Dentists and Hebrews 4:12

I went to the dentist recently. If there's anything I hate to do more than going to the dentist, it's... well, I can't really think of it right now. The dentist is awful, and I hate going. Always have, always will.

Rarely has a song so accurately captured a profession

The worst part may not be the pleasure they enjoy inflicting on their patient-victims. As much fun as I enjoy having an iron hook jammed into my gums repeatedly, it still might not be as bad as the scolding. You know the part, where they find something, anything, to belittle you for. You're not brushing enough, and if you are you're doing something wrong, and you need to floss more, unless you floss like you're supposed to in which case you probably floss too much and are damaging your gums... No matter how clean your teeth were, no matter if your entire visit took less than five minutes, they have to end it by letting you know that you're utterly incompetent in oral care and your mouth is revolting.

While I was being told that my oral care is so awful it deserves prosecution for war crimes, I couldn't help but think of Hebrews 4:12. Wait, the feel-good verse about the Bible being awesome? Yep, that one. Let's take a look at that verse in context, and see how the fault-finding dentist is a bad parable for one function of the word of God.

In Hebrews, the author is encouraging Christians facing persecution to not abandon the faith and return to their old way of life. He does this by systematically proving the superiority of Christ to every aspect of old covenant Judaism (and by extension all man-made faiths as well). Everything in the old covenant points to Jesus, he is its fulfillment, salvation is only possible through his work alone, and to abandon the faith is spiritual suicide, because any other system is necessarily unable to save. Now that Christ has come as the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises, there is no other way. So Hebrews has two themes continually interwoven, the absolute supremacy of Christ, and the need to persevere in the faith.

In Hebrews 3-4, the author draws a parallel between the work of Christ and the work of Moses/Joshua. As Moses delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt, Jesus delivers us from slavery to sin and fear of death (2:14ff). As Joshua led the people into rest in the Promised Land, Christ is leading his people to the greater rest which still remains, the promised "Sabbath rest for the people of God" (4:9).

But there was a problem with ancient Israel, and a warning for us today. Did all who started on the Exodus enter the Promised Land? No. In fact, other than Joshua and Caleb, every single Israelite 20 years and older died in the wilderness. They had gotten right up to the edge of the Promised Land - and there they rebelled against God. His judgment was to send them back into the desert to wander and die, and their children would enter the land (Numbers 13-14).

The author uses this example as a warning and exhortation to us. "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end" (3:12-14). And again, our primary text:

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (4:11-13)

As Israel came to the edge of Canaan, the author pictures us coming to the entrance to God's eternal rest. The standard by which we will be judged, by which it will be decided whether we enter the rest or die in the wilderness, is the word of God. Have we obeyed God's word? And not just our actions - even our thoughts and intentions are judged by God's holy standard.

And nothing will be hidden from God's sight - everything is laid bare before Him. You can try lying to the dentist about flossing every day; when your mouth is opened wide, the truth is evident to him. You can try lying to God, saying "All these I have kept from my youth" (Luke 18:21), but do you really imagine God doesn't see?

The dentist's ability to find fault is nothing compared to the convicting power of God's law. "Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no man will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:19-20). When our lives and thoughts are laid bare and judged against the standard of God's word, there will be none who pass, and none who can so much as offer a defense. Every mouth is stopped. Every one is accountable. No one will be justified through obedience to the law, but the depth of our sin will be undeniable.

What hope is there? Who can endure such a judgment, having all exposed before God and judged by God's word, which can discern even our thoughts and the intentions of our hearts? What can we do other than accept the guilty verdict and our well-deserved punishment? Keep reading:

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16)

On our own, we are hopeless, destined to die like the rebellious Israelites. But we have a great high priest who, as the next six chapters discuss, has made complete atonement for the sin of his people. In Jesus, and only in him, we find forgiveness of sins and intercession before the Father. Through faith in him we are forgiven of sins, delivered from the judgment, and granted entry to God's rest.

The Curious Case of Opal Covey

When I moved back to Toledo a couple years ago, I had forgotten how much fun the mayoral elections can be. To help explain how the illustrious Carty Finkbeiner could keep getting elected, just look at the competition, including perennial candidate Opal Covey.

Recently Opal went on the radio to talk about her platform. It didn't go well. So she confronted the host about his sinful defiance of God's will that she must be mayor. Seriously. Just watch:

Another fun interview with her can be found here. Please watch this one to the end. You can thank me later.

These clips and her prophetic electoral history (four previous times she's been told by God she would be mayor, without success) raise a host of questions. The shenanigans on display here don't come about in a vacuum, and frankly what she's doing, while maybe more exuberant, is far too familiar.

1) Where are the people to defend her? Why is there no mention of this on charismamag.com or charismanews.com? She has a prophetic word from God and is being mocked and resisted - why don't they take up her cause? And lest you think this is just too far out there for them to defend, take a look at what they actively promote, and tell me how this is any different from, say, a typical Jennifer LeClaire piece.

2) Why is nobody proposing an "open but cautious" stance? How is it that we all instantly know this is total garbage, but with other 'prophecies' and 'tongues' we're supposed to wait and see because you never know? What, specifically, is the difference between this and the thousands of 'words from the lord' that will be spouted at charismatic churches this Sunday?

3) How is it that a talk radio host in Toledo, OH knows the simple equation that self-proclaimed prophet + false = false prophet, and he's not afraid to tell her so (even as she speaks in tongues against him!), but major evangelical leaders and theologians can't figure it out?

4) How is her schtick any different from what happens daily on TBN? How is she different from the New Apostolic Reformation or IHOP or Chuck Pierce or Patricia King or Benny Hinn or Pat Robertson or Bill Johnson or the Elijah List or Todd Bentley or...

5) Is it the William Tapley effect? As Chris Rosebrough often points out, William Tapley plays the same game as Robertson, Hagee, Cahn, and many others who rake in millions while he's a laughingstock. Why? They're slick and polished, while Tapley is... well, just watch his videos. Is that all that's at play here, why Opal Covey is a laughingstock while Bill Johnson has a global following and TBN rakes in cash by the billions? What exactly is different about her, other than the polish?

6) Note carefully the "I speak in tongues against you". Somehow tongues went from declaration of the wonders of God in understandable foreign language previously unknown to the speaker (Acts 2) to gibberish random syllables as a curse. In other words, from spiritual gift to witchcraft. Now, is that common practice in charismaticism? Before you answer, consider the word-faith theology of Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, and their ilk, the idea that you're a little god who creates the future through the power of your words. How is what she did any different?

7) While it's easy to dismiss her as crazy and disturbed, does she understand the implications of what she's saying better than many? Consider - she claims to have a prophecy that she will be mayor. Fred Lefebvre doesn't accept it and seems to work against it (by exposing her utter lack of qualifications). So she accuses him of the gross sin of opposing the work of god, and pronounces judgment on him. Because god told her she would be mayor, everyone who has heard the prophecy is morally bound to obey, and disobedience to her word is tantamount to disobeying god, liable to the fires of hell.

It all makes for a good laugh, except for one thing - if she actually received a real prophecy, her pronouncement would be 100% correct. She didn't, and she's a false prophet and blasphemer, but if it was actually a word from God, she would have been correct that opposing it is vile sin.

So why does this woman understand this, but so much of the church doesn't? How many pastors have an extrabiblical 'vision' they claim is God's revelation to them? How many projects are launched with no justification beyond "God put this on our hearts" or "God gave us a vision for this"? How often is "God is telling me..." or "God is leading me to..." tossed out in casual conversation, as if direct orders from the almighty creator are on the same level as a comment about the weather?

Why do we put up with this? How do we not understand - if Opal Covey can understand it, I'm sure it's not beyond our grasp - that a divine revelation morally binds all hearers, and to oppose it is sin? If they claim the message is God's word, no matter how soft they sell it, to disobey or fail to support it is direct rebellion against God himself - if it's actually from God. If it's not, and at this point in redemptive history we can safely say it's not, then they are sinning by taking God's name in vain, and they're false prophets.

When we let that kind of thing fester unopposed, a generation of Opal Coveys is the result.

The Obvious Happened. What Now?

The University of Toronto, in good progressive fashion, started using "gender-neutral" bathrooms in some dorms. You will no doubt be shocked to find out that college guys like looking at naked girls, and some particularly sleazy ones decided to do so without the girls' permission.

So what do we make of this? It's tempting to start with "I told you so" and "How could they not see this would happen?", and plenty of good folks are already on that train. The point needs to be driven home that this result is entirely predictable, and this foolishness needlessly puts women and children in harm's way.

There's one problem nagging at me, though. I have a hard time buying the underlying assumption - that the people responsible for these asinine policies couldn't see this coming. These are generally people with advanced degrees - no matter how worthless those degrees may be, they require some intellectual acumen to obtain. Am I really to believe they are capable of academic achievement, yet utterly ignorant of what could happen when young males are granted free access to naked vulnerable women?

Of course they knew what would happen. They don't care. Advancing the progressive agenda is much more important to them than frivolous concerns like the safety and purity of women and children. There are goals to accomplish, and if some women and children have to be sacrificed - through sexual assaults, being torn limb from limb inside the womb, whatever - along the way, that's collateral damage they're willing to live with. Eggs and omelets and all.

The ultimate goal isn't feminism or 'equality' or a gender-free society or any small potatoes like that. Those are mere means to their doomed-to-fail end: the eradication of God. It's the same goal humanity has shared since Genesis 3, when our father Adam rebelled against God and exalted his own creaturely wisdom above that of the Creator. Following Adam's sin-corrupted nature, we rebel against God and fight against all that necessarily flows from Genesis 1:1. God created, and therefore has all sovereignty and right to define. We want to rule, so we do all we can to defy God.

And so we have these projects to cast off what God has said is good. God created male and female, so we invent the choose your own gender adventure society. God rules over life and death, so we claim for ourselves the right to kill at any time, for any reason; people are only alive when we deem them worthy of life. God created man in His image and gave him dominion over animals, so we imagine man in the image of ancient apes, just another animal, one the world would be better off without. There is no truth so obvious that we won't overturn it to send the message, "We are in charge here!" There is nothing so good that we won't destroy it to spite God.

The problem isn't ignorance, but wickedness. The cure is not common sense (though a dose of common grace sure wouldn't hurt!), but repentance. Foolish policies like the gender-neutral dorm bathrooms come from despising the obvious, but not merely the obvious about boys and girls. It comes from despising the obvious truth that God created and rules over us; we have sinned against Him, and deserve nothing but the harshest judgment. Our only hope is to repent and turn in faith in Jesus Christ, trusting his propitiatory death for sin and righteousness credited to all who trust in him alone.

Trailblazing on the Broad Path

I had no intention of writing or hopefully even thinking about TD Jakes ever again. But then I saw this article in my twitter feed, and here we are.

Short version, he's OK with "gay marriage" (or at least the government backing off and allowing whatever), his views on homosexuality are "evolved and evolving", and he thinks at least some churches should openly embrace unrepentant homosexuals. In fairness, for now his Potter's House isn't yet openly gay-embracing, but these statements definitely open the possibility.

I'll let others dive into the more fun aspects here, such as his anti-inspiration description of Paul's letters and his postmodern "I'm not God, so I can't know what any of this means!" hermeneutic, and focus on why he's doing this now.

Above all else, remember that Jakes is a money-grubbing televangelist whose primary theological aim is prosperity - his personal enrichment at the expense of the gullible. This is almost certainly a trial balloon, just wanting to see what kind of reception they get from their victim/donors.

In the wake of Obergefell, it's only a matter of time until churches, even false-gospel outposts of hell like Potter's House, lose tax-exempt status if they continue to oppose homosexuality. Not only will they need to start paying taxes, their income is likely to fall, as people may not be willing/able to give as much without the accompanying write-off. It makes sense to compromise to keep that exemption.

Unless, of course, the outcry against the decision is strong enough. If a large percentage of existing donors are angry enough about the change and stop donating, it could be worse financially than losing tax exemption. In that case it would make financial sense to hold firm and suffer the consequences - and maybe even pick up new donors in the process.

We could add that a church might hold firm because of the clear teaching of God's Word, but, well, TD Jakes.

So I think this is a trial balloon. They no doubt have run numbers on what losing tax exemption will cost, and they're gathering data to project loss (or even potential gain!) from openly affirming homosexual sin. If the numbers are right, expect them to make the formal move soon enough.

And don't be naïve enough to think this stops here. How many megachurches with debts in the tens of millions and budgets that are already stretched too thin can afford to lose tax exempt status? Do you see Andy Stanley or Ed Young or your local Creek holding the line on clear biblical truth, at the potential cost of millions a year?

So give TD Jakes credit. He's nothing if not a shrewd businessman and a trailblazer. Many others will follow the path he's blazing, which is coincidentally broad and leads to destruction.

The Lamest "God Told Me"

This weekend there's a conference in Houston that I would have loved to attend, but will be unable to. The theme of the Sufficient Fire conference is the sufficiency of the Word of God, which stands in stark contrast to the constant barrage of "God told me" theology plaguing evangelicalism. But just because I can't go doesn't mean I can't participate my own unique way - by compiling the lamest examples of someone playing the "God told me" card anywhere on the internet.

I'm not looking for the usual suspects and low-hanging fruit. I mean, any day now Pat Robertson will come down from the mountain with prophecies God gave him for 2015 (much like last year, and every year). We're only a few weeks removed from Perry Noble claiming God told him to preach a sermon against the Ten Commandments and the gospel. That stuff - it's just too easy and obvious, and far better people write far better responses to it.

No, the niche I'm going for here is the utterly lame. The times when someone claims "God told me" or "God is leading me to", and you just can't believe they would waste such a trump card on something so incredibly trivial or stupid. For example:

About ten years ago I was leading a Bible study for my church's singles group. My friend Mitch, the leader of the group as a whole, had been trying to get his old friend Jon to come, and one week he finally agreed. Jon missed that study, and the next time we saw him, we asked what happened.
 
"Well, I was planning on going to Bible study, but God told me not to."
 
Oh really?
 
"Yeah, I was going to go, but I heard God say, 'Jon, I want you to go to the video store instead.'"
 
Oh, I bet. So what did the Almighty tell you to get a the video store, pray tell?
 
"A History of Violence. Don't ever watch that, it was awful!"

There you have it. A guy claimed God told him to skip Bible study to rent an awful movie. But at least we were warned not to see a movie we already had no intention of watching!

I would like to think it can't get any lamer than that. But this is your chance to prove me wrong. Put your examples of the most ridiculously pathetic times someone has thrown out a "God told me" around you. And then we can all thank God for the Bible, so we don't need to engage in such nonsense.

No Bad Malarkey Puns

Unless you only get your news exclusively from official Southern Baptist sources or Charisma Magazine, you've probably heard that Alex Malarkey, the boy whose 'visit to heaven' was chronicled in the book "The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven", has finally gotten word out that the book is his father's embellishing of stories he told to get attention. In other words, he never went to heaven (duh), told some wild stories, his dad turned them into a book and made off with loads of cash. Also, we found out that the publishers and bookstores knew this years ago, but continued to peddle it for filthy lucre.

Many pixels have been and will continue to be darkened over this saga, and frankly there will be better places to get news and commentary than here. My main contribution here will be to clarify one talking point and preemptively shoot down another that's sure to come out.

1) The publishers/bookstores just found out this was a fraud. I've already linked Phil Johnson's documentation showing that Tyndale House knew that Alex disputed the book as far back as 2011, despite their claims that they just found out last week. But that's not what I mean here.

I mean that they knew it was a complete load of garbage the instant they saw a manuscript, or even heard a pitch for the book. Seriously, this isn't Discernment 101, this is like the intro to the syllabus for Remedial Discernment.

Did Alex Malarkey die, go to heaven, and come back with a report for us? No. Did Colton Burpo or Don Piper? No. Did the next person to make this claim, or the next, or the next? No, no, and no. And so on.

They didn't just find out this was a fraud. They just found out (in 2011) that Alex was recanting his story. But they should have known all along this story was a bucket of horse manure. (On the bookstore side, the SBC officially condemns this type of book as heretical nonsense, yet their bookstore chain (Lifeway) continues to sell them. This is one of the major driving forces of #the15, a push to call elites to account for things like peddling heresy for profit.)

2) Unbelievers are slandering the church because of this. I have seen this lament, due to how many news and faux-news organizations are covering this and how the reprobate are openly mocking. But what I anticipate - I'm surprised I haven't seen it yet - is that this will be thrown at #the15 and the like. That is, they will say that the reason people are mocking Christ and his church is that they pushed to get the truth and make it known. If we had been content to leave things be, they would have no cause to mock.

I would suggest they take it back a step further - the cause for mocking here isn't that the truth came out, it's that the book was produced at all, then peddled and bought en masse. The problem isn't that Pulpit and Pen got the backstory to the book, it's that Tyndale House published it as if it were a Christian book at all. The problem isn't that people pushed Lifeway to discontinue the book, but that they ever sold it in the first place.

My crazy idea is that there would be less to mock if Christian publishers and bookstores showed as much discernment as a moldy tangerine, and reject obviously anti-Christian books like this outright. People aren't mocking because we've spoken when we should be silent, but because they were silent when they needed to speak.