The Word of Faith Religion. Part 3

The Word of Faith Religion
Part 3
(2006)

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Asaph the Psalmist spoke for God saying,
“Now consider this, you who forget God,
lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver,”
Psalm 50:22.
 
     It breeds idolatry to exalt any single attribute of God to the exclusion of the others and call that attribute your God. If any of you have ever seen the Westboro Baptists in action you’ve seen a group that has a god of hate and no love, or at least of any love worth mentioning. If you’re not at all familiar with this group please take just a few minutes (parents please be cautious with your little ones) and go to the site linked above and look at them. They are neither Baptists nor Christians. They are not Wfers either, but they will work to illustrate a key point in this letter. They exalt judgment against sin in a non-glorious way and exclude all other aspects of the God of the Bible by their presentation of His word. This shows me that they must not have received faith because they do not reflect God’s full counsel. I have heard notably sound Christians who preach vehemently against sin (as they must) ask a Westboro to speak about the love of God for just one minute, and they refused to do so. They could not. Love is not in their vocabulary. If it is it’s just not that big a deal. To hear a Westboro member speak of anything else about their god other than hate would seem to constitute the proclamation of a different god all together. From what I’ve heard them preach for so long I cannot imagine them ever proclaiming anything about their god as merciful or saving. The attributes taught about their god form him, don’t they? The world perceives from them a god of pure hatred as they wish. Whether the Westboro Baptist believes him to be only hatred behind closed doors is irrelevant; their public message portrays their god by both action and omission. The same is true for the teachers of the WFR. By idolatrizing different attributes I believe they make a god just as false, but much less offensive to sinners.
     There is no one identifiable attribute of God that alone makes Him God! He is holy and wholly His own whether sinners like it or not. Love is not His defining characteristic. To exalt God’s love and forget His anger can make men as equally idolatrous as a Westboro though certainly more pleasing to idolaters. I think this has become the case in our generations more than any other because we truly believe that we’re something awesome. Many think that love is what we naturally incur. Of course God should love us they say; everyone else does. Even many “Christian” attitudes today reflect a belief that God should be thrilled to have them in heaven, and that He would be eternally deprived should they abandon Him to Himself! See, you have to remove anger to get the god of modern men to sell. If you say that God is angry then it naturally begs the question, “What is He angry at?” And that’s an unattractive answer to sinful men. The WFR has removed anger from any public proclamation and exalted love making their god sell like hotcakes. Sinners rush to a god who preaches not just come as you are, but stay just the same as long as you’d like. I say that whatever scripture reveals God to be is what the preacher should proclaim with equal attention though the task may not be equally simple. I don’t like telling people about hell, but I love hell’s designer and creator. If you don’t love the God who created hell then your god may not exist at all. This is part of the full counsel and cannot be removed from its place.     My point is that we should be taught to love all of scripture and I believe this includes God’s divine wrath. Yes, we ought to love His wrath. But how does a statement like that sit with you I wonder? I do say that we should love His fury, but I don’t think we’ll ever feel at ease when we consider it. I don’t think we should. Let’s be glad that as Christians we are not appointed to it. Have you read Revelation? It is no wonder to me that we don’t feel as warm in our relationship to God pondering His wrath in hell as when we ponder His love in heaven. The subjects are not equally palatable because we’re not yet perfected. For example, I can still weep at the thought of any of my loved ones being in hell for eternity, but I know one day I will no longer weep for them even if they’re there, Revelation 21:4. We don’t think of wrath like we think of mercy this side of the veil and I say it is because we are still sinners. I know this to be true by my own heart and I understand it, but it is our God just the same, is it not? Isn’t all scripture God breathed? My prayer for us all is that we’d seek to know all about God. I don’t want to hate to love anything of my loving God’s doing. God is perfect over both heaven and hell without scriptural ambiguity. “Whatever the LORD pleases He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deep places,” Psalm 135:6. I want to focus on one aspect of God today contra the WFR.
     Now, having said all of that, I’d like to say one more thing before I move on. I feel that some of God’s attributes are more important to deal with than others. For example, dealing with God’s anger towards sin is more important than dealing with His provision to cheerful givers. Both are attributes of God and neither should be removed, but one matter deals with eternal imperative and the other with temporal comforts. This is the same in that a paycheck is more important to a starving family at the present than a pension at the tail end of a career. It is more important that a preacher deal with God’s anger towards sinners (due to the power of their sin,) than to speak to Christians on methods of taking care of the widows in the church, though both are still part of the full counsel of God. It presents more of a problem when a preacher avoids teaching about God’s anger than it does to avoid teaching about how to have a good marriage. This is not merely due to the volume of the words dealing with the topics in the text, but the gravity of the subject’s implications to the hearer. I would rather have two people in heaven that had a bad marriage than to have made earth a wonderful place to go to hell from for two happily married pagans. Still, one need not exclude the other as I believe God wants His people to have excellent marriages. All I’m saying is that one is plainly more important than the other.
     I am confident that no one will be in hell because they did not know that the wise men were never actually at the manger.
     OK, here we go. This letter’s subject is a god devoid of wrath (or at least of wrath ever worth mentioning) and is again to call your attention to the Word-Of-Faith Religion or WFR and its defining features. I was once an adamant WFer but then I was saved. This is the 3rd part of a series on the subject. All parts are available at Biblecia.com.
     Have you ever heard the phrase “The full counsel of God?” You’ve heard it here several times already. Scripture instructs us that teachers of the Bible shall answer to God with more accountability than layman in the church. They will incur, James said, a stricter judgment in 3:1. But what is this full counsel of God that they are held accountable to teach? I will define it simply as: “Everything that a Christian teacher sees in the word of God.” The wrath of God is the subject most avoided in our day, I’m certain, and this is wrong. God is lopsided in the thoughts of many. This is prevalent in the WFR. He’s big love to sinners and little angry at sin. Perhaps in other generations many preachers were guilty in reverse, but we don’t live then. To speak about the anger of God to most youths today instantly portrays a God with whom they are not the least bit acquainted. Try it. Wrath is not the only topic that shouldn’t be neglected though.
     Could a preacher be guilty of preaching only wrath and not on joy in the Lord? The Westboros illustrate the fact that I think the answer is yes. Could a pastor be guilty of preaching only on evangelism and nothing on financial stewardship and the joy/responsibility of financial giving? Again, I think yes because joy and financial stewardship are both parts of that full counsel. If a pastor spends his life dividing the word of God rightly he will see fit to preach on everything from heaven to hell as it is his commission to do so, 2 Timothy 2:15. A born again preacher who’s rightly dividing the Bible will preach on the full counsel of God because the apostolic tradition has trained him to do so. Don’t forget folks, the canon of scripture came to us and it covers the whole scope of thought. Here’s some great advice: “Men, when you preach on heaven, let there be a twinkle in your eye, a smile on your face and a glow from your skin. When you preach on hell, you’re normal face will do fine.” – Charles Spurgeon.
     After long contemplation I can say without any reservation that the god of the WFR is not angry at sinners, or at least if he is it’s not important enough of a subject for his ministers to devote any length of time to. Love to the Westboro Baptist is like God’s anger and the demand of repentance to the WF preacher; they’re just not relevant to the Bible message. I have asked myself what this can show us and am writing to warn you of a great deception in our day that comes right from the scriptures using a partial counsel of God which I will hasten to add is not counsel ultimately worth having as they give it.
     I will attempt to make sense of this in this way: Christian, what would you think of a “Learned” preacher who said that god was not loving according to the Bible and sought to teach his flock so from the text? What if he even used a whole lot of Bible texts? Would you think that person to be preaching a god other than your own? I would say so. Would he not only be giving part of the counsel of God? I would say this because the references to God’s love, mercy, grace, compassion and the like are so present to His word that these truths are incontrovertible and also unavoidable for any substantial length of time. So what about some other profoundly present attributes of God in scripture? Let me name just a few: holy, the creator and sustainer of all things, genius, wise, omniscient, sovereign and omnipresent. If a preacher never made reference to these things, or if the presence of these attributes could not clearly be attached to a man’s god after hearing him for some time should it not raise concern? Can you see where I’m going with this? What if God’s anger is never preached? Attributes like anger, hatred, God’s justice and wrath are more present than all the attributes of love and mercy in the Bible by far, just count. Does this fact mean that God is more about hate for sin than love for men? No, that’s not my point at all. This fact simply means that He should be extolled as the only God of both. It is a symptom of a sick ministry that never teaches about such things as in the WFR. So what does it say to us when a preacher’s god is devoid of ever showing such “Negative” attributes? At the very least it means they’re not preaching a full counsel of God, and may serve to prove that person un-approved concerning the doctrine of the church.
     Let’s go to history for a moment. Marcion (110-160 AD) was a teacher in the second century. He denounced everything Jewish, accepted only 10 of the Pauline Epistles and re-wrote the Gospel of Luke which really became the Gospel of Marcion. He was denounced by the church as a heretic in his day, amen. This man, along with all of his error, was completely opposed to a God of any type of wrath. His views were very Gnostic in that God was not angry with anyone. Marcion did not know Jesus Christ. He said that the OT God was evil and mean and that the NT god had conquered him. He taught that god would never judge a man, but was only love. Does that type of thinking sound familiar to any of you? It sounds like a whole lot of preachers putting out the books, movies and CDs today. I saw a movie a while ago called the Gospel. I don’t remember who made it. Not only was the Gospel never preached in the film, but the only guy vilified in the movie was the one convicted that sin shouldn’t be tolerated in the church. Everyone else just tolerated sin, and this one character was seen as a backstabber because he didn’t want a sin loving sensual and secular rapper singing in his church on Sunday morning just because he was the preacher’s son. Like the church in the film, the WFer is all about tolerance. God is not mad at the sinner. The salvation they preach is consequently devoid of any demands for holiness and repentance. The new birth is just a decision that may or may not really affect you.
     I have spent years in the past in the WF Church and I tell you that not only was the idea of God’s wrath something to be set aside or rarely mentioned; it was taboo. The WFR is extremely Marcionistic. Wrath was never taught. It was treated like creationism is in most secular universities today. It was an attribute not reconcilable to our pulpits. Back then when I read passages that spoke of His anger it was as if my “Rose colored glasses” simply took them out of focus and I moved on. I can’t help but think that many of you are in that same place. If someone spoke to us back then about the condemnation of sinners, their need for repentance to flee from God’s wrath, the fury of God in hell (a joke because it was as if Satan ran it), or the jealousy of God for His name you would have been met with scorn, ridicule or full body yawning from the people. I’m not just talking about those little weak 10:00 AM yawns either. I’m talking about those cat-like yawns that just take over your whole body at 10:00 PM when you’re really tired. I’m not sure which was better. A wise man once said, “Anger is a thousand times better than apathy” and I have come to agree. I saw these things because as I began to leave the WF church I started discussing God’s wrath with people and getting to preach little bits about it in a few churches here and there. I wasn’t angry at the people; I was trying to preach on something very important and was too young in Christ to know what was opposing me. I didn’t know that I had just been received by a different God through repentance and faith. I was met by patronizing comments that my knowledge would mature and that I would forget about teaching on hell and sin and refocus myself on the more important things like people’s dreams for the future. It was as if they were saying, “Oh, everyone understands about God’s wrath so let’s just move on already.” I looked for any type of severe and sobering teaching in their sermons and books and found that the full counsel of God was indeed terrifyingly absent. This led me to a near effortless conclusion. Friends, I think it’s simple – If anger against sin is by volume a most evident thing portrayed in the Bible by God then it seems apparent that a person who NEVER mentions it is not interested in proclaiming God at all. It’s that simple. Take the time and think about this if you have a WF influence in your life. Consider how often these teachers preach about topics like hell, sin or depravity. This is the only way I can bring these things to light. These are not unimportant subjects to the Bible student. I’m not saying it’s every sermon. I don’t know any good preacher whose every sermon is on any one topic no matter how important it may be. The full counsel of God requires the preacher to exposit a full gamut of truth addressing every question of the human heart that simply includes the things we’re looking at now. I’m asking you all this: Can you attribute terrible fury against sin to the God your preacher preaches without having to reference material elsewhere from that preacher? Can you see the preacher you have in mind reading some of the texts that we will read together soon and teaching from them? There is something else that I must ask that may be more important.
     Do you understand that God is furious with sinners? It is not that God loves the sinner and hates the sin. No sin is in hell apart from the sinner, and it has no moral consequences floating in space. Consider the fate of the ungodly: “…When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, 8 in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power,” 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9. This is yet to come. This is in reference to the Second Advent of Christ. Friends, it is not that hell was for Satan alone then, oops, men had to go, too. Hell was created in God’s omniscience for the eternal future of both sinning men and angels. This is inescapable if you believe that God is omniscient.
     So why would I want to argue these things some ask? Indeed, by magnifying such a topic some may feel that it is my only topic. I assure you that it isn’t. I love to preach on everything I see in the Bible. Just last night I recorded a message on love between brethren as a demonstration of our faith in league with 1 John 3:14. I am seeking to address the WFR for you. Why must we preach about hell at all? Benny Hinn says, “You cannot win the lost by telling them [lowered mocking tone] ‘you’re going to hell.’ Just focus on Jesus loves you; God has a plan for you.” Isn’t this what makes people feel comfortable with God? Why preach on the things that sinners don’t like to hear about, or that makes the church feel shaky before God? I’ll answer it plainly: because it is the full counsel of God, and any Bible teacher on any level is compelled to preach it faithfully. I’m interested in dividing from dividers and uniting with uniters. Is this hellfire and brimstone teaching? Not by my definition. Hellfire and brimstone teaching, as it is called, is often devoid of context. If a preacher makes sense of why hellfire and brimstone is a fact (because of sin) then that’s just solid preaching. God has not appointed His church to eternal wrath, amen. It is certain that hell is not in the future of the Christian, but it may still be to many around us which makes the topic more than relevant unless we care more about ourselves.
     Read these following 12 verses with me thoughtfully please, and try to picture a preacher with whom God’s voice here cannot be heard in any measure, or displayed clearly during any given year:     2. “For the indignation of the LORD is against all nations, And His fury against all their armies; He has utterly destroyed them, He has given them over to the slaughter,” Isaiah 34:2.
     3. “Your sons have fainted, They lie at the head of all the streets, Like an antelope in a net; They are full of the fury of the LORD, The rebuke of your God,” Isaiah 51:20
     4. “Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, My anger and My fury will be poured out on this place—on man and on beast, on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground. And it will burn and not be quenched,” Jeremiah 7:20
     5. “For thus says the LORD God of Israel to me: “Take this wine cup of fury from My hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send you, to drink it,” Jeremiah 25:25.
     6.“Standing like an enemy, He has bent His bow; With His right hand, like an adversary, He has slain all who were pleasing to His eye; On the tent of the daughter of Zion, He has poured out His fury like fire,” Lamentations 2:4.
     7. “Therefore I also will act in fury. My eye will not spare nor will I have pity; and though they cry in My ears with a loud voice, I will not hear them,” Ezekiel 8:18.
     8. “And I will execute vengeance in anger and fury on the nations that have not heard,” Micah 5:15.     10. “I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts. And I will give to each one of you according to your works,” Revelation 2:23.
     11. “Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen,” Revelation 1:7.
     12. “Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God,” Revelation 19:15.     These 12 passages are just a few from both the OT and the NT. Would the preacher in your mind look like a Westboro Baptist preaching on love if he were to speak of these things to you on Sunday? Would it get heads turning in the pews with crinkled foreheads wondering what’s going on? If so, look closer at your church, please. They may be guilty of not preaching the full counsel of God. Pray for the pastor, the people and for yourself as you deal with the weight of the full counsel of the wrath of the God of heaven.
     Folks, I’m not here trying to exalt His hatred for sinners above His other attributes. I’m just magnifying this feature because of its glaring omission in the WFR today. I’m not trying to lop side God in this direction either. I just wonder how many of you are not receiving God’s full counsel. Make no mistake, I want you to know the God of wrath. He is the only God in the heavens. Remember that the WFR is not really a clearly identifiable denomination; it’s a mentality and attitude that simply pervades more churches than others, and all in measure. It was Joel Osteen who recently said, “No matter who you are, no matter what you have done or who you have done it with. God is not angry with you.” He said this to a worldwide audience. What in the world does that do to divine wrath? It makes it repugnant to that church and taboo. It is God who created hell before Satan fell as it is written, “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done,” Genesis 2:2, and He is angry at sinners. “God is a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day.”Psalm 7:11. Mr. Osteen is not the least bit interested in proclaiming the God of the Bible.
     God demands that His ministers preach what He wrote. In regards to wrath we know that it was God who slew David’s infant child, God who killed Ananias and Saphira, God who sent His angel out to kill 185,000 enemy troops in one night, God who killed all those in Sodom and Gomorrah, God who killed all the firstborn of Egypt and then drowned Egypt’s armies in the Red Sea and God who threatens every sinner with hell that is not reconciled to Him through His Son. It is the same God of love that drowned every person alive save eight in the days of Noah. I want to challenge you in a way that will awaken you to consider these things well. This is nothing but Bible history, and God wants His people to remember it. Parents, consider your son or daughter at ten months old. How precious they were or are to you. As a parent, what would you see happen to that child? I would suffer a slow and painful death for my little girl. I will show you how God is not altogether like us. Consider a woman at the highest peak of a mountain in the days of the flood holding her precious little one above her head in gripping tears beseeching God to please not kill her baby as the waters threatened to sweep her off her tip toes. Watch her paddle for her life to hold that precious little one up for air as it cries in the freezing water. Then watch it drown with its terrified mother. That happened and it was God alone who killed them both. I am being very real here and historically graphic for a purpose. If you disagree with my use of words and pictures here then it only goes to demonstrate the very reason I’m writing this letter. Do you think that what I’ve just said did not actually happen with perhaps hundreds of thousands alive in those days? Please don’t consider me evil for bringing it to your remembrance. If you’re uneasy I understand; so am I when I think of God’s wrath. That’s the point. Please consider why that might be. Have we ever trembled before the wrath of a God, who is not altogether like us? Which of us can say we are altogether like God? Have our churches falsely placed us so close to Him that we’ve forgotten His holiness? Let His wrath serve to show you His nature; it will not be displayed in the WFR.
     I want you to know God, not just what of Him you like to think about. Consider God’s fury and tremble at it as you might at other times marvel at His love. The real mystery is that God is actually going to let sinners into heaven. Liars, thieves, blasphemers, adulterers, fornicators, drunks and murderers will actually know grace. They can know it through the repentance of their sin and their turning to God in faith. They can be born again! Jesus died in their place taking the wrath of God upon Himself, Isaiah 53. This wrath was the only thing He feared. Oh, what a gracious offer. He took your sin and you can get His righteousness. God, who would be righteous to destroy us all by fire tomorrow, is actually going to save innumerable souls from hell. He is going to do this and the only thing that makes sense of any of it is that it is all for His everlasting glory, Romans 5:8, and for the eternal joy of His elect.
     Friends, I want you to feel nauseous if need be as you consider God’s wrath at the flood of Noah. It is not an unloving God you’re contemplating at that point that’s making you uneasy or hot; it is coming into contact with your own sinful nature that hates the light yet still. It is our own sin that makes us feel uneasy before God. We still don’t think life is His own to do with it as He pleases. My own heart pounds as I share these things, but I am compelled to. Satan did not flood this world. If Satan was physical he would have died in the flood too. It was the God who sent His Son to be the substitutionary death for sinners who flooded the world in His anger. It was God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah and He wants you to remember it because what’s coming upon this earth yet still is far more terrifying, Jude 1:7. What happened to all those souls I cannot say in a blanket statement, but many of them went straight to hell I’m certain. Consider this as well: God’s wrath is as eternal as hell.
     Some will say that a message such as this is too negative. Others will see wisdom in its intentionally concentrated focus. I don’t want to tear any pages out of your Bible or my own. Indeed I want notes on every page. Let’s not lop side God, dear friends. Don’t be guilty of idolatry and make a god to suit you by avoiding what you clearly see in the Bible. The WFR preaches straight out of the Bible, yes, they just don’t preach it all. This affirms something sinister in the spirit by which they preach as I feel I’ve demonstrated for you here. By avoiding God’s wrath WF preachers allow people to avoid the fear of the consequences of sin. There is therefore no conviction of sin and no departing from it which is repentance. None of these things are in accord with a true conversion. People are members of churches that have not repented from practiced fornication, homosexuality, drunkenness and idolatry because all they’ve heard is that God loves them. If that worked I might be inclined to climb on board, but it doesn’t. It makes counterfeits. Dear God, don’t ever let us produce any counterfeits.
     Let’s understand that we do not define good; God defines good by what He does. In regards to salvation Paul said, “Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men…” in 2 Corinthians 5:11. Using that text with a bit of liberality to an audience I assume is mostly Christian, I wish to persuade men that Paul meant terror as it says. It was because he knew the full counsel of God. This knowledge is reflected in those compelled to preach His word. How can you know terror in a god that just draws near to get you drunk? How can you know terror in a god who is not angry at anything you’ve done? You can’t; it’s a false god they’ve got. It’s a devil as an angel of light.
     The WFR doesn’t have or relay the full counsel of God. They have none of it in fact. Its teachers are bankrupt everywhere but the bank. There is nothing new under the sun. Jeremiah was surrounded by the spirit of the WFR in his own day as you and I are in ours. I’m coming to a close.     WF teaching produces non-Lordship salvation in people. Blind people rededicate themselves instead of repenting. They confess and do not forsake. They sin and claim He died that they might continue in it. The goodness that they think will save them will be that which condemns them. They’re not perfect they say and this allows them to find solace in fornication. They are actors on their own stages. They will slip and not get up. Their teachers say “God is not angry” and so their sin is not repulsive but only more reason to love the poor innocent sinner. They give up the sins that give them no pleasure and confess that they’ll work on the ones that please them still. Their teachers are smooth talkers and cause no one to turn from sin. They are hucksters of products and peddlers with words. Their claws scratch ears and speak dreams of their own hearts regarding worthless crusades for decisions, satellite dishes, mansions and cars. There is nothing new under the sun. May God help us all to be bold and say, “Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls…” Jeremiah 6:16.
     I know it is a hard topic for some, and I wholeheartedly pray that any offense be only for the night. May God help me to be humble as I bring what must be brought from my heart. I ask you to please go and read these texts again in light of everything you know about the God of the Bible. I’ve revealed no one single attribute that makes Him God. I have sought to prove you against them who forget God. Go and see their messages, listen to them and see. A hatred for sin and sinner is not His only attribute but merely part of the full counsel of God. The WFR is not in love with this God, but I pray that you are. May God bless you richly! I thank you for your time to consider these difficult things here with me. Go and see it written in your own Bible if you must. Outline the verses that are the most difficult. Spend some time and learn about the wrath of your God. It is not His past; it is not His future as “…God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM…”
     Here is a list of preachers who present a WFR in different degrees. These are the teachers we were told would come and God’s word never fails (Matthew 7:15, 21-23; 2 Corinthians 11:14; Galatians 1:8-9; 1 Timothy 6:3-10; 2 Timothy 4:3.) The ones in bold are those I knew best. It’s such people as these that I have in mind while I write.

**I highly recommend these sermons. They relate to this letter series as a whole. The first two are free, but the third is available (to my knowledge) for purchase only.
1. Hank Hanegraaff: “Counterfeit Revival.”
2. Todd Friel’s messages called “Rodney Howard-Browne” parts 1-3.
3. John Macarthur’s “Does God Promise Health and Wealth?” parts 1-2. Product codes 90-63 and 90-64 respectively. You have to go to page 6 after clicking on this hyperlink to find them. CD: $5.00; Mp3: $3.00.
 
Thank you for your attention to this letter.