Open Letter to Rachel Held Evans

Note: I posted this on Mrs Evans’s website, Facebook and Twitter stream, which were the methods she stated people can contact her.

Dear Mrs Evans,

I am the Elizabeth Prata of the blog “The End Time” who wrote about you this week and to whom you responded. I am writing in heartfelt concern and in Christian tender pleading.

I am a 53 year old woman, born and bred in New England and transplanted to Georgia later in life. My salvation in Jesus Christ came later in life also. By this short biography perhaps you can accept this missive as an elder woman teaching a younger as in Titus 2:4.

I can see that you are a bright, accomplished, intelligent woman yourself, as much as we can discern these things via the computer screen and internet.

The Holy Spirit has laid you on my heart and it is on that basis I write to you. If we were standing face to face, you would see that my hands are extended and my eyes are full of tears.

On Twitter you shared with me that you long for the truth. It is because of that longing which you expressed that I write to share the truth with you.

The truth is that there is “this same Jesus” (Acts 1:11) and there is “another Jesus”. (2 Cor 11:4). This same Jesus of the Old Testament and the New is going to return to judge the living and the dead. He will line up the sheep and the goats and He will tell them to account for their lives.

Some in the goats line will be shocked they are not in the sheep line. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ “ (Matthew 7:21-23).

This is a serious passage of scripture and it behooves every person who claims Jesus to examine themselves frequently to ensure they are not among the ones who have claimed a different Jesus. (2 Corinthians 13:5).

“I marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ to another gospel:” (Galatians 1:6)

Do you claim a different Gospel? I think so, if I may say so tenderly. In your book, Evolving in Monkey Town you wrote,

“I’m an evolutionist because I believe that the best way to reclaim the gospel in times of change is not to cling more tightly to our convictions but to hold them with an open hand.”

To claim ‘this same Jesus” is to claim the same Jesus who was with God when the world was made. (Acts 17:24). To claim this same Jesus is to claim that He is the Word and He speaks truth. (John 1:1, John 14:6). To claim this same Jesus is to claim the Jesus who said ‘Let there be man, Adam, and it is good’. (Genesis 1:26, 27, 31).

If you believe in evolution you claim a different Jesus.

As for ‘changing our convictions to meld’ with the times, I ask you, how often? Did the Chinese of the year 200AD need to change what they believe, or the Icelanders of the year 1500, or the Bolivians of 1999 or the Rachel Held Evans’s of 2013? When does one change? How often? Every millennium? Every year? Every week? Change to which culture? Or do we claim this same Jesus who said to us via His Spirit, cling to what is Good! (Romans 12:9, 1 Thess 5:21). And we know that the only Good is the Father! (Matthew 19:17). And we know that the Father revealed Himself in the Word by His Son! (Hebrews 1:1-2)

We do not need to “reclaim the Gospel” because the Gospel never went anywhere. The Gospel are words unto life, and has the power of God behind it. This is the Gospel of Jesus you go away from when you say we need to loosen our convictions, despite the Word who is Jesus telling us to cling to them:

“Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)

I want to ask you and then pray that the Spirit convicts you, to examine yourself to see that, if Jesus were to return in the next few moments, would you be in the group that says “Lord, Lord, did we not…?” I believe you are in that group. I mourn for you, in seeing the fruits from your different gospel, and beg you to come to Jesus, and believe the Bible as He has given it to us. For what a person thinks of the Bible reveals what they believe about Him. He IS the Word (John 1:1)

You said you seek the truth. The truth is that Jesus said via His word “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15).

Do you believe it is impossible for you to have fallen under the sway of a false notion of a different Gospel, and further, that there is no need to examine yourself? If so then THAT is arrogance. Do you believe that one must change and adapt their convictions in order to stay current with man’s culture on this world which is run by satan? If so then you believe in a different gospel that does not save!

“In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:4)

Please, Mrs Evans, for the sake of your eternal soul, heed these things. Fall to the cross and plead for forgiveness and ask for grace and mercy. The glory of the universe is that this same Jesus who will come one day to judge the living and the dead, this same Jesus, if you repent, will claim you for His daughter. He will send mercy-

For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” (Romans 9:15.)

I pray He says to you, Rachel, “I will have mercy.”

In His name,

Elizabeth Prata
July 10, 2013

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Author: elizabethprata