Study – Grow – Know

Don Francisco’s Burgeoning Universalism, Part 1

July 8, 2015 at 7:53 AM 5 comments

Don Francisco seems to be moving toward Universalism as he denies the substitutionary atonement.

What is posted below is from one of the individual’s social network page. I reprint it here in its entirety without edits because it allows readers to read it for themselves and determine if there is any truth in it at all. It appears to be Don Francisco’s reaction to an article posted about him and his change of position to something that really smacks of Universalism.

Boy, posting that link the other day has shown me that after all these years I’m still very naive: I really didn’t expect to be demonized. It made me remember how many Protestants were killed by other Protestants during the Reformation. Many of you have some excellent scriptural fortifications! May life never hand you a question you don’t have chapter and verse for.

I’ll let the cat out of the bag. I agree with what’s said in the linked article. Most of you think it’s against God and unbiblical because it disagrees with your own interpretation and/or what you’ve been taught. I used to think just like you do.

To put it bluntly, believing in penal substitution (that Jesus endured the Father’s wrath for us) is the result of ignorance and blindness. Ignorance, because you don’t understand what the High Priest actually did on the Day of Atonement, and blindness, because of our human incapacity to see anything other than an angry god that needs to be placated. That article rightly calls the idea ‘pagan’ because it is– we’ve made the Father into Molech and twisted the Bible to justify it.

The Temple was a metaphor for Creation– God, beyond time, matter, and space was in the Holy of Holies at the center, with the created world outside the Veil of matter and flesh. When the high priest went in and sprinkled lamb’s blood on the Mercy Seat, it typified the cleansing of all creation with God’s own blood. Then the high priest came out through the Veil wearing a brilliant white robe and phylacteries with the Name That Could Not Be Spoken written on them– typifying God Himself emerging into time and space– and cleansing everything with the blood. Then the priest put on another robe, made of the same material as the Veil, showing God as one of us.

The whole picture is of God coming to us to set creation free– actually the opposite of anger-appeasement. The anger and violence are ours, part of every civilization and religion mankind has ever devised. One of the reasons Jesus submitted to it was to show its powerlessness by rising from the dead, that we need never fear it again. That’s my God.

This isn’t new. It’s the original Gospel. It’s taken 2,000 years for us to get things this sick and twisted. (Emphasis added)

As you can see, I have bolded a portion of what he says because that is the linchpin upon which his theology sits. He believes that people who believe in “penal substitution” (substitutionary atonement) – that Jesus (as the God/Man experienced God the Father’s wrath on OUR behalf so that we would not HAVE to) – is a position born of ignorance and blindness! Imagine that?

The belief that Jesus died as a substitutionary atonement for sinners is central to the Gospel of Jesus! Certainly, the New Testament is replete with this message. Without the “penal substitution,” we have a Person who died for no real reason, except as Francisco implies, it was only to “cleanse” God’s Creation so that God could become one of us.

However, in Romans 3, we learn from Paul that all people are sinners. It doesn’t matter whether they are Jew or Gentile. All people have fallen short of God’s grace. In fact, in Romans 5, Paul clearly and logically lays it out that in Adam all have died since the entire human race stems from Adam’s loins. Since he was a sinner and fell, dying spiritually immediately and also began to die physically right away (though it took several hundred years for Adam to physically die; that’s how perfect his physical form was prior to sinning), children who were born to Adam through Eve (who had also sinned and died spiritually and began to die physically), also had what is called the sin nature. This nature is in rebellion to God and cannot in any way please God. The sin nature works within us to keep us in rebellion to God and if not for God (in Jesus) taking on human form and becoming fully Man (while retaining His full deity), the chance for humanity’s salvation would have been nil.

Notice that Don here approves of an article that teaches Universalism.

Even though God proved how gracious He was by not holding specific sins against people prior to giving the Law (through Moses), sin still reigned from Adam onward. The fact that all human beings have a sin nature is proof that all human beings are in need of salvation. In order to make salvation available to people, a debt – the sin debt – needed to be paid.

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:21 the following and very sobering words. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Interesting. Essentially, it means that in order for God to even offer salvation to humanity, something (or Someone) had to pay a price in order to satiate the righteous decree of God Himself that the punishment must be meted out. Basically, Paul tells us that Jesus – who was without sin – literally became sin or put another way, was seen as sin by God the Father, who poured out His wrath on Jesus so that He would not have to pour it out on us. So God – who essentially tells us that payment needed to be made for sin, opted to pay that penalty Himself in the form of Jesus (God, the Son).

Today, we see more and more people denying the “substitutionary death” of Jesus. Notice please in the above quote, Francisco demeans the idea of this substitutionary death and does so by using allegory to get there. He applies meaning to the actions of Jesus that actually deny the truth of Scripture, leaving us to conclude that the Bible’s inerrancy and truthfulness is questionable. This is clear from Francisco’s method of biblical interpretation alone as can be clearly seen in the above quote. In that regard, he appears little different from people like Brian McClaren, Rob Bell and others who preach a gospel that little resembles the Gospel of Scripture.

While the apostle Paul tells us one thing, Francisco tells us something else by literally denying the Bible! People like this have little difficulty in setting aside God’s written Word in favor of simply focusing on Christ as the Word. While Jesus IS the Word (John 1:1), it is clear that without the written testimony, we would have nothing that would teach us about God’s unfolding plan of salvation that culminates on Calvary’s cross with the death (and eventual resurrection) of Jesus.

The only way you can arrive to the same conclusion that Francisco arrives at is by denying huge sections of Scripture. As we’ll see in Part 2 of this article series, Francisco actually denies the inerrancy and infallibility of God’s (written) Word, attempting to note a difference between Jesus as the physical Word and the Scriptures as God’s Word.

The lamb and other animals that were sacrificed in the Old Testament all pointed to Jesus. Jesus’ once-for-all atonement was something that allowed Him to say “it is finished” and when He ascended back to the Father, was able to SIT DOWN at the right hand of God. This is something that no priest in the Old Testament could ever do and it is because those animal sacrifices were not sufficient enough.

The problem is that humanity sinned, but God wanted to open the door to get back into fellowship with us. The only way was by paying the debt that sin created. Interestingly enough, it was God Himself (Jesus, God the Son) who became the volunteer for this venture to pay the debt that no human being could ever pay.

The type of “theology” espoused by the person above is fully and wholly satanic. It denies the truth of Scripture, replacing it with feel good pabulum. It is essentially the same lie that Satan used with our first parents to get them to sin. Notice in the above quote, the person says the actions of the priest in the OT are “showing God as one of us.” This then, would culminate in Jesus and that we are now godlike because He is one of us. What the person above fails to capture is that Jesus became one of us for the sole purpose of identifying fully with our humanity so that He could then offer Himself as the perfect atonement to the Father. In doing so, as He hung on the cross, He experienced the Father’s wrath (“My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? – Matthew 27:46) as the Father poured out His anger on the Son and turned His back to Him. This is what all who die into eternity without God will tragically experience in spite of the fact that God in Jesus made a way for them to escape His wrath.

Theology like Francisco’s ultimately leads to Universalism, the belief that eventually everyone will get to heaven. People who believe in Universalism are often high-minded, pitying those of us who continue to believe that because of God’s laws, He must reject those who ultimately choose to reject Him. God is bigger, they say, than that. God loves all people and finds a way to bring all people to heaven. This untruth is the very lie that has motivated Satan since sin was first found in him. To these people, the Bible is more of a guide, but does not contain God’s actual truthful Word to humanity. They forget that without God’s written Word, we would know NOTHING about God’s physical, incarnate Word. Ultimately, this is merely another form of Cultural Marxism infiltrating aspects of the visible Church.

This is an abject denial of the truth of God’s written Word. In fact, you’ll find that people like Don Francisco quote and even refer Scripture less and less as time goes by. They prefer to be guided by how they FEEL about something (emotional virtue), in spite of the clear and succinct evidence presented in Scripture. They believe this route causes them to be free indeed. I’m sure Adam and Eve thought the same thing…initially, until the impact of their pride and arrogance was seen for what it was and for how it changed them.

People like Francisco would call me arrogant, ignorant, blind, self-serving. The Bible tells us the truth about salvation. Rejecting it in favor of some theology based on emotional virtue not only serves no purpose but ends up calling God a liar. It causes a person to side with Satan.

Universalism essentially says that everyone will get to heaven because God cleansed everything with His blood, which opened the way for Him to become one of us. This is not what the Bible teaches, but when people start dabbling with emotional virtue, truth essentially flies out the window as it is exchanged for a lie.

This should remind us that not ONE of us is above falling to deceiving spirits. Not one of us! If this does not cause us to fall on our knees in humble submission to God in Christ, nothing will!

Entry filed under: christianity, Cultural Marxism, Demonic, emergent church, Religious - Christian - End Times, Religious - Christian - Prophecy, Religious - Christian - Theology, salvation.