Mere Christianity
In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis says the following about authority:
"Believing things on authority only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority...The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority -- because scientists say so. Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life."
Mere Christianity is a compilation of on-air radio talks that were given in the forties and first published as three separate parts. Lewis was formerly an atheist and he was making the case for Christ in his day through these talks. He said the above in response to those who rejected the authority of scripture. I have no problem accepting the authority of scripture in my life. But as I read this, it also brought back memories of misplaced authority.
While I was studying U.S. History at Vol State, I began to see how many things I had believed in my life that were simply a blind acceptance of someone else's ideology. In other words, I believed amazingly uninformed statements because I believed in the person saying them and therefore made him an authority worthy of my trust. I never bothered to investigate these ideologies or beliefs. If this man represented history or a historical figure in a certain way, I accepted it on his authority. I did the same with his interpretation of scripture. I ultimately had to face the reality that he was not an authority I should have trusted on either. Not only did he misrepresent history and historical figures with certain statements, he misrepresented the Gospel. Where scripture and God's promises seemed to contradict him, I believed him. And I yielded many aspects of my life to the traditions of men because the answer to anything debatable in scripture was, "Obey them that have the rule over you." I was taught that I could not go wrong by following this man because if I did what he said, God would not hold me responsible. My obedience to this man, in other words, would be counted by God as obedience to HIM. Scary stuff. But I once believed these things. It is not true that God will not hold me accountable for obedience or allegiance to a man. There are many scriptures that completely contradict this.
I marvel, in hindsight, at the things I once blindly accepted. While I could not fathom a group of people making the writings of a man like Joseph Smith an equal authority to the Bible, I was doing the same thing with a man named William Sowders. I was taught to believe his personal revelations based on a personal experience he had where God told him audibly, "I want you to preach MY gospel." Based on the telling of that story, I (as have many others) gave that man authority in my life equal to the scriptures themselves. That is exactly why Mormons believe what Joseph Smith wrote -- because he claimed divine revelation. How was I any different? I accepted the notion that God had withdrawn the truth from his followers for decades and decades, waiting for this man to come on the scene and preach the truth.
When my pastor's wife would declare that her husband was one of the only ones who had "stuck to the original," she was referring to the special revelations of Sowders. She claimed openly that God was going to use her husband to restore the body of Christ in the last days. Some will argue that those statements never came directly from him. But he was there when she said it and I don't remember him ever correcting her. He himself told the story about James Sowders declaring him a Moses when he was born. So, he was called a Moses. He was called a Zerubabbel. He was called an apostle in our day. And I believed these things. Some still do. This man is no longer living. But there was a time when we did not believe he would "go off the scene" before Jesus' return because he was too instrumental in God restoring the body. We wrongly elevated this man to a status God had not given him. It was done in all sincerity, but all of those things have been proven untrue.
In all those years, I never investigated what other Christians believed. I just accepted that I had been born into the truth. Much later in my life, I discovered how many things I had believed that were identical to the teachings of the Jehovah's Witnesses, whom I viewed as a religious cult. And I'm not talking about minor points, but the major doctrines of both. I never knew these similarities until after I left. They were shocking to me. They were also eye-opening.
For those of you reading who did not grow up the way I did, these are some of the reasons why deception is an emotionally charged subject for me. I know the downfall of giving spiritual authority to the wrong people. That's why I try to look at the real message put forth by an author and whether or not it is the true gospel message or "another gospel," as we are warned of accepting by scripture. I want only the truth.
I am a very trusting person and I do not naturally question or scrutinize beneath the surface of things. I am not, by nature, a person of discernment. I take people at face value and am often surprised by an agenda I would never have recognized had it not slapped me in the face. I don't want to be deceived spiritually again. And I don't want to see others taken in and deceived and harmed as I have been. It's not my job to save them, of course. But it is our duty to proclaim the gospel to the world -- the world that we come into contact with on a daily basis.
I don't want to be the authority in anyone's life. I just want you to recognize who you are giving authority to in your life. For all of us, it needs to be the authority of God's Word and not the personal revelations of men or authors. There are "Christians" these days who are trying to reinvent Christianity because they feel let down by their past "Christian" experiences. This is often referred to as the Emergent Movement. I have had to work at reading a book with the thought in mind, "How does this line up with scripture?" It doesn't come naturally to me and I will be the first to admit that I need more of the Word of God to be written on my heart.
We also go wrong when we listen to the culture around us. Our culture tells us that physical beauty, youth, money, self-fulfillment, tolerance and personal happiness are all ultimate things. We are being lied to every day and some of it is penetrating our minds and influencing our priorities and choices. Myself included! I constantly have to remind myself to reject the world's values and embrace only what God values.
I loved this quote from Mere Christianity:
"...the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or -- if they think there is not -- at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it."
When Jesus returns, it is not going to be another manger scene of quiet humility. He will return in power and glory. It will be "so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time of choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not."
I grew up believing myself to be a Christian, yet I viewed Christ's return with fear and dread. Even though I sang songs about it, I did not truly long for it. I did not even look forward to it. It represented to me my end because I would not be perfect and I would not go with him when he came. Had I truly been "in Christ" instead of being "in church" I would have longed for his coming the way I have begun to in recent years.
I say that I have only begun to long for his coming because I recognize that I am in a process of growing into that longing more and more every day. But the first step in that process was rejecting my old beliefs about salvation and embracing the promises of God. These promises are given directly to you and me, not through men such as priests or "the ministry" I was taught to put between God and myself. If you are still there and take exception to that statement, remember how we were instructed -- before the move to TN -- not to pray for God to show us what to do, but for God to show our minister (who would tell us) because that was God's order. This is strikingly similar to what is taught in Roman Catholicism about the role of priests.
"Believing things on authority only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority...The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority -- because scientists say so. Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life."
Mere Christianity is a compilation of on-air radio talks that were given in the forties and first published as three separate parts. Lewis was formerly an atheist and he was making the case for Christ in his day through these talks. He said the above in response to those who rejected the authority of scripture. I have no problem accepting the authority of scripture in my life. But as I read this, it also brought back memories of misplaced authority.
While I was studying U.S. History at Vol State, I began to see how many things I had believed in my life that were simply a blind acceptance of someone else's ideology. In other words, I believed amazingly uninformed statements because I believed in the person saying them and therefore made him an authority worthy of my trust. I never bothered to investigate these ideologies or beliefs. If this man represented history or a historical figure in a certain way, I accepted it on his authority. I did the same with his interpretation of scripture. I ultimately had to face the reality that he was not an authority I should have trusted on either. Not only did he misrepresent history and historical figures with certain statements, he misrepresented the Gospel. Where scripture and God's promises seemed to contradict him, I believed him. And I yielded many aspects of my life to the traditions of men because the answer to anything debatable in scripture was, "Obey them that have the rule over you." I was taught that I could not go wrong by following this man because if I did what he said, God would not hold me responsible. My obedience to this man, in other words, would be counted by God as obedience to HIM. Scary stuff. But I once believed these things. It is not true that God will not hold me accountable for obedience or allegiance to a man. There are many scriptures that completely contradict this.
I marvel, in hindsight, at the things I once blindly accepted. While I could not fathom a group of people making the writings of a man like Joseph Smith an equal authority to the Bible, I was doing the same thing with a man named William Sowders. I was taught to believe his personal revelations based on a personal experience he had where God told him audibly, "I want you to preach MY gospel." Based on the telling of that story, I (as have many others) gave that man authority in my life equal to the scriptures themselves. That is exactly why Mormons believe what Joseph Smith wrote -- because he claimed divine revelation. How was I any different? I accepted the notion that God had withdrawn the truth from his followers for decades and decades, waiting for this man to come on the scene and preach the truth.
When my pastor's wife would declare that her husband was one of the only ones who had "stuck to the original," she was referring to the special revelations of Sowders. She claimed openly that God was going to use her husband to restore the body of Christ in the last days. Some will argue that those statements never came directly from him. But he was there when she said it and I don't remember him ever correcting her. He himself told the story about James Sowders declaring him a Moses when he was born. So, he was called a Moses. He was called a Zerubabbel. He was called an apostle in our day. And I believed these things. Some still do. This man is no longer living. But there was a time when we did not believe he would "go off the scene" before Jesus' return because he was too instrumental in God restoring the body. We wrongly elevated this man to a status God had not given him. It was done in all sincerity, but all of those things have been proven untrue.
In all those years, I never investigated what other Christians believed. I just accepted that I had been born into the truth. Much later in my life, I discovered how many things I had believed that were identical to the teachings of the Jehovah's Witnesses, whom I viewed as a religious cult. And I'm not talking about minor points, but the major doctrines of both. I never knew these similarities until after I left. They were shocking to me. They were also eye-opening.
For those of you reading who did not grow up the way I did, these are some of the reasons why deception is an emotionally charged subject for me. I know the downfall of giving spiritual authority to the wrong people. That's why I try to look at the real message put forth by an author and whether or not it is the true gospel message or "another gospel," as we are warned of accepting by scripture. I want only the truth.
I am a very trusting person and I do not naturally question or scrutinize beneath the surface of things. I am not, by nature, a person of discernment. I take people at face value and am often surprised by an agenda I would never have recognized had it not slapped me in the face. I don't want to be deceived spiritually again. And I don't want to see others taken in and deceived and harmed as I have been. It's not my job to save them, of course. But it is our duty to proclaim the gospel to the world -- the world that we come into contact with on a daily basis.
I don't want to be the authority in anyone's life. I just want you to recognize who you are giving authority to in your life. For all of us, it needs to be the authority of God's Word and not the personal revelations of men or authors. There are "Christians" these days who are trying to reinvent Christianity because they feel let down by their past "Christian" experiences. This is often referred to as the Emergent Movement. I have had to work at reading a book with the thought in mind, "How does this line up with scripture?" It doesn't come naturally to me and I will be the first to admit that I need more of the Word of God to be written on my heart.
We also go wrong when we listen to the culture around us. Our culture tells us that physical beauty, youth, money, self-fulfillment, tolerance and personal happiness are all ultimate things. We are being lied to every day and some of it is penetrating our minds and influencing our priorities and choices. Myself included! I constantly have to remind myself to reject the world's values and embrace only what God values.
I loved this quote from Mere Christianity:
"...the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or -- if they think there is not -- at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it."
When Jesus returns, it is not going to be another manger scene of quiet humility. He will return in power and glory. It will be "so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time of choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not."
I grew up believing myself to be a Christian, yet I viewed Christ's return with fear and dread. Even though I sang songs about it, I did not truly long for it. I did not even look forward to it. It represented to me my end because I would not be perfect and I would not go with him when he came. Had I truly been "in Christ" instead of being "in church" I would have longed for his coming the way I have begun to in recent years.
I say that I have only begun to long for his coming because I recognize that I am in a process of growing into that longing more and more every day. But the first step in that process was rejecting my old beliefs about salvation and embracing the promises of God. These promises are given directly to you and me, not through men such as priests or "the ministry" I was taught to put between God and myself. If you are still there and take exception to that statement, remember how we were instructed -- before the move to TN -- not to pray for God to show us what to do, but for God to show our minister (who would tell us) because that was God's order. This is strikingly similar to what is taught in Roman Catholicism about the role of priests.
Comments
I was also recently thinking about how, in the past, when we had a prayer request or needed to repent, we were to go to the pastor and tell him what the request or our need was so he could pray for (over) us. That, too, smacks of Roman Catholicism but personally, I think it was a method of gathering information in order to have greater control on the church body. Could be wrong but your post and that thought make me shudder to think I could still be caught in that darkness if I had never been set free.
If someone is reading who is still there, no matter how they feel about me personally, they know I am not making this stuff up. Being told that God would speak to the minister and not directly to us was not a one time event. I just gave an example everyone would clearly remember.
I know that some things have changed in recent years. But if the foundation remains the same, those minor changes are just a result of shifting sand.
So why do I feel compelled to talk so much about deception? Because I keep feeling pulled back to the subject and I know that God often works through us, His instruments. I don't know what my role may be in anyone else's life, but as long as God keeps putting this on my heart, I will keep talking about it. I may never know the exact reason why. But I don't need to.
I pasted a little bit of a sermon by Jospeh Philpot titled "A compassionate High Priest and a Throne of Grace" below:
http://www.gracegems.org/Philpot/compassionate_high_priest.htm
Joseph Philpot, July 27, 1847
"For we have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities--but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." –Hebrews 4:15-16
The grand object of the Epistle to the Hebrews is to set forth the high priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Into that subject we cannot now fully enter; and yet our text leads us (and may the Lord lead us by the text) into some attempt to show who this High Priest is, of whom the apostle here speaks.
I. I need scarcely take up your time by showing at any length in what way the high priest under the law was a type and figure of the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet, there are certain points of resemblance, and certain points of difference, which it will be desirable to enter into, in order to illustrate and set forth more clearly the mind and meaning of the Holy Spirit in the words before us.
There were THREE POINTS OF RESEMBLANCE (there were more, but I confine myself to three) between the high priest under the law and the great "High Priest over the house of God." The first was, that the high priest offered sacrifices; the second, that he made intercession for the sins of the people on the great day of atonement, by taking incense beaten small, and, putting it on the coals which were taken off the bronze altar, with it entered into the most holy place; and the third, that he blessed the people.
Now, in these three points did the high priest under the law beautifully resemble and set forth the great "High Priest over the house of God." But O, how feeble the resemblance! how dim the type! how shadowy the figure! The high priest under the law could only offer the blood of bulls and goats, which can never take away sin; the great "High Priest over the house of God" offered himself--his own body and his own soul--that precious, precious blood, which "cleanses from all sin." The high priest under the law could only offer incense upon the coals taken from off the bronze altar; the great "High Priest over the house of God" is offering daily the virtue of his sacrifice by "making intercession for us." The high priest under the law could only pronounce the blessing in so many words; he could not give or communicate that blessing to the soul; the great "High Priest over the house of God" can and does bless the soul with the sweet manifestations of his loving-kindness and tender mercy.
But again. There are POINTS OF DIFFERENCE, as well as points of resemblance,
1. The high priest under the law was but a man; the great "High Priest over the house of God" is God-man, "Immanuel, God with us," the eternal "Son of the Father, in truth and love," having taken our nature into union with his own divine and glorious Person.
2. The high priest under the law died in course of years, and was succeeded by a high priest as mortal as himself; Heb 7:23 but the great High Priest above lives for evermore to "make intercession for us."
3. The high priest under the law might be (and the apostle seems to make some allusion to the circumstance here) one who had no sympathy nor fellow-feeling for the infirmities and sins of those for whom he made sacrifice; he might be like some of our priestly Dons who seem all holiness, and have no tender heart to feel compassion for backsliders, and those that are out of the way--but the great "High Priest over the house of God," the apostle here says, is one that is "touched with the feeling of our infirmities."
4. The high priest under the law might be, or might not be, tempted--he might be, or he might not be, a man who knew the plague of his own heart and the workings of his fallen nature, and therefore might not be "tempted in all points" like unto those for whom he might sacrifice--but the great "High Priest over the house of God" was "tempted in all points like as we are." and therefore can have, and has a sympathetic feeling for the tempted.
5. The high priest under the law was a sinner--but the great "High Priest over the house of God" is spotless, without sin, "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens."
God bless,
TODD E.