CHRISTIANITY TODAY AND RICHARD FOSTER
In "A Life Formed in the Spirit," Christianity Today is once again celebrating Richard Foster's "legacy" -- which is one, unfortunately, of great heresy.
Failing to test the spirits, Foster followed his Quaker training in silence and meditation to reach an altered state of consciousness in which he believes to have met Jesus personally.
Sound bizarre? It should, but Foster taught this same meditative technique, step-by-step, in the first edition of "Celebration of Discipline," with the promise that if you visualize and focus on Jesus, it will be more than an exercise of the mind, and that Christ will literally, actually "come to you":
"[I]n your imagination allow your spiritual body, shining with light, to rise out of your physical body. Look back so that you can see yourself lying in the grass and reassure your body that you will return momentarily ... Go deeper and deeper into outer space until there is nothing except the warm presence of the eternal Creator. Rest in His presence."
In this same volume Foster boldly declared, "let us embrace the New Age with abandon" (paraphrase-need to confirm source). Both of these statements have been carefully excised in later editions in order to disarm objections to these anti-biblical references.
In spite of Foster's wholehearted embrace of shamanism and New Spirituality, he continues to be a celebrated "hero of the faith," championed by such publications as Christianity Today magazine, for which Foster serves as an "Advisory Editor."
What's interesting is that both Foster and Willard cut their teeth in the Quaker Friends Church, whose founder (George Fox) preached New Age Universalism -- and with which Foster and Willard have pollinated (polluted) the entire Body of Christ under the guise of "Spiritual Formation."
The "celebration" of this fact is proof positive of the Word of God, which prophesied, "in latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils" (1 Tim 4:1).
Foster should not be celebrated, nor his writings, but soundly rebuked by CT, and rejected by all who fear God.
But tragically, Christianity Today is simply walking in the footsteps of its founder, who "had nothing but praise for his long-time friend John Paul II and in particular for 'his strong Catholic faith.' Furthermore, [Graham] declared that there were no essential disagreements between them theologically."*
John Paul II was personally acquainted with the Dali Lama and allowed this self-worshiping "god-man" to place a statue of Buddah on the Catholic altar to perform prayer rituals at the church of St. Peter at Assisi.*
If Billy Graham and Foster are really in the TRUE faith (once delivered unto the saints), why have they united with false religions and encouraged the church to follow after other gods?
Again, this is fulfillment of 1 Tim 4:1, indicating that deception and apostasy are in full bloom, just as our Lord warned would be the first and foremost sign of the times before his return (Matthew 24:3-27).
(see "Hello Dalai" by T. A. McMahon for more details) http://www.thebereancall.org/node/6982
November 1, 2008
September 8, 2008
Truth is Irrelevant to the Compromising Church
Shameful Ironies!
Dave Hunt
Martin Luther is remembered and widely honored today in much of the world—certainly throughout the West. The recent movie about his life was a Hollywood success that attracted large secular audiences in spite of its religious content. Luther stood up courageously against the false doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church despite Pope Leo X’s determination to arrest and burn him alive at the stake. He had been disillusioned while visiting the Vatican and seeing the hypocrisy and open immorality among the clergy from priest to pope. The final straw was Rome’s selling of indulgences for supposedly releasing one’s dead relatives from purgatory to enter heaven. The infamous sales pitch that raised millions of dollars promised, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” The proceeds from this shameless scam paid for repairing and enlarging St. Peter’s Basilica. That awesome structure stands today as a monument to the false gospel that Church still regularly preaches!
Disillusioned and furious, Luther wrote his Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (known as “The Ninety-five Theses”) and nailed it to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. Copies were widely distributed in several European languages, shaking Europe, inciting heated debate, sparking the Reformation and the exodus of millions from the Roman Catholic Church—and hopefully bringing salvation to many of them.
Although Luther retained some of his Catholicism, his bold declaration before the Imperial Diet at Worms (in stark contrast to the attitude of so many Christians today) has inspired millions: “I am bound by the Scriptures...and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything...here I stand; may God help me.” That he really meant what he said is proved by the fact that it should have cost him his life had not some powerful German princes taken up his cause and protected him in protest against Rome—an event from which we get the designation “Protestant.”
Desperate to maintain the Church’s totalitarian authority, Catholic bishops and cardinals launched a counter-Reformation defining Church doctrines and demanding obedience thereto at the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Its Canons and Decrees (see Resources) denounced the sole authority of Scripture affirmed by Luther, denied salvation by faith in Christ without Church sacraments and good works, and basically rejected everything the Reformers asked the Church to accept in submission to God’s Word. Trent pronounced more than 100 anathemas (excommunication/damnation) against all who accepted any Reformation teaching. It was costly to stand for the truth of God’s Word in those days, and many thousands would not compromise their convictions in spite of torture and death.
We are in great need of a revival of such unwavering conviction today. It will not come, however, without an awakening of an individual hunger and thirst after righteousness (Mt 5:6) and deep passion for our Lord and for His Word. Sadly, the truth of God is not only neglected and compromised today but is actually undermined by many whom millions of Christians look up to as evangelical leaders. Tragically, multitudes are being prepared to follow the great delusion that will befall those who “received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved” (2 Thes 2:8-12).
Is the fifteenth-century Reformation and Rome’s opposition to it at that time merely interesting history with little relationship to the church and world today? Hardly! The battle continues and has reached a far deadlier phase. A growing delusion has deceived multitudes into embracing ecumenical compromise while imagining that they are still on the Lord’s side.
In 1962, at the opening of Vatican II in Rome, Pope John XXIII affirmed, “I do accept entirely all that has been decided and declared at the Council of Trent.” Vatican II itself “proposes again the decrees of the Council of Trent.” On 12/31/95, honoring the 450th anniversary of the opening of Trent, Pope John Paul II declared, “Its conclusions maintain all their value.”
Regardless of what a Catholic friend, a liberal priest, or a professor at a Catholic university may say, Trent remains the official teaching of Rome and has been reconfirmed many times since by the highest Church authority. Here are only a few of Trent’s anathemas, all of which were renewed by Vatican II, The Code of Canon Law, and the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, and which remain today as the official teaching of Roman Catholicism, sustaining the inflexible dogmas of that “infallible” Church, regardless of statements by anyone to the contrary:
* If anyone denies that by...baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted [or] denies that...[the] justice, sanctification and redemption...of Jesus Christ is applied both to adults and to infants by the sacrament of baptism...let him be anathema.... (Rome’s emphasis)
* If anyone says that the sacraments of the New Law [i.e., the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church] are not necessary for salvation...and that without them...men obtain from God through faith alone the grace of justification...let him be anathema....
* If anyone says that baptism is...not necessary for salvation, let him be anathema....
* If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out...that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema....
* If anyone says that the sacrifice of the mass...wherein that life-giving victim by which we are reconciled to the Father is daily immolated on the altar by priests...is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross but not a propitiatory one...offered for the living and the dead, for sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities, let him be anathema.
* No bolder nor clearer rejection of the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ could be declared. This brief sample presents the actual teaching of Roman Catholicism as it is taught to and practiced by hundreds of millions of Catholics today. There is no disputing the fact that this is a false gospel, which, sadly, holds Roman Catholics in bondage on their way to the flames—not of a “purgatory” invented by popes, but to the eternal Lake of Fire. How can those who profess to admire Luther and the Reformation defend Catholicism?
Given these indisputable facts, no evangelical could call Roman Catholics born-again Christians.The shameful irony is that so many evangelical leaders and their followers, while claiming to honor the Reformation and its gospel of salvation by faith alone in Jesus Christ, at the same time close their eyes to the truth and act as though the Reformation never occurred and as if Catholics believe the biblical gospel. Have we forgotten that those who do not believe the gospel are eternally lost? Will their endless doom be on our hands?
Shameful ironies abound. Although the Roman Catholic Church no longer burns opponents at the stake (a practice now repugnant even to the secular world), it still maintains every false teaching and practice opposed by Luther and his fellow Reformers, thereby deceiving countless millions. It still teaches salvation through baptism, good works, and the other sacraments mediated by Mary as the “doorway to Christ”; it still offers indulgences at a price for release from purgatory to heaven; and it still rejects the final authority of Scripture! All of the anathemas pronounced by Trent against Protestant beliefs remain in full force and effect. Yet many of Luther’s modern followers now embrace Roman Catholicism as the true gospel!
On 10/31/99, representatives of the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church signed a Joint Declaration (JDDJ) declaring that they had resolved the major differences that caused the Reformation. Not one doctrine or practice had changed in the Catholic Church. While Lutherans were congratulating themselves on this wonderful “agreement,” Pope John Paul II was offering special indulgences unto salvation for the year 2000. Had Martin Luther been alive, he would have denounced the traitors leading the church that bears his name and would have nailed his “Ninety-five Theses” to the door of the Lutheran World Federation headquarters! How can we explain the blindness leading to this unconscionable betrayal of the Reformation, and of Christ and His Word?
Five years earlier, no less shameful, evangelical leaders (Bill Bright, Charles Colson, Os Guinness, Richard Mouw [president of Fuller Theological Seminary], J.I. Packer, Pat Robertson, John White [former president of National Association of Evangelicals], et al.), had endorsed “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium” (ECT). It calls for evangelicals to join Roman Catholics in evangelizing the world, and states, “We thank God for the discovery of one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.”
Nor was ECT anything new, but the culmination of a compromise of truth that had been growing within the evangelical movement for a long time. For at least 40 years prior to ECT, Billy Graham had been declaring that his beliefs were basically the same as those of orthodox Roman Catholics, and that he and the Pope agreed on almost everything, including the way of salvation! The same stance had long been adopted by evangelical universities such as Westmont and Wheaton, publications such as Christianity Today and Charisma, organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ, Youth With A Mission, and World Vision, as well as by other evangelical institutions and leaders. Highlighting evangelicalism’s schizophrenia, Wheaton, which has a large Center and Museum honoring Billy Graham and which hires short-term Catholic professors, last year fired a popular professor for “converting to Catholicism,” while calling him "a gifted brother in Christ"!
Martin Luther and the other Reformers would have died at the stake rather than sign such documents as JDDJ and ECT! How do we explain today’s denial of all that the Reformation stood for by those who claim to honor it and to follow in the faith of the Reformers? Attempting to fathom such spiritual schizophrenia, The New York Times, in its March 30, 1994, announcement of ECT, had written:
They toiled together in the movements against abortion and pornography, and now leading Catholics and evangelicals are asking their flocks...to finally accept each other as Christians. In what’s being called a historic declaration, evangelicals...joined with conservative Roman Catholic leaders...[and] urged Catholics and evangelicals to stop aggressive proselytization of each other’s flocks. John White, president of Geneva College and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said the statement was a “triumphalistic moment” in American religious life after centuries of distrust....
The gospel of Jesus Christ, by which alone one is born again (1 Pt 1:22-25) is being denied. That is the issue, with the eternal destiny of souls hanging in the balance. While they did not personally sign ECT, Bill Hybels and Rick Warren, like so many other evangelical leaders, give the appearance of full cooperation and agreement with Rome. In violation of the clear command of Scripture to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), neither Hybels nor Warren nor most other evangelical leaders, including Billy Graham, will use their huge influence to bring any warning or correction—to Rome or to anyone else!
Even Islam is defended as a valid “faith” that Rick Warren cooperates with in working (through his P. E.A.C.E Plan) for what he calls a “New Reformation.” In its advancement, he says he “would trust any imam or priest or rabbi....” Do we no longer believe the gospel and that those who reject it are eternally lost?
John Paul II denounced everything the Reformation stood for, yet he, too, is highly honored by those who still praise Luther. How can we honor two diametrically opposed beliefs at the same time? Have “Christians” gone mad?! Words have changed their definitions, contradictory convictions are simultaneously professed, and truth is re-defined to suit anyone’s taste. We are adrift on an ocean of meaninglessness without rudder or compass—yet nearly everyone praises our “progress.” Exactly like the world, the church (“rich, and increased with goods” – Rv 3:17) willingly blurs the essential differences between God’s truth and Satan’s lies. Oh, yes, evangelical leaders still claim to affirm God’s Word, yet who stands up against the false doctrines made popular by today’s “Christian” radio and TV or against the “mother of harlots” (Rv 17:5) as did Luther?
Though lip service is still given to the Reformation, the deep convictions that birthed it have been compromised. The hour grows late and the evangelical church desperately needs to face some honest questions:
1. What was the purpose of the Reformation?
2. Was its uncompromising affirmation of biblical truth appropriate in Luther’s day but not now?
3. What did it stand for at that time, at the cost of so many martyrs and so much suffering, that should now be denied?
4. Have Jesus Christ and His gospel changed?
5. Has any belief or practice changed in the Catholic Church that would justify evangelicals embracing Catholicism as the biblical gospel?
While evangelicals are literally thumbing their noses at the Reformers, a powerful Reformation of Islam is gathering momentum in the Muslim world. Urgent calls go forth to abstain from the fleshly immorality of America, “the Great Satan.” After the stunning defeats by Israel in 1948 and 1967, imams began to preach that Allah was not happy and that Muslims must get back to the Qur’an and true Islam. The result has been a growing awakening of fundamentalist Islam with its accompanying terrorism.
At the same time, the “Christian” West sinks into ever-deepening depravity. As one example, Howard Stern’s foul mouth and glorification of immorality have made him the highest paid radio personality in the U.S. That movies, television, and radio shows continue to grow ever bolder in their mocking of biblical truth and promotion of homosexuality and other shameful perversions only reflects what the vast majority of Westerners, including Catholics and Protestants, want and enjoy.
The Bible hasn’t changed. God hasn’t changed. The gospel hasn’t changed. Has our hope changed? Instead of “looking for that blessed hope...the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Ti 2:13), are we looking instead to “Christian” politicians for salvation? The evangelical church today is in the mood of accommodation, unity, compromise. Are these the “perilous times” (2 Tm 3:1) ominously foretold in Scripture? TBC
Dave Hunt
Martin Luther is remembered and widely honored today in much of the world—certainly throughout the West. The recent movie about his life was a Hollywood success that attracted large secular audiences in spite of its religious content. Luther stood up courageously against the false doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church despite Pope Leo X’s determination to arrest and burn him alive at the stake. He had been disillusioned while visiting the Vatican and seeing the hypocrisy and open immorality among the clergy from priest to pope. The final straw was Rome’s selling of indulgences for supposedly releasing one’s dead relatives from purgatory to enter heaven. The infamous sales pitch that raised millions of dollars promised, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” The proceeds from this shameless scam paid for repairing and enlarging St. Peter’s Basilica. That awesome structure stands today as a monument to the false gospel that Church still regularly preaches!
Disillusioned and furious, Luther wrote his Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences (known as “The Ninety-five Theses”) and nailed it to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. Copies were widely distributed in several European languages, shaking Europe, inciting heated debate, sparking the Reformation and the exodus of millions from the Roman Catholic Church—and hopefully bringing salvation to many of them.
Although Luther retained some of his Catholicism, his bold declaration before the Imperial Diet at Worms (in stark contrast to the attitude of so many Christians today) has inspired millions: “I am bound by the Scriptures...and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything...here I stand; may God help me.” That he really meant what he said is proved by the fact that it should have cost him his life had not some powerful German princes taken up his cause and protected him in protest against Rome—an event from which we get the designation “Protestant.”
Desperate to maintain the Church’s totalitarian authority, Catholic bishops and cardinals launched a counter-Reformation defining Church doctrines and demanding obedience thereto at the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Its Canons and Decrees (see Resources) denounced the sole authority of Scripture affirmed by Luther, denied salvation by faith in Christ without Church sacraments and good works, and basically rejected everything the Reformers asked the Church to accept in submission to God’s Word. Trent pronounced more than 100 anathemas (excommunication/damnation) against all who accepted any Reformation teaching. It was costly to stand for the truth of God’s Word in those days, and many thousands would not compromise their convictions in spite of torture and death.
We are in great need of a revival of such unwavering conviction today. It will not come, however, without an awakening of an individual hunger and thirst after righteousness (Mt 5:6) and deep passion for our Lord and for His Word. Sadly, the truth of God is not only neglected and compromised today but is actually undermined by many whom millions of Christians look up to as evangelical leaders. Tragically, multitudes are being prepared to follow the great delusion that will befall those who “received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved” (2 Thes 2:8-12).
Is the fifteenth-century Reformation and Rome’s opposition to it at that time merely interesting history with little relationship to the church and world today? Hardly! The battle continues and has reached a far deadlier phase. A growing delusion has deceived multitudes into embracing ecumenical compromise while imagining that they are still on the Lord’s side.
In 1962, at the opening of Vatican II in Rome, Pope John XXIII affirmed, “I do accept entirely all that has been decided and declared at the Council of Trent.” Vatican II itself “proposes again the decrees of the Council of Trent.” On 12/31/95, honoring the 450th anniversary of the opening of Trent, Pope John Paul II declared, “Its conclusions maintain all their value.”
Regardless of what a Catholic friend, a liberal priest, or a professor at a Catholic university may say, Trent remains the official teaching of Rome and has been reconfirmed many times since by the highest Church authority. Here are only a few of Trent’s anathemas, all of which were renewed by Vatican II, The Code of Canon Law, and the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, and which remain today as the official teaching of Roman Catholicism, sustaining the inflexible dogmas of that “infallible” Church, regardless of statements by anyone to the contrary:
* If anyone denies that by...baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted [or] denies that...[the] justice, sanctification and redemption...of Jesus Christ is applied both to adults and to infants by the sacrament of baptism...let him be anathema.... (Rome’s emphasis)
* If anyone says that the sacraments of the New Law [i.e., the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church] are not necessary for salvation...and that without them...men obtain from God through faith alone the grace of justification...let him be anathema....
* If anyone says that baptism is...not necessary for salvation, let him be anathema....
* If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out...that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema....
* If anyone says that the sacrifice of the mass...wherein that life-giving victim by which we are reconciled to the Father is daily immolated on the altar by priests...is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross but not a propitiatory one...offered for the living and the dead, for sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities, let him be anathema.
* No bolder nor clearer rejection of the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ could be declared. This brief sample presents the actual teaching of Roman Catholicism as it is taught to and practiced by hundreds of millions of Catholics today. There is no disputing the fact that this is a false gospel, which, sadly, holds Roman Catholics in bondage on their way to the flames—not of a “purgatory” invented by popes, but to the eternal Lake of Fire. How can those who profess to admire Luther and the Reformation defend Catholicism?
Given these indisputable facts, no evangelical could call Roman Catholics born-again Christians.The shameful irony is that so many evangelical leaders and their followers, while claiming to honor the Reformation and its gospel of salvation by faith alone in Jesus Christ, at the same time close their eyes to the truth and act as though the Reformation never occurred and as if Catholics believe the biblical gospel. Have we forgotten that those who do not believe the gospel are eternally lost? Will their endless doom be on our hands?
Shameful ironies abound. Although the Roman Catholic Church no longer burns opponents at the stake (a practice now repugnant even to the secular world), it still maintains every false teaching and practice opposed by Luther and his fellow Reformers, thereby deceiving countless millions. It still teaches salvation through baptism, good works, and the other sacraments mediated by Mary as the “doorway to Christ”; it still offers indulgences at a price for release from purgatory to heaven; and it still rejects the final authority of Scripture! All of the anathemas pronounced by Trent against Protestant beliefs remain in full force and effect. Yet many of Luther’s modern followers now embrace Roman Catholicism as the true gospel!
On 10/31/99, representatives of the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church signed a Joint Declaration (JDDJ) declaring that they had resolved the major differences that caused the Reformation. Not one doctrine or practice had changed in the Catholic Church. While Lutherans were congratulating themselves on this wonderful “agreement,” Pope John Paul II was offering special indulgences unto salvation for the year 2000. Had Martin Luther been alive, he would have denounced the traitors leading the church that bears his name and would have nailed his “Ninety-five Theses” to the door of the Lutheran World Federation headquarters! How can we explain the blindness leading to this unconscionable betrayal of the Reformation, and of Christ and His Word?
Five years earlier, no less shameful, evangelical leaders (Bill Bright, Charles Colson, Os Guinness, Richard Mouw [president of Fuller Theological Seminary], J.I. Packer, Pat Robertson, John White [former president of National Association of Evangelicals], et al.), had endorsed “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium” (ECT). It calls for evangelicals to join Roman Catholics in evangelizing the world, and states, “We thank God for the discovery of one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.”
Nor was ECT anything new, but the culmination of a compromise of truth that had been growing within the evangelical movement for a long time. For at least 40 years prior to ECT, Billy Graham had been declaring that his beliefs were basically the same as those of orthodox Roman Catholics, and that he and the Pope agreed on almost everything, including the way of salvation! The same stance had long been adopted by evangelical universities such as Westmont and Wheaton, publications such as Christianity Today and Charisma, organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ, Youth With A Mission, and World Vision, as well as by other evangelical institutions and leaders. Highlighting evangelicalism’s schizophrenia, Wheaton, which has a large Center and Museum honoring Billy Graham and which hires short-term Catholic professors, last year fired a popular professor for “converting to Catholicism,” while calling him "a gifted brother in Christ"!
Martin Luther and the other Reformers would have died at the stake rather than sign such documents as JDDJ and ECT! How do we explain today’s denial of all that the Reformation stood for by those who claim to honor it and to follow in the faith of the Reformers? Attempting to fathom such spiritual schizophrenia, The New York Times, in its March 30, 1994, announcement of ECT, had written:
They toiled together in the movements against abortion and pornography, and now leading Catholics and evangelicals are asking their flocks...to finally accept each other as Christians. In what’s being called a historic declaration, evangelicals...joined with conservative Roman Catholic leaders...[and] urged Catholics and evangelicals to stop aggressive proselytization of each other’s flocks. John White, president of Geneva College and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said the statement was a “triumphalistic moment” in American religious life after centuries of distrust....
The gospel of Jesus Christ, by which alone one is born again (1 Pt 1:22-25) is being denied. That is the issue, with the eternal destiny of souls hanging in the balance. While they did not personally sign ECT, Bill Hybels and Rick Warren, like so many other evangelical leaders, give the appearance of full cooperation and agreement with Rome. In violation of the clear command of Scripture to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), neither Hybels nor Warren nor most other evangelical leaders, including Billy Graham, will use their huge influence to bring any warning or correction—to Rome or to anyone else!
Even Islam is defended as a valid “faith” that Rick Warren cooperates with in working (through his P. E.A.C.E Plan) for what he calls a “New Reformation.” In its advancement, he says he “would trust any imam or priest or rabbi....” Do we no longer believe the gospel and that those who reject it are eternally lost?
John Paul II denounced everything the Reformation stood for, yet he, too, is highly honored by those who still praise Luther. How can we honor two diametrically opposed beliefs at the same time? Have “Christians” gone mad?! Words have changed their definitions, contradictory convictions are simultaneously professed, and truth is re-defined to suit anyone’s taste. We are adrift on an ocean of meaninglessness without rudder or compass—yet nearly everyone praises our “progress.” Exactly like the world, the church (“rich, and increased with goods” – Rv 3:17) willingly blurs the essential differences between God’s truth and Satan’s lies. Oh, yes, evangelical leaders still claim to affirm God’s Word, yet who stands up against the false doctrines made popular by today’s “Christian” radio and TV or against the “mother of harlots” (Rv 17:5) as did Luther?
Though lip service is still given to the Reformation, the deep convictions that birthed it have been compromised. The hour grows late and the evangelical church desperately needs to face some honest questions:
1. What was the purpose of the Reformation?
2. Was its uncompromising affirmation of biblical truth appropriate in Luther’s day but not now?
3. What did it stand for at that time, at the cost of so many martyrs and so much suffering, that should now be denied?
4. Have Jesus Christ and His gospel changed?
5. Has any belief or practice changed in the Catholic Church that would justify evangelicals embracing Catholicism as the biblical gospel?
While evangelicals are literally thumbing their noses at the Reformers, a powerful Reformation of Islam is gathering momentum in the Muslim world. Urgent calls go forth to abstain from the fleshly immorality of America, “the Great Satan.” After the stunning defeats by Israel in 1948 and 1967, imams began to preach that Allah was not happy and that Muslims must get back to the Qur’an and true Islam. The result has been a growing awakening of fundamentalist Islam with its accompanying terrorism.
At the same time, the “Christian” West sinks into ever-deepening depravity. As one example, Howard Stern’s foul mouth and glorification of immorality have made him the highest paid radio personality in the U.S. That movies, television, and radio shows continue to grow ever bolder in their mocking of biblical truth and promotion of homosexuality and other shameful perversions only reflects what the vast majority of Westerners, including Catholics and Protestants, want and enjoy.
The Bible hasn’t changed. God hasn’t changed. The gospel hasn’t changed. Has our hope changed? Instead of “looking for that blessed hope...the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Ti 2:13), are we looking instead to “Christian” politicians for salvation? The evangelical church today is in the mood of accommodation, unity, compromise. Are these the “perilous times” (2 Tm 3:1) ominously foretold in Scripture? TBC
September 7, 2008
Benny Hinn - Healer or Heretic?
The Heretic
D Magazine - July 2003
By John Bloom
Controversial televangelist and faith healer Benny Hinn came to Texas in 1999, abandoning his congregation in Florida to build a World Health Center in Irving. But Hinn - whose lifestyle more closely resembles Michael Jackson's than Jerry Falwell's - recently got word from on high to delay his plans for the theme park/New Age miracle spa. Thank God. If you drive west from the city, through the neo-modern lunarscape of Las Colinas, past the airport on our denuded prairie, into the warren of faceless office buildings that make up cosmopolitan Grapevine, you'll never find Benny Hinn.
He wants it that way. The nerve center of his worldwide organization is tucked away in a group of cheap, white, nondescript buildings that look like the kind of domiciles favored by mafia fronts on the wharves of New Jersey. Inside, several dozen employees process an estimated $100 million per year in donations from people who believe in Hinn as a sort of Elmer Gantry for the 21st century. (Obviously they didn't read the novel.)
Now go the other way, into the cul-de-sacs and barrios of deep East Dallas. On a dead-end street next to a nursing home, in an expansive two-story house that doesn't look like a mafia front, even though it was once owned by the Dallas mob, the Trinity Foundation works 24/7 trying to find out just how much money passes through Grapevine, where it comes from, and where it goes. Members of the Christian watchdog organization do so by running undercover operations, infiltrations, spying, surveillance, the cultivation of ties to disgruntled ex-employees, and even going through Benny Hinn's garbage in an effort to, well, to make him prove he's not a fraud.
"All we want is for Benny Hinn to make good on promises he made to me in 1993," says Ole Anthony, president of the Trinity Foundation. "He promised he would stop airing fake healings, that he would medically verify all healings, that he would wait six months after the healing before putting it on TV, to make sure it was authentic. He said he would do all these things, and he's done none of them. It would also be nice if he would submit himself to a real theologian for examination. Some of his teachings are off the scale, even bordering on necromancy."
What the heck is Benny Hinn doing in Dallas?
It's weird. It was weird when he announced he was moving here in 1999, pretty much abandoning his church congregation in Florida. It was weirder still when he announced that God had ordered him to build a $30 million World Healing Center in Irving, making it sound like a combination theme park and New Age miracle spa. The way he laid it out, it would be a sort of shrine to famous faith healers of the past, complete with "stereophonic statue gardens," as well as a Holy Ghost Mayo Clinic for the halt, the lame, and the afflicted. One envisioned wheelchair-bound hordes being lifted off jumbo jets at DFW Airport and convoying their way over to Las Colinas, like pilgrims pouring into a Disney World version of Lourdes. Isn't this the kind of thing that belongs in Tulsa?
Fortunately, God changed His mind last summer and told Hinn not to build the healing center after all, even though he had spent two years collecting donations for it. (God was apparently vague about what Hinn should do with the money. The county tax assessor was less vague, telling Hinn it was unlikely that his tax exemption would survive theme-park ownership.) Hinn said it was just a timing matter. God wants the healing center, but he doesn't want it right now. (Because the only other building the Almighty is known to have ordered is the Temple at Jerusalem, maybe He's just unimpressed with Irving.) Hinn finally said he would keep his headquarters in Dallas because the central location saves him money.
"Good," Anthony says. "It will save us money, too."
If anything, the move to Texas looks like an attempt to spread his operations over as many geographical jurisdictions as possible. For example, Hinn's TV show, This Is Your Day!, originates in studios in Orange County, California, and airs in 192 countries, making it one of the most widely disseminated programs in the world. Hinn is so ubiquitous on religious TV, in fact, that you would assume by this point - 30 years into his preaching ministry - that he would have become a household name, like Billy Graham, counseling the president and appearing on The Today Show in times of national crisis. But Hinn has done the opposite.
Aside from his twice-monthly appearances at his own choreographed "crusades," held in the largest sports arenas on the planet, Hinn is a virtual recluse, surrounded by armies of bodyguards, ensconced in an $8 million oceanfront hacienda in southern California, traveling by private jet for "snorkeling vacations" in the Cayman Islands, staying in $3,000 presidential suites, and claiming a level of financial secrecy and paranoid internal security that's more often associated with drug dealers than men of the cloth. By surrounding himself with yes-men and stage-managing every detail of his public image - even to the point of stiff-arming the occasional paparazzo who tries to photograph him - he has more in common with Michael Jackson than Jerry Falwell. He may, in fact, be the first Christian rock star. The analogy is not Paul McCartney, though. Hinn's career is more like Cher's. He makes it up as he goes along, re-inventing himself whenever necessary.
Hinn has no church. He belongs to no denomination. He's not even affiliated with any particular religion, although his buzz words indicate he tends to dwell on the freaky fringe of Pentecostalism. As recently as three centuries ago, he probably would have been burned as a heretic. To give you some idea of his doctrinal strangeness, he once preached that the Trinity is actually nine persons because each member of the Trinity - Father, Son, Holy Spirit - is also a Trinity. He also says that God and the Holy Spirit have real bodies with eyes, hands, mouth, etc. Various theologians have trashed Hinn, of course, for preaching "new revelations" directly from God that turn out to be, when examined, variations of thousand-year-old heresies. He thinks of himself as a prophet (even when his prophecies don't come true) and, in one burst of grandeur, "a new messiah walking on the earth." He believes that the Biblical Adam flew into outer space; that when God parted the Red Sea he made it into a wall of ice; that God talks to him more frequently than he talked to, say, Moses; that a man has risen from the dead in his presence; that a man turned into a snake before his eyes; that angels come to his bedroom and talk to him; and that the only reason we're not all in perfect health, living forever, is that there are demons in the world, attacking us. He's expressed opinions normally heard only on schizophrenia wards, and he's done it in front of millions of people - and still they come. They come in such numbers that thousands have to be turned away, and even the ones turned away gladly give him their money.
It happened at the age of 11, when Jesus first appeared to either him or his mother while he was living in Jaffa, Israel. Or maybe it happened at 18, when he had a conversion experience at a high school in Toronto. That's when Benny Hinn says he was "anointed." Or maybe it was shortly after that, when he took a bus trip to Pittsburgh to see the faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman. It's difficult to say exactly when it happened, or what form it took, because Hinn parcels out little bits and pieces of his background as it suits him, then embellishes the stories so that isolating any one event in his life is like puzzling through a 30-year-old KGB file.
What we do know - because he returns to it time and again - is that a transforming moment in his life occurred when, as a teenager, he was assigned to take care of a crippled arthritic woman on a pilgrimage to see one of Kuhlman's healing services, and he saw the woman apparently lose all pain in her legs and "untwist," as he put it. Depending on how cynical you are, he had either found his holy calling or discovered one of the oldest American carnie games. Ever since then, he's been praised as a true miracle worker - Oral Roberts himself is his biggest fan - and also debunked by various investigative reporters around the world, including 60 Minutes Australia, which concluded, "Benny Hinn is a fake. A dangerous fake. What he does is prey on the sick, the desperate, and the gullible." (Dallas' Trinity Foundation does most of the legwork for all the various networks and newspapers that have investigated Hinn. Of the Australian report, Ole Anthony says, "Apparently in Australia you can just go ahead and say the truth out loud.")
Hinn is a peculiar sort, even by the standards of the ongoing circus called American televangelism. If you look at the superstars of the past 20 years - Bakker, Swaggart, Tilton - they're all of a type: WASPy extroverts with good looks in a sort of dime store gigolo way. (Even Jim Bakker had that lost-puppy look that's so attractive to lonely widows, and older women living alone are the number one demographic group when it comes to sending money to television ministries.) Hinn, on the other hand, is short, slight, Semitic, round-faced, and often sports a haircut that looks like a scoop of Rocky Road ice cream that's been knocked off the top of the cone. He reminds you of a discount Persian rug merchant, not a spiritual leader. He's a Palestinian with a Greek father and Armenian Turk mother, raised in a Catholic school along with eight brothers and sisters who were stuffed into a tiny two-bedroom apartment in the Tel Aviv suburb of Jaffa. In Hinn's books he claims that his father was the mayor of Jaffa. As it turns out, Jaffa had no mayor after the year 1948, four years before Hinn was born. Like many factoids in the Hinn legend, this one seems to be a fib.
Toufik Benedictus Hinn, known to his family as "Tutu," didn't much like living in Israel with an Arabic first name, so early in life he became "Benny." He was not particularly noted by his classmates at College de Frere elementary school in Jaffa or, after the family emigrated when Benny was 14, at Georges Vanier Secondary School in Toronto. In his sermons and books, Hinn has portrayed his childhood as that of a social outcast, handicapped by a severe stutter, who was nonetheless a stellar student. But when G. Richard Fisher and M. Kurt Goedelman, two journalists who write for Christian publications, looked into Hinn's youth, they found that both claims were untrue: nobody remembered Hinn's stutter, and he had dropped out of high school after the 11th grade. White lies, by themselves, don't really mean that much, but they indicate how twisted Hinn's mythmaking can be. He invents things that reflect badly on him just as easily as he invents things that reflect well on him. Psychologically, he can't stand the unadorned truth.
Occasionally, though, the enhancements expand from the realm of the white lie into the land of the whopper. For example, Hinn claims to have preached at an all-girls Catholic school in Jerusalem in 1976 and "every single girl in that school got saved, including all the nuns." Since there's only one Catholic girls school in Jerusalem, Schmidt's Girls College, it was a fairly easy matter to question all the nuns who were there in 1976, as well as Father Dusind, who has overseen all religious instruction since 1955. The result? "This is nonsense, real nonsense," Dusind told Fisher and Goedelman. "It never happened and could not happen because a Charismatic healer or Protestant preacher would never ever be let in to talk to the girls."
Or how about the time Hinn went into a Catholic hospital in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and healed everyone there? The way Hinn tells it, he, three other Pentecostal preachers, and seven Catholic priests held a service together in the hospital chapel, where everyone went to work with "anointing bottles," and patients were healed instantly. They were then asked to lay hands on all the patients in the hospital's rooms, so Hinn and his "Miracle Invasion" team went down the hall healing people, knocking them down with God's power, until "the hospital looked like it had been hit by an earthquake."
The reality - easily confirmed by speaking to officials at Sault Ste. Marie General Hospital and the Gray Sisters of the Immaculate Conception who work there - is that no patients were released the day Hinn held a small service in the chapel and that, furthermore, "Mr. Hinn's claims are outlandish and unwarranted."
Okay, so what? Benny Hinn isn't the first flamboyant, white-suited evangelist to play fast and loose with "miracles," and he won't be the last. What makes Hinn different is that, after moving to Orlando in 1979 and founding the Orlando Christian Center in 1983, he became the most famous - and perhaps richest - evangelist in the world. When he preaches in the Philippines or Africa, for example, it's not uncommon to have 500,000 people at the service. And they all come for the same reason: supernatural events, miracles, ecstatic emotional experiences. He refined his technique in the '80s at the Orlando church, which was the scene of loud, frenzied, charismatic services almost from the moment he opened his doors. Hinn would frequently speak in tongues - something he no longer does now that his services are televised - and issue wild prophecies and reveal divine messages given only to him, as he essentially incorporated into his own services all the techniques he learned from watching Kathryn Kuhlman. Soon the Orlando church became a mecca for the suffering, and by the time Hinn started doing organized crusades in the late '80s, he was poised to fill the void left by the spectacular crashes of the Bakkers, Swaggarts, and Tiltons.
In many ways, Hinn is a throwback to the tent revival meetings of the 19th century. Short on scripture, long on enthusiasm, these were originally ways to carry the gospel to backwoods people who weren't served by churches, and the tradition was to collect a little money for the minister's traveling expenses at the end of the service. As time went on, the tent revival fell prey to shysters and carnie men, who discovered they could make a sizeable haul by stoking the emotions of the illiterate and making them feel like they were in the presence of miraculous events. It was a short jump from there to Aimee Semple Macpherson, the now discredited healer of the 1920s who, oddly enough, Hinn reveres as one of his spiritual predecessors. Macpherson was the first to take the tent revival nationwide.
This is not to say that everyone who held a healing service was a fraud - but the ones who made an entire career of it tended to be. There even developed a body of sleight-of-hand that survived well into the '90s, notably practiced by Dallas' own W.V. Grant, who can make a leg look like it has grown longer or shorter simply by manipulating the shoe with a deft magician's move. The healing service, almost from the beginning, was a strange mixture of showmanship, fervent worship, and magic.
Hinn's services, for example, follow a strict pattern that's calculated for maximum emotional impact and, not so coincidentally, maximum offering collection. From the time the crowd enters the arena, they're massaged with mood lighting, repetitive music, responsive chanting, group gestures, group singing, various forms of choral and instrumental entertainment, all leading up to the moment Hinn makes his entrance. The song sung for the entrance is "How Great Thou Art," making convenient use of an ambiguous personal pronoun.
"There's power here, people!" Hinn will typically say. "Lift your hands and receive it."
All dutifully lift their hands.
"You will be healed tonight!"
They sob and shout hallelujah.
"All things are possible to him that believeth!"
Hinn repeats this same sentence three times, getting a bigger emotional reaction each time he says it.
Chant, song, gesture, salute - all the classic techniques used to submerge the individual into a group. It works for dictators, and it works for Hinn. But now that he's joined them together in hope, he adds a dose of fear.
He speaks of huge disasters coming to the world. He tells them of the strange times we live in, a sinful world that will be cleansed by fire and earthquake. And there's only one slim hope to escape: "Only those who have been giving to God's work will be spared."
As a violin plays, money is collected in big white plastic buckets. And as the ushers do their work, Hinn's voice turns soothing. "Nothing will touch you. No one will touch your children. Nothing will touch your home."
Although he never says, "Donate money or you'll die," he comes close. There is a constant theme in his preaching of the connection between "giving" and "healing," making a "faith vow" and "having your needs met." He comes within a hairsbreadth of saying, "If you give me money, you will be healed." And the collection always occurs between his promise of healing and the actual healing session - the same way street performers save their biggest trick until after the hat has been passed.
Along about 10 p.m., when all the checks and dead presidents have been collected, Hinn announces that God is speaking to him. Sometimes he sees angels in the room. Sometimes he sees ugly demon monsters that are fleeing from the building. ("You ugly spirit of sickness, go out of this place! Let God's people go!") Sometimes he just feels the presence of spirits or angels. Once he saw the whole arena bathed in golden dust. And then, as though his body has been taken over by a force he can't control, he starts running around knocking people over. Sometimes he knocks them over with his coat, sometimes by blowing on them, sometimes by pushing their forehead with his hand - but when he touches them, they fall over. As he does this, he calls out the healings - a brain tumor, a cancer, a crippled left leg - as though he's watching something occurring that the rest of us can't see. And then, one by one, various people are brought onto the stage, and an announcer describes their affliction so that Hinn can lay hands on them and pronounce the disease vanquished. On an average night he'll heal about 80 people, in addition to the ones he shouts out in a sort of "wherever you are, you're healed" way.
No wonder Hinn needs bodyguards. Very few, if any, of these people are actually healed. And when they die, or their disease becomes worse, their relatives tend to become angry. For the past 10 years, this has been demonstrated over and over again by various investigative reports conducted with the resources of the Trinity Foundation, beginning with an Inside Edition show in 1993 hosted by Bill O'Reilly and reported by Steve Wilson.
Just a few examples:
He healed a case of brain cancer on stage, even though Inside Edition followed up with tests that showed the tumor was still present.
The "cure" of a deaf woman turned out to be a woman who, according to her doctor, was not deaf in the first place.
A Houston woman who thought she was cured of lung cancer ("It will never come back!" Hinn told her) rejected her doctors' advice and care - and died two months later.
Heavyweight boxer Evander Holyfield, banned from boxing because of a heart condition, went to a Benny Hinn crusade in Philadelphia, had Hinn lay hands on him, and gave Hinn a check for $265,000 after he was told he was healed. In fact, he passed his next examination by the boxing commission, but later his doctors said he never had a heart condition in the first place. He had been misdiagnosed.
Hinn claims that a man in Ghana was raised from the dead on the platform. "We have it on video!" he says, although he's never produced the video.
In two cases, journalists have tried to verify all the healings at a particular crusade. For an HBO documentary called A Question of Miracles, researchers attended a Portland, Oregon, crusade at which 76 miracles were claimed. Even though Hinn had agreed to provide medical verification of each one, he stonewalled requests for the data, then eventually responded 13 weeks later - with only five names. HBO followed up the five cases and determined that a woman "cured" of lung cancer had died nine months later, an old woman's broken vertebra wasn't healed after all, a man with a logging injury deteriorated as he refused medication and a needed operation, a woman claiming to be healed of deafness had never been deaf (according to her husband), and a woman complaining of "breathlessness" had stopped going to the doctor on instructions of her mother.
Just last December, NBC's Dateline tried to duplicate the HBO study. At a crusade in Las Vegas, they counted 56 miracles. Of those, Hinn eventually provided data "proving" five of them. Four of those people refused to share their medical records with NBC. The remaining one, a woman supposedly cured of Lou Gehrig's Disease, had been misdiagnosed, according to her doctor.
There have been so many documentaries and investigations on Hinn - almost all of them orchestrated by Trinity Foundation - that they even have a common structure:
Here's what Hinn looks like in action.
Here's what he claims to do.
Here's what his critics say.
Is he a fraud or is he a healer?
Let's find out.
Not much healing going on.
Okay, here's what Hinn says in his defense.
And one thing Hinn says in his defense - when confronted with evidence that someone claimed to be healed and then died - is that, "The reason people lose their healing is because they begin questioning if God really did it." If you're not healed - or, worse yet, if your sick child is not healed - it's your fault for not having enough faith. It's at this point that Hinn's ministry almost passes over into the realm of primitive magic - i.e., if you want it bad enough, and you say the right things and feel the right things, it will come true.
As it turns out, though, the media investigations are the best thing that ever happened to Hinn. They made him more famous, and more recognizable, than religious TV ever could have. And because most of his audience is made up of the truly desperate - the chronically sick, the dying, people living with pain - Benny Hinn became one more "treatment" for them to take a shot at.
When the first investigation broke, in March 1993, Hinn must have thought his empire was about to fall apart. There was a nasty shoving incident at the Philadelphia airport with Steve Wilson of Inside Edition, followed by a damage-control campaign in which Hinn went on many radio and TV shows and met privately with several of his critics to admit that he'd made mistakes and vow that he would never again air "miracles" on TV unless they had been medically verified. "God has taken me by the neck," he said to his congregation. "I think I'm gonna stop preaching healing and start preaching Jesus." At the request of Inside Edition, Ole Anthony traveled to Orlando to meet with Hinn. At the only face-to-face meeting the two men have had, Hinn said he was reformed and that he intended to start medically verifying all miracles and holding them back from television for six months, so that they could be proven authentic. He even said at one point that worldly wealth was sinful - something you'll rarely hear fall out of the mouth of a TV evangelist.
If you study this particular year in his life, 1993, he's remarkably consistent in his statements, very self-aware of exactly what errors he's made, very humble, very apologetic, very interested in getting "back to the gospel." He even says at one point that he'll stop doing healing services entirely. And most everyone believed him, including Inside Edition, in a follow-up report, and including Anthony. "I was disappointed," Anthony says today, "that a year later he was back to his old tricks."
By 1994, it was as though the soul searching of the previous year had never existed. He geared up to be bigger than ever. He added crusades, he became more flamboyant, more theatrical, and the procession of "miracles" flitting across the TV screen every day continued unabated.
Apparently what he'd discovered is that scandal was good for business. Or at least this particular type of scandal was good for business. Bakker and Swaggart - he must have thought of them at some point - had been brought down by sex, which is difficult for the Christian world to forgive. Greed, on the other hand, can be overcome. Tilton had been brought down by money issues, but after a few years of lying low, he was back in action. This was a whole new type of media attention. The reporters simply said, "Is he a healer, or is he a fake?" And because it was presented as an open-ended question, the crowds got even larger.
Ten years later, Hinn has become something of a media master. Whenever he's investigated now, he simply admits his "mistakes." He's especially fond of going on The Larry King Show at any time of crisis. He's also refined his view of what he does. He doesn't heal anyone, he always reminds the interviewer. He just creates an atmosphere so that God can heal people. By the time people get to the stage, they've already been healed by God, he says. If the healing turns out to be bogus, then the person was self-deluded. Besides, hope is a great thing.
He also says he has a doctor backstage now to counsel the miracle cases and encourage them to continue with their medication until the healing has been verified. This seems to satisfy the media, even though it amounts to an admission of his own inability to know whether someone is healed.
The image he presents to the faithful is the opposite, of course. To them he's a man possessed of special wisdom. He sees things no one else can see. He has conversations with Jesus that no one else has had. He witnesses the presence of God when no one else would be aware of it. And he constantly says his teaching is "new." ("You didn't come here to hear the same preaching you've been hearing for 50 years, did you?") Of course, to orthodox Christians, this alone makes him heretical. Far from being "new," they would say, the gospel has not changed for 2,000 years.
But there's an even darker side to Hinn and his organization. In 1998, two members of his inner circle died of heroin overdoses. In 1999, after one of his many vows of reform, he fired several board members and hired an ex-cop named Mario C. Licciardello to do an internal investigation of his ministry. Licciardello was the brother of Carman, who is sort of the Engelbert Humperdinck of Christian singers, so many think Hinn considered him "safe." But Licciardello did such a good job - taking hundreds of depositions and getting to the bottom of the heroin use - that Hinn then sued him. While Licciardello was still his head of security, the ministry filed a lawsuit demanding that all his files be turned over and sealed, because their public release could result in the end of the ministry. Licciardello was a police investigator with 25 years of experience, and he felt like his whole career was being smeared, so he fought back with his own lawyers. His counsel continually tried to take Hinn's deposition, but Hinn fought him at every step. The judge, however, ruled against him and said that, if Hinn intended to enjoin Licciardello, he would have to make himself available for questioning.
On the very day that Hinn was supposed to give his deposition in the case, Licciardello had a heart attack and died. The Hinn organization made an out-of-court settlement with Licciardello's widow, which included sealing the court papers.
Hinn runs the largest evangelistic organization in the world that is not a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. That means his finances are private, his salary is secret, and his income is anybody's guess. Royalties from his books alone are estimated at $500,000 per year, but he essentially has carte blanche to take anything out of the till he wants. "He lives the lifestyle of a billionaire," says Ole Anthony, "all on the backs of false promises and selling false hope."
As Hinn put it himself, in a moment of rare revelatory candor, "I don't need gold in heaven, I gotta have it now."
During 1993, his one year of "reform," he talked about being stung by being portrayed as a millionaire and how he wanted to be "more Christ-like." His solution: "The Lord said sell the Benz and the watch."
He got rid of his Rolex and his Mercedes. Notice he didn't give them away. He sold them - and then replaced the Mercedes with a $65,000 BMW. This is what God told him to do. Just as God told him more recently that now is not the right time for the World Healing Center in Irving. And who better to know what God wants, because Hinn, after all, is only the third person in the history of the universe to have actually seen God and lived to tell about it.
D Magazine - July 2003
By John Bloom
Controversial televangelist and faith healer Benny Hinn came to Texas in 1999, abandoning his congregation in Florida to build a World Health Center in Irving. But Hinn - whose lifestyle more closely resembles Michael Jackson's than Jerry Falwell's - recently got word from on high to delay his plans for the theme park/New Age miracle spa. Thank God. If you drive west from the city, through the neo-modern lunarscape of Las Colinas, past the airport on our denuded prairie, into the warren of faceless office buildings that make up cosmopolitan Grapevine, you'll never find Benny Hinn.
He wants it that way. The nerve center of his worldwide organization is tucked away in a group of cheap, white, nondescript buildings that look like the kind of domiciles favored by mafia fronts on the wharves of New Jersey. Inside, several dozen employees process an estimated $100 million per year in donations from people who believe in Hinn as a sort of Elmer Gantry for the 21st century. (Obviously they didn't read the novel.)
Now go the other way, into the cul-de-sacs and barrios of deep East Dallas. On a dead-end street next to a nursing home, in an expansive two-story house that doesn't look like a mafia front, even though it was once owned by the Dallas mob, the Trinity Foundation works 24/7 trying to find out just how much money passes through Grapevine, where it comes from, and where it goes. Members of the Christian watchdog organization do so by running undercover operations, infiltrations, spying, surveillance, the cultivation of ties to disgruntled ex-employees, and even going through Benny Hinn's garbage in an effort to, well, to make him prove he's not a fraud.
"All we want is for Benny Hinn to make good on promises he made to me in 1993," says Ole Anthony, president of the Trinity Foundation. "He promised he would stop airing fake healings, that he would medically verify all healings, that he would wait six months after the healing before putting it on TV, to make sure it was authentic. He said he would do all these things, and he's done none of them. It would also be nice if he would submit himself to a real theologian for examination. Some of his teachings are off the scale, even bordering on necromancy."
What the heck is Benny Hinn doing in Dallas?
It's weird. It was weird when he announced he was moving here in 1999, pretty much abandoning his church congregation in Florida. It was weirder still when he announced that God had ordered him to build a $30 million World Healing Center in Irving, making it sound like a combination theme park and New Age miracle spa. The way he laid it out, it would be a sort of shrine to famous faith healers of the past, complete with "stereophonic statue gardens," as well as a Holy Ghost Mayo Clinic for the halt, the lame, and the afflicted. One envisioned wheelchair-bound hordes being lifted off jumbo jets at DFW Airport and convoying their way over to Las Colinas, like pilgrims pouring into a Disney World version of Lourdes. Isn't this the kind of thing that belongs in Tulsa?
Fortunately, God changed His mind last summer and told Hinn not to build the healing center after all, even though he had spent two years collecting donations for it. (God was apparently vague about what Hinn should do with the money. The county tax assessor was less vague, telling Hinn it was unlikely that his tax exemption would survive theme-park ownership.) Hinn said it was just a timing matter. God wants the healing center, but he doesn't want it right now. (Because the only other building the Almighty is known to have ordered is the Temple at Jerusalem, maybe He's just unimpressed with Irving.) Hinn finally said he would keep his headquarters in Dallas because the central location saves him money.
"Good," Anthony says. "It will save us money, too."
If anything, the move to Texas looks like an attempt to spread his operations over as many geographical jurisdictions as possible. For example, Hinn's TV show, This Is Your Day!, originates in studios in Orange County, California, and airs in 192 countries, making it one of the most widely disseminated programs in the world. Hinn is so ubiquitous on religious TV, in fact, that you would assume by this point - 30 years into his preaching ministry - that he would have become a household name, like Billy Graham, counseling the president and appearing on The Today Show in times of national crisis. But Hinn has done the opposite.
Aside from his twice-monthly appearances at his own choreographed "crusades," held in the largest sports arenas on the planet, Hinn is a virtual recluse, surrounded by armies of bodyguards, ensconced in an $8 million oceanfront hacienda in southern California, traveling by private jet for "snorkeling vacations" in the Cayman Islands, staying in $3,000 presidential suites, and claiming a level of financial secrecy and paranoid internal security that's more often associated with drug dealers than men of the cloth. By surrounding himself with yes-men and stage-managing every detail of his public image - even to the point of stiff-arming the occasional paparazzo who tries to photograph him - he has more in common with Michael Jackson than Jerry Falwell. He may, in fact, be the first Christian rock star. The analogy is not Paul McCartney, though. Hinn's career is more like Cher's. He makes it up as he goes along, re-inventing himself whenever necessary.
Hinn has no church. He belongs to no denomination. He's not even affiliated with any particular religion, although his buzz words indicate he tends to dwell on the freaky fringe of Pentecostalism. As recently as three centuries ago, he probably would have been burned as a heretic. To give you some idea of his doctrinal strangeness, he once preached that the Trinity is actually nine persons because each member of the Trinity - Father, Son, Holy Spirit - is also a Trinity. He also says that God and the Holy Spirit have real bodies with eyes, hands, mouth, etc. Various theologians have trashed Hinn, of course, for preaching "new revelations" directly from God that turn out to be, when examined, variations of thousand-year-old heresies. He thinks of himself as a prophet (even when his prophecies don't come true) and, in one burst of grandeur, "a new messiah walking on the earth." He believes that the Biblical Adam flew into outer space; that when God parted the Red Sea he made it into a wall of ice; that God talks to him more frequently than he talked to, say, Moses; that a man has risen from the dead in his presence; that a man turned into a snake before his eyes; that angels come to his bedroom and talk to him; and that the only reason we're not all in perfect health, living forever, is that there are demons in the world, attacking us. He's expressed opinions normally heard only on schizophrenia wards, and he's done it in front of millions of people - and still they come. They come in such numbers that thousands have to be turned away, and even the ones turned away gladly give him their money.
It happened at the age of 11, when Jesus first appeared to either him or his mother while he was living in Jaffa, Israel. Or maybe it happened at 18, when he had a conversion experience at a high school in Toronto. That's when Benny Hinn says he was "anointed." Or maybe it was shortly after that, when he took a bus trip to Pittsburgh to see the faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman. It's difficult to say exactly when it happened, or what form it took, because Hinn parcels out little bits and pieces of his background as it suits him, then embellishes the stories so that isolating any one event in his life is like puzzling through a 30-year-old KGB file.
What we do know - because he returns to it time and again - is that a transforming moment in his life occurred when, as a teenager, he was assigned to take care of a crippled arthritic woman on a pilgrimage to see one of Kuhlman's healing services, and he saw the woman apparently lose all pain in her legs and "untwist," as he put it. Depending on how cynical you are, he had either found his holy calling or discovered one of the oldest American carnie games. Ever since then, he's been praised as a true miracle worker - Oral Roberts himself is his biggest fan - and also debunked by various investigative reporters around the world, including 60 Minutes Australia, which concluded, "Benny Hinn is a fake. A dangerous fake. What he does is prey on the sick, the desperate, and the gullible." (Dallas' Trinity Foundation does most of the legwork for all the various networks and newspapers that have investigated Hinn. Of the Australian report, Ole Anthony says, "Apparently in Australia you can just go ahead and say the truth out loud.")
Hinn is a peculiar sort, even by the standards of the ongoing circus called American televangelism. If you look at the superstars of the past 20 years - Bakker, Swaggart, Tilton - they're all of a type: WASPy extroverts with good looks in a sort of dime store gigolo way. (Even Jim Bakker had that lost-puppy look that's so attractive to lonely widows, and older women living alone are the number one demographic group when it comes to sending money to television ministries.) Hinn, on the other hand, is short, slight, Semitic, round-faced, and often sports a haircut that looks like a scoop of Rocky Road ice cream that's been knocked off the top of the cone. He reminds you of a discount Persian rug merchant, not a spiritual leader. He's a Palestinian with a Greek father and Armenian Turk mother, raised in a Catholic school along with eight brothers and sisters who were stuffed into a tiny two-bedroom apartment in the Tel Aviv suburb of Jaffa. In Hinn's books he claims that his father was the mayor of Jaffa. As it turns out, Jaffa had no mayor after the year 1948, four years before Hinn was born. Like many factoids in the Hinn legend, this one seems to be a fib.
Toufik Benedictus Hinn, known to his family as "Tutu," didn't much like living in Israel with an Arabic first name, so early in life he became "Benny." He was not particularly noted by his classmates at College de Frere elementary school in Jaffa or, after the family emigrated when Benny was 14, at Georges Vanier Secondary School in Toronto. In his sermons and books, Hinn has portrayed his childhood as that of a social outcast, handicapped by a severe stutter, who was nonetheless a stellar student. But when G. Richard Fisher and M. Kurt Goedelman, two journalists who write for Christian publications, looked into Hinn's youth, they found that both claims were untrue: nobody remembered Hinn's stutter, and he had dropped out of high school after the 11th grade. White lies, by themselves, don't really mean that much, but they indicate how twisted Hinn's mythmaking can be. He invents things that reflect badly on him just as easily as he invents things that reflect well on him. Psychologically, he can't stand the unadorned truth.
Occasionally, though, the enhancements expand from the realm of the white lie into the land of the whopper. For example, Hinn claims to have preached at an all-girls Catholic school in Jerusalem in 1976 and "every single girl in that school got saved, including all the nuns." Since there's only one Catholic girls school in Jerusalem, Schmidt's Girls College, it was a fairly easy matter to question all the nuns who were there in 1976, as well as Father Dusind, who has overseen all religious instruction since 1955. The result? "This is nonsense, real nonsense," Dusind told Fisher and Goedelman. "It never happened and could not happen because a Charismatic healer or Protestant preacher would never ever be let in to talk to the girls."
Or how about the time Hinn went into a Catholic hospital in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and healed everyone there? The way Hinn tells it, he, three other Pentecostal preachers, and seven Catholic priests held a service together in the hospital chapel, where everyone went to work with "anointing bottles," and patients were healed instantly. They were then asked to lay hands on all the patients in the hospital's rooms, so Hinn and his "Miracle Invasion" team went down the hall healing people, knocking them down with God's power, until "the hospital looked like it had been hit by an earthquake."
The reality - easily confirmed by speaking to officials at Sault Ste. Marie General Hospital and the Gray Sisters of the Immaculate Conception who work there - is that no patients were released the day Hinn held a small service in the chapel and that, furthermore, "Mr. Hinn's claims are outlandish and unwarranted."
Okay, so what? Benny Hinn isn't the first flamboyant, white-suited evangelist to play fast and loose with "miracles," and he won't be the last. What makes Hinn different is that, after moving to Orlando in 1979 and founding the Orlando Christian Center in 1983, he became the most famous - and perhaps richest - evangelist in the world. When he preaches in the Philippines or Africa, for example, it's not uncommon to have 500,000 people at the service. And they all come for the same reason: supernatural events, miracles, ecstatic emotional experiences. He refined his technique in the '80s at the Orlando church, which was the scene of loud, frenzied, charismatic services almost from the moment he opened his doors. Hinn would frequently speak in tongues - something he no longer does now that his services are televised - and issue wild prophecies and reveal divine messages given only to him, as he essentially incorporated into his own services all the techniques he learned from watching Kathryn Kuhlman. Soon the Orlando church became a mecca for the suffering, and by the time Hinn started doing organized crusades in the late '80s, he was poised to fill the void left by the spectacular crashes of the Bakkers, Swaggarts, and Tiltons.
In many ways, Hinn is a throwback to the tent revival meetings of the 19th century. Short on scripture, long on enthusiasm, these were originally ways to carry the gospel to backwoods people who weren't served by churches, and the tradition was to collect a little money for the minister's traveling expenses at the end of the service. As time went on, the tent revival fell prey to shysters and carnie men, who discovered they could make a sizeable haul by stoking the emotions of the illiterate and making them feel like they were in the presence of miraculous events. It was a short jump from there to Aimee Semple Macpherson, the now discredited healer of the 1920s who, oddly enough, Hinn reveres as one of his spiritual predecessors. Macpherson was the first to take the tent revival nationwide.
This is not to say that everyone who held a healing service was a fraud - but the ones who made an entire career of it tended to be. There even developed a body of sleight-of-hand that survived well into the '90s, notably practiced by Dallas' own W.V. Grant, who can make a leg look like it has grown longer or shorter simply by manipulating the shoe with a deft magician's move. The healing service, almost from the beginning, was a strange mixture of showmanship, fervent worship, and magic.
Hinn's services, for example, follow a strict pattern that's calculated for maximum emotional impact and, not so coincidentally, maximum offering collection. From the time the crowd enters the arena, they're massaged with mood lighting, repetitive music, responsive chanting, group gestures, group singing, various forms of choral and instrumental entertainment, all leading up to the moment Hinn makes his entrance. The song sung for the entrance is "How Great Thou Art," making convenient use of an ambiguous personal pronoun.
"There's power here, people!" Hinn will typically say. "Lift your hands and receive it."
All dutifully lift their hands.
"You will be healed tonight!"
They sob and shout hallelujah.
"All things are possible to him that believeth!"
Hinn repeats this same sentence three times, getting a bigger emotional reaction each time he says it.
Chant, song, gesture, salute - all the classic techniques used to submerge the individual into a group. It works for dictators, and it works for Hinn. But now that he's joined them together in hope, he adds a dose of fear.
He speaks of huge disasters coming to the world. He tells them of the strange times we live in, a sinful world that will be cleansed by fire and earthquake. And there's only one slim hope to escape: "Only those who have been giving to God's work will be spared."
As a violin plays, money is collected in big white plastic buckets. And as the ushers do their work, Hinn's voice turns soothing. "Nothing will touch you. No one will touch your children. Nothing will touch your home."
Although he never says, "Donate money or you'll die," he comes close. There is a constant theme in his preaching of the connection between "giving" and "healing," making a "faith vow" and "having your needs met." He comes within a hairsbreadth of saying, "If you give me money, you will be healed." And the collection always occurs between his promise of healing and the actual healing session - the same way street performers save their biggest trick until after the hat has been passed.
Along about 10 p.m., when all the checks and dead presidents have been collected, Hinn announces that God is speaking to him. Sometimes he sees angels in the room. Sometimes he sees ugly demon monsters that are fleeing from the building. ("You ugly spirit of sickness, go out of this place! Let God's people go!") Sometimes he just feels the presence of spirits or angels. Once he saw the whole arena bathed in golden dust. And then, as though his body has been taken over by a force he can't control, he starts running around knocking people over. Sometimes he knocks them over with his coat, sometimes by blowing on them, sometimes by pushing their forehead with his hand - but when he touches them, they fall over. As he does this, he calls out the healings - a brain tumor, a cancer, a crippled left leg - as though he's watching something occurring that the rest of us can't see. And then, one by one, various people are brought onto the stage, and an announcer describes their affliction so that Hinn can lay hands on them and pronounce the disease vanquished. On an average night he'll heal about 80 people, in addition to the ones he shouts out in a sort of "wherever you are, you're healed" way.
No wonder Hinn needs bodyguards. Very few, if any, of these people are actually healed. And when they die, or their disease becomes worse, their relatives tend to become angry. For the past 10 years, this has been demonstrated over and over again by various investigative reports conducted with the resources of the Trinity Foundation, beginning with an Inside Edition show in 1993 hosted by Bill O'Reilly and reported by Steve Wilson.
Just a few examples:
He healed a case of brain cancer on stage, even though Inside Edition followed up with tests that showed the tumor was still present.
The "cure" of a deaf woman turned out to be a woman who, according to her doctor, was not deaf in the first place.
A Houston woman who thought she was cured of lung cancer ("It will never come back!" Hinn told her) rejected her doctors' advice and care - and died two months later.
Heavyweight boxer Evander Holyfield, banned from boxing because of a heart condition, went to a Benny Hinn crusade in Philadelphia, had Hinn lay hands on him, and gave Hinn a check for $265,000 after he was told he was healed. In fact, he passed his next examination by the boxing commission, but later his doctors said he never had a heart condition in the first place. He had been misdiagnosed.
Hinn claims that a man in Ghana was raised from the dead on the platform. "We have it on video!" he says, although he's never produced the video.
In two cases, journalists have tried to verify all the healings at a particular crusade. For an HBO documentary called A Question of Miracles, researchers attended a Portland, Oregon, crusade at which 76 miracles were claimed. Even though Hinn had agreed to provide medical verification of each one, he stonewalled requests for the data, then eventually responded 13 weeks later - with only five names. HBO followed up the five cases and determined that a woman "cured" of lung cancer had died nine months later, an old woman's broken vertebra wasn't healed after all, a man with a logging injury deteriorated as he refused medication and a needed operation, a woman claiming to be healed of deafness had never been deaf (according to her husband), and a woman complaining of "breathlessness" had stopped going to the doctor on instructions of her mother.
Just last December, NBC's Dateline tried to duplicate the HBO study. At a crusade in Las Vegas, they counted 56 miracles. Of those, Hinn eventually provided data "proving" five of them. Four of those people refused to share their medical records with NBC. The remaining one, a woman supposedly cured of Lou Gehrig's Disease, had been misdiagnosed, according to her doctor.
There have been so many documentaries and investigations on Hinn - almost all of them orchestrated by Trinity Foundation - that they even have a common structure:
Here's what Hinn looks like in action.
Here's what he claims to do.
Here's what his critics say.
Is he a fraud or is he a healer?
Let's find out.
Not much healing going on.
Okay, here's what Hinn says in his defense.
And one thing Hinn says in his defense - when confronted with evidence that someone claimed to be healed and then died - is that, "The reason people lose their healing is because they begin questioning if God really did it." If you're not healed - or, worse yet, if your sick child is not healed - it's your fault for not having enough faith. It's at this point that Hinn's ministry almost passes over into the realm of primitive magic - i.e., if you want it bad enough, and you say the right things and feel the right things, it will come true.
As it turns out, though, the media investigations are the best thing that ever happened to Hinn. They made him more famous, and more recognizable, than religious TV ever could have. And because most of his audience is made up of the truly desperate - the chronically sick, the dying, people living with pain - Benny Hinn became one more "treatment" for them to take a shot at.
When the first investigation broke, in March 1993, Hinn must have thought his empire was about to fall apart. There was a nasty shoving incident at the Philadelphia airport with Steve Wilson of Inside Edition, followed by a damage-control campaign in which Hinn went on many radio and TV shows and met privately with several of his critics to admit that he'd made mistakes and vow that he would never again air "miracles" on TV unless they had been medically verified. "God has taken me by the neck," he said to his congregation. "I think I'm gonna stop preaching healing and start preaching Jesus." At the request of Inside Edition, Ole Anthony traveled to Orlando to meet with Hinn. At the only face-to-face meeting the two men have had, Hinn said he was reformed and that he intended to start medically verifying all miracles and holding them back from television for six months, so that they could be proven authentic. He even said at one point that worldly wealth was sinful - something you'll rarely hear fall out of the mouth of a TV evangelist.
If you study this particular year in his life, 1993, he's remarkably consistent in his statements, very self-aware of exactly what errors he's made, very humble, very apologetic, very interested in getting "back to the gospel." He even says at one point that he'll stop doing healing services entirely. And most everyone believed him, including Inside Edition, in a follow-up report, and including Anthony. "I was disappointed," Anthony says today, "that a year later he was back to his old tricks."
By 1994, it was as though the soul searching of the previous year had never existed. He geared up to be bigger than ever. He added crusades, he became more flamboyant, more theatrical, and the procession of "miracles" flitting across the TV screen every day continued unabated.
Apparently what he'd discovered is that scandal was good for business. Or at least this particular type of scandal was good for business. Bakker and Swaggart - he must have thought of them at some point - had been brought down by sex, which is difficult for the Christian world to forgive. Greed, on the other hand, can be overcome. Tilton had been brought down by money issues, but after a few years of lying low, he was back in action. This was a whole new type of media attention. The reporters simply said, "Is he a healer, or is he a fake?" And because it was presented as an open-ended question, the crowds got even larger.
Ten years later, Hinn has become something of a media master. Whenever he's investigated now, he simply admits his "mistakes." He's especially fond of going on The Larry King Show at any time of crisis. He's also refined his view of what he does. He doesn't heal anyone, he always reminds the interviewer. He just creates an atmosphere so that God can heal people. By the time people get to the stage, they've already been healed by God, he says. If the healing turns out to be bogus, then the person was self-deluded. Besides, hope is a great thing.
He also says he has a doctor backstage now to counsel the miracle cases and encourage them to continue with their medication until the healing has been verified. This seems to satisfy the media, even though it amounts to an admission of his own inability to know whether someone is healed.
The image he presents to the faithful is the opposite, of course. To them he's a man possessed of special wisdom. He sees things no one else can see. He has conversations with Jesus that no one else has had. He witnesses the presence of God when no one else would be aware of it. And he constantly says his teaching is "new." ("You didn't come here to hear the same preaching you've been hearing for 50 years, did you?") Of course, to orthodox Christians, this alone makes him heretical. Far from being "new," they would say, the gospel has not changed for 2,000 years.
But there's an even darker side to Hinn and his organization. In 1998, two members of his inner circle died of heroin overdoses. In 1999, after one of his many vows of reform, he fired several board members and hired an ex-cop named Mario C. Licciardello to do an internal investigation of his ministry. Licciardello was the brother of Carman, who is sort of the Engelbert Humperdinck of Christian singers, so many think Hinn considered him "safe." But Licciardello did such a good job - taking hundreds of depositions and getting to the bottom of the heroin use - that Hinn then sued him. While Licciardello was still his head of security, the ministry filed a lawsuit demanding that all his files be turned over and sealed, because their public release could result in the end of the ministry. Licciardello was a police investigator with 25 years of experience, and he felt like his whole career was being smeared, so he fought back with his own lawyers. His counsel continually tried to take Hinn's deposition, but Hinn fought him at every step. The judge, however, ruled against him and said that, if Hinn intended to enjoin Licciardello, he would have to make himself available for questioning.
On the very day that Hinn was supposed to give his deposition in the case, Licciardello had a heart attack and died. The Hinn organization made an out-of-court settlement with Licciardello's widow, which included sealing the court papers.
Hinn runs the largest evangelistic organization in the world that is not a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. That means his finances are private, his salary is secret, and his income is anybody's guess. Royalties from his books alone are estimated at $500,000 per year, but he essentially has carte blanche to take anything out of the till he wants. "He lives the lifestyle of a billionaire," says Ole Anthony, "all on the backs of false promises and selling false hope."
As Hinn put it himself, in a moment of rare revelatory candor, "I don't need gold in heaven, I gotta have it now."
During 1993, his one year of "reform," he talked about being stung by being portrayed as a millionaire and how he wanted to be "more Christ-like." His solution: "The Lord said sell the Benz and the watch."
He got rid of his Rolex and his Mercedes. Notice he didn't give them away. He sold them - and then replaced the Mercedes with a $65,000 BMW. This is what God told him to do. Just as God told him more recently that now is not the right time for the World Healing Center in Irving. And who better to know what God wants, because Hinn, after all, is only the third person in the history of the universe to have actually seen God and lived to tell about it.
September 3, 2008
Deceptions of the Last Days
Lying Signs and Wonders: Deceptions of the Last Days
Taken from Ben Israel Newsletter – Spring 1995
Some Cautionary Thoughts on the Present Revival
I would appreciate your sympathy as I try to address a subject that is already dividing many of God’s people into defensive and opposing camps. One is put into the uncomfortable, if not dangerous, even in raising elementary cautions, of seeming to oppose to what in the eyes of many is holy and of the Spirit of God. Precious and mature saints of our own knowledge testify to the indisputable blessing they are assured that they have received. Far be it from us to dispute or denigrate what is from God. Nevertheless, in fidelity to our own call and responsibility before the Lord and to His people, and after much reflection, prayer and discussion amongst ourselves, we offer the following for your thoughtful and prayerful consideration.
I venture out with some trepidation to raise some questions about a phenomenon that is already perplexing many. Unlike such previous moves of God as the Welsh Revival, noted from its inception for its unmistakably holy character, the present revival generates mixed reports from unequivocal enthusiasm to those that are dubious, critical, and utterly rejecting. Some suggest more than one stream with a fleshly counterfeit paralleling the God-given and authentic. What I have been able to observe via video tape of one principal, and evidently original stream, I found entirely repugnant. Ministers of the word were ostensibly so drunk in the spirit that they were unable to be coherent, railing finally into a collapse from their stupor. I found this entirely unbecoming to the dignity of their professed call and felt the preached word to he denigrated by joking references to the feeble results obtained by it in comparison to the effects procured now by the experiences of the ‘power’ to which they were testifying. Was it my imagination that made me sense in watching some helplessly convulsing in laughter, that what had gripped them was already panically beyond their control and was actually causing them a physical pain? It is a moot question if one would describe it as ‘holy’. On the contrary, it appears to be irreverent if not indeed demonic and hellish.
From identical meetings others report unmistakable benefit, instant release from depression and other dogged personality disorders and disabilities upon receiving ‘the blessing’. We are not in a position to categorically condemn as deception the ostensible benefits to which many testify. God is always free to bless whom He will bless. But our point is that if the enemy can succeed in bringing the Church to viewing benefit as the determinant by which something is judged to be of God, we may well have been brought to the very ground of deception itself.
For myself, I would choose to keep my distance from such phenomena, trusting that whatever I might be missing is not greater than what I am protecting and cherishing and that the Lord is not offended by a carefulness that would rather err in a jealousy for His holiness than to risk subverting what has already been given as pure and true (the residue of the knowledge of God as holy, obtained through obedience and communion, cherished and guarded over the years). What believer who has once been in that Presence could ever countenance the entertainment-carnival atmosphere that prevailed in the video cited above? I have not yet recovered, and trust never will, from the eerie experience some twenty years ago of being present on the platform at an international conference in the midst of falling bodies (ostensibly ’slain in the Spirit’) in the complete absence of the sense of God’s presence! The visible demonstration of power without the corresponding sense of God in the midst of squeals of carnal excitement and popping flashbulbs was more than could be borne. Whatever the consequence to propriety, ministerial and offended relationships, I had to leave.
Remarkable that though we are explicitly warned about end-time “lying signs and wonders”, (II Thessalonians 2:9; Matthew 24:24) we imagine that it is future and mindlessly trust ourselves in our greed for experiences, empowerments, or releases to dubious personalities who have caught the public fancy in incredible overnight popularity. I profoundly respect God’s use of the weak and the foolish thing, but I cannot for that reason endorse what is garish, cheap, and coarse as being that. “Holiness unto the Lord” is still the standard of God’s House even when it is unspectacular and unassuming in the eyes of the world—or even our own.
Certainly in all of the overwhelming endorsement of the present revival-renewal phenomenon, the sober believer will not fault this modest, hopefully redemptive voice of caution. Perhaps one of the most ominous features of the hour is the note of warning sounded about those who have some reserve as being ‘obstructions’, ‘enemies’, or ‘threats’ to this outpouring of God. The invitation seems to be to abandon all restraint (’The bar is open’)—leap in or get out of the way of others if you cannot! God is well able, I feel sure, to protect as well as perfect what pertains unto Him (Colossians 1:28). I cannot help but wonder if it is man’s interests that are being so vehemently defended and that we are at the inception of what could ultimately be finalized by the warning that “they will kill you and claim that they are doing God a service.” (John 16:2)
I would insert here a caution given by T. Austin Sparks, more appropriate now perhaps then when it was sounded decades ago, in speaking of the Corinthians’ propensity for ’sensational evidences’. How much does it suggest that we may presently be reaping is what was mindlessly and carelessly sown in the decades of the Charismatic Movement. The immaturity of many was fostered in easy ‘decisions’, Cross-avoiding indolence, undisciplined living, the giddy adulation of personalities and in the superficiality, levity and lightness of our meetings:
“We are in that kind of age today. It is becoming more and more a psychic age. It is an age of the soul just spilling over, asserting itself, taking control of everything in Christianity as well as outside of it—a soulish age… Be careful that you are not hankering for this realm again. Are you after the evidence? My, how I have seen dear Christian people just prostrating themselves, groaning and crying, almost screaming for evidence—these ’sign’ things… Christians and dear men of God, who have been greatly used, are creating an emotional, psychic situation that is involving simple Christians in things which are, sooner or later, going to be a great disillusionment and an offense. It will bring ‘offendedness’ with the Lord, and that is just what the devil is after.” (Called Unto the Fellowship of His Son, p. 46, published by Emmanuel Church, 12000 E.14th St., Tulsa, OK 74128)
Personally, I believe myself to be ready to risk all and to dare all for the Lord, but certainly not for a ‘blessing’ or dubious ‘experience’ that confers some seeming good. My own preference, and I believe that of the Scripture, is to seek out the root of depression according to the Word (usually unacknowledged disobediences). This will be accomplished primarily through that part of the Body to whom I am accountable and with whom I am authentically joined. (Ephesians 4:15) When ‘experience’ as a ‘quick-fix’ alternative is preferred to these disciplines, we put ourselves in a place of spiritual jeopardy. Is not the Lord near at hand to all who seek Him? What is the enduring benefit when we have merely received some alleviation from the symptoms that were occasioned by serious defects of character and return with these defects still remaining? Whatever the future will reveal of the present revival phenomenon, perhaps the greatest will be the profound repentance of broken thousands upon recognizing their susceptibility to deception, their lack of elementary discernment, and their haste to run after demonstrations of power in atmospheres so contrary to God’s known holiness and character.
Clearly, a power is at work. The question is, whose? Who is it that is mediating an alternative and lesser joy to the immature, the carnal, and the undiscerning? We are already discomforted to learn of the loss of interest, even the repudiation of apostolic vision once held by those who have received ‘the blessing’—as if the one were somehow antithetical or opposed to the other! Assuming that our fears are exaggerated and that the present phenomenon is of God, though admittedly marred only by certain excesses, in what ways will future ‘lying signs and wonders’ be different from that with which we are presently being confronted? By what criteria will these differences be identified? Are we presently at the level of maturity and discernment by which these important distinctions can be made? By what means shall we come to that place if we are now prone to describe as ‘enemies’ those who are only raising the questions? The very ridicule and censure brought by the advocates of this revival to those who attempt to do so makes suspect the very claims they espouse. The fact that something eventuates in blessing, release, or deliverance is no sure evidence or guarantee that it is of God. (Matthew 24:24) The same powers of darkness which have wrought the oppressions through careless or unclean living can just as easily relieve them—restoring even relationships broken and made miserable by them—in order to bring about a greater deception!
Even the most rapturous ‘love of God’ can be a pseudo-sensation produced by spirits in the indiscriminate and slothful who are unwilling for the sacrifices of seeking God’s face in truth. Is the ‘hunger for God’ in fact that, or a hunger for an experience of God that will assure the insecure soul that they are known and accepted of God? Is this not the unrecognized motive that makes many pant after present day prophets in hope of a ‘prophetic’ word of this kind? Does not this encouraged tendency promote the immaturity of such rather than encourage them in the faith of sons? Do we not prefer to be effortlessly ‘acted upon’ miraculously—rather than diligently seek God on the basis of the promise of His Word? “And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)
Are these not the last days in which we have been warned about deception and been exhorted to test all spirits? (I John 4:1; I Thessalonians 5:21) What are our eschatological expectations—the premises of our faith? Surely these views will altogether affect our susceptibilities to every new thing that promises to bless and establish us in this present life and rob us at the same time of the alertness that would and should otherwise be ours. Are we to ignore the prevalence of ear-splitting ‘worship’, high-powered offerings, calculated theatrics, carnival bawdiness, the chilling hellish shrieks and cries that punctuate the proceedings, the conspicuous absence of the preached word (except perhaps in a token way), the relentless spirit-dulling testimonies in a stupor unbecoming the dignity of God—given incoherently even by ministers of the Word? Not for a moment would such ‘phenomena’ be tolerated at the historic Welsh Revival where every care was taken to avoid even the use of instrumental music or any intrusion of man—the very things now being celebrated and employed. That revival was holiness unto the Lord so long as those standards were maintained.
Has He changed from being the God who insisted that His priests mount a ramp to the altar rather than ascend by steps lest any flesh be revealed? (Exodus 20:26) Who had them wear the golden head plate continually on their foreheads (the very place now we so readily make available for the touch that brings the ‘blessing’) ‘Holiness unto the Lord’? Who enjoined about the holy anointing oil that nothing shall be made ‘like unto that’ nor that it shall ever “Upon man’s flesh… be poured?” (Exodus 30:32-38) Our ache is that ‘Holiness unto the Lord’ be ascribed afresh on the foreheads of priestly men and women who will stand for Him in this age of sleaze and vulgarity that even now threatens to seep into the House of God. It is the cry of Isaiah 52:11, “Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst other; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord”—Indeed, “let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” (II Corinthians 7:1). Viewing the world staggering in violence, war, the catastrophes of earthquake, famine, flood, and fire, the Church in its present pitiful state of shallowness and un-preparedness, should we not rather “Be afflicted, and mourn and weep: let[ting] our laughter be turned to mourning, and [our] joy to heaviness?” Forgive us if we are being too cautious. We would be naive to think that deception is only a fear for the carnal and the sensual. Final and last day’s deceptions will be spiritual “for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light”. (II Corinthians 11:14) “The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.” (I Peter 4:7).
Taken from Ben Israel Newsletter – Spring 1995
Some Cautionary Thoughts on the Present Revival
I would appreciate your sympathy as I try to address a subject that is already dividing many of God’s people into defensive and opposing camps. One is put into the uncomfortable, if not dangerous, even in raising elementary cautions, of seeming to oppose to what in the eyes of many is holy and of the Spirit of God. Precious and mature saints of our own knowledge testify to the indisputable blessing they are assured that they have received. Far be it from us to dispute or denigrate what is from God. Nevertheless, in fidelity to our own call and responsibility before the Lord and to His people, and after much reflection, prayer and discussion amongst ourselves, we offer the following for your thoughtful and prayerful consideration.
I venture out with some trepidation to raise some questions about a phenomenon that is already perplexing many. Unlike such previous moves of God as the Welsh Revival, noted from its inception for its unmistakably holy character, the present revival generates mixed reports from unequivocal enthusiasm to those that are dubious, critical, and utterly rejecting. Some suggest more than one stream with a fleshly counterfeit paralleling the God-given and authentic. What I have been able to observe via video tape of one principal, and evidently original stream, I found entirely repugnant. Ministers of the word were ostensibly so drunk in the spirit that they were unable to be coherent, railing finally into a collapse from their stupor. I found this entirely unbecoming to the dignity of their professed call and felt the preached word to he denigrated by joking references to the feeble results obtained by it in comparison to the effects procured now by the experiences of the ‘power’ to which they were testifying. Was it my imagination that made me sense in watching some helplessly convulsing in laughter, that what had gripped them was already panically beyond their control and was actually causing them a physical pain? It is a moot question if one would describe it as ‘holy’. On the contrary, it appears to be irreverent if not indeed demonic and hellish.
From identical meetings others report unmistakable benefit, instant release from depression and other dogged personality disorders and disabilities upon receiving ‘the blessing’. We are not in a position to categorically condemn as deception the ostensible benefits to which many testify. God is always free to bless whom He will bless. But our point is that if the enemy can succeed in bringing the Church to viewing benefit as the determinant by which something is judged to be of God, we may well have been brought to the very ground of deception itself.
For myself, I would choose to keep my distance from such phenomena, trusting that whatever I might be missing is not greater than what I am protecting and cherishing and that the Lord is not offended by a carefulness that would rather err in a jealousy for His holiness than to risk subverting what has already been given as pure and true (the residue of the knowledge of God as holy, obtained through obedience and communion, cherished and guarded over the years). What believer who has once been in that Presence could ever countenance the entertainment-carnival atmosphere that prevailed in the video cited above? I have not yet recovered, and trust never will, from the eerie experience some twenty years ago of being present on the platform at an international conference in the midst of falling bodies (ostensibly ’slain in the Spirit’) in the complete absence of the sense of God’s presence! The visible demonstration of power without the corresponding sense of God in the midst of squeals of carnal excitement and popping flashbulbs was more than could be borne. Whatever the consequence to propriety, ministerial and offended relationships, I had to leave.
Remarkable that though we are explicitly warned about end-time “lying signs and wonders”, (II Thessalonians 2:9; Matthew 24:24) we imagine that it is future and mindlessly trust ourselves in our greed for experiences, empowerments, or releases to dubious personalities who have caught the public fancy in incredible overnight popularity. I profoundly respect God’s use of the weak and the foolish thing, but I cannot for that reason endorse what is garish, cheap, and coarse as being that. “Holiness unto the Lord” is still the standard of God’s House even when it is unspectacular and unassuming in the eyes of the world—or even our own.
Certainly in all of the overwhelming endorsement of the present revival-renewal phenomenon, the sober believer will not fault this modest, hopefully redemptive voice of caution. Perhaps one of the most ominous features of the hour is the note of warning sounded about those who have some reserve as being ‘obstructions’, ‘enemies’, or ‘threats’ to this outpouring of God. The invitation seems to be to abandon all restraint (’The bar is open’)—leap in or get out of the way of others if you cannot! God is well able, I feel sure, to protect as well as perfect what pertains unto Him (Colossians 1:28). I cannot help but wonder if it is man’s interests that are being so vehemently defended and that we are at the inception of what could ultimately be finalized by the warning that “they will kill you and claim that they are doing God a service.” (John 16:2)
I would insert here a caution given by T. Austin Sparks, more appropriate now perhaps then when it was sounded decades ago, in speaking of the Corinthians’ propensity for ’sensational evidences’. How much does it suggest that we may presently be reaping is what was mindlessly and carelessly sown in the decades of the Charismatic Movement. The immaturity of many was fostered in easy ‘decisions’, Cross-avoiding indolence, undisciplined living, the giddy adulation of personalities and in the superficiality, levity and lightness of our meetings:
“We are in that kind of age today. It is becoming more and more a psychic age. It is an age of the soul just spilling over, asserting itself, taking control of everything in Christianity as well as outside of it—a soulish age… Be careful that you are not hankering for this realm again. Are you after the evidence? My, how I have seen dear Christian people just prostrating themselves, groaning and crying, almost screaming for evidence—these ’sign’ things… Christians and dear men of God, who have been greatly used, are creating an emotional, psychic situation that is involving simple Christians in things which are, sooner or later, going to be a great disillusionment and an offense. It will bring ‘offendedness’ with the Lord, and that is just what the devil is after.” (Called Unto the Fellowship of His Son, p. 46, published by Emmanuel Church, 12000 E.14th St., Tulsa, OK 74128)
Personally, I believe myself to be ready to risk all and to dare all for the Lord, but certainly not for a ‘blessing’ or dubious ‘experience’ that confers some seeming good. My own preference, and I believe that of the Scripture, is to seek out the root of depression according to the Word (usually unacknowledged disobediences). This will be accomplished primarily through that part of the Body to whom I am accountable and with whom I am authentically joined. (Ephesians 4:15) When ‘experience’ as a ‘quick-fix’ alternative is preferred to these disciplines, we put ourselves in a place of spiritual jeopardy. Is not the Lord near at hand to all who seek Him? What is the enduring benefit when we have merely received some alleviation from the symptoms that were occasioned by serious defects of character and return with these defects still remaining? Whatever the future will reveal of the present revival phenomenon, perhaps the greatest will be the profound repentance of broken thousands upon recognizing their susceptibility to deception, their lack of elementary discernment, and their haste to run after demonstrations of power in atmospheres so contrary to God’s known holiness and character.
Clearly, a power is at work. The question is, whose? Who is it that is mediating an alternative and lesser joy to the immature, the carnal, and the undiscerning? We are already discomforted to learn of the loss of interest, even the repudiation of apostolic vision once held by those who have received ‘the blessing’—as if the one were somehow antithetical or opposed to the other! Assuming that our fears are exaggerated and that the present phenomenon is of God, though admittedly marred only by certain excesses, in what ways will future ‘lying signs and wonders’ be different from that with which we are presently being confronted? By what criteria will these differences be identified? Are we presently at the level of maturity and discernment by which these important distinctions can be made? By what means shall we come to that place if we are now prone to describe as ‘enemies’ those who are only raising the questions? The very ridicule and censure brought by the advocates of this revival to those who attempt to do so makes suspect the very claims they espouse. The fact that something eventuates in blessing, release, or deliverance is no sure evidence or guarantee that it is of God. (Matthew 24:24) The same powers of darkness which have wrought the oppressions through careless or unclean living can just as easily relieve them—restoring even relationships broken and made miserable by them—in order to bring about a greater deception!
Even the most rapturous ‘love of God’ can be a pseudo-sensation produced by spirits in the indiscriminate and slothful who are unwilling for the sacrifices of seeking God’s face in truth. Is the ‘hunger for God’ in fact that, or a hunger for an experience of God that will assure the insecure soul that they are known and accepted of God? Is this not the unrecognized motive that makes many pant after present day prophets in hope of a ‘prophetic’ word of this kind? Does not this encouraged tendency promote the immaturity of such rather than encourage them in the faith of sons? Do we not prefer to be effortlessly ‘acted upon’ miraculously—rather than diligently seek God on the basis of the promise of His Word? “And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)
Are these not the last days in which we have been warned about deception and been exhorted to test all spirits? (I John 4:1; I Thessalonians 5:21) What are our eschatological expectations—the premises of our faith? Surely these views will altogether affect our susceptibilities to every new thing that promises to bless and establish us in this present life and rob us at the same time of the alertness that would and should otherwise be ours. Are we to ignore the prevalence of ear-splitting ‘worship’, high-powered offerings, calculated theatrics, carnival bawdiness, the chilling hellish shrieks and cries that punctuate the proceedings, the conspicuous absence of the preached word (except perhaps in a token way), the relentless spirit-dulling testimonies in a stupor unbecoming the dignity of God—given incoherently even by ministers of the Word? Not for a moment would such ‘phenomena’ be tolerated at the historic Welsh Revival where every care was taken to avoid even the use of instrumental music or any intrusion of man—the very things now being celebrated and employed. That revival was holiness unto the Lord so long as those standards were maintained.
Has He changed from being the God who insisted that His priests mount a ramp to the altar rather than ascend by steps lest any flesh be revealed? (Exodus 20:26) Who had them wear the golden head plate continually on their foreheads (the very place now we so readily make available for the touch that brings the ‘blessing’) ‘Holiness unto the Lord’? Who enjoined about the holy anointing oil that nothing shall be made ‘like unto that’ nor that it shall ever “Upon man’s flesh… be poured?” (Exodus 30:32-38) Our ache is that ‘Holiness unto the Lord’ be ascribed afresh on the foreheads of priestly men and women who will stand for Him in this age of sleaze and vulgarity that even now threatens to seep into the House of God. It is the cry of Isaiah 52:11, “Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst other; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord”—Indeed, “let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” (II Corinthians 7:1). Viewing the world staggering in violence, war, the catastrophes of earthquake, famine, flood, and fire, the Church in its present pitiful state of shallowness and un-preparedness, should we not rather “Be afflicted, and mourn and weep: let[ting] our laughter be turned to mourning, and [our] joy to heaviness?” Forgive us if we are being too cautious. We would be naive to think that deception is only a fear for the carnal and the sensual. Final and last day’s deceptions will be spiritual “for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light”. (II Corinthians 11:14) “The end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.” (I Peter 4:7).
August 24, 2008
Latter Rain Heresies
The Return of the Glory
Summarising two separate messages, "The Divine Unveiling of the Church" by Rob Wheeler of Aukland, New Zealand, and "Old Testament Promises" by Bill Britton, we can see clearly that the expectation is for the Shekinah Glory of God to return to its spiritual "ark" in the Living Temple of the Church in the last days.
"In Ezekiel 44 we read of the Sons of Zadok who ministered in the Most Holy Place. So shall it be for those who inherit the promises; they shall see God face to face and be the habitation of the living God."
In II Cor 6:16 we read, "For we are the temple of the living God; just as God has said, "I will dwell in them and walk among them and I shall be their God and they shall be my people.
" Thus, we have the promise that God will dwell in us, and the Holy Spirit is given us as the pledge, or firstfruits of that fulness. It is Christ in you that is the hope of glory (Col. 1:25-27). We are approaching the climax--the time at which God will dwell in us that we might be the vehicle of His manifest presence.
The latter-rain sequence has the return of the Shekinah to the Temple (Church) producing the Corporate Christ which then harvests the world by a signs and wonder revival, while simultaneously bringing judgement on the Harlot (disobedient Christians).
The Glory, in their understanding, is the visible manifestation of the Spirit. Now, in light of the satanic nature of this deception, it is not surprising that deceived Christians are being led to expect a manifested SPIRIT and not the visible return of the Lord Jesus.
I believe the way we are headed is into teaching about the return of the "lord" to his church, in glory, BEFORE (or perhaps even instead of?) the physical return of Jesus.
Bible translations that encourage the wrong interpretation
Unfortunately, modern translations of the Bible help in this deception. The Authorised Version has the blessed hope as the appearing of our great God in glory. Many other translations have the return OF THE GLORY!!
KING JAMES: Titus 2:13 13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; (KJV)
NEW ENGLISH BIBLE: Looking forward to the happy fulfilment of our hopes when the splendour of our great God and saviour Christ Jesus will appear...
REVISED STANDARD VERSION: Awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ....
JERUSALEM BIBLE: while we are waiting in hope for the blessing which will come with the appearing of the glory of our great God and saviour Jesus Christ....
GOOD NEWS BIBLE: as we wait for the blessed day we hope for, whenthe glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ will appear....
Is it any wonder that new Christians are confused on this issue, when the very scriptures they read seem to confirm that we are awaiting the "return of the glory" instead of the return of the Lord Jesus in a physical Body.
False Prophecy of the Return of the Glory
"The Glory of God, my Glory, says the Lord, after a sacrifice had been prepared and offered up, shook the very foundations of Hell as I defeated Death, Hell, and the Grave, I shall bring my Glory once again back into my dwelling place, the heart of a sinless man. Such as this you have become...Haven't I said If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, a new type of man who has never before existed? And this existence, says the Lord, is as my dwelling place and my home. For the Glory of God, my Glory, says the Lord, the Heavy Presence that shook the very foundations of the earth as I proclaimed Goodness and Mercy, has come once again to dwell in a tabernacle of flesh...
"You are temples, you are vessels, you are receptacles, you are containers of the very Fires of Heaven, measured into you as you will receive it. Some taking much, moving from Glory to Glory, changed by the nearness of my Glory, ever growing, ever changing, ever allowing Me more of you.
"Do not be afraid of my Glory, of my Heavy Presence says God, the God of Glory, for a time when I could not allow you to come near Me has passed. No longer must I hide you in the parting of the Rock as Moses was hidden, but today I bring you face to face with my Glory... For the Glory of God, my Glory says the Lord, is soon to come in His fullness, and where once men were shielded as I proclaimed Mercy and Grace, finally I will proclaim righteous judgement.
"Wait..... do you say `rejoice'? NO NO NO...weep and cry out, for then the souls of all who would not hear Me will be devastated, their lives destroyed, for every mans life, every mans work shall be judged by Fire, and only what has been straked and splattered by the Blood of Redemption will stand as a testimony to my Righteousness, and what is wicked, what is sinful, yes, even all that is not of Faith will burn in the very presence of my Glory in you, in you, in you, in you, in you, in you, IN YOU! [Carl Killingsworth on the Vineyard's New Wine BBS.January 1995:]
When Richard Riss wrote to explain his views on the Rapture (an earthly spiritual transformation) Bill Benninghoff replied to comment: (6)
"So shall ye know that I am the LORD your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more. I believe that this refers to the church, the Israel of God (Galatians 6) which will be purified by the Lord and indwellt by the Glory and Presence of Jesus....The Lord will dwell in His church in a marked and noticeable way as a result of the great outpouring of the Spirit, and the nations will know that Jesus Christ is God Almighty!
The feast of Passover is experienced by the believer at the moment he or she is born again. The individual is brought out of Egypt (the world) and into the Kingdom of God and into covenant relationship with God through Christ. The feast of unleavened bread and the feast of firstfruits are also fulfilled at this time as the new Christian is cleansed of all his/her sins. The feast of Pentecost is experienced by the believer when they are baptized into the power of the Holy Spirit.
The feast of Tabernacles (which actually has three parts: trumpets, day of atonement and tabernacles) is something that to my knowledge has not yet been experienced by individual believers or by the church corporately. Some leaders in the Body of Christ have taught that trumpets will be experienced by the church as the rapture, the day of atonement is the pouring out of God's wrath on the earth while the church is in heaven and that tabernacles represents the return of the church with the Lord to earth to begin the Millenium. I don't believe that the Scriptures teach this at all I believe that the feast of trumpets represents the prophetic flow of God among His people. This is something that the church really began to walk in as a result of the 1948 latter rain revival
The Day of Atonement was a time in which the sins of the covenant nation were cleansed and in which in the year of Jubilee (every 50th year) debts were cancelled, slaves were set free and land was returned to its original owners. It seems that this present move of God is one in which men and women who are already members of the covenant nation of God are being delivered from their sins, healed of their woundings and strengthened by the Spirit of the Lord. It seems to be a time of corporate cleansing and restoration in the Body of Christ.
(So today is the time of the Day of Atonement) I believe that all seven feasts must be experienced by the church on earth before the work is completed and the Lord returns for His bride. He will not return for her until she has completed her mission to become the expression of the Glory of God in the earth and until disciples have been made of all the nations.
YOU are the Antichrist!
I promised to reveal a dangerous aspect to the teaching of Ken Copeland, that the "christ" is the "anointing" upon all believers. This leads him to the belief that all who rebel against the anointing, or the anointed ones, are THE ANTI-CHRIST! Scripture identifies the antichrist as those who deny that Christ "is come in the flesh". If an anointing, or a glory cloud, is believed to be the coming of Christ into a Body of Flesh (his church) then anyone who denies the reality of such a thing could be labelled, scripturally, an antichrist.
Because we deny that Christ has come invisibly into this Body of people - thus we are the antichrist and we must be destroyed. Far-fetched? Unlikely ever to be applied to us? Well, this reasoning has already been applied:Earl Paulk writes in "The Wounded Body of Christ"
"Every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world. (1 John 4:3) When John dealt with identifying the antichrist, he said the spirit of antichrist was already at work. This spirit was identifiable by the fact that it...does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is the area in which we must test the spirits. The greatest test of the antichrist is its attitude towards the church - Jesus Christ himself is not a threat to any community unless there is a living thriving church in that community. Therefore, the spirit of antichrist refuses to recognise that GOD IS HERE IN THE FLESH. Attacking such figures as Oral Roberts, Jim Bakker and Kenneth Copeland are attacking the Church of Jesus Christ - such mockery and criticism are the means by which the spirit of antichrist operates."
Ken Copeland makes the same application. He goes to great lengths to try to prove that the word christ means anointing, so every time you come to the word christ in the Bible you should retranslate it, the anointing. Jesus was a man who was christed, he had the anointing. Now that same anointing is coming upon the Church, and if you oppose it you are anti-anointing, and that makes you an anti-christ!
"Once you start re-translating the word christ, as anointing you'll realize how the message of the anointing permeates the entire new testament. Even in those early days, the devil sent people in to steal that message,-------- people with the spirit of anti-christ (anti-anointing). For if you reTranslate the word anti-christ you'll realize it's referring to someone who is opposed to the anointing."(7)
Now we have to consider what this all means for us, and what it means in terms of the events of the endtimes.
Similarities to the Reign of Antichrist
If this were just another heresy it would be doomed to wither and die, like all the others. BUT, this is more than just a heresy by a few isolated groups. It is so widespread that almost every large group and ministry today has been infected by at least a part of the latter rain teachings,We cannot deny that we DO have an outpouring at the moment - this is not just fantasy but fact. So whatever the human thoughts and beliefs behind this, there is a spiritual power that fuels it - a power so great that it is able to influence the entire Church and bring about signs and wonders.
I want you to consider the latter rain teachings in the light of the book of revelation. You will notice some similarities.
1. THE WHITE HORSE: (Rev 6:2)
THEY CLAIM:
That the White Horse is the victorious church going out to conquer the world, at the beginning of the renewal, the beginning of the latter rain revival. (Bob Jones claims he saw a vision of a white horse in 1982, ready to ride - he believed this was the start of the revival.)
WE KNOW:
The white horse is clearly no Jesus Christ, but the spirit of antichrist! It closely resembles the Lord Jesus, but the Lord Jesus doesn't come at the start of the seven years, but at the end! The white horse is one of the four judgements sent out by God - it is the great apostasy that must come before the end.
THUS THEY HAIL THE ANTICHRIST APOSTASY AS THE VICTORIOUS CHURCH.
2. THE RETURN OF THE GLORY TO THE TEMPLE
THEY CLAIM:
that the Spirit of Christ will incarnate into a Body - his church (and maybe one representative of that church, its new head - see Appendix and this is seen as the entrance of the christ spirit into the Temple. And it is also seen as the spiritual marriage of the Bridegroom and his perfected bride.
WE KNOW:
Antichrist comes to a Temple, as God! "he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God".(2 Thess 2:4)He will also have a counterfeit bride - the Harlot, Mystery Babylon.
THUS THE CHURCH IS BEING PREPARED TO ACCEPT ANTICHRIST AS HER LORD AND CHRIST
3.THE TRIBULATION
THEY CLAIM:
The second half of the last seven years will be the reign of the manchild as the corporate christ, ruling over the rest of the Church and the world. It will be a time of purging for the Church and the world of anyone who refuses to bow and worship the glorious Manchild, the corporate christ. They say God will be cleansing out the tares from his church! AND WHILE THIS IS HAPPENING, the manchild company will be ruling over the world, meting out God's judgement, immune to all this suffering and disaster, using their powers to produce signs and wonders to bring the world to christ.
WE KNOW:
On the contrary the last three and a half-years are the reign of antichrist - not of Christ. The Tribulation is a result of satan and his demons coming down to earth, and the Tribulation is not primarily God at work removing wickedness, it is satan at work removing those who are righteous. Anyone who refuses to worship satan will be killed. And his False Prophet will be producing lying signs and wonders to deceive if possible even the very elect.
THUS THE CHURCH IS BEING PREPARED TO WORK ALONGSIDE ANTICHRIST IN SLAUGHTERING THE RIGHTEOUS.
4. SPIRITUAL WARFARE
THEY CLAIM:
that the manchild company have to cleanse the heavens - they have to be raised spiritually so they can war with the evil heavenly powers and cast them out, so they can take their place and rule over the earth territorially. All this teaching about territorial spirits is leading to that moment, which they call the war in heaven (Rev 12:7)
WE KNOW:
that the war in heaven is not conducted by the saints, but by the Archangel Michael and his angelic hosts. And the result is that satan and his fallen angels are cast out onto the earth to create havok there - Notice also they say the spiritual elite, the manchild company will be transformed into spiritual beings with resurrection bodies. So I do wonder if some of these people will so open themselves to the demonic before the end that the fallen angels actually possess them, as in the days of Noah - and you will have spirit beings walking the earth again.
THUS THEY WILL HELP IN THE SET UP OF THE SATANIC KINGDOM AND ACTUALLY PLAY HOST TO THE DEMONS.
CONCLUSION
My intention in writing these articles is not to criticise individuals associated with Toronto or the false revival - for they answer to God. Nor do I intend to tar everyone with the same brush, for many people get involved because they have a zeal for God - they want to see the world and the church changed and improved. They have no idea where these teachings are coming from. (Yet they fail to respond when they are told it is not biblical.
)We do have a responsibility to alert believers to the true nature of these teachings. If God chooses to reveal to us the roots of heresy and the possible outcome of deception, we have the task of exposing these things in order to SAVE PEOPLE FROM A HORRIBLE FATE.
If you saw a kitten about to stumble blindly across a busy main road, would you stand by and do nothing, telling people that it would be unloving to scare the kitten into fleeing to safety? Or would you turn aside, hoping somebody else would go to its rescue? If you would have compassion on a kitten in danger, how much more so should we seek to "rescue the perishing" - in this case, those who are at risk of perishing from the antichrist deception now running rampant in the Church and world.
All who love the truth have a responsibility to denounce these teachings and to avoid all those who teach them - even part of them.
A Little Leaven Leavens the Lump
Once you accept part of the teaching, the rest becomes necessary and inevitable. If this is an antichrist doctrine, it is the doctrine of demons and we should have nothing to do with it. We MUST remain true to the light of scripture - to the basics:
* SALVATION BY FAITH
* THE SACRIFICE OF JESUS ON THE CROSS FOR OUR REDEMPTION
* INDIVIDUAL CONVERSION AND SALVATION
* THE GREAT COMMISSION TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO EVERY MAN
* THE EVENTS OF THE END - THE APOSTASY, THE TRIBULATION THE RAPTURE, HEAVEN AS A LOCATION, HELL AS JUDGEMENT FOR THE WICKED
* THE KINGDOM AS THE LITERAL RETURN OF JESUS TO ESTABLISH RIGHTEOUSNESS;
* THE ROLE OF ISRAEL AS A NATION
* THE MILLENNIAL RULE OF CHRIST, NOT THE CHURCH
* THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST, ALREADY UNITED, ONE WITH CHRIST, TO WITNESS, TO ENDURE AND IF NECESSARY TO SUFFER AND DIE - ALWAYS HATED AND REJECTED AND ULTIMATELY TRIUMPHANT IN HER ALLEGIANCE TO CHRIST.
* THE CHRISTIAN HOPE IS THE RETURN OF JESUS PERSONALLY IN GLORY AND OUR INHERITANCE IN HIM ALONE.
We must continue to preach the great truths of the Bible, undeterred, believing that God is with us and will support, inspire and help us - and protect us. He will honour his word, honour those who hold to his word.
We must call on anyone involved in these teachings to abandon them and repent of them.
We must remain open, patient, kind, helpful and forgiving - not become hateful, proud and elitist.
We must remember that we can all be deceived - by all means save some; if they will not hear you, move on.
2 Tim 4:2 I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word, be instant in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine - for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry."
http://www.intotruth.org/res/newthing.html
Summarising two separate messages, "The Divine Unveiling of the Church" by Rob Wheeler of Aukland, New Zealand, and "Old Testament Promises" by Bill Britton, we can see clearly that the expectation is for the Shekinah Glory of God to return to its spiritual "ark" in the Living Temple of the Church in the last days.
"In Ezekiel 44 we read of the Sons of Zadok who ministered in the Most Holy Place. So shall it be for those who inherit the promises; they shall see God face to face and be the habitation of the living God."
In II Cor 6:16 we read, "For we are the temple of the living God; just as God has said, "I will dwell in them and walk among them and I shall be their God and they shall be my people.
" Thus, we have the promise that God will dwell in us, and the Holy Spirit is given us as the pledge, or firstfruits of that fulness. It is Christ in you that is the hope of glory (Col. 1:25-27). We are approaching the climax--the time at which God will dwell in us that we might be the vehicle of His manifest presence.
The latter-rain sequence has the return of the Shekinah to the Temple (Church) producing the Corporate Christ which then harvests the world by a signs and wonder revival, while simultaneously bringing judgement on the Harlot (disobedient Christians).
The Glory, in their understanding, is the visible manifestation of the Spirit. Now, in light of the satanic nature of this deception, it is not surprising that deceived Christians are being led to expect a manifested SPIRIT and not the visible return of the Lord Jesus.
I believe the way we are headed is into teaching about the return of the "lord" to his church, in glory, BEFORE (or perhaps even instead of?) the physical return of Jesus.
Bible translations that encourage the wrong interpretation
Unfortunately, modern translations of the Bible help in this deception. The Authorised Version has the blessed hope as the appearing of our great God in glory. Many other translations have the return OF THE GLORY!!
KING JAMES: Titus 2:13 13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; (KJV)
NEW ENGLISH BIBLE: Looking forward to the happy fulfilment of our hopes when the splendour of our great God and saviour Christ Jesus will appear...
REVISED STANDARD VERSION: Awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ....
JERUSALEM BIBLE: while we are waiting in hope for the blessing which will come with the appearing of the glory of our great God and saviour Jesus Christ....
GOOD NEWS BIBLE: as we wait for the blessed day we hope for, whenthe glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ will appear....
Is it any wonder that new Christians are confused on this issue, when the very scriptures they read seem to confirm that we are awaiting the "return of the glory" instead of the return of the Lord Jesus in a physical Body.
False Prophecy of the Return of the Glory
"The Glory of God, my Glory, says the Lord, after a sacrifice had been prepared and offered up, shook the very foundations of Hell as I defeated Death, Hell, and the Grave, I shall bring my Glory once again back into my dwelling place, the heart of a sinless man. Such as this you have become...Haven't I said If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, a new type of man who has never before existed? And this existence, says the Lord, is as my dwelling place and my home. For the Glory of God, my Glory, says the Lord, the Heavy Presence that shook the very foundations of the earth as I proclaimed Goodness and Mercy, has come once again to dwell in a tabernacle of flesh...
"You are temples, you are vessels, you are receptacles, you are containers of the very Fires of Heaven, measured into you as you will receive it. Some taking much, moving from Glory to Glory, changed by the nearness of my Glory, ever growing, ever changing, ever allowing Me more of you.
"Do not be afraid of my Glory, of my Heavy Presence says God, the God of Glory, for a time when I could not allow you to come near Me has passed. No longer must I hide you in the parting of the Rock as Moses was hidden, but today I bring you face to face with my Glory... For the Glory of God, my Glory says the Lord, is soon to come in His fullness, and where once men were shielded as I proclaimed Mercy and Grace, finally I will proclaim righteous judgement.
"Wait..... do you say `rejoice'? NO NO NO...weep and cry out, for then the souls of all who would not hear Me will be devastated, their lives destroyed, for every mans life, every mans work shall be judged by Fire, and only what has been straked and splattered by the Blood of Redemption will stand as a testimony to my Righteousness, and what is wicked, what is sinful, yes, even all that is not of Faith will burn in the very presence of my Glory in you, in you, in you, in you, in you, in you, IN YOU! [Carl Killingsworth on the Vineyard's New Wine BBS.January 1995:]
When Richard Riss wrote to explain his views on the Rapture (an earthly spiritual transformation) Bill Benninghoff replied to comment: (6)
"So shall ye know that I am the LORD your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more. I believe that this refers to the church, the Israel of God (Galatians 6) which will be purified by the Lord and indwellt by the Glory and Presence of Jesus....The Lord will dwell in His church in a marked and noticeable way as a result of the great outpouring of the Spirit, and the nations will know that Jesus Christ is God Almighty!
The feast of Passover is experienced by the believer at the moment he or she is born again. The individual is brought out of Egypt (the world) and into the Kingdom of God and into covenant relationship with God through Christ. The feast of unleavened bread and the feast of firstfruits are also fulfilled at this time as the new Christian is cleansed of all his/her sins. The feast of Pentecost is experienced by the believer when they are baptized into the power of the Holy Spirit.
The feast of Tabernacles (which actually has three parts: trumpets, day of atonement and tabernacles) is something that to my knowledge has not yet been experienced by individual believers or by the church corporately. Some leaders in the Body of Christ have taught that trumpets will be experienced by the church as the rapture, the day of atonement is the pouring out of God's wrath on the earth while the church is in heaven and that tabernacles represents the return of the church with the Lord to earth to begin the Millenium. I don't believe that the Scriptures teach this at all I believe that the feast of trumpets represents the prophetic flow of God among His people. This is something that the church really began to walk in as a result of the 1948 latter rain revival
The Day of Atonement was a time in which the sins of the covenant nation were cleansed and in which in the year of Jubilee (every 50th year) debts were cancelled, slaves were set free and land was returned to its original owners. It seems that this present move of God is one in which men and women who are already members of the covenant nation of God are being delivered from their sins, healed of their woundings and strengthened by the Spirit of the Lord. It seems to be a time of corporate cleansing and restoration in the Body of Christ.
(So today is the time of the Day of Atonement) I believe that all seven feasts must be experienced by the church on earth before the work is completed and the Lord returns for His bride. He will not return for her until she has completed her mission to become the expression of the Glory of God in the earth and until disciples have been made of all the nations.
YOU are the Antichrist!
I promised to reveal a dangerous aspect to the teaching of Ken Copeland, that the "christ" is the "anointing" upon all believers. This leads him to the belief that all who rebel against the anointing, or the anointed ones, are THE ANTI-CHRIST! Scripture identifies the antichrist as those who deny that Christ "is come in the flesh". If an anointing, or a glory cloud, is believed to be the coming of Christ into a Body of Flesh (his church) then anyone who denies the reality of such a thing could be labelled, scripturally, an antichrist.
Because we deny that Christ has come invisibly into this Body of people - thus we are the antichrist and we must be destroyed. Far-fetched? Unlikely ever to be applied to us? Well, this reasoning has already been applied:Earl Paulk writes in "The Wounded Body of Christ"
"Every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world. (1 John 4:3) When John dealt with identifying the antichrist, he said the spirit of antichrist was already at work. This spirit was identifiable by the fact that it...does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is the area in which we must test the spirits. The greatest test of the antichrist is its attitude towards the church - Jesus Christ himself is not a threat to any community unless there is a living thriving church in that community. Therefore, the spirit of antichrist refuses to recognise that GOD IS HERE IN THE FLESH. Attacking such figures as Oral Roberts, Jim Bakker and Kenneth Copeland are attacking the Church of Jesus Christ - such mockery and criticism are the means by which the spirit of antichrist operates."
Ken Copeland makes the same application. He goes to great lengths to try to prove that the word christ means anointing, so every time you come to the word christ in the Bible you should retranslate it, the anointing. Jesus was a man who was christed, he had the anointing. Now that same anointing is coming upon the Church, and if you oppose it you are anti-anointing, and that makes you an anti-christ!
"Once you start re-translating the word christ, as anointing you'll realize how the message of the anointing permeates the entire new testament. Even in those early days, the devil sent people in to steal that message,-------- people with the spirit of anti-christ (anti-anointing). For if you reTranslate the word anti-christ you'll realize it's referring to someone who is opposed to the anointing."(7)
Now we have to consider what this all means for us, and what it means in terms of the events of the endtimes.
Similarities to the Reign of Antichrist
If this were just another heresy it would be doomed to wither and die, like all the others. BUT, this is more than just a heresy by a few isolated groups. It is so widespread that almost every large group and ministry today has been infected by at least a part of the latter rain teachings,We cannot deny that we DO have an outpouring at the moment - this is not just fantasy but fact. So whatever the human thoughts and beliefs behind this, there is a spiritual power that fuels it - a power so great that it is able to influence the entire Church and bring about signs and wonders.
I want you to consider the latter rain teachings in the light of the book of revelation. You will notice some similarities.
1. THE WHITE HORSE: (Rev 6:2)
THEY CLAIM:
That the White Horse is the victorious church going out to conquer the world, at the beginning of the renewal, the beginning of the latter rain revival. (Bob Jones claims he saw a vision of a white horse in 1982, ready to ride - he believed this was the start of the revival.)
WE KNOW:
The white horse is clearly no Jesus Christ, but the spirit of antichrist! It closely resembles the Lord Jesus, but the Lord Jesus doesn't come at the start of the seven years, but at the end! The white horse is one of the four judgements sent out by God - it is the great apostasy that must come before the end.
THUS THEY HAIL THE ANTICHRIST APOSTASY AS THE VICTORIOUS CHURCH.
2. THE RETURN OF THE GLORY TO THE TEMPLE
THEY CLAIM:
that the Spirit of Christ will incarnate into a Body - his church (and maybe one representative of that church, its new head - see Appendix and this is seen as the entrance of the christ spirit into the Temple. And it is also seen as the spiritual marriage of the Bridegroom and his perfected bride.
WE KNOW:
Antichrist comes to a Temple, as God! "he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God".(2 Thess 2:4)He will also have a counterfeit bride - the Harlot, Mystery Babylon.
THUS THE CHURCH IS BEING PREPARED TO ACCEPT ANTICHRIST AS HER LORD AND CHRIST
3.THE TRIBULATION
THEY CLAIM:
The second half of the last seven years will be the reign of the manchild as the corporate christ, ruling over the rest of the Church and the world. It will be a time of purging for the Church and the world of anyone who refuses to bow and worship the glorious Manchild, the corporate christ. They say God will be cleansing out the tares from his church! AND WHILE THIS IS HAPPENING, the manchild company will be ruling over the world, meting out God's judgement, immune to all this suffering and disaster, using their powers to produce signs and wonders to bring the world to christ.
WE KNOW:
On the contrary the last three and a half-years are the reign of antichrist - not of Christ. The Tribulation is a result of satan and his demons coming down to earth, and the Tribulation is not primarily God at work removing wickedness, it is satan at work removing those who are righteous. Anyone who refuses to worship satan will be killed. And his False Prophet will be producing lying signs and wonders to deceive if possible even the very elect.
THUS THE CHURCH IS BEING PREPARED TO WORK ALONGSIDE ANTICHRIST IN SLAUGHTERING THE RIGHTEOUS.
4. SPIRITUAL WARFARE
THEY CLAIM:
that the manchild company have to cleanse the heavens - they have to be raised spiritually so they can war with the evil heavenly powers and cast them out, so they can take their place and rule over the earth territorially. All this teaching about territorial spirits is leading to that moment, which they call the war in heaven (Rev 12:7)
WE KNOW:
that the war in heaven is not conducted by the saints, but by the Archangel Michael and his angelic hosts. And the result is that satan and his fallen angels are cast out onto the earth to create havok there - Notice also they say the spiritual elite, the manchild company will be transformed into spiritual beings with resurrection bodies. So I do wonder if some of these people will so open themselves to the demonic before the end that the fallen angels actually possess them, as in the days of Noah - and you will have spirit beings walking the earth again.
THUS THEY WILL HELP IN THE SET UP OF THE SATANIC KINGDOM AND ACTUALLY PLAY HOST TO THE DEMONS.
CONCLUSION
My intention in writing these articles is not to criticise individuals associated with Toronto or the false revival - for they answer to God. Nor do I intend to tar everyone with the same brush, for many people get involved because they have a zeal for God - they want to see the world and the church changed and improved. They have no idea where these teachings are coming from. (Yet they fail to respond when they are told it is not biblical.
)We do have a responsibility to alert believers to the true nature of these teachings. If God chooses to reveal to us the roots of heresy and the possible outcome of deception, we have the task of exposing these things in order to SAVE PEOPLE FROM A HORRIBLE FATE.
If you saw a kitten about to stumble blindly across a busy main road, would you stand by and do nothing, telling people that it would be unloving to scare the kitten into fleeing to safety? Or would you turn aside, hoping somebody else would go to its rescue? If you would have compassion on a kitten in danger, how much more so should we seek to "rescue the perishing" - in this case, those who are at risk of perishing from the antichrist deception now running rampant in the Church and world.
All who love the truth have a responsibility to denounce these teachings and to avoid all those who teach them - even part of them.
A Little Leaven Leavens the Lump
Once you accept part of the teaching, the rest becomes necessary and inevitable. If this is an antichrist doctrine, it is the doctrine of demons and we should have nothing to do with it. We MUST remain true to the light of scripture - to the basics:
* SALVATION BY FAITH
* THE SACRIFICE OF JESUS ON THE CROSS FOR OUR REDEMPTION
* INDIVIDUAL CONVERSION AND SALVATION
* THE GREAT COMMISSION TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO EVERY MAN
* THE EVENTS OF THE END - THE APOSTASY, THE TRIBULATION THE RAPTURE, HEAVEN AS A LOCATION, HELL AS JUDGEMENT FOR THE WICKED
* THE KINGDOM AS THE LITERAL RETURN OF JESUS TO ESTABLISH RIGHTEOUSNESS;
* THE ROLE OF ISRAEL AS A NATION
* THE MILLENNIAL RULE OF CHRIST, NOT THE CHURCH
* THE CHURCH AS THE BODY OF CHRIST, ALREADY UNITED, ONE WITH CHRIST, TO WITNESS, TO ENDURE AND IF NECESSARY TO SUFFER AND DIE - ALWAYS HATED AND REJECTED AND ULTIMATELY TRIUMPHANT IN HER ALLEGIANCE TO CHRIST.
* THE CHRISTIAN HOPE IS THE RETURN OF JESUS PERSONALLY IN GLORY AND OUR INHERITANCE IN HIM ALONE.
We must continue to preach the great truths of the Bible, undeterred, believing that God is with us and will support, inspire and help us - and protect us. He will honour his word, honour those who hold to his word.
We must call on anyone involved in these teachings to abandon them and repent of them.
We must remain open, patient, kind, helpful and forgiving - not become hateful, proud and elitist.
We must remember that we can all be deceived - by all means save some; if they will not hear you, move on.
2 Tim 4:2 I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word, be instant in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine - for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry."
http://www.intotruth.org/res/newthing.html
August 23, 2008
Spiritual Survival for a Church in Crisis
Discernment
By John MacArthur
"In the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power." 2 Tim. 3:1-5
"There will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words." 2 Pet. 2:1-3
"As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy.'" 1 Peter 1:14-16
Today's church is like the religious leaders of Jesus' day, who could tell the difference between superficial things like pleasant and stormy weather, but not between truth and error (Matt. 16:1-3). So many churches have relinquished biblical ethics and doctrine, a deep reverence and worship of God, repentance over sin, humility toward God and fellow believers, and a profound understanding of God's character and work. All that has resulted in a low-level commitment to holy living.
In contrast, God calls all true believers to pursue perfect conformity to the absolute, holy standard of His Word....If you're going to live a holy life that pleases the Lord, it's essential that you be spiritually discerning.
What Is Spiritual Discernment?
Spiritual discernment is the skill of separating divine truth from error. First Thessalonians 5:21 says we are to "examine everything carefully." That speaks of testing something to reveal its genuineness. We as believers are to evaluate everything we come in contact with to distinguish what is true and false, good and bad, or right and wrong. That can be a difficult task. Why? First, we are constantly fighting the sinful desires of our fallen flesh. Second, we face satanic deception. The devil is doing everything he can to confound and confuse us. Third, we are inundated with worldly influences that seek to overpower us.
Opposing the world, the flesh, and the devil requires us to "hold fast to that which is good" (v. 21). We are to embrace wholeheartedly what is inherently genuine and true. We are also to "abstain from every form of evil" (v. 22). That means we are to separate ourselves from every form of perversion as though we were avoiding a deadly plague or poison. One pastor correctly wrote,
"The worst forms of wickedness consist of perversions of the truth, of spiritual lies, although today many look upon these forms with indifference and regard them rather harmless" (R.C. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians, to the Thessalonians, to Timothy, to Titus and to Philemon [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1961], p. 363).
Many in today's church are indifferent about separating divine truth from error because they lack spiritual discernment.
Why Is There a Lack of Spiritual Discernment?
● Weak Doctrine.... a shallow knowledge of God's Word because the church has yielded the trade and skill of understanding it to people who are ill-equipped to do so.... Because experience and emotion have been elevated above divine revelation, many who call themselves Christians have no biblical basis for doing so....
Some say that doctrine divides. That's true! If you set aside biblical truth and remain silent for fear of offending people, opposition will disappear, but so will some other things like truth, holiness, and God Himself. [Jude 1:3-4]
● Relativistic Thinking.... Much of today's church has a continuum mindset, a continuum being that which has no discernable division into parts. Rather than seeing things as black and white--as right and wrong or true and false--it prefers to see things in infinite shades of gray....
"How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night" (Ps. 1:1-2).
● Worldly Methodology.... the church's preoccupation with image and influence as the key to evangelization.
Since today's church believes it must win the lost to Christ by winning their favor, it no longer teaches the biblical doctrines of sin, hell, repentance, or the cross because those would offend the lost or make them feel uncomfortable. Instead it markets itself as a benevolent, non-threatening agency whose primary goal is to achieve prestige, popularity, and intellectual acceptance among the lost. Its premise is, "If they like us, they'll like our Jesus."....
Martyn Lloyd-Jones "saw that the elements of warning and of opposition to error were essential parts of any true commitment to the Bible... Accordingly he expected no approval from those who accepted the prevailing attitude which put 'love' first and treated arguments over doctrine as unchristian...." (The Fight of Faith, p. 650).... True believers are an offense to those who reject the truth. ...[John 15:18-20; Hebrews 10:33]
● Inaccurate Interpretation... indifferent toward God's Word. Some teachers in the church are not trained to study God's Word and end up with a wrong theology. Some are trained, but opt to tell stories or mix man-made ideas with biblical truth.... Still others arrive at what they believe is truth by some mystical intuition, experience, or emotion....
● Lax Discipline... because of the failure to carry out church discipline.... (Matt. 18:15-17)....The church should be sending a message to the lost that says, "We are a holy people."
● Spiritual Immaturity. Many in the church have only a shallow knowledge of God's Word, trust in personal experiences or feelings as truth, or chase personal comfort and success as a way of life...[Ephesians 4:14-15; Hebrews 5:12-14]
How Can I Be Spiritually Discerning?
● Desire It. ...Proverbs 2:2-5 says, "Make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding; for if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding; if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will discern the fear of the Lord, and discover the knowledge of God." Are you willing to follow the path that leads to spiritual discernment?
● Pray for It.... balance your desire for spiritual discernment by depending on the Lord for it through prayer. ...James 1:5 says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him."
● Learn from Others.... 1 John 4:1 says, "Test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world."... It's not a matter of praying in the evening, "Lord, give me discernment," and then waking up the next morning and having it. Spiritual maturity is the result of being nourished by God's Word. ...
Depend on the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is the true Discerner who will lead you into all truth (John 16:13). He perfectly knows the mind of God: "The thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural [lost] man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no man. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor. 2:11-16).
Allow the Holy Spirit to control your life by confessing and forsaking sin and living a pure, holy life. Galatians 5:16 says, "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh." As you are obedient to that, He will make you a discerning believer.
Study God's Word
Spiritual discernment flourishes in an environment of intense, faithful Bible study. You will not be spiritually discerning--even though you desire it, pray for it, learn from the gifted and mature, and depend on the Holy Spirit --unless you diligently study His Word. Only there will you find the principles and truths to discern between truth and error. In Acts 17, for example, the Jewish people of Berea received Paul's preaching eagerly, and then tested his gospel message by comparing it to the teachings of the Old Testament. As a result many became believers.
In Acts 20 Paul warned the church leaders at Ephesus about false teachers who would try to infiltrate and devastate the church. His concluding word to them was this: "I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified" (v. 32). Paul knew that their careful study of God's Word was essential for protecting the church from error.
Second Timothy 2:15 says, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth." The laborer who gives maximum effort to the quality of his work will not be ashamed because of any faulty workmanship. That means the believer is to present God's Word accurately to others in contrast to those "wrangle about words" or engage in "worldly and empty chatter" (vv. 14, 16). By doing so, he will receive God's approval and be counted as one worthy to stand alongside Him. The unashamed believer can say, "Lord, I studied and presented Your Word with integrity."
What about you? How do you study God's Word? In a superficial, careless way, or carefully and thoughtfully? Digging deeply into God's Word requires effort, but remember this: "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
Conclusion
Spiritual discernment requires desire, prayer, learning from the gifted and mature, dependence on the Holy Spirit, and a diligent study of God's Word. If you follow those steps, you will strengthen your doctrinal convictions, think antithetically, be kept from worldly approaches, be a good interpreter of God's Word, and confront sin. All that will help you mature and bring honor to God!
By John MacArthur
"In the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power." 2 Tim. 3:1-5
"There will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words." 2 Pet. 2:1-3
"As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy.'" 1 Peter 1:14-16
Today's church is like the religious leaders of Jesus' day, who could tell the difference between superficial things like pleasant and stormy weather, but not between truth and error (Matt. 16:1-3). So many churches have relinquished biblical ethics and doctrine, a deep reverence and worship of God, repentance over sin, humility toward God and fellow believers, and a profound understanding of God's character and work. All that has resulted in a low-level commitment to holy living.
In contrast, God calls all true believers to pursue perfect conformity to the absolute, holy standard of His Word....If you're going to live a holy life that pleases the Lord, it's essential that you be spiritually discerning.
What Is Spiritual Discernment?
Spiritual discernment is the skill of separating divine truth from error. First Thessalonians 5:21 says we are to "examine everything carefully." That speaks of testing something to reveal its genuineness. We as believers are to evaluate everything we come in contact with to distinguish what is true and false, good and bad, or right and wrong. That can be a difficult task. Why? First, we are constantly fighting the sinful desires of our fallen flesh. Second, we face satanic deception. The devil is doing everything he can to confound and confuse us. Third, we are inundated with worldly influences that seek to overpower us.
Opposing the world, the flesh, and the devil requires us to "hold fast to that which is good" (v. 21). We are to embrace wholeheartedly what is inherently genuine and true. We are also to "abstain from every form of evil" (v. 22). That means we are to separate ourselves from every form of perversion as though we were avoiding a deadly plague or poison. One pastor correctly wrote,
"The worst forms of wickedness consist of perversions of the truth, of spiritual lies, although today many look upon these forms with indifference and regard them rather harmless" (R.C. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians, to the Thessalonians, to Timothy, to Titus and to Philemon [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1961], p. 363).
Many in today's church are indifferent about separating divine truth from error because they lack spiritual discernment.
Why Is There a Lack of Spiritual Discernment?
● Weak Doctrine.... a shallow knowledge of God's Word because the church has yielded the trade and skill of understanding it to people who are ill-equipped to do so.... Because experience and emotion have been elevated above divine revelation, many who call themselves Christians have no biblical basis for doing so....
Some say that doctrine divides. That's true! If you set aside biblical truth and remain silent for fear of offending people, opposition will disappear, but so will some other things like truth, holiness, and God Himself. [Jude 1:3-4]
● Relativistic Thinking.... Much of today's church has a continuum mindset, a continuum being that which has no discernable division into parts. Rather than seeing things as black and white--as right and wrong or true and false--it prefers to see things in infinite shades of gray....
"How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night" (Ps. 1:1-2).
● Worldly Methodology.... the church's preoccupation with image and influence as the key to evangelization.
Since today's church believes it must win the lost to Christ by winning their favor, it no longer teaches the biblical doctrines of sin, hell, repentance, or the cross because those would offend the lost or make them feel uncomfortable. Instead it markets itself as a benevolent, non-threatening agency whose primary goal is to achieve prestige, popularity, and intellectual acceptance among the lost. Its premise is, "If they like us, they'll like our Jesus."....
Martyn Lloyd-Jones "saw that the elements of warning and of opposition to error were essential parts of any true commitment to the Bible... Accordingly he expected no approval from those who accepted the prevailing attitude which put 'love' first and treated arguments over doctrine as unchristian...." (The Fight of Faith, p. 650).... True believers are an offense to those who reject the truth. ...[John 15:18-20; Hebrews 10:33]
● Inaccurate Interpretation... indifferent toward God's Word. Some teachers in the church are not trained to study God's Word and end up with a wrong theology. Some are trained, but opt to tell stories or mix man-made ideas with biblical truth.... Still others arrive at what they believe is truth by some mystical intuition, experience, or emotion....
● Lax Discipline... because of the failure to carry out church discipline.... (Matt. 18:15-17)....The church should be sending a message to the lost that says, "We are a holy people."
● Spiritual Immaturity. Many in the church have only a shallow knowledge of God's Word, trust in personal experiences or feelings as truth, or chase personal comfort and success as a way of life...[Ephesians 4:14-15; Hebrews 5:12-14]
How Can I Be Spiritually Discerning?
● Desire It. ...Proverbs 2:2-5 says, "Make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding; for if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding; if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will discern the fear of the Lord, and discover the knowledge of God." Are you willing to follow the path that leads to spiritual discernment?
● Pray for It.... balance your desire for spiritual discernment by depending on the Lord for it through prayer. ...James 1:5 says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him."
● Learn from Others.... 1 John 4:1 says, "Test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world."... It's not a matter of praying in the evening, "Lord, give me discernment," and then waking up the next morning and having it. Spiritual maturity is the result of being nourished by God's Word. ...
Depend on the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is the true Discerner who will lead you into all truth (John 16:13). He perfectly knows the mind of God: "The thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. But a natural [lost] man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no man. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ" (1 Cor. 2:11-16).
Allow the Holy Spirit to control your life by confessing and forsaking sin and living a pure, holy life. Galatians 5:16 says, "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh." As you are obedient to that, He will make you a discerning believer.
Study God's Word
Spiritual discernment flourishes in an environment of intense, faithful Bible study. You will not be spiritually discerning--even though you desire it, pray for it, learn from the gifted and mature, and depend on the Holy Spirit --unless you diligently study His Word. Only there will you find the principles and truths to discern between truth and error. In Acts 17, for example, the Jewish people of Berea received Paul's preaching eagerly, and then tested his gospel message by comparing it to the teachings of the Old Testament. As a result many became believers.
In Acts 20 Paul warned the church leaders at Ephesus about false teachers who would try to infiltrate and devastate the church. His concluding word to them was this: "I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified" (v. 32). Paul knew that their careful study of God's Word was essential for protecting the church from error.
Second Timothy 2:15 says, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth." The laborer who gives maximum effort to the quality of his work will not be ashamed because of any faulty workmanship. That means the believer is to present God's Word accurately to others in contrast to those "wrangle about words" or engage in "worldly and empty chatter" (vv. 14, 16). By doing so, he will receive God's approval and be counted as one worthy to stand alongside Him. The unashamed believer can say, "Lord, I studied and presented Your Word with integrity."
What about you? How do you study God's Word? In a superficial, careless way, or carefully and thoughtfully? Digging deeply into God's Word requires effort, but remember this: "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
Conclusion
Spiritual discernment requires desire, prayer, learning from the gifted and mature, dependence on the Holy Spirit, and a diligent study of God's Word. If you follow those steps, you will strengthen your doctrinal convictions, think antithetically, be kept from worldly approaches, be a good interpreter of God's Word, and confront sin. All that will help you mature and bring honor to God!
August 20, 2008
Don't be Deceived!
Angels, Deception and a Cry for Biblical Truth
Weird teachings about angels have become the norm in some charismatic circles today. It’s time to demand sanity on the subject.
At a growing Brazilian church in Boston, a pastor told his congregation he was having regular conversations with an angel. Weeks later he set a chair on the stage for the heavenly visitor, whom he said was attending Sunday services even though no one could see him. The pastor eventually wrote a book containing messages he had supposedly received from the angel. The man’s teachings became so bizarre that he was eventually removed from his denomination for promoting heresy.
That scenario may seem extreme, but it is one example of widespread emphasis on angels and angelic encounters in the charismatic movement today. In the case of the Brazilian church, the pastor went off the theological deep end and his church became a cult. It remains to be seen what will happen in other sectors of our movement as leaders promote teachings about angels that range from the mildly weird to downright wacky:
“It remains to be seen what will happen in other sectors of our movement as leaders promote teachings about angels that range from the mildly weird to downright wacky.”
* Evangelist Todd Bentley, leader of the Lakeland Revival, stirred up interest in angels when he wrote about Emma, a female angel he said wears a long white dress, floats above the floor and resembles Kathryn Kuhlman.
* A young evangelist who was preaching in Canada last spring held up a jar with a feather in it and told the congregation it belonged to an angel who visits him. He said the angel was coming to the service to release riches and healing to those who wanted prayer.
* Leaders of the prophetic movement often speak of angels that bring healing, wealth or special anointings. Some have described angels as tall as skyscrapers while others say they have seen tiny angels the size of insects. One prophet spoke of angels who are sleeping inside the walls of churches. Another segment of believers claim that the glowing circles of light that often show up on photographs are angels in the form of “orbs.”
With such exotic teachings on the rise, we desperately need some biblical guidelines. If you believe everything you hear these days, angels can be huge, tiny, spherical, male, female, feathered or non-feathered. What’s next? Yipping dog angels? Mermaid angels with fins? Court jester angels with bells on their hats?
Since my earliest days in the charismatic movement I was always taught that the Bible is our guidebook for doctrine and practice, and that the early church's experience in the Book of Acts should be a pattern for us. This would direct us to assume that if a spiritual experience is not in the Bible, then it should not be considered normative for us today.
When I look at what the New Testament teaches us about angels, and specifically what the book of Acts shows us about them, here’s what I find:
* Angels who looked like men told the early disciples that Jesus would return one day (see Acts 1:11)
* Angels are actively working behind the scenes to minister to the saints, especially to offer protection (see Acts 12:7-11)
* In one case an angel directed Philip where to preach (see Acts 8:26)
* Angels sometimes appeared in visions to give instructions, as one did for Cornelius (see Acts 10:3,7,22)
* An angel came to Paul to strengthen him and to assure him that he would preach to Caesar (see Acts 27:23-24).
If we look at Paul’s epistles, we find only a few references to angels—and most are actually warnings to the early church about a wrong emphasis on angels:
* Paul warned the Galatians that false angels can bring deception (see Gal. 1:8)
* Paul warned the Corinthians about "angels of light" that are messengers of Satan (see 2 Cor. 11:14)
* Paul warned the Colossians about misguided people who worship angels and deceive people with their emphasis on mystical experiences that are rooted in their hyperinflated egos (see Col. 2:18).
The book of Hebrews was written to a group of Christians who were considering going back to Old Covenant worship. In the first chapter the author makes it clear that angels have a lower place in God's economy when compared to Jesus Christ.
Many Bible scholars believe the readers of this epistle were being tempted to go back to an Old Covenant paradigm in which angels played a more significant role. The author of Hebrews warns these believers to focus their attention instead on the Son of God, who is more glorious than angels. We can make some basic assumptions about angels in the New Covenant era:
1. Angels help the church fulfill its mission, and they protect and guide the saints. Every one of us has probably experienced the activity of angels in our lives—often without knowing it because they are usually invisible.
2. Angels sometimes intervene with directive messages. But there is no case in the New Testament church in which an angel gave his name or brought attention to himself.
3. Angels don’t teach or explain doctrine. In our movement today, some leaders have suggested that certain angels (such as “Winds of Change”) have arrived to usher in new movements. Emma has been described as a "nurturing angel" who brings a prophetic movement. But nowhere does the Bible suggest that angels bring moves of God. Jesus commissioned the church to advance the kingdom by preaching the gospel. Angels know this and they are expecting us to do our job.
4. Angels don’t bring healing. The New Testament church was commissioned to bring healing “through the name of Jesus,” and Jesus was always the focus for anyone who was healed miraculously. The story of the Pool of Siloam falls under the Old Covenant system, since this phenomenon occurred before the ministry of Jesus. And when Jesus came to that pool He proved to be a better solution to those who waited for the stirring of the waters.
5. Angels look like people, and in every case in Scripture they appeared to be male. However, in some cases their appearance was frightening because they carry with them the glory of heaven and the fear of God.
6. False angels preach a different gospel. One of the devil's strategies is to send counterfeit angelic messengers who bring teaching that is contrary to biblical truth.
There are many flaky, weird and foolish concepts being circulated in our movement today that must be corrected. If we don't hold tightly to Scripture, we might unknowingly give birth to a cult that could bring great damage and division to churches worldwide. It’s time to get back to the Bible!
J. Lee Grady
Weird teachings about angels have become the norm in some charismatic circles today. It’s time to demand sanity on the subject.
At a growing Brazilian church in Boston, a pastor told his congregation he was having regular conversations with an angel. Weeks later he set a chair on the stage for the heavenly visitor, whom he said was attending Sunday services even though no one could see him. The pastor eventually wrote a book containing messages he had supposedly received from the angel. The man’s teachings became so bizarre that he was eventually removed from his denomination for promoting heresy.
That scenario may seem extreme, but it is one example of widespread emphasis on angels and angelic encounters in the charismatic movement today. In the case of the Brazilian church, the pastor went off the theological deep end and his church became a cult. It remains to be seen what will happen in other sectors of our movement as leaders promote teachings about angels that range from the mildly weird to downright wacky:
“It remains to be seen what will happen in other sectors of our movement as leaders promote teachings about angels that range from the mildly weird to downright wacky.”
* Evangelist Todd Bentley, leader of the Lakeland Revival, stirred up interest in angels when he wrote about Emma, a female angel he said wears a long white dress, floats above the floor and resembles Kathryn Kuhlman.
* A young evangelist who was preaching in Canada last spring held up a jar with a feather in it and told the congregation it belonged to an angel who visits him. He said the angel was coming to the service to release riches and healing to those who wanted prayer.
* Leaders of the prophetic movement often speak of angels that bring healing, wealth or special anointings. Some have described angels as tall as skyscrapers while others say they have seen tiny angels the size of insects. One prophet spoke of angels who are sleeping inside the walls of churches. Another segment of believers claim that the glowing circles of light that often show up on photographs are angels in the form of “orbs.”
With such exotic teachings on the rise, we desperately need some biblical guidelines. If you believe everything you hear these days, angels can be huge, tiny, spherical, male, female, feathered or non-feathered. What’s next? Yipping dog angels? Mermaid angels with fins? Court jester angels with bells on their hats?
Since my earliest days in the charismatic movement I was always taught that the Bible is our guidebook for doctrine and practice, and that the early church's experience in the Book of Acts should be a pattern for us. This would direct us to assume that if a spiritual experience is not in the Bible, then it should not be considered normative for us today.
When I look at what the New Testament teaches us about angels, and specifically what the book of Acts shows us about them, here’s what I find:
* Angels who looked like men told the early disciples that Jesus would return one day (see Acts 1:11)
* Angels are actively working behind the scenes to minister to the saints, especially to offer protection (see Acts 12:7-11)
* In one case an angel directed Philip where to preach (see Acts 8:26)
* Angels sometimes appeared in visions to give instructions, as one did for Cornelius (see Acts 10:3,7,22)
* An angel came to Paul to strengthen him and to assure him that he would preach to Caesar (see Acts 27:23-24).
If we look at Paul’s epistles, we find only a few references to angels—and most are actually warnings to the early church about a wrong emphasis on angels:
* Paul warned the Galatians that false angels can bring deception (see Gal. 1:8)
* Paul warned the Corinthians about "angels of light" that are messengers of Satan (see 2 Cor. 11:14)
* Paul warned the Colossians about misguided people who worship angels and deceive people with their emphasis on mystical experiences that are rooted in their hyperinflated egos (see Col. 2:18).
The book of Hebrews was written to a group of Christians who were considering going back to Old Covenant worship. In the first chapter the author makes it clear that angels have a lower place in God's economy when compared to Jesus Christ.
Many Bible scholars believe the readers of this epistle were being tempted to go back to an Old Covenant paradigm in which angels played a more significant role. The author of Hebrews warns these believers to focus their attention instead on the Son of God, who is more glorious than angels. We can make some basic assumptions about angels in the New Covenant era:
1. Angels help the church fulfill its mission, and they protect and guide the saints. Every one of us has probably experienced the activity of angels in our lives—often without knowing it because they are usually invisible.
2. Angels sometimes intervene with directive messages. But there is no case in the New Testament church in which an angel gave his name or brought attention to himself.
3. Angels don’t teach or explain doctrine. In our movement today, some leaders have suggested that certain angels (such as “Winds of Change”) have arrived to usher in new movements. Emma has been described as a "nurturing angel" who brings a prophetic movement. But nowhere does the Bible suggest that angels bring moves of God. Jesus commissioned the church to advance the kingdom by preaching the gospel. Angels know this and they are expecting us to do our job.
4. Angels don’t bring healing. The New Testament church was commissioned to bring healing “through the name of Jesus,” and Jesus was always the focus for anyone who was healed miraculously. The story of the Pool of Siloam falls under the Old Covenant system, since this phenomenon occurred before the ministry of Jesus. And when Jesus came to that pool He proved to be a better solution to those who waited for the stirring of the waters.
5. Angels look like people, and in every case in Scripture they appeared to be male. However, in some cases their appearance was frightening because they carry with them the glory of heaven and the fear of God.
6. False angels preach a different gospel. One of the devil's strategies is to send counterfeit angelic messengers who bring teaching that is contrary to biblical truth.
There are many flaky, weird and foolish concepts being circulated in our movement today that must be corrected. If we don't hold tightly to Scripture, we might unknowingly give birth to a cult that could bring great damage and division to churches worldwide. It’s time to get back to the Bible!
J. Lee Grady
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
