Category: All Articles

Let the Lions Defend Themselves

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Culture, Theology

–August of 1996

Let The Lions Defend Themselves

The story is told of a circus train which derailed while passing through the mountainous terrain of West Virginia. As locals gathered to observe the situation, much attention was given to the car which contained the circus lions. These massive beasts, already disturbed by the accident, were being further aggravated by neighboring dogs which were barking snapping at them through the heavy iron bars. The frustrated circus owner, concerned for the welfare of his prized animals, began to cry out, “What can we do to protect the lions?” An amused farmer called back with this bit of practical advice: “Why, mister, you don’t need to protect lions! Just turn them loose, and they’ll protect themselves!”

This story reminds us of the inherent power of the Gospel message, a power that it contains in and of itself. The Gospel needs only an outlet, a channel, someone to “open the door and let it out” in order to demonstrate its native dynamic.

Now to give the full picture, it is admitted that the Christian minister sometimes must adopt a defensive posture. In a society oriented toward doubt and skepticism, it is necessary to employ reason and logic to “protect” Christianity from the “barking dogs of dissent” Whose howls of criticism often dominate the intellectual marketplace. This is the task of apologetics, and it involves the responsibility of proving or defending the Good News. Paul himself declared that he was “set for the defense of the gospel.” Furthermore, Peter admonished his readers to be prepared to defend their faith before those who would inquire about the hope we have in Christ (I Pet. 3:15).

A second aspect of the Christian minister’s responsibility in relationship to the Gospel is that of persuading. Here again Paul acknowledged, “Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.” King Agrippa certainly felt the force of the apostle’s persuasive powers for he candidly admitted, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” This concession, however, didn’t satisfy Paul, and he promptly increased pressure upon Agrippa to be “altogether” persuaded. There certainly is a time and place for the preacher of the Gospel, under divine direction, to bring his hearers tactfully—yet firmly—to a crisis, to a point of decision.

However, to maintain a balanced view of the Great Commission, remember that the Gospel had been best advanced—not by proving or persuading—but simply by proclaiming. This basic methodology is often neglected because it is humbling; it accents the message, not the messenger. It does not depend upon “enticing words of man’s wisdom” but simply upon the Holy Spirit’s power. When angels appeared to astonished shepherds in Bethlehem, they didn’t unfold complex arguments to prove the birth of the Messiah; nor did they come with a high-pressure sales technique to convince their hearers to worship the newborn King. They simply proclaimed the birth of the Saviour and let the wonder and mystique of their message do its own work. The world has not been the same since that day.

So, the next time you are tempted to be discouraged by your inabilities or your want of talent, take heart. The power of the Gospel message does not lie within ourselves; it is inherent in the message itself. The Gospel only needs a channel, someone to open the door and release it. The lion will defend itself.

From the River to the Rhine

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living, Church, Culture, Ministry

–October of 1996

From the River to the Rhine

I grew up in the country. My boyhood days were making memories on a lazy little farm in the Deep South. I was awakened in the morning by the sound or a crowing rooster or a bawling calf. I spent hours walking barefoot behind my father’s plow as he turned up the soft cool earth, readying it for the spring garden. I have played the day away in the gurgling, pristine waters of a forest stream, while birds darted about and squirrels chattered angrily at the sight of an intruder. The grand finale to such a storybook day was when family gathered around the front porch for the evening, each taking his place on a rocking chair on the porch swing.  The cool night breeze would bear the music of a distant whippoorwill, the crickets chirped wildly, while the flickering light of fireflies provided us with our own dazzling fireworks display.  Conversation would gradually begin to be interrupted by yawns, and Mother would give the order that sent us scampering away to bed.

Few outsiders ever invaded our private world.  Anyone driving by on the main thoroughfare in front of our place was most often someone we knew.  Any car turning up our lane caused an immediate rush to the front door or window by inquisitive kids to see who our rare visitors might be.  I grew up in a quiet tranquil world.

I now live in the heart of a bustling metropolis.  The sounds of traffic and commerce fill the air.  People dash about with jobs to perform and deadlines to meet.  Recently while driving off our hilltop campus into the heart of downtown, my heart began to long for the tranquil quietness of my boyhood days, I cried inwardly, “Lord, look at all these people!”  My Heavenly Father quickly responded, “No, you are the one that needs to look.  I see them.”  With the aid of divine illumination, I suddenly began to see more clearly.  I saw the multiplied thousands of people in the inner-city with no one to care for their spiritual needs.  Here are people of every race and class, scurrying about like sheep with no shepherd—abandoned, it seemed, by those who could offer hope and help.

Mission strategists tell us that the inner cities of America have now become one of the largest mission fields of the world.  Yet strangely, the Church—and particularly those within the holiness tradition—has largely abandoned the inner-city.  It has surrendered the high ground of spiritual warfare to poverty, drugs, prostitution and vice of all sorts.  Even the horn and cymbals of the Salvationist street preacher have been traded for a soup ladle and a used clothing store.  Oh, the large mainline churches still stand tall and proud on prominent downtown streets; but they have no ministry to the hopeless or message of holiness for desperate sinners.

The Wesleyan message of saving grace and heart purity saved England in her darkest hour from revolution and turned around one of society’s and civilization’s most festering sores.  Yet the holiness church here in America has not chosen this road of revival and reform for the inner-city, but it has chosen rather to flee the cities and entrench itself in comfortable suburbia.  It now lines the outer beltways of our major metropolises and enjoys a selective evangelism that is more palatable and profitable.  This ecclesiastical escapism has helped to breed the user-friendly church, with plenty of self-help classes but very little agony and anxiety for the lost.

Jesus, however, authenticated his ministry and membership by preaching the gospel to the poor.  He rebuked the righteous by reminding them that he did not come to call them to repentance, but the sinner.  He articulated his mission statement well when he said, “I have come to seek and to save that which is lost.”  This Bible contains over four hundred passages relating to the poor, sixty-four of which command us as believers to help the vulnerable.  Yet holiness people rationalize their own inactivity with a “pessimistic theology” that believes we can’t fix society’s ills.

I’m well aware that the words I write will stir up strong feelings and immediate debate.  The first rebuttal will be that “white flight” and population shifts have forced the church to relocate in the proximity of those who want to identify with the church ministry emphasis.  Another argument is that because of socio-economic reasons, as well as other cultural factors, the blending of the two groups of people is just not possible or even practical.

I fully grasp the significance of each argument and will not take the time in this article to rebut them.  However, what frustrates me is that these groups will parade missionaries from every land and isle to their churches, hear their presentations, cry over the distant lost, and empty their pockets to make sure that sinners ten thousand miles away get the gospel message.  Yet they have no burden and make no plans and feel no responsibility to send a missionary or establish a ministry to and for the most desperately lost people in the world—the people in the inner-city.

This duplicity has even gripped until the Bible college movement until they, too, boast of rural campuses in comfortable suburbia, with plenty of hiking trails, swimming pools, and white-water rafting.  All, of course, within a considerable distance of any poor miserable sinner!  No wonder many graduates ask the potential church congregation about parsonage amenities, salary packages and retirement programs before they ever explore the possibility of reaching the lost.

Did I say that all have abandoned the inner-city?  The Catholics and the cults are still there.  There are also many little store-front ministries, mostly sponsored by the Pentecostals or the Calvinists.  These little hole-in-the-wall churches offer hope and light to those lost in darkness, and to some extent hold back the powers of evil in the inner-city.  Several of those missions here in Cincinnati have been fully operated and staffed by GBS students.  It was my own years spent working in an inner-city mission that created a passion and a drive for evangelizing the lost that has marked my ministry for the last twenty years.

One such mission stands at the north end of Main Street, in a section called “Over the Rhine.”  GBS Alumni will know it as “Main Street Mission.”  Our students have preached from its pulpit, held Good News Clubs for the neighborhood children, preached on its street corners, and passed out gospel tracts all the way down the southern end of Main Street, where it deadends into the riverfront.

Our present pastor, Tom McKnight, works so faithfully with his people for the conversion of souls in his inner-city parish.  Tom is often heard from the pulpit saying, as he challenges his people, “we must reach them from the river to the Rhine.”  Of course, Tom is referring to the southern end of Main Street on the riverfront to the northern end of Main Street in the area of Over the Rhine.  The words and burden of this man have challenged my heart again and again.  Tom is right.  We must reach them.  We must take our cities back for the glory of God and the good of our civilization.

In the first part of this century when the Bible college movement, God called out the Cowmans and sent them to the Orient.  He called out the Smelzenbachs and sent them to Africa, as well as various others around the globe.  But these two couples from the holiness movement made an impact on the world that will never be forgotten.  I’m praying that in the closing part of this century God will once again find a couple like the Cowmans and call them—call them to the inner cities of our own country!  I want God’s Bible School and College to be on the front line, leading the way and giving the support that is necessary to see our inner cities reached.  Tom is right.  From the river to the Rhine, we must reach them!

Don’t Move the Fences (Part Two)

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living

– Summer of 1996

Don’t Move the Fences (Part Two)

Looking around the world scene, we note a real sense of apprehension—a genuine uneasiness, a pronounced fear, and a bewildering confusion. The church has not been exempt from this menacing uneasiness. The church and world alike are suffering from the systematic rejection of values, morals and convictions long held by Christians in particular, and by western civilization in general.

When these restraining principles for life and practice are lost, then we lose the very “retaining walls” that keep the foundation of civilization from being washed away in an onslaught of secularism. I would suggest to you that we are experiencing erosion of these foundations in three very important areas in today’s Christian culture.

First, we have lost a sense of eternity. When men no longer feel that life has destiny, they soon cease to believe that life has meaning and value. A lost sense of eternity will redefine our existence. John Wesley, who spent countless days on horseback, sleeping her and there and preaching the gospel, was a man with a keen sense of eternity. He wrote in his journal after spending a delightful evening in a very palatial home, “I like a nice bed, a beautiful room, and lovely grounds; but I believe in eternity. Hence I will arise early and be on my way.”

When we lose a sense of eternity, we become materialistic. Materialistic causes us to view life through a totally different lens than God intended us to use. We begin to focus on what we wear, what we eat, what we live in, and how much we make. Like Lot we view the well-watered plains of Jordan as something desirable and drive out tent pegs deeply in this modern-day Sodom. Materialism quickly leads to secularism; and secularism will take us down a treacherous slope to hedonism, where we shamelessly “belly-up” to this world’s cafeteria of constant pleasure. Fun and folly become the norms of life.

Once a sense of eternity has slipped from our consciousness, we next lose a sense of morality. When a man’s moral compass can no longer point to absolute truth, his ability to discern right and wrong become impossible. With right and wrong disregarded, decency, propriety, and purity are no longer virtues to emulate, but something to mock. Issues of clean language, modest attire, and sexual purity become irrelevant matters of legalistic behavior that ought to have died sooner. In the words of Chesterton, “We insist on becoming completely unstrained but will only succeed in being completely unbuttoned.”

The last foundation we lose is a sense of accountability. When accountability goes, so does our conscience. With no conscience to guide, men suppress, subvert and ultimately scorn God’s truth. The cry of the pagan, “evil be thou my good,” becomes the philosophy of the man from skid row to Wall Street. Abortion, euthanasia, adultery, lying, and stealing are only methods to accomplish a desired end rather than sins that would damn a man to Hell.

Reader, be careful! Recklessly removing the ancient landmarks of our godly forefathers can result in a dangerous confusion of where the lines really lie in the land. Before you remove the fence, make sure you ask yourself why it was put there to start with. The cost of defiance and reckless destruction of God’s fundamental truths can be eternally devastating.

Don’t Move the Fences (Part One)

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living

–May of 1996

Don’t Move the Fences (Part One)

Researchers tell us that groups of small children play with greater freedom and security when playing in an area with a well-defined perimeter like a fence.  If you remove the fence, the children become uneasy and fearful; and they cluster together in a central area as if danger were near.

Parents know that the most well-adjusted teenagers are those who live in well-structured homes with well-defined guidelines and limits on behavior.  History has proven as well that any unit of people—whether as small as a city or as large as a country—live with less stress and greater happiness when the laws and values that affect and control their behavior are clearly articulated and promptly enforced.

Looking around at the world scene, there is a real sense of apprehension—a genuine uneasiness, a pronounced fear, and a bewildering confusion which have all increased steadily as we have systematically rejected and cast aside values, morals and convictions long held by civilized people.

Unfortunately, the church has not been exempt from this menacing uneasiness.  Church leaders have betrayed their trust by casting aside as burdensome baggage the long-held convictions and traditions that have guided and aided God’s people for centuries.  They have suggested that they are only the useless fodder of the biblically illiterate.  They have tossed them aside without ever really examining why they were there to start with.  G.K. Chesterton said it pointedly, clearly, and almost prophetically: “Whenever you remove a fence, it is imperative that you find out why it was put there in the first place.”  Fences are being removed, and nobody is really asking the question why they were there to start with.  In our mad haste to accommodate uncontroverted worldlings seeking a self-centered hedonism rather than a Christ-centered holiness, we are casting off what the church has held dear for hundreds of years.  This so-called attempt to show our openness has instead only advertised to the world our decadence and has left the faithful feeling betrayed, confused and empty.

If confusion and betrayal were the only consequences of our present dilemma, we would still have sufficient reason to raise our voice.  However, they are only the firstfruits of our folly.  The more serious consequence is the destruction of some of the very foundational beliefs that keep the church anchored in God and obedient to Scripture.  Any time behavioral patterns change, theological positions (belief about God) must be altered to accommodate those changes.

In my next article I will share what I fear to be the most significant threats to the very foundations of the Church in this present world.

Bring Me the Books

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Education

–February of 1996

Bring Me the Books

A minister and his family were visiting John Bunyan’s home in Bedford, England.  While walking through his house, now a museum, they were overwhelmed by the world-wide impact of his book The Pilgrim’s Progress.  Outside of the Bible, no book in history has been translated into so many languages and enjoyed such voluminous sales.  As he was leaving the house, he remarked to the woman at the ticket desk how thrilling it was that an ordinary tinker had told a story of salvation in such lucid and imaginary terms.  The woman looked up somewhat embarrassed and said, “I suppose it is a great book; I have never read it.”  And so it is that even one surrounded wall-to-wall by one of the best-selling books of all time could leave it unread.

The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy from prison, “Bring me the books.”  Paul knew a book could break the mind out beyond the bounds of prison and bring freedom.  Everyone should know the joy of reading.  Every parent should make it a priority in encouraging his children to read.  At present, our family is reading the Bible through individually, and together we are reading through the Book of Virtues, as well as other books of personal interest and edification.  Books are important.  They are important to God; indeed they are so important that He gave us the “Book of all books.”  I am absolutely convinced that the books one reads help mold one’s life more purposely and eternally than we ever realize.  History will show not only what good books have done, but what bad books have done in either advancing or ruining not only individuals but nations.  It is easy to see what the writings of Voltaire and Karl Marx did to darken the minds and retard the progress of millions while creating a humanistic state.  Just what part evil literature has played in the present moral breakdown throughout the world will never be known until men are called forth to answer to a Holy God for their unholy deeds.  What we do not know is that thousands of young people had their first doubt about God and the Bible, and their first foray into sin, because of the influence of godless literature.

On the other hand, the reading of a good book can produce quite the opposite effect.  Many people are in the Church today because they were brought to Christ by the reading of a good book.  Thousands have witnessed the power of a lowly gospel tract to capture the mind and focus the attention on God and salvation.

I am convinced that it is the humiliation of the word in our time that has beggared us more than anything else.  When our society laid down its books (not only religious books, but good books of all sorts) and began to listen to the steady dribble of radio and television, our society experienced intellectual meltdown and moral decay.

I believe revival can be aided by the return to reading.  This includes not only reading the Word of God, but reading the writings of the early saints.  Biographical writings of men and women who have lived godly and noble lives, if read, can once again put the Christian life back in its lofty and noble place in the minds of another generation.

It is my conviction for reading and for books that produces such excitement in announcing the donation of the private library of Dr. H.E. Schmul to God’s Bible School.  These books and papers will be housed in a ministerial research center where our young “preacher-boys” can go and spend time perusing through one of the most outstanding holiness libraries anywhere in the holiness movement.  It is my hope that in placing this private library on our campus in a prominent place and making it available to our ministerial students, we here at God’s Bible School and College can have a part in the revival of reading good books, which I believe will have a part in the revival of the Church.