Timothy Jennings and God Does Destroy
I listened to six hour-long lectures by Dr. Jennings while taking copious notes. From these notes I wrote a brief paper for the administrative committee at Ouachita Hills College. This paper strongly recommended that we not assign our students to listen to Dr. Jennings’ lectures.
Several months later I had, in one week, two individuals call me and ask about Dr. Jennings’ teachings. After writing the second response (to the two individuals) I concluded that I should place my paper to the executive committee in the public domain. I posted it on my website.
About three weeks later I was surprised to receive a call from Dr. Jennings himself. He kindly informed me that I had misrepresented him in my paper and had not acted in harmony with Bible principles by placing that paper in the public domain without having first contacted him.
That phone call persuaded me that I had not in all respects well summarized his teachings. It did not, however, persuade me that Brother Jennings was safer than I had first indicated.
This paper will replace the original. I hope to improve on that paper by more accurately representing what Timothy Jennings really teaches, by giving him an opportunity to see the paper before it is in the public eye, and by clarifying statements that were ambiguous or easily misunderstood.
But first, let me address the reason that I do not believe I must confront false teachers before exposing them. A false teacher neither offends me nor sins against me. I do not pretend to know his character. He is not ashamed of his teachings (if indeed he places them in the public domain). I oppose his teachings, not his person. And for that reason Romans 16:17-18 rather than Matthew 18, applies to my situation.
Yet I will admit that it is generally a good thing to talk to someone about what they believe before telling someone else what they believe. Misunderstandings are common. In the case of Mr. Jennings I felt that I well understood his position before writing. And after talking with him, I feel that I was fundamentally correct regarding what he teaches.
Initial Summary
Dr. Jennings’ lectures are content rich and are profusely illustrated. And if I am correct, Dr. Jennings is in grave danger.
Like Dr. Kellogg of yesteryear, he has been used by God to uncover a great deal of truth in his professional studies. His teachings regarding the relation of the various faculties of the mind (will, appetites, passions, reason, conscience, emotions, imagination, etc.) are profound and incredibly consistent with EGW’s teaching on the same.
And like Dr. Kellogg of yesteryear, he has woven into his presentations a deadly net of falsehoods that destroy the most fundamental of Christian virtues – faith.[1] I do not mean that Dr. Jennings teaches any of the same errors taught by Dr. Kellogg. Rather, I mean that both doctors eventually became icons of a dangerous mixture of truth and error.
In short, Dr. Jennings believes that God takes no initiative in causing prolonged pain during the destruction of the wicked, and that to prolong or cause punitive suffering is torture and that such a view of God (that he would cause prolonged pain as part of punishment) destroys love and trust.
More than this view, which is explained thoroughly in two of the lectures given at the Forest Lake church in Florida, and is alluded to in two others, Dr. Jennings has espoused a theory of the atonement that mirrors in some fundamental ways the moral influence theory.[2]
He does not, for example, believe in substitutionary atonement. He makes light of the idea that sins must be “paid” for.
Jennings’ epistemology is troubling. He argues, when defending the views above, that we must reject any doctrine that requires us not to reason. But he explains this in such a way that if we believe that God is loving, and that God burns people for rebelling, such a dichotomy is not reasonable and the some point of it must be rejected.
Thus he, in his recorded lectures, inadvertently sets individual reason above inspiration. When a man’s reason can not grasp the harmony of two ideas (as Satan could not perceive any harmony between justice and mercy, a similar perplexity to the one facing Jennings), the man concludes that at least one of the ideas must be flawed. This has always been the essence of unbelief.
Jennings also repudiates ideas associated with the investigative judgment. He thinks not that sins are blotted from a record in heaven during the judgment. He mocks the idea that the our personal sins will be forever forgotten.
These views, woven into such a collection of profound insights into human nature, make for an extremely cogent parallel to the book Living Temple with its incredible insights into physiology interwoven around a philosophy of life-is-God.
And like the book Living Temple, which was critically evaluated by Jones, Waggoner, and several other notable messengers of God, and was pronounced harmless by them all, the lectures of Dr. Jennings seem to have elicited no protest from the audience. (This I gather from the 30 minute question and answer period at the conclusion of the final lecture.)
I must conclude that it would be irresponsible to encourage anyone to listen to his lectures.
The Doctrine of Justice
I have written elsewhere regarding the doctrine of justice. See, for example, my article on the draft.
There are several Bible facts about justice that relate to this discussion.
First, the angels (who are in the know) believe God’s judgments are perfectly fair. These heavenly beings witness pain and suffering caused by the seven last plagues. These plagues are punitive rather than corrective. (That is, they occur after the close of human probation.) And the suffering is fair, it is just. God is “holy” who judges the wicked. That is obvious, “manifest”, according to the righteous ones in Revelation 15.
And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory. . . . and [some] gnawed their tongues for pain, And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds. Revelation 16:4-11
Second, when brethren study the Bible and despite their best efforts to harmonize yet can not see eye-to-eye, God has ordained the gifts of the Spirit to serve as a protection. They keep us from being blown around by winds of doctrine. And on the question of God’s executive judgment, the prophetic gift speaks plainly.
The power that inflicted retributive justice upon man’s substitute and surety, was the power that sustained and upheld the suffering One under the tremendous weight of wrath that would have fallen upon a sinful world. Christ was suffering the death that was pronounced upon the transgressors of God’s law. It is a fearful thing for the unrepenting sinner to fall into the hands of the living God. This is proved by the history of the destruction of the old world by a flood, by the record of the fire which fell from heaven and destroyed the inhabitants of Sodom. But never was this proved to so great an extent as in the agony of Christ, . . . when He bore the wrath of God for a sinful world. . . .
Man has not been made a sin-bearer, and he will never know the horror of the curse of sin which the Saviour bore. No sorrow can bear any comparison with the sorrow of Him upon whom the wrath of God fell with overwhelming force. Human nature can endure but a limited amount of test and trial. The finite can only endure the finite measure, and human nature succumbs; but the nature of Christ had a greater capacity for suffering; for the human existed in the divine nature, and created a capacity for suffering to endure that which resulted from the sins of a lost world. The agony which Christ endured, broadens, deepens, and gives a more extended conception of the character of sin, and the character of the retribution which God will bring upon those who continue in sin. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. – That I May Know Him, 64.2-4
Third, the idea that men receive a reward that is “according to their works” is a theme of scripture. The reward of the wicked includes “tribulation” and “wrath” and punishment more sore than dying without mercy under the law of Moses.
- 2 Cor 5:10 . . . that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
- 1 Peter 1:17 . . . without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work.
- 2 Cor 11:15 . . . whose end shall be according to their works.
- Rev 20:12 . . . the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
- Rev 20:13 . . . they were judged every man according to their works.
- Rev 2:23 . . . I will give unto every one of you according to your works.
- 2 Chron 6:30 . . . and render unto every man according unto all his ways.
- Jer 17:10 . . . I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
- Ps 62:12 . . . for thou renderest to every man according to his work.
- Isa 3:10-11 Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.
- Matt 16:27 . . . and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
Fourth, Christ’s illustrations of the executive judgment harmonize well with the idea of a finite punishment that is painful and precisely just. And when Ezra prayed about God’s judgments on Israel (that included great suffering and horrible deaths inflicted by Babylon), he acknowledged that they had been punished “less” than they deserved.
Fifth, the danger of experiencing the wrath of God is part of the third angel’s message.
In short the doctrine of justice is present truth and it is no surprise that the devil would oppose it.
Dethroning Reason
Now when I talked to Dr. Jennings on the phone (April 17, 2009) he referred me to a statement where Ellen White talks about the idea of God torturing sinners as being a falsehood that overthrows reason.
From listening to his lectures it seems to me that Dr. Jennings believes that the purposeful painful punishment of sinners is irrational if one believes in a loving God. Now to me it seems perfectly rational that a loving God would nevertheless be willing to be fair even if being so was painful to himself. To inflict pain on the man that ordered torture for a humble servant of Jesus seems only just. In fact, it is when the persecutors are already dead that the blood of the martyrs calls out for God to avenge “our blood” in Revelation 6. So painful punishment seems rational to me and irrational to Jennings.
But whether it seems rational to Tim Jennings or myself is not a very important question. God is wiser than man. We must assume that his ideas are higher than ours even when we can not attain to them. Nevertheless, reason is one of the ruling powers in the Christian mind. It, rather than the appetites, is to guide the will. And when reason is “dethroned”, it is not because a man chooses to believe God’s Word. Rather, it is because he has become either a lunatic or a slave of his passions.
The following is the statement to which Tim was referring. I hope you can see that it does in no way excuse a man for exalting his reason over the plain statements of scripture. See the last sentence where teachers are bidden to check their sources of authority.
Ellen White does attack as contrary to our sense of justice the doctrine of eternal torment, or the doctrine that God enjoys punishing the wicked. But the very logic of the statements implies that a finite punishment would be a just yet unpleasant reality. See the second portion of the appendix.
The irony is that Satan, by teaching eternal torment, hoped to lead men to some of the very same conclusions that Tim Jennings has espoused. Men would conclude that God’s punishments must not be expected to be “literally” fulfilled.
Though Jennings has not gone as far down the road as the universalists (Ellen White mentions them in the context of the statement above), yet he has taken one key step in the same direction. The “threatenings,” some of them, have been explained as non-literal prophesies.
Still it is true that lost men, even while being consumed, will be bemoaning their sins. The thoughts of one such man are recorded by Solomon.
While this essay is far from a thorough treatment of justice, and even further from a rounded treatment of atonement (see my article, “Atonement Cleansing”), yet it is sufficient I think to demonstrate why Jennings should not be followed as he travels down the road of being wise “above that which is written.”
God’s ways are fair.
Appendix Part I – A Critique of the Six Lectures Given at Forest Lake Academy
Lecture One
In his first lecture Dr. Jennings sets the stage for what he will develop more thoroughly in lectures four and six. He begins to explain that “lies believed” destroy love and trust. Then he begins to hint that the audience may even believe lies. Then, to paraphrase (all statements in quotes are quotes from my notes, paraphrases only of Dr. Jennings) him from my notes,
“The most destructive lies we believe are lies about God himself. Some of you will be shocked by the evidence. I want you to look at the information and weigh it.”
This idea is important to him. He emphasizes repeatedly that:
“Trust broken makes fear and selfishness…as a natural consequence. This idea is known as survival of the fittest – the opposite of God’s principle of love.”
What comes clear later is that if one believes in the standard Adventist position on the executive judgment and the substitutionary atonement, one will not trust God, but will become selfish and self protecting from such a cruel Being.
The first lecture ends with six suggestions. Suggestion number two introduces an idea that will be repeated throughout the series,
“If you have seen me [Jesus], you have seen the Father.”
This Jennings develops into a hermeneutic such that if Jesus didn’t punish then the Father won’t, if Jesus could forgive men before dying, then the Father could forgive men without Jesus dying. But that comes in lectures 4 and 6, and the person listening doesn’t realize what the repetition of the “principle” is setting him up to experience.
Lecture Two
This is the lecture on the Law of Liberty. It is fascinating. The short of it is that if a husband, for example, threatens to beat his wife if she will not obey, the natural consequence of this will be that
“love is damaged, and eventually destroyed. A desire to rebel is instilled.”
“If the woman stays, she loses her individuality, she becomes a shadow person.”
The principle seems true and obvious as it relates to marriage. But Dr. Jennings has wider applications in mind, and he begins to make them in this lecture. If you believe that God threatens disobedience with punishment, “love is damaged” and see above for the rest. This places the cause for rebellion squarely at the feet of whoever inspired a prophet to threaten. Dr. Jennings indicates that he is very aware of the implications (though there is no evidence he is thinking of the implication just mentioned).
On a light note in a serious article, he says that the “stimulus package of Bush is a example of the law of love.” I don’t think this represents his best judgment.
In this lecture Jennings introduces one of what he calls “lies”, namely that:
“One of the lies is that the law of God brings death.”
He is saying that the law does not condemn men in such a way as to require their death.
He says:
“Does God have to use his power to kill? To inflict penalties?”
The implied answer is “no.”
There is an illustration that Jennings uses four or five times in his lecture series. Imagine, he says, a happily married couple. Someone approaches the wife with digitally altered photographs that falsely prove that her faithful husband has been having an affair. How will she react. Each time he uses the illustration he concludes:
“Lies believed lead to fear and selfishness.”
The problem with this illustration and conclusion is that it is one-sided. If the only kind of lie that could be told about God is that He is cruel, Jennings’ illustration would be more sensible. But there is an opposite type of lie, that God accepts you as you are. What does this lie lead to? Not “fear and selfishness” but self-confidence and selfishness. There are many lies and they produce a plethora of evil effects.
Lecture Three
In this lecture, on the family, Jennings begins to really advertise for his future lectures on the issues. He begins by making the case that lies about God are commonly believed and are the reason that people have problems with their relation to God. He urges people to come to the fourth lecture.
Like much in the first two lectures, this lecture is full of useful material on human-human interaction. But he makes one questionable point by suggesting a different translation of the proverb. I have not checked into this, but my gut reaction is that this is the wrong solution to the problem of well-raised lost children:
“Raise a child according to his way and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
Ironically, and interestingly, Dr. Jennings makes a good point about the damage done by threatening consequences to children and then not following through. He says the children will learn not to trust their parent. If only he had thought the implications of this through in relation to his theology regarding the judgment….
Lecture Four
“Our weapons are not spiritual, the battlefield is the mind, a war over ideas about what God is like. What happened in [a patient’s] mind when the preacher said what he did? She was hardened.”
This is the introduction to the primary lecture on what God is like.
The lecture boils down to “seven basic strategies” Satan uses, and defenses that “demolish Satan’s strongholds in our minds.”
1. “Lies about God.”
“That he is cruel, etc.”
Lies harden us, and we create schemes to be protected from God.
“God will examine our healthy brother Jesus in our place.”
This second of what Jennings calls “lies” about God examining Jesus, is very subtle. It is the first attack on the idea of substitutionary atonement in the lectures. It mocks, by illustration, the idea of the Father accepting the righteousness of Jesus in place of our life in the judgment.
And how do we escape the lies?
“Defense: Examine the facts about the Father through the lens of Jesus. Don’t read the Old Testament to see Jesus, but study Jesus to understand the Old Testament.”
He sets up this unreal dichotomy as a standard. Such a standard would allow one to reinterpret obvious OT examples of executive execution.
Satan’s next strategy:
“2. Antithetical beliefs. These turn off our brains.” Examples
“God is love.”
“Burn you in hell forever.”
“love and hell” are antithetical
“god is love” and “burn in hell” these “CANNOT BE TRUE AT THE SAME TIME”
Jennings must sense that at this point some in the audience are feeling very uncomfortable. The last statement seemed to indicate that even a finite hell where God burns men can not be true if “God is love.”
“Someone says ‘I take God at faith, I just believe him.’ “you just turned off your brain.”
This is a direct exalting of human reason over inspiration. But he comes back and challenges:
“You think you have some verses, some inspired materials, that indicate that God will burn people? Bring them this afternoon, I would love to tell you what I believe about hell.”
He says that the idea that “God will inflict penalties” is antithetical to “God is love.”
He says “God does not use his power to inflict external penalties. All God has to do is let go and if he lets go, we will die.”
What is the defense against such so-called “lies” (that originate in Bible verses…)?
“Examine your beliefs in light of truth. Reject anything that requires you not to think.” And by this he seems to mean, anything that challenges your understanding, such as the harmony of justice and mercy.
Satan’s third strategy – to remove the meaning behind symbols.
He talks about how we sing about being cleansed “by the blood” as an example of an empty metaphor. He explains that “blood is life” and “the blood of Jesus is the life of Jesus.” “We are cleansed by the life of Jesus.”
But we are not cleansed, in the metaphor, by the blood in the lamb. We are cleansed by the blood spilled from the lamb. We are cleaned by the death, the shedding of the life, of Jesus. And this is an important point.
The fourth through seventh strategies are mostly well explained and harmless. But on the fifth… “Surrendering judgment to others.”
Here methinks that Dr. Jennings shows that he has read Graham Maxwell. He makes a point that we can not surrender our beliefs to the “28 beliefs” of the church and then launches into the “servants or friends” theme of Maxwell. But this is speculative on my part and he doesn’t make any applications here.
Lecture Five
Lecture 5 was on Depression. I didn’t take notes and was doing two things at once while listening to it.
Lecture Six
“Our Goal is to know God better, to develop trust and love and faith in God.”
Jennings begins with a list of myths about forgiveness.
One of these myths identified by Jennings is that “Forgiveness comes after the offender says ‘I’m sorry'”
His good point, that we should forgive before persons apologize, is extrapolated into a statement about forgiveness of sins: God has already forgiven us, even before we ask.
But while it is true that God loves us, gave all to save us, is not angry with us, yet the Bible places forgiveness as conditioned on confession and repentance.
“Myth three: Forgiveness requires payment.”
And this is the attack on substitutionary atonement.
“Anybody heard that forgiveness requires payment for our sins?”
“How many believe that Jesus died to pay our debt? That God forgives our debts as we forgive our debtors? If you collect the debt, can you forgive it? If you forgive it, can you collect it?”
Thus he confuses the issue of relationship and justice. I forgive my debtors as a response to God forgiving me. But I am not their Lawgiver. They sinned against God and hurt me. I forgive the hurt. The judgment deals with the sin. So God says “vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay.”
He observes that in 1 Cor 13, “Love keeps no record of wrong” and uses this to belittle the idea of a record being kept of our sins in heaven.
He says that our view of atonement is a “split in the godhead” and thus false.
“Did Jesus need appeasement? Where did this distortion come from?”
Thus he seeks to equate what really expresses the idea of justice with what he calls appeasement. And that is a great fault.
He addresses this apparent objection to his views: “Without shedding of blood is no remission” He 9:22.
And his answer is a modern tweaking of the moral influence theory. Jesus died to show us love and thus change us. It is one truth pitted against another in such a way as to make the second look like a lie.
” ‘[You say] the Father applies Christ’s record to our record and declares us innocent when we accept him.’ In what universe will it ever be true that Adam never sinned? If we say God declares us innocent, we make God out to be a liar.”
“The records will last through all eternity.”
You will find an attack on the doctrine of the blotting out of sins; you will find an attack on the use of records in the judgment of consecrated persons; You will find that sins are blotted “not from a book” but from our character. You will find that the punishment for sin is the damage the sinner experiences in sinning.
You will find him answer an objection or two about God’s OT threatenings by saying that God was desperate and risked being misunderstood by rebels by communicating in a way they might listen – in other words, (my extrapolation, not his:) God didn’t mean what He said.
You will find in the Q and A, after the lecture, that a lady asked him more about “hell.”
His summary is that God is a fire that burns sin, not material things, so the people won’t be burned, but will die naturally from the brightness of God and the sin in them will be naturally consumed by the fire of God’s presence, so God will not actually do anything to destroy them.
And this flies entirely in the face of both scripture and the Spirit of Prophecy.
You will find the strangest argument from the Greek word for sulfur in the third angel’s message.