Go Ahead and Cry “Wolf!”

Every Christian is supposed to be God’s child, not his grandchild, slave, or employee.

Often, misguided Christians say famous TV preachers are “God’s generals,” as though they consult with God in a War Room like the one in Dr. Strangelove, and we are supposed to stay outside and wait for them to come out and tell us what God said and what we should do. Is that consistent with the New Testament’s clear assertions that we are God’s sons and daughters through the Holy Spirit? Of course not. If you had 10 siblings, and your dad called a meeting about an important issue, would it be acceptable for him to invite three into the room and only allow you to come in to bring everyone snacks and coffee? No. It would be absurd and insulting.

Personally, I refer to the big-name preachers who teach poison as “Satan’s generals,” because that’s what they are. They play on our fleshly inclination to be wowed by fame and wealth, not our desire to know God or be filled with righteousness.

Under the old covenant, very few people knew the Holy Spirit, and it was normal for people like Moses to go off, be with God, and bring his commands to the rest of us. Under the new covenant, everyone is supposed to be filled with, and led by, the Spirit.

Before I go on, I should say what “anointing” means. People think it means they feel the Holy Spirit in the room. That’s not true at all. It means “authorization.” In the Bible, a person who was given authority was anointed with oil. Prophets poured oil on kings.

An anointing is not the same thing as a gift. You can have a gift but not be entitled to guide other people or tell them what to do.

Under the new covenant, an anointed person will certainly have some supernatural gifts, but a gift isn’t proof of anointing. There are people who display supernatural gifts yet who should not get the idea that they are leaders or teachers.

Fame and money are not evidence of anointing. The people who murdered the prophets and Yeshua were rich and famous. Jim Bakker was rich and famous. Popes who persecuted Jews were rich and famous. Mother Teresa was famous, and she didn’t believe in God.

Peter Popoff was one of the most famous American evangelists. He was caught using a radio apparatus with an earpiece to fake messages from God. They actually came from his wife, who was in on the hoax. He had a huge following. He had money. Was he anointed?

A lot of Christians think you measure a preacher’s worth by the number of TV cameras he has pointed at him or the number of people he packs into stadiums. There is no reason whatsoever to think this is true.

Another point: every Spirit-led Christian is accountable to every other Spirit-led Christian, as well as being accountable to people in general. The fact that you stand in front of crowds or you built a big church doesn’t mean you are exempt from righteous criticism. In fact, we all depend on criticism, from God and from other people, in order to be sanctified and improved.

It’s important to note that God never said prominent men of God could only be corrected by other bigwigs. Every Spirit-led Christian can correct every other Spirit-led Christian.

Finally, God does not actually need famous preachers who reach millions of people, so famous preachers are not more important to the kingdom than the rest of us. The world has a population of over 8 billion. There are millions of anointed people out there, reaching others every day. They reach more people than the TV idols while doing less damage.

God’s kingdom can get by very well with millions of obscure Spirit-led Christians. If every Spirit-led Christian had converted two people since the Spirit fell in the Upper Room, almost everyone on Earth would be Spirit-led by now.

Now let me discuss judgment and criticism.

As I have often pointed out, many Christians think the Bible only has two words: “judge not.” Of course, this is not true. The prophets, Yeshua, and the apostles judged other people constantly.

Go find me a prophet who showed up to tell the Jews what a great job they were doing. There were none. The same Bible chapter that contains the smaller two-word false Bible contains more words that expand on, and clarify, “judge not.” We are required to judge ourselves before we judge others. That’s what it says.

What about “speaking evil” of other Christians? James said we shouldn’t do it.

It doesn’t mean what many people think. It comes from a Greek word, katalalia. The New King James says we should not speak katalalia, not that we should never criticize. How much shorter would the New Testament be if we deleted all the harsh, critical things the apostles and Yeshua said about religious figures?

Katalalia refers to slander. It’s about using speech in a malicious manner to harm others. For example, if I say, “When Perry Stone sexually harassed his employees, and when he was rightfully exposed, he failed to accept the blame and even threatened to sue people who spoke the truth about it,” it’s not “speaking evil” in the sense English Bible translations suggest. I’m saying something truthful in order to protect other Christians from harm. The purpose isn’t to destroy Perry Stone or to make him suffer. It’s to let people who revere him know they need to be careful.

In writing all this, I’m doing what my Elements professor taught me to do in law school. I am laying out rules and principles so I can put them together and apply them to a situation.

I have really enjoyed watching the preacher Mark Hemans. He heals people. He casts demons out of them. He tells them hidden things about their lives, on camera, to help them. He relays a lot of things God has told him. He doesn’t teach the false prosperity gospel or ask for money. He is coming to Florida in November, and my wife and I have been planning to go watch him in person.

Yesterday, he posted a short Youtube video criticizing (ironically) Christians who criticize other Christians. He went after people who criticized famous TV preachers. He named names. Kathryn Krick. Benny Hinn. Joyce Meyer. He named some of the worst, most destructive preachers. He said people who criticized them were touching God’s anointed and that God would “protect” the ones who were criticized.

He is out of line.

The preachers he defends are, legitimately, evil and destructive. Their teachings are very harmful. They literally lead people into defeat and damnation. They are wrong about major, fundamental things. They have to be exposed for the good of the flock.

Just as Yeshua, the prophets, and the apostles exposed frauds, heretics, and apostates openly, people who are exposing these crooked preachers are doing an important thing of which God approves. God requires it of us.

He said the preachers who were under fire were “God’s anointed.” That is simply not true, for reasons I named above. They are famous, not anointed. They are rich, not anointed. Some of them have done supernatural things. That doesn’t make them anointed. There are many successful preachers of whom we can say there is no reason to think they were chosen and given authority by God. In other cases, people who were anointed to begin with have lost their anointing, which means they no longer have authority.

God has never anointed any person to lie. He has never anointed anyone to rob the poor. He has never said any preacher was above criticism.

God didn’t anoint Benny Hinn to fake healings, tell people God would make them rich for contributing to his ministry, or sell prophecies, but he did all those things, and now that his ministry is a tiny operation that runs out of a warehouse, he roams Africa vouching for crooked preachers who pay for his endorsement.

God didn’t anoint Perry Stone to make excuses for, and dishonestly minimize, his egregious, persistent sexual misdeeds and then threaten to sue truthful people who told the world about them. God didn’t anoint him to claim he had had a prophetic dream in which the accusers were fish that got eaten by a bigger fish that symbolized God’s punishment. He didn’t anoint him to promote lying prosperity preachers. He did all those things.

God didn’t anoint Joyce Meyer to teach the prosperity gospel. He didn’t anoint her, as a woman, to lead a ministry at all. He didn’t anoint her to tell people that if they gave her donations, God owed them money. She did all that.

God didn’t anoint Kenneth Copeland to make himself a billionaire by teaching the prosperity gospel to poor people whose donations only made them poorer, but he has been doing it for over 40 years. He didn’t anoint him to spend donations on multiple jets or use the jets for vacations. He never told Copeland, who is in bad health and not long for this world, that he would live to be 120, but Copeland says he did, and he says he accepted his badly-needed pacemaker “by faith,” whatever that means.

How do you receive a pacemaker by faith? We receive healing by faith, not pacemakers. A pacemaker is for a person who can’t get healed. An atheist can receive a pacemaker.

God didn’t tell Copeland that his wife Gloria, who is severely demented and soon to die, was also going to live to be 120, but Copeland says he did. Gloria herself claimed it. She is almost certain to be dead within 5 years, as is Copeland. The last time she appeared in public, she didn’t know what was going on. She can’t perform basic life functions.

God has never had anything to do with Kathryn Krick’s cult. Mark Hemans has no business threatening good people who tell the truth about her. She is disgusting, and so is Geordavie, her African preacher idol.

I could go on all day with this. The general rule with famous preachers is that they are out of their lane. It’s not exceptional. It’s normal. People who become famous generally do so by their own efforts. They do it out of ambition, egotism, and/or greed. This applies to preachers just like everyone else. It’s not like the world of rich preachers is a meritocracy.

Mark Hemans clearly thinks that criticizing famous preachers for good reason is persecution. That’s not even close to right. By extension, he is telling us Yeshua and the prophets persecuted God’s anointed. The disturbing truth is that Hemans himself is guilty of persecution. He is trying to shame and scare people who tell the truth about predators in the church. We are all anointed to expose predators, and trying to scare us for doing it is persecution.

We’re not just talking about people who have great intentions but occasionally miss the mark in some small way. We are talking about sociopathic liars who drive people away from God and eat their savings.

He’s also demonstrating hypocrisy. In his services, he criticizes Christians constantly in order to help them. On camera, he reveals their porn habits. Their drug habits. Their pride. Their unforgiveness. He tells them to repent. So somehow, he is entitled to correct other believers, but we, the little people in the pews, are not. That is absurdity.

We don’t have a system in which Mark Hemans or Benny Hinn is special and the rest of us are not. There are two levels in the kingdom: God’s level, and ours. There is no officer class. There is no VIP room. There is no gold card or business class. Sure, God favors some Christians more than others, but favor doesn’t put anyone above justice.

The Bible says we are kings and priests. It doesn’t mention dukes, earls, barons, knights, and pew-filling, chair-stacking peasants who don’t get to speak. You’re a king and priest, or you’re nothing.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard Mark Hemans say something that wasn’t correct. The other day, I heard him praising Charlie Kirk as a man of God. Kirk was no man of God at all. He was an ambitious man who wanted money and power. His main interest was politics, just like Caesar’s.

Since Kirk’s death, we have seen a lot of his private communications. They’re not about God. They’re not even about what’s good for America. They’re about his “brand,” his donations, and his strategies for becoming more successful. One communication also shows an antisemitic streak.

Sure, he promoted Christianity. As a side dish. You could say the same of Nicki Minaj.

Praising Kirk as a man of God shows a lack of divine insight. It’s simply wrong.

I also saw him tell a lady pastor she got a huge stomach tumor because she ate a meal without saying a blessing. First of all, why didn’t he tell her women shouldn’t be pastors? Paul made that clear. Second, I just don’t believe one missed blessing can bring a person a demon that creates football-size cancers. That is over the top.

I can’t say I am positive he was wrong, and maybe I’m the one who is wrong, but what he said suggests a lack of patience that is uncharacteristic of God as I understand him.

Please don’t tell me women should be preachers because Paul said a woman named Junia was “outstanding among the apostles.” That’s a mistranslation. He said she was well-known among the apostles. They knew who she was.

Don’t start lecturing me about Phoebe, the female deacon he mentioned. The Greek word he used means something like servant or waiter. Deacons are not preachers. In modern churches, they do things like taking out trash and parking people’s cars.

I was disappointed when I saw the video about God punishing those who expose preachers, so I wrote a comment in dissent. Today I checked to see if there was a response. Not only was there no response; Mark or his Internet employee had removed all comments. Commenting on that video is now impossible.

This is worse than persecuting whistleblowers. God once told me, “The concealment of a sin is worse than the sin itself.” I hate to see any preacher shut down dissent.

It’s fine to filter out the kooks who show up to say God is imaginary, or who inject wacky doctrine from dead churches, mainstream Judaism, Islam, or other counterproductive religions. It’s dangerous to shut down responses from people who know what they’re talking about, simply because you don’t want to admit you might be wrong.

Comment-banning is a common thing among preachers who are in the wrong and reject correction. Perry Stone started doing it after he got caught telling a woman God had told him it was okay for him to commit adultery. Kenneth Copeland has done it for years. It makes you wonder if there is anything else Mark Hemans doesn’t want people to hear about.

When a preacher bans comments, he builds a wall of sycophants around himself, and they reinforce his errors and sins.

My wife and I often talk about Eddie Murphy when we talk about those who surround themselves with yes-men. Eddie Murphy did some embarrassing things back during the last century, and when he talked about it, he said one problem was that everyone around him praised him no matter what he did. Whatever he suggested, they said, “Eddie! You a GENIUS!” He was aware that this drove him to do stupid things he regretted.

Now we have messengers from Satan, surrounding preachers who cut off correction, standing around saying, “Benny! You a GENIUS!” “Joyce! You a GENIUS!” “Bishop Jakes! You a GENIUS!” The next thing may be, “Mark! You a GENIUS!”

Stifling speech is what demons do when they attack people in their sleep. They choke them to keep them from casting them out. Christians shouldn’t do it to cover up their own problems.

This all underscores the importance of praying in the Spirit. All Christians fall into error, but if we listen to the Holy Spirit every day, he pulls us out of it. He shows us what we need to stop doing. He shows us which friends and preachers to drop. He shows us what is wrong with our doctrine. As John said, he teaches us all things. If you’re not spending time in the Spirit, you’re just listening to gossip.

I’m not saying Mark Hemans is a bad preacher. I have gotten a lot from watching him. But anyone can stumble, and if you take away your correction safety net, you may not get back up. Enabling predators who destroy millions is not a small error. It is a huge, dangerous misstep.

I have decided we are going to skip his appearance in Florida. I thought it would be a very pleasant excursion, but we don’t worship preachers, we know God is here with us and inside us, and we are aware that nobody has to get in a car and go see an apostle in order to have a great relationship with God.

Of course, we are praying for him. That is an obvious response to a problem like this. I hope he snaps out of this. I thought he was doing such wonderful things.

Since I started writing this, God has shown me something interesting: he has become a homeschooler.

I don’t go to church, but I am very serious about God. My wife and I spend all sorts of time in prayer, we discuss God, we try to implement his correction, and we try to do what he wants us to. Things are going much better for us than they did when we were preacher-followers.

Years ago, God told me the age of the big church was over because churches had become so corrupt, they drove people away from him. He told me real Christianity was moving to other venues like homes.

It’s just like homeschooling. We can’t send our kids to Caesar’s schools because the people with rainbow hair will tell them to become socialists, engage in sodomy, and have themselves sexually mutilated. We have to educate our young at home now. Well, God is doing the same thing.

Churches always reject me. They accept Mark Hemans and the frauds and scoundrels he tells us to protect. I shouldn’t let myself think too highly of Mark Hemans. He may be an apostle, but he is not my chief authority, and he can lead me astray like any other man.

I plan to keep watching him, because a lot of great things happen at his services, and he does useful teaching, but as always, I will rely on God to tell me what I should and should not accept.