Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
“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)
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The False Filter |
The Biblical Filter |
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The word OR the Word |
The Word THROUGH the word |
The question is, when BJ is permitted to change where “inspiration” happens (in people’s minds, that is) so that it is opposite to what God says, what are people getting from BJ that they are not going to get from God? Let’s zoom in on what happens between the Scriptures and the readers after BJ is done twisting the teachings of God’s word to peddle his wares.
Because BJ has moved where “inspiration” happens and what it means (in spite of how clearly the Bible tells us both), people who buy what he peddles have Scriptures that are a contaminated mix of poison and pudding (not a hybrid God/Man mix as he claims). This means that what the BJs are giving their readers is a poisoned view of God’s word, and this results in the readers of God’s word being poisoned by deception just as Eve was in the Garden. Here is the result:
Now, if anyone thinks I am being too severe, just let me remind you of how seriously Paul himself said this in the Scripture at the start of my daily sharing. Paul was dealing with such things already. He made clear that this was really about Satan’s work from beginning to end. And he also made the connection back to the very first deception, “But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (II Corinthians 11:3).
When I
began my journey through BJ's book, I was quite sure he was a false
teacher from things I had personally heard him say and teach during interviews
on religious programs. It wasn’t hearsay, it was I-heard-him-say. Now that I
have joined his tour group down the garden path, it has become all the clearer
that he is doing exactly what the apostle Paul warned about. The “Jesus” in his
book is “another” one, the spirit that moves him is a “different” one, and the
gospel he proclaims (not very clearly as of yet) is a “different” one. He has
been clear enough that I must urge everyone to recall what we are taught from
the Scriptures about standing against the devil’s work. Paul wrote:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Ephesians 6:10-12).
Since
BJ’s work is one of “the schemes of the devil”, and since our battle is not
with the BJs (flesh and blood) but the powers and forces working through them, “Therefore
take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil
day, and having done all, to stand firm” (Ephesians 6:13). Paul then gives the
imagery of the full armor of God as putting on truth, righteousness, the
readiness of the gospel, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the
sword of the Spirit (the word of God), and “praying at all times in the Spirit”
(6:14-20).
Putting on the full (or whole) armor of God is not primarily an individual
thing. It is mostly a corporate thing, what the “one new man” of chapter 2 puts
on. This means we must put on the whole armor of God together. We must speak
the truth in love to one another. We must pursue the righteousness, joy, and
peace of the Holy Spirit in the church. We must encourage each other in our
attempts to share the good news of great joy with people as often as God gives
opportunity. We must help each other hold up faith as our defense against all
the devil’s fiery arrows. We must unite to take up the word of God as the sword
of the Holy Spirit, using the words God has breathed out into his word as our
weapon to fight the lies and deceptions of the evil one, and we must unite with
other believers to keep growing in praying in the Spirit (not the flesh) so we
can quickly recognize when someone is succumbing to deception and seek to help
them be free in Christ as quickly as possible.
Now,
as soon as I open BJ’s garden-path book we see exactly what I have warned
about. He continues, “The LXX reads and translates the Hebrew text differently –
dramatically so” (p. 100).
OKAY…
so then… do you see how dishonest this is?
What
we discovered about BJ’s dealings with Isaiah 53:10 is that the well-respected
English translations all say in English what we found is in the Hebrew text.
Here is what I shared from the Hebrew of this verse:
“Yet it was the will”: “to delight (take) v. — to take a high degree of pleasure or mental satisfaction in.”
“of the LORD”: “Yahweh n. — the name the God of Israel gives to the Israelites through Moses.”
“to crush him”: “to hurt ⇔ crush v. — to hurt someone, conceived of as crushing or breaking something into pieces.”
Make
sure you notice that in BJ’s book he does NOT include what the Hebrew text
says, nor that all the major English translations say the same thing as the
Hebrew text. Instead, while leaving out what the Scripture says, he admits that
the LXX is “dramatically” different, but instead of rejecting the LXX because it
is obviously mistaken, he tries to turn our attention from the English to the
Greek hoping we won’t see the Hebrew!
With
that in mind, that even BJ is admitting that his LXX is dramatically different
than the original and the best translations, the rest is a deliberate ploy to
deceive.
I
looked up online to see how the LXX translates the whole of verse 10 since BJ
only quoted part of it. On the intertextual.bible website it gives the direct
translation from the Hebrew as, “Though the Lord desired to crush him and make
him ill,” and the translation into the LXX as, “And the Lord desires to cleanse
him from his blow.” Yes, this is a dramatic discrepancy! Not only is the LXX
changing the word used in the original, but also is giving only one expression instead
of the two. The Hebrew has two rhyming thoughts (“the Lord desired to crush him
AND make him ill”), while the Greek has only one (“the Lord desires to cleanse
him from his blow”).
In the
“Notes and References” section that immediately follows, intertextual.bible
adds,
... The Hebrew text insinuates that it was God who caused the servant to suffer. The translator may have disliked this idea, and hence banned it from his translation. Something similar has happened in verse 10 ... Whereas in the Hebrew it pleases God to crush the servant, the Greek softens the text by stating that God wants to purify him ..." (Vorm-Croughs, Mirjam van der The Old Greek of Isaiah: An Analysis of its Pluses and Minuses (p. 467) Society of Biblical Literature, 2014).[1]
Since
it is so obvious that BJ is pushing into the spotlight the only document that
supports his viewpoint, and he admits it is dramatically different than both
the Hebrew original and the most well-respected English translations, please
accept that there is far better reason to see his LXX translation of this verse
to be a translator’s personal editing, not what is the best translation of the Hebrew
text. The bottom line is that the LXX is a translation, but BJ has put it in
the place of the Hebrew Scriptures.
So there
it is again, BJ is putting on a show of warning us about those people out there
who pick translations to support the Jesus they wanted to find in the Bible,
while he is the one doing that very thing right in front of us, and with
obvious differences to what was written and tested.
I am
not going to comment on the rest of what he says about this applying to Jesus as
God doing some kind of cleansing. That is NOT what the Hebrew says. It is NOT
what the well-respected translations say. It is simply not what God breathed
out, and it is as clear an example of the serpent’s “Did God actually say…?” as
we can find.
I
cringe reading what he says about his view because it is outright lying. When
he writes, “This perspective matters because a gospel-informed translation into
English perceives God as a divine healer rather than a cruel punisher” (p.
101).
First,
the LXX translation of Isaiah 53:10 is NOT a “gospel-informed translation”. It is a mistaken translation
that is proven false by the Hebrew text and other Scripture-informed translations.
Second, what BJ is giving us in English is a translation of a
translation. Bear that in mind. BJ has picked the only translation to support
his view and then gives us the English translation of that mistranslation to
prove his point. That is dishonest since he has yet to show his readers what
the Hebrew said or how it is expressed in the well-respected English
translations.
Third,
I continue to reject BJ’s notion of a “gospel-informed translation” since he is
admitting to “eisegesis” (reading things IN to Scripture) rather than “exegesis”
reading OUT of Scripture what God already breathed in to Scripture. Translations
are God-informed, or Scripture-informed. We always begin with a best
understanding of what is written and seek to learn from it. That’s why Paul
followed his declaration that “All Scripture is breathed out by God” with “and
profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in
righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good
work” (II Timothy 3:16-17).
In
this case, when we take BJ’s boastful claim that his LXX is superior to both
the Hebrew and the major translations into English FROM the Hebrew, we can open
“all Scripture” and see what God is teaching us about this, how he is reproving
BJ for his dishonest translation-of-a-translation, correcting the BJs with what
the Bible really says, and training them (along with us) to “Pursue
righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness” (I Timothy 6:11).
Fourth, when we follow the Hebrew and best English translations, we do not lose God as “a divine healer” or fabricate a god who is “a cruel punisher”. Instead, we are saved from the serpent’s continued assertions of, “Did God actually say…?”, and we discover how God devised a plan for our divine healing that involved him satisfying his justice against our sin on the only person who could die for our sins instead of his own. There is no “beautifully prefigures” going on in the LXX version of Isaiah 53:10 or BJ’s use of it. There are no "pretty white lies". We know that even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (II Corinthians 11:14) to deceive as many as possible. So a translation that is in a league of its own even from the original Hebrew is not beautiful in any way for the child of God.
However, we could go on and on about how beautifully the love of the Father and the Son shine out to us as “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Corinthians 4:6) as we see Jesus bearing our sins in his body on that tree.
Since
we come now to BJ’s concluding paragraph in this section, we will look at this
and then call it a night (in more ways than one!).
When
BJ writes, “In other words, inspiration is about more than the Hebrew, Greek,
or translated texts” (p. 101), I say, No, that is false. Let’s remind ourselves that
what the Bible says “inspiration” is looks like this:
Because God breathed out his words through the writers into the Scriptures, and those writers recorded those words in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, then inspiration absolutely is all about “the Hebrew, Greek, or translated texts” because we are now left to understand Scripture as God’s word!
And, to clarify, the Hebrew and Greek parts apply to the Scriptures, not to the LXX as a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The LXX is not “the Scriptures”. It is a translation! We believe that the original Hebrew and Greek (with some Aramaic) is what was breathed out by God, and anything else is a translation that must be tested by the originals, not by another translation.
BJ is
showing himself in direct opposition to God on this when he puts inspiration
here:
And,
after looking at what we have journeyed through in the past couple of pages in
his book, we should be able to see quite clearly why this is an accurate
portrayal of what he is doing:
I cringe at how blatantly dishonest BJ is being in this book, and I grieve at how popular it is. However, don’t we have something about this very thing in the Scriptures? Paul warned Timothy,
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths (II Timothy 4:3-4).
This
sounds so much like the introduction to BJ’s other book, “A More Christlike God”,
where he admitted that he came to Scripture looking for the Jesus he wanted to
find there. Paul said this would happen. It is in Scripture. And Paul’s word to
Timothy was, “As for you…” which means, each of us can choose to continue
following the true Lord Jesus Christ no matter how “many” find a much broader
and easier way than what was given to us by God.
I will close with Paul’s instruction:
“As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned” (Titus 3:10-11).
I will
have nothing to do with BJ in fellowship. He has already stirred up division
with people we were enjoying getting to know in Christ. I am on my forty-first
day of warning him of his divisiveness and deception. I only continue through
the book to leave a trail of “truth in love” to help find a few who want to
return home to the true Father in heaven through the true Lord Jesus Christ by
the ministry of the true Holy Spirit of God. God’s word tells us what to think
of the BJs. Let’s have nothing to do with them and get back to walking with God
in the obedience of faith.
Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed (Hebrews 12:12-13).
© 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
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