Being Yoked with Unbelievers is Also a Cause of the Weakness of the Churches

A strong Church, a doctrinally  sound Church, a Church with pastor and members that pray long hours for each other and for revival.  How I wish.  

Besides all the bad teachings that are corrupting the churches there is this extremely bad pidea that it's OK to get together with members of other religions and cultus such as Mormons or Jews or roman catholics or Muslims and so on,, thinking it's a nice thing to include them and if the focus is on the Bibble then there's a chance they'kll learn the truth.

But they won't.  Most of them already know at least some of the Bible and it makes no difference at all, they think it justifies their false beliefs.  And meanwhile true Christians are compromised by their presence.  Asw I've pointed out many times "ecumenical prayer" which includes those other religions is like Elijah praying with the priests of Baal.   It's hard to grasp how off base Christians can be that they think God could bless such a  prayer.  Since the prayer breakfasts in Washington DC are of this "ecumenical" sort it's no wonder the nation keeps sinking lower and lower despite all their earnest prayer.  And the National Cathedral is a horror of liberal theology as well as treating all religions as the same.

I wish there was a way to get the message out to all the churches, but then that's just wishful thinking, isn't it>  Even if they got the message they'd just scoff at it as too narrow and fundamentalist or something.

Judgment, Revival Hope, Judgment, Revival Hope, Judgment, Revival Hope.

I've been saying for years that the US is under God's judgment, also that the churches are in such  bad shape we can't expect God to give us a revival.  But I keep hoping I'm wrong.  Couldn't the erring churches repent and reform, give up their false teachings about heaven experiences and Jesus Calling and the rest of the bad teachers and seek God from a pure doctrinal position and He'd give us a revival?  And if that happened then we could get somewhere pushing back the evils of the culture.

I still hope even when I keep finding out how much worse it is thanb eveb U gad tgiyggt,

Sigh

Come soon, Lord Jesus.

Do We "Throw Out the Baby With the Bath Water" When we Condemn All "Mysticism" as False?

Since I try to expose false Christian teachings which usually means experience-based practices that slight the biblical revelation, while at the same time I have positive things to say about a sort of "mysticism" that I think is legitimate, it can get confusing.  When I have to get into something like the Jesus Calling book as I  as I just did I do start wond3ering if maybe I should just completely abandon any defense of anything that goes by the name "mysticism" and maybe i should.  I need to pray more about that.  Even A. W. Tozer can be wrong after all even though Ihe bases his "higher life" teachings on the Bible and emphasizes the Bible as the foundation of everything we do as Christians.

Maybe I will eventually have to renounce my own arguments along these lines but since it has come up again I just want to make the case once more.   John MacArthur is always denouncinbg the "higher life" as a delusion and that sort of thing and I just heard a vid3eo in which he says that again.

So my defense is that all the "higher life" is is experiences that come to people who spend more than the usual amount of time pursuing the usual normal Christian biblical practices.   People who do say morning devotions, Bible reading and prayer for half an hour or so or even an hour, then maybe an eventing prayer time as well, aren't going to have this sort of experience.  But those who pant after God to the point that they spend hours in prayer and Bible reading and Bible meditation beecause they have an unusual passion or zeal for the things of God are very likely to have extgraordinary experiences of God.   No, not audible speaking, but inhtensified messages of great clarity through the bible, deep experiences of love for God that can carry you away, that can be called as the old mystics called them, "transports<' experiences of great peace, deep peace, experiences of "glory" as Jessie Penn Lewis described hers, and so on.    These come often with self-denial, denying self, taking up the cross and following Him.    These things are BIBLICAL.  And I think that's all Tozer is talking about.  When all you hear is debunkery of such things you are likely to get cooled down to the poinbt that you stop spending "too much" time with the Lord.   I think that's what tozer was complaining about in his introduction to his book The Pursuit of God.

Fasting is also biblical but we don't hear that preached much outside of charismatic circles where it gets used to promote some bad teaching.  This is too bad because it IS biblical, and it DOES promkote deeper experiences of God.  It brings more spiritual power, more self denial, more ability to actually do good in the world around us.  It can bring an "anointing" that draws people to the gospel, and anointing is another concept that is too often denounced by people who are so woreried about the mystical they quench every tiny way it might be expressed.

It is true that the extra passion and extra zeal that can deepen one's experience of God can also get demons involved and that has to be guarded against.   The most trustworthy of the mystics, in my opinion. are always warning about being misled and the need for special care and prayer against deception.

Reading or listening to Christian books is a legitimate part of the normal Christian life, but of course it matters WHAT books you are reading.  Jesus Calling is not the right direction.  Nor The Shack.  Nor The Prayer of Jabok.  Nor The Purpose Driven Life.  Etc.  But there's plenty of Charles Spurgeon out there, and J C Rule and i'd recommend that kind of reading myself.  I'm listening to a You tube audible book by SPurgeon, at the moment titled According to Promise.  It has som some very inspiring chapters in it that could carry a person away with "mystical transports" I suppose.

Jesus Calling Part 2

As I listened to various critical discussions of this book  in the end the one that stood out as the best expose of its heretical New Age character was Warren B. Smith as interviewed by Janet Medford, so I wanted to make sure I highlighted that one in a separate post:

Warren B Smith - Serious Problems With Jesus Calling - YouTube

The book Jesus Calling is one of the latest and maybe the biggest piece of heresy to be accepted by Christians.

It's disappointing to find out that Christians I know are enthralled with a teaching that seems to me to be herettical or close to it and it may take me a while to catch up with my o9wn impression of it because I really don't want to think that's true.  Although I want to keep up with the errors that are affrecting Christians it's such an unpleasant task to familiarize myself with such teachings I neglect the obligation.  

Then something happens so that i can't avoid it.  That happened recently as ai discovered that a group of Christians meeting for Bible Study used two sources I know to be false, and a couple others were referred to approvingly.  The book "Jesus Calling" is read as part of the meeting, and one of the materials that was handed out was a teaching by Beth Moore.  Both these teachings are at least close to heretical.  The more I find out about Jesus Calling the more outright heretical it appears to be.

My own gfirst take on it was, is this writer saying she actually heard these words from Jesus or is she just putting words in His mouth that she thinks express His thoughts or what?  In either case this is highly questionabhle to put it mildely.   My second thought was Why would Jesus need to talk through this woman and why would He need to say the things He says here if it is Him which I doubt.  the message that day was about the importance of thankfulness, a perfectly biblical idea but my question is Why do we need a special commm7unication from jesus to be aware of this biblical teaching?  We can find it in scripture and take it to heart from there.

Since i've been avoiding this kind of thing for a long time I wasn't familiar with this  so I've had to spend some time finding out more about it.  Fortunately You Tube has plenty of discussion of it.  Most of the discussion is repetitive but I did like the one by a yo8ung college student who went a bit further into it than the others I'd heard:

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE JESUS CALLING DEVOTIONALS - YouTube

As I was thinking about it I realized the main sign when it comes to content of any teachihing I suspect of being a heresy is that the gospel message is neglected or distorted in some way so as to obscure it.  That is a sure sign that the author of the teaching is demonic.  This colleege student Angela touches on this problem but doesn't go into depth about it.   She mentioned hearing Michael Horton, a Refored Pastor, had discussed the book so I wanted to find what he had to say:I ccouldn't find Michael Horton on You tube so I suppose he has a written article somewhere that I won't be able to find .  But there's a lot of discussion on You tube anyway.  Here's Justin Peters:

Justin Peters on Jesus Calling and divine revelation knowledge - YouTube

nd here's a former New Age practitioner Warren Smith being interviewecd on a radio show:

Warren B Smith - Serious Problems With Jesus Calling - YouTube

The book has New Age connections and Gnostic connections according to many of these videos.  The main thing is that this is not Jesus Christ talking.  I would think if we stopped to hear it a Chrtistian should be able to recognize that it's not His voice.  "Myh sheep hear My voice" He told us.  This is not His voice.    

Jesus Calling is heresy.  I hope the message gets out to more Christians.