Tuesday, April 22, 2014

The Post-Reformation Idolatry

Idolatry has always provoked the deep anger and judgment of God. It must be avoided in all its forms to avoid incurring the wrath of God either individually or corporately.

Pre-Reformation Idolatry

The Roman Catholic church invented the saints as object of veneration or worship. Although the Statement of Faith of the Roman Catholic church is right on (Apostle's Creed), they have always had the tendency to add to Scripture by using tradition and putting it on the same level as the Word of God.

Now, not all Roman Catholics may believe in the veneration of the saints but to those who still do, it is very clear in God's word that any object of worship that is not THE Creator but that which is created is a blasphemous IDOL, nothing more, nothing less. It is quite clear that Paul in Romans 1:25 defines the abomination of idolatry as that of worshiping the created rather than the Creator. In the same chapter verses 22 and 23 makes it really clear that we cannot substitute the glory of God with something created whether human or animal.

The Roman Catholic Church actually removed the second commandment out of the Ten Commandments because it was very specific to their practice of idolatry. So to intentionally hide the truth after the Dark Ages (period in history when the Roman Catholic Church banned the reading of the Bible in any language if one is not a priest, and was punishable by torture as mandated by the Inquisition among others), they double the "You shall not covet..." to be able to have a count of 10 commandments, a clear insult to the intelligence of all those who call themselves Roman Catholics and is compelled to agree with the Pope (thus making the pope even more powerful than God Himself!) As we shall see later, this is a result of their tacit assumption that God is NOT that intelligent and can be impressed by their ritual or pretense at piety as long as they can show (even if insincere) attempts at personal piety. They forget Christ's angry commentary on the Pharisees who were like "whitewashed tombs" showing elegance on the outside but full of foul dead carcasses in the inside.

The second commandment is found in Exodus 20:4-6 which clearly specifies that "any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth" cannot be a substitute for the image of God. Because the Roman Catholic Church had been practicing precisely that abomination in their traditions before they lifted the ban on reading the Bible, they were forced to sweep the second commandment under the rug. Again, they assume that God is not all-knowing and that he is not really intelligent enough to perceive any anomalies in their practice. You be the judge!

Post-Reformation Idolatry

What is more subtle is that post Dark Ages Christianity has also been practicing some form of idolatry. In fact, it is idolatry that is just as blasphemous and unbiblical that it has resulted among others, in very defeated Christians and/or Christians who are a shame to the gospel and/or Christians who renounce their faith!

This brand of idolatry started as early as the other heretics. Quite early in the Christian church, now dominated by gentiles instead of Jews (this is a very important point to both hermeneutics and orthodox Christian doctrine), most of the early church fathers adopted Hellenistic concepts of God rather than properly exegeting Scripture and inductively deriving the correct concept and image of God as declared and illustrated by Scripture.

Even famous church fathers like Augustine and scholastics like Thomas Aquinas were also guilty of this. Such Hellenistic theologies got sucked into the the mainstream of orthodox Christianity that even more modern church heroes like John Calvin unwittingly based a lot of their doctrine on these false assumptions about God. In fact, we have already refuted the Calvinist TULIP as completely un-scriptural the way they articulate it. Quite unfortunately, these have become the foundation of what we now call Classical Theology and like the Roman Catholic church are becoming the dominant majority in even the evangelical world.

False or Half-true Classical theologies

We have to make clear that any assumptions anyone has about God which is NOT consistent with what the word of God either declares or portrays, is not only aberrant but paints a FALSE picture of God and puts the "idolater" in a precarious position of worshiping a God that is not the same as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In fact, it is this FALSE concept of God that is the root of all idolatry since the God it is pointing to is NOT the ONE TRUE GOD!!!

For clarity we try to enumerate as many assumptions about God that are not biblical but have crept into mainstream evangelical and fundamental belief. We will make as comprehensive a list as possible and refute them Biblically and logically or point out why they are the opposite of Scriptural statements for the comfort of those who wish to know ONLY God's mind and not seminarian or pseudo-seminarian jargon. So this will be a continuous work in progress...

Note further that the refutations will be based on the correct assumption that God is THE GREATEST COMMUNICATOR and hence, has to speak in the plainest and simplest language to be undertandable to everyone. Note also that if there NOT be any need for seminarian explanations or gobbledygook to twist the Scripture description to fit their false theology, i.e., we base our deductions or inductions on the plain reading of the word either in the translation or the original language and context.
  1. God totally controls everything totally and absolutely. This is the first FALSE proposition about God. If God controls everything, then why are things NOT going ENTIRELY God's way. Does he pleasure in playing with Himself? I highly doubt that. Was God in total control when Satan and 1/3 of heaven fell from grace? Was God in total control when man fell at the garden? It is clear from Scripture as discussed in my other blogs that God took a risk in withdrawing total control over the heart and mind and will of man when He decided to create man in his image. HIS IMAGE meant TOTAL autonomy of heart, mind and soul was granted to man at the creation making him totally independent of God in his personal decisions.
  2. God's sovereignty is the most important quality or attribute of God. Contrary to this FALSE teaching, the Bible implicitly assumes God's sovereignty and mentions very little of it when praising or worshiping God. In fact, the Psalms, particularly David's psalms praise God for his KHECED and his EMETH, the Hebrew word for lovingkindness (or steadfast love) and faithfulness. In fact, the chief end of man, according to the Lord Jesus (and not according to the erroneous Westminster or Heidlelberg confessions) is to LOVE God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength (attributes by the way that God no longer controls) and our neighbor as ourselves. Why because the chief end of God, if you synthesize the whole of Scripture, is to create a people of faith who would WILLINGLY love Him back the way He loves them. God is love and is all for relationship with man. In fact, the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ PROVES NOTHING LESS than the fact that GOD LOVES US SO MUCH THAT HE WOULD RATHER DIE FOR US THAN LIVE WITHOUT US!  God is LOVE, first and foremost and Love is the MOST IMPORTANT quality or attribute of God. Read the shortest Psalm. Psalm 117 is so short that is has time to mention ONLY WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT to the worshiping psalmist...God's kheced and emeth which endures forever.
  3. God never takes any risks because he controls everything. There is a separate blog on this issue. Suffice it to say that RISK in any language is incurred when things and/or events turn out LESS THAN 100% of what is desired by the risk taker. God wanted to create his people, his people of faith BUT... 1/3 of heaven fell, man fell, God destroyed the earth during Noah's time annihilating almost everyone, the Jewish majority of the chosen people rejected him, and believe it or not a majority of those who belong to Christian churches today will be absent from heaven when some of us get there! There is RISK all over the place. Whether it is random risk or a CALCULATED risk, it is risk just the same. Let us start calling a spade, a spade. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck,....(you know the routine?).
  4. God knows everything, past, present and future because the bible declares he knows the end from the beginning. More accurately and Biblically stated, God CAN know everything but the Bible consistently shows that God CHOSE not to know a lot of things. God knows everything that He has predestined and declared in Scripture but we have to limit it to those. Total Omniscience does not cover the future, just the past and present. The future is a whole new bowl of wax. Jesus "saw" and knew Nathaniel praying before they met each other, but it does not necessarily mean that Jesus knew Nathaniel's entire future. Classical theologians need to make a sane, logical and rational choice when the Bible shows God as surprised, angry, happy, etc. There are only two logical and rational choices: either God truly does not know the future where he reacted or He knew the future but decided to be a hypocrite about it! I would NEVER make any proposition that would make God a hypocrite. Hence, i have only ONE conclusion...God did not know the future in those instances where he got angry or surprised. Stretch this farther... Did God know that Abraham would willingly sacrifice Isaac or not? If you are like me, you see a genuine God who loves and desires autonomous man to willingly please God. On the other hand, if you are like most classicists, intentionally or unintentionally, you would say God knew what would happen and thus make the logical conclusion that God was playing with Himself and was just doing one of his hypocritical moments. There is absolutely NO MIDDLE GROUND CONCLUSION POSSIBLE HERE! Are you listening? Take the example of Job. Did God know the final outcome whether Job would give up or not or finally curse God and die? I hope not, because God is not and never will be such a hypocrite as the classicists implicitly conclude.
  5. God never changes his mind. In Exodus 32, God wanted to annihilate Israel in his fierce anger against their idolatry, replacing his glory with that of a golden calf. But Moses argued intelligently against it and God CHANGED HIS MIND! In fact, this very incident is repeated without apology and without apologetic mambo jambo in Psalm 106:23! In Isaiah 38, God declared explicitly his will that Hezekiah was going to die that night. However, Hezekiah prayed and pleaded with God and GOD CHANGED HIS MIND! In the book of Jonah, God was going to burn Ninevah to the ground and wanted Jonah to declare his intent. Surprisingly, the fierce and barbaric Assyrian warriors of Ninevah declared a fast and prayed to God. Well, God was TRULY IMPRESSED! And, God CHANGED HIS MIND! In fact, that was why Jonah became angry at God for sending him. Note that we agree that God's very character NEVER changes as declared by James 1:17. However, he is know to always change his mind. By the way, the word "relent" in Psalm 110:4 which is translated as "change of mind" and where God declares He will NOT change his mind, is the same Hebrew word "nacham" in Jeremiah 26 used at least 4 times in that chapter where God said he WOULD indeed change his mind. If God NEVER changes his mind, then what is the use of prayer and supplication if it does not change his mind??? Most commentaries say that prayer changes us instead of God's mind thus preaching self-hypnosis under the guise of exegesis. Such is the nature of FALSE teaching.
  6. God is impassive or impassible. Exodus 34:14 says, "for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God". Now, tell me that jealousy has no emotions! Tell me that jealousy is not something that comes about because ONE is AFFECTED directly by the actions or behaviour of somebody else. We have several other examples but this one is conclusive. FALSE teaching by the scholastics, namely, Thomas Aquinas, followed by J.I.Packer and several other classicists. Shows us that on one is perfect including the brightest minds, even including myself. Take a look at Jeremiah 32:30 where God Himself says that Israel PROVOKED him to anger! In verse 31, God says that the "city has AROUSED my anger and wrath". God is indeed vulnerable because He chose to be out of his love and is deeply affected by the behavior of his people. Here are some more monkey wrenches against this false theology: When Jesus wept over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37-39, was it because he was human or was he actually expressing the emotions of God? Can the classical theologian interpret this plainly without the help of seminary jargon? When Jesus wept over Lazarus in John 11:35 was it because he was human or was he expressing the feelings of his soul and spirit (which is fundamentally GOD)? If it is because he was human, how come His being the impassive and impassible God had NO POWER to trump his "frail and emotional" humanity? Again, no seminary gobbledygook please, just plain common sense exegesis!  "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints" Psalm 116: 15 clearly implies emotions and that God is affected. Or do classicists DARE to EDIT God presumming to know BETTER THAN GOD? Anthropomorphisms are highly unacceptable arguments; if we start on that track then who is to say which part of Scripture is anthropomorphic and which part is not? Again, classicists attempt to be better than God as communicators! Such presumption!  Nuff said.
  7. God is simple.
  8. The TULIP of Calvinism. One needs to be simply HONESTLY Biblical to refute all five!!! We have a separate blog, Relational Theology's response to the Five Points of Calvinism, on this. Suffice it to say here that the preponderance of Scripture against TULIP and against each point of TULIP make only the stubbornly intellectually dishonest stand their TULIP ground. Either that or they are thoroughly brainwashed by their seminary education gobbledygook. When you repeat a lie too many times (and years) to yourself, it begins to sound like the truth to you.
  9. God answers prayer but only according to His will. Anyone who prays with this in mind as interpreted by most commentaries simply do not know how to pray nor what prayer is really for. Israel asked Samuel for a king like the other nations in 1 Samuel 8. God Himself declared that it was against His will BUT, LO AND BEHOLD, He GRANTED their request. It was God's will that Hezekiah would die that night he declared it through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 38. Isaiah had not even left the gates of the palace when God reversed his will in response to Hezekiah's plea. So, anyone who says otherwise either does not know how to read English, does not know how to read Hebrew, is performing classic isegesis instead of exegesis, or is so presumptously arrogant that they begin to claim that we can only understand God only if we listen to their convoluted interpretations and lose our common sense at the same time, or guilty of ALL of the above simultaneously!!! For these presumptous teachers, Matthew 5:19 clearly applies to them, "Whoever relaxes (even worse, twists) one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven..."
  10. We will never know enough about God to be able to say that we know and understand God because His wisdom is infinite and man's wisdom is finite. Just read Jeremiah 9:23,24 and either God means what he says or he means something else and therefore is not such a great communicator after all!!!
  11. The Old Testament was only for the Jews and Christians should only the Old Testament for illustration or background but only conform to the teachings of the New Testament
  12. The Church is the new Israel and the Bible no longer applies to the "old" Israel. 
  13. There can be free will under the absolute control of God (oxymoron, actually!)
  14. Miracles, signs and wonders were replete before the cannon of Scripture was closed. Now that it is closed God has stopped using these as a means for revelation.

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