'Apostates are pretty nice people'

It’s been a big week here in Akron.

First of all, in case you haven’t heard, a nurse treating the now-deceased Ebola victim in Texas decided she didn’t need to “self-monitor” and got on a flight to Cleveland for a weekend in Akron picking out bridesmaids dresses, etc., in preparation for her upcoming wedding. She now has full-blown Ebola.

As you might guess, it’s the talk of the town, on the same scale as when Akron native LeBron James, an NBA all-star on the same page with Michael Jordan, announced in July he was returning to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Secondly, the “Akron Beacon Journal” newspaper has had a week-long expose on Pentecostal televangelist Ernest Angley, 93 years old and a native of North Carolina, who has “reigned” from Akron for the last  six decades.

He’s been compared in the articles to Jim Jones and accused of being a homosexual who has for years “inappropriately touched” underling pastors, etc., among lots of other horrendous charges.

What’s funny to anyone who lives here is Angley’s “Grace Cathedral” is a major landmark in town, partly because of an unfinished 494-foot tower erected in the ‘60s by another nationally known televangelist, Rex Humbard.

Also, his daily lunch buffet on the campus of “Ernest Angley Ministries,” next to the eyesore tower, is widely regarded for being a good meal at a cheap price. My mom even has a close friend who likes to eat there with her husband at least once a month on her day off.

Today’s “Beacon” article was about Angley’s Boeing 747-SP jetliner, reported to be “so large that it literally won’t fit inside any hangar at its home field, Akron-Canton Airport.”

Reporter Bob Dyer writes, “Angley is proud of his bird, which he uses a few times each year for distant mission trips. He says the Lord promised it to him long ago, and he is doing the Lord’s work with it, evangelizing across the globe.

“But some folks, both inside and outside of his church, question why a man who relies mainly on donations from individuals in his congregation and in the TV audience would own a gigantic, customized airplane that cost a fortune to purchase and costs a smaller fortune to operate.

“Personnel at the airport who did not want to be identified because they were not authorized to talk about a private plane said Angley’s jet holds about 48,000 gallons of fuel. Current price of Grade-A jet fuel: $5 per gallon. One fill-up: $240,000.

“Although the plane has remarkable range — a whopping 6,500 nautical miles — Angley’s trips frequently require multiple fuel stops in each direction. The country where he spent two weeks earlier this year, South Africa, is 8,400 miles from Akron.

“Add in landing fees, maintenance and other related costs and, if Angley takes three trips a year averaging 16,000 miles round trip, the annual operating cost is about $2.16 million.

“Angley won’t reveal the original price of the plane — “We don’t tell,” he said with a smile. But a former longtime employee of his, Steve Nelson, estimated the figure at about $26 million.”

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Here’s a great passage from R. Dawson Barlow’s 2005 book, The Apostasy of the Christian Church:

“But just to make sure we are not deceived by the niceties of some people and human ‘sweetness,’ it is at this point we must be very clear about the nature of apostasy. Apostasy does not usually deny the existence of God. It does not behave itself unseemly and cry out that it hates God.

“In fact, apostates are pretty nice people whose life philosophy is to get along with everybody, offend no one and attempt to make the world a better place. Apostasy pursues to serve a ‘god of his/her own imagination’ and serve ‘he, she, or even it’ through a form of religion whose foundation of authority is the subjective feelings they have on a certain matter.

“It matters not what the revelation of God says, the final, ultimate authority is, ‘How I feel about any issue in my heart!’ It rejects the objective authority of the Word of God as the final court of appeal, and, in the process of this rejection, embraces the deceitful, subjective message of the human heart and misinterprets it as God’s authoritative message.

“The buzz word of this growing number of people is, ‘Well, you have to do whatever is right for you.’ The conclusion is that nothing is really right or wrong, but what is right and wrong  for me! This is nothing but a denial of any absolute truths.”

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Two times in Paul’s epistles he warns against “enticing words.”

He argues in I Cor. 2:4, “And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.”

In Colossians 2:4, he emphasizes, “And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words.”

Jordan explains, “That idea of enticing words—it’s words that are really enticements, where you’re trying to entice somebody into doing something for some other reason than what the real issue is.

“If you were in the commerce world, they’d call it ‘bait and switch.’ Entice them to come in and then switch them to something you really wanted to do with them. In religion, it can be as simple as, ‘Come worship with us and we’ll have a 30-ft. long submarine sandwich!’

“Down in Alabama there used to be this thing about having the biggest attendance: ‘If you can get bigger attendance at your (service) than they can get at theirs, the loser’s got to swallow a goldfish.’

“Or it can be the Catholic (method) of, ‘Come and get your blessing that you can’t get any other way except through us, and do our rites and ceremonies and all the stuff.’ The message is, ‘If you come and do what we want you to do, you’ll get more from God then if you don’t.’ ”

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In I Cor. 1:17, Paul writes, “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.”

Jordan explains, “That ‘wisdom of words’; that’s talking about making your own way, giving your own explanation. It’s human viewpoint; man’s plan to do things. And what it does is make the gospel ‘of none effect.’

“That doesn’t mean you don’t believe the gospel, it just means it doesn’t have its impact. It doesn’t mean you don’t know the Bible, or read the Bible, or study the Bible; it just means the Bible doesn’t have the impact on your life God’s designed it to have. Galatians 6 is another explanation of that. When he talks about ‘fleshly wisdom,’ he’s talking about religious show.

“Galatians 6:12 says, ‘As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ.’

“This thing about ‘constraining you to be circumcised’; it’s not really an issue of stopping sin because the people trying to get you to do the religious operation—they don’t keep the law either. They don’t perform the perfection either. They just really want to make a ‘fair show of your flesh.’

“They got a system they’re promoting. And it gets to be this big fleshly operation. And Paul, he talks in chapter 11 of II Corinthians about the Corinthians ‘being corrupted from the simplicity that’s in Christ.’

“He starts out in the chapter by saying, ‘For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward.’

“He’s saying that it’s been ‘with simplicity—that’s how I’ve held my conversation with you and with others. My manner of life has been such that it’s just been who God has made me in Christ that’s the issue; not a bunch of human viewpoint. I’m not trying to build systems and followings and movements and all the rest, but just have the life of Christ be the issue.’

“That word conversation; look at I Peter 3. Sometimes you hear that word conversation, and oftentimes it’s chaffed at because it’s an Old English word that has more meanings to it than what we generally talk about.

“We usually mean our speech. You know, sit around and have a conversation, discussing things with people. But a conversation is more than just a conversational chat; it’s an entering into an inner play.

“I Peter 3 says, ‘Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.’

“Now, notice that’s the wife’s conversation; it doesn’t say that they may hear your conversation. If the word conversation was only meant to refer to something that you’re saying, they would say ‘when they hear your conversation.’

“But what does it say they’re going to do to your conversation? Behold it. Your conversation is not simply something that you hear with your ear; it’s something you can see with your eye. It’s more than just words. It’s something literally that you can see in someone. It’s the way they converse with life; it’s the way they interplay with life.

“Somebody said conversation means ‘a manner of life.’ It’s more than that; it’s literally life itself and it’s something that can be held. And I say that to you so you understand the translators of the King James Bible—when they use that word, they did not use it simply to refer to words—because you cannot behold words. It has to do with who you are and the whole circuit; the whole of what your life is about.

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“II Tim. 3:10 says, ‘But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience.’

“Timothy knew what Paul taught. When he says ‘my manner of life,’ now, that’s his conversation. He’s saying, ‘You’ve known the things I teach and you know the way I live; my purpose; my faith; my longsuffering; my charity; my patience; my persecutions and afflictions.’

“Timothy knew all about Paul! And it mattered to Paul that Timothy knew more than just the doctrine. He wanted him to know how the doctrine lived in his life and how he ministered that to others.

“In Philippians 1:29-30, Paul says, ‘For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake; Having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me.’

“That’s his conversation: ‘What you see in me, what you hear to be in me’; his manner of life. And Paul says to the Corinthians, ‘When you looked at my life, you know the way I’ve lived with you, and it’s been in simplicity. It’s not been a duplicitous life. I haven’t been one way over here and another way there. And it’s been in godly sincerity.’

“In II Cor. 1:12, he says it was ‘not with fleshly wisdom.’ In 2:17, he says, ‘For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.’ In II Cor. 4:1-2, ‘But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.’

“Now, if you’ve renounced something, you must have once used them, right? You see, Paul was once a religious zealot. He’s saying, ‘We’ve renounced all that, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully.’ He’s saying, ‘That’s what I used to do.’

“But what is he doing now: ‘Manifesting truth, commending to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.’ I think that’s one of the greatest verses in the Bible to give to a preacher or a believer—anybody who does the Lord’s work—on how to do it.

“ ‘I’m not gonna try to use guile to catch you. Not gonna handle the Word of God deceitfully. Not gonna give you the impression the Bible says one thing when it really says another. But what we’re going to do is by the manifestation of the truth. .  . we’re just going to teach the truth. And if teaching the truth will commend itself to your conscience, then your conscience and my conscience are at one.’

“I’ve learned for years that if you’ll just teach the doctrine—just manifest the truth—the truth will commend itself to a man’s conscience that wants the truth, and when it doesn’t commend itself to someone, you know why it isn’t. Because what they’re looking for is something different. What good is it to just go out and try to gather a big crowd of people and have a big show in the flesh?

“You can get hundreds and scores of people, and big movements and big things, and it looks powerful, and it looks big, and looks great, but if it was gathered on some basis other than the simple manifestation of the truth—commending itself to people’s conscience in the sight of God; if it gathers them for some other reason—then what did you really create and gather? Well, you gathered something other than what God’s doing.”