The Shack is back for round two. To those who say, “Yay!” read on. To those who say, “Nay!” read on anyway.
“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”
John 10:27
“But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”
John 10:5
Wm. Paul Young is preaching a different gospel plain and simple and if a person fails to see this maybe because they are new in the faith, one needs to reassess where his/her allegiance lies. Do you think this man’s fiction holds more weight than what is actually revealed in the Word of God?
One can reason and make allowances for interpretations clearly deviating from what is revealed to us in Scripture and invoke both “grace and compassion” to reach the lost but at the cost of compromising the very truth that leads to deliverance. Can we reason with God and tell Him He knew our intentions? Will our good intentions actually be enough to save the person’s soul should the recipient of our “kindness and compassion” die suddenly without knowledge of the “true” Christ and not the Christ that is invented by an unregenerate mind? (I say this because a person who believes that people can go to heaven without repenting and continuing to lead lives contrary to God’s standard of righteousness is the very definition of that.)
If your answer is yes, you don’t know Christ. If your answer is no, then stop compromising the truth for your good intentions. You know it won’t save anyone. You can hope it will but unless the person actually hears the truth and gets convicted by it, they will remain in that state.
Bad theology will always be palatable to the natural man. Why? Because the natural man does not have the mind of Christ, the Holy Spirit who illuminates one’s understanding.
“The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”
1 Corinthians 2:14
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.”
Isaiah 55:8
The natural man will only grasp to the limit of his/her comprehension, coming short at understanding the spiritual implication, that is why he/she rejects the truth coming from above.
Peter Declares That Jesus Is the Messiah
13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” 14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.
Matthew 16:13-17
Verse 17 gives us clarity that without God opening the person’s mind to understand, people will always come up short. In Verse 14, people are going by what other people are saying without absolute certainty.
People devoid of the Holy Spirit will easily flock to false interpretations and bad theology. Satan then promotes the false interpretation along with false Christianity so that when the light of truth comes to the hearer, those who have built their theology on the lie will flat out reject it. (2 Corinthians 4:4)
This is why The Shack is selling by the millions.
Good post, the problem in today’s society is that when people are fed garbage (false doctrine) and grow up in it, anything healthy (God’s Word) will be for them unpalatable. The scary part is that they got used to hearing false teachings so much that they made it for them, the truth. That’s a classic illustration of Satan’s tactics which is to feed them continuously false information regarding the Bible that after awhile it will convince them that that is the truth.
Yup. Exactly. Thanks 🙂
Caeli, thanks for “daring to speak up”! I think you may be interested in this review of Young’s nonfiction bestseller about “Lies”. People must be warned and we have to hold the line and please the Lord not people.Lord bless you!
http://pulpitandpen.org/2017/03/20/the-lies-behind-the-shack/
I checked the link and when one decides to dig into this new book, they have a likelihood of sealing their fate into full blown apostasy. Such audacity for a man to say the fundamental truths in the Bible is misinterpreted and suddenly, he’s the only one to get it right? Talk about arrogance and we know it to be from the enemy because it sets itself up to challenge God’s Word.
Caeli, Young’s works can’t be defended and they shouldn’t be. He is a false teacher, there is no question about it. Arrogance is the right word. He doesn’t love the Lord and His Word. And his words are destroying people and scattering the sheep. He is living off the sheep too, which is a Biblical mark of a false teacher.
Amen, sister. For which he is the embodiment of what the believers are forewarned in 1 Timothy 6:3-5,
“If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, 4 they are conceited and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions 5 and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.”
Exactly! Caeli, without God’s Word to shed light on all that we see around us, we walk blindly and can’t see even the most obvious facts – the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. People truly do make merchandise of us. It’s real and He shows us. He gives us light.