Is Christianity just something that helps some people? Is there really any basis for right and wrong other than opinion?

This article is reproduced with permission from the British ministry Facing The Challenge, see below for more information.

Across Britain this week, hundreds of couples will be getting married. They will spend thousands of pounds on the wedding itself. I’m sure they will go into their marriages with high hopes, and most of them will mean the promises they make to each other.

Yet the sad reality is that four out of ten of them will end in the divorce courts. Until recently, Britain had the highest divorce rate in Europe. It has only fallen from that position because fewer people are now getting married in the first place.

Image: Billy Hicks/Wikimedia Commons

And whatever we think about the rightness or wrongness of divorce, surely we cannot deny the pain and guilt that it inflicts on any children involved—and indeed on the husband and wife. Divorced people who remarry have a higher chance of going through yet another marriage breakdown. (Perhaps this is one reason why people choose to live together rather than to marry.) Children from broken homes are more likely to have behavioral problems, more likely to have problems at school, and more likely to end up in broken relationships as adults.

We’re in a mess, aren’t we? Where has it come from? How did we get here?

One of the underlying reasons is that for most of us today, right and wrong are no longer something God-given, something we can all agree on. Rather, right and wrong are just a matter of “lifestyle choice”.

Apparently six out of seven 13-15 year olds now believe that there is nothing wrong with sex outside marriage. Three out of four believe there is nothing wrong with under age sex. Half of all lower sixth form pupils are already sexually active.

So Britain now has the highest proportion of unmarried teenage mothers in the world. And surely we can’t deny that these girls are not ready psychologically, emotionally, or financially, for the demands of parenthood.

But where has this idea come from? This belief that right and wrong are just a lifestyle choice.

Underlying it is the belief that truth itself is just a matter of personal opinion. No-one can know what is really true. Something can be “true for you” without necessarily being “true for me too.” So we all make up our own version of the truth as we go along.

A recent CD by the Manic Street Preachers captures this in its title: This is my truth tell me yours.

So today truth is whatever you want it to be—and because of that, right and wrong become just whatever you choose them to be.

Now in this kind of world, Christianity becomes just your private opinion, or my private opinion. If you choose to be a Christian, that’s fine—for you. I’m so glad it helps you—don’t push it down my throat, thank you very much. It isn’t for me.

So here we are in a world where truth is a matter of opinion, right and wrong is a matter of lifestyle choice, and Christian faith is something private and personal, with nothing to say to the wider world of law, or education, or the media, or business. Religious beliefs are private beliefs, and we should keep them that way.

But we find ourselves unable to live in this world that we have created.

God is speaking today and Pastor Loren Sandford urges all of us to pursue biblical discernment.

With so many questionable prophetic words circulating these days, concerning both the wider world and personal prophecies, wouldn’t it be a good thing for the body of Christ to sharpen its discernment? I fear that to fail to do this will ultimately result in a tragic disillusionment with prophetic ministry at a time in history when accurate plumb line prophetic ministry is desperately needed. What are some ways to sort true words from false?

#1: Does this supposed word from God stand the test of Scripture?

Colossians 2:18 warns against the one who takes his “stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind.” It can be supposed revelatory visions we believe reveal a truth or it can be receiving a vision for some ministry you want to do or a position you’re convinced you hold that fills you with an energy that isn’t the Lord. In any case, it must square with the eternal Word. The apostle Paul wrote: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!” (Galatians 1:8)

#2: Does this word reflect the revealed nature and character of God?

Begin this test with I John 4:8: “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” God is love. His love may take many forms, ranging from tenderness to discipline and even anger, but it will always be love for our sake – love in the content of the word and love in the spirit of the word.

#3: Does this word line up with what God is already doing and with what the Bible tells us God wants to do? 

Question words that lead us in different directions than those already in evidence, bearing fruit in our lives and ministries. For instance, we founded the church I pastor on a vision for mercy—that we would be a place of refuge and healing. But for a time, we allowed ourselves to be side-tracked by those who called for a spiritual warfare emphasis. The result was predictably wounding. Until God brought about a cleansing, removed the competing voices and restored us to the original vision, warfare nearly destroyed us. We should have known. There have been others who called for a primary emphasis on prophetic ministry as our foundation. It resulted in deception and harm because God had dictated and confirmed a different foundation.

When the Day of Pentecost Came… They Recognized Their Experience As Foretold In Scripture

Peter said in Acts 2:16, “But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh’”(Acts 2:16; King James Version [KJV])” Everyone present at the Pentecost Festival had no doubt this was real because it had been predicted by Joel the prophet (Joel 2:28-32).

When the Day of Pentecost Came… They Knew this was an Answer to Prayer

Image: Serge Taeymans

All of the 120 people assembled on this special day had waited patiently for the descent of the Spirit while they prayed. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was present, along with Jesus’ brothers (Acts 1:14), and they were all together in one accord, in one mind, and in one place (Acts 2:1). When people are in one accord, having the same mind and spirit, and are assembled in one place in Jesus’ Name, marvelous things will always happen.

When the Day of Pentecost Came… They Knew Beyond Doubt the Holy Spirit had Come

All those who had assembled on this day to experience the descent and infilling of the Holy Spirit, recognized the reason for His descent. But some of the unregenerate people who witnessed the event said, “They must be drunk.” This is the way it is with those who are not spiritually minded—they will always criticize what they don’t understand. But Peter understood what was happening, and responded by saying, “These men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only 9 a.m. [in the morning]; this is the outpouring of the Spirit of God as promised in the prophecies of Joel; ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, ‘That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh—that is, mankind; And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams”(Acts 2:15-17 New Millennia In-Depth Bible). When people are full of intoxicating wine, they act crazy and babble, but the incoherent language was God’s way of infusing [and binding] people together through languages, since the Tower of Babel experience (Gen. 11:9) had confused and diffused people through languages.

Pray today that God will give you a fresh “baptism of fire” from above, because Jesus said “If you then [who hear My words], being evil—[that is, incomplete and immature], know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him” (Luke 11:13 New Millennia In-Depth Bible).

Her death didn’t grab headlines like Coretta Scott King’s did. But Elsie Mason and her late husband captured heaven’s attention.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Last week, just one day before Coretta Scott King’s funeral was aired from an Atlanta megachurch, a lesser-known black woman named Elsie Louise Washington Mason was buried quietly in Memphis. She was the widow of Bishop C.H. Mason, founder of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), the nation’s largest Pentecostal denomination.

Mrs. Mason’s funeral was not aired on CNN. No U.S. presidents attended. Her body was not displayed in any government rotundas. Oprah did not walk past her casket.

But Elsie Mason’s life deserved national recognition.

She died at Memphis’ Methodist University Hospital on Jan. 31 at the age of 98. Although her memory had begun to fade, she was still a living scrapbook of the civil rights era—and of the Christian spirituality that undergirded it.

When she was born, Teddy Roosevelt was president, women wore floor-length skirts and only rich people had telephones. Blacks could not vote, and rarely were they allowed to worship with whites.

The radical message that Elsie and her husband preached would change that.

C.H. Mason helped dismantle institutionalized racism long before Martin Luther King Jr. preached his first sermon. Mason did this not by staging nonviolent protests or by organizing political rallies. Instead he invited blacks and whites to gather at the foot of the cross, where he believed all human beings found equality.

A Baptist at first, Mason visited the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in 1906, became a Pentecostal and began to spread the message of the Holy Spirit’s power throughout the South. His black Baptist colleagues rejected his message, which included a belief in speaking in tongues, healing and miracles.

After Mason organized COGIC in 1907, both blacks and whites attended his meetings—sometimes sparking race riots. Mason’s influence grew to the point that he ordained dozens of white Pentecostal ministers at a time when all other Christian denominations were separated by race.

During an interview with Charisma in 1996, at age 88, Elsie recalled the early days of Pentecostal revivals in black communities in the South. In Texas, she said, Mason would attract huge crowds.

“Crutches were lined up against the walls because the people didn’t need them anymore,” she said. “In Memphis, a lady took sick during our convocation, and at that time doctors weren’t as prevalent as they are today, and there were hardly any hospitals for Negroes. So they sent for Bishop Mason, and he prayed until the Lord raised her.”

During her younger years, Elsie edited COGIC’s newspaper The Whole Truth and worked as a secretary in the denomination’s missions department. She even served as a missionary in Haiti and founded an orphanage.

As usual, Christianity Today featured its annual list of leading Christian books in its April edition. This year it offered the 10 best, several honorable mentions, and also a list of the last century’s 100 leading books. I had not read any of this year’s list so I started with number one, Jeffery Sheler’s Is the Bible True?

I quickly learned that the author is not a theologian or scholar in a religious sense. Sheler is a journalist who has written much about religion for his employer, U.S. News and World Report, in the last ten years. Sheler brings his journalistic skills to bear in his book, along with the access that his position gives him into academia and other hard to penetrate circles of influence. Sheler also had the advantages of the superior and at times amazing research talents and resources of his magazine staff along with the encouragement of his employers. Quite a combination for such a book.

The book’s subtitle tells the reader that she is about to learn or confirm that the Scriptures are essentially true, so that the conclusion of the debate that is presented is not ever in doubt. Nonetheless I found that Sheler methodically and fairly presented the most compelling facts or suppositions that are today’s fashion in the endless argument about the validity of the Bible.

Sheler divided his text into six parts. He begins with a quick review of the history of these age old arguments: how the Bible or canon came to be, who authored the various books, and why the Bible is a revelation-story about God and His Son.

Part two deals with the good and bad archaeological finds of the last 150 years. It includes a look at the lack of any tangible evidence that any patriarch actually lived. I have always found discussion of this dearth of “proof” worrisome. I remember when I was working my way through Gunther Plaut’s commentary on the Torah asking God why He hadn’t solved all the mystery of the patriarchs and the first 1000 or whatever years of scripture’s content with a few well placed nicely illustrated artifacts. Such would be so helpful and would end so much of the debate that never ceases. God spoke to my heart at that point and said “Mur, I am God, I don’t have to prove myself to men. It is the other way around, men have to prove themselves to me.”

I found the part on archaeology most helpful. I had been unaware of most of the material presented by Sheler on this subject. I also learned a great deal in part three which presents what we have learned so far from the Dead Sea Scrolls. He also tells the story of this find and how those involved have conducted themselves. We humans have a tendency to look out for number one— not necessarily a nice attribute.