A tenth unscriptural tradition is that the teaching of the Apostles supersedes the Words of the Son of God in the Gospel. The truth is, everything Jesus taught is repeated by the Apostles in their epistles.

An eleventh unscriptural tradition is that there will be a Gentile kingdom in Heaven and a Jewish kingdom on the earth. To which kingdom, then, does the new Jerusalem belong, for it will be located on the earth? Let us hope it is not exclusively a Jewish kingdom (as though the Jews after the flesh will inherit the Kingdom of God) because the Throne of God and the Lamb will be in it.

There is only the one Seed of Abraham—the Lord Jesus Christ and those who belong to Him. There is no other seed of Abraham that will inherit the promises of God, other than the promises directed at the physical nation of Israel and their return to the physical land. No individual, Jewish or Gentile, has any inheritance in the Kingdom of God until he or she has been born again, as Jesus the Jew told Nicodemus the Jew.

Once a person has been born again, all distinctions of race and gender disappear as far as the Kingdom is concerned. There is only one new Man. I do not understand why competent scholars insist on dividing the work of God into Jews and Gentiles. This division is certainly anti-Pauline.

Obviously we have not mentioned all of the current errors. We have not discussed the imaging, prosperity, soulish faith, and reconstruction errors. They are demonstrably incorrect but may not have done the harm produced by the eleven we have mentioned.

How did we get so far away from the Scriptures? There may be at least three reasons.

First we have rejected the truth concerning self-denial, suffering for the Gospel, carrying our cross after Jesus. Therefore God Himself has deluded us.

For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie (II Thessalonians 2:11—NIV)

Second we apply models, such as Dispensationalism and then distort passages of the Scriptures until they fit the model.

For example, we take the fourth chapter of First Thessalonians, a passage addressed to grieving relatives of deceased Christians, and turn it into the hope Christians will be caught up to Heaven to escape Antichrist and the Great Tribulation. Then we make this funeral passage the blessed hope of the Church, stressing the catching up of the believers and ignoring the prerequisite resurrection from the dead—an experience that will make us invulnerable to Antichrist and the Great Tribulation. Terribly illogical, inconsistent, and a warping of the text!

We take the statement, "He that guards the word of my patience I will guard from the hour of temptation," and translate it, "he who takes the four steps of salvation will be removed from the earth before the Great Tribulation." Yet the Apostle John, the same writer using the same Greek terms, says, "I do not pray that you will take them out of the world but that you will guard them from the evil one." Careless scholarship!

To be continued.