The Fivefold Ministry And Spiritual Abuse - Resources Coming!

We have been inundated through the years with a LOT of requests for help, counsel and teaching on the subject of spiritual abuse as inflicted by those of the "five fold ministry" and have unfortunately have found ourselves really unable to find the time to deliver on it.

That is about to change.

We are working feverishly to provide - at long last, after 10 years of start and stopping - a webbed version of teaching we've done on how the horrible spectre of spiritual or religious abuse has become a materialized monstrosity that quietly lurks in the shadows of many Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. We hope to have the first 3 of 4 articles on it completed in the next week or so, finally uploaded and updated from the present ones still on the site.

In 1998, I did a talk on this at the EMNR Chicago Conference on Biblical Discernment about the same time I started our ministry website. The learning curve and time we spent preparing, designing and uploading a variety of articles and PDF tracts was enormous, as well as research into the now moribund Prophecy Club - not to mention a lot of assistance offered to victims of fivefold ministry-inflicted abuses. And then the rise of the Remnant Fellowship cult pretty much kept us digging deep into the rabbit hole that Gwen Shamblin dug for the church to fall into from 2002 onward (during the post 9/11/2001 days I don't mind telling you that we were stunned for several weeks afterward, which is far better than what many 9/11 victims experienced.

So now, we're finally making the time to get this done. We hope to stream an excerpt of a DVD we're now doing of my teaching there in the next week or so also.

"Expelled: The Movie" - Be A Part Of A Campaign For Truth

Darwinian evolution has far too long held cultural sway and has contributed to the deevolution of Western civilization. You may say your ancestor wasn't a monkey. Or a "missing link." Or the result of random atoms smashing into each other acted upon by cosmic radiation. The arrogance of the secular elite's control over hearts and minds doesn't care. They'll teach it anyway and demand your silence at the cost of being labelled intolerant fundy theocrats .. or an anti-intellectual zealot.

And they control the video editing suites, the budgets, the programming, the air time, the staffing and the curricula behind two of the most influential institutions of our day - the academia and mass media. Don't want your kids or others to hear about the thorougly credible science that non Darwinian scientists have amassed about the possibility that God might have been behind creation? Too bad. They sit on school boards and reign from production offices. You haven't got a chance ..

Or do you ...?

The film "Expelled" helps shed light on this flatulent underbelly of godless secular humanism with the owl visaged Ben Stein leading us through a narrative of expose as well as hope. It will be released on April 18 nationwide. It isn't surprising that the media are allegedly refusing to offer much air time for advertising on this.

Check out the trailer at

Be that as it may, the filmmakers are hoping that the concerned public who are following the evidence of science that exposes the fallacies of Darwinian evolution will mobilize by grassroots and word of mouth a publicity campaign to get folks out to watch the movie. A worthy cause, I think. Here's my own small contribution. Spread the news. Post on a blog. Tell your youth group. Tell your Sunday School class. Send some emails. Tell your Baptist brother's pastoral staff. Stand for truth - and academic freedom.

Go the website for more information. If The Blasphemy Network could mobilize thousands of tongue talking Christians to hype Matt Crouch's screwy "Omega Code" that advanced some really BAD end times fantasy with lame acting, it's about time they go to the movies again to learn about a reality far more down home and dangerous then any "bible code."

agape
rafael

A Recommitment ..

8:05 a.m. .. Mount St. Mary's Cemetary in Kansas City, MO .. 3.9.08

I drove by once again after having spent an hour or so there trying to help make it possible to fulfill my mom's final wishes concerning this place speaking to various people who oversee it. She wants to be buried there, in this old cemetary in the middle of Kansas City, next to her beloved abuelo, my great grandfather Mattias Adriano. He was the only father figure she ever really knew in her childhood and she lost him when she was 12 years old. There's so much sad history and painful narrative I could fill this with, but I fully understand why she wants to do this. So, as Joy, myself and fellow countercult minister Lora Burton were leaving town after the EMNR convention we'd been at that weekend, I simply could not drive past it without a final look at the place my mom wants to be left behind at as she awaits a better resurrection.

Death lost it's grip and my fear of it years ago when I embraced Christ as my Savior. In fact, I often find myself longing to be absent from the Body to be with Him. But the earthy finality of a literal burial place is ground zero for the reality that I'm not there yet and that there is work to be done to help people realize that such a place can be a beginning for them .. or the entrance into the most horrible of dead ends. As we drove around this old Catholic cemetary, in the silence, the cold and the ever lightening dawn of the new day, musing over the eternal tensions of my assurance of eternal life with that of the harsh reality that millions die daily and face eternal death, the grave stones seemed to become witnesses to me of a dire need I simply have to address ..

I need to see, as my mom so passionately cries about in her prayers, "souls saved." I need to be about the Father's business in defending and proclaiming the Faith that saves souls. From here on out, I'm going to be a lot more vocal here on this blog then ever before as I try to document what it means to seek and save that which is lost. And cultists are very lost people .. Mormons are lost. Jehovah's Witnesses are lost. Moonies are lost. The disciples of self-proclaimed religious avatars, mystics, and prophets are lost. And it is the power of the Gospel that will save them.

Pray for us. We want to be on target, on mission .. speaking the truth in love and taking heed that no man deceive any one into missing out on the Way, the Truth and the Life.

agape

rafael

Quite Possibly The Best Video On Cults Ever Made

Tired of trying to be a prophet, avatar or visionary but can't get anyone to blindly follow you? Have you always wanted to know how to manipulate people in the name of any deity, religion or philosophy you want to hide behind with your own agenda of naked abuse of power? Look no further! Independent film maker Corey Burtt's outstanding bit of cautionary cinema will open your eyes and help you see where you've been missing the boat! Soon, you too can organize mass movements based on deception where manipulation, spiritual abuse and damnable heresy that will destroy lives and doom souls .. just like Gwen Shamblin, Sun Myung Moon, Joseph Smith, Judge Rutherford and sooooo many others!

Themsis' fightin' words

Well, it didn't take long for the brickbats to follow our articles on Joel Osteen's unbiblical gospel.

I was rather surprised when Joy forwarded to me this vapid letter of rebuke from one Bob Ross, a fellow I'd never heard of before. A couple net searches turns up that this Mr. Ross runs Pilgrim Publications, a publishing firm that publishes the sermons and writings of the legendary Charles Spurgeon's, the so-called "prince of preachers." Had he stayed there, he'd probably sleep better at nights. It also seems that he has become a shrill critic of those who hold to doctrines he believes should be piddled upon in the name of the purity of whatever concept of Christian faith he holds to be true and dear, Calvinism and "pedobaptism" being the particular targets of his online screeds in which he addresses himself as "Brother Bob".

What's even weirder is that this gentleman has become one of the more incendiary apologistas for - you guessed it - none other then the irrepressible Joel Osteen himself. Incredible, but true. I wondered to myself .. could this be another sign of the endtime apostasy? I sat and mulled on this a second, wondering how a Spurgeon fanatic and self-anointed swatter of what he calls "Calvinistic theological errors/flies" - depending on where you read on his blog - could become so completely mush-minded as to accept Osteen's Christless preaching as Biblical. Still, stranger things have happened when seemingly grounded Christian figures go off the deep end and wander their star into quagmires of their own creation, leading too many there with them

(cue video of John Shelby Spong, Hobart Freeman, Gwen Shamblin, Carlton Pearson, Jay Bakker, ad nauseum)

Between smearing the Tulip confession and deciding which of the works of the good reverend Spurgeon to again reprint, Mr. Ross apparently feels that His Best Life Now involves being a gadfly across the Internet, savaging those who criticize Osteen. Apparently, I'm just another one of those who've enjoyed the company of a Pilgrim passing through. So when he decided to address my fellow apologist homeys Jeff Downs and Lance King in an apologetics forum I do not
subscribe to (but at one time did several years ago) I decided that I'd need to respond to it here on this blog. I trust Mr. Ross won't mind me doing this for the sake of clarity and in the spirit of rejoinder he obviously likes to "engage" with. And I'm endeavoring in this since no one is here to stop me, and this is my blog, and I am what it says I am and I will never, never, never be the
same again ..

oops .. excuse me, I've been watching too much of Joel lately.

Anyway, I'm sure Brother Bob you won't mind me sharing my own thoughts here ..

Dear Rafel, Lance, and Jeff Downs:

I always "consider the source" when I read the type of critical materials you
present against Joel Osteen, as sent to me via email.

It never fails to amaze me at how many ways people continue to misspell my name. Never. At least Mr. Ross was positive enough to start his excoriation with the kinder and gentler
approbation of "Dear ..." That's better then how I've started .. anyway, on to Bob's consideration:

Your religious affiliation (Church of God, Cleveland) and organizational
affilliations and recommendations do not gain my respect for you as
competent critics.

Hmmm. Now that's a new angle, there Bob! I've been called a lot of thing in the past. Arminian moron, anti-this, holy roller cultist, the usual blackening of character. My Pentecostal perspective on Christian life has figured prominently in them. One guy once said I sounded too balanced to be Pentecostal. Themsis fightin' words, the good ol' boys on the Maytag assembly line I used to work on here a few years ago might say. So hearing my movement, the Church of God (Cleveland) missing muster with Mister Mustard - er, Ross isn't too far off the mark from other digs in the past (sorry, the alliterative temptation was too good to pass up). It was an easy cheap shot though - you diss the Church of God and never say one reason why.

What happened, did a Church of God preacher lay heavy hands on you at an old fashioned altar in the past? Did you get an atomic wedgie at a Church of God youth camp in your tender past? I mean, come on, what is it about my movement you don't like?

This strange criticism begs the question - what is it in Mr. Ross's estimation makes one a "competent critic"? .. According toMr. Ross wrote of himself that

“I was baptized in the Methodist Church at any early myself, but I later heard the simple Gospel such as preached by Joel Osteen, and the Lord granted me repentance and faith in Christ. That simple Gosple works, and I am still rejoicing in it after nearly 53 years of professing it. NOTE TO JOEL CRITICS:
There’s no need sending me trash talk about Joel. I listen to him every Sunday,
and until I hear something worthy of my changing my attitude about him, you can save your breath. I AM PRO-JOEL.”

So, Bob, let's review a working hypothesis here .. I think it's fair to assume that you say that

1) Being involved in a "working simple Gosple" found only after departing your church
roots

and

2) Only hearing something you arbitrarily decide is "worthy" will lead you to open your mind about Joel Osteen

are the criterion you establish for your status as a "competent critic." This is a rather curious choice of discernment there. It works well for all kinds of people who find the truth to be too troublesome to bother with and who dig this hill to die upon for the "Truth" they want to live by.

Do you watch a lot of movies, Bob? I really don't, but your petulant little outburst here reminded me of a hilarious scene in "Fever Pitch." It's when the Red Sox fanatic Ben, dining with his new girlfriend Lindsay, warbles like a six year old and claps his hands over his ears when trying to avoid hearing someone in the next table over discussing the ongoing Red Sox game he wasn't watching at that moment. It's a scream of a scene.

Only this isn't funny. You show how seemingly bereft of discernment you are. Cultists of all stripes do the exact same thing you apparently commend yourself with: express utter surrender to the preaching of a man who stands for nothing except establishing God as an indulgent Daddy ready to pimp your ride through life AND shutting your brain off from any objective thought about it unless it's "worthy." Feh.

You are spot on, Bob, about one thing: Joel Osteen's gospel IS simple ..

It is so simple that if you breathe on it, it will crumble into a billion bits, just the point that our articles make. Osteen's brand of "far and away favor" will never prepare people for real life in a real world. If that is the kind of religion you want to cling to, go right ahead. Just don't dignify it with the term Christianity. You mock Christ anytime you foolishly assert that Joel Osteen stands for Him.

Jeff Downs, for example, who sent me your link,is a pedobaptist, committed to a theology which alleges that little babies born to believers get "born
again" in their infancy, and that adults get "born again before faith." The
fact that he likes your material does not commend it to me.

Whatever difference, Mr. Ross, you may have with Jeff's theology, here's something to think about: at least Jeff HAS a theology and a position to stand upon that can be cogently argued, discussed, disagreed or agreed with. Jeff stands for a whole lot more than "pedobaptism" and is one of the most solidly and doctrinally anchored young Christian men I've ever known. Ditto for Lance King whose passion for theology is beyond question. Those are foundations they enjoy that the sandy shoals of Lakewood's "podium" never have had - and which you apparently flounder upon.

I seem to remember a verse in the old book about building upon sand ..

For another example, you are affiliated with EMNR, and based on my knowledge of that group over the years, this tends to discredit you rather than commend you.

Glad to hear you're such an astute observer of EMNR. Oh wait, I don't recall seeing you at any EMNR conventions lately. I don't recall hearing of your courageous attempts to swat the flies there. Come to the next one in Kansas City in a couple months. Be man enough to come face those who you feel "discredit" me, Jeff or Lance and see what manner of Christian servants they are. Your swatter won't reach that far, I assure you.

Also, some of the authors and books you recommend tend to discredit your
competency with me.

Ah yes, more of the critierion of "competency" ..

Walter Martin, for example, who help popularize so-called "apologetics," will "eduip" no one on the Eternal Sonship of Christ, which he rejected. In a TV debate with two prominent Oneness ministers (Urshan and Sabin), Martin denied Eternal Sonship, as he does in his book on cults.

Themsis' fightin' words, brother Bob. You need to document this high sounding charge, which sounds terribly THEOLOGICAL to me. How dare you resort to anything but the "simple" Gospel!

No, seriously .. I'd really like to see you produce your evidence of such a scurrilious charge. I don't think you have a leg to stand upon, but I'm willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. The TV debate you refer to is in my collection of videotapes. Document, please, at what point in this discussion that Dr. Martin "denied Eternal Sonship." I'll pull it out and watch it to find it.

When confronted by me, the current CRI headed by Hank Hanegraaff, said in a letter to me that the current CRI differS with Martin, and rejects his position. Joel Osteen is sounder on the Person of Christ than was Walter Martin whom you recommend!

As to what the current CRI stands for is less a concern for me since I do not support CRI nor Hank Hanegraaf's ministry whatsoever due to issues I don't have time to get into. I'm just glad you're there to confront everyone to help bring the light of truth on things. So therefore, if there's a letter you can send or post to the internet that shows that Mr. Hanegraaf rejects Dr. Martin's position because of an allegation that he denies the eternal Sonship of Jesus, let me lapse into good old fashioined polemic: I dares ya .. I double DOG dares ya .. to do so. Go for it. I would LOVE to see it.

As to what Joel Osteen thinks about the Eternal Sonship of Christ is largely a subject of speculation. Remember, Bob, this is your pastor speaking:

"I mean, there’s a lot better people qualified to say, 'Here’s a book that going to explain the scriptures to you.' I don’t think that’s my gifting," Osteen says.

Bobby, son, I seem to recall a verse or two to back up what I say about pastors being competent teachers who reprove, rebuke and correct with longsuffering and doctrine in the old Book. That hasn't apparently occurred to your pastor -apparently.

I suggest you put your proofs down for your next Spurgeon anthology and search those verses out. By the way, how do you make one of those funny pointy hats that press workers used to wear in those old movies where the newspaper presses were being stopped? Maybe you can make one and wear it while you read the Bible. Remember that scene in "Signs" when the kids were trying to keep the aliens from reading their minds? In some way, I think that might help you out here.

But more -- much more -- than these obvious elements which reflect upon your attributes to be competent as critics of Joel Osteen (or anyone else), I find your material utterly extraneous, nit-picking, ridiculous, and phantasmagorical.

Gee, Bob, that really cuts deep. It never dawned on me as to how incompetent I could be. I never knew my elements were so obvious and my deficit of attributes so plain. How I wish I'd seen one of your ads when I was a young Christian many yarrons ago that could have directed me to the Bob Ross Institute For Competent Criticism, how much more farther along I might be in life!

Be that as it may, I think by the grace of God and the light of the Scriptures and the Spirit of Christ, I've come along pretty well. Since you haven't the fortitude nor intellectual honesty to document what it is about the articles that you find so warped, there's no way to gauge how delusional or truthful you might be here. Again, unlike you, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But not for real long, though. Once more, you remind me of Jimmy Fallon freaking everyone out at dinner. That is really some of the strangest flights of rhetorical fancy that I've ever heard about my writing!

I will not elaborate, as there's simply too much palabber to mention, but I will cite one major instance which clearly demonstrates your utter incompetence as critics of Joel: "The situation is as it is: Joel Osteen's teaching has little to nothing to do with the person and work of Jesus Christ. Osteen's total lack of understanding of the exclusivity of Christ . . . " etc. My advice to you is that you prayerfully consider getting into a more positive work in contrast to your current incompetent "ministry" of selling merchandise on the pretext of "equipping" naive Christians.

Your work is example of why I have so little use for the appalling entrepreneurs (apologists) who more appropriately could be called "Appallingists."

Boy that one really hurt, didn't it Bob?

I bet you and others of the Joel Osteen Experience had a lot of egg to lick off his face when Joel hit Fox News with his inane patter on the LDS Church on the eve of the remembrance of the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of God. Sorry to rain on your parade, but when your pastor goes on national television to commend Mormonism as the equivalency of Christianity, your whining about my incompetence simply becomes nothing but hot air.

If there was any doubt that Joel Osteen is absent of any sound understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ, and that He alone is the way to God the Father, then Joel thunderously silenced it with his plaintive Texas lilt affirming for millions just the opposite.

Your folly will follow you, Bobby. Be careful now ..

Perhaps you might consider a new vocation yourself: why don't you join the Committee Of Interfaith Dialogue that meets at the Starbucks outside the Lakewood Church to help unify the Jehovah's Witnesses and Moonies with your outreach to penetrate Houston. Why don't you get them involved in helping everyone find the champion within themselves? While you are at it, have Yisrael Hawkins channel Marshal Appelwhite while Kenneth Copeland does a holding pattern at 35,000 feet above Waco so as to bring peace to the midlands?

I think I've said all I care to say to you about it Bobby. I'll be waiting to hear from you on your baseless charges. FYI .. you might want find more peace of mind and freedom from those mean and nasty appallingists by unsubbing from the APPALLINGETICS email list you sent this silly letter of yours out own.

Oh hey, don't get me wrong, I think Spurgeon is certainly one of the finest Christian
expositors to have ever lived, but that canonizing title "prince of preachers" sounds like something coming out of a marketing focus group at Destiny Image then from the starry eyed 19th century fans of his.

I surely hope, Bob, that you're above that kind of hero worship.

But thanks for making me the target of your venom. I'm part of the club now. First, the Internet Monk, then James White. And now me! I am sure Lance, Jeff and I all have the same big lumps in our throats knowing we've been targetted along with some really cool Christian expositors. I can die now, knowing my life was not a total waste.

Ciao, Roberto!

The Joel Osteen articles .. FINALLY online!

I have been busier then a cat with two tails at a rocking chair convention with a whole lot of projects. Helping families battle back to save their children from the clutches of the tea party cult of Remnant Fellowship is one such front. There's a lot we can't say much about what we do there and in other areas, but we are still committed to watching God humble that cult and get it to where He wants it to be.

Veangeance is the Lord's, says the Word of God, and if He wants it, I don't mind offering His Spirit all the help He can get here. Nor do a LOT of people across the nation who help out.

Thank you, folks. You all know who you are. By God's grace, we shall overcome and the Zion Curtain will fall someday. The false prophet Gwen Shamblin would do well to learn that she can rise with the Son of God, Jesus as God Incarnate .. or fall with the night that the shadow of God's judgment will send upon her for her heresies, destruction of families and control of lives.

Anyway, I digress. Preaching and teaching engagements (HINT HINT PASTORS!) are another pursuit and working with the Evangelical Ministries to New Religions coalition as a publication committee member is yet another. Need I say that our website continues to get a ton of email requesting we finish the article series we started on mind control, religious abuse, Wicca and the never ending three ring circus of Pentecostal and Charismatic extremism? It just goes on and on, and it's a calling we all pursue as diligently as possible - Steve and Kathy Hogel in Memphis and Lance and Heather King in Knoxville - according to the gifts and opportunities God gives us.

It never fails to amaze me at how many people read our article on Jimmy Swaggart's need to repent. The article is routinely, every month, the most viewed article after our tribute page to my favorite baseball team of all time - the Chicago Cubs. But the firestorm of emails we get from these and other ministry ventures keep us on our toes - and our attempts to help those burned by bad religion and false teachers don't allow us to sit around nights at home either. We stay as engaged as we feel led to be.

But as you know, no self-respecting End Time Apostacy would be complete without a couple of trademark poster children for falsehood, heresy, unreality or manipulation coming to the forefront. Joel Osteen, the megachurch "pastor" of the Lakewood Church seems to fit that bill well all by himself, actually. His star has increasingly splashed all across civilization everywhere like a fusillade of lightning bolts forged from Jell-O. Osteen's influence is beyond belief and his delivery of humanistic motivational oratory is being accepted as cutting edge preaching as arresting and transformational as that of George Whitfield or Martin Luther King.

So, with all of that going on in Spiritwatch Ministries, there was no better way for our ministry to have been tasked to analyze Joel Osteen's questionable doctrine and example unless we were asked to create a talk on Osteen's first best seller "Your Best Life Now" and do it within 90 days for the 2006 EMNR conference in Birmingham. Remember the old saying about how the best way to get something done is to give it to an overworked and busy person? LOL. Thanks, Bob Waldrop .. if hadn't been for you, we'd have never given an Osteen discerning a second thought because his toweringly shallow preaching speaks for itself. But we've come to see millions of people think otherwise ..

So by the grace of God, Lance and I managed to pull it off and deliver it to a good crowd of folks. Here's a link to listen to it in Real Audio if you want to hear it. A long standing project to adapt the talk Lance and I did there seemed relegated to a long delay and we never quite got it together until we finally realized that Osteen's influence has been exponentially spreading all over the world. This year seemed particularly marked, so we plunged ahead to adapt our talk into website articles.

Sola Deo Gloria, we have finally completed these. They are in 4 parts .. and in case you think there's no need to get at what's behind the smile of Joel Osteen watch this clip below .. and tell me if this is What Would Jesus Do ..

I seem to remember a verse somewhere in the Bible about this kind of unimaginable waffling that Joel Osteen seems to be engaged in here: this is What Would Jesus Say about it, we think ..

For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words,
of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.

To read the Osteen articles, click here. We hope they be the balanced resource Lance and I have striven to make them.

When God's Voice Is Common And The Still Small Voice Is Mundane

We've been doing some long overdue review of our research library we've built about the Word of Faith movement and have watched a lot of some of the most looney stuff you can ever imagine. As a Pentecostal, it turns my stomach .. as a Christian, it breaks my heart .. to see and hear other professing Christian "anointed" teaching so much error, bad doctrine and living such carnal lives filled with any kind of spirit but the Holy One. Over and over, we'd listen to people like Jesse DuPlantis, Kenneth Copeland and a host of others blab out in the middle of their typically manic-driven deliveries that they'd had a conversation with God at least as familiar as a conversation you might have with the mailman at Denny's. DuPlantis, in one sermon in our video library, was told by God that He had his own favorite verse in the Bible the same way everyone else does. And the crowd in the TBN soundstage lapped it up like it was manna from on High. Eck. Gag me with angel dust.

The notion that God speaks to us isn't a problem. Unlike the scoffing and/or skepticism of those who don't believe in a vocal Divinity who does speak to us, Christians can and should seek to hear God speaking to them as they seek direction, guidance and encouragement. It's where the conversations lead and how they're supposedly held that becomes the BIG problem. Here's a great article I also dug out while researching on the net that highlights the issue of a voice from heaven that becomes as ordinary as the voice of your BP clerk .. Below is a sample:

When God's Voice Is Common

“God told me ...”

The Bible says God speaks in a “still, small voice,” but that voice no longer seems to be still or small if you listen to contemporary pastors. The phrase “God told me” is becoming one of their favorite expressions. So many seem to be on speaking terms with God.

Turn on the TV or the radio, and one will inevitably encounter a preacher flashing what one pastor calls the “God trump card.” It signals that the holder is the recipient of a steady stream of revelations from God on matters big and small.

It's invoked so often that few question it, but two recent examples stand out.

In May, the Rev. O'Neal Dozier, pastor of Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, Fla., told an audience that Jesus had appeared to him in a dream and told him that the next governor of that state would be a Republican.

In March, spiritual guru Neale Donald Walsch published “Home With God” and announced that it would be the final chapter in his best-selling “Conversations With God” trilogy, in which he claims to talk to the Almighty.

Last November, J. Lee Grady, editor of Charisma magazine, wrote a column complaining about pastors taking their revelations too far. He cited one charismatic pastor who told his congregation that a new revelation from the Bible allowed him to have more than one wife. Another said his “anointing” allowed him to have more than one sexual partner.

Ruth Tucker, author of “God Talk,” says pastors - and ordinary people - often confuse God's voice with their own.

“The voice of God often corresponds with something they very much want to hear,” Tucker says. “Biblically, God speaks, but God breaks through in a monumental way that's far beyond giving comfort or advice to any person's plan or agenda.”

Claims of personal encounters with God are nothing new. Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions are filled with inspiring stories about God communicating with people. People of faith often talk about hearing God's voice in a dramatic situation or being led by an inner voice or a divine sign.

But what happens when revelation becomes routine? What happens when some preachers talk about God as if they have his cellphone number?

Click the link above to read the entire absorbing article. There's much to be said here about it, but I will confine myself to a few ruminations here ..

I believe in a God who speaks and wants to be heard. I am certainly NOT posting this to squelch trust and faith in a Father whose voice wants to be heard. However, I think there is MUCH to be said about our Christian culture (especially the Evangelical/Pentecostal ones) when it comes to thinking about - as has been well described - a glib, vociferous God always penetrating the sonic landscape of our overstimulated, plugged in lives with a divine voice pouring into our consciousness every moment of the day.

Cults and false religions surely have a field day with this, citing routine earthshaking encounters with God that they claim end up in their anointing by Him to become His exclusive mouthpiece by being equipped with a special divine empowerment that enables them to hear God exclusively. False prophets and teachers from time immemorial routinely claim to hear from God regularly to authorize their own peculiar polity or practice, from Baalam to the Watchtower's Governing Body to Gwen Shamblin.

I came from a Roman Catholic religious culture in which silence and contemplation of the mystery of God's presence was a thing worthy of aspiration but was so couched in Roman tradition that it was seen as the province only of mystics and those in religious orders. I have never lost that contemplative side which my early upbringing gave me, but have joyously received a revelation of a God who does speak to His children when I became a believer. But along the way, I've seen God's voice cited so often and so frequently in Christian circles that it is very difficult to not become confused, let alone cynical, about all of those claiming to hear Him speak to him in all things. Look at the dueling tongues of opposing "messages from the Spirit" in which "thus saith the Lord" is cited by warring factions over some matter in our churches.

Over the 26 years since that happened, I have come to see how we can barely abide a concept of a God who sometimes IS silent and who sometimes doesn't ALWAYS speak when we long and demand that He should. It's sad to see how Pentecostals fidget when we think we're not "hearing" from God regularly and think we are at some horrible deficit if we don't. Back in the 1990's, when Charisma Magazine had a TV show, I remember their interviewers always asking as a central point of their featured interview of some Pentecostal or Charismatic luminary one big question: "What do you hear God saying to the church?" .. as if to suggest there was a divine message bearing His will and prerogative each week for us to follow from the person involved.

Silence is not golden for Pentecostals. It is a source of irritation, fear and panic. That is what gets me about my beloved tongue talking brethren, of whom I am a part. Preachers and music ministers and prayer warriors have to fill every living moment in Christian meetings with our ubiquitous and cliched utterances.

"Say amen somebody"

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus .. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus .."

"Are you with me?"

"Oh, come on, now let's hear you really sing like you believe that!"

"I know I'm preaching better than some of you are letting on."

"Can I get a witness?"

"It's getting quiet in here."

I think personally that this is more an expression of insecurity by these folks more than the exhortations to attention we like to think it is, because they've GOT to hear if we are "with them." It's a DEAD service if worship doesn't have sacrifices of praise and choirs/orchestras who didn't lift the roof off the church building. We seem to always end up filling that silence with our own noise, spake into those awkward moments of fearful concern that we don't HEAR Him and are somehow losing out with Him if His Voice is not "heard" as a direct quote we then "speak into" our lives.

And then we cover it with the full gospel language that sanctifies what we say, in our belief it was God who indeed speak, but end up saying "God told me."

I am reminded of Michael Card's elegantly blunt song "The Final Word" here:

You and me we use so very many clumsy words

The noise of what we often say is not worth being heard

When the Father's wisdom wanted to communicate His Love

He spoke it in one final perfect Word ...

Surely I believe God speaks today. I have no problem with anyone else citing what you've heard of God at all. IF you've heard from God, you must bear witness to it. I've done this myself in the pulpit or in the prayer line. When I pray with people at the altar call that may be given in a church as a visiting minister or an elder in my home church, God will sometimes give me a word of exhortation, wisdom or knowledge to the person I am ministering to that I trust ministers grace, comfort, admonition and encouragement to them. But anything spake in the name of God will never contradict the written Word of God, and isn't to be some new source of divine revelation that supersedes the Bible. That's one of the greatest digs of cessationists against those who hold that there's a God in Heaven who speaks to His people yet today. Christians who understand the balance don't make that mistake - it's the immature, spiritually warped and the ignorant who do. New Testament examples abound where the early church recognized and welcomed such intimate and immediate communion with God as being exhortational, edifying and encouraging in nature and not the source of doctrine. So I will prophecy as God grants .. not this kid in Himself

And I think that there's a lot to be said about the God who is THERE, the Lamb upon the Throne, who sometimes is just THERE to be worshipped and praised and adored .. despite His silence. The trials I am facing right now and in my past life - and I expect in the future - will be teaching that anew. I'd hope Christians out there would know the difference between such a Lord and the tragically unnecessary FEAR that drives us to put words in His mouth He never spake

agape

rafael