RAPTURE NOTES
The Alpha Course
By Chris Hand
Is the popular Alpha Course
leading people astray?
Many people have been greatly impressed by the Alpha course.
Designed to be an introduction to the Christian faith through talks, video
presentations, small-group discussions and a special weekend-away, lots of
churches are now employing it as part of their outreach.
In the eyes of many it has been a run-away-success and its fame has spread far
beyond the UK, and Holy Trinity Brompton, the London church where it originated.
It is no exaggeration to say it has spread right across the world and is now
finding friends in several continents. It has been adapted so as to be
accessible to young people and has also proved versatile enough to be used in
prisons, schools and places of work.
Churches in inner cities and rural areas have found it sufficiently flexible for
their needs. Future plans for expansion suggest that Alpha is very much here to
stay. What is more, many people claim to have been helped through going on the
Alpha course and believe it has brought them an understanding of God and how to
respond to Him. Testimonies and accounts of wonderful things that have happened
to individuals abound. In the light of all this, surely there cannot be anything
wrong with it?
With so many in today's society gripped by materialism and atheism, can Alpha be
anything other than a good thing? As young people become hopelessly enmeshed in
a godless culture, should we not applaud the efforts of Alpha and help make it a
success?
We wished that the answers to these questions could be an emphatic Yes. But
closer examination of Alpha prevents such a clean bill of health being given to
it. Why this concern? There are six vital reasons we would like to bring to your
attention.
1. The God of Alpha is not the God of the Bible.
Alpha quotes from the Bible a lot. It cannot be faulted on
that. But for all this it does not present us with the God who has revealed
Himself in the Bible. There is much we could say about the God of the
Scriptures. He is the Creator of the universe and the one who upholds it and
maintains it. He is a great King and Sovereign over all He has made. We are
challenged to ponder:
" To whom then will you liken me. Or to whom shall I be equal? says the Holy
One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things, Who brings
out their host by number; He calls them all by name, By the greatness of his
might and the strength of his power; Not one is missing." (Isaiah 40:25-26)
"He is high and holy. He dwells in heaven and is all-glorious. Nothing impure can
live in His presence. For those that fall short of His glory and perfection,
there is judgement that follows." (Romans 6:23)
Now of course much more could be said. But you will have to search hard and long
in Alpha to find a God that resembles the One just described. Nothing about Him
as Creator, nothing about Him as a great King. He is assumed rather than
described. The Bible tells us "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of
the living God" (Hebrews 10:31). But we would not be any wiser of this from
going on the Alpha Course. It simply fails to tell us anything we need to know
about God.
2. The plight of man in Alpha is not as serious as
in the Bible.
Man's state until he is reconciled to God is not a happy one.
Psalm 7:11 tells us God is a just judge, And - "God is angry with the wicked
every day". The gospel of John makes this abundantly plain: He who believes in
the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see
life, but the wrath of God abides on him. (John 3:36) Man without God is subject
to the wrath of God. We are not slightly displeasing to Him. It is not that we
have occasional faults and foibles that surface. It is what we are by nature.
The apostle Paul explains that we are "by nature children of wrath" (Ephesians
2:3). This is very strong language and leaves us in no doubt. We have offended
against God and broken His holy law. We are sinners in His sight and deserve
condemnation. It is as straightforward as that.
By contrast, Alpha does not use strong terms and leaves us rather unclear about
where we stand. As one follows its argument, sin is more to be seen in the way
we have messed up our lives (Gumbel 1994: 44,47). It is an inward-looking
description of man's state that majors on his feelings of fearfulness (Gumbel
1994:22). It is a picture of man predominated by his feelings of sadness and
unhappiness (Gumbel 1994:12-22). sup1/sup.
Now of course these things are all true. This is what life is like for sinners.
It is a miserable life for them. Yet this is to major on the consequences of sin
rather than sin itself. These are the miseries that follow inevitably because we
are sinners. The problem, however, is more serious than simply sin's
consequences. Alpha fails to tell us that ultimately we have offended God and
courted His displeasure. We have sinned against God and are justly under His
judgement. We are people "...having no hope and without God in the world"
(Ephesians 2:12). For all the gravity of sin, Alpha never allows us to feel too
bad about ourselves. It never permits us to see ourselves in God's sight. That
is a big omission.
3. The Jesus Christ of Alpha is not the Jesus
Christ of the Bible.
This may surprise us. Alpha appears to have quite a lot to say
about the Lord Jesus. It tells us what He did, what He said, the claims He made
about Himself and establishes beyond doubt that the resurrection actually took
place.
But despite having part of the course entitled 'Why did Jesus die?', it is
unable in the final analysis to answer this question. This is a core issue.
Christ died because God's holy justice required it. Our lives were forfeit. We
had sinned and were helpless. Christ had to die in the place of sinners who
truly deserved to bear the penalty for their sin. Christ's death propitiated or
appeased the wrath of God (Romans 3:25,1 John 2:2). Alpha has not described God
to us and therefore has no meaningful place for God's wrath. Christ's death ends
up having to satisfy some abstract principle of justice that has somehow become
detached from God Himself.
Alpha's own illustrations and attempts to explain get us no closer to the heart
of the matter (Gumbel 1994:19-20;47-48). Christ's death upon the cross becomes
an act of love but without any real connection with the reality of judgement and
God's wrath. All we are left with is the impression that Christ has sacrificed
Himself to rescue us from the consequences of sin because that was required by
some impersonal and rather arbitrary justice system. It is all rather
mysterious. This is not the Christ of Scripture.
4. The love of God in Alpha is not the love of the
God of the Bible.
The Bible is clear that 'God is love' (1 John 4:8). Alpha
tells us this too. There is a difference, however. In Alpha God is love and
little else. There is not much else that He can be as the course has missed all
the aspects of His great character that refer to His holiness and glory. We are
left with love.
The God of the Bible is love but it is love that is seen in His willingness to
save sinners. We are told, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
everlasting life." (John 3:16)
Why did the Lord come? To save sinners. What moved God to do this? His love.
This is what makes His love so special and wonderful. It is that such a holy and
glorious God should save sinners. This is clear from Romans 5:8 as well, But God
demonstrates his own love towards us, in that while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us. God's love is evident in that He acted to save sinners. Here
we see the glory of Christ's love. But without the context of God's holiness and
absolute perfection, the meaning of that love is lost to us. Instead God merely
becomes an emotional being of unconditional love divorced from any true
understanding of His true nature and being. Alpha's God will give us an
emotional high and make us feel special. The God of the Bible will give us
eternal life. There is a big difference between the two.
5. The Holy Spirit of Alpha is not the Holy Spirit
of the Bible.
There is more space in Alpha devoted to the Holy Spirit than
to the Lord Jesus. This is surprising given what Scripture says about the Holy
Spirit (John 16:13-14). Why does Alpha do this? It is because Alpha's 'Holy
Spirit' is the agent for giving to people an 'experience' that is going to make
God real to them.
The main focus for this is the 'Holy Spirit Weekend-Away'. People doing Alpha
are told to expect all manner of things might happen to them. We are told,
Sometimes, when people are filled, they shake like a leaf in the wind. Others
find themselves breathing deeply as if almost physically breathing in the
Spirit. (Gumbel 1994:136). It is not restricted to this, however.
Physical heat sometimes accompanies the filling of the Spirit and people
experience it in their hands or some other part of their bodies. One person
described a feeling of 'glowing all over'. Another said she experienced 'liquid
heat'. Still another described 'burning in my arms when I was not hot'. (Gumbel
1994:136)
This is all very interesting but it has nothing to do with
the Holy Spirit as known through the pages of Scripture. Nowhere are any
phenomena such as these attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit. Alpha's
'Spirit' appears to work in ways that lie outside the confines of Scripture.
6. Conversions in Alpha are not like conversions in
the Bible.
On the Day of Pentecost, Peter's hearers were '...cut to the
heart...'(Acts 2:37). The Philippian jailer asked urgently 'Sirs, what must I do
to be saved?' (Acts 16:30). They understood that they were sinners. They
realised that they needed mercy. It was clear to them as it was to the believers
in Thessalonica that the gospel was '...in truth, the word of God...' (1
Thessalonians 2:13).
Conversions in Alpha come differently from this. More
often than not it is an emotional experience about the love of God but without
any understanding of holiness or the need to be saved from our sins.
There is no recognition of the need to repent and to turn to God as a matter of
life and death. People feel forgiven but do not seem to have realised the depth
of their sinfulness or repented of their sin. People feel cleansed without
having consciously put their faith in Christ. Often this happens when people are
in some ecstatic state. Alpha may regard this as conversion but it is not what
we find in the Bible.
For all its efforts, Alpha does not help us to know God. It does not describe
the true and living God for us. It does not diagnose man's condition accurately
enough. It is unable to adequately account for Christ's death, and substitutes an
unbiblical view of God's love and God's Holy Spirit in its place. To cap it all,
the whole issue of conversion is grievously misunderstood. By sparing us the
'bad news' about ourselves, it is unable to supply us with the 'good news'.
The needs of our souls for biblical and life-saving truth are far too precious
and important to be ought down to this level. It needs the unvarnished truth of
the Scriptures. We may merely succeed in adding people to our churches who have
never been converted. That will be no help to them and no help to our churches
either.
To leave someone believing they are converted when they are
not is an awful prospect. Yet that is what we are risking using defective tools
such as Alpha, 'having a form of godliness but denying its power' (2 Timothy
3:5). We must do better. Failure is too high a price to pay.
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