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A New Perspective on Communion

August 30, 2009 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

Jeanie and I went to our second Tres Dias team meeting today in preparation for the October retreat that we will be serving at, and were once again blessed in many ways. We began the day with praise and worship followed by communion as we did with the first meeting. Today however I learned a truth about communion that I had not previously realized.

Now I’ve taken communion, or the Lord’s Supper as it is also known, umpteen times over the years, and always recognized much of the significance of the broken body of Christ in the Bread and the blood of Christ in the wine (or juice if you prefer). I’ve taken it in the Baptist traditional well as the Methodist and have read much about other denominations ways of taking communion and their interpretations of not only the significance of communion but of the substance of it as well. I also understand the significance of the old covenant passing away and the beginning of the new covenant. This morning, however, Pastor Jim quoted some scripture and said a couple of things about The Lord’s Supper that really cemented at least a portion of the importance of communion for me.

Pastor Jim read through 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 and then focused on verse 26 where Paul states, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” Jim then paused to re-emphasize how we are proclaiming Jesus’ death with communion and all that His death signifies.

Now, too often, we as Christians concentrate on the risen Jesus and don’t think as much about the crucified Jesus or more importantly, exactly what occurred at the moment of His death. After all, Easter is probably our most important day in commemorating Jesus and after that, Christmas. But many of us give little thought to Good Friday. Don’t get me wrong here, the risen Christ is what our religion is all about and without that Christianity wouldn’t exist. I just think that many Christians don’t reflect as much about what happened when Jesus died, or at least I hadn’t until today.

After Pastor Jim finished and while I was waiting my turn to take communion, I reflected back on exactly what did happen when Christ died. In Matthew 27:50-51 we read that “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split.”

Now when the veil in the temple leading into the Holy of Holies was rent, that is when the barrier that had stood between us and God since the Fall of Adam was removed. The pathway for our sins to be cleansed and for us to be able to “come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need”, as we read in Hebrews 4:16, occurred at the exact moment of Jesus sinless death. According to Paul, what occurred at Jesus’ death is what we are proclaiming when we take the bread and the cup.

Now, there is much more that can be said about communion but I just wanted to write about this portion of it and how I will always look at it little differently and be a little more thankful of it when I have the opportunity to take it. I think that many churches don’t emphasize communion nearly enough nor take it as often as they could. From near as I can tell, the early church took it every week. That would be fine with me, especially from looking at communion in the new light that I gained of it today

Filed Under: Christian Living, communion, Tres Dias

A Problem With Unconditional Election

August 29, 2009 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

Calvinism creates many problems for my little pea brain, and although I can respect the Calvinists view of the sovereignty of God, I find the whole Calvinist view of Unconditional Election very unsavory to say the least. I personally think that with the exception of Total Depravity, pretty much the rest of the TULIP needs to be tossed.

One of the things that I have pondered about this whole double-predestination theology (Unconditional Election) is that, if true, wouldn’t that send innocent babies to Hell if they were deemed reprobate? Well, tonight I decided to do a little research on this idea and it would appear that John Calvin pretty much believed that was the case.

In John Calvin’s book “Harmony of the Law” Volume 2, Calvin states “Although we must recollect that God would never have suffered any infants to be destroyed, except those which He had already reprobated and condemned to eternal death.” He essentially says that if an innocent baby isn’t one of the elect, it’s condemned. You can read this book in its entirety here.

I simply can’t imagine some innocent baby of about two or three dying a premature death, waking up in Hell, and going, “huh??”

In my mind, anybody that could believe that a loving God would send innocent babies to Hell must be deluded, although I’ve read that not all Calvinists believe this and probably others simply haven’t paused long enough to think of some of the implications of double-predestination. I, like others before me, see many potential pitfalls for Christian living lying within the theology of predestination when preached from a Calvinist viewpoint, however I would prefer to approach it from a loving stance to correct those who have been taught this doctrine.

I firmly believe that Calvinists are our brothers in Christ and take heed to John Wesley’s words of caution when he said in his letter “What is an Arminian”;Is it not the duty of every Arminian Preacher, First, never, in public or in private, to use the word Calvinist as a term of reproach; seeing it is neither better nor worse than calling names? — a practice no more consistent with good sense or good manners, than it is with Christianity.

Although I would classify myself as a Wesleyan/Arminian, I would like to understand more about the theology of Calvinism as well as that of my own church so that I can do as Wesley said when he stated:

“Answer all [the Calvinists'] objections, as occasion offers, both in public and private. But take care to do this with all possible sweetness both of look and of accent…Make it a matter of constant and earnest prayer, that God would stop the plague.” Volume 5 of the Works of John Wesley 1839

Filed Under: Calvinism

C.S. Lewis, Philip Yancey and John Wesley on Spiritual Dryness

August 28, 2009 By Randy Olds 1 Comment

Although C.S. Lewis and Philip Yancy are two of my favorite Christian authors, there is one subject that they both repeatedly approach in their writings that has consistently troubled me. That is the subject of the necessity of periods of “spiritual dryness” in all Christians walk with God. Both Lewis and Yancey state that there will be “trough periods” where the Lord will leave us on our own, so to speak, and that these times are simply a reality of the Christian faith and are simply unavoidable. This concept has troubled me from the first time that I encountered it in their writings, but until now I had not given it a great deal of consideration.

Lewis first touches on these periods or “troughs” as he calls them in “Mere Christianity” and then goes on in greater detail in “The Screwtape Letters.” In Letters #8 and #9 Lewis’ character Screwtape is instructing his pupil Wormwood on how to take advantage of these troughs where “[God] withdraws, if not in fact, at least from [the Christians] conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the [Christian] to stand up on its own two legs – to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.” Lewis goes on to state that “[God] relies on the troughs even more than the peaks; some of His special favorites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.”

Lewis also portrays God as occasionally removing Himself from our presence in his fictional portrayal of the Lion “Aslan” in his Narnia books. Toward the end of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, Mr. Beaver laments of Aslan after Aslan pulls one of his vanishing acts; “He’ll be coming and going [...]. One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down–and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll often drop in. Only you mustn’t press him. He’s wild you know. Not like a tame lion.” J.R.R. Tolkien, one of Lewis’ close friends and a person who was instrumental in Lewis’ conversion from atheism to Christianity, was supposedly deeply troubled by this aspect of Aslan, who is supposed to be a Christ-type in Lewis’ Narnia books. There were also other elements of Narnia that Tolkien had issues with, and his dislike for the series created some distance between him and Lewis but that’s another story.

When I first started reading Philip Yancey’s books, I found him also going into great detail about his belief that periods of spiritual dryness are a necessary part of the Christian experience. In “Reaching for the Invisible God”, he devotes a whole chapter entitled “Passion and the Desert” addressing this phenomenon. In “Prayer; Does it Make a Difference?” he states “I take some comfort in the fact that virtually all the masters of spirituality recount a dark night of the soul. Sometimes it passes quickly and sometimes it persists for months, even years. I have yet to find a single witness, though, who does not tell of going through a dry period.”

From near as I can tell this concept of spiritual dryness had its beginnings in the sixteenth century with a number of spiritual writers who held the belief that all Christians following Christ much go through this “dark night of the soul”. This dark night was to be likened to the desert wanderings of Israel in their forty years in the wilderness seeking the Promised Land. Mystics like John of the Cross who penned “The Dark Night of the Soul” and Teresa of Avila promoted these ideas and they gained prominence over the years.

Although I have not experienced an inexplicable “dark night of the soul” period since becoming a Christian, I kind of figured that it must be an inevitability due to what I had read on the subject. I didn’t like the idea and I hadn’t really read anything in scripture affirming that this was part of Gods plan, but simply hoped that if it must come, at least maybe God would have a good reason for it and that I would be spiritually ready for it.

All of this brings me to John Wesley’s published sermon #46 entitled “The Wilderness State”. I read this sermon the other night, and ended up rereading it several times, because in this sermon, Wesley directly refutes the idea that God is going to intentionally lead us into a “wilderness state” for no reason other than to force us to grow spiritually. As with many of my other readings of Wesley, I was forced to rethink the ideas that I had formed on this idea.
While Wesley respected Teresa, John of the Cross and other theologians such as William Law who held this “dark night of the soul” idea, he disagreed about the universal requirement for all Christians to experience such a period. He knew that Christians frequently suffered these dark night periods when externally everything appeared to be going well for them. Wesley attributed these periods to sin, ignorance of scripture or an unrealistic view of the Christian life. He affirms that suffering is promised as a part of being a disciple of Christ, but not that it is a part of Gods design. He acknowledges that the causes of this so-called wilderness state are various but “dares not rank among these the sovereign will of God.”

I’ll not go into the bulk of the sermon where Wesley addresses the various reasons that can bring on the “wilderness state” because I’m more concerned right now with what does not cause it, i.e. the deliberate withdrawal of God’s presence in our lives to promote spiritual growth. Wesley states:

“But is not darkness much more profitable for the soul than light? Is not the work of God in the heart most swiftly and effectually carried on during a state of inward suffering? Is not a believer more swiftly and thoroughly purified by sorrow, than by joy? — by anguish, and pain, and distress, and spiritual martyrdoms, than by continual peace?” So the Mystics teach; so it is written in their books; but not in the oracles of God. The Scripture nowhere says, that the absence of God best perfects his work in the heart! Rather, his presence, and a clear communion with the Father and the Son: A strong consciousness of this will do more an hour, than his absence in an age.

After reading through this sermon several times and then re-reading portions of Lewis and Yancey I decided to read some passages from the Bible again just to affirm what Wesley was saying. I read the end of Matthew where our Lord says, “I am with you always, to the end of the age”, and from Psalms 23 “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” I also read the proof text that Wesley uses for this sermon; “Ye now have sorrow: But I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” John 16:22. I, like Wesley, simply don’t see in scripture where God withdraws from his Children simply to force us to grow.

I don’t believe that my life as a Christian is going to be a sunshiny bowl of cherries all of the time. That is simply completely unrealistic. However, when I do find myself in the troughs or in a wilderness state, I don’t want to believe that this is simply Gods sovereign will. Instead, I want to examine my walk with God and see where I may need to correct my course or pray for God to help me and sustain me.

I still love C.S. Lewis and Philip Yanceys writings and have drawn great strength from both of them and will continue reading them, however with regards to the whole notion of unmerited “dark nights of the soul”, I think that Wesley is probably a whole lot closer to the truth of the matter. Wesley’s arguments seem sound and reflect the little that I have learned about the nature of God and seem a lot more scripturally sound that what others have written on this subject.

Filed Under: C.S. Lewis, John Wesley, Philip Yancey, Spiritual Dryness

K.W. Leslie on the Johannine Comma

August 26, 2009 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

I occasionally read K.W. Leslie’s blog, and today found probably the best explanation of the Johannine Comma that I have seen. You can find his explanation here. I mentioned in an earlier post how this apparent addition to the book of 1 John had given me some problems when I was first trying to come to grips with the Trinity, but that I had found ample other scriptural proof of the Trinity to get past it. Leslie emphasizes that while also explaining in a very concise manner how this comma came to be.

Filed Under: Biblical Inerrancy, Textual Criticism, The Trinity

Did Armstrongism Breed Atheists?

August 26, 2009 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

I talked with my brother by phone this weekend, and he told me that he had “got a wild hair”, and decided to look up some of the people that we had gone to “church” with as children growing up in the Worldwide Church of God. He seemed pretty smug when he told me that the three people that he found on Facebook were now, like him, all professing atheists. I’m not sure why he wanted to make sure that that I became aware of their atheism. Was it because my Christianity is making a little nervous?

That the three people that he found were now atheists did not surprise me, but it did make me think a little more about something that has concerned me since I began my search to find out who God really was and henceforth becoming a Christian.

When I began to seriously research God and Christianity, I was all over the place on the Internet and with other reading materials. Anything and everything seemed relevant. I read much about the Early Church, the Protestant Reformation, Gnosticism, Catholicism, Atheism, Cults and anything else that I could find in reference to Christianity and religion. One thing that kept popping up on my computer screen were all of the atheist websites that seemed to be all over the Internet. Many of them seemed to be relatively benign, simply putting forth their views but many more were downright militant. Then, as my research progressed, I found that more and more of the atheists that I was encountering on the internet were previously associated with the “church” that I grew up in, The Worldwide Church of God, or some other abusive religion.

Even though I debunked many of the tenants of Armstrongism (the religious belief system of the Worldwide Church of God and its many splinter groups) years ago, I still read much of the information that I find from former members. I was only mildly surprised to find a great many of them to now be atheists or agnostics, especially second generation adult children who grew up in this cult. Although growing up in the WWCOG definitely left its scars on me and I feel that those scars were a primary reason for my struggles with encountering Christ in a personal, meaningful way, I have never considered myself atheist. I would say though that I was on the verge of becoming agnostic when Christ rescued me from myself and I came to know Him for who He really is.

One website that I stumbled upon several months ago stated that roughly 40,000 of the adult children “survivors” of the WWCOG were now atheist/agnostic. I find that number hard to believe and even harder to substantiate, but I do find that a very large percentage of the Armstrong “survivors” are now either atheist/agnostic or are embracing gnosticism or some other non- or neo-Christian theism. I’ve not researched how many adult children of other cults or cult-like religions professing some form of Christianity have also had such difficulties as adults with coming to know Christ, but I would imagine that the numbers are similarly high.

I can see how this has happened. When a person learns that basically everything that they were taught about God and Jesus was a lie, they tend to have a hard time believing anything at all about God or Jesus. I left home and “The Church” in 1983 at the age of 16 and spent the next eight or so years basically just decompressing from that experience, with very little interest in God or Christianity at all. In my twenties I began to know that I needed God, but basically had no idea who or what He was. I knew that the teachings that I grew up were wrong, but it took many years of reading my Bible as well as other Christian writings to find any degree of comfort level with dispelling the entire doctrine of Armstrongism.

It’s really difficult to accept the fact that essentially everything that you were taught as a child about God and Christianity was incorrect and still retain any faith at all in the God of the Bible. One must first unlearn and disprove all that they were taught as a child and young adult and then relearn what the truth is. It is also very difficult to trust any religious teachers, pastors or theologians to supply you with the truth when the “Apostle” that you grew up listening to turns out to be a false prophet. I can see how becoming an atheist or agnostic could seem to be a much “easier, softer way” than to actually read the Bible and all of the commentaries to come to a conclusive belief in who God actually is and that Jesus actually did come two-thousand years ago to show us how to live and then to die for our sins.

Additionally, I found it hard to believe in a Jesus who loved and cared about me when all that I learned about God growing up was the fiery Wrath-of-God Jehovah who seemingly couldn’t wait to throw all of the sinners into the Lake of Fire (i.e. Hell). Closed, controlling religions such as the Worldwide Church of God and other cults tend to try and control their flock with a doctrine of the fear of Gods wrath instead of embracing their flock with the truth of Gods love. It’s all a lot of “you better do this or else…” instead of “God loves you no matter how many times you screw up.”

My brother once told me that he would rather burn in Hell than to worship an egotistic God with the temper of a three-year-old. I have seen than same sentiment mirrored on many atheist websites. In fact, although he won’t admit to it, I imagine that’s where he picked up the terminology from. Reflecting back on my youth, I don’t remember hearing the term “Grace” one time from the pulpit while I was growing up. Grace simply wasn’t part of the curriculum. In some ways, the God that I was taught about did resemble that ill-tempered three-year-old that my brother was refering to.

Another reason that I believe that so many people who grew up in cults as well as other “closed high-demand religious groups” turn to atheism/agnosticism as well as gnosticism and other “new-age” religions is the proliferation of all of the religious as well as anti-religion websites on the internet. When I first began my search for “the truth” about God and Christianity, the internet was still in its infancy and I had to do the bulk of my research the old-fashioned way by reading the Bible and using some very large and hard to read commentaries like Matthew Henry and Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown. Now, and for perhaps the last fifteen years or so, all one has to do is log on to the internet and you can find any number of people willing to commentate on the Bible. Some of them have some very good things to say, others not so good, and some are simply completely crazy. It can be very difficult to separate the “wheat from the tares” when you are looking for theology on the internet.

Now, I’m not saying that the internet isn’t a very useful tool for someone looking for Biblical truth, but one must use a very high degree of discernment. I pray regularly that God will guide me in my search for truth about him and keep me from straying into potentially dangerous ground. I have found some very enticing websites from people professing to be atheists who gave some very good arguments for their beliefs and in all honesty the whole Gnostic theology has its attractions as well, but at the end of the day, I can thankfully say that Gods grace came through for me. I can see, however, how someone coming out of a cult could be easily drawn into atheism or Gnosticism from simply spending time on some of the websites available and reading some of the publications, both fiction and non-fiction from these camps.

By Gods loving grace I came through the darkness and into the light, but it was a very long and arduous journey. I ended up going down a few blind alleys that turned into dead ends and had to turn back. Coming out of a cult or other closed, legalistic, or spiritually abusive religious group and then coming to know a loving Savior is possible; I did it. It’s not necessarily easy, though. I went through this journey largely on my own, with only God’s loving hand to guide me and a few Christians that I largely didn’t trust giving me encouragement along the way.

Those Christians were as helpful as they could be, but they still didn’t understand how difficult my “deprogramming” was because they had simply learned about Christ and came to love Him. For the most part they didn’t have to unlearn and then relearn Christ the way that I did. I hope that one day I can guide someone through the same path that I came down, but perhaps it won’t be as difficult for them since I already know the road, at least to here anyway.

Filed Under: Armstrongism, atheism

A Great Blessing

August 21, 2009 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

My wife and I were sitting on the porch this evening, discussing our Christian lives when she remarked, “You know, Randy, there were times in the past when when you were making an attempt to be a Christian, but I knew that you just weren’t getting it. Now, however, I am convinced that Jesus is really working in you and I can tell anyone I know that you are a 100% Christian. I have absolutely no doubt that you are in this for good.”

Coming from my wife of 18 years, that was a great blessing. She knows me better than anyone in the world, and has watched over the last year as I have come to know Christ. She was also there in the beginning, when I was completely confused about God and Christianity and she saw me make many false starts trying to come to faith. I know that it was surely a frustrating thing to see me make a feeble attempt to become what I thought a Christian was time after time, and then give up after a month or two, deciding that it was just not for me…that it was just too hard.

I myself was a little skeptical of my own conversion during the first few months, afraid that it was just a phase that I was going through, and somewhat worried that within a few months I would go back to being my old miserable self. But as Christ continued to transform me, I became more and more confident in His saving grace, and eventually became completely assured that He was definitely at work within in me. I no longer thought that being a Christian was “just too hard” because I had learned that what my Lord had said was true when He said, “My yoke is easy and My Burden is light.”I began to realize that the person that I was becoming bore but a passing resemblance of the old me. I finally understood what “Born Again” really meant.

During the first few months, my wife would occasionally say, “I really like the new Randy”, but I could still see the wariness in her eyes as she waited to see how this would turn out. And from time to time, when some of my old sinful nature would make a brief reappearance, she would ask, “Oh no, please tell me that the old Randy isn’t coming back.” I would assure her that the old Randy was indeed dead and buried, because I knew that Christ was now living in me, and she would say, “Okay, just checking.” I knew that it was hard for her to believe in the change that she was seeing, and patiently prayed for the day that she would realize that Jesus really was changing me from the inside out.

I’ve had some of my Christian friends and co-workers remark about the change that they’ve seen in me, but to hear my wife affirm that she was “100% convinced” of the change in me and that she could attest to that transformation to anyone she knew was the greatest blessing of all. She has been a rock for these 18 years, patient and long suffering, spending no telling how many hours in prayer to our Lord for me, and has finally had her prayers answered. Praise God!!

Filed Under: Christian Living
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