Church History and Me: The Dispensation
For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles – if you indeed have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in other ages was not made know to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His hold apostles and prophets…
Ephesians 3:1-5
But I want you to know, brethren, that the tings which happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel…
Philippians 1:12
All of the horns of the wicked I will also cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted.
Psalm 75:10
After the 1960s, Before Facebook
Lord, even a mentally obsessive person like myself at times finds it hard to see you providentially in control of all things, especially when things around us look so hopeless and godless. Thankfully, there is a degree of clear wisdom and solid purpose in your dispensations or οικονομιαν (economies), or paradigms/spiritual environments/households.
A few things have been made known to me for certain: both my physical and spiritual birth have come along after the post–1960s code of neo–pagan ethics established itself into the daily life of every American and beyond: and both my physical and spiritual birth came just before the establishment of the technological interfaces which have effectively torn down all the walls which had previously blocked interpersonal communication and transmission of information (Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, and Google, generally).
Lord, I have been so tremendously confused as to what my role is in history, especially as a minister, and one struck down by the weight of the gospel and fear of the Final Day. I pray that you will guide me as I seek out, now, not just a self–understanding (as I have done before), but an understanding of Your Spirit’s perspective (TRUE perspective!) on the outside and surrounding circumstances of life, which no human living does not believe has anything but the greatest weight.
The ethics inherited from the 1960s were a mix of good and bad. The spirit of those times sought to relativize everything: for good, because the relativization halted importune judgments; for bad, because it destroyed any sense of solid spiritual reality. The 60s lead the way to a type of selfishness and entitlement that excused itself because it was garbed with a sentiment of “live and let live.” That might be the very basic summary of the world I physically came into, as one outside of the Predestined Church, at first appearance.
With that said, I also came into the world to witness that very Predestined Church still fuming, and struggling to deal with this new paradigm of plastered and broadcasted images; wickedness prominently displayed on televisions and in photographs. Before the 20th century, no one really could have conceived of such a paradigm.
I was born in 80 years into the 20th century, approximately 35 years after World War II. Even the adult leaders of the Christian Church in the 1980s and 1990s were thrust into such a chaotic mix of images and sentiments. By then, no one could have conceived any more of the type of quiet that David Brainerd knew. So the church responded to the 1960s accordingly… Loudly, chaotically, bumbly … just like the world. But the Church was accused because she claimed to have something, whereas the world, (self – named “ post modern”) made no claim, philosophically, to anything but “the pursuit of happiness,” to which anyone at any moment could speak lies. “I’m happy!” said all of the celebrities on TV. They lied. Their lives were, in actuality, miserable and disgusting.
My soul longed for “good,” even from the beginning. I spent 23 years fighting through a mass of lies, confusion, and rabbit trails that, themselves, lasted for years, before I sank my teeth into something solid. Beginning in Rumi’s poetry and C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, I encountered You, LORD. However, the Scriptures themselves, by Your provident will, were locked up to my understanding.
I indeed did sink my teeth into something solid, and between the years 2002 and 2003, my new life began to grow. This new life started because the truth came in and started weeding out the lies.
Although the lies were deep-seated in my inner man, the truth became moreso.
I vividly remember receiving the invitation to be a member of Friendster from Adam Stachelek in the summer of 2003, at almost exactly the same time that I became born-again in the Spirit (cf. John 3:3-8). With Friendster, I saw accessibility to persons who were previously either in accessible or mysterious open up. But at that point, my worship had shifted from the creation (which included people) to You, the Creator (cf. Romans 1:25), and even in all of my folly, I never fell into an inferior worship again, despite the temptation of greater accessibility to persons.
The same cannot be said of the unregenerate. I made it into Your kingdom just in time, before a higher level of torture in misery would have come into my life… Having access, and still not getting through to the people I would have wished to worship and covet after.
And knowledge… You infiltrated wisdom to me through provident books. I was forced by the parameter of physical media to “chew on” everything that came in. When my worship became set, as it indeed did in the summer 2003, I was no longer “open-minded” for the sake of being open minded. Although the endeavor was necessarily imperfect, my will was set to chew on “the things of God.”
The same cannot be said of the unregenerate. Like me at the time, they were forced by the parameter of physical media to chew on all things… A subway ride, quiet time in the apartment. But after 2003, I can presume that all undisciplined persons received a brain assault that could only have the necessary consequence of groupthink. And those who were still investigating the nature of reality, guided only by there lust, always and easily found an opinion that would demand from them no growth, nor change.
But you are sovereign over all of this:
When I choose the proper time, I will judge up rightly.
(Psalm 75:2)
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And it happened, as [the sower] sowed, that some seed fell by the wayside, and the birds of the air came and devoured it.
Mark 4:4
Lies, Deception, and Truth
…for [the devil] is a liar and the father of. (John 8:44) What is not new in this dispensation is the fabric of lies…it has always been the same. What is new is the mode of dispersal. Deception comes from noise, and from the appearance of well – groomed philosophy and perspective. One of the strategies of Satan has been to either leave out or over mystify eternity. This is done by creating and cultivating addictions… Needless, purposeless pits that need to be filled – immediately. While the body is warm, the addiction is vital. So this is how the murderer (John 8:44) is manifest in the “safety“ of America and the west.
Perhaps people started “chewing“ on more of the “wrong stuff“ than ever before in the 1960s. After the information explosion in the Naughts, people may have simply stopped chewing, and just started swallowing the “wrong stuff” whole!
As a smart youth in the 1990s, I indeed learned how to chew… On the wrong stuff. And intense imagination chewing on poison yielded a painful sickness. One thing that you greatly redeemed, starting in that year of 2003 was my ability to chew… and I began chewing on the right stuff, for my long-term good.
So for me, the turn of accessibility of both people and knowledge, after a degree of deliverance was achieved in my soul, was a huge blessing. My imagination over these past 10 years had the ability and dispensational means to seize what was good. For I truly believe that in your economy, Lord, seizing what is GOOD is the only real path to salvation. Avoiding what is BAD, in itself, avail us nothing.
And this may be an essential feature to the dispensational change, and perhaps even the fabric of the so-called Third Reformation.
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The heart knows its own bitterness,
And a stranger does not share its joy.
Proverbs 14:10
Relationships Over the Past 50 Years or So
I often register and ponder this historical observation: David Brainerd never used a telephone. Neither did George Whitfield, nor did John Wesley. These people were the champions of the classic era of evangelical faith. There is no end to the praises sung for these men by even the most fundamental of the fundamentalists – those who are actually confirmed “fanatics” point their finger back 200 to 300 years at these men and say, “look at them!“ Yet, I feel a lot of effective truth can be unpacked, Lord, when we consider that their entire relational grid was limited – and very limited compared to our own REAL relational grid.
For Wesley, Brainerd, Whitfield, and countless others, the diversity of relational activity was limited to two modes: face-to-face encounters, and letter – writing. The face – to– face encounters could have been individual, or a group addresses, and the letters could have been individual or encyclical. But here, we see what I suppose to be the absolute limits of concourse for these men.
I just made this observation the other day: it is a miracle that the greatest explosion of technology happened in the realm of intercommunication rather than in elimination of persons. Though destructive technology has been extensively developed as well, the heart of man still yearns primarily for connection. Hence the vast addiction to social media. Perhaps the force of the great evangelists, for better and for worse, laid the spiritual foundation for this phenomenon. Nonetheless, as I mentioned before one feature of this spiritual dispensation is the accessibility of persons. The telephone broke the ground, but this perhaps over-accessibility has manifested in many other ways since.
It would be far, far beyond the scope of this prayer to try and enumerate all of the implications of this, so I will just jump to what I feel the conclusion is: we have learned beyond a doubt that our reason and strategy simply CANNOT change the way that a person is, no matter how much communicative force we use.
Wesley, Whitfield, and Brainerd were great men, but they were not you, Jesus. Do you think that they nursed the notion that if they could just get their message, or the words of the Bible, into the people’s ears, that it would guarantee conversion? Their theology certainly and emphatically said “no“ to such a fancy, but do you still think that they nursed the notion?
In such a more vivid way do we now realize, after the telecommunications explosion, that only Your providential shaping of a person’s life can cultivate the belief and understanding unto salvation. We can influence, but our influence is beyond imagination.
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Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Matthew 6:34
Our Influence is Beyond Imagination
No one is great without an aspect of archetypal influence. But the seldom–mentioned truth is that contrived campaigns of influence are useless.
There are many people in our culture who are influential. They work hard, for sure, but they are really driven by their own lust. And the stories of truly great people almost always give the report: “I did not expect this. I did not think my life would go in this direction of greatness.“
So perhaps I am coming to the end of this prayer, LORD. Or the end of a pre-prayer and the beginning of a REAL prayer – because my soul has indeed been convinced that only steady, constant, fervent prayer availeth any good. I have, so far, lived a full and robust life. I have been positioned in a peculiar time. I have in faith and in the Spirit, overcome enough to the point where I can’t but look outward. Is there any good to offer in my life, on account of my journeying with you? Why do not others see you, God? If I am indeed a teacher, should I be set up as such, and steadily move in that anointing, taking no thought for the effect of my words and character, yet praying ceaselessly for the well–being of all?
There is no evidence that activity coming out of anything but personal prayer and worship has any eternal use. Those of us who have been forced to retreat in quiet know this.
“I am the great influencer, and I will continue to influence. Let Me continue to influence you! You are correct in that influence is beyond imagination. So reserve your imagination for imagining Me, My life, My worship, My hope. Don’t let the devil fool you, nor manipulate you into thinking that you are off track.”
“Present to the world good things, and encourage them to persist in them. And in My time, the gospel will manifest. The words from today’s Scriptures are timely: ‘Stand fast in the Lord, beloved (Philippians 4:1)’; and ‘Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things.’ (For your influence will be manifest as well…) ‘The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:8-9)’“
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For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might according to his glorious power, for all patience and long– suffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.
Colossians 1:9-11
Concluding Thoughts
One of the beautiful benefits of “sola scriptura“ is that we get to, in some sense, veto the portions of church history (that is, the traditions of men) that have revealed themselves to be fruitless. For instance, many may believe George Whitfield was great because he used great force, and was aggressive – but it would not be absurd to put forth the observation and even conclusion that it was rather his divine abiding and unusual character that activated such a mighty flow of activity. Nobody would contest this principle, yet many in attempting to impersonate Whitfield have missed the point.
And at this crossroads of my own life, I do indeed conclude that I cannot continue to be yielded to a fully relational grid of interpersonal activity that operates out of a fear of the other’s condemnation, but I must operate out of the knowledge of Your will.
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For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works.
And that my soul knows very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written.
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.
Psalm 138:13-16
Nuance in this Dispensation
In general, it seems that care for the individual was a thing that dawned around the time of the Reformation. The “care for souls“ that the great post – Reformers had was an unprecedented thing on the paradigmatic level. Perhaps part of the reason why this occurred was that, after the contingent circumstances of communication and technological development after the Reformation, people actually HAD access to souls.
Is it too bold for me to say that, along the same line of development, now in this dispensation, we have access to the nuances of the soul? LORD, do you not care about every detail of our lives, not just the unregenerate parts?
You have revealed to us the vastness of space in this century. It has humbled us. But does it not also show that the lives of people, predestined or no, have the same multitude of detail and nuance within them? Physically, metaphysically? We cannot know these details, but we can know that You know them (cf. Psalm 139:13-16!), and can minister and pray along that line.
LORD, You can make it effective.
There are vast differences between my journal and David Brainerd’s journal. Brainard’s journal only covers a few years. Mine started when I was 16, and now I am 35 [at the time of writing, June 2015]. My conversion was, and is, very long. It is slow (glacial, even); it is nuanced. But it is determined. And by Your grace, my conversion puts you in the proper place, which is ALL IN ALL. You were all-in-all to Brainerd for sure, but how much did Brainerd know that he was fearfully and wonderfully made?
Indeed he knew of such a truth, but did he יֹדַ֥עַת (as in, וְ֝נַפְשִׁ֗י יֹדַ֥עַת מְאֹֽד) it?
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The Great Κρισις
Whatever the LORD pleases, He does.
Psalm 135:6
The Great Κρισις – Favor
When you have favor, you have influence. And when you have influence, you can effect change. These were things I never considered in years and seasons pass. Effecting change in another’s life, and even affecting change in the course of another‘s will was never on the radar in the days when pleasing myself was the priority, and my primary relationship to other people was the position of seeking their approval.
But ever since you began stripping away from me hermetic habits and day-filling intellectual routines, you have essentially forced me into the great crisis of the total relationship, where somebody else’s problem could also be MY problem.
Thus, the same force of prayer that effected all of the change in my inner spiritual mechanism is now being turned out toward others. It was a brilliant idea, Lord, though it is still very much in the beginning stages.
In these beginning stages, I see myself well-positioned among people, receiving positive feedback from them, yet finding not even a small doorway to present to them the life of Christ in anyway that could be construed as life-changing.
And I perceive that this is happening because there is still so much that I don’t understand, and there is still so much in the way of dead works affecting my life.
How much is still in my life that was formed in a time when my attitude toward relationship was faithless? There is still a spirit of one foot in, and one foot out.
Lord, my prayer is that for the remainder of my days, I will walk in your best will. As far as it’s leaning toward others, I am still largely ignored. I have grown a lot over the past few years, but this is still very much in crisis.
I have the favor and I am well positioned. Where do I go from here?
(8/11/15)
But when Jesus saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray the LORD of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.
Matthew 9:36-38
The Great Κρισις – Society
One of the great mysteries of our faith is that it gives the most severe diagnosis to humanity, yet it is marked with the most explicit hope… Not in some airy Buddhist ideal of disembodied nothingness, but in a real redemption and a real resurrection of mankind.
So a person like me is criticized for his severe appraisals and rebukes against various behaviors, yet people wonder at my refusal to ever speak negatively about any individual.
LORD, you’ve shown this to be, in me, a good tendency. In fact, as much as it rubs people so wrong to hear a person condemn all variety of sexual behavior and selfish lifestyles, yet the essential commending of the person as a child of God, made in the image of God, and loved by God keeps my communication vital. I get this when I hear you say to the thief on the cross: “Assuredly (he even says, assuredly!), I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.“ (Matthew 23:43). The man’s behavior was deplorable until the end. Yet you saw something else.
This is truly the dispensation of “seeing something else.“ The scene has been set: a fundamental church projects it’s sentiments loudly in our nation, over most of the land. Thankfully, there is still a major gospel hold on the moderates of the population, those of moderate intellectual ability. Those who are philosophically radical are still small and radical. The message of the fundamental church is not wrong, but it is an old wineskin (Luke 5:37), and lacks the present truth (2 Peter 1:12) of both spirituality and theology.
In this category of life, that is, my relationship to other people, you have stirred me up and given me dispeace and anxiety. This is what I perceive as the formation of the paradigm of the “right relational“ in my life. It is a vast topic and will take extended seasons to form, but I look forward into it with exceeding joy (Jude 24). Thus, I press into it now.