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    Rx for the Ailing Bride: A Biblical Template for the Ideal Christian
    Rx for the Ailing Bride: A Biblical Template for the Ideal Christian
    Rx for the Ailing Bride: A Biblical Template for the Ideal Christian
    Ebook122 pages1 hour

    Rx for the Ailing Bride: A Biblical Template for the Ideal Christian

    By Nathan James

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    About this ebook

    Todays church has shackled itself to many Reformation doctrines not supported in scripture. Regarding salvation, two of those doctrines that have been particularly detrimental are Calvinism and Arminianism. Both of these have selectively filtered Biblical passages through their man-made theological construct, effectively rejecting the whole council of God.

    Baptist churches in particular have widely subscribed to either the doctrines or mission of Arminianism, which essentially requires that every believers primary responsibility is to be an evangelist. Preaching this man-made doctrine from pulpits every Sunday has played a significant role in stunting the spiritual growth of most members, as they are crammed into a role outside of their spiritual gifting. At the same time, the real work associated with a believers true spiritual giftedness is going unused, failing to minister to the body of Christ as God designed.

    The cumulative effect is that the local church is focused on enticing those outside the church to join an assembly that essentially ignores the needs of those within. The key marker that Jesus said would show the outside world who we belong to is our love for one another. The early church understood this clearly, as they shared all things in common with their fellow believers. They sacrificially gave of their physical possessions to meet the tangible needs of the saints and used their spiritual gifts to edify and strengthen one another spiritually.

    So, if the Arminanistic model is not valid, what does the ideal Christian look like? Based on Scripture, we see these essential characteristics:-Seeking to be daily clean before God and filled with the Holy Spirit;-Operating in the Body of Christ in accordance with the spiritual gift bestowed to each believer; and-Actively obedient to the Commands of Christ.

    Join Nathan in exploring these characteristics as he seeks to bring maturity to believers and to restore the well being and health of the sickly bride of Christ.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWestBow Press
    Release dateJan 4, 2012
    ISBN9781449733483
    Rx for the Ailing Bride: A Biblical Template for the Ideal Christian
    Author

    Nathan James

    VICTOR BLISS, an American, studied Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Harvard, Oxford, and the Sorbonne, and Psychotherapy at the Jung Institute in Zurich. Since 1965 he has studied and practiced Tantra under several masters in India and the West. Based in California, he has a private practice, teaches seminars and leads workshops in Europe, Asia and America. NATHAN JAMES was born in London. Educated at Oxford and the University of California, Berkeley, he received his PhD for a dissertation on homoerotic desire in the context of Freudian psychoanalysis. He currently lives in Paris, where he works as an art critic, therapist, and kickboxing coach. —www.mantantra.com

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      Book preview

      Rx for the Ailing Bride - Nathan James

      Introduction

      The reformers’ call has not been strange to our Christian history. During His time on earth, Jesus commanded us to be vigilant, warning us to watch for false prophets. As early as thirty years after the crucifixion of Christ, Paul was rebuking the Corinthians regarding the false doctrine of angel worship and the Galatians for returning to Old Testament law, losing sight of the new covenant that provides justification through faith.

      After a period of intense persecution, the underground church emerged in 313 A.D. after Constantine converted to Christianity and signed the Edict of Milan, which ended the national persecution of Christians. The council of Nicea was convened twelve years later to address the heresy taught by Arian that Christ was a created being and not God at all (think of modern-day Jehovah’s Witnesses). Arian’s teachings were dismissed, but while rejecting one fallacy, we see, starting with this council, other man-made doctrines emerge.

      Interestingly, it was determined (not unanimously) by this council that Easter should be calculated separately from the Jewish calendar even though Easter is the Sunday following Passover (primarily distrusting Jews to get the date right). Some other policies were established that were not that significant but required of all Christians. In some cases, those who didn’t agree with the council were exiled.

      Under the leadership of Constantine, the church started the march toward authoritarianism. It wasn’t long before the authorized church prevented laymen from searching out Scripture for themselves and/or challenging the doctrine established by the church, often threatening violence to stop them. It’s easy to see how, in later generations, the church became corrupt, as it progressively mandated doctrine authored by man until the legitimate gospel was nearly obscured.

      This model persisted until Martin Luther came on the scene in the early 1500s, rejecting the abundant corruption in the Catholic Church and beginning the Protestant Reformation. Others who followed Luther, such as John Calvin, Jacobus Armenius, and John Wesley, sought to bring the church back to the ideal. Many times, the ideal was based on a master theology, a compilation of the teachings of men that tried to stuff Scripture into a mold, while others have correctly tried to have their theology shaped first by Scripture and then point believers back to the clear path of God’s Word.

      Unfortunately, during this volatile time, authoritarianism was still in vogue as Christians tried to force Christians (often by violence and persecution) to adopt what they thought was the correct master theology. I suppose those Christians who resorted to force were so busy trying to prove they were right that they didn’t take time to read Christ’s commands on how to treat your brothers—or how to treat your enemies for that matter.

      I highlighted Calvin, Armenius, and Wesley for a reason. Calvin became the father of Calvinism, a belief system that teaches man has no choice but is selected by the sovereign grace of God either to eternal salvation or eternal damnation. Out of Calvin’s teaching came today’s Presbyterian church.

      Armenius rejected Calvin’s teachings and instead focused on man’s free will, teaching that all mankind can come to salvation and that God is dependent on believers to spread the gospel to bring as many as possible to salvation.

      Wesley is probably the most influential follower of Arminianism. He, along with his brother Charles, essentially started what we know today as the Methodist Church. The following passage from Wesley’s book The Twelve Rules reveals what he thinks Christians should be about:

      You have nothing to do but save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work. It is not your business to preach so many times; but to save as many souls as you can. To bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and with all your power to build them up in that holiness, without which they cannot see the Lord.

      The Baptist Church splintered from mainline Protestants by rejecting infant baptism and claiming that full immersion is the only correct technique for baptizing converts. The denomination sprang up after the two fundamental doctrines regarding salvation were established and has historically shifted between the two, having separate offshoots that follow one or the other or, in some cases, taking a little from both.

      Charles Spurgeon, one of the most widely know early Baptist preachers, was part of the Particular Baptist movement, meaning he aligned with the Calvinistic beliefs that God has called out specific people to salvation. The contrasting Baptist affiliation, General Baptists, believed in general atonement and that anyone could come to salvation, which aligns with the Arminianistic model.

      Even though Spurgeon was Calvinistic in his views, he was strongly focused on soul winning, as illustrated in these quotes:

      I would sooner bring one sinner to Jesus Christ than unravel all the mysteries of the divine Word, for salvation is the one thing we are to live for.

      If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.

      If there be any one point in which the Christian church ought to keep its fervor at a white heat, it is concerning missions. If there be anything about which we cannot tolerate lukewarmness, it is the matter of sending the gospel to a dying world.

      The Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest organization of Baptist churches in the United States, appears to have started out leaning toward Calvinistic views in the 1800s but in the 1900s moved significantly in the direction of Arminianism. I’ve found that the message coming from Southern Baptist pulpits today regarding evangelism is in very close harmony with Wesley’s and Spurgeon’s quotes above. Even Baptist churches that have a sovereign grace theology seem to align closely with Spurgeon’s belief that missions and evangelism should be the church’s highest priority (remaining aligned with the Arminianistic mission, though rejecting the underlying theology).

      It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand from Scripture that the primary underlying premise of both Calvinism and Arminianism is true, based on the authority of the Word of God. God is indeed sovereign over the salvation process, and man certainly has choice. However, since both doctrines refuse to be informed by the whole council of God as revealed in scripture, they both wander into error by creating man-authored doctrine logically connected to the true underlying premise, but clearly lacking Biblical support.

      The fallacy of Calvinism is that because God is sovereign over the salvation process (true), He has therefore determined, apart from man’s choice, that He will select some to go to heaven and the rest will be condemned to hell (false). The fallacy of Arminianism is that since man has the ability to choose (true), then God cannot possibly have control, and He hopes His people will do their best to bring as many sinners as possible into heaven (false).

      Both beliefs start with a Biblical if but a manmade then (or false conclusion), and both paint a dismal picture of God that should embarrass any earnest Christian. God is neither a murderous creator (creating life so He can selectively destroy it), nor a powerless wimp helplessly standing by while people who could have been saved slip into hell.

      You might wonder why such high-minded theology has any relevance to the average Christian. I have heard believers say we shouldn’t bother participating in this discussion because it is divisive. However, Christians under the bondage of these man-made beliefs are not free to seek the clear Biblical model of a vibrant, mature believer (what Jesus illustrated as a ten-talent servant). Much like the believers in the early church who again became enslaved, subjecting themselves to the miserable requirements of the law, many believers today have subjected themselves to man-made notions that stunt their spiritual growth, steal their joy, and, when the numbers are significant, compromise the health of the body of Christ.

      I am extremely thankful that I live in a day when the common man like me has access to the Word of God and can search Scripture, as the Bereans did in Acts 17, for God’s revealed truth without fear of authoritarian reprisals that have long plagued the church. My goal in this book is first to help get the reader past the Arminianistic fallacy, as it has particularly infected Baptists in America, and then to present what I understand Scripture reveals as the ideal or mature pattern for Christians to follow. My prayer, by the grace of God, is not to advance any one set of man-authored theologies (certainly including my own) but to advance the truth God makes clear in His Word for the benefit and well-being of the church, the bride of Christ.

      CHAPTER 1:

      A Little Background

      I grew up as an Independent Baptist, accepting Jesus as my savior when I was just four years old.

      My father pastored several small churches. Later, he

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