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You Don’t Care About God’s Standard or God’s Approval: More on Virtual Christianity

November 19, 2019 / 2 Comments on You Don’t Care About God’s Standard or God’s Approval: More on Virtual Christianity

Part One

Justification by faith brings the “in Christ” position for the believer. “In Christ” the believer is approved before God. That’s how someone is saved by faith. In that way, justification by faith brings approval in Christ. Christ did everything the Father wanted Him to do. He wanted to do it and He did it. In a positional way, the believer receives the imputed righteousness of Christ, the righteousness that Christ lived, and, therefore, is approved in Christ. He doesn’t get this approval by works, but by grace through faith.

The idea of justification by faith isn’t that someone, who isn’t interested in pleasing God the Father or living in a way that God the Father approves, still receives approval in Christ. What’s the problem here? He doesn’t know God. He doesn’t believe. Trusting the Father also means that the Father will help or aid in the pleasing of Him. That’s saving grace. He helps the one who wants to do it. Wanting to do it is part of the belief that saves. What I’m saying is that this falling short of saving faith, and yet something less than saving faith is being accepted as sufficient. The “faith” itself falls short of the biblical and then historical Christian components, what have been termed notitia, assensus, and fiducia.

Notitia falls short, which is knowledge. Jesus Himself is short shrifted of many qualities that are offensive to the one who isn’t seeking practical approval from Jesus. Saving faith requires assensus, the conviction that the content of the notitia is truth. Sometimes a childhood profession wasn’t saving faith and this is laid bare by the lack of conviction toward obedience to the Lordship that someone professes to know. It’s only a profession. Fiducia requires commitment. This person lacks in commitment. Jesus said someone needed to count the cost. Saving grace isn’t about what grace allows, but what it enables. Wanting something allowed that offends Jesus is lacking commitment.

This is what happens. Someone doesn’t want to please God. He wants God’s approval, but he doesn’t care about living in an approved manner to God. He just wants the approval. He especially wants to feel approval — from himself and others all around. Don’t criticize this person. He loves himself and the world. He wants approval despite his superior love for himself and the world. He doesn’t love God. He says he does, most likely because of a feeling, which isn’t love, or at the least something short of love. He loves himself and the world. With the love of God, he could live to be approved unto God. He doesn’t want to. He “wants” to in the sense that he wishes he had the affection and will. That he has for himself and the world.

A corrupt view of both justification and sanctification arises. I say justification, because this false view of sanctification can’t be accompanied by a true or right view of justification. Justification comes by saving faith, not a dead or demon faith or mere intellectual assent, and a right or faithful view of Jesus Christ. This isn’t a doctrinal malfunction, but a practical one, that is really laid out in 2 Peter 2.

A person attempts to fit Jesus, the Bible, and his understanding of faith into own own lust. He tries to accommodate his love for himself and the world, the allure of those, into a version of Christianity provided by false teachers, who make it credible with their officiality. “Teachers” are affirming this corruption. It’s a lie. The leaders of these churches use this false doctrine, an unbiblical and even heretical one, to make merchandise of their adherents.

Jesus sanctified Himself by the truth (John 17:19), which is that He did everything the Father told Him to do. Believers are not sanctified by a lesser standard than Jesus. They too are sanctified by everything God says — all of His words, sayings, or commandments. That’s what God approves. That goal doesn’t change, just because a person might sin and not fulfill it perfectly.

The Apostle Paul labored that he might please God. This is fundamental to sanctification. It repeats itself in several places in the New Testament, even a familiar text like Colossians 3:20:

Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.

The Lord is well-pleased by children obeying their parents in all things. In all things. This is the sanctification God is working in the believer, which the believer works out (Philip 2:12-13). Hebrews 13:21 explains it very well:

Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever.

In sanctification, God wants to “make you perfect in every good work to do his will.” This is what is well-pleasing in His sight, not preaching the gospel fluently to yourself or to just keep doing the work of believing you’re already all done with approval when you were justified. That isn’t even justification, let alone sanctification.

The purveyors of the false view of sanctification about which I am writing do not care about God’s standard or His approval. They care…about themselves. They nourish and cherish their own flesh. Like Peter writes, they deny the Lord that bought them (2 Peter 2:1). They don’t like having a boss, and they get around it with what Peter writes in the next chapter, by wresting scriptures unto their own destruction (2 Pet 3:16).

Christians Who Weaponize Secular Psychiatry: Ghosting Again and then Narcissism

November 17, 2019 / Leave a comment

What anyone who claims to be a Christian should know by now is that modern psychiatry isn’t science. It can’t be trusted as an assessment of human behavior. It’s essentially a product of modernism, which denies the supernatural or divine intervention. It prefers a human interpretation of everything. Romans 1 calls this suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

Mechanistic naturalism moves someone into explanations or evaluations of people’s conduct in accordance with secular views of man’s origins. Rather than turning to scripture as sufficient, and with the wisdom of God, the Creator and Sustainer of mankind, he chooses subjective speculation in whatever way he feels it works best for him. Instead of quoting the Bible, he quotes a psychotherapist. A large percentage of the “studies” or “research” are debunked as utter falsehood. It isn’t science, but it is the illusion he embraces over the truth.

Today professing Christians weaponize secular psychiatry, even though it’s false, to excuse bad behavior or justify their own allure for the world. Last week I wrote about generation Z and millennials and their “ghosting.” After I wrote that piece, someone interacted with me:

Yes,”ghosting” is hateful in the extreme. Often it is preceded by thinking or statements like, “You are a toxic personality or a narcissist, so I need to completely cut you out of my life so I can take care of myself, my well-being…” Obviously, there is a lot of “judging” going on by the one doing the ghosting; usually very ironically since the “ghosters” are typically very concerned that they are being judged.

Later I was sent:

It is something that I have just observed has been wildly popular in the culture the last few years. I have seen it all over Facebook and Twitter. There are tons of YouTube videos on it.

I noticed that a lot of the younger crowd is sold out on the idea of “positive only” and that translates into cutting off anyone they deem is bad for them.

They obsess on their “wellness,” and anyone or anything that gets in the way of that is bad. Of course, they really don’t get rid of stuff that actually is bad for them but it is more about just having what they lust for and getting rid of anything that gets in the way of their lusts.

There is a constant consideration of what is good for their body and mind but not really what is truly good for either one. — “whose God is their belly…”

All of this was familiar to me, because I had read similar or the same. The authors of secular psychiatric works do not look to the Bible as an authority — very little to no scripture in their writings. Those reading them do so without discernment and with little to no Bible knowledge themselves. They aren’t looking for a hearing from God. They tolerate only an echo of their own feelings. They have almost nothing to combat the deception and lies. I don’t think they care, because they want something that isn’t in the Bible, and this faux authority suits them like it did with the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. They didn’t depend on God’s Word, but on human philosophy. It is of which Paul warns when he writes in Colossians 2:8:

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

Furthermore, younger people want acceptance or approval, even if they’re disobedient to scripture or disrespectful of authority. In the tradition of criminalizing hate speech, anything disapproving or critical, they categorize like criminal assault, words causing psychological harm akin to physical injury. “Ghosting” is finding a safe space from a “narcissist.”

Those who don’t give approval are now, yes, narcissists. From what I’ve read, they’ve also got narcissistic personality disorder, maybe. They don’t, but it works to explain the disapproval. The ghosters haven’t done anything wrong. Their critics are narcissists. Who has narcissistic personality disorder? Whoever disapproves of a generation Z or millennial. This disorder has caused one of these young ones psychological harm, based on what? Their own opinion.

Yet, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists call “ghosting” “narcissistic.” The ghosts are narcissists, they say. They say it’s a kind of psychological manipulation, like “bullying.” The ghosts want to show that they devalue you. They want to leave you feeling responsible and terrified that they’ll never return. They lack the character or the principles that define what once was called “adulthood,” but it is actual Christian character that desires reconciliation out of the love of Christ.

Ghosting is the equivalent of what I call “clearing or tossing the game board.” If you don’t approve of them, they’ll toss the game board. “Wanna play?” “Nope.” Dipping from the reservoir of psychoanalysis, someone wrote:

If someone behaves poorly in a healthy relationship, upon reconciliation, there is generally an admission of wrong-doing, atonement, and a change in behavior. In a relationship with a Narcissist there is never a desire to have an open dialogue about the ‘problem,’ there is never an admission of wrong-doing and the behavior goes on as it always has. Astonishingly, they act like nothing ever happened. If you bring it up or try to talk about it you will be ghosted again until you learn not to talk about it and you will learn too, because you will remember the agony you were left in.

Anyone can find anything in the field of psychiatry to support his position, if he wants. It’s highly subjective.

Looking at ghosting from a judicial standpoint, one of natural law, it doesn’t give due process. The ghoster takes the role of judge, jury, and executioner. He wants justice for himself, but he doesn’t give it to others. Psychoanalysts would call this “lacking in empathy” (like a sociopath), but scripture says it is unloving. He doesn’t love his neighbor, and he can’t and he won’t, because he doesn’t love God. Love is fruit of the Spirit.

The desire to receive approval exceeds personal responsibility. His (or her) concern is only for himself (or herself), and in particular, his own approval. The Apostle Paul could write his epistle to Philemon, because he knew Philemon, like Paul wrote the Philippians, esteemed others better than himself. He looked not on his own things, but in the case of Philemon, he looked on the things of Onesimus, his former slave, and now a brother beloved. Paul could mediate between two brothers, who both would want reconciliation. No ghosting for a true, biblical Christian.

Virtual Christian Living or Your Christian Brain in a Vat: The Avoidance or Corruption of Biblical Sanctification

November 13, 2019 / 8 Comments on Virtual Christian Living or Your Christian Brain in a Vat: The Avoidance or Corruption of Biblical Sanctification

Listen to my session from the 2019 Word of Truth Conference. As an addenda to that one, listen to this session from James Bronsveld and this one from Thomas Ross.

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Imagine a Christian life you don’t actually live. Jesus lives it for you. You can’t please Him yourself. Impossible. Instead then, just access the life that Jesus lived by faith or by preaching the gospel fluently to yourself (part of the lingo). This supposedly honors God and Jesus more because He’s the one who does it. It’s virtual Christian living where you just click on the faith button, the equivalent of your Christian brain in a vat wired into a Christian matrix.

This false view of sanctification reminds me of the “think system” of Professor Harold Hill in the musical, the Music Man. Why do the hard thing of learning an instrument and how to read music, when someone can just use the think system? The music is as good as being played, even if it is not. Parents all over America have no need to sacrifice for music lessons or to do the hard work at enforcing the practice of an instrument. Even if the child doesn’t want to play, he can just rely on Jesus to have played for him, and feel no guilt for not practicing or improving.

This avoidance or corruption of biblical and historical sanctification takes the doctrine of imputation to a new and different level. It isn’t just positional righteousness imputed to you, which is biblical, but your whole practical righteousness too, which isn’t. Instead of doing the hard thing, the struggle, the beating your body into subjection, pressing toward the mark, fighting the good fight, and mortifying the deeds of the flesh, you just contemplate the cross and imagine that life you couldn’t live to be already lived. Done.

What I’m describing is very convenient. It really does take all the pressure off you to obey all those imperatives of the New Testament. No expectations. No worries about judgment. No need for approval. That was already settled at justification and it remains settled. You just tell yourself it’s already done.

With the hypergrace view, I don’t need to care for my elderly parents, my alzheimer’s-ridden father. I’m not bothered by any compunction for their needs. Jesus settled that. I don’t have to feel judged by anyone in some form of guilt ridden anxiety as they waste away. I can just enjoy my life. I can reduce my work to the equivalent of clicking a like button and adding a few hearts or emojis under a social network posting.

There is no use feeling guilty about disobeying or dishonoring parents, ghosting them, a wife not submitting to her husband, or even for not practicing the Great Commission, because Jesus paid it all. Satiate in that like a Christian brain in a vat. You preach that to yourself and the guilt is gone. Instead you can go binge watch a season of Handmaid’s Tale, as if it were a virtuous activity. Jesus was checked in, while you were checked out. Apparently, this is true freedom, unchained from the expectations of good works for sanctification.

Biblical Sanctification

James in his epistle explains this dead or demon faith in the second chapter. Rather than feeling the obligation of actual service to someone cold and needy, just say, be warmed and filled, and you have that base covered. James though says, no. No, faith without works is dead. Works? Yes, works. You, that’s you, have to do good works. The good works of sanctification don’t count through justification — just the opposite.

The New Testament is filled with imperatives Christians are commanded to do, things to avoid, activities to abstain, qualities to be, such as “be patient,” “be holy,” “be merciful,” and “be glad.” You can’t just turn those over to Jesus to live and then jump in your car to catch a rock concert for you. Paul said he had to struggle to do what he should and not do what he shouldn’t. That struggle isn’t necessary with “let go and let God.”

Young people today want approval without the actual fulfillment of acceptable behavior. They want to experience fleshly lust and the allurements of the world and not be judged for lapping those up. With this system, God always gives them approval, because they’re in Christ and God always approves of His Son. They didn’t think this system up. Peter says that false teachers ‘through covetousness with feigned words have made merchandise of them.’

Jesus did everything the Father wanted Him to do, and in John 17, He prayed that believers would be sanctified in the same way that He was, sanctified by the truth. That sanctification doesn’t come by His doing everything He was supposed to do and then our just trusting in everything that He was supposed to do, getting credit for living the Christian life because He did it for us. Nope. The Bible doesn’t teach anything like that. That is a monumental lie.

Justification and Sanctification

Justification is by grace alone through faith alone through Christ alone and apart from works. We don’t do good works for justification. We receive positional righteousness by faith. We then stand before God as righteous. We don’t have to prove anything, earn anything, or owe anything. The price was paid by Jesus on the cross, His righteousness was imputed to us, and our sins were forgiven, past/present/future.

Is sanctification also by faith alone? No. It isn’t. Human effort is required for sanctification. Sanctification is by faith and good works. Is that new? No, it is the biblical and historic doctrine of sanctification. It’s worth looking at a few places, even though there are hundreds of them. A major portion of the New Testament teaches sanctification by works. Sure, we do these good works through the power of the Holy Spirit and by the Word of God, but they are our works. We do them. God is working through us, sure, but we are still doing the works. There are 1,050 commands in the New Testament and for an actual reason, not a virtual one. Those justified by faith are to do and will do good works. God is also judging believers as to whether they are doing good works. They will give an account to Him at the judgment seat of Christ for whether they lived them.

There are many verses that teach our part in sanctification, but consider Romans 8:13

For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

Who mortifies, puts to death in a continuous sense, the deeds of the body? “Ye do.” The believer is responsible for mortification. This reminds me of the previous chapter, when Paul wrote in Romans 7:21:

I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.

Paul would do good. God is working in Him to do good (Philippians 2:12-13), but it is Paul doing good. Faith is not alone for a Christian (read James). A man may say he has faith, but that faith is dead if it is not accompanied by good works (James 2:14-21). John said that a man may say he knows God, but without doing good works, keeping God’s commandments, he is a liar (1 John 2:3-4).

This perversion of which I write eliminates biblical sanctification and stretches out justification all the way to glorification. Someone isn’t required to do anything in sanctification, except “speak the gospel fluently into his life.” The idea here is that you can’t please God, that’s impossible (this is a kind of voluntary humility, a humble brag), but Jesus does please the Father, so he can access it just by believing it. Justification is moved into the sanctification slot. With true sanctification, through the Spirit and the Word of God, the believer, who has a new nature, can and does do good works. If he doesn’t, that indicates he isn’t a new person.

We are not sanctified by believing. We are sanctified by working (and believing). You won’t work if you don’t believe, but the sanctification comes by things like “mortification.” It’s hard work. It’s a struggle. You are doing this work, like Paul said, to be accepted of the Father (2 Corinthians 5:9). We’ve already been accepted for justification. That’s settled. We look for acceptance in our post justification works. Someone can have greater fruit and receive greater rewards (1 Cor 3, 2 Cor 4-5). In Roman 12:1, we present our bodies a living sacrifice, and the consideration for us is that presentation, acceptable to God. If so, it won’t conform to this world (Romans 12:2).

“Gospel fluency,” “contemplating the cross,” or “let go and let God” do not represent biblical or historical sanctification. They are another, modern iteration of turning the grace of God the lasciviousness, the apostasy of 2 Peter 2 and Jude. They take away responsibility to obey the commands of the New Testament, fulfill the law of Christ, and turn it over to Jesus. It just isn’t true. The New Testament doesn’t teach it.

I call on anyone who has received or obtained or borrowed this false view of sanctification to repent. Leave it behind. Forsake it. It is a cultic view formulated to allure its adherents as prey. Sanctification is the second phase of ultimate salvation, the first justification, and the third glorification. Your acceptance of an utterly corrupt, false view of sanctification does not bode well for your justification or your glorification. If you don’t like the kingdom of Jesus Christ now, living it out on earth in your sanctification, why would you think you would enjoy it in the future? You love this present world, not the future one.

The Question of the Christianity of Kanye West

November 11, 2019 / 6 Comments on The Question of the Christianity of Kanye West

In the kitchen of our church building today I watched a toddler girl stick her hand into the trash, pull out a piece of soggy food, and bite into it before her mother could stop her. I’m sure there was something nutritional to that bite. Maybe it was a decent leftover that had just hit the top of the heap. Even though I laughed, I understood her mom’s disapproval. It’s not acceptable to pick through the garbage for food. That’s also how it is to find something good in the Kanye West, Jesus Is King, album. Whatever good nibbles are in there, and there are a few, are ruined by everything around them. They do not testify to the heart and life of a saved person, which is reinforced by what Kanye said in interviews in the weeks around the release of the album.

Considering all the lyrics and their medium, they’re common and profane. They aren’t worshipful, solemn, or reverent, requirements for biblical worship. They are not holy or acceptable unto God. They are conformed to this world. They’re not good either. They are lustful, childish, silly, and inappropriate. They are on the level of Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham, which isn’t even right for children’s literature, except as a joke. They are not transcendent, substantial, or beautiful. They are trite and trashy.

Kanye writes:

What have you been hearin’ from the Christians?
They’ll be the first one to judge me
Make it feel like nobody love me
They’ll be the first one to judge me
Feelin’ like nobody love me
Told people God was my mission
What have you been hearin’ from the Christians?
They’ll be the first one to judge me
Make it feel like nobody love me

I’m going to use the second person often through the rest of this piece. We love you Kanye. Paul wrote the church at Thessalonica, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” Your album is not good. That’s what you be hearin’ from this Christian. If Christians do say your album is bad, and Brad Pitt, Katy Perry, and David Letterman say it is good, you should pay attention to the Christians. Don’t expect Christians to give approval to false worship and continued sin.

Leave the public eye like the Apostle did after he was converted on the road to Damascus, if you are really converted. Follow the description of repentance in 2 Corinthians 7:10-11 and the example of Zaccheus in Luke 19. Spend time first getting distance from your former life. Move off of the entire licentious, pornographic scene. Stop promoting yourself. Learn your Bible and what it teaches first. You don’t know it. Your theology is bad. Much of what you say is unbiblical, but it’s also disrespectful as a proclamation of worship.

Rap is more than just another genre, unlike your “pastor” told you. You were much closer to the truth, when you told him, “Rap is of the devil.” It isn’t fitting as worship of God. God doesn’t receive it. It isn’t lovely. Stop saying things like the following in Jesus the King:

I’ve been tellin’ y’all since ’05
The greatest artist restin’ or alive
That’s on L.A. Reid, that’s on Clive
That’s no Jive, that’s on God
Off the 350s He supplied
The IRS want they fifty plus our tithe
Man, that’s over half of the pie
I felt dry, that’s on God
That’s why I charge the prices that I charge
I can’t be out here dancin’ with the stars
No, I cannot let my family starve
I go hard, that’s on God

To start, who complains about the IRS in a worship song? God has more power than the Internal Revenue Service of the United States. More so, the “on God” concept of your lyrics, Kanye, is blasphemous. Jesus said in Matthew 5:33-37 in His Sermon on the Mount:

33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: 34 But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God’s throne: 35 Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. 36 Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. 37 But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

This is a flippant use of God’s name, that is, God’s name in vain. Not only are you not “the greatest artist restin’ or alive,” but it’s proud to say it. Just saying these things you do and enunciating the name of God along side of them is profane. Consider the following verses of scripture:

1 Chronicles 16:25 says, “For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised: he also is to be feared above all gods.”
Psalm 48:1, “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness.”
Psalm 145:3, “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.”

Your music isn’t great, Kanye. It isn’t appropriate for God. It isn’t holy. It isn’t sacred. It isn’t even gospel, like you and others claim, even though “gospel music” itself is not historic, biblical worship. It arose in the late 19th century as a means of manipulation and pandering to a fleshly crowd under the guise of promoting the gospel. The gospel is to be preached, not sung to an audience, like what you are doing.

Somebody who is saved has all the power of the universe within him. Scripture doesn’t teach like your choir sings: “Sing till the power of the Lord comes down.” The believer yields to the Holy Spirit, Who, as God, has all power. Singing won’t bring the power of the Lord down. This is a perversion of the power of God. This is “second blessing” experience promoted by the same charismaticism that originated from the same source as “gospel music.” The way your choir Kanye swings its hips fits more into this ecstatic charismatic “worship,” then true biblical worship, acceptable to God.

Watching a young man give Kanye an only positive review on youtube, he brought forth the idea espoused by Charlie Pride that there are “three basic ingredients in American music: country, gospel, and the blues” — which isn’t true. Country, gospel, and the blues are not sacred and sacred music exists in America, is truly the original music of the American people. Perhaps someone could say those other three are the foundation of wicked, worldly pop music, but those are not the basis of sacred music, which isn’t popular music. Those three and all the genres proceeding from them are not sacred and not fitting of the nature of God.

The music of the Pilgrims wasn’t country, gospel, or the blues. It was sacred. The churches of early America sang sacred music, hymns and psalms. The very first book published in the entirety of British North America was the Bay Psalm Book, first printed in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The title page reads:

Whereunto is prefixed a discourse

declaring not only the lawfullness, but also

the necessity of the heavenly Ordinance

of singing Scripture Psalmes in

the Churches of God.

The churches of God in early America sang Psalms. Someone filled with the Spirit will sing to God psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:18-19, Colossians 3:16-17). Jesus the King does not fit that teaching. It doesn’t read like anything close to the music God’s people have used to worship Him.

Something gospel is also not, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “greedy of filthy lucre,” and as Peter taught, “making merchandise of you.” But as Rolling Stone reported:

At Coachella this year, you could buy $50 socks emblazoned with the phrase “Jesus Walks.” At four Jesus Is King: A Kanye West Experience events held in Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, in honor of an album that missed two release dates, he sold Christian-inspired sweaters for $140.

This isn’t about — “I can’t let my family starve.” Laced through your lyrics and in your interviews is a prosperity theology in which you declare that being a Christian is a way to greater monetary gain, when Jesus called it, “Deny thyself, take thy cross, and follow me.” Nobody begrudges a Christian of earning a living. He should earn a living, but no one should profit off of God. God isn’t a commodity. The Apostle Paul said it confuses the gospel.

In the positive review of Kanye I referenced earlier, the deceived or rebellious young man said Kanye will bring unity to the country with his Jesus Is King. Radio host Glenn Beck said with complete seriousness that he thinks that Jesus Is King might be the start of another Great Awakening. No and no.

Unity and great awakening arise from the truth of scripture practiced in a biblical manner. They will start with being poor in spirit, mourning over sin, and yielding to the control of the Lordship of Christ. Unity includes biblical separation, because Jesus came not to bring peace, but to bring a sword. When God destroyed the earth with a flood, eight people only were in unity, and that was all the unity, the only unity God would accept. He killed everyone else. God has chosen the foolishness of preaching to save them who believe. That is the way to unity. So much is lacking and mostly contradictory to biblical unity and spiritual life coming from Kanye West.

Jessie Penn-Lewis: Binding Satan (part 14 of 22)

November 8, 2019 / Leave a comment

The content of this post is now available in the study of:

1.) Evan Roberts

2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905

3.) Jessie Penn-Lewis

on the faithsaves.net website. Please click on the people above to view the study. On the FaithSaves website the PDF files may be easiest to read.

You are also encouraged to learn more about Keswick theology and its errors, as well as the Biblical doctrine of salvation, at the soteriology page at Faithsaves.

The Tragedy and Hatefulness of People Who Ghost

November 6, 2019 / 9 Comments on The Tragedy and Hatefulness of People Who Ghost

I’d never heard the word, ghost, until a few days ago. Well, no. I heard “Holy Ghost” in the King James Version, and Casper the friendly ghost. I’ve heard the term, ghost, used in varied other ways, and I wouldn’t have made this up. I went to RealClearPolitics, and read “The Conflict Avoidance Generation” by Noah Rothman at Commentary. The subtitle is “Comfort First.” Here are the first three paragraphs:

My two young children adored their babysitter. For about eight months, she watched them when my wife and I couldn’t, and she was good at her job. A recently enrolled student in a local community college, her schedule didn’t always include time to work for us. But when it did, she was punctual and professional, and her services were well compensated. And then one day, she disappeared.

It occurred to us only after several weeks of radio silence that falling off the face of the earth might have been her way of severing our professional relationship. In retrospect, this maneuver was, perhaps, in character. Her preferred method of declining the opportunity to sit for our children when her schedule did not permit it was just not to take our call. So, resolved to find a new sitter, my wife and I conducted a handful of interviews and settled on a replacement relatively quickly. We introduced the new sitter to our children and established a prospective starting date in about two weeks. That was the last we saw or heard from her. Once again, we were “ghosted.”

Our experience appears increasingly typical for employers seeking talent among young professionals entering the workforce. “Ghosting,” in the popular vernacular, is the practice of closing off all communication without any forewarning or explanation. This discourteous practice was once exclusive to the dating world, but it is now being applied to all sorts of interpersonal relationships, including those that are entirely professional.

“Ghosting” is defined as “the practice of closing off all communication without any forewarning or explanation” (this article lays out what it is too very well). As you continue to read, you’ll see that “ghosting” has become a regular practice by a surprising high percentage of “Generation Z” (22 and below) — 43% just vanish when they don’t want the job anymore. In addition, 25% of millennials (23-38) bail on their employers. What is going on here?

Some have studied this new trend, and Rothman calls it “an ideological obsession with avoiding all forms of trauma and distress—even the emotional sort.” He further describes:

The path of least resistance is to avoid potentially conflictual interpersonal engagements. Compulsive conflict avoidance is, however, not only rude but unproductive and unhealthy. “Ghosting” isn’t just ignoring a problem in the hope that it will go away or changing the subject; it’s a complete cognitive and emotional shutdown.

Rothman references an article in The Atlantic that turned into a book of the same title: “The Coddling of the American Mind,” which has this sentence in the subheading: “In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like.” The article is worth reading. I give both articles a full disclaimer, but I have both seen and experienced “ghosting” numerous times.

“Ghosting” disobeys the frequent biblical command to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” No one wants someone with whom he relates to just “drop off the face of the earth” with almost no warning and with no opportunity at reconciliation or mediation. If you do this to someone, you are wrong. Jesus says this is as much as murdering someone (cf. Matt 5:21-26).

Social media provides the practice or pattern of ghosting. Someone makes an even moderately negative comment, perhaps just unaccepting, and it is deleted immediately, the person blocked permanently. A non-affirming relationship is rejected. This is. not. Christian. I see this as the norm in social networking and then it becomes a pattern for behavior in the real world.

Someone ghosting is practicing an unscriptural form of separation, separation in the worst, most harsh, hateful way. It doesn’t try to keep a relationship going. It doesn’t care about the person it ghosts. I hear the generation Z and millennials talk about unity, especially since there is so much division in the country, but they do not understand unity. Unity isn’t the absence of conflict. Jesus did not come to bring peace, but a sword, and no one brings unity more than Jesus. They practice this nuclear form of separation that scorches the earth all around its object, like Rome with Carthage.

“Freedom” isn’t the ability to say or do what you want without rejection. Real freedom gives confidence to face adversity. The truly free person can stand up to scrutiny. It’s even part of being an adult, which is one reason I see this being the behavior of young people. It’s also because they have been coddled, like the article says.

When a conflict arises in a relationship, scripture teaches reconciliation, and mediation if necessary. Tough conversations must be had. This is love. Pushing the eject button isn’t love. It is selfishness. Ghosting is “vindictive” a word used four times in the Atlantic article. He calls it “vindictive protectiveness,” followed by this sentence: “It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse.”

Don’t get me wrong, generation Z and millennials don’t think they’ve been coddled (overly protected). They think they’ve been abused. They’ve “had life very hard” — not. This is the generation where dodge ball, the teeter totter, and the monkey bars went extinct. Two words: hand sanitizer. Almost everyone in my generation of parents over served their children. They gave them too much, protected them from too much. They had life too easy. They don’t think so. They think they had it hard, but no generation of people had it as easy as those 35 and younger. More coddling isn’t the solution to their problem. The future looks already very dim, but if this doesn’t stop, that trajectory downward will be even worse.

Word of Truth Conference 2019: The Biblical Doctrine of Sanctification

November 4, 2019 / 13 Comments on Word of Truth Conference 2019: The Biblical Doctrine of Sanctification

2019 WORD OF TRUTH CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

November 6-10, Wednesday-Sunday

Sanctification (part one), Bethel Baptist Church, El Sobrante, CA

DATE AND TIME EVENT/THEME SPEAKER
11/6, Wed, 7:00pm 1st Sermon Chris Teale
11/6, Wed, 7:50pm 2nd Sermon James Bronsveld
11/7, Thurs, 9:30am Salvation and Sanctification David Warner
11/7, Thurs, 10:35am Evangelism and Sanctification Kent Brandenburg
11/7, Thurs, 11:40am The Means of Sanctification Thomas Ross
11/7, Thurs, 7:00pm 1st Sermon Dave Mallinak
11/7, Thurs, 7:50pm 2nd Sermon James Bronsveld
11/8, Fri, 9:30am Sanctification and the Work of the Holy Spirit David Sutton
11/8, Fri, 10:35am Scripture and Sanctification Chris Teale
11/8, Fri, 11:40am Good Works and Sanctification Kent Brandenburg
11/8, Fri, 7:00pm Sermon Dave Mallinak
11/9, Sat, 9:30am The Church and Sanctification James Bronsveld
11/9, Sat, 10:35am The Effects of Sanctification Thomas Ross
11/9, Sat, 11:40am Antinomianism James Bronsveld
11/11, Sun, 9:45am Revivalism Thomas Ross
11/11, Sun, 11:00am Sermon Kent Brandenburg
11/11, Sun, 2:30pm Panel Discussion Brandenburg, Ross, Sutton, Warner

The audio for the meeting will be at https://www.wordoftruthconference.com

The video for the meeting will be at https://www.youtube.com/user/BethelElSobrante

Having a Quote Used Out of Context: Normal from the Left, Illustrated in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America

November 3, 2019 / 4 Comments on Having a Quote Used Out of Context: Normal from the Left, Illustrated in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America

Oxford reads and quotes Thou Shalt Keep Them, our book on the biblical theology of the perfect preservation of scripture. Someone alerted me that The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America quoted me, and upon review in an unfavorable manner. Our book appears in the bibliography and a chapter I wrote in particular is supposedly “quoted” — exactly three words. I’ll get to those.

I am said to be quoted in a chapter by Jason A. Hentschel, the senior pastor of the Wyoming Baptist Church in Wyoming, OH. As a little tip, if you go to the church website, the most recent sermon came from Dr. Emily Hill. It is an American Baptist Church. His chapter, however, is entitled, “The King James Only Movement.” The first page of the chapter starts with an illustration of a “Reverend Martin Luther Hux” lighting a Revised Standard Version on fire in the bed of his pick up truck in North Carolina. Almost every possible advocate of the King James Version (KJV) is lumped in with the burning RSV. Showing his absolute lack of a grasp of the issue, he traces blame to evangelical J. I. Packer.

Hentschel bemoans the underlying presupposition of certainty among the proponents of the KJV or the textus receptus Greek text behind the KJV New Testament. He says these evangelicals, who support the KJV, must save it from history or escape from history to take their position. A tell-tale sentence from Hentschel reads:

Of course, we must ask at this point why it is assumed we must have certainty of faith, why we must be certain that what we know to be true is really true.

Overall, whatever his problem with a KJV only position and even what that means to him (because he doesn’t explain it), his real problem is with the idea that professing Christians are either certain of the Bible or they receive certainty from it. His view of faith is one in which God retains a mystery unfettered by the bounds of a book. The definition of faith itself depends on uncertainty, so that one’s view of God transmogrifies amoeba-like just out of touch of anything concrete in the imagination. This isn’t the God of the Bible, which makes the Bible always a problem for one with God as comfortable abstraction.

The “quote of me” comes within the following portion of a paragraph:

For these in the King James Only movement, to chase after ancient texts or to pretend that scholars can piece together lost autographs with any measure of certainty is a fool’s errand, the unmistakable mark of an unbeliever. As Edward Hills contends, if God has left his word so vulnerable, then the Christian faith and Christian orthodoxy “would always be wavering.” Or, as another follower put it, there would be nothing left but “despair and doubt.”

Okay. Hentschel says those last three words are a quote of me from Thou Shalt Keep Them, the chapter titled, “First Century Textual Attack.” Apparently, I get one less word than his quote of Edward Hills’s, “would always be wavering.” First, “despair and doubt” are three words on page 150, which is not in my chapter on first century textual attack. Nope. It’s in the following chapter by Thomas Corkish, titled “Pure Words of God.” I apologize to Dr. Corkish for no mention for writing those three words. I’m sure most people are not going to check the accuracy of his endnotes. I didn’t write them though.

In the chapter written by Corkish, not by me, Hentschel is quoting from the last sentence of a section of the chapter:

All Christians must take hope in a preserved and infallible Word, or despair and doubt will fill their hearts.

This sentence ends a paragraph that references Psalm 12 and its promise to the poor and needy there. The words are like a contract. God refers to the surety of His words like He does the surety of His promise to the poor and needy. If the words are unsure, the contract is, and not anything on which to depend. In the very passage, God makes the fulfillment of His promise dependent on the surety of the words.

If God’s words cannot be trusted, how can God be trusted? This is not to say that scripture is bigger than God. Even if scripture is lesser than the greater, the actual fulfillment of God’s promise, then despair and doubt do proceed from the untrustworthiness of scripture. This point can be made from the text. It’s either true or it isn’t. If it isn’t, isn’t that attributable to God? God Himself is saying that it is attributable to Him. He is saying that if we cannot trust His Word, then we cannot trust Him. Yet, we can trust Him and His Word.

Hentschel doesn’t deal with the point of the quote in its context. I’ve found this to be normal for all manner of the left, including the theological left.

Missionaries, Preachers and Everyone Else Who Travels: ATMs Free Worldwide and No Foreign Transaction Fees

November 1, 2019 / Leave a comment

If you travel within the United States, it is nice to be able to use an ATM without having to pay any fees. If you travel internationally, being able to use any ATM you want without having to pay ATM fees or foreign transaction fees sounds almost too good to be true–for not only do you save a 3% foreign transaction fee and the fee from the ATM, but you also avoid the poor exchange rates that are offered at the airport (especially) and also at other places where money changing goes on–instead, you just pay the actual conversion rate into the foreign currency. If one is frequently in foreign countries–whether as a missionary, a pastor who watches over those missionaries sent out of his church, or simply as a person who goes outside of the United States, the savings can definitely add up. There are numbers of banks that I know of that give ATM refunds within the United States, but very few also do the same internationally. There are two ways to get the above valuable benefits that I am aware of, and one of them is currently offering a very good deal, so I thought it would be a good time to write a blog post about this.

SoFi–Everything Free & Make $50 or $150 or More in

About 5 Minutes

SoFi Money has a brokerage account that offers the benefits above. That is:

No monthly fees
No minimum balance requirement
No direct deposit required
Unlimited ATM fee reimbursements worldwide (they give you a Visa debit card for use with your account)
No foreign transaction fees worldwide
High interest rate
No hard pull on your credit report–no negative effects whatsoever on your credit score

Furthermore, right now they are offering you $50 for signing up for SoFi Money and depositing $100 (which you can take out again whenever you like). You can possibly sign up in less time than it takes to read this post and get $50. The bonus is posting very quickly as well–it shows up within a few days in my experience. Furthermore, you can get a referral link from within their app and get $100 if you refer someone else, $200 if you refer two people, $300 for three people, and so on. So if you sign up, then refer your spouse, you will get $50 (you sign up) + $100 (referral bonus for spouse) + $50 (spouse signs up) = $200 very easily. If you have a lot of siblings you can get a lot of money for an account that is worth having. You can leave $1 in there and then put money in the account whenever you travel, use the travel benefits, and then go back to leaving $1 in there, or you can actually use SoFi for the various things that they want you to use them for if you find their products attractive. I signed up and then I referred my wife.

You can use my referral link by clicking here to get $50 and a worthwhile account. You don’t have to use my referral link, of course, but if you do I will also be benefited financially, and I would appreciate that because we just had to buy some expensive equipment to help with our online classes and video ministry, and we would rejoice if God provided for us while also helping others get a valuable account that can save them a lot when they travel.

I know that advertisements always tell you to “buy RIGHT NOW” and stuff like that, but this is a very good deal with people signing up all over the place, and I don’t think they are going to keep offering it for a long time, so I would suggest signing up quickly before they end the promotion if you want to get the opening and referral bonus(es).

SoFi also makes loans, and you can find out more about them with my referral link about that by clicking here. I have not looked into their loans much because I don’t need a loan, but if you absolutely cannot avoid debt (it is far better to lend than to need a loan) you can get information about SoFi loans here.

There are advantages SoFi Money has over the Schwab account below–a higher interest rate and a very easy $50 or possibly $200 or more if you sign up now, and no hard pull on your credit report. There are also some advantages to Schwab; I will discuss those below.

Schwab Checking Account–similar benefits

Charles Schwab has a checking account that offers:

No monthly fees
No minimum balance requirement
No direct deposit required
Unlimited ATM fee reimbursements worldwide (they give you a Visa debit card for use with your account)
No foreign transaction fees worldwide

I have had a Charles Schwab checking account for years and am very glad to have been able to avoid ATM fees and foreign transaction fees when we have travelled to Kenya, various parts of Europe, the Philippines, etc. (When the ATM charges you a fee Schwab refunds it.) We don’t use our Schwab checking account that much except if we are not local–then we transfer some money into the account (both with SoFi and with Charles Schwab it is very easy to link another bank account) and use the Schwab account while we are away from home.

The Schwab checking account does not have nearly as high an interest rate as SoFi Money, and getting one involves a hard pull on your credit report, just like opening a credit card or applying for a home mortgage, etc. On the other hand, Schwab is a very well-known and reputable brokerage firm so you can invest with them as well as bank. I have found their customer service over the years to be excellent. Furthermore, you can sign up for God-honoring Christian-based mutual funds through Schwab, since they carry them along with many, many other types of investments. I do not yet know whether that is possible with SoFi Money because my account with them is very new and I wanted to get this post out before the SoFi Money promo ended. Also, with Schwab you can get paper bank statements; I am not sure if SoFi offers those or not. Finally, Schwab’s checking account is FDIC insured. SoFi moves your money into FDIC insured bank accounts, utilizing six banks so it is FDIC insured up to $1.5 million, but if they were to go bust in the one day or two or whatever between when you deposited your money and when it got swept into an FDIC insured account, it might be a less than ideal situation for that particular deposit. I have no concerns about depositing $100 in SoFi or even thousands of dollars in SoFi, but if I were a millionaire I would be more likely to keep my money with Schwab and I would do a lot more with their brokerage than with SoFi’s brokerage.

If you sign up with this link, you should be able to get $100 from Schwab’s refer-a-friend program. I do not make anything from this program, but you get $100. I am not sure if the link I just supplied for Schwab will work for more than the first person who tries it, unlike the SoFi money bonus which should work for as long as they offer the promo for as many people as click on it and sign up. If you can deposit thousands and thousands of dollars, you can get more than $100 from Schwab–a certain level gives you $200 and if you deposit over $100,000 you get $500, but most people are probably not going to do that.

I have signed up for both SoFi Money and Schwab, and would suggest that you think about getting one or both of these accounts if you ever travel where your local bank does not give you ATM refunds, and especially if you ever leave the USA.

–TDR

Answering “Conservative Christianity and the Authorized Version,” part three

October 30, 2019 / 3 Comments on Answering “Conservative Christianity and the Authorized Version,” part three

Part One Part Two

In the third post in his series (one, two, three), Michael Riley at Religious Affections Ministries (RAM) argues that the degradation of the English language at its present state does not stop the modern versions from being conservative in consistency with being a conservative church with conservative worship like RAM teaches. It seems that pastors in the UK when Scott Aniol visited there brought this as an argument against, that a translation into modern English conflicted with conservatism, unlike the King James Version. Riley to his credit sympathizes with the argument and shows understanding of it for the first five and a half paragraphs before disavowing it.

I don’t know what arguments the UK conservative pastors bring about the inability of the present English language to represent the original text of the Bible. I have my own thoughts about it that are not what I would consider to be akin to very poor and even false KJV only style arguments. I’ve written a lot about it recently because of the new book by Mark Ward, where he argues that the English of the KJV is unable to communicate sufficiently to a contemporary English audience — they won’t get most of it because of various reasons, especially what Ward calls “false friends,” words or phrases that people do not understand anymore, yet that they think they do understand.

Riley agrees that English has degraded. The almost entirely English audience that reads English has also taken a major decline with a steep trajectory downward. Linguists with no skin in the issue of the translation of scripture have agreed that modern English has lost the ability of past English to communicate a formal social standard — a particular structure, seriousness, and governing of rules of discourse. Is the English of today a craft that can transmit adequately or appropriately the content of scripture? Is there an interchange in priority from God to man, a diminishing of divine character by a casualness and commonality past suitability? Even if the modern English hasn’t become incongruous with the Word of God, is it so close to being so, should the godly of the culture put on the brakes to further erosion?

The new translations have not arisen from church agreement to the degree that a standard, single Bible could come from the unified effort, proceeding with reverence, respect, and holy motives. In the opinion of many, they have reeked of pragmatism and pandering. Do those doing the work not see the damage done by producing multitudinous translations? Is all the variation and the plausible subjectivity of it an even worse friend than the apparent false friends?

Lawyers still understand the need for the precision of formality, that functions according to certain codes that do seem to proceed from natural or moral law. We still follow the same Constitution of the United States without calls of updates. We don’t modernize the Declaration of Independence. If we do change the Constitution, add an amendment, it is very difficult and so also very seldom. Amendments read like the original, keeping it in the same spirit with a similar tone.

The Bible is a document of exponentially greater value than any other book or literature. It deserves the veneration of scarce change. Modern versions don’t give it that. Modern translators fiddle and fiddle as if they were Nero and Rome burned. They scamper through the graveyard across the burial plots of sorts. It contributes to lack of respect like we see in almost every institution. If we can’t take scripture seriously, when God is of highest value, then everything else will be lost as well. This all flies in the face of conservatism.

WHAT IS TRUTH

Yearly Archives: 2019

Recent Posts

INDEX FOR WHAT IS TRUTH

You Don’t Care About God’s Standard or God’s Approval: More on Virtual Christianity

Christians Who Weaponize Secular Psychiatry: Ghosting Again and then Narcissism

Virtual Christian Living or Your Christian Brain in a Vat: The Avoidance or Corruption of Biblical Sanctification

The Question of the Christianity of Kanye West

Jessie Penn-Lewis: Binding Satan (part 14 of 22)

The Tragedy and Hatefulness of People Who Ghost

Word of Truth Conference 2019: The Biblical Doctrine of Sanctification

Having a Quote Used Out of Context: Normal from the Left, Illustrated in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America

Missionaries, Preachers and Everyone Else Who Travels: ATMs Free Worldwide and No Foreign Transaction Fees

SoFi–Everything Free & Make $50 or $150 or More in

About 5 Minutes

Schwab Checking Account–similar benefits

Answering “Conservative Christianity and the Authorized Version,” part three

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