All posts by Rod Heggy

Bible, importance of

RESTORATION MOVEMENT: NO. 3

The Word Both Limits and Frees Us Spiritually

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The reason many Christians struggle with doubt and confusion is because they have failed to learn the Word, test the Word, and compare the Word to the claims of others. Every generation must experience the Word and must experience the need for Christ. Every generation must experience restoration.

Some generations have it easier than others because they learn from prior generations. But many Christians of the present generation seem intent on entombing themselves in materialism and distancing themselves from Christ, rather than trying to become Christ-like.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17, NIV)

This is true or it is not. Assuming for the moment that objective and verifiable proof supports the conclusion that the Scriptures are true and reliable, it stands to reason that Christians should be able to build their lives upon the Scriptures.  But parallel to that, and what should be no surprise to Christians, is that the Scriptures should mold our outlook and lives. In other words, when the Bible speaks, we speak, when the Bible is silent, we are silent.

One of the founding intellects of the Restoration Movement, Thomas Campbell, in 1809 is reported as asserting that:

All denominations held in common the essential core of faith (“Jesus is the Christ (the Messiah), the Son of the Living God”), and differed only by the separate traditions accumulated through eighteen centuries – “the rubbish of the ages.” [The Plea at 14.]

His son, Alexander Campbell, stated in 1812,

Everything was to be cut away from the faith that was not authorized by Christ and His apostles. No tradition could be binding without New Testament sanction. [The Plea at 14.]

Thomas Campbell stated the logical conclusion:

Where the Lord “has not enjoined” a command, no “human authority” can “impose new commands.” [The Plea at 30, FN26.]

Eugene Johnson, Esq., in 1975, stated:

It meant that Campbell had faith in Christians to act democratically in the spirit of Christ on matters where no command was given, yet where a duty was indicated. [The Plea at 30.]

In other words, the Scriptures should moderate us as much as they encourage us and justify us. The Scriptures indict us more than they indict those who do not believe, while freeing us as well. Restoration Movement Christians who miss the simple truth that we speak only when the Bible speaks and not otherwise as to matters spiritual have lost our second greatest treasure.

Missions: Latin America

Missions: The Next Generation

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Bill & Karleen Crandall serve in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Their most recent newsletter is here. Bill & Karleen served in the ministry at Yukon, Okla., many years ago, and much of their support is provided by Christian churches in Oklahoma. Their daughter Jennifer and her husband serve in Krasnodar, in Russia. Jennifer is hospitalized in Krasnodar awaiting the birth of her second child. The Crandalls are headed there.

This is an amazing family. They were able to turn their backs on U.S. materialism and security, which the rest of us take for granted and treat as our rights, rather than our privileges.

If you are tired of supporting mega-churches and mega-charities that never seem to do more than add to their own wealth, here is the alternative: real missionaries and real people living adventures the rest of us only dare read about.

Movies

MOVIE REVIEW

The Zeitgeist Claim

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I was invited by an old friend to review a part of the Zeitgeist movie and answer some questions about it. I ended up watching the whole thing, largely because I kept waiting for it to all make sense, for all the dots to be connected, and for the big answers or big solutions to be announced.

I was disappointed.

The idea of this particular format of presentation is not only not new, it even existed pre-internet. When I was in high school in the 1970s, a televised history class one day presented a slide show in time and in beat to Iron Butterfly’s unforgettable In-A-Gadda–Da-Vida (“In the Garden of Eden,” some say), which by 1972 was an oldie. The entire Oklahoma City public school system saw this televised presentation.

Likewise, the conceptual framework of the Zeitgeist movie is not a revelation but a rehash of most of the more interesting conspiracy theories. The idea that people should not lend unthinking acquiescence to what they are told by government or the media is certainly worthy. But, a bunch of alternative history or alternative reality theories that are no more substantiated, and usually less so, is not likely to create an environment of critical thinking.

Indeed, there is a large scale abandonment of critical thinking training proceeding at breakneck speed in America. That is why debate squads are now rare in high schools and colleges, but numerous members (fifty at one local high school has been recently reported) of every faculty have special sports coaching contracts. Team sports teach many good things, but critical thinking is not one of them.

The Zeitgeist movie begins with the assertion that religion is a fraud and that if the intelligent reviewer will but do the indepth research the authors of Zeitgeist have done, they will reach the same contrarian result. Of course, in the movie itself, the poor narration and even grammatical errors notwithstanding, only conclusions are presented. No substantiating documents or evidence are presented. Otherwise, the movie’s sweep through thousands of years of history could not be accomplished in two hours.

The Zeitgeist authors are clearly trying to repackage the “international Jewish bankers control the world” conspiracy theory, without using the word “Jewish,” and graft it onto the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, World War I and World War II, federal income taxation and national banking systems as progenitors of economic slavery. Oh, and if you research any of these issues and reach a different conclusion, the authors of the movie are concerned that you may have reviewed “biased sources” or “very general” sources.

Oh, lest I forget, my friend asked me to consider the Zeitgeist claim at the beginning of the film that there have been many “God the son” stories in the religions of antiquity such that the claims about Jesus are simply borrowed from those earlier religious claims. This is not a new argument. It has been made many times. The first time I saw it was in Gibbon’s The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, which was published in the 1700s (Gibbon died in 1794). Gibbon’s theory, as I recall it, was that because the Gospels seemed to track an earlier religious claim, possibly Mithraism, the Gospels were accepted by Roman soldiers, eventually leading to the acceptance of Christianity as the state religion of Rome. However, as I recall, Mithraism was not much of a competitor for Christianity because Mithraism only allowed males into the sect, i.e., it was not family friendly, and was only one of many “pagan” beliefs that migrated to Rome during that era. The parallels in the stories of Mithra and Jesus that scholars could agree upon were not terribly compelling or even numerous, but the Zeitgeist movie claims otherwise.

Books

BOOK REVIEW

Christian Novels and Weak Tea

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Based upon the recommendation I saw in World Magazine, I obtained and read a novel by Randy Singer entitled False Witness. For a summer novel, it was not a burden to read but I could not give it high marks. It is a paperback you can buy about anywhere. I got mine online.

The novel was an attempt to explore the intrigue of bounty hunters, corrupt lawyers, mobsters, and incredibly valuable technology that falling into the wrong hands, might destroy our way of life. It even included the naïveté of law school students. It was written in a way to maximize its readability, but that always seems to import a certain amount of shallowness. With a governor on violence, there was also a concomitant impediment to self-examination by the characters. Because they did not go too far, they had little to regret, and without regret, there is no twisting of the soul with which to commiserate or self-examine.

The other thing that made it less noteworthy was that the author, to be a “good Christian author,” minimized sexuality and violence while writing about characters that would not have been less violent than they desired, much less than to meet criminal objectives of the highest magnitude. Likewise, Christian characters were noble in the face of sure death and none suffered from cowardice or avarice. In other words, to protect our sensibilities, the author failed to take us where we are afraid to go, failed to take us where we cannot go, and failed to make us confront our own failings, lusts, and weaknesses. In other words, what was the point of the cost, time or effort spent writing it or reading it?

If you like weak tea, well-done meat, and abhor frantic dancing, then you can safely coast through this novel. But if you want a novel that challenges your emotions, challenges your assumptions, and has something lasting to say, this is not it.