Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-7-25

This week I share an article I wrote for The American Spectator magazine. It was occasioned by the death of Jimmy Swaggart, one of Christianity’s great evangelists and certainly the premier “televangelist.” I knew him slightly – more specifically, I interviewed him several times as I worked some years ago on a projected book about him and his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis.

More than that, I was a follower of his ministry and was baptised in the Spirit – became a Pentecostal – under his teaching. My family and I attended many crusades. Through “ups and downs,” as people will ask; and my wife and I are weekly worshipers today. His son Donnie and grandson Gabriel carry the message admirably, teaching and preaching.

“Ups and downs”? I almost would rather learn from a human being who has been redeemed then… well, someone who suggests that he or she never has fallen. As Theodore Roosevelt said, It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.

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As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many (Hebrews 9:27-28).

America was largely founded, substantially settled, and essentially established on Christian foundations. The models for colonies’ governments, and the blueprints for “framing” documents, were Biblical. Even Deists among the Founding Fathers generally acknowledged the Bible as their guide for designing constitutions and the governing documents.

America’s spiritual moorings were derived from more than such influences, however. The nation often has had “parallel leadership” from among Christian figures. Pilgrims came to the New World in search of religious freedom. Among them were Puritans. Before the Revolution – and helping to fuel its liberty-loving fervor – was the Great Awakening. Preachers like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and the Wesley brothers were enormously influential throughout the colonies and new United States. In the next generations the Second Great Awakening, and religious figures like Henry Ward Beecher and his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe persuasively argued against slavery and for social reform. Open-air revival meetings were conducted on Wall Street and other major sites.

… and so through much of American history. No matter the tenor of political changes and social trends, preachers, evangelists, and Gospel songwriters influenced broad swaths of American culture. Camp-meetings as Americans moved Westward; massive urban revivals; new denominations. Clergy as best-selling authors and influential lecturers have always been prominent in public debates. The D L Moodys, Billy Sundays, Aimee Semple McPhersons, and Father Coughlins of yesterday prefigured “America’s Pastor,” Billy Graham.

While one segment of America was discovering Jesus in California in the 1960s and ‘70s – the “Jesus Movement” on the beaches – another revolution was sweeping through more traditional neighborhoods, families, and denominations: Pentecostalism. There were many leaders, including Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, and Jim Bakker. They sustained ostracism from mainstream denominations, yet they flourished. Many of them built huge empires that eventually were undermined by corruption and scandals, frequently self-inflicted.

The death of Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, who died on July 1, 2025, is a case in point. He became a figure of major influence in American religious life and even politics, endured scandal and self-abasement, and was an actor in a sad but not uncommon scenario… but his last chapters reflected redemption and “overcoming.” His flock remained with him, or regrouped. He rebuilt his major Pentecostal movement through fidelity to its basic tenets, but also by shifting the focus and presentation of his message, or God’s message as He received it.

Forty years ago Jimmy Swaggart was invited to the White House by Ronald Reagan; and last year a new president, Donald Trump, placed calls to his office. In the 1980s Swaggart graced the covers of weekly news magazines; recently he was feted at his 90th birthday celebration by the likes of Bill Gaither and Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham who once disdained his style of preaching and much of its substance. Between the “first and second” Swaggarts he also overcame near-universal opprobrium after being caught with prostitutes.

By the time of his death Swaggart was the longest-running televangelist and possibly the most prominent expositor of Protestant Christianity in the world; certainly the leading exponent of Pentecostalism, which is sweeping the globe, especially south of the Equator. His ministry of frequent and massive crusades across America and in numerous overseas countries was supplanted by a media ministry, the only 24/7 Christian cable channel offering exclusive programming of a single ministry. Myriad worship services originate in his large headquarters in Baton Rouge LA; he published a monthly magazine and produced dozens of CDs and DVDs featuring his own distinctive performances and those of his large and talented worship team. Scores of published books and tracts written by Swaggart are ministry staples.

Over his career Swaggart inadvertently provided an additional meaning to the Biblical phrase “Born Again.”

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Jimmy Lee Swaggart was born on the Ides of March, 1935, within months of his cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, a pioneer of rock and roll; and Mickey Gilley, the popular country-music star whose nightclub Gilley’s was the setting of the movie Urban Cowboy. The clan – whose family tree resembles, rather, a twisted vine – counts other piano-playing preachers and recording stars. Linda Gail Lewis (Jerry Lee’s sister), for instance, began her career in the 1960s and still records and performs, with a large following in Europe as a rockabilly queen. That family tree, planted and nurtured around little Ferriday LA, is replete with inter-marriage, multiple marriages (Jerry and Linda Gail each having tied the knot seven times through the years), adultery, and illegitimate siblings and cousins. In that medley, Jimmy and Jerry Lee were double first-cousins.

Jimmy Swaggart himself had one marriage, to Frances Anderson of Wisner LA; and one child, Donnie, who was named after Swaggart’s older brother who died in infancy. It is curious to note that Swaggart, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Ray Charles all had older brothers who died in accidents when they were boys. The rural South of the 1930s dished up a strange, but common, set of touchstones – tragedy, poverty, violence, music, religious fundamentalism.

After his hardscrabble family of drinkers, roustabouts, and lawbreakers got saved in a tent revival, young Jimmy felt a calling to be an evangelist. After his marriage at age 17 (Frances was 15), they travelled with Donnie and a lone accordion, singing Gospel songs and preaching – initially to sparse groups, and sleeping in their car or in church basements.

In 1957 his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis, recently signed to a recording contract with Elvis’s label Sun Records, mightily defined rock ‘n’ roll with massive hit songs like Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On and Great Balls Of Fire, making tens of thousands of dollars a night and appearing on network TV. Jerry Lee and Sam Phillips of Sun Records arranged to launch a Gospel line with Swaggart its featured performer. But the young evangelist declined the offer, believing that God wanted him to preach, not sing.

Swaggart was destined – called – to do both.

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In the late ‘50s Swaggart gradually expanded his ministry from small churches and modest tent revivals to larger crusades, recording traditional Southern Gospel songs and attracting radio air time. The dynamic music was “bait,” he said, to draw people to the preaching; and vice versa in other cases.

Through the 1970s and ‘80s, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries grew exponentially. He established a church in Baton Rouge, Family Worship Center; he founded a Bible College; his radio empire expanded to television, buying time on stations to form a de facto network; crusades became major events in major venues in major cities… expanding to mass meetings in many countries around the world, often filling entire stadiums. Many of his singers and musicians, like Janet Paschal and John Starnes, graduated to successful solo careers. By the mid-1980s his telecast, now a full hour in length, was carried on 250 stations. Swaggart’s template for crusades was a Friday evangelistic message; a Saturday “invitation service” for people to respond to altar calls; and a Sunday service explaining the Gifts of the Spirit for those eager to receive them.

The on-stage evangelist Jimmy Swaggart was electric – a handsome, talented, exuberant musician, singer, and preacher. Inevitably his anointed messages were accompanied by sweat and tears and “hard” preaching – against sin, apostasy, liberal theology, “dead churches,” and such. He had little trouble criticising rival preachers, some by name; and he received criticism back. The Christian Right was ascendant in politics at the time; Pentecostal and Charismatic ministries were naturally compatible with those social and political impulses.

But “Pride goeth before a fall,” and a spate of scandals soiled the Pentecostal movement in the mid-1980s. Jim Bakker had sex with a church secretary and was later sent to jail for financial improprieties at the tacky Christian theme park established by him and his tacky wife Tammy Faye. Jerry Falwell, who had successfully penetrated the political world through his Moral Majority, embarrassed himself in the scramble for Bakker’s empire. Oral Roberts said that God would kill him if supporters fell short of donation-goals. (The goal was met, and the Lord did not immediately take Roberts’s life.) Ministers engaged in “Name It and Claim It” promises, and invented a seductive “Prosperity Gospel.” Many other ministries were embroiled, seemingly every other month, in sex or financial or doctrinal scandals.

An Elmer Gantry-type if there ever were one, Swaggart continued his hellfire preaching at the time, severely criticizing many of his fellow evangelists on moral and theological grounds. Many rapacious “reporters” like Geraldo Rivera and CNN’s John Camp devoted themselves to finding chinks in Swaggart’s armor. Beyond defending himself and the Gospel, his attitude and body language in interviews signalled the Pride about which Scripture warns.

Indeed it foreshadowed a fall – from grace, from a mass following, and from respect and respectability in the Christian world. In 1988 a rival Louisiana preacher with whom Swaggart had tussled caught Jimmy with a prostitute, in a cheap motel outside New Orleans. The preacher’s men took photographic evidence and slashed Swaggart’s tires. A nation-wide scandal ensued; Swaggart confessed in an apology to God and Frances and Donnie that was picked up by a multitude of TV stations and magazine covers. His tear-stained face and contorted expression were cemented in the public’s mind as the new face of Pentecostalism. Swaggart’s denomination, the Assemblies of God, rebuked him and ordered corrective steps designed to rehabilitate the preacher and rescue his ministry.

Swaggart accepted some discipline, ignored other recommendations. He self-exiled, but returned to his pulpit sooner than the AG ruled. The denomination eventually revoked Swaggart’s ministry credentials. Offerings and donations drastically dropped. Enrollment at the Bible College fell from 1451 to 370. Grass grew in the cracks of Family Worship Center’s parking lots.

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During these very times I was working on a project about the Cousins Swaggart, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Mickey Gilley. I had interviewed all three and many of their relatives, associates, even students at Swaggart’s Bible College. Even a prostitute he was caught with.

His confession aligned with the facts. Whether his apologies – more correctly, signs of repentance – were sincere, became a matter of fierce debate.

After the service at which he returned to the pulpit, I approached him and expressed the hope that his failing, and what I assumed would be his repentance and rehabilitation, could make for a powerful message to a public comprised, after all, of sinners and flawed people. And that I would tell that story without tabloid flavors. He replied with what I have since called a Pentecostal No: “Brother Marschall, I’ll pray about it.”

In Jimmy Swaggart’s message that day, the theme centered on the Biblical figure of King David – that he too (I add the “too,” because it was obvious Swaggart drew a comparison to himself) engaged in lust and adultery, and was guilty of much. But none of that, Swaggart noted, changed the fact that God had a call on David’s life. With that anointing, David eventually carried out amazing tasks that God had set before him.

It was a facile argument, given the circumstances in Baton Rouge that morning, and yet it was theologically sound.

The road that Jimmy Swaggart walked thereafter, whether out of desperation or by design – his or God’s – has been unique. Perhaps it was a strategic withdrawal from the ministry’s program. The overseas crusades largely ended, as did many stateside crusades. The face-to-the-world aspect of his ministry became the home church, Family Worship Center, featuring three services a week and various camp meetings and special conferences. An extensive media ministry was established through his new outlet, SonLife Broadcasting. A core group of staffers, musicians, singers, and teachers remained, loyally. A children’s ministry was expanded.

The ministry outreach grew, particularly exegetical material (Swaggart’s Bible studies total more than 7500 pages). He claimed a divine revelation that directed him to address “the message of the Cross,” asserting that aspect of Jesus’s sacrifice as the proper focus of Christians’ faith. In the course of his latter-day ministry activities I have joined those who believe his ultimate repentance was sincere.

Swaggart was joined in the pulpit by his son Donnie and grandson Dr Gabriel Swaggart. In the years before his death they assumed virtually all the ministry duties, excellently – breaking a pattern of many televangelists’ kids being weak shadows of their fathers, with the exception of Franklin Graham.

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In Jimmy Swaggart’s last decades his fervent delivery mellowed, but not his message. Hellfire themes continued. He never softened his Pentecostal distinctives (his son and grandson emphasize the Gifts even more than he had), and his publications and sermons continued to attack false doctrines and flawed theology in some denominations.

If parts of the general public did not know, or forgot, who Jimmy Swaggart was, it was due to his decision to “feed the sheep” and focus on his congregation; on SonLife’s media outreach; and sharing his theological brand. Appeals for, say, hospitals in India were supplanted by campaigns to provide thousands of Expositor’s Study Bibles to countries around the world. These were important goals of Swaggart until the end, and along the way he acquired new friends (as calls from Donald Trump, Bill Gaither, Mike Lindell and a wide variety of others attest) and in new fields of activity. Gabe, and especially Donnie, became increasingly active and vocal in conservative politics.

… which brings to the fore, full-circle perhaps, the traditional and essential place of Christianity in American life. Jimmy Swaggart’s ultimate re-emergence and influence, and a new (or renewed) America where Donnie Swaggart is invited to White House prayer meetings, and Gabe Swaggart is honored at the Louisiana State Senate, testifies to an important aspect of faith – ultimately, “overcoming” in this corrupt world. The perseverance that lifted the piano-playing preacher from Ferriday, Louisiana was largely spiritual but also spoke of definition and redefinition; of dispensing and seeking forgiveness; of knowing God and making Him known. Somehow, an American story too.

Jimmy Swaggart’s struggles, victories, and personal “overcoming” will be a testament living beyond his grave.

He breathed his last earthly breath, as country folks say, about 8:30 a.m. on July 1, 2025. Donnie made the announcement on various ministry platforms, and quoted a verse from II Timothy that his father cited as he was slipping away in recent months:I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course.

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Looking For A City

6-9-25

Think back to when you were a child. It’s Christmas morning. You know there are presents waiting for you. They were hinted at, and promised, and your loving parents have always come through. What anticipation!

You come downstairs, and – yes! – there are many waiting for you. All wrapped, different sizes and shapes, colorful paper, all with your name on the tags. Your parents set them before you and invite you to open them. You do! What joy!

But the big one in the corner you choose not to open. The long box with the colorful ribbon you tell your parents you’ll skip. “Till later?” “No, it just doesn’t interest me.” The square box in the colorful paper sounds intriguing when you shake it, but… you reject that too. And so on.

How often did that happen with you on Christmas or your birthday? Never? Probably never.

Presents from strangers are exciting enough, but gifts from your loving parents are bound to be special… chosen for you… pleasing to you… designed to meet your needs and desires and expectations. Why would you say No?

OK, you know this is an analogy. In the Christian world, where we are the children and our loving father is… our loving Father, we have been given lessons and tasks and rules and advice and love, lots of love, we have also been showered with gifts. Lots of gifts. Forgiveness, salvation, mercy, peace, wisdom… lots of gifts. Why would we turn any of them down?

Millions of Christians do.

When Jesus faced crucifixion – He knew what was coming – He told His disciples that One would come to them when He would ascend to Heaven. The Holy spirit, of course was active throughout the Old Testament, as God’s agent of sorts, just as Scripture tells us that through Jesus the Universe was created; and He was the Man in the fiery furnace when Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego were miraculously spared. When Jesus was incarnate – the Messiah; Emmanuel; “God-With-Us” – it was God dwelling among us. Totally God and Totally man? Well, the Lord is a miracle-working God at whose ways we marvel.

But when the disciples were troubled that Jesus announced His imminent departure from this earth, He reassured them and promised: “I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you (John 16:7).”

The Helper, the Advocate, the Comforter – the Holy Spirit has many names, as He has many roles. But. As Christ left this earth physically, the Spirit came to dwell in the hearts, minds, and spirits of Believers. Many Christians treat the Holy Ghost as some sort of cartoony-angel sitting on our shoulders, or a go-between to Heaven when we pray, or… not at all. Yet the Spirit of God is the Spirit of God. He is as much God as Jesus was when walking on earth. He is as much God as, well, God Himself. 

Jesus was sent to “be” God among us, to serve His mission and be sacrifice for our sins. The Spirit was sent to “be” God in every Christian’s heart. 

Yet many treat Him as an option, an afterthought, almost apart from the Father and the Son – as if the Godhead is a “diune,” not a Triune, God who has revealed Himself in three manifestations.

This is Pentecost Sunday, named for the Hebrew feast that coincided with 50 days after Passover / Easter. It was the day, described in Scripture, after Jesus bodily ascended into Heaven to rejoin the Father. It was the day when “a mighty rushing wind” blew through the assembled believers in an Upper Room. Strange things happened: All began speaking in unknown languages. They marveled, and observers wondered if they spontaneously were drunk. They appeared to have supernatural flames on their heads.

Those who had been cowering fear for days became bold. The confused became wise, for the rest of their lives. Followers became leaders. The impulsive Peter became head of the church, logical and firm. 

It was the Day of Pentecost, and the followers of Jesus, the nascent church, indeed the entire world, has never been the same. Because the Holy Spirit was sent by the Father to indwell believers.

I will return to the Christmas-Day analogy. The Holy Spirit also came with Gifts. As recorded in Scripture – examples cited in the Book of Acts; in numerous references in Paul’s Epistles – He shared spiritual gifts. There are nine specifically referred to but, as with Fruits of the Spirit, we may experience more. But:

The Word of wisdom; the Word of knowledge; Gifts of faith;

The Gift of healing; Working of miracles; the Gift of prophecy;

Discerning between spirits; the Gift of speaking in tongues; the Gift of interpreting tongues.

The First-century Church grew exponentially and despite persecution partly because new Believers were wise, brave, equipped, and blessed by these gifts. Eventually broad swaths of the Church disdained these Gifts as… weird, supernatural, often misapplied. Yes, they were; but they are still God’s gifts, God’s will. Pastors have sniffed to me, “So, have you experienced these manifestations?” That’s no challenge: Yes, I have. Have I witnessed miracles? Yes, I have. Do I believe the “Baptism in the Holy Ghost” is for today? Um, should I call God a liar?

It is strange, but the Gifts are widely disdained as “not for today,” meant for people 2000 years ago, just “odd” for modern folks. Yes; there are strange things happenin’ every day. Thank God.  

The Gifts of the Spirit are for today. These can be explained more, and I invite readers to write if I can share and explain. The Holy Ghost is on the move in this world – Pentecostals, for instance, outnumber Catholics today in the country of Brazil. We have adherents in every denomination, but also separate church bodies like the Assemblies of and the Church of God and Church of God in Christ. 

Faithful believers who seek the Baptism, and the Gifts, should be assured that God honors the desire… and grants the Gifts as He wills. Don’t get caught up in Tongues, for instance, when you might have been ministering to many through Wisdom and Faith and Discernment. 

But If people fear God and love His Son… why would they disregard the Spirit Who yearns to dwell within us all? And why would people ignore all those Gifts prepared for them?!?!

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Sweetest Name I Know

7-1-24

Easter has passed; and Pentecost – the “birth-day of the Church,” the day on which the Holy Spirit descended upon believers in the Upper Room – which is observed so many days after the Resurrection of Jesus, has likewise been celebrated.

I pray in your lives that Pentecost has been observed and celebrated. Let us distinguish between the Church and denominations; and let us always cherish the gift, and Gifts, of the Holy Spirit from our Father. (After all, what children would neglect or reject gifts from their loving parents???)

I am going to imagine an encounter between two of the Disciples during those momentous days in Jerusalem. Its details are fictional: I am compressing and conflating events between Jesus’s Crucifixion and the Day of Pentecost; these two men could not have had this face-to-face encounter. But aspects are nonetheless true: their actions, motivations, and reactions are true.

In imagining this dialog, I am confident of its verisimilitude, because we each have a little of these two Disciples, Judas and Peter, within us. I do.

Peter: The Lord was taken from us, betrayed to be accused by the Jews and turned over to the Romans, and…

Judas: I know! I was the one who betrayed Him… Surely you know.

Peter: Yes, of course. We knew that you slipped away during the Last Supper and accepted a bribe of 30 pieces of silver to betray Him. At the moment we had wondered what Jesus meant when He said, “What you are going to do, do quickly.”

Judas: It was my decision, but we all heard Jesus say, “One of you will betray me.” You all asked, “Is it I, Lord?” and I even asked, “Is it I?” and Jesus looked at me and answered, “You have said so.”

Peter: So how could you do it? Was that not a warning? You had the chance to resist that temptation, to change your plan! You lived and walked and talked with the Lord, as we all did. You knew He was the Messiah!

Judas: Yes! We all lived and worked together as brothers for three years! So how do you explain that you betrayed Him too? You failed Him likewise!

Peter: Yes… I did betray Him too. But my sins did not lead to His Jesus’ death…

Judas: So your life was more precious than Jesus’s? More than mine, I suppose? You thought you would save your neck by denying you even knew Him?

Peter: Yes… I always was impulsive. It is no excuse. And, as with you, the Lord also looked into my face and prophesied what I would do. In my pride, I protested that “Even if they all fall away, I will never fall away…”

Judas: And the Lord was even more specific about you, that before the rooster would crow, you would deny knowing Him not once but three times…!

Peter: I know, I know. But Judas, after your betrayal, after Jesus was taken and falsely accused, and beaten and tortured and sentenced to death… did you repent?

Judas: I was bitterly sorry. I grieved. I gave the Master over to be killed. I went to the Jews and returned the pieces of silver… But they laughed at me, and threw the coins to the ground. They mocked me.

Peter: You could have…

Judas: I did the only thing I could think of doing. I had betrayed the Savior. He in Whom no sin was found. Whose only crime was Love…

Peter: You hanged yourself.

Judas: No one to mourn. I was alone, despising myself. I did what I deserved. But… you…? After you denied knowing Jesus when He was being persecuted? Not standing up for Him? What did you do?

Peter: I was remorseful too! Especially when I was present in Jerusalem when they tortured Him and spat on Him and whipped Him and nailed His wrists and feet to a cross and…

Judas: Did you go to Golgotha? Were you there when He died?

Peter. … No. I hid. I was afraid for my life. We all huddled together. Those days, after Jesus died and was buried… were the darkest days you could imagine. He left us. We were alone. And none of us had spoken up for Him…

Judas: Did you think to hang yourself? You betrayed Him too!

Peter: Maybe it was my impulsive nature… but… I prayed to God. I needed to be forgiven. I begged for mercy. I was lost, confused… and had sinned against the Savior of humankind. I prayed for God to help me, to forgive me, to renew my faith. What else could I do?

Two sinners. Judas and Peter. “What else could they do?”

You know “the rest of the story.” The three women who had gone to the tomb to anoint Jesus’s body became the first evangelists! He had risen from the dead, and they ran to find the cowering Disciples and share the news.

Peter – the unhanged traitor – remained impulsive some more days. The Disciples beheld Jesus, some even incredulous. Thomas had to feel the wounds in Jesus’s side to know He was indeed the Savior in their midst. Some went with Jesus to the Mount of Transfiguration to see Him bodily rise to Heaven… the final confirmation of His divinity.

Then the Disciples returned to the Upper Room and – impulsively – argued a bit about how to organize things, or not, going forward. But… the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised came upon them, and on others gathered with them. They spoke in “other tongues.” Thereafter they received spiritual gifts, supernatural powers promised forever after to all Believers.

And – miracle of miracles? – Peter was no longer impulsive, immature, foolish. He became a “rock,” the leader of the Church, strong in faith.

This story is not about sins we are capable of committing. It is a lesson in how we should respond when we sin. We know how God will respond if we approach in true faith. He is the God of mercies who heals and forgives. We can pray, always; and we can pray for each other.

We all are, in one way or another at times, a Judas or a Peter. With whom do you identify? And let me ask a serious question, not fictional: What if Judas and Peter had sought each other out, to pray together, instead of facing their dilemmas alone…?

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Click: Can I Pray For You

5-29-23

The followers of Christ were frightened and confused. Their Jesus had been tortured, killed, and buried. On the third day He rose from the dead. He was with them for 40 days, then left them again. He ascended bodily to Heaven. But among the words He left were two specific things. He said it was “better” that He leave them, because “One would come” who would give them each, individually, “power from on high.” None of them understood. He also told them to “wait.”

In the meantime, for the harvest commemoration called Pentecost, Jews from “every nation on earth” were gathered in Jerusalem, many with the Apostles. They waited… for what? They were confused, nervous, choosing a replacement for Judas, anxious, wondering…

… until, suddenly, in an upper room of a house where they waited, a “mighty rushing wind” blew through. On their foreheads were strange sights – “tongues as of fire” appeared on those gathered. Then (some began to remember) as Old Testament prophesies and words of John the Baptist had foretold, the men and women were “filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

So this is what they were told to wait for. Was it merely a strange occurrence, a bizarre one-time event, with incomprehensible meaning? Some people, in subsequent generations, have attempted to obscure this event, but it was crystal-clear.

This was Jesus’s Promise fulfilled. The Holy Spirit – the next manifestation of God on earth; the third member of the Trinity – had come to reside in the hearts of believers in Christ. For that day, and for the rest of humankind’s history.

Many things changed, profoundly, that Day. The fear and confusion among the Disciples evaporated. Peter, who had always been an impulsive and sometimes foolish Follower, was suddenly mature in faith and leadership. He became the head of the newly organized church.

Yes, this was the birth of the Church.

Those who had gathered from other lands likewise were filled with Truth and Power, and returned home to spread the Gospel. Members of the Twelve became missionaries who visited them, and other lands, to establish groups of believers. So the acceptance of Jesus as Savior, and His Church, spread. Before the year 70 A.D., there were even Christian fellowships as far away as England.

The second chapter of the Book of Acts recorded these events of Pentecost; and so did secular reporters of the day, and contemporary historians like Josephus. But in ancient Scripture, it had been foretold. And in the last days, God says, I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; your sons and your daughters will prophesy; your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.

All through the New Testament are accounts of how God subsequently poured out His gifts. St Paul listed them succinctly in his first letter to the Church at Corinth: Words of wisdom; Words of knowledge; the Gift of supernatural faith; Gifts of healing; the working of miracles; the Gift of prophecy; the ability to discern spirits; speaking in tongues; and the interpretation of tongues.

After two thousand years, these Gifts still sound strange to some people, but scarcely are stranger than Jesus, and His followers, making the blind to see; raising people from the dead; and – perhaps most audaciously – forgiving people of their sins in the Name of Jesus. Oh, that’s not for today? Then the Savior Who promised these things is a liar.

Further than that – if you might be someone to whom these things sound like fairy tales or delusional rants – I have experienced many of these Gifts. I have seen them exercised by others. I have seen healings; I have been at exorcisms; I have found myself praying over people things that I had no way of knowing – not in a trance; nothing like that, but just aware what God wanted me to share. My daughter prayed over my wife who was diagnosed with three types of cancer, somehow aware that God had healed her. Indeed the doctors found no cancers the next day. It was not my daughter’s prayer that healed, but she had an inspiration to share what God had done at that moment. That is a Gift.

Manifestations of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit – Pentecostalism; the Charismatic Movement; Holy-Ghost Revival – never died, but since around 1900 have exploded around the world. There are major denominations in America. The Underground Church in China is largely Pentecostal. There are more Pentecostals than Catholics in Africa and South America. The Assemblies of God has more adherents in Brazil than in the United States and Europe combined. Think of news stories you have recently heard of “revival” breaking out in Kentucky and elsewhere…

Readers, you might know and be already at home with many of these things. Or maybe they are foreign to you. Or are rumors you have heard; or perhaps are unknown to you. Your salvation does not depend at all on whether you accept or reject the Gifts. You might respond – or not – with ecstatic worship. There are no rules! My own “prayer language,” when exercised, is in private.

But just think about the Gifts of God He offers you through the experience of the Holy Spirit. I invite you think back on any Christmas morning, or birthday. How many wonderful gifts were given to you by your loving parents; how many times that you said… “No… not for me.”

Really?

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In the chance any of this intrigues you, please contact me and I can offer you information, and will prayerfully answer your questions.

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This is not a church service; just worship time:

Click: Cleansed / Look What the Lord Has Done

2-20-23

There are strange things happening every day.

For a change, not everything in the news seems Apocalyptic. At a small university in Kentucky, a religious revival has broken out. Stranger than its occurrence, perhaps, is the fact that it is being noticed by the news media. Social media, these days, cannot keep the lid on much.

Revival. It was only on February 6 that this blog made an argument that Christians stop praying to God to send revival – my point being that we should, ourselves, work to revive our faith, our churches, our communities, our nation; and then God will bless us. “Revive us again,” in the words of the old Gospel song: inspire us to do Your work that You may bless our land.

God does, after all, work in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. On February 8, in a morning chapel service at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, a seemingly routine message, based on Romans 12: 9-21, was delivered. Its message was love – one of Scripture’s most forceful presentations of the necessity to discern Christ’s love, to share love, to be love. Mostly students in attendance, the young campus speaker in a stained T-shirt; when chapel was over there was an invitation to pray.

Chapel did not end, however. There was prayer in the seats and in front of the stage. Students did not leave. Praying and singing grew more intense. By evening the auditorium was full, the balconies too, and praying and singing continued – singly, in groups; quiet and exuberant. A choir sang and individuals spontaneously preached. Everyone prayed and laughed and cried and hugged. Now adults joined the throng – faculty and neighborhood folk.

This did not stop at end of day. It continued overnight, into the next day. It continues still, more than 10 days later. As word spread (as the Word spread!) the university opened satellite locations around campus; people gathered and prayed and sang on lawns and elsewhere on campus. Social media accelerated the phenomenon – yes, clearly a revival – and there was news of similar occurrences on other campuses around the nation. People arrived from around America.

Besides the prayer and worship there have been testimonies, conversion experiences, healings, ecstatic gifts, demons cast out; and no less significant, profound private prayer and quiet fellowship, prophesies and revelations from God, and answered prayer requests. I have been to Pentecostal revivals that are more exuberant, but… God works in mysterious, and myriad, ways.

I want no one to think I am implying a connection between my little call for individuals’ need for revival, and the Asbury events a few days later. I should be struck down if I thought to imply such. However, if the Holy Spirit moved me, and others, to address the need for a proper understanding of revival in our land… well, that working of God is perhaps mysterious but not “strange.” The Holy Spirit might be motivating many people at the same time. And, I notice, a movie about the Jesus Movement has been released just now.

In fact an aspect of the current Asbury Revival (there have been others on that campus, most recently in 1970) was the “strange” story of a Christian couple from Malaysia, of all places, who were inspired to move to Kentucky, of all places, and wait for the falling of the Holy Spirit in a worship-revival setting. It did not come for years, and, discouraged, they moved to New York City. But they were inspired in their hearts to return to Kentucky, which they did… days before the current revival fell. After God moves, His timetable becomes clearer!

This had been my point. That we, as believers, cannot order God around with a wish-list that He “send” deeper spiritual experiences on demand. That is our job. But there is a holy synergy.

When His people work and wait… expect and believe… study and spread the Word… open their hearts and “till the soil,” so to speak – He will plant the seeds. And bring a harvest such as we see at Asbury right now. Remember: “Revive” means, literally, Re-Birth.

As I said, I have been in revivals like the famous one in Pensacola, the “Brownsville Revival” that lasted years. There have been others. In fact, what the Asbury chapel resembles is the early, first-century church after Christ’s ascension. Other experiences have included the four notable “Great Awakenings” between the Colonial days and the Civil War, as well as in brush arbors and camp meetings on the American frontier; but they have accelerated in the past century: Wichita in 1900; Asuza Street in L.A. in 1906; revivals in Wales and Scotland; the Toronto Blessing; etc. Their increase suggests that the End Times are approaching.

In the Second Chapter of Acts it is foretold: In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people; your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.

Regarding my recent message here: “Hasn’t God sent revival after all?” Yes. My plea, again, was for us, like watchmen at the wall (Isaiah 62:6) to wait, warn, and work. Also – there is Revival and there is Revival. A “revival” of the nation’s politics and morality is important. But even the most well-meaning Christian patriots must not confuse the priorities:

We must work for our own spiritual revivals, in our households and communities, before working for, and expecting, national policy-revivals. Any other order is futile.

And – this is so important to notice about the Asbury Revival! – this is happening among the youth!

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There are many, many cameras trained on the Asbury Revival right now. Search Google and YouTube and elsewhere; you will easily find video clips and news reports and even live streams. Experience it for yourself, even on the TV or computer screen… and maybe invite the Holy Spirit to your own community.

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Click: News report on the Asbury Revival

6-13-22

I’m not going to go Theological on you here. I will take a moment, however, to invite us all to consider a glaring matter (I believe to be a problem) in today’s churches.

The root of “Theology” literally is “the study of God,” so I might break my promise before I start, but I rather think in this matter we should study not God so much as contemporary worship, the practices of Western churches, and the evolution, yes, of denominations.

Simply: I think significant portions of Christendom – north of the Equator, generally, and in America especially – have sublimated important aspects of Christian doctrine. That is to say, the Church that Jesus inspired and the Apostles established.

Stick with me: Essential elements of Christianity, the accepted teaching over many centuries, and the foundational beliefs of Christians… are often ignored today. In Christian churches themselves.

Many Christians are being taught incomplete Gospels, if taught at all.

An incomplete Gospel is not the Gospel at all. Churches and their traditions and denominations used to proclaim “a full Gospel” and be dedicated to “know Christ and make Him known.” Now it is what has become convenient, or appealing, or uncomplicated. And I am not here referring to obscure debates or fine points of, say, eschatology or, you know, “how many angels can dance on the heads of pins.”

Those challenges are serious enough… and I suppose always will be. My concern actually is more basic, and can be illustrated by two recent days in the church “calendar” that are practically ignored in much of today’s church.

The first is Ascension Day. For centuries the Transfiguration of Christ – His bodily ascension to Heaven, witnessed by Disciples and accompanied by faith-heroes of the Old Testament – was a major event, celebrated by churches in a major way, observed for its major significance.

This Transfiguration of the Christ “closed the circle,” made complete His earthly Ministry. The fulfillment of a hundred various prophesies… the details of His life and many miracles performed… His suffering and sacrificial death… all were the varieties of signs and wonders that announced who He was. Of course, His miraculous victory over death, and 40 days of being seen, and preaching anew, were further signs that He was – as His followers were now believing – much greater than the prophets of old.

But Jesus’s bodily Ascension to Heaven, lifted to the clouds, welcomed by the Father… this was the final act in His ministry on earth. The Ascension confirmed, finally, that Jesus was Divine; that He was returning to the Father.

This act, this fact, was profoundly important to the early Church. And it remained a major element of teaching and creeds and church observances for centuries. Properly so.

Today (and believe me, I know and honor the pockets of exceptions) the mainstream denominations scarcely mention the event, the Day, its implications. A needless omission; a symptom of post-Modern disrespect for God Almighty and His plan for His church.

You might ask: Would clergy who undergo training, and people who build churches, really abandon the Faith??? The answer is found, sadly, many times throughout Biblical history. At one time (see Samuel II, chapter 6) the Israelites actually let the Ark of Covenant — delivered and designed by God Himself — be abandoned for three months. There is an example. (King David wanted to return it to Jerusalem, but instead consigned it to the household of Obed-Edom, appropriately, a Levite — and this, I believe, was a sign to us: “As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord!”)

Even more egregious, and more widespread, is what I call the “Duine God” who is worshiped and glorified, to the extent He is, by the contemporary church. (That is, opposed to the “Triune God” – the Trinity.)

Ten days after Jesus’s Ascension, a significant promise of His was fulfilled. As the Disciples and others “waited” as Jesus commanded, “there came a rushing sound as from a mighty wind… over the heads of the assembled crowd there appeared what seemed like tongues of flame… everyone began speaking, but in languages of others, and in unknown talk that sounded like gibberish…” (My paraphrase of the account in the Book of Acts.)

Happening on Pentecost (the “Feast of Weeks” on the Jewish calendar; subsequently known as Whit Day, sometimes Whitsunday) – the events of that day gave rise to the Pentecostal experience of believers.

That Pentecost event was the birth-day of the Church. Jesus had assured the Disciples that it was “better that He leave them, because One will come with power, so they might do all things He had done.” A miracle happened that day… and has not ceased. Nine Spiritual Gifts, as listed in I Corinthians and elsewhere, came upon those people, and are still promised to believers today. They include speaking, and understanding, strange tongues, “the language of angels.” Gifts of miraculous knowledge, and wisdom, and prophetic visions; and healing.

Not all “powers” at all times to all people: they are not magic wands. But they are gifts.

And I am astonished how few Christian churches believe in them today. Or seek them. Or accept them. Or teach them. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever… and so is the equal member of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit – God in us. Yet today’s churches are afraid to see the Gifts, and the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, as anything but a 2000-year-old religious relic. Tragic.

Some people today claim that this experience was “emotionalism.” But things changed, forever. Peter, for instance, had been an impulsive and sometimes foolish fan of Jesus. After Pentecost he became a wise, mature, and persuasive leader. Some people today claim that the Pentecostal experience was for that moment only, to “anoint” followers. However, it did not stop. Within decades there were Christian churches as far away as England, and in short centuries, Christianity was the official faith of the Roman Empire. The power of Pentecost!

I have experienced some of the Gifts; and friends have. Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing segment of the church, and south of the Equator is overtaking Catholic and traditional Protestant denominations in numbers. Holy-Spirit Christianity is outstripping Islam in Africa (the massacres you hear about in the news are routinely of Pentecostal communities).

These “holes in the Gospel” today I see as nothing less than a religious “cancel culture” of the post-Modern age, with dead, frightened mainstream skeletons behind pulpits of social clubs and mausoleums posing as churches. Churches that deny the Trinity.

That is harsh, but I think Christians need some spiritual tables overturned in church parking lots and courtyards. Would Jesus know His church if He returned today?

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Click: Altar Call – Baptism In the Holy Spirit

6-8-20

I write this as the third part of an informal tracking of a neglected but essential part of church history – the period after Jesus’s crucifixion and death; Resurrection and 40 days of preaching and witnessing; His bodily Ascension into Heaven, confirming His divine nature; then came the day of Pentecost.

It was the promise of Pentecost – what we have come to call the Pentecostal experience – and Jesus’s careful explanation that it was good that He leave earth, because He would then send to believers the Helper, the Healer, the Comforter: One who would empower and instruct. The Holy Spirit, third manifestation, the third Person, of the Trinity. We shared how the Spirit first fell on worshipers in the upper room, how they received a strange gift of speaking in unknown languages, but understood or interpreted.

This was the “Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” this spiritual joy and maturity. It was not a one-day event in history. It was merely the first time.

I write this in the midst, whew, of the worldwide pandemic’s fears, afflictions, and social disruption; and in the equally chaotic riots following a police suspect’s death. And… what’s next? People are right to be unsure if not unsafe. Or vice-versa.

As a natural skeptic, I wonder whether we will look back on the shutdowns, this virus, and feel blessed, feel relieved, or feel scammed. And these riots – will we look back and see an explosion of righteousness, or a period of anarchy and looting?

I will keep to my promised theme. I can write about things we see and don’t know are true; or I can write about things we cannot see, but know are true.

Things were different, once the Holy Spirit came. Peter, for instance, had been a bumbling and impulsive disciple who denied knowing Jesus three times when things were dicey – scarcely less an offense than Judas’s betrayal. Yet after the Spirit came upon him in the upper room, Peter became the mature leader of the new church that formed, and a powerful preacher.

What happened to Peter 2000 years ago can happen to believers today, and does happen to believers today. Can you have salvation without the “baptism” of the Holy Spirit? Yes. The gifts are… extra. But who would reject gifts, especially from Almighty God? Would children at birthday parties reject gifts?

Yet, some Christians do. If God chose to express Himself in three ways, we need to remember they were equal manifestations. Jesus was all God and all man; and so is the Spirit.

This same Spirit was explained by this same Peter after he was blessed with gifts of wisdom. He recalled, and shared, the passage from Joel chapter 28 (500-800 years earlier) – And it shall come to pass… says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams…. I will pour out My Spirit in those days…

Now it became clear. “Greater is He that is within you [the Holy Spirit], than he who is in the world [Satan].”

Some Christians claim that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were only for that first crowd. But that is to doubt Jesus and limit the Father, not to mention denying the subsequent evidence. I know because I have experienced the Baptism, and I have witnessed miracles; I have received the gifts. Many people have.

Other Christians believe that sudden outbreaks of tongues, ecstatic worship, and miracles broke out in Wichita around 1900 and in a black church on Asuza Street, Los Angeles, in 1906 is where it started. And then, as we shared, Pentecostalism spread to half a billion people around the world, second only to Roman Catholicism among Christians. Not for now? How would that explain miracles, church growth, healings, and blessings over the following 2000 years?

There are accounts (described by no less a person than Theodore Roosevelt in his classic book The Winning of West) of pioneer camp-meetings and revivals where worshipers would gather for several days, overtaken by ecstatic worship and strange tongues. In the 1700s, similar responses in Philadelphia to public sermons of Charles Whitefield; Benjamin Franklin recorded these. In the 1800s, a similar reaction among lunchtime worshipers on Wall Street, of all places. The blind hymn-writer Fanny Crosby prayed in “the language of angels” only she and her Lord knew. And so forth, all before Azusa Street.

After that, however, there were spontaneous and simultaneous “eruptions” of Holy Spirit preaching, singing, worship, healings, Words of prophecy, and such, all over the world. Two decades ago I twice attended a famous such revival in Pensacola, Florida – a visiting evangelist was used by God to spark ecstatic worship that was not extinguished – 24/7, for month after month; people attracted from all over the world.

If the Holy Spirit is the equal of Jesus… but you don’t have to receive this “Spirit baptism” to enter heaven… why do some of us consider it so important? But as I implied before, if God offers a spiritual gift and we decline it, we are spiritual fools.

What are the Gifts of the Spirit? They listed several times in the New Testament. Any can be prayed for; they can be-one-time gifts – for self-edification, or ministering to a situation – or occasionally are specialized lifetime ministering gifts, for instance to evangelists with healing ministries. They are wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues.

As I said, I have experienced some (blessing others when needed, or to communicate with God when I felt helpless) and I have witnessed healings, emotional breakthroughs, astonishing revelations.

Listen: Christianity is nothing if not a system of faith and belief and miracles. Plain and simple. How have Christians become so blasé about a Man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, and rose from the dead? “Oh, well, that was God, 2000 years ago.” How can there be so many people who go to church (if at all) out of dull habit; who never feel joyful when “Hallelujah” is read from the same old prayer book; who have “forms of godliness, but deny the power thereof”?

They quench the Holy Spirit, embarrassed to seek… reluctant to accept gifts… afraid to exercise the power it enables.

Instead – bringing it today – Christians complain about current events in the news. They feel helpless to do anything about them. They are lost, spiritually, in these uncertain times. In this time of threats and potential disasters facing us, they might even wish for some miracles.

You know what? It is as easy to pray for miracles, as to wish for them. And you have a loving Father who has stored up gifts you can access. Why, oh why, do people neglect the third Person of the Trinity?

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Since the Pentecostal movement is spread across the world, with no one denomination or pope – the Bible is sole authority – it is joyful to see the workings of the Holy Ghost everywhere… and especially, in these day of persecution, how the Spirit empowers traditional Christians, new believers, and persecuted Christians. Here, a group of Iranians who support underground Christians churches in Iran, singing of the sweet Spirit of God.

Click: Come, Holy Spirit

6-2-20

God’s message for the time of plagues, lockdowns, economic distress, international strife, riots in the streets.

I tell you I am going to do what is best for you. This is why I am going away. The Holy Spirit cannot come to help you until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit, the Comforter, the Helper, to you.

We think we are going through strange times, rapidly changing events of great magnitude. Prosperity. Then suddenly the world stops spinning and millions are out of work; schools and shops are empty. The stock market breaks records; commerce is humming. Then suddenly a plague threatens to kill millions. The world’s major trading partners are at odds, then break relations; exchange deadly threats. Hong Kong, reveling in tastes of freedom… waving American flags… singing Christian hymns in the streets… brutally is suppressed and taken over by the Communists. In America, peace in (weirdly empty) streets, then suddenly major cities and towns are in violence, its (savagely crowded) streets aflame.

All within a few months; some things changing overnight.

Jerusalem once was like that. Jesus, that street preacher with a healing ministry, enters the city amidst celebrations and hosannas. Suddenly, in less than a week, He is framed, accused, jailed, tortured, sentenced, and killed. All in five days. The government is repressive, the religious leaders defensive. This Jesus is dead and His followers weep, also fearing for their lives. Earthquakes; the temple veil spontaneously rips in two; the environment is dark. Suddenly Jesus comes back to life. His broken body is perfect. Thousands see him, even skeptical Romans confirm the events.

All within a few days; some things changing overnight.

Jesus did return. He communed. He preached. He explained. People saw. People understood. People believed.

After a whirlwind 40 days – that frequent Biblical number – another change. Jesus left again… lifted up not on a cross but bodily into the heavens. From the Mount Of Olives this Ascension, as we discussed last week here, was the final, supernatural, confirmation that He was God; returning to the throne to sit at the right hand of the Father.

Father? Son? One God? Ah, the mystery of the “Godhead.” God chose to reveal Himself in three ways to His children. He could have chosen two, or two dozen. The Trinity is His choice, all God in three natures. (If we could fully understand, we would be Gods.) Like water, ice, and steam.

The third “person” of the Trinity? That is the Holy Spirit. Present and referred to in the Old Testament. But specifically promised and explained by Jesus before the Ascension. “It is best for you that I depart… The Holy Spirit cannot come until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit, the Comforter, the Helper, to you.”

Who is this Holy Ghost?

The world still asks this. The Holy Spirit is the most misunderstood, and the least accessed, member of the Trinity. When Jesus left this earth in order to send us the Holy Spirit… it is almost like disobedience that we do not welcome the Holy Spirit more, seek its wisdom and guidance and power and comfort.

Fifty days after the Resurrection, Jesus’s followers, men and women, met for the celebration of Pentecost in Jerusalem. They were praying, and as recorded in the second chapter of Acts of the Apostles, something like a mighty wind came through the room. What appeared to be flames rested on peoples’ heads. They all began to speak… in unknown languages. Foreign tongues, unknown words, unbidden.

They ran to the streets. People heard; some understood; some thought they were drunk.

But “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance”; that is what was going on.

And this has been “going on” ever since.

Given the broad expanse of time, this Holy-Ghost experience that has occurred again in these last days – perhaps close to the End of Time – is also a relatively brief and crowded time. In only a century, marked from 1906, Pentecostalism counts a half-billion people around the world, second in numbers only to Roman Catholicism among Christians.

It is a movement that adheres not only to the Bible, in literal terms, but to the practices, power, mystery, ecstatic worship and closeness to Jesus, and miraculous gifts that all Christians experienced on the First Century churches.

Of those “gifts” there are nine listed in the Bible, available to us. Pentecostals (and Charismatics) seek and accept them, and they change lives. I will finish this three-part discussion in the next message – not to be as a schoolmarm lecturing about history, but to share what I have joyfully come to experience.

However, in these troubled times – these very days, these troubled and confusing and dangerous and evil days – I think the Holy Spirit holds more help, and hope, that we can know. And what better time to know that we are not alone. I will share practical Biblical truths. For times such as these, the Holy Spirit was sent to us.

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Click: Sweet, Sweet Spirit

2-13-17

I heard about one of those Management Consultants who conduct weekend seminars, telling a story about his advice to a trainee.

“There are two… essential… things… never to forget…” and he paused some more – “when you set out… to navigate your… career.”

Annoyed by the strangely lugubrious rollout, the trainee insisted, “Yes? YES? Well???”

The instructor replied, “Patience.”

Point taken. But the trainee pressed on. “What’s the other thing???”

Before he could finish the question, the instructor interrupted: “Timing.”

Good advice, if we think about it. (By the way, you just saved two whole days, and a $300 registration fee, for the seminar!) (You’re welcome.) Like most good advice, the best source is not a Management guru, or even Life’s Experiences, but the Bible.

The famous verse – so famous that even irreligious people often quote it during their marriage ceremony – from I Corinthians 13, offers “patience” as the first of the words that define Love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” Wow. “Patience” leads the list.

A verse we all should remember when things are wrong, or insecure, or bleak, or threatening, or dangerous… and we fret – “Be still and know that I am God.” How much simpler can an assurance of God be? My daughter Heather meditates on Psalm 46:10 by parsing its words individually: each phrase brimming with meaning.

“Be.” “Be still.” “Be still and know.” “Be still and know that I am.” “Be still and know that I am God.” Thus comes spiritual patience.

Then there is the closely related virtue, a sense of timing. Many of the Israelites’ woes, and their leaders’ mistakes, came from disobeying God’s directions, being impulsive, jumping the gun, so to speak.

Many Christians do this from mistaken confidence that they have God’s Will; are full of the Spirit; when often it is old-fashioned Pride.

Peter walked on water as his Savior did and instructed him to do… until he looked down. Impulsive.

Of all the Apostles, I identify the most with Peter, I must admit. Impulsive, sometimes too eager to please God, when all He asks is obedience. The “other side of that coin” concerns Peter, again, and those who were told to “wait” for the Disciple to replace Judas. They were impatient… they substituted THEIR timing for God’s… and drew straws. A guy named Matthias was chosen.

I describe him that way because we never hear of him again in the Bible. He was chosen by 11 men holding an election. But the Holy Spirit, in God’s timing, would APPOINT the successor: Paul.

Peter was an impulsive, bumbling, flawed follower of Jesus. After swearing he would never do so, he denied Jesus three times, leading to the crucifixion. But in God’s timing, Peter soon became a wise, inspirational, strong leader. A great Manager, in fact, of the early church, it could be said. On his confession of Jesus as Lord, the church had its foundation.

What changed? Obedience to God’s timing. In that timing, baptism played a role in the step-by-step timing we are to obey, ourselves. When Peter and the Disciples had been baptized in the Spirit – and as other converts were to experience in a tidal wave of belief after Pentecost – the promise of Zechariah 4:6 was confirmed: “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, said the Lord of hosts…”

Jesus Himself had no earthly ministry we are told about, for the first 30 years of His life. Then he was baptized in the River Jordan, according to God’s timing. The Holy Spirit came upon Him, and His heavenly ministry commenced.

Patience is a virtue. And timing? Always remember to set your clocks and watches to God-Standard Time.

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Click: Waiting On the Lord

4-21-14

In a generation after the first Easter, Christianity had spread to the far corners of the known world. There were churches in the future lands of England and Ireland; after a century, church settlements in “barbarian” northern Europe; and around 300, Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the formerly pagan Roman empire.

The Bishop Eusebius wrote remarkable histories during the reign of Constantine that traced the lifelines of the church: communities; outposts; heresies; theological and leadership rivalries; miracles; persecution (for instance in Gaul, which made Rome’s look like child’s play) and martyrs. Christianity spread, subsuming the cultures and arts… as, it seems to me, any movement fostered by the Creator of the Universe, was proper to do.

“Gospel” means “Good News.” The early church fathers, in the manner of Mary at the tomb, were Newsboys in a very real sense; so were the rising corps of evangelists, missionaries, and pastors.

But have you ever stopped to think of what enabled the Gospel to spread so rapidly? There is a temptation to think it was the witnessing of Christ’s miracles. Eusebius, for instance, had spoken to people who had spoken to people who knew Jesus, heard Him preach; seen His miracles, encountered His resurrected self.

I think it was different; I think it was more. After the Ascension of Jesus, it was as if the scales fell from peoples’ eyes. Gentiles had the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament explained to them. Jews, multitudes of them, remembered those prophecies anew, and recognized how Jesus fulfilled them to the smallest detail. As the Roman centurion said, in a sudden moment of clarity, “This Man indeed is the Son of God.”

Additionally, what happened was the miracle of Pentecost. On that feast day, the frightened Disciples received the gift of the Holy Spirit, which Christ had promised to them – to us – and told them to wait. After it comes, as on that day, believers share their head-knowledge with heart-knowledge. They becomes doers of the Word, not hearers only. They supernaturally gain wisdom and knowledge… and boldness.

So: my view was that the sudden spread of Christianity, even despite (and maybe because of) persecution, was due less to the MIRACULOUS elements of Christ’s ministry, and more to the LOGIC of His incarnation. Some people were late to the party – oh, what a party! – but their minds were clear, in those first centuries. It became the most natural thing on earth (and beyond) to live (and die) for the God-with-us, Jesus.

Among the logical evidence that Gentiles learned, and Jewish believers recalled, were the words of Isaiah, written an amazing 700 years BEFORE Jesus was born. Without verse numbers and footnotes, it is a startling narrative:

“Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? … He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked – but with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. … He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

What does this tell us? That after Jesus rose to Heaven, His followers shared the Good News – the Gospel message. It was indeed good; humankind’s best. But it was not “news.” It, and uncountable other details about the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, had been planned and written before the foundation of the world.

Not “breaking news,” but Good News indeed.

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It took “breaking through the clutter” to hear, for the first time, or thousandth time, the STORY of Jesus. Then, as now, the simple logic overwhelms our minds and hearts and souls. The supernatural becomes natural. This ordinary paradigm has been summed up touchingly by songs of two female poets of the 1800s. I implore you to click this short video, watch, listen, and learn… or re-learn. “Tell Me the Story of Jesus” is a beautiful plaint by “America’s Blind Poetess.” Fanny Crosby was blinded at birth, began to write poems in her 40s, and before she died in her 90s had written nearly 9000 hymn-poems, many beloved today. “I Love to Tell the Story” was written by Katherine Hankey, a well-to-do British girl who shared the gospel with factory workers and street people until she became too sick to leave her deathbed. But, she wrote, “I Love To Tell the Story.”

Click: The Story of Jesus – Telling and Being Told

6-13-11

The most holy days of the Christian calendar might not be Christmas and Easter, greeting cards and family get-togethers to the contrary notwithstanding. I have no intention of diminishing their importance, of course, and we should agree that every day “is the day that the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice” in them all. The meanings of Christmas and Easter are foundation-stones of our faith.

However, the two Sundays celebrated in this very church season, back to back, traditionally were major observance-days in church history, most of 2000 years. And they are much neglected today.

I am referring to Ascension Day and Pentecost. Christmas reminds us that God sent his Son; on Easter we celebrate that His Son, who Died in our place for the sin-punishment we deserve, was raised from the dead, as He had raised Lazarus. Although Jesus said “It is finished” before He died on the cross, His earthly ministry was really completed when He ascended into Heaven. He went to sit at the right hand of the Father; His divinity was asserted. Then He became Lord as well as Savior.

Then, in just a few days, there was a gathering in an upper room in Jerusalem.

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance….

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” … Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. … And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.

Pentecost is the birthday of the church. It was from this day, and that event, that the church was commissioned to be God’s home – or, more correctly, be Him, to a lost world. Like a proper birthday party, there were gifts galore, as the excerpt from Acts II describes. Not the least of miracles is that Peter was transformed from a wise guy to a wise man. That’s the kind of thing that happens when the Holy Spirit blows in, and settles in your heart.

I would like to share what I think the church is going to start looking like, but that’s for later. Right now I’m enjoying the birthday party.

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A great birthday tune: a traditional hymn performed in a non-traditional way (and this traditional guy loves it) by Bart Millard, backed by Mercy Me. Visuals by the traditionally awesome Beanscot Channel.

Click: Brethren, We Have Met to Worship