THE BISHOP’S NEW CLOTHES

Has the Church sold out to the World?

By Steve Maltz

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Copyright © 2013 Steve Maltz

First published 2013

The right of Steve Maltz to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a license permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licenses are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.

Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright (c) 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.

ISBN 978-0-9562296-6-3

Cover design by Phil Maltz

I can honestly say that this book would not be the book that it is without some meddling from others! Special thanks go to Malcolm “Hash-Man” for moaning two chapters into existence, to Kit for his sanctified nagging, to Kay for the title (which may prove my undoing!) and to Peter, Simon, Kate and the two Mikes for their key contributions and encouragements. Also to Dave for his advice on avoiding a cultural faux-pas! Finally

and crucially, Monica, aka wifey, that nine stone whirlwind of a woman who still manages to filter out most of the nonsense!

CONTENTS

Preface

Prologue: The Jesus Mindset

Chapter 1: How Dim Is Your Lamp?

Chapter 2: Was Jesus Gay?

Chapter 3: Was Jesus Goy?

Chapter 4: Doing God’s Stuff

Chapter 5 : Outrageous Unfairness

Chapter 6: Cinderella Church

Chapter 7: Onwards Christian Shirkers…

Chapter 8: The Upside-Down Gospel

Chapter 9: Language, Timothy!

Chapter 10: Anything Goes… Within Reason!

Chapter 11: Anything Goes… Without Reason!

Chapter 12: Kingdom When?

Chapter 13: His Pain, My Blame; His Shame, My Gain

Chapter 14: Those First Twelve Chapters

Chapter 15: For Whatever Reason

Chapter 16: Why Apologise?

Chapter 17: If Justin Had De-robed

Chapter 18: Come Holy Spirits

Chapter 19: Windblower

Chapter 20: The Greatest Of These Is…

Epilogue: The God Heartset

Further Reading

Preface

I was born to write. That is my gift. I’m not a teacher, preacher or Christian celebrity who has put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) to expound on my knowledge or experiences. No, I just write and, when pushed, I speak on my writings to audiences of varying sizes. I write what God puts on my heart, which doesn’t always follow my original plan and makes life interesting, but ultimately rewarding. And such is the case with this little book.

My last five years have been interesting, to say the least. God has shoved me into a virtual time machine and has introduced me to the mindset that drove not only those first Christians, but also the Jews of the Old Testament and, bridging the two, Jesus

himself. My travels took me through 2,000 years of history and my eyes were opened to the dynamics that drove the Church, a battle for the mind between that mindset and the pagan Greek mindset added to the mix from the 1st Century onwards.

Out of this came my trilogy of books. How the Church Lost the Way dealt with the effect that the dualism of Plato had on the early Church, how it wormed its way into both the formulation of Christian doctrine and the practice of the faith. This was followed by How the Church Lost the Truth, which took the story further and showed how the writings

of Aristotle did much damage to the medieval Church, with repercussions right to the Church of today. It also showed us five battlegrounds, key areas where Christians have always managed to agree to disagree and we saw how the varying approaches were determined by how far Greek philosophy has influenced theologians.

Finally, To Life! Was written in order to provide some good news, as a counter to the sorry tale of the damage wrought by the Greek invasion! It introduced us to the Hebraic mindset, the way that the first Christians thought (and soon to be introduced to you in the Prologue here as the Jesus Mindset) and provided a contrast between the two ways of thinking. The second half of the book was written to give practical instructions on how

we 21st Century Christians can begin to turn back the clock. This was quite an uncomfortable book to write as it took me into the unfamiliar territory of providing advice, tips and suggestions of how one could live truly God-centred lives and this was something that I was more willing to offer others than actually take heed of myself! But I comforted myself with the knowledge that the wisdom within those 223 pages was more

the result of divine promptings, than from my own knowledge and experience. Judging by the reaction of others to that book, I feel perfectly justified in coming to that conclusion. It seems to be at the centre of a mini-renewal for many churches and

individuals. Praise God.

The Bishop’s New Clothes. Not my first choice of title, in fact it was the fourth or fifth choice, thrown at me by my good friend Kay at Ben Gurion airport. To appreciate it, you need to be familiar with the short story, “the Emperor’s New Clothes”, by Hans Christian Anderson. In this tale a vain Emperor hires a couple of dodgy tailors to make him the most magnificent outfit of all. It was actually non-existent but the tailors conned him into believing that it was only invisible to stupid or worthless people. So as not to seem stupid or worthless, everyone pretends that they can see this wonderful outfit, except one person, a child, who declares, “He ain’t wearing anything at all… the Bishop’s in the altogether, the altogether, the altogether…”!

I am that child and I’m looking for some playmates.

“And he said: ‘I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’” (Matthew 18:3)

I don’t have anything against Bishops or their clothing, I just see them as a convenient symbol for the established Church in the context of this book. My contention is that the Church today, whatever variety it takes, from Roman Catholics to Charismatics, from House Churches to Messianics, is wearing clothes of mixed thread, with much of it produced from the looms of the World’s systems. It seems to have always been so…

but that don’t make it right!

What I have done is pick twenty areas that really needle, provoke or engage me, particularly focussing on the ways that the Church and our modern society have moved dangerously close. Here’s a warning worth heeding:

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you

know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.” (James 4:1-9)

Many of these essays are extensions of topics covered in the practical section of To Life!, but others are new – in fact there are seven chapters which I had no original intention to write about! My prayer is that the twenty topics covered here may encourage you to consider the new and rethink the old, and learn to exercise a true Hebraic (Biblical) mindset. And if you need instructions or a reminder of what this is all about, then read on…

Prologue: The Jesus Mindset

Let me tell you about one of the saddest things I’ve witnessed in my Christian life. It was a Sunday morning TV studio discussion on BBC1 and the subject was the very emotive Creation vs. Evolution debate. As is usual with such discussions, the audience were generally more insightful and Biblically astute than the invited “experts”, but one exchange lives long in my memory. A very prominent Anglican had just been confronted at length by a creationist, who was asking him why he seemed to over-sympathise with the position of the non-Christian evolutionists. The Anglican then turned to his chief protagonist in the debate, a hardened atheist scientist, and said something like this; I feel a greater kindred spirit with you than the creationist over there.

Let’s take a step back and analyse that statement. This Anglican publicly stated to millions of viewers that he felt a greater connection to a man who aggressively denied the existence of God than to a man to whom he was connected as a fellow member of the mystical Body of Christ and indwelt by the same Holy Spirit. And what was the basis of this statement? A point of doctrine.

This may seem trivial, perhaps because it is so commonplace these days and at least we are not screaming “heresy” at each other and brandishing weapons, as Christians used to do to drive the point home (sometimes literally!). Yet this seems to be a new development, where we are seen to showcase what divides us rather than what unites us and where issues take priority over absolute truth. In other words, in order to stay relevant to the World in which we live, Christians are entering into the great debates of the day, not as a single unified voice, but boasting a plethora of views and opinions, little different to the broad spectrum of commentary that we see in our daily newspapers and on our TV screens. Current examples of this are the debates over homosexuality, women in leadership and the Israel/Palestine conflict.

We have no problem understanding the variety of opinions over such issues, because our World is no longer as black and white as it used to be, with a deluge of views informed by religion, philosophy, politics, gender, race, culture and whatever newsfeed/blog you subscribe to. Truth is no longer seen as carved on stone tablets, but rather as etched on soft clay, to be stretched and pulled about to fit any mould. This is a given in our age of relativism and feeds the political correctness and tolerance of our Western society, for which certainties are seen as dangerous and fundamentalist and the source of most of the key global conflicts of our day.

But we Christians, we members of the Body of Christ, shouldn’t we be defending absolute truth, shouldn’t we speak with the same voice? After all, don’t we all have the same Holy Spirit living in us? Is he speaking to us all differently? Something is not right here.

I’ve just watched another TV debate, interestingly a revisit of the same subject as above, the Creation vs. Evolution thing. This time the audience was divided into two, facing each other, with the presenter striding between each. Christians were on both sides, but those who sat among the atheist scientists were passionately defending the science but extremely flaky when quizzed on their faith. In other words, if pressed, they would probably declare themselves as scientists who happen to be Christians, rather than Christians who worked as scientists. Their identity was defined by their professional career, rather than their faith.

Many centuries ago, there was a philosopher called Justin, a follower of the Greek thinker, Plato, and he was a proud wearer of the philosopher’s cloak, as a badge of his office. As a result of a meeting with a stranger on a beach, Justin converted to Christianity. But he continued to wear his philosopher’s cloak for the rest of his life, an act that proclaimed that he may now be a Christian, but he was still a philosopher. This man is better known as Justin Martyr, one of the Church fathers and a very influential one in terms of the transition of Christianity from its exclusive Jewish origins to an inclusive faith for all. But… and this is a big but… he was still a philosopher, a Christian philosopher.

So what? How is that a problem? Well, a philosopher is, by definition, a “lover of wisdom” and a Christian is “a follower of the Christ”. If we dig deeper we have to admit that the goal of a philosopher is to live his life according to wisdom, wherever it may be found. The goal of a Christian is focussed on a person, Jesus Christ and is achieved through the exercise of faith. So a Christian uses faith to achieve his goal, whereas a philosopher uses his reasoning abilities to achieve the same.

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

(Hebrews 11:6)

For Christians, faith is all important, because, if you don’t believe in God, your wisdom is going to come from other places. James calls this wisdom “earthly, unspiritual, of the

devil” (James 3:15), known to us more familiarly as the World, the flesh and the devil. But if you do believe in God, then watch out, there are blessings in store.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5)

So there are two kinds of wisdom. James first talks about the signs of the wisdom that is “earthly, unspiritual, of the devil”:

“But if you harbour bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.” (James 3:14-16)

Then there’s the wisdom that God gives to those who believe in Him:

“But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.”

(James 3:17)

If we look at the heart of these passages in James 3, we can perhaps see a theme developing. The good wisdom is that displayed by Jesus, the Son of God, on his short stay on earth.

The other wisdom, characterised by envy, selfish ambition, boastfulness and which leads to disorder and every evil practice, is that displayed by unregenerate, natural man. The good wisdom is that which is natural to God, the bad wisdom is that which is natural to man. Seeking after good wisdom is putting God at the very centre of our lives, otherwise we are putting ourselves at the centre.

So, returning to Justin, our Christian philosopher and even to our modern day Christian scientists, whom we met earlier, we must examine the wisdom that they exhibit in order to ascertain what truly motivates them. Is God at the centre, or is He on the fringes? As Justin continued to wear his philosopher’s cloak after his conversion, that tells me that God was probably not always dead centre and that a little of the other wisdom had gained some degree of a hold over him.

Why is this important? It is very important because Justin, along with many other Church Fathers, saw no problem in promoting and teaching a Christianity that combined the pure faith of the Jewish apostles of Jesus Christ with the philosophy of Plato in the Gentile, Greek-speaking World. His motive was a sincere attempt at evangelism but his method was deeply flawed and, ultimately, disastrous for the Church.

“Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people. Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.’”

(2 Corinthians 6:14-18)

The light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ has nothing in common with the darkness of the philosophy of Plato, despite Justin and others believing they had points in common. It is true that both emphasise a spiritual viewpoint, in contrast to the materialism in the culture that surrounded them, but, where it is most important, at the very core of their belief systems, is where the differences are clear. Plato’s idea of “God” was unmistakably very different to the Christian one. For that reason alone, Justin and others should have stayed well clear of the Greek philosophy of their day.

But they didn’t and neither did the Church Fathers who followed them, or those further down the line, including hugely influential Christian teachers such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and even Martin Luther. And this was despite the very clear warnings of the apostle Paul in his letter to the Colossians:

“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”

(Colossians 2:8)

Darkness was allowed into the light and dimmed it. It produced Christians who, although they may have burned with the light of the Gospel, still had a measure of darkness mixed in with their belief systems. One dominant idea taken in was the dualism taught by Plato, which emphasised the spiritual over the physical, giving rise to division and subsequent conflict in the Church by creating artificial separations between the clergy and laity, the spiritual and the physical, the holy and the profane, heaven and earth and so on. For a full treatment of the development of these ideas and the harm they did to the Church may I direct you to my book, How the Church Lost the Way.

The other darkness that entered the Church was down to the teachings of Aristotle, the pupil of Plato. It only took hold from the medieval Church onwards, but it held on tenaciously and it still has Christians in a tight grip. (The story of how this happened is told in my other book, How the Church Lost the Truth). It gave priority to the rational mind over the exercising of faith and leads us back to the warnings presented earlier,

from the book of James.

“But if you harbour bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.” (James 3:14-16)

This darkness comes from the earthly wisdom that James speaks about. It is allowing ideas from the “World” to enter into the thinking of Christians. In some cases this can be

harmless, but when this provides an attack on our faith, then we’re heading for big trouble. This is because the very essence of faith is that it is unreasonable to the World. For someone brought up in the secular World, the idea of a God is unreasonable, as is the virgin birth, a bodily resurrection, the afterlife, hell and the whole realm of the supernatural and the miraculous. It is because of this that we have seen the rise of so-called “liberal” Christianity, providing a compromise between faith and reason, resulting in, among other things, those who wear the cloak of philosophy – or science, or politics, or “what a thoroughly switched-on chap I am” – but who are also Christians. We must return to the absolute centrality of faith, always.

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

(Hebrews 11:6)

And what is this faith? It’s not just total faith in God, but total faith in His word the Bible, in His son Jesus and in the workings of the Holy Spirit, even when the rational mind shouts “NO!”

But this faith does not work in isolation. Out of it comes what is increasingly seen as a missing factor in the Church today; our deeds, our actions, our attitudes. James also speaks about this:

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he

looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it – he will be blessed in what he does.” (James 1:22-25)

If the good wisdom that we receive from our faith in God does not result in deeds and actions, then we have a man who has lost his reflection, who not only forgets what he looks like, but fails to reflect Jesus himself, surely the goal of every Christian.

“And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

(2 Corinthians 3:18)

We must examine ourselves. Do we truly reflect the Lord’s glory? What does the World see when it looks at us Christians? One is reminded of the old cliché, that the only

Bible some see is in the actions of Christians. The World often sees our words, usually in our disputes with other Christians, over worldly agendas that have sucked in the

Church, such as homosexuality and women in leadership. But what of our actions? In Western Society aren’t we known more for our “outdated views”, our “judgementalism”, our “irrelevance”, than for what should be a natural consequence of the wisdom that comes from God, through faith, as we already saw:

“But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere.”

(James 3:17)

But the reason that it doesn’t is because of that unholy trinity – the World, the flesh and the devil. The temptations of the flesh and the machinations of the devil should be apparent, but what is very rarely addressed are the influences from the World, predominantly from this darkness of Greek thinking that has invaded the Church from the World. James provides us with a very timely warning about this:

“You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”

(James 4:4)

And what are the danger signs? They have to be in our actions. If, in our desire for acceptance and relevance, we show no distinction in our actions from those who surround us, then are we really following Jesus’ command here?

“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)

Are we allowing the light that shines in our heart to break out and be visible… through our deeds? And, talking about Jesus…

Yes, I’ve finally got there – the Jesus mindset!

Jesus had a certain way of thinking and it makes perfect sense that we should want to know about this and, if possible, to emulate it. This may not be as impossible as it seems if we accept that Jesus was (and still is, of course) a Jew and that he lived at a certain point in history and shared a way of thinking with most of his contemporaries and those who came before him and who inhabited the pages of the Old Testament.

His way of thinking I have called the Jesus mindset but, in reality, it can also be called the Hebraic mindset and even – believe it or not – the Biblical mindset. Of course every

Christian believes they have a Biblical mindset, so it is certainly contentious of me to insist that, what I am describing here is the Biblical mindset. Yet I’m not allowing that to stop me, because of the following statement:

Since the 2nd Century, the insinuation of Greek thinking into the Church has been so effective that Christians today, in common with everyone else in Western society, have inherited a Greek mindset that has mostly replaced the Biblical mindset of Jesus, his apostles and the prophets and teachers who inhabit the pages of the Old and the New Testament.

This Greek mindset has, as I mentioned earlier, put man at the centre of our lives rather than God and has given priority to the Greek analytic nature over the faith-driven Hebraic, Biblical nature. To further illustrate the difference we can say the following: the Greek mind says that the things of God must be deduced from our logical minds; the Hebraic mind says that the things of God can only be understood by faith and revelation. Also, the Greek mind says that we should strive for knowledge about God; the Hebraic mind says that we should know God.

The Bible is not a book to analyse and argue over; it is the living word of God that we should believe as a consequence of our faith in God and, very importantly, should inform our actions. The Hebraic mindset is all about doing stuff, the Greek way is to constantly think, re-think, analyse and argue, but rarely to allow our thoughts to flow into our deeds.

We must show the World through our actions inspired by the good wisdom that God freely gives us through faith in Him, that there really is something different about us.

“As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” (James 2:26)

Let’s start today to purge ourselves of the darkness that has entered our thinking from the Greek world. Easier said than done, of course, but that is why I have written the book To Life! to help you get started in understanding the Jesus mindset.

Returning to the incident at the head of this chapter in the TV debate, where the Anglican publicly stated that he felt closer to the atheist scientist than to the Christian

brother with whom he differed, doctrinally. We should now see this as an example of our inherited Greek mindset, with its emphasis on analysing and thinking, of doctrine over

practice. But we can personalise this and ask ourselves if, in our disagreements over doctrine with other Christians, we are more interested in proving our point, or remaining in fellowship? Greek thinking is focussed on being right, Hebraic thinking concentrates on being in right relationships. This is a sadly neglected truth.

We are reminded of Jesus’ proclamation on how Christians should demonstrate a good witness to the World around them.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)

This is surely the heart of the Jesus mindset. It’s serious stuff. It’s time to take our faith seriously.

Now, as you work your way through the twenty chapters of this book, let’s approach each scenario as if a 1st Century Christian was looking through your eyes and processing the 21st Century data-stream using the mindset that he would have shared with Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries.

It’s the Jesus Mindset. It could also be called Jesus, unplugged or Christianity zero. We are talking about our precious faith, as originally received, before the World infiltrated through the traditions of man and Greek thinking.

It’s time to reclaim…

Chapter 1: How Dim Is Your Lamp?

Our society is a big shouty place. Our voices may be small, compared with the bellowing of an elephant, the thunderclaps of a mighty storm or the clashing cascades of a waterfall, but we have technology to beef up our feebleness and create a rather loud noise in the process.

Four generations ago we would have heard of foreign wars through our daily newspapers. Three generations ago it would have been also through BBC radio. Two generations ago it would have been also through the television. A generation ago it would have been more or less the same. The current generation can now watch the conflict in realtime through the many communication networks that vie for our attention. The World is now available at the touch of a button (subject to broadband contract, TV licence or mobile phone tariff).

Like it or not we are all trapped in this Global Village, force-fed news, opinions, commentary, and entertainment and, whether we realise it or not, we are all equally exposed to the spin and whims of the news-makers, opinion-formers, commentators and entertainers. Do we passively allow this to wash over us, blowing us hither and whither, depending on what newspaper we read or which blog, newsfeed or information

channel we subscribe to? This is our current default, but it is not our factory setting.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

We are not animals, doomed to a bit part in the circle of life, living purely to procreate and to provide sustenance to whatever lurks on the next step in the food chain. If most of us examine our lives we would admit that, yes we too live for (the act of) procreation, but we are certainly not at the mercy of predators. But are we? The World can devour us in other ways. It does so through invisible bonds about which we can live our lives in

total ignorance.

What is your vice? Sex, money (acquiring it and/or spending it), power, fame, food, alcohol, drugs, gambling, computer games, television? What is your addiction? Same list, but with bonds just that little bit tighter. All have one thing in common. Each take you away from fulfilling the potential that is inside all of us, whether it is creativity, compassion, gifts or talents. Each stop you from reaching out to others, from working for the common good, from making your Creator happy and proud of you, His special creation. Think about this, then re-read the factory settings.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

We really are special to God; we are spiritual beings as well as physical beings, yet how many of us live in wholeness, with both natures working together in harmony? The imbalance may be fed by what society throws at us, with its promises of sex, money, power, fame and the rest of them, but the decision is always ours to make.

We deserve better than this and, for all the advantages of modern society, there’s a price to pay. Of course many have broken out of this circle and have lived fruitful altruistic lives full of purpose, though, without the assurance of a higher power, they would be missing one particular ingredient… hope. Which brings me to the Christian life.

We Christians too live in the Global Village. But does the Global village live in us? Yes, it’s a cliché, but it’s merely a paraphrase of Paul’s warning to us.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)

Well, how many times have we heard that one preached! Yet have we really allowed it to sink in? It’s the pattern of this World that is the key phrase and Paul’s warning is a truly prophetic statement that has never been more relevant than in the present situation.

“But if you harbour bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.” (James 3:14-15)

Here James describes the pattern of the World, governed by wisdom that is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil – the more familiar World, the flesh and the devil. The activity of the devil is familiar, as are the lusts of the flesh, but the wisdom of the World is not so well documented. But it is quite straightforward, as the abiding principles of the World in which we live were formulated by the philosophers of ancient Greece, over 2,000 years ago and they have not wilted with age. This is to be contrasted with the abiding principles in the Kingdom that Christians abide in, a mindset birthed from within the pages of the Bible and packaged and distributed to all who wanted to hear by the Man from Galilee, Jesus Christ.

“If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you”.

(John 15:19)

A Christian, then, is someone who lives in the World but does not belong to it. So it’s a matter of treading that dividing line, of living as a common citizen of the World, but living in a bubble that protects us from being corrupted by it. But this bubble is meant to be visible; the World is meant to know that we are not quite one of them and hate us for it!

Does the World hate you? If it doesn’t then perhaps you’re doing something wrong. And if it does, how can that make us an effective witness?

Well, it depends on what we mean by The World. The World hated Jesus when he first came.

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” (John 15:18)

This does not mean that Jesus is hateable – quite the reverse really – but it means that the Kingdom that he brought about is basically incompatible with the one that runs the World. We note in the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus’ first and most profound challenge was to issue the heart-felt call “Thy Kingdom Come”. That is revolutionary. It means this World’s system is no good and must, sooner or later, be replaced by God’s Kingdom,

come down to earth. No wonder the “Kings of this World” are not generally well-disposed towards Jesus! Jesus’ Kingdom and the World’s systems are incompatible. It’s oil and water, they basically don’t mix… unless the oil is soluble in water. Which brings us back to ourselves…

A Christian is meant to be someone who is insoluble, who doesn’t dissolve in the World’s systems. We are meant to remain visibly separate, which will make the World hate us. But at the same time we need to be sufficiently attractive to those trapped by the World’s systems, who are looking for an escape. These people need to see our lamps.

“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)

Now examine yourself. You may have an extensive knowledge of the Bible (even Leviticus), even to the extent of memorizing key verses and big chunks of the Psalms. You may have a firm grasp of Church history, the creeds and the liturgy. You may be

blessed with the spiritual gifts of tongues, prophecy or healing. You may be a gifted preacher or teacher of the Word, respected by your congregation of fellow Christian workers, or beyond. You may even be a full-time Christian worker, working for your

local Church or a para-church ministry, making an impact nationwide, or even worldwide…

But does your lamp shine?

This is a fundamental contrast between the Greek and the Hebraic (Jesus) Mindset. The above list of knowledge and skills is a typical menu for the average Western Christian but, when push turns to shove, it’s the execution of the knowledge and skills that is lacking in most of us. I may be a writer of twelve books, to say nothing of the podcasts, blogs, DVDs, booklets, youtube videos etc., but when was the last time I visited (or even spoke to) the three neighbours on the other side of the road, two of whom have cancer and the other multiple sclerosis? It’s a deep shame and one that gets deeper every day I do nothing about it. It’s my hope that the catharsis of writing about this would be the catalyst for acting on it!

And how about you? The probability is that there ain’t anything to fix, but my experience is that there are many Christians like me, good on theory but lousy on practice. If your

conscience pricketh then pause now and ask God to bring in mind just one person or situation where your lamp can shine.

Take a pause now.

Last year I visited the London Olympics, just a short trip down the Central Line for me. As you arrived at Stratford tube station there was one constant thread on the twenty minute walk to the Olympic stadium. This was the volunteer crew of “games makers”, kitted out in distinctive red and purple tops and beige trousers. As we trudged slowly onwards, these folk – of all ages and races – were dotted among us, beaming away with their perma-grins, helpful instructions, singing or rapping little ditties and generally exuding an incense of bonhomie. They were in the crowd (i.e. one of us) but definitely not of the crowd – they both behaved and looked different to the rest of us.

Perhaps a bad example (particularly as I found them quite irritating), but an illustration of the need for us to be visibly different, in the sense of standing out from the crowd, even if this makes us unpopular (“… that is why the world hates you,” John 15:19).

What this means is that not only must people know that we are Christians, but that we behave like Christians are meant to behave. There is no point doing all the good stuff and not allowing God to get the glory. Equally there’s no point folk knowing that we’re Christians and allowing God to get all the flak (when we’re behaving less than perfectly)!

Yes, you may be a paragon of virtue in the office, not gossiping or bullying, or laughing at the dodgy jokes and being seen as a thoroughly good egg, but if they don’t know you as a Christian then you are taking all the glory from the God who has been moulding you into the image of Jesus, through the work of the Holy Spirit in your life.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.”

(Matthew 5:13)

Many years ago I started work in a computer centre (in the prehistoric days when it was all about punch cards and tickertape) and my boss quickly impressed me as a supportive and helpful person. But he was the constant butt of jokes and office gossip. Why? Because he had just become a Christian and, whereas his alcohol consumption before had been legendary, he was now tee-total and a witness to the power of Christ.

They joked about him, but secretly they admired him.

By contrast, we may have “come out” as a Christian many years ago in our work environment but, as time rolled by and the World moved further on its current path of slackness, licentiousness and ungodliness, you found yourself caught up in its snares, suddenly unable to break free. Before you knew it,

your saltiness has gone and your distinctiveness as a Christian has disappeared. Even worse, your workmates had noticed this and wondered, what’s all this fuss about being a Christian? I don’t see the difference!

“You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”

(James 4:4)

When the Church was birthed early in the 1st Century it was very separate from the World. Before it was forced underground through persecution everyone knew about

this new sect of The Way, who were very active in teaching and training others. This changed when the Church was transformed from being a collection of individual believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, to a collection of buildings maintained by a rich hierarchy of priests, bishops and Popes (there’s more on this in my book, How The Church Lost the Way). The medieval Church wasn’t so much a friend to the World, as the World itself! Since then, there has been a return to the basic simpler model, but the World never really withdrew from the structures of the Church.

Earlier I asked us all, does our lamp shine? It’s a question that only we can answer and that only we as individuals can deal with. Not so with what has become the established Church, the expression of our Christian faith that is seen by the World, from the media to the “man in the street”.

How bright is the Church’s lamp?

According to Revelation Chapter 1, the Church is furnished with great golden lampstands, allowing its light to shine far and wide over all. Yet the Lord Jesus is able to remove these if an errant Church does not change its ways.

“Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” (Revelation 2:5)

These days I believe that it is up to individual Christians to polish up their lamps and rather than expecting a genie to appear to sort out their problems, get these lamps lit and blazing in witness to the World that surrounds us. We each have individual responsibilities for our own lamps, but there’s nothing we can do about the great golden lampstands. For most of us, that is beyond the scope of our lives. First we must get our own houses in order.

The lamps may be few but if they can light up the path of salvation for those with eyes to see, then what more can we do?

Chapter 2: Was Jesus Gay?

Whaaaaaaaat?! (Throws book away in disgust.)

Initial reactions: Has Steve gone mad? But he’s spot on with so many other things, perhaps…? No, he’s gone off! But, at least let’s hear him out. No, NO! Why should we expose ourselves to such nonsense?

Slow down, collect yourself, put a kettle on. Then let me explain.

My son, Jonathan is currently studying for a theatre studies degree and he tells me that, whereas traditional dramatic performances are to a passive audience, there is a genre

that encourages active participation, where the onus is on interactivity with the audience. To you and me, it’s that old classroom staple, show and tell. Rather than writing or speaking about a topic, you demonstrate it directly to your audience.

This is how it has played out. There will be some who have scanned the contents page, read the offending words (repeated at the top of this page) and swiftly discarded the book. Others could be piqued and would flick through to this page to feed their curiosity. Yes, it’s you I’m speaking about!

It is that first person who has illustrated the very attitude that this chapter addresses, our need, as people of God’s Kingdom, to act soberly, not to react in haste, before knowing the full facts. Unfortunately the very person who needs to realise this has already disengaged from the debate!

When Jesus was confronted by the Jerusalem Jews, they made some rash statements about him, the most serious being that he must have been demon-possessed. His response was: “Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment.” (John 7:24)

Our human nature compels us to follow the mob, just like those Jews before Pilate who were emotionally drummed up and primed by their leaders into rash declarations. Even when we read of a national Christian figure falling from grace, how often have we passed immediate judgement on this person, particularly if he was not of our Christian “tribe”, our justification being of him letting the side down and so deserving of all that

he gets! Then we read of the devastating effect this has had on his family, his church, his peers and we check ourselves. Judge not, lest ye be judged! (Matthew 7:1)

We must be seen as a people of sober judgement, preferring silence to gut-reaction, aware of the damage we could do to God’s reputation by acting as a bad ambassador.

Emotions have their place. They are a fast-track access to our heart, often with a complete mind bypass. They drive our romantic notions, they are stirred up by music, drama, perhaps even by a plate of quiche (negatively in my case). I’ve often wondered why we consider the heart as the seat of emotions. When I’m all churned up, there are other bodily parts that seem to kick in, borne out by the involuntary loosening action exhibited by many when put in situations of fear and danger.

Interestingly, the Old Testament in its original language (Hebrew) concurs with this. The Hebrews saw the bowels, rather than the heart, as the seat of emotions, something the

King James Version got right.

“… therefore my bowels are troubled for him;…” (Jeremiah 31:20 KJV)

The NIV Bible translation puts it differently, perhaps loathe to use such an “unclean” word.

“… Therefore my heart yearns for him…” (NIV)

Interesting, but drifting off point. Emotions can be very confusing to us Christians. How many of us had experienced our first brush with Christianity at a Billy Graham, Luis Palau or Reinhard Bonnke (or other) rally? How many moved forwards at the altar call, made a decision and then later dismissed this as acting in the moment, a purely emotional response to the words and the atmosphere of expectancy? Apparently more

than 2.5 million people had received Jesus Christ as personal saviour at a Billy Graham Crusade by 1993. If that many people had become true, solid, born-again believers rather than acting in the moment think of how the World could have been changed for the better. Of course, God still worked (and is still working) on many hearts at these rallies and there are countless testimonies of truly changed lives as a result.

But a decision to transfer ownership of one’s most treasured possession – our own lives – from owner-occupier to the benign multinational corporation of the Kingdom of God, is not a decision that can be taken lightly at the spur of the moment, as a reaction to the gentle assault on the senses at a stadium event. There is one valid exception to this, in the case where the Holy Spirit has already been working on a person, bringing conviction and the assurance of hope and all that is needed is that final nudge.

So emotions in isolation can be a danger, unless accompanied by brain activity. Which is why you’re going to read on now, when I again ask… was Jesus really gay? Come again…?

Peter Tatchell, the gay activist, certainly entertains the possibility. On his website he comments on a fragment of manuscript apparently found by a Biblical scholar, Morton

Smith, at a monastery near Jerusalem in 1958. It was supposedly a fragment of a letter by Church Father, Clement of Alexandria, where he speaks of a “secret” Gospel of Mark, which contains this passage in Chapter 10:

“But the youth, looking upon him (Jesus), loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him, wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God. And thence, arising, he

returned to the other side of the Jordan.”

According to Tatchell, “The precise nature of the relationship between Christ and the youth is not spelled out. Sexual relations are suggested but not explicitly stated.”

So he’s not spelling it out, just reading between the lines of possibilities. He uses this ambivalence to declare that, as it’s not explicitly stated whether Jesus was homosexual or heterosexual, then it is wrong for us to assume either. Not really a valid argument unless the official Gospel accounts give us any cause for questioning his sexuality.

So do they?

Sussex University chaplain, Paul Oestreicher, writing in the Guardian on April 12th 2012, certainly believes so. He was focussing on Jesus’ relationship with the apostle John. His first observation was that John was the disciple that Jesus “loved in a special way”. What a loaded statement! He was referring to the following verse:

“… and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved…” (John 20:2)

Oestreicher then heaps his own observations onto a set of “evidences” for an untoward relationship. There’s the image in Christian art of John’s head laying on Jesus’ breast at the Last Supper. There’s also the fact that Jesus was unmarried and that John seems to have been well integrated into Jesus’ family. I could go on and reference such “luminaries” as Rt. Rev. Hugh Montefiore (nicknamed Hugh Montefiasco by his students) and Bishop Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop in the U.S., but there’s no point, as this issue is really not open to debate. After all, this article did appear in The Guardian, the bastion of the liberal establishment and no friend of Biblical Christianity!

So, where are we? We have been introduced to two spokespeople, Peter Tatchell, the gay activist and Paul Oestreicher, the liberal Christian. The former seeks to normalise his lifestyle within a Christian framework and the latter is fully aware, as a columnist, that controversy sells. Each has a clear agenda to promote. Does this mean that truth has been compromised in order to push these agendas? Judge for yourselves.

First we look at Tatchell’s source document, the “secret” Gospel of Mark. This has absolutely nothing to do with the actual Gospel of Mark, appearing in the Gospels in our

canonical New Testament. It doesn’t even belong in the category of “Gospels that didn’t quite make it” into the Bible, such as the Gospel of Thomas. It doesn’t even fall into the

category of a document that has actually been discovered and read. It is just something referred to within an ancient letter supposedly written by a Church Father and found by Morton Smith, a professor of ancient history, in a monastery at Mar Saba, in Israel. And even then, no-one apart from this professor has seen the original documents and many are certain that, assuming it exists, it is a forgery anyway. The clincher seems

to be that Smith was gay, which suggests a personal agenda, though this hasn’t been proven.

But we can discount any possibilities of a personal agenda, or even the accusations of forgery, because, as Christians the instructions are clear. We are not to derive any doctrine or certainly any inferences to the character of Jesus from any document outside the revealed Word of God, the Bible. So really, although non-Christians may be provoked, amused or intrigued by Peter Tatchell’s views, as Christians we are on safe ground and so do not need to trouble ourselves in this particular debate.

With Paul Oestreicher it is not so simple, as he is taking the Bible, specifically the Gospel of John, as the source document for his views. Let us remind ourselves of the verse that seems to have set this whole thing off.

“… and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved…” (John 20:2)

The Greek word used here for “loved” is phileo. It is the type of love that is best expressed as “friendly affection”. It is neither the deep spiritual love, God’s kind of love, suggested by agape and neither is it the carnal passionate lustful love of eros. Phileo love is what we sometimes call “platonic” love, epitomised by the sort of drunken exchange you may find in a TV soap, “Hey, you’re my best mate, you know I really love you… just as a friend of course”.

John the apostle was Jesus’ best friend. Period. Absolutely no suggestion of any eros shenanigans. So we can rest assured… Jesus was assuredly not gay!

So what was Oestreicher up to? Laying aside his bid for centre stage through the use of controversy, we here have a case of the person who has an idea / plan / scheme / revelation then furiously leafs through the pages of his Bible to build up a case to support his ideas scripturally.

How do we, then, approach God’s Words? How do we read Scripture? It is useful for us to really go back to basics, to look at how people have dealt with such things in the past.

It is no surprise that, when it comes to figuring things out, we find ourselves turning to the Ancient Greeks, Aristotle in particular. He determined that there were two ways to reason, persuade, learn, teach and come to have beliefs. The first is deductive thinking.

This is the usual way we figure things out, it’s what we mean when we say that something’s logical. The gist of it is that we start with some general statements that we believe to be true, then arrive at a conclusion that supposedly will also be true.

Here’s an example:

- All men have an adam’s apple.

- Peter is a man.

These are our two general statements that we believe to be true. From these statements we deduce that, therefore, Peter has an adam’s apple. Nothing too difficult there, it makes logical sense. This little exercise is called a syllogism, and originally came from the mind of Aristotle.

The other way of thinking is called inductive thinking and it’s the exact opposite of deductive thinking. In this case we start with specific statements that we know to be true, then arrive at a general conclusion that we’re happy with but may or may not actually be verifiably true, but could be probably true.

An example should make this clearer:

- I have examined five thousand dogs

- Every dog examined has fleas

Here are two facts, or observations, that are totally true (unless I can’t count or am not very thorough). Here is my conclusion:

All dogs have fleas.

This is possibly, or even probably true, though the 5,001st dog may not have fleas, which invalidates my conclusion.

So what’s all this got to do with the Bible? A lot actually, but it’s subtle because both deductive and inductive reasoning have unknowingly been used by Christians when wrestling with Bible Scriptures. And, as reasoning is a feature of the Greek mind, we need to know if it’s all kosher and that we’re using the right tools in discerning God’s Words.

Let’s revisit these matters, but this time with the Bible in mind. But before we do so, we have to get one thing totally clear in our mind. If we’re talking about truth, then we need

to have total confidence that the Word of God, in the form of the Scriptures, is true… always. If we are going to apply the rules of logic to Bible verses, our starting point must always be that these are the very words of God and that God does not lie. If we don’t have that certainty then everything that follows is going to be clouded in doubt and there would be no point in using the Bible as a source of truth by which we must live our lives.

Do not pass Go… unless you mean it! If you’re not convinced of my basic assumptions of the inerrancy of the Bible (allowing for some leeway in translations from the original languages) then you need to pray that God can either give you this certainty right now or that He will guide you and instruct you in these matters, perhaps as you progress through this book. So, with the Bible in mind…

If we are using deductive thinking then we have to be sure that our general statements are cast-iron, 100% true, because we are going to have specific conclusions that we are going to declare as truth! And we should now see where we’re going, because this is how theologians over the centuries have formulated Christian doctrine.

But, once we veer into contentious areas, when we can’t make general statements that are agreed to be verifiably and universally true, deductive logic can do more harm than good, in creating divisive doctrines, resulting in broken fellowship and a poor witness to the unbelieving World.

Finally, a general statement that is most definitely inaccurate brings us to those sinister purveyors of bad doctrines that Scripture most definitely warns us against:

“But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them – bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will

follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.” (2 Peter 2:1-3)

Let’s return to our Guardian columnist, Paul Oestreicher. He took the simple declaration that John was the disciple that Jesus loved and made the incorrect premise – through faulty translation – that their relationship was a physical “eros” expression of love. To this he “read between the lines” of other Scripture and made faulty deductions. This is what he did:

Jesus loved John (correct)

It was ‘eros’ love expressed here (incorrect)

Resulting in: Jesus loved John ‘erotically’ (incorrect!)

Here are some more examples:

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science cult, looked at the name Adam, then divided it into the two syllables “A” and “dam”, then taking the English meaning as

“an obstruction” concluded that Adam “was an obstruction put in place by the serpent between man and his Creator” (?!)

Her mistaken deductive thinking was that it is valid to use wordplay even in a translated language, therefore it is valid to divide the name Adam into two words, therefore I can attach my own resultant interpretation to the Genesis story.

Erich von Daniken was the Swiss author who wrote Chariots of the Gods (and 25 other books), asserting that God was an alien astronaut. One “proof text” he used for this was

Genesis 1:26, where God speaks in the plural (“let us make man in our image”). So he has taken a Scripture and used it to back up his mistaken presupposition that God was just one of many “alien astronauts”.

Then there are the modern-day prosperity teachers who plunder the Bible for “proof texts” to support their own agendas, twisting meanings and contexts of these Scriptures in ways that would make that master of deductive logic, Sherlock Holmes, turn in his fictional grave! More of them later.

So, the Bible and deductive logic? Good for doctrine, as long as your reasoning is sound and as long as your general statements are true, which they patently weren’t in the case of Paul Oestreicher, Mary Baker Eddy and Erich van Daniken. And, as the abiding general statement for our prosperity preachers is that Jesus wants us to be rich, we know that the very subjective logic that follows will be directed solely towards that end.

“As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. ‘This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ,’ he said. Some of the Jews were persuaded…” (Acts 17:2-4)

Paul here reasoned from the Scriptures. He allowed the Scriptures to speak for themselves, allowing them to tell the story of the Messiah who was crucified, but who rose again from the dead. He met with some success too. So there’s nothing wrong with deductive logic per se, it’s just that we need to know when to use it.

Now for inductive thinking and the Bible. Let’s remind ourselves.

Here we start with specific statements that we know to be true, then arrive at a general conclusion that we’re happy with but may or may not actually be verifiably true, but could be probably true.

With inductive Bible study, the specific statements that we start with as our raw material are the Bible verses themselves. So all we are doing here is examining the Scripture and coming to conclusions. Nothing other than good ol’ fashioned Bible study!

“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 3:14-15)

Paul says it well. The Holy Scriptures, with enlightened guidance, are sufficient to make one wise for salvation.

Inductive thinking encourages us to grapple with the specific statements (Bible verses) and arrive at a general conclusion that we are happy with – though it may not be everybody else’s conclusion. As Bible study is an interface between our minds and God’s mind, then we can surely expect God to be speaking to us in different ways, without allowing us to veer away from the truth of the Scriptures. This is very much a feature of the Hebrew mindset, so this is a good place to expand a little and remind ourselves what we’re talking about here.

The Greek mind says that man is at the centre of life; the Hebraic mind says that God is at the centre of life.

We must read Scriptures with the knowledge that it is primarily about God and His plan for our life, rather than seeking for confirmations for our own plans and actions.

The Greek mind says that the things of God must be deduced from our logical minds; the Hebraic mind says that the things of God can only be understood by faith and revelation.

Scripture is not as black and white as some imagine. The Greek deductive mind has a problem with this, requiring logical progressions, but the Hebraic inductive mind is more

accommodating, allowing for “non-logical” elements, such as faith and revelation.

The Greek mind says that we should strive for knowledge about God; the Hebraic mind says that we should know God.

The Greek deductive mind is never happier than when creating systematic theologies and great “trees of doctrines”, with everything connected up logically. When done correctly this does tell us much about God and is commendable and historically has protected the faith from heresy (though most of these are the result of Greek mindset – read How the Church Lost the Truth). But to really know God, is to grapple with His Words prayerfully and we do this through Bible study, using the inductive Hebraic mindset.

So, what have we learned? In short, we have discovered that there are basically two ways of investigating and analysing things of God, whether it is God Himself, or His Words or any other relevant topic. Both come originally from the ancient Greek mind, mostly developed by the pagan philosopher, Aristotle.

The first approach is using deductive logic, arguing from general statements that we believe to be true, then arriving at a conclusion that should also be true. This is useful for creating doctrine and arriving at systematic theologies, to explain every facet of God and His ways.

The other is using inductive logic, arguing from specific statements that we know to be true, then arriving at a general conclusion that we’re happy with. This is the approach we take when we grapple with Holy Scripture, in Bible study and this is where we engage with God Himself, through His Word.

And engaging with God is what He has put us on earth for. So rather than troubling ourselves with World-driven debates over the sexuality of Jesus, let’s concentrate on the business in hand.

Chapter 3: Was Jesus Goy?

Mmmmmmm!! (goy is Yiddish/Hebrew for “gentile”).

Do we really need this chapter? Sadly… yes. Not that you need it, but that you may tell others who need to know the basic facts about Jesus, our Messiah.

To be absolutely clear on the matter, here’s what I wrote in my book, Jesus, Man of Many Names (no harm in a bit of self-plagiarising!)

Picture the scene. It’s two thousand years ago, in a small village called Nazareth, in the Galilee region of what is now the Land of Israel. You see a little boy playing in the backyard among the wood piles and shavings. His father, Yosef, is in the workshop next to the yard and his mother, Miriam, is busy cooking. His name is Yeshua ben Yosef. You know him better as Jesus, son of Joseph.

It is time for lunch and his mother calls him. If Miriam had called him by the name ‘Jesus’, two things would have happened. Firstly he would have carried on playing, not recognising the command and secondly the neighbours would have been astonished

at Miriam’s bad attempt at Greek, a feat which was about as likely as your average cockney walking up to a pub landlord and asking for a pint of beer in his best classical Latin. If she’d added the epithet ‘Christ’, the situation would have been even more dramatic. Because not only would he have continued to ignore her and the neighbours been astonished at her Greek, but she would also have been stoned to death for assigning a forbidden and blasphemous title to her son. That is because ‘Christ’, is the English translation of ‘Christos’, the Greek translation for the Hebrew word ‘Mashiach’, which means Messiah, or ‘anointed one’. And no Jew would dare to make a claim to that title. Well, not until this particular boy became a man and embarked on his life’s mission.

Yeshua (Jesus) was a nice Jewish boy, who any mother would be proud of. He was born in Bethlehem, as the Christmas cards show us, in very humble surroundings. After birth he had been circumcised and consecrated at the Temple and, by all accounts, had the typical childhood of one from a poor family in a Galileean village. And how do we

know they were poor? “No room at the inn” was certainly a clue but the clincher was the “pair of doves or two young pigeons” that they sacrificed to the Lord after the birth. This was the ‘pidyon ha-Ben’, the redemption of a boy. It’s an acknowledgement that every first-born boy belongs to God and all parents must “buy him back” by making a sacrifice.

This rule dated right back to the time of Moses, when the first-born boys of the Israelites were spared from the Angel of Death on Passover night. Joseph and Mary were too poor to offer a lamb sacrifice and so were permitted to offer up the birds as a cheaper alternative.

So Jesus was Jewish. The clincher has to be in the last Chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22:

“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you these things in the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the Bright and Morning Star.” (Revelation 22:16)

Jesus was, is and will still be the offspring of David, the Jewish king, which makes him, most definitely, Jewish too.

This is obviously not an issue to every serious Christian who reads their Bible and can check out the facts for themselves. Obviously in the past, Christians had no such luxury and had to rely on the established Church for their religious input, so we can excuse them for not understanding this basic truth (though of course we can’t excuse their teachers). But there are some folk these days who still choose to believe a lie.

There are Palestinian historians who assert that, at the time of Jesus, Jews only lived in the southern parts, Judea and Samaria and that the Galilee area in the north, where

Jesus came from, was 90% Syrian and 10% Greek. For that reason they declare that Jesus was a “Palestinian” and not Jewish at all and, as a convenient side-issue, that Jews have absolutely no rights to Jerusalem, their capital. This view is shared by some far-right Christians, who stretch the truth even further by adding that modern Jews aren’t Jews either, but imposter descendants of the 8th Century Khazars from Asia!

So, why bring this up? What have we learnt? Probably nothing much really, but just the need to ask a single question:

What is truth?

“Pilate said to Him, ‘What is truth?; And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, ‘I find no fault in Him at all.’” (John 18:38)

Pilate knew that all Jesus said was true, but still allowed the drama to play out to its awful conclusion. As Christians we need not just to ask the same question, what is truth?, but to seek it earnestly, and deal with the consequences.

“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)

Sometimes the truth is clear, as in the question posed at the head of this chapter, was Jesus goy? The fact that some choose to avoid the truth says more about them than perhaps they realise. Most of us have perhaps s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d the truth now and again. I should know, I come from a family who positively revel in it. Here’s a typical dinner-time conversation from my earlier days:

Father: I had a really famous actor in my taxi today.

Mother: Who was it?

Father: Can’t remember, but he’s been in hundreds of films.

Sister: That’s nothing, my teacher used to be an actress. She’s been in thousands of films.

Me: So what! My teacher told me I’m such a good writer that some day millions of people will want to read my books!

In fact, Maltz exaggeration is probably the most endearing family trait known to man (see what I’ve done here?) But you really didn’t want to know that. Back to the real World…

The truth is not so much a certainty as just an option in today’s World. They call it relativism, where there are no absolutes, no definable rights and wrongs. What’s right for you may not be right for me. It’s very un-PC to go against this and particularly so when you use the Bible as a source for your absolutes. The World’s thinking is that, as religious dogma has been the source of so much conflict, we need to rise above this

and accept, in a spirit of tolerance, that we all live by different rules and we shouldn’t judge those who live by a different truth. Let us remind ourselves:

“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15)

If we want God’s approval we need to unashamedly seek His truth in everything. If we want man’s approval then we accept whatever “truth” has been set up as the way to live

your life in this World. There’s an extreme version of this. It is called propaganda.

Remember what I said earlier? Those Palestinian historians and far-right Christians chose to believe a lie. There was choice in the matter, because one suspects that they knew what the truth was, but they chose to reject it. This is a propaganda technique, the big lie, supposedly invented by Adolf Hitler concerning what he called the Jew’s lies about who was responsible for Germany losing the First World War.

His propaganda minister, Goebbels, explained it well, when writing about Winston Churchill:

“The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”

Of course, no-one actually employed the big lie better than Goebbels and the Nazis, using it to justify the holocaust, by vilifying the Jews as monsters and arch manipulators and depicting Germany as a victim nation that was simply having to fight back against “International Jewry”.

The essence of the big lie is that if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. Arguably, the advertising industry and politicians have benefited greatly from this view of the World. But you never heard that here!

Let’s sit back and consider how this affects us as 21st Century Christians, living in Western society. Apparently in a typical day we receive around 3,000 messages, bits

of information thrown at us from hither and thither and absorbed by our senses of sight and hearing, then processed by our brain and stored away in some hidden recess of the

mind. It has been said that if you stand in Times Square, New York, and slowly move around, in a twenty minute period you will receive around 500 visual messages from billboards, neon signs, light poles, sandwich boards, flyers, buildings, cabs, buses and buildings.

What is this doing to our soul? This has only really happened over the last century, it’s a new phenomenon but how does it affect our ability to absorb and act on information? It’s frightening if you think about it – and we haven’t even discussed the internet, TV, radio, mp3s and video.

“How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” (Psalm 119:9-11)

We really have to walk around with our eyes open and make a conscious decision whether we are going to be swayed by the messages that are thrown at us, or by meditating on the word I have hidden in my heart…

“… That I might not sin against You!”

There’s the rub. Those messages that are bombarding us, what is their purpose? They are there to sway us into buying something or doing something. They are not there to enrich our soul. We haven’t asked for them. How many of these messages are going to… entice you into sin?

Yes, very old-fashioned. Sin. But we must constantly remind ourselves that, simply by walking through our High Streets, we are exposing ourselves to temptations and enticements that we are probably too deadened to recognise as such. We need divine coping mechanisms… That I might not sin against You!

The truth. God’s Word.

How many of us have memorised whole chunks of Scripture, words hidden in our heart? It was far easier in Jesus’ day. As I commented in How The Church Lost The Way:

“Jesus and his contemporaries, in common with Jews before him and after him, would have had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament. Jewish boys would study the Torah (The first five books of the Bible) at the age of five, the oral “Traditions” at the age of ten and be trained in halachot, rabbinic legal decisions, at the ripe old age of fifteen! Scripture would be memorised as they didn’t

have laptops in those days, or even ready access to writing materials. They knew God’s Word like some of us know the Simpsons, past storylines of our favourite soaps, or the traits and foibles of the latest movie star.”

It can be a struggle unless we see it as a labour of love, as something that we actively desire to do, to have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

Was Jesus goy?

Let’s not concern ourselves with questions that we should already know the answers to, but instead treasure God’s Word in our hearts, so that we can have the real answers to the questions the World should be asking.

Chapter 4: Doing God’s Stuff

Rupert Murdoch. Now, that’s not a name you expected to see at the head of a chapter. For those of you untouched by this man’s influence (i.e. those who don’t read newspapers or watch satellite TV), he’s the man who brought us celebrity phone tapping (News of the World) and “Are You Smarter than a 10 Year Old?” (on the Sky TV network)… as well as The Times and The Simpsons (D’oh!)

He’s not a young man (still alive, at the time of writing) and is eager to ensure that his multi-billion dollar empire, News International, is going to stay in steady hands. So his eldest daughter and two sons are on the board and will eventually take over the reins of the multinational corporation. The flamboyant crook, Robert Maxwell, also left a legacy to his sons when he slipped off that boat near the Canary Islands, but the less said about that particular legacy the better! All through the world of big business and the media we read of the same story. Successful enterprises becoming family legacies and dynasties, from Jones & Son to Dallas (the TV show).

We also see the same transference in the Christian world. Ministries often pass from father to son. There are many examples of this, but I won’t single any out as I don’t wish

to give the impression of partiality. We need to pause and reconsider that statement, ministries pass from father to son and first ask what a ministry is?

God places a vision in someone’s heart. He is telling that person that He has a job for him/her to do. This, of course, requires a primed and willing heart in the first case, such as in the case of Isaiah.

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’” (Isaiah 6:8)

When this willingness matches up with a timely commissioning from God, then something is birthed. It may be just (to borrow a cliché) a tiny acorn and it may stay that way throughout its life… as a tiny acorn. Ministries don’t have to always grow into mighty oaks. The key is to stay true to God’s initial spark in your soul and then to allow it to grow naturally in proportion to the amount of divine food it receives, rather than as a result of your blood, sweat and elbow-grease. If you stay close to the original vision and it does grow into a mighty oak then God has decided that you are capable of receiving great responsibility. He feels that He can trust you. This is precious and you must do all you can not to blow it! But blow it we sometimes do…

When I became a believer I already had a creative writing gift and in my naiveté felt that it was a simple case of transference, from one kingdom to the other. Here am I, I prayed to a God who had not yet asked, send me! Then, without a moment’s hesitation I drew up my strategy of how I was going to bless God and then set about implementing my master plan. Oh how glad you’ll be, Lord, that you took me into your team!

For around fifteen years I plodded away, creating, writing, devising this that and the other, from books, websites and plays and tracts to computer games, screenplays and board games. In some cases (the Saltshakers website being an example) there was a measure of success, but mostly my endeavours fizzled out as damp squibs. Not that this put me off, so time, money and energy was spent on the next project and Monica had to get used to throwing her arms up in exasperation, or covering her face in frustration! The fact is that a creative person can sometimes find it very hard to switch off. My problem was in not finding that silence before the Lord, when He can talk and

you can listen.

Then one day God finally got through to me. It wasn’t that He hadn’t tried before, but we can be our own worst enemies in our wilfulness to go our own way, even when we think it is His way. So God spoke and gave me an ultimatum; if I stop my vain efforts in trying to make it in the secular world, He will find me an audience, as long as I write what He told me to write. Sounded like a good deal for me, so I threw away my carefully researched TV kitchen-sink drama and wrote a short article with the title, The Idiot’s guide to the Middle East conflict. That was 2002 and I’ve not looked back. He didn’t

promise me fame or riches; He just taught me that, if I really wanted a ministry, it had to be on His terms.

The point I’m making is that a ministry has to be birthed and sustained by God, in accordance with the time we spend listening to Him and acting in line with what He says. Anything else is just a business, a company, a corporation. We mustn’t confuse the two.

So God has given you a ministry and you have done your best to grow that vision in the way that the Lord leads. Sometimes others are brought into that vision, either because they share it as a call on their life or because you need people to do the stuff you can’t do, such as administration, the accounts etc.

This is all good, but now the dynamic has changed. Now you have to stay true to the vision that God gave you while considering the needs of others, all of whom will have their own versions of the vision. We are now in the shaky area of human relationships. Now, where’s my Bible, I need some input here…

What’s the difference between one of these ministries and a church? Isn’t a ministry just a church with a specific objective? What does the Bible say about ministries, in the way they are understood today? Here’s a good place to start.

“In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known

to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.’ This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.”

(Acts 6:1-6)

Stephen and the others were the first deacons, brought together to form a ministry, Feed the Grecian Widows. They were selected as men of faith and wisdom, deemed to

be key qualities even for a work of such a practical nature. They were still part of the Jerusalem Church, but they were a ministry within this wider body. So one would presume that FtGW would have been accountable to the First Messianic of Jerusalem congregation, in matters of discipline and direction.

Now for the biggie. What’s this got to do with the way we “do Church” now in the 21st Century? We live in a very different world, with different needs and obligations. Yes, it’s true that we do things in different ways, but God hasn’t changed one iota, however much we have allowed the World to change us.

And change us, it has. Even for most Christians, life in the Western World (and increasingly in the rest of the World) is not God-centred any more. What does that mean in the context of Christian ministries? How do our ministries differ from our 1st Century example and how do they resemble a typical modern day secular company or organisation. I would suggest the following questions would be worth asking:

- Was the ministry birthed from a personal vision from God? (Not necessarily talking about an actual visual or audio manifestation, but a real solid impression of God nudging you in a certain direction).

- Is the ministry still fulfilling that original vision?

- Is God still nudging you?

- Have you made room in your structures to discern any divine nudges?

- If God told you that the vision has fulfilled its purpose, would you wind up your ministry?

- Does everyone in the ministry share the vision? How do you know this?

- Is the ministry supported by a Church congregation?

- How is the ministry financed?

I’d like to speak a little on that last point, the financing, concerning the practical life-blood of the ministry. This is a most contentious area and a real battleground between the Greek and Hebraic (Jesus) mindsets. This is contentious because there is abundant evidence that, in terms of finances, ministries these days rely less and less on God’s ways and more and more on the ways of the World. Even in my working life, as a freelancer for Christian media ministries, I have seen a discernible change over the last five years in the way they approach the subject of financing.

Where is the Jesus mindset in the incessant barrage of mail and email requests for funds, using the same tried and tested techniques employed by secular charities? And what about the increasing use of broadcasting time in financial appeals? The very worst of this is from some Satellite TV stations, who presumably have to use aggressive approaches to finance the huge costs of leasing satellite time. The truth is plain to see,

it seems blatantly obvious. If God supplies the vision, then He can certainly finance it.

The problem is that the World has taught us two very different ways of approaching this situation. It has told us that it is OK, even beneficial to the greater good (i.e. banks!)

for us to live in debt, in the form of overdrafts and credit card balances.

“The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” (Proverbs 22:7)

The World has also told us that it is OK to amass cash reserves, put aside for emergencies (also good for the banks!)

Yet does God really work in this way? How did He supply that most needed resource of all – food – to the children of Israel as they roamed around the desert? He supplied them with manna, white honey wafers, the first recorded recipe for breakfast cereal! They were to gather manna daily (apart from the day before the Sabbath, when they gathered for two days), but to gather just enough for their daily needs and not to store

any for the next day.

“However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.” (Exodus 16:20)

Is this a divine principle? That God will supply our needs as and when we need them?

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:19)

This has certainly been my experience and that of many mature Christian leaders I have spoken to. The Lord likes to keep us on our toes, it’s a reminder of our absolute reliance on Him, something that the World wants us to forget.

And there’s the rub. The World (or rather, the prince of this World, the devil – John 12:31) wants us to forget God; it is telling us that all we need for our lives is supplied by

its systems, from the cradle to the grave. It is seductive, it is hard to resist, but it is not God’s way and, as Christians, we must always seek to remind ourselves who is Master of our lives.

We return to the original conversation at the head of this chapter, that of the transference of ministries, from fathers to sons. Bringing together all we have discussed I would first look at Rupert Murdoch’s motive in passing down control of News International to his sons and daughter.

He had built up his empire from scratch and wanted to leave it in safe hands with the only people who would be guaranteed loyal to him, his own children. They would be

aware of Murdoch’s business objectives and would supposedly carry on in the same vein. There is also the question of legacy and looking after the next generation, an inbuilt instinct for all parents.

Now let’s consider a Christian ministry and realise that none of this should, in the first instance, hold true. Firstly, there should be not the slightest whiff of empire-building or of self-promotion. To profit personally from God’s vision in your life was not why He gave you this vision! Neither should it be a legacy for your children, because it is not yours to give! Of course, if God has truly planted the same vision in the minds of your children, then this is not an issue and we are on safe ground, but the proliferation of father/son handovers in the Christian world tends to speak otherwise.

But then I may be wrong on this and, if a ministry is run in a godly fashion and is achieving God’s objectives, then it needs to be sustained through to the next generation and, if the children are ordained by God to do so, then the handover is going to be relatively straightforward.

Then there’s another really difficult question to ask. It flows from the major symptom of how the Church has followed a Greek rather than a Hebraic path, particularly in recent years.

Does your ministry currently serve God, or does God serve your ministry?

Be honest as you really think hard about this. All ministries birthed by a vision will have set out to serve God, but what about now? Is God seen as a source to be tapped into, simply to give an edge over secular businesses, or is He the centre of everything? In this book we are going to meet a few that are following that first path and it’s not the correct one.

The point I’m trying to make is that everything we do as Christians, whether as individuals or as groups, should be to His glory, transparent and above reproach. The Lord sees into all of our hearts and the following verse speaks far more eloquently into this issue than anything more that I can write.

“He said to them, ‘You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.’”(Luke 16:15)

Chapter 5 : Outrageous Unfairness

I never intended to cover this subject but I was divinely nudged.

Once a week I travel into London for business reasons and, for exercise purposes, this involves a 45 minute stroll from Oxford Street to Pimlico. This week’s journey was eventful, though mostly I didn’t know it at the time. At 8am I passed the Ritz hotel in Piccadilly, unaware that Margaret Thatcher was just about to die in her bed there and was to be the focus of an extended period of national mourning (apart from the street parties in Brixton and Glasgow). Forty minutes later, after a hearty breakfast, I witnessed the aftermath of another death. A lady cyclist had just been killed by a lorry in Victoria Street and, if it hadn’t been for the breakfast, I would have probably witnessed this sad event. This particular death, in contrast with the first one, was a lonely one, a single tarpaulin next to a mangled bike, the emergency services busy on the periphery,

with a significant exclusion zone separating the body from the World of the here and now.

Curiously these two deaths had the most coverage in the news services of the day. Perhaps I was the only one aware of their proximity. I felt that this was significant, hence the divine nudge.

It turned out that the lady cyclist was Dr Katharine Giles, a highly respected scientist working at University College, London. Hers had been the second untimely death in her

department and her manager later wrote, “we are all left with a sense of the outrageous unfairness with which some of our best colleagues have been taken from us”.

The outrageous unfairness of… death, the greatest taboo of them all. How better to describe the thing that happens to all of us but which none of us would care to speak of… death. It’s so taboo, that I can’t even bring myself to mention the word without a pause… first!

I think that for most of us caught up in the business of living our lives, we just believe that it’s going to go on… and on… and on. Cessation of life is not an option, as it is too

unknowable, unthinkable, even outrageous and unfair. Perhaps it’s a remnant of being made in the image of God, that our instinct is one of continuity and everlasting life. Of course, those of us who are Christians are assured of this continuity and everlasting life; perhaps that is why we’re the only ones unafraid of addressing the subject of… death.

Our society fires many mixed messages to us about this subject. Movies these days have enormous kill-counts, mostly casually despatched by the hero in both mundane and imaginative ways. Yet every one of those doomed ones would have had a (fictitious) lifetime of triumphs, failures, significant events and sorrows, only to be snuffed out in a moment, for your entertainment. Think of real life, of the thousands destroyed at the Somme, or Hiroshima or any number of bloody battles in our history. Each life cheaply sacrificed, despite perhaps the heroic context in which many died. How many people living in our current society, without belief system or assurance, could

contemplate death in a battle? Is it still this same instinct as mentioned earlier… death is for other people, I’m going to live forever?

Yet, by contrast, modern medicine strives to prolong life, even though it can’t conquer death. Millions of pounds are spent on this mission and people will readily sacrifice quality of life, just to give themselves a little more time. Is it because cessation of life has suddenly become real to them, the unwanted encroachment of the unknowable, unthinkable, unfair inevitability of… death?

How can we live with death and how can we help others to do so, too? We can deal with its inevitability, because we have no control of that, but perhaps we should concentrate on the taboo nature of the subject. If we can strip it bare of society’s fears and foibles, see it in its full nakedness, then perhaps we can start to get an understanding of its true nature. It is time to switch on to the Jesus Mindset, to strip out traditions of man and pagan thought patterns and return to the simple understanding of the Jewish followers of Jesus, specifically the thoughts of rabbi Saul (Paul) and the apostle John.

Death hasn’t always been there; it arrived after Adam’s sin in the Garden (Romans 5:12) and will stay around until the end, when, described as the last enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), it is destroyed, being thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14).

This is where death itself dies; this event is known as the second death. Just before that event, all who had died will be judged and the result of this judgement is surely the most

terrifying or amazing thing of all.

Amazing for some…

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

But terrifying for others…

“But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars – their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)

And that’s that, really. The rest is just commentary… painfully so. We all need to be in the first group and, to do so, we must avoid membership of the second group. And we do so by believing in God’s Word and receiving willingly His plan for our life.

What we need to believe is that death can really be defeated in our own lives. We need to be able to approach that final judgement with confidence. Paul is in mocking mode when he said:

“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55)

Jesus defeated death through dying on the cross and rising again on the third day.

“For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.” (Romans 6:9)

By doing so he has cleared a path for us to know – without a shred of doubt – that death is defeated for us, too – it cannot hold us.

“… just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”. (Romans 5:21)

“… but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel”. (2 Timothy 1:10)

Remember, death came about through Adam’s sin and it has still operated in the same way ever since.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

(Romans 6:23)

Familiar words, of course, but have they ever really sunk in? We must now again remind ourselves what Jesus achieved for us.

“Because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:2)

So sin and death have no hold on us any more, as long as we have belief, faith in what Jesus has accomplished for us. The way we are indoctrinated by society gives the

impression that what Jesus did was the easy bit and that the hard bit is for us to actually believe in it! In other words, the thinking goes something like this: do you honestly expect me to take time and effort to understand your fanciful superstitious worldview that we no longer need to believe in, because we are living in more enlightened, scientific times?

How tragic is that? That is the sad consequence of allowing the Spirit of the age, the rise of rationalism and the rejection of a spiritual element, to inform our thinking processes. It gives rise to two contrasting situations:

“The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.”

(Romans 8:6)

What controls your mind? Where do you want to be? There’s no argument, if the truth be told. Don’t we all want life and peace? The trouble is that the truth is not often told. And why is this? That’s where we’re going next.

It’s all about Heaven and Hell really, but that’s where it gets tricky. Let me put it this way…

Imagine you are in a queue at the final judgement with a fair smattering of saints from all ages. Parallel to you a few feet away is a second queue, containing the unbelieving, the immoral, the idolaters and the liars from all ages (we’ll leave out the murderers, the vile and the magicians for now). This is how things could pan out as a voice calls over to you from the other queue:

John (ex-office worker from Putney): I knew you, didn’t you work in accounts?

You: Yes, I did. It’s John, isn’t it? Nice to…

John: Nice? Nice! What’s nice about being in a queue with this lot? Look at them! And, by the way, why are you in a different queue?

You: Because I am… was… a Christian.

John: Mmm. So how did that qualify you?

You: I believed in Jesus Christ and what he did for me.

John: Just believing in that… got you in the queue?

You: Yes. It’s as simple as that.

John (after a pause): Then why didn’t you tell me?

You (after a longer pause): Didn’t I?

John: No… in fact I didn’t think your religion was such a big deal.

You: Why would you say that?

John: Because you behaved just like one of us…

You (emphatic): No I didn’t! Anyway, don’t confuse my tolerant attitude with my accepting of all the… bad behaviour.

John: I’m sure I’ve seen you drunk…

You: OK. Just once… and it was a leaving do… mmmm, maybe twice. But certainly not every week like the rest of you…

John:… and you laughed at our jokes, even the… y’know, dodgy ones… and I never heard you complain when we had a go at Holy Hayley. Now we all knew she was one of

your lot… a right pain she was!

Jack (ex-clerk at the same firm, around 80 years earlier): Shameful!

You: Pardon me?

Jack: Me, I’m a sinner and I know it, that’s what got me here.

John: Sin? What’s that got to do with anything?

Jack: It’s shameful that this fellow doesn’t know why he’s here, in this queue, with the likes of me. At least I know why I’m here.

John: And why’s that?

Jack: Because I was… an unrepentant sinner. I could have done something about it… but I chose not to.

John: What do you mean… unrepentant sinner?

Jack: I denied Christ and lived my life by my own rules.

John: How so?

Jack: I indulged in carnal lusts…

John: We’ve all done that, haven’t we?

Jack:… I blasphemed the Lord’s name…

John: Eh?

Jack:… I stole things. Small items of office equipment, but still stealing…

John: And who didn’t do that?!

Jack: But there seems to be a difference… between you and me…

John: Pray tell, friend.

Jack: I knew I was doing wrong… and you didn’t, because nobody told you… because he (points at you) didn’t tell you! Shameful!

John: If I knew that at the time, and that it would bring me here, with you, I’m sure I would have done something about it… or perhaps not… who knows?

Jack: At least I knew I was doing wrong. I was able to choose. No-one to blame but myself.

John: So, what you’re saying is that the blame was not all mine, if I didn’t know I was doing wrong.

You: Hold on, hold on. We all have responsibility for our own actions.

John: But… you could have said… something. Did you really want your mates to condemn themselves? Surely you could have said something…?

Surely you could have said something? Surely we could all say something… more.

Why would we want to see our friends, family and workmates in that queue of the condemned, at the final judgement, where God is going to look at the unrepented sin they have committed and say…

“But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars – their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)

Now I don’t think we are meant to analyse this list, looking for loopholes (my sins are not in this list, perhaps I’m OK) and nasty surprises (does it mean that cowardly Christians are condemned?). The entry requirements have been made clear throughout God’s Word.

“That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” (Romans 10:9-10)

Since I’ve been a believer, the people who have impressed me most have been those with a real gift for evangelism. They are so single minded, talking eating and breathing Jesus and never overlooking every opportunity to witness, whatever the personal cost or potential embarrassing situation. I used to think that this was the normal Christian life, which made me feel very small and unworthy, as I just couldn’t bring myself to do what

they do. And if they didn’t do what they do, many would not hear of Jesus (though, of course, God has His ways for reaching everyone, despite our shortcomings). But I still can’t do it and have learned to accept that fact. I just don’t seem to be put into those situations where I can effectively share my faith. God knows us well and uses us all in different ways.

Yet I still wonder if there was a time when every Christian was a natural evangelist. Perhaps it was easier when we lived in a country where Christianity was the dominant worldview, such as in the early 19th Century, when science and rationalism hadn’t yet made such inroads into popular thinking. Yet, if we (and me in particular) are promoting the Jesus Mindset, the return to a purer, uncluttered faith, perhaps there’s a case for…

“could do better, can try harder”!?

Perhaps it would help us to think about those two queues at the final judgement. Imagine your loved ones there, shuffling slowly forwards, surrounded by murderers, adulterers, liars and sorcerers. Then think on how they found themselves in that particular queue, purely on the basis of their rejection of Jesus Christ during their lifetime. We may feel excused in that evangelism is a gift after all and the hardest people to reach are those you have known and lived with, yet there’s one aspect of our witness that we can have no excuse for; did we act out the Christian life, and how much of Jesus shone through our actions and deeds?

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

(2 Corinthians 3:17-18)

Have we reflected the Lord’s glory in all that we do, especially when others are watching? Have we at least not provided a stumbling block, a barrier to entry, caused by a distorted reflection or one tinged with hypocrisy, detachment from the real world or just bad behaviour!

We now return to the sad story of Katherine Giles, the lady cyclist. We don’t know what the state of her soul was, or how God has used this to reach others. But may we conclude our examination of this taboo subject by praying for Katherine’s family and colleagues, for a true spiritual legacy in the lives of all who have been touched by this tragedy.

Chapter 6: Cinderella Church

Richard the Third may have had the ‘ump, but King Henry the Eighth was positively livid! How could his divine mandate be passed to the next generation if there was no male heir? Thus commenced the familiar sequence regarding the fate of his wives; divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. Out of this mess came Edward VI, who only lasted a few years, followed by his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth I. Henry was a firm believer in the doctrine of the divine right of Kings, seeing himself more or less as the “English Pope”, God’s right-hand man in God’s own country, setting himself up as the head of the English Church, once he had split from Rome.

The divine right of Kings may have been a convenient excuse for Kings behaving badly, but it was neither divine in origin, nor right. So where did it come from? It seems to have

originated with a Papal Bull, a controversial and badly-received proclamation from Pope Boniface VIII in 1302. The thinking was that God had given spiritual power to the Church (through the Pope, of course) and earthly power to the political ruler, the King. The implication was that the King was free to do whatever he wanted (as was the Pope) and relegated God to absentee parent, leaving his favourite child free to bully the rest

of the kids in the playground.

Of course, this was not from the Bible, just another example of the corruption of the medieval Church and the basic human inclination to create power bases. If this was not

something that came from Holy Scripture, then what does the Bible really tell us about such things? Is there such a process of anointing a succession of men (and women) for

His purposes? Well there is, but it’s not how the World (and the medieval Church) would have done it. Which is, let’s face it… quite comforting.

It all began with Father Abraham, the true head of mankind’s earthly (through the Jews) and spiritual (through the Christians) dynasty. He was even commissioned directly from God, with a promise:

“The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’” (Genesis 12:1-3)

So did Abraham (then known as Abram) divorce or behead his wife because of the lack of an heir? Did he leave her for a younger more fertile option when her biological clock had seemingly ground to a halt? Of course not… no, wait a minute… he did! Yes, he did dally with the au-pair… but that was at his wife’s insistence and she didn’t lose her head in the process! The result of this dalliance was a first son, Ishmael.

That would have sufficed for King Henry. A male heir, happy days! But from this point the Bible doesn’t follow the World’s script, because Ishmael, the first born, does not become the heir. Instead Abraham and Sarah break all gynaecological records and produce a son, Isaac, in their twilight years. And it is he who becomes the heir.

“… it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned…” (Genesis 21:12)

We move to the next generation. Isaac finds a wife Rebekah and she bears him twins, Esau and Jacob. Again, it is Jacob, the younger, who becomes the heir, albeit as the result of a bit of trickery and fine dining. God repeats the same blessing He gave to his granddad.

“I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.” (Genesis 28:13-14)

The next generation is even more interesting because this time the heir is the fourth born, Judah. This is because the firstborn, Reuben, slept with his father’s mistress (presumably without permission) and the next two, Simeon and Levi had killed all the males in a city in revenge for the rape of their sister. Further down the line, we find Jesse’s six eldest sons being rejected and God’s favour passing to David, who was, of course to become King of Israel.

We all know that the next king of Israel was Solomon, but here we see not one but two curiosities. First, the physical succession. As a King you would expect Solomon to have been David’s heir apparent, his first-born. In fact he was at least the tenth official son, not including a collection of unofficial sons, born from his mistresses. There’s no time to go into this except to say that it was a decision David made himself, prompted by Solomon’s mother Bathsheba and Nathan the prophet (1 Kings 1:5-53). Then, there was the spiritual succession, which passes not to Solomon, but his younger brother, Nathan. Solomon had started well, but his reign nosedived at a pace that reflected the speed with which his harem grew!

It is this spiritual succession, from Abraham onwards, that we have been concerning ourselves with. When we talk about heirs in a Biblical sense, we are speaking of a spiritual bloodline, rather than a physical one. These people are blood related, but the pattern is not a worldly one; it is not about a position of worldly privilege, of riches and power. It’s a very different bloodline. It’s a bloodline with an ultimate purpose, the birth of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. This bloodline is listed in Luke 3:23-38. Here’s some of it:

“Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melki, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son of Josech, the son of Joda, the son of Joanan,

the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the son of Melki, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son

of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Salmon, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Ram, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham.“

(Luke 3:23-34)

Now the “divine right of kings” produced a succession of self-proclaimed “God’s ambassadors”, who clearly weren’t anything of the sort and used their position to get up to all sorts of naughtiness. It is clear that the Bible teaches otherwise. God gives us a meandering Messianic bloodline and it’s not just full of first-borns. Many, such as Esau, Reuben, Simeon and Levi are overlooked on purpose, as are every king of Judah and

Israel except King David. God operates by very different rules, which basically means that… so should we.

God tends to overlook the big shots.

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” (1 Corinthians 1:27)

He used the stammering, reluctant Moses (“O Lord please send someone else to do it” Exodus 4:13), rather than his more naturally eloquent elder brother, Aaron. Rahab was a common prostitute living in Jericho, yet God used her to save Joshua and the spies and gives her an honourable mention in the “hall of faith” in Hebrews 11:31. Gideon was the lowest member of the lowest clan of Israel and a whinger who needed a series of clear signs before he could be coaxed into action. But then he allowed the Lord to reduce his men by over 99% before delivering a great victory against the Midianites. David was just a shepherd and part time harpist, but this complex, flawed man was moulded by God into a renowned soldier-King and an eternal divine favourite.

Jesus’ disciples would all fail auditions as leading men, in any Hollywood drama, except perhaps Judas, who fit the role of deluded baddie quite well. The rest of them, if you remember, scattered like ripples in a puddle at the first whiff of personal danger, when Jesus was arrested (Matthew 26:56). Could you see Bruce, Arnie, Sly or Van Damme doing the same? Of course they would, they’re only actors, after all!

All of these Bible characters go on a personal journey of discovery. God already knows them better than they know themselves and He moulds them each into someone He could use. They don’t start that way, some are reluctant (Moses), hesitant (Gideon), wilful (Simon Peter) or just seemingly not of the right stuff, but God knows otherwise.

And so it continued in history too. It has to be that way because we must remind ourselves what the goal of every Christian ought to be:

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

(2 Corinthians 3:17-18)

We need to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus, in order to reflect the Lord’s glory. So, it stands to reason that those Christians who have been the most open to this divine transformation should be the ones that God has used the most. That should be the mark of a Christian. So we comb our Church history books and read the testimonies of those great men and women of faith, who sought to emulate Jesus, rather than the World.

Francis of Assisi may have been high-born, but he gained his following from preaching on the streets with the beggars and living the simple life. Similarly, Mother Theresa of Calcutta (or Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu to her friends) left home at eighteen to be a missionary and dedicated the rest of her life to working among the poorest among the poor. William Wilberforce may have worked in the murky world of politics, but his faith in

Jesus shone in his work to abolish slavery, despite failing health and robust opposition. Corrie Ten Boom, the middle aged Dutch Christian, put her own life in constant danger by rescuing many Jews during Nazi occupation, earning her a spell in a concentration camp.

There are, of course, many other examples, most unrecorded and unknown to us this side of heaven. Yet we have to say that they all worked on the margins of Christian society, the exceptions rather than the rule. Francis of Assisi founded his religious order with the blessing of Pope Innocent III, the very same man who insisted that all Jews wear the yellow badge, as an example of “a people rejected by God”. While Mother Theresa ministered to the poor in Calcutta, just down the road the well-heeled Anglicans of the Raj enjoyed sumptuous meals after their weekly Church services. William Wilberforce may have belonged to a parliament that required a Christian oath for membership, but his fight for the abolition of slavery was largely opposed by the Christian establishment, including the Royal family and Lord Nelson! Corrie Ten Boom was one of just a handful of righteous gentiles in the Dutch Church, who stood by the Jews in their hour of need.

Any reading of the history of Christianity in the Western World would tell a similar story; those who stood up for true Biblical faith and the actions inspired by it, were vilified,

mocked, persecuted, even martyred, including John Wycliffe, who had the cheek to produce an English translation of the Bible, the first that could be read by the common person! This all beggars belief and the depths to which the State Church had fallen since those heady exciting days described in the Book of Acts must make God weep. This whole sorry story is told in many of my other books, notably How the Church

Lost the Truth, which describes the role played by pagan Greek philosophy in this decline.

But God has always supplied a remnant of true believers, either as localised movements (as in the case of the Waldenses and the Moravians), or with faith-filled individuals, such as those already described, who lived extraordinary lives despite

the hostility that surrounded them from the “official” Church.

And what of today? Does the Church still persecute its own? Where can we see Jesus’ likeness? What is the real state of the Church today? Are we truly the spotless bride we are meant to be, when Jesus returns for us?

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish,

but holy and blameless.” (Ephesians 5:25-27)

Cynical old me, as I ponder, thank goodness he didn’t return during the Dark Ages, or during the Crusades, the Inquisition, or the Holocaust. What on earth would he have found then, masquerading as the Church? Would he have been like Prince Charming, roaming the earth, ignoring whole bands of ugly sisters, looking for Cinderella Church, to that which the slipper fits?

Is it still Cinderella Church that Jesus searches for? That without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, that which is holy and blameless. Or are the stubborn stains of Greece too hard to remove? Is it too late to iron out those ancient wrinkles of pagan philosophy? Where is the Church without blemish?

Well, it may surprise you to know that God’s view of Church is not necessarily our view. The actual Greek word that is translated as “church” in the New Testament is ekklesia and it actually means “called out ones”. The Church is actually you and me, not the building in which we meet. This idea of “church-as-building” originated in the 4th Century when Christianity became the State Religion of the Roman Empire and the emperor needed a way to control the people.

So they constructed these buildings, based on a proven model used for civic assemblies, called them “churches” and proclaimed that you can only be saved inside these buildings, you had to regularly attend meetings inside these buildings if you wanted to be a Christian. It was all about control and the common person knew no better as they couldn’t read, no-one had a Bible and, even if they could read, the Scriptures weren’t in a language that anyone could understand anyway (they were in Latin, the language of the clergy)!

Today it is different in that we can read our Bibles, yet many of us don’t realise that “being Church” is nothing to do with what we do inside those buildings any more, whether they are of the ancient crumbling variety, or sports halls, or people’s homes. We are the Church. Remember this, it is important.

Let me repeat what I said earlier, when we looked at those characters who lived through Bible times. God tends to overlook the big shots.

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” (1 Corinthians 1:27)

I believe that God is preparing an army of Cinderellas, not the dread army of champions led by “God’s Generals”, or Joel’s triumphant army of righteous locusts (as some believe themselves to be), but the scattered remnant of broken, redeemed and selfless people that God is able to use for His purposes because they haven’t requisitioned Him for their purposes. There is only room for one Kingdom in the economy of God.

“For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (Matthew 23:12)

If you conduct a straw poll in the streets to find who are considered the most visible Christians in our society, you would draw a blank and will be fobbed off with the

Archbishops and Bishops of the land, none of whom they could personally name. A generation or two ago there were richer pickings with the likes of C.S. Lewis and Malcolm Muggeridge, but today… who knows? What does this tell us? It tells us that we are certainly not living in a Christian society, however you may define it. People can reel off names of scientists, politicians, actors, writers… even celebrity cooks. But Christians? No idea.

If you conducted the same poll with Christians you would probably be furnished with a list of popular writers, speakers, worship leaders and songwriters. There is a theme here, have you noticed it? Christians who are prominent these days in our Christian subculture are those who have become well-known for what they say… not necessarily what they do. It’s all about words, ideas, thoughts, theology, doctrine… even political

opinions, social commentary, theological debate.

It’s all just…. so Greek!

There’s nothing wrong with words and ideas, but where are the Christians who are visibly doing the stuff? The reason why non-Christians are not able to name any of us

is because mostly what we are known for these days is for what we say (usually moaning about something, or being negative), not what we do. And the World has enough opinionated people talking for a living, we are bombarded daily with this stuff.

Yet we are called to be different, to be salt and light, to have our lamps shining brightly, to demonstrate Jesus to an unbelieving World, not just talk about Him. We need not so

much to “talk the talk” as to “walk the walk”.

“For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” (Colossians 1:9-10 NKJV)

This is not a random quote to support my position, this is the very lifeblood and theme of God’s purpose for us. Of course we know this already and there are many of us who are walking the walk. This is not about you, it’s about all of us because we are all God’s representatives. We are here to demonstrate His Glory to Joe Bloggs in the street, not explain the exegesis of the doctrine of grace to him. We must make it clear not just that we are performing great acts of charity and service, but what our motivation is.

“And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3:17)

“Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

(1 Corinthians 10:31)

A lot of fuss has been made about the new Pope, Francis. That he stayed in a hotel suite, rather than the opulence of the papal apartment and paid the bill personally when he checked-out. That he rode on a bus after his election (though probably not the 128 from Romford). That he used to cook his own meals and regularly visited slums. The word bandied about here is humility and the news-worthiness of this is because of the

surprise that “God’s representative on earth” should be such a humble man. That’s because Popes and churchmen (whatever their denomination) are not really known for expressing Jesus’ likeness, rather than ruling Jesus’ Kingdom on earth. It’s a refreshing change, I suppose.

We look at the mainstream Church today and look at Paul’s observation of the radiant church without stain and wrinkle and wonder what kind of fit we have. Is the Church the church, or does it contain the church? There is a precedent for this in Scripture, in Jesus’ warnings to the Laodicean Church, in Revelation 3:20:

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”

So here sit those Laodiceans in the church pews and Jesus invites those who want to listen to him, to open the door to him. The impression is that not everyone is going to want to do this, not everyone in the church (building) is actually the Church!

The Cinderella Church is not a denomination, or an organised Church. It comprises individual, called-out ones, who are striving to walk worthy of the Lord and who will open the door to Jesus and dine with him because they hunger for him and him alone. It will contain Anglicans but not the Anglican church; it will contain Pentecostals but not the whole Elim/ AOG denominations. It will also contain Methodists, Baptists, even those caught up in very dodgy, dubious churches. It will even contain Messianics. There will be those who would call themselves Calvinists, Arminians, pre-millenialists and the

rest. God won’t let our doctrinal differences get in the way of our destiny.

He knows His Cinderella Church. We are the ones who are possibly going to be surprised as to who we will end up “sharing a cloud with” when everything is wrapped up for us.

Chapter 7: Onwards Christian Shirkers…

… marching back to bed!

Well that’s the last straw, how dare he! It does seem quite a harsh statement to make, to say nothing of the plundering of an old Christian battle-hymn! But this is very much the story of my own life.

I was never one for going to Church in the early days. It was a strain for me from Day One. After all, I was a 32 year old married man with no comforting childhood tradition to

tap into, this was no prodigal return, no sepia-toned nostalgic trip to better days. As a fan of heavy rock guitar music, Tiswas and the Goon Show, the last thing I wanted to do was to dress nicely and have my hair forcibly combed by wifey, then dragged into this fun-starved stained-glass prison, where I would have to sing simplistic dirges and generally be nice and polite. Let’s just say there were a lot of rough edges to deal with in those days.

As it turned out, I quickly adapted and the Church we went to was one of the better ones, with a multicultural mix of people, which appealed to our combined Jewish/German/ Polish/Catholic heritage. Still not a great fan of the music (or being nice and polite), but my Sunday outings were generally a place of spiritual growth. The philosophy of St Andrews was to ease new converts in, not to throw too much at them at once, which was fine by me. We soon had our regular unofficial pew placement, with me sitting at the far end, ready for any quick getaway if things got too heavy!

In those days, although my private – let us say academic – development as a Christian was going quite well, with a growing tape library and a mind that was devouring all kinds

of Christian books at an alarming rate, it was the social side that was lacking. In other words I was feeding the Greek nature (thinking, analysing, pondering), but neglecting the Hebraic nature (doing stuff that Christians were meant to do and cultivating relationships). To be honest I was painfully shy, happy to remain pew-fodder and positively alarmed at the threatened new adventure of going to a mid-week home group!

Can’t one be a private Christian? Why involve other people? These were my thoughts at that time and, if it wasn’t for the efforts of others, wifey included, I would have remained a solitary little island within my own world, a natural introvert who saw no need for change. God had other plans for me and brought me kicking and screaming into this alien landscape of other people… and it actually started growing on me.

I was a Christian shirker, content with feeding the inner life but generally unwilling to dip my toe into real Christian living. To be honest, this is still my inclination, but the difference is that I now know it is a wrong one.

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

God has a plan for all of us and, whether we like it or not, it’s always going to involve other people. It has to, I can’t see God giving us skills for any other reason, except to give back to Him, in the form of good works to others.

I think many of us are trapped by our inherited and taught Greek natures to think otherwise. I had originally rested in the thought that the sole purpose of the Christian life was personal salvation, to be saved, then go to heaven and live there happily ever after. I saw God as the captain of this great celestial liner, tossing out lifebelts to those He had selected, then watching as these blessed souls lived the rest of their lives safely cosseted by these life-saving adornments, with nothing to do but wait for the day of their final rescue.

It all boils down to one question. Is it enough just to be saved, or are we meant to do stuff too? A lot of theological hot-air has been exhaled on this subject and I’m just going to suggest a new approach to this question. It was a foundational question for the Protestant reformers and was expressed in their slogan, sola fide, faith alone. It also led to an extreme view, called antinomianism, where the very thought of law or works is frowned upon with disdain.

We can look at this debate in two ways. The first way is the Greek way, where we lock horns over Scripture, depending on whether we are following Paul (in Romans, Ephesians and Galatians) or James (in his letter). First, in Paul’s corner we give you the following:

“For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.“ (Romans 3:28)

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” (Romans 5:1)

“So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.” (Galatians 3:24)

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

These seem to be clear cut, with the primacy on faith.

Then, James gives us the following:

“You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.” (James 2:24)

“In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith; I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.” (James 2:17-18)

“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?” (James 2:14)

So, what’s it to be? Faith alone, sola fide, as declared by Martin Luther, the Reformer (who had quite a low view of the Book of James), or faith plus deeds, as the apostle James is telling us?

Who’s right and who’s wrong? Is it a matter of context or is one Biblical letter writer to be held at a higher esteem?

Or… can they both be right? This ought to be our approach to Holy Scripture, as God would not have allowed any falsehoods in His words. And this brings us to the second way to reading these words… the Hebraic way.

If the Greek way is to argue over words and their meaning and to retrench into our chosen corner when there appears to be conflicting verses, the Hebraic way looks elsewhere for inspiration. The Hebraic way would look first at the Author of the words and ask, knowing the character of the Author, what is He saying here, and what isn’t He saying?

It would look at the Paul passages and agree with the fact that one’s works won’t get you saved, only faith is going to do that. Then it would look at James and agree with the fact that once we are saved, if there’s no evidence of a changed life, through one’s works, then there’s something wrong here! If faith has not resulted in deeds, then how can that person be truly saved? It gives a lie to the work that the Holy Spirit does in us:

“Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” (Matthew 3:8)

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2)

Remember, straight after Paul tells us that we have been saved by faith… “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

He then tells us that this faith must result in good works. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

So the Hebraic mind tries to get inside God’s mind and make Him the centre of our thinking, before we start to analyse (or dissect) His Words.

Now do you think Almighty God, Creator of the Heavens and the Earth would allow His son to die a horrific, painful death on the Cross to atone for the sins of mankind, in order

that some of us could just bide time on this earth, existing solely for the spiritual rewards of the next life?

If we have inclined ourselves to this opinion then there have been historical precedents for this and we really need to learn from history in order to move on in our Christian life. Here it is in a nutshell:

From the middle of the 1st Century onwards, once the generation of Jewish apostles and disciples had died out, the reins of the Church were grabbed by the Gentile Church fathers, most of whom were well versed in pagan Greek philosophy, notably that of Plato. The major effect of this was to introduce the mistaken, non-Biblical idea that there is a separation between the physical and the spiritual. This led to artificial divisions in the Church and Christian thinking, between the body and the soul, the natural and the supernatural, the holy and the profane.

On the practical level it even divided the Body of Christ into two classifications, the clergy (the spiritual “professional” Christians) and the laity (the rest of us). This idea has been re-inforced ever since, giving the mistaken belief that only a small group of us (the clergy) are called into full-time Christian service. The rest of us (the laity) are the ones who are “served” and pay for this “privilege”, usually financially.

There are two outcomes to this, both affecting us today, if we only realised it. During the Dark Ages, the “Christian” world had sunk to such a low that the common man hadn’t a clue what he really needed to do to be saved. The Bible was only available in Latin, the language of the clergy, which didn’t really matter as the general public was illiterate. Lives were so brutally short that the clergy taught folk that only by performing rituals in Church, could they get to heaven and that their lives on earth were hardly worth living, so at least they had something to look forwards to. A historian wrote the following:

“The new kind of Christians, after the fall (of Rome), had little interest in their bodies as such. They cared about the health of their souls. They had no interest in consumption. They could lose their reputation rather than gain it for possessing wealth in a society where poverty was next to godliness. Roman wealth was replaced by Christian poverty.”

A History of Knowledge, Charles Van Doren p. 96, Ballantine Books 1992

There is every possibility that this thinking is still with us, even if in the milder form of not being interested in fulfilling their potential on earth because surely God has something better waiting for us in Heaven.

The other outcome is a more obvious one. We still have clergy and laity. The clergy these days also come in plain-clothed varieties, in pastors, worship leaders, writers, prophets, apostles and Christian leaders. These are our full-time Christian workers, earning their livelihood through exercising their God-given gifts. The tendency is for the laity to hand over all spiritual tasks to these “professional Christians”, to leave the rest of us to live our secular lives for ourselves. You can see here the subtle influence of Plato’s philosophy still with us – the separation of our lives into the spiritual and the secular. A symptom of this is the situation when a tramp or needy person wanders into the church – hold on, I’ll just go and fetch the vicar, he’ll pray for you / help you out financially / feed you / clothe you…

And there lies the problem and an “acceptable” refuge for a Christian shirker. We still think we’re the laity!

We’re not.

“To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father – to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.” (Revelation 1:5-6)

We are all priests to serve God, we don’t just anoint the special ones to intercede for us, as they did in Old Testament times.

But we still think we’re the laity. We are still used to elevating others to “minister” to us. We lay our hands on our TV sets because the “prophet” has told us we can catch the anointing that way. We allow our favourite trusted teachers to feed our spirits without examining their words against the plumbline of the Bible, seemingly bypassing our God-given critical faculties. We bind ourselves to TV ministries, attracted by the promised

blessings and “financial rewards” or just because they look honest and speak well.

We are still dependent on professional Christians. We need to break free from the pews, take charge of our own Christian development and behave like the Bereans:

“Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every

day to see if what Paul said was true.” (Acts 17:11)

It’s not easy sometimes, especially for those of us who are natural introverts. God doesn’t see the barriers that we create for ourselves. My barrier was the fear of speaking to a group of people. I would avoid it wherever I could until the day came…

when I couldn’t any more. I was literally thrown on stage by my mother to be M.C. at an early event held by our messianic fellowship (Tree of Life), simply because there was no-one else available. I did it and… reluctantly… quite enjoyed it and found myself quite natural at it. It didn’t suddenly open up a brand new ministry of public speaking in stadiums and conference halls, but it did convince me that, when push came to shove, I

could do it.

This fact was brought to mind after my first few published books were hardly flying off the shelves and I realised that I needed to get out there and do some promotions in

churches and messianic fellowships. This involved speaking to the public – let’s face it, I would rather eat quiche (private joke) than speak at a church – and set off a chain of events, culminating in wifey and I now organising a set of conferences, where I have been front man and teacher. God can use anybody. If he can take a tongue-tied introvert and give him the courage (and the words) to speak in front of over a hundred people at a time, then it’s time you fellow shirkers out there took note and allowed God to help you break any barriers you may have to really using the gifts He has given you.

“Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.” (1 Corinthians 12:7-11)

Noting that these gifts all seem to involve interactions with other people, I had always accepted these as a theoretical possibility but a personal no-go area. But, even more telling are the next few verses:

“The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body – whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.” (1 Corinthians 12:12-14)

You know the foot-related nursery rhyme… and this little piggy stayed at home? Well that may not be where God is calling you and for us all to function as a part of the wider body we may need to leave our comfort zones and venture forth.

This is one of the key ideas behind our conferences, the Foundations conferences held at Quinta Christian Conference Centre – this book is being launched at Foundations 4. The conferences are for people to come and find out where they fit into the Body of Messiah. Foundations is not just about teaching and instruction, but about contributing, networking and exploration. If you want to talk about something you own that is part of your testimony, then we encourage you to bring it along for a “show and tell”. If you play a musical instrument, then bring it! We have seen many people energized and motivated into “finding their gifts” at our conferences and the best advert for them is that, even though the first three conferences were held over a fourteen month period, around half of those who came to the third one had already been to at least one of the first two!

We must rid ourselves of the safety blanket of hiding among the “laity”. Shirkers of the world unite… and get out of bed!

Chapter 8: The Upside-Down Gospel

Christian satellite television should ideally come with a spiritual health warning! Some of it is perfectly safe, inspiring even, but there are certain times on certain channels when it is highly advisable to keep any non-believers well away. That is, unless you want to expose them to the upside-down Gospel, a peculiar variation of God’s Word that kicks in with these Christian stations for one purpose only… to aid them in their fund-raising.

It’s amazing really because much of this teaching seems to originate with just one man, Oral Roberts, who was rather obsessed by gardening, or rather the planting of seeds. He took this from the original garden, the Garden of Eden.

“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” (Genesis 8:22)

The context is an agricultural one. But Roberts decided to apply deeper spiritual interpretations from his own imagination, as we shall soon see. From this verse he makes a jump to Jesus’ teaching on seeds.

“He replied, ‘Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there

and it will move.’ Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20)

This was a foundational verse for Roberts, who thought he had discovered a formula here, a miracle factory that could be harnessed. We plant a seed of faith and, because

the Genesis verse seemed to imply a universal process that could apply spiritually as well as physically, then God is duty bound to deliver and will send us the miracle we need, even when we have a situation as impossible as the moving of mountains.

So Roberts thought he had found the mother-lode, a path to prosperity that seemed to come from God’s Word.

Before we move on from here I want you to review the last two sentences and notice how many words have been italicized. Each word alludes to Robert’s own thinking processes, his agenda, his needs, his interpretations of God’s Word. That’s an important point, hold onto it.

Roberts then produced three Bible verses as keys to strengthen his central seed of faith formula. The first recognizes God as our source.

“And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”

(Philippians 4:19)

This is fine. But then he gives us:

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Luke 6:38)

And this is where Roberts’ interpretation starts to turn the Gospel upside down. He says that we must first plant a seed of faith so that God can multiply it back to meet our need. There is no way we can give to God without receiving something back from Him, multiplied!

Let’s think about this.

The right-way-up gospel is all about giving the very best of you back to God, without the expectation of reward. It’s about giving wholeheartedly… just for the joy of giving, of pleasing God, of helping others. It’s about dying to self.

“In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” (Acts 20:35)

The upside-down gospel is to give of yourself with the expectation of personal rewards, even multiplied personal rewards. Let’s read the verse in Luke again:

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Luke 6:38)

If Roberts’ interpretation is correct, that the more we give, the more we get back, surely basic human nature is going to ensure that – even if we consciously don’t admit it – we are only going to give much because we are expecting to get an awful lot more back!

So, is Luke trying to tempt us here into something less than godly? He is recording here a sequence of sayings from Jesus.

“Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven… Give and it will be given to you.”

The meaning is clear, as a sequence. The emphasis is on the first beat… do not judge… do not condemn… forgive… give. Otherwise, there are consequences, the gist of the second beat… you will be judged… you will be condemned… you won’t be forgiven… you won’t receive.

Jesus is showing us good conduct. Do you really think that the Jesus you and I love is supplying here a get-rich-quick formula that has somehow escaped the notice of theologians for centuries, until unearthed by an American living in the second half of the 20th Century?

Here is the final Bible verse furnished by Roberts to back up his new findings:

“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24)

So here’s the deal. You have planted your seed of faith, expecting it to multiply and produce a miracle. We must now believe that we have received that miracle, no matter how long we have to wait. Two points here. First, Roberts has provided an escape clause here. By not specifying when the miracle is to be provided, there’s no come back, as he can just demand that you show more patience!

Secondly, the quote in Mark seems to back up what he’s saying. It is interesting that the tense of the action varies according to what translation you receive. Most have the

receiving to be in the present and the future, rather than in the past, which slightly changes the meaning. Also, the verse begins with a “therefore”, implying a link from the previous verse. As this verse talks about having faith to throw a mountain into the sea, it implies that the key principle is faith in prayer, rather than the result of the prayer.

The final comment on his website (http://oralroberts.com/teaching/seed-faith/) about this is:

“So, give God something to work with. No matter how little you think you have, sow it in joy and faith, knowing in your heart that you are sowing seed so you may reap miracles. Then start expecting all kinds of miracles! Remember, God always sends the right answer at the right time, in the right way. His timing and methods are always exactly right for our lives!”

So how do we summarise this keystone to the “seed faith” movement and the upside-down-gospel that flows from it (also known as the prosperity gospel)?

Basically, it is one man’s “discovery of a divine formula for prosperity” and the goal that he set himself to build up a plausible Biblical narrative to support this. Let’s face it,

Oral Roberts has been successful in this; he has birthed a whole generation of faith/prosperity teachers, who have built very impressive kingdoms and power bases on the back of this teaching.

The true Gospel is from God. The upside-down gospel is from man. It is yet another symptom of the Greek understanding of the things of God, placing human agendas at the heart of one’s thinking, then plundering Holy Scripture to convince the World that God’s on their side.

So you turn on your TV and just happen to watch a fundraising broadcast from one of the Christian stations. The presenter will almost certainly be using the seed faith concept in his presentation, though many different routes may be taken to reach the bottom-line. Some of them can be quite imaginative in their meanderings, but the punch-line is always the same.

“Sow your seed now… and you will receive your reward.”

Why is such manipulation needed? Why can’t they just explain their needs and rely on the generosity of their viewers? This is the route taken by various Christian media stations in the UK and it both gets results and treats their supporters as mature Christians, emphasising the joint enterprise in the work of providing the Gospel message on the media, without pandering to basic human greed. “Seed faith” is a travesty of God’s Word and it is why I opened up this chapter with a spiritual health warning.

Here’s a “gift” that’s just dropped into my lap today. One of the World’s foremost “faith preachers” has just posted a request for his followers to send in $2.5m over the next 90 days, so that he can get out of debt! The incentive to these “cheerful givers” is that they will supernaturally get a 100% return on their investment. Here’s a quote from his website:

“This is an appointed hour. Imagine: Your $100 gift immediately doubles to $200. Your $500 seed literally becomes $1,000. If God leads you to plant $10,000, it instantly grows into a $20,000 seed! And your double seed, sown bountifully, will reap bountifully through the supernatural law of multiplication! Only God could provide something like this—a double harvest for you. And the more you plant, the more you will reap! The

anointing for biblical abundance is being released. As you step into this miracle by faith, it will be poured out upon you, too! Your giving is literally the weapon that breaks the bondage of debt in this ministry and in your home during the next 90 days.”

You couldn’t make it up! Christians wake up!

There is another tactic they use, again originating from Scripture, but torn violently from its pages. It comes from this little incident:

“God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.” (Acts 19:11-12)

By taking what Paul did here as an example they find themselves with a tangible means of sustaining their manipulative relationship with their audience. They claim that a green

(seems to be a favourite colour) prayer cloth can be used as a channel of the blessings that God wants for you, once you have sown your seed gift into the ministry.

But then it opens up another issue. Who is setting themselves on par with the great apostle Paul? We don’t read of this activity in any other verses, from any other apostles? It smacks of a one-off, something consistent with those early days, when the Gospel needed to explode into that society in as short a time as possible.

Here’s one such person. Let’s call him Nigel:

“The Green Prosperity Prayer Handkerchief is a cloth that Nigel has personally prayed over, blessed, and anointed. Nigel believes the prayer cloth is a Touch Point of Hope to help people release their faith because, “all things are possible to him that believeth.” [Mark 9:23] Thousands of people around the world who have used the Green Prosperity Prayer Handkerchief have given inspiring testimonies of the miracles of healing, prosperity, and spiritual salvation.”

Also there is a Christian TV ministry that encourages its viewers to email prayer requests (along with their seed-faith gift). These are then printed out, taken to a special altar built in Jerusalem and, on live TV, prayed over by “men of God”.

Now there’s nothing wrong with prayer requests, all ministries get them and we Christians see value in prayers being offered on our behalf from far and wide. But to take them in their thousands to an “altar” in a “holy place” and there, in the presence of thousands, get the “Holy people” to pray over them. Is this the gospel? Is this the freedom Jesus has given us, writing his law on our minds… or is this theology straight out of the pages of the Old Testament?

Altars? Holy places? Holy people acting as priests on our behalf? It’s another upside-down gospel, where we are supposed to believe that there is geographical significance in our worship and service and where special anointed people are able to intercede for us, as if they have a special hot-line to God because they’ve been on the TV!

We now begin to realise that there are people out there who actually believe that they are God’s extra-special ones. Here’s a quote that both illustrates this and ties everything together nicely.

“I prayed over this cloth for God to deliver you – use as a point of contact [Acts 19:11-12]… It is not necessary to wear the cloth unless you feel you should. It can be used more than once or for more than one person. If you wish to request more, I will be glad to send them to you. The important thing is to use the cloth as a point of contact for the body…” (Christian News review of Oral Roberts: “An American Life” by David Harrell)

So what is the postscript to all of this? Here’s a passage of Scripture that seems to fit the bill:

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres

opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth – men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.” (2 Timothy 3:1-9)

I’m not saying that this is a complete description of the “seed faith” teachers as much of their other teaching is often quite sound, but there’s enough similarity to make us wonder that if Paul is not talking about them, then you’d be hard pressed to find another group of people who better fit the bill.

If Jesus popped to this earth for a day visit, would he be able to get past the bodyguards and security systems and speak to these people, as they enjoy the fruit of their “spiritual labours” in their mansions and huge estates?

Would he want to?

Chapter 9: Language, Timothy!

Sorry, if you don’t get the pun in the title. Google it, if you’re confused!

So, this could be seen as the wild-card chapter, perhaps the author’s little indulgence. Possibly, but there is a serious message here. It’s serious because it involves the only one of the Ten Commandments that seems to have been broken quite deliberately, without conscience. It’s the third commandment:

“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name”. (Exodus 20:7)

It’s the one about blasphemy. Breaking this one had consequences:

“Say to the Israelites: ‘If anyone curses his God, he will be held responsible; anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord must be put to death. The entire assembly must stone him. Whether an alien or native-born, when he blasphemes the Name, he must be put to death.’” (Leviticus 24:15-16)

It’s as well we are not under the Old Covenant in terms of consequences of actions, otherwise the world would be a very lonely place, inhabited only by a few maiden aunts and the odd vicar. Because the rest of us would have been stoned to death for blasphemy!

But I’ve never taken the name of God in vain in any way! Yes you have.

First a list of some euphemisms for “God”; by gad, oh my gosh, by gum, by Jove, by George, so ‘elp me Bob, by Godfrey, great Scott, good grief, goodness gracious, begorrah, we’ve all uttered one or two of these in our time, haven’t we?

Then we have these; Gadzooks (God’s hooks), drat! (God rot), doggone (God damn), cor blimey (God blind me), by golly (God’s body), darnation (damnation), strewth (God’s truth), suffering succotash (Suffering Saviour), zounds (God’s wounds).

Then there are the alternative names for “Jesus”; Jiminy Cricket, Gee wiz, Jeez, Gee, Jeepers, Judas Priest, Jeepers Creepers.

For “Christ”; Criminy, Crickey, Cripes, for crying out loud, chrissakes.

For “Lord”; Lor, Lawdy, Lumme (Lord love me).

These are known as minced oaths, religious euphemisms that were created to avoid direct blasphemy, which in older days, would have got you in trouble with the authorities. Many of these would have been created round the time of the Puritans, who were particularly hot on this issue. Here’s a typical notice from 1623:

“For as much as all profane Swearing and Cursing is forbidden by the Word of GOD, be it therefore enacted, by the Authority of the then Parliament, that no Person or Persons should from thenceforth profanely Swear or Curse, upon Penalty of forfeiting one Shilling to the use of the Poor for every Oath or Curse. Refusal or inability to pay resulted in the offender being set in the stocks (if over twelve years old) or whipped if younger.”

Have we taken the Lord’s name in vain? Of course we have, though, in mitigation, we mostly haven’t realised it, or have felt safe in the knowledge that a derivation is not the actual word, so no worries! I wonder what God thinks?

Yet even Christians have been known to utter such epithets as “Oh my God!” or “Oh God”. These may not be seen as blasphemies, but perhaps can be suggested as over-familiarity with the Deity. The use of the phrase “Jesus Christ!” in all of its derivations seems to be on the rise in popular dramas, even our daytime soaps. We don’t need euphemisms or minced oaths these days as there is no guilty conscience or penalties in

uttering blasphemies. That’s a good indication that our society today is very much Post-Christian.

The last person to be sent to prison for blasphemy in the UK was John Gott in 1921, who received nine months hard labour for publishing satirical pamphlets mocking Jesus. In 1949, Lord Denning said that “it was thought that a denial of Christianity was liable to shake the fabric of society, which was itself founded upon Christian religion. There is no such danger to society now and the offence of blasphemy is a dead letter”. Could this be because our society has lost the fear of God? It seems so, especially when we remember the outrage from Christians at the broadcasting of the highly blasphemous “Jerry Springer: The Opera” at the BBC. Over 63,000 official complaints were made but no prosecutions resulted, as the High Court felt that blasphemy offences do not apply to stage productions or broadcasts?!! Another indicator of how our society today is Post-Christian.

So, thinking now about ourselves, are we condemning ourselves in our speech? It’s serious business if we remember the example of these two chaps condemned by Paul:

“… of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.” (1 Timothy 1:20)

Have we inadvertently committed unpardonable sins? Who am I to say? Who am I to judge? But we serve a God who forgives and it would be a good exercise if we all paused now and asked Him to forgive us for any past infractions on this issue. The thing is that we may also have to cover any future infractions because most of the words and phrases mentioned are so much a part of the English vocabulary, we probably are

unaware when we are using them. But it’s good to get before God on this and just assure Him that we’ll do our best.

And it’s important that we do make an effort, if we are trying to become more like Jesus and less like the mould that the World would like to force us into. Here’s one for you young ‘uns to set a good example to the rest of us:

“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.” (1 Timothy 4:12)

Our speech is one of our main interfaces with the World. Is our speech as clean as it could be?

“Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man ‘unclean.’ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual

immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” (Matthew 15:17-19)

So, moving on to another aspect of our speech, the use of certain words in common parlance. Read on…

The World is not as mysterious as it once was. Until our scientific age started digging away at the foundations, God was very much seen at the centre of all aspects of life. Of course this may have led us into making incorrect conclusions about the mechanisms that control our lives and our World, but they got it right in that God is still very much at the centre of our lives. Here’s a good example.

Strokes these days kill or disadvantage thousands of people. It is described as a rapid loss of brain function due to the lack of blood reaching it. Of course we know that now, but we haven’t always known that. In fact the word itself comes from the phrase, “a stroke of God’s hand”, attributing a divine cause to the condition. Interesting and curiously apt, as God has His hand on every aspect of our lives, whether we choose

to believe this or not.

“If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.” (Psalm 139:9-10)

After all, don’t doctors still say, as both a comfort and an admission that they have done all they can, according to their knowledge, “It’s in God’s hands now”? They probably don’t mean what they say, but that doesn’t diminish the power of the concept.

Now there’s another set of words that we use all of the time but tend to make me feel very uncomfortable. Here are a few sentences that illustrate this:

“You’re a lucky man! How fortunate you are! What are the chances?”

We’ve all said these things, they are so tightly knitted in our everyday banter. Yet, when we look at the origin of these words…

Fortuna was the Roman goddess of luck, fate and fortune and the daughter of the chief god, Jupiter. She had temples dedicated to her and owned the wheel of fortune (now a TV game show), that she spun randomly to determine the fate of individuals. If you are fortunate, then Dame Fortune is surely smiling at you. A lucky person is surely in league with Lady Luck!

What are we really saying when we use these words? Is there a sense of invoking these pagan deities or at least acknowledging the power behind what seems to be random

forces? Or is it a load of old nonsense and we shouldn’t worry about it?

Whatever way you view it, perhaps, as Christians, our everyday language should reflect our beliefs. One word that ought to be used more is blessing, though it may seem a touch sanctimonious if over-used.

“You’re a blessed man! How blessed you are!”

Perhaps there are words we can derive from the fruits of the Spirit?

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23)

Do you have other alternative sanctified words that we can use? If so, please get in touch, it would be such a blessing.

So, what’s the point of this little chapter? It’s just that what may seem trivial and irrelevant to us may actually not be so, but even irreverent to Him whom we love and follow. Isn’t the point of loving someone (or Someone), the act of taking time to find out if you are pleasing or displeasing Them? Yes, there has been over three millennia since Moses came down that mountain with those stone tablets, and yes, we are living in New Covenant days, but if God instructed the Hebrews not to take His name in vain then, should that not also be so for Christians today?

The next time you accidently hit your thumb with a hammer, meditate for a moment before your exclamation (as if!). Here are a few options you have that don’t involve blasphemy or obscenity: oh dear, deary me, ouch, that hurts! Controversially, it may even be “spiritually correct” to utter a quick f***, s*** or b*******, rather than taking the Lord’s name in vain. The choice is yours. Use it wisely. ;–)

Chapter 10: Anything Goes… Within Reason!

Here are a few scenarios that have crossed my path over the past few years. A very well-known Christian teacher, acting as an ‘agony uncle’ for a magazine, stated that Muslims probably had a chance to get to heaven. A world-famous author wrote that monogamous homosexual relationships were probably OK with Jesus. Leaders of a national denomination denied that God can still act in judgement over His people, through natural phenomena such as bolts of lightning. Then there was the episode mentioned in the Prologue, of the scientist who felt more connected to an atheist than a fellow Christian because of doctrinal differences.

What’s the connection? They are all Christians, but what they see when they open the pages of the Bible may be very different to what others see. To understand how they feel able to believe what they believe, we are going on a short journey in time.

In 1771, the highly influential Encyclopaedia Britannica was first published, as a three volume set. Let’s have a quick look at two of its pages. On page 493, in the astronomy section, it states that the World was created on 4007BC and on page 414 it talks about the universal deluge that covered the World and how Noah’s ark survived it. It also contains an article that scientifically proved that the ark would have been big enough

to hold all of the animals.

In 1853, the eighth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica said the following about The Flood:

“The insuperable difficulties connected with the belief that all other existing species of animals were provided for in the ark are obviated by adopting the suggestion of Bishop Stillingfleet, approved by Matthew Poole… and others, that the Deluge did not extend beyond the region of the Earth then inhabited.”

Doubts had started to creep in. We move onto the ninth edition, in 1875. This time The Flood story was recorded without comment, implying that debate on this issue was not considered important or relevant enough. Skipping a few generations, the 1960 edition contained an article that said:

“Before the days of ‘higher criticism’ and the rise of the modern scientific views as to the origin of the species, there was much discussion among the learned, and many ingenious and curious theories were advanced, as to the number of animals on the ark.”

So what we observe here is the growing irrelevance of the Noah’s Ark story thanks to the rise of scientific thinking and the whole story is relegated to the status of legend, with a condescending quip about how pointless it is to argue about the number of animals there were on the ark, when the whole story is probably myth anyway.

“Before the days of ‘higher criticism’ and the rise of modern scientific views…”

Higher Criticism seems to have made a difference in the way we read and understand the Bible. So what is it?

There’s a hard way and a simple way to describe it. Being a simple person, I will simply say that it is using our intellects and analytical tools to tear the Bible apart as one would do any other book, in order to see who really wrote it and what it really says. It totally ignores what the Bible says about itself:

“For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)

Wielding the scalpel of our analytical tools of Biblical criticism is like conducting an autopsy on a living body. We need to ask ourselves, how did these scholars feel able to do this? How can they not see that the Bible, God’s living words of instruction to us, is not like any other book? The following few paragraphs, taken from my book, How the Church Lost the Truth, and embellished with some extra explanations where needed, set the scene:

In the 8th Century the works of the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, were discovered by the Muslims and translated by the Jews into the languages of the day. Aristotle’s main teaching was to encourage rational thought and the use of the senses in observing the World around you. By introducing the concept of rationalism into the religious cultures of the Jews, Muslims and Christians, it is fair to say that the damage done was immense. These ideas were taken up by the most influential Christian philosopher of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, who created a religious system combining faith and reason,

stating that even the existence of God was not to be taken as a given but through analysis of information that could be gathered by the senses.

The genie had been let out and the subsequent rise of rationalism was to eat away at the certainties of faith. State Christianity became more of a philosophic system to be

argued over rather than a supernatural expression of God’s plans for mankind. This was not helped by the corruptions of the Catholic Church and its use of pagan practices to control the ordinary people. Something had to give and it was Martin Luther who provided the spark of a Reformation in the Church, a new beginning.

Yet even the Reformers were not free from Greek influences, but it was the accent on the rationalism of Aristotle that was to spearhead the next major attack on the Christian Church, which has lasted from the end of the Middle Ages right up until today. First came the Renaissance, the “rebirth”, the flowering of culture and artistic expression in Italy, believe it or not inspired by the ideals of Ancient Greece! This was also the birth of Humanism, a movement that placed man at the centre of everything, rather than God. Then came the philosophers of the Enlightenment, who built on these ideas

and eventually totally did away with the need for God at all, replacing Him with their own rational ideas. This was the birth of individualism, which has now become the defining feature of modern society.

Although God made something of a comeback thanks to the Methodist movement, followed by the awakenings of the 18th and 19th Centuries, prompting a massive worldwide missionary movement, we largely entered an age of confusion and division. This was the age of new cults, such as Christian Science and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, borne out of the ancient Greek heresies. It was also an age of a fight back by the Catholics, with strange new doctrines such as the immaculate conception. There were the Deists, who believed in some kind of absentee landlord God and then there was Charles Darwin and his ideas, to further chip away at the ancient faith, with the mallet of human reason and scientific methodology. And out of Germany came Higher Criticism, a new way to disbelieve the Bible.

One of the basic methodologies of Higher Criticism would be to look at each book, in both Old and New Testaments and re-evaluate them in terms of authorship and intention, by analysing the literary genres used, other ancient literature, as well as historical knowledge of Biblical times. This is a worthy enterprise if you have any reasons to doubt the book you are investigating, in terms of content or authorship. Any reasons to doubt… doubt… DOUBT.

“… he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.” (James 1:6)

This conjures up an image of drifting without a foundation or an anchor to cling onto. Being at the mercy of the wind implies a lack of certainty and lays you open to all sorts of dangers. Here we see it explained so:

“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.” (Ephesians 4:14)

It is interesting that a watershed moment in recent history regarding these matters, was the Scopes “Monkey” trial in 1925, with a stand-off between supporters of the Biblical Creation account (taking six literal days) and the Theory of Evolution. This was made into a play and a film, entitled “Inherit the Wind”. The title of the play is from Proverbs:

“He who brings trouble on his family will inherit only wind, and the fool will be servant to the wise.” (Proverbs 11:29)

Whatever the reasons were for using this quote for the title of the play, these words are worth heeding. We Christians are a family, one big (but not necessarily happy) family! We don’t want to inherit the wind of bad teaching, we only seek to bring our family together in truth.

That is the purpose of this book. It may seem that there’s a lot of criticising going on here, but it’s all done in love, a sincere desire to bring healing to the Body of Christ and to anchor us all in the truth of God’s Word.

Now, out of this higher criticism came a new form of Christianity, one that very much mixed up Bible truths with the patterns of this World. Paul had seen this coming:

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)

There was a new kid in town, flexing his muscles. His name was Liberal Christianity and the Jesus Mindset now found itself in some new battles. A good definition of Liberal Christianity is the one given in Wikipedia:

“Thus, liberal Christian theologians do not claim to discover truth propositions but rather create religious models and concepts that reflect the class, gender, social, and political contexts from which they emerge. Liberal Christianity looks upon the Bible as a collection of narratives that explain, epitomize, or symbolize the essence and significance of Christian understanding. Thus, most liberal Christians do not regard the Bible as inerrant, but believe Scripture to be “inspired” in the same way a poem is said to be “inspired” and passed down by humans.”

So what we have here is the triumph of the rational mind, the scientific approach to the Bible. Rather than let the Bible speak in the timeless way that it has always done, these new theologians are creating models, clevernesses from their own minds, using the Bible as a source of concepts rather than absolute truth.

One of their first “contributions” was to tear the Gospels to pieces. In the 19th Century David Strauss wrote a Life of Jesus in which he stripped out any miraculous events, as they would have come from the imagination of the community as it told and retold these stories. Ernest Renan, in his Vie de Jesus, went even further, embellishing the gospel narratives with his own psychological insights into Jesus and his motivations. This

tickled the public and it was popular enough to be reprinted eight times in three months.

These liberal Christians wanted to major on the moral teachings of Jesus as a standard for society, but tried to do this by stripping out all supernatural elements. Even today, modern liberal Christians would tend to see the miracles of Jesus as metaphors for the power of God, rather than actual events.

It is time to return to the examples given at the head of the chapter, all of which you will now identify as natural consequences of the rise of Liberal Christianity, particularly in the UK.

First, the ‘agony uncle’, who stated that Muslims probably had a chance to get to heaven. His comment was of the nature, how do we really know who gets into heaven and, anyway, who are we to judge?

Now Jesus was very clear on this matter:

“Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” (John 14:6)

No-one embodied the Jesus Mindset more than Jesus, of course and there’s no way to read this verse (and others that say similar) other than the fact that the only way we are going to get to heaven is through our faith in Jesus and what he did for us.

We can, of course, make use of deductive logic (as mentioned in an earlier chapter) by making some assertions and then arriving at a conclusion. But if that conclusion is anything other than what John 14:6 is telling us, then our assertions are probably going to be false, and those assertions will be formed from our needs, agendas and prejudices. For instance, our teacher here will start with the general statement that God is merciful (as He is) and loving (as He also is) and will come to the reasonable conclusion that everyone is going to be saved, because God doesn’t really want anyone to go to Hell.

Yes, but equally we can make the general statement that God is a righteous God and the only way we can be in the presence of a righteous God (i.e. in heaven) is through Jesus’ redemptive act on the cross. So our conclusion here is that no-one comes to the Father except through Jesus. This happens to be true but this use of deductive logic is not the way to come to the conclusion. Instead we use inductive logic and start with John 14:6, a specific statement that we know to be true, as well as those other Scriptures that agree with it and come to the general conclusion – that only believers in Jesus are saved.

Then there’s that author who wrote that monogamous homosexual relationships were probably OK with Jesus. He is not taking this assertion from Scripture, as Jesus never spoke specifically of this. So he is not using inductive logic, where we start from a specific statement that we know to be true (i.e. Scripture). Instead he is making general statements based on his knowledge of Jesus’ character and coming to a conclusion that he’s not even sure about himself (through the use of the word “probably”). In other words, it’s just his view, nothing to do with what’s actually true!

Then we had the leaders of a national denomination denying that God can still act in judgement over His people, through natural phenomena such as bolts of lightning. Those old enough to remember this event in the 1980s will know it involved the unexpected and mysterious lightning strike on the steeple of York Minister three days after the consecration of an extremely liberal Christian (David Jenkins, who believed in

neither the virgin birth or the bodily resurrection of Jesus) as Bishop of Durham.

There are two issues here. Firstly the idea that God doesn’t involve Himself in acts of judgement and doesn’t do much smiting any more is not a concept that can be found anywhere in the Bible. It’s the main idea of a corruption called Deism, one of the early versions of Liberal Christianity. Deists believe that God just got the world and everything started, then left the rest to us. Just doesn’t get personally involved anymore. This was still alive and well in the 1980s, so it seems, particularly as the Anglican hierarchy would have preferred this to the other possibility – God’s displeasure in the consecration of a heretic!

Which brings us to David Jenkins. How can someone become the Bishop of Durham (the third highest ranking Anglican in the land) without believing in what we would call the minimum requirements to being a Christian, the fact that Jesus had a physical resurrection? If this is the natural consequence of Liberal Christianity it would be interesting to see how we actually got from Higher Criticism to David Jenkins.

What were his credentials? He gained an MA at Oxford University and trained at Lincoln Theological College. He taught theology at Oxford and became Professor of Theology

at Leeds University. He was also chaplain at a variety of places and had written many books on theology. So there’s evidence that he knew his stuff and that he was a clever man. But, in 1984, he was asked, on the Credo programme on Channel 4, whether he believed that Jesus rose from the dead. This is what he answered:

“Well, I hold the view that he rose from the dead. The question is what that means, isn’t it? I think I should like to say that it doesn’t seem to me, reading the records as they remain in both the Gospels and what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, that there was any one event which you could identify with the Resurrection. What seems to me to have happened is that there were a series of experiences which gradually convinced a growing number of the people who became apostles that Jesus had certainly been dead, certainly buried and he wasn’t finished. And what is more he wasn’t just not finished but he was “raised up”, that is to say, the very life and power and purpose and personality which was in him was actually continuing and was continuing both in the

sphere of God and in the sphere of history so that he was a risen and living presence and possibility.”

In other words, by evading the question and giving such a fuzzy answer, he tried to minimise the fact that he did not believe that Jesus had a resurrection body, despite what Scripture says:

“He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” (Luke 24:6-7)

“But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” (1 Corinthians 15:12-14)

Now Jenkins was a theologian and he would have been aware of this verse in 1 Corinthians. So either he believed his faith was useless or that resurrection from the dead means something other than a body returning from the dead. His fuzzy answer

above seemed to indicate a “re-interpretation”.

So, Liberal Christians (because Jenkins is not alone in his beliefs here), in stripping out the supernatural from the Bible, do not give themselves any room to believe what is the

cornerstone of belief in Jesus, a bodily resurrection. So, instead they have to de-spiritualise the plain text of Scripture, as he did in the nonsense answer that he gave to the interviewer.

Later on, he came straight to the point, when pressed:

“I personally do not know whether the grave was empty or not. The evidence of the texts, the nature of the tradition and the general facts about the way people all over the world rapidly believe appropriate stories to support the religious beliefs leave me wholly uncertain about the Empty Tomb as literal historical fact.”

So he was able to accept the uncontroversial parts of the Bible, such as the actual existence of Jesus and his teachings, as history but when his Liberal Christian agenda was challenged at its deepest level, all he could come out with was doubt and uncertainty.

“… he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.” (James 1:6)

What we are observing here is an important point, how we all come to faith in different ways and are exposed to different influences. As Christians we all gravitate towards the model of Christianity that makes us feel most comfortable. Once we make this decision we tend to stick to it. That is our basic nature. The problem comes when the model starts creaking a bit and doesn’t answer all of the questions. In these cases, do we have the humility and the awareness to adjust or look beyond our model? In such times we must turn to the One who lives beyond any model we may create and ask what He thinks.

Finally there was the episode mentioned in the Prologue, of the scientist who felt more connected to an atheist than a fellow Christian because of doctrinal differences. We saw this as an example of our inherited Greek mindset, with its emphasis on analysing and thinking, of doctrine over practice and we asked ourselves that, in our disagreements over doctrine with other Christians, are we more interested in proving our point, or remaining in fellowship? Greek thinking is focused on being right, Hebraic thinking concentrates on being in right relationships.

In the next chapter we are going to look at the other side of the equation… when reason seems to completely desert us.

Chapter 11: Anything Goes… Without Reason!

It has been agreed that 9-11 has been the key terrorist outrage to hit the USA this century. At the time of writing, the second key outrage was said to be the bombing at the Boston marathon in 2013. Hold onto that fact.

Now, there is a grouping of Christians in the USA (with affiliates over here) called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) who declare that the second apostolic age began in 2001, bringing back the functions of “prophet” and “apostle”. In other words, in their view they are God’s spokespeople to our generation in the USA. The unofficial leader of this movement, C. Peter Wagner has said the following:

“The NAR represents the most radical change in the way of doing church since the Protestant Reformation. This is not a doctrinal change. We adhere to the major tenets of

the Reformation: the authority of Scripture, justification by faith, and the priesthood of all believers. But the quality of church life, the governance of the church, the worship, the theology of prayer, the missional goals, the optimistic vision for the future, and other features, constitute quite a change from traditional Protestantism.”

So he considers this as probably the biggest thing to hit the Western Church since the Protestant reformation a few centuries ago. The restoration of prophets and apostles? Really? Perhaps we are returning to Bible times, the times of Acts?

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had

everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved… All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them.” (Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-34)

That’s some act to follow! So, when a group in the 21st Century proclaim that they are the biggest thing to hit the Western Church for centuries, I can’t let this go unchallenged! I ask this not (just) as a cynical observer but as one who sincerely wants to see God moving in our World. Christians can make as many declarations and boasts as they like, but we can only judge them by their fruit. In the case of the NAR, Peter Wagner and others have made very bold declarations and boastings about their movement. A group that declares itself a new reformation is going to have to make a very visible impact on the Body of Christ, as did Luther, Calvin and others in the original Reformation.

Luther and Calvin’s reformation brought the Bible back to the centre of Christian life and emphasised the importance of a personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the personal responsibility to respond to this revelation. This new reformation brings a new emphasis to the role of the prophet and apostle, so we would expect to see a very visible contribution to the wider Church in terms of prophetic utterances and whatever an apostle is meant to do. First, the prophetic…

Perhaps I’m being naïve, but surely a chief function of the prophet is to speak God’s truths to the nation, or at least to the Church in the nation. This could be a warning to change your ways, or invite consequences, as with the Old Testament prophets and their warnings to Israel or Judah of disasters to come if they didn’t sort themselves out:

“At the end of seven days the word of the Lord came to me: ‘Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me.’” (Ezekiel 3:16-17)

Or He could be telling His people that He’s finally had enough of them!

“People of Israel, listen to this message! This is what the Lord said about you, Israel. This message is about all the families that I brought from the land of Egypt. ‘There are many families on earth, but you are the only family I chose to know in a special way. And you turned against me, so I will punish you for all your sins.’” (Amos 3:1-2)

Or perhaps it is to demonstrate God’s power, as a witness, as in the case of Elijah on Mount Carmel:

“Elijah took twelve stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, ‘Your name shall be Israel.’ With the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he dug a trench around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed. He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. Then he said to them, ‘Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood. Do it again,’ he said, and they did it again. ‘Do it a third time,’ he ordered, and they did it the third time. The water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench. At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: ‘O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.’ Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, ‘The Lord – he is God! The Lord – he is God!’” (1 Kings 18:31-39)

Can we speak of any instance when anyone in the Church since the times of those first apostles has demonstrated such a witness of God’s great power?

So what about these prophets of the new reformation? This brings me back to the Boston Marathon bombings. If a prophet truly has the mind of God, was there no one who could have prophesied this? Yes, we know that some things just happen and, although God is in control of everything, He may choose not to warn us in advance. But just once… please… God?

But, surely things would be different in a new reformation? So I put this to a test. I downloaded mp3s from a conference held by some within this movement, with the title, What is God saying for 2013?

What did God have to say about this year? Not much, as it turned out. Did He tell any of them about Boston, or at least something major that was going to happen? And what

about the significant Oklahoma tornado that killed eighteen people in May this year? Or am I being unrealistic here? Yet… even some kind of vague warning of a national outrage in April or natural disaster in May could have been apt. No, every proclamation was so vague that you could pick any year at random and get events to fit their prophecies. Somehow I can’t see Isaiah, Jeremiah or Ezekiel speaking with such vagueness. Boy could we do with one of those grizzly old fellows today!

Having sifted through around ten hours of talks from five prophets of the NAR (I did it, so you don’t have to – what a sacrifice!) all I got was a lot of theory (some of it very heavy in jargon – much of it awkwardly couched in Hebraic terms) about prophecy, much tickling of the ears on what the delegates wanted to hear (e.g. the marginalisation of Christianity in the USA) and – to give them credit – an occasional admission of how they have failed to get their message across in past years (despite doing this stuff for twelve years now), but now they are about to get it right and how God will bring in a mighty worldwide revival that will change the whole World, bringing in over a billion souls… over the next ten years!

Over the next ten years? Far enough in the future to have absolutely no relevance to us today! I heard this same message ten years ago, twenty years ago. In fact as a very

young Christian I was at the London Arena in October 1990 to witness John Wimber, the hugely influential charismatic leader, who had brought over his family and a group called the Kansas City Prophets, because God had told them of a great worldwide revival that was going to break out at that time and at that place. Their ministry had been affirmed by virtually every charismatic and renewal church grouping in the UK. So

expectations were high…

But nothing happened. No revival, nothing. As a new Christian, I expected at the very least an apology from our leaders for getting it wrong… and at the most, a public stoning as false prophets! I have to confess that I was so disappointed; I had visited all three days of that conference, expecting something to happen. What I didn’t know then was that, in my Christian life, I was going to be let down many more times by “prophets”. Cynicism doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere, it has to be fed and cultivated!

Now there’s nothing wrong with the NAR and any other group promising great demonstrations of God’s power, if they can back up their claims. Why can’t they predict something publicly – say on primetime TV – before the event and, with the confidence of Elijah, put their reputation totally on the line. Then, if it comes to pass, let them use it as a demonstration of God’s glory and, if it doesn’t, let them resign from their office. It’s the same with healing miracles. Why do we never see the medical certificates and independent verification? If they have been giving such an anointing, surely it is not just for their own gatherings and conferences, but for the whole World, or at least the wider Church? What a witness it would be for the World to see an uncontested healing or a fulfilled prophecy. At least it will attest to the possibility of a Higher Power, to even the hardest of hearts. If they actually come up with the goods and the World takes notice, then I will be first in the queue to see Richard Dawkins and his godless crew wriggle out of that one!

There’s an increasing number of churches that tap into the need for gimmicks to draw in the crowds, as they see this done successfully with secular marketing campaigns. But when you can boast a supernatural God who has performed mighty deeds, it can give you an edge over your secular counterparts. After all, a Beyonce or One Direction concert is not going to promise you… Anointed high praise, results producing prayers,

prophetic declarations and life changing messages (as did one London Church in its posters) or Two Days of Miracles, as did another one.

But I am fed up with the unfulfilled promises and I know I am not alone. It does our credibility as the “People of the King” no good at all and just serves to feed the many negative stereotypes that we carry as our burden in the cynical, materialistic 21st Century.

Now, how about the “apostles”? I used to think that the apostolic age ended with the 1st Century apostles, who were given this special anointing to get the whole thing (i.e. the

Church) on the road. So, if some folk come along saying that this same anointing has returned, then they are going to have to be some pretty impressive people.

So when a group of the most prominent apostles of the NAR were on stage at Lakeland in 2009 during the Todd Bentley fiasco, before the doggy-doo hit the fan, I was immediately engaged by what was happening live on Christian TV with this heavily promoted Christian celebrity. It was a commissioning service, with these people laying hands on Bentley, commending his ministry as a mighty work of God. Did none of them know that Bentley was, at that time, hitting the bottle, estranged secretly from his wife and engaged in an “unhealthy relationship on an emotional level” with a member of his staff? If they didn’t, then why didn’t God tell them before they made complete fools of themselves on live TV? If they did, then shame on them!

Who set me up as judge and jury? I am simply reporting what I saw and I just wonder how many Christians were severely damaged by the Lakeland thing, although there would have been some who God undoubtedly blessed despite the shenanigans (more of this in a later chapter).

Anything goes… without reason! Yes, that’s the title of this chapter. The previous chapter showed the dangers of losing ground to an over-analytical nature, as a consequence of the current battle between faith and reason. But the flip-side is

when Christians seem to lose all sense of reason, which is fine if God is pulling the strings, but… when it seems like He isn’t, then there is real reason for despair.

Let’s say God has brought back the functions of prophet and apostle. Aren’t they the greater gifts?

“And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues.” (1 Corinthians 12:28)

So acknowledging the importance of these gifts, one would think that He would be very careful and selective about who He selects to be so gifted. He who gives could also take away. Perhaps the Church needs to do a stock-take and decide who is truly working for the glory of God and who isn’t and clear out the dead-wood, though ultimately this is for God to judge, not you and I.

It has not been my intention to be so negative. But the fact is that, over my twenty five years or so of walking with Jesus, the only times I have really tripped up (or felt like pushing someone else over) was when I have observed unrealistic utterances that

have gone unchallenged… and then swept under the carpet when no-one’s looking. But I have been looking. Perhaps you have too. And there’s an important principle at stake here:

“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:7-8)

God is not to be mocked. He’s mocked all the time by New Atheists and those who worship at their feet. But we Christians must never mock Him, or provide fuel for others to mock Him. Sometimes that can involve making a stand, which is not good for your popularity, if that is important for you.

It shouldn’t be.

Chapter 12: Kingdom When?

Ancient Israel. A restless people.

They began to look at the nations around them. These people had Kings, who led them into battle, ruled them, made decisions for them. We want a King, too! This was the cry of Israel in 1 Samuel 8 and they got the one they deserved, Saul. God had warned them, but did they listen? He told them that this King was going to take away their sons to fight dangerous wars, their daughters to be cooks and bakers and would also take a proportion of their land, crops, slaves and flocks for his own use. No, we want a King! “Then don’t come running back to me when it all goes wrong!” adds God, in 1 Samuel 8:18. ‘We don’t care – give us a King, already!’

The people wanted a King for a very good reason. It’s the same reason why human beings throughout history have tried to do things their own way and have followed their human instincts in building their own empires and kingdoms. It’s because we are wilful beings and, when push comes to shove, quite faithless. We still find it hard to trust God, (or even believe in Him these days) and, rather than waiting on Him, we go ahead with our own plans expecting His blessing when we have spent all of our energy and return to Him with a pleading heart to put things right.

And what of us today? It’s still in our basic human nature to desire a king, an earthly being who will put things right.

History is full of such kings, emperors and dictators, though many of them turned out to be tyrants on a power trip. We Christians, of course, belong to our own king, Jesus, though it’s been a matter of confusion as to what this actually means.

“Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.’” (John 18:36)

So we are a part of Jesus’ kingdom, which is separate from all of the kingdoms of the World. We are fifth columnists in today’s society, living in the same land and breathing the same air as everyone else, but working for King Messiah. That’s important for us to remember, as perhaps the chief theme in this book. We are no longer a part of the World’s kingdoms; we have moved on to a new kingdom and really there is no turning

back, if we want to be serious, effective subjects of our King:

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.” (Ephesians 2:1-2)

The ruler of the kingdom of the air is, of course, Satan. We have turned our backs on this and are now members of Jesus’ kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven. This is the kingdom spoken about by the prophet Daniel:

“In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.” (Daniel 2:44)

What exactly is the Kingdom of Heaven? One mistaken view is a result of its very name. The term “Kingdom of Heaven” is only found in the Gospel of Matthew and there is an interesting reason for this. Matthew was writing primarily for a Jewish audience, who had such a reverence for God that His name could not be written down. So, instead, a

euphemism, “heaven” was substituted. In the other gospels, written for Gentile audiences, the phrase “kingdom of God” is used.

So, perhaps subconsciously, we look at the phrase “kingdom of heaven” and equate it only with the future, a time when we are communing with God in heavenly places. If, instead, we meditate on the expression, “kingdom of God” we can get an understanding of exactly what it is referring to, the rule of God in the hearts of the believer.

To expand on that, the Kingdom of Heaven is not just about some time in the future. Neither is it any kind of earthly rule by the Church or Christian ministries. It is nothing to do with man’s endeavours; it is simply all about God and His work in our world, through miracles, healings and all manifestations of the workings of the Holy Spirit through the actions of ordinary Christians like you and me. It is God’s plan for mending our broken world.

Jesus described it in the Hebraic method of parables, using word pictures to explain spiritual concepts by giving practical, earthy examples. The Kingdom of Heaven is like:

“A man who sowed good seeds in his field.” (Matthew 13:24)

“A mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field.” (Matthew 13:31)

“Yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.” (Matthew 13:33)

“Treasure hidden in a field.” (Matthew 13:44)

“A merchant looking for fine pearls.” (Matthew 13:45)

“A net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish.” (Matthew 13:47)

“A landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard.”

(Matthew 20:1)

“A king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.” (Matthew 22:2)

All would have conjured up images in the minds of the listeners, providing a new piece in the jigsaw of the complete picture of the Kingdom of Heaven, a place with very different rules, but abounding with joy and fulfilment in working for our King.

Of course if Jesus had been speaking primarily to our generation, his parables would have reflected our everyday lives and would probably have included stories of merchant

bankers, iPads and bling. Nevertheless, we can still benefit from those 1st Century agricultural vignettes and gain understanding of what he was teaching.

That’s where our story should finish. It seems so simple, this tale of two kingdoms, that of the World and that of God, with born-again Christians “crossing over” from the first to

the second.

You’ll remember our story of the ancient Hebrews and their demand for an earthly King, to be like the other nations that surrounded them and how this came from the restlessness of the human spirit, wanting to do things their way, the way of man, whatever the consequences. God listened to their demands and sent them King Saul. Who said God doesn’t have a sense of humour?

Apparently, God is still laughing because some Christians (many of them were mentioned in the previous chapter) have been recently showing the same restlessness. Their rallying call is something like:

“We want the kingdom and we want it now!”

Rather than understanding that the Kingdom of Heaven was initiated by God through the ministry of Jesus and co-ordinated through the Holy Spirit, these people believe that the Kingdom of Heaven is to be established on earth through the efforts of… Christians.

Although there are many groupings of Christians that think this way, I return to those New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) people, as they have so much to say about such things. Here’s how Peter Wagner (founder of the NAR) explains their views on the website www.globalspheres.org

“This refers to the desire that some of my friends and I have to follow Jesus and do what He wants. One of the things He does want He taught us to pray for in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ This means that we do our best to see that what we know is characteristic of heaven work its way into the warp and woof of our society here on earth. Think of heaven: no injustice, no

poverty, righteousness, peace, prosperity, no disease, love, no corruption, no crime, no misery, no racism, and I could go on. Wouldn’t you like your city to display those characteristics?”

But where does dominion come in? On the first page of the Bible, God told Adam and Eve to “fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea,” etc. (Genesis 1:28). Adam, Eve, and the whole human race were to take dominion over the rest of creation, but Satan entered the picture, succeeded in usurping Adam’s dominion for himself and became what Jesus calls “the ruler of this world” (John 14:30). When

Jesus came, he brought the kingdom of God and He expects His kingdom-minded people to take whatever action is needed to push back the long-standing kingdom of Satan and bring the peace and prosperity of His kingdom here on earth. This is what we mean by dominionism.”

Can you sense the underlying theme here of human effort to “establish” the Kingdom of Heaven? Let us remind ourselves of Jesus’ words:

“Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.’” (John 18:36)

Dominionism, also known as Kingdom Now, is a desire to force the Kingdom of Heaven onto the World’s systems. It’s a sincere desire to bring righteousness into the heart of our society but, unfortunately, it just doesn’t seem to be God’s plan. And if it ain’t from God, it ain’t worth pursuing!

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons

and in your name perform many miracles?’Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:21-23)

That’s an uncomfortable passage, but God must have had people in mind when He wrote it. We just have to do our best to ensure that it doesn’t apply to us and one way of doing this is to try and think as Jesus did, with the Jesus Mindset.

And one plumbline consideration is to ask yourself this question: Am I truly giving God the glory, or man? When Peter Wagner states: “God expects His kingdom-minded people to take whatever action is needed to push back the long-standing kingdom of Satan and bring the peace and prosperity of His kingdom here on earth”, I just don’t see this necessarily as a God-centred activity (though there are always going to be exceptions, as God always finds ways to surprise us). What do you think?

Here is an assessment of Kingdom Now thinking, in a web article:

“Kingdom Now theology is a theological belief within the Charismatic movement of Protestant Christianity, mainly in the United States. Kingdom Now proponents believe that God lost control over the world to Satan when Adam and Eve sinned. Since then, the theology goes, God has been trying to reestablish control over the world by seeking a special group of believers— known variously as “covenant people,” “overcomers,”

or “Joel’s army”—and that through these people, social institutions (including governments and laws) would be brought under God’s authority. The belief is that,

since believers are indwelt by the same Holy Spirit that indwelt Jesus, we have all authority in heaven and on the earth; we have the power to believe for and speak

into existence things that are not, and thus we can bring about the Kingdom Age.”

(http://www.gotquestions.org/kingdom-now.html)

A bit harsh, but a fair summary of the basic beliefs of these people. It’s not a new idea, in fact Ambrose, Bishop of Milan in the 4th Century, also felt that the Church should venture forwards with strength. In his way of thinking, the Church had spiritual authority to exert great – even limitless – power in the World. It was this thinking that gave us a Roman Catholic church that worked hand in hand with the secular imperial powers to carve up the running of medieval society. This should be contrasted with the sages and prophets of Judaism, who did not look forward to the Messianic era, in order to subdue the World or rule the nations, but rather to be left in peace to study the Torah and encourage the World to seek knowledge of God.

It’s time to heed some words from Paul:

“Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:19-24)

God doesn’t need us to sort out the World, to prepare the way for Jesus’ return. Scripture seems to be saying the opposite, that the World is to become a lot worse before the Lord’s return.

“You will hear of wars and rumours of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All

these are the beginning of birth pains. ‘Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.’” (Matthew 24:6-13)

As much as we may want to be agents of change in society, God would rather that we concentrate on the small things first, as we do our bit to extend the Kingdom of Heaven by telling others about it.

That should be enough to make God pleased with us.

Chapter 13: His Pain, My Blame; His Shame, My Gain

For three hours the world was in darkness. It wasn’t nighttime, the sky wasn’t heavy with storm clouds and it certainly wasn’t an eclipse. It was a one-time act of God, so there was a purpose to it.

“From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land.” (Matthew 27:45)

Have you thought how frightening that must have been, not the least for those few who stood facing the three crosses at Golgotha, just outside Jerusalem, having already watched the Saviour of mankind writhing in agony through the tortures of crucifixion, for the last three hours? At last his ordeal must be over now, they must have thought, unaware that the worst was about to come!

That three hour darkness. How must it have seemed to those who weren’t present at the crucifixion of Jesus? Here’s where the Bible breaks out into the history books, to the consternation of the secular God-bashers, because there is historical evidence for this darkness. Two pagan (non-Christian) historians, Thallus the Roman and Phlegon the Greek, mention it, citing the reason as a solar eclipse. This, of course, is probably the

only rational conclusion they could have made (although it was scientifically impossible), but the point is that a reason had to be found for a phenomenon that historically took place. Even more compelling is the fact that Thallus was writing just a few years after the event and so would have been an eye-witness (of the event, not the crucifixion).

The worst was about to come? What can be worse than the physical agony of crucifixion?

An event so horrific and upsetting that three hours of darkness was needed to spare the sanity of the witnesses of the crucifixion. Their eyes were protected from the scene on

the cross. Before we discuss this, it’s back to basics for us.

Have you ever wondered what “died for our sins” actually means and how it was accomplished? We now find ourselves at the edge of a minefield in the middle of swamp land, populated by the product of great theological brains and swirling with the

hot vapours of discussion, some of it quite vitriolic.

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:3)

What does it mean? Quite a lot of possibilities, apparently. There seem to be at least eight possibilities.

The Christus Victor (or the ransom) view states that Christ died to “buy back” humanity from Satan, who has “owned” us since the Fall. The Governmental view has Christ suffering on the cross as a demonstration of God’s displeasure with our sin and appeasing His wrath that we deserve. The Moral influence view has all acts of Christ, including his willingness to die on the cross, as a moral example for us to follow.

This gives him the role as the first martyr (though the only resurrected one). The Recapitulation theory has Jesus as the second Adam, succeeding where the first failed and leading us into eternal life. The Mystical view has Christ triumphing over his own sinful nature, which would awake some sort of “god-consciousness” in us. The Satisfaction theory states that Christ died as a satisfactory substitute for the sins of humanity by restoring honour to God, lost because of our sins. The Penal Substitution theory also states that Christ died as a satisfactory substitute for the sins of humanity, but as a punishment, saving us from the consequences of these sins. There are more

theories and variations on the above, but we really don’t need to go to these places!

Oh God, save us… from the complexities of our theologians. Is this such a complicated topic that we can’t come up with one solid definition that we can all understand? Perhaps we aren’t meant to understand it? Is an understanding of the mechanism of the atonement necessary for our salvation? If so, then there are millions of Christians going to the “other place” because they don’t have the benefit of an understanding of philosophy or theology.

What’s happened to a simple faith? Is it really so complex and do I really have the credentials to add my views to those who have written books on the subject, spoken on it at conferences and symposiums and have argued its points in heated debates?

So let us leave the Greek debating chamber and return to God’s Word.

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:3)

And what are those Scriptures Paul is referring to? Here are the main ones:

“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:28)

“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood – to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.” (Romans 3:25)

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

“… who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.” (Galatians 1:4)

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.’” (Galatians 3:13)

“Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.” (Hebrews 10:11-12)

“‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed.’” (1 Peter 2:24)

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.” (1 Peter 3:18)

“He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2:2)

Read them in one go then mull them over. What are they saying? What are the themes? In summary I see Jesus shedding blood for us, taking on this punishment on our behalf and somehow dealing with our sins and providing us with a form of righteousness (good standing before God).

This is interesting, because only one of the theories of atonement listed earlier seem to fit this theme. This is troubling, because surely those theologians have been reading the same Scriptures as I have? Yes, I’m sure they have… but they are all encumbered by other factors. As I’ve already discussed in my other books (How the Church Lost the Way/Truth), commentators all tend to come with personal agendas, whether it’s a background in philosophy, or a denominational party line. If you don’t believe me, then trace the history of all of these theories of the atonement and see who first postulated them and why they postulated them. It’s interesting and revealing.

So where does that leave us? It seems that modern Christians who have a view of the matter seem to follow either the moral influence camp or the penal substitution camp.

The moral influence view is also known as the subjective view, which is a very telling definition, placing it very firmly as a human response to the cross, rather than a God-centred explanation. It is the preferred view of liberal Christians and stresses God’s love, with Christ’s death on the cross as the supreme expression of this love. There’s nothing wrong with that as an observation, but is it the whole story? It doesn’t seem so to me, as it doesn’t really address the persistent Scripture, “Christ died for my sins”. How does it deal with my sins? How does it address the Old Testament narrative of the

Fall and our separation from God?

The penal substitution view of the atonement is the only one that seems to fit the theme developed in those Scriptures listed above. To remind you, it states that Christ died as a satisfactory substitute for the sins of humanity, but as a punishment, saving us from the consequences of these sins.

But what a name! A real turn-off to us average Joes! Penal substitution? What does that really mean? Actually, to theologians it’s a good name. “Penal” refers to the need for

punishment (as in the word “penalty”) and “substitution” alludes to Christ taking it for us. So we deserve the punishment because of our sins, but Christ takes it for us and, by doing so, gives us a righteousness that we don’t deserve, but allows us to be reconciled to God, who hates sin.

Now look at the heading of this chapter. This, I suggest, is a more user-friendly way to understand what Christ did for us, when he died for our sins.

His pain, my blame; His shame, my gain.

Jesus suffered the pain, for which we must take the blame. He also suffered the shame on our behalf, for the gain to us of our sins dealt with.

There can be no more important doctrine. Paul certainly thought so.

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14)

Yet the theologians, with their myriad of theories have overcomplicated it all. Motivated by their Greek mindset, convincing them that they are right and everyone else is wrong, they often allow this to create discord with Christian brothers and sisters and breaks in fellowship. This has recently happened in the UK Church, as a result of some writings of the liberal Christian, Steve Chalke, and the repercussions of his clumsy attack on penal substitution, leading to splits and plenty of hot air. If you don’t believe me, here’s what he said:

“John’s Gospel famously declares, ‘God loved the people of this world so much that he gave his only Son.’ How then, have we come to believe that at the cross this God of love suddenly decides to vent his anger and wrath on his Son? The fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse – a vengeful Father, punishing his son for an offence that he has not committed…”

(Chalke & Mann, Lost Message, 182)

His use of the term cosmic child abuse was like a red rag to a whole herd of bulls and led to a lot of “less than loving” responses. Should Christians really be having these

verbal jousts in the public arena? Should they be using such provocative language? Should they be venting their collective spleens? Who benefits from these verbal spats? Certainly not the Body of Christ.

The liberal camp stresses the love of God, as expressed in Christ’s sacrificial act. The conservative camp stresses the justice of God, expressed in His outpouring of wrath to His son on the cross because of the sins of humanity. Can we not see both as valid? Does it have to be so black and white? Although I recognise the importance of Penal Substitution as an explanation of the mechanism, I can also appreciate the heart of the Moral Influence view, as an expression of God’s love for us. This is a feature of the Hebraic mindset, holding truths in tension.

We now return to earlier on, when I left you dangling over a cliff. I suggested that, when darkness descended at noon on that day of crucifixion, the worst was about to come!

What could have been worse than the physical agony of crucifixion? Isaiah spoke hundreds of years earlier about this.

“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:4-5)

He was… crushed for our iniquities… the punishment that brought us peace was on him…

It was during those three hours that the sinless Christ… took on our sins. Every sin that had ever been committed (and that would ever be committed) was dealt with in those three hours.

God was pouring out His wrath on His beloved son… and it wasn’t pretty. Hence the darkness.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Romans 5:8-10)

It wasn’t nice, but it was necessary. We will no doubt be spending most of eternity thanking him for it.

Chapter 14: Those First Twelve Chapters

Now let me be the devil’s advocate…

Put yourselves in the shoes of the “enemy of our souls”. What’s the easiest strategy for undermining God’s plans for mankind? Simple, he thinks. I’ll get them to doubt the

fundamentals, then watch and see what develops…

And this is what happened. All he had to do was work on those first twelve chapters, in the book of Genesis. If he could undermine those 6,700 words (in English) he could start to destroy the very foundations of the Christian faith.

First of all he preyed on the restlessness in the soul of man (and woman) since the Fall. It was the desire for wisdom that was the result of eating from the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil. From the first insight (that they were naked) to the great scientific advances in the 21st Century, wisdom has been a persistent feature of the human experience. Before the Fall, man (and woman) lived God centred lives, secure in their

relationship with their Creator. Since then, there has been a slow deterioration of this dynamic, resulting in lives dominated by their needs and their wisdom.

When the Greeks came along, the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle attached itself so strongly onto the human psyche, even the Church itself. This wisdom wormed its way into the way many Christians interpreted Holy Scripture. Plato’s damage was to the Early Church and Aristotle did his damage to the Medieval Church. Christians today are still in bondage to this pagan wisdom, which seems to indicate that the devil’s strategy

has been largely successful. So how did this pan out? It’s time to open up God’s Word.

We start with the first Chapter in the Bible.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’, and the darkness he called ‘night’. And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day.” (Genesis 1:1-5)

The basic attack on this passage is the first salvo in the battle of those twelve Chapters, a conflict that is going to eventually be fought out throughout the whole Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). See this as a whispering in the ear of Christians, scholars and theologians:

Did God really say…? Because surely scholarship now says…

The first day? The second day? The Church Fathers took issue with these as literal days because their rational minds said that God should have created everything in a single moment, not as long as six days. Modern theologians take issue with these as literal days because their rational minds say that the scientists have proved that the earth is billions of years old.

The rational mind here is the wisdom that comes from the World, in this instance working against the seemingly irrational literal interpretation of the Creation story, which has to be accepted by faith that God means what He says in His Word.

This is a major issue in our Church and perhaps the biggest battleground between reason and faith. This is due to the overwhelming weight of supposedly scientific evidence to support the World’s arguments, so much so that the theory of evolution, in one guise or another, has become the dominant view of the Church in the UK. As a science graduate, this has been a real journey for me and all I can advise is that you

personally seek the Lord’s wisdom.

How does this help to undermine God’s plans for mankind? It does so by sowing seeds of doubt, that the Bible doesn’t mean everything it says and that we should view parts of it using the lens of scientific discovery. And it diminishes God, it puts an idea in our head that God isn’t big and powerful enough to create the Heavens and the Earth in just six days.

“But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of

my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’, for she was taken out of man. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.’” (Genesis 2:20-24)

It’s the first marriage. Man and woman united, becoming one flesh. This is the foundational passage for this great institution, the cornerstone of the family, which itself is the cornerstone of human civilisation. So, mess with this and you will seriously multiply this mess.

Jesus affirms this passage and reminds us of the characters in the drama:

“‘Haven’t you read,’ he replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator “made them male and female”,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh?’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

A man leaves his father and mother to be united with his wife. That’s how it works. Male and female… then another male and another female… from Adam & Eve… then many generations later… to Steve & Monica (or should I be poetic and say Madam & Steve?) It’s the only system that could work, in order to propagate the species. It’s all a matter of biology, you don’t need me to paint a picture.

It’s not hard to see that these are dangerous verses for the homosexual lobby, especially for those within the Church who have to find ways to re-interpret these two passages. So not only do they have to skirt round the plain reading of the text in Genesis, but have to do the same to the very words of Jesus himself.

How does this help to undermine God’s plans for mankind? If we attack traditional marriage then we are attacking the truth in God’s Word. Of course we can read our own

agenda into Scripture, using our own deductive logic. We can even say, as that international author in a previous chapter did, that Jesus probably thinks it OK for a monogamous homosexual relationship.

Well, let’s see this from God’s (and Jesus’) point of view. God created man and woman with the necessary biology to want to have kids (through sexual pleasure) and to be able to have kids (reproductive system). It works for the animal kingdom, it works for us. But for this to work for us, there needs to be a structure in place. It is called family. It’s the only way we can nurture and teach the next generation. So God teaches us both by direct instruction (those verses you just read) and by example in the rest of the Bible,

demonstrating the centrality of family in His plan for us. That’s God’s viewpoint, now for man’s, according to some people’s wisdom…

Now, I don’t see any problem with men living together as friends or women living together as friends. That’s fine, companionship is good. But this is nothing to do with

Genesis 2:20-24, you’re not going to produce kids, there’s not going to be family. But there’s a line drawn in the sand and its name is sex. When the author mentioned earlier says that monogamous homosexual behaviour is OK, he’s not talking about companionship (if he is, than I have no problem with it either), he is talking about sex. Not sex as an incentive to procreate, not even sex as an expression of love within the

marriage partnership, but sex practiced outside the structure as laid down in Scripture and outside the structure designed by God in our human biology.

My only issue here is when we call it marriage, as, by doing so, it is both an attack on the truth of Holy Scripture (by redefining what marriage is) and a mockery of God’s Word. Otherwise there are plenty of things that people get up to in their own space that are frowned upon by God, even found detestable (e.g. Romans 1:28-32, Revelation 22:15) and certainly not part of His plan for our lives. This is none of my business, so I’m not going to be the one to judge (even if it seems that I am).

One last word on this subject comes from a Jewish prayer that says, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who creates the human being”. This is not recited, as expected, at the birth of a child but rather at a wedding ceremony. This is because, in Jewish thought, a human being is not complete until married. Food for thought.

“The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, “You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.”’ ‘You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’… To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat of it”. Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.’” (Genesis 3:2-5; 3:17-19)

The Fall of man. The devil has this one firmly in his crosshairs, because if he can successfully foul this one up, then he can hijack the central doctrine of our faith; sin,

death and our need for salvation. If he can convince mankind that this is just a fable, an allegory, a cautionary tale, then he’s even managed to convince some that he himself is just a fictional figure!

Through the Fall, death came into the World:

“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” (Romans 5:12)

So death didn’t exist before then. Nothing died before Adam and Eve sinned. No animals, fishes, birds and plants had died. No dinosaurs had died. Pardon me?

Think about it. If you believe in the millions of years of natural selection that form the bedrock of the Theory of Evolution, then countless plankton, amoeba, lizards, big

reptiles, small mammals and baboons would have had to live, and die, to provide the relentless climb of adaptation and specialisation up the tree of evolution, culminating in those primitive humanoids, Adam and Eve.

You can’t believe in this, the standard story fed to our kids in schools… and believe the Bible. Unless you decide to read the Fall of man as a fable, an allegory, a cautionary tale. If you go along with this view then you are not inclined to believe that Adam and Eve were actual people. Yet Jesus seemed to believe they were. We already read this:

“‘Haven’t you read,’ he replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator “made them male and female”,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.’” (Matthew 19:4-6)

Jesus seemed to think that Adam and Eve were at the beginning. Do we think that he was wrong and that Adam and Eve were just representative of mankind? This means that, according to them, both marriage and original sin are just a theory, suggested by Scripture. If original sin is not grounded in real history, then no actual person fell from grace and how are we meant to inherit our sin nature? And if we can’t be absolutely sure that we have an inherited sin nature, then why did Jesus die for us? It all becomes messy, murky and it’s exactly what the devil wants!

“God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.’” (Genesis 6:12-14)

Noah’s ark, as we saw in an earlier chapter, is just a nice story, perhaps an allegory, but certainly not a global judgement, according to a recent edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Scientists love to pick this one to pieces, from all sorts of angles. From biology (couldn’t fit them all in), geology (only a localised flood at best), climatology (only rains that bad in

England) and anthropology (what, only eight people left!) But even if there were no objections from the scientists, the idea that God could be so judgemental as to wipe out most of mankind, including innocent children, placid librarians and earnest potters, is not a God that many liberal Christians feel comfortable with. So they are quite glad that the scientists have rescued them from this “angry, peeved Deity”.

So how does an attack on the truth of this story help to undermine God’s plans for mankind? Apart from the obvious – attacking the truth of God’s Word – it entices us away from an understanding of God’s character, the side of Him that upsets some reasonable, loving Christians. God as a God of judgement and righteousness. He can behave very unreasonably if He wants to, but only by our flawed human standards.

“Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting

from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man. As for you, be fruitful and increase in number;

multiply on the earth and increase upon it.” (Genesis 9:3-7)

By diminishing the truth of these laws given to Noah, the Noahide laws, it is again a case of chipping away at those foundational Chapters of Genesis.

An interesting one. Is God speaking for capital punishment here, or have things changed now we are living under the New Covenant? God takes the shedding of innocent blood very seriously, whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. Interestingly, the sixth commandment in Exodus is this:

You shall not murder. (Exodus 20:13)

The Hebrew word at the heart of this, retzach, is never used in the context of war. So it is unlawful murder that it refers to. It brings into context that God allows killing in war and, in this sense, also allows for killing in capital punishment and self-defense.

So a literal reading of the Bible in its context does allow for the death penalty, something that our liberal society balks at, as something barbaric, paying no heed to the crime that may have deserved this. By ignoring this understanding some Christians are just adding to those chipping away at those foundations. Nevertheless, it’s an issue that it very much up for debate and it all hangs on how one sees the Ten Commandments playing out in the context of the New Covenant. And that’s a whole new can of worms!

Moving on…

“The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. [Ham was the father of Canaan.] These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth. Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a

vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father’s nakedness.

When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.’ He also said, ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend the territory of Japheth; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave.’ After the flood Noah lived 350 years. Altogether, Noah lived

950 years, and then he died.” (Genesis 9:18-29)

The thing is that these are stories, old stories. There are similar stories a few chapters earlier, from Cain & Abel right up to Noah. Do we accept them as true or just as fables, nice stories that may illustrate some spiritual principle? We have to be careful if we treat Holy Scripture this way because, at some point surely we are going to come across a real person. The question is, when? People, as you have seen, have already doubted whether Adam and Eve were real, Noah too. But what about Abraham, Moses? What about… Jesus? Dangerous thinking indeed.

The Bible tells us that the only people to survive the Flood were Noah and his family, with his three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth founding three “branches” of mankind, settling in different places and eventually populating the whole earth. Science tells us this is ridiculous, the Bible asserts that it is true, reminding us in the book of Chronicles, as well as in Matthew and Luke, that people during this part of history were part of the Messianic genealogical line that eventually leads to the Messiah, Jesus.

“Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melki, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph… the son of Abraham, the son of

Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of

Jared, the son of Mahalalel, the son of Kenan, the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” (Luke 3:23-38)

Did Jesus have real ancestors or pretend ones? If they were pretend ones, doesn’t that add fuel to the flames of doubt whether Jesus himself was a real person. So… can you see how the devil’s whispers here can indeed sow some very toxic seeds?

“The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’… The Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring

I will give this land.’” (Genesis 12:1-3,7)

Here is where the real covenant story begins, the beginning of the selection of a people who will become a great nation and through whom all peoples on earth will be blessed. You’d be hard pressed to find a Christian, even the most liberal of the liberals, who would deny Abraham was a real person. So far, so good.

Genesis Chapter 12 is the start of a new Chapter in human history and is foundational in our identification of the people who are the offspring of Abraham, who will inherit the land and be a source of blessing to so many. The devil knows that the physical descendants of Abraham, known throughout history as the Jewish people, are going to be a key factor in his demise. Where else do you think anti-Semitism comes from? (For more on this, read my book Outcast Nation). Surely that alone is sufficient evidence that there is something special about these people and that, perhaps, when Genesis 12:1-7 itemises the promises, it is literally to these people.

But others would say otherwise and, out of this alternative agenda, we get the view known as Replacement Theology, or Supercessionism, that simply states that the Jews have been superceded/replaced by the Church and, when Genesis 12 talks about offspring of Abraham/Abram it is a spiritual offspring, the Church, that is meant.

So it is abundantly clear how a particular reading of this Scripture can help to undermine God’s plans for mankind. By robbing Jews of any physical (the land of Israel) or spiritual

(blessing the world) legacy, it plays right into the hand of the devil who knows from his own Bible understanding (which is far better than most Christians) that the return of Jesus Christ in the End of Days is very much tied up with the Jewish people. That’s why the devil has targeted them for extinction, something the Church has at times been happy to comply with.

Of course, all of this may be new to you. It is not something that the Church teaches much about, as it would involve an admission of past misdemeanours and a complete re-appraisal of attitudes to God’s first covenant people! For this reason, the next chapter is devoted to this very important topic.

Chapter 15: For Whatever Reason

You’re a simple man (or lady) in a crowd. You’ve been forced to stay up all night by the enforcers of the chief priests. It’s now 7am and you’re dead on your feet, forced to watch the final acts of a tragic charade. But then there is more, because these very same men are now ghosting through the crowd, with their mutterings, suggestions, commands. Crucify him! Crucify him!

A rising chant, builds and builds as the unfortunate prisoner is paraded by the guards, his broken body streaked with fresh blood and bruises. Soon you join in, fearful of the consequences if you don’t. Some go still further as Pilate turns his back on the crowd, angry fists raise to the sky, but inclined towards the man who was claiming to be the anointed one, the Son of God.

“Let his blood be on us and our children.”

That simple phrase, uttered by a few overexcited Jews nearly two thousand years ago has since become a curse, condemning Jewish people to a history of hatred and persecution at the hands of the followers of that same crucified saviour. What a twisted irony. The very same blood that has brought salvation to millions throughout history was to bring death and disaster to others on the simple pretext of those words uttered by a few Jews in that small crowd in Jerusalem early in that springtime day.

And that’s the point. It’s pretext, not context. It’s reading into the Bible a justification for whatever is already in your heart, rather than allowing God’s Word to feed your heart with His truth. It’s following this train of thought; I have an inclination within my heart to think negatively about the Jews and, to prove that God has given me this inclination, I must search Scripture for verses that make sense of these feelings. It is no different to the cash-hungry televangelist who plunders the Bible to feed his greed, or the deranged cult leader who seeks justification for acts born from his own twisted imagination.

“Let his blood be on us and our children.”

These words were just convenient for those early Church Fathers who had figured out their own philosophic systems and needed to find God’s approval for the growing tendrils of hatred for this rejected race that gripped their hearts. Don’t take my word for it, listen to what those early Gentile Christian teachers were saying:

“… they have committed the most abominable of crimes, in forming this conspiracy against the Saviour of the human race.” Origen

“The synagogue is worse than a brothel…the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults… a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ… the refuge of devils,

a gulf and an abyss of perdition… As for me, I hate the synagogue…I hate the Jews for the same reason.” John Chrysostom

These are not a couple of isolated quotes taken out of context; they are just two of hundreds of quotes that could have been used, from the lips of a whole breadth of men who shaped the direction of early Christianity.

What they were saying was that responsibility for the death of Christ should not fall at the feet of those who actually carried out the deed (the Romans), or those who manipulated Pilate to carry out the sentence (the chief priests and elders), or those who uttered those fateful, self-condemning words (the group of Jews who stood before Pilate that morning), or he who willingly accepted his forthcoming death (Jesus), or He who planned the whole episode as the necessary human component of His masterplan (God)… but instead should be laid at the feet of every Jew who has lived on earth from that time onwards.

That’s what the Church has done for much of its history. It is a shameful and wicked act. Let’s see the consequences of this.

- On July 15th, 1099, the First Crusade arrived in Jerusalem and proceeded to slaughter every Jew they could find, many burnt alive in the synagogue. After this monstrous act they went on a procession to church, singing hymns on the way and wading ankle deep in the blood of their victims.

- Jews were again and again accused of murdering Christian children and using their blood to make Passover matzah bread. These accusations were usually at Easter-time and were usually accompanied by massacres of Jewish populations. The first such accusation was in 1144 in Norwich, England.

- Jews were forcibly expelled from England in 1290, from France in 1306, from Germany in the 1350s, from Spain in 1492, from Portugal in 1496 and from the Papal States in 1569.

- Martin Luther wrote a pamphlet, On the Jews and their Lies (1543), using the following descriptions, “venomous… thieves… disgusting vermin… a pestilence and misfortune for our country… children of the devil.”

Who were carrying out these acts? Not Hitler, Stalin or Mao Tse Tung, psychopaths unburdened by consciences or any acknowledgement of a holy God? No, these acts

were sanctioned or directly carried out by followers of the crucified Jewish Messiah, who, while dying, openly forgave all who were responsible for his death. These words were conveniently forgotten by the Crusaders who, according to an eyewitness, “cut down with the sword every one whom they found in Jerusalem, and spared no one. The victors were covered with blood from head to foot. It was a most affecting sight which filled the heart with holy joy to see the people tread the holy places in the fervour of an

excellent devotion.”

“Let his blood be on us and our children.”

Perhaps no other Bible verse has been played out so consistently by the historical Church, despite being a statement rather than a command. The Church has seen itself fit to appoint itself as “God’s avenger”. Yet doesn’t Jesus say the following in his divine

manifesto, the Sermon on the Mount:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:1-3)

The Church has inherited a plank the size of the Grand Canyon.

So now the focus switches from the Jews to the Church. But, before it does, we need to know what God has to say on this issue. After all, He is still very much involved with human affairs, despite what many in the Church think. He didn’t just light the blue touch-paper with the flames of Pentecost, before leaving us alone on earth to do what we want. He had this to say about the Jews, his first covenant people:

“This is what the Lord says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar – the Lord Almighty is his name: ‘Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,’ declares the Lord, ‘will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me.’ This is what the Lord says: ‘Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel because of all they have done,’ declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 31:35-37)

And no-one could dare to declare that this passage has been taken out of context. It comes straight after the only verses in the Hebrew Scriptures (repeated in Hebrews 8:8-12) that specifically speak of a New Covenant, a covenant that would be sealed by the blood of Jesus and would be made with the Jewish people (Jeremiah 31:31). The Gentiles are only grafted into this covenant, as explained in Romans Chapter 9-11, where Paul is speaking to the Gentile church:

“If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support

the root, but the root supports you.” (Romans 11:17-18)

If this is not familiar to you it is because the Church today rarely addresses these three Chapters in Romans, except to strip out a verse or two to graft into its sermons. If you read it you will find another warning to the Gentile Church:

“Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.” (Romans 11:20b-21)

There is no reading of these three Chapters in Romans that tell any other story than God reminding His Church of His continuing love and His future plans for the Jewish people. Yet much of the Church (but not all of it) is ignorant of this fact. We must stop

cherry-picking our Scripture and start reading large chunks of Bible narratives, to catch the flow of God’s story. These three Chapters would be a good start and you should preserve the context by beginning your reading at Chapter eight and finishing at Chapter twelve. There is a gap between “nothing being able to separate us from the Love of God” (Romans 8:39) and “offering your body as a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1), where we read the story of God’s great mercy to His original covenant people.

God’s mercy, but the Church’s folly… and wilful blindness!

So, to bring these ideas together, in the Jeremiah 31 passage, God first declares that he will institute a New Covenant with the House of Judah and Israel (i.e. the Jews) then, as if to stress the identity of the prime recipients, He then goes on to tell us that the Jewish people are as likely to be rejected by Him as mankind being in a position to measure the whole universe or the sun and the stars shining no more.

In other words, despite the dominant thinking of the majority of the Church today, the Jews are still in God’s plan. This is dangerous stuff, because the Bible is full of stories of people and nations who have tried to thwart God’s plans, let alone coming against God’s people. These stories never had happy endings! Beware, Church!

Beware, Church, because this is no longer about the Jews, neither is it about God. It is about you, the Body of Christ. It is also about the members of that body, so, from now on, this is about… you, dear reader.

But the Church has changed in terms of its treatment of the Jews… hasn’t it?

Think again. There was a meeting of the good and the wise of the Christian and Jewish communities. The question posed was, “Why does the Church hate the Jews”? This time the same old excuses – accusations of Christ-killing, of child snatching or poisoning wells – were not reeled out. Instead there was just a corporate shrugging of ecclesiastical shoulders and an admission that they had no answer. The Church just doesn’t like the Jews… period. This meeting was held as recently as 2002 and those who came to this conclusion included a future Archbishop of Canterbury. This is very much a current problem in the Church and is one that is rarely addressed directly.

If honesty is to be exercised, then here are the two thoughts that have probably crossed most minds. Firstly, the appeal to Church tradition. Could the Church Fathers, Augustine, the Popes and Martin Luther – who have given us so much guidance in living the Christian life – have got it so wrong about the Jews? That’s an easy one. It’s all a matter of context. Read the history of these fallible men and see for yourselves how their view of the Jews was coloured by their own human prejudices. How can one compare their subjective conclusions on the rejected people, the Jews with God’s divine assurances for His accepted people, the Jews? Do we follow God or man?

“See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)

The second thought concerns an attitude that I have experienced, along with many Christians who wish to promote a better understanding of Jewish people in the Church. The attitude is this, from many Christian leaders; the last thing I need in my church/fellowship is division, so we steer well clear of the topic of Israel and the Jews.

Now step back and analyse that remark. Yes, we all want to promote order in churches, but do you think that God cares more for order than for putting right a historical wrong that is a hidden cancer in the Church in our country? Ignoring this is tantamount to condoning it. God’s truths are meant to create division, that’s the way we can separate

the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the chaff. If a split results from incorporating “Hebraic” elements into a church service then whose side do you really think God would take? Unfortunately, there’s a major problem here and we must individually decide if we are a part of this problem, or agents for a solution.

But back to reality and to a statement that best sums up the majority of Christian thinking on this issue: OK, so Christians, for whatever reason, just don’t like Jews. It’s always been so, perhaps it always will be so. The key words here are “for whatever reason” and it is these words that are going to lead us deeper into the heart of this problem.

For whatever reason? Pharaoh thought he had a reason, they may grow too large and turn against us.

For whatever reason? The Church fathers thought they had a reason, after all the Jews killed Christ, didn’t they?

For whatever reason? Emperor Constantine thought he had a reason, they are encouraging Christianity to remain too Jewish.

For whatever reason? The medieval Church thought it had a reason, they steal communion wafers in order to stick pins in them and trample on them, so torturing Christ!

For whatever reason? Martin Luther thought he had a reason, they refuse to convert to Christianity!

For whatever reason? Voltaire thought he had a reason, they gave us Christianity!

For whatever reason? The Muslims think they have a reason, they have stolen our land.

There’s an awful lot of “for whatever reasons” and I haven’t even started on those who blame the Jews for capitalism, communism, 9-11, the two World Wars, polluting the Aryan race, Hollywood (we’ll concede that one!) on a list that grows longer year by year.

It’s that word “whatever”. It tells us that the World will always find a reason to hate Jews, it’s not just about what happened at 7am that Jerusalem morning many moons ago.

Let his blood be on us and our children.

It runs far deeper than that, with a whole catalogue of religious, racial, economic, political or sociological reasons for this hatred. It used to be just anti-Semitism but now we also have a politically correct version of it called anti-Israelism. Have no doubts about this, it’s really the same thing, it’s just more acceptable in polite society. You don’t need to find a single reason, no reason is needed, we just don’t like them, as those Church leaders admitted in that meeting in 2002, though they weren’t speaking personally, but for the wider Church. We just don’t like them.

There must be reasons for this. In fact there are and it’s just one reason… and it’s a biggie!

We know that there is one God who has blessed us with the possibility of salvation and the gift of eternal life and calls Israel “the apple of His eye”, promising that they will never cease to be a nation before Him. But we also know that there is one adversary, who hates God, hates His Messiah and His people. He particularly hates the Jews. Paul gives us good reasons for this:

“Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.” (Romans 9:4-5)

The Jews were responsible for all of this! No wonder Satan hates them. He also hates them because they hold the key to his ultimate demise, when Jesus Christ returns as a Jew to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and claims his inheritance.

That’s the reason, no other is needed and it implies something too awful to contemplate:

If you have any negativity towards the Jews, even in a small way, then you are aiding and abetting the enemy of our souls.

Never before can a much-used phrase have more relevance, the uncomfortable truth.

It is time the Church grasped the reality of this statement. Just read your daily newspapers, read the blogs, watch the news. Have you ever wondered why:

- There is a movement against Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. It’s called BDS – boycotts, divestment and sanctions – and it is sponsored by a variety of repressive Muslim regimes. Those who support this, including the promotion of an annual Israel Apartheid group in colleges throughout the country, include neo-nazis from the Right, radicals from the Left, anarchists, deluded academics and Muslim fundamentalists. All united in hatred on an issue that is not born out by facts if any of these people bothered to do their research.

- The human rights council in the United Nations has adopted more resolutions condemning Israel than it has all other states combined. Israel has never served on this council, whose current members include such bastions of human rights as China, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

- One of the recent candidates for Pope, Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga is a notorious Jew-hater. In an interview with the Italian Catholic publication, 30 Giorni in May 2002, he even went as far as blaming Jews for the recent cases of sexual misconduct by priests, through their control of the media!

- There is a one-sided Church initiative called EAPPI that focuses almost entirely on the “evils of Israeli occupation”. It is supported by the Quakers, the Baptist Union, the Catholics, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church, the United Reformed Church and possibly the Church of England too.

Believe me when I say that, if this list would cover all current acts against the Jewish people in the realms of politics, economics, religion, academia, social behavior etc., it would provide very grim reading indeed. And all this against a people group who number just 0.19% of the world’s population! You just couldn’t make this up.

Wasn’t Satan a clever boy then? He’s managed to dupe so many of God’s people into believing his propaganda, knowing full well that most in the Church today are either ignorant of his schemes or are helplessly blinkered or are distracted by the shiny trinkets that lay scattered on pathways leading nowhere.

Wake up, Church and smell the roses. It’s surely not too late to get your act together.

Chapter 16: Why Apologise?

Apologetics? Couldn’t they have come up with a better word? The first impression is that we’re so ashamed to be believers in God that we have to apologise for it! But, then the second impression, once we have looked it up, is that it comes from the Greek word that means “speaking in defence”. Here’s Paul speaking:

“King Agrippa, I consider myself fortunate to stand before you today as I make my defence [= apolgeomai] against all the accusations of the Jews.” (Acts 26:2)

Recently I was (loosely) involved with the UK tour of one of the world’s top Christian apologists, allegedly the only person that Richard Dawkins refuses to debate with. The tour was a sell out and featured battles (jousting with words, not long pointy sticks) in large packed halls, with sometimes as many as 2000 people, most of them Christians. And the main subject debated was “Does God exist?”

Does God exist? Now that’s a question!

Another question is, why do so many Christians come to such debates? Many, like those in the Roman arenas of old, are there to watch their champions fight battles, gladiators of debate, using powerful words and silky rhetoric as weapons to defeat the enemy. But perhaps some are there because they have doubts themselves, and need reassurances.

This is troubling. Faith and doubt, the battle that all Christians fight to a certain extent, though not all of us care to admit it. So when did Christians start to doubt? Did some start to question things like Woody Allen, the comedian, who said: “How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?”

There is a group called “Sea of Faith” that has been set up to explore the implications of understanding religious faith as a human creation. In other words, how can we order

our world knowing that God doesn’t exist? Well, you may be interested to know that, according to a report a few years back, it claims it has “up to 50 vicars and some Roman Catholic priests in its membership, as well as rank and file church members.”

This is the worst outcome of the process outlined in an earlier chapter, the rise and rise of the liberal strand of Christianity in the UK. We talked about David Jenkins, the Bishop of Durham in the 1980s, who believed neither in the virgin Birth nor the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. That would have been enough to condemn him as a heretic in earlier times. But, it seems, the process of liberalisation, with the encroachment of wave after wave of doubt, has resulted in its ultimate expression. The

question now increasingly voiced even by a few from within the Christian community:

Does God exist?

For us Christians, God is surely a given. It’s the stuff we add onto that basic fact that gets us all in a tizz. But some have been brought to that darkest night of the soul and have allowed themselves to sink into a swamp of doubt.

Well it all goes back to the middle ages to that Italian Catholic theologian, Thomas Aquinas, already mentioned a couple of times in earlier chapters. Thomas Aquinas,

Christian philosopher, who set the ball rolling for the relentless rise of reason at the expense of faith as the Western world moved through the Renaissance, then the Enlightenment, resulting in the current prevalent philosophy, that of secular humanism. Has there been a philosophy that screams NO to God as much as this one?! We are secular (we are of the World) and we are humanist (man-centred)! The God-centred Jesus Mindset has found its fiercest foe. And within this philosophy are a group of people, the New Atheists, who brazenly and fearlessly declare their agenda, as a clenched fist to the Great (“non-existent”) Father in the Sky. Here are some quotes from them.

“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Ariane Sherine (founder of Atheist Bus Campaign)

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Richard Dawkins

“The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.”

Christopher Hitchens

“We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.” Sam Harris

It’s nasty, vindictive stuff, though it undoubtedly sells books and guarantees a voice on the anti-Christian media. They should be thankful that we have freedom of speech here, though I can’t see many book tours for these gentlemen in Muslim countries, despite the focus of their bile being the Christian God. And they must surely be thankful that they don’t live at the time of the Spanish inquisition!

Yet, vitriol aside, there has to be a core of valid concerns at the heart of the debate. Do they have any good arguments that could help us understand how to reach these people, or at least those who are influenced by them? Some hints came from an unusual source, the comedian Ricky Gervais (from “The Office”), a famous celebrity atheist, who even has a stage act taking the mickey out of Christians. He recently posted a lengthy article on his blog on why he’s an atheist. It was honest and helpful and made a nice change to get an insight into the atheist’s mindset without having to put up with the hatefulness so typical of Dawkins and his friends. Here are a few extracts, with some observations by me:

“I don’t believe in God because there is absolutely no scientific evidence for his existence and from what I’ve heard the very definition is a logical impossibility in this

known universe.”

This is a classic embodiment of the Greek mindset, rejecting anything that can’t be detected by the five senses or analysed rationally. The Jesus Mindset is so alien to the fallen state of mankind that God is literally reasoned out of existence.

“I’m not saying faith doesn’t exist. I know faith exists. I see it all the time. But believing in something doesn’t make it true. Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true. The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.”

There is nothing wrong with these statements at all as general principles. God either exists or He doesn’t. The problem with atheists is that they are not looking for Him in the right places, or prefer not to consider those places because they are scared what they may find there. This latter point is denied, of course, but many atheists have a history with God (or the Church), and use their newly-discovered “disbelief” as their refuge. Their hope is that their disbelief would just make the problem go away.

“It’s strange that anyone who believes that an all-powerful all-knowing, omniscient power responsible for everything that happens, would also want to judge and punish people for what they are.”

From his perspective this is a perfectly valid point to make. Unless you have faith that God is who He says He is, the all-powerful, all-knowing, omniscient (same thing really) Being, you are not going to accept the reality of the rest of the package – of our sinfulness weighed up against His holiness and righteousness, with the due consequences. The difficulty in our evangelism is getting this point across in a loving manner, particularly to disinterested or closed minds.

“When confronted with anyone who holds my lack of religious faith in such contempt, I say, ‘It’s the way God made me.’”

Yes, Mr Gervais, but God can also change you. All it needs is your open and willing heart.

“I learned of evolution – a theory so simple that only England’s greatest genius could have come up with it. Evolution of plants, animals and us – with imagination,

free will, love, humour. I no longer needed a reason for my existence, just a reason to live. And imagination, free will, love, humour, fun, music, sports, beer and pizza are

all good enough reasons for living.”

That’s fine, but there’s a flip-side to a life without ultimate hope. It can also be short and brutishly unfair. Not everyone has access to music, sports, beer and pizza. It can be a life lived for personal pleasure, something that our secular society encourages. And, anyway, what’s evolution got to do with it and, if evolution applies also to human beings, there is absolutely no (scientific) evidence that we are any different to how we were thousands of years ago. Scientific progress may have given us electric toothbrushes, but there is still evil in our hearts and we still can’t get on with each other any more than the ancient Romans could.

“But living an honest life -– for that you need the truth. That’s the other thing I learned that day, that the truth, however shocking or uncomfortable, in the end leads to

liberation and dignity.”

Agree with you there, Ricky. Where have you found the truth? To revisit your quote about God, “The existence of truth is not subjective. It either exists or it doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions, but you can’t have your own truth.” We Christians believe we have found absolute truth and it gives true freedom, despite rumours to the contrary. Jesus said, “I Am the Way, the Truth and the Life…”

“‘Do unto others…’ is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. But that’s exactly what it is: a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It’s knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that’s where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. ‘Do this or you’ll burn in hell.’ You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.”

Who says you live a good life? What standards other than self-administered ones have led to judging your own behaviour? This is not a personal criticism, it’s the basic problem with man (and woman). We love to justify ourselves. But then Christians could do better in the way they can come across as selfish, cold and judgemental. You are so right on that one, there must be better ways to get our points across.

So, perhaps we have learned a little more about real people outside our own “bubble”. It’s as important for us to understand what makes them tick as it is for us to communicate to them how God ticks.

Back to our apologists. One thing comes to mind and… that’s what it comes to… the mind. That’s the area of engagement, the mind. If you had been in the audience for the “Does God exist?” tour, it would have been argument and counterargument that you witness. And you wouldn’t have expected the following exchange:

God exists. No he doesn’t. Yes He does. No he doesn’t. Yes He does…

Instead, expect the argument from ignorance, the argument from popularity, the transcendental popularity, the argument from coercion, the first cause argument, the argument from authority, the argument from personal experience, the argument from

improbability, the argument from design and Pascal’s wager.

Of course, the atheists would have counters to the above, as well as their own set of arguments. The result of this is, as mentioned earlier, a joust with words, ideas, arguments.

Is there something missing here? There is, if the intention is just to change people’s minds. With the Gospel it’s different, it’s hearts and minds. And one without the other won’t do. Apologists have all the best arguments of course, so it’s no surprise when we

see them winning minds. That particular battle is a Greek one, in the realm of the intellect, of reason or debate. You may win minds this way, but you will never win hearts; that’s a very different kettle of fish, a Hebraic one. Remember Ricky Gervais’s first comment?

“I don’t believe in God because there is absolutely no scientific evidence for his existence and from what I’ve heard the very definition is a logical impossibility in this

known universe.”

God is not found by scientific evidence. The Bible tells us how God is found:

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’” (Jeremiah 29:11-13)

“But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.” (Deuteronomy 4:29)

With all your heart and all your soul. That’s the way to do it. Your mind is involved in the seeking and, certainly, the work of the apologist is part of the process, but you are only going to connect to God when you really want to.

Remember the contrasting definitions of the Greek (worldly) mindset and the Hebraic /Jesus (biblical) mindset, as mentioned in the Prologue?

The Greek mind says that we should strive for knowledge about God (using our mind only); the Hebraic mind says that we should know God (with our heart and mind). Apologetics will get you to stage one, knowing about God, but to know God is to search for Him diligently. And He won’t let you down.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and

to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)

Apologetics won’t give you faith. They can feed a faith that is already there, but faith is a decision that you are going to have to make alone, it’s a personal thing, you and God. But, of course, you know that already.

You can’t be a Greek Christian, one who has been convinced in mind only. That was me, for ten years, ten wasted years (though God had a plan!) when I accepted the things of God as true but did not have sufficient faith to allow the Holy Spirit into my heart. Be warned:

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6)

Only with faith can we become Christians, in mind, heart and soul. You can’t think your way into the Kingdom, but your mind can show you where it can be found. That’s the value of apologetics.

If you have friends who are earnestly seeking God, pray for them, not just that they can be convinced by argument but that they may be given the gift of faith to absorb that argument into their soul and spirit.

Chapter 17: If Justin Had De-robed

It’s not always advisable to let ones imagination (especially mine!) run riot, but it can have its uses. One thing that has recently engaged my cerebral juices is to consider how different the Church could have been if the Church Fathers hadn’t allowed themselves to be swayed by the Greek culture of their day, if Justin Martyr had discarded his philosopher’s cloak, when the truth of the Christian gospel had been revealed to him.

Let’s think. The effect of Greek philosophy on Christian theory and practice is far more extensive than most people realise (an account of this is found in my book, How the Church Lost the Way). In a nutshell, the main influences on early Christianity were the ideas of Plato, particularly the dualistic idea of separation between the physical (body) and the spiritual (soul & spirit). Added to this was the rationalism of Aristotle, from the medieval period onwards.

So, let our minds wander and imagine that, despite the cultural pressures on them, the Church Fathers were to take the following Scripture very seriously:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

So instead of finding ways to reconcile Biblical understandings with Platonic philosophy, they were to follow Paul words to the Colossians:

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” (Colossians 2:6-8)

So less importance would have been given to the analysis of Scripture or the addition of human traditions and sayings, and more importance would have been given to the acting out of the commands of Scripture. Perhaps Jesus’ words here would have been wonderfully acted out:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)

Less analysis would mean less arguing over doctrines, which themselves would have been tainted by the philosophic structures of Platonism. So, there would have been fewer heresies to contend with and fewer church splits. The Eastern and Western church, for instance, wouldn’t have split over the wording of the creed. And would there have been an Eastern and Western church anyway? Without the division of believers

into the clergy and laity, a consequence of Plato’s dualism, the Church would not have been burdened with great hierarchies and bishops would not have had any particular clothing, let alone new clothes!

Churches would be identified as congregations, rather than buildings, loosely connected and perhaps operating as an underground movement, as we can assume that persecution would have been rife, fuelled by Satan’s frustration at not being able to orchestrate the creation of a “sold out” State Christianity. The Emperor Constantine might have still seen his “sign of the cross” in the sky, but the true Church would have resisted any attempts of his to control it by forcing it into state-sponsored buildings. As

a result, persecution would have remained and Christians would have operated at the very edges of society, rather than in the mainstream. There would have been no priests, popes or archbishops, as none of them are mentioned in the New Testament. No Catholic Church, no Orthodox church, just a vast network of congregations, thriving like their forbears in the early Church.

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had

everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:42-47)

Every Christian would have had access to a Bible, taking the trouble to learn Hebrew and Greek if necessary, out of a desire to follow God and read His word. And, because scholars wouldn’t be using Greek techniques, such as allegory and the spiritualising of the text, Bible interpretation would favour the Hebraic approach, giving priority to the plain reading of the text.

There would have been no holy wars, perhaps no Islam as the conditions that gave rise to it would have been missing. No “Christian” anti-Semitism, as Christians would have been Biblically literate and the Jews would have been loved and respected, so much so that the majority may have been simply loved into the Kingdom. Christians would have resolved their differences through Biblical ways, not by killing each other in imaginative ways. There would have been no Crusades, as there would have been no ecclesiastical hunger for power, riches and territory and no Inquisition as there would have been no heretics to torture and burn.

Of course, human nature being as it is, history would still have its bloody and tragic episodes, as not all will be in the Kingdom of God. They would have simply found other ways to hate and kill each other, though we would have expected Christians to act as agents of peace and justice, even at the cost of their lives.

Also there would not have been the rise of rationalism in the Church. Scientific progress would probably have mostly taken place outside of the Church, as Scripture mostly doesn’t lend itself to such pursuits, being content in telling us that all we have and need are provided by God and that’s that! In our World, much of the scientific enquiry, inspired by the teachings of Aristotle, and even embraced by the established Church, led to the humanistic movements of the Renaissance, then the Enlightenment.

Neither of these would have happened in our alternative scenario, as both were man-centred reactions against State Christianity. Christians would not have needed to turn

to science for the basic provisions of health and comfort as they would have naturally trusted in God their divine Father to supply all of their needs and heal them when they

were sick.

And what of modern times? One could imagine mainstream society to be very different, particularly in standards of morality. One would expect secular society to be run on Greek ideas and ideals, which would ensure a comfortable life for the privileged few, but a purposeless and mean existence for the rest of us. You only need to read your history books to see that Greek civilisation had little value for life. Abortions, child murder and

euthanasia would be the norm, as would casual slaughter for entertainment purposes.

My guess is that Christians would find themselves loosely integrated into society, being careful that they are “in” and not “of” the World. This will be tricky but, as long as the

Church is providing a real, God-centred witness, they will be either tolerated and revered, or more likely persecuted and marginalised, by followers of “The prince of this World”. In short, Christians in the Western world in this scenario would fare in much the same way as Christians do in today’s persecuted world, in places like Africa, the Middle East and China.

Of course, none of this actually happened, as all that surrounds us is in God’s plan, even the bad stuff. In His perfect wisdom He allowed Greek influences into our Biblical faith, with all of the consequences. We can’t question Him, neither should we want to.

“… the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)

All that should concern us is the gift of life that He has bestowed upon us and being thankful that He has also provided us Christians with faith and hope, bought for us through the blood of Messiah Jesus.

Chapter 18: Come Holy Spirits

How many Holy Spirits are there? No, that’s not a theological question and I haven’t gone all bennyhinn! It’s just that… an awful lot of people claim that the Holy Spirit told them this, or that, or asked them to do this, or do that. And, unless there are a lot of Holy Spirits around, I find it hard to believe that a God of order would set out His shop in such a way as to create such confusion, particularly when you see some of the things

done in His name.

What are you talking about?

First, some theology. Here’s what the Bible tells us about the Holy Spirit:

“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to one hope when you were called – one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4:2-6)

This is an important passage for us believers and the gist of it is unity and oneness. It brings to mind God the Divine Puppeteer, masterminding His benign plan for mankind with us as players in the great drama, all working mysteriously through our own free will, but within the confines of the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

I’m sure that this was so when the Church got started, in the lives of those key players, the apostles – Paul, Peter, John and James in particular. God spoke and people responded and the Kingdom advanced just that little bit each time.

“For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews.” (Galatians 2:8-9)

So lines of demarcation were drawn and we have the beginning of specific ministries here. When unity was an issue, heads were banged together in order to straighten the path of the Church. This doesn’t seem to happen much these days.

Let’s skip forwards 2,000 years. Spot the inconsistencies…

You are in a revival meeting in a huge auditorium. You are surrounded by thousands of people, mostly youngish, all casually dressed. The air throbs with rock rhythms delivered by a five piece electric band on the stage. In front of the stage is a line of needy people, united in their expectancy. The street-wise preacher has finished his message, lifts his eyes and arms to the heavens and… absolute nothing. He tries again, starts speaking in tongues, his voice a bit louder. Still… nothing. So he strides towards the line of people, offers a prayer chant and lunges his right hand forwards to the nearest person… who flinches.

You are in an ancient city church, all stained glass windows, bells and smells. It is quiet apart from the occasional cough or snore, with a low monotonous soundtrack trickling from the low-wattage speaker in front of the pulpit. It’s the vicar preaching a sermon he had downloaded from the web. He barely looks up, stumbling with the words, thinking of lunch. Suddenly there’s a rumbling. Is it the vicar’s stomach, showing him up again? No, but there’s a sound of the blowing of a violent wind… and people start falling off their seats and speaking in strange tongues.

See the difference. In the first scenario, the Holy Spirit is expected to turn up, nay, demanded to turn up… in power. But he decides not to. Instead, in the second scenario, he decides to wake up a sleepy congregation with a mighty demonstration.

It’s not likely to happen, is it? Why? Because it just doesn’t? Why doesn’t it? Because different Christian groups have a different idea of who the Holy Spirit is and what he does. There can be many reasons for this, but it’s mostly a matter of culture. So, a question.

Is the Holy Spirit culturally sensitive? Does he operate according to the man-made traditions we have all constructed as a model of how we do church or does he operate despite these man-made traditions? Do we limit him by our expectations?

If we are part of an extreme reformed tradition that asserts that ‘things of the Spirit’ are no more (i.e. cessationists) then does he turn up anyway or stay away, grieved at not being invited, or even acknowledged? If we are an ultra-charismatic assembly that advertises how he is going to turn up with mighty acts of miracles and deliverance, does he comply and act according to the bidding of the leader, or is he grieved at being manipulated?

Do we grieve the Holy Spirit more than we realise?

“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” (Ephesians 4:30)

Let me tell you of two experiences I had as a young Christian in the early 1990s. Firstly, I’m recollecting what happened at that John Wimber meeting, mentioned in an earlier chapter, at London Docklands. He had with him a group of prophets and there was a lot of teaching as well as… other things. The teaching was mostly over my head but there were some things taught that I knew in my spirit were wrong (borne out after subsequent research). Nevertheless, I stuck it out to the end and, on the last session of the last day, Wimber invited all who wanted to be touched by the Holy Spirit to come to the front. Around a third of the audience went forwards, me included.

We stood in a long line, facing Wimber, who just picked up the microphone and spoke three words, Come Holy Spirit. Just three words. No emotion, music, or razzmatazz. What happened next cut through culture, cynicism, disbelief and any other barrier I put up to deny what was about to happen. Those three words had set off a chain reaction and from the far end I could see a sea of bobbing heads dropping like dominoes as

the pace picked up as it approached. Then it hit me. I didn’t keel over like most of the others, but I felt a sensation flowing through my body, from head to feet. The friend who came with me was out like a light for over an hour!

What had happened? Was it mass hysteria or emotionalism? I was quick to deny that, being a bit of a cold fish (in those days – now I’m just slightly lukewarm), but accepted that perhaps, at some deeper level, I had an emotional expectancy and just went with the crowd.

But… that wasn’t the end of the episode for me. Three days later, as a result of that experience, I had to undergo a lot of “ministry” for issues churned up by my Holy Spirit experience, relating to some dabbling with the occult in my teenage years, which had created a few – let us say – attachments!

The end result was – and it took a bit of time – freedom and release from demonic bondage. Just from those three words. The Holy Spirit had turned up, despite my “theology”. He may not have been in all of the teaching and certainly wasn’t in the prophetic utterances of a mighty revival that was meant to break out, but the Holy Spirit came, because he had some appointments to fulfil!

My second experience was a bit of the flip side to this. A friend invited me to Wembley Arena for a meeting held by a world-famous USA evangelist/teacher. I went along to humour him, not expecting much. I wasn’t let down, it was awful. Yes “awful” can be a subjective word and others may have had a very different reaction, but I would just like to draw you to a piece of Scripture, about conduct in Church.

“So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?” (1 Corinthians 14:23)

At Wembley, it was like a scene that wouldn’t have felt out of place at the Stock Exchange, or at the football stadium just down the road. A cacophony of sound, delivered by a variety of human throats, mostly discordant and in complete disorder.

Out of their mind seemed an understatement and you just could not imagine in any way how the Holy Spirit could be orchestrating this display, in order to build up his people. I just had to come to the conclusion that just because someone says this is of God, it’s not necessarily true.

What I believe I have learned is that the Holy Spirit goes about his business in his own time, despite our efforts. What we must learn is discernment, to know what is of God and what isn’t. This is sadly lacking and we need to ask why?

It’s all a symptom of the World in the Church. In the days when we Christians were totally sold out on God, people took time to wait on God, listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit before acting. People prayed before acting, during their actions and after their actions. It was serious stuff and it was God centred, with no stronger reason than the desire to win souls.

These days, Christianity is not the culture of our society any more, but a subculture, competing with other subcultures. Devastatingly sad but true. Time was that the monarch could declare national days of prayer (as George VI did during the last war) and people would pack the churches. Or that ordinary people actually took notice of what the Archbishop of Canterbury had to say (in the days when they spoke of spiritual matters rather than bashing the current government). Those were the days when we could fairly accurately say that we were a Christian nation. These days there is possibly one single factor that ensures some divine covering in our nation – the coronation oath made by the Queen, containing a set of promises to God, which will expire when she does (what a sad day that will be).

As a subculture it has all of the usual trappings – broadcast and print media operations (Radio and TV stations, magazines and newspapers), seasonal events (such as Keswick and Spring Harvest), its own spokespeople and ‘celebrities’ (mainly unknown to the outside World), jargon and source documents (The Bible and church traditions etc). It has something the others don’t have, of course, access to the Almighty Creator of the Universe, but that cuts no ice with the secular regulators who determine broadcast licences, charity statuses etc. It also has a thriving cottage industry, called ministries, thousands of them, all competing for resources and market share.

Yes, this sounds like a touch of shooting myself in the foot. After all, Monica and I run a ministry too, Saffron Planet Publishing, to publish my books and run the conferences.

Then there’s my ministry as an author. Well, there ought to be a big difference between a ministry and a small business in a  ‘cottage industry’ but, if our ministry has not been inspired by God, sustained by the Holy Spirit and honouring to the name of Jesus, then it isn’t a ministry, it’s a business.

Many ministries were birthed and nurtured with good intentions, but now may be operating under a different set of rules, still operating in a Christian context, but now so

dependent on the World’s systems that they have ceased to be a ministry in the traditional sense. If you’re not sure about your ministry, revisit your original mission statement and truthfully assess if that’s where you are now.

Then there will be some ministries that accept this fact, but still believe that they are in God’s will, as in fact they may be. It’s not for any of us to judge, it’s a matter between them and their Creator.

So the question we ask is how many ministries are truly run with God at the centre, with leadership still sensitive above all to the leadings of the Holy Spirit and less by the needs to balance the books and provide a return on investment? There are so many ministries out there – are they all being directed by the Holy Spirit, even those that seem to duplicate others and offer nothing unique?

There are also many churches out there that, and it has to be said, are run primarily as a business, perhaps to provide a steady income to its ministers, sometimes through a business model that has tithing grafted into its heart. Honesty is what’s needed here. Just because you meet in a building (either a consecrated church building or any other), have services on Sunday, preach from the pulpit and model the usual trappings of ‘doing Church’, it doesn’t mean that you are approved by the Holy Spirit. That sounds awkward, so I’ll rephrase it.

If a new church is the result of an earnest and confirmed vision that God has placed on your heart, for you to work 100% for Him and not as a career move, or as security for your family, then go for it, there are exciting days ahead for you.

Otherwise, you could have just created another Christian business to add to the thousands out there struggling on limited resources.

It’s all a matter of vision and being real with God. If you’re unsure if your ministry is currently in God’s will then perhaps you should lay it down and, if it’s in God’s will, He will allow it to be rebuilt, with Him at the centre.

Dare we do this? Perhaps we should.

Chapter 19: Windblower

This, I am ashamed to confess, is the biggest failure in my Christian life. Communicating with Father God. It’s not that He makes it difficult, perhaps it’s because He makes it so easy! After all, all we need to do is close our eyes, retreat to that quiet space and off we go. Trouble is that, as a creative type, my inner quiet space is perpetually busy, with thoughts and ideas somersaulting and cartwheeling around, as my synapses trigger away like jumping jacks on a bonfire night. It really is difficult to quieten myself down and tune in to the divine. Confession over, am I alone here?

Rather than tackle the subject of prayer in the usual way, which I’d be a hypocrite to attempt, I would like to propose something different, an allegory – not a deep one, but rather an obvious one – of God’s difficulties getting His people to listen to Him. Ladies and gentlemen, I present… Windblower.

I am Windblower. I control the mighty winds that blow from the north, the south, the east and the west. There is no escape from my power, no refuge from my might. It hasn’t always been this way. I remember those earliest times, simpler days, before the storms.

When I created the very first breezeling, fashioned from the soil into my likeness and filled with a small part of my essence, just a tiny breeze. Just a gentle breeze created out of love, out of my own gentleness, and in gentleness we used to talk as we drifted together in the Eastern currents.

But, alas, terrible events transpired. The first breezelings succumbed to the dark storm and were contained, no longer were the Eastern currents available to them. They drifted to the west and multiplied and soon the earth was populated by breezelings, all individual, contained, separate from me and, where it mattered, from each other.

For hundreds of years I watched over them, unable to meet with them individually in the currents, because of their containment. But I performed mighty acts, through their history. I blew away the flood waters to enable the righteous family to re-seed the earth. My winds divided those waters in the great miracle of deliverance, as my chosen breezelings escaped from captivity. When they were hungry in the desert I blew food in from the sea. Wherever I could I acted in great power to ensure the survival of these chosen ones.

But they were soon to discover that if they sowed the wind, they would reap the whirlwind. Storms were sometimes needed to correct their waywardness. Whether a scorching wind on the wicked, or evil-doers blown like chaff into the distance, or a great storm at sea to bring the errant in line. I would shake the trees in the forest, even the earth itself would totter like a hut, at my command.

Yet those who searched for me, they knew that they would not find me in those storms and great and powerful winds, but in the stillness within their hearts. Those breezelings were few, but they were precious. They were created with breaches in their shells and I was able to speak to them and, through them, the others too.

But it was a troubled history and my chosen breezelings found themselves drifting to places they did not want to be, but where their misdeeds condemned them to go, blown by the mighty winds into exile. Soon it was time for me to begin the process of

restoration, so I poured my essence into a breezeling, lived among them and died at their hands. By doing so I reopened the Eastern currents and breezelings were able to rediscover the gentleness that enabled us to talk again in the coolness of the breeze. My wind blew through the lands, touching those who would listen and respond and, in this way, I grew my Kingdom of breezes.

Those first breezes abounded in gentleness, in the deeds they performed for each other and the great joy they gave me in our conversations as again we drifted together in the Eastern currents. They acted as if they were one, their membranes sensitive to each other’s needs, helping each other in practical ways as well as petitioning me on each other’s behalf.

But it wasn’t to last and they began to lose their gentleness, slowly and imperceptively, gaining a hardness from those breezelings who had been hardened by the World. The main effect of this was that the Eastern currents became fixed in one direction, with

the breezes talking but not listening, our conversations becoming formalised, ritualised, deadened by rigid patterns rather than the informal freedoms and joys of earlier times.

I found myself squeezed out, my voice not heard any more. I still spoke, but they rarely listened. I began to wonder if my voice was loud enough; perhaps the gentle winds should become storms again. But I resisted this and waited. And waited… and waited…

When we pray to God, do we open up the possibility of an answer, or is it a continuous stream of petition, requests and demands? Conditioned by our world of immediacy and

instant results, have we lost the ability to wait patiently unto the Lord?

Does He answer prayer – but – because it’s not the answer we expect or want, we fail to register this and continue with our plans secure in the thought that God’s “silence” is a sign of His “agreement”? Perhaps we have simply blocked up our “prayer ears”, given ourselves a self-inflicted tinnitus, replacing the gentleness with hardness and condemning ourselves to a divine silence? God is speaking, perhaps even shouting at us, but maybe we have blocked Him out because we don’t want Him to get in the way of our plans?

Harsh words indeed and perhaps unfair, but worth a thought and certainly worth addressing… just in case, let us stop right now and pray:

“Heavenly Father are You speaking to me, but I’m not listening? If so, speak now because I am listening now…”

Have five minutes of silent listening.

OK, back to the noise of my words. Of course our time is better spent actually praying, rather than reading my words about this activity. As I confessed at the head of the chapter, the activity of prayer is probably my greatest failing. Yet God still finds ways to speak to me, despite my failings. Perhaps some of this may chime with you. First some Scripture:

“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

If we take this literally then there’s no time for anything else, such as actually living our lives. But what I believe Paul means here is that we should see God as so much a part of our daily lives that we should continually be ready and able to rejoice in Him, pray to Him, thank Him.

Now this would be impossible in the context of the usual way we are taught to approach the subject of prayer. Because of our natural Greek mindset we are encouraged to compartmentalize our lives; Now’s a time for worship, now’s a time for Bible reading, for prayer, for intercession. Ten minutes a day for prayer, ten minutes for Bible reading. Perhaps a special place, like a study or a prayer closet for doing this. And we try not to

feel guilty for failing to carry out our spiritual duties today…

It’s the same thinking that says to some that the only time we meet with God is in a building called church, on a Sunday morning for an hour or so. It’s a symptom of a pagan virus that has infected the Christian body and dominated Christian thinking for nearly 2000 years and it is a result of the dualism of Plato, the idea that there’s a separation between the spiritual and the physical, the natural and the supernatural, the holy and the profane etc.

Hebraic thinking says something different. It considers us holistically as whole people. And that includes the way that we deal with our relationship with God. And this is my justification for my – fractured in a traditional sense – approach to prayer. If we see prayer as a natural expression, rather than something that we have to work at or ritualise or tightly structure, then…

We can pray at any time, in any way. It need just be a single word or two, or a quick thank you (or a Hallelujah if you’re an arm waver). If we can think of God as Someone who is standing next to us at all times, rather than Someone who needs to be called down from heaven by use of a “call sign” (as in ham radio) or a grand invocation, then this will make it easier to develop a real relationship with Him. Perhaps.

Also, there’s nothing magical or charmed by those three words, “in Jesus’ name”. We tend to think that these are divine promptings that ‘seal the deal’ and force God to take more notice than He would have done. That they give our prayers extra oomph, or immediacy, or invoke some sort of loophole that ties God up in some kind of legal knot, forcing Him to act a little more speedily! So why do we append these words to our prayers?

Here’s where it comes from:

“And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” (John 14:13-14)

This is a classic example of the way we revert to our Greek mindset. By chanting ‘in Jesus’ name’ we are simply reciting a formula we have been told gets results, rather than embracing the spirit behind those words. And what is the spirit behind these words? It means praying with Jesus’ authority, knowing that it will give glory to God. If your prayer is one that is not going to give glory to God, then praying in Jesus’ name is,

frankly, a waste of time. Does receiving a brand new car in Jesus’ name give glory to God? I think not. It is not the words that you use, but the purpose behind the prayer that is key. So if your purpose is one that will give God the glory, then by all means, pray it in Jesus’ name and God will answer your prayer (though not always in the way you want or expect, of course).

My philosophy has always been KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid – because it always seems to be our natural inclination to over-complicate things. And prayer is no exception. This is why some folk like to pray long, eloquent, jargon-filled prayers during open prayer time, as if God and the angels are sitting on a panel, X-Factor style, ready to judge you on content and style and deciding whether to pass your request through to the processing department. Of course, this is just my opinion and one that will no doubt attract a lot of flak (particularly from wifey!), as, of course, the Holy Spirit works with all of us in very different ways. And that brings me to another feature of the Jesus mindset.

We are all different. We all have one Creator, but rather than beings of mud and dust, we are a sum of what has come before (in our DNA) and of our environment and upbringing.

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptised by one Spirit so as to form one body – whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.” (1 Corinthians 12:12-14)

God finds different ways to communicate with each of us, depending on how we each tick. For some of us it is in dreams (not me, unless it’s possible to decode the surreal sci-fi landscapes that inhabit my nocturnal journeys). For others it may be the occasional audio voice or vision (if frequent, seek medical advice!). Or it could be that still quiet voice – the gentleness of His spirit into our own. With me it tends to be

circumstance – events (such as my Margaret Thatcher episode, while walking in London, as mentioned in an earlier chapter), or interactions (words spoken, something on TV or radio, chance meetings etc.), or through the Bible, or a preacher or teacher.

The point is that we should all be given licence to find our own level. What works for you may not work for me. What works for me can seem crazy to others (ask my wife). Of course, if you think God speaks to you through cloud formations, the colour of Simon Cowell’s shirt or cracks in the pavement, then speak to someone else before acting on what you think God is saying!

God just loves it when we speak to Him.

“But God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer.” (Psalm 66:19)

He loves it even more when we listen to Him.

“For God does speak – now one way, now another – though man may not perceive it.”

(Job 33:14)

If we haven’t yet sussed out this prayer thing, then perhaps now is a good time to start working on it. Hopefully I may have been of some help. If not, there are plenty of books available on the subject (perhaps too many), so you are certainly not alone.

Yes, you are not alone. He’s standing next to you, just waiting for a chat.

Chapter 20: The Greatest Of These Is…

I love my wife. Her name is Monica, we’ve been married for over 33 years and she still finds new ways to delight me every day. I am truly blessed.

Of course we are called to love our wives.

Husbands, love your wives… (Ephesians 5:25)

It’s a Biblical command, perhaps one of the easier ones to act out. It is easy to love a flesh and blood person who you can see, touch, hear and smell, who you share your triumphs and tragedies with, who is your helper, friend, adviser, comforter… and corrector (in my case). Love is easy when guided by the five senses. Our grandson is barely two weeks old, all he does is eat and poo, but we already love him to bits. We

humans have our dark side, but we really do have a natural inclination to love those who are close to us. That’s the way we’ve been made.

Here’s the second half of the verse in Ephesians:

“… just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

Now, I know what it’s like to love my wife, so if Christ loves the Church in the same way, then he really does love us. Right? But… is this mutual?

How much do we love God? How much do we love Jesus? Really. It’s time for honesty, because loving an invisible Deity has to be different from loving a nine stone whirlwind of a woman the wrong side of fifty!

We can have faith in God, that He exists; that He has done all that He says He has done; that He loves us so much that He sent His only-begotten son to die for us. But do we love Him? We say that we do in our prayers and songs, but do we really love Him… with a passion?

Remember that Jesus asked Simon three times whether he loved him (John 21:15-19). Why did he have to ask him three times? And this is a man who lived with him for three years, watched him live his life, then abandoned him when the going got tough. If Simon’s love could be doubted, then what about ours? Do we really love Him, or is it just a vague fuzzy warm feeling of general benevolence?

Yes, this sounds a bit harsh. But I speak of myself first. In fact, all of my books are primarily written for myself. What a strange man. My books are just me sharing my journey with the rest of you, so we are all in the same boat here, a group of Christians who really want to get real with God. And an important part of this journey concerns our relationship with our Creator. I know He loves you and me. He tells us this so many times in Scripture. Here are just two verses out of hundreds:

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.” (John 15:9)

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

Are we filled with love for Him when we wake up in the morning? Or when we drop off to sleep at night? If not, perhaps it’s all down to personality traits? Let’s face it, some of us have more of a loving nature and find this stuff easier. For some of us it can be hard work getting that old stiff upper lip to quiver! I’m somewhere in between, I think.

My position is this; I love God, but I really would like to LOVE God. There’s an old chap in Romford. Let’s call him Uncle Syd, who regularly and unashamedly cries when he prays to Jesus, because he loves him with such a passion. Is this where we want to be? Is this where we should be?

Here’s a clue:

“‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replied, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.” (Matthew 22:36-38)

This is a command, which means that we should work at it, especially if it doesn’t come naturally. We are called to love God with our whole being, with all that is us, whether we call it our mind, body, spirit, heart, soul or emotions. All that we have should be poured out to Him. Here’s an interesting passage:

“We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” (1 John 4:19-20)

Perhaps there’s a pointer here? The theme continues…

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.” (John 15:12-14)

God wants us to love one another. He even tells us that we need to get these horizontal relationships (with fellow believers) right before the vertical one (with God) can be developed. Here’s the second half of the Matthew passage, the second (of two)

commandments that Jesus gave us:

“And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”(Matthew 22:39-40)

Perhaps we should just try to be more loving people in general? I know I could do better. Perhaps by doing so, we’ll find it easier to build a true relationship with God Himself?

Here’s a mental image I have been using when writing this book. It was useful for me, perhaps it will be for you, too? Think of a children’s playground. The one I conjure up in my mind’s eye has sand pits, metal climbing frames and rickety swings. You are one

of the kids running around and all the other kids there are people you know. Think of these kids having adult faces, each identifiable to you and each of them being someone you either find hard to love or think you may have hurt. In my case these “kidults” would

be folk I had in mind when I wrote each chapter of this book, who may be hurt (as well as challenged) by the content.

Now imagine them all (including you) running around, interacting with each other. Perhaps a little push here and there, or a bit of name calling. Just usual kiddie rough-and-tumble. All harmless stuff. Then teacher (God?) blows his whistle, signalling the end of playtime and we all line up, spats forgotten, games over, all back to normal. That’s my memory of playtime, of course, it’s probably not so innocent these days,

but bear with me!

That’s how we should be. We may push each other around a little (doctrinal differences?), perhaps a bit of name-calling (sanctified gossip?), but, when it’s time to get serious, we just get on with life and line up together in love, all differences forgotten when we realise that there’s an immense job to do out there in the World… and we’re all in this together.

What I’m saying is that – to coin a much used phrase – what goes on in the playground stays in the playground.

Here is John’s take on the second great command.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)

Love is in short supply in our world. It seems to be so in the Church too, particularly when we see so much “dirty linen being washed in public”, thanks to the rapid propagation of news and opinion in our current unforgiving age of Twitter, Facebook and the like. By all means let’s have a bit of play time, as long as we get in line afterwards and do what teacher says.

My feeling is that the Church generally just does lip service to the “loving God” thing. Yes, we sing the songs and pray through the devotionals but, if every church and ministry really loved God in heart, mind and soul would they honestly be run in the way that they are? What really drives your Church or ministry, God… or the World? Is God really in the centre of our Church? Is He really in the centre of our lives?

It all starts with us, you and me, individuals. Whatever role you have in the Body of Christ, whether it is a strong arm or a little pinkie, it is our responsibility to get our own relationship right with God, our Creator.

The buck stops here.

Epilogue: The God Heartset

We started with the Jesus Mindset, to get into the head of those early Jewish believers, to see how they thought and how they acted on those thoughts. Now we end, not on the God mindset, as I would not presume to get inside God’s head, but rather His Heartset (yes, I’ve just made up this word), to really think about what is important to the heart of God.

So what is the heart of God? Here are some Scriptures that have really spoken to me:

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

God is not a Calvinist or an Arminian. He is not swayed by our arguments and our readings of His words. He wants nothing more than all of us to bend our knees in repentance, come to our senses and attain eternal life. The fact that this is not embraced by all of us, is not His fault but our stubbornness and desire to go our own way.

“And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.” (Acts 17:25)

Basically, God could achieve whatever He wants to achieve without us and, let’s face it, He would do a far better job of it! But, He chooses to work through us, with all of our flaws and foibles. Our mistake is when we choose to believe that He can’t do without us! Some of the “faith teachers” are of this opinion, that God can only act in situations where we have first made declarations “through our faith” and have therefore cleared a

pathway for Him to do His stuff. A symptom of how the Church has veered away from being God-centred to putting ourselves at the centre of everything.

Here’s another useful Scripture:

“From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him,

though he is not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:26-27)

I do believe that God’s heart is to make Himself accessible for everyone, acknowledging that we are all different, by virtue of where we live, our circumstances and our personalities. He is not as rigid as we sometimes make Him out to be. He is not “The great computer in the sky” that some make Him out to be, accessed by inputting the correct formula. Neither is He the “divine slot machine”, where we insert our needs and desires and expect multiplication of blessings, as if by right. Again – and I do repeat this a lot – it’s Greek thinking to believe this and, because that’s the way we are taught from our earliest schooldays to think, we can hardly blame ourselves for this.

But it’s different now, because you now know better. God is a living entity, not a magic black box that we can plug into, and He asks for nothing more than a relationship with us. After all, those who are His people on earth are going to be His people in heaven too, living with Him and each other in a way that is totally beyond our current understanding but which, I am sure, is going to be completely marvellous!

“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.” (Revelation 22:1-5)

But, that’s one for the future. We’ve still got the present to contend with first and it’s worth reminding ourselves of the realities of our lives.

The first question I asked was does our lamp shine?

“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)

We have to take responsibility for our own actions, our own witness. We can’t leave it to our leaders, some of whom have failed quite miserably in this most basic of instructions in God’s Word. And where is God’s heart on this matter? He knows that our good deeds done in His name will give Him glory and provide a wonderful witness to the unsaved.

“And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” (Colossians 3:17)

Then we took a detour, but an important one for those who weren’t put off by the title, was Jesus gay? For those with eyes to see, ears to hear, it was simply a plea not to rely solely on our emotions when we process information. God expects better than that and Christians have been known too often for reacting before thinking, sometimes.

But it’s more than just emotions, our critical faculties can also let us down too. We must not give any credence to any writings outside of the revealed Word of God, particularly when they seem to imply different understandings. But then, we can also be fooled when confronted with God’s Word, in the hands of people who wish to interpret it to further their own agenda and mindset. It is important that we read The Bible inductively

in the first instance, allowing the Scripture itself to speak to us, rather than deductively, when we read our own ideas into Scripture. What does God want from us? Nothing more than the following:

“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 3:14-15)

Then I asked another seemingly mischievous question, was Jesus goy, was Jesus a gentile? These days none but the seriously truth-challenged would be doubting the Jewishness of Jesus. After supplying enough evidence to scotch that view, we moved to the real purpose of the chapter, examining what is truth? Truth is a precious commodity, in our relativistic society, that stretches it in all directions to cover the various opinions

of man. Biblical truth must be defended and we are urged to treasure God’s Word in our hearts, so that we can have the real answers to the questions the World should be asking.

Next, I spoke to those of us who believe God has given a mandate to convert a vision into a reality, through birthing a ministry. We must learn to hear God’s Word in this important matter, not just when to start an endeavour, but when to let it go. Everything has a season.

It is worth repeating the conclusion, that everything we do as Christians, whether as individuals or as groups, should be to His glory, transparent and above reproach. The Lord sees into all of our hearts and the following verse speaks far more eloquently into this issue than anything more that I can write.

“He said to them, ‘You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.’” (Luke 16:15)

What can one say about death? It’s hard enough to contemplate the death of a vision, or a ministry, but when a loved one dies, the finality of it hits hardest of all. Not so much when we consider the death of a believer:

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

But we all know some in this second category.

“But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars – their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)

But rather than the usual debates on God’s thinking on these matters, it profits us more to remind ourselves what God’s heart is and allow that to flow into our own hearts:

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

God knows who He will spend eternity with. We don’t know, as we can’t see into people’s hearts. Nothing more needs to be said on the matter.

Next we return to the people whom God chooses to be his special instruments and what we discovered was that, despite what the Worldly church tends to think, God tends to overlook the big shots.

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” (1 Corinthians 1:27)

I think that it’s because we tend to over-esteem ourselves and, after all, everything we do should be to the Glory of God, not man… and certainly not ourselves.

“Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31)

He is looking for His Cinderella Church; not a denomination, or an organised Church; it comprises individual, called-out ones, who are striving to walk worthy of the Lord.

But how do we all fit into this? Are we crying out, Here I am, choose me… or are we Christian shirkers, marching back to bed?

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)

God has a plan for all of us and some of us need to walk free from our comfort zones, leaving behind such “Greek” concepts as clergy and laity, and grasp our destiny.

What we must certainly do, though, is avoid those whom He warns us about:

“They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres

opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth – men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.” (2 Timothy 3:1-9)

The trouble is that, at the time of writing, the folly of the Faith teachers is not yet clear to everyone. Let’s pray for that day to come soon, so that we can finally be rid of the upside-down Gospel that they promote, where the Kingdom of God seems to be paved with gold, perfect health and financed by way of green prosperity prayer handkerchiefs and vain promises of massive returns on your faith investment!

Yet these ministries (perhaps apart from that one $2.5m in debt) seem to do quite well for themselves financially and, it must be said, some of their teaching is fine and many folk are undoubtedly saved through their ministry. All that we need to do is accept that He is a gracious, loving God who blesses whom He wants to bless, despite the structures we put up against Him. And He is the judge of all and will hold everyone accountable for what they have done in this life.

“For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:14)

Perhaps one secret thing that brings shame to most of us at some time or other is our tongue, or rather what it gets up to when we let slip. It’s that third commandment:

“You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.” (Exodus 20:7)

It’s a neglected issue, particularly as so much blasphemy is more commonplace that we realise (though you know it now, so we have no excuse!), thanks to euphemisms that have been passed down to us. Above all, we must never forget Whom we serve and should we not be as careful not to offend Him as we are in our dealings with our earthly loved ones?

Then we have to look at the current flavours of our Christian experience and I provided a glimpse of two extreme expressions.

Firstly, those who have inherited the Greek analytical mindset and have allowed it to chip away at the certainties of faith, where Christianity has become more of a philosophic system to be argued over, than a supernatural expression of God’s plans for mankind. We suggested that this takes away the anchor of our faith and leaves us as…

“… 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.” (Ephesians 4:14)

Then there are those who seem to have faith totally without reason, those who set themselves as God’s mouthpieces, like the prophets and apostles of Bible times, yet without their credibility… or results.

If a group sets themselves up as a new reformation of the Church, as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) do, then they really need to come up with the goods and show an

uncommon level of holiness, righteousness and accuracy in their predictions. Alas, we can only judge by results and, for that reason, NAR… you’re fired!

Joking aside, there is a warning:

“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6:7-8)

Further confusions occur when Christians consider what is meant by the Kingdom of Heaven. Rather than follow the theories of man, it is urged that we follow Jesus’ own teachings on this issue and realise that it is nothing other than the rule of God in the hearts of the believer.

Another confusion is centred around what is surely the most important thing of all, the cross of Christ. Paul himself said:

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14)

We need to really grasp exactly what this means to us when we exclaim “Christ died for our sins” and I suggested a short statement that distils it into a single message; His pain, my blame. His shame, my gain.

There’s a battle to be fought and we really all need to get our act together and realise that there’s strength in numbers in this war against the enemy of our souls. And one strategy of the devil that seems to be working is on the lines of I’ll get them to doubt the fundamentals, then watch and see what develops…

The fundamentals, the first twelve Chapters of Genesis, have been picked off, in a relentless covert campaign to undermine God’s Word and God’s plan for mankind. Using the tools of Greek philosophy we have seen attacks on Creation, marriage, the Fall of man and death through sin, the genealogies, the Flood and the laws given to Noah, and the importance of God’s chosen people, the Jews. Just look again at that list and realize how foundational each of these is. The devil’s strategy is to get us to begin to doubt the truth that lies at the heart of each one, in the familiar refrain of, “Are you sure God said…?”

Consequently, God’s heart is for us to believe His Word. If doubt begins to creep in to the first twelve Chapters of the Bible, then watch how the rest crumbles…

The last entry on that list concerned the Jewish people. The devil has a particular hatred for the Jews and has used his full arsenal in this particular battle, from “Christian” anti-Semitism that poisons the heart to Replacement Theology that poisons the brain. God’s heart is very clear on this matter:

“This is what the Lord says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar – the Lord Almighty is his name: ‘Only if these decrees vanish from my sight,’ declares the Lord, ‘will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me.’ This is what the Lord says: ‘Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel because of all they have done,’ declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 31:35-37)

“‘Up, Zion! Escape, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon.’ For thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘He sent Me after glory, to the nations which plunder you; for he who touches you touches the apple of His eye.’” (Zechariah 2:7-8)

Next, we considered how we defend God to non-believers, particularly those vicious attacks by those who call themselves the New Atheists. While apologetics is a worthy exercise, it is basically fighting the battle using the tools of the enemy, the analytical, scientific Greek mindset. The Hebraic mindset is better employed in searching for God and is hinted at with these Scriptures:

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’” (Jeremiah 29:11-13)

“But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul”. (Deuteronomy 4:29)

God is not looking for us to win intellectual battles; His heart is for people to attain the gift of faith to absorb those arguments into their soul and spirit.

A short interlude followed, a sort of a summary wrapped up in a “what-if” scenario, how different the Church could have been if the Church Fathers hadn’t allowed themselves to be swayed by the Greek culture of their day. The purpose of this is to show the damage that Greek thinking has done to the Church and how things could have been so different…

Then we examined the curious situation of there being so many different expressions of our faith, all making claims to special or general instructions from the Holy Spirit. Of course God has created us as individuals with free will and the natural outcome of this is that we tend to find God on our own terms, in a way that is comfortable for us.

Yet the truth of the matter is that God roams freely and does what He wants. He will find a way of blessing us despite any mess we may have created for ourselves, or what others may have created for us and lured us into.

Then, communicating with God.

“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

Keeping it simple, He’s standing next to us, just waiting for us to speak with Him. Whether we want to express our joy, to thank Him, or to ask Him something or to just have a chat, He is available at all times, at all places.

And finally? Love. It may be all around, but how loving are we to our fellow Christians and, more importantly, our God? We could do with committing the following to our hearts… minds… and souls:

“‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.’” (Matthew 22:36-38)

So, we are now at the end. And what is the summary of the summary? One statement and one verse that just sums it all up? Well, I think it is this:

God does what God does. We just need to get with the programme.

“Whatever the Lord pleases He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deep places.” (Psalm 135:6)

This is the heart of The Jesus Mindset. God… God… God. Not God in a box, or God reinvented, or a new way to look at God, or any other theory, technique, or new thinking. Just God… unplugged.

So how should we leave this? We may be at the end of the book, but we should now be at the beginning of an exciting journey. Some of you are already on this journey. In fact, all Christians are meant to be on it, that’s what we’re signed up for, but not all have followed the small print. My prayer is that at least one of the twenty topics examined has impacted your soul, so much so that this will be translated into action.

Here’s a Scripture, already considered in an earlier chapter, that I think should show us the way.

“For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.” (Colossians 1:9-12 NKJV)

At the heart of this, God’s heart for us:

“… that you may walk worthy of the Lord…”

Amen.

Further Reading

At the current time eight of my books are still available for purchase, either through Amazon, Christian bookshops or directly from www.sppublishing.com.

To Life! Rediscovering Biblical Church

Have you ever asked the question, where does the World end and the Church begin? Is the 21st Century Church truly the best it could possibly be?

“In this fine book, Steve Maltz addresses the issue of religious tradition and its power to force out biblical truth, thus creating disarmed and impotent churches. It is a warning we must heed.” Chris Hill, Bible teacher, writer, broadcaster

How the Church lost The Way… … and how it can find it again

The story of how the Church has been infiltrated by a pagan virus that has worked its way through every facet of our Christian life and how we can start fighting back.

“With great insight, explaining many concepts simply, Steve Maltz brings us back to the root of our Christian faith. I believe that every pastor and ordinand in the country will benefit from reading this book.” Mark Weeden, Senior Pastor, Worthing Tabernacle

How the Church lost The Truth… … and how it can find it again

What has happened to some key battlegrounds of Christian Truth and how it is that the Church has managed to lose so much that had been revealed to it in the Bible.

“I really enjoyed reading it. You are the master of epigrams, full of Jewish wit and humour, which I love. These keep you reading and make the whole interesting. It’s so important to add gravy to the meat and you are a good chef. I hope this book will reach those who need it most though I fear they will be irritated, if not infuriated, by your dismissal of so many of their heroes!” David Pawson, international Bible teacher

Jesus, the Man of Many Names : A Fresh Understanding from the dawn of time to the End of Days

Are you prepared for a new book about Jesus that does offer fresh insights without boasting new revelations? Drawing on sources from the Jewish world, ancient and modern, the author will take you on an exhilarating, lively and entertaining exploration of the life and times of the Jewish Messiah.

“Steve Maltz has a gift for combining pacy writing with crystal-clear distillation of his own careful study of scholarly resources and a firm grip on the Gospel. The result is a fascinating new landscape of insight.” David Andrew (editor Sword Magazine)

The Truth is out there: The Ultimate World Conspiracy.

Who really is pulling the strings? Is history just a random sequence of events, or are there secret manipulations? What makes us tick? How did the World as we see it come to be? Read this book if you are prepared to be challenged.

“Steve Maltz has a rare gift of being able to communicate complex ideas in a way that leaves you thinking that you have read the work of a genius but can still follow his argument clearly. A brilliant read for an evangelist to engage with a sceptic or to give as a gift for ‘food for thought’.” Tim Leffler, The GoodBookstall.org.uk

The (other) F-Word : Faith, the Last Taboo

A presentation of the Gospel for the modern world. It is direct, uncompromising, engaging and is written to be relevant to the everyday person. Dare you go where modern man fears to tread? You’ll either be inspired or provoked, either way it should be an interesting experience.

“This is a clear and straightforward evangelistic book, written with real style and panache, and a genuine sense of humour. But at the same time it is serious and God-honouring. I genuinely think that not since C S Lewis have we had a Christian author who has addressed his current generation in such a culture-attuned way.” Peter Sammons Author & Publisher

Outcast Nation Israel, The Jews… and You

The story of the People and the Land through biblical and secular history, tracing the outworkings of God’s covenants and offering explanations for both the survival and the success of this Outcast Nation.

“The ‘Unavoidable Questions’ in the final chapter are particularly challenging, and need to be answered honestly, however uncomfortable they may make you. Highly recommended for reading by as many people as possible, of all beliefs and none.”

Mary Bartholemew (The GoodBookStall)

God’s Signature: The Wonders of the Hebrew Scriptures

Have you ever wondered how the Old Testament came to be written, why God chose Hebrew as the language of the Book and what exactly could we be missing through not reading the Hebrew Scriptures in their original language?

“For those who want a readable introduction to the matter or for those who simply want to dip their toes into the subject God’s Signature is definitely the book to start with. You’ll find it very difficult to put down.” Mike Moore (Director of Christian Witness to Israel)

Table of Contents

Preface

Prologue: The Jesus Mindset

Chapter 1: How Dim Is Your Lamp?

Chapter 2: Was Jesus Gay?

Chapter 3: Was Jesus Goy?

Chapter 4: Doing God’s Stuff

Chapter 5 : Outrageous Unfairness

Chapter 6: Cinderella Church

Chapter 7: Onwards Christian Shirkers…

Chapter 8: The Upside-Down Gospel

Chapter 9: Language, Timothy!

Chapter 10: Anything Goes… Within Reason!

Chapter 11: Anything Goes… Without Reason!

Chapter 12: Kingdom When?

Chapter 13: His Pain, My Blame; His Shame, My Gain

Chapter 14: Those First Twelve Chapters

Chapter 15: For Whatever Reason

Chapter 16: Why Apologise?

Chapter 17: If Justin Had De-robed

Chapter 18: Come Holy Spirits

Chapter 19: Windblower

Chapter 20: The Greatest Of These Is…

Epilogue: The God Heartset

Further Reading