The Word of Faith Religion. Part 2
The Word of Faith Religion
Part 2
(2006)
[Download here]
“For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness,
who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels,
that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us,”
2 Corinthians 4:6-7.
In our last letter we defined the WFR as an illusive religious composition of worldly wisdom evidenced best by its teachers and reckless theology. This means that the WFR is not a denomination per se but is an ideology most certainly fueled by wealth and worldwide 21st century ego finding its way by varying degrees into every denomination influencing every one of us in our lives. We are discussing WF ideology in this series of letters in some depth. This age of Christianity and its perversions has indeed been coming for a long time 2 Timothy 4:3; our generation is the perfect generation of sinner to attempt to make God submit to us and our sovereign constitutionally declared free wills via the Bible as our leverage. I would define WFism (which pervades every denomination) in a nutshell as “scriptural selfishness.”
In part one of this series we spoke specifically about the materialism and greed that is so unashamedly prominent in many of these Word-of-faith (WF) pseudo churches who’ve effectively turned the love of money into a religion straight out of the Bible. “…The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows,”1 Timothy 6:10. There’s a table of such teachers at the end of each of these letters.
In this letter we are talking about the WFR’s cheap views of salvation; herein is the WFR shown reckless and counterfeit. Paul Washer said it best, and his statement can serve as summary for my letter. He said, “The greatest heresy ever produced by the modern church is that if you pray and ask Jesus to come into your heart He will certainly come.” This is what we saw demonstrated in the videos you just watched and it is being taught in a great many WFish places today. It is not good folks, and I pray that I can get you to see why.
This topic is dreadfully important to me and I want you to know that I do not hate those that I must call false prophets. I love my enemies but this does not make them brothers; they are loved enemies that I would see glorified. As Christians, sometimes we exhort and sometimes we rebuke; I pray that all of you understand that. My conscience bears me witness that I am not unjustly troubled but am merely attempting a tempered fight for the honor of the faith as I see needed, and as I am instructed. Jude 1:3. This is not easy to write about but it is compulsory. May the Lord bless your reading and humble considerations.
I want to speak boldly about that which really began to shed light on the fruitlessness of my faith as an undergraduate of the WFR defined by men like Rodney Howard-Browne (whose church and students were shown in the videos.) The main subject of this letter tonight as I write to you from Iraq 650 miles due east of Jerusalem is to me the most sure way to identify such teachers as unloving and wrong. It is when the grace they teach is held in such light esteem and is so spurn-able and whimsical that just to decide for it is the “sacramental” guarantee of salvation. You saw this in the videos above. Please give me your patience and some time to explain this perversion in the pages to come.
WF believers (Wfers) such as those in the videos wouldn’t claim to ultimately speak for God regarding any man’s salvation, but would say that they are simply preaching Romans 10:9-13 and believing God to do the rest in their “evangelism.” They’d say that they could very well be mistaken about a person’s heart in declaring a man justified after “The Prayer” and Jesus would not quit the ministry. This is a difficult fight for some people to focus on because how can I or anyone else argue against the actions on the part of a nice young boy and girl who actually think that by such means you can lead 300 people “to the Lord” in a week? Who are we to question their honest labors? I know they worked hard but I would inform you all that to focus on motive rather than truth is a very slippery slope both here and in most places of faith, so don’t do it. We deal with issues most times; motives take care of themselves.
By analogy I invite you to consider for a moment how to preach the Gospel as Lazarus may have after Jesus’ ascension. Lazarus, a revived person by such untouchable power could never liken life to mere choice! “Lazarus came out of the tomb and did not infer that he was alive by any prior knowledge (or decisions).” – John Piper (Words in parenthesis mine.)
In WF ideology classic Christianity has been joyously jettisoned. It is not preaching. Instead of disciples being found in contrite heart over their sin and then running, leaping and praising God into a loving Jesus by the hearing of the word of God alive in them through the Gospel, carnal decision is the life. A choice is all that’s required of any unrepentant alien who’d say “The Prayer” to have a total assurance of heaven when they die. In the WFR it really is just a polling of people to see who wants to go to heaven when they die. This is not true motive and these are not the same truths; one is masquerading as Gospel pre-hell and the former is Gospel! Then instead of God the Holy Spirit confirming a true salvation in a man, men in their carelessness have the affectation to immediately declare men sons of God. The stranger praying may even doubt salvation but not the WFer who is declaring it over them! It’s done according to the Roman’s road. They say, “You prayed that prayer and asked Jesus into your heart, so He came.” That’s a deranged faith in sandy words not a rock bedded faith in the word of God. The Bible’s words save no one; they make saved men wise in God, 2 Timothy 3:15. I, like Paul Washer, consider this the greatest heresy produced by the modern church. This is not Romans 10 or Acts 18. WFers like in Rodney Howard-Browne’s church look total strangers in the eyes after their all-sovereign decision and say verbatim as they are taught to say: “As a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I tell you today that all of your sins are forgiven.” soul winning script. Wow! That’s something! People pray a prayer and “Get saved” to the excitement of the tares. Oh, Edwards! America has need of thee. Oh, Calvin, America has need of thee! Dear Spurgeon, we have need of thee! Does your church teach such a cheap salvation? If so then this type of WF ideology has come to it as well.
I pray that you might love the weight of the majesty of the Savior and His Gospel in my words and be reminded or rebuked that the death of God sobers a man in that that Seed first died as he must also. For Christians death was in Adam. Death reigned before life, then life became the death of death, life now lives unto the death of life which begins life without death.
The WFR produces a people sustained by emotion and decision in the guise of spirituality and strange gifts (to be examined in greater detail in another letter.) Sadly this is not sustainment but a facade. Emotions and experiences are worthless if doctrine is invalid. I’ve had more pagans tell me of dreams, miracles and blessings from God then I can count. “Emotions do not validate faith; faith validates emotions.” – Todd Friel. It is now 1:57 AM here in Iraq. Just this afternoon I lifted my hands and sang along with a beautiful song as I prepared my notes for a Bible class on John 1:1-28. The lyrics in the song said, “I want to take Your word and shine it all around but first help me just to live it Lord, and when I’m doing well help me to never seek a crown for my reward is giving glory to You.” As I considered those words, my class and how much I wanted to glorify God in teaching I cried happily and prayed for God’s help. What a precious gift to love to love my God! The class was great. Despite such overwhelming emotions that legitimately vent faith they are not the measure of it or the temperature showing its health.
Emotions get mystified as spirituality in the seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. This is WFR friends and I must mention it. They call it “the presence of the Lord.” Questions like: “Can you feel the presence of the Lord here this morning?” are common in their festivals during the music part and between offerings. This is not God folks; there is no scripture telling us of such feelings. You can feel similar emotions at a baseball game surrounded by atheists if the weather is right. It is not spiritual; it is emotional no matter how strong the emotion. Ask most any girl alive in the 60s when the Beatles came to town what emotion can do. The emotional and even physical manifestations of many women when they saw Elvis was no less ridiculous then those in the WFR seeing their jesus during the singing and music “and no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light,” 2 Corinthians 11:14. In the WF-spirit emotions are the standard of experience and serve as a confirmation of faith. I mention this because emotion is as shallow as decision and is just as misleading. WF is ideology received by decision and proven by emotion. The members need church meetings like a drug addict needs a fix or they feel empty inside. They go to teachers that get them shouting and “filled up” because it is how they’re taught that a Christian is kept in faith. It is existentialism at its worst because it is called spiritual. Their performers get them shouting and jumping focused on what God is going to do for them while constantly feeling the need to say things like “Ya’ll just ain’t hearing me” or “I wish I had somebody to praise the Lord up in here tonight” as the organ plays behind them to entertain the spectators. These performers or “preachers” as they falsely call them have to say these things because what they’re saying is so very great in their own estimation. In the WFR religion I constantly heard expressions from people like: “I have got to get to the meeting tonight and get filled up,” or “I need to go to church and just dive into the presence tonight” or “I need a touch from the Lord today.” I went to meetings where the “preacher” poured invisible glasses of Holy Ghost wine over people and they got “drunk” on it. They rolled on the floor and laughed uncontrollably. I remember this vividly because I had to be behind them to catch them as they fell or else God may have hurt them. I say this in shame. I had to be there to cover the lower parts of the ladies with sheets or else God may have revealed their nakedness to everyone.
I can’t tell you how many false conversions I labored to produce in Rodney’s church on the streets of Brandon and Tampa, FL, and indeed everywhere else I went in my dark ages. The Gospel was not preached; I just had people praying who wanted to be in heaven when they died. They were not broken over sin and I had no godly reason to tell them that sin was broken over them. Please stop reading and consider what I just said if you are not against all these things. At least submit with me to the fact that men ought never to call men saved. Can we agree on that? If you agree with that then continue and please consider what kind of a reckless theology would be represented by those who would do it for twenty years. What god do they serve? Begin here with me to see the evil cheapness of the WFR. Christianity is not cheap, but the WFR is very cheap my friends. Hardly any man would deny a cheap and free ticket to heaven. A man says “Sure, whatever man, I’ll pray, ok” and this is all a WF believer needs to hear to believe that all heaven immediately bows its ear with pencil in hand. In my shame I can recall present lesbians and fornicators being “slain in the spirit” after they made a “decision” for Jesus. They prayed a prayer, I told them they were saved as did the preacher and they came to church and were slain in a spirit. I’ve seen it and thought that they were saved, but a month later they were back in their sin and wanted nothing to do with God again. They came to church to hear about health and wealth in the “presences” of their new found faith. They did not come in repentance and why should they have to? They were already saved in our cult by saying the prayer!
By grace I will never make light of grace again! This is the beginning of my deliverance from WFism and the heart of my message to you. I would as soon never mention Christ in this world again than to make Him a light subject to be bought or sold in quick back alley deals at the rate of 300 a week. I would have 3,000 a week but only by Gospel! I treasure the Gospel and greatly fear bringing reproach upon it. I will tell men how they can be saved and comfort those who are saved in love.
As I write these letters I’m attempting to tell you a little about myself as well so I thought I’d tell you a little about how I was saved from the cheapness of the WFR. Following a somewhat long season of selfishness and Bible twisting in the WF church I trace my conversion finally to the hearing of a sermon on the attributes of God called “My Concept of God” by an Irishman named Leslie Hale whom I’ve never seen in person. I heard this sermon on cassette tape in my living room and remember standing in front of the tape deck frozen knowing that I did not know this man’s God, but that his God was the God of the scriptures. I didn’t really even like Mr. Hale because he wasn’t “alive” in the Holy Ghost which to a WFer means tongues, jumping around and referring to nearly everything as anointed. After hearing this simple message on the supremacy of God I began to repent of my sin for the first time and instantly despised the puny god of decision and buddy-buddy-ness taught in the WFR. Everything became different after that day. Looking back I know that I did not seek God but rather that He sought me. This was sovereign Gospel in me and not the WF gospel. The story I’m about to tell you occurred not long after.
Years ago I remember sitting on the front row of Kevin Howell’s church having my hands cupped in shame over my face. To be ashamed was something totally unacceptable for a “little god” to do but I was being made to see that men are neither gods nor little ones. I felt like running out and never coming back but couldn’t in my weakness. I loved my pastor. Even now in tears I can remember how I was overwhelmingly ashamed in sadness that God was so very small to me and that I had all my life preached a false gospel without love proclaiming unsaved men saved to the shame of both God and saved men. I had slandered Christ as cheap and submissive to decision. I had cast Him before swine in the guise of free will and decision. I had called men saved by a grace so cheap that men today walk around saying that they once tried Christianity but it didn’t work for them. I was falling on the rock that smashes men to pieces Matthew 21:44.
God used a preacher (go figure) to vilify the Joel Osteen/Dani Johnson/Paula White/Kenneth Copeland style of self help christianity that I “felt” was Christianity just because it came from the Bible. I used to think that that was a guarantee of truth, but I have seen the depths of Satan even here and this certainly not only in the WFR. Friends don’t you know that Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Catholics, Oneness Pentecostals, Churches of Christ, Creciendo en Gracia, Westboro Baptists, Homosexual pastors and new agers of every fruity flavor all come from the Bible? I can’t stop crying as I write this letter to you.
During Leslie Hale’s sermon I heard awesome things and by God was inwardly called to faith in Christ even above my own judgment. I look back and find this true. Oh, blessed day! I want you all to hear some of those awesome things. It was these kinds of truths that God used to curve the stream of my selfish WF heart from an unknown-god to adoration. In the WFR they teach a god in the Bible but it is not the God of the Bible and that is why I’m writing all of these letters to you. I want to make you see this. I was once in the WFR, and to such as I was it was written: “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?” Romans 10: 14.
Hale was both quoting and teaching from AW Pink’s classic book called “The Attributes of God” and I trust that 2 Corinthians 4:6 happened in me as the preacher said things like:
The God of this 20th century…no more resembles the supreme Sovereign of holy writ than does the dim flickering of a candle against the glory of the midday sun. The god who is now talked about in the average pulpit, spoken of in the ordinary Sunday school, mentioned in much of the religious literature of the day and preached on in most of the so called Bible conferences of the day…is the figment of human imagination; an invention of maudlin sentimentality. The heathen outside of the pale of Christendom form gods out of wood and stone while the millions of heathen inside Christendom manufacture a god out of their own carnal minds. In reality they are but atheists for there is no other possible alternative between an absolute supreme God and no God at all. A god whose will is resisted, whose designs are frustrated, whose purpose is checkmated…possesses no title to Deity…and so far from being a fit object of worship merits not but contempt.
I, by grace alone, knew that the preacher was speaking directly of my god and I didn’t like it one bit. I didn’t like it but God had my attention. All through this message God was destroying the cheap grace and my “Free will decisional” idol that represented it. God was putting the god of the WFR on its face like another Dagon 1 Samuel 5:3-4. In the WFR a person’s faith can stop and start the plans of God. If you don’t believe, God’s hands are tied; likewise if you do believe then God must move. He’s just waiting on you to get in agreement with Him and tell Him how much, when and where you want what you want. You control God but of course they’d use scripture to teach that controlling God is exactly what He wants you to do. They can do this and a million goats say amen with their eyes on homes, cars and satellite dishes. They are profits not prophets who teach such scriptural selfishness. Believing things like this is totally contrary to God, and comes from WF theology.
Can you see, therefore, how such a statement as the one aforementioned would be completely incomprehensible to me back then?
Once again quoting Pink Hale said:
So puerile and powerless is the creature to affect the Most High. Scripture itself tells us that when the Gentile heads unite with apostate Israel to defy Jehovah and His Christ then, according to Psalms 2:4, “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh…”
He quoted CH Spurgeon into my heart forever:
Men will allow God to be everywhere except on His throne. They will allow Him to be in His workshop to fashion worlds and to make stars. They will allow Him to be in His almonry to dispense His alms and bestow His bounty. They will allow Him to sustain the earth and to bear up the pillars thereof, or to light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever moving ocean. But when God in our lives ascends His throne His creatures then gnash their teeth. I had never even heard of Charles Spurgeon or AW Pink! Hale attacked everything I believed and I began to flinch at stopping the tape, but it was too late I would soon only need others to unwrap me John 11:44. In the WFR my visions of selfish ambition were preached back to me as promises and visions from God. I had delighted myself in Him and He was going to give me the desires of my heart. That’s scripture, right? Well the problem is, and I hope I can get you to see this, that I only delighted in Him because He was going to give me the desires of my heart. This is WFR and its scriptural selfishness. I would get excited about becoming a billionaire businessman (to fund our false gospel) and that excitement was subconsciously spiritualized when I tithed. What a puny gospel; we didn’t focus on God we wanted what was in His hands.
Here’s one more quote from the sermon:
The supremacy of the true and living God might well be argued from the infinite distance which separates the mightiest creatures from the Almighty Creator. He is the potter, they are but the clay in His hands to be molded into vessels of honor or to be dashed in pieces according to Psalm 2:9 as He pleases…Were all the denizens of heaven…and all the inhabitants of the earth to combine in revolt against Him it would occasion Him no uneasiness and would have less effect upon His eternal and unassailable throne than has the spray of Mediterranean’s waves upon the towering rocks of Gibraltar.
The religion that says such things was not what I knew then. I thought that man was a little god and I saw the whole world as his given footstool. The WFR is the very definition of a man centered gospel. Have you heard this phrase before? It’s when men choose, men are the center, and men have a god like role in the world. “God creates man in His image and they return the favor” – John Macarthur. (He spoke of a different subject but same fact.)
Hale wasn’t speaking of the god of hugs and kisses, or the god that came to church last night and had us just laughing, laughing, laughing. The results of such a “church” will surely be as the first Pentecost, not the last.
These words above are not Bible quotes but God through this preacher began to show me the truth of His sovereignty in places like Psalms 2 quoted above. I had never seen Him as such. I heard the word sovereign, yeah, but there are eyes in hearing as well and mine were scaled over by my WFR. Oh, I had lots of “tongues”, “prophesies” fulfilled, emotional highs like never before, persecutions for what I believed, friends and some financial results but it was not life. Mormons have such things! God was a go getter of my blessings and delighted in making much of me. Christians are given the true gift of faith which is delighting in making much of Him.
Post conversion I began to love a sovereign God and that love took residence by the hearing of His supremacy. I saw the cross and the glory of Christ there. Suddenly Jesus was not just a really anointed guy like in WF theology, He was God and God cannot fail. What a difference. That’s why I write these letters. In the WFR God responds to a man’s faith like a servant responds to a master. Ask Eddie Long or Joyce Meyer about the power of your godliness, they’ll tell you. In agreement with Him, Wfers teach that there are times when you can literally demand God to move. “Tithe and then tell God to bring in the harvest” Kevin Howell taught. This is not a request, this is a demand he’d say.
Under His exalted perfections by the hearing of the word God brought me on trial before verses like Romans 9:15-21:
“…He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.” Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens. You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?”
He is not a decision, He is sovereign. Surely some of you even now are gnashing your teeth at what I’m writing wishing me to cite other texts. If you are in a WF type church I ask you to change my life by sending me just one sermon by the WF teachers listed in the table below that deals in any length with verses like Romans 9:15-21 above. Just send me a link; I’ll go and listen to it. I’ve looked and I’ve not found a full counsel of God in any of them, not one. I found 666 ways to increase myself by God but nothing about sovereignty and not much about sin. Wfers don’t care about holiness, they want stuff.
I’ve spoken to you a little previously about the emotional sustainment inbred into this type of system. I’d like to continue on with this a little more. Please hear me dear friends, I am warning you all of the depths of Satan in the WFR. God suffers men to endure it from time to time so that you can know. The WFR is a lazy school of selfishness. It was not god I knew in those places. My emotions felt there was not faith, but emotion. Friends, I have danced before my God as in Ecclesiastes 3:4. In fact there have been precious times when my dancing likely resembled a less talented scene from the movie Footloose! Since I was found in Him there have been sweet times of refreshing when I could do nothing but dance! There is such a time but it ought never to have been on the road to hell. I danced in the WFR upon my own destruction. It is not god they’ve got, and this is well evidenced in that god’s cheap grace and how they sling it out after “sovereign prayers.” I hear this cheapness all over the place these days. In short what I’m saying is that a man should not dance before God until he is born again and the whole point of this part of the series of these letters is to teach that being born again is not in saying a prayer and counting it done.
In the world today there’s a very lucrative black market called gospel, dear reader, and its peddlers are so far away from love that their gospel’s effectiveness can only be placed upon a customer’s correct use. Their target consumer is anyone with itching ears. There is no power in their gospel. Literally all of the power of the cross of Christ is taught as present and given to the consumer dependent upon carnal decision alone. By a spiritual lack of knowledge sovereignty over grace is thus usurped and this by a third party – the preacher. The listener is just deceived. The “salvation” preached under the CEOs like those in the videos we watched before is empty. If God does use it, it is only despite it and we ought never to thank Satan for the things spoken by him that God used to take us from him. If you were brought into the faith by something light such as a quick street side prayer and perhaps have later come to something true then my words in bold just above are my trust. God does use falsity. I do not wish to tread upon any true grace. I am simply pointing out what, by doctrine; dare not be confused with it.
The WFR is nothing short of a defiled system at play; a pleasing poison peddling paragraphs with sin that spoils like an undying cancer. This imaginary “salvation” in the WFR that is gained and sustained by decision and emotionalism is like children playing in the broken down shell of an old car moving only in the child’s imagination.
After the “conversion” of Constantine in the early fourth century Christianity corrupted. Wealth began to flood the church and choke it as it always does. Some fled into the deserts where monasticism was born with men like Anthony and cloisters eventually developed under men like Pachomius. The simplicities of grace became universally infected with imperial protocol and priests began to crowd the scene as vital to sacred rights in pompous costumes giving a seductive illusion of mystical power in heavenly ritual while the altar (which was destroyed by God) replaced the pulpit. This time marked the beginnings of the system that would centuries later in AD 590 officially become Catholicism, a great enemy of Christianity. Suddenly sacramentalism was born. Fetishism and priest craft found its way into the Bible and Satan made a new and glorious way to hell by ignoring the justification of faith alone. In Catholicism, by participating in sacred rights (despite motive) the participant is guaranteed some measure of grace by the church. Motives do matter somewhat in both priest and receiver but there is always taught to be some level of forgiveness for sin just because of the observance of the sacrament itself. This is sacramentalism, and these vain routines pretend to forgive sin in Catholicism every day. The priests have to perform the ritual or it is not valid but because this whole system was designed in simony (Acts 8:18-19) they teach that all sacraments deliver some mitigated blessing simply by virtue of execution. Here’s the subject’s relevance to the WFR:
But what about decision itself? Doesn’t a person have to decide to receive the Lord? Yes, of course we decide but salvation more glorious than insurance. I’m not saying that men go to heaven unwillingly, or that anyone will be in hell who wanted heaven rightly. We choose, but was there not something of the Holy Spirit at work in us before we chose? Is there not more at stake to the beauty and sweetness of Christ’s calling than a prayer to “close the deal?” Are there not laws for our pulpits? Did Christ come only to influence that which was doable in men? Should we operate in ignorance and hope that men are saved when we lead them in our prayers? Is there not more than an unperceivable and untouchable beauty that may or may not have happened during “the prayer?” Is the life Christ gives not one that soon breathes the religious affections and puts God on the singing lips of men made contrite against the entire world? Is that glory not beyond emotion? Do preachers not feel weight to invoke the name of Jesus in their preaching? To feel the weight of truth in the cross is the source of the joy in preaching it! Are we not afraid of dealing lightly with Calvary and calling just any man “brother”? This is not a ticket to heaven we preach, is it? This is not like buying a last minute item from the impulse isle of a store with the piece of mind that it can always be returned if we’re not satisfied, is it? Don’t you know, evangelist, that when you preach the Gospel angels bear witness? To apply it hastily at the feet of strangers as if it is a light subject is so alien to the heart of a genuine evangelist that it makes every true evangelist sick at the slander. We preach and we invite; God converts, God confirms. Your prayers do not convert! I am not saying stop going and preaching; I’m saying go and start preaching. Tell them how to be saved. Preach on sin, tell them what sin is, get them to see their sin and tell them about the Lord and His work on the cross. Do not avoid the former. To those who may pray such worldly prayers, I pray that you would cease lying by your faith to men. You don’t know if they’re truly saved so how can you say it? You certainly don’t know if they’re saved after a sixty second prayer! How can a man assume that God’s death and the power of faith are thus bound to man’s decisions?
Writing these letters is in part why God brought me through the WFR. This is my heart I pour out to you and all the while as I write I am seeing the Gospel preached on a thousand rolling hills and I love the feet of all those who bring it. Romans 10:15. The greatest joy of my life is remembering all of the places where I myself have preached His Gospel and brought Christ to men. I go back to sun bathed hillsides, cars, beaches, trucks, universities, Laundromats, apartments, foxholes, hospitals, schools, sidewalks, pagan temples, cities, airports, airplanes, churches, parking garages, restaurants, benches, countries, restrooms (yes, even there.) I hear precious Gospel words whispered in fields at night while watching for an enemy through night vision goggles. I feel again the uncomfortable crunch of sand between my teeth after sharing the Gospel in Iraqi desserts on windy nights. Oh, God how I long to see what You have done and how I have shared in it!!! This is the meaning of my life.
I love you all, and pray that my strong words are not too much. Please consider this as you consider me: Evangelists in the vineyard know that they are but laborers happily performing what is required of them (Luke 17:10). Some are hired in the morning, some in the late afternoon. Their joy and love is in their service and they delight to please Him who enlisted them. They know that “…Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase,” 1 Corinthians 3:7. The WFR teaches men to go out and be everything in salvation (perhaps except increaser.) They are instantly the sewer and the harvester. They are not planting and watering but just reaping as if that’s John 4. You saw the video. What farmer plants a seed and digs it up in thirty seconds expecting harvest? Only an imposter who does not understand seed would do this. Matthew 13:28.
Wfers tell their students to get men to pray prayers to “accept Jesus into their heart.” If the prayer’s effect is a flop six weeks later assure them by your previous prophetic wisdom that they are surely saved; you were there when they prayed. If this doesn’t suffice fix it quick and get em to pray again rededicating themselves to their previous decision. Where could such goofy wisdom come from except from unsaved men? I cannot see anyone who loves the cross and truly carries it calling it such a cheap thing. They say “They can be born again again because God is subject to them and gives eternal life temporarily oft.” Go into a room of fifty kids and ask them who wants to go to heaven and get a decision, that’s love. After all we don’t know what God’s doing, do we? They might be saved, right? This is not proper motive, sir, no matter the numbers. Pragmatism is the drumbeat of a theological death march.
Let me speak of the heavenly gift of salvation. Salvation, once birthed, cannot be lost or forfeit. False conversions can, however, show themselves to be false as undiscerning men drown in the gray. You cannot earn grace, but you can prove that it is not yours. This is not WF opinion. In the WF religion, as in many other schools of theology that are not WF, salvation can be lost. This issue is spoken of very boldly by me, but it is not a doctrine that cannot be disputed from within the faith. I think that Christians can disagree on this and keep fellowship striving to keep the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:1-6. Amen. However, take the idea of losing one’s salvation and put it on top of the WFR and its cheap views on gaining grace and it is but more evidence of the cheapness of the entire system. In the WFR salvation is both easy come and rather easy go. What sort of a “little god” would believe that he could be the god of God? A life of sin is lived “accepting” Him and then kicking Him out again unless of course the sinner chooses by free will to welcome Him back in again until further notice. What sort of unholy lunacy is that sort of teaching built on or designed to honor? Oh, I’m sure it’s on scriptures, sir, but it is not scriptural. Non-Lordship salvation is stupid.
How can a man claim that a man can turn his back on the grace of salvation? How can the heart be removed and the body still live? Perhaps by briefly showing the amazingly solid love of Christ in His Good Shepherding of the church, the error of thinking grace is imputed by mere choice will become clearer. Herein is the fixed spirit of the elect: All may claim to love You, Jesus, and then soon depart but as for Your sheep “…Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” John 6:68-69. What an all shaking, world flipping, soul dancing mystery of trembling solemnity to see that that even the “…Come to believe…” was grace!!! “Did I not choose you, the twelve…” John 6:70, 15:16. It is not choice but grace. Oh, how unsettling is the shallowness of the WFR and its decisional sacramentum! Come out from it if you’re in it, reader, and let the dead bury their dead. For every false teacher I’ve named below I could name you two great teachers.
Oh, how far from grasping grace it is to believe that salvation is both first of God then first also of men.
I’ll refer you to our Recommended Listening List at Biblecia.com/articles to men far more capable of this than I am. For a magnificent teaching on the awesome nature of salvation go to paragraph number three on the list which is John Piper and get John Calvin’s biography in your ears. What Calvin believed was grace and this is what I believe. Go hear John Calvin talk about the nature of saving faith; you won’t care what Benny Hinn thinks about it anymore. Go hear about David Brainerd and then you’ll yawn when Richard Roberts asks you to put your hands on the TV screen for “something good tonight.”
If you believe that salvation is merely of choosing then of course losing it is just as easy. The reason I’m addressing this issue in this letter is because saying grace can be revoked also shows an unnecessary and sad devaluation of the gift on multiple levels. We say that the grace itself which birthed your repentance and brought you to willingly believe in Jesus is itself a promised and purchased gift. Therefore, if you see, savor, and long for the love of God in your heart rightly then you should rejoice not because you decided right alone, but because that heart to decide was bought for you by Jesus ~ 1,970 years ago on the cross (Ephesians 1; Romans 4:25). This humbles a man in God. “Oh, how conserving are the doctrines of grace to a hundred other doctrines.” – Charles Spurgeon. This eternal plan of redemption is not begun in the mouths of men, but in the wisdom of God before men existed. Ephesians 1. Hebrews 8:10 tells us that the NT heart is the fulfillment that Israel would receive and that which is to us in the church from Jeremiah 31:31-34.
Make war therefore! Don’t coast! Christians are at war with their sin. If you’re not at war with sin then you are dead in it. Christians fight and never make peace with sin. “By His stripes” we are made to know, made to see, made to taste of heaven…made to choose and so we chose willingly. We’d never turn from this grace. Oh, what a blessed sealing that only those in the dispatch can say that Jesus is Lord. This is not from presumption but persuasion. We as Paul are “…confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ,” Philippians 1:6. No verses negate this for us. In true salvation the strength of it is upon God not men; this is totally different from what I learned in the WFR. In the WFR not only did I choose God first but I also had to maintain my walk with Him or He might just erase my name from the Book of Life.
Revelation 3:1-6 warns the dead church in Sardis to repent for their sin before their church is extinguished. This is something even saved men sometimes need to hear. Beginning in verse four Jesus commends those in this dead church who’ve not “defiled their garments” (a clear expression of their genuine faith amidst the church) and promises them that they will not be blotted from the Book of Life. Wfers read verse 5 which says, “He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life” as a threat. All I’ll ask is how can a man turn this promise into a threat? In those days men were erased from favored books or VIP lists as we might call them today when falling out of disfavor with the in-crowd. Jesus promises His own that He’ll never do this. It’s a promise of security not a threat. How can you turn a promise into a threat?
It is God “Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works (or magic prayers), but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began,”2 Timothy 1:9 (words in parenthesis mine.) Notice when this grace was given. Don’t deal lightly with this; it preceded our prayers.
I am displaying a small bit of systematic theology here. I recommend RC Sproul to you for a more thorough examination. “Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 1 John 5:5. “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God,” Luke 9:62. Many false plowmen will come and be rejected on that day Jesus said (Matthew 7).
Once saved always saved is a cheap view, normally. This phrase is usually used by a man with a cheap view of grace to label another cheap view of grace. Men do not get saved and then live a life of willful sin secure in election, that’s stupid. We know that men are saved and that that means fruit in their lives. Those evident changes we call fixed in heaven because it is Paul’s language we adopt. One old Negro spiritual said it best: “If you is what you was you aint.”
I used to believe that salvation was cheap and so I could gain it and lose it by my decisions. That’s a cheap salvation hanging on the will of men. Human will is cheap! It changes immediately after lunch or a good night’s sleep. In the WFR, however, will was all I had…Well that plus the gibberish of tongues and psychosomatic emotional experiences induced by jokes and music at the right moments. I got similar emotions after I saw the movie Titanic back when it first came out in like 1997. I used to think that grace was easy to be gained and then lost again, but that was pre-salvation. Now I am confirming myself in this calling. “Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble,” 2 Peter 1:10. This is for my sake not for God’s.
I spurned You my God and saw You as one who bowed to my decisions and left me by the same in a covenant that I had made over You in Your Bible. Why would a man argue that salvation can be lost? Can God not keep a man even over that man? All Christians sin do they not? Is salvation’s Army truly so superficial that there is no war anymore but only constant defeat, separation and the need for re-enlistment? To those of you who believe God can be forsaken: At what level of sin do you then discharge? Surely it is somewhere just over your own.
Do you not fear to be wrong in teaching the book, WFish opponent? Is it that you think a man who believes he is sealed to God and hid in Christ is prone to apathy or a lascivious license? If apathy and such sin tendency is your concern for a man I share it and say that there is merit for your concern for he is likely not in Christ. Romans 3:7-8. Good call! But perhaps you have ignored the fact that in Christ there is no apathy! Matthew 10:37. Have you not read the atomic mass of such things as “Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God,” 1 John 3:9. This is not sinless perfection, the heart is changed in this man and he would die to please his new master rather than delight in his sins. He is a dog that dislikes his vomit now, and he does not return to the mud like the swine. 2 Peter 2:22. He cannot sin; how could he? To whom shall he go? You are rebuked in this.
Surely to justify your status over your crucified helper you’ll argue contextual errors on my part, but my context is God’s New Testament grace, sir, and I am careful to include the whole. My context is in the God able to keep men from stumbling. My context is the God who would not let even the OT children in Israel fall to their enemies “For His name’s sake!” My salvation is for that name’s sake as well. This is my context. My root is in a plan beyond me (Romans 9.) My context is this very New Testament plan of which I speak wrought from the foundation of the earth, not the foul breath of men’s decisions. I love a loving and redeeming God and only because He first loved me. That is my boast. What is yours in light of this but a redeeming God, and? This is not a sweet and joyous trust because you ought not to delight in yourself. You are not securing grace you are bronze plating it. I sing songs in my heart that say “My love for You, oh Lord, will never die.” I say that without pretension; I sing it in an assured hope. I am not presuming this; I am persuaded of this – “My love for You, oh Lord, will never die.” You cannot sing this because salvation is your decision to gain and even keep by tomorrow’s decisions. Who are you to presume that you’ll keep yourself in the love of God forever? Christ has come to remove your burden and your doctrine has replaced it.
Beloved has God not shown you in the explanation of His parable that “These are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirty fold, some sixty, and some a hundred,” Mark 4:20? There is good seed! Brethren “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” 1 John 3:1. Turn from this and you’ve never turned to it. This is systematic theology. I site again, “Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God,” 1 John 3:9. If these things describe something you may have received one day when you said a prayer then we’re not talking about the same thing. There is no apathy in Him because you are alive by the love of Jesus; secure salvation breeds an eternally palpable life. God gives life to us in His Son and it, like Him because it is Him, never dies. Does that mean that this love also is without beginning? Oh, the vastness of eternal God! What a shame to call it mere choice to love Him. Salvation is a well within the Christian surely without bottom. God gives life in His Son and it changes everything. It not only changes everything in this life, the lotto can do that, this gift changes everything forever!
Men in Christ are kept in Christ by Christ. Is this so hard to love without question for us? Christ is our assurance of this and to all disputers we do not but correct and welcome you, if you would hear us, to the same grace and assurance that we wish you to have. We bless you in invitation. Pity me if I’m wrong and if this grace within me is not from God for eternity. Antichrists in both the past and present of our faith “…went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us,” 1 John 2:19.They would have continued with us if they were of us because we continue to the end. We persevere because we are saints. Place not the Gospel before pigs. We know that “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out,” John 6:37 and our confidence is in Him who said it not those who come.
Is salvation not spoken of with surety in your church? If salvation can be lost then perhaps you’ve lost it unawares. You can’t say this is impossible unless you have cleaned out all sin. Perhaps you have offended God and He’s left you, but has plans to come back when you’re ready. Is there a probationary glory that you preach? Perhaps that’s in 2nd Hebrews. Look at Hebrews 6:4-6, you say. What about Galatians 5:4 you ask? Men can fall! Men can fall! To men be the glory they have the power to fall! Yes, sir, they do fall but there is no glory. Indeed we all live without even a perfect hour. The context for us is grace and grace from grace to grace. Tell us why salvation is not this glorious, dear sir, and we will point you to grace again. We who have received the Holy Spirit have received Him as the down payment of promise from God the Father (Ephesians 1:14) and we know that God does not renegotiate. Our hearts are fixed my incorrect friend; fixed on grace immovable. We do not slumber and make no provision for the flesh precisely because we have a new master. We fight because we are made to love Him. We are secure in faith and our sins slowly die in our conformity to Him. If you see a life of willful sin and apathy in a man claiming “eternal security” then he is as deceived about the nature of saving faith as you are who think that he could have arrived to that fallen condition from salvation.
I love doctrine and I love the Gospel. Are you in love with a God whose ways are past finding out? This is not the God of decision; this God is holy and must receive you, it is not the other way around. Come to Him and seek Him with your whole heart. Knock and it shall be opened…Ask and you shall receive. God is gracious. Consider your sins reader. Consider your lying, stealing, blasphemy, adultery (which Jesus said is even looking with lust), cheating and the lack of love you have for God and your neighbor. Consider it long and well then look to the cross. It is the forgiveness of sin that is the motive we teach. Men should not come to Christ for anything else first, and not just because they’d like to go to heaven when they die. The knowledge of sin (1 John 1:10) is not in understanding that we are simply “less than perfect;” It is in knowing that we are less than dust. In the end it is the dust that is exalted. Repent and put your faith in Jesus Christ and you’ll see that it is not just the fear of hell that should send you to Him but the thankfulness that He came to save you from hell. I tell you that getting into heaven is not about being good; if that were the case who could stand? No, the way to heaven is in Christ. Here is our Gospel in fourteen words: you and I broke the law and Jesus Christ came to pay the fine. He did this so that at the judgment men could leave the courtroom, not because they’re good, but because they’ve had their fine paid by Christ’s shedding of blood. It’s good news. He is our ransom. If you see it then repent of your sin. Take time and think about God’s laws like in Exodus 20 and name your sins to Him. Then, think of Jesus on the cross for you anyway. It should break your heart and lead you to call out on the name of the Lord putting your trust in Him like you’d trust a parachute jumping 20,000 feet out of a plane. I hope that makes sense. The witnesses “went out and preached that people should repent,” Mark 6:12. They did not go out and preach that people were saved.
I know that this teaching is tough. May God bless you for reading and considering these things. I’ve tried to do two things in this letter: 1) to show you that the WFR religion and “just say this prayer” evangelism is vain and not the wisdom of God but of the devil, and 2) to show you that the Bible speaks of a grace so great that it is not on us to impose, but on us to preach wherever we go to whomever at every chance so that we might see God’s grace at work. I pray that my boldness of speech both pleases those who it should please and displeases those it should displease, all to the glory of God and His holy Gospel. “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. “For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, as so many, peddling the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ,” 2 Corinthians 2:14-17.
*This series of letters was written in Iraq and mailed out over the course of a few weeks beginning in June of 2008. This is the second part of that series on the Word-of-faith Religion (WFR.) It was originally divided into parts 2A – 2F. This is the entire letter.
Here is a list of preachers who present a WFR in different degrees. These are the teachers we were told would come and God’s word never fails (Matthew 7:15, 21-23; 2 Corinthians 11:14; Galatians 1:8-9; 1 Timothy 6:3-10; 2 Timothy 4:3.) The ones in bold are those I knew best. It’s such people as these that I have in mind while I write.
**I highly recommend these sermons. They relate to this letter series as a whole. The first two are free, but the third is available (to my knowledge) for purchase only.
1. Hank Hanegraaff: “Counterfeit Revival.”
2. Todd Friel’s messages called “Rodney Howard-Browne” parts 1-3.
3. John Macarthur’s “Does God Promise Health and Wealth?” parts 1-2. Product codes 90-63 and 90-64 respectively. You have to go to page 6 after clicking on this hyperlink to find them. CD: $5.00; Mp3: $3.00.
Thank you for your attention to this letter.
Part 2
(2006)
[Download here]
“For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness,
who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels,
that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us,”
2 Corinthians 4:6-7.
In our last letter we defined the WFR as an illusive religious composition of worldly wisdom evidenced best by its teachers and reckless theology. This means that the WFR is not a denomination per se but is an ideology most certainly fueled by wealth and worldwide 21st century ego finding its way by varying degrees into every denomination influencing every one of us in our lives. We are discussing WF ideology in this series of letters in some depth. This age of Christianity and its perversions has indeed been coming for a long time 2 Timothy 4:3; our generation is the perfect generation of sinner to attempt to make God submit to us and our sovereign constitutionally declared free wills via the Bible as our leverage. I would define WFism (which pervades every denomination) in a nutshell as “scriptural selfishness.”
In part one of this series we spoke specifically about the materialism and greed that is so unashamedly prominent in many of these Word-of-faith (WF) pseudo churches who’ve effectively turned the love of money into a religion straight out of the Bible. “…The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows,”1 Timothy 6:10. There’s a table of such teachers at the end of each of these letters.
In this letter we are talking about the WFR’s cheap views of salvation; herein is the WFR shown reckless and counterfeit. Paul Washer said it best, and his statement can serve as summary for my letter. He said, “The greatest heresy ever produced by the modern church is that if you pray and ask Jesus to come into your heart He will certainly come.” This is what we saw demonstrated in the videos you just watched and it is being taught in a great many WFish places today. It is not good folks, and I pray that I can get you to see why.
This topic is dreadfully important to me and I want you to know that I do not hate those that I must call false prophets. I love my enemies but this does not make them brothers; they are loved enemies that I would see glorified. As Christians, sometimes we exhort and sometimes we rebuke; I pray that all of you understand that. My conscience bears me witness that I am not unjustly troubled but am merely attempting a tempered fight for the honor of the faith as I see needed, and as I am instructed. Jude 1:3. This is not easy to write about but it is compulsory. May the Lord bless your reading and humble considerations.
I want to speak boldly about that which really began to shed light on the fruitlessness of my faith as an undergraduate of the WFR defined by men like Rodney Howard-Browne (whose church and students were shown in the videos.) The main subject of this letter tonight as I write to you from Iraq 650 miles due east of Jerusalem is to me the most sure way to identify such teachers as unloving and wrong. It is when the grace they teach is held in such light esteem and is so spurn-able and whimsical that just to decide for it is the “sacramental” guarantee of salvation. You saw this in the videos above. Please give me your patience and some time to explain this perversion in the pages to come.
WF believers (Wfers) such as those in the videos wouldn’t claim to ultimately speak for God regarding any man’s salvation, but would say that they are simply preaching Romans 10:9-13 and believing God to do the rest in their “evangelism.” They’d say that they could very well be mistaken about a person’s heart in declaring a man justified after “The Prayer” and Jesus would not quit the ministry. This is a difficult fight for some people to focus on because how can I or anyone else argue against the actions on the part of a nice young boy and girl who actually think that by such means you can lead 300 people “to the Lord” in a week? Who are we to question their honest labors? I know they worked hard but I would inform you all that to focus on motive rather than truth is a very slippery slope both here and in most places of faith, so don’t do it. We deal with issues most times; motives take care of themselves.
By analogy I invite you to consider for a moment how to preach the Gospel as Lazarus may have after Jesus’ ascension. Lazarus, a revived person by such untouchable power could never liken life to mere choice! “Lazarus came out of the tomb and did not infer that he was alive by any prior knowledge (or decisions).” – John Piper (Words in parenthesis mine.)
There is sweetness and power in the Gospel beyond utterance and no Christian who’s tasted of its glory would ever dream of holding it in such light esteem as to quickly pronounce it over men as blind possibilities
that may have just been “accepted” if…
Decision carries no such weight, and a Christian would never apply Christ’s work to men so blindly. To a profane mind the blood of Jesus is like a cheap paint to be sprayed not a priceless cup to be lifted, and the swine surely trample it underfoot. Matthew 7:6. I believe that the reason Wfers don’t fear speaking for God regarding salvation is because there’s no wisdom in such a shallow grace. There is no repentance needed; to them it really is just about someone saying a prayer to “accept Jesus” and BAM it’s done. Some WFers even go as far as calling this “acceptance” repentance. Their great sin continues in asserting hasty salvations over men like candy.In WF ideology classic Christianity has been joyously jettisoned. It is not preaching. Instead of disciples being found in contrite heart over their sin and then running, leaping and praising God into a loving Jesus by the hearing of the word of God alive in them through the Gospel, carnal decision is the life. A choice is all that’s required of any unrepentant alien who’d say “The Prayer” to have a total assurance of heaven when they die. In the WFR it really is just a polling of people to see who wants to go to heaven when they die. This is not true motive and these are not the same truths; one is masquerading as Gospel pre-hell and the former is Gospel! Then instead of God the Holy Spirit confirming a true salvation in a man, men in their carelessness have the affectation to immediately declare men sons of God. The stranger praying may even doubt salvation but not the WFer who is declaring it over them! It’s done according to the Roman’s road. They say, “You prayed that prayer and asked Jesus into your heart, so He came.” That’s a deranged faith in sandy words not a rock bedded faith in the word of God. The Bible’s words save no one; they make saved men wise in God, 2 Timothy 3:15. I, like Paul Washer, consider this the greatest heresy produced by the modern church. This is not Romans 10 or Acts 18. WFers like in Rodney Howard-Browne’s church look total strangers in the eyes after their all-sovereign decision and say verbatim as they are taught to say: “As a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I tell you today that all of your sins are forgiven.” soul winning script. Wow! That’s something! People pray a prayer and “Get saved” to the excitement of the tares. Oh, Edwards! America has need of thee. Oh, Calvin, America has need of thee! Dear Spurgeon, we have need of thee! Does your church teach such a cheap salvation? If so then this type of WF ideology has come to it as well.
I pray that you might love the weight of the majesty of the Savior and His Gospel in my words and be reminded or rebuked that the death of God sobers a man in that that Seed first died as he must also. For Christians death was in Adam. Death reigned before life, then life became the death of death, life now lives unto the death of life which begins life without death.
The WFR produces a people sustained by emotion and decision in the guise of spirituality and strange gifts (to be examined in greater detail in another letter.) Sadly this is not sustainment but a facade. Emotions and experiences are worthless if doctrine is invalid. I’ve had more pagans tell me of dreams, miracles and blessings from God then I can count. “Emotions do not validate faith; faith validates emotions.” – Todd Friel. It is now 1:57 AM here in Iraq. Just this afternoon I lifted my hands and sang along with a beautiful song as I prepared my notes for a Bible class on John 1:1-28. The lyrics in the song said, “I want to take Your word and shine it all around but first help me just to live it Lord, and when I’m doing well help me to never seek a crown for my reward is giving glory to You.” As I considered those words, my class and how much I wanted to glorify God in teaching I cried happily and prayed for God’s help. What a precious gift to love to love my God! The class was great. Despite such overwhelming emotions that legitimately vent faith they are not the measure of it or the temperature showing its health.
Emotions get mystified as spirituality in the seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. This is WFR friends and I must mention it. They call it “the presence of the Lord.” Questions like: “Can you feel the presence of the Lord here this morning?” are common in their festivals during the music part and between offerings. This is not God folks; there is no scripture telling us of such feelings. You can feel similar emotions at a baseball game surrounded by atheists if the weather is right. It is not spiritual; it is emotional no matter how strong the emotion. Ask most any girl alive in the 60s when the Beatles came to town what emotion can do. The emotional and even physical manifestations of many women when they saw Elvis was no less ridiculous then those in the WFR seeing their jesus during the singing and music “and no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light,” 2 Corinthians 11:14. In the WF-spirit emotions are the standard of experience and serve as a confirmation of faith. I mention this because emotion is as shallow as decision and is just as misleading. WF is ideology received by decision and proven by emotion. The members need church meetings like a drug addict needs a fix or they feel empty inside. They go to teachers that get them shouting and “filled up” because it is how they’re taught that a Christian is kept in faith. It is existentialism at its worst because it is called spiritual. Their performers get them shouting and jumping focused on what God is going to do for them while constantly feeling the need to say things like “Ya’ll just ain’t hearing me” or “I wish I had somebody to praise the Lord up in here tonight” as the organ plays behind them to entertain the spectators. These performers or “preachers” as they falsely call them have to say these things because what they’re saying is so very great in their own estimation. In the WFR religion I constantly heard expressions from people like: “I have got to get to the meeting tonight and get filled up,” or “I need to go to church and just dive into the presence tonight” or “I need a touch from the Lord today.” I went to meetings where the “preacher” poured invisible glasses of Holy Ghost wine over people and they got “drunk” on it. They rolled on the floor and laughed uncontrollably. I remember this vividly because I had to be behind them to catch them as they fell or else God may have hurt them. I say this in shame. I had to be there to cover the lower parts of the ladies with sheets or else God may have revealed their nakedness to everyone.
This is stupid, friends, and either pure emotional compost or demons; it is not even an option to think that it was God!
There are no such “presences” of God to be felt for or mentioned as experiential to us in scripture, but the WFR god is one of bi-weekly tangible physical experiences. Because of this false gospel of emotion and experience you have people “accepting” Jesus or needing to rededicate themselves at the ages of 14, 18, 19, 22, 24, 26, 38, 42 and 54 hopefully dying in their faith because they just could never feel right with God. “These likewise are the ones sown on stony ground who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness; and they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a time. Afterward, when tribulation or persecution arises for the word’s sake, immediately they stumble,” Mark 4:16-17.I can’t tell you how many false conversions I labored to produce in Rodney’s church on the streets of Brandon and Tampa, FL, and indeed everywhere else I went in my dark ages. The Gospel was not preached; I just had people praying who wanted to be in heaven when they died. They were not broken over sin and I had no godly reason to tell them that sin was broken over them. Please stop reading and consider what I just said if you are not against all these things. At least submit with me to the fact that men ought never to call men saved. Can we agree on that? If you agree with that then continue and please consider what kind of a reckless theology would be represented by those who would do it for twenty years. What god do they serve? Begin here with me to see the evil cheapness of the WFR. Christianity is not cheap, but the WFR is very cheap my friends. Hardly any man would deny a cheap and free ticket to heaven. A man says “Sure, whatever man, I’ll pray, ok” and this is all a WF believer needs to hear to believe that all heaven immediately bows its ear with pencil in hand. In my shame I can recall present lesbians and fornicators being “slain in the spirit” after they made a “decision” for Jesus. They prayed a prayer, I told them they were saved as did the preacher and they came to church and were slain in a spirit. I’ve seen it and thought that they were saved, but a month later they were back in their sin and wanted nothing to do with God again. They came to church to hear about health and wealth in the “presences” of their new found faith. They did not come in repentance and why should they have to? They were already saved in our cult by saying the prayer!
By grace I will never make light of grace again! This is the beginning of my deliverance from WFism and the heart of my message to you. I would as soon never mention Christ in this world again than to make Him a light subject to be bought or sold in quick back alley deals at the rate of 300 a week. I would have 3,000 a week but only by Gospel! I treasure the Gospel and greatly fear bringing reproach upon it. I will tell men how they can be saved and comfort those who are saved in love.
As I write these letters I’m attempting to tell you a little about myself as well so I thought I’d tell you a little about how I was saved from the cheapness of the WFR. Following a somewhat long season of selfishness and Bible twisting in the WF church I trace my conversion finally to the hearing of a sermon on the attributes of God called “My Concept of God” by an Irishman named Leslie Hale whom I’ve never seen in person. I heard this sermon on cassette tape in my living room and remember standing in front of the tape deck frozen knowing that I did not know this man’s God, but that his God was the God of the scriptures. I didn’t really even like Mr. Hale because he wasn’t “alive” in the Holy Ghost which to a WFer means tongues, jumping around and referring to nearly everything as anointed. After hearing this simple message on the supremacy of God I began to repent of my sin for the first time and instantly despised the puny god of decision and buddy-buddy-ness taught in the WFR. Everything became different after that day. Looking back I know that I did not seek God but rather that He sought me. This was sovereign Gospel in me and not the WF gospel. The story I’m about to tell you occurred not long after.
Years ago I remember sitting on the front row of Kevin Howell’s church having my hands cupped in shame over my face. To be ashamed was something totally unacceptable for a “little god” to do but I was being made to see that men are neither gods nor little ones. I felt like running out and never coming back but couldn’t in my weakness. I loved my pastor. Even now in tears I can remember how I was overwhelmingly ashamed in sadness that God was so very small to me and that I had all my life preached a false gospel without love proclaiming unsaved men saved to the shame of both God and saved men. I had slandered Christ as cheap and submissive to decision. I had cast Him before swine in the guise of free will and decision. I had called men saved by a grace so cheap that men today walk around saying that they once tried Christianity but it didn’t work for them. I was falling on the rock that smashes men to pieces Matthew 21:44.
By faith I knew that I had been given the bittersweet gift
bestowed only on sons: the grace of the knowledge of my sin.
I could no longer drink the cup of demons and was weeping that Wednesday night when I was suddenly battered on my right shoulder and almost pushed out of my chair by Gaile the pastor’s shouting wife. She was getting “drunk on the Holy Spirit” and was stumbling around you see? She proceeded to shout in my ear and jump around in the room while hitting me on the shoulder with her hands as if to inspire alcoholic bliss in me before she hit the floor in boisterous laughter and the gibberish of useless “tongues.” (We’ll come back to tongues in another letter.) I was so ashamed of myself and of her. Her display broke my heart even more and I didn’t even really understand why yet. At that point God was still a big chum who drew near to hug and smooch me; He was not the God manifest in the Bible.God used a preacher (go figure) to vilify the Joel Osteen/Dani Johnson/Paula White/Kenneth Copeland style of self help christianity that I “felt” was Christianity just because it came from the Bible. I used to think that that was a guarantee of truth, but I have seen the depths of Satan even here and this certainly not only in the WFR. Friends don’t you know that Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Catholics, Oneness Pentecostals, Churches of Christ, Creciendo en Gracia, Westboro Baptists, Homosexual pastors and new agers of every fruity flavor all come from the Bible? I can’t stop crying as I write this letter to you.
During Leslie Hale’s sermon I heard awesome things and by God was inwardly called to faith in Christ even above my own judgment. I look back and find this true. Oh, blessed day! I want you all to hear some of those awesome things. It was these kinds of truths that God used to curve the stream of my selfish WF heart from an unknown-god to adoration. In the WFR they teach a god in the Bible but it is not the God of the Bible and that is why I’m writing all of these letters to you. I want to make you see this. I was once in the WFR, and to such as I was it was written: “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?” Romans 10: 14.
Hale was both quoting and teaching from AW Pink’s classic book called “The Attributes of God” and I trust that 2 Corinthians 4:6 happened in me as the preacher said things like:
The God of this 20th century…no more resembles the supreme Sovereign of holy writ than does the dim flickering of a candle against the glory of the midday sun. The god who is now talked about in the average pulpit, spoken of in the ordinary Sunday school, mentioned in much of the religious literature of the day and preached on in most of the so called Bible conferences of the day…is the figment of human imagination; an invention of maudlin sentimentality. The heathen outside of the pale of Christendom form gods out of wood and stone while the millions of heathen inside Christendom manufacture a god out of their own carnal minds. In reality they are but atheists for there is no other possible alternative between an absolute supreme God and no God at all. A god whose will is resisted, whose designs are frustrated, whose purpose is checkmated…possesses no title to Deity…and so far from being a fit object of worship merits not but contempt.
I, by grace alone, knew that the preacher was speaking directly of my god and I didn’t like it one bit. I didn’t like it but God had my attention. All through this message God was destroying the cheap grace and my “Free will decisional” idol that represented it. God was putting the god of the WFR on its face like another Dagon 1 Samuel 5:3-4. In the WFR a person’s faith can stop and start the plans of God. If you don’t believe, God’s hands are tied; likewise if you do believe then God must move. He’s just waiting on you to get in agreement with Him and tell Him how much, when and where you want what you want. You control God but of course they’d use scripture to teach that controlling God is exactly what He wants you to do. They can do this and a million goats say amen with their eyes on homes, cars and satellite dishes. They are profits not prophets who teach such scriptural selfishness. Believing things like this is totally contrary to God, and comes from WF theology.
Can you see, therefore, how such a statement as the one aforementioned would be completely incomprehensible to me back then?
Once again quoting Pink Hale said:
So puerile and powerless is the creature to affect the Most High. Scripture itself tells us that when the Gentile heads unite with apostate Israel to defy Jehovah and His Christ then, according to Psalms 2:4, “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh…”
He quoted CH Spurgeon into my heart forever:
Men will allow God to be everywhere except on His throne. They will allow Him to be in His workshop to fashion worlds and to make stars. They will allow Him to be in His almonry to dispense His alms and bestow His bounty. They will allow Him to sustain the earth and to bear up the pillars thereof, or to light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever moving ocean. But when God in our lives ascends His throne His creatures then gnash their teeth. I had never even heard of Charles Spurgeon or AW Pink! Hale attacked everything I believed and I began to flinch at stopping the tape, but it was too late I would soon only need others to unwrap me John 11:44. In the WFR my visions of selfish ambition were preached back to me as promises and visions from God. I had delighted myself in Him and He was going to give me the desires of my heart. That’s scripture, right? Well the problem is, and I hope I can get you to see this, that I only delighted in Him because He was going to give me the desires of my heart. This is WFR and its scriptural selfishness. I would get excited about becoming a billionaire businessman (to fund our false gospel) and that excitement was subconsciously spiritualized when I tithed. What a puny gospel; we didn’t focus on God we wanted what was in His hands.
Here’s one more quote from the sermon:
The supremacy of the true and living God might well be argued from the infinite distance which separates the mightiest creatures from the Almighty Creator. He is the potter, they are but the clay in His hands to be molded into vessels of honor or to be dashed in pieces according to Psalm 2:9 as He pleases…Were all the denizens of heaven…and all the inhabitants of the earth to combine in revolt against Him it would occasion Him no uneasiness and would have less effect upon His eternal and unassailable throne than has the spray of Mediterranean’s waves upon the towering rocks of Gibraltar.
The religion that says such things was not what I knew then. I thought that man was a little god and I saw the whole world as his given footstool. The WFR is the very definition of a man centered gospel. Have you heard this phrase before? It’s when men choose, men are the center, and men have a god like role in the world. “God creates man in His image and they return the favor” – John Macarthur. (He spoke of a different subject but same fact.)
Hale wasn’t speaking of the god of hugs and kisses, or the god that came to church last night and had us just laughing, laughing, laughing. The results of such a “church” will surely be as the first Pentecost, not the last.
These words above are not Bible quotes but God through this preacher began to show me the truth of His sovereignty in places like Psalms 2 quoted above. I had never seen Him as such. I heard the word sovereign, yeah, but there are eyes in hearing as well and mine were scaled over by my WFR. Oh, I had lots of “tongues”, “prophesies” fulfilled, emotional highs like never before, persecutions for what I believed, friends and some financial results but it was not life. Mormons have such things! God was a go getter of my blessings and delighted in making much of me. Christians are given the true gift of faith which is delighting in making much of Him.
All pagan teachings have two things in common:
1) The elevation of men, and 2) the reduction of God.
The Word-of-faith movement does both and in it “little gods” look to their “big brother” as merely the “first begotten Son.”
I heard Paula White and Ted Huch (leading Wfers) say recently that Jesus is only the First Begotten Son of God. What they say is that we’re all begotten of the Spirit and so we’re all begotten sons and daughters. True, we are begotten of the Spirit, but I don’t care what your slant on a scripture is, to lower the title phrase “Only Begotten” as if it is of man at all is a demonic iceberg in theology; we see very little of it on the surface. I refer you back to the quote in blue just above. To call Jesus merely a first begotten Son and then to call all Christians begotten sons and daughters just the same is the de-elevation of God and the elevation of man. That is paganism in display.Post conversion I began to love a sovereign God and that love took residence by the hearing of His supremacy. I saw the cross and the glory of Christ there. Suddenly Jesus was not just a really anointed guy like in WF theology, He was God and God cannot fail. What a difference. That’s why I write these letters. In the WFR God responds to a man’s faith like a servant responds to a master. Ask Eddie Long or Joyce Meyer about the power of your godliness, they’ll tell you. In agreement with Him, Wfers teach that there are times when you can literally demand God to move. “Tithe and then tell God to bring in the harvest” Kevin Howell taught. This is not a request, this is a demand he’d say.
Under His exalted perfections by the hearing of the word God brought me on trial before verses like Romans 9:15-21:
“…He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.” So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.” Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens. You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?”
He is not a decision, He is sovereign. Surely some of you even now are gnashing your teeth at what I’m writing wishing me to cite other texts. If you are in a WF type church I ask you to change my life by sending me just one sermon by the WF teachers listed in the table below that deals in any length with verses like Romans 9:15-21 above. Just send me a link; I’ll go and listen to it. I’ve looked and I’ve not found a full counsel of God in any of them, not one. I found 666 ways to increase myself by God but nothing about sovereignty and not much about sin. Wfers don’t care about holiness, they want stuff.
I believe that mankind’s worst problem is sin and
I don’t hear these folks talking about it too much.
God shows Himself and all of a sudden His friends are pleased to hear:“Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD,
Or as His counselor has taught Him?
With whom did He take counsel, and who instructed Him,
And taught Him in the path of justice?
Who taught Him knowledge,
And showed Him the way of understanding?
Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket,
And are counted as the small dust on the scales;
Look, He lifts up the isles as a very little thing.
And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn,
Nor its beasts sufficient for a burnt offering.
All nations before Him are as nothing,
And they are counted by Him less than nothing and worthless.
To whom then will you liken God?
Or what likeness will you compare to Him?
Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
He brings the princes to nothing;
He makes the judges of the earth useless,”
Isaiah 40:13-18 and 21-23.
No, Lord, surely man is the center. How can all the nations be accounted as nothing next to You? Oh, that was just incomprehensible to me while in the WFR. It was the sheer size and sovereignty of the God of Isaiah that brought about the love of God in me. Leslie Hale knew it and God taught me it. I cannot stress enough the evils of just calling such knowledge and the receipt of salvation a gift of decision prayed in by men and then done. The nature of the god preached in such foolishness is evidenced by his guaranteed service to this system.The God of Isaiah is not imputed by decision
nor is there WF Bible textology that can sanely be leveraged so.
Have you not seen Him in His word, sir?
Are you not afraid to make light of Him and tell men He’s saved them who perhaps He has not saved by your prayers?
Would you go and tell men that this God’s blood was
splattered for them without reverence?
Indeed we are the perfect generation to teach such cheap things!
The WFR’s cheap salvation stems from a lazy spirit taking grace for granted. I’ll use a quote: “Who…is outraged that God forgives sinners? There’s almost nobody arguing that. Almost everybody thinks He owes salvation to us and if He doesn’t give it, He’s the problem not us…God to forgive sin had to kill His own Son in order to justify sinful men…Sleep well tonight, sinner. Unbelievable! Unbelievable! Except by grace then it becomes believable.” – John Piper. Taking grace for granted has eternal consequences. Taking it for granted is why there’s teaching that men get saved just by deciding to get saved. Taking it for granted is why Joel Osteen has a pulpit.I’ve spoken to you a little previously about the emotional sustainment inbred into this type of system. I’d like to continue on with this a little more. Please hear me dear friends, I am warning you all of the depths of Satan in the WFR. God suffers men to endure it from time to time so that you can know. The WFR is a lazy school of selfishness. It was not god I knew in those places. My emotions felt there was not faith, but emotion. Friends, I have danced before my God as in Ecclesiastes 3:4. In fact there have been precious times when my dancing likely resembled a less talented scene from the movie Footloose! Since I was found in Him there have been sweet times of refreshing when I could do nothing but dance! There is such a time but it ought never to have been on the road to hell. I danced in the WFR upon my own destruction. It is not god they’ve got, and this is well evidenced in that god’s cheap grace and how they sling it out after “sovereign prayers.” I hear this cheapness all over the place these days. In short what I’m saying is that a man should not dance before God until he is born again and the whole point of this part of the series of these letters is to teach that being born again is not in saying a prayer and counting it done.
In the world today there’s a very lucrative black market called gospel, dear reader, and its peddlers are so far away from love that their gospel’s effectiveness can only be placed upon a customer’s correct use. Their target consumer is anyone with itching ears. There is no power in their gospel. Literally all of the power of the cross of Christ is taught as present and given to the consumer dependent upon carnal decision alone. By a spiritual lack of knowledge sovereignty over grace is thus usurped and this by a third party – the preacher. The listener is just deceived. The “salvation” preached under the CEOs like those in the videos we watched before is empty. If God does use it, it is only despite it and we ought never to thank Satan for the things spoken by him that God used to take us from him. If you were brought into the faith by something light such as a quick street side prayer and perhaps have later come to something true then my words in bold just above are my trust. God does use falsity. I do not wish to tread upon any true grace. I am simply pointing out what, by doctrine; dare not be confused with it.
The WFR is nothing short of a defiled system at play; a pleasing poison peddling paragraphs with sin that spoils like an undying cancer. This imaginary “salvation” in the WFR that is gained and sustained by decision and emotionalism is like children playing in the broken down shell of an old car moving only in the child’s imagination.
Christ imparts holiness to the believer by faith in
every generation.
Decision is not elevated to its place in ours.
In the WFR holiness is not required, just faith in Bible words. That is why “Decision prayers” can constitute the receipt of holy faith. In the WFR you need faith and cash to put your money where your mouth is, and your mouth to put your faith where your money is. There are satellites to buy, limousines to procure, and 10,000 square foot mansions on riverfront estates to adorn these anointed new prophets and profits of their god who’ll not entertain guests unless providing beds of ivory. Contentment is beneath these “little gods” in Armani vestments and their sheep fall backwards under the overwhelming emotional highs of their god through the agency of his new apostles and their new “drunken” religion.After the “conversion” of Constantine in the early fourth century Christianity corrupted. Wealth began to flood the church and choke it as it always does. Some fled into the deserts where monasticism was born with men like Anthony and cloisters eventually developed under men like Pachomius. The simplicities of grace became universally infected with imperial protocol and priests began to crowd the scene as vital to sacred rights in pompous costumes giving a seductive illusion of mystical power in heavenly ritual while the altar (which was destroyed by God) replaced the pulpit. This time marked the beginnings of the system that would centuries later in AD 590 officially become Catholicism, a great enemy of Christianity. Suddenly sacramentalism was born. Fetishism and priest craft found its way into the Bible and Satan made a new and glorious way to hell by ignoring the justification of faith alone. In Catholicism, by participating in sacred rights (despite motive) the participant is guaranteed some measure of grace by the church. Motives do matter somewhat in both priest and receiver but there is always taught to be some level of forgiveness for sin just because of the observance of the sacrament itself. This is sacramentalism, and these vain routines pretend to forgive sin in Catholicism every day. The priests have to perform the ritual or it is not valid but because this whole system was designed in simony (Acts 8:18-19) they teach that all sacraments deliver some mitigated blessing simply by virtue of execution. Here’s the subject’s relevance to the WFR:
WFers teach that the only sacrament of salvation is decision – if you’ll
“JUST SAY THIS PRAYER”
Aka:
“HOC EST CORPUS MEUM.”
By the power of the preacher motives are immaterial in the WF sacrament and any participant by the virtue of choice receives all of heaven’s blood bought eternal grace as a result of “the prayer” and is declared heaven bound. When a pronouncement of grace and that even of saving grace is given upon the repetition of a prayer I smell the sulfur of Rome and detest it even here in the emperor’s new clothes. Go and read Rodney Howard-Browne’s soul winning script (trust me it won’t take long) and see this ten second purchase described by the salesman. This is what Rodney gives to his “Bible school students” to preach. And it’s not just him; you’ll find similar things in the ministries of those listed below because this is the WFR and its cheap view of salvation. Please understand, I’m not saying that Rodney Howard-Browne is a pope or that the WFR religion is Catholic. I’m showing that a sacramentalist mindset should accompany our understanding of such “say this prayer” superstition. This superstition is something the WFR happens to share with Catholicism and they both pronounce sure blessing on external action on God’s behalf without jurisdiction.Christians tell men how to be saved;
We are not priests confirming them with magic words.
I will say this with specificity: “If a man takes a stranger, spends a literal minute talking to him about a few scriptures in passing about a concept of sin, gets him to “accept Jesus” in order that he can be sure of heaven, and then has the audacity to pronounce salvation grace over that individual he is empty and false.” I know that many do this in ignorance, but ignorance makes the doctrine no less deceptive. This is no different than the sacraments of Rome when salvation is assured by such means, and is without dispute just as useless. By making a decision to pray a prayer men are taught that God responds with grace instantly every single time. This is WFism and is exactly what Paul Washer is saying in the quote at the beginning of the first part (part 2A) of this letter; it is great heresy.Salvation is not a flu shot that inoculates people from hell.
It is a promised heart bought on Calvary to display God’s all.
To reduce it to decision is such a fowl perversion that it betrays a lack of appreciation and likely even of ownership.
I’ve spent some time speaking against what I hope you now see errant in decisional regeneration which is what the Word-of-faith (WFR) teaches. Decisional regeneration is that a man chooses God and God gets with it as decision regenerates the soul. I’d like to talk for a bit about salvation and the deciding of it. What I detest about doctrines on salvation like the WFR is that they do not go to God for salvation but have a system that falsely saves souls. They get them to pray and call it done. I hate this with all that I am and my God hates it as well you can be sure. Jeremiah 23 describes these false preachers perfectly. Jeremiah dealt with the same things in his day that we must deal with in ours and when I read his writings it’s like he’s speaking about Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland or Paula White directly. We teach that men are saved by grace and what I mean by that is that God saves them. The day you believed in God was the day that the gift of belief was given to you. The word came and maybe you’d heard it a thousand times but suddenly you saw grace and you ran to it. Where did that come from? It came from God not you. I’ll say it again: It came from God not you. It is God who opens the heart through the preaching of the word. It is not decision that brings grace but grace that brings decision. Once men are brought to faith they willingly choose Christ…Never before! None of us would love God if God did not first love us! That means we’d never have repented of sin and put our trust in Him unless He first overcame our sin and convicted us of it. “And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment,” John 16:8. Who convicts? God. Who receives the prayers of a convicted sinner? God. Who regenerates the heart through repentance and faith? God. The WFR and others believe that the future is somehow open and that God sits by watching to see what happens or that He simply knows everything, but does nothing to intervene. I know that God knows the future, and we know that not all men are chosen to be saved because of Romans 9:20-23 so we teach a salvation more sure than decision. We teach a salvation of cross intended proportions not just cross resulted possibilities. We teach that when Christ said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one” in John 10:27-30 that He means He saves us and keeps us saved. We do not depend on ourselves but live dependant upon Him daily. We fight sin because we know that the desire to fight sin came from Him. Philippians 2:13. Not only can these sheep not jump the pen but have wisdom to know that they’d never want to. In WFism it is as if salvation begins at decision; in Christianity salvation is why the world was made. Romans 5:8.But what about decision itself? Doesn’t a person have to decide to receive the Lord? Yes, of course we decide but salvation more glorious than insurance. I’m not saying that men go to heaven unwillingly, or that anyone will be in hell who wanted heaven rightly. We choose, but was there not something of the Holy Spirit at work in us before we chose? Is there not more at stake to the beauty and sweetness of Christ’s calling than a prayer to “close the deal?” Are there not laws for our pulpits? Did Christ come only to influence that which was doable in men? Should we operate in ignorance and hope that men are saved when we lead them in our prayers? Is there not more than an unperceivable and untouchable beauty that may or may not have happened during “the prayer?” Is the life Christ gives not one that soon breathes the religious affections and puts God on the singing lips of men made contrite against the entire world? Is that glory not beyond emotion? Do preachers not feel weight to invoke the name of Jesus in their preaching? To feel the weight of truth in the cross is the source of the joy in preaching it! Are we not afraid of dealing lightly with Calvary and calling just any man “brother”? This is not a ticket to heaven we preach, is it? This is not like buying a last minute item from the impulse isle of a store with the piece of mind that it can always be returned if we’re not satisfied, is it? Don’t you know, evangelist, that when you preach the Gospel angels bear witness? To apply it hastily at the feet of strangers as if it is a light subject is so alien to the heart of a genuine evangelist that it makes every true evangelist sick at the slander. We preach and we invite; God converts, God confirms. Your prayers do not convert! I am not saying stop going and preaching; I’m saying go and start preaching. Tell them how to be saved. Preach on sin, tell them what sin is, get them to see their sin and tell them about the Lord and His work on the cross. Do not avoid the former. To those who may pray such worldly prayers, I pray that you would cease lying by your faith to men. You don’t know if they’re truly saved so how can you say it? You certainly don’t know if they’re saved after a sixty second prayer! How can a man assume that God’s death and the power of faith are thus bound to man’s decisions?
Writing these letters is in part why God brought me through the WFR. This is my heart I pour out to you and all the while as I write I am seeing the Gospel preached on a thousand rolling hills and I love the feet of all those who bring it. Romans 10:15. The greatest joy of my life is remembering all of the places where I myself have preached His Gospel and brought Christ to men. I go back to sun bathed hillsides, cars, beaches, trucks, universities, Laundromats, apartments, foxholes, hospitals, schools, sidewalks, pagan temples, cities, airports, airplanes, churches, parking garages, restaurants, benches, countries, restrooms (yes, even there.) I hear precious Gospel words whispered in fields at night while watching for an enemy through night vision goggles. I feel again the uncomfortable crunch of sand between my teeth after sharing the Gospel in Iraqi desserts on windy nights. Oh, God how I long to see what You have done and how I have shared in it!!! This is the meaning of my life.
I love you all, and pray that my strong words are not too much. Please consider this as you consider me: Evangelists in the vineyard know that they are but laborers happily performing what is required of them (Luke 17:10). Some are hired in the morning, some in the late afternoon. Their joy and love is in their service and they delight to please Him who enlisted them. They know that “…Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase,” 1 Corinthians 3:7. The WFR teaches men to go out and be everything in salvation (perhaps except increaser.) They are instantly the sewer and the harvester. They are not planting and watering but just reaping as if that’s John 4. You saw the video. What farmer plants a seed and digs it up in thirty seconds expecting harvest? Only an imposter who does not understand seed would do this. Matthew 13:28.
Wfers tell their students to get men to pray prayers to “accept Jesus into their heart.” If the prayer’s effect is a flop six weeks later assure them by your previous prophetic wisdom that they are surely saved; you were there when they prayed. If this doesn’t suffice fix it quick and get em to pray again rededicating themselves to their previous decision. Where could such goofy wisdom come from except from unsaved men? I cannot see anyone who loves the cross and truly carries it calling it such a cheap thing. They say “They can be born again again because God is subject to them and gives eternal life temporarily oft.” Go into a room of fifty kids and ask them who wants to go to heaven and get a decision, that’s love. After all we don’t know what God’s doing, do we? They might be saved, right? This is not proper motive, sir, no matter the numbers. Pragmatism is the drumbeat of a theological death march.
Scatter your seed, yes, but value it!
It will fall as God wills but open your eyes my friend it is
precious seed!
To the WF style Evangelist, I say that you have done a great disservice to your listeners. You have placed large and loud earphones on the ears of blind men approaching thousand foot cliffs who will now no longer hear warning shouts if you have your way – Ray Comfort. You have not told him that he will die and loved him enough to tell him about his sin. You have not expounded sin so that Christ is shown as the only way. Christ is an option when He is reduced to a decision. Hammer home the law and sin. 1 John 3:4, 1 Corinthians 15:56. Cut and maim and kill because this is the only thing that will make them live, as it is written “And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder,” Matthew 21:44.You have given your hearer nothing to remember but a catch phrase like that of any salesman’s cardboard exhibits jam-packed with popping colorful words like “easy,” “free,” “fast” and “guaranteed.” You are bankrupt, sir, and we in Christ pray for the death of your business. We cannot even rejoice because your gospel is preached. A first lesson of grace is the knowledge of sin and God is good to show it to those He loves. A first mercy is the hatred of their sin, but what in your teaching is but to promote love in the mirror? Oh, we’ll never fully understand how God saved us this side of that saving but we are surely not saved by decision. We are saved by faith which itself is the very gift we alone beseech God to give to men through our preaching. Augustine in “The Confessions” (AD 397) said “Now what, indeed, does God command first and foremost except that we believe in Him? This faith He Himself gives, so it is well said to God, ‘Give what You command.’” This gift is from God alone! We beseech God to give faith; we do not fetch faith from wells of decision.Let me speak of the heavenly gift of salvation. Salvation, once birthed, cannot be lost or forfeit. False conversions can, however, show themselves to be false as undiscerning men drown in the gray. You cannot earn grace, but you can prove that it is not yours. This is not WF opinion. In the WF religion, as in many other schools of theology that are not WF, salvation can be lost. This issue is spoken of very boldly by me, but it is not a doctrine that cannot be disputed from within the faith. I think that Christians can disagree on this and keep fellowship striving to keep the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:1-6. Amen. However, take the idea of losing one’s salvation and put it on top of the WFR and its cheap views on gaining grace and it is but more evidence of the cheapness of the entire system. In the WFR salvation is both easy come and rather easy go. What sort of a “little god” would believe that he could be the god of God? A life of sin is lived “accepting” Him and then kicking Him out again unless of course the sinner chooses by free will to welcome Him back in again until further notice. What sort of unholy lunacy is that sort of teaching built on or designed to honor? Oh, I’m sure it’s on scriptures, sir, but it is not scriptural. Non-Lordship salvation is stupid.
How can a man claim that a man can turn his back on the grace of salvation? How can the heart be removed and the body still live? Perhaps by briefly showing the amazingly solid love of Christ in His Good Shepherding of the church, the error of thinking grace is imputed by mere choice will become clearer. Herein is the fixed spirit of the elect: All may claim to love You, Jesus, and then soon depart but as for Your sheep “…Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” John 6:68-69. What an all shaking, world flipping, soul dancing mystery of trembling solemnity to see that that even the “…Come to believe…” was grace!!! “Did I not choose you, the twelve…” John 6:70, 15:16. It is not choice but grace. Oh, how unsettling is the shallowness of the WFR and its decisional sacramentum! Come out from it if you’re in it, reader, and let the dead bury their dead. For every false teacher I’ve named below I could name you two great teachers.
Oh, how far from grasping grace it is to believe that salvation is both first of God then first also of men.
I’ll refer you to our Recommended Listening List at Biblecia.com/articles to men far more capable of this than I am. For a magnificent teaching on the awesome nature of salvation go to paragraph number three on the list which is John Piper and get John Calvin’s biography in your ears. What Calvin believed was grace and this is what I believe. Go hear John Calvin talk about the nature of saving faith; you won’t care what Benny Hinn thinks about it anymore. Go hear about David Brainerd and then you’ll yawn when Richard Roberts asks you to put your hands on the TV screen for “something good tonight.”
If you believe that salvation is merely of choosing then of course losing it is just as easy. The reason I’m addressing this issue in this letter is because saying grace can be revoked also shows an unnecessary and sad devaluation of the gift on multiple levels. We say that the grace itself which birthed your repentance and brought you to willingly believe in Jesus is itself a promised and purchased gift. Therefore, if you see, savor, and long for the love of God in your heart rightly then you should rejoice not because you decided right alone, but because that heart to decide was bought for you by Jesus ~ 1,970 years ago on the cross (Ephesians 1; Romans 4:25). This humbles a man in God. “Oh, how conserving are the doctrines of grace to a hundred other doctrines.” – Charles Spurgeon. This eternal plan of redemption is not begun in the mouths of men, but in the wisdom of God before men existed. Ephesians 1. Hebrews 8:10 tells us that the NT heart is the fulfillment that Israel would receive and that which is to us in the church from Jeremiah 31:31-34.
Make war therefore! Don’t coast! Christians are at war with their sin. If you’re not at war with sin then you are dead in it. Christians fight and never make peace with sin. “By His stripes” we are made to know, made to see, made to taste of heaven…made to choose and so we chose willingly. We’d never turn from this grace. Oh, what a blessed sealing that only those in the dispatch can say that Jesus is Lord. This is not from presumption but persuasion. We as Paul are “…confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ,” Philippians 1:6. No verses negate this for us. In true salvation the strength of it is upon God not men; this is totally different from what I learned in the WFR. In the WFR not only did I choose God first but I also had to maintain my walk with Him or He might just erase my name from the Book of Life.
Revelation 3:1-6 warns the dead church in Sardis to repent for their sin before their church is extinguished. This is something even saved men sometimes need to hear. Beginning in verse four Jesus commends those in this dead church who’ve not “defiled their garments” (a clear expression of their genuine faith amidst the church) and promises them that they will not be blotted from the Book of Life. Wfers read verse 5 which says, “He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life” as a threat. All I’ll ask is how can a man turn this promise into a threat? In those days men were erased from favored books or VIP lists as we might call them today when falling out of disfavor with the in-crowd. Jesus promises His own that He’ll never do this. It’s a promise of security not a threat. How can you turn a promise into a threat?
It is God “Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works (or magic prayers), but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began,”2 Timothy 1:9 (words in parenthesis mine.) Notice when this grace was given. Don’t deal lightly with this; it preceded our prayers.
I am displaying a small bit of systematic theology here. I recommend RC Sproul to you for a more thorough examination. “Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 1 John 5:5. “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God,” Luke 9:62. Many false plowmen will come and be rejected on that day Jesus said (Matthew 7).
Once saved always saved is a cheap view, normally. This phrase is usually used by a man with a cheap view of grace to label another cheap view of grace. Men do not get saved and then live a life of willful sin secure in election, that’s stupid. We know that men are saved and that that means fruit in their lives. Those evident changes we call fixed in heaven because it is Paul’s language we adopt. One old Negro spiritual said it best: “If you is what you was you aint.”
I used to believe that salvation was cheap and so I could gain it and lose it by my decisions. That’s a cheap salvation hanging on the will of men. Human will is cheap! It changes immediately after lunch or a good night’s sleep. In the WFR, however, will was all I had…Well that plus the gibberish of tongues and psychosomatic emotional experiences induced by jokes and music at the right moments. I got similar emotions after I saw the movie Titanic back when it first came out in like 1997. I used to think that grace was easy to be gained and then lost again, but that was pre-salvation. Now I am confirming myself in this calling. “Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble,” 2 Peter 1:10. This is for my sake not for God’s.
I spurned You my God and saw You as one who bowed to my decisions and left me by the same in a covenant that I had made over You in Your Bible. Why would a man argue that salvation can be lost? Can God not keep a man even over that man? All Christians sin do they not? Is salvation’s Army truly so superficial that there is no war anymore but only constant defeat, separation and the need for re-enlistment? To those of you who believe God can be forsaken: At what level of sin do you then discharge? Surely it is somewhere just over your own.
Do you not fear to be wrong in teaching the book, WFish opponent? Is it that you think a man who believes he is sealed to God and hid in Christ is prone to apathy or a lascivious license? If apathy and such sin tendency is your concern for a man I share it and say that there is merit for your concern for he is likely not in Christ. Romans 3:7-8. Good call! But perhaps you have ignored the fact that in Christ there is no apathy! Matthew 10:37. Have you not read the atomic mass of such things as “Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God,” 1 John 3:9. This is not sinless perfection, the heart is changed in this man and he would die to please his new master rather than delight in his sins. He is a dog that dislikes his vomit now, and he does not return to the mud like the swine. 2 Peter 2:22. He cannot sin; how could he? To whom shall he go? You are rebuked in this.
Surely to justify your status over your crucified helper you’ll argue contextual errors on my part, but my context is God’s New Testament grace, sir, and I am careful to include the whole. My context is in the God able to keep men from stumbling. My context is the God who would not let even the OT children in Israel fall to their enemies “For His name’s sake!” My salvation is for that name’s sake as well. This is my context. My root is in a plan beyond me (Romans 9.) My context is this very New Testament plan of which I speak wrought from the foundation of the earth, not the foul breath of men’s decisions. I love a loving and redeeming God and only because He first loved me. That is my boast. What is yours in light of this but a redeeming God, and? This is not a sweet and joyous trust because you ought not to delight in yourself. You are not securing grace you are bronze plating it. I sing songs in my heart that say “My love for You, oh Lord, will never die.” I say that without pretension; I sing it in an assured hope. I am not presuming this; I am persuaded of this – “My love for You, oh Lord, will never die.” You cannot sing this because salvation is your decision to gain and even keep by tomorrow’s decisions. Who are you to presume that you’ll keep yourself in the love of God forever? Christ has come to remove your burden and your doctrine has replaced it.
Beloved has God not shown you in the explanation of His parable that “These are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirty fold, some sixty, and some a hundred,” Mark 4:20? There is good seed! Brethren “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” 1 John 3:1. Turn from this and you’ve never turned to it. This is systematic theology. I site again, “Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God,” 1 John 3:9. If these things describe something you may have received one day when you said a prayer then we’re not talking about the same thing. There is no apathy in Him because you are alive by the love of Jesus; secure salvation breeds an eternally palpable life. God gives life to us in His Son and it, like Him because it is Him, never dies. Does that mean that this love also is without beginning? Oh, the vastness of eternal God! What a shame to call it mere choice to love Him. Salvation is a well within the Christian surely without bottom. God gives life in His Son and it changes everything. It not only changes everything in this life, the lotto can do that, this gift changes everything forever!
Men in Christ are kept in Christ by Christ. Is this so hard to love without question for us? Christ is our assurance of this and to all disputers we do not but correct and welcome you, if you would hear us, to the same grace and assurance that we wish you to have. We bless you in invitation. Pity me if I’m wrong and if this grace within me is not from God for eternity. Antichrists in both the past and present of our faith “…went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us,” 1 John 2:19.They would have continued with us if they were of us because we continue to the end. We persevere because we are saints. Place not the Gospel before pigs. We know that “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out,” John 6:37 and our confidence is in Him who said it not those who come.
Is salvation not spoken of with surety in your church? If salvation can be lost then perhaps you’ve lost it unawares. You can’t say this is impossible unless you have cleaned out all sin. Perhaps you have offended God and He’s left you, but has plans to come back when you’re ready. Is there a probationary glory that you preach? Perhaps that’s in 2nd Hebrews. Look at Hebrews 6:4-6, you say. What about Galatians 5:4 you ask? Men can fall! Men can fall! To men be the glory they have the power to fall! Yes, sir, they do fall but there is no glory. Indeed we all live without even a perfect hour. The context for us is grace and grace from grace to grace. Tell us why salvation is not this glorious, dear sir, and we will point you to grace again. We who have received the Holy Spirit have received Him as the down payment of promise from God the Father (Ephesians 1:14) and we know that God does not renegotiate. Our hearts are fixed my incorrect friend; fixed on grace immovable. We do not slumber and make no provision for the flesh precisely because we have a new master. We fight because we are made to love Him. We are secure in faith and our sins slowly die in our conformity to Him. If you see a life of willful sin and apathy in a man claiming “eternal security” then he is as deceived about the nature of saving faith as you are who think that he could have arrived to that fallen condition from salvation.
I love doctrine and I love the Gospel. Are you in love with a God whose ways are past finding out? This is not the God of decision; this God is holy and must receive you, it is not the other way around. Come to Him and seek Him with your whole heart. Knock and it shall be opened…Ask and you shall receive. God is gracious. Consider your sins reader. Consider your lying, stealing, blasphemy, adultery (which Jesus said is even looking with lust), cheating and the lack of love you have for God and your neighbor. Consider it long and well then look to the cross. It is the forgiveness of sin that is the motive we teach. Men should not come to Christ for anything else first, and not just because they’d like to go to heaven when they die. The knowledge of sin (1 John 1:10) is not in understanding that we are simply “less than perfect;” It is in knowing that we are less than dust. In the end it is the dust that is exalted. Repent and put your faith in Jesus Christ and you’ll see that it is not just the fear of hell that should send you to Him but the thankfulness that He came to save you from hell. I tell you that getting into heaven is not about being good; if that were the case who could stand? No, the way to heaven is in Christ. Here is our Gospel in fourteen words: you and I broke the law and Jesus Christ came to pay the fine. He did this so that at the judgment men could leave the courtroom, not because they’re good, but because they’ve had their fine paid by Christ’s shedding of blood. It’s good news. He is our ransom. If you see it then repent of your sin. Take time and think about God’s laws like in Exodus 20 and name your sins to Him. Then, think of Jesus on the cross for you anyway. It should break your heart and lead you to call out on the name of the Lord putting your trust in Him like you’d trust a parachute jumping 20,000 feet out of a plane. I hope that makes sense. The witnesses “went out and preached that people should repent,” Mark 6:12. They did not go out and preach that people were saved.
I know that this teaching is tough. May God bless you for reading and considering these things. I’ve tried to do two things in this letter: 1) to show you that the WFR religion and “just say this prayer” evangelism is vain and not the wisdom of God but of the devil, and 2) to show you that the Bible speaks of a grace so great that it is not on us to impose, but on us to preach wherever we go to whomever at every chance so that we might see God’s grace at work. I pray that my boldness of speech both pleases those who it should please and displeases those it should displease, all to the glory of God and His holy Gospel. “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. “For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, as so many, peddling the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ,” 2 Corinthians 2:14-17.
*This series of letters was written in Iraq and mailed out over the course of a few weeks beginning in June of 2008. This is the second part of that series on the Word-of-faith Religion (WFR.) It was originally divided into parts 2A – 2F. This is the entire letter.
Here is a list of preachers who present a WFR in different degrees. These are the teachers we were told would come and God’s word never fails (Matthew 7:15, 21-23; 2 Corinthians 11:14; Galatians 1:8-9; 1 Timothy 6:3-10; 2 Timothy 4:3.) The ones in bold are those I knew best. It’s such people as these that I have in mind while I write.
**I highly recommend these sermons. They relate to this letter series as a whole. The first two are free, but the third is available (to my knowledge) for purchase only.
1. Hank Hanegraaff: “Counterfeit Revival.”
2. Todd Friel’s messages called “Rodney Howard-Browne” parts 1-3.
3. John Macarthur’s “Does God Promise Health and Wealth?” parts 1-2. Product codes 90-63 and 90-64 respectively. You have to go to page 6 after clicking on this hyperlink to find them. CD: $5.00; Mp3: $3.00.
Thank you for your attention to this letter.
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