This calls for a story. Years ago my wife and I were both on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ (that’s where we met). I had been involved with the local Crusade ministry at UNC-Chapel Hill, where I taught weekly LTC classes and assisted the local Campus Staff. In those days of the 1970s all Campus Staff had available to them a resource book officially known as the "Campus Crusade For Christ Campus Ministry Manual" (whether or not the beast still lives, I can’t say). It was the size of large city phone directory. Between its covers were everything a good Campus Crusader needed for life and godliness. Need a ten week bible study? It’s in there. Need the Four Spiritual Laws the size of an overhead transparency? It was in there. Need a six-month Leadership Training Class. It’s in there. Need instructions on personal hygiene and the need to wear clean underwear. Yep, it was in there (No, I’m not kidding. Many people coming into the movement were coming out of the hippie counter-culture of the day and were in need of, well, a bath!). The "Campus Ministry Manual" was "the book" where you could find just about anything you needed to lead your ministry, all with officially approved forms. And the truly distinguishing characteristic of the manual was its bright goldenrod color (with appropriate black lettering), which almost predictably gave rise to its nickname among Campus Staff (drum roll please . . . ) - "the Golden Calf".

O.K., at this point you’re probably asking what this has to do with bronze serpents, revival and what’s going on in Lakeland, Florida. Well, I’ve been asking myself the same question and, quite frankly, I haven’t been able make the segue either. But I love the story and this just seemed like a good place to throw it in. But I promise that if a good segue comes to me later, I’ll try to figure out a way to include it!. O.K., on to bronze serpents.

I know you’re familiar with the incident among God’s people recorded in Numbers 21, but let me bore you with a quick summary anyway. God’s people are wandering around in a wilderness of their own creation when they once again get "impatient" (any of this sound vaguely familiar?). They finally begin (once again) to whine and complain about the lack of accommodations, etc. God responds without warning by sending "fiery serpents" among the people who begin to die in significant numbers. The people repent and ask Moses to intervene and intercede with God. He instructs Moses to create an image of one of the serpents and to hoist it up on a pole for everyone to see. Whoever looks at the bronze serpent, though he was bitten, would live. It was an act of faith and obedience (and probably very "counter intuitive" - what good is looking at a snake on a pole going to do for a fatal snake bite?! Hello?!). Now, before leaving this passage I want to make just a couple of points. First, the serpents were the result of the people’s impatience on the journey God had them on (Hmmmmmm). Second, while God used the bronze replica of the serpent to heal the people (in other words, it was "a God-thing" for that generation), He never used it again.

O.K., 700 years have passed in the national experience of God’s people when we read the following:

It is now the reign of King Hezekiah, one of the "good" kings of Judah. A national spiritual awakening is underway and Hezekiah is cleansing the land of idols. And one of the "idols" he must get rid of is the bronze serpent which has been preserved since the days of Moses. It has not simply been "preserved". It is now being worshiped: "for until those days the sons of Israel burned incense to it". Offering incense to any image constitutes an act of worship, and that is idolatry in it’s rawest form. But the people had found a way to "soften" their idolatry by referring to the object of their idolatry in dismissive terms. They called it "Nehushtan" which translates "that bronze thing". It’s nothing important, the people would say, "its just that bronze thing". Funny how we find ways to minimize our idolatries, both then and now.

This weekend my wife and I took our young friend, Jamie, to see the new Narnia movie, "Prince Caspian". It’s a good movie and I would encourage you to go. At one point toward the end, when the battle is intense, Lucy has an encounter with Aslan, the great lion. "Why haven’t you rushed in to save us, like last time," Lucy asks. "Things don’t happen the same way twice, dear one," Aslan replies.(Hmmm.) Military leaders are frequently accused of preparing to fight the last war instead of the next war. As Christians we are often guilty of idolizing the last move of God rather than repenting, seeking and preparing for the next move of God. But that’s not how God works. Anytime God "touches down" in a "divine visitation" whether personally or corporately, there is a very real risk of that event becoming a Bronze Serpent to which we secretly begin offering incense, and which God must eventually break into pieces, because it has become an idol that He can no longer use. Revival isn’t the result of a formula. It is the result of a personal visitation by a personal God, who always repeats Himself but never in the same way twice. But once God moves, we tend to turn His unique dealing into a formula or a Bronze Serpent.

My friend Wolfgang Simson likes to share what he calls his steps for turning any blessing into a curse. They run something like this (I’m sure Wolf will let me know if I get them wrong!):

Step 1: Someone has a blessed experience (like healing or "revival").

Step 2: Someone creates a story or testimony about their blessed experience (nothing like a youtube video!).

Step 3: Someone creates a methodology to instantly re-create that blessed experience (like an "impartation"?).

Step 4: Someone creates an institution or organization for the world wide marketing of that methodology (time to incorporate, copyright, trademark and produce some video training classes to sell on how you can do this too!)

Step 5: It becomes an institution (Wahoo!)

Step 6: Someone lays their hand upon the plow and looks back and disqualifies themselves for service in the Kingdom. In other words: it’s over. We lay our hand upon the plow, but we look back at our Bronze Serpents and our idolatry disqualifies us for what God wants to do next.

Some of us are trying to lay our hand upon the plow of the new thing God wants to do, but we are looking back at our bronze serpent and insisting that God do it that way, rather than His way. That Bronze Serpent may represent what God did in the past (either personally or corporately), but it does NOT represent what He wants to do now & in the future. There are entire Christian organizations, ministries & denominations which have become bronze serpents. One of their primary purposes for existing is to memorialize what God once did, and to offer incense to a bronze serpent of God’s past dealings. Whatever that Bronze Serpent might be in your own spiritual life, or in mine, it now represents the greatest barrier to us moving forward with God into the new season He wants to bring us into. I will dare to say that every one of us reading (or writing!) this newsletter has a bronze serpent in our lives that we need to give up and let God destroy in order to set us free for the new thing He wants to do in and through us in this upcoming move of God. What’s the bronze serpent in your life? Deal with it . . . before God has to.

If you haven’t yet heard about what is occurring in Lakeland, Florida under the ministry of Todd Bentley, you probably soon will (if for no other reason than the PR machine is in high gear on this one). Let me begin saying that I find myself in the uncomfortable position of agreeing with J. Lee Grady, Editor of Charisma Magazine (you’ll be able to read his commentary on Lakeland via the link below). I want to support and bless everything that God is doing, whether in Lakeland or anywhere else. My life’s goal is not to ask God to bless what I am doing, but rather to find what God is already doing and blessing and to ask His permission to join in. In addition, as one who has dedicated himself to fasting and praying for a new spiritual outpouring for the past 12 years, I am keenly aware of the high level of expectation currently hovering over the Church regarding a coming spiritual outpouring. I share that sense of expectation. But I want it to be the "real deal" and not some bronze serpent that has been swept up into a worldwide PR machine of human invention.

I recently received the following e-mail from someone on this list. Please read carefully, and ask yourself if there is a "Bronze Serpent" here:

Did you see it? Allow me. First, I have no doubt that the Israelites of Hezekiah’s day felt that they too were simply "honoring the fathers" when they offered incense to "that bronze thing". I genuinely doubt that it ever occurred to most of them that they were practicing idolatry - worshiping some past thing God had done in the days of their fathers. "Honoring the fathers" can lead to bizzar things, even idolatry. Second, there has been a strong undercurrent for many years among Pentecostals to see a return of the Pentecostal healing crusades of the 1940s and 50s. Prophesying such a return has been a Pentecostal cottage industry for as long as I can remember. To me, in my limited perspective, it looks and sounds suspiciously like a bronze serpent - the worship and pursuit of what God once did, but not of what He intends to do. And I have discovered in my limited 37 years of Christian experience that God sometimes gives us what we ask for, because He knows that we are unable or unwilling to receive what He wants to give us.

What follows are simply my personal observations, as a student of the history of revival, for what they are worth. I have not been to Lakeland, although I have watched some of the streaming video now available on numerous sites. I don’t want to play "coy" so let me place my cards out on the table. If you haven’t guessed already I think the Lakeland phenomenon (a better word at this point than "movement") is a bronze serpent, an effort to resurrect and promote an old move under the guise of a new move. Could I be wrong? Of course I could. That’s why I want to offer the following observations.

1. Approaching God With Open Hearts. Whether Lakeland or any other phenomenon, we need to approach it and God with open hearts and open minds. I want everything God wants to offer His Church, even if it doesn’t fit my preconceived paradigm of what I thought God might do. Otherwise I am simply attempting to fashion God and His dealings into my own image. May God keep us all open to every move of His Spirit, all the while discerning the gifts and distinguishing the various spirits.

2. "This" Versus "That". From all that I have seen and heard thus far (apart from the noise of the promotion and hype machine that is now in high gear), the Lakeland phenomenon appears to be a Pentecostal healing crusade on steroids. Numerous Pentecostal healing evangelists have been conducting such meetings for years. Benny Hinn has been filling arenas like the Lakeland Center for years with his healing crusades. Why were those NOT a new worldwide move of God but this one under Todd Bentley is? Hamilton Filmalter, a South African healing evangelist and acquaintance of mine, does evangelistic healing crusades in Pakistan with crowds numbering in the tens of thousands. The videos of his meetings with people being healed are more impressive than anything I have seen out of Lakeland. Why is that not the beginning of a worldwide move of God, but Lakeland is? The only difference I can see so far is that Bentley is part of a much better promotional network, including local "Impartation" meetings springing up around the country.

3. Anointing Versus Approval. Much has been made about Todd Bentley’s eccentric behavior (tattoos, piercings, stage antics, etc.). My view is that God uses imperfect people simply because that’s all the clay He has to work with (which means there is still hope for yours truly). But this raises a valid issue, namely, our tendency to mistake God’s anointing for God’s approval. God anoints His gifts in us because He graciously uses imperfect people - we hold His treasure in earthen vessels. Get over it. But when He chooses to do so we tend to mistake His anointing of His gift for His approval of our lifestyle. In other words, we tend to say: "God is blessing my gift and anointing my ministry, so He must approve of all the things I do" (lifestyle, dumb opinions, eccentric behavior, tattoos & piercings, lousy taste in music, stage antics, etc., etc.). Sorry, but NO! Never mistake God’s anointing for God’s approval. One is a manifestation of God’s grace. The other is a manifestation of our character. And always remember that you will destroy with your character what you build with your gift. One of the greatest threats to any movement is the unconfronted and unhealed character flaws of it’s leadership.

4. The Danger of "Pendulum Pushing". During the Welsh Revival of 1904 Evan Roberts observed that when there was a "lull" in the services, that’s when people were tempted "to push the pendulum rather than raise the weights." (O.K., if you technoweenies are unfamiliar with weight-driven pendulum clocks then you probably missed the whole point, but I’ll leave it to you to figure it out!). To update the metaphor, when things get quiet and there is a lull in the meeting, that’s when people tend to turn up the volume on the sound system. In the absence of power, volume will do. Ministries or movements which build themselves on "visions, signs & wonders" are uniquely susceptible to "pendulum pushing" by experience-oriented people who are always looking for "more". This is why people flock to meetings touting gold dust, gemstones, angelic visitations, etc. Bentley "pushes the pendulum" with talk of angelic visitations in his meetings. Quite frankly, we’ve had them too, but we do not spend time talking about them or using them to promote meetings. Besides, who do you want to guide your meetings; Jesus or an angel named "Emma" (tough call there, but I think I’m going to go with Jesus). In addition Bentley talks about having visited the "third heaven" where he met aborted babies who "need people to adopt them". The Apostle Paul visited the third heaven, too, but wasn’t permitted to talk about what he saw there. Apparently, Bentley feels no such restriction. Sorry, but I trust Paul more than I do Todd. To me, this smacks loudly of "pendulum pushing" for all the wrong purposes. Beware meetings built on "pendulum pushing".