Cindy K

On a previous thread, I referred to an audio download from Walter Martin that I had listened to that day:
http://www.spiritwatch.org/cultrise79.ram

I’m amazed at how much of what he said stuck with me.  The sermon centers around Matt 24 and defines what a cult is, and it was just a crystal, crystal clear message.  He applied Scripture to very contemporary issues in a manner I so rarely hear anymore.  The matter of intramural debate that he used as an example (in ’79) was that of eschatology, and I wonder what he would have to day about this issue and the implications of all the peripherals (such as the Trinity issue)?

Therein, he says that we had better get back to teaching the essentials of the faith and get away from all of this carrying on over the non-essential stuff, otherwise we would not have the love for one another in the Body and we would not be able to evangelize the lost. I could not agree more with him.

I guess this is why this whole gender thing irritates me so much — because it has been interwoven into essentials of the faith, as Lin aptly notes.  The preaching of Jesus Christ and the Cross has become much more about dresses and submission.  That is not the preaching of the Cross.

Someone wrote to me last night about how grieved they were over how Don was treated on that treadstone thread or whatever it was — and I just again heard Walter Martin quoting 2nd Corinthians 11:3 ~ “But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”  (Do you think it does apply to this issue????  It almost makes me wonder if God was not looking right at us from his timeless perspective, moving Paul’s heart and mind to choose these very words.)

Now that I don’t even have to pull out my Majority Text and my Lexicon anymore, I went to Zhubert.com and looked up 2 Cor 11.  I was surprised that in addition to the word for “simple, singular and frank,” I looked and saw the “kai” (and).   It is not only just the simplicity of that is in Christ.  It says “and the cleanliness, purity and chastity” that is in Christ.  It’s straight and simple Greek there also, not always the case with the complex language of Paul.

(BTW, that was another side point of ignorance that was put to Don over there in that blog when someone clearly demonstrated that they had far less training in Greek than Don did.  Paul’s Greek is complex and as complex as James’ language.  Anyone who has taken upon the task of learning Greek learns very quickly that John is very comfortable conversation and that Paul and James are like advanced college level, both in language and in content.  That particular critic demonstrated his own ignorance in that particular comment.  But in 2 Cor 11:3, it’s straight and simple.)

God bless anyone who chooses to follow a particular course.  God bless those who eat meat sacrificed to idols and those that don’t.  Wear a head covering or don’t wear one and be blessed and rejoice.  But whatever my conviction and the Holy Spirit’s leaning on my own heart or one someone else’s, we are all called to liberty and love.  And we all get it wrong and we all mature as we grow, but the overriding goal and motive should be love for one another in Christ.  There was none of that on that blog thread.

I felt sick when I saw that someone told Don to be gracious as he was about to be eviscerated (gutted).  Every source was challenged (back to the well-documented paterfamilias and Roman secular law stuff again), his epistemology was challenged (which I found to be quite shocking), and in the end was called names — one of which I have not heard used seriously since I was in high school 25 years ago.  I felt better having read all the comments because Don was not eviscerated in any sense.  They didn’t have the goods to do it, so it degenerated into name calling.  Don didn’t seem upset at all, even in pointing out the name calling.

Bussell’s article got it right — they want uniformity through opposition (an article written in ’85?).  They certainly do not appear to want unity through love.  Christ’s love in us, freely shown to one another in liberty, is the ONLY way that it will happen.   Anything else, if it is not “cultic” or “thought stopping” to begin with will eventually end up becoming so.  And that is not unity but is rather static totalism and death to liberty.

It breaks my heart to consider what will happen to the church.  The whole body suffers — as if we have some raging infection.  At least that is my optimism talking, as the alternate means that we are not of the same body.  Only Jesus knows our hearts and souls.  Why are so many professing Christians obsessed with this?  Has it always been this way and I’ve been unaware?  Or is it worse and more widespread?