Month: August 2015 (Page 1 of 2)

I discovered that one of my pastor friends, and his church, has joined the Bethel Church Network.  This puts me at odds with him, his associate, and several other leaders in the church who are friends.  I knew that they had come under the influence of some leading heretics, such as Joseph Prince.  We had disagreements over NAR (New apostolic Reformation) doctrine, such as dominionism and the so-called great endtime revival.  Eventually, because we live in the same city, we will come into sharp conflict over this recent decision.  I cannot suppress the truth in me any more than one who has imbibed a heresy can suppress it.  In this world of shrinking friendships and a growing number of enemies, every Christian will eventually face this dilemma.

“Now brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death.  And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved. – Matthew 10:21-22

It is a time of difficult choices.  We are having to choose between Christ and friends, Christ and family members, and even Christ and our jobs.  One day it may be the choice between Christ and our lives.  I have already lost friends for denouncing Bethel Music, which is very powerful alluring music that has drawn innumerable people into Bethel’s diabolical influence.  My detractors claims that the music is beautiful and that they can find nothing wrong with it.  Do they not know that is the cleverness of the final deception?  They are responsible for every soul they introduce Bethel Music to who ends up in fatal deception.

Bethel Church (Redding, CA) is an incredible cult.  It is a heretical NAR church controlled by notorious heretics “Apostle” Bill Johnson and his wife, Beni.  Bethel Church is established on a smoldering mass of heresy and heretical practices not unlike the aberrant Latter Rain Movement that plagued the early days of Pentecost.  However, it makes the original Latter Rain Movement appear mild by comparison.  From their “dead-raising teams” to “grave-sucking” practice, Bethel is an unrestrained, anything-goes cauldron of manifestations of diabolical lying signs and wonders.  Participants often go into trances, hallucinate, and become so mesmerized by the Bethel Deception/Delusion that they reject their families.  I personally know godly parents estranged from their children and grandchildren because of Bethel Church.  Like all cults, they are completely under the sway of their leaders, Bill and Beni Johnson (Beni allegedly change her name to honor heretic Benny Hinn).

There is no doubt that we are in the time of great deception, delusion, and apostasy.  I believe it is the final one. The Apostle Paul wrote that during the final apostasy the working of Satan would manifest all diabolical power, signs, lying wonders, and all deceivableness of unrighteousness (2 Thess. 2:9-10).  Christ warned of the intensity and captivating nature of that deception (Matt. 24:24).  Individuals who surrender themselves to this vast and unprecedented cloud of deception will be sent a great delusion by God so that they will believe a lie that will damn them (11^th – 12^th).  The Bible doesn’t spell out what that lie will be, but I believe it will lead to complete subservience to the False Prophet.  He will eventually manifest as the supreme, charismatic, one-world, “miracle-working” leader of United Religions.

Everyone who is filled with the Holy Spirit wants to see the power of God at work in their lives.  The Holy Spirit is still working powerfully through surrendered vessels.   However, there is a great danger in becoming obsessed with signs and wonders.  What is the greater benefit:  to see a sign or wonder in the church meeting, or to receive something from God’s word that makes you stronger, better equipped to face end times deception and prepared for the unprecedented evil storm?  Gold dust falling from the ceiling, oil appearing on people’s face and hands, rocking for hours in a trance, lying on a grave trying to suck the anointing out of a dead body, running around crying out, “Wakey, wakey wakey,” (Beni Johnson in the Mojave Desert, http://www.benij.org/blog.php?id=1 ) trying to awaken angels, will NOT prepare you to overcome the final deception.  Instead, it will guarantee you a place in the apostasy.  Bethel Church is a doorway to eternal darkness and hell.

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” – 2 Timothy 3:16-17

The word “inspiration” in the above verse is the Greek word, theopneustos, which means “divinely breathed in.”  In other words, God divinely breathed His word into the writers of the Scripture.   In my opinion, He still breathes words into His ministers today.  He has something that He wants to say and it is not “Your Best Life Now.”  He wants to wake up a slumbering Christianity and shake up a rapidly disintegrating world.

The problem is that pulpits are being filled by hirelings and heretics.  Additionally, they are filled by genuinely called men of God who are intimidated into tiptoeing around fiery truth.  They are afraid of losing people.  Some churches are so deep in debt that debt is like an austere room monitor in a library imposing and restrictive of any words that might rattle the cages.  Many pastors have become “benign parsons”, loved by all, but presiding over spiritual death camps.

It is tragic when a man is intelligent and articulate enough to preach a good sermon, but not anointed enough to inspire a change in anyone’s life. I’ve known men like that all my Christian life. They build churches, draw great crowds, avoid saying or doing anything controversial, but it’s all just religiosity.

I pray that God will send some gate shakers. I’m talking about preachers who are not deterred by the locked gates guarding people’s hearts. At this dark and evil hour, the world needs fiery prophetic voices that ignore the pastoring how-to books, the public relations manual from denomination headquarters, and just let the Holy Spirit breath through their words.

Let a fire breath and it will get hotter. 
“…for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” – 2 Peter 1:21

Open the religious dampers!  Let there be a free flow of the Divine Breath from heaven!  Preach without fear and worry about negative reaction or rejection!

If people don’t shake up and wake up, the world as we know it is going to fall like a mountain into a cauldron of simmering wickedness so vile the entire planet will teem with unprecedented demonic activity. It can’t wait, this business of dispensing fire-breathed truth. Don’t hold back! There will be no need to preach “return and repent” when the Bridegroom comes and the door slams shut.

I recently watched a performance of Toby Mac on Fox News.  I didn’t know for sure if he claimed to be a Christian, but evidently he did.  The song he performed was very good…if his goal was to stimulate the flesh.  It had no spiritual value whatsoever.  It caused the reaction in people that it was designed for.  Mac verified that fact when he asked the crowd to dance.  Many were already dancing.  And dance they did—the women moving sultrily and provocatively.  I think I heard Mac’s song on a secular station (where it appropriately belongs) when I was in a department store.

I won’t go into the origins of CCM, its birth out of the Jesus Movement, which came from the Counterculture Movement, whose offspring are now destroying Christianity and the United States.  Instead, I will deal with Mac’s and similar music on the basis of scripture.

Ephesians 2, the old nature defined.

“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.” – Ephesians 2:1-3

God considers individuals dead who are in trespasses and sins, because they are in subservience to the flesh and cannot accept life.  They choose death over life, darkness over light, and flesh over spirit.  Such an individual has a carnal mind, which is a mortal enemy against God.  The flesh is very creative when it has control of the mind, but it only produces what is pleasing to itself.  Everything the flesh produces is an affront to God.  Just as He did not accept Cain’s offering, or the offerings of Nadab and Abihu, God does not accept such offerings

If there were a “Holiest of All” on earth, and Mac waltzed into it playing his song, he would be instantly cremated.  The tired, old excuse, “But it is reaching the lost,” is invalid.  Satan is reaching the lost.  He is reaching the lost who have rejected the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  He does so by one major method of music designed by the flesh, for the flesh.  The many professing Christian musicians joining him in his paradigm are a great assistance to his efforts.  They are also reaching the lost in the same manner and with a diabolical message.  That message is, “You can have God and the world system.”  That is synonymous with a call to worship Satan.

For those reasons I would call Mac’s music, and most CCM, “dead” music.  It has no life for the spirit, but only the flesh.

The Carnal Mind is God’s enemy:

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Romans 8:5-8

The contrast to Ephesians 2:1-3 is Ephesians 4:17-24

“This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart;  who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.  But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” – Ephesians 4:17-24

A true Christian must be focused on building up the spiritual mind.  That cannot be accomplished if one returns to subservience to the flesh.  Further, such reverting can open the door for old bondages and proclivities to return.  Maybe that is why the Christian Music Industry is fraught with homosexuality and other tawdry lifestyles.  It is an unaccountable industry—arrogantly and defiantly so.

The problem is that we now have generations that have never known otherwise.  Born and raised in a time of apostasy, they believe the aberrations in Christianity are normal.  Those generations have been cheated out of a genuine relationship with Christ and God.  I have been praying for years that God would raise up an army of Christian musicians that write and produce exclusively Christian music.   It may or may not happen.  The absence of it must not lead one to turn to the “Toby Macs” of the industry for entertainment.

Christians do not need music, but they want it.  We do not need many things that we believe are essential to our comfort and emotional well-being.  We need God’s word.  We need to pray.  We need to stand up for truth.  We need to keep ourselves unspotted from the world system.  We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  We can use music that feeds the spiritual person.  But we don’t need Toby Mac.