After relocating to Alberta Canada in the early 1990s to start a new church, I was introduced to the term, “multiculturalism.” It sounded non-threatening, even altruistic. But the fact that it was being pimped so forcefully by the Canadian government made me suspicious. I soon learned it meant flooding a First World nation with Third World migrants, not out of some humanitarian compassion for the less fortunate, but that this was designed to dilute and eventually erase the distinctive Canadian culture. And this is not just about Canada, but a world-wide scheme of the George Soros, global elite-types to cancel out Judeo-Christian, Western Civilization. Their long-dedicated endgame is to level the playing field of nations in the fantasy that if you blend all the cultures together, out will emerge a homogenized utopia, or at least one more easily controlled by the ideological gods.
Whether the Global Deep State employs the tool of multiculturalism, Marxism, race-baiting, climate change, transgenderism, DEI, or some other gaslighting gimmick, their totalitarian goal remains the same: Infiltrate a nation by taking over their educational system and mass media, and replace the public’s current reality with one that makes them more subservient to their new masters. Cultural Marxist Antonio Gramsci understood this tactic. He is often credited with coining the phrase, “capture the culture,” which is exactly the intent of this nefarious cabal.
God’s design for man is the opposite of multiculturalism, just as it was with its original attempt at Babel. It was God who put the various people groups into His preordained, geographic locations, their “allotted places,” because that was the way He planned to reveal Himself to them. This is what Paul was preaching to the Athenians on Mars Hill: “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling places, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us.”
I’ve often heard it asked, “What does God do with people in the Judgment who live in remote places of the world and have never heard the gospel?” For one, as Paul preached in Romans, the entire cosmos loudly declares the glory of God. But also, it has been discovered that in every culture throughout the world there is a strong belief in a one true God, though they may have referred to Him with different names until they get to know Him more accurately.
As Don Richardson writes in Eternity in Their Hearts, the Chinese called Him Shang Ti, which means “Lord on High” or “Supreme Deity.” In Korea He was known as Hananim, which means, “The Great One.” In Ethiopia He was called Magano, portrayed as loving father who created all of humanity. In the Central African Republic’s, the Fang people referred to Him as Mebege, meaning the “Supreme God and Creator.” For those we were reaching in South Africa, the Xhosa tribe. their ancient name for God was u Thixo, worshiped as “The Almighty Creator and the ultimate source of all existence.” It was men like John G. Lake and Robert Moffat, father-in-law of David Livingstone, who first planted those seeds that we were able to reap several generations later.
But there will come a day in the not-so-distant future when all tribes, peoples, and cultures will gather around the throne of God and worship together as one. Psalm 86:9, “All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and glorify your name.” The Book of Revelations foretells a time when these things will take place. “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb clothed in white robes … and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb …’”
These are the loud praises of the Tribulation saints, the ones who came to Christ after the Rapture. They are a people who will forfeit their heads rather than lose their souls. Although they would never choose to find themselves in the horrors of the seven-year Tribulation Period, under the circumstances, they are in the best possible place for God to reach them, a last-ditch opportunity at redemption. With millions of martyrs that have gone before them, they will receive “The Crown of Life,” for “they loved not their lives unto death.” They will join all the peoples of the world from Adam to the Second Coming, every nation, every tribe, every language, every culture, all standing together as one before the throne of their Creator, Savior, and Lord.
And then God’s eternal plan for the nations will finally be complete.
An improbable feud has recently broken out between Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV, which only further proves that Trump is not intimidated to take on anyone who disagrees with him, including the spiritual leader of a billion-and-a half people and someone known as the “Vicar of Christ.” At least you’ve got to admire his chutzpah. The pope launched the first volley, launching a thinly-veiled criticism of Trump’s -military actions in Iran. He built his argument around a misinterpretation of Matthew 5, where Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.”
The pope’s understanding of “peacemaker” is someone who would lay down his arms and negotiate peace with his enemy, even if that enemy was determined to vaporize his existence with a nuclear bomb. If Evil wants to decapitate you with a three-foot Zulfiqar blade, should you then offer your other cheek, if you even had one left to offer? Or to put it like the modern-day Philistines, “From the river to the sea,” which is their clever little way of saying they want to herd all the Jews from the Euphrates River and drown them in the Mediterranean Sea. This is not about land; it’s about Ishmael contesting Isaac’s right to exist.
And they’re not in the least embarrassed to say it out loud. It’s an important part of their creed. This is that bothersome little truth many don’t want to talk about for fear of being branded on the wrong side of the cancel culture. This is not bigotry, Islamophobia, prejudice, intolerance, bias, or narrow mindedness. It’s just what jihadists actually do, and they’d feel slighted if you thought any less of them. And don’t get too comfortable, Gentiles: They said that once they finish off the “Saturday people,” they’re coming for the “Sunday people.”
But back to the pope’s beef with Trump. He quoted from Isaiah 1:15, that says, “When you lift up your hands in prayer…I will not listen, for your hands are covered in blood.” First of all, is the pope actually insinuating that Trump prays? I don’t think anyone has ever accused him of that before. Praying to himself, maybe, but not to God. This is not a criticism of what the president is doing in Iran, but as a modern-day Jehu with a bulletproof ego, you can’t expect him to behave with perfect manners.
Unlike the pope, Jesus defined “peacemaker” as someone who’s been reconciled to God, and in turn is involved in helping others make peace with God. Peace with God can only be accomplished by turning to Jesus in repentance and receiving His blood as payment for your sins.
But even by the pope’s misinterpretation of this word, Trump would have to be considered a “peacemaker.” In his first fifteen months of his presidency, he has mediated peace between at least five warring nations: Armenia and Azerbaijan, Rwanda and the Congo (though the ceasefire didn’t hold), Cambodia and Thailand, India and Pakistan, Israel and Hamas, and most recently a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. And currently, the president is attempting, so far unsuccessfully, to mediate a ceasefire between Russia and the Ukraine, while at the same time trying to negotiate a peace between the Iranian intifada and the rest of the civilized world. And if that’s not enough for someone who’s almost eighty-years-old, he just flew off to China in hopes of discouraging Xi Jinping from invading Taiwan. And shortly after returning, he ordered U.S. forces to take out Abu-Bilal Al-Minuki, a top ISIS terrorist and someone primarily responsible for the wholesale slaughter of over 7000 Christians in Nigeria. That’s a lot of peacemaking.
But it’s not a peace based on a laying down of arms, holding hands, and singing camp songs around a bonfire. Evil only understands one thing: power, a larger power than its own. And that power is crushing a morally depraved, demonic regime and liberating the Persian people from almost five decades of totalitarian brutality. Reagan called it, “Peace with strength.” Theodore Roosevelt called it, “speak softly and carry a big stick.”
Trump has his own style: “Type loudly in ALL CAPS and carry a 30,000-pound bunker-busting bomb.” Indeed, he doth text like Jehu.
Leo is either extremely naive or just a garden variety Leftist to believe you can negotiate with Evil. Shades of Neville Chamberlain’s meeting with Hitler in Munich, where the prime minister infamously declared, “I believe it is peace for our time.” Six months later, the Nazis steamrolled into Poland.
Was Trump calling for regime change at the Vatican when he said he didn’t want a pope who believes it’s okay for Iran to go nuclear? Would he install Marco Rubio to replace him? Best not to suggest it to him. It seems reasonable not to want a bunch of blood-rabid ayatolliahs to have the ability to vaporize the world, especially when those “blood-rabid ayatolliahs” already dream of the day where such a catastrophic event will usher in their long-awaited messiah, Ai-Masih, who they believe will then whisk them away to paradise while the rest of us infidels are blasted into a radiated oblivion. Everyone needs a dream, right?
The pope claimed that power should be used to protect the innocent victims. The Persian civilians are the most innocent of victims, the very ones Trump is trying to protect. According to reports from inside Iran, the civilian population wants American bombs to continue, as they are more afraid of the regime than they are of the bombs. According to an Iranian-born surgeon, Dr. Sheila Nazarian, the regime has executed tens of thousands of its own people, and that when women are executed they are first gang raped. Just recently, they publicly hung their own 19-year-old Olympic medal wrestler, Saleh Mohammadi, for protesting against the regime.
For forty-seven years, Iran has been the bully of the Middle East, and obtaining a nuclear weapon would only make them that much more bullier. The last five American presidents, going back to George Bush senior, have warned that Iran must never be allowed to go nuclear. Now, Trump is actually doing something about it. And while the usual suspects on the Left and in the media chirp away from the sidelines and root for the opposing team, Iranian-Americans are marching in the streets and praying for their family’s liberation back home.
Some would say, and I know this because I’ve heard them say it, that I’m just cheerleading for Team Trump. I would cheer for anyone God raises up to do his bidding, including the highly flawed Orange man. It’s God who “puts up one and takes down another.” If you’re waiting for the perfect leader, you’ll have to wait for the Rapture. It’s not the first time God has chosen to fight Evil with marred individuals, men like Jephthah and Samson, men with egos massive enough to withstand the earthly powers of hell. You might say, “that’s Old Testament-type warfare; our warfare is not with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers.” True, but if you pay attention, you can catch a glimpse of an earthly demonstration of it playing out on the evening news, and more recently still since October 7.
We’re called to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” So, what should we pray? Primarily, that Jews would turn to Christ. But also that they would have peace and protection from their surrounding enemies who are practicing ethnic cleansing against them. And who are those enemies but their ancient foes, repurposed Philistines. And how would we know who those enemies were if we weren’t paying attention to what was happening in the Middle East? And is it such a stretch to believe that our prayers for Israel’s peace and security are being answered through this current conflict?
But there is a silver lining: The underground Iranian church is one of the fastest growing in the world. Jesus said that one of the things that would mark the End Times would be “wars and rumors of war,” and so here we are. And any war that involves fighting for the survival and peace of Israel is a battle that is also playing out in the Heavenlies. Moses declared, “The LORD is a man of war,” and so the Peacemaker Himself can take the tragedy of war and use it to do some of His best work.
Chad became a born again believer in 2009. In spite of a hectic work schedule as a night security guard, he faithfully attended the regular church services and even the Tuesday night bible study for men.
About two years into his walk with Christ, his faith was seriously tested when a couple of fellow employees lied about him to his boss, saying that he was cheating on his hours and even sleeping on the job. He knew these two men were lying because they were jealous of his recent promotion, and also because of his witness for Christ, mocking him as “the little Jesus boy.” Unfortunately, the boss believed the two men and Chad was fired, but Chad powered on, supported by his friends in the church and soon got another job.
About a year later he met a young lady who also claimed to be a Christian. Their relationship quickly blossomed, until one day he discovered she had been deceiving him, and that she was actually married. Chad was devastated, broke off the relationship, and fell into a deep depression for several months and began slipping back into his old lifestyle. He quit going to church, and in his bitterness, he claimed to be an atheist and joined an occultic group that believed in astral travel and reincarnation. Some time later, Chad accidentally overdosed on fentanyl. So, the question before us is, where is Chad’s soul today?
The system of belief known as “eternal security,” sometimes referred to, sarcastically, as “once saved always saved,” claims that once a person like Chad has been genuinely converted to Christ, their eternal destiny is now forever sealed, regardless of what they do for the rest of their lives. The Plymouth Brethren first coined the phrase “eternal security” in 1913, and it was further popularized by the Southern Baptists. More recently, it was supported in the 1980s by the “Hyper-Grace” movement, the Presbyterians, the Calvary Chapels, and the Berean Call (Dave Hunt) ministries.
One of the primary texts used to support this doctrine is John 10:28, 29: “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who gave them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” That sounds pretty rock solid that once someone has repented and come to Christ for salvation, “no one can snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” No devil, no husband, no wife, no priest, no preacher or false prophet, absolutely no one has the power to steal one of God’s people out of the Father’s hand. Case closed!
But not so fast. There is actually one person who has the power to remove someone from the Father’s hand. This individual’s power supersedes all others, including God’s. True, there is no one in heaven or on earth that can stop this individual from being snatched away, except for one: Themselves. And because they possess a God-given free will, they can choose to simply walk out of the Father’s hand whenever they believe they could do better on their own, as millions have tragically done throughout the Ages.
Another Scripture used to support this doctrine is Romans 8:38,39: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” But this Scripture only proves that God will never stop loving us, even if he has to eventually condemn us for the willful choices we’ve made to reject him. God is not willing that any would perish, but he also won’t violate someone’s free will. In his love for the Jews, he once wept over the city of Jerusalem, knowing they were rejecting him and would ultimately perish.
This doctrine of “eternal security” is similar to the Calvinist’s doctrine of “predestination,” which states that God ordains certain people for salvation, even before the foundation of the world, and that once such a person is chosen, they cannot unchoose Christ. That now, their eternal destiny is sealed regardless of what choices, good or bad, they make the rest of their lives, even if one eventually decides to become a satanic serial killer. If true, then their freewill has been nullified because God has chosen them, even if it’s against their will. So, either way, whether someone is predestined by God for salvation, or if one makes a conscience and sincere declaration of faith in Christ, this person can now no longer backslide, even if he is determined to do so and that such a person would end up in heaven even if they didn’t want to be there. If such a person did manage to arrive in heaven, they would be most miserable, because there would no longer be any sin for them to indulge in. It would be like a committed drunk being suddenly plucked from his bar stool during Happy Hour and transported to a monk’s remote cave in the Himalayas.
I am not saying that our eternal security is dependent on doing enough good works. I came out of a church group that said we were saved by grace but practiced the opposite, that the measure of one’s salvation was determined by how often they attended church services and how many souls they witnessed to, good things in themselves, but not a measuring stick for their standing with God. “We are saved by grace and that not of ourselves.” But our eternal security is conditional upon our following through in our relationship with God, which is not measured by our good works but on the condition of our hearts toward God.
The title of this blog is “We are eternally secure, if.” In Hebrews 3:12,14, the writer expresses it this way: “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God…that none of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, IF indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.” The author addresses this letter to “brothers,” those that are in Christ. But then he warns them against falling away by “not holding unto their original confidence.” It is impossible to “fall away” from something if one wasn’t truly there in the first place.
Paul writes the same thing in 1Cor.15:1,2 “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the Gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, IF you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.”
And in Col.1:22,23..”He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, IF indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel…”
All this to say that we are saved by grace and faith in Christ, but it is conditional on us to maintain our relationship with God. Paul said as much when he wrote that we are to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.”
This same theme of “conditional salvation,” not to be confused with God’s unconditional love for us, is expressed throughout the Scriptures. 2Peter 2:20,21: “For if, after they have escaped the defilement of the world through the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.” Peter not only writes that one can become “entangled” in their former sins and consequently “turn back” from Christ, but that if they remain in their backslidden state, they will become even worse than before they were saved.
The author of Hebrews also warns against falling away from Christ. “But my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he SHRINKS BACK, my soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who SHRINK BACK AND ARE DESTROYED, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.” (Heb.10:38,39). If someone can “shrink back,” that means they were securely in one place but that then they fell back to a previous place.
James 5:19,20. “My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” James is talking about a brother that has wandered away from the faith, one that if not brought back to the truth will lose his soul.
Back to Chad. Those who believe in the doctrine of “once saved always saved,” have only two possibilities concerning his eternal destiny. One, they would claim, that if he returned back to his former sins, then his commitment to Christ wasn’t sincere, and therefore he was never saved in the first place. But that would be difficult to prove in Chad’s case, since he demonstrated for several years that he was genuinely converted and even produced fruit proving his repentance.
The second possible outcome for Chad, they would claim, would be that he hasn’t lost his salvation but has merely forfeited his eternal rewards, based on 1Cor. 3, which states, “Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”
The context of this text clearly has nothing to do with one’s salvation or eternal security. What is being questioned is whether his good works will be rewarded or burned up, whether they were performed through righteous motivations or otherwise.
Our salvation requires an active faith, not a passive belief. It involves a passionate pursuit, not a lazy compliance. Not a striving for acceptance because we have already been accepted, or by performing enough good works. It doesn’t depend on living a perfect life; if it did, there would be no hope for any of us. But it does depend on keeping our hearts right with God by faith and by trying to obey God even through the most difficult circumstances of life and by remembering that this sin-cursed world is just a fleeting shadow; that our real home is even now being prepared for us by our Father, where we will dwell with him for all eternity.
But I also believe this: That those who come to Christ and then turn away, that God will pursue them even more vigorously than others who have not slid back. Like the parable of the one sheep that went astray and how the shepherd prioritized more on that one than the other ninety-nine, I believe God makes an extreme effort through the power of the Holy Spirit to convict and woo them back from the cliff of eternal death. And even if they don’t turn around before the Rapture of the Church and have to enter into the Tribulation Period, they will still have an opportunity to repent and not perish with the rest of the unbelieving world, though that decision will be more difficult at that time.
My purpose in writing this blog is to warn those who have once professed faith in Christ who now believe their ticket to heaven is forever punched, simply because they go to church and try to be a good person. Like the five virgins who were rejected because they failed to maintain oil in their lamps, we also must maintain the fire in our relationship with God, lest we miss out on another marriage celebration, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
If you have loved ones who have wandered from their faith, don’t give up hope. James tells us that “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” Jesus said, “Truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.” And in Philippians, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
At the Last Supper, while the bread and Cup were still making their rounds, Jesus shocked his disciples by announcing that one of them was going to betray him. I can picture them putting their hand to their chests and pleading their innocence, “Is it I, Lord? while indignantly looking around the table and casting a suspicious eye at their fellow comrades. But while the taste of bread and wine was still fresh in their mouths, they quickly pivoted from identifying the backstabbing snitch to a more personal concern: Who among them was the greatest?
The other disciples were indignant, not because they thought the timing inappropriate, what with their Master about to go to the Cross and all, but probably because they hadn’t thought of it first and didn’t want the others to get the drop on them. Jesus responded by giving them a powerful kingdom truth on leadership: “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them…But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.” You can just hear the air squeaking out of their ego-inflated heads, especially Peter’s. He had to assume he had the inside track, seeing how that no less than Jesus himself once publicly honored him as a rock-solid leader, not withstanding the fact that shortly afterwards Jesus called him Satan.
This was radical teaching, as those who ruled in those days were usually ruthless tyrants. The only thing they were familiar with serving was serving up someone’s severed head on a platter. But as in everything else in Christ’s kingdom, practicing godly, righteous leadership, to use Dallas Willard’s illustration, would be like trying to fly an airplane right side up in an upside-down world.
As a former pastor of some twenty-five years, I’ve witnessed the fact that most people can’t handle being promoted. And for many years, that also included me. It changes people, and too often not in a good way. Like few things in life, promotion reveals what’s inside a man. The newly promoted Bible study leader or newly minted assistant pastor can suddenly take on an aura of superiority and expect others to acknowledge their newfound status, and they can even become indignant when they don’t. This new leader can begin to see himself as smarter and above the rest of the herd. Why? Because he’s suddenly wiser and smarter? No, but because his position convinces him that he is. And as long as he sees himself in such an amplified light, his pride limits his future usefulness and retards any further personal maturity. He has become his position; this is now his identity, and rare is the person who can avoid this trap.
In such cases, with all the drama of their elevated status, the purpose for such a promotion is lost, which is, as Paul put it, “To equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” He said nothing about leadership embellishing one’s personal reputation or shoring up one’s self-esteem. Nor did he mention anything about gratifying one’s need for affirmation or cementing one’s personal legacy.
I came to Christ out of the 1970s “Jesus people movement,” and appropriately, I wasn’t converted in a church service or in a massive evangelistic crusade. I didn’t even recite the Roman Road to salvation prayer, but like the Apostle Paul, I met Christ one-on-one on a desert road. I wasn’t walking on my way to Damascus, but rather, I was hitchhiking on my way to Tucson. Nor did I see a blinding light or hear a booming Voice from heaven, knocking me to the ground. However, under the scorching, bright Arizona sun, I was staggered back a few steps by a sharp pain that hit me in the chest. And though I was only twenty-seven years old, the thought that I could die out there scared me enough to consider my eternal destiny. I was no Bible scholar, but my Catholic upbringing taught me about heaven and hell, and in my current spiritual state, I determined that I would probably be going to the latter.
Alarmed by the prospect of fire and brimstone, I walked off the road, dropped my hundred-pound backpack, and fell to my knees under a scrubby mesquite tree. I lifted my hands to heaven, and not being in the habit of praying, I simply called out to God and began repenting of everything I could think of, including my childhood involvement in burning down a neighbor’s garage. (To our relief, the adults blamed the fire on “spontaneous combustion,” which my playmates and I quickly agreed to). When I was finished confessing, I felt different, lighter. I knew something had happened, but to make sure this was God, I challenged him to prove it by having the next car that went by stop and give me a ride. It was a valid test, because for the last few hours, there had been very few cars, and none apparently wanted to pick up someone who looked like the front cover of a Jethro Tull album.
I stood up, and as I strapped on my backpack and turned back to the road, I saw a psychedelic, flower-powered Volkswagen van. In the searing, desert heat, the kind that causes a mirage of simmering air to appear just above the surface, I thought the van might be a drug-induced hallucination, because it wasn’t coming down the road normally, but it was backing towards me in reverse. As I continued peering through the wavering air at the slowly backing van, I saw the side door slide open and a bearded man wildly gesturing for me to get in. Sitting in the back beside a washtub full of iced beers, the driver turned around and said to me, “We passed you by about five minutes ago, but something told me to go back and get you.”
A few weeks later, God led me to a church full of young people just like myself, not one of those old, stuffy, religious places where any sign of life had long since been suffocated out of it. In those rustic, early days, the young pastors preferred being called “brothers.” Most of us new believers traded our pot highs for Jesus highs, Gospel rock bands played evangelistic concerts on Friday and Saturday nights, and I preached my first altar call barefoot. We were tongue-talking, wide-eyed, Jesus freaks, and anyone outside the church building was an eligible target for conversion. Sermons were served up three times a week, and we eagerly tithed from our minimum wage jobs. Sunday mornings quickly filled up with “Jesus people” weddings, honeymoons were celebrated at Bible conferences, and babies began filling up the nurseries.
But over time, those innocent days slowly hardened into a more structured organization, where “brothers” now insisted on being called “pastors,” and anyone who didn’t make that smooth transition was eyed suspiciously. The preachers began developing a unique ability to turn any text in the Bible into a three-point scolding message on why we weren’t good enough, that we “hadn’t arrived,” and if we just did more good works for the church and answered a few more altar calls, God might finally be happy with us. Or, to paraphrase John Burke, “You’re bad, God is mad, try harder.”
Pastors began lording it over the congregants, and terms like “headship” became the most prominent doctrine. The lines became increasingly blurred between being led by the Holy Spirit and pastoral submission, and to disagree with a pastor was to disagree with God, enabling pastors to subtly displace the position that Christ was supposed to have in our hearts to the point of making them objects of idolatry. Once, I was called out in a public assembly and given a “prophetic message” that I had a “wandering spirit” and reprimanded with the words, “You think it’s just about you and Jesus” (I thought that was the goal), which meant that the pastor felt I wasn’t sufficiently under his control.
Years later, when my family and I were almost murdered in an armed home invasion in Johannesburg, South Africa, it was strongly inferred by a pastor that we were at least partially responsible because we weren’t sufficiently submitted to our headship. On another occasion, my teenage daughter was grabbed by the arm, spun around, and rebuked by a pastor for not attending a prayer meeting. And worse, of the thirty-some witnesses twenty feet away, no one “saw a thing.” It had become that kind of place.
One popular phrase used to keep the flock in line was, “God has an address,” which meant that if you wanted to hear from God and maintain your salvation, you needed to stay in the church body that “God planted you in.” If you chose to uproot yourself for another church, you were warned that you’d probably end up divorced, lose your salvation, your mind, and forever be employed as a Walmart greeter or flipping burgers at McDonald’s. “Would you like that with fries?” was one of the thinly veiled threats about what would happen to you if you left that group. When I returned to America with my family after being missionaries in South Africa for eight years, we wanted to come back into the international headquarters church rather than our sending church. This was such a major transgression to them that I was banned from ministry for a full year, publicly humiliated along with my family, including my wife and three daughters, who helped build up our South African tent church, and overnight, I was reduced from being an African missionary to working as a bread and ice cream vendor. At least I avoided Walmart and McDonald’s.
Another control tactic they employed was a technique called “keystroke logging” or “keyboard capturing.” This was a creepy method of spying on you by candidly downloading a program into your computer that enabled them to monitor everything you typed on your keyboard, including reading all your emails in real time as you were writing them. If this technique of unauthorized surveillance were employed in the secular workforce, there would be lawsuits, but this type of invasion of privacy was deemed warranted to keep people in line.
What began as a grass-roots, spontaneous move of God eventually morphed into a well-ordered system of heavy shepherding, where pastors began acting more like Old Testament kings than New Testament shepherds. Most had lost sight of the purpose that God had elevated them to church leadership in the first place: “To equip and build up the body of Christ.” Instead of feeding the flock, these types of leaders feasted on them to bolster their need for significance and undergird their insecurities by controlling others. Instead of them modeling the attitude of John the Baptist: “He must increase, and I must decrease,” the opposite began prevailing, where Jesus was decreased and the pastor’s influence increased in their narcissistic compulsion to dominate. These control issues wouldn’t allow those under them to grow beyond their leaders, like raising a child but never allowing them to grow past their sixteenth birthday, because if they did, the pastors might lose their influence over them, and they would become more dependent on Jesus than them.
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It was a similar experience in my youth as a Catholic, before I became a biblical Christian. I remember our priest telling us that we shouldn’t read the Bible on our own, because without the priest to interpret it for us, we couldn’t understand it. The priest must have known that if people began reading the Bible for themselves, they would become less dependent on Catholicism and more on the Bible. And they would have been right.
God’s Word is meant to be a direct lifeline from God to the believer. It doesn’t need to be filtered through any man’s personal agenda or tailored to conform to some denominational interpretation. It is inspired by the Holy Spirit, not by man, and as Paul insisted, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture comes from one’s own interpretation,” and woe to anyone who has the pride to think that somehow they’re the exception. It’s the divine manna from heaven, not to be added to or subtracted from, flowing directly from the heart of God to feed, nourish, and build up the saints in Christ. Since the Holy Spirit is the Author of the Word, He is also the Illuminator of the Word. Only pride and an elevated sense of self-importance would make any man believe he could do it better. John wrote, “But you have received the Holy Spirit, and He lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know.” Thank God for the many preachers who simply preach the Word and let the Holy Spirit do its work, rather than twisting it to fit their own particular agenda.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “desire the pure milk of the Word,” the unadulterated Word of God. We don’t need a mediator. “We have one mediator between God and men, that is, the man Christ Jesus.” No priest, no pastor, no elder, no bishop or pope has the right to get in between God’s Word and the believer and put their own personal spin on it. When believers hear the Word of God preached, they should be Bereans and not just assume everything they hear is the gospel truth. Once, I heard preached from the pulpit that Samson had gone to hell because he committed suicide. Wow, who would have thought that one of the “Heroes of Faith” had gone to hell? Okay, that’s an easy one, but it’s not healthy to just sit there like an undiscerning SpongeBob and not respectfully challenge things we believe are unbiblical. The Apostle John wrote, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
Paul warned against those who “preach with selfish ambition.” He could have ruled with an iron fist. He could have made it all about himself, proudly listing his credentials and demanding allegiance. Instead, he said he would rather perish himself than see his fellow Jews be lost. He wrote, “I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources, he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life that comes from God.” (Ephesians 3:16-19).
Any sermon preached on the above text, especially considering its uplifting theme, would not have conformed with my former group’s unique perspective, and thus would have violated what they called the “fellowship pattern,” which meant every sermon needed to align with their peculiar exegesis. And though my former church organization was extremely evangelistic and believed in all the gifts of the Spirit, they were sorely lacking in the fruits of the Spirit, especially humility and love. In the three decades I spent with them, I don’t remember hearing a single sermon on the love and grace of God or an encouraging sermon on who we were in Christ. It wasn’t that kind of place. Jesus said, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.” Jesus had a “meek and humble heart,” which is to say that those trained by Him would have the same qualities. Unfortunately, disciples in the above group became as proud as their pastors who trained them.
This is what Ezekiel warned about in chapter 34: “Woe to the shepherds who have become feeders of themselves and not their flocks.” These kinds of shepherds feast on the flock for the purpose of gratifying their own appetite for self-importance and to shore up their own personal insecurities. Ezekiel said these shepherds eat the finest food while the flock starves for spiritual nourishment that would build them up and encourage them. He chastised those shepherds for “ruling them with force and harshness.” Jude added, “These are…shepherds feeding themselves…they promise people refreshment and truth, but leave them spiritually dry.” They keep their people feeling condemned and dependent on them, while addicting them to keep returning for more of the same in hopes of finally feeling accepted.
Jesus is the role model for spiritual leadership. If anyone could have lorded it over His followers, it was Him. But instead, He washed their feet. He could have demanded His rights as the Son of God, but instead He went to the cross. Jesus put Himself in a lower position than those who would follow Him. He once compared his leadership to a mother hen gathering his chicks to himself to shelter and nurture them, and it was said of Him that “a bruised reed he would not break.” He asked, “Who was greater, the one who reclines at the table or one who serves? But I came as one who serves,” placing his disciples in the position of those who recline at the table. That Jesus Himself would place Himself in the position of a servant says that any spiritual leader should do the same, unless they feel they are greater than Jesus. Peter wrote, “Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight…not domineering over those in your charge for personal gain.” In other words, not lording over them for the sake of one’s personal self-aggrandizement.
All this to say that though I may not know everything there is to know about healthy church leadership, I do know what isn’t.
Scottish author and poet Charles Mackay once wrote, “Irrationality actually increases when we join the crowd.” Mackay, author of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, said those words back in the 19th century, but he could have been prophetically speaking about the herd mentality and the “madness of the crowds” that transpired during the recent COVID “pandemic.” Back in those days of global hysteria, orchestrated by nefarious players using dubious science, the herd was in full stampede. Sadly, three years later, you can still spot a few traumatized stragglers, panting through their masks and bringing up the rear.
Leveraging a Chinese bio-attack on America, a cabal of billionaire totalitarianists hired and financed a gang of unscrupulous scientists to lab-produce and then enhance a bat coronavirus. Together with their accomplices in the State media, masquerading as journalists, they ramped up the fears and gaslighted the unsuspecting public every evening on the alphabet news, traumatizing them into compliance. These global predators then used the crisis to seize unprecedented power, tank a robust economy, eliminate tens of thousands of small businesses, score a lottery-scale financial windfall for themselves, successfully sabotage a presidential reelection, bastardize what we once referred to as health care, and murder a genocidal-scale of innocent victims.
These modern-day Stalinists succeeded in weaponizing a genetically engineered virus and then purposely spread it throughout the planet in a scheme they themselves referred to as “soft kill.” Then, in Deep State lockstep with the levers of power, using fearporn propaganda, they were able to mandate the “popular delusions” of social distancing, masking, “fifteen days to flatten the curve,” school closures, draconian lockdowns, hospital quarantines that forced the elderly to die isolated from their loved ones, and “safe and effective” vaccines, more specifically referred to by uncompromised scientists as “experimental, gene-altering, injections.” Since then, all these above dictates have been thoroughly debunked as useless against spreading infection and completely without any scientific basis, even by the same villains who perpetuated those lies in the first place, including the CDC and its chief executioners, Fauci and Gates.
Their manufactured pandemic silently killed at least a half a million Americans, even targeting athletically-healthy young people, inflicting them with myocarditis, a lethal enlargement of the heart muscle, as well as permanently injuring hundreds of thousands more of all ages. The whole gig was preplanned years earlier using a hypothetical pandemic exercise called “Event 201,” which used a gain-of-function, genetically altered virus, super-charging its ability to spread and cause more serious infections. And here’s the real kicker: in many cases more were actually bumped off by the mRNA pseudo-vaccines than the virus itself, as data from the Israeli Ministry of Health claimed, inspiring one of their independent scientist to call it a “new holocaust.”
Yet the biggest threat was not the Wuhan virus or the noxious vaccines, but the Mafia-style syndicate of serial killers who are still free to strike again. Even now these global terrorists, in conjunction with the pharmaceutical vultures, are pushing monkeypox and the bird flu as the next global “catastrophes” (apparently having run out of COVID variants) as well as working on a plan to use genetically modified mosquitoes to deliver a “vaccine” payload. After discouraging early treatment, they banned the use of inexpensive and highly effective antiviral drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which would have decreased both deaths and hospitalizations by more than 80%, they instead promoted the use of remdesivir, toxic both to the liver and kidneys and of no value in fighting the virus. And for $39,000 a pop, they were able to coerce the hospitals into using ventilators, which soft-killed many thousands more.
Scottish author and poet Charles Mackay once wrote, “Irrationality actually increases when we join the crowd.” Mackay, author of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, said those words back in the 19th-century, but he could have been prophetically speaking about the herd mentality and the “madness of the crowds” that transpired during the recent COVID “pandemic.” Back in those days of global hysteria, orchestrated by nefarious players using dubious science, the herd was in full stampede. Sadly, three years later, you can still spot a few traumatized stragglers, panting through their masks and bringing up the rear.
Leveraging a Chinese bio-attack on America, a cabal of billionaire totalitarianists hired and financed a gang of unscrupulous scientists to lab-produce and then enhance a bat coronavirus. Together with their accomplices in the State media, masquerading as journalists, they ramped-up the fears and gaslighted the unsuspecting public every evening on the alphabet news, traumatizing them into compliance. These global predators then used the crisis to seize unprecedented power, tank a robust economy, eliminate tens of thousands of small businesses, score a lottery-scale financial windfall for themselves, successfully sabotage a presidential reelection, bastardize what we once referred to as health care, and murder a genocidal-scale of innocent victims.
These modern-day Stalinists succeeded in weaponizing a genetically engineered virus and then purposely spread it throughout the planet in a scheme they themselves referred to as “soft kill.” Then, in Deep State lockstep with the levers of power, using fearporn propaganda, they were able to mandate the “popular delusions” of social distancing, masking, “fifteen days to flatten the curve,” school closures, draconian lockdowns, hospital quarantines that forced the elderly to die isolated from their loved ones, and “safe and effective” vaccines, more specifically referred to by uncompromised scientists as “experimental, gene-altering, injections.” Since then, all these above dictates have been thoroughly debunked as useless against spreading infection and completely without any scientific basis, even by the same villains who perpetuated those lies in the first place, including the CDC and its chief executioners, Fauci and Gates.
Their manufactured pandemic silently killed at least a half a million Americans, even targeting athletically-healthy young people, inflicting them with myocarditis, a lethal enlargement of the heart muscle, as well as permanently injuring hundreds of thousands more of all ages. The whole gig was preplanned years earlier using a hypothetical pandemic exercise called “Event 201,” which used a gain-of-function, genetically altered virus, super-charging its ability to spread and cause more serious infections. And here’s the real kicker: in many cases more were actually bumped off by the mRNA pseudo-vaccines than the virus itself, as data from the Israeli Ministry of Health claimed, inspiring one of their independent scientist to call it a “new holocaust.”
Yet the biggest threat was not the Wuhan virus or the noxious vaccines, but the Mafia-style syndicate of serial killers who are still free to strike again. Even now these global terrorists, in conjunction with the pharmaceutical vultures, are pushing monkeypox and the bird flu as the next global “catastrophes” (apparently having run out of COVID variants) as well as working on a plan to use genetically modified mosquitoes to deliver a “vaccine” payload. After discouraging early treatment, they banned the use of inexpensive and highly effective antiviral drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which would have decreased both deaths and hospitalizations by more than 80%, they instead promoted the use of remdesivir, toxic both to the liver and kidneys and of no value in fighting the virus. And for $39,000 a pop, they were able to coerce the hospitals into using ventilators, which soft-killed many thousands more.
Most people were true believers from the beginning. They learned to overcome their suspicions and write off those “anti-vaxxers” as wild-eyed, conspiratorial zealots, while comforting themselves in cognitive dissonance and surrounding themselves with other groupthinkers from the herd. Having mentally armed themselves against the “crazies,” they eagerly masked up and booster-upped while casting a scolding finger at those who didn’t. I was once confronted by a Korean War veteran screaming at me in a local grocery store for not wearing a mask, as if mistaking me for an enemy soldier that had followed him home from the war. It was Bertrand Russell who said, “Collective fear stimulates the herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.” Mackay added, “When we think in crowds, we sometimes don’t think at all, or at least very differently.”
It still saddens me some today to see the occasional mask-wearer, especially those walking outside in the fresh air, virtual signaling and bravely believing that they are saving themselves and the world from Armageddon. I would sometimes mumble under my breath, “How could people, Americans, be so fearful and naive?” Once, I apparently mumbled too loud and someone actually heard me and loudly rebuked me in the quiet lobby of a medical clinic. Nose to nose with me he screamed, “Is that what you want to be doing when Jesus comes back?” He actually screamed those exact words, and in front of a roomful of nervous patients awaiting eye surgery, who then became even more nervous. I didn’t know if he was a hot-wired crackhead or a prophet sent from God. Just to be safe, I took it as the latter, and now I look differently at mask-wearers. From Vietnam, to a Johannesburg home invasion, to decades of spiritual abuse, I also know what it is to suffer the mental scars of post-traumatic fears.
But even back in the day, some people slowly began waking up and sensing the “health emergency” was being exaggerated for some other purpose, that they weren’t being told the truth. So, the good news in all those crimes is that an encouraging number of people are waking up and beginning to think independently from the hypnotized crowd, daring to question that encroaching medical police state. Mackay ends his treatise with this conclusion: “Men think in herds and go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”
But if we peek behind the veil at these unscrupulous puppets, we will see another entity that rules over them. You could say these traitors answer to a higher power, or should I say, a lower power. Only someone inspired by a demonic influence could conceive of such a diabolical plot of massive depopulation and freedom-sucking control. But eventually, the devil always overplays his hand, he likes to show off a little; his pride craves a fix. And at certain focal points like the Jan.6 “insurrection” and the above-mentioned COVID caper, his schemes become obvious enough for even the most die-hard skeptics to have their doubts. What we saw playing out in these above-mentioned events was a mirror image of what is happening in the supernatural world—a cosmic battle being fought in the heavenlies, an epic battle pitting the powers of oppressive Evil against the liberating power of God, a battle for the very heart and soul of mankind.
And that is what this has really been about. Not to be a bearer of bad news, but that fast-rising Evil that we all witnessed is only a harbinger of a greater Evil to come, one that will overthrow the current world system as we know it, led by a character the Bible calls the Antichrist. It’s not the Republican Party that is going to rescue us, or Elon Musk. Donald Trump is not our savior. It’s not Fox News that’s going to give us the Good News about our present hope and future glory. There is no political solution to mankind’s perilous dilemma. There is only One who can rescue us, and He has demonstrated both His willingness and the means to do so. He doesn’t need your vote, but He does require your heart. He alone has entered into our hopeless, fallen condition and ransomed us from the Evil one with His own Blood
A woman recently asked me if one needs to wake up spiritually in order to wake up to this Great Reset invasion. It certainly wouldn’t hurt, but oddly, the two are often not connected. But either one is a good bridge to the other, though I would start with the spiritual in case you didn’t get to the other. With the result of the recent U.S. election, the Western world has dramatically shifted. Those of us who have endured the wokeness and the fast-rising police state can breathe a little easier, though now the assault will only come disguised in a different form. I believe the world is being given a reprieve from the mega-insanity, a further opportunity to wake up and turn to Christ before the darkness eventually descends and they be caught unprepared.
Jesus said, “But stay awake at all times, praying that you may escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of God.”
It is said that Thomas Jefferson didn’t believe in the supernatural, and so one day he took a penknife and cut out everything in his Bible that had to do with the miraculous. And then, just as Jehoiakim king of Judah did fourteen hundred years earlier, he tossed each successive clipping into the fireplace. It’s called the Jefferson Bible. I don’t know if this story is true or not, but I am aware of many others since who have virtually cut out large swaths of Scripture from their bibles, refusing to preach on certain subjects either because they don’t believe them or they found them inconvenient.
One of those large swaths that have downsized many of today’s Bibles is anything having to do with End Times prophecy and how it relates to the Church and the nation of Israel. Though more than two hundred verses in the New Testament and as much as one-third of the entire Bible deal with eschatology, these verses appear to have been lost to “Jefferson’s penknife.”
Why would anyone avoid preaching on prophecy and the End Times? I can only guess that some don’t want to be associated with the “doomsday, sandwich-board whackoes.” Leave it to the devil to raise up these latter-day charlatans in the first place, those date-setting, bearded, self-proclaimed oracles, resulting in the denigrating of any genuine, Scripture-based, End Times teachers. You know, those brave souls who would dare to include the books of Daniel and Revelations in their pulpits.
Another excuse I’ve heard for boycotting this subject is that preaching on prophecy is too confusing and difficult to understand. I read that as virtual-signaling that someone doesn’t want to make the effort to dig into the more complex and weightier parts of Scripture. Others, I’ve heard, don’t want to scare off or offend their congregations, but all they’re doing is cheating them out of the self-cleansing expectancy of the imminent return of Christ and the Rapture of the Church. And that we’ve been chosen to comprise the last generation of the Gentile Age, and that our future is far more glorious than anything we could hope for or imagine. Paul, a recent visitor to glory, said he heard things there that were so utterly Divine that a human tongue wasn’t worthy to utter them. Why would you not want to remind people of that kind of hope?
A second topic that avoids most sermon notes is the controversial subject of spiritual gifts. Controversial only because many of today’s preachers don’t believe in their present-day application, especially the power and vocal gifts, and so they gloss over them with nary a mention. And even many who are Spirit-filled downplay even the genuine, orderly expression of these gifts in their services for fear of appearing “too weird.” But they too are depriving their congregations, cheating them out of the full power of the Holy Spirit and the potential for individuals to express their gifts in order to build up the Body of Christ. Ever since Pentecost, the birth of the Church, every believer has been promised this power and giftings from Above, and if it wasn’t missing in action from many preacher’s teachings, they might be discovering their gifts and blessing the Church with them.
A third swath of Scripture that has gone absent without official leave is the subject of spiritual warfare. Paul warned, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of Evil in the heavenly places.” I’m not talking about chasing demons or mapping out your city, but how are believers to wrestle against cosmic forces of Evil if they aren’t even aware that they exist? Paul further wrote, “The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” Strongholds? What’s he talking about? “Resist the devil and he will flee.” The who?
This power and authority over the Evil one was given to us at the Great Commission. Without it, we’d have to call it the “Limited Commission.” One of our enemy’s greatest feats has been to get believers to ignore or deny that the devil even exists. And his strategy must be working, as a recent Barna survey revealed that almost 60% of self-proclaimed Christians don’t believe in a literal devil. And Google agrees. Is it any wonder that so many of God’s people feel defeated in their walks when they’ve been unknowingly thrust into a spiritual war zone completely unequipped?
These modern-day Jeffersonian Bibles have resulted in effectively shrinking God’s Word to about half its original size. It’s not that I believe these pastors don’t teach on other critical areas of Scripture, like salvation, repentance, forgiveness, thanksgiving, and such things, because I’ve heard them. But if I was Screwtape, I especially would not want them to teach on the power of Pentecost. I would want that subject buried somewhere in the distant, forgotten past. Bad enough these Christians come to church and go about doing some good works here and there without them shifting into another gear with the supernatural to aid them. And would the devil want believers to be focused on the return of Christ? No, he would want them sleepy, complacent, and with their lamps lacking oil. And why would that “old serpent” want believers to be enlightened about his nefarious activities in the world? He’s not called the “Prince of Darkness” for nothing. Better to let them keep their harmless, red-clad, cartoonish, Hollywood version rather than the real thing.
It’s not that believers can’t dig into these subjects on their own, but most don’t make the effort and just depend on their preachers to tell them what to believe. In Paul’s farewell speech to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, he said in part, “Nor did I shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” Paul, rather than shrinking God’s Word, believed we should teach the entire revelation of Scripture without omitting or adding to it. Anything less would be a sin and a great disservice to the people God has entrusted to us.
I’m not trying to embarrass this guy, or maybe I am, but there’s a certain pastor named Bill from Amarillo, Texas who gives a one-minute “Let’s Go Deeper” segment on a Christian radio station, so you may have heard of him. Now that I’ve outed him, I’d like to give him his due.
Pastor Bill said he was preaching his way through the book of Jude and then quoted verse 20, which reads in part, “But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith…” If you’re wondering why I left off the last five words of that Scripture, it was purposeful, because in explaining this text, Pastor Bill also left it off.
And there lies the problem. Leaving off those last five words changes the whole meaning of Jude’s intent. I’m not living in Bill’s head so I don’t know if he just innocently misinterpreted this Scripture or if it’s intentional and he’s trying to avoid a subject he’s uncomfortable with, but when you go out of your way to eliminate part of the written Word, I suspect the latter. Now that we’ve exposed his crime, let’s look at his takeaway from this aborted text. Bill asks the question. “How do we build ourselves up in our most holy faith?” Great question. The answer would have been obvious to him if he hadn’t cut off those last five words.
But he did. And then instead, Bill takes us on a detour and redirects us to Acts 20:32, which has Paul speaking to the Ephesian elders: “And now I commend you to God and to the Word of his grace, which is able to build you up.” Then, Bill does a virtual cut and paste from Acts 20 and attaches it to Jude 20 and creates his own version of Jude’s words. According to Bill’s new translation, we are built up in Christ by the “words of his grace.”
True. But we are also built up in corporate worship and by Christian fellowship and by someone close to us being converted to Christ and by a whole host of other things. Though we are certainly built up by the “words of his grace,” Jude was speaking specifically about something different. In case you haven’t already read those last five words, I’ll let Jude give them to you now. They are, “PRAYING IN THE HOLY SPIRIT.” So, the completed verse would read, “But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.” Elsewhere, Paul defines “praying in the Holy Spirit” as “praying in tongues.”
And so you see why this is such a big deal. It’s not like if you don’t like the plain interpretation of something, you can just translate it differently to suit your own taste just because you’ve got the pulpit. The JW’s know all about that. And then there’s that thing about not adding or subtracting from the Word of God. I’m pretty sure that would include cutting and pasting parts of it.
After the Resurrection and just before he ascended back to heaven, Jesus gave his final instructions to the disciples: First, the Bible says, “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” At this point, they were spiritually reborn and received the indwelling Spirit that comes with salvation. Then, a little later, he instructed them further: “And behold, I am sending the promise of the Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” So, in addition to receiving the indwelling Spirit upon salvation, he said that forty days later at Pentecost they would receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit and be “clothed with power from on high.”
This is just the plane, straightforward reading of the text. You don’t have to be a Bible geek or have a Greek and Hebrew lexicon to understand it. You don’t need the fifty-six-volume Bible Illustrator commentary to arrive at the proper interpretation. And you don’t need a master’s degree in theology to understand this, though that in itself these days might be a hindrance. And you certainly don’t want to fuse two unrelated texts together in order to pretend they mean something else, as Pastor Bill appears to have done.
And Bill’s not alone. Countless Bible teachers avoid these biblical truths like black mold on a toilet seat, One such teacher said, “Paul’s letter to the Corinthians was to get them off the kick of speaking in tongues.” I guess then Paul would have to kick the habit also, since he said, “I speak in tongues more than you all.” Another said, “The gift of tongues is not given for personal enrichment.” Again, we’d have to believe that Paul spoke a lot in tongues but was never enriched by the experience. And my favorite: “Jesus didn’t speak in tongues.” I even once had a pastor mock the use of tongues from the pulpit while looking angrily down at me. Yikes, with everyone clapping and praising God in this mega church, how did he know it was me? And this was in a self-proclaimed Pentecostal church. Go figure.
“The devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy.” To me, one of Satan’s most successful and devastating thefts has been his robbing the Church of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The result of this theft is that without this original juice, most of Christendom has become stuffed up with religiosity and programs substituting for the power of God, and some are even denying the faith altogether. This theft has robbed the Church of the main thing that makes it a Church, the full, energizing power of the Holy Spirit to overcome in these perilous, waning days of the Laodicean Church Age.
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As the song goes, “These are the days that we’ve been waiting for, all of our lives.” These are the days the prophets eagerly looked forward to. The blueprint we were given at Pentecost wasn’t meant to just strap us into the starting blocks and then have us quit the race after a quick sprint. Are we to believe that God didn’t want us to have all his spiritual weapons in our arsenal and the fullness of his power to make it to the finish line?
In this final blog on the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I want to explain the two different types of speaking in tongues. Even among some bona fide Pentecostals there is some confusion on this. The first type is for prophecy, tongues that need to be interpreted. If there is no interpretation, the speaker should be silent or pray that he could interpret the message himself. The second is for a personal prayer language, not to be used in the church assembly but should only be exercised in one’s private prayer closet.
Paul differentiated between these two functions in his first letter to the Corinthians. It needs to be said that the church at Corinth was the most fleshly, carnal of all first-century churches, even more carnal than your average evangelical church in America today. In one instance, a young man was sleeping with his stepmother. Even the Methodists don’t allow for that. Though this violated the Old Testament and Roman laws of the day, apparently no one thought it a big deal. In fact, they were rather proud of it, perhaps a chance to prove their wokeness. And when Paul chastised them for their depravity, they thought he was a little over the top about it. And when it came to the Lord’s Table, instead of using it to remember Christ’s death and resurrection, some were celebrating the wine far more than others and treated the sacrament with all the reverence of a bachelor party at Buffalo Wild Wings.
These fleshly, carnal Corinthians were also abusing the gift of tongues, disrupting the church services by randomly blabbering away, possibly after having guzzled too much of that Communion wine. They are not unlike the present-day hypercharismatics and their “out-of-control” manifestations, that serve to violate Paul’s command to “let all things be done decently and in order.” So Paul admonished the tongue-talkers for their foolishness and told them to keep quiet in the church unless there was someone there who could interpret them for the benefit of all.
So, the first function of tongues is prophetic and requires an interpreter. The second function is that of a prayer language. Paul contrasted these two uses when he wrote, “The one who prays in a tongue edifies himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.” In writing of his personal prayer life, Paul wrote, “If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful … so, I will pray in the Spirit and also with my understanding.” This kind of prayer tongues are for those times when mere words are inadequate to express our deepest needs and desires. Paul explains this in Romans 8: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words,,, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
Praying in tongues is also a powerful means of personal edification. As Jude put it, “… but you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.” This is not a selfish exercise, but a gift God wants every believer to have so they can have more of his presence and for additional power to carry out the work he has given us to do. It’s like salvation on espresso.
Those who want to criticize the gift of tongues like to emphasize the texts that say, “The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues.” And that speaking in tongues is “the least of the gifts,” as if this gift had little worth at all. But is any gift from God not of supreme value? Paul left no doubt about his personal dependence on tongues when he wrote, “I speak in tongues more than you all.” I would encourage those who have built a wall of defense around tongues through their own various interpretations to lower their guard and ask God to reveal this gift to them.
Paul is writing this not to lessen the importance of this personal prayer language, but to amplify the importance of building up the whole church, which is the primary aim of all spiritual gifts. He said, “Each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” But there is also an important place for the God-given praise and prayer language so that Spirit-filled believers can “build themselves up in their most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.”
I hope this helps you to better understand this complex subject. It’s not actually that complex—it’s quite straightforward. Unfortunately, those who want to relegate all Spiritual gifts to the distant past have muddied the waters for those who have followed their teachings.
In this third blog on the subject of spiritual gifts, I want to explain the difference between the indwelling Spirit of Christ, who comes to reside in every believer immediately upon salvation, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, a separate experience that is promised to every believer who earnestly seeks it. In studying this out again, I have had to relearn some things I’d forgotten and unlearn some others I thought I knew, and so this is the result.
The Bible teaches us that whenever a person is born again they receive the Spirit of Christ, who immediately resides within them. Paul wrote to the Ephesians that they were “sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.” This relationship has often been illustrated as God giving us an engagement ring, the Holy Spirit, assuring us that one day we will acquire our full possession and be seated with him at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
The disciples became the first converts of the New Testament when Jesus, after rising from the dead, “breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” This word breathed was also used when God breathed into Adam’s nostrils “the breath of life.” It is used similarly when Ezekiel spoke to the dry bones: “Behold, I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live.” Paul in addressing this indwelling Spirit wrote. “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.” And to the Romans, he wrote, “anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.”
This is the indwelling Spirit of salvation. But the baptism of the Holy Spirit is a separate experience. Unlike the Spirit of Christ that dwells in every true believer, this baptism is not necessary for salvation, but it greatly empowers it, and God intends for every believer to have it, as promised by John the Baptist. (Luke 3:16). In March of 1977, a few weeks after I had a Divine Encounter with God along a desert road in Arizona, I received this “baptism of the Holy Spirit is a separate experience” It involved three men, a small room, and a lot of shouting. The only requirement to receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit, besides being born again, is to have a humble and hungry heart for more of God.
Before Jesus ascended back to heaven, he promised this “second blessing” to his disciples. He told them it was expedient that he leave so he could send them the Holy Spirit. They had recently been converted and received the indwelling Spirit of God, and now on the Day of Pentecost, a hundred and twenty obediently gathered for a prayer meeting in the Upper Room. There, they received “the promise of the Father” and were “clothed with power from on high.”
In Acts 19, Paul asked some Ephesian believers if they had received the Holy Spirit when they believed. One interpretation of this text is that when Paul discovered these Ephesian believers had only been baptized in John’s baptism, the same baptism that the early apostles received, Paul baptized them in the New Testament baptism of repentance and then proceeded to pray for them to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit whereby they spoke in tongues.
The other possible explanation of this text is that these Ephesian believers were genuinely saved in the baptism of John. Thus, they already had the indwelling Spirit within them and would already possess the Spirit of salvation. But they hadn’t yet heard about the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the “second blessing,” so Paul laid hands on them to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
In this latter interpretation, Paul wouldn’t have asked this question, “Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed,” if salvation and the baptism of the Holy Spirit was the same. They responded, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” When Paul laid hands on them, “the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues.” In fact, every time someone got filled with the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, they spoke in tongues, but that’s for another blog. I could build a solid case for either of these interpretations, but I’ll let you decide for yourself.
I’ve heard the accusation that Pentecostal-type believers consider themselves superior to other believers. On the surface, that would seem plausible; wouldn’t it be inevitable that having more of the Spirit would make one a greater Christian? But that logic doesn’t hold in real life. In truth, many of the greatest saints in all history didn’t claim this “second blessing.” And many who do claim it, make very little use of it and oftentimes have less of the fruits of the Spirit than other believers. And most Pentecostal churches today have no more “Spirit-filled” activities than your mainline Methodists. And some who do claim Pentecost, open themselves to another spirit that incites them into flopping, flagging, and making laughing fools of themselves, and fools of the Holy Spirit. And no one can act as wacky and weird as an unhinged Pentecostal. Paul said, “not to use your freedom as an excuse for the flesh.”
I hope I have clearly shown the difference between the Spirit of Christ that comes to dwell in every believer upon salvation and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. My sole purpose in pointing this out is to do the work that many pastors and Bible teachers have for various reasons failed to do. It is my hope that every believer would have access to the fire of Pentecost that God intended for all of his saints, especially in these perilous times as we await his soon coming return.
Paul said in his first letter to the Corinthian church, “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed.” One of Paul’s greatest fears, besides his fear that his fellow Jews would fail to come to Christ, is that the power of the spiritual gifts, especially the sign gifts, would eventually be lost to the Church. But then, less than three hundred years after Paul’s letter, most churches have become just that.
The other day I did an internet search for churches in my city that claim to be “Spirit-filled” or “Full Gospel.” Unfortunately, over time, these terms have been so compromised that today they can mean anything from being jacked up on caffeine in the church bistro, to having a sugar rush from the glazed donuts, to having an ultra-animated church greeting committee, or even having an electric guitar in the worship service.
According to my research, the Unitarians and the Presbyterians are considered “Spirit-filled.” Regrettably, this term has lost most of its original punch, unless these groups have suddenly had an Azuza Street-type revival that I wasn’t aware of. Out of over one hundred churches in my city, there were only two that actually believed in the “baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire” that Jesus promised to every believer in Luke 3:16. This is exactly what Paul feared for his Corinthian believers.
In his book, Charismatic Gifts in the Early Church, Ronald N. Kydd exposes one of the most common myths about why some believe the sign gifts have ceased. He writes that as the Christian community in the 3rd Century grew in size, wealth, and social acceptance, the gifts of the Spirit just quietly slipped away. This started in 313 A.D. with the passing of the Edict of Milan, an agreement between Emperor Constantine of the Western Roman Empire and Emperor Licinius of the Eastern Roman Empire, resulting in them changing their policy towards Christians, essentially ending persecution and giving the Church legal status. If the fires of Pentecost had not been extinguished in the 3rd century, we could have likely avoided the 1000 years known as the “Dark Ages.”
In other words, as the believers were no longer enduring the fires of persecution, their spiritual temperatures cooled, and their hearts and minds shut down to their need for the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. So, it wasn’t that the gifts ceased, as many have claimed, limiting them to the Apostolic Age only, but because the Church at large didn’t think they needed them anymore.
So, the sign gifts didn’t just fade away or cease to exist, but they were simply written off by most of the Church world because they had grown self-sufficient, and so like many churches still today, they reflect another one of Paul’s letters when he said they would have “an appearance of godliness, but they would deny its power.”
My hope is that these sign gifts of the Spirit be returned to the Church, where Paul intended them to be. In this present-day Laodicean Church Age, any talk of having a last day’s revival is improbable. But any talk about having such a revival without relighting the fires of Pentecost is absurd.
In a world that is experiencing a foretaste of the Apocalypse, maintaining one’s personal walk with Christ is a unique challenge. Witnessing firsthand the absolute End Time’s Evil, long-hidden but now rising out of the shadows, we need to breathe in the power of Pentecost as never before.
Changing from glory to glory 