This is the sad story of a man called Bob the Heretic. Bob finds the Bible, the word of the true God, to be foolishness and a stumbling block, because he has not been given faith to believe. His allegiance therefore is to himself due to his inflated view of his own wisdom. He has no desire to honestly study God’s word in order to know who He is, what He is like, and what He has done. Love for God, obedience, worship, reverence, selfless allegiance to God’s Lordship are all words that are not in his vocabulary. He loves too much his lustful pleasures, and his own god who permits him to do everything he desires — himself. And when he reads about the true God’s judgment against sin and His invitation to find forgiveness and pursue holiness, his brain’s self-idolatrous creed is to not only not believe Him (for to believe is to submit), but also to despise the holy God. Bob would just as soon go on his merry way and pursue all his pleasures, and run out the clock on his own life before being thrown away by God’s angels onto the smouldering trash heap of eternity. But there is one nagging thing: all the Christians around him who believe the very things by which his lustful passions feel so threatened. It does not help either that his conscience accuses him of being evil, and that his own reason agrees with the Christians’ talk about the trustworthiness of the God who made Himself clearly known, and, hence, the trustworthiness of His word. However, if you think Bob will come to his senses and come honest about his guilt and his fear of death and judgment and then repent and believe in the Saviour God who forgives through the work of His Son, then you do not know Bob and his love of his wretched self. True to his nature, Bob doubles down on his hell-bound road, and comes up with a happy plan to get back at all the tiresome Christians and ultimately at God: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em at their game. First step in playing this religion game is: craft a god who can tolerate all your evils. And for Bob, it cannot be just any kind of fictitious god. Any of the thousand Hindu gods, for example, just won’t do for Bob. No, his own god has to bear the name Yahweh. He knows too much already about the existence of the true and living God who saved Israel from Egypt, split the Red Sea, and rose from the dead. So he goes the way of all the successful heretics that have gone before him: Mohammed, Joseph Smith, and (of course) the Popes. He appropriates the name of the true God, and crafts his own golden calf. In order to mold this new god, he has to throw into the fire all diligence, all honesty, all careful hermeneutic (as well as his own soul) when it comes to his approach to the Scripture which bears the testimony for who the true God really is. Second step is: find an unsuspecting community to dupe (and make sure they are Christian enough to not burn you at the stake). For Bob, it is all about the optics and self-image; he does not want to be seen by his community as just another wayward, proud idiot who chose to pursue after his lusts at cost of his soul. No, no! But rather, Bob has to be seen as just too wise, too pious, and (most importantly) too misunderstood; it is the entire Christian community that got their faith wrong all along! And as long as he can lure an entire Christian community to so be “free” from their “restrictive” faith (as if it is even possible to deceive them, if indeed they are Christians who read about how temptation works from Genesis 3) and fall for his own version of a god who tolerates his evil nature, he would not feel so alone in his pursuit after his lustful passions and feel so afraid of judgment anymore; he's got others accompanying him to the eternal lake of fire. In fact, with his new support group, he might find it easier to cauterize his conscience more and more, in search of his wanton “freedom.” And, oh, this is the most important part: make sure they don’t try to kill you for blasphemy. After all, this life is Bob’s only best life. Third step is: “free” the community from their "restrictive" Scripture-bound conscience. Bob is no idiot. He knows that there is nothing wrong with the formulation of creeds that succinctly summarize the core beliefs of a faith community (in fact, if the community is committed to their god, they will have formulated one). He knows that creeds simply mean a common confession of a faith community. He knows that 1Timothy 3:16 constitutes a creed of the early church (but alas, only if Bob read the following verses). He knows that he has a creed of his own that he wants to sell. But creeds that are already rock solid and well formulated in Scripture pose an obstacle to what he wants to do: create a support group around his own creed, who will join him in eternal perdition. Therefore, Bob has to first decry the evils of creeds (even if it makes no sense and even if it sounds hypocritical; “gotta fake it till you make it,” is what his teachers back in his hometown always said), and hope that the community is stupid enough to forget what painstaking study of Scripture the authors had to do in order to formulate the wordings of the creeds, and… forget that those creeds were written in response to unbiblical, false teachings of heretics in the first place. It is not likely that the entire community believes what they believe simply because of creeds, but that they have formulated the creeds because of what they believe from the Bible. But Bob is Bob; he likes to shake the tree, and see what falls. Hopefully, there are some silly younglings who are only taught from creeds but are never taught how to study the Scripture. Fourth step is: once they are "free," slowly constrict them with your false gospel. After working the community to hopefully reach some level of doubt (or at least confusion) about their longstanding (unfounded) beliefs, Bob will start binding them with his own creeds. Hey, the serpent first attacked the woman’s faith in God’s trustworthiness, then started attacking God’s word. If this tactic was good enough for Bob’s mentor, it is good enough for Bob. There is one issue however for Bob in this critical step: he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Studying the sweeping, expansive testimony of Scripture has never been his forte, nor his interest. So then, all he does have is a simple formula of select passages that has just enough wordings that he can play with (if he doesn’t read the context). Bob’s dream is to be the head of the next Roman Catholic church, the next Mormon church, or the next Islamic church (and whatever else groups there are out there). And in order to become one of the greats, his attack has to be focused on the Bible’s message of salvation: that the Triune God, who for His glory and for the good of His people, has sent His Son to become the once-for-all sacrifice for sin, and made Him Lord and Messiah, who will one day destroy all evil and usher the eternal state of judgment for the unbelievers and bliss for the believers. So Bob is pretty happy with his plan. He travels around, and finds a town called Wisdom that seems pretty dull to him. And there, Bob plies his trade. Slowly but surely, the whole town becomes aware of this stranger in their midst. All too well, they know that the spiritual profile of such huckster is described in detail in 2Peter 2. After showing Bob the clear teachings of Scripture and despite the repeated admonishments to repent and believe the true God, the townspeople fail to persuade Bob. Then the townspeople have nothing else to do but to pray and to warn other towns about Bob. Then God hears the prayers, and sends Satan to Bob as a form of judgment. Bob gets eaten by worms, and dies. Guys. Don’t be like Bob. EPILOGUE The townspeople of Wisdom formulate a new creed (with supporting Scripture) in response to Bob’s false teachings, so that the future generations may clearly know how soul-damning teachings should be refuted from God’s word.
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CategoriesAll Discourse Doctrines Gospel Humour NT Commentaries OT Commentaries Tactical Life Date
August 2023
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