The Intimidation Factor. Charles Redfern

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СКАЧАТЬ destined for death; instead of living in the freedom of God’s grace, we are now captive to Satan’s kingdom.

      Salvation history

      I believe that God, in His infinite mercy and kindness, did not neglect his rule over the Earth. Instead, he continued to uphold the Earth while He began a process that would bring creation back into a proper relationship with himself. In order to bring redemption, God established covenants that revealed his grace. God established a covenant with Abraham, who, through his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob, would be the forefather of the people of Israel. This nation became enslaved in Egypt but was then freed by God through a covenant with Moses. God gave Moses His law. That law convicts human beings of their sin and shows God’s righteousness. It shows how we can come to Christ for our salvation.

      God wanted to rule Israel directly. The nation was not meant to have a king. However, God did establish a monarchy upon the nation’s request. The first king was known as Saul, but he disobeyed God and the rule of Israel was not passed through his line. Instead, David became king and God covenanted with him, promising that his descendant would restore God’s reign as the Messiah.

      I believe that God sent His only Son, Jesus, conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, fully God and fully human in one person, into the world as the fulfillment of His own covenants with Israel. Jesus was God’s Messiah, or anointed one, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to launch God’s kingdom reign on the Earth. He overpowered Satan by resisting temptation, casting out demons, healing the sick, raising the dead, teaching the good news of the kingdom’s arrival, and bringing compassion and salvation to the lost. He formed a community that would become known as The Church, which would serve as the instrument of God’s kingdom.

      Jesus paid the penalty for our sins by dying on the cross, meeting the justice required by the law so that his followers would experience God’s mercy. He rose again on the third day in victory over death. Christ disarmed Satan, fulfilled God’s covenants with Israel’s forefathers, and now stands as the eternal king, bringing about salvation throughout the Earth, culminating in his return.

      After Jesus ascended into heaven, God poured out the Holy Spirit onto his church, baptizing its people and releasing his gifts for the purpose of ministry. The Spirit sanctifies us as we yield to him; brings us into intimacy with God; functions as a deposit guaranteeing our salvation; brings about a life leading to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self control; and grants us his varied gifts for serving others. I believe in the present-day ministry of the Holy Spirit and the exercise of all the gifts as they are described in the Bible. The Spirit indwells every believer and functions as our abiding helper, teacher, guide, and advocate.

      The Bible

      I believe that the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments were written by human authors and inspired by the Holy Spirit. I affirm their truthfulness, accuracy, sufficiency, and authority. They are the only infallible and inerrant rule of faith and of practice.

      The Church

      I believe in the one holy, universal Church, which is known as both the Body and Bride of Christ, headed by Christ Himself. The Holy Spirit regenerates all who repent of their sins and confess Jesus as their lord and savior. The Church functions as the agent of God’s invading kingdom, bringing people to Christ through the preaching of the Gospel, the performance of his deeds, and the display of his compassion and love. The Church is meant to reach out to and advocate the cause of the desperate and needy and promulgates the sound stewardship of God’s Earth. Furthermore, the Church is God’s agent in bringing people into deeper, more profound intimacy with Him.

      The Church has celebrated two ordinances, sometimes described as sacraments, throughout its history. The sacrament of baptism signifies our death to our former life and our resurrection in Christ. Communion, also known as the Lord’s Supper, recalls the all-important day when Christ shed his blood on the cross. The eating of the bread and the drinking of the fruit of the vine illuminates our union with his death to sin. All believers are welcome to participate in both ceremonies.

      The End Times

      I believe that God’s kingdom reign was inaugurated in the ministry of Christ and that it continues in the current-day ministry of the Holy Spirit through God’s body and bride, the Church. This reign will be consummated in the physical, visible, and victorious return of Christ, when he will establish his kingdom rule forever. There will be a general resurrection of the dead, both the saved and the lost. Those that are saved will be resurrected into life and those that are lost will be resurrected into eternal alienation from God. There will be a new Heaven and a new Earth, in which God’s love and righteousness dwells forever. God will “wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

      1. Block, “Evangelicals, Heresy, and Scripture Alone,” First Things, 10/4/2016; Arakaki, “Evangelicalism Falling to Pieces?” Orthodox Reformed Bridge, 10/20/2016; The State of American Theology Study, 2016, commissioned by Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research.

      2. Mumford, “Package-Deal Ethics,” The Hedgehog Review, Fall, 2017.

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      From Evangelicalism’s Height to its Depths

      One Man’s Journey

      I blame my parents—and the church that wooed me to Christ. Neither prepared me for the bully onslaught. Maybe Mom devastated me once with an ill-timed frown and my opera-buff father played his music too loud; but, otherwise, our home was filled with hugs and laughter. The church, which I discovered in my teens, was the epitome of love and integrity. How was I to know that the big bad world was filled with stress-suckling tyrants? And who knew that evangelicals would morph into a tribe of partisan pit bulls?

      I was reared in the Sunday morning religion of the ‘50’s and ‘60’s: Dress up the kids until they itch and hush them during dirge-like hymns and the ten-minute sermon. It was, in H. Richard Niebuhr’s words, a religion in which “a God without wrath brought men [and women] without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” Imagine my shock when I met the Christ of the New Testament: God lived a human life, died for our sin, reigned victorious over death at his resurrection, and shares that victory with his followers in a sheer act of grace.

      I discovered the real Christ in high school after my family’s final move (I was born in Minnesota in 1956, moved to California in 1960, then to New Jersey in 1969 and to Connecticut in 1972). I joined a group of teens who prayed before first-period classes and huddled in Tuesday evening Bible studies at the parsonage of a local Baptist church. My new friends were delightfully weird. They never swore or bad-mouthed each other or told dirty jokes—and they were hilarious, a veritable fit. True, they were fundamentalists (they strode great strides to disprove evolution), but they didn’t condemn everyone. We were all emulating our mentor, Rich Ainsworth, a 25-year-old graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, the hub for Dispensationalism—a theology popularized by John Nelson Darby (1800–1882) and Cyrus I. Scofield (1843–1921) and which segments history into distinct phases culminating in a climactic “Rapture,” when the faithful will be snatched up before a Great Tribulation and Christ’s Second Coming. The Left Behind series dramatizes Dispensationalism’s angle. Rich did not fit the Dispensationalist rap of grim preachers condemning an apostate church. Nor did he denounce tongue-speaking Pentecostals, who embraced the contemporary movement of the Holy Spirit and the application of God’s gifts. He disagreed with them (most Dispensationalists are cessationists: СКАЧАТЬ