There Is No Such Thing as a SeekerPart1–What's wrong with being seeker friendly?

_{Steven Long 5/29/12}

The seeker friendly church dominates much of the Evangelical scene today. With its pragmatic approach evangelism and its non-confrontational message of the gospel this movement has been growing rapidly ever since its conception in the late 70's, early 80's. The idea conceived is to approach the individual with "no pressure" and slowly introduce them to the Christian faith. In the end, the person sees how they can be a Christian without being a rules-hound or following a list of do's and dont's while not sacrificing intelligent thought and logic. This is a noble cause, to be sure, but there are several problems with this line of reasoning:

1. Scripture never demonstrates or promotes seeker friendly methods. Never in all the pages of Scripture do we find any of the apostles practicing "friendship" or seeker evangelism. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being around people and I enjoy making friends. But this idea that we must "earn" the right to speak into one's life before we can give them the Gospel is absolutely bogus! Somehow, I don't imagine Jesus sending out the apostles to preach and telling them, "Okay, guys. Go preach and tell them the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. But first, make sure you befriend them, otherwise they won't listen." Actually, Jesus said something more like this,

(Mt 10:14-15) And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town. Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town.

Jesus’ statement in this passage has nothing to do with building relationships before giving them the gospel. “Aha!” one may say, “But Jesus did say to seek out those who were of peace. Doesn’t that mean there were those seeking God?”

Actually, the culture of that time, and still in many parts of the world, was open to hospitality and indeed felt the responsibility to receive strangers into their homes. A perfect example of this from the Old Testament would be in Genesis 18 when the two angels came into Sodom and Lot felt the responsibility to allow them to stay in his home for protection. This same practice carried over into New Testament theology (Mt 25:35, Heb 13:2). Seeking out the man or person of peace was, simply put, seeking out those who practiced hospitality and would gladly allow the apostles to stay in their home even at the risk of offending the village or town.

2. The ends should never justify the means. While it is a noble thing to befriend a person and build a relationship with that person we must remember that only God knows the final outcome of that person’s destiny. We should not, therefore, violate the fundamental principles of Scripture in order to try and “save” a person. When we do this we are treading on the ground of the Holy Spirit, whose primary role is to sanctify believers but also by the Father’s doing to draw His elect. Therefore, it is pointless to invent new ways to soothe a person into the gospel; it’s just not gonna happen, which leads me to my last point:


3. Scripture declares that no one seeks God. For all my seeker friendly friends out there (no pun intended , we as believers have to own up to it: Scripture declares that man, in his natural state is an enemy of God! Consider the following passages.

(Rom 3:10-12) as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands;
no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” (emphasis mine)

(Mt 12:30) Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. (emphasis mine)

(Ro 5:10) For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (emphasis mine)

(Php 3:18) For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. (emphasis mine)

Scripture declares over and over that those who are unbelievers, those who do not know or accept the things of Christ are His enemies. How then can call those who are enemies of Christ “seekers?” We cannot.

And so the question remains as to what a seeker of God really is. This is the very question we will tackle in the next post. Stay tuned.

The Great Theological Famine

_{Steven Long 5/27/12}

Did you know that most people who call themselves Christians are theologically void? It's true. Sadly, our nation seems to be experiencing a theological famine that has never been seen before–at least not in this author's time. I recently posted a theological quiz on this blog just to see how many would take it and what the results would be. I must say that I was somewhat disappointed. Grant it that only four people have taken the quiz the results of the answers were almost unbelievable. On average, only about 30% of the people answered some of the questions correctly while no one scored 100%. The quiz is a mere six questions and they are only simple, theological truths that those who call themselves Christians, who are supposedly devoted followers of Christ, should have no problem answering. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Most disturbing were the questions dealing with sin, Hell, and salvation. Take a look for yourself at the results by clicking the link (Theology Quiz Results) and I challenge you to take the quiz for yourself. Just look for page tab on the menu. If you do bad then let it encourage you to study God's Word more so that you can know and pursue Him. If you do well then be an encouragement to others in your fellowship to study the Word of God more diligently. Let us do what we can do to end this spiritual famine.

Detecting a Counterfieit

_{Daniel Long 5/26/12}

I work at a money processing center. As part of my job, I handle large quantities of currency every day. And when you handle that much currency, you are bound to come across counterfeit bills. Of course we have counterfeit detectors built into the equipment that we use to process the money, but many times the equipment isn’t accurate. Believe it or not, the best way to detect a counterfeit bill is to manually inspect the bill. That means you have to know a real bill from a fake bill. Some of the counterfeits I’ve spotted have been really bad; almost anyone could have spotted them. Others have been really good, so good that if you aren’t thoroughly familiar with the real thing, you would definitely miss it.
Now you might think as part of my training I had to learn all about counterfeit notes, studying different types of counterfeit bills, and ways to spot them etc. But that’s not how I learned to spot a counterfeit. The way I learned to spot a counterfeit was by handling the real thing so much, that I automatically knew when something about the bill was different. Something didn’t look right or feel right. Something about the paper was off. The color of the ink was slightly different. By handling the real thing every day, I found myself being able to spot a counterfeit almost immediately.
The same is true with the Word of God. How will we know when we have run across a counterfeit? We have handled the real thing so much, and know it so well, that we will quickly be able to detect when something is not right. I remember listening to the late Dr. Walter Martin, former president of the Christian Research Institute, speaking on Jehovah Witnesses say, “The average Jehovah Witness can turn the average Christian into a doctrinal pretzel in a matter of minutes.” This is because the average Christian doesn’t take enough time to study his Bible. And yet the only key to be able to discern truth from error is by knowing truth well enough to detect error. And this means that as Christians, we need to spend more time in the Word of God,
1John 4:1 tells us that we are not to “believe every spirit,” but that we are to “test the spirits,” to see if they really are from God. And Paul tells us that we are not to “despise prophesies,” but that we are to “test everything,” (1Thes. 5:20-21). But how are we to test false doctrine if we don’t know true doctrine? We should be more like the Christians in Berea, (Acts 17:11). They tested everything that Paul said by the Word of God. If the Bereans tested everything that the Apostle Paul said how much more should we be testing what our own Pastors say!
How sad it is that many professing Christians do not test what they hear from the pulpit against God’s Word. Perhaps the attitude is, “He’s the Pastor, he must know what he’s talking about.” Or, “He’s the Pastor, I’m sure he’s done much studying about this topic.” But what if he’s wrong? How will we know if he is preaching contrary to the Word of God if we don’t know the Word of God well enough to detect truth or error?
God is very serious about how we handle His Word, (2Timothy 2:15). The Bible is not a toy to play around with, (2Cor. 4:2). It is the very Word of the Living God. God the Holy Spirit wrote it. Why then don’t we take the time to study it?
If in order to get a particular job that you were applying for, a job that you have wanted for a long time, and you had to study and know the ins and outs of the company hand book, wouldn’t you study it every time you got the chance? Yes you would, otherwise you would fail the test and not even be considered for the job. So then how can the Word of God, the very book that speaks of how you relate to Him, and how your eternal soul will be saved, a book that speaks of how to know the eternal, holy, and righteous God of the universe, the One who created you and everything you lay your eyes on, a book that shows us the only way of redemption be so neglected? Perhaps it’s because at best we’ve become lazy, and at worst we just don’t care, which could mean we don’t really know Him.
The Bible is the book that God has written in order to reveal Himself to man (2Timothy 3:16; 2Peter1:20). It is our job as Christians to know this book well enough to be able to detect truth from error. It is the job of the Pastor to feed his flock truth. And it is the flock’s responsibility to test by Scripture what is being said from the pulpit. The way to do this is to study scripture not in small chunks, but in its context
First, make it a goal to read the Bible all the way through. Some people like to switch back and forth from the Old Testament to the New, reading a book in the Old, and then a book in the New. Others like to work their way through the Bible from cover to cover. What I have found very helpful is repetitious reading. I choose a New Testament book I want to study (usually a small Epistle, such as James or 1John) and I read it over and over. The smaller Epistles have anywhere from four to six chapters and can be read in one sitting. Reading a small Epistle for thirty days will give you a good grasp on what the author wanted to convey. When studying larger New Testament books like the Gospels, or Romans, I like to split the book up into sections and read anywhere five or six chapters a day. For example, Romans has sixteen chapters. I read chapters 1-5 for a few weeks, and then move to 6-10, then 11-16. These are my study habits. You may find something that works better for you.
Whatever that may be, the point is that we need to know the Word of God so well that when we come across a counterfeit message (and we will) we’ll be able to spot it immediately. I hope that this article has been encouraging and in spires you to study and treasure the scriptures.