Thessalonians - Understanding the Mixture — Jacob Prasch

Understanding the Mixture in 1 Thessalonians

Hello, dear friends, this is Jacob Pratt. Turn with me, please, if you have your Bible, to the First Statistical of St. Paul to the Thessalonians. Thessalonians, Chapter 2. I'm going to look at the subject, Understanding the Mixture.

Paul's Gentle Exhortation and Bold Defense of the Gospel

Understanding the Mixture from 1 Thessalonians, and I'm reading from Chapter 2. Paul begins by telling us about the opposition he had in Philippi. But he had boldness in God to speak the Gospel amidst much opposition.

He then continues, in verse 3, talking about his exhortation. The Cambridge theologian, C .H. Dodd, identified from the Greek text of the Bible three kinds of teachings that the New Testament shows us existed in the early church.

Three kinds of teachings. Didacian, Hamelia, and Kerygma. Didacian, Hamelia, and Kerygma. Didacian is expounding doctrine. Expounding doctrine. Kerygma is preaching the Gospel to the unsaved. But then there is Hamelia, where we get the word homily.

That is encouraging. That is exhortation. Now, when Paul exhorted young believers in this passage, in verse 7, he proved to be gentle among you, as the nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children.

The Greek text here carries the idea of a professional, I suppose you'd say, nursery school teacher, or a professional nursemaid. Someone who, by profession, looked after other people's children. But the person with that profession, how they would care for their own biological baby, a child.

So, it's somebody who's a professional at looking after children, but the care by which they would look after their own biological child. When Paul exhorted new believers, he was very gentle. But when he proclaimed doctrine, and when he proclaimed the Gospel, he would be as forceful as is necessary.

In other words, bold. Forthright. Look at the preaching of Jesus of the Hebrew prophets. At times, they were bold and forthright. At other times, they were gentle. There are some people today who say, well, we should always be bold.

There are people who can't handle that. You don't talk to a small child in unnecessarily strong tones. And you don't use unnecessarily strong terms with a small child. Neither do you talk to newly-saved people that way.

You speak to them as spiritual children, in order to see them grow unharmed. Protective? Yes. But heavy-handed with new believers? No, Paul was not like that. But in presenting the Gospel in the face of opposition, both from his fellow rabbis and from the pagan priesthoods, he was quite, quite bold.

So, too, in opposing ever and those who misled and deceived the Church, he could be vociferously aggressive in protecting that flock. Think what Paul is saying here. I'm like a nursing mother tenderly caring for her own children.

How does a mother protect her children? The baby. Very gentle and kind with the baby. But when someone comes to threaten that baby, even a bear, an elephant, a rhinoceros, will protect that baby aggressively.

An elephant, a bear, or a rhinoceros, a lioness, any animal in Africa, as Africans know better than I do, will be very, very aggressive when something threatens their baby. So, too, when young believers are going to be hurt or misled or deceived, Paul would become very, very bold.

And when people were being pointed away from the true Gospel by opposition, he would become very bold. There are times for aggression, boldness, and there are times for gentleness. Those who say, well, we should never speak strongly, no, no, no.

They say this from ignorance or pride. They're not saying it from God's wisdom. That's man's wisdom, man's foolishness. What we read in the Scripture is God's wisdom. Let's understand this idea of the mixture.

Error, Impurity, and Deceit in Apostolic Ministry

I'll begin now in verse 3. Paul says here, For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit, but we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the Gospel. So we speak not of pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts.

For we never came with flattering speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed. God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or from others, even though as apostles of Christ we might have asserted our authority.

Our exhortation doesn't come from error, impurity, or by way of deceit. In verse 1 of chapter 1 of this epistle, Paul writes on behalf of himself and Silvanus and Timothy to the church in Thessalonica.

And he begins with his introduction. In his Hebrew thinking, it would have been In Hebrew thinking, it would have been Grace and peace to you from God our Father and Jesus the Messiah, translated into Greek.

Now understand what Paul is saying here. He's comparing the ministry of his own mission team, his own church planting team, his own evangelistic team, of Silvanus, Timothy, and himself, with con artists, with phonies, with false apostles, with men who had other motives.

What were their motives? Their motives were greed and seeking their own glory. Greed and seeking their own glory. And how did they do it? Flattery speech. And what we will see in a moment is the mixture.

They do it with mixture. Let's look now at verse 3. Our exhortation does not come from error, or impurity, or by way of deceit. Notice the sequence. First comes error, then comes impurity, then comes deception.

The sequence is important. Error means doctrinal error. We are dealing in verse 2 with kerygma. But in verse 3, we are dealing with deduction. Doctrinal error is the first thing. Doctrinal error is followed by impurity.

The Greek word for impurity is eikatharsis. Eikatharsis. The opposite of catharsis. What does eikatharsis mean? It's not pure. It means a mixture. Something that has not been cleansed. There is impurity mixed with what is right and what is good.

Eikatharsis is a mixture of truth and error. A mixture of flesh and spirit. A mixture of what is good and what is bad. But it begins with error. A little leaven leavens the entire lump of dough. Jesus said, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.

Pride, Leaven, and False Doctrine

Notice the characteristics of leaven in 1 Corinthians 5. The Jews could not celebrate the Passover until the leaven was removed from the house and the bread could have no leaven in it. Leaven has to do with sin.

Especially the sin of pride. As Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 5, your boasting is not good. Leaven puffs up. It contributes nothing nutritionally to the value of the bread. It just puffs up. That's all it does.

This is the way pride works. Your boasting is not good. The first sin was pride. Satan's first sin was pride. He wanted to be God. Man's first sin was pride. The lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life, Adam and Eve wanted to be God.

Pride is the kind of sin that otherlies unto sin. You see, a person with a problem with greed, unto that greed is pride. You see, a person with a problem with uncontrolled lust, unto that lust is pride.

You see, a person with a problem with unholy, unrighteous anger, unto that anger is pride. Pride is the kind of sin that begets other sin. But false doctrine is also leaven. Because false doctrine is also sin and involves spiritual pride.

When you see people teaching false doctrine, like the money preachers, Lord Faith people, these people are undergirded by spiritual pride. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. And a little leaven looms the whole lump.

False Prophets and False Teachers

First comes error, and then impurity. Error is mixed with truth. Peter covers this subject from a slightly different aspect. Turn with me very briefly to 2 Peter, chapter 2, verse 1. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you.

Notice that Paul uses false prophets and false teachers interchangeably. Why? Why is a false prophet held as synonymous with a false teacher? Well, to understand this, we have to understand the background of Jeremiah 23.

Again, the false prophets give straw, the true prophets give grain, the Word of God. However, the reason Paul uses false prophets, I'm sorry, Peter uses false prophets and false teachers interchangeably, is because if someone's doctrine is wrong, their prophecies will be wrong.

Why do men like Gerald Coates in Great Britain and Rick Joyner in the United States make so many false prophecies? Why has Benny Hinn made so many false prophecies that have not happened in the name of the Lord?

Deuteronomy 18, Jeremiah 28 tells us that makes them what we call in Hebrew a nebeshekh, or a false prophet, who is forbidden to pay attention to such men. And those who will pay attention to such men are in rebellion against the Word of God because we can prove they prophesied things that haven't happened.

Why are their prophecies wrong? Because their doctrines are wrong. But then it says in verse 1 of chapter 2 in 2 Peter, there will be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who brought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.

What does this mean? Introduce destructive heresies is man's best effort to translate a Greek term parasogzusin, parasogzusin. Para means next to, and sogzusin is what follows it. Para is the prefix. What parasogzusin means is they put truth next to error.

They put truth next to error. What did the devil do when he tempted Adam and Eve? He took something God actually said that was true and put it next to error. In the temptation of Jesus in Matthew chapter 4, in the temptation narrative, what did Satan do?

Same thing he did with Adam and Eve. He tried on the second Adam what he tried on the first. He put truth next to error. Twisted biblical passages out of context subtly. Parasogzusin is always laying truth next to error.

Whatever is true is only camouflage. It's only to package what is false. Again, it is like a drop of poison inside a delicious meal. But that arsenic will kill you. Whatever is true and nutritious is only there to deceive you.

Some people will say, well, there's some truth in Toronto. I know it was not all of God, but some of it was. By virtue of the fact it is a mixture that tells you it's a deception. Satan is much too clever to tell you an out-and-out lie.

Look how he tempted Jesus. Look how he tempted Adam and Eve. He subtly perverts truth. Parasogzusin. Error is followed by impurity. A mixture of truth and error in 1 Thessalonians. Well, we have to chew the meat and spit out the bones.

That is garbage. That is the silly, silly argument of men who are following their own reason instead of God. If you hear a pastor telling you that, he's unfit to be a pastor because he doesn't know how to protect his sheep from the wolves.

You would not eat a meal if you knew it was laced with arsenic. No matter how good the rest of it was, you wouldn't eat an omelet with three eggs and one was rotten just because the other two were good.

Once you ingest it as a meal, you cannot biochemically, the enzymes in our bodies cannot separate the toxins from what's healthy. You can't spit it out when it's a homogeneous solution. It's like saying, I'm going to put sugar in my tea, but someone who's a diabetic will say, well, I shouldn't have the sugar, so I'll spit out the sugar.

No, you don't put the sugar in the tea to begin with if you're a diabetic. That's the mentality of it. It's a foolish, silly argument by men who are best ignorant, but more often who are compromising with wickedness.

Parasolutions. And it leads people, Peter says, to ultimately deny the Master who bought them. This is an open-stated fact. We have tapes. We have documentation. What the word fades, people believe. The beliefs of E .W. Kenyon, passed down through Kenneth Hagen and Kenneth Copeland, have come into countries like South Africa.

And there are people in this country who were groomed in this school of thinking. And it's no lie. Watch it on television. Ray McCrory comes from this school of thinking. We have a local colored pastor in Port Elizabeth from this particular background.

His name is... They come from this background. What is the background? What are the theological presuppositions of E .W. Kenyon that were brought to South Africa by the influences of Hagen and Copeland that men like him and Macaulay believed?

Kenyon's Teaching on Christ's Death and Resurrection

Well, let's look. E .W. Kenyon said, Jesus died spiritually. Now, we have videotapes, television reels, of Copeland saying this. Even one recently. The Bible says that when Jesus died on the cross, he got the victory.

On the cross, Jesus said, It is finished. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. Copeland, Hagen, and their disciples, they say, No, no. Satan got the victory on the cross. When Jesus died on the cross, he died spiritually.

Meaning, he became a satanic being in hell of one nature with Satan. And he was tortured three days and three nights in hell. Then he had to be born again in hell. Then he rose from the dead. Copeland actually said that he could have died on the cross instead of Jesus Christ because he's a born again man.

What did they do? They put truth next to error. They paracelsus him, even denying the master who bought them. Why did they do it? It is a pretext for greed. These are the men who are the money preachers.

Because the cross of Jesus is not central to their view of salvation, because they believe Satan got the victory on the cross, neither is the cross of Jesus central to their view of the Christian life.

Instead of pick up your cross and follow me and exchange it one day for a crown clinging to the old rugged cross, it becomes, you don't have to suffer. You're a king's kid. God wants you rich. Grab it and grab it.

They have a crossless Christian walk because they have a crossless gospel. A different gospel. Even a different Christ, very often. They deny the master who bought them. Because the paracelsus him. They put truth next to error.

Mormonism and Truth Mixed with Error

Well, there's some truth in what? Kenneth Copeland and Kenneth Hagin. Dear friends, I have nothing against Mormons, but Joseph Smith, Brigham Young. Brigham Young had 23 wives. When a Mormon knocks on my door, much of what he says I'll agree with.

But I certainly don't agree with Brigham Young's statement that black people were ugly, mischievous, depraved, descendants of fallen angels, and that any Mormon who marries a black person has to be killed because they're ugly, mischievous, and stupid.

I don't think that's true of black people, but that's what the founders of Mormonism said. Now, there's some truth in what Mormons say. Well, of course there's some truth in what Mormonism says. The Latter-day Saints.

There's always some truth to camouflage the lie. Always. We have to keep what's good and throw out what's bad. No. By virtue of the fact of the mixture, we keep away from the whole thing. That's what God says.

Greed, Flattery, and Exploitation in the Prosperity Gospel

Now, let's look at what Paul tells us further in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 2. First comes error in verse 3. Then impurity. This ekatharsis. This mixture of truth and error. What's the third thing? Deceit.

Deception. How does deception come? Error leading to impurity. A mixture of truth and error. A mixture of what is of the flesh and of the spirit. Then comes the deception. And deception multiplies in the last days.

The men who do it in verse 5 come off with flattering speech. Notice how the con-artist money preachers always tell people what they want to hear and butter them up. And you know what's the sad tragic thing in this country?

The black folk and the colored folk have had a bad enough time for too long. It's bad enough to take money from the haves, but when you pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ to take it from the have-nots, when you take it from poor colored people, when you take it from black folk in the townships, when you take it from single parents, families, and the unemployed, when you con and manipulate poor people by perverting the Bible out of context, by taking error, mixing it with truth in order to deceive, to get money out of them, that's what's happening to the colored people in South Africa.

That's what's happening to the black folk in South Africa. That's what's happening to many of the less financially privileged white people in South Africa. To the Asian folks in South Africa, they're being financially exploited by men who teach deception by putting error and mixing it with truth.

They catharsis the mixture. And it's a pretext for greed. And there are pastors who go along with this and who don't protect them from these wolves are a disgrace to the name of Jesus Christ. They don't love God and they don't even love their own people.

Otherwise, they'd stop their own people from being milked and exploited by these television con artists from the state. That's how it works. But Paul says his missionary team didn't flatter people. They told them straight up the truth.

There was no pretext for greed and they didn't seek the glory of men. When you see these other men who Paul is comparing his ministry to, they're always seeking their own glory. So you have Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy up against men who were out with the pretext for greed.

Introducing error into the church. Mixing truth with error to deceive people to get money out of them. And then they seek their own glory. But let's go further understanding this mixture. Turn with me, please, to the end of this chapter.

Satan's Opposition and the Meaning of Binding and Loosing

Chapter 2, verse 18. Paul says, I want it to come to you. In Thessalonica. He actually says, I want it to come to you more than once. I, Paul, want it to come. Yet Satan thwarted us. For who was our hope or joy or crown of exaltation?

Is it not even you in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming? For you are our holy joy. The only thing Paul cared about was the one stage under his ministry and being ready to meet Jesus. That's all he cared about.

He didn't need another Mercedes paid for by the poor and unemployed colored people or black people in the townships who ride on a crowded bus to work if they can get one. We want it to come to you, but Satan thwarted us.

One of the lies being propagated today is we can speak, we can bind, we can loose, we can take kingdom dominion. Satan can't thwart us. We're king's kids. If Satan tries to oppose us, we just bind him in the name of Jesus.

What did they know that Paul didn't? When you understand Matthew 18, binding and loosing has nothing whatsoever to do with what these silly con artists are telling you. Binding and loosing means two things.

It comes from the Hebrew terms k'tir and asor with their Greek equivalents of gluor and derl. It's first of all the authority that Jesus gave the apostles to define doctrine. You're free from this, but you must do that as in Acts 15 when doctrine was defined.

The second thing it means is dealing with sin in the church. Whatever you bound in heaven will be bound on earth means people who won't repent of their sin in the church. All the so-called demons, binding demons and speaking into the heavenlies and binding and loosing is all nonsense.

Look at the book of Acts chapter 17 when Paul was standing in the shadow of the Acropolis. Other gods are demons, he tells us, the Monoi and Corinth, but when he's standing in the very shadow of the demonic temples in Athens, it says the idols vex him in Acts 17.

What did Paul do when the idols oppressed him? We take authority over this demon of a scene of worship, we bind this spirit. No, he didn't do that. This is what the sitting ordiners do. It's not what the apostles of Jesus Christ did.

African Traditional Religion and Religious Exploitation

You have a big, big problem today in Africa, and the black folk and the colored folk are being taken in by some of their own ministers. Now, I thank God for those black ministers and those colored ministers who love Jesus.

I've met some wonderful black and colored ministers who really do believe the Bible and protect their flock. But something has happened. The black African is culturally predisposed and the colored folk are culturally predisposed to exploitation.

What used to be the sangorma is now the preacher. What used to be the muti is now giving money to this guy. Some of them actually sell omelets and Holy Ghost miracle cloths to take away death. This is just muti calling itself Christianity.

This is just a sangorma standing in a pulpit. That's all it is. And the fear of the sangorma, the fear of the witchdoctor, now becomes fear of the preacher. Touch not my anointed. Not even knowing what that means.

No, David wouldn't touch Saul because he was God's anointed, but David told the truth about Saul, but he was a backslider and a murderer. That's not what touch not my anointed means. What they're teaching you is superstition.

These men are not preachers. They behave like witchdoctors. They're exploiting the poor. They're exploiting the black and colored folks of this continent. And again, I think the black and colored folks have suffered enough.

They don't need to be exploited further by preachers. Not only white ones, but even among their own. Satan thwarted them. Now Satan can only do what God allows him to do. And even when Satan has a victory, God turns it around.

For sure. But don't think he does not have his victories along the way. He wins certain battles. But those victories he has backfire on him. And ultimately he loses the war. Satan thought he won on Calvary when Jesus was crucified.

Only Jesus rose from the dead. Even when God allows Satan a victory, it backfires on Satan. The cross and resurrection are the greatest example. And there's a further example to come in the last days.

Paul's Distress, Faith, and the Making of Disciples

But let's understand this. It's like a gambit in a chess game. You lose a rook and your opponent is thrilled. Except when he realizes you set him up to take his queen and put his king in check. When Satan has a victory, God allows it to bring an even bigger victory to himself and his people.

Nonetheless, in chapter 3, verse 1, Paul says, when we couldn't bear it no longer, we thought it best to be left in Athens alone. We couldn't take it anymore. Paul, Silvanus, Timothy, we couldn't take it anymore.

They reached the end of their emotional rope. Today, the con artist money preachers will tell you, you need to have faith. Just confess. Just believe. Don't look at the facts. Don't look at reality. That's not faith.

That's rubbish. Paul, Timothy, Silvanus, they reached the end of their rope. They couldn't go anymore. Do not let people tell you that you don't have faith when you've just about had it. When they say, you don't have any faith, you don't have the victory, who's telling you that?

Some con artist preacher riding around in a BMW where you live in a township? Easy for him to say. That's some gormless standing in the pulpit calling himself a preacher when he isn't. Taking your money, lying to you, deceiving you, one of your own kind, imitating some white guy on television?

That's a disgrace. Paul understood. What do these people know that Paul didn't? The answer is, nothing. But what happens? Verse 5, for this reason, when I could endure it no longer, Paul now gets personal.

I sent to find out about your faith, for fear that the tempter, that is the devil, might have tempted you, and our labor should be in vain. But now that Timothy has come to us from you and has brought us good news of your faith and love, and that you always think kindly of us, longing to see us just as we long to see you, for this reason, brethren, in all our distress and affliction, we were confident about you through your faith.

When we are weak, the Lord undertakes for us. And the way the Lord encouraged Paul was he saw the fruit of his ministry. He saw disciples, people who continued on with Jesus. Now pay attention. Look at the word good news where that term appears in verse 6.

The Greek word for good news is evangelion. It is also the word for gospel. For he's talking here about believers, that he brought us evangelion from you, brought us gospel from you, that you were continuing in your faith.

In other words, the gospel is this. It is not making converts, it's making disciples. I had a rather biblically ignorant pastor from the northern suburbs last night of Port Elizabeth come to me and tell me how many thousands of people were saved at a tent meeting.

I wasn't impressed. I'd rarely met a more arrogant and biblically ignorant man than him. He had nothing to say from Scripture. What were those people saved into? They may have had decisions, but they're not going to have disciples.

How can you be a disciple when the pastor himself is ignorant of the word of God? The good news is not people making decisions. I don't care if it's 16 ,000 or 60. The good news is people continuing in their faith, discipleship.

Jesus never said to make converts. He said make disciples. That's the real gospel. How many people are going to be committed to Jesus and follow him on the basis of Scripture long-term? You know, I've seen so many decisions in Africa.

I know many black Africans who've made decisions at that kind of meeting that this colored pastor told me about last night. Then they go back to the township and buy some muti. They sleep on bricks because they're afraid of the takalash, but they've all made decisions.

Were they converted? I don't know, but I know this. They're not disciples. Jesus comes to set us free of muti, of sungormis. These people are using the gospel to put you back in bondage to sungormis and muti.

Only the sungormis stand in pulpits. This is a tragedy. This is a terrible, terrible tragedy. But the good news is whether they're disciples. There's always a mixture. Now, we'll look on further at this subject of the mixture and what's happening today in the church as opposed to what the Bible tells us should be happening in the church.

Spirit, Soul, and Body in 1 Thessalonians 5

God bless you and thank you. Hello, dear friends. Greetings in Jesus. This is Jacob Plath speaking to you from 1 Thessalonians 5. We're looking at verse 23. 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 23. And we're continuing to focus on the subject of understanding the mixture.

Understanding the mixture. And our last broadcast in this series we looked at two Greek words. Parasophusin was one and ekatharsis was the other. A mixture of truth and error, or putting truth next to error.

But let's go even further. I'm reading now verse 23 of 1 Thessalonians 5 where under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit Paul writes, Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Lord Jesus Christ. We often point out that when the Bible says Christ Jesus, it means him in eternity. His exalted faith. But when it says Jesus Christ it's him coming down to earth in some way. Whenever the Bible speaks of the return of Christ it's always as the son of man.

In heaven and in eternity it's the son of God. Yet it's all Jesus. May God sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete. Notice there is three. Spirit, soul and body.

In the original Greek the word for spirit is pneuma. The word for soul is psuche. We get psychology. And the third for body is soma. Pneuma, psuche, soma. In Hebrew, again, we have three distinct words.

The Hebrew word for spirit is ruach. Ruach. The Hebrew word for soul is nefesh. Nefesh. And the Hebrew word for body is guf. Notice it puts spirit first. Sanctification takes place in the spirit. God changes people from the inside out.

Spiritual sanctification, spiritual change, spiritual renewal begets psychological, emotional, intellectual renewal of the soul. Then comes renewal of the body, which is ultimately recognized in the resurrection of the coming of the Lord Jesus, which Paul points us to in this verse.

Humanity Made in the Image of the Triune God

Religion tries to change man from the outside. Dress this way, think that way, change your thinking, change your outward appearance, your outward life, but no, no, no. That doesn't work. Man must be born again.

God changes our spirit. Once the spirit is changed, then comes the changes of the soul, the sukhe, and from there comes the changes of, ultimately, the body. God changes man from the inside out. The world and religion tries to change man from the outside in, which just doesn't work.

Now, let's notice these are distinct. Our body, our soul, and our spirit are absolutely separate entities. Interrelated, but separate. The reason we have a body, a soul, and a spirit is because we are tripartite beings.

God is Triune, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And therefore, there are certain things because we are made in His image and likeness, because we are Amagio Dei, made in the image of God, because we are theopomorphic men and women, made in the image of God.

Because God is Triune, He makes us in His image and likeness. There are at least two major things that teach us about how we are made in God's image and likeness in the Bible. The first begins in the book of Genesis, where Adam and Eve were told to be one.

The word for one in Hebrew, echad, shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad, here it was where the Lord our God is oneness. Not the number one, that would be yachid, but a plural one, echad. It says Adam and Eve were told to be one flesh.

The oneness that takes place in a marriage, in which a baby is procreated, reflects the Trinity, the Triunity of the Godhead. The Old Testament usually describes sexual intercourse in the Hebrew text as niknasba, to go into her.

One person going inside of another becoming one. And then a third person is procreated. A pregnant woman. Pregnant mother. Are they one or are they three? One's inside of another. This is one of the things that teaches about God.

We're made in His image and likeness. But another is what we see here in the New Testament. That we are tripartite beings. We have a body, we have a soul, and we have a spirit. In Biblical psychology, the soul and spirit are distinct.

Biblical Psychology and the Limits of Secular Psychology

Man is three-dimensional. Biblical psychology is based largely in the book of Proverbs. If you want to know why people behave why they do, read Proverbs. It's the best psychology book ever written. However, in secular psychology, man is only a bipartite being.

Instead of three-dimensional men and women made in the image of God as the Bible teaches, secular psychology makes us bi-dimensional, two-dimensional men and women. We simply become advanced apes, higher primates on the phylogenetic scale.

We're simply nothing more than advanced models of monkeys, as Darwinism has tried to argue. The Bible says we are three-dimensional. Secular psychology says we are two-dimensional because the spirit and the soul become confused and mixed into one.

The soul is our mind, our emotions, our intellect. That's the mind. But the spirit is the innermost man. It's what communes with God. It is metaphorically represented in the Old Testament by kleos, kidneys.

In the New Testament, by the cardio, the heart, in Greek. Paul says we are temples of the Holy Spirit. The temple had an outer court, a holy place, and a holy of holies. Our physical bodies, the gus, the soma, the body, corresponds to the outer court of the temple.

Everyone could see it and come in contact with it. But then there was the holy place. That corresponds to our mind, our soul, our emotions, our intellect. Keep your mind holy. But then there's the innermost man.

That corresponds to the holy of holies, what the Hebrews call the kodesh kodeshin. What in Latin is referred to as the sanctum sanctorum, our spirit. That is where God's spirit dwelt in the temple. It's the innermost man.

It's what communes with God. Our spirit is different from our soul. The same as the holy of holies is different than the holy place. In the Bible, we have three dimensions. In the world of secular psychology, we only have two dimensions.

We have a problem. Biblical psychology understands our behavior results from a combination of what we are spiritually with what we are physically. Secular psychology doesn't. Secular psychology is completely and utterly flawed because it does not understand the spiritual tripartite nature of man.

Behavior is simply a product of the electro-biochemical functions of neural metabolism of the brain. And then is what you are psychologically that results from it. The Bible says something different.

It's that combined with what we are spiritually, the innermost man or woman. Now let's understand this. There are two primary schools of secular psychology. Two. The first is what we call the Freudian.

Named after Sigmund Freud. Freudianism basically would not see any spiritual property to man. They would see metaphysical beliefs, religious beliefs of any kind as a groundless superstition. Possibly even a form of mental illness.

Then there is the Ghanian school of secular psychology. Named after Carl Jung. Jungian psychology would in a sense see a spiritual dimension of man. Called the collective unconscious. But this is more metaphysical in nature than spiritual.

And it is essentially a cult. Thus, Freudianism would reject the spiritual nature of man, but Jungianism would mix the spiritual nature with the psychological nature. It all becomes psychology. That is secular psychology.

We are bipartite, two-dimensional. Physical psychology, we are tripartite, three-dimensional. That is one of the reasons secular psychology doesn't work. Never heal people's problems. Certainly won't save their soul.