Well, it's been almost four months since I sent my last letter to Westboro Baptist Church, so I decided to write yet another letter. So here it is.
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Hello once again, Mrs. Roper.
This is Michael, the same one who wrote you twice before, once with my cousin Eddie. I'm sure you remember seeing my ridiculously long letters. If not, feel free to review them here.
Unlike my last two letters, I will try to keep this one relatively short.
I was going through your blog when two particular conversations caught my attention. The first was your conversation with Jeff entitled "A Huge Media Bath Thanks To Weston, MO," and the second, "We Bind This Nation So God Will Destroy Them."
I would just like to start by apologizing for Jeff. Not that that does anyone any good, but I honestly felt bad for you the way he was criticizing you. I do have to admit that he had good reason to criticize, but his method of using insults was not justified.
And one more thing before I get to the main point of this letter: in your response to Jeff's letter, you said, "Now, I must get off email and go make myself presentable for Fox 4." This is kind of off topic, but doesn't Jesus say in Matthew 6:25, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?"? And doesn't God say in 1 Samuel 16:7 when Samuel is looking for the next king of Israel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart"? Sorry to throw that at you, but that just stuck out at me as I was reading your blog.
Now on to the real topic of discussion. In your response to the unnamed Jew who is beginning to attend church, you told the unnamed author that you are "binding this nation to the standards/commandments of God so that God will destroy them." But in Mark 2:23-28, when Jesus was confronted for failing to uphold the Sabbath, He explained to the Pharisees how David ate the consecrated bread that was only lawful for consumption by the priests. He told them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27-28). According to the Pharisees, Jesus had broken the commandment that says, "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy" (Exodus 20:8). But they had forgotten the reason for the commandment: God had blessed the Sabbath so that we would not need to do work, not that we would not be allowed to do work. As stated here, the Sabbath was made to be a blessing to man, not a burden.
Similarly, the Law was not established so that we would follow it to gain salvation. It was put in place so that we would realize our inability to keep the Commandments and our need for a Savior. That does not mean we should not strive to keep the Commandments, but it does mean that we are not condemned if we slip up. (See Romans 7:7-13.) As written in Hebrews 10:1-4, "The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins." 1 Peter 3:18 says, "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God." And in Romans 8:1-4, Paul says, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit." Jesus died for us so that those who believe in Him would be freed from the power of sin, which is death, and "where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin" (Hebrews 10:18), meaning, once our sin has been forgiven, it stands forgiven permanently and does not need any renewal of forgiveness.
Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast." Constantly the Bible reminds us that salvation is not through works, but through faith in Jesus Christ. (Admittedly, these words come from Paul; but if what we believe is true—that the entire Bible is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16)—then if Paul's words are taken as a lie, then the entire Bible is taken as a lie, and God is made to be a liar. To quote the verse you yourself referenced in your response to the unnamed Jew, "The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because He had pity on His people and on His dwelling place. But they mocked God's messengers, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets until the wrath of the Lord was aroused against His people and there was no remedy." If you deny Paul's words, you deny the words of God Himself.) We are not saved by works, but unto works; we do not save ourselves by doing good things, but we do good things because we are saved. That's why Paul says in the next verse (Ephesians 2:10), "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." God presented the Law to us so that we would see our need for a Savior, and we strive to obey the Law because we are saved so that our salvation would look appealing to others looking in from outside the body of Christ.
As in my previous letters, I ask you again to reconsider your approach to spreading the gospel. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8:13, "Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall." I believe this stands true for witnessing as well. If your method of spreading the gospel causes other Christians to develop hatred for you (breaking the Commandment against murder, according to Jesus), then you should strive to witness in a way that would promote love and curiosity from others. Paul became "all things to all men so that by all possible means [he] might save some" (1 Corinthians 9:22).
I would encourage you to read through the book of Hosea. (Not that I think you haven't already. I'm sure you have, but please read it again. It's a great book, as I'm sure you know.) The Bible was not written merely as a history book. It was written so that we would see how it applies to our lives and so that we would strive to obey the words that we can consciously follow. Hosea is all about how God loves His people, even when we turn our backs on Him. He held His hand out to us, even when we tried to slap His hand away. He allowed us to drift into our sin, not because He gave up on us and turned us over to Satan, but in order for us to experience the consequences, in order to teach us and bring us back to Him. And when we come back, like the father of the prodigal son, He takes us back joyfully. As Jesus told the Pharisees in Luke 15:7, "There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent."
So please, re-evaluate the gospel you are preaching. Put your message to the test: match it up against the Bible and see if it stands firm in the truth. The gospel is a message of love, of grace, of mercy; it's a message of before and after: who we once were, and who we are now; the path we were on, and the path we are on now.
I want to make it clear that I believe you truly are a woman of God. But I believe that you don't quite have all the facts straight. You may very well be on the road to heaven, but your message is not encouraging others to come to the Lord. Jesus told His disciples to "go and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19), and we are His disciples, sent out into the world to bring others to know Christ. We are not to throw people's faults in their faces, but to show them the Savior who can (and wants to) redeem them despite their faults.
I would very much appreciate a reply. I'm getting a little discouraged because I haven't received a reply to my previous letters, and I'd like this to be a two-way conversation, not a monologue.
Thank you for your time, once again. I hope to hear back from you soon. And God bless!
Michael Watanabe
"If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him." ~ 1 John 4:15-16
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