An Endrun
around Rom. 1 and Acts 17
A gameplan of YWAM with reference to the “World Christian
Gathering on Indigenous People” Movement (WCGIP)
by
Sandy Simpson, Apologetics Coordination Team, March 2006
Daniel
Kikawa, formerly working with YWAM and now with his
own organization called Aloha Ke Akua,
and Danny Lehmann, Director of YWAM Honolulu have
repeatedly pulled Romans 1 and Acts 17 from their contexts in order to promote
IPM ideology. I have yet to hear them, or any other leader in the IPM for
that matter, teach these Scriptures in
context. Yanking Scriptures out of context is one of the first marks of
false teaching.
On
Daniel Kikawa's video called God's Fingerprints In
Japan he quotes Romans 1:19-20 and Acts 17:26-28 out of context as he also
did on the Word to the World radio show on KLHT on two separate programs
spanning a few years. Never were these verses taught in their context but rather
twisted to fit a particular agenda. Let's look at both cases:
ROMANS
1:19-20
On
the Fingerprints DVD Kikawa quotes from the
NIV:
Romans 1:19-20 ... what may be known about God is plain to
them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the
world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature— have been
clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without
excuse.
He
also takes Romans 1 out of context in his latest interview on Word to the
World.
He was born in the center of civilization of that day. y’know the nexus of Europe and
Asia and Africa, the civilization of that day and what did Jesus say is tell
everybody that I came, y’know. Not that you don't
know God or that you don't have no relationship with him and he's a foreign God
to you. But that, that the son of your creator came who made himself known to
as Rom. 1:20 says and so this is what we bring to them and we find that if
there are people who are really seeking God, there are people like Jobs
everywhere who know.1
No
explanation of context was given on either the video or in the radio interview.
IPM leaders are constantly quoting Romans 1:20 out of context. They love
to emphasize what is NOT the point of the passage. Of course the creation is
obvious for men who want to look at it and understand it, thus understanding
there has to be a Creator. Sure ... when men think about their nature
they might possibly see that man is created in the image of God Who is Spirit. But
that's about all they know. They know NOTHING of the Son,
therefore they know NOTHING of salvation and sonship. What
they don't quote is what follows because it destroys their argument that all
nations, cultures and peoples are already worshipping the true God.
Romans 1:21-25 For
although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to
him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although
they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the
immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and
reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to
sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They
exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things
rather than the Creator— who is forever praised. Amen.
As
I stated in a previous article, the fact is that ALL Gentiles (1) did not
glorify God (2) did not give thanks to God (3) were foolish (4) were futile in
their thinking, their beliefs (5) exchanged the glory of God for images (6)
were given over to sin (7) and exchanged the truth of God for a lie,
worshipping created things instead of the Creator. This covers EVERYONE
since Adam until God revealed Himself to Israel through the patriarchs, Moses
and the prophets. This started at the fall. Adam and Eve “exchanged
the truth of God for a lie” and it has been getting worse ever since.
The
point of this passage also comes to light when you read what precedes it.
Notice that the word “since” was taken out of verse 19 by Kikawa,
possibly so that the sentence would read smoothly. But it does tend to make the
reader assume that what was quoted in the video is a complete thought. Yet
the word “since” means that we have to look back to what the passage states
earlier.
Romans 1:16-19 I
am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation
of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the
gospel a righteousness from God is revealed,
a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written:
"The righteous will live by faith." The wrath of God is being
revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who
suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known
about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
God
made it plain to men that He was the Creator and had all power. But men,
from the beginning, rejected God. Though they were created by God they
could not be His children and He their Father. The wrath of God is coming
on men who do not believe. What must they believe? The
Gospel! The only way to be righteous before God is to believe in the
Gospel message about Jesus Christ. There is no other way and “no other
name” by which we may be reconciled with God except through His Son, Jesus
Christ ... and His Son must be revealed by those who preach the
Gospel. The power of salvation does not lie in the old gods
renamed. It lies in the Son of God, Jesus Christ,
revealed!
ACTS
17:26-28
This
passage, pulled from context, is what is used over and over again by the
leadership of the IPM, which includes YWAM leaders, Daniel Kikawa,
Richard Twiss, Terry LeBlanc and many other First
Nations “Christian” leaders. This is how it was quoted on Kikawa's Fingerprints DVD:
Acts 17:26-28 From one man
he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he
determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find
him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and
have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
The
writer of Acts, Luke, was quoting from the Old Testament. We can
understand the context of Acts 17:26 by reading Deut. 32:7-11.
Deut. 32:7-11 "Remember
the days of old, Consider the years of many generations. Ask your father, and
he will show you; Your elders, and they will tell you: When the Most High
divided their inheritance to the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam,
He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the children of
Israel. For the LORD’S portion is His people; Jacob is the place of His
inheritance.”
God
was setting the boundaries for the nations according to the children of Israel
so that the Gentile nations would end up in proximity to Israel and thus
possibly come to know the God of Israel. It was not that God was creating
nations and giving them “promised lands”. He was going to spread Israel
out among the nations as a witness from the establishment of Israel till the
incarnation of Jesus Christ. After Jesus Christ the message of the Gospel would
be spread through Jews and Gentiles who had come to understand and believe in
the mystery of the Gospel.
The
above erroneous interpretation of Acts 17 is reinforced by Danny Lehmann's
statements on his program:
Now yesterday Daniel, we closed our broadcast by talking
about the issue of Japan and how people have a hard time having the gospel
being communicated to them because it sounds foreign… that's the big problem-
whether its India or Thailand, Africa or Latin America. If God appears to be a
foreign God it would be equivalent to us in America which is a normally
Christian based society accepting Buddhism, because it sounds foreign to us.
And in the Bible when Paul was preaching in Acts 17 it tells us that when he
was talking about Jesus and the resurrection, they said "well he's talking
about a foreign God" and he went on to bridge the gap there in a
magnificent way there at Mars hill.2
As
I covered in a previous article, Paul did preach the Gospel in terms that the
Greeks could understand. He used the illustration of the “unknown god”
which they were worshipping, with some sarcasm as scholars note, to point out
that they did NOT know the true God at all, not to bridge a “gap” between them
and their worship of an “unknown god”.
Acts 17:23 For as I walked
around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar
with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something
unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
Barnes
New Testament Notes states that an altar had been erected in Athens during a
time of pestilence some 600 years before Christ because all the other
"known" and named gods could not deliver them. Paul came and
used this altar to illustrate that they did NOT know God at all, saying “Him I declare to you” in other words,
“I
make known to you his name, attributes, etc. ... In other circumstances
it might seem to be presumptuous for an unknown Jew to attempt to instruct the
sages of Athens. But here they had confessed and proclaimed their ignorance. By
rearing this altar they acknowledged their need of instruction. The way was,
therefore, fairly open for Paul to address even these philosophers, and to
discourse to them on a point on which they acknowledged their ignorance”.3
An
“unknown god” means they were worshipping something unknown, not known.
John Gill Expositor states:
“God is an unknown God to those who have only the
light of nature to guide them; for though it may be known by it that there is a
God, and that there is but one, and somewhat of him may be discerned thereby; yet
the nature of his essence, and the perfections of his nature, and the unity of
his being, are very little, and not truly and commonly understood, and the
persons in the Godhead not at all, and still less God in Christ, whom to know
is life eternal: hence the Gentiles are described as such who know not God;”4
Another
problem with Lehmann's analysis of this passage, out of context, is that most
of the Greeks rejected the true God Paul was preaching because they did not believe
in a resurrection.
Acts 17:32-18:1 When they heard
about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said,
"We want to hear you again on this subject." At that, Paul left
the Council. A few men became followers of Paul and believed.
Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus,
also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others. After
this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth.
These
WCGIP promoters keep claiming that the supreme beings of all cultures are
YHWH. So if Paul was bridging a gap between YHWH and the supreme being of
the Greeks, Zeus, he was doing a very poor job! As far as we know Paul was
never invited back to the Areopagus to speak, so this
invitation was really an empty one, designed to get him to shut up and
leave. Only a few believed in Jesus Christ. Paul was not there to
bridge a “gap” between an unknown foreign “supreme being” like Zeus, or an
unknown god and YHWH. He was there to tell them that they had been
acknowledging an unknown god among many other
false gods and to use that as an illustration to show them they were in error
and to preach the Gospel about Jesus Christ. This example of Paul, the
only one in Scripture, does not justify telling people around the world that
they have already been worshipping the true God and just have to add Jesus
Christ into the mix, and usually by the name of some foreign god. Paul was
clear about the Gospel he preached:
1 Corinthians 2:2 For
I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him
crucified.
Apparently,
according to people like Kikawa, we now need to be
experts in foreign gods to present the Gospel effectively, bridging the gap
between false gods and the One True God. Paul resolved to be an expert in
the Gospel! Lehmann goes on to say:
"and isn't it
interesting that he used the Greek word for God "theos"
and he says I'm going to declare to you about that God."5
“Theos” is a general word for “god” as is the word “god” in
our language. This in no way shows that Paul was talking to them about
YHWH when he said “unknown god”. Paul simply talked about an unknown
“god” (theos) then proceeded
to tell them who YHWH is—the Triune God they knew nothing about and were not
prepared to believe in.
The
end result of teachings of the IPM are leading people
to unrepentance for their cultures, for their demonic
worship, and for their very lives. Yet the context of Act 17 is very
clear:
Acts 17:30-31 In the past
God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to
repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by
the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him
from the dead."
This
verse goes to the heart of the error of the IPM. Those who lead others to
be unrepentant about their traditions of men, their lifestyles, and even their
worship of other “supreme beings” are in DIRECT opposition to the clear command
of God for “all people everywhere to repent”.
ON THE ISSUE
OF ABSTAINING
The
endrun around these passages is leading people from
every culture in the world toward unrepentance. But
the IPM message, as illustrated in Kikawa's video and
in IPM events, is decidedly aimed at believers. This was evident by the
fact that in Kikawa's Fingerprints video he
apologized to Japanese Christians in a Baptist church in Japan. What is
the purpose of this? The purpose is that the enemy wants to get First
Nations Christians back to the worship and practices of their former heathen
cultures!
Let
me give you some examples from the Old Testament and the New Testament where
the people of God were urged to get AWAY from cultural/religious activities as
a witness of the Gospel of Christ. What IPM leaders are doing is basically
trying to put a stamp of approval on cultural activities that are tied to false
religions and false gods. In fact one of the big pushes in the IPM is to
get people in every culture to go back to worshipping “God” by the name of
their former “supreme being” deities. But God is clear that we are to worship
Him and Him alone, and God has a name revealed first to the Jews and later to
the Gentiles through Jesus Christ by way of Paul.
IPM
leaders are teaching Christians to “redeem” their cultures by worshipping their
former gods, pretending they are YHWH. To call Jesus by other names of
gods is to blaspheme His name (Phil. 2:9-10)! There is salvation in only
one name under heaven … that is the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12). We
are to worship God by His name, not in other names. 27 times the New Testament
declares that we are to follow God in the name of Jesus Christ.6
We as
true believers are to follow God first and where our cultures lead us into
idolatry and sin we are to obey Jesus Christ and abstain from things tied to
past false religions. Kikawa, in his video, left
the door wide open for Christians to take part in the “Tea Ceremony” of the
Buddhists in Japan, to worship at shrines and structures dedicated to false
gods, to pray to Buddha with a hidden cross behind a wall, and then had the
audacity to apologize for missionaries who told the people to get away from
their false religions! Getting people to go back to the worship of false
gods is one definition of “doctrines of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1).
Let's
take a quick look at just a few examples from the Old Testament, among many, to
see what God had to say about former cultural practices.
Leviticus 18:3 You
must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as
they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their
practices.
We
are not to follow the cultural and religious practices of the heathen nations
ALL Gentiles were bound to. When we become followers of the One True God
we take on a new culture and religion, that of the worship of YHWH, and the practices
we are taught in the Word of God. But even Israel disobeyed the Lord.
1 Kings 14:24 There
were even male shrine prostitutes in the land; the people engaged in all the
detestable practices of the nations the LORD had driven out before the
Israelites.
1
Kings 17:7-9 All this took place because the Israelites had sinned
against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt from under the
power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They worshiped other gods and followed the
practices of the nations the LORD had driven out before them, as well as the
practices that the kings of Israel had introduced. The Israelites secretly did
things against the LORD their God that were not right. From watchtower to
fortified city they built themselves high places in all their towns.
Yet
IPM leaders want Christians to go back to their cultural practices including
those tied to the worship of demonic false gods. It is worthy of note that
Kikawa introduced ancient three-tiered
watchtowers/high places in Japan as places of worship of “God”. Kikawa picks out one supreme being and says the Japanese
can continue to worship Ama-No-Minaka-Nushi (allegedly the
high god) who is actually simply the “Divine Lord of the Middle Heavens and
god of the Pole Star”.7 He is
presented as part of three gods of Creation, thus promoting Tritheism
instead of Trinitarianism, and tries to prove they
are worthy of worship because of the ancient watchtowers. But notice from
the verse above, the children of Israel were not to use the high places and
watchtowers of the past for worship. For a partial list of the pantheon of
gods, including a number of “supreme beings” of Japan, you can go to a number
of web sites on the Internet. That Japan has a number of “supreme beings”
is beyond dispute. Which supreme being among the
vast pantheons of Japan is the true God? Just as in Greece the answer is
“NONE”! All Gentiles were “without hope and without God in the world” until
they heard the Gospel (Eph. 2:12).
Let's
look at the consistency of Scripture in the New Testament in forbidding
cultural practices tied to demonic worship. There were only a few
suggestions of the Apostles for the Gentile Christians.
Acts 15:20 Instead we should
write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from
sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.
Acts 15:29 You are to abstain from food
sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals
and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.
If
this were today and the false apostles of the New Apostolic Reformation
including their adherents in YWAM, the IPM and other affiliated organizations
were actually leading the Church, there would be no rules given
whatsoever. But these suggestions of the Apostles on
things to avoid show real Holy Spirit-inspired depth of insight. We
are to avoid immorality, avoid filthy pagan rituals like drinking blood and
eating strangled animals, and stay away from cultural practices tied to the
worship of false gods. We are here as salt and light in a dark
world. We have a witness to live out before the world that involves not
only what we say but what we do. Gentile Christians were to abstain from
food to be sacrificed to idols. A lot of the meat sold in the public marketplaces
of that time was for the express purpose of making sacrifices to idols. If
nonbelievers saw Christians buying and eating this meat it would make them
think that what they were doing was fine in the eyes of God, even though for
Christians that meat was clean before God.
This
illustration from Scripture has direct implications to what the IPM is leading
Christians to do. How can you go to the ancient watchtowers/high places or
tea rooms in Japan as a Christian, allegedly to worship God, and not legitimize
the worship of demons there in the eyes of unbelievers? How can you practice
the hula without changing the name, the movements, and the names of the gods
being worshipped without legitimizing those who practice the hula in worship of
false gods like Pele? How can you participate in an Indian powwow, beating
drums, and summoning "Yohewa" without
legitimizing the worship of the demonic deity the Great Spirit? The answer
is—as Christians we lose our testimony before a sinful world,
that continues in idolatry, when we do things like the Apostles told the
Gentile believers not to do. Even more seriously, Christians who do these
things can expose themselves to demonic oppression through the types of
practices advocated by the IPM.
Endnotes
1—Daniel
Kikawa, Word to the World with host Danny Lehmann,
KLHT, Feb. 14/06, #7
2—Danny
Lehmann, Ibid., Feb. 7/06, #2
3—Barnes New Testament Notes, ALBERT BARNES. PHILADELPHIA, August 25th,
1832.
4—John
Gill Expositor , LONDON: PRINTED FOR MATHEWS AND
LEIGH, 18 STRAND, by W. Clowes, Northumberland-Court,
1809, Edited and revised and updated by Larry Pierce, 1994-1995.
5—Danny
Lehmann, Word to the World with host Danny Lehmann, KLHT, Feb. 7/06, #2)
6—Ac
2:38, 3:6, 4:10, 4:18, 4:30, 5:40, 8:12, 8:16, 9:27, 9:29, 15:26, 16:18, 19:5,
19:13, 19:17, 21:13, 26:9; 1 Cor. 1:2, 1:10, 5:4, 6:11; Eph. 5:20; Php. 2:10; Col 3:17; 2 Thes.1:12, 3:6; 1 John 3:23
7—Encyclopedia
of Gods and Goddesses, http://www.geocities.com/thewitchescircle/biggg.htm;
Japanese Gods, http://www.lowchensaustralia.com/names/godsjapanese.htm