CORRUPTING SCRIPTURE, SIN, AND CHRISTIAN EVOLUTIONISTS

The Spirit had led Jesus into the desert, where He and Satan exchanged Scripture:

·       Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” (Matthew 4:5-6; ESV; quoting from Psalm 91:11-12)

The devil’s quotation illustrated the fact that Scripture, although cited accurately, can be used deceptively. Jesus responded by making the necessary distinction between trusting God and acting in a presumptuous manner:

·       Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” (Matthew 4:7; quoting from Deut. 6:16)

Jesus corrected the devil’s deceptive use of Scripture. Although we are to trust the Lord to protect us, we shouldn’t jump off a mountain to coerce Him to protect us, as the devil had suggested to Jesus. He had invoked Scripture in a demonstrably sinful way, in a way that it was never intended to be used.

Manipulating Scripture to serve our purposes or to support our cause is very common. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ™, made popular by The Beatles, claimed

·       “Christ said, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ Be still and know you are God and when you know that you are God you will begin to live Godhood, and living Godhood there is no reason to suffer.” (Scripture Twisting, James Sire)

For one thing, Jesus never said this. Instead, it comes from Psalm 46. However, Maharishi adds a twist. Instead of knowing that God is God, he admonishes us to know that we are God – so characteristic of the non-biblical faiths.

In contrast, Jesus warned us against this kind of arrogance:

·       For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 18:14)

In many ways Jesus warned against arrogance and pride and commended the humble. A Roman Captain of 100 men asked Him to heal his servant. However, he astonishingly added, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed” (Matthew 8:8). Jesus was so amazed by this appropriate display of humility and wisdom that He proclaimed that He had never seen such faith.

Joyce Meyers is a product of the Word of Faith movement:

·       “Unto every man is given the measure of faith, and faith is a powerful force.” “It says in Romans 4:17 that …we have a God who gives life to the dead and He calls things that be not as though they already existed…If there’s something in your way, speak it.” “When I talked with Dr. Roberts today and we talked about this seed-faith thing, he said…when you give you get a receipt in heaven that when you have a need you can then go with your receipt and say ‘You see, God, I have got my receipt from my sowing and now I have a need and I’m cashing in my receipt.” (CRJ, Hunter)

However, Meyers and other “word of faith” preachers have manipulated Romans 4 to say something that it doesn’t say, that we have the same power that God has to give life to the dead. However, this verse says absolutely nothing about our having this power:

·       As it is written, “I have made you [Abraham] the father of many nations”—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. (Romans 4:17)

If we do have the powers of God, this verse says nothing about it. Instead, Scripture informs us that we do not have such powers:

• Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that." But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16)

Another “word of faith” preacher, T.D. Jakes appeals to Proverbs 18:21 to justify his claim that our tongues have supernatural power:

• Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

However, this verse and the entire context fail to suggest that our tongues are endowed with supernatural power. Instead, they do have natural power to build someone up or to break them down.

This is a matter of using God’s Word in an improper way. The Apostle Paul had commended his ministry because this was something that they did not do:

·       For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ. (2 Corinthians 2:17; KJV)

To use Scripture in a way that it was clearly never intended to be used is to “corrupt the word of God” as the devil had done with Jesus.

I am particularly troubled by Christian evolutionists in this regard. In order to advance the theory of evolution, they not only corrupt a few verses; they corrupt the entirety of Scripture by claiming that Genesis 1-11 is not about history but purely about spirituality. By claiming this, they empty Scripture of much of its content and historical context.

Why do they denigrate Scripture so severely? To demonstrate that Scripture does not contradict evolution! If evolution is simply about the physical world and Scripture is simply about the spiritual world, then Scripture can no longer contradict evolution. It can no longer say that God historically spoke things into existence. Instead, the CE insists that this is a spiritual message without any bearing upon the historical, physical world.

Denis Lamoureaux provides a common CE example by his denial of an historical Adam and Eve:

• Paul was a first century man steeped in the historical and scientific categories of his generation… Paul had no choice but to believe in the historicity of Gen 3 [the Fall with the introduction of sin and death] and the causal connection between the sin of Adam and the entrance of pain and mortality into the world. Romans 5:12-19 and 1 Cor 15:20-49 are evidence of this fact [that Paul had been mistaken]. However, the historicity of Adam, the attribution of divine judgmental action for his sin, and the origin of physical suffering and death as a consequence are notions conceived from an ancient phenomenal perspective. These events in Gen 3 never happened because they are based on ancient history and ancient science, and Paul had no way of knowing this.” (Christian Research Journal, Vol. 37/Number 06, 22)

In denying that Adam, Eve, and Genesis are historical, the CE must also malign the testimony of the NT to their historicity. According to Lamoureaux, Paul was mistaken, and, therefore, Scripture cannot be trusted in every instance. But this doesn’t matter to the CE. After all, who really cares about the Bible’s teachings regarding the physical world as long as its spiritual teachings can be trusted, right?

Wrong! History and theology – the spiritual message – are inseparable. One depends on the other. We cannot have a theology of the Cross without the history of the Cross – that Christ historically died for us.

The same is true about the teachings of Genesis. We cannot have a theology of marriage without the history of marriage – how God had historically joined Adam and Eve together, making them one, as Jesus commented:

·       He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female [quoting Gen. 1:26-27 as actual history], and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ [quoting Gen. 2:24 as history]? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

The various writers of the Bible have uniformly quoted Genesis as historical, even where written poetically. There is absolutely no biblical basis to regard Genesis as non-historical. This is also affirmed by the various Biblical genealogies, all assuming Adam to have actually existed.

·       But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. (2 Corinthians 4:2)

The CE has massively “tampered with God’s word” and, therefore, has no basis to make the same boast as had Paul, who had justifiably appealed “to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” Instead, the CE has sinfully tampered with God’s word, leading many perplexed students astray.

In contrast to the CE, God has commended those who have correctly interpreted Scripture:

• Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)

The stakes are high. If Adam’s role in the Fall wasn’t historical, then what Jesus had accomplished is also thrown into doubt. Here is how Garrett J. DeWeese puts it:

• If Adam is not the progenitor of H. sapiens, then the doctrine of the fall as it has been understood in Christian theology for two thousand years is false, and the entrance of sin into humanity remains a mystery… There is a strong correlation between accepting TE [theistic evolution] and rejecting substitutionary atonement [that Christ died for us] as an antiquated doctrine rooted in medieval retributive thinking. (23)

And why not? If Paul had been mistaken about the history (as had Genesis), then, perhaps also, he was mistaken about the theology. If his statements about the world of history were errant, why not also about the world of the Spirit!

The CE has corrupted the Gospel message and has made it difficult for those who seek truth, as Jesus had charged the Jewish leadership:

• "Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering." (Luke 11:52)

As a young Christian, I too had corrupted the teachings of Scripture. I was intent to find in Scripture, not what God had intended, but instead what would validate me and my philosophy of life. The CE is doing the very same thing by coercing Scripture to validate evolution. This is sin! Let us pray that the Lord will awake them and expose this deception.

Challenging the Racial Divide: Fight or Flight

T.D. Jakes was being interviewed on Racism by the 700 Club. He said some important things:

1.     Racism is endemic in the USA today.

2.     The Black community continues to suffer.

3.     The Church should be playing a leading role.

4.     However, racism remains the elephant in the closet. The Church will not touch it.

5.     Separation remains.

Indeed, the interview reflected this very problem. The interviewer played it safe rather than to do the risky – to enter into a genuine and needful exchange of perspectives. He declined to challenge Jakes’ ensuing narrative of Black victimization, opting instead for superficiality and avoidance. Result – the distance remains.

This reminded me of a film I attended in the mid-eighties, while in seminary. It presented us with a vivid portrait of the problems that plague the African American community.

During the subsequent discussion, I naively asked, “What can I do?” I was essentially slapped-down. The white speaker explained that this isn’t what it’s all about. It wasn’t to provide an avenue for the white to conveniently expiate for his guilt. And admittedly, there had been horrible injustices perpetrated against African Americans.

Well, what was the purpose for showing the film? I mulled over this issue for years. I finally concluded that it was about being shamed and made to suffer for what “we” have done to our African American brothers. It was a matter of accepting our corporate guilt by virtue of our skin color – a narrative that seems to lie at the heart of our increasingly polarized culture. Besides, it is an absolute conversation-stopper.

This is a narrative that many Whites just cannot receive. After all, they hadn’t been proponents of slavery or even Jim Crow. Why then should they have to bear the guilt! And even if they did play a role, doesn’t the blood of Christ bring forgiveness and cleansing from all sin once we confess?

Therefore, many Whites remain on the sidelines. Others remain on the “sidelines” in a different way. Instead of engaging the liberal and inflammatory narrative that the US is still the same racist nation, trying to keep Blacks down, they embrace it entirely for the sake of “peace” and “love.” But is this love? Will it bridge the racial divide or will it further isolate and disenfranchise the Black community?

I recalled talking to a tour-guide in East Germany. I had asked her what she felt about all of the suffering that had been inflicted upon the German people after the war. She passionlessly stated, “We deserve it!”

I was shocked! Yes, there are just consequences of sin and criminality. However, she and many Germans are still bearing the guilt and shame of the Nazi era.

Is this healthy? Well, it has certainly led to hard work and economic advancement. But does it lead to brotherhood and love? While shame can lead to needful self-examination, can persistent shame lead to other-centeredness or does it lead us to retreat into a “safe” and controlled cocoon, containing only people who think like you?

Persistent shame leads to flight. If we cannot find comfort within ourselves, we cannot find it in the presence of others, especially those who refuse to accept us. I tried to engage our tour-guide further, but it seemed fruitless.

What will it take to build the Body of Christ? We cannot run from this question. This is central to the heart of our Savior. He prayed to the Father:

·       "My prayer is… that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23)

What is the answer? Prayer! Also, we must embrace, to the fullest, the concerns of our Savior for love and unity, especially among the races, so that the world will believe. This determination must take precedence over our desires for comfort, of being right, of wanting to punish, of resentment, of jealousy, and of everything else.

Meanwhile, we have followed the world. Instead of trying to honestly hack our way through barriers, speaking truth in love, fearful of the consequences, we have taken the safe way – the way that has replaced comfortable platitudes for real engagement and relationship.

We have to say, “I want to be your brother, but will you let me be me? Will you allow me to speak honestly in love, even if I say painful things that you don’t agree with?” Why? We will never agree on all issues, right? However, love doesn’t depend on that. My wife and I don’t always agree, but we can still love each other. Why then do we have to deal with these divisive issues?

These are festering pustules that must be lanced by the medicine of true Christian brotherhood. Without this, the distrust, cynicism, and distance remain unchecked. I think that the old ways – the superficial affirmations and platitudes – haven’t worked. It seems that they have even contributed to the distance. Instead, we have to commit ourselves to prayer and to His Word:

·       Speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (Ephesians 4:15-16)

Even though speaking the “truth [of the Gospel] in love” is central to this context, it also pertains to the truth of our feelings and convictions, as Paul later reflected:

·       Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. (Ephesians 4:29)

Let us lead the way showing forth honest, yet respectful and loving dialogue. Let us show the world that, for the sake of our Savior, we can disagree and still love.

ADDENDUM

Now, let’s bring all of this theology home where it belongs. An elderly black woman friend recently called me aside. “I don’t have a racist bone in my body!” she confided with a smile. She knew her statement would lure me in, and it did!

She continued, “I needed to buy a house, the same house where I still reside and where I raised my children, but I didn’t have the money for the down-payment. It was a white woman who co-signed for me!”

For my friend, that was the deal-maker. What influence - the transforming power of a single act of love!