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.

MY RESPONSE TO A THEISTIC EVOLUTIONIST (TE)

I usually don’t answer personal attacks, but I feel led to make an exception in your case. You attack me as unloving. While it is true that I am not here to “make nice,” I think that the biblical concept of love is broader than that. Just look at Jesus’ denunciations of the Pharisees and even His own disciples, calling Peter “Satan.”

Although love is primarily focused on what the other person needs most, it can take many different forms.

• My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins. (James 5:19-20) 

I wish that this could always be done by “making nice,” but it often requires more than that. Sometimes – and there are many examples of this in the NT – it requires direct speaking, even when it might be painful.

You smear me by calling me “a modern biblical literalist.” No one is a literalist. I certainly don’t follow Jesus literally when He taught to “pluck your eye out,” nor does anyone else. We are not such idiots, as the TE would have us, that we cannot discern between literal and figurative language.

Meanwhile you claim that the TE has a high view of Scripture. However, the TE clearly does not have a high view of Scripture when he dismisses the historicity of Adam, even though he is found in genealogies, and dismiss the many NT references to the first several chapters of Genesis as historical.

“Well, so what,” you might say. This is serious! If you are unwilling to accept what the Bible so unimpeachably and historically teaches about the physical world, how can you take seriously what the Bible teaches about the spiritual world? You can’t, as Jesus explained to Nicodemus:

• "You are Israel's teacher," said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things?  I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of HEAVENLY THINGS? (John 3:10-12)

If the Bible is errant in what it teaches about the physical world, there is absolutely no reason to trust in what it says about the spiritual. Consequently, I have found that TEs’ views on ethical questions are almost indistinguishable from those of the educated elite. I wish it were otherwise.

You defend your faith in the Bible by what you have personally experienced, and that is good, but it clearly isn’t enough. One of your own, Karl Giberson, wrote:

• “Acid is an appropriate metaphor for the erosion of my fundamentalism, as I slowly lost confidence in the Genesis story of creation and the scientific creationism that placed this ancient story within the framework of modern science….[Darwin’s] acid dissolved Adam and Eve; it ate through the Garden of Eden; it destroyed the historicity of the events of creation week. It etched holes in those parts of Christianity connected to the stories—the fall, “Christ as the second Adam,” the origins of sin, and nearly everything else that I counted sacred.” (Saving Darwin, 9-10)

Although he then insisted that this was as far as the acid would go, he later called the God of the OT a “genocidal maniac.” Should we not be concerned about this acid?

False Teachers, Theistic Evolutionists, and the Church

Jesus often warned about false teachers. Here is one such warning:

• “You nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: "'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.'" (Matthew 15:6-9)

Theistic evolutionists (TEs) – now they call themselves “Christian evolutionists” – are similar to the Pharisees. Although they do not “nullify the word of God” for the sake of their traditions, they do nullify it for the sake of their first love, evolution. TE Dennis Lamoureaux provides one common example in 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)

“Paul had no way of knowing this?” Has this TE forgotten about this existence of the Spirit? It is one thing to say that Paul lacked complete knowledge. It is another thing to claim that he wrote without correct knowledge! In other words, Lamoureaux claims that he has a superior knowledge which trumps what Paul had written. He wants us, therefore, to place our faith in him and the present scientific consensus rather than in the Bible. Meanwhile, Paul argues that Adam had been just as real and historical as Jesus:

• Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men… For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:12, 15-19)

If what Adam had done wasn’t real, 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 and rejecting substitutionary atonement [that Christ for us] as an antiquated doctrine rooted in medieval retributive thinking. (23)

DeWeese is correct. To deny the role of Adam is also to deny the role of Jesus. How then should we respond to the teaching of the TE? How did Jesus deal with the scribes and Pharisees of His day:

• "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)

Evidently, their hearts were far from Him!

The Offensive “Us - Them” Distinction

The central message of the Gospel is that we are sinners who must be forgiven and “born again” from above. Those who are born again become “new creations,” have passed from death into life, and are no longer of this world (John 15-17). This means that we are different from others. We are God’s redeemed – the Body of Christ – and have become “one with Him in Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:17).

Understandably, the Gospel is offensive. It claims that Christians are a distinct and special people, but this is the Gospel, and any attempt to modify this teaching undermines the Gospel. However, many who call themselves Postmodern or Progressive “Christians” have rejected this critical distinction.

For example, a manager of a “Christian” Evolutionist Facebook group wrote:

• This group is unusual because we can all come together without having an us-them mentality. We're proud of that.

For Mystics, Emergents, Progressives, and “Christian” Evolutionists, this distinction is offensive. It separates people. It seems that, for them, removing such distinctions is to make a more peaceful world. However, for the Christian, peace is a matter of loving others despite the unavoidable distinctions. (Somehow, my wife and I are able to love each other despite our many differences!)

I responded:

• What then do you make of the many verses that claim a sharp distinction between believers and those who aren't, for instance 2 Corinthians 6:14-16: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God.”

What a set of politically incorrect verses! Of course, the world regards such beliefs as the height of arrogance and not the grace of God.

I did not receive a response – not from anyone. Perhaps, though, it might make them wonder whether they can consistently call themselves “Christian.” Of course, they hate me, as Jesus had promised (John 15:18-20). But I ask myself, “How can I best love them? Through pleasantries or prophetic warnings? Through enabling them to have a false sense of security or through exposing them to the painful, revealing light?

There is a radical distinction between the children of the light - those who come to the light - and the children of darkness, who detest the light and will avoid it at all costs, even by destroying the lamps of that light (John 16:1-3).

The Apostle Paul put it this way:

• For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. (2 Cor. 2:15-16)

Consequently, for some, the light carries a nauseating stench of death. However, this evil response often disguises itself in the garments of righteousness (2 Cor. 11:14-15).

One Progressive “Christian” Facebook group rejected my concern for our persecuted Christian brethren:

• We are called to love all people, not just Christians!

This reminded me of the synagogue ruler who had criticized Jesus because He had healed on the Sabbath rather than on one of the six other days (Luke 13). Of course, he justified his criticism by an appeal to the Law of Moses, making his evil sound righteous.

Yes, we are called to love all, but sincere love must begin with our own household:

• Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. (Gal. 6:10)

Why? This is the best way to love the world! How do we love our children? By starting with loving our wives! This is entirely consistent with Jesus’ prayer:

• “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—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23)

Loving the brethren is our primary vocation! Sadly, the church is plagued with all kinds of problems. Nevertheless, the greatest gift we can give others is to show them the reality of Jesus. We are to do this by loving our brethren before anyone else! Our mandate is to maintain the unity of Christ’s Church (Eph. 4:1-5) not the non-existent “unity” of all humanity!