Jesus explicitly says that His Kingdom is “not of this world” (John 18:36) yet some of us still persist, like the crowds, to make him an Earthly king by force (John 6:15).   This is not what Jesus wants from us.  What he wants is for us to “make disciples” of the nations.   Unlike the devil, He wants to rule over a kingdom of voluntary subjects, not of people who are enslaved to Him and hate Him.   What is this “making disciples” all about though?   Some explain “make disciples of all nations” to mean “take over the nations” whereas others explain it to mean “take some people from all of the nations.”   Does history offer us any help in resolving which interpretation is better?

Well certainly we can observe that any time that the church and state are intertwined, it leads to serious corruption of the church.   Christianity gets physical defense from other powers in exchange for being corrupt.    History does not lead in the trajectory of the Church “taking over” nations.

On the other hand, to take the other view that the Christian take-over of Rome was a tragic mistake will not do either.  We’ve made a lot about Wilberforce, but what about all of great things that Christianity did to culture before then?  We abolished ancient slavery, gladiatorial matches, raised the status of women significantly,  including female infants, took power away from the autocrats and created room in the society for the common man, to mention a few of the “human rights” related changes that never happened in Rome or anywhere else in history without Christ.    Everything we became as a civilization stemmed out of Christianity being the dominant cultural force,  instead of paganism.   Now we are using the technology and money that resulted from having these Christian principles to reach to the literal ends of the earth for Christ.  Moreover, neither Islam nor barbarians were able to kill us because we were protected by the medieval states.   To argue that the church should not have influence on the state is to argue for a state of perpetual persecution and martyrdom.  God saw fit to end that by making Caesar acknowledge Christ.  I disagree with those who say “the church needs a little persecution.”   If they are so sincere in that belief, I have a short list of places they can move to volunteer.

Part of our inheritance from our Spiritual forebears is not just salvation, it is the environment in which we could find salvation and even more importantly — give it to others.   We need to pass something down to our children other than just salvation — we need to pass down to them the cultural inheritance of our past.  We need to pass down to them the Christian principles that make us free as a people, or not only they but all of the weak of the secular world will be slaves again.    Our governments have been working against us to remove the Christianity from our civilization, and when they are done, nothing will be left but the pagan roots of Rome that were there before.   Can you say “welcome back” gladiators?

A large part of the church is focused simply on saving souls, and part of the church is focused on reforming the government.   Both are needed, but these groups have completely different theologies.  Is there any view which would consistently motivate us to do both?  I haven’t solved the puzzle but I’m becoming more convinced of several things.

First, culture is the main thing that welcomes or rejects God among a people, this includes both revival, as well as freedom.   Winning souls is critical, influencing law is good, but impacting culture is the stage upon which these things happen.  If we abandon culture, we curse the ability to reach future generations and their ability to affect the law.

Second, part of who we are as Christians is our Christian cultural values.   Multiculturalists are working hard to undermine this by labeling it Western imperialism.    In reality it has taken 2000 years to get certain values to be deeply a part of who we are.  We can’t throw that under the bus.   The logical extension of this is that we must teach every disciple of Christ the fundamental elements of Christian culture.  Most people refer to this as “Biblical worldview” but this often ends up as a side topic.    We need to understand this as central to the discipleship process.   Of course Biblical worldview is deeply enmeshed in personal character, but what we need to pass down is something about our corporate relationships and relationship to the world.

Third, I have come to the belief that what you belief about the Earth is what you is what you leave on the Earth. I mean that in the very specific sense that the cultural inheritance you pass down is what you pass down to change the Kingdoms of this world.   If you only pass down your faith or people you have evangelized, but pass nothing to them about culture you pass them down an inheritance of slavery.    You have been given an inheritance by all of the Christians before you, you must maintain that trust and pass it down to your children.  If you do not believe in the principles of freedom and pass them down, you are setting the stage for their slavery and bondage.

Fourth, the church is locked in a mortal struggle with the state.   When the state gains enough power over the church, Satan will use it to try and wipe the church out.    The more space in society that the state takes up, the less “room” there is for the church.   “Big government” is not a modern invention.  It is an historical reality.  Christ comes to set people free from the chains of serving man, often personified as an absolute ruler.   Our ideal is not a state we control or one that we ignore.  Our ideal is a state that we influence.   If Jesus says “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s” that means that something belongs to God which does not belong to Caesar and that Caesar himself must render unto God his due.   We as the church are the voice and influence to make that happen.     This doesn’t mean that we can’t actually run the government.  We can, but when we do, we must do so in the spirit of Daniel — as a blessing to all people, like God who “causes it to rain on the unrighteous,” not as implementers of a religious policy.    When we put in place policies which give people freedom, and serve justice to the weak, we fundamentally set back the devil’s Kingdom.   The church can help the poor, but only the state can give them “justice.”   Some have perverted this to mean give them handouts.    Justice means the right to be treated the same as someone who has money, not the right to have their money.

I recently attended a conference with the rest of the team where Kris Vallotton was the main speaker.  We were going mostly as a fellowship, not for the message, as I had only heard Kris briefly on a single web cast before.  I just knew that the Bethel related guys were doing cool things and the host of the conference was very excited about having him in.    We didn’t go because we were big followers of his, but because we were looking for an opportunity for the guys to have an encounter with God, and do something as a team.    Kris tells some great “God stories”  Everyone laughed a lot during the services.   I cried a couple of times over the stories.   It was a great experience.    People know Kris and the Bethel guys, though, not because they are funny, but because they are saying something profound to the church in this time.

There was a very nice anointing around his life that I feel like restored my fire and “freshness” with God.  (Not to mention the worship really moved me). Vallotton’s signature is what I might call “prophetic worldview insights.”   This made him a little bit like a Graham Cooke that was more focused on the church orientation than strictly personal issues.  One of Vallotton’s trademarks is to throw big ideas on the table, and then just move on rather than fully develop them.  This perhaps is because they are actually coming from God as revelations and he himself does not fully know what they mean or imply yet.   He put several big ideas on the table that I want to interact with here.  Keep in mind, though I disagree with Kris on several points, I see him as operating under a real mantle from God for changing the church in our generation.  I’m just a guy with a blog trying to figure out what to do with this stuff.

I say this as someone who didn’t feel like I naturally “fit in” with the Bethel folks or the people that they attract.   The spike haired pastor with the USSR t-shirt giving the blessing was only one of many “fish out of water” experiences for us.   However, God is speaking to the church through them right now, and we need to listen and hear what they are saying.  I felt like God showed me tonight how even people who are committed to a life of following the cloud of the anoint will can the new anointing.   I always thought that as a Charismatic who was sold on following the Spirit, all I had to do was ride the wave, but it doesn’t exactly work like that.  Even radical Spirit Filled types can miss what God is doing in their generation because God will design it in a package that maybe doesn’t look so radical and Spirit filled on the surface.  Well the Bethel guys are really shaking things up by changing our orientation toward church.

Bethel as the new Kansas City? Vallotton is definitely one who is looking at a more long term horizon for the church, unlike those in the Kansas City movement.  In fact, one could see how Bethel in some ways has picked up the mantle that Kansas City put down—by blending the Latter Rain (prophetic) with Pentecostal and Vineyard influences.  Kansas City you could say lost out because its leaders lacked the humility to complement their gifts, and now because what remains (the IHOP movement) has gone over to an unhealthy view of the end times.    Bethel comes with an anointing to get the Charismatic church back on track – actually reaching people instead of just waving banners around.   Some of the observations of Bill Johnson could have come straight from the mouth of Curry Blake, but Johnson has the mantle for charismatic people to listen.  The difference is that Bethel doesn’t come with a lot of stunning fireworks.  I don’t really enjoy Bill Johnson as a teacher and they don’t do “wow” prophetic meetings.  Overall I saw the genius of God in this.  Charismatics pride themselves on following the cloud – how can a people who have built their lives around chasing God miss the next move of God?  Well if God comes to them “in a whisper,” without hype or fireworks, then they will only know it is God if they recognize His hand and voice in what is taking place.  God is not a miracle factory.  He is looking for a people that will join with him to bring the Kingdom to earth.

Historiography. Vallotton referred to the Catholic church as our mother and said he really didn’t know whether or not it was a good idea in 1517 to separate from the Catholic church or not.  He did not come across as an advocate for return to modern Catholicism, however.  This is a reversal of Latter Rain “Restorationism” such as laid out by Kevin Conner and Bill Hamon.  It says we need to get back to a place we were, rather than emphasizing the things God has strategically done to bring us forward in the past 5 centuries.  Conner would see God continually restoring the church doctrine by doctrine and practice by practice beginning with Luther, through Wesley and right down to now.  I side with Conner and the Latter Rainers on this one.   I see the Medieval Catholic Church as being corrupt necessarily because of its tight integration of Church and State, not something we want to rebuild or revisit.

Relationship to the World. Vallotton is pointing to something real though that God is doing in our time.  He’s rolling Spirit filled people into places of influence in the City of Man.  They are a kind of New Testament Daniel Company.  He talks about this as a collaboration between God ordained secular (Romans 13) government, and God ordained Church (Ephesians 6) government.  There is a lot (2000 years of history and thought) to deal with here.  What I saw out of this was lighting a different way forward than strict political activism.  This was a more about a kind of civic activism – the Kingdom is something that comes and saves souls, but also shakes up the culture of the city.  This is very powerful.  Rather than focus on the national political scene which tends to marginalize us, or focusing on spiritual mapping which may not actually do anything, here we have an approach that says “transform your immediate environment.” by leveraging the God given power of Romans 13 offices.  We have to end our hostility toward these offices as “the world,” and start looking at them as the powers which God has established over our city.  He gave examples which included a Christian prophetically elected as mayor, a reformist mayor in a corrupt city supported by the church, and secular officials supported in doing good by the church.  He talked about how solving problems in the city gives the church credibility that we have lost as well.

Eschatology. Vallotton specifically attacked the Hal Lindsey (premillennial) gloom and doom worldview, saying that this kind of view actually gives power to the devil. We start awaiting the coming and empowerment of the anti-Christ not the coming of Christ.  I am on board with these points.  Where he got into murkier water was the expectation of the church’s role in the world.  There was definitely a postmillennial (church taking over) overtone to his teaching.  For example, he held up the Renaissance as a point to which we should return.  He saw this as a time of church dominance in the culture and that as a goal.  He also told some great stories which revealed his orientation to be less about theonomy (takeover by law) and more about real influence in the culture.  His contention was that we should be the people who solve the problems of our cities, and that that can start by us taking a servant attitude toward our civic leadership.  As an amillennial, I fit this insight about the government of this world not into a “redeem the city” paradigm since I follow Augustine in truly seeing a “City of Man” which will ultimately be destroyed.  I see impacting the city as being about saving souls ultimately, but secondarily about making the manifold wisdom known to the principalities and powers.  You don’t bring down the principality over a city through a “prayer walk.”  Even a revival alone will not do it.  The instrument of civil government working with the church, however, can do it.  It’s a kind of taking “Spiritual Warfare” onto the devil’s home turf.

Protestant Individualism. Vallotton identified and criticized Protestantism’s orientation toward valuing people only based on doctrine. He saw this as being historically rooted in the tradition of Protestants separating and joining based on doctrine,  but I don’t think he made a strong enough connection that this orientation is partly dictated. by Protestant theology.  Individual salvation by faith leads us to separate from our families and others and forge our own lives based on Christ.  In fact, individualism is the sine qua non of Protestant civilization.  Our desire to “separate” or “join” with others based on “doctrine” is intimately connected with the idea of individual salvation versus the Catholic or Orthodox ideas of salvation by the Church.  So we can’t exactly throw that overboard.  What we could do, however, is tweak it, and I think his ultimate conclusion was very good: we have to value and love people because they are people, not based on their level of agreement with us as we are apt to do as Protestants.  He talked about an “iron curtain coming down” which was a very powerful image.  That iron curtain is the strict separation we place between ourselves and unbelievers and the way we instrumentalize them by focusing on their conversion (changing their minds) more than actually loving them through their lives.

Judgment versus Reaping and Sowing. Vallotton told a story of being with a bunch of other apostolic/prophetic voices and challenging their assumption that God was judging us for this or that.  He seems to agree with Jim Richards that God doesn’t bring “judgment” per se after the cross.  He allows us to reap the consequences of our actions.  Was Sept 11^th a judgment or a consequence of our actions and attitudes? He specifically called out David Wilkerson as being one who has prophesied a lot of gloom and doom over the years, none of which has come to pass, and said we need to get out of that mindset.   Kris sees it as a contradiction for God to bring death on us because of our bringing death on others (such as through abortion).  He made great points about “culture” and how it really is a feedback loop: you have to change the system.  However, I don’t think that this means that God can’t allow or even bring death as a consequence of our killing.  This is certainly the basis of capital punishment.  On the other hand, I think Kris is onto something when he takes the focus off of “God’s judgment” and puts it back onto us and by extension the activity of the Enemy of our souls to exploit our sin to destroy us.

Remarkably, these were only a few of the major paradigm shifting ideas that Vallotton put forward.   He also discussed “Apostleships”, the “Owl” prophetic movement, and multi-generational church just to name a few others that I can’t cover here.  All of this led me to conclude that I need to be spending more time with God and less time with my brain.  God is a genius, so He tells you things that you could never figure out from a lifetime of study.  He breathes on an idea and it has life.   I need that a lot more than another degree.

So I have become aware that I am an excitement addict.  I need things to be exciting.  In fact, I come from a generation of excitement addicts.  We basically have continuous entertainment opportunities all the time.  We are raised from the beginning on this excitement diet.  Whether it be video games, sex, food, or even things in the church the bottom line is that we want it to be exciting.  This is because we were raised to chase a high.

This concept has recently been ported over into the Christian world as “Christian Hedonism” most notably promoted by John Piper and to a lesser extent Mike Bickle and Sam Storms.  It’s a great revelation that the joy of knowing God surpasses the pleasures of the world.  On the other hand the pleasure of the world and the pleasures of God work in fundamentally different ways.  The pleasure of the world feeds the self and reinforces the self.  The pleasure of the world comes with an intense kick right up front.  That’s designed to get you hooked.  The other thing though is that the pleasure of the world always comes with a “hangover.”  It comes with the negative consequences of what you did.  These may be in your heart, in your body, in your relationships, in your finances or all of the above.

Look at physical intimacy.   Sinful physical intimacy may come with a huge rush right up front, but in the end you have total destruction.  There may be an abortion, an STD, and a broken heart coming just to name a few possibilities.  If you are married, it may include divorce, devastated children, and child support payments.   These are life long “consequences.”   Physical intimacy in marriage may not always have the same “rush” but it is part of building a lifelong relationship and has the potential to develop dimensions that sinful intimacy can never have because it is part of reinforcing a lifelong trust relationship.

God’s pleasures come with time.  A lot like vegetables.  You get no “high” from eating vegetables, but if you eat a lot of them, and cut out the sugar and caffeine, you’ll have a lot more energy.  Now God is certainly a lot better than vegetables.  But it’s a similar flow.  When we pack into a service looking for the spiritual “high” we’re treating God like our worldly idols.  When we come to him looking for a “high” we’re treating him like a worldly idol.

How do we exit the cycle of looking for the next “high” of some kind.  Well of course there is dying to self, but dying to self is not denying yourself something you really really want.  It is learning to stop wanting what will kill you and start wanting what will save you.  It is learning to stop eating of the forbidden fruit and to start eating of the tree of life.

Look, this even applies to learning.  For me it is easier to feed my mind than to feed my spirit.  But feeding my mind makes me just smart, it doesn’t make me effective.   If you fathom all mysteries but have not love….  But when you get in God’s presence and stay there you actually become something different.  You don’t just know something different.  Eating of the tree of life of the presence of Jesus is the gift that keeps on giving, a lot like a good vegetable diet J   It can even be very exciting, but if excitement is your goal you’re going to burn out.

What I am starting to learn (very slowly) is the “simple pleasure” of the unexciting things in life.  Working hard during the work day, going to bed on time, eat right, etc, are all the “less exciting options” but they pay off major dividends over time.   As your life gets in order, there is more room for God.   The devil works hard to keep your life out of order so you can’t stay in the flow with God.   The bait he uses is excitement.  That first rush of the forbidden fruit masks its deadly nature.   But every time you walk in what is right, you sow a harvest of good things to come.   And there is a joy of the good harvest that is much richer than the guilty and temporal pleasure of the exciting whirlwind.   I never heard anyone say “man I wish had eaten more fatty foods yesterday.”   That’s because later on you are in harvest time.  Do you get a harvest of corruption after a short high, or do you get a harvest of joy after “eating your vegetables?”

We continue to wade deeper into the waters of demonic deliverance.  And I certainly don’t have “the answers” as it comes to this topic, but I learn more and more all the time.   Talking to other people about how their bondage works has definitely been eye opening about how to get more freedom myself, and even others who are “healthy.”

Jesus says that “my sheep hear my voice.”  This is a great promise, but the problem is that we also hear the devil’s voice, and we have to learn to totally reject and disfellowship from it.  How do we do that?  A lot has been written in Charismatic movement about hearing God’s voice, but none of that stuff has really worked for me.  I think it is because I need to do more “eviction” of the devil.

Of course the devil has basic tricks like making good things seem evil, and evil seem good.  He “speaks” by giving you negative emotions about Godly things and euphoric emotions about sin.  This feeling is followed by him giving you a script like “I really want that.”  So you will come into agreement with him and he’ll have power.   These feeling have power because you believe the lies.  When you see a pretty girl and you have all of these emotions and you want to act on it, that’s because you are letting the devil play his script in your head.   The devil always lies about the consequences.  He likes you to think that there are no negative consequences of your action, but of course that’s dead wrong.

While those things are tricky, they are more obvious because we know they are obviously wrong.    The hard ones really are the “religious lies” like the ones that Jesus had to face in the wilderness.  Most demons are very well versed in the religious.   I had a friend the other day start praying for a guy on the phone who didn’t believe in demons.  That was until my friend started casting one out of him and he was screaming and choking on the phone.  The devil loves the theology that he doesn’t exist.

The first thing you need to know about the devil’s voice is that it is demanding and “loud”. The devil is glad to talk all the time.  He wants to talk about everything because anything you listen to will lead you into bondage.   God by contrast is not loud and demanding.    One of the keys to knowing God’s voice is that there is grace released when you hear it.   You hear the word and there is something within you desiring to do it.  Now there is often conflict between your flesh and carrying out God’s will, but one of the signs of God speaking is this sense of “yes” and being carried along in that direction.   God’s voice is speaking “in” you as much as he speaks “to” you – after all Christ and the Holy Spirit are living inside of you.  We know someone whose constantly chattering demon says “ask God to speak to you like this.” I believe that is taunt because God doesn’t speak like that.   God doesn’t speak with lots of constant “conversational” dos and don’ts.

This leads to my second observation about the devil’s voice.  He loves to “pile it on.”  Whatever you are doing is not enough.  He loves to find something he knows you won’t do and then condemn you for it.  “Sell all you have and give it to the poor” and then when you don’t do it, you feel guilty.   It’s not God.   If God wants you to sell all, it won’t feel like that.   If God wants you to do it, you’ll have a deep desire to do it, even if it is a struggle.   There is no condemnation in Christ, but the devil’s goal is to find something to condemn you for.  This is because if you are condemned you are in works, and that means he’s in control.  Basically you have to know that you are forgiven and free whether or not you pray, read your Bible, or anything else.  If I worship God tonight, that’s great for me, and great for God, but it has nothing to do with my “rightness” with God.  No “rules” can add or subtract from that because Jesus paid it all.  And if I sin, I repent and am forgiven.   God takes it off, he doesn’t pile it on.

John G. Lake once said that “hell is distraction” and that is the next observation about the devil: he is distraction.  He has all kinds of things you need to do and worry about all the time.  Basically anything to keep you from dealing with your real self, and getting in contact with God.  You’ll know this when you get down to pray and you become worried about all kinds of random things.  That’s the devil.   God is when you get to that place of layer after layer of focus, to the point where you are “lost in the Spirit” and you don’t even know you’re in the room.   You’re caught up in focus on God.   You are carried there by His presence in you which is calling out to His presence in heaven.

And of course we must remember that the devil used Scripture in the temptation of Jesus.   Even if the devil says something that is “true” — such as a Scripture verse — it’s still really a lie designed to bring death.  It’s a lie because of context, and a lie because of intent.   You know it’s a lie because of where it came from.   The devil can only lie and only destroy.  We have to proactively evict the devil’s voice from each of our lives.  We have to evict the voice of guilt and condemnation.  We have to evict the voice that demands we do this and that and this.   Kick it out, and listen to God’s voice of perfect love coming from the Holy Spirit within you.

A recent commenter was trying to understand why Charismatics seem to be particularly open to the Word of Faith movement and assume that if you are anti-Word of Faith you are anti-Charismatic.   When I was in high school, before I became Charismatic, I remember staying up late with my brother and watching one of the TV ministries with my brother.  It was completely ridiculous.  I had a hard time even recognizing it as Christian.   Yet these guys are raising enough money to stay on the air.   It was several more years before I was introduced to the Faith teaching in the church where I came into the Charismatic movement.   At the time it seemed that the pastors of that church were more interested in the Holy Spirit than the money and I saw the Faith teaching as something separate from what I had rejected on TV.  I saw it as part of believing God.  I was believing Him to be a supernatural and victorious person and that entailed an attitude of victory, overcoming and faith.   Declaring Scriptures over myself made sense and I was glad to do it.   It never got me the breakthrough from lifelong sin patterns, but it gave me a much more victorious mindset.   I later found out that the church pastors were in fact not much different from the TV preachers and were making incredible salaries while expecting very high sums out of the congregation in many different ways.

Which leads to my first observation:  it’s funny how “faith” always gets tied in with money.    I do not think it is supposed to be.   When you start going after the money, you end up with “name it and claim it” and a very selfish version of Christianity.   That was never what I wanted — perhaps because I had never lacked money or status, or perhaps because I had already put it all on the altar when I accepted Christ.    Yet, these faith teachings about money always end up in “give to get.”   Instead of giving to speed the gospel, you are now giving to increase your bank account.   Count me out.  I’m trying to build a heavenly bank account.

My second observation is that the Word-Faith teaching quickly becomes a kind of Gnosticism, much like Christian Science.  You are declaring yourself healed even though you are sick.   You are declaring yourself free even though you are in bondage.  You end up starting by denying reality.  This is a fundamental problem that keeps it from “working.”   Instead of exposing and confronting you end up denying.

But does that mean I am completely anti-Faith?  Actually it doesn’t.   After a number of years of not listening to that kind of teaching, I’ve realized that I’ve lost an important part of my Christian identity that I need to bring back in a healthy way.   I don’t think that I could listen to the main teachers on this subject for the two reasons above, yet I think that the “Attitude of Faith” is absolutely critical.   What would a “Faith” teaching look like without the money stuff and the denying of reality?   Hard to imagine isn’t it??

Well for starters, I think it would become focused on victory over sin, demons, and disease, which are the things that I think I remember Jesus focusing on.   I think it would also focus on confidence in the face of danger and intimidation.   It would focus on bold proclamation of the truth and walking in the full stature of Christ.    Secondly, I think that it would begin by recognition of a problem and THEN asserting the will of Christ over it.   You are sick but — Jesus makes you well.   Instead of Gnosticism we have declarations of victory on behalf of an almighty God.   Real Faith is about stepping into the attitude and position of Jesus on the Earth.  Hebrews 11 does truly paint a fabulous picture of the “man of faith” that God wants us to be.  Is the money really that exciting?  Can’t you get hyped about that on a late night infomercial?

Which leaves a question — where do the “confessions” that form the heart of the WoF teaching come in?  Actually these Scriptural confessions were part of why it was attractive to me in the first place.   The idea of quoting a Scripture to take authority over my problem made a lot of sense to my evangelical-fundamentalist ears.   I moved away from them because I felt that they weren’t really getting the job done and because of the “Gnosticism” issue of denial of reality.  I am thinking about bringing them back, but with a different focus — expose the issue, and assert God’s dominion over it.

The basic task of pastoring people is helping them to grow.  A major component of this then is counseling.  And both counseling and pastoring are tied closely to our view of sanctification, and our view of the human person.  There are several major schools of thought today that provide us an approach to helping people to grow:

“Christian Counseling.” The Christian Counseling movement is very integrationist in its philosophy.  The basic idea is to build on secular counseling insights and just insert Christian values without addressing the fundamental models. This school is best represented by Gary Collins and his book “Christian Counseling” There are several problems with this.  First  Secular Psychology and Christian psychology are based on very different premises. Starting with the existence of God, and working through the various facets of the human personality, traditional psychological models differ greatly from a Biblical view.   Secular counseling for example has no concept of “sin” and therefore no idea of “correction.”   Secondly, secular models are not static.  Contemporary psychology has great diversity and the reigning paradigms change every decade or two.

“Biblical Counseling” Also called “Nouthetic Counseling.” This is the movement started by Jay Adams with his seminal work “Competent to Counsel.”  Adams is a strong correction to integrationist approaches.  Looking at examples from his books, you could almost caricature his model as “Scriptural Rebuke.”   Basically this is the no nonsense, in your face, why didn’t you do the right thing approach, salted with a some Scripture verses.  Now, this is certainly better than secular counseling for sure, because you are getting responsibility back on the person instead of just validating them.

“Deliverance.” In the Charismatic church, if you have a problem you can’t beat we say that you have a demon.  The idea is that if we cast it out, you will be able to break the cycle.  This traditionally involves repentance of past sins, naming the spirit and commanding it to leave.  A new movement of “Inner Healing” has rounded out the deliverance approach   This has meant a greater focus on the “Father’s Heart,” and healing of past wounds.   Deliverance methods are great if the person you are working with has the anointing to just blast the devil off of you, but a lot of people end up frustrated trying to get free from their problems when the focus is on the devil alone.

“Discipleship Counseling” This is the name that Neal Anderson has chosen for his model, but I think a more descriptive name would be Christian Identity Counseling . Anderson’s model is kind of like Deliverance gone mainstream. He’s taken the concepts made them more palatable and consistent and give it his own twist, which has evolved over time. Anderson’s basic idea is that when you are not doing well it is because you are failing to recognize your identity in Christ. In addition, you may have demonic activity, which mainstream models essentially ignore.   I am most familiar with Anderson’s model because I have tried, used it, and built on its insights.   With time this has led me to identify what I see as flaws in the approach and move toward our own FCF approach.

Anderson, whether consciously or not, has much similarity with the “Word of Faith” movement.  He leans toward a once saved always saved model of salvation and with it an approach that if things are going wrong it is because you are not walking in your already fully established identity in Christ.    One sign of this is his use of the word “renounce” in several places where it would be natural to say “repent.”   This seems to stem from the idea that if you are already perfect in Christ, you are simply needing to “renounce” the problem rather than take ownership of it and repent.   The idea being that your spirit is perfect, but your flesh is not.   Your flesh sinned.   This can lead to the thinking that “it really wasn’t me it was my flesh.”

“Reality Counseling“  For now this is what I’m going to call our method.   It is NOT to be confused with secular “Reality Therapy.” First, we see “exposure” as a major facet of freedom.  Talking and bringing the problem fully out into the light is critical.   What are the roots?  How does it function?  What is your pattern?  Related to this, we see that most people  work very hard to “put up a front” for others to see.  It is critical that you tear down this idol of pleasing others and get real in order to be free.  As long as you are trying to be someone you are not, you are in works, and God’s grace will not function for you.   When you bring your real sins and real self before God only then through the blood of Christ can you be secure and accepted in his presence. If you are hiding like Adam and Eve were in the garden, you cannot experience the cleansing power of that blood.   This is the reality about yourself.

Second, in response to Anderson, we believe very much that you may not be saved, and that can lose your salvation.   In addition, we see “In Christ” as an important reality which applies subsequent to repentance, not as a proxy for repentance.   You must take full responsibility for having committed the sin, whether or not there was demonic involvement.  You must then repent and turn away from it at the point that if it were offered to you again, you would not take it because you would rather have Christ.     Then you can assert your identity in Christ, because you are now “in Christ” in this area.  Being in Christ is something that happens by faith, and happens progressively.   As you repent and excercise faith, you are more “in Christ.”   This is not from a perspective of your salvation, but it is from a perspetive of your ongoing experience of God and victory over sin.   This is the reality of your sin.

Connected with this is the issue of faith and works.   If you try to fight your sin without really repenting, or fight the devil without really removing, you will be in works.  You will be trying to please God by doing good things instead of accepting that God loves you regardless of your inability to do good things.  It is by abiding in this unconditional love, and by receiving forgiviness for your sins that results from repentance that you will have the power of God living inside of you.   When you try to get God to love you more by human effort, you are in works.   This is the Reality of God’s love.

After exposing, and taking real ownership of the issue including repentance, you can deal with the demonic power that is reinforcing the pattern.   We really see this as the devil’s role.  He’s like the iron padlock on the door of your sin.   He keeps reinforcing it by making it hard to do the right thing, and easy to the wrong thing.   He supercharges the evil, and fights you on the good.   He plays tapes in your head and until you accept them.  He’s an evil bully.    We will command him to go, but you must be ready to take back the ground one piece at a time.   We look for “total disfellowship” as the condition of his removal.  Every thing that causes you to “like” him being there must be gone.   But I don’t like the devil being there?   You like what he offers you on the front end, just not what you get on the back end.  You like the drinking but not the hangover.   When you stop liking the drinking, the devil’s days are numbered.   This is the reality about the devil.

It was asked in a comment what is the significance of the New Perspective on Paul.   First of all, I am not going to pretend to be an expert.  It’s a bit of a tricky subject that people will want to argue about.  If you want a more expert debriefing, check out one of the audios here.  Or you may want to look at John Piper’s book “The Future of Justification.”

The simple version is as follows.   Back in the 70s, a scholar named E.P. Sanders wrote a book called “Paul and Palestinian Judaism.”   It claimed that Paul was not arguing against Jewish legalism, he was just arguing against Jewish exclusivity.   It was based on research which Sanders believed showed the Pharisees and others to not be oriented toward salvation by works by to salvation by grace.

It seems like a minor argument, but it’s actually quite significant.  If Paul was not arguing against Jewish legalism then this affects the meaning of terms like “justification” and “works of the law.”   If Paul was not arguing against those who would seek salvation by human effort, then in effect things like the letter to the Romans are no longer about how to be saved.  They are about who gets to be in the church or not.

Sanders contended that Luther’s tortured conscience is really the source for our reading of these terms as dealing with legalism.  Ever since the Reformation we’ve been misunderstanding it.   In essence, this reading of Paul reverses the Reformation.   Out is the “old” Lutheran salvation by faith perspective and in is something about being part of God’s covenant people.  If Salvation is not by faith, then dare I say we labor in vain.

This argument was picked up by James D.G Dunn of the University of Durham in England and then N.T. Wright, who is now Bishop of Durham.  N.T. Wright is the main person influencing the average evangelical.  This is because he sees himself a kind of moderate evangelical, and has taken strong stands in the past against the crazy theological liberal ideas.   People that are otherwise very orthodox are drinking down his commentaries and books.   Certain ultra-Calvinist groups have also picked up on this as a basis for their views called the “Federal Vision” or “Auburn Avenue Theology,” which undermines salvation by faith too, but just in a more conservative way.

Now of course Wright is too slippery to show his cards and take these ideas to the logical conclusion.  If someone from the NPP were to show up and read this blog they would most likely claim that I had not really understood the New Perspective, or that I was making conclusions that the proponents themselves do not make.   I think Wright as an Anglican may see himself as trying to create a new path by de-emphasizing certain Reformation distinctives and thus build a bridge between Protestants and Catholics, but it’s not really a new path, it’s a new basis for the old path of salvation through the “church.”  It seems that ever since it’s founding Anglicanism is always fighting between the Puritan and High Church parties — see for example the “Oxford Movement” Regardless, it’s not a path we can take, because even if Wright and other proponents are unwilling to draw the conclusions, they will inevitably surface.

With the rise of contemporary Reformed thought, a number of Charismatic groups have also arisen which embrace Calvinism.  Perhaps the most important of these is “New Frontiers” a major church planting network from England.    A major concept for Charismatics in the 20th century was a dream of unifying the “Word and the Spirit.”  Ern Baxter, one of the major leaders of the Shepherding Movement, was one who held to this concept.    So was R.T. Kendall, who wrote a book by the same title with Paul Cain.   Smith Wigglesworth gave a major prophecy on this topic near the end of his life.   Baxter and Kendall saw this as a union between Calvinism and the Charismatic.  And there are many heirs of the Shepherding Movement today who hold to Calvinism.  C.J. Mahaney is perhaps the one with the highest profile.   So there has been, and continues to be a shift toward Calvinism among Charismatics.

This partly because of the logical connection between Charismatic ideas like hearing God speak, being refined by fire,  and waiting on God with the concept of a God who controls the details of our lives.   If you doubt that these ideas create problems or go together, look no father than the recent book written by the young Reformed pastor titled: Just Do Something

Now the reality is that few people hold a truly consistent theology.  Instead we tend to get our ideas out of a buffet of the current ideas of the time.   At the same time, even those who are expert in theology are not always consistent, because the consistency leads to uncomfortable conclusions.  Now to a certain extent, such tensions are inevitable – since the creator of the universe could never be reduced to a single idea.   On the other hand the recognition of tension does not mean that we have to live in confusion, contradiction or denial.   Every theology has a “center” that really determines the direction it will ultimately go, regardless of what beliefs specific individuals hold.

So for example, if you are a Calvinist and belief that God predestines people to salvation, you can of course be a very evangelistic person and belief in the urgency of mission.  However this is logically inconsistent.   If God has already predestined them, it takes a lot of the urgency of mission away.  Therefore with time – perhaps a couple of generations, the theology will tend toward it’s logical “center”  This is about where things stood in the days of William Carey, when he launched the missions movement almost singlehandedly against the Calvinistic bent of his day.   This idea of a God who is in control is the logical center of Calvinism.  Therefore I believe that a truly consistent Calvinism will ultimately always tend to be more focused on government of this world than evangelism.  There will also always be more Calvinist intellectuals than Arminian ones, because the logic focus on the need for man to “do” is decreased, and the logical need for him know the correct theology is increased.   Only when you look into history and trace what happens to an idea after it has been living in a church culture for a few generations do you really get the flavor of where it leads.

Arminian theology seems to thrive best as a response to Calvinism because it does not have as good of a theological “center” as Calvinism does.   A theology of “free will” alone can too easily lead to liberalism or humanism.   People crop up to call themselves “Arminian” basically only when the Calvinists start telling us that God is damning people.  Aside from that most Christians are glad to ignore the “systems” and just say that God wants people saved.    If Calvinism and Reformed though are not healthy centers, and Arminianism alone is not a viable center, long term, what is?

The reason I feel the need to address this topic is because I was listening to the Introductory lectures of the brilliant instructor Richard Pratt, on the RTS Itunes U.   His explanation of Reformed/Calvinistic thought as a tradition was compelling, and it led me to ask, do we have a tradition that can be as logically compelling as Reformed thought or are we just a protest movement?

In my last post I talked about a unifying idea for a truly Pentecostal/Charismatic theology:  Possibility in God.   This is a truly Arminian concept, yet it is also a God-centered concept.  I propose this as an alternative “theological center”   For Wesley this manifested in the sanctification idea.  He believe that holiness was possible in God.  150 years later, the holiness people were putting this into practice and seeing dramatic miracles (and yes, a good deal of legalism).   The Pentecostals took the holiness ideal to its logical conclusion and became a movement based around the possibility of walking as Jesus walked.   As long as we are reaching toward God as a people, we as a people will continue to move theologically and eschatologically toward Him.  As soon as we stop, we are off into error.

After years of study, I feel that I am finally starting to get a hold of an idea that has eluded me.  I did a long paper in Seminary so that I could clearly understand eschatology.  Separately, I’ve been trying to understand how Charismatic preaching and Bible interpretation works.   This leads ultimately to an examination of our Charismatic practice to find the “way forward.”

There are a lot of groups offering us a false “way forward” in the church right now.  The whole “Emergent” movement is capturing a generation with pseudo-Christianity.  The seeker friendly church is watering down the Gospel.  The New Perpsective on Paul is deceiving the scholars.  The Charismatic church is rife with abuse of money and power, and chasing after signs.   Meanwhile our culture is going down so fast we can’t keep up.  It’s discouraging out there.  We need revival.

Now this is not a post about revival, but it is a post about having a theology that can undergird a revival.   This is the theology fo the possible.

First, our view of the end times.   I have come to the conclusoin that although almost no Charismatic/Pentecostals who embrace amillennialism as a system, we are in fact amillennial by  nature!  Just to review, in a nutshell, the postmillennial view looks for taking over of institutions.  The premillennial view looks for Christ to return and take over.  The amillennial view says that we are in a spiritual millennium now.   This is why some theologians prefer the term “present millennialism” or “inaugurated millennialism.”  The reason why we are present millennial in nature is because we fundamentally are a movement about believing that you can have “more of God” than you have.   We are a movement that says you can “be like Jesus.” You can actually do the things he did, think like he thought.  You can have a ministry like the apostles had.   This is a basic hermeneutic of bringing a spiritual reality from heaven into earth.    This is present millennialism.

However, Charismatic/Penteocstal groups have been everything but present millennial.  This is at least partly because the he Reformed/Calvinist guys who developed Amillennialism have a very boring conception of a spritual millennlum.  They would go bonkers if they heard we had adopted their view (and made it more optimistic), but the basic features of their system, how it reads the Bible, and where it puts events, is really the one that “fits” with Charismatic/ Pentecostalism.  It’s not just a “good option” for us.  It fits with our “more of God” view life.

You see, postmillennialism, which is popular in some Charismatic circles, like Bill Johnson or Bill Hamon, involves us ultimately “taking over.”  It’s definitely an attitude of the “possible” but it is not an attitude of the spiritually possible.  The more you get into taking over this world, the more you end up moving away from the Pentecostal/Charismatic idenity of having “more of God.”    Same thing with premillennialism.   When you get into this, you stop believe God about what you are and can become, and you start focusing on what is coming, and how you have a “last days” ministry.   Now that I see this, I would call John G. Lake a present millennialist.   His life passion was bringing the spiritual dominion of God into the Earth.   He rejected the premillennial dispensationalism that all of the Pentecostals of his day accepted, and although he had a “dominion” mindset, it was not about taking over governments.   His passion was the God kind of life.  That is my passion too.  And that is the same thing that George Warnock lays out in the Feast of Tabernacles.

Connect to this, The Latter Rain brought in a view of “Restored Truth” showing that the Church was moving progressively in a direction looking more like the early church.   The early rain had come, and now the “latter rain” is coming.   One step at a time, first Luther bringing back salvation by faith, then Wesley bringing back responsibility of man, then the Pentecostals bringing back the dynamic experience of the Holy Spirit, etc.   The church itself is on a trajectory of spiritual upward movement.   Each move of God takes us closer to be a glorious end time church.     This concept also fits with both the Charismatic worldview, and the present millennial system.

This leads to my third, related, observation.   The Charismatic hermeneutic is different from the traditional Reformed hermeneutic.  They believe all doctrine must originate from the Bible.  We believe that God is speaking now to highlight things in the Bible that we never corporately saw or practiced before.  Of course no one explicitly believes that, but in practice that is exactly what Charismatics believe.    For the Reformed people God “spoke.”  For us he “is speaking.”   It is a way of saying we believe in revelation.   We do not believe that prophets or a revival can create new doctrine, but because we believe God is restoring the church, we believe revival can reveal Biblical doctrine that has not been emphasized before — such as the 5 fold ministry.   It’s been there for 2 thousand years, but only since 1948 has anyone actually “tried” it.    That’s because we believe in the possible.  We believe that the church and the individual have the possibility to be more like God than they are and that is what God is taking us to, one step at a time.  Therefore when a “new revelation” is released, we instinctively receive it as part of taking us there.   This is actually not always good, but do you see how it ties together?   The “more of God” worldview means a present millennium, a view of the progressive restoration of the church,  and an openness to what God is saying “now” through the church.

This has been a missing piece — connecting our theory of what we are dong to what we are actually doing.   Normally we just dip into the evangelical bucket for “doctrine” add on a few Charismatic distinctives and keep doing our Charismatic thing.   It is inconsistent.   Part of what we’re missing is how you “validate” when God is bringing something forth, versus when it just sounds exciting, but isn’t a revelation.   Charismatics are very succeptible to hype.  If you hype it up, we might think the Spirit is moving.  And the Spirit moving is the hermeneutic of now.   If you are bringing more of God, you must be right, and you must have the doctrine we need.    No need to validate.   But if you wanted to validate, would you have the tools?  No.   That’s because evangelical hermeneutics do not provide the tools.   They just tell you how to be “safe” and avoid any possibility of error — which of course doesn’t work anyway.   But now things are changing.   Redemptive-Historical preaching and Biblical Theology are on the rise, and they are unlocking how the Bible itself works.  My theory is that this method of reading the Bible is more conducive to revelation.  It recognizes that how the Apostles themselves interpreted Scripture is how we should interpret it.  As Pentecostals, we go one step farther — they way they interpreted the OT, is the way we should interpret the NT and evaluate revelation.    Use of the apostolic method of hermeneutics is how we should validate what God is speaking to the church “now.”

For me this leads to a tight theology of the possible.   We are Arminian because we believe that the way things are is NOT the way things have to be.  We embrace a view of “Restored Truth” and are present millennial because we believe in greater possibilities for the church itself in history.    We use Apostolic Hermeneutics because we believe that we can do the same things that the apostles did,  including the way they interpreted the Bible, and even receiving revelation directly from God.   These are all deeply rooted in and connected by the single belief that we can and will have “more of God”!

I just finished reading The Feast of Tabernacles by George Warnock.  It is definitely one of the seminal books of the Charismatic movement, although very few contemporary Charismatics have heard of it.  Warnock was a key figure in the “Latter Rain” revival of 1948, and wrote the Tabernacles in 1951 in response to a prophecy.  He had this to say about the relationship between the Latter Rain and the Charismatic movement “It wasn’t long until the move of God began to infiltrate the large post-reformation churches, and some saw fit to give it a name that was more prestigious — The Charismatic Movement.”

FoT is contains an elaborate and fascinating set of typologies.  Perhaps because of this, and because of the climate during the 20^th century which was hostile to typology he includes a section in the book where he explains and defends its use.  It may be the only book I’ve ever read which actually explains in some part the theory of hermeneutics that underlies it.   I was interested in the book because something of the Latter Rain has always captured my interest, especially since it is talked about so glowingly by certain ones who were “there” and at the same time an almost forgotten movement because so many who were involved dissolved in the Charismatic movement or got into cults.  So that leaves me with a question – what was it that was good about the LR that we should keep, and what was bad that caused the problems?  So reading the FoT is part of going to back to the source.

The basic theory of the book is simple.  There are 3 biblical feasts:  Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles.   Passover and Pentecost are explicitly fulfilled in the New Testament which leaves an open question about the Feast of Tabernacles.  That fulfillment is coming at the end of age – now – through the people of God.   The first part of the book is spent laying the backdrop of the other two feasts and seems fairly straightforward.  It begins to get interesting as he moves deeper into the Tabernacles concept and seeks Biblical justification in a variety of places.

Warnock looks at the various celebrations of the Feast of Tabernacles in the Bible as each showing us something about a final eschatological Feast of Tabernacles in the Church: Solomon’s dedication of the Temple, Nehemiah, Jesus visit to the Feast

Criticisms

First, let me deal with places where I had issues or disagreed.  My main and most consistent of the book is the thinly veiled elitism it contains.  In several places the implication is made either directly or through typology that if you are not with “us,” you are against God.   This same kind of elitism continues today in some heirs of the Latter Rain.  This is where the Charismatic idea of responding to critics as “Pharisees” seems to stem from.  Let me say up front, that the most Pharisee-like experience I’ve ever had was in a Charismatic church.

In addition the idea of rallying around a doctrine is derided, while at the same time new doctrines are advanced.  I definitely see the point that during a special revival visitation of Christ, doctrine becomes less important as the true people of God are called out from every place and called together, yet during the rest of time doctrine is an important part of building together.

Warnock has an unusual idea of there being different groups within the church.  In other words descriptions like “Sons,” “The Bride,” which we take to be metaphors for the church, he sees as parts of the church.  Here again is a problem.  Although he does not develop the idea here, others did, and it led to serious elitism.  What if I’m a manifested son and you’re not?  What if I’m the bride and you’re not?

Hermeneutics

First, I strongly believe in Warnock’s basic theory of approaching Scripture. Sixty years later the scholarly community seems to be slowly moving to the place where Warnock already was by revelation.  The Hermeneutical principles he lays out are:

1. We should use the same principles of hermeneutics that the apostles did
2. Typology is valid and important in interpreting Scripture
3. All of the Bible is applicable to us. (He identifies the church as spiritual Israel)
4. The Old Testament is the pattern of the New.  (1 Cor 15:46)

I was thrilled when I first read this because it follows the exact line I’ve been exploring through other channels.  It was a strong confirmation that the journey I’ve been on for Spirit-filled hermeneutics was heading the right direction.

We see Warnock applying these hermeneutics throughout the book.  In the end of the book he looks at Moses and Elijah appearing on the mountain and Peter offering to construct “tents” (tabernacles) there as a sign of a “Moses-Elijah Company” on the Earth.

In addition to applying the Feasts typology to history (Passover=Reformation, Pentecost=Pentecostalism, Tabernacles=Return of Christ), he applies the history of Israel as a pattern for the history of the church.  We already went through the “Babylonian Captivity” of the Dark Ages (this is in agreement with Luther).  Protestantism itself was a kind of “Second Temple,” but just like the second temple, it ended in a system of religion not glory.  The idea is that now in the post-Chistendom era, we are in the same place Spiritually as when Christ came the first time and he is preparing the house for his return.  This pattern may be more of a stretch, but it is interesting.  He then spends a chapter examining the restoration of the temple by Zerubabbel, Nehemiah, comparing their task of restoration of the Temple to our task of restoring the church.  This works, but it doesn’t exactly match the historical recapitulation scheme he set up.

He uses numerous other types and symbols as well.  He shows the significance of the number 2.  He looks briefly at the concept of redigging of wells, which was such a big deal recently in the Charismatic movement.  He uses the story of Jonathan winning a victory but being punished for eating the honey as a typological story of being punished for tasting the fruit of the spiritual “promised land.”  He also interprets Jacob’s ladder.  Really it’s a gold mine of typological interpretations.  Some very strong, some not as strong, but really an example I’d like to examine in more detail as an application of “Apostolic hermeneutics” to now.

Eschatology

Different Charismatic groups have built different eschatologies, but they all differ from the traditional Pentecostal dispensationalism, and this is due directly to the influence of the Latter Rain.   Warnock sees the “hope of the church” not as the return of Christ to the saints, but as the Glory of Christ filling the “Temple” of the church in the same way it did in Solomon’s dedication ceremony.

He has a big vision for what is possible in God.  In fact, you could say that his vision was very similar to that of the original Pentecostals.  He talks about speaking in foreign tongues (xenolalia), being translated, and doing all kinds of exploits.  It was definitely a vision of “unlimited Christianity” and read  a lot like a David Hogan story. (p181)  I got a kick out of this line “They shall poison his food but it shall be like adding vitamins to his diet.”   The emphasis here though is on living the very same kind of life that Jesus did.  This is a part of the Spirit filled promise that we should never lay aside.  In some ways that was what the Feast of Tabernacles book was all about – a kind of trumpet call to the church saying that we are entering and end time phase of history where as Christ begins to tabernacle more with his church, we shall increasingly reflect the glory and power of Christ.  I believe both of those things.

Warnock sees overcomers as coming to a place where they speak “with such power and authority that the very nations themselves will have to bow in submission.”  This sounds postmillennial on the surface, but I actually see his ideas a more of a modified amillennialism, because they do not focus on cultural transformation, they focus on spiritual transformation and victory.  He acknowledges a Great Tribulation, but he sees these overcomers as having remarkable authority in the midst of it, including prayers that cut it short, and in general a ministry to those who are oppressed and persecuted during it.   The concept here is of a deep intimacy with God and protection during the judgment as Noah was protected in the Ark.  Our covenant must end in “glory and victory” because it is a ministry of life, where as the Mosiac covenant was a ministry of death. This is a pattern of “Spiritual Victory,” as opposed to postmillennial ideas of physical dominion, or premillennial ideas of awaiting the king, or evangelizing to save as many before he comes.

On the one hand, I want to dream big, on the other hand, it seems that if you get focused on being “powerful” you don’t be come powerful, you become arrogant.  I’m not sure how to resolve this at the level of personal spirituality yet.