T. A. McMahon & Sarah Leslie (Part 1)

Program Description: 

Tom welcomes guest Sarah Leslie from the discernment blog site "Herescope."

Transcript:

Gary: Welcome to Search the Scriptures 24/7, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring T.A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael. Thanks for joining us.

In today’s program, Tom welcomes special guest Sarah Leslie, editor and contributing writer for the discernment blog site “Herescope.” Now, along with his guest, here’s TBC executive director, Tom McMahon.

Tom: Thanks, Gary. Joining us for today’s program and next week’s as well is Sarah Leslie. Sarah’s the editor and contributing writer for the discernment blog site “Herescope.” Now, I’ve been following Sarah’s writings for decades, and the issues she addresses [and] the information she presents are a very important help to the body of Christ, in my opinion, especially as the apostasy of our day continues to increase exponentially. Sarah, thanks for joining us for Search the Scriptures 24/7.

Sarah: It’s nice to be with you, Tom.

Tom: Okay. Now, Sarah, you address some issues that influence significant numbers of Christians, both professing Christians and true believers, and you help some believers to discern between false teachings…and I know many are eternally thankful while others you upset, because you’ve “attacked”--now, I put that in parentheses…well, actually quotation marks…

Sarah: [laughs]

Tom: …because that’s the way it usually comes out, right, Sarah?

Sarah: Oh, yeah…

Tom: You attack their sacred cows. So tell us…

Sarah: Yeah…

Tom: …how did you get into this sort of ministry that blesses some, but really tends to make a number of folks angry?

Sarah: [laughs] What a question! Well, I got saved in the early ‘70s. I came out of the hippie movement, and I also was deeply involved in some things in the New Age Movement. And when I got truly born again and gave my life a hundred percent to the Lord, some of the first things that started crossing my path were the same kind of Eastern Mysticism that I had just come out of, and by this time I was being immersed in the Word of God, I was studying the Scriptures, I was listening to the Lord, and I was recognizing what I was seeing, and at first of course it was just in the world that I was noticing this in my graduate school classes, and that kind of thing.

But eventually I began to notice--in fact, it was very quickly--I began to notice how it was coming into the church, and a lot of times it would be repackaged, rewritten, sometimes the terminology would be changed or it sounded a little bit more biblical, but I was recognizing what I was seeing, and I knew what I was seeing, and so I began writing about it, talking about it to friends, that kind of thing. It really wasn’t till the late 1980s--early 1990s that I began to actually start writing about this, and my husband and I were involved with several publishing endeavors in the 1990s, including--we had our own magazine called The Christian Conscience--and we began to start warning people about what we were seeing coming in the church. And of course by that time I was good friends with Warren Smith, who also came out of the New Age Movement, and I actually helped him with several of his books, to publish to them for the first time around, and I’ve been doing this with Discernment Ministries. My husband and I are both on the board of directors of Discernment Ministries since the late 1990s, and in 2005, we set up a blog called Herescope, which basically means scoping out a heresy, and that became a major vehicle for Discernment Ministries to warn people about things.

Tom: Sarah, what you’ve talked about--your background, what you’ve presented for us, things that have come into the church--do you see this thing developing rapidly, exponentially even, from the 80s to 90s to today?

Sarah: I certainly do, I certainly do. I vividly remember the first time I heard Constance Cumbey talk about the New Age Movement, and heard Dave Hunt talk about the New Age Movement back in the early 80s and explain my life to me, and explain what I had been involved in, and at that time it just seemed so remote--I mean, I never even dreamed this would come into the church, but it began to arise in the 1990s, and since 2000, it has just grown exponentially, just the way you describe it. And a lot of it came through certain leaders, certain movements in the church, and it was orchestrated. I mean, the kind of research I do is historical research. A lot of it was planned and intentional.

Tom: Mm-hmm. Now, some Christian leaders, Bible teachers and so on--I mean, I’ve heard this over and over again--they say, “Well, you really don’t need to look at that stuff. What you really need to do [is] be in the Bible.” They use the analogy of in the treasury department: if you want to recognize a counterfeit bill, you study the real thing and then the other things will show themselves up. What’s your response to that?

Sarah: My husband actually did a little bit of research on that, because he was intrigued that that was commonly said, and he discovered that the way the treasury department actually trains people is that you have to sit there with the false dollar right up next against the real dollar. They teach you that you cannot tell the difference unless you compare the two side by side with your own eyes, your skin, feeling it, touching it…yeah. And so, I know that’s a very naïve position. I also don’t think it’s scriptural. We are required by the Lord to be wary…

Tom: Yeah. Exactly.

Sarah: …and to have discernment.

Tom: Sure, it talks about Satan being a roaring lion, and we’re not to miss his devices, his guys, the things that his guys…that he uses. So that’s one thing. The other thing is--just to come back to it--part of the problem, as you described this growth, exponential growth, which I see absolutely, as--you know, Sarah, I’ve been…I worked with Dave for 35 years--and to see the progression, to see the development of all this is stunning. It’s stunning to us. But the point is, the solution…this is why I’m not going to rap their knuckles if somebody says, “Well, you’ve really got to know the truth.” Yes, you do have to know the truth! And part of the problem, in my view, with the growth that we’re seeing, the exponential growth, is that people aren’t into the Word of God. I’m talking about believers, people who claim to be Bible-believing Christians--they really don’t read the Bible. They get spoon-fed or…even Bible studies more often than not, or a book by somebody else, you know, not by the writers of Scripture. So yes, we need to be into the Word of God, but we also need to recognize the devices of the adversary in whatever form they take. You don’t major in that, but you have to be aware of it, don’t you agree?

Sarah: Absolutely, absolutely. I run into people all the time who get deceived because they’re not in the Word of God and it sounds so good. I mean, some of these Christian leaders these days are very, very sophisticated in how they market themselves and their tactics and their techniques are very, very manipulative and very intoxicating.

Tom: Right. Well, that brings me to another question I had: why do you think that people today are so--I don’t like to use the word “gullible,” but how are they so easily seduced into the very kinds of things--now, we haven’t given examples; that’s coming, folks--but why in general would you say people are ripe for seduction?

Sarah: Well, one of the things people don’t realize is that a lot of these leaders in the evangelical world were actually trained in modern marketing methods, and in modern marketing methods they use very sophisticated psychological methods to hook people into new ideas, new beliefs, new values, new worldviews, and this is all based on--believe it or not, the most simple formula is peer pressure. If you can get somebody hip, popular, cool-looking, with a lot of pizzazz to go out there on the frontlines of the evangelical world and stand up on a stage and do all sorts of phenomenal things and say all sorts of things that tickle your ears, people fall for it. They love idols, they love stars, and they all want to be the first person to be on this star’s team, and we all follow like sheep. But they are using very, very sophisticated techniques to try to get people to jump onto the latest craze and to just follow it hook, line, and sinker, and we have a whole generation of evangelicals who have all been raised this way. They’ve all been trained--“Whatever’s hip and cool, we’re on that boat.”

Tom: Right. And we could throw that into the realm of spoon-feeding: if I’m following and individual--call him your spiritual guru or even evangelical preacher or teacher--you’re going to be ripe for that if you just want to be spoon-fed, if you don’t want to be a Berean and check things out.

Now, let me give you a specific example of just what you said: Sarah, you know that Rick Warren’s book…

Sarah: Purpose Driven Life.

Tom: …The Purpose Driven Life, you know, it began [with] Purpose Driven Church and Purpose Driven Life and so on--that sold, I don’t know what the latest figures are, but at one point it was beyond 30 million copies. Now, I tell people I can explain to them how that book was so successful: because it was pure marketing, absolutely pure marketing. And why would I say that? Well, Rick admits that one of his mentors--you know, he talks about two of his mentors, actually, he has three--one would be Billy Graham, the other one, and this is the one I’m referring to, would be Peter Drucker, who was a management genius, as you know. Well, when you spend twenty years under the guidance of somebody like Peter Drucker whose forte is marketing and management, guess what? That’s how it’s going to play out. So you can just follow the program of Rick’s promotion of The Purpose Driven Life--as I said, it started with Purpose Driven Church, I think he sold a million copies of that, and then he brought it to the church through these marketing things. So that would be a very specific example of what you’ve just said.

Sarah: In fact, a man even wrote a book about it called PyroMarketing.

Tom: Yeah, I’m not familiar with that book. Again, are we against marketing? Look, it’s a business approach. My concern here is, fine, use it in your business. I mean, I’ve read some of Drucker’s books, and I think they were pretty sound in terms of the area of management. But as soon as you apply that to the church, it’s one of the deadliest things coming, and you can just see it, as you’ve pointed out, across the board with the…it’s like every large church or every so-called Christian institution now has a marketing department that rules the roost, right?

Sarah: Right. Actually, so…In fact, some people like Rick Warren have professional handlers, profession PR men like Larry Ross. That’s a sad commentary on the church that you need a spin guy.

Tom: Well, I mean, look at the fund appeals. Are you telling me--or the phone calls that you get from, you know, some ministries that we think, “Well, they’re really good ministries,” but all of a sudden you’re getting these fund appeal letters week after week after week, and then even phone calls. Well, anyway, I don’t want to get away from our topic, but the point of all that, folks, is that there are things that are bringing this stuff, sort of drawing and pushing and compelling--the way they go about things has to do with marketing and we are ripe for it. I would say being a consumer--sadly, most of us are, you know, we’re consumers, even big-time consumers--well, we’re ripe for a marketing department. We’re ripe for developments in the church that move in that fashion. So, it’s a huge problem.

Sarah: Yes, it is.

Tom: I mean, that’s a part of the issue that I think we need to address. But for the work that you’ve done, for Herescope, for your discernment ministries, give our listeners some examples of what you’re concerned about and one of the things that you do--and this is what I really appreciate--is you give us a historic basis…

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Tom: …for what we’re seeing today, and I think that’s huge. And it’s missing in the church, especially with regard to this upcoming generation. But go ahead. Give us some examples.

Sarah: Well, one of the things that we have watched very closely--we actually have what we call the Discernment Research Group, and that’s a whole group of pastors, scholars, historians, and researchers, writers like me, where we talk amongst ourselves and follow these trends, and we dig in there and we do historical research, and one of the things that we have watched over the years and we’ve written extensively about is the rise of post-modernism in the church, and by that I mean the abandonment of biblical absolutes in favor of touchy-feely things, in favor of experiential things, and rewriting doctrine.

What we watched first--and of course, Discernment Ministries has a very long history going back into researching the whole rise of the Latter Rain Movement, which was a cult in the Pentecostal world, how it came to permanence in the charismatic world, and how it’s now C. Peter Wagner’s New Apostolic Reformation. This was a whole movement of mysticism that came into the church, and it was complete with signs and wonders and gold dust and Todd Bentley and all of the phenomena, the “laughing revivals” they had--that would be one phenomena that we’ve watched. That would be one movement. Another one would be the emergent church movement. This is more commonly recognized by people in the discernment world circles. They know a lot about the emergent church movement because there’ve been a lot of really good, topnotch discernment researchers who have written extensively--people like Pastor Ken Silva, for example, on his Apprising website, kept on top of that for years.

But there’s also another movement which we stumbled on sort of by accident which is equally just as mystical, equally (conceptual ?) as these other movements, equally post-modern, but it comes straight out of our evangelical movement, and it particularly comes out of our end-times eschatology crowd, and we stumbled onto this by accident and we were devastated, because a lot of us had friends who were deeply involved in this by the time we even discovered it was out there.

Tom: Mm-hmm. Sarah, let me take you back, because you mentioned the Latter Rain, Manifest Sons of God--now, folks, we’re talking about a movement that started in Canada in Saskatchewan in 1947, and you had individuals like William Branham and others that are, although they’re not visible in terms of their teachings big time today, this was huge. But this is the roots, this is the basis, at least that individual and others, and this movement out of Canada in 1947, we’ve seen it grow and develop, and when you think that it’s, “Oh, well, that was just--that’s over, that was gone,” I like to use the analogy of waves, of sets of waves. I’m an old-time surfer…

Sarah: Yes.

Tom: …so you have a wave that comes in, let’s say 1947, and the Latter Rain Movement, the wave crests, and then drops its debris on the beach, and then it draws back, taking some with it, and you think, “Oh, okay, that was that, that’s over, that’s passé, that’s gone.” But no! Then you have a next set that comes in, sometimes with new individuals--you mentioned Todd Bentley and individuals [like] Rodney Brown and Toronto Airport--manifestations there, and you know, I mean, we could go on and on about these things, but they happened later. But the root of it is pretty much the same; just the players change. And now we’re seeing a movement, and we’re seeing a convergence, which we’ll talk about in a minute. But the convergence would be bringing other things that are somewhat related, bringing people who’d you say, “Well, this is too diverse,” but no, it’s bringing people together to reinforce what goes back to--there are other examples, but with regard to the Latter Rain Movement, it goes back to 1947.

Sarah: That’s right. That’s right. A lot of these movements we can track through time and actually personnel, individuals, leaders in the evangelical world, who got sucked into a lot of these movements at one level or another, and some of the places where they got sucked in is actually rather alarming, because with the, like at Fuller Theological Seminary, which became sort of a seabed, like a think tank almost, for all of these movements, every single one of these movements, so as you look at the big picture, you can see the interconnections between all of these groups and all of these leaders, and that’s disturbing.

Tom: Yeah. Now, you know, on the one hand, people say, going back to the response that we get, “Well, you just need to study the Bible.” Yes, you do need to study the Bible, but my concern, Sarah, is for the upcoming generation, and I’m talking about young believers who are biblically literate, you know, they do read the Bible, but they’re clueless in terms of their understanding of the development of these things. Now, you know, what’s the old line about history? If you don’t know history, it’s going to repeat itself, and really have an effect. So my concern here is that this is why I hold what you do and others that you work with in such high regard, because people don’t have to major in what you do, okay? You’ve been called to do it, but they have to be aware so that they can recognize--red flags need to go up when they say, “Wait a minute, what I’m seeing today, that sounds like the old Manifest Sons of God, or Latter Rain stuff,” whatever it might be, but our young people today are missing that…well, the other part of the problem is that too many of them, even though they may be believers, they’re biblically illiterate. They just don’t spend their time in reading the Word and understanding the Word. But again, that is a problem that I’m thankful that your ministry and others like your ministry address, because it’s critically important in these days.

Sarah: It is. One of the things we try to do when we write about heresy is we always try to write the truth. We always try to explain why it’s heresy and contrast it to the Word of God where we can come back to the truth and that isn’t done in a lot of sections of all of this. We need to stay right there on target and educate people.

Tom: Yeah, because--just a little side note here, a couple years ago I was in Devon, England. I was speaking at a conference called Truth for Youth, and we had about 180 young people, early 20s, right in that age bracket, and I remember saying to them and the speakers that were with me were absolutely terrific, but I spoke for all of us. I said, “Look,” to the young people I said, “Look, we’re here because we want to encourage you and help you to think biblically. We want you to think biblically. But you know what? We’d be satisfied if you just think!” [chuckles] The point is, and this is what you’re talking about, that, you see, when you lay things out and you explain things, Sarah, then you’re not only teaching specifics about the issue that you’re addressing, but you’re encouraging young people or anybody, any believer, to think their way through it “to the law and the testimony,” Isaiah writes. “If they speak not according to this word, there is no light in them.” So we need to be able to think through this stuff, but we’re in a day and age--you mentioned it before--we’re like sheep. We’re drawn this way or to this personality or to that personality and so on, and to our spiritual harm, which is a huge problem.

Sarah: That is true, that is true. We definitely have a dumbing down going on in the church itself.

Tom: One of the big issues today, and you have addressed it in a mighty way, and it’s something that, you know, I’d have to say, “Wait a minute, why is this so big? Where did this come from?” And I’m referring to the issue of the Nephilim. And now we have prophecy conferences around all the issues, all the speculations, the ideas, the opinions of who the Nephilim were, you know, what that was about, and now how it’s progressed into something that’s way beyond what it used to be. Let me read a Scripture here--this is from Genesis so people understand what I’m referring to--in Genesis:6:1-4 [1] And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, [2] That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. [3] And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. [4] There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
See All...: “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” Now, Sarah, I don’t know what your experiences were when you became a believer back in the ‘80s, did you say?

Sarah: It was the early ‘70s.

Tom: Early ‘70s, okay. But, you know, I can remember back then when I--you know, that’s around the time that I became a believer, and this was a verse that oh, yeah, we would discus and we would talk about, but nobody came to a dogmatic position on it. There wasn’t enough information. Now that has become like a neon sign, like a billboard. You know, it’s so up there in terms of who’s involved and the influences of it and so on, way beyond anything that the Scripture would allow, I would think. So, Sarah, we’re out of time for this part of our interview, but I want to encourage our listeners, we are going to address this issue and this may be one of the most bizarre things we’ve ever had to talk about here on Search the Scriptures 24/7, but I think it’s important, and I think we need to deal with it. So the Lord willing, next week we’ll pick up here and hope the folks come back.

Gary: You’ve been listening to Search the Scriptures 24/7, with T.A. McMahon, a radio ministry of The Berean Call.

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I’m Gary Carmichael. Thanks for joining us. We hope you can tune in next week. Until then, be sure to Search the Scriptures 24/7.