A Lesson to be Learned: the Pulpit a Place of Authoritative Proclamation and Holiness

I'd like to spend a few minutes this afternoon trying once again to bring some positive out of the evangelical cover -up of the

Ergen -Kanner scandal. Lessons hopefully that we can learn from this and pray about and examine ourselves about in regards to this entire mess that has developed since, well, specifically for me, since February of 2010.

Specifically my thoughts have been focused upon what we can learn about the defense of Ergen -Kanner and what it says about the church today.

When we think about what the Ergen -Kanner scandal is about, his defenders have been repeatedly saying the same thing, and that is

Dr. Kanner did not do anything that violated – he's not a heretic, it's no theological issues, and he did nothing morally wrong.

Nothing morally wrong is what we have been told. And I, whenever I see that, whether it's repeated by Norman Geisler or any of the lesser luminaries that have sought to defend what

Ergen -Kanner has done, I am truly taken aback. Let's remember that for,

I think, any fair -minded person who has actually taken the time to examine the information, what we know is that Dr.

Ergen -Kanner has stood in front of audiences, religious audiences, in churches, behind a pulpit, and he has mythologized, he has created an entire persona that is meant to give him a particular position from which to act as an expert on the

Islamic faith. He has stood in front of audiences of hundreds and audiences of thousands and claimed to have lived in Turkey, lived in Ankara, lived on the border of Iraq and Turkey, not just visited these places, though we don't even have any evidence of that, but to actually have lived there, that he was part of that culture, that he evidently spoke the language, though he doesn't speak either

Turkish or Arabic, his mother language is Swedish, and that when he came here to the

United States, he thought, in 1978 or 1979, he thought the Christians hated him, and that with broken

English, just a few years later, he confessed Christ as Savior. It's a great story, it just didn't happen. The reality is that he came here in 1969, and he learned

English in the Ohio school system, and if he ever visited Turkey, it was just a visit, we don't have any evidence of this, but that's now what the claim is, that he visited

Turkey, but that's not what he's told people. He said he had always lived in majority Muslim nations, it was an entire persona that he was creating, and one of the most concerning things about this, things that should concern any believer anyways, is that he would weave this persona into saying true things about the gospel.

For example, when he just simply lied, and said that he had debated Shabir Ali, Abdul Salib, and Nader Ahmed, all these men, he said, said these things about the death of Christ, and then if you listen carefully, he says, see what this has to do with the atonement, and then he goes on to say true things about the atonement, the necessity of the cross, the necessity of an atoning sacrifice for God to be able to save us.

Well, he never debated Shabir Ali, and Abdul Salib's a Christian, and you can read every bit of the exchange between Nader Ahmed and Ergin Kaner on his website, at least he used to be able to,

I haven't checked it to see if it's still there, and none of those words are found there either. So all three men, he was just lining up Arabic -sounding names, and tying this together with true statements.

That's really, really troubling, and to do this from behind the pulpit. You see, here's where we run into the problem.

It seems that for many evangelicals today, what you do behind the pulpit is an amoral, non -moral thing.

Remember what Elmer Towns said, well, we give our professors theological leverage.

I guess that means you can just make stuff up as long as it has some positive aspect to it, you know, you can say you're doing it for Jesus.

But the very idea, I mean, Norman Geisler has done this as well, the very idea that someone who's written on Christian morals and ethics could say that lying to thousands of people is not a moral act.

It's not immoral, it's not even in the realm of morality. It's an amazing thing.

Where does that come from? How is it that people can actually buy into that? Well, I have a saying, theology matters, and I've said many times, it seems to me that modern evangelicals are canonically challenged.

They've bought into such a surface -level theology and are so frequently brought into the faith with such a hobbled gospel that many of the people we have in our churches are not even regenerate.

You try to preach holiness to them and they rebel against it. Their self -righteousness has never been challenged.

They've been presented with a gospel that's so hobbled, it's not even a gospel at all, and only the gospel saves.

And so, we have many unregenerate people sitting in the pews of churches all across our land.

And they're the ones that want to be entertained, they're the ones that want to be coddled, they're the ones that will get angry with you if you really start pressing the actual claims of God.

And if you're brought into the external

Christian faith with the idea that, well, you know, God really, you know, needs you,

God has a you -centered hole in his heart, and this kind of utter rot, it's easy to understand how then you can grab hold of sayings like, well, we're not under the law but under grace, you just make law equals

Old Testament, and therefore, who really needs to worry about that Old Testament stuff? And so, it's not shocking or surprising to me at all when

I see people who claim to have once been Christians, they're now atheists or Buddhists or Muslims or whatever, and you start digging around and, well, you know,

I got into that Jesus stuff, but then I read the Old Testament, I just, I couldn't stand the

God of the Old Testament, so I left the faith. I understand that, it makes perfect sense to me.

Anyone who doesn't understand the holiness of God, therefore, doesn't understand their own sin, and therefore, doesn't understand the need of a savior, doesn't understand the need of atonement, and therefore, never really bowed the knee to Christ in repentance, a change of the mind, and so they were one of those many, many people who got a glazing of religiosity, but were never really saved.

And so, because of that, the Old Testament presentation of what's important to God is often completely lacking for evangelicals.

In fact, many people go into evangelical churches, and they, since they're never challenged on this, they bring their priorities in, and what's important to me must be what's important to God.

But, and so they start reading, like in 2

Samuel, about Uzzah. David has gotten the ark back, and the people of Israel are rejoicing and dancing before the ark as they move toward Jerusalem.

God had never actually ordained any of that. But there may be some element here of treating the ark as a sort of a magical thing, but the point is that God had laid down specific rules as to how the ark was to be handled because it represented his presence amongst the people.

But the people were, well, they were rejoicing, and God would allow anybody to do anything while rejoicing or worshiping, right?

Look around the evangelical landscape, and that's what a lot of people think. But the reality is that God had laid down rules about his worship.

The people should have known because of the story of Aaron's sons.

Aaron's sons had sort of decided they could do what they wanted in worship, too, and they had offered strange fire, the only thing

I could figure out is they decided there was a better way of doing things. They offered strange fire before the

Lord, and God struck them dead. Yeah, he struck them dead. That would seem to communicate the idea that God takes his worship rather seriously.

And you see, modern people, modern Western people, and people who still have a secular mindset and people who have come into the

Christian faith without actually ever having their sinful heart broken in light of the holiness of God, and hence don't really understand the atonement, read this kind of thing, and,

I don't know, I don't really like that kind of God. That bothers me. Yeah, it should bother you, because if it bothers you, what that means is you've never really thought about the holiness of God, and your own sin and the fact that God could strike you dead for your sin at any point, and he'd be just in doing so.

These are the same kind of people who don't like what God did with the Amorites, justice, bring wrath to bear, it doesn't really matter,

I don't want a God who does things like that. Didn't we get rid of all that with Jesus? No wonder they don't understand the atonement.

But going back to Uzzah, the ark begins to topple and Uzzah reaches out and touches it.

Of course, it wasn't being carried correctly in the first place, and the people were ignoring God's commands, but they're rejoicing and they're worshipping, and God strikes

Uzzah dead. Kills him. God takes his worship very, very seriously.

But you know, I think of other Old Testament stories where men did terrible things.

You think of one of the patriarchs who ended up treating one of his own daughters, daughter -in -law, as I recall, as a prostitute.

Terrible thing. God didn't strike him dead. We have a very different set of priorities today, don't we?

If Ergen Kanner had cheated on his wife, and no one said that he has, he'd be out.

That'd be it. No doubt about it. Gone. Now, looking at the

Haggard situation, a couple years later, he might be back. But if he had cheated on his wife, look at Jimmy Swagger.

Well, I know, he's got a TV program now too, but he's never really recovered. That's what would happen.

But Ergen Kanner can play with the worship of God. He can be just horrifically dishonest in the presence of the people of God.

In fact, I would argue that when you're standing behind the pulpit, when you're standing before the people of God, you've been entrusted with the task of opening

God's Word and speaking God's truth. That is the very center of worship. I have, for many years, been very politically incorrect.

When I travel around, and I'm in a place, I remember, ironically, it was in Chicago, and I was speaking at an apologetics conference with Norman Geisler.

And there was a group that would lead in worship, the musical folks.

And right before I was to speak, they said, they were talking about, you know, worship and stuff, and they said, before we finish up the worship and the speaker comes.

When I got up, they had already left, they weren't even in the room anymore, but when I got up, I said, you know, I just have to say something about that.

The worship didn't end when the music stopped. If what we're doing is proclaiming

God's truth, the worship is going on right now. And so we have a whole lot of really unbiblical thought in the church.

Part of it's because we have so many non -Christians in the external church, anyways. But when you think about standing behind the pulpit, with a

Bible in your hand, and weaving mythology, all under the guise of, well, but it's all for Jesus.

We obviously don't have a holistic, biblical view of God's priorities.

There should be a tremendous amount of gravity.

Remember the term gravitas a few years ago, when Cheney was picked by Bush to be his vice presidential nominee, gravitas, concern, devotion, focus, reverence, when we go into the pulpit.

It's actually fairly good that in a lot of these modern churches, they've just gotten rid of the pulpit. I think that's a good thing.

It shouldn't be there. Because see, the pulpit is a place of authoritative proclamation. If they're not going to make an authoritative proclamation, then get rid of it.

Just be honest that you're there to entertain people. That you're there to entertain lost people, in fact, and never going to challenge them on their self -righteousness or anything else like that.

You're not going to actually bring an authoritative word from God of repentance to those individuals. That's what the pulpit's for.

Because God speaks to his people through his word from behind that pulpit. But you see,

Ergon Kanner stood behind that pulpit, and he lied. And he refuses to repent of it.

Talking about misstatements is not repentance. That's excusing behavior.

And he might well get away with it. Might well get away with it. Well, not for folks who know the truth, but you see, we live in a day where lying behind the pulpit, yeah, but the kids love him.

What does it really matter? He didn't cheat on his wife. You see, we don't have a biblical set of priorities.

And when we look at what happened to Aaron's sons and to Uzzah, we still haven't learned the lesson.

There's no difference between that God and the God we worship today. And if you think there is, then you just don't understand the message of the entirety of the

Bible. It's a message that, once again, we have been reminded that we need to learn with regularity.

And it hasn't been enjoyable relearning that lesson. But if through this, on the next

Lord's Day and in future Lord's Days, as I and others stand behind that pulpit, if we are filled with the appropriate fear of the

Lord, reverence, honor, a worshipful recognition that we handle the very truth of God, and we are being used of God as the means to communicate with His people in that time and that place, and that He is worshiped and honored in that, if that means that our study is more focused, that we are ever more desirous of being used of God in that pulpit to honor

Him, well, we are. That's how God uses situations like this.

Let's hope and pray that's exactly the result of all of this. Thanks for thinking about this with me.