Dr. Robert Sumner passed away in December 2016. The Biblical Evangelist newspaper is no longer being published and the ministry of Biblical Evangelism has ceased operation.

The remaining inventory of his books and gospel tracts was transferred to The Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles and may be ordered here.

The Many Faces of Deception: The Truth about False Teachings in the Church
Florence Bulle

This is not a book exposing Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism, Armstrongism, The Way International, Christian Science or any of the other 1,000 and 1 non-evangelical cults. No, it zeroes in on those flying under the evangelical banner who are teaching things contrary to “Thus saith the Lord” and injuring untold thousands thereby. The author goes after those majoring in “inner healing,” “name it and claim it,” “health and wealth,” “angelic visitations,” “codependency” and the multitudinous “the Lord told me” prophets.

If I may start with a word of humor, on her first page (the Introduction) she discusses the Devil’s tactics and he apparently got into the typesetter’s mind. When she wanted to say, “belief in the Devil was passé,” it appeared in type as “belief in the Devil was passe.” Somehow old Satan got the wrong letter changed!

Be that as it may, in her first chapter she goes after those who want to serve Christ “for fun and profit.” In chapter 2 she goes after those who “thank God” for sin (I didn’t know any taught that, but maybe those in her crowd do). In her next chapter she discusses miracles – which she strongly believes in, but is forced to admit miracles do not necessarily result in living for God, and her prime example of a miracle is a prime illustration – and she discusses those who fake the moving of the Holy Spirit or offer substitutes (I gathered from this chapter she believes in what some call “speaking with tongues”).

The author may be a good illustration of what she is trying to prove. Bulle, perhaps one of today’s evangelical feminists – and maybe even a preacher herself – goes a mite afield in her next chapter, “The Battle of the Sexes.” Decrying today’s voices calling for submissive wives (the SBC?), she referred to a preacher who quoted I Timothy 3:1 (“This is a true saying, if a man desires the office of a bishop…”) and after the word “man” he inserted a parenthesis “not woman.” And she complained, “…he must have known that the Greek word translated here in the KJV as ‘man’ is a generic term, the indefinite pronoun tis meaning ‘any person.’” But if Sister Bulle had bothered to read the next verse she would have learned that this “man” (tis) is further described as the husband “of one wife” (mias gunaikos). So, unless she approves of lesbianism – and we don’t think she does – that is the end of that particular “women preachers” argument. We don’t know whether she is a Greek scholar or not, but the English is very, very clear in this case.

She then goes after what “prominent preachers” have said about Sarah, namely, they have “had Sarah painting the nursery and knitting blue booties in anticipation of a promised son.” I have been a Christian since 1940 and a preacher for more than 58 years – and not one time have I ever heard a preacher portray Sarah thusly! But that was a strawman she established to knock down and give her own version of Sarah’s place. She carefully explains the meaning of “Lord,” the term Sarah used for Abraham, saying it was “simply the common title of respect in that day…the same word Rebecca used when she gave Abraham’s servant water, saying, ‘Drink, my lord’.” Here she is defining the Greek word kurios by the Hebrew word adon (although the latter includes “master” in its meaning!). How much better – but not exactly beneficial for her point – it would have been to note that “Lord” here is the same word the rebellious Saul of Tarsus used in his conversion experience on the Road to Damascus, crying out in Acts 9:6 to the ascended Christ, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” (Perhaps, as a feminist Bible teacher, she will give us a list of where kurios is used of or to women; it would be interesting.) Then she offers an illustration of a divorcee whose marriage, she says, was ruined by trying to be a submissive wife. Obviously, we don’t know the other side of that story so can’t comment, but from there she went to the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31 (which really has nothing to do with the subject one way or another), and the remainder of the chapter is about some new “covering” idea (so new to us, we hadn’t heard it before).

The next chapter deals with another type of submission (individual control over others). I wondered why, reading her examples, it was in the book. Perhaps some will be helped by it if they are being controlled by outsiders to the point of co-dependency. The next chapter is about voices – how do you know which are from God and which are not; quite frankly, we do go into listening voices from anywhere! All we need to know is in the Word of God! And the next chapter is related, partly because she believes in a “gift of prophecy” for today that is supposed to be a message from God not found in the Bible. But that is enough; you get the idea.

Another negative note: some of the heroes of Mrs. Bulle, who appears to be charismatic (she attended Bible school, but didn’t say where – although it was one where she, her husband and three children were involved in a “communal-living fellowship” – she does say she was raised a Nazarene) are definitely not our heroes. She praises by quoting glowingly, for example, E. Stanley Jones. In our judgment, he would be a better illustration of a “face of deception.” She also refers to those “slain in the spirit” at divorcee/preacher Kathryn Kuhl-man’s meetings, whom we felt was as phony as a $3 bill. On the other hand, she quotes good men like A. W. Tozer.

In a word: there are better books out there on this subject!

Bethany House Publishers

Bloomington, MN

13 Chapters

220 Pages

$10.99, Paper