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
