Who DO you Believe?

If I have got this right, whilst I sit in front of my laptop typing out this blog, a congregation of young people from churches around London and the Home Counties, including a large contingent from my home church in Ascot, are at this moment assembled at Westminster Chapel for a conference. "Conference", that is, a series of sermons delivered from the pulpit, usually on a specific subject in relation to the Bible. Rather like at the turn of the Millennium, when Alex and I attended the Prayer for Israel Conference at the same venue and hosted by that late great Israeli preacher and advocate, Lance Lambert.

At least that P.F.I. Conference was open for people of all ages, I assume, from teenager upwards, with no set upper age limit. It was also about the same time I took my young wife to the Holy Land to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. As such, the P.F.I. meant a lot for both of us. At Westminster Chapel, Lance Lambert spoke into our spirits. Therefore I have to admit of my puzzlement on why at this conference taking place at this moment, there is a set upper age limit, which is up to but not including one's fortieth birthday. In other words, the Westminster Chapel conference is for eighteen-to-thirties only. And so I ponder what will be taught from the pulpit which is so relevant for them but no longer relevant for oldies such as myself.

Westminster Chapel, London

Maybe I will ask one of the students tomorrow, after the morning service, that is with the hope that they will be able to get out of bed early enough to attend church after such a busy day. Maybe he will tell me that it was about Courtship, Marriage and Children. Or the conference may be about future church leadership. Not much use for those who regularly attend an Anglican church unless you are a student at Oxford or Cambridge. Far less if the ambition of those at the conference is to become the Bishop of Canterbury. For that, one has to post-graduate to a level of a doctorate at Oxbridge. Too bad that none of the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ had managed to reach such academic levels, although one of them, Judas Iscariot, might have come close.

But let's be fair. Saul of Tarsus was a well educated Jew, a rising Pharisee, a son of a Pharisee, from the tribe of Benjamin. He had the equivalent of a doctorate attained from Oxford or Cambridge. Not only was he a rising star at the Sanhedrin, but the throwing of a garment at his feet whilst Stephen was stoned to death was an indication of future leadership. Saul was thoroughly into the Scriptures. But like all the other Jews around him, Saul failed to discern the signs of the times. For example, he was well familiar with the writings of the prophet Daniel. So were the High Priest and all other members of the Sanhedrin. I know this, because when Jesus quoted from that scroll during his trial, the entire assembly had really got hot under the collar, so much so that the High Priest had to tear his cloak from top to bottom!  

What was the sign of the times found in Daniel's scroll? Some simple arithmetic would have made a connection between Daniel's prophecy and the timing of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, his Death and Resurrection. If such experts were aware that Nehemiah's commission to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem took place in the month of Nisan, during the twentieth year into the reign of Persian King Artaxerxes, then those members of the Sanhedrin would have been able to work out that such a particular date occurred some 483 Hebrew years earlier, at 445 BC. By making such calculations, the Jews would have been far more likely to have made a connection between this Jesus of Nazareth and the awaited Messiah (Nehemiah 2:1-6, Daniel 9:20-27, Matthew 26:57-68).

But they all missed the point. Despite such learning, they failed to connect this Jesus as their awaited Messiah or Christ. And his authoritative teachings backed by many miracles performed, especially with the raising of Lazarus from the dead, yet still failed connect this Jesus as the Christ. As for myself, I have always felt inspired by such prophecy and its fulfilment in Jesus Christ. This led me to an interest in End Time Prophecy, particularly in the 1980's when I bought books on the subject, particularly by Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye and Norman Robertson, all three predicting the end of the present age by the turn of the Millennium. Unfortunately for them, we are still here and it's still business as usual, which has also led to the rise of doubters who had since poured scorn on this so-called "Dispensationalist Theory".

Not that I no longer believe in the "Rapture" or translation of all saints to heaven before the actual return of Jesus Christ to Earth. I still believe in the Rapture, which has always been held as imminent, or could happen at any moment, totally unexpected. I have always believed in it since the mid seventies when I bought and read The Late Great Planet Earth along with its sister book, There's A New World Coming, both by Hal Lindsey. But I need to be truthful about myself here, and ask: Has such gaining of knowledge made me a better man who is loving towards others? Sad to say, the answer to that question is No. Instead, I was tempted to feel smug. Like one evening in 1974 as I was walking through Brixton in South London, I passed a Unification Church with its doors open and people milling around. This type of church is part of a group which denies the reality of the Trinity. I felt a sense of smugness as I walked passed it, when maybe I should have been praying for the light of truth to shine into their hearts, if  I believed they were on the wrong tracks.

And the same can be applied to Creationism. I have already testified on my conversion from committing myself in Darwinian Evolution to Divine Creation, from one straight to the other, on one stormy evening. But there is a danger that I could feel smug about myself in my commitment to Creation and the Deluge of Noah's day, when I'm called to love others around me and to seek an opportunity to share the Gospel to those who don't yet know God.

But is it right to do good to others whilst remaining unsure about my core beliefs? If, for example, there was an Indian Buddhist who not only shown hospitality to strangers but actually went out of his way to reach the poor and the hungry to help them. The sort of man who actually welcomes strangers and passing travellers into his home and feeds them, refreshes them and even provide a bed for the night if such a provision is necessary. Someone who is beginning to resemble Job of the Old Testament, whom God refers to as a righteous man. Then over here in England, where houses are regarded as castles, two Christians, each living across the street, squabble whether one is eternally saved or not, and ends up slamming the front door at each other and both feeling in a bit of a huff. One who holds Calvinist views, the other Arminian views. As words are thrown one from one to the other and back, any observer with neutral views will wonder who of the three is really doing the will of God and showing Christlike characteristics.

I can't help what Jesus had said on one occasion. He said,

Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out - those who have done good will rise to live, and those who had done evil will rise to be condemned. (John 5:28-29, Acts 24:15).

Of course, every evangelical Christian will say that the "good" done for a favourable resurrection are deeds done under the power of the Holy Spirit, whilst so-called "goodness" done "in the flesh" will still lead into perdition. This may even be backed by the conversion of Cornelius. He was well into good deeds before his conversion, but this did not excuse him and his household from the need to believe in Jesus and be filled with the Holy Spirit. If such an incident demonstrates the case, then every church should have the brightest light to shine in a dark world. Like moths attracted to candlelight, unbelievers would flock to these churches, at least for curiosity, if not to receive some form of benefit whether physical, spiritual, or even psychological. Even Jesus himself endorsed this a little later that unbelievers will know that we are his disciples if we have love for each other (John 13:35). The reality is that any just about every English church I have ever visited, I am sad to say that I have not come across such a level of goodness and love of the level indicated by Jesus Christ, or for that matter, that of Cornelius or even the Buddhist. 

Which makes me attempt to put myself in the neutral's position. To whom would he be most impressed, the Calvinist, the Arminian - or the Buddhist? Of course, the two quarrelling Christian believers will still go to heaven after they die, despite the constant bicker and even hatred fostered between them, whilst the Buddhist will end up in a fiery hell, and that after feeding the hungry, helped those in poverty, provided a bed for the wayward traveller, or even done something as simple as offering a cup of water to a thirsty passerby who happens to be a true Christian believer. 

It is something that would cause me to pull on my own hair in frustration. I have to be honest with myself, I would be far more impressed with the Buddhist, who most likely have some form of Divine Creation belief, which ever direction it takes in the world of Buddhism. But I have not found this among English, middle-class Christian graduates. Nor for that matter, on the universality of Noah's Flood. 

And the issue of a geographically universal flood has always intrigued me. Just think, the very ground I'm standing on - whether it would be on a mountain summit, on a hillside, in a valley, on an expanse of flat plain, in a forest, at a desert, in the countryside, on a meadow, at the beach, in the city street, at a slum area, whether it's here at home in the UK, or in Israel, North America, Singapore, Australia, or central Europe - every square inch of ground I ever stood on was once underwater. However, I have read of one 19th Century theologian, a person who is a true believer in Christ and preaches salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, yet adores the works of geologists Charles Lyell, Georges Cuvier, William Buckland, John Fleming, and other great academics of his day who all deny the reality of a universal deluge, and its geological implications, to have been sent by God to wipe out a corrupt antediluvian race. This person I'm referring to is John Pye-Smith, an English churchman who wanted to reconcile the works of these academics with the Scriptural testimony of Genesis. So he worked on a theory based on recorded hydrodynamics at work within local floods occurring around the world, and their potential to snuff out life of both animal and human unfortunate enough to be caught in such deluges.

Pye-Smith made such reconciliation between the two opposing parties - the Bible and Uniformitarian geology - by coming up with the concept of an anthropological universal but geographically local Flood theory, mainly that the Flood was the result of a rapid subsidence of the Mesopotamian basin to allow the waters of the Indian Ocean to rush in and at the same time drowning the entire antediluvian race. And this without a single person escaping the catastrophe by climbing one of many surrounding mountain ranges. Tied to this idea is the impossibility of the Ark resting on the summit of the traditional Mt. Ararat located in Eastern Turkey, for this location, is not only too far away from the Mesopotamian Basin but it's summit, at 1,537 metres high, would make such a local Flood improbable. Therefore John Pye-Smith had to relocate Mt. Ararat to one of the foothills within the Mesopotamian Basin.

The traditional Mt. Ararat, on the Eastern Turkish border.

John Pye Smith with his local-Flood theory was a typical English Christian who finds himself far more at home in his compromise than sticking his neck out in full support for the verity of Holy Scripture. This looks to be very much like many of our church-going graduates I have spoken to at present. And in addition, I can give a rather shocking surprise when I browsed through a book written by one of Britain's most famous and most popular itinerant preachers, Cambridge-educated Methodist David Pawson, one-time pastor of Millmeads Baptist Church in Guildford, Surrey, before relocating to another church in the Hampshire town of Basingstoke. Pawson is the author of many books, including two of his well known debunking Eternal Security. Another of his books, a volume called Unlocking the Bible, which is basically a commentary on all the books in the Bible, including, of course, Genesis. Turning to the section of Noah and the Deluge,  I couldn't help but noticing that Pawson is in keeping with John Pye-Smith, with his version of the map of a local flood covering the Mesopotamian Valley, with his emphasis on human morality and personal responsibility towards God rather than with any importance over the geographical extent of the Flood.

Yet Pawson is popular, even among those in our church at Ascot. Here is the crutch. If someone with the likes of Pawson insist that the Flood of Noah was anthropologically universal but geographically local in extend, and I come along with the insistence that the Flood was both geographical and anthropologically universal, then Pawson's view, along with Pye-Smith's view in his attempt for reconciliation with the likes of Uniformitarian geologists William Buckland and Charles Lyell, such gentlemen would be favoured high and above my opinion set on Holy Scripture alone, because they were educated at a respectable university and I wasn't. This is indeed a melancholic situation I tend to face, which is not only here in the United Kingdom but more on a global scale, which is inclusive of our Christian-based British culture!

But for the truth of Holy Scripture would I lay down my life if I have to, even if I may be perceived by others as more of a mischievous child rather than a fully grown man of thinking and choice. But despite of this, I will always remain true to the Bible, even if it means that I'm seen as the only nutter in our fellowship and community alike.