vernacular, but my point was to evangelize Jordan Peterson and maybe the crowd there.

Peterson at best improves temporal life on a disposable planet with no future.  He doesn't prepare mankind for eternity, so he misses the point of man's existence.  Man can't please God with Peterson's way.  Peterson's common sense brings no power of sustainability, because man can't be or stay good or better on his own.  He needs the gospel.  Without justification, real salvation, man is lost in his sins, and as a result is not close to better off.  His worst days are still ahead practicing Peterson at his best.  This is a lie, a deceitful lie.

I watched Peterson's speech to Prager U and then the interview with Dennis Prager.  Peterson cried a lot.  The tears remind me of the tears of John in Revelation 5, when no man can undo the seals on the inheritance of all things.  The strong angel tells John not to weep, because the Lamb is worthy to redeem the lost world.  All the problems of the world are rescued by a true and real Jesus, not a metaphorical one that is a mere antitype.  Jesus actually died, was buried, and rose again.  God could wipe away Peterson's tears if he turned to Jesus Christ.

The Trip to Europe Continued (Twenty-Fourth Post In Total)

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France was the last stop of our trip to Europe.  We stayed in Montrouge, just south of Paris, right next to the Mairie de Montrouge station.  On Monday, we arose to take the subway to the Louvre, the famed museum in Paris.  This was the only stop where we did not have tickets in advance, so we waited in line outside in the rain.  It wasn't the best thing to do, but it was good to compare just how much longer it takes at a major site without tickets.

The Louvre has a notable appearance with the glass pyramid above ground, marking the entrance to the museum.

The Louvre contains paintings, sculptures, Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern antiquities, and more.   It can keep you busy, but people mainly focus on the most famous works, which include the gigantic Coronation of Napoleon.

More than anything is the Mona Lisa.  It takes up the middle of one room, and it takes difficult effort to get to the front by the rope.  It is amazing how disorganized it is to move closer with actual pushing and shoving.  Louis XIV kept the Mona Lisa at the Palace of Versailles, where it remained

until the end of the French Revolution.  The top of the Louvre Palace has 86 statues of famous men, each one labelled (the middle here, Rousseau and right, Montesquieu).












We left and ate at Angelina, and experienced the world famous hot chocolate there.  Afterwards my wife and I sat at the edge of the River Seine, while our daughters shopped nearby.

The next morning I would pick a rental car and we would drive the three hours to Omaha Beach in Normandy to visit the American cemetery, the beach, and the museum there.

When is Bad Preaching a Separating Issue?

Independent Baptist Churches are--well--independent.  Just as a significant variety of belief and practice may be found in the IFB movement, so one can find a great variety in the quality of independent Baptist preaching.  On one end of the spectrum, one can find careful expository preaching with strong application that leads to both a stronger church and stronger pastoral leadership through the years, such as the large majority of the preaching at Bethel Baptist Church in El Sobrante, CA, both in the regular services and during the Word of Truth conferences.  A Biblical basis for this kind of preaching includes the fact that in the command to "preach the Word" (2 Timothy 4:2), the noun "Word" has an anaphoric article in Greek referring back to the "all Scripture" of 2 Timothy 3:16 (as noted, e. g., in the study here).  That is, the Apostle Paul's inspired command in 2 Timothy 3:15-4:2 includes the heaven-given directive that Timothy preach all the inspired Scripture in the church of God--something that will only take place if expositional preaching through books of the Bible is a key aspect of the regular preaching ministry.

This is not to say that every single message in a sound church must be a verse-by-verse exposition.  The book of Acts contains sound--indeed, inspired--topical sermons, and it is reasonable to conclude that the model in Acts indicates that evangelistic preaching should generally be topical, while Biblically-based topical preaching is indubitably also lawful for the saints in the church of God.

However, not all independent Baptist churches are careful in the preaching and teaching of the Word.  Sadly, many of them too often commit the wicked sin (2 Peter 3:16) of wresting the Scriptures, taking them out of context in their sermons, and in this manner being like the devil in their use of Scripture rather than being like Christ (Matthew 4:1-11; Genesis 3:1-6).

The question of this post involves the following. I would like to hear comments based on Biblical wisdom in the comment section to this post that help to answer these questions.

1.) Not all the Apostles had an equal level of education--Paul, for example, had more "theological" training than Peter did, and his epistles reflect greater complexity than Peter's writings, yet both are part of the invaluable inspired deposit of the New Testament.  When, however, does a lack of ability to understand and interpret Scripture become a disqualifying lack of being "apt to teach" (1 Timothy 3:2)?  How does aptitude in teaching differ for a bishop/overseer and for, say, a children's Sunday School teacher?

2.) Everyone can commit the wicked sin of misinterpreting Scripture on occasion.  When, however, does this rise to the level where a church should separate from another one that is guilty of this sin too often?

3.) How does one distinguish the fact that some qualified preachers may more easily commit this sin, while others are more liable to different sins of a different type (e. g., prayerlessness, unbiblical anger, etc.), with the unrepentant practice of Scripture-twisting?  Nobody, or just about nobody, will boldly say "Yes, I don't care if I am taking God's Word of context."  How can the kind of regular lack of watchfulness and care against this sin indicate a separation-worthy situation?

4.) How does one confront another brother, or even a spiritual leader, who is guilty of this sin?  How does one church and its leadership deal with another church and its leadership about this sin?  What should a church member do if he is in a church where the pastor or pastors are too often guilty of this sin?  How does one seek to show reverence for whatever parts of God's truth are in a message that contains exegetical fallacies, receiving that truth with reverence and godly fear, while also hating the sin of Scripture-twisting, as one must hate all sin?

5.) How can the principle of 1 Corinthians 14:29 be applied to preaching, and how can a man instruct his family to not receive and believe exegetical fallacies in a sermon or sermons he has heard without turning the situation into one of "roast preacher" after a message?

6.) How does one treat a church-run Bible college or institute that is producing men who believe the right doctrine but do not know how to preach what a text actually says and do not know how to interpret Scripture, or are seriously deficient in this area?

7.) What role can other pastors in a church and/or deacons or other spiritual leaders play in helping a head pastor to take Scripture-twisting seriously if it seems he does not do so as much as he should, without these other men becoming people who are unsupportive or critical instead of helpfully supportive of their shepherds?

8.) What kind of accountability can the pastor of a church, perhaps a smaller church with spiritually immature Christians who would not know if the pastor is taking the Word of context, institute for himself to guard against this sin?  How can he make sure Scripture-twisting is not happening if he does not have as much time as he would like to study because he has to work one, or maybe even two or three secular jobs because the church cannot yet support him financially?

9.) How can a church distinguish between a man training for the ministry who is not yet "apt to teach" to the point where hands should be laid on him and one who still has (as do we all) room to continue to grow in this area, but one who is qualified and whom a church could ordain and/or send out to evangelize for the purpose of seeing churches established elsewhere?

I certainly do not think that I have the definitive answer to these questions, and I would like to hear thoughtful, Biblically-based ideas in the comment section.  One thing that I do believe can be definitively stated, however, is that the answer is not "we cannot do anything about Scripture-twisting." Furthermore, the too-common practice among independent Baptists to (commendably and rightfully) warn carefully about many sins, but never to warn about this one, is a great evil.

--TDR

The Fallacy of Critical Text Apologetics with Islam: James White and Pooyan Mehrshahi

Robert Truelove interviews Pooyan Mehrshahi with a focus on the superiority or necessity of the received or ecclesiastical text position related to Muslim apologetics.

Evangelical apologist and critical text advocate, James White, very often warns that apologetics with Moslems is ruined by a received text position.  He states this with absolute dogmatism, while giving zero proof or evidence for his contention.  Instead of speaking with a tone of incredulity and rolling his eyes, he should explain the preeminence of his position.  The only evidence is that he says it, so it must be true -- he's the authority.

On the other hand, we listen to Pooyan Mehrshahi explaining his position and giving actual evidence for it.  I've written the same thing related to my evangelism of Moslems (here).  Listen to Mehrshahi here on the preservation of scripture.   He is a pastor of a Baptist church in Cheltenham, UK and has an amazing personal testimony, having grown up with Shia Islam, learning Arabic and memorizing the Quran in Iran.  The biggest attack on Christianity by Islam is the corruption of the text of scripture.  They, as Mehrshahi asserts, use and quote evangelicals to support their position.  The right position and powerful position against Islam is the doctrine of preservation, which is the truth.  I don't imagine White's (and those like him) position on the text of scripture doing anything but providing ammunition for Islam against Christianity.  He hurts the cause.

Please watch the interview of Mehrshahi and then listen to Mehrshahi's sermon.  They will square you away against the deceit of the position of White, whose position is just false.

Jessie Penn-Lewis: Conversion (?) and Higher Life (part 2 of 22)

The content of this post is now available in the study of:

1.) Evan Roberts

2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905

3.) Jessie Penn-Lewis

on the faithsaves.net website. Please click on the people above to view the study.  On the FaithSaves website the PDF files may be easiest to read.

 

You are also encouraged to learn more about Keswick theology and its errors, as well as the Biblical doctrine of salvation, at the soteriology page at Faithsaves.