Prosperity Gospel

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of the prosperity gospel.  I see it so much at my job, this idea that if you accept Christ, then your life will be filled with constant material blessings, if you pray hard enough, or have the right “faith”.  This essentially says that you accept Christ to become healthy and rich; I feel it is basically saying that Jesus died on the cross so we could have comfort and pleasures in our earthly life.  This has really been bothering me lately, of course because these ideas are not at all biblical, and secondly because of the prevalence of this prosperity gospel that seems to be continually growing.  Why on earth do we think that Jesus died so we would be guaranteed comfort on earth?  Christ didn’t suffer all the physical pain of the cross and the incomprehensible (for us to even begin to grasp) pain of being separated from God because all the sin of mankind was thrown on him, so that we could have money and not get sick.  He endured all that so we could, even though we are worthless and undeserving, have a relationship with the perfect God who created the universe!  It honestly hurts and offends me to see what Christ has done for us become so distorted and twisted!  So what does Jesus have to say about what we can expect when we surrender to him and follow him?  Well I think Matthew 10 as a start, has a lot to say on this question; as Jesus is preparing to send out the twelve apostles, he says in verses 37-39 “”Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.  Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”  These statements by Jesus do not offer a life of ease; the very phrase “take up your cross” denotes difficulty and struggle.  Jesus is clear that if we aren’t willing to surrender everything for him, then we cannot be his followers.  But why should this surprise us?  If we truly believe that Christ paid our sentence in full, that without Him we could never come to God, because we could never earn it or be good enough, if we truly believe and trust that through Christ we have been given such grace and mercy, then how could we not give everything for him, out of pure gratitude?  If Christ sacrificed everything for us, who did not in any way deserve it, how can we expect to just sit back and not give our all for God, who deserves everything we have, not just because of His amazing gift to us, but simply on the fact that He’s God!  Jesus again makes it clear that following him does not guarantee comfort when he says in John 16:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world.”  Or we can take the passage in James 1, where we are told to consider it pure joy when (not if) you encounter trials, or even taking the life of the apostle Paul in to consideration: he was stoned, beaten, and shipwrecked, just to name a few.  Now I am not saying that every follower of Christ will have extreme suffering or difficulty in their lives and I am not saying that if God blesses a Christian materially, that there is something unbiblical about that.  What I am trying to get across is that we will still have suffering of some kind in our lives, but as James 1 elaborates, God will use it to draw us closer to Him!  There is a purpose in it!  The prosperity gospel doesn’t allow for this, it makes Christ’s death into a mockery and makes God a slave to our comfort and beckon call for healing, money, relationships, or whatever other worldly success we might desire, and insults our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world who suffer poverty, imprisonment, torture, and death daily for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ, claiming that any who suffer such things do so out of a LACK of faith! So in the end, the prosperity gospel belittles the suffering of our savior, mocks the hardships of our fellow believers, and trades selfless submission to our Lord for indulgent worship of self.

Ashley
jude.three.blog@gmail.com

Something I Preached and Some Things Preached to Me

            This past Thursday, I had the privilege of preaching the chapel service at the shelter. I preached from Galatians 4:4-9, focusing in on who Christ is, four reasons He came, and how those who have received Him ought to live that out. It seems to have been received with conviction, and has led to many further conversations with several of the clients. Praise God for using my meager words, and for creating opportunities for us to make His gospel known!
            Today I attended a conference put on by Voice of the Martyrs, where I got hear preachers from persecuted churches around the world. Some of the pictures were hard to look at, and the stories even harder to hear, but it was powerful reminder to remember those who are truly our brother’s and sisters and who are suffering and dying each day for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. May we never forget! It was particularly challenging when the speaker from North Korea told us that the churches of North Korea, who are being tortured and murdered with more brutality than perhaps any other Christians on earth, are actually in constant prayer for US! They pray earnestly each day that we would stop relying on our money and worldly freedom, and learn to rely fully on God and the only true freedom that is found in Christ. He said boldly that, for the Child of God, political freedom is irrelevant. In Christ we are free. If our Body is in chains, it is in chains to God’s glory. Even more challenging came the words of an Ethiopian pastor, who had himself been tortured horrifically with boiling oil. He pleaded with us NOT to pray for the persecution to stop! “That prayer is NOT Biblical” He declared with passion. He insisted that we ought to pray for boldness in the midst of the persecution, but that persecution is promised in scripture, and always leads to the growth of the church! He would gladly return and suffer, even die, that Christ may be known!
            Truly, may we never forget our suffering brothers and sisters. Let us pray earnestly for their needs, and even more, for their boldness to continue proclaiming the gospel! Let us be inspired by their faith, and declare it here, where as of yet there is no law to hinder us! How can we pray for THEM to be Bold and suffer, when we ourselves are cowards in a place where suffering is not even likely! Let us join with them in one mission, as one body, the body of Christ, who Himself suffered unto death so that we can be free…even if we are in chains.

Luke
jude.three.blog@gmail.com

Firm Foundation (part 5)

            The most common objection that I face in putting my trust in God’s revealed word in the Bible comes primarily from my Mormon and Muslim friends, who will insist that, sure, the Bible WAS given to us perfectly by God, but since then Men have changed it. They have edited, added to, deleted, and otherwise altered God’s intended words so that the Bible can no longer be trusted. Now, much of the evidence we have looked at so far is already based on the text as we have it today, but there is far more that can be said on this subject! As this is a blog and not a text book, I will give you the highlights. First, let’s look at what evidence we have of what the early Bible looked like. We have copies of the bible as a whole that go back within only a few hundred years of the original, and fragments that go back even to within DECADES of the original. I’m not talking just a few, either. The manuscript evidence for the Bible is very rich! It is wide spread in area, copies being found on multiple continents and very early even translated into many other languages. We also have many early Christian writers quoting the Bible often in their writings, allowing us to compare their quotes to the copies we have and see how they match up. Now, when we compare all of this, what do we see? Do we see differences between all these copies and translations and quotes? Honestly, yes. There are some differences. But let’s talk about that for a moment. When you have mostly lower class converts rather than professional scribes, and they are persecuted and so must copy their scriptures secretly, and they are doing so in a hurry because they want to get it out to as many people as possible, and don’t forget they are writing by hand, and not exactly with modern pens, there are bound to be some typos! This should be expected. Now, add to that the fact that they are writing on papyrus, which is basically large leaves stuck together into sheets to use as paper, and thus has natural lines on it, and it can be hard to tell certain letters apart, which can make copying correctly even harder. So, yes, we see errors and variations, but when you examine the large number of copies and translations and quotes, and compare them, it is most often not very difficult to figure out where such a mistake happened. Also, since in the ancient Greek language of the New Testament, word order in a sentence has little effect on the meaning, most of these variations have literally NO impact on what the text actually MEANS, since many of the variations are simply transposing words. One of the most common variations that will be seen, for example, will be that some copies might say “Christ Jesus” and other copies “Jesus Christ”. Even if we don’t know which way the original said it…does that matter? Does it effect how we understand the author’s message? Of course not! And so, if anyone tries to throw at you all the “thousands of errors” in the New Testament manuscripts, don’t let it fret you. Most of these so called “errors” are variations that have zero impact on what the text is saying, and in almost every case, by comparing everything we have, we can easily be confident in what the original said. Even scholars very critical of the Bible have admitted that with all the evidence we have today, the original copies of the books of the bible looked pretty much like they do today. Now, my critics would point out that I have used qualifiers “pretty much”, “most of these”, “In almost every case”. Why use these phrases? Well, because I am honest! There are a few passages that it is more complicated knowing for sure if they were in the original. But even if you take all of these, and liberally assume that they all do NOT belong (which is a leap of faith, but here is the point) they do not actually change ANY belief or doctrine of the Christian faith! No matter where you fall on these questions, the fact remains that the message of the Bible, even in all its finer details, is unchallenged by manuscript variation! We can be quite sure, if archeology can be trusted at all, that the Bible is today what it was 2,000 years ago in every way that matters! In other words, if you say the Bible is corrupt and untrustworthy, than to be consistent, you also must say that we can no NOTHING about history at all, because NOTHING is trustworthy!

            So, the Bible is trustworthy. It is the very word of God. It is truly a firm foundation on which to build our worldview. So, what about the final challenge, “if the Bible is such a great foundation, why are there SO many different churches? How come no one can agree on what it teaches?” This sounds like a powerful argument, until you really look at the evidence. Most churches that teach and practice a belief that the Scriptures themselves are truly the ultimate authority do NOT disagree on many things. Most of the variation comes in where other sources come in. Some churches add in church authority of tradition, or modern spiritual experience to their foundation, saying that things can be known fully based on these things, or that scripture should be read in light of these things, rather than these things understood completely in light of what scripture says about them. Now, I am NOT saying that such churches are not true Christians (Some are not, others are. Such things must be dealt with on a case by case basis, depending on the Gospel that is taught and the God that is believed in. We can do this by comparing their core beliefs to…you guessed it, what it taught in the Bible!). What I am saying is, when you change the foundation, you change the conclusions. Many churches may know the core truth, but let a mixed foundation distort many of the details. And of course, we are all fallible humans, and even the most Biblically devoted follower of Christ will get some things wrong and need to learn more throughout their life. None of us have PERFECT understanding, but the core of Biblical teaching is clear, no matter what name the church has on the sign.  

Luke

Jude.three.blog@gmail.com

Progress Report

Sorry about the black out in communication. Ashley and I have been busy finishing a short book of sorts, which is in peer review as we speak. It's nothing fancy, just a description of the Christian Gospel in detail to a homeless shelter audience. We hope to have it released locally within a couple months, and if all goes well, it will be available to shelters around the country by the end of the year, but we will see how it goes. Still much work to be done!

Tomorrow we will be hosting a meeting of local missionaries to discuss strategies for reaching local communities of Asian refugees from oppressive countries. There are quite a few such communities here, and we are excited about the opportunity to be a part of reaching them with a hand of friendship, and far more importantly, with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Finally, to those who are interested in hearing me preach, I found one of my sermons from last year posted on "sermoncloud.com". The link for the message is: http://my.ekklesia360.com/Clients/sermonaudioplayer.php?CMSCODE=EKK&siteid=819&sermonid=183960&useSkin=skin_plain.xml&CMS_LINK=http://my.ekklesia360.com&width=350&height=140

Please continue to keep us in your prayers, and we hope to back to posting regularly very soon.

God Bless you all,
Luke
Jude.three.blog@gmail.com

Firm Foundation (part 4)

            In college, I often had people question how I could believe something “just because it is in a book (i.e. the Bible). It amazed me how many people would throw this out, sometimes even with a quite cocky demeanor, as if they were really saying something, you know? This always baffled me. Was I doing something out of the ordinary relying on a book for information? I mean, most of us believe in the planet Neptune. But have you ever looked through a telescope yourself and seen it? A few of you probably have, but most of us have never done so. So why do we believe it is real? We were told so by a teacher…in many cases a teacher who themselves had never actually seen it! Yet, are we irrational for believing in Neptune? Of course not! This gets us into an important topic in understanding our foundation for knowledge. It is a fact that most of us, in this scientific and individualistic society, are not always comfortable with, but nevertheless it is where we get a very large percentage of what we consider to be knowledge. That topic is information learned by authority. Indeed, we believe in many historical events, people, places, concepts, and ideas NOT because we have experienced them, or because we have experimental evidence ourselves. We believe these things because we were told them by someone who would know. This is perfectly reasonable, and in fact we would find someone quite UNREASONABLE if they, for example, would not believe that George Washington was our first president unless they could travel back in time and see him for themselves, or at least unearth his body and examine it for forensic evidence to make sure it was from the time period it was supposed to be, and examine all the original copies of documentation and personal effects, as well as excavating the site of the original white house to find confirming evidence. If someone would not accept any information without this process, in their attempt to be rational, they would actually be a fool and would know quite little. The truth is, authority is a very reasonable source of information, so long as the authority is sound. If someone knew that a man was a frequent liar, and chose to believe him anyway, this would of course be irrational. It is important to know the limits and biases of the authorities you rely on, but it is still necessary to rely on them! And when authority and experience conflict, experience should not necessarily win. My experience tells me that the desk in front of me is a single, solid, stationary object. My physics professor told me, however, that it is actually trillions of tiny particles moving rapidly, and with space in between them. I believe in atoms and molecules, therefore in this case I trust authority over experience, and I suspect that you do as well.

            So let’s apply this to the Bible. The Bible is the very word of God. There could not be a greater and more worthy and knowledgeable authority. It authenticates it’s own authority through marvelously fulfilled prophesies, showing that it’s source had knowledge of even future events, as well as meticulous information about the past, often in detail that mere human authors of the day could not have known, but by archeology today, we see them quite plainly. No one has been able to show the source to be liar. Because of this, even though many of the claims of the Bible are things that we have no way of verifying with personal experience or empirical evidence, it makes perfect sense to trust those things. The authority is sound, therefore it is a perfectly rational source of knowledge.

            Let’s compare this again to the Book of Mormon. The Book or Mormon contains prophesies that are sketchy at best, and out right failures at worse. Its historical narrative goes against all known evidence. But should we trust it over the evidence? Like my physics professor, should my experience take a back seat to its authority? The answer is an un questionable no. Not only does it seem to be demonstrably false and thus untrustworthy as an authority, It also itself appeals to personal spiritual experience as it’s own source and test of authority. This concept was dealt with in more detail in an earlier post titled “Experiencing God?”. Basically, however, the Book of Mormon does not even set itself as a foundation for knowledge, but rather appeals to another foundation…one that can be tested and found wanting.

            So, what we have in the Bible is the unique, authoritative, and trustworthy word of God. It is a firm foundation indeed! In my next and final post in this series, we will deal with the objections that claim the Bible we have today is corrupted, and does not represent what God originally inspired. 

Luke

Jude.three.blog@gmail.com

Firm Foundation (part 3)

            Recently, a woman came into my office saying that she had a question she needed to ask me. She had a Bible in her hand, and I put what I was doing aside and asked her what was going on? I expected the question to be related to a verse she was having trouble with, or something her pastor said that she was unsettled by. These things happen often at the shelter. But when I asked her what her question was, she set her bible down on my desk and said that she didn’t understand how both the Bible and science could be true. If science is right, doesn’t that mean we don’t need the Bible anymore? Aren’t its claims out dated and unnecessary in this day and age? Her question is not unique. It is echoed throughout our culture. College professors proclaim it, Atheist authors make millions on it, and fundamentalist preachers even fuel it, denouncing science as today’s heresy. But is this a legitimate controversy? Are science and scripture at odds? Does one have to brush aside physics and fear geology to love the Lord? The truth is, not at all! But you have to have your foundation right!

            Today, many popular skeptics tend toward “scientism”. That is to say, they believe that science and only science is the source of knowledge. Science is THE way that we know ANYTHING. Science, therefore, is there foundation. But this, first of all, is self refuting. You cannot prove that “science is the only source of knowledge” scientifically. What experiment did you do to arrive at that statement? What observation let to that law? None. It is an assumption that is itself NOT scientific. Science itself does not set itself up as the only way to know anything. In fact, Science assumes certain things to be true before it even starts. It assumes that the universe is consistent. It assumes that our senses are basically accurate. It assumes that our memory is essentially reliable, so that what we think we observed moments ago is in fact what we really did observe. These things cannot be scientifically proven, and if they are not true, science is impossible. Now, we would all agree that these are perfectly rational assumptions, but that is the point! These are things we all “know” to be true, but no science can PROVE them! Science, in fact, needs us to already KNOW them, because if you doubt them, then observation and experiment mean nothing. These are clear examples of things we know without science. 

             Now, what kind of world allows these things to be true? If we are only matter in motion, and are nothing more than chemicals and particle collisions, as the scientific atheist must affirm, then why should I believe my senses tell me anything that is actually TRUE about the universe. If I am nothing more than a highly evolved animal, shaped by only blind physical process based on survival and reproduction, then my senses would tell me whatever they needed to for me to survive and procreate. An illusion that makes me avoid death and find a mate would be just as beneficial as actual perception of reality, if not more so! Why should an atheistic evolutionist believe that a randomly evolved replicating chemical system can actually “know” anything at all about what the universe really is? Now, what about the Biblical view? If there is an intelligent and orderly God governing the universe, we should expect it to be consistent. If he created man in his image, and desires him to know truth and live right, we should expect senses that tell us truth about the universe and memory that can help us retain and know it. All the assumptions science needs to work in the first place fit best in a Biblical world view. The Bible gives us the reasons to believe that science works at all, where as atheism does not. The Bible makes sense out of the things that we all rely on everyday, and it makes sense out of science itself!

            Also, remember that science has a limited scope. Science, for example, answers “how” questions, it does not answer “why” questions. This is not a weakness of science, just an explanation of sciences purpose. A hammer is a wonderful tool I can use to do many things, but I would not use it to cook an egg or change the channel on my TV. That is simply not what a hammer is for. Science is similar. It is a wonderful tool to know certain types of information, but people run into trouble when they try to use it for things it simply can’t do. Science cannot answer questions of purpose or morality. It does not explain spiritual matters, nor can it be applied to prove that spiritual matters do or do not exist. It is confined to physical observations, and as such, can only explain what happens, and can only do so in the physical domain. It cannot tell us why a physical world exists in the first place. Scientist have tried to use it this way, and have failed. It cannot tell us what is right or wrong. It cannot tell us who God is, or what He wants from us, and thus it cannot tell us WHY we exist or what the PURPOSE of life is. Science is an amazing tool, one that we should love and embrace, using the minds God has given us to be productive, help others, and explore the wonderful world God has given us. But we need to remember that it is a precision tool, not an all purpose one.

            Finally, like archeology, in recent years there have been quite a few in the academic realm that have found science to push them TOWARD Christian faith rather than away from it. They have looked at the world and realized that God’s fingerprints are indeed on all he made, and that the heavens really do declare the glory of God.

            Physicist Robert Jastrow, director of NASA’s “Goddard Institute for Space Studies” (though himself an agnostic) said it well when he painted this picture:

“For the scientist that has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance. He is about to conquer the highest peak. As he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

- Luke

jude.three.blog@gmail.com