Once again, I can't remember writing it. Secondly, it's so good that I can't believe that a dip like me did write it. At the same time, it's as basic as can be.

 

I have three friends who were teachers in the body of Christ and lost their 

good sense (this is nicer than saying that they lost their minds) when they switched from believing in the sovereignty of God to believing that God wasn't sovereign after all, but in fact was figuring things out as they happened, right along with His creation. These three friends are Rick Farwell, Ted McDivitt and Dan Sheridan. They lost their ever-loving minds, these three, when they adopted a viewpoint called "Open Theism," which

states that God doesn't know the future. Rick Farwell was the ringleader. I mention thesenames so that, when you hear them (if you hear them) you will be on your guard to watch out for the insane teaching known as "Open Theism." (It is named "Open Theism" because it posits that the future is open to God; in other words; God doesn't know what's going to happen until it happens. Yeah. I know. Right? What the hell.)

 

When my friend Ted McDivitt first told me that he had gone from believing in the sovereignty of God to believing that God didn't know what would happen in the next moment, I was stunned. He was telling me this on the phone, and I said, "I don't know who this is, but can you please put Ted McDivitt back on the line?" It was as though Ted's brain had been hijacked. And indeed it had. It was hijacked by Rick Farwell, another teacher who I knew and at whose conference in South Carolina I had taught from 1996-2000. Rick didn't invent the abortion of theology known as "Open Theism," but he became an outspoken advocate of it, and probably still is. 

 

But when my friend and former co-laborer Dan Sheridan adopted it, I was gobsmacked. I still can't quite wrap my head around the fact that it happened. How appealing it must be, I guess, to remove God from His own creation. How to explain the motivation behind adopting this? I think the motivation is the temptation to avoid attributing the evil things that happen in the world to God. I think these men became emotionally repulsed (unable to handle it any longer because they had become more emotional than intellectual or logical) by the fact that God creates and executes evil. In my mind, these three went from being men in the department of the sovereignty of God to becoming delicate butterflies who could no longer handle God doing evil.  Satan had derailed and stripped them, and from the day on which they adopted the abominable teaching they became—in my mind—worthless as teachers. Worthless. From that day on, they ceased to exist for me as teachers. They were  still friends, but they were no longer qualified to speak on the topic of God, because no one can teach about God who does not understand the most basic thing about God, namely that He is God. 

 

The common denominator of these three people and their adaptation of the

theological abortion known as "Open Theism" was a misunderstanding of the figure of speech known as "Condescension," where God comes across in Scripture as a human. These three (and I suppose others) make the common mistake (although I hate to believe that it is common) of encountering this figure of speech, not realizing that it is a figure of speech, and basing their understanding of God upon the errant assumption that the figure of speech is literal and thus an example of God's essence. 

 

My incredulity over this is probably what fueled me to write this article. Pass this article along to anyone who thinks that God is just like His creation. 

 

"God is just like His creation?" Dear God, may You protect us from any more of your children falling into this bottomless pit of nearly laughable error. 

 

If only it were funny.