TruthTalks Archives - Truth Is The Word

In today’s world, most people associate ‘supernatural’ with ghosts, séances, and Harry Potter. To say that Christianity is a supernatural relationship sounds both confusing and heretical. But it is!

The meaning of the word ‘supernatural’ is ‘relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe’  The Bible is full of accounts of supernatural events. Jesus ministered supernaturally, and the re-birth of the spirit is a profoundly supernatural phenomenon. The word ‘metaphysical’ is more or less a synonym for supernatural and is defined as ‘relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses’ Yet, here again, it is usually connected in Christian circles with cult systems or Word of Faith extremes. Yet, Christianity is metaphysical. We cannot see God, who is Spirit, yet we have a relationship with the triune Godhead in and through Jesus Christ.

We cannot test or measure the manifestations of healing and miracles yet we experience them and gladly accept them… or do we?

Some Christian folk reject outright anything, spiritual gifts included, that appear to be supernatural. Words of Knowledge are to them simply intellectually informed teachings, Words of Wisdom are wise utterances, Prophecy is preaching, and so on. Such people are commonly termed cessationists in theological circles; they believed that the ‘Gifts of the Spirit’ have ceased.  I have read as much as I choose to about the justifications for holding such a belief, but I find them wanting. Although theologians of this persuasion often claim that their theology is based on a sound exposition of scripture, nothing could be further from the truth. The New Testament is replete with references to the supernatural, and the claim that 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 supports cessationism is, in my opinion at least, just foolish and irresponsible. Actually, the real argument that the supernatural Gifts of the Spirit have ceased is based on a selective reading of history and not on biblical interpretation.

On the other side of the spectrum are those who claim to operate supernaturally as disciples of Jesus, but evidence magical manipulation rather than spiritual ministry. I am referring here to such things as crowd mesmerising, leg-stretching, mantra shouting, gold dust materialising, angel feather falling, religious slight-of-hand. I regard this as a perversion and not a spiritual reality, and as mind-craft, not supernatural ministry. Neither cessationism nor charismania are valid expressions of biblical Christianity.

If these two positions represent the end-points of a horizontal line, then the middle point, pulled up to form a triangle, must be intellectual knowledge-based pseudo-Christianity. In terms of this belief system, re-birth is just a euphemism for commitment of the will, spirituality consists of Bible study and prayer, church is an organisation akin to a school, and evangelism is a call to embrace a way of living and a denominational doctrinal statement. To my way of thinking, this too is a parody of New Testament Christianity. Cessationism, charismania, and intellectual pseudo-belief form a baleful triumvirate in current Christendom.

Jesus modelled a supernatural faith relationship with His Father, the Holy Spirit, and His disciples.

Read through the Gospels and observe how He ministered supernaturally, and how He positioned faith, not as a force to be manipulated, but as a the catalyst of metaphysical relationships. Take note of His profound lecture to the intellectually religious leader Nicodemus. Read on through the book of

Giving to the local church is biblical and important, but tithing is a self-serving remnant from a long distant age.

On numerous occasions, I have sat through Sunday services where there have been two sermons; one on tithing and the other on whatever topic the preacher had on his heart. I am not being facetious or sarcastic here, but some churches preach on tithing every Sunday. The exhortations I have heard on this subject usually take one of two forms:

* There is the appeal to God’s Law, routinely built around, what I call ‘Malachi’s mallet’; “Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me.” But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’ “In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse — the whole nation of you — because you are robbing me” (Malachi 3:8-10). Then there is the…

* …‘let’s do a good deal with God’ approach, and here the continuation of the Malachi passage works well; “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it” (Mal 3:10-11). So, great, let’s give 10 and He will give us 100… a good deal indeed!

Does the Bible insist that disciples of the Lord Jesus give a tenth of whatever they earn? Are pastors righteous when they insist that their members tithe to their local church? Should we be financially funding our local church? My answers are No… No… and Yes!

Tithing, which is a word describing a tenth of something, has its origin in the life of Old Testament Israel and was what we today would understand as Income Tax. The tithe paid for Israel’s system of government before the advent of kings and kingdoms. The priests administered religious ritual and the judges administered justice and provided national leadership. All adult citizens paid the tithe to fund the religious and judicial systems (Leviticus 27:30, Numbers 18:26).

Do we find the concept of tithing in the New Testament? No, we do not, but we do find a few references to it. Its first New Testament appearance is when Jesus was declaring dire woes on the Pharisees; “Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone” (Luke 11:42 and also in Matthew 23:23). Advocates of tithing often link this to what Jesus said concerning the Law; “I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). Here, Jesus is not only said to be endorsing the tithe, but also claiming that non-tithers will not go to Heaven! But is this honestly what these texts mean? I don’t think they do; in fact I think that this understanding is as back-to-front as ‘ehtit’! The address to the Pharisees consisted of woes, not affirmation. The Matthew 23 passage starts with Jesus telling His followers that they were to obey the Pharisees, despite their hypocrisy, because they were the custodians of the Law of Moses. Before Jesus died to settle the demands of the Law, the Jews were still under the Law and could only be deemed righteous before God if they obeyed all of its requirements. His statement recorded in Matthew...

“Say to them, ‘This is the nation that has not obeyed the Lord its God or responded to correction’. Truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips’” (Jeremiah 7:28)

These are the words of the prophet Jeremiah speaking to the nation of Israel about 2,600 years ago, but they may just as well have been spoken to the nations of the world now.

I don’t! It disappoints me, but I have to admit that I have become sceptical to the point of cynicism. When it comes to most politicians and most news media, I have moved from ‘not easily convinced’ towards ‘distrustful of human sincerity and integrity’.

The Oxford Dictionaries word of the year for 2016 is ‘post-truth’. They define this composite word as describing ‘circumstances where objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. Perhaps I would not have taken this too seriously if I had not been closely following both the Brexit bruhaha and the US elections rumpus. I watched with amazement as internationally recognised news anchors and political commentators displayed the most blatant bias in their reporting. They rephrased items of ‘fact’ and added an obvious spin accompanied by sneers, smirks and dismissive gestures. My amazement turned to outrage, and finally to sadness.

The first of the ‘post’ words that demanded my attention some years ago was the word ‘post-modern’, commonly referring to the last quarter of the twentieth century. Post-modern would at least mean ‘an era after the modern one, however, we seldom use it in this way. More often, we refer to post-modern as an era of radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, religions, and so on. During this period philosophers, and even some church leaders, sowed the poisonous seed of what would later grow into a post-Christian worldview. For at least the last 20 years there has been a definite shift away from the predominance of Christian beliefs and ethics in politics, economics, and sociology. This erosion has resulted in the loss of the primacy of the Christian worldview in political affairs in favour of secularism and nationalism. The result is what some social commentators have labelled a ‘post-Christian’ worldview.

During the 20th century, some church leaders tried to ‘save’ the Bible from scorn and disuse by attempting to de-supernaturalise it. People, like Bishop Spong, believed that only a scientifically validated faith could survive the times. I remember attending a faculty meeting of the theological department of a public university where some of the professors were arguing that for Christian theology to survive we would need to align it closely with the sciences. Later came the seeker-sensitive substitute for the Gospel, emergent church liberalism on the one hand, and a warmed up version of demonism going under the label of the New Apostolic Reformation.

It isn’t hard to see how this would grow into what is now termed the post-truth era. If truth is relative to circumstances and subordinate to expediencies then the lines between right and wrong, moral and immoral, true and false, become so feint that they all but disappear.

‘Fake news’ inundates the media and the internet and social media are replete with irrational and often mischievous announcements and ‘revelations’.

The American Intelligence chiefs use uncorroborated information as part of their presidential briefings, newspapers publish it, TV hosts discuss it with panels of so-called experts, and the public believes it… Well not all of us. In addition, this morass of half-truth, untruth and misinformation even extends its swampy reach to the church. Ministers of the Gospel pull people’s legs and claim that they are thus healed (pull...

Have you ever wondered if Jesus was really born on the 25th December?

Would shepherds and their sheep be outdoors in the fields in the middle of winter? And what are we supposed to make of the cynics who say that the Christmas birth story is just a variation of the ancient myth of the god of wine, Dionysus (also known as Bacchus, or Iacchus) supposedly born of a virgin mother on that day? Perhaps we, like the ancient Magi of the Christmas story, should look to the heavens for the answers.

The autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere is on the 22nd September, and this month is a far more likely candidate for the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ than is December, here’s why:  Interestingly, on the 22nd September 3 BC the planet Mercury was in the constellation of Virgo at sunrise (as seen from Bethlehem).  Above Mercury stood Venus, in almost perfect alignment, and above that, in the constellation of Leo, stood Jupiter in conjunction with the star Regulus.  This would have been a significant astronomical event to the ancient wise men, the Magi, who would probably have attributed great religious significance to it.  One week earlier, the planets Venus and Mercury were in perfect conjunction at dawn, and this would also have attracted the attention of ancient astronomers.  So, if we are looking for a suitable date for the birth of Jesus Christ, the 22nd September 3 BC would fit nicely.

There has been a lot of speculation about the nature of the Star of Bethlehem.

Some think it was a comet, others that it was a supernova, and yet others that it was a specially created miraculous stellar phenomenon. I have read several articles on this subject, but none of the explanations given satisfy me. The biblical data is as follows. The wise men reported to King Herod that they were searching for the recently born Jewish Messiah because they had seen ‘his star rising in the east…’ (Matthew 2:2). The account in Matthew’s Gospel goes on to say that Herod inquired of these Magi the ‘exact time the star had appeared.’ On the advice of his scholars, he then directed the Magi to Bethlehem, and the star ‘went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.’  The wise men then entered the house where Mary was. Note the use of the word ‘house’ and not ‘stable’. The account tells us that the Magi saw a ‘child’, not a ‘baby’, and bowed down and worshipped him. The wise men then did not tell Herod where the child was living, and so the evil king ordered the slaughter of all boys of two years old or under living in or around Bethlehem.

What we can glean from this data is firstly, that the star was observed ‘rising in the east’. The Magi most probably came from Babylonia, where the priestly class of scientists studied astronomy. Their practice was to observe the heavenly bodies at dawn each morning. They noted and interpreted the meaning of the constellation and planets which appeared on the eastern horizon as the sun rose. To them, each star sign signified a nation, and each planet and first order star had a special significance. The ancients regarded the planets as ‘wandering stars’ because they did not know the scientific differences between stars and planets, and merely observed that the planets appeared to wander across the night sky while other stars stood still in the heavens.

The second piece of information we have from the biblical data is that the star of Bethlehem appeared to move and then to stand still. This rules out the supernova theory, because that would appear as a sudden and stationary burst of light in one particular location.

The third thing we can gather from the data is that Jesus was no longer a newborn baby when the Magi visited. Mary was living in a house, not a stable, and Herod ordered the murder of all boys of two years old and under. Had Jesus been a baby, then it would have sufficed to kill only babes in arms. After all,

On the 25th December each year most Christians choose to celebrate the birthday of the Lord Jesus Christ.Shopping malls used to be festooned with decorations, Christmas trees stood in the windows of most stores, and carols filled the air.

Not any more. Now, at best, you see a token decoration and a ‘Happy Holidays’ sign in the odd shop window.

But do you remember the little carved nativity scenes? The baby Jesus in a crib, donkeys and assorted livestock peering in along with a token shepherd; Oh, and Joseph and Mary standing behind the crib. Mary doesn’t usually feature much in our modern Christmas celebrations but I want to focus on her in this article… and no, I haven’t converted to Roman Catholicism

It is one thing for us to claim that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and quite another to assert that we are interpreting it correctly.

I have written on this subject before but it is so important that it warrants repeating.

I am currently helping a colleague develop a two-day workshop on Bible interpretation for church leaders who have English as a second or third language. Most of them have a low level of formal education, and a further challenge is that many of them have only been exposed to topical or allegorical preaching.

Those who do not interpret the Bible allegorically, have been taught to take everything at face value and very literally.

Perhaps I should give an example of these two types of ‘interpretation’: The story that Jesus told of the good Samaritan has often been interpreted allegorically. Some  teachers have claimed that the two coins given to the innkeeper to provide for the injured man’s board and lodging stand for baptism and holy communion. The idea being that these are the two ordained church provisions for the ‘sinner’. But there is no end to what the two coins could be taken to represent; Old and New Testaments, Apostles and Prophets, and so on. The problem is, of course, that the original context of the passage plays little role in this form of interpretation, and nor does the first intended meaning.

A couple of years ago I came across a rather extreme yet nevertheless real-life example of literalistic interpretation. One of our preaching team members was ministering at a church in a nearby informal settlement. During the service, a young woman started to manifest signs of demonic interference, so… the church leaders immediately tied her up with ropes! The visiting preacher demanded that they release her and asked why they had tied her up. They answered that the Bible said they should because “Jesus said in Matthew 12:29 that they should ‘bind the strongman’.” Once again, the context and first intended meaning of the scripture in question had been ignored.

So, what are the most fundamental processes for interpreting the Bible? For me, there are just three – Context, Christocentricity, and Exhaustive Reference.

In the majority of cases, the context of a text yields its fundamental meaning, in other words;

* Look at the verse’s position within the larger portion of scripture in which the text is set.

* Observe the literary type or style of the passage. Is it poetic, or prophetic, a parable, or a historical account? For instance, we get into all sorts of trouble when we read the book of Revelation as a chronological history.

* Finally, note the cultural, geographic, and historic setting.

Determining the context of a passage helps us answer the key question, ‘what is the first intended meaning of this portion of scripture?’ A helpful way of getting to an answer to this question is to consider what the first listeners or readers would have understood as the meaning.

Where the meaning of a passage is still not clear, even when considered within its various contexts, then we need to ask a further question; ‘what light does the life and teaching of the Lord Jesus shed on my understanding of this passage?’ Did Jesus teach this? Did Jesus do what the text appears to teach? Is what Jesus presented as the nature, character, and values of the Triune God consistent with what this text appears to be saying? Jesus Christ is the full manifestation of the Godhead (Colossians 2:9) and we can be sure that His life and teachings constitute the primary key to understanding the Bible.

I find it hard to believe that Evangelical Christians are divided, and passionately so, over whether planet Earth is 6,000 years or 4 billion years old.

Indeed, Jon Greene writes that it is ‘one of the most polarizing and divisive issues within the Christian community’. In the past, local churches and even entire denominations, have divided over issues such as baby baptism, speaking in tongues, and even end-time scenarios. But to divide over the age of the Earth seems even more pathetic!

In 2012 Joy! Magazine was buzzing with articles and letters to the editor about this issue, and so they asked me to write a ‘calming’ article which I titled ‘The great creation debate’. Now it seems that things are hotting up once more, and so I feel the need to make some observations… again.

To get up to date I watched a number of YouTube debates  between people like Kent Hovind and Ken Ham on the Young Earth side and Hugh Ross, and Hank Hanegraaff on the Old Earth side. All the Christians I have heard, or read, who are involved in the controversy believe in the inspiration of the Bible and, strangely enough, they all seem to agree that Darwinian Evolution (change through unguided naturalistic processes), as it is commonly understood, is neither biblical nor logical. Yet Kent Hovind called Hugh Ross a heretic, to his face, claimed that the God he worshiped was not Hugh’s god and that the graciously tolerant Dr. Ross was a cult leader. What on earth (pun intended) is the cause of such insecurity and animosity?

Trying to make sense of the debates on this issue can be confusing and frustrating.

On the one side, the arguments often devolve into “God’s Word says so, so that’s the way it is” statements, and on the other side the many references to quasars, the speed of light, quantum mechanics, and so on can be a little overwhelming. Debaters tend to argue at length (Pun intended once more) whether the meaning of the word translated as ‘day’ in Genesis Chapter One can indicate a long period instead of a 24-hours. Ken Ham accuses Old Earth Creationists of arguing from the basis of science and then trying to make the biblical account conform to the so-called evidence. Dr. Ross, however, claims that he is equally committed to the inspiration and authority of the Bible, but that he sees no conflict between a reasoned interpretation of the scriptures and the scientific evidence. But is the real driving issue the matter of WHEN God created? Is it really? I don’t think so.

Ken Ham states that his concern is not so much the age of the earth as it is the authority of scripture, and I think that here he puts his finger on the underlying issue. The 20th century scientific age ushered in aggressive atheistic criticism of biblical authority, and even within the church liberal scholars undercut the belief that the Bible is divinely inspired. Charles Darwin’s theories of natural evolution added to the controversy and so several ‘fundamentalist’ Christians dedicated themselves to the task of defending the inspiration and authority of scripture against science in the face of humanistic scorn and derision.

Darwinian evolution, although taught in most schools as ‘fact’, has now been largely abandoned by most informed scientists, and so the battle front has shifted to the matter of the age of the cosmos in general and the earth in particular. Young Earthers contend that a ‘plain reading’ of the Engli...

Ever since I have known him Len Sweet has boldly declared that the church is suffering from a ‘Jesus deficit disorder’ I met up with him again a few weeks ago and asked him if this was still the case. … Continued

What do Mohammad and Jesus have in common? Absolutely nothing. In the religion of Islam, Jesus is honoured as a messenger of Allah but Muhammad is revered as his last and greatest messenger. Biblical Christianity, on the other hand, gives … Continued

When it comes to local churches, is big always best, or is small better, or does size just not matter at all? Three decades ago I had the privilege of being called to pastor a tiny but rapidly growing local … Continued