THE DARKNESS OF THE HUMAN HEART

Part 1

How the Cultic Mind Distorts Scripture

 

An Indictment of Our Culture by

Gary Ray Branscome

 

The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but according to their own lusts, will surround themselves with teachers who tell them what their ears itch to hear” (2Timothy 4:3).

 

          Because the Bible is the Word of God, everything that it says is “sound doctrine”! We may not always understand it, but those who profess “themselves to be wise” by making up explanations found nowhere in the text while explaining away any statements of Scripture that do not agree with those explanations, have a cultic mentality and a “spirit of error” (Romans 1:22 and 1John 4:6).

 

          Our society, and the world in general, is in the mess it is in today because instead of faithfully believing and teaching what the Bible clearly and objectively says, some Christians have fought like cats and dogs over made-up explanations, and disagreements as to which passages to affirm and which to explain away. And, by professing themselves to be wise they have discredited themselves, and the truth of Scripture, in the eyes of the world. The purpose of this essay is to expose the cultic mindset behind this division while calling God’s people back to the plainly-stated truth of His Word.

 

Widespread Refusal to Accept What the Bible Says

At present, much division stems from stories that have been made-up in an attempt to reconcile the truth of Scripture with evolution. Stories about God using evolution which are passed off as a valid explanation of Scripture when anyone who uses their head can see that they are just made-up stories, not something the Bible says.

          In fact, if you go to any reputable university and take a course on the Bible as literature (which includes Genesis) the professor may not believe what the Bible says about the origin of the earth, but he will not claim that the text is teaching evolution either. He will simply point out that the ancient Hebrews believed that God created the universe and all that is in it in six twenty-four hour days about six-thousand years ago, and believed that all living things reproduce after their own kind. Anyone who teaches otherwise is simply deceiving himself, and that is not a mark of good scholarship.

 

“The account of the creation, its commencement, progress, and completion, bears the marks, both in form and substance, of a historical document in which it is intended that we should accept as actual truth, not only the assertion that God created the heavens, and the earth, and all that lives and moves in the world, but also the description of the creation itself in all of its several stages.” [“Commentary on the Old Testament IN TEN VOLUMES,” by C.F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, page 37]

 

          That being said, let’s look specifically at one man-made attempt to reconcile secular religion with Scripture – the so-called “gap theory”. I use the words, “so-called” because it is not a valid theory at all, but only a lame attempt to reconcile the secular myth of “million of years” with Scripture.

          The person who came up with that “theory” began with the words, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and empty” (Genesis 1:1-2). He then claimed that the word translated, “was” could be translated, “became”. While that is not the case, even if it was, because there is nothing in the text that even suggests a period of time other than part of one day, in that context the phrase “became without form” would simply mean “came into existence without form”. Therefore, when men claim that the earth became “without form” over a period of millions of years they are just making up a story, not interpreting Scripture. And, when they pass that made-up story off as God’s Word they are lying in God’s name.

          But, it does not stop there! They go on make up a story about why the earth “became without form and empty”. They claim that Satan and his angels once lived on the earth and fought battles, and that those battles left the earth “without form and empty”. They then use that made-up story as an explanation of where fossils came from. Yet, none of them ever stops to ask: Where is any of that in the Bible? Instead they blindly teach it as fact while interpreting one passage of Scripture after another to support their made-up scenario. In their blindness they think that the more passages they can interpret to support their made-up story the more support they have for it. However, the opposite is true. The more passages they read unscriptural ideas into, the further they get from the truth.

 

One generation after another has added to and embellished the gap story, without ever considering the fact that it is just a story someone made up. Moreover, the same can be said of all of the other stories that have been invented in an attempt to reconcile Scripture with evolution, “Day Age” being one of the best known. None of those made-up stories is actually taught in Scripture, and none of them is anything more than the word of man. Nevertheless, before secularists condemn those who interpret [i.e. pervert] Scripture in that way, they need to realize that they do the same thing. Secular-scientists just make up stories about how life came into existence without God, and how various features of the earth’s crust were formed. All of those stories are based assumptions, and the facts actually known to science are twisted to support those assumptions in the same way that cults twist Scripture. Evolutionists rarely examine the evidence critically, or acknowledge the fact that many of their explanations [“theories”] do not fit the evidence. In contrast, when we set aside all made-up explanations regarding the Book of Genesis, and look at what the words of Scripture actually say, those words give us a straightforward history of what happened.

 

Deeper Into Darkness

          Getting back to how made-up stories are passed off as Bible doctrine, another example can be found in the claim that angels have, in the past, mated with humans. The explanation of how some people can read that idea into Scripture while ignoring the fact that angels and humans are not the same created kind, and angels are not even flesh and blood, lies in the deceitfulness of the human heart. As it is written, “The heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9).

          The passage that they read all of these ideas into is found in the sixth chapter of Genesis where we read:

 

“When men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them… the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And… there were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

 

          First of all, the people who read angels into this text assume that the “sons of God” spoken of were angels, and look for passages they can “interpret” to support that assumption. At the same time they ignore the fact that angels and humans are not the same created kind, and explain away Christ’s words, “When the dead rise, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are like the angels who are in heaven” (Mark 12:25).

          They then assume that the great-ones [“giants” KJV] were the hybrid offspring of angels and humans, ignoring the fact that every creature that was created with the ability to reproduce was created to reproduce “after its kind,” and angels and humans are not the same created kind.

          So, they build a doctrine that consists of one assumption piled on another, all of them being the word of man not the Word of God. The assumption that the “sons of God” spoken of were angels is the word of man. The assumption that the “giants” spoken of were the hybrid offspring of angels and humans is the word of man. The assumption that these angels had DNA compatible with humans, when they are not physical beings and were not created to reproduce, is the word of man. And all who explain away the fact that angels are not the same created kind as humans, and were not created to reproduce are rebelling, “against the words of God,” and despising “the counsel of the most High” (Psalm 107:11).

          Those who hold these views then add to their sin by reading their fanciful “interpretation” into many other passages. For example, they assume that the giants that were living in Canaan at the time of Moses and Joshua were the hybrid offspring of angels and humans when the Bible says no such thing. [See Deut. 2:11, 3:11, Josh. 13:12 etc..] And, they wax eloquent in talking about these giants as if they knew all of the facts and were experts, when it is all a figment of their imagination.  

 

          In the past, Satan gave man-made doctrines, like those just discussed, status by leading men to revere them as tradition. However, since tradition is often now viewed with suspicion his aim seems to be to pass such man-made doctrines off as interpretation, while blinding people to the fact that those “interpretations” are just the figment of an over active imagination. In fact, that is the blindness behind all of the cults

 

Conclusion

I could give many more examples, one being the claim that the seven churches spoken of in the first part of the Book of Revelation are actually a “Church Age” when the Bible says no such thing. Or the claim that the resurrection and rapture of believers will take place before the end of the world, when Christ plainly told us that He would raise up believers “on the last day” (John 6:40). All such man-made explanations of Scripture fly in the face of the words, “No truth of scripture comes from any private [i.e. made-up] explanation” (2Peter 1:20).