Truth Magazine

By Mike Willis

The Jimmy Swaggart debacle has received national attention for several weeks now. The newspapers report that he hired a prostitute to undress before him and that he has been rather addicted to pornography for nearly twenty years. I take no joy in the sin of this or any other man. The man needs the grace of God to obtain the forgiveness of his sins in order that he may be saved on judgment day.

Nevertheless, his sin serves as an occasion to remind us of several biblical truths, which some writers have already done. One false doctrine which Swaggart propagated, and which has spread among some Christians, is manifested as transparently false by his commission of habitual sins. I speak of his doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Those who have watched the Jimmy Swaggart show have witnessed his testimonies to the power of the Holy Spirit in his life. He has told us how the Holy Spirit directly laid burdens on his heart, directly gave him a message which he was obligated to preach, enabled him to speak in tongues, so stirred him that he began dancing while he was preaching, and many other activities. Another work which was attributed to the Holy Spirit was the work of helping man to overcome sin. Pentecostal doctrine, like many other denominational dogmas, asserts that man has received an inherited depraved nature which inclines a man to commit sin. One is able to overcome the impact of this depraved nature by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which makes man able to resist the temptation to sin. Swaggart and Jim Bakker have repeatedly testified to the joys of their Spirit-filled lives which enabled them to live above the world, above those who did not have the indwelling Holy Spirit,

Apparently, the indwelling Holy Spirit was not effectual in enabling Jimmy Swaggart to resist sin. As a matter of fact, Oral Roberts had a vision indicating that Jimmy was demon possessed. He “saw demons with long fingernails digging the flesh into Jimmy Swaggart’s body.” The indwelling Holy Spirit could not prevent him from being demon possessed, if the testimony of Oral Roberts is to be believed, much less to resist the temptation to sin. The Scriptures teach that man can resist the devil and he will flee from him (Jas. 4:7).

Swaggart’s doctrine of an indwelling Holy Spirit has spilled over into the church (although its source may not have been Swaggart; however we need to be careful not to minimize the impact and spread of the false doctrines taught by television evangelists who have a significant audience). A few years ago, I sat in a Bible class and heard a person teach that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit enabled man to overcome his “sin nature.” He commented that all of the preachers whose marriages had broken up in recent years denied the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, implying thereby that had they believed in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (in a personal or literal sense) they would have been able to resist sin and avoid their marriage failure. Frankly, I have not perceived any superior moral character in those who believed in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Bible class teacher who implied as much being included. Those who have believed in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit have been involved in fornication, adultery, homosexuality, false doctrine, lording over churches, promoting majority rule, serving as one man elders, etc. the same as have those who denied the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, and dozens of other Pentecostal preachers whose lives have moral failures demonstrate this fact without ever mentioning moral failures among our brethren.

One preacher among us listed the things which the Holy Spirit did for man by indwelling him:

The Holy Spirit indwells (Rom. 8:9); provides a habitation of God in us (Eph. 2:22); provides a motive for us to keep our spirits and our bodies clean (1 Cor. 6:19-20); enables us to keep the faith (2 Tim. 1:13-14); brings comfort (Acts 3:19); brings renewal (Titus 3:5); is present in times of reproach (1 Pet. 4:14); aids in our worship (Phil. 3:3); helps us live a consecrated life (Jude 20); produces fruit in our lives (Gal. 5:22-23; Eph. 5:9); and many other things.

Notice these items: provides a motive for us to keep our spirits and our bodies clean; enables us to keep the faith; brings renewal; helps us live a consecrated life. If the Spirit enables us to do these things, separate and apart from the word of God by literally undwelling us, whose fault is it if we do not keep our spirits and bodies clean, keep the faith, have renewal, and live a consecrated life? Surely if it is the work of the Spirit to do these things and they are not done, the Spirit is at fault for not doing them! If the responsibility for not doing them falls on the Christian, he must be the one who is expected to do these things, not the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Those who teach the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit will want to divorce themselves from the Jimmy Swaggarts and Jimmy Bakkers, and understandably so. No doubt they will deny that such men were Christians and deny that they never truly possessed the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, these men quote the same passages as do our brethren to prove that there is an indwelling of the Holy Spirit. They give human testimony, the evidence of experience, to affirm that they have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The passages of Scripture are misinterpreted and human testimony is invalid, subjective evidence.

From the sins of Jimmy Swaggart and Jimmy Bakker, let us be reminded that the doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which these men have taught is false to the core, as confirmed in their lives and revealed by the study of Holy Scripture. In repudiating the extremes of Swaggart and Bakker along with the claims and theories of some brethren, we do not reject what the Bible teaches about the Holy Spirit dwelling in Christians and Christians in the Spirit. That spiritual relationship is wholly independent of the errors and antics we are opposing.

Guardian of Truth XXXII: 9, pp. 258, 278-279
May 5, 1988

By Steve Wolfgang

Footnote Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind.- How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), pp. 68,73-75.

Allan Bloom, currently a professor at the University of Chicago, has had a distinguished academic career, teaching also at Yale, the universities of Paris, Tel Aviv, and Toronto. During the 1960s he was a professor at Cornell resigning in protest over the capitulation of that school’s administration to campus radicals.

His Closing of the American Mind became an unexpected bestseller, indeed, something of a cultural phenomenon, during 1987. While we do not endorse everything in the book, several pages are well worth reflecting upon.

Though students do not have books, they most emphatically do have music. Nothing is more singular about this generation than its addiction to music. This is the age of music and the states of soul that accompany it. To find a rival to this enthusiasm, one would have to go back at least a century to Germany and the passion for Wagner’s operas. They had the religious sense that Wagner was creating the meaning of life and that they were not merely listening to his works but experiencing that means. Today, a very large proportion of young people between the ages of ten and twenty live for music. It is their passion; nothing else excites them as it does; they cannot take seriously anything alien to music. When they are in school and with their families. they are longing to plug themselves back into their music. Nothing surrounding them – school, family, church – has anything to do with their musical world. At best that ordinary life is neutral, but mostly it is an impediment, drained of vital content, even a thing to be rebelled against. Of course, the enthusiasm for Wagner was limited to a small class, could be indulged only rarely and only in a few places, and had to wait on the composer’s slow output. The music of the new votaries, on the other hand, knows neither class nor nation. It is available twenty-four hours a day, everywhere. There is the stereo in the home, in the car; there are concerts; there are music videos, with special channels exclusively devoted to them, on the air nonstop; there are the Walkmans so that no place – not public transportation, not the library – prevents students from communing with the Muse, even while studying.

One needs only ask first-year university students what music they listen to, how much of it and what it means to them, in order to discover that the phenomenon is universal in America, that it begins in adolescence or a bit before and continues through the college years. It is the youth culture and, as I have so often insisted, there is now no other countervailing nourishment for the spirit. Some of this culture’s power comes from the fact that it is so loud. It makes conversation impossible, so that much of friendship must be without the shared speech that Aristotle asserts is the essence of friendship and the only true common ground. With rock, illusions of shared feelings, bodily contact and grunted formulas, which are supposed to contain so much .meaning beyond speech, are the basis of association. None of this contradicts going about the business of life, attending classes and doing the assignment for them. But the meaningful inner life is with the music.

Guardian of Truth XXXII: 8, p. 238
April 21, 1988

By Cloyce Sutton II

He’s the Grand Poohbah of partiology! He’s one party-loving, happening dude! He’s the original party animal! He’s Spuds MacKenzie! He’s also a dog. And he’s also America’s idol.

Most of you have seen Spuds. He is the “spokes-creature” for Bud Light Beer. He is a white English bull terrier with a spot around his left eye. Not only can he be seen in television ads, but also in stores. In many card and novelty stores, you may purchase all manner of official Spuds MacKenzie paraphernalia.

Spuds has become a symbol to Americans. He represents to us “the good life.” He leads a spoiled and pampered life. Beautiful, and immodestly dressed women attend him. He lives in a fabulous mansion. He is driven to and fro in a chauffeured limousine. He gives daily attention to his tan, pedicure, and massage. He enjoys a splendid party every night, whether at his private pool or on a public beach. All America is captivated by his extravagant charm. Indeed, we long to be like him.

My concern is not so much that we adore an animal. Indeed, men may learn valuable lessons from some unlikely creatures (Prov. 30:24-3 1). My concern in this case is twofold: what Spuds MacKenzie represents, and what our adoration of him represents.

Spuds MacKenzie is an advertising representative for a beer company. He symbolizes a lifestyle given to revelry. He tells us that drinking is an important part of the good life. But what he represents is clearly condemned in Scripture. Drunkenness, carousings, and social drinking can have no place in the life of a Christian (1 Pet. 4:3-5). These are the deeds of darkness (Rom. 13:11-14). Those who are charmed by alcohol can never know the good life (Prov. 23:29-35).

Of greater concern to me is what this phenomenon says about us as a society. Man was created in God’s image and given dominion over all other animals (Gen. 1:26-30). Yet we have taken a rather unattractive dog and made it the object of our veneration. We want to be like it. It is our idol. We now worship a dog.

But why do we worship a dog? Because we do not worship God. In Romans 1, Paul describes the condition of men who put aside the knowledge of God. When men will not acknowledge their Creator, their only alternative is to worship something less. In verses 22-23, Paul says,

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

When a nation sees fit to idolize dogs, it is only because they no longer see fit to glorify God.

Our adoration for Spuds MacKenzie is a sad commentary on the moral climate of our nation. Our only recourse is to turn back to the God who created us. May we learn, as did the early Christians, that we must “turn to God from idols to serve a living and true God” (1 Thess. 1:9).

Guardian of Truth XXXII: 8, p. 231
April 21, 1988

By Mike Willis

For several years, the Crossroads church was the focus of national attention among the liberal churches of Christ. However, one of her satellite churches gradually began to eclipse the mother church. A group of brethren in Boston began to have phenomenal success as they moved beyond the crossroads.

The rapid growth of the Boston Church of Christ began in 1979 when evangelist Kip McKean was hired by a suburban congregation with fewer than 100 members. By December 1980, Sunday attendance exceeded 250. Today, more than 3,300 people worship weekly at the Boston Garden, home to the Boston Bruins and Celtics. In addition, more than 1,300 were baptized in 1986 at churches planted by the Boston congregation on five continents since 1982.(1)

The shift in leadership occurred, not only because of the phenomenal success of the Boston church, but also because of the removal of Chuck Lucas as preacher at the Crossroads church in Gainesville, Florida. The Crossroads movement was shocked by an announcement in the 25 August 1985 issue of ATC.

Our hearts are heavy and hurting as we share with you the unanimous decision of the elders to terminate Chuck Lucas as evangelist of the Crossroads Church of Christ. This decision was made necessary because of recurring sins in his life, which he has acknowledged.

The apostasy of Chuck Lucas created a vacuum in the Crossroads movement which was quickly filled by Kip McKean. The Boston church has since then moved to the forefront and the Crossroads church has taken a lesser important position. The movement has since been termed the “Discipling Movement” or “Multiplying ministry.”

More Rapid Changes

As the Boston church grew it moved beyond the crossroads, for it was willing to conduct its affairs without much concern for what the liberal brotherhood thought or what had been accepted as scriptural in the past. They have moved forward in their development of the “Discipling Movement.” In this phase of the movement, we see new ground being developed and explored. The balance of this material will deal with these new developments.

1. Submission to Authority. A series of six articles appeared in the Boston Church of Christ, the bulletin published by the church with the same name. This series of articles emphasized the obligation to submit to the leaders of the church. The articles explain: “(1) Submission is not agreement; (2) submission is more than outward obedience. . . (3) submission is not conditions. . . (4) Submission is not being quite.”(2) The thrust of these articles was to emphasize the obligation of the members at the Boston church to submit to their leadership.

2. Creation of House Churches. Operating without a building of its own, the Boston church rented facilities for meeting on the Lord’s day and divided their membership into house churches for other meetings. The elders “delegated” authority to house church leaders to oversee these groups. “Many of these ‘house churches’ have long ago outgrown the ‘house’ size, some of them 45 having as many as 250 members. . . . Therefore, the two elders of the Boston church, still headquartered in Lexington, are in essence, elders over a plurality of churches.”(3) The Boston leadership was willing to lay aside the biblical concept of autonomy.

Replacing “Congregational Autonomy” with Congregational Cooperation. The traditional idea that each group of disciples in a city is entirely autonomous from other disicples is not found in the Bible and has severely damaged efforts to win the world for Christ. Those with a heritage in the restoration movement have wrongly used the false teaching of “congregational autonomy” to justify disunity and noncooperation with other brothers.”(4)

Rejecting the concept of autonomous churches, the Boston church has perverted the organization of the church by making regional elders of its eldership (cf. Acts 20:28; 1 Pet. 5:1-3).

3. Creation of Pillar Churches. Another departure from biblical organization has occurred in the creation of “pillar churches.” “Pillar churches” are churches designed to serve as branches to impact a whole region of the country. The San Diego Church is the “pillar church for the southwest”; the Atlanta church is the “pillar church for the southeast”; etc. Although Boston does not claim to be the pillar church for the world, they send men to these pillar churches to set things in order (make this church like the Boston church). Too, the leaders in the Boston church are sometimes the “prayer partners” of the leaders of the satellite church.(5) The result of this is the creation of a group of churches under one founding mother church. The Catholic concept of church organization, of one mother church influencing and controlling other churches, is very similar to the Boston influence over pillar churches which in turn are over other churches.

4. Remnant theology. The “discipling churches” have had difficulty in defining their place in God’s plan. In an article published in the BCC, Bob Gempel stated that the 66multiplying ministries” are the remnant of God’s people today. He wrote,

Nothing that we in Boston have said or done in recent months has stirred as much anger in the Brotherhood as our reference to the planting of a multiplying ministry in Atlanta as the gathering of a remnant of Christians from the Southeastern United States. It is interesting to me that our comfortability with remnant terminology ceases when we are faced with the possibility that we are not part of it.(6)

Because of the concept of the “multiplying ministries” as God’s remnant, the leaders go into a city with several churches of Christ to “plant” a “mission” work. None of the existing churches are places in which a Christian can worship and fulfill God’s will. A church built after the pattern of the Boston church must be created. Where the “multiplying ministry” has gone into an existing church, they either take complete control of the church or divide it. The Boston plan must be duplicated; consequently, the church will be divided or another church will be started in order to duplicate the Boston plan.

This is also the reason that many Christians are rebaptized when they become a part of the “multiplying” ministry. They “teach a narrow definition of what constitutes valid baptism. As a result, the church rebaptizes even people who were baptized in other Churches of Christ.”(7) As an example of this, Lynn Nitz, wife of Mark Nitz who preached for several years in the Cincinnati, OH area, was rebaptized when she joined the local “multiplying ministry” church in Cincinnati.(8) The “multiplying ministry” does not want to imply that they are the only ones saved.(9) Hence, they are sectarian to the core – they create a division within the church of God, separating themselves from others whom they believe to be saved. To separate oneself from the lost is one thing; to separate oneself from the rest of the saved is another. The former can be defended biblically; the latter cannot. The “multiplying ministry” needs to decide whether they are the “remnant” (the only ones saved) or not. To date, they have been unable to decide where they fit in God’s plan.

5. The use of music in the “multiplying ministries.” Our liberal brethren have allowed the college choruses to perform in their buildings for many years. Quartets and other groups have performed at singings in many localities. The development of a local church choir to be used for special performances was not that big a jump for the Crossroads church. The Crossroads church made this transition by organizing a group known as “The Crossroads Singers” who tour the country giving concerts in civic centers as well as local churches.(10) Their performances are partially secular and partially spiritual. Auditions are held to select performers from the congregation to compose “The Crossroads Singers.”(11) At the Crossroads church, the singers were used “in conjunction with evangelistic crusades, vacation Bible schools, and special services.”(12)

When the Boston church developed, what was begun at Crossroads was expanded. The Boston church had several members who were successful entertainers and they developed other musical performers. In 1982, the Boston church organized “The Freedom Singers” as an a capella singing group to be used in seminars and concerts. Writing about their performance, Bob Tranchell said, “One of their finest performances was the recent Holiday Concert. I came in prepared for an excellent evening of entertainment and walked away deeply touched. The mixture of a capella spiritual songs, testimonies from the performers’ lives and secular music was moving.”(13) In December 1987, a musical group from the New York City Church of Christ performed a concert and took a special contribution to raise $3000 for the poor. “In the next 5 months, several Friday and Saturday evening concerts will be hosted to raise money for a special contribution that will be collected by the London church in June.”(14)

They went another step in producing a musical entitled “Upside Down.” The musical was based on the book of Acts and traced the lives of Peter and Paul to their deaths. Describing the benefits from this musical, Tranchell also gives more details about the play, “There are four functions which a musical such as ‘Upside Down’ can impart – (1) to get the message out to non-Christians; (2) to encourage the Christians; (3) to give Christians a pure environment to perform in, and (4) to provide money for world missions. All the proceeds from ‘Upside Down’ will be given to world missions.”(15)

Tranchell also described a “band formed by Robert Duncan which plays contemporary Christian music and is made up of disciples in the Atlanta Church of Christ” which is known as “2:38.”(16)

In the following article in his material on “Recapturing the Power of Music,” Tranchell affirms, that, whereas instrumental music should not be used in the public worship services, “in a non-worship setting we should allow and encourage people to use their talents to the glory of God and the preaching of His word.”(17) The “multiplying ministry” has moved away from the doctrine of Christ in its use of music, involving the church in activities unauthorized (concerts, secular performances, plays, bands, etc.), using choirs at special services, and defending the use of mechanical instruments of music with spiritual songs outside the worship assembly.

Conclusion

The “multiplying ministry” has moved well “beyond the crossroads” and deeper into denominationalism. The tactics used by the “multiplying ministry” have been employed by Baptist churches for years to build large congregations, such as those churches where W.A. Criswell preaches in Dallas, Texas and Jerry Falwell preaches in Lynchburg, Virginia. The “multiplying ministry” is systematically creating a fellowship of churches like other denominations in America. Simply because they teach that baptism is for the remission of sins no more makes them the Lord’s church than it does the Mormon Church.

Recognizing what this movement is, why would faithful brethren go to men who are thoroughly infected with denominationalism to learn how to make more Christians? Nevertheless this has occurred. Connie Adams wrote, “What is of concern to me is the fact that in the last year or two reports have come of several preachers among us who have gone to Boston to study their methods of evangelism.”(18)

The “multiplying ministry” is more of the fruit of the liberalism which divided the churches several decades ago. The “multiplying ministry” churches have not repented of their involvement in liberalism; there has been no renunciation of the apostasies of the 1950s and 1960s. Instead this movement has moved deeper into apostasy, employing the tactics which have made the denominations grow, imitating the Falwells, Swaggerts, Criswells, and others instead of the church of the first century. Let us not allow their numerical growth to blind us to this fact.

Endnotes

1. Carlene B. Hill, “Boston Church of Christ Grows Amid Controversy,” Christianity Today [19 February 1988], p. 53.

2. Boston Church of Christ (hereafter called BCC) [11 October 1987].

3. Eddie Whitten, “The Discipling Ministry, Crossroads/Boston,” Contending for the Faith [May 1987], p. 5. The concept of elders serving over all of the churches in a city was proposed by Alvin Jennings in 3 R’s of Urban Church Growth (later renamed How Christianity Grows in the City).

4. Thomas Bogle, BCC [1 November 1987], p. 3.

5. Before moving to California, Tom Brown of Boston continued to “disciple” Bruce Williams in San Diego – BCC [20 December 1987], p. 1; Kip McKean continues to “disciple” Tom Brown in Berkeley, CA – Berkeley (CA) Church of Christ [May 1987), p. 1.

6. BCC (25 October 1987), p. 7.

7. Christianity Today [19 February 1988], pp. 53,55.

8. Gateway Church of Christ [5 July 1987], p. 3.

9. “Note that we are not saying that only those who are part of the remnant will be saved” – BCC [25 October 1987], p. 7.

10. ATC [14 June 1981], p. 3.

11. ATC [7 November 1982], p. 2.

12. The Crossroads Singers, p. 8.

13. BCC [27 December 1987], p. 3.

14. ATC [7 February 1988], p. 4.

15. BCC [27 December 1987], p. 3.

16. BCC [27 December 1987] p. 3.

17. BCC [17 January 1988], p. 3.

18. “The Boston Hierarchy,” Searching The Scriptures [January 1988], p. 3.

Guardian of Truth XXXII: 8, pp. 226, 245-246
April 21, 1988