SRR 114 Heaven’s Diaspora: John Piper & the Decline of Sola Fide at Final Judgment (5)

I do a podcast.

I'm not interested in your podcast.

The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone. When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the error and combating the error.

Polemics, Clarkianism, and the Bible Alone

We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so, the next few statements that I'm going to make, I'm probably going to step on all of the vantillium toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.

We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style.

I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing. It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible. Jesus said, Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way, as opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. All right. Welcome back to Simple Riff around the radio, where the Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety is applied to all of life. Thankfully for today, I'm not flying solo this time.

I've got a very, very special guest with me once again. We have Hiram Diaz back on the show. Very grateful for this brother to be back on with us. We had a really good, really good interview with him going back a while back about critical race theory.

And we got some really positive feedback on that show. Really good feedback. People have really been appreciating the discussion and the stuff that we talked about back then. So I'm hoping that we can have Hiram on more as a regular rather than as a guest, more of as just a regular contributor.

He's been contributing some great articles recently as well on the Thorn Crown Ministries blog, the scripture list. So I encourage you to check that out and look at stuff up. He's a sharp guy, so he's got some really good material out there.

Before we but before we get started on that. Oh, so the topic is going to be we're going to continue talking about Piper and I want to continue on to the fifth fatal flaw. But I want to lead up to that a little bit.

So first of all, just a few announcements. I started I started a new a new series. I guess you can call it a series for basically reflections on the Lord's Day preaching at my church. So it's just a brief kind of like one or two pages of notes that I take from the sermon and from just kind of the service in general.

And they're just reflections, thoughts, things that come across my mind when when the preaching is going on and and tying a bunch of things together. So you that might be something that you can check out.

Some of the people, some people that I've talked to use that as like a sort of a supplement to their family worship or to their Lord's Day worship. So I encourage you to check that out. You might find it useful.

I talk about a lot of different things and in each sermon. So it's kind of a mishmash of topics like ranging from the well-meant offer of the gospel to using Christian labels and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff in there that you may get some some food for thought from.

So that's that's the one new thing. And so there's there's another new semi new feature to our website called Carlos's Bookshelf. And this is something that I really enjoy doing. It's basically like my Goodreads library.

It's my library of books and I have my reviews up there as well. So I kind of want to start this into a potentially a new thing for the Thorn Crown Ministries to if people have a question about a specific book that they're curious about, that they want they would like some clarity or some answers on, which is kind of what I did recently with Josh Harris and his book, Dug Down Deep.

And so I'd like to continue doing that. And just kind of I enjoy doing that. I enjoy reviewing books and kind of discussing them and things like that. And you kind of take me for that kind of guy as well, Hiram.

You like to do that stuff, too?

Yeah, over at Biblical Trinitarian, where I write, usually I have a section on book reviews. And I've been aiming at least since this month, I want to try to get a book every once or every one or two weeks reviewed.

So right now I'm going through patristic literature and studies on the patristic fathers and patristic authors to get different views of, you know, what it is they believed about different subjects. I just finished a book on patristic bibliology, their understanding of the scriptures.

And it was enlightening. It wasn't the best book, but it was good. But yeah, I spend quite a bit of time reading, more reading than writing, actually. I'm trying to balance that out at some point.

Yeah, that's fantastic. I am eating your dust, man. I don't know how you do it. I wish I could read that fast. That's very cool. Yeah, so I want to encourage people to ask us questions, you know, about different, you know, a bunch of books.

There's obviously a lot of books coming out. And so I think that's great that we have a pretty good team to be able to look into stuff like that. I mean, you're putting out, starting to put out book reviews already.

So, and I'm trying to do the same thing, but a much slower pace, unfortunately. But I'm going to try to keep that somewhat consistent. So that's awesome. So I recently just posted a review of Edward Snowden's book called Permanent Record.

And it's kind of fascinating because, like, what does that have to do? What does a former NSA whistleblower have to do with final salvation? And it's pretty interesting. I encourage you to check out the review for that.

It's a brief review. It's nothing convoluted. But he's essentially describing the Internet in a very soteriological manner. It's kind of interesting how people idolize these things as a way to start over, to create aliases online and feel like you're being born again almost.

It's very interesting. So it's all related to salvation. Everybody wants some kind of salvation. And everybody has these different ways of trying to obtain it. And so, yeah, I encourage people to check that out.

It came out pretty recently, like in September, I think. So you can check that out. So that now basically brings us to our main point, which is the issue of continuing to unravel the final salvation theology of John Piper.

John Piper, Final Salvation, and the Council of Trent

And we picked up on fatal flaw number five. And so before that, I want to just kind of give a brief recap of the previous one. So the previous flaw was number four, which was the active obedience and congruous merit of the believer.

And I say that deliberately because Piper is saying, you know, the perfect active obedience and passive obedience of Christ as a satisfaction for God's wrath and justification of believers is not enough for Piper because he's still saying that you have to face God on the last day as a judge.

And you have to pass the final test by showing your own works, your own righteousness, your own active obedience, your own congruous merit in order to go to heaven. So it's not enough for Piper to have Christ alone.

You need to have your own works present at the last judgment in order to get to heaven. And so I wanted to ask you because you're kind of new to this discussion. It's mainly been between me and Tim. And I wanted to get just like, what's your past with Piper?

Did you ever like Piper? How much of his stuff have you read? What's your take on all this Final Salvation stuff going on?

I got to be honest with you. I've always kind of been wary of John Piper, even though I found some. I don't know if people still do it, but, you know, like sermon jams on YouTube. Well, they have like a sermon, a clip of a sermon playing, you know, like a hip hop beat in the background.

I think that's where I was introduced to Piper. And I have a friend who really likes Piper. But I've always been wary of him, primarily because of how emotional he is. I just don't trust emotional preachers.

I don't, you know. And the reason why is because, look, if you have something with content to tell me, you can tell me in a monotone voice. And if it's truth, it should have an effect on me. If you have to flail your hands around and gesticulate, right, raise your voice, drop your voice, have all these different things that you're doing to affect my emotions, then chances are you're slipping some poison in the orange juice you're giving me.

You know what I mean? And that's how I've always felt about Piper.

That's funny.

But I remember years ago when I first encountered John Robbins, Trinity Foundation, Gordon Clark, and I read about the Pied Piper, you know, the article that he wrote. And I remember, okay, well, this ties right into how I feel about the guy.

Obviously, there's something wrong that I could sense in some way. And so this makes sense. I kind of forgot about him, though, until people started posting stuff about Salvation by Faith Alone and Piper's renunciation of that.

And so I started remembering more about the Pied Piper situation. But the more I heard Piper's attempt to justify himself to people and his beliefs, the more I was reminded of the succession of the Council of Trent.

Because what he's saying sounds like it's taken directly from that. And if you remember, that's the session on justification in the Council of Trent, where they basically say the same thing that he said, where, okay, well, you get in by faith and you stay in by works.

And you're going to be judged on the basis of not only the faith that you have that brought you in, but the works that you have that you persisted in. So faith working itself out through love is their understanding of faith.

It's not just faith in terms of sent to a proposition.

Yeah.

It's works, basically, snuck in through the back door, the same way that the Federal Revisionists talk about faith. That's how Piper talks about it. And they're both talking about it in the same way that the Romanists do, and the Romanists did way back in the Reformation time.

So, yeah, the more I heard from Piper, the more I read about Piper, the more that I was reminded of the Council of Trent. And it's amazing because I remember going to some threads on Facebook and just showing people, okay, here's what the Roman Catholic Church said about justification in the late 1500s, early 1600s.

And here's what Piper says. And people are like, yeah, but. There's no but there. You know what I mean? There's no but. If you claim to be Reformed and you're talking like the Council of Trent when it comes to justification, you're not only not Reformed, you're not a believer.

You know what I mean? But that's it in a nutshell, more or less, you know, just listening to Piper's teaching online, reading it, reading some of the articles at Desiring God. In addition to me thinking that he's just a weird emotional person, the justification issue becomes really clear.

He affirms a doctrine of justification that is basically Roman Catholic without all the sacraments.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's funny because, you know, going back to his preaching style, I don't necessarily mind it that much, I guess. What does concern me is his theology of emotions. And I wrote a review of his book, What Did You Expect?

No, What's the Difference? What's the difference? The differences between biblical manhood and womanhood. And he really bothers me because he says that he's very fixated on emotion, like your emotional state.

And it's like, why are you so concerned about people's emotion? And he says, like, you shouldn't be. If you have a begrudging attitude, then you shouldn't be devoid of that. Because you know how he is.

He's focused on Christian hedonism and your greatest desire should be joy and being joyful in God and all that stuff. And, you know, I can kind of see where he's going. But honestly, it's sort of missing the mark.

Because what you should be concerned with is the truth. And what you should be concerned with is preaching convictions that line up with the Word, which is the truth. If you do that, the emotions will follow.

And everybody's emotional state is different. Some people are not as emotional as others. And that's the same with preachers. Preachers have different styles. Some people are more expressive. Some people are less outwardly like Piper.

They're flailing limbs around and stuff. And there's good and bad preachers that do both of those things. And I think it's important to just be natural. Don't be unnatural. Don't try to stifle your emotions unnaturally.

Don't try to exaggerate them unnaturally. Just be natural. Just be human. It's human to express emotion and conviction. But do it in a way that you are concerned primarily with the conviction. And Piper tends to focus a lot on the wrong thing, on emotion.

So were you going to jump in?

Yeah, I was going to say not to give the wrong idea. When I say I don't like emotional preachers or I don't trust them, what I mean is more like, you know the stereotypical black pastor or the stereotypical Hispanic Pentecostal pastor where it's just a performance.

You know what I mean? It's like, well, I'm going to open up with a word of prayer and start off with this low tone where, you know, and gradually constrain them until you're screaming at everybody and everyone's like, wow, this is amazing.

That's the feeling that I've always got with Piper. The whole thing is emotional. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I see what you're saying.

You know, like listening to give a contrast, a huge contrast, but someone who's emotional in his preaching for good reason, you know, Pastor Patrick Kynes. When he preaches, you know, I don't have a problem with it because I know that he believes the truth.

I know that what he's feeling is a response to what he's believing and what he's talking about. You see what I'm saying?

Right, right. Amen. Yeah.

It's not a show being put on. This is a guy who's preaching the truth and his concern is for Christ's sheep. And so if he's angry about something, it's because it's something legitimate to be angry about as a pastor, as a Christian, etc.

If he's happy about something, etc. But for John Piper, like I said, it's always felt like, okay, here's my moment where I'm humbled before God and everybody's going to see this in the way I put my head down and my hands up.

And here's the part where I start getting bold in the spirit and everybody's going to see it because I start shaking. And here's the part where I get, you know, valiant for the truth because I start yelling and hitting the pulpit.

Like, dude, you know, maybe he is legitimate, but that's what I meant when I said the pastor. The pastors who are emotional for me are, you know, I'm wary of them. But like we've seen through your article, through your articles, and through the podcasts that have been done regarding Piper, we see that his concern isn't for the truth.

His concern is for his own doctrine, you know, regardless of what the scriptures say, because he's not going to be corrected on it as far as we can tell.

Sadly. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm glad you brought up Trent, too, because in all of our articles, basically Tim's article and Tim's article and in my articles, we quote Trent heavily to show just how closely he lines up with what they're saying rather than what the Reformers are saying with the Protestant Reformation writings, the mainstream writings that he claims to agree with are saying.

And so that's what fatal fault number four dealt with largely as well. I quoted a bunch of mainstream Protestants from the past, Martin Luther, Charles Spurgeon, Horatius Bonner, and showed that the Belgian Confession, you know, the confessions, they basically all express things that are directly opposed to what Piper is teaching.

So, yeah, and I also wanted to clarify something because I think people, so the Trinity Foundation published the first part of my article, but not the second. And I think people got confused because they published the first part in two parts.

And so people might, because people might have thought that they read both parts on the Trinity Foundation, but that was only the first part. So if you haven't read the second part, you have to read it on the Thorn Crown Ministries website, and that covers a lot more material.

So it's fatal flaws number four through six and a few other sections. So, yeah, people just wanted to throw that out to make sure that there was not, because there's much less views on the second article than the first.

And I think it might have been due to some of that confusion. So, yeah, if you haven't checked, if you haven't read it yet, I encourage you to read it. We're going to deal with a lot of the sections here, but you can see it for yourself with your own eyes.

And it's just very, it's very clear cut. So jumping on to fatal flaw number five, and I call this flaw Heaven's Diaspora. And the reason I call it that is because when we were dealing with this issue back in the Bible-thumping wing night, we were, a lot of, there was a lot of opposition.

There was a lot of support for Piper. And we were, I was very concerned that, I was already concerned back to the article that you referred to from John Robbins, the Pied Piper. You need to read that article if you haven't already.

It's a very good article. It's mainly a critique of Piper's book, Future Grace, which he revised in 2012, and apparently is still pretty much a mess. I mean, it's no surprise. The stuff that he's saying is still a mess.

So, I mean, back, you know, recently. So he is not sound. And so when we were deliberating about this and going back and forth with people, I was on my way home one day, and I suddenly realized, like, wait a minute.

If Piper is saying that in order for you to go to heaven, you have to face God at final judgment and prove your works to him, your salvation to him with your works. What about believers that have already died?

Where are they? You know, like, and it's such a simple, that is one of the most, it's such a simple question, you know, like, what happens to these people? And so that's what Fatal Flaw number five is basically unpacking.

It's, you know, because the Bible very clearly says, in 2 Corinthians 5, 7 -8, it says, For we walk by faith, not by sight. We are confident, yes, well-pleased rather, to be absent from the body or dead and to be present with the Lord.

So departed, in other words, departed believers, believers who have already passed away, have already, quote, attained heaven without having to step foot in, quote, Christ's courtroom. And this is Piper's words that I'm quoting.

Stand before Christ as judge at the last judgment. Those are Piper's words. And so there's a problem there, you know, and it's a very basic problem. Like, there's something seriously wrong there. And, you know, and also in Philippians, it says, Philippians 1, 21 -24, for believers to live is Christ and to die is gain.

But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit for my labor, yet what I will choose I cannot tell. For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart or die and be with Christ, which is far better.

And so the teaching is absolutely clear. And so this very simple doctrine refutes Piper's absurd claim that all believers must first be evaluated at the final judgment before they can enter heaven. But it gets worse.

This is what's so interesting because Piper actually affirms that. He affirms that when believers die right now, they go to heaven. And you would have to. I mean, that's such an obvious doctrine. Like, you would have to affirm that.

And he does. That's what makes it so weird. It makes it even worse in a way because if we follow Piper's logic initially, you know, without knowing that he affirms it, if you follow his logic initially, it would mean that not a single believer is in heaven now because they would not have yet been deemed worthy to enter it at the last judgment.

The last judgment obviously hasn't happened yet. And Piper believes that the last judgment is in the future. He's not some weird kind of like a preterist or whatever. He believes that there will be a final judgment and it hasn't happened yet.

So therefore, where are they? You know, what are they doing? Where are they? And so Piper actually acknowledges this. He says, this is quoting him, "...our judgment will be after we die.". That's implied in the text, but Hebrews 9 .27 makes it explicit, "...it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.".

We don't need to be more specific than that this morning. We need only say that before we enter the final state of glory with our resurrection bodies on the new earth, we will stand before Christ as judge.

So there he's emphatically saying repeatedly what he's been saying in his article on, does God really save us by faith alone? He says, in final salvation, at the last judgment, we will have to conform our fruit on the final judgment before God and everybody else to prove that we're really worthy of heaven.

And so this is what's so interesting because, and it's not just that, you know, it's not just the part of believers, it's also raptured believers. You know, there's raptured like Enoch, by faith, Enoch was raptured and taken away so that he did not see death.

Not by faith and a trial to present his works at the final judgment to see if he was really there, if he was really saved and proved his inherent righteousness before God. It's like, okay, or worse, he's not even there yet.

He must be, where would he be? Where can he be?

He's still in transit. He's traveling still.

Yeah, well, here's what's interesting. See, this is what's interesting. We just talked about how close he is to the council of Trent, to Romanism, to Roman Catholicism. So what's one of the implications of that view?

They must be in some other place, like maybe, who knows? I don't know, purgatory?

Exactly, yeah.

Limbo?

Yeah.

Where else would they be?

Yeah.

If they can't get in until they get judged at the last judgment, where else would they possibly be? Or soul sleep, maybe? Didn't you write about annihilationism or soul sleep?

Yeah, I wrote a small book on soul sleep called Soul Sleep and Unbiblical Doctrines showing that it's not even possible. The interpretation of sleep as being a state of unconsciousness is not possible given the Bible's literal depiction of literal sleep.

It's never a state of absolute unconsciousness. So, yeah, it's called Soul Sleep and Unbiblical Doctrines. It's pretty short. It's like 50 pages or something.

Yeah.

No, and that's great. And we just quoted the verses disproving that. I mean, you know, it's not like... Yeah, obviously, it's a very... It's a very unbiblical view.

And so...

Well, I was going to say, like, speaking of Romanism, right? Even though Roman Catholicism has the doctrine of purgatory, they don't deny that some Christians go to heaven immediately upon death, right?

They'll say that the Christians who are sanctified enough,.

Who are perfected now,.

They make it directly to heaven. So maybe that's Piper's view.

Yeah, absolutely.

Who knows?

Who knows?

It is insane. So we'll see just how bad it's going to get. It's going to get worse. So, yeah, the Bible talks about raptured saints like Enoch and, like, who else got raptured?

Elijah.

Elijah. He was raptured. He was brought up in chariots of fire. So where would he be going? Would he be going to a courtroom to await his…. Like, it's so blatantly contradictory to the plain teaching of the Bible.

So, yeah, Hebrews 11, 5 says,. By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death and was not found because God had taken him. For before he was taken, he had this testimony that he pleased God.

And so it's very clear that when believers die, their spirits go directly to heaven with God. Their spirits. Their bodies are not redeemed yet. That's not going to happen until later. But their spirits go directly with God to heaven, in heaven.

And so even the transfiguration of Christ where he appears with Moses and Elijah, you know, in Matthew 17, 1 -3 says,. Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves, and he was transfigured before them.

His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them talking with him. So this is clearly showing that Moses and Elijah were glorified spirits in heaven fellowshipping with God already prior to the final judgment.

So there's something very clearly wrong there. And, you know, there's just so many….

We can keep going.

We can keep going and going and going. And I encourage people to read the article to get the full scope of this because it is that bad. And it's going to get worse.

And I was going to say, I don't think you quote Hebrews 12 -23, right? But in Hebrews 12 -23, the writer says, To the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect.

Right?

He's talking about the people.

There you go.

The people that are in heaven right now are spirits of the righteous who are made perfect. I mean, they're sinless. They're glorified.

There you go.

They're awaiting the resurrection of their bodies, of course. But they're in heaven right now. So that's just another way in which Piper's error is shown to be false. Shown to be an error.

Amen.

Who are enrolled in heaven right now. This very moment. Present tense. I mean, it's so clear. And so obviously, what are we getting at? And it's very clear. It should be clear by now, right? If Piper were consistent with his view, that believers cannot be finally saved and get to heaven until the final judgment when God publicly confirms their works, then heaven must be currently devoid of all deceased and raptured believers who would instead have to be in some kind of soul sleep or some other midway realm like maybe Rome's Limbo, Purgatory.

Who knows? The options are very limited and they're flatly unbiblical. So he doesn't have a whole lot of places to turn to. So where does he turn to? Well, interestingly enough, in 1993, Piper said this.

What we have seen so far is that believers in Jesus go to be with Him when we die. Verse 8. We prefer to be absent from the body and at home with the Lord for those of us who trust Jesus as Savior and Lord to live as Christ and to die as gain.

To depart and be with Christ is very much better. So he just affirmed what we were just talking about. That deceased believers are already in heaven. Okay, so what is going on? Now that's just a major blatant contradiction.

Those two are irreconcilable realities unless you do this. This is the only... Because I thought about this. What could he possibly say to reconcile that? And this is what I came up with. This is the best I could do.

This is me trying to be as charitable as I possibly could be with Piper given what he just said. Two very sharply contrasting things. Apparently very contradictory things. So for Piper, believers who die prior to the final judgment go straight to heaven.

But when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead,.

Evidently,.

He's going to evict all of them from their heavenly abode and put their works on trial to see if they're worthy of re-entering heaven. That's the only thing I could come up with.

It's double jeopardy too.

Yeah, it's a disaster. Yeah, and I mentioned that earlier that this is a form of double jeopardy as well because why are you being put on trial for something... If you've already gone to heaven, it's contradicting everything that you've been saying about having to face the final judgment in order to enter heaven.

It doesn't make any sense. That flatly contradicts what he's contradicting himself. And the only thing, the only possible way to reconcile it that I'm seeing is basically that God is going to initiate a massive heavenly diaspora.

He's going to kick everybody out of heaven, put them on the judgment line. Hey, you got to get back in line. You got to get back in line and you have to prove yourself to me because you never did that you are fully qualified enough to go to heaven with your works.

And so again, folks, we can just... Can we end it now? Can we just end it now? Yeah, exactly. I mean, how much more absurd does this have to get? Because sadly, it still gets worse. We're not even done yet is the sad thing.

Yeah.

Well, like you and I know, you know, I'm assuming most of the listeners know, logic is not... People in, I guess, people like Piper and stuff like that, they are opposed to quote, unquote, mere human logic.

You know what I mean? So when you point out things like that,.

Surprise, surprise.

Yeah, I can imagine them being like, well, you know, that's just, that's your way of trying to reconcile the mystery in scripture. Like this isn't a mystery to you. You're flat out contradicting yourself.

It's either one or the other, you know, but given the mythology, the hatred of logic that you find among a lot of people, even those who profess to be reformed and Calvinistic, it wouldn't surprise me if somebody tried to use that as a defense, you know, like we have to hold these things in tension.

Yeah.

It's not...

Oh, man.

That's terrible.

It's a flat out contradiction. There's nothing to hold in tension, you know.

That's terrible.

Yeah.

And if you want a good perspective on logic, you recently published an article on Thorn Crown Ministries, right? What is it called?

The...

Contradictions are carnal.

Yes. Yes.

So again, if you're listening, I highly encourage people to check that article out, get a good perspective on logic, which will help you to see these, you know, and it doesn't take much.

It doesn't.

It honestly does not take much. It doesn't take a genius, a proficient logician to see the problem here. You know, it should be pretty obvious. Like this is not something that you can get away with easily.

This is not something... This is clearly... Something is clearly wrong. And it's nonsense. And it destroys biblical eschatology, the assurance of believers, how can you be assured? How can you possibly be assured if even deceased believers who have died and gone to heaven are apparently still going to have to get back in line to be judged?

There is no... That's even worse. That's like... That's even worse than just being nervous about this life. You know, like, man, if I die, what's going to happen? It's like, no, it's worse. If you die and you go to heaven, it's almost like...

It's...

What a horrendous feeling must that be like. Hey, you know, your seat might get reclaimed, your house might get reclaimed by somebody else, you know. You may not make it after all in the long run.

You know, it reminds me of...

It's just horrendous.

It reminds me of, you know, like mafia movies where you got this guy who turned on the mafia boss and he's like, well, maybe I'm still in good standing with him. So the boss invites him over and he's like, yeah, you can have dinner with me, just hang out.

And the whole time he's like, he's going to shoot me, I don't know when.

Right?

It's like, this is what Piper's... This is what Piper's heaven is like right now. Like a whole bunch of guys and Piper's God that he's envisioning is like a mafia boss who's like, yeah, come on, come have some of these heavenly delights for a little while and then bang, on resurrection day, he's just going to bang, shoot him, you know, throw him in a ditch.