March 2, 2021 – Click here to listen
One time I had a young employee come to my office and ask for counseling. I agreed and she suddenly burst into tears and as I tried to calm her down and console her, she blurted out that her grandfather had told her that if she attended a worship service where musical instruments were used, she would go to hell.
Huh?
I asked her what denomination her family was and she told me Church of Christ. I sighed and told her that some of their beliefs are not from the Bible regardless of their claims. For example they do not believe in the Holy Trinity. They believe in the deity of Jesus Christ but reject the doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus himself spoke of the Trinity many times.
I went on to explain that in regard to musical instruments that the longest book of the Bible is Psalms. Interestingly it is actually a book of hymns. When David moved the arc of the covenant, he assembled some of the Levites to praise God using stringed instruments, cymbals, and trumpets. Years later some 4000 Levites were designated to praise the Lord with musical instruments that were made for them. In addition 300 singers were assigned to praise the Lord with their voices.
I told her that since God designated the longest book of His Bible to a book of hymns that historically were accompanied by singers and musicians and their instruments, she was safe from hell. Nowhere does the Bible say attending church where musical instruments are played is a sentence to the eternal fires of hell.
Ugh . . . So how does a religion that claims to be Bible based deny the Trinity? How can they tell their members that they will go to hell if they attend a church that employs musical instruments? How can they claim to be the one true church?
I believe people get in the way of truth. It is invariably a case of straying away from the Bible altogether or taking it out of context. Snake handlers for example take one incident out of context about poisonous snakes and drinking poison and jeopardize their lives and the congregation. How often is it said in the secular world that the Bible states, an “eye for an eye” and yet right below those words in the Bible Jesus said it was wrong?
Billy Graham and Charles Templeton were evangelists who rose to fame in the 40s. Early in their careers they were friends – close friends. Many have said Templeton was the one that everyone thought was going to overturn the world with the Gospel. However, Templeton ended up leaving the Christian faith, eventually becoming an atheist. In 1982, though still an atheist, he said of Billy Graham, “There is no feigning in him: he believes what he believes with an invincible innocence. He is the only mass evangelist I would trust.” Templeton died in 2001 at the age of 86, shortly after he wrote what many consider to be one of the most heart-breaking books ever published: Farewell to God.
Here is an excerpt from that book, about a pivotal conversation he had with Billy Graham as he was leaving the faith. The context is his desire to go to Princeton to study the Christian faith more critically. He wanted Graham to come with him. Please keep in mind, this is his account of the conversation:
“All our differences came to a head in a discussion which, better than anything I know, explains Billy Graham and his phenomenal success as an evangelist.
In the course of our conversation I said, ‘But, Billy, it’s simply not possible any longer to believe, for instance, the biblical account of creation. The world was not created over a period of days a few thousand years ago; it has evolved over millions of years. It’s not a matter of speculation; it’s a demonstrable fact.’
‘I don’t accept that’ Billy said. ‘And there are reputable scholars who don’t.’
‘Who are these scholars?’ I said. ‘Men in conservative Christian colleges[?]’
‘Most of them, yes,’ he said. ‘But that is not the point. I believe the Genesis account of creation because it’s in the Bible. I’ve discovered something in my ministry: When I take the Bible literally, when I proclaim it as the word of God, my preaching has power. When I stand on the platform and say, ‘God says,’ or ‘The Bible says,’ the Holy Spirit uses me. There are results. Wiser men than you or I have been arguing questions like this for centuries. I don’t have the time or the intellect to examine all sides of the theological dispute, so I’ve decided once and for all to stop questioning and accept the Bible as God’s word.’
‘But Billy,’ I protested, ‘You cannot do that. You don’t dare stop thinking about the most important question in life. Do it and you begin to die. It’s intellectual suicide.’”
‘I don’t know about anybody else,’ he said, ‘but I’ve decided that that’s the path for me.’”
(Farewell to God, 7-8)
Templeton, as his own story makes plain, never truly reached a point where he was intellectually convicted of the truthfulness of Christianity (what the reformers called assensus). Assensus represents the conviction we have in our minds. Assent of the mind is vital to our faith. Graham, according to this testimony, had enough assensus to make a decision. He was not going to be an eternal “tire-kicker” with regard to Christianity. Sure, he could have waited, like Templeton, until every possible objection to the faith was answered, but this would amount to a failure of modernistic irrationality. We can never have all our questions answered. At some point there must be a sufficiency in probability.
There is a time when we, like Billy Graham, must stop the type of questioning that comes prior to faith, and make a decision. This does not mean we stop using our minds, as Templeton unfortunately assumed. In Christianity, we call this fides quaenes intellectum, “faith seeking understanding.” We believe in order to understand. We have faith and seek understanding.
May God give us all the ability to be like Billy Graham and make a decision to trust God and the Bible. May he help us to believe what we believe with an invincible innocence. Though doubts may still exist, they do not mean that our faith is not real.
As for me I’m like Billy Graham in that I believe the Bible. I don’t have all the answers and never will. I don’t have the intellect nor do I think anyone else does to answer all of the questions. At some point we just have to put our faith in something. I would rather put my faith in God and His Holy Word than the musings of someone who is but mere flesh and tries to shred the Bible with their theories.
As I said in the onset, men get in the way of truth. Read your Bible and believe. God has given us enough. If He explained everything we desire to know the universe could not contain the books that would be written and we couldn’t understand them anyway.
If you disagree then explain the following verse that is in the Bible. How can a book be living? God is God and flesh is flesh . . .
Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.