Tag: discernment

Posted in theology

The Prosperity Gospel You May Not Recognize

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

The Benny Hinn-style of prosperity gospel is well known and easily seen among those Christians with even a snippet of discernment. The Hinn-style prosperity gospel, labeled ‘hard prosperity gospel’ in the article below, promises instant health or wealth, or immediate financial gains. These prosperity gospelers frequently use terms like ‘breakthrough’, urge positive confessions, (AKA ‘name it and claim it’), and press their audiences for donations they call ‘seed faith’ giving. Joel Osteen is one of these. So is Kenneth Copeland.

Discernment help: John Piper, Six Keys to Detecting the Prosperity Gospel. This essay is well-written and clear.

But there is another type of prosperity gospel that is much harder to detect. As always, that old serpent is subtle. It is in fact the first quality we learn about him, from Genesis 3:1. The first mention in the Bible of the serpent tells us of his subtlety. The word means cunning in a bad way, crafty, or shrewd. So it stands to reason satan adjusts his methods of deception. The “softer prosperity gospel” is one of those.

At 9Marks’ article quoted below, we learn of this more subtle prosperity gospel which in the quote below, says assumes its audience knows the Gospel already:

This is not a new concern. Others have described facets of this prosperity gospel under names like moralistic therapeutic deism, Christless Christianity, and the commodification of Christianity. In truth, all three descriptors overlap to describe a prosperity gospel that is easily missed, because it is seems reasonable to Christians who love God and the American Dream.

That said, the ‘soft prosperity gospel’ can be just as ruinous as the hard prosperity gospel. Any deviation from Christ’s standards for life and doctrine is ruinous. Why? Because any deviation comes from either our flesh, the world, or from satan, and stands opposed to Christ’s Good News. Just because it’s soft does not mean it’s less hard on the soul.

9Marks: “While evangelicals have traditionally decried the prosperity gospel in its “hard” form, there is a softer form of this teaching that is all too common among us. Often undetected by Bible-believing Christians, it assumes the gospel and leads its adherents to focus on things like financial planning, diet and exercise, and strategies for self-improvement. In contrast to the hard prosperity gospel, which offers miraculous and immediate health and wealth, this softer, subtler variety challenges believers to break through to the blessed life by means of the latest pastor-prescribed technique.”

I liked the use of the term “assumes the Gospel”. Too often as a Christian ministry whose goal of presenting information to its audience assumes its audience as Christians already know the Gospel. However, genuine Christians need to be reminded of it all the time. And we can never assume that anyone reading or listening to our output is actually a Christian and/or already knows the Gospel. The Gospel as Good News should be shared incessantly to one and all.

The 9Marks article mentioned diet & exercise as a location for one of the ways softer prosperity gospel enters in. Among the Christian circles I frequent, which focus on women, there is a huge emphasis on diet and exercise. It’s also called ‘wellness’. I’ve written previously about the trad wife & crunchy Christian woman. In these realms it seems a softer prosperity gospel abounds. Angela Mitchell of Raising Apologists has done a yeoman’s work on this topic as well. See some of her links below.

Wellness Christianity is not the only potential soft prosperity pitfall, of course. The pitfalls exist in spheres of financial planning, self-improvement, and other American style problems we think we have.

We do want to be healthy, plan wisely with our finances, and improve ourselves. That is not the issue. The problem comes when promoters of a soft prosperity shift the focus from Jesus’ blessedness to the blessings.

The 9Marks article continues with presenting 5 trademarks of soft prosperity.

  1. Soft prosperity elevates “blessings” over the blessed God.
  2. Soft prosperity detaches verses from the redemptive framework of the Bible.
  3. Soft prosperity diminishes the curse that Christ bore and the blessing of the Holy Spirit.
  4. Soft prosperity relies on pastor-prescribed therapeutic techniques.
  5. Soft prosperity largely addresses first world, middle class problems.

It is easy to get drawn in to these, so please take a look at the article and see if you have or haven’t been fooled by these subtleties. If you have, of course Jesus will accept your repentance and the Spirit will respond to your request to be strengthened in discernment. If you have not been taken in, pray in praise to Jesus that He has delivered you from this error. Remember we do nothing on our own. We always abide in Him.

9Marks- A softer prosperity Gospel: more common than you think

Further Resources

Ligonier: The Soft Prosperity Gospel

Raising Apologists: A Plea for Christians to be Discerning about Wellness

Raising Apologists Highlights on Homeopathy (On Instagram)

Raising Apologists Highlights on Wellness part 1

Raising Apologists Highlights on Wellness part 2

Posted in theology

A teaching on ‘Soul Ties’ has no business being in a Christian book: On Evangelical fads

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

Fads exist of course in the secular world. I have seen so many ‘evangelical fads’ come and go. There are so many, and mainly they are all false. Most of them have emerged from a different religion and been adapted in some way to be made palatable to Christian ears and eyes.

Today is about one such unChristian fad I spotted in a well-known ‘Christian’ teacher’s book. When we are IN a fad, IN an era, we often do not realize it. It’s why many pastors say to ‘read the old dead guys’. We can see their foibles and emphases from the vantage point of hindsight. As they say, hindsight is 20/20.

RESOURCE: Servants of Grace, Jason Garwood, Why Christians Should Read the Dead Guys

But we can still work hard to stick with scripture which is always truth, and check against whatever might be the fad of the day is. Will it pass away as shallow, or align with scripture?

Remember Prayer of Jabez? Prayer rugs? Seeker-sensitive? Purpose driven?

A fad is defined as “style, activity, product, or interest that becomes extremely popular for a short time and then fades away quickly”

Beth Moore is a false teacher. Today I focus on a little known and rarely spoken of reason: Moore frequently jumps on evangelical fads.

This post is not solely about Beth Moore, but I’m using her as an example to warn you that your discernment should be honed to alert you to any teacher who seems to be jumping on a fad.

Beth Moore’s past jumping on fads and then leaves them when they diminish in popularity, included fads such as saying mantras, family altars, Lectio Divina, Contemplative Spirituality, blue bracelets, Enneagram, and so on.

Today I’ll show you that another evangelical fad which was popular for a while but then passed away- “soul ties”.

Many of the fads that infiltrate Christendom have roots in Mysticism. Lectio Divina did, Enneagram did, Contemplative Spirituality did. So does ‘Soul Ties’. Sadly, it’s the women Bible teachers who tend to jump on these secular or New Age fads and re-brand them into Christianity. Remember circle-making? Popular around 2012.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss in 2012 leading other female Bible teachers in a wiccan-originated circle making prayer moment: source FMI

Soul ties are allegedly some kind of tie between people that connect them at a soul level. The connection is usually based on sexual union. It is some kind of intense connection that supposedly entwines one person with another. As this article explains,

In popular usage, a soul tie is a deep emotional or spiritual connection between two individuals. It is believed to bond people on a level that transcends ordinary relationships, often persisting long after a relationship ends. What sets a soul tie apart in popular belief is its intensity, longevity, and impact. … A key point is that a soul tie isn’t always positive or healthy; it can be uplifting or toxic, reflecting the nature of the relationship bond.

In Beth Moore’s book Praying God’s Word (published 2000) on p. 277-278 Moore is discussing sexual strongholds. She used the term soul ties as one of the reasons people sin sexually. This of course is a Mystical/New Age term and has no business in any Christian book. The only soul we are tied to is Jesus after salvation, as the Holy Spirit comes to indwell us. Even the marital union is one that makes the man and the woman “one flesh,” not ‘one soul’

Here are the screen shots from Moore’s book:

Do you see how an allegedly ‘Christian’ Bible teacher takes a New Age fad and then uses scripture around it to make it a candy coated nugget of garbage? The Corinthians verse is God’s word, but soul ties are Satan’s.

Doreen Virtue was a deeply committed New Ager who blessedly was shown the true faith and she repented. She has renounced all her previous dark teachings and now focuses on the Light of Jesus and His Word. Here on Facebook she mentions ‘soul ties’. I’ll link it but if you don’t have Facebook here is what she said:

The concept of “soul ties” is a new age, not Biblical, belief. Soul ties are NOT in the Bible! Jonathan and David’s friendship and “shall become one flesh” are not about “soul ties.” I should know, because when I was a new age teacher before I was saved, I taught and wrote extensively about soul ties, twin flames, cord connections, etc. I repent and apologize for these false teachings that have now seeped into the church.”

Doreen has a 15 minute video explaining why ‘soul ties’ are not biblical, here.

Soul ties have New Age roots. In the early 1980s many New Age metaphysical books came out. They became influential and propelled ideas from New Age into the mainstream American consciousness. Shirley MacLaine’s Out on a Limb was one of these that became hugely influential, as well as Richard Bach’s metaphysical musings on soul mates in The Bridge Across Forever. From that we morphed into the notion that soul ties are cords of energy linking two people on the planet and even after death linking auras across lifetimes in the cosmos.

GotQuestions has a good essay on soul ties, which they call soul links: What is a soul link?

Fads come and go, but the word of God remains forever.

Phil Johnson, The Flaws of a fad-driven church, part 2: “But that’s how all these fads are crafted. They are deliberately dumbed down, made soft and generic and nonthreatening, so that they don’t rebuke anyone’s sin; they don’t endanger anyone’s shallowness; they don’t threaten anyone’s comfort zone; and they don’t challenge anyone’s worldliness. That’s the way both the publishers and the people want it.“

Friends, when you work in honing your discernment, pray to the Spirit to help you detect if the teacher you are following is properly presenting eternal truths, or teaching passing unbiblical fads wrapped in Christianese talk. They may even (mis)use scripture to do it. Fads are almost always from a different religion. These ideas enter in and try to pollute the faithful, alter the doctrines of God, and sway you from the path of righteousness.

As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of people, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is, Christ, (Ephesians 4:14-15).

Do not be misled by varied and strange teachings; for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, through which those who were so occupied were not benefited. (Hebrews 13:9)

Further Resources

Trying to Understand why Evangelicals quickly chase fads and what actually works

The Flaws of a fad-driven church, part 1

Posted in theology

Jen Wilkin has always been egalitarian, see this from 2015

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

SYNOPSIS: I critique an older essay of Jen Wilkin’s, labeling her a false teacher whose trajectory since 2014 has been downward. I translate her false teacher-speech into what she is really saying, in order to demonstrate that even seemingly soft words and faux-kindness have hidden barbs that destroy. I urge discernment when evaluating their messages.

Continue reading “Jen Wilkin has always been egalitarian, see this from 2015” →
Posted in theology

Born to Be Destroyed: The Stark Language of 2 Peter

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

Something that always surprises me is how tolerant and soft-hearted people are when you mention so-and-so is a false teacher. They look at the person being named as false, and not at Jesus. Certainly they aren’t looking at their Bible. False teachers are of satan. But when you say someone like Joyce Meyer is false, or Beth Moore, they look at Meyer and see a woman who smiles and has a large following and has a Bible in her hand, so they say “But she’s not THAT bad”, or “Have you prayed for her?’ or “Leave her alone- God will sort it out.”

All of those are wrong responses to any named false teacher.

While many people will agree that false teachers exist, when I match the person to the claim, they will balk.

Yet the Bible describes these false ones in the starkest of terms. In just one example, we turn to 2 Peter 2:13-14 which says, ‘they revel in their deceptions’.

suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions as they feast with you, 14having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having hearts trained in greed, accursed children;

John MacArthur preached about these false teachers from the 2 Peter 2:13 verse. He said –

“Further describing their action, Peter with obvious disgust says, “They are stains and blemishes.” Boy, those are absolutely vivid words. The word “stains” is the word filth spots, dirt spots. The word “blemish” is the word scab, or the word defect. It is the idea of dirt spots, defects, filth spots, scabs. They pollute. They’re dirty.  They’re foul. They’re diseased. And he says they’re reveling in their deceptions.” Creatures born to be killed.

That means someone like Joyce Meyer is a filth spot. Joel Osteen is a defect. Beth Moore is a scab. THAT is how awful a false teacher is. I’m not saying these things, the Bible is!

Next, do you notice the word revel is used twice in the same verse?! What does revel mean here?

HELPS Word-studies says
tryphḗ (from thryptō, “to break down due to over-indulgence, i.e. living in excessive luxury”) – properly, feebleness brought on by self-indulgence (luxury); (figuratively) moral and spiritual breakdown (“enfeeblement”) from over-indulging in dainty (“delicate”) things, i.e. “dainty living” that deteriorates soul and body.

Their Reveling (2 Peter 2:13–14a), as Warren Wiersbe in The Bible exposition commentary interprets the verse, says-

The words translated “riot” and “sporting” carry the meaning of “sensual reveling.” They also contain the idea of luxury, softness, and extravagance. At the expense of those who support them (2 Peter 2:3), the apostates enjoy luxurious living. In our own society, there are those who plead for funds for their “ministries,” yet live in expensive houses, drive luxury cars, and wear costly clothes. When we remember that Jesus became poor in order to make us rich, their garish lifestyle seems out of step with New Testament Christianity.

Not only do they deceive others, but they even deceive themselves! They can “prove” from the Bible that their lifestyle is right. In ancient times, it was expected that people would revel at night, but these people dared to revel in the daytime, so convinced were they of their practices. A person can become so accustomed to his vices that he sees them as virtues.

These false teachers are born to be killed. Jude 1:4 says certain men were born for condemnation. The 2 Peter verse says they will be destroyed. MacArthur again,

The Greek text actually reads this way, “In their destroying they shall be destroyed.” And that’s…that’s another way to read this, that in the destructive work that they do as they lead people to destruction through their witless, non-reasoning stupidity and living off their passionate instincts, as they consume others in that operation, they will themselves be consumed. They are abandoned to destruction, born for the flesh, born to perish. Sermon- Creatures born to be killed part 1.

It is important to look at the Bible when discerning about false teachers. Because we are sinners, our sin clouds our judgment of others when assessing their output against the Bible. We need the clear word of God to remind us that these teachers whose father is satan, are not just as good as us or just as bad as us. Do not think, “Well, no one is perfect”, or “Well, I sin too.” False teachers are an entirely different beast.

These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved. (2 Peter 2:17).

Springs without water are empty, like the promises of false teachers. They are reserved for blackest darkness in the future. Don’t follow them.

Posted in theology

Why should the church always be on guard?

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

The Lord will build His church. It will never fail. That’s not to say that it won’t be under attack. It’s under attack every day. So the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible authors to warn us in many of the books to stay vigilant.

From the John MacArthur Daily Bible, entry on July 18,

Why should the church always be on guard?

“Paul told the Ephesians that he had declared to them “the whole purpose of God” (Ac 20:27). The entire plan and purpose of God for man’s salvation in all its fullness: divine truths of cre ation, election, redemption, justification, adoption, conversion, sanctification, holy living, and glorification. And now that he was leaving, he gives them a warning.”

“False teachers were already plaguing the churches of Galatia (Gal 1:6) and the Corinthian church (2Co 11:4). “Be on guard for yourselves” (v. 28), a warning that proved true by later events at Ephesus (1Ti 1:3-7, 19-20; 6:20-21; Rev 2:2). Paul repeated this call to self-examination to Timothy when his young son in the faith served as pastor of the Ephesian congregation (1Ti 4:16; 2Ti 2:20-21). The “overseers” are the same as elders and pastors. The word stresses the leaders’ responsibility to watch over and protect their congregations- an appropriate usage in the context of a warning against false teachers. Church rule, which minimizes the biblical authority of elders in favor of a cultural, democratic process, is foreign to the New Testament (1Th 5:12, 13; Heb 13:17).”

“He warns of “savage wolves” (v. 29)-a term borrowed from Jesus (Mt 7:15; 10:16). This metaphor stresses the extreme danger false teachers pose to the church. “From among your own selves” (v. 30). Even more deadly than attacks from outside the church are the defections of those (especially leaders) within the church (1Ti 1:20; 2Ti 1:15; 2:17; Jude 3, 4, 10-13). These wolves would speak “perverse things.” The Greek word means “distorted” or “twisted.” False teachers twist God’s Word for their own evil ends (13:10; 2Pe 3:16).”

“And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up” (v. 32). The Scriptures, the record of God’s gracious dealings with mankind, is the source of spiritual growth for all Christians. And since the church is “the pillar and support of the truth” (1Ti 3:15), its leaders must be familiar with that truth.” –end quoted MacArthur Bible entry

Stay vigilant. Be vigilant of our flesh and kill our own sin. Be vigilant over what we absorb from the world, which is at odds with the Lord Jesus. Stay vigilant over enemies and spies who come into the church, either your physical church or the digital Christian world via speeches, books, podcasts and the like. Jesus commended the church at EPhesus for being vigilant-

I know your deeds and your labor and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil people, and you have put those who call themselves apostles to the test, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured on account of My name, and have not become weary. (Revelation 2:2-3).

How do we remain on guard but not get weary expending that energy? Rely on the Lord. His sustenance is the word, prayer, and fellowship with the saints. These things revive us.

Posted in theology

Recognizing Rebellion Behind the Pulpit

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

SYNOPSIS: This article examines the question of persistent, public disobedience among self-professing Christian women who preach and teach in defiance of biblical commands. It urges discernment, humility, and repentance, arguing that ongoing rebellion against Scripture raises serious concerns about genuine faith.

Continue reading “Recognizing Rebellion Behind the Pulpit” →
Posted in theology

When “She Helped Me” Isn’t a Valid Defense

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

SYNOPSIS: Many defend false teachers by claiming, “Their teachings helped me.” This essay examines what true biblical help looks like—conviction of sin, growth in holiness, and exaltation of Christ—and argues that spiritual benefit must be measured by Scripture, not personal feelings.

Continue reading “When “She Helped Me” Isn’t a Valid Defense” →
Posted in theology

I Didn’t Go to Heaven — And Neither Did They

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

SYNOPSIS: Modern “heaven tourism” claims continue resurfacing through books, interviews, and testimonies, but many contradict Scripture and even themselves. Christians should exercise biblical discernment, reject subjective revelations, and trust the sufficiency of God’s Word alone regarding heaven, hell, eternity, and salvation.

EPrata photo
Continue reading “I Didn’t Go to Heaven — And Neither Did They” →