Written by R. Scott Clark |
Thursday, September 23, 2021
There is such a thing as a message of “cheap grace” and the Dela Cruzes would seem to be the poster children for it. Any preacher who only offers “free salvation” but who omits “take up your cross” as a consequence (not a prior condition) of that grace is a preaching a false, antinomian, Gnostic, therapeutic gospel.

Julie Roys ran a story yesterday by Sarah Einselen about a new congregation, which apparently opened this summer, in San Diego. Living Faith Church is a small congregation pastored by a husband and wife team, Stephen and Angela Dela Cruz. The salacious part of the story is that she was (is?) a porn star and he is a business coach. They met at the former Bethany University, which closed in 2011, an Assemblies of God related school. Together they claim to run ten multi-million dollar businesses. They do not say of what sort. It is not clear whether Angela Dela Cruz is still active in the porn industry but the two are clearly capitalizing on her past to generate “buzz” and interest in this congregation. One social media ad identifies her as an “adult actress,” which is code for pornstar. Judging by what one can see from videos of the services the porn angle may be generating more outrage than new members. They are clearly meeting in a very small space with relatively few people. What is more impressive, however, is how formulaic everything is. We see three musicians on a platform singing the same awful “praise music” as every other would-be mega-church in America. The messages seem to be firmly in the middle of the American evangelical therapeutic religion. Stephen is the poor-man’s Joel Osteen and he is going to help you live your best life now.
Your Porn Life Now
For the sake of discussion, since they are clearly capitalizing on her life in the porn business, let us presume that the Stephen and Angela believe and are teaching others that a being a Christian and living a judgment-free successful life are entirely compatible.  The congregation’s statement of faith looks as if it were written by students from an AOG “university” circa 2011. Whoever wrote the confession wants to be an orthodox, Arminian, Baptistic, Pentecostal. It has a relatively high view of Scripture:
The Bible is God’s Word to all people. It was written by human authors under the supernatural guidance of the Holy Spirit. Because it was inspired by God, the Bible is truth without any mixture of error and is completely relevant to our daily lives.
The Holy spirit is said to be given “subsequent to salvation” and the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” is a second blessing. “This immersion into Spirit-led living provides the Christian with the power to live a fruitful, victorious life, understanding of spiritual truth, and boldness in sharing the good news with others. He also gives us spiritual gifts. As Christians, we seek to live under His daily guidance.” If Mrs Dela Cruz is impenitent about her role in the porn industry, a major source of human trafficking and exploitation and a source of spiritual destruction for many, then they are proposing a definition of the victorious higher life hitherto unknown. Without a hint of irony their statement of faith unequivocally affirms the existence of a literal hell. Salvation is said to be by grace but the statement offers nothing on the doctrines of mortification of sin or vivification in the new life.
Therapeutic Gnosticism
If the mainstream of American evangelicalism has become entirely captive to what Christian Smith, in 2009, called “moralistic therapeutic deism” much of the rest of it has become a subsidiary: Gnostic therapeutic pentecostalism. In Deism God is largely absent. In Pentecostalism, especially of the sort being marketed by the Dela Cruzes, God is a cosmic Door Dash driver. This is not old-school Pentecostalism, which was rooted in the Holiness tradition. As Marx materialized Hegel (by turning the dialectical process of history into class warfare) so the real second blessing offered by the likes of Stephen and Angela Dela Cruz is an emotionally satisfying, financially prosperous life now. Joel Osteen has routed the Azusa Street Revival. Like all the other second-rate business coaches in the world they have the secrets to success. Mind you, unlike Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos, they are not actually producing wealth themselves but they will show you how you can do it. Instead of cheesy late-night television commercials they are holding church services with the requisite praise music, which promises to give participants that shot of endorphins followed by a rousing pep talk.
This is fundamentally Gnostic because it offers a perverse salvation through secret knowledge (Gnosis). This, of course, is what the Gnostics offered in the second century. Like the Gnostics, they hijacked Christianity through redefining terms and changing the story dramatically. In Gnosticism the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh, was rendered a mean, demiurge tied to creation, which was said to be inherently evil. The immaterial, i.e., the spiritual, was said to be good. The key to deliverance from the material world is a secret known only to true Gnostics. They developed an elaborate hierarchy of being and promised to guide followers through the maze. The Jesus of the second-century Gnostic texts is not the Jesus of the Gospels.
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Gerwig’s task as Barbie’s director was to create a movie that celebrated the doll while also acknowledging her controversial status in American culture. But if Barbie is a symbol of unattainable beauty standards, the Barbie movie is a symbol of incoherent feminist standards. Where earlier waves of feminism sought for women’s equal participation in democracy and the marketplace as women, modern feminism seeks to transcend—even leave behind—the female body altogether.

In the new movie Barbie, Greta Gerwig wants you to believe that being pregnant is weird. Midge, a pregnant Barbie doll that serves as the butt of many jokes, was discontinued “because a pregnant doll is just too weird.” Midge has no speaking parts, and characters throughout the movie are repeatedly taken aback whenever she appears. Barbie wants to empower women to be anything they are or choose to be (in the film, Barbie comes in every career, country, shade, size, and even sex) — except, apparently, the one thing that most women eventually hold in common: becoming a mother.
Mattel’s Barbie doll has always provoked conversation about womanhood and the female body. She has been an icon of femininity in the truest sense of the word: Barbie was the ideal. But Barbie has also been plagued by controversy, with some claiming she perpetuated unattainable standards rather than empowering women to overcome them. The Barbie doll’s meteoric success and then rapid decline, however, is only a mirror reflecting deeper cultural questions about what it means to be a woman.
Gerwig’s task as Barbie’s director was to create a movie that celebrated the doll while also acknowledging her controversial status in American culture. But if Barbie is a symbol of unattainable beauty standards, the Barbie movie is a symbol of incoherent feminist standards. Where earlier waves of feminism sought for women’s equal participation in democracy and the marketplace as women, modern feminism seeks to transcend—even leave behind—the female body altogether.
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When a saint’s mortal life ends, they are gathered to their people. Their soul is engulfed in the perfect love of beloved friends and family who all died clinging to Christ in faith. Mystery of mysteries: though bodiless, they were recognizable to the patriarchs and will be for us as well. But the saints will not only recognize “their people” loved and lost and now reunited. They will recognize him whom they have only seen through the eyes of faith.

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. Psalm 116:15

What is precious to you? If your house caught fire, what would you brave the flames to save? Your spouse and children, of course. Maybe a beloved pet, family photo, or treasured heirloom? That word, “precious,” is used throughout the Old Testament to describe costly jewels like the one upon the brow of David’s crown (2 Samuel 12:30). David employed the same word in Psalm 116:15 to describe God’s valuation of the death of a Christian: “Precious in the sight of the Lord, is the death of his saints.” But how can that be? The Bible calls death “the wages of sin” (Romans 6:23) and “the last enemy to be destroyed” (1 Corinthians 15:26). Death is so tragic that Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. How then can death be precious in God’s sight?
We must be careful to note that the Psalmist is not speaking about death generally. “As I live, declares the Lord GOD,” in Ezekiel 33:11, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” David is speaking exclusively of the death of saints. What is a saint? Some say saints are the best of the best believers; the cream of the Christian crop. But the Bible says that a saint is anyone “loved of God” (Romans 1:7), “sanctified in Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:2), who trust in Christ’s love (Ephesians 3:18) and belongs to his church (Ephesians 2:19). Saints are those who belong to God by grace through faith in Christ. Thus, they are “his saints” (Psalm 116:15). How then is the death of a saint precious in God’s sight?
The death of a saint is precious in the sight of the Lord because it marks the end of their suffering. Many of us know the heartache of watching a loved one decline. Many simply fade away with old age. Some are eaten from the inside out with disease. Others get lost in the cruel fog of dementia.
Days before the Lord took her home, we to see my grandmother in her nursing home. She was strapped into her wheelchair to keep her upright. If she recognized me, she couldn’t say so because she lost the power of expression and speech. She could only squeeze my hand as we recited the 23rd Psalm for her. Witnessing the end of a woman who had been so strong and vibrant the whole of her life was brutal. I cannot imagine how dreadful it must have been for her to live through it. Nor can I imagine her ecstasy when, upon taking her last breath and giving up the ghost, the clouds in her mind cleared like that Galilean storm long ago. Her frozen memory thawed like a flower breaking up through snow. Her soul’s strength renewed and, like a bird loosed from its cage, she mounted up “with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31) and flew to heaven, never to know pain, sadness, or loneliness ever again.
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