NINE

The Lure of Doctrine Without Power

I HAVE NOT MEANT to portray New York City as totally godless and pagan, because in fact, Brooklyn has historically been known as “the borough of churches.” We have countless buildings that once housed active, vibrant congregations. Unfortunately, they are almost empty today. As the neighborhoods “changed,” as drugs became more prevalent, the momentum faded.

Many parishioners died or moved into the suburbs but generously left large endowments. Today these churches may have pitifully few people in the pews on Sunday but they can still pay a pastor’s full-time salary and keep the enterprise going. One of the most famous is a downtown church we used to rent for special outreach events. The sanctuary, which seats 1,400, was packed in the 1930s and 1940s, but it has not been used for regular Sunday worship since the 1960s. The congregation currently meets in the basement.

Inner cities have thus become a forgotten mission field. Church buildings are empty in places where they should be crowded. Sin is abounding—but contrary to Romans 5, grace is not abounding more.

Is this because the pulpits are not declaring truth?

In some cases, yes—but in many cases, no. That may surprise you if you have assumed that the decline is always due to theological liberalism or false doctrine. But many groups who own these silent sanctuaries are as orthodox as a church could be. If you quizzed them about the divinity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, or their adherence to the Apostles’ Creed, they would pass with flying colors.

So what is missing?

BEYOND HEAD KNOWLEDGE

THE ABSENT ELEMENT IS what is expressed in the final sentence of the prayer recorded in Acts 4: “Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders” (v. 30). What gains unbelievers’ attention and stirs the heart is seeing the gospel expressed in power.

It takes more than academic rigor to win the world for Christ. Correct doctrine alone isn’t enough. Proclamation and teaching aren’t enough. God must be invited to “confirm the word with signs following” (see Heb. 2:4). In other words, the gospel must be preached with the involvement of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven.

The apostles prayed for God to do supernatural things. They wanted people to know their belief was more than positional or theoretical. There was power in this faith. “O God, stretch out your hand—work with us in this.” They wanted a faith that was obviously alive, a faith based not just on the cross but also on the empty tomb. The cross, as poignant as it is, is understandable from a human perspective: an innocent man was murdered by crooked politicians and religious leaders. But the empty tomb—what can you say? Only a supernatural God could accomplish that.

In too many churches today, people don’t see manifestations of God’s power in answer to fervent praying. Instead, they hear arguments about theological issues that few people care about. On Christian radio and television we are often merely talking to ourselves.

What we are dealing with today is an Old Testament “vow religion” comprised of endless repetitions and commands to do all the right things. Modern preachers, like Moses, come down from the mount calling for commitment. Everyone says yes but then promptly breaks the vow within two days. There is little dependence on God’s power to make an ongoing difference. There is little calling upon God to revolutionize us in a supernatural way.

Jesus is saying today, as he said to the church at Sardis, “You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God…. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief…. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev. 3:1–3, 6).

Isn’t it remarkable that only two of the seven churches of Revelation (Pergamum and Thyatira) were scolded for false doctrine? Far more common was a lack of spiritual vitality, of fervency, of closeness to the Lord. These are what the glorified Christ wanted to talk about most.

I am not advocating melodrama or theatrics that work up emotion. But I am in favor, as were the apostles, of asking God to stretch out his hand and manifest himself.

People pay attention when they see that God actually changes persons and sets them free. When a new Christian stands up and tells how God has revolutionized his or her life, no one dozes off. When someone is healed or released from a life-controlling bondage, everyone takes notice. These things bear witness to a God who is strong and alive.

WHO IS OUTSIDE THE FORT?

MAINTAINING DOCTRINAL PURITY IS good, but it is not the whole picture for a New Testament church. The apostles wanted to do much more than simply “hold the fort,” as the old gospel song says. They asked God to empower them to move out and impact an entire culture.

In too many places where the Bible is being thumped and doctrine is being argued until three in the morning, the Spirit of that doctrine is missing. William Law, an English devotional writer of the early 1700s, wrote, “Read whatever chapter of Scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it—yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon him.”¹

One way to recognize whether we suffer from this disconnection is to look at our concern for people who are dirty … people who are “other” … people who don’t fit the core group’s image. The idea that a church could be called just to serve yuppies or some other designated class is not found in the New Testament. The ravages of sin are not pleasant—but they are what Jesus came to forgive and heal. “The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). The Spirit of God is a Spirit of mercy, of compassion, of reaching out.

Yet Christians often hesitate to reach out to those who are different. They want God to clean the fish before they catch them. If someone’s gold ring is attached to an unusual body part, if the person doesn’t smell the best, or if the skin color is not the same, Christians tend to hesitate. But think for a moment about God reaching out to us. If ever there was a “reach,” that was it: the holy, pure Deity extending himself to us who were soiled, evil-hearted, unholy. God could have said, “You’re so different from me, so distasteful, I would really rather not get too close to you.” But he didn’t say that. It was our very differentness that drew his hand of love.

Jesus didn’t just speak the healing word to lepers from a distance of thirty yards. He touched them.

I shall never forget Easter Sunday 1992—the day that Roberta Langella gave her dramatic testimony, as I recounted in chapter 3. A homeless man was standing in the back of the church, listening intently.

At the end of the evening meeting I sat down on the edge of the platform, exhausted, as others continued to pray with those who had responded to Christ. The organist was playing quietly. I wanted to relax. I was just starting to unwind when I looked up to see this man, with shabby clothing and matted hair, standing in the center aisle about four rows back and waiting for permission to approach me.

I nodded and gave him a weak little wave of my hand Look at how this Easter Sunday is going to end, I thought to myself. He’s going to hit me up for money. That happens often in this church. I’m so tired….

When he came close, I saw that his two front teeth were missing. But more striking was his odor—the mixture of alcohol, sweat, urine, and garbage took my breath away. I have been around many street people, but this was the strongest stench I have ever encountered. I instinctively had to turn my head sideways to inhale, then look back in his direction while breathing out.

I asked his name.

“David,” he said softly.

“How long have you been homeless, David?”?

“Six years.”

“Where did you sleep last night?”

“In an abandoned truck.”

I had heard enough and wanted to get this over quickly. I reached for the money clip in my back pocket.

At that moment David put his finger in front of my face and said, “No, you don’t understand—I don’t want your money. I’m going to die out there. I want the Jesus that red-haired girl talked about.”

I hesitated, then closed my eyes God, forgive me, I begged. I felt soiled and cheap. Me, a minister of the gospel … I had wanted simply to get rid of him, when he was crying out for the help of Christ I had just preached about. I swallowed hard as God’s love flooded my soul.

David sensed the change in me. He moved toward me and fell on my chest, burying his grimy head against my white shirt and tie. Holding him close, I talked to him about Jesus’ love. These weren’t just words; I felt them. I felt love for this pitiful young man. And that smell … I don’t know how to explain it. It had almost made me sick, but now it became the most beautiful fragrance to me. I reveled in what had been repulsive just a moment ago.

The Lord seemed to say to me in that instant, Jim, if you and your wife have any value to me, if you have any purpose in my work—it has to do with this odor. This is the smell of the world I died for.

David surrendered to the Christ he heard about that night. We got him into a hospital detoxification unit for a week. We got his teeth fixed. He joined the Prayer Band right away. He spent the next Thanksgiving Day in our home. We invited him back for Christmas as well.

I will never forget his present to me. Inside a little box was … one handkerchief. It was all he could afford.

Today David heads up the maintenance department at the church, overseeing ten other employees. He is now married and a father. God is opening more and more doors for him to go out and give his testimony. When he speaks, his words have a weight and an impact that many ordained ministers would covet.

As Christians reach out to touch everyone, including the unlovely who are now everywhere in our society, God touches them, too—and revolutionizes their lives. Otherwise we would just be circling the wagons, busying ourselves with Bible studies among our own kind. There is no demonstration of God’s power because we have closed ourselves off from the need for such demonstration.

Why do the greatest miracle stories seem to come from mission fields, either overseas or among the destitute here at home (the Teen Challenge outreach to drug addicts, for example)? Because the need is there. Christians are taking their sound doctrine and extending it to lives in chaos, which is what God has called us all to do.

Without this extension of compassion it is all too easy for Bible teachers and authors to grow haughty. We become proud of what we know. We are so impressed with our doctrinal orderliness that we become intellectually arrogant. We have the rules and theories all figured out while the rest of the world is befuddled and confused about God’s truth … poor souls.

Such an attitude takes the heart out of the very Word we preach. We end up with lots of doctrinal particulars, but very little happens that resembles the Bible we’re teaching from. I am personally tired of hearing all the positions and teaching principles. Where are the crowds of new converts? Where are the joyful baptisms? Where are the vibrant prayer meetings?

Once again, William Law writes:

We may take for a certain rule, that the more the divine nature and life of Jesus is manifest in us, and the higher our sense of righteousness and virtue, the more we shall pity and love those who are suffering from the blindness, disease, and death of sin. The sight of such people then, instead of raising in us a haughty contempt or holier-than-thou indignation, will rather fill us with such tenderness and compassion as when we see the miseries of a dread disease.²

Carol and I have found that unless God baptizes us with fresh outpourings of love, we would leave New York City yesterday! We don’t live in this crowded, ill-mannered, violent city because we like it. Whenever I meet or read about a guy who has sexually abused a little girl, I’m tempted in my flesh to throw him out a fifth-story window. This isn’t an easy place for love to flourish.

But Christ died for that man. What could ever change him? What could ever replace the lust and violence in his heart? He isn’t likely to read the theological commentaries on my bookshelves. He desperately needs to be surprised by the power of a loving, almighty God.

If the Spirit is not keeping my heart in line with my doctrine, something crucial is missing. I can affirm the existence of Jesus Christ all I want, but in order to be effective, he must come alive in my life in a way that even the pedophile, the prostitute, and the pusher can see.

ART OR HEART?

IF WE DO NOT yearn and pray and expect God to stretch out his hand and do the supernatural, it will not happen. That is the simple truth of the matter. We must give him room to operate. If we go on, week after week, filling the time with religious lectures and nothing more, God has little opportunity in which to move.

So long as we are busy polishing our oratory, the stage is entirely ours. Listen to the reproof of the great prophet of prayer E. M. Bounds more than a hundred years ago:

Among the things that hinder spiritual results, fine preaching must have place among the first. Fine preaching is that kind of preaching where the force of the preacher is expended to make the sermon great in thought, tasteful as a work of art, perfect as a scholarly production, complete in rhetorical finish, and fine in its pleasing and popular force

In true preaching, the sermon proceeds out of the man. It is part of him, flowing out of his life. Fine preaching separates between the man and the sermon. Such sermons will make an impression, but it is not the impression that the Holy Ghost makes. Influence it may have, but the influence is not distinctly spiritual, if spiritual at all. These sermons do not reach the conscience, are not even aimed at it.³

God is not nearly as enamored with the performance of pulpiteering as he is with humble words that manifest his presence to the soul. Consider Paul and Barnabas’s ministry in two adjacent towns, as related in Acts 14:

1. Iconium: “Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to do miraculous signs and wonders” (v.3, italics added).

2. Lystra: “A man crippled in his feet … listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed and called out, ‘Stand up on your feet!’ At that, the man jumped up and began to walk” (vv. 8–10). The crowd’s reaction was immediate.

Message plus divine demonstration. Doctrine plus power. This is the New Testament way.

For a more sobering example, see what happened in the previous chapter when these two apostles were addressing a government official on the island of Cyprus who “wanted to hear the word of God” (Acts 13:7). A sorcerer named Elymas interrupted the proclamation of the truth. “Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas” (v. 9) and rebuked him, announcing that God would strike him blind.

It is not accidental that the writer mentions Paul’s spiritual condition: he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Here was a man specially empowered that moment by the Spirit and ready for the satanic challenge. Paul’s doctrine was immediately reinforced by God’s overwhelming power. “When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord” (Acts 13:12).

Amazed at the teaching? Yes, for this was a teaching with power. People must not only hear but feel, see, and experience the grace of God we speak about.

Such an event was certainly unpredictable. As we open up our church meetings to God’s power, they will not always follow a predetermined schedule or order. Who can outline what God might have in mind?

Some have said, “The miracles, signs, and wonders of the book of Acts were temporary. They served to authenticate the apostles until such time as the New Testament could be written. Now we have the completed Word of God, which erases the need for supernatural happenings.”

My response is this: If we have a completed revelation in written form, are we seeing at least as much advance for God’s kingdom, as many people coming to Christ, as many victories over Satan as those poor fellows who had to get along with just the Old Testament? If not, why not? Are we missing something valuable that they felt was essential?

I have met preachers who have punched up a computer file and proudly showed me what they would be preaching for nearly the next year. Everything was cut-and-dried. The pressure of having to seek God week by week had been removed. What if God has a different idea? What if the spiritual temperature of the congregation changes by next October? Without an anointing and prophetic edge to declare something fresh from God’s Word, church life can be reduced to little more than a lecture series.

Imagine that Carol and I invited you to our home for a cookout. When you arrive, I greet you at the door. As soon as I take your coat, I hand you a little piece of paper with the evening’s outline. There you see that for the first seven minutes we will have light socializing: How was the traffic? What are your kids doing these days?

Then for the next four minutes I will give a quick tour of our home, the deck out back, and so forth. Following that will be twenty-two minutes for the meal. The blessing will be voiced by Carol; then we will pass the food….

You would say to yourself, This is weird! Why all the regimen? Can’t we just relax and get to know one another? What if somebody has an idea or wants to talk about something that’s not on the agenda?

Too often a church service, which is meant to draw us toward God, is not all that much different. Spontaneity and the leading of the Spirit have been thrown out in the name of keeping things on schedule. However, there has never been a revival of religion so long as the order of service has been strictly followed.

Please understand: I am not campaigning for disorder. I am not saying “anything goes.” I am asking us to remember that we are to be led by the Holy Spirit. Jesus said he would build his church, and we must not be so independent that we lose contact with the Master Planner. God the Holy Spirit does unusual things, and he does not always notify us in advance.

“Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God,” says Romans 8:14. Read the gospels and look for Jesus’ daily agenda. It just isn’t there. Scan the book of Acts to find the apostolic liturgy. You’ll come up empty. What you will find are people moving in spontaneous obedience as they are propelled by the fresh wind of the Holy Spirit.

The prayer of the Jerusalem believers recorded in Acts 4 says in essence, “God, please don’t send us out there alone just talking. Work with us; confirm your message in a supernatural way.” What way and in what manner was left entirely (and rightly) to God alone.

Charles Finney, the lawyer turned evangelist, once said that as long as an audience kept looking at him while he preached, he knew he was failing. Only when their heads began to drop in deep conviction of sin did he know that God was working alongside him, producing a heart change inside. The words of sound doctrine alone were not enough.

In fact, revivals have never been dominated by eloquent or clever preaching. If you had timed the meetings with a stopwatch, you would have found far more minutes given to prayer, weeping, and repentance than to sermons. In the “Prayer Meeting Revival” of 1857–59 there was virtually no preaching at all. Yet it apparently produced the greatest harvest of any spiritual awakening in American history: estimates run to 1,000,000 converts across the United States, out of a national population at that time of only 30,000,000. That would be proportionate to 9,000,000 Americans today falling on their knees in repentance!

How did this happen? A quiet businessman named Jeremiah Lanphier started a Wednesday noon prayer meeting in a Dutch Reformed church here in New York City, no more than a quarter mile from Wall Street. The first week, six people showed up. The next week, twenty came. The next week, forty … and they decided to have daily meetings instead.

“There was no fanaticism, no hysteria, just an incredible movement of people to pray,” reports J. Edwin Orr. “The services were not given over to preaching. Instead, anyone was free to pray.”⁴

During the fourth week, the financial Panic of 1857 hit; the bond market crashed, and the first banks failed. (Within a month, more than 1,400 banks had collapsed.) People began calling out to God more seriously than ever. Lanphier’s church started having three noontime prayer meetings in different rooms. John Street Methodist Church, a few doors east of Broadway, was packed out as well. Soon Burton’s Theater on Chambers Street was jammed with 3,000 people each noon.

The scene was soon replicated in Boston, New Haven, Philadelphia, Washington, and the South. By the next spring 2,000 Chicagoans were gathering each day in the Metropolitan Theater to pray. A young 21-year-old in those meetings, newly arrived in the city, felt his first call to do Christian work. He wrote his mother back East that he was going to start a Sunday school class. His name was Dwight L. Moody.

Does anyone really think that America today is lacking preachers, books, Bible translations, and neat doctrinal statements? What we really lack is the passion to call upon the Lord until he opens the heavens and shows himself powerful.

THE LIMITS OF TEACHING

LET ME MAKE A bold statement: Christianity is not predominantly a teaching religion. We have been almost overrun these days by the cult of the speaker. The person who can stand up and expound correct doctrine is viewed as essential; without such a talent the church would not know what to do. As I said in an earlier chapter, the North American church has made the sermon the centerpiece of the meeting, rather than the throne of grace, where God acts in people’s lives.

The Jewish faith in Jesus’ day was dominated by rabbis—teachers of the law. Their doctrine was thorough. Jesus told them, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39–40, italics added). They knew the written word of God very well, but not the living Word, even as he stood before them.

The Scriptures are not so much the goal as they are an arrow that points us to the life-changing Christ

Unfortunately, the rabbis never did realize who was among them. In the last few days before his crucifixion, Jesus wept over the city as he said, “You did not recognize the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:44 NASB)

It is fine to explain about God, but far too few people today are experiencing the living Christ in their lives. We are not seeing God’s visitation in our gatherings. We are not on the lookout for his outstretched hand.

The teaching of sound doctrine is a prelude, if you will, to the supernatural. It is also a guide, a set of boundaries to keep emotion and exuberance within proper channels.

But as Paul said, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6). If the Holy Spirit is not given an opening among us, if his work is not welcomed, if we are afraid of what he might do, we leave ourselves with nothing but death.

Granted, extremists have done fanatical things in the name of the Holy Spirit that have frightened many sincere Christians away. Chaotic meetings with silly things going on and a lack of reverence for God have driven many to prefer a quiet, orderly lecture. But this is just another tactic of the enemy to make us throw out the baby with the bathwater. Satan’s tendency is always to push us toward one extreme or the other: deadness or fanaticism.

Gordon D. Fee, a New Testament scholar whose heritage is Pentecostal, has said about corporate worship, “You really should have this incredible sense of unworthiness—‘I don’t really belong here’—coupled with the opposing sense of total joy—‘It is all of grace, so I do belong here.’ What bothers me about some within the Pentecostal and charismatic tradition is the joy without reverence, without awe.” But in too many mainstream evangelical churches, Fee adds, there is neither “reverence nor joy.”⁵

The old saying is true: If you have only the Word, you dry up. If you have only the Spirit, you blow up. But if you have both, you grow up.

We must not succumb to fear of the Holy Spirit. More than 200 years ago, William Law bluntly declared that the church of his day was “in the same apostasy that characterized the Jewish nation…. The Jews refused Him who was the substance and fulfilling of all that was taught in their Law and Prophets. The Christian church is in a fallen state for the same rejection of the Holy Spirit.” He said further that just as the Jews refused Jesus and quoted Scripture to prove their point, “so church leaders today reject the demonstration and power of the Holy Spirit in the name of sound doctrine.”⁶

What would the Englishman say if he were alive today?

A CRY FOR MORE

I DO NOT MEAN to imply that all is well-adjusted in the life and worship of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. As I said in the beginning, there are no perfect churches. I must be honest and tell you that I live with an almost constant sense of failure. When I think of what God could do for all the needs of this city and how little we are accomplishing, it makes me passionate to seek God’s intervention in even more powerful ways.

North American Christians must no longer accept the status quo. No more neat little meetings, even with the benefit of 100 percent correct doctrine.

Are we hiding behind the doctrine of God’s omnipresence, that he is everywhere around the globe, especially “where two or three are gathered together” … to the point that we don’t seriously ask and expect to see him work with power in our lives here and now? Shouldn’t we expect to see him in action once in a while? Shouldn’t we implore him to manifest himself? Moses did. Joshua did. Elijah did. Elisha did. Peter did. Philip did. Paul did. Shouldn’t we?

God will manifest himself in direct proportion to our passion for him. The principle he laid down long ago is still true: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13). O God, split the heavens and come down! Manifest yourself somehow. Do what only you can do.