UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES
The Newsletter of Contend for the Faith, Inc

1 Chronicles 12:32

JUNE 2001

Beginnings

Pray for Annette’s brother Mike in Texas who has been a JW for 25 years and has led his wife and three of his children into this bondage which masquerades as the truth. Mike is a very intelligent man who is the president of his own company. And please pray for Annette who loves her brother and wants him to come to the knowledge of the truth.

We are also still helping Trisha, whose neighbors, Doug and Julie, are Jehovah’s Witnesses. Trisha has become frustrated with her neighbor Julie who lives inconsistently with what JW’s teach, yet she refuses to abandon this cult.

Please for Doug and Julie, that the will come to see the falseness of this cult and the truth of Christianity. Please pray that their small children will also receive Christ as their savior. And please pray for Trisha, the Christian neighbor trying to reach them, that she will not grow weary in well doing and she will grow in her understanding and defense of Christianity.

We are also helping people in another situation. Bob and Lynne are Christians who have a dear friend named Lin who is very involved in the New Age movement. We are helping them better understand the New Age viewpoint so they can be better witnesses to Lin.

Please pray for Bob and Lynne as they learn more about how to respond to the New Age teachings to reach their friend, and please pray for Lin that her eyes will be opened by the truth and she will reject spiritual deception and embrace the gospel of Christ.

We greatly desire your prayers in all of these situations and for the class below.

COLLEGE SURVIVAL CLASS

Beginning July 11, 2001, I will be teaching a 5-week class on Wednesday nights from 7:00-9:30pm at Calvary Church for present and soon-to-be college students to learn to defend their faith at college.

This class will prepare them for the clash of worldviews they will face on the college campus, from atheistic professors to New Age classmates and from liberalism to relativism. These belief systems will be explained and their inherent problems will be exposed.

This class is open to anyone of college age or up. The cost of the class is only $25, which covers books and materials provided. Call Dave at 541-2676 for more information!

CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH

UNDERSTANDING THE HEART OF THE GOSPEL

Is it possible that there are people in your church and in mine who, while they profess to know Christ, do not have a clear understanding of the Gospel? Certainly the answer is likely to be yes, but we don’t like to think that people in our own churches merely profess, yet do not possess, a relationship with the Lord Jesus.

I was troubled by an article that ran in the Charlotte Observer in May. You may have seen it. It was the first-person account of a reporter for the newspaper, Michelle Crouch, chronicling her journey from Catholicism to evangelicalism to Judaism.

She was born into a Catholic family, but she turned to evangelical Christianity while in high school when she “publicly accept[ed] Jesus into my heart.” She tried to witness to unsaved friends and she prayed continually for her parents’ salvation. But Michelle became weary of witnessing, and she began to wonder “whether it was right to judge others by what they believed, rather than what kind of person they were.” She admits “I began to realize the Christian belief system wasn’t working for me.”

As an adult she met and married a man who is Jewish. This set her on the road to learning more about his Jewish beliefs, and after much study and introspection, Michelle converted to Reform Judaism, a liberal branch of the Jewish religion, which she says “helps me make more sense of the world.”

What happened in her situation? Did she truly trust in Christ for her salvation, only to abandon Him for another way that seemed more sensible? Or did she never understand the Gospel in the first place, so the act of accepting Jesus into her heart was meaningless?

What was different, however, was the reaction to the cartoon. Some newspapers refused to run it. Others, including The Charlotte Observer, ran an apology for those offended by the strip.

What caused the furor? In the comic, Hart drew a menorah, a Jewish candle stand with seven flames. As each of the seven sayings of Jesus on the cross was quoted, one of the flames was extinguished. At the end, the menorah turned into the cross.

Letters to the editor flooded the newspapers. The cartoonist was likened to the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis for what was perceived to be his anti-Jewish sentiment. Charlotte rabbi Jim Bennett accused Hart of promot-ing “Christian triumphalism.”

What was most interesting to me in this controversy was that the letter writers were upset primarily because someone would dare make the claim that Christianity was the fulfillment of Old Testament Judaism; whether or not the claim was true was secondary.

Reflecting the postmodern philosophy so popular in our day, wherein it is the greatest conceivable sin to claim that one viewpoint is correct and all opposing views are therefore incorrect, Rabbi Bennett wrote:

“Jews today are grateful that most Christians reject the idea, which Hart appears to embrace, that Christianity has replaced Judaism. Our Jewish faith affirms there are many paths to truth and many ways to fulfill God’s will for our lives. We believe Judaism is, and always has been, a living and legitimate faith system, like Christianity, Islam and every other faith held dear by people today.”

The problem with Hart’s view of Christianity, according to postmodern thinking, is that it is too exclusive and intolerant of other systems of belief.

This situation reminded me of a column written years ago by the advice columnist “Dear Abby,” who happens to be Jewish by ethnicity. A reader, respond-ing to an earlier letter, wrote to Abby:

“Your answer to the woman who complained that her relatives were always arguing with her about religion was ridiculous. You advised her to simply declare the subject off-limits. Are you suggesting that people talk only about trivial, meaningless subjects so as to avoid a potential controversy? . . . It is arrogant to tell people there are subjects that they may not mention in your presence. You could have sug-gested she learn enough about her relatives’ cult to show them the errors contained in its teachings.”

Abby’s response was telling:

“In my view, the height of arrogance is to attempt to show people the ‘errors’ in the religion of their choice.”

There are at least two significant problems in the postmodern thinking that led to both of these situations.

First, it may not be the height of arrogance but the epitome of love to show people the errors of their beliefs. If an earthquake causes a bridge to collapse in front of me, am I being arrogant by turning around and warning others going down the same road to turn around also and avoid certain death? And if alerting others of impend-ing doom in the temporal realm is an act of compassion, how much more loving is it to warn people of spiritual eternal death?

Second, those who object to the exclusivity of the claims of Christianity themselves commit the same “transgression.” In other words, if the assertion “The only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ” is non-inclusive of other points of view, then the counterclaim “Your (Christian) view is wrong, but mine is right” is equally exclusive.

The bottom line here is that everyone, both believers and un-believers, should be less concerned about being offended by religious claims and more concerned about whether or not these assertions are TRUE. We all need to be, first and foremost, committed to truth.

Jesus says as much in His encounter with Pilate. After telling him He came into the world to bear witness to the truth, Jesus says, “Everyone on the side of truth listens to Me” (John 18:37 NIV). How you respond to Jesus says more about you than it does about Him.

When Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), He was making a most reasonable statement. Ask those to whom you are witness-ing, on which side are they?

Jude 3,
Dave