The book of Isaiah may be the best loved book the Old Testament. It is familiar partly because Isaiah is quoted in the New Testament more than any other prophet; this should be no surprise since Isaiah’s message to God’s wayward people was that one day He would send His Servant, the Messiah, to redeem them and bring them back to him. People are encouraged to read that although Judah fell into sin and unbelief, God promised to save a remnant for Himself. What some people overlook is what God promised to do to Judah before salvation came.
While it
is true that Isaiah offered hope for Judah’s future, he didn’t gloss over the
punishment that was to come. The prophet shared God’s
warning in no uncertain terms, “My people will go into exile because they
lack knowledge.” The knowledge the prophet referred to is the same thing Wisdom
teaches in Proverbs: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and
the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Jesus
repeated this concept when He declared, “Now this is eternal life: that
they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” The
knowledge of God – who He is and what He requires – is the essential knowledge
the people in Isaiah’s day were missing.
I fear
that the same thing may be true of much of the church today. Personal Bible
study, that which seeks essential knowledge, is rare even among evangelical, “born
again” Christians. The Christian pollster, George Barna, reports the
sad statistics of how few Bible believers read their Bibles regularly. Too many
believers are satisfied with what their pastor or some popular media figure
tells them. Sound Bible preaching is good; the growth of radio, television and
Internet Bible teaching is a modern blessing. However, if believers don’t follow
the Bereans and do their homework, they risk being led into the same trap
as the people Paul
warned about: “they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.”
There
was a period in history about the time of the “Third
Great Awakening” when Satan seems to have worked overtime to fill “itching
ears” with the doctrines of demons. It is interesting to note that several of
the quasi-Christian sects that exist today had their beginnings in the mid- to
late-nineteenth century. The Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Seventh-day
Adventists, the Christian Scientists each trace their roots to that time.
Dispensationalists and Pentecostals, though perhaps not as far removed from
Bible truth, also sprung from this era. I have often wondered what made that
time period such fertile ground for error to sprout.
The
premillennial dispensationalism of John
Nelson Darby that swept early twentieth century America at the urging of
the infamous
C.I. Scofield lies in the foundations of venerable institutions like Moody
Bible Institute and Dallas Seminary. Because of this, most Baptists today who
know only of this version of end times theology have no idea that when Hal
Lindsay’s The Late Great Planet Earth and LaHaye and Jenkins’ Left
Behind series popularized Darbyism late in the century that the teaching
was then barely one hundred years old. Darby’s invented eschatology stood in
contrast to almost two thousand years of Scriptural teaching. A friend once counselled
me that if a Bible student comes up with something no one else has ever seen in
Scripture, he’s wrong. At the very least, one should question his assertions.
The same
kind of thing happened with Pentecostalism early in the twentieth century as it
spread a version of emotional, materialistic religion across America. The names
of Charles Fox Parham
and William Seymour are not widely known outside of charismatic circles,
but these men and others heavily influenced primarily Wesleyan and Baptist
believers. They took a particular reading of a few Scriptures and developed a
system of thinking that has infected three generations of Christians. Their
belief in a second work of the Holy Spirit in believers, the “prosperity
gospel,” as it is sometimes called, the frenetic search for an ecstatic worship
experience that characterize so many young churches today, all find their roots
in the teachings of these few men.
It was
during my Bible college years that I was introduced to the charismatic
movement. I decided to take the “Berean”
approach recommended by Paul, and I discovered that there was much to be
admired in the desire of the charismatics to make the Word of God a reality in
their daily lives. I also had some truly wonderful worship experiences when I
visited their services. I was less certain that the health and wealth preaching
paired with a name-it-claim-it attitude could be supported by Scripture. It all
seemed too materialistic to be a proper reflection of what I see in the Word.
While I
disagree with the hermeneutics that bring the dispensational Baptists and
charismatics to their various conclusions, I wouldn’t call them heretical. Being
wrong about the end times or focusing too much on material prosperity shouldn’t
keep anyone from the Kingdom of God as long as the faith they proclaim is in
Christ and His sacrifice alone. However, there are some teachings becoming
popular today that strike at the heart of what it means to be Christian. The
first I call the happiness gospel and the other is the same-sex gospel.
I have
written extensively about the warm, fuzzy happiness misunderstanding in my Rob
Bell series and my response to Randy Alcorn’s Happiness. (see links
below) On the surface it may not seem like Alcorn’s confusion of happiness with
joy is a big deal; it is when you realize it promotes a false gospel. It is
easier to see how Rob Bell’s type of preaching—no hell; no judgment – can’t be
squared with the Bible at all. I have also written about our generation’s exposure
to a more subtle but deadly misunderstanding about same-sex relationships that
threatens the foundation of what God is doing with humankind. The male/female
intimacy of marriage is essential to the imageo Dei. (see Truth
Dysphoria)
Each of
these modern misapprehensions of Bible truth can be clearly rebutted with a
good dose of Bible knowledge. The day is coming when our knowledge will be
complete. Paul speaks of a day when we no longer see through a glass darkly. God
promises a day when, “the land will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the sea is filled with water.” I am confident that God
has the same message for people today as He did in Isaiah’s day: “Woe to
those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and
light for darkness.” Isaiah’s contemporary, Hosea,
gave the same warning he did: “My people are destroyed for lack of
knowledge.”
I wrote
it in “Today’s
Chaldean Chastisement,” and I will repeat it here: we should not imagine
that God is so much different today than He was in Isaiah’s day. As the prophet
Malachi
reports: “I am the Lord; I change not.” Our faith is a historical,
propositional faith; it demands knowledge. If we don’t possess the knowledge of
who God is and what He requires, we will bear the same consequences He
promised through Isaiah: “If you do not stand firm in your faith [with
knowledge as the foundation], then you will not stand at all.” Where do you
stand?
No comments:
Post a Comment