We blog these things for the few

Do you believe everything you see? No? That's good. Are you sure? Well then, do you believe that I have been blogging all week? If you think so, you are wrong. Other than okaying a few comments, until this morning I hadn't looked at or touched my blog for a week. If this makes you curious, read on...

It all started last Saturday morning when I watched that video - you know, the cheery little conversational thingy that McLaren and Burke recorded while driving in circles in the car last week. Maybe I should't have watched it. I was already feeling toxic from reading too much about error and false teaching and contemplative mystics and their books and things for way too long. So maybe I just started getting car sick or something, but as I watched these two apparently happy looking guys who so positively promote, spread and teach falsehoods with their polite conversations and pleasantly smiling faces, making it seem as if they were going about God's work in a biblical way, suddenly I got completely sick of this whole thing. And I don't just mean the emerging church or this little blog, but the whole thing about deception and the days we are living in. So what happened next is that I did a quick bit of power-blogging and pre-scheduled a string of back burner posts - a whole week's worth actually - so I could lay the blog thing to rest for a while. Then I brought everything before the Lord and let the spiritual poison slowly drain out of my brain.

I've spent the entire week since then soaking up God's Word, having gravitated to an amazingly timely study in the Old Testament prophets. These guys had guts and said some very unpopular things, but continued to warn God's people amidst the false prophets (who were saying nice, positive things - but were dead wrong). I wonder if those false prophets had nice smiles on their faces as they gave their positive, nice prophecies, while God's judgment was imminent. The unpopular job of the true prophet was to keep telling the masses who rejected their message of truth, for the sake of the few who would listen. They simply obeyed God, who, because He is merciful and just, was giving His people time to repent of their idolatrous ways, even though He knew they wouldn't listen.

There is huge a parallel here for the church to learn regarding the times we live in now. There are those today who are telling you nice things. These are wolves disguised as sheep, who call themselves God's people, but they won't talk about judgment, hell, sin or repentance. Instead they love to ooze about in conversations about the journey, kingdom, peace and justice here and now, or the new theories of atonement, the power of questions, and their favourite heretics and false teachers who have endorsed their new books. The saddest part is that there are those who are listening to these false prophets and believing everything they say, because they are not studying God's Word - let alone defending or contending. But how can you pick up your battle sword if you can't remember what it looks like? When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness Satan used Scripture. He also offered his kingdom, here and now, in exchange for worship - he is the ruler of this world - and Jesus answered back with Scripture. The devil has apparently read the Bible and knows scripture very well, but he twists it. It seems like the key to defeating the enemy is knowing how to use God's Word better than the enemy does. But how many Christians can do that?

No, we post-modern Christians would rather read a book to learn about who God is than sludge through the Bible. Isn't that right? Just take a look at your local Christian book store and wander over to that best seller section. See that fiction book up there? Yes, that book. Do you know its author just got an award for his book, even though he openly denied the penal sacrificial atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross in a recent interview (transcript is here)? Doesn't that make this nice, popular author (who is speaking in churches across the land spreading his nice fabricated false fable) a false teacher?

So how do we combat today's false prophets and authors and speakers (who the Bible calls ministers of Satan)? Every Christian should be able to spot them and point them out and avoid them, but they can't because they are not spending time in God's Word (I mean studying, not doing a Lectio Divina). And so this is why some unworthy sinners saved by grace are called upon by God to warn His people today, because He is merciful and just. Even so, God said that the people who love listening to the false prophets will not listen to God's truth, even when He sends it to them.

So why would any person in their right mind spend three hours of their much needed beauty sleep posting a well researched article with a dozen live links, all previously searched out during long hours of burning the midnight oil, to warn Christians about false teaching when maybe 30 of them will skim through it and nod their heads in agreement, 30 might quickly browse the headline and decide it’s not bad enough news to bother reading, another 30 will politely disagree, yawn and move on to a more interesting website, and 9 more may read it, shake their head in disgust, and leave a very nasty comment? Here is why - we who blog these things blog for the few; the remnant, for that one person to whom God is speaking, who may read the truth, be convicted, will not harden their heart, and will have the guts to come out of the popular deception.

This is just one little blog of many, but is not for everyone - it is here for the few. Not that it's got all the answers, and I may not have all my theological ducks in a row, but this blog is basically here for the ones who are not quite ready to believe the lie, because God is calling them. It's for the person in the church down the road who is confused by a recommendation from the pulpit by the nice assistant pastor who is reading books by Ruth Haley Barton. Or that person who might have gone to that retreat centre run by those really nice people I know who teach their guests nice contemplative practices, and that St. Teresa of Avila (the mystic who lived in bondage and terror to her bouts of demonic levitation) had an "amazing encounter with God that set her free." It's for the young woman in our nice local Christian university who is being told to read Thomas Merton and practice the Examen of Ignatius of Loyola by her nice English professor who leads nice retreats at Merton's monastery. Or the confused young man who wasn't quite sure if he agreed with what the very popular Tony Campolo said in chapel at his Bible college campus. And it's for that person on the other side of the country who knows there is something not quite right about bringing the 12 steps of AA into the church, even though so many nice people are saying it's okay. And for the burnt out church leader who just returned from a nice, quiet Focus on the Family retreat but wonders what was not quite right about those popular Scazzero books they gave him to read.

This is why some of us (I can't speak for all Christian bloggers) blog the things we blog. For the few who will listen to the truth. (I'm not claiming to be a prophet or anyone important at all, as all prophecy has been written already, but we can speak forth God's Word, and that is what we should listen to above all. We all have to answer to Him alone.)

As for me and the little brown blog, I think I'm going to keep doing my Bible study for the next little while, but I'll be back when it is time...there's a time for everything, and every once in a while I need to unplug, drink in the living water of the Word, take my daily Prasch pill, blow the dust off my Bible teaching CD's, and detox. Hope some of you will be doing the same. Til later...

In the meantime, you be on the watch...

¹³For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.

¹⁴And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.

¹⁵Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

2 Corinthians 11