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 |
1.
He
was 100% wrong that we can disregard everything Jesus said in Matthew 25 about
the sheep and the goats. We saw that Jesus himself taught the opposite of what
BJ claims, and there is no way to reject the Word of God in the word of God
when Jesus was speaking the words God breathed out through his Son, and through
Matthew, into the Scriptures. When the sheep get eternal life and the goats get
condemned to the fire God made for the devil and his angels, there is no
possible way to say that all people everywhere for all time get saved!
2.
He
was 100% wrong that I Corinthians 15:22 supports universal inclusion when the
“all” refers to all believers, particularly those who had fallen asleep in the
Lord and cannot be applied to unbelievers. Note: I just noticed that BJ’s
choice of translation includes the bias he was warning us about previously.
What is the bias? I didn’t notice it in using the ESV, and I didn’t notice it
because it wasn’t in the original Greek. But now that I’m coming back to BJ’s
book I see that he quoted, “As in Adam, all people die; so in Christ, all
people shall be made alive”. Guess what! The word “people” BJ uses twice is
NOT in the original! So he is guilty of using a translation that has
deliberately added words that aren’t there, something I am quite certain he
paraded himself as being totally against! And, it is what I complain about regarding
the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their New World Translation, that they add words
that aren’t there! Oh well, nothing surprising in the BJ camp. But I would just
add now that, if anyone bought his argument using the translation he quoted,
the translation is bogus, and it totally misrepresents what Paul said and what
he was talking about in that context.
3. BJ was also 100% wrong in using
Romans 11:32 to claim that God would show mercy on all people everywhere from
all time when everything Paul was talking about in Romans 9-11 was related to Israel
and how the Gentile believers should understand God’s work among the Jewish
people. However, I again see that in his book he deliberately used a false
translation to make his false claims. His translation says, “God consigned all
people to disobedience so he could have mercy on all people”. The
word “people” is not in this verse either, so the translation is a
mistranslation, and I only know it is promoting a misleading bias that is
contrary to what God said in those verses. If a guy cannot make his case
showing both the best and most accurate translations, and the wording in the originals
(even if tools are needed), he doesn’t have a case!
Now
that we have seen that BJ is wrong on all three counts, let’s look at the claims
he makes just to see how dishonest and deceptive he is.
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“Overlooking Paul’s understanding, intent, and argument, we began with
what he can’t mean” (p. 115). |
It is BJ who is presently overlooking what Paul said, even using a
dishonest translation of Paul’s words! And what he infers people dishonestly
claim he “can’t” mean is actually what it can’t mean because it’s not what
Paul said! |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“Namely, he can’t possibly mean what he actually said” (p. 115). |
Actually, BJ got it totally wrong what Paul said, so HE is the one he
can’t accept Paul could mean what he said! |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“So, here we have Revelation’s apparently infernal exclusion
head-to-head against two obviously universal inclusion verses…” (p. 115). |
No, here we have Revelations OBVIOUSLY “infernal exclusion” totally in
line with what Jesus and Paul said that are not even close to universal
inclusion verses! |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“…but because we believed the Bible is inerrant, we knew the two
authors could not possibly be in conflict or contradiction” (p. 115). |
What we saw is that the Bible (as the full collection of inspired
Scriptures) is inerrant, and when we read what was written, there truly was
no conflict or contradiction in what Jesus, Paul, or John wrote about the
judgment of the saved and the lost. It is BJ who is trying to create
conflicts where there are none because he needs people to believe his
universal inclusion theory. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“We must force them to agree” (p. 115). |
Nope. We just read them and found that they agreed. They didn’t even
need our help at all, let alone our forcing, fabricating, and deceiving. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“How? With our own eschatology, of course” (p. 115). |
Nope. What I shared was straight out of the Bible. It is BJ who is forcing
his “own eschatology” onto us, even using false translations that add words
to the Scriptures! |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“So, Paul’s straightforward and all-inclusive statements were
violently retrofitted to undergird our infernalist system” (p. 115). |
What a joke! Yes, Paul’s words were totally straightforward in showing
us how God would relate to “everyone who believes” in two different foci. No, there was nothing “all-inclusive” in his words at all. It does not
require any retrofitting to believe what Jesus, Paul and John wrote, but BJ
is trying very hard to retrofit our faith with him as the authority who can
change what is written in God’s word to his own agenda. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“This example is especially remarkable given that it’s hard to imagine
Paul making a stronger case for inclusion than he does” (p. 115). |
I’m shaking my head. Paul doesn’t even come close to making a case for
inclusion, and yet BJ has “imagined” that there couldn’t be a stronger case
for it than what Paul said even though BJ had to use a false translation to
make it look like Paul said something! |
It
appears that he just goes on and on with the same lies, so I will just
reiterate that there were no errors in what Matthew, Jesus, Paul, or John said
or wrote, so there is no conflict between the inerrancy of Scripture and its
authority to hold us accountable to what it says.
And
yes, I read his conclusion to this section on p. 116, but my fingers are
getting tired of typing out every statement he makes that is full of lies just
to prove that is the case. I’ll just say that everything he said in that
section is bogus because he is on his cheap grace extreme trying to prove that
anyone different than him is out to lunch when that would have to include
Matthew, Jesus, Paul, and John.
Next, BJ
tackles, “Inerrantist Literalism” (p. 116).
Because BJ is writing about his personal journey, I can’t dispute what
he did or what he was taught. However, I will say that the normal understanding
of “literal” meant what is described as the plumbline in this chart.
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BJ’s Literal Sense |
The Historical-Grammatical Sense |
BJ’s Literalism |
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Claims “literal” but means “tropological” (moral of the story), his
“different gospel” (from outside of the Scriptures), and “typological”
(allegorical), none of which mean "literal". |
The grammatical-historical method means reading the Bible in a plain
manner, respecting grammar, word meanings, and other factors with an emphasis
on context, Context, CONTEXT. |
BJ puts people here who ascribe to the plain meaning of Scripture as
if they are stifling the Holy Spirit and missing the point of the divine and
human authors.
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So,
because BJ is still pushing his “literal sense” as if it is what the early
church taught, and dissing the people who take the plain meaning of the
Scripture as his version of “literalism”, this whole section is just more of
his jargonized expressions of the same things. It is the Historical-Grammatical
(or Grammatical-Historical) that gives the best sense of what the Bible is
actually saying.
After
a couple of pages of his thoughts about everything, he again fails to make the
distinction between the symbolism of Revelation and the history of Genesis. So,
because he is misrepresenting Scripture on such important themes, let’s
clarify.
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“Similarly, when I read Genesis, I reasoned that the Bible says the
universe was created in six days, well, days means actual twenty-four-hour
periods, right?” (p. 118). |
No, not “similarly”, since Revelation is apocalyptic and Genesis is
history! And, yes, the historical-grammatical information in Genesis absolutely
does teach a six-day creation, and, as I have said before, the science does
nothing to discredit this.[1] |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“And if Adam and Eve were our historical proto-parents, then Cain and
his surviving brother were made to be the incestuous fathers of all people
(with imaginary sisters and inexplicable already-populated cities). |
Yes, Adam and Eve were the parents of the human race, just as
Scripture teaches. No, Cain and his siblings were not incestuous since the law forbidding
sexual relationships with family members was not given until hundreds of
years after the flood. I have to say that, with all the good Christian creationist sites
explaining both the historical-grammatical explanation of Scripture regarding
creation, and explaining how the human race came from Adam and Eve’s
children, it is pretty pathetic to hear somebody claiming there is something
wrong with any of it just to promote his another Jesus, different spirit, and
different gospel. Here are some more articles to refute this bogusness.[2] |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“And if the Bible says Noah’s floodwaters ‘covered the face of the
earth,’ it meant the entire globe, immersing Mount Everest, right? Literally.
Er – actually” (p. 118). |
Dejavu? I thought we covered this already. Yes, Noah’s floodwaters covered the face of the whole earth as it was
prior to the flood! No, it did not cover what we now have as Mount Everest because Mount
Everest was created during the flood with both the building up of sedimentary
rock and the tectonic action that pushed it up. Look it up for yourself and
you will find that Mount Everest is still growing! So, yes, the floodwaters did actually cover the surface of the planet,
and the evidence of such a worldwide flood is everywhere to be seen. Here are
some articles addressing BJ’s Mount Everest farce.[3] |
Okay,
I’m going to try to just summarize since all BJ is doing is challenging his
fabrication of a wrong view with a wrong view. He doesn’t understand the
historical-grammatical view of how to interpret Scripture, which is why he
didn’t dare include it. Oooops, I have to address this one:
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“That’s inerrant literalism as it stands today” (p. 118). |
No, that is BJ’s strawman (dishonest, deceptive) fabrication of his
opponent and he has replaced his strawman with something that doesn’t even
come close to being literal. |
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“And any Scriptures that challenge these theological commitments are
an inconvenience we overlook. When the authors or characters go off-script –
when Jesus frequently colors outside the lines – we could no longer even see
it" (p. 118). |
Again, this is a deceptive way of making a claim about something while
hiding it in a personal story, so I will separate the two. If that’s what he
and his buds did, bad on them. However, it is NOT what the historical-grammatical sense does, hence
being able to find what the Bible actually says without twisting it to say
things that aren’t there at all. And, the way BJ pretends the other guys are
doing what he claims is so horrible, the fact that he is the one doing the
misrepresenting, ignoring of Scriptures, and dissing things Jesus said about
the Scriptures, and the prophets, and about his Father, is horrible
hypocrisy. |
I
really wish I could still copy/paste because there is so much in here he is
lying about!
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BJ’s Claim |
Monte’s Response |
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“Like its modernist liberal counterpart, biblical literalism often
ignores or negates the illumination by the Spirit, prayerful discernment, and
obedient action as conditions for understanding Scripture” (p. 118). |
But the historical-grammatical sense does not. We can leave anything
resembling what BJ is describing (misrepresenting as it is) and totally
reject BJ’s dishonest approach to Scripture at the same time because the
plumbline approach does lead us to know the actual meaning of God’s word as
far as it is clearly revealed. |
I’m
going to stop here for the night. I see that he is now claiming that the early
church had a sense like what he has been promoting, so I suspect this will be
more labor-intensive work for my fingers to type it out. I will just say that
his statements are full of misrepresentations that I have already responded to.
Perhaps he will give details of what he is talking about under the “Patristic
Literal Sense” which he claims will be very different from the “biblical
literalism” sense he has fabricated.
Let’s
just say that, if I was a scout for a pro baseball team and I was sent to look
at BJ as a prospect, the fact that he has struck out every time at bat would be
enough for me to walk away now. However, since so many people are lining up for
this guys autograph, we will continue the journey of exposing how deceptive the
BJs really are.
© 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]
At creation.com, I typed in
the question, “How does science affirm the biblical account of creation?” Here
are the results: https://creation.com/en/search?q=how+does+science+affirm+the+biblical+account+of+creation
Here
is the same question asked at Answers in Genesis: https://answersingenesis.org/search/?q=How+does+science+affirm+the+biblical+account+of+creation%3F
And
here are a few from Institute for Creation Research: https://www.icr.org/home/submitsearch?f_keyword_all=does+science+affirm+creation%3F&action=submitsearch§ion=0&f_search_type=icr&f_constraint=both&f_context_all=any&f_context_exact=any&f_context_any=any&f_context_without=any
[2]
how did Adam and Eve's descendants populate the earth?
From
AIG: https://answersingenesis.org/search/?q=how+did+Adam+and+Eve%27s+descendents+populate+the+earth
[3]
CMI re Mount Everest: https://creation.com/en/search?q=Mount+Everest#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=Mount%20Everest&gsc.sort=
AIG
re Mount Everest: https://answersingenesis.org/search/?q=Mount+Everest
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