Trickle-Down Theology

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living

–May of 2000

Trickle-Down Theology

Pollsters of every sort are needling the church by claiming that Christians today are lying, cheating, stealing and committing fornication at the same rate as non Christians.  I am not sure whom these pollsters are surveying, but in the community of saints with which I am privileged to have fellowship, this would certainly not be the case.  The vast majority of the Christians I know could well be described in the words of Paul, “…if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

Why then are the pollsters taunting us with such nonsense as Christian-liars and sensual-saints? That answer is not too difficult.  They simply expect the church to be different and are bitterly disappointed when they survey church-going people who are not!  My belief is that they are surveying mostly people who have only identified with the Church, but have never experienced the real, radical, transforming power of saving grace.  These people don’t have a clue as to how God’s grace can and will make a difference.  The pulpit voice they listen to is failing them.

What troubles me even more than this is the shallow, watery, weak-willed, entry-level commitment that has produced a community of saints who have ceased to talk about how God is impacting their lives through His Word.  Testimonies are silent about how God is altering the essence and expression of both the content and context of their lives through their daily contact with scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit. Very little is being said about how God is putting them in a narrow place to convict and conform them to the likeness of Christ.   I see this as the scourge and the curse of the church today. These warm-hearted souls who do know the saving grace of Jesus, who have ceased their sinning and going astray, have for some reason or the other failed to understand the extreme importance of allowing the Word of God to fill their minds and flow out of their lives.  They are not experiencing regular change and conformity to Christ through the power of the Word.  Their lives are almost totally barren of personal convictions, codes of conduct and moral values that flow out of the study and application of biblical principles.

The Lord Jesus told the church that she was to be salt to a world that has no seasoning and light to a world that is in terrible darkness.  Both of these are change agents and both bring a stark contrast to what is there.  We cannot change the world, nor make a profound moral influence on the society around us, if the principles of the Bible are not trickling down through our lives, formulating values, convictions and codes of behavior that visibility affect the way we live. The world expects and should expect to see a way of living that squares with scripture.

It is imperative that as Christians we allow what we know and believe to trickle down and transform the way we live our lives.  We have to get our theology out of the ivory towers of scholasticism.  It has to leave the four walls of our local church.  It has to go beyond pulpit pounding and Sunday School discussions.  We cannot live it in that secret place of daily devotion. It has to become an inseparable part of who we are.  It has to make its way into the market place, the factory and into the homes of our friends and neighbors that do not know Jesus.  If it does not, the Church collectively and the Christian individually will be as the salt that lost its savor and the light that was hidden under a basket.   We will have only a form of godliness that is empty of power.

One of the beautiful sights in northern Israel is snow-covered Mt. Hermon.  The snow that falls on the majestic head of Mt. Hermon melts and works its way down the crevices of that old mountain, forming streams, creeks, and rivers that empty into the Sea of Galilee.  From the Sea of Galilee, the country of Israel pumps millions of gallons of water as far away as the plains of Jordan around the Dead Sea.  The water transforms that barren wilderness into lush gardens filled with date palms, banana trees and beautiful flowers.  One could literally say that the snow that fell on Mt. Hermon grew an orchid near the shores of the Dead Sea.

The wonderful truths that are found in God’s Word should be working their way down through the soul of our being and out into our lives in such a way as to change the moral landscape all around us.  I believe good theology and real Christianity has a trickle-down effect.

A Serious Saintliness

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

–April of 2000

A Serious Saintliness

Henry Drummond, while preaching in chapel at Harvard many years ago, said, “Gentlemen, don’t touch Christianity unless you mean business.” Drummond’s voice seems very much out of vogue in modern day religion, but he was right on target then and now. The common admonition of our day is to “lighten up” and not take religion too seriously. J.I. Packer has compared the modern route in religion to something similar to the “hot tub experience.” “The hot tub experience,” says Packer, “is sensuous, relaxing, sloppy, laid back—not in any way demanding…but very, very nice, even to the point of being great fun.” Packer concludes that many today want Christianity to be just like that and take great pains to make it so.

Somehow a system of belief that culminated on a rugged cross has been reconfigured into a well-marketed program of “let us help you feel better about yourself and teach you how to enjoy life to the full.” This hedonistic spin on Christianity is in direct contradiction to what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. The yearning for happiness, rather than holiness, found so widely among Christians professing a superior degree of sanctity is sufficient proof that such sanctity doesn’t exist. John Wesley said of the members of one of the early Methodist societies, that he doubted that they had been made perfect in love because they came to church to enjoy religion instead of to learn how they could become holy.

Real saints are serious about real holiness. I don’t mean a couple of trips to an altar or the regular verbalization that “I’m sanctified.” I mean real sanctity. Holy people seek to be separate from all that stains their world or dirties their lives. They are free from all sinful thoughts, impure motives and questionable activities. Through the power of Christ and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, they have found true inner goodness and authentic clean living.

A call to real sanctity needs to be taken up with great intensity in our day. All the praying, sacrificing and pleading with God will not bring revival until we take seriously the call to holiness. If we choose to fill our minds with pornography, violence, immorality, hatred, promiscuity and self centeredness and call it entertainment, then we can be certain that God will not hear our prayers. We cannot expect a divine visitation if we are unethical in business, corrupt in our speech and careless in our commitments. Let no one be fooled. True Christianity makes serious demands on out lives. It is impossible to have a heart in one condition and produce fruit of an opposite condition. A holy heart will affect our actions, just as our actions reflect our heart.

Saints are serious about obedience. The apostle said, “For this is the love of god, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.” (1John 5:3) Someone has high rightly said that it is impossible for a man who loves God to say, “No, Lord,” because if Christ is truly our Lord, we cannot refuse him. Jesus said it this way in Luke 6:46, “Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” In the salvation process God radically and immediately reorients our lives to Christ so that He is truly Lord of our lives.

Saints are serious about servanthood. Paul reminds us again that “our life is not our own,” but it is “hid with Christ in God.” We are told that “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord.” It is only in the context of servanthood that our lives can become something beautiful for God and resourceful for others.

Richard Foster may have summed it up best when he said, “The desperate need today is not fro a great number of intelligent or gifted people, but the desperate need is for deep people.” Dr. Foster, I couldn’t agree with you more.

Radical Faith

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living, Theology

–March of 2000

Radical Faith

When Martin Wells Knapp walked into the Hamilton County Courthouse in the summer of 1900 to record the deed to the newly-purchased property at 1810 Young Street, he told the clerk to record the deed in the name of “God the Father.”  Thus began the story of radical faith on the campus of God’s Bible School.

Radical isn’t a word that most conservative Christians are comfortable with.  Religiously, it conjures up images of wild-eyed fanatics flirting with the spiritual ragged edge.  Politically, it is connected to tree-hugging environmentalists, pro-abortionists, and other people who embrace far-left social issues.

At the turn of the century, it was a label given to differentiate between those who accepted the status quo of the mainline church and those who embraced a total dependence on God to meet all of their needs spiritually, financially, and physically while they gave themselves to the promotion of revival and world evangelism.  The term was dropped, about a half century later, as these groups started their descent into mainline respectability.  Interestingly enough, though, the term radical faith is surfacing again at the turn of this century by youth organizations and prominent evangelicals such as Chuck Colson.  It has been revived once again to distinguish between what God really wants and the status quo faith found in the average church.

Knapp and those associated with GBS in the first several decades defined Biblical faith as something radically different from what they saw in the mainline churches.  Knapp’s personal view of faith was affected by several different influences.  First, his strong conviction of what New Testament faith really required left him with the belief that most Christians have strayed too far from a New Testament or primitive faith (thus the school’s motto, “Back to the Bible”).  Secondly, he was influenced by the writings of Madame Guyon and George Mueller.  Third, he believed in a personal experience of physical healing.  Fourth, he rejoiced in a tremendous move of God among the revivalist groups of which he was a part.

Though Knapp lived only a year after he started GBS, his emphasis on total abandonment and complete trust in God affected decades of graduates.  In 1901, the Cowmans were led to go to Japan the “New Testament way,” that is with no promise of support.  G.C. Bevington came here as a student in 1902.  His colorful ministry later was compiled in the book, Remarkable Incidents and Modern Miracles through Prayer and Faith.  This same radical faith sent John F. Simpson to the Philippines, Lula Schmelzenbach to South Africa, Lillian Trasher to Egypt, Everett Phillippe to the Caribbeans, Wesley Duewel to India, and thousands of others to conquer impossible situations for God at home and abroad armed only with an unflinching faith in God, backed up by total commitment to His cause.

Oswald Chambers, who was here in the first decade, described the institution in these words: “It is a work run primarily on the faith line.”  Chambers was so impressed by this life of faith that he chose to start a school like it in England.

The modern ear doesn’t like the sound of radical faith.  The modern mind just can’t accept it.  We have developed such an impoverished view of God that our minds are no longer conditioned to expect God’s mighty intervention on our behalf.  We have put God in a box and become at ease with explaining why we shouldn’t step out on naked faith.  Those who choose to do so anyway are often stereotyped as simpletons and woefully ignorant of true spirituality.  I would readily acknowledge that there is a fine line between radical faith and foolishness, but I would also have to admit that there is a fine line between so called sensible faith and a faith so weakened by carnality that it can’t let go of self and trust God with everything.  The latter is so influenced by self that it rebels against the kind of interference God would need to make in our lives to see radical faith really operative.

Nevertheless, God is looking for men with radical faith.  When God needed a family through which to bring the Messiah, He chose a pagan from the region of Iraq; He revealed Himself to Abram, and called him to leave behind everything he knew and go to a place that he knew nothing about.  God promised to give him this new land and populate it with his descendants who would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.  Yet, for the next 25 years Abraham had to share that promise with a barren wife, moving about as a pilgrim on land in which he never owned more than a gravesite.  Despite the circumstances, Abraham believed God; and God responded to Abraham’s faith and brought every word of His promise to pass.

Job is another example of God’s interest in faith.  Job represents the ultimate in righteous living.  He was God’s first choice to prove to Satan that a man’s faith can be genuine and selfless, not dependent on health or wealth.  Job had to replay the original test of the Garden of Eden with the bar raised a good deal higher.  This man from Uz came through with flying colors and proved that radical faith can see God’s trustworthiness even in the dark.

I see evidences that the faith of our fathers is resurfacing boldly in a new generation—a generation much like the one a century ago that felt the need to live out a faith more daring than that of the average Christian around them.  Though we may not like the term, may God bless this generation with the works that flow from a life of radical faith.

Staying True for a Century

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Education

–Winter of 2000

Staying True for a Century

In 1899 General William Booth of the Salvation Army made the following prediction about the Twentieth Century: “I’m of the opinion that the dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.”

I don’t believe anyone who has kept abreast of mainstream Protestantism in America would argue with the accuracy of General Booth’s prophecy.  The truth is that many Protestant denominations have drifted much further into apostasy than even General Booth predicted.

But it is also true that there are churches, organizations, institutions and individuals who have held true to vital Christianity and the fundamentals of the faith.  It would be a profitable study to trace the road to apostasy and ruin that so many have taken.  However, I believe it to be an even more profitable study to trace the steps of those who have remained true over the years.

God’s Bible School and College is celebrating 100 years of service to the holiness movement this year.  For 100 years this school has remained true to its original mission, purpose and doctrinal statement.  That is, indeed, a great accomplishment!  The question I’ve asked myself so many times is how and why did this institution stay the course for 100 years?  As I’ve given it some thought, I believe there are five basic reasons why GBS has remained true to its God-given assignment over this last century.

God has retained ownership

When Martin Wells Knapp purchased the original property, he had the deed made out to “God the Father.”  The early camp advertisements listed the workers as “God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.”  Some of the earliest school brochures listed the superintendent of the school as “God the Father.”  The earliest mission statement read, “This is a home for God’s children where they may come and find His will and then equip for His service.”  This language was not the mere spiritual prattle of a group of religious fools touting their piety.  They meant every word of it!  From the earliest days to this very day, there has been on this campus a keen sense of God’s ownership of this institution.

I well remember early in my presidency how God taught me a lesson that that was His school.  I found out from the business office on Wednesday that the following Monday we would have to have around $88,000 by 5:00 p.m.  The daily cash sheet showed that we had around $2,000 in the bank.  We were in the heart of the summer slump, and I had no idea what to do.  When the men left my office, I walked out from behind my desk, got down on my knees before God with the intention of praying and fasting through the noon hour.  No sooner had my knee touched the rug than God spoke, saying, “Stand still and see My salvation.  Get up from here, go home, wash your face and lighten your countenance.  I’m going to meet this need and show you this is My school.”  God did exactly that.  Before Monday at 5:00 p.m. every penny of that money was in our hands.  I couldn’t tell you the times that I’ve received a note from a faithful constituent telling me that God spoke to them about giving a particular amount to the school and it would be just exactly what we needed to meet a need.

There are events in our history that were not God-ordained or God-honored.  The foolishness of men brought the school down to the very brink of closure.  As a matter of fact, the courts had already appointed an officer to liquidate the assets and close the doors.  But God had other plans and He gave saintly Sister Peabody the promise of Joshua 1:3 while in prayer.  She left her room and started walking the campus, reclaiming it for God.  The rest is history.  During those dark days God kept doing His work on campus, turning out students like Jewel Stetler, Grover Blankenship, Arthur Travis, Earl Weddle, Wingrove Taylor, Paul Lucas and Arnie Sypolt, along with some of the largest classes in the school’s history.

Those who have been involved in the life of this institution over the past 100 years would agree that there has been an unusual sense of God’s ownership and presence on this campus.

GBS has been able to maintain a balance between an emphasis upon spiritual life and academic excellence

There is probably no other school comparable in size that has turned out more preachers and missionaries who are clearly marked by an emphasis upon prayer, faith and the leadership of the Holy Spirit than GBS.  In interview after interview, GBS students will tell you about miraculous answers to prayer while here on this campus and in the years that followed through their ministry.  They will talk to you about an emphasis upon faith that they learned here as a student.  They will share stories of the leadership of the Holy Spirit that brought them here, that kept them here and sent them forth.  They reflect upon their student days as a time when they were instructed as well as mentored in what a real vital prayer life should be, how to discern the voice of the Spirit and how to have faith for the smallest necessities of life.  Our students are interested in homiletics, but they are also challenged and shown what it means to wrap their heart around a text of Scripture and let it burn until the congregation knows their heart is on fire.  They are trained to take certain tools and exegete a particular passage, but they also must know what it means to get into the Word of God until they meet the Living Word.  They know the value of training their voice so as to sing in an acceptable manner, but they also know the value of preparing their heart until when they sing, they do so with the anointing of the Lord.

GBS has always had a staff and faculty that saw the advancement of God’s cause more important than their own material gain

In the early days of the school, no one received a salary.  And since the days that salaries began, no one has ever been remunerated their real worth.  Faculty and staff who have gathered here on this Hilltop have had one unifying conviction, namely, God called them here and God would provide for their needs.  When I look back over 100 years and see all the thousands of students that have been trained by such a sacrificial faculty, I recall the words of Winston Churchill when he said, “Never in the course of history has so much been owed by so many to so few.”  Those words are so true when you think of the faculty and staff who have labored here for so little.  They gave themselves to something that was bigger than their own personal needs and God has used their commitment to keep this institution on course.  Probably there is no greater reason for the continuation of this school than its godly faculty and staff.

GBS has been able to preserve its core identity

The leadership of this institution has had the ability to understand who we are and why we exist.  The school has been able to change without changing.  GBS is a Bible college in the holiness tradition and has been for 100 years.  Many things have changed on this Hilltop—facilities, programs and methods of operation—but our core identity and values are the same as they were 100 years ago.

I believe there are three reasons we’ve been able to maintain our core identity: The first is, at the heart of every degree is a solid Bible core.  That has not changed and will not change.  Second, GBS has always been strong in its emphasis on solid Wesleyan theology, particularly from a systematic approach.  A systematic theology class here is not a class that tosses out a number of ideas about God and allows students to choose the theory they prefer.  Nor is it a class to guide them into what they want to think about God.  It is a class on what they should think about God.  It has been the philosophy of the theology teachers here over the years, particularly Dr. Wilcox, that there is a body of truth that needed to be imparted to young preachers and theologians, and it was the job of the teacher to impart that body of truth.  Some have called it mastering the minimum.  Consequently, GBS graduates have left here with an outstanding grasp of what Wesleyan theology is all about.  Some have ridiculed that approach and said GBS just turned out cookie-cutter preachers who didn’t know how to think for themselves.  To the contrary, I accept that ridicule as a compliment.  GBS has consistently turned out more holiness preachers than any other school, hands down.  Another interesting fact that has been the result of this emphasis is that GBS has had an unbelievably low attrition rate into denominations of other theological persuasions.  GBS has sent pastors into all sorts of denominations within the Methodist and Wesleyan tradition, but hardly any have filtered into non-Wesleyan denominations.  When a student left GBS, they left an adherent of holiness doctrine.  The final reason is that GBS has always had a faculty and staff that role modeled and mentored the students in holiness ethics, values and lifestyle issues.

GBS has been able to remain focused because it has consistently promoted personal evangelism as the very heart of the Christian life

No one has ever remained a student at this school for four years without being confronted with the claims and the cause of personal evangelism.  The unique location of GBS in Cincinnati and at the heart of the holiness movement has kept it at the forefront of outreach in many areas.  Those students in the early days well remember the street meetings, the home visitation teams, marching down the street with placards and meeting in Cincinnati Gardens for mass evangelistic campaigns.  They remember loading up a large truck and going out for personal work, the old Salvation Boat, Thanksgiving dinners, and the G.I.’s of the Cross.  More recent students remember the inner city missions, the traveling quartets and gospel teams, street meetings, Good News Clubs, personal witnessing teams, jail ministry teams and home Bible studies.  President Standley is probably the one most responsible for breathing a passion for personal evangelism into the very fabric of GBS.  That passion lives on!  If you visited our campus this week you would still witness students going out in any of a half dozen ministries, sharing the good news that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

I don’t have the prophetic ability or the clear eye of a General Booth to tell you what the Twenty-First Century holds.  But I do know this, by the grace of God, I want to stay focused on what really matters so that when the Twenty-Second Century rolls around, whoever is writing on the President’s Page can look back and say that GBS is still true to the faith after 200 years.

It’s Time to Sing!

by Mike Avery, posted in All Articles, Christian Living, Church, Theology

–December of 1999

It’s Time to Sing!

The year 2000 marks the beginning of a new millennium.  Crossing this threshold of time will prove to be an extraordinary moment for the church.  Two thousand years have passed since the birth of the Son of God in Bethlehem’s lowly manger, yet that birth still remains the defining moment of all history.  The church has steadily marched forward and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it.  The unfolding centuries have brought peril and persecution but the blood of the martyrs has proven to be the seed of the church.  After 2000 years we can joyfully proclaim that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever!  This alone ought to have the church singing as it makes its way into the new millennium.

Yet my sense is that most of the church is far from jubilant.  At the moment, the steady drum beat of the Y2K fear mongers have many looking for a reasonably comfortable cave, stocked with an ample supply of dried food and pure water.  Others are depressed by a culture that mocks Christian values.  They rightfully fear the violence, vulgarity, meanness and instability that is endangering our communities and sliding civilization into barbarism.  To make matters worse, much of the church has reacted by retreating to the safety of their religious subculture which has served only to privatize and marginalize their Christian witness.

It may be that the church strolls along with a heavy heart and a downcast look because it has forgotten something that the early church knew all too well.  It has forgotten the warning of Jesus in John 16:33.  Before Jesus left his disciples, he made it clear to them that tribulation is unavoidable, “In the world you shall have tribulation.”  This fundamental truth seems to rub the fur of the modern church the wrong way.  The early church understood it and counted it all joy when they suffered for Jesus’ sake.  When Ridley and Latimer were burned at the stake during the English reformation, Latimer cried to Ridley, “Have faith, Master Ridley.  Today we shall light a fire that will illuminate the world!”  Early Methodists faced hostile mobs, stonings and brutal beatings.  They accepted it as a part of confronting a fallen culture with the claims of Christ.  Today’s church around the world still offers more martyrs than any time in history.  The saints of all ages have faced trying times.  Jesus said that tribulation was unavoidable and we would do well to remember His words.

The trials that the church has endured have also proven true the words of Jesus that peace is available, “In me ye might have peace.”  I know of no amount of grace that makes a child of God look forward to difficulty, but there is His promised peace.  There is grace to help us keep our heads up and our hearts singing during the darkest of times.  After weeks in a concentration camp, Corrie Ten Boom asked her sister Betsy why God had allowed this to happen to them.  Betsy responded, “So that when we get out of here we can tell the world that there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”

Jesus also reminded us in this same verse that victory is inevitable.  “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”  The century we are about to close has done its dead level best to secularize, demoralize and destroy everything Christians hold dear.  Yet secularism, modernism and radical individualism have given the world nothing but emptiness and despair.  These philosophies have created a moral and spiritual vacuum which may well serve as the catalyst to launch the greatest move of God in the history of civilization.  The church must be ready to seize the moment!  This isn’t the time to hide in caves or adorn ourselves in the garb of a Puddleglum.  We haven’t the emotional coinage to spend fretting about what might happen.  This may be our finest hour!  So, children of God, look up!  Victory is ours!  Strike up the music!  It is time for the church to sing again!