Chaos in Worship in Corinth

Worship in the church at Corinth had to be an unforgettable experience. A careful reading of 1 Corinthians reveals such an abuse of the Lord’s Supper and a vying for showing one’s superiority with spiritual gifts given to the members there.

The Lord’s Supper had lost its original intent and had become a “church social function,” with the rich displaying their sumptuous food while others who were hungry were ignored. It had ceased to be His supper. Read the following verses and note the possessive words I have highlighted. “When you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper. For in eating each one takes his own supper ahead of others …” (1 Cor. 11:20-21). Imagine assembling to remember His death and suffering and being faced with such horrendous blasphemy. It was not the Lord’s Supper; it was theirs!

Their assemblies would have been equally frustrating. There was no church which had more spiritual gifts than Corinth (1 Cor. 1:7), nor was there any church which abused the usage of them more. Read 1 Corinthians 14:26-40, where you will discover that because each of them had miraculously given gifts, they were competing for worship time to use them (v. 26). Those who could speak with tongues thought their gifts were so great that they were all speaking at the same time. Paul rebuked them and told them that there should never be more than three speaking in tongues in a service and they should do it one at a time (v. 27). If there was no one present with the miraculous power to translate these languages, Paul said that they should never have anyone to speak in tongues (v. 28). Evidently, there were some women who were actively speaking up and he told them to be quiet, for it was shameful for women to speak in the church (v. 35).

While those speaking in tongues in the Bible were speaking real languages, which they had never studied (Acts 2:4-6), those in charismatic churches today do not speak in languages any man understands. What a contrast! Many are not aware that the Hindu religion has similar tongue speakers who duplicate what the charismatics do.

Yet, why would the Holy Spirit give such directions? Was there something better than the Holy Spirit actually empowering individuals to speak in foreign languages? These God given languages were designed for the unbelievers (v. 22), yet God limited the usage of them among believers. Why? What could be more profitable than this manifestation of God and His power? Read the text again.

God wanted prophets, not tongue speaking! Think!

Posted in Dan Jenkins | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Chaos in Worship in Corinth

Preaching is So Boring

A study of 1 Corinthians 14 shows that God wanted prophets, not tongue speakers, in the assembly of the church. It also shows that the church at Corinth wanted tongue speaking more than they wanted prophets. When there was no interpreter present, those in the assembly knew that God was in their midst, but they did not have a clue what God was saying through those speaking foreign languages. It was exciting, but Paul said it was not beneficial. On the other hand, when God gave His message in a language everyone understood by using His prophets, the Corinthians had little interest in this matter.

Was this disdain for prophecy only found in Corinth? Consider the words of Paul to the church in Thessalonica. “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies” (1 Thess. 5:16-20). Evidently the church in Thessalonica had some who wanted to hinder the work of the Spirit because they did not want prophecies to impact their lives.

Wonder if the same attitude exists in our world today? While we do not have “inspired prophets” to deliver His message, we do have godly preachers delivering His message through an inspired book. Biblical preaching in the 21st century is the equivalent of prophecy in the first century. Both groups of speakers are doing exactly the same thing. They are delivering God’s inspired message to the listeners.

Have you seriously considered what our lack of love for Biblical preaching says about us? Preaching is God’s appointed way for changing lives in our assemblies. Do we seriously want God to work in our lives to bring about change? Paul shows that in Bible study we are changed into the image of Jesus by the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18). God knew that there was nothing else that had so much power over mankind as preaching, and He ordained it in our worship.

It is obvious that, to the carnally minded, worship would be far more “exciting” with miracles, shouting, uncontrolled emotional outbursts, planned dramatic experiences and tongue speaking, but when all is said and done, it is only in preaching that God speaks to us! He speaks not to the carnal, fleshly part of us, but to our eternal souls. If the design of worship is to make it exciting and entertaining, then push preaching aside. However, if the design is to remove sin and create holiness, then His plan and His place for preaching must be honored.

Think about it. “Despise not preaching!”

Posted in Dan Jenkins | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Preaching is So Boring

When You are as Old as Methuselah

Can you remember, when as a child, you thought that anyone who was thirty was really old, and anyone over sixty was approaching Methuselah’s age? It’s funny when you turn thirty your whole perception changes. If you are sixty plus, you, unlike those around you, cannot seem to think of yourself as being old.

The Bible has so much to say about getting old, and regardless of our perception of when that is, we would be wise to think about it. God describes the lives of many older people and how aging impacted their physical and spiritual life.

There is that decline of our physical health as we get older. Who has not heard of the failing eyesight of Isaac which allowed him to be deceived by the animal hairs his mother had placed on Jacob’s neck and hands? Later, Jacob himself died as a blind man unable to see because of his old age (Gen. 48:10). When David was seventy, the Bible described him as being “. . . old, advanced in years; and they put covers on him, but he could not get warm” (1 Kings 1:1). Read Ecclesiastes 12 to see the poetical description of loss of hearing, loss of teeth, trembling hands, fear of heights, inability to sleep and the loss of vision.

The Bible also describes the possibility of the decline of our spiritual health as we get older. I am not sure about the early life of the brother of the prodigal son, but I know that as the older brother he was beset with jealously, bitterness and a total disrespect for his father. Is there any story in the Bible more sad than the description of Solomon? “For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the LORD his God, as was the heart of his father David” (1 Kings 11:4).

On the other hand, there are those verses describing the faithfulness of older saints. Think about Moses, who at the end of his life had a spirituality unmatched in the rest of his life. Think of Caleb, who at 85 was still actively trusting in the providence of God. Then there are those inspiring words of aged Paul, who saw death on the horizon and talked of how he had fought the good fight and run the race to the finish line (2 Tim. 4:7). He saw the crown of righteousness awaiting him and all who are faithful until death.

I especially love the way God described the life of Abraham. “Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age” (Gen. 15:15)—not at an old age but a good old age. There is a difference. As you age think about this. Will you die at a good old age?

Posted in Dan Jenkins | Tagged , , | Comments Off on When You are as Old as Methuselah

The Baseball Game Jesus Created

Just suppose someone made a perfect translation of the official rules of baseball and sent them to a distant land. When the people there received that rule book they were fascinated and decided to introduce this sport into their land. The baseball field was laid out according to the rule book with every distance measured accurately. The strike zone was learned and soon everyone knew that “It’s one, two, three strikes you’re out, at the old ballgame.” They knew balls and strikes. They knew the definition of a balk, the infield fly rule and a double play. Now think about this. Had then invented a new game? Or were they simply playing an old game in a new place?

Now suppose that in our own land everyone lost interest in baseball. There were attempts to make it more exciting with every team making up its own rules. Soon no one had any desire to watch or play the original sport. Suppose that the game stopped being played altogether and five hundred years passed. Then someone found the old rulebook and began encouraging others to get involved in the game. A baseball field was laid out with every distance measured accurately. The strike zone was learned and soon everyone knew that “It’s one, two, three strikes you’re out, at the old ballgame.” They knew balls and strikes. They knew the definition of a balk, the infield fly rule and a double play. Now think about this. Had then invented a new game? Or were they simply playing an old game at a new time?

In this same way, imagine a world where Jesus introduced a new “game” called Christianity. He gave a “rule book,” which was easily understandable, and soon the “game” was found throughout the first century world. Everyone knew the “rules” about salvation, the Lord’s supper, the works of the flesh, the fruit of the spirit, heaven, the return of Jesus and the daily life of Christians. They knew about His church, purchased with His own blood. That book was translated into many languages and the same “game” was found in many nations.

Imagine people beginning to change the “rules” to make it fit better into their definition of what a “game/church” should be like. Imagine the book being laid aside with every person feeling free to write his own rules. Soon it would be impossible to even recognize how Jesus planned for the “game” to be played.

Do you know what this church is about? We have taken the “rule book” and are doing all we can to play the “old game” in a new time and a new place. This should make the “Rule Writer” so happy! Come, let’s study His book together.

Posted in Dan Jenkins | Tagged , , | Comments Off on The Baseball Game Jesus Created

Interview with Abby Johnson

On September 26, 2009, Abby Johnson held an ultrasound probe as she watched a baby in the womb recoil from a suction cannula while a doctor performed an abortion. That horrific scene caused Abby to leave Planned Parenthood. She is now working for a pro-life organization called Coalition for Life. Brad Harrub had the opportunity to talk with Abby recently. We hope our readers will appreciate (and share) this heart-rending firsthand account.
Brad Harrub: Please share with our readers some of your background and how you became involved in the abortion controversy.
Abby Johnson: I was a student at Texas A&M and went to a volunteer opportunity fair that they had every semester on campus. There was a woman there who was talking about planned parenthood. I really didn’t know anything about Planned Parenthood. I didn’t grow up in a community with Planned Parenthood. She began talking about Planned Parenthood and the services they provided. She did talk about abortion a little bit, but she told us that the primary volunteer duties were to escort women into the clinic whenever they were there for their abortion procedures. I told her that I grew up in a pro-life household. She told me she understood that, but the reason it was so important for women to have this choice was because if it wasn’t available then women would be having all of these illegal abortions and dying at this incredible rate. And I just thought this was terrible, so I thought to myself, “This is something I could get behind and it makes sense to me.” So I started volunteering.
I was a volunteer for about two years. I then became their campus intern—still a volunteer position—but I became the liaison between Planned Parenthood and Texas A&M. I did that for a year, and right before I graduated with my undergraduate degree from A&M, they asked me if I wanted to become an employee—a paid employee—of Planned Parenthood. I didn’t have any other job prospects coming up, so I said sure. I knew I wanted to get my master’s degree and they said they would work with me on that. So I went ahead and started working there. I worked there through the time when I got my graduate degree and just kept getting promoted and eventually ended up running that particular health center.
BH: So, you actually grew up in a “pro-life” family environment?
AJ: Yes, absolutely!
BH: Wow. So what do you think it was that helped you make that break and say: “I’m going to volunteer for Planned Parenthood?” Was there a certain phrase or hook she used, or something that she was offering that made it appealing?
AJ: Well, I think it was just the idea that if legalized abortion is not available and if these clinics are not available, then we are basically sending women to these slaughter-houses. And therefore women would be dying at this incredible rate. And for me—I’m a very compassionate person—to hear that was too much. To hear somebody say, “Women are going to be dying if this is not a legal option for women” was new. I’d never really thought about it in that way.
BH: Even though the statistics don’t bear out their scare tactic. So, in a weird, twisted kind of way you viewed yourself as “pro-life” but for older life, so to speak?
AJ: Right. Really that is the way they want to frame the argument. They don’t ever think about the unborn life, and that is intentional. They don’t want to think about the baby. They don’t want the clinic workers to think about the baby. They don’t want the women coming in for the abortions to think about the baby. They only want the women to think about themselves. And they only want the clinic workers to think about the woman sitting in front of them. And that’s very intentional.
BH: Obviously there is a single event that changed your perspective on life. Can you share what took place and how it changed you?
AJ: There were a couple of things. One was how the business model had been changing within the facility. They had really gone from a family planning and prevention model to abortion model. They went to, “Abortion is the most lucrative. It’s how we make the most money. We’re not making any money with the economy, so we see abortion as an opportunity to really up our income and up our revenue. So we need to get in as many women as possible to have these abortions.” So that was very troubling.
BH: Wow, that’s incredible to hear.
AJ: And so that was kind of the first thing. When I questioned that, it was really my fall from grace. That was when my supervisor told me abortion needed to be my number one priority. That I really didn’t need to worry about family planning and that I needed to get my head in the game for abortion. That’s when I told her abortion would never be my priority, and that family planning would always be my priority. That’s when things started to snowball for me.
On September 26 (2009), that’s when I actually saw an ultrasound-guided abortion procedure. Ultrasound-guided abortions are very uncommon. They are particularly uncommon in large abortion facilities like Planned Parenthood. If we are talking about abortion in terms of safe procedures for the woman, ultrasound-guided procedures are the safest procedure. It is the best type of procedure for the woman. There’s less risk of uterine perforation. These big places don’t want to do it because it takes more time.
This particular physician who was coming down that day is a private practice abortion physician. He has his own practice out of town and he was coming in to do abortions as a visiting physician that day. In his practice he only does ultrasound-guided abortions. The patient was a little further along in her pregnancy—about 13 weeks—so the doctor decided that on this patient he was going to do an ultrasound-guided procedure. For that procedure he needed an extra person in the room to hold the ultrasound probe, and that was me.
So they called me into the room and told me they would need me to hold the ultrasound probe on her abdomen so that he could see the uterus during the procedure. That was to be my job during the procedure. So we had everything in place, and I saw on the screen a thirteen-week baby. You know at thirteen weeks—even at ten weeks—what you see on the ultrasound is a fully formed baby with arms and legs. Everything is fully formed. If you can get a good profile view, you can see all of this.
Well, this was a good profile view. I could see everything from head to foot. And then I saw the probe—called a cannula, that is hooked up to the suction machine—I saw that go into the woman’s uterus. And then I saw it jab into the side of the baby. Then, in just a few seconds, I saw the baby begin to react to that jabbing. I saw the baby’s arms and legs begin to move. The baby was trying to get away from the probe.
BHrad: Wow. I have to ask this because I’m sitting here trying to imagine it for myself: What were you going through internally at that point?
AJ: Well, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. I felt sick to my stomach. I realized what I was about to look at and I realized what I was about to see. And that’s when they turned on the suction. A baby at that age has a perfectly formed backbone. The last thing I saw was the backbone going through the cannula on the ultrasound screen. I’ll never forget what it looked like on the screen. You know how they say with a train wreck you don’t want to watch but you can’t stop looking at it? That’s what it was like for me. I didn’t want to look at it, but I couldn’t stop looking at the screen. When I saw that baby moving, it was like he was waking up and then trying to get away from the cannula.
I immediately thought of all the women I had lied too. You get a lot of questions in the room. As a counselor in the room with women, they ask you questions before they go back for their abortion procedure. One of the things they ask you frequently is, “Is my baby going to feel this?” Every time I had told them no. Because I really didn’t think the baby would feel it. Planned Parenthood had told me they wouldn’t feel it, so I told them no. I immediately thought about all the women I had lied to. I was thinking to myself, “What if I had told them the truth? What if I had known the truth— would I still be here at this job? Would those women have chosen an abortion?” What kind of difference would it have made if we had all known the truth? Why are they trying to hide this?
BH: So obviously your beliefs have changed. What would you say today, here at the end of 2009, are your beliefs on this controversial topic?
AJ: I’m firmly pro-life. The other day I went out in front of an abortion clinic for the first time on an abortion day. It was a good feeling to be on the other side of the fence. But I have a very unique sense of what is going on inside that clinic and what those women are feeling, because I have sat there and looked in their faces.
BH: So what would you say? Let’s say you have a 15-year-old or a 20-year-old or even a 30-year-old that is currently pregnant and not sure what to do? What would be your words of wisdom at this stage?
AJ: I’ve been asked that a lot. A lot of times women choose abortion out of convenience. In fact, most of the time they think that abortion is going to be a quick fix. They think an abortion is going to make their lives easier, and I know that is not the case. It is not a quick fix. It is not something you just do and it goes away. It will be with you for the rest of your life. If they are a young person or a person of any age and they don’t have children—many women who choose abortion are in their younger years—that memory of the child they aborted comes back to them when they are holding their wanted children. People have asked me, “What would you have said differently to those women you were counseling with?” I would have said, “Your baby does have a heartbeat. No matter what you’ve been told, your baby does have a heartbeat, and your baby is going to feel what is happening to it during the abortion. Your baby is going to feel that pain. And, when the abortion is finished, somebody is going to have to go back and reassemble the baby that was in your uterus. And they are going to know if it was a boy or girl. This is very real. This is not just a mass of tissue. This is not just a glob of cells. This is a real baby in your uterus.”
BH: What are the secrets in the abortion industry that many never hear about? Obviously you’ve touched on one that most people know that maybe we don’t admit—and that is a lot of this is about money.
AJ: Oh yeah.
BH: But what are some other things, having “been there and done that,” that you can share?
AJ: It is so much about money. But also, anytime there are any complications they will do anything to keep that woman quiet, including paying her money to keep her quiet.
BH: Now when you say complications, you mean medical injury.
AJ: Yeah. They will pay her off to keep her quiet. Which is sad, because then we never know about those tragedies of abortion. There are so many times that women are injured from an abortion— they’ve had botched abortions— and instead of going to the media so that other women can hear their stories, they are paid off. They are required to sign a statement saying that they will not go public with that information. In some states, like Texas, there are laws where they will come and ask the woman if she wants to view the ultrasound. If she does choose to view her ultrasound, and let’s say she’s 10, 12 14, weeks pregnant, they will not show her the full profile of her baby. They may only show her…
BH: A leg.
AJ: The leg. If you are a layperson looking at the ultrasound, you don’t know what that is. And they’ll say, “That’s it. See you can’t see anything.” Because they don’t want to give her the truth. They call themselves pro-choice. But it’s not really about giving women honest choices. There are just so many things they are not honest about. For instance, they never go over all of the risks about abortion when a woman comes in. They never talk about all of the options. They don’t normally ask, “Have you considered your other options?”
BH: Have you ever seen someone coming back after an abortion procedure who is emotionally torn up?
AJ: Absolutely. Absolutely. The abortion industry’s answer to that is that the person is weak or that they were emotionally unstable to begin with. They don’t believe in post-abortion syndrome. They believe that for a normal person, you’re going to do fine after the abortion. They really just dismiss women that have regrets after an abortion, and they just think something is wrong with them.

BH: We appreciate more than you know your willingness to talk. And we are so thankful you are speaking out for pro-life. I’ll say this, I think there is a truth out there that is not getting out. I think if more women armed themselves with what you are revealing here, we would have less abortions going on than we have today.
Posted in Brad Harrub | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Interview with Abby Johnson