Eschatology

Are the Pulpits Silent Now?

Standard

In late July of this year, I asked the following economic questions, and this is how you answered:

[poll id=45]

***

[poll id=46]

***

[poll id=47]

***

[poll id=48]

I would be interested in knowing if those figures still hold true.

The even greater question is whether or not your church has discussed the economy. I’m suspecting now that they have.

Rather than open up a new set of polls, I’d simply like to ask you all to leave a comment on the following questions:

Has your church leadership addressed the financial meltdown? If so, what did they say or do?

Has your church leadership taken any steps to initiate a new program/benevolence to address financial issues among the congregants within the church? Outside the church?

Do people in your church think this meltdown is The Beginning of the End?

Thank you for being a reader and for contributing your comments.

The Coming Charismatic Civil War

Standard

On Wednesday, Lee Grady of Charisma magazine posted “Can We Avoid a Charismatic Civil War?” I would ask that those of you who have some stake in the charismatic movement read it. Just follow the link in the title.

I’ll wait.

Done? Okay. Here’s what I have to say.

A Gray casualty of the Civil WarWhile I share Grady’s powerless feeling as I watch the errors compound in large swaths of the charismatic movement, regardless of what anyone thinks of Rick Joyner’s prophetic powers, it always had to lead to this confrontation. You get on a road that forks, at some point you have to decide which way to go. Sadly, one side chose experiences, ecstasies, armies, dominion, and the age-old whisperings in the Garden while the other chose Jesus.

The answer to Grady’s question is a simple no. No, we can’t avoid a civil war within the charismatic movement because one side chose truth while the other chose error. One side chose the Bible while the other chose untested prophetic revelation. One side was satisfied with Jesus alone while the other wanted more.

You can’t make those two sides fit together. They practically define mutual exclusivity.

Here’s a simple question: “What portion of the gold in the old temple contained impurities? Answer: None of it. The gold in the temple, the gold God took great pains to describe, was pure gold.

If God went to such pains to ensure that an item as simple as a gold cup used in His Old Testament temple was free of all alloyed taint, how much impurity will He tolerate in the teachings and preachings delivered by the New Testament temples of His Holy Spirit?

And that’s all you have to know here. We may see through a glass darkly, but that doesn’t mean we tolerate impurities and pretend they aren’t there. Yet how much doctrinal foolishness must pass in some sectors of the charismatic movement before it draws God’s wrathful fire?

Just a glance at the fully ripened fruit on the Blue side of Rick Joyner’s vision should be enough to disqualify that army entirely. Please, just open your eyes. Even a little.

It had to come down to this.

Rick Joyner prophesies a great end times revival as the Blue army advances under a banner of dreams, visions, miracles, and prophetic words. He sees The Blues triumphing over the more “intellectual, but less spiritual” Grays, redefining Christianity, for the better, in the process.

Here’s what the Bible sees:

Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.
—2 Thessalonians 2:3-15

“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short. Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand.
—Matthew 24:9-25

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
—2 Timothy 4:3-4

Now I ask you, does this support Joyner’s Blue army prophecy in any way? Even the slightest?

Well, perhaps it does—by exposing it!

I could get into Latter Day Rain, Joel’s Army, The Manifest Sons of God, The New Breed, Lakeland, Toronto, Brownsville, Pensacola, the Kansas City Prophets, and a million other Blue army buzzwords, but the time is short. Honestly, it’s very, very short.

Read enough about this civil war “prophecy” and you’ll even have some saying it will come down to bloodshed. With Blue proponents claiming that some Blues will be immortal this side of heaven, I guess it’s clear whose blood will be shed.

It’s time for the civil war. It had to happen. No one asked for it, but here it is.

If you’re a charismatic who believes that we need to test the marching orders and practices of the Blue army and are grieved by the blatant doctrinal fallacies and outright myths erupting like sores on some sectors of the charismatic movement, understand this: You are the new enemy. You are the Gray.

Maranatha.

A Sure Word from the Lord

Standard

In uncertain times, the Bible offers truth and hope. I read this today and could not help but note how applicable it is for all of us. The lessons and truths leap from the page:

Afterward Ben-hadad king of Syria mustered his entire army and went up and besieged Samaria. And there was a great famine in Samaria, as they besieged it, until a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver.

Now as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, “Help, my lord, O king!” And he said, “If the LORD will not help you, how shall I help you? From the threshing floor, or from the winepress?” And the king asked her, “What is your trouble?” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ So we boiled my son and ate him. And on the next day I said to her, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him.’ But she has hidden her son.”

When the king heard the words of the woman, he tore his clothes—now he was passing by on the wall—and the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth beneath on his body—and he said, “May God do so to me and more also, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today.”

Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him.Now the king had dispatched a man from his presence, but before the messenger arrived Elisha said to the elders, “Do you see how this murderer has sent to take off my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold the door fast against him. Is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him?” And while he was still speaking with them, the messenger came down to him and said, “This trouble is from the LORD! Why should I wait for the LORD any longer?”

But Elisha said, “Hear the word of the LORD: thus says the LORD, Tomorrow about this time a seah of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, at the gate of Samaria.”

Then the captain on whose hand the king leaned said to the man of God, “If the LORD himself should make windows in heaven, could this thing be?” But he said, “You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat of it.”

Now there were four men who were lepers at the entrance to the gate. And they said to one another, “Why are we sitting here until we die? If we say, ‘Let us enter the city,’ the famine is in the city, and we shall die there. And if we sit here, we die also. So now come, let us go over to the camp of the Syrians. If they spare our lives we shall live, and if they kill us we shall but die.”

So they arose at twilight to go to the camp of the Syrians. But when they came to the edge of the camp of the Syrians, behold, there was no one there. For the Lord had made the army of the Syrians hear the sound of chariots and of horses, the sound of a great army, so that they said to one another, “Behold, the king of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to come against us.” So they fled away in the twilight and abandoned their tents, their horses, and their donkeys, leaving the camp as it was, and fled for their lives.

And when these lepers came to the edge of the camp, they went into a tent and ate and drank, and they carried off silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them. Then they came back and entered another tent and carried off things from it and went and hid them. Then they said to one another, “We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news. If we are silent and wait until the morning light, punishment will overtake us. Now therefore come; let us go and tell the king’s household.”

So they came and called to the gatekeepers of the city and told them, “We came to the camp of the Syrians, and behold, there was no one to be seen or heard there, nothing but the horses tied and the donkeys tied and the tents as they were.”

Then the gatekeepers called out, and it was told within the king’s household. And the king rose in the night and said to his servants, “I will tell you what the Syrians have done to us. They know that we are hungry. Therefore they have gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the open country, thinking, ‘When they come out of the city, we shall take them alive and get into the city.'” And one of his servants said, “Let some men take five of the remaining horses, seeing that those who are left here will fare like the whole multitude of Israel who have already perished. Let us send and see.” So they took two horsemen, and the king sent them after the army of the Syrians, saying, “Go and see.”

So they went after them as far as the Jordan, and behold, all the way was littered with garments and equipment that the Syrians had thrown away in their haste. And the messengers returned and told the king. Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Syrians. So a seah of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the LORD.

Now the king had appointed the captain on whose hand he leaned to have charge of the gate. And the people trampled him in the gate, so that he died, as the man of God had said when the king came down to him. For when the man of God had said to the king, “Two seahs of barley shall be sold for a shekel, and a seah of fine flour for a shekel, about this time tomorrow in the gate of Samaria,” the captain had answered the man of God, “If the LORD himself should make windows in heaven, could such a thing be?” And he had said, “You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat of it.” And so it happened to him, for the people trampled him in the gate and he died.
—2 Kings 6:24-7:20

From God’s mouth to our ears.