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.

Three or four times, I think, an anonymous person has posted a comment in which he writes a short paragraph to say that I’m not a scholar, except in a very small circle of KJVO churches.  His evidence of this is the lack of acknowledgement received from evangelical scholarship.  I’m not recognized in scholarly circles, he says, which proves I’m not a scholar.  His point for these comments is to discredit what I write with hopes that no one takes what I write seriously.

Whether I’m a scholar or not had not occurred to me until this person had written these anonymous comments.  I’d like to address this, because now it seems like an interesting subject to me.  It brought back to memory an article written by Aaron Strouse, “What Is Biblical Scholarship?”  Does it matter if someone is considered a scholar?  What matters to me is if what I’m writing is true, hence the title of the blog, What Is Truth.

Obviously the idea behind anonymous’s comments is that recognition from certain association is what makes someone a scholar.  This reminds me of how the religious leaders dealt with Jesus.  To them, Jesus wasn’t a scholar, because He didn’t receive the imprimatur of the sacral society of the day.  These men essentially quoted each other and received their endorsement by approved person.  The Lord Jesus on the other hand spoke with direct authority, proving His doctrine from scripture.  I call this making your cake from scratch versus making it out of the box.  Jesus went directly to the source of authority.

A long time ago I knew that I would not get the acceptance of mainstream scholarship.  It gives its approval to its own people, which must take “correct” positions.  It’s very much like the accreditation of the state schools.  Almost all of it relates to power and money.  Darwinism is a prerequisite for inclusion in the scientific establishment.  We all know that a establishment exists in Washington, DC that protects itself from outside competition.

The money factor in establishment scholarship relates especially to the schools and the publishers.  Schools need a broad position to attract the most possible students for more tuition and money to pay for buildings and faculty.  Accreditation relates to size.  Publishers, as one might understand, need books that will sell enough to make money.  The two are interrelated and scholarship means fitting into positions acceptable to a larger group of people.  The power lies in positions that will bring the money that pays mortgages.  Someone who does not toe the line will lose out.  He should know that in advance as he makes his decision to elevate the truth above acceptance and power.

I’m saying that the truth trumps so-called scholarship.  The real power is in heaven, and the approval should be Jesus Christ.  Moses rejected the court of Pharoah for the people of God.  When I go door to door, the people I talk to don’t ask me if I’m a scholar.  I’ve got to stand and show them the truth from the Bible, where they believe it because it is God’s Word.  I don’t quote and footnote and explain that so-and-so Dr. Scholar says.  When someone does discipleship in the church, he doesn’t say, let’s do this because “most scholars say.”  He opens his Bible and proves things straight from the Bible.

The Lord Jesus said, By their fruits ye shall know them.  When He said that, He was saying that you judge someone by what kind of fruit is produced, the followers.  Are the people following you obedient to the Word of God?  As a result, are the people following you living obedient, holy lives in surrender to Jesus Christ?  That’s also what builds a church.

My approach on this blog is to present a biblical and historical position.  That will stand up to scrutiny.  If I write something here that is true — it is biblical and historical — and someone says, “that’s not scholarly” or “you aren’t a scholar,” that doesn’t overturn what I’ve written.  What should matter is whether what I’ve written is true.

I could point to at least five or ten different issues or matters where I have proven something from scripture to overturn a “scholar.”  Daniel Wallace, who is considered a scholar in the mainstream, wrote an article that said that God did not in fact preserve every Word to be available for God’s people.  I dealt with every one of his arguments in a biblical manner without getting an answer, except for personal attack.  What I wrote stands, whether he is a scholar or not.

Many years ago, I unveiled the gender discord argument between Hebrew noun and pronoun that backs up the position of a masculine pronoun as antecedent of a feminine noun in Psalm 12:6-7.  I sent a paper out by email that made its way all over the country.  With clear proof of that gender discord position with numerous examples relating to the Word of God, I never received an answer from those who took the wrong view.  Proximity of antecedent to the noun comes back into play.  I debunked the argument of gender discord, but “scholars” would not rescind.  This dishonesty is scholarship, I’ve found.  What is more important?  Being a scholar or telling the truth?

I’ve written many articles proving from scripture that unity is based upon all the teaching of scripture and not the “essentials.”  There is no biblical proof of unity based on “essential doctrines.”  This is very important if unity is very important, which it is.

I understand that I’m defending unpopular positions here, but that doesn’t mean that what I’m writing is false.  The “scholars” should prove that what I’m writing is wrong, based upon scripture.  They don’t do that.  Are they really scholars?  Is that what we want scholarship to be?

Even if I’m not a scholar, which I’m happy to agree, that I’m not one, I believe Thomas Ross, who posts here on Friday, is a scholar in a class of anyone who might be called a scholar.  He has his personal devotions in Hebrew and Greek.  I believe he has large portions of scripture memorized in the original language.  I’ve read a lot of scholarship, and he is a scholar.  He stands up easily to other so-called scholars, except actually being a scholar.  Thomas Ross writes here, perhaps because he recognizes that I write the truth.  Is in a regular, consistent way proving the truth, scholarship?  That should be what matters.

In the end, we’re going to stand before God, and He’s going to judge.  That’s the judgment I’m concerned about.  Many, if not most of these scholars, will stand before God, but not at the bema seat judgment.  They’ll stand before Him at the Great White Throne Judgment.  They aren’t even saved, and this is evidenced by their elevation of “scholarship” ahead of truth.  God is going to judge based upon the truth, not what men agree is scholarly.

The addition of “social” to “justice” negates justice.  Justice is equal treatment of everyone.  Social justice chooses groups for unequal treatment.  Justice originates in scripture, almost as old as the earth.  Social justice arose in the 19th century.  I’m saying that according to a leftist viewpoint the addition of this adjective corrupts justice.  It’s not justice anymore.

For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.

For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.

No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. 

Today people who do not like Christianity, actual Christianity, biblical Christianity, explain Christianity to actual Christians and in a condescending and patronizing way.  Like leftists invented and use the term “mansplaining,” this is Christianitysplaining.  From my perspective, which is a biblical one, that takes a grammatical-historical interpretation of scripture, these are unbelievers explaining to Christians their own corrupted version of Christianity.  There are two very public examples of this in recent days, but I believe these represent something happening as a culture.

Of the two examples, one came in a tweet from Democrat presidential candidate, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (former mayor of South Bend, IN):

Today I join millions around the world in celebrating the arrival of divinity on earth, who came into this world not in riches but in poverty, not as a citizen but as a refugee.

No matter where or how we celebrate, merry Christmas.

— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) December 25, 2019

Joseph and Mary were going to Bethlehem to pay taxes when Jesus was born.  They weren’t fleeing anyone.  Jesus grew up in Nazareth, where both his parents were from.  Buttigieg wraps himself in the mantle of Christianity to pick off other Christianitysplainers.

The next example, days before the Buttigieg tweet, was the editorial in Christianity Today, where the editor, Mark Galli, took a shot at evangelical Trump voters by informing them that “Trump Should Be Removed From Office.”  In his first sentence, he Christianitysplains:

In our founding documents, Billy Graham explains that Christianity Today will help evangelical Christians interpret the news in a manner that reflects their faith.

Apparently the call to the new Ukrainian president was a tipping point for Galli, and then also a sentence in the last paragraph:  “Some have criticized us for our reserve.”  I’m open to scriptural explanations.  Galli says that you’re not being Christian if you oppose impeachment.  This is akin, according to him, to brushing off the president’s immoral behavior.  A constitutional scholar, Galli is not (since the original writing of this post, Wayne Grudem has published an excellent rebuttal of the Galli editorial, worth a read).

Since those two, Buttigieg and Galli, Christianitysplained, a tidal wave of media followed with further Christianitysplaining.  The world knows the Christianity it wants and it expects Christians to live it.  It’s a kind of feeding frenzy because of what the world sees in the Southern Baptist Convention with its pandering to a new, woke generation of Conventioneers.  They smell blood in the water.


The Atlantic Christianitysplains with its article, “Leith Anderson and the Silent Majority,” attempting to shame who they think is an influential evangelical leader.   Several dozen articles pummeling evangelicals have followed.  I believe the leftist media rightly assess weakness in professing Christianity, especially among millennials.  This is the most telling culture change.  Very few millennials agree with the preceding generation.

Millennial evangelicals and now fundamentalists, which aren’t even mostly faithful to church, sympathize with all things relevant in the culture.  They’re friends with same sex married, who seem just like normal people to them — and who are we to question “love”?  They like the idea of admitting to white privilege, the feel of a pseudo-humility that pays personal dividends.  They’re cleared of racism.  They support egalitarian marriages after years of girl and boy friends.   They like suggestive, very emotive music in touch with their feelings, which they interpret as spiritual.  Their art is gritty, urban, modern or postmodern, and apocalyptic, what they think is authentic.  Most of them have trouble with their parents, several of which like Trump, which embarrasses them. Mothers of millennials often Christianitysplain to the fathers of millennials, hoping dad takes it easy on junior.  This is all very fertile ground for the seeds of a woke journalist.

Millennials and their fawning servant leaders have entered a kind of negotiated surrender.  Leaders should serve, no doubt, and Jesus served, but this isn’t what “servant leadership” is or at least has become.  I believe Douglas Wilson represents it correctly when he writes:

The emphasis placed on servant leadership in recent decades has produced a soft complementarianism, one which adopts egalitarian assumptions for most of human existence, but which tolerates a modified pretend hierarchy in the two places where our trained exegetes have not yet hammered out a plausible workaround for us. In this pretend hierarchy, the leaders are allowed to be leaders so long as they do exactly what they’re told.

Bnonn Tennant writes:

Servant leadership is a dirty little phrase that has slipped into evangelical culture like a silk pillow over the face. 

It tastes sweet in the mouth, like honey, because who doesn’t agree that men should imitate the Lord Jesus, who came not to be served, but to serve (Matthew 20:28)?  But it is bitter in the stomach, because it makes men subservient to those they are supposed to be leading.

These millennials Christianitysplain to their elders on a regular basis, telling them how it should be done, in addition to saying, you’ve got a flawed gospel.  What do you mean?  I want to know.  They Christianitysplain something about freedom.  It’s not really new.  It is antinomianism, that is very old and described in 2 Peter and Jude among other places, turning the grace of God into lascisviousness.

Christianitysplainers want to splain.  They know, they splain, and somehow their Christianity looks less like biblical Christianity and more like the spirit of the age.

This is actually part six as well of a series I’ve been doing on Ghosting:  part one   part two   part three   part four   part five

Isaiah 53 prophesies the future conversion of the nation Israel and chronicles the account of her future repentance.  I want to focus on the middle triad of this confession, the apex of the five triads (52:13-15, 53:1-3, 53:4-6, 53:7-9, 53:10-12), in verses four through six and give a miniature exposition before getting to the point of the post, which proceeds from the truth of the last verse of that majestic text.

4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

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.

I’ve never met Paul Washer or heard him in person.  He has become well known among conservative evangelicals.  He has preached at Grace Community Church, Masters College, and the G3 Conference.  Often, Todd Friel refers to him on his Wretched program.  He is the founder and director of Heart Cry Missionary Society.  He was a missionary to Peru for ten years.  I’m using him for this post because of good things I hear from and have heard from him.

Paul Washer entitles this presentation:  “Churches Using Carnal Means to Attract Carnal People.”  I agree with a very large percentage of it. He starts out with this:

Because we have dumbed down the gospel, because we’re not preaching the true gospel, and we are using carnal means to attract people.  If you use carnal means to attract men, you’re going to attract carnal men.  And you’re going to have to keep using greater carnal means to keep them in the church.

I’m right with him on that.  I agree that those could be the two biggest problems going, if not the first and third biggest problems with the second the corruption of the biblical doctrine of sanctification.  However, Washer is very concerned about that too, as seen in recent tweets by him (his last three):

The Apostle Paul and James are not teaching contrary doctrines of salvation. Paul addresses the cause of our salvation (faith), while James addresses the result of our salvation (works). From both writers, we gain a comprehensive or holistic view of the work of God in salvation.

— Paul Washer (@paulwasher) December 11, 2019

Salvation by faith will result in works or obedience to the will of God. Yet even these works are not to be attributed primarily to the one who performs them but to the God who gives grace — Paul wrote, “But by the grace of God I am what I am” (I Corinthians 15:10).

— Paul Washer (@paulwasher) December 12, 2019

Those who have been saved by faith will begin to live in increasing conformity to God’s will, not by their own strength, but because they have been regenerated and indwelt by God’s Spirit. They are God’s work, for God’s glory. They will not be lost because God will not lose them!

— Paul Washer (@paulwasher) December 14, 2019

Washer repudiates using carnal means in the church to attract men to church, because it will result in attracting carnal men.  I also agree that it will necessitate greater carnal means to keep those carnal men.  However, does Paul Washer fellowship with churches that use carnal means?  Conservative evangelicalism is full of them.  They still use plenty of carnal means in their youth groups (Washer mentions “youth groups”), including the rock music and rock concerts, which are carnal music.

He continues:

We have these large churches fill with unconverted, carnal people.  But in those churches we have this small group of people that honestly want Christ, and they honestly want His Word and they honestly want to be transformed.  They don’t need anything else.  All they need is true worship of the true God and scripture being preached to them and lived out before them.  That’s what they want.

Now I want to tell you the great sin of the American pastor.  And this has got me in a lot of trouble, but it’s true.  This small group of converted people in that local church, all they want is Jesus and all they want to do is the right thing.  They want purity, they want truth, they want Christ, but the pastor, in order to keep this larger group of unconverted people, he caters to them.  So while he’s feeding these carnal men and women with carnal things, he’s letting the sheep of God starve to death and he’s going to stand before God one day in judgment.

Then Washer gives an illustration to try to motivate people to do something about this, to stand for these people in these churches.  This was the essence of everything that he said.  You can listen to the rest of it, but I want to comment on the two paragraphs coming from him.

I agree that there are these large churches full of unconverted people.  Their pastors have told me themselves that they have mainly unconverted people attending their churches.  They know it.  They are doing exactly what Washer says.  There really are a smaller group of people in these churches in many cases, just like he described.  It’s sad but true, what he’s saying.  But what’s missing?

Washer calls on people to do something about what he’s describing as very bad, but I have found something else about these people in these churches.  These “good people” very often have a church to which they could join that isn’t using carnal methods and is doing all the good things that he describes about a good church.  I’ve talked to them many times.  I’ve told them about the difference.  I’ve been doing this for over thirty years.  What do the “good people” do?  They stay in their carnal churches using carnal methods.

The “good people” in the churches according to Washer’s description, I’ve met.  They don’t want this church described.  They want, as I’ve seen it, some fictional church that is halfway between the carnal method church and the one Washer describes.  They also don’t want to give up their carnality as much as he describes.  What would someone do who wanted it?  He would separate from the carnal church, which is a practice of biblical separation.

As well, what should anyone do to rescue these people?  Washer says the people who do nothing about it are as guilty as the people doing it.  What do they do though?  The small group needs to be taught by people like Washer to join another smaller group, one that isn’t using carnal methods.  The small group that loves the Lord as Washer describes can leave in a biblical manner.  If a Roman Catholic is converted, truly so with a true gospel, he should leave the Catholic church.

I ask, can you worship God in your church?  We have a tract with that title.  A person who can’t worship God in his church, because it uses carnal worship and doesn’t preach a true gospel or have a true God, should leave that church and go to one that does.  Carnal churches are hard to leave.  They have friends, sometimes family, carnal music, carnal methods, and the size to provide certain comforts and conveniences.  The truth, separation from worldliness, and transformation aren’t as important as these things to most of these “good people.”

The kind of church that stays pure is a shock to the system of the person who has stayed for a long time at a “carnal church.”  A church doesn’t stay pure by accident.  It requires discipline.  It doesn’t draw in the visitors like the carnal church.  It’s easier to get people to come and feel that rush of success.  What might go along with the purity is a personal separation that the “good people” are not accustomed to.

To wrap this up, Washer doesn’t mention separation.  Separation is all over the Bible and in nearly every New Testament book.  There is an actual section on separation in most of the epistles, and yet evangelicals rarely make a peep about separation, including the conservative ones.  Washer himself hobnobs with evangelicals.  Those are his people.  I don’t see him with separatists.

On Washer’s website, I saw him preaching to a large crowd of evangelicals filling up a gigantic cathedral in Paris.  How did they draw that big crowd in Paris?  To get a large group of people together, doctrinal or practical barriers are diminished or removed.  That alone is a method.  Is it a godly method to decide to devalue doctrine and practice for the purpose of a larger group, finding commonality by moving doctrines and practices into non-essential categories?

If the good people separated from carnal churches, those churches would get the message that they are losing their good people because of their ungodly beliefs and practices.  That’s what they should do.  Then the smaller, godly, pure churches would get bigger.  This doesn’t happen because these good people are not so good as Paul Washer thinks and says.  They are not walking by faith, but walking by sight.  They won’t “go outside the camp” to identify and suffer with the people of God.  Paul Washer himself stays within the confines of the fellowship of that crowd.

Wellness in the Bible is wellness.  Unbiblical “wellness” isn’t wellness.  Without biblical wellness, it won’t be well with you.  You will be unwell.  Don’t think otherwise.  You do so at your own risk.

Wellness is a major theme in scripture, beginning with the Old Testament.  God wants people to be well (Hebrew, yawtab).  God gives the prescription for wellness in the following verses, and scripture is consistent in the usage.

Very often tied into wellness is the prolonging of life, which also conforms to what people might think with “wellness,” even today.  Here are the verses and some contain both concepts, wellness and prolonged days or quite simply, you may live.

Deuteronomy 4:40, “Thou shalt keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments, which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, for ever.”
Deuteronomy 5:29, “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!”
Deuteronomy 5:33, “Ye shall walk in all the ways which the LORD your God hath commanded you, that ye may live, and that it may be well with you, and that ye may prolong your days in the land which ye shall possess.”
Deuteronomy 6:1-3, “1 Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the LORD your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it: 2 That thou mightest fear the LORD thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the LORD God of thy fathers hath promised thee,, in the land that floweth with milk and honey.
Deuteronomy 6:18, “And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the LORD: that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers.”
Deuteronomy 12:28, “Observe and hear all these words which I command thee, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee for ever, when thou doest that which is good and right in the sight of the LORD thy God.”
Psalm 128:1-2, “1 Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways. 2 For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.“
Ecclesiastes 8:12-13, “12 Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before him: 13 But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because he feareth not before God.
Jeremiah 7:23, “But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you.“
Jeremiah 38:20, “But Jeremiah said, They shall not deliver thee. Obey, I beseech thee, the voice of the LORD, which I speak unto thee: so it shall be well unto thee, and thy soul shall live.“
Jeremiah 42:6, “Whether it be good, or whether it be evil, we will obey the voice of the LORD our God, to whom we send thee; that it may be well with us, when we obey the voice of the LORD our God.”
Ephesians 6:1-3, “1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 2 Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) 3 That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.“