A TIME OF BOUNDLESS DELUSIONS
There was a time within living memory when no world or prominent Christian leader would make outlandish statements which could be regarded as ludicrous. There has been a strange and remarkable change, and the Bible provides the answer. The Apostle Paul in 2 Thess. 2 predicted the Great Apostasy of the end times in the revelation of the "man of sin," and "the mystery of iniquity," and it clearly revolves around the exaltation of man and the conflict between Truth and error.
What Jesus Christ revealed to the Apostle John in vision also bears on this issue (Rev. 16:13-14;) and sadly it relates to the Seventh-day Adventist Church as well as to the world, as prophesied by Ellen G. White.
WORLD LEADER INDULGES IN CHRISTIAN RIGHT FANTASY
In the world at large there is an abundance of evidence that the final
delusions predicted in Bible prophecy are intensifying. The Prime
Minister of Israel is not embarrassed to make statements which associate
him with
the fantasies of the extreme Religious Right in the United
States and Israel:
Bibi and the Christian Right Agree: Trump Is the New Cyrus the Great
It’s hardly surprising that on arriving in Washington, Israeli prime
minister Benjamin Netanyahu would feel grateful toward his host, the
president of the United States. After all, Bibi’s in hot water back home
thanks to a corruption investigation that may soon bear evil fruit for
the longtime leader of the Israeli right. His biggest, er, trump card
both domestically and internationally is his close relationship with the
leader of the free world. And that relationship was significantly
enhanced by the Trump administration’s decision to move the U.S. embassy
from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, at the cost of wildly negative reactions
from most of the rest of the world.
But still, Netanyahu’s shout-out to Trump in Washington today was more than
a bit over-the-top.
I want to tell you that the Jewish people have a long memory. So we remember
the proclamation of the great King Cyrus the Great — Persian King.
Twenty-five hundred years ago, he proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in
Babylon can come back and rebuild our temple in Jerusalem. We remember,
100 years ago, Lord Balfour, who issued the Balfour Proclamation that
recognized the rights of the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland.
We remember seventy years ago, President Harry S. Truman was the first
leader to recognize the Jewish state. And we remember how a few weeks
ago, President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people throughout the
ages. And as you just said, others talked about it. You did it.
Given Donald Trump’s extremely well-known weakness for flattery and, indeed,
sycophantic adulation, Netanyahu’s comparison of Trump to the greatest
Anglo-American heroes (Balfour and Truman) of Zionist history made
sense. But it’s the Cyrus comparison that was really clever.
As Tara Isabella Burton explained before Bibi made this statement,
Trump-as-Cyrus is the prevailing U.S. Christian right rationalization
about their support for him:
The comparison comes up frequently in the evangelical world. Many
evangelical speakers and media outlets compare Trump to Cyrus, a
historical Persian king who, in the sixth century BCE, conquered Babylon
and ended the Babylonian captivity, a period during which Israelites had
been forcibly resettled in exile. This allowed Jews to return to the
area now known as Israel and build a temple in Jerusalem.
The Cyrus model for Trump has become more prominent after Trump’s
announcement that the U.S. embassy would be moved to Jerusalem.
While Cyrus is not Jewish and does not worship the God of Israel, he is
nevertheless portrayed in Isaiah as an instrument of God — an unwitting
conduit through which God effects his divine plan for history. Cyrus is,
therefore, the archetype of the unlikely “vessel”: someone God has
chosen for an important historical purpose, despite not looking like —
or having the religious character of — an obvious man of God.
For conservative Evangelicals who are already inclined to view Trump as a
virtuous pagan who is fighting against feminists, LGBTQ activists, and
other liberals to bring back the 1950s, having the Israeli leader they
already identify with their apocalyptic hopes for Israel confirm Trump’s
religio-historical importance is huge.
So this was quite the favor Bibi did for his friend in the White House. And it didn’t hurt that Donald Trump lacks the sense of modesty that would make him blush at comparisons to world-historical figures from across the ages.
Netanyahu's inclusion of a religious fantasy in his "shoutout" to Donald Trump is an indication of how enmeshed politics and religion have become in the modern world.
ACCOMMODATION OF RELIGIOUS RIGHT WITH EVIL
As in the world of politics excuses are made for
Trump as a matter of expediency, so also the same applies to the
Evangelical world where the achievement of political objectives has
totally supplanted Bible Truth and morality:
Franklin Graham says he believes Trump is a 'changed person'
Franklin Graham: "I believe he's President of the United States for a
reason. I believe God put him there. He offended everybody ... he seemed
to do everything wrong as a candidate and he won. I don't understand it
other than God put him there"
Evangelical leader Franklin Graham in an interview called President Trump a
"changed person" after reports of an alleged affair with an adult film
star.
Graham, the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association,
said during the interview on CNN he's "more interested in who a person
is today" than who they were in the past.
"And I believe that he's a changed person and I've never seen anybody get
attacked like he gets attacked," Graham said, saying Trump is attacked
by the media every day.
His comments came after a report that Trump's personal lawyer arranged a
six-figure payment to a former adult film star to keep her from
discussing a sexual encounter with Trump. . .
"These alleged affairs, they're alleged with Trump, didn't happen while he
was in office," Graham said during the interview.
Graham also said he thinks Trump has done a lot during his first year and
called for people to look at the strong economy.
"We're all getting helped by Donald Trump's business expertise coming into
Washington," he said.
When pressed on if he thinks that the president should be a moral authority for the U.S., Graham said, "I hope and pray that he will be a better moral authority in these next three years."
Note Graham's belief that Trump has done a lot during his first year, and
his primary concern about the economy. What in the world has all of this
got to do with the gospel of God? What a repudiation of Jesus'
declaration, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God
the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21,) which was the clearest
statement possible of the principle of separation of Church and State!
The truth is that Franklin Graham and his associates not only stand in
opposition to the separation of Church and State - they want to take
control of the State as an assertion of Christian supremacy!
Graham gives further demonstration of blind loyalty to the man Donald Trump,
no matter how vulgar and irresponsible he may be:
Franklin Graham defends Donald Trump as a 'changed person'
When Lemon
pointed out Trump's continued inflaming use of Twitter, and his
derogatory statements against nations in Africa, Graham once again
defended the president by saying that "he talks a certain way" just to
get his point across.
"There are a lot of presidents that have had rough language, and a lot of these things that have been accused of the President, I am not sure are true," Graham added. "He says he didn't do it."
Graham demands that the nation should stretch credulity beyond limit to
believe Trump when "He says he didn't do it." To give him the benefit of
the doubt about the sincerity of his belief one must conclude that he is
deluded!
Franklin Graham is the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association, and the son of its founder, Billy Graham. Graham the elder
was conducting Christian Crusades in the United Kingdom in the early
1950s when famous Seventh-day Adventist evangelist George E. Vandeman
was also conducting a major evangelistic campaign. On one occasion he
mentioned from the podium that Graham had read some of Ellen G. White's
writings. He thought that the Graham crusades might prepare many for the
Adventist faith. This thinking was widely shared by many in the ranks of
the laity, including this writer, who also attended a talk by Graham at
the London School of Economics and one of the gigantic stadium rallies.
It was wishful thinking. In retrospect, rather than preparing the
multitudes to join the Seventh-day Adventist faith, events have moved in
the opposite direction. It was unlikely that Graham could have prepared
the ground for the Seventh-day Adventist message. Graham was not close
to understanding and believing
the judgment hour message - the
Sanctuary Doctrine, unique to the Adventist movement. Moreover, as
sincere as Graham may have been, and this was a trait of character that
was universally attributed to him, he was a shallow expositor of the
Bible by choice, He had no use for "heavy theology":
‘America’s Pastor’: Evangelist Billy Graham dead at 99
Always Billy, never the Rev. Graham, the humble but media-savvy Southern
Baptist minister had little use for clerical garb or heavy theology. He
even bypassed churches, preferring to deliver his spellbinding sermons
in stadiums packed with people hungry to hear how much God loves them
and how that very night they were being called to surrender their lives
to Jesus Christ.
Over the decades, Graham also became the unofficial White House chaplain, participating in nine presidential inaugurations between 1965 and 2005 and offering spiritual guidance – and occasionally political advice – to Republican and Democratic presidents. (Underlined emphasis added.)
Had Graham been interested in "heavy theology" he might have recognized the
danger of being involved with political leaders. In the first place,
Jesus Himself warned against "false Christs and false prophets" as signs
of His coming and of the end of the world:
Matt. 24: 3And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto
him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what
shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? . . .
24For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
Secondly, God had long warned in the Old Testament about the deadly peril of
a lack of knowledge:
Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.
The critical question is how can the false Christs and false prophets be
recognized without knowledge of the Holy Scriptures? To forswear the
sound doctrines of the Bible is to embark on a course of spiritual
self-destruction:
2 Timothy 4:
2Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. 3For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
The tragedy of what began as the Great Advent Movement is that contemporary
Seventh-day Adventist pastors echo Billy Graham's
aversion to "heavy
theology," and this writer has heard a pastor, a nice young
man, describe activists for sound doctrine as "disagreeable persons."
These continue to
"new-model the cause," drifting further and further away
from the original dynamic Advent Movement.
In retrospect Billy Graham can be seen as a major agent of the final great
apostasy, driven by the workings of the spirits of devils as prophesied
in Rev. 16:13-14:
Evangelicalism and the Charismatic Movement
Over the past four decades, the charismatic movement has leavened
evangelicalism with its mystical approach to the Christian life and its
sensual contemporary worship music.
Prior to the 1970s, most evangelicals looked upon the
Pentecostal-Charismatic movement as fanaticism and worse.
Arno Gaebelein said, “We are convinced that this movement is one which is
not of God” (Our Hope, July 1907).
Harry Ironside called it “the disgusting tongues movement” and stated that
“superstition and fanaticism of the grossest character find a ‘hotbed’
in their midst” (Ironside, Holiness: The False and the True, 1912).
Brethren minister Louis Bauman wrote in 1941 that “probably the most
wide-spread of all satanic phenomena today is the demonic imitation of
the apostolic gift of tongues.” He further asserted, “The first miracle
that Satan ever wrought was to cause the serpent to speak in a tongue.
It would appear he is still working his same original miracle.”
R.A. Torrey said Pentecostalism is “emphatically not of God, and founded by
a sodomite.”
G. Campbell Morgan called Azusa Street Pentecostalism “the last vomit of
Satan.”
Merrill Unger represented the predominant view in the 1960s when he called
the Charismatic Movement “widespread confusion.” He said: “When the Word
of God is given preeminence and when sound Bible doctrine, especially in
the sphere of the theology of the Holy Spirit is stressed and made the
test of experience, the claims of charismatic Christianity will be
rejected.”
The man who helped break down the resistance against the
Pentecostal-Charismatic movements was none other than Billy Graham, the
prince of evangelicalism. In 1962, Graham spoke at the Full Gospel
Business Men's International (FGBMI) conference and praised the
charismatic-ecumenical movement. Graham was featured on the cover of the
October 1962 issue of the FGBMI’s Voice magazine.
In 1967, Graham was the keynote speaker at the dedication ceremony of Oral
Roberts University. No personality represented a more radical,
unscriptural, wild-eyed brand of Pentecostalism than Oral Roberts. He
claimed apostolic healing power, but many died during his healing
crusades, and after he claimed that a 900-foot-tall Jesus promised His
blessing on the City of Faith hospital, it went bankrupt.
By the 1970s, the attitude within evangelicalism had changed dramatically.
In March 1972, Christianity Today observed: “A new era of the Spirit has
begun. The charismatic experience moves Christians far beyond
glossalalia [tongues speaking]. ... There is light on the horizon. An
evangelical renaissance is becoming visible along the Christian highway,
from the frontiers of the sects to the high places of the Roman Catholic
communion. This appears to be one of the most strategic moments in the
church’s history.”
By the 1970s, “the majority of younger evangelicals in the Church of England
were charismatic” (Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided, p. 135). By
1987, the Evangelical Times in England observed “that a large--some
would say the greater--part of the evangelical world is in some measure
influenced by the various branches of the charismatic scene.” By 1999,
the Evangelical Alliance in England included Pentecostals at every level
of leadership, and “no group on the council is opposed to the
Pentecostal position” (Renewal, March 1999).
The same was true in the United States. By 1992, 80% of the membership of
the National Association of Evangelicals was Pentecostal, up from 62% in
1987, and the president of the NAE, Don Argue, belonged to the
Assemblies of God.
Roughly half of the attendees at Billy Graham’s 1983 Conference for
Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam were Pentecostal or Charismatic.
In 1984 Fuller Theological Seminary made Pentecostal David DuPlessis its
“resident consultant on ecumenical affairs” and in 1985 Fuller
established the “David J. DuPlessis Center for Christian Spirituality.”
By then both the dean of Fuller Theological Seminary and the president
of Gordon-Conwell Seminary were Pentecostals.
In 1989 J.I. Packer, a professor at Regent College and a senior editor of
Christianity Today, said the Charismatic movement “must be adjudged a
work of God” (Calvary Contender, July 15, 1989). He said, “Sharing
charismatic experience ... is often declared ... to unify Protestants
and Roman Catholics at a deeper level than that at which their doctrine
divides them. This, if so, gives charismaticism great ecumenical
significance.”
Many of the evangelicals that have adopted a positive view of the
Charismatic movement do not call themselves Charismatic. The term “third
wave” was coined in the 1980s by Fuller Seminary professor Peter Wagner.
He said the first wave was Pentecostalism in the early 1900s; the second
wave was the Charismatic movement of the 1960s; and the third wave has
been occurring since the 1980s among evangelicals.
“The Third Wave is a new moving of the Holy Spirit among evangelicals who,
for one reason or another, have chosen not to identify with either the
Pentecostals or the charismatics. Its roots go back a little further,
but I see it as mainly a movement beginning in the 1980s and gathering
momentum through the closing years of the twentieth century. ... I see
the Third Wave as distinct from, but at the same time very similar to
the first and second waves. ... The major variation comes in the
understanding of the meaning of baptism in the Holy Spirit and the role
of tongues in authenticating this. I myself, for example, would rather
not have people call me a charismatic. I do not consider myself a
charismatic. I am simply an evangelical Congregationalist who is open to
the Holy Spirit working through me and my church in any way he chooses”
(Wagner, The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit, 1988, pp. 18-19).
The Third Wave is characterized by the following:
* An acceptance of “tongues speaking” as legitimate even though it is mere
gibberish
* An openness to divine healing as something promised by God
* A yearning for experiential worship that involves yielding to sensual
contemporary music
* A focus on charismatic style spiritual warfare, including the concept of
territorial spirits that must be identified and bound by prayer before
evangelism can be successful
* An openness to the continued gift of prophecy
* An ecumenical mindset
It is evident that the Billy Graham crusades fitted hand in glove with the
developing charismatic, ecumenical movement, which was clearly
controlled by the spirits of Rev. 16:13-14, and this is underscored by
the history of the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International,
mentioned in the last quotation above, which ensnared professionals and
politicians as well as businessmen into a false and fraudulent form of
Christianity:
Demos Sakarian and the His Ecumenical Businessmen
In many countries of the world one can go to a fashionable hotel and find
a Saturday breakfast meeting of the Full Gospel Business Men’s
Fellowship International (FGBMFI). There they will see businessmen
raising their hands in adoration and praise to the Lord. A speaker, most
likely not an ordained minister, would give a talk or Bible teaching,
and others would be invited to witness to what the Lord has done in
their lives. At times the “MC” - facilitator of these breakfast meetings
would ask those present to raise their hands in recognition as he called
out the major denominations, Baptist, Methodists, Presbyterians,
Catholics, etc. This ritual makes it clear to all that these breakfast
meetings were ecumenical fellowships.[2]
The FGBMFI has brought the Gospel to millions of men all over the world, and
then immediately baptized many of them in the Holy Spirit –something few
other churches or para-churches are likely to do. This has been done
mostly by the thousands (and ultimately hundreds of thousands) of
members taking the trouble to invite unbelieving friends, nominal
Christians, and outright skeptics to the meetings with the lure of a
free breakfast. In these meeting there have always been a steady stream
of healings and deliverance prayer that occurs either across the
breakfast table, in a healing line, or in spontaneous prayer groups that
form as the official meeting adjourn. This is evangelization as in the
Hebrews 2: 1-4 model at its best.
Most Church historians date the beginning of the Charismatic Renewal at
1960, with the incident at St. Marks in California, when the Rev. Dennis
Bennett declared before his congregation that he spoke in tongues. But
if by the Charismatic Renewal is meant the coming of Pentecostalism to
mainline Christians, a good case can be made that the Renewal really
began a decade earlier with the founding of the FGBMFI. It was in these
meetings that thousands of men from the mainline denominations met in
worshipful, ecumenical fellowship and received the Gifts of the Spirit.
In the United States, where the FGBMFI began, thousands of persons
received the Gifts of the Spirit in FGBMFI meetings during the 1950s,
and hundreds of thousands in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, the FGBMFI
was the major institution driving the remarkable expansion of Renewalist
(Pentecostal, Charismatic and “Third Wave”) churches during those
decades. But back in the 1950s it served as a “Holy Ghost holding tank”
for thousands of persons in the mainline denominations who were baptized
by the Spirit, but could not practice the Gifts in their churches, but
they could and did at the Saturday breakfast meetings. . .
By 1993, when Demos died, the FBBMFI in the United States was undergoing a
decline – the natural course of a revival institution that succeeded.
Its initial message: that God acted in everyday life of ordinary people
with the power of the Spirit, and the Gifts of the Spirit, was now
common, if not universally accepted. The theology of Faith Idealism, and
Christian NewThought prosperity, which it did so much to spread, was
well established if still controversial.
From the 1980s the FGBMFI underwent a tremendous expansion overseas,
especially in the 3rd World. In many of these countries the combination
of the concepts of “businessman” with “honesty” and “holiness” and the
power of the Spirit had never been made. The FGBMFI presence and
modeling have been truly revolutionary. It suddenly injects, in a sense,
the “Protestant Ethic” and Puritan respect for commercial life in places
where those things were unknown. Especially in Africa, the FGBMFI has
been a conduit for the spread of the Charismatic renewal and the Gifts
of the Spirit.[8] In that continent, where many persons are still under
the bondage of witchcraft and almost everyone believes in the spiritual
dimensions of dreams and visions, the strong Pentecostal/charismatic
message of FGBMFI speakers is readily accepted. [9] Similarly, the
FGBMFI has experienced dramatic successes in Latin America in recent
decades.
But in perspective, it may be that its revolutionary and continued “worship
ecumenism” practiced at all FGBMFI meetings is its greatest legacy. . .
[2]I first encountered the FGBMFI as a new and very “Catholic” Charismatic about 1975. I was struck by this ritual of denominational ecumenism. Having been well educated in Church history it impressed me immediately that such a multidenominational meeting would not have been held two hundred years ago, and three hundred years ago they might have been at each other’s throats with the cutlery on the table. Catholics would have had all Protestants declared as heretics and worthy of the stake. Calvinists would have attempted the same for the Baptists. This “worshiping ecumenicism,” where doctrines were NOT discussed, prompted me to reconsider the meaning of heresy, and its over use in conservative theological circles. . .
Far from leading men and women to the true Christ, Billy Graham's work has had the opposite effect:
5. The Billy Graham effect
As the country sought healing after World War II, Americans began searching
for hope in the God-smorgasbord that Christianity had laid out, from
Bible-believing fundamentalism to Holy Ghost-inspired Pentecostalism,
from education-minded Roman Catholicism to progressive-leaning high
church spiritualism.
One man seemed capable of connecting across church and denominational lines:
Billy Graham.
Unrestrained by the limitations of a home church, Graham’s God evolved into
a deity that a variety of Americans wanted to know. Graham’s God wooed
conservative and charismatic believers alike, and didn’t offend most
Catholic and Episcopalian believers.
Amid the large and varied buffet, Graham’s God was like a peanut
butter-and-jelly sandwich, a divine brand delivered using books,
television, radio, magazine publishing and live events.
In many ways, Graham was the first to unleash the power of GOD®. And that
changed everything.
Today, most Christians can’t distinguish between God and GOD®, which has
made America’s deity into a superpower, an almighty deity that can be
mixed with just about anything, from enterprise to politics, from hate
campaigns to promises of prosperity.
Here in America, God is constantly changing. It’s a divine story that we
edit and manipulate—sometimes innocently and sometimes
intentionally—into our own narratives.
We create a most powerful God who serves our own agendas, whether they be cities built on hills or presidential elections.
THE ASCENDANCY OF THE CHIEF AMONG FALSE GODS
The worship of GOD® is the product of the work of the Pentecostal
charismatics and the catalyst of Billy Graham's evangelistic crusades.
GOD® is unquestionably a false god, and many false gods have plagued the
people of God from the time that Satan gained the victory over Adam in
the Garden of Eden.
No genuine Christian would be unaware of how he deceived Eve and through her
overcame and wrested sovereignty over this world from Adam. The genuine
Christian is also aware that in exercise of his temporary sovereignty
Satan boldly and presumptuously dared to tempt the One whom he knew to
be the Divine Son of God in the wilderness. Satan is a defeated foe
since the Divine sacrifice Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary; but
judgment is yet to be executed upon him. In this sense he is still
permitted to carry on with his pretense of being the God of this world
until his iniquity is fully matured. The professed Christian who is
ignorant of this fact is without excuse for succumbing to the deceptions
of the devil as they joyfully proclaim their love for "the Lord" and
commit themselves to follow him. Of necessity the false Lord of this
world is warring against the Holy Spirit, the only one whom the Lord
Jesus Christ promised would guide His followers into all Truth. Any
spirit which leads into error is not the true Spirit of God; hence the
necessity of knowing the doctrines and prophecies of the Bible which
expose the impostor. This is emphasized in numerous passages of
Scripture; above all in the words of Jesus Christ Himself (Matt.
24:23-25,) and particularly in the Apostle Paul's great prophecy of the
end time in 2Thess. 2:3-12. Applying the words of Jesus Christ in a
different context, "This day [in these times] is this scripture
fulfilled" in our sight.
Although Satan has used many false gods to entrap humanity, the chief has
always been the one conceived in ancient Babylon: Lord Baal, whose
worship spread throughout the world wherever human beings settled, and
corrupted ancient Israel:
Ba‘al Worship in the Old Testament
While we have no surviving Canaanite religious texts, the accounts of Ba‘al
worship in the Old Testament correspond closely to the existing versions
of the Ba‘al myth and what we know of religious practices in surrounding
areas. The influence of this religious system on Israel can hardly be
overestimated. Contrary to how some statements in the biblical
traditions are often understood, the problem that faced Israel through
most of its history was not that the people totally abandoned Yahweh for
the worship of Ba‘al. Rather the problem was syncretism, the blending of
Yahweh worship with Ba’al worship.
Yahweh has been experienced as a God of power, the God who fought Pharaoh,
who parted the Reed Sea, who led the Israelites through the desert, who
parted the Jordan, who brought them into the land by toppling the walls
of Jericho and routing the Canaanite and Philistine armies. This led to
the idea that Yahweh, the God of the patriarchs, was a powerful warrior
God, the God of the desert who could be counted on to march in with his
heavenly armies in times of crisis. However, as the Israelites settled
into the land, they encountered the fertility cult of Ba‘al. They were
easily convinced that while Yahweh may be God of the desert and God of
battles and God of power, it was Ba‘al who was in charge of the more
mundane aspects of everyday life, such as rain and crops and livestock.
The Israelites never abandoned the worship of Yahweh. They simply added the
worship of Ba‘al to their worship of Yahweh (called syncretism). They
had one God for crises and another god for everyday life. The actual
worship of Ba‘al was carried out in terms of imitative magic whereby
sexual acts by both male and female temple prostitutes were understood
to arouse Ba‘al who then brought rain to make Mother Earth fertile (in
some forms of the myth, represented by a female consort, Asherah or
Astarte).
When crops were abundant, Ba‘al was praised and thanked for his abundant
rain. It is in this context that drought had such impact throughout the
biblical traditions. Not only was lack of rain a threat to survival, it
was also a sign that the gods of the Ba‘al myth were unhappy. It is this
context that the "contest" between Elijah and the prophets of Ba’al
carries such significance. The issue is really who controls the rain,
Ba‘al or Yahweh.
Hosea suggests and Jeremiah graphically depicts the debauchery and excesses that developed in the worship of Ba‘al. Because of the sexual overtones of Ba‘al worship, it was easy to use the metaphor of adultery or prostitution to describe the problem that such syncretism raised for Israel. The prophets are consistent in condemning Ba‘al worship as a sign of being unfaithful to their covenant relationship with Yahweh. It is also in this context that the idea of Yahweh being a "jealous" God comes into play (see God as a "jealous" God). The idea here is not an emotional or arrogant dimension, but rather simply an assertion that if God alone is God, as the shema in Deuteronomy 6:4 asserts, then they cannot worship both Yahweh and Ba‘al. . .
Up to this point the author is stating solid historical facts. Then he
spoils it by this sentence suggesting a lack of belief in the Divine
inspiration of the Bible: "It is likely in response to the Ba‘al myth
that Israelites eventually developed their profound doctrine of
creation." This flows from
Higher Criticism. Ironically this is a
denigration of the true God's revelation of Himself and His Truth in the
Bible. It is attributable to the influence of the premier religious body
promoting Baal Worship over the centuries and into the present, and
fulfilling the Apostle Paul's great prophecy of 2 Thess. 2. The Church
of Rome is the veritable temple of Baal cloaked in the garb of
"Christianity." (Cf.
Baal is the Catholic God.)
"Baal is the Catholic God" lists fifty-three Roman Catholic doctrines and
symbols that mirror those of Baal. Central to these doctrines and
symbols is the worship of
the Triune God, who is identical to Lord
Baal. Note that “The ancient Babylonians recognised the doctrine of
a trinity, or three persons in one god. This is precisely
the Roman
Catholic definition of the Trinity, with emphasis on the one being.
(Cf.
"In reply to your first question,"
and read down to "It is all of one source.") The myth of the Triune God
has been received by the vast majority of Protestant Churches, including
the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The conclusion is irresistible that
Baal has become the dominant God of the corporate body of Adventists, as
was the case in Ancient Israel for such astonishingly long periods of
time. However, in the Independent Ministries there is an equally deadly
deviance from the Truth revealed about the Godhead, in an unwitting
demonstration of Semi-Arianism. This is a denial of the eternal equality
and co-existence of the pre-existent Christ with God the Father as a
dual Godhead. They argue that He was the Son of God by generation before
His Incarnation, and therefore
a lesser God. The Semi-Arians also deny the Personhood of the Holy
Spirit. Whether or not this is a form of Baal worship may be debatable;
but they are certainly not advocating the worship of the true Godhead.
Theirs is a problem similar to that of Judaism, which will not recognize
Jesus Christ as one of the New Testament Trio of true Gods:
The Judaism that emerged after the exile in the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah was passionately monotheistic, and has remained so ever since. In fact, it was partly that passion for monotheism that arose from the purge of Ba‘al worship from their corporate consciousness that caused Judaism to have problems accepting Jesus as the Son of God. For many faithful Jews, that sounded too much like a return to a polytheistic syncretism. (Ba‘al Worship in the Old Testament.)
Both the Jews and the Semi-Arians are in dire straits spiritually, since
no-one has access to the Father but by Jesus Christ who revealed Himself to be
the fully Divine "I AM" in the flesh. The
following statement of Ellen G. White can be applied to the Semi-Arians:
At the time of the loud cry of the third angel those who have been in any measure blinded by the enemy, who have not fully recovered themselves from the snare of Satan, will be in peril, because it will be difficult for them to discern the light from heaven, and they will be inclined to accept falsehood. Their erroneous experience will color their thoughts, their decisions, their propositions, their counsels. The evidences that God has given will be no evidence to those who have blinded their eyes by choosing darkness rather than light. After rejecting light, they will originate theories which they will call "light," but which the Lord calls, "Sparks of their own kindling," by which they will direct their steps. . . (Let the Trumpet Give a Certain Sound, Review and Herald, December 13, 1892)
There is hardly a better descriptive word for "Sparks of their own kindling" than "delusions," and it applies to the hierarchy of the Seventh-day Adventist Church as well as to misguided Independents who have a zeal that is not according to knowledge
"No heavy theology," the guiding principle of Billy Graham,
"America's Pastor," has prevailed against the advanced Bible doctrines
of the Advent Movement. Seventh-day Adventist pastors and teachers also
now subscribe to "no heavy theology," and have convinced the many in
the Church that salvation depends only on a confession of faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ. The critical problem is the false "Lord Baal"
claiming to be Jesus Christ. How can we identify him apart from the Word
of God? Jesus Christ gave the clearest possible warning in Matthew 24
that the deceptions of false christs and false prophets would be so
overwhelming that "if it were possible " "they shall deceive the very
elect." Ellen G. White warned, "So closely will the counterfeit resemble
the true that it will be impossible to distinguish between them except
by the Holy Scriptures." (Great Controversy, p. 593.
The "Lord Baal" is the ultimate deceiver of these times. It is well to
consider his origin and all of the implications of falling under his
spell:
Nimrod the Founder of the Occult and Babylon
The Bible develops a very prominent and notorious character named Nimrod.
He was the sixth son born of Cush. His name in Hebrew means to rebel. He
was the founder of Babylon and Assyria. He is mentioned in I Chronicles
1: 10, Micah 5: 6 and in Genesis 10: 8b-9. The Hebrew text states that
he was a mighty hunter before the Lord. This is indicative of his
antagonism and opposition to God. He was wicked and made the whole world
rebel through the building of the Tower of Babel. He was the first to
establish kingdoms. . .
Josephus says:
“Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God.
He was the grandson of Ham the son of Noah. He was a bold man, and of
great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as
if it was through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was
their own courage, which procured that happiness. He also gradually
changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men
from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on
his power…(Antiquities of the Jews Chapter 4:2)”. . .
Even though Semiramis claimed to be a virgin she had another son, named
Tammuz, who she said was the reincarnation of Nimrod. She became known
as the “Virgin Mother”, “Holy Mother” and the “Queen of Heaven” and was
symbolized by the Moon. So began the worship of Semiramis and the
child-god, and the whole paraphernalia of the Babylonian religious
system.
From various ancient sources, it seems that Nimrod’s wife/mother; Semiramis
was high priestess of the Babel religion and the founder of all mystery
religions as well as goddess. . .
According to the cult of Ishtar, Tammuz was conceived by a sunbeam, a
counterfeit version of Jesus’ virgin birth. Tammuz corresponded to Baal
in Phoenicia, Osiris in Egypt, Eros in Greece, and Cupid in Rome. In
every case, the worship of those gods and goddesses was associated with
sexual immorality. . .
In its organized form false religion began with the tower of Babel and Nimrod, from which Babylon derives its name. . . Under the leadership of the proud and apostate Nimrod they planned to storm heaven and unify their power and prestige in a great worldwide system of worship. That was man’s first counterfeit religion, from which every other false religion in one way or another has sprung. . .
The false Lord of the counterfeit religion established by Semiramis was a
Triad/Trinity comprised of Nimrod, Tammuz, and Semiramis herself, now
universally worshipped under the delusion that they are the same as the
true Godhead.
This is the central evidence of Baal worship in his own temple, the Church
of Rome, and in the Protestant world including the Seventh-day Adventist
Church. The following is quoted from a study on this website titled
"GODHEAD CONFUSION IN SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST COMMUNITY":
Elder Grotheer refers to the pagan triad in WWN10(86) under the title “THAT
I MAY KNOW HIM”:
The method of how we should approach this doctrine was discussed. Do we seek
to move from the pagan triad concept to the truth about God, or do we
recognize paganism for what it is, and seek to find the true picture of
God in the Old Testament as revealed in the earthly sanctuary - God
seated between the cherubim - and one of those cherubim a created being?
. . .
A little thought over the origin of sin in Heaven and its transfer to this
planet due to the surrender of our first parents to the sophistry of
Lucifer gives insight as to the why of the pagan trinity concepts with
their multiple triads. It also gives meaning to "the serpent's"
suggestion - "Ye shall be as gods." (Gen. 3:5) . . .
A web page of the United Church of God titled “How Ancient Trinitarian Gods
Influenced Adoption of the Trinity” drives home the point about the
pagan origins of the Trinity dogma. It opens with this statement: “Many
who believe in the Trinity are surprised, perhaps shocked, to learn that
the idea of divine beings existing as trinities or triads long predated
Christianity. Yet, as we will see, the evidence is abundantly
documented.”
The article goes on to document the triad/trinity concepts of the Sumerians
and Babylonians:
Sumeria
“The universe was divided into three regions each of which became the domain
of a god. Anu’s share was the sky. The earth was given to Enlil. Ea
became the ruler of the waters. Together they constituted the triad of
the Great Gods” ( The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, 1994, pp.
54-55)
Babylonia
“The ancient Babylonians
recognised the doctrine of a trinity, or three
persons in one god — as appears from a composite god with three heads
forming part of their mythology, and the use of the equilateral
triangle, also, as an emblem of such trinity in unity” (Thomas Dennis
Rock, The Mystical Woman and the Cities of the Nations, 1867, pp.
22-23). (Original italics)
Similar belief in a divine trinity is documented for India, Greece, Egypt,
Rome, and also the Phoenicians, the Germanic nations, and the Celts.
The last two paragraphs of the United Church of God paper state as follows:
James Bonwick summarized the story well on page 396 of his 1878 work
Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought: “It is an undoubted fact that more
or less all over the world the deities are in triads. This rule applies
to eastern and western hemispheres, to north and south.
“Further, it is observed that, in some mystical way, the triad of three persons is one. The first is as the second or third, the second as first or third, the third as first or second; in fact, they are each other, one and the same individual being. The definition of Athanasius, who lived in Egypt, applies to the trinities of all heathen religions.” (Original italics; underscored emphasis added.))
It bears repeating as referenced earlier in this writing, that the critically important point generally not recognized is the peculiar nature of the Trinity God of the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant churches that have followed it, including the contemporary Seventh-day Adventist Church. This God is not three beings, or three Gods, but one being in a strange composite of three "persons."
The epitome of Baal worship is exhibited in the history and contemporary
characteristics of the Roman Catholic Church. It is not difficult for
the Bible Christian to discern the qualities of the "proud and apostate
Nimrod," in the religion of the papacy, which displays "antagonism and
opposition to God" in the proud boasts of the papal office and the
"affront and contempt of God" inherent in arrogant papal claims of the
power to enter even into the Holy of Holies of the heavens. Immorality
is rampant in the ranks of the Institution's false priesthood, and
immorality on the part of the laity is condoned by the offer of pardons
in the confessional.
As to the Evangelicals, under the delusion that they worship the true God
they perceive that there is Baal worship in America, but attribute it to
"Secular humanism":
Matt Barber on today’s Baal worshipers
Selected parts:
Modern-day liberals – or “progressives” as they more discreetly prefer –
labor under an awkward misconception; namely, that there is anything
remotely “progressive” about the fundamental canons of their blind,
secular-humanist faith. In fact, today’s liberalism is largely a
sanitized retread of an antiquated mythology – one that significantly
predates the only truly progressive movement: biblical Christianity.
The principal pillars of Baalism were child sacrifice, sexual immorality (both heterosexual and homosexual) and pantheism (reverence of creation over the Creator). . .
The problem with this point of view is that "Secular humanism posits that
human beings are capable of being ethical and moral without religion or
a god," (Secular humanism.) Worshippers of Baal in Christianity
believe that there is a God; and they are deceived into worshipping the
false Lord Baal in place of the Heavenly Trio of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit (Cf. Matt. 28:19.) It is an
incontrovertible fact that the Trinity almost universally worshiped in
Christendom is identical to the Babylonian Triad/Trinity, which also
plagued ancient Israel where Baal worship was pervasive:
Baal was the name of the main god of the Canaanites in Old Testament times.
Baal worship served as a problem to Israel throughout the period of the
judges (Judges 3:7) and was prevalent in the reign of King Ahab of the
northern kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 16:31-33).
Judah, the southern kingdom, also struggled with Baal worship. In 2 Chronicles 28:1-4 we read, "Ahaz was twenty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD, as his father David had done, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. He even made metal images for the Baals, and he made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel. And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree." The Lord judged Judah by allowing the king of Syria and the king of Israel to defeat Judah in battle and enslave hundreds of thousands of captives (2 Chronicles 28:5-7).
WILFUL IGNORANCE OF THE TRUE GOD AND SOUND DOCTRINE REVEALED IN THE HOLY BIBLE
It was in the Northern Kingdom that Hosea prophesied. The vital importance
of a perfected knowledge of the true God is emphasized by the fact that
it was in the Northern Kingdom besieged by Baal worship that God, in
Hosea 4:6 quoted above, condemned the rejection of knowledge. Had Israel
not rejected this knowledge she could more readily have recognized the
false religion of Baal corrupting her worship.
Consider the consequences of arrogantly repudiating "heavy theology."
Darkness now "covers the earth, and gross darkness the people," (Isa.
60:2a.) Those Evangelicals who still have a proper regard for biblical
knowledge
deplore the contemporary ignorance of the Scriptures. The
apostates are without excuse. Hosea 4:6 sounds the warning against
ignorance. Willingly choosing ignorance exhibits "affront and contempt
of God" in Jesus Christ Who promised in John 16:13: "Howbeit when he, the
Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth . . .
The nature of guidance "into all truth" is declared unequivocally by the Apostle Paul in Heb. 5. In verses 9 & 10 he continues with the theme of the high priestly ministry of Jesus Christ thus: "And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, called by God as High Priest “according to the order of Melchizedek” (NKJV.) Then he continues in verses 11-14
Of whom we have much to say, and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
The strong meat is clearly the revelation of
Jesus Christ's ministry in the
heavenly sanctuary. Paul further emphasizes the critical importance of
thorough study of the Bible in 2 Timothy 2:15: "Study to show thyself
approved unto God, a workman who needeth not to be ashamed, rightly
dividing the word of truth." What are the "proud and apostate" religious
leaders who spurn the Word of God other than the prophets of Baal!
Here it must be re-emphasized that the Bible is the only means by which to
discern the "antagonism and opposition to God" that is inherent in Baal
worship. This essential enlightenment from the Word of God has been
neutralized, to the extent that both the people and their religious
leaders are blinded and deluded into believing that they are worshipping
the true Godhead when in reality they have surrendered to the worship of
Satan. As referenced earlier in this review of final world events, this
has been the result of Higher Criticism.
To fully realize the extent to which the political Evangelicals are in
rebellion against the true Godhead, it is helpful to quote some relevant
verses of Scripture. Jesus said, "My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom.
If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over
to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world," (John
18:36; NLT.) He also established the principle of separation of Church
and State: "And he saith unto them, "Whose is this image and
superscription? They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them,
Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God
the things that are God's" (Matt. 22:20-21.) In the words of the Apostle
Paul:
But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the
heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, To the
general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in
heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made
perfect, And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood
of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. . .
Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear (Heb. 12: 22-24, 28.)
Can the Scriptures be any clearer in establishing that Jesus Christ's
kingdom is totally separate from this world, and centered in heaven? But
here is what the Evangelicals teach:
While I believe Rome leads the way with the bold claim that God chose Peter
and the succeeding popes to take the title of “Vicar of Christ” and
determine what the sheep should or should not believe,
other groups
believe they have been called to usher in or even prepare and set up the
kingdom of God here on Earth without the presence of the King. Often
taking the position that Jesus will not actually physically return to
rule and reign for a period of one thousand years, these groups see
themselves as chosen by God to be human vessels for this purpose.
Common names for this teaching are: Kingdom Now, Dominion Theology, and
Reconstructionism. It is the idea that before Christ can return, the
world must be brought together in unity and perfection, and this work
will be done by the Christian church. Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven
P.E.A.C.E. Plan, Jim Wallis’ social gospel agenda, and Tony Campolo or
Brian McLaren’s emergent church are a few of the avenues through which
this is being propagated. The goal is to basically eradicate all the
world’s ills (e.g., disease, poverty, terrorism, and pollution) and
thus, we will have created a “Heaven on Earth” Utopia.
While creating such a world sounds very good, it is not what the Bible says
is going to happen. Many Scriptures, in both the Old and New Testaments,
describe a very different scenario, such as the following:
Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye
shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be
offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And
many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because
iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that
shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of
the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all
nations; and then shall the end come. (Matthew 24:9-14)
This movement has swept the planet, and those who refuse to join hands are considered “colonial,” “militant fundamentalists,” and “narrow-minded crackpots” who are not willing to catch the “new wave” and get on board with the mighty revival that is moving the world toward unity and peace. Many of the leaders in this movement have no problem whatsoever joining with the pope in Rome and the kingdom-of-Earth plans he has for joining together with other religions, including Islam. . .
A STATISM IN DEFIANCE OF ALMIGHTY GOD
Viewing this movement, can one imagine a greater "affront and contempt of
God" and the promises of His Word? This is Baal worship, and follows the
path of the "proud and apostate Nimrod," who re-instituted "Statism"
after the flood in defiance of God:
Nimrod the Statist
While we must remember that Cain was the first Statist, [Gen. 4:17b]
(commentators refer to Nimrod as the first statist because of the
greater amount of Biblical data on Nimrod), we must see Nimrod's infamy
stemming from his move out of the Patriarchal structure ordained by God
and into a non-Familial system of government. While one could possibly
tolerate a person who wanted to establish Godly non-Familial systems of
government in the place of unGodly and oppressive Families, one can in
no way tolerate Nimrod's deplorable actions. He sought, following Cain,
to completely overthrow God's Family-centered order; the social system in
which obedient Families were the source of all order and prosperity.
Nimrod sought to establish cities of oppression in the place of godly
Families like Noah's or Abraham's. Thomas Whitelaw notes of Nimrod's
revolution:
Under him, society passed from the patriarchal condition, in which each
separate clan or tribe owns the sway of its natural head, into that
(more abject or more civilized according as it is viewed) in which many
different clans or tribes recognize the sway of one who is not their
natural head, but has acquired his ascendency and dominion by conquest.
Franz Delitzsch (1888) confirms our view of Nimrod as the first political
leader (of the post-Flood world):
What the narrative has in view is not the greatness of Nimrod as a hunter,
but his importance as the founder of a state. The hunter without equal
was also the first monarch.
John P. Lange (1864) suggests that the move from Family-government to the
predominance of the "State" was not without conflict:
This establishment of an empire transforming the patriarchal
clan-governments into one monarchy is not to be thought of as happening
without force. The hunter becomes a subjugator of men, in other words, a
conquerer.
Nimrod attempted to move culture away from the Family and towards a
non-Familial, and hence oppressive and impersonal, form of "government."
The conservative Leupold (1942) describes the centrality of the monarch
in this "government."
So this inciter to revolt (Nimrod) came to be the first tyrant upon the
earth, oppressing others and using them for the furtherance of his own
interests.
He notes how this was a break with the Lord's ordination:
Here is the real story of the founding of empires, for that matter, of the
first empires. Having the type of character that we find described in
vv. 8-9 in the person of Nimrod, we must needs regard both Babylon and
Assyria as exponents of the spirit of this world. This attitude over
against Babylon is the attitude of the Scriptures in prophetic
utterances (cf. Isa. 13, also Isa. 47) as well as in the book of
Revelation (18:21). These early kingdoms or empires are, therefore to be
regarded as the achievements of a lawless fellow who taught men to revolt against duly
constituted authority.
The phrase "duly constituted authority" is an interesting one. Most
assuredly the Family was "duly constituted." Can we say the same thing
about the "State"? Was there a "State" at the time Nimrod left the
Household of Faith? Does the "State" have any other origin than in
Nimrod's Babylon? Clearly, the departure from Patriarchal society came
about through Nimrod's apostasy. John Gill (1763) comments on Genesis
10:8:
He began to be a mighty one on the earth; that is, he was the first that
formed a plan of government, and brought men into subjection to it; for
this refers not to his gigantic stature, as if he was a giant, as the
Septuagint renders; or a strong robust man, as Onkelos; nor to his moral
character, as the Targum of Jonathan, which is "he began to be mighty in
sin, and to rebel before the Lord in the earth;" but to his civil
character, as a ruler and governor: he was the first that reduced bodies
of people and various cities into one form of government, and became the
head of them; either by force and usurpation, or it may be with the
consent of the people, through his persuasion of them. . . .
One could easily get the impression that there was no government before Nimrod. Nimrod did not bring us government, he brought us "the government." We should not say "there was no government before Nimrod." There was no "State" before Nimrod (or Cain), but there was social order, and the source of this well-governed society was the Family.
The progenitors of Statism were Cain and Nimrod! What a satanic principle to
follow! The political Evangelicals are worshippers of Baal, as are the
hierarchy and followers of Rome, the temple of Baal!
CONSEQUENCES OF BIBLE ILLITERACY AND FALSE DOCTRINE
This is not the end of the indictment of Baalism. As the result of the Bible illiteracy
engendered by Higher Criticism, the rejection of "heavy theology," and
the teaching that all that is required for salvation is a simple
affirmation of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, millions of hapless
victims believe themselves to be "born again" without any understanding
of the saving and cleansing power of Jesus. The Bible teaches that "If
we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness," (1 John 1:9;) "But if we walk
in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with
another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all
sin," (1 John 1:7.) The plight of millions who are deluded into
believing that they are "born again" when there is no evidence of a
corresponding conversion and sanctification by the cleansing power of
the Holy Spirit is tragic. The tragedy is compounded by the Calvinist
doctrine of "once saved always saved," which is excoriated in the
following essay by a Wesleyan Methodist:
The real problem with ‘Once Saved Always Saved’
I just finished reading the New York Times article about Robert L. Dear Jr,
the shooter in the recent Planned Parenthood attack in Colorado Springs.
In the article, Dear is described as a serial philanderer, gambler, an
abusive husband/boyfriend and a Christian.
A Christian?
Well, yes, of course. Why not?
I mean, once saved always saved, right? That’s what Dear believed, anyway:
“He says that as long as he believes he will be saved, he can do
whatever he pleases.”
And herein lies my biggest problem with not only Robert Dear, but all
persons who espouse some doctrine of unchecked Once Saved Always Saved.
How are you going to tell me that a person can claim to be a follower of
the crucified Messiah, claim to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and yet
live a life that is in complete and utter contradiction with everything
that God stands for?
How can you have, as the article contends, “a man of religious conviction
who sinned openly, a man who craved solitude and near-constant female
company, a man who successfully wooed women but, some of them say, also
abused them. [A man who] frequented marijuana websites, then argued with
other posters, often through heated religious screeds” who is also a
Christian?
This kind of thing, where a man can live in complete contradiction to the
character of the gospel and yet still believe himself to be a Christian,
is only possible because of a doctrine that is downright false.
There is
absolutely no point in all of Scripture where mere confession of belief
warrants a free ticket to heaven no matter what one does in this life.
You can ask Jesus into your heart 8 million times, but if you live the
kind of life described above, you need to know that you are not a
Christian.
This is what I find so problematic about the doctrine of Once Saved Always Saved. It throws the entire gospel under the bus of the human need for security, however false that security may be. It offers certitude where none should be offered. It allows us to live how we want to live without demanding any conformity to the image of Christ, any growth in holiness, any perseverance. . .
The following lengthy essay was written by a Seventh-day Adventist pastor;
one who appears not to have climbed onto the "no heavy theology"
bandwagon. It is well supported by texts from the Bible:
A battle has raged in theological circles in the last few decades about the
eternal security of the believer, sometimes called "once saved, always
saved." Let's examine this issue, as usual, only on the basis of what
Scripture says and nothing else. To find and know the truth, we must
cast aside whatever preconceptions we have, whatever teachings we have
heard from men, and be prepared to accept God's word for what it says.
Why should we bother to consider this subject? Isn't it sufficient to simply
have a close relationship with Christ, as a servant of the Lord Jesus,
and seek to obey him in all things? For those who have that, of course
that is sufficient. But there are teachings, such as the "once saved,
always saved" doctrine that cause people to claim to be Christians,
pointing with conviction to the day on which they confessed their faith,
but thereafter living as the world, indistinguishable from the world. In
many communities there is a high level of hypocrisy with "Christians"
attending church but throughout the week living lives which rival in
wickedness the worst of unbelievers.
Two teachings come immediately to mind which stress the spiritual danger of
such beliefs and actions. Jesus limited entrance into the kingdom when
he said, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the
kingdom of heaven but only he who does the will of my Father in heaven"
(Matthew 7:21). Paul narrowed the passage into the kingdom even further
when he said, "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be
conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn
among many brothers" (Romans 8:29). This is not a scripture which states
that certain people are predestined to be saved. It is a scripture which
states that God predestined the qualification for those who will be
saved. There is no salvation for those who do not do the will of God
they will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Salvation is limited to
those who are conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ, God's Son. The
likeness to which all believers can be conformed is the commitment to do
the will of God.
It does not matter if someone made a sincere confession of faith at some earlier time if he later does not do the will of God and is not conformed to the likeness of his Son. God predestined this qualification for all who would be saved. Only those who satisfy this qualification will be the brothers (and sisters) of the Lord Jesus. Jesus said, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother" (Matthew 12:48 50). . .
Not only do the Evangelicals open the door to hypocrisy and self-deception
by the doctrine of "once saved, always saved," but they also bandy about
talk of forgiveness and redemption, arrogating to themselves the power
to forgive and declare the "redemption" of flagrant sinners who refuse
to repent. This is the case with their willful and unwavering support of
Donald Trump. He is notorious for his compulsive lying, history of
sexual depravity, and fraudulent practices.
Jesus said, "Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is
expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter
will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And
when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness,
and of judgment (John 16:7-8.) It is clear that Trump is
not convicted of
sin, or of righteousness, or of judgment. He scorns confession of sin, repentance, and
the forgiveness of God:
Trump: I hope I don't have to ask 'for much forgiveness' from God
Though he remarked last year that he has never asked God for forgiveness,
Donald Trump suggested in an interview published Wednesday that he plans
on doing just that.
In an interview with columnist Cal Thomas, Trump was asked, "You have said
you never felt the need to ask for God’s forgiveness, and yet repentance
for one’s sins is a precondition to salvation. I ask you the question
Jesus asked of Peter: Who do you say He is?"
"I will be asking for forgiveness, but hopefully I won’t have to be asking for much forgiveness. As you know, I am Presbyterian and Protestant. I’ve had great relationships and developed even greater relationships with ministers. We have tremendous support from the clergy. I think I will be doing very well during the election with evangelicals and with Christians," Trump said, according to the transcript."
In the above context it appears that Trump does not think in terms of
seeking forgiveness from God, but only from the religious leaders; and
they presume to forgive him for his sins
which are against God and man. With knowledge of his transgressions,
they
declare him righteous. This is a flagrant affront to God the Father, the Lord Jesus
Christ, and the Holy Spirit:
Trump squanders moral authority — for evangelical leaders
Dispense with fig leaf of Christian forgiveness and admit the means to a
political end: Our view.
Let's see whether we understand this. A lawyer for Donald Trump sets up a
private Delaware company weeks before the 2016 election to arrange a
$130,000 secret payoff to a porn star named Stormy Daniels, buying her
silence about an alleged Trump tryst in 2006.
The Wall Street Journal breaks this perfidy recently, and leading
evangelical leaders promptly ... denounce his immoral behavior? No,
silly us. They give Trump a spiritual pass:
"You get a mulligan," said Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research
Council.
"The president is a much different person today (than in 2006)," said the
Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham.
"He's changed," said Jerry Falwell Jr.
Message: That 7th Commandment is overrated. It's hard to imagine these
religious leaders being so forgiving if the sinner in question was a
Democrat. In fact, this sort of rank hypocrisy only serves to diminish
their moral authority.
TONY PERKINS: President is keeping his promises
[B]This isn't to say that their flock[B] — the nation's estimated 60 million
evangelical Christians — is acting irrationally by supporting Trump.
About 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump, who identifies as
Presbyterian. And while that support has slipped a bit, they remain a
strong constituency for the president.
Born-again Christians "have a long record of being highly pragmatic, rather than purist, in (using) the tools of the federal government to protect their own authority and advance a moral agenda," . . .
Why Evangelicals Support President Trump, Despite His Immorality
While the majority of Americans consistently report that they disapprove of
President Trump, and millions rally to protest the Muslim Ban, attacks
on the Affordable Care Act and anti-immigrant policies, one group has
not wavered in its support of Trump: his faith advisors. Jerry Falwell,
Jr. has celebrated Trump as a “dream president” and Franklin Graham said
“God’s hand intervened” to elect him. At the 2018 National Prayer
Breakfast in Washington, D.C., several speakers said no President in
American history has done as much as this one to promote “religious
freedom.”
To many within and beyond the faith community, these preachers’ claims raise
eyebrows. How do Christian ministers reconcile the Jesus who said “Love
your enemy” with a President whose policy is to strike back at all
critics? Why would people who claim to stand for family values so
uncritically support a thrice-married man who according to Ronan
Farrow’s reporting for the New Yorker set up complex legal arrangements
to cover up multiple affairs throughout his current marriage?
Eighty percent of white evangelicals voted for and, by and large, continue
to support President Trump. To almost everyone else in America, this
seems like a fundamental contradiction. But to Trump’s faithful, it is
Providence at work in human history. They believe God is making America
great again through an imperfect human agent. And like any true
believers, they will not be moved.
As a preacher who grew up in the South during the Moral Majority movement, I know where my sisters and brothers are coming from. They feel that the “liberal media” and “secular humanists” seek to embarrass their heroes for standing by this President and therefore only confirm their conviction that they are an embattled minority, up against great odds with none but God on their side. . .
The Evangelical leaders' and their followers are alike delusional in their support for Donald Trump. They are unshakeable in their unity, and this is a strange phenomenon in a nation which has historically fostered independence and individuality. There has surely been a process of re-education and propagandizing, controlled by the spirits of Rev. 16:13-14.
The reason for the display of herd
mentality which has enabled "an embattled minority" to wield political
power far beyond their proportion of the population is expressed in the
following articles:
The rise of American authoritarianism [A March 1, 2016 article]
A niche group of political scientists may have uncovered what's driving
Donald Trump's ascent. What they found has implications that go well
beyond 2016.
The American media, over the past year, has been trying to work out
something of a mystery: Why is the Republican electorate supporting a
far-right, orange-toned populist with no real political experience, who
espouses extreme and often bizarre views? How has Donald Trump,
seemingly out of nowhere, suddenly become so popular?
What's made Trump's rise even more puzzling is that his support seems to
cross demographic lines — education, income, age, even religiosity —
that usually demarcate candidates. And whereas most Republican
candidates might draw strong support from just one segment of the party
base, such as Southern evangelicals or coastal moderates, Trump
currently does surprisingly well from the Gulf Coast of Florida to the
towns of upstate New York, and he won a resounding victory in the Nevada
caucuses.
Perhaps strangest of all, it wasn't just Trump but his supporters who seemed
to have come out of nowhere, suddenly expressing, in large numbers,
ideas far more extreme than anything that has risen to such popularity
in recent memory. In South Carolina, a CBS News exit poll found that 75
percent of Republican voters supported banning Muslims from the United
States. A PPP poll found that a third of Trump voters support banning
gays and lesbians from the country. Twenty percent said Lincoln
shouldn't have freed the slaves.
Last September, a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
named Matthew MacWilliams realized that his dissertation research might
hold the answer to not just one but all three of these mysteries.
MacWilliams studies authoritarianism — not actual dictators, but rather a
psychological profile of individual voters that is characterized by a
desire for order and a fear of outsiders. People who score high in
authoritarianism, when they feel threatened, look for strong leaders who
promise to take whatever action necessary to protect them from outsiders
and prevent the changes they fear.
So MacWilliams naturally wondered if authoritarianism might correlate with
support for Trump.
He polled a large sample of likely voters, looking for correlations between
support for Trump and views that align with authoritarianism. What he
found was astonishing: Not only did authoritarianism correlate, but it
seemed to predict support for Trump more reliably than virtually any
other indicator. He later repeated the same poll in South Carolina,
shortly before the primary there, and found the same results, which he
published in Vox: . . .
As it turns out, MacWilliams wasn't the only one to have this realization.
Miles away, in an office at Vanderbilt University, a professor named
Marc Hetherington was having his own aha moment. He realized that he and
a fellow political scientist, the University of North Carolina's
Jonathan Weiler, had essentially predicted Trump's rise back in 2009,
when they discovered something that would turn out to be far more
significant than they then realized.
That year, Hetherington and Weiler published a book about the effects of
authoritarianism on American politics. Through a series of experiments
and careful data analysis, they had come to a surprising conclusion:
Much of the polarization dividing American politics was fueled not just
by gerrymandering or money in politics or the other oft-cited variables,
but by an unnoticed but surprisingly large electoral group —
authoritarians.
Their book concluded that the GOP, by positioning itself as the party of traditional values and law and order, had unknowingly attracted what would turn out to be a vast and previously bipartisan population of Americans with authoritarian tendencies.
An earlier report on this website in 2017 examined the
strange admiration
of the Religious Right for Vladimir Putin and Putin's Russia. The
following article analyzes the similarities between the support of
religious leaders for Donald Trump and Putin respectively; the selected
quotations focus on Trump's relationship with the Evangelicals:
Trump & Putin: Our New Biblical Kings [A February 19, 2017 article]
Few world leaders have reaped so much politically as Donald Trump and
Vladimir Putin from embracing their faith. But what does God’s flock see
in such blatantly flawed men?
“Mr. President, in the Bible rain is a sign of God’s blessing. And it
started to rain...when you came to the platform,” said Reverend Franklin
Graham in his inaugural benediction before President Donald J. Trump.
[Graham could not have been conscious of his statement's link to Baal
worship.]
Graham, President of Samaritan’s Purse and Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association, was one of six, predominantly Christian spiritual leaders
praying on January 20. It’s his firm conviction that the election was
the work of divine providence.
“I believe,” Graham told Fox News, that “in this election, no question,
God’s hand was in it.”
That more ministers participated in Trump’s inauguration than ever before,
or that a man not known for religious fervor found Jesus when he needed
evangelical support most, should never be a surprise. Faith and power
frequently consort and Christianity, in general, has always held an
awkward relationship with power. From Trump’s America to Vladimir
Putin’s Russia, conservative Christianity once again has a seat at the
table. But why people of faith have flocked to these obviously flawed
men may be surprising. Both Trump and Putin have portrayed themselves as
protectors of the devout, casting themselves in the mold of ancient
Biblical figures so familiar to churchgoers.
But what does this President and faith leaders—especially evangelicals—get
from this mutual back-scratching? Does it fill a particular gap?
“One of the strangest trends in the American presidency is the persistent
need for the president to be connected to religion in some way,” says
Rachel Blum, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Miami
University of Ohio. “It is almost an unwritten requirement that the
president profess Christianity.”
Heads of state in the West frequently embrace a religious tradition, but as
many know, in recent decades in America, this political influence
largely comes from the uncentralized evangelical right. . .
In 1980, President Reagan won the trust of evangelicals, paving the way for
the rising religious-right and “Moral Majority.”
“Although Christians in America exerted extreme influence on the Republican
Party in the 1980s and 1990s,” says Blum, “the effect of that period
went both ways. The Republican Party became the party of God, but
evangelical Christians also became Republican.”
Among Republican presidents, Donald Trump’s supposed religious affections
differ significantly from previous office holders. By any measure, he
was the least likely candidate to have ministers like Graham singing his
praises.
“Trump’s considerable appeal to Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists
seemed weird during the early days of the campaign,” says Dan P.
McAdams, the Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology and Director of
the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern University.
“After all, the guy knows almost nothing about Christianity, and his
life is hardly a model of Christian virtue.”
Blum agrees. “Trump has been historically cagey about [religion]...which is
fascinating given the way that religious voters, leaders, and groups
rally behind him.”
But they don’t. . .
With the support of the Russian President, the Orthodox Church’s opposition
to gay rights and to freedom of expression are codified.
Evangelization
outside of the Church is now legally banned in Russia without a permit
and severely restricted, giving the Russian Orthodox Church a place of
primacy.
That sort of bully pulpit speaks not only to Russia’s devout public, but to
American evangelicals who support Russia’s anti-LGBTQ policies. It was
Trump’s inaugural spiritual leader Franklin Graham who—while explicitly
noting that he was not endorsing Putin—once praised his harsh policies
as having a moral standard “higher than our own.” A request for comment
from Graham by The Daily Beast was not returned.
There is little reason to see Trump’s embrace of religion—and in this case,
evangelical Christianity—as serving any other purpose than the Orthodox
Church does for Putin. And while the religion of Reagan should be wary
of the Russian President, and a potential American Putin, there are
strong reasons for their embrace of Trump.
His strong authoritarianism makes up for his lack of sanctified spirit. Yes,
as a candidate, Trump’s initial courting of evangelicals began with his
awkward foreplay at Liberty University, and his forced sanctimony belies
a man who is always trying too hard to annex the evangelical world, but
his strategy continues to work and he fills that power-shaped hole left
in the heart of American evangelicalism after President George W. Bush.
“Over time,” says McAdams, “it became apparent that he shares with many
conservative white Christians a conviction that the world is inherently
evil and chaotic and that only a strong leader can save good people from
the perils all around.”
“Evangelicals may seem to be rallying around Trump,” says Blum, noting that
keeping this “Republican coalition” together means spinning things as a
“threat...to the Christian way of life.” In this case, she says, “Trump
is a sort of savior.”
“Savior” may sound strong, but it may not be far off.
Some evangelicals have compared him to Cyrus the Great, the Persian king
who, the Bible says, God used to return the Jews back to their homeland
after a long exile. He’s also been called a new king David, the famous
Israelite ruler with many flaws, but said to be “a man after God’s own
heart” (Acts 13:22).
In other words, as these flawed sinners were tools of God, so also he will
impart his blessing and authority to President Trump.
Noting Trump’s flaws and where he runs contrary to facts is not likely—as
many have discovered—to change minds bolstered by a formidable
unconscious bias. For now, they may remain “theologically incorrect,”
says cognitive scientist Jason Slone, author of Theological
Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn’t and
professor of literature and philosophy at Georgia Southern University. .
.
As it turns out, this right-wing authoritarianism finds a stronghold when
people are threatened, and according to McAdams, it is most-frequently
associated with white religious fundamentalism. He notes that while many
later supported Trump reluctantly (e.g. party reasons) during the
general election, early support was driven by right-wing
authoritarianism.
“Right-wing authoritarianism,” says McAdams, “is a pattern of attitudes and
values revolving around strict adherence to society's traditional norms,
submission to authorities who personify or reinforce those norms, and
deep antipathy (to the point of hatred and aggression) for those
individuals who are perceived as violating the traditional norms of
society.”
He notes that in studies evangelical Protestants score “significantly
higher” on right-wing authoritarianism “than Catholics, mainline
Protestants, and Jews. . .
What America will look like in four years remains very uncertain. But what
is clear, is that for now Trump feels he’s got a divine stamp of
approval. This does nothing to curtail his ego or to stop his momentum.
In his eyes, he is a man after God’s own heart.
In fact, in his own version of the inaugural rain story—one unsupported by
the facts—Trump paints himself like a relatively minor biblical Moses
crossing the waters of the Red Sea.
“It was almost raining,” he told the CIA dramatically, “…but God looked down
and said, ‘we’re not going to let it rain on your speech….’” He adds “it
stopped immediately, it was amazing, and then it became really sunny,
then I walked off, and it poured right after I left.”
With that professed belief—that God and America is on his side—he, his Republican comrades, and evangelical reformers may believe there is no reason to stop their march toward theocracy. Then we’ll see just how strong that wall of separation really is.
The evidence is overwhelming that this is State Baalism, pure and simple. It
will be noted that Donald Trump has moved State Baalism far beyond where
it advanced under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. There is very little
left of the wall of separation between Church and State. Under the
delusions of Satan, right-wing Evangelicals in America are close to
establishing their tyrannical theocracy of Baal worship in fulfillment
of Rev. 13:12-17.
For thousands of years Satan has been experimenting
upon the properties of the human mind, and he has learned to know it
well. By his subtle workings in these last days, he is linking the human
mind with his own, imbuing it with his thoughts; and he is doing
this work in so deceptive a manner that those who accept his guidance
know not that they are being led by him at his will. The great deceiver
hopes so to confuse the minds of men and women, that none but his voice
will be heard." (2SM 352.3; underscored emphasis added)