Question: Please listen to the enclosed tape by Gene Edwards and give your evaluation in your ...

Question: Please listen to the enclosed tape by Gene Edwards and give your evaluation in your newsletter. What do you think?

Response: I listened to the tape and was appalled. Edwards is obviously a mystic who applies his own esoteric meaning to words. He says that before creation of anything, the Father, Son and Spirit “were having church life.” What he means is not clear, so we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for that strange statement. Again, can his statement that the Godhead “made a terrible and frightening gamble” in creating mankind be overlooked as a peculiar way of speaking? But we must object when he says that the redeemed were planned to be “portions of the Son...portions of His being that would be given great destiny...those separate pieces would one day come together and be one again...these glorious, wonderful, destined and highly honored portions of His being would come back to Him.” We are not little parts of Christ! That is heresy.

Nor is it true that “God put something in this universe that would let us know what Christ was like before creation...that we would be able to look at and know that this was what His Son was like. And that was a little lamb.” Christ is not like a little lamb! He was sacrificed for our sins as a lamb is sacrificed, but He is also called “the lion of the tribe of Judah” (Rv 5:5). Does a lion also tell us what Christ is like? Yet Satan “goes about as a roaring lion” (1 Pt 5:8.) Furthermore, lambs are helpless and prone to wander, unable to find their way without a shepherd, which is why we are likened unto sheep. Surely Christ is not like that. In fact, He is also called the Shepherd!

Edwards goes on to declare that Christ actually was slain before anything was ever created, and “when He died, all those parts of Him died too...they were slain with Him...[and] rose with Him” before they were even created. “The old fallen creation...was slain before it was created.” He adds that “there is no creation...because He was absolutely all...there was no way to create creation without that creation being created in Him, because there wasn’t any room any place else...creation was created in Christ.” Again, the heresy of pantheism: that God is all and all is God.

Further contradictions abound: “So the Lord didn’t know what was going to happen....And then He went back to the end, where He always is...and He saw you in that great throng...of those wonderful, glorious portions of His being. One of them had your name on them (sic)...you are so beautiful, to be honored above all things...pure and so holy...you’re not a creation at all, for you are that which cannot be created, for you have in you a life that was previous to creation...and you belong, and always have belonged...where He is....” (Again, heresy. Only God is uncreated and always existed.)

Edwards continues, “He’s going to marry you. That’s why I’m so for sisters and not particularly interested in brothers. [Sniffling and crying by Edwards.] I’m trying to learn to be a girl....I’m going to be a girl....Sisters, be patient with us...someday we will be like you, and then together we will be like Him...one with Him.” It is heresy to suggest that being the bride of Christ has anything to do with femaleness and thus male members of the church must become girls! In the church there is “neither male nor female” (Gal:3:28There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
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These are not all of the problems in the tape but enough.