Last time we saw that Whitten believes the religious world unwittingly lied to people for centuries. On page 144, he states that the Church remains stuck in “the spiritual framework of legalism”. To Whitten, this framework keeps Christians in bondage to sorrow, suffering and spiritual fatigue by claiming that God demands effort of obedience. Accordingly, he also teaches that such a framework, with its demands of obedience, misrepresents God; not like a father, but like an austere, cold and distant tyrant.
Whitten teaches that legalism is implicitly inherent in the first Reformation. He writes that the church needs to awaken to this ‘framework of legalism’, and be freed from it. When introducing his Next Great Awakening, he leads with a definition of ‘awakening’.
“Awakening is an act or moment of becoming aware; to rouse from sleep”, page 143. Whitten goes on to write, “the Body of Christ is on the threshold of a new spiritual reformation that will impact the world in a much greater measure than the Protestant Reformation”.
He also claims on page 144 that because of the great impact of the first Reformation, “few ever saw the fundamental flaws in its theology“. According to him, the new spiritual awakening is beginning now; marked by the ideology/theology that he teaches.
The basis for his Great Awakening
The certainty of this New Reformation, or as he calls it, the New Awakening is based on his understanding of the three major Jewish feasts. He writes on page 149, “These feasts all have historical, prophetic, and spiritual significance. They give … prophetic insight into the plans of God concerning His church and His people”. To Whitten, the feasts are the God-given “road map to follow and the ability to chart a course toward the fullness of all Jesus died to give”, page 156; emphasis added. He relies on the structure and sequence of the OT feasts to prophesy this New Reformation. As stated before, this Reformation will make the first Reformation pale in comparison.
Emphasis in all the following quotes from the book is added.
On page 149 he breaks down the work of each Feast. “The Feast of Passover reveals the person and work of the Son, … the feast of Pentecost reveals the person and work of the Holy Spirit, … the Feast of Tabernacles reveals the person and work of the Father”.
Supposedly, fulfillment of the first two is complete. “The last one … will be, … that great revelatory work of God … the Father is coming to the Church and to all Christians who will look and see”.
Of course, the ones willing to get rid of the contaminants that ‘religion’ injected into grace are the ones who ‘truly’ look and see. And, God will come to these personally and directly; not through Christ, by the preaching, or in the organized church. Once rid of the contaminants, the Father will come and unite Himself with these people; it will be “magnificent, life-changing, and gloriously real. This union will change us, and through us will change the world”, page 150.
What awaits us in this New Awakening?
Whitten tells of a time coming where believers will experience real intimacy with the Father; and he’s not talking about heaven. Page 158, “… we [will] get the greatest expression of the life of God … a revelation of God and a resulting intimacy with Him that will reveal Him as the great Father that He is. This revelation by itself will awaken the Church and allow the Church to experience the joy and liberty that is our birthright”.
“We are all headed somewhere with Him [the Father], He has the way mapped out for us. We must get to know Him [the Father] and experience His pure grace to be able to receive what He desires to give“, page 158. Once you understand this new revelation of the Father, then you will be able to cry “Abba, Father”! [The way mapped out here is not Jesus Christ]
Whitten cites Acts 2 & 4 to show that the early church pristinely exemplified this revelation of God as our Father. He claims that since that time, the churches’ teaching changed and this ‘original’ understanding of ‘union with the Father’ became lost. He teaches that the New Reformation is the Spirit “convincing believers with an inner knowing“. And it’s happening now through Whitten and others like him.
What is this ‘knowing’? It is knowing that “something about the legalistic Christianity experienced by most believers is seriously flawed in its foundation. … Something is wrong and needs to be corrected. An understanding of God’s great grace [as Whitten teaches it] will correct what is wrong and will produce the results Jesus promised …”. Quotes from page 145.
Awaken to your sanctification satisfaction
Further he writes on page 146, “Satisfaction in life flows primarily out of an understanding of who we are, not what we do. The gospel was designed and executed to produce in us satisfaction, a sense of fullness, and a deep inner connection with God that leaves little room or desire for expressions of our flesh”. [he means bodily, physical obedience of life and activities of good works]
Whitten continues on page 146 after quoting Matt. 5:6, “Blessed means happy or blissful. Happiness or blessedness is a result of Christ’s righteousness satisfying us at the deepest level of our being”. He often uses this language of ‘our experience’ and the ‘finished work of Christ’ together. This blurs the two distinct saving acts of God (justification for us and sanctification in us), into a single state that includes experience.
He admits that his own Christian life was stymied by his own legalism. This ‘single state that includes our experience’ was his answer to his dissatisfying performance treadmill and the hamster wheel of life he found himself on. He was no longer satisfied; and legalism is not satisfying! But his answer was that there had to be only one finished facet to salvation, one salvific ‘state of our being’ where God ‘does it all for you’. He discarded (or never knew?) the true Christian life as taught by Calvin.
Also note in the above quote from page 146, that to Whitten, God’s holy justice is not what Christ’s righteousness satisfies. (Talk of justice makes God a ‘big meanie‘ to Whitten). This begs the question, does this teaching cancel out the biblical definition of atonement?
How Whitten gets ‘satisfaction’ to replace sanctification
Whitten goes on to teach that Christ took care of our hungering and thirsting found in Matt 5:6, because that hunger and thirst was for a right standing with God. We don’t need to hunger or thirst, Christ fixed that for us. Now, just knowing who you are now brings satisfaction. And, that satisfaction will set you free from chasing after performance of the law, and repenting when you fail. (He reminds us of how much time this will save). Hungering and thirsting now is the equivalent of not trusting in what Jesus died to give.
Replacing faith-filled, from-the-heart obedience and good works with an inner experience in your ‘deepest being’ is how he exchanges satisfaction with sanctification. He swaps it out when he replaces faith language with language about your visceral feelings.
Are the Reformed Protestants also distancing themselves from faith language? This is difficult to prove since there is no quoting what someone doesn’t say. Are they moving more into language of experience, inner knowing, and feelings? The members should listen carefully. Do they also consider it a waste of time to hunger and thirst after righteousness?
However, Whitten needed to replace sanctification with something else; because true sanctification, as taught by the Reformation, needs faith, and that’s the part he did not understand. Without true faith, sanctification cannot be finished inwardly, or outwardly. And, from faith, there is objective fruit that others can see. The Bible calls it: perfected. And God does this perfecting in us when He, by the Spirit, uses the imperative passages and the indicative texts, through the preaching, to produce obedience and good works in the faithful, faith-filled Christian. That’s the way God ordained things.
Whitten’s version finishes only inwardly and subjectively with your satisfaction. There might be outward fruit, or not; God doesn’t demand any. In Whitten’s satisfaction, all that matters is your inner experience and your inner ‘knowing’. Therefore, for one’s satisfaction, one personally holds only to the indicative texts, and fixates solely on those. Your satisfaction depends on you. It depends on your inner experience, how you view yourself, and how well you understand what God really thinks about you.
Awaken to the leaven of the law
To Whitten, the law only proves that Christ lived a perfect life on our behalf as signified in the first feast. To Whitten, the leaven at the Passover did not signify sin, but the law. On page 153 he writes, “the unleavened bread speaks of the gospel being taken or eaten without the leaven of the law”. He condemns the law as nothing but leaven in both Testaments.
However, from Gotquestions.org we find, “In the Bible, leaven is almost always symbolic of sin”.
Whitten condemns the law based on how he understood it to function in sanctification. Page 154, “The leavening of the law corrupts the pure Gospel at the point of sanctification and [the law] produces a life-robbing element into the finished work of Christ”. Thus, according to him, the connection to the law at this point in salvation is how he ended up on a path of legalism. Since this is what he ‘learned’ from the Reformation, it must be wrong.
When Whitten learned about the Reformation of Luther and Calvin, he clearly did not fully grasp something fundamental. He did understand that the Heidelberg Catechism teaches that a good work must be in accordance with the law of God as stated in QA 91. But how did he not know that good works proceed from the gift of true faith, and thus are a God-given aspect of our sanctification? How did he miss that the Spirit works sanctification in us through faith? Perhaps he did not understand something about faith.
Awakening?
In the final chapter it becomes evident that Whitten sees his future Awakened era as an eternal era on earth. This replaces the ‘heaven’ concept that most people find in the Bible. This era will be when God comes down to His people by a full union with them and tabernacles here with them. He writes, “Heaven isn’t just a place, Heaven is Him [the Father]”, page 163. The Father will only unite Himself to those who receive and believe that Christ died to give them everything; and they show trust in that by not attempting any law keeping.
Expanding universe?
This also explains his final section at the very end of his book, (which is published in 2012). Whitten made a new friend at a breakfast “a few years ago”, a guest lecturer at his local university. While talking with this new friend, he learned that the universe is “expand[ing] at the speed of light in all directions”. Then, Whitten realized that this expansion was because the “universe isn’t big enough to contain all the things God has prepared for those who love Him”; page 171. When his ‘union with the Father’ happens and the final Feast of Tabernacles is realized, the universe will need to expand in order to hold God as He tabernacles with men!
Oddly, Whitten does not name this friend in his book! One would think that he would at least name the guy that validated his New Revelation.
Whitten’s ‘love’ and ‘saved by faith’
On page 161 Whitten writes, “God loved us by faith. He loved us before we loved Him, quotes Rom 5:8. He [God] “believed” that such a demonstration of His love for us would be responded to and reciprocated! It is the very nature of God to love. … He loves us before we perform. He loves us even if we don’t perform. … Our love for Him is a response to His love for us, not the other way around”. [Quote marks, Whitten’s; other emphasis ours].
About that love
He teaches on page 162 that God loves the world even if the world rejects Him. God does not withhold His love. And according to Whitten, God’s love, and your willingness to receive it, is your singular hope of becoming like Him [the Father]. (Genesis 3:5?)
So, the only thing that can separate you from God is your attempt to keep rules of the law because that means you are not receiving God’s love. Whitten is clear, sin doesn’t separate you from the Father, law-keeping separates you from the Father and His love.
Whitten writes, “the revelation of that unmerited and ceaseless love is your lifeline …”, page 162. He does not teach that Christ is the revelation of God’s love, or your lifeline. Then he continues, “The only thing that can limit the love of God is your inability or unwillingness to receive it”. That sums up human responsibility in his ideology. You can turn away from G.R.A.C.E. and be lost; it’s your own fault and your own doing.
About our love
Whitten teaches on page 162 that it is our free will that makes our love for God a ‘free response’; and not a reaction to God’s demand that we love Him. According to him, if it is not from our free will [and spontaneously so], it isn’t love. Thus, love for God is optional to Whitten, and apart from Christ. God saves who He will, whether they love Him back or not. This version of a one-way love is a distortion of the unilateral covenant of the scriptures.
This continues his idea that God makes no demands upon His chosen people. According to Whitten, even love is not demanded nor commanded. This is directly against Jesus’ own words in Mark 12:30-31.
First of all, our love is not a reaction. Secondly, we don’t produce love by our own strength or power. Humans cannot contrive a ‘love response’ on their own. Neither is it a response from a free will that is sovereign in its own strength.
The scriptures teach that God works His love in us, by the Spirit. Whitten does not teach what the scriptures teach; that our love for God is a result of God’s efficacious love worked in us, or that God draws us to love Him.
Saved by God’s faith
According to Whitten on page 161, salvation is by God’s faith. Sounds like the Reformed Protestant’s ‘faith of Christ’ is a new twist of an old lie. (#Pilgrim Xu, #Kelly NG). Whitten is clear, it is not ‘faith’ when we believe. He calls what we do ‘believing’; a simple, passive receiving. A receiving of God’s real attitude about what we already are in our new state of being of holiness. It is not an oversight that he omits the word faith when he teaches that we should ‘believe’.
Whitten teaches that humans believe but God has faith. Is faith an attribute of God? Is faith an eternal thing? But, faith needs an object! For those in reformed churches, that object is Christ. And, for Whitten, that object is us humans, we are the object of God’s faith.
Whitten does not use phrases like ‘believing in Jesus Christ’ or ‘believing on Christ as your personal Savior’. He does not write about living by faith, walking by faith, or praying in faith. He is careful to not use the phrase or the idea of ‘our faith’. Whitten’s book lacks the true form and intent of biblical faith language. Whitten’s understanding of ‘faith’ is that it is God’s action.
And, just a thought about this statement: “He [God] “believed” that such a demonstration of His love for us would be responded to and reciprocated!”. Is the idea that ‘God believed that we would respond to His love‘ merely Whitten’s expression of the Arminian form of ‘foreknowledge‘?
His attitude toward the institution of the church, which is why he thinks it needs a new reformation
On page 33 he writes: “I repeat, the Church is immature and has been for most of its existence. The reason is simply the inability to see the revelation of grace and the finished work of Christ. If the goal is managing sin and keeping it under control, it seems to me we have been failing miserably. Please, let’s give ourselves the chance to break out of the religious performance prison and grow up in freedom and liberty. A revelation of grace allows us to mature and motivates us to become someone who is like Jesus*. With our focus on behavior and sin management, we cannot eat anything but milk, and thus the nurseries are full of cute but howling babies who cannot feed themselves.”
Page 34-35, “Honestly, I think many of us pastors fear our people “growing up”; because if they do, we may not be able to control them! They might develop minds of their own. They might begin questioning the religious drivel and spiritual milk they are being asked to eat each week. The constant rehashing of the same old behaviors – be good boys and girls, do some good works so God will bless, learn to manage your sin, don’t tick the Big Guy off – claptrap.”
*Don’t assume that Whitten means for us to conform ourselves to Christ when he writes “be like Jesus”. To him, we are like Jesus because we understand God’s real attitude towards us; we don’t need to become ‘Christ-like’.
Next (and final) post:
Whitten’s Ah-Ha moment, and then some final thoughts. Thank you for your readership and keep tuning in!
