Applegate has its own radio station, which plays non-stop here. When I jump in my car, I often turn it on, and almost always someone is teaching from somewhere in the Bible.  The teachers on the station are almost exclusively Courson, either the dad, Jon, or one of this two sons, Ben and Peter-John, the latter who died in 2019, but his replays continue.

Until I moved up here to Oregon, I knew of Calvary Chapel, but I had not been around it.  I did not know really what distinguished it.  Southern Oregon though has been heavily impacted by Calvary Chapel and I think it is the greatest religious influence in the area where we are evangelizing and starting a church.  Jon Courson left Oregon for a short while around 2002 to help Chuck Smith in the founding Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, but came back around 2006 and has been here ever since.

With that introduction, coming home last night at about 5:30pm after evangelizing and passing out gospel tracts in town, I turned on KAPL, the Applegate station, and Jon Courson was teaching from Revelation 4.  When I listen, I’m not doing so with the idea that I want to find something wrong with teaching on that station.  Just the opposite, I know when I turn it on, someone is going to be teaching from the Bible.  I would rather listen to something from the Bible.  I would like it to be good.  Very often I agree.  However, I’m starting to get what the Calvary Chapel doctrine is.

Calvary Chapel doctrine is easy believism.  It is second blessing or keswick sanctification.  It is revivalistic.  It is mystical.  It is overtly positive to a fault, going out of the way so that people won’t feel guilty.  It is what I’ve heard termed (and used myself), cheap grace.  It is very often allegorical and especially in the Old Testament, seeing things in passages that are not there.  For all the time I’ve been listening, I don’t hear a true gospel.  They believe salvation comes through Jesus Christ, but it is mostly a less than saving faith preached.  I don’t hear repentance.  I’m sure they use the term when they get to those passages, but I still had not heard it after hours hearing it in the car.

I think people have been saved at Applegate, but it is so weak that it will give most people the false impression they’re saved, when they’re not.  It changes the nature of Christianity and a true imagination of God.  The doctrine produces worldly people, who call themselves Christians.  They use worldly music and mainly rock.  The sermons are not expository.  They are verse by verse, but they are not finding the point of the text and preaching the text then in its context, which is what expository preaching will do.

What I heard last night is just an example — understand that I’m writing here based on memory of what I was hearing.  Courson was commenting on “holy, holy, holy,” spoken by the angels to God.  He said that the word “holy” relates to “whole” or “wholeness,” related to sound, healthy, or complete.  That make sense to a hearer, because the word “holy” sounds like the word “wholly” (actually exactly like it).

Saying that’s what holy meant, “whole,” then he took off on some related passages, including worshiping God in the beauty of his holiness.  He said that holiness is lovely, that it is attractive to people, because there is a wholeness of completeness to it, as if someone has it all together.  Obviously, if someone gets the meaning of “holy” wrong, that will greatly influence the understanding of Revelation 4, God Himself, the gospel, and the entire Bible.

“Holy” does not mean “whole.”  At best, you get out a book of English etymology and you can find a related Old Scottish word, hale, which means “health, happiness, and wholeness.”  That’s not how you understand the meaning of a biblical word.  Both the Hebrew (qadosh) and Greek (hagios) words translated into the English, “holy,” in the King James Version mean “separate” or “sanctified.”  God’s holiness is beautiful, but that doesn’t mean that it is attractive to an ungodly or unsaved person; just the opposite according to Jesus.  He said men are turned away the light of God, that they hate it and love darkness instead.  Believers should worship God in the beauty of His holiness, because that is God’s standard of beauty.

Beauty to Applegate is what is “whole,” which is attractive to people.  Their “worship” is “attractive,” so it must be “beautiful.”  Actually, beauty is subjective to Applegate.  It isn’t based upon God’s holiness.  God’s holiness isn’t sensual, worldly, and fleshly, among other traits we know God doesn’t like and do not correspond to His nature.

Here’s how Courson explained what was happening then with the angels incessantly proclaiming, “holy, holy, holy,” in the presence of God.  I’m not making this up.  He said that the angels would be considering going back home for the night, but when they look at God, they are so overwhelmed with Him that it produces an ecstatic state, so that out of that impression, they bow down before Him.  They are just blown away by God and then they proceed to get up again to leave, see God again, and are affected again by seeing Him, so that they proclaim, “holy, holy, holy,” again.  They just keep doing this and then just never stop.  I’m not misrepresenting what he said.

Courson said these angels were not automatrons, like, he said, the characters on the Disney ride, Pirates of the Carribean, who just keep singing their refrain in a loop.  He tried to sing “holy, holy, holy” to the tune of the Disney ride.  He said, No, these angels are of greater intelligence then humans, so they are speaking out, “holy, holy, holy,” because of the effects of their seeing God.  Is that what you think?

Here’s a simpler explanation without reading into Revelation 4 this idea that the angels in heaven would go home for the night, but His wholeness is too inspiring to leave.  God created certain angels with the express purpose of praising Him like they do in the heavenly holy of holies.  I don’t doubt their intelligence, but I don’t think they are just blown away by the “wholeness” of God, that He’s just got it all together so much, that they can’t help but stay forever, continuing to say exactly the same thing.  They are fulfilling their duty out of fear of God, which is why they cover their face and feet with separate sets of wings.

“Wholeness” is an easy vessel in which to pour all sorts of ideas, especially for new age teaching.  It helps with cheap grace.  When God commands, “Be ye holy,” like in Leviticus and then 1 Peter, He then doesn’t mean, “be separate,” or distinct, in accordance with the character of God, but that someone has his life all together, whole, happy, and attractive.   People don’t like separation.  God’s holiness is a uniqueness of God, His majesty, the glories of the perfection of His attributes, but they are all maintained by His keeping separate from everything.  Nothing about God then is common or profane. The world will be blown away by this person, who is holy, because his life is so complete, thinking that it is beautiful.  To be holy, he could work on self-care and wellness, to present himself as an attractive person.  This is deceit about the holiness of God.  How could someone sincerely think this, I don’t know.

Another ride in the car two days before, I had KAPL on again, and someone not a Courson was teaching on Acts 10 and 11, and the entire time he was parking on Acts 10:15 (and 11:9):  “And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.”  His exclusive point was the someone who believes in Jesus is not common, whether he’s even not doing what God doesn’t want him to do, since all of us still sin.  I bring this in, because it is related.  When someone isn’t living a righteous life, he is common (or profane).  He isn’t holy.    Sure, if he’s truly saved, he’s positionally holy, but not to sin, and if he is sinning, he is common and profane.

The passage was unrelated to the point this teacher was making.  The truth is that people are not unclean or common just because they are Gentiles or just because they don’t follow the dietary restrictions.  However, it doesn’t mean that people who are actually sinning are not common.  They are.  God doesn’t want believers living in a common or profane manner.  This is just another issue of personal holiness that is twisted that results in a different, unbiblical version of Christianity being presented, and again related to the holiness of God.