Thanks Beth Moore.
Thanks, satan.
/sarcasm.
Lifetime television Network has ordered a docu-series about female preachers. This from TV Insider.
Lifetime is looking for an "Amen" with its new woman-preacher-focused docu-series. Preach follows four Ohio "Prophetesses" as they tend to their respective flocks, healing wounds both physical and psychic.
Prayers are about to be answered with Lifetime’s all-new docu-series Preach, premiering Friday, June 5th, at 10pm ET/PT. Produced by CORE Media Group, the show follows four powerful female leaders who believe God has given them the ability to heal the sick, see the future and rid people of their addictions. Known as “Prophetesses,” these women speak as interpreters through whom the will of God is expressed. In order for their legacy to continue, they must enlist protégés and teach them how to carry on their gift. These “Queens of the Church” each have different styles and their own special way of delivering God’s message, but all are united in their love of the Lord.
The Prophetesses and protégés featured are:Belinda Scott (Cleveland Heights, Ohio) – Belinda considers herself a Major Prophetess who has given council to politicians and celebrities across the country. She has the ability to predict child birth and specializes in blessing the wombs of barren women. Belinda’s protégé, Hadassah Elder, grew up Muslim so adjusting to new life as a Christian protégé will have its challenges.
Taketa Williams (Columbus, Ohio) – Taketa has been called the "Beyonce of the Preaching World" and touts a global following. She trains her protégé with a strict hand and isn't afraid to drop someone if they don't come up to her standards. Her protégé, Rebecca Hairston, is a single mother with three children.
Back to Blackaby. In October 1990, Henry Blackaby and Claude T. King published a book called “Experiencing God.”Linda Roark (Trenton, Ohio) – Linda's specialty is delivering people from the street and bringing them to God. Known as the “Blue-Eyed Soul Sister,” she has been told that she "looks white but preaches black,” and is admired in African-American churches for her ability to roar and get the room standing on their feet. Linda’s protege, Angel Pound, had a rough start in life. A former drug addict who has now turned her life around, she is still haunted by a past that threatens her chances of becoming a Prophetess.
Kelly Crews (Cleveland, Ohio) – Kelly is Belinda’s former protégé who is now building a ministry of her own. The only single Prophetess in the group, she has trouble finding a man who can handle her gift. Kelly’s protégé, Stacey Williams, is newly married and pregnant and struggles with making her prophetic training a priority.
Here is the blurb:
“Revised and expanded, this classic study guides readers to experience a relationship with God through which they come to know and do His will by learning to recognize when He is speaking.”Blackaby had opened the door to Mysticism and it swept the conservative churches like wildfire. His book, and Blackaby’s influence through it, cannot be underestimated. Lifeway published this in 2013:
Experiencing God: Knowing and Doing the Will of God, the best-selling LifeWay resource first released in 1990, was written by Henry Blackaby and Claude King. Experiencing God has touched and changed millions of lives and thousands of churches around the world. The workbook has sold more than 7 million copies, is available in more than 45 languages and has been used in almost every denomination.They are even making a film about the impact this book has had.
Gary Gilley reviewed Blackaby’s book in three parts, examining Blackaby's misuse of scripture, his neo-Orthodoxy, and his mysticism. Experiencing God cannot to be consumed safely, brethren. Here is Gilley-
The appeal of Blackaby's ideas is that we can experience a deeper reality of the presence and voice of God. Unfortunately, Blackaby does not derive most of his thoughts from Scripture. ... Experiencing God is a book that is full of errors, biblically unsupportable assertions, incredible statements and story-theology (views based upon anecdotal accounts rather than upon Scripture).Here are a few quotes about the emphasis Blackaby puts on experience over the Bible-
"Knowing God only comes through experience as he reveals Himself to me through my experiences with Him".
"If you have trouble hearing God speak, you are in trouble at the very heart of your Christian experience".
"If anything is clear from a reading of the Bible, this fact is clear: God speaks to His people...God does speak to His people, and you can anticipate that He will be speaking to you also."
However the impact of this door Blackaby cracked open led, for example, to Beth Moore's widening it with her prophesying. Just as Experiencing God was gaining traction, Beth Moore's rise to popularity began. Moore began to say "I believe" more and more often, rather than "scripture says." As time went on and she was not corrected for her own misuse of scripture, her neo-Orthodoxy, and her mysticism, she got bolder. Now Moore is flat-out prophesying, and her actions on stage or in church do not differ one bit from the ladies who are going to be featured in the upcoming docu-series. Except ... Moore is accepted by conservative circles (as areBlackaby's lessons on how to "listen to God").
Why do I say thanks Blackaby, thanks Moore? Because they opened the door to this continuationism that even the most conservative, evangelical corners of the faith are now accepting. Because two credible teachers with bona-fide credentials and the Southern Baptist Convention behind them, prophesied, taught prophesying, and continue to demonstrate prophesying. They normalized it. They were early mystics infiltrating the most conservative quarters. Were they the only people prophesying in the 1990s? No, but they were the most credible. The thought was, 'If it is OK for them to prophesy, receive direct revelation, if it's a normal Christian thing, then it must be all right, notwithstanding the nutcases flopping around on the floor over there in Charismania-land."
There are/were/will be three sets of spiritual gifts given by the Holy Spirit to the believers. One set are works kinds of gifts, the gifts of mercy and helps and administration, for example. Another set given are those involving words, such as preaching, teaching, and exhorting, for example. A third set were tongues, interpreting tongues, miracles, and prophesying. It is this third set that is under contention by continuationists vs. cessationists.
The group of people who say the gifts have ceased do so based on the authority of scripture, explaining that these particular gifts were given to lay a foundation of the church through the apostles. Those gifts given were not in and of themselves for the body of believers for all time, but to authenticate the apostles' authority in having been sent by God. Even as the apostles were dying out, and the New Testament progressed, the "sign" gifts were ending. This was all explained in detail in the Strange Fire Conference held at Grace Community Church in fall of 2013.
Continuationists believe that the sign gifts have continued unabated since the first century church. They believe they are the same in quality and quantity as occurred when Peter raised his mother-in-law to life or when Paul healed the sick. And that they are going on now.
One of the charges that continuationists make is that the kind of prophesying Moore does is in line with the Bible, but that the kind of prophesying (and healing and tongues) that a Benny Hinn type does is not. That when a statement is made like Blackaby offers ("God told me"), it's simply one of a long line of continuing statements Jesus is continuing to make personally to those whom He chooses, but when a prophetess from Ohio lays hands and 'heals' a barren womb, it's not.
The only problem is, the barn door is either open or closed. Once you open the door to the notion that God is continuing to speak, you open the door to ALL of it. As Phil Johnson said, there is no safe zone regarding extra-biblical activity. All those who accepted Blackaby and Moore' sign giftings must now look in the mirror and see these 4 prophetesses and all their kind...and answer to scripture for "providing cover for aberrant people and movements in some of the most problematic districts of the charismatic community".
The continuationist- cessationist discussion aside, one would think it wold be obvious that the 4 prophetesses documented in the upcoming series are easily seen to be false. I used to think that it'd be obvious that a devotional claiming to be written in 1st person Jesus is false too, but Jesus Calling has been on the best seller list for ten years, so I take nothing for granted anymore in the discernment department.
So here it is: the women featured on the Preach docu-series ARE FALSE and in no way represent CHRISTIANITY. They are wolves come to get your money and destroy your faith. A side benefit for satan is that they tarnish the Christian faith altogether.
How can I say that? The Bible says women are not to preach.
I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. (1 Timothy 2:12)
In listening to Alistair Begg last weekend he mentioned about the false teachers and prophets. This verse,
Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake. (Titus 1:11)
The phrase their mouths must be stopped is actually referring to a muzzle, like one puts on a dog, because false teachers are dogs and worse.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary:
mouths … stopped—literally, "muzzled," "bridled" as an unruly beast (compare Ps 32:9).This is where unchecked mysticism gets us. The rampant Charismania won't stop with these four women, it didn't stop with Blackaby and Moore, after all. It will go on and get worse and worse.
subvert … houses—"overthrowing" their "faith" (2Ti 2:18). "They are the devil's levers by which he subverts the houses of God"
Lord, please stop Belinda Scott's, Taketa Williams', Linda Roark's, and Kelly Crews' mouths.
