Dave McCrory And The Love Of God.

Dave McCrory,
I don't know you, but I could kiss you. I rejected your comment only because it could be used by my enemies right now. I hope you read this. I just wanted to say your love for our Savior is evident and I know you'd sacrifice whatever you had to as well.

God bless,
Phil Perkins.

Homosexuals DO Have The Right To Marry

Please, Christian friends, let's think about this. Forever my brothers and sisters in the Christian community have said that sodomites don't have the right to marry. This is bunk.

Any gay man on earth has the right to get a physical, get tested, court a nice gal, and marry her. It's called repentance.

Aaaaahh. See there? The language of the debate is wrong. We've let the other side win because we've let them control the language. Bad move.

What the homosexual activitists are really after is the package of benefits that society has traditionally given those that support the propigation of society, both culturally and reproductively by redefining "marriage" to include their nutty lifestyle.

In Christ,
Phil Perkins. PS Sorry for the delay on completing my two series on the Zondervan handbook and on the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. There has been much going on having to do with the Emergent, so most of my blog time has been spent at Zits.

Bad News For Afghanistan

I recently found out that the Daystar television network is coming to Afghanistan. Daystar is a lot like the Sky Angel Network.

That means in a war-torn country where Christianity is misunderstood and hated, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Marylin Hickey, Oral Roberts, and the like will make sure that the gospel will never be listened to by millions of people.

American Evangelicalism has a lot to answer for already. Why are we bent on damning those folks by immunizing them to the real gospel? Instead, they will be promised health and wealth if they believe in the word-of-faith Jesus.

I will pray hard for the failure of Daystar or that they will clean up their act.

Saddened,
Phil Perkins.

An Afterthought About Suffering.

When I die, I don't want to see Jesus and be wearing freshly ironed pants and unmussed hair. I want to wear scars. He does.

Hoping,
Phil Perkins.

AN ABANDONED FELLOWSHIP--Part I (of III)

SAVED TO SUFFER

A phrase has stuck in my mind for about two or three years now. "The fellowship of His sufferings." I came across it reading Scripture and can't seem to forget it. Oxymoronish isn't it? Fellowship is warm and cuddly. Suffering isn't. Sometimes this expression fills my heart and mind. Strangely, it names something I want.

A lady in our church who came to regeneration and repentance late in life has shared over the years just how meanly her co-workers have treated her because of Christ. Well, this Sunday in Sunday School she shared that again. I have come to respect her a lot. I know that she has suffered because she doesn't hide her Jesus and her obedience to Him. So I know she is truly suffering for Him.

But she seemed really down. So, I wrote a little note about the fellowship of His suffering from Philippians. By the reaction in her eyes I knew she was up lifted.

Here is the passage:

Philippians 3:8-11.
8More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,

9and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,

10that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

11in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Follow the logical chain:

A. Paul left all positions and possessions v. 8 a and b.
so that
B. Paul could get Christ and His imputed righteousness (be saved) vs. 8c-9.
so that
C. Paul could know 3 things:
1. Him (Christ) v. 10a.
2. The Power of Christ's resurrection v. 10b.
3. The Fellowship of Christ's sufferings v. 10c.
by the means of (in other words, the knowing of Christ, His resurrection power, and the fellowship of His sufferings is able to happen only because of the following):
D. Being conformed to His death v. 10d.
so that
E. Paul could be raised from the dead v. 11.

WOOOOWWW!!!! Did you get that? No, of course not. That was a stupid and unfair question. There is too much there for anyone to get. But get what you can. It is rich. Here are three observations quickly:
1. Salvation is for the purpose (in this passage) of knowing Christ, His resurrection power, and the
fellowship of His sufferings. That's right. Saved to suffer.
2. There is a sacred and personal bond between a believer and Christ that is only formed when the believer suffers.
3. Suffering and conformity to Christ's death is an evidence of our election so strong that without it, we
can be sure that we are not saved.

How DARE we hope for salvation without the suffering!

May God grant us the suffering that is our gift from the Father.

In tears,
Phil Perkins.

Ground Control To Pastor Tom

Here are two quotes from an eleven-year pastor on his blog:

Let me say this up front: I have some real struggles categorically condemning certain — maybe any — form of prayer.

AND

Jesus clearly condemned “vain repetition” (Matt. 6:7) and prayer distinctly practiced for show (Matt. 6:1-4).

Yep, you heard right. At the start of one paragraph he said he didn't want to condemn any certain form of prayer. And two paragraphs later, he said Jesus did just that.

The subject was Emergents and Contemplative Prayer. These folks are bringing in pagan prayer and meditation practices from the East. Obviously this is a very sinful thing.

However, our pastor friend (I'll call him Tom), wanting to seem open-minded, could not bring himself to speak against it. Only that it bothered him a bit, but not enough to actually be a mean, bigoted, Fundamentalist jerk casting dispersions on others and their groups and calling names and such.

Then Pastor Tom went on in the next paragraph to say that Jesus condemned certain forms of prayer. Pastor Tom didn't even catch his own contradiction

Let us remind ourselves that Paul told Timothy in I Timothy 3 the overseer was to be both moral and "able to teach." We can't be sure if Pastor Tom is really that dull or just blinded by his lust for approval from all quarters. Paul definitely made the moral part most important, but don't forget the smart part, too.

Grounnd controlllll to Paaastor Tommmm........

Phil Perkins.

Good Men

Someone very wise once said, "Evil prevails when good men do nothing." They were wrong. Men that do nothing aren't good. They're cowards.

Ted Haggard's Scandal Nobody's Fault?

Ex-emergent pastor, Mark Driscoll, known for his profanity and lewd remarks, has weighed in on the real problem that lead to Ted Haggard's downfall, in his opinion. It was Mrs. Haggard's fault.

He was quoted in the Rocky Mountain News at http://www.rockymountainnews.com.

Driscoll: It is not uncommon to meet pastors' wives who really let themselves go. They sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband's sin, but she may not be helping him either.

Thanks, Mark. Don't you have a sermon to lace with potty jokes for Sunday?

Phil Perkins.

Oh Really, Ted?

Here is a haunting quote from a Tom Brokaw interview with Ted Haggard. It is chilling.

Haggard: ...the emphasis in our church isn’t how to get your sins removed, because that’s pretty easy to do.

Hummm............perhaaaaapssss....................not.

Phil Perkins.

Evangelical Evil

In my post, Two Whores and a Harem found here: http://dontadddontsubtract.blogspot.com/2006/11/two-whores-and-harem-or-why-im-not.html, I blamed the Haggard scandal on his congregation. I further blame all Evangelicals, including myself, for allowing such a heretic to be in leadership. Only a few months ago he was interviewed by Tom Brokaw.

Haggard: We do talk about sin, but the issue is Jesus took care of our sin and Jesus removes guilt from our life so the emphasis in our church isn’t how to get your sins removed, because that’s pretty easy to do. Jesus did that on the cross. The emphasis in our church is how to fulfill the destiny that God’s called you to.

Brokaw: You’re making it easier for them?

Haggard: Making it easier for them, just like Jesus did, just like Moses did.

Yes, he said that. He made light of the atoning blood of our Savior and lied about the nature of biblical salvation. And yet, there was no outrage in the evangelical movement except from those commonly treated like nut jobs.

This is our fault,

Phil Perkins. Read this article: http://www.delightintheword.org/site/cpage.asp?cpage_id=6241&sec_id=755

I'M A SCUMBAG

Want to know just what a dirty, rotten, disgusting sinner I am? I'll tell you. Just yesterday afternoon folks came to my door to tell me about the Watchtower organization. They do not believe Jesus was truly God. That evening I wrote this about the experience:

Scripture is clear; if someone is wanting to speak of spritual things we are obligated before God to tell them the truth. So, I relunctantly decided to speak to them and witness to Christ's deity.

In the first sentence, I'm telling you just how obedient to Scripture I am. Whatta guy, huh? The second sentence reveals the truth, though. I "reluctantly" witnessed to them about "Christ's deity?" OUCH!!!!

Just so happened an opportunity to tell someone about Christ interrupted my TV show.

Excuse me while I vomit,
Phil Perkins.

Today's Riddle

Today's riddle is a vocabulary question. Entertainment center. Is that something in your living room or is it your church?

Two Great Things About The Ted Haggard Scandal

To every dark episode there is an upside, even if it is just surviving it to get through it. But there are two very positive aspects to Ted Haggard's follies.

First, the church is purified by getting rid of this sin.

Second, individuals will be doing some introspection. I am. It just hit me in church yesterday. What if my life was turned inside out for all to see?

Fearing God,
Phil Perkins.

Saying For The Day

Just a thought from a guy that has been known to go to seed on a thing or two now and then:

The fifth horseman rides a hobby horse.

AN EXPOSE` OF THE ZONDERVAN HANDBOOK TO THE BIBLE, Part III (of VII)

More on Claire Powell’s Feminism

I really wanted to give only two segments of this expose` to Claire Powell’s article, "The Bible Through Women’s Eyes." Now it will be three. There is just too much in the way of Scripture-twisting in the article and I think it should be answered. And all these aspects give us a chance to do good logical interpretive work together and see some of the popular arguments feminists are using to subvert the Scriptures.

The title itself is misleading. First, is Claire Powell really the one to tell all women how they ought to think about the Bible? Why not Rosie O’Donnell, Phil Donahue, George Bush, or Madonna? I know plenty of Christian women that read the Scripture without a feminist interpretative template.

Second, and much more important, why should we accept that there are different legitimate views of the Scripture? Scripture says that truth is one. If we have disagreements about Scripture, the problem is that one or both are wrong. This is along the same line as the fallacy Richard Bauckman perpetrates on page 254 in the article, "A Story through Women’s Eyes." There Bauckman refers to "recent feminist interpretation of the Bible." (More on that upcoming.) Here's the rub: if we have a feminist interpretation, could we not also have a Nazi interpretation? Or Democrat? Or Republican? Or Socialist? Or atheist? Or...Or...Or...

In a section of her article called "Are God and the Bible biased?" Powell informs us the Bible is not biased. (Whew, I was worried.) Her argument goes like this: The Bible has all sorts of stories that pay much more attention to men than to women and put men in charge of a lot of stuff. This is bad. However, Powell does approve of God because (as it turns out) these are just stories about how things were, and not an approval of this state of affairs. In other words, narrative is not prescriptive. It does not prescribe behavior or belief.

However, in the same section she notices that women in spiritual leadership roles of prophetess and judge are mentioned. Here, however, narrative is to be taken as prescriptive. It seems that narrative that is not in favor of her point is not prescriptive, but narrative that seems to make her point is. Is she that stupid or does she hope we are?

As with much that Powell does, this is half true. History is often just a story about what happened. But not always. There are two reasons to take history as doctrine or commandment:

First, does other Scripture make a direct commandment or a direct statement of doctrine or ethics that agrees with the seeming implication(s) of the story?

Second, does something in the story logically require that the implication(s) of the story be taken as truly biblical doctrine or ethics?

If the answer to either of these questions is "yes," then you have a story with ethical or doctrinal content that is to be taken as true. Paul demonstrates this when he asserts the headship of man based on the Genesis story. Paul’s opinion in I Timothy 2 says that women are to be submissive and quiet in church. So that meets the first criterion listed above. And his reason is the creation order. So that meets the second criterion.

Another glaring contradiction occurs when she says this about the patriarchal nature of spiritual leadership under the Old Covenant:

....There is no divine mandate for it. Women were excluded from the Old Testament Priesthood, but so were many men!"

Huummm....No mandate for male leadership, but women were excluded from God’s priesthood? So just where did the mandate come from? Exodus, if I recall. And did I detect a nanner, nanner, nanner in that last little clause, "but so were many men!"? I think probably so. Her exclamation point after "so were many men" must mean something. It seems Powell has shown the source of her interpretative proclivities.

Finally, on page 90 she writes this about Paul’s writings on the subject in the NT:

In the New Testament Letters there is every indication that any restrictions on women apply within a specific culture and context. Where the particular details of a 1st-century situation differ from ours, it is the principle behind the teaching which is properly binding for all time. Thus, when Paul indicates in 1 Timothy 2 that women should not teach or have authority over men, he is addressing a particular problem of false teaching and wrongful authority in Ephesus. In such a context the women were to stop what they were doing wrong.

This is wrong on so many levels it makes my head hurt. Let’s look at it on a line-by-line basis.

CP (Claire Powell): In the New Testament letters there is every indication that any restrictions on women apply within a specific culture and context.

ANSWER: So name one of those indications. Paul gave reasons that had to do with creation order, not culture or specific situations. I Corinthians 11: 7-9 says, "For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; for indeed man was not created for the woman's sake, but woman for the man's sake." And I Timothy 2 : 12-14 says,"But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression." Of course, maybe these are not the indications Powell was taking about. She must have been kidding about that "every" part.

CP: Thus, when Paul indicates in 1 Timothy 2 that women should not teach or have authority over men, he is addressing a particular problem of false teaching and wrongful authority in Ephesus.

ANSWER: Fine, except that false teaching is not even mentioned in the passage. Wrongful authority is and creation order is.

CP: In such a context the women were to stop what they were doing wrong.

ANSWER: Yes, stop teaching and taking authority over men, like Paul commanded.

In Christ,
Phil Perkins.

Two Whores and a Harem--or--Why I'm Not Sorry For Ted Haggard's Congregation

I'm not sorry for Ted Haggard's congregation. Well...maybe a little. This scandal has to hurt, but they weren't exactly Bereans, either.

Ted Haggard visited a prostitute. Fitting, I think, since he's one himself. He whored out the gopsel of Jesus Christ for popularity and power. He did so by altering the message to comfort the sinful rather than call us to repentance. But his church is filled with people selling their very souls for the gooshy feelings of religiosity without repentance. Instead of the Holy One of Israel, they have loved the Friendly One of Colorado Springs.

Ted sold out for popularity and power. His congregation sold out for gooshy feelings. Only God can decide who is worse.

Praying for repentance,
Phil Perkins--mine, too.

Ted Haggard Didn't Fall.

Ted Haggard didn't fall. He was already in the gutter. We evangelicals simply elevated him and his gutter to pulpit level.

I was not surprised by today's mess in the news about Ted Haggard covorting about with a sodomite prostitute. What did surprise me some time ago was the realization that people who call themselves Christians would actually have anything to do with this man.

However, Haggard has done us all this great favor: he has accurately represented evangelical "Christianity" in America. It is a sewer of lukewarm compromise and half-truth. Haggard once described Evangelicalism as broad enough to reach from Benny Hinn to R. C. Sproul. That statement alone would disqualify him from service in a godly church. Benny Hinn is an apostate. He has also stated publicly that his emphasis will be on the positive, not on negatives like sin and judgment. This, too, should have been a deal killer.

Open heresy will always lead to moral compromise and moral compromise will always lead to open heresy. That is what today's Evangelicalism is all about. We would rather read the Message than the Bible because it can be twisted into almost anything. Bothered by the Bible? No problem reread that passage in the Message. We want to hear about how God will make us rich, not daily self-denial, the mortification of sin, or the fellowship of His suffering.

Take advantage of Haggard's favor. Look into the mirror that is Ted Haggard. Then ask yourself if your attitudes and beliefs are that much different. Then repent. Then call on your friends to repent. Then call on your church to repent.

Repenting of my silence against compromise,
Phil Perkins.

What's Funny About Fads in the Church?

Well, not much. And while unscrupulous folks making money in the temple is a crime, here is a funny about that subject I found at the Sacred Sandwich:

http://sacredsandwich.com/headline20.htm

Propositional Truth and Jesus.

The best argument against those that say "truth is a Person, not a proposition" is given by Greg Koukl here: http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6869 Specifically, go to the third and fourth paragraphs.

Read it and laugh. Read it and learn. Remember it. I will.

Hilariously in Christ,
Phil Perkins.

AN EXPOSE` OF THE ZONDERVAN HANDBOOK TO THE BIBLE, Part II (of VII)

Zondervan Lies About The Creation Order To Further a Feminist Agenda.

On page 89-91 the Zondervan Handbook to the Bible has an article by the feminist Claire Powell. In it we read, "Woman is created out of man, not to show subordination, but to show that she is like him rather than like the other created beings and to show the interdependence..."

Oh, really, now. If Powell is right, Paul is wrong. Hmmm...Paul, the apostle or Powell, the feminist...hmmm...what to do, what to do...

Paul said twice in his letters that the order of creation shows man is the head of woman. This passage does show likeness of woman to man. She was his flesh and bone, showing fundamental equality. However, Powell omits the second half of the implications. This is a Hebrew story. Semitic peoples put great importance on the primacy of that which comes before another and that from which the other has its origin. For instance, when the Jews mocked Jesus and asked if He was greater than their patriarchs, He answered, "Before Abraham was, I am." They recognized this was a claim of authority over Abraham, Moses, the Law, and them. In fact, they tried to kill Him.

Powell's dishonesty seems clear to me for two reasons. First, the Handbook is sold as a source of accurate background information. Primacy being a foundational principle of Scripture, how did such experts miss something so simple? Second, witness how dishonestly she handles other passages as we continue.

In order to prove her point of equality without headship, she uses a passage that begins and ends with the authority of the man over the woman. Then, with surgical precision, she lifts the only two verses in the passage that speak of equality without speaking of headship. Here is her quote from I Corinthians 11:11-12:

In our life in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman was made from man, in the same way man is born of woman.

This quote speaks of interdependence and essential equality. However, the rest of the passage speaks of the headship of the man in this life (not the next) and ends with a declaration of the universality of this ethic. Here is I Corinthians 11:3-16 in the NASB:

3But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.

4Every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying disgraces his head.

5But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head, for she is one and the same as the woman whose head is shaved.

6For if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her cover her head.

7For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.

8For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man;

9for indeed man was not created for the woman's sake, but woman for the man's sake.

10Therefore the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.

11However, in the Lord, neither is woman independent of man, nor is man independent of woman.

12For as the woman originates from the man, so also the man has his birth through the woman; and all things originate from God.

13Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered?

14Does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him,

15but if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her? For her hair is given to her for a covering.

16But if one is inclined to be contentious, we have no other practice, nor have the churches of God. (emphasis added)

Please note in this passage of 14 verses, Powell’s two verses are the only ones not to mention man’s headship and that verses 7-9 use the order of creation as the reason for the headship of man and the subordination of woman in this life.

So, did Powell’s eyes land only on these two verses in the middle of a headship passage by chance?

Or did she lie?

More on this article next time.

AN EXPOSE` OF THE ZONDERVAN HANDBOOK TO THE BIBLE, Part I (of VII)

Zondervan Claims Bible is "Misleading."

Zondervan Publishing has taken yet another step toward a fully feminized, apostasy. On page 603 of the Zondervan Handbook to the Bible (third edition, 1999, by David and Pat Alexander) is an article by Richard Bauckman. He writes this in the first paragraph:

In the social world of the New Testament period it was mostly men who had official authority in the public sphere, whereas women often had real power and influence, alongside men, in the domestic sphere of the household. The latter was far from unimportant, but literature of the period written from the male perspective, as most is, can easily give a misleading impression by focussing on those aspects of life in which men were dominant.

Did you catch that? The literature of the NT era was "misleading" by "focussing on" the "men." Don’t worry, though. The good Professor Bauckman didn’t give poor old God a flat out F. The next paragraph tells us that the gospels were nice to the ladies. So God, I guess, gets a C or so, because, while the accusation evidently stands against the rest of the New Testament, God did okay when He wrote Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The strong implication is that we have to read between the lines of the New Testament to find the truth because its type of literature can mislead us. Makes you wish God was just half as smart as Mr. Bauckman, huh.

But wait. There’s more. In the end of the article Bauckman informs us that Mary was being groomed for a teaching role and we know that because she received instruction at Jesus’ feet in Luke 10:38-42. Well, so did others. Sitting at a rabbi’s feet showed submission. And it showed that Jesus was willing to teach a woman. It is not an indication that she will be a teacher in God’s assembly. A disciple of a rabbi training to teach would be sitting at his feet for years, not an afternoon. And he would be male. These points are obvious. Lots of people sat at Jesus’ feet. In chapter seven we read of the demoniac who sat at His feet. Was the demoniac a rabbi in training? Why only Mary, Mr. Bauckman?

Richard Bauckman has shaded the truth about these passages to fit a feminist agenda.

If you are of a mind to give our prostituted friends in Grand Rapids the benefit of the doubt, please wait for next six segments of this expose` to come out this coming week and next. You will see the Zondervan Handbook to the Bible pushes feminism, evolution, eco-paganism, feminist interpretations of the Bible, and more. And you will see that they are more than willing to lie in order to do so.

Sanctification in the Modern Church

I just wrote an article for a John Owen blog. It concerns his book The Mortification of Sin. A whole book written in a very precise and scholarly way on not sinning. Sound like a big seller? Here is what I wrote:

First of all, thanks to Echindod for the invite to write here. I am not sure if he expects me to follow the exact format he is using or not. So I will follow it somewhat, transgress it somewhat, and await my printed verbal chastisement if he sees fit.

Before, I start anything else, I must say that the idea of a Christian book that deals only with how to kill sin in one’s life would never get published by Zondervan if written today. Twelve Ways To Start a Christian Bowling League for Left-handed Presbyterian Plumbers, How to Reach Your Teenager For Christ Without Making Her Feel Guilty About The Pair Of Pliers Through Her Upper Lip And Eyebrow, or Richard Foster’s Easy-to-follow Plans To Construct Your Own Spring Scented Prayer Wheels for $5 Or Less and Market Them on Ebay for Ungodly Profits are more like it. But sin? Who’s going to read dry old doctrinal stuff like that? Maybe folks who love God? Well just how many of those do you find at the Bible Book Store on a Saturday morning, huh? They’re as gone as Stryper.

Now how about a book on how not to feel so guilty about sin? Wonder if Rick Warren isn’t already writing that one? Yeah, that's it...Forty Days Without A Conscience. Can't you just see that on the INSPIRATIONAL BOOKS rack at a truck stop right next to The Meassage Study Bible For Golfers.

Anyway, I congratulate Echindod on his interest on such a subject. I feel a little guilty that this is not something uppermost on my mind. So this will be good exercise for the mind and the soul.

Phil Perkins.

Rodney, Ron, and Jesus

Here is an excellent article by Ron Gleason on "Rodney King Theology." It's a little long, but worth the read. His principles are applicable to today's hemophiliac church.

Christianity: Doctrine and Ethics: The “Boundaries” of the Christian Faith (III)

PHARISEES OF LUUV

There is a new Pharisee in town. Like the Pharisee of old, she is pompous. Unlike the Pharisee of old, she cloaks her sin in a false righteousness of love, instead of a false righteousness of law keeping. By using the term “she” I am not implying that all the new Pharisees are female, only that they are feminine.

I. Identity of the Pharisees of Luuv.


The Pharisees of Luuv major on religion and minor on obedience. They are the uptight, white-knuckled, super religious folks in every Evangelical church bent on making sure everyone else knows just how “loving” they are. They hate others, forbid to speak much of sin and righteousness, and ban terms like “false-teacher,” “liar,” or “repent.”

Sometimes other names for these modern zealots come to mind. Here are a few of my favorites. Take and keep the ones you like. I call them the Laodecians of Luuv, the Willowy Wusses of Wimpism, the Uptight Ultra-religious, the Sultans of Smarm, the Sadducees of Sap, or simply Smarmisees. Make up your own and share them with your friends. The Spirit used humorous terms for the terminally pious like White-washed Walls, Dung Heaps, Dogs, Liars, and many more. So this is a scriptural practice, a sound learning device, and loads of fun. Your kids will love it.

II. Evangelical Luuv defined.

A. How in the world can I pair up the idea of love with the idea of Pharisees? I don’t.

There is a difference between what the Scripture calls love and what an American Evangelical (I am one) calls love. For this article I will spell Evangelical love “Luuv,” capitalizing the noun form to indicate deity in the mind of its disciples. When spoken the vowel sound of Luuv is to be lengthened for emphasis. Add a churchy accent of your favorite flavor and you’ll have it. (Rick Warren did this in his address to the Baptist World Congress in Birmingham, England.) Scriptural love will be spelled in the conventional way—“love” because that’s what it is.

B. Evangelical Luuv may be scripturally defined as the pursuit, glorification, or valuing of that which is soft, smooth, and not likely to cause offense or controversy.

C. Luuv appears in Scripture as a vice, not a virtue.

Clergy that cow tow to this idol are threatened with God’s wrath. In Malachi God promises to seed their faces with the dung of their own religion, pronounce against their children and grandchildren, and then take the clergy out with the garbage (chapter 2, verse 3.) Evangelical Luuv is, at heart, a pursuit of things that are smooth and comforting. On the part of the clergy, it is a failure to point out the sins in our midst because the pastor doesn’t want to be ridiculed. In Malachi’s words they “show partiality in the Law.”

D. God is NOT Luuv and He never has been.

“God is Luuv,” the mantra of the spiritually mediocre, is a VERY precious lie to us Evangelicals. We depend on it to spare us from twinges of conscience and to forget passages of Scripture that tell us God is righteousness or God is truth. It is the antidote to those passages, our big eraser, a very spiritual-sounding shield against all who dare make an embarrassing observation or ask an awkward question about our conduct—especially God.


III. The Pharisees of Luuv are ungodly persons that oppose God.

Just as the Pharisees of the New Testament pretended to themselves and others that they loved God, so their modern counterparts are proved by the Lord Jesus to be imposters because they have substituted their particular brand of religion, tradition, and set of rules for the truth. Their substitute is beguiling. It seems so godly and biblical—god is Luuv. Most Pharisees believe they are godly and saved. They are not godly and most of them are not saved. They ARE supremely religious—even smarmy. Religion oozes out like syrupy poison.

Jesus, on the other hand, was a carpenter who read the Scripture and obeyed it.

IV. Rules of Pharisees of Luuv.

A. Rules are added.

The Smarmisees love to add rules. Unlike their forebears they only add a few rules, because their aim is to feel religious, by ignoring God’s rules. This is so they rarely think about their sin. The original Pharisees felt religious by adding rule upon rule in order to cover over their sin with buckets full of religious deeds and poses. The similarity is that both are aiming to feel more religious, by obscuring their sin, subtly highlighting the misdeeds of others even if those “sins” are only the violation of Pharisee Law. Both hate God and use people for their own glory.

We can break down all the rules added by the Pharisees of Luuv to just seven basics.

Rule One. Never—and I mean NEVER—tell anyone what they are doing is wrong.

Rule Two. Tell anyone who is breaking Rule One that what they are doing is wrong--WAY wrong.

Rule Three. Work “god is Luuv” into any conversation you have. That way others will know you’re luvving and they’re not.

Rule Four. Attend only discussion style Sunday School classes and Bible studies so you can get in at least three god-is-Luuv’s before the final prayer.

Rule Five. Speak very softly, like a young girl in severe pain, in order to rid the congregation of men and so others will know you’re luuving and they’re not.

Rule Six. Perfect a really good smarmy face. Try for that special my-dog-just-died-of-a-hideous- wasting-disease-but-I’m-holding-up-just-fine-thank-you-for-asking kind of smile.

Rule Seven. Frown and object any time words like sin, judgment, or repent are used, especially if the speaker really seems to mean it. Remind that big meany god is Luuv. A furrowed brow helps.

V. Rules are taken away.

This is the important part. Smarmisees don’t really take a scissors to their Bibles and cut out commandments. That would make them all lumpy and kind of thin and they don’t actually READ their Bibles anyway. They already KNOW the three IMPORTANT parts—god is Luuv, knowledge puffs up, and don’t judge (that’s their job.) Instead, they simply repeat their mantra in willowy voices every time sin and righteousness is mentioned. I think it’s kind of like x-ies when we were kids. If some big meany says “God” just say “god is luuv” and the big meany has to go away. If he doesn’t, then bring his name up in prayer meeting when he isn’t there. Use your most girlish voice when asking prayer for his un-luuving attitude. Boy, does THAT score points!

VI. Self absorption of Pharisees of Luuv.

The new Pharisees are self-oriented liars. While the emphasis seems to be right and good, centered on others, self is the over riding concern. Thus appearance is more important than substance. For instance, how many times in discussions with Smarmisees have you heard someone rebuked harshly (but in Luuv) because he spoke the truth to someone who rejected it angrily? The clueless critic will say something to the effect that the sinner would have accepted Jesus if only the speaker had spoken in the Proper Way and at the Proper Time, both of which we non-Pharisees are way too stupid to figure out on our own. The Proper Way has something to do with the painted-on cry-smile and girly voice. The Proper Time never actually comes because the scorn of a sinner will ALWAYS cause the Swamis of Swish to wet their collective pants.

They cannot tolerate rejection because they are disobedient to God or because they are not new creatures in Christ. Even a vicarious rejection through someone else in their church group is too insulting to their inner selves.

VII. Generation of Pharisees of Luuv.

Okay, here is some good news from the bad news. The bad news is that my generation did this to the church. (I bought into these lies, too.) The good news is we are getting old enough that we are becoming irrelevant and many will soon be dead. There are strong indications that God is giving us a younger generation that are more God and truth centered. For instance, today’s students in many Bible colleges are much more apt to embrace the sovereign authority of God over man’s will. Here are the names of some very good Christian leaders that are solidly scriptural: Todd Wilkin of Issues Etc., Michael Horton of The White Horse Inn, Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, John Piper, John McArthur, and others. Many of these good men are in their early forties, promising the church 20 years of productive leadership. This is very good news.

VIII. On-Purpose Ignorance of Pharisees of Luuv.

I use the term ignorance here in its most derogatory sense. I do not mean they are unwitting, unknowing, or ill informed, though some certainly are misled by a predominately effeminate Evangelical clergy. That would be an accident, not their fault. I am referring to the act mentioned in Romans 1 and lots of other Scripture involving the outright suppression of knowable truth. They ignore it. It is a deep-in-the-soul dishonesty, a sin inviting the wrath of God.

A. Pharisees of Luuv are ignorant of Scripture and scriptural love, ON PURPOSE.

The Pharisees of Luuv carry themselves as if they had great wisdom and insight. The truth is that they are ignorant about love—their favorite subject.

To illustrate, try this. Are love and righteousness opposite or the same? If you said “opposite,” you have full blown SOTS, Smarminess of the Soul. Get help.

God’s love is defined by the Apostle of Love, John, as obedience to God. John, after all, is he who said “God is love” in Chapter 4 of his first epistle. He also says in Chapter 5 that the Spirit of God is truth, in the first verse of his gospel that the Son of God is truth, and in Chapter 10 of his gospel that those who do not obey truth are not the Son’s sheep. But those passages don’t seem very important to the Idolaters of Luuv.

B. Pharisees of Luuv are ignorant of God, ON PURPOSE.

One evening in a laundromat, I visited with an idolater. His license plate said “REDEEMD” and he was a teacher at a reputable local church. “Great,” I thought, “he’s a brother.” We each began talking about our respective gods—mine the God of Scripture and his “the god of the New Testament.” I use quotes here because they are his words, not mine. And his words are blasphemous. He informed me that “the god of the Old Testament” killed women and children. “I will not worship that kind of god!” he said with an upturned lip and a feminine superiority in his eyes. I think he expected me to be impressed. I warned him that he was an idolater, worshipping an idol.

This is the most damning sin of the demonically syrupy. Many are like him. Convinced that the God of the Old Testament who promised to “make loving kindness on thousands of those that love Me and keep my commandments” is harsh and that the God of the New Testament who said, some “are prepared for destruction” is tender. This is plainly ignorant. They ignore the Scriptures, ON PURPOSE, to ignore God, ON PURPOSE.

C. Pharisees of Luuv are ignorant of the real outcome of their actions.

The Uptight Ultra-religious commit three errors having to do with the results of the way they act, speak, and believe. First, they believe that their syrupiness will curry favor with God. Remember Malachi? Much of the writings of the prophets have to do with people seeking comfort, not obedience. This is a sin and the outcome will be perdition for many.

Second, they believe they are doing God a favor by representing Him to others as a wuss. We can have more members if only we can be more tolerant, they say. While this mollifies the sinfully religious and pets women and children, men are repulsed by both the wuss god and the wuss preacher.

Third, they believe they are going to curry favor with unbelievers by not acting like Christians.

If getting others to like us means not being us, who do they really like? Obviously it isn’t us. After forty years of being relevant, luuving, charming, winsome, or whatever the new buzz word is from the latest Evangelical wunderkind, Americans hate Christians more than ever before. We deserve it, because we have been lying to them.

IX. Arrogance of Pharisees of Luuv.

The old Pharisees arrogantly rejected the Lord Jesus and His Father. So do the modern ones. Their rejection of God’s person will be dealt with in the next section on idolatry. In addition, they arrogantly reject His wisdom and His words.

In Sunday School I was being lectured by one of the dozen or so Smarmisees in our church. She is a good-hearted lady that is new in the faith, one of those swayed unduly by our predominately effeminate clergy. Her point was typical Evangelical syrup. We cannot be very aggressive or forceful because that is sinful. I asked her if it would be sinful to call a recalcitrant believer foolish or a false teacher a dog. Of course, it was horrible in her mind to do such a thing. I revealed these were the words of Jude and Paul and she laughed, a little embarrassed.

Jesus called the terminally pious dung heaps and more. God calls His people that stray to another god prostitutes. In Hosea, we read “you have loved the wages of a whore on every barn floor.” He obviously would not pass the smarminess test of my Sunday School friend.

Leaders and long-time churchgoers that spout such filth are so unspeakably arrogant they condemn God and all His prophets and apostles. They think they know more and are better than God and all His prophets and apostles. After all, the way God talks is sinful to them. God must be instructed in the god-is-Luuv doctrine. Then, perhaps, if He minds His manners, He can become as moral and luuving and they.

X. Idolatry of Pharisees of Luuv.

The Pharisees of Luuv despise the God of Scripture. They demonstrate this by their insistence on the down grading of God to the god-is-Luuv god. Like my idolater friend in the laundromat, they will not worship the severe God that has revealed Himself in the Bible.

“…for I, Yahweh, your (m,s) God, am a jealous God, reckoning the iniquities of the fathers upon the sons, upon the third generation, and upon the fourth generation for those who hate Me, and making loving kindness for thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

Did you recognize that quote? Where is it from? It is the second half of the Second Commandment and if you are a churchgoer and did not know that, you are probably an Evangelical or a Catholic. The first half goes like this: “Never make for yourself (m,s) an idol or any image of anything in the heavens above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. Never worship them and never serve them, for I Yahweh am a jealous God…” Exodus 20: 4-6.

So then, the White-knucklers will only worship the god of sappiness and syrup. According to Moses’ tablets, they do NOT love God. THEY HATE HIM DEEPLY. They have so earnestly feigned love of God they have been fooled their own act. What it is important for Christians everywhere to understand is these preachers and church members are haters of God, not lovers of God, according to the Word of God.

And they will hate YOU. Remember, John defined love as obedience to God (not goosh) in I John 5: 3 and II John 6. In I John 5:2 he gives us a test to see if we love the children of God. The test is not gooshy talk, a smarmy gaze, or marshmallows on your brain. Read it here below.

“By this we know if we love the children of God, if God we are loving and His commandments we are doing. For this is the love God, that His commandments we keep, and His commandments are not hard.”

The Worshippers of Luuv FAIL the test of Scripture. They major in NOT keeping His commandments if they are outside their tradition or opinion. After all, god is Luuv so they do not have to concern themselves with a lot of Scripture.

XI. Solution to Pharisees of Luuv.
Lit me suggest four steps every church can take to end this new legalism.
A. Pastors, pull your skirts back down and preach the Bible.

Pastors, you must start being men and stop being wusses. Stop selling out for convenience and approval. Many of you have been lazy in the study and cowards in the sanctuary. Study the Scripture and just tell us what it says. Those of us that leave were not really of us.

B. Bible schools and seminaries, stress Scripture, not psychology.

Decide if you believe in the sufficiency of Scripture or not. If the Scripture is good enough “so the man of God may be adequately equipped for every good work,” then you can teach Paul and David, without Jung, Rogers, and Winfrey. You contradict your own doctrinal statements when you insist the pastor must also be trained in psychology as well as Scripture. Psychology treats sin. Scripture calls for repentance and offers redemption. There is not a happy medium between these two views.

C. Church members, hire and encourage Scripture-loving pastors.

Look for, hire, and keep pastors that major in Scripture. Good examples are John MacArthur and J. Vernon Magee. You want a man that teaches Bible and lots of it. If your pastor is weak pray for him and encourage him. He may be a good man with a sensitive nature. Special care must be given to such a man. However, if a pastor persists in mushy, unclear teaching you MUST fire him. He is not of a godly character. Weenie men often compensate for instances of cowardice by gossip and back-biting. When faced with a struggle between truth and lie, they will often attack the truth in gossip because the truth makes them face the lie. I have seen this over and over in both secular and religious settings.

D. Church boards, get rid of physical images of “Jesus.”

“Jesus” pictures glorify effeminacy.

Contrary to the Second Commandment we Evangelicals have a taste for painted images of various guys in long hair and robes. We lie to our children and say these guys are Jesus, thus condemning our children, grand children, and great grand children according to the Second commandment. All the so-called images of Jesus I have ever seen picture some idiot that just had his nails done, to paraphrase Larry Norman. The Sallman picture of the Dork at the Door (Christ at the Door to idolaters) would have us believe that the Jesus of John’s Revelation is NOT arrayed with snow white head and hair, feet of burnished bronze, a sword coming out His mouth, and eyes on FIRE! His face shone like the SUN! Revelation says that He is. You can trust John the Apostle or the clerk at the Bible Book Store. Your choice. As for me and my house, we will stick with the apostle’s version. It seems safer to me.

Sallman’s Dork at the Door is an effeminate fellow just hoping for dear life you’ll let him in. Don’t. He might ask you for a date.

Scriptureless Pulpits

It’s Thursday afternoon. I am running to get material for my shop and I turn the truck radio to the local religious station. Chuck Swindoll is laughing and promising to tell me how his passage of Scripture can help me stay young. Naturally, my curiosity is piqued beyond anything any middle-aged man could possibly stand! Still, I turn the station.

It’s Friday morning. I’m up early. O goody, goody, goosebumps. Benny Hinn is on healing hemorrhoids, taming tumors, and sellin’ the spirit cheap. Call in now. Glory be to Benny’s god, whoever THAT is. I turn the station. Doubly excited, I discover another faith healer that has found it pays more to hock health food than do the healing himself. Hey, it HAS to be easier than sweating buckets into a microphone and pushing some overweight guy to the floor to cure his arthritis, leaving him still curiously overweight. (Benny’s god is very modest that way, I guess. Only heals the stuff that ain’t real showy.)

It’s Sunday Morning. The preacher is simply THRILLED by his cute story. So are several others. It’s all about himself, his car, his wife, his dreams, or his whatever. It helps manage the 36 minutes left in a 40 minute sermon block because he only studied two verses this week. Even HE isn’t able to stretch the spiritual lesson he got from his dog, Poopsie, for 36 minutes. No worries, though. He will slip in five or ten more words from those two verses. You know, the two that are so profound he just has to spend the entire 40 minutes on them. Then and only then will he go into the story about what he saw on that disgusting TV no good Christian should watch and what his neighbor did to his cat. That will leave about 4 minutes for the last phrase of the last verse, and a quick song about accepting Jesus because He really, really, really, really, really, really wants—no NEEDS—you to love Him. Feeding the sheep, right? Yeah, huh.

Fascinated by the story of the time the pastor’s fish tank blah, blah, blah…I somehow force myself to go back to studying and memorizing Scriptures on my own in the pew because I ought to make good use of the time used to get here and sit here. But I’m worried. There’s that lady who dressed me down for twenty minutes for not walking around and talking enough during Greeting Time (another great pastoral time management tool.) She might just light into me for studying the Bible instead of learning about Judge Judy and the pastor’s reaction to the case of the bad hair dryer that made the dog bite the neighbor who got thirteen stitches and an infection and dented his left rear right front fender on the way to the clinic, all of which cost twelve hundred, seventy-eight dollars and thirteen cents. This worries me until I look over to her and see her husband is fast asleep. Alright! I’m home safe for one more week.

I’m jealous, though. Amazingly, many Evangelicals get MORE than two verses! That’s right, they do. I didn’t believe it either until I tuned in Charles Stanley. They may get seven ways to improve your (insert the most disconcerting subject you can think of here) mixed with parts of twelve quickly spurted excuse verses. Excuse verses—some call them proof texts—are very important passages of Scripture that only the speaker could possibly have figured out had ANYTHING to do with the subject he MADE UP for this morning’s sermonette on dating, buying a car, raising pigeons, bicycling, swimming the back stroke, or whatever to the glory of God and the giant cardboard thermometer in the foyer.

If you can relate to any of this, lobby hard to fire your pastor and change the channel. Quickly.

Jim Bublitz Quote

Over at the sliceoflaodicea.com (a great, great site) yesterday I found this from JimBublitz. He is quoting John Flavel.

"Whatever religion or doctrine condones or makes allowances for sin is not of Christ. The Doctrine of Christ everywhere teaches self-denial and mortification of worldliness and sin. The whole stream of the gospel runs against those things. Scripture emphasizes the 'holy' and the 'heavenly' (not the sinful and the worldly). The true gospel has not even the slightest tendency to extol corrupt nature, or feed it's pride by magnifying it's freedom and power. And it rejects everything that undermines or obscures the merit of Christ, or tries to give any credit to man, in any way. And it certainly never makes the death of Christ a cloak to cover sin, but rather it always speaks of it as an instrument that destroys it!"

Amen.

The Blessings of Having a Hard Headed Dad

I was thinking of the great contrast between the way my dad thought and acted and the way we moderns and postmoderns act. To him tolerance was about adjusting valve lash, not approving of sin or some preacher that finds it easier to tell funny stories, than to actually crack the Book and deliver some grass and water to the sheep.

I can tell you all thrity-five billion things wrong with Dad. Got a week? Yeah, he's a son of Adam, just like his kid. If you have two weeks you can hear about mine, but add another week to take a VERY long shower.

My dad is very hard headed. He won't give you a lot of time to spout about some opinion. Not unless you're quoting Scripture. Then he will listen and wrestle with it. And he'll tell you if you're right or wrong or if he doesn't know. He wouldn't DREAM of just nodding approval because it "touched" him.

Why isn't anyone like that anymore? Dad is likely to call you a liar, so don't lie. Try that in church sometime and see if you're still in good graces. You may be called "mean." And you certainly will NOT be asked to give the blessing--EVER. People will just barely tolerate you. (Actually, not everyone--just the vocal ones.)

Dad is lonely right now. In fact, there is a deep-seated loneliness that comes from always feeling like the one others see as odd. And many think he is. In today's terms he is. In God's terms, he's normal.

I suppose I'm odd, too. I thank my Dad for that. And I thank God for Dad. What a blessing.

God bless you, Dad. You're a tremendous blessing. I love you.

Phil Perkins.

A Theology of Truth, Information, and the Love of Knowledge

The following article is an outline of my beginnings of a solution to a multifaceted problem that may seem obscure to the average Christian. However, it is very important. The fact that we do not love knowledge is a measure of two things. First, it is a measure of how much we love God. Second, it is a measure of doctrinal troubles to come in the church.

I openly invite any and all to criticize this article. Examine it critically. Do not spare my feelings. I am still in process of synthesizing its final form. I especially invite those of you that are theologically trained, philosophically trained, or just good critical thinkers. I will take correction. The only ones that I do not wish to hear from on this particular blog are the postmoderns. I am not being mean. It is just a simple fact that their thoughts will be irrelevant because of their worldview.

I will be expanding on the individual sections in upcoming blogs.

Thanks. Phil Perkins.


A THEOLOGY OF TRUTH, INFORMATION, AND THE LOVE OF KNOWLEDGE
Why Christians Are Obligated To Achieve Mental Excellence
Why Christians Are Obligated To Be Propositional Thinkers

What is the proper role of knowledge in the life of a Christian? Christianity is primarily spiritual, not intellectual, isn’t it? Doesn’t the Bible teach us that “knowledge puffs up?” We are to be humble, simple folk, right? After all, Faith is the opposite of Reason, right?

It will come as a soft surprise to many Evangelicals that the answer to all the above questions after the first one is a biblical NO. Unfortunately, the view of knowledge in much of the Evangelical church is very unbiblical and spiritually harmful in a multitude of ways. It has left us vulnerable to the attacks of those that claim that all that counts is science and to the attacks of the New Age (aka old paganism) that has come into our churches at the hands of men like Henry Blackaby, Karl Barth, Robert Schuller, Rick Warren, Ken Blanchard, Benny Hinn, and many, many more. The latest consequence of our nonchalance toward knowledge is the Emergent heresy, in which the leaders make outlandish statements, such as sodomy is not necessarily a sin (a la Brian McLaren) and then turn right around and say they believe in the authority of Scripture. (Specifically, this is postmodernism, which is an eschewal of absolute truth, which is really just another way of getting along without paying much attention to truth at all so that one may feel righteous in one’s debauchery.)

I. We will start with some definitions. We will use these definitions because it is best to be precise.

A. Truth is how things really are, were, or will be. It is objective. This is the biblical definition, but it is not the usual definition.

1. Dictionary definitions of truth usually describe it as accuracy. The problem with this definition of truth for Biblicists is that it limits truth to residing in a description of the way things really are or in the mind of the describer or perceiver. This is not reflective of a Biblical world view. For one thing the Bible always places truth outside of us and our language. That is to say, it is objective. Placing truth in language or in our minds makes it subjective and then the postmodernists are right in their statement that there is no absolute truth. (I am ignoring the logical weirdness of asserting that the absolute truth is there is no absolute truth. I suppose they really mean there is no absolute truth but that one, which leads one to ask by just what principles they discovered this no-absolute-truth principle since no other principles could possibly exist.)

2. Truth is objectively existent in God’s mind and in the rest of reality by way of God’s acts of creating and sustaining all that is outside of Him.

3. Truth is also objectively existent in God’s Revelation. That is to say, His words, whether written as part of Scripture or unwritten prophecy is truth. This is different than any created being. A created being can only say things that are true. They cannot create truth.

B. Information is a representation or description of truth. It consists in differences. More on this later.

C. Falsehood is a description of things as they really are not, were not, or will not be. It is misinformation.

1. Falsehood may be accidental from simply being mistaken.

2. Falsehood may be intended to mislead others.

D. Lying is the use of falsehood to intentionally mislead others.

E. Knowledge is the perception, memory, and use of truth represented in information.

F. True is an adjective that means accurate with respect to a representation of truth.

G. Objective is an adjective here used to describe truth. By this we mean that truth has its origin and it’s truthness outside of any sort of human perception, perceiver, knowledge, knower, communication, or communicator. In other words, it depends on no human. It is true no matter what you or I think or say.

H. Subjective is an adjective used here to indicate the state of a propositional statement having its origin in the mind or emotions of a human or group of humans by consensus or convention.

I. Propositional statement denotes a statements that the speaker or writer presents as true in declarative sentences.

J. Faithfulness is the act of doing what correlates with the truth or the state of being true.

K. Faith is the quality of acting faithfully.

II. Truth comes from God.

A. God decides what is true in all areas of life: morality, history, and science. These are the three overlapping spheres of reality and our knowledge of it.

1. Morality, the first sphere of knowledge, is God’s Personality.

a. Inner morality is what one knows of God’s Personality. It is innate, learned from nature, and learned from Revelation.

b. Outer morality is God’s Personality imitated. This is called obedience to God.

2. History, the second sphere of knowledge, is what happens, past, present, and future, material and spiritual.

3. Science, the third sphere of knowledge, is how things are, how God acts as He sustains the material universe. For the purposes of this article we will place math and logic under the umbrella of science. So we refer to science in the older sense of the word. Whether math and logic flow directly from God’s mind or from His activity, this writer currently cannot ascertain.

B. Therefore, the central aspect of God’s godness (the biblical term is holiness) in character is truth, holiness being the state or characteristic of being wholly separate from all that is created, that is, being like God, which He is. Truth and holiness cannot be separated. (The central aspect of God’s godness in capacity for action is power, but that is not our subject here.)

1. Obedience to God is obeying truth.

2. Love is the application of truth to how one acts towards others and God.

C. The dichotomy between faith and reason is false.

1. The idea that faith and reason informed by objective observation of the universe and Revelation are opposite is a mistake on the part of some, a lie on the part of others.

2. The Evangelical idea that worship is to be primarily emotional, not intellectual is paganism.

3. The valuing of devotional reading of Revelation over intellectual reading and critical analysis is pagan. What a passage means to you is of no importance. What God intended to communicate is what matters.

D. Morality flows from God’s heart. Morality is true because that is what God is like. He is truth, so don’t lie. He is love, so don’t steal or commit adultery. He is sovereign, so take the proper authority God has appointed to you in whatever roles you fill, submit to those in authority over you, and own things.

E. History flows from God’s mind. (Let there be light…) The things that take place are history. This is not formal history like history class or the history that is written by historians. That kind of history, in so far as it is true and not a part of the historian’s agenda, is a very small part of general history, as we are using the term here. All that happens is what God has planned for ages.

F. Science flows from God’s activity, ordered by God’s mind. It is a subset of history, but it is so important in our world that we categorize it by itself in our minds and in our academy.

1. God sustains all material things.

2. The laws of science are patterns God has decided to follow.

3. Being the Sustainer of the entire universe, God has His hand on all things at all times.
Therefore, gravity works because He does it. Electricity works because He does it.

4. God can make exceptions to the usual patterns of His work in matter. These exceptions are commonly called miracles.

5. Prayer is asking God to surprise us.

III. Because truth comes from God, information and knowledge cannot be divorced from God.

IV. Information is differences in perception and language that encode differences in reality (truth.)

A. Sensory input is always differential.

B. White noise and monochromatic visual fields are the closest we can come to non-differential sensory input. Uniform, or non-differential, sensory input leads to sensory break down, the inability to perceive anything. Prolonged exposure to it can lead to hallucinations.

C. Perception is the recognition of differences.

D. Data in a computer are binary choices.

1. Data to the eye are differences in light’s intensity and hue.

2. Data to touch are texture, the differences of surfaces and shapes.

3. Data to the ear are differences of air pressure (vibrations) and differences in the frequency and harmonic patterns of those differences of air pressure.

E. Data in morals are differences in good and evil.

F. Knowledge is the memory of these differences. See the definition section.

G. Evil consists in the purposeful confusion or denial of these differences in thought or action. This is a way of denying God by denying His wisdom, work, and authority.

H. Therefore, it is natural that the godly value knowledge and that a measure of the ungodliness of the ungodly is their disdain for knowledge of God and that disdain eventually extends to disdain for knowledge in general.

V. Knowledge is possible only because God directly causes us to know.

A. God has given truth that we can know.

1. God has given us the physical universe to perceive and ponder. This is God’s objective truth for us to see, taste, smell, hear, and feel with our skin.

2. God has given us the Revelation to perceive and ponder. This is God’s objective truth for us to read, hear, and teach others.

B. God has given us the capacity to perceive and ponder.

1. He has given us our five senses.

2. He has given us our conscience, or the innate knowledge of God’s Personality.

3. He has given us our intellects.

VI. Love of knowledge is part of love for God.

A. The Shama in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 requires that we involve our whole being in pursuit of God. This includes our minds.

B. I John 4-5 and the test of truth….The Spirit is Truth.

C. Exodus 33:13. Knowledge is both a reward from God for obedience and an aid to further obedience in order to find further favor with God.

D. Thy word is truth.

VII. Hatred of God leads directly to hatred of knowledge.

A. Romans chapter one indicates the strong link between the rejection of God and the rejection of knowledge.

B. Proverbs indicates that foolishness is ungodliness.

VIII. Communication is the ability to use differences to encode differences.

A. Language, oral or written involves differences.

B. Language is information encoded.

IX. The Fallacy from Incomplete Knowledge is an excuse for mental laziness and other sins.

A. Some claim that because we cannot know anything with complete accuracy that we then must assume that there is no absolute truth. This is a sham. The argument will start by asking deep questions. The answers will show that various people will give various and even contradictory answers to difficult questions. The wag will then assert the nonsequitor. Namely, no truth really exists.

B. This is easily demonstrated to be nonsense. Once upon a time, no one knew lightning was electricity. But it was. The lack of knowledge by humans simply means that we are not as smart as we would like to be. This is only a clever argument meant to intimidate the easily bent among us.

X. The Fallacy from Inaccurate Language is another excuse for mental laziness and other sins.

XI. The Fallacy from the Arbitrary Nature of Language is still another excuse.

A. Another argument for the denial of absolute truth is illustrated by a recent radio ad touting the need to educate girls. A young girl asks her father, “Daddy, did you know that the concept of odd and even is a philosophical illusion?” Besides the bigotry of valuing the education of girls over that of boys, the big sounding assertion that her father, being a stupid male, could not possibly have known is wrong. It is based on the idea that numbers are the invention of man.

B. Language is arbitrarily designed to encode information. However, that does not mean that which is encoded is not real, subjective, or arbitrary. For instance, if Morse code were used to indicate a delay in a train’s arrival, the fact that Mr. Morse chose what patterns of dots and dashes indicated what letters will not make the train arrive on time.

XII. The Fallacy from the Certainty of Scientific Knowledge.

A. The seeming certainty of knowledge gives rise to another sort of fallacy. This fallacy does not deny the existence of knowledge. No, in fact, it is the opposite. It gives us the idea that we can know so much more than we really can. I posit that we cannot really actually understand in an absolute sense.

B. What we call scientific knowledge is nothing more than a more detailed description of what we observe.

Introduction.

The theme of this blog is simple. It is a call to be biblical again. It is my prayer that the church in America will repent of its penchant for fads and love Jesus again. Hence the title. Al tosap al davaraiv is an approximate pronunciation of the first four Hebrew words of Proverbs 30:5-6. In English it is "Do not add to His words." The blog address comes from Deuteronomy 4:2, where we read,. "Never add to the word which I commanded you (mp) and never take from it, in order that you may keep the commandments of Yahweh your (mp) God which I commanded you (mp)."

In the coming days we will start with a biblical, common sense view of knowledge (epistemology). This is because I teach Greek and Hebrew at a small Christian Bible college and it behooves me to motivate students to learn. It is a godly endeavor to know.

There is, however, another reason for the emphasis on knowing. It is in answer the the Emergent heresy. Brian McLaren, Dan Kimball, and theooze.com are pulling a lot of unsuspecting Christians out of good churches, into an apostate movement that is neither emerging nor Christian. They hate propositional truth. It is my contention, then, that they also hate God and His People, whether they know it or not.

Phil Perkins.