The Rest of the Old Old Story

The following isn’t a carefully outlined teaching, just random but extremely important thoughts. Really, it’s just comments on things Watchman Nee said in the book Spiritual Authority.

The greatest of God’s demands on man is not for him to bear the cross, to serve, to make offerings, or deny himself. The greatest demand is for him to obey. (p. 13 [New York: Christian Fellowship Publishers, Inc.] 1972, paperback)

As people, descendants of Adam, we like the idea of having our life outlined for us. We want to know what to do. We want to study the Bible, and we want to have a principle to follow for each situation. This is not what God wants, however. “As many as are led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God,” says the Scripture (Rom. 8:14). We are to know how to be a spiritual people.

The Bible says that if righteousness came by the Law, then Christ died in vain (Gal. 2:21). Often this is misinterpreted to mean that God doesn’t care about our works at all. Of course he cares about our works. One day he will judge us by our works, and we are told to fear that judgment (2 Cor. 5:10-11; 1 Pet 1:17). Paul described his ministry as going around testifying to us Gentiles that we should repent and do works that befit repentance (Acts 26:20).  He most certainly was not telling us in Gal. 2:21 that our works don’t matter!

Instead, Paul is trying to tell us that the Law will never produce righteousness in us. He says that if the Law could have produced righteousness, then righteousness would have come from the Law (Gal. 3:21). However, because of the sin that is in our flesh, the Law is too weak to produce righteousness in us (Rom. 8:3).

So what will? The answer is that walking by the Spirit can produce righteousness in us (Rom. 8:4). Jesus did not just die for the forgiveness of our sins. He died to give us the Spirit of God. The mark of the new covenant is that everyone from high to low, old to young, and ruler to servant will receive the Spirit (Acts 2:16-21). The Law’s requirements are righteous, but they will be produced by our walking in the Spirit of God, not by our following the old Law nor any new set of rules or principles.

May God give us both revelation so that we can understand this and boldness so that we are willing to carry it out.

This is important. It is possible to give all your possessions to the poor and give your body to be burned, yet not have love and obtain no profit for your great sacrifices (1 Cor. 13:3). It is likely–because the Scriptures say this will happen to many–that you (uh–yes, you; it’s you that are told in 1 Pet. 1:17 to be afraid and you told in 2 Pet. 1:5-11 to learn and grow) will prophesy, work miracles and cast out demons in Jesus’ name, but be denied entrance to the kingdom of God.

The will of God is the absolute thing; the cup (that is, the crucifixion) is not absolute. (p. 14)

This was fascinating. Watchman Nee is very defensive of Jesus in the story of Gethsemane (thank God for men who stand up for Jesus). He says that Jesus’ prayer in the garden was not out of weakness. He prayed that the cup might pass from him, but he did not pray that he could be out from under God’s will. If God’s will could be different, if the cup of the crucifixion did not need to be drunk, then Jesus was asking if it could pass. However, if God’s will could not be different, then there was no question at all. It is always the Father’s will that must be done.

We can feel whatever we feel. We can ask whatever we might ask, but we must be subject to the will of God. The will of God must matter to us as it did to Jesus. He prayed in agony for hours while his apostles fell asleep in order to know the will of God. He did not walk away from the garden wondering. Instead, he got up saying, “Let’s go. The one who betrays me is here” (Matt. 26:46). He got up knowing what was going to happen to him. He had found the will of God; it was the cup, and now he would drink it.

It was a neat picture. May we care as our Lord cared about the will of God.

To serve God we are not called to choose self-denial or sacrifice; rather we are called to fulfill God’s purpose. (p. 15)

Eph. 2:10 says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do.” We are not called to do just any works. We are called to do the works God has prepared for us to do. We will  only find those works by the Spirit, not by following rules and being strict disciplinarians.

David Wilkerson wrote a book called The Cross and the Switchblade about going to New York to minister to gangs there. The trip to New York was not just some good idea that he got. He laid it before God, agonized before God in prayer, and put tests before himself to see if this were really the will of God. It was. So God preserved, protected, and empowered him there. Not only did it produce direct fruit in the 1960′s when it happened, but to this day Teen Challenge, which came out of that ministry, is acknowledged even by the U.S. government as the most effective ministry, by far, to drug addicts in America.

This alone is work in obedience to God’s will, that which originates with God. We are not to find work to do, rather we are to be sent to work by God. Once having understood this we shall truly experience the reality of the authority of the kingdom of the heavens. (p. 16)

Do you want to really be effective? Go where God sends you. Do what God calls you to do. Those who prophesied and cast out demons in Matthew 7, but were rejected by God, did not experience the blessing of God, despite the things they did. How could they? They were unknown to the Lord. Even so, there are many today holding great crusades and describing great miracles, but leaving no changed lives and no churches behind. This happens because they are not doing what they are called to do.

Satan laughs when a rebellious person preaches the word, for in that person is dwelling the satanic principle. (pp. 16-17)

Like begets like. Natural gives birth to natural and spiritual to spiritual. Ministers who have chosen their own principles and their own ministry in order to preach the word will give birth to unspiritual disciples who do not know how to follow God. God will not be able to use them. We see this principle working in far too vast of numbers in the United States. So much ministry is ineffective. Churches have no impact on the society around them. On the contrary, society not only influences the churches but eventually overthrows them. There is no power to continue. Older Christians warn zealous new Christians that their zeal will disappear after a few years. Their warnings are usually correct.

Christianity is supposed to be a spiritual religion. Like Adam in the garden we are supposed to be walking with God, not living by our knowledge of good and evil. Let us obey the command to walk by the Spirit, for it is by the Spirit that we will put to death the deeds of the flesh (Rom. 8:12-13) and only as we are led by the Spirit that we are not under the Law (Gal. 5:18).

I had 30 spam comments this morning on my blog, which is why the comments are moderated. The spam comments are all very similar. There is a nonsense sentence followed by links. Who would do this? What are they trying to accomplish? I’m having trouble thinking of a scenario where someone would actually click on those links.

This post is called “Questions and Complaints” because those are where most of my writing ideas come from. Either someone asks me a question or I’m complaining about something I don’t think is right or don’t agree with. This post is on the complaint side, a hodgepodge of responses to things I read this morning.

I got up early this Sunday morning, read Discover magazine a bit, then got online and googled “the church,” hoping maybe to find some interesting, committed group of people that understands the importance of the church. I found out that there’s an Australian rock band called The Church, and it’s also a popular name for bars, both in America and England. However, I also found a number of sites of churches.

It fascinated me to find a group in London that has a web site just beginning. The one page they saw fit to have up on their site was their beliefs page, which was arranged, of course, like a statement of faith with numbered points. Point number one was their belief in the Bible as the “word for word” revelation of God. They even saw fit to describe the Bible as the “complete” revelation of God.

Should this really be point number one in a statement of faith? The early churches had a statement of faith that over 300 years developed into the Nicene (or Apostles) Creed, which never mentions the Scriptures, despite the fact that the bishops at Nicea had a strong belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures (the books of which were not yet defined; several were still in question). These bishops had such a strong attachment to the Scriptures that the greatest difficulty at the Council of Nicea was a struggle over adding an extra-scriptural word to the statement (they called it a “rule”) of faith they were developing. Nonetheless, the only reference to the Scriptures in the creed they came up with, which is still quoted weekly by many churches today, is in the line “. . . rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”

The next church page I went to was http://www.thechurchofgod.com. Their front page has only one paragraph on it. It begins with “Welcome to the official website of the Church of God. We are fully committed to the Bible . . .” That’s nice. How about God? Are you committed to God? Can you be? Or is he unknowable, and is it dangerous to try to follow him?

That’s my greatest objection to all these statements about following the Scriptures. Do you know that the Scriptures say they can’t be followed unless you’re first following God? The Word of God is foolishness to the natural man, and the natural man cannot comprehend them. God–yes, God, that being that runs the universe–must reveal the things of God to you in order for you to understand them. Examine away! Study the Scriptures! Make sure you’ve carefully checked out everything you’ve been told! In the end, unless God gives you revelation, you will be deceived.

What should you do about all these voices calling out to you? How do you decide between all the various groups claiming to be the church and all the various messages coming from Christian denominations? Check it out in the Scriptures, right? That’s not what the Scriptures say. The Scriptures say that you will know a prophet by his fruit. Only a good tree can produce good fruit. Bad trees will produce bad fruit.

That’s the teaching of Christ. I wonder if we believe it. I am in possession of a 19-page refutation of Rose Creek Village written back when we were “The Church in Bethel Springs.” The pastor who wrote it gave a glowing testimony of our fruit here. He said that the testimony of all the brothers he knew who had visited was that we were everything a church ought to be. His conclusion? This great fruit was produced by a bad tree. How did he know it was bad? He disagreed with Noah and me on a couple interpretations of Scripture. Worse, he couldn’t even present any good arguments for those interpretations of his. All he had is that his interpretations were more common than ours. Surely Scripturally it is not a very good argument that there are a multitude of people–a broad path–that agree with you, especially when you acknowledge in advance, as this pastor did, that his own church and others like it are prone to backbiting and half-heartedness.

Let me give you a different message. If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance you have some idea where I’m coming from already, you are open to it, and you will look at what I’m saying Scripturally and agree. However, if you’re just passing by and found this blog on a search, there’s little chance you’ll agree with me no matter how clear the Scriptures are on the following subject. American Christians like to honor the Scriptures with first place on their statement of faith, but actually believing the Scriptures when they disagree with that statement of faith is of little importance to almost any Christian. Really. I’ve talked to thousands of them all over the world. It is a rare Christian that can look at a Scripture verse honestly if it disagrees with his or her church.

Okay, so here’s that different message. It is the church that is the pillar and support of the truth. People who believe that the Scriptures are the pillar and support of the truth really don’t like it when I say that, but it’s simply a Scripture quote (1 Tim. 3:15). There’s a similar statement made in 1 John 2:27. If someone is trying to seduce you, John says, the safety you have is that “you don’t need anyone to teach you, but the anointing will teach you all things, and it will be true and not a lie.” The “yous” in that verse are all plural, not singular. There’s no promises that God will guide an individual into truth in this manner–in fact, there’s promises to the contrary (Heb. 3:13)–but 1 Jn. 2:27 does promise some sort of infallibility to an obedient church.  History testifies that this guidance into what is true comes with stops and starts, mistakes and corrections, but it is nonetheless a guidance into truth, and it is a promise of God, a promise he has repeatedly fulfilled.

If you really want to follow and believe the Scriptures, you need to follow and believe the anointing of God with other believers. Can you imagine a statement of faith that began with, “We believe that all the truth and revelation we have has been humbly received from God by the anointing of his Spirit because we can’t trust our carnal minds to interpret Scripture without that revelation”?

I promised a hodgepodge of issues, but I got carried away with this one, and this post is long enough. I’ll address the other major issue I wanted to cover in my next post. I think it’s important to cover the issue of trusting God’s anointing over and over and over again. Many American Christians are stuck in dead and powerless tradition, and those who are not don’t have a clue about the power and importance of the church. Thus, they are stuck in a system that keeps them in fellowship with dead and powerless Christians, pouring themselves out in ministry to them, until they become burned out, exhausted, and sometimes unbelieving. They have no idea what God wants to bring them into, the joy and power of the unity of disciples. They have no idea of the ministry God will automatically create if those who have given their lives up for God knit themselves together as God’s people, having the candlestick of God’s approval in their midst (see Rev. chs. 1-3), and becoming the city of God whose light cannot be hidden. It’s far more important than people realize. Just because Christians gather together doesn’t mean that God calls them a church. It is possible to have your candlestick pulled (Rev. 2:5), yet wind up together trying to be a church without realizing God has departed from you. We quote Rev. 3:20 as a salvation verse, but it is a statement to the church in Laodicea that Jesus is now on the outside, knocking to come in, rather than being in their midst, all of them being joined to him.

I started to write  a blog last night, and I decided I wanted it permanently on my “Rest of the Old, Old Story” web site. You can read it at http://www.oldoldstory.org/teachings/leaveitall.html. Sorry for linking you to a “blog,” but this seemed to work. Leave me a note (your back button will get you back here after reading it) if you have comments. It’s a lot to chew on. It was a lot for me to chew on, and I wrote it!

This is part two of “Dealing with Bible Errors the Right Way”

All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for good works. (2 Tim. 3:16,17)

The authority of the inspired scriptures resides, not in an intrusive control of the writing process, nor in an error-free presentation, but in a reliable expression of the faith in the unique period of its earliest gestation. (James Tunstead Burtchaell CSC, in Alan Richardson and John Bowden, A New Dictionary of Christian Theology)

Yesterday we—well, I—discussed whether the existence of errors, real or imagined, left us with no more inspiration than “a reliable expression of the faith in the unique period of its earliest gestation.” I am not satisfied with that, and I am reasonably certain that the apostle Paul, in his second letter to Timothy, meant far more than that.

Today, there as an awful heresy that none of us recognize as such. It is a denial of the inspiration of the Bible that the apostles and early Christians knew. It is the false and damaging teaching that “a text without a context is a pretext.” What that means is that if a sentence or passage of Scripture is quoted out of context, then it is being misused. If this were true—which, thank God, it is not—then it would disqualify most quotations of the Old Testament that are found in the New.

Let’s begin with the virgin birth. If you believed the heresy that all Scripture use must be “in context,” then you would have to reject the New Testament use of Isaiah 7:14 (Matt. 1:23). In context, Isaiah 7:14 is a prophecy to King Ahaz of Judah that a maiden, in his day, would give birth to a child named Emmanuel. Before Emmanuel became old enough to tell good from evil, King Pekah of Israel and King Rezin of Syria, who were troubling Ahaz, would be removed from their thrones. That’s the context, and Matthew completely ignored both context and translation in using Isaiah 7:14 as a prophecy of the virgin birth of Christ.

It’s only the LXX, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, that refers to the mother of Emmanuel as a virgin. The “original” Hebrew calls her a maiden, which can refer to a virgin, but is not necessarily one. Good thing, too, since we don’t believe in two virgin births. We believe that the mother of the first Emmanuel, the one born in Ahaz’ time, was not a virgin. Only the mother of Jesus, the true Emmanuel, was a virgin.

Because we don’t understand inspiration, and because we’ve believed the heresy that “a text without a context is a pretext,” skeptics like to point out that Matthew pulled Isaiah 7:14 out of context—way out of context. Shoot, they might as well start wandering through all the prophecies quoted in the New Testament, because most of them are out of context.

Take Hebrews 1:5, for example. While the first portion of that verse, taken from Psalm 2, works quite well in its original context, the last half doesn’t work at all. It is taken, not very well, from 1 Chr. 28:6, where God tells David, “Solomon thy son shall build my house and my court, for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be to him a father” (LXX, the version seemingly used by the writer of Hebrews).

Let’s look at another. In Romans 10:13, Paul quotes Joel 2:32, which says, “It shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (LXX). However, in the original Hebrew that’s not just any Lord. In the original Hebrew, it says whoever calls on the name of Yahweh shall be saved. Then it gives a “because,” which means it explains why “whoever calls on the name of Yahweh shall be saved.” That “because” goes like this: “For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as Yahweh hath said, and in the remnant whom Yahweh shall call” (Joel 2:32, KJV with LORD changed to the original Yahweh).

So why does Paul feel free to apply this to Jesus? Clearly, it’s addressing Yahweh, the God of the Jews, and it says that we’ll be saved by calling on Yahweh specifically because salvation shall be in Mt. Zion and in Jerusalem. In other words, it will be in Israel’s holy city. To have people calling on Jesus, even if you use the more accurate Yeshua or Yahshua, in any old city, outside of Judaism, as Paul is suggesting, is hardly in context!

Worse, Paul presses on and in v. 18, he quotes from Psalm 19. He says, “Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world” (Rom. 10:18, KJV). For the last few verses, he has been talking about calling on the name of Jesus and preaching Jesus in all the earth. In v. 17 specifically, he has said that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Then he suddenly says that people have already heard because “their” sound went into all the earth.

Whose sound? In context, in Romans 10, you’d have to assume he meant the preachers he’s been talking about for four verses. “How shall they hear without a preacher?” he asks in v. 14. However, he can’t be talking about preachers, because Psalm 19, from which he is quoting, makes it quite clear that “their sound” is the revelation of the glory of God given by the skies. The skies declare the glory of God; they certainly do not reveal the name of Jesus, which is “the only name given under heaven by which man must be saved,” according to Peter (Acts 4:12).

We could go on and on. I found those by flipping around in the New Testament for just a couple minutes. It seems ironic to me that we Americans speak of God’s inspiration of the Scriptures, a highly spiritual and mystical process, and then look for it to be manifested intellectually with Scripture carefully used in context and scientific accuracy, completely irrelevant to the message, being divinely bestowed on primitive people. Scripture was never meant to be used in this method, and our defense of “verbal, plenary inspiration of the Scriptures” has little, if anything at all, to do with real inspiration, and it cripples us and makes us, in the Bible’s words, foolish.

Just as God’s message goes into Scripture by inspiration, so it comes out by revelation. The Scriptures never subject themselves to man’s intellect. “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent” (1 Cor. 1:19). So much for the reliability of everything you learned in Bible school. Paul had a different method for preaching the Gospel. “Not with wisdom of words,” he said, “lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect” (1 Cor. 1:17).

Can we really use a prophecy pulled out of context from Isaiah, then use a Greek translation that doesn’t exactly match the Hebrew? Of course we can. The prophecy does not prove the event. The event proves the prophecy. So God used an unusual route to let us know he knew in advance of the virgin birth. However, Isaiah 7:14 does not prove there was a virgin birth. The virgin birth proves that the LXX translation of Isaiah 7:14 was a prophecy.

Todd Burke, a missionary to Cambodia and author of a book whose title I don’t remember, told a story about arriving in a poor area of Cambodia. He was sleeping on a 1/16^th of an inch thick mat, like all the Cambodians, but his birthday had arrived. He had the money to go down to the store and buy a mattress; not as nice as an American mattress, but a mattress nonetheless. He and his wife got up that morning and prayed about whether it was okay to purchase that mattress.

After they prayed, they opened their little daily devotional called My Daily Bread. The Scripture for that day? “Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” They laughed and laughed, but they took it as a word from the Lord, and they did not purchase the mattress.

This isn’t silly. The God of inspiration is the God of revelation. Rather than reveal his whole plan to Isaiah, who surely could not have handled the entire picture of the Messiah, he gave Isaiah prophecies containing bits and pieces of the whole picture. In Isaiah’s prophecy to Ahaz, he breathed in a subtle clue that when God came to earth (Emmanuel, God with us) he would come through a virgin. In other places, he breathed in not-so-subtle testimonies of a suffering Messiah.

We at Rose Creek Village have had our own experience of the subtle inspiration of God: a testimony that God was thinking of us thousands of years in advance. In 1995, several families from the church in Geneva, Florida came to Bethel Springs, Tennessee to proclaim the Life of God. Wanting some time to discuss these things, one of the sisters in Bethel Springs suggested retreating for a week to a national park some five hours away called Standing Stone. Why Standing Stone? To this day we do not know, except that God had things to say to us. There were many parks closer and just as beautiful.

It was a difficult weak, and there was much opposition from the enemy. The brothers and sisters from Geneva cried out to God. On the very last night, they were ready to end the day when one of the sisters came out to say, “We need to sing one more song. Let’s sing ‘Awake.’”

Everyone gathered. They began to sing, and the Holy Spirit suddenly began to move. Faces changed, hearts lifted, and many who had wondered opened their hearts to the message of God. In one moment the church in Bethel Springs was born.

It was months later when we ran across the passage in Genesis that describes Jacob’s vision of a ladder stretching from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending upon it. Then the Scripture says:

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep … and Jacob rose up early in the morning, took the stone that he had used as a pillow, and stood it up like a pillar and poured oil on top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel.

Now perhaps you think it pure chance that God used the song awake to pour the oil of the Holy Spirit upon us at a place called Standing Stone in order to begin the church at Bethel Springs, but we cannot. We know that for the God of the Scriptures to be thinking of us 3,000 years ago or more is not strange. It is simply the way God works. It is a normal experience for those that live by revelation.

Inspiration has nothing whatsoever to do with scientific accuracy or a memory jogged by God to remember insignificant details like whether bystanders saw a light or heard words (Acts 9:7; 22:9). Nor does inspiration have anything to do with whether the days of Genesis are literal 24-hour periods or eras consisting of thousands, millions, or billions of years. Inspiration has to do with the fact that it was God’s influence that made Moses use “greater light” and “lesser light” rather than “sun” and “moon” in Genesis one. The greater and lesser light, more importantly than representing the sun and moon, represent Christ, the light of the world, and the Church that, with no light of its own, reflects the glory of the Son.

Those who understand inspiration are ever learning, always being taught by the revelation of God. Who told Paul that Abraham’s two sons are really two covenants, one bringing freedom and one bringing slavery? We can debate until we pass into eternity whether there was a literal Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in a literal garden being eaten by a literal man. It will do us no good. It is far more important that we receive the revelation that we, like Adam, will be barred from the rest of God found in his garden if we live by the knowledge of good and evil. The flaming sword turns every way to bar the life of man from the garden of God. Even so, only those who will lose their life may enter eternal life by eating the Tree of Life found in the garden where live all those who find their rest in God alone.

The authority of the inspired scriptures resides, not in an intrusive control of the writing process, nor in an error-free presentation, but in a reliable expression of the faith in the unique period of its earliest gestation. (James Tunstead Burtchaell CSC, in Alan Richardson and John Bowden, A New Dictionary of Christian Theology, from William Sykes, The Eternal Vision)

I’m sure this was written by someone who does not believe that the Scriptures are “error-free” in the traditional sense. The person who gave the above quote probably knows that there are number differences between Chronicles and Kings (e.g., 1 Kings 4:26 & 2 Chr. 9:25) and between Ezra and Nehemiah (e.g., Ez. 2:29 & Neh. 7:33). He probably knows that one Gospel says that Jesus encountered blind Bartimaeus on the way into Jericho, and another says he encountered him on the way out (Mk. 10:46-52 & Luk. 18:35-43). He probably knows that it’s foolish to quote the Bible as scientifically accurate because it says the world hangs on nothing (Job 26:7) without also mentioning that it also says the earth sits on pillars (1 Sam. 2:8) and has a sky as hard as metal (Job 37:18).

James Tunstead Burtchaell’s answer to these errors, whether they are real or imagined, is to argue that the Scriptures are “a reliable expression of the faith.” Personally, I don’t believe that’s enough. I believe that’s “caving in.”

I want to give a different answer in two parts. One, the inspiration and usefulness of the Scriptures has nothing to do with whether there are errors in the Bible. Two, I want to explain what inspiration is and what we miss today because we don’t understand inspiration.

Watchman Nee believe that all such errors were only apparent. They could be explained by the careful Bible student so that they could be shown not to be errors. However, he didn’t think explaining the errors was a solution to the problem. Instead, he wrote:

There was once a brother, who, not long after he had believed in the Lord, was confronted by another person who told him that there were errors in the Bible. He was so exasperated that he nearly cried. … He laid this matter before an elderly sister, for he reckoned that since this sister loved the Lord and loved the Bible so much she certainly would be agitated if she realized there were these errors in the Bible. The strange thing was, however, that after this sister heard him out, she was calm as could be. Her reply to his presentation was: This is no problem. … All she said was, that knowing God did not depend on the solving of these questions! (The Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation, pp. 7-8)

Nee adds, “This brother spent an entire year searching the Scriptures with regard to these questions. Upon finding out the evidence that the Bible passages in question were correct and not in error, the heavy burden upon his heart dropped away” (ibid., p. 8). Nee does not agree there are errors in the Bible, but he also does not agree that it matters. What does matter, he explains right afterward:

People may attempt to prove this or that thing, but we Christians can prove one very important thing—that God is indeed God and that we know Him who is so real. And by knowing Him, all problems are solved. Such knowledge does not rely on how logical are the reasons or how clear the doctrines; it relies only on revelation. (ibid., pp. 8-9)

Recently I gave a teaching on the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. I had noticed how the prayers of the apostle Paul focused on knowing God through revelation. For example, the first prayer Paul prayed for the Ephesians was “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ … may give to you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him” (Eph. 1:17). When he prayed for the Colossians, whom he had never met, his prayer was similar. “Since the day we heard, we do not stop praying for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” (Col. 1:9).

Paul’s major concern for churches, whether ones he formed like the Ephesians or ones he’d never met like the Colossians, was that they would have a spiritual wisdom and understanding.

We need the same thing. Today anyone with an internet connection can find a list of all the contradictions in the Bible and hear all the arguments against the historicity and scientific accuracy of the Bible. I have talked to many whose faith has been shaken or completely lost once they heard those arguments. Statistics indicate that up to 80% of college students lose their faith during their years in college. It’s likely that the teachings they hear in history and science classes are as much to blame as the temptations of the world.

The answer is not to know all the arguments for the scientific accuracy of the Bible. The answer is to know God. A rich and real experience with God and with the Scriptures would remove all doubt! Wouldn’t you love to be able to answer, “Well, if the Scriptures are so full of error, then why have they repeatedly provided timely answers to the issues of my life? If God is not real, then why are my prayers answered and why has the direction God has given me proven useful and accurate again and again and again? You can show me all the contradictions in the Bible that you want, but it is simply impossible for me not to believe in it because it has been so powerfully effective in my life. Truly, God has proven his Word, both the Word in my heart and the Word on the pages of the Bible, to be alive and powerful. I cannot disbelieve. I can only believe; experience demands it.”

We do not need more intellectual arguments. We need more spiritual experience. Personally, I believe that most of the people I have met who have lost their faith lost it not because of the arguments they heard but because their spiritual experience agreed with the arguments against their Christian faith. They didn’t have their prayers answered. They didn’t have a close walk with God. The Bible was already cold and dead to them. Thus the intellectual arguments that there are errors in the Bible simply reinforced what they were already experiencing—that there is no power and life in the Scriptures or in walking with God.

Nothing will shake the faith of the man or woman who knows God. Such a man or woman will either say “I don’t care what you think about errors in the Bible; I know the Bible is powerful and from God,” or they will answer with arguments of their own. Either way, their faith will stand, because it is based on a knowledge that God is real, alive, and powerful, and that the Scriptures are true and effective. I promised a second part to this blog, explaining what inspiration is and what we’re missing out on by not understanding it. However, this post is long enough. I will save section two for tomorrow or the day after (or maybe the day after that; I’ll try to get to it quickly!).