Friday, August 29, 2008

A Heresy Hunter At Concordia

Note that I have now started a new blog called A Heresy Hunter At Concordia. Enjoy!

Friday, August 15, 2008

The Heresy Hunter Retires

After 20 years involvement with, and 13 years employment with the Christian Research Institute (CRI), at the age of 59 I am moving on to my third career.

My first was 22 years as a plant operator at a power generating station in Toronto. The second was my time with CRI as a researcher for the Bible Answer Man show and writer for the Christian Research Journal.

In September I will be starting classes at Concordia Theological Seminary (CTS) in Fort Wayne, Indiana where I will be studying to become a pastor in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. This was definitely not my idea - when my wife would suggest that I'd make a good pastor I would shrug it off. However, after asking a few questions I saw doors opening and others closing and it became obvious that God wanted me to go into the pastoral ministry. Additionally, others I respected thought I'd make a great pastor as well - again, much to my surprise - and the staff of CRI has been behind me and has wished me well.

My plan is to preach and write for the next 30 years or so and then move on to my fourth career - possibly as a 90 year old rock singer - after all, the Rolling Stones will probably still be performing!

Since I've got to immerse myself in my studies for the next few years and will undoubtedly lose touch with all the current heresies in Christianity today, posts to this blog will be few and far between. I may start another blog relating my time at CTS but that remains to be seen. If I do I'll post a link here. Once I'm ordained, in addition to serving my parishioners I plan to continue writing on today's aberrant movements. The Heresy Hunter may ride again, but this time greatly improved!

In the meantime my wife and I will be living mostly off of student loans and donations. If your church would like to adopt me as a student it would be greatly appreciated - just contact Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne for details!

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Thursday, August 14, 2008

Deception in the Church? Blame Iraq!!!

This is so unbelievable that I'll just post this with no further comment necessary. Dutch Sheets writes the following on Elijah List and the Streams of Revival e-mail letter:

The level of deception and confusion I have seen over America the last two years, both in the church and out, has been unlike anything I have ever witnessed. The level of it, especially in the body of Christ, has truly been shocking to me.

The list of areas in which it has manifested is broad: presidential candidate endorsements and prophecies; doctrinal error; relational breakups; disagreements over what is true and false revival; and so on. Add to this list a general weariness, complacency (one well-known leader told me he doesn’t think it matters anymore who is elected president—so much for shifting the Supreme Court!), disillusionment, disorientation and so on, and it all equals incredible deception and confusion.

I believe [the deception] is linked to our war in Iraq, which is ancient Babylon. Babylon, of course, means “confusion.” It was not difficult for us to defeat Iraq’s physical army, but the principality—the spirit of Babylon—has been another story altogether.

Just a couple of weeks ago, however, I heard the Holy Spirit very clearly say to me, “I’m about to unravel the cords of confusion.” When I heard this I had the sense that He would begin to do it in September. In 2 Chronicles 20, [we read that] God used the Israelite’s worship to “ambush” their enemies. The result was that these enemies destroyed one another! Expect the confusion to break off the church this fall and God’s enemies to be ambushed.

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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Life After Bentley

Now that Todd Bentley is headed for the divorce courts J. Lee Grady is finally confident enough to state what many of us have known since Todd Bentley showed up on the scene. From today's Charisma News:

Here are few of my many, many questions about this fiasco:
Why did so many people flock to Lakeland from around the world to rally behind an evangelist who had serious credibility issues from the beginning?
To put it bluntly, we’re just plain gullible.

...Why didn’t anyone in Lakeland denounce the favorable comments Bentley made about William Branham?
This one baffles me. Branham embraced horrible deception near the end of his ministry, before he died in 1965. He claimed that he was the reincarnation of Elijah—and his strange doctrines are still embraced by a cultlike following today. When Bentley announced to the world that the same angel that ushered in the 1950s healing revival had come to Lakeland, the entire audience should have run for the exits.

Why didn’t anyone correct this error from the pulpit? Godly leaders are supposed to protect the sheep from heresy, not spoon feed deception to them.

...Why did God TV tell people that “any criticism of Todd Bentley is demonic”?
This ridiculous statement was actually made on one of God TV’s pre-shows. In fact, the network’s hosts also warned listeners that if they listened to criticism of Bentley, they could lose their healings.
This is cultic manipulation at its worst. The Bible tells us that the Bereans were noble believers because they studied the Scriptures daily “to see whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11, NASB). Yet in the case of Lakeland, honest intellectual inquiry was viewed as a sign of weakness. People were expected to jump first and then open their eyes.
Just because we believe in the power of the Holy Spirit does not mean we check our brains at the church door. We are commanded to test the spirits. Jesus wants us to love Him with our hearts and our minds.

...Why did a group of respected ministers lay hands on Bentley on June 23 and publicly ordain him? Did they know of his personal problems?
This controversial ceremony was organized by Peter Wagner, who felt that one of Bentley’s greatest needs was proper spiritual covering. He asked California pastors Che Ahn and Bill Johnson, along with Canadian pastor John Arnott, to lay hands on Bentley and bring him under their care.
Eventually another "move of God" is going to hit the scene. People are going to flock to the "revival" and unquestioningly embrace it. It happened at Azusa, it happened in Toronto, it happened in Brownsville, and it happened in Lakeland. It will happen again and people will not learn from the past.

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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Todd Bentley Meets Law and Gospel

Listen as a man known as "Law Man" preaches Law and Gospel at the entrance to a Todd Bentley meeting. You'll be asking yourself "Are these Bentley fans actually Christians?"

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Friday, August 08, 2008

1 Corinthians 2:9 - Joel Osteen Version


In today's devotional message Joel quotes 1 Cor. 2:9 and writes:

Because God loves you, He has supernatural blessings in store for you; increase, favor, good breaks, supernatural opportunities. His dream for your life is so much greater than you ever imagined. You haven’t seen anything yet! You may have a dream to get well again, or to be able to walk without pain, but God’s dream for you is not only that you will walk, but that you be able to run and play like you did when you were a child. Your dream may be just to keep your marriage together, but God’s dream is that your marriage would be happier, healthier, and more fulfilling than you ever thought possible!

Your dream may be to just pay your bills and make it through each month, but God’s dream is that you have an abundance, that you be totally out of debt, pay your house off, pay your credit cards off, and have so much overflow that you can be a blessing to everyone around you! Get ready because God has greater blessings in store for you that you ever imagined. Open you heart today and keep an attitude of faith and expectancy and you will live the abundant life the Lord has prepared for you!
But what does Paul say in 2 Cor. 2:6-10?

We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:

"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him"

but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
Although many Christians use this to point to what God has prepared for us in eternity, Paul is quoting from an Old Testament passage that was pointing forward to the plan of salvation. No doubt we can also use it to describe God's future plans, but one thing we can say for a certainty is that the Joel Osteen interpretation is pure fiction.

As an aside, you can read my review of Osteen's current best-seller, "Become a Better You," in the current Christian Research Journal.

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Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Patricia King - It's Time To Get Out There and Raise the Dead

Good Christian people, it's time to get out to your local mortuary and start raising the dead! Watch the gold dust fall and just feel the power of God come down as you pray over those bodies in your neighbourhood mortuary. What? Nothing happened, even though you felt God's power and saw the gold dust? Well, don't let that bother you!

In this very weird video prophetess Patricia King introduces a woman from Phoenix who is doing just this! King travels in the same prophetic? circles as Todd Bentley, Bob Jones, Paul Cain, etc.

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