My odyssey road trip across southwestern America goes on. I am writing today from Flagstaff, Ariz., where I’ve been temporarily sidelined by a full-blown cold that set in last night as I slept in the back of my freezing cold Isuzu Rodeo.

I had just come from an overnight stay in sunny and warm Las Vegas—a friend convinced me that I, as a journalist, simply could not skip Sin City—and it was still plenty comfortable out when I went to go to sleep after 9 o’clock off I-40 on Route 66 in Seligman, Ariz.

This changed dramatically, however, after midnight. My sleeping bag designed for arctic climbers, which I use only as a blanket since I can’t deal with its zippered mummy position, could only do so much.

I will now make my long-anticipated journey into Grand Canyon National Park (somewhere I’ve never been, as is true of Arizona period) tomorrow morning. I simply didn’t want to risk having to spend yet another bone-chiller in the flattened-out back of my SUV, which a friend in Chicago has dubbed “Lisa’s Homeless Shelter.” (Editor’s Note: Be assured I will post an entry soon on these latest travel stops.)

*****

Listening to some old sermons on CD while driving, I came across this great passage from Jordan dating back to the 2005 Soldiers in Training conference:

“In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, (theologians) began to think about how your soul and your spirit kind of interplay in your inner man and they developed what they called the doctrine of the kenosis.

“Of course, kenosis (theology) is as old as Philippians 2, folks; it didn’t just show up in the 17 and 1800s. Paul thought about it originally. . .

“After the 6^th and 7^th century, there’s no doctrinal development at all in the institutional church for almost a thousand years. Until you come to the 15 and 1600s, and then there’s the Reformation and the great topic in theology called Soteriology—salvation.

“And the issue of salvation in the Reformation was really the issue of the application of redemption. The verse in Romans 1:16 says, ‘For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.’ If you don’t get the proposition straight the rest of that verse won’t help you . . .

“A couple of weeks ago the pope died. Listen, I don’t know if you’ve ever read any of the writings of Pope John Paul II; I have. And this man talks constantly about Christ dying for his sins, about Jesus Christ being resurrected, about Him being ‘God in human flesh come to intercede in the sufferings of humanity.’

“He was schooled and he genuinely filled his mind on a daily basis, it seems, with all that information. But that verse in Romans 1:6 doesn’t say that’s how you get saved. It says the way you get saved is by relying exclusively on that information.

“See how close you can get to it and miss it? You can get real close! It can look—you can have all the Is dotted, Ts crossed, the doctrinal statement exactly right and look like you’re there, but miss it.

“Because having it or not having it isn’t there (in organized religion’s theology); it’s over here (in the Bible). It’s understanding that the life is ‘Christ in you the hope of glory’; not how shiny your doctrinal statement is.

“Romans 1:16 is a verse of Scripture you need to get clearly fixed in your understanding about the clarity of the gospel. That issue of the proposition—and that’s where the ‘Lordship Salvation’ comes in, that’s where the ‘Easy-Believism’ stuff comes in—all that confusing stuff you hear comes in from just a failure to make the issue the issue and the issue is relying exclusively on faith, no works involved.

“And it’s not just knowing all about it—people say, ‘Well, they didn’t really have saving faith; they weren’t really . . .’ Listen, faith is faith is faith! There ain’t but one kind of faith and that’s just faith!

“ ‘If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater,’ says I John 5:9. If you know how to trust somebody who tells you, ‘We’re going to meet at a certain time at a certain location,’ and you follow the map, and come that day because you took their word for it, you know how to have faith.

“That’s how you have faith in God. The thing about God is, though, He’ll never lie to you. I might. God won’t make a mistake; I sure will. God won’t let you down. The witness of God is greater, deals in greater things—eternity.

“But faith is faith. There’s no value in my faith; the value’s in what I’m trusting. And what God says is, ‘You have to trust me exclusively—nothing else.’ And that’s what quote ‘saving faith’ is. But that’s a Calvinistic term because they think that there’s a bunch of merits and different kinds of faith, and that’s this theology business.

“Do you think anybody understood justification by grace through faith before Martin Luther? Sure they did. Where do you think he heard about it?! We’re going to see there are people all through church history . . . For 1,600 years there’ve been people preaching it. Luther was just a guy with a lot of political clout who came to believe it and made the headlines.”

*****

Jordan went on, “The only visible, organized religious system that God ever established was the nation Israel. That’s why if you can’t identify the difference between Israel and the Body of Christ, you’re never going to get straight the issue of where the real life of the Body of Christ really is.

“Institutions, councils, crusades, church boards, worship services, images, clerical garb—all that stuff is not the issue. That’s focusing on things that aren’t the issue. The issue is sound doctrine, truth, I Timothy 2:4: ‘Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.’

“So, to study real church history, what are you going to study? Well, you’re going to study what is the real issue, aren’t you? Which would be people, saints and sound doctrine. It would be the outworking of sound doctrine through God’s people, not the institutions of religionized Christendom.

“You understand when you read a church history book, most of them are really giving the history of the ‘anti-church’? The false church?

“There’s a guy who calls us ‘hyper-dispensationalists.’ You haven’t lived until you’ve been called an ‘ultra-dispensationalist.’ I got a friend who responds, ‘Well, if I’m a hyper, you’re a subtra.’ In other words, ‘If I went too far, you didn’t go far enough.’

*****

What I wish I could make the people who dismiss me as a “hyper-dispensationalist” understand is that, according to the Bible, Believers will one day participate in the running of the government of the heavens and our job assignments will be based upon our grasp of the Word.

In II Timothy 3:7, Paul warns about those who are ‘ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.’ In heaven, people will always be coming to more and more knowledge about the truth.

Jordan confirms, “Just as one event in your life leads to another event to another event and causes maturity and growth, and understanding and expansion of knowledge, everything God wants you to know is already in the Book, but you’re going to have an eternity to learn about it.”