17,000 DELUSIONAL PEOPLE

Listen to Jude: "Yet it the same way, these men [false teachers] by dreaming . . . reject authority." 

When we dream, we're divorced from reality and the real world. In a dream, things aren't as they really are but twice a day and once on Sunday, world without end, amen,  people, sitting in church voluntarily hie themselves off into a world that doesn't exist. How so? They do try to go there when they do what the world famous preacher with the 1,000 watt smile, Joel Osteen, tells them to do.

He tells them to say twice a day, "I am blessed. I am prosperous. I am successful.” “I am victorious. I am talented. I am creative.” “I am wise. I am healthy. I am in shape.” “I am energetic. I am happy. I am positive.” “I am passionate. I am strong. I am confident.” “I am secure. I am beautiful. I am attractive.” “I am valuable. I am free. I am redeemed.” “I am forgiven. I am anointed. I am accepted.” “I am approved. I am prepared. I am qualified.” “I am motivated. I am focused. I am disciplined.” “I am determined. I am patient. I am kind.” “I am generous. I am excellent. I am equipped.” “I am empowered. I am well able.” “I am a child of the Most High God.”

To go further into Alice's Wonderland, he says that by saying those words twice a day, you will attract those things to you. Really? No. But every Sunday, 17,000 people gather in Houston to collectively leave reality to try to get to the land of unicorns, pots of gold, and four-leaf clovers. 

In the Bible he holds aloft, no one can find a promise therein that God will make a person beautiful and attractive, qualified and excellent, healthy and in shape, creative and energetic. Saying it won't make it so, Joe. To fall for that is to reject the authority of Scripture.

If you believe this say -it- and- claim- it-claptrap, I have the seven cities of Cibola I'll sell you.

 

TICKTOCK

 In 1516, a man named Erasmus, a Dutch theologian and widely revered scholar,  went back to the original Greek of the New Testament and published it in its original language. He put parallel to it, not the official Latin translation but his own Latin version. He did this because he was naively hoping that it would prompt a healthy reform in the Roman Catholic Church. But he didn't realize that he had produced a ticking time bomb that would change the world and fracture the religious system of his day in such a way that it could never be put together as it was. 

In the irony of historical ironies, he dedicated his work to the pope, who then sent him a letter expressing  his gratitude and thanks along with his commendation for the work. His gratitude was premature. The book that was a bomb had now begun ticking. What Erasmus had done would have ramifications he had never dreamed of.

In Matthew 4:17, for example, he found that the Latin Vulgate which had held sway for over a thousand years had Jesus say, "Do penance." Erasmus translated the Greek word, "be penitent." Then he started the bomb ticking when he translated the word properly as, "change your mind." This meant that Jesus was not instigating the external sacrament of penance, as Rome had taught for eons, but was speaking of the internal need for sinners to change their minds. That one word would be the bomb.

The problem didn't stop there. If Rome was wrong on Matthew 4:17, where else might they have erred? That would raise the question of what kind of a spiritual authority were the popes and the entire system they represented and proclaimed? It was the Bible in its original language that was the time bomb at the feet of the pope who now had the truth in his hands. Ticktock. Ticktock. Ticktock.

Not even Erasmus realized the significance of his accomplishment, His work became the basis for Martin Luther’s German translation of the New Testament, William Tyndale’s English translation, and the Hungarian and Spanish translations.

From this we have the famous statement, "Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched."

IT STILL IS REARING ITS UGLY HEAD

 There's a type of Bible "teaching" that, although it's thousands of years old, we see it rear its ugly head repetitively in church after church at 11 AM Sunday after Sunday. This type of teaching started with the ancient Greeks in regard to their precious Iliad and The Odyssey. 

From there, the Jews adopted it because there were parts of the Old Testament they decided were embarrassing. Still alive, the church fathers, going against the teaching method of Christ and the Apostles, brought it into the church.

There's a name for the method; it's called the allegorical. Its adherents are able to find hidden meanings in the words of the Scriptures, and, in so doing, twist the clear and present meaning of the literal words into something completely different than what the author has written. The peddlers of this method find a meaning below the surface. For example, the preacher deliteralizes  Second Coming of Christ and finds the hidden meaning: the Second Coming becomes Christ's coming into the heart of the believer at his conversion. The fire on an Old Testament altar becomes the Holy Spirit. 

The congregation, hearing this, oohs and ahhs over the brilliance of the pastor who is coming up with these hidden meanings out of thin air, little realizing that the Bible has now become putty in his hands. 

Augustine, often referred to as a brilliant theologian, was an allegorizer on steroids as we see in his treatment of the story of the Good Samaritan. I have reproduced what he did to the story word for word.

 Read it and weep:

 "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho;  Adam himself is meant; Jerusalem is the heavenly city of peace, from whose blessedness Adam fell; Jericho means the moon, and signifies our mortality, because it is born, waxes, wanes, an dies. Thieves are the devil and his angels. Who stripped him, namely; of his immortality; and beat him, by persuading him to sin; and left him half-dead, because in so far as man can understand and know God, he lives, but in so far as he is wasted and oppressed by sin, he is dead; he is therefore called half-dead.  The priest and the Levite who saw him and passed by, signify the priesthood and ministry of the Old Testament which could profit nothing for salvation. Samaritan means Guardian, and therefore the Lord Himself is signified by this name. The binding of the wounds is the restraint of sin. Oil is the comfort of good hope; wine the exhortation to work with fervent spirit. The beast is the flesh in which He deigned to come to us. The being set upon the beast is belief in the incarnation of Christ. The inn is the Church, where travelers returning to their heavenly country are refreshed after pilgrimage. The morrow is after the resurrection of the Lord. The two pence are either the two precepts of love, or the promise of this life and of that which is to come. The innkeeper is the Apostle (Paul). The supererogatory payment is either his counsel of celibacy, or the fact that he worked with his own hands lest he should be a burden to any of the weaker brethren when the Gospel was new, though it was lawful for him 'to live by the gospel.'"

The method didn't cease to exist with Augustine. You've heard pastors use it time and time again: Christ calming the storm becomes Christ solving the storms of our problems; David's slaying of the giant Goliath becomes how to deal with our "giant problems." Christ's resurrection becomes His "comeback" and "you can have a comeback too." 

If this is what you're hearing at church, go out and find a Bible teacher who uses the method of Christ and the Apostles: the literal, grammatical, and historical method. Start this Sunday and don't quit until you do.

AN EASTER DEBACLE

We begin with one word: debacle. To be precise, we begin with a complete collapse or failure that, to state the sad fact, few seem to recognize. The collapse occurred in the aftermath of a well-known Easter (better yet, Resurrection Sunday) play. 

The play is a marathon rivaling "Gone With the Wind" in running time--around 3 and a half hours. (I've never seen GWTW because I've always fallen asleep somewhere in its progression.) The play features a great deal of music which consumes some of those 3.5 hours. It's just too long for my tastes. But, that's just me, one of my quirks that pronounces some movies, plays, or books as too long. As I've heard, if one were to read "Moby Dick," to complete the book would take the average reader almost 8 hours and he would have to swim through many, many pages before the great white whale first shows up. 

The play is all about the words and works of Christ, climaxing with the death and resurrection. Then after the play came the pastoral exhortation to the audience to "Stay in your seats, stop moving around, and listen to me for the next few minutes." It was then that the Easter debacle ("failure" and "collapse") began with what's called, "The invitation." 

He kept telling the congregation to stop and sit down. He said, "If you keep moving around, some people may go to hell." (No one will be able to use the excuse, "You can't send me to hell because people were moving around." They will be, in the words of Paul in Romans, "Without excuse."

The collapse was immediate as the speaker began ti address the unsaved who had just seen the play, "If you're here tonight and you haven't submitted your life to Jesus Christ and you want to begin that journey tonight, could there be a better time? It's time to give your life to Jesus Christ. We want you to give your life to Jesus Christ. He continued.

"Friend, if you want to make it right with God, I want you to pray this prayer and really mean it with all your heart. Let me be clear; this prayer doesn't save you. Your faith in Jesus saves you. 

"So when you pray this prayer and you really mean it with all your heart, and you're ready to submit your life to your Lord Jesus Christ, I want you to pray this prayer  and meant it with all your heart: 'Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner and Lord Jesus, I'm sorry  for my sins, I'm so sorry for my sins, I'm asking you to forgive me of my sins. I know you died for me; I know that I'm a sinner. Lord Jesus, save me,would you save my soul and forgive my sins, Lord Jesus, help me, help me to live for you, Lord Jesus, save me' "

After that, he asked those who had done that to raise their hands with every head bowed and every eye closed.

The difficulties abound. The pastor began with, "If you're here tonight and you haven't submitted your life to Christ .. ." What goes unnoticed by the assembled is that "submit" isn't a requirement for eternal life in a verse they all know, John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." Where is "submit?"

Without their realizing the pastor as added four words to the verse so that it reads, ". . . . whosoever believes in Him and submits to Him has everlasting life."

The Easter debacle continued with the pastor's requirement that to be saved, a person must be "sorry for my  sins, so sorry for my sins. This idea is there because he thinks the word "repent" means "feel sorry for" but it means "to change one's mind." When a person does believe as John 3:16 says, he has "changed his mind."

The failure didn't stop there. Next, the pastor tells the person to ask Jesus for forgiveness so he can be saved. "Believing" is in John 3:16, "asking" is not. Asking comes across as pleading or begging.

There are many things this congregation hasn't noticed, and a major one was right there in front of them when we rewind the tape and go back to what the pastor said two minutes earlier: "This prayer doesn't save you. Faith in Christ saves you." That IS in John 3:16, only a better way to biblically say it is that we're saved THROUGH faith.  In reality, Christ saves us  through faith. But my point isn't that; my point is that he's just said, "faith saves you." But then he contradicts that statement by saying,  "Submission" saves you. Asking Jesus to forgive you sins saves you. Then giving your life to Jesus saves you."

Where are all those words, "give your life to Christ," "I'm sorry for my sins, really sorry," "submit," "ask Jesus to save you," and "help me to live for you," in I Corinthians 15:3-4? John 3:16? And Acts 16:32:3? 

Those words are not there.