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October 2, 2016

Andy Stanley Tries to Defend His Heresy

By Anthony Wade

Stanley doubles down on his assertion that the Gospel is no longer sufficient for the new generation...

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But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. -- 2Peter 2: 1 (ESV)

Let me start by saying that anyone in a public ministry can make an honest mistake. Teachers can even have holes in their theology if you will. The word heresy or heretic should not be taken lightly. Simply put someone who is heretical teaches things contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet even that can be misapplied. For me someone crosses into the realm of heretic when their teaching continuously departs from sound Biblical orthodoxy and they refuse to repent of it. The purpose of calling them out as heretical at that point is for the betterment of the body of Christ and in alignment with Biblical instruction:

Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. -- Romans 16: 17 (KJV)

We are to mark those that cause division and offense that are contrary to sound doctrine. We mark them so that we might avoid them. In the key verse today we see Peter discussing heresies and from this one verse we can determine several things about heresy. The first thing is that heresy is a product of false teachers. Secondly they are destructive by nature. Thirdly they deny the Master; in other words they deny the Gospel. They are secret in nature in that they are not announced. Wolves do not come into the church with signs around their necks beloved. These are high standards that have to be met before someone should be properly named a heretic. It has to be earned and deserved. This is not a matter of hating and it is not personal. It is in adherence to the command found in Titus that all ministers rebuke those that present a false gospel. Why? Because they are destructive. To what end? To the end of all things. Romans teaches us that only the true Gospel of Jesus Christ has the power of God unto thesalvation of man. By default then, the false gospel is destructive because it cannot save anyone./

I say this as a backdrop to revisiting a story from a few weeks ago involving mega-church heretic Andy Stanley who preached an absolutely horrific sermon that disavowed the Bible as inerrant and sided with atheistic and humanistic arguments over the validity of Scripture. This horrific sermon is not what made Andy Stanley a heretic as he was one long before this was preached. His track record is one of running a purpose driven schemata on steroids. He is on record as saying we should not call pastors shepherds anymore because the term is no longer culturally relevant. That alone is heretical because it is God who referred to pastors as shepherds and it accurately describes the job as God intended it. Stanley however follows Rick Warrenism that declares the pastor is not a shepherd but rather a vision casting CEO. This fundamentally destroys the underpinnings of how God designed His church. That is why it is heretical. Stanley also recently turned his worship sets at his church over to sexually provocative boy band songs and in a different week it was a music set of Beatles music. In an interview a couple of years ago, Stanley declared that the Bible was just a collection of ancient documents, a statement that laid the ground work for the horrific sermon last month. It is because of this sermon that Stanley received enormous backlash and now he is trying to "clarify" what he was saying. One of the vehicles he used is churchleaders.com, which specializes in purpose driven leaders and traffics in multiple false teachers. In this article, they apparently took issue with what I had written previously regarding this sermon:

A blog post at 828ministries.com claimed, "Megachurch heretic Andy Stanley continues to cross the line into full blown humanism and abandon all sense of orthodox Christianity in pursuit of his carnal purpose driven dreams." A much more measured, but highly critical response came from pastor and author David Prince, who in a recent post said, "According to Stanley, defending the Bible in its entirety as completely true is too great a burden, and wrongly puts the Bible at the center of the debate. He speaks as if his view is a cutting edge apologetic position for our time or an innovative evangelistic strategy, but what he is advocating has historically had a name--liberalism." -- Churchleaders.com

Moving past not understanding that my ministry site is not a blog, I can only assume that church leaders takes issue with my correctly calling Stanley a heretic but essentially David Prince seems to agree with my assessment. Anyone who promotes liberalism as Christianity is by default heretical. Perhaps Prince was more reserved because he was only responding to this one sermon where I had already dealt with Andy Stanley on the other heretical issues that lie in the wake of his preaching. Nevertheless, let us reason together and see how they defend the indefensible and see if we can gain a glimpse into their flawed and unbiblical thinking.

"First," Stanley begins, "I believe the Bible is without error in everything it affirms. I believe what the Bible says is true, is true."

Yeah, except that is not what Stanley actually said in the sermon. What he actually said is,

"If the Bible is the foundation of our faith, as the Bible goes, so goes our faith. It is next to impossible to defend the entire Bible. And while YOU may be able to hang on to it, your kids and grandkids and the next generation will not. -- Andy Stanley

Do you know there are all sorts of contradictions in the OT? There's all these facts and figure that do not add up. By the way, the Bible seems to teach that the earth is only six thousand years old and everybody knows the earth is 4.5 billion years old and the universe is 14.5 million years old." If the entire Bible isn't true then the Bible isn't true and all of Christianity comes tumbling down." -- Andy Stanley

So unless Stanley is making the absurd argument that you need two gospels, one for believers and one for unbelievers, he is simply lying here. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say you believe in the inerrancy of Scripture and also say that everybody knows the earth is 4.5 billion years old. It does not work like that. You are speaking out of both sides of your mouth.

For listeners accustomed to preachers taking every opportunity to correct, chastise and reprimand unbelievers, my approach is confusing. But for the father whose 23-year-old son agreed to give church one more chance"well"folks like that hug my neck and send me gift cards." -- Andy Stanley

This is a ridiculous strawman argument. No one is advocating that preachers chastise unbelievers. That is not Scriptural either. While we are at it; the approach is not confusing at all. It is heretical. It leaves sound doctrine behind in pursuit of this hodgepodge of feel good humanism that people can relate to better on a purely carnal level. The father of a 23 year old hugs your neck because his child decided to give church one more chance? And this is held up as something to pursue? What difference does it make if someone decides to give a false church with a false gospel one more chance? When you sacrifice the real Gospel you sacrifice salvation. That is what we ought to be focusing on, not whether someone is "churched"; which is another horrible Rick Warrenism from the Purpose Drive Church.

For Stanley, that quote illustrates Stanley's driving core--a passion for a millennial generation he says are leaving a faith they know well. -- Church Leaders

Here we come to the basic flaws in this defense and the thinking Stanley had that led to this sermon. The premise Stanley has is that church kids go off to college and when confronted by big bad science, they lose their faith. The solution is to approach faith from the perspective of the world. Abandon the basic tenets of our beliefs such as the Bible being infallible in favor of the witness from the Gospel writers. The problems here are easy to discern. First of all, at the heart of the problem are false conversions. If your child goes off to college and has their faith undermined by science then they never had faith to begin with. Faith is not so easily destroyed beloved. The problem is the modern church, such as the one operated by Andy Stanley does not preach the Gospel anymore and caters to the goats. The result is predictable as most people are told they are saved but are not. This is a point that Stanley continues to clearly not understand:

"If we're going to reach the un-churched, under-churched, de-churched and post-churched with the gospel in a culture that's trending post-Christian, we must rethink our approach" Stanley claims.

No Andy. What you are arguing is that the Gospel is not sufficient. That this culture is somehow different that the generation from the 1960's or 1840's and they are not. Romans 1:16 assures us that only the Gospel has the power of God unto the salvation of man so changing it is not an option! The rethought approach Stanley engaged in is to try and convince millennials of the Gospel by carnal means of reason. What's the problem with that beloved? I am almost embarrassed to have to remind people but salvation is not a process of the mind but rather a process of the spirit. You cannot be convinced to be saved. The spirit must draw you through the correct preaching of the uncompromised Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Stanley believes many pastors still operate from the assumption that biblical authority is a persuasive tool to use in a Gospel presentation, a premise he openly questions. -- Church Leaders

I do not know any pastor who thinks this at all. There are no "tools" to persuade people other than the Gospel itself. This is what happens when you start relying on human wisdom, which Paul clearly teaches us empties the cross of its power. In his sermon Andy Stanley tried several persuasive arguments but the problem is they were all false. For instance, he opined that the Bible is not needed because there actually was no Bible for the first few hundred years of the faith. Is this a correct statement? Technically there were no bound Bibles as we have today but the church still used the Scriptures which would eventually become the Bible. In the New Testament, Peter even directly refers to the writings of Paul as Scripture! These points however seem completely lost in the muddle heresies of Andy Stanley.

"Appealing to post-Christian people on the basis of the authority of Scripture has essentially the same effect as a Muslim Imam appealing to you on the basis of the authority of the Quran. You may or may not already know what it says. But it doesn't matter. The Quran doesn't carry any weight with you. You don't view the Quran as authoritative. Close to half our population does not view the Bible as authoritative either." -- Andy Stanley

Once again, Stanley seems very confused. Perhaps this is what happens when you no longer consider yourself a shepherd. Let me explain the system God set up. In Acts Chapter Two, we see the model for the New Testament church and guess what? It is not meant for unbelievers! It is meant for the sheep. That is why the pastor is called a shepherd. He is responsible for the spiritual maturity of the sheep in God and for protecting them from wolves. How does one do this? Through the preaching of the true Gospel of course! Do we want the unsaved to come to our church? Of course! Where else will they hear the true Gospel, which we already pointed out is the only thing with the power of God unto their salvation. So you do not appeal to any unsaved populations with anything other than the Gospel. You do not need to deal with the authority of Scripture until later. Let the Spirit draw them. Let them repent of their sins. Advanced orthodoxy is learned later. Stanley keeps thinking it is his job to convince the unsaved to become saved but he does not have that power. Only God does. His job is to faithfully proclaim the Gospel.

"What is the faith of your children worth? Your grandchildren? Think about it. What is the faith of the next generation worth? I say, everything. I say it's worth any change necessary to ensure the version of faith the next generation leaves home with is the enduring version--the faith of our first-century fathers. The version that was harder than steel and tougher than nails. The version rooted in an event, not a book." - Andy Stanley

Wow. So after pretending he was not challenging the inerrancy of Scripture, he ends by again asserting that our faith should not be rooted in the Bible. Instead it should be rooted in an event that is only found in the Bible. The lunacy of this reverse logic is as staggering as it is heretical. The only enduring faith is one that has resulted from a preaching of the actual Gospel. Not trying to educationally teach why they should believe. When you use science and history to convince someone of something then science and history can also unconvince them. That is why we rely upon conversion through the Holy Spirit. The Bible says none comes to salvation unless the spirit draws them.

If you are truly concerned about millennials leaving the faith try going back to the real Gospel. That means preaching about sin and the need for repentance. That means preaching Calvary. That means deny yourself and picking up your cross. That means you do not sing New Kids on the Block or the Beatles during corporate worship. That means you do not cheapen Scripture which God has said He breathed out Himself. That means if you are playing the role of a pastor then you must shepherd the sheep the Lord has entrusted to you. Andy Stanley realized that many of the kids he was sending off to college were losing their faith and he immediately blamed God. He blamed the Gospel as not being sufficient. What he should have realized is true faith is not shaken by Earth Science 101. That means he sent off kids who had no faith. He should have looked long and hard in the mirror at that point and returned to the only thing that has the true power of God unto the salvation of man; the real Gospel of Jesus Christ. Until he does so, he remains a heretic. Sorry if that is not a measured enough reality for some.

Reverend Anthony Wade -- October 2, 2016



Authors Bio:
Credentialed Minister of the Gospel for the Assemblies of God. Owner and founder of 828 ministries. Vice President for Goodwill Industries. Always remember that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

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