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  • A REAL PROBLEM IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

    by Rev. Dr. Robert R. LaRochelle

    CrossingTo be honest with you, my original intent in writing this article was to do a followup look at the visit of Pope Francis to the United States. I was planning to look at Catholicism and Protestantism in relation to one another at this point nearly 500 years after the onset of the Reformation. As many readers of this page know, I have written extensively about Protestant- Catholic relations in three different books published by Energion: my autobiographically based Crossing the Street, as well as the Topical Line Drives titles What Roman Catholics Need to know about Protestants and What Protestants Need to know about Roman Catholics.
    As part of this post, I intended to reflect upon the lingering anti-Catholicism that exists within some pockets of Protestant Christianity. Yet, upon further reflection and based upon my reading of several posts and discussions in this space over the last couple of months, I have concluded that there is something even more problematic within the Christian church.
    Christian FUNDAMENTALISM and its partner BIBLICAL LITERALISM continue to be real problems within the Christian community. Through their assertions, those espousing the fundamentalist, literalist approach to the Bible render dialogue difficult within the Christian community and the opportunity for healthy interfaith relationships essentially nil.
    Fundamentalism is marked by the age old conviction that, in reading the Bible, we should be governed by the principle that, in effect, God said it, we believe it and that’s final! Now, while it might be nice if religious faith were as simple as that, we know that it is not. We understand that the Bible often contradicts itself in both facts and theology, i.e., there are different views of God and God’s activity within the Bible. Also there are moral issues which are problematic, e.g., some passages which are used to defend slavery, segregation and the subjugation of women. Then there is the assertion that there is absolute moral authority found in the Bible as applicable to each and every contemporary social issue we face, most recently evidenced in debates about gay rights.
    Literally interpreted Biblical Christianity points us in the direction of espousing a God who is too small, a God in whose eternal presence we will bask ONLY if we assert faith in Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior. Extreme Fundamentalism renders the faith of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus inadequate in terms of the attainment of salvation. It renders the path to everlasting life as lacking depth or substance. In my book A Home United, also published by Energion, I affirm the importance of love in the relationships/marriages of those from different perspectives, a love grounded in God’s love for us. Biblical Fundamentalists would disparage that claim- and I think that is a problem. It is the transcendent love of a God who transcends all that has both created and sustained humanity, the world and this universe in which we all reside. It is this love which is the true ground of our very being!
    Fundamentalists have defended some of the most abhorrent practices in the life of our nation- and they continue to do so. They have made serious ecumenical and interfaith dialogue less possible than it ought to be.
    As a starting point for discussion, I suggest a serious reading of John Shelby Spong’s book Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism. If you read it or have read it, I would welcome your comments here as well as anything you have to say about this post.
    THANKS for giving this topic some thought!!………………
     

  • What is a proper response to the Paris attacks?

    by Chris Eyre
    (Reprinted from his website: http://eyrelines.energion.net/?p=884)

    The attacks in Paris last night are horrifying in their death toll, the number of those injured and that fact that there was no conceivable offense which the victims had committed, apart, that is, from living in France. My prayers go with the families of those killed and injured, and with the people of Paris and of France who are coming to terms with the shock.
    There are already a lot of idiot statements going around the web, and no doubt there will be many more in the future, but before I get to those, I find I am shocked not to have heard anything from the media about the bombings in Beirut and Baghdad before yesterday, and I suspect I might never have heard about them had it not been for the Paris attacks. Our media has failed us in this; lives do not matter less because they are in the Middle East than in Europe, or because they are those of people with a different religion or a different skin color. Nor do they matter less because Beirut and Baghdad are far less shocked than is Paris, as they are more used to such atrocities – indeed, we should perhaps consider that Beirut and (in particular) Baghdad deserve special sympathy because there, the violence is more frequent and therefore more damaging to morale.
    Some of those idiot statements have come from the French President, François Hollande, in various statements. He talks about severe measures, and about a war on terror, and did that even before anyone had claimed responsibility for the attacks. I can understand that a politician will feel the need to capture the mood of his country, and that that mood is one of wishing to have vengeance for the damage. A statesman, however (and I would have hoped that the president of a major European nation might have managed to achieve that status) would seek to guide the people rather than ride the wave of their anger, and precipitate action is one of the things which terrorists most hope to cause. He would acknowledge the anger, state that he shares it and talk about prevention of a future atrocity and taking measured steps against those ultimately responsible.
    Let me start with “war on terror”. This is a ridiculous concept, almost as much so as a war on drugs (do I go out and shoot a few aspirin?). Wars are between sovereign nations, and the vast majority of terrorist groups are not acting on behalf of a sovereign state (though the military of many nations may be guilty of terror attacks themselves). Curiously, these attacks are possibly an exception, in that credit has been claimed by IS, who are de-facto a sovereign state, holding a large swathe of territory in Iraq and Syria. I think he would have been justified in principle in declaring war on Islamic State – I am even inclined to think that this meets the criteria necessary for starting a just war under Augustine’s and Aquinas’ principles (jus ad bellum). Of course, no-one wants to recognize IS as a state….
    This topic, in fact, came up in last night’s Global Christian Perspectives webcast, in which Allan Bevere went into some detail about just war, and rightly pointed out that it is not just the issue of whether you go to war which is subject to moral principles (originally specifically Christian, but now in theory accepted as good argument in international law), but also whether the war is waged justly (jus in bello). If you cannot wage war justly, even if it is just to start a war, you have no moral alternative but to sue for peace or surrender, according to Augustine and Aquinas. Major principles are that there must be a reasonable prospect of success, and that you must not kill innocents.
    There, I think we have huge difficulties, firstly in safeguarding innocents. Certainly, efforts to date in the “war on terror” have resulted in very large numbers of innocent casualties – many more innocents than terrorists, in fact. Unless we change our way of dealing with this (and there is really no alternative to “boots on the ground” given the lamentable accuracy of targeting from the air – this piece of idiocy from Allen West is actually right on point; I might think that he was a liberal speaking satirically if I didn’t know better), we will not possess “jus in bello” and cannot reasonably wage war even against IS.
    Secondly, what remote possibility is there of ever declaring success? In particular, what possibility is there of success when we are not prepared to occupy (for an indefinite but no doubt very long period) even the states which we have held accountable for past terrorism? It is, of course, very widely appreciated that where you kill innocents in significant numbers, you actually create new terrorists in greater numbers than the reduction you tend to achieve, and certainly create more sympathy for the terrorists’ cause; certainly the terrorists understand this, and the overreaction is one of the outcomes they most desire. What possibility is there of success when prosecuting the “war” actually makes more new terrorists than it kills, and where significant numbers of them are living in states which have no responsibility for their actions, sometimes our own nations?
    I recently linked again from Facebook to my 2013 meditation on Remembrance Day, and the sentiments there are still entirely valid. If anything, though, the more I read the gospels, the less I think that Jesus would have approved any of the Just War concepts which Augustine came up with; he would not approve war at all. I am not quite at the point of being able to say that I would never support my country going to war in any circumstances (though I thoroughly approve Jeremy Corbyn’s undertaking that if he became Prime Minister, he would never order the use of nuclear weapons, and hope that the right wing and the media are wrong that this makes him unelectable), but at the least, can we try to adhere to Just War principles?
    I now realize that I missed something in my 2013 account. Although I rightly, I think, determined that no war my country had fought in the last 100 years or more had been just with the exception of World War II, I missed the fact that the way Britain fought the war emphatically did not meet just war standards, as we deliberately targeted civilian populations (first with the excuse that the Germans had first bombed London, which it proves was in error when a raid overshot industrial targets). I think I can therefore now say that we have not fought a completely just war at any time in history which I can think of.
    I realize that in saying that, I am going completely against a lot of public mood, particularly at present in France. I will also probably make myself unpopular in many circles if I point out that the fact that my country, France and Spain have been targeted by Islamic terrorists follows our own actions in bombing and invading Islamic countries, and killing large numbers of innocent Muslims. It is, no doubt, difficult for someone whose home is bombed and whose family members are killed or maimed to appreciate that we were not waging war on them and that the correct action is not to come and bomb us.
    I do not think that I would be inclined to accept the excuse of someone who killed my wife that she was “collateral damage”, for instance, though I would hope that my Christian principles would win out over my natural urge to do them at least as much damage in return, and if not them personally, then their families, their friends or those associated with them, or in paroxysms of grief, those who looked a bit like them or shared their politics or religion – it is scary what the frustration of powerlessness in the face of loss can do to human morality, what depths otherwise civilized people are prepared to sink to. I could here point out Rene Girard’s work on the futility of redemptive violence and his identification of the Crucifixion as the “last scapegoat”, after which we need not look to violence to redeem anything.
    War is hell. It crucifies people and nations. We should do everything in our power to avoid it. And, if we are a Christian nation, or a nation whose sense of morality was forged in Christianity even if we have moved on from that belief, we should consider very seriously the injunction to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
    France, however, is not feeling much like that at the moment (and who can blame them?). Feelings, however, do not have to become actions, and a statesman might point that out. On the back of that, there are some other stupid statements. “It’s because of all the refugees” is one obvious one. Well, despite the fact that I now hear that a Syrian man who is known to have come via Lesbos may be implicated (and I’m afraid I find that all too convenient to those arguing against the refugees), in general the refugees are trying to get away from the people who do these things. Christianity inherited from Judaism an obligation of hospitality towards the stranger, which Europe is not doing a very good job of upholding so far, and it would be a tragedy if the borders now closed completely, which is certainly what not a few people are suggesting. You might argue that Europe is post-Christian, but it has emerged out of Christianity and in theory still holds to largely Christian principles. It could be that the basic European principle of free movement of people within Europe (to which my country does not wholly subscribe) may be ending here, and that would be a tragedy for Europe and a victory for the terrorists. If you’re in the States, contemplate what the imposition of full border controls between the individual states would do to, for instance, the commute from New Jersey to New York….
    Equally damaging is the suggestion that the attacks must be because of security failures, and therefore we should massively increase security measures. One of the things which makes Europe a great place to live, work and holiday in is that it is relatively free.  We are not a set of police states, a set of nations obsessed with looking over our shoulders. If we lose that as a reaction to these attacks, again the terrorists have won. We also value free speech, and that would vanish under such a regime – in point of fact that has already been horribly eroded due to previous attacks (such as those on Charlie Hebdo, in central London, and on trains in Madrid).
    A statesman would say that there is a value in being European, a value created from our common beliefs in justice and mercy, tolerance, freedom of movement, freedom of speech and freedom of belief. He would suggest that if we react in such a way as to reduce those values, the terrorists have destroyed us. Eight men with guns and some explosives will have caused the destruction of the dream of a multi-national union of some 750 million people, and we will largely have done it to ourselves.
    A Christian statesman might remind us that Jesus said “what you do to the least of these, you do to me”.

  • Getting Along with the Exes

    Getting Along with the Exes

    by Henry Neufeld, Publisher

    No, no, no! Not the ex-spouses. The ex-faiths!
    You see, while Jody and I were both members of a United Methodist congregation when we got married, we had both come to that place by leaving other churches. Jody was ex-Catholic, and I was ex-Seventh-day Adventist.
    These are both groups that have a bit of trouble with someone being ex. Ex-SDAs are viewed by more traditional Adventists as apostates. Having learned the important doctrines of the Sabbath, and understood the apostasy of fallen Protestantism, evidenced by their disobedience of the Sabbath command, and having once seemed to be a part of God’s true remnant people, the apostate has chosen, instead, to become God’s enemy and deny the true faith.
    There are those who don’t believe one can even be ex-Catholic. For a completely different set of reasons, an ex-Catholic is often seen as apostate, having left the one true, holy, and apostolic church for some sect. Their one hope, of course, is that they can be brought back into the fold in some way.
    Besides often having a hard time dealing with ex-members, there is another problem with an ex-Catholic/ex-SDA combination. SDAs are a step past protestants. They not only protest Roman Catholic doctrine. They protest the protestants who aren’t far enough away from Catholicism. If you talk to SDAs now, you will find that many have shed this prejudice and have admitted that the Catholic church of today is not the same as the church of the 15th and 16th centuries. History moves on and so do people. But there are still SDAs who think that distributing Ellen White’s book, The Great Controversy, is a good way to recruit new members. Evangelism, they would call it, as in evangelizing Christians who don’t have their doctrine right. The Great Controversy is a book that paints the Roman Catholic church in a very bad light with the Pope as the Antichrist. Indeed, demonize would be quite literally true of this description of Catholic life.
    Catholics, in turn, can hardly be happy about a group that sees them as heathen in need of evangelization. One of my professors, from whom I took both some French and also Patristic Latin, was an ex-Catholic priest. His conversion was considered such a coup that there was a story book for young people about his experiences and how he had moved from the false religion of Catholicism to become part of God’s remnant people. (Note: I have written in some detail about SDA doctrines on my blog Threads from Henry’s Web. Just put SDA in the search box.)
    I’ve painted a stark picture of the separation between our previous faiths for a reason. Neither of these descriptions is accurate for all members and even for all officials of these two churches.
    I recall two interesting encounters I’ve had. The first was with a Catholic priest at a local church. I had taken a very good friend to Mass there, always mildly uncomfortable for me as I must stay seated as the Eucharist is offered, while people struggle to get around me. I seem to never find a good place to be both there, and out of traffic, especially when I’m accompanying someone who is participating. When I was leaving the church, the priest was shaking hands and, being a rather friendly fellow (and I must confess an excellent preacher), he cornered me, welcomed me, and shook my hands. Regarding my home church I said with a smile, “I’m from the heretics down the road.” He laughed, slapped me on the back and said, “Please! Separated brethren! You’re a separated brother now!”
    The second was while taking one of my authors to a book signing and speaking engagement at a Seventh-day Adventist Church. (Energion Publications has several Seventh-day Adventist writers on its author list.) As the author signed books, I was accosted by a young man who said he worked at the conference office. He wondered how it was possible that one could have doctrinal problems with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and was determined to ask me about it. He was somewhat less determined to hear the answer.
    The pastor of that church, his wife, and a few of the leaders in the congregation took us to dinner following the event and apologized profusely for having let this happen to me. They didn’t think of me as an apostate and were quite happy to be in fellowship and ministry with me.
    I can certainly balance any incident of unkindness or discourtesy from either of our former faiths with incidents of kindness, dialogue, and Christian fellowship. I don’t want these positive aspects to be forgotten. But I want to focus on the negatives and how we can work through those negatives to a more positive result.
    Not every Methodist is the same, nor is every Baptist, nor every Presbyterian, nor every Seventh-day Adventist, nor every Catholic. Not even every Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, or—wait for it!—Muslim is the same as every other.
    What each of us need is a bit of reorientation.
    First, we need to reorient ourselves and find a new perspective on groups. Think for a minute about what I’ve said about these two groups. You should see a very clear similarity between them. Yes, there it is. Both groups tend to think of themselves as the true church and so see those who leave as departing from the truth and descending into falsehood.
    You should have caught a phrase I just used that’s off-kilter. If you didn’t, work on that reorientation. I said “both groups tend to think.” But really people, individuals, in both groups tend to think in this way. And that suggests a different way of carrying out relationships. Multiply the friendships and avoid cases of enmity.
    But, you may think, the authorities within the group encourage such negative thinking.
    But, you should think instead, the friendships and good relationships remain possible.
    As long as we define another group solely by its negatives, it will remain negative. In fact, by treating the group as a negative, we will tend to reinforce the negative attitude we, and they, already have.
    So while Jody’s family and mine questioned our respective backgrounds, Jody and I just went ahead and looked for the positives. What was it that we both knew because of our background that would help us as we moved ahead? And in fact we both have found positive elements from our upbringing, many of them common elements. We can both point to family members whose strong faith has been an encouragement to us. There is a depth to our understanding of who we are now that comes, in part, from our experience of where we have been.
    Neither of us are inclined to go back to our former denominations. But we can appreciate things about them.
    Respecting people, learning from them, finding positive elements of their belief systems, and making friendships does not mean that one has to approve of everything or accept everything. One can still recognize the negative. I find, for example, that the more authoritarian elements of both the Catholic and SDA systems are not conducive to spiritual growth. That’s one of many reasons I’m not going back. But that disapproval doesn’t mean that I can’t be friends.
    When Jody and I got married it was in a church that, at the time, was divided between an 11:00 am crowd and an 8:30 am crowd. The 8:30 crowd was contemporary and more spontaneous in worship style. It was also charismatic in theology as a general rule. The 11:00 crowd was traditional about its worship forms and generally Methodist mainstream in its theological positions. I had been, for some time, considered a member of the 11:00 crowd, but I had started attending both services. I did so because, as a teacher in the church, I felt it was my duty to be aware of “both” sides. (Note for further discussion: There are rarely just two sides to any two-sided issue.)
    So when Jody and I chose to get married and scheduled the service for right after church, people from both services came together, many for the first time in years. Our wedding music included contemporary praise and traditional organ music. We expressed, as we joined our lives together, our hope that all could come to appreciate the value of the contribution of others.
    It wasn’t just the exes that needed to be reconciled. It was the present. But the method was the same. It was by looking at and learning to appreciate what we could that we could bring together the best of streams of tradition within a single congregation, just as it is by learning to appreciate, building relationships, and bringing the best of our past faith communities together that we can build greater value from them.
    This is not toleration but celebration. It is not compromise, but growth. I believe it is also not being overcome by evil, but overcoming evil with good (Romans 12:21).

  • Going Deeper in Bible Study

    by Henry Neufeld, Publisher

    Learning coverRecently I was listening to an explanation of a Bible passage by a writer who shall remain nameless. In the course of this explanation it became clear that the writer had an overriding agenda, and by that I mean an agenda that overrode the story told in the text. It became his story as he repeatedly informed his readers of what other, less enlightened people believed the passage meant and then strongly affirmed that if we studied the passage “more deeply” we would discover that his conclusion was the correct one.
    The problem was that at no point in his explanation did he explain what there was “deeper” in the passage that would support his particular interpretation. He simply affirmed and reaffirmed that if we would just look deeper we would see that his conclusion was inevitable.
    I should note that my own understanding of the passage clashed vigorously with his. It could be that I’m biased. But I never heard him point to any particular element of the passage in question that would suggest his understanding over what he was describing as the dominant one for the passage, one that he thought was very wrong and even dangerous. I actually think both his and the traditional understandings leave something to be desired. But that passage is not my subject.
    Similarly, I have heard many proclaim that if one just looks at a passage in context, one will discover that it means something quite different than it appears to mean on the surface. Much less frequently the person speaking will explain just what context is in view (historical, grammatical, structural, literary, etc.) and just how that context changes the surface meaning.
    Don’t get me wrong here. The most obvious surface meaning of a scripture is very frequently not what the original author intended. If seen in proper historical, cultural, and literary context it may well mean something different. But these elements of context are something that a serious student needs to discover and then express. And there’s another important context: The context of our own experience and biases.
    I do not intend in this essay to propose methods of Bible study. I’ve written two books that are relevant to this process: Learning and Living Scripture (with Dr. Geoffrey Lentz) and When People Speak for God. What I’m suggesting here is that if we go deeper we have to ask “in what way”? If we study the context we need to outline the connections that we make and how those questions impact our understanding. If we are trying to see things from a broader perspective, what is that perspective?
    When I was in college taking a major in Biblical Languages, I encountered the historical-critical method. I also immediately encountered the controversy that there is around this. One was surrendering the notion that God had inspired the Bible if one used the historical-critical method. On the other hand, one was denying the intellect and going against science if one avoided it.
    I at first embraced this method for a simple reason: It was pursuing what I had thought was the goal of Bible study. Let’s get closer to the sources and thus get at the real truth. Form criticism could take me back to original forms of a saying so that I could hear it more like it was when it was first spoken. Redaction criticism let me look at the process of producing a book in the form in which it appeared in scripture. Source criticism let me look at documents that preceded the ones I actually had in front of me.
    I was digging back into history. I was getting closer to the source. I had never framed it in this way, but God was at the source, and if I could just get right back there I would know precisely what God had to say to me without any doubt.
    But then inadequacies began to show up in my new-found methods. Source criticism might explain how there were two creation stories and how they might differ, but if source criticism was the explanation for the differences, what explained the fact that they had been combined into one document? If they were too different to have been written by the same person, why could the documents written by two persons be combined, successfully, into one by yet another person. Was this latter person too stupid to see the differences? Did he just not care?
    Enter canonical criticism. Let’s look at the text as we have it in its canonical form, the form accepted by the community of faith over time. In this case, I look at the text as it is and ask what I can learn from the current form. This is all very nice, but I had to ask myself if the current form is the important thing, then why does it have such a tangled past? If the current form is so good, were those who lived with its predecessors spiritually crippled?
    While I could certainly pick holes in just about any critical theory, I could also see the ways they picked holes in some of the traditional views of how we got biblical books. There was plenty of room to critique the details of the sources of the Pentateuch, such as dating and the exact boundaries between them, but at the same time sources could explain the reason why many things were there that otherwise made no sense.
    It was at this point in my thinking that I started to refer to “critical methodologies” rather than “historical-critical method.” No, that’s not original with me, but I don’t even remember when I first encountered it. It just seemed to fit the need.
    Early in my studies I had some difficulty with the criticisms of one methodology by practitioners of another. Then I began to note that people tended to grab hold of one particular approach and stick with it. To a person with a hammer everything is a nail. To a form critic, everything was orally transmitted. To the redaction critic, there must have been a process of editing. To the source critic, all books have sources. And to the advocate of canonical criticism, it was obvious that the canonical form of the text, accepted by the church as Holy Scripture, was the one to study.
    So I went back to sources. Not document sources. Not historical first sources. Philosophical sources. Where do I start in my exploration of the Bible? My starting point is this: I believe God is active in history. I’m going to again bypass all the issues of why I believe this and in what way I believe God is active. I will simply note on the latter point that I prefer to say both that God can intervene, but that this intervention is more an internal process that we might ever imagine. (On this point, see Edward W. H. Vick, History and Christian Faith, though I had not read his book when I first took up this approach.)
    If God is active in history, why would I believe that God was more active in one piece of history than another? More precisely, why would I believe that God was more active at one point in the history of the text than at another?
    And thus I got a new definition of “going deeper.” I now consider it important to go deeper into the history of the text, not as I did when a college student trying to get closer to the mouth of God, but rather to see God in action in the production of the text. Form criticism, to the extent it works, takes me to a point where I can see, through a glass darkly, early people telling stories of their God around a camp fire. Sources let me see communities that contributed to my community bringing God’s stories together. Redaction criticism let me look at those communities trying to bring their variant stories of God’s activity into one stream.
    In turn, once there was a text to be transmitted in writing, the variants in the text told me the story of transmission and preservation. I can certainly use text-critical principles to get a text closest to the original, but in those variants I can also see God’s people struggle with the meaning of that text. Instead of becoming concerned about errors—and there are many errors in transmission—I started to see each document as somebody’s Bible, or a portion of it. However much I might treat it as a source of data, textual variants, for someone, the manuscript in front of me was God’s Word.
    As people then create translations and editions, instead of seeing some corruption of an early source, I see God’s people both passing on and shaping the story of God’s action while at the same time shaping it for generations to come.
    This is just one strand of the way we read and tell the story of God’s people. God is no longer, for me, the distant person that I search for at the end of a long process, whether the historical-critical process I learned in academic work, or the historical-grammatical study I learned when I was younger. God is, for me, the one who is in and through everything, who spoke and yet speaks, who is obscured in the tales of old, and often equally obscured in ours, who may be clearly seen in some events in the past, but may also be clearly seen in my own home.
    And then as I tell that story and shape that story, I know that God will still be active.
    Bible study, in this sense, is not a spectator sport. It’s a participatory sport. Don’t get upset that I’m calling it sport. It’s often one of the greatest sports that there is. To use examples from baseball, as we interpret, we can throw balls and strikes. We can hit a ball in a way that looks hopeless, but due to someone else’s error nonetheless it results in a run. Or we can do everything perfectly in terms of technique and still get nowhere.
    And because God is with our study every bit as much as he was with the most ancient source, we don’t have to worry. We can go ahead and play at whatever skill level. Just remember that none of us play the game to perfection.

  • How do we treat testimony and the witness?

    by Doris Horton Murdoch

    Testify coverJohn 9:24-25, NASB: So a second time they (Pharisees) called the man who had been blind, and said to him, “Give glory to God; we know that this man [Jesus] is a sinner.” He then answered, “Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I do know that though I was blind, now I see.”
    John 1:46. NASB: Nathaniel said to him, “Can any good come out of Nazareth?” Phillip said to him, “Come and see.”
    Jealousy and fear led to the accusation of Jesus being a sinner and not of God. Does unbelief and worldly desires cause division? What must the “believing body” be very careful of? Does the church question change in a person’s life when a testimony is shared? Does the body truly forgive others and find joy in one’s redemption? Does the body encourage and nurture the new believer to live out the shared testimony? What is our response to John 1:46?
    Check out Part I of the book, Testify: By the Blood of the Lamb and the Word of our Testimony.

    Order Testify: By the Blood of the Lamb and the Word of Our Testimony here: https://energiondirect.info/christian-living/testify

  • The risks of testifying in one's own congreation

    by Doris Horton Murdoch

    Testify coverJohn 8:31-32, NASB: So Jesus was saying to these Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.”
    Is it culturally risky to share one’s testimony? Is it more difficult to share with church family than the unbelieving world? How does the church body respond to testimonials?
    When one has made a drastic change in life and shares a personal testimony, it may be difficult to share the testimony with long-term believers. One may be living in an environment that is not approved of by the congregation or may be in a job that requires Sunday obligations. The new believer may be marginalized by the congregation due to economics, education, disabilities, racism, misjudgment or misunderstandings. Persecution may come to the person who chooses to testify to the Truth of Jesus Christ. John 8:31-32 speaks of spiritual freedom through the Truth, Jesus Christ.
    Has the congregation that persecutes or segregates truly found freedom through the Truth? Does God expect us to damage our worldly reputation to become reputable witnesses for His Kingdom?

    Order Testify: By the Blood of the Lamb and the Word of Our Testimony here: https://energiondirect.info/christian-living/testify

     

  • Markers of spiritual growth

    by Doris Horton Murdoch

    Testify coverMust others see changes in the Christian’s walk in order for us to be ongoing witnesses to the world? Once we’ve accepted Christ as our personal Savior, can we remain at this initial stage of belief? Without interruptions on this walk that move us in new directions, are we truly growing as Christians? What is the journey of sanctification?
    As author of the book, Testify: By the Blood of the Lamb and the Word of Our Testimony, I believe the Christian’s life should be filled with spiritual markers that redirect the footsteps of the faithful, ever-drawing the disciple closer to the likeness of Jesus and God’s eternal kingdom. Read the book. Become aware of spiritual markers and how these markers change the believer’s life. Internalize the process of sanctification so that there is a personal awareness of God ever-moving in the believer’s journey to complete salvation.

    Order Testify: By the Blood of the Lamb and the Word of Our Testimony here: https://energiondirect.info/christian-living/testify

  • WRONG ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT JESUS AND ISRAEL

    Care RootsChristians who have not realized and valued the Jewish roots of the Church can have wrong assumptions about Jesus. For instance, a famous work of art, “The Last Supper” by Leonardo daVinci, is in error in almost every historical detail, but the Church has never questioned this depiction of the Lord Jesus Christ and His disciples. Dwight Pryor of The Center for Judaic Christian Studies points out that The Last Supper was actually a Passover Seder, and the correct setting is in the evening, commemorating the night the death angel “passed over” the homes of the Israelites as they were preparing to flee Egypt. In the painting fish and bread are served, but the food Jesus and His disciples had was matza (unleavened bread) and a lamb from the Temple sacrifices. In the painting Jesus is seated upright at the center of a long table. However, Jesus and his disciples would have been reclining on the floor on cushions, leaning around a u-shaped table called a triclinium. Jesus, the guest of honor, would have been placed in the second position from the right end. Instead, daVinci painted “thirteen Europeans in Renaissance clothing having a midday meal in an Italian palace!” says Pryor. Jesus was robbed of His Jewish identity!
    We lost the awareness of the Jewishness of Jesus and of Christianity when the Church began changing from a fully Jewish membership (about ten years after Pentecost) to a Gentile religion, especially after the dispersion of the Jews following the Second Jewish Revolt of A.D. 135. A famous Jewish evangelist, Jonathan Bernis of Jewish Voice Ministries, said that before his eyes were opened to see the true identity of Jesus of Nazareth, he thought Jesus was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Christ! His false assumption was similar to that of the brothers of Joseph when they were sent from Canaan by their father Jacob to Egypt to buy grain during the famine. Joseph, the Prime Minister of Egypt, appeared to them to be a Gentile. How shocked they were later when he revealed himself as their own brother! (Gen. 42-45) Just as Joseph was “received” as “Savior” from the famine by the Gentile Egyptians, in the same way Jesus was received as Savior from sin by the Gentiles. But the time is coming and is already here when the Jewish people will recognize their Jewish Messiah, just as Joseph’s brothers finally recognized him, “and all Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:25-26).
    Christians can have wrong assumptions about Israel also. Many wrongly assume that the Arabs and Jews should share the land equally, but they don’t take into account that the covenants God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (name changed to Israel) regarding the land are everlasting covenants. Those who don’t respect the authority of the Bible but lean on their human understanding have made wrong assumptions. God made generous provisions of land for the Arabs, descendants of Ishmael and Esau, but His covenant was with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel (Gen. 17: 18-21). Moreover, He identified Himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying “This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations” (Ex. 3:15). Their descendants, the Jews, were promised the Holy Land, which was first defined to Abraham as the land from the Nile River to the Euphrates River (Gen. 15:18). That includes the so-called “West Bank” (Judea and Samaria) where many Jews have bravely settled and claimed their biblical inheritance in the midst of hostile Muslims.
    Even though the Palestinians continue to threaten that they will push Israel into the Sea, God has guaranteed that Israel will exist as long as the sun, moon and stars exist! (Jer. 31:35-36) The Muslims do not want a state alongside the state of Israel; they want a land devoid of Jews. It is not a territorial dispute, because the 22 Arab nations have over eight million square miles of land (rich with oil), and Israel has only eight thousand, six hundred thirty square miles. God has deeded the land to Israel, a fact which the world rejects, because they reject the authority of God’s Word.
    The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is actually a religious, and indeed, a spiritual conflict.  All peace plans have and will fail because of misunderstanding this.  When Israel was recreated in the center of the Islamic heartland in 1948, demonstrating that the Bible, and not the Qur’an, was God’s true Word, this was a direct challenge to Islam.  The Qur’an demands that jihad be waged until Israel is wiped out.  Today the Covenant of the Hamas states, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).  The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”  This Covenant is based on Mohammed’s “hadith” (sayings and laws transmitted orally) in which He claimed the Final Hour will not come until Muslims slaughter Jews, and even the rocks and trees will betray the Jews hiding behind them.  This portrayal of the Final Hour means a Muslim, who by faith has to believe in the Hour, has to also believe in this mass slaughter of Jews” (http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm).
    Again, this is a spiritual conflict.
    The world falsely assumes that the conflict has a human solution, but the Bible says otherwise. The flash point for the conflict centers on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where Satan has been planning to set up his throne ever since he was kicked out of heaven (Rev. 12: 7-9; Isa. 14:12-14; Matt. 24:15-16; II Thess. 2: 3-4). The Lord Jesus will return to that holy place, vanquish Satan and all His enemies, and begin His reign over all the earth in New Jerusalem (Zech. 14; Rev. 19-22).
    New Jerusalem will be a Jewish place with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel written on the twelve gates of the city! The wall of the city will have twelve foundations with the names of the twelve Jewish apostles of the Lamb on them. It would be wise for Christians to get rid of their false assumptions about Jesus and Israel, God’s Holy Land, and begin rehearsing for our heavenly destiny by caring about our Jewish roots!
    What are some ways you can begin to show that you care about the Jewish roots of the Church?

  • YOU ARE GOD’S POEM

    by Nancy Petrey

    Habitation of HoneyAfter my book, Habitation of Honey: Poems and Songs, was published this May, I continued to write poems, and they came in quick succession. God would inspire me with a thought or a verse from Scripture, and the words would flow out in rhythm and rhyme. Writing a poem or a song is more fun and easier than writing prose. The advantage of poetry is that it isn’t complicated, it takes less time, and it encapsulates truth that can fly like an arrow to the heart.
    I wrote a poem, “His Shaft of Light,” as a poetic response to the shooting in the AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, and the subsequent controversy about the Confederate flag. Here is an excerpt of that poem:
    Ramping up the rhetoric, accusations rife,
    Doing all they can to get you into strife.
    Please don’t take the bait, and let your temper flare.
    Behind it all is Satan, of whom you’re not aware
    Principalities and powers, fanning flames of hate,
    People rush to judgment, but God calls out to wait.
    Pause and say a prayer to the One Who sees it all.
    Be a source of healing, be ready at His call
    .….
    Look for opportunities to be His shaft of light,
    When anger smokes and voices rage,
    His Spirit scatters night.
    Warfare is our portion, so it’s best that we obey
    Our Commander, the Messiah – He will lead the way.
    The next morning I awoke with a big question mark in my soul. Was this poem really from God or just my own “take” on the situation? I asked the Lord and then turned at random in the Bible to see if He would answer with a certain verse. It so happened I opened at Ephesians 2, and my eye fell on the little boxed-in section at the top right of the page, “Word Wealth,” with the definition of the Greek word for “workmanship” from the 10th verse: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
    This is what I read: “Poiema (poy-ay-mah): from the verb poiea, ‘to make.’ (Compare ‘poem’ and ‘poetry.’)” OH! I GASPED! It was obvious God was speaking to me! I held the Bible to my chest and began to worship and thank Him for answering my question and convincing me that my poem was indeed from Him! Then I read on: “Poiema emphasizes God as the Master Designer, the universe as His creation and the redeemed believer as His NEW creation (Eph. 2:10). Before conversion our lives had no rhyme or reason. Conversion brought us balance, symmetry, and order. WE ARE GOD’S POEM, HIS WORK OF ART.”[1] Wow! Just to think that I am God’s work of art, His poem!
    Satan had tried to squelch my creative endeavor, but God graciously affirmed me as a poet. I was scheduled to speak at a women’s meeting a month later, and I shared my testimony about how God spoke to me in the midst of my doubts. Then I recited a new poem God had given me from Ephesians 2:10 just for this group of women, “God’s Poem.” Here is an excerpt:
    …
    Put on His whole armor, quote His word out loud,
    You are God’s poem, of you He’s very proud.
    Maidens on the march, publishing His word,[2] As you speak in love, know that you’ll be heard.
    God wants a multitude, a wedding is His goal –
    Jesus and His bride, His poem to unfold.
    …
    All my poems and songs in my book, Habitation of Honey, are based on Scripture. The recurring theme is the destiny of the Church as the Bride of Christ, her highest calling. I think of these poems as helping to prepare the way for the return of the Lord. John the Baptist did that the first time the Messiah came to earth. Remember, he ate locusts and wild honey in the wilderness. To be ready for the Bridegroom, the Bride needs to continually eat the honey – read and study the Scripture. These scriptural poems and songs can serve as daily devotionals. They are varied, some calling for action, some extolling the awesomeness of God in creation, and some contemplative. I need this one, “Sit Quietly” (an excerpt):
    As the butterfly flitting from flower to flower,
    You’ve tasted the nectar in this world’s hour.
    Your wings have shimmered with light from above,
    But I would tuck you under my wing, little dove.
    You’ll never want to fly away,
    Nestled by Me, you’ll want to stay.
    You will hear my heart, if you lie very still,
    And you’ll have my power working in your will…
    There are seasons in life, and you’ve run the race,
    But nothing is better than seeing My face.
    Sit quietly now, look up at My smile.
    I’ve been gazing at you a long, long while.
    What kind of poem is God making of your life? What truth is He displaying through His workmanship in your life? What facet of His beauty, power, and love is He showing forth in the poetry of your life? You are God’s poem! Rejoice!

    [1] Jack W. Hayford, Gen. Ed., Spirit-Filled Life Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, New King James Version, 1991), p. 1789.
    [2] Psalm 68:11 – “The Lord gave the word, great was the company [feminine noun] of those who proclaimed it.”

    Order Habitation of Honey: Poems and Songs here: https://energiondirect.info/christian-living/habitation-of-honey

  • MY CONTINUING JOURNEY AS A MIZPAH

    by Nancy Petrey

    Jewish RootsIt was on August 18, 1995, that God called me to a specific work in His kingdom, that of a “Mizpah” for Israel. It came in the form of a personal prophecy from my husband, who said, “The Lord has told me you are a Mizpah for Israel.” A friend pointed me to the story of the covenant made between Jacob and his father-in-law, Laban. “And Laban said, ‘This heap [of stones] is a witness between you and me this day.’ Therefore its name was called Galeed, also Mizpah, because he said, ‘May the Lord watch between you and me when we are absent one from another.” Later I found out that Israel and the Church were indeed “absent one from another,” because the Church had cut off her Jewish roots!
    A personal prophecy is not meant to direct your life but to confirm a direction that God is already leading you in. I had already been acting as a witness and a watchman for Israel after being inspired by my first tour there in 1994. Being in Israel gave me the feeling I had gone home, and upon my return I wrote a report entitled, “Back to My Roots.” This was before I even knew there was a Jewish roots movement. Now God was calling me to help the Church to be reconnected to her Jewish roots.
    The real beginning point of my Jewish roots journey began back in 1975, when I read Corrie Ten Boom’s book, The Hiding Place. The courage she and her family had in hiding Jews from the Nazis in Holland really impacted my life. On a trip to Israel in 1998, with a seven-and-a-half-hour layover in Amsterdam, I was able to visit the Ten Boom watchmaker’s shop where the famous hiding place was located. How dramatic that I could step into the cut-out wall to stand in that hiding place! While in the house I also had the blessing of playing the piano and having others gather around and sing “You are My Hiding Place.”
    On my most recent trip to Israel in September-October, 2012, I had another priceless musical experience. My friend and I visited the Jerusalem Prayer Center, which is the former home of Horatio Spafford’s daughter, Bertha Vester. Her piano was in the chapel, and my host in Jerusalem, Roy Kendall, played Spafford’s beautiful hymn, “It is Well with My Soul,” on that piano, as our group sang along. My spirit soared.
    Other exciting things have happened to me on my seven trips to Israel, but nothing is more satisfying than seeing my Jewish Messiah in Scripture, as I continue my journey as a Mizpah! I see Yeshua the Messiah closely identified with Israel in the servant passages in Isaiah – “Israel, My Servant” (Isa. 41:8-9; 43:10; 44:1, 21; 45:4; 48:20; and 49:3) and “Yeshua My Servant” (Isa. 42:1; 49:5-6; 50:4-10; 52:13; and 53:11.) The servant roles of both Yeshua and Israel are juxtaposed, however, within these three verses: “… You are My servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified … And now the Lord says, Who formed Me [Yeshua] from the womb to be His Servant [Yeshua], to bring Jacob back to Him, so that Israel is gathered to Him … It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles …” (Isa. 49:3, 5-6).
    Never forget that Jesus was born King of the Jews, died King of the Jews, and is coming back to Jerusalem, the Jewish capital, as not only King of the Jews, but King of the whole world!
    Although national Israel today does not recognize Yeshua of Nazareth as their long-awaited Messiah, they will soon. Zechariah prophesies, “… they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn” (Zech. 12:10), indicating repentance and recognition! It is interesting that the word “whom” in this verse was inserted by the translators, because the Hebrew word, “et,” is not translatable. This little word, “et” looks like this in Hebrew – את, and it is always used between a verb and its object. The two Hebrew letters making up “et” are Aleph (א) and Tav (ת), which are the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In Greek they would be Alpha and Omega! Who does that remind you of? The little word “et” gives the identity of the “WHOM,” connecting “Me” (Jesus) and “they” (Israel) in this verse! He is the Aleph and the Tav, the First and the Last! The Hebrew letters form a picture of His sacrifice – Aleph (א), the ox, a sacrificial animal, and Tav (ת), a CROSS in its earliest form! Chew on that a while!
    It is satisfying to see a portrait of the Jewish Messiah hidden in the Hebrew alphabet. And knowing that we are grafted in to the Jewish olive tree (Rom. 11:16-24) causes Scripture to really open up to us. Current events in Israel become more personally relevant also. We will not only see Bible prophecy being fulfilled, but we can choose to be involved in it!
    Maybe I have whetted your appetite to take a Jewish roots journey. I pray so. What kind of journey are you on now in your walk with the Lord?

    Order Jewish Roots Journey here: https://energiondirect.info/theology/jewish-roots-journey 
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