Should We Follow Gamaliel's Advice?

Acts 5:38-39 reads:

"So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!"

Recently I've been seeing this come up over and over, exhorting us to stop fighting against perceived false teachers, heresies, and unbiblical practices. If it's not true, the reasoning goes, it will die out and go away. And if you're wrong and it actually is true, well, you don't want to oppose God, do you?

Is this an appropriate use of this passage? I think not, for numerous reasons.

First, it's an inference drawn from a narrative which is exactly the opposite of direct commands, such as Titus 1:10-11 and 1 John 4:1-6, as well as descriptions of the church such as Ephesians 4:11-16. In interpretation, the clear always trumps the unclear; clear doctrinal teachings explain the narratives. To subvert clear, unambiguous teaching by making it subordinate to possible inferences drawn from narratives is twisting the Bible on its head. It's a sure-fire recipe for disaster.

But even if that clear teaching wasn't there, would this even be good advice for Christians? True, it's the words of scripture - but it's the words of a blasphemous enemy of the church plotting the best way to eliminate any memory of Jesus Christ*. Well guess what, the words "He has uttered blasphemy" are recorded in scripture about Jesus - should we therefore hold that Jesus is actually a blasphemer? Of course not. Nor should we swallow this utterance unquestioned. At the very least, we need to have the same skepticism we use for the speeches of Job's friends.

And putting that aside, is it even good advice? Really, how often has "just ignore it and it will go away" worked? Maybe with an annoying little sibling you might get lucky occasionally. Maybe. But a health issue, a weed problem, a leaky faucet, Milton, or a subversive movement? Not likely.

No, I don't think this was good advice we should emulate. I think it was providentially terrible advice, just as God providentially made Absalom listen to Hushai's awful advice rather than Ahithophel's counsel. God protected his people by making their enemies act foolishly. By the time they got around to full-on attacks, it was too little, too late.

This advice of Gamaliel's is directly contrary to God's commands, was aimed at destroying the church, and proved to be spectacularly awful. Why, exactly, should the church follow his advice now? Oh that's right - it's those who are promoting unbiblical nonsense and want it to go unchallenged who suggest we should. How about we just obey God instead?

By the way, do you think they actually believe what they're promoting? Here's a test - go to one of their churches and start teaching, say, the full gospel, the sufficiency of scripture, etc. Do you think they'd let you go unopposed or shut you down? Exactly.


*Because he had been mentor of the Apostle Paul, I've often heard people speak of Gamaliel as if he surely must have been a Christian himself. And maybe there's some early-Christian literature describing his conversion, I dunno. But in this story, he's clearly not a Christian. He compares Jesus to some rabble-rousing nobodies and schemes how to make people forget about him, too. Certainly he doesn't speak up affirming Jesus as Lord and Christ! And a few paragraphs later, when we see his great disciple Saul, what is he doing? Assisting in the murder of Stephen, and going on a Christian-killing rampage. So his top man was a persecutor, he rejected Jesus as Messiah and wanted the church to just go away. We think he was a crypto-Christian... why, exactly?

Church Discipline vs Gutless Grace

I've sometimes said that no statement is simultaneously more obvious and controversial than "boys and girls are different". So much of current wickedness - being forced to pretend two boys can marry each other, a 6-year-old boy pretending to be a girl and everyone else being forced to play along - comes from fighting against perhaps the most obvious fact of personhood. If boys and girls are different, these things are reprehensibly wicked. If they're not, then... um... you know, I can't even imagine what to put here. The fact that male and female are different is so blazingly obvious, I can't even think of what to use to illustrate what things would be like if they weren't. Yet that's what we're (very selectively) being forced to pretend. Yeah, that'll end well.

But there's another statement that, within the church is nearly as obvious and nearly as controversial. You ready? "You can judge a tree by its fruit". Aside from pretty much being a tautology, you have Jesus directly teaching it, so you'd think that would settle it. But you'd better have a strong backbone if you try to teach it, or worse yet, act like you believe it. Prepare for the onslaught of "you're confusing law and gospel!" protests, and all manner of assaults from the Gutless Gracers, who seek to exalt grace by insisting that it does nothing but provide fire insurance. I never cease to be amazed at how hard people will work to denounce the thought that a new creation will somehow be new.

I was thinking of this recently as I read some texts on church discipline, Matthew 18:15-20 and 1 Corinthians 5. I seriously wonder how someone who holds to Gutless Grace would handle those passages. That position maintains that there is no necessary connection between your profession of faith and your ensuing life - you can be justified without subsequently ever experiencing even the tiniest bit of sanctification. You can become a good tree while still producing nothing but poisonous fruit and thorns; Jesus is your savior but Satan remains your lord.

Now read those passages, which address how the church is to deal with sin. Notice first, the one being disciplined is one who claims to be a brother - he professes belief in Christ. Second, the discipline is brought on by his actions - in one case sin which he refuses to repent of, in the other case sin which is especially vile. Finally, the last stage of punishment is to put him out of the church, to hand him over to Satan, to have nothing to do with him (such as sharing the Lord's Supper with him), to treat him as an unbeliever.

Put it all together, and here's what you get. Based on his actions, the church is to deny the validity of his profession of faith. The church is to unite and say that he is not one of them, to deny him any form of fellowship, which is only appropriate if he is an unbeliever. Which is to say, because of his conduct, they are to have no confidence that he is a brother in Christ. If a man's belief doesn't affect his actions, the church is to regard it as no belief at all. If he claims Jesus as savior but not as lord, the church is to contradict him and disassociate from him.

So how does the 'Jesus as savior only' position deal with this?

Osteen Thoughts

Lest the title of the post confuse you, this will not be a series of banal idiocies that might someday attain the level of wisdom found in discount fortune cookies. No, this is not the thoughts of Osteen or snippets from any Osteen book or sermon, but thoughts about Smiley Joel. Now I realize that this may be low-hanging fruit; so be it. He's as popular and dangerous as ever.

Most often when I see something about Joely-O, it comes across as if he's a bumbling idiot. He's just shiny-happy and smiley, and his theology is vapid and empty. The problem is thorough incompetence. And I can totally get that. Just listen to him dodge questions any 3rd-grader in Awana can handle easily, and you'll definitely think there's just no there there.

And that is where I think the danger lies. He may come across as a bumbling well-meaning doofus like Verbal Kint, but his Keyser Soze-esque heresy [no spoiler alert because that movie's old enough to vote, oh and Darth Vader is Luke's father] is every bit as deadly as that of any other prosperity non-gospel hawker like Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, TD Jakes, Paula White, Robert Schuller, etc. He's not an innocent incompetent who's in over his head. He's yet another following the was of Balaam son of Beor, actively working for your destruction.

Want an example? Here you go. Listen to Osteen explain his theology, and Chris Rosebrough react appropriately. Just a warning - the Osteen update music is, uh, special. (On a side note, his update musics are great examples of polemical sarcasm. You learn so much about Mark Driscoll, Perry Noble, James MacDonald (2 songs!), Patricia King, William Tapley, or Rick Warren before you even get to the story.) It's about 20 minutes, but it's worth it if you think Osteen is just empty but harmless.

There is no such thing as empty teaching. If the teaching is devoid of God's truth, it will be filled with demonic lies. No exceptions, no matter how big of a smile it hides behind. Osteen's teaching is deadly. Keep yourself and anyone you love far, far away.

Something Worse Than Shame

There is something worse than feeling shame when you do something shameful. As God said through Jeremiah:

How can you say, ‘We are wise,
    and the law of the Lord is with us’?
But behold, the lying pen of the scribes
    has made it into a lie.
The wise men shall be put to shame;
    they shall be dismayed and taken;
behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord,
    so what wisdom is in them?
Therefore I will give their wives to others
    and their fields to conquerors,
because from the least to the greatest
    everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
from prophet to priest,
    everyone deals falsely.
They have healed the wound of my people lightly,
    saying, ‘Peace, peace,’
    when there is no peace.
Were they ashamed when they committed abomination?
    No, they were not at all ashamed;
    they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among the fallen;
    when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,
says the Lord. (Jeremiah 8:8-12)

But there's something significantly better than shame, too. So here, from worse to best, are the three typical responses to shameful acts.

Worst: No shame at all, not even knowing how to blush. Being convinced that there's nothing wrong with it - or worse, that it's actually good. Some go so far as to demand the church and society formally bless and honor their shameful sin. We could call this a hard heart or seared conscience. It's really, really bad.

Sorta better-ish: Feeling shame when you do something shameful - but that's all. You know it's wrong, you feel it's wrong, you're convicted about your sinfulness, but you have no idea what to do about it. By the grace of God this may become godly sorrow. But too often it leads the other way. Instead of repentance unto life, worldly sorrow leads to death. Worldly sorrow attacks the symptom, trying to assuage the conscience by self-justification, or killing the conscience by heart hardening. It's better than being incapable of blushing, depending on which way you go from here.

Best: Repentance and faith unto salvation. Confess sin as sin, agree with God's righteous judgment against it, and admit that there is nothing you could ever do to atone for it. Turn to Jesus in faith, trusting in God's great mercy displayed in the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus. The sorrow and shame of lawful conviction lead you to repentance and trust in the only one who can save.

The world is constantly trying to eliminate shame by pretending that sin is OK. The saddest thing is when the church joins them in this self-destructive quest. What we have to offer is so much better than deadening the conscience - the actual removal of shame through the forgiveness of sin which comes only through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Brothers, don't hate them by telling them their sin is fine; love them by telling them how their sin can be forgiven.

Epistemologies Have Consequences

The last few weeks, Frank Turk has been re-posting an old series debunking the arrogant, ridiculous idea that old-timey people just had no concept of whether or not historical events actually happened. You know - they told these stories, and they were 'true' because they conveyed true ideas, regardless of whether they described actual events. Those simpletons just had no categories for stories meant to convey truth without having actually happened (words like parable, for instance). So we get these Bible stories that read like historical narratives, but of course they aren't, it's just because those ignoramuses had no idea concept of actual history vs myth. If you'd like to see a Pauline and Petrine sledgehammer wielded against this Ennsian jibba jabba, read here, here, here, and here. Enjoy!

It got me thinking back to a post I never got around to writing in about 2005, back when I was first introduced to Rob Bell and the Emerg*s. Remember this famous/controversial passage from Velvet Elvis?

What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births?

But what if, as you study the origin of the word “virgin” you discover that the word “virgin” in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word “virgin” could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being “born of a virgin” also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse?

What if that spring were seriously questioned? Could a person keep on jumping? Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live? Or does the whole thing fall apart?

Now if you remember, the typical conversation between a shocked Christian and a Bell fanboi went something like this.

Bellite: Rob Bell is awexome!!1!one!
Christian: Really? I heard he denied the virgin birth.
Bellite: No, he explicitly affirms it. He was just raising some questions. People r just h8ers.

And that would usually be that. Bell says he affirms it, so everything's OK, right? Not so fast. What he says here is every bit as bad as, if not worse than, outright denial. He's not saying it's untrue; he's saying it doesn't matter whether or not it is. It looks like a step further than Enns - not only do those ancient ignoramuses lack the concept of real history vs myth, to Bell it wouldn't make a difference if they did. True? False? Doesn't matter.

In fact, he's saying that this could be an outright lie intended to deceive pagan cultists, and it wouldn't matter a tiny bit. Think about that again: Rob Bell is claiming that lying Apostles could have made the whole thing up as a means of tricking cultists into "the way of Jesus", and it wouldn't have any effect on his faith. Actually, I kind of agree with him there - his 'faith' is such a mash of lies, deceptions, distortions, and jibba jabba, another lie here or there could hardly make a difference.

This is what made the kerfuffle over his "Love Wins" garbage so ridiculous. People seemed genuinely shocked that Bell was a universalist, as if he had been orthodox before that or something. Really? It was surprising that someone who bragged about his contempt for God's Word from day 1 would show contempt for particular doctrines contained within? Pro tip: if someone doesn't care whether the Bible is full of lies, he's probably not going to be the most faithful expositor.

Listen: when a guy's ministry consists of 'making people think' by asking innocent questions a la the serpent in Genesis 3, when he starts by ridiculing the truthfulness of God's Word and seeking to undermine the foundation of faith, when he is so openly contemptuous of Christianity and the very notion of truth itself, he's a wolf. Protect your flock from him, and move on.

Everything you needed to know that he was a rank heretic was right here (and a bunch of other places - he isn't shy about it!). Those who promoted him as if he were a Christian teacher, and those pastors who knowingly brought his vile teachings into their churches, will have a lot to answer for when the good shepherd demands an account.

Boring Testimonies

For some reason I'm not entirely sure of, I've been seeing a lot of mentions of Ergun Caner lately. Caner, as you may recall, was the president of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, a renowned conference speaker, the inventor of Double-Stuf Oreos, once ate a whole wheel of cheese, played Donatello in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action movie, didn't surrender after the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, climbed Mount Everest solo in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two, fought alongside Lewis and Clark at the Alamo, is the Lindbergh baby, and circumnavigated the globe thrice by riding a dolphin wearing pantaloons.

OK, maybe I didn't get every last syllable. But it's basically right. Basically.

The details of his biography don't seem to matter much to Caner. As Tom Chantry summed it up, "A kid from Ohio went around right after 9-11 telling churches that he was trained as a Jihadist/terrorist while he was growing up in Turkey." A little misstatement here, a tiny bald-faced lie endlessly repeated there, and we have a new 'evangelical' superstar.

I don't really remember this guy much, but the last generation's big testimonial liar was Mike Warnke. Dude rose to prominence by claiming to have been a converted Satanist high priest, only it turns out he was lying. Just lied to people, for God's glory, of course.

Now it's easy to see why these guys would lie - they acquired significant fame and wealth and power on the basis of their amazing testimonies. But even among people who are not aspiring to Christianoid celebrityhood, a similar spirit is alive and kicking. Most often it's well-intentioned (but sorely misguided), but the push to embellish our testimonies is all around us.

We loathe the boring testimony. Raised by Christian parents, never went all prodigal, came to faith at an early age? Boring. Who's going to be impressed by that? If you're at a Bible college and have a testimony-writing project, and that's your story, you will probably get a bad grade (not hypothetical, btw). Might want to throw in some rebellion - maybe a little drunkenness or something - so people will know how much you've repented. How will people know how awesome the life-transforming power of Christ is if they don't know what a hellion you used to be?

Have you ever heard someone tell his story, how he came to faith in Christ and was rescued from [drugs, illicit sex, a cult, liberalism, whatever vile thing you can name and many you shouldn't], and heard someone with a 'boring' testimony say something like "I wish I had done some of that so I'd have an awesome story, too"? Have you ever thought it yourself?

Why do we do that? Why do we even entertain the thought that we wish we had sinned more (so that our testimony to grace would be increased), or worse, that we should lie and claim we did? For one thing, we tend to forget just how horrifying sin is, that sin from which we've been completely forgiven can still have residual effects the rest of our lives. Instead of wishing we had sinned that way for a better conversion story, it would be a good opportunity to thank God for the grace that restrained your wicked, unregenerate heart from heading down that particular evil, self-destructive path.

But the bigger reason, I think, is that we're all Pelagian by (sinful) nature, and we struggle against remnants of it as long as we struggle with the flesh. That is, we can sometimes slip into thinking that the determining power in faith is not God's power, but the will of the listener. They will surely believe, if only our presentation is good enough to convince them. We think that conversion is merely changing sides in a debate rather than divinely-wrought regeneration. And so we fall into thinking that we can cut through their unbelief if only we have a more compelling story, and that would have been the case if only we had been worse sinners before we were saved.

So let's look at the least-dramatic conversion story imaginable, such as the person raised by Christian parents who came to faith early and never had a major period of rebellion. What kind of testimony does he have? Well, like all people, he was a rebel against the sovereign creator of all, and he gladly followed the ways of Satan. God has appointed a day when He will judge the world and punish His enemies, and he was an object of God's wrath. But God sent Jesus Christ to be a propitiatory sacrifice for our sin and raised him to life for our justification - he became sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him - and now all who are united to Christ in faith are forgiven of their sin, counted righteous in Christ, and reconciled to God. By God's grace alone he has been made alive, completely forgiven of all sin, and rather than bearing God's wrath eternally in hell, in the ages to come he will be lavished with the immeasurable riches of God's grace. And so God will save all those - and only those - who call on the name of the Lord Jesus, who repent and believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin, everyone whom God calls to himself.

You know, I'm not sure how that testimony needs embellishing. So I guess maybe what we should do is worry less about ourselves and proclaim Jesus more.

Questions for the Purpose-Driven Vision-Casting Blackabeans

"Now these in Blackabea thought themselves with their God-experiences more noble than those in mere Christendom; they received the extra-Biblical revelation with all eagerness, examining their circumstances, subjective impressions, and liver shivers daily to see if these things were right in their own eyes." (Not-Acts 17:11)

One of the big trends in what we still call evangelicalism over the last couple of decades has been the development of 'vision'. It goes by many names and takes many forms, but it all amounts to roughly the same thing - discovering extra-Biblical revelation of God's specific will, for you individually or for your church/ministry. You need to discover your purpose, and become purpose-driven, completely oriented towards fulfilling that purpose. You need to discern where God is working and how He is inviting you to join Him in that work. You need to identify God's vision for you and cast it to others.

Do this well, and your life will be meaningful and blessed. Your ministry will be more powerful that you can possibly imagine. You will experience God as you drive towards your purpose and fulfill your special calling and probably earn a trophy or something.

Fail to do this, and... oh man. I shudder to think of how horrible and purposeless and worthless your existence is. You'll be sentenced to the worst curse imaginable - being ordinary. Yikes. Just consider the horror of the man who loves his neighbor as himself, but never figures out where exactly he's supposed to be doing this or which particular neighbor he's supposed to particularly love, so he just loves them all indiscriminately. What a pathetic waste of protoplasm!

Clearly nobody would want to be like that, just being sanctified and obeying scripture all willy-nilly wherever he happens to be. No, we need something more. Obviously, we all must find our purposeful vision of God-experience. Like, duh.

But still, I have a few questions for the experts in this field. For instance:

How close to God's vision for my life is close enough? If God is calling me to be a missionary in France, and I get things a little messed up, and serve as a missionary in Belgium, is that OK? Or is my life and ministry doomed to endless frustration and worthlessness because I missed God's specific calling for me? What if it's not that close, like instead of going to France, I go to Pakistan or North Korea? Or maybe I'm not a foreign missionary at all, but instead just pastor a church at home for a couple decades. Is there any good that can come from that, or is it so far off my calling that it's a fate worse than death?

What if I love/evangelize the wrong people? You know - like what if God is working on my coworker Steve and inviting me to join, but I misinterpret the impression I got while praying my vision prayers, and accidentally told Brian about Jesus instead? Is it a sin for me to have proclaimed the gospel to the wrong person?

What if someone doesn't get on board with my vision? Can I make him another dead body in the pile behind my bus, or giving him a catapult ride out of the county? Isn't that more appropriate for, I dunno, prosperity-gospel spewing Sabellian false teachers than for actual Christians who just don't agree with my extra-biblical ideas? But wait - if my vision is from God, for them to disobey or even question it is sin. So even if they don't disobey anything actually in the Bible, I can still excommunicate them for the sin of disagreeing with me, right?

Isn't all the stuff that's actually in the Bible enough? I mean, Jesus gives a decent enough mission statement for his church, and there's a bunch of other stuff about what kind of people we will become and what we should be doing. Isn't that enough for equipping us for every good work, without the need for additional specific revelation? Where in scripture are we told to be looking for this kind of thing, anyway?

Remember when Gnosticism with its secret knowledge only available to a select few mega-apostles was such a threat to the early church? Why, exactly, do we need to re-introduce it and try to mainstream it?

Finally, did I really make it through an entire post about finding your special purpose without making a Navin R Johnson joke?