The Transgender god of the New Christian Gnostics

An article was recently published by the Washington Post chronicling Bethel University’s new stance, which strongly encourages their students to not use words like “man” or “mankind” when referring to the human race. The university in St. Paul, Minnesota, wrote in a statement to its students, “The Bible teaches us to value all people because they are created in God’s image. … To be clear in our Christian witness, the faculty encourages the use of inclusive language.”

The phrase, “image of God,” seems to be the focal point of the controversy at Bethel. Genesis 1:26-27 states, “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

Bethel University appears to interpret verse 27 as saying that the image of God is both male and female. Therefore, according to that interpretation, the use of the words “mankind” or “man” when referring to humanity is not inclusive and a denial of 50% of the image of God.

A different Bethel has taken this line of reasoning a step further.

Kris Vallotton, the Associate Pastor at Bethel Church in Redding, California, proclaimed at a women’s conference, “God made you after His kind, and God made Adam. The word “Adam” and the word “man”, the Hebrew word is the exact same word. He made Adam both male and female as you know. How many of you know God is not a man? God is both male and female. … It took a man and a woman to demonstrate the revelation of who God is.”

God is both male and female? Really? Adam was created as both a male and a female? Wow. Vallotton even expands this point in a different message by suggesting that Adam had the sexual capacity to replicate himself independent of Eve. Unbelievable.  

But you know, Kris may not be in the minority for much longer. The book and movie, The Shack, represent both God the Father and the Holy Spirit as women. Perhaps to balance things out in his mind, the writer chose to allow Jesus to still be a man.

Pastors across the country are lauding this new film, but perhaps they wouldn’t be so quick to sing its praises if they knew the origins of these strange beliefs about the image of God.

The early Church faced intense opposition throughout the first three centuries. The persecutions they endured by various Roman Emperors are well-documented historical atrocities.

However, just as it is today, the greatest threat to Christianity in the first three centuries of the Church was not persecution by violent unbelievers. The greatest threat to the Church came from wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing. Gnosticism ravaged the Church in those days, and its deceitful influence upon modern Christianity is clearly evident in these descriptions of the heretical beliefs of Gnostics about members of the Trinity.

They go on to say that the Demiurge imagined that he created all these things of himself, while he in reality made them in conjunction with the productive power of Achamoth (mother). … This mother they also call Ogdoad, Sophia, Terra, Jerusalem, Holy Spirit, and, with a masculine reference, Lord. – Irenaeus 180CE, Volume 1, p. 528 [CD-ROM]

Hereupon the Father by and by, being moved, produces in his own image, with a view to these circumstances the Horos whom we have mentioned above; (and this he does) by means of Monogenes Nus, a male-female (Æon), because there is this variation of statement about the Father’s sex. … Meanwhile you must believe that Sophia has the surnames of earth and of Mother—“Mother-Earth,” of course—and (what may excite your laughter still more heartily) even Holy Spirit. In this way they have conferred all honour on that female, I suppose even a beard, not to say other things.

– Tertullian 200CE, Volume 3, p. 887, 898 [CD-ROM]

Marcus, making a similar attempt with this (heretic), asserts that the Tetrad came to him in the form of a woman,—since the world could not bear, he says, the male (form) of this Tetrad, and that she revealed herself who she was, and explained to this (Marcus) alone the generation of the universe.

– Hippolytus 225CE, Volume 5, p. 171 [CD-ROM]

To sum up these quotes, the Gnostics wrote that a heavenly mother and father created all things. They said the divine father is literally both male and female, and that another name for the Holy Spirit is “Mother-Earth”.

Though Gnosticism is almost 2,000 years old, remarkably, it is obviously still doing damage to Christians in the 21^st century. The transgender false god of the new Christian Gnostics is steadily sweeping away masses of church-goers into serious doctrinal error.

What does it mean to be made in God’s image? Biblical languages scholar, Dr. Michael Heiser, argues that perhaps we’re asking the wrong question.

“It’s not an attribute given to humanity. Think of it as a verb. … I think we should understand Genesis 1:26-27 as referring, as meaning that humankind was created to function in the capacity of God. Let us make humankind as our image. All of this points to viewing the image in a functional sense. We are created to “image” God. … We are His representatives. It’s a status given to us. It’s a function that we need to fulfill.”

So, how can you faithfully be God’s imager this week? How can you authentically fulfill your calling to represent the character of our great Redeemer to those you encounter? If you’re wrestling with what that will look like, just turn your eyes upon Jesus, for He is the image of the invisible God. 

Excerpt from Ch. 13 – New: Wineskins and the Simple Words of Christ

A false doctrine again creeping into the Church states the God of the Old Testament is not the same as the God of the New Testament. I say it is creeping in again because it’s well documented that during the second century, a man named Marcion was denounced as a heretic for promoting that and other Gnostic teachings.3 Oftentimes, people who are holding to this ancient heresy will say that while they don’t believe in the God of the Old Testament, they do believe in Jesus and the God of the New Testament.

It’s quite interesting, though, if you read the New Testament, how often Jesus identifies Himself with the God of the Old Testament. 


 

Maybe you’ve heard that Jesus never claimed to be God. That’s simply not true. He absolutely claimed to be God; He just did it in a Jewish way, since He was a Jew. …

In Isaiah 6, the prophet writes:

In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.”

And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Keep on listening, but do not perceive; keep on looking, but do not understand.’ Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, and their eyes dim, otherwise they might see with their eyes, ear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed” (verses 1-10).

In verse 1, Isaiah said he saw the Lord on the throne, lofty and exalted. The Hebrew word used here for “Lord” is Adonai. So, Isaiah testified he saw the Lord, Adonai, high and lifted up on the throne. Second, in verse 5 Isaiah says he is in deep trouble because he is a man of unclean lips and his eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. This is the same Lord of hosts the Seraphim said was “Holy, Holy, Holy” in verse 3. The phrase “Lord of hosts” in Hebrew is Yahweh Sabaoth; or, if you’d prefer, Jehovah Sabaoth. Therefore, we are able to easily deduce that Isaiah saw a manifestation of Yahweh in his vision recorded in Isaiah 6.

Now we will move back to the New Testament. In John 12, we find Jesus in the last week of His life. He has already raised Lazarus from the dead and is popular with most of the people. But the leaders of the Jews are plotting to kill both Him and Lazarus. John writes:

Though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him. This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet which he spoke: “Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” For this reason they could not believe, for Isaiah said again, “He has blinded their eyes and He hardened their heart, so that they would not see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and be converted and I heal them.” These things Isaiah said because he saw His glory, and he spoke of Him. Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God (verses 37-43).

John quotes Isaiah 6 and then writes that Isaiah said these things because he saw “His glory, and he spoke of Him.” Who is the “Him” whom John says Isaiah saw? The answer is found in verses 37 and 42, where John says even though Jesus was performing many signs the Jews refused to believe in Him, and the ones who did believe wouldn’t confess Him because they were afraid of being put out of the synagogue.

No one would get put out of the synagogue for confessing belief in Yahweh. All Jews confessed that truth every time they said the Shema (see Deuteronomy 6:4-5). But a person would get put out of the synagogue for confessing the truth that Jesus was Yahweh. Many of them were seeing, yet they weren’t believing. Isaiah, however, saw His glory and believed. He saw Yahweh. So, once again, John tells us Jesus and Yahweh are one.

After Isaiah saw the pre-incarnate Jesus, his life was never the same. As his old wineskins were burst, he was filled with an excitement and boldness to do anything for the Lord God no matter the cost. Just as Isaiah’s life was turned rightside up when he actually saw the Lord God after serving Him for so many years, my world was rocked when I began to discover how the entire Old Testament was designed to point us to Jesus. It changed everything. Many of my old wineskins were burst, which helped me make sense of so many things in the Old Testament that had troubled me in the past.

Irenaeus on the Heretical Teachings of Marcion in 180CE

Marcion of Pontus … advanced the most daring blasphemy against Him who is proclaimed as God by the law and the prophets, declaring Him to be the author of evils, to take delight in war, to be infirm of purpose, and even to be contrary to Himself. But Jesus being derived from that father who is above the God that made the world … was manifested in the form of a man to those who were in Judea, abolishing the prophets and the law, and all the works of that God who made the world, whom also he calls Cosmocrator. Besides this, he mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke, removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord, and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord. …

In addition to his blasphemy against God Himself, he advanced this also, truly speaking as with the mouth of the devil, and saying all things in direct opposition to the truth—that Cain, and those like him, and the Sodomites, and the Egyptians, and others like them, and, in fine, all the nations who walked in all sorts of abomination, were saved by the Lord, on His descending into Hades, and on their running unto Him, and that they welcomed Him into their kingdom. …

For all those who are of a perverse mind, having been set against the Mosaic legislation, judging it to be dissimilar and contrary to the doctrine of the Gospel, have not applied themselves to investigate the causes of the difference of each covenant. Since, therefore, they have been deserted by the paternal love, and puffed up by Satan, being brought over to the doctrine of Simon Magus, they have apostatized in their opinions from Him who is God, and imagined that they have themselves discovered more than the apostles, by finding out another god; and [maintained] that the apostles preached the Gospel still somewhat under the influence of Jewish opinions, but that they themselves are purer [in doctrine], and more intelligent, than the apostles.

Therefore also Marcion and his followers have taken themselves to mutilating the Scriptures, not acknowledging some books at all; and, curtailing the Gospel according to Luke and the Epistles of Paul, they assert that these are alone authentic, which they have themselves thus shortened. … But all the rest, inflated with the false name of “knowledge,” do certainly recognize the Scriptures; but they pervert the interpretations, as I have shown in the first book.