Tag Archives: Christianity

Adjusting to the Unpredictable

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One of the things that has so intrigued me about reading The Black Swan is that it seems like each new section brings up another thought-provoking idea that leaps off the page at me. Yes! I think. That IS how it is.

Or, No, wonder I was having problems with such and such. Or… Wow what a fantastic doctrinal analogy!

As I’m going back through earlier sections which I’ve already read, I’m finding nearly every page dog-eared. Just in the prologue, I came upon the notion that instead of trying to predict Black Swan events (seeing as they are, by definition, unpredictable) we should instead be seeking to adjust to their existence.

That thought alone triggered a rush of thoughts. How do you adjust to the unpredictable? You adjust to the Justice of God, to use a phrase often uttered by my pastor. You adjust to His justice first through salvation, and second through consistently being filled with the Spirit and growing in knowledge of His word. Because of Christ’s work on the cross, the Father’s justice has been satisfied and is therefore free to bless us when we believe in and appropriate that work for ourselves. He gives us His own righteousness and places us in union with His Beloved Son, and as a result we share everything His son has. (Meditate on that concept for a little bit!)

The more we learn, the more our thinking is changed to His, increasing our  capacity to receive the blessings He wants to give us. He is for us. He decreed everything that would ever happen to us, and it all fits into His purpose.

Whatever happens may not be predictable from my view, but to God, who is outside of time, it’s already happened. Just like the fact that from my side He’s conforming me to the image of His son even now, whereas from His I’m already conformed.

If you can really get your mind around those facts and live in them, there’s not much that can unsettle you. So then Black Swan’s don’t really matter. Because to God there are no Black Swans. What I love about this book is the crack it’s putting into the facade the world throws up — a facade that people know things, that things are getting better, that we have control, that there are experts and the rest of us better listen to them, that we can have security and safety and surety…

When really, who could have predicted 911? When the cold war ended, who could have predicted that the next big threat was going to be muslim extremists operating out of primitive villages in the Hindu Kush?

I couldn’t predict that when I took my mother to the dentist the other day to get her cleared before taking a drug her oncologist wants her to take, that they would going to find decay in one of her teeth and tell us she needs to have it pulled. My mother is nearly 82 and has excellent teeth. Only two tiny cavities and those having appeared only in the last few years. Yet here she is with decay hiding between two of her back teeth.

Nor could I have predicted I’d lock myself out of the house yesterday morning, but that happened too. Nor that today, when I was hanging out the laundry, a sock would drop and Quigley would pounce on it (he hasn’t done that in over a year I think) and I’d spend the next ten minutes chasing him to a standstill so I could get it back. Neither incident remotely measures up to the immensity of a Black Swan event, but in my life at least, they serve to illustrate that you really never know how things are going to come together to completely change the day. Or maybe the week, or month or even the rest of one’s life.

 

His Plans Not Mine

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Last night’s message in the GBC Basics Class that is going through the book of John triggered some tremendously clarifying thoughts for me. We’ve reached verses 15-17 of chapter 7 where the Jews were marveling at our Lord’s teachings, wondering how He could speak with such authority and confidence when He’d never gone to Rabbi or Pharisee college. Jesus’s answer:

“My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me.”

Now, He was not teaching the same stuff as the other rabbis and pharisees, yet they all claimed the same source for their messages. In fact, Jesus’s message was pretty much opposite what the Pharisees were saying (keep the law and you’ll please God and be saved vs believe in Me and you’ll be saved) Naturally the Jews wondered how they could know who was telling the truth? Jesus said,

“If any man is willing (ie, determined) to do His (the Father’s) will, he shall know of the truth, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself.”

Pastor Joe, the pastor in training who teaches the Basics classes, said that the student who makes the word alone his absolute standard and doesn’t tolerate nonsense derived from human minds will know it’s from God. If you keep at it and keep taking in the Word from your prepared Pastor on a daily basis, God will, through that, give you the ability to see the success of the Word when it’s applied to life and circumstances. We see its success in the fact that we have inner peace in a situation that formerly would have reduced us to, as my friend Mary likes to say, a trembling puddle on the floor.

That’s true. I have experienced that. When I gave the deadline and the publicizing of my books over to God to handle, I experienced great inner peace. But as I listened to the lesson and recalled this, I still had some doubts. Forgetting about the inner peace, I recalled that I’d trusted Him with the success of The Enclave. Trusted Him to be my publicist, to build the readership apart from social networking and the help of man which would encourage me to compromise my beliefs.

Yes, I experienced the peace that came with slamming all my cares on Him, but in the other matters it seems that He didn’t come through. My books aren’t apparently huge sellers, I’m not getting a bunch of fan letters and in fact, The Enclave is rated only 4 stars at Amazon, the lowest of any of my books. So… what’s up with that? I trusted Him and this is how He came through?

Ah, but as I thought through that sequence during the class, reminding the Lord that I’d trusted Him to build the readership, etc, the Holy Spirit seemed to say, “Well… who’s to say He hasn’t done that? Maybe He didn’t do it on as great a scale as you had hoped, but He’s still done it…”

True.  And if it’s not as much as I’d dreamed of, well, there’s a reason. More than one. First, being wildly successful would be a distraction to my spiritual life. It would probably have consumed me, I would have thought I had done something to earn it, and wouldn’t have had to go to Him again and again like I have because everything would have been going “right.”  I certainly would not be making the applications of doctrine that I am right now. In fact, now that I think about it… I wasn’t trusting Him with my cares so much as I was trusting Him with MY plan. Seeing that things weren’t going as I’d hoped, fearing that the book would be no good, that I’d lose readers, that… blah, blah, blah… I couldn’t write and so I gave it over to Him to fix. But it was still MY plan.

Which is hardly the way it’s supposed work. I’m supposed to be trusting Him for HIS plan, whatever it may be. MY plans are stupid and small. Earthly. Temporal. His are way beyond anything I can imagine. Nothing so small and temporal and petty as the acclaim of a fallen world, but plans for my eternal benefit, plans to give me what money can’t buy and very few enjoy. Worldly acclaim can’t compare to unshakable inner peace, joy, love… confidence that His word works, that no matter what He is with me, that He will never leave me nor forsake me… That I am who I am by His grace, and who cares if people don’t like that? Confidence that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

But what about all the people watching — those who read of my decision not to do things the world’s way, and who haven’t seen Him come through for me? Won’t it look to them like He didn’t? Maybe. Will they think to themselves, “Oh, see? She should have banded together with us, trusted us to bring her success. That’s the way it’s supposed to be done.”

But why should I care? Am I serving man or God? And anyway, who decided that worldly success is the mark of God’s coming through? Those, I would guess, who aren’t willing to trust God with their plans and would rather take a shot at fulfilling them themselves.

Separating To

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In the book Lone Survivor, which I’ve blogged about here and here, author Marcus Luttrell wrote about the very intense training he and his fellows went through to become SEALs.  It began with boot camp, then those who who’d signed up/been accepted for SEAL training were moved to Coronado Island for the initial two week training phase they call Indoctrination. “Indoc” prepares them for the seven month Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALs (BUD/s) course to follow. Of the 164 men who’d been assigned to Marcus’s Class 226, more than fifty had dropped out during Indoc, about which Marcus reflected,

“I know a few never showed up at all, mostly through sheer intimidation. But the rest had somehow vanished into the void. I never saw any of them leave, not even my roommate.”

Having read through his Indoc experiences, I wasn’t surprised, since he’d been wholly occupied with getting through it himself. It made me think, too,  about another aspect of the Christian life I’ve been reflecting on lately — the command we’re given in God’s word to separate from friends, loved ones, situations, even geographical locations that are hindering our spiritual growth, pulling us down, pulling us back into the cosmic system.

 I Thess 3:14 tells us not to associate with those who do not obey Paul’s doctrines, including those who lead “undisciplined” lives. 2 Ti 3:5 instructs us to avoid those who have a form of godliness but have denied its power, and Ro 16:17,18 warns us away from those who bring in “dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching we’ve received.”  And then, of course there is the fool in Ps 14:1 who says in his heart (but not necessarily with his lips) that there is no god. Pro 13:20 adds, He who walks with wise men will be wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm.

And if that’s not clear enough, Ps 101:6 says, My eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me; He who walks in a blameless way is the one who will minister to me. He who practices deceit shall not dwell in my house; He who speaks falsehood shall not maintain his position before me.

These are clear commands. Unfortunately the execution of them is not always so easy. Even leaving aside the consideration of how to know if someone is a fool or is leading an “undisciplined life,” the very process of making such a determination can lead one into the sin of judging.Given that judging is a sin that often feels very right and very justified, it can be difficult to know if one is sinning or exercising the discernment born of wisdom in attempting to apply the command to separate.

One of the most helpful concepts I’ve come across is the idea that  we don’t separate from , we separate to. Separating from can all too easily devolve into thoughts like: “Ah, that person believes something other than what I’ve been taught. They are doing things that the Bible doesn’t condone. They are not getting doctrine everyday. In fact they are not getting doctrinal teaching at all. They are a fool! I must separate!” (And it almost seems like I should add at this point, “Thank you, Lord for not making me a fool like them.” as per the self-righteous Pharisee in Luke 18)

That’s judging.

Separating to, however, is more like what Marcus described in his Indoc training: you are so focused on the word, so focused on God’s calling for your life, so focused on just working out your own salvation with fear and trembling, you don’t have time or mental energy to concern yourself with what others are doing. If they struggle along beside you — wonderful. You can help each other and develop a bond and a growing intimacy. If they stop coming alongside, you’ll barely notice, too occupied with your number one priority which is the Word of God, which God Himself has magnified above his very own name. Ps 138:2

NoCal Conference 2009

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karen Golden Gate

Well, I got back Monday afternoon from the Northern California Bible Conference which was held in Burlingame, CA (just south of San Francisco on the Peninsula) and sponsored by Grace Bible Church but which my Pastor did not attend, and so, obviously, did not teach at. Instead it was taught by one of the pastors my pastor has ordained, a man who has started his own ministry out here in the west.

The subject was Authority — how it is the most important thing in the universe. The question asked was “Do you know who/what your authority is?”

The answer… it’s a threefold construct — a triangle of God, His Word and the Pastor Teacher God has assigned to you to communicate that Word.

We were reminded that God is not the author of confusion. (I Co 14:33)

That God does things in ones — One Lord, one faith, one baptism (Eph 4:5) — and that we each have one spiritual gift and one pastor teacher assigned at a time.

We reviewed the scriptures that document the fact that we are assigned a Pastor Teacher — Ephesians 4:12, 13 which tells us the gift of Pastor-Teacher is given for the training of the saints for the work of the ministry. I Pe 5:3 reveals that each pastor is assigned a specific congregation, and I Th 512 adds that each believer is assigned a pastor… and thus a specific congregation as well. The local congregation operates as a body in itself, and all the parts are needed by all the other parts. (I Co 12)

In times past the notion of staying loyal to an assigned pastor and local assembly was mostly unchallenged due to the difficulties of travel and the limitations of technology. If you wanted to hear someone you had to be there. Or perhaps, as in the first century, ou could rely on letters or books. Now with the explosion of printed material as well as internet technology which puts the works of thousands at our fingertips, and with transportation having advanced to the point you can travel thousands of miles in a day… this is more of a challenge. And that challenge was what the bulk of the teaching — and the conversation — at the Northern California Bible conference was about.

With the proliferation of prepared, doctrinal pastors in recent years, many of whom have their messages recorded and made available through the internet or other digitized means, it has become very easy to go “church hopping.” Don’t like what your pastor is teaching this week? With a couple of mouse clicks, you can see what Pastor B is teaching. Angry and offended because your pastor has dared to tell you the truth and thereby become your enemy (Gal 4:16), you can click out of his site and go to someone else who teaches more in line with what you want to hear. Do you just want to accumulate knowledge?  Feel good about your life and your self? Or are you simply curious as to what else is out there? Are you bored? Familiarity can be a subtle attack on your mental attitude with respect to doctrine which can cause you to become dissatisfied, restless or feel dry — though sometimes that dry feeling is just part of the Christian life, a test to see if you will proceed regardless or wander away in search of something new and more exciting.

The problem with this “spiritual adultery” (as the concept was taught this weekend) is that even prepared, experienced doctrinal pastors disagree in what they teach. Some say the rapture will occur at the end of the church age and other place it mid Tribulation. Some say we don’t need rebound (confession of sins to regain the Filling of the Holy Spirit) and others say rebound is central to the function of the Christian life. Some have taught that you can reach in this life a state of sinless perfection and others are aghast at such a suggestion.

All of them can support their positions scripturally because, as my pastor says, you can make the Bible say anything you want it to. So then, how does the congregant determine which is right? To think that you have the ability to discern through all the different teachers and pick out which one is correct here and which is correct there is really pretty arrogant. It assumes that you out of all of them are the one with the greatest knowledge and ability to see truth. It’s especially arrogant if you consider the fact that most of the men you are critiquing spend their days digging into God’s word, study the Greek and Hebrew and have spent years doing so, whereas the average congregant has devoted maybe only 20% of the same amount of time to their studies.

Actually, that mindset, the one of roaming about sampling from this and that source as you determine (or perhaps you think the Holy Spirit is guiding you… but not anyone else, apparently, or wouldn’t they be right?) is pretty close to today’s post-modernist thinking that says you don’t need an authority, someone to teach you, but that you can figure things out for yourself. It says that there is no absolute truth, either, that image is more important than words, that personal experience and emotion trumps reason.  A 2002 article in Christianity Todaypoints out that “when we speak of truth…our postmodern neighbors hear just one more opinion among many.”  I wonder if that might not also apply to some of our fellow Christians, their thinking influenced by the prevailing viewpoint of the times. 

But the Bible doesn’t hold that a man’s opinion or his experience is important. God’s ways are not man’s ways; His thoughts are not man’s thoughts. The fool is right in his own eyes. The ways of a man seem right to him… And pastors were given to train and instruct the saints for the work of service. Yes, the Holy Spirit is our ultimate teacher — we can’t understand a thing the pastor teaches apart from Him; nor can the pastor study and teach correctly apart from Him. But that doesn’t negate the fact that the gift of pastor teacher has been given for our edification and we need him. One pastor. One human authority at a time to respect, trust and submit to — not merely to the man himself, but ultimately to God, who provided the man and delegated the authority to him.

Lone Survivor — Revisited

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Awhile back I wrote about the book Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell and Patrick Robinson (Here) . At the time I’d just begun it. This morning I finished it. That I took as long as I did is no reflection on the book, only on the level of life distractions I’ve been faced with. And actually I think I’ve read it about three times altogether now, given my propensity for skipping ahead and then returning to read through more slowly. I don’t often recommend books, but this is one I do. Especially if you know anything about the angelic conflict, the purpose of suffering, the reason we’re here, how to glorify God… because this book presents a vivid, moving and compelling visual/experiential illustration of what the Christian life is about.

It is not a religious book, though Luttrell does believe in God and it’s very clear that God preserved his life in the mountains of Afghanistan. But the similarities between our lives in training as Christians and then executing that training as we begin to come under more and more pressure from the enemy and the training and deployment of Navy SEALS were amazingly apt. I have turned over the corners of over thirty pages of sections I wanted to quote or reflect upon.

For example…

It was just another example of how amazingly sharp you need to be in order to wear the SEAL Trident. Over and over during training, we were told never to be complacent, reminded constantly of the sheer cunning and unpredictability of our terrorist enemy, of the necessity for total vigilance at all times, of the endless need to watch out for our teammates….

He spends quite a bit of time relating his experiences as he went through the training to be a SEAL before going on to describe the events of Operation Redwing, from which only he survived. The training was absolutely fascinating and in that especially I could relate. Often they would be put uncomfortable, painful situations, like being in cold water up their necks for precisely the amount of time their instructors knew they could bear before expiring.

They were also deliberatedlytreated unjustly. After spending the afternoon cleaning his room, getting everything shining and spotless, a trainee would stand agog as the instructor come to inspect his work would proceed to drop sand on the gleaming floor, tear up the crisply made bed, pull out all the neatly packed-drawers and dump their contents on the floor, all the while yelling at the trainee for being a slob and a lazy bum (well, not those words precisely) and then commanding him to “get wet and sandy.” Which meant to go out fully clothed (in your dress uniform even) jump into the cold Pacific off Coronado island and then roll about in the sand.

I read that part about the time Pastor was talking about how as Christians we are going to receive unjust treatment. It’s a part of suffering for blessing. It’s something God doesn’t just “allow” but in a sense chooses and at times even orchestrates. (As He used Pharaoh). Reading that the Navy SEAL instructors were deliberately unjust was a shock. Here’s a quote:

I asked [Instructor] Reno about this weeks later, and he told me, “Marcus, the body can take damn near anything. It’s the mind that needs training. The question that guy was being asked involved mental strength. Can you handle such injustice? Can you cope with that kind of unfairness, that much of a setback? And still come back with your jaw set, still determined, swearing to God you will never quit? That’s what we’re looking for.”

And that’s what God’s looking for. Not perfection. But plugging. Never giving up on the plan. No matter what hits you, you just keep on going. Because Satan knows just as well as those SEAL instructors that injustice is really, really hard to swallow. It ignites all manner of sins from anger to resentment to vengeance, from sulking to self-pity to giving up. He knows that if he comes at God’s people with injustice a certain number of them are going to throw in the towel. Or, to keep with the SEAL theme, to ring the bell that signalled withdrawal.

To fight in God’s army you have to be able to handle injustice. And pain.

Here’s another quote:

I remember [the instructor] said flatly, “You’re going to hurt while you’re here. That’s our job, to induce pain; not permanent injury, of course, but we need to make you hurt. That’s a big part of becoming a SEAL. We need proof you can take the punishment. And the way out of that is mental… Don’t buckle under to the hurt, rev up your spirit and your motivation, attack the courses. Tell ourself precisely how much you want to be here.”

Of course in our case, it doesn’t depend on us. We can bear the pain and the injustice through the power that God has given us. The power of His word and of His Spirit. But it is primarily born through the mind. The attitude we bring to the suffering is what determines success or failure. Suffering is given to us so we can learn obedience, as Jesus did, and later so that we might glorify God while enduring it.  If we get subjective about it, we will fail. If we step back and recognize it as something God has allowed and then ask ourselves what He might be intending fur us to learn from it, we’ll go a long way toward maintaining that proper mental attitude.

And this was just from the first two weeks of the SEAL training. Before they even got to BUD/s and well before they had to face the dreaded Hell Week…

…to be continued.

A Summary of the Christian Life

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In our lessons lately, our pastor has been teaching from an outline of five basic principles that encapsulate living the Christian Life. They are…

1. Knowing the angelic conflict

2. Knowing how to glorify God (there are specific criterion)

3. Know no man after the flesh

4. Live for others

5. Continually take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

We just spent a week or so on knowing the angelic conflict — not an indepth teaching on the entire doctrine, but rather emphasizing how it answers some of the deep questions many people ask and few can answer. Why sin? Why did God create any of us, angels included, knowing His creatures would rebel? Why suffering and chaos? Why disaster, especially when it comes into the lives of those who are making good decisions and going forward in the plan of God?

The timing of this in concert with what’s been going on in my own life has been… well, certainly not coincidental since I don’t believe in coincidence. Before the moment needed, God provides His word and its answers. He also provides it after the moment needed, just to confirm. And, come to think of it, in the moment, as well. I guess He’s got all bases covered.

Why suffering? Why disaster? It’s getting clearer for me. Here’s a section of my notes from a recent lesson that really resonated:

You were doing all the right things, you’d made positive decisions, had kept going forward in the Plan and you were waiting for the promised blessings to be dropped in your lap. And they were. Except they didn’t look at all like you expected them to look.

They were the blessings of adversity and undeserved suffering. Not prosperity, going through success and having business propositions coming in that made you look like a great business person. No. What matters isn’t whether you are successful in the world’s eyes, but did you stick with the Plan? Did you keep going forward, reaching for what lies ahead? Or did you come up with an excuse to give it up and go back to the world’s ways?

God has a way of having something come into your life that you didn’t expect. It may be physical suffering; it may be problems in relationships — problems in the marriage, in the family, in friendships. It may be problems with success or money. All seemingly negative things, yet all for our benefit. But if you go forward, regardless, you’ll receive real  divine blessings, of the same nature as our Lord received.

When He was on the cross, that didn’t seem at all like blessing according to the world’s view, but look at where He is now because of it: King of kings, Lord of lords, seated at the right hand of the Father in heavenly places. One day every knee will bow and He will rule forever in righteousness. But He had to go through the Cross first.

I think too often people expect the world to be heaven. They want everything to go right, they want success, money, pleasure, good relationships, good health, etc. I know I did. But if you understand the angelic conflict, then you know that’s not it at all. The world isn’t heaven, it’s fallen. It’s a battleground. It’s a theater. The angels are learning things from us. We’re not here to have things go our way and have a nice life. We’re here to bring glory to God in the angelic conflict. And that takes suffering, as the book of Job so clearly illuminates.

This world is also temporary. What matters is the eternal, but unfortunately I think it takes a lifetime to really believe that.

My Debt to the Colonel

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One of the things I’ve most appreciated about Colonel Thieme’s teachings was that he defined words that often were left to assumption. In fact, I think one very big part of his ministry was either to specifically define  or abandon altogether much of the standard “vocabulary” of Christianity. The baggage that many Christian words carry with them is immense and many times obfuscates their original meanings. It was one reason I chose to write in the genre of fantasy so I could get away from those words.

Love, for example is one such word. In the Greek (unlike in the English) there are two words for love and each has different meaning: agape and phileo. Agape is a system of thinking more than an emotion and is based on showing grace and kindness and maybe just not sinning against another person. It is based on something in the subject doing the loving. Phileo on the other hand, is a personal emotional response toward some element of attractiveness in the object.

Heart is another example. Heart has all kinds of conotations in English. Love the Lord with all your heart, for example.  I think a common conotation there is that it’s an emotion. A feeling. But the Greek word kardia much more than that. Thayer defines it as the centre and seat of spiritual life; the soul or mind, as it is the fountain and seat of the thoughts, passions, desires, appetites, affections, purposes, endeavours; of the understanding, the faculty and seat of the intelligence; of the will and character.  Many times the word is translated mind as well as heart.

This in contrast to nous  which is also sometimes translated mind, but more in the sense of understanding. Col Thieme taught that nous is where you perceive and understand things. But it’s the things you really believe and that are important to you that are in the kardia and the kardia is where you do your living from. (My paraphrase). 

This corresponds to another pair of Greek words that each are translated with the single English word knowledge: gnosis and epignosis. Gnosis is just knowledge; epignosis is full knowledge or wisdom. Gnosis is the kind of knowledge one has in the nous, whereas epignosis is what drives the kardia.  (I think it’s usually employed in connection with knowing God)

Instead of just popping over things, or teaching what he’d always heard, Col Thieme stopped and thought things through. If he had questions he tried to answer them. He dug deeply into the word, the history, the original languages. He thought about things like what comprises the soul, and how do we acquire knowledge? What’s the difference between the acquisition of natural knowledge and spiritual knowledge? What about the sin nature?

He asked questions like, if God told Adam and the woman that they’d die if they ate of the fruit, why didn’t they just drop dead as soon as they did? What was the change that occurred there? Why does the Hebrew say, “Dying you shall die?” Is the word for death doubled for emphasis? Or were there actually two deaths? One at the moment of the transgression (spiritual death) and another later in old age (physical death).

He really dug into the Angelic conflict, a doctrine Lewis Sperry Chafer had introduced him to, and which he built upon.  And as part of his teaching, part of his effort to get people to break out of their tradition-bound way of thinking about the spiritual life, he came up with innovative terms for complex concepts…  Rebound, Cosmic System, Angelic Conflict, GAP, Human Viewpoint, Divine Viewpoint. Nor did he shy away from teaching advanced doctrines to his congregation — doctrines like the depravity of man,  justification, the Hypostatic Union, election, pre-destination, eternal security, expiation, propitiation, divine decrees, the essence of God…

Many people might think those doctrines are fit only for those attending seminaries. Pastors need to know such things, they think, but not the common people. I disagree. If God put that stuff in His Word, He intends for us to seek to know it. And I can say that after years of studying it, when all the pieces finally begin to come together, I see how the doctrines of election and predestination, grace, eternal security have very real and very relevant appliaction to my every day life. More than I ever imagined they could.

So I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the man who poured out his life digging through the Word of God and teaching to his congregation the things that he found. It changed my life profoundly. I cannot imagine anything else, frankly. Nor would I want it.

Opposition

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I mentioned yesterday that once I began to study under the Colonel’s ministry, opposition came in. When I shared my excitement with my old church friends of what I was learning, how real it had become, how it was all making so much sense I was told to stay away from Thieme. He splits churches, I was told. I said, “He just teaches truth. If people leave a church to follow that, he’s not doing it, the people are.”

I was also told that Thieme would steal my soul. But when I asked how that might be accomplished, the person couldn’t tell me.

Col. Thieme taught that the “blood of Christ” did not refer to the literal blood of Christ (He didn’t bleed to death after all, since He said himself that His work was “finished” before He died physically) but to the expiatory work of Christ’s spiritual death on the cross, during which he was separated from God the Father for the first time ever as all the sins of the world were poured out on Him and judged. This was major anathema to my critics.

To me it was the first time the whole blood thing ever made sense.  I’d always wondered why would God be interested in some plasma with red corpuscles, platelets and white blood cells. How could that do anything about sin? It made no sense. The moment I heard this teaching I knew it was truth. So many things fell into place. But when I tried to share it people got very upset, so I soon learned not to.

Other friends wrote a lengthy letter detailing a metaphor for Christian living that involved a wheel with spokes — there’s Bible study, witnessing, prayer, giving, singing, fellowshipping, etc. Get too much of any one category, that spoke grows and the wheel won’t work. Clever metaphor, but it didn’t sway me. The word of God is not a spoke equal with those other things my friends listed, it’s the axle around which they all turn! The word of God is the mind of Christ and when it becomes our mind, it informs all those other things, so that we do them in accordance with His standards and in the power of His Spirit.

My mother, an unbeliever, thought I was in some kind of cult like that of Jim Jones, whose Guyana fiasco happened around the time I was just gaining momentum.

The weirdest thing though was the strange assault to get me to buy into tongues. Orville had told me right off that they weren’t for this age, but as soon as we got into the small churches in northern Arizona, we were bombarded with people telling us this was the right way to go. Col Thieme agreed with Orville, and backed it up with extensive scriptural evidence. 

Still, the people kept coming. Our landlady was into tongues and tried to convince me it was good. Then when we moved to an apple orchard, a woman showed up at the door to buy apples, and as we got into conversation, she told me that I needed to have the baptism of the Spirit so I could speak in tongues. A teacher friend invited for dinner, one of the few non-Mormons, confessed that she spoke in tongues whenver she didn’t know what to pray and began doing so right there in my kitchen.

We went to a Bible study where a woman sat looking spacier and spacier as the study concluded and when the pastor started to say the closing prayer she raised her hand and said she had a message from the Holy Spirit. He waved her on and she began to speak in tongues, looking as if she were in a trance. I was absolutely creeped out. All I could think was that it sounded like something from the devil.

When she was done, she offered to give the interpretation (in violation of protocol set up in the NT — it was supposed to be someone else who did that; in fact, mostly tongues was a sign for the Jews to witness to those who had gathered from afar and spoke other languages) wqhich was that God wants us to worship Him “in this way.” I stared at the floor praying God would get us out of there right away.

Thankfully, she finished, the Pastor said his prayer and to my horror, my husband was suddenly in conversation with the person beside him. A pair of shoes appeared on the floor before mine and I looked up into the eyes of the woman who had spoken (there were about 30 people present — and she was some distance away, separated from me by several people when she spoke). She invited me to come to her Bible class. I thanked her, and refrained from telling her I wouldn’t attend if it were the last bible study on earth.

My husband finally stopped talking and we left. Outside I told him of my intense negative reaction and he told me that as soon as she’d begun speaking he’d prayed that if that was really something from God He would make it clear, and if it wasn’t, that He would make it stop. And immediately it had stopped.

We never went to that bible study again, nor the church that sponsored it.

And then, in the most bizarre event of all, our Landcruiser broke down in the middle of nowhere between Globe and Winkleman one very hot summer dayas we were on our way down to Tucson. Stu got up on the Toyota’s roof and spied a trailer hidden behind some trees not far off, so we took our dog out of the car and walked down to see if we could use the phone. I don’t know what was done about the Landcruiser, too excited to discover that the woman of the house was a Christian. We talked and talked and I told her how I’d gotten saved and she took me down to Winkleman for some reason where I told some other people how I’d gotten saved… and then she started in on the second blessing and tongues and how she’d awakened one night to find Satan standing at the foot of her bed. She prayed him away to a radius of one mile from her home.

I probably listened like a deer caught in headlights and was quite relieved when we left. But somehow she had gotten my address and sent me several letters urging me in this direction.  I know I asked her several questions regarding what speaking in tongues did for her but the only one I recall is her saying that it made her certain she was saved. I was already certain of that, so didn’t tongues to do it.

Anyway, this all went on over a period or a year or so, and only when I was  solid in my understanding of the relevant scriptures  and absolutely convinced that tongues are not for today, did all that stop. Since that period of time I have never had another person show up out of nowhere telling me about tongues.

How I Found Col Thieme

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I was saved in the fall of 1974, by the words of a man who taught the college class Sunday school at a Conservative Baptist Church in Tucson, AZ. Orville Smyth was a letter carrier, back in the days when they didn’t drive trucks but walked from door to door. During his route, Orville memorized scripture. He also taught himself Greek (although not, I think, while he was walking…). And he taught in the Sunday school — adults and young adults.

In addition to the college class, he taught a new believer’s class on Monday nights which I and my now-husband attended — salvation by grace, salvation by faith alone in Christ alone, eternal security, the inerrancy of the Scriptures, 1 John 1:9 and more.  In the college classes he worked from Lewis Sperry Chafer’s Major Bible Themes, and taught us… well, the basic doctrines of the church age — all the above plus the essence and character of God, the angelic conflict, the depravity of man, Dispensations…

I had about nine months with him before my husband and I were married and we moved to Northern Arizona. Orville gave me an excellent foundation for my spiritual life. But there were a lot of other things… I had so many questions. Especially over that summer as we sought to find a new church home and every place we went more or less struck out. They were either way off the doctrine we believed or weren’t interested in studying at all.

The tiny Baptist church we were attending in Heber was either searching for a pastor or having a revival — I can’t recall any more — but the speaker’s subject was “yielding to the Spirit.” I’d already heard about yielding, but no one could really tell me how that was accomplished or what it actually meant. I mostly thought of yellow yield signs when I thought of the word, and not driving into oncoming traffic. Which wasn’t terribly useful.

The temporary speaker suggested that to yield we write all our sins down on a piece of paper and then light a match to it. By doing that, we would be yielded.

So I did that. I didn’t feel any more yielded than I had previously. And worse, it wasn’t an hour before I was committing another sin again. So that whole paper burning thing didn’t seem to have done much good. Besides making me feel terribly silly.

Then my husband got a job teaching math and biology and coaching football at the high school in nearby Lakeside and started about two weeks later. About a week into his teaching experience, he didn’t come home for dinner, so I turned down the heat on my simmering meatballs and went to school to find him. Football practice had held him late, but he was about ready to go when I arrived.

Not to go home and eat the meatballs, however. No. We had been invited to a Bible study at one of his fellow teachers’ homes. So off we went. I was not in the best mood for new people, a new Bible Study (most til then had been extremely lame) and no dinner. Besides, what about my meatballs!?

Looking back it makes me laugh. Little did I know how great that meeting would impact my life. And there I was, like Martha, all worried about meatballs.

When we got there everyone else has arrived and instead of meeting in the spacious living room, we were ushered to a dimly lit back bedroom that had been converted to a sort of study. There were file cabinets, several Western saddles on stands, shelves and shelves of 8 track tapes and a reel-to-reel tape player, which was to be the source of our “Bible Study.” I thought it was all  terribly weird, including the people.

And then the Colonel began…His voice and his manner were both annoying and compelling. His doctrinal content was what I was looking for, but he was so in-your-face. He taught like a drill instructor! (given his preparations, no surprise!) And in that first lesson, he was criticising lots of things I held dear — environmentalism, being one of them. The rest is lost to time, but Stu and I went home laughing about his dogmatic, forthright manner, his critical words, and totally un-pastor like demeanor.

But there was truth there and we came back the next week. I don’t recall whose idea it was. I think it might have been my husband’s, but I’m not sure. In between the things I didn’t like were lots of things I did. For one thing there was this matter of yielding.

That, taught Colonel Thieme, was merely another way of saying we needed to be filled with the Spirit. He delineated between the Indwelling of the Spirit, which all church age believers have all the time, and the Filling of the Spirit which is transitory. The first time we sin after salvation, we lose the filling of the Spirit, which is where He controls the soul. 1 John 1:9, which tells us to confess our sins, brings back the Filling of the Spirit and temporal fellowship with God. A baby believer spends more time out of fellowship than in. But as we grow and as God’s word begins to transform our thoughts, we begin to avoid the more obvious sins and spend more time filled with the Spirit. It’s a long slow process.

But it made sense. And it works. I knew it was truth as soon as I heard it. Suddenly all the floundering around, all the vagueries of what “yieldedness” meant had been circumvented and I had a concept I could hold on to and actually apply.

Thus  began what was for a few months (or was it years?) of a love-hate relationship with the man. His personality was abrasive. He made an issue of his authority. He sometimes used “bad words”. And while none of that bothered me all that much, it sure did bother others.  And that did bother me.

But even so,  I couldn’t stop listening; it was the only place I was getting fed, and boy was I!  I ordered cassettes of the basics series through the mail and listened to three of the hour-long tapes a day — because I was so eager to hear the next one. I just couldn’t seem to get enough. Since I had no kids, no job and no car, I had time. Also no telephone, and no TV. And, it being Mormon country (almost all the teachers at the school were LDS), and us being new to the area, I had few friends as well. I listened, took notes, then copied them over into neat transcriptions with all the references. I also read most of the publications, and taught myself beginning Greek.  

 The Colonel’s teachings on Moses made him come alive. I saw him as a real person, with flaws and faults and foibles like the rest of us, even if he was the “humblest man in the earth.” It told me that sinless perfection was not the goal. That those people in the Bible were not “saints” in the sense of holier than thou individuals but people just like me, with very similar struggles.

I LOVED the story of Joseph, which is echoed in The Light of Eidon…

Col Thieme’s teachings on the angelic conflict, which elaborated on what Chafer had uncovered, answered all sorts of questions and made so many things fit together into one understandable whole. The difference between the Indwelling and Filling of the Spirit, the concept of human viewpoint versus divine viewpoint,  the notion of mental attitude sins, the clarification of what a pastor’s job really was, why we need to get the word taught every day… everthing was so vital, so exciting and compelling and useable. The Christian life came alive as never before.

But of course, because we are in a battle with spiritual forces of darkness in the heavenlies, there had to be opposition, and there was…

Colonel Thieme – Face to Face With the Lord

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RBTBIOPH3

My first pastor, the one through whom I was introduced to doctrine, and under whom I studied for something like 23 years, and one of the two men I credited in the acknowledgements of Arena and the Guardian King series went home to be with the Lord last Sunday. Here is the press release:

Robert B. Thieme, Jr., pastor of Berachah Church from 1950-2003 and president of R. B. Thieme, Jr., Bible Ministries, passed through death into eternity Sunday, 16 August 2009 at 8:45 PM and is now “absent from the body and face to face with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8b). He was the beloved husband of Betty Beal Thieme and devoted father of Robert B. Thieme III. He is also survived by his sister, Ann T. Wallis, and his cousins, Fredericka Botts and Nancy N. Harder.

Bob was born on 1 April 1918. His father, Robert B. Thieme, and mother, Anna Cloakey Thieme, of Ft. Wayne, Indiana moved to Beverly Hills, California in 1926. Bob graduated from Beverly Hills High School in the summer of 1936, having lettered in football, track, and gymnastics. He was a member of the Beverly High Alumni Association.

Bob enrolled at the University of Arizona in Tucson in the fall of 1936 where he majored in classical Greek and joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. After a distinguished college career, he graduated on 29 May 1940 magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He was also commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve.

With the goal of becoming a pastor, Bob was licensed to preach by the First Baptist Church of Tucson, Arizona on 5 June 1940. To further his ministerial preparation, he enrolled in Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas in 1940. After one semester, his seminary studies were interrupted by the impending entry of the United States into World War II.

On 3 April 1941 Lieutenant Thieme began active duty service in the Army Air Corps. Because of the nature of his assigned duties he received rapid promotion and by the end of the war had attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. LTC Thieme was the Director of Military Training for Flying Training Command. In this position he was charged with initiating, prescribing, and standardizing military training for all categories of personnel in the Aviation Cadet programs. His duties included coordinating training at 120 Army Air Corps installations throughout the United States and authoring publications that standardized this training. By 1943, he had written The Military Triad, Strategy and Tactics for The Aviation Cadet, and Get Smart, Mister. His final assignment was to supervise and direct the gunnery training at Harlingen Field, Texas. Bob returned to Dallas Seminary in 1946 to resume preparation for the ministry. The academic training he received in Greek, Hebrew, theology, history, and textual criticism became the foundation for a rigorous professional life of studying and teaching the Word of God. As a student, he became the interim pastor of Reinhardt Bible Church in Dallas, Texas. Upon graduating summa cum laude with a Master of Theology in May 1949, he continued to pastor at Reinhardt until April 1950.

For fifty-three years Robert B. Thieme, Jr., was the pastor of Berachah Church in Houston, Texas. As pastor he developed an innovative system of vocabulary, illustrations, and biblical categories designed to communicate the truths of God’s Word. His scholarly, expository approach to teaching the Word of God and the worldwide distribution of his publications and biblical teachings without charge or obligation have made Pastor Robert B. Thieme, Jr., a major voice in Christianity today.

A memorial service will be held at Berachah Church at 10:00 AM Sunday, 23 August 2009.

**

As I read this I realized for the first time that Col Thieme had already started preparing for the ministry when he was called into military service. But despite the press release’s implication that this service was an “interruption” I suddenly saw that it was anything but. It was not only God’s preparation for what was to be his life’s work but a wonderful metaphor for what Col Thieme would do as a pastor: train the army of God. I knew he had been involved in the Army’s training program, but it didn’t register until now just how extensive that work had been. First he developed a program for training the country’s soldiers. Then he developed a program for training the soldiers of our Lord’s heavenly kingdom. And that is just… awesome.

I also had completely forgotten that he had started out as interim pastor at Reinhardt Bible Church. Yes, I know I heard him mention it on occasion, but I did not recall it until now — certainly not when I came up with Cam Reinhardt’s name. Too funny.

I don’t think I can even get my mind around how greatly this man influenced my life. I am so grateful for his diligence in studying and teaching and protecting his sheep, in the face often of tremendous opposition and persecution. What he gave to me is a something I shall literally cherish forever.

But I’ll save that musing for another day.

The R. B. Thieme, Jr, Bible Ministries website has a wealth of his materials available for ordering free of charge. As with Grace Bible Church, the financial policy is one of grace, whereby anyone interested in receiving doctrinal information is free to do so and contributions are made solely on a voluntary basis. There are audio tapes, MP3 CD’s, DVDs and numerous booklets. I own and have read nearly all the latter, and still go back to refer to them from time to time.