Recycling the Same Old
The wisdom of this world is naturally attractive to man, but it’s most deceitful when presented as from God. The serpent did this in the beginning in the Garden and his approach still works today, presenting tempting morsels as revelations of God. Thank God for Jesus Christ and the access He’s given us to the Tree of Life! “O Timothy! Guard that which was committed to your trust, turning away from the profane and empty babblings and opposing views of what is falsely called ‘knowledge’” (1 Timothy 6:20 EMTV).
Brad asks us about Greg Boyd:
Also have been been told of Greg Boyd this week. I was told he talks of God as I do, what I have learned from you. Have not seen anything from him yet, as I only heard of him this week. www.reknew.org
And:
Not able to analyze this video. :
Greg boyd-women in leadership/ministry utube.
Would like to hear what God has to say of this.
Paul replies:
Hi Brad,
I checked out Greg Boyd’s site, and the shorter of his two videos on YouTube about women in leadership: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57GMoet8DhQ
Greg Boyd isn’t a Christian – not according to the definition demonstrated in the Bible and in our lives, that of a born-again believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Greg is an intellectual “believer” – by worldly measures, an intelligent, capable, zealous, passionate, articulate, humorous, charismatic, and accomplished man. None of that means anything with God, however, because there is no faith or the cross that ministers life from above.
In the welcoming video on his site, “Viva La Revolution,” Greg speaks of the Catholic Church and its offspring as if they’re legitimate. He could only do this as part of the same religious system, a child of Babylon who hasn’t been born of the Jerusalem from above. He says:
“We are on the verge of a new reformation… more revolutionary than the Protestant reformation of the 16th century.”
The Protestant Reformation tried merely to “reform” the Catholic Church, an institution utterly corrupt in God’s sight. Working from this faulty foundation, the Reformation only produced new and altered copies of a counterfeit. That’s why it’s said Babylon is filled with names of blasphemy (Revelation 17:3).
Greg goes on:
“People are rethinking fundamental aspects of the faith…. That’s why we named this ministry ‘Reknew’…. Without in any way dissing the church tradition, we’re challenging people to take a fresh look at old beliefs…. New wine is being poured in old wineskins causing old wineskins to burst apart – it’s causing people to ask a whole lot of good questions….”
Does God pour new wine in old wineskins? Didn’t the Lord say this was unwise and unprofitable? “No one puts new wine into old wineskins, else the new wine bursts the wineskins, and the wine spills, and the wineskins will be ruined. The new wine must be put into new wineskins” (Mark 2:22 MKJV).
Greg is admitting there are no new wineskins in his revolution, yet doesn’t perceive the meaning of his admission. How can he? He’s under strong delusion. And he doesn’t have new wine, as he presumes, just more of the same old questions without understanding or godly answers.
Greg’s ways are opposed to the Lord’s ways, Who positively and emphatically “dissed” the traditions of the religious of His day:
“But He answered and said to them, ‘Well has Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. However, they worship Me in vain, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men… making the Word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have delivered’” (Mark 7:6-7, 13 MKJV).
And while Greg isn’t dissing church traditions, one of the “good questions” he refers to disses God’s sovereignty:
“Is there any truth to these clichés that are perpetually repeated in the face of suffering, when tragedy happens folks say, ‘Oh, well, you know God is still on His throne… it’s all for the better, God knows what He’s doing, there’s no chance, nothing happens by chance, God’s timing is the right timing, His ways are not our ways,’ and on and on and on and on. Does believing in God mean you have to believe in that kind of stuff?”
By cavalierly dismissing God’s sovereignty over everything, Greg denies Him as LORD and calls Him a liar.
Isaiah 45:5-7 ESV
(5) I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me,
(6) that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides Me; I am the LORD, and there is no other.
(7) I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, Who does all these things.
Greg mocks the notion of “a macho God controlling everything.” Who says God is “macho” because He’s in complete control? This is a characterization of Greg’s carnal mind, vainly trying to comprehend or describe God. Without the mind of the Last Adam, Jesus Christ our Savior, and understanding of His Spirit, how can he know God? The truth is foolishness to the wise of this world, namely, Greg Boyd.
1 Corinthians 2:11-16 MKJV
(11) For who among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of man within him? So also no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.
(12) But we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit from God, so that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God.
(13) These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
(14) But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
(15) But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is judged by no one.
(16) For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.
How presumptuous of Greg to speak as if he knows God contrary to His Word! This is the man of sin coming as an angel of light. In Greg’s form of intellectual and carnal Christianity, there’s no place for the personal application of the cross that does away with the man of sin. It’s through the cross that we personally learn of God’s sovereignty, being dethroned as our own sovereigns, “every man doing what is right in his own eyes.”
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 MKJV
(18) For the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those being lost, but to us being saved, it is the power of God.
(19) For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will set aside the understanding of the perceiving ones.”
(20) Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the lawyer of this world? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
(21) For since, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom did not know God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe.
(22) For the Jews ask for a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom;
(23) but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness.
(24) But to them, the called-out ones, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
(25) Because the foolish thing of God is wiser than men, and the weak thing of God is stronger than men.
In line with Greg’s dismissal of God and His oversight of His creation, Greg also promotes evolutionary theory – the epitome of God-denial and arrogant insanity. Greg warns others not to come against this sacred science, which is truly the most pompous and outrageous of lies defying both science and common sense.
So it’s no surprise that Greg also trashes the commandment of the Lord against women teaching or usurping authority over men:
“Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I do not allow a woman to teach, or to exercise authority over a man, but to be in silence” (1 Timothy 2:11-12 MKJV).
1 Corinthians 14:34-37 MKJV
(34) Let your women be silent in the churches; for it is not permitted to them to speak, but to be in subjection, as the Law also says.
(35) And if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for a woman to speak in a church.
(36) Or did the Word of God go out from you? Or did it reach only to you?
(37) If anyone thinks to be a prophet, or a spiritual one, let him recognize the things I write to you, that they are a commandment of the Lord.
Greg’s argument for women in authority over men isn’t original, though he brings his own flavor and twist to it. He states that the “Old Testament culture” was “extremely patriarchal,” but “when the New Testament is being written, we find the gates are opened up for men and women equally.”
That’s all lies. With regards to the sexes, nothing at all changed affecting how God made them with different positions in our lives on earth. Men were given to be the head since Adam was created first, though women chosen of God also had faith from the beginning. Eve, Sarah, Rebecca, Deborah, Miriam, Abigail, Esther, Hannah, Huldah, Samson’s mother – the list goes on – all spoke and took initiative in the faith given to them of God. That’s why the apostle Peter uses the godly men and women of old as examples for the believers of the “New Testament era” to follow:
1 Peter 3:1-6 HNV
(1) In like manner, wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; so that, even if any don’t obey the Word, they may be won by the behavior of their wives without a word;
(2) seeing your pure behavior in fear.
(3) Let your beauty be not the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on fine clothing;
(4) but in the hidden person of the heart, in the incorruptible adornment of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God very precious.
(5) For this is how the holy women before, who hoped in God also adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands:
(6) as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose children you now are, if you do well, and are not put in fear by any terror.
Greg doesn’t distinguish between gifts of the Spirit and the offices of ministry. He quotes Peter’s words in Acts, which refer to Joel’s prophecy:
Acts 2:17-18 MKJV
(17) And it shall be in the last days, says God, I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.
(18) And in those days I will pour out My Spirit upon My slaves and My slave women, and they shall prophesy.
Greg proposes this means that women now serve as prophets and evangelists in God’s assembly. He’s wrong; that’s not what the Scripture is saying. The Lord is talking about spiritual gifts such as prophesying, which He gives to both men and women for the edification of His Body. His appointed shepherds that oversee His flock are always men, however, and not even all men are elders or leaders under God, though they may prophesy and exercise other gifts, as did Stephen and Philip, for examples (Acts 7 and 8). (For more on this subject, see Diabolical Doctrine: Women Are Ministers of God in Spiritual Authority over Men.)
Because women were sent to announce the Lord’s resurrection to the apostles, Greg makes the following spurious claim: “The first Christian evangelists were women – to men!”
As wonderful as it was to bear this good news to the apostles, that didn’t make the women evangelists. Shouldn’t Greg, a presumed minister of Christ, know the difference between one who delivers a message and one who does the work of an evangelist?
2 Timothy 4:1-5 MKJV
(1) Therefore I solemnly witness before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, Who is going to judge the living and the dead according to His appearance and His kingdom,
(2) preach the Word, be instant in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine.
(3) For a time will be when they will not endure sound doctrine, but they will heap up teachers to themselves according to their own lusts, tickling the ear.
(4) And they will turn away their ears from the truth and will be turned to myths.
(5) But you watch in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fully carry out your ministry.
Greg also mocks the apostles using an Elmer Fudd voice for “hiding” because “scared and afraid,” contrasting them to the women who went to the sepulcher. Yet we don’t find any such testimony in the Scriptures. Where does Greg get off making things up as if they’re in the Bible and using them to pit women against men with his sexist remarks?
This man is a divider and destroyer while deceitfully posing as a unifier and builder of the Church; he even claims to take a major role in what he defines as the greatest move of God in history. How strong the delusion God gives men over to, those who don’t have a love of the truth!
“He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters” (Matthew 12:30 EMTV).