A PERSONAL REFLECTION … Understanding important truths from the Bible….

I Timothy 4:16               NKJV

 Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.

  

There are questions which a Christian Pastor can ask that are troubling to say the least. 

1.       Is there Christianity without the knowledge of God?  In the light of John 17:3

 this seems impossible.  John seems to clearly inform us that the believer must know God.

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

2.      As a Christian can a person know God other than by His revelation of Himself.  When we read Matthew 11:27 this also seems impossible.  Jesus in the Matthew passage makes the knowledge of God a revelation by Himself as He wills.  Surely He will not reveal a false God. 

3.       Doesn’t this make every believer to some degree a theologian?  Paul writing I Cor. 2:11-14 distinguishes the fact of salvation on this very issue.

 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. ¹² Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.  ¹³ These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy^[a] Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. ¹⁴ But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

4.      Now comes the discriminating question.  Should I have distinctive Christian fellowship with someone  whom I know does not believe the truth about God as Christians confess?  By this I mean pray with, worship with, converse with, and in general treat as fellow Christians those who are heterodox?

I do not find this is the practice of the believer in the Scriptures.  Daniel is an excellent example of this.  Though he had supporters in the court of the King, he was hated and found intolerable by the majority.

And I find men of the past hated by the majority for the same reason.  There are too many examples of Christian martyrs to bother giving a single example.

What brings me to these reflections is an occurrence of research on Rodman Williams who is dead now but was evidently a warm hearted Christian believer.  Williams was a brilliant Liberal Bible Scholar and Christian leader.  He was  at one time the President of and a professor at Austin Seminary, a Presbyterian Seminary in Austin, TX.  In the mid 60’s he experienced a charismatic conversion.  He began speaking in “tongues” and leading Evangelical Bible studies.  Williams became one of the foremost leaders of the Neo-Charasmatic Evangelical Renewal.  I was deeply moved as I read his testimony.

Now the rub comes.  Williams maintained his fellowship--by his admission--with the liberals who were his closest friends.  This included the “God Is Dead” men (he never agreed with them), to the leadership of the World Council of Churches.  He never left the liberal church in which he had his ordination.  And he remained popular in those circles.

Williams developed his association with the Neo-Charasmatic Movement and professed the fundamentals which were identified with that movement.  He did embrace the Scriptures.  He did confess Trinitarian Christianity.  He did profess salvation by faith through grace by Christ alone.  But he evidently required this of no one else.

What am I misunderstanding?

All Peter and John had to do was deny the resurrection.  All Gottschalk had to do was recant his belief in the Doctrines of Grace.  All Bunyan had to do was quit preaching.  All the 1600 ministers in England had to do was read the advertisement for Sunday sports contests from the pulpit.

A question I despise , “Was Rodman Williams a Christian?”  This I know, he lived and died with a credible profession of faith.  He lived with a resounding history of Christian service.  His devotion to Christ shames me.  That is my answer—anything more he will answer to his Master as each of us must.

Romans 14:4

Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand.