In God we Trust

November 20th, 2018

Everybody Else Gets Tested

One of the neatest things God has taught me is that there is no substitute…for God.

I turned back to God for real in about 2007. I joined a church in Miami. Eventually, I learned that the pastors were wrong about many things. I learned that they were liars; they taught things they knew were not true, because their false doctrine moved people to give them money. I learned that they were ignorant about many things; they couldn’t even get themselves blessed, but they were teaching other people.

These things are true, but I got a lot of benefit from the church at first. Some things they or their guest speakers taught were true and useful.

I joined another church, and the same thing happened. The church disappeared in a puff of pride and anger, but I learned a lot of good things there. The pastor was an active pedophile, but he still managed to teach me things that were worth holding onto.

What’s the big lesson here? It’s this: don’t trust people to teach you about God; not forever, anyway. Learn to hear from the Holy Spirit himself. This is how Christianity is supposed to work.

In all likelihood, if you turn to God right now and accept Jesus, and you tell God you only want to learn from him, you will have problems. I don’t know of anyone who instantly developed a reliable channel of communication with God. You will probably have to find teachers. Nonetheless, you have to go beyond them eventually, because every Christian makes mistakes.

My last two pastors taught me some good things, and they also taught me some toxic garbage. Human beings didn’t expose the errors to me; they defended and reinforced them. Human beings could not be trusted to refute false doctrine for me. The Holy Spirit himself woke me up and showed me what was wrong with the churches. No one else is reliable.

You have to rely on men a little bit, but if you’re still breastfeeding from your pastor 5 years into your walk, you’re doing Christianity wrong. God didn’t save you and fill you with the Holy Spirit so you could hang on every word from Andrew Wommack or Jentezen Franklin. He did it so you could know him personally and receive his instruction directly.

Teachers are like human parents. It’s fine if your mom changes your diapers when you’re 6 months old. If she’s still doing it when you’re 40, something is amiss.

Lately I’ve been listening to Derek Prince a lot. He has done some wonderful teaching. I’ve benefited a great deal from listening to him. These things are true, but I’m already spotting his errors, and some of them are pretty bad. Derek Prince is not Jesus. He made mistakes.

I’ll tell you about the first error I noticed. Prince has a long history of casting out demons. He has teachings in which he discusses things demons told him. For example, a woman he helped had a demon that claimed it had followed Prince from Africa. Prince asked it a lot of questions, and it answered him. Prince was pleased to get the information and pass it on.

Problem: demons are liars. The demon didn’t tell him the truth. It told him things that would hurt his ministry and the people who listened to his teachings. Do I know which things it said were lies? No. I don’t have to. I have common sense, so I know it lied.

What do you think a demon is going to do when you ask it questions? Do you seriously think it’s going to be truthful and try to help you? The Bible doesn’t say that. It says Satan is a liar and the father of lies. Most of Satan’s power comes from lying. MOST.

Lying is much easier than working. It makes your enemies do your work for you.

Satan is like a woman. He is very feminine, which is why he chooses to manifest as “goddesses.” A man will try to destroy you by beating you to death. A woman will simply lie about you until you dry up and die.

Prince himself says Jesus told demons, “Be muzzled,” when he cast them out. Jesus didn’t have long conversations with demons. The longest interaction we know of consisted of Jesus agreeing to let some demons go into a herd of pigs. He didn’t ask for their life stories. When he spoke with Satan himself, he kept it brief.

Think about it: why should we go to demons for instruction? The very idea is insane. How is it different from idolatry? It’s an effort to get, from another spirit, what God himself isn’t giving us.

The Bible says they who trust in God will lack no good thing. If God won’t give you something, it’s not a good thing, and you shouldn’t have it.

There are a lot of preachers on Youtube, shooting the breeze with people who are supposedly letting demons speak through them. How can anyone think the demons aren’t using these conversations as opportunities to spread poison? It’s their job! If I were a demon, it’s exactly what I’d do. Am I smarter than Satan? Have I come up with a strategy he never heard of until today? Bet I haven’t.

Here is the second error: Prince endorses the law of tithing, for Christians.

I can’t say it enough: we are not under the Jewish law. We can eat rabbits and oysters. We can wear poly/cotton shirts. We can eat toast during Passover. Tithing, as a required practice, comes from the Jewish law.

Preachers love to claim Abraham’s tithe to Melchizedek proves we have to tithe, and Prince is no exception. Yes, Abraham tithed before the law existed, but he only did it once as far as we know, and we have no record of him requiring other believers to do it, as he forced them to be circumcised.

There is no record of Christians tithing in the New Testament. There is absolutely no record of the prosperity gospel.

If you have to tithe, you have to obey all of the laws of ritual giving. If you grow crops, you can’t harvest the corners of the fields; you have to invite the poor to come and glean. If you have a pear tree, you have to take 10% of the pears to church (tithes went to the temple, not the church, but still). You’re not allowed to tithe until you pay all your bills. The Jewish law is very complex, and Prince didn’t know much about it. He taught people to obey a law, but he taught a very incomplete and, therefore, invalid version of the law.

Here’s what Paul said about legalism in Galatians:

For everyone who depends on legalistic observance of Torah commands lives under a curse, since it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not keep on doing everything written in the Scroll of the Torah.”

Now it is evident that no one comes to be declared righteous by God through legalism, since “The person who is righteous will attain life by trusting and being faithful.”

Furthermore, legalism is not based on trusting and being faithful, but on the text that says, “Anyone who does these things will attain life through them.”

The Messiah redeemed us from the curse pronounced in the Torah by becoming cursed on our behalf; for the Tanakh says, “Everyone who hangs from a stake comes under a curse.”

Yeshua the Messiah did this so that in union with him the Gentiles might receive the blessing announced to Avraham, so that through trusting and being faithful, we might receive what was promised, namely, the Spirit.

Paul began Galatians 3, addressing their legalism, this way:

You stupid Galatians! Who has put you under a spell?

Don’t dismiss the word “spell” as though a modern American had said it without sincerity. Paul meant what he said. He knew witchcraft and demons were real. He was being literal. He used a Greek word which referred to witchcraft. He knew legalism sometimes resulted from spells cast by witches, and he believed the Galatians should be aware that they might be under such a spell.

Prince himself cast out a religious demon that told people not to eat pork.

I’m not going to count my grapes and take 10% to a church. Forget it. I have a huge rosemary bush. Do you seriously think I’m going to drive to the property where it grows, cut 10% off, and take it to a preacher? Come on! The law requires those things.

The law is very hard. One of its purposes was to show people they could not be righteous through their own efforts. Jesus freed us from the burden of the law by fulfilling it on the cross. If you pick the burden up again, you’re making a mistake, and you can’t expect God to back you up.

I went to Middlebrook Church here in Ocala about 4 times. Maybe 5. I didn’t give them a cent. I’m glad I didn’t, because during the last service I attended, the pastor taught New Age idolatry. If the Holy Spirit had wanted me to give, I would have given. I’m not going to support idolatry just because Abraham gave a bunch of sheep and chickens to Melchizedek. I believe God would hold me responsible if I gave stupidly. I believe he has done it in the past.

It’s strange that idolaters use the term “New Age.” All of what they teach is very old. There is nothing new about it.

You can’t serve two masters. Jesus made that clear. The law is one master, and the Holy Spirit is another.

You really have to get to know the Holy Spirit. You can’t trust human beings all your life. You can’t trust Derek Prince, the pope, me, or anyone else. Try to pick out the things that are true, get yourself baptized with the Holy Spirit, pray in tongues a great deal every day, and listen to God. He is the only truly trustworthy being there is. Everyone else, without exception, can fail. There are people in hell who gave some good teaching as pastors while they were alive.

By the way, I will mention this again: I heard a teaching that said the ability to pray in tongues could be blocked by unforgiveness and unconfessed sin, so if you’re still stuck, think about it. From personal experience, I can tell you that even when you think you’ve confessed everything, you will probably turn out to be wrong. Ask God to show you what you still have to get out of yourself.

Don’t think of confession, repentance, sanctification, and having demons cast out as one-time things. It’s like taking out the garbage. You have to keep it up. You wouldn’t take your garbage out in January and forget about it for the rest of the year because it was already done.

God told me this: “I am a living thing.” He also said, “Things get better, or they get worse.” We are always improving or deteriorating. Demons, sicknesses, and iniquities can come back, so keep doing what you’re supposed to do. Improve or deteriorate. There is no third choice.

I won’t let myself get frustrated with Prince. He’s not a failure, as far as I can tell. He’s just imperfect, like the rest of us. He did a lot of great work, and I will still listen to him sometimes. If I get disgusted because of his little errors, I’m condemning and discarding every preacher who ever lived, and I’m certainly condemning myself.

One Response to “In God we Trust”

  1. Ed Bonderenka Says:

    I’ve only cast out one demon in my life.
    I knew it was in there by the things the person was saying.
    In church.
    The demon left without saying a word.
    We took the lady and her husband out for coffee and ice cream afterward. Never talked about the incident.
    She was free.