Recovered In Christ

YOUR ADVERSITY IS A MARK OF CHRIST 

By Isaac Mwangi 

Galatians 6:17 “From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.”

Paul had wounds inflicted by his enemies in an attempt to stop him from preaching the gospel. Christ suffered, too, and called on every disciple to pick up their cross and follow Him.

It is common to hear people being exhorted to accept the gospel and experience miracles – and by this is meant material prosperity. All your troubles, you are told, will fly away if you simply join our denomination. Or plant a seed. Or do any of a thousand deceptions.

But the cross is about suffering and death, not personal glorification. Elijah fled into the wilderness to hide from Jezebel. Jeremiah was thrown into a pit and into prison. John the Baptist was forced to feed on insects and later beheaded. And Stephen was stoned to death. We do not follow Christ for material riches, although He is able to give us wealth as well. As surely as night follows day, an uncompromising faith will attract severe demonic persecution. When you lose your job for reasons you cannot understand, or are in danger of losing your only house, or find that even your very life is at stake, take heart and know that this is the cost of discipleship. You are following in the footsteps of a long chain of Christians who have taken the narrow road and entered through the small gate. Rejoice and be glad.

Today’s writer is a Kenyan journalist and author of Poisoned Well of Tradition.

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J. C. Ryle on the Acceptance of False Teachers

“Many things combine to make the present inroad of false doctrine peculiarly dangerous.

1. There is an undeniable zeal in some of the teachers of error: their “earnestness” makes many think they must be right.

2. There is a great appearance of learning and theological knowledge: many fancy that such clever and intellectual men must surely be safe guides.

3. There is a general tendency to free thought and free inquiry in these latter days: many like to prove their independence of judgment, by believing novelties.

4. There is a wide-spread desire to appear charitable and liberal-minded: many seem half ashamed of saying that anybody can be in the wrong.

5. There is a quantity of half-truth taught by the modern false teachers: they are incessantly using Scriptural terms and phrases in an unscriptural sense.

6. There is a morbid craving in the public mind for a more sensuous, ceremonial, sensational, showy worship: men are impatient of inward, invisible heart-work.

7. There is a silly readiness in every direction to believe everybody who talks cleverly, lovingly and earnestly, and a determination to forget that Satan often masquerades himself “as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

8. There is a wide-spread “gullibility” among professing Christians: every heretic who tells his story plausibly is sure to be believed, and everybody who doubts him is called a persecutor and a narrow-minded man.

All these things are peculiar symptoms of our times. I defy any observing person to deny them. They tend to make the assaults of false doctrine in our day peculiarly dangerous. They make it more than ever needful to cry aloud, “Do not be carried away!””

~ J.C. Ryle (1816-1900)

 

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“We cannot therefore, at this time, over-estimate the importance of believers having open minds to “examine all things” they have thought, and taught, in  connection with the things of God, and the spiritual realm. All the “truths” they have held; all the phrases and expressions they have used in “holiness  teachings”; and all the “teachings” they have  absorbed through others. For any  wrong interpretation of truth, any theories and phrases which are man – conceived, and which we may build upon wrongly, will have perilous consequences to ourselves, and to others, in the  conflict which the Church, and the individual believer, is now passing  through. Since in the “later times” evil spirits  will come to them with deceptions in doctrinal form, believers must examine carefully what they accept as “doctrine,” lest it should be from the emissaries of the deceiver.”

The Peril Of The Time Of The Baptism Of The Spirit

It is just here that the ignorance of the believer about (1) the spiritual  world now opened to him, (2) the workings of evil powers in that realm, and (3)  the conditions upon which God works in and through him, gives the enemy his  opportunity. It is the time of greatest peril for every believer, unless he is  instructed and prepared, as the disciples  were for three whole years by the Lord. The danger lies along the line of supernatural “guidance,” through not  knowing  the condition of co-operation with the Holy Spirit, and how to discern  the will of God; and counterfeit manifestations,  through not knowing the  “discerning of spirits” necessary to detect the workings of the false angel of  light, who is  able to bring about counterfeit gifts of prophesy, tongues,    healings, and other spiritual experiences, connected with the work of the Holy  Ghost.

Those who have their eyes opened to the opposing forces of the spiritual  realm, understand that very few believers can  guarantee   that they are obeying God, and God only, in direct supernatural guidance, because there  are so many factors liable to intervene, such as the believer’s own mind, own spirit, own will, and the deceptive intrusion of  the powers of darkness.

Since evil spirits can counterfeit God as Father, Son, or Holy  Spirit, the believer needs also to know very  clearly the principles upon which  God works, so as to detect between the Divine and the Satanic workings. There is  a “discernment” which is a spiritual gift, enabling the believer to discern  “spirits,” but this also requires  knowledge of “doctrine” (1 John 4: 1),  so as to discern between doctrine which is of God, and doctrines, or teachings, of teaching spirits.

There is a detecting, by the gift of discerning of spirits, which  spirit is at work; and a test of spirits, which is doctrinal. In the  former a believer can tell by a spirit of discernment, that the lying  spirits  are  at work in a meeting, or in a person, but he may not have the understanding needed for testing the “doctrines” set forth by a teacher.  He needs knowledge in both cases; knowledge to read his spirit with assurance in  the face of all  contrary appearances, that the supernatural workings are “of  God”; and knowledge to detect the subtlety of “teachings”  bearing certain infallible indications that they emanate from the pit, while appearing to be  from God.

In personal obedience to God, the believer can detect whether he is obeying God in some “command,” by judging its  fruits,  and by knowledge of the  character of God, such as the truth that (1) God has always a purpose in His  commands,  and (2) He will give no command out of harmony with His character and  Word. Other factors needed for clear knowledge are  dealt with later on.” – Jessie Penn Lewis; War On The Saints

Below are 2 great articles that were given to me regarding the “Alpha” course and the demonic deception sweeping the church through “The Toronto Blessing”.

The Alpha Course is a course that has been used by many as a way to attempt to introduce the false doctrines and practices of the Third Wave into mainstream denominations.

I was dumbfounded when I found out some of the people who endorse this course.  Among them were the Salvation Army and, most notably, Luis Palau.  Here is his endorsement that is featured on the Alpha Course web page:

“Alpha seems especially blessed in that the Lord is using it to reach all sorts of people in all sorts of spiritual condition.”

The Alpha Course, though teaching some truth, also lays truth alongside error.  The wooing of people using the gospel message, only to later enslave them in ritualism, works salvation, and occult manifestations is one of the great deceptions of our time.  One of the cleverest ploys of the enemy in our day is to allow “unprincipled” men to use the salvation message as an enticement to unsuspecting and untrained people, while they secretly introduce false doctrine, thereby giving “the devil a foothold” for fleshly manifestations and temptations in their lives.  The men who designed this course are laying error alongside truth, introducing error secretly (“pareisaxousinin” in Greek) the result of which will ruin the faith of the believer in the end.  The Bible says of this process:

“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.” (2 Pet. 2:1)

Beware of the Alpha Course!

Perhaps the preachers and evangelists who have endorsed this course need to take a longer look at their Bibles. Jesus NEVER laid hands on his disciples, the result of which were “manifestations” of uncontrollable laughter, mayhem, shaking, animal noises, vomiting, or any of the other demonic disorder of the Toronto and Brownsville “things”.  Luis Palau, of all people, had better wake up to this deception that is sweeping the churches of Europe and is now being used around the world.

The Alpha Course

 – by Chris Hand

Many people have been greatly impressed by the Alpha course. Designed to be an introduction to the Christian faith through talks, video presentations, small-group discussions and a special weekend-away, lots of churches are now employing it as part of their outreach.

In the eyes of many it has been a run-away-success and its fame has spread far beyond the UK, and Holy Trinity Brompton, the London church where it originated.

It is no exaggeration to say it has spread right across the world and is now finding friends in several continents. It has been adapted so as to be accessible to young people and has also proved versatile enough to be used in prisons, schools and places of work.

Churches in inner cities and rural areas have found it sufficiently flexible for their needs. Future plans for expansion suggest that Alpha is very much here to stay. What is more, many people claim to have been helped through going on the Alpha course and believe it has brought them an understanding of God and how to respond to Him. Testimonies and accounts of wonderful things that have happened to individuals abound; In the light of all this, surely there cannot be anything wrong with it?

With so many in today’s society gripped by materialism and atheism, can Alpha be anything other than a good thing? As young people become hopelessly enmeshed in a godless culture, should we not applaud the efforts of Alpha and help make it a success?

We wished that the answers to these questions could be an emphatic Yes. But closer examination of Alpha prevents such a clean bill of health being given to it. Why this concern? There are six vital reasons we would like to bring to your attention.

1. The God of Alpha is not the God of the Bible.

Alpha quotes from the Bible a lot. It cannot be faulted on that. But for all this it does not present us with the God who has revealed Himself in the Bible. There is much we could say about the God of the Scriptures. He is the Creator of the universe and the one who upholds it and maintains it. He is a great King and Sovereign over all He has made. We are challenged to ponder:

” To whom then will you liken me. Or to whom shall I be equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, Who brings out their host by number; He calls them all by name, By the greatness of his might and the strength of his power; Not one is missing.” (Isaiah 40:25-26)

He is high and holy. He dwells in heaven and is all-glorious. Nothing impure can live in His presence. For those that fall short of His glory and perfection, there is judgment that follows (Romans 6:23)

Now of course much more could be said. But you will have to search hard and long in Alpha to find a God that resembles the One just described. Nothing about Him as Creator, nothing about Him as a great King. He is assumed rather than described. The Bible tells us “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). But we would not be any wiser of this from going on the Alpha Course. It simply fails to tell us anything we need to know about God.

2. The plight of man in Alpha is not as serious as in the Bible.

Man’s state until he is reconciled to God is not a happy one. Psalm 7:11 tells us God is a just judge, And – “God is angry with the wicked every day”. The gospel of John makes this abundantly plain: He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. (John 3:36) Man without God is subject to the wrath of God. We are not slightly displeasing to Him. It is not that we have occasional faults and foibles that surface. It is what we are by nature.

The apostle Paul explains that we are “by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). This is very strong language and leaves us in no doubt. We have offended against God and broken His holy law. We are sinners in His sight and deserve condemnation. It is as straightforward as that.

By contrast, Alpha does not use strong terms and leaves us rather unclear about where we stand. As one follows its argument, sin is more to be seen in the way we have messed up our lives (Gumbel 1994: 44,47). It is an inward-looking description of man’s state that majors on his feelings of fearfulness (Gumbel 1994:22). It is a picture of man predominated by his feelings of sadness and unhappiness (Gumbel 1994:12-22). sup1/sup.

Now of course these things are all true. This is what life is like for sinners. It is a miserable life for them. Yet this is to major on the consequences of sin rather than sin itself. These are the miseries that follow inevitably because we are sinners. The problem, however, is more serious than simply sin’s consequences. Alpha fails to tell us that ultimately we have offended God and courted His displeasure. We have sinned against God and are justly under His judgment. We are people “…having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). For all the gravity of sin, Alpha never allows us to feel too bad about ourselves. It never permits us to see ourselves in God’s sight. That is a big omission.

3. The Jesus Christ of Alpha is not the Jesus Christ of the Bible.

This may surprise us. Alpha appears to have quite a lot to say about the Lord Jesus. It tells us what He did, what He said, the claims He made about Himself and establishes beyond doubt that the resurrection actually took place.

But despite having part of the course entitled ‘Why did Jesus die?’, it is unable in the final analysis to answer this question. This is a core issue.

Christ died because God’s holy justice required it. Our lives were forfeit. We had sinned and were helpless. Christ had to die in the place of sinners who truly deserved to bear the penalty for their sin. Christ’s death propitiated or appeased the wrath of God (Romans 3:25,1 John 2:2). Alpha has not described God to us and therefore has no meaningful place for God’s wrath. Christ’s death ends up having to satisfy some abstract principle of justice that has somehow become detached from God Himself.

Alpha’s own illustrations and attempts to explain get us no closer to the heart of the matter (Gumbel 1994:19-20;47-48). Christ’s death upon the cross becomes an act of love but without any real connection with the reality of judgment and God’s wrath. All we are left with is the impression that Christ has sacrificed Himself to rescue us from the consequences of sin because that was required by some impersonal and rather arbitrary justice system. It is all rather mysterious. This is not the Christ of Scripture.

4. The love of God in Alpha is not the love of the God of the Bible.

The Bible is clear that ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8). Alpha tells us this too. There is a difference, however. In Alpha God is love and little else. There is not much else that He can be as the course has missed all the aspects of His great character that refer to His holiness and glory. We are left with love.

The God of the Bible is love but it is love that is seen in His willingness to save sinners. We are told, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

Why did the Lord come? To save sinners. What moved God to do this? His love. This is what makes His love so special and wonderful. It is that such a holy and glorious God should save sinners. This is clear from Romans 5:8 as well, But God demonstrates his own love towards us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God’s love is evident in that He acted to save sinners. Here we see the glory of Christ’s love. But without the context of God’s holiness and absolute perfection, the meaning of that love is lost to us. Instead God merely becomes an emotional being of unconditional love divorced from any true understanding of His true nature and being. Alpha’s God will give us an emotional high and make us feel special. The God of the Bible will give us eternal life. There is a big difference between the two.

5. The Holy Spirit of Alpha is not the Holy Spirit of the Bible.

There is more space in Alpha devoted to the Holy Spirit than to the Lord Jesus. This is surprising given what Scripture says about the Holy Spirit (John 16:13-14). Why does Alpha do this? It is because Alpha’s ‘Holy Spirit’ is the agent for giving to people an ‘experience’ that is going to make God real to them.

The main focus for this is the ‘Holy Spirit Weekend-Away’. People doing Alpha are told to expect all manner of things might happen to them. We are told, Sometimes, when people are filled, they shake like a leaf in the wind. Others find themselves breathing deeply as if almost physically breathing in the Spirit. (Gumbel 1994:136). It is not restricted to this, however.

Physical heat sometimes accompanies the filling of the Spirit and people experience it in their hands or some other part of their bodies. One person described a feeling of ‘glowing all over’. Another said she experienced ‘liquid heat’. Still another described ‘burning in my arms when I was not hot’. (Gumbel 1994:136)

This is all very interesting but it has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit as known through the pages of Scripture. Nowhere are any phenomena such as these attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit. Alpha’s ‘Spirit’ appears to work in ways that lie outside the confines of Scripture. Whoever it is that people are ‘introduced’ to at the Alpha Weekend, it is not the Holy Spirit. But whoever the mysterious guest is, he is equally at home among the ecstatic gatherings of New Age enthusiasts and non-Christian religions alike.

6. Conversions in Alpha are not like conversions in the Bible.

On the Day of Pentecost, Peter’s hearers were ‘…cut to the heart…'(Acts 2:37). The Philippian jailer asked urgently ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ (Acts 16:30). They understood that they were sinners. They realized that they needed mercy. It was clear to them as it was to the believers in Thessalonica that the gospel was ‘…in truth, the word of God…’ (1 Thessalonians 2:13).

Conversions in Alpha come differently from this. More often than not it is an emotional experience about the love of God but without any understanding of holiness or the need to be saved from our sins. There is no recognition of the need to repent and to turn to God as a matter of life and death. People feel forgiven but do not seem to have realized the depth of their sinfulness or repented of their sin. People feel cleansed without having consciously put their faith in Christ. Often this happens when people are in some ecstatic state. Alpha may regard this as conversion but it is not what we find in the Bible.

For all its efforts, Alpha does not help us to know God. It does not describe the true and living God for us. It does not diagnose man’s condition accurately enough. It is unable to adequately account for Christ’s death and substitutes an unbiblical view of God’s love and God’s Holy Spirit in its place. To cap it all, the whole issue of conversion is grievously misunderstood. By sparing us the ‘bad news’ about ourselves, it is unable to supply us with the ‘good news’.

The needs of our souls for biblical and life-saving truth are far too precious and important to be brought down to this level. It needs the unvarnished truth of the Scriptures. We may merely succeed in adding people to our churches who have never been converted. That will be no help to them and no help to our churches either.

To leave someone believing they are converted when they are not is an awful prospect. Yet that is what we are risking using defective tools such as Alpha, ‘having a form of godliness but denying its power’ (2 Timothy 3:5). We must do better. Failure is too high a price to pay.

 

Everyone is asking “What about Alpha?” What is it, and what are we to believe about it?

– by Tricia Tillin

The Alpha course is an evangelistic initiative begun by Holy Trinity Brompton – perhaps better known now for its promotion of the Toronto Blessing.

The official history of the Alpha Course begins 16 years ago when a member of HTB, Charles Marnham, set up an informal home group to present answers to basic gospel questions. However, HTB curate, Nicky Gumbel, transformed the course into what we see today. [see endnote] It is designed to appeal to non-believers, with every detail – the food, flowers, hospitality and questions – aimed at disarming the unchurched.

The final weekend away is a vital part of the course – and this has attracted the most criticism, as it gives a chance for the leaders, if they are so disposed, to present the Holy Spirit in an experimental fashion to a captive audience. The course always ends with a Supper laid on to which more non-believers are invited, and so the process continues.

Whatever else can be said about the Alpha Course, it has been a runaway success. In 1991 there were just four courses involving 600 people; in 1993 there were fewer than 10 courses being held in Britain. Now there are an estimated 3,000 being run regularly three times a year, more than 500 of them overseas. These are being run by every denomination, including Catholic.

One difficulty in pinning down the problems with the Alpha Course is that each church running the course will use the materials in a different way. Thus it is feasible, in theory at least, that a church might avoid all controversy and simply use the course to preach the gospel to unbelievers. This does leave unanswered the question – why does any church need to buy a course to be able to preach the gospel?

However, there are deep concerns. Below I present some thoughts on the Alpha Course by a Christian (i) who grew alarmed when viewing the course materials. It is a personal view but I believe it speaks for many.

Alpha certainly starts by preaching the gospel; the first three talks on Video One focus on the person and work of Jesus Christ, and the three talks on video Two which cover fundamental steps for new Christians, such as ‘How can I be sure of my faith?’, ‘Why and how should I read the Bible?’ and ‘Why and how should I pray?’ are all good. But as the course progresses, some of the talks tend to wander off into lengthy accounts of HTB’s experiences of the Toronto Blessing and associated ministries, novel exegeses of various Biblical passages common amongst pro-Toronto preachers, calls for unity despite truth and an over-emphasis on the Holy Spirit, all of which are less than helpful, to say the least, to potential Christians.

Clearly the aim is to bring as many into God’s Kingdom as possible but by the end of the course I cannot help feeling that the Toronto Blessing may have been the greater beneficiary.

The Alpha course was virtually unknown until Eleanor Mumford of the South-West London Vineyard church brought the Toronto Blessing from the Toronto Airport Vineyard church in Canada to HTB, via Nicky Gumbel in May 1994, (ii) and Nicky Gumbel spends a substantial amount of time relating to Alpha participants in video 3 talk 9, exactly how it occurred:

“Ellie Mumford told us a little bit of what she had seen in Toronto… .it was obvious that Ellie was just dying to pray for all of us.. then she said ‘Now we’ll invite the Holy Spirit to come.’ and the moment she said that one of the people there was thrown, literally, across the room and was lying on the floor, just howling and laughing….making the most incredible noise….I experienced the power of the Spirit in a way I hadn’t experienced for years, like massive electricity going through my body… One of the guys was prophesying. He was just lying there prophesying. . .”

Gumbel’s description of the antics that went on in the vestry of HTB after their invocation of the Spirit seems to me to bear no resemblance at all to what happened on the day of Pentecost. (iii)

Yet Alpha participants are being taught all this as part of an evangelistic/Christian Living course as though it is normal and desirable, with absolutely no mention made of the need to test the spirits (1 John 4:3), and at the end of this talk are prayed for, corporately, to receive it. Thus, they are initiated into the Toronto Blessing without a whimper of protest amongst them.

“I believe it is no coincidence that the present movement of the Holy Spirit [TB] has come at the same time as the explosion of the Alpha Courses. I think the two go together.” [Nicky Gumbel, ‘The Spirit and Evangelism’, Renewal, May 1995, p15].

So one of my concerns is whether the TB, which is being experienced at HTB, can possibly be divorced from the Alpha Initiative. In view of the similarities of emphasis and content between the two, I’m not sure that it can. Alpha also promotes, as does the leadership of the TB, ‘unity’ between Protestants and Roman Catholics, with no consideration, or perhaps realisation, of the unreconcileable doctrines of the two Churches, and so another concern is its trend towards ecumenism.

POWER EVANGELISM

Heavily influenced by the ‘Signs and Wonders’ ministry of John Wimber in the 1980s, power evangelism has been one of the preparation grounds for the Toronto Experience. It focuses on a pragmatic/experiential rather than a proclamatory/doctrinal approach to spreading the gospel. As such it tends to shift the focus away from the shed blood of Jesus on the cross and onto the supernatural works of the Holy Spirit carried out by men. This is the method of evangelism favoured by Alpha. [Telling Others pp21-24;29-31].

ALPHA AND THE NEW AGE

All of this heightened interest amongst Charismatic Christians in ‘Signs and Wonders’ and the supernatural experiences of the Toronto Blessing is a reflection of spiritual and cultural changes going on outside Christianity, in which New Age experiential mysticism predominates.

Nicky Gumbel is aware of this paradigm shift from reason to experience: “In the Enlightenment reason ruled supreme and explanation led to experience. In the present transitional culture, with its ‘pick-and-mix’ worldview in which the New Age movement is a potent strand, experiences lead to explanation”. [Nicky Gumbel, Telling Others, p19].

Post-Christian neo-mysticism is already so pervasive that virtually every non-christian participant of Alpha – or any other evangelistic initiative – will reflect to some degree New Age thinking. In New Age philosophy “experiences lead to explanation” yet, like the Toronto Experience, the thrust of Alpha is towards the experiential, not the written Word. One pastor who has made use of the Alpha course writes: “One of the problems of proclaiming the gospel in a post-modern world is that culture itself warms much more readily to lifestyle than to doctrine. But the Christian lifestyle is not Christian faith… .I am sure that many people are being converted through the Alpha course, but I have a suspicion that some of those people are being converted to a Christian lifestyle rather than to Christ.”. [Ian Lewis, ‘The Alpha Course’, Evangelicals Now, Dec 1995].

The two testimonies given by Alpha participants at the beginning of the first Alpha video are prime examples of this. There are certain basic elements one would expect to hear in a classic conversion testimony: the conviction of sin leading to repentance and subsequent assurance of God’s forgiveness and salvation through the death on the cross of Jesus Christ. But these are not there in any form in these two testimonies.

A relationship with God is referred to, as is the experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, prayer, an interest in Bible reading, church-going, Christianity and what Alpha has done for them. But Jesus and what He has done for them and a relationship with Him is not mentioned at all. Yet the Lord Jesus is the gospel, He is salvation, He is their new life so how can He possibly be so completely overlooked in a basic conversion testimony?

Adherents of false religions claim a relationship with God, and a prayer life, but they are not saved. Many church goers read their Bibles and have an interest in church and in Christianity, but they are not saved.

Likewise, more compassion/understanding at work, more patience, tolerance, confidence and deep feelings of contentment can equally well be produced by a sense of psychological well-being. Without the cross they do not constitute salvation. The attempt by Nicky Gumbel to bring Jesus into the testimonies by asking exactly what had made these differences, was met with a blank look and the response: “Just the relationship that I’ve developed with God. Simple as that.”

These testimonies seemed to me to be, as Ian Lewis suggests, only evidence of conversion to a Christian lifestyle, not to Christ. And when the “Christian lifestyle” is an endless round of blessings’, supernatural ‘experiences’, spiritual ‘parties’ [see video talk 14] and ‘play’-times (iv), then the transition from the counterfeit spirituality of the New Age to Christianity is really only one of degree, not kind. In which case I would echo the question of one evangelical minister who asked: “What is it they are converted to?”

EVANGELISM OR CHRISTIAN LIVING?

“Scripture tells us that salvation comes through hearing the gospel, and I would expect any course aimed at non-christians to concentrate primarily on the facts of the gospel. The Alpha course deals with the basics of the gospel in two sessions… While these are unequivocal gospel presentations, the remainder of the course deals essentially with what may be described as Christian living… When we used an adapted version of the course in our church, non-christians were left behind by about the sixth week. They still had very fundamental questions about what Christians believe, which were not answered by talking about how Christians live and for this reason the course seemed more suited to people who have already made a commitment to Christ.” [Ian Lewis, Evangelicals Now, Dec 1995].

THE HOLY SPIRIT WEEKEND

White Alpha training manual pp26-36/Video III talks 7-9 “We live in the age of the Spirit.” [p29].

Christians have always referred to the period of time between the first and second advents as the age of Grace, or the Church age. That has not changed. Why encourage now, in such a precarious spiritual climate, the New Age concept of the Age of Aquarius (the spirit)?

Continuing his observations on the New Age Nicky Gumbel writes: “I have found on Alpha that those from an essentially enlightened background feel at home with the parts of the course which appeal to the mind, but often have difficulty in experiencing the Holy Spirit. Others coming from the New Age movement find that rational and historical explanations leave them cold, but at the weekend away they are on more familiar territory in experiencing the Holy Spirit.” [Telling Others, p19].

But it is the “rational and historical explanations” of sessions l and 2 which are the essence of the gospel (Acts 2:22-41; 6:9-7:60; 8:26-38; 17:16-33) and which the unbeliever must grasp and accept with his mind, under the convicting and illuminating power of the Holy Spirit, if he is to repent and experience salvation in his heart (Romans 10:13,14). Nevertheless: “At the end of the course I send out questionnaires… if there is a change I ask when that change occurred. For many the decisive moment is the Saturday evening of the weekend.” [Telling Others, p120]. This is the time when Nicky Gumbel invites the Holy Spirit to come and participants are filled with the Spirit. [Telling Others, pp117,120,123; Blue Alpha training manual p18]

I find this extremely worrying. The “decisive moment” should surely be the point at which a person steps over from eternal death to eternal life through the conversion experience (John 3:16; 5:24; Romans 10:9,10,13 and other refs). But most of the testimonies in ‘Telling Others’ seem to confuse the experience of conversion with the experience of baptism in the Holy Spirit.

But is this surprising when Nicky Gumbel himself seems to treat conversion as a preliminary to the main event? The breath of new life into a repentant sinner is taught in talk 7, but Nicky Gumbel does not make it clear that this happens at conversion (2 Cor 5:17). Rather, he suggests this is due to a second experience: the baptism in the Spirit.

The following testimony is an alarming example of the confusion between conversion and baptism in the Holy Spirit, but it is by no means the only one:

“….my wife encouraged me to read an article in a magazine about the Alpha course at HTB. What had stuck in my mind was how the work of the Holy Spirit was described as of paramount importance. I knew in my heart I had to have his power in my life at any cost. So I… enrolled on the course and focused on the weekend where the work of the Holy Spirit is discussed… .Never mind the weeks of pre-med, I just had to get into the operating theatre… .I looked at the order of play, saw that the third session on ‘How can I be filled with the Spirit (which I identified as the main one) was at 4:30pm and simply hung on like a marathon runner weaving his way up the finishing straight with nothing but the finishing tape as the focus of his attention… .the prize was so near but we were getting there so slowly. I literally wanted to scream out ‘Do it now! Do it now! I can’t hold out any longer’ I’m not exaggerating when I say I was in agony Then Nicky Gumbel invited the Spirit to come and oh, the relief.” [Interview in Renewal, Oct 1995, p16; Telling Others pp36-37].

Though the prayer at the end of these talks includes repentance, the gospel talks are not at this point uppermost in participants minds, and the corporate request “inviting the Holy Spirit to come and fill us” is then made by all in the room.

HOW CAN I RESIST EVIL?

Session 9 White Alpha training manual pp39-45/Video IV Talk 10.

In section II of this session Satan’s tactics are listed: destroys; blinds eyes; causes doubt; tempts; accuses. All of these Gumbel applies to the area of Christian behaviour. Deception, the tactic focusing on belief, is omitted. This oversight can be deadly. Deception concerning doctrine is Satan’s most powerful weapon against the Church and new Christians need to be made aware just how practised Satan is at deceiving Christians through false doctrines and false spiritual experiences. (v)

Gumbel points out in this talk that occult activity “always comes under the guise of something good”. The Toronto Blessing is seen as “something good”. How strange then that neither he nor anyone else at HTB thought to test the Toronto spirit before accepting it and then passing it on to everyone else. (vi)

HOW DOES GOD GUIDE US?

Session 10 White Alpha training manual pp46-51/Video IV Talk 11

The “Guiding Spirit” and “more unusual ways” of guidance referred to in this talk, especially guidance by angels, need thorough testing against Scripture in today’s religious climate in which false prophets and occult ‘spirit guides’ masquerading as angels of light abound.

A testimony in HTB in FOCUS: ALPHA NEWS, Aug 1995, in which Jesus is referred to as “a guiding light” (p14), is just an inkling of what may be to come.

DOES GOD HEAL TODAY?

Session 12 White Alpha training manual ppS8-62/Video V Talk 13

During this talk Nicky Gumbel tells Alpha participants of the visit by John Wimber to HTB in 1982 to demonstrate God’s power to heal. He says: “John Wimber then said ‘We’ve had words of knowledge’ these are supernatural revelations, things that they couldn’t have known otherwise about the conditions of people in the room… specific details were given, accurately describing the conditions… .as the list was responded to, the level of faith in the room was rising.”

Gumbel says that he still felt “cynical and hostile” until the following evening when he was prayed for: “So they prayed for the Spirit to come….I felt something like 10,000 volts going through my body….The American had a fairly limited prayer. He just said ‘more power’….it was the only thing he ever prayed. I can’t remember him ever praying anything else… Now we’ve seen many kinds of these manifestations of the Spirit on the weekends… these manifestations… and the physical healings themselves are not the important thing… .the fruit of the Spirit… these are the things that matter, the fruit that comes from these experiences. So we began to realise that God heals miraculously….”

Nicky Gumbel gives no indication here that he or anyone else attending that meeting tested the spirits to ensure that everything came from the Holy Spirit.

And, of course, the fruit of the Holy Spirit does not come from “these experiences” but from the daily sanctification by the Holy Spirit through obedience to the Word (John 14:15;21;23-26;15:l-7;10;14-15).

Once again Alpha participants are not being warned of the very serious dangers of accepting anything and everything from anyone and everyone. So they will walk out of the cocoon of Alpha and straight into the path of the “enemy the devil [who] prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour”. (1 Peter 5:8).

WHAT ABOUT THE CHURCH?

Session 13 White Alpha training manual pp63-68/Video V Talk 14

(1) ROMANISM

“The Alpha course is… adaptable across tradition and denominations… I know of its uses in Catholic churches.” [Martin Cavender in Telling Others].

Adaptable in what sense exactly? Alpha’s publications manager advises that, while presentation of the material can be adapted to suit, the content should be followed exactly. (He makes particular reference to the weekend dealing with the Holy Spirit in this respect) [Christian Herald, 9:12:1995].

If the content of the course teaches the fundamental historical and theological facts and doctrines of the Christian faith as recorded in Scripture, then, having tested and proved that to be so, any Protestant church using Alpha could follow the course exactly. But could a Catholic church do that?

In talk 8 and in section II of this talk Gumbel teaches Alpha participants that the differences between Protestants and Catholics are “totally insignificant compared to the things that unite us… we need to unite around the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus; the absolute essential things at the core of the Christian faith on which we are all agreed. We need to give people liberty to disagree on the things which are secondary.”

I agree wholeheartedly with the last sentence but that is not the issue here. It is on the essentials that Protestants and Catholics do not have unity. That was the whole point of the Protestant Reformation. Discussing the price of unity in the Church, Bishop Ryle wrote: “Our noble Reformers bought the truth at the price of their own blood, and handed it down to us. Let us take heed that we do not basely sell it for a mess of pottage, under the specious names of unity and peace.” [Warnings to the Churches, 1877, p128].

Still Gumbel says: “We need to unite… there has been some comment which is not helpful to unity. Let us drop that and get on. It is wonderful that the movement of the Spirit will always bring churches together. He is doing that right across the denominations and within the traditions… we are seeing Roman Catholics coming now… Nobody is suspicious of anybody else… People are no longer ‘labelling’ themselves or others. I long for the day when we drop all these labels and just regard ourselves as Christians with a commission from Jesus Christ.” [Renewal, May 1995,p16]

‘Adaptability’ of the Alpha course to include Catholics, not necessarily to convert them, is referred to in Alpha as ‘unity’ and I am concerned that Alpha is contributing – albeit unintentionally – to the undoing of the Protestant Reformation through the promulgation of ecumenism disguised as Christian Unity.

(2) UNITY AND FALSE DOCTRINE/TEACHERS

“A disunited church, squabbling and criticising makes it very hard for the world to believe”. [Gumbel, Renewal, May 1995, p16]. Consequently “we make it a rule on Alpha never to criticise another denomination, another Christian church or a Christian leader.” [Telling Others, p114; and this talk, section II].

Yet there are times when failure to ‘criticise’ – or rather to rebuke and correct (2 Tim 3:16; 4:2-5) – is actually to be disobedient to the Word of God. Although in talk five Gumbel only applied the rebuking and correcting to Christian behaviour, it also applies to false teaching. We must certainly not judge one another’s sins or their hearts (e.g. Matt 7:1-5), or their personalities, but we are to test all teachings prophesies and practices against Scripture and judge whether they are true or false (1 Cor 2:15;16; 1 John 4:1).

According to Ephesians 4:3-6 Christian unity comes through our being baptised through one Spirit into “one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all”.

Unity is also essential to Latter-Rain doctrine, to enable the incarnation of Christ into His physical body (the Church), because He cannot incarnate a divided body. But Latter-Rain is a “different gospel” (Gal 1:6-7) with a faulty eschatology which is insinuating itself into Charismatic fellowships these days; one of its most successful routes being the Toronto Blessing (vii).

It is vital that we “earnestly contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3). If not, we may find ourselves, and those new believers we have nurtured, part of the Apostate church.

(3) THE PARABLE OF THE PARTY

In section IV, Gumbel says the Church, though God’s Holy Temple, so often loses “the sense of the presence of God in its midst”. He is making reference here to the Sunday meetings of believers rather than to the Church as the body of Christ and uses the parable of the Prodigal Son to explain that Sunday services should be like a ‘party’. “Jesus was saying that….the Church is like….a feast and a celebration, and at a party everyone has a good time. There’s fun, there’s laughter… .Why shouldn’t there be laughter at the biggest party of all? and that’s what we’re seeing today, laughter and fun, and people getting drunk – not with wine, Paul says ‘don’t get drunk with wine – be filled with the Spirit, Come to a party where you can get drunk on God… .I was at a party like that last night. It was a whole load of church leaders, and we invited the Spirit to come… It was a party thrown by the Holy Spirit. It was a fun place to be. The Church is meant to be a party…”

The Church will celebrate the marriage feast of the Lamb when the Lord Jesus returns, but I find no references to “fun” or “parties” anywhere in Scripture, except in denunciation. In 1 Corinthians 10:1-11 for example. Until Jesus returns and we attend the marriage feast of the Lamb, there is no place for “parties” or “festivals”; not even “to the Lord”.

CONCLUSION

It may only be part of Alpha’s teaching which does not accord with Scripture, but I would say with Paul: “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” (Gal 5:9).

Every Christian and every fellowship is able to witness to the gospel. Many fellowships create their own evangelistic courses under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It should not be necessary to rely on the methods and techniques of another fellowship when we have all the instruction and teaching material we need in Scripture, all the experience we need in each of our relationships with the Lord Jesus and are each empowered by the Holy Spirit to go and do it. But if leaders do decide to use the Alpha course they should at least consider the following points in light of the concerns above:

• That they ensure non-believing participants have fully understood the meaning of the cross and are saved (sessions I and 2) before propelling them into a course on Christian Living. (sessions 3-14).
• That they ensure converts are fully aware of their conversion experience and are becoming stable in their daily      relationship with the Lord Jesus before thrusting them into the baptism of the Holy Spirit, for which they are not yet ready and which could allow into their lives the influence of an alien spirit through ground given, albeit unintentionally.
• That they ensure participants understand the different nature of the work of each person in the Trinity.
• That they ensure the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and his convicting and sanctifying work in a believer’s life is not      submerged beneath the gifts and the power of the Holy Spirit.
• That they ensure participants are taught to proceed from the Word to experience, not from experience to the Word.
• Following from this, that they ensure participants understand that deception regarding doctrine and supernatural      phenomena has always been Satan’s main weapon against the Church and that knowing and standing fast in the Word is our weapon of defence, as it was for Jesus (Matt 4:1-11).
• That they ensure participants are taught to become Bereans (Acts 17:11) able to test everything against Scripture for      themselves, not relying on leaders, who are not infallible (e.g. Gal 2:11-14), to do their thinking and living for them.
• That they revise the booklist on pp72-75 of  the white Alpha training manual as it tends to display a bias towards      writers sympathetic to the Vineyard/Toronto Experience/Restorationist persuasion, while omitting other sound and more obvious choices in several of the sessions.

• In 1877 Bishop Ryle wrote: “The Lord Jesus Christ declares, ‘I will build My Church’….Ministers may preach, and writers may write, but the Lord Jesus Christ alone can build. And except He builds, the work stands still….Sometimes the work goes on fast, and sometimes it goes on slowly. Man is frequently impatient, and thinks that nothing is doing. But man’s time is not God’s time. A thousand years in His sight are but as a single day. The great builder makes no mistakes. He knows what He is doing. He sees the end from the beginning. He works by a perfect, unalterable and certain plan.” [J.C. Ryle ‘The True Church’ in Warnings to the Churches, 1877, pp13-14].

[Note: Nicky Gumbel dates his call to evangelism (Tape Five of the video set) to the 1982 incident in which he received prayer from John Wimber. On that occasion, he experienced such supernatural power that he had to call out for it to stop. Wimber gave a “word” that Gumbel had been given “a gift of telling people about Jesus”.]

A much expanded version of this paper is presently available from Jo Gardner, price £1.25 incl. postage. Write to: Adullam Register/Alpha, 86 Manor Way, Croxley Green, Herts WD3 3LY. This paper and other material will also shortly be produced in the form of a booklet. Enquiries to Jo Gardner, not Banner!

FOOTNOTES

(i) Letters to the author should be directed to Banner Ministries.

(ii) HTB in Focus: Alpha News, Aug 1995 p9. See also Wallace Boulton, ed., The Impact Of Toronto, 1995 pp2O-24.

(iii) See Richard Smith, “Spiritual Drunkenness”, Sept 1994.

(iv) See Wallace Boulton, ed., The Impact Of Toronto, 1995, p19.

Also David Noakes, Dealing With Poison In The Pot, audio tape, CFCM 95/04, side 1.

And Johannes Facius, ‘Laugh? I Nearly Cried’ in Prophecy Today, May/June 1995, p25.

(v) See for example, Robert M. Bowman, Orthodoxy And Heresy: A Biblical Guide To Doctrinal Discernment, 1993. And J.C. Ryle, Warnings To The Churches, 1877.

(vi) During the Leadership Consultation held in January and March 1995, by the Centre for Contemporary Ministry, it was noted that Wm Branham also practised impartation of the Spirit, which others could then pass on. Arnott has likened the Toronto Blessing to a virus. (See Haggai 2:10-14).

(vii) See ‘Birth of the Manchild‘ in Mainstream, Spring 1995, ppi-5 for the eschatology being taught at some Vineyard churches.

 

 

 

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Recovery IS Deliverance

Deliverance: The Action Of Being Rescued Or Set Free

Recovered IN Christ Package

“Deliverance from the power
of the evil one comes through
definite resistance on the ground of the Cross.”
– J.O Fraser

This material is being presented this weekend at “The First International Alcoholics Anonymous History Conference” in Portland, Maine, filled with thousands of seekers and Christians coming together to learn how to better make a stand for Christ and our biblical roots in all 12 step fellowships.

http://mauihistorian.blogspot.ca/

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“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

 Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith. “The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them. “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. “He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

Brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed, meaning one person, who is Christ. What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.

Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator. A mediator, however, implies more than one party; but God is one.

Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

Before the coming of this faith,we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith,  for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Galatians 3

Commentary:

Understanding the Law

In Verse 19, Paul suddenly stops the flow of his argument and asks a question: What, then, was the purpose of the law? This question reflects Paul’s awareness that his argument so far would lead his readers to wonder whether he has denied any purpose to the law. If the inheritance of the promised blessing does not depend on the law, as Paul has just declared (v. 18), then why was the law given by God? Paul’s answer is important for us as we wrestle with similar questions regarding the application of the Mosaic law. How should Christians relate to the Mosaic law today?

In this section Paul first asks his major, initial question regarding the purpose of the law and replies briefly (vv. 19-20), then asks a supplementary question regarding the relation of the law to the promise of God and supplies an explanation (vv. 21-22), and finally presents two images to illustrate more fully God’s purpose for the law (vv. 23-25).What Was the Purpose of the Law? (3:19-20)

Paul’s brief reply to this question points to (1) the negative purpose of the law, (2) the temporal framework for the law and (3) the mediated origin of the law.

1. According to Paul, the law has a negative purpose: It was added because of transgressions (v. 19). Paul has already demonstrated what the law does not do: it does not make anyone righteous before God (v. 11); it is not based on faith (v. 12); it is not the basis of inheritance (v. 18). So if the law is divorced from righteousness, faith and inheritance of the blessing, to what is law related? Paul says that the law is related to transgressions. A transgression is the violation of a standard. The law provides the objective standard by which the violations are measured. In order for sinners to know how sinful they really are, how far they deviate from God’s standards, God gave the law. Before the law was given, there was sin (see Rom 5:13). But after the law was given, sin could be clearly specified and measured (see Rom 3:20; 4:15; 7:7). Each act or attitude could then be labeled as a transgression of this or that commandment of the law.

Imagine a state in which there are many traffic accidents but no traffic laws. Although people are driving in dangerous, harmful ways, it is difficult to designate which acts are harmful until the legislature issues a book of traffic laws. Then it is possible for the police to cite drivers for transgressions of the traffic laws. The laws define harmful ways of driving as violations of standards set by the legislature. The function of traffic laws is to allow bad drivers to be identified and prosecuted.

2. The temporal framework for the law is clearly established by the words added . . . until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come (v. 19). Paul has already emphasized that the Mosaic law was given 430 years after the Abrahamic promise (v. 17). The word added implies that the law was not a central theme in God’s redemptive plan; it was supplementary and secondary to the enduring covenant made with Abraham. As the word added marks the beginning point for the Mosaic law, the word until marks its end point. The Mosaic law came into effect at a certain point in history and was in effect only until the promised Seed, Christ, appeared. There is a contrast here between the permanent validity of the promise and the temporary nature of the law. On the one hand, the promise was made long before the law and will be in effect long after the period of the law; on the other hand, the law was in effect for a relatively short period of time limited in both directions by the words added and until.

As we shall see in our study of the next few sections of the letter (see 3:23-25; 4:1-4), Paul’s presentation of the temporal framework for the law is a major theme of his argument for the superiority of the promise fulfilled in Christ over the law. This theme differs radically from the common Jewish perspective of his day, which emphasized the eternal, immutable nature of the law. But Paul’s Christocentric perspective led him to see that Christ (the promised Seed), not the law, was the eternal one.

3. Paul designates the origin of the law in his statement that the law was put into effect through angels by a mediator (v. 19). By this Paul does not mean that the law was given by angels rather than by God. He is merely pointing to the well-known Jewish tradition that God gave the law through the agency of angels as well as by a mediator, namely Moses. References to the agency of angels in the giving of the law can be found in the Greek version of Deuteronomy 33:2 and Psalm 68:17. We can also see this tradition about angels in Acts 7:53 and Hebrews 2:2.

The presence of angels and the mediation of Moses in the giving of the law were understood by the Jewish people to signify the great glory of the law. But Paul argues that the giving of the law through a series of intermediaries, angels and Moses, actually demonstrates the inferiority of the law. His argument is cryptic and enigmatic: A mediator, however, does not represent just one party; but God is one (v. 20). Literally, this sentence reads, “But a mediator is not one, but God is one.” A contrast is being made between the plurality of participants in a process of mediation and the oneness of God. In the larger context of Paul’s argument here, there is also the implied contrast between the promise given directly by God to Abraham and fulfilled in Christ, the seed of Abraham, and the law given through numerous intermediaries.

By faith the Galatian converts have already entered into the experience of the Spirit (vv. 1-5), which is the fulfillment of the promise (v. 14). Evidently they are now being persuaded that if they observe the rituals of the Jewish people, they will experience new dimensions of spiritual life and blessing–that if they become members of God’s people, the Jews, they will be guaranteed intimacy with God. Paul warns them that the circumstances of the giving of the law demonstrate otherwise. The law had a mediated origin. Thus the law does not provide direct access to God. Only the fulfillment of the promise in the bestowal of the Spirit to those in Christ guarantees direct access to God (see 4:4-8).

Paul’s affirmation of the common confession of all Jews that God is one (v. 20) implies a contrast between the universality of God and the particularity of the law. The particular focus of the law is specified by its mediation through the angels and Moses to the Jewish people. The preachers of the false gospel in Galatia limited the sphere of God’s blessing to the Jewish nation. Their message implied that God is the God of the Jews only. But the unity of God means that he is the God of the Gentiles as well as the God of the Jews (see Rom 3:29-30). The universality of God is clearly expressed in the promise for “all nations” (Gal 3:8). The bestowal of the Spirit on Gentiles who had not become Jews was irrefutable evidence for the universality of God.

Moses, the mediator of the law, brought in a law that divided Jews from Gentiles; therefore he was not the mediator of “the one,” the one new community promised to Abraham (v. 8) and found in Christ (v. 28). Christ, not Moses, is the mediator of the unity of all believers in Christ–Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female.

These arguments against the supremacy of the Mosaic law should not be interpreted to mean that Paul is antinomian, totally against the law. He is, after all, showing that the law had an important place in the redemptive plan of God. But the giving of the law was not the final goal of God’s plan. The law was an essential step, but only a step,  toward the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises in Christ. Christ is the beginning, end and center of God’s plan.

In the churches in Galatia the law was supplanting the central place of Christ. The churches were becoming law-centered. It was necessary, therefore, to put the law back into its rightful place. Its purpose is negative: to point out transgressions. Its time is limited: 430 years after the promise, until Christ. Its origin is mediated through angels and Moses: it does not provide direct access to God, and it divides Jews from Gentiles. Is the Law Opposed to the Promises of God? (3:21-22)

This question is an understandable response to Paul’s stark contrast between the law and the promise (vv. 15-18) and his confinement of the law to a limited role in God’s historical plan (vv. 19-20). People who were preoccupied with the supreme value of the law must have been stunned by such a devaluation of it. How could Paul speak against the law? Was the logical conclusion of his line of reasoning the position that the law stood in opposition to the promise? Absolutely not! says Paul. Since both the law and the promise were given by God, they must be complementary rather than contradictory in the overall plan of God. Paul explains the relation of the law to the promise in a two-part answer to the question. First, he presents a contrary-to-fact hypothesis that ascribes a positive role to the law (v. 21). Second, he turns from hypothesis to the reality of the law’s negative role (v. 22).

In order to clarify the relation of the law to the promise, Paul poses a contrary-to-fact hypothesis: If a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law (v. 21). The very way that Paul phrases this hypothesis (as a contrary-to-fact conditional statement) indicates that he does not for a moment think the law can impart life. By life Paul means living in right relationship with God (see 2:19: “that I might live for God”). If the law could empower one to live in a right relationship with God, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. This was in fact the position of the rival teachers in the Galatian churches. They were promoting the law as the way to live for God. It was actually their position that set the law in direct opposition to the promise; it contradicted the gospel. For as Paul has already said (2:21), “if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

It is only when the law is given a positive role that it is directly opposed to the promise fulfilled in Christ. You are faced with an absolute contradiction if you are told that only by believing in the cross of Christ will you be able to live in a right relationship with God and then you are told that only by keeping the law will you be able to live in a right relationship with God. And that is precisely what the Galatian believers were being told by the rival teachers. But Paul does not accept the false hypothesis of a positive role for the law. Since believing the gospel has already been proved to be the only way to receive life in the Spirit and righteousness (3:1-18), such a positive role for the law is excluded.

The strong adversative conjunction but at the beginning of verse 22 indicates that Paul is turning from the unreal hypothesis of a positive role for the law to the reality of the negative role of the law: but the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin (v. 22). In reality, the law has the negative function of condemning everyone. Literally, Paul says that “the Scripture imprisoned all under sin.” Probably Paul has in mind Deuteronomy 27:26, the specific Scripture he quoted in verse 10: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” This citation from the law summarizes the purpose of the law: to demonstrate that all are sinners and to put all sinners under God’s judgment. Paul’s emphasis on the universality of human sin (v. 22) and the universality of God’s judgment on all sinners (v. 10) reduces Jews to the same status as Gentiles–the whole world is a prisoner of sin. So identification with the Jewish people by circumcision and observance of the Mosaic law does not remove one from the circle of “Gentile sinners” (2:15) and bring one into the sphere of righteousness, blessing and life. Rather, it leaves one imprisoned under sin.

But we are not left as condemned sinners under the curse of God. The law was given to show that all humanity is held under the bondage of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe (v. 22). Now we can see how the law and the promise work in harmony to fulfill the purpose of God. The law puts us down under the curse; the promise lifts us up in Christ. We are left with no exit under the condemnation of the law so that we might find our freedom only by faith in Christ. The law imprisons all–both Jews and Gentiles–under sin to prepare the way for including all believers in Christ–both Jews and Gentiles–in the blessing promised to Abraham.

So the law should not be viewed as contradictory to the gospel. By reducing all to the level of sinners, the law prepares the way for the gospel. But neither should the law be viewed as if it were the same as the gospel. The law has a negative purpose: it makes us aware of our sin. But it does not, indeed it cannot, set us free from bondage to sin. The promise of blessing comes only through faith in Christ. The Law Is a Jailer and a Disciplinarian (3:23-25)

Paul expands and dramatizes his explanation of the negative function of the law by personifying the law as a jailer and a disciplinarian. In his portrayal of the roles given by God to the law, Paul shows that these negative roles are a necessary part, but only a temporary part, of the entire drama of God’s plan of salvation.

The law took the part of God’s jailer on the stage of history: before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed (v. 23). Notice the important shift of focus from universal to particular: in verse 22 the whole world is declared by Scripture to be a prisoner of sin, but in verse 23 Paul says we were held prisoners by the law. In the first case the law is related to all people without distinction, Jews as well as Gentiles. All are condemned as sinners by the law. In the second case the law is related to Jews. For a certain period of time, Jews in particular were held as prisoners under law. When we read the Mosaic law we can see how every aspect of Jewish life was restricted, restrained and confined by the law. In this sense the law was a jailer over the Jews.

It is essential to distinguish between these two functions of the law: the universal condemnatory function and the particular supervisory function. Every person in the whole world of every time and every race is under the condemnation of the law given in Scripture. The law makes it clear that everyone is a prisoner of sin in order that it may be absolutely clear that the salvation promised by God can be received only by faith in Jesus Christ (v. 22). That is the universal condemnatory function of the law. The condemning sentence of the law against all humanity can never be overturned. It stands as a permanent indictment of the sinful rebellion of the whole world against God.

The Mosaic law was given not only as a permanent standard for all humanity but also as a temporary system to supervise a particular people. As we read through the Mosaic law we are impressed with a complex system of laws that were set in place to guide the conduct of the Jewish people. According to Paul’s imagery in verse 23, the law functioned as a jailer to lock up the Jewish people in a vast system of legal codes and regulations. But that lockup was meant to be only temporary. Verse 23 begins and ends with clear references to the time when the imprisonment within the system of Mosaic law would end: before this faith came . . . until faith should be revealed. Of course Abraham had faith in God long before the Mosaic law, as Paul emphasized in 3:6. But the specific nature of this faith that Paul has in mind has just been stated in verse 22: faith in Jesus Christ . . . Before this faith came, we [the Jewish people] were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith [in Jesus Christ] should be revealed. The function of the law as a jailer is not permanent; it is limited to a certain period in history.

The temporary function of the law is also described by the image of a disciplinarian. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ (v. 24). The NIV here is more a loose paraphrase than a word-for-word translation. The NRSV is an excellent, literal translation of this phrase: “Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came.” Behind the English word disciplinarian is the Greek word paidagogos, from which we derive pedagogue. The first meaning listed in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary for pedagogue is “a teacher of children or youth”; the second meaning given is “one (as a slave) having charge of a boy chiefly on the way to and from school in classical antiquity.” In Paul’s day the pedagogue was distinguished from the teacher (didaskalos). The pedagogue supervised, controlled and disciplined the child; the teacher instructed and educated him.

A fascinating dialogue between Socrates and a boy named Lysis highlights this distinction. Socrates begins the conversation by asking Lysis, “Do they [Lysis’s parents] let you control your own self, or will they not trust you in that either?”

“Of course they do not,” he replied.

“But someone controls you?”

“Yes,” he said, “my pedagogue here.”

“Is he a slave?”

“Why certainly; he belongs to us,” he said.

“What a strange thing,” I exclaimed: “a free man controlled by a slave! But how does this pedagogue exert his control over you?”

“By taking me to the teacher,” he replied.

Josephus tells us of a pedagogue who was found beating the family cook when the child under his supervision overate. The pedagogue himself was corrected with the words: “Man, we did not make you the cook’s pedagogue, did we? but the child’s. Correct him; help him!”

These examples of the use of the term pedagogue in Greek literature point to the common perception of this figure in the Hellenistic world: he was given the responsibility to supervise and discipline the conduct of children. He did not have the positive task of educating the child; he was only supposed to control the behavior of the child through consistent discipline. The point of Paul’s use of this image in depicting the law is that the law was given this supervisory, disciplinary role over the Jewish people. But the supervisory control of the law was only “until Christ” (to Christ in NIV). This phrase has a temporal meaning, as we can see from the parallel phrase in the previous verse: until faith should be revealed. In the outworking of God’s plan of salvation in history, the period when the Jewish people were under the supervisory control of the law was followed by the coming of Christ. The supervisory discipline of the law over the people of God came to an end when Christ came.

The purpose of the disciplinary function of the law was to demonstrate that God’s people could only be justified by faith: that we [the Jewish people] might be justified by faith (v. 24). Under the constant discipline of the law, the Jewish people should have learned how impossible it was to keep the law. The law constantly beat them down like a stern disciplinarian, pointing out all their shortcomings and failures. The pain of this discipline was designed to teach them that they could only be declared righteous by God through faith.

In verse 25 Paul draws a conclusion that demolishes any argument that Christians ought to live under the supervisory control of the law: Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law. The Galatian believers were evidently succumbing to arguments that their life in Christ should be lived under the supervisory discipline of the Mosaic law. But to live under the supervision of the Mosaic law is to live as if Christ had not come. Now that Christ has come, we live, as Paul has already affirmed in 2:20, “by faith in the Son of God.” To live by faith in Christ sets us free from the supervision of the law.

Since Paul is still speaking here in the first-person plural (we) his primary reference is to the freedom that Jewish believers now experience from the supervision of the law because they have put their faith in Christ. If Jewish believers are no longer under the supervision of the law, then it is surely foolish for Gentile believers in Christ to put themselves under the law’s supervision. No wonder Paul began this chapter with the rebuke “You foolish Galatians!” They have received the Spirit by believing the gospel, but now they are trying to make progress in their spiritual life by observing the law. But their attempt to observe the law as if they were now under the supervision of the law is not progress; it is retrogression to the period in history before Christ came.

We have some friends who immigrated from a country under dictatorship   to North America. Their move to the States marked a turning point in their history. They no longer live under the tyrannical government of their former country. Now they are under a new government. It would make no sense for them to start living again as if they were under the supervision of their former government.

Similarly, Paul sees the turning point in his life to be the time when he put his faith in Christ. Before that time he lived under the supervision of the Mosaic law. But after he put his faith in Christ, his life was lived by faith in Christ, under the supervision of Christ. He had immigrated  (see Col 1:13) to the kingdom of Christ.

Of course those friends who have now immigrated to America cannot assume that they are now free to do whatever was forbidden in their former country. Although they cannot be prosecuted under the laws of their former country for murder or theft, they are now bound by the laws of their new country not to murder or steal. Our new life in Christ is not under the supervision of the law; it is under the rule of Christ by his Spirit. Freedom in Christ from the supervisory rule of the Mosaic law empowers us to “live for God” (2:19).

To read the whole commentary on Galatians 3 start at http://www.biblegateway.com/resources/commentaries/IVP-NT/Gal/Understanding-Presence-Spirit?action=getChapterSections&cid=7&source=1&schap=3

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Who is the Holy Spirit? How should we approach Him? What are His attributes? What does the Bible say about Him?

Let’s start off with the introduction of the Holy Spirit. It’s found right in the first chapter of Genesis in the second verse: “The earth was without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light;’ and there was light.” At the very beginning of Genesis, you have God’s Word, Jesus; you have God the Father; and you have the Holy Spirit: the Trinity all represented in creation.

The interesting part of this is the Hebrew word for spirit. We almost get a little spooky talking about the Holy Ghost, but the Hebrew word behind spirit is ruach, and it means “air in motion.” It is the same word for “breath.” It also means “life.” By resemblance to breath and air in motion, it means “spirit.” That’s where we get the translation, and the Hebrew word contains all those different meanings. If we just leave it with our English word “spirit,” we’re not getting the full attributes of what the Bible is trying to describe. It’s trying to describe that there’s a breath involved.

Going back to that first chapter in Genesis, if the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the deep, and then God said, “Let there be light,” when you speak, it’s through your breath that the words take form. Just imagine that: God speaking, His breath comes out, and there you have the Word of God, “Let there be light.” That is where the Gospel of John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” They are all separate, but at the same time, they are all one, just as when you breathe and you speak, your words can be one with you.

Let’s take this into the New Testament because we have almost the same thing where Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit. He says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:608, NKJV).

Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit, and He’s saying it is like wind. When you get into the Greek behind that, the Greek word is pneuma, which again means “a current of air,” “breath,” or a “breeze, ” and again by analogy, “a spirit.” So both the Hebrew and the Greek word are talking about breath. It’s talking about wind.

Back in Creation, back in Genesis, you’ve got how we were made. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Genesis 2:6-7, NKJV). Some translations call that “a living soul.” It’s from the breath of God that we actually get our life. And so now you get the linkage of how we were created. How we were created in the image of God is because of our breath, and it is because of the breath of God coming into us.

The same thing happens when we are born of the Spirit. When we are re-born, it is from the breath of God. In the Gospel of John, where He is giving to His disciples the Holy Spirit, just as God breathed on Adam and gave him the breath of life, Jesus breathed on His disciples in John chapter 20: “‘Peace to you! As the Father sent me, I also send you.’ And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit'” (John 20:21-22, NKJV).

The Holy Spirit, the breath of God. When you get into that kind of analogy,  you now understand better what the attributes are. It’s no longer something  spooky, but it’s something very close to you. It’s as close to you as your very breath. The Bible says, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” I love the current praise song that says “You are the air I breathe,  Your holy Presence in me.” We can literally breathe in the Presence of God  and be filled with the Holy Spirit with our breath.

Jesus didn’t just breathe on the disciples 2,000 years ago. Every time we are baptized in the Holy Spirit, it is God’s breath on us. Just imagine     that. It is not a one-time thing. I think Christians today have gotten into the baptism of the Holy Spirit as some kind of one event. We have got that in Acts chapter 2, but we fail to look forward to Acts chapter 4 where they get baptized in the Holy Spirit again. It says very clearly in Acts chapter 4 they were all filled with the Holy Spirit as they were in a prayer meeting:  “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they  were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God boldly.” So it is not just in Acts chapter 2; it is also in Acts chapter 4. This means  we can be filled with the Spirit continually.

I was at a tremendous meeting in February with John and Carol Arnot from  the Toronto Fellowship. They asked me to speak. I started speaking at 8:00.  I was tired going into it, but I just got energized, filled with the Holy Spirit during that. At that time, it went from 8:00 until midnight. If you can imagine that: four hours. At the end of it I was absolutely energized. I was so filled with the Holy Spirit it seemed like anything was possible. The next day, I was driving into the studio, and I was praying on my way in. I was kind of grumbling and complaining and saying, “Lord God, why can’t that sort of go with me all the time?” And God spoke to me very clearly, “Why do you get out of the river?” I thought about that. I said, “Well, why do I?”

We don’t have to. We don’t have to walk around as if there are some moments when we’re filled with the Spirit and other moments when  we’re not. We can be continually filled with His Presence. It all has to do with how we think about it. If we actually think that in Him we live and move and have our being, that our very breath as we breathe in, we can be filled with God Almighty. Just imagine how that will transform your life! The baptism in the Holy Spirit is not a one-time event. It can be a continuous  thing for all who believe.

I want you to take that thought with you through the day, through the month, through the year. I think Christians now more than ever need to be filled  with the Holy Spirit, need to be filled with His authority, really need to have the power of God working in their lives. We live in perilous times. It is not a time for us to take off the Armor of God and go relax. We need to be fully armed, fully prepared with the Holy Spirit.

Let me conclude with this. It’s the conclusion that is found in the 150^th Psalm. It’s the very last word in Psalms. It’s the very last Psalm. There are a 150 of them, and here’s the very end of it. It says, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the  Lord!”

Let your breath praise the Lord today!

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Probably one of the most important things a believer needs to know about the workings of Christ versus demons in “beautiful” spiritual experiences:

“The period of danger is, as already shown in Chapter 3, at the time of seeking the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, when much has been said by others about manifestations of God to the consciousness, or some “coming upon” of the Spirit, felt by the senses. This is the opportunity for the watching spirits.

What believer is there that does not long for the “conscious” presence of God, and would not give up all to obtain it? How difficult it is to walk by “faith,” when passing through the dark places of life! If the “conscious presence” is to be obtained by the Baptism of the Spirit, and there can be supernatural effects upon the senses, so that God is really felt to be at hand – then who would not be tempted to seek it? It looks to be an absolutely necessary equipment for service, and it appears from the Bible story of Pentecost, as if the believers then must have had this conscious presence, felt by them physically and actually.

Here lies the danger point which first opens the door to Satan. The working upon the senses in the religious realm, has long been Satan’s special mode of deceiving men throughout the whole world, of which he is the god and prince. He knows how to soothe, and move, and work upon the senses in every possible way, and, in every form of religion ever known, deceiving unregenerate men with the form of godliness whilst denying the power. Among the truly converted, and even sanctified believers, the senses are still his way of approach. Let the soul admit a craving for beautiful emotions, happy feelings, overwhelming joy, and the conception that manifestations, or “signs,” are necessary to prove the presence of God, especially in the Baptism of the Spirit, and the way is open for Satan’s lying spirits to deceive.

The Lord said, on the eve of His Cross, concerning the coming of the Holy Spirit to the believer, “I will . . manifest Myself unto him” (John 14: 21), but He did not say how He would fulfil His promise. To the woman at the well He said “God is spirit,” and “they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” The manifestation of Christ is, therefore, to the spirit, and not in the realm of the senses, or animal soul. Hence the craving for sense-manifestation opens the door to deceiving spirits to counterfeit the real presence of Christ; but the consent and co-operation of the will to their control must be obtained, and this they seek to get under the guise of an “angel of light”; as a messenger of God apparently clothed with light, not darkness, for light is the very nature and character of God.

The basis of this deception of the believer is his ignorance of the principles on which God works in man, and the true conditions for His manifested presence in the man’s spirit; and his ignorance of the conditions upon which evil spirits work, in a passive surrender  of the will, mind and body to supernatural power. In his ignorance of the true working of God, the believer expects Him to move on the physical being, so that He is manifested to the senses, and to use his faculties apart from him, as a proof of His presence and “control,” whereas God only moves in, and through the man himself by the active co-operation of his will–the will being the ego, or centre of the man. Neither does God use the faculties of the man apart from conjunction with the man, i.e., through his will. Not instead of the man, but with him (2 Cor. 6: 1).”

– Jessie Penn-Lewis; War On The Saints, Chapter 5

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With all due respect, Truth is one, and the path is one, and we should be wary of the path we choose, and not choose it according to what feels right to us. If you went to an airport and asked to go to Rome and they said “jump on any plane and it will get you to Rome!” you would know inherently that would be untrue. So how, when it comes to God can we say that the paths which all are 100% completely different narratives would take us to the same place, when the “places” each teacher, philosopher or Religion speak about are all so different? Is God so fickle? So whatever my interpretation is, is truth?

That’s so convenient, because if I feel that way then I will inherently create God as I want Him to be, as opposed to how He is. This will remove my accountability and subsequently His holiness. The Bible says that we are not to lean on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5)  and that indeed human wisdom is like a leaf blowing in the wind, and is quite meaningless. (1 Cor 1:25) For example, Hindus believe in Pantheism, up to 300 million deities alone, then Buddha comes and diverts from Hinduism and creates Buddhism, and tells us that our soul is to be reincarnated up to 357 times to reach “enlightenment”, yet Buddha says we can do this on our own will and strength, thus taking us back to SELF.

Jesus says we cannot do it alone and that He is The Vine, The Bread, The Living water, that life without Him spells death. (John 15:5, John 6:35, John 4:14) All these teachers were mere humans on the quest for truth, but Jesus Christ was not a man searching for truth, He claimed to BE truth, and as He said to Pontius Pilate “My Kingdom is not of this world”.  (John 14:6, John 18:36) Jesus spoke truth that included ALL people (Galatians 3:28) but the truth itself was exclusive, this is why He said the gate is narrow and FEW enter by it. (Matt 7:13) Powerful words, a sword that cuts to the core of our humanity and false notions, it’s challenging. This is why He was dragged to the Cross…because either Jesus was a mad man or He is exactly who He says He is…and if he Resurrected, then how can all paths be the same?

Jesus says our soul is here one time and will be judged once. (Hebrews 9:27) Mohammad says that Jesus was a prophet and God “hid him from the Cross” thus denying that Jesus died for our sins . Allah and The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are not the same God. Allah is an impersonal force  that commands followers to  pray X amount of times a day and do many “works” to go to the afterlife, and believe me, Mohammad had no idea where he stood with Allah at the end of his life. Jesus says that works alone are not enough and that it’s His death on the cross that saves us, so that we know EXACTLY where we stand with God at all times. This creates an eternal comfort that no other philosophy, religion or person has brought to this world. So how, can there be one truth and many paths? This is not to say that we are not to love one another despite our different paths…but to say they are all the same would be indeed to discount the absolute truths claimed by them all.

The Holy Bible is God’s narrative, filled with hundreds of fulfilled prophecies that lead straight to Jesus and God says in Deuteronomy that we will know He is speaking because He will tell us what the future holds…no other book, the Vedas, Buddhism, Paganism, New Ageism, The Gnostics, The Qu’ran, speak into the future, at all. The Holy Bible does with 100% flawless Precision, and no other book would DARE present something like The Book of Revelation. That being said, we are called to choose our Narrative of God and to do so wisely…either we exist in Karma or we exist in Grace. Because I am such a sinner by nature and have been my entire life, I needed the grace. My soul was sick and Christ was the remedy.

Mariah Greenberg Roncetti

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A View from the Trenches

James’ Story

James, 13, soft-spoken and courteous, was once a brutal killer.  For three years he marched through the Sudanese jungle with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and during that time he was forced to commit inhumane acts against his fellow human beings.

“I shot 20 [people].  I feel very bad.  They ordered me to kill them.  If I don’t do it then they would kill me” he said.

James was abducted during an LRA raid on his village when he was eight.  His parents were executed in front of him. “So my mother tried to run, to help us…so they killed my mother immediately.  So my father also wanted to run so they killed him.  The LRA abduct me…and I have to go in the bush.

“I was a young soldier.  I carried my gun beside me and I walked with them” James said.

James was forced to participate in many LRA activities, including raiding villages.

“They burn everything, they shoot the people, they cut their lips, noses, everything.

“I didn’t know what to do, so I started praying to God” he said.

James decided that he had to escape.  An opportunity presented itself when a Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF) helicopter stumbled across his platoon.  In the midst of an intense rocket barrage James summoned the courage to run and fled into the bush with three other children.

They ran to a nearby town and were taken before the local Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) commander.  The commander contacted Sam Childers, (www.machinegunpreacher.org) who agreed to care for the former child soldiers.

“After that I was ok and Sam bought me to his village” James said.

“For bringing me from a very dangerous place to a nice place I thank him very much.  Let God bless him for everything that he has done for me.”

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