Do We Trust The Widsom of Men, or the Wisdom of God?

Main Idea:

The question that I am asking is, do we trust the wisdom fo men, or that of God?  I ask this if you are reading this, because many in the church sadly are moving toward that of the atheistic world view that is being taught in public education, and in an attempt to compromise and not "rock the boat", they try and fit the atheistic view into that of the church.  That becomes dangerous.  Both, because some churches have allowed liberal politics in disguised as "Jesus' love", or extreme liberal theology, or sadly both.  I think the biggest issue that threatens the church today is that of complacency, with evolution sneaking in the back door of the church.  When some pastors/ leaders say, "the creation story is just a poetic story" and that there is some hidden message that only he/she after 2k can understand...I am guessing the rest of the church for the last 2k were wrong on, etc.

This isn't even a discussion we should be having in the church.  We should all be in agreement that when Jesus said, "God's Word is true," that would end this kind of misinterpreting and abuse of scripture.  Paul clearly foreshadows this heresy in the book of Romans.  "His invisible attributes—His eternal power and His divine nature—have been clearly seen ever since the creation of the world, being understood through the things that have been made. So people are without excuse— for even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give Him thanks. Instead, their thinking became futile, and their senseless hearts were made dark. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image in the form of mortal man and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Therefore God gave them over in the evil desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies with one another. They traded the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen."
Romans 1:20‭-‬25 TLV
https://bible.com/bible/314/rom.1.20-25.TLV

And its, "they traded the truth...for a lie...and worshiped...the creation..."  this is evolution.  So when those in the church try and merge this teaching with that of the church it is a compromise that we shouldn't even be involved in.

Theological Problems

'Likewise you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. ' The Revelation 2:15 https://my.bible.com/bible/314/REV.2.15

NICOLAITANS nĭk’ ə lā ə tənz (Νικολαιτής, -αί). A term appearing in the Revelation (2:6, 15) describing members of Christian congregations who held a doctrine that the Lord hated. Irenaeus said that they were followers of Nicolaus of Antioch, a proselyte who was among the seven men chosen to serve the Jerusalem congregation (Acts 6:5), who had forsaken true Christian doctrine; he said they lived in unrestrained indulgence (Against Heresies I; 26:3). Hippolytus confirmed this by noting that Nicolaus left correct doctrine and had the habit of indifference as to what a man ate and as to how he lived (Refutation of Heresies 7:24). The Apostolic Constitutions(6:8) described them as “shameless in uncleanness.” Although Clement of Alexandria defended Nicolaus by insisting that his followers had misunderstood him, he observed that the Nicolaitans abandoned themselves to pleasures like goats in a life of shameless self-indulgence (The Miscellianes 2:20).

In the letter to the church at Pergamum the Nicolaitans were associated closely with those people who held the teaching of Balaam. This may have been a play on words. “Nicolaitans” could have been derived from two Gr. words, nikan, which meant “to conquer” and laos, which meant “people.” Likewise Balaam could be derived from two Heb. words, bela which meant “to conquer” and ha’am, which meant “people.” Nicolaus and Balaam would then be the Gr. and Heb. forms of the same name, descriptive in each instance of an evil teacher who had influence over the people and brought them into bondage to heresy.

A story is recorded of the seduction of the Israelites into immoral and idolatrous unions wth the women of Moab (Num 25:1-5). Had this situation not been checked, Israel would have been destroyed as a nation. Numbers 31:16 attributed the success of this seduction of God’s people to the evil influence of a prophet named Balaam who advised Balak, king of Moab, to follow such a course of action. Balaam became, therefore, in Heb. history a symbol of an evil man who led God’s people into immorality and sin

The letter to the church at Pergamum specifically charged them with having seduced people into eating meat offered to idols and into acts of fornication. The decree of the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:28, 29) had laid down also two specific conditions upon which Gentiles were to be admitted into Christian fellowship: they were to abstain from things offered to idols and from fornication. These were the very regulations which the Nicolaitans violated.

They were a people who used Christian liberty as an occasion for the flesh, against such Paul warned (Gal 5:13). The enticement to such a course of action was the pagan society in which Christians lived where eating meat offered to idols was common. Sex relations outside marriage were completely acceptable in such a society. The Nicolaitans attempted to establish a compromise with the pagan society of the Graeco-Roman world that surrounded them. The people most susceptible to such teaching were, no doubt, the upper classes who stood to lose the most by a separation from the culture to which they had belonged before conversion.

It may be that the doctrine of the Nicolaitans was dualistic. They prob. reasoned that the human body was evil anyway and only the spirit was good. A Christian, therefore, could do whatever he desired with his body because it had no importance. The spirit, on the other hand, was the recipient of grace which meant that grace and forgiveness were his no matter what he did. They were those ready to compromise with the world. They were judged by the author of Revelation to be most dangerous because the result of their teaching would have conformed Christianity to the world rather than have Christianity change the world. Eusebius indicated that this sect did not last very long, and in all probability the only knowledge of their teaching that is possible will be found in the slight references to them in Revelation.  (biblegateway.com)

I bring this up because the Nicolaitans allowed worldly teaching to come into the church and that led to heresy.  This is what is happening with the modern church today.  Some, not all, allow heresy to come into the church in the form of "creation-evolutionism."  Again as stated above, "They were judged by the author of Revelation to be most dangerous because the result of their teaching world have conformed Christianity to the world rather than have Christianity change the world."

The Theological problems are divided as follows, and this is not exhausted by any means; inspired with mans bias or inspired with Holy Spirit divine direction, if we were not made in God's image, where did original sin go, how to interpret scripture.

Inspired with mans bias or inspired with Holy Spirit and divine direction:

I have recently read where a pastor stated that the inspiration was divine, but that it was given to men that wrote out of their own bias'.  I am paraphrasing, but that is the sum of what he said.  He went on to state that the men writing the books of the bible were not puppets on a string, writing whatever the Holy Spirit told them to write.  I would agree that God did not dictate all of scripture to someone, He did indeed dictate to both John in the Revelation, and to Moses with the Torah.  And the later is important for the sake of how the liberal theologians sneak evolution in the back door of the church.  They will say, "the bible is not a science book", no one even said it was, but there is a lot of scientific facts in the bible, thousands of years before secular science, "discovered" them.  They will say, "the bible is about the redemption of man" and to that I say YES!! Amen!  No one ever said it wasn't, but when you start questioning the inspiration of the scriptures then you put into doubt the redemption story.  This same pastor said that the creation story of Gen. 1-2 was possibly a "creation poem" and nothing more...

I think the place to start is by questioning the idea that the creation account is just inspired but bias by Moses.  Scripture states that God met Moses on mt. Sinai, and told him what to write.  http://sinaiinarabia.com/ . You can see that there is evidence that God did come down to Moses, and He had Moses write the creation account in the (historic narrative) this is used if giving a historic account of a real event.  So, if God meets Moses face to face and dictates to him in the historic narrative the account of creation...then either God's account is true, (Jesus said God's word is true), or someone 2k years removed is right, and Moses accidentally wrote it to sound true, and was only writing poetry, even though it is not written in a poetic style at all!?  HaHa😅😜😜

If we were not made in God's image then what happened to original sin?

This is more a philosophical question i guess, If secular evolution is correct and we evolved from apes, then we are not made in the image of God, we would be made in the image of an ape.  This means God lied when He said we are made in His image.  I don't believe that God lied.  So either we were created exactly like Moses wrote, or we weren't created at all...So for liberal theologians to bring this into the church is bad.....They are doing exactly what the Nicolations did.  And, if we were not made in His image then there was no Adam and Eve, evolution would have produced many people at different stages of evolution and you would not be able to have original sin, and even if there was an Adam and Eve there would have been many and if some sinned and some didn't then there would be perfect sinless people walking around...which is clearly heresy.  If there was no original sin, then Jesus came and died for nothing...so even if the liberal will say it doesn't matter, and the only message is redemption...which I agree with...you cannot have redemption if there is nothing to redeem us from.

How to interpret scripture

In the time of Jesus the Pharisees' would interpret scripture "allegorically" which simply means to reduce everything down to a symbols, and nothing means what it says, and only the interpreter can tell you...only each interpreter will give you something different....Jesus referred to these people as a den of snakes.  Charles Ryrie in his book, Basic Theology states, "Allegorical Hermeneutics is a symbolic representation.  Allegorical is used when the literal sense seems unacceptable to the interpreter.  The actual words, then, are not understood in their normal sense but in a symbolic sense, which results in a different meaning of the text, a meaning that, in the strictest sense, the text never intended to convey."  Jesus actually said that God's word was true...so Jesus thought it was not allegorical.  Even early church fathers saw creation as an actual account.  Early church fathers . So it is very strange that progressive liberal theologians will try and make the argument that we must now interpret scripture in light of modern evolution, as if that even makes sense.

The other way is "literal".  Now that doesn't mean that everything is literal, but what it does mean is that there are rules to when something is literal, and when it is symbolic.  The principles used are:  grammatically - what is it actually saying, contextually - words don't stand in isolation, therefore what is the context both to the passage, and chapter, but to the rest of the bible, compare scripture with scripture, and recognize the progressiveness of revelation.

Conclusion:

So, do we trust the wisdom of man or that of God?  It is truly scary that people not only on the outside of the church but we see those on the inside causing trouble and confusion.  They bring liberal ideas and call it the "love of God" ... yes God is love, and Jesus said that the entire of scripture is love...but love motivates us to share Christ, and Christ said "go and sin no more."  Jude said in his letter, beware there are those that will come into the church and teach something that the apostles are not teaching, this is another gospel....And that is my warning the liberal theologan is bringing in a new gospel that the apostles never taught.  Also, As Paul said in Romans 1, man will worship the creation instead of the creator...as do those that teach evolution inside the church....let us pray that they search for truth, and find it...scripture says, to those that more is given, more will be required!