Two New Books Forthcoming from VOMK (Introduction to Preparing for the Underground Church, Part VII)

Posted on March 21, 2017 by Pastor Foley

(Part VII of VII of Pastor Foley’s introductory essay to Rev. Richard Wurmbrand’s Preparing for the Underground Church. To order a print or electronic copy of the bilingual Korean/English edition of Preparing for the Underground Church, including Pastor Foley’s introductory essay and a foreword by Voice of the Martyrs historian Merv Knight, visit Amazon or click here to visit the bookstore page on our website. For Part I of Pastor Foley’s introductory essay , click here.) 

 

What is most challenging and unprecedented about our situation [as Christians in the West as the sexual revolution pummels the church] is that in the past, when persecution came, the church could return to its underground roots of family.

As can be seen in Rev. Wurmbrand’s “Preparing for the Underground Church” essay, the church could very naturally meet among households, which Christianity has always considered the “first church” of the faith anyway.[1] As Radner notes, family is both “the central basis for metaphors of spiritual formation” as well as “the actual realm of spiritual formation’s enactment.”[2] It is where traditions are passed on, especially, as del Noce points out, “ the idea of indissoluble monogamous marriage and other ideas related to it (modesty, purity, continence),”[3] as well as sustaining Christian notions of chastity, religious singleness, and friendship.

But family is precisely what has been uprooted by the sexual revolution. Thus, the second and third volumes of this series will address the habilitation of Christianity’s “first church,” the family, in the context of preparing for the underground church.

  • Volume 2, “Planting the Underground Church,” to be published in April 2017 as the Lord permits, is a practical guide to how underground churches are built “from the ground of family up” rather than “from the pulpit down.”
  • Volume 3, “Living in the Underground Church,” to be published in November 2017 as the Lord permits, is a set of discipleship tools and hermeneutics from church tradition to equip Christians for hearing and doing the word in the context of the underground church. Our prayer, as always, is that we contribute nothing new to Christian theology.

And indeed, that is why we turn now [Editor’s note: in the book itself] to an essay written nearly four decades ago [Rev. Wurmbrand’s “Preparing for the Underground Church”] to learn that nothing we are presently facing is, in Christian terms, new at all.

For in all times and places, including here in South Korea, Christians must be ready to preach, pray, or die at a moment’s notice.

 

[1] See 1 Timothy 3:1-5.

[2] Ephraim Radner. 2016. A Time to Keep: Theology, Mortality, and the Shape of a Human Life. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, Loc. 2097.

[3] Augusto del Noce, 2015. The Crisis of Modernity. Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queen’s University Press, p. 161.

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Is Christ Unreasonable?

Posted on March 9, 2017 by Editor

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Matthew 5:38-48

Last time we learned about seven steps that we should take when reading the gospel:

1) Pray

2) Ask “What Does this Reveal About the Character of God?”

3) Ask “What is the Context?”

4) Ask “How Does the Nicene Creed Shed Light On this Passage?”

5) Ask “What Action Does God Take In This Passage Toward Others?”

6) Ask “What Action Does God Call Me to Take Toward Others?”

7) Ask “What Actions Will I Take?”

But why are these steps so important? Why should we follow them? Do they actually make a difference in reading the Bible?

Let’s do an experiment to find out.

First, we’ll read Matthew 5:38-48 without these questions. Then we’ll apply the questions to the scripture passage. My hypothesis is that applying these questions will change the way we read the scripture. What do you think?

When we read this scripture without asking these questions (or asking these questions incorrectly) we often come away with a list of commands:

“Do not resist the one who is evil” (Matthew 5:39)

“If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:39)

“If anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well” (Matthew 5:40)

“If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles” (Matthew 5:41)

“Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you” (Matthew 5:42)

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44)

By the time we have read this, we have become incredulous. We want to be able to do these things, but they seem impossible! After all, if we “do not resist the one who is evil” won’t we be taken advantage of? What Christ is calling us to do is unfair and unreasonable!

When pastors say, “Jesus doesn’t actually want us to do these things; he’s just proving how helpless we are without him,” we full-heartedly agree. This makes sense to us.

But if we begin by asking “what does this scripture passage say about the character of God?” the scripture begins to look very different. We are still called to follow Christ’s instructions, but these instructions become a reaction to God’s character.

Christ tells us that we are to do all of these things so that we “may be sons of [our] Father who is in heaven.” What is our Father like? “He makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” When we “turn the other cheek” and “go two miles,” we are not sacrificing our well-being to earn God’s approval; we are imitating what our Father has already done and continues to do.

A Bible passage is always more than a series of do’s and don’ts. It fits inside of a context, and that context is key to showing that do’s and don’ts exist in the first place. In the case of this passage, the do’s and don’ts for human beings fit into the wider context of God’s character. It turns out that this is not primarily a passage about us at all, but instead about God.

In Matthew 5:48, for example, Jesus says, “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” When we hear perfect, we think of someone who has never done wrong.  While this is true—God has never done wrong—this is not the correct meaning for “perfect” in this passage.

The actual Greek word used here is, “τέλειοι,” meaning “to reach its end” or “to be complete.” In other words, God is like a flower in full bloom—he is fully mature and cannot possibly become any more perfect.

What does this perfection look like? It looks like treating all people the same—regardless of whether they do right or wrong. Whatever God is met with, he responds to in kindness. God…

…does not resist the one who is evil.

…turns the other cheek when he is slapped on one cheek.

…lets the one who sues him for his shirt have his cloak as well.

…walks two miles with the man who forces him to walk one mile.

…gives to the one who begs from him, and does not refuse the one who would borrow from him.

…loves his enemies and prays for those who persecute him

How do we know he does this? Because Christ, himself, shows us this.

These actions all begin with God—through Jesus—and we follow these actions so that we might be children of our Father. Jesus showed us what we would be like if we were not born into sin. When he died on the cross, he showed us what it truly means to be human.

“Okay,” we think. “But I’d never be able to do that.”

If that’s the case, this scripture brings us good news. When Jesus says we are called to be perfect, he means that it is time to start growing up. We do not have to act like children forever. When we slap people who slap us, when we turn away from the people who beg of us, when we slander our enemies, we are being childish. God is calling us to grow up in this passage.

When Christ died on the cross, he did not only forgive us; he gave us the grace to help us grow up fully and become like him.

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How Should I Read the Bible?

Posted on March 9, 2017 by Editor

To watch other Voice of the Martyrs videos, visit the Voice of the Martyrs Video Page!

If we try to read the Bible in the same way that we read any other book, we will quickly become overwhelmed. After all, the Bible does not run from beginning to end. It starts, restarts, and goes sideways. Sometimes it even seems to contradict itself! Despite our confusion, many of us know that we should be reading the Bible more. Others of us are drawn to the Bible out of a genuine curiosity. This being the case, how can we read the Bible without being overwhelmed by it?

Perhaps we could try reading the Bible in the same way that the church has read it for most of church history; a way of reading the Bible that developed long before bible colleges or seminaries were ever built:

1) Pray: The Bible is the living word of God. Through the Bible, God speaks to us. If we think we can pick up the Bible, read it, and completely understand it without praying, we are being prideful. By praying, we show God that we need him to explain his word to us—and if there’s one thing the modern abundance in heresy has revealed, it’s that we are completely incapable of reading scripture without him.

2) Ask “What Does this Reveal About the Character of God?”: Do we think that the Bible primarily directs us to the actions we should take? Do we think its purpose is to warn us of the consequences of those actions? If so, we will be confused when we read the Bible.

3) Ask “What is the Context?”: While this question may intimidate any Christian who has never gone to seminary, it is actually quite simple. This question asks:

Who is speaking?

Whom are they speaking to?

Where are they speaking?

What happened before this scripture? What happened after?

Are there any other scriptures related to this scripture?

Even if we haven’t finished reading through the entire Bible—or if we don’t know our Hittites from our Hivites—we can still answer this question. The scripture passage, itself, will answer the first three questions. As we continue to read the Bible, we can build up a repertoire of scripture by which we can answer the last two questions.

4) Ask “How Does the Nicene Creed Shed Light On This Passage?”: Unfortunately, the word “creed” has been known to cause tension in the Christian community. Some of us fear that creeds and liturgies may take the life out of worship or cripple spiritual growth.

“God didn’t give people the creed; he gave them the scripture,” we may argue. “The creed was created by human beings!”

But by saying this, we overlook that every word in the creed was carefully chosen by the council of Nicaea. And the council of Nicaea were not merely respected by their own community. Almost every member of this council had been persecuted for their faith long before Christianity had been promoted by Constantine. These Christians were so invested in their faith that they had sacrificed their well-being to protect it. Therefore, every phrase—every word—in the Nicene Creed carefully correlates to dozens of scriptural sources. This is why the Nicene Creed is the profession of faith that has been believed by Christians in every country at every point in time.

If we wished to be crude, we might say that the Nicene Creed is like the SparkNotes version of the Bible.

Everything you need to know about the Bible—all the main themes, the important characters, the key facts—are included in the Nicene Creed. The creed, then, acts as a summary of the Bible. Through this summary, we are able to view the Bible as a whole—not only as a collection of small parts. This is what makes the Nicene Creed essential to reading scripture: the creed compares the narrow focus of the particular scripture passage we are reading to the overall Bible, allowing us to forgo our own biases and assumptions in favor of the Biblical truth.

In other words, the Nicene Creed allows us to see both the forest and the trees.

5) Ask “What Action Does God Take In This Passage Toward Others?”: Although this question appears to be the most self-evident, it is often actually the most difficult to answer. This is because this question doesn’t ask what we think God should have done, what we think he did, or what we assumed he did—it asks what God actually did.

We must read each passage carefully, paying special attention to the verbs. Whenever I read through the Bible, I highlight what God says and does. By doing this, I avoid accidentally conjuring up actions that God never took.

6) Ask “What Action Does God Call Me to Take Toward Others?”: It is very important to note the order of five and six. Sometimes, we think that our action is the most important action; that we act first and then God responds to our action. But the Bible teaches the reverse: God acts and we are called to respond. In fact, the Bible often argues that sin is actually a result of our acting first, rather than responding to God.

“But,” we might argue, “I’ve never seen God act. How could I possibly respond to him?”

Of course we haven’t seen God act. Sin acts as a spiritual cataract, blinding us from the obvious truths of the world. When God acts, sin blinds us from seeing his actions. Because sin keeps us from truly seeing the world, we must trust the Bible to guide us.

7) Ask “What Actions Will I Take?”: When the Bible tells us that we are expected to respond to God’s actions, it is not making a theoretical claim. We are called to mirror God’s image into the world and that means that we must take action.

After reading about what God does for us, we must then respond in our own lives. Knowing what God has done for us, what will we do unto others?

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