God's Word Without Glasses

I was thankful God directed me to the teachers He did, local and national, when I was a new Christian.  Bob Mumford and Derek Prince were the two main Charismatic leaders whose teaching I followed.  They, with Don Basham, Ern Baxter, and Charles Simpson joined together in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the early '70s to hear and spread God's word for that time.

I always admired that these men, each having his own successful individual ministry, willingly entered into covenant with each other.  To teach and live the Kingdom of God, they submitted their ministries, their teachings, and their personal walks to each other.

I admired their integrity.  After Derek Prince was widowed, he met a woman he was convinced God told him would be his wife.  But Prince submitted his re-marriage to the others.  When the other men counseled against the marriage, he parted from his fiancee.  It was only after the other men became convinced God approved the re-marriage, and gave their approval, that Prince and his second wife were wed.

More importantly, these leaders showed public integrity.  When they perceived that the "Shepherding" movement that grew from their collaboration had gone beyond scripture's teaching, Prince, Mumford and Simpson distanced themselves from that movement and publicly repented their involvement in it.  (Basham and Baxter had passed away in the meantime.)

They were very different men. I consider Prince my mentor in the faith.  I was baptized in the Spirit after one of his teaching-meetings, and thank God for his teachings then, and in all my Christian walk since.  Prince was born in India in a British military family, and had been a fellow in Philosophy at Cambridge University before he became a Christian.  His scriptural teaching was as thorough, logical, and penetrating as his academic training, and always powerfully spoke God's word to my heart.

Bob Mumford had been a knock-about American kid, with divorced parents and a 9th-grade education.  His teaching style was as folksy and humorous as Derek Prince' was intellectual and disciplined.  Bob used to say that when people were laughing, he could hit them in the teeth with the gospel, and never even split their lip.  I loved the teaching of both men, and loved the contrasting ways God made His word memorable !

One teaching of Bob's I especially remember was about wearing "glasses" when we read scripture.  As he put it, "If you're wearing your Baptist glasses, you can find water baptism in the Song of Solomon."

We all know what he means.  People can always "find" what they want to find in the Bible.  The problem is that's only their prelude for reading out of the Bible what they wanted to find.  We wear our "glasses" because we think they'll help us "read" the Bible better.  They actually make us blind to the Truth: which the Bible is.

We've all heard hundreds of these "the Bible says/teaches..." deceptions.  Christian clowns or white supremacy, prosperity gospel, abortion "rights," gun "rights," unitarianism, "Christian socialism" and "Christian conservatism," bus-ministry, capitalism, monarchy and democracy, cremation, angel-worship, slavery...  Whatever glasses you choose to wear, you can "find" it in the Bible.

(If you can't "find" it, you can always put it in the Bible by way of false "translation"...like the Jehovah's Witnesses' New World version of scripture.  Or invent a "Bible" of your own, like the Book of Mormon.  For those who want to hear something other than the truth of the Bible, the ways of lying, and the lies, are infinite.)

Truth is One, Jesus.  My experience in life fully convinces me that all Truth is in the Bible.  The way to get to more of Him is to go further into what the Bible says.  Jesus is also the One Way.  When we take our pet theories and doctrines out of scripture context, we move away from Jesus, and take scripture the wrong way.  Taken out the unity Truth IS, our "proof-text" scriptures become not-quite-truth.  Even in the natural, we don't consider a bit of Frank's body, removed from Frank's body, is still somehow "Frank."
 
There's no secret to reading scripture truthfully.  Come to scripture with an honest heart: read scripture without your glasses.  Ask the Spirit to "lead you into all truth," as Jesus promised He would.

Everybody knows this.  The amazing thing in these dark times...when our One Hope of Life is The Way we follow The Truth...is that so very, very, few do this.