Part One

Sanctification, the practical outworking of actual salvation, which surely proceeds from justification, Paul characterizes in Romans 6:12:

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.

Essentially the Apostle Paul is stating the expectation of the reality of true salvation in someone’s life, commanding someone to cooperate in practice with what God has already done.  A verse I quoted in part one speaks of this, Galatians 5:24:

And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

Saved people, “they that are Christ’s,” “have crucified the flesh with the. . . . lusts.”  Sin won’t reign in the body of a person where the flesh with its lusts has been crucified.  “Crucified” is aorist tense, so completed action at one point in time.  In Romans 6, this is what Paul said in the previous verse (v. 11):

Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

[A]ll things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.

Young people. . .  should and must receive an education in music as well as in the other arts if we are to wean them away from carnal and lascivious songs and interest them in what is good and wholesome.

The Bible doesn’t say what lust is.  It assumes we know, because we do know.  Not knowing is either blindness or feigning ignorance.  Blindness or feigned ignorance won’t work in the end with God.  He knows we know.  People can understand and apply the passages on lust.  They don’t want to give up their lust.  I’m asserting a deliberate, convenient ineptitude of professing Christians at applying the lust passages of scripture.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.  And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.

And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee.

Young people are encouraged to feel the very same sensational nervous impact of loud rhythmic music on the body that they would experience in a large, worldly pop concert, complete with replicated lighting and atmosphere. At the same time they reflect on predestination and election. Worldly culture provides the bodily, emotional feelings, into which Christian thoughts are infused and floated. Biblical sentiments are harnessed to carnal entertainment. . . . When you look at their ‘favourite films’, and ‘favourite music’ you find them unashamedly naming the leading groups, tracks and entertainment of debased culture, and it is clear that the world is still in their hearts. Years ago, such brethren would not have been baptised until they were clear of the world, but now you can go to seminary, no questions asked, and take up a pastorate, with unfought and unsurrendered idols in the throne room of your life. What hope is there for churches that have under-shepherds whose loyalties are so divided and distorted?

Most of the time when someone is said to be divisive, it isn’t the person who is divisive.  Don’t get me wrong.  Some people are divisive.  But most of the time, it isn’t a person who is dividing.  Stay with me.

Scripture talks about divisive people.  It is the heretic of Titus 3:10-11.

A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject; Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.

The term heretick isn’t in scripture that much.  It’s a word thrown around quite a bit though, usually, I’ve found, as a pejorative, calling someone a “heretic.”  In fact, and I’ve written about this a few times on this blog, a heretic is a divisive or factious person.  That is who it is in Titus 3:10-11.

I’ve pastored for 33 years, one year in seminary and 32 years in California since starting the church here, and I’ve seen the violation of Titus 3:10-11 in a church, like Titus 3:10-11 read.  Factious people enter into a church and cause division.  Usually it isn’t doctrinal, but personality based.  Someone doesn’t want to do what he’s told or fit into the body.  The whole church wants to remodel the kitchen except for one vociferous personality.  Sometimes one person is a regular critic of leadership and it drags everyone down.

The main kind of heresy in a church is personality and pride.  Someone doesn’t want compatibility with everyone else.  He wants to stick out and make it about him.  In the few usages of heresy, doctrine also divides.  Someone will divert off the path of truth and try to take people with him.  This could be a perversion of the Trinity, inerrancy, or the gospel.  I think that is the usage of Acts 24:14:

But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets.

When the word “divisive” is used today, I don’t see it mainly as almost ever used in a scriptural way, either way.  When someone says that you’re divisive, they aren’t using it according to scripture.

If a biblical doctrine divides, that’s no fault of the doctrine but of those who defect from it. Doctrine may divide, but biblical teaching can’t be divisive. The divisive are those who defect from the truth. To say a particular doctrinal stance is divisive is misguided rhetoric.

— Mike Riccardi (@MikeRiccardi_) June 5, 2019

I read this retweeted in a twitter feed, and it’s something I’ve been talking about for years.  The “divisive” one, the heretic, is the one who divides off biblical and historical doctrine.  Just because there is “division” doesn’t mean that someone is being divisive.  If I point out unbiblical doctrine, I’m not being divisive.  It’s the person who has moved off or from biblical and historical doctrine who is divisive.  Usually it’s something new.

Doctrine may divide, but biblical teaching can’t be divisive. The divisive are those who defect from the truth. 

Maybe every next generation is a new and troubling day.  I don’t want to overestimate the degree of perversity of the present generation.  However, I think we have taken a unique plunge into the abyss.

You’ve perhaps heard of Moore’s law.  The Wikipedia article states:

The observation is named after Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and CEO of Intel, whose 1965 paper described a doubling every year in the number of components per integrated circuit and projected this rate of growth would continue for at least another decade. In 1975, looking forward to the next decade, he revised the forecast to doubling every two years.

His “law” has proven true, but in 2015 Moore “foresaw that the rate of progress would reach saturation,” and said, “I see Moore’s law dying here in the next decade or so.”

Perhaps as Moore’s law has materialized, to the same degree of progress in technology has occurred a parallel spiritual regression.  Moore’s law portrays a steep trajectory upward as we have fallen off a cliff in the other direction morally and biblically.  The two might even be interrelated.

In a day such as today, Jordan Peterson could seem to be a bright alternative.  Only in such darkness would he come off as light, when in fact he is a near or sort of modernist.  I’ve read modernists.  I know how they read.  I hear modernism in Jordan Peterson.  Only in such dark days does a possible modernist seem bright in comparison to postmodernism, nihilism, and political correctness.

I wrote here that I attended a Jordan Peterson speech in San Francisco, and I did on May 2. I had written some things about him since he burst into public awareness a short time ago (here, here, here, here, and here).  Someone gave me his book for a gift for my birthday, which was a little less than a month before the San Francisco speech, and I read it before his speech.  His speech isn’t posted at youtube yet, and we were told it was unlawful to record, so I didn’t even though I had a digital recorder with me.  I listened carefully and got the gist of what he said, and can remember it.

Someone wrote two critical articles about Peterson at The Federalist that would be worth reading (part one, part two).  I’m not suggesting myself that someone look to Jordan Peterson for his theology or interpretation of scripture.  He’s a problem.  I’m glad The Federalist, not a Christian organization, recognized it and allowed the articles they published.

Peterson used Genesis as his authority for his San Francisco speech.  I would not have thought that he would have done that, even though I know he’s been renting out and filling a theater for his teaching through Genesis up in the Toronto area of Canada.  His first Genesis lecture is his most watched youtube video.

I agreed with every one of Peterson’s points, even though I know he does not have a true or right view of the Genesis account.  The title of his speech was “The Meaning and Reality of Individual Sovereignty.”  I think the founding fathers of the United States would have proceeded from similar thinking as Peterson, which some might call “natural law.” He said, one, that God created order, two, that God created man in His image with the Word, so, three, God wants man to bring order through the Word just like God.  All that is true.  Everything Peterson says isn’t true, but those three points are true, which were the points of His speech.

In addition to Genesis, Peterson mixes in historical thinking and the evidence from other cultures.  He doesn’t interpret all of that, just reports it.  I have titled this type of proof, “feeding off the carcass.”  I don’t think Peterson understands it in a right way, but he is right to promote it.  Other cultures borrowed from the Genesis culture, because they were perversions of the original culture God created.  Based on God’s grace, unfaithful people sustained aspects of what God instituted originally with faithful people.  Noah brought a culture to the other side of the flood and was alive at the time of the tower of Babel.  Abraham sent a servant back to Mesopotamia to find a wife for his son, because there was something still there to find.

Peterson explains through his understanding of science, being widely read in peer-reviewed materials. He warns of danger and destruction from departing from ways established and constituted in Western civilization.  They didn’t succeed on a whim.  These ways made their way through, revealed in historical archtypes that stand as laws regulating success for people.  Western civilization capitalized on these and in contrast with the failings of the East.  Good enough?  No, and by far not good enough.

From my watching and listening to Peterson, he seems himself like he knows something important is missing in his own life.  He cries more than ever.  Perhaps the internal contradiction breaks him, especially someone who puts such an emphasis on telling the truth.  There is an underlying lie to all of what Peterson says, that is crucial.  One could call it the big lie in contradistinction to little truths that Peterson bravely tells.

The Independent Institute, which sponsored the event in San Francisco with Peterson, asked ticket buyers and members for questions.  In the end, they read none of them, because all of the question and answer time was taken up by a small panel of board members of the Institute and Peterson riffed so long on his answers that he ate up all the time.  Peterson often gives long answers and goes off on related tangents.  However, I sent in this question:

What do you think of what scripture says, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:17, that if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins?  Is not meaning lost with mere symbolism and not historic reality and then fulfillment of Jesus’ own saying in Matthew 17:22-23 that the Son of Man will be delivered into the hands of men, they will kill Him, and He will be raised on the third day?

I didn’t directly quote the King James Version.  I put the question in more modern vernacular, but my point was to evangelize Jordan Peterson and maybe the crowd there.

Peterson at best improves temporal life on a disposable planet with no future.  He doesn’t prepare mankind for eternity, so he misses the point of man’s existence.  Man can’t please God with Peterson’s way.  Peterson’s common sense brings no power of sustainability, because man can’t be or stay good or better on his own.  He needs the gospel.  Without justification, real salvation, man is lost in his sins, and as a result is not close to better off.  His worst days are still ahead practicing Peterson at his best.  This is a lie, a deceitful lie.

I watched Peterson’s speech to Prager U and then the interview with Dennis Prager.  Peterson cried a lot.  The tears remind me of the tears of John in Revelation 5, when no man can undo the seals on the inheritance of all things.  The strong angel tells John not to weep, because the Lamb is worthy to redeem the lost world.  All the problems of the world are rescued by a true and real Jesus, not a metaphorical one that is a mere antitype.  Jesus actually died, was buried, and rose again.  God could wipe away Peterson’s tears if he turned to Jesus Christ.

Robert Truelove interviews Pooyan Mehrshahi with a focus on the superiority or necessity of the received or ecclesiastical text position related to Muslim apologetics.

Evangelical apologist and critical text advocate, James White, very often warns that apologetics with Moslems is ruined by a received text position.  He states this with absolute dogmatism, while giving zero proof or evidence for his contention.  Instead of speaking with a tone of incredulity and rolling his eyes, he should explain the preeminence of his position.  The only evidence is that he says it, so it must be true — he’s the authority.

On the other hand, we listen to Pooyan Mehrshahi explaining his position and giving actual evidence for it.  I’ve written the same thing related to my evangelism of Moslems (here).  Listen to Mehrshahi here on the preservation of scripture.   He is a pastor of a Baptist church in Cheltenham, UK and has an amazing personal testimony, having grown up with Shia Islam, learning Arabic and memorizing the Quran in Iran.  The biggest attack on Christianity by Islam is the corruption of the text of scripture.  They, as Mehrshahi asserts, use and quote evangelicals to support their position.  The right position and powerful position against Islam is the doctrine of preservation, which is the truth.  I don’t imagine White’s (and those like him) position on the text of scripture doing anything but providing ammunition for Islam against Christianity.  He hurts the cause.

Please watch the interview of Mehrshahi and then listen to Mehrshahi’s sermon.  They will square you away against the deceit of the position of White, whose position is just false.

“Apostate” and “apostasy” are technical terms not found in the Bible, but they are in common use through church history to describe turning from the faith to various degrees.  In general, it is viewed as complete turning from the faith, as done by an unsaved person and proving that he is not saved (1 John 2:19).  Jesus said that those who are His disciples will continue in His Word (John 8:31) and that His sheep will hear His voice and follow Him (John 10:27).

Turning away completely is apostasy, which means someone isn’t saved, never was saved in the first place, so didn’t continue in the faith.  When I say “various degrees” of apostasy, I mean that someone can turn from something he once believed for whatever reason, but is still saved.  This is a more difficult concept, because the question arises, “Does an actual true, genuine Christian turn away from anything that God says?”  And perhaps another, “Isn’t a person who lives in perpetual sin unsaved?”  Any unrepentant sin merits church discipline in the New Testament, where someone is regarded as a heathen man and a publican (Matthew 18:17).

A lot is changing in professing Christianity today in whatever realm someone might want to characterize genuine Christianity, evangelicalism or fundamentalism.  Do these changes represent the changes of saved people, where now they aren’t obeying scripture as they once were, or these are just unbelievers?  This is a tough call, but also a common question.  We’re not saved by doing good works, but by grace, and yet on the other hand, grace isn’t a means of disobeying what God said.

For the sake of this post, I’m going to say that there are saved people, who are just not practicing like they once did.  The biggest crowd of these are millennials or perhaps we could call them younger people.  They still believe in Jesus Christ for salvation.  They would still say they want to live for the Lord.  They still believe the Bible is the Word of God. However, they don’t practice the same way as the previous generation and this is happening all over the place.  To put this into the above discussion, are these saved people?  I’m going to say, yes, for the sake of this post, but I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes.  The Bible doesn’t change, God doesn’t change, so the change could be apostasy.  Perhaps someone just needs to wait and see.

I’m making room for a partial apostasy still being saved, because of the churches in the New Testament, where they were not practicing like Paul wanted according to his epistles and Jesus expected according to His letters delivered to seven churches in Asia.  Did the changes at Corinth, ones of which Paul did not approve, constitute not being saved?  Did the changes at Ephesus or Pergamos or Thyatira mean a departure from the faith totally?  It did at Laodicea, we know (Revelation 3:14-22), but it’s tough to know to what extent the people were unsaved in the other six, where Jesus disapproved.

Again, salvation is not something to mess around with, so we shouldn’t give people a false sense of security about salvation, if they have departed from some orthodox belief and practice, while holding on to a profession of faith.  Today, I think, that millennials are banking on the notion that they still have reached the low bar, a minimal threshold, to count as salvation without having to live all the stuff that they don’t like.  They are changing Christianity very often to the degree that it isn’t even Christianity any more, and they don’t care, as long as they’re happy with it.  Does that sound like saved people?  It’s difficult for me to say, yes, that sounds like Christianity to me.

This has all been introduction so far, but the way I believe the apostasy is occurring, saved or not saved, has taken on the following steps, which I’m calling the most common paradigm for apostasy.  I’m going to write them in the second person for someone reading to apply to himself.

1. You want to live like you want.
2. You want acceptance of that lifestyle.
3. You recruit validation from like-minded people.
4. You destroy or scorched-earth the source of the former belief and practice to justify your leaving for the new.

“Pharisee” means “separatist.”  BDAG, the foremost lexicon of the Greek New Testament, says right at the beginning of the definition:

The Semitic words mean ‘the separated ones, separatists’.

The Pharisees were separatists.  Paul had been a Pharisee.  Upon conversion, Paul was no longer a Pharisee.  He left Pharisaism.  So does that mean he wasn’t a separatist?  Wrong.  After he was saved, Paul still taught separation.  He could rightly be called the theologian of separation, the face of scriptural separation.

The modern evangelical calls separation Pharisaism and separatists, Pharisees.  When Paul gave up Pharisaism, he didn’t give up separation.  One could say he doubled down on actual separation, godly separation, because no one represents it more in the New Testament than the Apostle Paul.

Separation isn’t Pharisaical. No, separation is scriptural.  Pharisaism is what is unscriptural.  “Pharisee” means “separation” and the lineage or legacy that led to Pharisees was legitimate.  If we went back into the history, there was good reason to participate in separation.

The legitimate forefathers of the Pharisees were the separatists from Greek culture, when Antiochus Epiphanes offered the pig on the altar of the temple.  They led the Maccabean revolt, which is was a legitimate expression of disgust with impurity.  Daniel represents this by separating himself from the sinful aspects of Babylonian culture, despite living in the midst of it.  By the time, we get to Christ, the Pharisees were a mere caricature of that group of separatists.

The Apostle Paul didn’t give up separation.  He gave up the self-righteous separation of the Pharisees.  They separated to show others how much better they were than others, comparing themselves with men (see this post).  What set the Pharisees apart was not biblical practice, but traditions that were not required by scripture.  They were showy traditions that emphasized the easiest ways to manifest a faux righteous behavior.  They weren’t even obeying scripture.

In recent days, and this isn’t unusual, I was called a Pharisee by someone, and it included the label, whitened sepulcher, a designation Jesus used for the Pharisees.  From what I could gather, I was being called these things for three main reasons:  one, the standards I hold, two, the practice of separation to which I adhere, and three, my lack of sinless perfection.  None of those three made a Pharisee to be a Pharisee in the pejorative use of the term.

No one is a Pharisee for interpreting, believing, and applying scripture.  The Pharisees weren’t doing that, which is why Jesus asked them continually in the gospels, “Have ye not read?” (Matthew 12:3, 5, etc.).  Because it seemed like they hadn’t even read the book, they were so far off in their understanding of it.  When He corrected their perversion of the Old Testament in the Sermon on the Mount, He started by saying, “It hath been said.”  What was said in scripture was true; it was their corruptions that were not true.

In general, the Pharisees conformed God’s Word to their own attempts on keeping all of the law.  That was impossible, so they turned it into mere ritual that they thought they could keep.  They wouldn’t even do that, but it was an attempt to minimize the Old Testament to what was possible for them, which is salvation by works.  The people attempting to be saved by works don’t respect the scripture, because they are impossible to keep by one’s self.

The idea of separation itself, subsisting within the carcass of Pharisaism, was correct and the Apostle Paul taught it in nearly every one of his epistles and implied it in all.  In Romans he said, mark and avoid (Rom 16:17-18).  In 1 Corinthians he said, not to keep company with someone who calls himself a brother, but is still continuing in sin (1 Cor 5:11).  In 2 Corinthians 6:17, he said, come out from among them and be ye separate.  In Galatians he said, if any many preach any other gospel, let him be accursed (Gal 1:6-9).  In Ephesians, he said, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them (Eph 5:11).  He implied separation in Philippians 3:18-19:

(For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose] glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)

In 2 Thessalonians 3:14, the theologian of separation said:

And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him,, that he may be ashamed.

In 1 Timothy 6, he said to withdraw your self from those who do certain things.  In 2 Timothy 2, he said to purge yourself from vessels of dishonor.

God will separate every unbeliever from Himself into the lake of fire along with the devil and His angels.  He had separated Noah and his family by water and the ark from every other soul on the entire planet.

Just because you believe something and separate over it doesn’t mean that you will live it with sinless perfection.  You’re not a hypocrite or deceive just because you don’t keep it one hundred percent.  No one keeps the standards with perfection.  I’m not saying I’m better than someone else.  I do break the laws that I believe are right.  I don’t separate from anyone else for breaking them.  That isn’t biblical separation.  A Pharisee might separate after one violation, but a biblical separatist will first get the beam out of his own eye, so he can remove the mote out of his brother’s eye.  He still tries to help his brother, and if his brother, after three tries, won’t repent, then he separates from him.   He doesn’t want to, but God tells him to, so he does.  That’s not Pharisaism.

Pharisaism proclaims what he is not willing himself to keep.  He acts like he believes it, when he really doesn’t.   He just wants others to think he does.  He judges other people harshly to make himself look better in front of them.  That would fit with what Jesus said about the Pharisees in Matthew 23 with His woes to the Pharisees.

Paul was a former Pharisee, and He knew and taught Christians to separate.  Separation isn’t Pharisaical.  If you are saying that, please stop.  If you are not separating, then you are disobeying scripture.  If you disobey scripture, and then act like you do obey it, you’re being a Pharisee.  Don’t say you’re obeying scripture, when you won’t practice biblical separation.