Two dangers facing the church

“And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’a and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God,’ he is not to ‘honor his fatherc’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’" (Matthew 15:3-9 NIV) "Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow. Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: 'Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!'? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. (Colossians 2:16-23 NIV). Modern Christians tend to misjudge the Pharisees. From a human standpoint the Pharisees were not evil men disguising themselves as good, they were religious men desperately trying to be good. Unfortunately that desire became the bait of the trap of self-righteousness that they found themselves entrapped in. Let's take a quick look at how Pharisaism developed. While in the Babylonian captivity, the religious leaders began to rightly reason, "We are in this mess because we broke the Law of God." Moving forward from that premise, they devised a strategy to rectify the problem. That strategy resulted in erecting fences around the Law of God in an effort to keep people from breaking that law. Historically the process resulted in the work we know as the Talmund. By Jesus' day there were some 724 volumes of rabbinic interpretations all designed to keep the Jews from stepping over the boundary of the Law. Unfortunately, the very fences these rabbinic leaders erected to protect the Law became the very obstacles that obscured the Law and elicited Jesus scathing rebuke, "Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition." Modern Christians are not immune. How sad when we as believers allow our traditions to trump Biblical truth! A number of years ago I was at a conference of Baptist churches where the speaker asked the youth leaders, "Who would you tell your older teens to marry if they asked you? One leader proudly answered, "I'd tell them to marry a Baptist first and a Christian second!" That my friend is a prime example of tradition being held as the authority of truth! As I see it there are two very real dangers facing the church today. One is modernity, a view that is constantly altering the Word of God in hopes of staying relevant. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, those who follow such a tack have a very weak view of Scripture. They do not view the Bible as the Authoritative Word of God, rather they se it as the creation of fallen and often misguided men who wrote from a standpoint of cultural bias. By and large we recognize this danger as that of theological liberalism, unless we are in the Baptist tradition, then we call such people "moderates" A second danger, one we don't quickly or easily recognize in our churches, is the danger of Pharisaism where traditions become mistaken as truth. Don't get me wrong, I am not opposed to tradition, but I am opposed to any tradition which is elevated to the status of Biblical truth and supported by Scriptures purposefully misinterpreted as the frame of tradition is forced upon what we allow the Scripture to say. We need to be careful students of the Scripture. We need to carefully guard the Truth of God's Word, and avoid the dangers inherent in either liberalism or Pharisaism. Rev. Dr. John Pearrell, Gateway Community Church (SBC) Covington, GA

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

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There is a growing myth that needs to be exposed.  Recently, an influential evangelical pastor reportedly has declared that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.  This misunderstanding is found in the broader misunderstanding that all the monotheistic religions worship the same God.  A.     According to Eerdman’s handbook of religion “Judaism is the oldest of the three great monotheistic religions and is the parent of both Christianity and Islam.”  The assumption then is since we have a common ancestry, we must then have a common God.

Now, beside the fact that if one is to read the Koran he or she will discover that the Allah of the Koran is quite different in nature then the God of the Bible.  But let’s not argue that particular point.  For those of us who are Christians, the authority of Scripture must be the foundation upon which we build our world view on this important question.

I believe that there are two key passages which help us answer the question as to whether or not we who name the name of Christ and those who follow the prophet Mohammad are in fact trying to approach the same God.

Our first passage is found in Acts 17.  Paul is in Athens and he has observed the multiplicity of ways in which the Athenians were trying to approach God.  “So Paul stood up in front of the council and said: People of Athens, I see that you are very religious. As I was going through your city and looking at the things you worship, I found an altar with the words, “To an Unknown God.” You worship this God, but you don’t really know him. So I want to tell you about him. This God made the world and everything in it. He is Lord of heaven and earth, and he doesn’t live in temples built by human hands. He doesn’t need help from anyone. He gives life, breath, and everything else to all people. From one person God made all nations who live on earth, and he decided when and where every nation would be. God has done all this, so that we will look for him and reach out and find him. He isn’t far from any of us, and he gives us the power to live, to move, and to be who we are. “We are his children,” just as some of your poets have said. Since we are God’s children, we must not think that he is like an idol made out of gold or silver or stone. He isn’t like anything that humans have thought up and made. In the past, God forgave all this because people did not know what they were doing. But now he says that everyone everywhere must turn to him. He has set a day when he will judge the world’s people with fairness. And he has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death.” (Acts 17:22–31, CEV)

Notice a number of key points Paul makes: (1) it is possible to be religious yet deceived.  He says, “You worship this God, but you don’t really know Him.  If one stops and thinks about it for a minute, if the Bible is true and “Only Jesus has the power to save! His name is the only one in all the world that can save anyone.” (Acts 4:12, CEV), then one of Satan’s most diabolical devices is any belief system that points people anywhere else but to Christ.  Indeed, Paul makes this point in the text above.  (2)” In the past, God forgave all this because people did not know what they were doing. But now he says that everyone everywhere must turn to him. He has set a day when he will judge the world’s people with fairness.”  May I put this in plain English, people who try to get to God any other way beside Christ are worshipping in vain; they are spinning their wheels so to speak.  (3) The third key point Paul makes is that the resurrection of Christ has “sealed the deal” and in judgment Allah will not save you, Mohammad, will not save you, Moses will not save you, Abraham will not save you, Buddha will not save you, nor will any of the 300 million gods of Hinduism.  Only Christ can save you.

Now, let’s jump back to a very key passage of Scripture found in John 8.  Jesus is in a debate with the Jews.  They claim, “The only Father we have is God himself.”  (John 8:41).  Look carefully at Jesus’ response:  “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” (John 8:42–47, NIV84).  And earlier in John 8 Jesus says something quite astonishing, and, if I may be so bold, quite clearly.  Look at John 8:19, “You do not know me or my Father.  If you knew me, you would know my Father also.”

What did Jesus just say?  Very simply He says clearly and firmly that the only way to know the true God is by knowing Him.  If I understand this correctly, Jesus has just claimed that unless we recognize Him, we cannot recognize God.  Therefore, any religion that worships any God apart from Christ is not worshipping the One True God of Heaven!

Now, before you start crying “Bigot,” “Elitist,” and start telling me to “read the rest of the Bible,” etc., etc., let me remind you of two other very important passages of Scripture.  John 14:6 and Matthew 26:39.  In John 14:6 Jesus makes a very startling claim, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6, NIV84).  Notice here please that Jesus does not claim to be a way to God, but He claims to be the only way to God.  That “no one” is a universal exclusive.  So if you are going to call anyone a bigot, and an elitist, and arrogant, you need to start those accusations with Jesus since he is the one who made the claim.

Many of course want to argue that Jesus really said no such thing.  It is amazing how selective we get when it comes to wanting to believe what we want to believe.  Many claim to accept the authority of Scripture except when they say something they don’t want to hear, then they start all sort of mental gyrations to get it where they want it.  One of my favorite is the guy who told me, “Well, Jesus didn’t mean that He was the only way to God, what He meant was His way of love is the only way to God.” 

So put John 14:6 aside for a minute, and look at Jesus’ prayer in the Garden. “Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.’” (Matthew 26:39, NIV84).  What is Jesus asking for here?  He is asking the Father if there is any other way of salvation; any other way men might be able to get into real fellowship with God, any other way men might be able to enter the Kingdom of God, then, please, don’t let Him go to the cross.  Does He go to the cross?  If the answer is yes, then the corollary to that is there is no other way to heaven except through Jesus the Christ.

Years ago, after a trip, I came home and received some very bad news; news no one wants to hear—ever.  I was told that a biopsy had revealed not only a cancer, but the fastest growing cancer known to man.  Not good news.  Let me ask you a question.  Wouldn’t it have been more loving for my doctor and then my wife (who delivered the news to me), just to keep quiet about it?  Not to tell me the truth about my condition?  Obviously the answer is no.  The most loving thing they could do was to tell me the truth, give me the prescribed course of treatment and then let me decide whether I would believe them and follow the advice, or if I would deny the advice and frankly die.

Strange to me at least that we can understand that logic on a physical level, but on the spiritual level where we are dealing with eternal matters of life and death, we think it is more loving to let people believe in that which is not true rather than run the risk of offending them.  I weep when I realize some believing Muslims strap bombs to themselves, blow up innocent people (it matters not if they are infidels or other Muslims) believing that they are going to wake up in Paradise.  But if what Jesus said, is true, they wake up instead in an eternal hell.  Oh, wait, I guess it is not loving for me to point that out is it.

Whatever you think on this matter is ultimately between you and God.  I for one am going to rest on the authority of the revealed Word of God rather than upon my own wishful thinking.