Our home of nearly 30 years, Hilltop Acres Ranch, is truly a wonderful place to live and we thank our Lord for the "grace and peace" we find here, not to mention the pileated woodpeckers and deer.
This little fellow was about 30 feet from our house nestled in the grass.
AN OPEN LETTER TO GRACE BELIEVERS EVERYWHERE:
It was July 12th
2002 that Carol was hit head-on by a ten passenger van and was
hospitalized for the next 19 days and bedridden at our home the next
seven weeks. What Pastor C. Richard Jordan was preaching during that
time was not a high priority item for me, except that during that July,
people from our church came home with Jordan’s teaching that Jesus did
not know he was the Son of God until the Father told him in Luke 3, that
Jesus did not exhibit any of the attributes of God during His earthly
ministry, and that Christ is not omniscient even today.
You cannot imagine my shock or chagrin
that Pastor Jordan would put such a confused representation of Kenotic
Theology forth at a conference attended by both lost and saved, young
and old, babes and mature, and send my folks back to me with these
heretical ideas.
With respect to this subject I have now
studied what has been written by Lewis Sperry Chafer, Oliver B. Greene,
R.A. Torrey, Hugh McIntosh, H.C. Thiessen, probably three dozen
commentaries and several theological dictionaries. Unquestionably, no
writer says about the Kenosis what Pastor Jordan is saying, but perhaps
a more appropriate question I have is the one you alluded to in you
letter: why is this a subject preached at bible conferences? Are we as
the Athenians of Acts 17.21 or is there acceptance of Open View Theology
in Pastor Jordan’s future? What good did Pastor Jordan would think
could possibly come from such problematical teaching?
A.A. Milne has Winnie-the-Pooh describe
himself as a "bear of very little brain" which is a description I feel
comfortable in sharing: meanwhile, in my more than twenty years of
pulpit ministry I have never felt it appropriate to teach anything that
would confuse people over the person and deity of our precious Lord
Jesus Christ and I simply cannot imagine why Pastor Jordan would send my
people back home to me with the idea that Jesus had to find out he was
the Son of God in Luke 3.22 when Christ clearly knew it in Luke 2.49,
that Jesus exhibited none of the attributes of God in the four gospels
and worst of all, that my Savior doesn’t have omniscience even today.
Simple minded me: I see Jesus doing
things that exhibit deity in all four gospels, and I see no reason in
the world to stand in any pulpit anywhere and say that he did not.
On top of that, you cannot teach the
words “emptied himself” from a King James Bible, but even if you rely on
‘the Greek,’ or a translation such as the NASV which does use those
words, did He not humble Himself at the cross, not at the incarnation?
And again, is it not terribly intemperate to raise these sorts of
issues, so as to minister questions?
Like you, I see a tremendous
inappropriateness to all this, but now that Pastor Jordan and his
attention seeking wanna-be's have preached this far and wide, we are
stuck with dealing with the problem they has created. It is good that
you urge patience; but his message went out to hundreds and was dropped
in my lap by people who heard him teach it and wrongly assumed that I
would agree with anything Pastor Jordan taught since we were such good
friends. It is good that you suggest interacting in writing, but tapes
of this deleterious message with its pernicious doctrines are already
all over America, and now his friends are preaching this same message on
the internet. You are so right to suggest restraint but the heretical
cat has already been let out of the bag. Where was the wisdom and
restraint that Pastor C. Richard Jordan should have exhibited in his
sermon topic selection and its appropriateness for general audiences?
The more I study what has been written
about Philippians 2.3-6 the more my head hurts. Some of what you sent
was new to me and having read it, I again agree with you that it is a
subject that requires patient prayerful study. This is a subject that
should not be treated in the flippant manner of Pastor Jordan, (“Wait,
son, there is something else for you to know about” as Pastor Jordan has
God the Father saying in his message “When Did Christ Learn the
Mystery”) and certainly is not a subject appropriate for bible
conferences (and perhaps Pastor Jordan sensed that when he said “If I
was getting that across to you, you couldn’t be looking at me that
blank” or “Can you grasp some of that in your mind without being a
heretic?”).
Men of stature, men of character, men of
integrity admit when they have erred and endeavor to do better. Pastor
Jordan now resorts to name calling and avoiding dealing with the mess he
created with his own intemperate impertinent flippant irreverent
inappropriate message. Our opponents wrongly say “You people make too
much of Paul” but thanks to Pastor Jordan they can now say “You make too
little of Christ,” or, "You teach Christ as a lesser god" and they'd be
right.
When I disagreed with the teachings that Pastor Jordan exposed our people to, he and his ring-kissers heard about it, even though I had never once mentioned him by name. Since then the attack on me has been relentless and scurrilous. Pastor Jordan refuses to speak to me, answer my emails or the four letters I sent him or my request to air this allout in a public forum. In a manner most Machiavellian, Pastor Jordan avoids the doctrinal ussue and avoids me, while his Grace Gestapo levels incessant person attack on me, thereby intimidating anyone that would disagree with the doctrinal issues they created.
Pastor Terence D. McLean
NEWSLETTER
email us with your snail mail address
to get the complete newsletter sent to you FREE.
King James
Dispensational
Mid-Acts Pauline
|
He that cometh preacheth another Jesus whom we have not preached... II Corinthians 11:4 We all know, there are many aberrant groups teaching heresy with respect to the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here are some examples of the damnable teachings that are out there, as Satan has “blinded the minds of them which believe not”
WORLD WIDE CHURCH OF GOD (Herbert W. Armstrong):“Jesus Christ himself will never be quantitatively equal with God” “His father is God: they are two separate persons.” Quotations from “What it Means to be Equal with God” pages 21-22, 43. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE (Mary Baker Eddy) “Jesus is the human man and Christ is the divine idea.” “If there had never existed such a person as the Galilean Prophet, it would make no difference. Quotations from “Science Health and the Scriptures” page 473, First Church of Christ Scientist page 318-319. JEHOVAH WITNESSES (Judge Rutherford & Charles Taze Russell) “Michael the archangel is no other than the only-begotten son of God, now Jesus Christ.” Quotation from “New Heaven New Earth” page 30. MORMONISM (Joseph Smith, Brigham Young): “By obedience and devotion he attained to the pinnacle of intelligence which ranked him as a God.” Quotation from “Mormon Doctrine” page 172. WAY INTERNATIONAL (Victor Paul Wierwille): “Jesus Christ was the son of God but not God the son.” Quotation from “Jesus Christ is Not God” page 16. UNIFICATION CHURCH (Sun Yung Moon) “As a man Jesus was not different from us.” “He can by no means be called God” Quotations from “Divine Principle” page 210-212.
When we encounter people who have been victimized by such teaching, we try to get them saved, but in order to do that we much open our Bibles and show them that Jesus was worthy to die for their sins because Jesus Christ is God, the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Christ’s deity is the central doctrine of Christianity. To demonstrate the deity of Christ to the victims of cults most generally we page through the four gospels to demonstrate Christ’s miracle-working power, His omniscience as He even knows what people are thinking, His resurrection from the dead with victory over death, hell and the grave. Most all of us have taken evangelistic or “soul-winning” courses which all include a lesson on how to demonstrate the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Please consider trying to show the JW at your door that Jesus is God...without using Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. How would you show Christ’s deity to those nice Mormon boys on their bicycles if you could never once refer to the four gospels? Or the Moonie selling flowers at the airport? Or the World Widers trying to take over your church? Pastor C. Richard Jordan, Grace School of the Bible, pastor of the Shorewood Bible Church in Chicago, would have you to believe that Christ had none of the attributes of deity in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. If you believe that and support that teaching, how then do you witness the deity of Christ to cult members? More importantly, why would you not recognize that what Pastor Jordan and his followers are teaching and believing is really no different from what the Christ-denying cults teach and believe? Here are some examples:
The King James man and the Textus Receptus man are two different men After about five years of study, I came to the position that I have held for the past twenty-five or so years and that is this: The King James Bible is God’s inspired words perfectly preserved without error and exactly as God wants me to have His words in my English language. Back in the early days I thought that when men would preach from the King James Bible it was because they were King James Bible believing men, but such was not the case, and it still isn’t true. In fact, many men you might think of as being King James believers are no different from the many Bible-correctors who “Greek” what the Bible says to make it suit their purposes. The only real difference would be the Greek text they use to correct the King James Bible would be the Textus Receptus rather than the so-called Critical Text descended from Westcott and Hort. Most people think the real Bible is Greek and that good teaching and preaching depends on getting help from the Greek language as all English translations have, to use the cliché, lost something in the translation. The good news is, when God perfectly preserved His words in my King James Bible God actually gave me a text in my language that is superior to any set of Greek or Hebrews manuscripts ever assembled. Most people do not know that are no original manuscripts that have ever been found and so when people take about the “Originals” they are disingenuous at best and deceitful at worst, or maybe they are just plain ignorantly appealing to the original languages as if that were the same as the original manuscripts. The good news is, I need not study the original languages as my King James Bible is God’s perfect word in my English language. Most people think there is something preachers refer to as “The Greek” which is a final authority standing behind the Bible, probably manuscripts in a museum somewhere. The good news is, there are dozens of differing Greek New Testaments and there are even several referred to as Textus Receptus but I don’t need any of them as I have God’s perfectly preserved words in my King James Bible. Most people think a Bible translation in English must match “The Greek” word-for-word when in fact no English translation ever produced matches any Greek text and none ever will. The good news is God preserved His words without error and did so in a most amazing way. Just as the translators of the King James Bible wrote in the frontispiece, “Translated out of the original languages and with former translations diligently compared and revised,” the King James translators never had any intention of translating the Textus Receptus, word for word, tit-for-tat, into English. Note what actually happened as we use one particular verse to illustrate:
II Corinthians 1:11 Ye also helping...is
a phrase that matches the Bishop’s Bible of 1568 Clearly, the issue in the example shown above was never the Textus Receptus. What was at issue was God’s words perfectly preserved which is what we have in our King James Bible. We need not appeal to any other authority as we actually mean it when we say that our Bible in our final authority in all matters of faith and practice. The question you need to ask your leaders, preachers and teachers is this: Do you believe the King James Bible is God’s perfectly preserved word, not even one mistake in it? If they do not, I have a four-letter word for you: EXIT. Find someone who is a King James Bible believer because you will never learn how to believe your Bible from people who don’t believe theirs. Next newsletter we will talk about the myth of the five revisions of the King James Bible and why I use the date 1769 rather than 1611.
When
a people say “Any Bible will do” what they are really saying
is “no Bible is true.” © Discerning the Times Publishing Inc.
These are just the lead articles from the
Discerning the Times Newsletter: to
receive the entire newsletter, free, send us
your postal address. Thank you. |