"For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for battle?"
Nothing gives a sadder impression than to read the word of God and then to listen to most of the preaching that is going on today. To say that the sounds from the majority of todays pulpits are muffled, hesitant and excusing the faith of our fathers rather than proclaiming it is almost an understatement.
Frankly speaking; they sound like they have a mouth full of wool. Not uncommonly that comes from a head full of wool also. And woolly-headedness lacks all authority, never speaks clearly and always apologizes for anything that might taste of certainty. To read about the early fearless church being ready to speak irrespective of cost to the speaker and then look at the situation today makes you realize that the bible has almost nothing to do with what is happening today in the very churches that purport to be based on the original dynamic of the "Way". Why?
The message of the bible is not modern. What does the word modern mean?
Substitute it for 'according to what we now believe to be true' and you see the point of divergence. If it is not new and if it is not in the mood of the time then it must be rejected as obsolete. But why is that taken to be true? In other fields that certainly does not apply. The foundations of virtually everything else is to be found in the very distant past. Mathematics, geometry, logic etc etc. is based even today on things as old as and in some cases even older than the now extant bible. Our legal system has its root in the Lex Romana, the entire stage industry owes its basics to the Greek dramas from over two thousands years ago. Nobody in their right mind would jettison the understandings of an Archimedes or Euclide on the strength of the argument that they 'are not modern'. But the Bible is subjected to be modified to suit modernity. Which is simply another way of saying that you prefer the snow when the avalanche has hit the valley below the mountain it came from.
The ministry of modernizing the scriptural teaching to suit the 'modern mind' is very much akin to downhill-racing on an avalanche. Its fun while it lasts, very speedy, and maybe even exhilarating. But the avalanche always end in the trough of utter despair for those living in its way. The hillsides of truth have been deforested by so called liberal theology and all kinds of academic shenanigans. And the mass of truth that was suspended on the hillside of lofty truth has been let go, and the truth denied a firm base will sweep those who laud the sliding to a bitter end. Why?
Because God has not changed. His Son Jesus Christ has not changed. The changes in the world are modernly thought to be evolving to constantly higher levels, that is a blatant lie. The development is not uphill, but downhill. Modernity is simply one way of calling attention to where the avalanche at present has its front on the downhill run.
But I digress. Wool in the mouth of the speakers comes from wool in the head and from trying to eat sheep without butchering them. For those of you familiar with biblical images the concept of "The Lamb of God" will ring true. The equivalent concept of "The Word of God" will also be familiar. But do you ever link them together?
Behold the Lamb, behold the Word
To get milk from a ewe is comparatively easy: you buff the udder (providing the ewe recognizes you as her lamb, they are picky that way) and the milk will be let down for you to suckle. The sheep goes on with the business of producing more milk until you are hungry again. Milk Christians are spoken of in the scriptures in several passages. "I could not speak to you as mature believers but as babes in Christ, I could only feed you milk, you were unready for meat!", "By this time you ought to be ready to teach yourselves and others, but you are still milk-teeth people and need milk, meat you cannot handle." "Seek the sincere milk of the gospel.. but then grow!"
Hence:
"Study to show yourself approved, a workman not needing to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth!" The word here used for 'dividing' is the Greek word used for what the butcher does in the abbatoir. He dissects the lamb after removing the wool and finds the anatomically correct way of separating the meat from the bones, the edible from that which was structurally the sheep's backbone. He cuts straight cuts! He has discernment as to what is to be eaten and what not. Or: he knows how to ready the sheep for sacrifice as well as to eat. The lamb-chops are never hidden in the wool!
The Lamb is the Word. Unless he had been led like a lamb to the slaughter it would not have been more than a children's book picture. But the Lamb that was slain is who we believe in. "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain!"
We must not adapt the biblical message to a squeamish modern culture that cries at the least sight of blood whilst never understanding that the "Life is in the shed blood".
Unless you learn to undertake the precarious and delicate ministry of 'cutting straight', of literally "slaughtering" the bible, of discerning its various parts and making use of them along the lines which the bible itself describes, then all you can do is eat wool or , at best, continue on the milky way. Spiritual malnutrition is the church's most serious condition. It comes from feeding thirty, forty, fifty and sixty year old people with milk only.
And those who never know either the Lamb or the Word as it is to be seen in the view of those who wrote it down, at the demand and urge of the true author: the Spirit of God, will do best to leave it alone.
The wool in the mouth preaching goes a long way to call the faith of the church into disrepute and it cow-tows with the fawning, tail-fanning idea that we must preach to please the world. To adapt and dismantle, to gloss over and minimize, divest of any authority, every statement of scripture to fit into the 'anything goes except God' culture of the 'modern times'. That is surely the end of the Church. But not the end of faith, for God has not ever left Himself without a witness.
At the time of the prophet Elijah things were not dissimilar to today. Under the threat of the feminist movement of his time (The Queen Jezebel, the femme fatale behind the king Ahab) he ran away all the way down to the mount of revelation, in Sinai, and there he was met by the unchanging everlasting God of all men. Elijah was allowed to bring his case to the highest court possible. "I, I only am left among the righteous!" God smiled at his wayward son and said: "Nope, I have seven thousand that have not bowed their knee to Baal."
"Sorry to disappoint you, Elijah, I, the eternal God always make sure I have plenty who have not fallen into the trap of 'modernity'."
So: if wool is what you get when meat is what you need, then challenge those who spread the lanolin-sodden fleece to 'spit it out'. How could a clear worldwide call to repentance ever come from a mouth full of wool?
And point them to the "Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the preachers". And then send them to school to learn how to 'divide the word rightly".
Teddy Donobauer, Doncaster
"Release us, Lord from the prisons of our minds"
