Yet more on separation

OK - I'm still reading Ezra. Today it was chapter 6 and, again, the subject of separation came up. In the description of the first celebration of the Passover after completion of the Temple, it says that "the Israelites who had returned from the exile ate it, together with all who had separated themselves from the unclean practices of their Gentile neighbours in order to seek the LORD, the God of Israel" (vs 21, NIV). So the returning Israelites were not totally exclusive, but any others who wished to join them had to first of all separate themselves from certain things. We are not told exactly what the unclean practices were, but worship of idols would have been included and may have involved various forms of sexual immorality and possibly even child sacrifice. Exactly the sort of things which had got the Israelites expelled from the Holy Land in the first place, more than 70 years earlier.

This message - of the need for those who seek the Lord to separate themselves from the world and its ways - is largely absent in the church these days. Not much is said about how the world system in which we live is totally antithetical to living as a Christian and so has to be forsaken. Not much preaching is done on the need for repentance. It's all about God's love and grace and forgiveness to the extent that many in the church do not seem to realise that, if the world does not find them odd, something is wrong. They are going to get a shock when the real persecution starts! If you have put your faith in Christ and crossed over from death into life, you are in the world but not of the world. Sometimes that involves a physical separation but, more often, it is a mental separation from worldly ways of thinking. We still need to interact with the world around us but we do it from a different perspective and with the thought always that this is not our home. Our home is in heaven with Christ.

As Christians, we need to be careful of the company we keep, what we read, what we listen to, what we watch on TV or look at on the internet. Bad company corrupts good character. We need to measure everything against what the Bible teaches. We need to heed Philippians 4:8 and think on good things and, if possible, find godly people to associate with and emulate (Philippians 4:9). If the church we attend majors on love and forgiveness and does not preach the need for repentance and separation from the world, we need to find another church, because otherwise we will end up surrounded by people who have one foot in the church and one foot in the world and we will be corrupted by them.

"Therefore come out from them and be separate", says the Lord. (2 Cor 6:17a NIV)

More on separation

My Bible reading for today was Ezra chapter 4. In it, the returned exiles, who are rebuilding the Temple of the LORD, receive an offer of help from some of the local inhabitants, who say that they too seek the God of the Israelites and sacrifice to Him. They receive a very definite 'no' from the leaders of the exiles. Now, to a modern reader of Scripture, this seems a bit harsh. Although these people are described as 'the enemies of Judah' right at the start of the chapter, that may be from the benefit of hindsight, as they certainly went on to become enemies after their help was rejected. Not an unnatural reaction. If a similar situation were to occur nowadays, many would say that seekers who seem to worship the same God as we do and who want to get involved in our church should be welcomed, not rejected. Why make enemies of your neighbours?

However, the Israelite leaders were quite right. To understand the situation fully, you need to know the background of the people who came to help. They were not Israelites or descendents of Abraham but people from elsewhere who had been relocated from their conquered homelands by the Assyrian ruler Esarhaddon, in line with Assyrian policies which aimed to uproot conquered peoples in order to subjugate them to Assyrian rule and assimilate them into the Assyrian empire. 2 Kings 17:24-41 describes how these people worshipped the God of Israel but also continued to worship their own gods. In other words, they were idolaters. If their help had been accepted, their idolatry would soon have infected the Israelites, who had managed to stay faithful to the God of Israel throughout the exile. A temple built with their involvement would have ostensibly been a temple to the God of Israel but would probably also have had annexes for the worship of other gods!

Zerubbabel, Jeshua and the others seem, to our modern way of thinking, to be anything but inclusive when they tell the locals "You have no part with us in building a temple to our God." They not only forfeited help they could have had but also suffered years of opposition. However, they stayed true to God and, in the end, the temple was built. It may have lacked the glory of Solomon's Temple but it was dedicated to the one true God. That was more important. They applied the principle of separation and stayed faithful to God. Would that more of our churches would do the same.

PS. And if the Israelite leaders knew at the time that these people who came offering help were enemies, they were smart enough not to be taken in by the story of them seeking the God of Israel. They didn't just take them at face value but applied biblical principles and rejected the offer. Something for churches which accept lottery money to think about!

On running the race

Last night at Bible Study we looked at Hebrews 12. It starts with that wonderful verse 'Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.' Not the race that we have chosen - the one marked out for us. For one christian friend today that race is coping with the death of her husband in an accident just weeks before they were due to share retirement together. For another, it is struggling with secondary cancer when just months ago she had been given the all-clear. There are times when you just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other (metaphorically speaking). That's perseverance.

There is some debate as to who wrote the book of Hebrews but my money is on the Apostle Paul. He knew about both hardship and perseverance. He finished the race and kept the faith (2 Tim 3:7). He called himself the least of all the apostles and yet, in many ways, he was the greatest. He left us a wealth of instruction on how to live the christian life and was himself a shining example for us to follow. It therefore concerns me when people write him off as legalistic or his example as too difficult to follow. How could the writer of Galatians possibly be legalistic! Paul, were he alive today, would be the first to say that we should follow Jesus, not Paul, however if we ignore Paul we are missing something, because Paul's writings, inspired by the Holy Spirit, point us to Jesus. That is why they are included in the Canon of Scripture and I am uncomfortable with the current trend among some christians to minimise or sideline Paul's epistles - an example being Professor Donald Macleod of the Free Church, who is reported as saying in a BBC radio interview "My concern is to go back to Jesus. I even feel uncomfortable going back to St.Paul." Why? The two (Paul and Jesus) are not incompatible. If we didn't have the gospels, we would still be able to understand the gospel and know Christ through Paul's writings.

It seems to me that those who want to go back to Jesus and who ignore Paul are really modern-day liberals who preach a gospel of love and grace while quietly ignoring the fact that grace is not a licence to sin. Paul was an observant Jew who had a supernatural encounter with the living Christ which changed his life from that moment on. He then became the apostle to the gentiles. That's you and me, unless you are a Jew. That's why we need to pay attention to his teachings. He had the background to understand the law and the prophets and he had the revelation of Christ as Messiah. He is also a wonderful example of perseverance in the face of persecution. The writer John Buchan understood this. In his book, Mr Standfast, one of the characters discourses on courage. 'It's easy to be brave if you're feeling well and have food inside you ... but the big courage is the cold-blooded kind, the kind that never lets go even when you're feeling empty inside, and your blood's thin, and there's no kind of fun or profit to be had, and the trouble's not over in an hour or two but lasts for months and years ... fortitude's the biggest thing a man can have - just to go on enduring when there's no guts or heart left in you ... the head man at the job (fortitude) was the Apostle Paul.' (Mr Standfast Chapter XI)

Now Paul is one of the great cloud of witnesses who surround us and I, for one, am glad of his example.

How to avoid being deceived

Deception has always threatened the church. Jesus warned about it. Paul wrote several of his letters to counter it, Peter and John had strong words to say about it. It is nothing new, however the scale of deception assaulting the church at the moment seems to be far more than at any other time in history, save the early days of the church when they did not have the Gospels and Epistles. That, together with other global events, indicates to me that we are in the last days. The main reason I decided to start writing this blog was to counter, in some small way, the deceptions I find creeping into the church in Scotland. I do not expect anyone to just accept what I say here as gospel - I expect them to go away and search the scriptures to see if what I say is true. I also expect them to do some background reading, which is why I provide links to other websites in many of my articles.

This blog is aimed at mature christians. If you are a new christian my advice to you would be to concentrate on reading the Bible. Read a decent translation, not a paraphrase like The Message or the Living Bible. Don't skip any of it, because you need to get the big picture. Go to a church where they preach from the Bible. Go to a good Bible study group if you can. Then, when you've read the Bible, you can use it to measure what I say. If you are a mature christian and you have not read all of the Bible, go away and read it all. You need to get the big picture. How can you use the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God if you haven't read it all?

I cannot hope to cover all the deceptions of the enemy in  this blog, however if you really know the Word of God, you will be able to recognise deception when you see it and that is vitally important. In the words of Jesus "Watch out that no-one deceives you." (Matthew 24:4 NIV)

Is the UK a Christian country?

According to a poll carried out by Ipsos-Mori for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, half of those in Britain who say they are Christian rarely go to church while nearly 60% do not read the Bible. Such statistics allow Dawkins to claim that Britain is not the Christian nation which some claim it to be, based on the fact that more than 50% of the population still identify themselves as 'Christian' when asked about their religion.

Frankly, I am really uneasy when anyone claims that this is still a Christian nation, because my experience says that it manifestly is not, and so I am not surprised at the result of this latest poll. Reading the Bible and going to church are not essential for salvation, which is through faith in Christ and not through good works, however they are a pretty good indicator as to whether someone is a genuine Christian or not. Dawkins therefore has a point when he claims that Christianity is not as prevalent as some would make out. However, the fact that a significant number of people in this country still tick 'Christian' as opposed to 'atheist' or 'none' when asked about their religion does mean something. They may not be born again, they may not be practising Christians, but they are still comfortable with being labelled as a Christian and the backlash currently under way against militant secularism is a reflection of this.

I do not believe that we should be imposing Christianity on the nation, as I said in my last post, however I do believe that Christians should be involved in public life and should encourage people to live by God's laws. It is an absolute fallacy to suggest that anyone, whatever their faith, can so compartmentalise their life as to leave their faith out of it when they go into their job, be it as a politician, councillor, doctor, teacher or whatever. Your religion or belief system is integral to your life, it influences all your opinions and decisions and secularists are not exempt from this rule. Christians should not be ashamed of their faith and should not be bullied into keeping it 'just for Sundays'. It applies to all the other days of the week too.

If there is one thing above all which the great British public hates, it is intolerance. Hopefully, the increasing aggressiveness of the secularists will be self-defeating in just the same way as attempts to impose Christian morals on the public have been.

Why what we believe matters

What we believe matters because it affects our actions.

• If we believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, we will not prepare ourselves for the tribulation.
• If we believe that Roman Catholicism is a Christian religion we will not evangelise Roman Catholics.
• If we believe that, as Christians, we cannot fall away, we will be complacent about deception and sin.
• If we believe in the power of positive thinking we will end up trying to pray a 2 deg rise in temperature from below freezing to above freezing. (I am not kidding - I have seen this being tried! It didn't work.)
• If we believe that the Bible is not absolute but has to be interpreted in the light of modern day thinking, we will accept homosexual marriage and female ministers.
• If we believe that we have to conquer the world as Christians before Christ returns then we will become militant and will try to impose Christianity on others rather than winning them to Christ.
• If we believe that we need to overcome the principalities and powers over a geographical area before we can evangelise, we will spend more time in so-called strategic spiritual warfare than we do in witnessing to the unsaved.

There are so many subtle deceptions coming into the church in these last days. The only way to avoid them is to know the Word. When tempted, Jesus answered Satan with 'it is written' - we should do the same. We need to be so familiar with the Bible - old and new testaments - that we can recognise a false teaching when we hear or see one. We need to check that what we believe is actually the truth because it is not only a matter of life and death - it is a matter of eternal salvation or eternal damnation.

'Take heed that ye be not deceived' Luke 21:8 KJV

Rightly handling the Word

I don't think any Christian would disagree that Bible study is important, both individual and in a group, however I am coming to see that the way in which we study the Bible is also important, particularly given the recent rise in alternative methods such as Lectio Divina. I am not going to comment on that particular method here, but would encourage anyone who is interested to follow this link. Instead I want to concentrate on an increasingly common way of doing Bible study, particularly in groups, where those involved are encouraged not just to read the passage and understand it but to try and think their way into the emotions of the characters, including the writer of the passage. It is meant to be a way of making the scriptures come alive, and it can be quite successful in doing that, however it can also be fraught with dangers, the main one being that we read our own emotions into the story.

Feelings are not ignored in the Bible - one only has to read the Psalms to see that - however many of the stories in the Bible tell of what people did, rather than what they felt. The type of study mentioned above seeks to fill in this gap, however I can't help but wonder if we are really meant to do that. If God wanted us to know how individuals felt, would he not have said so? When we read emotions into a passage primarily concerned with actions, are we not adding to scripture? In Jeremiah 17:9 we read that 'The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.' however in the next verse we find that 'I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.' (NIV - emphasis mine.) So our emotions (which come from the heart) are not to be trusted but God rewards us according to what we do, rather than feel, which is a relief, to me anyway.

It seems to me that the rise in popularity of this kind of Bible study is linked to the general rise of Romanticism in the church - the elevation of imagination to the status of revelation, the elevation of experience over obedience, the elevation of emotion over action. Christianity ultimately is a decision, not a feeling. It is not of works but true faith manifests itself in works i.e. actions. Perhaps that is why so many Bible stories are about actions, not feelings.

Did God really say?

A friend recently attended the ladies Bible study of a conservative, evangelical church for the first time and probably the last. Not that she had any problem with the study, which was looking at the life of one of the disciples. It was the conversation on homosexuality which took place after someone mentioned the case of the christian couple who are no longer allowed to foster because of their christian beliefs. She was horrified to hear how far Satan's deception had penetrated into even this once-conservative denomination. Statements such as 'God made people to be gay' and 'gay people are born that way' were made as if they were fact.

Let me just digress a moment to remind you what the actual facts are viz

1. there is no scientific evidence that anyone is born gay
2. there is no biblical evidence to support the view that God creates some people homosexuals
3. there is no evidence that sexual orientation is fixed from birth
4. there is evidence that people can and do change their sexual orientation – eg the book Setting Love in Order by Mario Bergner

Back to the Bible study, although, by this stage, calling it that sounds like it could be a breach of the Trade Descriptions Act since very little reference to the Bible was being made in the conversation. Instead, a lot of man-made wisdom was being touted as if it were gospel. The bottom line seemed to be that God couldn't be very loving if he made people homosexual and then denied them the chance to marry someone of their own sex. Put like that, the argument that gay is OK sounds very reasonable and those who took a biblical stand, my friend included, were left feeling that they were being unreasonable and unkind.

However the real bottom line is this – did God really say? (Gen 3:1) Just as Satan deceived Eve by getting her to question what God had said, and the motivation behind it, so he has deceived the poor women in that Bible study. Instead of believing God's word they have believed the lies of man and have elevated their own feelings and opinions above the Word of God. They have quite literally exchanged the truth for a lie (Rom 1:25). Either you believe the Bible or you don't. There is no middle ground. That is the battle in these last days and it is being carried into even formerly conservative evangelical churches by those who call themselves christians but who are not. There is only one way to answer such attacks – 'it is written' (Matt 4:4).