Saturday, July 28, 2012

Rightfully dividing the Word of Truth

One of the things that is responsible for more damage in the body of Christ today is the twisting and mis-interpreting of scripture- and the teaching of it to others!  The Word itself instructs us to STUDY it for ourselves, so that we will correctly interpret, and teach it correctly (2 Timothy 2:15)

One of THE MOST commonly twisted and mis-interpreted, actually mis-QUOTED scriptures is 1 Corinthians 10:13 - "No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it."

I have heard this scripture mis-quoted for years, even by some "seasoned veterans" of the Bible- just a few minutes ago, I saw it again in a Facebook re-post, by a world-wide known Pastor.

GOD NEVER SAID HE WOULD NOT GIVE YOU MORE THAN YOU COULD BEAR.  This scripture has nothing to do with burdens, heartbreak, stress, or any other such thing.  This scripture is dealing with the issue of SIN, and the temptation to give in to it.  It is really quite self-explanatory.  What it is saying is, when we are tempted to sin, that temptation is something that many others have faced also:  and that there is no excuse for giving in to that temptation, because God has made a way of escape for each and every one of us, when we are faced with temptation.  We will not be able to stand before him and say "God!  It wasn't my fault!  The temptation was too great, and I couldn't resist (or, I couldn't bear it)!" 

Matthew 11: 29, and 1 Peter 5:7 tells us that the Lord wants us to come to him, for REST during the times of trial.  He will help us, He will strengthen us.  But if we expected him to immediately take every burden off of our shoulders the minute WE felt we couldn't handle it, we would never develop all the characteristics that trials develop in us!.....
 James 1:2-4 and Romans 5:3-5
“Consider it pure joy...whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Perseverance must finish its work so that you will be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
“We also rejoice in our suffering because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character, character, hope.  And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us.”
  

And then, the ultimate reward -James 1:2 ...."“Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.”

Friday, July 20, 2012

Joel Osteen and the Mormon Church

by Pastor William Shifflett 

www.reasoningtreechurch.org

If you’re an Osteen fan please don’t read these words in a defensive posture or you will certainly miss the point. I’m not out to be overly critical of the man or his style of motivational speaking but as a shepherd I am supposed to warn the sheep and a recent event makes me more mindful of that responsibility and of the need to make some comments about Mr. Osteen.
My wife and I were watching a video about the marks of a cult which included a clip from Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace that was recorded in late  2007 as the presidential candidates were vying for the attention of the American public. Joel Osteen was the participant and he was asked by Chris Wallace whether he thought Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts and a practicing Mormon, was a Christian. Joel’s response was “In my mind yes, he believes in Jesus Christ.”
Now I don’t know Mitt Romney but I do know that if he is a good Mormon then he cannot be a Christian. Let me defend myself again by saying this is not an unfair criticism of Joel Osteen, it is a recognition of how little Joel really knows about Christian faith and worldviews. For those who might be equally confused here are a few reminders of what Mormons believe.
  • The Bible is only God’s Word if it is correctly translated, which means
    the way they say it should be translated. Anything which contradicts
    Mormonism is of course in their view wrong.
  • Because the Bible is filled with error the gospel has been perverted and
    this is why Joseph Smith was given the Restoration of the Everlasting
    Gospel.
  • Mormon doctrine says that Jesus and Satan are spirit brothers of God.
  • Mormons believe The Father, Son and Holy Ghost are three separate and
    distinct gods. Thus they believe in polytheism, i.e. many gods.
  • Mormons believe in eternal progression that men can and will become gods
    themselves. God the Father was once a man, he has a physical body as does
    his wife. Jesus was the offspring of physical union between God and Mary.
  • Jesus’s death on the cross provides resurrection but not atonement for
    all sins. This must be done by works.
Does Mitt Romney believe in Jesus Christ? Certainly. But if he is a good Mormon it isn’t the Jesus of the Bible. Joel Osteen’s comments reveal his ignorance of Bible truth and provides but one more reason for discerning Christians to turn him off.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Money Transfer!!!

"Does the Bible teach the transfer of wealth from the wicked to the righteous?"

by:  Pastor William Shifflett
www.Swordpoints.org

This false but extremely popular teaching has absolutely no basis in Scripture. You may not know that in the New King James version the word transfer appears only in 2ND Samuel 3:10 in reference to the people giving the Kingdom of Saul to David. The word transferred appears only in 1ST Corinthians 4:6 where Paul is drawing an illustration between himself and Apollos. I have heard more than one teacher of this view say that “God says he is going to transfer the wealth of the wicked to the righteous” but obviously He must be using a different word. One of the key verses used in support of this doctrine comes from Proverbs 13:22 which says, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children, But the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.” From this verse with a few other unrelated verses tossed in proponents argue that God is going to give the church this wealth in the last days. What can we say in response?

First consider the similarity between what this verse says and how Jesus approaches the concept of giving. Jesus says “lay up treasure for yourselves in heaven.” When we give we are storing up riches in heaven. But we won’t have access to those riches until we actually get to heaven. The wicked on the other hand are not setting aside for eternity and that is the contrast we should draw. In Luke 12 Jesus shares a parable that conveys this same idea. Those who are laying up treasure in heaven will benefit in the end. Those who are not will see all they have done pass out of their hands.

“Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: "The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, 'What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?' So he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry." ' But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?' So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God." Luke 12:16-22

The teaching rises from a fundamental flaw that argues that ALL Christians should be rich. It fails to take several other factors into consideration. First wealth is relative. Bill Gates is wealthy to me, but to a Haitian who makes about $90 per year I am Bill Gates. Second it fails to consider that only in America and other developed countries can the wealth we enjoy even be contemplated. The average daily wage on planet earth is $2.

Third and most serious is the absolute mishandling of Scripture to support the position. Larry Huch uses a passage of Scripture from James 5 to validate the claim that ALL Christians should be (not could be which I agree with wholeheartedly), should be rich. Yet James 2:5 says that God chose the poor to be rich in faith (not wealth). Jesus rebukes the Laodicean church which had come to such a place of financial strength that they lost the sense of their need for God. (Revelation 3.)

Finally Larry Huch himself says that this so called transfer of wealth happens when the Lord returns and not before. In speaking of the James 5 passage Huch says;
“Now it is extremely important that you understand what God is saying here, because this is the key to the end-time transfer of wealth. ‘The cries of the reapers [workers/laborers] have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.’ I think many times people mistakenly read this ‘The Lord of the Sabbath’ But the word is Sabaoth which means ‘leader of a great army or mass. In the very last days when the Lord comes for His glorious bride, who will be without spot or blemish, there will be no poverty or sickness. We will cry out to the Master Avenger, and He will take the wealth from the wicked, those who have kept it back wages by fraud, and put it into the hands of the righteous.” ( 10 Curses that Block the Blessing p.98 Bold emphasis mine)

I hope that you can see the contradiction. The whole purpose of Huch’s book is breaking curses including the one that is preventing your financial wealth. Yet in trying to bring this liberty he says it doesn’t happen until Jesus comes.

I could go on but not wishing to be redundant I will conclude with just one more striking question. If the prosperity teachers believe God is going to take the wealth of the wicked and give it to the righteous why do they keep asking the righteous for money????

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

WHOSE Conspiracy???

After much thought, I have come to a conclusion: I believe that one of satan's most powerful weapons today is conspiracy theories!  If you read enough of them, you will start to believe them- and the problem is, they all say something a little different!  They are one of the enemy's number one sources of CONFUSION. His favorite battle field is the human mind. Fear, paranoia, and (extreme) suspicion are very effective tools in his hand, and can make a person crazy~ don't fall into his trap! 
The Bible says "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee" Isaiah 26:3
There's no harm in being alert, being informed.  In fact, the Bible also admonishes us to do that, all through the Gospels, Jesus warned us to WATCH, to BE AWARE, and Paul in his letters warned us to BE SOBER and VIGILANT..... there is a major difference however, in being "on our guard" and being a nervous paranoid wreck!  Think about a soldier- they MUST keep their wits about them in the heat of battle- if they fall apart and get hysterical, they are most assuredly a sitting duck for the enemy!  
I realize that we live in an evil world, and that wicked minded men are everywhere, especially within the circles of high authority and power positions.  I am sure that there is a LOT that goes on behind closed doors that we, the general public, do not know about- that's probably a good thing actually.  
It is easy to get caught up in searching out these stories and reports of intrigue, mystery, scandal, and top secret activities- the human mind is naturally curious of what is hidden.  But we are instructed by the word of God to not waste our time, because these are evil days we live in (Eph 5:16)  God wants us to be good stewards, of everything he's blessed us with, and that includes our time.  We can get so involved in this pursuit, we can easily start to neglect the whole purpose of our redemption- the rescuing of other lost souls in the grip of the enemy!  Also, we can neglect GOD, and communion with him- why he created us to begin with.  
These last days ARE evil, and they can be terrifying at times.  The Bible says in Luke 21:26 "Men’s hearts will fail them for fear and for looking upon those things which are coming on the earth; for the powers of heaven shall be shaken."...... but 2 Timothy 1:7 says  "God has not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, of love, and of a sound mind".  It's high time that God's people realize who they belong to.... and discover, and LIVE DAILY in the 91st Psalm!
I'm reminded of a little chorus we used to sing:  Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.
Philipians 4:8 - "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."

What soes the Bible say about an out of body experience / astral projection"

"What does the Bible say about an out of body experience / astral projection?"
www.gotquestions.com
Information about the "out-of-body” experience is both vast and subjective. According to Wikipedia, one out of ten people claims to have had an out-of-body experience (OBE), and there are many different types of the experiences claimed. They range from involuntary out-of-body experiences or near-death experiences that happen after or during a trauma or accident, to what is called “astral projection" in which a person voluntarily tries to leave his/her body behind and ascend to a spiritual plane where he/she believes he/she will find truth and clarity.

A few famous Christians have had what might be called, in today’s world, an out-of-body experience, most notably the Apostle Paul. He says in 2 Corinthians 12:1-4, "I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows—was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell." In the verses preceding this passage, Paul lists his "boasts" or the things that, if he were counting on works and good deeds to secure his salvation, would get him into heaven. Though he seems to be referring to a third party, scholars agree that he is speaking of himself in the third person. Therefore, he is including this apparent out-of-body experience in his list of boasts. The point he is making is that any revelation that comes from outside the Bible (extra-biblical revelation) is not a reliable source, and as Paul says, "There is nothing to be gained by it." This does not mean that his out-of-body experience wasn't real, only that he is not relying on it to give him truth or really to benefit himself or other people in any way.

An involuntary out-of-body experience or a near-death experience, like the Apostle Paul's, should be treated in the same way as a dream in the life of a Christian—an unexplained phenomenon that may make a good story, but does not give us truth. The only place we find absolute truth is in the Word of God. All other sources are merely subjective human accounts or interpretations based on what we can discover with our finite minds. The book of Revelation, or John's vision, is an exception to this, as are the prophecies or visions of the Old Testament prophets. In each of those cases, the prophets were told that this was a revelation from the Lord, and they should share what they had seen because it was directly from the mouth of God.

A voluntary out-of-body experience, or an “astral projection,” is a different story. A person trying to achieve an out-of-body experience in order to connect with spirits or the spirit world is practicing the occult. There are two forms of this. The first is called the “phasing” model, in which the person tries to find new spiritual truth by accessing a part of the mind that is "shut off" during everyday life. This practice is connected to Buddhism or postmodernism and the belief that enlightenment is achieved from looking within oneself. The other form, called the “mystical” model, is when the person tries to exit the body entirely, his/her spirit traveling to another plane that is not connected to the physical world at all.

The Bible explicitly warns against occult practice, or sorcery, in Galatians 5:19-20, saying that those who practice it will not inherit God's kingdom. God's commands are always for our good, and He commands us to stay far away from occult practices because there is great potential, when trying to access the spiritual world, of opening oneself up to demons who can tell us lies about God and confuse our minds. In Job 4:12-21, Eliphaz describes being visited by a lying spirit in a vision that tells him God does not regard humans and that He doesn't care for us, which is false! The phasing model is also futile, according to Scripture. Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it?" and 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 says, "When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power." It is futile to search for infinite wisdom inside the finite mind of man.

One concrete example of this comes from the popular book 90 Minutes in Heaven by Pastor Don Piper. Piper describes what is, in essence, an out-of-body experience he had after a severe car accident, during which he believes he died and went to heaven for ninety minutes. Whether or not Piper did actually see heaven or spend time there is debatable, and in the end nobody but God knows. However, there is a serious problem, theologically speaking, with the conclusion Pastor Piper draws from his experience. He tells the reader that, now that he has "been to heaven," he can speak comfort to grieving people at funerals "with more authority" than he could previously. Piper's motives are correct: he wants to give people hope. However, it is dead wrong to say that his own subjective experience will give him more authority to administer the hope of heaven than the perfect truth of Scripture would do.

In conclusion, whatever sort of out-of-body experience we are talking about, the main point to remember is that an out-of-body experience will give us neither truth nor knowledge. If an involuntary out-of-body experience occurs in the life of a Christian, the best approach would be to consider it in the same category as a dream—interesting, perhaps, but not a source of truth. Christians are to find truth only in the words of God, as Jesus prays in John 17:17, "Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth."

Recommended Resource: The Truth Behind Ghosts, Mediums, and Psychic Phenomena by Ron Rhodes.

"What does the Bible say about channeling?"

"What does the Bible say about channeling?"                                             www.gotquestions.org

The Bible is explicitly clear in its handling of channeling and contacting the dead. Scripture has a well-documented view of the practice of mediums, channeling, and fortune-telling. Leviticus 19:31 states: “Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them…”. Leviticus 20:6 says: “I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people.” Deuteronomy 18:12 says that consulting mediums or channeling the dead is “detestable.” Clearly, God sees these practices as sinful and completely without benefit.

Saul, a powerful king of Israel, finally reached the end of his tragic fall away from God when he involved himself in channeling. Saul chose to seek answers from a medium when God didn’t provide him the answers he wanted. In 1 Samuel 28:6-20, Saul asks a psychic to summon the spirit of the prophet Samuel. His grave error is mentioned later in Chronicles 10:13-14, which emphasizes that Saul’s involvement in it was wrong: “he [Saul] was unfaithful to the Lord, he did not keep the word of the Lord, and even consulted a medium for guidance, and did not inquire of the Lord…”

As Christians, we ought to seek God’s answers to our questions. Praying or “channeling” any other being is idolatry. Praying to any dead person, including the Apostles, Mary, and so forth, is not so very different that holding a séance and asking a dead relative to help us. Most so-called mediums are actually frauds who use memory tricks, planted accomplices, and special effects to fool people. Those that are not frauds are cooperating with dangerous spiritual beings. Satan’s henchmen are adept at appearing as helpful spirits, making it easy for them to confuse and corrupt people who open themselves up through channeling.

Recommended Resource: Jesus Among Other gods by Ravi Zacharias.