George Whitefield to John Wesley On Todd Bentley & Lakeland Outpouring Manifestations

George Whitefield wrote to John Wesley that should he give ’similar encouragement to those convulsions…[eg the physical spiritual manifestations linked to the Camisard French Prophets, see here, that mirror the manifestations at Toronto and Lakeland] how many [people in his meetings] would cry out each night! I think it is tempting God to require such signs…….. the devil interposes. I think it will encourage the French Prophets, take people from the written word, and make them depend on visions, convulsions, etc., more than on the promises and precepts of the gospel.’

(Source – George Whitefield personal letter to John Wesley, dated 25th June 1739, quoted in Origins of the Shakers  by Clarke Garrett )

Religious Americans say “My faith isn’t the only way”

In a survey of 35,000 American adults recently by the Pew Forum, with the results reported in the San Franciso Chronicle here, there were the following very telling figures -

57 percent of evangelical  church attenders said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life. In all, 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation shared that view, and 68 percent said there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their own religion.

Nearly across the board, the majority of religious Americans believe many religions can lead to eternal life: mainline Protestants (83 percent), members of historic black Protestant churches (59 percent), Roman Catholics (79 percent), Jews (82 percent) and Muslims (56 percent).

“The survey shows religion in America is, indeed, 3,000 miles wide and only three inches deep,” said D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist of religion. “There’s a growing pluralistic impulse toward tolerance and that is having theological consequences,” he said.

“It shows increased religious security. People are comfortable with other traditions even if they’re different,” said the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance. “It indicates a level of humility about religion that would be of great benefit to everyone.”

The gospel has indeed been forgotten by many.

Q: What becomes a church that is ashamed of the gospel?

A: Death.

Dear God, help us!

The sign above an English Church

I was out and about yesterday, and I noticed the new sign over the gate of a village church. This church is beautiful looking, and very old – the stuff of picture postcards in a tranquil idyllic setting. It is not one to have trendy signs with clever messages like some churches do. It is what it is, and has been the same way for years – on the outside at least. I have been inside there, and sadly it is a typical Church of England that has lost its way and doesn’t know what it is anymore. It preaches an all inclusive gospel without the uniqueness of Jesus, and preaches a message of ‘lead a good life and everyone will get to heaven’. Books in its tiny religious lending library include one sound Christian book, an obviously still unopened Good News Bible with a rainbow on the front, and the rest is a scattering of Catholic and New Age books.

It has a very strange ‘tangible’ spirit inside that church: it is filled with a fragrance that is not the fragrance of God. Coincidently it is in a community surrounded by Celtic Druidic influences in the natural landscape, and has one of the highest levels of witchcraft in the area. A witchcraft cult is in that village that is known but not talked about openly.  But then the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is a Druid (see here), so so what when the New Age and Occult and Christianity can dwell side by side like they do merrily on this church’s bookshelf?  

I noticed yesterday that the church had a new sign wrought out of ironwork put over their gate, so I am guessing it is a permanent feature. The sign arched above its Medieveal Gate has been specially made and said: ‘Putting a Stop to Poverty’. 

I am all for social justice, and real Christianity has never not  included feeding, clothing and housing the poor BUT when that becomes all  the church is about, or even its main focus and outreach, the church has lost its way.

At the moment (in general) we have a dichotomy in ‘Christianity’ with a so-called ’spirit-filled’ side of the church that is selfish, inward looking and self-obsessed. And an apostate heretical side that is charitable and outward looking. When can we have a spirit filled church that is also genuinely charitable and gives a monkeys about anything other than themselves?

RICK JOYNER, THE APOSTLE PAUL AND THE ANTICHRIST

This article is by ‘AriseMyLove’: - 

RICK JOYNER, THE APOSTLE PAUL AND THE ANTICHRIST

In March 2007 I heard someone at my church Bible group innocently read out loud one of Rick Joyner’s messages from the Elijah List.

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:mzLW88CKXgYJ:www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word/5039+Elijah+list+Rick+Joyner

Unfortunately for the person reading aloud, I became apoplectic at what I heard Joyner say. I flipped out in the class. I already was on the alert to anyone talking about prophecy or false prophecy because of things the Lord had recently spoken to me.

I had previously loved Joyner. I had even personally ordered The Final Quest  for the women in my Bible group at my previous church — (a sin I need to now repent of for poisoning them).

There was such grandeur in the way Joyner described spiritual warfare in that book. I frequently repeated his story about the homeless man “who did not kick the kitten” vs. the well-bred evangelist who led thousands to the Lord. (It took a man who had been through seminary to catch the lie in Joyner’s story for me — that it was a subtle attack upon the fact that the whole point OF spiritual warfare is evangelism!)

I remember taking some note when reading how Joyner said he “met Paul” and how Joyner’s version of “Paul” had been slightly disparaging about his own Epistles. Rick Joyner’s “Apostle Paul” in The Final Quest made the reader, ever so slightly, come into doubt about the veracity of Paul’s Epistles as being part of the sealed canon of Scripture.

But, I did not really question The Final Quest, and I did NOT really fine-tooth the book with the Word. I just did a sort of “weighing it in my heart” kind of confirmation. Big mistake.

So years later, when someone was reading Rick Joyner’s deconstruction of Our Lord’s Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, I went nuts in the class. My ears were on fire. Joyner was attempting to rewrite its meaning, that the Wheat and the Tares are not believers and unbelievers — they are “true prophets” and “false prophets!”

This was after I had been alerted by God to the problem of false prophecy by some Apostolic-Prophetic types — and Joyner’s reconditioning of the Word started to sound like more “cover your rear-end” theology on the prophetic.

Joyner had to know about the many false prophecies that had gone out with his fellow Elijah Listers. Joyner’s own false prophecies about Y2K were legend; but even those false prophecies he made he had already tried to cover up.

But now, in an Elijah List message, Joyner was saying that modern prophets are on a learning curve, basically, but woe to us if we do not “sow” into their ministries, even though, just like in the parable of the wheat and the tares, we will not know until the end of time who the true prophets are and who the false prophets are!

Joyner wrote:

“Young, immature prophetic people will often behave unskilled, and we will be tempted to think that they are really “tares” instead of “wheat.”

Joyner’s argument is so convoluted here, I again have to doubt his sanity.

First, he uses a new lexicon of the Apostolic-Prophetic by using the word “immature” and “unskilled” when he means to describe people who have given false prophecies. It is twisting the truth to say that people give false prophecies because they are “immature” or “unskilled”. What does human skill have to do with it?

And what does being immature — or even being a baby Christian have to do with it? In the book of Acts, Paul laid hands on John the Baptist’s disciple and the man was “immediately filled with the Spirit and began to prophesy”. I don’t see Paul discussing a learning curve for prophetic accuracy here. I don’t see Paul packing up this young man to a school of the Prophets.

Joyner defiles the word of God as he dares twist the meaning of the “wheat” to mean “true prophets” and the “tares” to mean false ones. But God was telling us that He would have to destroy the lives of Believers (the wheat) if He took vengeance upon Unbelievers (the tares) now, because wheat and tares grow so closely together. It is sort of an expansive analogy to how the Lord allows the sun to rise and set upon the righteous and unrighteous alike.

The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares is an answer to the believer’s cry when they “see the wicked prosper”. God is saying that if He destroyed the wicked now, (for example, Hollywood), the structures and institutions (for example, the studios) that support us believers in that industry would be destroyed. Our own abundant life would be threatened if unbelievers were taken out now! It is His mercy on us, in this parable, that He is patient and merciful.

But this parable has NOTHING AT ALL to do with the myriad warnings by Jesus against false teachings and false prophecies. Joyner is deceitfully twisting the Word of God for his own purposes. Because of the importance of prophecy, and its natural sway over people’s lives — Jesus, in contrast to Joyner, lovingly but sternly warns us to put prophecy to the test, to beware false prophets and avoid their heresies.

Joyner further twists the Word by saying that some people are accusing his prophetic friends of being “tares”. But this is a lie. The criticism against Joyner and Bob Jones and Paul Cain and other prophets associated with them is that they are “false prophets” not “tares”(unbelievers)

Big distinction there, Mr. Joyner.

And, despite Joyner’s claim, it is not a matter of “skill” or human dexterity that is the mark of true prophecy. Whether or not it comes from God is the mark of true prophecy. Joyner reconstructs the meaning of this scripture to give him and his pals an “out” for false prophecy by labeling it “unskilled” and from young prophets. What hubris. What pride to think that he can do this sort of thing to Jesus.

But THEN as this person read on, Joyner defiled Paul! Again, it was a subtle attack. He made a false statement that Paul had gone from “pride to humility” based upon his salutations in his various letters. And again, it was to cover up the false prophecies done by his friends in the Apostolic-Prophetic movement. Note how Joyner inserts this phony idea of “maturity” in regards to prophecy into the argument:

One of the great examples of how the wheat matures is the Apostle Paul. In one of his early letters, he stated that he was not inferior to even the most eminent apostles (see II Corinthians 11:5). He wrote about five years later that he was the “least of the apostles” (see I Corinthians 15:9). In a letter he wrote about five years after this, he stated that he was “the least of the saints” (see Ephesians 3:8). In one of his last letters, he declared himself to be “the greatest of sinners” (see I Timothy 1:15). He kept seeing himself as less important, though he was obviously growing in spiritual stature, and actually was one of the most important first century apostles.

We need to also consider that Paul may have been quite arrogant as a young apostle, but he was still an apostle!

Joyner attempts to make the argument that, like Paul, his prophet pals were making false prophecies but that, like Paul, they would improve!!! And even Joyner’s chronology is incorrect – 2 Corinthians was not written before 1 Corinthians.

But these self-descriptions by Paul do not indicate a “confession of sin” or a statement of where Paul was with personal sin at that time. They were simply greetings and ways to put himself into the context of what each letter was about. It is a bad argument to draw a conclusion about Paul’s personal sin from the way he describes himself in the Epistles.

But it is a worse argument to draw any conclusion from Joyner’s conceit about Paul’s sin that modern false prophets are learning to be “accurate” just as Paul “went from pride to humility”! Joyner’s own pride is outrageous in its attempts to denigrate Paul in order to cover up the false prophecies of his friends. As this person finished reading, I almost exploded.

So I started to research Joyner. I wanted to understand why he would try to cover up the false prophecies of fellow Elijah Listers by attempting to “redo” the Word in the Parable of the Wheat/Tares. Certainly it was sick self-preservation of his friends; a despicable, but understandable motive. But this was the second time I knew of that Joyner making an attack upon Paul. I just could not understand why he would attack the veracity of Paul and the epistles.

Then I remembered an odd argument I once heard. Jesus never mentioned homosexuality, but Paul did. Some people have tried to scissor Paul out of the Bible, and Peter to a lesser context, simply because they named that sin. The argument goes: Paul was just a man, Jesus was the Lord, so Paul’s writings are not valid against homosexuality. The Synoptic Gospels were the real “Word” and they never mentioned homosexuality! I remembered this argument when I was thinking about Joyner’s attack on Paul.

Why would Joyner make a subtle attack on Paul’s letters as not being the Word of God? Which is exactly what he was doing in The Final Quest. I could not understand Joyner’s motive. So I remembered the homosexual argument that dismissed the Epistles as not being on the same level as the Word as the Synoptic Gospels.

So I looked up practicing Gay “Christians” to see what they believed about Rick Joyner.

http://www.gaychurch.org/The_Word/Prophetic/red_vs_blue_states_and_prophecy.htm

I was shocked at their arms-length acceptance of Joyner and Bob Jones. Arms length — meaning that these people believe it is okay to be gay in Jesus’ eyes and that Joyner might be okay. In that community, this means that they really really really LIKE Rick Joyner. Strike one.

Then I thought: Well if these deceived people are okay with Joyner, how about the Mormons? Joyner is doing exactly what the Mormons did by questioning the veracity of the Word, with their “adding to the gospel” with revelations by demonic beings (by which the Mormons are saying that there is “something wrong” or “something insufficient” with the Bible) Joyner is conversing with angels, small “j” jesus, etc., just like Joseph Smith did in his abominations.

I found my answer from one of the nuttiest “prophets” of modern day Mormonism. This man prophesied that: the same spirit that raised up the Angel Moroni, of Nefti and Alma and Joseph Smith and Brigham Young also called forth Rick Joyner and his vision of the End Times in his book The Final Quest.

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,465033465,00.html

I just about fell over. A demonic spirit was claiming Rick Joyner? And it became apparent to me as I googled that already many scholars had compared Joyner with Mormons. It started to click. Then I recalled that after I digested THE FINAL QUEST I purchased Joyner’s There Were Two Trees In the Garden.  I could not understand anything Joyner was saying in that book.

However, some smart Pastor already figured it out the real motivations behind Joyner in his critique:

MANIFEST SONS OF SATAN

It is chilling to hear Joyner (in There Were Two Trees In The Garden) use words that apply to and are addressed to Satan and address them to believers. Isaiah reveals the awful pride and arrogance of Lucifer:

“I will ascend to heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the sides of the north. I will ascend the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.” Isa.14 13-14

To be like God was the delusion held out to Eve by the serpent in the garden. Yet, Joyner, after having addressed the prideful inclinations of Satan and the deception of Eve, without a blush says:

“Let us understand, the Lord wants us to ascend to heaven; He wants us to sit on the mount of the assembly; He wants us to be raised above the heights of the clouds, and He wants us to be like Him (to have His nature).”71

Here Joyner gives away his orientation toward Manifest Sons and Little God doctrines. Why was what was off-limits to the devil any less off-limits to us? Ezekiel 28 gives God’s answer to Lucifer — and the five “I wills” of Isaiah 14 are responded with the five “I wills” of God’s judgment for wanting to usurp the very throne of God and become like God.

DENIAL OF THE BODILY RESURRECTION OF JESUS

Joyner’s false teachings abound and multiply. It may be sloppy writing or unclear theology but it becomes even more serious as Joyner slips into teachings that would be welcome in a Kingdom Hall.

How should we view Jesus? We should view Him as the Bible does. John 2:21-22 and Luke 24:39 make it abundantly clear that Jesus arose in His physical body. The bodily resurrection is a foundational truth in the Christian faith. Jesus, as our mediator, exists in a glorified resurrected body. He is forever the God-man.

This truth of the two natures of Christ is called the hypostatic union and has always been defended by the Church. Christ exists in two natures, human and divine (Philippians 2:6-7).

Apparently, Joyner either denies this or simply does not understand it:

“There is a tendency to continue relating to Him as ‘the MAN from Galilee.’ Jesus is not a man. He was and is Spirit. He took the form of a servant and became a man for a brief time.”72

71. There Were Two Trees in the Garden, op. cit., pg. 54, italics in original.
72. Ibid., pg. 59, bold in original.
73. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976, pg. 322.
74. There Were Two Trees in the Garden, op. cit., pg. 64, emphasis added.

Joyner couldn’t be clearer in his declaration: “Jesus is not a man. He was and is Spirit”. Joyner finds himself closely aligned with Gnosticism, one of the most threatening heresies of the early Church. More specifically, he is bordering on a form of Docetism, a view which denies Christ’s true humanity by saying that Christ only “appeared” to have a physical body. However, based on a multitude of Scriptures, Louis Berkhof summarizes the view of historical orthodoxy:

“The incarnation constituted Him a complex person, constituted of two natures. He is the God-man… the one divine person, who possessed a divine nature from eternity, assumed a human nature, and now has both.”73

Surely no true prophet of God would deny the human nature of Christ or that Jesus is in a resurrected glorified body. Paul reminds us in 1 Timothy 2:5, “There is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” How can Joyner say, “Jesus is not a man”? If we accept Prophet Joyner, then we have eroded the doctrinal truths that separate Christianity from the cults.
http://www.pfo.org/r-joyner.htm

As shown, Joyner has a strangely simplistic view of the spiritual realm. It is almost like taking your understanding of ghosts and demonic possession from Hollywood movies. Or, how the Mormons misrepresent Jesus as being Satan’s brother, as if their idea didn’t shatter any notion of the Godhead or of Christian salvation.

By Joyner saying that “Jesus was and is Spirit” and just sorta slipped into an earthly body for a short stint on earth, then — with the same conviction — one could say that “when people are possessed, a demon just slips into that person’s body for a short time” -not unlike the ridiculously simple theology of a Hollywood ghost film. But there is more to the Trinity — and to possession — than Joyner’s GHOSTBUSTERS mentality.

A final objection to Joyner is this:

Why would any Christian, any Christian author of importance, any preacher of any merit, or any Christian, period, go out of their way to pen such a distressingly obvious sentence: Jesus was and is Spirit? This is precisely what Jesus warned us to look for:

“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is Anti-Christ, that denieth the Father and the Son.”

By saying that Jesus “was and is” Spirit, Joyner is denying there is a difference between the Father and the Son! The Father is Spirit, and the Son is the Pre-existent God Man*, the Word Made Flesh. Joyner has identified himself as Antichrist.

But Joyner may have thought he was getting around a more popular Bible definition of Anti-Christ here:

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.

… because Joyner does say “Well, Jesus was in a body on earth for a while”, he would seem to avoid the Anti Christ label. But this plays on Christian ignorance of who Jesus is and WHY:

Instead, God the Word, in His grace, added to Himself human nature (Phil. 2:5-8] in order to bear our sins in His body on the cross (1 Pet. 2:24) so that He might become sin on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21).

Jesus preexisted with the Father as God-With-A-HUMAN-NATURE in order that mankind would be saved.

By Joyner saying Jesus was and is Spirit, we lose our salvation!

Still, Joyner had to know that his words could be construed in this manner. He is playing with “anti-Christ” fire. But why even bother opening this huge door for criticism?

That’s the head-scratcher on Joyner. Why write anything in this realm of “anti-Christ” at all? What would make Joyner so… blind?

The only answer is found in his own book THE FINAL QUEST about the Christians in “Pride” who got shot in the rear-end because they are too “proud” to admit there is no armor there. And it certainly explains Joyner’s false attack on Paul for Pride (Joyner is projecting his own sin upon the Apostle Paul.)

In the over-wordy and unreadable Gnosticism of Joyner’s book THERE WERE TWO TREES IN THE GARDEN, we find an entire landscape of Joyner’s own pride in his knowledge about religious things without Christian wisdom — the fear of the Lord. “Knowledge puffeth up” and Joyner has shot himself in his own rear end.

Joyner fails the Biblical test. He has shown that he dares, in his pride, to rewrite Scripture for his own reasons, something that God forbids anyone to do. He unwittingly has identified himself as Anti-Christ.

But, again, what is the motive here? If this is an Anti-Christ situation, what is happening? And why, besides trying to create a false doctrine for the false prophecies of his friends Bob Jones, Paul Cain, Chuck Pierce, C Peter Wagner, what is the specific motive behind it? So how does all the stuff about Mormons and Gay “Christians” claiming Joyner fit in?

This is the scary part. It is known that the Anti Christ one world governmental religion will be a totalitarian theocracy that kills Christians. Emma, the angel Bob Jones claims started the whole Kansas City Movement means: embracing everything…

Emma (really the name of a demon of Hell on Satanist’s websites named Emma O who inspires fear in anyone who does not believe in Satan!) Emma, the angel given by Bob Jones to Todd Bentley in 2000. Emma the angel who Bob Jones said started the Kansas City Movement/Toronto Blessing/Pensacola outpouring. Her name means “embracing everything”. Every religion. Every creed. Mormons, Catholics, Moslems, Protestants, Gay “Christians”.

Thus — the attack upon the Apostle Paul’s writings as the Word of God. If one can scissor Paul out of the Bible, you have a whole new group of “Gay Christians” that you can welcome into your “church”. Thus, the Mormon “prophet” that said the same God who wrote the Book of Mormon, the same Angel (demon) Moroni who brought it, is behind Rick Joyner’s THE FINAL QUEST. There are millions of Mormons now welcome into your Anti-Christ apostasy.

So what team is it that Joyner thinks true Christians are playing on in his coming Civil War in the Church in the Final Quest? Sounds like Satan’s own prophecy about the rift now of the Apostolic/Prophetic Kansas City Movement against people who know the word of God — even Charismatics who know and believe the Word of God over experience, signs and wonders and false prophecies of false prophets.

Finally, of course, Joyner, like Bill Hamon, mixes up Old Testament ideas and New Testament ideas — just like the Mormons do. The most terrible idea that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young had was that they could murder unbelievers in the name of Mormonism. (Their next Old Testament idea is of course, polygamy.) The Anti Christ will inspire his church to murder Christians, and believe they will be murdering people for Christ.

Rick Joyner is, to my knowledge, part owner of GODTV.

[* See discussion on this statement in the comments section]