I’m not sure I ever met him, but a professor at the seminary I attended fascinated me. His name was Jack Deere. He taught in the Old Testament department. I realize that it is a stereotype, but in my mind, OT scholars are the most stoic of all Bible teachers. They always seemed to me to be more academic and less prone to emotionalism than others. They reminded me of a police detective on a show long ago who had a famous line: “Just the facts, sir.”

I was very surprised to learn that Deere was going to leave the seminary because he had come to believe in “signs and wonders.” From what I understood, this movement he was joining was highly emotional. It adopted many of the excesses of the charismatic movement. It believed in casting out demons, speaking in tongues, receiving prophecies, and miraculous healings. Almost universally, those in that movement preach a gospel of works. Believers must do good works in order to keep their eternal salvation. I could not wrap my head around a stoic, studious, OT professor from Dallas Seminary being part of such a group. DTS rejected all of those things. He had clearly fallen into a den of false teaching.

I did not follow Deere’s career after he left the seminary. I would occasionally hear his former students speak of what he was doing. I heard that he had fallen into the excesses and unbiblical teachings of the movement he had adopted. He believed in things such as God’s speaking to various people in audible voices. Every time I heard such reports, I just shook my head and walked away, unable to understand how Deere wound up where he did.

Recently, I read an interview that Deere conducted to promote his new book. The book describes his life. In it, he speaks of the difficulties he experienced. These were difficulties of which I was unaware. He tells of the pain and trauma he experienced years before when his father committed suicide. This impacted him from his earliest years.

But there were other devastating events in his life. His wife had been an alcoholic for decades. Her disease had wreaked havoc on their family and had almost killed her. He had a son who was a drug addict and had taken his own life. Deere is very open about his struggles.

In discussing his dad, Deere has written that he looks forward to seeing his father in the kingdom. It is clear that he still misses him, decades after his death. In the interview, he commented that some have written to him, informing him that his father will not be in the kingdom. Deere will not see him there because anybody who commits suicide will be in the lake of fire. That means his son will be there as well.

Such a comment does not surprise me. The vast majority of those in the signs and wonders movement hold to that belief. They believe that salvation can be lost and that a person who commits suicide has committed a really big sin and cannot repent of it.

I was pleasantly surprised by Deere’s response to these comments. He has spent years in that movement and has even written books supporting it. But he said his father was a believer. I don’t know what his father believed, but Deere said that every believer has eternal life that can never be lost. The fact that his father committed suicide does not change that. Deere said that the grace of the Lord guarantees that he will indeed see his father in the kingdom.

I just have to say, “Wow!” I have no idea how Deere can hold such a Biblical belief and also be a leader in a movement that denies it. It also shows me the grace of Christ. Even though he adopted so many strange beliefs and practices, Deere knows he has eternal life.

He fascinates me. I don’t understand him. But even if we have rejected sound teaching, if we have believed in Jesus for eternal life, that gift is ours. Nothing changes that. Such is the Lord’s grace towards us (2 Tim 2:13).