The Bible tells us that there will be false teachers, wolves and heretics. They have malintent, in other words, they want to do you and your church harm. They aren’t simply misguided or temporarily misunderstanding kind people, they are predators out to get you.
They “will secretly introduce destructive heresies,” 2 Peter 2:1 They “distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them”. (Acts 20:30b) They are “rebellious people, full of meaningless talk and deception” (Titus 1:10b) They “are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good”. (Titus 1:16b)
They have an agenda of purposeful deception, (Acts 20:30) and their motive for this deception is dishonest gain. (1 Timothy 6:5).
I saw an article with an interesting topic on Facebook and I looked it up to see if it was real. It is real. Here is the interesting news. This article is from The Vatican, and since it involves the papacy, I take it to be credible, since they are reporting on themselves. The religion site is being built in United Arab Emirates, known as UAE.
"The Abrahamic Family House, which encloses a synagogue, a church and a mosque in a single complex, and which is scheduled to be inaugurated in 2022, is 20 percent complete, the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity (HCHF) said in a statement on Tuesday. ... Besides the 3 places of worship, the site includes a cultural center that aims to encourage people to exemplify human fraternity and solidarity within a community that cherishes the values of mutual respect and peaceful coexistence, while the unique character of each faith is preserved."
Each faith, meaning Judaism, Christianity (The Roman Catholic version of false Christianity) and Islam. Note that it is illegal for any building in the UAE to display a cross, therefore the church on this site will be devoid of one. It is illegal in UAE to convert from Islam to any other religion, so it remains to be seen how much ‘tolerance’ will be involved.
If you go to the website for this project, which The Vatican reports is 20% finished and will open within a year, you see a photo of how it will look and the architecture is quite beautiful.
The left is the Mosque, the middle is the Church, the right is the Synagogue. This is an artist’s rendering. Source
Interesting. I had not know about these ‘Abraham Accords’ which was the covenant that forms the basis for the building project, with other projects to come. The accords marked the first public normalization of relations between an Arab country and Israel since that of Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, says Wikipedia. The progress of this building site is pretty amazing, because the Accords were only signed in September 2020, one year ago.
Let’s turn to past history and future prophecy for a moment
Kay Cude, poet. Used with permission. Artist’s statement on Beulah Land
I think what affects me the greatest about this song is the identifying that His redeemed have a pronounced longing to be with their beloved Saviour and God The Father. Secondly, we will have resurrected and glorified bodies and no more fleshly infringement with which to wage war. And thirdly, the entire body of Christ (centuries worth, from Adam onward!) will no longer be apart! What a great day for us to wait upon! –To look into the face of Him whose death and resurrection became our atonement; He, Who became our individual and personal Saviour. Yet, when for the very first time that we hear His voice as He calls us each by name–perhaps that will be the second greatest joy we will ever know! For the first will be our being in His presence, prone on our faces in unspeakable love and worship, before our King, our Saviour, our Master and Lord, The Christ!
Are you culturally humble? If not, and you’re an employee of the city of Atlanta, you soon will be.
I am headed to the G3 Conference in Atlanta in a few days, so I was googling around to see what the Atlanta ordinances were regarding COVID, and also just researching the city. While Googling, I found this headline from September 21, 2021, which intrigued me in all the bad ways.
DISCERNMENT: Have you polished, adjusted, and thanked God today for your spiritual armor? We should be armed and ready, from head to toe, and praising the Lord for His generosity in protecting us from the demons and from the evil one himself! If we are on guard, rooted in His word, and seeking His face, we can always spot the real from the imitation, the Godly miracle from the demonic copy, the truth from a lying sign. It is a skill that needs honing, and we will need it more than ever as each day from now on progresses. Be ready and sharpen that sword: read your Bible today!
HOW, THEN, SHALL WE BE? Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, (2 Peter 3:11). When He comes, how will Jesus find each one of us? Arguing with a spouse? Or serving with humility? Without self-control? Or sober and watchful? In His glorious wisdom He gave us opportunity to obey Him. Let us be faithful and diligent in His service, till the end!
BAD TIMES ARE GOOD TIMES: Oh what an exciting time we live in! Are you looking up, looking forward, and looking out? Share Him, expect Him, and love each other till the moment the trumpet sounds… He said He will come, He said to look up when we see these things come to pass, and He is coming soon. Do this, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed. (Romans 13:11). Now is the time to urge those who do not believe to seek truth. Truth resides in Jesus and in Him alone. And aren’t we who know Him blessed with the most wonderful relationship of which we can possibly conceive? Even if we do not have opportunity to witness every day, let us reflect Him in our demeanor and smile. We are rejoicing always!
For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with Him. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, just as you also are doing. (1 Thessalonians 5:11)
SPEEDING UP! Do you feel things are going faster and faster? The news that is coming at us is ever more forceful in its depravity? I do! I feel like a gal stuck in a snowball that is gathering speed as it rolls down the hill. The times are picking up steam. Are you using one eye for looking out (for your fellow man) and the other eye for looking up (for our redemption draweth nigh)?
KINDNESS IS THE WATCHWORD: The times are getting harder now for all of us, financially, emotionally, physically. Let us remember to share our faith with unbelievers but also encourage each other. Now is the time to let grudges go, to refrain from being annoyed by small things. Put personal differences aside and “build each other up” as we face increasing iniquity that disheartens and depresses, as the news indeed often does. (Be Salt & Light, Matthew 5:13-16)
Jesus said we do not need to worry. Matthew 6:25: “For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”
It has been The End Time since Jesus ascended and will end when He returns. We are in the last days. The Lord may tarry longer but it feels to me and many others that the end of the end days may be upon us. Whether or not they are, let us watch and marvel at His word, feel joy in His promises, even as we see the needs of others rise in confusion and fear…because that represents a tremendous opportunity to share Jesus with them! It is hard but it’s also exciting for us to actually see many of God’s works unfold in these days.
Whatever it is or whatever you’re going through, God’s got this! It is not a surprise to Him, it is ordained for His glory and our good. Cling to that and the knowledge that if you are in Him, He is your all in all, Alpha and Omega, perfect Savior who loves His children dearly.
I’m often asked to review or share my thoughts on a Christian Bible study, a new book, or other material. As someone with the spiritual gift of discernment I am happy to do this for women since the gifts were distributed for the edification of the church; local first, then global. Recently I was asked about a popular book by Emily Lex. The book is called-
Freely and Lightly: God’s Gracious Invitation to a Life of Quiet Confidence
I love all things Italian. My father’s side of the family came from Italy. I have a fascination with the Roman empire because of its monumental achievements. Who wouldn’t be amazed at the discipline of the Roman legion? The straight and paved Roman roads? The soaring aqueducts, bridges, and buildings? The breakwaters?
Wait, wut? The breakwaters?
Yes, perhaps the most amazing achievement of all. Astonishing because they have lasted for 2000 years, and, modern engineers can’t figure out how.
Seven years ago I wrote a series on the IF Gathering. (2014). Four years ago I did an update. (2017)
The organization reports that in 2021, there were 6,648 IF:Local events in 66 countries. Because this para-church organization is still growing so much, it’s time for another reminder in discerning love and care for women everywhere, to avoid IF:Gathering.
The IF:Gathering and its women have only embedded themselves deeper into the faith and are tainting even more women with their brand of liberal theology, shaky hermeneutics, usurping lifestyles, and their idol of social justice. After 8 years of watching this organization (since its inception in 2013) we can see by now that it is essentially a female takeover of the church as a feminist, para-church/social justice/liberal organization, where women are drawn out from under their pastoral authority of the local church, fed false notions about Jesus and about our own identity, and reinserted as thorns and weeds to infect the local church with these modernly false ideas, only to turn around and recruit more women to do the same. It’s a multiplying movement that fulfills several scriptures about how false doctrine gets into the church.
Source and video below.
PROBLEM #1: Their premise is based on doubt.
The title “IF:Gathering” comes from their motto, “If God is real, then what?” The purpose statement on their IRS forms is to equip women by having them share their feelings about Bible passages posted online, and the by-product is to instill or institutionalize doubt. Their IRS tax form statement of purpose states:
If:Lead: equipping women to share and learn through Christ-centered discussions
IF:Austin: a two-day gathering that brought thousands of women together in Austin and at local gatherings across the globe. The gathering is a fresh, deep, honest space for a new generation of women to wrestle with the essential question: if God is real… then what?
If:Equip: a holistic, strategic, deep way to connect online with a like-hearted community and relevant resources. We hope to prepare women around the world to know God more deeply and to live out their purposes by sharing comments and feelings about daily passages posted online.
PROBLEM #2: It’s based on feelings we have, not on biblical truths revealing who Jesus is
Did you notice the ‘like-hearted‘ community? The Christian faith is not about feelings, but about what we know about Jesus. It’s supposed to be like-minded. This is an organization that calls their homes ‘spaces’, their local communities ‘contexts’, and their goal is to ‘change the world’. Its mission is to wrestle with the notion IF God is real. Using this amorphous, non-specific language helps cultivate the doubt, which is the opposite of the certainty we are supposed to preserve and promote as believers. We’re believers, not doubters. It’s Good News, not Maybe News.
The ‘gathering’ part is actually brilliant. They aim to disciple women in gatherings at homes, dorms, and other locales, sometimes churches. It’s not public, nor it is under the authority of local churches or of men. Participants know where to gather through social media, which is employed in a major way. It’s why this is a stealth approach to infect the church. Galatians 2:4 and 2 Peter 2:1 said this would happen. Yet discipleship is supposed to take place within and around the local church.
PROBLEM #3: Secretiveness
There aren’t any posters, advertisements, billboards, pamphlets that one can see. They don’t normally make known who will be speaking at the annual large Gathering ahead of time. That’s allegedly so that people don’t come for the personalities but for the fellowship and learning. But would you want to spend time and money to go to a conference without being able to vet the speakers? Or your own pastor helping you vet the speakers?
Instead, there’s texts, social media whispers, person-to-person promotion, all of it done in a way that is more subterranean than any other generation’s Christian activity (apart from the actual persecuted church.)
IF:Gatherings are ongoing in living rooms and lawns by the thousands. There are A LOT OF GATHERINGS. Look. This map is four years old and their gatherings are only increasing in number:
The idea to disciple women is a good one. However, that is an activity that the church is responsible for. These gatherings take place outside of the auspices of the local church and its pastoral authority and is based on curricula that has shaky scripture interpretations at best.
PROBLEM #4: Founded on direct revelation
The gatherings were born from the mind of a young woman named Jennie Allen. At the first Gathering, she revealed that she had heard God whisper to her, and after a few years decided to step out from her church to enact this so-called God-whispered “vision to gather, equip, and unleash women to live out God’s calling on their lives.”
“together with a team of friends, formally established IF:Gathering. … Some of the first friends to believe in her vision put aside their own individual ministries to leverage their collective influence for the glory of God and the good of His Church.” (Source, source).
So they abandoned their local ministries to go online for the good of the global church? Exactly wrong. Here is Jennie Allen claiming direct revelation from God as the catalyst for IF.
PROBLEM #5: Draws women away from local churches, the place where we’re supposed to disciple
They abandoned their ongoing locally accountable ministries, to follow a young woman who’d heard a whisper, in order to establish Bible studies about a God they doubted existed, in order to equip women to discuss feelings about the Bible, enact social justice, reconcile the world, heal the nations, and disciple a generation. Hmmm. I’m not being satirical. All that verbiage is from their own statements.
PROBLEM #6: Feminist oriented
The constant refrain in the IF material is that these women will “change the world” (source, 2022 promotion). This is why I call it a stealth feminist takeover. I’m not being hyperbolic, it’s actual, from their own vision statement
women out from local authority, changing the world based on misinterpreted Bible verses and their feelings. Not promoting Jesus of the Bible to call people to repentance and salvation.
I wonder how it works to be submitted to a local church, yet to draw away women from other churches to come to your house to discus your feelings about direct revelation, extra biblical Jesus while then returning to church to ‘take initiative.’
IF’s founders are paying lip service to the concept of local church, while the entire movement’s thrust is about taking initiative to change the world, start global movements, heal the world, etc. (SOURCE) Not to return to one’s church, submit to local leadership, and operate in our spheres, nor to find contentment in our roles as wives and moms. There is nothing local about IF:Gathering.
Conclusion- Concerns with IF:Gathering are:
Founded on Direct Revelation: Founder Jennie Allen said she heard a whisper from God telling her to start a discipleship group. (source, also see above). Direct revelation is hazardous to one’s soul. If you test a direct, audible command from God against the Bible and it’s there, you do not need the audible command. If it is not there, it’s a lie and you don’t need it anyway. That’s a paraphrase from John Owen.
Doubting God: The premise itself is based on study of a God that those who gather doubt exist. IF God is real? Doubt is not noble. The Bible says doubt is a destroyer of life. (James 1:5-8).
Lack of male oversight and involvement and severe emphasis on women-led initiatives: Jennie’s husband Zac says he provides theological oversight, but he is listed as working only 10 hours per week at the 501(c) 3 non-profit, and the only other male on the Governing Board is David Willis for 2 hours per week. The 40-hour/weeks are put in by Jennie and Lisa Huntsberry. It’s Jennie’s baby, she is listed as Principal Officer on the tax forms. It’s led by Lisa Huntsberry who’s listed as CEO. The fact is, it operates as a woman-led, para-church organization with little male accountability or pastoral oversight.
The IF:Gathering’s premise is flawed and so are its goals. Again, from their IRS form, it states that their goals are to foment a ‘global movement’ that ‘promotes healing around the world’. Is that what the Bible says women are to do? Unleash movements? These women are mothers. With children at home. The Bible tells us what we are to do: raise the kids, support the husband. Did even Jesus come to promote healing around the world? And just what IS “healing”, anyway?
Goals are postmodern and extra-biblical: As Tim Challies said, the words reconciliation and healing have a different meaning to the postmodernist liberal than they do to the Christian fundamentalist:
“…perverts the Biblical meaning of “reconciliation.” The Bible does not use this word arbitrarily, but speaks of the reconciliation of man to God and how this can be accomplished. It speaks of redemption! Salvation! Our ministry of reconciliation is not relational healing of myself to my neighbor (right and good as that may be), but the far more important relational healing of a sinful man to a holy God.
The ‘reconciliation’ the IF-ladies intend is the latter, promoting relational healing. Hence their emphasis on feelings and their activity of social justice.
Liberal-to-false teachers as partners and speakers. For example- Ann Voskamp. Does she even know how to use the English language anymore? Below is her tweet. I thought teachers were supposed to be ‘able to teach’. (2 Timothy 2:24). Being able to teach presumes a facility with the language so as to communicate truths in a way that will edify the hearer. Voskamp’s gone beyond #babble all the way to to #Babel.
The list of IF speakers for the recent gathering that concluded in March 2021 is posted but their talks are behind a paywall. Nevertheless, this list is only a quarter of the amount of listed speakers, and demonstrates immediately that the speakers are part of the problem with IF:Gathering leaders’ discernment. Francis Chan, Christine Caine are false teachers, Lauren Chandler and Lysa TerKeurst are heavily suspect, as well as severe concerns with Jackie Hill Perry and Jefferson Bethke (of the ‘Why I hate religion‘ author)
Jo Saxton (Female Pastor. A director of yet another ‘movement’ whose goal is “to CHANGE the world by putting DISCIPLESHIP and MISSION back into the hands of everyday people.” Emphasis theirs.
No town is too small, too rural, too citified or too sophisticated to host an IF:Table. The brand of Christianity the women promote is far from the Bible’s call to obedience for women, due to their emphasis on social causes, feminist living and usurping thrust of the IF:Movement, doubting God, and discussing their feelings. I pray you protect your daughters and granddaughters from any and all IF activities.
IF:Gathering says, IF God is real, then what? Satan says, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” Satan says, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here…” (Luke 4:3, Luke 4:9)
Some good news, the Truth Matters Conference, usually held at John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church, moved its venue to the middle of the United StatesS so more people could attend. It will now be held at “The Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky, for three days of unforgettable Bible teaching, glorious music, and rich fellowship with the extended Grace to You family.” This conference also sold out within minutes of opening ticket sales, which is great news. People still clamor for truth and fellowship with the saints. If you missed getting a ticket, the event will be open for free May 18–20, 2022 on livestream at the link above.
Pastor Gabe Hughes, known to us as Pastor Gabe on Twitter, the voice of WWUTT.com and Associate Pastor at First Baptist Church of Lindale TX, has been banned from tweeting from his Twitter Account for one week for posting this:
David Platt, formerly President of the International Mission Board and pastor at McLean Bible Church, has been scheduled as one of the speakers at IF:Gathering, a feminist, social justice, parachurch organization, and will be speaking alongside such false teachers as Francis Chan, Christine Caine, Ann Voskamp, Lysa TerKeurst, and so on.
The G3 Conference is going to take place September 30-October 2. It has drawn 6400 participants, from all 50 states and several countries. Two days ago founder Josh Buice tweeted that there were only 40 seats left, and I’m sure those have sold out by now. G3 Ministries’ new Editor-In-Chief, Scott Aniol said,
It's remarkable that @JoshBuice, @VirgilWlkrOMAHA, and the good folks of one regular local church have built a huge conference, and now an expanded ministry, not by compromising truth, not by inviting speakers from a diluted pool of widely divergent views, but by an unapologetic emphasis upon the sufficiency of Scripture, expository preaching, confessional orthodoxy, and the primacy of the local church. Gives me hope. Evangelical leaders take note. Honored to be joining with them. @G3Conference #G32021
Paul Washer of HeartCry Missionary Society issued an urgent prayer request in early September for one certain mission family in Afghanistan, and asks for general prayer for that situation. HeartCry is a credible organization and though news from that region of the world may be misty due to fog of war, my opinion is that HeartCry will offer the most solid information we can get in this sad and fluid situation. HeartCry link here
In June, it was reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is out after 12 years of leading Israel. Since then, he has been struggling to form a coalition government with his opposition.
The Kendrick Brothers have a new film out, Show Me The Father. This is the duo who produced Courageous, Fireproof, and Facing the Giants. This film is not a narrative like previous filsms, it’s a documentary. As World Magazine describes, “The film highlights the importance of fathers by telling the stories of several men whose father figures affected them for good—and evil.” This might be a good thing, as increasingly the Kendrick Brothers’ films have demonstrated a more prosperity gospelish bent than one would like. I wrote about them here. I’m hopeful the documentary approach will yield edifying content. The Brothers can put together a movie quite well, so perhaps this one will be the one for which discerning Christians will give a thumbs up.
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