Watch Out for Those Who Teach God Speaks to Them, Pt 3

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective

This is the third installment of this short series on watching out for those who claim that God speaks to them. The first two parts are here and here. We’ve been focusing on individuals who claim that God speaks to them. They usually relate that to the rest of us as hearing words, sentences, and even paragraphs inside their head. Some will say that God speaks to them audibly. I’m not going to deny that God speaks to us. The whole point of this series has been to teach that anything we hear someone teaching while claiming that God literally spoke to them is to be immediately compared to God’s revealed written Word. If it doesn’t agree, it must be rejected regardless of how much of a stink our emotions might fight that concept.

We eventually focused specifically on something Beth Moore began teaching a few years ago. We could have used anyone, but Beth Moore is extremely popular among many southern congregations and is very big in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), so she was chosen. She was also chosen because something she’s been teaching is a real sore point with me because of how it robs God of His sovereignty.

You’ll recall that Moore claims that God told her that His “Bride is paralyzed” due to unbelief. The implication is that – because God revealed this to Moore – she has some type of apostolic authority, which means if we reject what she is telling us, we are rejecting God and His truth. Beyond this, if (or since) God revealed this to Moore, then it is true. Yet, if we look at Scripture – specifically, Acts 17, Paul is very pleased with the fact that the Bereans heard what he taught and compared it to the Scriptures. Moreover, they found that what Paul taught agreed with Scriptures.

In that chapter, note that Paul is not upset with the Bereans for taking his teachings and comparing them to God’s written Word (at that point, the Old Testament). Paul knew that the Bereans were doing what all Christians should do. It isn’t done enough today though because too often, Christians determine truth via their emotions.

Beth Moore unequivocally tells us that God told her that His Bride is paralyzed. What does that mean? It means several things. First, it means that due to “unbelief,” God’s Bride is largely powerless. Second, it means God has literally lost control and cannot operate. By the way, the Bride of Christ is the true, invisible Church. The visible church is something else entirely. The visible church is composed of people who profess to be Christian as well as those who actually are Christian. When we go to worship with others, that is part of the visible Church. All of Christendom – made up of believes and unbelievers (the wheat and the tares; cf. Matthew 24:30) – constitutes the visible Church.

The invisible Church, on the other hand, is composed only of true believers, true Christians. Regarding His Church (or His Bride), this is what Jesus stated about it:

“And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” (KJV)

He’s saying that to Peter (which many take to mean that Peter is the foundation upon, which the Church is built, but I believe that Jesus is speaking of Peter’s faith here). Notice what Jesus says though because it is extremely important. Jesus says that He – “I” – will build “my” Church (the invisible Church) and because Jesus is the Builder, guess what? Not even the gates of hell shall prevail against it.

But some might say, “Yeah, but through unbelief, doesn’t the Bible tell us that God is unable to do certain things?” Yes, but those things normally have to do with what God does in people. Matthew 13:58 is one example, where we read, “And He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.” When God meets resistance through unbelief on a personal level, He often can do little for that person! However, this cannot negate the declarative statement He made regarding His Church (Bride)! The two are separate things.

1 Corinthians 6:20 and 7:23 tells us we have been bought with a price. What does that tell you and me? That we are not our own. That God owns us and decides how best to use us, what He will allow into our lives, and the overall outcome of our lives once we, through faith, become new creatures in Christ through the process of being born again (John 3).

I do not belong to myself anymore. Jesus owns me. I am His slave. I work for Him. I take orders from Him. The things that come into my life do so because of His decisions based on how He is recreating me to showcase His glory. There are a lot of things going on below the surface that God is using to shape, mold, and perfect me.

If someone said to me that Christendom is largely unbelieving, that is something I would agree with, but to say that Christ’s “Bride is paralyzed” is abysmally inaccurate. It is so largely because it discounts God’s sovereignty, His power, His rule over us.

If we are truly Christian in the first place, this means that we have been “born again” or “born from above” (John 3) via the actions of the Holy Spirit, who brings about this new birth in us. It is something that cannot be undone. According to Paul, whether we “feel” it or not, he tells us that we are seated with Christ right now in the heavenly realm. Here is the text from Ephesians 2:4-7.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Did you accomplish any of that in the above text? If you even say “Well, I did cooperate with God,” you’d still be wrong! God did it all. The very next set of verses are the ones which speak to the fact that God and God alone grants salvation.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them,” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

If God is able to save us when we were already dead (and incapable of helping ourselves), then how can anyone teach that God cannot exercise control over His own Bride? Are you seeing how a statement like that is one framed to energize our emotions and not something that accurately reflects the truth of God’s written Word?

Numerous passages in Scripture teach us that the Holy Spirit indwells true believers (Romans 8:4, Ephesians 1:13b-14). There are a lot of people running around today who call themselves Christians, but unless they are authentic or true believers, the Holy Spirit does not indwell them. If the Holy Spirit indwells us, then we should assume that He exercises His power in and through us as well. His job is to recreate the image of Christ within us (which will not be completed until the day we step through the door of death into eternity). In John 5:17, Jesus asserted the truth that says He and His Father are always working even to the present day. That means that God has things to do and regarding the Church – His Bride – the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (or Him). This means that in spite of Satan’s best efforts – which includes getting Christians to live in unbelief – God will get the job done!

While there may be true Christians who, from time to time, will succumb to unbelief, it is the Holy Spirit’s job to ensure that we do not stay there. If we do become engulfed in an unbelief that we cannot shake, the Spirit always reserves the right to end our life here (as I believe He did with Ananias and Sapphira, Acts 5). God holds absolute sway over everyone, including Christians. There is absolutely nothing that man or Satan can put in God’s way that will keep Him from bringing His own goals and specific will to fruition.

Beth Moore is wrong times a million. If she said that part of the visible Church or part of Christendom  was paralyzed by unbelief, I would agree with her. But she is teaching that His Bride is paralyzed and by doing so, she is implying that the entire Bride is paralyzed. She does not qualify it to say that “some” within the Bride are paralyzed. That would be easier to swallow, but her implication is something that Satan would teach because it is terrible, terrible exegesis of God’s Word. It attributes to God a complete lack of ability to accomplish His goals and that is the number one thing Satan has been trying to get people to believe since the Garden of Eden.

I was hoping to finish this with this part, but I will try to do so next time by listing some of the things every Christian should be aware of in order to determine whether or not someone is a false teacher. Then, we’ll get back to Daniel 11! Thanks for your patience.

Theology and Politics from a Conservative, Biblical Perspective