Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
Day 94
“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)
|
The False Filter |
The Biblical Filter |
|
The word OR the Word |
The Word THROUGH the word |
Conclusion: a retelling of
the Emperor’s New Clothes.
The
big deal in my last day’s Journal Journey was the discovery that Brad Jersak
declared the parable of the prodigal son to be the quintessential illustration
of God’s wrath even though the parable was not about God’s wrath, never
mentioned God’s wrath, never illustrated God showing wrath, and never matched
anything anywhere in the Bible that it speaks of God’s wrath.
At the
same time, we looked at parables Jesus told in which he clearly spoke about
God’s wrath both in allegorical illustrations and real-life applications. Each
instance also matches what is taught elsewhere in the Scriptures about the
judgment of God on sin and sinners, and the final judgment to come. Nothing
incongruous whatsoever, and yet not what the BJ fans want to hear.
This
morning, in my time with God in his word and prayer, I came to the seventh “woe”
Jesus pronounced against the scribes and Pharisees. I will share the Scripture,
and then ask you to consider what it means that Jesus would conclude his seven
woes with something so condemning.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. (Matthew 23:29-36)
1. Not one part of this is allegorical. Real people. Real history. Real events. Real prophecies. Real warnings. Real-life judgment. And we now know, real life fulfillment. Plus, Jesus announced SEVEN woes to make sure we got it that it was him doing the judging of those people.
2. The fact that Jesus would pronounce seven woes in which he addressed the “hypocrites” who led the synagogue worship, and who controlled people’s access to the Scriptures, is an inescapable indictment on them. “Woe” means “horror (interjection) n. — an interjection of grief or of denunciation” (BSL). We can be quite sure from Jesus’ lament that immediately follows, and from his description of judgment on the leaders, that he was using “woe” in its fullest sense of BOTH grief and denunciation, something BJ’s “another Jesus” would never have the righteousness (or Christlikeness) to do.
3. Jesus is showing that he knows the truth. His sevenfold description of the heart condition of these men is such a direct and stark contrast to their appearances that it glorifies Jesus as the Son of God for KNOWING this! He KNOWS what is real. David told Solomon, “the LORD (Yahweh) searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought” (I Chronicles 28:9). Solomon included in his prayer of dedication for the temple, “for you, you only, know the hearts of all the children of mankind” (I Kings 8:39). Matthew spoke of Jesus “knowing their thoughts” (Matthew 9:4), Luke concurred, “But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts” (Luke 9:47), and Jesus glorified his Father with “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts” and then adds his judgment, “For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15). BJ’s Jesus has no such apprehension of the truth of people, their need, their standing before God, and so we turn to the true Lord Jesus Christ who knows us all in truth and in his kindness is calling us all to repentance so we can share in the glory of eternal life.
4. Jesus has repeatedly called the scribes and Pharisees “hypocrites”, which means, “hypocrite (actor) n. — a person who professes beliefs and opinions that he or she does not hold in order to conceal his or her real feelings or motives” (BSL). He is telling “the crowds and the disciples” that these men who paraded themselves as their righteous leaders were as corrupt as corrupt can be. I know from my own journey through BJ’s book that even though there is such glaring evidence of his deliberate misleading of people, and there is no doubt that his Jesus is the “another Jesus” Paul warned about, and the spirit of his book is the “different spirit” Paul warned about, and the gospel he talks about is the “different gospel” Paul warned about (which the book has proven “is no gospel at all”), it is still difficult for me to confidently conclude that he truly is a false prophet. I know we are told to make these judgments. We are to warn such people and then have nothing to do with them if they are unrepentant, but there is still the awareness that I am just a fellow human being with limitations Jesus did not have. However, when Jesus makes seven expressions of condemnation on these leaders, calling them hypocrites repeatedly, showing in the woes how their hypocrisy has been on display for everyone to see, this concluding woe most certainly brings the sin of these men to its most intense spotlight. If they will not repent, the crowds and disciples MUST know that these men are NOT of God, and are actually AGAINST God with their hypocrisy.
5. As Jesus speaks of “the prophets”,
he has ample opportunity to give us clarifications of any he was correcting because
they got it wrong about what God had breathed out through them. However, once
more, unanimously, there is zero reference to any prophet making a mistake,
corrupting what God told them into a God/man hybrid, confusing God’s role in
sending his Son to suffer and die for our sins, or anything whatsoever. And
because we are all the way at the end of BJ’s book, I now know that he has not
presented ONE instance of Jesus or the apostles correcting ANYTHING from the
Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures they had in their day. This is particularly sad since it is a major theme of his book to convince people that we need a more Christlike Yahweh and a more Christlike word![1]
6. When Jesus does speak of the
prophets, notice his use of “righteous” because he would never use this word
with someone who had spoken falsehood about his Father. He rhymed (partnered) “the
prophets” and “the righteous” in the Jewish parallelism that emphasizes and
enhances what is being mentioned. He calls “shedding the blood of the prophets”
“murder”, indicating that they were not put to death as false prophets since
that would not have been murder! Jesus says that he himself will send more “prophets
and wise men and scribes” who now have given us the rest of the Scriptures, and
he adds that they will do to these servants of God what they had done to the
previous servants of God. Specifically, he speaks of “all the righteous blood
shed on earth” and then he gives us a literal A-to-Z collection of ALL the
prophets we have in the Scriptures from Abel to Zechariah, something he would
never have done if any of those prophets had spoken falsehood against him and
his Father.
7. And finally, Jesus pronounces
JUDGMENT! This absolutely exposes Brad Jersak as a liar and deceiver as Jesus and
the apostles warned. Jesus declares that those scribes and Pharisees were “the
sons of those who MURDERED the prophets”. When he says, “Fill up, then, the
measure of your fathers,” he means to bring the evil of their forefathers to
its grand climax so it can be judged and condemned with such righteous judgment
that the evil will be expunged from the coming kingdom of the new heavens and
the new earth. And when he adds, “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are
you to escape being sentenced to hell?” it is clear that he is pronouncing the
judgment BJ has tried to claim that neither Jesus nor the “more Christlike”
Yahweh of BJ’s dreams would ever do. But the true Lord Jesus did it, does it,
and will do it. As Jesus describes what these men will do to the messengers he
sends, his statement that “on you may come all the righteous blood shed
on earth,” is a very clear and specific reference to the guilt and condemnation
these men were under as the “sons” of the prophet-murderers. This is why Paul
was so clear at the end of his ministry to declare, “Therefore I testify to you
this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from
declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:26-27). Paul could say that
no one’s blood was on his head because he did not fail to share the gospel with
everyone. If they ended up in hell, their blood was on their own head since
they would have rejected what Paul told them.
Clarification: BJ’s “another Jesus”
is not only so different from Yahweh as revealed in the breathed-out words of
God, but it is different from the true Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in the
breathed-out words of God! As Paul said, “have nothing to do with him, that he
may be ashamed” (II Thessalonians 3:14), and “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).
The
Plumbline Between the Pendulum Extremes
As way
of reminder, I have tried to illustrate how both of the extremes BJ is arguing
for and against are his creation (as is/are the Emperor’s New Clothes he keeps
speaking about). I do not agree with either of his extremes. I am not asking
readers to choose between those two extremes but to reject them both.
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BJ’s Literal Sense |
The Historical-Grammatical Sense |
BJ’s Literalism |
|
A
god-of-rhetoric-and-allegory-who-doesn’t-even-add-up. |
|
A
god-in-man’s-image-who-is-just-as-trigger-happy-angry-as-too-many-fathers. |
Believe it or not, the whole thing is BJ’s rhetoric. He has pitted his
LS extreme against his Strawman of the opposite extreme as a rhetorical device.
You know, to use rhetorical devices to persuade people to believe what the
author desires even though that makes it non-literal. Allegorical. Figurative.
Just get the moral of the story out of it. And the moral of the story is… WATCH
OUT FOR FALSE TEACHERS!
What I AM encouraging is that everyone would
let Scripture speak for itself. It has been doing that for centuries. Even
millennia. And the only thing that ruins it is all the… FALSE TEACHERS!
I have tried to show in my responses what
happens when we do our own reading of the Bible, talk with our Father in Heaven
about what we are reading, examine the Scriptures to discern whether anything
we are being taught from others is true, and reject, renounce, and forsake
anyone and anything that contradicts the clearly revealed words of God
(unrepentantly, I mean). This is summarized as the Historical-Grammatical sense
(or Grammatical-Historical sense). However, I’m not arguing the exact wording
of that viewpoint, but the sense that we understand God’s word in the context
of the historical background of when and to whom it was written, and in our
best understanding of the grammatical sense of the words God breathed out.
|
BJ’s Literal Sense |
The Historical-Grammatical
Sense |
BJ’s Literalism |
|
A god-of-rhetoric-and-allegory-who-doesn’t-even-add-up. |
Taking what the words mean
in the context they are presented and tested by anything else in God’s word
that helps us understand what God said and what he meant. |
A
god-in-man’s-image-who-is-just-as-trigger-happy-angry-as-too-many-fathers. |
My
focus is to simply call people back to the Scriptures. They are God’s
word. The Bible is the Scriptures so it is God’s word. We get to know Jesus
through the Scriptures. There is not a Jesus Christ we can attach to outside
the Scriptures who can reinterpret what we are reading (that’s BJ in his
Emperor’s New Clothes costume).
Instead, the Lord Jesus Christ has ascended
to the right hand of the Father. He has left us his word to live by. That is
why we call it the highest authority over the church. We don’t mean in place of
Jesus, but because Jesus is the one who gave us his word. It is his word. His
manual for the whole church to live by. Every teaching we hear or read is
measured by the word, not BJ’s “another Jesus” that we must take his word for
it is outside the Scriptures somewhere telling everyone through the BJ prophets
what their “another Jesus” thinks of Yahweh and his boys who wrote down his
words.
Rather, the Bible IS the manual Jesus Christ
has left us, and we worship him by following his word just as other generations
worshiped him by obeying the prophets he sent (or were judged for rejecting and
sometimes killing the prophets). Paul equated “be filled with the Spirit” with
“let the word of Christ dwell in your richly”. He said that we are to take up
“the sword of the Spirit” which is “the word of God”. We do not want to have
the word without the Spirit, but we cannot have the Spirit-filled life without
the word of Christ dwelling in us richly. We must have the word and the Spirit,
and BJ is NEITHER!
BJ’s
Non-literal View of his own Non-literalness
In his
book, BJ is using rhetorical devices. He says that if rhetoric is used it means
the content is non-literal. BJ’s content is non-literal. Everything he writes
in his book is opposite to what it says because that is what BJ says in his
book about what God’s word says that he doesn’t like. I don’t like what is in
BJ’s book, so that means it is non-literal. Literally!!!
BJ’s
claim: “But rhetoric is like preaching. It’s an oratory method for effect” (p.
274). Rhetoric might refer to ways of communicating that tend to persuade, and
preaching is obviously communicating to persuade sinners to receive the good
news of the kingdom. However, what BJ is missing is that EVERYTHING in the
Bible is breathed out by God, so it has an element that goes beyond rhetoric,
beyond parables, beyond apocalypse, beyond hyperbole, to communicate… TRUTH!!!
And
because the issue in the Bible is that it is telling the TRUTH, BJ is lying to
suggest that anything God communicates, even using figurative language, means
something different than what is stated. The Bible is “the word of truth”. Our Helper
is “the Spirit of truth”. The Spirit leads us into “all truth”. No matter what
rhetoricalism anyone believes they find in any of the writers, the truth is
that they are telling the truth.
When BJ turns Scriptures around to mean something different from
what the Spirit of Truth says, and he claims that the “word of Truth” got it
wrong about Yahweh in the Old Testament, it would mean that the prophets who
claimed to be telling the truth about Yahweh were really false prophets
(according to the word of Truth on the matter), and that makes Jesus a false
Messiah since Jesus affirmed the prophets of the Old Testament who told us what
Yahweh was like.
All
that to say that BJ’s rhetorical devices do not add up to truth in love, spirit
and truth, or truth whatsoever.
Looking
For a More Christlike Conclusion
It is
so fitting that the very last words of BJ’s book are his attempt at a summary
of what Scripture says on behalf of Christ, and it is NOT like what Jesus would
say anywhere in Scripture!
Why is
it fitting?
Because Brad Jersak is a false teacher, so he concludes with a false
teaching.
The
final statement is “A Word whose voice we hear saying, ‘Come, follow me.
There’s a place at my Father’s table for everyone. Even you. Especially you’”
(p. 275).
That
is NOT Christlike enough!
When
Jesus called people to “Come, follow me”, it included arguing with people he
said were of their father the devil. He said that those who believed in him
would have a place at his table of eternal life, but those who would not
believe were condemned already. I could go on with these contrasts, but it
would require believing what Jesus said about the sheep and the goats, the
gathering of the elect at his coming to judge the lost, and even all his
allegorical illustrations of the real-life judgment and wrath of God that
sinners will face if they do not repent and receive the good news.
And
what is REALLY missing is any reference to… THE GOSPEL!!! How unChristlike can
you get!
Do you
realize that in this whole book, BJ did not tell us what the gospel is? He did
not proclaim the gospel. He did not tell us what Jesus said, that the time is
fulfilled (he kept telling us why the prophets got it wrong), the kingdom of
God is at hand (he wants us to think everyone is in whether they enter or not),
repent (BJ wants us to agree with the serpent’s “Did God really say…?” instead
of repenting of walking in the ways of the world, the flesh, and the devil),
and believe the good news (that a Savior has been born, who is Christ the Lord,
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, Jesus came to seek and to
save the lost).
BJ has
taken away the gospel that tells sinners that there is a Savior who has atoned
for our sins. He denies all the Scriptures that say God sent his Son to take
our place. I don’t think BJ even mentions “propitiation” once in his book.
Okay, I
just checked. The word “propitiated” comes up once in a quote from Anthony
someone (can’t remember who he was) in reference to us not having “propitiated
God and changed him” (p. 267). But the Bible never even suggests us
propitiating God or atoning for our own sins, so that still isn’t an
explanation of what the apostles meant by using the word four times!
Now,
in a book so determined to diss the wrath of God against sin, it is ironic that
the author would not even mention the word that means God dealing with his
wrath and justice against our sin! Propitiation comes up in these four passages
of Scripture. Here is its meaning:
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. (BSL)
We
needed a “means” of “appeasing wrath” because of everything Scripture says
about “the wrath OF God”. This wrath had to be appeased, or satisfied, if we
would ever “gain the good will” of the “offended person”, which was God. And
this most definitely relates to “sacrifices for appeasing angered deities”
since our sins were an affront to the holy God and “without the shedding of
blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22).
The
point is that the very word “propitiation” MEANS that God had wrath that was
against sinners and someone besides us guilty sinners had to satisfy the
justice of God against our sins. It’s in the word! It can’t be warm-fuzzied
away. It can’t be erased with misrepresentations of rhetoric. Someone had to be
our substitute in satisfying God’s justice against our sin.
Now let’s see what these four verses tell us about who did this for us:
1. “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Romans 3:22-25). Almost every phrase of that sentence disagrees with BJ’s claims. Especially note that “God put forward” his own Son “AS a propitiation” and “BY his blood” with the intention that it MUST “be received by faith” to get a spot at the table! This propitiation is “IN Christ Jesus”, which is why BJ’s conclusion is not Christlike enough! He made no mention of Jesus calling anyone to the cross to “receive by faith” what “God put forward as a propitiation by his blood”. How unloving to leave out the greatest gift of love the world has ever known!!!
2. “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17). Jesus had to become like us. He was NOT “a merciful and faithful high priest” prior to his coming since there was no sacrifice that could take away our sins. There was no covenant in place of which he was high priest. But he became like us so he could become our merciful and faithful high priest in service of God, for the express purpose of, “to make propitiation for the sins of the people”. Again, the fact that BJ wouldn’t even mention this word to show us how Christlike the Christ is, is… well… just like a word-twisting deceiving peddler of God’s word!
3. “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (I John 2:2). John was assuring the believers that Jesus “IS the propitiation for our sins”, but he knew that Jesus was always talking about the other sheep that were yet to believe in him (see John 17). John had come to know that this propitiation was not only for the Jews who believed in Jesus as Messiah, but for any Gentiles from all over the world throughout all remaining time who trusted in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, the one and only Savior of the world. But again, Jesus is THE propitiation of the wrath of God for OUR sins. There is no hope without this, and the fact that BJ did not mention it once proves again that he is teaching “another Jesus”, “a different spirit”, and “a different gospel” than the one we find in the very Christlike word of God!
4. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:9-10). BJ has tried so hard to deceive people from believing that “GOD sent his only son into the world” for the express purpose of him laying down his life in propitiation. God wants us to “live through him (Jesus)”. So how do we know God loves us? That he “SENT his Son to BE the propitiation for our sins”. This is precisely what Isaiah 53 declared hundreds of years earlier, and the fact that BJ tried so hard and deceptively to explain that Scripture away shows the evil of his heart that he does not want sinners to know the extreme glory of the love of God.
Because BJ suggests it is a huge stumbling stone for people in the
church to discover that God has righteous hatred for sin, he has tried to
rewrite Scripture to give people what they want to hear. However, we need to
hear the “whole counsel of God”, and not BJ’s pendulum-swinging extremes that
are both not true. God judges and condemns unrepentant sinners with wrath. He
forgives and welcomes repentant sinners with forgiveness. The Bible is
saturated with examples of both. Brad Jersak leaves these things out because
they expose him as a liar, and his last statement in the last chapter confirms
that his Christ is not even close to being Christlike enough.
A
Wrath-and-Love Conclusion
Yesterday (in reference to when I wrote this part) I was puttering in
the kitchen making slow-cooker chili, so I looked up some sermons on the wrath
of God to listen to while I worked. I settled on two messages by R.C. Sproul.
The first, “The Wrath of God: When Worlds Collide”, and the second, “The
Lovingkindness of God: Loved by God”. Between
the two of them, they showed the plumbline of truth that God is BOTH a
God of justice and a God of love. We do not need to cherry-pick between the
two. The links to both messages are in this
footnote.[2]
What
stood out so beautifully is that R.C. Sproul was using the Bible. He was
quoting whole Scripture verses and reading them in context. He explained what
words meant without explaining away any he didn’t like. It was just hearing the
truth being taught from Scripture.
By the
end of the second message, it was glaringly evident that BJ does not know the
word, let alone how to make it “more Christlike”. It was such a breath of fresh
air to hear Scripture handled correctly, truthfully, honestly, and sincerely.
The two messages together showed that God did indeed have “the wrath of God”,
and that God is so exceptionally loving that even the Hebrew Scriptures BJ
needs to allegorize are full to overflowing with expressions of God’s love for
his people. Please take the time to listen to real teachers of God’s word
before continuing with BJ down his garden path.
And
in Conclusion:
I am
planning to do a summary conclusion to my rebuttal of BJ’s false teachings.
However, this post is my conclusion to responding to the garden path of BJ’s
book. Whatever else I share in a summary rebuttal will be a strong
encouragement to search the Scriptures like the Bereans and find out what they
say about God’s wrath, his love, and everything else about him. Take to heart
the warnings of Jesus and the apostles about false teachers and seek God in his
word and prayer so you always know what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
He will lead and guide us into truth IF we will stick with his word, which is…
(drumroll please)… already quite Christlike enough!
© 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
#bradjersak #amoreChristlikeword #falseteachers
#amoreChristlikeGod #freedominChrist #Godsword #Bible #JesusChrist #God #penalsubstitionaryatonement
[1]
Just another reminder that in the one instance BJ claimed to present evidence
that Jesus was correcting Scripture it was nothing of the sort. He was
correcting the teaching of these very scribes and Pharisees that he is now
rebuking with these woes. It was their teaching from the Scriptures that was
false and needed correcting, just as is the case with BJ!
[2]
The Wrath of God: When Worlds Collide
https://youtu.be/BKubXE4ntdg?si=YI9RvlIgkVn8dPMc
The
Lovingkindness of God: Loved by God
https://youtu.be/L7I2xnXh2Lo?si=PMyKV5BnMoCTbbCV
For
added measure, here are some articles from Got Questions about Propitiation:
What
is propitiation?
https://www.gotquestions.org/propitiation.html
What
does it mean that Jesus is the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10)?
https://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-is-the-propitiation-for-our-sins.html
What
are some Bible verses about atonement?
https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-verses-about-atonement.html
What
is the doctrine of penal substitution?
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