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 |
- to breathe out the Scriptures over the generations,
- to compile them through forty different men from all kinds of cultures and times,
- to spread this out over 15 centuries to prove that no man could have pulled this off,
- to give a unified theme of his intention to have a people in the image and likeness of his Son,
- an aim that required his own Son to give us “redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7),
- to embed his substitutionary redemptive work into the prophetic pages of Scripture as clearly as we see in Isaiah 53,
- to have four gospel writers declare Jesus’ death and resurrection on our behalf,
- and the apostles upon whom Jesus promised to build his church teaching us how Jesus is the one “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Romans 3:25)[1],
- and to have “the twenty-four elders” who “fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:8-10),
- and people still believe the BJs that creation should not be taken literally, the fall into sin should not be taken literally, God’s judgment on the earth with a worldwide flood should not be taken literally, and that we should not believe the prophets who spoke of Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection, or the gospel writers’ description of Jesus’ death and resurrection, or the apostles’ explanation of the death and resurrection of our Savior when the author has failed 100% to support his claims and has twisted and distorted any Scripture he has used to decorate his points!
One
thing I am trying to do along with my journey through this book is demonstrate
a huge alternative to the unbiblical approach of BJ’s “another Jesus”. That is,
to seek God in his word every day of our lives. Scripture says that “faith
comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). The
“word of Christ” is the New Testament message, the gospel of the kingdom
preached in the fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures. The Scriptures
give us the authoritative “word of Christ”. BJ’s self-authority and
contemplative prayer remove people from “the word of Christ”.
My
testimony is that more than three decades of seeking God in his word and prayer
every morning has made it very clear that we get to know the Word THROUGH the
word. Here is a video I made a few days ago showing how God reveals in Jesus
such an upholding of the Scriptures BJ denies. It is undeniable that BJ is
opposing Christ himself.[2]
And
here is one more example of how God gave me something from his word as the
direct answer to BJ’s words. This is one of the verses God gave me from his
word since my last journal entry: “Evil men do not
understand justice, but those who seek the LORD (Yahweh) understand it
completely” (Proverbs 28:5). One of the core themes of BJ’s book is his
admission that he does not get God’s justice. He doesn’t understand it. Where
the Creator shows his justice against criminal nations, clearly demonstrating how
evil and unrepentant they were, BJ doesn’t understand. He creates (with
spiritual help) “another Jesus” who corrects God’s justice. Yes, his version of
Jesus rewrites the authoritative Scriptures so that God is not just. And God
showed me that verse to present his critique of BJ’s attack on his character. BJ
does not understand justice, but those who seek Yahweh understand God’s justice
completely. Here is a very short video where I share a few thoughts of what
this Scripture meant to me.[3]
I am
now finally up to a new chapter, “Chapter 5, Before We Open the Scrolls:
Preconditions for Reading”, and his opening quote needs clarification! He
presents Augustine commenting on a rule related to “figurative expressions”.
That rule is to look for what “tends to establish the reign of love” (p. 87).
Sounds good. However, there is one BIG problem, and I am quite sure Augustine
was NOT applying this to what BJ is trying to pull off.
The
problem is that this ONLY applies to what the Bible clearly shows is a
“figurative expression”. It does NOT apply to BJ’s erroneous claim that reading
the Bible in a literal way (taking each text and genre to mean what they mean)
is wrong and that it needs to be read figuratively. In that case, BJ would
apply Augustine’s quote to anything in the Bible he doesn’t like, something I’m
quite sure Augustine was not even remotely talking about!
So,
the opening question after the quote is, “What is Worthy of God?” (p. 87). That
is a good question in the “spirit and truth” and “truth in love” focus of
worship and fellowship among God’s people. However, as BJ seeks to help us with
“the right disposition” for reading God’s word (p. 87), and asks “what would
that look like?”, I already know that the predisposition of the book is wrong,
so whatever it teaches us about predispositions will be in error. That’s the
way truth and error work: you reap what you sow.
Okay
(sigh), as BJ suggests that we approach Scripture with “love for God, humility
before God, and openness to God,” and summarizes that “we will see how a faith
commitment to the goodness and love of God are required for a reading of
Scripture ‘worthy’ of God’s character” (p. 87), he immediately turns to a book
espousing “Biblical Anthropomorphism”, something that is NOT worthy of God’s
character because it turns the Bible from man-created-in-the-image-of-God to
God-created-in-the-image-of-man!
I
skimmed BJ’s focus on Plato, Socrates, and Philo since they are not authorities
on the authority of the Scriptures as the word of God. However, this expression
caught my attention. Under the heading of “Philo”, BJ snuck in, “Alexandria was
a thriving center of Greek philosophy and home to Jewish rabbis who had already
translated their Hebrew Scriptures into Greek and integrated the best of Jewish
and Greek thought into their theology” (p. 89). I do not know if his Philo
represents what was happening at the time, but I challenge the notion that the
manuscripts we have for the Old and New Testaments integrated “Greek thought
into their theology”. I know BJ needs that to be true to support his hypothesis
that Yahweh’s justice against criminal nations is horrid, but I’m just putting
this here because he has a habit of not giving evidence to support such claims.
I’m not buying this one and I’m keeping my eye open for evidence of what he is
talking about.
Here’s
more of these misrepresentations. First, BJ says,
When we read in the Old Testament that God is gracious and compassionate, that his mercy kisses justice, and that his lovingkindness endures forever, this is language “fitting” or “worthy” or appropriate of God (p. 89).
Yes,
those attributes of God are fitting and worthy of the Yahweh revealed in the
Scriptures. However, BJ then makes another of his famous false equivalencies:
But when God is not that way—when God appears cruel or vindictive, consumed by wrath—how can that be? Philo believes that such descriptions are not worthy of God. But there they are in the Scriptures (p. 89).
Ummm…
no… those concepts of “cruel or vindictive, consumed by wrath” are NOT in the
Scriptures! Those are BJ’s “does not understand justice” issue. I will just say
this in the most simple of terms, that God cannot show his lovingkindness to
Abraham and his descendants while allowing criminal nations to abuse and
traumatize them. His justice against criminals is in perfect friendship with his
compassion for their victims. It is not a good God who allows evil to go
unchecked because then it would force kazillions of victims to bear that
unchecked evil, and that is not good!
Okay,
this is sad for me. I’m finally getting why my new friend was posting such
God-dishonoring posts online. The poison-in-the-pudding comes from this “bitter
root”.[4]
Philo reasons that if Yahweh is truly God—the ultimate Good—then brutal descriptions of Yahweh must be anthropomorphic projections, that is, attributing human attributes and actions to God. We must, therefore, read those passages allegorically, because to read them literally would be unworthy of God5 (p. 89).
Bottom
line: Philo was wrong because he was “reasoning” instead of “reading”! NONE of
the attributes of God in the Scriptures are ever referred to as
anthropomorphic, none are "brutal descriptions", they are NOT to be taken allegorically, and reading them
literally would be totally WORTHY of God! Again, I’m not talking about BJ’s
misrepresentations of God’s attributes. I have previously shown that he doesn’t
even know what he is talking about. Rather, I am upholding the pure justice,
holiness, and goodness of God in caring for his people and executing justice
against the criminal nations.
What
is wrong with a non-believer’s understanding (Philo) that “God is all-good and
all-merciful”? Answer: that’s not ALL God is! Simple.
And,
again, the Scriptures do not say that God only has two or three of the
attributes we read about in the Scriptures. Scripture says God has ALL his
attributes (hence someone like Stephen Charnock in his “Existence and
Attributes of God” is far more trustworthy than a non-Christian philosophizing
rabbi[5] and his 21st century disciples).
I
suspect that from here on in I simply need to point out that BJ’s points are
bogus. Just because a rabbi denies some of the attributes of God, and prefers
seeing God in our image instead of us in his, does not mean God is that way.
BJ’s presuppositions are not helpful (at best).
So, when BJ reasons,
“Where God is not portrayed as good, he (Philo) instructs us to read allegorically, because we must never allow a literalist interpretation to negate our understanding of God’s goodness” (p. 89),
that is absolutely
bogus. There is nowhere in the Bible that God is “not portrayed as good”. It
isn’t taking God’s word literally that he really did judge criminal cities and
nations that is the problem here. It is claiming that God does not have the right
as God, as Creator, as the covenant God of Israel, to do good to his people by
executing judgment against their enemies. We already see in Canada what a
horrible place we are becoming because even government leaders are criminal and
there is no justice against them. How evil-hearted it is to claim that God is
not good when he judges sinners for their unrepentant sin! Of course he is good
to deal with the wicked injustice!
So, with my view that God is good in his justice towards criminals as he is in his provision to his children, I could just as well say,
“That way, every story (even the disturbing ones) can show us something of how to become righteous people who do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God,6 without impugning God’s character” (pp. 89-90).
Exactly! Stop “impugning God’s
character” for doing the good and holy and righteous thing of executing justice
against criminals!
This
is a good place to mention a thread of the tapestry of Scripture that is so strongly
in the picture that not even the BJs can remove it. It is the theme of what
happens to a nation when the wicked prosper and their sins are unchecked, and
what it is like among a people when the righteous prosper and sin is constantly
kept in check through a covenant relationship with God.
This
is also a good spot to place this reminder that the best resource I could
recommend to learn how to have a “let the word of Christ dwell in your richly”
experience of God (Colossians 3:16) is the “Experiencing God” course by Henry
Blackaby. This servant of God (who went to be with the Lord, Feb 10, 2024) is
the man God used to teach me how to read Scripture as God speaking to me. I
cannot compare it to any other resources, but simply testify that this is how
God showed me how to “tremble at God’s word” as God delights in, and no one
should accept BJ’s “another Jesus” without going through that Bible study
course as it is designed and watching to see what happens when someone seeks to
“live by every word that comes from the mouth of God”.
I
share about the Blackaby ministry because of what they posted on their Facebook
page this morning, “‘Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to
any people’ (Prov. 14:34).” This reminded me of Proverbs 29:2, “When the
righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people
groan.” My point is that it makes no sense whatsoever to truly want a “god” who
does not execute justice against criminals. We keep watching in North American
society as sin increases to the disgrace of our people and our countries are
crumbling in the “whoever does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it”
kind of way. When there is no justice against sin, the people groan as they
watch their societies dissolve. No “good” God would leave sin unpunished. And
nowhere in the Bible does it present God being at peace with his goodness while
he tolerates sin in its damaging attack on his people.
Now BJ
moves from philosophers prior to Christ to some men we hear of as “the Church
Fathers”. And what stands out is that BJ is doing it again, making claims
without evidence! He writes,
Like Plato and Philo, they were committed to reading the Scriptures under the assumption that God is good, and all God does is goodness. And now, in Christ, they are also informed by the apostolic revelation that God is infinite Love in God’s very nature. They know that God is Light, and in God there is no darkness at all. They believe that God is Life, and in him there is no death at all. They preach that God is Mercy, and in him is no retribution at all. The revelation that God is immutable Christlike love, light, and life precedes their reading of the Bible and guides their interpretation of every line (p. 90).
Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky!
First,
he doesn’t share any evidence for his claim.
Second, there is nothing wrong with the assumption that God is good
since it is so clearly revealed throughout the Scriptures. And we do know that
in Jesus Christ, God’s Light came into the world.
Third,
HOWEVER!!! Notice his false equivalency parallelism:
- “They know that God is Light, and in God there is no darkness at all.”
- “They believe that God is Life, and in him there is no death at all.”
- “They preach that God is Mercy, and in him is no retribution at all.”
Really? The first two make sense. God by his very nature is Light and
there cannot be any darkness in him at all (the Bible says that). It is also
true that God is Life and cannot have death in him (also biblical). But that he
is “mercy” but without “retribution”? Totally unbiblical. And no evidence that any
of the Church Fathers said such a thing!
C’mon.
Even Jesus said that God was both! In Jesus’ own words, “Whoever believes in
him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18),
and, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36). I’m
quite expecting BJ to explain these away later in his book as more
anthropomorphisms, but I present them as the words of “the Word” himself, and
there is no way BJ can legitimately erase the very “word of Christ” on the
matter just because he doesn’t like it that God executes righteous justice
against criminals (Here is an excellent short article that explains why we need
both God’s goodness and his justice to have either[6]).
So,
even though BJ throws in phrases like “knowing this up front” (p. 90) as if he
made his point about the Church Fathers, I say bogus. Not so. No points made.
No evidence given. We aren’t “knowing” this up front because it is not
knowledge, but ignorance.
Okay,
I really thought I would be able to get through this more quickly, but the
false statements continue, and people are still buying the book!
Said another way, the first Christians committed themselves fully to the gospel of Jesus Christ and his revelation of triune Love. Then they would open the Scriptures. This theological precommitment dramatically impacted how they read and translated the Bible. And so it can for us today (p. 90).
No
way! The first Christians heard the gospel of the kingdom saturated with the
Scriptures! The Scriptures were opened to them by the proclamation of the
gospel of the kingdom that was both showing from the Scriptures that Jesus was
the Christ, and teaching how the gospel of the kingdom delivers people out of
the domain of darkness and transfers them into the kingdom of God’s beloved
Son. Read the book of Acts. It shows this abundantly clearly.
I am
going to end here for today, but my point in this is simple: BJ is absolutely
wrong to say that people figured out the right preconditions and preconceptions
before they opened the Scriptures. No one can have a “theological
precommitment” prior to engaging with Scripture since it is the Scriptures, the
“breathed out words of God” that tell us what to believe.
And so,
it better NOT be for us today that we let the BJs tell us what to think before
we open the Scriptures when God’s word says that “faith comes from hearing, and
hearing through the word of Christ” which IS the Scriptures!
In
conclusion, a verse BJ quoted earlier argues against him:
He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD (Yahweh) require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)
What
is “good” means, “good (moral) adj. — of moral excellence.”
The
“LORD” means “Yahweh”, Jesus’ Father.
To do
“justice” means, “justice n. — judgment involved in the determination of rights
and the assignment of rewards and punishments.”
To
love “kindness” means, “kindness (act) n. — a kind act.”
To
walk “humbly” means, “to do humbly v. — to behave in a humble manner” (Bible Sense Lexicon).
Here
we see clearly that what Yahweh considers “good” includes BOTH justice and
kindness together. And those who walk humbly with God worship him as both just
and kind because we know, “Evil men do not understand justice, but those who
seek the LORD understand it completely” (Proverbs 28:5).[7]
© 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]
I know we
have not yet discovered what BJ is going to do with such an obvious revelation
of God to breathe out the word “propitiation” four times in the New Testament
(Romans 3:25; Hebrews 2:17; I John 2:2; I John 4:10), but here is what that
word means as defined in the Bible Sense Lexicon, “propitiation n. — the means
of appeasing wrath and gaining the good will of an offended person; especially
with respect to sacrifices for appeasing angered deities.” BJ has already tried
to deny that God would do such a thing, and has claimed that God feeling wrath
against sin as revealed in the Scriptures is false. I’m just pointing out that
anyone believing BJ instead of God should literally and sincerely and
poor-in-spiritly be ashamed of themselves and come to Jesus in repentance and
faith to get to know the wonders of our “great salvation”.
[2]
Jesus (the Word) and the Scriptures (the word)
While I'm continuing to slog through a
poison-in-the-pudding book of false teachings, God keeps speaking to me through
his word about the glory of his word. In Matthew 11, Jesus addresses some of
the things this false teacher claims against the Bible, and in a way that not
only rebukes those claims, but ministers to me through "the word of
Christ" to build up my faith.
[3]
To Understand God's Justice Completely
This has got to be one of my shortest videos ever!
Anyway, one more Scripture showing God's thoughts about what we think of his
justice.
[4]
The “’root of bitterness’” that “springs up and causes trouble, and by it many
become defiled” in Hebrews 12:15 is not about “bitterness” as we often hear it
taught. The “root of bitterness” is a quote from the Old Testament, so we must
look to that passage to see what the bitter root is all about. We find in
Deuteronomy 29:16-28 where Moses is warning his people in relation to all the “detestable
things, their idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, which were among
them” that they had seen in Egypt, and in the nations they had passed through
on their way to the Promised Land. And then Moses gives this warning:
Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’
So, the “bitter root” is a metaphor for
someone bringing the idols of the nations into the camp, and acting like they
will be safe even though they are walking in the stubbornness of their hearts.
The rest of that section explains God’s judgment. However, my point is that it
is just as evil for the author to use pagans who did not understand Yahweh to
change what the Scriptures say about Yahweh. It is just as deadly a poison as
what God was dealing with in that day.
[5]
The Existence and Attributes of God - A Reader’s Guide to a Christian Classic:
https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-existence-and-attributes-of-god
[7]
Paul Washer: What is the
greatest problem in all of Scripture (explaining how God deals with his own
justice in order to justly forgive us of our sins)
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