Playing Games with God
Chapter 4
The Word Game
by Robert M. Smith
When someone makes
reference to a "word game" it is likely that our minds will conjure up
the image of a Scrabble board or a Crossword puzzle. There are other
word games available to the general public, such as Balderdash and
Probe, but the veterans of this genre have secured their niche in the
market and in our minds for quite a while. I have also heard, over the
past several years, that these particular games are extremely good for
one's mental health – even to the point of minimizing the onslaught of
that dreaded disease, Alzheimers. With those tidbits of information, I
am sure that you can readily see that there are indeed some benefits to
pastimes of this sort ... but, alas, not all word games are so profitable.
In the year 2006 I
had heard a most astonishing report about a man who, though he was an
internationally respected hockey coach and though he had won
championships and personal awards – like "NHL coach of the year", could
not read or write. Jacques Demers coached a number of elite National
Hockey League teams to various hockey titles during his career but he
kept hiding and disguising this personal problem from the world. He had
learned a few tricks to find his way around but he eventually
surrendered to the inevitable, "coming clean" with a public admission
and, now, speaking out about illiteracy. Never before had I heard of
such a high-ranking individual being plagued with this problem ... and,
bless his heart, he's currently learning how to read and write in the
latter years of his life.
This scenario,
however, spurs me on to think of what it must be like to wander through
this information-laden world, where communication is going on
ceaselessly, without the slightest ability to decipher any of it. Think
of it: the written word displayed everywhere; every sign and every
direction; every menu and every name; every list and every memo; every
instruction and every piece of literature; as inexplicable and pointless
as a Jackson Pollock painting to a viewer! The entire world could be
laid out at our feet and we wouldn't understand a thing until someone
else graciously interpreted it for us. That is a tremendous handicap!
Lots of communication going on ... but none for the illiterate! "What a
tragedy!" you say ... and I concur. But this tragedy is much more
extensive than this mere physical/mental/social/academic burden. It
exists on yet another plane; accepted by the status quo; more deplorable
in its results; more thorough in its vacuity; more precise in its
mortality. Here, it is called Biblical illiteracy. A Word game
that has no equal. A Word game that the vast majority of Christians are
playing to their own detriment. A Word game where, the Holy Spirit – Who
not only inspired the written Word of God, but also loves it – is being
suppressed and denounced.
Too harsh, you
say? Not nearly harsh enough, I'm afraid. Erwin Lutzer, citing a survey
of evangelical Christians in North America, reveals this, "According to
a recent Barna survey, 'only four out of every ten born again adults
rely upon the Bible or church teachings as their primary source of moral
guidance.'"[1]
There is absolutely no rationale strong enough or good enough to justify
this pathetic response to the Living God! Yet, time after time,
Christians resort to lame excuses in the hope of validating the demonic
laziness and apathy that has gripped this twenty-fist century, western
rendition of the church. Do not be fooled, counteracting apathy has
nothing to do with dancing, chanting and "letting it all hang out" in a
frenzy of emotional excess. It is, however, reflected in a disciplined,
steadfastness of spiritual proportions that reshapes the character of an
individual through the transformation of a heart and mind that had,
heretofore, been bent on self-fulfillment and self-realization. Leaving
this "self" in charge causes our unbelief to continue staring us in the
face in the form of a 60 – 40 ratio ... and, no doubt, getting worse by
the minute. As a consequence, there is little wonder why our Lord Jesus
asked this rhetorical question so long ago: "However, when the
Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?"
(Lk 18:8 NASB).
Oh to be sure,
there are many who claim to love our Lord Jesus Christ with all
their hearts, as they say, unencumbered by a legalistic bondage to the
Scriptures, insisting that doctrine interferes with the freedom found in
such love. However, parading this shallow humanistic affection reveres
the worshipper and not the Worshipped, for it does not take into account
the desires of God but rather the desires of an unsavory and unholy man.
It is simply not possible to love Christ, in the truest sense of the
word, while spurning the written Word of God which He loved to the
uttermost. It is also impossible to claim a love for God while
simultaneously ignoring the revelation He has given in the Scriptures.
Something is definitely out of kilter and someone is obviously playing a
religious game while such dichotomies exist for Jesus, Himself, laid the
groundwork for His disciples by establishing the prominence of Scripture
in all of life:
"Then beginning with
Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things
concerning Himself in all the Scriptures."
(Lk 24:27 NASB)
"Then He opened their
minds to understand the Scriptures."
(Lk 24:45 NASB)
There is no
negating the importance of the Scriptures to the Son of God; no
ecstasies are capable of replacing or displacing its importance; no
activity or program will provide spiritual help or growth without it; no
human being will be transformed into a new spiritual creature in the
absence of its fundamental truth; the earth, though populated, will
remain a vast spiritual void for lack of it. How important is the Word
of God? Beyond measure, as Gary Inrig writes:
"The Lord Jesus lived God's Word, loved God's Word, and was loyal to
God's Word. Scripture was His guidebook for His life, His protection in
His spiritual warfare, His authority in His public teaching, and His
directive for His God-given ministry. He obeyed its commands with His
actions, and He honored its meaning with His teaching.
The
implications are obvious and essential. If our Lord and Savior shaped
His life by Scripture, how can we imagine we need it less than He did?
If we call Him Lord and Teacher, how can we have a lower view of
Scripture than He did? If we are His followers, how can we rely on it
less than He did? We are no match for the wiles and seductions of Satan,
but God's Word retains its power as the sword of the Spirit, able to put
our enemy on the defensive."[2]
Just as there are
those who claim a love for Christ, there are also those who claim
a love for the Holy Spirit while spurning the written Word of
God. This, too, is an incompatibility of astronomical proportion for the
Holy Spirit who inspired the writing of Scripture (2 Tim 3:16) would
never shun it. If we truly desire to be under the control of the Holy
Spirit we shall be found drenched in His Word, where 100% of Him is
found 100% of the time. No other dubious source of His guidance will
ever supplant that reality according to our Saviour Jesus Christ:
"But when He, the Spirit
of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth;"
(Jn 16:13a NASB)
"Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth."
(Jn 17:17 NASB)
Note that Jesus
stated His disciples will be sanctified or set apart from all others
in the truth, not for the truth or because of the truth. This is an
immersion, not simply an application or an association. We are not
sanctified by what teachings we adhere to; we are sanctified by living
in the truth; and we cannot live in the truth until we
realize what that truth happens to be; and Jesus takes all of the
mystery and speculation out of the picture by boldly stating "Your word
is truth", speaking of His Father and the Scriptures that He has
provided. He who is sanctified is he who is immersed in the Word of God.
And who will guide us along, as we bathe in the Word of God – the Word
of truth? The Spirit of truth, who desires to lead us into all truth.
The truth about God, the truth about life and the truth about me will
suddenly become clear and fulfilling when, through the Scriptures, the
Holy Spirit teaches me. We must come to the realization that it is only
unbelief that keeps a person from the Bible for we show our faith by who
we listen to. Francis Schaeffer put it this way: "I have said that
inerrancy is the watershed of the evangelical world. But t is not just a
theological debating point. It is the obeying of the Scripture which
is the watershed! It is believing and applying it to our lives which
demonstrate whether we in fact believe it."[3] Elsewhere he writes
this complementary thought in amplification of this all-important tenet:
"... we must say that if we believe in truth, we must practice truth. We
live in an age of Hegelian synthesis and relativism, men don't believe
truth exists. How do we expect the world to take us seriously when we
say we believe truth exists and then live in a relativistic way?"[4]
The symptoms of
unbelief are rampant within the North American church. Too frequently
have we allowed ourselves to fade when we should be shining and to be
tasteless when we should be salty, simply because we have not spent
enough time within the pages of our Bibles where God's power can be seen
and experienced.
We have a series
of problems in this area:
A) We seem to believe that reading books about the Book, or
Christian novels, or stout theological dissertations, or any manner of
other Christian literature is substantial enough, so we substitute.
B) We have become intolerably glib about the Scriptures in North
America by allowing our "blessed" prosperity to wipe the importance of
study from our hearts. God's Word is getting crowded out.
C) We have inverted the words of our Lord Jesus Christ as stated in
Matt 6:25-33. He said that we must seek His kingdom first "... and
all these things will be added to you."
But we are seeking the temporal good life first. And through our
concept of "born again" evangelicalism we think that the kingdom of God
shall be ours as well. We want to claim the benefits of both worlds by
professing to be changed or transformed and, yet, all the while,
ignoring the very power behind any transformation – the Word of God.
We must begin to
rethink and refashion our perspectives in order to rise above this
desolate position of mediocrity.
In the Apostle
Paul's second epistle to Timothy there are two passages that must come
to bear upon us. Let them eradicate the ridiculous notion that true
Christianity can exist without prime commitment to the revealed will of
God in the Bible.
One of the first
portions of Scripture to be weighed is 2 Tim 2:15, "Be diligent
to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be
ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth."
Paul leads into this comment by warning against disputes "about words"
and he summarizes his thoughts with the example of Hymenaeus and
Philetus who were using the dispute approach to undermine the faith of
some. He called it "worldly and empty chatter". Here were two men who
claimed that the resurrection of believers of which Jesus had spoken in
John's Gospel narrative [chapter 6] had already come and gone.. They
might have been trying to establish a special, secret society following
of their own or they might have simply been trying to come up with an
answer to a specific local dilemma that had arisen but, whatever the
reason, they were upsetting the faith of some (2 Tim 2:18). According to
Rom 14:13-23, this is a most ill-advised approach and extremely
detrimental to the spiritual health of any local expression of the
church universal. And so, in the midst of his warning and his example,
Paul inserted the responsibility of a disciple – called a "workman"
here.
"The word of
truth" pertains to the very texts of which our Lord Jesus Christ made
reference in Jn 14:26 and Jn 16:13-14 wherein we find the layout of the
New Testament canon. Our Lord's words were to be paramount (Matt 28:20)
and His words were to be seen as absolute essentials for eternal
life (Jn 6:68-69). Thus, the Gospels are verified Scripture and, as
Peter indicates, the Pauline epistles are as well (2 Pet 3:15-16). The
entire New Testament, along with the Old, contains internal and external
authentication as to its origins with the test of time perhaps being the
most compelling and revealing validation. Now, these, we must handle
"accurately".
To become adept
with the Bible, takes time and effort. To hope that this skill will
develop overnight and with ease – even under the supernatural influence
of the Holy Spirit – is only a foolhardy North American notion spawned
of an atmosphere where fast-food, instant lottery winners, instant
coffee, instant cures and quick conveniences of every sort abound. Why,
we have even tried to abbreviate the Bible by, first using red ink for
special parts and then condensing it to concepts and main passages in a
Reader's Digest model. It is possible that these could be good
and effective under certain circumstances but they are more indicative
of the compromising, nonchalant attitude of North America rather than
the true heart of Christ's disciples who would desire every single piece
of God's inspired revelation.
Often we, who call
ourselves "Christian", do not even avail ourselves of these convenient
versions. We would prefer to leave the Bible alone entirely
because of a preconceived notion about difficulty in understanding it
and because it tends to expose many areas of our lives that need
revision and reformation. Too often we feel that Bible projects are
better left undisturbed but Paul shows us the foolishness of this
mentality by pointing to Hymenaeus and Philetus. They might have been
ignorant of the truth or they might have known the truth and ran
deliberately contrary to it, out of disdain, a proclivity that is not
merely a twenty-first century trait although evidenced in the abundance
of cult activity in our time. My concern, in bringing this incident up,
is not with these two early church heretics but, rather, with those who
had their faith upset by them.
Why would anyone's
faith be disturbed by others who were so blatantly wrong? Quite simply,
those who did not know the truth through constant exposure to it could
easily be led astray, and therein lies our warning. Because of the
plethora of cults in existence today we really need no more intense
urging to return to the Bible than this. Unfortunately it may take a
tragedy in the scope of a "Jonestown incident" to ignite many of us
since our lethargy is so deeply ingrained.
In 2 Tim 3:16-17
Paul also writes, "All Scripture is inspired by God and
profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in
righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for
every good work." (NASB). I
particularly appreciate the Revised Standard Version's interpretation of
the Greek word artios (v 17) for it gives a better sense of the
perfecting work of God in the man of God when the Word of God is present
in him: "complete". In this, even aside from the benefits listed for the
committed individual, one has more than enough incentive to spend all of
his/her waking hours immersed in the truth of the Scriptures. The plain
and confirmed truth that all Scripture is inspired by God ought
to draw us like a magnet to its pages for answers and strength daily.
You and I must finally appreciate that we are incomplete without the
Word of God: "Whatever keeps me from the Bible is my enemy, however
harmless it may appear to be. Whatever engages my attention when I
should be meditating on God and things eternal does injury to my soul.
Let the cares of life crowd out the Scriptures from my mind and I have
suffered loss where I can least afford it. Let me accept anything else
instead of the Scriptures and I have been cheated and robbed to my
eternal confusion."[5]
Referring to Jn
6:68-69 again, where do we go and what do we seek if we are not spending
time in God's Word? Obviously, we cannot be looking for eternal life or
an understanding of this life if we neglect the Author of both. Think of
it: within the pages of your Bible are the very words of God. That
concept is earth-shattering! Absolutely no one is as worthy of attention
as Him and yet we ignore Him. That concept equally earth-shattering!
Note that it is not the adequacy of the message or of the Messenger that
is in question here, but rather, the dedication and realization of the
recipients of Divine revelation that desperately need to be analyzed.
With this entire introduction in mind, therefore, let us examine a few
passages of Word of God.
2 Pet 1:19-21 (NASB): "So we
have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay
attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and
the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that
no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no
prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the
Holy Spirit spoke from God."
After encouraging
the saints of the first-century dispersion to continue diligently in
their faith through the appreciation and development of godly character
[2 Pet 1:2-15], the Apostle Peter chooses a couple of facts to inspire
them further. He wants to lead them into a proper and deeper estimation
of the written Word of God by linking it to the spoken Word of God. Thus
we have, in verse 19, the phrase "we have the prophetic word [that which
is expressly said] made more sure [stable or steadfast]" which he ties
to the Scriptures in verse 20. Peter is defining God's intentions with
the written Word ... that it is virtually the same as if God were speaking
directly to us in audible fashion. And that is the crux of the matter
isn't it? God speaks, or He does not. The written expression of God is
as thorough and as authoritative as His verbal expression or it is not.
This is precisely where the Holy Spirit enters the picture and this is
also precisely where a man with the comprehension of A.W. Tozer assists
us: "The Bible will never be a living Book to us until we are convinced
that God is articulate in His universe. To jump from a dead, impersonal
world to a dogmatic Bible is too much for most people. They may admit
that they should accept the Bible as the Word of God, and they may try
to think of it as such, but they find it impossible to believe that the
words there on the page are actually for them. A man may say, 'These
words are addressed to me,' and yet in his heart not feel and know that
they are. He is the victim of a divided psychology. He tries to think of
God as mute everywhere else and vocal only in a book.
I believe that
much of our religious unbelief is due to a wrong conception of and a
wrong feeling for the Scriptures of Truth. A silent God suddenly began
to speak in a book and when the book was finished lapsed back into
silence again forever. Now we read the book as the record of what God
said when He was for a brief time in a speaking mood. With notions like
that in our heads how can we believe? The facts are that God is not
silent, has never been silent. It is the nature of God to speak. The
second Person of the Holy Trinity is called the Word. The Bible
is the inevitable outcome of God's continuous speech. It is the
infallible declaration of His mind – for us put into our familiar human
words."[6]
Both Jesus, in the
Gospel narratives, and His disciples, in the New Testament epistles,
referenced the written Word of God ninety-one times. Most of those
references – certainly all that were made by our Lord Jesus – were
present tense references: "it is written". When one actually
stops to consider this phrase in detail one must conclude that it is a
most unusual construct. The Old Testament Scriptures that were cited
were inscribed hundreds of years prior to these referrals and, yet, they
are attributed with present tense status by Jesus and His followers. The
meaning, by Peter in his second epistle, and by Jesus, in the Gospels,
is quite evident and poignant: because of its source, the Word that was
written long ago will always remain pertinent in the eternal present!
This "word" is a living thing (Heb 4:12) and never out of date. Its mere
existence in written form is indicative of its authority and its power;
God's Word withstands and spans the passing of time; as I have often
said from the platform, it is a piece of eternity dropped into temporal
existence for our benefit just as Romans 15:4 states, "For whatever was
written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that
through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might
have hope." (NASB) Similarly, we could say, "Those who do not learn from
the past are doomed to repeat it" – a mandate that, though not
obligatory, remains highly beneficial to any adherent.
In our day North
American society and many North American authorities have removed the
Bible from sight and recognition. It has been or is being ushered out of
every institution in the land, in a brazen act of rebellion against God.
Some believe that these institutions are simply defying the
authoritarianism of Christian roots while attempting to liberate mankind
from the shackles of religious domination. But, little do they realize,
their contempt of Scriptural values stems from a prior rejection of the
Christ, just as it was in the first century AD. The two rejections
always go hand in hand: reject Christ, reject the Scriptures. In keeping
with the word of the prophet of old, North America is the fulfillment of
this testimony:
"'Behold, days are coming', declares the Lord God,
'When I will send a famine on the land,
Not a famine for bread or a thirst for water,
But rather for hearing the words of the LORD.
'People will stagger from sea to sea
And from the north even to the east;
They will go to and fro to seek the word of the LORD,
But they will not find it.'" (Amos 8:11-12 NASB)
This is something
to be expected from a secular humanism that longs to deny and destroy
moral accountability to a supreme God. However, not wishing to leave
this perspective languishing in the lap of the ungodly, and getting back
to my initial challenge known as the "Word game" among Christians, why
would a believer in Christ enjoin him or her self with the repudiation
exhibited in the world by also shunning the Word of God? Two things
should be fully realized at this point: 1) A Christian who shuns the
Word of God is aligning with the "world" against God; 2) It is because
of God's people that a "famine" exists in our land. We are the ones who
possess the Scriptures, so it is only reasonable to assume that if there
are people dying for a lack of them, it is our fault. We forget that we
have been entrusted with a global task that Francis Schaeffer describes
in his book The Great Evangelical Disaster, "... compromising the
full authority of Scripture eventually affects what it means to be a
Christian theologically and how we live in the full spectrum of human
life." [7] As a result, we have no right to stand
up to a pagan society and condemn it for any reason if we aren't living
under the authority of the Word of God ourselves. When we ignore the
power of the Word of God in our lives, we bring the same powerlessness
to the land in which we dwell. Therefore, what had been given to us as a
blessing – for both ourselves and others – becomes a curse to our nation
when we refuse to live under its influence ... and we can never be under
its influence as long as we ignore it and refuse to heed it. This brings
us full-circle to the verse that I have quoted already in this book –
Rom 2:24: "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of
you." This verse will be there at every turn, with every spiritual game
revealed, to indicate to us what is really happening instead of what we
imagine.
Christians who
play this "Word game" remind me of a stadium full of rabid fans. While
the team on the field may win the contest, the fans begin to don huge
foam-rubber hands with index fingers fully raised, screaming
frantically, "We're number one!" When this follows a championship win,
it can last for hours! I've witnessed this sort of mayhem many times.
The fans claim the status of a "winner" but, oddly enough, have not
actually entered the fray upon the field; doing nothing essentially to
earn the title.
When I translate
this to the Christian who plays the "Word game" I see a number of
warnings for them: 1) One had better make sure that one is actually a
part of the team [Christianity] before claiming victor's status; 2) The
way we treat the Word of God indicates what team we are on; 3)
Christianity is not now, nor ever has been a spectator sport! Anything
other than our complete devotion to the Bible smacks of pretension and
insensibility and it is from this game that all other games emanate. So
if our hearts can be turned about at this point we can keep a variety of
spiritual diseases from infecting ourselves and others any further.
Before I close
this chapter I would like to make brief mention of two other "Word
games" that Christians play to their personal and our corporate
detriment. In an effort to alleviate the affects of the "game" that I
have been dwelling on heretofore, other games have been devised to take
its place. These others are well-intentioned and often subconsciously
applied, but they are equally deleterious because they do not treat the
Word of God properly. One method treats the Bible too plebeian and the
other sees it too pre-eminently.
The first, the
plebeian one, sees the Bible as little more than a text book. It is
indeed read but it does not resonate with the Holy Spirit's power.
Believers who look upon the Bible in this way are little different than
those of whom Tozer wrote:
"To most people
God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence
which they consider adequate; but He remains personally unknown to the
individual. 'He must be,' they say, 'therefore we believe He is.'"[8]
Among the proponents
of this viewpoint are many theological scholars and those who long for
the scholarly image. Christian intellectualists can be found in this
gathering more often than not, attempting to magnify their own name and
reducing God to a mere formula or conclusion from the text ... a
sanctimonious humanism, if you will.
The second, the
pre-eminent one, sees the Bible as an idol, where it becomes God and God
becomes it. Believers who envision the Scriptures in this way do not
realize that, though they may possess the Word of God in their hands, it
is not God, Himself that they are carrying about. Being locked into this
perspective is actually no different than being obsessed with a fetish
made of wood or stone. I am convinced that, for the most part,
Christians have very little idea of what the Scriptures are all about.
Most of us do not realize that the Bible is in our possession on a
need to know basis. God did not have to provide us with this book
but in His sovereign benevolence He made it available – like grace – to
the common man. In one sense it is very much like a newspaper where we
are told the most important things – the essential things – but not
everything. Like a stage production, the Bible is "up front" but there
is so much activity and information going on behind the scenes. Every
now and then, within the Scriptures themselves, we are given a fleeting
glimpse that there is so much more: see the first few chapters of the
book of Job and the book of Revelation.
Am I saying that
the Bible is as unimportant as a newspaper? No. It is the Divinely
inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. This is not at all a
question of authorship, authority or authenticity ... it is completely a
question of utility and function. The Bible was designed to augment and
nourish our relationship with God. However, it is not our
relationship with God. There are hordes of Christians in the world today
who, through no fault of their own, do not have a Bible ... and have never
seen one. But they are still Christians, for God has never been limited
by the written word. How can I know that to be true? Because the Bible
actually shows us that it is true. There are many relationships that God
had established throughout time that were not blessed with the written
Word: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, the king of
Crete, the people of Derbe, Lystra and Iconium, and the Philippian
jailer to name only a few. There were also ministries blessed by God
that did not find their way to the inspired text: those of Apollos
[unless, of course, you think that he is the writer of the book of
Hebrews as I do], the vast majority of the Apostles, Agabus and
Phillip's daughters – all not recorded but all used and directed by God
... and that is simply the New Testament; the Old Testament has many more.
Yes, the holy Scriptures are invaluable to the believer but they are on
a need to know basis and they are not God – they may, however, be
considered appropriately as a letter from God.
We are the ones
who try to limit God by locking Him neatly, tidily and opportunistically
within a book. This often suits our religious attitudes of convenience.
The Pharisees did the very same thing and Jesus had to point out that
they were wrong in doing so: "You search the Scriptures because
you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify
about Me." (Jn 5:39 NASB). They
couldn't fathom that the Scriptures were the revealed will of God and,
as such, pointed to the Lamb of God and not to the Scriptures themselves
as a means of salvation. Like the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures that He
inspired always point beyond themselves ... always extroversive, never
introversive.
Why am I bringing
this up? Simply because there are far too many Christians playing this
game as well. They haven't yet come to the understanding that God does
not come in book form; He is not ink on a page, gold-edged or
otherwise; He is not an infrequently read piece of literature; He is not
hemmed in by a leather cover; when we close the Book we do not shut Him
off like some ethereal light switch; when we tuck the Book under our arm
we have not boxed Him in and cordoned Him off like some genie, complying
only to our personal interpretations and selfish expectations. The Bible
is His revealed will for mankind, His desires for you and me ... but the
real God remains apart from the text just as I am from this very book
that you are reading now. Both, the Bible and this book, are
communication devices, vehicles for the flow and interchange of thought.
We do great harm to the media, to the authors and to ourselves when
ascribing to them a position and entity that was never intended. Divine
revelation was always intended to lead to and sustain a Divine
relationship which has always had the essential primacy; it is a
supportive role; it was never meant to overturn that order. The true and
living God wants us to utilize His Word to establish and maintain a
right relationship with Him and the first step, following my salvation
through faith in Jesus Christ and His Cross, is to see the Bible as it
truly is ... without applying to it those fanciful games that we cherish
so. Every other spiritual game we play stems from this one. Eliminate
the "Word games" and we shall be able to work on others with greater
facility.
[1] Erwin W.
Lutzer, Who are you to judge?, Moody Press, Chicago,
2002, Page 41
[2] Gary Inrig, True North,
Discovery House Publishers, Grand Rapids, 2002, Page 60
[3] Francis A. Schaeffer, The
Great Evangelical Disaster, Crossway Books, Westchester, IL,
1984, Page 61
[4] Francis A. Schaeffer, Death
in the City, Inter-Varsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 1969, Page 72
[5] A. W. Tozer, The Best of A.W.
Tozer – Volume 1, Christian Publications Inc., Camp Hill,
PA, Page 108
[6] A. W. Tozer, The Best of A.W.
Tozer – Volume 1, Christian Publications Inc., Camp Hill, PA, Page 26
[7] Francis A. Schaeffer, The
Great Evangelical Disaster, Crossway Books, Westchester, IL,
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[8] A. W. Tozer, The Best of A.W.
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