2 February 2014
Dear Phyllis,
The other day I got a letter from, my dear friend Luke Kuepfer. Luke was here in Chiang Mai 8 to 16 years ago and is the best man I have met in SEA. It was a tremendous loss to us when he left, but there is no doubt he is headed for the top. Luke is a man who towers above me in every department, but I told him ten years ago that he has the wrong message. I also told him that he wouldn't understand what I was talking about now but perhaps in another 20 years he might agree that God's message is not HOW but WHO.
There are two ways of doing things – man's way and God's way. Man's way is HOW but God's way is WHO. Man's way is by education and God's way is by the Holy Spirit in a man. Both methods work. I believe it can be safely said that at least 90% of Christian activity is done by man's way. This is certainly true in world missions. By far the vast bulk of mission activity from fund raising to evangelism is done by human energy working along man's way of doing things. Obviously it works. There are hundreds of organizations that are self-sustaining and self-perpetuating. The very fact that the world is filled with various denominations and mission societies is a proof that they do propagate. It has been well said that God gives a message to a man. The message becomes a movement. The movement becomes a monument, and then you have a mess.
Religion is something that man has created. Jesus never came to this earth to start a new religion. He came to redeem humanity back to the Father, and to give life to fallen men. The followers of Jesus started Christianity. There is a fundamental difference between religion and life. Religion is in the realm of the soul; life is in the spirit. Religion is propagated by information and education. Life is propagated by birth. We are born of the Spirit of God, and our life is in the spirit. But obviously there is a tremendous overlap between religion and the life of Christ. And the Gospel obviously has its essence in Christianity. You cannot separate the Gospel from Christianity.
Basically I am opposed to formal education; and in this I am wrong. The gift of a teacher is one of the spiritual gifts, so you cannot say that education is not spiritual. Ignorance is not a spiritual virtue. Peter encourages us to add to our virtue knowledge (2 Pet. 1:6). It is universally accepted that Christians should be as educated as possible. Paul did a great deal of teaching. He spent two years in Ephesus teaching in the school of Tyrannus (Act 19:9,10). Certainly you cannot condemn education and teaching. But there is a fundamental difference between those who are taught by the Holy Spirit and those who are taught by learned professors.
For any young man who feels called to the ministry, unquestionably, it is assumed that he must go to Bible school or seminary. Very few denominations would allow a preacher in their pulpit that wasn't a graduate of some accepted school. And certainly 95% of all Christian workers have a formal education.
But on the other side of the coin it is highly significant that many of the most outstanding preachers are not men who have come through the accepted path of seminaries. David Brainard went to Yale but was put out. The world have seen few men of the caliber of Brainard. Charles Spurgeon, Charles Finny, DL Moody, Billy Sunday, John Sung, Watchman Nee, AW Tozer, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and many others are all men with no diplomas hanging on their wall. There are extremely few graduates that can come close to these men for their ability, wisdom, spirituality, or effectiveness in bringing souls to Christ. The greatest preacher I ever heard was Joe Carroll, and he never went to Bible school. The greatest Bible teacher I ever met was Dave Lanam. Dave Lanam was a self-taught man.
All these giants of the faith were highly intelligent very well educated men, but they didn't get their education by sitting in a class room. It is generally true that most of these men were exceptionally well read. Tozer and Martyn Lloyd-Jones were highly intellectual, and exceptionally well versed in philosophy, classics, and the highest level of Christian literature. The problem is; that the best way to get this knowledge is by private reading rather than in a lecture hall. Many – if not most – young men these days, after they get out of Bible school ease up on reading, and spend more time on their computer and reading magazines than devouring Christian classics.
It cannot be said that all PhDs are not spiritual. Bob Smith is a notable exception. He was extremely well educated and had all the degrees. He had studied philosophy in some of the most prestigious universities in the world. He could match anyone who wanted to tangle with him on any subject. He was a professor at Bethany Bible college. But he was the most unusual speaker I have ever heard. He would stand up and start to speak in a dry monotone that would make you look at your watch and wonder how long have I got to put up with this. He was the most non-dynamic, unimpressive man I ever knew. But as you listened to this dry man, your heart would burn. After an hour you would beg him to keep going. His preaching would go straight to the heart. But far above his massive intellect, he was a man who deeply loved God, and was filled with the Holy Spirit as few men are. It was not uncommon for him to break down weeping in the middle of a message. He was a man who was mastered by the Word and nearly all speakers today are men who have attempted to master the Word. The flavor of their message is radically different. One speaks to the heart, and the other speaks to the head.
After doing almost legendary work here in Chiang Mai, my dear friend, Luke, felt he needed more education. He went back to the states to get more degrees and be better qualified to minister. I am sure he has accumulated a great deal more information now than he had eight years ago but I wonder if he is more filled with the Holy Spirit. Sitting in a class room is not the best place to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
The problem with too much education is that it causes many to think that they have all the answers. The most dangerous man I ever met was Bob Unger. Bob was a professional golfer on the PGA tour. He got saved, left golf, and went to seminary when he was in his 30s. He was the assistant pastor at the Greenville Christian Fellowship. I had just returned home from Japan for a furlough, and he thought I was a alien from otter space. I said things that turned on the alarm system for him, and he told Pastor Joner that he thought I was off the rails. For the next six months he tried to straighten me out. One time I told him, “Bob, quit it. You act just like a kid nine months out of seminary (he was). You have all the answers, but none of the experience.” At the time Bob had good standing at the church, but later they had to ask him to leave.
One of the problems in Japan is that they have the highest educated pulpit in the world. That is; the pastors in Japan have the highest education ratio for the size of the churches in the world. The Japanese, of course, put a very high premium on education, and it certainly shows up in the churches. But this has not produced more power of the Holy Spirit. We all have the tendency to think that everyone is interested in the thing that interests us the most. Because a very high percentage of pastors are academician they think that everyone in their church would enjoy the same. Consequently a large portions of the preaching in Japan sounds very much like lectures in seminaries. At such times the power of the Holy Spirit is noticeably absent.
On the other end of the spectrum was Uncle Buddy Robinson of the Nazarenes. Buddy Robinson was a drunken cowboy with a speech impediment. When he got saved he wanted to be a preacher, so he bought himself a black suit and a large Bible. He rented the school house, and put up signs that there was to be a special meeting. Cowhands and folks from miles around came to hear this spectacle of the uneducated cowboy. When he started to speak the place was hilarious. Everyone was rollicking with laughter at that stupid cowhand with his speech impediment trying to act like a preacher. In his frustration, Buddy began to cry. As the tears coursed down his cheeks, the snickering calmed down, and the school house grew quiet. Poor Buddy stood there in his pulpit unable to communicate the message of life that had saved him, but soon cowhands took off their hats and began to go forward. The power of God came down on that meeting and some of the hardest men in town were saved. You don't get that with a fancy diploma hanging on your wall and a lot of letters after your name.
One of the hottest acts in Chiang Mai that I personally know is Paul and Marisa. Both of them are at the end of the line of folks you might expect to get saved. They both came from seriously flawed backgrounds. Neither one has spent one hour in Bible school, but the Lord has His hand on them like nothing else I know in town. I told you how Marisa went to a pre-chemo therapy session in the hospital, and the place looked like death row. Several hours later Paul went back to pick Marisa up, and he said it was like a baby shower. Two weeks later the same thing happened again. She has gone to the women's prison, and an hour later women are gathered around her straining to hear every word she says. Even the guards are impressed, and stand there listening. She can hold a crowd spell-bound for an hour at a lick and a loud protest when she quits. We have many very good pastors and missionaries here in Chiang Mai, but I challenge anyone who can come close to the amazing anointing she has and what it is producing. You can go to seminary for twenty years and have so many letters after your name that it take two sheets of paper to write your name and there is no way you could get 1/10th the power Marisa has.
The reason I told Luke that God's message was not HOW but WHO is because I have seen 30 years of that. I attended the missionary conferences in Karuizawa for 30 years and saw the fundamental emphasis of speakers coming year after year telling us how to do it. All the missionaries in Japan are frustrated and are desperate to know what works. They come each year with notebooks to learn how. And I have yet to see anything works.
The only exception I know in the missionary scene in Japan is Gotthold Beck and his work in Kichijoji. That is the only work I know of in post-war Japan that has gone forward just like it is supposed to. One time I asked Gotthold how many churches he had. Astonishingly he responded, “I don't know, but I do know that I have over 70 men who preach regularly. None of these men are Bible school graduates but they are producing results that is not being duplicated anyplace else in Japan.
This is one of the secretes of the revival in China is the house church movement where they have a huge number of lay-preachers who don't have the education, but are seeing astonishing results. It might be that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and maybe the world by wisdom knew not God but it may please God to save by the foolishness of preaching (1 Cor. 1:27,21). I don't think that is what they are teaching in most seminaries.
But maybe I am wrong.
Jesus is still Lord,
bill
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