UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES: 2002/03
Print Version
E-mail This Article
Leave CommentUNDERSTANDING THE TIMES
The Newsletter of Contend for the Faith, Inc
1 Chronicles 12:32
MARCH 2002
Man of Honor, Man of Heresy
THE MAN OF HONOR
Last month Deborah and I had the pleasure of attending a banquet at which John Ashcroft, the Attorney General of the United States and former senator from Missouri, was the featured speaker.
Mr. Ashcroft has been roundly criticized in the media and by groups hostile to Christianity for being publicly outspoken concerning his Christian beliefs. Some have even suggested he resign from his position as Attorney General if he insists on affirming his faith in public. (I wonder: would the same people call for his resignation if he were outspoken about being a homosexual or an atheist? If we had a person in his position who was actively affirming atheism, what would the ACLU, People for the American Way and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State say about Christian leaders and groups claiming he was not fit for office?)
Mr. Ashcroft gave an excellent and encouraging speech. It is truly a blessing to see a godly man occupying this office with the intention and conviction to uphold the law, rather than to circumvent it for the benefit of friends.
In listening to Mr. Ashcroft, I was reminded of the words of John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who said,
“Providence has given our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”
Please remember to pray for Mr. Ashcroft and all who are in the current administration and in Congress that they would lead our nation in a righteous manner (1 Tim. 2:1-4).
THE BISHOP OF HERESY
I can think of no better example of the crucial need for sound and rational doctrinal teaching within the church than John Shelby Spong.
Mr. Spong is a Charlotte native who was a bishop in good standing in the Episcopal Church for more than 20 years in New Jersey. He says his mother was a fundamentalist who raised him to believe the Bible was true, but his faith in the literal truth of Scripture was shattered when he attended a secular university.
“When the power of a great modern secular university . . . challenged my life, I experienced my first faith crisis. My philosophy teacher was an atheist. Another professor . . . had once been a Congregational-ist minister but had . . . repudiated his faith, and upon receiving his doctorate, entered the academic world dedicated to destroying ‘superstitious religion’. . . . It was under such experiences as these that a literal reading of the Bible disintegrated. . . . I met this crisis by abandoning the authority of the literal scriptures.” ( This Hebrew Lord, pg. 08 )
Now retired, Mr. Spong has written several books and dozens of articles denying every essential teaching of the Christian faith.
At a recent visit to Dilworth United Methodist Church in Charlotte he asserted to over 600 avid listeners that the theistic view of God is not only dead but immoral, Jesus did not die for the sins of the world, human beings are not fallen, no transcendent God created the world, the church needs to abandon trying to convert individuals and to stop making people feel guilty because of sin, and Jesus was not born of a virgin and did not rise from the dead. He said all of this while claiming to be a Christian who is a “deeply committed passionate believer in Jesus.”
How many people are now being led astray because this man seemingly never understood and could not defend the things his parents and church taught him?
PRAYER REQUESTS
To teach many College Sur-vival Classes this summer For new computer equipment For $600 more in monthly support to minister full time
CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH
UNDERSTANDING THE VALUE OF THE RESURRECTION
As we approach the Sunday on which we celebrate the greatest event and the most important doctrine of the Christian faith, namely the bodily resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, I am more grateful than ever for this sublime truth upon which the church is built.
For centuries the fact of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead has been denied or distorted or both. It started with the chief priests and elders of the Jews who instructed the soldiers to lie, saying the disciples came and stole the body while they slept (Matt. 27:11-15). The denials and distortions are still being loudly asserted today.
For example, consider the claims of Islam, the religion that has been in the news more than any other since 9/11. The Qur’an denies that Jesus was crucified at all, so of course there was no resurrection. Jesus remained alive until he was taken up into heaven by Allah.
"That they rejected Faith; That they uttered against Mary A grave false charge; That they said (in boast), “We killed Christ Jesus The son of Mary, The Messenger of Allah”, – But they killed him not, nor crucified him, But so it was made To appear to them, . . .
For of a surety They killed him not – Nay, Allah raised him up Unto Himself; and Allah Is exalted in Power, Wise." (Sura 4:156-158)
Muslims believe that Allah would not let his Messenger die such an ignominious death. They have great respect for Jesus as a prophet of God, but he is by no means the Son of God nor equal to God. They deny the resurrection because they deny the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross. In Islam, because there is no Savior, there is no guarantee of life in paradise for most Muslims.
Another example representing both the denial and the distortion of the resurrection of Christ comes from former Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong. Mr. Spong, who speaks and writes prolifically against the essential teachings of the Christian faith, says that a literal understanding of the bodily resurrection of Jesus is clearly “not believable” in our modern, scientific world. Yet he affirms a belief in the resurrec-tion by redefining it.
Instead of the body of Jesus rising from the dead, “resur-rection” is the teachings of Jesus becoming alive in the hearts of the disciples after His death.
"Peter, having had in Galilee an experience of the inbreaking reality of God that he called resurrection, which included seeing Jesus of Nazareth as part of God who was and is, shared that experience first with his Galilean fishing partners James, John, and, maybe, Andrew. It was electrifying, and, though not clear to any of them, it was real." (Resurrection Myth or Reality?, p. 277)
It was both tragic and heart-rending to see over 600 people, after hearing his flagrant denials of every point of the historic Christian faith, give thanks and appreciation to Mr. Spong with two standing ovations.
Two comments from attendees brought home the utter lostness of these sincere but horribly misguided people:
“It was the best revival I have ever been to!”
“Spong taught us ‘We are not born into sin.’ We are glad to hear that!”
TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE
The fact of the literal bodily resurrection is borne out by the uniform and manifold testimo-nies from the books of the New Testament. The birth and existence of the church cannot be explained apart from the victory over death that Christ demon-strated by rising from the dead.
Acts 1:3 says that Jesus presented Himself alive by “many infallible proofs.” Peter tells us that he and the other apostles were “eyewitnesses of His majesty” (2 Pet. 1:16), which included the risen Christ. John declares to his readers that “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). Paul tells us that the good news of the Gospel is the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Christ (1 Cor. 15:1-8).
These men died for their preaching of the fact of Christ’s resurrection. We can REJOICE that while we were yet ungodly sinners, Christ died for us, and we are reconciled to God and justified in His sight when we, too, believe that Jesus is Lord and has risen from the dead (Rom. 4:25; 5:6-10; 10:9-10).
Jude 3,
Dave
