This video explains a lot about the privilege of attending The Master's Seminary in California. All Christians should watch this because whether you are in the pulpit or the pew, you need to know how to distinguish between biblical Christian leadership and self indulgent empire building. Please sit back and listen to 43 years of wisdom as one of the truly great expositors of the 20th and 21st centuries brings outstanding clarity on this subject . . . and he also takes a shot at who he thinks is the most egotistical individual among the current parade of "TV preachers". Great viewing!
We live in a church era where the common mantra is "you have your interpretation and I have my interpretation and no one can know for sure so lets just all take our bats and go home". It has become our own version of "pleading the fifth". Statements like this (and I have heard many "church leaders" say words to this effect) make their own doctrinal allegiance to the authority of Scripture as useless and meaningless. Such claims amount to nothing less than a denial of the inerrancy, infallibility, and sufficiency of Scripture itself.
The Apostle Paul wrote that “God is not the author of
confusion” (1 Corinthians 14:33a) and this would certainly be consistent with
Him giving fallen men a written revelation of Himself. It becomes one of the
many ways that a Holy and Righteous God stoops down to sinful and fallen men. Professor Matt Waymeyer of "The Master's Seminary" writes:
Because the Bible was given to reveal truth rather than
conceal it, the interpreter must assume the overall clarity of God’s Word.
Often referred to as the perspicuity of Scripture, this means that the divine
intention of the Bible was/is basically clear and comprehensible to its
original author, its original audience, and its contemporary readers. This is
not to say that all parts of Scripture are equally clear or that there are no
difficult passages to interpret (2 Pet 3:16), and this does not deny that later
revelation provides a fuller picture of the subject addressed in earlier
prophecy. But it does mean that the basic meaning of biblical prophecy was
intelligible and could be understood when it was originally revealed.
This perspicuity of God’s Holy Word became increasingly
undermined as can be seen even in the later stages of the New Testament with
the rise of Gnosticism and appeals to “secret knowledge” belonging to spiritual
elitists. We see this issue clearly raised in Jude’s Epistle when he unmasks
the modus operandi of these wolves that were infiltrating the body of Christ as
early as the first century AD:
Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the
flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. (Jude 8ESV emphasis mine)
Even in Jude’s time we see false teachers who are making
claims of dreams that give them deeper knowledge. We see this today in the
Charismatic movement and especially within the Word Faith factions of that
movement. What is implied by this Gnostic knowledge? That the plain surface
meaning is not enough. They are saying that deeper, hidden knowledge is where true
spirituality is really at. And it continues into the present day unabated:
Joyce Meyer goes on to tell her hearers soon after this that they should not go looking in the Bible for this teaching on the atonement because they won't find it there. Joyce tells them that this special knowledge only comes through "personal revelation". Aside from the biblical fact that Joyce Meyer is unqualified (as a woman, see 1 Timothy 2-3) to stand in a pulpit, such ridiculous claims do not even warrant further debate.
The various factors of false teaching, refutation of false
teaching, theological agendas, and the need to harmonize difficult Scriptural
passages all impacted on the practice of hermeneutics in the early church era.
During the Patristic Period (A.D. 100-590) the early church fathers placed
great emphasis on allegorizing biblical passages. This was the “search for
hidden or secret meaning that underlies the actual words of a given text – a
meaning that is unrelated to the more obvious meaning of the text.” The
early church fathers also began to place greater value and emphasis on the
traditional interpretation of a passage being the correct one rather than
evaluating a traditional interpretation in the light of what the Scripture
says.
The Medieval Period (A.D. 590-1500) saw these ideas develop
further and really set the scene for what Roman Catholicism holds to in its
present form. Biblical students focused more on studying what the church
fathers had to say about any given portion of the biblical text and placed
almost no importance on exegeting the text itself. The Bible was no longer the
ultimate authority because that was now trumped by how church tradition
interpreted that Bible. And this tradition was primarily driven by
allegorization as church tradition continually found deeper (and more self serving)
meaning from texts that spoke plainly and differently to these “allegorical
innovations”.
The Reformation Period (1500-1650) was a revolution in the
handling of Scripture. With a renewed emphasis on the supreme authority of
Scripture (Sola Scriptura was their battle cry), the Reformers trashed Rome’s
“creative accounting” in favor of a plain reading of the biblical text in its
original languages. This was a pivotal moment in church history. Martin Luther
was the man who ignited the Reformation with his brazen defiance of Popes and
Roman religiosity. Luther maintained that Scripture was its own best
interpreter and that interpretation should be driven by this concept.
The period following the Reformation (1650-1800) saw the
rise of Pietism, and with it, an approach to interpretation focused on careful
grammatical-historical analysis of the Scriptures in their original languages.
They could see that the God of the Bible did not have a problem explaining
Himself and a natural reading of the text, in context, could yield
comprehensible results to the recipient when read in this natural way.
Rationalism was also on the rise at this time and elevated the human intellect
to the point where the Rationalists thought that Scripture needed to conform to
their reasoning, and the parts that refused were simply ignored or rejected.
During the Modern Period (1800-Present), rationalism gave
birth to what would become theological liberalism. The Higher-Critical Method
was brazen intellectual snobbery. These people cared nothing for the authority
of Scripture. Their interpretive focus avoided the pursuit of discovering what
God was saying through His Word, and instead focused on delusional attempts at
trying to explain the “editorial process” that caused Scripture to appear in
the form that they found it in.
The 20th Century gave rise to the Reader-Response
Method where the author of the text was not allowed into the discussion on what
the text was saying. These people considered it far more important to decide
what the text was saying to them. What fun can be had by reinterpreting
Reader-Response conclusions in even more fanciful and self serving ways at the
expense of their own self importance.
D.A. Carson wrote as far back as 1984 on this important
shift in the mode of attack on conservative evangelicalism when he said there
had been a change in the theological climate over the preceding four decades.
He wrote:
At the risk of oversimplification, one could argue that the generation of conservative Christians before the present one faced opponents who argued in effect that the Bible is not trustworthy, and only the ignorant or blind could claim it is. In the present generation, there are of course many voices that say the same thing; but there are new voices that loudly insist our real problem is hermeneutical and exegetical. (D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies p18)
This sounds ominously like the “emergent church” which would
begin to appear more than a decade after Carson penned those words. The enemy
within is far more dangerous than the enemy without. A Richard Dawkins who
rails on God, Christianity, and the Bible is an obvious enemy that we can see
coming well in advance. A Brian MacLaren, on the other hand, is a far more
dangerous threat because he masquerades as one of us and claims to uphold the
authority of Scripture all the while being hell-bent on redefining so much of
what it plainly says.
If we want to understand a book in the best possible way
then we need to ask the author exactly what he was saying. So too with
Scripture, we need to know the authorial intent if we are to interpret it
rightly. And Scripture is unique in that it has what we call Dual Authorship. If
I was to hand write you a letter with my finest Shepherd’s Conference fountain
pen, would you say that the letter was written by my fountain pen? Likewise,
throughout history, God has used special men as writing tools in His hand to
bring about His written revelation. Some of the distinctive qualities of these
human fountain pens are evident, but they are transcended by the divine voice
that speaks through them. Though this analogy is not a watertight analogy it can be somewhat helpful.
Throughout the Bible we see that its text regularly
presented as both the words of God and the words of man (2 Samuel 23:2, 1 Kings
14:18, 16:12, 16:34, 2 Kings 9:36, 14:25, 1 Chronicles 17:3, Jeremiah 1:9,
37:2, Zechariah 7:7,12, Luke 1:70, Acts 1:16, 2:16-17, 3:18,21, 4:25, 28:25,
Romans 1:1-2, 1 Corinthians 9:8-10, 14:37, Galatians 1:11-12, 1 Thessalonians
2:13, 4:8, 4:15, Hebrews 1:1, 1 Peter 1:10-12, 2 Peter 3:2, Rev 1:1-3). This
fact is most clearly nailed down in Paul’s second letter to Timothy and in
Peter’s second Epistle:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto
all good works. (2 Timothy 3:16-17 KJV)
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is
of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the
will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. (2
Peter 1:20-21 KJV)
The fact of Dual Authorship has major implications for the
right practice of sound hermeneutics. Waymeyer explains this when he says that:
The dual authorship of Scripture ultimately forms the
foundation of Bible interpretation, for upon it rest five aspects of Scripture,
which, in turn, lead to specific principles for interpreting God’s Word. These
five aspects are the overall unity of Scripture, the overall clarity of
Scripture, the single meaning of Scripture, the contextual nature of Scripture,
and the human language of Scripture.
For this reason the Grammatical-Historical method of Bible
interpretation, with its emphasis on examining the context and interpreting the
content of the passage, has maintained a healthy following through the recent
centuries of hermeneutical turbulence. It is the “no brainer” approach to
interpreting the Bible because the God of the Bible has never had a problem
explaining Himself.
Today we pick up from where we left off last week on our expository journey through the Epistle of Jude. Verse 8 of Jude's Epistle gives four characteristics of apostates that infiltrate the church. Last week we looked at the third of these, which is that they "reject authority", they are people who want to live outside the realm of accountability and submission. Today we will look at the fourth characteristic in verse 8 which is that these false teachers "blaspheme the glorious ones". This is a part of my verse by verse exposition through the Epistle of Jude for our church plant in Denmark - Kristuskirken.
1 Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: 2 May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. 3 Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. 4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. 5 Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day 7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. 8 Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. (Jude 1-8)
The fourth characteristic of apostates that Jude lists in verse 8 is that they "blaspheme the glorious ones". They have contempt and carelessness for anything that warrants fear or reverence. These are people who shoot from the hip in their speech about "spiritual warfare", Satan, and God Himself. They continually play with fire without any regard for the impending peril they open themselves and their followers up to. John Macarthur had this to say:
The Greek is doxasfrom which we get doxology, it's a word that means glory. They blaspheme glories. And it could refer to the glories of God, it could refer to the glories of Christ. It could refer to the glories of divine truth. But I'll tell you this, the word "blaspheme" is clear enough in its intention to be identified with anything that is holy, or sacred. To blaspheme is to basically curse what is sacred. They're irreverent. I get sometimes squeamish when I hear certain so-called clerics or biblical scholars talk about Jesus in a blasphemous fashion. I literally feel sick when I see Jesus misrepresented in some stupid fashion in a ridiculous movie which takes away His glory. These people who claim to represent Christ and claim to be the scholars of the New Testament who are going to help us find the real Jesus, are really blasphemers. Certainly the angels did that. They blasphemed the glories of heaven. Certainly Sodom and Gomorrah did that, they blasphemed the very holy angels. Certainly Israel did that, they blasphemed God when they made that idol and worshiped it. Very serious.
Jesse Duplantis is one of the worst examples of this sort of behavior.
The teaching in this video is so stupid and blasphemous of God's character and nature that it does not even warrant a response. I'll include just one more short clip because it serves as another great example of this idiotic biblically incompetent behavior:
Jesse, you are going to find out how wrong you are! The Apostle Peter described this behavior when he said:
then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction (2 Peter 2:9-12)
Here is one more clear example of this. Aside from the very obvious reason why Joyce Meyer should not be calling HERself a Bible teacher, there are other alarm bells we should be hearing. Even though Jude points out in verse 9:
But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, "The Lord rebuke you." (Jude 9)
Joyce seems to think that she can take these matters into her own hands.
If Michael the archangel refused to take a shot at Satan, but rather appealed to God and His authority, how much more should we. We'll talk more about this intriguing encounter between Michael and the Devil next week!
The previous post in this series highlighted the farcical state of professing Christianity in Denmark. When high profile Pentecostal leader, Lars Due Christensen, evicted me from a Christian conference - for sharing the Gospel with people - it was just one example of the dreadful biblical illiteracy that plagues church leadership throughout Denmark - whichever denominational stripe they may be. Not only that, it was a blatant demonstration of the overt hostility to the biblical Gospel by those who profess to be the shepherds.
The word of the LORD came to me: "Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord GOD: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with none to search or seek for them.
"Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: As I live, declares the Lord GOD, surely because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: Thus says the Lord GOD, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.
"For thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice. (Ezekiel 34:1-16)
True shepherds do two things; they feed sheep and they protect them from wolves - not feed sheep to wolves! With this in mind and the reality that many church goers in Denmark were entranced by the "kookiness and spookiness" of the Word Faith prosperity preachers (at least the remainder of those who were not either liberal, emergent, or purpose driven), I called upon my dear friend Justin Peters to see if he was traveling anywhere near Europe in the coming months. As providence would have it Justin was going to be doing seminars in England and had space in his schedule to fly over to us in the summer of 2008 and teach his "A Call For Discernment Seminar". Consistent with the cowardly practices of Danish church leaders it was apparent that there had been somewhat of a stealth campaign with "strong encouragement" for people not to attend Justin's seminar. As usual, it seems that an open discussion with Tilbage Til Bibelen (our evangelism ministry) was not an option. Nonetheless, Justin graciously came and ministered to us. If you haven't seen his seminar, it is jaw dropping! Justin is not a bitter individual, but he does offer an even handed, yet devastating, biblical critique of the preachers who seem to monopolize airtime in religious broadcasting. Here is an overview of Justin's seminar:
Thou shalt not criticize is not the eleventh commandment. It is a manipulative technique used by false teachers to protect them from scrutiny. God's Word has survived millennia of scrutiny, but these Word Faith charlatans cannot survive any!
Coming Friday - Frikirkenet (which is a Danish word that means "a network of church leaders united by their common ignorance of plain biblical teaching").
