Questions About Seminary, Ministry and the Holy Spirit (Heartcry 2005 Conference Q&a) — Paul Washer

All right, well, we're going to go ahead and begin. Okay, well, it's questions dealing with just, you know, anything that's on your heart. Try to be very, very specific and just, you know, ask away. And I'm going to go to the Lord in prayer at this moment.

Father, I pray and I ask that You would honor Your Son and help Your people. Lord, help us through Your Scriptures to mutually help one another in the things pertaining to You and the things that You've called us to do.

In Jesus' name. There are so many brick buildings in this country called churches, and there are no more churches than the man on the moon and the Spirit of God departed from them years ago. And we go to them and try to accommodate them when we're just accommodating two full suns of hell.

Planting Biblical Churches With Careful Discernment

And one of the greatest needs in this country today is to start biblical churches. Now, young men, be careful. I'm not negating what's being said here. I'm saying you have to pray and you have to know you're in the very center of God's will.

Very center of God's will. Because I want you to know that there is so, and I go back to saying this, there are so many tiny red brick buildings, especially all over the South, that have Baptist or something on them.

There are no more churches. They're just an attic for bats. And you have to be careful. I wonder sometime the wisdom of trying to go in and wrangle for years with a bunch of lost people who are leaders instead of just going out and starting churches.

Now again, I wanted to go to this extreme to point out to you that you have really got to pray. You have really got to pray. Because there are some places where you need to go in there and they are believers and they've been misled and you start teaching them the truth.

In the case of Mike, the fruit bore it out, didn't it? I mean, in two years they've thrown it away and they're thriving and happy. But be careful. Don't think everything that has the sign church on it is a church.

Another question? The thing is, in seminary you come into contact with so many students that are very, very orthodox, defenders of the truth. And many of the seminaries that have really experienced somewhat of a reformation in things.

Seminary, Regeneration, and the Danger of Intellectualism

And you've got these students now who are fiery for the truth, but in reality they're cold as a stone. They've memorized the Westminster, but they wouldn't walk across the street to witness to a lost man or seek and pray.

Well, the first thing that you need to realize is this. Not everybody who goes to seminary is converted. And the carnal man loves anything that will puff up and bring power. And you fail at business. Just get you into some sort of religion.

Because if you can learn all the right jargon, you can really, really get some power and some sway and some reputation over people. That's the first thing we need to realize. In every case, be careful what you call the church.

Because the true church of Jesus Christ, everyone who's in it is truly regenerated. Okay? So not everybody in seminary is regenerate. But in seminary, we all see this tenancy. I think it's called A Little Workbook for Young Theologians.

It's written by a German theologian. It's about how you can go to seminary. He starts out by saying this young man is called into the ministry. He's preached a few sermons at his church. It's very fiery.

There's a lot of life into it. He goes off to seminary because that's what you do if you're called into the ministry. And he comes back a year later and preaches a sermon at the same church and it's deader than stone.

Now that's something that often happens in seminary life because most seminaries are geared towards the intellectual side. Okay? They're geared towards that. And what you have since very few churches practice accountability with the students and very few elders are actually involved in the life of seminary students, it's like a catch -22.

The seminary will say that's not our job. It's the job of the church. And the church doesn't even know what the seminary student's doing. So basically, you've got a young man running awry with no biblical accountability from biblical elders.

That's a problem. My main question that comes to the forefront, and I went to seminary, is this. Are seminaries even biblical to start off with? I think that seminaries... I don't want to throw that out.

I don't want to cause some huge revolution here or something. But when we look in the New Testament, we don't see people being sent out somewhere into an incubator and then they pass their three years there and they pop out a minister of the Gospel.

I think that a seminary thing is not really the perfect scenario, but I think seminary could work if it was brought under elders and men who are ministering. Here's something that you need to understand.

We don't see this type of institution in the New Testament in the sense that someone who's given over to a professional type of theological teaching, they're not in the local church ministering. They're not dealing with these types of things.

It's a whole different world. It becomes an intellectual thing. And then you get on the idea of being published as a seminary professor and the whole thing of you spend your life just simply cloistered writing, publishing, teaching, writing.

Now, this is not always the case, but these are some of the problems. Now I'm getting older in the faith with my own sons if they were called into the ministry. I hope that as their father or if I was in a church where the elders took this thing as it should be in a biblical fashion, that my sons would actually be trained in the context of the local church under godly men and come out that way preaching.

That's just my opinion. I'll just turn this over to anyone who would like to. Anyone else like to comment on this? Well, in the 1970s when I attended seminary, the overwhelming atmosphere was, and I guess it always is, an atmosphere of theory and intellectualism.

And I remember hearing a sermon that had a profound impact on me. And the title of it was The Danger of Trafficking in Unlived Truth. And when you have an academic setting that you hear theory on and on and on, and there's not even time to apply it because you have to study for the test.

You have to read five books a week or whatever. It just becomes, the Bible becomes a textbook, which it isn't that. And you can't even process the living out of the truth. So, I remember the men in that atmosphere.

You know, Paul spoke somewhere about the kingdom of God not being in word only, but in power and demonstration. The way one can have the greatest impact or real impact in that atmosphere is to really model and live the truth.

Because there's going to be a multitude of religious talk every day. But a man who prays and walks with God and lives it, his life will affect others, though he doesn't even know it. Leonard Ravenhill used to say, you never have to advertise a fire, so just get on fire for God and men will come and watch you burn.

And I think the reality of a life lived is the greatest impact that you can have.

A wise minister who I'm sure is with the Lord now, I haven't lost contact with him. A seminary had contacted him. He was a pastor in Chicago. One of his young men went off to Bible college and now he was going to go on to seminary because after four years of Bible college, the Bible college said that now you need to go on and get your master's degree because you're not ready yet.

So he had to go back to his pastor and ask his pastor to give a reference to the seminary. So he wrote on the application, I can recommend him to you, but I can't recommend you to him. He was full of fire and after four years of Bible college, half of his fire is gone.

If I send him to you, I'm afraid the other half will be gone too. I think Brother Paul has said something that's struck my heart, that's been on my heart for years, that we're just not doing it right when it comes to the training of ministers.

Our Lord taught us how to do it. The apostles emulated it. They gathered men to themselves and they discipled them. That's how the church is carried out to new generations.

You look at the Great Awakening in Europe, England, Wales. You look at the Whitefields and everything. All of that did not come as a result of their institutional religious training. It came even though their institutions fought against them.

Fought against them. And I am not saying, I am not with the 1950s fundamentalism that is all against knowledge and the intellect. I would that you young men and women acceded in Greek and acceded in Hebrew.

That you had an understanding of church history, if that thing even exists. But that's another story. All these different things. Study hard. You should be given to hours and hours of study and hours and hours of prayer.

But I'm just not convinced anymore that seminary is the biblical way to do that. Not at all. Well, we are really showing ourselves as heretics now, aren't we? Okay, after this guy,.

Then the young man back there. I think this might be... I know it's following the same lines as what James said, but when we were talking earlier, you talked about a church that was dead and a church that was alive.

Knowledge, Holiness, and Spiritual Life in Bible College

And one of them, the church that was dead, had a really good theology. The church that was alive was not. And I've noticed since I've been at college, and even though it is just a Bible college, I've noticed that in high school, my heart for God and for everything was...

I don't want to say it was on fire or anything like that, but I cared a lot more. I loved God more with my heart than I do with my mind. And now that I'm in college and learning all this stuff, I feel like my heart's gone.

And I have a lot of knowledge in my head, but I feel it's almost pointless sometimes. So, I guess I'll put that in a question. There you go. Okay, how do we deal with that? Let me just tell you something.

First of all, I would encourage you to pray and to even fast for the Lord's direction in your life. And I would tell you that several times... You know how people will say, when Jesus said, sell all you have and give to the poor and follow Me, and people say, well, He's not really asking you to do that.

He's just asking you to have that in your heart. And I heard a man answer one time, he said, that's strange. He's asked me to do that about three times. And you know, we all talk about radically following Jesus.

And when we're young, we come to think that that is wearing a Jesus bracelet or a Jesus t-shirt or listening to some contemporary Christian music group or something. But maybe you're being confronted with what it really means to radically follow Jesus.

I mean, I'm going to teach tomorrow on something about identifying holiness possibly. And it says that the will of God, one of the characteristics of it is it's good. And in the context, it means it promotes your spiritual well-being.

You might be burned at the stake according to the will of God, but you're going to really be holy while you're burning. I mean, what I'm saying is, and I'm hearing all these young men who come to me from Bible college and seminaries and everything else, and they're going, I'm in seminary, but my spiritual life has just gone down the tubes.

And I'm putting the two together. I'm going, this doesn't work. The will of God, even though it may require tremendous sacrifice and the loss of limbs, is always going to be in this thing of prospering you spiritually.

And young men, I can tell you that if you don't go to seminary, a lot of churches, at least in the denomination that I'm at least identified with, they're not going to look at you. But here comes the question.

I've had to make choices in my life in which I knew if I preach this certain way or I make this certain decision that I'm going to be shut out from many circles. I'm not going to even be in them. Sometimes that needs to be done.

You know, I want to share with you young men something that I hope you understand it. You can go to South America. You can go to Peru. And you can preach the Gospel and if people will be very kind, and Peruvians are some of the kindest people in the world, they will listen to your message.

They will thank you for it. They will even say they believe in Jesus and everything else. But then if you mention you need to leave the Catholic Church because it does not preach the Word of God, they will be terrified.

I want to tell you something. I see the same thing among Southern Baptists and Baptist denominations. I mean, the power. And I'm not saying leave. Please don't misunderstand me, but I'm just saying recognize the power of this thing.

You don't like what you're doing. Spiritually, it's not making you grow, but it has such a power over you. That system of what you're supposed to do in order to minister, it's got you so strong that you would be terrified to step outside of it and go a different direction.

That's frightening. That's the power of religion. And you don't have to look over somewhere very far to find it. It's right here. It's right here. I like the way one man put it. He said, don't seek a ministry, but wait for the fruit that will naturally come from a disciplined life.

I would encourage you young men to pray. You know, it's been bred into you this idea of adolescence and that maybe when you're 30, you'll start acting like a man. Or when you're 30, maybe you'll graduate from seminary and be able to become some sort of a man of God.

You ought to be praying and praying and making decisions. You ought to be seeking the Lord no matter where it takes you. You ought to be studying God's Word and praying. And if anything gets in the way of truly studying God's Word down on your knees, get it out of your life.

I can't think of anything except for the Hebrew and Greek that I learned. I can't think of anything that helped me from seminary. And it wasn't until I went to the mission field and I got in God's Word hours a day systematically from Genesis to Revelation, that every aspect of my theology changed.

When I graduated from Southern Baptist Seminary, I was versed in Karl Barth, Otto Weber, and Jürgen Moltmann. All the German theology that closed every church in Germany. And it wasn't until I got in the Bible that I realized most of what I had learned was worthless.

And so you get into God's Word. You want to learn how to preach? Find the preachers that God has most used throughout the history and read them. You're Charles Spurgeon who was a Calvinist. You're Alexander McLaren who was not.

Read books of men who were on fire. Read books of men who God used to change countries. Read their biographies. Read their sermons. Read their theology. You don't want to read a book from some man who was never used of God to do anything except waste trees.

And then find men on this earth that are walking now. They won't be necessarily popular and they won't have the biggest churches, but truth comes out of their mouth and get there. And stay there and learn from them.

Come under a godly group of elders who love you enough to care about you, to teach you. Be there and learn. That's what I'm talking about. And I'm telling you, there's one brother here who I just talked to just recently from Indiana.

I know Ked Chrisman over in Owensboro. And they're not starting seminaries. What they're doing is their elders are opening themselves up to teach young men the Word of God and allow them to come and minister with them.

You know, I think that's where we need to be going. And boy, I don't know if I hope or do not hope this tape goes out to many people. I think sometimes we don't think about an aspect of how God prepares people for ministry.

It is so opposite of how the church does it. Think of this. Someone has a heart to be in ministry and they go to seminary for three years and rush through it for hopefully 30 years of ministry. But in Scripture, God prepared men for 30 years for three years of ministry.

Jesus prepared 30 years for three years of ministry. John the Baptist prepared for 30 years for six months of ministry to get his head cut off. God's ways in preparing a man are not our ways. And God has a unique, special way to prepare every servant that He's going to use.

And the critical ingredient is to have a heart to only do His will and cry out for Him to shape you the way He wants to shape you. God doesn't have a cookie factory. Seminaries are cookie factories. God's ways of preparing men are so unique and He doesn't do it in the same way usually at all.

Discerning a Missionary Calling

I am just wondering if a particular or special call is needed to know that God is calling you to be a missionary or if He just leads you into it like any other aspect of His will.

I've had someone ask me that already. First of all, I'm doing all the talking. Would someone like to answer that, please? Let me share this with you. What is a missionary? First of all, why did you have to ask that?

Now, if I answer that question, I'm really going to be a heretic. Sometimes I bless the day I met you. Sometimes I curse the day I met you. You mean going into the mission field as far as cross-cultural missions.

Alright? In my own life and in Scripture, let's start off there, we see men called in seemingly different ways. We see this Isaiah. In chapter 6 of Isaiah, we see the Apostle Paul in the road to Damascus.

We see apostles called. But we see different things. We see different categories of revelation, ways in which God does it, and they're all differing. You know, to some of those men, He didn't say, come and follow Me and be an apostle.

He just looked at them and said, come and follow Me. Come and follow Me. With Isaiah, we see something in which I'm calling you to obey Me, but here it is. Go out and be a prophet to this people. Paul the Apostle, it was very clear.

I'm calling you out. You're going to see how much you have to suffer. I'm going to send you to the Gentiles. The number one thing for those of you who are younger is that concentrate on this. Follow Him.

Follow Him. Now, I'm going to answer your question, but I want to lay down some groundwork first. So many young people I see lose so much spiritual, emotional, and physical energy worrying about what God has decreed for the future.

Am I called to do this? Or am I called to do that? Am I called into the ministry? Am I called to marry this person? Just all these things. And yet, the sovereignty of God lets us know that none of that is really our worry.

That day to day we are to follow Him hard. To follow His precepts. To follow whatever He puts in our path. And I think number one is this, a lot of times, and I'm not saying you do this, Rachel, but a lot of times in my young life, I spent more time worrying about the call to do something in the future rather than simply following the precepts and the open doors of that day.

So, I think that if a person will do what Romans 12, verses 1 -2 is talking about, renewing their mind, and I think the direction there is in the Word of God, in prayer, in godly fellowship, renewing their mind, renewing their mind in what God has revealed in this book and what God reveals daily with regard to our personal activities, that one of two things are going to happen.

One, in the midst of all that, there's going to be this extraordinary revelation. You know, go to China. You just know it. And then it's just confirmed over and over again. That might happen that way.

Or, you might end up in China and 20 years later say, how on earth did I ever get here? Do you see what I'm saying? And if you look at the lives of the patriarchs in the Old Testament, these men like Abraham and things, there was this idea of just kind of...

Moses said, how do I know this is going to be you that's going to do all this? And he says, well, when you're in the Promised Land, you'll know it. And so, follow hard after Him every day. Renew your mind in the Word of God and do not waste so much energy, so much thought life on am I or am I not.

I have a very, very... maybe it's because I am childlike too much. I have a very childlike view of the will of God. And I say it this way. It's really childish. A theologian could tear it apart. But I kind of made this agreement with God.

And it's this. God, I'm going to keep doing exactly what I'm doing today. And I'm going to keep doing it. And I'm not going to do anything else until You make it so clear to me that I need to go in another direction that I know that if I don't do it, I'm disobeying.

Until that happens, I'm not worrying about anything. And it just really set me free. People have come to me with heart Christ, for example, and you always have people make suggestions. Man, if you do this, the ministry would just explode and it would be this and it would be that.

And they go, what's your vision? I love to get that question. What's your vision? And I always go, Jesus Christ crucified, resurrected from the dead, assaulted to the right hand of the Father. I don't understand.

No, what's your vision? Be a good husband. Love my children. No, your vision. I go, I'm sorry. I do understand what they're saying, but I'm not going to submit to it. There's enough evil for today. I want to obey.

Here's what I want. And this is a part of this conference. And I shared this with Darren before I preached yesterday on the telephone. And I am so sick and tired of preaching the Christian life. And I am so sick and tired of doing big things.

I don't want to be a good preacher. I don't want to have a reputation. I don't want to do big things. And I don't want my name to be remembered in a book. I want to love my wife. I want to love my children.

I want to be a good friend. I want to have a servant's heart. I want to do all these things that are so small, and yet they're the very things that Jesus said true discipleship was about. And if I concentrate on those things, all those things or those big decrees of whether or not I'm called to go here or there, or China or Bangkok, they're all going to take care of themselves.

Because let me tell you something, young men. When you start out, you're going to want to save the world. When you get my age, you're just going to want to save yourself. And you're going to eventually see that as a total impossibility.

And so what I want to encourage you as far as the will of God is just lay it to rest. Lord, do You want me to be a missionary in a foreign land? Your servant, in your case, your handmaiden, listens. Let me know.

But Lord, if You want to speak to me about these things for days on end, feel free to speak. I will listen. But until then, I, your handmaiden, I am going to be about the daily task that You present before me.

And I am going to rest in Your sovereign ability either to split open the skies and say go to Bangkok or to get me there without me even hardly knowing it and 20 years later wondering how I got here. Anyone else like to add to that?

Anything? Yeah. Amen to all that. I was just pleasantly thinking of a dear brother that went on, died and is with the Lord now, R .F. Gates, who was a Southern Baptist evangelist. Brother R .F. was just somebody who was filled with the joy of the Lord.

The Holy Spirit, Spiritual Power, and Supernatural Ministry

And it was just who he was. As we were coming to this conference, one of the brothers in the van was talking about reading a little article that Tom Aspel had written about Brother R .F., talking about being in a car with him going down the highway.

And for some reason, the car quit. And it looked like they were going to just get run over. And before Tom knew what was happening, Brother R .F. just broke out into praise to God. Well, blessed be God, you know, just praying, Lord, if it would glorify You to just have us run over by a semi and killed right now, Lord, just whatever will glorify You.

I mean, that was just spontaneously coming out of this guy. And that sounds kind of crazy or wacko to most people. But that's how Brother R .F. lived because he trusted in God. He didn't make big plans.

But when I think about him and how many lives he touched and how many young preachers God used that man who just loved him with all his heart to kind of give some of that contagious joy to, it's amazing.

And I think that's kind of what Brother Paul is saying. If you concentrate on being what God wants you to be, you'll end up doing what God wants you to do. The brother he's speaking about I wanted to have at this conference.

I had asked. It's so amazing. That brother took my hand about seven or eight years ago at a conference. I saw him. Maybe more years than that. I was walking in this auditorium and I saw him off to the side.

He was so filled with the Holy Spirit of God. It was almost like a physical manifestation. That's not an exaggeration, is it? I didn't even know who he was. I didn't even know his name. And I just went to him and I just went like this.

I didn't know what to do. And he took my hand and he just blessed me. Years later, this was last year, I was preaching in Texas. And I was at this church and I was talking about encounters that I'd had with God and men and women of God.

I said the most amazing thing happened to me and I don't even know this man's name, but it was at this place and it was at this time and I saw him and he glowed. It was just the most amazing thing. And the preacher looked at me and he goes, I was at that conference.

It was R .F. And I said, who? And he said, I know who he is. He was so filled with the Holy Spirit. Gosh, I got in a room with him and he prayed later on. It was absolutely amazing. And the point that I'm trying to make is look at this.

He didn't even teach me anything. He didn't speak three words to me. But he was filled with the Holy Spirit of God and it ministered to me more than a hundred sermons I've ever heard. You see, if you are what God desires you to be, you'll do what He desires you to do.

My question concerns something you touched on just a couple of seconds here and last night for about two seconds you touched on it, Paul. But other than that, you won't hear it preached about unless it's almost blasphemous.

But it's of the filling of the Holy Spirit. Baptism of the Holy Spirit. And I ask around godly men that I know and people are scared of it because of what it's become in the charismatic movement. And so I'd like for you to teach out a Scripture about it.

Brother Charles,.

Would you like to share some things on this? Yeah, that's a great idea. A lot of these men,.

I've met them in the last few years and they've ministered in my life and others and out of our gratitude to God for that we've sought to see those same messages or those kinds of things used in the lives of others.

And so we've started a ministry where we do offer CDs and tapes from any of those things. One of the things Charles spoke on, in fact, some college buddies of mine, that's how we met Charles, is Paul directed us to Charles over this very issue.

He had spoken a message about it to his church years ago and if it would be right, those helped us a lot to maybe get those in your hands. And if anybody would want to do that, we could do that. But another thing also is, maybe I will suggest is Lloyd-Jones, his book on the joy of the speakable.

It's not really published anymore, you can't find it. There's a guy, if you go to rarechristianbooks .com, there's a book. They published that book along with, what's the other book on that, Prove All Things.

Those are together as one volume. It's like $35, but it's probably the best published work you'll find on it. Get in touch with.

Also, is it Power Without Measure? Is that out of print? Let me just say this. You have to understand the context in which we live. Let me give you an example. Jehovah's Witnesses knock on my door. I say, yes, may I help you?

And they go, we're Jehovah's Witnesses. I usually say, so am I, come on in. And they'll come in and after a while I go, no, you're Jehovah's Witnesses. I'm a Jehovah's Witness. The point I'm trying to make is, I'm not going to let anyone rob me of my heritage.

Now, what we have done, Baptists, I know probably not everybody here is Baptist. Thank God. What we've done is this. We are a reactionary people. Right? So throughout our theological history, we'll see an abuse of a certain doctrine and sometimes running to center, but many times running to center and then keep running and go to the next extreme on the complete other side.

Now, because of... I think this began, in my opinion, probably in the awakenings. When there were great revivals in England and in New England, the problem with great revivals is this, is Satan's not asleep when they come.

He will usually send people that will get kind of involved with those revivals, who will take away the credibility of the revivals with emotionalism and all kinds of stuff. And the leaders that are really godly men have to be very, very careful what goes on when a true revival breaks out because there will be people doing all kinds of silly stuff.

I'll never forget, I was preaching in Peru one time and God seemed to be moving and this lady just totally passed out right in the middle of the auditorium. While I was preaching, I just walked down to her and I stopped and I said, Ma 'am, get up.

God's done nothing to you and neither is the devil. And she just got right up again. And what I'm saying is, we have had to put forced terminology on certain doctrines. I believe we've forced them into boxes with a desire to protect ourselves from heresy.

But the models that we've built are superficial and they're dangerous in themselves. And when we start wrangling over terms like filling, baptism, and these things, we get ourselves into a lot of trouble.

We do know that a true believer in Jesus Christ has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit and has been given the Holy Spirit. I mean, you're not a Christian if there's not the Holy Spirit in your life. But at the same time, there are workings and manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer.

You can call them different things if you like. I've always been of the opinion it's better to have it and not know what to call it than to know what to call it and not have it. Manifestations and workings of the Holy Spirit.

And the very men who oftentimes almost idolize the Whitefields and the Daniel Rowlands and the Hal Harris's and the great preachers of the great awakenings, men who almost idolize them at the same time would fight against their experiences that they had.

They were men who had powerful experiences and manifestations of the Holy Spirit that were quite unusual. Now, that all has to be in the context of Scripture, but it is real. The greatest need for some of you young men is to go out in the wilderness and lay on top of a log and cry out to God and let dew fall on your head a couple of days and just scream out for one thing, that the power of God would be on your life.

Because it is the difference between a boy of God and a man of God. We are such social animals today. And the guys I see coming out of seminary are such social animals. They all want to have group hugs and sing Kumbaya.

But the thing about it is, someone's got to go out there into the wilderness and throw stones at the gates of heaven with boldness until God comes down upon their life. And how you want to really call that doesn't make me much difference as long as you keep it confined into the parameters of Scripture.

These are some of the things that are on some of those cassettes. I was amazed that I was at the Founders Conference several years ago and Ian Murray said many things about this that I never thought would come out of his mouth.

And Martin Lloyd-Jones, read him on the Holy Spirit. Now, he's an embarrassment to some of his friends, but read him on the Holy Spirit. And I think it could be very, very beneficial. Let me tell you something, young men, do not allow anyone to rob you of your heritage.

And your heritage is this, that you will be filled with the Holy Spirit. And that God will do supernatural things through your life. Don't allow anyone to rob you of that. This whole thing, I am brought... it's amazing.

I have gone up until just a few months ago, I have lived the last several years of my life on fire that... I don't know how to say it. On experiences of younger years. And it's almost killed me. And there has been a reawakening in my life to go out into the fields, to cry out to God that His power would be upon my life.