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.
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.
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.
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!
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.”
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:
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)
-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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I love Chris Rosebrough of Fighting for the Faith. He has been “Fighting for the Faith” for a long time. Fighting for the Faith is a discernment ministry that compares what popular pastors, preachers, teachers, conference speakers, self-proclaimed prophets and prophetesses and self-appointed apostles and apostlets say to the word of God. He is known by the moniker “Pirate Christian.”
He is also a Lutheran pastor with a congregation in Minnesota.
If you need a discernment person, Chris Rosebrough would be a safe discerner. (Along with Justin Peters and Steve Kozar). Rosebrough has been discerning for a long time. I remember looking (and looking and looking) for material discerning Beth Moore back in 2011 and there was very little that wasn’t 100% approving of her. One of the three pieces that I found back then was a review Rosebrough did on her Hebrews speech published in 2006. So, a long time.
As he says in his tagline above, he compares what self-professed Christians say to what the Bible says. Last week he reviewed a speech Beth Moore made on her Youtube channel, where she allegedly explained the David & Goliath event in 1 Samuel 17.
What Rosebrough does in this video is…well…a lot! He announced at the outset of the video that Beth Moore is not a sound teacher. But he does more than just announce. He then turns to the Bible and reads the entire passage from the Bible that the teacher is presenting. He reads before and after, for context. Rosebrough explains the passage as he reads; the context, the history, the background, the meaning of certain words. Full explanation. By the time he is finished the listener has a solid grasp on the passage.
Then, and only then, near the end of this video, Rosebrough turns to the Beth Moore speech. The reader has by now been given such a solid grounding, he or she can immediately see why Moore’s explanation of the verse is not only ridiculous, but nearly blasphemy.
His discernment technique is more than pointing a finger and saying “don’t listen to her!” He teaches (pastorally), he models discernment (spiritual gift usage), and he is clear (“able to teach”).
A few points from the video:
narcigesis: this is a combination of two terms, narcissism and eisegesis. Narcissism because Moore inserts herself and the reader into the text and makes US the point, and eisegesis because that is an interpretive method where the interpreter inserts a preconceived meaning INTO the text instead of exegeting it (drawing meaning FROM the text.
If you are listening to a teacher explain a passage and you realize they have made it all about you, or made it where we are the hero of the story and not Jesus, it’s narcigesis. You might think, “Well DUH!” but satan is subtle and often times you do not realize the passage has been twisted. But listening to Chris Rosebrough, you will learn how to spot it.
Screen shot from Moore’s speech. The tall figure is supposed to represent Goliath, which Moore says represents our problems.
Rosebrough ends the video this way:
Beth Moore is not a sound biblical teacher … She took a text that’s so obviously about Christ and makes it about you and about me shows that she’s not skilled at all in rightly handling God’s word and and pointing you to yourself as your own savior.
Please listen to the video to see not only why Moore is not a solid teacher, but how to approach a biblical text and how to approach discernment.
the-end-time.org 