SPIRITUALISTIC HUMBUGGERY!

I’ll explain the title in a moment.

Several years ago I read The DaVinci Code, an extremely well-written book that created quite a stir. I love fast-paced novels that move from one crisis to another; perhaps this book could be described as “Robert Ludlum goes to church.” I decided to read the book so I could at least be aware of what the buzz in the Christian community was all about.

As I started into the novel, I found myself mentally going to 1 John 4:1-4:

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (ESV). 

At first my attention was drawn primarily to verse four—“For He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world”— but then I realized the tremendous value of what this full passage conveys and I began to give attention to the reason why the apostle John had written this. He was writing to protect the church in Asia Minor from the infiltration of heresy.

Since the birth of the church, the enemy has attempted to kill it. He has attacked the church from the outside by sending persecution. Persecution against the church is currently happening throughout the world in Iran, Egypt, Kenya, China, Nigeria, and this will continue until Jesus returns. Persecution in John’s day was very intense and would result in his being exiled to the Island of Patmos—and what happened there is another story for another day.

More difficult to handle are the attacks on the fundamentals of the Christian faith that come in the form of false prophets or from those with seemingly impeccable academic credentials. These attacks sometimes come from within the church and sometimes through the media. The DaVinci Code was simply another well-crafted attack on our faith.

This passage in 1 John helps us know how to separate, as it were, the sheep from the goats, the good from the bad, the right from the wrong.

Verse one is quite straightforward. The instruction here is that we are not to believe something simply because the “message carrier” announces that he is from God or that he has a new revelation. We are to test and see if the “message carrier” is of God or not. It is of special importance that we be cautious of those with whose life and ministry we are not really familiar.

Verses two and three tell us how to discern if the message or the messenger is truly “of God.” Not everybody who tells you they believe that Jesus is the Son of God is “of God” and, consequently, neither is their message. The apostle James says that even devils recognize who Jesus is (James 2:19). Verse two says that we can tell if the message or messenger are “of God” if they confess that Jesus has come in the flesh. What the writer was saying here was that when a person confesses that Jesus is the Son of God and has come in the flesh, he is not just verbally saying this but he is confessing (coming into agreement with) that Jesus is the Son of God. He is confessing faith in Christ and he is confessing that he is living his life in submission to Christ’s sovereignty.

I have heard those with an antichrist spirit (verse 3) say that Jesus is the Son of God. But when confronted, they would not confess (come into agreement with) that He was the Son of God, that He had come in the flesh, that they had repented of their sin and embraced by faith His death, burial and resurrection. The antichrist spirit will not confess Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Savior.

Verse four says, “You are from God.” The writer says this to contrast the believer with the false teacher who is of the world and speaks of the world system. Verse four goes on to say, “. . . and have overcome them.” The group that John was writing to was not being taken in by the false teaching that was prevalent in their day. They had gained a complete victory over these false teachers and their heresies because “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” 

A.T. Robertson in his classic book Word Pictures in the New Testament, writing about this passage, says, “Some believers fall easy victims to the latest fads in spiritualistic humbuggery.” I have no idea what that last word means but I love the way it rolls off my tongue.

A DARK COMEDY!

I am deeply burdened for our nation!

I was not born in this country. I was born in Canada and grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, where I graduated from high school and began my university studies. At 19 I responded to the call of God to prepare for ministry and after a diligent search, decided that going to a Christian college near the beach in California would be a good thing. It was there in Santa Cruz, California, that I met, courted and proposed to the love of my life, Carol. We have been married for 48 years and involved in ministry for 47 years.

I chose to become an American citizen because I love this country. And as a patriotic American, I am deeply burdened for the tragic mess our nation is in.

I am not talking primarily about the political mess that has now enshrouded the land. And I certainly am not talking about being a Democrat or a Republican. The mess in our nation has little to do with politics and nothing to do with leaning to the right or the left. Our fundamental problem is much deeper than the silliness of politics and the dark comedy routine that is being played out by the current batch of politicians in Washington.

Our underlying problem has to do with sin . . . yes, I said sin. Our nation and much of the church has embraced sinful living as the norm. We have become relatively numb to what is going on around us. Please take a moment and consider the following:

• When I was a boy, about four to five percent of married couples divorced; today 51 percent of couples (in and out of the church) divorce. What does that say to us? What does that say about us?

• Nationwide 65 percent of singles have sexual relations before getting married and the statistics are not much lower for singles in the church. Does the contemporary church care? What does the Bible say about this?

• In the last forty years, 55 million unborn babies have been aborted in America. This is a staggering and blatant disregard for the sanctity of human life. There is no excuse for this!

• For the first time in U.S. history, over 50 percent of births are out-of-wedlock. The consequential problems in fatherless households and the resulting orphan mindset will be fully realized in the years ahead. One only has to look at the tragic problems now plaguing the inner city because of out-of-wedlock births to see what problems are beginning to descend on the suburbs.

• Homosexual lifestyles, including same-sex-marriage, are endorsed and celebrated, even by our national leaders. New laws promote and protect this unnatural lifestyle—even though the gay population is only about two percent of the population. Homosexuality is in clear violation of Scripture—or perhaps we don’t believe that!

• Graphic sexual activity and nudity are now just a click away on computers and smartphones. In the U.S. 33 percent of women regularly watch pornography (and this percentage is growing) and 70 percent of men between the ages of 18 to 24 visit porn sites at least once a month. It is estimated that 40 percent of church-attending men regularly view pornography.

• The latest polls reveal that support for legalization of marijuana has risen from 12 percent in 1969 to 58 percent today.

I use the above to illustrate what I call “the mess” our nation is in.

God has given His people a very clear prescription for action in times such as these. But it is my opinion that the majority of the church community in America doesn’t care or doesn’t believe that God’s plan can work in contemporary society. Simply put, the church has believed the father of lies and has begun thinking that the situation is beyond fixing, that it’s hopeless! 

What is the plan? It is simple but it is also embarrassing because it calls for humility and repentance on the part of God’s people.

The Lord said to Solomon, “When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:13-14, NKJV).

I wish that I could invoke a national revival . . . and if it were in my power to do so, I would. But I can’t! What I can do is pray and humbly ask God to forgive me, to forgive our nation for the gross sins being committed around us, and to forgive us for turning a blind eye to what is happening. And to please come and heal our land!

Carol and I pray together almost every morning before we start our day. We pray over our family, over our day, over our friends and over our church. We ask God every day to send a healing to our land as we pray for our leaders and our pastors.

Will you join us in praying for a national healing? Together we can make a difference!

HE FAILED AND HE BAILED...BUT THAT IS NOT THE END OF THE STORY!

One of the more intriguing characters of the New Testament is John Mark, the writer of the gospel of Mark. His account of the gospel is thought by many scholars to be the first of the gospel narratives. Mark was a close associate of Peter and it is thought that many of his concise stories about the ministry and teachings of Jesus are drawn from his conversations with Peter.

Mark was a cousin to Barnabas, who traveled with Paul on his first missionary journey. Christian Jews had gone to Antioch because of the outbreak of persecution in Jerusalem (see Acts 8:1) and a church started there was comprised, at first, mainly of Jewish believers. Antioch was one of the larger commercial cities in the Roman Empire and filled with Gentiles, who were receiving Christ in large numbers. Very quickly there were more Gentiles in the Antioch church than Jews and this seemed to trouble the leaders of the church in Jerusalem. They sent Barnabas to check it out and he immediately recognized that God was birthing something very special. Barnabas also recognized that “this new thing” was going to be controversial with the Jerusalem church and would need leadership from someone who understood what God was up to and was not afraid of controversy.

About three years after Paul’s conversion, he went to Jerusalem and attempted to join with the disciples but they were afraid of him. Barnabas was the one who finally mediated a peace between Paul and the original apostles. After a while, because of the controversial nature of Paul’s conversion and ministry, the leadership in Jerusalem sent Paul to his hometown of Tarsus.

After Barnabas saw what God was doing in Antioch, he went to Tarsus and found Paul (Acts 11:25-26) because he knew, by the Holy Spirit, that Paul was the man who understood what God was doing with the Gentiles. According to some historians, under the leadership of Paul and Barnabas, the Antioch church grew to about 30,000. They had no buildings and met wherever they could, but they had the raw power of the Holy Spirit and the blessing of God, and the first expression of the gospel penetrating the Gentile world was underway. It was in Antioch that the expression “Christian” was first used (Acts 11:26). Paul was the architect of taking the gospel to the Gentiles and along with it began the controversy of his message and ministry being misunderstood by many in the Jewish church.

After a while Paul seemed to be bored with the work of the local church and he and Barnabas set out on their first missionary journey. Accompanying them was John Mark. Paul’s team set sail for Cyprus (Acts 13:4) and after a time of ministry there, the team headed for what today would be Turkey. But landing there, “John (Mark) left them and returned to Jerusalem” (Acts 13:13). At this point we are given no further insight about why this happened.

After completing their trip, Paul and Barnabas returned to Antioch, visited Jerusalem, and then returned to Antioch and continued their ministry there. After a while Paul wanted to go back on the road. Barnabas agreed and wanted to take John Mark with them again, “But Paul thought best not to take with them the one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphylia” (Acts 15:38).

We are now given an insight as to what happened with Mark on the first journey. The word withdrawn used here means “to fall away, to become faithless, to withdraw from.” Was Mark too young? Was there too much pressure? Did Mark have a crisis of faith? We don’t have a concrete answer to exactly what happened with Mark, but he did withdraw . . . he failed and he bailed!

But that is not the end! Whatever caused him to bolt and return home did not destroy him. I believe that between Peter, in Jerusalem, and Barnabas, they ministered to and restored Mark. If anyone was capable of counseling Mark on how to overcome failure, it would be Peter, and I believe he did just that. Peter had been the king of failure; he knew all about facing failure and rising above it.

Although Paul was reluctant to have Mark with him again on his second trip, Paul later expressed a love of Mark (2 Timothy 4:11) and it is very likely that Mark was with Paul in Rome when the apostle was killed (Philemon 24).

Mark’s account of the gospel is very compelling to me. His book is shorter than the other gospel writers, his writing is brisk, and his stories are concise and quick moving. Mark seems to be in a hurry to tell his story. I love it!

Mark is like many of us. We get saved, we start strong, and then we make some mistakes and we bail . . . just as Mark did. That does not need to be the end of the story but it will be if we quit. Mark didn’t quit. Yes, he went through some kind of “withdrawal” but he went back to his roots; he went back to Jerusalem and to the people he knew could help him—and they did.

Yes, Mark failed and he bailed but that is not the end of the story! Do not let it be the end of your story, either. Be like Mark and come back stronger than ever. Go back to your roots, back to your first love, and let Him restore you!

WHAT IS THAT?

In the late 1970’s, a portion of my ministry responsibilities included oversight of several groups of men who traveled representing the organization I was serving at that time. As Vice President I not only directed the business affairs of the ministry but also was involved in the continuing spiritual development of our staff. At one point I asked all the traveling representatives to read Exodus 16 every day for two weeks and then send me a brief report on how the passage had ministered to them. I chose Exodus 16 because personally I had found it very meaningful. It had spoken volumes to me about God’s provision and faithfulness. About ten days into the exercise, one of my closest friends called and in frustration blurted out, “Dave, I have read this passage every day and I am getting absolutely nothing.” We had a good laugh together and I shared with him what the Lord had quickened to my heart from this passage.

When the children of Israel exited Egypt, they did so riding on the power of several explosive events. First, it was a miracle that Pharaoh would release them. The exodus began because of a series of miraculous occurrences, including the visit of the Death Angel. The Israelites plundered the Egyptians and God protected them on their way to the shores of the Red Sea. Then the Red Sea opened for them and the Egyptian army was destroyed by the very miracle that allowed the Jews to escape (see Exodus 14:28-31).

 

Once in the wilderness, the lifestyle of the escaping Jews changed dramatically. In Egypt they had been slaves and servants who worked for a living, but in the wilderness there was no way for them to work and so they had to learn to trust in the faithfulness of God to provide everything. This was new to them and the lesson was not embraced fully right away. Trusting in the faithfulness of God has always been a difficult but important lesson for God’s people to learn.

When my friend called me in frustration and said emphatically, “I’m getting nothing here, nothing,” it was not because he was dead spiritually. He is a marvelous, Spirit-filled follower of Jesus, but at this time he did not see anything in this passage that ministered to him. His blindness does not make him worse or better than any of us. We all have areas of blindness that we grapple with in different areas of spiritual truth—or at least I certainly do. Sometimes we try too hard to make Scripture “talk to us” and in our desire to find the “deeper truths,” we miss the elegant simplicity of the obvious.

The provision of the manna was new to the Jews. They had never seen anything like it and they did not know what to think of it. The meaning of the word manna in Hebrew is, “What is it?” (Exodus16:15).

Here are a few of the more obvious lessons from Exodus 16. (If you have others and want to send them to me, use the COMMENT button below.)

·     God is faithful! For forty years, twice a day, six days a week, God sent enough provision to feed hundreds of thousands of people. This is the first recorded example of “fast food” catering!

·     Manna is an example of God’s commitment to provide for the needs of His people.

·     Each family was to take just enough for one day and on Friday, enough to get them through to Sunday morning; otherwise, the provision would begin to breed worms and stink. I wonder what that says about trying to store up faith and trust like you were adding money to a bank account. There is no bank account in which to deposit trust for tomorrow. Trust cannot be built up and held for use in the future. Our trust in Him is to be refreshed every day because yesterday’s just won’t cut it today!

·     When the lesson of the miracle of the manna was over, it was over. As the children of Israel crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land, the miracle of the manna stopped (see Joshua 5:12). Methods change! God has never done it just this way ever again.

·     The lesson is not about manna, it’s about obedience and trust. Manna is temporary but faith/trust will carry us through all the ups and downs of this life and into eternity. God was teaching His people to live by faith/trust (see Joshua 5:6).

• God’s ability to provide for the needs of His people is unlimited. (Please note that I said needs, not wantsǃ Wants indicate greed and covetousness.) God’s ability to care for us is as limitless as eternity is big!

When the Jews looked at the manna, they asked, “What is it?” How will God provide? I don’t know! His methods continually adjust and change. I just know it will be there when we need it.

THANK YOU, JOHN MacARTHUR

I want to say a heartfelt thank you to John MacArthur for his stinging slap of rebuke to the Pentecostal/charismatic global family.

I am sure that some of my friends are wondering why I would thank John MacArthur and I will answer that in a moment. But first, a little perspective.

I am a Pentecostal. My grandfather, a Methodist lay preacher with a passionate desire to follow the Lord, brought our family into Pentecost about 90 years ago. My parents were very strong, conservative Pentecostals and they raised my brother and me in a Bible-centered, Spirit-filled home. I received Christ as my savior when I was in grade school and received the baptism in the Holy Spirit fifty-eight years ago.

It is vitally important to understand that controversy/persecution has always accompanied the outpouring of God’s Spirit. In fact, the Pentecostal movement was birthed in controversy. Within hours of the outpouring on the Day of Pentecost, criticism arose (see Acts 2). The heaviest criticism of the early Church arose from the religious establishment and ended up with portions of the Church being scattered throughout the world (see Acts 8:1).

In 1906, in a rundown building on Azusa Street near downtown Los Angeles, the modern-day Pentecostal outpouring began. Within weeks an article appeared on the front page of The Los Angeles Times ridiculing “the weird Babel of Tongues” occurring in the Azusa Street Revival. From that inauspicious beginning, the modern expression of Pentecost has spread all over the world.

Up to the 1950s, the mainstream of the Protestant church viewed the Pentecostals as a sect and, in fact, Pentecostal pastors were often not welcomed into local ministerial associations. With the eruption of the charismatic movement in the late ’50s and early ’60s, much of the criticism of the Pentecostals began to wane. Part of the reason was that the charismatic renewal was sweeping into mainstream evangelical and historic denominations. As a result, many of the historic church leaders were beginning to understand that while the Pentecostals did have a different view of the gifts and operation of the Holy Spirit, the rest of their doctrinal beliefs were within the boundaries of orthodoxy.

  

As acceptance among mainline evangelicals rose, Pentecostal churches slacked off in their distinctive doctrine of the Holy Spirit and His gifts to the church. In the last thirty years, the average Pentecostal church has gone from being a church with a distinctive Pentecostal expression to, at best, a middle-of-the-road evangelical church.

Today the fastest growing segment of Christianity in the world is the Pentecostal/charismatic community. While modern Pentecostalism is just slightly over 100 years old, it has experienced phenomenal growth that shows no sign of slowing down. It is estimated that at least 600 million people are now “Pentecostal/charismatic” Christians and surveys indicate that over 40 percent of all Christians (globally) are Pentecostal/charismatic. The largest areas of growth currently are in Asia and Africa. The growth of the Pentecostal/charismatic movement in North America is very anemic but perhaps that’s about to change!

Why did I start this article by saying thank you to John MacArthur? Because I believe MacArthur has done the current North American Pentecostal/charismatic movement a tremendous favor. Our movement has been given a hard slap and we needed it. We have had a wake-up call—but are we going to respond or will we roll over and go back to sleep?

The Pentecostal/charismatic movement in North America has gotten fat and sloppy. Many of our younger leaders have wanted nothing to do with the sting of criticism and the shunning that sometimes accompanied being known as a “Pentecostal.” Since the 1990s, the heroes of many of the younger Spirit-filled pastors have been Bill Hybels, Rick Warren and John Maxwell. Many of the most talked about churches with a Pentecostal heritage are now consumed with looking good to the public, having a cool, contemporary style, and not offending anyone. As a result, many of our churches have no prayer meetings, the worship style is concert type rock and roll, and services are barely more than one hour long. The previous drive for evangelism and world missions has largely been blunted and people are rarely invited to openly declare themselves for the Lord! The North American Pentecostal church has given itself a vasectomy and if it stays on this current course, within another five or ten years we will be nothing more than another dying church movement.

I believe the Lord used John MacArthur to deliver this much-needed message. The heart of the wake-up call has nothing to do with our movement blaspheming the Holy Spirit (as MacArthur stated). That is simply an unfounded accusation—but it certainly got our attention. It is always wrong to take an anecdote and say that one abhorrent act or belief represents the whole of a movement. It does not and never has! The bad behavior of a few Pentecostals/charismatics no more represents the whole movement than the young couple in MacArthur’s church who are engaging in sex before marriage represents the conduct of all the unmarried couples in his congregation.

So again, thank you, John MacArthur. You've done the Pentecostal/charismatic movement a tremendous favor. You have slapped some of us awake—and we needed that!