The thing about being both well-known and on Twitter, I suppose, is that if you royally, utterly, abysmally blow it, there are no fingers on Earth fast enough to delete it before someone screenshots it and saves it in perpetuity. Especially if you send that tweet at the absolute worst possible time. This was certainly the case with Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who is also the senior pastor of New Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was once pastored by no less than the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
On Easter Sunday, of all days, Sen. Warnock tweeted, “The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether you are Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others, we are able to save ourselves.” (www.foxnews.com/politics/warnock-deletes-easter-tweet-amid-backlash)
I do not know Sen. Warnock, and therefore I am unwilling to assign any ill motives to his words. They may well have been given simply out of a heart desirous to help others. I do know the Bible, though, and therefore I am willing to assign the proper descriptive term to his words: Heresy.
For 24 years now, I have periodically given my church what may seem like an odd instruction. I have taught them that if I ever contradict any of the foundational doctrines of Scripture, I am to be fired and removed. This is because a church is way bigger than any one man, even if he is the founding pastor (as I am) or the pastor of a historic church, or even a United States senator. If I had said the words Sen. Warnock tweeted on Sunday morning, I would have been fired before I ever stepped foot in the pulpit.
The words of that ill-conceived tweet are not just wrong – they are completely wrong, and about the most important subject in Scripture.