By Apprising Ministries special correspondent Rob Willmann of Rendering Truth.com
This is a repost of an original article on Renduring Truth

TD Jakes’ bad theology isn’t limited to the Trinity.

Over the past few days the Christian blogosphere has exploded with posts, comments, and articles about TD Jake’s supposed change in his theological stance concerning the nature of God.

According to his supporters from the Elephant Room he’s gone from a Oneness Pentecostal-based modalist view of God with God being expressed in 3 separate manifestations, to a now orthodox biblical stance of God being eternally co-existent as 3 distinct persons yet one God.

I don’t agree with his supporters.

Daniel Neades blog BetterThanSacrifice.org summarizes much of what’s gone on in the past week. Daniel posted the following in his article “Elephant Room 2: may we now regard T.D. Jakes as Trinitarian and orthodox?”:

Notice that the error of modalism is not that it denies God’s working distinctively as Father, Son and Holy Spirit – modalism expressly affirms this – but rather, that it denies the existence of three distinct Persons within the Godhead.

Daniel goes on later in the article to state the Athanasian Creed, which could have been a perfect way to determine whether TD Jakes was orthodox. Mark Driscoll and James MacDonald (the two men asking questions of Jakes in the conference) could have asked TD Jakes to affirm his understanding, belief in, and preaching of these central truths by asking him to affirm the Athanasian creed.

However, that’s not what happened.

In a conference that was billed as a place where hard-hitting questions were expected, where differing views could stand toe-to-toe and really dig into the understanding of different theologies, TD Jakes was given a pass.

The moderators (Driscoll and MacDonald) lobbed slow-toss softballs to TD Jakes, and allowed him to hit these out of the park. TD Jakes even went so far as to requalify his statements about the Trinity in such a way as to straddle the fence. His fellow Oneness Pentecostal friends must be happy. Read Daniel’s article above for more on the exchange that took place.

My concern goes deeper. I began asking myself these questions:

If TD Jakes was wrong on the Trinity, what else could he be wrong on? Are there other core areas of doctrine where Jakes falls short?

Wouldn’t you know it, he fails to preach the true Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s right. He FAILS when it comes to the Gospel.

The following excerpt is from a well-documented article on Jakes by G. Richard Foster titled ‘“GET READY” FOR T.D. JAKES – THE VELCRO BISHOP WITH ANOTHER GOSPEL’

Essentially, Jakes fumbles the Gospel in his book, ‘The Harvest’. In this book on pp. 46-47 Jakes confuses salvation and sanctification. Here’s the quote from the article:

He then goes on to propose the strangest Gospel to come down the pike in a while.

Jakes’ view can be called a two-tiered salvation or a two-step salvation or perhaps a progressive graduated salvation. His imaginary salvation is based on a distortion of John 1:12-13. It goes as follow:

“Scripture teaches that receiving Christ as your personal Savior does not necessarily make you a son of God, but if you choose to do so, the power (authority) and right to do so is present. … Just being saved does not make you a son of God, …only those who are willing to be led by the Spirit actually realize and manifest the sonship of God.”37

So in Jakes’ view being a son is not something you are, it is only something you can opt to manifest. His teaching is more at home with that of the late cult leader Herbert W. Armstrong, than with orthodoxy.38

Jakes does not realize how nonsensical he sounds when he says one can be saved and not be a son of God. Does he not realize that the terms are interchangeable and that one really means the other? Being “saved” and “being a son of God” are one in the same. The moment we exercise faith in Jesus and accept Him, we are sons. “For you are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ,” Galatians 3:26 declares.

Jakes confounds and distorts the salvation process by making a distinction between accepting Jesus as Savior and being a son of God. He says that these are different states arrived at in different ways. The Bible does not recognize Jakes’ false dichotomy.

The truth of Scripture regarding the riches of our salvation is summarized by Thomas R. Edgar:

“Every person who believes in Jesus Christ has their sins forgiven and is immediately justified. The Holy Spirit indwells every believer immediately upon salvation. Every believer has access to God in prayer and has other believers available for fellowship, edification, and counsel. Every Christian has all of this immediately upon justification.”39

If we were to believe Jakes, we would have to believe that receiving Christ and being saved are one thing (doing very little if anything for you, except for being a first step) and being a son of God is something entirely different that you can choose or not choose to become. So you can be “saved” but not really saved. When you decide to be led by the Spirit you then manifest son-ship.

Romans 8:1 indicates, however, that walking in the Spirit is something you can and will do because you are already a son of God. Walking in the Spirit is a privilege and the manifestation of sons. Jakes totally misunderstands and confuses salvation and sanctification.”

So Jakes believes that being saved DOESN’T make me a son of God?

HUH?

I would ask Jakes to read this from Scripture:

Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

So to those of you within orthodox Christianity, and ESPECIALLY the folks from the Elephant Room conference, why are you so eager to welcome TD Jakes into the fold?

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Has Jakes repented and publicly stated he’s changed his view on the Gospel?
2. Has Jakes removed the sale of his book from Amazon since it clearly confuses salvation and sanctification?
3. Why did it take a pay-per-view event like this for Jakes to come clean if he has changed his view on the Trinity?
4. Why didn’t he come forward publicly about his new ‘Trinitarian’ stance when he prayerfully realized he was in error?
5. IF Questions 1 and 2 are answered with a ‘No.’, then should I support TD Jakes? Should I welcome him into the church universal as a orthodox, biblical teacher?

I think it should be obvious by now that if TD Jakes was wrong on the Trinity, wrong on the Gospel, and such a huge proponent of the prosperity gospel (which is not THE Gospel, but is instead a false one), then there is no excuse for Driscoll and MacDonald welcoming TD Jakes into the evangelical fold.

I smell a wolf.

The original appears complete with a comments section for you to join the discussion right here.

See also:

T.D. JAKES IS HERETICAL CONCERNING MODALISM WHETHER HE BELIEVES IT OR NOT

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: T.D. JAKES AND PAULA WHITE

DUNG DROPPINGS IN THE ELEPHANT ROOM: T.D. JAKES—JESUS IS THE PRODUCT