republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

Of all the individuals introduced to us in the New Testament, the one
who would perhaps win the vote for “most likely to live in a shack”
would be John The Baptist.

The Baptist shows up in all four Gospels and is mentioned several times in Acts. The picture painted of this greatest prophet (Luke 7:28), foretold by Isaiah as one who would “prepare the way of the Lord” (Matthew 3:3),
is one that depicts a rugged, adventurous sort of fellow whose message
positioned him as an iconoclast against the prevailing religious culture
of his day.

Bedecked in a “not appropriate for a fancy Jerusalem soiree” garment
of camel hair, girded about his torso with a leather belt, John is
described as a character much better suited to the Judean wilderness
than to acceptable Jewish society. His diet of “locusts and honey” seems
highlighted to make apparent his unorthodox lifestyle. For even the
most adventurous Jew, you wouldn’t just find “locust and honey” flavored
granola at the nearest kosher market, in the event one wanted to
emulate the Baptist’s outdoor lifestyle.

But John wasn’t merely a rugged, wilderness living, outdoorsy
adventurer. He was the prophet of God who would, after a four hundred
year drought of prophecy, usher in the actual sandals-on-the-ground
ministry of God in this world. He was the final forerunner to the One
who would be greater than Moses. (Hebrews 3:1-6).

Though we are not given the details of exactly where the Baptist
lived during his Judean wilderness ministry, his eccentric presentation
and his unapproved religious message present him as a social and
religious outcast who could easily be seen living in some remote “shack”
by the edge of the Jordan River.

Regardless, though, of his abode – whether a shack, a cave, a tent,
or merely under the immense twinkling canopy of God’s heaven – the
Baptist attracted attention.   His ministry brought out the curious and
the concerned. It brought authentic believers and self-righteous
detractors. They came from the towns and villages of Judea, including
Jerusalem, to hear this man as he proclaimed his novel message.

Where John the Baptist identified himself as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” (John 1:23) the modern story from the modern Shack is anything but … The Shack
message seems to be basking in the glowing praise of the multitudes.
 But it was the message that John proclaimed – whether from a wilderness
“shack” or not – that distinguishes him from the wildly popular current
thing which is equally drawing out believers and detractors.  But in
the modern case of The Shack,
it is John’s message which is so glaringly absent and which so easily
identifies it as a dangerous theological dalliance more common to the
wide path than the narrow way (Matthew 7:13-14) which the Baptist came to announce.

“Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” (Matthew 3:1-2)

This latest contemporary “Christian craze” drawing the masses – The Shack
– is being lauded as the greatest thing since the crucifixion and
resurrection.  But if John the Baptist’s message has been increasingly
disregarded in our day, it has been disregarded most epically so in
William Paul Young’s book and movie. The wrongful detractors of the
Baptist in his day don’t find their counterparts in the rightful
detractors of The Shack
today. Those warning against this Hollywood heresy do so because it
disregards the message and the path which the Baptist came to proclaim. The Shack
exudes and amplifies what is so rampant in the Bible-barren wilderness
of the modern church – the lack of a clear presentation of the rightly
understood Gospel and the echoing of God’s command for all men to
“repent and believe.”  (Acts 17:30)

Young’s latest book, Lies We Believe About God reveals the fundamental lies behind The Shack.   The lies presumably refuted are, in fact, themselves deceptive. In Lies’
28 brief chapters – one for each “lie” believed by Christians – Young
lays out his -for lack of a better word – theology that drove the faux
faith flick. In a word – in a single word – an appropriate review of this latest book, as well as The Shack, would be the word: UNCHRISTIAN.

“Be assured, there is nothing new in theology, except that which is false.”  Charles Spurgeon

Though throngs of “faith leaders and influencers” have endorsed the flick,
their praises of it actually serve to provide some providential
clarity, distinguishing – for the “abide in my Word” disciple (John 8:31)–
the narrow path from the wide path. The thousands upon thousands
thronging to the movie, lauding it as emotionally powerful and
provocatively Christian, have done exactly what Young’s theology has
done with John the Baptist’s entreaty. They have forgotten the Gospel
and its call to “repent and believe.”

Of the many, many “lies” in Lies,
this lack of apprehension and proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ is most fundamental to the multitude of errors that necessarily
follow and flow from its absence. NOTHING can be considered Christian if
it does not first proceed the Gospel.   Though Christian terms, church
words, and the names of “God,” “Jesus,” and “The Holy Spirit” are
bandied about with casual frequency, these things – apart from the
Gospel – merely become, in Young’s “theology,” recitations of the
imaginative (and damning) mental constructions of pop, religious
culture.

Lacking a fundamental understanding of the Gospel, Young’s latest
book, then, propounds a number of lies about God and Christianity.
Second only, perhaps, to the lack of a Biblical Jesus recognizable
through the Biblical Gospel, it is the disregard for Scripture itself
that marks Young’s illicit theology.   Though he cites Scripture, his
interpretation is uniquely his own, perverting the meaning intended by
God and as taught, preached, proclaimed and believed throughout two
millennia of authentic Christian orthodoxy.

Once Scripture has been given over to this “what’s this verse mean to
me” form of interpretation, any and all manner of error and heresy will
flow as the result. Such is the case with Lies.
From an egregiously faulty view of God, Young necessarily presents an
equally faulty, unscriptural view of man. The Gospel’s absence
precipitates the need to avoid, explain, or dismiss such necessary, and
fundamental to authentic Christian faith, doctrines ranging from sin, to
atonement, to justification, to the afterlife. Heretical views of God
and man, though touted to be Christian, are infused with healthy doses
of post-modern subjectivism, new age reflectiveness, and eastern
concepts of humanity’s “divine spark.”

With Scripture dismantled by faulty interpretation, or completely
discarded at crucial points, as it is in Young’s latest book, there is
no threshold against which to measure right from wrong. And, in Lies,
there is no evident right from wrong. All is subjective, personal, and
to be tolerated as individually acceptable. A sort of “what I think” or
“what you think” about God is okay, so long as we’re thinking about God.

A line from its dust jacket gives a flavor of Young’s theological
incertitude and serves as an ample warning of what theological
atrocities in the name of Christianity lay ahead in the book: “The goal
of this book is not controversy but conversation. Mostly, it’s about the
unconditional, relentless, and everlasting love of God.”

While the Biblically-offensive “Jesus loves you and has a wonderful
plan for your life” is hallowed as evangelical doctrine, its noxious
presence in Lies  – in
which “plan” really implies “God just wants a relationship with you” –
is no less Scripturally invalid than when it is touted from your nearest
Sunday morning pulpit.  Indeed, be it a controversy or a conversation,
the Lies‘ absence of the rightly handled Word of God (2 Timothy 2:15)
as the threshold against which correct understanding may be had make
Young’s efforts illicit, unhelpful, and patently heretical. The reason
of man cannot conceive the mind of God, apart from the
Spirit-illuminated, special revelation of His Word. What results from
Young’s “conversation” is nothing short of what the apostle would call
the “teaching of demons.”  (1 Timothy 4:1)

No Gospel, No “Repent and Believe” Because … Universalism

In Lies, Young
explicitly avoids the opening divine command of the New Testament,
introduced by the prophet John The Baptist. There is no need to “repent
and believe” because Young promotes universalism, a notion deemed
heretical throughout the annals of orthodox church history. Even though
we live in a post-modern, subjective world, we can be certain that the
abiding attribute of God’s immutability has persisted. His message, His
method, and His Gospel – like Himself – have not changed. But for Young
and his post-modern, emotions-first, mystic-embracing, esoteric
religious readers, it has. And it has changed to support that
pagan-favorite heresy of heresies: universalism. Everybody gets to go to
heaven.

“Papa is especially fond of you” is a resounding divine affirmation from the book and movie which Young repeats in his Lies.
He closes out one chapter with his own quaint agreement of this
universal view of God for each man saying, “Darling, that is all any of
us need to know.”

But the notion that we are all God’s children, all loved relentlessly
by Him, regardless of Christ’s atoning work, and certainly regardless
of the “repent and believe” command of God, leaves Young wrestling with
the Scripture-present reality of the saving Gospel. Though modern
evangelicalism has folded, spindled, and mutilated it, the “Gospel” is
familiar to most pew-dwellers. Many will even know that it means “Good
news,” while the full counsel of its implications may otherwise go to
the wayside. Still, for most, the Gospel is an expected component of
Christianity.  So Young doesn’t disregard it but instead contorts the
Gospel to accommodate his heresy of universalism. His chapter entitled
“You need to get saved,” – which is, remember, a “lie” – includes the following:

“The Good News is not that Jesus has opened up the
possibility of salvation and you have been invited to receive Jesus into
your life. The Gospel is that Jesus has already included you into His
life, into His relationship with God the Father, and into His anointing
in the Holy Spirit. The Good News is that Jesus did this without your
vote, and whether you believe it or not won’t make it any less true.”

While the historical reality and God-empowered spiritual efficacy of
the Good News don’t, in fact, hinge on “whether you believe it or not,”
the deceit in Young’s description is evident. The Gospel of Jesus Christ
is – singularly – the power of God to save. (Romans 1:16)
 But Young’s interpretation leaves that pre-eminent command of God to
all men, everywhere, to “repent and believe” an unnecessary
complication.

“God does not wait for my choice and then ‘save me.’ God has acted decisively and universally for all humankind.”

“Here’s the truth: every person who has ever been conceived was
included in the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.”

Near the close of this chapter’s “lie,” Young adds the italicized comment regarding the work of Christ, “We have all been included.” (Emphasis original)

Young further emphasizes the heresy of universalism in a chapter
refuting the lie that “Not everyone is a child of God.” Says Young,
“Every human being you meet, interact with, react and respond to, treat
rudely or with kindness and mercy: every one is a child of God.”

But this insanely popular notion stands in direct contradiction to
Scripture. While “every one” is a creation of God, “every one” is not a
child of God. Scripture clearly defines the “child of God” to be the one
who believes. (See John 1:12, Romans 8;16, Romans 9:8, 1 John 3:1-10)

“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”  John 1:12

We’re All In, Because God Is Good, and So Are We

In order to (in)effectively dismiss the perspicuous teaching of
Scripture about man’s fallen nature, endemic to “every person who has
ever been conceived,” Young denies Scripture’s Genesis-to-Revelation
testimony of human depravity. Scripture teaches that we are brought
forth in iniquity, conceived in sin (Psalm 51:5),
and apart from the atoning, substitutionary work of Christ and being
brought to repentance, belief, and faith through His Gospel, we remain
in a “condemned already” condition. (John 3:18)

Young’s Lies unfolds
this perspective in chapter two, “God is Good. I Am Not.” In presuming
to shatter this “lie” that we believe, Young opens with “This lie is
huge! And it is devastating!”  Saying, “Yes, we have crippled eyes, but
not a core of un-goodness,” Young declares “I am fundamentally good
because I am created ‘in Christ’ as an expression of God, an image
bearer, imago dei. (Ephesians 2:10)”

Here’s what that verse from Paul to the Ephesians, cited by Young, says:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Though Young would like to postulate that Paul’s use of the word “we”
implies “for every person ever conceived,” his citation as such is
Scripture-twisting extraordinaire. Typical of his mishandling of
Scripture, Young fails to recognize the target audience of Paul’s
epistle:

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: (Ephesians 1:1)

Paul addressed his letter to the “ faithful saints” in Ephesus, not
to unbelieving pagans. The “we” means “we” the church, “we” the
believers, “we” the ones who have repented and believed the Gospel,
given faith by the regenerative work of God alone. “We” isn’t universal;
“we” is exclusive … by the grace of God.

Young’s belief in the intrinsic goodness of man is explained further
when he refutes the “lie” that “sin separates us from God.” He opens
this chapter by offering a cutesy perspective of sin not as man’s
willful, prideful violation of Holy God’s righteous law, but merely as
sorts of “oopsies” we naturally make. He says that “making mistakes is
not only okay for human beings but is also indeed essential.” (emphasis original)

“Do we really think that Jesus never made a mistake on
His homework, or never forgot someone’s name, or as a carpenter always
made accurate measurements? Jesus didn’t have a reputation for being the
‘best carpenter’ in Nazareth, making perfect doors and always level
tables.”

Young goes on to explain that the notion of sin as “missing the mark”
really means that we’ve missed a “relational reality” with God that
creates a “distortion of the image of God in us.” The post-modern
esoteric language is intended to say that sin isn’t about our violation
of the moral demands of God’s righteous expectations for us. The “mark”
that we missed is not, says Young, “perfect moral behavior. The ‘mark”
is the Truth of your being.”

“There is a truth about who you are: God’s proclamation
about a ‘very good creation’ is the truest about you. That very good
creation is the form or origin of you, the truth of who you are in your
being. Sin, then, is anything that negates or diminishes or
misrepresents the truth of who you are, no matter how pretty or ugly
that is.”

Young also states that:

“We Christians have long espoused a theology of
separation. A lot of ‘my people’ will believe that the following
statement is in the Bible, but it isn’t: ‘You have sinned, and you are separated from God.” (Emphasis original)

Young’s Bible must be missing a number of books, chapters, and
verses. Here are two notable ones that teach the theology of sin-induced
separation:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23

“Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a  separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” Isaiah 59:1-2

But for Young, separation from God because of sin is a “lie.” “If
separation is a lie, does it mean that no one has ever been separated
from God? That is exactly what it means. Nothing can separate us from
the love of God. (Romans 8:38-39)”
Of course, once again, Young forgets the rather important context of
his citation of Romans. Paul had a very specific group in mind when he
used the word “us:” “To all those in Rome who are loved by God and
called to be saints” (Romans 1:7)

God Isn’t Really, Fully God – Sovereignty Denied

For Young, the attributes of God – besides His salvific,
universalistic decisiveness – are simply echoes of popular pagan
sidewalk theology, so often mimicked in evangelical pulpits in order to
keep goat pews occupied. God is good. God is love. God wants the best for you.
God, in Young’s theology, has no glaring attributes of justice,
righteousness, wrath, holiness, etc.  Like a television commercial
marketing some indulgent, but healthy, crave-able, guilt-free treat, God
is all the good that you want, and none of the bad you don’t. But
there’s one attribute of God that Young must wrestle with, an attribute
-while yet so misunderstood among pew dwellers and pulpits – that
remains intrinsic to the idea of “God.”  God is sovereign.

But according to Young’s Lies,
God is anything but sovereign. Though he apes much of what the pagan
world claims to believe about God, Young’s argument for a less than
sovereign God not only betrays common opinion (If there is a God, then
He must be totally in control, right? The ultimate characteristic of God
is that He’s unlimited in scope, power, and authority, right?), but his
opinion also defiles Scripture itself.

“God is a God of relationship and never acts independently.”

Young’s need to have a less than fully sovereign God is driven by his
inability to accommodate evil in the world with his God who is all love
and nothing but love. “One can’t run to God,” says Young, “if God is
the perpetrator” of evil.” So Young has undertaken to defend God from
evil in the world and he does that by making God less than sovereign.

“Do we actually believe we honor God by declaring God the
author of all this mess in the name of Sovereignty and Omnipotent
Control?”

Young calls such a notion “grim determinism,” “fatalism” and cannot be used to “justify evil.”

Young cites a “German friend” to help explain the notion of a God who
is not in control. His friend’s comment seems legitimately evangelical
enough, but in reality, it posits a God more common in the theology of
open theism, one who inherently lacks control and must learn as He goes.

“Scriptures show me that God has the heart of an artist,
not a grim construction planner. If the world were the work of a cosmic
engineer, he would be in a constant state of discontentedness. We would
all suffer from the constant nagging of a dogged designer who’s plans
just never work out like he intended or expected. Reality could never
live up to his spotless construction plans. But a true Creator knows he
not only has to shape, but also endorse and allow. Wisdom allows things
to grow and unfold.”

Young applauds this “learn as you go” concept of God, which
alleviates for him some of the evident realities of suffering, hardship,
and evil in the world. “The sovereignty of God is not about
deterministic control. So how does God reign? By being who God is: love
and relationship.”

To put a fine point of Scripture forth in response to this very
unchristian and unbiblical -yet culturally-pervasive – notion, consider a
verse from the Old Testament and one from the New:

“I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end
from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying,
‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,” Isaiah 46:9-10

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible
and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all
things were created through him and for him.” Colossians 1:16

Scripture makes it clear (in numerous places – see such texts as Psalm 90:2, Colossians 1:17, Psalm 97:9, Hebrews 1:3, 1 Chronicles 29:11-12, Psalm 135:6)
that God – the God of authentic Christianity – is absolutely sovereign.
 Perhaps though, Young and those who have difficulty reconciling God’s
sovereignty with earthly evil should ponder this verse from the inspired
wisdom of Proverbs and a corollary verse from the New Testament.

“The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.”  Proverbs 16:4

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

No Hell Below Us … At Least Not One That Isn’t Redemptive and Palliative

Having jettisoned the gospel and the nearly ubiquitous New Testament
call to “repent and believe,” having inculcated a heretical notion of
universalistic salvation for all men who are inherently good, and after
de-attributing God of His pre-eminent characteristic of sovereignty, the
one other notable thing that Young destroys in his unchristian theology
is another fundamental New Testament concept. There is no hell.

In his chapter entitled “Hell is separation from God,” Young attempts
to dismantle the erroneous belief of many about a subject very common
in the teaching of Jesus. But, according to Young’s explanation, Jesus
may have gotten a few details wrong.  Young recounts how he applied his
human reason to the difficult concept of hell in The Shack.

“In The Shack, I tried to move the conversation
about hell from the head to the heart by putting the main character,
Mackenzie, in the crosshairs of a terrible dilemma. In the cave where
Mack faces the Wisdom of God, Sophia, she demands that he take the
position of Judge, a role that he, like all of us, assumes daily. But
Sophia turns the tables unexpectedly.”

“Choose two of your children to spend eternity in God’s new heaven
and new earth, but only two … and three of your children to open
eternity in hell.”

“Sophia is driving the reality of this issue away from a disengaged,
heady debate and down into the deepest recesses of the heart and soul –
the visceral love of a parent for his or her children. It also exposes the lie that God is not a loving Father – not even as good a parent as we are
– and the lie that this remarkable, unreasonable love we have for our
children originates in us and not in God.” (Emphasis added)

The problem with Young’s attempt to eliminate eternal punishment from
a God who is all love – a pursuit he seeks to accomplish vicariously
through his blasphemous female character representing God – exposes
fundamental problems borne from the lack of a truly sovereign, utterly
Holy God. Without the belief in a sovereign, holy God, the ability to
reconcile hell, as well as the reality of evil in the world, is
impossible. Such things cannot be comprehended without a sovereign God,
without Whom – in His sovereignty – we are left to grapple with Biblical
realities, such as hell and evil purely on the basis of our fallen
understanding of not only what true, divine love looks like, but also
what true, divine justice looks like.

Thus Young’s eradication of hell is built on a framework of human
reason, with disregard to Scriptural insights. The reality of parental
love may express a sense of divine love for “those You have given Me,” (John 17:9),
but it cannot nearly presume to adequately define it. God’s
characteristic of love sits fully aside His other, equal-in-measure
attributes of righteousness, holiness, wrath, etc. These immutable
qualities of God do not change over time nor compete with one another in
their expressed fulness. The paradox that God can be loving yet damn
his creatures to hell does not speak to a momentary lapse of divine
love, but to the paradoxical reality that the full force of all His
attributes are always present, and that as the potter to the clay, He
alone has the freedom to do with His creatures as He wills.

“Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of
the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable
use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his
power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for
destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels
of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he
has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?”  Romans 9:21-24

So while a parent would never damn a child to hell, the sovereign God
who is the creator of all certainly has, does, and will. Love is not
God’s only attribute, despite Young’s and much of the evangelical
church’s teaching. God is love, indeed, but that feature does not
negate, offset, or eliminate the righteous exhibition of His other fully
divine attributes. Yet Young finds the Scriptural truth of hell-
proclaimed most frequently by the Lord Himself – to be untenable. He
attempts to further justify the erroneous notion of hell believed by
most Christians. And he intentionally does it by use of twisted
Scripture and human reason.

“Consider this simple line of reasoning. Either hell is a
created place or it is not. If it is not created, then it must by
definition be God, who alone is uncreated. In this sense, hell would be
God, who is a consuming fire. You destiny would not be apart from God
but directly into God, who is Love, Light, Goodness.”

(Young’s “simple line of reasoning” – no doubt intensely appealing to
the subjective, post-modern mindset of humanly conceived “fairness”
brings immediately to mind the words of God through the apostle Paul,
“For who has known the mind of God … “ 1 Corinthians 2:6 or, perhaps, from 1 Corinthians 3:19 … “the wisdom of the world is folly to God.”)

“The other alternative is that hell is a created place or
thing. Consider this passage: “For I am convinced that neither death,
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39)” (Emphasis original)

“This is a list,” says Young, “of all the realities that cannot
separate you from the love of God. What isn’t in the list, keeping in
mind that it includes ‘any created thing’ or any ‘thing to come?” Young
makes sure you get the answer, his answer, “Nothing. There is nothing
absent from the list.”

Far from an outright denial of the reality of hell, Young’s theology
attempts to reconcile hell with a loving God. His attempt is nothing
short of a sort of Roman Catholic purgatory in which post-death
redemption, and the experience of God’s love, may yet be realized.
 Indeed, for the universalistic Young, hell can only be a post-death
mechanism that results in heaven for all.

“So, if we continue this thought … perhaps hell is not
hell because of the absence of God, but because of the presence of God,
the continuous presence of fiery Love and Goodness and Freedom that
intends to destroy every vestige of evil and darkness that prevents us
from being fully free and fully alive. This is a fire of Love that now
and forever is ‘for’ us, not against us. Only if we posit that we have
existence apart from Jesus can we believe that hell is a form of
punishment that comes to us in our separation from Jesus. I propose the
possibility that hell is not separation from Jesus but that it is the
pain of resisting our salvation in Jesus while not being able to escape
Him who is True Love.”

“You are of your father, the devil … the father of lies.”  (John 8:44)

Young’s theology of “Lies” undergirds his fictional work The Shack.
 But his theology is aberrant, mishandles Scripture, denies fundamental
doctrines of the Christian faith, and serves merely to regurgitate the
false understandings of the world about God, slathering his presentation
of them sufficiently with Bible verses and church words that makes
those understandings seem Christian.  Yet Young denies the gospel,
denies the sinfulness of man, diminishes the sovereignty of God,
promotes an “all roads lead to heaven” universalism, and warps the
doctrine of eternal punishment so that it becomes a second, certain
chance.

There is nothing remotely, authentically Christian about Young’s Lies or about Young’s Shack, an abode that John the Baptist would certainly point to as being the nest of a “brood of vipers.”  (Matthew 3:7)
 Indeed, with the Baptist, we should certainly turn to Young and to
those who laud his work as “Christian,” and say, pointing to the
authentic Jesus of the authentic Biblical Gospel, “Behold, the Lamb of
God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”  (Matthew 3:2)

As of the moment of this writing, Lies We Believe About God
is noted as a “best seller” on Amazon, ranking at the #1 Spot in the
“Christian Meditation Worship & Devotion” category.  As for The Shack, four versions of this heretical novel show up in the top 50 best-selling evangelical books, with two being in the top ten.  (Source)  The theology of Lies which undergird The Shack,
though, must be recognized for the abject heresy that it is.  That
these two tomes show up on “Christian” or “evangelical” bestseller list
is a testimony to the failure of churches, pastors, and teachers to
“Preach the word” (2 Timothy 4:2) and to “teach what accords with sound doctrine.” (Titus 2:1).
 It’s also a sad testimony of those who might claim for themselves the
moniker “Christian” but are not doing the fundamental thing which
distinguishes a disciple of Jesus: “abide in my Word.”  (John 8:31)

Though these books arrive on a Christian bestseller list, the astute,
authentic, Bible-abiding disciple of Jesus will quickly recognize that
they are “best” because they are “selling,” not because they are “best”
for your faith, edifying to your soul, or helpful to the cause of
Christ.  The “Christianized” notions proffered in Young’s works are
distinctly UNCHRISTIAN.  His theological “lies” have the same source as
all lies, and Jesus identified that source with divine, authoritative
clarity:

“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do
your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does
not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies,
he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of
lies.” John 8:44