Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
Day 50
“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 |
But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit (Jude vss 17-19).
Yes,
this is the way the early church viewed people like the BJs who caused division
with their false teachings.
But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh (Jude vss. 20-23).
This
is what the church was told to do to follow the true Lord Jesus Christ by the
true Holy Spirit according to the true gospel of the kingdom.
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen (Jude vss. 24-25).
We
cannot get past what Jesus said about the “many” who would take the wide road
to destruction, but we can pray such blessings as this over the “few” who
continue to walk the narrow way by the light of the word of God as we have it
in the Bible.
The
next thing BJ presents is his imagination on how to describe the work of God in
salvation according to the traditional beliefs he has turned from (pp. 105-106).
I will not comment because it isn’t from God’s word. It’s just BJ continuing to
honor his thoughts above God’s. I will focus on anything he presents from God’s
word that must be correctly understood in order to be properly put into
practice.
However, instead of taking us to God’s word, BJ takes us to an
apocryphal book called “The Wisdom of Solomon”. He lies that it was in “all
Christian Bibles until the 1500’s, when the sola scriptura people removed it” because
it was never in the Bibles until the Roman Catholic Church began including it
to try to stop the Reformation. They did not want people turning back to the authority
of God’s word, and they did not want the Reformers putting Bibles into the
hands of the common people so they could see the deception of the Roman
Catholic Church.
BJ is
also being dishonest when he claims that “Paul engages the Wisdom of Solomon
through his epistle to the Romans” (p. 106) and gives no examples or evidence to
support his boast.
In
researching the truth about this apocryphal book, we find that it was never
considered Scripture by the early church, so it has no bearing on our present
discussion of the wrath of God. It is one more ploy to get people away from the
authority of what is written in the Scriptures by using another source that is
not Scripture. I have included a number of articles in the footnote that show
why the Apocrypha is not God’s word.[1]
Once
BJ has meandered down the garden path away from the Scriptures (again), he continues
to make false claims that must be challenged:
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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This translation (his mistranslation from the Apocrypha) is more in
line with the gospel of Jesus Christ (p. 107). |
We already saw that Paul’s reference to “the wrath” was in the context
of “the wrath of God” so it cannot apply to “Satan” as his Apocrypha
apparently suggested. Plus, the rest of Scripture clearly reveals God’s wrath
against sin and sinners, something that is a huge comfort to the children of
God. And I reject the notion that there is a gospel outside the Scriptures
that tells us how to interpret the Scriptures. The truth is that it is the
Scriptures that are breathed out by God and authoritative over us in telling
us what is the gospel of the kingdom. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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Wisdom of Solomon predates and prefigures the gospel that Paul
preached (p. 107). |
Yes, the non-biblical apocryphal books predate the writings of the New
Testament. No, they do not prefigure the gospel Paul preached. No one understood
the gospel until Jesus came and people began adjusting to him as the Messiah
they were waiting for. This is why the disciples were not waiting for Jesus’
resurrection on the third day after his crucifixion! Paul’s writings, along with those of the other apostles, are Jesus’
appointed foundation for the church to understand everything about the gospel
of the kingdom and what it means for us to live as children of God in this kingdom. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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And it’s more in line with the themes and actual words of Romans 5 (p.
107). |
The actual words of Romans 5, in the context of everything we looked
at, is not in line with the Apocrypha, and not in line with BJ’s claims. This
is why the Apocrypha was never considered Scripture, and it is why BJ keeps
turning to non-scriptural sources to convince us of his “another Jesus”, “different
spirit”, and “different gospel”. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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Maybe adding words isn’t always a great idea after all (p. 107). |
We have already seen that the term “wrath of God” was not adding words
because it is the truth taught throughout the whole of Scripture, from one
end of the Bible to the other. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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Maybe our intrusions into the Bible actually expose theological
agendas more than they reveal Paul’s meaning (p. 107). |
What’s funny (in a sad kind of way), is that BJ’s many intrusions into
what the Bible says definitely do expose a theological agenda to lead people
away from the whole counsel of God and turn their trust from God’s word to
man’s word. He definitely does NOT get Paul’s meaning in Romans. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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When you compare translations side by side, the question is NOT
necessarily which one best represents the first manuscripts, but which one
best represents the gospel (p. 107). |
False. Just another reminder that this is backwards. There is no gospel
outside the Scriptures, so we absolutely DO want to know which translation is
the most accurate to the manuscript evidence because it is in the manuscripts
that we find what God breathed out, and that is how we will know what the
gospel is. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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Again, what I’m saying is that, for most Bible readers, the best
standard for judging a translation is not your linguistic ability or your
academic credentials. It is your personal knowledge of who Jesus is, the
nature of God as he revealed it, and the gospel he preached. Go with that (p.
108). |
And with my own “again”, BJ has interjected his “another Jesus”, his
“different spirit”, and his “different gospel”, and now wants us to treat
those as authoritative over the Scriptures and translations when we
absolutely must know what the Scriptures say about God, Jesus, and the
gospel, to know what is truth. |
Okay,
so I thought we were going to pick up the pace a bit because he was just giving
his eisegetical opinion on eisegesis, but then he mentioned Scripture again
and, once again, MISREPRESENTED IT!
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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Referring to I Corinthians 2
and II Corinthians 3, he remarks, “In these passages, he denies that one can
interpret Scripture apart from the Spirit and says that to do so is to read
the Bible as the “letter that kills” – that is, as “biblical literalists” in
the tradition of Jesus’s opponents (p. 109). |
FALSE! Yes, we have been down this part of the garden path already, but if he
is still flogging the thing, I must remind everyone of his dishonesty! The “letter that kills” is NOT referring to “biblical literalists”! It
is referring to the LAW! The New Covenant is life in the Spirit, the Old
Covenant law is the letter that kills. Paul was not rebuking people who took
God at his word. He was rebuking those who were trying to weave aspects of
the Old Covenant into the New (as BJ is doing) and clarifying that the laws
of the Old Covenant have been replaced by the life of the New Covenant. I
can’t say enough of how deceptive it is for BJ to keep saying such false
things about God’s word. |
So, BJ
finally connects the real words of Jesus on the Emmaus Road with his garden
path, but he continues stating the opposite of what is in Scripture.
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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And yet the New Testament makes it very clear that we must make a
pre-commitment to the gospel if we’re to interpret Scripture correctly (p.
109). |
No, the New Testament keeps affirming the Scriptures of the Old
Testament without correcting ANY of them as BJ claims and showing from the
Scriptures who Jesus is and what he was doing. BJ has tried and failed to
discredit the Scriptures that spoke of his suffering and death by the will of
God. He has tried and failed to prove that God does not carry out justice
against sinners, and would never think of sending his Son to propitiate his
wrath against our sins. If it is BJ’s understanding of “a different gospel”
that has him lying about every Scripture he has shared, then how would this
fit that Jesus IS the Truth, and that he has sent his Spirit of Truth to
guide us into all truth? No, we get our understanding of everything from the
Scriptures, and they all unite to give us the whole counsel of God on every
matter of the gospel of the kingdom. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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The authors (and Christ himself) show us that we have no business
interpreting any part of the Bible without reference to Christ and the gospel
because the Lamb slain and risen is our hermeneutical key (p. 109). |
As with all counterfeits, there is some truth in this. We cannot fail
to see Jesus in the whole Bible. However, the hermeneutical key to understanding Scripture is not BJ’s
version of “another Jesus”, and “another gospel”. The hermeneutical key to
understanding Scripture is “all Scripture is breathed out by God”! Once we
get that, we will “live by every word that comes from the mouth of God” as
now united in the Bible. These Scriptures will teach us who Jesus is, what he
has done for us, and how he confirmed all the Scriptures the BJs are trying
to deny. |
In
finally referring to Luke 24 where Jesus talked with the two men on the Emmaus
Road, BJ asks the question,
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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How does a Christ-follower interpret “Moses, the Prophets, and all the
Scriptures”? By asking how they prefigure Christ and his gospel (p. 109). |
Somehow, BJ is using this to support his “another Jesus” and
“different gospel” idea. How do I know? Because he has tried to discredit
Moses, the Prophets, and the Scriptures, in what they DID tell us about the
Christ prior to his coming! If BJ really would ask how the Hebrew Scriptures
prefigured Christ and his gospel, he would need to repent of what he has
written, renounce his book full of false teachings, and preach the gospel
Paul preached of a Savior who laid down his life for his sheep. Or, “whom God
put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Romans
3:25). |
Now,
since we have arrived at the end of a chapter in BJ’s book, let me simply point
out again that as we consider what BJ has to say about “biblical literalism” in
the next chapter, he has already totally misrepresented this by claiming that
this has been Paul’s focus when Paul was really referring to the Old Covenant
Law, not BJ’s view of biblical literalism.
With
that in mind, we are really approaching the next chapter, “Much Ado About
Literalism” starting from scratch. Paul was NOT talking about this in his
letters to the Corinthians, so BJ is already in the wrong. But I am glad he
will give us his personal opinion about this topic so we can continue testing
everything, throwing out everything that is evil, and holding only on to the
good, which so far, has only come from the Scriptures, not from this book!
© 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
[1]
What is the Wisdom of Solomon?
https://www.gotquestions.org/Wisdom-of-Solomon.html
WHY
THE APOCRYPHA ISN’T IN THE BIBLE
https://crossexamined.org/why-the-apocrypha-isnt-in-the-bible/
Reasons
why the Apocrypha does not belong in the Bible
https://carm.org/roman-catholicism/reasons-why-the-apocrypha-does-not-belong-in-the-bible/
What
Is the Apocrypha? LISTENING TO FOUR CENTURIES OF SILENCE
https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-is-the-apocrypha
What
are the Apocrypha / Deuterocanonical books?
https://www.gotquestions.org/apocrypha-deuterocanonical.html
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