The Great DebateRev. David Henderson The Covenant News ~ September 16, 2008
Today we are in the midst of what CS Lewis called, "THE GREAT DEBATE." This debate is not merely defined by the politic of the day. This debate goes right to the heart and to the soul of where mankind lives. We can effectively participate in this debate if we know what is really going on, and how we can effect the outcome of that debate.
There are many issues that have their roots in this debate and are able to be seen more clearly in the light of their relationship to that debate; but, they themselves are not central to the debate; though they stem from it in their origin. Issues like abortion, infanticide, and government control of our lives, just to name a few are merely branches of this debate. (Not meaning here to diminish the importance of each of these issues, but merely attempting to put them into the perspective of how they really relate to the soul of man in this debate.)
To begin with we must gain a view of life through God's perspective. Some basics: First of all there is a God, Secondly He made all things through a special act of creation, And finally each and every thing that is created by him has a purpose according to that creation. The purpose of some things is hard to discern because of the effects of sin on the creation at large. This effect will be gone once God has manifested Himself in the way that He intends.
God made man in His image. That means that God made man to reflect His triune nature. God is seen in the scripture as being a triune. (We have grown accustomed to the word trinity, but triune is a more clear word describing this reality.) He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Every part of this triune nature of God is distinct and is also part of God's personhood, and yet at the same time unique in personhood. The Father is the will and what we would call the psyche of God, the Son is the body of God, the visible image of the invisible God, and the Holy Spirit is the Life, breath, or pneuma of God.
We too are triune beings. We have a body, a soul, and a spirit. Each and every one of these parts of us is unique and completely different from the other, yet we are all one person. We are three in one. Our body is known to us primarily because we mostly live according to it's wants, needs, and desires. Our soul is known to us for much the same reason. And until we become born again our spirit man is unknown to us, it only comes alive at the time of our new birth.
Our body is a tri-unity also. Our body consists of flesh, bones, and blood. Our soul or psyche is also a tri-unity. It consists of will (somewhat like the spine of the soul), emotions (very closely linked to the blood, "hot or cold blooded"), and intellect (the intellect is like the "flesh" of the soul-man, it gives covering to the will and the emotions.) It is almost impossible to say where one area of this begins and the other ends. For instance, where does the effect of what is in the blood stop and the emotions begin? If you eat something that "fires" you up, it effects your emotions also. The life of the flesh is in the blood.
Only the Word of God gives us the ability to discern the difference between the man of the soul and the man of the spirit. Our spirit man, which is our third tri-unity is so often related to the soul man that it takes specific clarity from the Word of God to divide between that which sources from the spirit man and that which sources from the soul man. The scripture tells us that the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. This is the place in our hearts where God dwells.
When the Word tells us that God dwells in us in the inner man that is what it is saying. This inner man is also divided (using that word divide for lack of a better word) into a tri-unity also. Our spirit man is the seat of fellowship, revelation, and incarnation of God in our lives. The revelation part of our spirit is very closely linked to the intellect (so close that we must always be careful not to allow our revelations to become exercises of the intellect instead of pictures and ideas from Jesus). The aspect of our inner man that relates to fellowship with God, His dwelling place is very closely tied to our emotions and our blood. Our emotions are to become the servant of the fellowship with God in our lives. And that area of the incarnation of God in our spirit man is the place where God sets His footprint in our spiritual man and unleashes the mighty manifestation of the power that raised Jesus from the dead.
This incarnation "footprint" of God in our lives is what people see when they see Jesus in and through us. They see His incarnation within His people. That is what attracts them to Him. They see Him in us. We are called to show to the world the indwelling Christ, not the soul man that we are, but the spiritual expression of Jesus Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith.
It is the presence of the risen Christ dwelling in us that will eventually "take over" our lives of sin and death and bring us to the place where our lives will be encompassed about with the risen Christ, transforming us and bringing us to the place where that life overcomes the death that is in us through sin. It is like a beach head for God's eventual victory. It is a beach head for the power of Jesus Christ operating in our lives.
Man, being made in the image of God, is a triune being with a specific and clear purpose. In fact, Jesus is called "the light of every man that cometh into the world." He, at the moment of each and every persons conception, brought a flash of light across the fertilized egg and performed the miracle of blowing the breath of life into the newly fertilized egg, thus making the fertilized egg at that very second of conception "a living soul." At that second the individual received personhood from God, though their spirit man, and body were not yet fully made complete. (The spirit of man is only complete when we are born again, and at that time our spirit man is then brought to life fully and completely. For some this never takes place.)
Knowing this, and seeing it from God's perspective is what gives power to our testimony in the abortion argument. We know that personhood is granted to the individual at the moment of conception because at that exact moment Jesus is present and becomes the "light" of that person, then and there. It is this belief that drives our argument forward on the sanctity of life. We believe because we have seen that the special creation of God was present as a flash of light and an breath of life from God at the very moment the sperm broke through the wall of the egg. How much more beautiful is this picture than that of man groveling his way through thousands of futile and useless generations of minute change until he became evolved to being what God wanted. What a difference it is when we see it from God's perspective.
To the early church this reality was unknown. They only knew that Jesus was the light of every man that cometh into the earth. They didn't know the specifics and proofs that we presently have concerning this. But the unifying factor between them and us was that we both know that Jesus is the light of every man. Now we know it from the Word, and from the scientific perspective which gives testimony to the truth of the word. We have seen it happen through the use of the electron microscope.
But, with or without the microscope the argument is still the same. Special creation by God for an exact purpose.
This is an incredible miracle, which was described 2,000 years in detail (i.e. the flash of light at conception... ) before the first electron microscope was invented to actually see it happen. (It takes a magnification of over 50,000 times to even see this happen at the moment of conception, yet it is spoken about in the gospel of John as if it is common knowledge... which of course to God it is, as the Word of God is written from God's perspective, not ours.)
So, being made in the image and likeness of God has endowed us with certain realities. However, in the midst of all this great purpose and function we have free will. Free will enables us to either choose or not choose the opportunity to experience these things.
This is where the great debate comes into our experience. The great debate is over the souls and spirits of men, it is over bringing them to the place where they see things from God's perspective. We bring them to a God-view-of-life as opposed to that which was sprung from the soul of man without acknowledgement toward or of God. We first bring them to an understanding of the reality that they are a special creation of God, known of Him, loved by Him, and made for a purpose.
Our greatest debate, and the debate that frames each and every other argument in our lives is over this belief in special creation by a loving God. God created us. If we somehow do not see it according to His perspective of when, how, and why He did so then our whole view of life will be skewered and we will be without a foundation. When God created us it was with a specific purpose in mind.
In the founding of the nation that we live in we come to grips with this "God-view" or "God-perspective" of life. It is impossible to argue that the founders of this society didn't see things from a "God-view" of life. Though they made great mistakes in other ways, they made no mistake when they framed the argument for breaking away with England and becoming an independent nation based on rights that were given specifically through the hand of God to each and every person at the moment of their creation. The Declaration of Independence stated this concept of being given un-alienable rights by our creator several times in the first few paragraphs. It was arguing this in the public arena of thought before other societies. It was a statement of why the founders felt impelled to embark on a course of liberty verses remaining subjects of a king across the water somewhere. Their entire argument was rooted and grounded in a special act of creation that featured with it the impartation of un-alienable rights to us the created.
The one sure fact was that they held to and understood was that there was a specific designated creator of man. This was the great debate at that time. It is not a new debate , though we often act and like it is and think that it is. The issue that they debated was over "special creation of the God of the universe enduing us with those un-alienable rights," VERSES "our rights springing up through nature" as the French enshrined in their constitution. This is what separated us from the French in their revolution, republic, and constitution. Special creation and acknowledgement of that special creation was the issue of the day. Nothing was more important in comprehending the rights of man than understanding that those rights were/are founded in a special act of creation by a loving Creator.
The argument was that, "Yes there are natural rights, but these rights are not founded in nature alone, but in the God that created nature." The problem with seeing your source as nature is that the governing body could then "see differently" at some given point and declare that you no longer had those rights.
Enter the work of satan. If you were wanting to destroy and unravel these rights then you would have to go to the actual root of their existence and attack there. You would have to make your attack in the area of belief in the source of these rights. You would have to assail the idea of their actually being a loving Creator who gave these rights to man. This is exactly the course that the enemy of our souls took.
This is what has happened in the modern world. Beginning back in the early 1800's and as a direct reaction to the "Great Awakening" outpouring which had changed the face of this nation and many others; there arose another movement on the scene. This movement could only be best described as a secular movement with ties to what has been called today "the New Age Movement." (Yes the power of the new age movement in America is not at all new.)
As the Great Awakening Movement was changing the face of America, and it's fundamental ideas about everything in society. (The Great Awakening Movement changed the face of the church in only a mere 100 years. We went from 90% Calvinistic Presbyterian to 95% plus Evangelical in the matter of time that it took to go from the great revivalist preachers Edwards to Finney.) The reaction to this was predictable. As long as people believed in their hearts the things of the scriptures and didn't try to take them seriously to allow those things to come to dominate governance, it was ok, or even beneficial. However, once people began to take seriously the demands of this obedience to scripture and it's effect on society all hell broke loose. The enemy raised up his ugly head and began his war on the church which was just then going through one of the greatest social transformations in history. It could be argued that there was nothing but the effect of the church in the book of acts that equaled or beat the effect of the Great Awakening Revival on the world.
The founding of this nation has often been described as a religious movement, because that is what it took to make it happen. There is no doubt at all but that the founders felt that it was a great movement of God that took place that led to our being liberated from being subjects to an earthly king, and transferred, through faith to being subjects of another king, God.
However, when they really began to take that specific creation idea down to the level of effecting society and the roots of wrongs that were being done in society, then there was a great reaction. The reaction here was to first try to marginalize the people that had become Evangelicals by branding them as not part of the intelligentsia, not enlightened, and not part of the elite; to cast a social cloud over them and make them look like fools for their taking literally the commands found in the scripture. When they found that this didn't really work they began to create an opposing movement based on "logic" and "reason" instead of spiritual ideas and realities. (As if t spiritual ideas found in the Word were not logical and reasonable.)
In order to bring this about those opposed to the Great Awakening and it's effect on society turned to new age spirit ism and created what was called the "Transcendent Movement." This movement was a move away from spirituality that touched base on the natural world and made demands on the lives of those who believed, and toward an inner form of meditative and contemplative life, i.e. in a sense a return to monasticism, but without ever having to leave society at large as did the monks of old.
This movement was the first time we had a movement of people looking to "eastern meditation" and "eastern spirituality" as a way to oppose the demands of this Biblical Christianity. This great darkness produced a cadre of "religious" leaders and secularists who were looking for arguments that fought the idea that there is and was a "special creation" of man. They looked to the intellectual elite that were rising in Germany, France, and England who were just now embracing approaches to life that were based not on the Bible but on the "reasoning" of man. These individuals were creating alternatives to the demands of Biblical Christianity and it's teaching about there being a special creation by a loving and caring God. (Many of these people did so in order that they could oppose the new movement of God, and many did it to keep their place as "respected" and "known" religious leaders. And some even opposed the work of God because they were jealous of God's demand on the lives and felt that "society" had a greater and more important demand on the lives of men. This was the belief of the socialists, Fabians, and communists.)
Ideas such as the goodness of man. Beliefs about man being perfect in his natural state, and only subject to corruption through involvement in society with others took over the idea that man was sinful and in need of redemption. The "Human Potential" movement has its roots directly in this area.
As they say, When a students comes, a teacher will arise. Those running from the effects of an honest belief in there being a divine creator who made us through his loving hand quickly found their new home in the ideas brought about by such men as Hegel, Marx, And Darwin. Socialism, and a arena of thought called the "School of Higher Criticism" became the new religion of the day. This new "school of thought" was really nothing but the old doctrine of disbelief repackaged to look like they sprung from a "new well" of intellect. It offered alternatives to what had been the foundation of our society here in the United States. They repackaged this disbelief and sold it to the public as an "alternative" theory to what life was really about. They, of course, had to disqualify beliefs about the special creation of man in order to do so.
Remember, this was a generational attack on the faith in a special creator giving all men unalienable rights.
They presented a whole new face to the creation of man. To this new "School of Higher Criticism" there were no accuracies in the Bible, which to them was nothing more than a nice book full of myths that should be dismissed as nothing more than a general guide to how life should be lived. Their first function was to attack the accuracy of the Word, and to pose alternatives to how man came into being, thus the rise of Darwinism. Their second function was to infiltrate every area of society from the schools, to government, to the religious training schools of our nation and other nations with the idea that the Word of God was not the Word of God, and thus was not an accurate portrayal of the true history and pre-history of man.
They assailed against special creation, arguing that man evolved. Of course those who were religious leaders conceded that maybe man was assisted in that evolution by a God who didn't interfere and didn't really much care how, when, or where this process took place. They argued that there was no creation, they also argued that man had no obligation to a God who was far off and that man was now ruler of his own destiny. Since man was not a special creation of a creator, then man had no obligation to that creator. They assailed the accuracy of the archeology of the Bible, and argued that there was no Jericho, Ai, Babylon, etc. They argued that these were mere stories to give the Law that was revealed through the Israelites and through "misguided" Christians a demand on our lives; and, once done with the law there was no other demand on our lives other than the "Social Contract" among men.
They argued that the scriptures were really originally written in Aramaic and not in Greek. (They did this in order to assail the things said from the Greek New Testament. If they could show that there might be a pre-scripture to the Greek then they could say that the Greek NT was not accurate, and that it had been changed from the original Aramaic which has been lost to us. This went directly to the argument against taking the Bible literally.)
They held ground strongly in our society, creating a secularist elite in our country. They were given their first blows when the Archeologist and explorers who discovered King Tut's Tomb also discovered Jericho, Ai, Babylon, Tyre and Sydon, and other Biblical cities mentioned in the Bible. This blow which should have shaken their foundation struck only a glancing effect. The reason that it was not as effective a blow as it should have been was that by the time that these discoveries took place (at the turn of the last century) they had already infiltrated all but a few Bible Schools, with the idea that the Greek New Testament was not accurate, because it was a mere copy of the Aramaic ones that must have existed and have been lost.
They produced in our society an entire cadre of unbelieving pastors and religious scholars. These dominate, out of sheer numbers, most of the arguments in our society of how the destiny and direction of man should be governed, and what man's pre-history actually was. This is a vital thing to know if we remember that nothing will effect us more than our belief concerning God making a special creation. They actually created a new form of ministry which elevated social involvement in causes to the level of relationship with God, and elevated social ills to the level of original sin (which of course they did not believe in.) The mixture of religious liberalism and socialism produced generations of ministers who haven't got a clue as to the reality of God's Word bringing us into the redemption. They are empty suits who are false shepherds who feed the flock on the mulch of social activism and not on the Word of God which produces true repentance and acceptance of the gospel.
Not too many years ago the last foundation block of this unbelieving crew was uprooted and destroyed, unfortunately it took place so many years after the damage had been done. What has happened is just like the scripture says when it talks about the parable of the tares and the wheat. The enemy sowed them into our midst and they have done great damage, all the while appearing to look like true wheat.
Several years back the "Biblical Archeology Magazine" put to rest the final arguments of the "School of Higher Criticism" when they showed the newly discovered Caiphas's Tomb. They even said (though they are a totally secular magazine) that this discovery put to rest the final arguments of this School of Higher Criticism in that not a single inscription on either the sarcophagus or the tomb walls was written in Aramaic. (In fact each and every inscription was written in Greek, not even in Hebrew, which was amazing when you consider that Caiphas was the High Priest of Israel.)
However, the damage had been accomplished in The Great Debate. The other side has found refuge in the idea that there was no special creation based on supposed Biblical inaccuracies, even though the past one hundred years has proven their argument to be wrong point after point. We now find ourselves in the midst of a completely secular society who uses these debate tools brought about through this "now debunked" ideology. Whenever the battle is engaged we find that the other side (who hates the Bible) relies on this alternative explanation of the "true meaning" of the Bible. Even when arguing for abortion, infanticide (the newest thing), homosexuality, or for socialism, they claim to have their foundation in the "true meaning" of a Bible that they say cannot be taken literally.
They don't dare approach the idea that man was made specifically in the image of the divine Creator. They know that believing this will cause them to be obligated to find the purpose that the Creator made man, and to submit to those demands.
Where does that leave us as the church? Where are we going? And how are we going to be able to prevail (if we are to prevail) in the midst of this battle that has been set before us.
We often retreat from the debate because we do not understand the fallacies of the arguments being presented, and, because we do not understand the purpose that the enemy wants to accomplish against us in engaging us in this battle. Because we have not studied to show ourselves approved of God and prepared by God to engage the debate in such a manner that we will prevail in our arguments we have been befuddled in this warfare.
I am not saying that it is all about the intellectual man and his ability to prevail in the arena of thought; However, it is non-sense to think that we can engage the enemy without preparation and due diligence. It is time to engage the enemy on these issues. It is time to create in our society an atmosphere around us that is receptive, once again, to a God-centered-view of life. It is time to prepare ourselves to engage the enemy in this great debate. It is time to prepare for the spiritual and mental warfare that is needed over the souls of men. We are to have the intention of winning nations to Christ. This is to be our direction. This is to be our view. We must see the larger picture and begin to work toward that end. This is to be our vision.
Many would tell us that this is not our job or purpose. They argue that Jesus never engaged the society at large about "issues." This is just not true. Jesus's word, the Bible, clearly reveals to us the truth about every area of life. There are no such thing as "issues" that God doesn't have something clear to say about. And in fact the Word clearly lays out the ideas of who made us, who we belong to, and to whom we owe an obligation to live our lives for. He further instructs us to go into all the world and make disciples (students) of all nations through teaching them the things that are made clear to us by Him in His Word. This is how we baptize nations. We submerge them into the understanding of God's will toward man.
It is only when the church backed away from the public emphasis on God's special creation that the enemy was able to come in and sub-plant the truth with the lie of evolution, and its fruits of abortion, infanticide, homosexuality, and government control of our lives, instead of God controling our lives. There is a hole in the heart of man that craves faith, purpose, and direction. If that hole is not filled with the truth it will grasp onto anything that could fill it, no matter how poor a replacement it is. This is the nature of the reality we live in as believers. When we choose not to engage this battle then we are deciding the fate of men and women. When we choose not to fight the fight in the public arena then we are choosing to yield the public arena to satan and his plan, purpose, and direction for men and women.
Just as nature always fills a vacuum we must also fill that vacuum in the hearts of our neighbors. If we do not do it, then satan will with his teachings that will result in great darkness being promulgated in and on our society. Under satan's rule the social contract soon becomes a contract with hell.
Nations are converted by us submerging them in all the things that God has taught us through His word; everything that applies to the spirit, soul, and body of men and women. Not just to those things that we consider important for the spiritual man. For instance: We proclaim that God wants men to be free, and that He hates "man-stealers" (kidnappers). He in fact proscribed capitol punishment for those that were kidnappers. The Great Awakening preachers strongly preached against slavery, whereas, all but a few of the new "religious elite" preached that it was a Biblical thing and something that even if not Biblical, was hard to parse out, "too difficult to understand," maybe as they say today, "Above my pay grade." The Great Awakening preachers said that the slavery that was going on was not Biblical, but was instead the cursed practice of "man-stealing" which was to be punished by death, and not rewarded by enshrining it in law and court decisions. (The Biblical idea of slavery was indentured servant-hood that someone sold themselves into because of debts. The "slave" of the Bible had rights, and was to be let free in seven years, or at the Year of Jubilee, whichever came first, completely debt free.)
Of course history proved the Great Awakening preachers right, no one would even argue the foolish arguments today that were strongly argued in that day in the behalf of maintaining a system of slavery. But, what are the arguments of the religious secularists today? What is their argument that must be confronted and defeated in the same way that the Great Awakening preachers defeated the arguments for slavery?
The great argument that must be taken on today, and which is the very root of all this battle against secularist thought, is that God created man just the way the Bible says He did, no ifs, ands, or buts. This argument goes directly to the root of believing that the Bible is the literal word of God. Out of this root springs all the other arguments that must be engaged in this time: Arguments against abortion, government control of our lives, and arguments for the rights to freely express, speak, publish, and proclaim our beliefs, Arguments for the right to defend those rights, and for the right to have a society that is governed by a system of punishing evil and rewarding good.
When the book of Romans tells us that we are to submit to the government and obey it's laws it did not at that venture give the government a blank check. Romans at that time and place delineated the purpose and function of governance that would be considered God's work in the midst of man. That government was the "ministry of God" when that government "rewarded good, and punished evil." When a government punishes good and rewards evil it is not in any way the ministry of God . We understand this principle in relationship to individual ministries that operate in the church, but somehow fail to understand it when dealing with the governments that we are under in the world. When a ministry no longer does the will of God, and sets out to do the opposite of the will of God it is no longer the ministry of God. So if we are to have a government that will submit to God's view of what constitutes government's purpose in the midst of man, we must engage in this arena of thought the battle being waged over the souls of men.
We cannot expect a group of men acting as a government to understand these things in and of themselves. They must be engaged concerning what God has to say about their duties and functions as a ministry of God. The ministry of God does God's will whether it be through its function as a government or as an individual. That is the standard laid down in the Word. Propagating the will of God is the purpose of God among men, that is our ministry. We do not have to respect either government or persons who say they are the ministry of God to us if they do not submit to God's will and purpose.
However, with this in mind, we remember that our instrument of change is not rebellion. Even if we rebel and disobey the government, we do so only as a necessity. Our instrument of change is to go forward with an uncompromising voice declaring the gospel with clarity, directness, and specificity in relationship to the individuals we encounter and the society at large. We must engage the public arena. We must interrupt time and place of the will and direction of man. We must insist on the Word being proclaimed in the streets, courthouses, houses of governing bodies, and to the individuals who we encounter. If we do not take this pro-active approach to ministering the gospel there will continue to be a loss of ground in our society.
Some say that we don't need this clarity preached to those around us. How is it that we devalue the sacrifice and cost that Jesus paid to give this life and gift of mercy to others that we would consider it not important enough to interrupt our neighbors life? It is never a convenient time to declare God's demand on either our life, or on the lives of others, never. However, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand and we need to see that immediacy in the lives of those around us and go forward declaring the acceptable year of the Lord. Now is the day of salvation. The fullness of times has already come, and that happened when Jesus appeared. Since that time we need to be all about getting the word to every living creature.
We do this by clearly preaching or proclaiming the gospel and how it touches each and every area of the lives of men. God indeed does care for what happens concerning men and women. He has a path that will enable a society to create a seedbed for what is His will to happen in the midst of mankind. That seedbed will not prevail under a secularist, anti-God, enshrinement of Godlessness in a society. However, the Godlessness will continue to prevail until we take back the debate and engage with confidence the battleground before us. We must engage the battle. We must take the gospel to the place where men/women live. Show God's view of everything that relates to the lives of men and women today.
We must be clear in our expression, and must at the same time we are going forth prepare our lives and words to victory. Nothing is more important in this time than engaging this battle. Nothing is more important right now than beginning the turnaround of this society to "once again" being based on a "God-world-view" of life, instead of a secularist view. Our society will not survive on it's present course. We are called to move and shake the nations from their present disbelief in the gospel to converting them to belief in the gospel. This must be done by planning and then applying the energy of the Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead directly to the lives of those around us, to their homes, and to the governing structures they have created to live their lives through.
I am not saying that this is an easy job, or always a fun job. Many times you get reactions that make you cringe, but we must prevail in these matters. A society is only as free as it is in allowing public discourse of the most important things. If we want a free society to live in we must take up this battle. There are men and women who crave to know the great purpose and to resolve the Great Debate that presently dominates their heart and soul. If we do not engage them in this debate, then they will fall prey to the work of satan and end up deceived and lost.