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
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
“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historical document in which it is intended that we should accept as actual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
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
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