Examining "A More Christlike Word"
by Brad Jersak
Day 102
“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
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The Biblical Filter
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The word OR the Word
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The Word THROUGH the word
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A Gift at the End to Begin
my Conclusion
What I
am writing here comes after I had written most of what is in this conclusion. I
wasn’t quite done, and I had not yet done my rereading and editing, when I
began my time with God in Mark’s gospel. Today (the day of writing this) I read
the first section of the gospel account and felt something: that Mark’s
presentation of the gospel was moving FAST!!!
What I
mean is that Mark went from introducing his gospel with, “The beginning of the
gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” to John the Baptist telling everyone
that Jesus was on his way to baptize people with the Holy Spirit in only eight
verses. It appears to be five sentences, and by the sixth, Jesus shows up!
But
what grabbed my attention was the Scripture he used to introduce us to the
Savior.
As it is written in Isaiah the
prophet,
“Behold, I send my messenger
before your face,
who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying in the
wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’” (Mark 1:2-3)
And what stood out about this was considering
how the grammar of the text affirms the authority of Scripture. Here is how the
Expositor’s Bible Commentary explains this:
Mark
cites the OT to show that any true understanding of the ministry of Jesus must
be firmly grounded there. The verb translated “is written” (v. 2) is in the
perfect tense. It denotes completed action in the past with continuing results.
“It was written and still is” is the sense. The frequency with which this tense
of the verb is used by the writers of the NT to introduce OT quotations
underscores their strong belief in the unchanging authority of the Scriptures.
Immediately we see that this rebukes Brad Jersak’s claims that the
Scriptures are not authoritative over God’s people as the word of God. It also
contradicts Brad Jersak by declaring that “inspiration” happened in the “is
written” part of the picture, not in the reading of Scripture. In other words,
this confirms that the Hebrew Scriptures of Jesus’ day were considered already
authoritative in themselves as written, not in every variation of
interpretation that happened when people read the text.
How
does this apply to us today?
Simply
that we are to treat Brad Jersak as a false teacher because he attacks the very
foundation of our faith, what “is written”. No matter what we believe about
God, and Jesus, and the gospel, and no matter how clearly we understand that
they are more important than the Bible, we only know about them through the
Bible, the collection of what “is written”. Everything Brad Jersak presented
from outside the Bible was to get us away from what “is written”.
When
we look at the context of the prophecy about John the Baptist, what do we find?
We find God relating to his people in the most loving of ways:
Comfort,
comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and
cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
that
her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has received from the LORD’s hand
double for all her sins.
(Isaiah
40:1-2)
This
is what it looks like for God’s justice and mercy to work together in perfect
harmony. Jerusalem (the people of God) will come to a time in their discipline
when God will declare that justice has been served. She will have received the
judgment she needed to break her heart and prepare her to come home.
So
what does Yahweh want his people to believe after they have refused to listen
to him, have adulterated and prostituted themselves with other nations and
other gods, have rejected the prophets God has sent to them, and have been
disciplined according to God’s loving hand of justice?
God
wants them to be ready for his comfort. They need to see their God as the
Father who longs to speak gently and tenderly to his children (think of Jesus’
lament over Jerusalem because they would not let him gather them to himself
like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings). When judgment has done its
work, mercy will rise in triumph over all that the world, the flesh, and the
devil have conspired to steal, to kill, and to destroy, and bring God’s people
home to the heart of their Father as illustrated in the parable of the lost
Son.
So
when we come to the specific prophecy fulfilled by John the Baptist, we read:
A
voice cries:
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the
LORD;
make straight in the desert a highway for
our God”
(Isaiah 40:4)
Right
away we see that the prophecy was about preparing the way of Yahweh (the LORD),
and this is applied to Jesus as the one it is talking about. Jersak keeps
trying to separate Yahweh and Yasous (Jesus) as though Jesus had to correct the
revelation of Yahweh in the Hebrew Scriptures. But here we see Mark declaring
what “is written” as authoritative because it was breathed out by God, and you
can’t get a closer association between Yahweh and Yasous than a prophecy made
about Yahweh and fulfilled by Yasous! And for both it is clear that this is
“our God”, which is why Thomas finally confessed, “My Lord, and my God!” when,
as a Jewish man, he would have only confessed Yahweh as “my God”.
Every
valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
(Isaiah
40:4)
This
pictures what John the Baptist was doing. It also gives us a very precise
commentary on what it looks like to have a figure of speech like these
metaphors applied to what really happened with Jesus. All these things happened
in the lives of people who heard the gospel of the kingdom and came to Christ
in repentance and faith. But it again affirms that there is never a discrepancy
between what a metaphor describes and how it applies. They are always equal in what
they describe.
And
the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
(Isaiah
40:5)
What
the prophecy said was that the glory of Yahweh would be revealed in the coming
of Jesus Christ. Mark says that what was happening in John the Baptist calling
people to Jesus was this prophecy. John wrote in the preface to his gospel
account, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his
glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John
1:14). This is what it means that “the glory of Yahweh shall be revealed”.
Jesus was showing what the Yahweh of the Old Testament was like in his glory.
Not correcting him, but glorifying him!
And
then there is that glorious conclusion, “for the mouth of YAHWEH has spoken”!
Everything that was happening in Jesus’ ministry was what Yahweh had spoken in
the prophets. None of it was corrected. Jesus affirmed all the Scriptures of
the Hebrew Bible. It is the exact opposite of what Brad Jersak claims, and the
Scriptures are full of these connections where the Son is the same as the
Father because he is the radiance of the Father’s glory.
Choose
You This Day…
This
is the obvious choice: everyone who reads Brad Jersak’s books must choose
between what Brad Jersak says about Scripture or what Scripture says about Brad
Jersak. Jersak calls Scripture a “God/Man hybrid”, while Scripture calls
Scripture “the word of God” (along with its fellowship of synonyms). If you’ve
read Jersak’s book to the end, perhaps even wandered down the three phases of
his garden path, you already know what he claims about Scripture. I will not
say more about that. It is enough that he has dissed Scripture, dissed Yahweh,
and even dissed Jesus as revealed in Scripture (he is only fine with his
“another Jesus”).
“But
what does Scripture say about Brad Jersak,” you ask?
I
would be happy (and sad) to tell you!
1. Scripture calls Brad Jersak a “false
prophet”. He is claiming a prophetic role (telling people what “more
Christlike” looks like), and he is false, saying things that just ain’t so. If
he lived during Moses’ time, “the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my
name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other
gods, that same prophet shall die’” (Deuteronomy 18:20). Jeremiah adds, “And
the LORD said to me: ‘The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I did not
send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you
a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds’”
(Jeremiah 14:14). Jesus warned about this as well, “Beware of false prophets,
who come to you in sheep 's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matthew
7:15). There are more such references, but because Brad Jersak is proclaiming
his own version of God, his word, and his Way, he is a false prophet.
2. Scripture calls Brad Jersak a
“Scoffer”. As the Apostle Peter begins his second letter, giving reminders to
the believers for their encouragement, he says, “that you should remember the
predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior
through your apostles” (3:2). This ties together the prophets of the Old
Testament with the apostles of the New. It also indicates that what we have
“through your apostles” is “the commandment of the Lord and Savior”. So Peter
gives this reminder, “knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the
last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires” (3:3). This has
been one of the marks of Brad Jersak’s writing, to scoff at the idea of Yahweh
judging criminal nations, to scoff at the teaching of Scripture regarding
creation, the fall into sin, the worldwide flood, and the Father’s sovereignty
in presenting his Son as the propitiation for our sins. As Peter reminds us of
these things through Scripture, we must remind one another as well not to
follow anyone who scoffs and mocks (disses) Scripture as God’s word about
everything that is written in the Bible.
3. Scripture says that Brad Jersak does
not have God, at least in his trilogy of poison-in-the-pudding fairy tales. The
apostle John wrote, “Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the
teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both
the Father and the Son” (2 John 1:9). Jersak has made clear even in the three
titles of his trilogy that he “goes on ahead” of what is written, he “does not
abide in the teaching of Christ” as God breathed out into his word, and so
“does not have God” in his teaching. He has simply made too many manmade
changes to God’s words for anyone to imagine that God is with him in his deviations
from truth.
4. Scripture says that Brad Jersak is a
liar. The apostle John wrote, “I write to you, not because you do not know the
truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth” (1 John
2:21). The early Christians did know the truth as we now have it collected into
the New Testament Scriptures. John makes clear that if someone presents lies,
they cannot be “of the truth”. But he continues, “Who is the liar but he who
denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the
Father and the Son” (vs 22). We often think of this as the extreme examples of
people outright denying everything about Jesus. But John’s focus is on someone
who “denies that Jesus is the Christ”. What did “the Christ” mean to him?
Everything the Hebrew Scriptures said about him! And Brad Jersak has sought to
dismantle the teachings of the Scriptures about the Christ in order to present
his “another Jesus” who is not the Christ. It doesn’t work to include the words
“Jesus” and “Christ” if what we mean by both is “another Jesus” from the one
revealed in the Scriptures.
5. Scripture says that Brad Jersak is a
teacher of “a different gospel”. In Galatians 1, Paul was “astonished that you
are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are
turning to a different gospel” (vs 6), but then clarifies, “not that there is
another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel
of Christ” (vs 7). Brad Jersak is clearly distorting the true gospel and
presenting a different one.
6. Scripture says that Brad Jersak is
“accursed”, or “anathema”. Paul continued with the Galatians, “But even if we
or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we
preached to you, let him be accursed” (vs 8). And then adds, “As we have said
before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to
the one you received, let him be accursed” (vs 9). Even in the titles of Brad
Jersak’s books, he admits that he is adding “more” to what is in Scripture. All
through this volume of his trilogy I kept seeing this, that he was saying
things we were supposed to believe that had their source outside of Scripture.
7. Scripture says that Brad Jersak is
one of those “evil people and imposters” who lead people astray. Paul told
Timothy, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be
persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse,
deceiving and being deceived” (II Timothy 3:12-13). Paul himself said that “We
are treated as impostors, and yet are true” (II Corinthians 6:8), while “evil
people and imposters” would be received as genuine. I’m simply stating what
Scripture says about Brad Jersak, that it is “evil people and imposters” who go
around “deceiving” others because they are “being deceived” by whatever ground
they have surrendered to the evil one.
8. I will close this section with the
Scripture that has been opening my posts for the later part of my journey down
Brad Jersak’s garden path. This calls out the author as someone who “proclaims
another Jesus than the one we proclaimed… a different spirit from the one you
received… a different gospel from the one you accepted” (2 Corinthians 11:4).
Just think if he had used those words instead of “more Christlike”! What if he
simply titled his books, “A Different God”, “A Different Word”, and “A
Different Way”. At least he would have been honest about his dishonesty!!!
As I
said introducing this conclusion, we are making a choice whether to believe
Brad Jersak’s claims about the Scriptures or the Scripture’s claims about him.
Jesus and the apostles did warn that “many” would choose the false teachers,
but I share this in the hope that someone reading this hadn’t thought about
that and might realize that it is impossible to follow the true Lord Jesus
Christ and a false teacher’s “another Jesus” at the same time.
Joshua’s
Exemplary Choice
Yes, I
deliberately began this conclusion with a phrase that many church folk would
recall came to us through Joshua. The “choose you this day” expression was part
of his call to Israel to resist the temptations of the idols of the lands they
were reclaiming and walk faithfully with Yahweh, the only true God. Here is how
he called the people to trust and serve Yahweh (the LORD) in Joshua 24:14-15.
First
Joshua exhorted the people, “Now therefore fear the LORD and serve him in
sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served
beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.” Please note that this is
NOT where Joshua is asking them to “choose this day”. Why not? Because that
choice had already been made!!! The previous books of Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, and Deuteronomy had left a very clear testimony of Israel already
agreeing to the terms of the first covenant. That choice had already been made
at Mount Horeb.
The
parallel to this in reference to Brad Jersak is that many of his readers have
already professed to be participants in the new covenant in Jesus’ blood. If
you are a reader who had once believed the Bible to be the word of God, you
believed that Yahweh revealed in the Old Testament was perfectly just and good,
and you believed that God gave his Son to be the propitiation (atoning
sacrifice) for our sins, you would be at about the same place in the new
covenant as Israel was in the old. Your choice was already made. You simply
needed to be reminded of your agreement.
It
just so happens that my “On This Day” sharing this morning was based on what we
call the Great Commission. Every “Christian” should have submitted to all three
parts of this commission, both in receiving it for ourselves, and in living it
out towards others. We should be a “disciple” of the Lord Jesus Christ; we
should be baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
(one name for the three persons of the Godhead), and we should have agreed to
learn to obey Jesus in everything he has given us in his word. That is our
response to the new covenant that is parallel to what Joshua was reminding the
Israelites they had already done in relation to the old covenant. It gives us
some sense of what Joshua was reminding the people about.
Second, after affirming what Israel had already done, Joshua presents a
conflicting challenge, “And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD,
choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in
the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you
dwell.” Joshua was telling the people, if it turns out that they find it
offensive to continue following Yahweh, then at least have the guts to identify
who it is they are serving. If they are giving up on Yahweh, which idols of the
pagan nations have done for them what Yahweh did to bring them into the
Promised Land?!
The
parallel to the followers of Brad Jersak should be obvious. He has made it
appear “evil in your eyes to serve Yahweh”. Yes, he has declared the Yahweh of
the Hebrew Scriptures to be “evil in your eyes”. He has accused him of being
violent and vindictive (not the same as Yahweh’s “vengeance”). He has accused
Yahweh of being unjust in putting to death people who did not deserve such a
just sentence against them. Yes, I have read this book for myself and it was
there woven through every chapter. The author believes that Yahweh as revealed
in the Scriptures that were breathed out by God was not “Christlike” enough!
So, if
you have been convinced that Jersak is right and the Scriptures are wrong, that
Jersak is right and Jesus and the apostles are wrong, then “choose this day
whom you will serve”!
Third,
Joshua continues to leave us with a testimony to follow: “But as for me and my
house, we will serve the LORD.” Joshua had no control over what the people
would do after his death. All he could leave was a legacy of faith, that he
would never turn from Yahweh to serve idols. He would never accuse Yahweh of
doing anything evil (and this includes during the history that Jersak claims
God did evil).
Joshua’s testimony still stands, and it stands against the claims of
Brad Jersak and his kin who present themselves as the authorities over
Scripture instead of treating Scripture as the “word of God” that has authority
over us.
A
Double-Dose Denunciation
It is
fitting that on this last post regarding this book God has once again given me
what to share to wrap things up. It is a testimony of how God has spoken to me
through his word this morning (on the day of adding this to my notes), and how
it directly denounces two of Jersak’s main points, that Jesus did not die as
our substitute bearing God’s judgment against our sins, and that God’s word is
not God’s word.
I
began this Sunday morning facing the following text:
Now
at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one
prisoner whom they wanted. And they had then a notorious prisoner called
Barabbas. So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me
to release for you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” For he knew that
it was out of envy that they had delivered him up. Besides, while he was
sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, “Have nothing to do
with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a
dream.” Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for
Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, “Which of the two
do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to
them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said,
“Let him be crucified!” And he said, “Why? What evil has he done?” But they
shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!” (Matthew 27:15-23)
The
first thing I saw in this was how Jesus experienced things I have been through.
I have been the scapegoat chosen while a “notorious” person got off scot-free,
as they say. I have been “delivered up” by people who “envied” that I was
leading people to love God and his word while they wanted to be in control of
the church for their own purposes. I have fallen prey to religious hypocrites
“persuading” the crowd (congregation) to “acquit the guilty for a bribe, and
deprive the innocent of his right!” (Isaiah 5:23) just as the elitists wanted a
criminal to go free so they could “destroy” Jesus. And I have experienced the
“crucify him” mentality of a church mob demanding a guilty verdict without
evidence or trial.
Yes,
that could sound like a sob story inviting a pity party, but that’s not my
intent. I was simply so surprised that God would begin this morning by showing
me some ways in which Jesus suffered MY story far beyond what I had ever
considered. I had long related to him as one who “was despised and rejected by
men,” and was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). To
know he came into the world to experience and feel things that I myself had
gone through has stirred up many expressions of worship and thanks to God.
I also
marveled at how clearly Isaiah 53 spoke of the ways Jesus would suffer in my
place (I have spoken of these already). But I had never seen this one paragraph
shining the spotlight on center stage where Jesus endured one thing after
another than was far more familiar than I wish.
And my
point is that he was there as my substitute. He was bearing my griefs and
carrying my sorrows. He was pierced for my transgressions. he was crushed for my
iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought me peace with God, and
with his wounds I am healed of all my sins. I know full well that like a sheep
I had gone astray. I know that I was with everyone else in turning to my own
way. And I know that “the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah
53:4-6).
But
never have I considered that Jesus experienced all these other things as my
substitute before he even went to his flogging or to his crucifixion. And to
see this today filled my heart with worship that God would do this for me then,
and show it to me now.
Three
Mentors of a Better Way
I have
not tackled Brad Jersak’s false teachings because I like to be negative. There
are some positive books I am waiting to read now that I am done this garden
path of poison-in-the-pudding teachings (yes, I’m having fun with the mixture
of metaphors). I believe that the verse from Paul at the beginning of these
posts is what the BJs are doing, and I think that this statement is a fitting
summary:
The purpose of
the BJs’ writings is to demoralize people’s faith in the authority of Scripture
as the breathed-out words of God. They continue the serpent’s question in the
garden, “Did God actually say…?” to replace what God said with what the “evil
people and imposters” are peddling for unjust gain.
But
now I will share the three mentors God used to teach me a better way than the
Bible-dissing mindset Brad Jersak has shared.
Mentor
1: Turning Life Inside Out
My
first mentor was in the form of a book by Larry Crabb entitled, “Inside Out”.
His theme revolved around the way God always begins with the heart and works
outward, and how that clashes with people who want to keep everything external
and decide how much anyone (including God) gets any deeper.
One of
the main points that stood out to me was his claim (prophetic) that church folk
would be more committed to self-protection than to knowing and doing the will
of God. I had not heard of self-protection before, and I was in a small,
friendly, welcoming church, so I did not recognize what he was talking about.
However, close to 35 years later, I can say that I have seen exactly
what he claimed. The biggest thing that has kept Christians from growing up in
Christ is their self-protection. They simply don’t want God to deal with them
at a heart level. This, of course, makes it very difficult for men to “keep watch
over your souls, as those who will have to give an account”, when people want
churches to operate without anyone knowing how their souls are doing!
How
does that relate to what I have read in Brad Jersak’s book? That the reason so
many church folk are finding it difficult to attach to God’s word as God’s word
is because they don’t want God doing anything with them. They don’t want his
word speaking to them about childhood trauma, disappointing marriages,
fear-based relationships, or the expectation that they will know and do the
will of God. Because whole churches can be built on the altar of
self-protection, many people in churches are missing out on a deep-hearted walk
with God because they have put limits on how much he can do through his word. This
makes fertile ground for someone to present “another Jesus” who has no such
expectations.
Mentor
2: An Introduction to Experiencing God
Approximately a year after Larry Crabb’s tutelage, my wife and I went to
a Pastors’ and Wives’ Retreat where the speaker was Henry Blackaby. I had only
ever heard one other man treat Scripture with such respect. For the few days we
were all together, he showed a picture of how God spoke to his people, how he
showed them his work, and how they could only experience him when they joined
him in what he was doing.
After
this retreat I purchased Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God course to continue
being mentored. I was intrigued that the subtitle was, “knowing and doing the
will of God” because Larry Crabb’s mentoring had warned me that this is the
exact thing that church folk do not want to know and do!
The
short of it was that by the time I completed the course, I was so in love with
God’s word (You know, like those love-letters from my girlfriend I had talked
about in an earlier chapter, not Jersak’s claim that to love God’s word means
loving the Bible more than him). Anyway, I was relating to God’s word like he
was speaking to me, I was seeing things standing out every day that applied to
things it seemed like he was doing in my life, and I was elated to be getting
to know God through his word like I had never experienced before.
And
then it hit. Horrible and painful things came up on both sides of our family. I
was shattered by a journey into grief that left me reeling. Except for one
thing. The next day after the first news hit, I went and had my time with God
in his word, something stood out that amazed me in its application to that
moment in my life, I talked with Father about it like it was where he wanted my
focus, and I felt his comfort and encouragement. When the second foot came down
(figuratively speaking), it was still happening. No matter how much pain I
felt, whatever I was reading turned into a ministry from my Father that felt
like the ink was still wet on the Scriptures that were before me.
Through those years of agonizing heartache and bewildering discoveries,
I not only learned how broken church folk can be, but I was learning to “know
and do the will of God” by attaching to God through his word. It is why I have
often quoted Romans 10:17 in my journey through this book, and so much other
sharing I do online, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word
of Christ.” Simply by hearing Scripture as “the word of Christ”, God was
building my faith based on “hearing” no matter what I was (or was not) “seeing”
around me.
In 32
years since that first ministry from Henry Blackaby, I have grown to have such
a deep attachment to the Scriptures as the word of God that it has been a
horrible grief to watch someone like Brad Jersak make so much money off of
dissing the word of God, the Word of God, and the God of the word/Word.
However, I would still urge people to utterly reject the lies Jersak has
published and learn how to read Scripture like God is talking to us. Just read
it. Listen to it. Whatever stands out, talk to Father about it. Be honest. Let
it be a two-way dialogue where you say how you think and feel to God, but then
you meditate on the words he is saying to you like you are letting him get his
side of the conversation in. It is amazing to relate to God like that, and God
used some of the most painful years of my life to teach me to love his word
like that.
This
mentoring turned into asking and answering three questions in my time with God
in his word. First, “What is God saying?” Second, “What is God doing?” Third,
“How do I join God in his work?” I would happily elaborate, but for now, I’m
simply leaving a testimony against Brad Jersak’s poison-in-the-pudding that a
daily time with God in his word where we pour out our hearts to him, and
receive into our hearts whatever he is saying through his word, causes us to see
the whole Bible as the word of God and to stand against people who join the
serpent’s “Did God actually say…?” and “steal, kill, and destroy” their
reverence and awe for the words of God. Thanks to God’s ministry through Larry
Crabb and Henry Blackaby, I have learned what it means “But this is the one to
whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my
word” (Isaiah 66:2). And whenever I do feel that trembling at the word of God
(the whole Bible) I know Father is totally aware of what is going on with me.
How I wish the same would be true for you!
Mentor
3: A Discovery of Freedom in Christ
With a
mind watching for the notorious evidence of self-protection turning our church
from knowing and doing the will of God, and a heart filled with bittersweet
experiences of experiencing God as I learned to know and do his will, a year
after Henry Blackaby spoke at the Pastors’ and Wives’ retreat, we met Neil
Anderson and heard of his Freedom in Christ ministry.
And
guess what? It was in the early stages of the world-upside-downness I was
telling you about where God had pierced us all the way through our
self-protection, shown me how we could experience him in the midst of it, and
primed me to learn how good church folk who had carried on an outwards role of
ministry for years could be so messed up inside (I’m talking about me here!).
The
bottom line is that, through Neil Anderson’s books and a few days at that
retreat I could see the connection between Jesus declaring the time fulfilled
for him “to proclaim good news to the poor… liberty to the captives and
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to
proclaim the year of the Lord's favor” (Luke 4:18-19), and what I was
discovering under the layers of self-protection in me, my family, and my
church.
In
other words, that was my first introduction to both the world of messed-upness
in church people and the word of freedom in Christ in the Bible. Jesus came to
set people free. Why had I never heard it that way? Why had I never been told
that this applies to childhood trauma, abuse, eating disorders, addictions,
hopelessness, depression, and whatever other debilitating labels are in
people’s hearts but never spoken of in church? And why were the most
self-protective people in charge of the core groups of churches?!
Well,
I have answered a lot of my questions in the past three decades. Everything has
solidified my understanding that churches need to continue telling people that
Jesus came to set them free. It should be normal for people to admit to things
going on inside them and receive ministry from the body of Christ that would
express Jesus healing the brokenhearted and binding up their wounds. At the
very least, it’s something on my mind no matter who I am talking with, and I
love that God’s word speaks of these things so clearly so that every hurting
and broken child of God can know there is hope.
I
would also apply this focus on Freedom in Christ to Brad Jersak’s garden path
by stating that this is another reason so many people are having difficulty
attaching to Scripture as God’s word. It is because so many churches do not
relate to people at the level of their “souls”. In fact, pastors get fired if
they try to watch over the souls of their core group who have kept the church
going playing good-Christian external roles!
And if
my time at Bible college was any indication of other Christian educational
institutions, the majority of students in my school were in need of MINISTRY
for themselves, NOT to be sent into the battlefield (and minefield) of ministry
to care for the souls of others who would fight them tooth and nail to not let
anyone find out who they really were, or what they were really like.
It is
especially notable that, when Jesus announced that the Scripture he had just
read in the synagogue of Nazareth was fulfilled right then and there in their
hearing, he was reading from Isaiah 61, again affirming the prophet who had
written so much about his Father! We can take to heart that Jesus is still
setting people free because his word so clearly says so!
Mentored
by a Cord of Three Strands
When I
look back at those three or four years and how God not only used those three
particular men, but in that particular order, and how it all was like puzzle
pieces fitting whatever God was speaking me about from his word each day, I not
only feel myself to be supremely mentored, but also supremely angry at the lies
Brad Jersak has told about God and his word. The thought of how many people
have been turned from experiencing God through his word and by his Spirit by
peddlers of God’s word who diss the Scriptures so people never find their
treasures is grievous to me.
I was
at some friends’ wedding when it first stood out to me, “a threefold cord is
not quickly broken.” Or, as I likely heard it in the NIV, “A cord of three
strands is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12). That is the imagery I have
with these three mentors, that God gave me a three-stranded cord to hold on to
as I traveled some of the most painful years of my life. It settled that I did
not want to sacrifice anyone on the altar of my self-protection, that I did want
God to work on me from the inside out, that I wanted to truly experience God by
knowing and doing his will, and I wanted to address anything in my life that
required freedom in Christ so nothing would be holding me back from growing up
in my Savior.
My
point is not to present three mentors with their sets of resources for you to
replace the three musketeers of the BJs (“three” being a relatively figurative
word). Rather, to give you background to how God led me to love his word as his
word because what I want is to see people return to the word of God and treat
it like Jesus’ authority over his church until his return.
When
the “word of men” is “the word of God”
A
Scripture that captures what I have been sharing is this from 1 Thessalonians
2:13:
"And
we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God,
which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it
really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers."
First,
this is how I want you to view what I just shared as a testimony regarding my
mentors. I do not want you to focus on “the word of men”, although God always
uses men to proclaim his word. Rather, I want you to be encouraged to get into
“the word of God” the way these men taught me.
For
the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword,
piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and
discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)
Yes,
that is the BIBLE as “the word of God”. The Scriptures. The written word. It is
NOT talking about Jesus as “the Word”. It is speaking of the Scriptures that
both Paul and Peter wanted the believers to treat as “the word of God”. And how
wonderful if anyone reading this would throw Jersak’s books in the trash and
fall in love with the “word of God” that builds our faith to attach to the
living God.
Second, Paul was being so clear that “the word of God” means what was
preached and proclaimed by the apostles which was the mix between “the gospel
of the kingdom” woven through with the Old Testament Scriptures that spoke of
Jesus and his kingdom. All through Acts we see the word of God including the
Hebrew Scriptures about Jesus and the message about Jesus that was presenting
the new covenant in his blood.
Paul
knows that what he and the other apostles were teaching was “the word of men”
in one sense, since it was coming through their mouths, words, and writings.
But he was so thankful that the Thessalonians could recognize that there was no
way these were merely “the word of men”. This is actually attested with the
early history of the New Testament Scriptures where the church recognized these
letters were not “the word of men”, but “what it really is, the word of God”.
I say
this because it is so clear that Satan is working through the BJs to steal,
kill, and destroy people’s faith in the word of God. Why? Because faith comes
from hearing, and hearing comes from the word of Christ. So, if people stop
attaching to the word of Christ (the Scriptures we now have in the Bible), they
will never grow in their faith.
Third,
I would add my testimony to what Paul said here because the more I have treated
the Scriptures as “the word of God”, and the more I have trembled before God’s
words like they are living and active, and they are able to pierce between my
soul and spirit so that I dare not argue with anything my Father in heaven says
I should be dealing with, the more I can say that God’s word “is at work in me”
as a believer.
When
Not Believing Moses Means Not Believing Christ (the real one)
What I
just said about Paul was a positive picture of how to see the word of God, the
Scriptures we have in the Bible. But Jesus spoke a similar thing in the
negative as a warning regarding how we treat the Old Testament. In John 5:46–47,
Jesus said, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of
me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”
Notice
again that Jesus ONLY speaks of Moses in the positive. He ONLY speaks of Moses
as someone whose five books were Scripture. There is not one correction of
Moses. NOT… ONE!!!
So we
have the real Lord Jesus Christ in the real words of Scripture telling us what
to think of the words of Scripture we call the books of Moses. And Jesus says
that if we do not believe Moses, we have no basis for believing Jesus’ words.
That is how connected Scripture is. If we won’t believe what is written in the
Hebrew Scriptures, how will we believe what Jesus said and the apostles wrote
in the New Testament Scriptures?
Do you
see how we could end up with charlatans like Brad and his kin making big bucks
peddling God’s word in twisted and distorted ways? All they need to do is get
people to not believe Moses. Then they can even question what Jesus and the
apostles said! And before we know it, people are taking the words of men to be
more authoritative than the word of God!
I
mean, think about it: Brad Jersak disses creation, which is described in the
books of Moses. He disses the fall into sin, which is written in the books of
Moses. He disses the worldwide flood, which is described as a worldwide flood
in the books of Moses. Do you see why he can’t believe Jesus Christ as revealed
in the New Testament Scriptures? Jesus says it is because Brad does not believe
Moses’ writings! Yes, WRITINGS! You know, SCRIPTURE.
And
this means that Jesus explains why Brad Jersak would publicly twist what it
means that “All Scripture is breathed out by God” from what God said it means,
that the writings of Moses are Scripture, to what a mere man means, that the
writings of Moses are a “God/man” hybrid that is not what God intended to say.
Jesus clearly tells us that what the Jewish people had in the Scriptures, in
what they called the books of Moses, were so authoritative that if people would
not believe Moses, they would not believe Christ, which is exactly what Brad
Jersak has proven.
Wrapping Up My Story (in a
rapping-fingers kind of way)
This
102 day “Journal Journey” isn’t about whether BJ has made his case (he hasn’t).
The popularity of teachers who present “another Jesus” a “different spirit” and
“a different gospel” is nothing new. Jesus and the apostles warned us it would
happen. People were saying false things about Jesus when he was alive, and have
been saying false things about him ever since. My writing of this extensive
critique of the book is to add my voice to the “few” and call them to remain
true to the narrow way, trusting in the word of God as we now have it gathered
into the Bible.
One of
the most liberating things I learned about sharing Christ with others is what
Jesus himself said about what was happening in the spiritual realm when we
proclaim the good news of the kingdom. He said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I
know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). What I realized is that when we
teach people from the word of God (the Bible), when we proclaim the gospel of
the kingdom over the airwaves, or into cyberspace, or around the kitchen table,
or over the fence with a neighbor, or on the street with someone we just met,
if we speak about Jesus directly from the Scriptures, that is Jesus’ voice. And
as long as we keep it there, trying to show people what the word of God says
about the Word of God, we will know we have found a lost sheep when they “hear
what the Spirit is saying” to them.
I also
want to put on the table that I have been hearing the Bible since I was a
child. I have been reading the Bible since my teens. I have been studying the
Bible since my early twenties. I have been relating to the Bible like God is
speaking to me since my mid-thirties. And my personal conclusion is that there
is a cohesive message that is like a tapestry of truth that only God could
weave. While I have come to conclusions that fit under various labels of doctrine,
my focus is on what is written in God’s word. I am often quite insecure about
whether a doctrinal statement is worded as precisely and comprehensively as
needed. But I am never insecure about meditating on the words of Scripture in a
real translation, looking up words to ascertain their clearest meaning, and
then striving to put those words into practice as the words my Savior has
spoken into my soul.
On the
other hand, Brad Jersak has used his book to tell his story of how he moved
away from the trustworthiness of the Scriptures into the adoption of his
partnership model that says the Bible is nothing better than a God/man hybrid
that we can only understand properly when we read it and the Spirit “inspires”
us with its true meaning. We have already seen that whatever “different spirit”
BJ has relied on has given him “another Jesus” and “a different gospel” than
what is written. Anyone who believes this author is submitting to BJ’s
authority instead of the authority of the Scriptures.
Yes,
we cannot escape that we are confessing someone to be the authority. If we
believe Brad Jersak, we are making him a greater authority than the apostles
who lived with Jesus, who were witnesses to his resurrection, or, like Paul,
was personally chosen for the glory of God to declare the gospel of the kingdom
to the Gentiles.
The
Injustice of Misunderstanding Yahweh
While
I have witnessed Brad Jersak cherry-picking parts of Scriptures out of context
to make his points, I have been able to read so many Scriptures in their
contexts as outright rebukes to his false teachings. I am sure I have shared
this in my rebuttals already, but as this is my last and most personal
conclusion, I will share what makes so much difference to me.
In
Proverbs 28:5, God’s word says,
Evil
men do not understand justice,
but those who seek the LORD (Yahweh)
understand
it completely.
This
says that if someone does “not understand justice” it is because of what is in
their hearts. No, I don’t mean the everyday church person who feels
mind-boggled when they think about God’s justice against sin, his judging of
his Son on our behalf, and the justification of all those who trust in Jesus.
I’m talking about people like Brad Jersak who will write trilogies of books
showing that they do not understand God’s justice in any way and are quite
determined to misrepresent what Scripture says about it. The proverb states why
such teachers cannot understand God’s justice. It is because something has
gripped their hearts with what is evil and so they are drawn to diss God’s
justice to a watching, listening, and reading world.
Note:
if it sounds harsh to suggest that Brad Jersak could be speaking out of an evil
source, don’t forget that David was tricked by Satan to number Israel, Peter
was speaking for Satan when he tried to stop Jesus from going to the cross,
Ananias and Sapphira were condemned for letting Satan lead them to lie to the
Holy Spirit, Simon the ex-sorcerer was overcome by the evils of his old ways to
try purchasing apostolic authority, and we are warned about the wisdom from
below that “is earthly, unspiritual, demonic” (James 3:15)
On the
other hand, the proverbs says that it is those who seek Yahweh (the LORD) who
understand justice completely. In the same way as those who reject Moses (as
revealed in Scripture) cannot understand Jesus, those who reject the Yahweh of
the Scriptures cannot understand justice. It is those who trust in Yahweh as
revealed in the Scriptures, and trust his Son who affirms the Scriptures that
speak of his Father, who come to understand justice. And it is to the glory of
God’s justice that we rejoice in what God did for us on the cross by satisfying
his justice against our sins by making Jesus to be sin on our behalf so we
could become the righteousness of God in him. Yes, the beauty that is in the
words of Scripture (the breathed-out words of God) is what gives us our hope.
A
Warning to Pay Attention
As I
have shared a few times, the book of Hebrews is a beautiful demonstration of
Scripture affirming Scripture. It gives us a very good picture of the kinds of
things Jesus would have taught the two men on the road to Emmaus about how
Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms all spoke of him. Here is one of its
callings to hold fast to Scripture instead of the whims and wishes of men:
Therefore
we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away
from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and
every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we
escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the
Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness
by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit
distributed according to his will. (Hebrews 2:1-4)
Let’s
look at this thought by thought because it is exactly what every reader of Brad
Jersak’s false teachings needs to take to heart from Scripture.
“Therefore
we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away
from it.” Yes, because Brad Jersak and his kin are pulling people away from
what “we have heard” in the Scriptures, we must pay “much closer attention” to
what is written because the BJs are determined to make people “drift away from
it”!
“For since the message declared by angels
proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just
retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” All
through Hebrews there is a picture of Jesus’ supremacy over everything,
including angels. So this is a strong contrast the writer is making to show
that what was already given “proved to be reliable”. That is the New Testament
declaring that what was given to us in the mosaic law was given by angels (see
Galatians 3:19) and its reliability was without question. How dishonest of Brad
Jersak to claim otherwise!
And
the warning about neglecting “such a great salvation” means the salvation
taught in the Scriptures! And THAT is the salvation Brad Jersak wants people to
neglect by him turning the spotlight to himself as the authority on what Jesus
did and which parts of the Bible can be trusted. According to Hebrews, the
books of Moses tell the truth about God’s law, and those Scriptures “proved to
be reliable”, not some God/man hybrid that cannot be trusted. This is so
glaring in condemning Brad Jersak that no true Christian should be listening to
him!
“It was declared at first by the Lord, and it
was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and
wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed
according to his will.” This weaves together how this “such a great salvation”
was presented to us by Christ (not by angels), but it was then “attested… by
those who heard”, meaning the apostles, and confirmed by all the miraculous
things God did as recorded in the book of Acts. It all is a glorious testimony
to how God gave us his word so that we could know what it means that we have
“such a great salvation”. Brad Jersak was sent to steal, kill, and destroy
people’s attachment to that salvation, but the writer of Hebrews calls us to
“pay much closer attention to what we have heard” in the Scriptures “lest we
drift away from it.” And that is what I hope my rebuttals and response
encourage in you who are reading this.
A
Proposal For Us Everyday Christians
I
would like to add something to the mix that is aimed at what I think of as us
common folk in the church. We’re the ones who really don’t have time to do
indepth studies of the church fathers, check out Hebrew and Greek definitions
(let alone learn the languages at the level of fluency in communication!), or
dissect the Bible for which parts fit every possible genre of language and
literature.
What
can we do instead?
We can
READ THE BIBLE!
Yes,
the thing I would add to this garden path journey through BJ’s “another Jesus”,
“different spirit”, and “different gospel”, is a way to read the Bible and test
it for ourselves.
What I
propose for you, the reader, is that you would begin a daily journey through
God’s word, the Bible, where you open the word to where you left off the day
before and ask God to speak to you through whatever you read that day.
The
point of our eternal life was stated by Jesus as, “that they know you, the only
true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). This makes the goal
of Bible study to get to know God better than we have ever known him before.
That is what it will be like in eternity, so we best get used to doing this
now!
When
we read the Bible as the word of God, and we treat it like he is speaking to
us, and we trust that the Holy Spirit is our Helper who “will teach you all
things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26),
we can focus on whatever stands out to us each time we spend time with God in
his word as something God is using to grow us up in Christ.
Because I am holding to what the Bible says about the inspiration of
Scripture as happening between God and the written text, and I denounce Brad Jersak’s
false teaching that inspiration is what happens when we read the text, if we
are using a good translation of the Scriptures, we need to focus on
understanding the text as it sits in its context. In other words, we want to do
our best to make sure we are letting God’s word speak for itself. We can then
consider what it says with a desire to know the truth on the matter. We can
seek to understand what it means, also consistent with all the rest of
Scripture. And we can be honest about how God wants us to apply his word to our
lives, putting into practice the whole counsel of God.
As I
said earlier, my daily quest is to be able to answer what God is speaking to me
about, what I see him doing, and how I am joining him in his work. I might not
fill in the blanks on the second and third parts of that every day, but I
always know what his word is speaking to me about, and it makes me attentive to
put myself in God’s hands so he can show me the rest.
I
believe that if we seek to abide in Christ through his word like that (“If you
abide in me, and my words abide in you” (John 15:7), it will be much easier to
recognize when someone is speaking into our lives as if they are an authority
over “my words”, the words of our Savior as collected into Scripture. We will
also see how the authority of Scripture speaks for itself, and we will feel a
radical different in us when we receive the word of God as our Father speaking
to his children, our Master speaking to his servants, and our Shepherd speaking
to his sheep. However we see it, God is speaking through his word, and we are
the ones who listen for every word that comes from the mouth of God so we can
live by those words and put them into practice.
The
Old-as-Sin Model of Craftiness
I can
make this assessment because I have read the book. I felt what happened to me
as I listened for validations of points the author was making. At first, it was
just the awareness that what I was reading started to sound familiar. After
some time, I realized why: it is the way Satan deceived Eve and lured Adam into
sin!
In
Genesis 3 we read “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the
field that the Lord God had made” (vs 1). There has been no shortage of
serpent-like craftiness ever since.
Satan
used a three-step approach to lead Adam and Eve into sin:
1. “He said to the woman, ‘Did God
actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?’” (vs 1). I
realized Brad Jersak was using this approach with every Scripture he presented.
It always had that sense of “Did God actually say?” what was written. And then
the author would expect us to believe what he said instead!
2. After Eve gave her paraphrase of
what God actually said (which was a bit off from what God actually said, by the
way), “the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die’” (vs 4). From
questioning whether God really did say something, the crafty deceiver then made
an outright lie against what God said, denying that what God said was true.
This is what Brad Jersak has done throughout the book as well, stating that
what God’s word says about the judgment to come won’t really happen. Much of
the book was the author telling us why “the plain reading” of Scripture isn’t
true. I just put this out there that instead of thinking he is brilliant for
seeing things beyond the plain reading of Scripture, I want everyone to see
that this is the way Satan has been luring people into sin ever since his first
success!
3. And then the serpent added, “For God
knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like
God, knowing good and evil” (vs 5). After an outright denial of what God said,
the serpent declares the opposite, acting like an authority over the words of
God. That is very obviously what Brad Jersak is doing as well, making himself
the authority who can say that people will experience an outcome quite
different from what God describes in his word.
I must admit, I am finding it difficult to
quit this conclusion (you likely noticed that). Even though I don’t know anyone
who might be reading this (though I hope my friends are secretly doing so), I
can definitely attach to what Paul wrote when he told the Corinthians, “For I
feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to
present you as a pure virgin to Christ” (II Corinthians 11:2). Obviously, I
have not done this for anyone. But the sense of it is there. If anyone ever
confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, if anyone was ever sincerely
baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, people like
me feel a “divine jealousy” that you belong to Christ, not Jersak. You were
“betrothed to Christ” himself. Even though we have sinned beyond counting, in
the gospel of the kingdom we are “presented… as a pure virgin to Christ”,
meaning we are received as if we had not sinned (just as Yahweh kept telling
his people all through the Old Testament!).
But this is where Paul continues the most
heartfelt lament of a preacher of God’s word, “But I am afraid that as the
serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a
sincere and pure devotion to Christ” (II Corinthians 11:3). This is why I
showed that Brad Jersak is following the three-prong approach Satan used in the
Garden of Eden. It is cunning. It is deceptive. It is aimed to lead people
astray from the “sincere and pure devotion to Christ” described in the
Scriptures.
And, lest anyone suggest that this is what
Brad Jersak keeps talking about, this nebulous Jesus that exists outside of
Scripture somewhere that the BJs have access to, it is immediately after this
that Paul states what I have been quoting in all my posts after…
Okay, I just surprised myself! I was trying
to guestimate when I started using the following verse to introduce all my
posts afterwards and I thought maybe 50% of the way through, or maybe 33%. So I
checked just to be sure and found that it was on DAY 7 that I started using
this Scripture! That’s how early on it stood out what the author was doing!
So, this is what Paul says right after
presenting his concern that the people were being led astray from Christ,
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. (II Corinthians 11:4).
My point is that Brad Jersak is always
talking about his “another Jesus” to lead people astray from their “sincere and
pure devotion to Christ”. And that is the best way to get professing
Christians: offer them a different version of Jesus!
Well, enough said (I cringe to say that). It
really is a choice between whether we hear Jesus calling us from his word to
believe his word and his Father, or we hear Brad Jersak as the new authority
over what we believe about the sacred Scriptures. I conclude resting in the
certainty that I have given every good reason why people should return to
Christ and his word from the garden path of Brad Jersak and his kin. And I hope
this helps many people to do so.
To the teaching and to the testimony! If they
will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn (Isaiah
8:20).
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God
gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made
it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word
of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed
is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those
who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near (Revelation
1:1-3).
© 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
