Clough Acts Lesson 39

Hermeneutics of Early Church – Acts 15:18-35

 

We will read the portion of Scripture which we will then exegete: Acts 15:15-35 “And to this agree the words of the prophets, as it is written; [16] After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down. [17] That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom My name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.  [18] Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world. [19] Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God: [20] But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood. [21] For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day.

 

[22] Then pleased it the apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas; namely, Judas surnamed Barsabbas, and Silas, chief men among the brethren:  [23] And they wrote letters by them after this manner; The apostles and elders and brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia: [24] Forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, saying, Ye must be circumcised, and keep the law: to whom we gave no such commandment: [25] It seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, [26] Men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. [27] We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth.

 

[28] For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; [29] That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well. [30] So when they were dismissed, they came to Antioch: and when they had gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle: [31] Which when they had read, they rejoiced for the consolation. [32] And Judas and Silas, being prophets also themselves, exhorted the brethren with many words, and confirmed them. [33] And after they had tarried there a space, they were let go in peace from the brethren unto the apostles. [34] Notwithstanding it pleased Silas to abide there still. [35] Paul also and Barnabas continued in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord, with many others also.”

 

Acts 15 is one of the great crucial chapters in the book of Acts.  It’s the first time that the Church really begins to officially see that it exists.  We know that the book of Acts is a book of transition.  This is why it’s so often you encounter fallacious applications of the text of Acts, people diving into the book to attain a few verses here and there, and then to promiscuously use these verses for their own purposes. Acts is a book of transition; it begins with emphasis upon the kingdom, exactly the same kind of emphasis as the Old Testament, exactly the same kind of emphasis as the four Gospels.  But before Acts finishes it sounds and reads like the epistles of the New Testament, the perfect bridge from the state of dealing with Israel as Israel to dealing with the Church as the Church.  It’s not that the Church gradually formed, it is something that sort of exists as a half and half during the book of Acts; it’s rather that the book of Acts unveils the Church.  The Church formed on the day of Pentecost but it was kept secret and is not revealed.  Paul calls the Church a secret in Ephesians 3, a secret not revealed in the Old Testament but one which was gradually unveiled as time went on. 

 

Acts 15 also gives us an inner account of one of the great ecumenical councils of the Church, the first one, the Council of Jerusalem, and it’s a model of Christian problem solving in a group.  It’s very interesting that Acts 15 provides one of the first models we have of congregational govern­ment.  That ought to be important for you because as Americans our pattern of government is congregational.  Did you ever wonder where the founding fathers of this country obtained their congregational ideas?  They obtained them from the congregational church and the congregational churches of New England for many of the men who wrote the Constitution, who were active in the early government, were men who had been, all their lives, active in the politics, so to speak, in their own churches.  This is one reason why as a country we were so blessed with such a cluster of geniuses when we began our history, because those men had exercised their skills within their church organizations prior to coming into government office. And thus it is that the congregational system of the Bible has become nationally the United States system of government.  And yet today our system of government is breaking down and becoming inefficient because, not anything to do with the system, but it’s basically due to the fact that our people have lost the spiritual foundation that once made congregational government function right.

 

We’ve also seen several other things in this group; as we’ve said every group has its elders, every group has a set, a very small set of leaders.  Most people are not leaders.  This is the agony of running any group, whether it’s a local church, whether it’s a committee or something else, very few people are leaders.  That is, very few people are willing to see that there’s something wrong and move into the situation and command resources to solve that problem.  That’s leadership and very few people have leadership.  So in many groups there will only be a few who are the leaders.  Now that’s beside the point, what the on paper, theoretical organization, of a group is.  You can write all of the constitutions you want to, you can have all the group by-laws you want to but basically you still have only a small group of people leading.  Now that’s not wrong; what is wrong is when that small group of people who leads lead by humanist principles.  That’s what’s wrong.  And there are only two sets of principles available to man; those principles that are revealed by God in His Word and those principles that are spawned by finite man thinking up the principles himself—man or God, those are the two choices. And in this section we see a group with a problem referring it in its leaders to the [can’t understand word] of God. 

 

We saw six principles so far in this group problem solving situation.  In verse 2 we saw the first principle, that they solved their problems decently and in order; they didn’t have a shouting match, they had a group discussion. They used the legitimate process of solution to the problem. 

 

The second principle we’ve seen is that their standards were not statistical, they did not commission Rabbi Gallop for a statistical survey to find out what people believe and therefore the 51% being always right dictate what the standards are.  There was none of that.  Here, as in verse 2 they went down to talk to the apostles and they began to beat out their solution on the basis of Scripture and apostolic criteria, not this 51% criteria society; it wasn’t a sociological solution, it was a Word, doctrinal solution. 

 

A third thing that they looked for and that’s found in verse 3 was a consensus among Bible-believing Christians.  A consensus; you say well, isn’t that statistical? No because what we have is God’s inerrant standard up here but no Christian including pastor-teachers are infallible and therefore there must always be the critique; there must always be Christians, [who say] let’s see, have we correctly inferred from that standard down to our present situation, is our link up here with the infallible Scripture authority sound?   And the consensus which is the basis of congregational government, operates on the assumption that the Holy Spirit will lead the group into a sound deduction based on Scripture.

 

The fourth principle we said in verse 7 was that all viewpoints were aired; that is, they were open, even to the most vicious of their opponents.  This is an exercise, which if some of you have not had you ought have.  There’s nothing to fear from your most vicious opponents, in fact, I often benefit from this; I enjoy a person who is strongly and antagonistically against my position because it’s usually a far more honest person than a person who tries to pretend they are with me and really aren’t; I like to speak to someone who is honest and who therefore says I don’t buy your position because of this, this, and this, and that’s good because it gets rid of the fat off  your system and it shows you where you stand.  Oftentimes when I study for a book study, as an example of this, I’ll often refer to scholars of the conservative camp for various theological purposes but then I’ll always, always, go out of my way to find some publication written on that book by the most anti-Biblical critic I can possibly find; I search high and low for a scholarly attack upon the book and so it is, the book of Acts here, that was one of these scholarly attacks that gave me a very interesting idea about Acts 2. 

 

In Acts 2 you remember there was Peter getting up before the Church on the day of Pentecost and he came out with this big long service.  Ah, said the critics, one of the critics said you see, that shows you that Luke is just making it all up; he says it’s absurd to think that here in the middle of a chaotic group some apostle gets up, addresses the group with this set form of address, with all the intricate theological reasoning, he couldn’t have dreamed that up on the scene, it’s nonsense, and so Luke put that in the mouth of Peter, Peter really didn’t say that, said the critic.  Now that got me to thinking, we’ve got to come up with some explanation if we’re intellectually honest, we’ve got to respond to that, that’s a good observation, Peter did have a premeditated system to his address.  And so it began to raise the question in my mind, where did it get it from?  He didn’t get it on the spur of the moment, I agree with the liberal critic there, but I disagreed that Luke is putting it in Peter’s mouth. 

 

So the only other conclusion is Peter must have had all that ready to go on the day of Pentecost.  And where do he go? A little search discovered, Luke 24, when the Lord Jesus Christ began to teach the disciples how to exegete the Old Testament.  And we begin to get a set series of text verse; everywhere Peter gets up, everywhere Paul gets up, everywhere James get up they’re using the set of Old Testament in exactly the same way.  In fact, most of them are using exactly the same quotes.  There is a constancy of approach to the Old Testament among the early Christians.  And we have to say where’d they get it from?  Luke isn’t inventing it, the Lord Jesus Christ taught them that. 

 

So far from being, then, a liability, that hostile critic and his acute observation gave cause for the discovery of a great truth. So don’t be afraid of opposing viewpoints; opposing viewpoints only sharpen your case and that’s what we need.  One of the most blessings that you can have on the university campus is to have some intelligent non-Christian, the trouble is, most of the non-Christian are stupid, and do not understand the Christian position so their criticisms are stupid and you tend to get very lazy in that kind of environment because you pick up these idiot criticisms and you know they’re wrong, a first grade Christian would know they’re wrong, and so you kind of get slack and you never come up against a real incisive critic.  If some of you want to read one, one example of a nice vicious anti-Christian, read the writings of the tutor of Karl Marx, a man by the name of Feuerbach who was one of the great atheists of the 19th century.  Read his writings and you’ll see what a real atheist looked like, a real vicious one that’s out to murder Christianity, out to tear it apart.  And that will be a good experience because having discovered that, anybody you meet on the street isn’t going to be a [can’t understand word].  So if you expose yourself to the best of the opposition you’ll equip yourself for any other person of the opposition.

 

In Acts 15 we have the quotation, in verse 16-17 of Amos 9 and we said that there’s a big debate over this quotation.  The debate is because of verse 15.  In verse 15 James, the chairman of the meeting, gets up at the end and says that as a result of our discussion today we’ve come to conclude that this business of having Gentiles saved and Gentiles freely admitted into the Church is Scriptural, and to cite that it’s Scriptural he quotes Amos 9. Ah, say the amillennialists, the anti-dispensationalists, the people who do not accept the fact that there are dispensations, they say see, verses 16-17 aren’t talking about Christ in the book of Amos, they’re talking about the nation Israel, Amos is a prophet in the Old Testament and he’s prophesying back around 900 or 800 BC, he’s prophesying that the northern kingdom is going out in 721 BC, and because that kingdom is going out and because it’s going to be destroyed it’s going to have a problem of suffering and then it’s going to go into exile. After it’s in exile God will bring and restore the nation back, “I will raise up the tabernacle of David.”  And both the northern and southern kingdom was actually involved in the prophecy.  The whole nation goes in exile and it’s brought back.

 

Now that’s the context of the prophecy.  You can read Amos from now until the rapture and if you didn’t know the New Testament you would swear it has nothing to do with the Messiah.  And if you interpret it literally, and we studied last time the problem of hermeneutics, which we better look at a moment; this word, “hermeneutics,” is the word from the Greek, Hermes, or Mercury was the interpreter of the gods in the sense he brought the messages of the gods and we get the word “hermeneutic” which is a principle of interpretation of literature, not just the Bible, any literature.  You say I don’t bother with hermeneutics, that’s too deep for me.  Well, it isn’t because you, in fact, are already using hermeneutics.  The question isn’t whether you’re using it, the question is whether you have good ones or bad ones, hermeneutics is how you listen and how you receive verbal statements, whether you interpret them allegorically or whether you interpret them literally.  Now there’s such a thing as allegory, of course.  But what we’re talking about is the major basic way you handle language.  Do you accept the fact that a word has a meaning, a specific meaning and you can’t ram, cram and jam a foreign meaning onto the word that the author intended that the author intended that word to have.  Then you have a literal, normal hermeneutic. 

 

And so it is, that dispensationalists have insisted on the literal or normal hermeneutic.  That doesn’t mean that dispensationalists are against allegory in places or against illustrations, metaphors, metonymy, that’s not the point.   The point is their basic hermeneutic is literal so it comes down to looking at the word “Israel” and the word “Church.”  Now these are two different words; in the Hebrew Yisrael, and then in the Greek ekklesia, the word for church.  Now here’s the point.  Do these words have two different meanings or don’t they?  Can they mean the same thing or not.  Granted, the word ekklesia in its non-technical sense, an assembly or group of people could possibly refer to Israel, but what we’re talking about is when ekklesia or the word “church” is used in a technical sense, does it in fact refer to the same thing as Israel?  The dispensational­ists position is no it doesn’t.  This is a basic thing to know about Bible reading.  If we take the set of all believers in the Old Testament, let every Old Testament believer be included in this circle of points, each point being an Old Testament believer.  How would you describe the Old Testament, not New Testament, Old Testament believers.  You can divide them in half; some of them are Gentiles and some are Jews.  That’s easy.  But the body of Jews is collectively known as “Israel.”  But all Jews aren’t believers, so therefore you have some points in the circle that represent believers but they also are a part of the set of all members of Israel.  But it’s possible to have members of the nation Israel who are not believers, unregenerate.  Now you can also have people outside of the nation Israel who are believers but they’re not part of Israel. 

 

So then, what does the word “Israel” mean?  It means the physical seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and it can include the unsaved part of the seed and the saved part of the seed.  But here’s the point; the word “Israel” in the Old Testament never includes non-Jews—Never!  Even if they’re believers they are still not part of Israel.  Okay, there’s the technical use of the word Israel in the Old Testament.  Now when we pop into the New Testament, and we draw the same circle representing every single saved person, now the word “church” refers to that set; the word “church” is used without any racial clarification whatsoever, it uses only one criteria, you belong to the church if you have personally trusted in Christ, not whether you’re a member of denomination A, denomination B, whether you don’t go to church, whether you do go to church, whether you’ve been baptized, not baptized, the issue is whether you’ve personally accepted Christ.  If you have, you’re in that set, you’re included in the word “church.” Now that’s how the word “church” is used in the New Testament. 

 

I don’t care how you massage this there’s no way the word “Israel” can be identical to the word “church.”  Those are two distinctly different words used for two distinctly different entities.  The word “Israel” is used for the physical Israel; sometimes including born again people, sometimes not, but definitely not including Gentile born again people.  Then we come into the New Testa­ment and the word “church” is used only for born again people, no longer talking about Israel, unsaved Israel, no longer talking about unsaved Gentiles.  So you’ve got this hermeneutic and the dispensationalist is simply the man who goes to Scripture and insists that these words cannot be confused.  They mean two different separate bodies.

 

All right, what does verses 16-17 have to do with all this?  Because in verses 16-17 Amos is talking about the destiny of the nation Israel and he’s not talking about Gentiles.  He’s talking about, in verse 16, “I will return,” that’s God speaking, “and I will build the tabernacle of David,” that’s the dynasty of David, that is the royal house of the nation Israel, “which has fallen down,” that is, that they’ve gone into exile, “and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up.”  So he’s talking about something that’s happening to Israel; he doesn’t mention the Church here; he mentions Israel.  But then he goes on to add, [17] “That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all Gentiles, upon whom My name is called,” that is, Israel will then reach out and take the Word of God to the Gentiles. 

Well, it seems that in verse 15 James is applying this to Christ, “After this I will return, and I will build again the tabernacle of David,” Jesus is the son of David, and Jesus died and rose again and now He’s being rebuilt, so to speak, He’s resurrected and now the Word of God on the first missionary journey of Paul is going to all the nations.  So isn’t James in verses 16-17 using this verse not for Israel but for the Church? 

 

And so we encounter the problem of how did the early Christians use the Old Testament?  Now the simplest way of seeing what’s going on here and the way to relate it in one easy picture to dozens…dozens of citations out of the Old Testament is to draw a principle of correspondence between the nation Israel and the person of Jesus Christ.  Let’s look at the correspondence.  The nation Israel was called out of the Gentiles.  It was called out of the Gentiles ultimately to save the Gentiles.  That’s the Abrahamic Covenant, isn’t it?  Israel wasn’t called to just be Israel, it wasn’t called to be a theological hot house, it was called to cultivate the Word of God, bring it into human civilization and then broadcast the Word of God out among the nations.  Israel had a missionary duty to perform in world history.  Jesus Christ was born under the times of the Gentiles and He too is going to take the Word of God out to the nations.  Israel came and was called out of Egypt; Jesus Christ was called out of Egypt.

 

Turn to Matthew 2:15 and we’ll see how the author of Matthew picks the same theme up and shows the principle of correspondence.  Speaking of the slaughter of the babies, Herod, this is Herod the Great, one of the cruelest men of history, one who Caesar Augustus said I’d rather be Herod’s hus, the word for pig, than his huios, I’d rather be Herod’s hus than his huios, and it means he’d rather be a pig on the farm of Herod than be one of his sons because Herod, when he got angry at his wife he just killed her, some men would like to do that but Herod actually did it.  And then if you were his son and he got angry at his son, well, he just wiped them out, that’s how he solved his family problem.  He had a problem with the Messiah so no problem, he just went down there and killed all the little babies two years and under, he was used to doing it to his own children so he couldn’t see why people would be upset if he did it to theirs.  So Jesus was removed from the situation and they stayed in Egypt.

 

So in Matthew 2:15 we read, “And was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called My son.”  Now the way you read it in verse 15 it looks for all the world like there’s a prophecy.  But if you went back to study the Old Testament text it doesn’t look like a prophecy at all; it’s just describing the history, not of Christ but of Israel.  “Out of Egypt have I,” Jehovah God, “called My son,” i.e. My nation Israel.  That’s the way it looks in the Old Testament, it does not look like it’s a prophecy.  Yet Matthew insists when he cites it here, “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of” by the prophet.  So Matthew handles a description of the state of Israel as though the Messiah must correspond in His personal life to the national picture. 

 

Let’s look at some further correspondences.  Israel, after the Exodus, wandered around for forty years in the wilderness.  Jesus Christ, after He was called to the ministry went into the wilderness for forty days.   Jesus Christ, while in the wilderness, met the temptation of Satan by citing sections of Deuteronomy and the sections he cited were sections written precisely during the period of the wilderness wanderings of the nation Israel.  During the time of the nation Israel that nation suffered from unbelief.  That’s why Isaiah 6 said, Isaiah, I’m going to send you to a people who have eyes and they don’t see, ears and they don’t hear, a heart and they don’t understand.  So I want you to go and I want you to preach the Word of God so they’ll be even more confused.  In other words, there was a tremendous deep rooted unbelief and the prophet was commissioned to deal with this. 

 

Now in the Lord Jesus Christ’s ministry it is precisely the same correspondence if you turn to Matthew 13:14 you’ll see that that exact passage of Isaiah is cited to refer to the unbelief in the life of Christ.  Just as Israel had a problem with unbelief at one stage in her existence so Christ had a problem with unbelief in one stage of His existence, not His own but in the people that heard Him.  So in Matthew 13:14 notice how the passage is introduced.  Keep in mind that this is a quote from Isaiah 6, that “In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which says, ‘By hearing, ye shall hear… etc. etc. etc.  Now if we went back to study Isaiah 6, again for all the world that does not look like a prophecy.  That looks like a simple description of the state of the nation, yet when Matthew goes back and he reaches back and he grabs Isaiah 6, he takes it over here and applies it to the life of Christ he says in fact, this is not just an innocent description of the state of Israel; this in addition is a prophecy of the shape of the life of the Messiah.

 

We can go on: Israel went into exile and was defeated.  Jesus Christ died and was buried.  Then the prophecies of Israel said they would be restored and there would be a worldwide impact with the Word of God coming out of Israel. And so Jesus Christ is resurrected and after Jesus Christ is resurrected there is a worldwide impact from the Word of God. 

 

Now let’s watch what is wrong with those people who come to Acts 15 and insist, on the basis of verses 15-16 that dispensationalism is wrong, that you need not take the Bible literally because this is a spiritualized interpretation.  They say this shows very clearly that Amos is to be taken with a grain of salt, that is, he’s to be reinterpreted with our advanced knowledge.  Now just a minute… when we dealt with Matthew 2, Matthew 2 wasn’t spiritualizing Israel, he believed literal Israel existed, did he not.  He was citing a literal incident in the history of Israel.  That was the basis for Christ’s experience coming out of Egypt.  Same thing here.  And so when we deal with this section, Amos looks at the last two features of the history of the nation Israel and all James does through the principle of correspondence is say look, Messiah, in His life has to correspond to the profile of the nation Israel.  So you’ve got two profiles and they’re both congruent, you have the profile, the national existence of Israel and the profile, the historic existence of Messiah.

 

And therefore verse 15 can be explained very easily.  All James is saying is look, what have we witnessed guys?  We’ve seen the Messiah die, we’ve seen Him rise from the dead, and what’s the next step that we would expect if we’re to make this principle a correspondence? We would expect that after Messiah is raised from the dead that the Word of God would go forth to the nation, just as we expect when the nation Israel comes back from captivity that she will have a worldwide impact.  So it’s more of an argument from correspondence and precedence.  James is simply saying we’ve got ample theological precedent out of the Old Testament; what you’re observing on Paul’s first missionary journey is not something at odds with God’s plan at all; it fits in with the basic spiritual tenor of his whole plan of salvation in the Old Testament. 

 

And we said last time, at the end of verse 16 there’s something left out in the Acts citation.  If you read this direct from the Old Testament you would read at the end of verse 16, “I will build again the ruins thereof, I will set up as in the days of old.”  And James deliberately omits that section, showing you that he himself is well aware that Messiah at this point in history does not literally fulfill Amos’ prophecy.  Amos’ prophecy is being used only under the principle of correspon­dence, showing that the Messiah in His life mirrors the nation’s life.  [17, “That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom My name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.”]

 

Acts 15:18, he then adds to this Old Testament citation.  Verse 18 is a citation, not from Amos 9, but from Isaiah 45, “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” Why this?  Why this tacked on?  For the reason that Amos is simply citing precedence.  He’s saying look, what we have observed here, what we have observed here, what we have observed here, is part and parcel of God’s overall program and so therefore there’s continuity in the plan of God.  That’s his point, continuity in the plan of God.

 

Now verse 19 begins his sentence [KJ judgment]; a word of explanation, my sentence doesn’t mean James made this thing up, and then rams and crams it down the throat of the early church.  James is acting as the chairman of this council meeting.  And acting as the chairman of the council meeting, James summarizes the result of the discussion.  And as he summarizes the result of the discussion he calls it “my sentence,” but that’s not… the sentence didn’t originate with him.  “Wherefore my sentence [judgment] is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God.” 

 

Now the Church doesn’t really know it at this time, from what we can gather, but they have just made an astounding statement.  In order to solve this early theological problem there had to be a two-way compromise; concessions were being made.  And this concession in verse 19 is a concession that the Jewish side makes toward the Gentiles.  The concession is titanic in its theological implications. At this point you just wonder whether they really knew what was happening.  But the concession, when you stop and look at it, is radical. What he’s just said is that we will not impose the Mosaic Law upon believers.  Now this is a major concession… a major concession.  “The Torah,” you might hear the early believers saying to themselves, “the Torah doesn’t apply to saved people?”  Hasn’t the Word of God been fractured, you mean you’re not going to impose the 613 do’s and don’ts of the first five books of the Scripture upon new believers?  Is that what you’re saying James?  Precisely says James, I refuse to “trouble them not,” so it looks on the surface to be a tiny little concession but this concession will shape the entire frame of the New Testament in years to come.  But at this point the Church officially decides that new Christians are not under the Law, a theme which Paul then brings out in Galatians, Romans and a few other places. 

 

Now to have proper concessions, a concession is a two-way street, so in Acts 15:20 we have the Gentiles asked to make concessions to the Jews.  Keep in mind that this is all during the period of transition, and this is where they first became aware of something.  Verse 19 the concession flows, the Jews are making a concession to the Gentiles. The concession is over the Torah; the concession is that here you have a set of believers to whom the Word of God, the Mosaic Law, that section of the Word of God, does not apply.  They didn’t know it when they did this, but this is later developed in the epistle to the Ephesians; here we have clearly stated in Scripture by way of implication, that a new entity has come into existence… a new entity in the plan of God.  It hasn’t got a name yet but it’s here; a strange new entity made up of people who have accepted Christ as Savior, yet to whom the Torah no longer applies.  Later this will be amplified.

 

But in Acts 15:20 we have the Gentile making a concession back to the Jews.  What is the nature of this concession?  Does this concession show us principles that we can still apply in our own life.  Indeed it does.  The concessions made the other way involve one of two things.  And over the years there have been great, great debates fought over the interpretation of verse 20.  There’s a whole group of people that believe that what verse 20 is saying is moral instruction. In other words Gentiles, this is something immoral, this is something immoral, this is something immoral.  These people would say, if you look at verse 20 carefully you see the word “fornication,” you see the word “blood” which could be murder, and you see the “pollutions of idols” which is idolatry.   [20, “But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.”]  And in classic Jewish thought the three cardinal sins of paganism were idolatry, fornication and murder.  In fact, those three words are used at the end of the book of Revelation to say that in the new heavens and the new earth and the new Jerusalem there will be no more idolaters, fornicators, and murderers because that is a triumvirate set of nouns that just describe paganism from the Jewish perspective. So they say see, those words occur in verse 20 so therefore verse 20 must refer to pagan immorality, and he’s saying these are basic Christian ethics. 

 

Where this breaks down is if you compare verse 20 with verse 29 which repeats the set of concessions in writing, because verse 29 is the letter form of the oral pronouncement of verse 20, you then very clearly see it’s talking about meat offered to idols, “and from things strangled” and so on, it’s talking about something to eat; it’s talking about dietary provisions.  What has morality got to do with diet?  There seems to be a little difference here.  Moreover, when you come back to Acts 15:21 and you see verse 21 begin with the word “For,” or “Because” it doesn’t make too much to interpret verse 20 as moral ethics.  In other words he’s saying don’t murder someone because you might offend the Jews.  Now that sounds incongruous, you don’t murder someone because God’s Word tells you you don’t, it’s an absolute, it’s not contingent on who might be watching you.  So that kind of interpretation breaks down and that’s why we don’t buy it. 

 

That’s why we say verse 20 doesn’t refer to ethical teachings at all; verse 20 refers to dietary concessions, that Gentiles temporarily make to the Jewish community over the problem that set the whole thing off in verse 1.  In verse 1 the Judaizers came down to cause an argument in the church at Antioch. When we went through verse 1 I said where concretely in every day experience did this argument break out?  Don’t think theologically in abstraction, there wasn’t some big long theological debate, it was a very practical debate.  Here was the problem. You have a church meeting and one of the centers, one of the central church meetings was communion. What happened at communion?  You had Jewish Christians come to communion, you had Gentile Christians come to communion.  What happened at communion besides serving the elements?  They ate together. Now what would happen, do you suppose, with a severely orthodox person comes in with their lunch pail and they open it up and they’ve got kosher food in their lunch bucket, and they sit right next to a Gentile and he’s got ham, the whole nine yards; that doesn’t promote Christian fellowship.  In other words, it was destructive of the communion service. 

So the Church had to deal with the problem because they couldn’t run their communion service, they couldn’t have an 8:00 o’clock communion service [with Gentiles] and an 11:00 o’clock communion service with Jews.  They couldn’t divide it up that way because communion by definition was to show the unity of the body.  So how could you get the unity of the body if you constantly were stumbling over these dietary problems.  So this is why verse 20 emphasizes dietary concessions, to get on with the show and let’s get going with the communion services and later on we can worry about the fine points of this thing.  So, the four concessions that are made involve dietary provisions or other associated ritual things that were upsetting the unity of the group.  The first one is easy to see. 

 

The first one is “pollutions from idols,” and comparing that with verse 29, it’s amplified in verse 29 and it’s talking about eating food that had been offered to idols, the same old problem that cropped up in Corinth later in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10.  The problem was, the guys that had the best meat market were the pagan priests.  They had great meat markets, they had great flocks of animals in the ancient world, particularly in the area where Paul’s first missionary journey occurred, and so when you wanted to go down to buy a steak where did you go?  You went to the pagan place.  Now as a Christian, born again, you know the Word of God, you don’t care whether the priest is doing their hocus pocus over the meat, who cares, I just want to eat the meat, I don’t take all this pagan garbage.  So I go down and I buy the meat and come home and eat it, no problem.  But if I brought the meat and I had my sandwich and I came to communion service and I undo my sandwich and there’s Mr. Orthodox Brethren right next to me and he sees this thing, and for years he was brought up to believe anybody that walks in that pagan place over there is associated with demons, he’s associated with all the pagan worship, yeeeh, I’m not going to sit with you.  So this was the problem and they say look, if it’s going to cause that much of a bind at communion, forget, don’t bother with it; eliminate it, in other words. 

 

Paul later, in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10 amplifies it’s not that it’s necessarily bad, it’s just that while you’ve got weaker brethren around with a weak conscience you’ve got to make concessions.  This is historically why in the communion service in many fundamental churches we have grape juice instead of wine.  I think it’s [can’t understand phrase] myself, I’d much rather have wine at the communion service because that’s exactly the way the Scripture says; one-third wine, two-thirds water probably what James always had done in the communion service, and how grape juice gets there I really don’t know, though I know the principle of it, and that is that in America and various parts of the world there has been such a problem with alcohol, people are so stupid about alcohol that they get soused and so therefore they don’t know how to handle themselves; some people smell a cork and flip and others have a problem, they can’t stop drinking once they’ve had a drop.  And so because it causes such a bind and a mess that evangelicals have gone over to grape juice.  But let’s always understand it’s a concession toward weak people.  People who object to alcohol at a communion service basically are weak and it’s a concession of weakness.  And a church ought always to strive to get back to a Biblical norm of real wine and not messing around with grape juice or Kool-aid or whatever is used now in communion services.  But that is an example of a modern day concession what would kind of may be click with you as the same kind of concession being made here. 

 

The second word: the second concession was fornication.  Now you say well isn’t that a clear-cut moral thing?  Doesn’t that invalidate your remarks earlier?  Don’t you say that this is all ritual; what’s fornication got to do with ritual?  Because the word porneia used here for fornication was used precisely for certain ritual provisions of Leviticus 18:6; if you turn there we’ll look at it.  This is not talking about what we normally think of as fornication.   This is talking about forbidden marriages.  The problem wasn’t somebody having sex without marital vows.  That’s wasn’t the problem.  In Leviticus 18 they had marital vows but the vows themselves were wrong.  God has laws that control the second divine institution and in particular the degrees of closeness of marriage.  Now this was not so from the beginning.  In the beginning… every once in a while someone will walk up with this condescending tut-tut about the Bible and they think they’ll pull one out of their little bag of tricks that will forever do you in and inevitably, 8 cases out of 10 it will be: and where did Cain get his wife?  It’s very simple, he married his sister.  And the reason that sounds so stupid is because today…what brother would want to marry his sister any way, but today the problem is the we have the fall working in the genetic tissue and therefore, because that has worked we have a problem of close intermarriages causing tremendous price and tremendous deterioration genetically in families.  Those of you who know European history know the royal families and how in European history many of these royal families have weird mongoloids and hemophiliacs and  the whole bit because they intermarried so often.  And so we have this side of the fall prohibitions, medically based, upon close intermarriage, but there is no inherent moral thing wrong with it.  It’s not a violation of God’s transcendent moral law; it’s just a concession to the fall.  And Cain married his sister.  Abel married his sister. And for years after the creation and the first couple you obviously had sibling marriages.  That was how the race got started; be thankful it did that way, we wouldn’t be here if it didn’t happen.  So sibling marriage then was all right.  But by the time of Moses God began to bound this thing and cut it off. 

 

So in Leviticus 18:6, “None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD.”  The word “uncover their nakedness” is a euphemism for sex in marriage.  This is not talking about illegitimate, this is talking about forbidden marriages.  Now the problem is that we know one reason behind Leviticus 18, which I’ve already mentioned, the medical reason. We know there are medical reasons for not having intermarriage with close family relations.  Unfortunately, however, the medical reason doesn’t fully explain this list; as we’ll see in a moment, there are forbidden marriages in here that are not between blood kinsman and we don’t know why those are prohibited but they are.  So there’s at least a medical reason, maybe there are more reasons; maybe some day in the future we’ll understand why the Mosaic Law has these things. 

 

As I’ve said before, don’t sell the Mosaic Law short; people used to laugh at these Mosaic provisions about digging a latrine outside the camp, that is until the Black Plague wiped out half of our ancestors in Europe. Then they weren’t laughing any longer about digging latrines outside the camp.  That was a soundly based provision.  And then the problem of Moses taking, ordering the people, when you have a wound and you have it seeping, whether it’s the serum, whether it’s the blood or some other thing, whenever you have stained clothing from a wound you take your clothing out and you leave it in the sun.  And people for thousands of years couldn’t figure out what… you know, what kind of a stupid thing that is, put the clothing out in the sun.  And of course now we know the germ theory.  And we know that in fact what’s happening is ultraviolet sterilization is occurring.  Now granted in the Mosaic Law it [doesn’t] say “thou shalt not ultravioletly sterilize thy clothing.” That word is not there because God is not filling in the latest scientific material; He’s just telling us the instructions and then later as man develops his repertoire of wisdom, then he begins to see, oh, I see why this is here; oh, I see why this is here.  So when we come to a list like Leviticus 18 just because a medical explanation currently doesn’t explain this, there may in the future be additional data that does, maybe some psychological thing or something.

 

Anyway, let’s look at the list.  Leviticus 18:6 is the principle: no marriage among close kinsman.  [7] “The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother, thou shalt not uncover; she is thy mother, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.  [8] The nakedness of thy father’s wife shalt thou not uncover; it is thy father’s nakedness.  [9] The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover.  [10] The nakedness of thy son’s daughter, or of thy daughter’s daughter, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover: for theirs is thine own nakedness.  [11] The nakedness of thy father’s wife’s daughter, begotten of thy father, she is thy sister; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.”  And so on, it goes down until you get down to verse 15, “Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter-in-law: she is thy son’s wife; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.”  Now obviously that’s not a blood relative, at that point the medical thing seems to break down though it may not eventually when all the facts are in.  But that’s just to show you that there was a whole list and the rabbis in the first century had a name for this: porneia, fornication, the very word used in James’ decree. 

 

So that’s the second prohibition, the Gentiles are to abstain from going down to the pagan restaurant to buy their steak.  The second thing is, in their marital relationship they would try to avoid this problem.  Now we don’t have all the data of what was going on but apparently this was a big hairy thing in those days and so just make concessions here and get the unity flowing in the system; they said don’t do it.

 

Now since we’re in Leviticus, let’s turn to Leviticus 17 because the third and fourth prohibition of the council concern blood in the meat; concerns the slaughter of meat.  I think those of you who were here when we dealt with some of the dietary provisions of the Old Testament remember my reading the report of how today, St. Louis and other places where the meat packing industry has large plants, the rabbis, special rabbis, I think they’re called the shoterim but I’m not sure, special rabbis are trained, it takes 2 or 3 years of apprenticeship to train into these slots, and they will ritually slaughter animals today in the meat packing industry.  And this meat and only this meat will be sold on the open market as kosher meat. 

 

Now what are some of the things that the rabbis today do in generating kosher meat?  One thing, when the cattle comes in for inspection the rabbis bathe the cattle; each steer is washed and he’s inspected just on his skin externally. Then the rabbi has a certain sword, which rabbinic tradition has big long details about how long the sword is, how you must sharpen the sword so that when you draw it across the throat of the steer there’s no skin or hair left on the blade after it comes through the throat, it’s got to be that sharp.  And after the animal is killed then he is cut open and all the organs are taken out one by one and inspected.  And if one of the organs shows any defect whatsoever the carcass is shelved, it cannot come out under kosher meat and they just let the Gentiles eat that but kosher people will not touch it.  Now the USDA also has similar things but they’re not so stringent.  The USDA regulations, as I understand it is that they’ll open up the carcass and they’ll inspect the organs and if one organ is bad they’ll throw the organ out but they will not throw the whole carcass out.  But the kosher people are far more strict in their interpreta­tion.  And then it goes on, they have to go through the meat, they have to cut all the fat off the meat, they have to drain it, often with salt solution and so on.  So it’s a much more strict meat processing.  And if you’re ever in a place where you question the quality of your meat go get kosher meat.  It’s more expensive but you won’t die of poison or something.  Those of you who saw the movie, Victory at Entebbe, remember that while the crowd was in the airport they all got diarrhea and everything else from eating that crappy meat in Uganda and it was only the orthodox Jews that stuck with the kosher diet who kept healthy during the ordeal.  So kosher meat has a lot to say for it and it’s always over the years been traditionally the best meat.

 

Now it goes back to these regulations in Leviticus 17:10-16, “And whatsoever man there is of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eat any manner of blood, I will even set my face against that soul that eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people.  [11] For the soul [life],” the nephesh, of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by means of,” instrumental, “by means of the nephesh.  [12] Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No nephesh,” or “no soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourneth among you eat blood.”  Notice even the Gentiles who lived with Israel were forbidden non-kosher meat.  [13] “And whatsoever man there is of the children of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn among you, who hunts and catches any beast or fowl that may be eaten, he shall pour out the blood thereof, and cover it with dust.  [14] Because it is the life of all flesh; for the blood of it is with the life thereof: therefore I said unto the children of Israel,” etc. etc. etc. 

 

Now there are some reasons for this business of no blood in the meat and James’ restriction number three and restriction number four deal with this problem of slaughtering meat.  One is that, remember he said don’t eat anything strangled because that means that the blood is still in the meat; that’s the point of that.  And then the next one was a general thing, don’t eat any meat, whether it was strangled or not that has blood in it.  So provisions three and four kind of go together.  What is the provision and why?  First there’s a spiritual reason behind it. There is a spiritual reason given to the entire human race in the Noahic Covenant for no human being eating blood in the meat; it applies to both Jew and Gentile, Genesis 9:4. The reason spiritually for this goes back to the diet of man.  Here’s a time line of history and here’s the flood.  Before the flood no meat was eaten; man had a totally vegetarian diet, protein was available from vegetarian sources sufficient to handle all health problems. And therefore up until the days of the flood any time an animal was killed it was killed for what purpose?  It was killed for a sacrifice that mirrored the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.  So for over a thousand years the father, son, father, son, father, son, father, son, father, son, father, son, whenever an animal was killed it was a picture of Christ.  It was a picture of blood sacrifice for sin. 

 

Then after the flood when the climate changed and the earth came into new geophysical configur­ation, because apparently there’s not enough vegetarian protein available,  man is permitted to eat meat, not commanded but he’s permitted to eat meat.  Therefore starting with the flood animals would be killed for two purposes.  Still some would be killed for sacrificial purposes but then other would be killed just to provide food to survive with.  Now what God says in Genesis 9:4, in the Noahic Covenant, what He says here in the Mosaic Covenant is simply this: I want you people to remember that to survive on this earth you have to live off someone else’s life. When you consume the meat of an animal that you’ve hunted, you are in effect making a theological statement.  You are saying I must subsist, in order for me to live something else must die, and therefore the blood becomes sort of a memorial to this effect.  People who are careless with the blood just, really are crass, they don’t understand what they’ve done when they’ve hunted an animal and they’ve eaten the animal.  They’ve eaten the animal and they’ve attained life because the animal died for them.  And so therefore it’s an honor to the animal who sacrificed his life that you may eat. That’s the spiritual reason for it and it goes back to the previous sacrificial use of meat.  It’s all right, there’s nothing wrong with hunting, it’s just that hunting cruelly, hunting without regard for the life of the animal whose life has been shed is unbiblical.

 

Now there’s another reason for this besides the spiritual reason, and that is, of course, the medical reason that the blood harbors disease.  The blood is the flushing fluid that flushes waste materials from the system; it carries these waste materials to the kidneys and so therefore the blood in itself has waste materials in it, so we know medically there are reasons why God says don’t bother with it.

 

Then third there is the cultic use; the cultic reason is this: that in ancient Egypt and many of the other places the priest would drink blood.  This came as a result of a mythological distortion of the true gospel.  Before the flood who consumed blood?  No man. Where was the blood taken?  It was taken for the sacrifice.  And who so to speak, in quote marks, “consumed” blood before the flood?  God did, in the sense that His sacrifices consumed the blood.  And so when mythology got through screwing up all the true revelation that man had one time, it came out with all these blood sacrifices, except now the purpose has been twisted and distorted so that now the priest would drink the blood, conveying the principle that they were God.  And so because God didn’t want men to make a divine claim for themselves He said I don’t want you drinking that.  So there are at least three reasons why men are not to partake of blood in the meat; meat that is [can’t understand word], there’s a reverence for the life of animals that must die that we may live. 

 

Turn back to Acts 15 and watch what the Church did to follow up on this council.  We’re at the end of the council, we’ve seen the council’s conclusion.  Concessions are made two ways; the law is not made to apply to the Gentile Christians, the Gentile Christians, however, are to at least have some concern for their Jewish brethren in the matter of diet and marriage. 

 

Acts 15:22-35 is a section which we can quickly summarize by showing that if the application of that decree to the early church.  Now if you’re a parent you understand, of course, that 2% of your energy is devoted to telling your children what not to do; 98% of your energy is devoted to making sure they follow out your commands.  And that’s the same with any organization; it’s easy to give directives, hard to carry them out.  It will always require nine to ten times the energy to see that someone does something that you’ve told them to do than it is to open your mouth and flap your tongue and put some words out there that says do this.  Same thing here. Watch how the early church followed up.  They did not just come to a conclusion but they imposed this conclusion upon the local churches. 

 

So they sent chosen men, verse 22, besides Paul and Barnabas, Judas and Silas, that’s so the message would have credibility. After all, Paul and Barnabas would have vested interest in this kind of a compromise so to make sure the compromise would be acceptable to Jews they also sent Silas and Judas with them.  [21, “For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day. [22] Then pleased it the apostles and elders, with the whole church, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas; namely, Judas surnamed Barsabbas, and Silas, chief men among the brethren.”]

 

Then in verse 23 we have the first case of a New Testament epistle.  And this is interesting; we’ve lost this epistle, although in a way it’s preserved here in the text.  But this shows you how the epistles of the New Testament came to be written; Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, did you ever wonder how those epistles came to be written.  You obviously know they’re letters but have you ever thought of the fact that the early Christians didn’t have a pocket testament they could whip out and say oh yeah, over in Colossians 3:20 it says… they didn’t have that.  There wasn’t any paper, there wasn’t any books.  The New Testament epistles were known only because they were copies that were read orally to the congregation, and this verse particularly shows you there were many letters written, several copies of it, this may why some of our textual variance, how the textual variance got started, and they sent them and the thing read this way, and it should be a quote mark before the word “The apostles.”  Here’s one of the first epistles.

 

Acts 15:23, “And they wrote letters by them after this manner;] “The apostles and elders and brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria” the place where the argument broke out, “and Cilicia,” which was the place of the first missionary journey.  [24] “Forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, saying, Ye must be circumcised, and keep the law: to whom we gave no such commandment: [25] It seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men unto you [with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, [26] Men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.]”  It says in verse 27 that their written tradition was to be confirmed by oral tradition.  Remember there’s a place for oral tradition in the early church before it dropped out.  [27, “We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth. [28] For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things;”]

 

And then verse 29, repeats the four concessions carefully listed, and verse 30 the end of it. [29, “That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well. [30] So when they were dismissed, they came to Antioch: and when they had gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle.”

 

Now those four concessions of verse 29 have an interesting history.  Not only are we so sure of our interpretation that’s ritual based on reasons I’ve already given but we also know our interpre­tation is correct by the way these four provisions recur again and again in the history of Europe.  These four provisions occurred in the days of Tertullian.  Tertullian said: “We Christians eat meat without the blood, unlike you Romans, and we do not have close kinship marriages.”  And then archeology has discovered documents from France showing the early church in the area of Gaul followed precisely these instructions, the dietary provisions were strong in 300 AD, that late.  In King Alfred, in the 9th century in his law codes in England mirrored these four provisions.  So these four provisions were not forgotten in the history of the west, and they kind of leaked their way into non-Christian areas and non-Christian legislation.

[31, “Which when they had read, they rejoiced for the consolation. [32] And Judas and Silas, being prophets also themselves, exhorted the brethren with many words, and confirmed them. [33] And after they had tarried there a space, they were let go in peace from the brethren unto the apostles. [34] Notwithstanding it pleased Silas to abide there still.”]

 

We come down to the end, and it shows how in Acts 15:35, “ Paul also and Barnabas continued in Antioch, [teaching and preaching the word of the Lord, with many others also]” constantly training the Church and training the Church and training the Church and training the Church.

 

Now let’s draw some conclusions from this.  Notice back at verse 28, that’s the key verse we want to end on, even though it’s not the last one, it’s the key verse.  Carefully following the problem solving technique of Acts 15, the Church when all the smoke cleared and the dust settled, was able to say, “the Holy Spirit, and us,” say… now how were they able to do that.  They put themselves in a place where the Holy Spirit could clarify His will to them.  And how did the early church do that?  By going back to the Scripture.  The Holy Spirit spoke to the early church in many ways but in this case He spoke through the Scriptures, and they could have that quiet confidence, that inner assurance that they were on the right track, like you can. When you know the Word of God and you have researched it and you have thought about it, you’ve discussed it and you’re sure of your footing, you can have that same assurance, the assurance that Christ had, that “the gates of hell shall never prevail against My church.”  No dictator, no heresy, no revolution, no catastrophe will destroy the Church.  The Holy Spirit will always guard the Church; some close calls, Acts 15 is was a close call theologically, but always the Holy Spirit is there, and so our response would be to get in a position where we can be led of the Holy Spirit. 

 

You say well, we don’t have problems with Judaizers coming into our communion service.  No, we have worse problems.  Let me read you a statement by a man who probably is the most vicious opponent of the Christian faith in the 20th century as far as religious opponent to it.  He’s a man whose writings form the basis of practically every critical New Testament work being done today or at least done in the last 20 or 30 years.  The man’s name, and one of the great German rationalists, Rudolf Bultmann, Bultmann set the pace intellectually for all the higher critical attacks on the New Testament in the 20th century.

 

Bultmann says this, and here’s the philosophy of the worldview that we face; not Judaizers but this kind of thing.  He’s talking about you, he’s talking about me when he makes this statement.  “It is impossible to use electric lights and the wireless and to avail ourselves of medical and surgical discoveries and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.”  He comments further: “The various impressions and speculations which influence credulous people,” that’s you, “here and there,” the little groups here and there, “are of little importance.  Nor does it matter to what extent cheap slogans,” such as creationism, “have spread an atmosphere anemically to science.  What matters is the worldview which men imbibe from their environment and it is science which determines that view of the world through the schools, through the press, through the radio, through the cinema and all the other fruits of technical progress.”

 

Now there’s Bultmann, he’s our enemy.  He represents the kind of thinking that is out to crush the Church and so we have to take up our tools.  The tools are here.  You can talk to a missionary; you can go into the library, the church library is stocked with volumes written to various problems; we have areas on creationism, education, history and so on.  Many of you bought Frances Schaeffer’s volume to prepare for the seminar.  These are things you are going to have to do; you may not do them but you’re going to have to do them if Christianity is going to survive in our day.  Your children are too precious for you to commit the Rudolf Bultmann’s of the world to set their environment, and that’s exactly what’s happening, as long as we sit passively by and let Bultmann and his disciples influence the system, carrying on, worrying about the few Christians here and there.  Do you know why Bultmann can say that?  Because Christians don’t raise up opposition. Christians are harmless; as far as Bultmann could care about the Christian, you never hear them, you never hear them criticize, you never hear them step into a position of influence, you never hear the evangelical voice heard anywhere, why should Bultmann be afraid.  He isn’t, nor are any of his colleagues afraid because we’ve dropped the ball, we haven’t been aggressive enough, and the times of retreat are rapidly drawing to a close; we’re going to lose the whole next generation.  It’s that simple. The word G-o-d will mean nothing in 20 or 30 years if trends continue, unless the Christians get grounded in doctrine and begin to do something.

 

We’re going to sing a hymn