Tag: beth moore

Posted in theology

Walsch, Young, and Beth Moore: ungodly channelers producing ungodly books. Part 3: Beth Moore’s “When Godly People do Ungodly Things”

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

A post on Instagram by the ever-solid Doreen Virtue about channeling (it’s here) reminded me that in 2011 I had written a series of essay examining what channeling (or ‘automatic writing’) is, and had examined three highly popular books that these seemingly Christian authors had published. I’ve revived and updated those essays here, I also shortened them, and split them up to examine each author in turn.

Neale Donald Walsch wrote “Conversations with God” (1995), William P. Young wrote “The Shack” (2007), and Beth Moore wrote “When Godly People Do Ungodly Things” (2002). All three were Christian bestsellers. All three are unholy.

Automatic writing is when a writer clears his mind, gives his will over to another entity from the supernatural realms, and allows his hand to be used as a transcriber, thereby allowing the entity to produce the work, and not himself through his own mind or consciousness. Not even the scriptures were generated in this manner. The Bible’s authors received inspiration but were mentally and emotionally present and the Holy Spirit used their mind and personality to write. The authors didn’t zone out and become robots as another entity produced the works.

One thing these automatic writers I’m looking at who channel these supernatural entities have in common is they all had a Christian-ish background. The second thing they all had in common was abuse, parents who were distant either physically or emotionally, and/or trauma of severe kinds that usually resulted in a deep depression throughout adulthood. It was in the depths of their depressions at the bottom of their turmoil that they began to experience the “call” from the other side. Here are their stories. Today, we look at Beth Moore.

Beth Moore was raised a Christian in Arkansas, attending church and Sunday School regularly. She earned a political science degree from college and after a few years “took a Bible doctrine class” taught at her church. Moore has been very open about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. In her recent memoir she finally revealed that it was her father who abused her. In her speeches she often mentioned the abuse (though not who the perp was).

She is also well known for having shared her personal thoughts on her low self-esteem, feeling of worthlessness, insecurity, etc. and in fact has memorialized those feelings in most of her books. For all that, she is closely guarded about her personal life but it is my opinion that the frequency with which she raises her personal traumas is an indicator that they are not slain and are in fact indicative of a deep depression, despite all her perkiness.

Beth Moore wrote in her book Believing God: “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.’”

Beth actually believes God speaks to her, speaks in such familiar language, and uses endearments such as babe and honey.

No.

In Moore’s “When Godly People Do Ungodly Things, in the preface she states,

Transcription from the screen shot reads: “This book represents one of the most unique writing experiences I’ve ever had with God. Unbeknownst to me, He’s been writing each chapter on my heart for several years. When the message for this book was complete (in His estimation—not mine!), God compelled me to ink it on paper with a force of the Holy Spirit unparalleled in my experience. He whisked me to the mountains of Wyoming where I entered solitary confinement with Him, and in only a few short weeks, I wrote the last line.

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. Moore said, “When the message of the book was complete, in His estimation, not my own”? So, a disembodied spirit via a force or a voice was telling her what to write and when to stop! Moore was not in control of the editing process, a force was. Her physical body was used by a disembodied spirit to write things down and she felt like she could not resist the force (‘compelled’). This is channeling, sisters.

Transcription of screen shot: “I am being as honest as I know how to be when I say that I did not write these pages by simple preference. I wrote them because had I not, the rocks in my yard would have cried out. What God does with what He’s required is His business. I entrust this message entirely to the One who delivered it while I sat bug-eyed.” (Source When Godly People Do Ungodly Things). 

Moore is saying that she sat passively like a robot or an automaton while God delivered a message. No. Moore is saying that her book is so important that all of creation would cry out if she didn’t write it. No.

Furthermore, she is putting herself as an equal to the Apostles who were praising JESUS at that time. Moore’s pride in elevating her book to the level of importance akin to joy expressed at the arrival of the Messiah illustrates a prideful heart. 

Sisters, one may wonder how these authors dare to write these blasphemous words, AND believe them. But pride is incremental. it speaks to the lust we have for ourselves in our hearts, and slowly insinuated its tentacles around that prideful heart to darken its view of Jesus and brighten our view of ourselves. Watch out for pride, or someday you may find yourself (or myself) saying that we are so important the rocks would cry out if we didn’t do such and such!

Further Resources

Grace to You: Hearing from Heaven

Doreen Virtue: Say NO to Jesus Calling New Age Channeled Books

The End Time: How do Christian authors end up channeling spirits and producing books from them? Pride

Posted in theology

False teachers’ emotional teaching

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

I’ve recently written about the clique of folks who claim in public that the church ‘hurt them’, and I went into a discussion of the difference between emotions and emotionalism. That essay is here.

Many women who teach the Bible on the speaking circuit are false. Not all, of course, but many. Since they are false they have to manufacture a work-around for their lack of illumination of the scriptures. They don’t exegete well (exegete meaning draw the Author’s intended meaning out of the Bible). They either twist the word (2 Peter 3:16), or they eisegete (meaning they put their own ideas into the Bible rather than unearth the one meaning the Author intended). Perhaps they use a cover for their obvious lack of theology. One of these covers frequently used is emotionalism.

Joe Thorn at Ligonier discusses emotionalism. He wrote in his essay Don’t pursue feelings, pursue Christ,

One danger is emotionalism, in which we allow our feelings to interpret our circumstances and form our thoughts about God. This is putting feelings before faith. The other danger is a kind of stoicism, where faith is rooted in theology but void of affection. This tendency removes feelings from faith altogether. While it is true that our emotions should not lead our theology, it is vital to our faith that theology lead to a deep experience of our triune God.

[Confession: I am certainly not perfect. I myself need to work against Stoicism.]

WHEN we commune with God, WHEN we are in prayer with the Spirit, WHEN we are at Jesus throne of grace, THEN our emotions develop into great affection for the Triune God. We do feel emotions such as relief, joy, humility, amazement, awe, proper fear; all the emotions that our study of His attributes will cultivate. But it’s theology first, and then the outflow of that growing knowledge of God is subsequently a growing feeling of affection for who He is. Put succinctly, the more we study Him the more we love Him.

Jonah knew full well who God is, but he was led by his emotions. Anger, resentment, bitterness, xenophobia…when you feel temptation to be led by your emotions at the expense of submission to God’s authority, remember Jonah.

When these false teachers lead by emotion, it creates a dependency on emotions. But emotions are fleeting. Hence the surfing analogy. We want to feel that high again that we felt at the Study/simulcast/event/conference etc. False teacher Rick Warren unwittingly explained the high of emotional learning back in a Baptist Press interview in 1998.

We’re just a church that tries to look for waves, and we ride them. And then we try to do it with balance. Catching the wave means first determining what God is doing… ~Rick Warren.

His quote typifies the flitting of encounter to encounter, a surfing the waves of an adrenaline approach to Christian life rather than persevering obediently, sacrificially, and steadily. Remember, we first discover who God is by reading His word. The article is (tellingly) titled, “Rick Warren: Surfing skills critical to ‘catching waves’ of God’s activity“

A church should look at Jesus. Not flit from high wave to high wave, and not surfing up and down based on a humanly interpreted vision of what God is doing.

Emotions give us that adrenaline and then suddenly you’re surfing, trying to catch that high you felt but every time you catch it, it needs to be a little higher than the last time. Why? The Law of Diminishing Returns-

The law of diminishing returns is a principle that states that after a certain point, each additional unit of input results in a smaller increase in output. In other words, you get less and less bang for your buck the more you do something. This can be applied to many areas of life, including business and investing. (Source).

Emotionalism will give you diminishing returns. In God’s economy, you only ever receive more. His is an economy of eternal increase. A false teacher’s economy is only ever one of decrease.

Let’s look at some examples of how false teachers use emotional language to deceive you into that false high.

Aimee Byrd’s Twitter & Threads profile pic

Aimee Byrd wrote recently about her decision to become ordained. She filled out a form, and voila! now she can legally marry people in her home state. Here is her gushing, over-the-top-emotional description about how performing the ceremony for her brother made her feel:

Last weekend I got to experience something that resonated so deeply with my soul. It felt like I got to meet a part of who I am. And in this, I wasn’t only seeing beauty, but participating in the beautiful. … ~Aimee Byrd

I’m hesitant to write about this, because it is so deeply meaningful to me. … ~Aimee Byrd

When I started this Substack, I wanted to write about what is real: what is the lump in my throat right now? ~Aimee Byrd

Aimee is a good writer, if a little fluffy for my taste. I’m not saying we should not write about what we are feeling when we commune with God. I am saying that some female teachers and false preacher women depend on flowery writing based on emotion rather than biblical facts.

In Aimee’s case, she wrote “It felt like…” She said that she mulled this over deeply and concluded, “But this is my brother asking me, and if I say no, I want it to be for good reason.” But her reasoning was based on a deep dive into history and culture, not the Bible. She decided to ordain herself because of how she felt about it [and because, she wrote, ‘the church hurt me’.].

All that combined, she wrote, “The state of Maryland doesn’t qualify what makes one ordained, or what kind of person is ordained, but recognizes ordination in the ministry as a status for the task of legally officiating a wedding. … I was comfortable to be appointed for this specific and beautiful ministry.” But God decides, and God trumps Maryland.

‘I was comfortable.’ Women are not to aspire to the ordained office in order to perform functions before the throne of God. But Aimee was ‘comfortable.’ Her soul resonated. There was a lump in her throat. It’s deeply meaningful. Sure, so that means her rebellion is OK?

Beth Moore has always written emotionally. She is emotionalism personified. She over-states things emotionally, constantly (that’s the key, emotional language is constant) using words like “with all my heart” and “deeply desire”, “in my bones”. Her teachings are saturated with overblown hyperbole and hyper adjectives such as vital, crucial etc. Even her first published study was filled with adjectives that work to evoke emotions and fervency rather than draw out from the Bible the attributes of God. She uses words like “vital” and “crucial” repeatedly. If everything is vital and crucial, then nothing is.

Beth Moore performing her Bible Study, with emotion

The basic test to determine if you’re being taught to be led by your emotions is, a few days after a study, think about what is at the top of your mind most. Did you learn more about God? Or more about the teacher? Do you remember the teacher’s anecdotes and how they made you feel, for about God and how seeing Him through scripture made you feel? Your thoughts and feelings about God stay. The thoughts and feelings about the teacher about the study about how you felt at the time, flee. See what remains. It should be a clearer picture of God.

[Many] falsely suppose that the feelings, which God has implanted in us as natural, proceed only from a defect. Accordingly the perfecting of believers does not depend on their casting off all feelings, but on their yielding to them and controlling them, only for proper reason. John Calvin, Commentary on Acts 20:37.

Posted in theology

The self-delusion is strong with this one (Lori Alexander & others)

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

Lori Alexander is known by her handle The Transformed Wife. Her TwitterX handle is godlywomanhood. She maintains many social media accounts for the express purpose, she says, of teaching women to be keepers at home, as per Titus 2:3-5.

On October 21, 2024, Lori The Transformed Wife, @godlywomanhood wrote-

This is for any of you who think my life is no different than the popular female preachers, influencers, book writers, speakers, and podcasters. I am home full time and always available for my family. I never travel. I’ve never given a speech anywhere. I stopped doing interviews. I donate all the money from my books to a pro-life organization. I just write or do a short video when something comes to mind. I mentor many women privately and on my social media sites in the ways of biblical womanhood as God commands. I stay within the boundary God has given to me to teach in Titus 2:3-5. I am a keeper at home as God commands. 3:06 PM Oct 21, 2024

I am glad she noticed the apparent contradiction of her constant shaming of women who work outside the home compared to her constant work for her ‘ministry’ inside her home. By my count she is on Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Private group, Pinterest, TikTok her blog, Instagram, and who know what else. Constantly. These are not dormant platforms. Lori is active. She creates a LOT of content almost every day. She not only works at creating content but manages donations and royalties from her published books, so, she is also working with her finances, too. She is busy.

As I say so often, don’t look at only what these women say, look at what they do. In her defensive posting, Lori unwittingly admits to blogging, authoring, mentoring, youtubing, responding to contacts, interviewing, and managing her finances. Just because she does it at home instead of an office does not negate the fact that she is extremely busy with her work. Anyone seeing the excessive abundance of her output would note the same. She is deluding herself.

I noticed this kind of self-delusion (or outright lie) in an early Beth Moore blog essay. I had read in a 2010 Christianity Today article, where the interviewer of Beth Moore had stated,

“…she insists on maintaining a regular schedule, traveling every other Friday night and coming home the next night. “We walk the dogs together and eat out together all the time and lie on the floor with pillows and watch TV,” Moore says. “My man demanded attention and he got it, and my man demanded a normal home life and he got it.”

No. The maths ain’t mathing. A normal life? Hardly.

I had already noted that year Moore’s heavy travel schedule at the time, her mention of spending 2 weeks secluded in a cabin in Wyoming to write her book, her book tours, her speaking engagements apart from Living Proof, her TV appearances, her IRS tax-return statement that she worked 50 hours per week at her office in Houston. She was busy. What Moore was claiming and what she was actually doing did not match up.

Is she deluding herself? Is she deceiving others? Both.

I noticed the same with Diana Stone. When Diana Stone was writing for She Reads Truth, we read in Diana Stone’s bio that, “You can find her in the mornings with a cup of coffee and her Bible flung open, preparing for the day ahead.” And “With a sweet daughter in tow, Diana clings to God’s Word daily.“

It turns out that Mrs. Stone relaxes with the Bible “flung open” … after she dropped her daughter to daycare. At the time of that writing, in 2014, the couple had employed a part time nanny to care for their daughter in their home so Mrs. Stone could work as a freelance writer. After bumping along with several nannies, (likely not a fun time for the children with personnel coming and going) they put their child in daycare so Mrs. Stone could continue to write at home. So yes, she was at home…while a day care worker took care of her kid. What she tells the public and what is actually going on did not match up.

It was the same with so many others such as Priscilla Shirer, Joanna Gaines, Jackie Hill Perry… If a Christian mother chooses a career and also has children, one or the other, or both, will suffer. No matter how they try to spin it.

It is impossible for a woman to claim undivided attention for the children at home AND have an outside the house career, especially when it’s evident by reading their blogs, seeing their speaking schedules, and just having common sense to see their lifestyle. These women on the speaking circuit are either deluding themselves or their audience, or both. But the main problem is the hypocrisy of saying you live godly as a wife and mom but living your career too.

If a woman and her husband decide she needs to work outside the home, there may be good reasons for that to which the outsider is not privy. Sheerah in the Bible was “a builder.” Rachel was a shepherdess. Deborah was a wife but also a Judge. Lydia ran a business of selling purple but also had her own household. There ARE examples of women in the Bible who worked.

But if she is a mother, yes, then her first priority should be the children. John Mark was blessed with a mom and a grandma who raised him in the admonition of the Law. Don’t be fooled by mothers who have young children at home who try to talk the talk about being totally oriented to the home all the while living a different lifestyle away from the home. We aren’t dumb. We see you.

If you have to work, so be it. There may be good reasons. On the flip side, if you’re ashamed of being a stay at home mom, realize it is a magnificent thing. The point is, there is no room for self-deception and no call to deceive others…unless that is the intent.

Posted in theology

Of toxic empathy, false zeal, and how satan’s demons masquerade to fool you

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

Allie Beth Stuckey published a book that’s out this week, called Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. The book is making waves and causing a hearty discussion on social media.

That’s good. Stuckey explores the concepts of the current cultural mantras, “love is love”, “trans women are women”, “abortion is health care”, “social justice is justice”, and pointedly, that empathy is not always empathy. Love, justice, empathy are good words, but they can and are appropriated by bad people who use those words to manipulate the people around them, especially Christians. Stuckey wrote in her introduction,

But empathy alone is a terrible guide. It may be part of what inspires us to do good, but it’s just an emotion and, like all emotions, is highly susceptible to manipulation. That’s exactly what’s happening today. Empathy has been hijacked for the purpose of conforming well-intentioned people to particular political agendas. Specifically, it’s been co-opted by the progressive wing of American society to convince people that the progressive position is exclusively the one of kindness and morality. I call it toxic empathy. Source: page xii)

Of course the culture will push back on a Christian re-redefining the words that the progressives have appropriated and redefined. Here we see one reaction-

Mason Mennenga @masonmennenga wrote on Twitter, “if you think empathy is toxic then you’re going to hate this guy named jesus christ“.

According to our own understanding of the word ’empathy’, of course the guy is right. But then again, this is a situation that calls for thought, not knee-jerk reactions such as “Yeah!” then press ‘like’.

The ever wise Ron Henzel @ronhenzel replied to Mennenga, (≠ means ‘does not equal’):

“toxic substance” ≠ “all substances are toxic”
“toxic waste” ≠ “all waste is toxic”
“toxic relationships” ≠ “all relationships are toxic”
“toxic empathy” ≠ “all empathy is toxic“

We must, MUST think things through. Christians are a thinking people, (Philippians 4:8). As Stuckey said, emotions can be manipulated.

Emotions are a part of life. But I bring this to your attention…what were the first emotions seen in the Bible? Shame, guilt, blame. Genesis 3. Satan manipulated Eve’s curiosity into a temptation and we know what happened from there.

Of ‘toxic empathy’, the American writer Flannery O’Connor said,

“If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.”

AI explains the quote-

This quote, by Flannery O’Connor, argues that modern society, lacking a strong religious faith, governs itself through a detached “tenderness” that, without the grounding of Christ, ultimately leads to horrific consequences like violence and oppression, symbolized by the gas chambers of concentration camps.

And haven’t we seen that? “Love thy neighbor” was the covid-flu mantra pressuring the populace to ingest untested or unwieldy vaccinations, to close down society against common sense, and to become isolated robots. What happened was the elderly were left to die alone and society’s children were impacted negatively for a generation to come. That’s just one example of how progressives used toxic empathy against the people in their society.

Moving away from toxic empathy to examining toxic zeal, Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached a 2 part series on true zeal versus false zeal.

There IS such a thing as false zeal. False Christians who seem so zealous for God are actually not zealous for God. It’s a manufactured zeal cloaking their zeal for themselves, or for satan. See this verse-

Brothers, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. (Romans 10:1-2).

By this verse we see there is such a thing as a zeal that is not of God. There can be zeal, or fervor, or energy around religious things, but not according to what we know from the Bible. AKA knowledge.

Zeal: great energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or an objective. Synonyms: passion, fervor, enthusiasm.

Photo by Luan Cabral on Unsplash

They went across the world to make one proselyte, but wound up making him twice the sons of hell they were. (Matthew 23:15). That verse is the example of zeal without knowledge. You can be passionate, you can be busy making disciples, but a false zeal will make disciples who miss the mark completely and will wind up in hell as a son of hell. Zeal, no knowledge.

Beth Moore has been consistently described through the years as “energetic”, “charismatic”, “passionate”. She puts out an energy as zealous for God. But because we know she is a false teacher, her zeal is without knowledge. She is full of emotion but lacks the tether to the Rock via faith.

She was recently interviewed by Ed Stetzer at Church Leaders. He ended by asking Moore how she prepares for a lesson. I was struck by her answer.

Question: Can you encourage teachers and preachers, especially in this season when it is hard to speak truth and there is a lot of destructive forces that are trying to take down teachers and preachers?

Answer:
“Keep asking the Lord to give you fire in your bones, to teach and preach and communicate the Scriptures so that you can’t keep it to yourself. Ask him for it when it wanes, and it’s going to wane…Nobody just keeps that naturally on their own.“

It’s love for scripture, love for Jesus, that drives the Christian to search the scriptures and then the scriptures fire up that proper zeal.

“Is My word not like fire?” declares the LORD, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock?” (Jeremiah 23:29).

You get a ‘fire in the bones’ when you open up the scriptures!

And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?(Luke 24:32).

But Moore said it is important that “we’re not just going to the scriptures to prepare a lesson.“

To be fair, she was talking of the teacher having a right relationship with Jesus as one prepares the lesson. I can intuit that she means not apathetic, in prayerful humility, regular church goer, etc But she didn’t say those things. She just muddily talked of the overflow (whatever that means). Consulting the scriptures is primary. But for the false zealer, it’s secondary. Emotions tops the list.

I was struck by what she said and what she did NOT say. Any thinking Christian must think of both- what is said and what is not said. Moore did not say it was crucial for the leader to pray for perseverance in staying in right doctrine. To ask for moral righteousness. Begging to rightly divide the scriptures. Her reply focused on emotion. ‘Fire in the bones’ (whatever that means) was most important to her because, as we know, she is driven by emotion. Zeal misapplied is false. Zeal untethered from the Rock will lead you nowhere good.

False teachers appear to be doing a religious effort, they look like they are on the right track, and part of that appearance is because of their fervent energy.

The Bible says that satan and his demons masquerade as angels of light. That means behavior, outward appearance. The thinking Christian must look deeper.

Do not fall for toxic empathy. Do not mistake toxic zeal for righteous fervor. Above, all, THINK!

Lloyd-Jones’ sermon can be heard here, for free: True Zeal and False Zeal: A Sermon on Romans 10:1-2. Or on Youtube with closed captions (which might help due to his accent).

Further Reading

Real Zeal vs. False Zeal part 1

Real Zeal vs. False zeal part 2

Here is a good article on turning information into knowledge by Rick Holland.

Here in this article What do you think about emotional sensationalism in the modern church? Stephen Nichols of Ligonier says there are valid emotions, but “especially in the American church, we seem to be very susceptible to this. There is a difference between emotion and emotionalism.”

Posted in theology

Beth Moore’s latest study: critique and review

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

Beth Moore is a self-identifying Bible teacher, who writes and publishes material based on the Bible. She also is President of her corporation Living Proof Ministries, in which Moore goes from city to city teaching material she says is related to the Bible. In addition, she has a TV show on TBN, Youtube, and other outlets. She has written a novel and recently published her autobiography.

She is 67 years old and has been teaching woman AND men – and eventually preaching – since about 1983.

She has always been false. She did not start well and go off the rails. Nor did she recently turn soft or errant. She has been false since the beginning. There are sheep and there are goats, one marked for blessing and eternal life and one marked for condemnation. Moore is the latter. I discussed that fact here:

Has Beth Moore only recently drifted, or has she always been false?

and here-

Beth Moore’s spiritual biography

I’ve been tracking Moore since 2011 when I was taken to a Live Living Proof event, and later a simulcast retreat weekend. I’ve written many critiques about both Moore’s doctrine, her teaching style, and her lifestyle. Last week, I checked in to see how Beth Moore’s teaching is going, with viewing her latest Bible series, “When is He Present?”, a study looking at what it means to truly seek the Lord’s presence. Key Scriptures: 1 Samuel 2:12-18, Jeremiah 7:12-15, Jeremiah 2:1-8, 1 Samuel 3:1-10, Proverbs 3:5-6.

Conclusion: Beth is still false.

Let’s take a look at why. This isn’t just about marking a teacher, it’s about leading the reader through WHY Beth Moore is false, so the reader can develop her own discernment and be on the alert for true and false teachers. That act alone glorifies the Lord. Rightly dividing the truth glorifies Him. Submitting to and learning about the actual God as revealed in scripture glorifies Him. Alternately, following a false teacher or believing wrong doctrine does not glorify God. This is why we critique teachers- to glorify God and to aid sisters in developing discernment.

But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to distinguish between good and evil. (Hebrews 5:14)

Moore began part 1 of her new series with a focus on 1 Samuel. We read at Grace To You the predominant themes of 1 & 2 Samuel:

-The first is the Davidic Covenant,
-A second theme is the sovereignty of God,
-Third, the work of the Holy Spirit in empowering men for divinely appointed tasks is evident,
-Fourth, the books of Samuel demonstrate the personal and national effects of sin.

Ligonier’s overview of 1 Samuel teaches three truths, that God always intended for Israel to have a king; God selected David to be king and promised him an eternal dynasty, God selected Jerusalem to be the place where He would provide a substitute for His people.

Knowing now the devastation of Israel’s national and personal sin, and how they were at a low and weak point because of persistent sin, how does Beth Moore introduce the theme and background of 1 Samuel? Let’s take a look.

Moore opens the lesson thus:

A paradox of being completely self-absorbed is that the more we fold into ourselves the more we try to just give ourselves to every craving every yearning anything we want regardless of what it does to anybody else that the more we do that the more and more Barren we become. ~Moore

Moore uses the word barren 9X in this lesson but the word sin only once. It seems that Moore is inserting her gynocentric focus here, in making these chapters be about women, barrenness, and birth. She opens with a focus on women- not sin, not kings, not Israel. Women and their child-birthing capabilities, or lack thereof. Moore knows her audience likely knows about barren Hannah, so Moore seems to have latched onto the birthing issue and barrenness and extrapolated it into the theme.

First, she uses the word barren when saying that when we give in to cravings, (carefully avoiding the word sin) it makes us “barren”. If that was all she said, one might surmise from the scant context, that Moore meant spiritually dry. But then she confuses things in the next moment by using the word barren to mean Hannah’s physical inability to have children.

screenshot from the video lesson

Moore conflated the word barren and then goes on in the ‘lesson’ to overuse the word without clarifying. Moore matches the spiritual dryness of disobedience to one woman’s inability to have children.

This lack of clarity and the cobbling together of cherry-picked words is the usual MO of how Moore has publicly said she crafts her lessons. She prays and waits to hear a literal word from the Spirit, then she goes through books of the Bible and picks out that word and makes a lesson out of it. Here, she seems to have ‘heard’ the Spirit say “barren”. You notice above how many books of the Bible and how many verses she intends to teach through. She is always all over the place.

I’m just a few minutes into Moore’s lesson and it is incorrect and confusing already.

In fact, the next statement Moore gives is that Moore claims the entire theme of the book of 1 Samuel is about barrenness. She said,

So the book unfolds 1st Samuel chapter 1 and goes into to chapter 2 and then we see it in chapter 3 the book unfolds with a whole theme of barrenness. It’s showing us the idea of barrenness in the woman by the name of Hannah…

This is incorrect. The theme of 1 Samuel is the installation of a King over the people, the beginning of the monarchy. Not barrenness.

screenshot from the video lesson

She goes on to say,

it puts us on the page of Hannah’s barrenness but that is not where it stops. Because what it immediately shows us is that this particular people of God has become Barren. That spiritually they are completely Barren.

So are the people unable to have children? Or are they barren spiritually? Because Moore has used the word in both senses in rapid order by now. And what exactly IS spiritual barrenness? How can an entire people be ‘barren’? The men too? She never defines it.

This is a tactic politicians use, when they use words that are commonly understood but that each person can attach their own individual interpretation to what it exactly means. Words like peace, liberty, freedom. Politicians do this so they can appeal to the widest possible audience (voters).

In faith-based organizations like Living Proof that twist the word, the speakers first rip out the context, then they use words that make sense on the surface but are in fact nebulous, so they can appeal to the widest audience possible (consumers).

Barrenness makes sense, but what IS it, really? The people at this juncture were SINNING. They were DISOBEDIENT. Moore doesn’t use the more specific and appropriate words of sin and disobedience. Only ‘barrenness’.

there’s nothing like barrenness to make God want to birth something… ~Moore

What?! Sometimes barrenness, if we interpret it as disobedience, causes God to punish, not birth something. See: Sodom, The Disapora, Intertestamental 400 years of silence…

Moore goes on to reference Sarah who was barren and in the NT Elizabeth who was past child bearing years. Moore again cobbling together a false doctrine out of her cherry picked word. Now it is true that God used barren women for His plan. In fact, He was the One who MADE the women barren in the first place. He didn’t look down on these poor women who could not give birth and decide out of compassion to give them a child. It is the Lord who opens and closes wombs and decides whether or not he gives a woman a child. He uses them as part of His plan.

Next, Moore says,

Elizabeth a woman past the years of childbearing there’s just nothing like a time of barrenness …

What does that mean??

Anna wasn’t mentioned as having children, and her life was rich a teaching ministry in the Temple. Lydia is not mentioned as having children yet her ministry of hospitality was thriving. What does that mean, “there’s nothing like a time of barrenness”?

so I want to say to you if you come here this weekend in your life your soul your heart just feels Barren you may be in exactly the right place because it may be that God is just about to birth something brand new in you.

Or it might mean you’ve been disobedient and need to repent.

The above sounds like Joel Osteen doesn’t it? Moore uses nebulous words in order to emotionally connect with her audience, rather than teach the plain meaning of scripture and allow the Spirit to connect in transforming their mind.

Beth, just stoppppp with the ping-ponging back and forth between the spiritual barrenness and gestational barrenness!

Moore refers to Hannah’s promise to dedicate the child to the LORD when he is old enough, and for laughs, Moore says she’d renege on that promise to YAHWEH:

I’m going to tell you something, if it were me, He just never would get old enough, isn’t that the truth…[laughter]

I’ve often remarked that Beth Moore lacks gravitas. Not that we moon about and wear a long face, but her frequent quips and pause for laughter moments chip away at the foundation of the seriousness of the topic on which she is speaking, and eats away at the due seriousness of the Bible itself. Should we joke about abandoning a promise to God?

Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, ‘YOU SHALL NOT [ab]MAKE FALSE VOWS, BUT SHALL FULFILL YOUR VOWS TO THE LORD.’ (Matthew 5:33)

Moore admits a bit further on that she changes translations frequently and when she does she reads the verse a bit differently and it “captures my fresh attention.“

This is rather a sad confession, but one that to my mind confirms once again that Moore is an unsaved person and looking for ways to liven her Bible reading (which is always dry as dust to a pagan). The Holy Spirit livens the reading of God’s word to us as He uses it as the mechanism to transform our mind and melt our heart and grow our soul. But not for a heathen. Heathens need tricks to make the Bible interesting and keep one’s attention. So Moore changes translations often.

Moore continues with reading a passage from Jeremiah where God is speaking to the people about their lack of awareness and failure even to ask “where is the Lord?” never noticing that He is not present among them. Moore extrapolates that to a lamentation for our day, that,

we should really be seeing the Lord move in our midst and moving some obstacles and making some ways in the wilderness and this is a God that does wonders for his people and where where is the Lord?

Is she saying that we should be expecting visible proof that the Lord is moving? Miracles and wonders? Seems so. If the Lord feels far from you, what are you called to do? REPENT. That word does not appear at all in the transcript of Moore’s 30-minute teaching. We seek the Lord’s presence through seeking His forgiveness for our sin through our repentance. This is not a mention in the transcript nor is it the theme in this lesson.

Moore went on like that for a while. Her teaching was not 100% devoid of truth. False teachers always include some truth which they mix with a heaping cup of confusion and a dollop of emotion. But her teaching was human centered, not God-centered.

What descriptions are used for false teachers? Spies, masquerade, creep in, secretly… If you could immediately detect their falsity then we would not need so many warnings in the Bible about training in discernment so we cold detect them.

Moore’s error in identifying the theme of 1 Samuel, her incorrect use of barrenness, and her ripping out of context the story of Sarah and other childless women are clues that her teaching that is not healthy.

Further Resources

Beware of False Teachers

Hannah’s perseverance

Why we still warn against Beth Moore

Posted in theology

Do these preaching ladies not know…? The Beth Moores vs. the Mary ‘Polly’ Careys

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

I’m reading William Carey’s biography, written by his great grandson S. Pearce Carey. It’s a wonderful book for many reasons. Full of nuggets. Like this one:

Carey’s sister Mary, nicknamed Polly, became an invalid at a young age. Her spine started to go. By age 25 she was a paralytic.

Carey had already evangelized his family, and blessedly, Mary was a believer when her infirmity struck. Mary was confined to her sick room for the next 50 years. She had been the one to accompany her brother tramping on their field forays, examining nature and admiring God’s handiwork. Thus, Mary’s confinement was a grief to her, as she too, loved to roam. Worse, for eleven years after her final paralysis, she could not speak. She contracted smallpox, and after recovering, whispered a sentence or two with great pain and difficulty. Then she was mute again for another 20 years.

Mary only had the use of her right arm and hand, and could write, but only in pain. However, she led a Bible study, using a slate to converse. She wrote copiously to William when he was abroad on mission. Some of these folios have been saved, Mary poured out her heart to William, and she wrote every bit of family news. She was a huge encouragement to William.

She was a prayer warrior unparalleled, S. Pearce Carey calling her one of Carey’s ‘chief priests’, saying, “the incense of whose ceaseless intercession was fragrant to God.’ She prayed every single day for William’s needs and his mission, for 52 years.

Mary had drawn her sister’s many children to Christ. Mary was so loved, “to part with her would tear us asunder” wrote Mary’s niece in 1828. In the end, Mary was just skin and bone, barely able to sit up in a chair while her bed was being made, yet her face shone with the love of Christ. She was known by all as a sweet tempered Christian lady, empathizing more for others than herself. Yet finally, in 1842 at the age of 75, Mary was brought home to her Lord, where she was finally free from all pain and standing upright to see His face.

Her ministry of evangelizing, letter writing, encouraging, praying, and teaching is known to us 182 years later as remarkable and a grace upon grace.

So it is with grief when I read of egotistical cretins like Beth Moore who complained an interview that she was “in a tradition where there were just very limited things that a woman could do” as Beth has said, so, that is why she chose to step out of God’s role for her and satisfied her venal ambition to preach. Her God-given role was “limiting.”

Limiting. As in, not big enough.

Gladys Aylward

A woman like Moore, with full body capabilities, given the blessing of two children, having a home and wealth (not evicted as Carey’s sister’s family was), considered her role limiting. Mary, bedridden in the 1700s-1800s, mute, one useful arm only and that in pain, lovingly cared for as she engaged in not one, not two, not three, not four, but five ministries, having global impact and heaven only knows the eternal impact.

Does Moore and her ilk not know of this? Do these strutting spiritual strumpets not know of lowly Cockney, uneducated, impoverished maid Gladys Aylward, denied support to go on mission in China, but went anyway? Pouring out her life to minister to and evangelize orphans? Working tirelessly for the pagan Chinese from 1930 to 1970, when she died in Taiwan?

Do they not know of Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, who was born into lordly British privilege, and used her means to become an ardent supporter of ministers who preach the truth? Inviting others to her home and founding dozens of chapels for the area’s preachers to do their godly ministrations? In 1783 she founded “The Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion”, a society of English preachers and churches that continues to this day.

Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon – Portrait – National Portrait Gallery, London

Do they not know of the blessing of motherhood, helpmeet, teacher of children, godly role and support of the household? Beth Moore and rebels of her ilk consider motherhood limiting. Praying: limiting. Letter writing: limiting. Philanthropy: limiting. Parenting: limiting. They consider all the roles and opportunities to serve God too limiting. They want to preach. They want to be in front. Well, ladies, the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

I am sure, SURE, on THAT DAY, women like Gladys, Selina, Mary will be standing in front, receiving due praise from the KING for their obedience and positive impact for the Kingdom. I am sure, SURE women like Beth Moore and Christine Caine and Jen Wilkin and Aimee Byrd etc. who rebel and whine, and ‘step into the classic leadership role’, as Caine has said, will be told “DEPART FROM ME” because of their rebellion and their negative damage to the kingdom. These disguised servants of righteousness will be unmasked, seen as they are- ministers of wickedness. As 2 Corinthians 11:15 says, their end will be as they deserve.

Meanwhile, dear sister, nothing is too limiting with God. Wherever you are and with whatever means He has given you, you can make an impact for His kingdom and for lost souls. Mary, Martha, Susannah, Dorcas, Lydia, Priscilla, Lois, Eunice…Gladys, Selina, Mary-Polly; whatever amount of education, whatever amount of finances, whatever the family situation, look to the excellent examples of our sisters in the faith. One day, we will meet them all. What a day that will be.

Posted in theology

Five years ago today we released the Open Letter to Beth Moore. Here’s what happened & here’s why Beth HAS to be vague

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

1. What happened

Five years ago today (L-R top row) Michelle Lesley, Amy Spreeman, Susan Heck, (L-R bottom row) Martha Peace, DebbieLynne Kespert, and myself here at The End Time, in tandem on our individual platforms, released an Open Letter to Beth Moore asking her 5 simple questions about her stance on homosexuality. Though Beth constantly remarks on cultural and social issues on her various platforms, to our knowledge we had never seen her take a stance on the sin of homosexuality. We felt it was important to get clarity on this from her, especially since she had (and still has) an enormous global platform with millions of followers.

Michelle Lesley posted a retrospective on her page today, saying,

As you’ll read below, the letter asked Moore to respond to five questions about homosexuality. To this day, as far as I know, she has obfuscated, finessed, straw-manned, slandered, and played the victim, but the one thing she has not done is to clearly and directly answer them. The ensuing brouhaha over the letter, however, spoke much louder than simply answering the questions. I’m re-posting this today to remind and warn all of us that this is how false teachers operate, and that we need to keep our eyes open and be good Bereans.

At Michelle’s site she kept a timeline of events and screen shots of Beth’s vague reactions. Check it out, it says a lot about a false teacher who would not answer a simple question about a sin that God abhors.

The Open Letter to Beth Moore: 5th Anniversary

Here are the five questions. In the original letter, there was a preamble and a closing, but here is the main point of our letter to Beth Moore:

1. Do you believe homosexuality is inherently sinful?
2. Do you believe that the practice of the homosexual lifestyle is compatible with holy Christian living?
3. Do you believe a person who dies as a practicing homosexual but professes to be a Christian will inherit eternal life?
4. Do you believe same sex attraction is, in and of itself, an inherently sinful, unnatural, and disordered desire that must be mortified?
5. Why have you been so silent on this subject in light of your desire to “teach the word of God?”

Seems simple enough to answer, right? But not for a false teacher. She can’t be pinned down. I am going to explain one reason why the event was instructive. Beth Moore (as a false teacher) is highly skilled in equivocating. Her use of non-specific language is masterful.

2. Why couldn’t she just answer?!

Outside of the faith, there are situations where specific language is a must. Science, Maths, technology, and judicial situations are four that I can think of. When a lawyer asks a question he poses it in a certain way in order to elicit a specific and clear response from a witness. You can’t be unclear in court. Judges issue decrees that must be clear. He wouldn’t issue a finding without naming the crime. Unthinkable.

But criminals, politicians, and false teachers speak in non-specifics all the time. How often have you seen a Mafia movie where the Boss says something like ,”Take care of that problem” and it really means, ‘Whack that guy and bury him in cement shoes’? Vague language serves some people very well.

“Firstly, … people typically equivocate when posed a question to which all possible replies have potentially negative consequences, but where nonetheless a reply is still expected.” The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction.

Back to faith situations using vague language- In the 1400s medieval Crusader and autobiographer Margery Kempe was sufficiently vague and slippery, using masterful unclarity to get out of her heresy trial when confronted by the Archbishop of York. And this was court, where specific language is a must! But Kempe never was pinned down.

“Kempe’s sophisticated use of evasive, vague, hedged, and recontextualized speech and situational pragmatics proved more than a match for the Archbishop and his clerks.” From “Margery Kempe’s Strategic Vague Language” in the book The Medieval Life of Language by Mark Amsler.”

We saw it again, recorded in trial documents when in the 1600s Anne Hutchinson was at trial before the Puritan Divines. Hutchinson’s skill at verbal slipperyness even caused the Governor prosecuting her for heresy to say, “Yes, you are a woman of most note, and of best abilities.” She would not be pinned down.

Vague language is most useful to a heretic.

So the problem trying to pin down a skilled equivocator like Beth Moore is not new. When Beth Moore refused to answer, she issued cryptic, vague tweets and messages on her platforms, designed to cover her in a smokescreen where she could disappear like a magician on stage.

But in the end she couldn’t.

Eventually, she had to answer, because this time, the situation wasn’t going away. When she did reply, it was a non-answer that said nothing. Yes, ‘she is a woman of most note, and of best abilities.’

As GK Chesterton has said of neo-paganism, they express “incomparable exercises in the English language“. (From “Heretics”).

Vagueness is important to the politician, false teacher, or any other person needing not to be clear. Here’s why. Let’s use a politician for an example. In speeches, the politician will choose high-emotion words, commonly understood by the hearer, who attaches his or her own personal meaning to it.

Like, ‘liberty’. Now, we all understand the word liberty. But do we? Liberty means something different to a person in jail or to the battered wife, which is different to an unhappy housewife who has career ambitions, which is different to a patriotic citizen in Middle America. We know the word, but we attach different meanings to it. The more vague one can be while seeming to be specific, the more the speaker can connect with more people, and importantly, not alienate a diverse base. The quote below about using pragmatic language can apply to false teachers because they are also like politicians: [insertion is mine, underline is mine]

“Another aspect of this issue is the diversity of the audience in the case of televised politics. In their public performances politicians [and false teachers] do not want to address only one target group but as many as possible. But this means that they have to convey different messages to different people at the same time. Producing coherent statements in such situations is only possible by using various forms of indirect vagueness because different groups of the audience may have dissimilar (and even contradictory) wants.” (Source- International Pragmatics Association, Political Language and Textual Vagueness by Helmut Gruber).

Our faith has words that possess certain meanings. It’s important to protect them and important to use them properly

False teachers have a diverse base and have to work to keep the base united, unlike Christians who have one base- Christ. We want the brilliance and clarity of God’s word to shine. Vagueness is why Beth Moore says all the time in her lessons, things like “Is everybody with me? Everybody know what I’m talkin’ about?” She isn’t checking for understanding, which can’t be done with a virtual audience in a video or in a massive auditorium of thousands of listeners. What she’s doing is forcing a unity among diversity.

The true teacher and the false teacher thus have different goals and use different language to achieve those goals. Read Chesterton’s quote below with the faith in mind. Can we construct a faith with unreliable instruments?

“And this kind of vagueness … is an absolutely final blow to anything in the nature of a science. Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments. A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not with a handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and falling together into new combinations. A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed.” GK Chesterton

3. What does the Bible say?

I’ve covered the fact of the false teachers’ use of vague language, and the necessity of their use of vagueness, but now let’s turn to see what the Bible has to say.

The one who has ears to hear, let him hear. Matthew 11:15. And Matthew 13:9, 43; Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 29, 3:6, 13, 22; Revelation 13:9. We see that phrase in God’s word so often. We all have ears, physically. We don’t all have the ability to hear through them if we’re deaf. Spiritually, those who are not in Christ do not have the ability to spiritually hear His word.

Chesterton, “A man cannot pay that kind of reverence to truth solid as marble; they can only be reverent towards a beautiful lie.” 

If you are in Christ, we DO have ears to hear- Him. But we need to listen carefully to one and all who claim to be speaking God’s words from God’s Bible. Are we listening carefully to not only the words with our ears, but with our souls, by the Spirit?

“Jesus’ simple request is that we use our God-given faculties (eyes to see, ears to hear) to tune in to His words (John 10:27 –28; Mark 4:24; Revelation 3:20). “For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open” (Mark 4:22).” (Source GotQuestions)

Whenever you hear a teacher professing Christianity equivocate, evade, or use vague language, especially when a specific question has been asked, your ears should hear what is being said and what is not being said.

We are ambassadors for Jesus and we have a duty to convey the King’s message as carefully as we can. So we use precise language in our teaching, evangelizing, writing, and preaching. When teachers or preachers don’t, then you know there is a problem. When they use cryptic, evasive, non-specific language, let him who has an ear, hear.

If we train ourselves in discernment we will hear and thus detect the source. (Hebrews 5:14).

Posted in theology

Two birthdays, two ministries, two trajectories

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

The Bible is disgusted by false teaching and is strong on pure doctrine. Why? The consequences of error are dire.

Scottish Divine James Durham said, “Error destroys the soul (2 Peter 2:1; 2 Thessalonians 2:12). In fact, it brings on swift damnation ( 2 Peter 2:1). It overthrows the faith of many (2 Timothy 2:18), perverts Scripture to people’s destruction (2 Peter 3:16), and deceives many (Matthew 24:11). For this reason, it is also called damnable and pernicious (2 Peter 2:1-2).”

Further, Durham wrote, “No titles carry greater indignation and abomination than the titles given to such people. They are generally called dogs and evil workers (Philippians 3:2); wolves, or rather grievous wolves (Matthew 7:15; Acts 20:29), deceitful workers; ministers of satan, as if they were expressly commissioned by him (2 Corinthians 11″13); deceivers and liars (Revelation 2:2); evil men and seducers, who wax worse and worse (2 Timothy 3:13).“

False teaching is not to be overlooked, dismissed, watered down, or ignored. It is serious, serious business. There is correct doctrine and there is incorrect doctrine. One pleases the Lord. The other provokes His wrath.

The problem is ancient, it began in time immemorial past in heaven when satan, puffed with pride and ambition to unseat God, lied and enticed many holy angels to quit following God and to follow him. They took the swap and thus they fell and became demons. Satan brought the problem to earth in the Garden where he tempted our first parents and they fell, bringing the future entirety of humankind with them. Satan’s deceptions have continued, with warnings and prohibitions to us from God, through the Old Testament to the New, and into this very day.

Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash

That’s one path, the wide one. One side of the light vs. dark saga.

Alternately there are those on the narrow path. God raises up ministers for His name in every generation who are stalwart, true, persevering, and edifying. After Jesus came the Apostles, then the church fathers, the medieval men like Wycliffe and Hus, the Reformation men like Luther and to the Puritans and post-Puritans like Edwards, and the mid twentieth century men like Gerstner, Sproul, Lloyd-Jones. Today we have the new men like Riccardi, Pickowitz, Buice, James Coates…

The Lord always raises up good men, and aside from the ones mentioned, there are thousands and millions more He raised up that we never heard of but who labored faithfully to their end, and were brought to the bosom of their Priestly Shepherd to enjoy rest from ministering and to the bliss of being with the leader of the true Church.

This dichotomy of false teaching vs. true was brought to mind this week as I noticed two famous people are having birthdays a few days apart.

John MacArthur and Beth Moore. I have been involved at a distance with both these folks for a long time. I’ve seen the trajectories. I’ve read and listened to their works. And the starkness could not be more clear. Beth Moore’s output has damaged the faith and in many cases brought it into disrepute, while MacArthur’s has strengthened it and honored the Lord’s name.

John MacArthur will turn 85 years old on June 19. He has been ministering as pastor-teacher at Grace Community Church for 56 years. He was ministering 5 years before that as an associate pastor. He has been actively serving the Lord for 61 years. The Lord is gracious to give us all these decades with him, and surely his impact has been great.

He has never wavered on the authority of scripture, cessationism, young earth creationism, complementarianism, dispensationalism, the Lordship of Christ, proper Christology, and gender and sexuality. He has preached through every book of the New Testament verse by verse, which took 45 years to accomplish. He has written over 150 books which have been translated into myriad languages, faithfully shepherded his congregation week after week, withstood the covid closures, led a solid seminary, and has been acknowledged by Christianity Today as one of the most influential preachers of his time. His MacArthur Study Bible has sold more than one million copies, receiving a Gold Medallion Book Award. That Study Bible has been in the hands of pastors from the icy Faroes in the Arctic Circle to dusty back roads in Africa, to the jungles of Peru.

Certainly there are many other private ministrations in Jesus’ name that only MacArthur and the Lord know about between them. He is in a long line of blood-bought pastors who have risen to public knowledge and have edified many who learn from him and watch his godly life as one to imitate. Paul said “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ”. (1 Corinthians 11:1). This means, “he was instructing us as believers to carefully examine our Savior’s life and the lives of His faithful servants. He gave a similar command earlier in 1 Corinthians 4:16: “Therefore I urge you to imitate me.” In the original Greek, the verb translated as “imitate” in 1 Corinthians 11:1 and 1 Corinthians 4:16 is mimētai and means “become a person who copies the words and behaviors of another.” (Source GotQuestions).

Perhaps the Lord has left MacArthur on earth so long in order to demonstrate His sustaining power in a faithful life that started and so far is ending well. The Lord is good to us.

For 45 years Beth Moore has been speaking here, there, and everywhere she possibly could. Regrettably, her speaking engagements have been laced with error and deception. She began, by her own words, in her early 20s as a “Christian Motivational Speaker”. She never left that profession, really. Then when she was 27 she began teaching a Sunday School class, but she said she was also “learning the scriptures” at that time. It’s a tragedy that they put her into a position where she was simultaneously learning the Bible AND teaching. She wasn’t ready.

Again by her own words, her class was “packed” and they all “had a blast” but “we weren’t really studying the scriptures”. Why? Because Beth said she “just thought up things to talk about and then I got panicked on Saturday because I think where is a scripture to go with it.” She never grew out of that improper hermeneutic even with “the doctrine class” she took. It was still motivational speaking but with with a thin Christian overlay of out of context sprinkled verses.

Did you know that Beth briefly attended seminary but dropped out? Why? She was “reading the environment and coming to the realization of what my opportunities would and would not be.” She chafed against the biblical hierarchy of male led faith, she has been clear about that. She obviously wasn’t in seminary to learn about Jesus and to parse the scriptures correctly. She wanted “opportunities” for herself and quit when she saw she couldn’t go rogue.

Yet she was teaching a packed Sunday School class of 2000, including men. She was preaching Sunday Night at the request of her then-pastor. She’d started teaching ‘Bible classes’ outside of her church interdenominationally. Her first ‘Study’ was published by Lifeway. What other “opportunities” was she looking for? What other “opportunities” remain? I leave it to you to surmise the answer.

Beth Moore will celebrate her 67th birthday on June 16, which at this writing is tomorrow. She has been actively ‘ministering’ for about 44 years. The Lord has His reasons for allowing false teachers to persist, and one of them is in order to see who is approved, and by contrast who is not. (1 Corinthians 11:19). Another reason perhaps is also to demonstrate His grace and mercy and patience in allowing such people to exist on His earth, in order to give opportunity to repent.

Jesus considers false female prophetesses an abomination. See His threatened condemnation to the false prophetess of Thyatira, but consider His grace, as He said He gave her time to repent. (Revelation 2:21). But she did not want to repent. Here, Matthew Henry is commenting on Revelation 2:21, the false prophetess of Thyatira-

They made use of the name of God to oppose the truth of his doctrine and worship; this very much aggravated their sin. They abused the patience of God to harden themselves in their wickedness. God gave them space for repentance, but they repented not. Observe, Repentance is necessary to prevent a sinner’s ruin. Where God gives space for repentance, he expects fruits meet for repentance. Where the space for repentance is lost, the sinner perishes with a double destruction. Source Henry, M. (1994). Matthew Henry’s commentary on the whole Bible (commenting on Revelation 2:21).

The problem with false teachers is that spreading error teaches others to lie. (Matthew 5:19). This is evil because error has its origins in the devil.

Please do not let Beth’s Christianish veneer and firehose gushing about Jesus distract you from the greed and ambition that lies underneath. Just as the Pharisees made a show of prayers on the street corners and attended banquets (so they could be honored for the chief seats), at Beth Moore’s core is a career minded, Jesus-using deceiver on a fast trajectory to hell. (2 Peter 2:1).

Wheat and tares grow together – for a while. Then comes the reaping.

The Lord is good to give us faithful pastors, He is also good to give us faithless wolves. He s always good. We learn who to imitate and who not to. We learn true doctrine and practice discernment by seeing what is false.

Psalm 100:5
For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

Posted in theology

Cut To The Chase: The entire discernment series (David Platt, Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, Jackie Hill Perry, Lori Alexander, Jen Wilkin, Priscilla Shirer, Ann Voskamp, Experiencing God)

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

Last week I wrote a series on discernment in 6 essays. They are below. I called it “Wolf Week” because false teachers are called wolves in scripture. My own version of Shark Week, lol.

Wolf Week Intro: or, We DO know the heart
Wolf Week # 1: My two “starter false teachers”
Wolf Week # 2: Why Wolves?
Wolf Week # 3: Types of false teachers and their different methods
Wolf Week # 4: Has that false teacher REALLY ‘helped’ you?
Wolf Week # 5: Why does God allow false teachers?

A short follow-up series I am publishing contains 5 more essays in short form focusing on 4 influential ‘Bible’ teachers. I have written discernment essays on these four previously in years past, but those essays were longer. Nowadays however, people like to read less lengthy material. So I cut to the chase and made shorter essays showing why these folks are false.

Here they all are in one place:

Cut to the Chase: Priscilla Shirer

Cut to the Chase: Jen Wilkin

Cut to the chase: Six Reasons why Joyce Meyer is a false teacher

Cut to the chase: Five reasons to avoid Jackie Hill Perry

Cut to the chase: Four reasons to avoid Lori Alexander of godlywomanhood

Cut to the chase: Six reasons why you should avoid Beth Moore

Cut to the Chase: Three (probably four) Reasons to Avoid David Platt

Cut To The Chase: Discerning Ann Voskamp

Cut to the Chase: “Experiencing God by Blackaby & King

Posted in theology

Cut to the chase: Six reasons why you should avoid Beth Moore

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

Last week I wrote a series on discernment in 6 essays. They are below. I called it “Wolf Week” because false teachers are called wolves in scripture. My own version of Shark Week, lol.

Wolf Week Intro: or, We DO know the heart
Wolf Week # 1: My two “starter false teachers”
Wolf Week # 2: Why Wolves?
Wolf Week # 3: Types of false teachers and their different methods
Wolf Week # 4: Has that false teacher REALLY ‘helped’ you?
Wolf Week # 5: Why does God allow false teachers?

A short follow-up series I am publishing beginning today contains 4 more essays in short form focusing on 4 influential ‘Bible’ teachers. I have written discernment essays on these four previously in years past, but those essays were longer. In articles like that, I include sources, explain the teacher’s errors thoroughly, and provide examples. All this make the essays longer. Nowadays however, people like to read less lengthy material. So I cut to the chase and made shorter essays showing why these folks are false.

Today I look at 6 reasons not to follow Beth Moore.

Continue reading “Cut to the chase: Six reasons why you should avoid Beth Moore” →