THE EVERLY BROTHERS: ALL I HAVE TO DO IS DREAM

In 1958, the Everly brothers put out a hit song that would be on the charts in Britain for 21 weeks and was Number 1 in America for 5 weeks. It was, "All I have to Do is Dream." It's a song whose line says, "If I want you, all I have to do is dream."

Motivational speakers have figured out that you can fool some of the people all of the time. They have also figured out that to fool people all they have to do is to appeal to a person's dreams. 

"Dreams" is a key word in their "sermons." Those motivational speakers who speak from behind a pulpit in a church auditorium rely heavily on the dreams people have for health, promotions, and wealth, et al. 

"You can achieve your dreams,"and, "Don't give up," they repeat like a never-ending drumbeat. They repeat the word over and over in their books, as evidenced by the following daily devotion entitled "Remember Your Dream."* (The emphasis is mine.)

"We all have dreams we're believing [God] for, but we may have hit some setbacks. Our dreams can get buried under discouragement, past mistakes, rejection, failure, and negative voices. It's easy to settle for mediocrity even when we have all this potential buried inside. Your dream may be buried, but it's still alive. It's not too late to see it come to pass. The key to reaching your destiny is to remember your dream. What has God put in your heart? What did you used to be excited about? Why do you think it's too late, it's too big, or it's not possible? Get your passion back. You haven't missed your opportunity or had too many bad breaks. Stir up your faith. God is going to resurrect what you thought was dead. You may have tried and failed, but dreams that you've given up on are going to suddenly come back to life. God has the final say. He hasn't changed His mind.

Prayer for Today

"Father, thank You for the dreams and desires You put in my heart. Thank You that I can stir up my faith and know that You can resurrect what I may have thought was dead. I declare that it is never too late to see my dreams come to pass because You have the final say. In Jesus Name, Amen."

 

This sermonette smacks of the false idea that all a person has to do is "resurrect it," "stir it up," and "declare that it's never too late." That error has been called, "Name it and claim it." (Motivational speakers are like the circus, you see one, you've seen them all.  Yawn.) 

Let's talk about a man who had a dream for his life. It was a dream for his legacy that would cement him in history. It was the godliest of godly dreams: his name was David and he wanted to  build the Temple in Israel, the first ever. 

In our sanctified imaginations, we can see David's visiting the land on which he would build his dream; we can see him sitting at his desk drawing upand studying the architectural plans he'd meticulously done; we can see him showing his plans to his son Solomon, telling him, "I'm going to put this here and that there." David is so excited.  

The only thing about his dream was that there was one word he hadn't counted on hearing: "No." That's what God said to his great dream. David couldn't "resurrect it," David couldn't stir it up, and David couldn't declare that it was never too late. God dashed the dream a'borning. David, God said, was a man of war and that was God's appointed place and will for him and he could be more than satisfed with what God had given him to do and what he had done. But the dream of building the Temple? NO.

 

Another example is Paul's dream of heading into Turkey with the gospel. That's a godly dream. He was so energetic about his dream that, "after they came to Mysia, they were trying [Greek: imperfect tense, "kept on trying"] to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them." God said, "No" to that dream. Peter would go there. Paul was to be satisfied with Macedonia. 

 

^{This false idea leads people to assume that their believing, if great enough, that their declaring, if said strongly enough, that their stirring up, if stirred hard enough and long enough will make their dream come true.}  

^{They're headed down a disappointing path. Their name is Legion.} 

 ^{____________________________________________________________}

 

 * Joel Osteen Feb. 4, 2021

JOHN 3:16: INSUFFICENT?

 The answer to that question is, "Yes, John 3:16 is insufficient according to the tenets of Lordship salvation." How so? To answer that question, let's define Lordship Salvation. 

Lrodship Salvation is a false gospel and would therefore stand under the stong language of Galatians 1:8-9: "But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, even now I say again: if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!."

Lordship salvation presents a false gospel because it delivers a heavy addition of works to grace which therefore nullifies the grace of faith alone in Christ alone as the one and ony condition of salvation. When a person introduces just one single work as a requirement for salvation, that destroys the gospel; Lordship Salvation stuffs a truck load of works into grace.

We'll start unloading the truck with the heavy box labeled "commitment." "COMMENTMENT" means that a person must yield his life to Christ as the Lord of his life. This means everyday, every month, and every year without fail.  According to Lordship Salvation, a person can believe in Jesus for everlasting life and the forgiveness of sin and not be saved because that faith must be joined by a commitment to serve Him his entire life. That first load is a heavy one. But the truck is not empty.

There's another huge box in the truck and this too requires for heavy lifting. It's a box that bears the label, "OBEDIENCE." The requirement is that lifelong obediece must follow commitment. There's no salvation apart from obedience according to Lordship Salvation, because obedience proves that a person is truly saved. Often Lordship Salvation say it this way, “We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.” That statement is illogical because the last half contradicts the first half. Yet that contradiction is passed over without thought by many even those who say they would disagree with Lordship Salvation.  

There's no rest for the weary; there's another weighty box in the truck. It's the one labeled, "PERSEVERANCE." Commitment must result in obedience and that commitment must result in obedience and those must, absolutely must, persevere from day one until the end of life. A person who commits his life to Christ, and obeys Him for decades, yet he stops serving and obeying Him at the end of life and dies as an immoral person or an alcoholic or a drug addict or any other type of sinner will not enter the gates of pearl. According to Lordship Salvation, no matter how long a person has been committed and has obeyed Christ, he can never assume he's saved, That's the way Lordship Salvation works. 

The signing on to receive these weighty boxes comes with serious psychological difficulties: how do I know if I'm commited enough? How do I know if I'm obedient enough? How do I know I'll be faithful to the finish? Those questions are beyond answers in this life. And if a person is serious, those questions put him into a torture chamber for the rest of his life. 

So, now we come to the question in the title of this essay. According to Lordship Salvation,  the most beloved verse in the Bible, is John 3:16, insufficient to bring eternal life and the forgiveness of sin? Yes, that's the logical conclusion the Lordship salvationist must come to because there's no mention in that verse of commitment, obedience, and perseverance.

Isn't it strange that John left those three things out? Could it be because commitment, obedience, and perseverance are a false gospel? 

Yes.

THE CHURCH THAT DIDN'T LAUGH

During Grace Biblical Seminary's conference in September 2022, a pastor announced that he had brought booklets that were available to one and all. Nothing unusual about that. What was unusual was that he said, "They're free but they will cost you everything." (It was a joke, so this article pauses to hear your laugh.) 

The entire group of attendees, all in unision, laughed with gusto. And well they should; the remark  made no sense. How can something be free and "cost you everything" at one and the same time? It was a non sequitur. (A statement containing an illogical conclusion.)

Imagine that you walk into a local store. As you look through the items, you find something that you're interested in buying. You pick it up and see no price tag attached. You ask the clerk about the price.

“How much is this?” you say. It’s a simple question, right? You expect an equally simple answer.

"It's free, but it will cost you five dollars," the clerk says. She smiles as if she's delivered good news. You need clarification, so you ask once again.

“How can it be free and five dollars?”

"It's a free gift from the manufacturer, but they require that you pay five dollars for it," the clerk says. You feel an urge to argue but decide to put the item down instead. After setting it aside, you slink quietly out of the store. After all, the clerk is obviously deranged. (from Lucas Kitchen)

Kitchen goes on to write, "The basic rules of logic prevent this obvious contradiction from being a successful sales tactic in a department store, yet pastors all over the world pedal this same illogical nonsense from their Sunday pulpits. 

"There was a time in my life, as a minister, where I heard these exact words coming from my mouth. People have left the church in massive numbers in the last three decades, and it's no wonder when foolish phrases like this are the foundation of most gospel presentations." 

But contrary to the GBS conference group, nobody in church laughs at such a  statement. They sit silently, accepting the statement without analyzation, biblical or otherwise.

Romans 5;23 and Revelation 22:17 along with lots of other declarations nod their heads in agreement: salvation is  free. Period. Over and out. 

And yet, next Sunday, millions and millions of people with hear, "Salvation is free but it will cost you everything," and they don't laugh. They should; the statement is ridiculous. The millions who hear this statement should do two things: laugh and leave, never to return and never to write a check to support the propagation of the non sequteur. 

A FATHER,, A MOTHER, A DYING BOY

 A father and mother have come to America. They have a son but there's a problem: he's sick, very sick. The doctors tell the parents that their young son has not one but two tumors in his head. The desperate parents have agreed to go on television for a documentary and announce their certainty that God is going to heal their son.It's a visible, televised examaple of the great faith they have.

We see the parents sittnig on their couch in their den as the camera rolls and we see their son off to their left in a half sitting, half lying position with his eyes closed. He's unresponsive. As the interview progresses, these humble parents tell us the reason for their certainty of the miracle to come: they're going to take their boy to pastor Benny Hinn and there on stage, before a massive throng, they and everyone else will see "Pastor Hinn" perform a miracle. As the father says, "God can do anything."

Television transports us into the massive throng assembled to see a miracle or experience one in one of Hinn's mega meetings. There they are, the father and the mother, who, with assistance, are carrying their son who's lying limp on a stretcher unresponsive and unaware of what's going on around him up to Pastor Hinn waiting on the platform for the boy's arrival.

Hinn, the anointed healer, approaches the unconscious child, touches his face, says some words and pronounces him healed as the boy neither moves nor speaks nor opens his eyes. 

Dad and mom take their son home. Within weeks, he's dead. The television camera and the documentarian return to the parents' home. They've granted another interview and they have an announcement to make. The interviewer asks, "What happened? Whom do you blame for this?"

Without batting an eye or missing a beat, the father says, "We blame ourselves." 

The father says that their son died because, as pastor Hinn said, "We didn't have enought faith." The father doesn't stop with that, he tells the watching audience that he wrote pastor Hinn a check for $2,000 and was glad to do it. 

For the rest of their lives, these two, unless they come to the truth, will go to their graves believing that their son died because of their deficient faith. They will live with the guilt because that's what Pastor Hinn teaches. They believe they failed their son.

What they don't know is that they've met a wolf in sheep's clothing. They've met a wolf who, like the wolves of Jesus' day, "like to walk around in long robes, and like personal greetings in the marketplaces, and seats of honor in the synagogues, and places of honor at banquets, who devour widows’ houses, and for appearance’s sake offer long prayers." The wolf in their case devoured their $2,000. There was no refund.

The wolves are on the prowl because they're ravenous for more. The Copelands, the Dollars, and the Osteens never devour enough; they always go after more. 

They are the modern Tetzles who promise that if you give them your money (by buying their books, purchasing their CDs, by sending them "seed money"), God is just waiting to bless them with prosperity, all the while, it's the wolves who are prospering. 

Why don't the wolves go to the hospitals and perform their "miracles?" Why don't the prosperity preachers go to Central America to the people who wash their clothes by beating them on a rock and sell them their books? Surely those in San Salvador who walk in shoes of cardboard need to hear that God will make them wealthy if they just have enough faith and give their money and buy the books.  They need to know the secret to living their best life now, don't they? 

The prosperity wolves have propagated an idol for people to worship; an idol whose goal is to make people happy and financially comfortable. They fill people's heads with delusions. The last verse of I John still applies today. 

The wolves smile. All the way to the bank.