Mild mannered, soft spoken, and the son of a preacher, Robert Courtney was a well-respected member of his Kansas City church. He was a deacon and choir member. Mr. Courtney even pledged $1,000,000 to the Northland Cathedral Assembly of God building fund. But Mr. Courtney had a dark secret. An owner of two pharmacies, he increased his fortune by diluting his customer's cancer drugs for over ten years. Eventually his scheme was uncovered by a suspicious oncologist, Dr. Verda Hunter. She had one of Courtney's prescriptions tested, discovered the awful truth and contacted the FBI. Following a sting operation, Courtney's pharmacy was raided and evidence was collected. When the FBI set up a victims hotline, over 3,000 people responded. The impact on people's lives was staggering. One FBI agent said she tearfully had to tell victims, "Your mother or father may have died because they did not receive proper chemo." The effect of the crime was especially insidious -- not only was the cancer treatment ineffective, but too low a dose of chemotherapy can build resistance and further reduce chances of survival. How could someone commit such a heinous act? That was the question one victim asked:

But for licensed nurse practitioner Connie Remby, who underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer using drugs provided by the pharmacist five years ago, Courtney's alleged tampering is beyond explanation. "When you've got cancer, you are fighting with all your life," says Remby, 45, whose cancer has since spread to her bones and brain. "You're giving everything you can to try to get better. For someone to take advantage of someone in this situation is unthinkable." [1]

From 1990 to 2001, Courtney had diluted about 98,000 prescriptions for 4,200 patients and 400 doctors. The prescriptions included not only cancer drugs, but virtually any drug that could be diluted, including drugs treating diabetes, AIDS, and infertility. On 12/5/02, Courtney was sentenced to 30 years in prison. You can watch the episode of "American Greed" here. And here is an article on the life of Mr. Courtney.

A More Dastardly Case of Adulterating a Miracle Drug

But there is widespread evidence of an even greater crime than Robert Courtney committed.
 

There exists a miracle drug for the treatment of an especially acute and deadly form of cancer. The Latin name for the disease is Sceleris, but it is commonly known as "Sin Cancer." The only known cure for this fatal disease is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the only treatment that can counteract sin's deadly effects. The Lord Jesus Christ has written the exact prescription with the precise medicine to terminate the eternal consequences of sin. But many unscrupulous "pharmacists" (a/k/a theologians) have been writing a new prescription of their own. Since "sin cancer" has eternal consequences (all other forms of cancer only kill the body), their product tampering is all the more dangerous.

There are several important ingredients that make up the gospel prescription. If these ingredients are adulterated or removed, the treatment is ineffective. Mr. Courtney reduced the dosage but he did not change the ingredients. He sold small doses to make more money. His crime was horrific, but unscrupulous theologians of our day are worse. The ecumenical "gospel" of these modern theologian/pharmacists cures no one of sin's consequences. Let me share with you the way they substitute the phony with the real and get away with it. It is sometimes difficult to detect, and therefore a greater danger to their unwitting patients. They willfully and skillfully remove salvation by faith alone while leaving "gospel terminology" that masks what is missing. Their ruse is to take out the most important ingredient of the Gospel (faith alone), and cleverly camouflage that it is missing. One way they do this is by changing word order: "Through Christ alone are we justified, when we receive this salvation in faith." (from the Catholic-Lutheran Accord). Another way is to remove the critical ingredient "imputation," and replace it the improved product "impartation."

Their resulting product is fatal. They say, "Go ahead! Take this prescription. A little bit of gospel truth is better than no gospel truth at all." But this is a lie from the pit of hell; it is a stratagem of Satan. There is only one true prescription for the Gospel. It is faith alone in Christ alone. Anything more or less is a counterfeit prescription. They have replaced the medication, leaving the labeling intact. They minimize or ignore critical differences (gospel ingredients) in order to affirm the potency of the Roman Catholic "gospel."

I have chosen four of these theologian/pharmacists for further study.

Four Very Evil Apothecaries

1) Evil Pharmacist Norman Geisler (Co-founder, Southern Evangelical Seminary, Matthews, NC)

In their book, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, Norman Geisler and Ralph McKenzie set about proving that Catholicism has a defective gospel. But then they conclude that Catholics are Christian. So desperate are these ecumenists to have Rome on their side in the culture wars that they are willing for the poisonous and ineffective Roman Catholic "gospel" to be administered to the billion or so Catholics in the world. Worse, by downsizing the true gospel, their ecumenical "gospel" builds up resistance in Catholics to the true gospel medicine. The Catholic says, "Why should I try your gospel medication if mine is just fine?"

Geisler and McKenzie analyze whether the Roman Catholic Church is a true church. They write: "Since a 'true church' must proclaim the 'true gospel' (Gal. 1:8; 2:4), the answer will depend on what is essential to the true gospel." [2] Their conclusion? Although Catholicism denies essential gospel ingredients, she still has a true gospel. Analyzing their gospel tampering, Rob Zins writes:

The author's bottom line is that to define a "true church" it must proclaim the "true Gospel." But the "true Gospel" can, they say, be proclaimed without proclaiming the essential truth of forensic justification. Even though the writers define imputed righteousness as essential to the true Gospel, they are willing to say one can proclaim a "true Gospel" without it. We ask, "How can something which is essential to the truth of the Gospel be left out in the definition of the 'true Gospel'?" The authors commit theological suicide here. They are saying that one essential part of a "true Gospel" can be left out with the remainder preached as the "true Gospel." The authors go on to say that to preach a gospel bereft of an essential part of that gospel is not to preach a false gospel. In their own words, "Rather, it is merely proclaiming an incomplete gospel." This is the only charge the authors are willing to lay at the doorstep of Rome. One gets the feeling that the realtor is marketing swampland again.

Suppose you buy an automobile without an engine. The salesman did not sell you a false automobile. he merely sold you a mobile which was a little short on auto. It is still a car and will do the job. [3]

Criminal pharmacist Robert Courtney distributed false assurance to his customers. Similarly, theologians Geisler and McKenzie willfully distribute false assurance to Catholic patients by insisting that their medicine is effective in treating the disease. "Go ahead and take the Catholic medication, even though it is diluted by human merit, sacramental salvation, purgatory, indulgences, penance, prayers to Mary and the saints, etc. It should still work."

Shame on them. By denying the exclusivity of the gospel medicine, they are guilty of dispensing another gospel. They prescribe the poisoned gospel in their greed for cultural influence. They do so with the knowledge of the existence and effectiveness of the "full strength" gospel.

2) Evil Pharmacist Charles Colson (Founder of Prison Fellowship and mastermind of ECT)

Mr. Colson was the instrumental force in the movement to bring evangelicals and Roman Catholics together (ECT) to fight the culture wars. Colson tells us his motive for the movement:

"'Evangelicals and Catholics Together' seeks to continue the legacy of C. S. Lewis by focusing on the core beliefs of all true Christians so that adherents of both major traditions can work together in the common task of evangelizing the nonbelieving world." [4]

Question: How can Catholics evangelize when they don't have the evangelium?

Back in 1997, I enrolled as a seminary student at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte (RTS). Before attending even a single class, I encountered Mr. Colson at the RTS convocation. At the end of his speech, there was a time for questions. I could tell that Seminary President Ric Cannada did not want me to ask my question, but he finally called on me. My question: "Mr. Colson, don't you think it is dangerous in the postmodern times in which we live, where truth is deemed relative, to enter into agreements where the truth is not clearly explained?" He spent a few minutes relating that Prison Fellowship had a statement of faith that included the gospel, and that if Catholics were willing to serve in his organization, then it was their consciences on the line, not his. Curiously, a friend obtained a copy of a tape of the lecture and the question and answer session. My question and Mr. Colson's response were mysteriously excluded. Sort of like the 18 1/2 minute gap in the Watergate tapes!

Colson went on to lead the movement of rapprochement with Rome through eight heretical ECT documents. But perhaps his greatest "accomplishment" was the Manhattan Declaration. This document rested upon the assumption that any ol' gospel is transformative; that socially conservative Catholics and Orthodox are Christians; and that together we must take the our gospel to the world. The radical claims of ECT (e.g. evangelicals and Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ and shouldn't waste resources evangelizing each other) were assumed to be true. Many of my evangelical friends and pastors signed this grievous document.

Charles Colson died 4/21/12. Here is the report in Christianity Today related to his death.

3) Evil Pharmacist Dr. Harold O. J. Brown (Professor, Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte)

One of the courses I signed up for my first semester at RTS was entitled "The Church and the World in the 20th Century." The professor was a man named Harold (Joe) Brown (a visiting professor from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School). After the weeklong course, but before writing my term paper, the second ECT document (The Gift of Salvation) exploded on the scene. This document claimed that the Catholic and evangelical gospels are both true. Here is my summary of the seven-step thought process of ECT II:

• Disunity regarding the gospel medicine is needlessly divisive.

• We rejoice in the discovery that we (Catholics and evangelicals) both administer the Gospel.

• We (Catholics and evangelicals) disagree on just about every important ingredient of the Gospel.

• We plan on closely examining every ingredient that makes up the Gospel.

• We must not let any disagreement on the ingredients of the Gospel keep us from administering the medicine together.

• We must not administer any medicine that has been tampered.

• We will keep talking about the ingredients even while we dispense the medicine.

[Can you imagine the following discussion at the evangelical Food and Drug Administration?: "Let's discuss the effectiveness of these two medications. One study shows that the first drug cures the disease. The other study shows that the second drug is lethal. One drug includes effective ingredients. The other uses completely different ingredients that are totally ineffective. But this whole approval process is distasteful and counter-productive. We want both drug companies to be happy, so we can't let our disagreements slow down the approval process. Let's approve both drugs. Better yet, let's require them to market them together. We can always do more testing later to see why one drug works while the other is ineffective and lethal."]

Getting back to Dr. Brown. After I read ECT II, I discovered that my professor headed the list of participants! In my term paper for the course, I urged Dr. Brown to recant. I wrote: "Although I admire your great intellect, I highly question your orthopraxy. In your participation in ECT2 you have greatly blasphemed the 'faith once delivered.' It is my earnest desire that you and all the evangelical signers repent. I pray that you will take a public stand and remove your name from this heretical document." Dr. Brown responded, "Strong medicine! This is quite a blast. Is this an 'articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae' (an article by which the church stands or falls)? I admire your energy, arguments, zeal, and am moved but not persuaded yet."

Dr. Brown went on to participate in all the remaining ECT discussions. He was also hired as a full-time professor at RTS-Charlotte and was the main reason I discontinued my seminary studies at RTS. [RTS-Orlando hired another ECT participant, Frank James, to be their President from 2004-2009]. Dr. Brown died on July 8, 2007. Here is the report in Christianity Today concerning his death.

Dr. Brown was quite affable. And he was incredibly intelligent and accomplished. It is sad that (to my knowledge) he never repented of his grievous "pharmaceutical crime."

4) Evil Pharmacist Dr. Richard Land (President, Southern Evangelical Seminary)

One of the interesting characteristics of these gospel tamperers is their chameleon-like abilities. Perhaps no one displays this better than Dr. Richard Land, the former president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), and current president of Southern Evangelical Seminary (SES). Dr. Land was one of the eight evangelical participants in the initial ECT document. He proceeded to remove his name from the document. Then he signed a document stating that the Catholic Church is not an acceptable Christian communion [5]. Then he participated in ECT II. Then he removed his name from ECT II to avoid... you get the picture. The following footnote was appended to the original ECT document clarifying Dr. Land's position: "Concern over the public impression that the Southern Baptist Convention had officially endorsed ECT led Richard Land and Larry Lewis to withdraw their signatures in April, 1995, while, at the same time, making clear that they maintain their strong personal endorsement of the declaration."

In a 2013 radio debate on Moody Radio, Dr. Land stated that he is quite mystified by criticism directed toward the ECT document. Land said, "Also, in America [Catholics] are co-belligerents in the pro-life cause, they are co-belligerents in the pro-marriage cause, and we as Baptists find it helpful that they are in line with us when it comes to not having women ministers. It helps that the largest communion of Christians (emphasis added), that they are holding to those bedrock values when we are contesting those values in the culture wars." So, to Dr. Land the Roman Catholic Church is not an acceptable Christian communion and it is the largest Christian communion. You can't make this stuff up! You can listen to the entire debate here.

In 2013 Dr. Land was accused of plagiarism and disciplined by the SBC. He then retired from the ERLC (but not before the Commission presented its 2012 and 2013 John Leland Religious Liberty Awards to two of Dr. Land's Catholic friends, Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Robert George). He then was hired by SES as its President. Since I was auditing courses at SES at the time, I requested an interview with Dr. Land. I wanted him to clarify his positions on Catholicism and the Gospel. Dr. Land refused my request, but one of the trustees on the Board sent me an email on his behalf. He stated that Dr. Land holds to salvation by faith alone in Christ alone. Given Dr. Land's multiple flip flops related to the Catholic "gospel," there is one burning question that begs to be asked. Dear sir, do you believe in salvation by faith alone in Christ alone, alone? The Reformers, if they were alive today, would likely insist upon the addition of this sixth "sola." But which of them could foresee a time when two diametrically opposed belief systems could both be affirmed as true?

Warnings to Those Who Tamper with the Gospel

The Bible warns teachers that they will be held to a higher standard by God. "Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we incur a stricter judgment." James 3:1. If you are teaching gospel truths, you better be double darn certain that you've got it right. "As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed." Gal. 1:9.

Ezekiel was appointed by God as a preacher under the Old (Mosaic) Covenant. God warned him, "Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman to the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from My mouth, warn them from Me. When I say to the wicked, 'You will surely die,' and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand...Again, when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I place an obstacle before him, he will die; since you have not warned him, he shall die in his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered; but his blood I will require at your hand." Ezekiel 3:18,20.

How much greater accountability is there for the watchmen under the New Covenant? Woe to those theologians, seminary presidents and professors who know the gospel, and yet perversely tamper with it! I fear that God will require the blood of over a billion Roman Catholics at their hands.

Playing God?

One of Robert Courtney's victims was asked why she thought he did what he did. She attributed it to more than greed. "I think he liked playing God." Are the Gospel-repackagers guilty of the same offense? They seek to change the world, and they hope to do so by changing the "church." They greedily adulterate God's transformational Gospel in the hopes of converting society. E. M. Bounds writes: "To save the world and ignore the individual is not only Utopian, but every way damaging. It is the process, fair and laudable in name, to save the world, but in results it is to lose the Church, or, which amounts to the same, making the Church worldly, and thereby unfitting her for her holy and sublime mission. Christ said that gaining the world and saving the man are antagonistic ends." [6]

Associating with Evil Apothecaries

The drug companies Eli Lilly and Bristol Myers Squibb paid out a $72,000,000 settlement to the victims of Robert Courtney. It was deemed that they should have known about Courtney's shenanigans. In like manner, there is no excuse for evangelical shepherds who promote these ecumenical gospel-falsifiers. When evil apothecary Os Guinness (ECT II) was invited to my church to headline our missions conference, I was distressed. I contacted the elders of the church asking them to find someone more appropriate. Half the elders never heard of ECT; others openly approved of the movement. Nothing was done to resolve the problem. One elder contacted me to say that if I pressed the issue I would be asked to leave the church.

Church leaders who support these ecumenists are not properly protecting their flocks. "For the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds." (2 Jn. 11). The notion of the existence of a "mere Christianity" inclusive of Roman Catholicism is false. Rome is not another door off the long hallway of Christianity. She has a "gospel" that saves no one. She is not Christian.

Homework

In conclusion, I urge us to get the Gospel right. The recommended reading for the month is the book by R.C. Sproul that seeks to help us do just that.

Beware those "walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God" (2 Cor. 4:2),

Dale

Excerpts from ECT II:

We must not allow our witness as Christians to be compromised by halfhearted discipleship or needlessly divisive disputes. While we rejoice in the unity we have discovered and are confident of the fundamental truths about the gift of salvation we have affirmed, we recognize that there are necessarily interrelated questions that require further and urgent exploration. Among such questions are these: the meaning of baptismal regeneration, the Eucharist, and sacramental grace; the historic uses of the language of justification as it relates to imputed and transformative righteousness; the normative status of justification in relation to all Christian doctrine; the assertion that while justification is by faith alone, the faith that receives salvation is never alone; diverse understandings of merit, reward, purgatory, and indulgences; Marian devotion and the assistance of the saints in the life of salvation; and the possibility of salvation for those who have not been evangelized.

On these and other questions, we recognize that there are also some differences within both the Evangelical and Catholic communities. We are committed to examining these questions further in our continuing conversations. All who truly believe in Jesus Christ are brothers and sisters in the Lord and must not allow their differences, however important, to undermine this great truth, or to deflect them from bearing witness together to God's gift of salvation in Christ. "I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought" (1 Corinthians 1:10).

As Evangelicals who thank God for the heritage of the Reformation and affirm with conviction its classic confessions, as Catholics who are conscientiously faithful to the teaching of the Catholic Church, and as disciples together of the Lord Jesus Christ who recognize our debt to our Christian forebears and our obligations to our contemporaries and those who will come after us, we affirm our unity in the Gospel that we have here professed. In our continuing discussions, we seek no unity other than unity in the truth. Only unity in the truth can be pleasing to the Lord and Savior whom we together serve, for he is "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6).

Evangelical signers of the Gospel-Destroying ECT II-The Gift of Salvation:

Dr. Gerald L. Bray (Beeson Divinity School)

Dr. Bill Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ)

Dr. Harold O.J. Brown (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)

Dr. Charles Colson (Prison Fellowship Ministries)

Bishop Williams C. Frey (Episcopal Church)

Dr. Timothy George (Beeson Divinity School)

Dr. Os Guinness (The Trinity Forum)

Dr. Kent R. Hill (Eastern Nazarene College)

Dr. Richard Land (Christian Life Commission)

Rev. Max Lucado (Oak Hills Church of Christ, San Antonio, TX)

Dr. T. M. Moore (Chesapeake Theological Seminary)

Dr. Richard Mouw (Fuller Theological Seminary)

Dr. Mark A. Noll (Wheaton College)

Mr. Brian O'Connell (Interdev)

Dr. Thomas Oden (Drew University)

Dr. James J.I. Packer (Regent College, British Columbia)

Dr. Timothy R. Phillips (Wheaton College)

Dr. John Rodgers (Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry)

[1] People Magazine, Doctored Drugs, 9/10/01.

[2] Geisler & McKenzie, Roman Catholics & Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, p. 502

[3] Zins, Robert M., On the Edge of Apostasy, p. 126

[4] Colson, Charles, Evangelicals & Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission, The Common Cultural Task, p. 36

[5] CURE Statement, August, 1994

[6] Bounds, E.M., Satan: His Personality, Power and Overthrow