NEW BOOKLET: The Wondrous Gospel—Enduring the Onslaughts of Deception

Lighthouse Trails is pleased to release our latest topical booklet, The Wondrous Gospel—Enduring the Onslaughts of Deception by David Dombrowski. The booklet is 10 pages long and sells for $1.95 for single copies. Quantity discounts are available. Our booklets are designed to give away to others or for your own personal use. Below is the content of this new booklet. To order copies of The Wondrous Gospel—Enduring the Onslaughts of Deception, click here.

The Wondrous Gospel—Enduring the Onslaughts of Deception

By David Dombrowski

When I consider the wonders of the Gospel—and I have been pondering it my many years as a Christian—I am filled with great awe of the magnitude and perfection of what God has done. At the same time, I am deeply saddened by man’s efforts over the centuries to erode the magnificence of God the Father sending His one and only Son to be a sacrifice for sin, securing now and forever the salvation of those who put their trust in Him.

Paul spoke of the attack on the Gospel that he saw would come shortly after his departure in these words:

For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. (Acts 20:29)

In addressing this group that included elders from Ephesus, Paul spoke of his tremendous efforts, “Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 21). The Gospel he shared was clear and simple, uncomplicated by the philosophical thoughts and strivings of men.

When it comes to salvation, the Bible is very clear on what one must do to be saved. To the Philippian jailer, Paul and Silas answered that very question with the words, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31). But it is no wonder that God would use such clarity and simplicity in presenting the Gospel. There is no confusion in the Gospel; the confusion was added later. Scripture says that the Lord is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9; emphasis added)

When it comes to salvation, God emphasizes clarity and simplicity. We see this even in the Old Testament where God speaks of the way of holiness and redemption as something even fools can understand:

And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there. (Isaiah 35:8-9)

There is currently a battle going on, but it is one that is actually centuries old, where the transgressors professing to know Christianity’s deeper secrets liken their theology to rocket science, where they expect everyone to trust them with their new twist on the “way to salvation.” Yet, we see again in Habakkuk God’s incentive to keep the Gospel straightforward and plain:

And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. . . . Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith. (Habakkuk 2:2,4, emphasis added)

Personally, I find it very interesting and a bit curious that these most clear words of salvation and redemption, found in a seemingly remote place in the Old Testament, reappear with vigor in Paul’s letter to the Romans:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. (Romans 1:16-17; emphasis added)

It was Paul who first persecuted the church. It was he who, though in error, thought it was his job to preserve the integrity of the Judaic faith only to find out that it was Jesus, the Redeemer and the Messiah, whom he was persecuting. Now, as a defender of the faith, he is careful to emphasize that our salvation was fully purchased through Christ and is consequently “not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:9). What a marvelous plan of salvation! When Paul says in Romans 1, “therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith” (v. 17), he is asserting that our righteousness is fully imputed to us from start to finish by faith. In other words, Jesus paid the full price for our salvation, so we can never say it’s the Cross plus something else; thus, accordingly, our salvation remains a matter of faith—trusting that what Jesus has done in our lives, He will bring to completion.

Yet, for some reason (Habakkuk 2:4 indicates it’s really our pride!), there is a tendency to want to add something to the full redemption with which God has purchased us through Christ. But this is fully wrong and an insult to God’s redemptive work. Consider, for example, how you would feel if you bought a friend a nice car as a gift at your own expense, but your friend started making payments back. This would nullify it as a gift because the friend is now paying for it. God has done that for us in that our salvation is a free gift, fully paid for; furthermore, there is no way we could possibly repay or add to our salvation because only the one perfect sacrifice of Christ on the Cross can pay for our sins—and that is all. That is why Hebrews 10:11 tells us that the Old Testament sacrifices “can never take away sins”; they were only foreshadowings of the perfect and complete sacrifice to come.

Applying Discernment

When we apply the lens of biblical discernment, it brings clarity to the aberrations (deviations) from the truth of the Gospel. When it comes to discernment, I always look to the instructions found in 1 John, chapter 4. It is there that we learn the “secret” to distinguishing light from darkness, truth from error, which is really no secret at all but the plain and pure Gospel itself. Simply put, if a theology or teaching truly elevates the Gospel, it is from God; if it pulls it down in any way, it is not from God, what John calls the spirit of antichrist (v. 3). Again, it is valuable to remember that the Greek for “ante-christ” covers a broad spectrum of meaning—from vicious Christ-hating to anything acting as a substitute for Christ whether it be a person, a theology, or an ideology that Satan uses as a tool to break down the truth and reality of the Gospel. It is this subversive end of the spectrum that is often more difficult to recognize and consequently more dangerous. In fact, the spirit of ante-christ can look very beautiful and appealing as Scripture says that “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). Looking back over the last two decades of Lighthouse Trails, I see three areas that have been particularly deceptive and damaging in appearing to be the light of truth when they are actually darkness; these are the realms of Catholicism, Calvinism, and Contemplative (i.e., New Age) teachings. Once embraced, they become strongholds that hold their recipients captive. In our research, we have produced much material to substantiate these findings, so I don’t want to get into all that here; but I would like to briefly demonstrate how these strongholds work in keeping people from the truth of the Gospel and are thus onslaughts of deception against that Gospel.

Catholicism

Catholicism was my own home territory because if you include my infancy, I was 30 years a Catholic. Oftentimes, the Catholic Church makes its claim to truth for having been around so long—with centuries of tradition. Unfortunately, it has not been centuries of true Gospel.

My story was typical of most Catholics. From my earliest youth, I had a strong desire to know God, but I occasionally wondered if I really knew Him. For instance, I would ask how or when did I become a Christian, and the ready reply would be, “when you were baptized as a baby.” I accepted that reply, but I was often disappointed by my lack of spiritual growth. Through the Baltimore Catechism, I was taught that our path to salvation is through participation in the sacraments, the foremost being the sacrament of the Eucharist. And it was through infant baptism and subsequently the Eucharist that I received Christ. Consequently, this was the “Gospel” I believed, and therefore, there were never any altar calls, never any invitations to receive Christ—because I was told, I already had Him.

The sacrament of confession was a weekly task for me, whereby I entered a booth and confessed my sins to a priest who was in an adjoining booth. Although we could not see each other because of a partition screen, I remember a series of weeks where I could recognize the voice of a young priest who grew tired of absolving me of the same sins week after week and finally rebuked me for repeating the same sins. But that is what a sinner does when he is powerless to be an overcomer on his own strength.

As time went on, I began to realize I was on the path to Hell as my habits only grew worse. But, I at least had now acquired one bit of truth, and that was recognizing my lost condition. Truly, though, the Catholic Church had held me back by never presenting to me the Gospel. As beautiful as it seemed to be, the Eucharist was and is a pseudo-Christ, an ante-christ whereby I had been handed a substitute for the Gospel. While the errors of Roman Catholicism are many, its own claim to its own singular greatest accomplishment is when it instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist. Without the Eucharist, the Mass would cease to be, and without the Mass, the Catholic Church would cease to be what it is. The claim is that Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross was imperfect and incomplete, and therefore, the Catholic Church instituted a “bloodless sacrifice” that is offered daily on the altar. This is in direct contradiction of chapters 9 and 10 of Hebrews, which state “without shedding of blood is no remission” of sins (Hebrews 9:22), along with repeated statements in both chapters indicating that Jesus’ sacrifice was perfect, complete, and for all time. This is the essence of the Gospel, and it is essential to securing an assurance of salvation. However, I was taught that it is wrong to ever feel assured of going to Heaven. Yet, John writes that he proclaims the Gospel “that ye may know that ye have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). However, in the sacrament of the Eucharist, a bloodless sacrifice is made again and again to compensate for the incomplete sacrifice of Jesus. It is really this false teaching that insists on the need for a continually repeated sacrifice that prevented me from finding salvation, though I searched for it in vain.

Through the centuries, godly men and women were brutally martyred or burned at the stake for defending the Gospel as the most important truth, being seen as committing the worst of heresies when questioning the Eucharist. We see here that the spirit of ante-christ can come like a beautiful angel or as a ravening beast because Satan will use whatever means it takes to accomplish his purposes.

Calvinism

Calvinism is actually fatalism repackaged in a beautiful candy wrapper called “eternal security.” But even few ministers seem to be interested in exploring what is beneath the wrapper. The truth of the matter is that Calvinism offers anything but eternal security. The delusion is in thinking that if we are “predestinated” for Heaven, our salvation is eternally secure; but the reality is that Calvinism does not and cannot offer a way to know if you are one of the “elect” or “predestinated for Heaven”; consequently, you are left in a state of perpetual questioning and doubt regarding salvation. Calvin himself wrote an appeal to God preceding his death whereby he petitioned God to save him if God can find the mercy within Himself to do so. But in Calvin’s case, the prognosis seemed doubtful in that Calvin’s religion indicated that God took pleasure in sending most people to Hell. Also, the fact that Calvin was responsible for the torture and murder of those who disagreed with his twisted theology left him with little good fruit to show that he belonged to the family of God.* As with Catholicism, Calvin brought forth a theology that seemed to be coming from an angel of light but in the end exposed itself as that of a ravening and roaring lion—as the spirit of ante-christ in its full spectrum.

If we apply the discernment test of 1 John 4 to the fatalism that Calvin offered, we find that while there is eternal security in Christ when we believe the Gospel, there is none to be found with Calvin’s “Gospel” in what proves to be nothing more than a vain philosophy. Yet the ante-christ spirit, perpetrated by Satan himself, is nonetheless there dispelling the wondrous love of Jesus Christ with a dangerous form of spiritual Russian roulette.

Although I personally never embraced the teachings of Calvinism, I did wonder as a young Christian what the word for “predestinate” means where it appears only in Romans 8:29-30 and Ephesians 1:5,11 in the New Testament (and never in the Old Testament). In none of these instances is it used in conjunction with salvation but rather a spiritual standing that God has prepared for those who believe the Gospel, namely a prepared destination to godliness and to be conformed to God’s will. Many Christians also confuse God’s foreknowledge with predestination. This is the serious error of Calvinism in that it causes one to conclude that man is void of free will and all the evil that has ever happened in the world must also be designed and instigated by God. This is grave and gross error in that “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). Contrary to the teachings of Calvinism, salvation is a gift from God freely given to all who put their trust and hope in Christ.

Contemplative and New Age

I lump contemplative prayer and New Age meditation together here because they are different sides of the same coin where in both cases the key ingredient is mysticism induced by mind-altering meditation. Motives and intents may be different, but the same or similar methods are used to achieve this altered state of consciousness to connect with “the other side,” namely the spirit world. The word “occult” has been softened to terms like “contemplative prayer,” “centering prayer,” or “the silence” to make the practice sound more Christian and more appealing. But none of this appeals to Scripture as in the case in Deuteronomy 18:9-12 where even the more recently popularized practice of necromancy (i.e., communication with the dead) is identified along with mind-altering practices as “an abomination unto the Lord” (Deuteronomy 18:12). Jesus reiterated the importance of true biblical prayer when He said, “when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do” (Matthew 6:7).

Ironically, contemplative prayer itself achieves the altered state of consciousness by repeating a word or short phrase over and over again for twenty minutes or so. It seems as if God is being tested to see if He will notice; and notice He does when He leaves them to their own devices to pursue their own sensual delusions. Since 2002, Lighthouse Trails has been documenting research in thousands of pages and links to demonstrate the great harm that is produced when engaging in practices like contemplative prayer. Consider, for example, Sue Monk-Kidd (contemplative author of The Secret Life of Bees) who started out as a Baptist Sunday school teacher and now worships the goddess Sophia. The problem with contemplative prayer is that it produces mystical experiences with familiar spirits whereby it makes a person feel so connected with God so as to be a part of God Himself. And when we get to thinking God and creation are one and the same, the Gospel loses its meaning completely.

The great tragedy of New Age practices having come into the mainstream church is that they disconnect the practitioner from the Gospel while connecting with “the other side.” Christ in us is our hope of glory, but the hope mystical (occult) practices offer is no hope at all in that Jesus Christ is substituted with an ante-christ system—some of it seemingly being presented as “pro-Christian” while some is vehemently opposed to the Gospel—more specifically, Christ’s atonement on the Cross, for sin.

For example, Helen Schucman wrote a book wherein the “Christ” in A Course in Miracles dictated to her what is often referred to now as the “Bible” of the New Age. A key point that the “Christ” told her is this: “The journey to the Cross should be the last useless journey.”¹ What could be closer to Satan’s heart? It is the spirit of antichrist at work; and today we have ministers springing up all over telling us that the Cross was a barbaric act of butchery that God would never require of His Son—that God would never cause His son to die as a substitute for the sins of all mankind. This is the sliding slope on which the New Age is taking untold numbers.

The spirit of ante-christ is powerfully at work in the New Age. It may sound beautiful to think that all humanity has a “christ consciousness” (ranging from “God is within” to “I am God”), but this is just the “beautiful” side of an ugly religion. As we have seen with Catholicism and Calvinism, there is a driving spirit aimed at destruction. Consequently, we find in various New Age books the theme that those who oppose New Age teachings will at some point need to be “taken out of the way”—that there will be a “selection process” by which Christians will be eliminated. Remember that Paul told Timothy, “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12).

The Wondrous, Enduring Gospel

In summary, I have given three serious and ominous examples of how the spirit of ante-christ has worked and continues to work in our world today—sometimes subtly and “wonderfully” (Daniel 8:24), sometimes aggressively and hatefully. But, in each case, the target or goal has always been the same—to discredit or minimize the Gospel because Satan knows all too well that the Gospel is the singular hope of mankind. Christ in us is our hope of glory. This is the one Christ, the only Christ, and the true Christ, the One who paid the penalty for our sins on the Cross. Without Him, there is no hope; with Him there is all hope, hope fully sufficient to get us to Heaven. It is the hope of the Gospel. As Paul said:

I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. (Romans 1:16)

May we always remember that even through the onslaughts of our Adversary and his attacks through the ages on the Gospel message, this Gospel still stands and endures. It remains as the blessed hope of an eternity with Christ. And for the believer, the Holy Spirit is ours—to comfort, guide, and bring us assurance. The Gospel is truly Good News—and it is ours to believe and ours to proclaim to those walking in darkness.

But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. (1 Peter 1:25)

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 To order copies of The Wondrous Gospel—Enduring the Onslaughts of Deception, click here.

*For documentation on these two points, read Bob Kirkland’s book Calvinism: None Dare Call It Heresy (available through Lighthouse Trails.)

Endnote:

1. From A Course in Miracles, text, p. 52.