Don Francisco’s Burgeoning Universalism, Part 2

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective

In the first part of this short series, we began discussing and highlighting what Don Francisco likely believes to be his “innovative” thinking with respect to God and His Word. Ultimately, as we’ll see in this article, Francisco has simply cast off the belief that God’s written Word is inerrant and infallible, while continuing to believe that God as the Incarnate Word (Jesus) is inerrant and infallible. As I mentioned last time, without God’s written Word, we would have little to no knowledge of the Incarnate Word. This glaring deficiency seems not to bother Don Francisco.

I’ve included in this article comments from Don Francisco’s page. These are his words, his comments, and his current beliefs. I’m quite certain because of these current beliefs, he has a deep sense of “freedom” and “maturity” that he believes stems from these beliefs. Note how he sees a difference between God’s incarnate Word and the Bible itself. While clearly, the Bible is not representative of ALL that is God, it portrays enough of God’s truth to humanity that essentially shows no difference between Jesus as the Incarnate Word and the Scriptures as God’s written Word.

In the above image, Francisco believes making a distinction between Jesus as the Word and the Scriptures as the written Word is important and even viable. What Francisco fails to realize is that by doing so, he is placing his understanding of Jesus solely on how he feels about Him. Based on this then, it becomes extraordinarily easy to sidestep Scripture when seeing an area of the Bible that fails to live up his expectations. Since he has unequivocally stated that the written Word is NOT infallible, inerrant or even the actual Word of God, then he has really thrown out the only absolute truth that God has given us.

Jesus does not live among us physically today. We cannot go up to Him, ask Him questions or hear His answer. We cannot sit at His feet and listen to Him as He expounds what He considered to be God’s Word. Without doubt, it is difficult enough to gain an accurate picture of how Jesus interacted with people from the Bible, not because it is supposedly not God’s Word (or truthful), but because we are left to imagine what Jesus sounded like, how He looked, and how He reacted to people. Each person will come away with a slightly different take on things and unfortunately, much of it is based on the way we ourselves interact with others.

The Bible tells us several things about itself that we need to bear in mind. Clearly, Jesus held the Scriptures up in high esteem. In fact, He stated that they testified of Him (John 5:39). Paul tells us a number of things that we need to bear in mind where the Scriptures are concerned.

In 2 Timothy 3:14-17 we learn the following truth.

“But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Paul is telling Timothy that all the study regarding God’s Word along with the way Timothy viewed the Scriptures was a very good thing and he should continue in that way. Why? Because the Bible is so filled with truth and God-breathed that it is “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” These facts are apparently now lost on Don Francisco because he admittedly does not see the Bible as God’s Word. Therefore, it is merely a “suggestion” or “guide.” In Francisco’s reality, his emotional virtue is a far better guide than the Bible for life.

In Mark 13:31, Jesus very succinctly stated the following.

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

Which words were those? Every word recorded in Scripture. Please note that if Jesus attested to the fact that the Bible speaks about Him (John 5:39), then it is clear that in the Bible, truth is built into it. Jesus spent years memorizing huge portions of Scripture and it is how God the Father, through the Holy Spirit guided Jesus along life’s road. How much more should we learn and know this same written Word? Yet Francisco would have us believe that knowing the written Word is not as important as knowing the Incarnate Word.

In Hebrews 4:12, we read just how important God’s written Word is for life and living.

“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Most scholars believe that the letter to the Hebrews was written after the ascension of Jesus but before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. As such then, the writer of Hebrews would have been referring to God’s Word as in His written Word plus the Incarnate Word as recorded for us in Scripture. Yes, Jesus was/is living, active and sharper than any two-edged sword. His Word pierces the soul and spirit and is able to judge the intentions of a man’s heart. But guess what? So is God’s WRITTEN Word. It is imbued with God’s power. It’s not a book of magic, but it speaks to us as being FROM God, ultimately written BY Him using 40 human beings to do it over a period of roughly 1600 to 2000 years, proving its supernatural origin.

The fact that Satan flees when addressed with God’s Word should tell us a great deal about the power of His Word.

Peter tells us that “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit,” 2 Peter 1:21). God spoke to us first by the prophets of old (and their prophecies were written down as the Holy Spirit moved them to do so). The writer to the Hebrews essentially says the very same thing.

“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe,” (Hebrews 1:1-2)

Had God not moved people to write down the facts about Jesus as God’s Word (John 1:1), we would have no record of it. The same applies to the “holy men of old” who were moved to prophecy and write down what they prophesied. Without a written record, the truth is we would have no truth today. Only the generation of Jesus’ day would have known the actual benefits of His life, death, and resurrection.

Either God is the ultimate Author of God’s written Word or He is not. If so, then the obligation on our part is to treat it as such. I know of no one who actually “worships” the written Word. It is a marvelous and truthful tool that God has given us that points TO the Incarnate Word. Without it, we are left to wonder and wander in darkness. With it, we have the clear path to Life itself.

I’ve dealt with atheists who do not believe the Bible is anything special at all. They see the Bible as written by fallible people who only wrote down what they saw or lived through their own biases. To the atheist then, God plays no part in it because God does not exist.

The tragedy that we see unfolding before us with people like Don Francisco is found in another portion of Scripture. 2 Thessalonians 2:3 tells us “Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.” The “apostasy” referenced here by Paul is understood to mean a deliberate falling away from the truth. The truth, in this case, is to doubt God’s veracity and ability to preserve His own written Word.

People like Don Francisco, while fully believing that they have thrown off the chains of “fundamentalism” and embraced the freeing power of “evangelicalism,” are doing a tremendous disservice, not only to themselves, but to those who place value on their songs and testimony. Francisco is actually more like the atheist today who denies the power of God’s Word. When Jesus quoted it (Matthew 4, as just one example), Satan was defeated. How could Satan be defeated if what Jesus spoke was not absolute truth?

Ultimately, Don Francisco (and others who think as he does) denies the infallibility and inerrancy of God’s Word. He has admitted that. What is he left with? He is left with what he THINKS Jesus was like. He is now free to pick and choose the portions of the Bible that either make sense to him or don’t. Anything he disagrees with he can simply throw away as having been defiled by human beings over the last 2,000 years. Clearly, to Don Francisco, God is not powerful enough to keep His Word (both Incarnate and written) pure. This is the exact same result that applies to atheists!

All we can do is pray for Don Francisco and people like him who come to place so little value on God’s written Word. Ultimately, they are denying God’s power, which brings me to this final verse in this article.

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people,” (2 Timothy 3:1-5; emphasis added).

Francisco claims he is being “demonized,” as though he is the victim in this. In reality, he is victimizing God’s Word by making it something that it is not. If we take away God’s Word, we have nothing that leads us to Jesus. This is exactly what Satan wants yet of course, Francisco cannot bear that. He’d rather play the victim card as though people are simply attacking him for his current beliefs. People CARE and we are sending out warnings with prayer that God might open his eyes so that he will humble himself and turn back to God.

I’m sure Don Francisco feels no need to “return” to God. In fact, I’m quite sure that he believes he has actually and finally found God truthfully. The sad reality is that he is confusing emotional virtue for truth. He is going solely by the way he feels about something and that is what the world does. In fact, it is what undergirds the “great falling away” that we’ve already referenced.

Folks, we need to pray for Don Francisco and at the same time, we need to “have nothing to do with him” because truth fails him. He has exchanged the truth of God for a lie, one that is promulgated on emotional virtue. He feels free, but is anything but. He can state that people are taking him out of context, but I’ve kept his comments within their original context. It is clear that he now sees God’s written Word as something that it is not, merely a suggested guide. He does not see the problem he has created for himself; that in order to know Jesus, we must know Him through God’s Word. Remove the inerrancy and infallibility from God’s written Word and you also remove the accurate representation of Jesus as the Incarnate Word. One is left with emotional virtue.

Will you join me in praying for him?

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective