Some Musings

I haven't posted on this blog for a number of weeks now. I fear I must confess with Martha - I have been cumbered about with many things and have forsaken the better way, sitting at the feet of Jesus. However, I'm sitting here at the kitchen table this morning drinking a cup of coffee so my wife could have a break from sitting with her mom who can no longer be left alone and I am able to actually think a little bit. I was musing about several suggestions from a number of my friends lately that I have become to "negative" and need to become more positive and uplifiting. I thought about that - a lot - because I have always been a positive person and I resent the thought of becoming negative. However, when the watchman sitting on the wall blows the sound of the trumpet in the night watch and shouts so as to awaken everyone in the city - it is rarely with a positive announcement. He is always bringing news that is negative. "The enemy approaches! Get up! Wake up! To arms, to arms!" Recently, I've felt like that watchman as I see what is developing in the Body of Christ that are disturbing and everybody wants a "positive" message. I fear that once again, I disappoint by not being as positive as some might like me to be.

The Holy Scriptures were inspired by God, supervised by the Holy Spirit, and centrally focused on the second Person of the God-Head, the Son. They are complete - in that there aren't going to be any more books written to be added to the Bible. The reason for this is so that man might have a fixed standard by which to judge what is and what is not of God. Every existential experience that occurs in the life of a man or woman must be judged by the established scriptural record. The proclamations of your current most favored prophet do not rise to the level of scripture and is not evaluated with the same honor as the logos - the written Word.

I personally believe that what we have today (prophetically) is not new "revelation," but rather illumination of the written revelation. Whatever it is that man needs to know about God, about himself, and about the universe (seen and unseen) is contained within the 66 books of the Bible. The Canon (measure) of Scritpure was established by God at the door of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness as Aaron's rod bloomed and budded and all scripture since that day has been measured by the Torah. Even the theology of grace must be measured by the established "law".

The proliferation of prophetic "revelation" in our generation screams for established Canon to be raised in defense of authentic spiritual life. Many so called spiritual oracles are "exceeding what is written" at such an alarming rate that there is danger that many (and I think many already have come to this place) will no longer find any value in God's written Word, but will feel that they have now gone beyond the Word into a higher spiritual plane. I am an avid "face booker" and I communicate with a lot of wonderful people who write on a variety of spiritual subjects. I am also subjected to countless individuals who are spewing out all sorts of "new revelation" with no scriptural basis, no biblical precedent, no authority from the apostles - leading gullible men and women, hungry for some new existentialist faith lumbering down a slippery path from which many may never return.

Much to the disappointment of many of my friends, all of this has left me somewhat skeptical of a lot of the "movements" that are springing up all over the place - each one claiming to be the next big revival or the great new wave. Some of my pentecostal friends have accused me of abandoning my pentecostal roots. I say to them, I have not abandoned my pentecostal roots, I have rather abandoned what pentecostalism has become. You can now "toke on the Holy Spirit", have spiritual orgasms with Jesus as He makes love to His bride, receive divine guidance from your own personal "prosperity" angel - all without fear of questioning as to the legitimacy of your experience or any suggestion that your experience may be outside of the markers of the Canon. Anyone who does question these things is immediately branded as judgmental or quenching the Spirit.

What bothers me in all of this is that there is rarely a mention of the things that Jesus was concerned about. Any cry for holiness is immediately branded as "works based faith." Any suggestion that our relationship to Jesus ought to affect the way we speak or the way we dress, change our sexual behaviors, or in any way affect our outward behavior is seen as legalism and a frustration of the grace of God. Just this week yet another well known religious leader has been exposed in immorality, again. Is it any wonder that those following live such wretched lives, immoral and unrepentant. It is because that's how those they follow live their own lives. The pentecostals of the past embraced holiness and repentance from sin just as tightly as they did tongues and prophecy. The new pentecostalism can scarcely be bothered with such things.

Jesus said, "Take no thought for tomorrow, what you will eat or drink or wear. Your Heavenly Father knows you have need of these things. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you." That's what Jesus said and yet the airways are filled to saturation with the prosperity guru's telling men how that true Christians will be rich and filled with many things - a direct aberration of the teaching of Jesus and their coffers are full of widows' mites and no one dare challenge them. The Lordship of Jesus is presented as an option, rather than a requirement for salvation - even though the Scriptures clearly demand that we profess His Lordship.

I believe we are almost there. Entering into an age in which only that which is truly of God will endure and only that which is confirmed in the Holy Scriptures will bear us up in the tidal wave of evil spewed out upon the earth by the spirit of anti-Christ that is being released. All the stuff the prosperity preachers have amassed will become worthless and the endless prophecies about the "good times" that are ahead will be beaten to the ground by the awful reality of the end of the age. David said regarding the Word of God - "I will make it a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. I will hide God's Word in my heart that I might not sin against Him."

I know there are those who prophecy a great last days revival that will fill all the churches to overflowing with people begging to become a Christian. I prophecy a great falling away - an apostasy of epic porportions such as has never been seen because men have been taught to despise the things that are truly of God and to embrace the things of the spirit of anti-Christ. Jesus said, "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction and many pass thereon, but narrow is the way that leadeth to righteousness and there will be few who will pass that way." Our generation is not "hungering and thirsting for righteousness", rather we are lusting for stuff - need to "feel" something. The just shall walk FAITH and not by SIGHT. Neither shall the just walk by FEELING. Our generation judges almost every spiritual experience by how it FEELS. How will we survive when we can't FEEL ANYTHING, and are required to walk totally faith. Faith in what? Feelings? Experiences? No, we must walk by faith in what God has said in His unchangeable Word; with no regard for how it feels, with no concern about whether or not I get a spiritual high from it. There is coming a day when we will need to learn to grind it out; without feelings, without emotionalism, without any external signs at all - the just walking by faith. Are you up to it?