An Open Letter to Arne Tiltnes, Endre Vestvik, and Other Like-Minded Ones

Some questions that require answers:

1) Is it right or wrong to have a desire to do righteousness as the Scriptures command and exhort us to, seeing it is written about Jesus that He was anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellow brethren because He loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and when Jesus on that day will come and say, “Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!”? Is it praiseworthy or blameworthy when we feel a sincere desire and longing in our hearts to do what is right and good in God’s eyes in everything because He loved us first, sending His Son as atonement for our sins?

2) Is it good or bad that we pray to God for grace and power to perform such righteousness, seeing that the Scriptures exhort us strongly to pray?

3) Is it advisable or blameworthy to believe that these prayers are being answered, believing that we shall receive and have received such grace and power when the Scriptures say, “Ask, and you shall receive,” and, “Believe that you receive them, and you will have them,” etc.? Mark 11:24.

4) Seeing that it succeeds in this way to do what is right, is it not right and good and acceptable in God’s eyes, or is it bad and blameworthy, to thank and praise and honor God for what He has wrought in us and from what He has saved us, like a drunkard when he has been saved from his drunkenness? Or do you think that God should be thanked and honored for saving people from drunkenness but that He is not worthy of thanks and honor when He saves us from unrighteousness, anger and wrath, love of money, vanity, conceit, envy, anxiety, etc.?

5) When God thus performs His work in us, when He fills our sincere longing and desire for Him and His kingdom and His righteousness, when He blesses us so that it succeeds for us to walk in Jesus’ steps as the Scriptures say we have been called to do, and He fills us with peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, do you think that it is right or wrong to proclaim this to our fellow men—unconverted and converted—and invite all of them to partake of the same? Do you think that Jesus reproaches us for this and that He would rather we keep all this happiness to ourselves in all secrecy?

6) What would you have done if this had happened to you?

7) Do you think that we, for example, fearing that someone, out of envy, should be quiet about all this wonderful salvation and heavenly glory that God, in His great grace lets us partake of? Would we, by doing that, please God who has been so inexpressibly good and gracious to us?

Tiltnes writes that our entire doctrine is an amazing gospel of self-righteousness.

According to the above which states our outlook and how we think and speak, anyone has the opportunity to agree fully with his perception that it is an amazing gospel, and a powerful and straightforward gospel. Likewise, it appears from the above just as clearly, that it is absolutely meaningless to call it self-righteousness. It is the exact opposite!!!

It is precisely because we are so unrighteous in ourselves—we acknowledge that we are unrighteous through and through—besides being so grieved over it, that we long to be truly righteous according to God’s righteousness, according to the divine nature. We pray earnestly, powerfully, and seriously for salvation from this unrighteousness so that we increasingly obtain it, praising God for it and recommending it to everyone else.

I would like to permit myself to ask you: Have you no longing for such a salvation? Would you not like to do what is right and good in everything? Do you not believe that this is possible?

What do you do with scriptures such as 1 John 2:29? “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.” And 2 Timothy 2:19? “Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”

There is a particularly great need for everyone who mentions the name of the Lord to be saved from all unrighteousness; I was powerfully reminded of it recently. I was at the barber’s, and he spoke to another person in the barber shop about someone who had been converted, and that this person was not permitted to play cards because everything was sin to such people, except committing unrighteous acts and that kind of thing; they could carry on with those things as much as they wanted. The barber said that he had kept an eye on this for over thirty years but had yet to see one righteous man among them. He said that if he was to find an honest man, he would have to find him among worldly people.

This extremely bad commendation is possibly an exaggeration; nevertheless, there is an awful lot of truth to it.

I have now lived and worked among the friends for about thirty-six years. They are precious people who are seriously seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness, and they love righteousness and hate and depart from unrighteousness, but I have yet to hear that any of them have either taught or preached that they could do righteousness or that they were to be saved by works of the law in their own strength or through their personal sense of righteousness. On the contrary, they have proclaimed the very opposite with great power! So, unfortunately, your judgment and your condemnations will come back to haunt you.

When Tiltnes writes that we were able to creep among our Christian people on soft paws, this is, to put it mildly, highly misleading. On the contrary! We walk openly and honestly in the light of day, fighting the good fight of faith with weapons at the ready and with warm hearts, publicly and in homes, verbally and in writing. Glory to God! Just as God in His great grace and goodness toward us saves us from all unrighteousness and ungodliness, so He also saves us from all deceitful ways. There are some people who have come to experience it, for God’s grace toward us has not been in vain. God and His amazing gospel are rightly entitled to this praise!

I want to remind you of the following verses in Paul’s letter to Titus: Chapter 1:16 and Chapter 2:7-8, 12, 14-15, and Chapter 3:5-11, 14-15. Take a good look at these scriptures as far as righteousness and self-righteousness are concerned, and particularly when it pertains to false teachers. Pay special attention to the character of a false teacher in verse 11: “Knowing that such a person is warped and sinning, being self-condemned.”

By God’s great grace we are going in the opposite direction by overcoming sin and having a good conscience toward God and men, so that even our adversaries usually give us a very good testimony, and we can give you the good news that it is becoming increasingly better by God blessing us with revivals within and without, more and more. Therefore this characteristic of false teachers is undeniably much more fittingly applied to others!

Your lying allegations and frivolous condemnations will, according to God’s Word, come back to haunt you. Oh, that you would and could be converted from all this before it is too late!

Who is it that you are condemning? A flock of dearly bought souls who are wholeheartedly serving God day and night with a good conscience, with peace and joy and thankfulness; a flock about whom you will in time have more and more reason to say, “Behold, how they love one another!”

May the Lord forgive you (for there is power, tremendous power in the atonement) and open your eyes to your blatant error. That is my wish and my prayer for you.

Abiding in the love of Christ, loving greetings from your

Elias Aslaksen