The Prosperity Preaching Crisis: Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater

                                                 








     


     I recently came across a post on facebook that portrayed the images of many of today's mainline prosperity preachers.  Under each picture was written their individual net worth.  The values ranges from just over 1 million dollars to 1 billion dollars.  These values did not surprise me and only made me shake my head, but some of the comments under the post caught my eye.  I realized from these few comments what a huge negative impact these heresies are making on both the true christian community as well as the world.  It is a real shame that the reason these people are so rich is that they preach a false, unbiblical, doctrine that gives people the false hope of riches and healing if they only will show their great faith by contributing to god's work.  In any other case I would always capitalize God, but in this case the true God is not the subject.        Indeed the Bible is correct and saying that the love of money is the root of all evil and it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than the rich man to enter the kingdom of God. The point of this article however is not to expose the ridiculous heresy of these false preachers in comparison to the Bible, but to help people have the discernment to not throw the proverbial  baby out with the bathwater.  I here comments like "this is exactly why I don't go to church, all they want is money" an " If I want to worship God I will go out into mother nature" or even "I don't know why I would want to go to church, there just a bunch of hypocrites".
     Well let me tell you friends first of all that all churches have hypocrites no matter if they preach truth or heresy. The fact is that those that make Jesus Christ Lord of their life are indeed sinners and do not become instantly perfect. There are even people that go to good Bible believing churches that could care less really about Christ and are only their for image and to ease their troubled conscience.  When a person is regenerated by faith in Jesus they do not instantly become perfect, it is a life long process called sanctification where we battle our sinful nature to do what God deems as right with the help of the Holy Spirit.
     It is a dire mistake to put all churches and all "Christians" under the same blanket. A Christian is a true follower of Jesus Christ that makes him lord of their life, and their chief end is to be obedient to him and bring him glory. Just because one says they are a christian does not mean that they are a true christian.  If I read in the news about an auto body shop that is a fraud and does sub par work, I don't assume that all auto body shops are worthless.  I have recently ready of school teachers who have sexually abuse their students, yet I do not view all school teachers as evil predators.  We constantly hear of crooked business men who take advantage of the poor, and use lawyers to manipulate the government in their favor, yet there are far more business men that are legitimate and upright.  So also there are many churches that do not not have truth or Christ as their aim, yet that does not include all churches. It is a mistake to throw away true Christians with the multitude of false Christians.
    I truly love to see the glories of God's creation in nature and view his handiwork. In fact in the Bible it says that God uses his creation to bear witness to all men that he exists. We call this natural or general revelation. But it just simply isn't enough to believe that God exists.  The Bible tells us that even Satan and his fallen angels believe that God exists.  By the grace of God, He also reveals himself to us in the Bible by the writing of men that He inspired with his very thoughts and voice.  In these scriptures is how we know what God expects of us, how we can be saved, how we can be condemned, how we can know his character, how we are to live, and every other aspect of life you can think of.  There is no matter in life in which the Bible is silent. To know and worship God and make His Son Jesus the Lord of your life, you need the scriptures. This is God's special revelation to us.  If you think that there is some mythical set of scales at the end of life that God is going to weigh out your good deeds to your bad and hope for a heavenly entrance, you are mistaken friend.
     If we lived an absolutely perfect life from our very birth, that would meet only the minimum of what our perfect God requires from us. For no unrighteousness can enter his kingdom.  But by his great grace and mercy  he sacrificed his own Son to make a way that we may become righteous in his sight.  In fact Jesus said " I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the father but by me. Without making Jesus the point of our lives, and center our life directly on Him then there is no need to go to church and there is no need to worship God.  He is not interested in being anything except everything to you.
     True Christians come together to worship the great God that saves their souls, helps them live better lives, and to strengthen each other against the attacks of this evil world.  Christians gathering together are like coals in a fire. If you take one coal out it soon looses its heat and goes black, but if you keep the coals together they stay hot and bright.  A true Christian church does take up an offering only to support the spread of God's word through missionaries, keeping up a building to worship in, and to pay a pastor to make it his full time job to keep the church united, healthy, and growing.
     The simple fact of the matter in the end is this. The only absolute truth we have in this world is that which is revealed to us by God in his Scriptures. Any other belief about how one might fare in the afterlife is but a contraption invented by men. I'm not willing to put my soul in the hands of men but only in the hands of God.

John Piper, Michael Horton, Sinclair Ferguson Panel Discussion

Divine Illumination

This excerpt is from the blogs of Ligonier.org 

“These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God (v. 10).”

- 1 Corinthians 2:6-16

Today, we are concluding our brief study of the person and work of the Holy Spirit with a look at the Spirit’s work of illumination. You may remember that in our study of Romans 8:16-17, we spoke of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, which tells us that the Spirit confirms to us that we are the children of God if we do in fact belong to Him. We noted that this subjective internal testimony operates in conjunction with His objective and external Word. Paul tell us that the Spirit confirms our adoption internally in the midst of a passage that tells us unequivocally that we have been adopted (vv. 12-17). The Word operates externally by our reading and hearing it, and the Spirit works internally to apply it to us. The Apostle did not expect the Holy Spirit to work apart from the Apostolic testimony in order to reassure us of our sonship; he expected the Spirit to work in and through the Apostolic preaching and teaching to confirm in our hearts that we are God’s children.

Divine illumination and the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit are closely related. In both cases, the Spirit works in and through the inscripturated words of God’s prophets and Apostles. When it comes to divine illumination, however, we are speaking more about the Holy Spirit’s work to give us understanding of Scripture than we are talking about the Spirit’s confirmation that we are God’s children. There are times in our lives when we are reading the Bible and suddenly we are struck by something in the text that we have never noticed before. Perhaps we suddenly see how the passage applies to our specific context. Maybe we understand the contours of an argument that escaped us previously. These are examples of the Holy Spirit’s work of illumination.

In 2 Corinthians 2:6-16, the Apostle describes this work of illumination. It involves the Spirit searching the depths of God (v. 10), not because He does not know the mind of God—for the Holy Spirit is God—but in order to grant to us the understanding that the Lord wants us to have. In other words, He searches the mind of God for our sake. He does not just open our minds and hearts at conversion; instead, He continues throughout our Christian lives to make the gospel make sense to us and convince us of its truth.

This work of illumination does not operate by giving us secret insight that one cannot derive by reading the text in context. Scripture is not a code book or the basis for fanciful allegorizing. Illumination, rather, takes what is already there and makes it real to us.

Coram Deo

Without the Holy Spirit’s work of illumination, we will never understand the Bible in a saving way. Many people read the Bible, know what it teaches, but never believe its message. It is not that they are somehow less intelligent. They do not believe because they have not been granted the ability to do so. We should thank God every day that He has granted us the capacity to trust in His Word, and may we ask Him to illumine our study every time we read it.

Passages for Further Study

2 Corinthians 3:12-18
1 John 2:20

Can I Have a Few Minutes of Your Time???

Here are some the greatest living men of God in my opinion. Please take a minute to hear what they have to say.  If you are already a Christian and need support and discipleship please contact us here at The Pamphlet.  We will come along side you and help teach you, keep you accountable, and bathe you in prayer.  If you are a seeker or a critical thinker please watch these videos and contact us with any questions or concerns you may have.  We have many resources available to you whether a skeptic, new believer, or mature saint. May you seek to know the TRUE GOD.

thepamphlet@outlook.com

Paul Washer

Ravi Zacharias

Michael Horton

John MacArthur

John Piper

                                                                     R.C. Sproul

Literal Principal of Biblical Interpretation

In my last article we covered a short introduction of Biblical Interpretation. With Hank Hanegraaff's Hankronym at our disposal, we remember the principals of proper exegesis of the Bible are: Literal, Illumination, Grammatical, Historical, Typological, and Synergistic Principals. In this article we will adjust our focus on the first of these principals. Let's look at the Literal Principal of Interpretation and apply it to the Scriptures.

     The Literal principal of Interpretation is found in almost every style and form of Biblical Hermeneutics, which we remember is the science of Biblical Interpretation. Perhaps only in the most extreme spiritualized views of scriptures is this principal absent. For example, there are more and more new heresies that teach that there is nothing concrete or explicit in the Bible. We are to interpret each Scripture as it applies to us in our given circumstance in life. These ideas may seem new to us, but they are just repackaged lies from early church heretics, even back to Satan himself in the Garden of Eden. If there is no absolutes in Scripture, we absolutely cannot know what is true.

     “To interpret Scripture literally, is to interpret it as literature”.-R.C. Sproul. When we study the Bible literally, we should interpret it just as we would interpret any other form of communication. That is, we should interpret it in its most clear and natural sense. After all, our true goal is to understand the author's literal meaning that was placed upon his heart. It is important to note that Scriptures surely do apply to us today and to our lives, but it is of paramount importance that we do not compose a meaning for ourselves that is different then the actual original meaning. That is to say, that Scripture has one true meaning to the original audience it was written to at that time. We can apply the truths of that meaning to our lives today, but we are not to create a new meaning outside of the original.

The key to the principal at hand, is to learn a few simple rules of literature. These are easy rules that apply to any type of literature, not only the Bible. God, by way of the Holy Spirit inspired various authors to pen the words of His will. It only makes clear sense that he would have these truths communicated in the way man communicates. Since the Scriptures were recorded as literature, then it only makes sense to use literary principals to interpret these Scriptures.

     The first basic literary principals we need to take into considerations is Form or Genre. The word genre simply means “kind” or “sort”. As we approach a Scripture it is very important to identify the genre. We need to decide if it is a historical narrative, which tell the great stories of history in the Bible and are full of adventure. Or perhaps the Scripture could be a book of poetry/wisdom such as psalms, proverbs, or song of Solomon. Or also perhaps it could be a Scripture filled with symbols and allegories such as the apocalyptic literature of Revelation. It is important to become familiar with all the different literary forms of the Bible to make proper exegesis. For instance if one was to interpret the Gospel of John as a poetic allegory such as proverbs, one would miss the truth of the deity of Christ and all relevance of his ministry and crucifixion would be lost. Or if you were to force one of Jesus's many parables to “walk on all fours” and force it into a literal historical narrative, we would have a Jesus that is made up of actual bread and vines, and at the same time is also an actual literal door. Of course these examples are a bit preposterous, but it will help you to start thinking about form.

     The second literary principal to consider is Figurative Language. It has been said that figurative language is the principal means by which God communicates spiritual realities to His Children. The Bible is full all sorts of figurative language, but today we will focus on the major three.

Metaphor- A metaphor is an implied comparison that identifies a word or phrase with something that it does not literally represent. An example of this is John 6:48 where Jesus says “I am the bread of life. He quite clearly was not intending for us to believe he was made of bread, but that he was the essence of true life.

Simile- A simile draws a comparison between two objects usually with the words “like” or “as”. Some prime examples of this can be found in the parables of Jesus. For instance the Kingdom of God is LIKE a mustard seed in Mark 4. God did not intend that the Kingdom of God is literally like a mustard seed, but it represents a spiritual truth that like a mustard seed the Kingdom of God starts out small and becomes great.

Hyperbole- Hyperbole is a figure of speech that uses exaggeration for effect or emphasis. The classic example of hyperbole is if you were to step on a scale and say “Oh my gracious, I weigh a TON!!!” We know you don't believe that you weigh 2000lbs but that you are using this literary device to exaggerate or disgust with your weight. A good Biblical example of hyperbole can be found in Mat 24:21-22 in the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.

Fantasy Imagery- Some classic examples of fantasy imagery that represent spiritual truths of persons are commonly found in apocalyptic passages. For instance the great red dragon in Rev 12 or the beast like a leopard with fell like a bear and a mouth like a lion in Rev. 13. Fantasy imagery, like hyperbole is used for dramatic effect, but the symbols used do not correspond with anything in the real world. Some great examples of christian authors using fantasy imagery to portray spiritual truths are John Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress and C.S. Lewis in the Chronicles of Narnia.

“When the Literal Principal of Biblical Interpretation is compromised or contradicted, truth is clouded and the totality of Scripture is confused.”

Mining the Bible for All It's Riches

In the cold north country of Alaska and Canada there lies millions of pounds of gold just waiting to be uncovered. This gold is laid to rest in gravel deposits from ancient river channels. These channels are now covered with sediment, soil, and vegetation. One would be hard pressed to imagine a river or creek once flowed along in these areas. The miners in this area have to use huge machinery to remove this material to expose the gold rich channel dirt below. The soil on the surface they call “overburden”, and the gold rich soil of the gravely river bottoms they call “paydirt”. Once this overburden is removed, the paydirt is exposed and collected. The paydirt is then processed by a machine called a wash plant. The wash plant uses high pressure water streams, vibrating screens, and gravity to separate the gold from the gravel. After countless hours of hard work and expense, the miner hopefully has a mason jar full of gold flakes for his trouble. And so it is with the Scriptures.

     When the Holy Spirit regenerates us and faith in Christ abounds, our great overburden of sin and guilt is removed from our account with the Father. As we saw in last week's article, our sin is first imputed to Christ so that we are seen guiltless, and then Christ righteousness is imputed onto ourselves through faith that we may be seen righteous to the father. Just as the giant bulldozers and excavators remove the overburden to expose the paydirt, so also Christ scrapes away our unrighteousness to expose his righteousness laid to our account. Here we stand redeemed with unlimited paydirt under our feet.

     This paydirt is the Holy Scriptures or Bible. The vox dei or voice of God spoken through men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is both infallible and inerrant, it is both revealing and obscure, it is both simple and complex. In the paragraphs to follow I will share with you a general overview of the rules I use to study the scriptures. How I mine each and every verse, exposing it to the high pressure showers and vibrating screens of the wash plant, in order to obtain the riches of truth hidden in the rubble. The more you work these principals, the more flakes you will find. Soon the flakes get larger and larger until you uncover great nuggets of truth that change your life, sanctify, draw you nearer to God, and most of all enhance how you bring him Glory. After all according the the Westminster Confession of Faith, the chief end of man is to “Glorify God and enjoy Him Forever”.

     In beginning there are three basic terms we need to discuss. These terms are hermeneutics, exegesis, and eisegesis. Hermeneutics is simply the fancy way of saying the science or art of interrupting the scriptures. It doesn't matter what method you use to study the Scriptures, it is still hermeneutics, whether right or wrong.

Eisegesis is also a complex term given to a simple prospect. Simply put, eisegesis means that you force your philosophy or doctrine on the Scriptures to make them support your cause. For instance if you had a firm belief that the three persons of the trinity were separate independent beings, you might only use Scriptures that speak of each person separately. You would ignore the passages that were in contradiction, and approach each verse separately, so as to remove context and remove the back drop of the rest of Scripture. Eisegesis is common with false biblical doctrine in those that were taught a doctrine without Scriptural support of the Bible as a whole. I like to call this “priming”. If doctrine comes before basic Bible interpretation, it is very easy to try to make verses match your doctrine, instead of the verses making your doctrine. Some concepts of the Bible are so simple that the only requirement to understand are ears or eyes. The very basics of salvation and good vs. evil are prime examples.

     Now we will deal with the primary focus of any true Bible student or theologian. Exegesis is yet another fancy Latin term that is very simple in meaning, but unable to be mastered. Exegesis simple means “to draw out of”. That is, that when we study the Scriptures, we are to draw the meaning out of the text that God intended, not what we intended. If Hermeneutics is the art of studying Scripture, then in fact exegesis is the interpretation that we gain from that study. It is no easy task, yet the rewards are beyond worth. I will lay out the basic rules that I believe help use to draw out the truth. I will only touch briefly on each rule in this article, as I will cover each separately in later articles.

*It is important to note that these principals have been used by theologians for hundreds of years. I will use a format of the rules I learned from Hank Hanegraaff at the Christian Research Institute. The acronyms, or Hankronyms as he likes to call them, are not my work, but those of Mr. Hanegraaff. You can learn more of this ministry at equip.org.

I used Mr. Hanegraaffs system do to his easy to remember acronyms. The basis is found Psalm 119:105. Thy word is a lamp unto thy feet, and a light unto my path. For the rules of Bible interpretation you just need to remember LIGHTS. Literal, Illumination, Grammar, History, Typology, and Synergy. Let's overview these rules.

Literal Principal- We are interpret the Bible in its most obvious and natural sense, or as it has been said “to interpret the Bible literally is to interpret it as literature.” If we use the methods of interpreting literature for the literal principal, we are far less likely to force symbols, metaphor, or allegory (parable) into a wooden literal sense. For instance When Christ says he is a door or a lamb, we are not to force the Scripture to say that he is really an actual door or lamb, but these are metaphors for a spiritual truth. We can define the literal interpretation of a verse through Form(genre), and by the presence, or lack there of , Figurative Language and Fantasy Imagery. Again, we will cover these topics in depth in articles to come.

Illumination Principal- The illumination principal is a Spirit powered principal. It is vital in exegesis to pray for illumination of the Scripture as well to hide the Word in your heart. An easy way to remember the steps to make the most of illumination is the acronym MEALS. Memorize, Examine, Apply, Listen, and Study.

Grammatical Principal- This principal breaks each verse down phrase by phrase, and word by word to draw out what the author is driving at. In order to understand this principal, we need only basic understanding of the rules of grammar. The basic of this principal are syntax, style, and semantics. And of course, a little common sense.

Historical Principal- In this principal, we take a look at what is going on around the author when a passage is written. In order to get a true context of the passage, often times one needs this principal to fully grasp the passage. Here we will use the acronym LEGACY. Location, Essence, Genre, Author, Context, and Years.

Typology Principal- A type is a person, event, or institution in the Old Testament that points forward to a greater reality in the New Testament. A great example of this principal is found in Hebrews 9:23-24. The Old Testament is filled with these types. For example the Holy Land, Holy City, and Holy Temple are all types of the future blessings of God's covenant people. It is said that “the study of prophecy (eschatology) is the thread that weave Scripture into a glorious tapestry, typology is the material out of which the thread is spun.”

Scriptural Synergy- As I have said in past articles this is by far the most important of the principals. Also know as the “Analogy or Faith”, this principal simply states that the whole of Scripture is great than the sum of its individual parts. In other words, to properly execute exegesis, your conclusion must always agree with and never contradict clear truths of the rest of Scripture. You must interpret individual passages of Scripture to understand the Bible as a whole, but these individual passages must all align with its counterparts.

Come back next week as we explore these principals in depth one at a time and apply them to the Scriptures. God Bless.

It's all About Perspective

Article By: Joe Osgood Jr.

Scriptural Support: Romans 4:22-25

“simul justus et peccator” (Simultaneously Righteous and Sinner.) This Latin phrase was Luther's formula for explaining the very heart of the Gospel message. The actual act of Justification. This phrase is not to be interpreted that we are both justified and sinner at the same time, which is a great contradiction, for one cannot both be justified and a sinner in himself. The phrase is meant in saying that from one perspective we are justified, and from another perspective we are sinners. From God the Father's perspective we are justified if we have TRUE FAITH in Christ because of his perfect sacrifice on the cross of Calvary.

Many are familiar with imputed righteousness. That is, when the righteousness of Christ is imputed or applied to our account. In fact it is a double imputation. Before Christ's righteousness can be applied to our account, our sins must be imputed to his account. Through his perfect keeping of the Law in his life on Earth he is the only suitable sacrifice. He is the only one with excess merit to his account. If we sin only once, our account is deficient, and not any amount of good works can bring that deficiency into the black.

When Christ presented himself as the perfect sacrifice and wholly and fully righteous, he had enough excess merit or righteousness to cover all who would have faith in him. In this way he took or imputed our sins onto himself for judgment of death, and imputed unto us his merit or righteousness in sin's stead.

In conclusion it is not that we are both justified and sinner at the same time. It is however well said that while we are still sinners, in God the Fathers eyes, he takes only the imputed merit or righteousness of Christ into account, and there for sees us as justified. This is not to say that we are free to sin as we please as Antinomians, that God's Grace may abound, but that we should strive for perfection and sanctification, as obedience is the true sign of a faithful servant and a loving child.

As John Bunyan the author of Pilgrims Progress noted:

One day as I was passing into the field . . . this sentence fell upon my soul. Thy righteousness is in heaven. And methought, withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right hand; there, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he wants [lacks] my righteousness, for that was just before [in front of] him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, "The same yesterday, today and, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8).Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosed from my afflictions and irons; my temptations also fled away; so that from that time those dreadful scriptures of God left off to trouble me; now went I also home rejoicing for the grace and love of God. (John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, [Hertfordshire: Evangelical Press, 1978, orig. 1666],pp. 90-91)