Truth Magazine

By Hoyt H. Houchen

Question: In Genesis 4.2-7, was Cain’s offering rejected because it way not authorized or because it was a mediocre offering, while Abel’s was his best? Did not God accept offerings of the fruit of the ground (Lev. 2, Deut. 26. 1-11)?

Reply: It is true that under the law of Moses, God accepted offerings of the fruit of the ground such as meal offerings (Lev. 2) and the first fruits of the ground (Deut. 26:1-11).

Cain’s offering (the fruit of the ground) was not offered by faith, thus it was unauthorized. It is evident that God had instructed Cain and Abel as to the kind of offering they were to make. We are told in Hebrews 11:4, “By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.” We learn from Romans 10:17, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Whatever is acceptable to God must be by faith; that is, it must be authorized by the word of God by command, example or necessary inference (implication). God’s word, then, should be the authority for all that we do. If a practice is not authorized by the Bible, it cannot be an item of faith. Since it is not an item of faith, it is therefore prohibited.

Mechanical instruments of music are not authorized in the worship of God. We are told to sing; therefore, vocal music is authorize4by the Scriptures (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16; etc.). We are instructed as to the kind of music we are to use in worship, which is singing. The New Testament is silent upon the use of mechanical instruments of music in worship, thus they are unauthorized and prohibited. Furthermore, they were not introduced into worship until centuries after the New Testament was written.

Numerous examples can be given of practices which are not authorized by the Scriptures. The reason is: they are not by faith. Sprinkling and pouring instead of baptism (immersion) are not by faith because there is no command or mention of their practice in the New Testament. There is one baptism (Eph. 4:5); it is a burial in water (Acts 8:38,39; Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:12) and it is for the remission of sins (Acts 2:38). God has taught us his will about the act of baptism, so when we submit to it we do so by faith (Rom. 10:17).

The only way that Abel could have offered his sacrifice by faith was to have done so according to God’s will (his instructions). This is the only way that we live by faith today. The offering of Abel was “more excellent” than Cain’s, not because it was of greater value materially, but because it was offered by faith. Cain did not follow God’s instructions; therefore, his offering was not by faith. Abel obeyed God; therefore, his offering was by faith. This is why Abel’s offering was acceptable to God and Cain’s was not.

Guardian of Truth XXXI: 13, p. 397
July 2, 1987

By Larry Ray Hafley

By now everyone has heard about the neutered Bible. God is not to be referred to as our “Father.” He is now our heavenly Parent. Jesus is the “child of God,” not the Son of God. (So, we must, I suppose, be baptized in the name of the Parent, the Sibling and the Holy it.) It is high profanity. It was bound to happen. If God is nothing but a nebulous force or unexplained power, why call him a person? If God is simply and merely a word used to sum up what cannot be known, why refer to him by gender? If the Bible is only a collation and collection of the “superstitious fables of an ancient people,” why accept its gender designations?

Actually, gender arguments are not the issue. The issue is one of truth and faith. What has to be established is the existence and nature of Deity, the Godhead. Also, the nature of man has to be resolved. Is man a mass of quivering protoplasm – that, and nothing more? What must be seen is the veracity, integrity and authenticity of the Bible. If a personal God exists, has He revealed Himself to His creation? If so, is the Bible that means of revelation and communication? Was God “manifested in the flesh”? Is man lost in sin? Is he accountable to his Creator? Is Jesus his Savior? Settle these matters and the gender question will not be raised. Unbelief manufactures issues that are the symptoms, not the disease. Our response must be to treat the malady, not the reaction.

Still, I feel like taking the neuterers out in the street so I can hit them over the head with a person hole cover!

Oral Profanity

Truly, profane language is rampant. It taints and stains the conversation of our society. Mouths have become dirty as a drain. Unless you are a monk or a hermit, I do not need to elaborate. Verbal profanity comes from the heart’s depravity. “O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things” (Matt. 12:34, 35). Purity of mind precedes purity of mouth. Therefore, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Prov. 4:23).

Profanity reveals a lack of self-control. It is the essence of selfishness, the offspring of anger, the vile repudiation of decency. Profanity shows the leaven, the influence of the world upon us. Hence, we must teach and practice temperance and be aware of the danger of conformity to the world. Parents, are you setting a good example? Are you instructing your children in righteousness and true holiness? The consequences of your failure to do so are eternal.

Guardian of Truth XXXI: 13, p. 404
July 2, 1987

By Daniel W. Petty

Robert Schuller was born in 1926 in northwestern Iowa, and belonged to the stock of Dutch immigrants who were attracted there in the late nineteenth century by the soil and by the opportunity to practice their Calvinistic faith without state interference. The Schuller family was part of the Reformed Church in America (Dutch Reformed), which holds to a staunchly orthodox interpretation of Calvinist theology, epitomized by the acronym T.U.L.I.P. total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints. The emphasis is strongly upon divine sovereignty and grace vs. human autonomy and efficacy.

Young Robert was nurtured on this doctrine, and in 1947, he graduated from Hope College in Holland, Michigan, a school affiliated with the RCA. Upon graduation from Hope, he entered Western Theological Seminary, just across the street, and also a theologically conservative RCA school. His B. D. thesis was a 285-page scriptural and topical index to Calvin’s Institutes.

In 1955, Schuller accepted the task of organizing a new church in Garden Grove, California. The Garden Grove Community Church began as Schuller started preaching from the tar-paper roof of a drive-in theater snack bar. The “drive-in church” concept was never dropped, even when modern buildings were later erected. The first “great glass cathedral,” complete with drive-in parking and equipped with hi-fi speakers, was finished in 1961. In 1980, the new $20 million Crystal Cathedral was completed, with an interior seating capacity of 3000, plus many more from cars parked outside.

The services of Schuller’s church are broadcast on the “Hour of Power,” a TV program with an audience of more than 500,000 viewers. The program began in 1970, and is part of the Robert Schuller Televangelism Association, Inc. Schuller is the only major TV evangelist within mainline Protestantism.

His TV work has been inspired by Bishop Fulton Sheen, while his message has been at least partly inspired by Norman Vincent Peale, who was Schuller’s guest speaker on more than one occasion. Schuller emphasizes “possibility thinking” and “self-esteem” – messages intended to reach the unchurched. In Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, the Fall of Man and original sin are interpreted as the loss of self-esteem and a consequent inferiority complex. Redemption is preached as the restoration of self-esteem.

For further reading on Robert Schuller, a good biography has been written: Dennis Voskuil, Mountains Into Goldmines: Robert Schuller and the Gospel of Success (Eerdmans, 1983).

Guardian of Truth XXXI: 12, p. 376
June 18, 1987

By Steve Wolfgang

Second in prominence and influence only to Billy Graham, Oral Roberts has had a major impact upon the American religious scene over the past forty years. At least two factors contributed to Roberts’ prominence. First, he was and is the most recognizable “leading light” among the Pentecostal, neo-Pentecostal, and charismatic movements – numerically and dynamically the most amazing international religious phenomenon of the modern age. Second, Roberts (as much or more than anyone else) is responsible for pioneering the mass media evangelism which has spawned the electronic church addressed in these articles.

Born in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma on January 24, 1918, only a few years after it had made the transition Indian Territory to statehood, Roberts has remained proud of his Cherokee heritage. Entering his teenage years at the beginning of the Depression, Roberts resented not only the poverty but the social stigma magnified by his parents’ convictions as Pentecostals. In 1935, he was diagnosed as having tuberculosis – a crisis which was resolved by his conversion and subsequent healing later that summer in an itinerant tent preacher’s revival.

Shortly thereafter, Oral decided to preach, joining with his father, who was a licensed preacher in the Pentecostal Holiness church – one of the largest of the Pentecostal bodies, exceeded in size only by the Assemblies of God, Aimee Semple McPherson’s Foursquare Gospel church, and A.J. Tomlison’s Cleveland, TN-based Church of God.

In 1937, Oral launched out on his own, conducting revivals and preaching over the radio. After several years of itinerant evangelism, Roberts worked with a succession of local Pentecostal Holiness churches in Georgia and Oklahoma, claiming to discover an ability to “heal” people of physical maladies, and noticing a “hunger for miracles” on the part of many people. In April, 1947, he began holding Sunday afternoon “healing services” in his church in Enid, OK. Later that year, Roberts moved to Tulsa to begin conducting healing revivals in various churches, including those outside his own denomination.

Upon the astute advice of observant friends and successful businessmen, Oral assembled an organization, Healing Waters, Inc., to handle his various enterprises. He began to publish his own magazine, Healing Waters, advertising his books and promoting his radio broadcasts. Roberts’ use of a large tent for his meetings eriabled him to go many places where there were no city auditoriums. Those cards and letters (to say nothing of dollars) kept rolling in.

Like Billy Graham, some of Roberts’ popularity was due to his willingness to become more “ecumenical” with the passing of time. He was also astute enough to by-pass the denominational hierarchies of the various Pentecostal groups, being instrumental in helping found and develop Demos Shakarian’s “Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International.” As with Graham, who moved steadily from the context of “Southern redneck fundamentalism” into the Protestant mainstream, Roberts allowed this increasing ecumenicity and desire for respectability to lead him into the Methodist church in 1968.

But it was Roberts’ entry into the visual media of film and television that was to set him apart. After producing a film about his ministry to be shown in churches, Roberts launched his television ministry in 1954. In the 1960’s, Roberts abandoned the Sunday morning “religious ghetto” of television programs for a series of slickly-produced, prime time TV specials which vresaged programs like “The 700 Club” and “PTL.”

But “the times they were a’changin.. in the ’60’s, and Roberts changed with them, abandoning his tent evangelism and turning his attention to Oral Roberts University (founded in 1966; indicative of his increasing acceptance by and of the religious world, Billy Graham spoke at the Dedication ceremony) and then to the “City of Faith” which would eventually begin to sap his financial strength seriously.

Roberts efforts on behalf of these enterprises (including his “vision” of a 900-foot Jesus and his recent threat that God would take his life if he did not raise $8 million for his medical school) have kept him in the news lately. However, his fortunes may be declining; Newsweek recently reported that Roberts’ audience had dropped from 2.5 million households in 1977 to 11.1 million in 1985, and TIME reported his 1986 proceeds at $55 million, down from $88 million in 1980.

Oral, however, is probably not finished. As Ed Harrell asks, “How do you top a 900-foot Jesus? Well, he did. I would never bet against Oral Roberts or Richard Nixon” (Newsweek, April 6, 1987, p. 20).

Sources

Oral Roberts: An American Life (1985), by David Edwin Edwin Harrell, is comprehensive. Harrell’s earlier work, All Things Are Possible (1975) places Roberts in the context of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movements, as does Richard Quebedeaux, The New Charismatics (1976). Interesting perspectives from former “insiders” are provided by Jerry Sholes, Give Me That Prime- Time Religion (1979), and Patti Roberts, Ashes to Gold (1983).

Guardian of Truth XXXI: 12, pp. 380-381
June 18, 1987