Seek The Genuine

Every newscast that I saw over the last few days had at least one moment of humor, even giddiness, over the prediction from a radio preacher that the world would come to an end.....or at least the end would begin.....yesterday. Even the commencement speaker at our son's law school graduation began with a joke. My first major interest after coming into the Christian faith 30 years ago was apologetics with a minor in researching the cults. I used to run a personal ad in our local newspaper trying to contact followers of one particular religious cult in order to reason with them from the Scriptures. The man behind this latest false prophesy departed from sound theology quite some time ago, in a number of theological areas, and has marks of a cult-like following. One gentleman spent his entire life savings of well over a hundred thousand dollars on billboards announcing that the end was coming. When interviewed after the failure of the predicted apocalypse he could only mutter that he didn't understand what went wrong with the prediction. My slant on this fiasco is a little bit different.  Bridge On The River Kwai is an excellent film from 1957 that starred William Holden, Alec Guinness, Sessue Hayakawa and Jack Hawkins. Guinness played British Colonel Nicholson whose men were POWs in a Japanese labor camp. His character was the epitome of military discipline and his men loved him for it. The Japanese were going to follow the Geneva Convention and proper military protocol or they would get no quality labor from his men. Even the Japanese camp commander Colonel Saito, played marvelously by Sessue Hayakawa, could only admire the leadership displayed by his counterpart and the effect it had on the British Colonel's men. Colonel Nicholson had his way and work proceeded on a bridge that the Japanese planned for troop movements. Aware of this back at Pacific headquarters, the British knew that something had gone horribly wrong with Colonel Nicholson's powers of reason and developed their own plan to blow up this bridge before it could be used. Colonel Nicholson upon seeing the detonation wires that were meant to destroy this magnificent structure that he believed attested to not only British engineering skill but military discipline and character, and then seeing the familiar faces at the end of those wires, suddenly came to his senses and saw who he was aiding and abetting. He could only utter "What have I done?" There may be a day when average liberal Americans, both your friends and mine, that have fallen for the schemes of the radical Progressives and the Marxists in business suits may only be able to utter those same words "What have I done?" I have had an idiosyncrasy, OK one of many, for quite some time now. When in a worship service my eyes will not depart from the pulpit. I sat in one church for many years without ever even looking into the choir loft that was directly above the pulpit. This emphasis on the authority of the pulpit over the man is the result of having seen so many follow charismatic individuals while leaving their mind behind. I will not acknowledge the walking back and forth with Bible raised, eloquent vocabularies, erudite elocution or any helps meant to get the attention of the congregation but only the authority of the preached Word that can be verified in that written Word, and the pulpit serves to remind me of this. Neither the pastor from that church mentioned nor from our present church would specifically utilize such enhancements but I have regularly experienced it while travelling. This certainly is extreme behavior on my part and I don't recommend it to anyone but it is a result of that cult research both in Christianity and politics for I have seen first hand, many times, how a persuasive personality with a few well chosen tricks can lure a bright mind into a cult or into theological or political error that should otherwise have been identified immediately. From my experience, the most effective thing that one can do to insure that he or she is never drawn into egregious error bordering on a cult is learning the genuine beforehand. One might then ask, "What if the first exposure in an attempt to learn the genuine is from the false prophet or the political propagandist?".  My answer to this is do not burn bridges until you are sure of where you want to go and in order to do this many areas have to be researched. In the Christian faith one has to at least be aware of how the church and its doctrine evolved over the centuries and the people behind this evolving. There have been many attempts over almost two millennia that deviated from sound doctrine and they had been identified, scrutinized by councils from the Scriptures and rejected. Tendencies to deviate can be spotted easily today but only if one is familiar with how we came to where we are. It has been our failure to undertake these first steps and build a defense against the mystic, the usurper and the charlatan that explains much of what is found in the typical Christian book store and on the airwaves. One needs to see the foundation of Christian belief which is Jesus Christ, from the foreshadowing of the Messiah in the Old Testament to inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the writing of His birth, life, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension in the New Testament. If one might feel tempted to depart from what has been orthodox doctrine then logic alone should raise a red flag that a false prophet is claiming to know that which everyone before him, or her, has testified to very plainly from Scripture. In politics, one has to see the need for and the writing of our Constitution from those involved. To follow those today who see an entirely different paradigm of interpreting that document as if we ourselves were writing it anew should, at the very least, demand that those proposing this new political philosophy openly admit that the change they proclaim is in the foundation and essence of America itself. Had the Progressives openly admitted this in the election of 2008 we would not have the personnel that we do in the Executive Branch or the two new members of the Supreme Court. Whether it is concerning a Harold Camping or Saul Alinsky, the disciplines are there and if put in place, the false prophet can easily be discerned.