NO , THAT'S NOT THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS

No, That's Not the True Meaning of Christmas

Thursday, December 20, 2012

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by John MacArthur
The community where I live doesn’t make international headlines very often, but last week the managers of a local residential complex for seniors earned a large-print banner at the top of the Drudge Report. “Christmas Tree Banned: ‘Religious Symbol,’” the headline screamed.
Someone in the retirement center’s parent corporation decided Christmas decorations are sectarian emblems and banned them from all communal areas. Staff were directed to remove the central Christmas tree that residents had already decorated.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about that story is that it made headlines at all. Every year the Grinches of militant secularism complain about Christmas decorations in public places, and each Christmas seems to produce more stories like that than the last. Lawsuits and protests over decorations have become as much a holiday tradition as figgy pudding.
Of course, Christmas trees are not really religious symbols. There is no biblical, creedal, or ecclesiastical mandate to decorate trees—or to exchange gifts, for that matter. We don’t know the actual date of Christ’s birth, so even the December 25 date had no special significance to the church for at least three centuries after Christ. Those are traditions that Christians have observed for generations. Like breaking plates at a Greek wedding, such things are cultural customs, not religious rites.
There is certainly nothing sacred about Christmas decorations, and if you don’t believe me, take a drive through the typical American neighborhood at night during the holiday season. Yards and houses are blanketed with fake snow, bright lights, and fantasy figures—Santa, Frosty, Rudolph, Jack Frost, gingerbread men, elves, nutcrackers, Scrooge, Charlie Brown, and of course, the Grinch.
Indeed, Christmas in American popular culture is overgrown with folklore, feelings, and nostalgic icons that have nothing whatsoever to do with religious faith. Most popular Christmas traditions are less than 150 years old. One such tradition, dating back to Dickens’s time, is the sentimental exploration of the question “What is the true meaning of Christmas?”
The true-meaning-of-Christmas meme even has its own Wikipedia entry. According to the article there, “In pop culture usage, overt religious references are mostly avoided, and the ‘true meaning’ is taken to be a sort of introspective and benevolent attitude.”
The truth of that analysis is amply illustrated in a growing menagerie of popular Christmas movies. From the classic favorites (played repeatedly in 24-hour marathons) to the cheesy dramas shown wall-to-wall on cable TV each December, Hollywood force-feeds viewers a seriously skewed notion of Christmas. The Hallmark Channel alone is advertising 12 new Christmas movies this month. In one way or another, most of them offer some view on the true meaning of Christmas.
All of them get it wrong.
Frankly, if everything you knew about Christmas came from tree ornaments, house decorations, and Christmas movies, you might not have a clue the holiday ever had anything to do with the birth of Christ. The fact that people think of Christmas trees as religious symbols proves Christians have not made their message clear.
For believers, that surely ought to be a more urgent matter of concern than the so-called war on Christmas. Secularists who can’t stand the sight of a Christmas tree pose no real threat to the church or her mission. What ought to trouble us in a culture dotted with churches and filled with professing Christians is that we haven’t managed to break through the confusion and commercialization of the year’s biggest holiday and show the world what we’re actually celebrating.
Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ. But it’s not just a poignant story about a baby born in a stable because his family was turned away from the inn. According to the New Testament, that baby is God in human flesh, voluntarily stepping down to live among humanity, as a servant, in order to take the burden of others’ guilt and pay the price for it by sacrificing his life for them:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14).
“Although He existed in the form of God, [He] did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).
He “appeared ... to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Hebrews 9:26 ESV). “He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin” (1 John 3:5). “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3 ESV). To echo the apostle Paul, “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all” (1 Timothy 1:15, emphasis added).
That’s what Christmas is truly all about, and December 25 is as good a day as any to set aside for a special celebration of it: “For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11, emphasis added). In other words, the “peace on earth, good will toward men” proclaimed by the angels is not merely about peace between nations and goodwill among men. It’s about peace with God and grace from Him to us in spite of our sin.
Even the name Jesus means “Savior”—“for He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). In other words, the very heart of the true meaning of Christmas is a promise of salvation—full and free redemption from the guilt and penalty of sin, “for all those who believe” (Romans 3:22). That is the “good news of great joy which will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10). Miss it, and you will have missed the true meaning of Christmas entirely. Lay hold of it, and you will not only gain eternal life; you can also enjoy a true peace that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7).

This article is from the December 11, 2012, edition of The Washington Times. © 2012

THE PEOPLE WHO MISSED CHRISTMAS : ROME AND NAZARETH

by John MacArthur
An entire nation missed Christmas. All of Rome could have shared in the Savior’s birth, but they missed it. That first Christmas was set in a Roman scene. Herod, for example, was the ruler appointed by Rome. And it was a decree by Caesar Augustus that set everything in motion (Luke 2:1).
Who was Caesar Augustus? He’s mentioned only once in Scripture, but he occupies an important place in the history of the Roman Empire. He was the grand-nephew of Julius Caesar. His name was Octavian; “Augustus” was a title meaning “venerable.” He ruled Rome from 27 B.C. to A.D. 14.
Octavian was for the most part a benevolent ruler. He was responsible for the Pax Romana, the era of peace between all the different parts of the Roman Empire. He instituted numerous reforms designed to do away with the worst forms of corruption and keep peace throughout the empire. But Octavian took the title of Pontifex Maximus, which means “highest priest.” He also deified both Julius Caesar and himself, and had temples built for Caesar worship.
Octavian had come to power when Julius Caesar was assassinated. In his will, Julius Caesar left all his possessions, including the throne, to his grand-nephew. In the middle of his reign, Octavian ordered a worldwide census. That was the decree spoken of in Luke 2:1.
And so Jesus was born in the heyday of the Roman Empire. Yet nearly all of Rome missed Christmas. Roman soldiers must have been everywhere in Bethlehem and the surrounding area, overseeing the census, registering people, and keeping order. Yet they missed Jesus’ birth. Why? Idolatry. They had their own gods—they were even willing to let their emperor pretend to be God. Christ did not fit into their pantheon. No mythological god could coexist with Him. So the Romans totally ignored His birth. This newborn baby became just one more number in their census.
Paganism has a strong a grip on our world today, and millions miss Christmas because of it. I’m not talking only about the dark paganism of distant lands, where Christ is unknown and unheard of, and where Christmas is unheard of. Obviously, those people miss Christmas. But there is another, subtler form of idolatry even in our society. And millions miss Christmas because of it. Most people in North America don’t worship carved idols or follow demonic superstition like the Romans did, but they nevertheless worship false gods. Some people worship money. Others worship sex. I know people who worship cars, boats, houses, power, prestige, popularity, and fame. Those things represent the pagan gods of the 21st century: selfishness and materialism. If that is what you worship, you’ll miss Christmas.
Finally, and perhaps saddest of all, Nazareth missed Christmas. Nazareth was a crude, uncultured town, quite a distance from Bethlehem. The people of that region had a reputation for violence. Nathanael expressed the prevailing opinion of that little town: “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46).
Yet Nazareth was the home of Mary and Joseph, and the boyhood home of Jesus. Although he was born in Bethlehem, He grew up in Nazareth and lived His perfect life before all the people there. Yet they completely overlooked Him. Luke 4 describes the most important Sabbath day Nazareth ever had:

And He [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” And He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke4:16-21)

After years of living among those people, Jesus was revealing to the Nazarenes who He was. For the first time ever, He was telling them publicly that He was the Messiah. And what was their reaction?

And all were speaking well of Him, and wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips; and they were saying, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” And He said to them, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, ‘Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we heard was done at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.’” And He said, “Truly I say to you, no prophet is welcome in his hometown. But I say to you in truth, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine came over all the land; and yet Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” And all the people in the synagogue were filled with rage as they heard these things; and they got up and drove Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, He went His way. (Luke4:22-30)

The people who knew Jesus best—those with whom He had grown up and among whom He had lived—tried to kill Him! That’s what I call missing Christmas. “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him,” John 1:11 says. The people of Nazareth, who knew Him better than anyone, had no idea who He really was. Mark 6:6 says even Jesus wondered at their unbelief.
What was their problem? Familiarity. They knew Him too well. They knew Him so well they couldn’t believe He was anyone special. Familiarity mixed with unbelief is a deadly thing. Whenever people tell me they grew up in Christianity but have rejected it, I cringe. Familiarity strangles conviction. Perhaps the most tragic sin of all is the unbelief of a person who has heard all the sermons, sat through all the Bible lessons, knows all the Christmas stories, but rejects Christ. There is no gospel, no good news, for such a person, because he already knows and rejects the only truth that can set him free. What a sad way to miss Christmas!
No one has to miss Christmas. Ignorant preoccupation, jealous fear, prideful indifference, religious ritual, false gods, and even contemptuous familiarity are only expressions of the one real reason people miss Christmas: unbelief.
If you truly love the Lord, you cannot allow those expressions of unbelief to take root in your heart. Don’t waste another year letting worldly materialism and selfish pursuits steal your affection. Discipline your heart and train your focus on the sacrifice Christ made on your behalf. Don’t lose sight of what and Whom you’re celebrating in the days ahead.
On the other hand, perhaps you’ve been missing Christmas altogether. You may get presents and eat a big dinner and decorate a tree, but you know in your heart that you are no different from the innkeeper, Herod, the religious leaders, the people of Jerusalem, the Romans, or the citizens of Nazareth. You are missing the reality of Christmas.
You don’t have to miss another one. Turn from your sin and unbelief and receive Christ as Lord and God. He will forgive your sin, change your life, and give you the greatest Christmas gift anyone can receive: “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name” (John 1:11-12).
Don’t miss Christmas this year!

(Adapted from The Miracle of Christmas.)

QUESTION : " COMPLEMENTARIANISM VS EGALITARIANISM , WHICH VIEW IS BIBLICALLY CORRECT ? "

Answer: Summarized by "The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood," complementarianism is the viewpoint that God restricts women from serving in church leadership roles and instead calls women to serve in equally important, but complementary roles. Summarized by "Christians for Biblical Equality," egalitarianism is the viewpoint that there are no biblical gender-based restrictions on ministry in the church. With both positions claiming to be biblically based, it is crucially important to fully examine what exactly the Bible does say on the issue of complementarianism vs. egalitarianism.

Again, to summarize, on the one side are the egalitarians who believe there are no gender distinctions and that since we are all one in Christ, women and men are interchangeable when it comes to functional roles in leadership and in the household. The opposing view is held by those who refer to themselves as complementarians. The complementarian view believes in the essential equality of men and women as persons (i.e., as human beings created in God’s image), but complementarians hold to gender distinctions when it comes to functional roles in society, the church and the home.

An argument in favor of complementarianism can be made from 1 Timothy 2:9-15. The verse in particular that seems to argue against the egalitarian view is 1 Timothy 2:12, which reads, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” Paul makes a similar argument in 1 Corinthians 14 where he writes, “The women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says” (1 Corinthians 14:34). Paul makes the argument that women are not allowed to teach and/or exercise authority over men within the church setting. Passages such as 1 Timothy 3:1-13 and Titus 1:6-9 seem to limit church leadership "offices" to men, as well.

Egalitarianism essentially makes its case based on Galatians 3:28. In that verse Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The egalitarian view argues that in Christ the gender distinctions that characterized fallen relationships have been removed. However, is this how Galatians 3:28 should be understood? Does the context warrant such an interpretation? It is abundantly clear that this interpretation does damage to the context of the verse. In Galatians, Paul is demonstrating the great truth of justification by faith alone and not by works (Galatians 2:16). In Galatians 3:15-29, Paul argues for justification on the differences between the law and the promise. Galatians 3:28 fits into Paul’s argument that all who are in Christ are Abraham’s offspring by faith and heirs to the promise (Galatians 3:29). The context of this passage makes it clear Paul is referring to salvation, not roles in the church. In other words, salvation is given freely to all without respect to external factors such as ethnicity, economic status, or gender. To stretch this context to also apply to gender roles in the church goes far beyond and outside of the argument Paul was making.

What is truly the crux of this argument, and what many egalitarians fail to understand, is that a difference in role does not equate to a difference in quality, importance, or value. Men and women are equally valued in God's sight and plan. Women are not inferior to men. Rather, God assigns different roles to men and women in the church and the home because that is how He designed us to function. The truth of differentiation and equality can be seen in the functional hierarchy within the Trinity (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:3). The Son submits to the Father, and the Holy Spirit submits to the Father and the Son. This functional submission does not imply an equivalent inferiority of essence; all three Persons are equally God, but they differ in their function. Likewise, men and women are equally human beings and equally share the image of God, but they have God-ordained roles and functions that mirror the functional hierarchy within the Trinity.

Recommended Resource: Women in Ministry: Four Views by Bonnidell & Robert Clouse, eds..

QUESTION : " WOMEN PASTORS/PREACHERS ? WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT WOMEN IN MINISTRY ? "

Answer: There is perhaps no more hotly debated issue in the church today than the issue of women serving as pastors/preachers. As a result, it is very important to not see this issue as men versus women. There are women who believe women should not serve as pastors and that the Bible places restrictions on the ministry of women, and there are men who believe women can serve as preachers and that there are no restrictions on women in ministry. This is not an issue of chauvinism or discrimination. It is an issue of biblical interpretation.

The Word of God proclaims, “A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent” (1 Timothy 2:11-12). In the church, God assigns different roles to men and women. This is a result of the way mankind was created and the way in which sin entered the world (1 Timothy 2:13-14). God, through the apostle Paul, restricts women from serving in roles of teaching and/or having spiritual authority over men. This precludes women from serving as pastors over men, which definitely includes preaching to, teaching, and having spiritual authority.

There are many “objections” to this view of women in ministry. A common one is that Paul restricts women from teaching because in the first century, women were typically uneducated. However, 1 Timothy 2:11-14 nowhere mentions educational status. If education were a qualification for ministry, the majority of Jesus' disciples would not have been qualified. A second common objection is that Paul only restricted the women of Ephesus from teaching (1 Timothy was written to Timothy, who was the pastor of the church in Ephesus). The city of Ephesus was known for its temple to Artemis, a false Greek/Roman goddess. Women were the authority in the worship of Artemis. However, the book of 1 Timothy nowhere mentions Artemis, nor does Paul mention Artemis worship as a reason for the restrictions in 1 Timothy 2:11-12.

A third common objection is that Paul is only referring to husbands and wives, not men and women in general. The Greek words in the passage could refer to husbands and wives; however, the basic meaning of the words refers to men and women. Further, the same Greek words are used in verses 8-10. Are only husbands to lift up holy hands in prayer without anger and disputing (verse 8)? Are only wives to dress modestly, have good deeds, and worship God (verses 9-10)? Of course not. Verses 8-10 clearly refer to all men and women, not only husbands and wives. There is nothing in the context that would indicate a switch to husbands and wives in verses 11-14.

Yet another frequent objection to this interpretation of women in ministry is in relation to women who held positions of leadership in the Bible, specifically Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah in the Old Testament. This objection fails to note some significant factors. First, Deborah was the only female judge among 13 male judges. Huldah was the only female prophet among dozens of male prophets mentioned in the Bible. Miriam's only connection to leadership was being the sister of Moses and Aaron. The two most prominent women in the times of the Kings were Athaliah and Jezebel—hardly examples of godly female leadership. Most significantly, though, the authority of women in the Old Testament is not relevant to the issue. The book of 1 Timothy and the other Pastoral Epistles present a new paradigm for the church—the body of Christ—and that paradigm involves the authority structure for the church, not for the nation of Israel or any other Old Testament entity.

Similar arguments are made using Priscilla and Phoebe in the New Testament. In Acts 18, Priscilla and Aquila are presented as faithful ministers for Christ. Priscilla's name is mentioned first, perhaps indicating that she was more “prominent” in ministry than her husband. However, Priscilla is nowhere described as participating in a ministry activity that is in contradiction to 1 Timothy 2:11-14. Priscilla and Aquila brought Apollos into their home and they both discipled him, explaining the Word of God to him more accurately (Acts 18:26).

In Romans 16:1, even if Phoebe is considered a “deaconess” instead of a “servant,” that does not indicate that Phoebe was a teacher in the church. “Able to teach” is given as a qualification for elders, but not deacons (1 Timothy 3:1-13; Titus 1:6-9). Elders/bishops/deacons are described as the “husband of one wife,” “a man whose children believe,” and “men worthy of respect.” Clearly the indication is that these qualifications refer to men. In addition, in 1 Timothy 3:1-13 and Titus 1:6-9, masculine pronouns are used exclusively to refer to elders/bishops/deacons.

The structure of 1 Timothy 2:11-14 makes the “reason” perfectly clear. Verse 13 begins with “for” and gives the “cause” of Paul’s statement in verses 11-12. Why should women not teach or have authority over men? Because “Adam was created first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived.” God created Adam first and then created Eve to be a “helper” for Adam. This order of creation has universal application in the family (Ephesians 5:22-33) and the church. The fact that Eve was deceived is also given as a reason for women not serving as pastors or having spiritual authority over men. This leads some to believe that women should not teach because they are more easily deceived. That concept is debatable, but if women are more easily deceived, why should they be allowed to teach children (who are easily deceived) and other women (who are supposedly more easily deceived)? That is not what the text says. Women are not to teach men or have spiritual authority over men because Eve was deceived. As a result, God has given men the primary teaching authority in the church.

Many women excel in gifts of hospitality, mercy, teaching, evangelism, and helps. Much of the ministry of the local church depends on women. Women in the church are not restricted from public praying or prophesying (1 Corinthians 11:5), only from having spiritual teaching authority over men. The Bible nowhere restricts women from exercising the gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12). Women, just as much as men, are called to minister to others, to demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23), and to proclaim the gospel to the lost (Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8; 1 Peter 3:15).

God has ordained that only men are to serve in positions of spiritual teaching authority in the church. This is not because men are necessarily better teachers, or because women are inferior or less intelligent (which is not the case). It is simply the way God designed the church to function. Men are to set the example in spiritual leadership—in their lives and through their words. Women are to take a less authoritative role. Women are encouraged to teach other women (Titus 2:3-5). The Bible also does not restrict women from teaching children. The only activity women are restricted from is teaching or having spiritual authority over men. This logically would preclude women from serving as pastors to men. This does not make women less important, by any means, but rather gives them a ministry focus more in agreement with God’s plan and His gifting of them.

Recommended Resource: Two Views on Women in Ministry, Revised by James R. Beck, ed..

QUESTION : " WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE CHURCH ? "

Answer: Acts 2:42 could be considered a purpose statement for the church: “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” According to this verse, the purposes/activities of the church should be 1) teaching biblical doctrine, 2) providing a place of fellowship for believers, 3) observing the Lord’s supper, and 4) praying.

The church is to teach biblical doctrine so we can be grounded in our faith. Ephesians 4:14 tells us, “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.” The church is to be a place of fellowship, where Christians can be devoted to one another and honor one another (Romans 12:10), instruct one another (Romans 15:14), be kind and compassionate to one another (Ephesians 4:32), encourage one another (1 Thessalonians 5:11), and most importantly, love one another (1 John 3:11).

The church is to be a place where believers can observe the Lord’s Supper, remembering Christ’s death and shed blood on our behalf (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). The concept of “breaking bread” (Acts 2:42) also carries the idea of having meals together. This is another example of the church promoting fellowship. The final purpose of the church according to Acts 2:42 is prayer. The church is to be a place that promotes prayer, teaches prayer, and practices prayer. Philippians 4:6-7 encourages us, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, 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 your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Another commission given to the church is proclaiming the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8). The church is called to be faithful in sharing the gospel through word and deed. The church is to be a “lighthouse” in the community, pointing people toward our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The church is to both promote the gospel and prepare its members to proclaim the gospel (1 Peter 3:15).

Some final purposes of the church are given in James 1:27: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” The church is to be about the business of ministering to those in need. This includes not only sharing the gospel, but also providing for physical needs (food, clothing, shelter) as necessary and appropriate. The church is also to equip believers in Christ with the tools they need to overcome sin and remain free from the pollution of the world. This is done by biblical teaching and Christian fellowship.

So, what is the purpose of the church? Paul gave an excellent illustration to the believers in Corinth. The church is God’s hands, mouth, and feet in this world—the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). We are to be doing the things that Jesus Christ would do if He were here physically on the earth. The church is to be “Christian,” “Christ-like,” and Christ-following.

Recommended Resource: Stop Dating the Church! Falling in Love with the Family of God by Joshua Harris.

QUESTION : " SHOULD A CHURCH BE SEEKER SENSITIVE ?"

Answer: In recent years a new movement within the evangelical church has come into vogue, commonly referred to as "seeker sensitive." Generally, this movement has seen a great deal of growth. Many “seeker” churches are now mega-churches with well-known pastors who are riding a wave of popularity in the evangelical world. The seeker-sensitive movement claims millions of conversions, commands vast resources, continues to gain popularity, and seems to be attracting millions of un-churched people into its fold.

So, what is this movement all about? Where does it come from? And, most importantly, is it biblical? Basically, the seeker-sensitive church tries to reach out to the unsaved person by making the church experience as comfortable, inviting, and non-threatening to him as possible. The hope is that the person will believe in the gospel. The idea behind the concept is to get as many unsaved people through the door as possible, and the church leadership are willing to use nearly any means to accomplish that goal. Theatrics and musical entertainment are the norm in the church service to keep the unsaved person from getting bored as he does with traditional churches. State-of-the-art technology in lighting and sound are common components of the seeker-sensitive churches, especially the larger ones.

Expertly run nurseries, day care, adult day care, community programs such as ESL (English as a Second Language), and much more are common fixtures in the larger seeker churches. Short sermons (typically 20 minutes at most) are usually focused on self-improvement. Supporters of this movement will say that the single reason behind all the expense, state-of-the-art tech gear, and theatrics is to reach the unsaved with the gospel; however, rarely are sin, hell, or repentance spoken of, and Jesus Christ as the exclusive way to heaven is rarely mentioned. Such doctrines are considered “divisive.”

The seeker-sensitive church movement has pioneered a new method for founding churches involving demographics studies and community surveys that ask the unsaved what they want in a church. This is a kind of “if you build it they will come” mentality. The reasoning is that if you give the unsaved better entertainment than they can receive elsewhere, or “do church” in a non-threatening way, then they will come, and hopefully, they will accept the gospel. The mindset is to hook the un-churched person with great entertainment, give him a message he can digest, and provide second-to-none services. The focus of the seeker church then is not Christ-centered, but man-centered. The main purpose of the seeker church’s existence is to give people what they want or meet their felt needs.

Further, the seeker-friendly gospel presentation is based on the idea that if you will believe in Jesus, He will make your life better. Relationships with your wife or husband, coworkers, children, etc., will be better. The message the seeker church sometimes passes on to the unsaved person is that God is a great cosmic genie, and if you stroke Him the right way, you will get what you want. In other words, if you profess to believe in Jesus, God will give you a better life, better relationships and purpose in life. So, for all intents and purposes, the seeker-sensitive movement is a type of system based on giving unbelievers whatever they want. What too often happens in such a system is that people make a profession of faith, but when the circumstances of their lives don’t immediately change for their material good, they forsake Christ, believing He has failed them.

How are people responding to the “seeker” movement? Many people have responded and begun attending seeker-sensitive churches. Many people, indeed, have come to faith in Christ as a result of a seeker-sensitive church. But the bigger question is, “What does God have to say about all this?” Is it possible for a movement to be successful from a human perspective, but be unacceptable to God?

The basic premise in the seeker-sensitive movement is that there are many people out there who are seeking God and want to know Him, but the concept of the traditional church scares them away from faith in Christ. But is it true that people are truly seeking God? Actually, Scripture teaches the exact opposite! The apostle Paul tells us that “there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God” (Romans 3:11). This means there is no such thing as an unbeliever who is truly seeking for God on his own. Furthermore, man is dead in his sin (Ephesians 2:1), and he can’t seek God because he doesn’t recognize his need for Him, which is why Paul says that there is no one who understands. Romans 1:20-23 teaches us that all unbelievers reject the true God. They then go on to form a god that is what they want (a god in their image or the image of something else). This is a god they can tame and control. Romans 1:18-20 says they knowingly suppress what they know about God through His creation and that they are subject to God’s wrath, another doctrine studiously avoided by the seeker churches.

God’s invisible attributes are clearly seen in creation, but unbelievers take that clear knowledge and revelation God has graciously provided and flatly reject it. This leads to Paul’s statement in Romans 1:20 that they are “without excuse.” What man finds when he seeks on his own is nothing more than a god of his own creation. Man does not seek for God; it is God who seeks for man. Jesus said that plainly in John 15:16, and John 6:44. The idea of thousands or even millions of unbelievers really searching for the true God is an utterly unbiblical notion. Thus, this movement is based on an unbiblical concept of the nature of the unsaved person, which is spiritually dead. A spiritually dead person does not seek God, nor can he. Therefore, there is no such thing as a seeking unbeliever. He does not understand the things of God until he is made alive by the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Until the Father draws him (John 6:44) and the Spirit awakens the heart so he can believe and receive the gift of faith (Ephesians 2:8), an unsaved person cannot believe. Salvation is completely the act of God whereby He draws and empowers the dead sinner with what is necessary to believe (John 6:37, 39-40). What part do we play in the salvation of others? God has commanded that we are the instrumentality through which the gospel is proclaimed. We share the gospel, but it is not our responsibility to make people believe, or even to try to be persuasive or manipulate them into believing. God has given us the message of the gospel; we are to share it with gentleness and reverence, but we are to share it, offensive parts and all. Nobody believes the gospel because a speaker is persuasive. People believe because of the work of God in their hearts.

God has not been vague on what His church is to be like. He didn’t leave us guessing. He has given us direction on how men are to lead His church (Acts 6:1-6, 14:23; Titus 1:5-9; 1 Timothy 3:1-13; Ephesians 4:11), the ordinances of the church (1 Corinthians 11; Matthew 28:19), and the worship in the church—it is to be on the “Lord’s Day” (Acts 20:7), and is to consist of preaching and teaching, prayer, fellowship (Acts 2:42) and the taking of an offering (Colossians 3:16). Here, the seeker movement has missed the mark completely with its man-centered focus. When an unsaved person enters church, should our goal be to make him feel as comfortable as possible? When it comes to issues like our kindness, speaking respectfully, or even physical comfort, all who enter the church should be treated well. But the unsaved person should never feel “at home” in church, which is the body of Christ. The preaching and teaching of truth should make him feel very uncomfortable as he, hopefully, realizes the state of his soul, comes to know the existence of hell, and recognizes his need for the Savior. This discomfort is what brings people to Christ, and those who attempt to circumvent discomfort are not being loving. In fact, just the opposite is true. If we love someone, we want him to know the truth about sin, death, and salvation so we can help him avoid an eternity in hell. According to Paul, when an unbeliever enters the church and the Word of God is preached expositionally (taught directly from the Scriptures), he will be convicted and called into account for his sin. The secrets of his heart are disclosed as he confesses and repents of his sin; this leads him to humble himself and worship the God who has provided the sacrifice for his salvation.

If we apply the standards of the seeker-sensitive movement to evaluate Jesus’ ministry, we get some interesting results. At one time, Jesus was preaching to thousands, and He clearly offends nearly all of those who heard Him. They desert Him, and “from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (John 6:66). The Greek words in this verse mean they left and never came back. Jesus warned us that, far from healing our relationships with others, Christians will experience rifts in their closest relationships because of Him (Matthew 10:34-37). It is true that once we are saved life is better because we are reconciled to God and have a right relationship with Him. This provides the deepest peace that can be known. However, the rest of our lives will almost certainly be more difficult than before. God has said that we will experience persecution (Matthew 10:25), the rest of the world will look upon us as fools (1 Corinthians 1:18, 23), and we may even experience deep divisions in our own families all because of Christ (Luke 12:53). Jesus never intended for us to be popular with unbelievers, saying instead that He came to bring not peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34).

The basic philosophy, theology, purpose, and end of the seeker-sensitive movement are entirely man-centered. However, some would say that regardless of the purpose, motive, and outcome of the movement being wrong, we can’t argue with the principle of getting the unsaved through the doors to hear the gospel. Certainly, any exposure we can give the unsaved to the gospel is a great thing. However, the seeker-sensitive movement sometimes doesn’t have the real gospel. Rather, it is a shell of the truth; it is hollow and void of the truths of sin, hell, and the holiness of God.

How is the rest of the body of Christ to respond to the seeker-sensitive movement? We are to “contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). We are to be all the more vigilant to model our churches after the instruction of Scripture. Eventually, this movement, like all others which have come and gone over the years, will run its course and fizzle out. The seeker movement is large and well accepted, but it will eventually give way to the next fad, and in some ways that has already happened with the Emerging Church movement. Oddities within the church come and go, but the biblical church, like her Lord, endures forever.

Recommended Resource: Biblical Church Growth: How You Can Work with God to Build a Faithful Church by Gary McIntosh.

QUESTION : " WHAT IS EMERGING/EMERGENT CHURCH MOVEMENT ?"

Answer: The emerging, or emergent, church movement takes its name from the idea that as culture changes, a new church should emerge in response. In this case, it is a response by various church leaders to the current era of post-modernism. Although post-modernism began in the 1950s, the church didn't really seek to conform to its tenets until the 1990s. Post-modernism can be thought of as a dissolution of "cold, hard fact" in favor of "warm, fuzzy subjectivity." The emerging / emergent church movement can be thought of the same way.

The emerging / emergent church movement falls into line with basic post-modernist thinking—it is about experience over reason, subjectivity over objectivity, spirituality over religion, images over words, outward over inward, feelings over truth. These are reactions to modernism and are thought to be necessary in order to actively engage contemporary culture. This movement is still fairly new, though, so there is not yet a standard method of "doing" church amongst the groups choosing to take a post-modern mindset. In fact, the emerging church rejects any standard methodology for doing anything. Therefore, there is a huge range of how far groups take a post-modernist approach to Christianity. Some groups go only a little way in order to impact their community for Christ, and remain biblically sound. Most groups, however, embrace post-modernist thinking, which eventually leads to a very liberal, loose translation of the Bible. This, in turn, lends to liberal doctrine and theology.

For example, because experience is valued more highly than reason, truth becomes relative. Relativism opens up all kinds of problems, as it destroys the standard that the Bible contains absolute truth, negating the belief that biblical truth can be absolute. If the Bible is not our source for absolute truth, and personal experience is allowed to define and interpret what truth actually is, a saving faith in Jesus Christ is rendered meaningless.

Another area where the emerging / emergent church movement has become anti-biblical is its focus on ecumenism. Unity among people coming from different religious backgrounds and diversity in the expression or corporate worship are strong focuses of the emergent church movement. Being ecumenical means that compromise is taking place, and this results in a watering down of Scripture in favor of not offending an apostate. This is in direct opposition to passages such as Revelation 2:14-17, Jesus' letter to the church of Pergamum, in which the Church is warned against tolerating those who teach false doctrine.

False doctrine seems to abound within the emerging / emergent church movement, though, as stated previously, not within every group espousing emerging / emergent church beliefs. Because of this, care must be taken when deciding whether or not to become involved with an emergent church group. We all need to take heed of Matthew 7:15-20, "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them."

While seeking new ways to witness to a changing culture is admirable, utilizing ways which compromise the Truth of the Gospel in any way is nothing more than promoting false doctrine and leading others away from Christ instead of to Him.

Recommended Resource: The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception by John MacArthur.

QUESTION : WHAT IS REPLACEMENT THEOLOGY ?

At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came upon the followers of Jesus with the sound of a violent, rushing wind and the appearance of tongues of fire. In the ensuing years, the alteration of the worship of God was no less dynamic for the Jews who had chosen to follow Jesus as their Messiah. Christ caused an upheaval in their worldview. The Jewish believers no longer relied on the daily sacrifices for the forgiveness of their sins, and they learned to think of God as Someone whom they could speak to directly, bypassing the system of priesthood. They also had to deal with the steady influx of Gentiles into the church, which challenged their Jewish sensibilities. The Jews, who had always been God’s chosen people (Deuteronomy 14:2), now faced the fact that God was choosing people from all nations, ethnicities, and religious backgrounds.

The crucial first-century transition from Judaism to Christianity was so significant that we are still debating its ramifications. Specifically, if God is now relating to the world through the church instead of through the nation of Israel, what does that mean for Israel? Is this a temporary condition, as the dispensationalists believe, or is God really and completely done with the Jews as a nation?

The latter belief is called "replacement theology." It teaches that the church has replaced Israel in God's plans, prophecies, and blessings. The roles of Israel and the church are foundational to the events of the end times; what one believes about replacement theology largely determines what one believes about the rapture, the tribulation, and the millennial kingdom, not to mention the role of the church in modern society.

A couple of practical matters led to the formation of replacement theology. One was that, for 2,400 years, from their exile to Babylon to the formation of Israel in modern times, Jews did not have a sovereign nation. And, after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, Jews were largely spread throughout the world. Another matter was the increasing wealth, advancement, and global reach of Christian sects and "Christian" nations. All this seemed to indicate God's abandonment of Israel and His focus on the church. Anti-Semitism also played a role. As the church emphasized the rejection of Jesus by the Jews, some Gentile believers adopted the common pagan belief that Jews are religiously backward and socially unapproachable.

Replacement theology is not based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. As the Bible uses metaphor (no one really expects God to send all the goats of the world to hell, as Matthew 25:31-33 allegorizes), some theologians concluded that much unfulfilled prophecy must have also been intended as metaphor—the promises made to Israel were really meant for the church. Once this simple "explanation" was made, large portions of the Bible became open to personal interpretation.

The Bible is filled with prophecies promising peace and wealth to Israel, and a great many are still unfulfilled, including a promise detailing specific borders (Genesis 15:18-20; Numbers 34:1-12), a promise of a King from the line of David (2 Samuel 7), and a promise that Israel would one day be wholly devoted to God (Jeremiah 31:31-34). Given the continued non-existence of a Jewish state and the success of Christian-led endeavors, it was difficult to see how such prophecies would ever be fulfilled. Some assumed they would be more easily and completely fulfilled through the church than through the Jewish people, and replacement theology was born.

In order to shift prophecy to the church, several specific promises must be "spiritualized" or "allegorized," that is, reinterpreted non-literally. Abraham's descendants beyond counting (Genesis 22:17) become all Christ-followers, not literal biological descendents. The literal 1,000-year reign of Christ (Revelation 20:1-6) becomes symbolic, either referencing the saints in heaven or the reign of Jesus in believers' hearts.

Allegorizing such a foundational concept as the subject of prophecy opens up many more issues. If the millennial kingdom is for the church, when will the rapture occur? If the prophecies of peace are for the church (Isaiah 32:18), should the church enforce peace in international affairs? If God's plan is for the church to lead (Isaiah 2:2), should the church take over politics? Replacement theology has several consequent beliefs:

- Amillennialism: The belief that the millennial kingdom is not literal, that it began at Christ's resurrection and is manifest either in the hearts of saints in heaven or saints on earth.
- Postmillennialism: The belief that the church is responsible for arranging the "golden age" of Christ's rule in people's hearts, resulting in godly overtones in politics, entertainment, family, and social life.
- Dominionism: Similar to postmillennialism but more extreme; the belief that the church is responsible for reinstating the Old Testament laws in all of the world's governments and societies.

As witnesses to the re-establishment of a Jewish state in 1948, we have an advantage over those earlier theologians; we've seen God's power in action to set the stage for a more literal interpretation of prophecy. This event, combined with a careful study of biblical prophecy, shows that the church was never designed to take the place of Israel.

First of all, the church is not a punishment on Israel for their failure to spread the gospel. It is God's work to draw Jews to Him (Romans 11:11). Daniel 9:20-27 is clear that God's plan for Israel is to last seventy "weeks" or 490 years, starting at the time of a decree to rebuild Jerusalem. Verses 25 and 26 suggest a significant event at the sixty-nine "week" mark—the point of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. It also allows for a break before the arrival of the seventieth week—this space of time has been manifested as the church age. As this prophecy is for Daniel's people (vs. 24), the church era is not mentioned. Instead, the prophecy skips ahead to the last "week"—the tribulation. Before the tribulation is the rapture, which marks the removal of the church—and the re-establishing of God's work with Israel.

Paul, in a letter written primarily to Gentiles, explicitly states that God is not finished with Israel. Romans 11:12 says that if Israel's rejection of Jesus is a blessing for the Gentiles, the restoration of Israel will be more so. Verses 25-26 go on to say, "For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery…that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and thus all Israel will be saved, just as it is written, 'The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob'" (cf. Daniel 9:24). As the previous verses clearly delineate Jews and Gentiles, there is no way that this prophecy can be applied to the church.

The more literal interpretation of God's plan for humanity is called "dispensationalism." Instead of the church replacing Israel, dispensationalism teaches that the Bible shows God working in very specific dispensations throughout history. The previous dispensation focused on Israel and the law. The current one on the church and grace. In "the fullness of time" (Ephesians 1:10), the next dispensation will begin. The church will be removed (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), Israel will be sanctified (Daniel 9:24), and the prophecies made to both Israel (Genesis 15:18-20; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Isaiah 11:6-9) and the church (Revelation 20:1-5) will be fulfilled in Jesus' literal millennial kingdom.

The problem with replacement theology is that it relies on the judgment and effort of man instead of the Word and power of God. Two hundred years ago, the idea of a restored Jewish state was incredible. Today, the Jewish state is a fact. Having such gracious proof of God's sovereignty, we should be greatly exhorted to read the Bible as literally as it was written. God has given the church specific blessings and responsibilities. We should concentrate on these and reject the allegorical interpretations of replacement theology.

THE BOYS OF BETHLEHEM : ~ MATTHEW 2 : 13 -23 ~

Have you ever checked out a website called Neighborhood Scout?

The answer is probably no unless you’re thinking about moving. Modern technology has made it possible to sit at your computer and do a virtual search of any city, town and neighborhood in the country. You can find out about the school system in Tarpon Springs, the average income in Bar Harbor, the rate of new construction in Tacoma, or the demographic makeup of Indianapolis. For that matter, you can break down a city like Indianapolis into many smaller neighborhoods, and then you can compare the stats for one part of the city against another.

That wasn’t possible until just a few years ago.

I mention that because this week I discovered a page on the Neighborhood Scout website where they ranked the 100 Safest Cities in the United States. Using the latest crime data involving robbery, murder, rape, vehicle theft and aggravated assault, they compiled a list of the safest places to live in the US.

Hartland, Wisconsin came in at number 1.
Followed by Bergenfield, New Jersey at number 2.
Brentwood, Tennessee took the third spot.
Followed by Franklin, Massachusetts at number 4.
Coming in at number 5 was Newtown, Connecticut.

Most of us had never heard of Newtown before last Friday. If you read the website’s description, you can understand why some people would consider it the ideal place to live. The education level in Newtown is considerably above the national average. Going by the numbers, violent crime there has been almost nonexistent. It is a white collar community, upper-middle class, with excellent schools, with lots of new construction and some of the highest home prices in America.

Here’s a quote from the website:

Because of many things, Newtown is a very good place for families to consider. With an enviable combination of good schools, low crime, college-educated neighbors who tend to support education because of their own experiences, and a high rate of home ownership in predominantly single-family properties, Newtown really has some of the features that families look for when choosing a good community to raise children. Is Newtown perfect? Of course not, and if you like frenetic nightlife, it will be far from your cup of tea. But overall this is a solid community, with many things to recommend it as a family-friendly place to live.

Clearly, Newtown is a good place to live. One can see why families have been drawn there. It has earned its designation as one of the safest places in America.

Death at Sandy Hook

And then came the events of last Friday morning.

Rather than repeat here what we’ve all seen and heard, I would rather focus on the fact that in some ways, this is nothing new.

Last year there were 14,612 murders in the US. That number has not been below 14,000 since 1968. That’s 281 a week, 40 a day. Said another way, if the murders were evenly distributed across the 50 states (which they are not), that would be 292 murders per state each year. Divided by 12, that means that each state would suffer the equivalent of a Newtown massacre every month.

We are a murderous people, living in a blood-soaked world. Given all the killing, it is to our credit that we can still be stunned by what happened in Newtown. It was a crime for which we seem to have no categories at all. As I write these words four days later, there seems to be no clear explanation, no answer to the Why question, nothing that would help us make sense of the slaughter of the children of Newtown.

Ever since we heard the news, we’ve all been struggling to deal with it. No one seems to have an answer. Perhaps Max Lacado said it best, in these sentences from a prayer he wrote on Friday afternoon:

Dear Jesus, It’s a good thing you were born at night. This world sure seems dark.

He’s right. It does seem darker this week. Odd that just a few days before Christmas we’re talking about the darkness of the world.

The governor of Connecticut said it another way:

Evil visited this community today.

He was right too. What happened was pure evil, undiluted and Satanic. What else do you call it when a man takes a rifle, kills his mother, then kills 20 innocent schoolchildren and six adults?

That’s what evil is and that’s what evil does.

Many have commented on how this horrific event took place just a few days before Christmas. It would be horrific at any time of the year, but it somehow seems worse during this happy season.

Two Observations

All of that leads me to make two observations:

1. If this can happen in Newtown, then where can you go to be safe?

People moved to Newtown to get away from things like this. And who can blame them? Newtown is not East Saint Louis or inner-city Detroit.

Death is everywhere, all around us, all the time. Most of the time we can push it away, keep it at arm’s length, but sometimes death comes in unbidden, unannounced, and very unwelcome.

Anyone seeking a quiet and peaceful life where these things never happen has picked the wrong planet to be born on.

2. It shouldn’t surprise us that we need to talk about darkness as Christmas approaches.

The signs were always there. From the beginning, the birth of Christ was fraught with difficulty:

• Mary became pregnant under strange circumstances.
   
• Joseph and Mary made a dangerous journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem in the latter stages of her pregnancy.
   
• When they got to Bethlehem, there was no room for them in the inn.
   
• Jesus was born in a manger, not the peaceful scene of the children’s Christmas program but in a stable, perhaps in a cave, at night, when Mary and Joseph were alone in the world.
   
• When the Magi came to Jerusalem and asked about the baby who had been born king of the Jews, Herod was so disturbed that he ordered the slaughter of the baby boys of Bethlehem.
   

Matthew tells the story this way:

He gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi (Matthew 2:16).

“Kill all the boys in Bethlehem.”

There is a big difference between Bethlehem then and Bethlehem now. Today Bethlehem is a bustling town of 28,000 people. Back then it was a tiny village (the “little town” of the Christmas carol) six miles south of Jerusalem. Travelers often stopped in Bethlehem before traveling to the “big city” to the north. Its population in Jesus’ day was no more than a few hundred people.

How many baby boys would be under the age of 2 in Bethlehem? No one knows, but the number would not have been large. One writer suggests a figure of 20.

Twenty baby boys.

Rounded up by Herod’s soldiers, slaughtered on the spot, run through with swords and spears. A brutal, vicious, bloodthirsty murder of innocent babies.

Who can understand this?
Why would a man do this?
What was he thinking?

An Evil Old Man

It may help you understand what happened if you know that Herod the Great is very old, very sick, and very nearly dead. He has been in power for over 40 years and has proven to be a clever and cruel man. Like all despots, he held tightly to the reins of power and brutally removed anyone who got in his way. Over the years he killed many people:

            *His brother-in-law
            *His mother-in-law
            *His wife

It was the murder of his wife that drove him mad. He killed her because he thought she was a threat to his power. But he never got over her. Even though he was only 44 when he killed her, and even though he lived to be 70, her murder was the beginning of the end.

Above everything else, Herod the Great was a killer. That was his nature. He killed out of spite and he killed to stay in power. Human life meant nothing to him. The great historian Josephus called him “barbaric,” another writer dubbed him “the malevolent maniac,” yet another named him “the great pervert.”

Perhaps his basic character can best be seen by one incident in the year 7 B.C. Herod is an old man now. He has been in power 41 years. He knows he doesn’t have much longer to live. Word comes that his sons are plotting to overthrow him. They are sons by his late wife. He orders them put to death . . . by strangling.

No wonder Caesar Augustus said, “It is safer to be Herod’s sow than his son.”

His wife. . . his mother-in-law . . . his brother-in-law . . . two sons . . . among hundreds of others. Killing was what he did best.

Rachel’s Tears

That is why the critics are wrong who question this story and say that Matthew made it up. To the contrary, it fits with everything else we know about Herod. He wouldn’t have thought twice about killing a couple dozen baby boys in a little town like Bethlehem. 

But it meant something to those parents who forever lost their sons.
Their tears were those of mothers who would not be comforted.
They are like the tears of Rachel (Matthew 2:18).

The loss is not lessened because we think we “understand” the tragedy. Understanding only gives us a framework for thinking about the unthinkable. Nothing could bring those little boys back to their grieving parents.

Evil visited Bethlehem that night.
Nothing would ever be the same.

Meanwhile Jesus and Mary and Joseph escaped to Egypt, an angel having warned Joseph in a dream to leave Bethlehem. In another dream he is told it is time to return to Israel:

After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead." (Matthew 2:19).

So they returned, but not to Bethlehem because they feared it was not safe. They settled in Galilee, in the tiny village of Nazareth, where Jesus could grow up safely.

Contrary to the sanitized versions we prefer, the birth of Jesus was messy and troublesome, fraught with difficulty and surrounded by people who either didn’t know, didn’t care, or actively opposed this little baby boy. 

I’m reminded of the words of Sweet Little Jesus Boy:

The world treat you mean, Lord.
Treat me mean too.
But that’s how things is down here.
We didn’t know it was you.

“But that’s how things is down here.” There is a world of sad, solemn truth in those seven words.

Longfellow’s Poem

Let’s shift the scene for a moment to Christmas Day 1864. After four bloody years, the Civil War is slowly drawing to close. Already 500,000 soldiers have died. Many more would die before the war would finally end. On that Christmas Day Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned a poem that became a beloved Christmas carol called I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. It starts with these hopeful words:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
    and wild and sweet
    The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

There is a story behind this poem that most people don’t know. Shortly after the war began, Longfellow’s beloved wife Fanny died after being terribly burned in a household accident. Her death threw Longfellow into despair. In his journal for December 25, 1862, he recorded, “’A merry Christmas’ say the children, but that is no more for me.” In 1863 his eldest son Charles was severely wounded and crippled in battle. Out of his own sadness and in response to the carnage of war, he wrote this pessimistic verse:

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
    “For hate is strong,
    And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Lately those words have seemed all too true. Hate is strong. Where is our hope at Christmastime? 

What About the Boys of Bethlehem?

I want to ask a question that I can’t fully answer, but it is one that we all think about in different ways and at different times. If the angel knew about the impending massacre at Bethlehem, why did he warn Mary and Joseph and not the others? On one level we know that Mary and Joseph were warned so that Jesus might be preserved from Herod’s murderous intentions. But what shall we say about the other boys of Bethlehem? And what about their parents? Were not those babies precious to the Lord also? Does the Lord hear the wails that arise from the little town of Bethlehem?

Here is my best attempt at an answer. We know that the Lord does care and that he does hear the cries of those who hurt so deeply. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” (Psalm 34:18). God has promised to do that. Millions of people can testify to God’s presence in the midst of the worst pain and the greatest loss.

But this truth, wonderful as it is, does not cancel our very real pain and it does not reverse the loss.

This much we know for certain. God always has a bigger plan than we can ever see from where we sit. He preserved his Son so that one day his Son could die on the cross for the sins of the world. These babies died now, the baby Jesus would grow up and die later. Jesus had to escape this time so that he would not escape the next time. Seen in broadest perspective, Jesus escaped the first time so that he wouldn’t escape the second time so that we would escape for all time.

I understand that this truth would have been small comfort to the weeping mothers of Bethlehem. On that night it seemed like a senseless slaughter, and the next night it seemed the same. One week later it still made no sense. One year later there was no explanation. Even a decade later no one could understand why those babies had to die. But run the clock forward about 33 years and suddenly things come into focus. Outside the walls of Jerusalem a man is dying on a cross. He was the one baby Herod could not kill; now he offers himself up for the sins of the world. In the end, he died too. If he had died in Bethlehem, he couldn’t have died at Calvary. All of this was part of God’s eternal plan. 

War at Bethlehem

Somewhere in my reading since last Friday, I ran across a statement that went something like this:

God declared war at Bethlehem.

That’s hardly the way we think of it, but it is not unbiblical. Ever since Eden, a battle has been raging between God and Satan for control of planet earth. When Adam and Eve sinned, Satan struck a blow for evil. From that time until this very hour, sin has reigned in every corner of this planet and has found a home in every human heart. All the pain and suffering we see around us–every bit of it–may be traced back to that that fateful moment in the Garden of Eden. Since then the armies of evil have been on the march in every generation. They have landed wave after wave of soldiers on beachheads around the world. There are times when it seems as if the battle is over and evil will reign unmolested forever.

Satan struck with terrible fury last Friday in Newtown, Connecticut. Evil invaded a peaceful New England community.

But if Christmas means anything, it is this: God wins in the end. At Bethlehem he launched a mighty counteroffensive that continues to this very day. It all started with a tiny baby boy named Jesus, born in a scandalous way, in a barn, to unmarried teenagers who were homeless and alone. The world had no idea that night what was happening in Bethlehem. Only in retrospect do we understand. 

The Wrong Shall Fail

That same battle of evil and good continues to the present moment and will continue into the future until the day when Jesus returns and defeats evil once and for all. Perhaps that thought is what led Longfellow to write one final verse to his poem in answer to his own despair:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
    The wrong shall fail,
    The right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Rightly understood, there is a world of truth in that final verse. At Bethlehem God struck a blow to liberate the world from sin and death.

And his front line soldier was a tiny baby boy.
One of the boys of Bethlehem.

Don’t take him for granted. There is in this little baby all the strength of Deity. The power of God is in those tiny fists. He has strength which is divine. Whatever he desires, he is able to achieve.

As Luther put it, “He whom the worlds could not enwrap, yonder lies on Mary’s lap." The baby wrapped in rags is also the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. He’s the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the undefeated Son of God.

He’s the leader of the armies of heaven.
Because he is who he is, Longfellow was right.

“The wrong shall fail, the right prevail.
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

I urge you to say those words aloud. We need to remind ourselves in these sad days that the devil will not have the final word. Though he strikes many painful blows, he cannot win because the battle belongs to the Lord.

Be encouraged, my friends. Do not despair. Through your tears, lift up your eyes and look again to Bethlehem. That sleeping child will rise to battle and no one will stand against him.

The boys of Bethlehem will be avenged and every enemy will be defeated. Better days are coming. In that confidence let us trust in God and commit ourselves to Jesus Christ now and forever. Because these things are true, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas. Amen.

WHAT'S SO DANGEROUS ABOUT THE EMERGING CHURCH ?

Hi, I'm Phil Johnson and I'm here in the studio with John MacArthur. And we've set aside the next hour or so to discuss a movement known as the Emerging Church. Now, John, that's going to be a familiar topic for a lot of our listeners, I know, because we get lots of questions about it. It's been about two years since Christianity Today featured a cover article about the Emerging Church Movement, they called it, I think, The Emergent Mystic. And for many evangelicals, I think that was November of about 2004 and for many evangelicals that was their introduction to this movement and this phenomenon known as the Emerging Church. And ever since that article was published, we have been getting a steady stream, an increasing stream of questions from listeners about this movement. It's become the number one thing we are asked for.
Now here's a sample of what we get, and I'll read this to you and then let you respond. This came to us by e-mail. "Dear Pastor John: I would like to know if you have any opinions regarding the so-called Emerging Church Movement. This movement seems to espouse a doctrine of Christian post-modernism. As this would seem to be a major contradiction to biblical truth, I'm concerned as to the effect of this philosophy on the church as a whole. Additionally, it seems many young people today are embracing this movement, including my own son. I'd like to know what you think and if you can suggest some resources for us that might help shed some light on the subject."

I know you've been watching this movement, John. In fact, last year you participated in a faculty lecture series at the Master's Seminary, evaluating the movement for students there and then some of the seminars at the Shepherds Conference for the past two years have dealt with the movement and its ramifications for church leaders. Today I want to give you an opportunity to answer some of the questions about the Emerging Church Movement that have come to us from our radio listeners because we want you to talk about this movement in laymen's terms for the average Grace To You hearer. And so we're going to give you an opportunity to say in the simplest possible terms what is wrong with the movement, what if anything is right with it, and what you think about the goals and the strategies of those who are at the forefront of this movement. And, as always, we want you to shine the light of Scripture on this movement and let's see how it fairs. So I've collected some of the questions our listeners have sent us and I've even prepared a few questions of my own. And if you're ready, we'll start with the first question I'm sure is on the mind of many of our listeners...what is the Emerging Church Movement and how can I recognize it when I see it?
JOHN: Well, I'd like to give a simple answer to that, I'll do my best to. The Emerging Church Movement is an amorphous sort of loose-knit association of churches that have decided that there is value, there is even virtue in uncertainty about Scripture. The bottom line in the movement is they believe that we aren't even suppose to understand precisely what the Bible means. And to me, that's the big issue. It is an attack on the clarity of Scripture and they elevate themselves as if this is some noble reality. They have finally risen to say we're honest enough to say, "We don't know what the Bible really means. We can't be certain. We are...we're the truly spiritual ones." It has overtones of spiritual pride, a false kind of spiritual pride which they call humility. They say, "We're too humble to say that we know what the Bible means."
The bottom line, I think, in the movement is that it is a denial of the clarity of Scripture. It is a denial that we can know what the Bible really says. And as I said, it's amorphous because there's a mish-mash of approaches to this and a mish-mash of styles and things like that. But they have embraced this mystery as if it's true spirituality. And so, it becomes celebration of mystery, a celebration of ignorance, a celebration that we can't really know. I think it's just another form of liberalism. I think it's just another form of denying the clarity of Scripture. And I think there's a motive behind it.
PHIL: It's interesting you compare it to liberalism because the typical leader in the Emerging Church Movement would say what they stand for is post-modernism. And theological liberalism was...drew out of modernism. These guys say they're reacting to modernism. How would you respond to that?
JOHN: Well it's just another philosophy. Post-modernism is another bad philosophy. Modernism was a bad philosophy. Post-modernism is another bad philosophy. But in both cases, they assault the Scripture. Modernism made reason, human reason, the king. Reason was supreme in modernism. Thomas Payne, The Age of Reason, The Enlightenment, all of those things, the Renaissance. Out of that came the worship of the human mind and the mind trumps God. Now mystery trumps the Bible. The human mind trumps the Bible in modernism, mystery trumps the Bible in post-modernism. It is at the foundation an unwillingness to accept the clear teaching of Scripture. Scripture is clear, "A wayfaring man though he be a fool need not err." God holds us responsible for a right understanding of Scripture. We are liable before God for what we do with a true and right understanding of Scripture. These people, like the liberals, deny the clear teaching of Scripture. And I'm convinced that the reason they deny it is not because it can't be understood, not because it's unclear, but because they don't like what it clearly says. And that takes you back to John 3, "Men love darkness rather than light." The light is there, they hate the light, they run from the light. The issue is not that Scripture is not clear, it is crystal clear.

One of the big issues is homosexuality in the Emerging Church. They don't want to take a position on homosexuality. The Bible is not vague or obscure or oblique about homosexuality. It couldn't be more clear. A homosexual will not inherit the Kingdom of God...that's pretty clear. Homosexuality in Romans chapter 1 is a perversion that is manifestly when it happens in a culture, begins to dominate a culture, an evidence of divine wrath and divine judgment. So the Bible is clear. They don't want that clarity. They want to run from the light. Scripture is light, it is not darkness, but they like the darkness because their deeds are evil.
So I think the motive behind this whole Emerging Church thing, whether it's a conscious or unconscious motive, is discomfort over what the Bible really says, whether it's about the gospel or whether it's about sin, virtue...they don't like it and so the out is...Well, it's not clear. This is just another way to set the Bible aside.
PHIL: That all mirrors exactly what's happening in secular culture, doesn't it?
JOHN: Sure...sure.
PHIL: I mean, if you think about what you've just described, the ambiguity towards every clear statement of truth, that's pretty much what's going on even in the secular world, it's the reason Europe and the secular media and all seem to think everything is morally ambiguous, even the...we probably live in a time where the line between good and evil is as clear as it could be.
JOHN: Yeah, and I think this is...this is nothing new either. Every culture apart from the gospel and apart from salvation is anti-God. I don't care whether you're Hottentot, walking around with no clothes on in Africa, or whether you're a tribal person in Indonesia, or whether you lived in the fifteenth century, or whether you are in the Roman culture of the first century, all human society thinking culture is ungodly and anti-biblical.
What is so interesting about this movement is the Emerging Church sanctifies the culture. The Emerging church sanctifies the post-modern culture as if it is legitimate and says if we're going to reach these people, we've got to become like these people. That's never been the biblical way...never. The Bible does not change. It's not a chameleon, it doesn't shift and change and adapt to culture. It confronts culture. It confronts an aboriginal culture. It confronts an ancient culture. It confronts a modern culture. It confronts every trend with fixed unchanging truth in every situation. And the Emerging Church not only is unwilling to believe the clear statement of Scripture, but it's unwilling to take the clear statement of Scripture and confront the culture. It wants to let the culture define what Christianity should be.
PHIL: It seems like as long as I can remember and even in my study of church history, this goes back for centuries, generations, there's always been an element in the church that thinks what we desperately need to do in order to reach the world is adapt our thinking and our language and everything to whatever is happening in the culture at the moment. This is just another expression of that, right?

JOHN: Yeah, why would we fail to understand that there are two opposite dominating world views? One is Satan and the other is God. Okay, we have a world view that is...that belongs to Satan and his children and the darkness. And we have a world view that belongs to God and His children and the light. And they are in absolute opposition to each other and there is no possible accommodation. That's..that's foundational in the Bible. That's as foundational as you can get. And the idea that somehow Christianity has to be reinvented to accommodate itself to any pattern of culture thinking, first of all, is blatantly wrong at its foundational level, and also it's, secondly, it's hopeless in its ability to actually do that because the culture moves so fast. What culture are they talking about? They're talking about a post-modern culture. Who does that involve? That involves, as you said in the beginning, young people primarily, so you can just axe everybody that's older than generation X, they don't connect with that at all. So now the Kingdom of God is only going to be exposed in this kind of fashion to this niche of people who are twenty and under. And by the way, the next five years of people coming along may have a whole different culture. So now we have planned obsolescence. So now we have marginalization.
I remember when...when the Crystal Cathedral, Robert Schuller, had figured out, you know, the real strategy, we're going to give them what they want. So he surveyed everybody and gave them what they want. Now we look at that thing and it's like an anachronism, it's like a...it's like a...it's like a dinosaur, no young person. I mean, you look at television, look at Robert Schuller, you see any young people in there?
PHIL: Right.
JOHN: You couldn't get...you couldn't get an eighteen-year-old to buy into that approach at all. It's...you can take the Willow Creek model, they had their little niche, they tried to move one generation down and they abandoned completely by their own admission, they abandoned the whole program after a number of years of trying it because they're so highly defined in their niche. So this is planned obsolescence.
I remember when...a metaphor for this, I was in Tulsa and I was looking at the Oral Roberts campus. They tried to make it as modern as possible.
PHIL: Right.
JOHN: and now it looks like a parking lot for old Star Wars space ships. It's so bizarre. And in an effort to be cutting edge and modern, they became completely obsolete.
PHIL: Out of date.
JOHN: Out of date. And that's what's going to happen to this movement. It's going to have its little tiny moment to try to corrupt the church and the next generation is going to have a completely different spin on what they want and this is going to be an obsolete kind of thing.
The thing that is not obsolete is the Word of God. The thing that's always relevant, always penetrating is the truth of God.
PHIL: You know, in fact as I surveyed just the past twenty years or so, there seem to be waves of this. The previous wave was the Willow Creek model, seeker-sensitivity, and all of that. In some ways, your critique of the Emerging Church Movement sounds very much like your critique of Seeker-sensitivity, Willow Creek and all that. How are these two movements similar, and how are they different?

JOHN: Well, it's the same philosophy. Give people what they want. And so, as people's wants change as the culture defines things, you change with it. I don't think the, for example, I don't think the Willow Creek people at the very beginning would say homosexuality is okay, because when they sort of launched their little niche, the big issue wasn't homosexuality, it was feminism. So they did buy into that.
PHIL: Okay.
JOHN: They bought in to feminism and he has his wife, they'll have his wife preach and he bought into Gilbert Belzekian's(??) Whole schstik about feminism, an he was his guru. Feminism was the hot deal and they were going to be relevant. And their relevancy meant we embrace feminism. The next wave is homosexuality. So the new deal is, you have people like Brian McClaren and all these other guys, Crissai(??)saying, "Sure we have homosexuals in our church, but we also have people who like chocolate and people who are overweight." They don't see a difference between that. So whatever the...whatever the current sin that needs to be tolerated in the culture is, they'll buy into. So it's just the next wave of cultural accommodation redefining Christianity in terms that are acceptable to whatever the trendy sin is and whatever the trendy way of thinking is. But it's really the same thing. It's moving away from the Word of God to adapt to the society. In the middle, you've got Rick...Rick Warren who...who is a step from Willow Creek. His schstik is...is into success and getting people where they need to be in life, and feeling good and having a purpose and a goal. It's very, very man-centered. And he's sort of in the middle between those two things. But the trends are always about...let's find out what people want, let's find out what their hot buttons are. And they're always week on theology and they always set the Bible aside. Either they...they don't necessarily blatantly deny it, the Willow Creek people set it aside in favor of things that they think appeal to people, the Saddleback model does the same thing and so does the post-modern Emerging Church. The Bible's just not in the middle of it.
Now they throw Bible verses around like mad. They're all over the place. There's an article in the...recently I read about Rob Bell and it says that all of his teaching is sprinkled with Bible verses. Well, that's a ploy. What does it mean if you throw Bible verses around if you confess that, we can't know what they mean? What are you doing here? There's a certain deception, I think, in that.
PHIL: Humph...yeah, now I want to sort of wrap up some of these ideas about post-modernism so people can understand what we're talking about when you mention post-modernism. You more or less defined it as the embracing of mystery, or uncertainty. Can you...do you want to expand a bit on what post-modernism is?

JOHN: Yeah, look, let's just take modernism as a starting point and we can simplify the view of the world. You have modernism, before that you have pre-modernism, after that you have post-modernism. Modernism says this, there is truth. Make it simple. There is truth and we can find it by human reason...not revelation from God, not the Bible, but human reason. We can find the truth. Before that, pre-modernism which was basically the way of the world back to the beginning, right? I mean, that was the dominant philosophy from the beginning until the enlightenment. And pre-modernism said there is truth and it comes from God, it has a supernatural source. And whether you were a Christian, or whether you worshiped the gods of Egypt, or whether you worshiped the pantheon of Athens, or whatever gods you had, you believed in the gods, you believed that there were supernatural powers that created and defined life and truth and so that was pre-modernism. There is truth and it has supernatural source.
Modernism comes along and says there is truth, we can find it with human reason. Forget God, forget the supernatural. So you have a few centuries...what?...a few thousand...a few hundred years, really...
PHIL: Of modernism.
JOHN: You have thousands of years of pre-modernism. You have a few hundred years, 250 years of modernism.
PHIL: About, yeah.
JOHN: Two-hundred and fifty years of modernism and at the end of that, because man is trying to find the truth and says it is in human reason and it's not from God, it's not in revelation, he thinks that science is the key. He's going to apply his mind systematically, scientifically and come up with the truth. And sad to say, the world gets worse, the world gets worse than it's ever been. It's bad before modernism, it's worse during modernism. You have the totalitarian world, you have the people who think they now know the truth and they're going to be...they're going to be the dictators of the world so you have, as you've pointed out, fascism, Nazism, Communism, and the massacre of millions and millions and millions of people in the name of human reason, right?
PHIL: Right. Now that was all the product of modernism.
JOHN: All the product of modernism. This is the modern...this is the modern world, we have assumed what the truth is and this is it. And autocratic people like Hitler and Stalin and all the rest massacre people. Stalin kills 50 million. Hitler kills six million. And we all know the horrific story of that. Modernism doesn't work. The Berlin Wall comes down. Everything crashes. Coincidentally in the Reagan era, I don't think he had a lot to do with it, I think it was the seeds of destruction that were in the system and it crashes. And what's going to take its place? Well, we tried to find the truth through revelation, pre-modernism, that didn't get us anywhere. We got into the Dark Ages there. We tried to find the truth through modernism, through human reason, we didn't get it there either. Look what we ended up with...the massacre of millions of people is the legacy of modernism. And all these societies now trying to recover and find themselves coming out of that kind of thing.

Now the idea is post-modernism says, we give. There may be truth, but we can't know it. We didn't get it in our pre-modernism, we didn't get it in modernism. So this is the after the fact and the answer is there might be truth...some people would say there is no universal truth, there is no absolute truth, but not all...not all post-modernism would say that. Post-modernism will at least say we can't know it...we can't know what it is. It may be from God, but we can't know what it is. So we embrace mystery. Post-modernism says you have your truth, I have my truth, everybody has his own truth, truth is whatever you think it is, whatever you want it to be, it's intuitive, it's experiential...but it's not universal and it's not knowable, universally knowable.
PHIL: That's why these days the highest values, the sole-remaining virtues are things like tolerance, ambiguity, mystery...
JOHN: Yeah. Oh, Brian McClaren says ambiguity is really a good thing, and that's just complete post-modernism. Tolerance is the only thing left because if everybody's entitled to his own truth, and you hear this...you hear it on television, people say, "Well, this is who I am and this is how I live, and you've got to take me the way I am."
PHIL: It gives people a license to invent their own religion, really.
JOHN: Sure.
PHIL: And then no one is permitted to challenge it.
JOHN: And then to have self-esteem about it and to feel really good about it. And, of course, the Emerging Church comes along and they love this because this takes all the rules out. Then you can be a member of the church if you're a homosexual, if you're overweight, or if you like chocolate, and it's all the same. You can live any way you want to live. Ambiguity is wonderful if you want to sin without any guilt. And I think that's at the bottom of this. They...they hate the light because their deeds are evil. Those are the words that came right out of the mouth of Jesus. They run from the light because they want the darkness. It's that simple. It's not that the Bible is not clear. All these philosophies, not withstanding, they all operate outside the realm of Scripture, right? Whether it's pre-modern, modern, or post-modern. It has nothing to do with the Bible. Those are all human philosophies.
When I was in college I...I took advanced European philosophy and studied the flow of philosophy. It didn't matter what the philosophy was and you could go through the whole thing starting in the pre-modern area with Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, and Phaeles(???) And you can march your way through the whole deal and you can come all the way to Decarte and flow through Haegler(?) And Kant and Kierkegaard and all that kind of stuff, it was all wrong. It was always wrong and it kept being wrong and even though it kept building on itself and altering and shifting and moving, it was all bogus...it was all error. And post-modernism is just another form of human error, another way to wrongly understand the universe, to wrongly understand reality.
And for the church to accommodate that is bizarre. If you were in the New Testament time, for example, if you wanted...let's say you wanted to be an Emerging Church in Paul's day, what would you do? How would you be an emerging Church then?

Well, you would say this is a world where everybody worships a lot of gods, so let's put up a bunch of idols in our church. Let's do this. This is a world full of homosexuality. The Roman world was rampant with homosexuality. So we've got to embrace that. There was, according to historians, there was a very, very far-reaching feminist movement where women were running around bare-breasted and carrying sticks and acting aggressive. If we want to really reach this world, this is how people in this world think, let's do that. That will be a good thing to do. Or maybe we could even go back further and let's say you're living in the Old Testament. What would you do in the Old Testament time to accommodate the culture? You'd put up idols, right? Maybe you'd have one of the priests of Molech come and talk in your meeting. Hey, let's have a priest of Molech come over and tell us how he does mysticism. Well this is exactly what the Bible forbids. This is exactly what God condemns. And in the New Testament this is exactly what John...keep yourselves from idols, you don't do that. It's all about separation. How can we come in this age and say what we want to do to really reach this age is bring in all the gods of this age, all the idols of this age and bring them into the church.
PHIL: And let's just have a conversation.
JOHN: Yeah, and let's have a...well, that's what the emerging people talk about. They say it's not a theology, we don't teach, we aren't pastors. The word "sermon" scares them. They hate that word. But they keep talking about the fact that we want to have a conversation. So it never has an end, it never has an objective. Nobody's right or nobody's wrong, it's just this unending conversation. It's just a lot of talk without a conclusion.
PHIL: Now I want to come back to this idea that preaching scares them, but before...before we get there, let me just follow up on something you said a minute ago about how it's just utterly absurd that the church would run after post-modern ideas. And yet on the other hand, and I agree with you, it's absolutely absurd that we would do that. It seems to me Scripture is clear that you don't ape the fashions of the world. On the other hand, both you and I came to Christ in an era where the chief enemy was modernism. And we came up in a kind of evangelicalism where the key enemy was modernism. People understood that. Mainstream evangelicalism always stood against modernism. Here comes a movement that professes to be and claims to be a movement against modernism. You could see in a way why naive Christians would think this must be a good thing, it represents the death of modernism, that's always been the enemy of truth and so on. And in fact, some of these people would look at you, John MacArthur, and say, "You may not realize it but in resisting post-modernism, you are showing yourself to be a modernist." How would you respond to that?
JOHN: Well, the bottom line is you don't define somebody by what they're against. Being against modernism, or being against post-modernism doesn't mean anything. Being against any philosophy doesn't mean anything. What are you for is the issue. And therefore nothing...to say Im against modernism because modernism says that there's no divine source of truth. I'm against post-modernism because post-modernism says you can't know the truth, you can't be sure about the truth. I think both of those are wrong, I'm against them both. But I could be against them both and be an atheist. I could be against them both and...and be a Jehovah's Witness, that doesn't prove anything. That is just a silly sort of straw man kind of thing. To say that they're against modernism is meaningless.

Look, in the modernist environment, you either were not a modernist or you were one. There wasn't really any middle ground. Either the Bible was written by God and divine revelation was a source of truth or human reason was a source of truth. And so it was...it was a clear-cut world. I...I went to seminary during that era and we were in to modernism. We were trying to understand how we would defend the Bible against the attacks of the modernists who denied its divine authorship and inerrancy and all that. I understand that world. There was no such thing as sort of middle ground. You either believed the Bible was the Word of God, or you were a modernist. There wasn't a lot in the middle.. So we were all against modernism. And I think it's the same today. You either believe the Bible is the clear revelation of God, or you don't. And there, really for me, there isn't any middle ground. It either is the Word of God or it is not, and the bottom line is, it claims to be. And if its claim is bogus, if its claim to be the Word of God is bogus, then all its other claims are suspect. So...and if its claim to clarity is bogus, then all its other claims are suspect. So there's really not any middle ground in my mind. I mean, I admit I'm kind of a black and white person. But I'm convinced that as much as I was against modernism because it denied divine authorship of Scripture, I am against post-modernism because it denies divine clarity in Scripture. Don't tell me God has spoken but He mumbled.
PHIL: So the battleground has shifted in this sense...the modernist said, "We aren't convinced that God is the author of Scripture." A post-modernist could say, "Yes, I believe Scripture is the Word of God in some sense, it's just not clear." The effect is the same, isn't it? Because it eliminates any authority from what God said.
JOHN: Sure. And you could get there another way. You could get to the same point by misinterpreting it. And there have always been people who come along, whether in the modern era or the post-modern era, who mangle the Bible. You've got all the cults, and isms, and chisms and all the rest of the stuff that misinterpret Scripture. That's another way to negate the Word of God. That's another way to obviate its message. You can deny that it's from God. You can deny that it's clear. Or you can just misinterpret it.
But in every...and you...you pointed this out to me, my whole life has basically surrounded these attacks on Scripture. The modernist attack, denying its authority and inspiration. Then came what I called the Charismatic attack on Scripture which says, "Well, we believe the Bible but Jesus mystically tells us what it means and we have more revelation, additional revelation, words of wisdom, words of knowledge, prophecies." That's an attack on the singularity of Scripture. Then came the psychological assault on Scripture which kind of came in from the side and said, "Well, you know, the Bible can help to sanctify people but not until they get psychologically oriented and psychology plays a big role. Well that's another attack on Scripture. Then came what I call the pragmatic assault on Scripture. The Bible...people don't want to hear the Bible. The Bible is irrelevant, you can't stand up for an hour and exposit the Word of God, you've got to tell them stories and blah, blah, blah. So you have the pragmatic attack on the Bible.

Now you have essentially the Emerging attack which is the attack on its perspicuity or its clarity. It's mystery and it's secretive and it's hidden. And this is wonderful, as I think Kristen Bellsripe(???)...Bellswiffe(????) said, "She used to think she knew what it meant when the world was black and white, now that she doesn't have any idea what it means, the world is full of color." So look, the Bible is always under assault. The Word of God is always under assault, right? Genesis 3, "Has God said," that's Satan's first ploy, he gets Eve to believe that what God said isn't true, that God is flawed, that she shouldn't believe what He said. You're not going to die...you're not going to die, that's not true. God lied to you, it's not true what it said. And that just goes on throughout all of history.
It doesn't...to me, you just rise to the defense of the Scripture in the sense that you keep teaching the Scripture. It...it can handle itself, it really can handle itself. And so instead of me trying to defend the Scripture by external defenses, the evidences, the apologetics on behalf of the Scripture, I just keep teaching it and it's a lion, you just open the cage and let it loose. And it is its own greatest defense.
PHIL: So, the worst thing we could do would be to capitulate to this and soften the edges of what really is clear in Scripture.
JOHN: Yeah, and I think the thing that you want to avoid in the Emerging Church, and people get caught up in this...well they like...they don't like the seeker-friendly movement because it's big business, because it's manipulation, because it's schstik, it's entertainment, it's a big stage show and the guy is a sort of variation of a quiz show host, clown, comedian, funny guy kind of thing. They don't like that. They want more mystery. So they go back to mediaeval Catholicism and they light a bunch of candles. You know, really it smells like orthodox, Greek orthodoxy, Russian orthodoxy kind of approach, milling people. I've been in a Russian Orthodox Church that there's no center, there's no focal point, there's no pulpit, there's no platform. There are these guys, they swing these censors and smoke and stuff rises and these really weird smells and they just..they walk in a little parade. I don't know if you've been to one, and they go behind a screen and then they walk back out and all the time the people...there are no chairs...I'm talking about Red Square in Moscow...no chairs, there's no where to sit down because there's...it's a parade of milling. And then people mill over here and they mill and then these guys walk around. This goes on for like a half an hour and they're making these weird chants.
Well this...this...this is mediaeval Catholic or orthodox kind of mysticism that they have brought in to, I think, create the illusion of mystery. And then they attach that to the Scripture as if the Scripture is this mystery and this hidden stuff. Look 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and 2, the Apostle Paul says, "We've taken the mystery out of this, you now have the mind of Christ." The mystery's out, the hidden mystery God has disclosed to you. This is a great statement and the Spirit who understands the things of God has made them known and the mystery's out. The mystery's gone. Paul even says, "I'm an...I'm an apostle of the mysteries, the things that were hidden in the Old Testament time and are now revealed to you." So this idea of smoke and mirrors and mystery just meandering...if you go to one of those places, you take your lap top and you fiddle with it, and you drink a latte while some guy may be talking, you get up, you leave. You walk around. It's sort of like a modern techy version of Russian orthodoxy.
PHIL: Yeah, only they do have chairs, they're easy chairs and couches, but...
JOHN: Yeah, it's like Starbucks.
PHIL: Yeah, it's interesting how you describe that and it makes me think there is a lot in common between the Emerging Church Movement and neoorthodoxy.

JOHN: Oh, absolutely. The thing it has nothing to do with is the Bible, nothing to do with Christianity..it is an aberration. It is the new liberalism. It's...it's the new form of anti-biblical quote/unquote Christendom.
PHIL: Let me go back to what you said about preaching. If you think about the post-modern climate in which we live where tolerance and ambiguity and mystery and diversity and all these things are the virtues, the one thing that would probably be least likely to be found in an environment like that would be preaching.
JOHN: Right, because, first of all, nobody has a right to impose on anybody else their ideas. Since we don't know what it means, since we're too humble to say what it means, why would we teach? What am I going to tell you? If I am self-confessed ignorant, if I don't know what it means, if I can't know what it means, if to say that I know what it means is an act of pride, then I have nothing to say. That may be the best thing about the movement, that they really don't have anything to say.
PHIL: Except it seems to me like for people who have nothing definitive to say, they do an awful lot of talking.
JOHN: Yeah, but let me explain that. They're really, really aggressive at tearing down the church, tearing down historic theology, tearing down doctrines that are precious and sacred and have been a part of the church's life for centuries. That is...that's the lowest level of assault there is. Anybody can shred and destroy without having to build something back in its place. I have more respect for a heretic who says, "I don't believe that, but here is what I believe and let me show you why I believe this."
If you talk to a Jehovah's Witness, or you talk to a Mormon, or you talk to somebody in some aberrant approach to Christianity that has a theology, that has a system that has been put together and crafted, even though it's heresy or it's error, I have more respect for that than somebody who just comes in and shreds what people believe and walks out of that, leaving chaos everywhere. Because at least the person who teaches error and tries to defend it biblically, legitimizes the effort...if you know what I'm saying...legitimizes the effort to dig in. I can deal with that person. I can sit down and say, "Let me show you why you're wrong about that verse. Let me show you why you're wrong about that understanding. I'll take you to the Word of God and show you."
If you don't believe that you can know anything from the Bible, I can't do anything with you. So to me that's the lowest approach, just to dismantle something and then light a bunch of candles and offer yourself as the great new answer to the world's understanding of religion.
PHIL: That again is post-modernism in action. If you study post-modern literature, whatever, the thing you will learn is called deconstructionism.

JOHN: Yeah, and that's part of revisionist history. Deconstruct everything simply means dismantle what everybody's always believed. The egotism of it is pretty frightening, but yeah, revisionist history...now you can go to a university and be taught history and Columbus is going to come out to be completely different than we learned what he was and all the figures of history are manipulated and twisted around because truth is not the issue anymore. As an educator at the Master's College I get involved in these discussions. What is more important than truth is ennobling the dis...the heretofore disenfranchised masses who have been subsumed under the dominant European white male culture. And so in order to release these oppressed women and minorities, we have to reinvent truth because the liberation of these...of these abused people is more important than facts, since we might not have any reality about what facts are anyway. So history gets twisted, everything gets twisted. And this is what's being applied. This mentality of post-modernism is being applied to the Scriptures and to the church.
PHIL: In some ways, I think the Seeker-Sensitive Movement laid the foundation for disaster by minimizing Scripture and doctrine and all. And now a new movement comes along whose devoted to questioning everything and criticizing everything and deconstructing everything and the church is filled with people who have no foundation, no solid foundation of doctrine to fall back on.
JOHN: Yeah, and that's a huge problem. Some of the culprits in this, of course, you have to look at people like the Christianity Today people, and you have to look at Zondervan. Christianity Today is the flagship magazine that keeps promoting this. Zondervan Publishing which years ago was publishing Bible study tools, is now publishing all that they can get their hands on, it seems, of this kind of material.
PHIL: Yeah, they have a whole arm of their company that is devoted to just publishing.
JOHN: Yeah. And then you have You(?) Specialities Organization partnering with Zondervan to flood the world with this kind of material and aid and abet this tragic invasion. And that's what makes it so...so sad because they've embraced the post-modern world. They...the publishers have embraced post-modernism. "Hey, we all have our own truth, this is wonderful dialogue, conversation." The only part of the conversation they don't like is when you say, "That's wrong. That's sinful. That's undermining the Word of God." They don't want that part of the conversation.
PHIL: Let me...let me give you an example of what you're talking about here. I'm going to read you a quotation from a book, this actually was published in America by Zondervan. It's by a British post-modern evangelical author, he calls himself an evangelical. This quote that I'm about to read would really raise a fair question of whether the man is evangelical. The author here is Steve Chalk, the book is called The Lost Message of Jesus, and this book was highly controversial because of what he says about the atonement. And I want to read you just a brief section here and get your response to it. But this...this shows that some of the issues that are questions that are being raised, the doctrines that are being attacked are not just peripheral or questionable issues, but some of the things that are at the very heart of what we believe and proclaim. This raises a fair question about the gospel and what did the cross mean? That's the very thing he's talking about here.

He writes this: "The fact is that the cross is not a form of cosmic child abuse, a vengeful father punishing his son for an offense he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith. Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement that God is love. If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God toward human kind but borne by His Son, then that makes a mockery of Jesus' own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil."
PHIL: He's saying if you believe Jesus died as a substitute for sinners, then that's a form of cosmic child abuse...his words.
JOHN: God is a bad guy. Jesus is a victim. My response to that is that you couldn't be a Christian and say that. That's just...that's outright heresy. But the...the issue to me is what does this come from? Is this a...is this a...does he find Bible verses, texts of Scripture that led him to that conviction? That sounds like the language of an atheist, doesn't it?
PHIL: It does.
JOHN: It sounds like the language of a flat-out anti-Christian pagan atheist mocking the cross of Jesus. That's mockery. That's...that's outright mockery. These people...and he thinks he's really cute and clever, this kind of stuff is going to shock people...and it does, that's why it stood out when you read it. But this is not even Christian thinking. There's nothing about looking at the Word of God there. There's nothing about trying to interpret the Scripture. This is more of what I was saying earlier. Bashing the truth, shredding the truth without having put anything in its place. Being cute and clever and novel and shocking and all of that and leaving people stunned but with nothing else. This is the worst kind of stuff because it sows seeds of doubt in the most fragile. This is a...this is the stuff that victimizes the children who are tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine. But that's not even Christianity, that is an attack on Christianity so to call yourself an evangelical and attack the heart and soul of the gospel.
But, of course, we would expect this, right? Because Jude says that the sad reality is, he says, "I would like to have written to you about our common salvation," as he starts his epistle, but he can't, as hard as he may have tried because he realizes that there isn't going to be a common salvation, or a common understanding of the gospel and salvation if they don't earnestly contend for the faith. Because unless you're going to battle for the truth, you're going to lose it since, he says, the heretics have crept into the church unawares. They're embedded, they're in the church, they're in the love feast, they're surrounding you. They're at the table. They're right there embedding themselves in the church. And that's where they do their damage. That's why he calls himself an evangelical. That's not an evangelical viewpoint, that's a heretic. And that's...and if you have this mass of quote/unquote professing Christian people that make up the large part of the church, the visible church, with no discernment, with no real theological understanding, then this stuff can be very, very seductive to them, very attractive to them. So see, if it's worded clever...cleverly...that's what makes Brian McClaren effective. He's...he's clever, deceptively clever to the uninitiated and the undiscerning.

PHIL: In a way, do you think there's an opportunity here though for those of us who love Scripture and are committed to what it teaches and want to proclaim it with clarity if we're clear in return? For example, the quote I just read from Steve Chalk is practically the polar antithesis of what Isaiah 53 says about the cross, that it pleased God to bruise Him. It was God who put Him to death. And if we proclaim that clearly, that's just as shocking, really. What Scripture says is shocking also. It's not the fact that this is shocking that makes it wrong, it's the fact that it's wrong.
JOHN: Right. No, I think that's a great observation. I think...sometimes I feel like what I'm preaching now is shocking just about every Sunday.
PHIL: And gets more shocking because the culture moves further and further away from....
JOHN: Yeah...yeah and as you know, our church is just filling up with young people, just pouring in. And I'm like stunning them with this straightforward biblical truth because it's so not post-modern, it's so fixed and inviolable and clear. It isn't ambiguous and it's...it's absolute. And this is pretty shocking if you're a student at UCLA or USC, in the universities in this area if you're coming out of the post-modern thinking of the world of their age group. It is...you're right, it is as stunning to hear that as it would be for an older evangelical to...to read Steve Chalk.
PHIL: I've watched you over the years respond to this sort of thing cause the Emerging Church Movement is not the first movement, obviously, that has come along and tried to blur the edges of truth. And wherever you see someone blurring truth like that, it seems like your instinctive response is to proclaim the truth with just that much more clarity.
JOHN: Yeah, why am I like that?
PHIL: I don't know, but I'm glad you are. I think Scripture commands us to...
JOHN: Well yeah, I think it's just because of that. I'm asking the question really rhetorically. I...I'm like that because I love the Word of God. I...I...look, I'm not under any illusions that God can't protect His truth, but I do know that I have been commanded in the Scriptures to guard that which has been entrusted to me. And the guardianship of the truth means that I will rise to the defense of biblical truth. That's part of the mandate of a pastor. That's...that's a responsibility we all have. And I...the truth is what I love, the truth is what I proclaim and the truth is what I will defend. It's not personal. I'm not mad at people. I'm not...I'm not trying to protect my own little space. It's all about the truth. And as long as I am here and God gives me breath, I'm going to look at those things that come against the truth and I'm...I'm going to point out the best I can that they are inconsistent with what the Word of God teaches. That doesn't make me popular in all circles, it creates just the opposite. But that's a small thing to me...as Paul said. I really don't care what the people think, I know what God has called me to do and what is the essence of my faithfulness to Him is to proclaim and to guard the truth.
PHIL: Would you ever join the Emergent conversation in order to hear your point of view...have your point of view heard by them, or is it better, do you think, to stand apart from a movement like this and confront them?

JOHN: Well I think I would probably be more than happy to address them any time they would invite me. But that...I...I would do that in a Roman Catholic Church or an orthodox church or a Mormon church but so far I haven't had any invitation.
PHIL: As long as they didn't tell you what to say, huh?
JOHN: Yeah, look I'm not going to spend my whole life saying what I believe only to the people who already believe it, but I understand that this era today...there was a time years ago, I remember I was invited to a campus, a university campus, they had a Mormon, they had a Jewish rabbi, they had a Catholic priest and they had, I think it was a Hindu or something, and then they had me. And it was like let everybody pontificate on his deal and this... That wouldn't happen today, I don't think, because I don't they want to hear any dogmatism about anything from anybody.
PHIL: Right. Well it's happened a few times with you on Larry King, but you only get 30 second snippets at the most.
JOHN: Well, you know, that's a sound byte environment and Larry is the main guy and all the commercials have to play and they've got to do all the stuff they've got to do. So you never really get to process things the way you'd like to. And I think I'm there mostly for the agitation factor.
PHIL: But it sounds to me like what you're saying is your advice to a young preacher would be not to learn how to adapt your language to suit the post-modern generation, but to actually cultivate clarity and be definitive.
JOHN: You know, I would be so bold as to say this, I don't...I don't even think a person should go to a church that isn't answerable to a doctrinal statement. If you're going to a church that doesn't have a doctrinal statement, you need to get out of there because you're at the whim of a guy who can invent anything he wants any time. This entrepreneurial approach to the church is a very serious breach. "We need to hold to the faith once for all delivered to the saints." There needs to be accountability to a mature godly eldership that aren't just guys raised by the entrepreneurial leader in the church. We need to be...we need to be faithful to a doctrinal statement, to historic doctrine, to what has been stated through historic doctrinal creeds. This flash in the pan, invent your own deal entrepreneurial approach to the church is very, very serious. You know, in Calvin's day if you preached without being ordained, they put you in prison, they were so protective of the truth. I don't think people should even be in a church unless that church is anchored to a historic doctrine and there are...there is an association with or a fellowship with. That's one of the reasons we have the Shepherds' Conference, there's so many independent churches that we need to network these guys so they sense accountability to other preachers and other teachers who hold to sound doctrine. They need that accountability as well as that fellowship and that association. And the thing about the Emerging Church is there are no rules, there is no doctrine and there's no official connection, right?
PHIL: Right.

JOHN: It's completely amorphous, every guy does exactly what he wants to in his own eyes. And that is very, very dangerous. And when one of those guys comes along and says, "Well we do it our way and they do it their way," that's really dangerous stuff. You mean to tell me that you got it right after 2000 years? You're the guy who got it right? Can everything in the past, dump everybody in the present, it's your deal, you're doing it your way. I think God has been faithful to protect His truth and to pass it down through the centuries in the hands of gifted, godly men and churches and it's articulated in creeds and doctrinal statements and books and things like that. These guys don't want anything to do with that. They want the freedom to shape their own Christianity to suit their own whims.
PHIL: A few years ago, it's probably been fifteen years ago, so this was before there was ever any idea of the Emerging Church on any kind of wide scale, you wrote an article called, "What does it mean to me?" where you critiqued the common practice of people in Bible studies to sit in living rooms full of people and just go around the room and each person says what does this verse mean to me. You critiqued that trend. Doesn't it seem that the Emerging Church is actually just the institutionalization of that methodology? That's what...
JOHN: Yeah, I guess with the exception that we don't know what it means so maybe we should say the Emerging Church is what I think this might mean to me.
PHIL: Remove all the dogmatism from it.
JOHN: Yeah.
PHIL: Is this...do you think this is another fad that will quickly go away, or what do you think the long-term ramifications...
JOHN: It has nothing to do with the Bible. It has nothing to do with the true church. It has nothing to do with real Christianity. It has nothing to do with the Holy spirit and therefore it has nothing to do with God. Is that a fad? Sure it's a fad. It's just more pop religion. Does that mean that these people none of them are Christians? I think there are probably some people in here...in this kind of movement who may be Christians who are seduced by this in their ignorance they are the children tossed to and fro, carried about by every blowing wind of doctrine, which is a terrible situation. And then to elevate that as if that's real spiritual nobility is sad. But I think it is faddish because post-modernism is faddish. It will have a short shelf life, shorter than ever because everything exhausts itself faster in an explosive media environment. Because you run everything to its limit, you exhaust every option faster. You've got thousands of years of pre-modernism, hundreds of years of modernism, maybe a few years of post-modernism and I don't know what is going to come next.
PHIL: Maybe the Lord will return.
JOHN: Yeah.

PHIL: In fact, as you look toward the future, just the past generation or so, the Evangelical Movement, particularly in America but really worldwide, has been ravaged by a series of these fads. The Seeker-Sensitive Movement, and all the various fads like Purpose Driven books and Jabez books.
JOHN: And what's in common with all these, Phil? What's in common in all these is the downplaying, if not the absolute disappearance of theology. That's what's common to all of them, whether you're talking about the Willow Creek which is the Seeker thing back up one generation to Schuller, or back up one generation to Norman Vincent Peale, back up one generation to Harry Emerson Fosdick and take it back to the great Presbyterian controversy in the U.S. Harry Emerson Fosdick who denies Scripture is the father of Norman Vincent Peale, who is all positive thinking. He is the father of a neoorthodox named Robert Schuller who uses the lingo that sounds familiar but infuses it with all different meaning. He told me that personally in his own conversation with me. The father of Schuller is Norman Vincent Peale, the son of Schuller is Bill Hybels who buys in to methodology rather than theology which gives birth to Rick Warren which gives birth to the Emerging Church. And a common thread in all of it is the downplaying, the depreciation, the diminishing of theology, of biblical interpretation and the priority of the Word of God verse by verse being taught and being preached.
PHIL: Exactly. It's left the Evangelical Movement without any kind of boundaries or definition though. There is no coherent, cohesive movement called evangelicalism anymore. That word has lost its meaning.
JOHN: Sure...sure.
PHIL: So what do you see as the future?
JOHN: Well what could it be if you don't...if theology isn't the issue? Then now evangelical as a word describes a broad kind of undefined, non-specific connection to Christianity.
PHIL: And every man does what's right in his own eyes.
JOHN: Right. But the bottom line is, just look at any kind of movement, whatever it is, and see if historic sound doctrine and faithful exposition of the Word of God is at the center. And if it's not, you've got problems. Even if it looks like a traditional church, right? You've got traditional churches where they still sing some old gospel songs and the preacher preaches a 30-minute evangelistic message. Those people may have no more discernment than somebody in an Emerging Church cause there's not a substantial theology, there's no a faithful exposition of the Word of God at any kind of depth. And so that contributes to people's susceptibility to these other movements which the style of which is more appealing.

Okay, let's say you're an 18-year-old kid or 20-year-old kid, you're at the university, you're up to your neck in post-modernism, but you've gone all your life to, let's say, a Baptist church where you hear the same old evangelistic sermons, you sing the same old hymns. And you watch people live a sort of superficial Christian life and you grew up...and it was a little bit legalistic and maybe it was...it was not powerful, you know, and the Word of God wasn't captivating, and all of a sudden along comes a guy at school and takes you off to an Emerging Church and they're smelling things and doing candles and it's cool and the guy's really anti-church and he's whacking all the stuff that you thought was dumb about your church, and it's just...he's shredding your experience...and you're saying, "Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right, I hated that organ and that old soprano singing every other week. It never had any effect on my life." And you buy in to the deception of this thing. That's who they're capturing. I don't think it's nearly as appealing to the non-churched people as to the marginally churched young people. In fact, most of the leaders in the Emerging Church Movement are those guys that grew up in a traditional church that didn't have a lot of depth or breadth and they reacted to the superficiality and somewhat maybe even the legalism of it. They're the ones that have been the architects of this thing.
PHIL: You know, I think most of our listeners, the majority of them are lay people in churches where within the next few years, if not already, they are going to be under pressured to adopt and embrace some of the methodology and style and coolness of the Emerging Movement. How would you counsel them to respond if in their church there are leaders who are promoting this kind of thing?
JOHN: First of all, I would say this, if your church is really committed to sound doctrine, if it's really committed to the exposition of Scripture, it's going to be committed to historic theology. And in itself that...that should have some control because it's going to revere the past. It's going to honor the past. And that becomes some kind of a controlling factor.
If you're in a church that is just grabbing every new fad that's coming down the line, they're more committed to methodology than they are to theology. There may be some exceptions to that, but to me methods are a non-issue. It's...it's...it's about the Word of God and where there is a church anchored to the Word of God, they make changes very slowly because they revere the tradition, they revere the historic theology, they revere the Word of God and their changes are conformed more by that. So if your church is jumping on every bandwagon, the real issue there is that there's a lack of that great depth and continuity of holding to historic doctrine and that the sound teaching of the Word of God that should be the controlling factor. It's a symptom when churches jump quickly from one fad to another.
And I'll tell you how it happens, it's so sad. It happens very often in the transition among pastors because it's hard for pastors to make that shift. So the pastor leaves and somebody says, "Let's get a guy who is on the new edge." He comes in, these guys are very ambitious, they want to build the mega church, all their heroes have big, big, big effective deals. They come in, they can't pull it off in their town, you know, Visalia, or Hocus-Pocus, Texas, they can't pull it off. So they shred the church in a year or two and then they leave. And then the church is sitting there, having been led down the primrose path like the Pied Piper and they've all walked off the end of the pier. And they don't know where to go. That's the scenario. But what holds the church is that strong, strong biblical doctrinal foundation. When it's not there, it's very hard to prevent those trendy things from captivating people. And they do it with good intention...we're going to win more, reach more, and all that.
PHIL: Let me ask you one last question and kind of give you an opportunity to answer this at length in any detail you want.

JOHN: I answer everything at length, don't I?
PHIL: But I want you to preach here because I want to ask you about the perspicuity of Scripture, the clarity of Scripture. You started by characterizing the Emerging Church Movement as a movement that is infatuated with mystery that is elevated ambiguity. I think it was Brian McClaren who said, "Clarity is overrated." And I know you don't feel that way and, in fact, I would say probably the outstanding thing about your preaching in my assessment would be the clarity with which you teach. And you've told me many times that it's because you believe Scripture itself speaks clearly. Tell us what Scripture says about its own perspicuity.
JOHN: There are a lot of telling...telling texts, but I'll just give you one little insight into that. Jesus comes into His ministry and He starts to teach and speak to the crowds in Israel and He says things to them like this, "Have you not read? Have you not heard what Scripture says? Do you not understand the Scripture?" And He indicts them again and again and again for their failure to understand the Old Testament and therefore to see its fulfillment in Him. He doesn't say to them, "Oh look, I know why you're having a really tough time with Me, because the Old Testament is so hard to understand. There's so much mystery there. Why would I ever expect you to understand that I'm the fulfillment of that?" He never said that.
He says...He indicts them, "Search the Scriptures, they are they which speak of Me." What's wrong with you? It's as clear as it can be. We would look at the Old Testament and say, "Oh, you know, who could ever understand that?" Jesus says to these people, the common run-of-the mill hoi polloi in the crowd, you need to understand the Old Testament because it speaks of Me. Search the Scripture, it's all there.
That...that is the testimony of Jesus to the clarity of the Old Testament to the degree that He holds them accountable for its accurate interpretation. And He never said anything other than that.
I'll even go a step further. The Apostle Paul writes Romans and he writes Galatians basically to Gentiles. They have no understanding of the Old Testament whatsoever. They don't know anything. They don't even know there is an Old Testament until they are told that. And yet he builds these massive cases of understanding the Christian gospel based on the sacrificial system on the foundation of the Old Testament both in Galatians and Romans where the Law plays this huge role in any understanding of the gospel with an expectation that they could read the Old Testament and make the clear connection of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. He writes the Corinthians and in chapter 3 makes this amazing contrast between the Law and the Spirit, between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. And that's written to Corinthians, that's written to Gentiles.

So even pagans could read the Old Testament and understand it. You would think also that the Romans would be expected to understand the book of Romans, right? That they're coming out of a pagan environment, they're converted Gentiles and they're supposed to fully understand the book of Romans. Well what does that...what are these Emerging Church people saying to us, that we can't understand we who are Christians who know the Old Testament and the gospels and the New Testament? We can't understand what Paul meant when he talked about justification? Steve Chalk is trying to tell us this is some kind of child abuse when we understand exactly what God did in putting Christ on the cross, it's crystal clear.
So I think the expectation of Jesus and the expectation of the Apostles was that people could understand it. Another thought, everybody that received the New Testament letters was a new Christian. Romans wasn't written to scholars, it wasn't written to seminary professors. It was written to a congregation of people who could hear it read and understand it. That's clarity. And the expectation was they were accountable to understand it and to apply it. And Paul even says at the end of his letters that you need to hear what I have written and you need to obey and my passion and my prayer for you is that all of this truth will...will capture your heart, that you will increase, he said to the Philippians, in knowledge and understanding he says to the Colossians, he said it to the Ephesians. So I think the testimony of Scripture itself is to its own clarity. And to come along and say that the Bible is not clear is then to accuse God, Christ, the Holy Spirit and the Scripture itself of claiming something for itself that it can't deliver. That's pretty serious.
PHIL: John, I know I speak for lots of our listeners when I say thank you to you for all the work you do in helping to make Scripture clear and understandable for all of us and thank you for your study and diligence and thanks for this hour. This has been very informative.
JOHN: Well, Phil, thank you and I know you know all these things very well and you're sharing the same convictions that I have. And together we're going to endeavor to be faithful and to keep this ministry faithful to these very truths. And the dominating truth is that God's Word is supreme.
PHIL: Thank you, John. And for those listeners who are interested in following this subject up further, I want to mention that you've got a new book coming out that deals with many of these issues, interacts with some of the writings of the leaders of the Emerging Church Movement on various fronts. The book is called The Truth Warand it's scheduled for release in the spring of 2007, so watch for it and be prepared for that.

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