Did We MISS the Entire Point of the GOSPELS?

Well, a few centuries later, when these things were uncovered, they were widely believed to be first-century literature, and they were almost equal to Paul’s writings because everybody believed they were explanations of the Christian faith from the first century. It was Neo-Platonism, and it went right into the Christian bloodstream, and it’s still there, folks, and if you don’t believe it’s still there, then every time you drive down the street and see a church building, those church buildings are built on the tradition of the Neo-Platonist mysticism. That’s where the concept of the high arch and the stained-glass windows come in: building a building that will produce a sense of the sublime and awe. That’s Greek mysticism. Their temples were built that way, and our church buildings are built that way, and we have the high vaults because they tend to create a sense of awe when we walk into them, which creates worship, and worship is what God wants, and therefore… that was their reasoning behind it.

So, for the next thousand years, there came the pope and the monks and the priests, and then something down here, the people and the peasants, and there came the teaching that only a few people could know God well. And only a very few people endowed with certain gifts and certain physical stamina could know union with God. This became a big word, and for a thousand years, this was the deeper Christian life built on the mindset of Greek mysticism. The Christian faith even took over the term “Christian mystics” to distinguish between Greek mystics, and let me tell you something, some of those people were some of the finest believers that ever lived, but they had some of the most screwed up literature that you could ever hope to get your hands on. You single brothers who feel you’ve got to go read these people’s stuff, go read it, and then you’re going to need a good Christian psychiatrist to get your head undone, because these people, some of them, had some really profound experiences with Christ, and it’s brackish water, out of it flows sweet and sour, and that which is Christian, you can see it. It was something really real, but here’s all this stuff that goes with it. And invariably, it is written on the concept of planes that you must pass through in order to reach…maybe I should do it this way (reaches lower), the deeper Christian life.

Are you following me? Is it making sense? Alright, wonderful. Barbara? Alright. Well, that’s still followed today in the Roman Catholic Church. I don’t even know what it’s all about, but I can tell you 2 or 3 things. I can tell you 3 steps I know of. Well, first there’s conversion. So, there are four. Another one is meditation, and another one is contemplation, and the final one is union, but boy, they got a zillion others stuck in here. Everybody who’s a deep, profound Roman Catholic varies the version a little. I do not know what meditation is, and I go on record, and I want you to go tell anybody and everybody, I haven’t the foggiest idea of what it is, I’ve never done it in my life, not for one second that I know of. Then there is contemplation, and nobody knows what contemplation is. All we know is it takes about 30 years to get there, and there are only two or three people in a generation or a century or whatever, just a handful of people who arrive at this, maybe a few hundred. And then some of these people experience union with God, whatever that is, and this is the desire of all religious single brothers. Whatever happened to the New Testament? Gone, lost.

Where are we today? Well, you know, I have to say this, and with all of the problems that little lady had, I don’t think we can really appreciate the fact that when Jean Guyon wrote that little book, A Short…do you get the point…A short…that was a revolution. A short. She wrote a book entitled “A Short and Simple Method of Prayer.” You don’t know what that woman was saying. She was saying, “You don’t have to have 40 years at this. It can be short, and it can be simple. It can be short, and it can’t be simple.” And then her opening words were, “It’s for everybody.” It’s no wonder they put her in the Bastille. And you know something? What she presented has probably never been improved on…until this week. Till this week. It was a very wonderful little thing she offered. It was very simple, very Christian, and very Christ-centered, and very gospel-centered. It was a wonderful little idea that had changed her life, and she was sharing it, and she got into a lot of trouble for doing so.

A lot of what she writes is very Catholic, and a lot of it is just really funny, but when she wrote that little book, most of what she said was just right on. Well, she influenced Protestants a lot more than she influenced Catholics. But we have to ask the question: where are we today in return to that first-century mindset and experience? Well, we have to appreciate Martin Luther. I mean, by that, we have to understand him.

How long have I been talking? Alright, I’ll make this real quick. Martin Luther was a monk who had gone through all of this. He did this. He lay on a cold slab of concrete or stone and prayed for days without food or water, and he was trying to get past meditation, and he wasn’t even sure he was into meditation. And all he knew was he was simple. So, we finally became Protestant, began protesting all this, he made a statement, and I have read it: we’re not going to have any of this; it’s not going to be in this meditation, contemplation, and all this Aristotelian stuff. It’s really funny how much he came out against Aristotle. It’s paradoxical because he was one of the greatest followers of Aristotle who ever lived. Now, does anybody know why I can make that statement unequivocal? One of the greatest followers of Aristotle who ever lived. Do you not know? Because he was an Augustinian monk who taught Augustinian theology in Wittenberg, and Augustine was 100% the son and disciple of Aristotle. Somewhere or other, Martin Luther never got the point, because he thought so highly of Augustine.

Well, you have to appreciate what Luther was up against. He was up against a dark world where ignorance abounded, where a thousand years there’d been very little literacy, even, very little writing. People were superstitious more than they were anything else. There was as much darkness and superstition as there was the Christian faith. People had their… everything… the Druid religions, just plain old animistic superstition, pervaded Europe at that time. Tetzel and his indulgences, all of this, buying their way out of purgatory, and Luther felt it was important that people understand the Bible. Wittingly or unwittingly, he set the Protestant faith on a course of intellectualism. He felt that if we would train our children, teach them to understand the Bible, and drill them in the schools, they would understand salvation, understand the Lord, and be a nation of saved people because we would all be just trained up from childhood. Boy, you don’t know how intellectualism and the Bible can turn people off.

I always think of this little kid down in Austria. There he is: he grew up in a Lutheran church in this little town, was a choir boy, went to church, went through the whole catechism, quoted it, and he grew up to be Adolf Hitler. If anybody ever thinks that going to Sunday school is going to change your kids, you just need to go to Europe and see the state church and complete control of the educational system, where every kid can sit down by the time he’s in the 7th grade and write a profound dissertation on soteriology. And you say, I don’t know what soteriology means. Well, that 7th grader does. What is soteriology? It is the theology of salvation, and they can spell it out to you.

Intellectualism. Protestantism: it cannot be understood apart from intellectualism. It is an intellectual exercise. And that’s where the deeper Christian life kind of never had a prayer, never got a chance. You and I owe a lot… boy, do we owe a lot… to John Wesley. John Wesley came and brought into the Christian faith, through much persecution… Do you know that man averaged preaching over 3 times a day for 50 years, 7 days a week? And that didn’t include the army of tens of thousands of men he set out preaching all over the world, all over the Western world. And you know what they were hammering at? One simple thing. It’s because they had had it and been so profound; they were shocked. Do you know what it was? What were they hammering at? Salvation is an experience for adults: first, that it’s an experience, and second, that it’s not a thing that happens to babies. Then it has to happen to an adult. He brought in evangelical, the evangelical gospel of salvation. He brought in “born again.” That’s what he brought in. And he brought in the only Christian experience we got. And I underlined the word experience. He brought in the experience of salvation, and that’s where the deep Christian life is today. It’s stuck in salvation. If you don’t believe that, I would admonish you to join the church I belong to. I am a Southern Baptist. You go to one of my denominations or churches, and you’ll hear us preaching until the hair is down in our faces and the water pouring out of our shoes. Salvation. Everybody gets revved up when someone gets saved. That’s our experience: getting revved up about somebody else getting saved. And that’s the two Christian experiences, getting saved and getting excited about somebody getting saved, and for most, that is the deeper Christian life. That’s it in most of evangelical Christendom and has been since the days of John Wesley; that is the end of the deeper Christian life today.

There are a few little scraps I’ll throw in. In the last century, Ruth Paxton wrote a book entitled “The River of Life,” and someone whose name we don’t know (Hannah Whitall Smith) wrote “The Secret of a Happy Christian.” Then there’s something else by an unknown Christian, Hannah Whitall Smith, Ruth Paxton, and then an unknown Christian who wrote something.

I think the Brethren, the Plymouth Brethren in Ireland and England during the 1820s and 30s, had started out in that direction, and then they got sidetracked on what all British people get sidetracked, and that’s preaching. They are preachers. They are pulpiteers, and it became a preaching mission, preaching the New Testament. And, of course, salvation got in there. Boy, you talk about an intellectual movement, and you tell a Brethren that he’d corrode on the spot, but it is, it is, you know, positional truth. This is your position in Christ, and you have to have faith in your position in Christ, and the deeper Christian life today, as little as it is, is mostly the revealing, the big secret of positional truth. That’s what you get in these wonderful, glorious Bible conferences out here. I’d like to say a kind word at this moment: hang positional truth. I don’t want positional truth. I want what my Lord had; I want reality. Aha, reality was what you want, Gene? Then we have something to sell here at the back of the room. Gene, we’ve got something you haven’t heard of. We got the ultimate end, the panacea of all things. Right this way, Gene. Step right up, boy. We’ve got it. We’ve got the thing you need: just come right over here and get down on your knees and speak in tongues. And that’s the other big deal in the Christian faith.

John Wesley gave us salvation, and then there came positional truth, and then there came this thing of speaking in tongues. Now, bless you, Pentecostals and Charismatics, forgive me, but boy, that’s a very small drink of water. Now you may think that’s a big drink of water, but you’ve never had a big drink of water. And I’ll tell you, I thank God that there is speaking in tongues, because if there weren’t speaking in tongues, there would be virtually no experiential Christianity today. I mean, there’s this dry prayer, there’s this dry read your Bible, and buster, you better obey it. I’m not against reading your Bible, but I want you to know that when you read your Bible with your brain, you’re no better off than a Pharisee, except that you’re saved.