This compilation, courtesy of Wretched Radio, shows Mark Driscoll and James MacDonald rebuking the false prosperity gospel preached by T.D. Jakes. What changed, guys?
My thanks to Apprising Ministries for bringing this to my attention.
Further reading:
In a piece entitled, ‘Reformed Crowd Asked to Repent for Attacking TD Jakes’, the Christian Post reports that Elephant Room participant, Bryan Crawford Loritts, is ‘asking the Reformed community to “repent” of their harsh criticism and one-sided attacks on Bishop T.D. Jakes in regards to his beliefs about the Godhead’.
The Post reports:
To the adjunct professor at Crichton College, those “gospel centered” people elevated love for doctrine over love for people. His words for them were this: “Your conduct is out of step with the gospel,” referring to Apostle Paul’s words to Peter in Galatians 2 when he avoided the Gentiles only when he was around the Jews.
Loritts has apparently failed to understand that it is because we love people – including T.D. Jakes himself – that we want to be sure that they are neither inadvertently trusting in a non-Trinitarian god of their own imagination, nor being deceived by a false prosperity gospel, such as the one Jakes preaches. Loritts uncharitably judges the inward thoughts and intents of his opponents.
James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, author of over 20 books, professor, accomplished debater and apologist, has weighed-in on the controversy concerning T.D. Jakes’ orthodoxy.
As covered by Apprising Ministries, White revealed his initial thoughts in a series of acerbic tweets:
James MacDonald’s invitation to T.D. Jakes to participate in The Elephant Room 2 has been nothing if not controversial, as I outlined in my previous post. MacDonald’s invitation to Jakes was no doubt well intentioned, and part of the motivation was surely to help break down the racial divide still all too evident in the visible church within the United States. Such intentions are commendable.
Why, then, was MacDonald’s invitation to T.D. Jakes controversial? For two primary reasons:
Before we can examine Jakes’ statements at the Elephant Room, it is necessary to understand both the heresy of modalism and the Church’s historic orthodox confession of the Trinity.
James MacDonald of The Elephant Room has already taken more than one hit this week, having been pushed to resign from The Gospel Coalition for being unwilling to rescind his invitation to alleged modalist T.D. Jakes.
Dan Phillips of the Pyromaniacs immediately weighed-in with his article, Even better than The Race Card™. Phillips called out MacDonald for implicitly claiming divine authority, and for MacDonald’s accusing The Gospel Coalition’s leadership of sin for disagreeing with him.
Today, MacDonald has given his critics yet more ammunition, even before his conversation with T.D. Jakes.
This article is a review of T.D. Jakes’ Code Orange Revival sermon, preached on 20 January 2012 at Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
T.D. Jakes is the leader of The Potter’s House, a 30,000 member congregation located in southern Dallas, Texas. I had never heard a T.D. Jakes sermon before, though I knew of his reputation. I was curious to see – if only via an Internet video stream – the man that Elevation Church reminded us was named ‘America’s Best Preacher’ by Time Magazine. Would I be able to uncover the secret of his mystique? And would he preach the Biblical Gospel?
After 40 minutes or so of emotionally intense praise and worship, Steven Furtick, founder and lead pastor of Elevation Church, introduces Jakes to the manifestly ecstatic, cheering crowd. Furtick promises that God is about to speak to us, that our lives will never be the same:
God’s gonna honour your faith. He’s going to shake you, and He’s gonna remake you. And He’s gonna do things in your life that will blow your mind. And we’re believing that for you tonight.
We’re in revival. If you’re joining us from all over the world, you need to know that this is night 10 of Code Orange Revival. We’re coming to you live from Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, reaching over a 100 countries all over the world. And God has made an appointment with you tonight. He’s about to speak something to you. Your life will never be the same. In His presence is fullness of joy.
You may have noticed Wikipedia’s unprecedented blackout today, in opposition to SOPA and PIPA. WordPress.com and other sites have also joined in the protest.
SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill before the United States House of Representatives; PIPA (the Protect IP Act, where ‘IP’ stands for ‘Intellectual Property’) is its counterpart in the United States Senate. The forces behind these bills are lobbying for draconian rules that will, among other things:
If you’ve been following Fighting for the Faith’s coverage of Steven Furtick’s Code Orange Revival, you’ll know that, thus far, the so-called ‘preaching’ has been an irredeemably dire exhibition of narcigetical scripture twisting. With just one exception: Matt Chandler bravely preached a decent sermon that actually pointed people away from themselves and towards Jesus Christ, the only One who shed His blood that people might be saved.
Matt Chandler’s reward for being faithful to His Lord and Master by proclaiming Law and Gospel was to have his sermon pulled from the rebroadcast of that evening’s Code Orange Revival event. Speculation abounded as to the reason for this, but Geoff Schultz – Motion Graphic Designer at Furtick’s Elevation Church – has posted on Facebook what sounds very much like an official line. Schultz writes:
The team decided to focus the rebroadcast on Jesus, so we reformatted the content a bit – We are trying to stay in the flow of what the Spirit is leading us to do.
We all want to hear from God. Now you can share the secret closely guarded by our forebears in the faith. This simple yet ancient formula will enable you to experience the voice of God speaking directly into your life:
Bishop N.T. Wright (a.k.a. Tom Wright) has undertaken sterling and valuable work in defence of the historicity of the New Testament and the resurrection of Christ. Unfortunately, he is also a leading proponent of the New Perspectives on Paul.
Those, like Wright, who advocate the New Perspectives, posit that the Reformers were wrong in seeing first century Judaism as a religion of legalistic works-righteousness. As Dr. Cornelis P. Venema (President of Mid-America Reformed Seminary, where he is also Professor of Doctrinal Studies) writes in his very helpful little book addresing the the New Perspectives, Getting the Gospel Right:
The problem with the Judaizers’ appeal to the ‘works of the law’ was not its legalism, Wright insists, but its perverted nationalism. (p. 37, original emphasis)
Venema continues in his description of Wright’s views:
One of the unfortunate features of the Reformation and of much evangelical thinking, according to Wright, is that they reduce the gospel to ‘a message about “how one gets saved”, in an individual and ahistorical sense’.
In this way of thinking, the focus of attention, so far as the gospel is concerned, is upon ‘something that in older theology would be called an ordo salutis, an order of salvation’. Because of its inappropriate focus upon the salvation of individual sinners, the older Reformation tradition was bound to exaggerate the importance of the doctrine of justification.
Whereas the Reformation perspective understands the gospel in terms of the salvation of individual sinners, Wright maintains that Paul’s gospel has a different focus. According to Wright, the basic message of Paul’s gospel focuses upon the lordship of Jesus Christ.
(pp. 39–40, bold emphasis mine)
So, according to Venema, Wright thinks that the Reformers inappropriately focused on the salvation of individual sinners and exaggerated the importance of the doctrine of justification (how we obtain a right standing before God). Oh dear.
