Fatal Worship

Don: The concept of fatal worship was outlined by Paul, who contrasted it with true (or what we have been calling authentic) worship:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 1:18-26)

True worship is the worship of God as the Creator. False or fatal worship is the worship of the creature. Leviticus provides an illustration:

Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what the Lord spoke, saying,
‘By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy,
And before all the people I will be honored.’”

So Aaron, therefore, kept silent.

Moses called also to Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Aaron’s uncle Uzziel, and said to them, “Come forward, carry your relatives away from the front of the sanctuary to the outside of the camp.” So they came forward and carried them still in their tunics to the outside of the camp, as Moses had said. (Leviticus 10:1-5)

Nadab and Abihu were of the Levi tribe, which was responsible for conducting certain religious activities in the Israelite temple. Leviticus 9 gives the background of the sacrifice for which their fire was intended:

Now it came about on the eighth day that Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel; and he said to Aaron, “Take for yourself a calf, a bull, for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering, both without defect, and offer them before the Lord. Then to the sons of Israel you shall speak, saying, ‘Take a male goat for a sin offering, and a calf and a lamb, both one year old, without defect, for a burnt offering, … Then Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people and blessed them, and he stepped down after making the sin offering and the burnt offering and the peace offerings. Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting. When they came out and blessed the people, the glory of the Lord appeared to all the people. Then fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the portions of fat on the altar; and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces. (Leviticus 9:1-3, 22-24)

The fire on the altar of the sanctuary came directly from the presence of God. It is a divine, holy, and consuming fire—it consumes the sins of Man. It cannot therefore be a fire originated by Man. It is the same divine fire that came down from Heaven to consume Elijah’s sacrifice—and the stone altar on which it was offered—on Mount Carmel.

Nadab and Abihu were also “consumed” by such fire. The same Hebrew word for “consumed” was used for “ate” when Eve ate the forbidden fruit:

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. (Genesis 3:6)

But in what way were Nadab and Abihu consumed? One would expect them to have been incinerated, yet after they died they were carried away “still in their tunics.” What appears to have been consumed was the sin within them.

Worship is the acknowledgment that God is the Creator of life. False worship is to repudiate this and put ourselves in his place, as Nadab and Abihu put their own fire in place of God’s. The result of false worship is that our lives, and not our sins, are consumed. Thus, false worship is fatal worship.

True worship is defined by the first angel in the following passage, and false worship by the third angel:

And I saw another angel flying in midheaven, having an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth, and to every nation and tribe and tongue and people; and he said with a loud voice, “Fear God, and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come; worship Him who made the heaven and the earth and sea and springs of waters. [Here is the definition of true worship.]

And another angel, a second one, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who has made all the nations drink of the wine of the passion of her immorality.”

Then another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. [This dramatic but symbolic language, taken literally, has given rise to the false concept of an everlasting fiery hell.] And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.” Here is the perseverance of the saints who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus. (Revelation 14:6-12)

In the symbolic language of worship, Sabbath-day rest is the setting aside of business as usual to contemplate the creative and sustaining power of God:

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. (Genesis 2:1-3)

Whatever “the beast” in Leviticus is, it is clearly a created being—a creature. Therefore to worship it is to worship the creature, not the Creator, which is the criterion for false and fatal worship. The wrath of God, which it incurs, is symbolic in Revelation but concrete in Romans:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven… God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1: 1, 26-32)
In plain language, the wrath of God is simply to leave us to our own devices, but with great reluctance and compassion:

How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I surrender you, O Israel? (Hosea 11:8)

The hell fire in Revelation is also a non-consuming fire, which burns everlastingly without consuming, and is itself an affirmation of God’s everlasting creative power.

How could we know if we are at risk of fatal worship?

David: What’s at stake, it seems to me, is eternal life. We still retain whatever is left of our mortal lives, but risk losing eternal life. I accept the analysis that the violent language of Revelation may be taken as symbolic, yet I question the wisdom of using it since it is so easy to be misread literally, as nearly all Christians of my acquaintance seem to read it. How many people were killed in medieval times because they bore some mark that was interpreted as the mark of the beast? The Old Testament is so easily misunderstood, whereas the New Testament and particularly the teachings of Jesus are so simple, clear, and to the point, even if they are hard to follow.

Donald: It’s almost as if the Old and New Testaments are discussing two different Gods, one angry, harsh, wrathful, and to be feared; the other loving, gracious, merciful, and wanting to be loved.

Don: It points to a need for reconciliation between the two views.

Kiran: Presumably, the sacrifice at which Nadab and Abihu helped was conducted in a tent, since it took place during the exodus and the Israelites would have been living in tents. God protected them in the day in the form of a cooling cloud and at night in the form of a warming fire. This was a nice God. Could Nadab and Abihu have died from carbon monoxide poisoning? It would explain why they were not physically burned. But Moses would have interpreted their death differently and attributed it to their breaking with protocol, and this would have made people fearful. Jesus came to correct such misinterpretations of a petty God. Mary Magdalene broke the rules by committing adultery, yet Jesus forgave her repeatedly.

David: At least one thing is clear and unambiguous in the Old Testament: God’s dislike for the way we worshipped then and still worship today with our congregations and offerings and music:

“I hate, I reject your festivals,
Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies.
“Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings.
“Take away from Me the noise of your songs;
I will not even listen to the sound of your harps.
“But let justice roll down like waters
And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:21-24)

This is what you would expect from a God of love and mercy and compassion and justice who wants us to strive to replicate those attributes among one-another. It seems to me there is no such thing as fatal worship for such a God, such a lamb—as Jesus. Life, never death, emanated from him. He promises redemption, no matter what.

By our recent in-depth analysis, the wrath of God no longer means an angry God; it means a sad one, bereft at having to leave us to our own devices. In that case, to call it wrath (as the Bible does) is plain wrong. Wrath and sadness are not synonyms.

Don: It is true that some key words seem to have been badly mistranslated. But the Old Testament is the writer’s interpretation of life and truth and the world they inhabited as they saw and heard it. Jesus came to correct such things. He told his compatriots: “You have heard this, but I tell you this,” or “This is what you thought, but this is the reality.…” It was a tool that enabled Jesus to contrast his capital-T Truth with the small-t truth that people had hitherto held so dear. As Kiran noted, because of the prevalent worldview, the Israelites saw Nadab and Abihu drop dead and attributed it to an act of God, when it might (for all we know) have been the result of carbon monoxide poisoning. For the Israelites, it was their truth, it was what they believed.

David: To what extent are the form and nature of Adventist worship (corporate or individual) based upon instruction, ideas, and concepts, etc., drawn from the Old and New Testaments, respectively?

Donald: A large Amish and Mennonite community near us has a timeline of their progress since their movement was born. The timeline includes meetings and conferences they have held over the years. Examining that timeline, it struck me that in many respects the Adventist church parallels what they describe as going on at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. Our patterns of worship do not seem all that unique, apart from the day on which we worship. We could pretty much fit in a church of most other denominations. We’ve changed a few names (Sabbath school instead of Sunday school, etc.) but that seems more just to stake out an identity. We’re not really all that different. We’re following other denominations in starting to worship in large auditoriums and following other worship patterns that appear to be preferred by a growing number of modern Adventists.

Don: There probably was a time when we tended to be more Old Testament-ish and we may now be tending more to the New Testament. We are heavily rooted in Old Testament liturgy.

David: I was not looking to put Adventism on the spot with my question, but thought—from what I have experienced of other denominations—that your answers might well represent Christianity as a whole, which is what I am really getting at. To me, it is heartening if Christianity moves away from the Old Testament and its God of wrath and punishment and altars and sacrifices, and is evolving instead toward the the gentle and loving lamb of the God of the New Testament.

Kiran: The God of the Israelites was kind and loving during the exodus, living among them, supplying manna and shade and warmth as needed. He knew that to let them go their own way would be to abandon them to blistering hot days, bitterly cold nights, and hunger. That is a harsh thing for a father to do to his children, and as wrathful as he could be.

Donald: Parents may be sad or even heartbroken over the direction their children take, especially in adulthood when the parents no longer have much say in the matter. They may also become angry, which is perhaps the response to having their hearts broken.

Don: The wrath of God is so central to worship that it seems necessary to examine it. Allowing us to go our own way is more compatible with the God that Jesus portrays.

David: The father of the Prodigal Son, displayed no anger, no wrath; but only sadness or joy, depending on what the prodigal was up to. And the prodigal himself was ashamed but not in the least fearful about coming home. He was not in fear of his father. There can, by definition, be nothing—period!—to be afraid of in a God of love.

Donald: A church that was established near Chicago based upon a God of love was very successful but was criticized as being shallow. But it was not. This was still a Father that had expectations of his children, and the pastor didn’t let them forget it. As well, he divided the church services up into services for believers and services for seekers, on the basis that each needed a worship experience that the other would not feel comfortable with. That church now seats 8,000 people in three services, and is almost a denomination in its own right. A picturesque little while church a couple of miles down the road, which looked as though it might hold 150 people, is virtually empty. It seems that rejoicing in a loving, fatherly God is much more attractive to worshippers that the traditional God of wrath.

David: I think Jesus, gentle as may be, left his contemporaries and us in no doubt that the God of wrath concept was and is utterly wrong, which is why my mind is blown that even today, 2,000 years later, most churches still tolerate and in some cases even promote the wrathful and retributive God of the Old Testament. That Christianity is evolving towards Christianity is, I suppose, better than the alternative, but Lord! Why is it taking so long?

Don: Fifty years ago, our culture was to gather, for professional conferences and so on. Today, our culture seems to be tending to want to get the information via podcast or webcast at home instead of at a gathering. This probably affects worship as well.

David: Before the word was digitized, it had to be spread face-to-face. That no longer holds true. On the other hand, it is hard to see how a virtual, digital, Good Samaritan could have been much use to the robbery victim.

Don: That may lead us to a discussion of technology and worship.

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