The Evangelical Within

Copyright © 2014 by Faith & Terry Keiner.

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-4990-2624-5

                Softcover        978-1-4990-2625-2

                eBook             978-1-4990-2623-8

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Rev. date: 05/23/2014

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Acknowledgments

I suppose that we’re like most people in certain respects. One those areas is when it comes time to tell all of the people who’ve had influence on our lives and directly impacted the books we’ve already written, and will continue to write with God’s Grace. We’ve already spoken to a number of our personal friends who fit into these categories’, and let them know just how crucial to both our lives and the books the books we’re writing they are. I do want to take an extra moment here though, and thank them again. Also, I want to do my best to let certain people, and you’ll know who you are, just how important they are in our lives. Our parents and families, Jim and Maria, Don and Susan, HoneyBee,…you’ll guys, along with our Lord God, are the most important part of our lives. You’ll all know how important writing is too us, and I just want you all to know that if God Himself gave us a choice to either write or have the lot of you in our lives, I would never write another word. Love you’ll guys, and thanks for simply being who you’ll are! Our lives are Blessed tremendously with you’ll in them.

There is another group of people who have been a huge Blessing, particularly in the writing of The Evangelical Within. The crew at Xlibris Publishing are an answered prayer for us. When we were in the process of getting ready to take the leap, we’d heard and read about so many horror stories from other authors. Xlibris, thanks for being and doing exactly what you presented yourselves as. We’re looking forward to a long relationship between us and Xlibris.

Again, thanks.

Preface

The Evangelical Within

By Faith & Terry Keiner

It’s important to note that Scriptural Evangelicalism, which is best described as Biblical Theology, doesn’t deviate from God’s [Inspired] Word in any detail at all. Does this sound as if I’m advocating Scriptural Evangelicalism? Or that maybe I consider myself to be an [Biblical] Evangelical Christian? Righto and righto!! I sure do hope that this is the impression people come away with from any type of interaction with me. I firmly believe that everything that is relevant to any part of the New Testament Believer’s life has to have been successfully tested by what I think of as a ‘test of the Scriptures.’ This is why I feel so strongly about Scriptural Evangelicalism being recognized as the only complete and accurate Biblical Theology necessary for man to be complete and perfect in Christ. This is also why I pray that every time anyone picks up any book other than the Bible, they also pick up their Bible, just to have it handy. This is something I have schooled myself to do, even when reading work put together by other authors that I’ve read before or know personally. Everything has to be tested by the truths found only in the Scriptures.

Man’s understanding of Evangelicalism has been skewed over and over again by a number of things, ranging from unlearned teaching, biased preaching, and uninformed writing, just to name a few. The purpose I’ve been called to here isn’t to set the record straight, or to answer specific questions in regards to this subject. My purpose here is to excite people about the subject matter, and to send them away with more questions unanswered than when they picked up the book. My purpose here is to stir up within people the desire to know more about Scriptural Evangelicalism than the book presents, and to point those people in the right directions to find the answers they need.

My prayer for those around me, whether I’m preaching, teaching, or writing, is that everyone will be blessed by the listening, note-taking, or reading at least as much as I’ve been by the researching, presenting, and the writing.

Blessings Brothers & Sisters before the Lord,

Terry Keiner

Absarokee MT

The Evangelical Within

Introduction

The established purpose of this work is threefold. We’ll be looking at some basics, such as Knowledge, History, and Application, as regards Evangelicals and the work they do in and through the much larger Evangelicalism, which contrary to what most of us has been taught, did not originate, or come into being, with the developing Early Church. A very important point to be made clear right in the beginning of things is that we have the need to not only identify and understand the three areas we’ve just identified, but to get the ‘full meal deal’ we also need to explore the other side of the coin, so to speak. I never understood the real need for this until some years ago when I was in American Samoa, or Pago Pago. I couldn’t get some of the people native to the island to understand the idea of extreme cold. The folks I was trying to explain the idea of ‘freezing cold’ too had never left their island, in their whole lives, and probably never would. Finally, two things dawned on me. First, did they really need to be able to relate to water freezing and snow falling? Second, they couldn’t understand the opposite of the only thing they’d ever known, which was the tropical warm climate of their home. I’ve never forgotten that lesson, and because of that experience I feel that I have a better ability to being able to not only understand myself, but to convey to others as well, different aspects of a given issue or situation. So, that is our goal here, to explore the whole enchilada, so far as what an Evangelical is and isn’t, and to have a clear vision on how this should apply to the life of every New Testament Believer.

While assuredly not the most misunderstood or used word or concept in the Bible, the word Evangelical, and its several different forms, are at least in the top ten. As is the case most often when a word or concept is continually misused, what may have been a simple omission or misunderstanding originally can quickly become a tradition, or as we shall see, a cause for bias or the basis for prejudice. The longer these types of situations exist, the harder it becomes to rectify them by correction through education, because by then a whole new set of obstacles are evident. We’ve all heard the saying, ‘You can’t teach an old dog a new trick.’ In most cases, people just plain out don’t want to either be shown that they’re wrong, or taught something new, or both. We get set in our ways, and that includes what we think of certain things, how we react in a given situation, and what we like and don’t like. The bottom line is that most of us just don’t like change, and we’ll fight it every step of the way.

In addition to addressing misconceptions and the lack of knowledge in some cases, we’ll also be creating a historical timeline of sorts. The purpose of our timeline will be to bring not only the concept, but the working application of both the Evangelical and Evangelicalism down through the ages of Biblical history. In doing this, our intention is to develop the understanding that being an Evangelical and ‘Evangelicalism’ isn’t something that only began with the walking of our CHRIST as a Man. This is not to say that we’ll find that the meaning and application of being an ‘Evangelic’ carries the same burdens and obligations for the New Testament Believer as it did for the Old Testament Worshipper. We will find that while the basic mechanics of the concept are similar, the everyday application does have some significant differences.

Last, but by no means least, we need to have a clear vision of how being an Evangelical fulfills prophecy spoken by the Old Testament prophets. We also need to connect the dots, so to speak, between an academic knowledge of what an Evangelical is, and a practical understanding of the day by day life of an Evangelical.

My prayer for all who read this work is that they will be as blessed with the reading of it as much as I am with the writing!

The Evangelical Within

By Faith & Terry Keiner

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

Part 1 - Knowledge

Chapter 1

- Old Testament Evangelicalism and Evangelicals

Part 2 - History

Chapter 2

- History of the Old Testament Evangelicalism and Evangelicals.

Chapter 3 -

Evangelicalism and Evangelicals during the time of Christ.

Chapter 4 -

The Roles of Evangelicalism Evangelicals in The New Testament Believer’s Worship of God.

Chapter 5 -

How the relevance of the Evangelical and Evangelicalism influenced the formation of the Early Church.

Part 3 - Application

Chapter 6

- Identify changes to Evangelicalism and Evangelicals during the history of Christianity.

Chapter 7

- Denominational influences on Evangelicalism and Evangelicals.

Summary

At the end of the day.

Index of Biblical References

The Evangelical Within

Part 1 - Knowledge

Chapter 1 - Old Testament Evangelicalism and Evangelicals

While there are marked differences in the application of the word ‘Evangelical’ between the Testaments, the basic definition remains the same. The Old Testament usage of the word, and by relation the concept of the word, is found consistently to be as a verb in both the Hebrew and Aramaic languages. The certain definition of the word is to ‘announce’, and that is directly related by Biblical connotation to ‘good tidings’.

evan·gel·i·cal

adjective \ˌē-ˌvan-ˈje-li-kəl, ˌe-vən-\

: of or relating to a Christian sect or group that stresses the authority of the Bible, the importance of believing that Jesus Christ saved you personally from sin or hell, and the preaching of these beliefs to other people

: having or showing very strong and enthusiastic feelings

Just one of many examples of the ‘delivery’ or ‘announcement’ of good tidings was made by the lepers to the people of Samaria. The people there had been under siege by the Syrians, and had just about been starved to death. Elisha had prophesied not that things would change, or that the Syrian army would end the siege, but that by the very next day food would be extremely cheap to buy.

‘Then Elisha said, Hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the LORD: ‘Tomorrow about this time a seah of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, at the gate of Samaria.’’ (II Kings 7:1 NKJV)

What we have here is the first of several deliverances, or announcements, of good