Did Jesus Calling get it wrong about Abraham?

Not so long ago a dear Christian friend of mine dropped a derogatory description of Abraham, stating that he was less than a noble, God-fearing, honorable man.

This disturbed me greatly. In my upbringing Abraham was revered as the father of the Jewish people and a man beloved by God. Nothing in my repeated readings of the Old Testament over the past 30-some years contradicted this teaching. Yet, I’ve been wrong about things before. So I’ve spent quite some time mulling over my friend’s statement.

Table of Contents

The fact is I wasn’t wrong.

It turns out that the intentional besmirching of Abraham’s character is coming in large part from the influence of a channeled book. In different editions this book has sold some 14 million copies and influenced countless people including many supposedly evangelical Christian ministers and lay people.

For those of you who have been spared immersion in the New Age, channeled material is said to come from higher spirits, angels, or god. In actuality it comes from demons and is condemned in all cases (Deuteronomy 18.10). Like many aspects of Satanic religion, channeling is a false copy of the real inspiration which happened to the writers of the Old and New Testaments. Satan mimics, copies and sows confusion out of his jealousy and hatred of God and man.

Here’s the passage:

ENTRUST YOUR LOVED ONES TO ME; release them into My protective care. They are much safer with Me than in your clinging hands. If you let a loved one become an idol in your heart, you endanger that one—as well as yourself. Remember the extreme measures I used with Abraham and Isaac. I took Isaac to the very point of death to free Abraham from son-worship. Both Abraham and Isaac suffered terribly because of the father’s undisciplined emotions. I detest idolatry, even in the form of parental love.¹

The main points (all poison, by the way):

1. Loving your children too much is idolatry.

2. Idols of the heart are a problem (this is a non-biblical idea promoted by Tim Keller’s Redeemer Network, but that’s outside of this article)

3. God brings people to the point of death to “teach them a lesson”.

4. Abraham is/was something called a “son-worshipper”.

5. Abraham could not discipline himself/his emotions.

6. Abraham’s feeling caused his son terrible suffering.

Contrast this with the clear words of Scripture:

And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. (Genesis 18:16-19)

This doesn’t sound like an idolater hated by God.

Later, when the Lord commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham responds immediately. No lack of discipline (emotional or otherwise) is evident here or anywhere in the Scriptures.

And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together. (Genesis 22:8)

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that Isaac was scared or disturbed because of anything his father ever did.

And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. (Genesis 22:11-13)

It’s not about freeing Abraham from “son-worship”

The story of Isaac is not about freeing a man from son worship. Just the opposite - it’s about setting the whole world under the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The channeled passage eliminates the main point which is a foreshadowing of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ by his Father, God.

Jesus Christ - God himself - was sacrificed to end the reign of sin and death forever. And he succeeded perfectly, marvelously, eternally. All who are God’s are freed from Satan’s dominion and transferred into the kingdom of his dear Son.

God commands us to be what the channeled voice derisively calls “son-worshippers”. The voice behind this channeled seduction hates Jesus, and all who are in his kingdom.

Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. (Psalms 2:12)

What does God tell us of our righteous brother Abraham?:

By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. (Hebrews 11:8)

and

And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. (James 2:23)

Abraham was an honorable man

According to our perfectly true Scriptures, Abraham is the friend of God. Who are you going to believe - the Bible or the ravings of a lunatic devil coming through a channeler?

Are you wondering the name of this channeled book? It is Sarah Young’s “Jesus Calling”. Don’t be deceived. Young’s Jesus is not our Lord.

For more on critical theory and the destruction of all that is good and noble

See Mishmash 10 | Critical theory as a means to destroy the old America

Thank you to Warren B. Smith for pointing out this passage. source and source.

Addendum - Response from my friend

After reading the above, my friend sent a response which includes the following:

…We do have this book in our library. It was passed along to us from other believers who gave it to us for encouragement. If the fact that we have this book in our library is offensive to anyone, please let me know. We do not ascribe to New Age anything.

My note back to him

Thanks for your note - you didn’t offend me then or since. Please don’t take that from my email. If I’d been offended, I would have spoken to you directly.

You heard preaching that got you thinking. That’s what a sermon is supposed to do. You then brought it up [ identifying information removed ]. Since the subject was raised [ removed ], I wanted to set the record straight about Abraham, and give everyone the background on the false teaching.

What troubled me was the idea itself, and that you had heard it in a sermon. The teaching wrongly maligned a dead man, twisted Scripture and cast doubt upon the nature and trustworthiness of God’s record in the Bible.

The issue prompting my email is the undermining of God’s Word from false teachers like Ms Young, which then infects preachers, who then mislead their flocks.

Many modern Christian books differ from the Bible in one way or another. That’s just the nature of the time we’re in. What makes this one so awful is the boldness Young had in admitting that the thing was channeled. (Documentation of this is appended below.)

The Holy Spirit is not channeling books. The 66 God-breathed books of the Bible have long been completed. If Sarah Young really channeled the book Jesus Calling as she seems to have done, then the source of it cannot be God. To claim that it came from Jesus is to confuse Satan with God. That is one dangerous road to go down. I’d want to keep you and all Christians well warned of the danger.

Alec

Below taken from: Women of grace

I am concerned with the way she acquired these devotions which she claims came from Jesus Christ in a way similar to messages He allegedly gave to two anonymous “listeners” who authored the book, God Calling. As this blog explains, these two listeners were engaged in what is known as automatic writing – an occult art – while receiving these messages.

Young, who is the wife of a missionary to Japan and the recipient of a post-graduate degree from a Presbyterian seminary, had been wanting to experience the Presence of God and found what she was looking for in God Calling.

Here is how she describes the first time she experienced God’s presence.

“One night I found myself leaving the warmth of our cozy chalet to walk alone in the snowy mountains. I went into a deeply wooded area, feeling vulnerable and awed by cold, moonlit beauty. The air was crisp and dry, piercing to inhale. Suddenly I felt as if a warm mist enveloped me. I became aware of a lovely Presence, and my involuntary response was to whisper, ‘Sweet Jesus.’ This utterance was totally uncharacteristic of me, and I was shocked to hear myself speaking so tenderly to Jesus. As I pondered this brief communication, I realized it was the response of a converted heart; at that moment I knew I belonged to Him. This was far more than the intellectual answers for which I’d been searching. This was a relationship with the Creator of the universe.”

It’s a beautiful story, but it doesn’t end there. Young wanted more. She wanted what the anonymous “listeners” had.

“The following year, I began to wonder if I, too, could receive messages during my times of communing with God,” she writes. “I had been writing in prayer journals for years, but that was one-way communication: I did all the talking. I knew that God communicated with me through the Bible, but I yearned for more. Increasingly, I wanted to hear what God had to say to me personally on a given day. I decided to listen to God with pen in hand, writing down whatever I believe He was saying. I felt awkward the first time I tried this, but I received a message. It was short, biblical, and appropriate. It addressed topics that were current in my life: trust, fear, and closeness to God. I responded by writing in my prayer journal.”

Although the reviewers I read found nothing wrong with the doctrine in Young’s messages, they expressed concern over the way she infers that while the Bible is inerrant and infallible, it is not sufficient – at least not for her.

“It was not enough for her and, implicitly, she teaches that it cannot be enough for us,” writes Protestant Pastor Tim Challies. “After all, it was not reading Scripture that proved her most important spiritual discipline, but this listening, this receiving of messages from the Lord. It is not Scripture she brings to us, not primarily anyway, but these messages from Jesus.”