Everywhere I go as regards church debate, which I still follow online from time to time, I see many fingers pointing, much accusation. It is always only ever the other fellow who is wrong.
But the fact is that error has two poles. It is the case that the one denouncing error usually espouses the opposite error, but is so wrapped up in his own self righteous fury that he cannot see his own.
Thus while one man's description of some other's error is reasonable enough the prescription, namely the recommended cure or course of action, so to speak, is wrong and often even more deadly
A case in point is in the ongoing furore over the Word of Faith doctrines that have taken hold of at least the Protestant arm of the Western church and are even spreading to Russia, as I saw once on a youtube video.
Now make no mistake, I firmly hold that Word of Faith doctrine is pure heresy.
They claim that words are containers of supernatural power, that Christians are little gods, that Christ's death on the cross was not enough as he had to suffer in Hell then become born again, that faith is a substance, that worldly riches is the godly prosperity that all in Christ should have and some go as far to deny the divinity of Christ himself
I hope to demonstrate in another piece how these doctrines are twistings of scripture done either by the wickedly presumptuous seeking to usurp the divinity of the Most High, or by the naive with no knowledge of other languages whereby naive literalism can and does lead to utterly disastrous results.
It is not my intention in this post here to refute the Word of Faith heresies. Ample work has already been done on that though I may add my voice to this in another post
But what do we have in the response to this?
Angry men. Angry men like John MacArthur, Paul Washer, Dave Wilkerson.
Is their anger righteous? How do we define the term?
Scripture says that the anger of men does not work the righteousness of God.
The anger of men, it can be seen, is vengeful and cruel. Anger is not proven be righteous by the evil of the object of the anger lest the Soviet armies' raping (literally!) rampage across Europe in 1944-5 be seen to be righteous anger. It was not.
Righteous anger is commensurate with the Love of God. Of course hypocrites will claim that their anger is in love. But I Corinthians 13 s clear as to the nature of love. If one's anger is not commensurate with this then it is sinful, indeed it is murder as the Sermon on the Mount points out. An anger that is as much FOR those it is angry at as well as AGAINST them - this is the only kind that can ever be commensurate with the love of Christ, anger that would be quick to forgive.
This is clearly not seen in the manner or content of those who would terrorize and bully with the awful reality of hell, or fulminate, in defiance of Jude verse 9, against the heresies of the Word of Faith movement where simple expository preaching is sufficient.
They do not have the fruit of the Spirit, as is clearly seen. Of course neither do the Word of Faith'ers who are so far out of field as to even be beyond the possibility of it except some major conviction of sin be done in their lives, buth when the likes of Joyce Meyer claims she no longer sins and is not a sinner then that is ruled out almost entiurel;y
In response to such invocations of the Holy Spirit we have those who say that the scrupture is sufficient for the christian life.
Really? It is sufficient for the benchmark of determining doctrinal truth of experiences purporting to be of God but doctrinal truth of itself is only dead letter. True letter, mark you, but still dead.
As I said elsewhere the Book testifies to the Spirit. To ignore the Spirit is to defy the book as is to twist of ignore the Book to seek a counterfeit spirit, usually the imaginations of the carnal mind
When like John MacArthur they move from normal speech to rant in less than two minutes I know them by their fruit.
And that is my point.
A carnal christian has nothing to offer by way of alterative to even the grossest heresies, for a carnal believer lacks the one thing that makes the difference: the personal realtionship with the Holy Spirit of Christ . Without this telling anyone, even oneself , what one ought to believe does not make it so
Such a person has merely a code, a cause and a cosmology. This is the opposite error to those who claim falsley that God is in intimate relationship with them and speaks to them daily
That he does not is shown by what they produce as testimony for such experiences and it certainly imapcts on the doctrine they espouse.
After all, if one claims that he is a little God did he get this from the Holy Spirit of Christ?
In all this the reality of real relationship with the Holy Spirit is what is trampled in the mud, and as these issues polarize, one side is taken as opposed to the other, but I hope to have demonstrated that both sides are in error here.
Hence the twin poles of error.
Of course I only chose one example for this, the Word of Faith controversy.
But it is, it seem to me, the standard response to any debate as is seen throughout history, with the appearance of soundness held by a legalistic adherence to creeds which I contend do not guarantee truth but conceal unbelief behind the hypocrisy which is all legalism is capable of
By way of other examples: The Tri theists were opposed by professors of various kinds of Oneness theory, from Arianism to the modern pentecostal irruptions of same
The monophysites were opposed by the Nestorians who maintained that Jesus was two people.
Legalism is opposed by licentiousness.
And it goes on
But the fact is that error has two poles. It is the case that the one denouncing error usually espouses the opposite error, but is so wrapped up in his own self righteous fury that he cannot see his own.
Thus while one man's description of some other's error is reasonable enough the prescription, namely the recommended cure or course of action, so to speak, is wrong and often even more deadly
A case in point is in the ongoing furore over the Word of Faith doctrines that have taken hold of at least the Protestant arm of the Western church and are even spreading to Russia, as I saw once on a youtube video.
Now make no mistake, I firmly hold that Word of Faith doctrine is pure heresy.
They claim that words are containers of supernatural power, that Christians are little gods, that Christ's death on the cross was not enough as he had to suffer in Hell then become born again, that faith is a substance, that worldly riches is the godly prosperity that all in Christ should have and some go as far to deny the divinity of Christ himself
I hope to demonstrate in another piece how these doctrines are twistings of scripture done either by the wickedly presumptuous seeking to usurp the divinity of the Most High, or by the naive with no knowledge of other languages whereby naive literalism can and does lead to utterly disastrous results.
It is not my intention in this post here to refute the Word of Faith heresies. Ample work has already been done on that though I may add my voice to this in another post
But what do we have in the response to this?
Angry men. Angry men like John MacArthur, Paul Washer, Dave Wilkerson.
Is their anger righteous? How do we define the term?
Scripture says that the anger of men does not work the righteousness of God.
The anger of men, it can be seen, is vengeful and cruel. Anger is not proven be righteous by the evil of the object of the anger lest the Soviet armies' raping (literally!) rampage across Europe in 1944-5 be seen to be righteous anger. It was not.
Righteous anger is commensurate with the Love of God. Of course hypocrites will claim that their anger is in love. But I Corinthians 13 s clear as to the nature of love. If one's anger is not commensurate with this then it is sinful, indeed it is murder as the Sermon on the Mount points out. An anger that is as much FOR those it is angry at as well as AGAINST them - this is the only kind that can ever be commensurate with the love of Christ, anger that would be quick to forgive.
This is clearly not seen in the manner or content of those who would terrorize and bully with the awful reality of hell, or fulminate, in defiance of Jude verse 9, against the heresies of the Word of Faith movement where simple expository preaching is sufficient.
They do not have the fruit of the Spirit, as is clearly seen. Of course neither do the Word of Faith'ers who are so far out of field as to even be beyond the possibility of it except some major conviction of sin be done in their lives, buth when the likes of Joyce Meyer claims she no longer sins and is not a sinner then that is ruled out almost entiurel;y
In response to such invocations of the Holy Spirit we have those who say that the scrupture is sufficient for the christian life.
Really? It is sufficient for the benchmark of determining doctrinal truth of experiences purporting to be of God but doctrinal truth of itself is only dead letter. True letter, mark you, but still dead.
As I said elsewhere the Book testifies to the Spirit. To ignore the Spirit is to defy the book as is to twist of ignore the Book to seek a counterfeit spirit, usually the imaginations of the carnal mind
When like John MacArthur they move from normal speech to rant in less than two minutes I know them by their fruit.
And that is my point.
A carnal christian has nothing to offer by way of alterative to even the grossest heresies, for a carnal believer lacks the one thing that makes the difference: the personal realtionship with the Holy Spirit of Christ . Without this telling anyone, even oneself , what one ought to believe does not make it so
Such a person has merely a code, a cause and a cosmology. This is the opposite error to those who claim falsley that God is in intimate relationship with them and speaks to them daily
That he does not is shown by what they produce as testimony for such experiences and it certainly imapcts on the doctrine they espouse.
After all, if one claims that he is a little God did he get this from the Holy Spirit of Christ?
In all this the reality of real relationship with the Holy Spirit is what is trampled in the mud, and as these issues polarize, one side is taken as opposed to the other, but I hope to have demonstrated that both sides are in error here.
Hence the twin poles of error.
Of course I only chose one example for this, the Word of Faith controversy.
But it is, it seem to me, the standard response to any debate as is seen throughout history, with the appearance of soundness held by a legalistic adherence to creeds which I contend do not guarantee truth but conceal unbelief behind the hypocrisy which is all legalism is capable of
By way of other examples: The Tri theists were opposed by professors of various kinds of Oneness theory, from Arianism to the modern pentecostal irruptions of same
The monophysites were opposed by the Nestorians who maintained that Jesus was two people.
Legalism is opposed by licentiousness.
And it goes on
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You can disagree with me, even spiritedly. But keep it civil as I am the one hurt by cruelty. I must protect myself from nastiness and will block or ban users if I must. And it would help if you offered reasons for your disagreements. If they are good I may respect you. If they are sound I may even change my mind