T.D. Jakes' Mangling of Mark 11:22-25 & Dubious Attack Against Sola Scriptura

Now, this is from, this is a segment taken from his sermon preached the first Sunday of this year. And I'm not going to obviously review the whole thing, but I want you to pay close attention to a very interesting and sneaky tactic that he engages in, in order to attack the sufficiency of Scripture.

It's a bad argument. In fact, this entire sermon is really one big extended bad hermeneutic. But here, I'll let you listen in. This is TD Jakes, again, from the first sermon preached this year over at the Potter's House out there in Dallas.

Mark 11 in Context and the Fig Tree

Here we go. So the criteria now says, now, whatsoever you desire, when you pray, when you pray, in the process of prayer, we're going to put, we're going to put a fence here. Believe you have received it.

Believe you have received, that's literally what it said, believe you receive it and you shall have it. Well, you can't believe you received what isn't yours.

Okay. Now, by the way, he's supposedly exegeting Mark chapter 11, and in fact, let me read it to you in context, so you can understand what's going on in this passage. I'll just do a quick, you know, hermeneutic on this, but here's what it says.

At verse 20, Mark chapter 11, verse 20, as they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots, because, you know, in fact, let me go back to that. Jesus had, go back to verse 12.

Here's what it says. On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. That's Jesus. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. But when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves for it was not the season for the figs.

And he said to it, may no one ever eat fruit from you again. And his disciples heard it. Then you fast forward to verse 20. So as they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots.

And Peter remembered and said to him, Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you cursed has withered. And Jesus answered them, have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, be taken up and thrown into the sea and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.

Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it. That is an heiress. Yes. And it will be yours. And whenever you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.

Now real quick, this passage here. Now, have you ever read, you know, like in Corinthians, the different passages in the New Testament that list the different gifts of the Spirit, the charismata? Okay.

There is a gift of faith and it's not talking about saving faith. Okay. It's talking about a supernatural charismatic, if you would, why I hate using that word because it can easily be misconstrued, but one of the gifts, one of the charismata, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, a faith that really can move mountains or can cause the sun to stand still, things like that.

You get what I'm saying? So this is in a sense talking about that type of faith and Jesus here is basically saying, have faith in God. Whoever says to this mountain, be taken up and thrown into the sea and does not doubt in his heart.

Now that doubt in the heart, you know, yeah, we're talking about a special type of faith here. Okay. And so yes, in some senses what he's talking about is true, but this is a favorite proof text of money grubbing televangelists.

And the reason why it's a favorite proof text of theirs is because, well, see, you want health, you want prosperity, you want wealth. All you got to do is believe it and receive it. It's not exactly what this is necessarily talking about here.

It's not talking about that at all. And Jesus here, you know, is talking to his disciples and, you know, they, his disciples are miracle workers, right? They give, they, you know, literally, you know, they raise the dead, they, you get what's going on here.

And so, so this is, is a supernatural type of faith given whereby you can perform these types of miracles and things like that and, and utter things and it comes to pass, but God is still the one in the driver's seat, not you.

Okay. Because these are things uttered in prayer. These are not giving you the desires of your wicked and evil heart, but don't let, don't let sound exegesis get in the way of a TD Jakes. Listen to what he does here.

And I'm going to back this up just a smidge so you can kind of get a little bit of this context.

They believe you receive it and you shall have it. Where you can't believe you received what isn't yours.

See his explanation. See, you can't receive what isn't yours. This passage says nothing about this. Now watch what he does. He inserts things into the text. He's going to engage in a hermeneutical twisting technique known as eisegesis.

Watch this. I mean, listen, you can't watch with radio. Bad metaphor.

You can hope you're going to get it. You can believe you shall receive it, but in order, let me break it down where you can get it. He is saying you receive it in your spirit before you receive it in your life.

Whatsoever you, oh, come on. No, he's not saying that at all. At this point, TD Jakes is inserting things in here. Come with me.

We're going to get this in a minute. Whatsoever you desire when you pray, believe you receive it and you shall have it. So believe you receive it. That's receiving it in one dimension means I have it in another one.

It doesn't mean that at all. He's completely inserting things into this text.

In one dimension means I have it in another one. Receiving it in one dimension means I have it in another one. Now you can't expect to have it in the natural if you haven't received it in the spirit. Let's work on this.

You cannot have. Yeah, he's working on it. He's working over this crowd. That's for sure. Healing in the natural until you receive healing in the spirit.

You let me back that up so you can hear it without my delay. Here we go.

Let's work on this. You cannot have healing in the natural until you receive healing in the spirit. You cannot have prosperity in the natural until you receive it in your spirit. The reason some of you are broke is that you have a broke spirit.

You have a broke mentality. You can't receive it in here. So you can't receive it right here. It comes in your spirit before it comes in your life.

Passage has nothing to do with things coming into your spirit. But this is he's laying groundwork here to attack the Bible. Believe it or not. Listen to what he where he goes with this. Oh, come on.

A wife is a woman before she gets a wife. A woman is a wife before you put a ring on her finger.

Really, where does the Bible say that?

If she's not a wife before you put a ring on her finger, she won't be a wife. Prove it by the scripture. Yeah, please try. Bible said, whosoever findeth a wife, findeth a good thing. If she was a wife, when I found her, I didn't make her a wife.

You have to be it in order to become it. Oh, let me go deeper.

Man, total twisting of that passage too.

God told God told Moses anoint men to be elders that, you know, to be elders. You can't make him an elder if he's not an elder. You can't make him a deacon if he's not a deacon. If it's not in here, it won't be out there.

Give him all the papers you want to, but you can't make them what they are not. Some strong faith there. When you pray, when you pray, believe you receive it and you shall have it. That's a strong faith.

Believe you receive it.

By the way, that elder passage, um, that's Titus chapter one. This is why I left you in Crete so that you might put what remain in order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you. It doesn't say when you, when you actually do the biblical verse work with this and put it in context, this passage isn't saying that, that they're elders before you anoint them to be elders.

Cause they are elders in the spirit before they are in the, in the natural, no biblical passage really says this. I've got it right now.

Got it right now. I'm not going to wait until I have it to receive it. I receive it in my spirit. I'm walking in what I've received in my spirit right now. I'm walking in it. I'm walking in it. I'm walking in it.

They haven't called me that yet, but I'm walking in it. Nobody has acknowledged it yet, but I'm walking in it.

Basically he's whipping these people up into a frenzy, teaching him false doctrine and what is it all basically turning God into a genie. This is a formula that you need to keep. You need to receive it and believe it in the spirit and it'll manifest itself in the natural and all that nonsense.

Cause this is the version of the prosperity heresy.

The lump hadn't hit it. I still got a fever, but I'm walking in my spirit. The check hadn't come yet, but I'm walking in it. I'm laying out plans. I'm picking out stuff. I'm designing, making arrangements, getting ready.

Oh, I have nothing in my spirit. That's going to stay where I am. I received it in my spirit and I'm going to have it in my life. What?

And believe it or not, this is all a prelude to his full frontal attack against God's word. Watch where he goes. That was him attempting to speak in tongues. That wasn't tongues, by the way.

Attacking the Sufficiency of Scripture

He received it and he shall have it. This is some powerful stuff. This is Holy Ghost dynamite. If you really receive this in your heart and in your life, this will change your life. Since Jesus is talking about having faith and this is faith in another dimension.

No, it's not. This is faith in the spirit world. No, it's not. That I am receiving in the spirit, things that I don't have in the natural.

That's not what this passage is teaching at all. Where do I get this faith?

Well, glory to God. If you could get it from me, it'd be good, but this is not contagious. To get it in the store, you can sell it and be rich. Would change the trajectory of your human experience. How, how do I get it?

Well, let's let's go to the word. The word says faith come about hearing, hearing by the word of God. Romans 10, 17. Watch what he does now. Now we know this. We understand that when we hear teaching and preaching, it produces faith.

We understand when we study the word, it produces faith. But have you considered at the time the text was written, there was no Bible to study. That is a flat out.

Absolute lie. What he's, he's going to base this is, I mean, historically it isn't even true. Okay. By the time the apostle Paul wrote those words to the church in Rome. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ.

The Bible was nearly complete. Almost totally 100 done. Okay. Yeah. Now we have the book of Romans and other epistles that were being tacked on here at this point to God's word, but the beginning of the written word of God goes all the way back to Moses.

Right. Um, in many good biblical scholars argue that the actual beginning of a written canon begins with God using his own finger to write on the stone tablets, the 10 commandments. Okay. Because really the appearance of the Torah and the 10 commandments coincide with each other is at historically and chronologically.

So the whole project of the written word of God begins with God himself writing out on stone, the 10 commandments. Right. So, well, you've got the Torah, you've got the prophets, you've got the, you know, the writings, you know, and Jews in the time of Jesus's day, you know, they, in ancient Israel, they had the full old Testament.

And, uh, if you were a Jew living, uh, abroad, you know, in the Mediterranean world and you were Greek speaking, well, you were reader of the Septuagint at this point. So yeah, they had a lot of the word of God.

A lot. In fact, the majority of it now regarding the apostles. Now they would, the living apostles, they spoke the word of God when they would preach and teach and tell people about Jesus. They were speaking the word of God.

Okay. They had apostolic authority when they spoke, when they wrote, when they taught. And by the way, there's only one place that you can go now to find the apostolic teaching and that's the new Testament.

That's the only place you can go. Now, is it true that Peter, James and John and all those guys probably could have told us a lot more about Jesus? Yeah. John himself actually tells us that in his gospel.

He tells us that if, if he were to record everything that Jesus said and did, he imagined that all the books in the world probably couldn't contain it all. Right. That was his point. So we, we know from John's own admission that between the synoptic, uh, gospel writers and, uh, John's gospel, we've got a fragment of what the disciples could have taught and maybe did teach.

Okay. But does that mean that we don't have the word of God? It's in its entirety. Nope. We have everything we need. So it's sufficient in the written word of God. So this argument that TD Jakes is using, did you consider they didn't have a Bible that they can study?

That is a straight up, flat out, bald faced lie. Listen again.

We understand when we study the word, it produces faith. But have you considered at the time the text was written, there was no Bible to study. So if faith coming by hearing and hearing by the word of God, do we limit the word of God?

When we confine the word of God to scripture alone, seeing at the time it was written, scriptures were still being written.

This isn't even a solid historical argument, let alone a biblical or theological argument. So this becomes then the basis for his basically saying scripture isn't sufficient. We don't need to rely on scripture alone.

Instead, we need another source of God of hearing God's word.

I have a class this Wednesday. I can, I can let it rip this Wednesday, but I'm just going to play around this morning. If, if faith cometh, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God, is he really just talking about scriptures when scriptures are still being written?

Yeah, he really is.

Which by the way, is one of the reasons why I played the lecture yesterday to scripture. Technically no, but that's what we've been given by God. And it's sufficient as scripture says in second Timothy chapter three, all scripture is God breathed and is profitable for teaching, correcting, rebuking, training, and righteousness so that the man of God may be fully equipped for every good work.

That's what God has given us now. Granted, I'm sure God has plenty of words to say, and anytime God speaks, it is the word of God, but in the church, the only thing we can trust is the written word. That's what we've been given and it's sufficient by its own standard.

And this, the argument that TD Jakes is engaging in, this is an argument designed to attack the sufficiency of scripture so that he can introduce you to another so-called source of receiving God's word that doesn't then, you know, that makes it possible for him to teach contrary to what scripture says, because he got it directly from this other source.

By the way, this is exactly what Stephen Schalk does too, but not in the charismatic sense. He attacks the clear teaching of the word of God and then talks about this trajectory of what God is doing and then that we can, we can then use that trajectory to decide which things we want to change in our teaching now.

Same concept. It's the magic bag. Okay. So now we've got the magic bag of the so-called trajectory of what God's doing in the world right now. And now we've, TD Jakes, he's teaching this magic bag. We could whip out anything we want out of this magic bag that he's talking about.

Let's see what he wants to pull out of this magic bag now.

By the word of God, this kind of believing can only happen when God has spoken in my spirit.

Subjective, prophetic experience, right? And that's not what Romans 10, 17 says at all, does it? Notice what he did. He took a passage that isn't talking about direct revelation of the sufficiency of scripture, twisted it and told a historical lie about it and makes this the governing text when there are other clear passages that are the ones that should be governing.

Same trick that Stephen Schalk engages in. TD Jakes engages in it too. This is a classic technique used by Bible twisters and those who want to teach their own doctrines rather than have their minds conformed and normed by what God has revealed in his written word.

When my spirit receives what God has spoken to me, I receive it right. Y 'all don't hear me. This is to keep me from trying to receive stuff that's yours because if he didn't speak it to me, I can't believe it like you and I can't receive what is yours.

So I can't covet what God has given to you because I don't have the faith to receive what I don't have.

Utter, complete nonsense. The Bible teaches none of this. TD Jakes is a wolf. He's a false teacher, a Bible twister and a very good one at that and somebody that should be avoided at all costs. But this is the technique.

It's the magic bag technique. The magic bag. You attack what the clear passages say with unclear and then you introduce an other than the written word of God norm by which you're appealing to and that norm is subjective and arbitrary and that becomes the thing you look to in order to smuggle in your false teaching and doctrine.

Classic Bible twisting technique, bad hermeneutic and this is exactly what the devil does. Did God really say same technique? All right. We're up on our second break. If you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard on this edition or any previous editions of fighting for the faith, you could do so.

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