Thursday, January 19, 2017

The Destructive Nature of Wrong Healing Theologies

The way the Charismatic church preaches healing is spiritually devastating and falsely puts the sick person's trust in revelation and in the men giving the revelation, instead of putting their trust and focus on our Lord Jesus Christ. As a Charismatic believer, I am deeply grieved by what I have seen in the church towards our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who are sick. 

Beneath all of the window dressing, healing ministries teach that healing is received by obtaining knowledge or revelation. If you are lucky, you might get one prayer out of a minister before they start to pile on the "how to be healed" homework. This is when the healing minister sends you a video, a book or invites you to come to one of their "training and equipping" classes. In these classes they will tell you all the reasons why you should be healed, yet they are unable to demonstrate it.

Charismatic healing ministers teach people these 4 basic “truths”:
  • It is always God's will to heal.
  • We have all power and all authority to heal the sick.
  • Healing is always today. There is no delay nor waiting.
  • It is part of the atonement. God said, "yes" to your healing 2000 years ago.

These are the basics of healing you will find in every Charismatic church or every healing book you read. It's all the same, but repackaged, renamed or "rediscovered" year after year after year.

Now there are generally two different camps or viewpoints when it comes to receiving healing in the Charismatic.

The first camp are those who preach a hyper-grace/Finished Work healing methodology. They say that you were healed 2000 years ago, but now you need to believe it in order to receive it. They will say things like, "Healing is already done in the spirit, but now we need to bring it into your reality". There will always be some variety on that theme because they have to explain why Christians are still sick despite it being "finished" at the Cross. They will have you focus on your identity in Christ and other related teachings where knowing “who you are” is the most important thing. Those who get healed by the grace of God are then seen as more spiritual sons of God than those who remain sick.

The other camp are those who believe there is a root cause for why you got sick in the first place. This camp says you need to discover that root cause in order to "close the door" that the enemy has used to gain entry. These people believe in breaking curses, believe that your words have intrinsic power to create or destroy and will usually make you repent for sins you may have never done or have already repented of and no longer partake in. This particular camp loves to get you to open up to them in order to dig into your life to find the root. These things then can be used against you to manipulate and control you.

Both schools of thought about receiving healing are destructive to the spiritual well being of the sick in the church.

Healing ministers teach a very impersonal God who desires His children to partake in a works based healing theology that requires one to rehearse phrases, repent of sins already repented of and other strange superstitious and ritualistic behavior. For instance, I heard with my own ears a popular "Identity" and "street healing" minister tell a stroke victim to “stop saying my stroke, but instead just say, the stroke”. 

The main reason why all of these ministers teach that healing is received by special revelation is because they are the ones who claim to have all power and authority, that it is always God's will to heal and that healing is part of the atonement. They need EXCUSES as to why people who come to them are not healed.

Some ministers like Todd White and Dan Mohler will say something like, “We are growing in this guys. There is something we're not seeing. If we had the revelation, all would be healed”.

This is total garbage and offers the sick person absolutely no solid foundation to stand upon! Now instead of having people continue to look to Jesus Christ and trust in Him, we send the sick and those wanting to pray for the sick on a revelation fishing expedition. 

Teachings like this make God impersonal. They paint God as someone who is waiting around until man figures out some secret revelation in order to begin healing His children. 

Ministers like Todd White and Dan Mohler betray their own basic healing truths. If God's will is always healing and we have all authority and power to heal and there is no timing on His part and it is part of the atonement, then healing should have happened. Period! Yet this is why hidden behind the "basic truths" these ministers preach, is a never ending journey of discovering more revelation or looking for answers. This is why sick people go from person to person, book to book and conference to conference because they have been sold the lie that in order to be healed they need to find the revelation. 

These ministers REFUSE to go back to the Word of God and re-evaluate what they believe. They continue to make up new revelations and come up with answers that are unbiblical and foolish. They set sick people up to become disillusioned and often times many leave the faith.

When a person is not healed, the healing ministries are suggesting (directly or indirectly) that something is wrong that needs discovered and fixed. One minister I used to follow even says, "The deficiency is never with God", which is suggesting not only that a deficiency exists, but that it is the sick person's fault.

When you look at both schools of thought, do you notice a common trend? It is man-based and it is self-based. It is all about preaching new revelation as a means to see healing or to see more people healed. It is a Gnostic view of healing that can be found in the New Age movement.

These teachings put sick people at odds with God and suggest that God is withholding healing because they aren't quite figuring out the atonement or the root cause. These healing theologies cause the sick to learn not to trust God in their sicknesses, but instead is telling them to trust in themselves, their doctrine or the minister who is teaching them healing. Sick people are constantly looking for answers or for other people to give them answers and this is how deception and error enters in to their lives. These errors can then extend to other areas of their faith.

Once a sick person tries everything that these ministers throw at them, then what? What do we have for the sick? Can we encourage someone to continue to follow the Lord even in their weakness and sickness? Sadly the answer is NO. I was that person who went to these ministers and they had nothing but taglines and catchphrases. They have absolutely nothing to offer the sick. It was this struggle and battle that allowed the Lord to open my eyes to other deceptions that I write about on here. It was in this battle that I finally found the Lord and stopped going from minister to minister to find Him.

A complete tearing down of healing theology needs to happen in the Charismatic church. We need to put our focus on Jesus Christ and teach the sick to trust Him no matter what happens. We need to stop telling people to look for secret revelations on healing. This is leading many astray. The sick children of God are being ravaged by thieves and wolves that have found their way into the church. God have mercy!

Thursday, January 5, 2017

Don't Hop on the Charismatic Church Revelation Train!

For ministers in the Charismatic church to remain relevant in your life they have to convince you they have some new revelation and knowledge that you really need to know NOW! And they will convince you they are the only ONE who has discovered it. In the end, your focus will not be on Jesus Christ or the gospel, but instead the ministers feeding you the revelation. Yet people will defend it because they say these minister are helping them to know "Jesus", yet little to no Jesus is ever preached. Any time Jesus is preached it is only to say He was an example to show us how we too can walk in power on earth. Even when talking about Jesus, they are actually diminishing Him and instead boasting about what man can do.

We have to be careful we don't get lured into the many different facets of the Charismatic Industrial Complex with their revelations, books, movies, videos and music. This stuff does not please the Lord at all because the focus is always on MEN and not on God.
"Buy my latest book on how to see the sick healed and come to the new Dominion, Authority, Sonship, Revelation School of Power and Identity! We will teach you how to walk in the power and authority that Jesus walked in. Bringing heaven to earth is our God given birth right and mandate. Are you ready to change the landscape of the nations?" (Yes I made this up, but it is real buzzwords that are often used).
^Don't fall for the spiritual hype!

Tired of Generalized Prophetic Warnings

Hey everyone I have decided to start sharing some of the short posts I make on my Facebook page here on my blog. Hopefully this is the first of many to come this year. God bless you all!

I've heard a lot of ministers talk about "an entertainment culture in the Church that the Lord wants to remove", but then these ministers who give the warning somehow exclude Hillsong, Bethel, IHOP and other popular churches from being included in that. If it isn't them, who could God possibly be talking about?

I've grown so tired of the generalized prophetic words and the generalized warnings. It's time to start using names of movements, churches and ministers in our warnings because otherwise it is pointless and no one thinks they are talking about anyone they may be following or have "liked".

It seems due to our sinful nature, we will exclude our favorite ministers and churches from examination as if they are outside of any sort of correction or error. When names are given in connection with the teachings that are in error, only then we will force people to have to start analyzing and facing head on the deceptions that have come into the Charismatic church.