"SOUTHERN
BAPTISM"
Miles
J. Stanford
EXPERIENCING GOD,
by Henry T. Blackaby (Broadman & Holman, Publishers, 1994, 185 pages).
Rev. Henry T. Blackaby is
Director of the Office of Prayer and Spiritual Awakening at the Home Mission
Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The author instructs and guides
the entire denomination, via official literature in the realm of spiritual
growth. This book is written for Southern Baptists--some 16 million--among
whom it seems to be all the rage.
The problem is that although it
is written to Christians for growth and service, it is not a Christian book;
rather, it is primarily a Jewish book. Nine-tenths of the Scripture and
scriptural examples are taken from the OT and the Synoptic Gospels, and applied
to the Christian. Consider the following:
MOSAIC
LAW!
God gave the Ten
Commandments. Are you obeying? God's commands are not given so you
can pick and choose the ones you want to obey and forget the rest. He
expects you to obey all His commands out of your love relationship with
Him (p. 156).
A love relationship with
God requires that you demonstrate your love by obedience. This is not
just a following of the "letter" of the law, but it is a following
of the "spirit" of the command as well (p. 51).
Obedience is very
important. When God gives you a directive, you are not just to observe it,
discuss it, or debate it. You are to obey it. Notice what the Scripture says
about obedience:
"If you diligently
obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His
commandments which I command you today... the Lord your God will set you
high above all nations of the earth" (Deut. 28:1).
"Obey My voice, and
I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the
ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you" (Jer.
7:23) (p. 158).
God has given His commandments
so you may prosper and live life to its fullest measure. If you love
Him, you will obey Him. If you do not obey Him, you do not really love
Him.
When you hear words like commands,
judgments, statutes, and laws, your first impression may
be a negative one. God's commands, however, are expressions of His nature of
love.
"What does the Lord
your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in His ways
and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all
your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I
command you is today for your good?" (Deut. 10:12-13).
"The Lord commanded us
to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord your God, for our good
always, that He might preserve us alive, unto this day. Then it will be
righteousness for us, if we are careful to observe all these commandments
before the Lord our God, as He has commanded us" (Deut. 6:24,25)
(pp. 12-14).
Donald Grey Barnhouse remarked
concerning the law being applied to believers:
"It was a tragic hour
when the Reformation churches wrote the Ten Commandments into their creeds and
catechisms and sought to bring believers into bondage to Jewish law, which was
never intended either for the Gentile nations or for the Church."
AMILLENNIAL
-- There may be some exceptions among the thousands of Southern Baptist
preachers, but the official stand of the Convention, and what emerges from Rev.
Henry Blackaby's office, is kingdom-now Amillennialism. Just more Judaism
fastened upon the Church.
Officially the Southern Baptist
Convention is non-dispensational. Hence the teaching from Rev. Blackaby
and his office of Spiritual Renewal is primarily Judaistic legalism, as
indicated above. Failure to rightly divide the Word of truth exposes the
believer to either the bondage of the law, or the lawlessness of
Charismata. There is much Charismatic activity throughout the
denomination, headed by such leaders as Jack Taylor and Ralph Neighbour.
KINGDOM
NOW
God's whole plan for the
advance of the kingdom depends on His working in real and practical ways
through His relationship to His people (p. 61).
Using kingdom ways is seen
in the life of the disciples. They had to learn to function according to
kingdom principles to do kingdom work. We must do kingdom work in
kingdom ways (pp. 100,101).
Without God at work in you,
you can do nothing to bear kingdom fruit (p. 152).
In this dispensation the Church
has nothing to do with Israel's coming Kingdom, but rather with winning souls
out of the world, and building them up in Christ, the Head of the Body.
A Christian cannot pick up his
Bible and read just anywhere and find direction for his feet. If he does
not read discriminately, rightly dividing, he may think it his duty to help
rebuild a temple in Jerusalem today, or do any of thousands of things that
would be totally inconsistent with his position as a Christian, whose life,
commonwealth, and hopes are in heaven (Eph. 1:3; Col. 3:1-3).
REDEEM
THE WORLD -- Amillennialism is striving to complete the kingdom so
that the Lord can return and take up His reign over that kingdom. All this
involves winning the world.
God is always at work in
His world. He is working to bring about world redemption through Christ
(p. 49).
God is interested in the
world's coming to know Him. The only way people will know what God is
like is when they see Him at work. They know His nature when they see
His nature expressed in His activity (p. 138).
When you begin to think
about working for God in His mission to redeem a lost world.... (p. 2 7) .
The call to salvation is a
call to be on mission with God as He reconciles a lost world to Himself
through Christ (p. 30).
When God's fullness of time
had come to redeem a lost world through His Son, He gave twelve men to His Son
to prepare them to accomplish His purpose (p. 73).
God creates in me the
desire to participate in His mission to reconcile a lost world to Himself (p.
109).
2 CORINTHIANS
5:19
God is the One who is at
work redeeming a lost world. His desire is to involve His people and His
servants. "Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself
through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that
is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself" (2 Cor.
5:18,19) (p. 42).
God has reconciled the world by
the Cross so that He can redeem those that believe. He is not seeking to
save the world. The truth is that by means of the death of Christ the
world has been put in a different position. Now God can save individuals out
of the world. Not the world redeemed, but "whosoever will may
come" out of the world and into Christ as personal Saviour. He
"hath reconciled us [believers] to Himself by Jesus Christ" (2 Cor.
5:18). As one has rightly said:
The present purpose of the
Gospel is not to convert the world, but to evangelize the world,
resulting in calling out both from Jew and Gentile, a people for God's Name,
the Christian heavenly Body, the Church.
EXPERIENCE
-- When Rev. Blackaby, typical of all non-dispensationalists, virtually
eliminates Paul and his Epistles (which are exclusively for the Christian), the
result is that nine-tenths of his book consists of legal, earthly, Judaistic
Scripture applied to the grace-oriented Body of Christ.
Hence the title of his book is Experiencing
God, and its theme is that God is known via experience. The Jewish
nation knew God primarily as the Lawgiver, and God revealed Himself to them in a
limited way via the law, and personal experience.
In the Scriptures knowledge
of God comes through experience. We come to know God as we experience
Him in and around our lives (p. 5).
God wants you to come to a
greater knowledge of Himself via experience. He wants to establish a
love relationship with you. He wants to involve you in His kingdom
purposes (P. 19).
Pity the Christian whose
knowledge of God is limited to his experiences! Consider the poor
subjective, experience-centered Charismatic. He doesn't even know his
"Jesus" well enough for his first step--he does not even have
assurance of eternal security--the finished work of the Cross!
The member of the Body of Christ
has the completed Scriptures, which fully reveal God the Father to the extent
that He has chosen to manifest Himself in this dispensation.
"He that hath seen Me
hath seen the Father." "God, who at sundry times and in
diverse manners spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in
these last days spoken unto us by His Son ... who, being the brightness of His
glory, and the express image of His Person." "For God, who
commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shone in our hearts, to
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ" (John 14:9; Heb. 1:1-3; 2 Cor. 4:6).
An eternity of experiences could
never compare with the knowledge of the Father gained through contemplating His
all-glorious Son, who is our very Life" (2 Cor. 3:18).
"That I may know
Him" (Phil. 3:10). Our Father delights in having us with
Himself. Love delights to satisfy itself about me. It is not only
that I can go in, but a much greater thing--my Father, in all His
majesty and glory, can come out. All is equipoised. Not
only have I entree, but I am shaped to the grandeur of the scene, conformed to
the glory of my Father. Not admitted like a stranger, but transformed
into the same image; not to equality, but similarity; transformed into moral
correspondence.
LOVE
MOTIVE -- As for Christ being our Christian life, Rev. Blackaby falls
far short of that fact. He, as with most, predicates all upon the
Christian's love for God--as he knows Him primarily by experience. The
love motive is reiterated throughout the book with intolerable repetition.
What is the one thing God
wants from you? He wants you to love Him with all your being. That
is the greatest commandment. Your experiencing God depends on your
having this relationship of love. A love relationship with God is more
important than any other single factor in your life (p. 53).
Rev. Blackaby is depriving
millions of Southern Baptists of the glorified Lord Jesus Christ's revelation of
His life for the Body of Christ through Paul. The source and force of the
Christian life is life, His life. "Your life is hidden with
Christ in God. When Christ who is our life.... For me to live is Christ"
(Col. 3:3,4; Phil. 1:21). The believer's love for man and God springs from
his Christian life. The fruit of the Spirit, which is the
manifestation of the life of Christ, is love (Gal. 5:22). Life,
then love!
JOHN
THE BAPTIST -- There are Baptist denominations that cite John the
Baptist as the beginning of their kingdom-oriented heritage. John the
Baptist, who was not a Christian, was not and never shall be a member of the
Body of Christ. Hence it is little wonder that Baptists remain at an
elementary level, ever clinging to the earthly position of Judaism. Rev.
Blackaby, with the teaching of the Christian life for missions of Southern
Baptists in his hands, declares John the Baptist to be the greatest:
What was Jesus' estimate of
John's life? "For I say unto you, among those born of women there
is not a greater prophet than John" (Lu. 7:28). None greater! (p.
29).
The author has cut short the
Lord's declaration concerning John. In the remainder of verse 28 He went
on to say, "but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater
than he [John]" (Lu. 7:28). John was a greater prophet than any
"born of women," but each born of the Spirit (Christian) is greater
than John.
Every Christian has the life of
Christ, and his citizenship is in heaven. He is in life-union with the
Son, seated with Him before the throne of the Father--his very life hidden with
Christ in God. John will never realize anything of that. He will
have eternal life from the Messiah, and will be a citizen of His earthly
millennial kingdom, under the theocratic rule of the King and His Bride, the
heavenly Church!
When Rev. Blackaby omits the
Pauline truth exclusively given to the heavenly Body, he traffics in Israel's
legal kingdom truth, and thereby draws the heavenly Church down to Israel's
earthly level.
When you study the
Scriptures, look to see how God works through the Scriptures. When you
learn how God has worked throughout history, you can depend on His working in
a similar way with you (p. 117).
Dr. Chafer rejects this
all-inclusive thinking:
There is no scholarly reason
for applying the Scriptures which bear upon the past, the present, or the
future of Israel to any other people than that nation of whom Scripture
speaks. The real unity of the Bible is preserved only by those who
observe with care the divine program for Gentiles, for Jews, and for
Christians in their individual and unchanging continuity.
Those who would intrude the
Mosaic system of merit into the Church's heaven-high divine administration of
superabounding grace either have no conception of the character of that
merit which the law required, or are lacking in the comprehension of the
glories of divine grace (Systematic Theology IV: 12,19).
CHURCH
TRUTH -- Now if Dr. Wm. R. Newell had been in Rev. Blackaby's
position as Director of Spiritual awakening for the Southern Baptist Convention,
there would be a totally different and life-giving message, similar to the
following:
There are two great revelators,
or unfolders of Divine truth in the Bible--Moses in the OT, and Paul in his
Epistles. Someone may ask, "Is not Christ the Great
Teacher?" In a sense it is true; but in a real sense He is the
Person taught about, rather than teaching.
The twelve Apostles (Matthias
by Divine appointment replaced Judas) were to be "witnesses" (Acts
1:22) of Christ's resurrection--that is, the fact of it. They
were not to unfold fully the doctrine of it, as Paul was.
Unto none of the Twelve did
God reveal the great body of doctrine for this dispensation. Just as God
chose Moses to be the revelator of Israel for the Ten Commandments, and all
connection with the Law dispensation, so He chose Saul of Tarsus to be the
revelator and unfolder of those mighty truths connected with our Lord's death,
burial, resurrection, and His ascended person.
All of the
"mysteries" or "secrets" revealed to God's people in this
Church dispensation of grace by the Spirit of Christ are revealed by
Paul. Paul is the declarer of the great company of God's elect, called
the Church which is Christ's Body--the individuals of which Body are
called members of the Body of Christ--members of Christ Himself.
No other Apostle (or OT
writer) speaks of these things. Peter himself had to learn them from
Paul (2 Pet. 3:15,16). Paul's great thirteen Epistles (Romans to
Philemon) belong specifically and exclusively to the Church.
Paul alone presents just
what the Gospel is for this present dispensation. You can evaluate
any man's preaching or teaching by this rule--Is he Pauline? Does
his doctrine start and finish according to the statements of Christian
doctrine shared by the Apostle Paul?
No matter how wonderful a man
may seem in his gifts and apparent consecration and love--if his Gospel is not
Pauline, it is not the Gospel; and we might as well get our minds settled at
once as to that. It may be Jesus' kingdom Gospel to Israel, but it is
not His heavenly Gospel of the grace of God that He gave to Paul from heaven
for His Body.
Not for a moment are we to
believe that James, Peter, and John were at variance with Paul.
Nevertheless, Paul is Christ's channel of the heavenly Gospel to
us. Take Romans to Philemon out of the Bible, and you cannot find
anything about the Church, the Body of Christ, for no other Apostle so much as
mentions the Body of Christ.
You cannot find one of the
great mysteries, such as the Rapture of the Church (1 Thess. 4; 1 Cor. 15), or
the mystery of the present hardening of Israel (Rom. 11). No other
Apostle speaks of any of these mysteries. Paul alone reveals them--the
great doctrines such as Justification by faith, Redemption, or
Sanctification. And what is perhaps the most tremendous fact of every
Christian life, that of his personal union with the Lord in Glory.
The failure or refusal to
discern the Pauline Gospel as a separate and new-creation revelation and not a
"development from Judaism," accounts for two-thirds of the confusion
in many people's minds today as regards just what the Gospel is. Paul's
Gospel will suffer no admixture with law on the one hand or religious
pretensions and performances on the other.
Failure to rightly divide
between the Kingdom and the Church will lead to a wrong conception of the
Bible and a false interpretation of its truths. One of the first things
that will happen will be to spiritualize the Kingdom promises of the OT and
attempt to make them apply to the Church of this dispensation. This only
results in confusion and conflict.
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