Category: false teachers

Posted in false prophets, false teachers, peace and security, tribulation

While they are saying peace and security

Posted on by elizabethprata

Here is some Middle East news. Things are deteriorating so rapidly over there it is breathtaking.

1. Jordan’s King Abdullah dissolves Parliament, calls early elections
“The royal decree follows Abdullah II’s pledge to bring in political reforms aimed at avoiding anti-government unrest in the wake of the Arab Spring. Jordanians have been pressing for a greater say in how their country is run and demanding corruption be tackled. Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood said in July its political party, the Islamic Action Front, would boycott the polls. The group has called for the monarch’s powers to be curtailed, and for an overhaul of the parliamentary system in which the prime minister is appointed by the king rather than elected. It has said it would boycott polls until such measures were introduced.”

The King may look stable but no situation in the ME is stable right now. This editorial in the UK Guardian asks, “Is Jordan heading for chaos?” The answer is yes. Yes it is. No nation will survive the chaos that is coming, and the chaos will begin in and around Israel.

Iran is not stable, either. Iran’s rial currency plunges in value, causing riots.

2. Iran’s currency plunges, protests in streets, clashes with police
“DUBAI (Reuters) – Riot police clashed with demonstrators and arrested money changers in Tehran on Wednesday in disturbances over the collapse of the Iranian currency, which has lost 40 percent of its value against the dollar in a week, witnesses said.”

Lost 40%!!!??? Imagine if the dollar had lost 40% of its value in one week!

This next one merits an uh-oh.

3. Another mortar has fallen into Turkish territory, and Turkey is even more incensed now. Turkey is a member of NATO. NATO nations are allied by treaty and must come to each other’s defense if attacked. The Lebanon Daily Star reports this afternoon, “Israel says Syrian mortar strike was attack on NATO. Says attack on one NATO member attack on all“

“PARIS: Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor said on Thursday a deadly Syrian mortar strike on a Turkish town had to be considered an attack on a member of the NATO alliance. Israel is technically at war with Damascus and occupies the Golan Heights that it seized in the 1967 war and later annexed, but it has generally taken a cautious line on the uprising in its Arab neighbour. “One has to say that according to the NATO treaty, it was an attack on a member of NATO, and that means France,” Meridor told reporters during a visit to Paris, referring to France’s membership of NATO. Syria and Israel have not exchanged fire in three decades, and a parliamentary briefing in July by the Israeli armed forces chief about the risk of “uncontrollable deterioration” in Syria were interpreted by local media as a caution against opening a new fighting front with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”

3a. The UN scrambles to defuse Syria-Turkey tensions
“UNITED NATIONS – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was “alarmed by escalating tensions” between Syria and Turkey and warned that the risk of the 18-month-long Syrian conflict embroiling the entire region was growing, his spokesman said on Thursday. “The Secretary-General is alarmed by escalating tensions along the Syrian-Turkish border,” Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters. “As the situation inside Syria deteriorates yet further … the risks of regional conflict and the threat to international peace and security are also increasing.”

Speaking of peace and security, there is this headline from today too:

Turkey seeks ‘peace and security,’ not war with Syria

And the UN speeches last week were full of references to peace and security.

“The world is in need of a new order of trustworthy leaders offering peace and lasting security.” Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, UN Speech, 9/2012

“Jordan’s King Abdullah said in his region of the Middle East, new opportunities are needed, especially for youth, to “fill the universal desire and basic human right to live in freedom, dignity and peace. … Abdullah also spoke of the Palestinians’ need for dignity and safety. UN Speech, 9/2012

Prophecy says, “While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.” (1 Thessalonians 5:3).

While they are saying…

Now it should be noted that the context of the verse is of the Day of the LORD, which means the Tribulation leading up to the actual moment of Jesus’s reappearance, coming in glory. But the problem of false prophets who tout peace around the next corner is as old as the hills. God told Jeremiah to say,

“They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14)

The wicked false prophets were telling the people that peace was coming, and that no trouble was on the horizon. They dressed the bleeding wound lightly. That wound was the Israelites’ separation from God. They were faithless, and the false prophets were capitalizing on their penchant for listening to the easy cure rather than the hard one. There are always people eager to hear an easy message being preached, and in that day, ‘peace, peace’ was the most favored one.

It is like that today, with so many false prophets and false teachers. The message most favored in the American church these days is “prosperity, prosperity.” The false ones preach an easy message to tickle the ears, and they find many willing listeners to heap up to themselves as eager followers to their false message. (2 Tim 4:3).

In the Tribulation, though there will be catastrophic wars, destructive natural disasters, and an economy and government gone wild, the false prophesiers will be saying “peace and safety is just around the corner!” As always, there will be eager people willing to listen to the false message and who refuse the hard cure: humble repentance.

In this day, just prior to the coming Tribulation, they are saying “peace and security!” with increasing fervor. (Imagine how many people will be saying it then, and how often, if it is so frequent now!)

The verse right before the one in Jeremiah 6 where they were saying “peace, peace”, is this. I believe it to be apt today. It closes out chapter 5:

“An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?” (Jeremiah 5:30-31).

Posted in beth moore, discernment, false teachers, james murphy, jentezen franklin, Joyce Meyer, osteen

It is important to be discerning!

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

A warning from my heart. One thing that strikes me is how few (seemingly) Christians really know how late the hour is. I’m still struck by Pastor James Murphy’s sermon, the raw and pointed one he delivered last Sunday in Johnson City NY. He said that the time has come to stop fooling around. Knowing the Word of God through diligent study and practice of discernment is too important. And he said, shame on them if they didn’t think it was important. It is.

And if we know the word of God we know how late the hour is. Paul said that we are children of the Light and will not be surprised as we see the Day approaching. (1 Thess 5:4.) The writer of Hebrews said that we should not stop assembling together, we should do it all the more as we see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:25). Not as we believe the day is approaching. Not as we pray that the day might be approaching. As we SEE the day approaching.

Knowing the lateness of the hour ties in with this verse: “For where your treasure is, there your heart shall be also.” (Matthew 6:21). Is our treasure Jesus? Or is it this world? At this late hour are we part of a Laodicean church? Jesus had charges against that church-

‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.” (Rev 3:15-18).

The Worship of Mammon, E. DeMorgan, 1909

Are we buying gold from Mammon? So that we may be comfortable and rich and have need of nothing? And so not have need of Jesus? Are we walking in self-confidence (Beth Moore), satisfied with our best life now (Joel Osteen), doing lukewarm works with Jesus as a footnote (Rick Warren), manipulating God so he will be forced to release the blessing (Joyce Meyer), begging for ‘seed money’ (Jentezen Franklin) and throwing people who “hinder” us off the bus where the bodies are piling up? (Mark Driscoll)?

Or are we the church at Philadelphia, where Jesus said we “have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.” ?

That is the main problem with the global church body today, but especially UK, Canada, Australia and US. We deny Jesus. Oh, sure, a name of Jesus is preached from pulpits, if they even dare to call it a pulpit, some just call it a podium, but it is from a different Gospel and it refers to a different Jesus. THE Jesus of the Bible is denied again and again.

Over 120 years ago Charles Haddon Spurgeon predicted, “A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats.” Oh, how right he was.

Our generation is “Sacrificing biblical truth for the cause of ecumenical unity and promotion of carnal methodology in churches are the norm of our age” wrote Chris Lawson in his April newsletter, “Clowning around in the pulpit.” He wrote, “Instead of playing fast and loose with God’s church, Christian leaders ought to be discussing Bible prophecy in light of global events and teaching biblical discernment in light of the end-times apostasy.”

Oh how right he is. Are pastors, teachers, and leaders teaching biblical discernment? A few. Praise them, and thank you Lord for raising up the pastors and teachers who are. But they are increasingly few…Grant Jeffrey is home with the Lord now, as is David Wilkerson, Adrian Rogers, and others. I see few discerning elders on the near horizon to take their place. And increasingly, the ones who are still teaching and preaching biblical discernment are not listened to. I wonder what the fallout has been for Pastor James Murphy up in Johnson City.

Thus, today, instead of the norm in our Bible-believing churches being the Prince of Preachers warning 120 years ago about the coming clown parade,

Believers are warned again and again throughout the Old Testament and the New about the dangers of idols, false teaching and false prophets. Are we, in the twenty-first century so smart that we can afford to ignore these? No. Are we who are the generation living in the latter days so advanced that we can ignore the warnings of end of times apostasy? No.

So what are we to do? John MacArthur preached on the verses from  Thessalonians 5:21-22, in a series titled “A Call for Discernment.” In part 1 he said, “We cannot for a moment believe that every one who claims to be in Christ and to speak on behalf of Christ is speaking the truth.” But yet so many people do. In 1 Thess 5:16 “starting with verse 16, Paul has been listing the basics of Christian living…rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus, do not quench the Spirit, do not despise Scripture or the revelation of God. And now he comes to this one, examine everything.”

Just because a person says they come in the name of Christ, they may not. Just because they are popular or long-lasting, doesn’t mean they get a pass on whether they should be examined. The Bereans were called noble for examining the scriptures to see if they lined up with what Paul said. And Paul loved it.

Here are some discernment resources:

MacArthur Sermons-
A Call For Discernment Part 1
A Call for Discernment Part 2
A Call for Discernment Part 3

Books-
The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment by Tim Challies
A Call for Discernment, Jay Adams

Study-
Discernment is a Commandment
Discernment in the Church
Discernment and the Watchman

The best Resource of all is the Holy Spirit! And the Bible itself.

Brethren, the hour is late. The watchword of the day is not our pits or self or confidence or release or seed or seeker. Repentance is the watchword, because after that, comes wrath.

Posted in beth moore, false doctrine, false teachers

Beth Moore: a type of false prophetess of the church at Thyatira?

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

There was an actual woman Jesus designated as a false prophetess who was corrupting the church at Thyatira. He also condemned the church for tolerating her! We know from the previous Bible examples that there will be again a type of false prophetess who corrupts the church.

Jesus’s letter regarding Thyatira was the longest of the seven. It enumerates a number of issues with that church. I’ll focus on the teachings of the false prophetess who was corrupting the sheep.

This Thyatiran church was tolerating sin and idolatry (also sexual immorality). Worse, it was tolerating a woman teacher who was promoting idolatry and not only were they tolerating it, but she had risen to such a point of prominence so that Jesus called her “Jezebel” (who was a queen who led the people into idolatry and immorality, and an eternal emblem of embodied rebellion). She was also prophesying in His name- falsely!

Now, it should be noted that this corruption was coming from a woman inside the church who was teaching the brethren, not from an outside influence. She was regarded as a sister in the faith. A prominent sister. So much so that she was given to teach and had gathered quite a few around her who were followers of her false teaching. The rest were tolerating it.

God wants a pure church. He wants Jesus to have a holy and virginal bride, and toleration of idolatry and false teaching is the opposite of that. This church at Thyatira was mightily besmirched.

However, to complicate matters, the verse in Rev. 2:19 says “as for your works, the last are more than the first.” They were loving, working and doing more that they had at the first. This makes it incredibly hard to separate the sinful idolatry from the loving works. They were not loveless, but they were tolerating sin, which is loveless. The unaddressed sin would eventually eat them up. By the second century there was no church at Thyatira any more. It had died. So obviously loving works alone are not enough to carry a church through. There must be solid doctrine and discerning elders properly identifying false doctrine and rooting it out.

In Thyatira, they were tolerating a false teaching and false propheying. They were accepting of a woman who had taken a place of leadership in teaching, she was preaching and prophesying which is forbidden to women in the church. The church congregation was tolerating these evils. Though the verse above calls them out for eating foods sacrificed to idols, nowadays, we do not sacrifice food to idols. However the notion there was of spiritual adultery, and spiritual adultery is certainly an issue today.

Can you think of one woman who perhaps fits the type that is described in the Letter to Thyatira?

Beth Moore, perhaps?

I think we can see that in Beth Moore’s fans, they exhibit what is called the idol worshiping excessive devotion to her that goes beyond a simple preference for one teacher over another. This is idolatry.

John MacArthur, in his sermon The Pathology of False Teachers, defines what false teaching IS: “It could be error about Christ, error about His lineage, error about His virgin birth. Someone who teaches contrary to the sinless perfection of Christ, contrary to His substitutionary atoning death on the cross, contrary to His resurrection, contrary to His miraculous life and works, His perfect teaching, His Second Coming, His high priestly ministry of intercession, His eternal reign, any of that. Anyone who teaches differently than that. It could be a denial of the authenticity of Scripture, the inspiration of Scripture, the authority of Scripture, the inerrancy of Scripture. It could be a denial of the work and ministry and person of the Holy Spirit as revealed on the pages of holy Scripture.”

In Mrs Moore’s case her falsity comes in her denial of the authority of Scripture by de facto writing her own. She also denies the authority of scripture by rebelling against it. She denies the sufficiency of Scripture by de facto claiming to write scripture herself. She also denies the sufficiency of scripture by teaching her own visions instead. If you are just reading for the first time that there are concerns with Mrs Moore’s teachings, please note that I have many examples of these concerns on the sidebar to your right. Other bloggers have also listed their concerns here, here, and here. I state unequivocally that through spirit-led study and discernment that my proposal is she is currently Christianity’s greatest counterfeit.

Her teaching denies the inspiration of Scripture, the authority of Scripture, the inerrancy of Scripture by inserting herself as another authority by reception of divine revelation outside the Bible. She has been subtle. However, her false teaching is rapidly becoming more bold. She says that she hears God personally telling her to do things or to teach things, this is a denial of the authority of scripture when you receive direct revelation and teach it as authoritative. She said recently she was lifted up to another dimension to see the church from Jesus’s perspective through Jesus’s eyes and returned to tell what she saw. This is prophetess. She says a book was delivered to her heart in toto by God with a force as compelled to put ink on paper. This is spirit writing, an idolatry that consorts with the devil. She says if she had not written her book that the rocks in her yard would have cried out, which is not only a claim that her writing is scripture, but is actually blasphemy.  More here.

All false teachers gather to themselves followers who exhibit excessive devotion. These followers defend their favored teacher almost violently. Many call themselves a “Beth Moore groupie.” The word “groupie” is … a derisive term used to describe a particular kind of female fan assumed to be more interested in sex with rock stars than in their music.” In Mrs Moore’s case it is the emotional intimacy they seek, because Mrs Moore is a self-help guru using the Bible as a platform from which to read ourselves into the text for temporal help with astray emotions, rather than a sacred text to discern more about Jesus. In the groupie’s mind they seek more intimacy with the false teacher than with Jesus. Any person who has become the substitution of adoration aside from Jesus is worshiping an idol.

Many female fans are more interested in following this false teacher than the One whom they are supposed to be learning about. Like this lady who titled her blog entry “Confessions of a Beth Moore groupie“. Or this lady, who calls herself a BM groupie and says that if Mrs Moore is anywhere within driving distance, she goes to see her. Or this lady who made tank tops and took a photo of the self-admitted groupies in her group to send to the object of their adoration. Or this lady who calls herself a groupie and jokes that she amazingly strayed once from Mrs Moore to take a study under someone else (Priscilla Shirer, another false teacher). This lady calls herself not only a Beth Moore groupie, but a Beth Moore addict. I can go on with the myriad of ladies online who self-profess excessive devotion to a person who is not Jesus, but you get the idea.

The verse from 2 Timothy 4:3 applies best here: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears...” Let’s unpack this phrase by phrase.

First, these ladies do not want sound doctrine. They have already rejected it.

Second, they want to suit their own desires. There is nothing in the universe more powerful than satisfying our own fleshly desires. It got Eve, then Adam. 1 John 2:16 applies here: “For everything in the world–the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does–comes not from the Father but from the world.” It is one reason for the vehement defense of Mrs Moore and the violently verbal rejection of anyone sharing concerns about Mrs Moore.

Third, they ‘heap up teachers.’ This part of the verse always reminded me of a child at the beach, heaping up sand next to themselves, or a child at Christmas, heaping up toys.

Fourth, their ears itch. An itch MUST be satisfied. The Greek word for itch here is knéthó, itch, rub, tickle, or from a late word meaning ‘scrape.’ This brings to mind the extreme scene of itching Job experienced when he had boils, and used a pot sherd to scrape them. He didn’t care if his very skin was scraped off, he had to satisfy that tickle so badly, even if it hurt him. (Job 2:8).

It is not simply a difference of opinion in one Bible teacher over another. Where satan has successfully installed a false teacher who is drawing many away from sound doctrine, he will fight to the death to keep it that way. Here is a great short essay in Why Idolatry is so Attractive. If you read it, you will see why the ladies react the way they do, and why it is so hard to get a Beth Moore lover away from her teaching.

No, she does not call herself a prophetess, but she acts in the prophetess role when she says she received a word from God audibly, directly, or through a vision and was ‘told’ to go out and speak it to the people. Defenders of Mrs Moore pick at points such as the aforementioned, but in looking at false teachers and the type of false prophetess described in the letter to Thyatira, we look at what they do, not just at what they say. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s a duck.

I have shared with you an interpretation specific to Thyatira of what Jesus warned, and of which we discern also will happen to the churches throughout the age. I applied an understanding of how Mrs Moore may be filling a type of role Jesus prophesied will occur. I ask you to ponder it, pray, and decide for yourself. I believe that Beth Moore is a type of false prophetess so deeply embedded in the body of the true church that her deep things of satan are corrupting it. That is my opinion, based on research, discernment, and prayer.

Meanwhile, Jesus said to those who do NOT hold to this false prophetess’s teaching, this or any false teaching, I remind us of Jesus’s words, “Now to you I say, and to the rest in Thyatira, as many as do not have this doctrine, who have not known the depths of Satan, as they say, I will put on you no other burden. But hold fast what you have till I come.”

Hold fast to the truth! He knows who does not fall to the deep things of satan, and has their reward in mind. One stays fast to the truth by continually studying the real thing, praying, and submitting to the Spirit’s generous leading into discernment. If you know the real thing, then you can spot the counterfeit. Watch out for popular false prophetesses, Thyatira, and hold fast, Jesus is coming!

discernment1

Posted in false teachers

One of God’s judgments on people are false teachers

Posted on by elizabethprata

“False teachers are God’s judgment on people who don’t want God, but in the name of religion plan on getting everything their carnal heart desires. That’s why a Joel Osteen is raised up. Those people who sit under him are not victims of him but he is the judgment of God upon them. And they want exactly what he wants, and it’s not God.” ~ Paul Washer

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires.” 2 Timothy 4:3

Posted in beth moore, false teachers

New Gospel vs. Old Gospel and Paul’s warning to Timothy

Posted on by elizabethprata

Beth Moore preaches Beth Moore. Her studies and talks and tv show are solely about her. This is what a brother in the faith said yesterday, Chris Rosebrough, not about Beth Moore specifically but about the scourge of falsity penetrating the church these days:

“The old gospel is about humble, contrite and repentant faith. The new gospel is about audacious faith.”

“The old gospel is about repentance & forgiveness of sins by Christ’s blood. The new gospel is about behavior modification & the cross is not needed.”

“The old gospel was about our need for an imputed righteousness; the new gospel is about satisfying our craving for significance.”

“The old gospel regenerates sinners born dead in trespasses & sin. The new gospel improves the lives of people who are “basically good”.

“The old gospel was about penal substitution. The new gospel is about life coaching.”

“The old gospel was about sin; the new gospel is about meeting felt needs.”

“The old gospel was about an offended God; the new gospel is about a wounded and victimized humanity.”

Balanced against the old foundational doctrines like that, you can see easily that Beth Moore preaches a new Gospel.

The Word is pure and true. Jesus said that false teachers would come, that doctrines of demons would enter, that they would not stand for sound doctrine but want tickled ears and heap up teachers who preach it. Etc. His word is true and though it is devastating to see the impact of these false teachings, it is satisfying to rely on God’s word when it is proved true over and over again, even in a negative way like this issue is.

If you are not at a good church now, I can recommend some good and biblical preachers online.

John MacArthur
Don Green
Phil Johnson

Steve Lawson
Paul Washer
Justin Peters: “A call for discernment, a biblical critique of the Word-Faith movement”

They are also all over YouTube too. You can trust these preachers in how they handle the word. But don’t believe me, listen for yourself and be a Berean 🙂

Here is a wonderful preaching on The Dangers of Apostasy by Steve Lawson. I really enjoy Pastor Lawson’s preaching, I’ve listened to much of what is available online and then I listened to it over again! Here he delves into the verses from 2 Timothy 3:1-5,

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”

Pastor Lawson explains that the conditions Paul warns Timothy about in the the last days are not just societal conditions, but conditions of apostasy that will be present in the church. A must listen

The aggressive rise in falsity we detect in our church tells me that Jesus will soon come. O come Lord Jesus!!
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Posted in beth moore, false teachers

Beth Moore says God lifted her into another dimension & showed her the church through Jesus’s eyes

Posted on by elizabethprata

This portion of the “teaching” I’m discussing in this essay is a minute long. Her “teaching” in its entirety is longer, about 4 min. The original video I’d included which the transcription is from, has been deleted by Moore. Most copies of it I have been able to find online are marked “not available.” I found that I had downloaded a copy from someone on Youtube who included some verses along with an inter-title caption. His video started a few seconds after the original one, so that is why there are a few sentences of a transcription that don’t appear on the video.

//www.youtube.com/get_player

Transcription: “… to beg to differ with people that are ten times smarter than I am. But I want to say to you I see something different than that. I see God doing something huge in the body of Christ. I do not know why I have had the privilege to get to travel around, see one church after another…one group of believers after another, interdenominationally, all over this country, but I have gotten to see something that I think is huge. And I’ll also suggest to you I am not the only one. And tonight I’m going to do my absolute best to illustrate to you something that God showed me out on that back porch. He put a picture…I’ve explained to you before I am a very visual person…so He speaks to me very often of putting a picture in my head. And it was as if I was raised up looking down on a community, as I saw the church in that particular dimension- certainly not all dimensions, not even in many, but in what we will discuss tonight, the church, as Jesus sees it, in a particular dimension.”

Do you know how crazy this sounds? Do you know how wrong this is? Do you know the danger you are in if you believe her?

I had seen that clip of her saying Jesus took her up and showed her the world in HIS dimension a few days ago. I was impacted greatly by it: horrified, aghast, astounded would be words to describe my thoughts and feelings when I heard that from Mrs Moore… and days later I am still feeling that way.

She literally said that God somehow mentally or emotionally or spiritually (Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know) took her into a dimension above the world to show her how Jesus sees His bride, effectively saying she was seeing thru Jesus eyes. Didn’t satan do that to Jesus, take Him up and show to Him all the world’s kingdoms? (Mt 4:8) Didn’t the Lord lift up Paul and show Him things, but which no man is permitted to tell? (2 Cor 12:4). Apparently women are, though. Is Mrs Moore more special than Paul? Has God changed His mind on permissions since then? The only conclusion I can make is that God changed His mind on the lifting up and the telling, or it is satan showing her these things. You can guess which one of these two I believe.

The rampant problem of Christians who teach and preach that personal visitations from God are the normative experience are actually chipping away at the foundational truths from the bible which is the ONLY revelation now. (Hebrews 1:1-2)

Yes, God can do what He wants, and He can give revelation, but is He behind personal visitations and whispers and visions? That is the question. I believe the answer is no. He has said that currently He wants us to know Him through Jesus, who is the Word and His word is found in the bible. I go back to Hebrews 1, and also Revelation 22;18,”warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book.” Revelation is the last book and with that admonishment, the canon closed. There is no new “seeing thru Jesus eyes” to be gained. It is all in the bible.

What Mrs Moore is saying is that God gave her a special revelation that is apart from the bible and subsequently she is here to teach us about it.

If we accept that we have authoritative word from the bible, PLUS Mrs Moore’s visions, PLUS Bill Hybels’ whispers, PLUS Colton Burpo’s visit to heaven, PLUS Mary K Baker’s visit to hell…where does it end? I say to one and all it ended at Revelation 22. You can read about it more here at MacArthur’s site, “Does God still give revelation?“

The canon of scripture is closed. I do not believe Jesus is continuing to give authoritative revelation, and certainly none that we accept as a “teaching” about His church

From GotQuestions about the canon:
“The acquisition of knowledge regarding such things as the true nature of God, the origin of the universe and life, the purpose and meaning of life, the wonders of salvation, and future events (including the destiny of mankind) are beyond the natural observational and scientific capacity of mankind. The already-delivered Word of God, valued and personally applied by Christians for centuries, is sufficient to explain to us everything we need to know of Christ (John 5:18; Acts 18:28; Galatians 3:22; 2 Timothy 3:15) and to teach us, correct us, and instruct us into all righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16).”

I reject Mrs Moore’s claims of being raised up to see the church in another dimension as Jesus sees it.

We don’t need to listen to individuals who say they have had a vision of being lifted up into His dimension, when Jesus came into OUR dimension to tell us, all of us. I’m grieved daily that people increasingly show us by their acceptance of heaping up these teachers who tickle the ears that His intrusion into our dimension was not enough. Now we must go to His, and come back and tell. This is what I mean by the current belief in the bible’s insufficiency. God does have a vision for His church and that vision is contained in the bible. Listening to one person’s extra-biblical revelations about what God showed her and her alone, and through Jesus’s eyes no less, is dangerous in the extreme.

I see these things being said from people within what was once a conservative denomination, and I see and hear others even in churches around me here in GA saying similar, and I wonder, ‘have they all gone mad??’ but the answer is yes, I fear. It is as though as the Lord lifts His hand in ending the Church Age, the delusion that will come upon the whole world is infiltrating even now (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12).
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Posted in bible, false doctrine, false teachers

Why we name false teachers

Posted on by elizabethprata

Christians are called to love one another. However foremost and primarily we are called to live in truth and protect the truth. So many times John rejoices over the new Christians walking in the truth, in 1 John, 2 John, 3 John… Do not mix up loving the brethren with remaining silent when false teaching comes for the sake of peace. If you love them you will speak up.

The Word is a precious gift, bought with the blood of our own Savior so that it could be inspired by the Spirit to men whom God loves so dearly. It is God’s own revelation of Himself to us for Godly living and proper worship. 2 Timothy 4:2 tells us to —

“preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.”

I submit to you that the Word is out of season at this present time. It is very hard today to cut through the accumulated baggage that is American Christianity. There are fads, books, ridiculous doctrines, liberalism, and attacks on the very foundations of the most basic truths of the faith. Under most attack today are the notions of hell as a place for eternal punishment of the unrighteous, that Jesus died for sins and rose again on the third day, and that Jesus is the only way to heaven. One out of season approach to the Word that particularly grieves me is when people say “take God out of the box” we have put Him in and they stay away from conviction of their convictions. No, God is not in a box, He is infinite. But He purposely revealed  Himself in the 66 books of the bible and that is the God He wants us to know at this time. He didn’t make Himself uninterpretable and He didn’t make Himself unclear in that revelation. There is more to God, but for now, we work with what we have, and that is the God in the bible. Which ironically often comes in a box.

Paul warned that a major end times sign is that they will not endure sound doctrine. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires:” (2 Timothy 4:3).  It doesn’t say that they will not endure doctrine, but sound doctrine. The Greek word “sound” in the part of the verse ‘sound doctrine’ means healthy, pure, well as in not-sick. It means as opposed to a debilitating sickness. And that is what unsound doctrine is, sickness.

It reminds me of the verse in 2 Timothy 2:17. Paul urged the workers in the faith to remain strong, refuting the words of false teachers such as Hymenaeus and Philetus, and Paul said something interesting here. He said that their teachings will spread like gangrene. The Greek word used here gangraina means gangrene, just as we know it today. A cankerous, spreading, oozing sore sickness. The US National Library of Medicine defines gangrene as “the death of tissue in part of the body.” The church is the body of Christ. Does that resonate with you, or what?

Paul is saying that false teachings kill off parts of  the body in oozing, putrid, destructive manner. Worse, the method of death of this tissue is defined as happening “when a body part loses its blood supply.” Jesus paid for the body with His blood so when we are cut off from the blood of Jesus by false teachings we are in very severe danger! That is what false teaching does, causes destruction to a part of the Body. The Holy Spirit was so apt in using gangrene as a metaphor! How wonderful He is!

So how do doctors treat gangrene? If it is caught before the infection goes too far, it is removed through a medical term called debridement, a medical word meaning the precise removal in an exact surgical procedure excising just the infected tissue. (I don’t want to get carried away with stretching metaphors too widely, but the body of the church is called the Bride…) However, if gangrene is left untreated for too long, a larger part of the body may need to be amputated. Finally, if left untreated for too, too long, the whole organism dies.

As far as the Word goes, I submit to you that failure to correct false teaching in firm manner over the last few decades has led us to the very brink of this apostate time, when Jesus said asked if, when He returns in His second coming, will He find faith upon the earth? (Luke 18:8.) One can almost imagine the gangrenous, disgusting thing that religion will have become by then, left untreated. And the pure parts that are left will have been amputated do deeply there may only be one finger or one toe remaining in light and in truth. Sorry for the gross images, but Paul started it!

So what are we to do when coming across a false teaching? Now I admit it is easier to point to a false teaching when finding a false teaching like Jentezen Franklin or Joel Osteen, or Beth Moore or Billy Graham because they are far away and we can simply turn the channel, walk by their table at the book store without purchasing, or say no to taking up their simulcast. But what happens when the false teaching comes to your church and you have to endure it week after week? Now there is a problem and I tell you up front is the hardest thing in the world to handle. Many, many people won’t, can’t, or don’t. And that is why we are in this apostate situation. Brothers and Sisters, you have to point it out!

But before you do, make sure that you have prayed, loved, walked, studied, waited, watched, and prayed some more. Then and only then when the Spirit assures you the time is right, go public. Be ready for blowback of satanic proportions!

People will question your authority to point out a false teaching, especially if your pastor is promoting it. This is very good, we should be questioned when we say a church leader or pastor is promoting a false teaching. (That is why you have to be very sure that the Spirit led you to the right conclusion). Read these following verses but be sure to read them in the context of the chapters later so you have a thorough understanding of the mandate and burden to publicly exhort against a false teaching.

1 Timothy 5:20: Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that the others may take warning.

Titus 1:13: This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith

Titus 2:15: These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.

But am I sure we are to do this to a brother? Yes. When Peter went off the rails in Antioch, Paul opposed Peter to his face. “But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.” (Galatians 2:11-14). What? Wasn’t Peter saved? Not condemned? Well John 3:18 says we condemn ourselves by what we believe and Peter had condemned himself by accepting a false teaching. It also could mean that the Gentile believers at Antioch were condemning Peter already. There was a ruckus and it was known that a division was happening in the church there because of the divisive nature of the Judaizers’ false teaching.

It was particularly hard because the co-pastor at Antioch, Barnabas, Paul’s beloved Barnabas! was now also being carried away too. Gangrene spreads, and Paul must have been grieved to see he was losing Barnabas to the hypocrisy dividing the church there. Peter was the most highly thought of in all of Christendom. But that didn’t stop Paul, because Jesus is even higher than that and it is His name we defend. He got to the point in Gal 2:14 where when he “saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the Gospel.” Paul waded in, knowing that the truth was more important than keeping peace. He opposed Peter to his face. The Spirit saw fit to include that in the record so we must use that as a pattern for today. When public sin against the Gospel encroaches on the church, there must be immediate and unequivocal church discipline to rectify it. Otherwise when we preach holiness and purity but don’t get rid of unholiness and impurity, we destroy our own credibility.

Now to the other point. Many people say not to name names. However, throughout the New Testament, we are told who was sinning and why. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees, Saducees, Scribes and Herodians. (Matthew 16:6-12 and Matthew 23:15). Paul rebuked Peter in Gal 2. Paul dealt with Hymenaeus, Philetus (1 Tim 1:20), and Demas (2 Tim 4:9-10). Peter dealt with Simon the Sorcerer and Ananaias/Sapphira (though these last two were not false teachers bringing false doctrine, but liars bringing hypocrisy to the tithe or grieving the Spirit). Names were named.

We know the names of the false doctrines too, not just the people perpretrating them. There were the  Judaizers/Legalists, (Acts 15:1), Gnosticism (1 Timothy 6:20-21, and likely was what Paul was dealing with in 1 Cor 8),  Asceticism (Colossians 2:18-23), Antinomianism (2 Timothy 3:2-9). There are other false doctrines, but suffice to say, why do we know the names of these false doctrines now? Names were named.

Most of these false doctrines are still around today, and indeed it is a blessing that they were named, so we can identify them and combat them in same manner as the forefathers of the faith did.

I have tried to show you that false doctrines and teachings are a gangrenous cancer that must be opposed and excised. It is uncomfortable to do this and it seems excessive to name names. But let me put it to you this way. Knowing now that false teaching kills the body, let us think of false teaching as a runaway train hurtling toward your town and potentially crashing into the houses and businesses lining the track.

The first thing to decide is, IS there a runaway train, and is it on our track? Have we heard the report correctly? Paul saw that they were not straighforward, and to me this means he had examined the issue up close and had proof. It doesn’t say “Paul heard…” or, “Paul wondered…”If it is a true report of a runaway train, would you stand by and say nothing? Would you say, “Well, the people in the houses are asleep, they will get mad at me if I call them at this hour. I better stay quiet for the sake of peace.” Of course not! But that is what people expect us to do when we spot a false teaching.

Secondly, do you make the call to the house owners in the path of destruction and say this:

“Get out! there is a runaway train coming!”
“Where is it?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Well, from what direction is it coming?”
“I can’t tell you that either.”
“What is the name of the train? Which train?”
“Sorry, I can’t tell you.”
“What time will it get here?”
“I can’t tell you that as well.”
“Why can’t you tell me the specifics???”
“Because I don’t want to offend the train.”

What good is sounding the alarm if you won’t go into specifics? Failure to be specific on behalf of not wanting to cause trouble for the perpetrators of false teaching is actually saying you prefer to besmirch the name of Jesus because you don’t want to offend satan!

It is not easy to do this though. It is not easy to discern false teaching, it takes prayer and study. It is not easy to stand up to the spiritual leaders and say they are wrong. It is not easy to maintain your convictions in the face of blowback. They will make you quail and they will make you doubt.

But look at our gracious God:

Do not say, ‘I am a youth,’For you shall go to all to whom I send you, And whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of their faces, For I am with you to deliver you,” says the LORD. (Jeremiah 1:7). He was true to Jeremiah and He will be with you as well,

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20). We are to go forth teaching and protecting the sound doctrines of the Gospel in the disciples and He will be with us to the end.
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Posted in beth moore, direct revelation, end time, false teachers

Walsch, Young, and Beth Moore: ungodly channelers all (Part 2)

Posted on by elizabethprata

Part 1: Making no distinction between Victorian channeling writers of yore and today’s Christian
Part 2: Making no distinction between Victorian channeling writers of yore and today’s Christian
Part 3: Walsch, Young, and Beth Moore: ungodly channelers all (Part 3)
Conclusion: How do Christian authors end up channeling spirits and producing books from them? Pride

In part 1 of the comparison between the Victorian spiritist’s automatic writing and today’s certain Christian authors receiving ‘Divine’ revelation by invisible force, I had asked “How is receiving a poem through automatic writing after a seance through a spirit guide any different from holing up in a cabin, having a long conversation with God and writing down by invisible force the ‘Christian’ doctrines that are then published to today’s fervent acclaim?”

I laid the historical groundwork to answer this question, with quotes from famous authors who have received written works from the spirit world through automatic writing. Automatic writing is really modern ghostwriting at its most literal form.

I had said that it is easy to look at WB Yeats and note that having received an entire poem (The Second Coming) in a trance while his hand was being used by an invisible force he ascribes to a spirit guide and say “that’s demonic.” I had wondered why people do not look more closely at some of today’s authors who use the exact same methods and come to the same conclusion, “that’s demonic.” Here are three popular Christian-ish authors who have revealed in interviews that they use the same method, although it goes by a different name now. We no longer hold a seance, call up a spirit guide, and allow our hand to be used as an automatic pen. These authors are today’s Christian mystics engaged in receiving divinely inspired writings in toto after a lengthy bouts of contemplative prayer, usually in seclusion, and are yet said to have a special and close relationship with God because they have done this.

Here are the three authors. I use their examples in order from least Christian to most Christian. Neale Donald Walsch, William P. Young, and Beth Moore.

In 1996 Neale Donald Walsch realized his life was a mess. His relationships weren’t working. His health wasn’t good. He got fired from his job. He  woke up one night just angry, really frustrated, and wrote down what was on his mind. God answered. He then had successive conversations with God. These chats became nine bestsellers. Walsch denies his books have been channeled into him, but this is how he explained to the NY Times how his books came about:

“In the spring of 1992…an extraordinary phenomenon occurred in my life. God began talking with you. Through me. Let me explain. I was very unhappy during that period, personally, professionally, and emotionally, and my life was feeling like a failure on all levels. As I’d been in the habit for years of writing my thoughts down in letters…I picked up my trusty yellow legal pad and began pouring out my feelings. This time…I decided to write a letter to God. It was a spiteful, passionate letter, full of confusions, contortions, and condemnation. And a pile of angry questions….To my surprise, as I scribbled out the last of my bitter, unanswerable questions and prepared to toss my pen aside, my hand remained poised over the paper, as if held there by some invisible force. Abruptly, the pen began moving on its own. I had no idea what I was about to write….Out came….Do you really want an answer to all these questions, or are you just venting? … Before I knew it, I had begun a conversation. … and I was not writing so much as taking dictation. … Often the answers came faster than I could write, and I found myself scribbling to keep up. When I became confused, or lost the feeling that the words were coming from somewhere else, I put the pen down and walked away from the dialogue until I again felt inspired–sorry, that’s the only word which truly fits–to return to the yellow legal pad and start transcribing again.”

He was taking dictation, physically being used by an entity from the other side to write about God. Sorry Mr Walsch, that’s channeling. It is also called automatic writing. And therefore anything that comes from the session should be looked upon with extreme suspicion and likely should be disregarded out of hand. And yet the series of books, “Conversations With God” was a huge bestseller. Our church folks have no discernment today. Sadly.

In 2008, William P. Young wrote a story for his kids about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit that his wife encouraged him to publish. It became the runaway bestseller The Shack.

Though Young is not as specific as Walsch, Moore, Yeats, Kipling or other automatic writers as to the exact mechanism of the automatic writing, he does state that the book was generated by whispers from God, dreams, and written pads of conversations he had with Him. “His book, The Shack was birthed from “conversations” and notes he would occasionally write during his 45 minute commutes to work on a commuter train, or from deep thought. “I had a number of those rather ugly yellow pads full of bits of conversations. Sometimes, I would wake up in the middle of the night in the middle of a conversation and grab a notepad to try and remember,” he says.”

Christian apologist Norman Geisler wrote of The Shack‘s origins by quoting from The Shack‘s afterword, “In the final section of the book titled “The Story behind THE SHACK,” he reveals that the motivation for this story comes from his own struggle to answer many of the difficult questions of life. He claims that his seminary training just did not provide answers to many of his pressing questions. Then one day in 2005, he felt God whisper in his ear that this year was going to be his year of Jubilee and restoration. Out of that experience he felt lead to write The Shack. According to Young, much of the book was formed around personal conversations he had with God, family, and friends (258-259).” Toward the end of writing the book, Mr Young had said that he spent one weekend writing four chapters, and one chapter, came out whole and he never edited it.

Beth Moore is a Christian teacher and writer who is currently very popular. The most visible of the trio (the trio being Walsch of Conversations with God, Young of The Shack, and Moore) her method of producing her written works are remarkably similar to them both, and also to the writers mentioned in the part 1 of this series, such as Kipling and Yeats who were admitted Spiritists engaging in automatic writing.

Beth Moore, from ‘Believing God’ said: “What God began to say to me about five years ago, and I’m telling you it sent me on such a trek with Him, that my head is still whirling over it. He began to say to me, ‘I’m gonna tell you something right now, Beth, and boy you write this one down, and you say it as often as I give you utterance to say it: My Bride is paralyzed by unbelief. My Bride is paralyzed by unbelief.’ And He said, ‘Startin’ with you.’” God says, “and boy you write this one down”????? ”

She states in the Believing God DVD: “You know what He told me not too long ago? I told you when I first began this whole concept, He first started teaching it to me about five years ago, and He said these words to me: ‘Baby, you have not even begun to believe Me. You haven’t even begun!’ You know what He said just a few days ago? ‘Honey, I just want you to know we’re just beginning.’ Oh, glory! That meant I had begun. Hallelujah! But He was telling me, ‘When this ends, we ain’t done with this. Honey, this is what we do for the rest of your life.’ And He said those words to me over and over again: ‘Believe Me. Believe Me. And I hope it’s starting to ring in your ears, over and over again, Believe Me.’”

In her book “When Godly People Do Ungodly Things, in the preface she states,

Now here is the question. Beth Moore says that she holed up in a cabin by herself, and a written work poured out, emerging complete and not by her own hand, so why DON’T say it is not of Godly origin? How is it different when Kipling says “My Daemon was with me in the Jungle Books, Kim, and both Puck books and good care I took to walk delicately, lest he should withdraw. I know that he did not because when those books were finished they said so themselves…” from what Moore says: “When the message of the book was complete, in His estimation, not my own”?? In both cases, disembodied spirits were telling the authors what to write and when to stop!

How is it any different when Yeats says the writing emerged from an invisible force channeled automatically through his hand, and Moore says that she was ‘compelled by God to put ink to paper with a force unparalleled’?? In both cases their physical bodies were used by a disembodied spirit to write things down and in both cases they felt like they could not resist the force!

How is it any different when Catholic Mystic Hildegard of Bingen says “And I spoke and wrote these things not by the invention of my heart or that of any other person, but as by the secret mysteries of God I heard and received them in the heavenly places” and Moore saying “Before God tells me a secret, He knows “up front I’m going to tell it! By and large, that’s our “deal.” (Beth Moore, Praying God’s Word, pgs 1-2). Or when Hildegard said she heard a voice say “write what you see and hear” and Moore saying “He began to say to me, ‘I’m gonna tell you something right now, Beth, and boy you write this one down, and you say it as often as I give you utterance to say it…” In both cases, the women were being directed to write what the spirit said, and both were told by a disembodied spirit that they were recipients of secrets extant of the bible but were doctrinally important just the same!

Yet in all the former cases we dismiss the experience from Yeats, Kipling, and Hildegard, easily detecting that they were of demonic origins. Yet we accept Moore’s writings from that same source and by the same method without question. Why? Why is it like this?

“He silences the lips of trusted advisers, and takes away the discernment of elders.” (Job 12:20)

“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “when I will send a famine through the land–not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.” (Amos 8:11).

“Calamity upon calamity will come, and rumor upon rumor. They will try to get a vision from the prophet; the teaching of the law by the priest will be lost, as will the counsel of the elders.” (Ezekiel 7:26)

Clarke’s Commentary explains– “Then shall they seek a vision – Vision shall perish from the prophet, the law from the priest, and counsel from the ancients. Previously to great national judgments, God restrains the influences of his Spirit. His word is not accompanied with the usual unction; and the wise men of the land, the senators and celebrated statesmen, devise foolish schemes; and thus, in endeavoring to avert it, they hasten on the national ruin. How true is the saying, Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat. “Those whom God designs to destroy, he first infatuates.”

If you are infatuated with The Shack, stop. If you are infatuated with Beth Moore, quit. I cannot say more strongly that we all need to pray for discernment in these days just prior to national judgment, we need to seek the truth, not automatically generated spirit writings that offer special secrets or additional insight apart from the bible.

“And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment,” (Philippians 1:9)

John MacArthur has written over 150 books. He has preached expositionally from the pulpit at Grace Community Church for 43 years. I would say he is an elder of the faith. In a Q&A session at the conclusion of the Truth Matters Conference he was asked: “What is your perspective that the Holy Spirit leads us by nudging us, or whispering to us or leading through dreams, things like that?”

MacArthur: “Well, I think the Holy Spirit does lead us, but there is no way to perceive that that’s happening. I don’t have a red light that goes on in my head that goes around and around when the Holy Spirit is leading. I don’t know when the Holy Spirit is leading or when I’m following my own impulses or my own desires, or whatever. I have no mechanism to know that. But in retrospect I see it, and I categorize that as the Providences of God. … For example the Friday they brought me a big list of places they want me to speak, and what did I do? Did I go into a trance and say OMMMM or some see if I can induce the Holy Spirit to know what to do? No. I simply looked at the list and thought, I can’t do that one, and I couldn’t do that one, and oh, that one looks doable. You know what would happen, if I am open and want to do God’s will it is amazing how in retrospect that I can look back and say that it was absolutely critical I be there…

“There is no mechanism that we possess that tells us at the moment when the Holy Spirit is leading us in some supernatural way but that in retrospect we can look back and discern by the Providences of God as it unfolded. … I’m not interested in the mystical stuff. I don’t expect the Holy Spirit to give me special impulses or special revelations.”

Interviewer Phil Johnson added, “The mistake a lot of Charismatics make is looking for special revelation when God doesn’t lead us by giving us new special revelation. He leads us by Providence but He is just as active in leading us.”

The mistake that people like Beth Moore and her followers make is that when special revelation is absent, they believe that God is NOT working, that He is NOT leading. So on the one hand we have a preacher of 50 years who says he has no special direct, auditory, or experiential connection to God nor the Holy Spirit that delivers personal direction to him, nor any mechanism that alerts him to when they are working. And when he writes a book he studies, reads, writes, edits, passes it to his circle of editors for revision and goes around again. And on the opposite end of the scale we have Beth Moore breathlessly saying that God “whisked her to Wyoming” where wholly perfect books are delivered through her hand whilst she is having lively conversations in complete sentences with the Spirit.

You choose which is the more likely the truthful Godly experience…and which is not.

Posted in bible jesus, false teachers, prophecy

What is "deception by investment"?

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

We are told that in the last days, deceivers will come. They will carry false doctrines, false teachings, and they will want to follow their own lusts instead of sound doctrine. This web page has a list of all the verses in the bible that speak to false doctrine. This web page lists all the warnings about false prophets (which are teachers, too).

In some cases, it is easy to tell who is false. Todd Bentley down in Lakeland FL was easy to spot as false for Christians – but still deceived a great many. People assume he got all those tattoos before he came to the Lord but he got them after, most of them in 2006, just two years before he hit the big time with his (false) ‘revival’. That was one clue that was pretty easy to track and confirm. Hitting old ladies during boisterous healing sessions was another.

Other false teachers we’re warned about, like in 2 Timothy 3:5, have a form of godliness but deny its power … those teachers are harder to spot. When I was a brand-new Christian and had not yet begun attending church, I watched Joel Osteen quite frequently. It took me a while to realize that I was always still hungry. His preaching sounded good but left me empty. I referred to my Bible after his half hour speeches but soon came to realize that he often used the verses out of context or twisted them to give us hope for an earthly success gained in our own strength.

I was a babe in the faith then, still on milk, but the Word is so transparent and so sure that relying on it brought me clarity as to Osteen’s teaching. (Hebrews 5:12; 1 Cor 3:2). I credit the Holy Spirit with it all. He is our teacher, (John 14:6). He molds character (Gal 5:22-23). If we submit to His teaching and allow Him to mold us, soon we will see through His lens more and more and not the craven lens that is our sinful flesh.

But because we ARE flesh, it gets tangled in everything. We can’t separate the flesh from who we are but continual submission and obedience regenerates us and we grow in His Christlikeness. Occasionally you have to take a look at a spot or blemish inside yourself. It’s hard to excise embedded fleshly lies from spiritual glorious truths. Jesus said in Mark 9:43- “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire…” Excising the flesh where it has fallen prey to sin or where lies are embedded within is sometimes a violently difficult process.

Sometimes someone will come up to you and say “So and so may be a false teacher bringing false doctrines.” You get angry, because you like that teacher. The first reaction will always be fleshly. Translation: emotional. People’s reactions will range from peeved to furious. When my friend and I were talking about false teachers and she asked me about Joyce Meyer, I said I believed Mrs. Meyer teaches a different gospel and therefore is false. She agreed. She wasn’t angry because she had already come to the same conclusion I had and therefore no anger flared up. But when I said I had concerns about Beth Moore, she got ticked because she had not come to that conclusion. Challenging Beth Moore as a teacher was also challenging my friend as a student. That anger arises because of something called “deception by investment”.

When a person begins to suspect their favorite teacher is a false teacher, they continue with the deception because they’ve invested so much of their life in them. They’ve invested their reputation. They’ve invested their money. They’d rather persist in deception than admit they were deceived and abandon their investment.

When we invest time, energy, even money in a teacher or a ministry and then some bubbling reservations or charges are raised, our fleshly response is to dismiss them out of hand. But that’s exactly when the lie firms its grip. Look at it as a morning glory.

I had a morning glory on the left side of my door for about a year. Boy, that thing grew fast! It soon wound around the wrought iron plant stand and up over the awning. The flowers looked so pretty in the morning when they bloomed! But then my landlord said that he had to excavate that area and was going to pave it over. I had to get rid of the wrought iron stand and the flowers.

I’d never dealt with morning glory flowers before. I was amazed at how firmly they were entrenched! I thought I could just pull them down but no way. I thought I could just use a knife to cut them away but nope, that didn’t work either. I had to use scissors and personally excise each strand. It took hours. Each vine was stronger than it looked.

A year later, on the right side of my door, I spotted some more morning glories! Look at the bottom of the photo below. I really can’t tell where the root is, or which stalk is the main one. Just suddenly one day there was a clump.

In the photo below, we can see how tightly wound the vine is to the thing which it claims, in this case, an old cable wire.

Left unattended, there will be shoots sprouting off to go in other directions to claim other things to cling to.

This how false teaching is. It emerges from whence you least expect. You’re surprised by it. Its root or origin is often difficult to determine. If left unattended, it winds among your flesh tighter and tighter. It gets harder and harder to excise. And left unattended for a long time, this happens:

How long did it take for that tree to grow into and up over the metal fence? It took decades, but the end result was that there was no way to remove the fence from the tree without killing the tree. They had become one flesh.

Here is my practical advice when hearing a charge of false teaching, either about yourself, or about another favored teachers you’ve invested in: be ready for the flesh to rebel. It will flare up like a match.

Your feelings will be towering, monumental, roaring. They will flare up! But don’t let that be your response. It is only a fleshly reaction. Instead, what happens to a match? It burns out quickly. Let the emotions about the charge of false teaching leveled on your favorite teacher dissipate. If you don’t allow them to lead you, they will dissipate. Then begin the work the Holy Spirit wants to lead you into. He will either confirm or deny the charge, but allowing yourself to let the anger drive you means you are allowing the morning glory vine access to a tighter grip. And we have seen what happens when we allow the flesh to lead us into failure to explore truth: a dead tree.

“Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Mt 7:19)

But the Lord is merciful. If you are far along in refusing to believe this teacher or that teacher is false because you have invested so much into him or her, if you do begin the examination process by repenting and pleading to be out of deception, you will be forgiven. It first begins with swallowing your pride.

“God sends Isaiah to foretell the ruin of his people. Many hear the sound of God’s word, but do not feel the power of it. God sometimes, in righteous judgment, gives men up to blindness of mind, because they will not receive the truth in the love of it. But no humble inquirer after Christ, need to fear this awful doom, which is a spiritual judgment on those who will still hold fast their sins. Let every one pray for the enlightening of the Holy Spirit, that he may perceive how precious are the Divine mercies, by which alone we are secured against this dreadful danger. Yet the Lord would preserve a remnant, like the tenth, holy to him. And blessed be God, he still preserves his church; however professors or visible churches may be lopped off as unfruitful, the holy seed will shoot forth, from whom all the numerous branches of righteousness shall arise.” (Matthew Henry commentary).

Be careful out there, brethren. Don’t let the morning glory vine choke off truth through its fleshly grip but instead, let His pure glory lead you into truth. Even if you have to cut off your hand to do it.