Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Why Exorcists are Animals

exorcismChristians seldom talk about “blaspheming angels.” But they should be familiar with the practice because Jude closely associates the action with false teaching. To keep the church pure, those who have walked up the hill of calvary believing in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ must contend with those who “blaspheme the glorious ones.” To ensure his readers grasp the point he is making, Jude goes onto recount the battle between Michael and Satan over body of Moses.

But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” – Jude 9

New Testament scholars believe Jude lifted this story form the book of Moses, The other historical mention of Moses’s death occurs in Deuteronomy 34:6; the passage does not include this story. Sadly, the section of the Book of Moses that contained this heavenly battle has been destroyed by arid conditions and the unlovingly sands of time. Though we do not have the original text from which this story came, we can be confident of its trustworthiness for it has found its way into the Bible. In addition to drawing from their own experiences, biblical writes frequently pulled from other historical sources and documents. Examine the books of Luke, Acts, and the Old Testament books such as 1 and 2 Samuel.

What does all this crazy story mean?

Jude includes the story to illustrate the folly of the false teachers of his day. When Satan comes for the body of Moses accusing the great prophet of his heinous sins of murder and rebellion against God, the archangel, Michael comes charging to Moses’s defense. Michael had every right to battle Satan for God had appointed him commander over his angels armies, instructing him to defend the nation of Israel (Dan 12:1; Enoc 20:5). But despite his high ranking, Michael did not presume to battle Satan in his own power. He appealed to Jesus saying, “The Lord rebuke you.”

The false teachers blasphemed angles when they assumed they had the internal power to rebuke the spiritual world.

Christians should not fear the demonic. Colossians 1:13-14 reports that we have been freed from Satan’s power:

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Christians do not have to walk in fear. And they do not have to fear spiritual encounters with the demonic for they have access to the power of Christ. They can evangelize demon controlled persons, trusting in the unwavering power of Jesus to conquer sin. Paul modeled such dependence upon Christ when he confronted a demon saying, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” The text goes on to report, “And it came out that very hour (Acts16:18b).”Christians should not fear the demons and angels.

But they should not presume they can control them. Those who prance about rebuking demons in their own authority run afoul of God. They offend God when they assert that they can cast out demons who cause sickness, who dwell in houses, and who control people’s minds. Jude labels the exorcism practices that dominate much of Christendom as being nothing more than the unholy “blaspheming of angels.”

The idea of man-based exorcism does not descend from heaven. It ascends from the dark depths of human nature. Peter reminds us, “They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves to corruption.” Those who claim to be the most spiritual among us are truly the earthliest among us. Jude concludes,

But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

Those who claim power over the demonic reveal themselves to be spiritual charlatans, peddling spiritual elixirs from their broken theological wagons. Lacking wisdom, they run madly about like deer in heat slapping people with crosses and Bible. They know nothing of the life changing power of Christ. The power they do know is the power from within which feeds the flesh’s passion for greed, pride, and sensuality. Ultimately,  the fate of these exorcists parallels the fate of the dumb deer unrestrained by reason; the false teachers become spiritual roadkill. They are destroyed by what they understand, their sin.

To experience the divine, men and women do not need to look within for the power to overcome demons. They need to look without to the hill of Calvary and to the cross of Jesus Christ which rolls away sin. Have you looked without?

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Identifying Fake Christians: Teachers of Dreams

spy blogSatanic spies have infiltrated the church, intent on wrecking the peace, unity, and doctrines of God’s people. While Bunyan’s Christian saw Formalist and Hypocrisy jump over the wall of salvation onto the narrow way, the average Christian seldom encounters such open hostility to the kingdom of God. Those who enter the church without passing through the hill of calvary at first appear to be as devoted to God as those who entered by the narrow gate.
Aware of this troubling reality, Jude tells Christians how to discern between true and disingenuous faith. Those who serve Satan reveal their true character by appealing to dreams to encourage sexual immorality, to deny the authority of Jesus, and to blaspheme angels.
Though most modern Christian would look crossed at anyone who said they slept with their Bible under their pillow and awoke the next morning with a special message from God, dreams remained a valid means of divine communication in the biblical era. God communicated to Joseph and the wisemen through dreams. Daniel and Joseph also received communications from God while sleeping. The satanic spies of Jude’s day did not dance off into imaginary land when they spoke of dreams. They erred not in claiming to have access to God’s word. They erred because they misrepresented God’s word. They took God’s clear commands about purity and obedience and twisted them into stating the opposite. Sexual sin was now licensed, encouraged, and permitted. The deity of Jesus was doubted. Feelings, human experience, and internal emotion became the defining marks of the false teachers. They prefaced their statements with, “Thus said the Lord” and then proceed to devote to deny the clear revelation of the Scriptures. Jeremiah laments

How long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart, who think to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, even as their fathers forgot my name for Baal? 28 Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let him who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? declares the Lord. (Jer. 23:26-27).

Not all who claim to know God’s word truly know it. Not ever pastor, parachurch leader, and professor who proclaims to speak for Jesus speaks for Jesus. Many claim to be speaking for him while allowing young men and women to engage in sexual sin. They say God would not give us urges if he did not want us to exercise them. They give license to divorce, abortion, and homosexuality as well. The false teachers must license and encourage sexual sin for “sexual immorality, impurity, and sensuality” are the works of the flesh (Gal 5:19). They lack the power of God found in the resurrection of Jesus Christ to overcome their own sin. Thus, they indulge in sexual sin and encourage others to do so for they know nothing else.
When they deny God’s sexual ethic, they also undermine the whole gospel. Jesus restricted sexual expression to the marriage bed stating,

“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. (Matt 19:4-6).

If Jesus misunderstood God’s sexual ethic, humanity has little reason to trust Jesus salvific teachings. He ceases to be the God, man who holds the universe together. He becomes a inspiring but somewhat antiquated religious sage. The false teachers destroy the authority of the Gospel, proclaiming God to be evolving.
Such denials feed upon logical insecurity. The Christian faith does not evolve from age to age. Jude encourages men and women to contend for the faith because it was “once for all delivered to the saints.” Any message from God will align with all of the earlier messages from God. John 15:26-27 reminds its readers that,

“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.”

God works in unison with himself. The Father, the Son, and Spirit all promote the same message. To pit one against the other in the name of relevance, culture revolution, or love is to defame the very word of God. Those who say “Thus says the Lord” and then proceed to deny the content of the Bible have never walked up the hill of Calvary and repented of their sins.

Have you entered by the narrow gate? What comes after, “Thus says the Lord?”

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Coronavirus and Skipping Church: A Pastor’s View

Western Christians now must decided if such precautions stem from wisdom or from fear. We do not want to dishonor the faith conquered the globe through the tortures of the arena, through the caring of black death victims, and through the suffering of the mission field. But at the same time, we also readily canceling church because of snowstorms, tornado’s, or the lack of natural resources caused by power or water outages. How do we make sense of the Coronavirus and the need to either cancel service or restrict our attendance at said services?

Below are the four principles guiding my approach the Coronavirus. I hope they help you find biblical clarity. 

1. Avoid Fear

We should avoid the tendency towards fear. We should not flee a service because we fear death or the virus. As my dear wife reminded me, God rules over the pestilence. He sends viruses as judgement, reminding humanity that God cherishes goodness and love (Ezek 38:22; Jer 24:10; Amos 4:1). Because God reigns over the plague,  his people possess the antidote to earthly fear, prayer. Psalm 91:3-6 declares:

For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.

Conversely, we should not rush to assembly because we fear the condemnation of our fellow Christians. We need to head Paul’s words to Timothy: “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” Our first concern should not be what our neighbors or even history will one day say of us. Our concern should solely be the words of God. Any action not based in the Scriptures is the wrong action.

When tempted to fear, we must nestles our souls into the comforting wings of God, crying out to him for  forgiveness, mercy, protection and healing, knowing he is gracious. He will hear our cries and do good for us today and hold us securely in heaven tomorrow. The Bible speaks to pandemics. We should listen and heed its directions.

2. Listen to Authorities

We should heed the counsel of our government authorities. Romans 13:1 “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” Unless we work in for the CDC, the department of health, or one of the institutions charged with overseeing the fight against the coronavirus, we should not flaunt the authority of the government, thinking we know better.

We do not know better. We are not the health experts, doctors, or nurses who have spent large portions of our lives fighting diseases and germs. We are the Monday morning quarterbacks depending on second information delivered by unverified sources. Tim Nichols helpful concludes,

No one is arguing, however, that experts can’t be wrong…Rather, the point is they are less likely to be wrong than nonexperts.

Christian humility demands that we admit the limits of our responsibilities and knowledge. God has not charged us or our churches with governing the nation. We need to trust God to rule through our government, heeding their advice as long as it does not contradict Scripture. I am thankful for how McLean Bible Church, Grace Community Church, and Capital Hill Baptist Church have model submission to the government authorities while simultaneous fighting for the right to assemble.

3. Promote Hospitality

To be hospitable is to be a lover of one’s community. When we come together, we must determine if our presence or if the gospel is causing social unrest. If men and women are opposed to the presence of the gospel, we should meet and risk persecution, imprisonment, and death. But if men and women are opposed to our presence because we have become either knowingly or unknowingly a biological weapon that could kill them, we should head their concern and avoid infecting them. At this point, our neighbors are not opposed to our faith. They are apposed to us harming them.

Moreover, the missionary, Jim Elliot, refused to use a gun to defend himself because he did not want to send an unbeliever to hell. We should follow his example and not allow our germs to unnecessarily condemn either believers or unbelievers to death. The famed sixteenth century Theologian, Martin Luther, concurs. He writes,

I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others and so cause their death as a result of my negligence.

I have cancelled more than one outreach event at my home because a family member has become a roving, puking machine; I did not want to pass along both the gospel and the flu. To care for others well, we must listen to Paul who says, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” We must ask ourselves if we are furthering the well-being of others and furthering the spread of the kingdom when we host services and come to church during these trying times. If our physical presence distracts from the gospel and threatens credible harm to others, we should cancel our services and refrain from attending church. The command to worship together should be pitted against God’s command to love one’s neighbors.

4. Love

Lastly, we must commit to always love one another. Though, we may have to skip church, we do not have to forsake the body of Christ and loving our neighbors. As believers, we should stand ready to help the sick, to care for displaced students, and to assist those who lost their jobs. We may not assemble in churches but we can love small expressions of the church. In the days ahead, the church will have unprecedented opportunities to love the body of Christ and to love their communities. Luther’s heart again should ring true of us today,

If my neighbor needs however, I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely.

Let’s go!

What theological principles are guiding your decision about whether or not to host or attend services?

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