Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
Day 77
“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 |
First,
I see Jesus in the Levites who killed 3,000 of their countrymen because they
were the instigators in the evil and wicked idolatry of the golden calves.
That’s Jesus, right? The shepherd who fights the evil and wicked forces that
have tried to hold his people captive? Isn’t “the reason the Son of God
appeared was to destroy the works of the devil”? (I John 3:8). Isn’t that what
he was doing in purging Israel of the evil of their demonic idols? That’s what
BJ wants me to see, right, how Jesus as the coming judge is prefigured in the
judgments we see throughout the Old Testament?
Fact
is that there is no disparity between the Jesus of the New Testament and the
Yahweh of the Old Testament, right? I mean, when Jesus returns,
“the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?’” (Revelation 6:15-17).
Doesn’t that put the one who is seated on the throne and the Lamb in the
same place of executing “the great day of THEIR wrath”? So what is it telling
you that BJ keeps insisting that Jesus and Yahweh are in disagreement about
such things, or that Jesus is only seen in his first coming but not in
everything prophesied (in both testaments of Scripture) about his second
coming?
This
is the thing that grieves me beyond irritation that people are swallowing BJ’s
arsenic-in-the-apple-juice (koolaid) without seeing that he demands that we
ignore so many things that are plainly written. But even in that, people cower
in shame that they would dare to admit what is plainly written because, to
measure up to the BJs, you have to deny what is so clear and plain and
consistent and harmonious throughout the Scriptures.
And
then, how do we see Jesus in all the Old Testament references to atonement?
Don’t we see him as both the atoning sacrifice that cleanses from sin and the
Great High Priest who expresses and fulfills the fullness of the covenant?
Don’t we see ourselves putting our hands on Jesus, the sacrificial lamb,
confessing our sins over him as our only hope of forgiveness and acceptance
with God, and seeing that in his “it is finished!” atonement is made, and the
wrath of God against our sin propitiated by his shed blood?
I
mean, isn’t “the book of life” that “of the Lamb who was slain”? (Rev 13:8).
Don’t we look at the sacrificial animals of the first covenant and see in them
how Jesus “himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to
sin and live to righteousness” because “by his wounds you have been healed” (I
Peter 2:24)? You know, just like a plain reading of Isaiah 53 described!
So,
when we read in the New Testament the warning, “Do you suppose, O man—you who
judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will
escape the judgment of God?” (Romans 2:3), do we not see that no one escaped
the judgment of God prior to the coming of Christ? And when people are told in
the New Testament, “because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing
up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be
revealed” (Romans 2:5), don’t we see that as harmonious with the prophetic
warnings Yahweh gave to Israel and the nations that have been fulfilled in the
revealing of God’s wrath against sin?
And
then I read in Hebrews 3 that the writer takes the very scenes of the books of
Moses where God says, “I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They
always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my
wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest’” (3:10-11) and says that it was “as the
Holy Spirit says” (vs 7), which is exactly what we would expect if the Holy
Spirit had carried a man along to write down God’s words.
And
then the writer warns believers to “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any
of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God”
(vs 12), and again makes reference to those people who “were unable to enter
because of unbelief” (vs 19). This makes it clear that the judgment Yahweh
pronounced over the generation that refused to go into the Promised Land was
affirmed as not only just and righteous, but is used as a warning to believers
to watch out for the same danger of unbelief and falling away.
My
point is that, when BJ says that we should ask how we see Jesus revealed in the
Old Testament, he doesn’t mean what is plainly revealed about Jesus, but what
his boxed-in “another Jesus” is like that requires rejecting even the very
words of Christ himself that do not fit the narrative.
I also
am watching to see how the BJs “idolize” or “blaspheme” God’s name since that
is something BJ has warned us about so hypocritically. They idolize their “another
Jesus” who must correct the Yahweh we see revealed in Scripture. They blaspheme
Yahweh for being overly harsh in his judgments on wicked and criminal nations.
They want us to cower in the corner fearing that we might break their rules
when, as Jesus said, they are just the teachings of men who were not carried
along by the Spirit and were not given the breathed-out words of God.
With
all that staying-together-in-negative-emotions about the BJs and their “another
Jesus”, “different spirit”, and “different gospel”, let’s continue with my
testimony of how wonderfully God spoke to me through his word to prepare me for
the next leg of the journey down BJ’s garden path.
As I
head into Matthew 19 in my morning time with God, I am now going through this
section of Scripture:
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.” (Matthew 19:3-9)
Notice what Jesus says about Yahweh.
1. “Have you not read…” again
affirms what is written in the Hebrew Scriptures without any reference to
correcting anything at all. This rebukes BJ for claiming otherwise.
2. “that he who created them”
indicates Jesus talking about Genesis 1 and 2 affirming that Yahweh created
Adam and Eve (them). This rebukes BJ for claiming that literal/historical
creation did not happen as described in God’s own breathed-out words.
3. “from the beginning” indicates
that Jesus saw Adam and Even created in the beginning as Genesis described, not
the sudden humanizing of some hominids that were around for kazillions of years
before God took the reigns of evolution and headed it in the
in-the-image-of-God direction. BJ also gets rebuked for suggesting that the
beginning is different than Genesis says it is since Jesus is affirming the
whole account as history, the way the Pharisees had read those Scriptures out
loud in synagogue worship, and is using it as the foundation on which to teach
the Pharisees how to relate to Scripture!
4. “made them male and female,” which,
of course, is exactly what the world needs to hear today from Christians who
believe God’s word is God’s word and know that Jesus Christ is the only hope of
salvation from sin and from the coming day of wrath. Jesus treated Genesis 1
and 2 as real history, rebuking BJ and his kin for claiming the opposite.
5. “and said, ‘Therefore a man
shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two
shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh.” Jesus said
it was his Father, Yahweh, who said this, laying down the institution of
marriage as a real event in real history by the real Yahweh who was holy,
righteous, and good, without any need of correction whatsoever.
6. “What therefore God has joined
together, let not man separate.” Jesus put the institution of marriage on
Yahweh, that in marriage God joins people together, and man has no right to
separate marriages.
7. Jesus then clarified that “Because
of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the
beginning it was not so”, meaning that the provision of divorce as a way to
provide for wives who were rejected by their husbands was not the original
plan, but a concession to make sure the women were given legal standing that
wouldn’t be there if the men could just discard their wives and leave them
helpless.
8. “And I say to you: whoever
divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits
adultery”, which is now Jesus saying that he can speak with the same authority
as his Father because the two are one and Jesus was the one through whom the
Father did all that creating!
I say this to show how clearly Jesus upheld
Scripture. BJ has only tried to use Scriptures that look like he was correcting
the Old Testament Scriptures when Jesus was really correcting the “righteousness”
of the Pharisees by exposing their false teachings and habits about giving,
prayer and fasting (Matthew 6ff). BJ failed at that because those Scriptures in
the Sermon on the Mount do not say what he claimed. And there are no other
Scriptures that even come close to saying Jesus corrected anything from the Old
Testament, but we have Scriptures like this one in Matthew 19 where Jesus again
affirmed the Scriptures, and affirmed Yahweh in what those Scriptures declared.
Now, a couple of days ago (in my journal
journey, that is) I quoted from II Thessalonians 1 in reference to BJ dissing
the idea that vengeance is an expression of both Yahweh and Jesus. I said I
would come back to this, so here is that whole section. Paul writes,
This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed (II Thessalonians 1:5-10).
Here’s my thing: if the apostles speak of “your
steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that
you are enduring” (vs ), and that “This is evidence of the righteous judgment
of God,” why would we want to believe someone who says that God doesn’t judge,
or that his judgment is not righteous, or that Yahweh is only portrayed as
judging in the God/man hybrid but the “another Jesus” of the BJs does not
endorse judging or judge righteously.
And, if this Scripture says that “God
considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you,” and this is
in the New Testament just as we see it in the Old Testament, why would we
listen to someone who does NOT consider it just of God and Jesus to repay
affliction to those who afflict God’s people just as they did under the old
covenant?!
And, if this Scripture says that God will “grant
relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us,” and that this will happen “when
the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire,”
and that it will be JESUS who is “inflicting vengeance on those who do not know
God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus”, why would we
ever believe someone who says that Jesus would never inflict vengeance on
sinners the way Yahweh is portrayed in the Old Testament? How could a Jewish
man like Paul see the Hebrew Scriptures and the word of God the apostles were
preaching as all talking about the same God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
but people believe the BJs who lie and say that their “another Jesus” is
nothing like the God/hybrid model of Yahweh in the Hebrew Scriptures?
And, if this Scripture says that “They (the
people who did not come to Christ in salvation) will suffer the punishment of
eternal destruction,” connecting this to Jesus being the one “inflicting
vengeance” on those people, and that this will send them “away from the
presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,” just like Jesus said
about the goats in the Great White Throne judgment of Matthew 25, and this will
happen “when he (Jesus) comes on that day”, why would we ever pay these
peddlers of God’s word their big bucks to tell us that God’s word can’t
possibly mean what it so plainly says?!
And, if this Scripture says that all this
judging Jesus will do will result in him being “glorified in his saints,” as he
vindicates us while expressing vengeance to them, “and to be marveled at among
all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed”, then why
would we let the BJs idolize their “another Jesus” who does nothing to save
anyone from anything at all (because they believe everyone will be included in
the end anyway), while blaspheming both Yahweh and Yasous (Jesus) for daring to
express their vengeance against evil and unbelieving people?
Now,
isn’t this the same thing Paul said in Romans, that second chapter BJ needs to
diss so we will not meditate on what it says?
He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality (Romans 2:6-11).
I
know, I know, BJ has already claimed the authority to reject the authority of
the apostle Paul. I don’t know what it is about Paul the BJs don’t like, but I
heard it in person from someone that left me bewildered at how anyone could be
upset with Paul for his apostolic place in preaching the gospel to us Gentiles?
But now I get it. Paul contradicts BJ, so Paul must be dissed while BJ is
exalted as understanding Jesus better than the apostles did!
But
humor me. Let’s actually look at what the apostle Paul said here. He didn’t
make money on what he taught like BJ is making a killing (in the literally,
literal sense) peddling his false teachings for profit (not prophet).
Paul
says that,
1. God “will render to each one
according to his works:” which means that God will only do to us what we have
earned. Nothing more. Nothing less.
2. “to those who by patience in
well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life”.
This is the well-doing of those who have been made alive in Christ, saved by
grace through faith without works, and are now showing their faith by the good
works they are doing according to God’s will. God will “render” eternal life to
those who are alive in his Son.
3. “but for those who are self-seeking
and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and
fury.” I know that BJ tried (and failed) to say that “wrath and fury” don’t
really mean “wrath and fury”, but that was utter bogusness. This Scripture
speaks the truth, and it says in the New Testament that there is a coming final
judgment that will fulfill all that the Old Testament judgments prefigured. And
we should never be heeding the counsel of someone telling us the exact opposite
of what God breathed out into his own word!
4. “There will be tribulation and
distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek,”
which means the judgment of God will be carried out without favoritism and
partiality, no universal inclusion in the end because that would not be just.
5. “but glory and honor and peace for
everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no
partiality.” It is so clear that there is no partiality in God granting the
fruit of his grace to believers while judging unbelievers with the condemnation
and wrath Jesus himself spoke about. And, again, why would we listen to someone
telling us the New Testament does NOT speak of God’s judgment when it so
clearly does and assigns it to Jesus as much as to the Father?
Well,
I feel like I got caught up on my personal sharing along this journey. Because
I believe that the Experiencing God lifestyle of treating God’s word like God’s
word, treating it like God speaks to us through it by his Spirit, applying his
word to whatever we see him doing in our lives, and making adjustments to join
him in his work, is not only vastly superior to the Bible-dissing, twisting,
and dismantling of the BJs, but is in a whole other section of the store than
the poison-in-the-pudding display of BJ’s “more Christlike” foodline.
It is
interesting that, as I look in BJ’s book to find where I left off, I see that he
speaks of “the divine solution – Jesus Christ, to whom all Scripture (before
and after) points” (p. 208). And I smile because I just showed in these two
days of journal journeying that BJ doesn’t have a clue how the Scriptures of
both the Old and New Testaments point to the Jesus who is exactly like his
Father as revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures, and it is blasphemy to suggest that
either one of them got it wrong about their own justice, mercy, and faithfulness.
© 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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