Jeremiah 6:16 says Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where [is] the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk [therein]. This is the only time it shows up in the Bible. It's amazing how men will focus so much on what God focused so little on isn't it. "We should ask for the old paths... " is inevitably followed by what the preacher says he thinks the "old paths" are! And it usually has the ring of all the things the preacher stands for. And if it is a pastoral authority control freak preacher, you already have a monster on your hands.
I used to prescribe to this notion myself when i was a Fundamentalist successionist. The old paths! It was a neat idea. Many preachers love that Jeremiah 6:16 is in the Bible. It is a good springboard for rabbit trails and hobby horses. People? Why are we messing around in law and prophets so much? Why are we wanting to allude to some mystical old paths, some mystical realm that only exist in the preachers minds. Whether you preachers keep trying to get your young preacher boys to be like Hudson Taylor, George Whitfield, Sam Jones, or Lester Roloff, or you are using the prophets as good examples of public ministry, you guys need to understand what age you are in TODAY! You are using his word too loosely. You are no longer teaching our young men to be individuals with a book. But you are pushing them to follow traditions of men, claim the same callings of men, follow the same commissions of men and to practice preaching styles that are not fitted for NT men.
Now, I get it. You say you are just trying to get people to live holy. Ok, no problem, but why do you focus on it so much? You focus on it, so I want to discuss it one time. Everything about Christian is new, not old. Our doctrine and salvation is derived from the NEW testament. We walk a new path, not a old path. We walk the path less traveled. We walk the path that is directly against the course of the world. The old paths spoken of, in Jeremiah contextually was probably a reference to the old covenant! Some say it was more long the lines of "remembering the former days". Should we admonish people to walk in that! Nope. Why would we lead people back to Temple life? We are saved by a New covenant of grace, not the old path of the law. We are new creatures in Christ. He put a new song in my heart. We preach the old story, but walking the old paths? Like I said, it has become a matter of definition! What are the old paths?
Why do preaching men make such mention of this phrase? There is always motive behind mentions! I can have my observations too preachers! It seems like you guys are just controlling the sheep with harsh preaching, and much discussion of old paths or being old fashioned. So much so, that you have to see your own standards in your members. It's disgusting to watch how you think it is so right, your dictatorship, your pastoral authority (they call it the "doctrine of submission" now), how God only deals with you in the congregation of 300 or even 30, it is such arrogance and unbecoming of real men of God. You are not submitted to God, if you are not submitted to the sheep he has put you over. You minister to them! And they to you! It goes both ways.
Now I realize this is a fine line here dwelling on this sort of thing, but that is what Silent Platform is. In the OT there is a Old way, a old covenant. In the NT there is a new way and a NEW covenant. Both law and grace are vital, necessary and important to understanding what salvation is. We see the law is just, good and holy from Romans, but Hebrews states it is old, decayeth, and waxeth away. The law is no more. It is done away with. It was a school master to bring us to Christ. Christ is revealed in the law and the prophets. But preachers are manipulating the pages and text of the 1611, as they are observed continually tiptoeing and hop scotching through the prophets and the law attempting to mesh it all with Paul's gospel of grace. When they do this they will eventually end up barking about continual repentance and old paths. It is all about fear, manipulation, control, and ultimately preeminence and superseding ones authority as a Shepard with some men. The same type of men that talk about old paths and "a gospel with repentance" are the same men who talk of great commissions, authority and mystical callings and unctions!
Men, snap out of it. The denominational control in the churches could not be more apparent if it hit you in the face like a frozen hockey puck traveling at 97 mph! You guys won't change anything, because you are so addicted to being in the old paths of the Independent Baptist church and ministry and what it has developed into in the 21st century. We are so young, about 60 years in infancy, full of stark raving lunatics, splintered, and scattered believers everywhere, agreeing on nothing, full of camps, clicks zealots, fanatics, and ego maniacal power control men, and you tell me we got it right and we are the Baptist succession of faith. Whatever! Keep smoking that peace pipe. There are good men out there, but the baser sort are much more the majority then people like to imagine. They just ignore it. Act like things are not that bad. Stick their heads in the sand and go about getting to busy in the ministry to notice their own corruption. You men perpetuate the system with that attitude!
Hate to burst your bubble guys, you seminary students, and graduates, but there are no "old paths" for you to seek, you have no race to be run like certain men from the pages of God's book. You have been weaving an illusion, most likely led about by parents or pastors of no ill will. They are just following the guidelines of the local church and all her statements of faith. Most church kids don;t even know there is a "real world". They live in a bubble. It's why they flake out so fast. We quickly blame sin, and the temptations of the world, but c'mon, we never look at our hypocritical positions, our religious ways and our "often reproofs" as the reasons they get stiff-necked. Maybe it wasn;t the sin of the world. Maybe it was the sin of the parents. Maybe it was the sin of the church! "Judgment must begin at the house of God"
There is no course given to us from the womb like some characters in the Bible. We are not the last modern day truth keepers. We are not the "sons of thunder" or "God's Swat team for Christ" in the last battle of the ages, the acts of the preachers standing against the hordes of world. We are more like gospel grenade throwing dividers that rival Islamic fanaticism.
God did not call you to go to Nineveh to tell them to repent. You were not called to stand against anyone, anywhere! You made it up in your head. Your own burdens, you took, and made them a calling, and placed scripture on it to justify it. You are not called to stand against unrighteousness, nor are you called to judge the world in righteousness. That job is reserved for one coming soon!
You can't stop it the world with your "old path" philosophy! We aren't meant to stop the flow of anything. We are to occupy, stand fast, hold fast. It's why God directs a Christian soldier to arm up in Eph 6. You are told to stand fast in the faith, and stand against the wiles of the Devil. God gave you no grand design as he did Paul. You have no great work that God said "DO". We just have our separate races to be run as diverse members of his body. Yeeshh. I know, sounds depressing doesn't it.
Now some guys will make it. They will have their dreams. Their home, property, cars, kids college paid, all by preaching the gospel of Christ with charge! All by defrauding the body of Christ with tithes, bogus offerings and faith promise gimmicks. They will go along with all the traditions, follow the playbook and all the insider trade secrets of church planting and ministry manufacturing that they have received of their forefathers (Seminaries and Pastors before them). But with these subtil, unseen compromises that go unnoticed but the majority, they will also have to learn to read the Bible with a slant, where everything is spiritualized, and modernized for the next generation of spoiled, rich American Conservative Christian church kids that they can be fooled to into funneling into the same corrupt cycle. They eventually start believing their own lies, and accepting their own realities. It's too late for a lot of them to change, the system is so smoothly implemented now.
We have to live in the real world! The only voice of God we have is the BOOK of God, which I believe to be the Authorized version. When men talk excessively about their calls, unctions, or being ordained of God, or called of God, or obligated by God, is when I have good reason to be wary and watchful. Are we not supposed to examine such things WITH the book? Look, you say God called you, fine, but you can slap that mandate only on yourself. The only calling I received and heard was for salvation.
I know this is not a welcome topic to most. But I can;t take it anymore. You people are living in a fantasy land. We live in the last of the last days, apostasy is growing more and more constricting all the believers around the globe, not just us Americans, and the wickedness of the world, well, it has always been. Your old paths will not make a dent in any of these things you use the phrase to rail against with such fervor and righteous indignation.
You actually think you'll stop it don't you? Thats why you keep harping on the old paths, telling people to repent and get back to the altar and get back to the old way! It's why you lunatics keep hitting the streets to protest the sodomite and the drunkards at their gatherings. Like they are doing some new thing. Like you are in some battle or something. Did your old paths call you to preach at sporting affairs of the world and worldly festivities and gathering. I just haven't seen that yet. Unless you hang around in Jeremiah with the old paths, or Jonah, and use those as cases to tell people to repent and throw down idols. All you protest against in the world just gives it more press! We are to LOVE not the world.
Now, all you preachers/missionaries and evangelist that happen upon this and think I am doing nothing more then dividing by talking in such manners, you all know you are just trying to silence guys like me. You know guys like me are right. You just won't admit it, because then you would have to eat cake and change so much and admit that you have been wrong for so long about so many things. It is a tough spot. I know.
You'll keep on having your people stay dumbed down on spoon fed bible teaching not fit for new converts, fooled to your piousness, and hardcore tendencies. You will maintain your solid men, some friends and families in your corners. But you never see fresh faces, in spite of the bash brothers public outreach ministries, because those coming in are too worldly or compromising or they just "can't take hard preaching. Your spiritual growth is now among people who are satisfied to stay in the same place as you. You men continue to fail to recognize "a more excellent way". You will all stagnate together in your old paths until the good Lord comes. Who is really being the divisive ones here? Who is the hireling?
You might claim that I am just some guy that got mad and bitter. I am about 10 years past that point now. I am a simple preacher of Gods holy word as you and I have no loyalty, or membership to you, your pastor, your street preaching zealot guru's, your friends, your professors, your Seminary cronies, or your Institute automatons, so why should I shut up and not speak my mind. You don't have to shut up! Why should I? I'll kick it down to grade school level if you want.
When I disagree with you, that questions your unction, your call, your work, your ministry, and you just can''t handle it, so you label (heretic, hyper, compromiser, etc), or you ridicule or slander (he isn't doing anything, he is just trying to get a following), and refuse to even have an intelligible conversation ("I am rejecting you as a heretic and we can have no more communication"). All very convenient isn't it. You know, some have asked why I choose anonymity for Silent Platform. There are a multitude of reasons, but one defining one is "why, I know my testimony will get thrashed, my name will be slandered. Thats what men do when they are faced with their own illusions, they attack, scoff, label, and misdirect! I have seen this 100 times over!
You are you guys so afraid to open up the same book, and let it speak, without Baptist positional theology, and logic filled pragmatic hyperbole and Successionism in your minds at the onset. Are you so right that you can't be wrong? Seriously! We need to start asking these kinds of questions! Are you so sure on your positions, that there is no room for doubt, and you know for absolute certain, that you can't consider that you are wrong on a great many things? Has our ministries, churches, systematic theology, institutes, seminaries, commentaries, and all the years of labor in therein, given way to "old path" of least resistance where we can simply bypass certain things while accepting others for the causes of the greater good? Just sayin...
No comments:
Post a Comment