John Piper Show and Tell
SHOW
TELL
For some strange reason, evangelicals continue to tolerate John Piper’s bizarre teachings—including the belief that Christians are still dead in trespasses and sins. However, and per the usual, he chooses his words very carefully so as to not come right out with stating it. Nevertheless, just in case you think he is speaking of the unregenerate, consider that he says: “….why you would call dead people to do things.” If he had the unregenerate in mind, this is certainly a strange choice of words. One might also think to himself: “Wasn’t Lazarus a believer?”
Furthermore, Piper shows his close kinship with Sonship Theology with the whole concept of “speaking life into people.”
And by the way, what’s the difference between what he is saying in the video and this description of metaphysical Christian Science: “In metaphysics the higher rules the lower. What we control in the spiritual realm will manifest in the physical. This process is done by seeing or speaking, affirmations. In the word faith philosophy words have power, they contain the force when spoken in faith…. The concept is to have it birthed in the spiritual realm first and then it will come about in the natural. As one takes the Scripture believing and confessing it the process of supernatural faith begins. One is to speak what they want into existence.”
And no John Piper verbiage would be complete without a direct contradiction to the plain sense of Scripture. He says we “can’t please God” when the apostle Paul makes it clear that we “make it our goal to please Him” and will be judged accordingly at the Bema Seat judgement.
paul
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
I am not defending NC. Frankly, I am pretty turned off by most of what is happening on the church scene in the U.S. I think Christianity today is Christianity astray. I just don’t appreciate people like Paul accusing me of things I don’t believe. He seldom responds to my questions. He accuses me of things I don’t believe. I must assume he does the same thing with others. He needs to convince me they really believe what he says they believe. The thing with Piper and calling on sinners who are dead to believe the gospel, turned into something Piper wasn’t saying is a great example. If you look at Packer’s “Evangelism and the Sov of God” it is clear the issue is the Sov of God and the responsibility of the unregenerate. It had nothing to do with what Paul was trying to turn it into.
Randy
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Paul,
When it comes to Solo Cristo, don’t confuse accomplishment of redemption and basis of justification with God’s purpose and the application of redemption. Solo Cristo has to do with the basis of justification before God, not the purpose of God or the application of redemption.
Randy
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Scream of the Damned video:
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Anonymous said, on September 1, 2011 at 10:08 pm
The new birth is what makes the gospel work, not the gospel.
Can someone provide some Scripture references for this and parse it out a bit? Aside from the obvious “Gospel Sanctification” stuff, has someone redefined “gospel” to mean something other than “good news”?
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“My point about the black/white thing is that you can’t assume something about me by what I don’t say. There has to be some evidence”
Randy, I am becoming more and more confused about your position. I did go to your site. From my years of working with mega’s, I learned never to believe a “what we believe” statement. Even Rick Warren gets that one right. But what they do and teach on a regular basis and who they align themselves with is what I look at.
I am even more confused because in one statement you say you don’t like what many are teaching in the NC stuff but in another, you demand proof quotes of what we think they are teaching that is wrong. . (Which we have shown several places where what they teach is very confusing and questionable. The Piper video for one.). How can I show you a “quote” of what they consistently leave out? That is something you will have to discern from lots of listening and reading.
Another big lesson I learned all those years is that people have their favorite gurus and nothing one can show them will matter. If they don’t want to see it, they won’t. And most of it then becomes, ‘you have to prove it to me in a way I approve’. Well, I can only put it out there. If you don’t agree, fine. I consider it a duty to warn folks. I will say that it took me a while to see it. And it took me a while and witnessing some very evil stuff to see the proof of what are evil systems in the seeker world. And I thought I was pretty smart. Not. I was fooled for a long time and I was raised with the basic truths and should have known better.
BTW: I am not here to defend Paul. I do not even know him. I was simply floored that someone else see’s it and gets it. For that alone, he gets a gold star from me. :o) Most people are so enamoured with Piper, Mohler, Dever, Mahaney, Driscoll, etc, they never question anything. This celebrity worship is a big problem.
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“Can someone provide some Scripture references for this and parse it out a bit? Aside from the obvious “Gospel Sanctification” stuff, has someone redefined “gospel” to mean something other than “good news”?
Cindy, Good question. I have no idea what they mean by “Gospel” half the time. I have seen Gospel marriage, Gospel child rearing, Gospel adoption, Gospel smoking cessation classes, ad nauseum.
Good news marriage. Good news smoking cessation…..???
The seekers just slapped a plastic fish on their car and were done with it.
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“What about the Father and the Holy Spirit?”
This is pivotal. It is the bottomline. One hardly ever hears of the function of Holy Spirit in clear terms from these guys.
One of the biggest red flags of a cultish system is when they play around with the Trinity.
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Lydia,
You have to read more than my doctrinal statement. Read what I wrote and see if I consistently teach what you find in the statement.
The issue here is that whether you like the so called NC packaging or not, sanctification is through the gospel just as much as justification. You can’t be justified by grace and then pull yourself up by your own bootstraps in sanctification. Jesus accomplished it all by his death. He gave himself for us to purify unto himself a people for his own possession, zealous of good works. Even the present ministry of the Spirit is his gift to the church, merited by his sacrificial work. Are we to be passive in the process of sanctification? Of course not!
Does the work of sanctification begin with our initiative and come to a right end by our efforts? No, it is God who works in us both to will and to do what pleases him.
My issue is that Paul continues to insist that I must believe Christians are totally depraved, that we are to be passive in sanctification, believers are under no law and may do what we please contrary to the revealed will of God. If that isn’t bearing false witness against one’s neighbor, I don’t know what is. And, if that is sin, then he is continuing impenitently in sin and needs to be disciplined by the church as a wicked person.
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Cindy,
Of course the term gospel means good news. It is good news that God is in sovereign control of the universe, but that is not the gospel in the context in which I am using the term. The gospel is good news but everything that is good news is not the gospel in that sense.
Randy
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Cindy,
What I am saying is that the gospel presentation is not “Believe and you will be regenerated.” It is regeneration that enables one to believe in the first place. No one can come to Christ unless the Father draws him Jn. 6:44. It is God’s work that makes the objective good news, subjective good news to us.
Randy
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