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.

What is Prayer? A Matter of Techniques and Gimmicks?

 
 

Is prayer a spiritual force, which we can learn to unleash? In The Power of Prayer on Plants (1959), Rev. Franklyn Loehr tries to make this very point:

• The discovery that prayer can measurably, and consistently, affect plant growth… is now recognized… Powers hitherto considered occult, extrasensory, or just plain magic, were given scientific proof… Man does have spiritual powers beyond this physical being. (9)

Similarly, Word of Faith TV preacher, Rod Parsley, also claims that prayer is a spiritual power that we have to exercise if we want to receive anything from God:

• “When you ask God what He wants, He only tells you one time in the whole 1,166 pages of your Bible…’Here’s what I want: Ask of Me!’ Why does He say that? Because He Can’t do it on His own. He can’t get what He wants on His own because He placed you in authority on this earth. Did you hear me? He has to compel you to ask Him so that then He can answer, because He said ‘Call and I will answer.” (CRJ, Hunter) 

According to the Word of Faith preachers, even God depends upon our spiritual authority. This is so different from the teachings of Scripture. Jesus warned His disciples that we can do nothing apart from Him (John 15:5). Paul declared our utter inadequacy (2 Corinthians 3:5).

According to Parsley, God cannot answer our prayers “on His own” and is dependent on us. However, Job confessed the very opposite thing:

• "I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.” (Job 42:2) 

Did God correct Job’s poor assessment of his own authority? No! Instead God affirmed Job’s words:

• After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. (Job 42:7)

Why did God affirm Job? What had Job said that mattered to God? He had repented:

• “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:6) 

Sarah certainly didn’t exercise her prayer power when she overheard Yahweh promising Abraham that He would give Sarah a child at the ripe age of 90. Instead, she laughed in unbelief. This prompted Yahweh to declare:

• Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son." (Genesis 18:14)

Evidently, Yahweh did not depend on Sarah to accomplish His purposes. Nor did Jesus require Mary and Martha’s prayers. They had sent word to Jesus to come heal their brother Lazarus who was mortally ill. However, Jesus purposely delayed coming at the time when their faith was at its peak. Instead, He allowed Lazarus to die and only arrived after he had been in the grave for four days. By this time, they had given up all hope and even prayer. When Jesus finally arrived

• "Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."  Martha answered, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." (John 11:21-24)

While it seemed that Martha had faith that Jesus could raise up her brother, she only thought that this was possible as part of the future general resurrection. However, Jesus proved that He didn’t need her faith or prayers.

What then is prayer, and how does God desire us to pray? Clearly, it’s not about the exercise of certain techniques or powers. It’s not about controlling our brain waves or even our thinking. Prayer is about something more fundamental and relational.

The Roman Centurion Cornelius was heard by God. Why?

• He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. (Acts 10:2)

They were “God-fearing.” God was first in their lives. As evidence of this, Cornelius “gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.” As a result, God sent an angel to him announcing:

• "Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.” (Acts 10:4)

Our Lord therefore sent Peter to them to preach the Gospel. As they listened, He filled them with the Holy Spirit. There is no mention here or any other place in the Bible that they first had to learn a set of prayer or concentration techniques. 

In contrast with the biblical revelation, the Quaker mystic, Richard Foster, instructs that if we want to receive from God, we must exercise our imagination:

• Imagine the light of Christ flowing through your hands and healing every emotional trauma and hurt feeling your child experienced that day. Fill him or her with the peace and joy of the Lord. In sleep the child is very receptive to prayer since the conscious mind, which tends to erect barriers to God’s gentle influence, is relaxed. (Celebration of Discipline, 39)

However, Scripture never identifies the failure to exercise our imagination as a reason for the failure of our prayers. Instead, Scripture consistently identifies our hard heart towards God as the problem. The Lord explained to His prophet Zechariah why He had turned His back on His children, Israel:

• "But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the LORD Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the LORD Almighty was very angry. "'When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,' says the LORD Almighty.” (Zechariah 7:11-13)

Israel’s problem was not that they had failed to exercise their imagination, but that they had turned away from the Lord.

Prayer isn’t magical; nor is it a secret power or even a skill. Instead, it is a matter of being real with God (Psalm 51:6). Our words must express truth and sincerity. Why aren’t our prayers heard? Because they are insincere! The Lord explained His problem with Judah to Jeremiah:

• “From the time I brought your forefathers up from Egypt until today, I warned them again and again, saying, ‘Obey me.’ But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubbornness of their evil hearts… Therefore this is what the LORD says: 'I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them. The towns of Judah and the people of Jerusalem will go and cry out to the gods to whom they burn incense, but they will not help them at all when disaster strikes. You have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah; and the altars you have set up to burn incense to that shameful god Baal are as many as the streets of Jerusalem.'  "Do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them, because I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their distress. (Jeremiah 11:7-14)

Only God could rescue Judah – not their gods or their various means of petitioning their God or even the prayers of Jeremiah. They had violated God’s covenant and refused to return. They had turned their backs on God, and now He would turn His back on them.

When Israel turned their back on the Lord, they also turned their back on the commandments of the Lord. Therefore, when the Lord charged Judah with unfaithfulness to their wives, He was also charging them with unfaithfulness to Him and the commandments He had given them:

• Another thing you do: You flood the LORD's altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. You ask, "Why?" It is because the LORD is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. Malachi 2:13-14 (NIV) 

Judah wondered why God wasn’t responding to their offerings and sacrifices, even to their cries and tears. If they weren’t living sincerely and obediently, a yardstick of their faithfulness, all of their fervency was for naught. They had not been faithful with their wives, and they weren’t making any moves to correct this matter. Tears wouldn’t rectify the matter; nor would achieving states of relaxation, but only sincere confession of their sins and repentance.

Some think that if they atone for their own sins by cutting or punishing themselves, they will gain merit before God. However, even these acts of self-sacrifice fail to engage God. If you beat up your wife, self-punishment or an expensive vacation will not take the place of humbly confessing your sins and tangibly demonstrating that you are truly repentant. God requires no less!

Peter echoes the same truth. When we give our sins safe haven, we build a wall against God:

• Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For, "Whoever would love life and see good days must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from deceitful speech. He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil."  (1 Peter 3:7-12)

When we refuse His will and teachings, we also refuse Him. In effect, we tell Him, “I can live my life just fine without your meddling.” We are also telling Him, “I don’t need you to answer my prayers.”

What does it mean to be righteous? Does it mean that we have to achieve a certain level of spiritual perfection? This is an important question, because Scripture tells us that God is attentive to the righteous (Psalm 4:3; Proverbs 15:29). The righteous are not the morally perfect – none of us are! The righteous are those who turn from their sins:

• Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous [those who turn from evil] and his ears are attentive to their cry; the face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all. (Psalm 34:14-19)

Strikingly, King David counted himself among “the righteous” even after his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband, Uriah (Psalm 32). He had been assured that God had forgiven him, and that made all the difference!

Prayer is not a matter of magic or of gimmickry, but rather a sincere and humble cry to a Father who can lift us up and wash us off.

The Prosperity Gospel and why it isn’t the Gospel

When they came to arrest Him in the Garden:

• Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him, "Am I leading a rebellion that you have come with swords and clubs? Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour--when darkness reigns." (Luke 22:52-53)

It is also in the darkness that the cults reign. None of them encourage the light of reason. If anything, they discourage it lest their manipulations come to light, and lest it be seen that their teachings fail to match up with Scripture. Those who lead false revivals often have counseled that the use of the mind is at odds with the operation of the Spirit. One visitor to the Anaheim Vineyard church reported this admonition:

• “And above all, don't try to rationally evaluate the things you will see. God isn't trying to reach your mind; He wants to reach your heart. Analyzing spiritual phenomena through the grid of human logic or religious presuppositions is the quickest way to quench what the Spirit is doing. Subjecting the revival to doctrinal tests is the surest way to put out the fire. Don't try to find reasonable explanations for what is happening; just turn your heart loose and let the Spirit flow through your emotions. Only then can the Spirit have His way in your life.” http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil//articles/laugh.htm

According to this Vineyard church, our minds are worse than a hindrance; they are an insurmountable obstacle to God’s purposes! However, the false revivalists conveniently leave out a number of verses like the admonition to love the Lord with all of our minds (Mat. 22:37) and to exercise discernment – testing all things (1 Thes. 5:19-21).

The prosperity ministry – the name-it-claim-it preachers – would have us simply ignore or dismiss the truth. Joel Osteen had taught:

• “Our words are vital in bringing our dreams to pass. It’s not enough to simply see it by faith or in your imagination. You have to begin speaking words of faith over your life. Your words have enormous creative power. The moment you speak something out, you give birth to it.”  “Just look in the mirror and say ‘I am strong, I am healthy. I’m rising to new levels, I’m excited about my future.’ When you say that, it may not be true. You may not be very healthy today, or maybe you don’t have a lot of things to look forward to, but Scripture tells us in Romans we have to call the things that are not as if they already were.” (CRJ, Hunter)

Scripture never gives us the license to play fast-and-loose with the truth. All truth is God’s truth. It belongs to Him and we are not at liberty to tamper with it. He tells us that He requires truth in the depths of our being:

• Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. (Psalm 51:6)

Our Lord wants us to reside in the light – in the embrace of wisdom. Using our tongues to distort the truth is simply not part of His program for us. Telling others that we don’t have cancer, when we do, is a refusal to walk in His light. It will also bring disrepute upon the church!

Instead, our tongues must be servants of the light – the truth of God. Therefore, they must always speak the truth, as James instructed:

• 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)

When we use our tongues in a presumptuous manner by claiming that we will get rich through trading or that we will obtain a certain blessing that is not Scripturally guaranteed, we speak evil and “boast in arrogance.” Instead, what we say must always conform to the truth. According to James, we are a mere “vapor.” Therefore, we are in no position to make arrogant claims about the future!

Osteen claims that Romans 4:17 gives us the license to speak as if we have things that we really do not as yet have:

• God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did. 

Indeed, God has the power to call things into existence by speaking. However, there is nothing in this verse to suggest that we are endowed with such power. Instead, James claims that we are not so endowed.

Prosperity preachers also resort to Proverbs 18:21 to prove that we have been given this power:

• The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

However, this verse falls far short of affirming that our tongues have supernatural power to call things into existence. Yes, the tongue does have “the power of life and death,” but this is a psychological or interpersonal power. Our words can build people up or tear them down. We can instruct others in the way of truth or the way of deceit.

Prosperity preachers also misdirect their audience away from the true Gospel. They encourage us to seek the wrong things, as James claimed:

• When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 4:3)

What are wrong motives? Self-gratification! This is not to say that our God will not provide gratifying blessings. He will! But this should not be our focus. Instead, our focus must be His kingdom and righteousness. As a consequence, He’ll give us everything we truly need (Mat. 6:33).

Instead, prosperity preacher Creflo Dollar defined the Gospel this way:

• “What’s the Gospel to those who are poor? Prosperity! What’s the Gospel to those who lack? Prosperity! And if you don’t preach it, then you won’t be able to do anything about it, then you won’t be able to do anything about the poverty situation.” (Hunter, CRJ, 24.)

However, the Gospel is not a matter of prosperity. The Book of Hebrews informs us that, often, the exemplars of faith fell far short of prosperity:

• They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- the world was not worthy of them. (Hebrews 11:37-38)

Instead, according to Paul, the Gospel is about contentment:

• But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. (1 Tim. 6:6-9)

Contrary to the prosperity gospel, Paul wrote that the desire for prosperity is “harmful” and can “plunge men into ruin and destruction.”

The prosperity ministry also fails to recognize the need for suffering and brokenness. Paul wrote that:

• Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. (2 Cor. 4:16-18; NKJV)

According to the Gospel, trials are necessary for growth into Christ-liken-ness. Our “renewal” can only take place as we look in faith towards the heavenly and not the hope of earthly prosperity.

The prosperity ministry is popular, but will it build up the body of Christ? Does it arm us with truth or a set of unrealistic expectations? More importantly, is it faithful to our Lord and His Word? Let Scripture by the judge!