Tags: wise became fools, humanism,
Apostle Paul, Nebuchadnezzar's dream, Daniel, Book of Daniel, St. Augustine, St. Aquinas,
Martin Luther, John Calvin, Charles Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, C.S.
Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Lloyd Price, Personality, Gideon, Old Testament
They
Knew But Wouldn't Listen
For although they knew God, they
neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and
their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and
birds and animals and reptiles. (Romans 1:21-23 niv)
The world about us is filled with the
utterances of the "wise men" that the Apostle Paul spoke of. Their voices are
calling out to us daily in their arrogance and defiance. They are inviting us to forsake
the God of our fathers and turn away from two thousand years of church history to follow a
god they have conjured up in their minds. They are detailing to us how the morality upon
which our society was inaugurated is archaic and no longer relevant. In some cases they
are re-writing our history to discount the existence of traditional Christian values in
our past altogether. They demarcate our current society as "enlightened" in an
effort to cover up the humanism they embrace.
* * *
Calvin, of the Calvin and Hobbes comic
strip, looks a little different today! This brings about the inquisition of his feline pal
who asks, "What happened to your head?"
"Evidently," the child
responds, "an unanticipated physiological consequence of cerebral augmentation. My
brain swelled."
While scratching his head, Hobbes
continues to marvel at his bug-eyed, brain inflated companion, "If your hats don't
fit, will you give them to me?"
But as usual, Calvin is not listening,
"My powerful brain is unraveling the mysteries of the universe. It's amazing! All
natural laws can be reduced to one simple, unifying equation."
Hobbes is stunned, "Really? What is
it?"
"Already my powerful brain is bored
with such simple problems and is now working on why girls are so obnoxious."
* * *
Humanism has been with us for a long
time. It is Western rationality that began in ancient Greece and passed through the
centuries to us today that is finding its final end in the total denunciation of God. It
is that logical thought process that the Apostle Paul talked about when he explained, Jews
demand miraculous signs and the Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a
stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called,
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness
of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's
strength. (I Cor 1:22-25 niv)
In essence all Western humanists are
Greeks in their thought life, and given their natural tendencies they will attack the
judgment of God. Western humanists will with unremitting consistency tend to deny the
presence of the supernatural. They will repudiate the reality of a living God who works in
history. The Western humanists were the Greeks Paul was speaking to. They desire to set
their minds against God in order to choose the way in which they want to live.
I have seen the world, I have heard
its voice calling out to me,
Saying so many things I've got to
know before I'm satisfied.
But it's a long way to go before it's
over,
Lord I've got to keep my head.
For a lie can bring confusion that
can lead my spirit to loose heart.
The voices that are calling out to the
West originated from that third kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar's dream recorded in the book of
Daniel. It is the call from the ancient Greek philosophers whose determination to exile
the concept of God from their description of reality now signals the end of the age and
the return of Christ.
I know what it is like to heed to the
call of these wolves in sheep's clothing who have set their minds against God. "Watch
out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are
ferocious wolves." (Matt 7:15 niv)
They create an illusion that there is so
much to learn from them, that the ultimate source of truth can be found in the stimulation
of the mind. Being someone myself who enjoys intellectual stimulation I can be easy prey
to their call.
Indeed, God has raised up men with
profound minds who have stirred the waters of history. We have already cited the Apostle
Paul, yet he was only the beginning of that remarkable presentation of extraordinary men
whose words have shaped Western thinking. Men like St. Augustine, St. Aquinas, Martin
Luther, John Calvin, Charles Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, C.S. Lewis, and
Francis Schaeffer to name a few, have used their minds to mold the Christian world view in
Western Society. Indeed, historical Christianity is anything but anti-intellectual.
Notwithstanding these great men of the
Word, there are many more voices out there who call us to a different path. How are we to
know who to listen to? So many sound so right and they even quote Scripture and associate
themselves with The Church. Out of all those people, who is telling the truth?
With the current explosion of media
technology the profusion of these voices coming into our lives is immeasurable. It is in
the midst of all this that we have to make a decision in order that we may know how to
live our lives.
So I'll listen to the voice of One I
cannot see,
To hear Him in His word and know what
to believe.
God has instructed us to listen to that
still small voice.(I Kings 19:12) In the midst of the volumes projected by the many
persuasions in the world around us, God's utterance stands as if it was in a distant
corner, scarcely to be heard. Yet it is this quiet voice that brings the words of eternal
life. To hear it one must be listening very closely. It comes from that knowledge deep
within our spirits that knows who God is.
It was Paul who vocalized to the Romans,
for since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-His eternal nature and
divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that
men were without excuse.(Rom 1:20 niv) I remember the first time that God communicated
to me in this way. It was the first time I heard from God himself.
Coming to
the Lord
I don't recall exactly how old I was,
though I was very young. However, I remember the incident as if it were yesterday. I did
not come from a church-attending family, so my exposure to Christianity was very minimal
as a child. I spent a tremendous amount of time over at my great-grandmothers as she
performed the grandmotherly baby sitting duties that her kind are so good at.
It was at her house that I spent hours
with her on the rocker. It was there that I suffered an appendicitis attack, to be rushed
to the hospital for emergency surgery on account of this life-threatening condition. It
was there that I spent hours listening to music on an old 45 player which developed my
love for music. It was there that the family would spend all the holidays, each event
highlighted by my acapella performance of the song, Personality. There was no
secret made that I was grandma's favorite, and the feeling was mutual.
My great grandmother was a believer and
introduced me to prayer. Faithfully, every night that I was with her I would repeat those
lines: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die
before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."
It was while I was asleep that the Lord
took my great-grandmother home to be with Him. It was a sudden stroke that was over before
anyone knew it. I wasn't ready to lose this one with whom I had joined my spirit with more
closely than any one else. The trauma crushed me.
The family was gathered in shock when
Aunt Wilma came to "console" me. She was known for her drunkenness and abrupt
talk. About once a year she would get on a good drunk and call my grandfather with the
sure result of cussing him out. She wasn't drunk that day but it was obvious that she had
her usual touch.
"You poor sad child, loosing your
grandmother that way," she exclaimed while patting me on the back.
This comment brought the entire anguish
of the event to my mind in one sudden crash. I collapsed into a sorrow that I had never
known before! Suddenly I realized there would never again be those days of sitting on the
rocker with grandma while she read me books or told me stories. She was gone forever. The
finality of death gripped my soul with agony and wonder. "Why does something so good
have to go away? It was so quick. . . so sudden. Is God as good as grandma said he was?
Where did she go? I want her to come back."
Though I prayed and prayed, she never
returned. For the first time in my life I wondered if God heard me, or even cared.
Life for most of us though is filled
with many grandmas, and I was no exception. Once a month I would spend the weekend over at
my grandmother on my dad's side. She would take me to church during those visitations,
every time sojourning to a different denomination. She obviously wanted to make sure that
I had a well-rounded Christian education.
She was Catholic though, so more times
than not we would wind up in a church of that persuasion. Now you must understand that
Mass was held in Latin at this time. Through a child's eye it didn't make a lot of sense
to me as these priests wandered about the altar mumbling something about dominos and
eggshells.
However, grandma knew what was going on!
All she had to do was take from the pew a book that had all the instructions in it. She
would explain it to me as well, but it still didn't resolve the issue of my
great-grandmother's death.
Likewise, I couldn't quite comprehend
why the priest didn't just dispense with the formalities and do something that I could
understand without having to read the program. Later when they converted to English, he
stood up and delivered a sermon. I found out that I did not miss that much after all.
I don't recall anymore what church she
took me to the morning God spoke to me. There's not a lot that I remember about the event.
Yet it was to become one of the most eventful affairs of my young life.
It was a typical Sunday morning service
in an ordinary church down the street, so much like the many frequented weekly in America
today. The preacher was talking to his congregation about a man named Gideon. It seems
this patriarch of the Old Testament laid a fleece outside overnight with the express
purpose of testing God.
This was something that I could bite
into; what with lambs wool lying on the ground as wet as a sponge. It made a lot of more
sense than anything I had heard at that point, and the death of my great grandmother had
left me with a lot of questions to ask God. It intrigued me that the God who seemed so big
and far away would actually take the time to communicate directly with me.
I talked to my grandmother about it and
she consented to help me reproduce the experiment. In those days people could still afford
wool carpets and she just happened to have a remnant laying around that I could use for my
ambitious enterprise. I told God that if He would work this same miracle for me that He
had performed for Gideon, I would be convinced that He was the bona fide God. If only we
had the same faith today as we did when we were but children.(Matt 11:25)
Innocently that evening, I put the
carpet out on the grass expecting to receive some sort of answer. When I awoke the next
morning I immediately bolted out the back door to witness the outcome. What I found was a
dry patch of carpet on a lawn completely covered with dew.
I was astounded! This little
demonstration was becoming quite a happening. So I figured there was no harm in continuing
the adventure to see if God would perform this miracle a second time as well. I exclaimed
in all of my youthful enthusiasm, "God let's go all the way with this thing. I know
you did it with Gideon, so there will be no problem doing it for me, right?"
Now this was going to be the true test.
It seemed to me that it would be a lot more difficult for God to get that piece of carpet
wet when everything around it was dry. So again I conscientiously laid the little speck of
carpet out on the immense lawn. The next morning when I awoke, I set my intentions outside
again to find a drenched carpet lying on a dry lawn.
Now I don't know if my grandmother
helped out on the experiment or not. She might have held the carpet under the water faucet
the first night or watered the lawn the second. Little children are easily fooled. One
Christmas over at my dad's house we kids heard bells jingling out on the front yard to
dash out to the surprise of bicycles awaiting. I had been convinced that Santa Claus had
visited us. So, I wondered for a long time if my grandmother had fooled me. I was always
too afraid to ask, and she never offered up a confession either. I'll never know for sure
I suppose.
The Greek would have told me that there
has to be a natural explanation for the appearance of the supernatural. Perhaps, he would
argue Gideon's grandmother overheard him in his prayer chamber. Determined to see his
faith built up in preparation for the battle that awaited him, she got out the hose that
night. O yes, this theory could be possible, but the undeniable fact that remains is that
Gideon's army saw the destruction of the ensuing menace in a miraculous way. This was all
accomplished in spite of the fact that he had weeded out most of his troops. (Jud 6:1-40,
7:1-25) It was not Santa Clause working for Gideon on that day.
We are not talking about myths here, but
rather the God of all creation. I am afraid it is the humanists who are ringing the bells
for humanity to follow. It is the fable called the triumph of their own minds. This novel
is being proposed in order to pull the wool over the eyes of the Western world. Adults I
have found, are no more difficult to fool than children.
There can be no doubt that God
communicated to me that weekend with my grandmother. And since then I have witnessed far
too much that defies any rational explanation for life apart from God. There have been too
many triumphs, too many victories, too many occurrences of God working in my behalf to
give any real credence to doubt.
Indeed, I have taken a lot of courses in
my life since that day, and some of them have led me directly away from God. Yet in that
solitary event I learned a lesson that I would never forget for the rest of my life. I
discovered that God loves me enough to take the time to talk to me.
The message to me in the Gideon
experiment was that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Heb 13:8 ) The same
God who wrote the commandments on those stone tablets eons ago is speaking the same
message to mankind today. God's Word on sin and the human condition in relation to sin has
remained unchanged from Genesis to Revelation. It is His word that gives life and man
would do well to pattern his life after the example laid out in it.
Are you one who desires to hear God's
voice? Do you want to know His will for you? If you do, then conform your thinking and
actions to the precepts that have been laid out for you in the Holy Bible. In these last
days and minutes before Christ's return, it is more important than ever for Christians to
uphold in their being the integrity of God's word. They cannot allow the "wise
men" of this age to alter for them their perception of Scripture.
Yet as never before the Body of Christ
is swaying further and further from the truth. The call of the world is ringing in their
ears with a resounding clamor. They must learn to listen to that "still small
voice." It is a matter of survival.
About the Author
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About the Author
Don Wigton
is a graduate of the prestigious music department at CSULB where he studied under Frank
Pooler, lyricist of Merry Christmas Darling, and sang in Pooler’s world renown
University Choir alongside Karen and Richard Carpenter. During this time Don was also the
lead composer of the band, Clovis Putney, that won the celebrated Hollywood Battle of the
Bands. After giving his life to God, Don began attending Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa to
study under some of the most prominent early Maranatha! musicians. Subsequently he toured
the Western United States with Jedidiah in association with Myrrh Records.
Eventually
Don served as a pastor at Calvary Chapel Bakersfield to witness thousands of salvations
through that ministry. As the music/concert director, Don worked for seven years with most
major Christian artist of that time while producing evangelical concerts attended by
thousands of young people seeking after God. Don’s Calvary Chapel Praise Choir
released the album Let All Who Hath Breath Praise the Lord on the Maranatha! label.
The next
years of Don’s life were spent as the praise leader of First Baptist Church in Bakersfield
during a time of unprecedented church renewal. Don teamed with the leadership to
successfully meld the old with the new through a period of tremendous church growth.
During this exciting time, Don’s praise team, Selah, produced the CD Stop and
Think About It.
Today Don is
the leading force behind Wigtune Company. This
webbased project located at www.praisesong.net has provided several million downloads of
Don’s music and hymn arrangements to tens of thousands of Christian organizations
throughout the world. More music can be found at Don's Southern
Cross Band website at www.socrossband.com.
The book Holy
Wars represents Don’s most recent effort to bless the church with biblical
instruction and direction in praise and worship. This heartfelt volume is an offering not
only to God’s people, but also to God Himself.
Connect With Don Online
Facebook - Southern Cross
Band
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Wigtune Blog
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was formed as a service to the body of Christ to encourage scriptural
worship. To accomplish this goal Wigtune Company offers free contemporary Christian praise
and worship music, contemporary Christian rock and hymn mp3 and chart material along with
a free on-line worship study book for personal devotions, Bible study groups, Sunday
schools, pastors, music ministers and ministry training. In order to bridge the gap
between the old and the new the worship study book gives solid theological and
historical support to the use of traditional Christian hymn-singing in conjunction with
praise chorus singing. 
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Check out this powerful Southern Cross song! 
