Starving Britain
Is the church
suffering a famine of hearing
the words of the
Lord, asks JON GARVEY
THERE HAS BEEN
a growing concern recently within the British evangelical
community, and particularly amongst thoughtful Charismatics, about the
place of the Bible in today’s churches. Prophecy Today drew
particular attention to this matter by two articles in the
September/October edition.
Clifford Hill’s editorial endorsed the North American
Convocation on Revival in calling for a return to a more biblical and
theological gospel. They have resolved to ‘become more theologically
serious, and to preach and teach more accurately and courageously the
whole counsel of God, especially those great doctrines which our Father
has chosen to bless in past seasons of lasting revival’.
His words were echoed in a letter from Charles de Lacy: ‘It
was through the preaching of doctrinal truths and, in the process, making
demands upon the congregation, that revival came to the church...’
I am sure many readers would agree with the desire to see a
more prominent place for God’s written word, but the ‘spurning of our
biblical heritage’, to use Dr Hill’s phrase, is so widespread that I fear
some readers may simply be unaware of what all the fuss is about.
There is a danger that the appeal to go ‘back to the Bible’
may just be seen as the latest in a long line of ways to give the Church
an instant ‘fix’. Recently we have had the ‘Toronto
blessing’. Prior to that were the ‘Kansas City prophets’ and ‘signs and
wonders’, and even before that ‘spiritual warfare’, ‘deliverance
ministry’, ‘the power of praise’ and various other phenomena spawned
within the Charismatic movement. It is only when one groups all these
together that one realises these ‘movements of the Spirit’ bear a
remarkable resemblance to the fashions arid fads found in the world of
music or clothes. The phrase ‘God is doing a new thing’ (Isaiah 43.19 -
look it up!) seems to be used to mean ‘God has a great new idea’, which
trivialises the ‘God who never changes’ in a way almost blasphemous.
The common feature of these trends is that they all require
very little effort on the part of believers, apart from an openness to the
particular phenomenon in question. If we are only receptive to what God is
doing, we are repeatedly told, then revival will come, souls will be
saved, lives will be changed and, in some views at least, Christ will
return forthwith.
In one sense that is very true. The glory of the Gospel is
that God, through the work of Christ and the ministry of the Holy Spirit,
is the sole author of everything that salvation brings. We can add nothing
to it by our efforts. But that is a far cry from saying that the fruits of
the Gospel can come instantly and automatically, which has been the
thrust of so much teaching in the last thirty years.
I fear that the churches have become so entrenched in such
thinking that ‘reformation of doctrine’ will be seen by many as no more
than a move towards teaching based on a verse from the Bible, rather than
on somebody’s ‘picture’ of a hot-air balloon, or looking at a
meditation-stone, or whatever. But that, unfortunately, is not what such
reformation is about, and very few churches are in any position even to
make a start on what is actually required.
If we look at what lay behind the work of the reformers of
old, at whatever period, we find a very different spirituality from what
is seen today. Whether we look at the very earliest like John Wycliffe or
John Huss, or at the sixteenth century reformers like Martin Luther, John
Calvin and the rest, or at the seventeenth century saints like Richard
Baxter, John Owen and Blaise Pascal, or at the eighteenth century
revivalists like George Whitefield, the Wesleys and Jonathan Edwards, or
even at preachers like Charles Spurgeon in the last century, then one
characteristic is common to all.
That characteristic is
an unquenchable zeal for the arduous labour of understanding and applying
the deep truths of the word of God. All these men, filled with God’s
Spirit and deeply in love with Christ, spent their lives in rigorous study
of theological doctrine before they would dare teach it to others.
They read the Scriptures in their original languages, so as
to be able to refute the traditional interpretations given by the Roman
church. They were totally familiar with the writings of the Church
Fathers, the Medieval Scholastic theologians, and their own
contemporaries, so that they could both benefit from what the Spirit had
taught others and avoid repeating old errors. They recognised the
importance of difficult doctrines like original sin, atonement and
election and made sure that their own teaching did not ignore or
contradict them.
How many of our teachers today have begun to consider these
truths, on which the Reformation was built? How many have even read the
works of the reformers themselves? Martin Luther is apparently only
remembered as an anti-semitic bigot. John Calvin is dismissed as the man
who invented predestination. The Puritans, who did more to bring
Spirit-filled Christianity to
England
than we can imagine, are held up by Christians as an example to avoid. As
for the Church Fathers, their works are no more familiar, even to those
with theological training, than those of Father Christmas.
As Clifford Hill says, ‘the key to revival lies in our own
repentance’. But even repentance, dare I say it, is seen by our
superficial age as a single key to unlock the door to every kind of
blessing. And yet when Luther nailed his famous 95 theses to the door at
Wittenburg, thus lighting the fuse of the Reformation, the very first
words read: ‘When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ says repent, he means
that the whole life of believers upon earth should be a constant and
perpetual repentance’.
And in the same way, when Christ tells us to read the
Scriptures, he means that our whole lives should be spent in grappling
with them as the very words of God; and especially so if we presume to
call ourselves leaders in the Church.
Paradoxically, it has never been easier to study Scripture
seriously. Virtually every Christian is educated to GCSE level - that has
not been so in any other age. And yet most of us today would hesitate even
to open books that were studied carefully by semi-illiterates in the past;
we would rather listen to cassettes containing ‘teaching’ with little or
no reference to biblical truths.
Study guides and commentaries on the Bible are easily
available for believers of every intellectual level. And yet many of us
never do more than read daily devotional notes.
There are more Bible Schools open than ever before - though
admittedly not all of the same quality - and even for those leaders who
have missed the opportunity for full-time study, there are many
correspondence courses available. But sadly, there are too many
church-leaders who stopped studying when they left college, apparently
believing that the Spirit is somehow quenched by the drinking in of his
word!
God is calling on his church to repent, is he not? But
repentance means a change of mind and a change of direction. A turning
away from something and towards something else. Are we prepared, then, to
make our repentance more than just a confession of sin? Are we prepared to
turn away from faith without theology and teaching which pays only
lip-service to the Bible? Are we prepared for the continuing commitment
of getting to grips with the Scriptural truths for which our spiritual
forbears laboured and died?
For the sake of God’s kingdom in
Britain, I pray that we
are.
 Jon Garvey is a
doctor in Chelmsford, Essex, and an elder at Danbury Mission Evangelical
Church.
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