"Secured by Christ on the Cross"

I have been reading over the past couple of weeks a fantastic little book by D.A. Carson entitled "Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus" (Crossway: Wheaton, IL 2010).  I just wanted to share this fantastic quote from it with you pertaining to the absolute centrality of the cross:

"Do we have the gift of the Spirit? Secured by Christ on the cross.
Do we enjoy the fellowship of the saints? Secured by Christ on the cross.
Does he give us comfort in life and in death? Secured by Christ on the cross.
Does he watch over us faithfully, providentially, graciously, and covenantally? Secured by Christ on the cross.
Do we anticipate resurrection bodies on the last day? Secured by Christ on the cross.
Is there a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness? Secured by Christ on the cross.
Do we enjoy new identities, so that we are no longer to see ourselves as nothing but failures, moral pariahs, disappointments--but as deeply loved, blood-bought, human beings, redeemed by Christ, declared just by God himself, owing to the fact that God himself presented his Son Jesus as the propitiation for our sins? All is secured by Christ on the cross and granted to those who have faith in him."

What a great reminder of both what we have in Christ, and the fact that the only reason we have it is that we are in Christ. And if you are not in Christ, this is what you're missing. This and much more.

SDG!

Sith Lords DO Exist!!

Okay, not everyone may appreciate this video. For those of you who don't know, Benny Hinn is a crazy faith healer guy. People have actually died at his super intense "healings." Does this strike anyone else as a little...backwards? Anyway, this is a hilarious YouTube video that my good friend and housemate Josh Stauffer sent me, and it just goes to show you that the Sith do exist!

In all seriousness, can one seriously look at people like Hinn, or Todd Bentley (who, I am ashamed to admit, is a Canadian pastor) who have these crazy "healing sessions" where they cast out demons and heal people through receiving special power and messages from the Holy Spirit, occasionally instructing them to kick elderly women in the face (Bentley)?

Many would try to make this case that "miracles are found all over the Bible." Actually, this is not so. With the exception of maybe one or two special circumstances, all of the miracles in the Bible are concentrated to four, very brief periods of time. I am indebted to my Old Testament Theology professor, a genius scholar by the name of Dr. Peter Gentry, for teaching us this in one of our recent classes.

These are the four time periods in which we encounter full on, genuine, out of this world miracles:

1. The Exodus
2. Elijah and Elisha
3. Jesus
4. The Apostolic Church

Okay, so things that we may perhaps deem somewhat "miraculous" can happen everyday. However, these "miracles" are never associated with the actions of a person. The miracles that occur in the Bible all occur with a specific purpose, they have a lesson behind them, or a reason for being. While each may have a specific purpose depending on context, in the Old Testament, the miracles occurred as signs establishing that Yahweh is the Most High God, the Great I AM, the Almighty One. They proved to the Israelites, the Egyptians, the Canaanites, Balaam, etc. that Yahweh is the one and only God.

Likewise, when Jesus was performing miracles during his ministry, they were to establish Him as God. As with the Old Testament, there is individual significance to each of the miracles, and not all miracles were done to convey exactly the same message. However, they were all, ultimately, demonstrations of Jesus unique Godhood. Some of His miracles were mirrors of those done by the prophets of the Old Testament. But others were things that no OT prophet was capable of. And the miracles of the Apostles? These were to validate that they were messengers sent by Christ, who is God. You should note that while certainly the Apostles performed many miracles, the emphasis in the text is not on their miraculous deeds, but on the proclamation of the Gospel. Their miraculous works simply validated that the message they proclaimed was of God, and so the text does not linger on the miracles, but the message.

An easy, and perhaps over simplified, way of looking at these "Miraculous Eras" would be as such:

1. The miracles at the time of the Exodus are predominantly done by God, with little use of human prophets. This was God establishing Himself as supreme in the face of the Israelites and their enemies.

2. The prophets Elijah and Elisha performed miracles in the name of God, and they did so to point to God as the Sovereign One, and to validate their message as being of God.

3. Jesus performed miracles to establish that He was God. His miraculous power is not God working through Him, but rather is His own power, merely subjected to the will of the Father.

4. The Apostles did miracles through the power of the Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus, and subject to the will of the Father in order to validate their Apostolic authority, and the validity of the blessed evangel.

So, with all these miracles found in the Bible, and with all of the historical validation the Bible has received what need is there today for miraculous signs? The physical healing in the Bible is not physical healing for healing's sake. This is not important. Our bodies are temporary. We need not worry about them such that we seek after miraculous works of God. Why do we flock to so-called "faith healers" when we have a Sovereign God who is in control of all things? What power does a healer have? What makes him so special? To give credence to such men is to set them up as men of higher standing than the rest of us. It elevates them to super-heroic status, and sets them high above the average Christian. But this is clearly contrary to the Biblical account of equality among believers. Sure, some people are more or less mature in faith than others. But nowhere does this say that this maturity of faith brings with it supernatural power.

So now, if this "Spirit" is not of God, then where? Here's what the Beloved Apostle had to say about these sorts of people:

"¹Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. ²By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, ³and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. ⁴Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. ⁵ They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. ⁶We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error." (1 John 4:1-6)

Now, to apply some hermeneutical principles here, we cannot simply read this passage outside of the context of the rest of the Canon. When it says that all who testify Christ are of God, we have to understand what is meant here. Elsewhere in Scripture Christ says:

 "^21'Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' ²³ And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'" (Matthew 7:21-23)

Just because someone claims they are working in the name of Christ does not make it so. So when we test those things that people say, when we look at these teachers, or any others for that matter, we are encouraged to evaluate whether what they are saying is from God or not. How do we do that? We consult the Word. We are encouraged by the Bereans of Acts 17:11 who listened to what Paul had to say, but did not simply accept what he said at face value. They would take everything he said and test it against what the Scriptures, God's revealed word to humanity, said and see if things lined up. This is commended by the author, saying that what they were doing was "noble." The People will claim that what they are doing is in the name of Jesus, but Christ affirmed in the passage above from Matthew that there would be many who would do great and wondrous things in his name, but he would turn them away at the day of judgement, saying that he never knew them. So the lesson, then, is to test all things you hear against the Bible, and if what you are hearing doesn't line up with Scripture, then reject that teaching.

Now, sometimes it is all an act, and there is nothing supernatural there at all. Sometimes, and this has been proven in many cases of faith healers, that all of the "healings" are pre-rehearsed and staged in order to get money. But other times I believe that people may be sincere,  but I believe that the forces of darkness come in to play, and through possession and other such deceptive tactics they make themselves to appear as angels of light (2 Corinthians 11:14), but they are not on the light side, they are of the dark side. Dark side? Working to deceive? Power hungry? Unnatural abilities?

See...they really DO exist.