Faith | thebereancall.org

Faith

September 6, 2023
Dave Hunt

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Born in 1926, Dave enjoyed the advantages of a godly upbringing, and placed his trust in Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and Lord in his early teens.

He received a degree in mathematics from U.C.L.A. Marriage to his wife, Ruth, was followed by the birth of four children, a career as CPA/management consultant and, later, the management of several corporations. Along with church-related activities, Dave initiated and became involved in numerous campus ministries and meetings in his home, with a special outreach to Jewish young people and foreign students.

Since 1973 Dave’s desire for fulltime ministry has found fulfillment through authorship of books dealing with the incursion, into Western culture and the church itself, of Eastern, psychological and selfist philosophies, ecumenism, and other unbiblical teachings. Concern over Islamic politics and religion are reflected in current articles, lectures and interviews.

At least 4 million copies of his books have been sold and have been translated into more than 50 languages. They include: The Cult Explosion, The God Makers, The New Spirituality, The Seduction of Christianity, Global Peace and the Rise of Antichrist, Occult Invasion, A Cup of Trembling, In Defense of the Faith, An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith, What Love Is This?, Countdown to the Second Coming, Seeking and Finding God, Honest Doubts, Judgment Day! Islam, Israel, and the Nations,Yoga and the Body of Christ, and his latest book, Cosmos, Creator and Human Destiny.
His video, Israel, Islam & Armageddon has become a tremendous tool for churches and others interested in helping spread the truth about events prior to and since the attack on the World Trade Center.
Dave’s impeccable research and recognized scholarship are based on in depth studies of original documents and publications, interviews with key experts from around the world, and extensive travel—including to South America, Australia, Europe and throughout the Middle East.

Friday, April 5, 2013, Dave Hunt drew his final breath and entered into the presence of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. His beloved wife Ruth was at his side.

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Transcript:

Let’s open the scriptures first of all to Luke chapter 13. And we’ll just read verses 23 and 24: “Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved?” 

He said unto them: “Oh, it’s fantastic. Especially in the last days, we’ll have this great revival! People will be coming into the kingdom by the droves!”

No! “Strive to enter in at the strait gate, for many I say unto you will seek to enter in and shall not be able.”

If we read it in Matthew 7, you don’t get the question there of the few that we say, which is why I wanted to read this one also. It’s close to Luke 18. So, turn right over to Luke 18. But if we read in Matthew 7, He says, “Broad is the road… that leads to destruction and many there be that go in there at. Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leads unto life, and few there be that find it.”

Luke:18:8: You know the verse. The second part of the verse: Nevertheless, “When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” It doesn’t sound like a great revival. It sounds like Jesus is even questioning: “Will there be anybody that still believes on the earth today?”

And now, in the day in which we live, something new is happening, and that’s what we want to move on into. The big cry today is “unity.” It’s very significant. In Genesis 11 you read that God looked down (this is on the tower of Babel), “Let us build us a city and a tower that will reach to heaven.” This is a city, it’s a civil government. The tower that reached to heaven is the religion of the day. So, this is the first world religion! And it was united with the civil authority. And that’s where we’re heading. Babel—Babylon­—will be revived! Revelation 17 tells us that. 

But it’s rather interesting that the cry of the whole world is “unity.” I remember an ad by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in Scientific American. And it had a picture of the Tower of Babel (in ruins, but the Tower of Babel) and this is what Lockheed said: “We are undoing the Babel effect!” They used those terms. “We are going to unite the world with our computers! The whole world will speak one language!” Well, you know, pretty soon you’ll be able to pick up a phone, you can talk in Afrikaans or English or wherever. Here, and in Japan, they hear you on the other end of the phone in Japanese! So, you can talk to anybody anywhere in the world. We will all be speaking one language. They’re going to unite the world! 

God said, “The imagination of man’s heart is only evil continually. They can do whatever they imagine, and that’s dangerous. Therefore, I’m going to scatter them and confound their languages!”

Everybody in the world says, “No, what we need today is unity! We need to be brought back together!” God says, “I’ve determined the bounds of our habitation. [This is Paul in Acts 17 in his speech at Mars Hill.] I’ve determined the bounds of their habitation. I have separated them that they might seek the Lord.”

But now, we’re going to get everybody back together.  

Now the church—that’s the big cry in the church: unity. You get a little bit discouraged in Africa, I’m sure, when some of the Africans profess faith in Christ and then seem to go back to their occult practices! 

But this is nothing new, folks. It’s been happening all down through history, and it was true of the Catholic Church. Everywhere the Catholic Church went they absorbed the religion, the occultism. But what is new now is that it is happening in Christian churches. It’s happening! There is an occult invasion of the church, and it is happening among those who call themselves “evangelicals.”

Let me just quote one of my favorite authors and probably one of yours as well, A.W. Tozer, apropos to what we’ve been trying to talk about. He said (I took this off of a tape. I sometimes listen to tapes of Tozer’s messages from the past.) He said, “I don’t want God ever to have to say to me, ‘I gave you your opportunity to tell the people, and you didn’t tell them. You wanted to be liked by the people, and you wouldn’t tell them. I’d lose every friend in Toronto (that’s where he was pastoring at the time) rather than hear it. I’d have you all turn your backs and walk away in cold anger from me rather than face up to that awful moment when the cry of men and women is heard, ‘The summer is past and we are not saved,’ and I know that I didn’t do my part to try to win men, to try to bring them to God. 

“It isn’t important that you like me. But it’s tremendously important that you’re washed in the blood of the Lamb. That you meet God in a saving encounter before that terrible day when you’ll have to cry ‘the opportunity is over.’” 

And then he goes on, and he says, “There is a namby-pamby effeminate kind of Christianity nowadays that’s telling the sinning world that they’re not to be blamed—that it is a disease.”

We mentioned a little bit of that. It comes out of psychology, remember? So we won’t go back over that.

But Tozer goes on: he says, “The modern gospel doesn’t say too much about sin. It makes an awful lot about a whimpering savior who whimpers over people, excuses them, tells them ‘hush, hush, don’t mention your sin. I died for you upon the tree.’”

“This is not the religion of the New Testament. It’s not the religion of the prophets. It’s not the religion of the church fathers or the reformers. It’s not the religion of the great missionaries.  It’s not the religion of the great evangelists. It’s an effeminate, watered- down, perfumed kind of Christianity that parades a pathetic, bent-over bewhiskered Christ up and down in front of people who scorn Him. 

“You ought to know tonight [he’s preaching to them now], sin is your own fault. And it’s my own fault if I sin. It’s not an excuse so I can say it was an accident or it’s a disease, or ‘I got it from my grandfather Adam. I can’t help myself. I’m a poor, weak man.’”

He says, “That teaching smacks of the dragon himself. The heartless betrayer of the sinner’s trust. Remember, young man, the ones that lead you into sin can never lead you out.”

So, there are a number of reasons why we find ourselves where we are today. We want to please men; we don’t want to upset anyone. We have a mistaken idea that, somehow, we can revise the gospel or repackage it so that it will be acceptable to the world. We have people who, in their zeal to get the world to accept the gospel, have remanufactured a gospel acceptable to the world. And it won’t save anybody. And that’s part of the problem.

Now, the apostasy goes back—for 1500 years the Catholic church has been in apostasy. Something new now—we are joining together in this idea. Now you think it’s discouraging in South Africa? Well, go to Korea! Yonggi Cho, pastor of the largest church in the world. His church is still involved in…well, you would find a mixture of ancestor worship there among those who call themselves Christians. Go to a “prayer mountain,” and so forth.

You have…this is so built into the heart of man that it’s very difficult to get it out.  We mentioned it the other day, 1 Thessalonians:1:10-11, Paul says, “You turned to God from idols to serve the living and the true God and to wait for His Son from heaven.”

Something really happened in these people’s lives! Why isn’t it happening today? Because there is a false gospel that is being preached. It’s not being preached in the power of the Holy

Spirit and in the convicting power of the Word of God.

Now, we could give you a lot of examples, but why is this, and who are the people who are encouraging occultism? Well, let me…maybe I should explain occultism briefly.

Occultism is simply the belief in a power, some power, that is innate in the Universe. It’s a potential—the human potential movement, the New Age Movement, it’s called the Human Potential Movement. It’s some kind of potential that we have in us, and it can be activated by positive thinking or positive speaking. You know, Jesus was always so “positive.” He said, “You whited sepulchres!” He said, “Except you repent, you will perish…”  (I guess Jeremiah was positive, you know.).

And when Jesus said, “This temple, there won’t be one stone left upon another, and Jerusalem will be destroyed.” I guess it was His “negative confession” that caused it to happen. I mean, that’s the idea that you get today.  “Don’t say you’re getting a cold. Because if you do, you’ll get a cold. But say, I don’t have a cold. I don’t have a cold.” And soon you won’t have a cold! Do you see the “power” of a “positive confession”? 

So, there are a number of people who brought this into the church, the evangelical church. About a hundred years ago, we had something called “New Thought.” Out of New Thought came Christian Science, Religious Science, Science of Mind, Unity School of Christianity, and so forth. 

New Thought was birthed, you could say, in Boston at the Emerson School of Oratory. And there was a gentleman there named E.W. Kenyon, who studied there, and he wrote some books. And Kenneth Hagin plagiarized his books, so…I mean, this is all thoroughly documented. If you want to read my writings or the writings of some others…. So that New Thought was retained. It was thrown out of the church, and it birthed these cults. But there were some people who kept it alive within the church.

Among them, Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuler, his chief disciple. Robert Schuler says, “Norman Vincent Peale is my mentor.”

Now we have Norman Vincent Peale on national television, highly regarded. Well, Billy Graham praises him! That’s…well, he’s dead now. But Billy Graham said on national television, “I know no one who has done more good for the cause of Christ and the Kingdom of God than Ruth and Norman Peale.”

But here’s Norman Peale on national television. He says, “You don’t have to be born again. You’ve got your way to God, I’ve got my way. I found eternal peace in a Shinto shrine.”

Let me just read to you some of the things that Norman Vincent Peale has had to say: “The world you live in is mental and not physical. Change your thought and you change everything. Your unconscious mind has a power that turns wishes into realities when the wishes are strong enough. Who is God? Some theological being? God is energy! [That’s the Star Wars Force.] As you breathe God in, as you visualize his energy, you will be reenergized. Prayer power is a manifestation of energy. Just as there exist scientific techniques for the release of atomic energy, so are there scientific procedures for the release of spiritual energy through the mechanism of prayer. Prayer is a procedure by which spiritual power flows from God, releases forces and energies….” And so forth.

That’s not Bible, folks. That’s occultism! So, occultism says there is some power out there and it works by Law. It works two ways: by laws and by techniques.

I don’t know about here, but we were in Zimbabwe and I mentioned…I was using “dousing” as an illustration, and it really hit home! I didn’t realize that the man whose home we were staying in, they located his well by dousing! It’s called water witching; water divining—absolutely forbidden! You know, you walk across the ground with a green willow twig (this is the way they did it in the United States in the early days), and that thing would go down like that [demonstrating], and supposedly the moisture in the twig was attracted to the moisture in the ground, and that was how you would locate it.

But wait a minute! For a good douser, that thing will go up and down [demonstrating “like that”] and it will tell you how deep you have to drill, how many feet, if you’re in America, or how many meters if you’re in Europe. It will tell you how many gallons, or how many litres (in your country) per minute this well will produce.

Furthermore, you can douse over a map! They don’t have to walk over the ground! 

So, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but Bermuda, the Island of Bermuda, the ground water geologists determined that there was no water. And in 1949 (or was it ’47?) Kennebunkport, Maine. Maybe you’ve heard that name, because some of our presidents have their summer residences and so forth. You would find a plaque in a room, and it would say, “In this room” [I think it’s 1947 or 1949] anyway, it names the man’s name. He located, by dousing over a map, three well sites on the Island of Bermuda, and that’s where they drilled, and he even told them how many gallons per minute! 

Now, look. Information is being communicated, isn’t it? There’s information! There’s no magnetic attraction. There’s no scientific explanation. Somewhere, someone, is communicating information, and I could quote from all kinds of New Age journalists that will tell you, they will agree, that whether you’re channeling Ramtha, or you’re channeling the Great White Brotherhood or you’re channeling some spirit entity or whatever, the messages have a consistency. All over the world there is a commonality, a common denominator, to these messages!

And they’re not trying to help you find water. I could quote you some of the people who have traveled around the world investigating this. And these are occultists themselves! These are not Christians. And they say, “You know, we’re getting in touch with some intelligence out there. And they’re trying to teach us something! In fact, they’re trying to teach us religious things!” And in fact, they are.

So, these ideas—amazingly, there’s a power. And it’s not God. Well, first of all, God is not subject to laws, but these men teach that this power is subject to laws.

They will take…. you say, how can they justify this? They will take…. Hebrews:11:3, for example. This is Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Oral Roberts, all these men—Hebrews:11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. So that things which are seen are not made of things that do appear,” and so forth. 

And they say, “No, that’s not what it says. What is says is, ‘We understand that it was by faith that God framed the worlds!’” They just put a little twist. You see what they’ve done? They’ve turned faith into a force, a force that God used to create the worlds. And because we’re “little gods,” and this force called “faith” is contained in words, we can learn to speak these words forth, make a positive confession, and we can create things like God creates. 

 So, they would take you to Genesis chapter 1, verse 3, verse 6, verse 11, and so forth, where it says (v. 3), “God said ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” And they say, “You see the power in words? So, we can speak it forth….” 

No! There was light not because God said, “Let there be light,” but because it was Godwho said, “Let there be light.”

So then these people teach that we are little gods and that we have this “creative power,” this force, in our tongue and so forth, and so this is one of the ways in which occultism is coming into the church of Jesus Christ. Even the evangelical church. 

Let me give you some other—well, first of all, while I’ve got my finger in the page here, Kenneth Hagin is generally credited with founding the so-called faith movement. Frederick Casey Price (let me quote you some of the leaders) says, “Kenneth Hagin has had the greatest influence upon my life of any living man. His books revolutionized and changed my life.”

Charles Capps similarly says, “Brother Hagin was the greatest influence of my life.”

Kenneth Copeland credits Hagin’s tapes with “having revolutionized his ministry.”

But Hagin plagiarized E.W. Kenyon, who studied in Boston in that hotbed of the emerging “New Thought” movement. 

Here’s Kenneth Hagin, Jr.: “Somebody will argue, ‘You’re talking about Positive Thinking.’ That’s right!,” he says. “I’m acquainted with the greatest positive thinker who ever was! God!”

Come on! God is a positive thinker? 

Norman Vincent Peale says, “Positive thinking is just another word for faith.”

No! You can be an atheist and teach positive thinking seminars, right? 

So now, we are just (doing) what the Catholic church did. We’re dressing up occultism under a thin veneer of Christianese, Christian language. We’re twisting the scriptures to justify occult techniques that are being brought into the church.

Robert Schuller says, “The greatest power in the world is Possibility Thinking!”

Really! What happened to God? “The greatest power in the world….” See, here’s how subtle it is. There are many Christians who think if they are praying for something: “If I could just believe that what I’m praying for will happen…. If I could just believe it’s going to happen…that that’s faith.”

But that’s not faith. That’s mind power! If things happen because you believe they will happen, you don’t need God! What is faith? 

Jesus said, “Have faith in God.” So, faith is believing that God will make it happen. Well, then, that changes everything! Maybe it’s not God’s will. Maybe it’s not God’s way. Maybe it’s not God’s time.

But Kenneth Hagin says Jesus appeared to him and gave him four principles, which if you follow these, you can always get what you want from God! And you will find that in his little booklet titled How to Write Your Own Ticket with God.

I don’t want to write my own ticket with God! If I’ve got any sense, I realize God is smarter than I am, and He really loves me, so His way is best. I don’t want to try to tell God what I want. But Yonggi Cho says he was praying for a bicycle, and desk, and a chair (some of you have read his book The Fourth Dimension). And Yonggi Cho says God spoke to him!

Now, look, if he got a silly idea in his head, then that’s bad enough, because it’s contrary to the Bible, and he ought to check it out with the Bible. But when he says God spoke to him, and he gives you the words, he is either lying or he was hallucinating, or he really got a message from some spirit. And it’s not the Spirit of God!

And he says God spoke to him and said, “Look, you’re praying for a bicycle. I don’t know what bicycle you want! There are French bicycles, American bicycles, there’s speed bicycles, there’s trail bicycles, all different colors. You’ve got to visualize exactly the bicycle you want. Only then can I give it to you!”

This is God? So, I’ve got to give my orders to God, and I’ve got to make it very clear. 

But what does Jesus say? “Your heavenly Father knows what you have need of before you ask.”

So, it’s the difference between letting God give me what I need and demanding from Him what I want, which may be the worst thing that I could possibly get.

So there are all kinds of techniques now. “We’re going to get hold of this power and we’re going to make it work.”

Now, if it works by laws or if it works by techniques, it’s not of God. God is not subject to laws. But Yonggi Cho, in his first book that made him famous (it should have made him infamous), but that shows the lack of discernment in the church. Why do they have a lack of discernment? Because they’re so eager for signs and wonders. They’re so eager to get this power!

Yonggi Cho said it, “A line is one-dimensional; a plane is two-dimensional (and that’s valid);” And he said, “The two includes the one —you draw enough lines infinitely close together; and you have a plane.”

And then he said, “A cube is three-dimensional.” And, following his analogy, he said, “The three includes the two.” And that’s true. You have enough planes infinitely close together, you have a cube.

Then he takes a leap neither warranted by logic, science, nor the Bible. He says, “The fourth dimension is spirit.”

You’ve got no basis for putting spirit in a cause-and-effect dimensional relationship with this three-dimensional physical universe in which we operate, okay? There’s no basis in science, logic, and certainly not in the Bible. Having done that, following…well, he said he got it from the Holy Spirit…following his analogy then, he says “the 4 includes the 3.” 

So now, you see what we have? We have pantheism! God is spirit, but He includes everything. And so God creates out of Himself, and the universe is part of God. He’s created out of himself. 

That’s why you don’t use feminine language for God. Because a woman gives birth out of herself. God creates out of nothing. He is not part of this universe, and that’s why this universe is going downhill, the second Law of Thermodynamics—the Law of Entropy. Energy is running out in this universe, and one day, unless God intervenes, which He will, the stars would be dead, infinitely dispersed, the whole thing approaching absolute zero. And all the corporate schemes and dreams and plans of mankind would be like sand castles washed out into a cosmic ocean of nothingness.

It would be like they had never been!

And if the Star Wars Force is the truth, then it’s running down like a clock too, because it’s part of the universe.

That’s the difference between naturalism and supernaturalism. There are no miracles in Christian Science. There are no miracles with the Faith Movement. It all works by Laws. Understand? If it works by laws, it is not a miracle. In fact, the atheist will say to you, “Oh, you think that was a miracle just because you don’t understand the laws that were governing. Your god is a hypothesis to explain the gaps in science! But one day, when science explains everything, then we don’t need your God!”

Okay, and if it all works by laws, and God has to follow these laws and you know the laws, then you can do it too! Okay?

So, Yonggi Cho said that the Holy Spirit taught him that we are fourth-dimensional beings, unsaved. Occultists are fourth-dimension beings. God is a fourth-dimension being. Satan and the demons and the angels are all fourth-dimension beings. He says God revealed it to him when he asked Him, “How is it that the occultist, the… (unintelligible), the soka gakai, (they have a positive chant, but they get miracles).  Na ham yo ho rengia kio, Na ham yo ho rengia kio. Na ham yo ho rengia kio.

They say it over and over and over, and this “creates miracles,” supposedly. Yonggi Cho says to God, “How come I see these sinners getting miracles and our church members are missing out?” And God told him the same thing he told… Well, he’s in touch with the same spirit that was in touch with Yonggi Cho, that the sinners are simply developing God’s laws of faith.”

So, look, folks, you don’t have to be a Christian. You can play the dark side or the light side. It doesn’t matter!

Do you have to be a Christian to flip the electric switch and get current flowing through here? It works by laws. This is science.

Mary Baker Eddy thought it was a big thing when she turned “Jesus” into a scientist. So, if it works by science, it works by…when I step into an airplane (and my wife and I fly too much), I don’t go into the cockpit and ask them, “Are you born-again evangelical Christians, filled with the Spirit…?”

All I care is, are they good pilots? [Audience laughter] And you don’t have to be a Christian to be a good pilot. (Are you following me?)

So, if it works by laws, and it is all built into this universe, you don’t have to be a Christian! And that’s why they say, “Well, occultists can do it. Soka gokki can do it.” So, now they’re teaching some kind of a power that is not of God. It’s no more of God than divining with a divining rod is of God.

So, this is part of the problem that we have in the church today. Now, who else teaches this sort of thing?  Well, we have something in…I don’t know—is inner healing, has that come here at all?

Well, the founder of inner healing was a woman named Agnes Sanford. And we talk a lot about her. I call her the Mary Baker Eddy of the Charismatic Movement. She is…it’s incredible! She taught…let me just give you some of her teachings. Now, what I don’t understand is how can they read her writings, know what she teaches, and revere her? This is the founder of the Inner Healing Movement (we’ll explain a little bit about it).

She taught that the Great Tribulation is passed. We’re in the Millennium. Christians must, through science of mind techniques take dominion over this earth, even removing the effects of the fall without the return of Christ [they’re not looking forward to that]. 

In The Healing Light, she presents a false god who she says is the “Life Force” in everyone and in everything, a form of energy like electricity. The original force we call “God.” (See, I’m quoting her.)
“We are part of God. He’s in Nature. He is Nature. I was conscious of oneness with God and therefore with the snake…” (she’s facing a snake now. How about that?)…which God had made.” 

She’s a pantheist! She loved Emmett Fox. He was Charles Filmore’s (the founder of Unity—that’s one of his spiritual children). She picked up ideas such as (I’m quoting Agnes Sanford, the founder of Inner Healing): “God’s love was blacked out from man by negative thought vibrations. Jesus lowered His thought vibrations to the thought vibrations of humanity to accomplish the at-one-ment.” (That’s a unity term that Filmore called a reconciliation of man’s mind with the divine mind through the super-consciousness of the Christ’s mind.)

She says…she gives four steps for tapping into this “God Force.” “To turn it on, we simply say (listen), ‘Whoever you are, whatever you are, come into me now!’” (Dave’s audience groaning)

Wow! What an invitation to demons! This is the founder of the Inner Healing Movement. She taught that everything is a matter of thought vibrations. We could be made ill by negative vibrations. We can heal ourselves through positive vibrations. 

She writes (you might want to try this sometime); she says, “You can project into the burglar’s mind the love of God by seeing him as a child of God and asking God to bless him.”

So if somebody sticks you up or are burglarizing your house, just “project the love of God into them, and call them a child of God. Just visualize them as a child of God, and that’s going to transform you.”

Well, she’s honored by Yonggi Cho, she’s honored by so many people, but among the inner healers, one of the major couples, John and Paula Sanford. Have they been to South Africa. John and Paula Sandford?

But certainly their writings have been here. Now listen to what they say: “Miracles happen by the cooperation of union and interplay of spirit and matter.” Confused men [Dave inserts “like me”].  

By the way, we expose it in our books. John Sanford claimed that Agnes Sandford was not a Christian and was demon possessed when she started this “school of prayer,” and where he studied when she started this whole thing. And that he had led her to Christ and cast a demon out of her.

Well, you want to read her writings—she tells [us] that she was raised of missionary parents in China, and there she sits before a Buddha and asking this spirit to come into her! So probably she was demon possessed. I don’t know, but anyway, this is the woman who founded this whole thing, and years later, after she founded it and they’re all following her, the leading inner healers, he says, “Oh, I led her to Christ and I cast a demon out of her.” 

Anyway, so here are the Sandfords, saying, “Confused men have thought there had to be a violation of principles for miracles to happen. What rot and bunk! Miracles happen by releasing power within matter, according to God’s principles. Nature, being filled….”

So miracles are natural? If miracles are natural, they’re not miracles! You don’t have to be too bright to realize that! “Nature, being filled with the Spirit of God, has immeasurable power locked within in its tiniest cells. Miracles happen by the operation of the Holy Spirit within principles far beyond our ability to comprehend, but nonetheless scientific. I have sometimes been called a Christian Scientist when lecturing on these subjects.”

Well, indeed they are Christian Scientists.

Now, let me quote you what Pat Robertson had to say on this topic. I don’t think we’ve quoted it. Pat Robertson said, “I began to realize there are principles in the Kingdom as valid for our lives as the Laws of Thermodynamics or the Law of Gravity. Once we perceived the secret, we realized anew that the Bible is not an impractical book of theology but rather a practical book of life containing a system of thought and conduct that will guarantee success.”

You got that? “The Bible’s not an impractical book of theology folks, that tells us about God. It’s a success manual! And it’s got these techniques and these principles, and even ungodly people can follow them, and God himself has to follow them because they’re built into the Universe and he’s part of it,” and so forth. 

I’ve probably belabored that too much. But here’s what we have happening. Hagin and Copeland teach this; Cho teaches it. And this is the foundation in either one of them. This is the foundation of the whole Positive Confession/Word Faith movement. Okay? This is the foundation of it.

Now, what else is going on? Something that surely in your country you couldn’t relate to. But we have YWAM, or Youth With A Mission, for example. Youth With A Mission? Now they are redeeming cultures. So they are going to the South Pacific, and in our country, North American Indian witchcraft. They’re redeeming the culture. We have, at the big gathering for Promise Keepers in Washington, D.C., and supposedly a million men there. And one of the men that they had pray had the Indian eagle feather headdress on that goes down the back and so forth. You know, when an Indian wears the eagle feathers he becomes (Wonken Tolka?). He is the “god.” They worship the eagle. They worship the sun. They worship the waterfalls and the trees, and so forth.

But you see, this is their culture, and it can come into our schools; it’s being taught to our children in public schools. It’s acceptable because this is their culture. Not religion.

No, you cannot separate their religion from their culture. It’s is so closely bound together. It’s rather interesting for us as Christians. A lot of people who call themselves Christians, their Christianity is separated from their culture, isn’t it? They go to church on Sunday morning and they sing some hymns and pray some prayers. But the rest of the week, try to do business with them! They’re pagans. And so, you know, “I’ve done my duty Sunday morning.” 

But the Indians—and natives everywhere—I don’t care if they’re native Africans or natives in the South Pacific, wherever they are, their culture is their religion. So now Youth With A Mission, we’re going to “sanctify” their culture. We’re going to keep their culture, but we’re going to biblicize it and Christianize it, and so forth.

Why, the Witch Doctor, he’s got some good principles, you know? And if we could just put some Christian terminology on this, then, you know, “Look what we’ve done for these people!”

So we have all kinds of people who have been “Christianized” but are not Christians. They think that they’re Christians. They fill our churches. And they’re being taught by the Word-Faith teachers these unbiblical pagan principles.

Well, I could give you a lot of other illustrations. But I brought a few things here that you might find interesting. I mentioned (I think) that the response to The Seduction of Christianity was Oral Roberts (that was a book back there that we wrote, if you’re not aware of it, in 1985). Oral Roberts immediately founded Charismatic Bible Ministries. And they agreed (now these are all leaders in the Word-Faith Movement—they all belong to it) and they agreed not to correct one another. See? “Don’t tell me I’m wrong, and I won’t tell you you’re wrong. And I won’t try to compare what you’re saying with the Bible.”

That’s one of their founding principles. “We will not correct one another.” That’s one of the major problems in the church today. People are not willing to be corrected. We’re not lovers of truth. And therefore, “a strong delusion has come upon them.”

So, here’s an ad for one of their conferences—they have it once a year in June. And here is their theme or their Logo: “Love and Unity through Signs and Wonders.”

That’s part of the problem today. People want signs and wonders so badly that they’re willing to compromise the Word of God. But you know the scriptures. You know what Jesus said. Matthew:24:24: “False prophets will arise and will do great signs and wonders so convincing that if possible even the elect would be deceived.”

The Bible foretells a great signs and wonders movement in the last days, and it says it’s not good, it’s bad. Jesus himself said in Matthew:7:22-23, remember: “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, in your name we cast out devils; in your name we did miracles?’ I will say to them, “I never knew you.
Depart from me!”

So Jesus is saying there’s going to be a big movement. A lot of leaders, Christian leaders—they pass for Christians. They’re doing it in his—These are not witch doctors! Look, let me just put it like this, in as kindly a way as I can: If a witch doctor suddenly walked into our churches, down the middle aisle, you know, in all of his rig and so forth, whatever a witchdoctor the kind that he is wears, we would throw him out! Or we would at least try to convert him!

But when he walks in in a business suit or a clerical collar, and he’s presenting the same stuff, but he’s got it dressed up in Christian language, then most people don’t recognize him, and then it leads them astray. And one of the reasons they don’t recognize it is because it’s so enticing! I can get this power!

You can read about it. You want to read about that? Again, we don’t have time. Go to 2 Peter 2, and he says, “There will be false teachers, false prophets in the last days.” (And listen to these words): “…who through covetousness shall make merchandise of you.” They’re out for money! That’s all they want. But let me give you just a few false prophecies of Benny Hinn. Or Kenneth Copeland. These people are false prophets.

For example, toward the end of 1975 (and I’m going back in time so you can see that it wasn’t fulfilled). Kenneth Copeland prophesied, (Quote – I’m quoting him.) “As you move into the month of January (that would have been 1976), you shall see more of the outpouring of God’s glory than in the history of this world. Limbs that have been amputated put back on by the power of God instantly! Bald men’s hair growing to a full head of hair. (Audience laughter). Eyeballs replaced, where there were no eyeballs. God will cause your automobile that gets 10 mpg to get 70 mpg, the same car! Anybody remember any of these things happening? Nothing. Nothing! He’s a false prophet.   

I can give you a lot of others, but we don’t have time. Let’s move on to Benny Hinn. He’s the most popular televangelist today. Not Sunday mornings, because I don’t think he has a Sunday morning service. Robert Shuller does.

Well, by the way, we offer a book in our ministry, and if you don’t get our newsletter you’re welcome to sign up for it. It’ll be sent out free. We offer a book called The Confusing World of Benny Hinn. And it will document everything thoroughly for you.

But, I’m going back and December 31, 1989, there at his church in Orlando. (I think I mentioned this the other day, but I’ll give you maybe a couple of others.) Benny Hinn is riding the throne room of God. God is speaking through him. I quote (I think I quoted it from memory, but let’s get it exactly.

“The Lord also tells me about ’94-’95, no later than that, God will destroy the homosexual community of America by fire.”

It didn’t happen! I mean, you couldn’t be too bright to make such a declaration, could you? They just get so filled with themselves! And filled with what they think is their power that they make rash predictions and so forth, but they attribute it to God! He said, “Canada will be visited the same night. Canada will be visited with a mighty revival that will start on the West Coast of British Columbia in the next three years.” That would have been by 1992. Never happened! He can’t even take credit for the Toronto Blessing because that was in the east, okay?

Benny Hinn can’t even get his testimony straight! In the PTL family devotional (I’m giving you the documentation) he says, “I got saved in Israel in 1968.” In a 1983 message in Saint Louis he said, “It was in Canada that I was born again right after ’68.

If you’re a liar you’d better have a better memory. You’ve got to remember what you said last time. Yet in Good Morning, Holy Spirit—that was a big seller across America, he says he was converted in 1972 during his senior year in high school. Major problem—he dropped out at the end of the 11th grade. He never was a senior in High School.

The man can’t get his testimony straight, and yet they follow him, and he says he goes to the grave of Katherine Kuhlman and Aimee Semple McPherson, where “the Holy Ghost is lingering,” and that’s where he picks up this anointing of the Holy Ghost.

Well, this is horrible stuff. What is the result of what’s going on? Ray Comfort, if you know Ray Comfort, but he has pointed out some statistics. He quotes the statistics from a major denomination in the United States which said it had an incredible 294,784 decisions for Christ in 1990. We have people “making decisions for Christ.” I don’t like that term, I’m sorry. I don’t find it in the Bible. 

Decision? What kind of a decision? Yet in 1991, that’s a year later, he could only find 14,337 of them at a Christian fellowship. There were 280, 447 decisions that couldn’t be accounted for. They just vanished.

Another leading U.S. denomination in 1995 claimed that they got 384,057 decisions, but only 23,000 of them remained in the church a year later.

At another crusade, 600 decisions were obtained with great rejoicing. Follow-up workers couldn’t even find one.

In 1991, in Cleveland, Ohio, 400 decisions were obtained in an inter-city outreach, you couldn’t find one of them.

Charles Hackett, the Division of the Home Missions National Director for the Assemblies of God in the U.S., he says, “A soul at the altar does not generate much excitement in some circles because we realized approximately 95 out of every 100 will not become integrated into the church. In fact, most of them won’t even return for a second visit.”

So there’s something wrong! We’re trying by techniques and by persuasion, and we’re repackaging Jesus and trying to make Him enticing. Jesus—remember when somebody says, “Lord, I’ll come along and I want to be your follower.”

Remember what Jesus said, “Peter, sign him up quick! James, get him in the choir. John, make a deacon out of him! You know, we don’t want to lose him!”
No! Jesus said, “You’re sure you want to follow me? I don’t even have anywhere to lay my head. You want to go where I’m going? I’m heading for a hill outside Jerusalem called Calvary. And they’re going to nail me to a cross, and if you want to follow me, make up your mind right now, pick up your cross and follow me, because that’s exactly where we’re going.’

You don’t hear that today. And that’s why we have all these false decisions, we’ve got all kinds of people who claim that so many big revivals! I mean, there are…I remember reading a (and I forget the man’s name now) but he followed one of these big evangelists and healers through Africa, where thousands were being converted; thousands were being healed. And he followed it up. He couldn’t find anybody! It’s just exaggeration, but then they send these reports back in order to raise money for themselves.

That’s a problem that weighs on my heart heavily, because the Word of God says, “If you don’t receive the love of the truth—” They don’t want truth. They want an experience. They want doctrine. They want some excitement, and those who refuse to receive the love of the truth will receive a strong delusion to believe the lie.

And this is not pleasant to talk about, and we haven’t even gotten to where I wanted to get, but I think you’ve kind of got a little bit of a background to understand what’s happening and where we’re going. And this is something new within the church. Occultism has been in the Catholic Church for 1500 years, but now it’s in the Evangelical Church, they’re merging with the Catholics, and we’re heading for a one-world church very rapidly and it could cost us something! We are going to have stand firm for the truth, and earnestly contend for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints.

Father, thank you for your Word that warns us of this time, and help us to be true to it and true to you, and Lord, help us to rescue man. These dear people, there are so many of them who are sincere. They want more of you, but they’ve been led astray by false prophets. Lord, help us to help them, we pray, in Jesus’s name. Amen.

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