A Journal Journey with Brad Jersak’s “Different” Jesus – Day 18

 

Examining "A More Christlike Word" by Brad Jersak

Day 18 

“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4) 

The False Filter	The Biblical Filter
The word OR the Word	The Word THROUGH the word

   Because BJ has twisted every Scripture he has used to say things they don’t say, and because he is now trying to convince everyone that Scripture is a collaborative “hybrid” made by mixing God inspiring a man and the man exhaling what God gave him in his own custom humanness, and because this is to set the stage for BJ’s “another Jesus” to correct the Scriptures BJ doesn’t like, I want to give an illustration of how men “were carried along by the Holy Spirit” to write the breathed out words of God into Scripture.

   Man was created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27). God is Triune, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The interactions between the persons of the Godhead are in perfect harmony so that they do everything together willingly. They used themselves as the blueprint to design our relational dynamic so that we find our ultimate satisfaction in attachment to the Triune and their people.

   Not only were we created in the image and likeness of the Triune God, but we are distinctly created in the image and likeness of Jesus Christ the Son who is the image of God. Let’s look at how Paul describes Jesus as the image of God in Colossians 1:15-20.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

   The reason God breathed out the description of Jesus as, “by him all things were created,” and, “all things were created through him and for him,” is that he is explaining Jesus in his relationship to the Triune. He is the Son. Because the Son is the image of God, “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3), we can agree with what Paul says that Jesus created all things, and yet the Father created all things through his Son. As John wrote the breathed-out words of God, “All things were made through him (Jesus the Word), and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3).

   This interrelatedness of the Triune God, particularly the way the Father does everything through his Son, gives us a glimpse into what it means for us to be in the image of God as the image of Jesus Christ. We are the sons of God. Jesus is “the firstborn over many brothers” (Romans 8:29). “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (II Corinthians 3:18).

   So, even though we say we are in the image and likeness of God as described in the creation account, we understand this to mean that we are the sons of God who are distinctly like the Son of God.[1] And the way we understand God breathing out his word through men is by looking at how Jesus communicated his Father’s word and work in his life and ministry.

   One of the most influential scriptures in helping me understand my relationship to God as “our Father in heaven” is what Jesus explains about his work in John 5. He was once again in trouble for healing a man on the Sabbath. As Jesus saw how the religious elite were stirring up persecution against him, he answered them with this explanation: “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (vs 17). Jesus sets the scene with his relationship to the Father. He wants everyone to know that what they witnessed or heard about in him healing a man on the Sabbath was because his Father (the Yahweh/LORD/Adonai these Jews believed in) was working, and that meant Jesus had to be working as well. And no, this is not correcting Scriptures from the Law that called for resting on the Sabbath!

   As the Jews realized that Jesus was claiming equality with God, and they were all the more eager to kill him because of this, Jesus continued,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing” (vss 19-20).

Jesus’ explanation for what he was doing was that it was what the Father was doing.

   I draw attention to this because we are made in the image of Jesus Christ. We learn about our relationship to God our Father by looking at Jesus’ relationship to God as his Father. We gain understanding of how God worked through men in history by looking at how he worked through his Son who is our Firstborn brother. And what we see is that Jesus did NOTHING apart from his Father, he did ONLY what he saw the Father doing, and this was because of the love-relationship between the Father and the Son. The Father’s love for his Son meant that he wanted his Son to be in fellowship with him in all that he did. That’s simply the way their relationship worked, and it is the pattern of our in-the-image-of-God relationship with the Triune.

   Now let’s connect what Jesus said about his relationship with the Father in his ministry with what the Scriptures say about Jesus in his relationship with the Father in creation. Both are telling us that the way the Father and Son relate is that the Father does his work through his Son and the Son does whatever the Father is doing. That is what it looks like for human beings to be in the image of Jesus Christ. The Father does his work through us and we do whatever the Father is doing. When God works through someone, it is never a hybrid mix of God’s part and our part. Rather, it is 100% God’s part through our 100% joining him in his work.

   In other words, through Jesus’ relationship with his Father, and what we see in the breathed-out Scriptures of how he worked through people, we do not see any room for thinking that we contribute the best we can do at reaching up to God and God contributes the rest in reaching down to us. We do not imagine such foolishness as thinking that Scripture is a hybridization of God inspiring a man with his (God’s) thoughts and the man exhaling those thoughts in his own words and understanding of what God meant (which needs correction at times from BJ’s “another Jesus”). 

   With this in mind (that Jesus showed how a Son did nothing apart from his Father and did only what the Father was doing), how does that apply to the biblical writers’ relationship to God as God breathed out his words through them? Well, let’s take this one step further and look at what Jesus said about himself in communicating God’s breathed-out words to the world. That will give us a very clear picture of how God speaks through his word, the Bible, in an “in the image of God” way that is seen in our Savior.

   Just as we see that Jesus created all things means that the Father created all things through his Son, we can also see that when Jesus kept saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you…” that this was in fellowship with “I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me” (John 8:28). Jesus can freely say what he wants to say because he was always saying what the Father gave him to say just as all the creating he did was the Father creating through him. This is what the Triune God is like, and we were made in their image. Let’s look at the ways Jesus expressed how it worked for him to speak what the Father gave him.

   In John 8:28, Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.” Jesus put what he could “do” and what he would “speak” in the same picture of doing and saying what the Father gave him to do and say. Whatever Jesus did and said was what the Father was doing and saying.

   In John 12:49, Jesus continued explaining this, “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak.” For Jesus to not speak on his own authority meant that the Father gave him “what to say and what to speak.” Jesus was in such fellowship with his Father that it was fully him to speak the same things the Father gave him to speak. The relationship is always the Father working and speaking through the Son, which is a huge indicator of how the Father works and speaks through his servants, the men through whom he breathed out his word.

   In John 14:10, Jesus continued, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.” Jesus did not allow the people to think there was a disconnect between him and his Father. Jesus always wanted everyone to know that it was his Father doing his work through his Son. In other words, if Jesus said it, the Father said it. This might remind you of how often the prophets would introduce their teachings with, "Thus says Yahweh..." They were not speaking on their own authority, but speaking what the Father taught them. 

   In John 16:13, Jesus applied this to the Holy Spirit, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” So, the Holy Spirit (who is the one who carried men along to write the Scriptures as the breathed-out words of God) also did not speak on his own authority, but spoke what he heard from the Father. He then carried men along in the writing of the Scriptures so that they were also not speaking on their own authority, but declaring what they were given by God.

   What I’m trying to show from this is that, when we simply read the Scriptures and let them speak to us we discover they answer the question of how authoritative they are. Both Jesus and the Holy Spirit did not speak on their own authority because they were always in fellowship with the Father who was the authority. What anyone heard from Jesus or the Holy Spirit was always "the word of God", or, the words from Father.

   This all applies to the Scriptures because they “all” (the entire thing) are “breathed-out by God”. They are consistently called “the word of God”, “the word of the LORD (Yahweh)”, “the word of Christ”, because it is all God’s words to be received and honored as authoritative because God is the authority behind them all. To be the word of God meant that the speaker or writer communicated precisely what God taught them to say.

   This means we cannot let the BJs tell us to imagine different scenarios that might work for how God and man came up with this hybridized way of communicating that was as much man’s contribution as God’s. We can’t let the BJs tell us that the Jesus BJ wanted to find in the Bible says he needs to correct things that Jesus’ Father declared to be his word. It is so clear that when God carried men along by his Holy Spirit, it resulted in people hearing exactly what God said, writing it down as God gave it to them, and now we can read exactly what God breathed out into Scripture (as translated into all our languages, that is).

   I hope I can pick up the pace in the next section by simply exposing how BJ is continuing to promote his false teaching that it was the biblical writers who were inspired and then they exhaled their best understanding of what God was getting at, and showing the truth that it is the Scriptures themselves that were breathed out by God and the men carried along by the Holy Spirit communicated the words of God in both spoken and then written form, just as Jesus and the Holy Spirit communicated what they were given by the Father.

   Now here’s a note to show how delightful it is to simply be like the noble Bereans who “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). Notice even here that “the word” and “the Scriptures” are used interchangeably because people knew what the Scriptures were, the word of God. I have not received BJ’s word with “all eagerness” because I already knew he was a false teacher from hearing him during some interviews on Christian TV. However, I always receive “the word” with all eagerness, and so our examining of the Scriptures has shown that what the Scriptures say about themselves really is the truth, and the BJs are exposed for saying quite different things than God breathed out in his word.

   With that in mind, in looking through these Scriptures about Jesus’ relationship with the Father, I noticed that John 5 continues into one of BJ’s arguments about how the Scriptures speak about Jesus from beginning to end (I don’t argue with the sense of that, only with the way BJ applies this to his “another Jesus” who corrects the Scriptures that speak of him!). What stood out is this challenge from Jesus to the religious elite: “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:46-47).

   Now, here’s the thing: BJ wants us to believe that some of what Moses wrote must be corrected by his “another Jesus”. But the Jesus of the Scriptures said that the people needed to believe Moses to believe him (Jesus). BJ says that all Scripture points to Jesus, which includes Moses, and Jesus said that Moses wrote of him (without adding any correction to anything Moses wrote), but BJ wants us to believe that his “another Jesus” needs to correct things Moses wrote, which means he is correcting what Moses wrote about Jesus!  

   The application is simple: those who believe Moses as is recorded in God’s word will believe in the true Lord Jesus Christ revealed in the Scriptures. However, if people are convinced to “not believe his writings” (as BJ is teaching) how will they believe the words of Jesus in the gospels? Once the BJs convince people not to believe what was written by Moses (and whichever other writers they think got it wrong about Yahweh), they will end up believing in the “another Jesus” Paul warned about, trusting in “another spirit” of understanding, and following “a different gospel” than the gospel of the kingdom.

   I share this note because we must see how BJ keeps contradicting the breathed-out words of God, even the direct quotes from Jesus’ own mouth. His hybrid-Jesus of the hybrid scriptures is not the true Lord Jesus Christ. And I hope we will remember these wonderful truths from Scripture as we head out on our next day’s journal journey to see what else we will be asked to believe that just ain’t so!

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com

Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition.

Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible Systems

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[1] I hate that I have to clarify this, but the modern translations that put “sons and daughters” instead of what God breathed-out as “sons”, and “brothers and sisters” in place of what God breathed-out as “brothers” are stealing, killing, and destroying people’s understanding of the glorious oneness of the body of Christ with Jesus Christ the Son. All believers are “sons of God” in the Spirit, and we are all “brothers” to Jesus and one another. There are not two distinctive groups in the kingdom (sons and daughters), but only sons who are brothers to our Savior. All the earthly and physical distinctions of being male and female apply at the same time just as God breathed out in his word, but in our understanding who we are “in Christ”, all who have been born again by the power of the Spirit, through the power of the gospel of the kingdom, are God’s sons, as God breathed-out through Paul, “in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (Galatians 3:26). This is HUGELY important in our understanding of what it means to be like Jesus, and to relate to God and one another as sons and brothers.

A Journal Journey with Brad Jersak’s “Different” Jesus - Day 17

 

Examining "A More Christlike Word" by Brad Jersak

Day 17 

“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4) 

The False Filter	The Biblical Filter
The word OR the Word	The Word THROUGH the word

The Anthropomorphic God	The God-is-who-he-is God
Select traits are treated as human qualities applied to God for illustrative purposes alone.	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature.
God’s “divine anger, judgment, or wrath” are “ever only anthropomorphisms of parental love aimed at restoration” (p. 52).	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature and mean exactly what they say they mean.
Needs to be corrected by BJ’s “another Jesus” whenever the biblical writers describe Yahweh in what BJ determines is unjust or immoral acts of subjugation or violence.	The same God we see revealed through the Scriptures we now call the Old Testament is revealed in an in-person way by the true Lord Jesus Christ in both his first and second comings.

   I now come to the fightin’ words I was facing as I pitched my tent the previous day. The author writes,

Today, I see inspiration in this way: the authors of Scripture were carried along⁶ by the Holy Spirit so that, through their words, by the Spirit, God breathes (present tense) a testimony to us that reveals our redemption and destiny in God through Christ. Scripture is the witness (and not the only one), and Christ is the revelation. When we read the Bible in that s/Spirit, we see the grand narrative and where it’s all pointing: to Christ and his gospel. To miss this is to miss everything, just as most of the religious leaders of Jesus’s day had—just as I had. (p. 62).

   This is simple: does the Bible say “God-breathed” the Scriptures Paul was speaking about to Timothy? Or does it say that “God breathes a testimony to us” as we are reading the Scriptures (I think is what BJ meant)?

   The word in question means, “God-breathed adj. — produced by the Spirit of God; understood as the air that was physically expelled out of the lungs of God” (BSL). The ESV translates this “breathed out by God”. The NIV has “God-breathed”. The KJV and NKJV have “given by inspiration of God”. The NASB has “is inspired by God”.

   Since the meaning of the word “God breathed” is in reference to the Scriptures (what the Christians already had of the written word of God), I just don’t get where the “God breathes” fits the statement. That changes it from something God did already in giving us the Scriptures (the sense of the text), to something God does in some ongoing way as people read the Scriptures (which isn’t the sense of the text). I will see if anything makes sense as we continue along the path, but it already sounds like there is no room to change “God breathed” the Scriptures to “God breathes a testimony to us”.

   I agree with the author’s assessment that “It’s possible to spend a lifetime studying the Bible without once hearing the Father or knowing the Word” (p. 63). However, not so with what he says next, “Apparently, the inspiration of Scripture is only real and relevant to us insofar as we fix our gaze on the One to whom it points” (p. 63). Again, that depends. Paul was talking about Scripture, which clearly would have included what we have in the Old Testament along with whatever the church had already recognized as the written word of God at the time Paul wrote those words. Since BJ’s argument about his ”another Jesus” requires us to believe he has found something wrong with the Scriptures Paul is talking about, Paul confronts this belief with the declaration that those very Scriptures are God-breathed.

   Think about what Jesus stated to Satan, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4). It sounds fair to me that “every word that comes from the mouth of God” and “God-breathed” are synonymous. Both are talking about the Scriptures, the written words of God, and both picture those words coming from the mouth of God. Jesus is quoting Scripture to make his point. That Scripture from Deuteronomy 8:3 says, 

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

   Here is why I am taking a “that depends” approach to the point BJ is trying to make. Scripture is not only about Christ. Jesus is not “the One to whom it points”, but the Son of the One to whom it points. Scripture points to God, and Christ is his image. The Scriptures are “the word of God” so they point to God. Christ is the image of God making God known to us so we hear “the word of Christ”. There is no separation of the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures. Even in Jesus’ words, we have Jesus declaring to Satan that everyone is to live by the words that come from the mouth of Yahweh, the very person BJ wants us to believe was represented poorly by the biblical writers while Jesus and Paul said that those words of Scripture came from the mouth of God, the mouth of Yahweh, and are God-breathed.

   So, I can’t agree at this point that “the inspiration of Scripture is only real and relevant to us insofar as we fix our gaze on the One to whom it points” (p. 63) because it is uncertain whether BJ admits that Scripture points to “the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3), or whether he claims it is his “another Jesus” that was being spoken about the whole time and is distinct from the Yahweh revealed in the Scriptures that both Jesus and Paul said were God-breathed.

   As I moved through BJ’s description of how “the complexity of the Scriptures only confirms their inspiration” (p. 63), and how the divine genius “transcends its distinctly human qualities”, I smacked into another loaded statement:

Loaded Question/Statement	Clarification of What we Know
“Amid the polyphony of conflicting worldviews that I see among its authors, I’m always inspired to see God’s fingerprints everywhere across its pages” (pp. 63-64).	The God’s fingerprints analogy sounds good, but nothing has been stated anywhere that says the biblical writers had “conflicting worldviews”. I would say that is not true at all.

   I keep noticing that BJ admits he is sharing what he thinks, what he sees, what he believes, not what is stated in the Scriptures. To believe there are “conflicting worldviews” when the Bible never makes that suggestion is not only an opinion, but an opinion contrary to revelation. It does continue to show that the “another Jesus” of the BJs is not the one revealed by God through his word.

   With that theme of the author suggesting his own ideas, he presents this challenge:

Let’s try this distinction: inspiration is not the same as exhalation. When we read that a biblical author is inspired, could it mean that God’s Spirit breathed into them and then, through their own creativity, worldviews, faith practices, religious beliefs, political biases, personal temperaments, and so forth, they exhaled a range of beautiful, unique, divine-human hybrid texts? (p. 64).

   “Let’s try this distinction,” is a BJ’s suggestion. It is his idea. For us to buy it, he would have to show that the Scriptures make this distinction (and they do not!).

   “Inspiration is not the same as exhalation.” That depends! The biblical word for “breathed-out” (which the author has replaced with “inspiration”) IS synonymous with “exhalation” (breathing out!). By replacing “breathed-out” with “inspiration”, it clouds the meaning of what the Scriptures say.

   This is a good time to expose a clever tactic called “bait and switch”. It means to bait someone with the idea you’re talking about one thing, but, while still using that label, they switch to a different thing. In this case, the bait is that we are talking about whether the Scriptures are “breathed out” by God. By then using the word “inspiration” he has switched what we are talking about. And applying this to the biblical writers instead of the Scriptures, readers will think they are agreeing with a point about Scripture when the topic has changed!

   So, “inspiration” is not what the biblical word says, although it is often used with the same meaning as “breathed out”. And it is not the men who were inspired but the Scriptures that were “breathed out”. BJ has switched “Scripture” to “men” and “breathed out” to “inspired” so that we are no longer discussing whether the Scriptures (what we have in the Bible) are breathed out by God and therefore authoritative over all matters of faith and practice in the church, but whether the men received “inspiration” from God, and what they “exhaled” as Scripture is no longer directly “breathed out” by God but "exhaled" by men. BIG difference!

   Now, I know that unraveling all these slight-of-hand word-tricks is quite time-consuming, but I hope it will prevent readers of BJ’s books to fall for these deceptive bait-and-switch schemes.

   “When we read that a biblical author is inspired,” is another bait-and-switch! Where did we read that the biblical authors were inspired? Didn’t the Scripture say that it was “all scripture” (the whole entire package) that was breathed out by God? I’m saying this because of what comes next. Let’s look at that, and then let’s consider how false it is because of all the baiting and switching that has taken place.

   When we read that a biblical author is inspired, could it mean that God’s Spirit breathed into them and then, through their own creativity, worldviews, faith practices, religious beliefs, political biases, personal temperaments, and so forth, they exhaled a range of beautiful, unique, divine-human hybrid texts? (p. 64).

   Um, how about “NO”!

   How do we know it is “NO!”?

1.     Because we haven’t read anywhere that the biblical authors were inspired but only that the Scriptures were breathed out by God.

2.    Because it couldn’t mean that God’s Spirit breathed “into” them when the text says that God “breathed out” the Scriptures.

3.    Because there is no mention in the Bible that men were free to add “their own creativity, worldviews, faith practices, religious beliefs, political biases, personal temperaments” or any “so forth” whatsoever!

4.    Because the fanciful suggestion that the Bible is “a range of beautiful, unique, divine-human hybrid texts” is the exact opposite of what the text says, that “all Scripture is breathed out by God”. The SCRIPTURE is breathed-out by God, NOT that the writers were inspired.

   I will conclude today’s journey with the last part of this paragraph: 

“A careful reading shows that God indeed inspired (breathed into) these men and women, who then exhaled a text that bears the aroma of both the Spirit’s divine genius and the authors’ truly human agency.” (p. 64).

   NO! A “careful reading” exposes that the text does NOT say “God indeed inspired… these men (and there is no mention of women being used as biblical writers)”. It says that God "breathed out" the Scriptures. And, it does not say that God “breathed into” the biblical writers, but that he “breathed out” the Scriptures. 

   There is absolutely no room for this theory that God breathed inspired thoughts into men who then exhaled a text that mixes divine and human thoughts. God’s word on his word is that “all Scripture (what we have of his word in written form) is breathed out by God”. And I hope you are seeing that if we let the BJs of the world switch words and thoughts to say whatever they please, we end up with that “another Jesus”, that “different spirit”, and that “different gospel” Paul warned us about long before we began this journey.

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com

Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition.

Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible Systems

A Journal Journey with Brad Jersak’s “Different” Jesus – Day 16

 

Examining "A More Christlike Word" by Brad Jersak

Day 16 

“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4)   

The False Filter	The Biblical Filter
The word OR the Word	The Word THROUGH the word

   Part of my aim in testing BJ’s theorem is to give testimonies of how God is leading me to the Word THROUGH the word (the Scriptures now collected into the Bible). He wants people to believe that the Bible is only one way we learn about Jesus and that it is faulty and needs to be corrected by authorities outside the Bible. However, when he claims Jesus corrected Yahweh of the Old Testament, he doesn’t mean the Jesus of the Scriptures, but his “another Jesus” who is not in the Bible. 

   My testimony is that the Bible is the word of God, that faith comes from hearing the Bible as “the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17), and that every word of it will do in our lives whatever the Spirit of Truth is sent to accomplish. And this day of my journal journey through chapter 4 of this treacherous trail is no exception to God speaking through his word so I know what he is saying, and showing me what he is doing in and around me so I can join him in his work. Here are some introductory testimonies of how God gave me exactly what I needed to continue exposing the poison-in-the-pudding of BJ’s false teachings.

   This morning, three witnesses joined my journey for today’s rugged hike. First, I had a new friend join me last night after my previous post was settled into cyberspace (Day 15). He goes by the name, Mr. Of God. What he brought into the picture was that, when we are challenged to reconsider our relationship to the Scriptures because the BJs do not want them treated as authoritative over the church, this little expression must be included in our understanding of what we have in the Bible. It is not just “the word”. It is the word “of God”.

   This means that the focus is not only on whether “the word” has authority, and especially whether it has a character that is tarnished by the genocidal immorality the BJs claim. But the focus is on what it means that the Bible is the word “of God”. It is the nature of God that determines what we think of his word. If he is immoral, then his word would include immorality. If he is a liar, then his word cannot be trusted.

   However, my friend, Mr. Of God, reminds me that the book I am hiking through is “of man”. It is of people who changed their minds about what they believe and want us to do the same. It is of people who misrepresent and lie about God’s word to make their points that the Scriptures are not the word “of God” (I have shown this in previous days of my journal journey).

   So, with the first of my three new friends for the journey, Mr. Of God is coming along for the rest of the adventure to keep pointing out to me this contrast, that we are always being asked to choose between the word “of God”, and the word “of man”. There are things that are “of God” and things that are not “of God”. And my friend has affirmed to me that the track record of the words “of man” in this book has been dishonest and misleading about the word “of God”, and so everything the “word of God” says about such men applies.

   The second witness to join today’s journey is named Mr. Authority. Here is how he introduced himself. As I began my time with God this morning (May 14, 2024), I came to the description of how people reacted to Jesus (the Word) as he concluded his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). The Scriptures tell us, “And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (7:28-29).

   This Scripture gives us a glimpse into the hearts of people who had grown up with the teachings and religiosity of hypocritical religious leaders. In this message, Jesus had denounced them as men who did things for show and applause but not for God. He called his disciples to have a righteousness that exceeded that of these religious elites and then showed that this means his followers must have a righteousness of the heart that is experienced and expressed for Father’s glory, not for applause or recognition.

   When we come to the end of the message and the people are “astonished” (“to be utterly amazed v. — to be or become astounded to such a degree as to nearly lose one’s mental composure” ~ BSL), it is in relation to “the scribes (“a learned person who was able to read and write; probably with a focus also on teaching the meaning of written documents” ~ BSL) who had taught them the Scriptures their whole lives. This is the impact Jesus had, that his teaching was so radically different from what these people had heard from the religious elite that they were involuntarily shaken with amazement at what they were hearing.

   The key word to describe what made Jesus’ teaching different from that of their religious leaders was, “authority” (“ruling authority n. — authority over a domain or sphere of influence; often pertaining to the political or religious sphere” ~ BSL). This means that the people recognized that there was a way Jesus taught that had authority to it. Their religious leaders never sounded like they had authority.

   So, my new friend on the journey, Mr. Authority, will keep pointing out who is claiming to be an authority on the Word and the word and contrasting any manmade claims with the authority of the Word as revealed to us in the word of God. Will we find that the BJs have authority to claim that Yahweh was immoral, or that Jesus authorizes their claim that the word of God (the Bible) needs to be corrected so that it is more “Christlike”? Or will we find Jesus speaking with authority in affirmation of the Scriptures that were available in his day (what we now call the Old Testament), and filling the Scriptures that were written for the church with his glory (what we now call the New Testament)? Our travelling companion, Mr. Authority, will help us see these distinctions.

   And the third witness to join my travels today is named Mr. Experiencing God. When I was asked to read BJ’s book to give the rationale for the strange teachings my friend was posting online, I asked if they would read “Experiencing God” by Henry Blackaby so they would understand where I am coming from in my love for the Bible as God’s word.[1] This is the resource God used thirty-two years ago to change my mind about what I was doing when I met with God in his word. Before that time, I called my time with God “my devotions”. It was what I was doing. It was what I was reading. It was what I was discovering. It was what I wanted to do with whatever I read. Everything was the stereotypical Western Christianity child-centered mindset. And I had no idea that it was all self-focused!

   When I met Henry Blackaby at a Pastors’ and Wives’ Retreat in May of 1992, I heard the most refreshing good news: I could lead a church to attach to God and his work by uniting our congregation to listen to God in his word. I would happily share more of how transforming this was, but the point for today’s journal journey is that God reminded me that what I am bringing to this “countering counterfeits” focus is the plumbline of “truth in love” that shows people how God is still speaking to his people through his word, the Bible. It is the Bible as the word of God that is “living and active” in our lives (the exact opposite of what BJ claimed early in our journey). And it is in our interactions with God in his word that we truly “experience God” in the real and personal ways we read all about in the Scriptures.

   For the rest of this journal journey, I have three companions to help me test everything, hold on to what is good, and avoid every appearance of evil in the book (I Thessalonians 5:21-22). Mr. Of God will keep showing me what is of God and what is not; Mr. Authority will keep showing what has authority and what does not, and Mr. Experiencing God will keep pointing out the glory of how God speaks through his word so we can hear what he is saying, recognize what he is doing, and join him in his work. And, with that, the four of us continue the arduous journey.

   Note: if you are wondering what I sound like in talking about these things, I did up a video version of how God blessed me with these three friends and you can view that in the link in the footnotes.[2]

The Anthropomorphic God	The God-is-who-he-is God
Select traits are treated as human qualities applied to God for illustrative purposes alone.	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature.
God’s “divine anger, judgment, or wrath” are “ever only anthropomorphisms of parental love aimed at restoration” (p. 52).	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature and mean exactly what they say they mean.
Needs to be corrected by BJ’s “another Jesus” whenever the biblical writers describe Yahweh in what BJ determines is unjust or immoral acts of subjugation or violence.	The same God we see revealed through the Scriptures we now call the Old Testament is revealed in an in-person way by the true Lord Jesus Christ in both his first and second comings.

   Today’s journey begins with a signpost telling us BJ’s thoughts about what is ahead. He gives “two points” that he claims 

“comprise a central key for interpreting Scripture:

• How does any given passage point to Christ?
• How does any given passage form Christlike people?” (p. 62)

   So often when I hear someone make a claim in certain words, or ask a question a certain way, my response is, “That depends.” Often, we can’t know what someone really means until we know the background, the context, or what they’re trying to get at.

   In our case, these two questions mean two different things based on whether we have bought into BJ’s “the word OR the Word” or we are getting to know “the Word THROUGH the word”. Even though it is one signpost, it is really calling us to choose between two trails. Our chart helps us picture where each one leads.

The False Filter	The Biblical Filter
The word OR the Word	The Word THROUGH the word
Question 1: “How does any given passage point to Christ?” On BJ’s trail of “another Jesus”, it isn’t about how Scripture points to the Christ revealed to us throughout the word (the Bible), but how the Scriptures can be reinterpreted to match the customized Jesus of “A More Christlike Word”. By making the focus on how every Scripture points to Christ instead of to the Triune God, it sets the stage for the author to present “another Jesus” who corrects Yahweh God, something that Jesus (Yahweh the Son) in the Bible never does.	Question 1: “How does any given passage point to Christ?” Because Jesus stated his mission as, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4), we must view Scripture as the word of God that reveals the Triune God. We cannot treat every passage like it is only pointing to Christ since Jesus was always pointing to the Father. It is fair to ask how all Scripture points to Christ if understood as the true Lord Jesus Christ and in his relationship to his Father.

 

The False Filter	The Biblical Filter
The word OR the Word	The Word THROUGH the word
Question 2: “How does any given passage form Christlike people?” When BJ succeeds at getting people to reorient themselves to his “word”, this will mean they believe in “another Jesus”, and that means they will live according to that belief instead of the revelation of Christ in the Scriptures.	Question 2: “How does any given passage form Christlike people?” When we remain oriented to the Bible as the word of God we are able to receive what Paul called “the whole counsel of God” so that our becoming like Christ is, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (II Corinthians 3:18), and with the knowledge that “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Corinthians 4:6). When all Scripture is showing us “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” we will become “Christlike” in the way God shows his glory all through the Scriptures.

   I see that the very next paragraph contains fightin’ words (he changes “God-breathed” from II Timothy 3:16 to “God breathes”!)! So I will pitch my tent here for another day and get a bit of rest before taking that one on! I hope that everyone can see that it is not enough to ask whether Scripture points to Christ. It does. But not so that Christ is separated from Yawheh of the Old Testament, or the Scriptures, or the epistles, or any other revelation of God and his word in the Bible. Christ never separated himself from the Father, and we have no right to do so. And Mr. Of God, Mr. Authority, and Mr. Experiencing God agree!

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.) 

A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com 

Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition. 

Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible Systems 

 

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[1] https://blackaby.org/experiencing-god/

[2] https://youtu.be/cdzXj7Ld-NM?si=0t4zghZ--e58upOU 

A Journal Journey with Brad Jersak’s “Different” Jesus – Day 15

 

Examining "A More Christlike Word" by Brad Jersak

Day 15 

“For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” (Paul’s concern from 2 Corinthians 11:4) 

The False Filter	The Biblical Filter
The word OR the Word	The Word THROUGH the word

   Because of how huge it is that the BJs want us to believe that some attributes/characteristics of God are nothing more than “anthropomorphisms”, I will keep these two clarifications before us as we continue our journey:

The Anthropomorphic God	The God-is-who-he-is God
Select traits are treated as human qualities applied to God for illustrative purposes alone.	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature.
God’s “divine anger, judgment, or wrath” are “ever only anthropomorphisms of parental love aimed at restoration” (p. 52).	All characteristics of God described in God’s word, the Bible, are inherent qualities of his nature and mean exactly what they say they mean.

   Because of the direction we are heading in this next chapter, I will add one more:

The Anthropomorphic God	The God-is-who-he-is God
Needs to be corrected by BJ’s “another Jesus” whenever the biblical writers describe Yahweh in what BJ determines is unjust or immoral acts of subjugation or violence.	The same God we see revealed through the Scriptures we now call the Old Testament is revealed in an in-person way by the true Lord Jesus Christ in both his first and second comings.

   As we continue, I am treating BJ’s book like he is the challenger to what the church has long believed (as he has admitted from his misunderstanding about what it means that the Bible as the word of God is “the final authority on all matters of faith and practice"). Therefore, we are going to look at his challenges to see if he is making his point and we should change our beliefs from what we have understood to be the correct view of God and his word. After hearing him out by the end of the book, we can either come to the conclusion that he has found legitimate truth that requires us to adjust our beliefs, or we can present a rebuttal because we believe this is a false teacher and false teaching that Jesus warned us about and we must shine as the light of the world to help people see the truth and hold fast to what we are given by God. I am quite sure I will be making rebuttals to obvious misrepresentations of God and his word as we continue since that has been the case through the first three chapters. However, my focus is on treating BJ as a challenger to the longstanding belief that the Bible is the word of God and is to be treated as such. He will have to prove that we are to change our minds about the Bible, and his 100% failure rate to this point is not boding well for his success.

   We now begin, “Chapter 4 ‘What Are We?’: Reframing Inspiration” (p. 56). The “What are we?” question means, what is our relationship with the Scriptures. And the first thought is a “loaded question”! I see there are more following, so I will try a chart to address loaded questions/statements, and clarify what we know.

Loaded Question/Statement	Clarification of What we Know
“Our hearts ask, ‘What are we’ when the Bible begins to confront us with grossly unpalatable images of God and immoral acts committed in his name” (p. 56).	The author has not presented anything from the Bible that presents God in “grossly unpalatable images,” or describes “immoral acts committed in his name” (with God’s authorization).

      After sharing some heart-wrenching examples of people walking away from Jesus because they had never attached to him by faith, the author expresses his experience, “But if you’ve known intimacy with Christ and experienced actual liberation, walking away from his love isn’t an option" (p. 56). I will just add my personal testimony of facing all kinds of disappointing experiences with churches and church folk while continuing to grow in my relationship with God on a daily basis by seeking to get to know the Word THROUGH the word. So denigrating the Scriptures as the BJs suggest is not required to have a growing relationship with the Lord.

Loaded Question/Statement	Clarification of What we Know
“Once you stop drinking the Kool-Aid of biblical literalism, any further connection with Scripture needs to include the answer to that awkward question, ‘What are we?’” (p. 57).	Nothing has been shared to explain “biblical literalism” or to justify the Jonestown’ metaphor of “Kool-Aid”. And there is nothing awkward about the “What are we?” question in relation to Scripture.

   The author follows this with, “And it’s tough to know what we are without also asking of the Bible, ‘What are you?’” (p. 57). For sure. When we know what God has given us in his word, we discover that it is saturated with an amazing and clear message of who, whose, and what we are, along with the relationship God desires us to have with his word.

   Now we come to the crux of the conflict, “As I keep insisting, Christ gets the final word, and the Scriptures testify to his authority. I relate to Christ as God’s Word and to the Bible as one (and not the only) venue where I can hear the living Voice” (p. 57). This is why the author needs to create a conflict between the word and the Word. It allows him to bring in other “venues” that are just as authoritative as the Bible (in his mind). Again, he will need to prove that this is necessary and good.

   The two sides BJ puts against each other are simplified into this chart:

Relationship to the word 1	Relationship to the word 2
“the Bible is God’s inspired, infallible, inerrant canon of His self-revelation” (p. 57).	“the Scriptures are actually a witness to Christ and a revelation of human hearts—” (p. 57).

   I am going to counter this challenge with a clarification. BJ wants us to believe that the Scriptures are “a witness to Christ”, which means they are human testimonies about Christ from which we can learn things about him from the best the people knew and understood. The Scriptures want us to believe they are “the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17), which means they are Christ speaking to us directly. Whenever BJ shares about Jesus speaking of the Scriptures as bearing witness about him, I think we will find that it is the way Jesus affirmed that the Scriptures were God’s word, not human words bearing witness to him.

   The author’s claim from here is “When I realized this, it meant I had to reframe how I see, read, and interpret Scripture, especially in its all-important role as the Word’s witness” (p. 57). Yes, if you change what you believe the Bible is, you would then change how you relate to it. This also works for the cults that change what people believe the Bible is which then changes how they relate to it, so we must be careful what we believe and how we behave accordingly.

   Two questions have not been answered. First, are the Scriptures merely a “witness to Christ”, or the “word of Christ”? Second, are the Scriptures merely “a revelation of human hearts”, or the revelation of God through human hearts? Neither of BJ’s claims about this have been shown to be the case. However, he speaks as if “I realized this”, but without any evidence that would make this an objective realization.  

Loaded Question/Statement	Clarification of What we Know
“Nevertheless, it gets a little tricky when I say Christ is my final authority while I’m also dependent on a witness that I call inspired yet seems unreliable at times” (p. 57).	There is nothing tricky about viewing Christ as the final authority and his Book as the final authority he has given us to govern everything we do in the church while he is away. And, to this point, nothing has been stated that shows the Bible to be unreliable, but plenty has been stated to show the author is unreliable in his use of the Bible.

   As to a friend’s question regarding what we can trust in the Bible if the parts BJ doesn’t like aren’t “accurate”, BJ replies, “Let’s begin by addressing the question of inspiration, infallibility, inerrancy, and canon. Then we’ll move on to how our convictions about what Scripture is impact our faith in the Gospel narratives about Jesus” (p. 58). It appears that these will be the three areas that shape what people believe the Bible is, and therefore adjust their relationship to the Bible accordingly.

   Another theme we will need to track is what the author means by “a literalist reading of Scripture” (p. 58). If this means that a person takes every verse of the Bible literally without regard for its genre, then that would be one of the pendulum extremes. The other pendulum extreme would be to take the whole Bible metaphorically or symbolically. The plumbline would be to take Scripture to be the word of God in all its genres. This attention to the literalist focus leads to the next loaded description.

Loaded Question/Statement

Clarification of What we Know

“Our church believed the Bible described a six-day creation (calculated by biblical genealogies to seven thousand years ago). We believed that Noah’s flood was actually global and must have covered Mount Everest. We also believed that literally every living species survived on an ark. At the same time, we weren’t so naïve as to believe Christ is an actual lamb with seven horns and seven eyes2” (p. 58). Note: this is a loaded statement since it words things inaccurately as if that is the biblical view (strawman) which then requires us to pick sides based on those misrepresentations.

Believing the biblical description of creation is good. It is clearly taught all through the Scriptures and is affirmed by science all the time. Believing that the global flood covered Mount Everest as we now see it is a misrepresentation of the facts and the Bible even says so![1] And it is not clear if his church really did teach these things, or if this is merely the author’s take on the matter. No, not every living “species” categorized by modern science was on the ark, but only the “kinds” described in creation (really BIG difference!). And, we can always take the historical accounts as true history while also recognizing the apocryphal accounts as true symbolically.

   I’m surveying the next ground the author leads us on, his journey of learning to question the Bible. His loaded points continue with things like,

Loaded Question/Statement	Clarification of What we Know
“I questioned whether God’s commands in the Old Testament to carry out acts of genocide without mercy truly came from the Abba whom Jesus revealed” (p. 60).	As already pointed out, there has been no evidence of God carrying out any acts of genocide, nor executing justice without mercy. We are not obligated to resolve this problem for him because he has yet to show that the problem exists (20% of the way through the book!).

   The next section continues his journey of processing in his mind how the Scriptures can be breathed out by God but not his authoritative word.

Loaded Question/Statement

Clarification of What we Know

“We don’t read the ugly parts of the Bible as bygone histories or dismiss them for their bad theology. Rather, we enter these stories and experience them as floodlights revealing our own issues” (p. 61).

Terms like “ugly parts” or “bygone histories” or “bad theology” all project imperfections on the Scriptures that have not been demonstrated. And, since the focus is to have a Jesus who reinterprets how we read about Yahweh in the Old Testament, there should have been something from Jesus supporting this viewpoint. It has also not even remotely been demonstrated that some of the descriptions of Yahweh by the biblical writers were nothing more than “a floodlight revealing our own issues”. I get that BJ wants that to be the case, but he has presented zero evidence to that effect.

   What I find along this leg of the journey is that I am constantly correcting bad information. It is like coming to a viewpoint, reading the sign describing what is before us, and pointing out that the sign is describing something different than we can see with our own eyes. So, as I have shown this with BJ’s own thoughts, it is there also in those he quotes as his affirmation for what he believes. Quoting David Goa,

“[I invite] the faithful to a particular spiritual discipline when they read the hard texts in the First (Old) Testament that speak of the anger, wrath, and judgement of the divine, including those that seem to be the wrathful words of God spoken directly, but are instead revelations of human passions, of the appetite for divine justice, assigned to God (p. 62).

   To claim that the words the biblical writers declared were Yahweh’s own words were “instead revelations of human passions, of the appetite for divine justice, assigned to God” is the continuing thread of unsubstantiated claims. I keep asking myself, “Says who?” And where does BJ’s Jesus say these things about Yahweh? If the Scriptures Jesus spoke about in his day were full of human passions parading as his Father’s words, he would have had to say so!

   The quote continues,

…All biblical revelation, along with the revelation of the Holy Spirit, is a light shone on our passions and thus on our way of seeking and knowing the world and our presumptions about God’s ways and God’s will. Revelation illuminates God’s love for us, but we need it also to shine light on our personal and collective darkness, the shadows in our life, our relationships, our moment in history, our place in culture⁵ (p. 62).

   All I can say right here is that something is missing. Revelation is first a revelation of God. It shows God to us. “In the beginning GOD!” it declares, and then begins revealing what God did and said. It is in revealing God to us that we discover everything he wants us to know about ourselves, but so that we are always seeing him first and understanding ourselves through his self-revelation. 

   And, since the author has yet to give any evidence that there is anything in the Scriptures of Jesus’ day that was a false revelation of Yahweh, we still haven’t been given any reason to disbelieve that the ways God executed justice against evil people is exactly the way God wants us to know how he feels about sin. Yes, we will see ourselves in the “collective darkness” as we see God in the holiness and righteousness of his judgment against sin. Whatever anyone believes about these things up to this point, I’m simply pointing out that the sign says one thing, but the scene says another. And nothing in any scene has shown us a Yahweh that Jesus corrected in word or deed.

   And that is a good spot to stop and catch a breath before continuing our journey. 

 

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.) 

A More Christlike Word © 2021 by Bradley Jersak Whitaker House 1030 Hunt Valley Circle • New Kensington, PA 15068 www.whitakerhouse.com 

Jersak, Bradley. A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way. Whitaker House. Kindle Edition. 

Definitions from the Bible Sense Lexicon (BSL) in Logos Bible Systems

  

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[1] The tectonic activity during the flood is described in Psalm 104:6-9.

You covered it with the deep as with a garment;
    the waters stood above the mountains.
At your rebuke they fled;
    at the sound of your thunder they took to flight.
The mountains rose, the valleys sank down
    to the place that you appointed for them.
You set a boundary that they may not pass,
    so that they might not again cover the earth.

Mount Everest as we know it is after “the Mountains rose”! Before that, it was part of the dry land described in the creation week. During the flood, it was covered with sediment and dead creatures that became the sedimentary rock and marine fossils that are found at Everest’s present height. The deep ocean valleys are “the valleys sank down”. What we see on the planet is quite consistent with Scripture.