Does it really need to be said? Persecution is not good for what ails us (Part Two)

Spiritual growth comes through Spirit-power and direction, applied from the inside out as God rewrites our heart, soul and mind to conform to his righteousness. Revivals of history have come as the result of prayer and the Spirit’s power; most are absent of any persecution as a proximate cause: the Reformation, Great Awakening, the Wesleyan Revival, the Second Great Awakening, the Korean Revival, the Welsh Revival.

From Does it really need to be said? Persecution is not good for what ails us (Part One)

And now, Part Two:

Therefore I propose Viewpoint B:

  • Tribulation is not a “good” but an evil, albeit one that can be turned to good use in the one who is faithful.
  • Therefore, Christians should not pray that persecution would come, hoping for a “bank shot” which will lead to revival.
  • If revival is what we want, we should pray for revival.
  • And finally: we should pray that persecution will NOT come; and that if it does come, that it will abate.

Here are some key Bible texts: (more…)

Published in: on April 1, 2013 at 10:14 am  Comments (8)  
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Does it really need to be said? Persecution is not good for what ails us (Part One)

Is persecution good for what ails the church? Here’s the word on the street:

Viewpoint A: Everyone knows that persecution purifies the church –

  • Therefore, if revival is to come, it will be through suffering.
  • Therefore, persecution is a good, a benefit.
  • Therefore, the committed Christian should pray for persecution to fall on their country.

Now, I know of no verse where Christians should hope for or pray for persecution. Nor is there a passage that says, “If you pray for revival, you’d better duck, God will send you tribulation.” These viewpoints strikes me as two of these Bible interpretations which are, to use the British phrase, “too clever by half.” It’s similar to the one I’ve heard people say, that we shouldn’t pray for patience – after all, if we do, God will send trials on us! I’m stymied, how a Christian could balk at praying for a fruit of the Spirit, or imagine that God will use our sincere prayer in order to play a trick on us!

The Bible is clear, and 2000 years of history give the same message –

  • Revival comes with or without persecution.
  • That is, revival and persecution do not follow a strict cause and effect. Nor are they typically correlated.
  • If there is correlation, it’s the question of the chicken and the egg – sometimes persecution comes because the church is growing and lively.
  • Persecution does not necessarily result in purification or vitality.
  • Persecution may be an impediment to church growth as much as it is a spur to growth.
  • People who pray for, seek or volunteer for persecution are on thin ice.

Christian-persecution-1024x682

The evidence: (more…)

Published in: on March 26, 2013 at 8:54 pm  Comments (7)  
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Buy Strack and Billerbeck’s Commentary – but beware! [technical article]

untitledLogos.com is going to publish Strack-Billerbeck’s Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and the Midrash (published in the 1920s) in German and in English. For years I’ve said this should be translated into English! Despite its serious flaws it’s still unequaled, and the price of $149 for the English-only version is a steal.

Its drawbacks:

First, S-B treated Judaism as if it were one monolithic whole, and did not take into account the differences between one group and another or the changes that took place in Judaism throughout the centuries. So if they located a found a parallel to (more…)

Published in: on March 26, 2013 at 11:54 am  Leave a Comment  
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False teaching – a corrosive, toxic, contaminant

This is how false teaching arrives:

A man with a white lab coat and rubber mallet in his pocket protector arrives in order to “heal you.” And just think, you didn’t even know you were sick! Still, after hmms and haws, he pull a bottle of medicine from a pocket, holds your nose and chucks a spoonful down your throat.

At this point, you gag and retch and run to the sink, where you empty your stomach.

“Ah,” says he, “the case is worse than I had thought! A double dose is what you need!”

You swallow, and retch twice as violently as before and drop to your knees.

“It’s obvious that you stand in need of my remedy worse than most. A triple dose is called for!” You choke it down, falling prone on the floor, your face drained of color, wheezing and tear-streaked.

A peddler of strange elixirs, potions which cannot be bought in just any store; he’s a trickster, and he usually charges plenty for his wares – probably money, definitely a chunk of your soul.

Why must we defend true doctrine and reject the false? I hope it’s not just that we can satisfy our own fussiness. I’ve seen those who love to make things “even”, but for their own mental and psychological satisfaction, as Carl Sandburg wrote in a favorite poem of mine:

The abracadabra boys – have they been in the stacks and cloisters? Have they been to a sea of jargons and brought back jargons? They foregather and make pitty pat with each other in Latin and in their private pig Latin, very ofay. Do they have fun? Sure – their fun is being what they are… (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238494)

Anal Retentive 5_3True doctrine is not ensuring that our system has all its “t”s crossed and “i”s dotted, nor ducks arranged in order of color and height. Truth speakers need not be pickers of nits or splitters of hairs. Rather, it is making sure that we follow God’s truth and avoid the “teachings of demons” (1 Tim 4:1): the Evil One oversees a factory with round-the-clock shifts, a production line of ideas to draw people away from God. The collection he’s brought out this year is nothing new; they’re old lies, spray painted with this season’s colors. (more…)

Published in: on March 21, 2013 at 3:43 pm  Comments (7)  
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mayans

Published in: on December 4, 2012 at 8:23 pm  Comments (2)  
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The Sheep and the Goats on Sunday Morning [Studies in 1 Corinthians]

When the Son of Man comes in his glory he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance. For I was lonely and I felt like a foreigner but you made me feel welcome; I was confused and you cleared things up; I was beaten down by life and you lifted me up; I was anonymous and you called me by name.”

Are you a sheep or a goat?

Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you lonely and feeling like a foreigner and made you feel welcome; or confused and we made things clear for you; or beaten down by life and lifted you up; or anonymous and we called you by name?” (more…)

Published in: on July 12, 2012 at 5:11 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Is wine forbidden in the Bible?

There is a long train of people who are keen to prove that wine in the New Testament era did not contain alcohol, that it was only grape juice. Therefore, Jesus must not have turned water into wine at Cana, nor serve wine at the Last Supper.

Nevertheless: how is it possible that wine (oinos/οἶνος) contain no alcohol if it is a product of fermentation (Mark 2:22) and, if used in excess, causes drunkenness (Eph 5:18; also Prov 20:1, which in the Septuagint uses the word oinos), while at the same time oinos contains no alcohol? In fact, the Greeks had another word for unfermented grape juice, or “must” – it was trux/τρύξ.

Deacons and widows should not be addicted to wine (1 Tim 3:8, Titus 2:3), and that’s wine with alcohol, not grape juice. Paul does not forbid drinking wine, only its abuse.

In fact, Paul’s practical advice that Timothy “use a little wine (again, oinos)” (1 Tim 5:23) makes sense only if that wine contains alcohol: Timothy’s stomach ailments were due to drinking contaminated water, which the alcohol in wine would kill. Likewise, the Good Samaritan treated open wounds with wine and oil, since alcohol is a natural disinfectant.

If Jesus and the disciples celebrated the Passover according to the Bible’s commands, they drank wine, period (Matt 26:27).

Those who love God’s Word need to show extraordinary care, not to make it say anything more or anything less than what it says.

Published in: on May 29, 2012 at 5:49 pm  Comments (4)  
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Can the use of Greek help the preacher? An example

Should a preacher refer to Hebrew or Greek from the pulpit? In all but a few instances, emphatically not. In a week or so I’ll be blogging on this very theme (see below, “I Love Greek but never use it from the Pulpit,” where I invite the readers’ input).

The study of original languages, like all study of technical background, is to inform the preacher, not to impress the audience. The preacher takes that material and puts it into plain English (or Spanish, in my case). Unless the audience can read the biblical languages, there is no reason to mention them, and plenty of reasons not to. (more…)

Published in: on July 24, 2011 at 6:07 pm  Comments (1)  
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What comes before the Day of the Lord: the final “apostasy” or the “departure” of the church? [Studies in Thessalonians]

According to 2 Thessalonians, Timothy brought Paul a question from a panicky church: Has the Day of the Lord come? Paul ties together language of the return of Christ from his own oral teaching, the Matthean tradition, Daniel and 1 Thessalonians. No indeed! he says, and I can prove it. Has the Man of Lawlessness appeared? Then no, the Day of the Lord has not come (2 Thess 2:3).

The other marker is more controversial: an “apostasy” or “falling away” (apostasia, ἀποστασία). The word might denote a political rebellion. Nevertheless, “falling away” in Judeo-Christian contexts usually refers to a spiritual apostasy. In the Apocrypha, many Jews apostatized from Yahweh in 1 Macc 2:15 (NRSV) – “The king’s officers who were enforcing the apostasy came to the town of Modein to make them offer sacrifice” to Greek gods. Paul himself was accused of teaching Diaspora Jews “apostasy from Moses” (Acts 21:21). The verb form also appears in a warning against apostasy in Heb 3:12 and in the Lukan version of the Parable of the Sower to speak of those who fall away because of persecution (Luke 8:13). Paul uses the verb (aphistemi, ἀφίστημι) of the end-time falling away once in 1 Tim 4:1; he uses the noun form (apostasia, ἀποστασία) only here in 2 Thess 2:3.[2] Most Bible versions render the term correctly: “falling away” (ASV, KJV, NKJV); rebel, rebellion (CEV, ESV, GNB, NIV, NLT, NRSV, RSV), revolt (GW, NJB), apostasy (HCSB, NASB).

But wait! A few Bible students have suggested that 2 Thess 2:3 should be translated not as the “apostasy” but as a “removal” or “departure.” That is, the church is taken away from the earth, with the rest of the population “left behind” for the tribulation.[3]

Can this interpretation hold up? (more…)

Published in: on June 30, 2011 at 9:20 pm  Comments (12)  
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1 Thess 4:17 – “meet the Lord in the air” in the original Greek [Studies in Thessalonians]

Since the Rapture has made headlines lately, here are some observations.

The New Testament was written in Greek. Some argue that it was originally done in Hebrew, but they cannot provide ancient Hebrew (or Aramaic or Syriac) manuscripts to back that up. All of Paul’s churches used Greek as their principal language. Paul himself had grown up speaking a dialect of Greek known as koine. It is for this reason that many serious students of the Scriptures decide to study that language, just as many others study Hebrew.

Unfortunately, much of what we hear about Greek in books or from the pulpit is false or misleading. For example, some preach that the word agape means “divine love,” whereas phile means “human love or affection.” This is simply not the case, and the words are often interchangeable in the New Testament. I shudder every time I hear the words “I know that it says thus-and-such in your Bibles, but the Greek really says, etc.” Listen: English Bible versions – with a few exceptions – were carried out by leading experts in the field of the original languages, who have gone to great lengths to express the meaning of the original in English. You can trust your English Bible.

Yet, every once in a while there is a gem in the original Greek that is difficult to communicate in English. For example, the NIV of 1 Thess 4:17 has, “After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” The other versions are similar and equally reliable. In my forthcoming commentary on 1 and 2 Thessalonians (Zondervan) I opted to translate verse 17 as: “we who still live and remain will be taken up together with [those who were dead] in the clouds to welcome the Lord in the air.” “To meet,” a verb in most versions, represents a Greek preposition and noun, “for a meeting” (eis apantesin). Nevertheless, a verb in English captures the original Greek equally well.

But one might ask, what happens after the Christians meet the Lord in the air? Where do they go? (more…)

Published in: on May 25, 2011 at 9:43 pm  Comments (12)  
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