PROMISE KEEPERS (I)A Case of Going Beyond What is Written

A genius architect designed and built a masterful tree-house for his son and said, “Son, here is the house I said I would build you.” The house provided perfectly for every need of the boy. However, much to the grief of his father, the son gathered up some scrap lumber and built a tree-house of his own design.
Jesus the all-knowing (Heb. 4:13), built the perfect church (Mat. 16:18), and gave to it and it alone the mission of making known to man the Word of God (Eph. 3:9-11) by which “the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). However, from time to time, men try to establish an organization to replace the church and her mission. Promise Keepers is such an organization. Founded in 1990 in Boulder, Colorado, it still recruits and attracts today.
That Promise Keepers is a religious organization, there is no doubt. Promise Keepers president Randy Phillips stated, “It is not political preferences we are concerned with but biblical convictions” (The Sunday Oklahoman, Oct. 5, 1997, p. 1, 16). The October ‘97 gathering at Washington D.C. was described as “…one of the largest religious gatherings in American History…” (Ibid.). Yes, Promise Keepers is a religious organization. Thus, it must be asked, “Isn’t God’s organization good enough anymore? Or can we snub our nose at what our Father has provided and go about building our own ‘tree-houses’?”
That Promise Keepers has a creed, there is no doubt. In the booklet Promise Keepers: Men’s Conferences, 1996 (Firm Foundation, Jan.’97, p. 18), there is the “Promise Keepers Statement of Faith.” Again, it must be asked, “When did God’s Word stop giving man everything we need to become ‘ perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work’?” Or, are we to make ourselves out to be God by making our own creed (tree-house) and replacing His?
Although Promise Keepers certainly has in mind that which is good, they fail like Uzzah, Nadab, Abihu and others who, while doing God’s things, did not do it God’s way. They “…have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge” (Rom. 10:2). They have taken it upon themselves to “…go onward and abide not in the teaching of Christ…” (2 John 9). They have gone about “teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men” which is vanity before God (Mat. 15:9).
Since Promise Keepers has such a noble cause, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for some good people to accept the fact that religiously, the Promise Keepers movement is not of God. However, we must not see things through men’s eyes, but through God’s: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways, my ways, saith Jehovah. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:8-9).
Gary Henson