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Pronouncement of Judgment, No. 1
BD19-01© Berean Memorial Church of Irving, Texas, Inc. (1971)
We are here this morning to share in the study and the
explaining of the Word of truth, the Word of God. We
welcome those of you who are visitors in our service, and we trust that the Word of God will prove to be a
significant element in your life. A lady last Sunday morning after the service came up and said she was going to start
attending the services regularly (she was a visitor) so that she could understand
what I was talking about. She isn’t the only one who needs to do that.
But she said a very perceptive thing. The
Word of God reveals to us certain things about ourselves. We have a body, which is self-evident, but we also have an immaterial part of our being which
has a two-fold part to it—a human soul and a human spirit. God has set up this system for you to be able
to come into a relationship with the living God so that you may
function the way He designed you to function. You
have divine viewpoint which is developed as a result of your
understanding of the Word of God. You have frame of reference, and this is what our visitor was talking about. She was saying, “I can’t understand some of
the things that I hear.” She didn’t know
this, but this was because she didn’t have a frame of
reference. It takes time to develop a frame of
reference. It takes years under a
program of Bible doctrine teaching under a pastor-teacher before you
can even begin to get off the ground from the point of your salvation, in an
understanding of God’s plan and your involvement with it.
We have seen that Satan was an angel, he rebelled against
God, and he fell into sin. In time, he
came onto the earth’s scene in the Garden of Eden, and he led
mankind into the only sin that a person could commit in the Garden of Eden, which was
negative volition toward the will of God. So
Adam and Eve sinned, and we discovered that they now possessed an old sin
nature. Their human spirits are now
dead. What happened to them is that into
their souls came this old sin nature. Consequently,
this part of them died, so they are spiritually dead. They
no longer have a point of contact with
God. The old sin nature is now upon the
throne of their lives, and it is dominating all facets of their being. Consequently,
they can’t do it a thing about
it. By rationalism, they cannot approach
God through their reasoning. By
empiricism, through their senses, they cannot approach God. It
was the act of grace when the Lord Jesus
Christ (Jehovah Elohim) walked into the garden and called Adam and
said, “Why are you hiding where you’re hiding?” And
their sin was exposed.
Human good was the first thing they produced, in the form of
their fig leaf loin cloths, in order to cover up the evidences of their
sin. They had lost their covering of
light which they apparently had once possessed before that. Now
they were aware of their nakedness, and
before facing God, they proceeded to provide a human good covering. This
is from the old sin nature, it’s a
satanic production, and it is constantly rejected in the Word of God.
This seems to be a very difficult point. I
find a little negative reaction upon
this. People have a little difficulty
getting it through their understanding that Satan is not running around
trying to turn all hell lose upon the earth. What he is trying
to do is to create as much good and as much
orderliness as possible, which is why he is interested in socialism and
communism, which is trying to create a forceful right relationship between human
beings in a perfect environment. Satan is
interested in producing good, so he goes about producing human good. And
God rejects this just as much as he
rejects the sins that come from our old sin nature. God
will not permit an unbeliever to be saved
by human good, nor will he permit a believer to be rewarded for his
human good.
God entered into the Garden of Eden. He
investigated the human sin, and we saw
that everybody passed the blame on down the line—Adam to Eve,
and Eve to the serpent. The scene is not set for the
pronouncement of divine judgment on man’s sin.
First
of all, in the orders of pronouncement, God began with
man when he asked, “Guilty or not guilty?” He went from the
woman to the serpent. Now he goes first
to the serpent and then on up. So, first we have
the serpent and the judgment which is placed upon him. A curse is declared.
We’ll start at Genesis 3:14, “And the Lord God said unto the
serpent, ‘because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above
all cattle and above every beast of the field. Upon thy
belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy
life.” The serpent, as an animal, is going to suffer
the consequences of being used as a tool of Satan. Animal
creation, we read in the Word of God,
has been made subject to man (Genesis 1:26). It was to be for
man’s blessing, and he was to control it. Animals
however were not made to be instruments of sin. Leviticus
20:15-16 declares that an animal used in sexual sin is to be destroyed. So
that animals, though not accountable,
suffer the consequences of being instruments of man’s sin. The
serpent, of course, was not accountable
as a creature, was not accountable as a creature, but anything that
acts as an agent of Satan, willfully or ignorantly, is going to come under divine judgment.
Romans 8:20-22 indicates that all of creation is suffering
as the result of the contamination of sin. Also Isaiah
11:6-9. However, there is upon the serpent, not only this general condemnation that
comes from sin, the general contamination, but a special judgment. He
is to be different from all the cattle of
the field. The Hebrew word is “behemah.” The
word “behemah” means domestic
animals. So, there is to be over the serpent a certain loathing. Remember
that the serpent was a very beautiful animal, and very clever, and he
apparently moved in an upright position. Because he was
called the bright and shining one, he apparently had a
quality about him of being very attractive.
But then there is another animal that he is condemned
above. We read that he is also to be
above all the beasts of the field. These
beasts are wild animals. The animals
mentioned previously are domestic animals. So, above all
animals, Satan suddenly was going to become a very loathsome
creature. He was to be despised. There is upon him
a curse. The Bible calls it an “arar,” a detesting and
abhorring quality which is place toward the snake.
So, the serpent who was originally the most beautiful of
animals is now made the most repulsive. And
you’ll notice in your English Bible that there’s no
verb here, so it’s an elliptical expression. In order to
make it pungent, it says, “Thou cursed.” He was to be
cursed above all domestic animals and above every wild
animal.
Here’s the mark of the curse. The serpent
henceforth is to crawl upon the ground. He has had
upright locomotion, but now he is to be on the ground. In
the process of his movement, he is to eat dirt. He has no hands
or legs. Every time he picks up a piece of food, it’s going to be something
that has been lying in the filth and the dirt. This is a
sign of what has happened to Satan. Satan, after all,
is in the serpent, and the judgment upon the serpent
reflect the position into which Satan has fallen. He
has bitten the dust—not yet, but he will
in the future at the point of the cross.
The serpent as such is limited in its attack upon its
victims at the foot level. It can strike the legs. However, being on
the ground, its head is thoroughly exposed in a vulnerable position to a fatal blow.
Genesis 3:15
This is going to be the background of the next verse,
Genesis 3:15. Satan, who used the
serpent, is not judged in this curse because he has already been judged
at the time of his revolt against God (Matthew 25:41). The
snake’s position today (every time you see a snake, remember)
is a reminder of the defeat that God has imposed upon Satan. He
gave him a mouthful of dust.
Then comes the next verse with this pronouncement upon
Satan. You would think now the serpent
has been judged. You would think
that the next thing should be the woman because God is going in inverse
order, and the next thing would be Adam, and judgments would be pronounced. But
right at this point, God stops and
interjects a very important thing. Genesis 3:15 is
one of the most dramatic verses of the Bible. This
is the first promise of salvation. It
comes after Satan and the serpent have
been dealt with because they are not included in this salvation. But
it is the principal of God that He does
not bring judgment until He has given opportunity for you to enter
grace. He exercises grace before He pronounces
judgment. This is the first biblical presentation, and it is the promise of a Savior.
Verse 15 says, “And I…” This is Jehovah
Elohim speaking. It’s
actually the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ here, who is the manifest
member of the trinity. Whenever we deal
with the Trinity where people speak to Him or see Him, Christ is the
representative. “I Jehovah, will put
enmity.” In the Hebrew, this is “avah,”
and enmity here means a hostile mind—total enemies. “…
between God and…” something else—Satan. There
is going to be complete and total enmity. “I
will put enmity between thee (Satan) and
the woman.” Between Satan and
humanity there is going to be a condition of enmity. The woman is, of
course, Eve, who is the mother of humanity.
Then He announces two seeds. One is that this
enmity, this loathing spirit of hostility, is going to
exist between “thy seed and her seed.” Let’s
look first of all to “thy seed.” Who
is “thy seed?” This refers to
Satan. Who are Satan’s seed? All unbelievers. Satan
has a family. John 8:44 calls him the father of this
family. It refers to everyone who is born into the human race, because we are born unsaved. It
refers to those who have an old sin nature, and the imputation of Adams sins, so that we are in the slave
market of sin, under Satan’s control. Everyone
who is born into the human race is born into Satan’s family,
because we’re born with an old sin nature, so we’re born spiritually dead.
From this old sin nature, we’re capable of sins and of human
good, and Satan is the promoter of both. A slave cannot
free another slave. He hasn’t got the price to pay for the redemption of anyone else. So
mankind, as Satan’s seed, is tied up
hopelessly in this slave market of sin, and there is no way out it for
a human being. The moment you take a breath of
life, you’re in that market.
There is another seed. That is “her seed.” Whose is
that? The woman’s seed. This has a specific reference. The only hope for
us in this slave market of sin is for someone who is outside of this slave market to come in and
redeem us. (It must be) someone who has the qualifications. The
woman’s seed refers to this someone who is the Lord Jesus Christ. Satan’s
seed are all of unsaved humanity who are trapped in the slave
market of sin. Her seed is the Lord
Jesus Christ who was not in the slave market of sin because He was born
outside of the line of contamination of the human race. Therefore, He did
not have an old sin nature and He did not have the
imputation of Adam’s sin to Him.
The Virgin Birth
This gospel announcement stresses what? What’s
the first thing when God announces to
this man and woman before He brings judgment upon them, God is going to
exercise grace, what’s the first thing He stresses that is of
crucial importance. You would say, if you stopped to think about it, the blood of Christ, His death, His
substitutionary death. Wrong! The first thing you find emphasized is the
virgin birth. This is the crucial thing. Man’s
seed is not involved in the incarnation of Jesus Christ because Adam sinned deliberately, and so
Adam is the means of transmitting the old sin nature. We’ve
already gone over Romans 5:12 that tells us how, by this one man, the
old sin nature entered into the human race. 1 Timothy 2:13-15
explains to us how the woman’s sin was not
deliberate. She was deceived. She,
herself, was going to be saved through
childbearing. That is, bearing
this particular child as the seed of the woman, the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, what we need is someone to be born into the human race to
solve this problem of the sin market. We
have to have someone to be born in the human race without a human
father so that he is born without an old sin nature and the imputation of
Adam’s sin. So, there can be
no salvation without the virgin birth. “Her
seed” is the first title given to the incarnate Jesus Christ.
When
Adam began reproducing, we read in Genesis 5, verse 3
says, “And he begat a son in his own likeness and after his
image.” Natural procreation is a barrier to
salvation. Adam had two sons. The
first one was named Cain, and the second
one was named Abel. They were both
born in his image and likeness. Both were in
the image of Adam in that they had his soul. They had his
likeness in that they had the old sin nature. Both
were spiritually dead, so they were the
seed of Satan. With the old sin
nature, these sons began producing human good and their personal sins. Neither
one of them had a human spirit. It was dead in both of those sons.
One
day, Abel, upon receiving information from his father
concerning the gospel, believed, and Abel was born again, and he came
alive spiritually. He received a live human
spirit. Now he had a point of contact
with God. His brother Cain rejected his
father’s explanation, and he remained spiritually dead. Both
of these sons came one day to bring an
offering. Abel, because he was
spiritually alive, brought a proper blood offering, from his new
spiritual nature, although he still had an old sin nature. Cain,
however, brought an offering of
vegetation because he didn’t have a human spirit. So
he brought from his old sin nature, and
this was human good. This man could
not have brought anything that would have been acceptable to God, even If
he had brought a blood sacrifice, until he had believed the gospel and been
born again. Up to that point, it was simply
religion, and God rejects religion because religion is man trying to
get God’s favor and please Him.
This pattern continued in the human race, all the way down,
until we come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Then, but the
supernatural work of God, Jesus Christ was born outside of
that slave market. He did not have a
human father. As the seed of the woman
born outside of the stream of contamination of the human race, He was
qualified to die on the cross. But, He could not
die for us as our substitute, in His deity, for obviously sovereignty
cannot be subject to death. Eternal life
cannot die. Omnipresence cannot be in one place
to die. Omnipotence cannot be conquered
by death. He is immutable, and therefore
He cannot change from life to death.
Therefore, when Genesis 3:15 makes a declaration concerning
the enmity between Satan and the woman’s descendants, and
between his seed of unbelievers and her seed, it is referring to this one person Jesus
Christ, but in His humanity. It is the
humanity of Jesus Christ which is being stressed here, and that humanity was
achieved through the virgin birth. That was the
only way we go someone outside of the slave market of sin.
Years ago when I was a teenager, visiting one Sunday
afternoon, calling on people and sharing the gospel with them in the
neighborhood, one man opened the door and we talked a while, and he
said, “Well I’ll tell you son. I can go along
with a lot of what you’re saying, but I just can’t go
along with this idea that someone could have a baby without a human father. I
don’t see any point in that at all.” Unfortunately,
I wasn’t informed to know what to say. As I go to
thinking about it, and as I look back on it now, the virgin birth is something you
associate with Christmas, and it’s kind of the magic of Christmas. It’s
one of the magical things that happen that makes Christmas special. Most
Christians don’t seem to understand the central position that
the virgin birth holds in our salvation. It’s
crucial. Without it, there’s nothing,
for this is the only way for God to bring a human being into the human
race who was sinless, and therefore qualified to die for us.
Now Satan understood this. He caught it
right off the bat. So, he made the
first of many moves to frustrate. This
is why he led Cain to kill Abel. This
is why Satan is called a murderer in
John 8:44 from the beginning. Throughout
the history of the human race, Satan has been trying to bring death to
the line through which the humanity of Christ was to come. Satan
has constantly been trying to eliminate
that line, and it began with Abel.
Fundamentalism
I want to observe that I think you should have a little
understanding toward the fundamentalist preacher. I
hear these snide remarks toward
fundamentalist preachers who take seriously the virgin birth of Jesus
Christ, and therefore they feel certain restrictions in such things as
evangelistic campaigns in which people who die the virgin birth of Christ and His
deity are involved as sponsoring members. I hear
these little remarks about the fundamentalist preachers who have
reservations about cooperating with such things as Billy Graham campaigns, which
notoriously include unbelievers without any apology, on the platform, in prayer,
and on the sponsoring committee.
Now whether you agree with them or not, you should at least
have an understanding of what their position is. I
realize that fundamentalists do not always
make their legitimate point of truth on good scholarly biblical ground. They
make a poor case. I also want to
make it clear that I am a
fundamentalist. I believe that
the Bible is the Word of God. I believe it is
inerrant. It is without
mistakes, in its
original writings. I believe that
Jesus Christ was virgin born, and that the spiritual death of Christ was
essential for our salvation. I believe
He’s coming again. I believe there’s a heaven and
there’s a hell. I believe all of the
fundamentals that God puts forth, and I believe them as literally true.
But
I must admit that the fundamentalists sometimes are poor
presenters of their case for the truth. The reason for
this is that they have fallen into the habit of preaching
to people’s emotions. The average
fundamentalist preacher is preaching to people’s emotions,
and when you preach to people’s emotions, you invite two bad results. The
first one is that the preacher tends to
become a poor expositor of the Bible on the basis of Greek and Hebrew,
because he resorts to devotional talks. He just
turns into a little devotional talks, to little inspirational
discourses, to illustrations, to jokes, and to cliché’s because
he’s trying to kick people’s
emotions into saying the right things—enough
“Praise the Lord” and enough
“Hallelujahs.” He
is preaching to people’s emotions.
It’s easy to preach to people’s emotions. All
you have to do is keep track of Reader’s
Digest, and you’ll be able to get people to feeling just
great. You can get all kinds of illustrations. We used to run
the clubs here, out of some original heritage that we had, and our stories were coming out of
Reader’s Digest … little illustrations and little emotions talks
until we kicked that out and got ourselves down to hardcore Bible doctrine instruction which
is the only thing that a human life can sustain itself upon.
Well this has a second bad effect. It makes bad
preparation for the preacher
because he falls to devotional preaching. Secondly, it
leads to believers thinking with their emotions. This
is very bad. When a believer
starts thinking with his
emotions, here’s what happens: Here
are his emotions which are to be governed by the directive side of his mind
as his will is to be governed, and his emotions are to be governed. What
does he do? He blanks out this part of his mind, and his
emotions move up and take over, and they start kicking into action. And
anytime a believer works on the basis of
emotions, he is a sincere person, and you had better steer clear from
him because sincere people are not operating and functioning on doctrinal
principals. They’re moving on emotions.
The
result is that the fundamentalist preacher often exposes
his congregation to human viewpoint, and to false doctrine that he
draws into his soul. One of the biggest things he
exposes them to is the tongues movement because the tongues movement is
based entirely on people who have blanked out the directive side of their
minds, and they are operating and functioning on the control of emotions. Consequently,
the majority of fundamental preachers end up making their church service an evangelist
coming-forward meeting—something
for somebody to make some kind of a public move. It’s
not a time for feeding the flock upon
the Word of God, upon the doctrinal principals of the Word of God. He’s
kicking their emotions around in order
to get them to the end of the service where he can start singing the
invitation hymn and get people running forward.
Now Christendom and Bible churches (Bible believing people)
are psyched to this. I’ve
had more people come to me and say, “Well, I just wish you’d
give an invitation at Berean.” We give
invitations all the time. I know what the
mean. They want to be able to raise their hand for something. All
we do is say, “You’re your own
priest. We give you the information. You face God, and
you act upon it.” Then it’s going to be
right. It’s going to be workable in your life. We’re
not going to give you some opportunity to let your emotions kick you up to some public move so
that you can make a spectacle and demonstration of yourself, so that
you’ll go home and feel that you have really gotten yourself right with God.
(That’s what happens at) these big youth rallies that get
everybody zapped up and kicked up, and then everybody goes home and
nothing is left. When was the last time you were
involved in a great big glamorous operation? How much is left
from that great big glamorous operation and the high-powered
advertising and coverage? How much is
really left that you know of, or what you think is left? After
all the glamour has drifted back out of
town, what is left? You have preachers
who are preaching the Word of God, and expositing the doctrines of the
Word, and feeding the people of God. Or you have
liberals who are moving in darkness, the blind leading the blind, and
feeding garbage to people, and that’s still what you have left. They’re
the people who are carrying the ball
before, during, and after.
So
I’m sympathetic if you say, “Well, the
fundamentalist doesn’t’
make a very good case for not cooperating with certain enterprises that
seem to be having a desirable goal like the winning of souls.” But
when a preacher preaches to emotions,
this is murder on the congregation. If
you haven’t had that experience, you are fortunate because
you have been freed from listening to that sort of thing. The reason they
can then resort to legalism and to their taboos is because
they can preach to people’s emotions. So
they’re going to give all kinds of taboos, and how people
should act nice. And pretty soon the people have picked up the
idea that you know what’s important. The
thing that’s important is what you do, and what
you’re about, rather than who
and what God is.
So
the fundamentalist is to be faulted. Nevertheless,
they have a good biblical ground, and I don’t appreciate these snide remarks against
fundamentalist preachers because they take a position against religious leaders who
reject the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. We
are talking about real live breathing human beings who speak and make
declarations. For example, one of the
most famous was a man named Bishop Kennedy who was a bishop of the
Methodist church on the west coast who stated, “I’m for
Bishop Pike about 99% of the time, I don’t think such theological
issues such as the virgin birth of Christ are the central important
things.”
Now if you know Bishop Pike, who is quite notorious in his
own right as an Episcopal Church leader, he went down so
far that his own church had to put him on trial several
times for heresy. You know that
this was the same Bishop Pike who got into spiritism and into seeking to
communicate through mediums with dead son, which the Word of God stringently
forbids because it’s contact with the demonic world, and he got
communications back. He died on an
expedition in the Holy Land.
But this Bishop Pike, if you’ve ever heard him on TV as he
would say, “I just jettison the deity of Christ and the
virgin birth as just
excess baggage on Christians. It is this
same Bishop Kennedy who is the chairman of Mr. Graham’s San
Francisco campaign. Now
it’s pretty hard when the
fellow who’s running the whole evangelistic campaign says,
“I agree that the
virgin birth of Christ and deity are not important issues.”
This
Bishop Gerald Kennedy wrote on the flyleaf of a book
written by a man named Nels Ferre. This
author said that to call Jesus God is to substitute an idol for
incarnation. “Jesus
never was God.” On page 40 of his
book, The Sun and the
Umbrella, Dr. Ferre said,
“Jesus seemed to have lived a great deal with the
Scriptures. Possibly this
fact became a real problem to him and his followers.” The Bible becomes
a problem, to a believer.
In another place, Dr. Ferre said, “It cannot be denied that
Jesus’ father was a blond German soldier.” Now
on the flyleaf of this book you may read
the commendation by no other than the man who headed up the San
Francisco Billy Graham campaign, Bishop Kennedy, where he said, “Concerning
this book by Nels Ferre, a modern parable written in the power and spirit of the New
Testament. It cuts right to the heart of our muddled theology. We have stood in
need of this clarification of the person of Jesus. If
it shocks certain traditionalists …”
(that’s one of the dirty words for fundamentalists), “… it
will thrill sincere world-minded Christians.” This
was a clarification of our Savior.
Lesley Weatherhead is a preacher and psychiatrist from City
Temple, London, England. He was invited
to sit on the platform with Dr. Graham in his meetings in Great
Britain, and was one of the sponsors of the London Crusade. He wrote a book
called the Christian agnostic in which he says that
Jesus is the son of a temple prostitute named Mary, and Zacharias the
priest was the father.
Now I’m not talking about somebody that you don’t
know—somebody that’s way off some place. When
the fundamentalist preacher says, “I have a problem in
cooperation in standing on
the platform where I see an unbeliever who makes remarks that my Savior
is the illegitimate son of his prostitute mother and Zacharias the temple
priest,” maybe you can get the feel that the fundamentalist maybe has a problem. At
least, you must admit that he has a
problem for himself whether it should be a problem or not. And
snide remarks are directed toward him as
though he were some obscurantist, uncooperative, contemptuous, and
contentious ignoramus is not in order. But how are you
going to contend with this glamour. How are
you going to stand up against this kind of glamour, a glamour of a
stadium rally, a glamour of big-named personalities, the appearance of
presidents and their honors, TV coverage, and famous entertainers? Dr.
Graham ran his congress on evangelism in
Minnesota, one of the featured speakers was Pat Boone. Pat
Boone, if you’ve been following the news
reports, has now been excommunicated from the Church of Christ in which
he was reared, for heresy, for he has gone full-blown into the tongues
movement. He and his wife
Shirley are now tongue
speakers—the whole bit. Why?
Well, I got a little suspicion when I heard him on TV and he
said, “For years my family and I went to church and Sunday
school, and that’s alright.” And when somebody
says, “Well, that’s alright,” they mean it’s a bunch
of junk but (they) don’t want to offend
anybody. But just the fact that he said,
“Well, that’s alright … we went to
church,” instead of the fact that he was
getting crucial doctrinal insights, I can suspect that this poor man
has been reared without crucial Bible doctrine insights, so consequently he
finally came to the point where his emotions took over. And
it’s the easiest (thing) in the world, from there, to feel
that you’ve got something real.
Every now and then somebody writes to me or calls my
attention to somebody who was a dud spiritually, and along comes the
Pentecostal movement, and members of their family get on fire for the
Lord. And it’s very confusing to (real) sincere
Christians to say, “Boy, I couldn’t get this guy to
go out to church. Now he goes to church all the time. He’s in
activity. He’s there.” Don’t
you kid you kid yourself. Being active,
being there, and being in church is nothing. It’s
meaningless, because the old sin nature,
when it’s functioning on the mentality of the emotions, will
lead you right into Satan’s hand every time.
So, Pat Boone was a featured speaker. Here’s
what he said. He got up before this magnificent assembly of
people interested in evangelism—spiritual leaders. He
said, “I’ve just finished appearing in Las
Vegas at the Flamingo. I followed Tom
Jones in. I saw his show the closing
night, and I’m going to tell you that it’s not only
illegal, but it makes Elvis Presley look arthritic.” There
was great applause and great laughter.
Now you spiritual people don’t know anything about that, and
that’s why you didn’t laugh, you see. You
don’t know anything about Elvis Presley and hips and motion,
but that was pretty funny. Then he said, “Now
I’m not going to try to do that, but I did ask Al Werner by
conductor to steal one of his arrangements (sort of copy it), and see if we can do some of
my songs with that kind of feel or something like it, so Al,
let’s give it a whack.” Boone’s
opening song was I’ve Got That Feeling Called Love. Following
which he said (that) he thought “… the
words of that song were appropriate tonight because we’re
here to talk about a feeling. See? Feelings? Thinking with
your feelings? Pentecostalism? It’s
OK to go to church. But what he got was hay, wood,
and stubble every time he walked into the church, I suppose.
“We’re here to talk about a feeling.” He
continued, “The name of this thing is
called ‘turn on,’ and … when you talk
about turning on, you’re talking about a
feeling, aren’t you. But we’re talking
about a great feeling tonight, and one that doesn’t wear off. It
just sort of stays with you. It just gets
better and better as you go along.”
No, we’re not talking about a feeling. We’re
talking about divine insights. We’re
talking about thinking with a mentality
that God the Holy Spirit has filled with truth.
Just to give you a little (idea) of the problem that
fundamentalist preachers face: Going
back to Bishop Pike, in a news report (we were told) that Dr. Billy
Graham spoke from a pulpit at Grace Cathedral on Knob Hill to a standing-room
only Christian men’s assembly. This was Bishop
Pike’s church. The meeting was
sponsored by United Church Men, the Layman’s Unit of the National Council
of Churches, which (as we’ve already covered) is a liberal expression.
(It was said,) “In his closing prayer, Dr. Graham offered a
special petition for the success of the current assembly of the
National Council of Churches, and prayed that out of this meeting there would
come a great message to the Christian world. The prayer at the
service was offered by the Reverend Dr. Edwin T. Dalberg
of St. Louis, President of the National Council of Churches. The
Reverend James Pike, Bishop of the
Diocese of California, pronounced the benediction.” This
was the same Bishop Pike who led in the attacks
on the House Committee on Un-American Activities on our Congress, and
who declared, “I do not believe that Christ sitteth on the right
hand of the Father. I feel the same about ‘ascended
into heaven,’ the same about ‘conceived of the Holy
Spirit,’ and ‘born of the virgin Mary.’”
Put yourself in the poor fundamentalist preacher’s
place. Here he is, bringing his flock
into a meeting where he sees preachers on the platform. They
both have Bibles. They’re both dressed (up). Some have collars
turned around to really identify them. What do they know
of the difference? Yet, Dr. Graham had no
difficulty in being present and participating in the installation of
this same Bishop Pike into his diocese in California. The poor
fundamentalist preacher looks at that and he says, “Now this
is something akin to the apostle Paul when he spent those three years in
Ephesus and participating in the installation of the prostitute priestesses in
the temple of Diana of the Ephesians. Because
the Bible says that when you deal with heresy, it is spiritual adultery. It
is contamination of the truth.
And when you get through (as has been the experience of some
of us), we have the hard problem of saying, “Here I speak to
this person.” You know, we can get glowing about how many people
we speak to at a meeting in a campaign such as that. But
the thing we don’t say is, “I sent this
fellow to the Roman Catholic church. I
sent this one to the darkness of the cults. The Jehovah
Witnesses got this one. I sent this one
back to Christian Science because that’s where he came
from. I sent this one back to the synagogue. I sent all these
others back to the darkness where the blind can lead the blind.
Now whether you agree or not, I just want you to understand
what is behind the problem of the genuine, knowledgeable, honest
fundamentalist preacher. He has a point,
and you (may) think it should not be his point. Now
certainly it’s exciting to be in on that glamour. A
lot of people get in on that sort of glamour
just because it’s exciting. They
feel they can get lost in the crowd. The Lord
can’t see them. If the TV cameras
come by, they hold a book up so they can’t notice them. And
they feel kind of at ease just to go
ahead and play the ball. (Why?)
Well, “We’re going to win souls.” It’s
sort of like Moses striking that rock when the Lord said, “Moses, speak.” And
he did that hideous desecration to the image of Christ. Well
God is true to His Word. He comes through. Sure,
souls are saved. They would have been saved anyhow, and
probably in better effective order, if the surroundings had been right. But
we seem to feel that we can justify it. And the
fundamentalist preacher says, “Well, I don’t feel you can.”
And in the follow-up, what are you going to do with these
converts. You should follow them up. “Oh,” you say, “we do follow them
up. We follow them up great. Sure, we send
them back to these (same) churches, but we follow them up.” They
fill out a couple of books and get a few inspirational talks. It
takes you two years of solid Bible
doctrine to even get off the ground. Don’t
kid me about following up (with) people. I know what
happens to people who start thinking with their emotions and
who become enthusiastic and diluted because they have no truth.
It is Dr. Graham’s right, or course, to exercise his
priesthood, but it is also the right of the fundamentalist preacher not
to be an object of ridicule, and I don’t appreciate the remarks
directed toward the sincere fundamentalist who may not express himself and make as good a
case as he should, but who does have a point from his point of view. It’s
an insult to the Lord Jesus Christ, and it strains the ground of his Christian fellowship very understandably.
There is no problem maintaining comradery with people who
are unbelievers. I have some very
good friends who are not believers. Sure, we
can do things together. We can go flying
(providing he has an airplane). I notice
when I look at my flight log, that my hours of flying time go up and
down dependent upon whether or not I have a friend who owns a plane. But
we can have a great time just flying
together with no problem at all.
I have no problem asking Ron Blue to come up here and bring
you greetings from the Lord, and look forward to getting together again. But
I would have some hesitation, I must
admit, in having a fellow who says that my Savior is a
prostitute’s son to stand up here and share with you his insights. And I would have
little problem asking him to lead you in prayer. I
wouldn’t have any problem to think that it’s
his right to think that and to exercise his priesthood. But
I would have a problem (in) thinking we should join forces to carry on the Lord’s work.
We have to agree in these meetings to send these people back
to whatever benighted situation they express that they have come from. Unless
you make that deal, and if you do anything else… I heard of a
fellow who tore up the cards so that these organizations couldn’t follow
them up, and of course that was not ethical for him to do that. If
you’re going to be ethical, you have to play ball with the
team, and so you have to make your choice as to whether it’s alright
for the Savior to be labeled as illegitimate or not.
This is follow-through in the Word of God in a considerable
degree. I want to dignify the virgin
birth for you, and I want to dignify it where you live, so that you can
apply it where these issues are active. Just
a couple of verses: 2 John 10-11 says, “For
if there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not
into your house, neither bid him Godspeed. For he that
biddeth him Godspeed is partaker of his evil deeds.” 1
Timothy 6:5 says, “Perverse disputings of
men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain
is godliness. From such, withdraw thyself.” 2 Timothy 2:21
says, “If a man therefore
purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified
and fit for the Master’s use, and prepared unto every good
work.” Chapter 3, verse 5 says, “Having a form of godliness,
but denying the power of it, from such turn away.” Then
that dramatic verse in Ephesians 5:11 where
the apostle Paul says, “And have no fellowship with the
unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” Not
commend them, but reprove them.
Now Paul was sensitive. In the book of
Acts chapter 20, he warned the elders, the leadership of
the church at Ephesus of what was going to happen. He
was very much concerned that after his
departure he know that there were going to rise within the church
religious leaders who were going to be wolves in sheep’s clothing. In
Acts 20:28, the apostle Paul says, “Take
heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock over which the Holy
Spirit has made you…” These
are the pastor-teachers. “…
to feed the church of God which He hath purchased with His own blood. For
I know this. After my departing shall grievous wolves
enter in among you, not sparing the flock.” And then this
unbelievable verse 30, “And of your own selves shall men
arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after
them.”
When we get to Genesis 3:15, and next Sunday morning we’re
going to pick up the story here in the expansion of this by Isaiah,
(the) very dramatic exciting expansion by Isaiah on what Genesis 3:15 means. But
the first thing, the first presentation of the gospel says, number one, the virgin birth. Because
without this sinless Savior, without this virgin birth that produced this sinless Savior, there could be no
hope for you and me to be taken out of that slave market of sin. He
was qualified to die because He was qualified in His sinless humanity.
I can understand the fundamentalist preacher. Now
I will not fault him, as poor as his presentation may be, for a very legitimate point. There
is nothing more important. Salvation begins with the fact of the virgin
birth.
Dr. John E. Danish
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