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Perhaps Today Devotional Critiques

February 12, 2002

GOD’S WILL FOR YOU AT HIS COMING

The indented sentences are from the book, PERHAPS TODAY, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.

A twenty-one-year-old college student once told me, "Pastor, I think I am oversexed! " I felt his statement could have only been prompted by what he permitted to live in his mind. When I asked how he spent his free time, he admitted to reading Playboy and Hustler magazines. Then he protested, "I don't buy them; they are always available in our frat house." When I asked what TV and movies he had experienced, he finally admitted to watching the HBO channel and a steady diet of R-rated films.

I told him that he was probably not oversexed. It is just that at twenty-one, he was at the highest point of his sex drive and he was overstimulating that drive with pornography and sexually explicit entertainment. I also warned him that because he had been living on such a steady junk diet of the mind, that it would probably take him a couple of months to overcome his mental feeding habit. I told him that with spiritual discipline he could gradually replace those lustful thoughts with wholesome images. Then I designed a regular Bible reading and study program for him, including three weeks of Scripture memorization. After faithfully practicing this new discipline, his mental perversions were replaced and his mind was purified.

What the Lord Jesus Christ stated is sin, Tim LaHaye calls "overstimulating that drive."  Jesus calls what that young man was doing adultery: "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." Matthew 5:28.  This young man's problem was that he was SINNING (nowhere is this mentioned here) and that God considered him an adulterer!  Why was SIN not called by its rightful name?  Why was it not make clear this young man was an adulterer in the sight of God?

The advice given to this young man was positively unbiblical because he was told by the writer that he could "gradually replace those lustful thoughts with wholesome images."  This is a psychological, humanistic way to approach sin and is against the teachings of the Holy Bible!

Jesus told us that sin is so serious that if we have to pluck out an eye or cut off a hand to stop sinning, we must do this: "And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:" Mark 9:47

Is the sin this young man was partaking of in the "cast into hell fire" list of sins?  Yes!  "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind. . ." 1 Cor. 6:9

Adulterers do not enter into the kingdom of heaven!  What must we do about youthful lusts? Should we adopt some kind of replacement program so we can gradually wean ourselves from our lusts?  Not according to the Word of God, which cannot lie: "Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart." 2 Tim. 2:22

We are to FLEE youthful lusts!  We are to do what it takes even to the point of cutting off or plucking out something that pains us to do because it is better to do that than to remain in our sin and be cast into hell fire.

Tim LaHaye never mentioned forsaking this sin and fleeing from it no matter what it costs, even to the point of leaving the frat house to avoid being in that wicked environment, and abstaining from television and movies.  (Almost all of it is filthy today; you don't need HBO to be destroyed by the moral decadence in almost every television commercial.) 

Also nothing was mentioned of the demonic strongholds the young man invited into his life through his willful participation in this moral filth, and how these need to be dealt with in Jesus' Name or else they will plague him for the rest of his life by working to try to get him to fall back into this sin.

Tim LaHaye did not tell this young man to REPENT of this sin and to RENOUNCE it!  (See 2 Cor. 4:2)

Instead he was given a Bible-reading and scripture memory program that is supposed to replace the perversion.  Yes, Bible reading and scripture memory is needed, but it will never take the place of confession of SIN (not calling it something else besides sin, like being "oversexed"), 1 Jn. 1:9, repentance and forsaking of the sin, renouncing the satanic strongholds he had invited into his own life by his rebellion to God, and deliverance of these strongholds in the Name of Jesus Christ!

All pornographic material, in any form has accompanying demons that do attach themselves to the life of any Christian willing to defile his temple (his body) in this manner.  Simply using some kind of replacement technique might or might not work for a season, but it will not take care of the root problem.  We must deal with sin and obey the Bible where it tells us to "cleanse ourselves of all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." 2 Cor. 7:12

 

Perhaps Today Devotional Critiques

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