Miserable Comforter

1. Elijah Thomas Chacko teaches that Job’s moment of justification was Job 42:10. I cite several Westminster Tradition publications as evidence:

 “The conveyance of your preaching on the book of Job reinforces the doctrine that we have been discussing these few weeks – the doctrine of Justification By Faith. Thank God that this year the Holy Spirit led you to diligently seek out the point of time in which Job was justified… Thank God for the words in Job 42:9-10; God ‘accepted Job’ and turned the captivity of Job. I felt this affirms your ministry on Justification By Faith… As Sarah Harper said, it is a hard thing to grasp if we do not know the Gospel that you have been preaching. Personally, because you have drilled me in the doctrines of Preparatory Work and the Sovereignty of God… there was acquiescence to the message.” (Ruth Mary Thomas, Teaneck, NJ, USA; 5 August 2015 AD)

“Pastor showed us that Job was justified when God accepted him and his prayers, and delivered him from his captivity (Job 42:10).” (Response of Zipporah Lee to pastor’s exegesis of the book of Job, Albin, Teaneck, NJ, USA; 20 May 2018 AD)

“Zephaniah conveyed your recent message from the book of Job. It helped me to appreciate what you have tried to teach me about the central importance of Justification By Faith among the subjective facets of the Gospel… Job’s eventual justification is the culminating event when, in chapter 42, God accepts his prayer and returns his captivity.” (Sarah Harper, Part 1, Philadelphia, Grange, Ulster, UK; 27 July 2015 AD)

2. This teaching of Elijah Thomas Chacko is scripturally unsound.

From the commencement of this book, the LORD clearly owned Job as His servant, declaring that there was ‘none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil’. Though all he had was touched, Satan was proven the liar and instead of cursing God to His face, Job blessed the Name of the LORD. When smitten with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown, Job meekly received ‘evil’ (Job 2:10) at the hand of God. He was an eminent ‘example of suffering affliction, and of patience. We have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy (Jam 5:10b-11).’ Though he spake unadvisedly at times, when his three friends provoked him to darken the Almighty’s counsel with words without knowledge, yet his words were those of a sorely tested saint rather than an unregenerate sinner. As Noah before and Daniel after, Job delivered his own soul by his righteousness (Eze 14:14,20). Job’s righteousness was that which is by faith in the Son of God. He came to consider his own righteousness to be vile and abhorrent (Job 40:4; 42:6). For did not Job declare, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him (Job 13:15a)’? And did not he profess faith in his Redeemer and anticipate his bodily resurrection with the just, saying ‘I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me (Job 19:25-27)’? Long before Job’s peculiar afflictions, we have good reason to believe that here was a rich man who had entered into the kingdom of heaven. For with God all things are possible. He may have been the greatest (richest and most influential) of all the men of the east (Job 1:3), but the Almighty was with him. Indeed, he was the greatest because God was with him (Job 1:10). He had one Master, and that was God, not mammon. He laid up for himself treasures in heaven where no Sabeans or Chaldeans could ever break in and steal – no, not Satan himself. ‘He was prosperous,’ writes Matthew Henry, ‘and his prosperity put a lustre upon his piety, and gave him who was so good so much greater opportunity of doing good.’ He delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. He caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. He was eyes to the blind, and feet was he to the lame. He was a father to the poor: and the cause which he knew not he searched out (Job 29:4,13,15-16). It says a lot that Elijah Chacko’s hearers are encouraged to condemn such manifestations of grace as a mere ‘form of piety and man-ward religion’.

3. Elijah Thomas Chacko’s doctrine  that Job was justified in Job 42:10 is in clear contradiction to the teachings of the Reformers, Puritans and other eminent saints.

In the Geneva Bible marginal notes (authored by John Calvin, John Knox, Miles Coverdale and other Reformation leaders), the turning of Job’s captivity is tersely explained thus: ‘He delivered him out of the affliction wherein he was.’ There is no hint that herein was Job’s moment of justification.

In Joseph Caryl’s (1602–1673) introduction to his 12 volume commentary on the book of Job, he explains, ‘God would also shew forth this for our learning, sic. The strength, the unmoveableness of faith, how unconquerable it is, what a kind of omnipotency there is in grace. God would have all the world to take notice of this in the Book of Job, that a godly person is in vain assaulted by friends or enemies, by men or devils, by wants or wounds: though he be even benighted in his spirit, though God himself take away the light of his countenance from him, yet God would have us learn and know, that over all these a true believer is more than a conqueror. For here is one of the greatest battles fought, that ever was between man and man, between man and hell, yea between God and man; yet Job went away with the victory. True grace is often assaulted, it never was or ever shall be overthrown’ [Exposition of Job with Practical Observations].

John Gill (1697-1771) wrote concerning the first verse of the first chapter, “… as to justification, every good man is perfect; Christ has completely redeemed his people from all their sins; he has perfectly fulfilled the law in their room and stead; he has fully expiated all their transgressions, he has procured the full remission of them, and brought in a righteousness which justifies them from all; so that they are free from the guilt of sin, and condemnation by it, and are in the sight of God unblameable, irreprovable, without fault, all fair and perfectly comely; and this was Job’s case…” [extract taken from Gill’s Exposition of the Old Testament, 1810 Mathews and Leigh edition].

Rather than quoting the Reformers and Puritans at length (which would not be difficult), I invite Mr Chacko to find himself a single man among them who will plainly support his doctrine. If God has called him to ‘restore all things’ (Matt 17:11), then why is he promoting novel doctrines and not directing us to those men of undoubted wisdom and piety who are quoted above? If a doctrine is to be restored to the church, it must have once been held by the church!

4. Elijah Thomas Chacko is not an Elihu – he is a miserable comforter.

Intrinsic to Elijah’s exposition of this book is his implication that in the lives of his followers, he fulfils the role of Elihu. As Zipporah Lee put it, ‘It is under pastor’s ministry that I am urged to be more upright to consider honestly the frowning providence in my life… Thank God for the Elihu in our days in the person of our pastor. It is he who makes sense to us the dealings of God in our lives through the exposition of the holy Scriptures…’ (New Jerusalem Times, 14 June AD 2018). ‘I felt that pastor has been an Elihu to me; not only has he interpreted the Word of God to me, he has also interpreted the dealings of God towards me in His providence’ (Zechariah Tan, The Jerusalem Times, 10 July AD 2010). Elijah sees himself as Christ’s forerunner and herald. Jonathan Edwards wrote in his “miscellanies” [Entry 810, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 18, Yale]: ‘Elihu was God’s forerunner; so before the end of the church’s suffering state there shall be those raised up that shall come in the spirit and power of Elias, going before the Lord to prepare his way. Before Job was delivered [note: ‘delivered’, not ‘justified’], God appeared greatly to humble [him], and make him sensible of his infinite greatness and sovereignty, and his own nothingness, blindness, and unworthiness. So before God delivers his church from her suffering state, he will appear by the pouring [out] of a remarkable spirit of conviction and, it may be, also in terrible providences, as God appeared to Job in a whirlwind…’ To this, Elijah would surely reply, “Amen, amen! I am that Elihu! I am that Elias!” But how can he be that Elihu if his exposition of the basic tenets of this book are so fatally flawed? For just before this, Edwards had written, ‘The infirmity of human nature, with its sinful corruption, under sore affliction is livelily represented in Job. And yet there is also livelily represented in him the integrity and perseverance of true saints through their greatest trials, by God’s help. Job was under all [trials] very dear to God. God had not forsaken him, nor had he taken his faithfulness away from him, though he seemed for a while so to hide his face from him, and set him as his mark; so is it with God’s afflicted church.’ Jonathan Edwards was not proposing that Elihu was sent to prepare Job’s heart for salvation! He believed (consistent with all the Reformers and Puritans) that Job was a true saint – that he already justified. Of course, whilst Jonathan Edward’s conviction that God should raise up those that shall come in the spirit and power of Elias might be music to Elijah’s ears and confirmation of his divine calling, the single area in which Elijah Chacko attacks Jonathan Edwards is in the area of eschatology! Jonathan Edwards was anticipating forerunners to prepare the way for Christ’s millennial rule. Elijah Chacko (being amillennial and not post-millennial) believes himself to be the forerunner sent ‘before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD‘ to prepare the universal church for Christ’s Second Coming.

Elijah Chacko’s bears no resemblance to Elihu. His ministry is brutal and uncharitable. He is an accuser of the brethren. He is a minister of condemnation. Had Elijah been sat down with Job upon the ground (Job 2:13), his doctrinal position, as elucidated from his own writings, would have been very clear. Here is how I believe his counsel might have gone: Job, your problem is that you are not yet justified. You are resisting the Holy Spirit – truncating the preparatory work. Ask yourself: are these the issues of Mount Gerizim or Mount Ebal? Is this smiling providence or frowning providence? You’re bloody dishonest! It’s not even subtle! Fire has already come down from heaven and consumed your sheep and your servants. Your wicked children perished in the midst of their feasting. Look at your wife! She only thinks about shopping. Now your pockets have holes and your wife has shown her true colours. Consider your ways! Your family is covenantally cursed! God has even smitten you with leprosy. You’re a spiritual leper and you still don’t see it. You’re marked by presumption! Because the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against you, man! You’re reeling in spiritual judgments. It’s the sheer mercy of God that He hasn’t cut you off completely! God has spread dung upon your face! Yet you continue to sit there in your ash-heap boasting about your good works. Don’t be a Pharisee! Save your soul, not your face! At heart, your religion is very man-ward. It’s Arminian to the core. You’re puffed up with knowledge, but experimentally you’re bankrupt. If I were you I would cry out to God. You need to wait on Him for salvation. Salvation is of the LORD. Your good works count for nothing. You need to weep and howl until your repentance need not be repented of. You need to appreciate and brace yourself for divine deferment.