A Closer Look at the Teachings of Joyce Meyer by Ken Jacobson

INTRODUCTION

A neighbor of mine mentioned the famous televangelist Joyce Meyer to me one day and suggested that I read one of Meyer’s books. So I read the one she had just read: Managing Your Emotions: Instead of Your Emotions Managing You, published in 2002, a book that is representative of the “self-help” books Meyer sells by the millions.

Early in her book Meyer warns;

“There is a lot of spiritual ‘junk’ being offered today, and some of it sounds so good and feels so right. Make sure what you are following is in line with the Word of God and is initiated by His Holy Spirit.” p 81

Are Joyce Meyer’s teachings “in line with the Word of God”?

Let’s take a look…

Chapter 1

SAVED BY FABULOUSNESS

Meyer sets the tone early in her book by making it clear just where she stands in relation to her readers: “My husband and I have a fabulous life” she writes on page 59, “Many times things are so wonderful for us I feel like a fairy princess.” “Here I am traveling all over the world,” she continues, “people are coming to hear me speak, I’m on radio and television, and God is opening doors to me everywhere I go – I am so blessed!”

And her readers? Meyer, equating herself with Abraham, goes on to tell her readers, “God will bless you too – if you will walk in His ways and trust him to be your recompense, your very great reward, your vindicator.”

“Each of us,” she explains, “can be as blessed as Abraham was, if we will be as faithful and obedient as he was.”

Meyer’s book is chocked full of these “if”s, hurdles her followers must jump before they can hope to approach her “fabulous life”: “If we are willing to control our emotions, God will bless us.” “…if we are being obedient to the Word and will of God and are being led by His Holy Spirit, we have nothing to fear from our enemies.” “If we do things God’s way, we will experience God’s victory.” “Unless we are obedient to God’s Word, the Word will have no effect on us.”

Her list of “ifs” and “unless we”s is almost endless, and the message is clear enough: Meyer is so “blessed” because she, like Abraham, is “faithful and obedient.” You’re not there yet.

The enormity of Meyer’s error here is hard to over-emphasize.

Meyer explains that she is “so blessed” in the context of Genesis 15, where God says to Abraham, “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, your very great reward.” Meyer continues, “In this passage we see that the Lord came to Abraham and promised that if he would be faithful and obedient to Him, he Himself would be his great recompense and reward.”

To start, Meyer ignores the simple fact that in the story of Abraham, there are no “ifs”. Nothing that God promises to Abraham is conditional on Abraham’s behavior, all is an unearned gift from God’s grace. Yet Meyer asserts, “God told Abraham that if he would obey Him, God would bless those who blessed him and curse those who cursed him.” It actually says nothing of the kind. It simply says “Go” … “and I will make of you a great nation. … I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse.” There is no “if”. When God says to Abraham “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great,” there is no “if you will walk in His ways” as Meyer claims –there is no “if” at all. Meyer has misrepresented what the story actually says, rejecting God’s grace and replacing it with her own conditionalities, while presenting herself in her book as admirably fulfilling them.

To the followers of televangelists, who have been taught a perverted concept of faith, this may seem insignificant, but it represents the difference between the useless self-righteousness that Meyer teaches and the righteousness that comes by faith in Christ that the Bible teaches.

In the fourth chapter of Romans, Paul examines the same story of Abraham that Meyer discusses above. His conclusion is simply the opposite of Meyer’s.

It’s important to read Paul’s words in Romans closely, in their context:

“What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. So also David speaks of the blessedness of those to whom God reckons righteousness irrespective of works:

‘Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered;

blessed is the one against whom the Lord will not reckon sin.’” Romans 4: 1-6

It’s not because Abraham was “faithful and obedient” and “walked in His ways” that he was “blessed”, as Meyer insists –it was because of Abraham’s faith in God. But Meyer apparently wants none of this for herself or her followers. She makes it clear that she has earned her “blessed” life through her own actions, instigated by her will, not by faith in God. “It takes a constant act of the will to choose to do things God’s way,” Meyer asserts.

“All we have to do today,” Meyer breezily states on p 53, “is what Moses had to do -obey.” Her ignorance of the story of Moses is telling –Moses was denied entrance into the promised land because he disobeyed God, yet Meyer presents herself as doing what even Moses could not and teaches her followers that they can do the same if they just try hard enough, like she, supposedly, does.

But Moses followed God by his faith and the reward he was looking for was the same as Abraham’s -not money, power or a “fabulous life” like Meyer’s, all of which he gladly rejected, but God himself.

“By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.” Hebrews 11:24-26

Meyer’s disdain for the biblical principal of salvation by faith is clear.

Her attitude toward her own followers is equally clear; “To receive from God what he has promised us in His Word,” she writes on p 54, “we must obey the Word. ‘Yes’, you may say, ‘but I have been doing the Word for a long time and I still don’t have the victory!’

Then do it some more.”

The apostle Paul teaches the opposite, again from the fourth chapter of Romans;

“Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham.” Romans 4:16

From her book it’s apparent that Meyer neither knows nor teaches this faith.

Salvation by faith is an essential doctrine of Christian belief. It means that our reconciliation with God and the salvation that comes from it is not brought about by our own actions but by putting our faith instead in Christ’s –specifically his self-sacrificing atonement for the sins of the world on the Cross. It’s “by his stripes we are healed” and it’s by giving up faith in our own actions for faith in His completed work that we receive that healing.

“For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith.” Phil 3:9

“By grace are you saved, through faith; and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God –not by works, so that no one can boast.” Eph 2:8

And since Meyer doesn’t grasp this basic truth, she boasts plenty;

“Do you want to continually bruise Satan’s head, as I am doing in my life and ministry?” asks Meyer later in the book (p172). You’re not doing it, it is assumed, but she, of course, is. “God fills every room in my heart, so that I am filled with His light.” “I walk in light and peace and joy,” Meyer continues (p82). “You can say the same thing if…” –yet another in her endless stream of “ifs” –“if you will open your heart to God and allow Him to fill every part of you with His life-giving Spirit.” Meyer paints the picture; “every part” of her is filled with God’s “life-giving Spirit” and since you aren’t there yet, you must follow her advice to get there. This is the underlying theme of Meyer’s books, repeated over and over again –she’s got it, you don’t, she’s there, you’re not. And of course, you can’t just “open your heart” and receive God’s spirit as a gift from God’s grace –that would be too easy. Her followers must first do everything Meyer tells them to so they can “sooner or later” get there; “… if you will stay on that narrow path and leave all your excess baggage behind, sooner or later you will find the peace, joy and fulfillment you seek.” (p 63)

Jesus, fortunately, puts no such hurdles in the way of His followers;

“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” John 7:37

Early in her book (p66) Meyer states flatly, “I firmly believe that no person will ever walk in God’s will and ultimately in victory if…” –still another of Meyer’s “if”s –“if he takes counsel with his emotions.”

But according to the Bible, “the victory” is not, as Meyer constantly insists, the result of our actions, whether “controlling our emotions” or “walking in God’s will” –it’s our faith;

“For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.” 1 John 5:4

At one point Meyer writes: “I needed to know that God loved me unconditionally and His love was not something I could buy with works or good behavior. (p44)” How does she go about this? By accepting Christ’s death on the cross as the proof of God’s love? “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us,” says 1 John 3:16. Of course not –it’s not in what Jesus did that Meyer puts her faith but in her own efforts: “Through the process of continual study and meditation in this area, I became rooted and grounded in God’s love as the Apostle Paul encourages us to do in Ephesians 3.”

Unsurprisingly, that’s not at all what Paul says. It’s not “continual study and meditation”, or any work on our part, that grounds us in love, but faith;

“I pray that he would give you, accord­ing to his glorious riches, strength in your inner being and power through his Spirit, and that the Messiah would make his home in your hearts through faith. Then, having been rooted and grounded in love, you will be able to understand, along with all the saints, what is wide, long, high, and deep— that is, you will know the love of the Messiah, which transcends knowledge, and will be filled with all the fullness of God.” Eph 3:16-19

It’s apparent that Meyer rejects faith because faith means abandoning the will, what Nietzsche called “the will to power”, the driving force behind Meyer’s ideology. An essential point of Meyer’s book is her contention that “we fight against our emotions –by using our will to make a decision to follow God’s Word (p23).” Meyer is saved by her doing, her will, her effort, to her credit and glory, not Christ’s. She claims she is using her will to follow God’s will, but in doing so she makes it plain that she refuses to abandon her own will in order to believe in Christ –she’d rather believe in herself. There’s no more “worldly” philosophy than this; the rejection of faith in God, in Christ’s atoning death on the cross, for faith in one’s self. Meyer claims to be preaching the gospel but she is doing the opposite; rejecting faith in Christ and teaching others to do the same.

One only needs to read the titles of her recent books to perceive the spirit of the religion of the self-will that Meyer is preaching: “Never Give Up!: Relentless Determination to Overcome Life’s Challenges”, “Winning the Battle in Your Mind”, “Overcoming the Obstacles to Your Happiness”, “21 Ways to Conquer Anxiety, Fear, and Discontentment”, “Look Great Feel Great”, “Overcoming Your Need to Please Everyone.” The message is repeated over and over again; it’s all about one’s self and one’s efforts –“conquering”, “overcoming”, “winning” –not about giving up on one’s self-will and instead putting one’s faith in Christ, who by His efforts conquered death, overcame the world and purchased eternal life for all with the sacrifice of his own life.

“This is the work of God, to believe in the one whom he has sent.” John 6:29

That one is Jesus, not Joyce.

Chapter 2

BLESSED BY MAMMON

“Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed.” -Jesus

Meyer often boasts in her book of her “blessedness”, but just what does Meyer consider “blessedness”? Is it faith or the righteousness that comes by faith, or the forgiveness of all our sins, or knowing God in Christ, or loving God and others? Unfortunately, none of those are a priority in Meyer’s book. It’s money. When Meyer was questioned by a local newspaper about her $20 million office complex, full of millions of dollars worth of antique furniture, the $10 million private jet, the $4 million family “compound”, the half million dollar vacation home and the fleet of personal cars worth hundreds of thousands, all paid for by her “ministry”, her response was curt and unequivocal: “there’s no need for us to apologize for being blessed.”

There is a serious problem with Meyer calling herself “blessed” due to her fabulous wealth. It’s not just the fact that Meyer claims her “blessedness” is somehow earned by her supposed obedience, as we saw in the previous chapter. The problem is that it completely contradicts the teachings and spirit of Christ on the subject of just who is and who isn’t “blessed”;

“Blessed are you who are poor,

for yours is the kingdom of God.

But woe to you who are rich,

for you have already received your comfort.” Luke 6: 20, 24

Jesus calls the poor “blessed” and denounces the rich? Meyer is either ignorant of or ignoring Christ’s clear teaching.

By denouncing the rich, Jesus was speaking entirely within the biblical tradition.

“Why should I fear in times of trouble,

when the iniquity of my persecutors surrounds me,

men who trust in their wealth

and boast of the abundance of their riches?” Psalms 49: 5

“Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches.” Ps 73:12

“Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.” Proverbs 30:8

What both Jesus and the Psalmist call “daily bread” is clearly not enough for Meyer, to put it mildly.

In the book, Meyer talks at length (p135-136) about a particular solid gold watch she coveted, but had postponed buying while she considered a less expensive, but merely gold-plated, version. When her husband Dave unexpectedly gifted her the solid gold watch, along with an expensive suit and gold ring to match, Meyer exults, “I thanked the Lord that I had had the sense to let Him work out His plan for me”, otherwise “… I would have ended up with a cheap watch that I would not have been happy with very long.”

The “cheap”, gold-plated version, by the way, cost $800.

Meyer, who boasted in the book “I am filled with peace and joy” makes it very clear where her joy comes from; “when Dave presented me with that 14-karat gold watch I had wanted so badly, I was filled with joy.” (p135)

“Joy” is hardly the emotion the Bible teaches is in order here;

“Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. … Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire.” James 5:3

Meyer goes on in her book about purchasing her new house, apparently the multimillion dollar family compound mentioned earlier, paid for, like everything else, by Joyce Meyer Ministries. “I knew the house was a gift from the Lord” she writes on p 137, describing it as “a good financial investment for us”. Ever the example to her readers of “Managing Your Emotions” Meyer explains how she didn’t get overly excited about it, as she might have in the past. Instead she was “filled with calm delight”. Why? Because by being too excited “sometimes we take away the joy and blessedness that should exist between us and the Lord when He does something special for us.”

This, according to Meyer, is where she finds her “joy and blessedness”, not in Christ and his atonement for her sins but in gold and real estate.

After washing his disciple’s feet, the work normally of the lowest servant, Jesus put an “if” before his disciples and pronounced a blessing if they do it;

“For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” John 13:17

Here’s a promise of a blessing Meyer is not taking up. Meyer knows these things, but doing them she isn’t.

Meyer has a mansion and a $500,000 summer home. Jesus was homeless. Meyer has a private jet and a fleet of luxury cars. Jesus had a borrowed donkey. Jesus’ example was one of utter humiliation, of being what Meyer mocks as “pitiful not powerful”, of washing his disciples feet, as if he were the lowest kind of slave, and of giving up everything, including his life, for others. Meyer’s example is one of exalting herself over others, of power and fame, of gaining millions of dollars in property, cars, jewelry, clothes and more from her “ministry” –all paid for by her followers, who gain nothing in return but the destructive lies that Meyer is selling them.

The contrast could not be more stark and Jesus’ warning above to “be on guard against all forms of greed” could not be more applicable.

“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him. And He [i.e. Jesus] said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.” Luke 16:13

While the televangelists rail against diversions like abortion and homosexuals, they greedily contaminate themselves with the one thing that Jesus describes as detestable: the “unrighteous Mammon”, –money. And, like Meyer, they equate that money with “blessedness”. Could Meyer, who constantly sets herself up as the example, possibly be more unlike Christ’s example? Could she be more out of line with the Word of God?

The “prosperity gospel” that Meyer preaches convinces her followers not only that Meyer is so much more “blessed” than they are due to her millions, but that if they don’t have money themselves they are somehow “cursed”. The Bible, fortunately, teaches the opposite.

A faithful man will be richly blessed, but one eager to get rich will not go unpunished. Proverbs 28:20

Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? … Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? James 2:5-7

Paul warned in First Timothy against those who teach such doctrines, who are people “…of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.” He continues;

People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. 1 Tim 6:5, 8-10

Unlike Meyer, the apostle Paul knew what true “blessedness” was -not gaining anything in this world, but gladly giving up everything to get the “exceeding great reward” of Christ and the righteousness that comes by faith in Him:

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. Phil 3:8-9

And the Christians of the Bible found their joy, not in gold, fame and real estate as Meyer does, but in the very loss of those things for the sake of Christ, because they were looking ahead to the same “recompense”, the “very great reward” that Abraham and Moses looked for;

“Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering… You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.” Hebrews 10: 32, 34-35

The reward that true believers look for is not in this world but in the next, as the Bible teaches over and over:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matt 6: 19-21

“All these people died having faith. They did not receive the things that were promised, yet they saw them in the distant future and welcomed them, acknowledging that they were strangers and foreigners on earth. …they were longing for a better country, that is, a heavenly one. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, because he has prepared a city for them.” Hebrews 11: 13-16

But Joyce Meyer already has her “reward”, and she has made it clear that it is squarely in this world, not in the next; “If you stay in your faith you are going to get paid,” Meyer asserts. “I’m living now in my reward.”

The antidote to Meyer’s corrupt teaching is, fortunately, simple:

“The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’ So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” Galatians 3:8

It’s Christ by whom the world is “blessed by God”, by faith, not money.

Chapter 3

I LOVE ME THIS I KNOW, JOYCE MEYER TELLS ME SO

Meyer admits that she wasn’t always the example that she holds herself up to be in her book. She describes her earlier life:

“I was a controller and manipulator. I was out of control emotionally. I was depressed. I had mood swings. I had a bad attitude, a horrible self-image, and low self-esteem. I didn’t like myself or anybody else.” p 191

How did Meyer find deliverance from this fallen state? Does she seek repentance and God’s healing grace and forgiveness? Of course not, repentance would be “pitiful and not powerful”. Meyer finds her solution not in the Word, but, as we shall see, in the principles of the self-help gurus:

“Finally I had to learn to just look myself in the mirror and say, “Joyce, I love you just the way you are, and I am going to get along with you. I am not going to be against you anymore.”p 210

In her book, Meyer’s transformation supposedly comes, not by repenting of her behavior and putting her faith in Christ and his atonement for the world’s sins, but, as always, by her own effort: in this case by loving herself. And for those who aren’t happy with their own behavior, Meyer admonishes them not to look to Christ for their salvation but at themselves in the mirror;

“Look at yourself in the mirror every morning and say, ‘I like you. You are a child of God. You are full of the Holy Spirit. You are capable. You have gifts and talents. You are a neat person –and I like you.’ If you do that and really believe it, it will work wonders in overcoming a shame-based nature. ” p 209

Meyer claims that her basis for this teaching is in the gospels, when someone asked Jesus;

Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Matt 22:36

About this, Meyer writes;

“He must have meant that it’s as important to love ourselves as it is to love others. But it is not enough to love ourselves, we must also like ourselves… If you don’t like you, you are going to have a hard time liking anyone else.” p 206-7

But Meyer, as she regularly does, is reading into the biblical text something that is simply not there. She doesn’t explain how it could be semantically possible to simultaneously love one’s self and not “like” one’s self. She also never explains why her word should take precedence over the words of Christ, who makes no such differentiation. She simply expects it. She is, after all, Joyce Meyer and Jesus in Meyer’s book is, well, just Jesus –little more than her personal spiritual assistant, there to get her whatever she wants.

Of course the Word nowhere teaches that we are to love ourselves or that doing so will “work wonders” or that not doing so will keep us from loving others. It teaches instead that we should put our faith in God, who alone has the power to “work wonders”. It teaches we should first love God no matter how we feel about ourselves. And it teaches;

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34

This is Christ’s “new” commandment, different from Moses’ –that we love others not as we selfishly love ourselves but as Christ selflessly loved us, a love that cost him his very life, the greatest love of all.

The “wonder working” power of self love, as Meyer describes it, is a concept that comes, not from the Word, but directly from the stack of writings by self-help gurus from which Meyer has derived many of the underlying principles of her teachings.

“If there is a panacea or cure-all to life, it is self-love,” wrote Paul Solomon, famed “psychic”, “seer” and channeler of the “universal mind”, fifteen years before Meyer’s book.

The end notes of Debbie Ford’s book, The Secret of the Shadow, which came out three years before Meyer’s, claims that Ford “has opened the hearts of thousands, bringing them the gift of self-love and emotional freedom.” Ford’s message, like Meyer’s, is that rather than rejecting and repenting of our sins, we should instead “embrace all of who we are, the good, the bad, dark and light.” “I think I would tell everybody that you have the right to love all of who you are,” writes Ford. “That’s when we return to wholeness.” Ford claims inspiration from Lazaris, a “spiritual teacher” “channeled” by Jack Purcel , the poet Rumi (“become the idol of yourself”), and New Spirituality advocate Neale Donald Walsch.

Pop psychologist and regular Oprah guest John Bradshaw, famous for popularizing the “inner child” concept, wrote in his best-selling 1988 book, Healing The Shame That Binds You, “Total self-love and acceptance is the only foundation for happiness and the love of others.” Though she never mentions or acknowledges him, Meyer lifts many of her most appallingly unbiblical teachings directly from Bradshaw, particularly in her “Rooted in Shame” chapter, and her final chapter “Restoring the Inner Child”.

In his 1994 best seller, The Six Pillars of Self Esteem, the hugely influential pop psychologist, Nathaniel Branden explained “People who do not experience self-love have little or no capacity to love others.” Branden is famous as the father of the “self esteem” movement, for his adulterous affair with Ayn Rand, and also for his atheism; “Anyone who engages in the practice of psychotherapy,” he wrote, “confronts every day the devastation wrought by the teachings of religion.” Meyer passes on Branden’s popular theories about the importance of self-esteem (which have since been disproven) as gospel truth.

Melanie Beattie wrote about “that sacred space we call self-love. It is a portal and a gateway. How we find it is a mystery; so is its power to get us to the next place.” Beattie’s book was called Stop being mean to yourself: a story about finding the true meaning of self-love and came out in 1998, four years before Meyer’s book. Beattie is also the author of the 1986 best seller Codependent No More, a book whose principles Meyer draws from liberally, often lifting entire sentences almost verbatim. Beattie more than once acknowledges her debt to Branden in her book. Meyer never acknowledges anyone.

Meyer’s “look at yourself in the mirror” prescription is from deeper in the self-help grab bag. Norman Vincent Peale prescribed it decades ago in his 1952 book The Power of Positive Thinking, and it’s been repeated in the self help books constantly since. “Look at yourself in the mirror every morning,” he wrote, “and say ‘I am a success.’ “ Although Peale’s goal is “success”, Meyer’s is something different: salvation from her “shame-based nature”, not by faith in what Christ did but by faith in what you do –verbally declaring your own self-love.

This is Meyer’s procedure throughout her book; she takes the principles of the best-selling pop psychologists and self-help gurus, twists and distorts Bible verses to fit them, throws in some pious platitudes, and magically transforms it all into a tax-exempt “christian ministry”. For every new fad in the self-help genre Meyer brings out a Jesussed-up version in response. But the foundation of Meyer’s religion, like that of the self-help writers, is built on the religion of the Self, not the religion of the Savior, a religion built on sand not on the Rock.

The apostle Paul warned;

“There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud...” 2 Timothy 3:1-2

And Meyer has perverted the teachings of Christ into just another tool to transform her followers into lovers of themselves too, just like Joyce.

Not surprisingly, after advocating in her book the supposed power of self-love based, falsely, on the command to “love your neighbor as yourself”, Meyer never goes on to bother with the “love God” and “love your neighbor” that Christ spoke of. It’s not the life of loving God and loving others that’s the goal in Meyer’s book, but a life of God loving me and I loving myself. It’s all about “me”. Meyer writes;

“Stop blaming yourself and feeling guilty, unworthy and unloved. Instead begin to say, ‘If God is for me, who can be against me? God loves me, and I love myself. Praise the Lord, I am free in Jesus’ name, amen.’ ” p 213

But we are not free in Christ because we declare we are, any more than we are lottery winners because we declare we are –it is not our words that free us but Christ, the Word incarnate Himself, who does;

“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” John 8:36

The freedom that Christ brings is the result not of our self love but of his selflessness;

“He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” 1 Peter 2.24

This healing, the soul-healing result of mankind’s reconciliation with God, was accomplished 2000 years ago by Christ’s atonement for our sins. And it is received by faith and not by our efforts, as the Bible teaches over and over but Meyer either doesn’t know or refuses to believe.

We can “stop blaming ourselves” when we believe that Christ took the blame for us. We can “stop feeling guilty” when we believe both that we are sinners in need of atonement and that Christ’s death atoned for all our sins. And we can know what love is, not when we love ourselves but when we accept the boundless love of Christ;

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” 1 John 3:16

“…whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Matt 20:26-28

This is the love of God that was revealed to the world in Christ –a love that inspires those who believe in Him to love, not themselves, but God and to serve, not themselves, but others.

http://joycevsjesus.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/a-closer-look-at-the-teachings-of-joyce-meyer-2/#comment-28

HAT/TIP to EndTimesPropheticWords

Testimony left at Pulpit Pimps here

Bill, you say that Joyce Meyer doesn’t run a cult, otherwise you wouldn’t be in it. Let me say that the people who are in cults think the same way! Nobody likes to think that they have been deceived,. They want to think they are smart enough to know better. I assure you that if Joyce Meyer teaches the prosperity gospel or that Jesus went to hell so you wouldn’t have to (and she does!), then she IS running a cult, and if you are supporting her, then YOU ARE in a cult and you don’t even know it!

What’s more, there is probably nothing anyone here can say to you that will convince you otherwise, and I for one will not attempt to do so. All anyone here can do for you is speak the truth. It’s up to God and you from there. If God can’t take some of what we say here and get it through to you, then you cannot be reached sir.

A few years ago, I supported Joyce Meyer with everything I had. I regarded her as a true, down to earth, sincere, and prosperous role model. I hung on every word that came out of her mouth as if they were the words of God straight to me. I never missed a show, and if I did, I watched her internet broadcasts. When she held her conferences in my area, I went to see her in person. I would do as she said to prove my commitment to God and take vacation days and drive 3 hours to Tulsa to see her preach at the ORU campus and drive 3 hours back home, justifying myself to God by reminding Him of these sacrifices.

Talking about sacrifice, not only did I give up a day’s pay to see her, but it was nothing for me to sacrifice $100 or more into the white buckets they’d pass around as offering plates, knowing all along that I’d have to sacrifice again when I didn’t have that money to pay a bill with! That, in addition to the hundreds of dollars I’d send her through the mail every month! In the typical Word of Faith fashion, I would then go to God in “prayer” and tell Him what He had to do (you [God] MUST keep your word; you MUST provide ‘pressed down, shaken-together’ etc; if I delight myself in you, you MUST give me the desire of my heart, ad nausea!).

Bill, that’s NOT praying! When a WoF preacher “prays” by saying “we bind you Satan, we come against all the powers of darkness, we rebuke all poverty and lack” etc, they are NOT praying to God! They are talking to the devil and speaking as if they were God Himself. It is NOT prayer. But I digress.

I absolutely LOVED Joyce Meyer! But God had other plans for me. I was DEEP into the Word of Faith . It was all I had ever known all my life. My grandmother latched onto the seed faith teachings of Oral Roberts back when it first came out. She taught my mother in the ways of the WoF, and my mother in turn taught us the same way!

I grew up thanking God for being numbered among those who knew the “truth!” Needless to say, I naturally equated the WoF to be the one and only WILL OF GOD, and anyone who believed otherwise was deceived and damned to hell! That being the case, I grew up feeling at one with all the T.V. ministers. I loved them ALL! As a young boy, I read Copeland’s “The Laws of Prosperity” and I was determined to make those laws work … after all they are LAWS and even God must abide by them!

But taking an honest look back over the past 30 years, I had to admit that they never worked for me. I grew up into my 40’s all along thinking there was something wrong with me. I would actually look at a mustard seed in the spice rack and wonder why my faith was so much smaller that that and didn’t work. Then I would get depressed because my faith was so much tinier than that mustard seed that God wouldn’t honor it.

I felt rejected by God. Sometimes that feeling of rejection made me angry at Him and there were times I actually told Him that he was a liar! That He WAS a respecter of persons; that He showed favoritism, and that He didn’t love me, even though I was doing everything I knew to do to keep with “His” teachings as I was taught them!

All that being said, let me say this: there was nothing wrong with my faith, so don’t even try to tell me “oh ye of little faith!” I’ve heard that all my life and now I know better. My faith was fine, but the problem was that my faith was in a LIE! The “god” I was mad at was NOT the God of the Bible! The “god” of the Word of Faith is a demon straight from HELL! I know that now, but therein lies the danger in Word of Faith teachings. The people in that CULT don’t even know who the TRUE God really is, and are damned as a result!

Back to Joyce Meyer. I supported her “ministry” with ALL of my substance, and I thought she was truly God speaking straight to me. But the more I gave to her, the poorer I got (the story of my life)! It wasn’t until I got down to where I was about to LOSE MY HOUSE the Lord began to act on the anguish inside me. I remember back in 2005, watching Joyce on T.V. One day she was talking about how she had brought her parents to St Louis and bought them a house close to her. She said “I was just in the mood to buy houses!” I almost screamed at her “why don’t you buy MINE for me?”

I pleaded with God to speak to her heart to send me a check and prevent the impending disaster facing me. Then I would know that God really heard me and loved me enough to finally do something after 30 years of giving!

But of course Joyce never did do that, and since I thought she was close to God and had his attentive ear, that it must be that God wanted me to suffer all the more! I couldn’t understand it. I had donated to her (God’s?) ministry, I helped her build her headquarters building and all the furnishings in it. According to her plea for funds back then, I was promised that I would “own” one square foot for each $100 I gave towards it (I gave $300, so I “owned” 3 square feet).

Had God forgotten that ????? Now I was in desperate need, had NOBODY to beg from like she did, and I felt God didn’t care. I told Him He was cruel and mean! But I still loved Him because even then, if I had given up on my ONLY hope, then I REALLY had no hope at all. Even then, I felt that my breakthrough might still come, so I’d pick myself up and apologize to God for my ill will towards Him.

Then one day, as I was watching Joyce on T.V. it seemed like literally “scales” fell from my eyes! Near the end of the show, as she was begging for donations, and her announcer came on talking about all her books that we could have for a “gift” of X-dollars, and then talked about “seeing Joyce in person” and hearing “Joyce preach the word as only she can do.” God Himself spoke to my spirit in that still small voice and told me “this isn’t about God, this is about JOYCE!” “Joyce” this, and “Joyce” that! And all the dollar signs on the T.V. screen seemed to “stick-out” like sore thumbs, and the whole thing smacked of one big long INFOMERCIAL about Joyce Meyer!!

That, my friend, was the beginning of my exodus from the Word of Faith! Each time I saw her show, it got even more disgusting to me … and I stopped giving to her. S L O W L Y, by putting a stop to the hemorrhage of money flowing out of my bank account to these people, I was able to recover somewhat, and I never did lose my house. But it was close. That, my friend was GOD showing me that He really did care about my financial well-being. He didn’t want my money!!!!! And not only did He NOT want my money, I was NOT cursed with a curse if I KEPT it !!!! That is freedom!

About the same time, I just happened to stumble upon this website, Pulpit-Pimps.org, and God has used this site TREMENDOUSLY to teach me the truth about where I had been all my life and that the Lord loved me enough to lead me out of it into the truth!

Unbeknownst to me, my mother, who had raised me in the WoF, had been led out of their heresy about a year before I had! She never told me though. I asked her why, and she said that I would have thought she was backslidden and lost in heresy forever. And she was right. Some other members of my extended family are not convinced, and there is a definite divide – but even that is mentioned in the Bible. That’s why I say that nothing any of us say will EVER convince you of the truth. You will just think that we are deceived and damned to hell. If God doesn’t get through to you, then YOU are not reachable. It’s as simple as that!

I know this is a LONG post, but before I stop there is some more I want to say about the Word of Faith.

The salvation of Jesus Christ is NOT about all the things that the Lord gives to His people! And people who seek the Lord for what He can give them are seeking Him for all the WRONG reasons! A person cannot receive the salvation of Christ unless first he realizes that he is a wretched sinner who deserves HELL, not all of the worldly stuff you WoF people clamor after! It’s not about getting all the STUFF. It’s about giving up their lives for HIM and becoming His slaves. Somehow you Word of Faith people have gotten that all backwards. You think salvation is about getting, and getting more It’s just STUFF, material worldly stuff, it’s CARNAL and ungodly! You think that all your STUFF is proof that you are blessed. There is one thing that is promised for sure to all true followers of Christ and that is PERSECUTION!

You Word of Faithers only think of earthly “blessings”. But God does not promise us the things of this world. Think about it What would it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your own SOUL? Copeland, Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, Paula White, all of those hellish creatures on TBN – I can’t even name all of the pulpit pimps on TV (and maybe even your pastor too by the way) all of them have their reward. They have their “Best Life Now” But they can’t take any of it with them where they go

What about later on? The Bible speaks of the rich man and Lazarus. That kind of reminds me of the relationship between all these RICH pastors and their pimped followers. I believe they will suffer the same fate!

God does promise us SPIRITUAL prosperity, but you Word of Faith people only think on things of this world. When people like you give expecting your 100-fold return, you are giving to GET !!!! But the true Jesus tells us to give, expecting NOTHING in return. Do any of you honestly do that? Neither are we supposed to give out of NECESSITY or of COMPULSION … tell THAT to all of the pimp preachers on TV who incessantly compel us to give to their ministries ad nausea! It’s WRONG! If any of them really believed what they “preach” then all they really have to do is give and expect their 100-fold return and leave their audiences ALONE! But they won’t ever do that, because they really don’t believe what they preach either. Otherwise they would practice what they preach. YOU are profitable to them, and they fear that if they don’t ask YOU for it, YOU won’t give it to them. YOU are their cash cow, not GOD.

I am not attacking you, so don’t even go there. I am speaking from a life of experience. As I said, I was all bound up and hog-tied in all that Word of Faith crap for almost 30 YEARS!!! I gave, and I gave. I did all of the right things according to our famous PIMPS! It was nothing for me to fork over almost everything I had … tithes and offerings above and beyond what was expected, because I BELIEVED what the pimps said. I thought that I was doing what GOD wanted, and I suffered the consequences of that for far too long.

Like Joyce Meyer always says “give until it hurts!” — “give SACRIFICIALLY!” My intentions were good. And I had faith. But my faith was in a LIE! I was sincere and honest, but I was sincerely and honestly WRONG. I think that the Lord really knew that, and finally got through to me to just STOP IT! Like, HELL-OOOOO! If this thing still doesn’t work after nearly 30 years, guess what – IT DOESN’T WORK!!

I see myself all over all of you defenders of these people. I was just like ALL of you. And a couple of years ago, I would have been standing right there by your side. That’s why I say that ONLY THE LORD will ever get through to you. Nobody could have EVER gotten through to me so I know that.

I guess you can tell I am just a little bit angry about this lie that is continuously propagated by the deluge of televangelists spewing this prosperity vomit into living rooms across this country and bringing millions to hell with them. But maybe somehow the Lord can use my experience to help lead someone else out of this DELUSION you call faith. It is another gospel, and the “Jesus” you think you worship will someday be crystal clear to you. I just hope that you find out who it really is before it’s too late. REALLY! The Bible is the truth, and it contains the way to the real Jesus. This Word of Faith gospel is pure MADNESS !!!!!

VISIT OUR

How does a good church become a cult? When does a pastor overstep his authority? How to recognize a toxic faith system that preys on emotionally dependent church members.

There is more than 100 Walter martin mp3 for download there.

Just right click and ‘save as”, then play in your media player.

Walter Martin - Errors of Positive Confession - 1 of 2.mp3

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Vatican says Benny Hinn and Paula White not Patrons of the Arts

When Benny Hinn made a statement to his followers in his August 5th broadcast that he had gone to Rome and had been made a Patron of the Arts it was inevitable someone would write the Vatican Museum program and ask.

Christian Research Services queried Fr. Mark Haydu, International Coordinator/Director of The Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums. His response:

To my knowledge, Paula White or Benny Hinn were not invited to the Vatican Museums in any official context, nor did we find anyone on our donors database of Patrons under those names. [Original on file with CRS]

Haydu told Christian Research Services that thousands of people visit the Vatican yearly and he’d only be aware of Patrons and visitors to the Museums.

Benny Hinn was the one who told people on camera that was the Vatican department he dealt with. The full story is here, including Hinn and White’s original statements July 24th about their trip to Rome. You can watch the broadcast of Hinn saying he was made a Patron of the Arts here. This is what he said:

The Vatican did invite me a few days ago. They made me a Patron of the Arts in the Vatican two weeks ago. And that’s a fact! A Patron of the Arts means you support the Vatican so they can maintain all the work of Michelangelo. I’m one of the guys now that supports what they do. And that is a fact. I was there, and we were taken around by a man named Wilhelm Kramer [or Cramer]. And they asked me, literally they said, “Do you know people that can help us financially?” I said, “Alright.”

Now here’s where I made my mistake: I let her [Paula White] come with me to Rome, so she can donate money. That was stupid on my part.

It’s possible paperwork of the bestowing of Patron of the Arts to Hinn and White hasn’t caught up to Haydu, a lot of things are possible. Given the date of the Hinn/White Rome visit is publicly known, checking the visit would not be difficult for officials running the Museums. Or a curious researcher. Or The National Enquirer. Paula White supposedly told her congregation in Florida she was heading off on vacation during that time. (the broadcast is not online) After telling her congregation she was on vacation White then said in her July statement she was in Rome on ministry business.  Her congregation found out about the Rome trip like everyone else from US tabloid. This is what she said in her public statement:

I publicly profess and forcefully renounce assertions that the recent trip to Italy to meet with Vatican officials suggests that the friendship is in any way improper or morally impure. We traveled independently to the region for respective ministry duties…

Since Hinn and White were ‘being made’ Patrons, they would have had to give the Vatican Museums money.
Donating would require real names or the name of their US ministries (donor money) and not the name David Solomon that Hinn supposedly used to check into the Rome hotel. It’s possible Hinn and White gave the Vatican a cash donation and phony names to become Patrons, anything is possible. But not probable.

If anything changes in this “I said/The Vatican said” discrepancy, I’ll post.

http://www.benedictionblogson.com/2010/08/14/vatican-says-benny-hinn-and-paula-white-not-patrons-of-the-arts/

Want to know how interpret the Bible Correctly?

Our groupblog author, Jeff Kluttz is an an excellent teacher. And he has things set up at his church to where he weekly records different teachings series and makes them available on his blog. Right now he is doing a series on The Gospel (can you imagine that,, a whole series on the blessed good news) and this teaching series on Interpreting The Bible which is essentially a free bible study method class. In the early 90′s I took a bible study method course at a local bible college and Jeffs teaching series is essentially the same thing.

I have enjoyed watching the series as Jeff releases a new video every week. As of the posting of this post, Jeff is up to week and video 8 and it looks like he will be doing several more weeks into this study. I have been waiting patently for him to finish so I could post them here and then I discovered a way I can go ahead and post them now. Instead of embeding the videos on this page, I will just give a link to the series page on ReturningKing.com. So far the series includes these videos with more to come.

• Interpreting the Bible Vlog Course Begins Today
• Intrepreting The Bible Pt. 2 – Linguistic Principle
• Intrepreting The Bible Pt. 3 – Historical/Cultural Principle
• Interpreting the Bible Pt. 4 – the Contextual Principle
• Bible Interpretation Pt. 05 – Contextual/Theological Principles
• Interpreting the Bible Pt. 6 – Resources
• Interpreting the Bible – Part 7 – The Golden Rule of Interpretation
• Interpreting the Bible – Part 8 – Applying The Golden Rule of Interpretation

Here is the link to THE VIDEO SERIES PAGE

After many of her family members joined World Changers Church International under the charismatic leadership of the Rev. Creflo A. Dollar Jr., Florence Duncan decided to give it a try. But what Duncan says she found was closer to a cult than to Christianity.

“It’s horrible, just absolutely horrible. My whole nuclear family is in this thing except me,” says Duncan, a devout Christian whose distress and exasperation over the situation is evident in her tone. “I’m the only odd man out.”

World Changers is one of the fastest-growing churches in the nation. Founded in an elementary school 11 years ago, the church is now forced to hire shuttle bus drivers and police officers to accommodate its Sunday services crowd. The church’s $7 million dome on Burdette Road in College Park is the largest church building in the Atlanta area.

Many of its 15,000 members, among them Duncan’s family, have been caught up in the promise of prosperity. And the promise of worldly riches says Duncan, a graduate of Atlanta Christian College who is working on her masters at Southern Christian University in Montgomery, Alabama, is “just Humanism dressed up in Christian clothes.”

The message of the “Prosperity Gospel,” which World Changers teaches, is simple: “You can be rich, healthy and trouble free. Jesus was rich and God wants you to be rich.” One look at the church’s facility, called the World Dome, is enough to convince you that it works — for somebody.

Sunday morning at the cavernous dome can be a moving experience. An army of ushers direct you to your seat in a state-of-the-art auditorium that is devoid of traditional church pews and instead, sports 8,000 plush theater-style seats. White collection buckets can be found alongside each aisle. The church’s bookstore is filled with books touting prosperity such as, “Confession Brings Possession,” and “How To Bring Home The Wealth.”

Of course, the prosperity message is not just limited to World Changers. Two of the movement’s elder leaders, Fred Price and Kenneth Copeland, can be viewed on a total 420 television stations worldwide and have published 67 books.

But some religious observers say the Prosperity Gospel is out of sync with the substance of Jesus’ teachings, which emphasizes selflessness and spiritual virtue.

J.R. Hudson was a member of World Changers for five years and graduated from their school of ministry. But his quest for true knowledge of the scriptures caused him to stray from the fold and persuaded him that the teachings were anti-scriptural.

Hudson contends that the Prosperity Gospel takes advantage of people who are not grounded in Biblical teachings. It tells them they can be wealthy and always healthy and never have problems.

But Hudson says the only one prospering is Dollar, who wears expensive suits, drives a Rolls Royce and owns his own Lear jet to whisk him across the country spreading his message of prosperity. According to Dollar’s teachings, if he didn’t look prosperous, how could he gain more followers?

Such thinking is one of the reasons both Duncan and Hudson call the movement a cult.

“The leader of a cult is generally someone very charismatic,” says Duncan. She characterizes him as charismatic, manipulative and with so much personality that his word carries more than the Bible’s — although members would deny that.

The other sticky issue is the enormous pressure the church places on members to tithe, or give ten percent of their earnings to the church. Unlike traditional churches, many of which also encourage tithing, World Changers goes further by tracking its members’ tithing records through membership numbers and computer records. Those who don’t tithe in accordance with the pledge signed during new member orientation are ostracized from the church’s ministries. You can attend the church, but you can’t participate in any of its official business.

Hudson says members are also taught that failure to tithe will result in the devil wrecking your car or something else terrible happening to you. Everything bad — and good — that happens in a believer’s life is attributed to whether or not the believer tithed properly.

The Rev. Marque Payne, author of “Tithing: The Truth About It,” has conducted Christian Finance conferences throughout the South and studied over 1,000 scriptures involving Christian finances. He says that what World Changers teaches is not what the Bible teaches.

“It is literally another gospel,” he writes. “The Bible makes it clear that you cannot serve two Gods — God and Mammon. Mammon being greed and the desire for materialistic things above everything else.”

Hudson describes Dollar as a very sincere, compassionate, strong-willed man who loves his family. “If you knew him you’d like him,” he says. “I don’t have anything bad that I can say about him personally…. He’s very sincere. He thinks he’s right. There’s a whole lot of people who think that but the thing is you can be sincere and be sincerely wrong.”

Hudson says that Dollar leads a very insulated life surrounded by what’s called Personal Pastor’s Assistants, or PPAs. In laymen’s terms that’s bodyguards. Those PPAs train both physically and technically in the tactics used by the Secret Service.

“People can’t just readily walk up and talk to him,” says Hudson. “Especially on his way to the pulpit no one is allowed to touch him because they might disturb the anointedness on his life. He’s supposedly so Godly he can’t be touched.”

Dollar also teaches that his word is beyond reproof. “They even use scripture to support that they shouldn’t be corrected in any way,” says Hudson.

Payne says that the notion that church leaders shouldn’t be questioned or corrected is one of the key characteristics of cults.

“The foundations of a cult are don’t question, don’t speak out of turn, don’t go study for yourself outside of the guidelines that they give you,” Payne says.

Duncan agrees that the followers are brainwashed by Dollar’s teachings.

“When someone does criticize them they come out strong against them calling them devils and the like,” says Hudson. “Word of Faith ministers are not going to respond to media or critics or anything like that. They’re pretty much focused in on their own little deal and their teachings.”

The Rev. T.A. Body of One Accord Community Church also hosts a daily radio talk show on WGUN which addresses the issues of false doctrine. He says that people call in by the thousands who have left the teachings of World Changers.

“I’ve asked him [Dollar] for a public debate but he won’t give it to me,” says Body. “I’ve asked him to even call into my show and correct me if I’m wrong. He hasn’t ever asked me to call him and correct him. Because I certainly would.”

Body says that Dollar constantly teaches his congregation that they can be just like him. “The person who works at McDonalds cannot expect to be the president of a bank by that message,” he says. “He lives in a very high lifestyle and he tells the members you can acquire this kind of lifestyle if you have faith in God.”

Hudson says the emperor has no clothes. “He’s riding to church in a Rolls Royce and flying a Lear jet across the country and here these people are still riding buses. They’re not getting any wealthier. Look in the parking lot. There’s too many beat up cars.”

“I thought it could work,” says Demetrius King a former member. “It sounds good and you would want it to work. It’s as simple as one, two three — tithe and you will prosper.” King’s financial situation didn’t get any better and he left the church disillusioned.

“It leaves a person spiritually bankrupt and empty trying to use formulas that do not work,” says Payne. “It leaves a person wondering in a daze and having to reassess their whole belief in what Christianity is.”

“World Changers teaches a theology and doctrine that people want to hear,” says Duncan. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to prosper, but to present that as the central core of the teachings of Christianity is a deception and lie. I’d say that they would have just about as much chance of gaining abundant prosperity by purchasing a lottery ticket.”

http://www.apologeticsindex.org/d11.html

STEPS: Your book on spiritual abuse was published almost a decade ago. But it’s still in print. I guess the problem hasn’t gone away yet?

Jeff: The response to the book has not really diminished that much. Usually a book will be out there for a couple of years and then go out of print. But people keep finding The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse as if it’s a new book. The stories I hear from people haven’t gotten any nicer over the last decade either. The wounds caused by spiritual abuse are still very deep. And to be honest, I don’t see that much improvement in the system overall. I think it’s pretty clear that spiritual abuse is not some kind of fad.

STEPS: Nor is it something that you and [coauthor] Dave Johnson invented, is it?

Jeff: Not at all. What we did was to stumble across some language that worked for people. It’s a language that matches the feelings and wounds that many people have experienced. We give people a way to talk about this kind of thing. But spiritual abuse is certainly nothing new. Spiritual abuse has been here since biblical times. We just came across a way of talking about it in our time, and put it into a package that made sense to a lot of people.

STEPS: Talk some more about spiritual abuse in the Bible. What did it look like then?

Jeff: It looked essentially the same then as it does now. Spiritual leaders exploited people for their own gain. Authority was misused in order to get things done in the name of God that weren’t really about God at all. Jeremiah talked about those who heal other people’s wounds superficially. Their real wounds were not dealt with; they were just glossed over for the sake of external appearances. That’s part of the dynamics of spiritual abuse. I think that God’s big gripe with the leaders of Israel, if you look at Ezekiel and Isaiah and Jeremiah, was that they were not using the authority they had been given for the benefit of the weak, for those who didn’t have a voice. They were using their authority for their own purposes and for the sake of human kingdoms. The result in people’s lives then was the same as now: spiritual exhaustion rooted in misconceptions about who God is, about what God wants from us and about God’s stance toward us.

The New Testament gives essentially the same picture. There aren’t a lot of times when Jesus is harsh; Jesus is not known for harshness. But about spiritual abuse he was very harsh. For example, in Matthew 23 he not only describes the dynamics that were going on between the Pharisees and the people, but he also warns people about the Pharisees. He urges them to stay away from the Pharisees. He calls the Pharisees names. He paints pictures about them. For example, he talks about the Pharisees as “whitewashed tombs.” That might seem like merely a picture of hypocrisy—being one way on the outside and a different way on the inside. But there is more than that in this picture. People at that time believed that if you touched a tomb you would be defiled. So Jesus is not only calling the Pharisees hypocrites; he is saying that if you fall under their influence you could become defiled—spiritually affected in a negative way. “Ravenous wolves” is another picture Jesus drew of spiritually abusive leaders. He’s talking about leaders who devour instead of build up. It is very clear when the Bible talks about the purpose of authority that it is for building up, for encouraging and for setting people free. The pictures that Jesus drew paint a stark contrast between the abusive use of authority and appropriate uses of authority.

The abuse of authority was also a central concern for Paul. His main adversaries were the people who thought he was being too graceful. They felt a need to correct his teaching and to help people understand that the Good News is not just about what God has done but also about the things we need to do. They were called the circumcision party, because they added that particular religious behavior to Christ’s behavior as a means of securing God’s approval. This theme of “legalistic teachers” comes up all the time in Paul’s letters. He warns the church at Ephesus that the people who try to add to the Good News in this way will not only come from outside the Christian community but from inside the Christian community as well. So they have to be on their guard [Acts 20:29–31].

In the book of Titus, Paul provides a long list of the qualities desirable in a leader. But then he says that leaders need to take a proactive stance in terms of building people up in grace, and a defensive stance in terms of guarding the flock from people who try to destroy it—especially those who try to add some kind of religious requirements or behavioral demands on top of the grace of God. It is the people who say you need Jesus plus something else, that Paul is warning about.

The letter of Galatians is another example. It is a very angry letter. It’s all about the idea that God’s approval comes from Jesus plus something that you do. Paul attacks this view from every possible angle he can think of. Once again he calls the Jesus-Plus people bad names and wishes bad things will happen to them. Very early in the book of Galatians he asks the people to whom he is writing, “Where is the sense of blessing you once had?”

Most of the people I work with, when they first became Christians, it was very clear to them that it was not about performance. It was only about what God did. And this gracefull message gave them a sense of blessing. They felt restful. Even if that feeling didn’t last very long, their spiritual journey started in a very deeply grace-full, rest-full place. They knew they needed a gift and that God had provided just the gift they needed. But then what happens very quickly is that people get taught or led to measure themselves based on themselves instead of measuring themselves based on what Christ did. That leads rapidly to a loss of that sense of blessing, of rest, of grace. What happens is that people start trying to “measure up.” And that, of course, doesn’t work.

STEPS: It seems to me that grace-based faith has always had this kind of Achilles’ heel. Performance orientation sneaks in so easily, even in churches whose formal theology emphasizes grace. And things start to fall apart real quick when that happens.

Jeff: Before we became Christians our performance and other people’s assessments of our performance were really all we had to measure ourselves by. We live in a world that promotes that very heavily. It’s the most natural thing we do. It’s one of the first things that little kids do. They make stuff and then they show it to you and say, “Look what I did!” It’s a very natural, normal and certainly not an evil thing to do. What the gospel does is that it says, “You can’t do anything.” And, “You don’t need to do anything.” That is not common sense in our world. In my opinion this is the “foolishness of the gospel that makes foolish the wisdom of the world.” It’s the too-good-to-be-true thing.

Christians tend to think that people don’t become Christians because they aren’t willing to give up the bad things in their lives. But I think the real reason that people don’t become Christians is that it’s just too good to be true. We can’t trust things that are too good to be true. It makes us anxious. We find ourselves waiting for the other shoe to drop or for the too-good-to-be-true thing to disappear. Or it might feel like we haven’t really heard the punch line yet. People are waiting for the “but” that comes after “God loves you.” They know it is there. When I was on the staff of a local church, people would hear that it was a safe place. They would come hear David Johnson preach, and they would sit there and cry because it sounded too good to be true. Some people would look ahead in the biblical text from which Dave was preaching to find the “but.” This sounds good, but wait until he gets down here to this part. Then the other shoe will drop. People anticipate that the rest of the story will be Bad News. It couldn’t be just Good News. That would be so totally foreign to what I have experienced in life so far. But that is exactly what the Good News is.

So, to get back to your question. We resist grace because we are culturally programmed to focus on performance, on what we can do, on how responsible we need to be. But there is a second factor. When a person becomes a Christian, they have a heart that is warm toward God. They want to do the things God wants them to do. They care about that now. Even if they can’t change their life around in the way they think they should, they still care about it now. And that makes them particularly susceptible to teaching that says, “You want to do God’s agenda? Well, we know more about that than anybody, so we can help you. We’ll tell you what God wants, and then you can work real hard to make that happen.” Now, not only are new Christians susceptible because we all live in a world that is oriented toward performance. They are susceptible also because spiritually abusive people can take advantage of their new desire to do God’s will.

STEPS: I suppose that all of these factors that set people up for spiritual abuse are even more problematic for people who have already experienced other kinds of abuse.

Jeff: Sure. Any kind of abuse teaches us unhealthy relationship skills. The skills may help us to survive in the abusive situation with as little damage as possible. But they leave us unbalanced. We may only know how to navigate in unhealthy relationships. So that’s what we unconsciously look for. It’s not unlike the woman who is married to an alcoholic and he dies and she swears she will never marry another alcoholic and then a few years later she is married to another alcoholic. It’s because we tend to do the things we already know how to do. In this respect, spiritually abusive systems are no different from other kinds of abusive systems. You find the same dynamics as in domestic violence, sexual abuse and other forms of abuse. People tend to gravitate toward what they know about already, even if what they already know is very unhealthy.

STEPS: You have already talked a bit about the role of authority in spiritually abusive relationships. In your book you list “power posturing” as one of the key features of spiritual abuse. What is that about?

Jeff: Spiritual abuse is always a power issue. In order for abuse to happen, by definition, it has to come from a place of higher power to a place of lesser power. People in low-power positions can’t abuse people in highpower positions. If hurtful things come from one person to another who are in power-equal positions, I don’t call that abuse. If a father beats up his son, that’s physical abuse. If two siblings beat up each other, it’s just fighting; it’s not abuse. A sibling might get beat up just as much as he would if he were fighting with his father. It’s certainly hurtful behavior. But it is hurtful behavior between peers. When it becomes abuse is when there is a power differential. This issue is one of the reasons I wrote When God’s People Let You Down as a kind of follow-up to The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse. There are lots of hurts that people experience in power-equal relationships. The hurt can be enormous, but that doesn’t make it abuse.

STEPS: You are also pretty careful in both of your books to emphasize that it is not always easy to figure out who has the power in a dysfunctional system. It’s not always the people who have power in a formal sense.

Jeff: That’s right. An example would be when a congregation is abusive toward a pastor. It might seem like the pastor is in the power position, but really the power may be concentrated in some group of people. It might be a formal group, like a Board of Deacons, but it could also be an informal group like a family that gives the most money or that has been in the congregation for the longest period of time. We also tried to be very careful to say that not all exercise of spiritual authority is abusive. Just because someone does not like the way the authority is leading doesn’t mean that it is spiritual abuse. And just because someone in a position of authority does something to hurt someone else doesn’t mean that it is spiritual abuse either. Just because a father does something to hurt a son doesn’t mean it’s abuse. How the father handles the situation afterward is often what determines whether it is abusive or not. It could be just a mistake, or an error in judgment. Maybe the father apologizes and makes amends as soon as he recognizes the harm that he has done. Whether or not something is abusive must take many factors like this into consideration.

STEPS: We’ve already talked a bit about the second characteristic you give for spiritual abuse: performance preoccupation. It seems like in the real world this is where the “subtle” part comes in.

Jeff: That’s right. Scripture does say that some behaviors are good and some behaviors are bad. And obedience is important. And holiness is an issue. But when it becomes abusive, when it becomes dangerous, is when it’s somehow added to God’s performance in Christ. For example, Scripture is pretty clear that if you support the kingdom of God in your heart, then you should support it with your wallet as well. So giving is good. If you are part of the program, help make the program happen. The issue is not whether people should give money to help do kingdom stuff. But if giving money to do kingdom stuff becomes part of what you do to get God’s approval, that’s when it gets dangerous. This is particularly true with finances, because it is so measurable; it’s easy to tell whether you are “doing the right thing” or not. So when it seems to pastors that they are just encouraging people to do good things, the bottom line may be that they are reinforcing a performance-based religiosity that can be very toxic.

STEPS: Another thing that seems to be a source of the “subtle” part of spiritual abuse is what you call “unspoken rules.” I’ve talked to many people who have experienced spiritual abuse but who are terribly confused about what has happened to them. Often as soon as you give them some vocabulary to describe their experience—even just the expression “spiritual abuse”—they recognize it immediately. It seems like the unspoken rules somehow keep people confused about what is happening.

Jeff: That’s because with unspoken rules you can’t tell that they exist until you break them. Suppose you have a rule that says “Don’t disagree with the pastor or you are in trouble.” You won’t know that rule is operative unless you disagree sometime with the pastor and say something about it. Then you’ll probably find out about the rule right away. As long as you agree or pretend to agree, you don’t even know that rule is there. But if you break the rule, you find out that it’s been a rule the whole time.

Probably the most common unspoken rule is the “Don’t talk” rule. This rule is what gives such power to the “Don’t disagree with the pastor” rule. The “Don’t talk” rule is the worst one. If you break one of the other unspoken rules and then find out that it was a rule all along, the “Don’t talk” rule is what really puts you in a bind. If you already learned how to stuff a lot of pain as a child in order to make your way through a dysfunctional family system, then it’s sometimes not that hard to use the same skills in a religious system. But it’s not a very healthy way to live. A 14-year-old in a very painful family system might try to survive by “holding their breath”—telling their friends, “I can’t wait until I’m 18, ’cause then I’m out of here.” Somehow age 18 represents when they’ll have enough power to do what they need to do to survive. People sometimes do the same thing in church. They sit in churches like that, holding their breath, waiting for some act of God to save them. In both cases it’s using the “holding your breath” strategy to survive. It is a strategy that may have seemed to work at one time in life, but it is not a very helpful or hopeful approach to any kind of adult relationship.

STEPS: Tell me something about “lack of balance,” which you also list as a feature of spiritually abusive systems.

Jeff: Unbalanced systems are those that focus too much on certain aspects of the Christian experience. The two examples we picked are objectivity and subjectivity. Objectivity means that everything is so black-and-white that there is no room for people’s individual experiences, talents and things like that. People have to just fit into the system or they are not acknowledged, get neglected or are told that they are divisive, demonic or something like that. On the other side are systems in which people’s gifts and experiences are given the ultimate authority. Extreme examples of this would be situations where you objectively know from Scripture or your own experience that something is misguided, but when you say so, you find that the subjective experience of a person in authority takes priority. That gives the ultimate authority to man rather than to God.

STEPS: You know, talking about all this stuff does not feel good. I’m aware of feeling a little nauseated, and I’m starting to feel the beginnings of a headache as we talk. I wonder if people reading this in STEPS might start checking out because this whole topic is so painful. If you have experienced spiritual abuse, it is not stuff you can just talk about abstractly without feeling some of the pain all over again, even if the abuse is many years in the past.

Jeff: Spiritual abuse is painful. For me the pain of talking about it is not so much that it brings up old pain from the past. It’s not about old wounds so much anymore. But I experience it as painful because we’ve been chipping away at this issue now for 15 years but we really haven’t done that much to change things. Every day I am reminded of the pain people are in because of this. Every day I hear from someone who has experienced this. They are not only in pain emotionally and psychologically, but also they are full of fear about God, thinking that they are in trouble because they haven’t gotten it right, or been good enough, or been Christian enough. That is really painful territory. And it’s difficult territory to work in.

STEPS: I think one of the most painful pieces of this puzzle is when you find people in abusive situations and they are unable to leave, unable to make healthy choices. Just as spouses in violent relationships sometimes return again and again to be abused, people who are in spiritually abusive relationships often find it very difficult to leave.

Jeff: The phenomena of not being able to leave has two parts. First, if you are outside a spiritually abusive system, you are the enemy. And secondly, although it is very easy to get in, it is very difficult to get out once you are in. It is exactly the same as in any very dysfunctional family. The fear is that if a person gets out of the family, they might tell the secret. So there is a lot of incentive to keep people inside the system.

People in abusive systems think that the inside of the system is the only safe place. If you associate with or connect to people outside the system, that is not safe. You can get hurt doing that. So just stay in here where it is safe. Those people out there will lead you away from God or from the things God wants. So it’s safest to stay in here with the leaders, who are the only ones who really know what God wants. The paranoia is that any kind of break from “us” and return to “them” would be disastrous. What makes this even more hurtful is that an individual’s relationship with God is taken hostage. It’s not just that the leader is worried that you are going to fall from grace if you associate with outsiders—or that you might tell outsiders what it’s like in here. It’s more like if you do tell the truth, you will be wrong and God will get you for that. God will be the enforcer. Bottom line: Stay in here or God will punish you.

STEPS: People in spiritually abusive systems have usually invested a lot in the system.

Jeff: Sure. You invest so much—and you are required to invest so much—in abusive systems that your world becomes pretty small. Sometimes people forget relationship skills that are necessary for relating to people outside the system. After a while you don’t have anybody outside the system that you are close to. So that makes the dependence on the system even stronger. On a human level, when we invest a lot, we hate to lose our investment. So we sometimes invest more to try to get a return on the original investment. Which means we have more to lose. Which means there is an even higher incentive to invest more. Some people have invested incredible amounts of their money, their emotions, their time and their energy in abusive systems.

A family I worked with recently was part of a small network of families. They only had associations with people in this small network. Their kids took piano lessons from someone in the group. If they leave that group, their kids lose their piano teacher. They lose the contacts with their sports teams. They lose not just the investment in the system—all the energy, time, money and emotions that they invested in getting the group to function—but they also lose all their social contacts and all the extracurricular things that are dependent on the group. This is very similar to the reason why a woman who is being battered doesn’t leave. If she leaves she has nothing. Going from something, albeit abusive, to nothing can be even more terrifying than staying where you are. So you stay, hoping it will turn around. Even if it is irrational to outsiders, the desire to stay put is very powerful when you are facing the loss of everything you know.

STEPS: In The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse you talk about the roots of secrecy in spiritually abusive systems. One root is the need people feel to be public relations agents for God—to have a “good testimony” so that people will think good things about God. And that leads people to all kinds of spin-control strategies, evasions and outright deceptions.

Jeff: So, if you have a leader who has a struggle in a system that is abusive—well, let me give an example. I have worked with a church where the pastor sexually exploited several of his counselees. The church could have dealt with the problem honestly. Maybe that would have meant saying, “This is what happened” and saying either “He’s out of here” or “He’s getting help.” But what they did was to make a secret about it. The leadership didn’t answer anyone’s questions about it, because That would make God look bad, they thought, and it might also make us look bad for having hired this person. What it did was to lock up all the pain, using the “Don’t talk” rule. Strategically they were aggressively not talking about it in order to not give God a bad name.

STEPS: Like we are well enough to be in charge of God’s reputation. That’s hard-core crazy.

Jeff: Right. Ten years later there are still two “camps” in that church. One group that still thinks the leadership did the right thing. And another group that is still angry about how the situation was handled. Those two camps are divided on every issue that comes up. Even totally unrelated issues like who to buy the carpeting from are contaminated by this history of denial.

STEPS: Let’s change the focus a bit and talk about how to recover from spiritual abuse. First, what about recovery for perpetrators of spiritual abuse? People in general don’t tend to be very hopeful about perpetrators of any kind of abuse. And for some good reasons. What’s your take on that?

Jeff: I think that pessimism is justified. First of all, in order for someone to recover from something, they have to realize that there is a problem, something to recover from. And when you have so much invested in being “right,” in being the one who “knows,” and you have led so many people down the road—well, it takes us back to the equity issue. Perpetrators of abuse have a major equity investment in the system. It’s hard to lose that. Also, it would have to be a horrifying realization to recognize that many of the things you have been doing for God have really hurt people. There is an incredible amount of equity that would be lost by admitting the need for help in this area. God will always offer grace. That is not the issue. The issue here is whether or not a perpetrator has a capacity to receive grace. Most don’t even think they need it. Grace just bounces off. It’s just like with any other issue. If the person who needs help doesn’t think they need help, then no one can help them.

STEPS: What is it that breaks through these kinds of barriers to receiving grace?

Jeff: It can just be tiredness that finally gets us to the point where we are ready to receive help. Sometimes all the pretense and denial is just too exhausting to continue, and we give it up. My instinct about what Jesus would say to perpetrators is that he would say, “Try harder.” He would say, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Then maybe a few would say, “I can’t.” And there would be hope for those folks. But most would say, “Okay, I can do that.” They would just try hard, try harder, try their hardest to be better, to be more correct. And maybe later they would be tired enough to understand what Jesus was really saying to them.

STEPS: It’s kind of like in early AA when people who came to meetings and were asked, “Have you lost your marriage yet?” or “Have you lost your job yet?” And if the answer was no, some old-timers would say, “Well, you probably still need some more experience with alcohol. Go out and get some more experience.” If you are not yet sick and tired of being sick and tired, then the cure won’t work.

Jeff: Yes. So go do some more, and if you get tired, we’ll still be here to help out. When Jesus interacted with the rich young ruler he told him, “Do everything that the law requires.” And the guy said, “I’ve done that already.” He should have said right away, “I haven’t and there’s no way I can do that.” But he was still deep in denial. So Jesus gave him a task that he couldn’t do: “Give up everything and follow me.” That he couldn’t do. Now some people look at that text and see it as just about selfishness—that the man was too selfish to give up his wealth. But I don’t think that text is about selfishness at all. The man should have answered, “I can’t” to Jesus’ first question. If he had said “I can’t” then there would have been grace. But when he was still that deep in denial, Jesus said in effect, “Well, you must need more experience before you will be ready to receive the help you need.”

STEPS: Just to be clear, you are not pessimistic about recovery for people who have abused others but who recognize what they have done and repent and seek healing.

Jeff: That’s right. I’m not pessimistic about recovery for anybody, for anything. I’m hopeful. That’s why I do what I do. But I am aware of the track record and of how difficult it is for spiritually abusive people to see what’s real and to change that pattern.

STEPS: The effects of spiritual abuse can last for a long time. Decades later it seems like it can still be easy to get triggered back into the abuse stuff.

Jeff: That’s true and it relates to another dynamic that we haven’t talked about yet. Spiritual abuse is talked about mostly in psychological terms. But there is also a spiritual dynamic to it—a dynamic of the spirit. Spiritual abuse is not just something that comes in a spiritual way or comes from spiritual people. In that sense it’s like physical abuse, which is not something that comes only in a physical way. When physical abuse happens, something physical is hurt. And when spiritual abuse happens, your spirit gets hurt. And that has long-lasting consequences.

Recovery is never easy for any of us. But I think that recovery from spiritual abuse is in some ways the most difficult of recovery journeys. One reason is that the person who has the greatest potential for helping us recover from spiritual abuse is the person we feel most alienated from.

Let me explain that a bit. When someone gets physically abused, they don’t necessarily distrust the Department of Social Services. The abuser wasn’t acting as a representative of the Department of Social Services when they abused the person. Similarly, when a woman gets abused sexually, she doesn’t necessarily distrust the person from the women’s shelter who offers to be helpful. She may distrust men in general, but the agency that is designed specifically to help is not necessarily a problem. The abuser was not acting as a representative of the agency designed to help abused people. So the woman who has been abused is not likely to think, If I go to the people who are from the agency that is designed to help me, I’m going to get hurt even worse. In the case of spiritual abuse, however, there is always a major problem with the “agency” that is specifically “designed” to be helpful: God. The fear is that if you go to God, you will get hurt even worse than you have already been hurt. Spiritual abuse always does damage to our relationship with God. It’s the worst. It’s a wound of the spirit. It’s a wound right down at the core of who we are.

STEPS: If you experience an abuser as acting on behalf of God, or speaking for God, or acting as an agent of God, you are really stuck.

Jeff: Abuse always happens in a relationship. And in the case of spiritual abuse, the abuse happens in the context of relationships where someone is in the role of representing God. Later, when the abuse has come to an end and we are looking for healthier relationships in which to recover, we may find other people—even people who may actually be faithfully representing God—but it will be difficult for us to trust in those relationships, difficult to invest again in relationships and difficult to relax.

STEPS: It seems like the struggle to trust people again is a very normal part of the recovery process after any kind of abuse. We usually start slow, risk a little, be vulnerable a little and gradually learn to trust again. But it’s much more difficult to give ourselves permission to have just a little bit of trust when it comes to our relationship with God. We often massively shame ourselves when our faith is hesitant or partial.

Jeff: Yes. One of the messages of the abusive system is that you have to have complete, total trust. So in recovery from spiritual abuse it is really important to give ourselves room to have little bits of faith. And also to learn to pay attention to our spiritual radar and to reconnect with our sense of blessing—and with the God who gives us that sense of blessing.

Jeff VanVonderen is an author and speaker. He is the executive director of Spiritual Abuse Recovery Resources, a ministry of Christian Recovery International. He also provides seminars, consultations and intervention services through the ministry of Innervention Inc. This interview first appeared in STEPS magazine, a publication of the National Association for Christian Recovery. All rights reserved.

http://www.spiritualabuse.com/?page_id=58

“A friendship did develop,” Hinn said of White in Oakland on July 30. “Hear this: No immorality whatsoever. These people out there are making it sound like we had an affair. That’s a lie.”

Hinn invited his daughters Natasha and Eleasha on stage in Oakland and asked the crowd to pray for him, his estranged wife, Suzanne, and their four children. He said he and his wife had problems in their marriage for years and “could no longer exist in the same house.”

Hinn’s wife, Suzanne, filed for divorce in February after the couple had been separated for years, but it has not been finalized.

Hinn aired segments from the Oakland crusade and made additional personal comments on his This Is Your Day program on TBN Aug. 5, the day after his 31st wedding anniversary. A ministry executive said the program will air on other networks this week, including on Daystar Friday.

Hinn told the crowd in Oakland that the Vatican made him a Patron of the Arts and invited him to visit Rome. He said patrons are asked to find donors to help maintain the Vatican’s art collections, and he wanted White to become a donor.

“I let her come with me to Rome so she can donate money,” Hinn said. “That was stupid on my part. And for that I do ask forgiveness.”

The National Enquirer published photos in its Aug. 2 issue of Hinn walking hand-in-hand with White in Rome. The article, which released July 23, claimed the two spent three nights in a five-star hotel Hinn booked under a false name.

Hinn said in Oakland that he and White found “common ground” after she appeared on This Is Your Day in late May. White and her ex-husband, Randy, went through a public divorce in 2007. She now leads the Tampa, Fla., church they founded, Without Walls International Church, and has her own national television show called Paula Today.

He said he and White were never alone in Rome, but claims he ended his friendship with her after the tabloid report was published. “I said, ‘Paula, we can’t even be friends right now.’”

Hinn admitted that he contributed to the demise of his marriage by putting ministry over his family. “I was so busy in the ministry, I was so caught up with the ministry, I forgot about my family,” Hinn said. “That’s probably what broke the whole thing up.”

He said he often preached that ministry comes first, acknowledging that he knew that teaching hurt his children. “You know what? It’s wrong,” he said of the teaching. “I’m here to admit I was wrong because the call of God first should touch the family. If you have no family, you can’t go on anyways.”

Hinn admitted he and his wife had “challenges” but said he didn’t expect her to end the marriage.

“We had troubles for a long time, and I would ask her often, ‘Would you ever divorce me?’” Hinn said. “She said, ‘Never because I fear God too much.’ She said, ‘My covenant is with God, not you.’ And I guess she could no longer handle it. One day she did it to my shock.”

Hinn said it’s painful to talk about his marital problems, noting that he and his wife were separated long before the divorce filing.

“We’ve had to be very quiet to protect the ministry, the work of the Lord,” he said. “But sadly when you are a public person, everything you do becomes public.”

“I don’t care how strong you are,” Hinn added. “I don’t care if the anointing of God is mighty on you. Nobody wants to be alone. I don’t care who you are. I am a human being just like you.”

Hinn said he is “still focused on the Lord’s work,” adding, “I’m going to go on serving Jesus with all my being, and whatever the future holds, that’s His business.”

Benny Hinn has declared here in this email to supporters that the LORD God told him, “There will be a release of an anointing for the next 12 months that you have never seen before!” He writes:

“The response continues to be overwhelming as many of our partners and ministry friends lock into the promise of an unprecedented 12-month release of anointing and abundance and begin to see God move actively in their lives!”

Benny Hinn is saying that God has promised 12 months of UNPRECEDENTED ANOINTING AND ABUNDANCE.

He then goes on to talk about how God told him to give some money, and he decreed that this gift was going to release God’s miracle for him, and it happened. After giving a false and inaccurate teaching about Job He then appeals to you, dear reader, to do what he falsely claims the Bible teaches Job did so that you can cash in on your “unprecedented blessing” and presumably enjoy the “unprecedented anointed” for the next 12 months, mind you.

The idea behind all these kinds of messages of course is to extract money from his readers. We know that it takes money to spread the gospel. It also takes money to spread false teaching and false prophecy. The finer things of life also require money.

Now let’s be clear here. If the LORD did not in fact say these things to Benny Hinn, then Benny Hinn is a fraud. If Benny Hinn is just making this stuff up, then he is taking money from gullible people on false pretenses. If He is saying that God is making promises that God is NOT in fact making, then Benny Hinn is behaving as a greedy false prophet, who like Balaam, loves the wages of unrighteousness.

I’d personally be amazed if God really did speak to Benny Hinn these things, because Benny Hinn can’t even get a basic teaching straight. He probably knows his readers are too lazy to actually check out the Bible references he gives. Look at what Hinn says:

In the midst of Job’s greatest challenge, he did three things (Job 22):

1. He prayed.
2. He made a vow as an offering.
3. He decreed his outcome.

We know Job prayed. I can’t see any place where Job made a vow as an offering. And I can’t see any place where Job decreed what God was going to do for him in restoring his fortune doubly before it actually happened.

Job 22 is actually a discourse by one of Job’s Comforters, Eliphaz, who tells Job in the midst of his suffering that if he would only repent and do the right thing, then:

Job 22:27  You will make your prayer to Him, He will hear you, And you will pay your vows.
Job 22:28  You will also declare a thing, And it will be established for you; So light will shine on your ways.

Note this is what the false counselor Eliphaz says, who was later rebuked by God. Nowhere does it say that Job did these things.

Yet Benny Hinn teaches that you have to do what Job did. What he wants the passage to say is that you need to make a promise to God to give to Benny Hinn, and decree what miracle God is going to do for you as a result, and it will be so.

Christian witchcraft at its best!

Yes folks, step right up, step right up, just put it on the Plastic, and tell God what He has to do for you! Because God’s true servant, Benny Hinn, has been told by God that God will do whatever you decree if you only send Benny money! And remember, this time its different! Oh yes, its different this time. We are heading into an UNPRECEDENTED time of prosperity and anointing for those who believe in Benny. God Himself has said so! Oh yes, He has!

Note that Benny Hinn is saying that “unprecedented anointing” will come to you if you sow generously into his ministry.

If this is true, then the receiving of the anointing is depending on you giving Benny some more money. This sounds a lot like saying that the anointing is for sale, that God’s favor is for sale. This is similar to the kind of abuse by Rome in the selling of indulgences that prompted Martin Luther to spark the Reformation. It is also similar to what Todd Bentley was doing in offering the impartation of his marvellous anointing to those who would sow generously “into the anointing” – meaning of course, into Todd’s pocket.

Benny needs more money to repair his private jet, because his anointing would be damaged if he travelled with commoners in First Class. He needs money as a patron of the arts for the Vatican. Those $10,000 a night hotels can add up for a while. He needs money for that too!

But something is going wrong! He has a two million dollar shortfall. Oh no! He might have to sell his multi-million dollar mansion. No, no. There is a better way. Why sell the mansion when he can help YOU to get rich by giving to him? That sounds like a much better solution, doesn’t it?

Folks, much as we like the message about Jesus going into the world, it is also important that this task be done primarily by true and honest people, not by people who LIE in the name of the Lord and use false revelations and false teachings in order to move people to hand their money. Not to extravagant fakers who cannot even keep their marriage together, but hide years of marital separation from the public to protect the revenue streams of the ministry business.

Every dollar you give to Benny Hinn is a dollar that will not go to a genuine minister of the gospel who does not resort to fraudulent prophecy in order to get the job done. Part of every dollar that you DO give to Benny Hinn is a dollar that will go to the proclamation of false prophecy and things that bring shame on the name of Jesus Christ before the entire world.

http://www.christian-faith.com/forjesus/benny-hinn-says-god-promises-unprecedented-prosperity-for-next-12-months

Bad news masquerading as good

After making a flippant but completely uninformed remark about Joel Osteen (with whom I had no familiarity except a short video clip), I was convicted that I ought not criticize things/people I know nothing about. After all, one of the charges against the false prophets in Second Peter is that they “speak evil of the things they do not understand”.

I rescinded my flippant remark and said I would look into Osteen more before making an evaluation. Thus, I traveled to my local library and picked up one of Osteen’s books–Become a Better You.

What I found shocked me and troubled me deeply. In some ways, Osteen is just another prosperity preacher of the Word of Faith tradition. He confuses the promises of the gospel with the idea of self-fulfillment and turns God into a vending-machine in the sky. The so-called prosperity gospel is a disturbing corruption of the true gospel–but I’ve known many who ascribe to a version of the prosperity gospel who still maintain at least a degree of faithfulness to the true gospel: that Jesus Christ died to pay the penalty for sins, on our behalf, thus reconciling us to God.

I see no evidence that Osteen has maintained any modicum of the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

Instead, Osteen has replaced the gospel with an “I’m good, you’re good, we’re all good” self-esteem talk. He tells his readers that “God has already put in the talent, the creativity, the discipline, the wisdom, and the determination. It’s all in you.” “We have to believe that we have what it takes.” Over and over, he states that “God has placed the seeds of greatness inside of you”. He emphasizes the goodness of creation–but completely ignores the fall.

I almost thought he was going to address the fall when he refers to Adam and Eve hiding after eating the forbidden fruit. “Great,” I thought, “Now he’s going to tell them that the created goodness has been warped and twisted by sin, but that Jesus died to redeem us from that twistedness, to reverse sin.” Alas, it was not to be. Instead, Osteen uses God’s response to Adam and Eve (“Who told you that you were naked?”) as “proof” that they weren’t actually naked, that they were believing a lie from the enemy. Except that wasn’t a lie. They were naked. They had something to be ashamed of. They had something to hide. It wasn’t a lie. It was the truth.

Now, this might sound like a huge downer. Osteen’s got good news, I’m bearing bad. But am I?

You see, Osteen’s message of self-esteem and “you’re all good” is a cheap substitute for the truly good news. The good news is that while we were completely worthless, God endued us with worth by sending His Son to die for us. While we were incapable of helping ourselves, Jesus Christ made us new. The good news is that while we were yet dead in our sins, Christ died for us.

Osteen’s message skips the fall–and thus sees no need for the cross. In the first seventy pages of Become a Better You, Osteen mentions the cross exactly never–unless one considers this gem on page 35: “God gave His very best for you, His only Son.”

In ignoring the fall and the cross, Osteen leaves out the essence of Christianity. As Charles Spurgeon points out (HT: Justin Taylor):

“Yes, it is Christ, Christ, Christ whom we have to preach; and if we leave Him out, we leave out the very soul of the gospel.”

“You do not really preach the gospel if you leave Christ out; if He be omitted, it is not the gospel. You may invite men to listen to your message, but you are only inviting them to gaze upon an empty table unless Christ is the very center and substance of all that you set before them.”

Want to become a better you? Osteen can’t help–he can only try to convince you that you’re actually not that bad. Only in Jesus Christ can bad become good and sinners saints. Denying sin will not make it go away, it will only lead us into delusion. Only by recognizing our sin and by faith receiving Christ’s work on the cross can we be made righteous.

The gospel that Osteen shares is not good news at all–it is bad news masquerading as good

http://bekahcubed.menterz.com/blog/2010/20100812-4132.htm

“It seems as though we can’t turn on the television or radio without hearing about tragic events happening in the United States and around the world. At the same time, we hear people say, “God is in charge.” Others counter that claim with, “If God is in control, He sure has things in a mess!” What many people don’t understand is that God is not the one who is in control. In Second Corinthians 4:4, Satan is called ‘the god of this world,” and he is the one who is wreaking havoc around the globe.”[1]

The above quotation was the opening to an article called “Who’s In Charge? We Are!” produced by RHEMA Bible Church Inc. At first glance, it would appear to be biblically sound, it is candy coated that’s for sure. However, the very concept that “We are in charge” negates the Sovereignty of God as though Satan or we ourselves are one up on God. In the article mentioned above they spoke of Jesus Christ delegating His authority to the church by commissioning the church to preach the gospel. Nevertheless, delegated authority is not the same as the authority itself. Delegation of authority can be defined as subdivision and sub-allocation of powers to the subordinates in order to achieve effective results. In connection to the delegated authority is the responsibility to complete the assigned tasks given. Authority always flows from top to bottom where responsibility of such given authority flows from bottom to top. This is called accountability, and the subordinate is always answerable to the authority for the end result. Therefore, it is Christ who is both “in charge” and “in control,” and we are accountable to him as representatives of His name in this world.

READ MORE HERE

Do you have discernment?  Have you ever tried to help someone see the light about their false doctrine?   Let’s pretend we’re playing a card game.  Let’s say you’re the one with discernment, and I will give you a card to show my displeasure and trump your politically incorrect statements.

READ MORE

Television evangelist Benny Hinn has admitted that his marriage probably broke down because he did not spend enough time with the family.

On the August 5 edition of his show “This is your Day,” Hinn said he was oftentimes “caught up with the ministry,” so much so that he forgot about his family.

“I’ve made mistakes because I wasn’t the perfect husband and the perfect dad because I was always gone traveling the world,” he said. “That’s probably what broke the whole thing up.”

Hinn told his viewers “not to neglect your family,” saying that the call of God should first touch the family.

“If you have no family, you can’t go on anyways,” he said.

Hinn’s wife, Suzanne, filed divorce papers in California earlier this year, citing “irreconcilable differences.” The couple had been married since 1979 and have four children together.

On his recent show, watched by millions around the world, Hinn said it was often painful to talk about their separation.

“We’ve had to be very quiet to protect the ministry, the work of the Lord,” he said. “But sadly when you are a public person, everything you do becomes public.”

Hinn continued: “I don’t care if the anointing of God is on you. Nobody wants to be alone. I don’t care who you are. I am a human being just like you.”

The press recently linked Hinn to fellow televangelist Paula White, suggesting they were romantically involved.

Hinn rejected the claims and denied any wrongdoing, stating that the article published by the National Enquirer on July 23 was a “pure lie.”

Following the story, Hinn and White announced their decision to “have no further social relationship” until his divorce is finalized and “only if we feel direction from the Lord to do so.”

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100811/benny-hinn-says-neglecting-family-led-to-divorce/

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I seen the video and Benny admits the he and his wife had not lived together for years. And Paul and Jan crouch have not lived together for years,,, what’s up with all that. It that what big money ministry does to marriages?

This video would not embed into this post. So you’ll have to GO HERE to see the video that I highly suggest. There is a link on the video page to the sermon notes below.

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TEXT: 1 Peter 3:17–22
PREACHER: Pastor Mark Driscoll
DATE: April 5, 2009

“For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil” –1 Peter 3:17

Introduction

1 Peter 3: 18–20 is, according to Martin Luther, “More obscure than any other passage in the New Testament.” It is one of the most debated passages in the Bible; there are around 180 different interpretations.

• All Scripture is equally inspired but not all Scripture is equally clear (2 Tim. 3:16 cf. 2 Pet. 3:16).
• The doctrine of perspicuity: Those verses in the Bible that are unclear should be interpreted in light of the passages that are clear.
• Lack of clarity in some passages requires us to be humble when approaching them.

Learn from Jesus’ Suffering (1 Peter 3:18a)

• This is a mysterious passage of Scripture describing Jesus’ suffering; your suffering may be mysterious as well.
• When you suffer, remember Jesus Christ.
• Our greatest need is not the absence of suffering but the presence of God.
• What are you learning about Jesus through suffering?

Learn from Jesus’ Death (1 Peter 3:18b–20)

• On the cross, Jesus said, “It is finished.” There was nothing else to be done in regard to his work of salvation, therefore it was not necessary for Christ to descend into hell, as some interpreters have said of this passage.
• On the cross, Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (emphasis added), which appears to be further evidence against the idea that Christ descended into hell after his death.
• “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). There is no second chance for repentance and faith after death.

Peter recalls Noah’s story in reference to Christian baptism (1 Peter 3:20).

• The story of Noah (Genesis 6:5–14) is often twisted to say that because Noah was righteous, he received favor from God. The Bible, however, presents the opposite order: God’s favor (“grace”) precedes and enables Noah’s righteousness.
• Along with his sons, Noah preached righteousness and built the Ark for 120 years. He was constantly mocked and nobody ever responded to his invitation for repentance. Christians suffer likewise in our day, awaiting the fulfillment of God’s promise.

Learn from Jesus’ Resurrection

• Baptism symbolizes the death, burial, and resurrection Jesus Christ.
• Baptism is an outward demonstration of inward transformation.
• Baptism shows a FACT (“the resurrection of Jesus Christ”) and FAITH (“a good conscience”).

Learn from Jesus’ Ascension

Remember who Jesus is, not just who he was. As a Christian…

• You will die, as Jesus did.
• Your body will go into the ground but your spirit will live, as Jesus’ did.
• You will rise from death as Jesus did.
• You will live in victory over the presence and power of sin with Jesus.

In the meantime…

• You will suffer as Jesus did.
• Your suffering will likely be as mysterious as Jesus’ suffering and as confusing as 1 Peter 3.
• Don’t try and figure it all out.
• Suffer well in faith like Noah did.

http://blog.marshillchurch.org/2009/04/07/notes-suffering-to-learn/

Gary says “Those who love to talk will experience the consequences,for the tongue can kill or nourish life – Proverbs18:21“

Well I like the song,,, it’s a nice little diddy – but horrendous theology?

May God bless you Gary, that you don’t succumb to a slip of your own lip, or worse yet -someone elses. Jas 3:8  But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

GO HERE to read the last post at KennethCopelandBlog.com titled Kenneth and Gloria Copeland: The Untold Story

Previous post on this blog about Kenneth and Gloria Copeland by Rich Vermillion are HERE HERE and HERE

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Here is a post I made at CARM.ORG to help quickly bring readers up to speed on what Vermillion has told us about KC and KCM so far.

I think almost everyone is missing the point of the OP. KC not flying HIS personal jets to Haiti is NOT the point – and that does NOT constitute fraud.

But KC is guilty of fraud because he deceived his “partners” and potential partners (lied to them for personal gain) into thinking that he had a cargo plane to fly supplies and would be taking donations to buy a “FLEET” of cargo planes to fly relief supplies in the event of a natural disasters. KC even said that “FLEET” would include helicopters. The Angel Flight 44 “aviation disaster relief FLEET” was the center piece of KC’s (for lack of a better term) sale pitches at his 06 believers convention (17, 000 in attendant). KC even used the AF44 sales pitch in three of his Believers Voice of Victory magazines. He recruited Vermillion to write a book about AF 44 and gave 70,000 books away (for a donation, of course) to “partners”. The book has it’s own website. And with the fact that the 06 believers convention was aired on DayStar, Millions heard KC’s AF44 sales pitch.

Now consider the 70,000 books that where given for donations. If each of the donating partners donated 20$, that adds up to over 1,250,000$. But KC has publicly said he has ONLY spent 65,000 sending supplies to Haiti. The 1.25 million figure is only from the Believers Voice of Victory solicitations. This would not include money taken in at the convention and through the convention airing on Daystar and donations taken through the books website. In all reality KC probably received 10′s of millions of dollars specifically donated for the AF44 aviation relief FLEET,,, but there is no “FLEET” and again KC has only spent 65,000 on Haiti.

Beachie will only respond with more histrionics, instead of looking at the very well documented evidence that Vermillion has gathered against KC in the Angel flight 44 debacle, but he and everyone else needs to at least read these 2 post by Vermillion,,,,

http://kennethcopelandblog.com/2010/01/18/the-af44-miracle-and-kenneth-copelands-promises/ (see the videos here)
http://kennethcopelandblog.com/2010/…-44-the-money/

Beachie, Vermillion was a KCM PARTNER for 17 years, He is a Charismatic that holds the office of prophet. He worked with KC to develop the AF44 book. That makes his “personal experience with KC” more authentic and non partisan than your emotional and theological attachments. Vermillion bills his effort to get KC to repent as a “minister to errant-minister” open rebuke”. For you to pull the “if he was a good “brother” he would not be finding fault with another brother” card is absurd. It is almost as absurd as you using the ‘well what has Vermillion done for Haiti” card. Vermillion was a partner of KCM and gave money to the AF44 campaign. But his donations where wasted and KC is no more than a crook hiding behind religious freedom. If it where not for religious exemptions, KC would already be in jail for this because it is obvious fraud and the evidence is clear. But I would not expect “died in the wool” WoF’ers to even fathom this because your religious tradition and belief would hang in the balance if you examined the evidence. http://forums.carm.org/v/showpost.php?p=5874404&postcount=38