Category: discernment

Posted in discernment, Uncategorized

#memeHeresies on Facebook, how to spot them and how to refute them

Posted on by elizabethprata

We’re visual creatures. We love the beautiful. I don’t think there is any person who says they prefer ugliness to beauty. Beauty has allure. Satan knew that in the garden, when he incited Eve to take another look at the fruit. (Genesis 3:6). Beauty can be used to exalt God, for He made everything beautiful in its time (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Unfortunately, beauty can also be used as a mask for the corruption within. (Matthew 23:27).

We all know what heresy/false doctrine is. It’s a teaching about Jesus that varies with what the Bible teaches about Jesus. The Nicolaitans and the Judaizers were two groups mentioned in the Bible for going around teaching false doctrine. Alexander and Hymaneus were two named teachers in the New Testament who were teaching falsely and were rebuked by Paul. In the OT, Micaiah rebuked Zedekiah the false prophet. False teaching has been around as long as humans have been around. (Genesis 3:1)

For millennia, to hear a teaching, one went to a public venue like the Areopagus or Solomon’s Porch, and listened to the teacher like Paul, then went home and compared to scripture as the Bereans did. (Acts 17:11). Nowadays, false messages disseminated more widely and more instantly than ever before. Just think of “TBN” AKA Trinity Broadcasting Network, founded in 1973. TBN is a place called “Unholy Trinity” by John MacArthur, where “religious quacks are actually multiplying at a frightening pace.” And with the multiplying quacks comes their quackery, AKA false teaching.

Add to that, satan targets women to send his false doctrines through (Genesis 3:4), because we are weaker (1 Peter 3:7), and more vulnerable (2 Timothy 3:6) and this dissemination includes social media. I’m on Facebook a lot, I administer a page there (The End Time) as well as my personal FB page. Facebook is used mostly by women. This is an amazing statistic by Pew Research from 2015,

Fully 72% of online American adults use Facebook, a proportion unchanged from September 2014. Usage continues to be especially popular among online women, 77% of whom are users.

What this boils down to is that Facebook is a place where satan has a wonderful time propagating his lies to the faith’s most vulnerable who are rarely given oversight by husbands while she surfs among the Facebook walls and statuses riddled with beautiful false teaching. These are the meme pictures.

Many of these memes going around are satanic. When I say satanic, don’t think of a black background and a red faced man with horns and fangs in the foreground. Satan is God’s most beautiful angel, an angel of light, and his work is flowers and a cute saying and pretty colors and a Christian-y saying all aimed to seduce women. Like this:

Jessica Pickowicz ( @Jess_Pickowicz , @BeauThing146 http://beautifulthing146.com/) has created a hashtag called #memeHeresies . The above photo is a #memeHeresy. I asked her if I could write about memeheresies and use that term in this essay and she said yes.

HOW TO MAKE A #MEMEHERESY

Satan enjoys deluding women, so flowers are usually a go-to graphic. Women like those. I don’t see many #memeheresies containing golf clubs, fishing tackle, or neckties.

So the first rule when a false teacher makes a false graphic of some kind of inspirational quote, it’s to choose something beautiful as the background. Of course, that’s a no-brainer. I mentioned above that beauty carries false teaching very well. Genesis 3:6a tells us that the lust of the eyes is a major part of sin.

When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes,…

The second criteria for a false inspirational picture is to choose something that is human-focused but mentions God. This is tricky, but then again, Joel Osteen has made a gazillion dollar industry out of treading that thin line. The quote below usually attributed to Roman Catholic friar St. Francis, but probably did not originate with the medieval monk, is the kind I’m talking about:

“Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.”

The quote mentions the gospel, and preaching, so it must be good, right? Wrong. The Gospel is Good News, and we are to proclaim it. With words. We can’t BE the message. Only Jesus was ever the message. And in addition to living that perfect life, He used lots of words. That’s because He IS the Word. (John 1:1). And besides, isn’t preaching a form of using words aloud? You see the ridiculousness once you begin to think about the quote. Also, note the sly turning away from Jesus onto ourselves with that one quote? Suddenly Jesus and His Gospel isn’t the message, human beings are the message.

In that exact same vein is the picture above, attributed to Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa was a Roman Catholic nun who hated the gospel of Jesus Christ, and lived under the delusion that her Catholic dogma was going to save her. Nonetheless, she allegedly said “I’m a pencil in the Hand of God”, which is set on a beautiful flower graphic.

The reason that #memeHeresy seems scriptural and inspirational is because it mentions God. On first look, it also seems to put the person in a humble position. You think, ‘awww, I’m just a meager tool in the hand of God.’

This would be a wrong interpretation of that meme.

The Apostles were pencils in the hand of God. The result was inspired Holy Scripture. If we put ourselves in that place, we are elevating ourselves beyond our position. Today no one is writing anything inspired by the Holy Spirit. Though, plenty of women are writing things inspired by satan. The most popular books of our day have been inspired directly by satan through the means of channeling. (For ex., When Godly People do Ungodly Things, Jesus Calling, &etc.)

If “Mother” Teresa meant that the metaphorical pencil is writing a metaphorical message through the the outward seeming goodness of our lives, then we have the same problem that we had in the St Francis quote. WE are not the message. We are ambassadors OF the message. (2 Corinthians 5:20). The message was proclaimed by Jesus. And by the way, we’re not good.

Finally, if we are but helpless tools in the Hand of God, then we are excusing our part in our own sanctification. We must press on, slay sin, submit, obey…all those are active verbs showing that we have a responsibility to Jesus while here on hearth. We’re not passive pencils, being used. We’re to be active participants in our life of obedience and usefulness.

Sometimes a meme will quote a scripture, and the scripture isn’t totally ripped from context as this one below shows. Did you know that a lot of times when you see a pretty photo with a verse over it, the verse address and the verse being quoted don’t match up? This one quoted blow is the tail end of a verse and it’s not twisted. So what’s the problem? The organization or person spreading it. The verse is OK, but She Reads Truth is not. Passing along a meme in which the verse is accurate but is promoted by a false teacher is just as bad. Double check the verse, the address, AND the teacher or organization publishing it.You don’t want to put a stumbling block in front of a sister and send her directly to a false teacher by your tacit recommendation of re-posting a good verse.

Same goes for this one below. The quote is not scripture but it’s an accurate saying. It is something I say myself. I am not familiar with the person mentioned at the bottom, but I am certainly familiar with the IF:gathering and its women. Again- avoid. Re-posting an accurate quote but from a false bunch of teachers will only confuse those less discerning sisters. Every re-post you do is tacitly giving your stamp of approval not only to the quote but to the author and organization, in this case, Mabuni and IF:gathering.

HOW TO REFUTE A #memeHeresy

I liked what Jessica did with the side by side refutation here. The stamp of the word “FALSE” across the left side states the situation in no uncertain terms, and the correct verse which refutes the false one is placed on the right. The left side is the man-oriented one and the right side is what God actually said about man.

By Jessica Pickowicz

Here is another one from Jessica. Do you see on the left, it’s man-oriented again? The scripture-y quote is supposed to makes us think, “Wow! I’m strong!” Yet the truth stated in real scripture is, “Wow, God’s gives grace!”

By Jessica Pickowicz

In sum, how to spot the false memes is to check, think, wait. Before passing it along,

1. Double check the address on the verse (if there is one).
2. Double check that the verse isn’t ripped from its context to say something it wasn’t intended to mean.
3. Check the person or organization publishing the quote.
4. STOP. THINK. Does this quote that sounds so Bible-y really reflect a true teaching of God?

To refute them you can always do what Jessica did and create a side-by-side refutation. If you’re not graphically skilled then simply post the scripture picture with a verse that refutes it and maybe a short explanation showing how one is man-oriented and the other is Jesus-oriented.

Well, some might say, doing all that checking, double checking, and investigating, at is a lot of work,. Yes. It’s work. You remember I mentioned the Bereans at the top? They heard Paul then went back and checked that these things were so. They worked, and were commended for it! Just because we’re living in a fast time doesn’t mean we have to quickly press “Post” or “Publish”. Stop. Think.

We handle the Bible’s message with care, because it is the most important message in life. You don’t toss a carton of eggs into the back seat of your car like you do your son’s soccer ball. You handle with care. We don’t toss around Bible-y sayings either. We take care, for the Word is precious. The false teachers toss around the Word carelessly, we believers don’t need to toss it around as well.

Posted in discernment, emotionalism, love, panentheism, theology

The idol of emotionalism

Posted on by elizabethprata
To the women who claim to have cuddled with Jesus, heard His whisper, sat on His lap, felt His ‘caress’, had their fondest dreams validated, (and I’m speaking of Beth Moore, Ann Voskamp, Kim Walker Smith, Joanna Gaines, and all the rest), hark to this paraphrase from Revelation 1:12 by John MacArthur,

He [John] turns when he hears this booming voice that sounds like a trumpet, and the voice is speaking, and he turns and sees that this voice belongs to a person in his vision moving among seven golden lampstands. Verse 20 says the seven golden lampstands are symbolic of the seven churches; they’re lights in that sense. And he looks into the middle of the lampstands and must be with some hope for comfort and encouragement, and instead he sees a warrior; he sees a frightening warrior, “one like a son of man – ” a term from Daniel expressing God in form, manifesting blazing glory, who has authority and power and dominion, as it says of the Son of Man in Daniel “ – clothed in a robe reaching to the feed and girded across His chest with a golden sash. His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire. And His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been made to glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters. In His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength. 

There is nothing cozy and cuddly about that vision of Christ. In fact, it is so terrifying that in chapter 1, verse 17 says, “When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man.” It literally, it literally took away his breath.

Ladies, reject the romantic panentheism. Don’t succumb to the idol of emotionalism, as explained here-

Beware of substituting the love of feelings and drama and emotion for the love of God. Some of us come to Him in tears; others in quiet surrender. Some come running, others walk, others are led by another, but the end result is the same. The bottom line is this: God is sovereign, and He will do it His way. It’s not about how we feel—it’s about who He is. more here

See Jesus for who He is: not the hand-wringing needy Jesus who begs for attention from us, but the Warrior in charge of His church, having ‘things against us’ when we do not obey His commands and threatening retribution. (Revelation 2:4, 2:20).

And for a laugh that hurts a little because it’s so true, read this from the Babylon Bee:

Powerful Time Of Worship Draws Woman Closer To Her Own Emotions Than She’s Been In A Long Time

RAPID CITY, SD—Sources are reporting that local woman Britney Mollison experienced the presence of her own emotions more powerfully than she has in a long time during a time of worship Wednesday night. According to Mollison’s own testimony, about three-quarters of the way through the set of dramatic songs blasting from the band onstage out to the worshipers, she was finally able to surrender all to her feelings.
“In that moment, when the bridge to ‘Oceans’ reached its crescendo and the keyboardist masterfully applied the wah pedal, my emotions were more real to me than I can remember,” Mollison sobbed to sources. “It was just me and and my personal relationship to the chemicals in my brain responding to stimuli. Nothing else mattered.”

More at link.

Be theological. It’s the best way to love Jesus, because it is the way He revealed Himself to us.

Posted in discernment, personal revelation, whisper

I’m doing everything I can to listen for that whisper…

Posted on by elizabethprata
Doing a scan of Twitter of the liberal women you will find a plethora of references to listening to the Holy Spirit’s whisper. And of course these liberal ladies have all sorts of advice on how to catch that breeze whisper so that you can hear it and obey it. This lady says we have to be still to hear it.

Oh, no! I might miss it!

Ann Voskamp is kind of gross about the whisper madness.

Just…ew. That gal got some fetishes for sure.

Beth Moore says,

So Jesus tells us ‘now’. Now what, I’m not sure. But we must stay close because He might say it. And according to Moore, it’s better if He only has to whisper.

Lysa TerKeurst gives advice on how to make prayers powerful,

Listening for the slightest whisper … sounds … fleeting. I’ll just take my Bible, thank you. It’s solid.

So, IS the Holy Spirit whispering to us? Must we sit, or be still, or listen hard, or stay close, or press scars, or DO any other particular thing in order to receive this revelation all the other women seem to be receiving?

No.

First, the Spirit is now whispering to you. Ladies, you can relax from worry that you’re not doing something particular to tune in to the frequency that you fear you’re missing. There is no frequency that only a select few know and has to be tuned in just right. Remember those finicky rabbit ears before cable? With tin foil on the tips for that extra boost? It’s not like that. The reason the Spirit is not whispering things to you is that the revelation from Jesus Christ about Jesus Christ is complete.

From the Strange Fire Question and Answer page. You do not have to worry about missing Holy Spirit whispers because the canon is closed and revelation is done

What does it mean that the revelation of God is completed in Christ according to Hebrews 1:1–2?Regarding the revelation we received in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1), Dr. Lawson said there is nothing left to be said. Could you please expand on this and comment on the revelation the authors of the New Testament received from the Holy Spirit and the necessity of writing the epistles? 

Hebrews 1:1–2 looks at the big picture of God’s revelation throughout human history. Just as the Old Testament looked forward to the coming of Jesus Christ, the New Testament is the revelation of Him. This is what the author of Hebrews meant in the opening verses of that book. He was gathering up the new revelation that had been given through the apostles and their associates and referred to it as that which God “has spoken to us in His Son” (Hebrews 1:2). 

In his commentary on Hebrews, John MacArthur writes this helpful explanation:
We must, of course, clearly understand that the Old Testament was not in any way erroneous. But there was in it a development, of spiritual light and of moral standards, until God’s truth was refined and finalized in the New Testament. The distinction is not in the validity of the revelation—its rightness or wrongness—but in the completeness of it and the time of it. Just as children are first taught letters, then words, and then sentences, so God gave His revelation. It began with the “picture book” of types and ceremonies and prophecies and progressed to final completion in Jesus Christ and His New Testament (p. 5). 

The New Testament revelation given through the apostles was the fulfillment of the Lord Jesus’ promise to His disciples recorded in John 16:13–15: “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” 

Thus, when Dr. Lawson commented that there is nothing left to be said, he referred to the fact that no further revelation will be added to the Bible (cf. Revelation 22:18–19). For further study on this point, please listen to John’s introduction to Hebrews and his two-part series from Revelation 22:13–21.

Posted in buffer, discernment, social media

Buffer and Newspaper Exegesis

Posted on by elizabethprata

I mentioned yesterday that I’m slow to adopt new social media or technology fads, so as to maintain a streamlined focus on the main online ministry I have set before me, which is make Christ known, and offer credible and solid resources to women and new Christians for growth enhancement.

I mentioned this because I saw a new gizmo on my blog’s “Add This” button. It’s called Buffer. I looked into it. Basically, it is a one stop shop whereupon for free (or more, for a fee) one can blast a set of self-selected material onto your chosen social media pages throughout a 24-hour staggered period.

I signed up.

Now, to load content. As a blogger at The End Time, I’d been in the mindset all along of a journalist. “Fresh content only on the blog”. So I write every day. Only a handful of times have I re-posted something. But then I thought, I’ve blogged daily since 2009 and I’ve published over 3,600 essays. It might be good to offer the older ones to a new ‘generation’ of blog readers. Because as we all know, a new generation is born on the internet every two to three minutes. LOL, not really, but attention spans are short. 2009 was 7 years ago, an ancient lifetime ago in internet years.

The Holy Spirit in His grace has dispensed to me His gifts of prophecy, discernment, and encouragement. I love prophecy. I love all of it. As a newbie Christian I cut my teeth eagerly on Jeremiah, Nahum, Obadiah. The OT prophets were the books I read first. Genesis, and all the OT prophets, before even turning to the New Testament and John. When I did turn to the NT, it was to Revelation.

As a child born in 1960, my first memory was of the Beatles in February 1964 (I had turned three years old just about 7 weeks before) and all the screaming. I was annoyed with the screaming. I thought it was nonsense that the screaming went on so long that one could not hear the actual music. I was precocious perhaps, autistic children usually are, and sometimes have advanced thought processes early. But the point is, my very first memory is of out of control girls screaming wildly. It was a chaotic scene.

My home was filled with aware and engaged parents observing current events on the newly invented television. They often discussed them as I listened. I often watched Viet Nam casualties loaded onto helicopters with newsman Walter Cronkite’s mournful intonation recounting the deaths and injuries. I always wondered why the injuries far outstripped the casualties. Real-time war reporting was fairly new, and the living technicolor also showed the color of the blood. As a child watching constant war during my formative decade it made an impression.

In addition to war, was strife. Civil Rights riots, Race Riots, marches in the streets for gay rights and feminist rights, protests, and the 1968 Democratic Convention carnage all passed before my observant eyes. My active but immature brain attempted to process all that I was seeing. Remember, as an autistic kid, what was on the TV was more real to me than what I was actually experiencing in life. It always has been.

In my formative years it seemed that things were out of control. As I grew to teenager years, I became aware that war and famine and chaos and strife has always been part of the human experience. I wondered why. I wondered why a LOT. I often thought that there had to be a reason. See, if war had always been present, and humans have always been present, there must be a reason why we have such a proclivity to war. And hate. And chaos. It just seemed obvious to me.

Every night for nearly 20 years, we would hear newsman Walter Cronkite sign off on his famous tagline, “And that’s the way it is, tonight, May 24, 1967.”

No! No, that’s NOT the way it is! It can’t be! There has to be a reason!

Autistic kids often attempt to find the secret pattern that they know is underlying everything. They look for an underlying order, a mathematical equation, a musical beat, a chronology, something, that will make everything make sense. It was agonizing not to know. But when the Light burst through my dead heart to regenerate it, and I learned that the underlying pattern to everything is Jesus, I lit up like a Roman candle.

I loved the notion that there was order, and purpose and a Controller in charge of it all. I loved that since the beginning God was in charge and for all the perplexing things that happen and have happened in the scope of perhaps 7000 years of human history in the world, there has been a reason. Because, you see, I’ve always looked for a reason. When I learned why things were the way they were, I went A-HA!! in a big way.

A haqrd copy collage I did which I scanned and digitally manipulated.
This is “Peace that Passeth” and shows how calm I feel now with the world news
still being chaotic but what a difference the biblical worldview has made.

Suddenly seeing all the news through a Godly worldview and not a confusing, incomprehensible, human world view made everything burst with color and light. There was a reason! There was order!

When I looked at the news I now knew why peace in the middle east was so elusive. I’d lived through the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur, The Camp David Accord. I’d lived through assassination after assassination. I’d lived through Iran’s rise and the Soviet Union’s Fall, and rise again. Looking at the paper made me understand what God was doing because i understood not only about sin, but His long-term plan and humankind’s redemption

Having a new worldview to see things though was fun so at the beginning of the blog’s life I did a lot of newspaper exegesis. I was thrilled. I’m not unhappy nor am I embarrassed. One can go too far in it, and come up with crackpot ideas, to be sure. I hope I didn’t do that. But I did enjoy flexing the boundaries of my newly grace-given worldview. Suddenly that order and pattern was there and I shared my perspective of it.

I’m still entranced with how things are moving in the news. I’m still vastly grateful the LORD gave me, through His Son and His Spirit, a perspective framework through which I can know, and I DO know. I’m also pleased to see even in the first month of life on this blog, essays which were of prophecy, discernment, and encouragement and which were not newspaper exegesis. Those are the ones I’m Buffering out.

As I send out 2009 and beyond The End Time stories through Buffer, and if you choose to explore here, have fun, don’t think too ill of me, and enjoy.

Posted in color run, discernment, hindu, holi, pagans

Of Church Color Runs and Hindu Holi Festivals

Posted on by elizabethprata

This week I’ve been writing about rituals and practices that Christianity has imported from pagan religions, specifically, coloring mandalas. Here is a list of these practices I’ve mentioned or written in the past months–

—Prayer beads (Catholic, Buddhist)
—Coloring mandalas (Buddhist, Hindu)
—Bible art journaling, (Celtic, Islamic Illumination)
—Labyrinths  (Catholic, goddess religions)
—Circle making (Wicca, earth religions)
—Contemplative prayer (Eastern religions, New Age cults)
—Lectio Divina (Mystic Religions, Catholic)
—Yoga (Hindu)

A freiend made me aware of another Hindu practice that is popping up in Christian activity schedules. It’s “The Color Run.” Many churches sponsor a 5K run for fun, health, or fundraising. This is great. These runs are a lot of fun and bring the community together. However, The Color Run has a specific feature added to it specifically ripped from a Hindu festival.

In “The Color Run, The Happiest 5K on the Planet”, as it dubs itself, runners are doused with colored powder at various locations during the run. The US Company describes The Color Run-

WHAT IS THE COLOR RUN?

The Color Run, also known as the Happiest 5k on the Planet, is a unique paint race that celebrates healthiness, happiness, and individuality. Now the single largest event series in the world, The Color Run has exploded since our debut event. We have more than tripled our growth, hosting more than 225 events in 35+ countries in 2015.

The Color Run, Tempe Arizona

Is The Color Run terrible in and of itself? Of course not. However, churches are now doing The Color Run and they should know that the Paint Race is certainly NOT “unique” as they stated. It is actually a Hindu festival and has been performed as a ritualistic celebration of victory of good over evil for two thousand years. Named Holi, the festival is

a spring celebration of love, frolic, and colours.

Holi celebrations start on the night before Holi with a Holika bonfire where people gather, do religious rituals in front of the bonfire, and pray that their internal evil should be destroyed as the bonfire starts. The next morning is celebrated as Rangwali Holi – a free-for-all carnival of colours. where participants play, chase and colour each other with dry powder and coloured water, with some carrying water guns and coloured water-filled balloons for their water fight.

Holi celebration at Sri Radha Krishna Temple, Utah, US. Wikipedia

Here is the explanation of why colors are used in the Holi celebration. It’s convoluted, but it gives a sense of the deep pagan origins of this ritual. In sum, Holi is short for “Holika”, the evil sister of the demon king Hiranyakashipu. The demon king began to grow arrogant, thought he was God, and ordered everyone to worship only him. There was battle between those who were loyal to demon king Hiranyakashipu and those loyal to Lord Vishnu. Hiranyakashipu’s own son was loyal to Vishnu and as a result he was cruelly tortured by Hiranyakashipu. Hiranyakashipu’s evil sister Holika tricked her nephew Prahlada into sitting on a pyre, while she was encased in a cloak that made her immune to the flames. But the cloak flew off her and onto Prahlada, and thus Holi was burned and Prahlada survived. Some other Lords and gods arrived to finish the deal and vanquish the usurper Hiranyakashipu. The next day, when the fire had cooled down, people applied ash to their foreheads. Eventually, coloured powder instead of ash came to be used to celebrate Holi.

The problem comes when churches mindlessly adopt this activity without knowing it is actually an important Hindu spring ritual. First Christian Church of Dyersburd wrote in their promotion of their “Color Run,”

How does a color run work?

All runners start out squeaky clean, decked out in white garb. During the run, color stations will be set up periodically throughout the course. At each color station, our “highly skilled” and “highly trained” paint throwers will toss paint powder on the runners going by. Note: do not slow down or stop in the color stations, as this causes a bottleneck for the runners behind you. Throughout the race, you’ll be painted several times in several colors, resulting in a highly hued, highly energized runner. Once the race is over, all participants will gather for a mass paint throwing (think Lebron James meets Rainbow Bright). Afterwards, stick around for a celebration including food & drink, music, and hundreds upon hundreds of selfies.

I am not judging anyone who has participated in a Color Run. I would hope that Churches would not adopt the Hindu celebration of Holi as a Western version of a celebration/festival/5K run. However most of the church sites that I have looked at do conclude the Color Run afterwards with food, music, dancing, and other frolics, making the Hindu Holi Fest and the Church 5K virtually indistinguishable. Please refer to the photos above of the Hindu Fest and the Church Color Run if you disagree.

I’m not against fun, but adopting a Hindu practice to have that fun is allowing the world to enter the Church. We can have our own fun as Christians, without the unnecessary layer of a pagan festival. My personal opinion is that churches should not adopt this ritual, and if they do, they should let their people know its origins so their people can make informed decisions as to whether or not to participate.

Do not worship the Lord your God in the way the pagan people worship their gods (Deuteronomy 12:4).

Thoppu Karanam in India
AKA ‘Super Brain Yoga’ in US

As for the practice of ripping off another culture’s practices, that is another discussion entirely. Last year when the Hindu Practice of Thoppu Karanam was ripped from Hindu Prayer Practices and re-made into American Super Brain Yoga, one Hindu man opined,

The legend behind “Thoppu Karanam” is that Lord Vishnu performed this “Thoppu Karanam” in front of Lord Ganapathi to recover his “Sudarshan Chakra” which was snatched by Ganapathi. Thus, Thoppu Karanam is performed as a prayer before Lord Ganesha by holding the hands crosswise across the chest with the fingers holding the earlobes and bending down and then getting up. 

Interestingly, the “Thoppu Karanam” has now attained international status thanks to fellow Americans who now call this as “Super Brain Yoga”. They have found through medical research that doing these special kind of sit ups while holding the opposite earlobes stimulates the brain power and increases the memory power. I hope they will not charge us while we perform Thoppu Karanam.

Satan is the most cunning and subtle animal in the Garden. (Genesis 3:1), His wiles are legendary. Ephesians 6:11 says “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil,” Should t we be doing our utmost not to mirror the world? Shouldn’t we be working hard to be a distinct people, and not engage in even what seems like a pagan ritual, never mind an actual pagan ritual? How many times were the Israelites warned not to delve into the pagan practices in Egypt? (Lev 18:3). Idol worship was a powerful temptation, and it still is.

The Expository Files explain:

Our English word ‘wiles’ is generally used to express deception through trickery and includes all the methods that would be part of that. It has to do with cunning or skill applied to no good purpose. The word ruse is a synonym with stress on the creation of a false impression.

Ephesians 4:14 says “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”

Gills reminds us of how stealthily satan brings his wiles to bear in “cunning craftiness”,

which not only suggests that their principal end in view is to deceive, but their insidious, private, and secret way of deceiving, and their expertness in it, which they have from the devil; and now the ministration of the Gospel is the best and surest guard and antidote against such fluctuations and deceptions. 

Please read the rest of the Bible.org essay above to learn more fully just how satan uses his wiles to trick us – and be sure that importing pagan rituals into Christianity is one such wile – and read how we can stand against such an enemy.

—————————————–

Further Reading:

Should a Christian participate in a ‘Color Run?’

Which is the Holi Celebration and Which is the Color Run?

© Western New Mexico University

Mumbai, India
Church Color Run

Posted in coloring, discernment, mandalas

Adult Christian Coloring Books: Put away childish things

Posted on by elizabethprata

I first warned about “Adult Christian Coloring” in November 2015 in an essay that also covered Bible Art Journaling. I’d written–

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People, Mandalas are HINDU. They are not, nor will they ever be Christian. They represent something sacred to the unsaved. Something sacred to the unsaved is an IDOL. We are back to the Second Commandment I opened this essay with. Don’t believe me? See mandalas defined-

Definition of mandala: Mandala (Sanskrit Maṇḍala, ‘circle’) is a spiritual and ritual symbol in Indian religions, representing the universe. The basic form of most mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point. In Hinduism, a mandala (yantra) is a two- or three-dimensional geometric composition used in sadhanas, puja or meditative rituals. It is considered to represent the abode of the deity. Each yantra is unique and calls the deity into the presence of the practitioner through the elaborate symbolic geometric designs. According to one scholar, “Yantras function as revelatory symbols of cosmic truths and as instructional charts of the spiritual aspect of human experience”. (source)

Do you really think it’s innocent to color a mandala just because some money-grubbing, undiscerning author re-packaged a pagan activity by pasting a line from a beloved hymn over the top of it and adding “Christian” to the title?

That is where Bible art journaling leads. It’s a diversion. Just as Catholic labyrinths were re-branded as Protestant prayer walking, just as occult channeling was re-branded as “hearing from God”, just as mystical “contemplative prayer” was re-branded as “Protestant contemplative prayer”, just as Hindu Yoga was re-branded as ‘Christian Yoga’, just as Wiccan pentagrams were re-branded as “circle making”…”. Remember enneagrams? Those have Sufi roots. Prayer beads emerged into Christianity from pagan roots. Bible art journaling is already melding with Hindu Mandala coloring.

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In June 2013 I’d also warned about mandalas, that time, in the form of prayer circles.

Here is Todd Friel from Wretched.tv on Adult Coloring Books, a 7-minute summation concisely explaining why Christians should not engage in that activity.

Christianity is meant to be distinct, and contain set apart people. (Deuteronomy 7:6-11). The Levitical Laws were to visibly demonstrate this, and nowadays in New Testament times our pursuit should be toward holiness and purity in individual lives and in corporate church lives. We are set apart. (1 Peter 2:9, Psalm 4:3, 1 John 4:4-5).

However with lack of discernment, so many Christians are allowing rituals from pagan religions to filter in. Labyrinthes, prayer beads, Mandalas, Yoga, Contemplative Prayer, Circle Making- it boggles the mind. Yet the acceptance of these non-Christian practices causes one to say- Why ‘Christian’ No Longer Means What It Used To, as Sunny Shell wrote last month–

As I consider how the Bride of Christ is shamefully defiling herself with vain and worldly philosophies, rather than cleansing and strengthening herself with the Word of God, these words from our heavenly Father come to mind, “Folly is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” (Prov 22:15), “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” (1 Cor 13:11),

Dear precious sister, give up childish ways. As Todd Friel said, adult coloring books are a child’s activity, where we learned motor skills and how to color within the lines.

As we grow, we move to adult activities such as killing the flesh, carrying our cross, and persevering in prayer. Put away childish things, and “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” (2 Peter 3:18)

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Further Reading from The End Time
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Further Reading/Listening from others
Posted in discernment, expository preaching, Jesus preaching, word

Why emergent/liberal churches will never have the power of the first century church they want

Posted on by elizabethprata

“I want our church to be like an Acts 2 church.”
“Oh, Holy Spirit, come down in power and presence to us today.”
“The original church was the best, we should be like them. We can be like them.”

I hear and read comments like those a lot today. The liberal or emergent churches stand on stage with a fog machine and the praise band plays the same refrain over and over, millennials are swaying and hands are upstretched. They cry out for power and wisdom and for the Holy Spirit to descend upon them in force. They crave ever more potent “experiences” and “power” and “anointing” as the early church seemed to have had.

And yet there is one critical ingredient that they lack, and in so lacking, they will NEVER have the power of the spirit that they crave. Can you guess what that ingredient is?

The word of God.

Preaching from the Bible.

Expository preaching in the power of the Spirit.

Teaching the people from God’s word.

Do you realize how much preaching from God’s word took place in the first century church? ALL OF IT. Jesus, (in Luke 24:13-35) Peter, Stephen, Paul…all preached the Old Testament and taught the new covenant as given to them by Jesus. Sermons, sermons, sermons. Expository preaching is what drove the first century church of Acts. Preaching. Much of Acts are recorded sermons preaching God’s word.

The book of Acts gives a unique glimpse into the life and practice of the early church. It describes the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost in Acts 2, the spread of the Gospel outside of Jerusalem in Acts 8 and to the Gentiles in Acts 10, how the church made decisions in regards to doctrine (Acts 15), and more.
The sermons recorded in Acts give us a window into the preaching ministries of Peter, Stephen, Philip, James, and Paul, along with the immediate impact those sermons had.
Below is a list of sermons preached in Acts along with a short description and reference for each are listed below. Not every passage below quotes the preacher’s sermon directly, but each passage will share something important about the content of the sermon or the response of the hearers. (source & chart below)

Many of these churches/preachers them tacitly or overtly declare expository preaching as old, dusty, and/or unnecessary. Or worse, some say it’s so easy it’s cheating. Yet such preaching is entirely necessary.

It is the preaching from God’s word that is the power. The liberal/emergent/millennials want power but they deny the vehicle that will bring them that power. They want wisdom but deny the only place where wisdom resides. They want Spirit power by bypass Jesus, who IS the Word.

From The Cripplegate, an excerpt from an interview with expositor Steven Lawson on the nature of expository preaching.

I believe that the Apostle Paul lays out the essentials of preaching in 1 Timothy 4:13 when he writes, “Until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, and to teaching.” 

In true expository preaching, there must be the reading of the text, the teaching of the text, and the exhorting with the text. Expository preaching informs the mind, ignites the heart, and impels the will. 

The supposed preaching that only instructs the mind is not a sermon, but a lecture. The supposed preaching that merely touches the heart is not a sermon, but a mere devotion. The supposed preaching that merely challenges the will is not a sermon, but a manipulation. True expository preaching must address all three aspects of the inner life of a person — mind, emotion, and will. Anything less, is not expository preaching.

Is your preacher more excited to read the announcements than to read the word of God? Or does he unashamedly proclaim the Word in power and truth?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)

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Further Reading

Six Characteristics of a Healthy Church

[hint: one of them is expository preaching]

Posted in discernment, mystery, scientology

Scientology opens new building in Atlanta, Martyn Lloyd Jones’ Mystery of God’s will

Posted on by elizabethprata

which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him. (Ephesians 1:8-9)

Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached a phenomenal series through the Book of Ephesians. His sermon on the verse from 8-9 is called The Mystery of God’s Will. It is so rich with insight and profundity I listened to it twice and then transcribed part of it so as to study more. Here is MLJ on the word mystery in Ephesians and other verses:

Mystery is a key term. If we do not understand its meaning we shall certainly go astray. … What, then, does this term mean? Well, let us have a few negatives. It does not mean the same as the manner of the cults and the mystery religions which were common in Paul’s day. A kind of mystic secret, which is only revealed to a few initiates and which is deliberately kept from and guarded from everybody else. No, that was the characteristic of the mystery religions. You went into the temples and you went through certain procedures. It was a secret that was really confined to a few philosophers and exceptional people. It was never given to the common, ordinary people.  

Oh no, it was closely guarded and kept, and there was a great ceremony and ritual and then you were initiated. There are certain cults as you are familiar with at the present time which are clearly based upon such practices and are the very antithesis of the Christian faith. Behind closed doors, the secret must be kept and never divulged, and nobody knows. It’s the opposite of Christianity which proclaims, preaches, expounds, heralds, and wants everybody to know it. It isn’t a closely guarded secret to which only initiates are admitted. No, it isn’t that. 

More important perhaps is that we should say this: that when this truth is described as a mystery, it doesn’t mean that it is something that is incomprehensible to the human mind in and of itself and therefore vague and nebulous and indefinite. Now that is the more important point to emphasize today. Because, there is a popular school of thought which says something like this: it is that the Christian faith can never be stated in propositions. Those of you who are following the journals will recognize this as part of the Barthian movement, followers of Karl Barth of Switzerland. They say that truth, salvation, cannot and must not be stated in propositional terms.

Well what is it then? They say it is essentially an encounter. It is this existential moment when God speaks to man and addresses him and then something happens. And all man’s attempts and endeavors to put it into print of necessity are wrong and false and misleading. That is why they say that ultimately all you have in the Bible is very fallible. That it is only man’s attempts to state this thing that happened at the moment of encounter. You mustn’t tell men that you must believe certain propositional truths, they say that truth can never be stated propositionally. It’s a mystery. In other words, their definition of a mystery is that it is something incomprehensible, something that men cannot state and cannot express. Any attempt to do so detracts from it.

Now, I say that it is vitally important that we should realize that that is not the meaning of mystery. That view of mystery is not confined to the Barthian movement and to its various adherents, there are others who believe the same thing. …

I suggest that those definitions of mystery are utterly erroneous.

Gill’s Exposition explains the Ephesians verse, what God’s mystery is—

the mystery—God’s purpose of redemption hidden heretofore in His counsels, but now revealed (Eph 6:19; Ro 16:25; Col 1:26, 27). This “mystery” is not like the heathen mysteries, which were imparted only to the initiated few. All Christians are the initiated. Only unbelievers are the uninitiated.

And yet, there are so many false religions around the world and on our own doorstep that take the word mystery and build an entire false religion around it. People follow a track or a hierarchy in attempting to climb toward solving the “mystery”. They will all perish if they adhere to their track on the mystery religion. So many men and women have founded religions where people fruitlessly seek to perform tasks and rituals which will eventually (they hope) reveal the mystery. In all cases, these false religions or secret societies are attempting to contact god or gods. As this page explains,

The idea of there being different levels then moves the process on and ensures that the new initiate strives to become an adherent or full member by learning the ways of the club or society – and thus the initiate becomes fully engulfed in the world of the society.

Secret societies take this membership a step further by including certain devices within the “knowledge bank” that the initiate must learn. These devices include secret handshakes and words, special days of the year known only to the few, and insights into standard texts. All this, and more, makes the initiate feel ever more important. In all instances, the ultimate enlightenment experience seems to be kept back for the very highest levels of initiation – lower levels of illumination are permitted and used for the lower degrees.

One modern secret society which proposes to unlock “mysteries” is the Scientology cult. One knows that cults attract large numbers. Cults indulge the flesh, appeal to intellect, or make a person feel exalted or special. It’s disheartening to see how many people fall for the false claims.

Cults have

excellent ways of drawing in members and utilizing a heightened state in the individual for their own ends – whatever they may be.

Scientology in particular, according to their own definition,

In one form or another, all great religions have held the hope of spiritual freedom—a condition free of material limitations and misery. The question has always been, however, how does one reach such a state, particularly while still living amidst a frantic and often overwhelming society?
Although modern life seems to pose an infinitely complex array of problems, Scientology maintains that the solutions to those problems are basically simple and within every man’s reach. Difficulties with communication and interpersonal relationships, nagging insecurities, self-doubt and despair—each man innately possesses the potential to be free of these and many other concerns.
Scientology offers a pathway to greater freedom.

No, it does not. The only pathway to freedom is through Jesus, because He forgives our sins and frees us from bondage to them.

I live within range of Atlanta. In this essay we are speaking of mystery religions, (cults) one of which is Scientology. Scientology says they offer “total freedom” but only through a veil of secret teachings. The following was news last weekend. Even at that, the information that published in the paper was not reported on by an unbiased journalist, it was from a carefully scripted press release from the organization itself. This means that the information we learn is only what the Organization wants us to know. The Church of Scientology-Atlanta held the grand opening of its new campus in Sandy Springs on Saturday and it seemed to be quite a draw.

So much wasted flesh… (photo source)

It’s quite disheartening to see so many people seek mysteries which have no resolution, when the resolution to everything is Jesus, and he is out in the open. We must address our sin, not indulge it, as the mystery religions do. Even more sad, is this article below reporting from the press release of the same event,

The Atlanta opening continues an explosive growth period for the Church in the past 12 months. And more is on the way, with openings in the coming year planned for cultural epicenters in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America. Joining the Church’s opening celebration were 1,500 Atlanta Scientologists, plus those from along the Eastern Seaboard. (source)

Many people are seeking what is false. These people seeking the false are not just in Atlanta like in the picture above, but they are all around the world. And they are seeking what is false not just through Scientology but other mystery religions too. It’s saddening to the point of mourning to see so many people in one photo applauding the mystery religion that will reveal no mystery but only send them to hell.

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. “For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)

The problem with the mis-definition of “mystery” is that non-believers seek knowledge to resolve the mystery, but never seek the resolution to our universal problem, which is sin. And sin is no mystery to anyone, even the unbeliever. (Romans 1:18).

If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. (1 John 4:15)

For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus. (1 Timothy 2:5)

Posted in barnhouse, discernment, social justice

What is God doing in the world today?

Posted on by elizabethprata
The following is a sermon excerpt transcribed from Dr Donald Grey Barnhouse. The sermon “What is God Doing Today?” can be found here. Dr Barnhouse launched his long-running radio program in 1927, and he pastored from 1927 until his death in 1960. Therefore this sermon had to have been preached sometime in that time frame, yet its age, at youngest perhaps 56 years old and at oldest, perhaps 90, is fresh and relevant today. 

We so often hear the cry of the social religious liberals to that they plan to change the world with their acts, or bring about social justice through this or that organization or these millions in donations. This of course is not a new theme. Dr Barnhouse’s sermon lets us know just how off-kilter the social justice cries really are. And how stale.

I recommend the sermon in its entirety at the link above.

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What is God Doing Today?

The question I am going to ask and answer today is ‘will the church save the world?’ What is God’s purpose in our age? God has but one purpose for the church, and He is confining that purpose to this age. In the Bible, God reveals that purpose.

Now we know that all Bible revelation centers around the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in two phases. First, He came to suffer for the sins of men. And He will come the second time to rule with a rod of iron and to bring righteousness to the earth. The Old Testament reveals nothing about the period between His First and Second coming. That revelation was made after Pentecost. 

What are God’s plan and purpose for this age? We need to find out so that we may not work contrary to them. A great New England preacher was once asked why he did not cooperate with Dwight L. Moody. The minister replied that he and Mr Moody did not agree on the purpose of life and work. This minister looked upon the church as a great ship, sailing through stormy seas, perhaps, but sailing on nevertheless in triumph, sure to come into port someday, with all the world on board. He expected that all the world would be Christianized and that everyone would be brought under the domination of the Gospel.

Mr Moody, on the other hand, looked upon the world as a sinking vessel, from which the church was to save as many souls as possible before the world foundered in great catastrophe. Obviously, it’s impossible to harmonize these two points of view. Therefore we need to examine God’s word so that our plans and purpose may be in harmony with His.
…
Never in the prophetic outline of the Church Age given in the word of God do we find the Church comprising more than a fraction of the population of the earth. Never is this Church spoken of as ‘all-inclusive’. Not one verse in the Bible teaches or even allows one to infer that the world is ever to be converted through the work of the church. Rather it is definitely taught that never will all people be in the true church. The low spiritual condition of many churches today is due in large measure to the fact that leaders have failed to recognize this truth and have been seeking to accomplish purposes that are out of harmony with the plan of God. Many leaders, lay and clerical alike, are trying to change the intellectual currents of the age. They are seeking to transform the social and economic order. Their aim is to build a new civilization for children to be born into. All this is foreign to the plan of God. Such ideas cannot be found in the New Testament.

Anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ can only adopt the attitude of the Lord Jesus toward the age in which we live. Our Lord spoke in no uncertain terms about the intellectual currents of this world system…its civilization…its social and economic order… He said in John 15, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it has hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own.”

There is no word here about trying to change the attitudes of the world toward believers in Lord Jesus Christ. … Christ NEVER hinted that there was any hope for this world as it is in its present condition. There is hope for believers, salvation for those who turn to Christ, but no hope for the unbelieving world. In John 17 Christ even refused to pray for the world. In His last, great prayer, recorded in John 17, He said “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world…9I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.” 

It is not God’s purpose in this age to improve the social or moral order of the world. Anybody who seeks to make this world a better place to live in has failed to understand the purpose of God today. For God’s purpose is to form His church, the Body of called-out ones.