There is a Difference

One of the problems with hearing from God is that you will find yourself in competition with a lot of people who have heard from things like the devil, insanity, a craving for attention, and indigestion. It’s always important to pray for guidance when someone tells you something that supposedly came from God, or when you think you’ve heard something from him.

I’ve watched Sid Roth many times. He has a show about supernatural things that happen to Christians. He has guests who have genuine revelations and so on, but he also hosts nuts and liars from time to time. They generally have books, CD’s, or DVD’s to sell. I’ve checked three of their products out, and none turned out to be worthwhile.

Sid has a Youtube channel, and the other day, he interviewed a guy named James Goll. This man says God visits him and so on. He says Trump will be reelected and that he will appoint a female “Esther” to the Supreme Court.

I have grave doubts about this guy. For one thing, he’s a self-promoter. Look how he introduced himself to Sid:

You know who you’re talking to. I am an intercessor. I’m also a teaching prophet, not only a declarative prophet.

Isn’t that pride?

What, exactly, is a teaching prophet? Is that like the guy who taught Amos, Jeremiah, and Samuel? As I recall, God himself taught them. If the new covenant is better than the old covenant, how come Old Testament prophets were taught by God and New Testament prophets have to have teachers? Does that make any sense?

Goll seems full of himself, and he also makes weird, inexplicable grimaces while he speaks. They remind me of tics. My personal belief about tics is that demons cause them. Something other than the proper inhabitant of a body tells the muscles to do silly things. If something is controlling your muscles, and it’s not you, who is it?

His whole demeanor is off-putting. He seems effeminate. He seems very angry. He’s unpleasant to watch. Spirit-led Christians are generally pleasant to be around. The Holy Spirit always brings harmony and affection.

He reminds me of someone who vanished from my life. This person lectured people, and he was usually angry. He spoke as though he had authority. He said a lot of useful things, but he got very involved with worldly projects and didn’t pray in tongues. If you don’t pray in tongues, you lack real revelation, but you can still fill up on the false kind. You can be led pretty far astray.

He used to invite people to get involved with his projects, saying they could work for him. The projects and jobs didn’t pan out, however. The rosy descriptions never matched reality. He persuaded a big company to do a job for him, and they invested a lot of money in preparation. Then they found out he didn’t have money to pay them. They sued, and he defaulted. He also said things about his technical background which I, as a former physicist, knew could not be true.

You always have to be careful about listening to self-promoters. Sometimes they’re like balloons. Let the air out, and what you have left is surprisingly small.

I looked Goll up. He is part of the Seven Mountain Mandate crowd. Ted Cruz’s dad and Paula White are also adherents, as are the Bethel/Sozo people. They believe Christians will take over the world. Not after the rapture. Now. They want to dominate the government, education, business, and entertainment, among other things.

I’m not a Sozo guy. A friend of mine gave me a Bethel book, and I gave their doctrine the old college try, with sincerity. Nothing happened. They tell you to think back to a traumatic moment in your life and ask Jesus where he was. He’s supposed to say something like, “I was over by the window,” and he explains what was happening. Then you find catharsis and healing. There is nothing even remotely like this in the Bible, and I got nothing from it. I’ve seen Bethel sermons, and most gave me the creeps. I think they’re on the wrong track.

I don’t see Christians taking over the world. We are declining in influence, and our decline isn’t linear. It’s accelerating. The difference between 2000 and 2010 was nothing compared to the difference between 2010 and 2020.

Jesus said the world would hate us. The Bible says it’s a problem if the world loves you. Jesus said his kingdom was not of this world; he rejected efforts to make him a political or military leader. He didn’t even try to run the temple, even though he was the son of God.

In short, I think the Seven Mountain Mandate doctrine is completely wrong. I think anyone who turns the office of prophet into a job and brags about his credentials is bogus. We are clearly told not to seek our own promotion. I don’t believe anyone who boasts and promotes himself, who makes money from Christianity, and who thinks Christians should run the present world can possibly be a prophet.

Prophets hear from God every day. Wouldn’t God tell a prophet if the movement he belonged to was based on misconeptions?

Goll claims Luke 7:44 somehow proves women are supposed to be prophets and pastors and so on. This is the verse about the woman who washed the feet of Jesus with her tears and dried them with her hair. In this story, Jesus talks to a man named Simon, teaching him about what the woman is doing.

Goll says Simon is Peter. Problem: he is not. Not even close. Jesus was invited to have a meal at the home of a pharisee, and that’s where the woman washed his feet. When the Bible mentions “Simon,” it says he was the man who invited Jesus to his house. Not Peter at all. It’s not ambiguous. It’s not subject to interpretation. It’s very clear.

Paul said women should not speak in church, and he was very firm about it. It makes sense, because men bear the burden of leadership in this world, and the human race was cursed because a man let a woman take over the job of religious instruction. When it comes to idolatry, women have a long history of taking the lead. False religions tend to spread among women first. Women are more open to them. This is why they slept with angels in Genesis and gave birth to giants.

If you think women make great leaders, ask yourself where we would be if women voted and men did not. Ellen DeGeneres would be empress for life, and our GNP would be about five hundred dollars. Somalia would be sending us aid.

Paul’s credentials are a lot stronger than James Goll’s. The Bible agrees with Paul, and I agree with him, too.

I came across another person who promoted weird doctrine. I put up a Youtube video, and a commenter posted an extremely long (maybe a thousand words) comment saying he and his family loved Marvel movies and that he expected the rapture to come on August 4, or Shavuot.

Problem: Marvel movies are occult movies. The characters use magic. Dr. Strange is a witch. The Scarlet Witch is pretty obviously a witch. Thor is a false god. The Black Panther uses drugs to make himself powerful. Christians shouldn’t fool with Marvel. I did, and I quit.

Problem: Shavuot was weeks ago. It ended on May 30. It’s a spring holiday.

Christians who have high hopes for August 4 are talking about counting the omer. An omer is a dry measure, like a pint. “Shavuot” means “weeks.” It’s a holiday that takes place 7 weeks after Pesach (Passover). Jews count 50 days between Pesach and Shavuot. I think I have that right. I guess the idea is that the days fill up an omer. Shavuot is supposed to be the same thing as Pentecost, but the Gregorian calendar throws it off. “Pentecost” is a Greek word that means “fiftieth.”

There is zero ambiguity. Shavuot ended weeks ago. It will not come this month.

It appears the August 4 idea comes from an obscure concept called the Creator’s Calendar. There are a few Christians who think the Jewish calendar is wrong. Jesus had no problem with the Jewish calendar, and Paul had no problem with it, but that’s the theory. The Creator’s Calendar says Shavuot will really take place on August 4.

Problem: Shavuot is the festival of the first fruits. You can’t have first fruits of the harvest in August. Not in Israel. The wheat harvest comes in spring.

If the rapture were to come on a Jewish holiday, I would expect it to be Sukkot. This is the week when Jews build temporary booths from branches. The rapture will take us away for 7 years (one week of years), and during that time, we will be celebrating with Jesus. It will be the celebration of his marriage to the church. It looks a lot like Sukkot. On the other hand, Shavuot is the day when the first fruits of the harvest are celebrated, and the rapture looks a lot like Jesus taking his first fruits to heaven.

I don’t know whether the rapture will land on a holiday, but I do know Shavuot was over a long time ago.

The long comment went to spam, and the guy who posted it asked me to restore it. I took a look at it. I think it went where it was supposed to go. He linked to his own video and tried to take over. That’s how spam works. I felt a strong impulse to delete it, so I did.

Prayer in tongues is very important. If you go off course and start believing something that isn’t true, prayer in tongues will put you back on track. Most Christians don’t pray in tongues much, so they drive off the road, stay there, and celebrate being stuck in a ditch.

I keep feeling like the rapture will come in December. I can’t prove it. I can’t say it’s a prophecy. I don’t have a special calendar. I am not a “teaching prophet” who writes books and appears on TV shows. In my entire life, I have made $80 from Christianity, and that was because a disturbed person forced me to take it. I don’t have a jet. I don’t have a beard. I don’t wear a habit or a cross the size of a frying pan. I don’t call myself Apostle Steve. I pray a lot, and I have a persistent feeling. That’s about it. I may be wrong.

I hope I’m right. Can you imagine putting up with another year of this insanity? It gets crazier every day. They’re burning Bibles in Portland now. Finally, someone on the other side is being honest. I’m actually happy about it. I don’t approve of burning Bibles, but I’m glad some of the children of darkness are exposing their real feelings.

I wonder what’s going to happen with coronavirus this year. My best guess was that it would poop out with the hot weather, but I was wrong about that. It’s also disconcerting to see it ramping up in conservative areas. My county is up around 1.5% now.

I think God spared conservatives for a while so we would have time to repent, fast, and pray. We did not do that, however.

Interesting fact: a huge percentage of the cases in my county are among women and prisoners. This is a prison county, so there are a large number of people who are cooped up together. Women make up something like 2/3 of the cases.

It makes sense that prisoners would get it. They are cursed people. Prison is a taste of hell, for people who are headed the wrong way. I’m not sure why women are getting sick. A women’s prison got hit, so that may explain it.

If you remove the prison cases, this county is still doing pretty well. Prisons and old folks homes are outliers. They are not representative of the rest of the population. Journalists don’t like to talk about it, but prisoners and people in homes make up a tremendous part of the coronavirus statistics. Journalists want us to think we’re all equally likely to get it, and that it’s usually a severe disease. Both of those things are untrue.

If there is an up side to the prison and nursing home situation, it’s that people in these facilities don’t get many chances to infect the rest of us.

Some people think bad things have to happen to Christians first, because Peter said something about judgment beginning in the house of the Lord. If you read his words, however, it appears that he is talking about things like confession, repentance, and inner transformation. Not plagues and famines and so on. Bad things don’t have to happen to Christians first. If anything, we should be less likely than anyone to experience things like coronavirus. The fact that coronavirus hit red states hardest at first doesn’t mean it’s not a punishment from God.

I guess that’s all I have. Keep praying, and don’t let anyone sneeze on you.