Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth Part II
The Mandates of Matthew 25
1. Three Powerful Parables
When Jesus had finished His prophetic discourse in answer to the disciples’ questions in Matthew 24, He then gave a series of Parables. By the context, these Parables must be understood to be about being ready for the Second Coming. We must remember as we approach these Parables that nothing in the circumstances is to be taken literally. Parables are stories that use earthly situations to illustrate heavenly principles. The coming of the bridegroom is not literal, that is, it is not the Wedding Feast of the Lamb that the foolish virgins are locked out of. There are, most obviously, no literal "talents" [1] . It is Christians, of course, who are being judged, not literal sheep and goats. But the intent of each of the Parables must not only be taken literally, but taken very seriously as well. These are mandates of Christian performance such that if we do not obey them we will absolutely not be ready for the Great Tribulation. Unfortunately, this is true even if we have been practicing the Three Switches. The Three Switches are basic spiritual disciplines. The Mandates of Matthew 25 , especially in the Second and Third parables, are about our overt behavior as Christians. Behavior that other people can see. It is behavior that effects the Church as a whole.
Before He got into the three main Parables, He gave another one that is frequently overlooked by those who study the two chapters. At the end of Matthew 24, in verses 43-51, He gave a brief but powerful Parable, though it is not entirely a Parable, in which He contrasted the fate of the faithful versus the unfaithful servants. The point that must be remembered by any Christian who reads this is that the unsaved are not included among the servants in this Parable, nor are they in the Three. All the people being considered in these Parables are Christians. The wise and foolish virgins are all Christians. All the of the master’s servants are Christians. Yes, even the goats at least consider themselves Christians. Here we find the greatest Scriptural expression of the principle that God places demands on Christians in terms of their performance in this life, and is stricter in punishing their failure to perform than He is, in this life at least, in punishing the unsaved.
I know that this idea is contrary to much of what is preached in contemporary churches, but it is what the Bible clearly shows. As a general rule, sins of omission by Christians are worse in God’s sight than sins of commission by Christians. There are standards of performance that God requires of us.
In this brief teaching, Jesus says that the faithful servant gets rewarded by being made ruler over all the master’s goods. Which is to say, the faithful servant will reign with Christ. The unfaithful servant is cut in two. Just what this may mean symbolically, I cannot say, but it does look like he loses his salvation. However, this may be a case of emphasizing by exaggeration, a literary form that appears to occur a number of times in the teachings of Jesus; like His telling us to cut off our hands and pluck out our eyes. But whatever happens to the unfaithful servant, it certainly is not good! Here we have another principle that is implied in many places in the New Testament: What makes you truly Christian is as much, if not more, a matter of what you do as it is a matter of what you believe. Like the people in Matthew 7:21-23, you can be convinced you are a Christian but if you aren’t doing what the Lord commands you be dismayed on Judgment Day to find that you are not accepted by the Lord Jesus Christ. And you won’t be ready for the Great Tribulation.
We must look closely at what was wrong with the unfaithful servant and learn from him what not to do. First, he didn’t expect the Lord to come. This is one of the places from which I draw the conclusion that to be ready for the Second Coming, a Christian must first of all really be expecting it. Not to be expecting it is setting yourself up for a terrible surprise, as did the unfaithful servant. It also opens you up to all kinds of other errors. A Christian who is really expecting the Second Coming is going to tend to be more on his toes about really living a life of obedient faith. Especially if he believes in it the way I teach it.
Then we find that the unfaithful servant began to beat his fellow servants. Again, this is exaggeration. But what is clear is that far from being a servant to them (note that the faithful servant was: vss. 45 & 46), the unfaithful servant abused his fellow servants. His behavior toward them was downright injurious. Now understand that as it applies in real life, few Christians ever physically abuse their fellow Christians. But all too often they verbally abuse them, by simply gossiping about them. I have also seen that Christians will abuse other Christians materially, too. [2] Christians abuse other Christians simply by neglecting them socially; leaving them out in the cold in terms of fellowship. And the neglect of Christians by Christians as far as their material needs are concerned is all too common. Overall, Jesus was telling us that in addition to expecting the Second Coming, we must also be diligent about being servants to our fellow Christians. As we shall see, this is where a significant part of the difference must and will be made between those who are ready and those who aren’t. A Christian can be living a life of piety in which he practices the Three Switches, but be so neglectful of the Mandates of Matthew 25 that as far as his fellow Christians are concerned, he’s worthless. If this is true of you, you are in big trouble insofar as being ready for the Tribulation is concerned.
We must also remember that the unfaithful servant engaged in what we would call material self-indulgence and was socializing with the unsaved. This is to say he was guilty of some of the sins we addressed in chapter 3 of the last section. Overall, this person was professing to be a Christian but was living a life that was anything but. No wonder he got such harsh treatment from the Lord. This is a warning to anyone who dares to call himself a Christian and yet who fails to really be obedient.
By contrast, the faithful servant is found doing the work he was given to do when the Lord comes. He is giving the Master’s household "food in due season". Which means he was on the ball about ministering to his fellow Christians. As in the Book of Ecclesiastes, whatever he found to do, he was doing with all his might. He was acting with an attitude of expecting the Lord to return at any moment. But more than that he was faithful. He was diligent and conscientious about obedient. It mattered to him that he be obedient. He was concerned about doing what was right, concerned about doing what he was supposed to do. He was concerned about pleasing his Lord. That’s how we should be.
When we consider these Parables, we must remember that Jesus was addressing His disciples, His closest followers. The context indicates that this teaching was given to them privately on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24: 3). In understanding a statement made in the Scripture, we should always keep it in mind to whom it was addressed. This can help us to discern sound doctrine and prevent us from reaching erroneous conclusions. Jesus was telling His disciples about things that were of concern only to Christians. The unsaved were seldom the concern of the teachings of Jesus. Just as His earthly ministry was focused on the people of Israel (see Matthew 15:24), so His words were focused on Christians. In His most of His teachings, the people who are found wanting on Judgment Day are the Christians who didn’t perform as God intended. As I am doing my best to show, performing as God intended is as essential for being ready for the Second Coming as it is for being ready for death. A Christian who isn’t living as God intended isn’t ready for either. The Christian who is ready gets protection - and wins the crown.
In the next three chapters I am going to go into as much depth as time and space allow to set forth the full meaning of the Mandates of Matthew 25. These Parables are all very well known. Everyone who has ever attended Sunday School for any length of time in any Church that makes any effort to preach the Gospel has heard them, as has any adult who has gone to a Bible - preaching Church for any length of time. They have all been frequently taught, and in fact have been the subject of entire books. Unfortunately, there is much truth in these Parables that has often been missed. A significant part of the reason for this is failure to define key terms in the context of Scripture. What, for example, in the context of the Bible, is the correct symbolic meaning of a "talent"? Most contemporary Christians have an erroneous understanding of this. The same is true of the identity of "the least of these my brethren". If you base your actions on erroneous definitions of these terms, you will be disobeying God while you think you’re being obedient. For many Christians this will make the difference between being ready and not being ready. For some, it will make the difference between Heaven and Hell. In the following chapters, I will define the key terms in these Parables in strict accordance with the Scripture, and base what I say on those definitions.
One thing I must say is that these Parables shed no light on how many Christians will or won’t be ready. In the first Parable, the proportion, if taken literally, is 1 to 1. In the second, it is 2 to 1. In the third, no proportion is given. But as shown in chapter 4 of section 1 of the "Great Tribulation" booklet, it appears that the actual proportion of those who are ready to those who aren’t is smaller than 1 to 1000. Knowing what the odds are should inspire Christians to make all the more effort to be ready. Or maybe I should say, it should scare Christians into it. Believing what I believe about the Great Tribulation is actually doing that to me! Any effort will probably help. Even if you don’t make the grade to get the Seal, the more effort you make, the less you will have to repent of once the Tribulation starts.
2. The Wise and Foolish Virgins
The first Parable of Matthew 25 is one of the best known of the many Parables Jesus taught. It is right up there with the Parable of the Prodigal Son. You all know the story. There are ten virgins waiting for a bridegroom to arrive. As they are waiting, they all fall asleep. (Uh! Oh! Here’s something that most people who have interpreted this Parable have missed.) Even the wise virgins doze off. But then the shout comes. The bridegroom is approaching. They all wake up. But alas, the foolish virgins find that their lamps have gone out for lack of oil. They ask the wise virgins to share some of theirs. The wise virgins refuse, pleading the scarcity of their own supply. (Uh! Oh! The interpreters have missed something here, too.) The foolish virgins have to rush off to buy oil. When they return, apparently with the oil and their lamps now burning, they find the door to the wedding is shut. They call out to the bridegroom and plead for admittance. His response is "I know you not". To which Jesus added the punch line: "Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming".
Now let’s start to take this Parable apart. First, as stated, all the virgins are Christians. Secondly, they all fall asleep. But note: there is a warning before the bridegroom actually appears. When he does come, they are all awake. The trouble is that five are ready and five aren’t. The Bible makes it very clear what their problem is. Their lamps have gone out. They didn’t have enough oil. But notice! Even the wise virgins had none to spare! Now you will remember that in Matthew 5: 14-16, Jesus tells Christians that they are the light of the world. Then He tells them, in so many words, that they shouldn’t conceal their light, but that they should let it be seen. They should set it up high (i.e. on a lampstand). Which is to say, they should be visible witnesses for Christ. Even there, the context indicates that there will be consequences for those who don’t perform as intended. It seems that even the wise virgins weren’t really doing their job. But in this Parable, the foolish virgins have a worse problem than that. No light to shine! They’ve let their lamps go out for lack of oil.
Now how do we get "oil in our lamps" to begin with. We find the answer to that question in Acts 1:8: "But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses...". In other words, the Holy Spirit is the oil that makes the light shine. We also know that elsewhere in the Bible oil is used as a symbol of the Holy Spirit. So the primary failure of the foolish virgins is that they weren’t filled with the Holy Spirit. But notice this: They were able to go out and buy oil! Understand this, though: The "foolish virgins" are Christians, and they do not lose their salvation. If that was the case, they could not "go....to those who sell, and buy....". They manage to get filled with the Holy Spirit after the bridegroom comes. This story, therefore, is a reference to the beginning of the Tribulation.
The fact that they bought it is a reference to the Three Switches. Even after the Tribulation has begun, it still will cost something to get right with the Lord. In fact, probably more than ever. The fact that they had the time to buy the oil is what shows us that this happens at the beginning of the Great Tribulation. Even though the first major catastrophe has happened, there is still opportunity to get right with the Lord and get filled with the Holy Spirit. But when they got back with the oil, they were locked out, which means that even though they were now filled with the Spirit, they were still out in the cold. This means that "foolish virgins" won’t be getting any divine protection, at least not during the First and Second Woes even though they repent. I do believe that all believers will be protected during the Third. But as stated elsewhere, the Seal of the Living God will be given just before the Tribulation starts, that is, just before the collision. For those who aren’t ready, there will be no general protection at least until the Third Woe begins. (I’ll leave God room to make some exceptions – He often does.)
Now looking deeper, we find that all the virgins are asleep. I believe that this is a prophetic reference to the state of the Church through most of the Church Age of Laodecia. I think Jesus is telling us that Christians will become aware that the His Coming is close just before the Tribulation begins. It is possible that I am one of the people who give the warning cry that wakes them up. (And/or it may mean that there will actually be as much as several months warning before the collision.) Whatever the circumstances, they aren’t taken entirely by surprise. Yet even with being awake, there are still foolish virgins with their lamps gone out and the wise have no oil to spare. We must look at what the Bible says about being filled with the Holy Spirit that makes the difference. But we must first understand why the wise virgins are able to be asleep and yet be filled with the Holy Spirit. By the context of the Parable, it appears that their being asleep is basically in reference to expecting the Second Coming. The "wise virgins" are living good Christian lives otherwise, but they just don’t really think that the Second Coming is close. This may well be the state of some overcomers today. The warning cry wakes them up to the fact that the Second Coming is almost upon them. Therefore it won’t be all that much of a surprise when it actually happens. But it still will be terrible for the foolish virgins. In fact, it won’t be pleasant even for those who are ready, it just won’t be so terrible or such a surprise.
Yet you notice that the foolish virgins ask the wise ones for some of their oil, and the wise have none to give. I believe the point is not that the wise virgins are really short of oil, but rather that they are unable to share what they have. The idea is that you can’t be ready for the Tribulation on the strength of another Christian’s faith. In the here and now, there are Christians who try to live their Christian lives on the strength of other Christians’ faith. They are the kind who are always going to pray meetings to be prayed for rather than to do the praying. They are always running to other Christians for advice on problems that they should be able to figure out for themselves. They have questions that they should know the answers to. If their Church is the kind where people go up to the altar to kneel and pray during the service, they are there every service, frequently weeping, and, of course, looking to be prayed for. "Altar crawlers", I call them. The reason for much of that weeping is guilt about the sin in their lives; sin for which they feel conviction but that they are not repenting of. They are looking for comfort, not for cleansing. They want Band-Aids when what they need is radical surgery. The reason they need all that counsel and prayer is that they don’t get into the Word for themselves and they don’t really pray for themselves. And they tend to be disobedient otherwise. If they had a really faithful walk with the Lord, they wouldn’t need all the "spoon feeding" from other Christians. If you are one of these, then understand that if you want to be ready, you must learn to stand on your own feet (on the Lord, of course) as a Christian.
So we find three major points in this Parable. First, you must really be expecting the Second Coming if you want to be ready. Not expecting it sets you up for the big surprise. Second, you must be filled with the Holy Spirit if you want to be ready. Third, you can not wait until the last minute to get filled with the Holy Spirit. You must be working at (remember – it costs us something) being filled and staying filled with the Spirit before you know that the Tribulation is about to begin. You will probably have at least a brief warning that the Tribulation is about to start, but it will already be too late to get ready. All three conditions must be satisfied now, or you’re going to be hurting. You can get filled with the Holy Spirit after the Tribulation begins, (many Christians will) but until the Third Woe it won’t help much. Even then, you will still be hurting if you weren’t ready. See Revelation 7:16. If you aren’t ready, that’s an offhand reference to what is going to happen to you!
Another way of looking at the problem with the Foolish Virgins is to say that they failed to maintain constant spiritual fellowship with God. In I John 1:7, we read, "If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another...". This isn’t about having fellowship with other Christians. It’s about having fellowship with Him! When we are Born Again, we enter into a relationship that is never broken unless we have the misfortune to so totally rebel against God that we lose our salvation. But beyond the spiritual relationship of being God’s children, we must also maintain constant fellowship, or we might say, communication with God. We need this to be able to grow in the Lord and live victorious Christian lives. This fellowship can be broken, by willful sin and/or neglect of the basic spiritual disciplines in the Three Switches. The result of breaking the fellowship is that one is not filled with the Holy Spirit, and therefore is not ready for the Second Coming. We must maintain fellowship with Him!
When Will Jesus Come?
I have written the second booklet of this series, "BABEL RISING!", to show my readers that the Great Tribulation, and of course the Second Coming of Christ, must happen soon. If not, there is never going to be a fulfillment of Second Coming Prophecy that in any way generally resembles Christian expectations. I’m sure that on the point of the Second Coming being near, Christians have been right, even though I believe that much of what has been taught and written about the details is wrong. I also believe that in some ways that Christians have the general idea of what is going to happen right. But one big error that I perceive on that point is that there has been a tendency to expect it too soon. Because of that mistake, many Christians have already lost interest in the subject and are ceasing to believe that it will be anytime soon. So read that booklet, if you haven’t, and you’ll see some reason to believe that it will be soon that you probably haven’t heard before. I realize that saying that there is never going to be a Second Coming that resembles our expectations if it doesn’t happen soon is dangerous. But if you read and understand what I say about where the human race appears to be going in terms of communication, medicine and space travel, I think you’ll agree.
This brings up the question of when exactly it will happen. It is well understood that Jesus told us that we can’t know exactly when. However, there is an argument derived from the tense of the Greek verb that Jesus is quoted as having used for "knows" (Matthew 24:36), to the effect that that verse only applied to people living at that time. There is also a hint in Daniel 12, when related to the Prophesy of the 70 Weeks in Daniel 9, to the effect that at the end it will be possible to figure out when, at least in terms of the approximate year. (I mean to say that I wouldn’t even get sticky about the exact year.) If this is so, then I would guess this much: The Great Tribulation should be over, Jesus should have returned and the Millenium (assuming there is one) should have begun by no later than the year 2030 AD. [3] , or not long thereafter. Note that I don’t say it will happen then, but rather that it should happen some time between now and then. I’m basing this on the idea, which I have had for some time, that the numbers in Daniel 12:11 &12 point to the year of the Second Coming. In the light of things that I know are going on now, I would reach about the same conclusion on the basis of the "Babel Rising!" concept. In that sense, however, I would make the absolute deadline (based on circumstances – not dates) at about 2050 AD, but even then I lean more to the sooner than to the later in the intervening time period. The bottom line is that I think most Christians living today, (1997) especially those under age 50, will probably live to see the Tribulation begin. So BE READY!!!
But most important is being filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus showed us that you can be ready spiritually without expecting the Tribulation (though it will definitely help). Expecting it may be optional, being filled with the Holy Spirit is not. It’s not really an option for Christians under any circumstances. Any Christian who thinks it is, is deceived. We are commanded to be filled with the Holy Spirit. To fail to be filled with the Spirit is living in disobedience.
Is Speaking in Tongues Necessary?
I must interpose something here that I am getting sticky about because I have seen the harm that this false teaching can do in a Christian’s life. I know a pastor who’s marriage broke up over this issue: Do not tell people that they have to speak in tongues to be filled with the Holy Spirit!!! Teaching people that they must can be setting them up for the destruction of their faith, or worse. It is equally wrong and dangerous to try to force a person to speak in tongues. I once knew a teenage girl, who had a severe drug addiction. She was admitted to a Christian drug rehabilitation program. She hadn’t been there very long before a well-meaning but doctrinally off-the-wall counselor tried to force her to speak in tongues. Confused and frightened, she fled from the program. A few months later she died from an O. D. I know that she had really been trying to get her life together. That counselor’s unscriptural action effectively killed that girl! The Bible shows that tongues can happen as a sign of receiving the Holy Spirit. It does not say that it absolutely will happen. On the contrary, the Bible identifies five other things that can happen as a sign that a person has received the Holy Spirit [4] , the most important of which is receiving power to witness that the Christian didn’t have before. See Acts 1:8. Note also that that first manifestation of tongues was related to witnessing. But in I Corinthians 12: 30, Paul asks rhetorically, "Do all speak with tongues?" The answer implied by the context is emphatically "NO!" Note also that the context is talking only about Christians, contrary to what I have heard falsely taught. Not all Christians are supposed to speak in tongues. If a person seeks tongues believing that he has to speak in tongues to be filled with the Spirit, and he doesn’t receive them, it can seriously damage his faith. I’m not talking hypothetically; I know I significant case in point. Again, the victim was an ordained minister! He turned hard-core apostate, vehemently opposed to any teaching about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts, and preaching a liberal, social gospel. You will remember that in the passage mentioned above, a few verses later Paul started talking about love. If there’s something that will absolutely be manifested in the life of anyone who is truly filled with the Holy Spirit, it is the love of Jesus! But not necessarily tongues!
How do you receive the Holy Spirit?
So, if you haven’t already, how do you receive the Holy Spirit? Remember that we are actually commanded to be filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and the Holy Spirit is promised to all believers (John 16:7, Acts 1:8, etc.). More than that, the Bible says that we’re not really Christians if we’re not filled with the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9). But there are Christians who have sought the fullness of the Spirit for years and yet have not received it. I do not claim to be able to tell you how to resolve this problem in every situation, but I can give you some tips on dealing with this problem.
First, you must be really willing to live a life that is committed to Christ. The Holy Spirit and willful sin, even sins of omission, do not keep company. You must have the intention of really being obedient. You must really be willing to renounce all sin and allow Jesus to be the Lord of your life. It has been well said that many Christians are happy to have Jesus as Saviour, but don’t want to know Him as Lord. Do you? Examine yourself before the Lord in prayer on this matter. Be sure that you are in a state of complete repentance. See Lamentations 3:40.
It is well known that you have to pray for the fullness of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is promised to those who do (Luke 11: 13). This may require you to fast and pray. You may have to persist in it for a while. It is also a Scriptural pattern that to receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit you may have to have others, such as pastors and elders who already have the Spirit, lay hands on you and pray for you to receive the Spirit.
I must note here that having yourself "anointed with oil", in the way it is done in most modern Churches in the U.S.A. anyway, probably will not help. This kind of anointing is not really Scriptural and has nothing to do with the way ritual anointing was done in ancient Israel. The only anointing with oil that Christians are told to do is a medicinal anointing, in James 5:14. The Greek word used for "anoint",
aliejw, is the word for anointing with oil as a medical treatment or as a cosmetic. This passage, understood in the context of the times in which it was written, is telling the elders to give the sick Christian the best medical treatment available. See Luke 10:34.Baptism: A Scriptural Prerequisite
There is one other tip I can give you about receiving the fullness of the Holy Spirit, but in doing so, I know I’m opening a bit of a can of worms. If you consider yourself a Christian, and have been seeking the fullness of the Spirit for years and have not received it, I must ask you a very serious question: Are you baptized? And by baptized, I mean in water by full immersion. Preferably done publicly. I’m not going to go into a deep Scriptural argument over this, and I know that God makes exceptions, but I must say this about Baptism: First, anything but full immersion in water is not true Christian Baptism in the Scriptural sense. Secondly, infant baptism doesn’t count. [5] Third, you may not realize it, but the Bible makes Baptism in water a prerequisite for Baptism in the Holy Spirit. As it says in Acts 2:38, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit". This idea of Baptism as a prerequisite for the Baptism in the Holy Spirit is illustrated twice in the Book of Acts, in the case of the Samaritans, Acts 8:16, and the disciples in Ephesus, Acts 19:1-6. Acts also shows two exceptions, but in both cases there was a reason for the exception. One was the newly-saved Saul, in Acts 9:17. He needed to be healed of his blindness. But the first thing he did when he had received the Spirit and had been healed was get baptized before he even ate anything. And that was after a three-day absolute fast! The Second was the case of Cornelius the Roman, his household and friends. In that case, Peter and his companions had to be shown that God would give the Holy Spirit to Gentiles. They were actually somewhat racist in their faith, and it was a shock to them when the Romans started speaking in tongues. But, again, the first thing they did when they heard it happening was get Cornelius and his household and friends baptized.
I had an experience some years ago wherein a young Christian man approached me for counseling. It seems that he was a sincere believer, having accepted Christ some years before. But he was living a defeated, frustrated Christian life. He had been unable to receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. He was unable to overcome the sin in his life. I found that there was no unforgiveness or rebelliousness problems, so it occurred to me to ask him whether he had been baptized. He said, yes, as an infant. I told him that that didn’t count and advised him to get baptized. He did, and the Spirit fell upon him while he was still in the water. His life was transformed. I’ve lost touch with him, but the last I knew he was studying for the ministry. If you haven’t been able to receive the Holy Spirit, and you haven’t really been baptized, try it! Be sure it’s done in a real Christian Church, and be sure it is done by complete immersion. Oh yes, and do it publicly if at all possible. You’ll be obeying God, and God will bless it. Oh yes: Do remember that really getting baptized is something you do only once.
In connection with this, I believe that the common Christian practice of allowing, or even compelling a new convert to go several months or even a year or more after accepting Christ before being baptized is a serious error in practice. I am not the only Christian leader I’ve known who thought so. By Biblical precedent, a new convert should be taught the significance of Baptism as soon as possible after his initial conversions, and then baptized right away. More than that, right after the new believer is baptized, elders of the Church who are truly Spirit-filled should then lay hands on him and pray for him to receive the Holy Spirit. If this was the common practice in the Church, I’m convinced the whole Church would be in much better shape spiritually.
In Romans 6:3-5, Paul relates our being baptized to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The way he puts it indicates that our baptism, as God sees it, is actual participation in Christ's death and resurrection. When we are baptized, we are spiritually dying and being raised from the dead. From God’s point of view, this is not symbolic. It is how He actually sees us. God never tells us to perform meaningless rituals. If we are told that "he who believes and is baptized will be saved..." (Mark 16:16), there is a reason for it.
I must admit that I know that God does make exceptions to this. If you have read the first booklet of this series, you may remember that I used the term "doctrinal legalist" for a Christian who won’t accept another person as a Christian if he disagrees with him on doctrinal matters. Well, I’ve observed long since that God is not a doctrinal legalist. He will make exceptions to His own rules on some matters to meet needs and to compensate for errors in doctrine that Christians have been taught. Thus He will sometimes fill people with the Holy Spirit when they haven’t been baptized, or were baptized in an unscriptural way. I am a case in point, I received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit before I got baptized in water – I was taught to expect it. [6] But I did get baptized later. God makes exceptions, but you shouldn’t expect Him to.
I also want to say that I believe that becoming a Christian is a three-step process, as shown in Acts 2:38: 1) Repentance (that’s when you accept Christ); 2) Water Baptism; and 3) Baptism with the Holy Spirit. In accordance with this passage and Romans 8:9, I believe that a person who hasn’t completed all three steps can’t really be considered Born Again. [7] That’s why I suggested in the first booklet of this series that Christians who think you must speak in tongues to be saved aren’t entirely without Scriptural support. Their error is believing that you will absolutely speak in tongues if you are filled with the Spirit. But about having to be filled with the Holy Spirit, I think they’re right. As Paul said in the passage in Romans referred to above, "Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His". In other words, if you aren’t filled with the Holy Spirit, you aren’t a Christian. I know that this may upset some of my readers, but it is what I understand the Bible to plainly say.
In conclusion, I seriously doubt that you can be ready for the Great Tribulation if you aren’t baptized in both water and the Holy Spirit.
Staying filled with the Holy Spirit
It will not be enough to be once-filled with the Spirit. To be ready, you must stay that way. There has been some good teaching on this subject, like the Campus Crusade concept of spiritual breathing, but there is more required than that. However, with due respect to Bill Bright and company, I think it’s worth explaining this concept for those who haven’t heard it. The idea is based on acknowledging that we all sin from time to time. The problem is, if we stay guilty of sin, we will grieve the Holy Spirit and we won’t be Spirit-filled for very long. So the idea is to make I John 1:9 a rule of constant practice. If you realize that you’ve sinned, say a brief prayer, confess the sin to God, and ask to be forgiven right away. That’s spiritual exhaling. Then remember that you’ve just grieved the Holy Spirit, so pray and ask the Lord to fill you anew with the Spirit. Believe the promise of Luke 11:13. That’s spiritual inhaling. The idea is that, generally speaking, this little discipline will keep you right with the Lord and filled with the Holy Spirit.
In connection with this, you must develop a moment-by-moment sense of the Spirit’s leading and learn to live in an atitude of constant prayer and constant obedience. As Paul said in II Corinthians 10:5, "bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ". That means staying so close to the Lord that you become conscious of even the slightest sinful thought, and reject it right away. Of course, this is one of the reasons why you have to be separate from the world. If you are indulging in the things of the world, as opposed to immersing your mind in the things of God, you won’t be able to do this. You won’t even remember to. But if you set your mind on staying close to the Lord, you will find it easier than you may think. As Paul also said in the same passage, "the weapons of our warfare....are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds". The "strongholds" he was referring to are strongholds of sin in our minds.
In accordance with what was said about forgiveness, you must also be on your toes about not letting any long term anger, resentment, grudges and/or bitterness take root in your heart. The devil knows that if a Christian is really walking a walk of obedient faith, he can’t get to him with a big, direct temptation. So he attacks with little things that seem harmless. One way he does this is to just provoke a little, ungoing annoyance that causes us to slip into resentment without realizing that we’re doing it, and before long we’ve grieved the Holy Spirit away. Then we’re vulnerable to the big temptation. The minor annoyances are the left jabs of minor temptation that set us up for the right hook of a big one. Be very careful to avoid slipping into the smallest, most seemingly trivial kinds of sin. And get right with God immediately if you realize you have. Never wait to repent. Always keep a very short, if any, unrepented sin account with God. In reference to chapter 3 of the first section, you aren’t going to stay filled with the Holy Spirit if you don’t stay separate from the world. If you indulge in the things of the world, you are committing idolatry, and you will grieve the Holy Spirit.
You as a Christian are expecting to spend eternity with the Lord. You know that the world around us will pass away. So forget it. Start living as if you were already in eternity with the Lord. You are!
Don’t Quench The Holy Spirit
Again, don’t quench the Spirit. This is something that needs some definition, but one way to do it is to forbid speaking in tongues. Or be opposed to sign gifts generally. If you look at the phrase, "Quench not the Spirit", in I Thessalonians 5:19, you will see that it is immediately followed, in verse 20, by "Do not despise prophesyings". These two admonitions can be viewed as two ways of saying the same thing. Pardon a little humor: What do you call a church that doesn’t believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit? A "non-profit" organization. Or, in spiritual terms, non-prophet! No gifts = no fruit. If you quench the Spirit by forbidding the sign gifts, or by being personally opposed to them, you will strangle His work of producing the fruit.
I have said that the signs should follow the Christians, and that Christians shouldn’t follow the signs. But there is error the other way too. It is equally, and perhaps just as insidiously, wrong to forbid manifestation of the signs. There must be a balance. All the spiritual gifts, and that means all the miraculous powers, described in the Bible are available for Christians today. As God said in Malachi 3:6, "I am the Lord, I do not change". Neither does He change His ways of doing things. There are times when miracles are needed. But they might not come if Christians don’t have the faith to expect them (see Matthew 13:58). Again, this depends on what Christians are taught. Refusal to accept sign gifts disarms the Christian and the Church.
There is a false teaching that says that all the sign gifts ended with the deaths of the Apostles. By the way, who’s death ended them? St. John died at least 20-30 years later than the last of the others. Did the sign gifts end with his death or one of theirs? Some of those who hold to this error today might be interested in knowing that the idea isn’t new. St. Augustine of Hippo (354-450 AD) believed in it for a while, but in his "Confessions" he admits he was wrong. Actually, this idea is logically fallacious. I once knew an off-the-wall street preacher who was nevertheless quite a Bible scholar in his own twisted way. "Gabriel" (his real first name) had taken this teaching to the logical conclusion that most of those who preach it have never realized: If it is true that the sign gifts ended with the death of the Apostles, so did the Church! That’s what he believed and preached! If the sign gifts did really end with the deaths of the Apostles (or as some say, the assembling of the Bible), Gabriel was right! Part of this error is rooted in believing that the phrase "when that which is perfect has come", in I Corinthians 13:10, is a reference to the Bible. Gabriel used to tell people not to go to any Church, but to go home and read the Bible instead. If this error was true, that would make perfect sense. I’m not saying anything against the Bible, but guess again. Compare the idea that the Bible is "that which is perfect" with I John 3:2, and especially the phrase "it has not been revealed". Now understand this: In the context of I Corinthians 13, Paul was talking about having complete knowledge (see I Corinthians 13:12). The word "perfect", as used in the Bible, means "complete" more than "flawless" – the knowledge in the Bible is flawless but not complete. So here is John talking about something that we won’t know until the Second Coming of Christ! That is what Paul was referring to with the phrase quoted above. That which is perfect has not come yet (It will soon!) so what is imperfect hasn’t passed away yet. God still works miracles! And by the way, since when, by the Bible, are miracles and sign gifts "imperfect"? See James 1:17.
It shouldn’t dismay Christian leaders if they preach a doctrine in which they are "holding the form of godliness but denying its power" (II Timothy 3:5) and they see Christians defecting to the New Age Movement. Or leaving dead Churches for Churches that go overboard with gifts. If you preach a Gospel without power, people will go where they think they’ll find it. But the power is there for us, more than the New Age Movement has to offer, if we have the faith to receive it. Teaching against sign gifts destroys faith. This is especially bad if you are teaching against healing, as one well-known radio teacher, Harold Camping, does. He isn’t just destroying faith, he is robbing Christians of hope. I remember one Sunday years ago when I was sitting in a Church listening to one of the leaders of the denomination preaching on healing. His sermon could have been summed up in these words: "Sure, God heals, but don’t expect Him to." I felt like throwing a hymnbook at him. It’s because of preaching like that that more people don’t get healed. As a person who has received healing (more than once) I know that Jesus still heals. I know that Christians should expect it. Anyone who teaches differently is serving the other guy. Christians should be taught to expect it. That gives them hope.
The Greek word translated "hope" in the New Testament is
elpiV. It does not mean "hope" in the sense of "I hope it doesn’t rain". It means "genuine expectation". Christian hope is really expecting the Lord to do what He promises to do. It is very much related to the idea of believing that "...He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." But Christians will not have hope if they aren’t taught to have it. Shame on those who teach against belief in God’s healing mercy! They should rather teach Christians to believe and stand on God’s promises. All of them!Healing is often the Lord’s "calling card", His way of letting the unsaved know He’s there. I knew a man years ago who, though unsaved, was watching Pat Robertson’s "700 Club" TV show. In the course of the show, Pat said, by "Word of Knowledge", [8] that a man in the TV audience was being healed of a foot problem called "spurs". It was him! By the way, this isn’t a story I heard on TV. The man it happened to told me about it in the course of normal, spontaneous conversation. He still wasn’t saved when he told me, although he was open to the Gospel. He had no motive to invent the story. I’ve said before that Christians shouldn’t follow the signs; that is, we shouldn’t make them the main focus of our Christian lives. But we shouldn’t deny or forbid them either. As Jesus said, if we really believe, the signs will follow us.
To deny or forbid the sign gifts is to quench the Holy Spirit, both in our own lives and in the Church. Have you ever noticed that Churches that totally deny the sign gifts tend to be dead otherwise? (There are exceptions, but they’re rare.) The Churches that forbid and teach against, or just plain don’t believe in, the sign gifts tend to be the Churches that drift into every-increasing apostasy and compromise with the world. To be filled with the Spirit, and stay that way, you have to be open to anything the Lord wants to give you. You have to believe in the power of God and be open to it. This is equivalent to being willing to do anything the Lord leads you to do. Just understand this, though, no way will the Spirit give you, or tell you to do, something that is contrary to the written Word. (Actually, God does sometime make exceptions, but there must be an underlying Scriptural reason why.) If you feel that God is telling you to do something that is contrary to the Scripture, you better be able to see why from the Bible. If not, someone else is doing the leading.
And there are counterfeit signs. The key to telling the difference is that real sign gifts are usually given to meet needs. Counterfeit signs are often just meaningless displays of power. However, a sign gift, such as a healing, that really helps someone is not of God if it leads a person to believe something that isn’t sound doctrine or worship anyone but the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Like healings attributed to the Virgin Mary. See Deuteronomy 13:1-4. From things I’ve observed in my experience of unscriptural healings, I have become convinced of this: Satan will gladly heal a person’s body if he believes that in so doing he will insure the damnation of that person’s soul. And he will heal to steal glory from Jesus. True miracles of God glorify Jesus and only Jesus. "...God has given Him the Name that is above every name....".
Again, to mention a specific problem, there are counterfeit tongues. There are three things I’ve observed that will usually tell you whether someone is really speaking in tongues or not: (1) Does he make noises that don’t sound like talking? [9] If what he is doing is really speaking in tongues, it will sound like talking, or possibly singing. True tongues, whether of men or angels, are languages. (2) Does he say the same few syllables over and over again? If he does, that is vain repetition, and the Holy Spirit doesn’t do that (Matthew 6:7 & 8). (3) Does he do it in a way that rudely interrupts someone else or really disrupts a meeting? The Holy Spirit does not create disorder. Any pastor or elder who discerns that anyone is violating any of these guidelines should gently but firmly tell him to shut up! It is disobedient and disorderly to let it continue. If the person doing it objects, or won’t stop, throw him out, and I’m not kidding. See I Corinthians 14:31-33.
One thing that Paul specifically says is not to despise prophesyings. This is tacitly affirming that God does speak through people by direct inspiration. But unfortunately, so does the devil. So you must be Scriptural in your dealing with this, or again, you are going to quench the Holy Spirit, and maybe do far worse than that. The key Scriptures for dealing with prophecy are I Corinthians 14: 29 and I Thessalonians 5:21. In both passages we have the idea of examining what is said in a prophecy instead of either blindly accepting or flatly rejecting it. What we should do is test it by the Scripture. I have seen that some subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) falsehood can slip into a Church, or a Christian’s thinking, as a result of a false prophecy. There was a Church in New York a few years ago whose members were out on the street telling people that the Holy Spirit had told them the exact date of the Second Coming. By the way, it didn’t happen when they said it would. (You guessed it, didn’t you?) On the other hand, failure to listen to a prophecy that is of God, especially if it is a warning, (many truly divine prophecies are warnings) can result in a Christian or a Church really getting messed up. (This has happened to me, I say with regret.) So handle prophecies with care. But don’t despise them. Listen, but test them!
One little tip: Reject out of hand any personal prophecy that makes you feel good about yourself. Especially if it tells you anything about what great things you are going to do for the Lord. The devil has a small army of false prophets telling Christians things like that, and they have set many people up for a big fall. I know one particular Christian whose life became a disaster area because he believed a prophecy like that and it did not get fulfilled. He was a rock musician, and the false prophet (A woman; this may sound sexist, but I warn you with good reason: be especially careful about any prophecy coming from a woman.) told him he would have a great ministry with his music. When the prophecy didn’t come true he suffered a severe mental breakdown that left him a chronic psycho. Such prophecies are psychologically loaded to get people into pride, and "pride goeth before destruction" (Proverbs 16:18). True prophecies may give a congregation or individual needed guidance [10] , warnings, or assurance. They may also tell God’s view of a specific situation. But they don’t boost the listener’s ego. And they don’t teach any new, unscriptural, doctrine. Like the date of the Second Coming.
Giving: A critical requirement
There is one more major requirement that must be fulfilled if we want to be continuously filled with the Holy Spirit. We must be in the habit of giving. We must tithe and then some. It is well understood that we can’t buy the fullness of the Holy Spirit, as shown in Acts 9:19 & 20. You can no more buy the fullness of the Spirit with money than you can buy salvation, period. Salvation, and the fullness of the Holy Spirit, are given as gifts to all the saints. But while the Spirit is a gift, there are conditions attached to receiving the fullness of the Spirit. The necessity of giving in relation to having the fullness of the Spirit derives from the fact that it is linked to the Biblical principle of sowing and reaping. Thus we read in Galatians 6:8, "the one who sows to please the Spirit will of the Spirit reap eternal life". We must remember that there is more to eternal life than life after death. Another meaning of having eternal life is having the life of the eternal one (as in John 17:3). Through the Holy Spirit indwelling us, we can experience it in the here and now. "Sowing" in the Biblical sense, can be understood as a synonym for giving. So, again, in Galatians 6:10, we read, "...therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, especially to those who belong to the family of believers The Word is telling us that when we give to others, especially to our fellow Christians, whether through our time, our money or our talents, we are sowing to the Spirit, and we will reap the fullness of the Spirit.
We know that in Malachi 3:10, God promised to pour out so much blessing on Israel that they would not have room to receive it if they simply paid their full tithes. Among Christians today, there are relatively few who give a full tithe. But it could be said that when we have paid the full tithe, we have not given God a thing. The tithe can be considered income tax in the Kingdom of Heaven. We really start giving when we exceed the tithe. Now, we can’t be too legalistic about this. II Corinthians 8:12 does indicate that God expects us to give in terms of what we have, not what we don’t have. But still, if most Laodicean Christians would give up some of their worldly pleasures and their high-tech toys, most of them could afford to pay a full tithe and then some. If more Christians did, both they as individuals and the Body of Christ as a whole would be blessed. I once was familiar with a Church whose congregation had a collective annual income of about five million dollars. But that Church had difficulty raising an annual budget of only about $150,000.00. And it was ostensibly a solid evangelical congregation. Something was really wrong. The problem was that it was really a typical Laodicean type Church in which the members thought they could be Christians without really obeying God. I might add that the last I knew, the membership of that Church had dwindled, and it was financially in deep trouble. If they had had an overcomers attitude toward giving, they would probably still be going strong.
Biblically, the tithe should be paid, (and I didn’t mean "given") and that to your own Church. Any giving you do elsewhere should be in addition to your tithe. I might add that Christians should be choosy about who or what they give to outside their own Churches. Even what passes itself off as an on-fire Christian ministry may be nothing more than a money-making scam. There was a certain ‘ministry’ that once was sending me such a large quantity of full-color-printed fund raising literature that I found it disturbing. The day came that they announced the fact that they had purchased a printing plant in South Korea. Then they further announced the purchase of a small ship. All this was ostensibly for the production and transportation of evangelistic literature throughout the world. However, I thought this over and drew my own conclusions. I sent them a letter with which I included a business card that identified me as an officer of a well-known ministry. I told them that I knew about publishing and I knew how much their fund-raising literature must cost. I suggested that if their real purpose was to distribute evangelistic literature world wide, a few small cargo planes could probably do the job faster and more efficiently than a ship. I told them that in my opinion the printing plant was for printing the fund-raising literature more cheaply, and the ship was to bring it to the U.S. to be mailed.
I assure you that I didn’t get any mail from them after that. Furthermore, it wasn’t long afterward that that ‘ministry’ seemed to totally vanish. I think that other Christians must have gotten wise to them. Be sure that you know what any ministry you give to is doing with your money. This is nothing but good stewardship.
I further recommend that Christians not give money to secular charities, either. Now, I wouldn’t make a hard and fast rule about this. But consider this: Most large, established charities (in the U.S.A., at least) have big corporations that regularly back them financially for tax shelter purposes. In fact, I recently saw a book about how companies can actually, in effect, make money by giving to big charities. Many of these same corporations also have rules in their corporate bylaws that prohibit them from making any donations to Christian ministries or Churches. Let the corporate fat cats give to the secular charities. They can afford it. Christian ministries need your donations. Give your money to the Lord’s work, as a faithful steward. Just remember this: a Christian who isn’t into giving isn’t likely to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And if you aren’t filled with the Spirit, you aren’t ready for the Tribulation.
3. The Parable of the Talents
This Parable is also fairly well known, as are the general ideas that it contains. The faithful servants used their talents for the Lord’s service and were rewarded. The unfaithful servant buried, which is to say, neglected, his talent and he was punished. This is well understood to mean that we should use our talents to serve the Lord. We will be rewarded in eternity if we do. I dare say that too little emphasis is placed on what happens to us if we don’t. But the big problem with the way this Parable is understood in the Churches lies in what we understand the word "talent" to mean. The difference between correctly or incorrectly defining this word, for many Christians, will be the difference between being ready or not being ready. For some, it will be the difference between being saved and going to hell.
When we think of the word "talent" in our culture, we think of something that we are naturally good at, like sports or art or music. However, from a Christian standpoint, we would be more correct if we called these abilities "natural aptitudes". Unfortunately, most Christians, even pastors, call them "talents", and think of them as "talents" in the sense of the Parable. But this is wrong, and it is a dangerous error. A "talent", as the word is used in the Parable, should be defined as a "spiritual gift". And that in the sense of Ephesians 4:11; "And He gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers". "Talents", therefore, are what are often called "service gifts", to distinguish them for the more overtly supernatural "sign gifts". That is, they are supernatural abilities given for the purpose of Christian ministry.
We know this from Matthew 25:15; "And to one He gave five talents, to one He gave two talents, and to another one, to each according to his own ability". The talents were given, first of all, to the lord’s servants. Which means they are given to Christians. Note that the lord didn’t give the talents to strangers. More than that, they had all been in his service for a while. He knew what their abilities were. The servant who buried his talent had only one, which implies that the lord had a hunch what he would do with it. The men who were given five and two went out and made money with theirs. Talents therefore, are something that are given in view of and in addition to our natural aptitudes and acquired skills. They are given only to Christians who are truly filled with the Holy Spirit. They don’t usually manifest themselves until after the Christian has gained some spiritual maturity. This is the way it usually is with service gifts.
Natural Aptitudes Are Not "Talents"
A natural aptitude can be considered a gift from God, but only in the sense that life itself is a gift from God, but not in the sense of the Parable. There is a serious, fundamental difference between gifts of the Holy Spirit and natural aptitudes. A natural aptitude can be used to do anything, including serious evil. Adolf Hitler was, in the common sense of the word, a "talented" orator and administrator. The people who create pornography may be "talented" writers, artists and photographers. Do you think that God made a special act of giving them those abilities? No way! Although some Christians may not believe it, the Bible does indicate that God allows a chance factor in life. See Ecclesiastes 9:11. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have free will. [11] Natural aptitudes, in most cases, are just accidents of nature.
A true "talent" is a service gift of the Holy Spirit, and is, as illustrated in the Parable, something that is usually given to compliment a natural aptitude for the Lord’s work. You’ll notice that I’m a writer. As a Christian, I’ve used that aptitude to create tracts, articles for Christian magazines, newsletters, Christian promotional literature, and booklets like this. I am using my natural aptitude for writing in connection with the spiritual gifts of teaching and evangelism. But there are other ways in which I can use this aptitude. Before I was saved, I used the same aptitude to create violent, sordid crime stories, weird science fiction, and political non-fiction that was subversive. The "talent", that is, the spiritual gift is a matter of what the aptitude is being used for.
It must be noted that there are cases where a service gift is given in spite of the lack of a complimentary natural aptitude. These, however , are rare cases and usually occur only when God has placed a very special calling on a Christian’s life. The gift of being a prophet is the one most likely to occur that way. It also happens with the gift of evangelism.
The danger in misunderstanding the word "talent" is that a Christian who thinks that his natural aptitudes are his spiritual gifts; that is, that they are his "talents" in the sense of the Parable, may concentrate on developing them to the point that he never learns what his true spiritual gifts are. This frequently happens with Christians who have an aptitude for music. If a Christian falls into this snare, the result will be that his ministry, if any, will be fruitless, and he will also miss out on a lot of spiritual growth. More than that, his aptitudes can become his idols to the point that he completely turns away from the Lord in pursuit of success. This is not hypothetical, I know cases in point. That mean that at the very best he will be saved "so as through fire", (I Corinthians 3:15) if he doesn’t lose his salvation.
Again, "talents" are given only for ministry. If something is a gift of the Holy Spirit, you can find it in the Bible. If something is really a Christian ministry, you can find that in the Bible too. Because of the misinterpretation of the word "talent", many Christians today are doing things for which there is no Biblical basis and calling them ministries. For example, I have known many Christians who were doing theater and calling it ministry, and I was involved in that myself at one time. There are Christians who think that their acting ability is a gift of the Holy Spirit. But there is no mention of theater as we know it in the Bible. The only mention of the word "actor" in the Bible is in the original Greek meaning of the word "hypocrite". Yes, that’s right. The Greek word ‘
upocritas, which we transliterate as "hypocrite", literally means "actor". Jesus could not have thought much of the acting profession, or he wouldn’t have used the word the way He did. The origins of theater as we know it were in pagan Greece, and the plays that we know of that were written and produced back then often had to do with Grecian idolatry. If you ask me, theater still has a lot to do with idolatry. That’s why I won’t have anything to do with it anymore.Ministry must be based on the Word of God
You may never have heard this before, but there is Biblical reason to believe that doing something as ministry that is not of God is a serious sin. The basis of this idea is the story of the two sons of Aaron; Nadab and Abihu, who offered "strange fire" before the Lord (Leviticus 10:1 &2). They were promptly burned alive by God for their trouble. This is an allegory of the error of a person deciding to serve God his own way, as opposed to God’s way, and what God’s reaction to it is. This was also what originally got Cain in trouble (Genesis 4: 3-5). You don’t tell God how you are going to serve Him. He tells you. But there are many Christians today who, because of their misunderstanding of this Parable, are doing just that. Serving God their way. Christians who do this are not going to have a prayer of being ready. Make sure there is Scriptural basis and/or precedent for anything you do as ministry. Otherwise, you are spiritually wasting your time – or worse.
There is another important difference between natural aptitudes and spiritual gifts. To use a true "talent", which of course means doing real, Scriptural ministry, you have to be a servant. This may mean that you may not be able to do what you want to do with your "talent". In addition to being a writer, I also have a natural aptitude for art. My first love, career-wise, was doing oil paintings. When I came to New York City in 1966, which was before I was saved, I came to study art with a view to a career in fine art painting. When I got saved a couple of years later, I wanted to use my oil painting ability to serve the Lord – by doing oil paintings for the Lord. However, I found little opportunity to do anything with my oil paintings that was serving the Lord. [12] Now it just so happens that my aptitude for art extends into commercial art. Before I got saved, I wasn’t even interested in commercial art. I didn’t want to know about it. But after I had been saved for several years, I began to have opportunities handed to me to do things of the nature of commercial art that really were serving the Lord. In the years since, that ability has enabled me to design and produce many tracts, posters, and even booklets like this one for the Lord’s work. Yes, I didn’t just write it, I also designed it (the printed, not the online, version). Again, I’m using my aptitude for art in connection with the spiritual gifts of teaching and evangelism, and in the case of these booklets, prophecy. And I don’t even have the materials to do oil paintings anymore. However, years later, the Lord gave me photography, and I have been able to do quite a bit that was serving the Lord with that. But even that has now been mostly put aside.
As Jesus said, in Matthew 20:26, "whoever desires to be great among you, let him be your servant." If you are doing something that is really ministry, it will be doing some kind of service. To use a "talent" in obedience to God, you may have to wait on Him to give you the opportunity. I have the support of none less than Martin Luther in saying that if you, especially as a young Christian, open a door for yourself, you may be rebelling against God. [13] You must be willing to accept service that requires humility. One problem that I have seen with many Christians, especially young ones, is that they will, so to speak, say, "I have a gift" or "I have a ministry", when, if they spoke the truth, they would say, "I am on an ego trip". I must confess that I was there once. That Christian rock musician I mentioned above was offered opportunity to play his guitar to accompany singing for a weekly Bible Study group. Although he did it for a short while, he despised it and soon quit because it wasn’t gratifying his ego. Remember, whatever you do, you must have the attitude of a servant. The men who received the "talents" were first and foremost, the master’s servants.
To fully understand what kind of service the Lord is talking about, let us look at what the different service gifts of Ephesians 4: 11 are. Bear in mind that they are for service, and that what the Lord is looking for in the terms of the Parable are results. One of the big common errors of contemporary teaching is that results don’t count, especially quantitative results. You can’t support that idea from the Bible. There is a Greek word in I Corinthians 12:6, used in reference to doing ministry with spiritual gifts, that is translated "operations" (KJV) or "activities" (NKJV), both of which are poor translations. The word is
energeia, from which we get the word "energy". As used in the Bible, it always means the action of supernatural power. More than that, it carries the implication of producing results. This is more clearly demonstrated in James 5:16, where a different form of the same basic word is translated "effective" (NKJV) in the statement: "The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." The use of a real "talent" will produce results. Quality does count, of course, but what is quality if there’s no quantity? In the Book of Acts, in several cases the Scripture contains numbers of the people who had been saved and had joined the Church. The 7th Chapter of Revelation talks about 12,000 from each tribe of Israel (which we understand to be spiritual Israel), and then about that "great multitude, which no man could number..." It certainly seems that numbers matter in the Bible. So the idea that numbers don’t matter is a lie of the devil. Remembering that, we will now examine the service gifts:The Service Gifts
1. Apostles: From a Greek word that means "one who is sent". There have been many attempts to define the ministry of the Apostle, some of which were clearly ignoring what is plainly shown in the Scriptures, and some of which were obviously intended to serve the doctrinal agendas of particular denominations. Some also have said that there are no apostles today. Actually, there are real apostles around today, and I’ve known a few. But we don’t call them apostles. We usually call them "missionaries" (though not all "missionaries" are true Apostles) or "Church planters". Basically, a true Apostle is a Christian who takes the Gospel where it has never been taken before and/or starts churches and ministries. The true Apostle is noted by the fact that he usually doesn’t stay around long after he gets a work started. Although there are exceptions, the Apostle usually gets things going well, and then hands the reins of leadership to other capable men and moves on. The ministry of the true Apostle is the one that is most likely to be accompanied by the frequent manifestation of sign gifts (Acts 2:43, etc.), but they will follow him. He won't follow them.
2. Prophets: This is the most sensitive of ministries. The word "Prophet", can be defined as "one who speaks forth", i.e. he speaks for God to the Church. A prophet is as much a "forth-teller" as a "foreteller". It is true that in the Church today, there is no specific, identifiable paid ministry (at least in most Churches) that could be called that of the "Prophet". That, however, does not mean that there are no true prophets. I believe I am a prophet, but I put some qualifications on that. I believe that I am a prophet in the sense of being a truly inspired teacher. And only in that sense. However, as a general rule, you must be careful about who you except as a prophet. Most of the people in the Churches who call themselves prophets, especially those who make a show of laying hands on people and "prophesying" over them, are not true prophets. Understand this: by Biblical tradition, what a true prophet says is not likely to be good news to those who hear it. Real prophets of God do not give "feel good" messages. A true prophet’s message is likely to be critical of the hearers, and/or is likely to contain dire warnings. As mine is and does. And this is the Biblical tradition! Like it or not! Just read the Book of Jeremiah! In the New Testament, look at Acts 11:27 & 28, and 21:10 & 11. Of course, the prophet’s bad news is usually tempered with promises of final blessing for the righteous. As was said in the last chapter, when a prophet speaks, listen!
3. Evangelists: This is the easiest to define. An Evangelist is a person who has a gift for sharing the Good News and bringing the unsaved to Christ. He may also be good at reviving backsliden Christians. A person who has this gift and uses it may be anyone from somebody you never heard of to somebody like Billy Graham. The point is, that when he speaks, other people get saved. This is one of two service gifts that can, and frequently do, manifest themselves in new converts. Ironically, in modern Churches, a person may be licensed or ordained as an evangelist and not really have the gift at all. Yet a nobody who sits at the back of the Church on Sunday morning may have it for personal evangelism in a very powerful way. God can be very unpredictable about who He gives this gift to. Those I’ve known who really had the gift of evangelism included several weirdo Jesus Freaks, an ex-prostitute, and a middle-aged man who made his living as a commercial artist. Unfortunately, modern Churches seldom really look for a person’s fruit in a Biblical way before they elect, license or ordain him to some official position. The Church would be in better shape if we did. By their fruit you shall know them!
4. Pastors: This word is actually a synonym for "shepherds". The "pastor" is the man who has a gift for leading a Church. I would actually call it the most difficult of the gifts to have. And I mean to live with having it, and to use it. It is the one that contains the greatest requirements for service. The good pastor is above all else, the humblest of servants. He must not be on an ego trip. That’s why St. Paul told Timothy not to let a new convert be a bishop. See I Timothy 3:6. By the way, the office of the bishop, as in I Timothy 3:1-7 is actually the office of a pastor, made official, and especially a senior pastor who has other pastors serving under him. A good pastor will be a good preacher and teacher, and even better as a listener. He must also be a good counselor. He will be a natural leader and must have some talent as an administrator. And he will also need exceptional gifts of patience, wisdom and love. See I Timothy 3:1-7 for further qualifications. You’ll notice that a seminary degree isn’t among them. Again, a person doesn’t necessarily have to be ordained to have and use this gift. A Christian who has it will automatically acquire a "flock". There are some lay leaders of fellowship groups who have the gift in a more genuine and powerful way than many ordained clergymen. Follow the man who has the gift, as opposed to the one with the diploma.
5. Teachers: This is self explanatory, almost. Again, this is me. The teacher needs knowledge, and the gift of being able to communicate it well. This requires accessory gifts of wisdom and understanding. He, too, must be a good listener. If he really has the gift, people will want to come and listen to him. Like the Pastor he will develop a following without trying. Again, this is something that a new convert should never be allowed to do. I don’t care how desperate a Church is for teachers. You are being seriously disobedient to God if you let a new convert teach. The teacher is in a position of having a tremendous responsibility before God, as he will have to answer for any errors that he teaches. Any errors he teaches can do real damage in the lives of other Christians. Therefore, he must be exceptionally steeped in the knowledge of the Word, and have a real "track record" of Christian living. A Church should chose with care who it allows to teach. As Paul also said, the pastors and teachers are the leaders who deserve the most respect (and pay?- see I Timothy 5:17).
6. Helps (also called "deacons): This one isn’t in Ephesians 4:11. Actually, we can find it in Romans 12:7, where it is translated "ministers", and in I Timothy 3:8-13. It is actually about plain, down-to-earth menial service. The kind that even Churches can’t do without. A person who has this gift has the knack - and the willingness - to just plug in anywhere and help out. He will usually be an exceptionally humble person. He’s the kind that just always seems to show up just when you need somebody. He’s the ubiquitous volunteer. Bet you didn’t know that this type was mentioned in the Bible! As far as his importance to the Church is concerned, he’s right up there with the five listed above. If you know a Christian who is like that, respect him! You might find out some day that he was the best Christian you ever knew. That nobody that everyone in the Church really looks down on might get the Seal of the Living God, when even that wonderful pastor of yours that you loved so much doesn’t. As Jesus said, "The last will be first and the first will be last". Note also that the office of the deacon, as in I Timothy 3:8-13 was originally the office of the men with the gift of helps, made official. That is, they were men who were assigned specific menial tasks within the Church. This is not something to despise and look down on. See Acts 6:1-8. Stephen was one of the first deacons. This work comes from the Greek diakonoV, which means "servant". By the way, the contemporary practice of deacons acting as a board of directors in the Church is not of God, but rather a tradition of man. The men and women who sit on those boards are often not deacons spiritually at all. I’m a minister’s son and I know! Deacons should never have authority over a pastor. True deacons wouldn’t want to.
These, of course, aren’t all the service gifts. And even these can manifest themselves in different ways. Not everyone who has the gift of being a pastor is in the pulpit, any more than everyone who is in the pulpit has the gift. The same thing is true of evangelists and deacons. But if a person is following the Lord, and does have one or more service gifts, the fact will make itself known. What will, in the final analysis, be the proof of the gift is the results. If a person has been laboring at a particular ministry for some time, and has not produced any visible results, he probably does not have the related gift. The only exceptions are the prophet and the person with the gift of helps. If the person with the gift of helps is really helping, that is his fruit. For the true prophet, all he has to do is make his message heard. What follows from it is in the hands of the Lord.
How do you know what your "talents" are?
So how do you know what your service gift (s) is? There are a number of ways to tell. Remember this, though, as a general principle: except for the gifts of evangelism and helps, serious service gifts won’t begin to make their presence known until you have been a Christian for several years. The idea of a person getting saved and then just jumping into some big ministry is usually not of God. A new convert will simply not know enough about the Bible, sound doctrine, and the Christian Faith generally. (This is one of the reasons why Christians shouldn’t look to celebrity converts for spiritual leadership.) A new convert thrust into a position of leadership will be vulnerable to all kinds of subtle temptations, doctrinal errors, and snares of the devil. I grew up in a parsonage, and the day I got saved I knew more about the Bible than some Christians ever know. But I had been saved nearly ten years when I first started teaching regularly. Aside from any use you may make of the two gifts mentioned above, you as a new Christian must accept that you probably have some growing to do before the Lord can use you in any big and serious way. Learn to practice the Three Switches and be a faithful member of your Church. Learn to be a servant. Wait on the Lord to show you what, if anything, special He wants you to do.
There’s another point to this that some of my readers may find upsetting: You should have some material maturity about you as well before you get into any serious ministry. There is a pattern in the Bible that implies that a person should be at least 30 years old before becoming a Christian leader. Priests in the Old Testament had to be 30 years old when they began their service. This idea has several other Biblical precedents as well. Joseph, son of Jacob, was 30 years old when he became "prime minister" of Egypt. David was 30 years old when he first became king. Finally, Jesus started His earthly ministry at age 30. [14] Why this is so I will not speculate, except to say that a person of that age is likely to be more emotionally stable than a younger person. Whatever it is, God must have good reason for it or it wouldn’t be in the Bible. I believe that one of the reasons why the Church is in the bad shape it is in is the practice of letting people pastor Churches when they are only in their early 20’s or even younger. Again, it is contrary to Biblical precedent. I was 34 years old when I started teaching the Bible regularly. My advice is that you shouldn’t expect to manifest any of the more serious service gifts until you are at least in your late 20’s. If you get the call, that’s one thing. But there is a difference between being called and being sent. The desire to do a particular kind of ministry may be a call, but you aren’t sent until you actually are given opportunity to do it. Again the opportunity for ministry must be given to you. God does make exceptions to this, but, like the case of baptism, don’t expect Him to.
Being a prophet is not an exception. Joseph, of course, manifested a prophetic gift when he was only in his teens. But you’ll notice that what he did with it at the time got him in trouble! (See Genesis 37.) He didn’t do anything with it that helped anyone until he was in his late 20’s. He was thirty years old when he interpreted Pharaoh’s dream. So I say this to a young person who thinks he’s a prophet: "Bite your tongue!" That is, keep your mouth shut until you are at least nearly thirty years old before you start doing any open prophesying. And then don’t insist that people take what you say as Gospel. The proof of your prophecy will be in what happens. Don’t expect God to bless you, or other people to thank you, for carelessly running your mouth! Also, if you think you are a prophet, don’t think you are a supersaint and somehow above the law as a Christian because of it, like some would-be "prophets" I’ve known. As someone else has said, God once spoke through a donkey, and He could speak through the dog next door if He should choose to. As stated in the "BABEL RISING!" booklet, every Christian is in a sense a prophet, and God can speak through any Christian. [15] But if God really is speaking through you, when the time comes for you to speak, you will not be able to keep silent. (See Jeremiah 20:9) If what you say is of God, it will come to pass no matter how it is received. Let that be the proof of your ministry, and that alone.
The Lord will, in most cases, start letting you know that you have a particular gift by giving you an interest in doing whatever. Again, I warn against acting on any such interests you get as a new convert. At that age (spiritually) the devil may give you an interest in a particular ministry to lead you astray. One of the devil’s big snares for new converts is to fill their heads with foolish ideas about what great things they are going to do for the Lord. [16] Then, when the great things don’t happen, they get discouraged and backslide. But if after you have been a Christian for a while, an interest in a particular form of ministry begins to take hold of you, then act on it. If it requires training, go for it. If there is a need for divine providence involved, like obtaining money for school, whether or not the Lord provides it will be a sign of His will in the matter. And remember this, if God has called you to a ministry, He will give you opportunity to do it. Especially at the start of the actual work. As mentioned previously, you may be rebelling against God if you open a door for yourself. I have over 17 years of experience in teaching adult Bible classes. One class I started lasted for 11 years. Another lasted over seven years. Yet in that entire time there was only once that I asked someone for permission to start a Bible class. That is to say, there was only one time that I opened the door for myself, and that class never got off the ground. In every other case, I was asked to start the class. I repeat, the Lord will open the doors for you if He wants you to do the ministry. Wait on Him, and if no doors open, forget it.
Finally, if the Lord is in it, that is, if you really have the gift, you will see fruit. As a Bible teacher, I have had people tell me again and again how my teaching helped them in their Christian lives. I have seen the changes that have happened in the lives of people who regularly attended my classes. And I did a lot of growing in the Lord and a lot of learning myself. That’s another measure of whether you are obeying the Lord in doing a ministry or not. If what you are doing is of God, doing it will bring you closer to Him. If it doesn’t, and especially if it actually takes you away from the Lord, you are acting in your own will, not His. If you are doing a real Christian ministry, if your are really using your "talents", it will help you to grow in the Lord and it will produce results in other people’s lives as well. Just remember this: If you do have a real "talent", a real service gift, you must develop it and use it for the Lord’s service. If you do you will be rewarded, and will have a good shot at being ready for the Tribulation. If you have a "talent" and you don’t use it, like the servant in the Parable, you may very well lose everything – eternally.
Commitment: A Major Requirement
One thing that is going to be required of you in your use of your "talents" is commitment. You are called to real, lasting commitment to whatever it is you are called to do. Commitment forces you to die to yourself. It forces you to take up your cross daily and follow Jesus. It may also force you to take risks, which is what the unfaithful servant was unwilling to do. I have heard it said that the unfaithful servant probably wouldn’t have been punished if he had invested the master’s money and lost it. It wasn’t the lack of profit (i.e. fruit) that was being punished so much as the lack of commitment. As stated, a prophet will not necessarily see any fruit, that is, any external results, from his ministry. But he too must be committed.
Actually, lack of commitment to obedience to Christ has been a problem since early in Church history. The moral and spiritual condition of our world is part of the results. In Matthew 28:19, Jesus told His followers to go and disciple all of the nations. He also said, in verse 18, that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to Him. This implies that the authority had been imputed to the Church, and we have the power to get the job done. The early Christians seemed to understand this. They took the Great Commission seriously. By the end of the 1st Century AD, Christianity had spread as far as Spain, Great Britain, and India. By the end of the Second Century, it had reached Japan, though it later died out there. But by the end of the 4th Century, the Church had lost most of its missionary zeal, and Christianity for the most part stopped spreading. Of course, during the last few centuries it has started spreading again, but with nowhere near the intensity and power that might have been. Today, we have the resources to take the Gospel to the whole world, and although we’re making some efforts, we’re not doing anything approaching what we could do if we were fully committed. Again, this failure is part of what will bring the Tribulation.
By contrast, consider how close communism came to taking over the world in this century. In the year 1916, no one was living under a communist government. But by the time the Berlin Wall fell, over 1/3 of the earth’s population was under communism. There wasn’t a government in the world that hadn’t been affected by communist thinking. Armed communist insurgency was under way in a number of countries. How did this happen? It is certainly not that communism is an attractive philosophy. It actually goes against the grain of fallen human nature, in that it opposes personal greed and ambition. This is why, unfortunately, some people have seen it as being similar to Christianity, and yet it is why it doesn’t really work. Yet communism nearly took over the world. Why?
The answer is commitment. Communists were willing, and in fact coerced by peer pressure, to give every cent of money they could spare beyond what they had to have for their basic needs, to the cause of communism. They were willing to give every moment of their time that they could manage to advancing the cause of communism. They had to spend as much time as they could in communist "cell" meetings (the communist equivalent of Christian Bible study, prayer, and fellowship groups). They had to spend as much time as they could reading and thinking about communist literature, thus immersing their minds in communism (as Christians should do with the Word of God). The result was the communists could devote enormous amounts of money and human energy to spreading propaganda and financing and fighting wars of revolution, without the hindrance of lack of unity. There were very few "lukewarm" communists! Such commitment and unity must inevitably produce the desired results; in that case, the communist takeover of country after country. By the way, that combination of unity and commitment was also true of 7th Century Muslims.
I’m convinced that if the Born Again Christians of our day had the kind of unity and commitment that the communists had, we could take over the world in a generation without a shot being fired. Even the Muslims would be converting to Christianity in large numbers. We would be able to dictate the actions of governments by the sheer weight of our votes. Even ungodly politicians would take a Christian line for the sake of staying in office. Ungodly entertainment would go out of business for lack of customers. We could bring down the Millenium without there having to be a Tribulation. Please understand that I am only saying this hypothetically. I certainly don’t expect it to happen. As things stand in the Church at large, I don’t think it can happen. The Tribulation will be what happens. But understand this: If we, as individuals or as congregations want to be ready for the Tribulation, then we must make the kind of commitment to the Lord that the communists once did to communism, and we must turn our backs completely on the world.
4. The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats
We all know about this one. It is Judgment Day. No beating around the bush about that in this Parable. It is Jesus Himself doing the Judging, as we are told elsewhere that He really will do. [17] But what’s this? Instead of human beings standing in judgment before the throne, we find sheep and goats. Now remember, everyone in these Parables is a Christian, or at least considers himself to be. So what we have here are two kinds of Christians. It might be said that the sheep are the real Christians and the goats are pseudo-Christians. But, as I will show, what really makes the difference is obedience. As said in the first chapter of this section, to the Jews of Jesus’ day, sheep and goats were different forms of the same animal. The Hebrew for "kid", as in "baby goat", and "lamb", is the same word. Both the sheep and the goats are professing Christians. But the Christians in one group are deceived. One group goes to heaven and the other appears to be sent to hell. However, as it applies to Great Tribulation, I believe that the real intent of the Parable, as well as all the others, is that those who don’t measure up don’t get the Seal of the Living God. Believe me, if you go into the Tribulation without the Seal, the odds are excellent that you will weep and gnash your teeth!
Again, we know, superficially, what makes the difference. This Parable is the least figurative of the Three. Jesus lays the reasons flat out, why the sheep are rewarded and the goats rejected: To the sheep, He said, "Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me". And of course He said the opposite to the goats. And we all know the things that Jesus said the sheep did do and the goats didn’t: "I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink, I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me, I was in prison and you came to Me."....therefore...."Come, you blessed of My Father, and inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world!" [18]
This is all understood, though I must say that all too many Christians don’t take this seriously enough, neither the qualifications, nor the promise, nor the warning. As stated in the Introduction, you cannot take the Bible too seriously. To ignore this is to be a goat, in the terms of the Parable. For you who take it seriously, and above all, who act on it, well, what "eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for those who love Him".....are what awaits you! For you who don’t, you better hope you don’t find out what awaits you!
For all that is understood about this Parable, and as well known as the Parable is, there is one small matter in which it has been widely misunderstood. This misunderstanding has been the cause of so much waste of Christian time, money, and material that it boggles the mind to consider it. In some cases, it has brought severe chastisement on Christians who thought they were being obedient. It has also, in an indirect way, been the cause of needless suffering among other Christians. The whole issue surrounds the definition of one key term in the Parable. This definition is the cornerstone on which proper understanding and application of this Parable rests. Yet this key term has been widely misunderstood. The result is that many Christians who thought they were being obedient servants to God were in fact committing effective rebellion, and thus the waste. The definition I’m talking about is how we understand the phrase, "the least of these My brethren. For general purposes, we can leave out the "the least of these" and concentrate on defining "My brethren". It is of critical importance that we correctly, in strict Scriptural terms, understand who "His brethren" are.
Who are "His Brethren"?
In the eyes of the unsaved who are familiar with the Parable (many are) and even in the thinking of many Christians, this phrase refers to the entire human race, without qualification. This kind of thinking is related to the idea of the universal brotherhood of all men. Although this idea sounds good, it has been astutely noted by many teachers and scholars of the Word that it is not in the Bible. That is to say, from the standpoint of Scripture, all men are not brothers. This is one of those hard Biblical truths that even Christians often find difficult to accept. The thing that makes men brothers is that they have the same father. It has been noted that although God is the Creator of all mankind, He is the Father only of Christians. You may recall that Jesus called the Jewish leaders who opposed Him, "....(sons) of your father the devil". Spiritually speaking, He meant it. See John 8:42-44. In the Old Testament, a king of Israel was rebuked by a prophet when he called a pagan king "my brother". See I Kings 20:31-43. Remember that what applied to Israelites versus Gentiles in the Old Testament applies to Christians versus unbelievers in the New.
In keeping with principles of sound doctrine, we will allow Scripture to interpret Scripture. We will call upon Jesus Himself to tell us who He meant by "My brethren". He gave us His definition of the term in Matthew 12:46-50 [19] :
Jesus told us that His brothers are those who are obedient to God. Which is to say, "His brethren" are our fellow Christians. And that as opposed to unbelievers, whoever they are. The people whom Jesus referred to as " My brethren" in the Parable are Christians, and no one else. To apply this term to non-Christians is a very serious error. The main point of this Parable is that we must be on the ball about being servants to our fellow Christians. Furthermore, with the phrase, "the least of these", He was telling us that we are to put no qualifications on which of our fellow Christians we will be servants to, an idea that is echoed all through the New Testament. See, for example, James 2:1-9. The poor James was referring to were the poor within the Church, as shown in verse5. We must be servants equally to all our fellow Christians, regardless of their social or economic status. We won’t be ready for the Tribulation if we are not.
In the Upper Room (John 12:34 & 35) Jesus emphatically told His disciples that they would be known by the fact that they loved one another. He said nothing about loving outsiders. Again, in Matthew 20:25-28, Jesus told His disciples that anyone who wished to be great among them must be a servant to all of them. Yet again, He made no mention of service to outsiders. He spoke only of our attitude and behavior toward our fellow Christians. These two passages are only a small fraction of the number of New Testament passages that support this idea. Jesus meant for us to focus on being servants to each other. The overwhelming emphasis of the New Testament is on our being servants to our fellow Christians.
Possible Objections
Some would counter this doctrine by bring up the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12), the commandment to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is, incidentally, a different way of expressing the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. In most cases, it really means giving others the same courtesy and respect that we would want for ourselves. You can do that in your daily Christian walk without going out of your way to be anyone’s servant.
Again, some would counter this doctrine by invoking the Parable of the Good Samaritan, in Luke 10:30-37. Let’s look at the situation in this Parable in detail: the victim had been robbed, stripped naked, wounded (we presume he was bleeding) and left for dead by thieves. What the Good Samaritan did was a spontaneous, one-shot response to an obvious, legitimate, and in fact urgent need. Although he took full responsibility for the man he helped, there is nothing in the Parable to suggest that he made an ongoing ministry of helping people that way. The Bible never forbids us to help the unsaved; rather, it tells us to put the priority on helping our fellow Christians (See Galatians 6:10). We should only make an ongoing ministry of helping Christians. Every Church should have, as part of its ministry, a program to give ongoing assistance to the needy within the congregation (that is what is being referred to in Acts 6). But few Churches do. Again, if we help the unsaved, it should be in the form of spontaneous one-shot acts of mercy and generosity, in response to obvious, legitimate needs. A minor example was the incident, years ago, when, as I was walking along the street late at night, I found a woman (not homeless) laying unconscious on the sidewalk. Needless to say, I quickly went to the nearest phone and called the police, and then kept watch over her until they came. Which was all I reasonably could do. This was, in a small way, being a "Good Samaritan". There are people, Christians and otherwise, who would have done nothing. But we should not give to the unsaved as an ongoing ministry. When we do help the unsaved, it should be done under the same general circumstances as what the Good Samaritan did: a spontaneous, one-shot response to an obvious, legitimate, and perhaps urgent need.
Pearls Before Swine
In a well known but rarely understood part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned us not to "cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and rend you." (Matthew 7:6). Note that this is in the same passage as the Golden Rule! And is further part of a passage that upholds the highest standards of Christian behavior. Yet here is Jesus telling us, in so many words, that there are people that we as Christians are not supposed to help. The man that the Good Samaritan helped was the victim of thieves. I submit to you that Christians who are running programs that help the homeless are frequently feeding thieves! Sometimes those thieves show what they are by robbing and otherwise abusing the very Christians who feed them. If they don’t, it’s only because they know better than to "bite the hand that feeds them". (I am not imagining this; I have extensive experience in ministry to the homeless, and I have seen this happen.) There was an incident in a Church in New York City less than two years ago wherein a Church was looted and seriously vandalized by hoodlums who had been eating the meals that that Church served to the homeless. The damage was of such extent that it shut down the Church. Those Christians violated the commandment to not cast pearls before swine, with exactly the results Jesus warned us about.
There’s a similar idea to "not casting pearls before swine" in the admonition to "Let the dead bury their dead" (Matthew 8:22). Christians should not do anything for the unsaved that they can very well do for themselves. This is poor stewardship. More than that, any Christian who takes it upon himself to be a servant to the unsaved is setting himself up to be unnecessarily abused, and that is not God’s will. You can get persecuted enough for really being obedient, without bringing suffering on yourself with disobedience. One of Satan’s snares for Christians, especially for those who don’t know sound doctrine, is to get them to be more "righteous" than the Bible calls upon them to be. Remember, you can go off the narrow path to the right as well as to the left. For example, the Bible says "Let him who has two coats give to him who has none (Luke 3:11). The devil’s reading of this commandment is "Let him who has one coat give to him who has none." I mean, the devil will try to get Christians to believe and act on this kind of falsehood. A demand based on this kind of lie is likely to come out of the mouth of an unsaved person. It will be often accompanied by a comment like "What kind of Christian are you?" When a Christian falls for it, he gets hurt. Then he’s likely to get discouraged and/or get mad at God and backslide. The Bible says that any giving that is asked of us is based on what we have, not what we don’t have. No Christian is asked by God to give to the point that he puts himself into genuine hurt See II Corinthians 8:12-14. And even then, the context of the passage (chapters 8-10) is about giving to help other Christians. If there is a limit on our giving to help our fellow Christians, how much more to giving to the unsaved?
There is an erroneous idea that pervades much of what is currently called Christian ministry to the effect that it is the duty of Christians to solve all the problems of the world. Biblically, the real job of Christians is to build the Church. That is, to get people saved and build them up in the faith, knowledge and love of the Lord Jesus Christ. See Ephesians 4:1-16. Along the way, that will mean giving many of them material help at one time or another. It requires us to be servants to one another, and this is a skill of Christian living that we all must learn. We have enough to do learning to serve each other and doing what the Lord told us to do without taking on things He didn’t mandate. Yet there are many Christians who believe that we should be servants to the unsaved world, and who are running ministries that are trying to do that. They frequently point to Old Testament passages like Isaiah 58:5-8 to support their doctrinal position. There are two problems with that, as far as sound doctrine is concerned.
The Authority of the New Testament
First of all, the words of Jesus supercede what the Old Testament says, and so, by extension, do the rest of the teachings of the New Testament. This is the intent of what God said about Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 15:5: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!" Now, note that Jesus was standing there talking to Moses and Elijah. Moses represented the Law. Elijah represented the Prophets. When the Father said of Jesus, "Hear Him!", He meant, "Listen to Him!; as opposed to listening to the Law and the Prophets." A new revelation of the Word of God was being declared. Since Jesus told us who we are supposed to serve, we must interpret the words of the Old Testament, such as the passage in Isaiah referred to above, by His words. Jesus specifically told us who we are supposed to serve.
Secondly, we must remember, once again, that just about everything in the Old Testament that had to do with Jews versus Gentiles now applies to Christians versus the unsaved. Just about everything that the Israelites were called upon to do in the way of charity was for their fellow Israelites. They were strictly told not to oppress foreigners in their midst, but they were not told to go out of their way to serve them. And they definitely were not told to give assistance of any kind to the surrounding Gentile nations. Remember; we are spiritual Israel. We are supposed to do our works of charity for our "fellow Israelites".
I repeat, the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats calls upon us to be on the ball about being servants to our fellow Christians. And that in the sense of meeting their basic material needs. Yet this is were many Christians have failed miserably. I know some real horror stories about cases where Christians were in desperate need of material assistance from their fellow Christians, and didn’t get it. In one such incident, God raised up the help that was needed from neighbors that weren’t Christian at all. And that is to the shame of the Christians who didn’t help. I have also seen cases of needy Christians who were turned away empty-handed from programs that were helping the unsaved homeless. Christians have refused, on the grounds of obeying the rules of their programs, to help their needy brothers. They are going to find out one of these days that in the sight of Jesus, they are goats! And that, no matter how much they may have thought that they were doing what they were supposed to do. Any rule in any ministry that forbids a Christian to help a Christian is evil! Regardless of the circumstances! Obeying such a rule is sin! It is "shutting up your heart against your brother" (see I John 3:17). God will not bless them for it.
When Christians set themselves up to be servants to the unsaved, that isn’t God’s will. Our service to others is meant to increase the love between Christians, strengthen the Church, and be a testimony for Jesus. It is not supposed to subsidize sinful lives, as ministries that help the unsaved frequently do. Christians shouldn’t support ministries that serve the unsaved. Churches that are running such ministries should shut them down and start organizing to help the needy in their own midst. They won’t get grants from the government or praise in the secular media for this, but see Luke 6:26. Incidentally, many ministries that serve the unsaved do get help from the government (at least in the U.S.A.) and this is a very dangerous thing. Those grants usually have rules attached. If the rules are violated, the people running the ministry in question can be in real trouble. I knew a minister who went to prison, through no fault of his own, except ignorance, in a case like that. I knew another ministry that had to be completely shut down because of the consequences of taking government money on government terms. This highlights the error of compromise with the world. If Christians do what the Bible says to do, they will get blessed, and ministries that do are likely to see their numbers growing rapidly. (Remember: Numbers do matter!) See Acts 4:34 & 35, and 6:1-7. By the way, the widows in Acts 6 were widows in the Church. See I Timothy5:9-16.
So keep it in mind that you are commanded to be a servant to your fellow Christians, and that you will not be ready for the Tribulation if you do not put this into practice. There is something that God has given or will give you to do that involves serving your brothers and sisters in Christ. Whatever it is, do it. Or else!
5. In Conclusion:
Remember that the Bible shows very clearly that just being a Christian isn’t enough to make you qualified to receive the Seal of the Living God and escape the plagues of His wrath during the Tribulation. As Jesus said, in Luke 21:36; "Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man". Understand that being able "to stand before the Son of Man" means being able to survive the Judgement, that is, to end up being sheep rather than goats. These words were addressed to Jesus disciples, and through them, to us. This has nothing to do with the unsaved. It is the Christians who are called to watch and pray. The unsaved aren’t even in the race. Being ready for the Tribulation will take serious effort on our parts.
Remember that we are living in the Age of the Church of Laodicea. The trouble is, when individual Churches decide to identify themselves with one of the seven, somehow they always see themselves as "Philadelphia" Churches. (Again, I know of specific cases in point.) Which is another manifestation of their state of being proud and deceived. There are very few Churches today that can claim to be Philadelphia Churches, and they are mainly in pagan Third World countries. Don’t assume that you as an individual, or your Church, fellowship group, Para-Church ministry, etc., as a whole, is ready. Remember that St. Paul never assumed he was ready, until the very end of his life and ministry. II Timothy was probably written no more than a few months before he was martyred. Although I’m writing this booklet, and have been a Born Again Christian now for 29 years, and have spent over 2/3 of that time involved in some form of ongoing ministry, I am by no means confident that I am ready. So don’t you be!
A seldom recognized part of the problem with the Church of Laodicea is the insidious perversion of the teaching of Jesus about not judging that is prevalent in modern Christianity. Christians have taken the words "Judge not that you be not judged" to mean that we should never call a sin a sin in another person, and that we should never confront a brother or sister about something they are doing that is wrong. This idea is allowing all kinds of evil to flourish within the Church, but it’s contrary to the teaching of St. Paul in I Corinthians 5. It is also contrary to the full meaning of the passage in Matthew 7. When Jesus said, in verse 5, First remove the plank from your own eye.....", He was saying, "If you have a problem with somebody, check yourself out first. Ask yourself why you have a problem with what your brother is doing." This passage is about bringing healing to relationships, not about tolerating sin. On the other hand, Paul told the Corinthians to kick a Christian who was committing flagrant, willful sin out of the Church. He said that we shouldn’t even eat with Christians who sin openly. If you tolerate open sinfulness in a fellow Christian, you effectively become guilty yourself.
A little known but very important passage is found in Proverbs 28:13: "He who covers his sin will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy". This goes for both Christians as individuals and for entire congregations. If we try to hid sin in our own lives, or overlook it in the Church, we will fail in our Christian lives, and we will not be ready for the Tribulation. We must be very strict in judging ourselves, and we must make a serious, continuous effort to live lives of obedient faith. To repeat what I have said elsewhere, if you want to be ready for the Tribulation, you must live such an overtly righteous life that you will be called a legalist if you preach what you practice. In II Chronicles 16:9 we read, "For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the whole earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him." You may have to stand up against the full satanic fury of the Beast. You will be able to do so only if your heart is fully committed to Christ.
This means that to be sure you are ready, you must examine yourself, your goals, and your priorities before God. What are your career goals? What do you do with your leisure time? Most of all, what are you doing that is Scripturally identifiable as ministry? These questions are not to be taken lightly. Your spiritual preparedness will depend on the answers. And this holds true no matter what your belief about the Rapture is. It holds true even if you die before the Lord comes. Again, I say with sorrow that many people who consider themselves Christians aren’t ready to meet the Lord, period.
So, if you want to be ready for the Tribulation, get away from your sitcoms and soap operas. Get away from your romantic or adventure or fantasy novels. Get away from your movies. Get away from your ball games (as a friend of mine once said, "Jesus, Name above ball games"), or whatever else is in your life that is not of God but that takes up a significant portion of your time and energy. Start making a priority of having a closer walk with God. Get into prayer like never before. Immerse your mind in the Word. Find out what your true "talents" are and start using them for something that the Bible specifically identifies as ministry. In addition to Ephesians 4: 11, check out Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12 for insight on this. All this may sound extreme and legalistic, but it is what is required of you if you want the Seal of the Living God.
In turning our backs on the world, we must particularly turn our backs on worldly entertainment. It is almost always in some way oppose to Christ. The exceptions are those few things that have upheld the Name of Jesus for financial gain. As St. Paul said (Philippians 1:18), rejoice for anything that preaches Christ, regardless of the motive. But more often, worldly entertainment outright mocks God and Christianity. I’ve seen Christians watching that kind of thing and laughing at it. That mockery is a serious sin. For a Christian to laugh at such entertainment is partaking in the sins of others, which is something the Bible tells us explicitly not to do (I Timothy 5:22). Again, worldly entertainment communicates and glorifies all kinds of sin, in terms of personal attitudes, values, and behavior. Our attitude toward this must be, again, in accordance with II Corinthians 6:17, "Touch no unclean thing". As in James 4:4, "Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." Too many modern Christians are being friends with the world, and they are going to regret it. If we do not take serious heed to these admonitions, and apply them in our lives, we will not be ready for the Tribulation.
On the other hand, you must maintain as close a relationship with the Lord as possible. The core of this relationship is prayer, especially intercessory prayer. This is a ministry you must commit yourself to on a regular basis. It is the first line of importance in what you must do, regardless of what else you are doing. It is the most important aspect of loving others with the love of Jesus. We know that He spent entire nights in prayer. There is reason to believe that much of His prayer, as shown in John 17, was intercessory prayer for His disciples, and through them for us. Our goal has to be to be like Jesus. The first line of being like Jesus is to be like Him in prayer. If you have a good prayer life, you know how much Satan hates it by how much he tries to stop it. That’s because our prayers do more good than anything else we do. Remember what I said about "reporting the fire". Our strength and wisdom are limited. God’s power and wisdom are limitless. When we pray, we are calling down his power and wisdom to do what we can’t do. We must all be engaged in something that is Biblically identifiable ministry. Even a Christian who is an invalid in a wheel chair can have a ministry of prevailing intercessory prayer.
Of course, we must all give heed to Bible study, church attendance, witnessing, giving, etc., but all of these things must be undergirded with prayer.
Finally, we must not procrastinate about doing this. The Bible tells us that we should be "redeeming the time, for the day is evil" (Ephesians 5:16). In Psalm 90:12, Moses says, "So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom". Every day we live, every hour of our time, is a gift from God and in a way, is also a "talent", given to us for stewardship, to be invested in the Master’s service. You should really think about how you use your time, and organize yourself to make the best use of your time that you can. Remember, as in the case of the foolish virgins, you can not wait until the last moment to get ready. You may never get the chance.
Again, don’t take the attitude "all things are lawful unto me" (I Corinthians 6:12), because the Bible makes it clear that God wants you to do the things that are "helpful" (NKJV). In everything, be one the ball and do the very best you can do. Be diligent. As Jesus said, in John 9:14, as long as it is day, we must do the Lord’s work. "The night is coming when no one can work." Remember what happened to the wicked servant who assumed his master wasn’t coming soon. Get on the ball before that Day catches you like a snare. Don’t get rejected or left behind. Jesus REALLY is coming soon. Get ready and stay ready....NOW!
Notes for part II