One Year Retrospective

Tom: Thanks, Gary, and welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which our hope is to encourage Christians and anyone else who’s seeking after God’s truth to look to His Word for all things that pertain to life and godliness. To put it another way, the B-I-B-L-E, that’s the book for me, and hopefully thee, and we, and all the other stuff, right, Dave?

Dave: Very good.

Tom: Okay! Dave, this program marks 52 weeks for Search the Scriptures Daily. You know, as the line goes, a year ago I couldn’t even spell “radio broadcaster,” but now I are one! (laughing). Gary told me that one. Well, anyway, we’re still new at this, but it’s been a challenge, but the Lord has been gracious and it’s been a fun learning experience.

So I thought that in honor of reaching this milestone, and since there are a host of radio stations new to broadcasting this program, that we’d take this time to give our new listeners some background information about ourselves and the ministry of The Berean Call. Some may know us from a book I had the privilege of working on with you, Dave, called The Seduction of Christianity, and it, I think, in a sense, reflects what we’re doing today ministry-wise. It was controversial 15 years ago when it came off the press, and it continues both to bless and to upset people today.

Now, Dave, could you tell us what the book is about and how it came about?

Dave: Boy, that’s 15 years ago, Tom, and you throw these questions at me without any warning here.

Tom: So we’re still practicing, Dave.

Dave: Right. That’s one of the things that concerns me about doctors. (chuckling) They’re still “practicing”! But I guess that’s true of everyone. We want to be practicing Christians, too, don’t we?

Well, Tom, that’s going back a long time in our memories, but I had written some books about cults, about the New Age, and to my dismay, I began to see some of the same things in the church.

Tom: Right. Well, Dave, let me interject here, because it wasn’t just books, but there were videos out there, The Cult Explosion was one, and these were being presented by churches around the country, and they would write to us and say, “We understand this about this cult, and that about that cult, and so on, but we’re actually getting that teaching in our church.” And we got lots of letters like that.

Dave:  Mm-hmm. Yes, I remember at a conference in San Diego, in fact, cult experts from all over the world gathered to talk about cults and the occult, and I was one of the plenary speakers, as they say, addressing the whole group, and I remember telling them, “We come here to talk about the Mormons and the Moonies, the Jehovah’s Witnesses…

Tom: Christian Science…

Dave: …the Hindus, or Buddhists, or whatever—the New Agers—and we’ve got much of that same thing in many so-called evangelical churches. And I just am tired of wasting my time! I’m not coming back to these conferences unless we are willing to address these problems as they manifest themselves inside the church.”

It didn’t go over very well at that conference.

Tom:  Well, you know, it’s safer to look over the fence, to look at somebody else’s dirty laundry, but when it comes into your own church or into the church, per se, it’s a little tougher to deal with.

Dave:  I was acquainted with a number of ministries that I had known for years—cult-warning ministries, supposedly. And I tried for years to get them to talk about some of these things: well, the Power of Positive Thinking, hypnosis, psychology, self-esteem, which is not biblical—I mean so many unbiblical ideas…

Tom:  Like visualization…

Dave: Right…were coming into the church. I could not get them to do that! That’s one of the blessings the Lord has given us in this ministry. One of the reasons of why I think a lot of these ministries were not willing to address these issues was because they already had an established mailing list, an established following—readers, and so forth—and had they started to talk about some of these things, they would have lost a large amount of them—lost contributions, and so forth. We started out that way, talking about these things from the very beginning, so supposedly, the people who read our books, listen to the radio, or read our newsletter…

Tom: Or see the videos that we do.

Dave: Yes, they all…I mean, they’re pretty much in agreement, although we do have people from time to time who send us angry letters and denounce us and want to get off the mailing list, and so forth. We do not want to…and we certainly try to avoid offending people. On the other hand, we have to speak the truth. Now it’s the truth as we understand it from our study of the Word of God. We’re not trying to impose it on anyone, and that’s why our ministry is called The Berean Call: search the Scriptures daily like the Bereans did, and that’s why this radio program is called The Berean Call. We don’t want to be anybody’s guru.  We don’t have an agenda. We’re not trying to push some particular theological school on anyone. We are trying to go by the Bible, and we are urging everyone to do that because we’ve gone over it in detail on these programs: If the Bible is not our authority, we have nothing. If the Bible is not God’s Word, if God did not speak through men of God, the Holy Spirit moved them, and He spoke through them, and if this is not true—all true, from Genesis to Revelation—every bit of it, then we are at sea without a compass. It’s your opinion against my opinion. Forget it! I’m not interested in men’s opinions about God. I want to know what God has to say, and I’m not interested…[I mean] what God has to say about Himself, and I’m not interested in men’s opinions about man, you know, what Freud said, or Carl Jung said, or whoever. I’m interested in what God has to say about us, and He has said plenty! And we need to study it, and if this is really God’s Word, we need to treat it like it is and reverence it and obey it.

Tom: Right. Now, The Seduction of Christianity was a response—our response—to so much feedback with regard to other books that you’ve done and other video projects—then they were “film projects.” Video wasn’t really up and running quite. But the controversial aspect of the book was that we talked about the doctrines—cultic doctrines—in some cases, techniques, methodologies, and so on. Yet we tied them to maybe somebody of note within the Christian church who was preaching it and promoting it. So we named names. Now, people were offended by that.

Dave: That has always puzzled me, Tom. If I say something publicly, why would I be offended if someone quotes publicly what I have already said publicly? If I really believe what I said, and I must have, and had some convictions about it, or I would not have said it, then wouldn’t I be happy that other people are quoting it now and giving broader distribution? But when someone says…well, let’s take an example…

Tom: Yeah, we need an example…

Dave: Yeah, because that was one of the things we did: we named names, and people said, “Well, wait a minute! Can’t you just talk about this?” We got lots of letters from people when we would give a quote: “Well, I never heard him say that.” If you don’t tie it to someone—if we just talk in generalities: “Oh, somebody out there in Timbuktu…some little church back in the woods…is saying this or that….” No, it becomes important, when this is a Christian leader. We are not denouncing anybody. We are not judging anyone’s motives…

Tom: Or hearts…

Dave: No, we are simply saying let’s measure what they say against the Word of God, and when someone, for example, many Christian psychologists teach self-esteem—that this is the big thing that we need—everybody needs self-esteem. And I go to the Bible, and it says, “In lowliness of mind” (Philippians:2:3Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.
See All...), “In lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.” And I go to Romans, chapter 12, which warns us not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to, and I cannot find a verse in the Bible that warns us not to think too lowly of ourselves, then I know that something isn’t right, and furthermore, when I study it a little bit, I find that these ideas did not come from the Bible—they did not come from a careful exegesis of Scripture. They came from the secular world. For example, Bruce Narramore says, and I’m just quoting him, it’s in writing: “It was humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers who first made us aware of the need of self-love and self-esteem.

Now he’s saying nobody in 1,900 years of studying the Bible on their knees got that idea out of the Bible! It came from godless—in fact, atheistic, anti-Christian men, which all of these humanistic psychologists are. And they’re the ones that gave us a new idea—gave the church a new idea. And then Christians said—or the psychologists, Christian psychologists, said, “Wow. Let’s go back to the Bible and see if we can’t maybe—uh—reexamine some verses in the Bible in light of this new idea from these humanistic atheistic psychologists. And what do you know! We discovered that that’s what the Bible was always talking about but men of God down through the ages—Spurgeon, or Wesley, Moody, go back to Paul, and so forth—nobody ever realized that! But now, we’ve got a new idea from psychology.”

So that came into the church. It concerned us a great deal. But…

Tom: Let me…not just the psychologists…we have Nietzsche, Frederick Nietzsche. I mean these things come right out of godless, anti-Christians historically.

Dave: Of course. This is where the idea of self-love came from.

Tom: Now it’s developed into…and it became so popular that it became a doctrine of the church! A solution to man’s problems.

Dave: See, Tom, even as we talk about this, hearing aids are going off, or people are turning off the radios, because…and that’s what I don’t understand. After we wrote that book, people like John Ankerberg—I could name a lot of talk show hosts, radio and television, who tried to get every—I mean they went to every Christian psychologist, the leaders in the country. Would they come on their program and discuss this with Dave Hunt? Not one of them would do it! The only one that we named in Seduction of Christianity who came on a program with me was José Silva! He came on the John Ankerberg Show. Now he’s an occultist. But at least he…

Tom: Silva Mind Control…

Dave: Right. Now called Silva Method. But at least he was willing to come out in the open and discuss it. But none of these men who were Christians—I think it would be greatly beneficial to the church if we could have open discussion about some of these issues. Let’s sit down, publically discuss it from the Bible. And the very fact that no one is willing to do this really troubles me. Furthermore, there are so many people who—well, let me give you an example. I was speaking at a very large church in Dallas—a major church in Dallas—and someone in the Question and Answer time asked me about Robert Schuller. Well, I’m…I quoted Robert Schuller—that was all I did. I said, “You know, Robert Schuller went to Lee’s Summit, MO, the headquarters of Unity School of Christianity, which is a cult as bad as you can get. They’re anti-Christian…

Tom:This is Religious Science; Mind Science.

Dave: Right. They deny everything in the Bible. They’re into yoga and UFOs, and all the occult techniques. They deny that man is a sinner, that Christ died for our sins. I mean, on and on it goes! You couldn’t get any worse than this, although they do it under the name of The Unity School of Christianity!

Now, Robert Schuller, like his mentor, Norman Vincent Peale, went there to speak to pastors—pastors in training—not to correct them but to commend them and to share his church growth principles! And I simply quoted…I found a tape. I went there. I got the tape. Now if you went there today, they would deny that Robert Schuller was ever there. You wouldn’t be allowed to have the tape. They probably destroyed it. But we have copies of it. And Robert Schuller was asked, in the Question and Answer time, “Well what do you think of…what is the function of a minister in the New Age movement of which we’re all a part?” they said.

He didn’t skip a beat. He didn’t say, “Wait a minute. We’re not part of this New Age movement.” He simply said, “Well, what we have to do is to positivize Christianity.” Then he said, “Now that may be…that’s easy for you, being Unity ministers and ministers in training. You’re already positive. But you…I deal…understand that I deal with people that you would even call Fundamentalists, and they use terms like ‘sin,’ and ‘guilt,’ ‘repentance,’ and ‘remission,’ and so forth, and we have to positivize—what we have to do is positivize these terms; positivize religion in this day.”

Now, I merely quoted that. And a number of people came up to me after the discussion, after the meeting, and wanted to ask this or that, and finally one older gentleman, who had been standing there—he was the last one—he said, “I liked everything you said tonight, except what you said about Robert Schuller.” Well, I said, “What did I say about Robert Schuller? I only quoted him! And you don’t like the quote. Maybe you don’t like what he said any better than I do!”

But I only use that as an illustration to show that people who somehow—don’t…please, don’t anyone put me on a pedestal. Don’t put Tom on a pedestal. But there are many Christian leaders who have been put on a pedestal by their followers—people who look up to them, and they will not hear—these followers don’t want to hear the truth. What I think we need to do—please correct me. Please. Anybody out there, you hear me say something that isn’t biblical, please correct me! I won’t consider it an attack. You know, I’ve been accused of attacking people. It’s not an attack. It’s a kindness! If I have been leading people astray, if I’ve been saying things in writing, or in publically, a speech, you know, radio or television, that are not biblical, please correct me! And I would be happy to be corrected! Why should I want to go on teaching error? And why would I not want this to be done publically? If I taught it publically, it should be corrected publically, and yet people say, “Oh no, you should go to these people privately.

Well, I’ve done that.

Tom:  Yeah, we went to many of the names that were mentioned in The Seduction of Christianity.

Dave: As many as we could. Most of them didn’t want to meet. But the ones that we could—and we found a strange anomaly. Generally when you sat down and discussed these things—well, not always, but you could come to some kind—at least they admitted that there was some truth in what you were saying. But they wouldn’t change it publically. The books remained the same. They continued to teach these things publically. So it became a bit discouraging.

And anyway, Tom, that was sort of what got us started on Seduction of Christianity. A concern for the truth of the Word of God that was being bent, or perverted, or denied—even within the evangelical church! And people were being led astray.

Now, if what we said was not true, then please correct us. But nobody has done so.

Tom:Dave, you know, we get a couple hundred letters a week, so there are people who do take issue with us on things, but whether it be eschatology, or…and we have made corrections in some things that we maybe haven’t communicated well, and so on. But why wouldn’t someone want…if they love the Lord, they love His truth, it just seems to us so reasonable that they would want to be corrected. We do, because if you’re going to please the Lord, you want to do things His way. And if somebody out there can point to the Scriptures and say, “Look, this is where you have erred.” Oh! That would be a blessing!

Dave: Yes, it would. And Tom, you mentioned eschatology. We don’t—we have not tried to correct anybody on their eschatology in any books, because eschatology is not a matter of salvation.

Tom: It’s a study of the last things.

Dave: Right. It’s not a matter of salvation. Now, I’ve been even accused of that. In fact, some people, in response to Seduction of Christianity and other early books, have said, “Well…” (and these would be some of the cult watchers), said, “Why don’t you just leave eschatology out of it?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m not pushing eschatology on anyone, but the Bible—Jesus himself—said the great sign of the nearness of his return would be spiritual deception—that false prophets would arise, would show…even there would be a signs and wonders movement of those who profess to be Christians and would show signs and wonders so convincing that if possible the elect would be deceived.” So I said, “I’m not pushing my eschatology on anyone, but when you talk about apostasy, which Paul said is a major sign of the last days, I have to talk about the last days in the context of the apostasy.”

Tom: Dave, there were some other issues that we mentioned in the book. Because as you follow Christianity, there are certainly ideas that come up, in a sense, fads, that are being promoted, movements that develop, and some of these are critical because they deal with faith. For example, we address the whole Word-Faith movement in the book. Here we’ve taken faith, taken a belief—not a belief but a term—that’s biblical and important. How else can we have a relationship with Christ? How else could we be saved except by faith? And they have just taken that word and removed it from any biblical understanding or meaning that it has.

Dave: Yeah, let me explain that very quickly. They’ve turned faith into a force that you aim at God to get what you want. For example, they would take Hebrews—well, probably a year ago, or many months ago, when we mentioned this, so we can do it again—they would take Hebrews:11:3Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
See All..., where it says, “By faith we understand the worlds were framed by the word of God.” They’ve turned that around, and they say, “No, that’s not what it says. It says ‘We understand it was by faith that God framed the worlds.’”

Oh, so now faith becomes a force that God used in framing the worlds. And since we’re little gods also, and they declare this vehemently, we can speak this word of faith! We can create reality like God does. Or they would go to Mark:11:22And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God.
See All..., where Jesus said, “Have faith in God.” Of course that’s where our faith is, and they turn it around and say, “Oh, no, it means ‘have the God-kind of faith.” So now, God has faith! In whom does God have faith? We’re supposed to have faith….Oh no, no no! Faith is a power, and we’re supposed to have the kind of faith that God has. This is not biblical, and it’s a great concern, because, as you said, we live by faith, we walk by faith, we’re saved by faith. It’s by faith alone that we can please God. Now, this is very important. And we’re to very earnestly contend for the faith, so if Satan can pervert faith, he’s done a great work.

Tom:Dave, one of the most stunning letters that I think we’ve ever received from—in response to Seduction of Christianity—we had a letter from a prisoner who was on Death Row. This man got saved on Death Row! And he had a ministry of praying and interceding—I mean, the guy had joy. But he wrote to us that some months after he had been saved, a book came along from the Word-Faith—it was a Word-Faith book—and that book caused him to begin now to pray and believe that God was going to get him off Death Row, get him out of prison. He said he went into bondage—absolute bondage. And then, by the grace of God, Seduction of Christianity came through on that same book cart, and he read it. And he wrote to us, and he said, “Your book delivered me from Death Row,” because now he had…I don’t know whatever happened to it, but I know, in his words, he had a fruitful…and he was restored to the faith. So it was wonderful.

Dave: Amen. And, Tom, that’s exactly what we would want for everyone who reads our books, reads the newsletter, or listens to the radio program.

Tom: And as we started out, we want to be nothing more than a signpost, pointing people not to Dave Hunt, not to T. A. McMahon, but to God’s Word. That’s where there’s power and deliverance. “I’m not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power unto…”

Dave: “…power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.” Amen