The New Apostolic Reformation - Lea-Anne Smith - GTAN2538

Jesus said in Matthew 28:19, Go, therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Welcome to Go Teach all nations, bringing you Christ's teachings through Australian and international speakers. And here is today's presenter, Lea-Anne Smith. SPEAKER 2 Well, December 14, 2019 was a day that two parents will never forget because it was the day their two year old daughter died. She stopped breathing for no explicable reason whatsoever. I can't begin to imagine the shock and distraught that they would have felt in the days that followed. They began to pray that their child would be resurrected. The whole church joined in praying that the babe would be resurrected. And in fact they didn't just pray, they declared life for their daughter. The parents were Kayleigh and Andrew Helliganthal. And here is, here is their beautiful little girl. Her name was Olive and Callie was a member of the church's worship team. And that church was Bethel in Redding, California. And they posted to Instagram every day. Day two, your name means victorious awakening. And that's what we believe, that's what we're believing for in Jesus name. And then day three, day three is a good day for a resurrection. And day four, day four is a really good day for resurrection. And the hashtag wakeupolive trended and the whole Christian world seemed to collectively hold its breath waiting to see how this would play out. And then day six, Day six, the Bethel music team posted this. Here is where we are at. Olive hasn't been raised. The breakthrough we have sought hasn't come. And so we're moving towards a memorial service and celebration of her life. You know, I can't, I just can't begin to think about what happened there without a flood of emotions. As a mother, as someone who's stood by and seen friends lose children is just horrific thing. But I remember at the time trying to make sense of why a church would set out and pray for the resurrection of a baby. Didn't they realise they'd just prolonged the parents grief? It just, it seemed bizarre. But on the other hand I'm thinking, oh, maybe we're just not spiritual enough, you know, maybe this is what we should be doing. Do Adventists just lack faith? You know, we don't, we, we don't step up to this. Is this a biblical thing to do? Well, this story happened five years ago and I didn't really understand the teachings of this church at the time that it happened. But I've come to a better understanding of it as I've studied this movement and I understand the theology of Bethel much better than I did before. How many of you have heard of Bethel Church? Yeah, okay, so I did say this last night, but I'll say it again now. Bethel has produced a lot of the Christian music that is used in contemporary churches today. Bethel, Elevation, Hillsong would be the biggest ones that produce contemporary music. And you'd be hard pressed as an Adventist to have not heard some Bethel music somewhere along the line. But we're going to just dig in a little bit today about the beliefs of this particular wave in history. Okay, so an overview of the four waves. We looked at this last night. Basically there were four waves we started last night. We looked at the Holiness movement and we looked at the first wave of Pentecostalism, how it actually started in the second wave. This was the age where Pentecostalism moved into mainstream churches. So it wasn't actually. You didn't have to worship in a Pentecostal denomination in order to practice Pentecostalism. You could do it in your mainstream church. In the third wave. This is where it moved into evangelical churches. And it was really through the music that came out of Vineyard and Calvary churches. And that was a response to the hippie movement sort of colliding with the charismatic movement and producing something called the Jesus people. And so those people, they brought along their guitars and they brought about worship, renewal. And then the fourth wave is quite different. And that's what we're looking at today. So. All right. Yes. I didn't do that, did I? Alright. The waves, the first wave were called Pentecostals. The second wave were called Charismatics. The third wave are called neocarismatics, like the new Charismatics. And the fourth wave today is what we call the New Apostolic Reformation. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about this movement. How many people have heard of the New Apostolic Reformation? Just a handful of you? Yeah. So the most influential man that probably has existed in Christianity in many, many years is probably this man here. His name is C. Peter Wagner and he died just a few years ago. He was a missionary. He was a missiologist, so he was a seminary professor. He wrote something like 70 books. His ideas were incredibly influential. He was a respected professor at Fuller Seminary and that gave him an incredible reach in terms of his influence. He was initially against Pentecostalism, but as he saw that they were more successful in winning people to Christ than his own profession, he actually became Pentecostal himself. He had a huge heart for Christianity. He wanted to see the whole world become Christian. And by the mid-1990s, he'd come to the conclusion that all of these different tribes in Christianity were more of a hindrance than help, because it signed onto this idea that the Holy Spirit is pouring out miraculous gifts in every denomination. And so it doesn't really matter, you know, if the Holy Spirit is blessing everybody, then truth is not so important or doctrine is not so important. And so it didn't really matter what your doctrine was. And he, he was, yeah, quite a poor theologian really, but he was incredibly, incredibly influential. So he became convinced that denominationalism, this idea of separate church denominations, was actually an impediment to growth and that the church really needed to move past that in order to grow. And I'm sure you can see the logic of that. You know, if you accept that every church out there has got signs and wonders, then it's a logical. It's a logical belief to have. So he wanted to get this post denominational thing really happening. And to do that, he planned a conference to launch his ideas. And he spearheaded the conference. He called it the Post Denominational Church Syndrome symposium. Sorry, the post denominational church symposium. And the day the conference started, he took some of his friends out for a meal to talk about his ideas. And one of them was a foursquare minister by the name of Jack Hayford. And Jack Hayford wrote that beautiful song, majesty, Worship His Majesty. You remember that song? Yeah. And he, he was a minister of a four square gospel church. Now, foursquare gospel churches came out of Azusa street that we talked about last night. So they were denominations, okay, very squarely denominations. And so when Peter started talking about post denominationalism, Jack Hayford got upset. You know, he was part of a denomination and he was old school, and he believed that clustering around shared belief was important because that's what denominations do. They cluster around a shared understanding of truth. Unlike churches tend to today, churches tend to cluster around shared spiritual experiences and shared ministry paradigms rather than a particular set of beliefs. Well, Peter, ever the pragmatist and very eager to please, he just said, well, we'll just change the name. So they sat there and they brainstormed and they came up with a new name. And that name was the New Apostolic Reformation. And the conference had already started, so obviously they couldn't change it from post denominational because that started the conference. But on the last day of the conference, Wagner stood up and he said, we've got a new name. And going forward, we're going to call ourselves the New Apostolic Reformation. Now, it never really took off, that name never really took off inside the movement for a variety of very interesting reasons. But it's now used. They don't use it on the inside, but it's used very heavily by those who critique the movement from outside. And believe you me, there are many people that have got concerns about this movement, both within Pentecostalism, within Christianity and secular people as well. And you'll understand why by the time we're through why that is. Now, let's look at the name the New Apostolic Reformation. So let's decode it. Each word new, new is basically refers to a new move of God. So they believe that something worldwide is going to happen. It's massive, it's new. And the word apostolic is basically refers to this belief that apostles are being raised up in the order of biblical apostles. So the same as John and Paul and Mark and Matthew, the new apostles that now happen on planet Earth. And the last one, Reformation, they named it that because they believed that the impact of it would equal or exceed the impact of the Protestant Reformation. So it's a harking back to the Protestant Reformation. So there's a lot of religious researchers looking at the fourth wave right now. Every time I log on and look at new articles, there's a raft more of them because people have got so many concerns about this particular, this particular movement. So what are the beliefs? Oh, there are some other names, Dominionism, so you might hear these as well. Post denominationalism, Dominionism, Restorationism and some people call it the Independent Network Charismatic Christianity or INK for short. So the New Apostolic Reformation, the short is nar, Nar nar. So if I talk about na, you'll know what I'm talking about. So what are the beliefs of this movement? There are four key beliefs of this movement and here they Dominionism. We're going to unpack that one over the next little while. The restoration of prophets and apostles. Now, someone asked about how these churches are organised. So prophets and apostles are part of that. Each church, they don't have the governance structure that we have where it's representative and, you know, the church comes together and everyone has a say and everybody votes. This is a lot more like Catholicism where there's just a head prophet and a head apostle. And so the head apostle is the lead pastor and the prophet is the one who hears from God and advises the pastor. And together they are the ones that hold the authority in the church. Also spiritual warfare, which we touched on a little bit this morning, and we'll talk a bit more about that somewhere next session, actually. And supernatural signs and wonders, they're the four key beliefs of this movement. But you know, what I think is really key to this, to unlocking it all, is if you understand Dominionism, the other ones are going to make sense. So we're going to start with Dominionism first. And so Dominionism basically says that Christians are to take dominion of the earth that God has given them to reclaim it. And so it's very much this idea that Adam was given dominion in the garden. So this is their theological pretext for it. He failed at it. And so now the Christian church has to be successful at it. But there's a problem, you know, as you can well imagine, Dominionism can lend itself to force and loss of control. And so the next thing is in Dominionism, that the revival is coming and the whole world is going to become Christian. Now, I think you'd be starting to see some problems with this, and we'll unpack it a little bit more as we go. And the next idea is that this coming revival, once the planet is reclaimed by the Christian church, there's going to be a coming revival that ushers in a time of peace and prosperity known as the millennium. Now, to really understand this, we need to understand what Adventists think about the millennium, what we think about it, and how this movement is different. So in premenialism, so that is the idea that the second coming happens pre the millennium, okay? There's a time of trouble on Earth, things get worse, and then Christ intercedes with the second Coming, and then we have a millennium in heaven, okay? So that is premillennialism. Post millennialism has it the other way around. It says there's increasing dominion on Earth, and then there's a millennium on Earth, and then there's a second coming. And it's called post millennialism because the second coming happens at the end of the millennium. Okay? So keep those things firmly in your mind, and that will. That will help. There it looks like for some reason. I've got. Oh, yeah, that's it. The fourth one is Christ's return. So Christ will come back when the nations are being reclaimed for Christianity. So let's have a little look at this. I know it's a bit hard to get your head around. It's so different to what we as Adventists believe in many ways. But there's another way of looking at it, and it's this. Eschatology is a big word, but it Basically means the end of things. It's the theology of the end of things. And there's two different types of eschatology in the world today in terms of ideas. One is what we call a victorious eschatology. And post millennialism leads to this victorious eschatology, where Christ returns when the church has reclaimed dominion over what is rightfully Christ versus apocalyptic eschatology, which says the world deteriorates until Christ intervenes. So which one? Adventists. Whether apocalyptic. Yeah, we're apocalyptic eschatology. And certainly not only as you look at the Bible, but certainly as you look at the world and what is happening. You know, if we head over to Matthew 24, which we talked a little bit about this morning, wars and rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, persecution and hate. People lovers of themselves, self centered religious deception. So false messiahs and false prophets who perform signs and wonders. So basically a worldwide apostasy. So that's what Matthew 24 says is going to happen before the second coming. It doesn't sound to me like the world's getting better. And what's the evidence pointing to? It's pointing to it not getting better. Absolutely. But this teaching of dominion is a major, major teaching in Christianity now today. And it's key to understanding what's happening out there. And there's literally hundreds of books out there that support this idea of post millennialism. So this is probably one of the top of the chart books that sold, I don't know, thousands and thousands. This was the 10 year anniversary of that book. It's written by Bill Johnson. Bill Johnson is the lead pastor at Bethel Church. Okay, so that gives you an idea of the sort of theology that swells in Bethel. And so the idea that you can see from the title of this book, when heaven invades Earth. And so heaven is going to come down here and we will, Christianity will have dominion here on earth. That's what the title is all about. So how does heaven actually happen on earth? Well, it happens through signs and wonders. That's what ushers it in. So if you look at the byline for this book, A Practical Guide to a Life of Miracles, because that is what's going to usher in this coming revival that brings in the millennium. Now Bill Johnson was heavily influenced by that man that we talked about earlier, Peter Wagner, and he's very much now at the forefront of this movement that teaches this. But I want you to think about this for a minute. If this is really true, what does it do to the second Coming? It obliterates it. You know, if if the Second Coming is pushed to a thousand years. Well, actually, they don't talk about it in terms of literal times. If it's pushed far, far into the future, when the earth has been reclaimed for Christianity, what happens to the Second Coming? There's no urgency there, is there? None whatsoever. And that is devastating for Adventism, you know, when you think about it, because the Second Coming is key to the good news of the Gospel through Jesus, life and death and resurrection. He saved us from eternal death because of sin. And now this greatest redemptive act still lies in front of us. And that's why we are called Seventh Day Adventists, because we believe in the Second Coming and we believe that Christ is coming again and he's going to take us away from this world with all its suffering and pain and tragedy. It's going to come to an end by this teaching called Dominionism, because it's a belief that Christianity is going to take dominion over the Earth, just as Adam was supposed to take dominion. It teaches that these problems of Earth, these wars, the climate change, the economic disaster, these things are going to disappear as the culture becomes Christianized. Problem. Can you see the problem? Yeah, yeah. Now, if I were the devil and I wanted to divert people away from the Second Coming, I don't think you could come up with a better, with a better idea than this idea of post millennialism. It obliterates the hope that we have. And you know, these folk, they have a whole strategy as to how we're going to Christianize the whole world. And here it is, it's called the Seven Mountain Mandate. Has anyone heard of the Seven Mountain Mandate? Oh, a few of you have, yes. Okay. And so the Seven Mountain Mandate says that basically these are the different aspects of culture. And to be Christianized, Christians have to take control of these seven areas. And these seven areas are religion, families, education, government, media and arts, science and technology and business. And so this idea has been floating around since 1970, but it never really gathered steam until 2001, when a man by the name of Lance Wallno got hold of it and he fashioned these ideas into what he called the Seven Mountain Mandate. And he and Bill Johnson, that man that we just spoke about a minute ago, the lead pastor at Bethel Church, wrote this book called Invading Babylon, the Seven Mountain Mandate. So how is this mandate implemented? Well, what we need to recognise here that it's not a strategy to evangelise, it's a strategy to transform culture. And by and large, the churches of the new Apostolic Reformation, they're not interested in worldwide evangelism, what they're interested in is transformation of culture. And here's a quote from Invading Babylon. This is what it says. The business of shifting culture or transforming nations does not require a majority of conversions. We make a mistake when we focus on winning a harvest in order to shape a culture. Now I know that might be a bit mind bending for you, so I'm just going to rephrase that for you. It's saying for Christianity to take dominion over the earth, we need to stop focusing on one to one evangelism and start focusing on transforming culture. Now that's a radical departure from Protestant Christianity. So how do you actually do this? Well, here's another quote in this same book. As long as the church thinks the purpose of the Great Commission is anything less than penetrating and occupying the mind molders of nations in order to bring about a sustained influence that shapes culture, we are asleep. That's quite mind bending. It's so different to how we think. So what they're saying is how you change culture is you actually penetrate and occupy the mind moulders of the nation. In other words, they talk about influencing the kings of society, they're talking about politics and getting close to legislators. And that's the story we're going to look at in our next session. So major belief, major belief revival is coming and the whole world is going to be Christianized. So how does this actually happen? Well, it doesn't happen because we turn to scripture and become convinced of our sin that repentance is not a big thing. In the new Apostolic Reformation. It's ushered in. Revival is actually ushered in by signs and wonders. And so Christians in the new Apostolic Reformation, they believe that it's a demonstration of miracle working power that will convert the world to Christ. And that is what's beginning to break over the world right now. And signs and wonders are key to ushering it in. And it's created something that's called revival culture, a culture of signs and wonders. There you go. I'll just pause there in case any of you want to take a photo. I'm famous for getting ahead of my slides. So for this I'm going to talk about Bethel Church, because as we've already pointed out, they're at the heart of this movement and they are incredibly influential in Christianity today. In fact, they seem to be as a global epicentre of Christian culture. This is Bill and Benny Johnson. Bill Johnson was a fifth generation pastor in the Assemblies of God stream, which was one of the churches that came out of Azusa Street. Benny passed away probably just 18 months or so ago with cancer. And the sad thing is Bill is a faith healer. And Bill has said for many, many years there is no room in my theology for illness because in his theology, everyone should be healed. And so I can only imagine the terrible torment that they went through as she died over a period of several years. It would have been very difficult for her and it would have been very difficult for him. Now, while I'm talking a little bit about Beale Johnson, I just want to talk about some common characteristics that you see in leaders of the new apostolic Reformation. They tend to be very charismatic in personality type. They tend not to have theological degrees. In fact, they believe that theological degrees are an impediment to doing ministry. They tend to be quite anti intellectual and they tend to be quite high on the mystical side. And the majority, if not all of these leaders have had an encounter with a being that they believe is Jesus, or at least have had visions of someone that they believe to be him. And here is so. So Bill, as I just told you, he's the lead apostle at Bethel. This man is actually the prophet. So this is the man that he hears from God. And here he is. He. He posted this on Instagram a few years ago and he basically says it's a fairly classic account. I had an encounter with God years ago that's changed my life forever. As I laid in my bathtub one night, Jesus walked into my bathroom and told me, you're a great leader. You're going to be a prophet to kings, prime ministers and governors. This was one of the most significant encounters I've had. Now, some common characteristics with these types of accounts. There is no sense of awe. There's no sense of awe in Scripture when angels turn up. The recipients generally fall flat on their faces in awe and can barely breathe for fear. The first words of the angels are usually, do not be afraid because the human is just terrifying. Nothing like happened like that happens here. This happens in the bathroom. People. What's the implied message? You know, Jesus and I are such intimate terms that he turns up, well, I'm stark naked. You know, it's a very flattering message as well. Great leader, he's going to be a great leader. He's prophet to kings, prime ministers. These prophetic messages, they're nearly always flattering. 99.9% of the time, they're incredibly flattering. And not only do leaders in this way have encounters with beings that they believe as Jesus, but they also have encounters with angels. And at times even dead apostles from the time of Jesus, just to be clear. And I don't need to tell you, you know, as Seventh Day Adventists, I don't need to tell you why that's really not possible. Now, these accounts by these people, incredible amounts of social capital and they generate for them this aura, sort of like cult like figure. If you've had an encounter with a supernatural being, you are particularly anointed. And if you're seen to be operating in the supernatural, then you know, the more signs and wonders you can do, the more anointed you're considered to be. Many of these leaders, if not all of them, in the new apostolic Reformation, have had some sort of power encounter. Now here's Bill's. Bill's power encounter. And this happened to him after he attended the Toronto Blessing. Now, remember last night I told you many of the most significant churches have come out of the Toronto Blessing, okay? This is one of them, his church. And this is what he says. I went from a dead sleep to being wide awake. In a moment, unexplainable power began to pulsate through my body, seemingly just shy of electrocution. It was as though I'd been plugged into a wall socket with a thousand volts of electricity flowing through my body. My arms and legs shot out in silent explosions as something was released through my hands and feet. The more I tried to stop it, the worse it got. It was raw power. And here's his summation. It was God. Bill's ministry changed radically after that experience. And here is someone who knew him through that period. And they said after this power encounter, Bill got radically, radically altered under the power of God. He saw things that we had never taught, he had never heard about people falling down in the power, shaking uncontrollably, weeping, crying. It was crazy. So he shared a little bit about Toronto and his experience. It was very casual. I don't remember him actually teaching a lot about it in the beginning, but people began to fall down and shake while he's preaching without him doing anything. So let's just summarise. Bill has some sort of supernatural experience which transforms his ministry going forward. And now his supernatural experience starts to spread to other people as he ministers a little bit like that, you know, what we talked about with Azusa street last night. So I don't need to tell you that this is not how the Holy Spirit works. This is. This is actually how the enemy works. Let's look at some of the signs and wonders that actually happen at Bethel Gold Dust just suddenly, mysteriously coming down. Glory clouds. This is presumed to be like the same glory cloud that happened in the tabernacle in the Old Testament in the sanctuary. Yeah. So you can look this up on YouTube and see it if you want. Slaying in the spirit. Feathers appearing. What else have we got there? Visions, tongues jumping, people feeling like there's an electric current running through them. Tingling, shaking, jerking, laughing, violent rolling, screaming. Wind and spirit drunkenness. So these sorts of signs and wonders are very important to Bethel. In fact, Bethel takes signs and wonders so seriously that they actually have created a Bethel Supernatural school of Ministry. Now here's a web shot from the Bethel Supernatural School of Ministry. Notice the headline. Become a modern day revivalist. How do you become a revivalist? You become a revivalist through learning how to do signs and wonders. And that's why you go to a supernatural school of ministry. So also there is the words, get equipped to bring the kingdom of God to your sphere of influence. Sphere of your influence is the new way they reference the Seven Mountain Mandate. They've taken a bit of heat for the Seven Mountain Mandate. They've softened the language and it's now called sphere of influence. So you can, you know, that's. That's taught there as well. So what happens in Bethel Spirit Supernatural School of Ministry? So these are some of the things they do. Fire tunnels, which is a way of humans imparting spiritual power to each other. Treasure hunts. That's their evangelism, where they get ideas about what someone who needs the gospel might look like. In their minds, they're wearing a red cardigan and they've got blue shoes. And then they'll go out in the community and find someone wearing a red cardigan and blue shoes and say, go. God has told me to speak to you. I've seen you in vision. That's treasure hunts, prophetic activation exercises. So, you know, when you turn up at the school, you might be told to prophesy over the person next to you that you've never met before and prophesy what colour bedroom there was when they were five. And if you get it wrong, there's no shame in getting it wrong. You just keep practicing till you get it right. They play things like tattoo interpretation. That's pretty interesting. Prophetic, you know, so they actually play, you know, and, you know, if you draw a yellow card, then you prophesy this over this person here. If you draw red, you prophesy over that person there. Trips to heaven. And they'll go along to psychic fairs, offering dream Interpretations, healings, and spirit readings. What does that sound like to you? You know, Bethel students fondly refer to their school as Hogwarts for Christians. They know they're playing with supernatural power. And I actually find that pretty concerning. So one of the reasons that Bethel has a supernatural school of ministry is because they believe that every believer has this responsibility of doing signs and wonders. If you're a Christian, then this is what you do. Now, they have some really divergent beliefs about Jesus. And this idea that doing signs and wonders is the responsibility of every believer actually comes from this belief here. And it's a belief about Jesus. And this is, Jesus didn't come to show you what he could do. He came to show you what you could do. And this is not. This is not a subtext. This is quote for quote out of many, many of their sermons and teachings. They say this out loud. It's not quiet. It's not quiet. It's their theology. And so I think we should actually remind ourselves why Jesus came. John 3:17, that God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. And why did he do signs and wonders? Well, Acts 2:22 tells us this. Fellow Israelites, listen to this. Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by you. Sorry, by God. To you, by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. So it was a sign that he was the Messiah. The signs and wonders were a sign that Jesus was the Messiah and that he had the power to take away our sins. It wasn't to teach us all how to do signs and wonders. And when you analyze the theology of this movement, it constantly brings God down to human levels and it puts humans up God's levels. So this belief, if Jesus did it, you can do it, you might need to practice. This is why we have the supernatural school of ministry. So you can come and practice using supernatural power and safety. Anything Jesus did, you can do. If Jesus raised the dead, guess what, folks? You can raise the dead. And Bethel actually has a dead raising team. They claim to have raised 12 people from the dead, but there's no actual evidence that these people actually died before they got raised and no medical evidence anyway. And so now with this understanding of their theology, maybe you understand, we started that story with little Olive, who they tried to raise from the dead. That's why they tried to do it, because it's embedded into their theology that they can do this. What does trying to resurrect people do to the Gospels? No Jesus came to save the world. He did miracles to prove he's the Messiah. And what does resurrecting, trying to resurrect people from the dead do? It detracts from the great resurrection that has already taken place and the promise that God will raise believers at the Second Coming. We're raised together. Those of us who die, we're raised together as a community at the time of the Second Coming. You know some other rather interesting practices that Bethel has indulged in over the years? This is a practice called gravesaking. Any of you heard of grave soaking? A few of you have heard of grave soaking. It's also called mantle graving. And it just involves visiting the graves of dead preachers whose anointing or mantle you want to grab for yourself, and you lie on it and you soak in the dead person's presence. Here is Bill's wife. So he denies that it happens, but here's a picture of his wife actually doing it, lying on the grave of C.S. lewis. So it absolutely does happen many times. A few years ago, they produced this book. It's called the Physics of Heaven. It was produced by people at Bethel. It's their theology in many ways. Chapters were written by key apostles, and it borrows unashamedly from the New Age. And this is a quote from this book. So this writer is saying, I have found throughout scripture at least 75 examples of things that the New Age has counterfeited, such as having a spirit guide, trances, meditation, auras, power objects, clairvoyance, clairaudience, and more. These actually belong to the church, but they have been stolen and cleverly repackaged. You know, think about this. Please keep in mind, as you think about this quote, this has come out of one of the most powerful and influential churches today, Bethel. These people at Bethel defend their use of New Age tactics. And now let's be clear here. The New Age, the New Age of spiritualism, remember that word, syncretism that we learned? This is syncretism. And I say this with the deepest love and care that I can for those who are caught up in the movement. But this is syncretism, which we've seen at every wave of this movement, mixing Christianity with non Christian religious beliefs. And it's something that the Bible speaks very strongly against. And, you know, I think this. If you've got no handle on truth, you've got no filter for heresy. And that is why the Christian Church needs to focus on truth, because otherwise we just accept any belief at all. So how do I make sense of all this. You know, I look at this blatant mixing of New Age into Bethel and their obsession with the supernatural, I'm reminded very much what Ellen White says in great controversy at the end of time. And she says this as spiritualism more closely imitates the nominal Christianity of the day, it has greater power to deceive and ensnare. Satan himself is converted after the modern order of things. He will appear in the character of an angel of light. Through the agency of spiritualism, miracles will be wrought, the sick will be healed, and many undeniable wonders will be performed. And as the spirits will profess faith in the Bible and manifest respect for the institutions of the church, their work will be accepted as a manifestation of divine power. I say we're there, folks. I say we're there. You know, Ellen White's talking about syncretism. She's talking about a time when spiritualism and Christianity would become so entwined, it would be hard to tell the difference. She's talking about a day when spirits and evil angels profess belief in scripture. And today, these supernatural schools of ministry are springing up everywhere, more and more of them online, here around Australia. Learning to commune with angels is standard fare. You know, the evidence is there. This power is not from God. And furthermore, you know, the Bible has something to say about signs and wonders. We looked at this text this morning when the disciples asked Jesus, when is the end of the age? What are the signs of your coming? And Jesus said, watch out that no one deceives you, because he knew that deception would be a big thing at the end of time. And in this same chapter, he says, for false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. So what I haven't told you is that many of these people call themselves prophets. So just as there's schools of supernatural ministry, there's also schools for prophets. So you can learn to be a prophet. And we now have more false prophets on the face of this planet than we've ever had in history. Scripture is being fulfilled in our time, and we need to know many of these leaders are talking with angels, and they take their instructions from angels. And one message I've heard again and again as I sift through some of these accounts is that angels tell these leaders that denominationalism is of the devil. So what's denominationalism is what came out of the Protestant Reformation. It's this idea of churches clustering around shared understandings of truth. That's us Folks, you know, denominations are becoming extinct. But as Adventists, we need to stand, you know, and we need to keep standing by God's grace, because denominations protect the very concept of truth. One last passage of scripture before I move on to something else. 1st Timothy 4. 1. The Spirit clearly says that in latter times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. And again, guys, I think we're there and I'm not saying there won't be miracles in the future. I think there will be and there are genuine miracles that happen in our church right now. The Bible makes it very clear though that in the last days, signs and wonders arise before the second coming and that they're actually, they're actually deceitful ones. So the question I ask is, does the fixation on signs and wonders and dominionism find its way in the music of churches like Bethel Hillsong and Elevation? It certainly does. It certainly does. And I'm not going to unpack that for you as I sometimes do. If you're interested in that, let me know and I'll give you a link on YouTube where I talk more extensively about music. But you know, if you believe that these things were happening, if you believed that, that Christianity is going to flood the world, if you believe that signs and wonders were going to usher that in, wouldn't you sing about it? Of course you'd sing about it. Of course you would write songs and sing about it. And so we need to be careful what we actually borrow from. This is Bill Johnson, he posted this a few years ago, did eventually come down, probably took too much heat for it. But he says music bypasses all of the intellectual barriers. And when the anointing of God is on a song, people will begin to believe things they wouldn't believe through teaching. You know, think back to that model of spirituality that we've been talking about. You know, the experiential circle and the cognitive biblical spirituality. And what he's saying is you can bypass, you can bypass reason and go straight to this experiential stuff through music. Through music. I'm gonna talk to you about one more thing before I wrap up. How am I going? Oh dear, get my skates on. Okay, one more strategy that they've employed, and this one, in true to form cult like manner, they've actually produced their own Bible. It's called the Passion Translation. Anyone heard of the Passion Translation? Yeah, a number of you have heard of the Passion Translation. So here it is. It's very, very cleverly marketed. I've actually came by a copy of looks like a Bible, but it also comes in individual books and it's been around for a few years. This One is the 20th, 2020 I think edition. If you wander into coorong now I live close to a very little coorong, but this is how much shelf space it demands or commands in the Bible section. You can see the NLT there right next to it. So those yellow boxes, that's all a passion. It's very, very popular. It was Translated by a Dr. Brian Simmons. He got his PhD in something other than biblical languages. He actually got his PhD at the Wagner Leaders Institute, that same Wagner that we talked about before Peter Wagner started a university. So if he doesn't have expertise in biblical languages, how did this translation come about? Well, let me share with you in his own words how it actually came about. So he told this story on Sid Roth's it's supernatural. So this is his account. Jesus Christ came into my room. He breathed on me and commissioned me. The breath, the wind of God came upon me. And he spoke to me and said, I, I'm commissioning you to translate the Bible into the translation project that I'm giving you to do. And he promised that he would help me. And he promised that he would give me secrets of the Hebrew language. He breathed on me so that I would do the project. And I felt downloads coming. Instantly I received downloads. It was like I got a chip put inside me, I got a connection inside of me to hear him better, to understand the scriptures better, and hopefully to translate. And then he says, the poetic language of Hebrew and Aramaic release something inside of me. It's divine, it's full of revelation. There's flavor. It's not like thinking with your heart. It's like heart level to heart. It's heart level to heart level, spirit to spirit, deep calling to deep. Think about this model again. You know, it's scary. It's scary. You know, if it's as he says, this Bible is not a new translation. If he got downloads, this is a new revelation. This puts this, this Bible into the same category as the Quran or Book of Mormon. Yeah, I was trying to think of that one. Yeah, yeah. So it's filled with words that are not in the original manuscripts but which are used in the hyper charismatic movement. Words like glory, anointing, manifest, activate, impartation, prophetic, et cetera. Here's a sample. I don't know if you can read that there, but you can see a few words there. Let me just have a look. At it. So you can see the word activate. So faith activates the promise. So this word activated actually comes from this idea that the power resides within you. And all it needs to happen is to for what's within you to be activated already so that you can then deploy power. And it comes from. It actually has occultic influences. If you trace back where this actually comes from, this word of faith, it's occultic. The word count of this Bible compared to a regular translation is something like 50% higher. It's a clear attempt to legitimise the most errant theology circulating in what was formerly Protestant Christianity. That's the big difference with the new Apostolic Reformation. It is not Protestant. They make no claims to be Protestant. This is a new stream in Christianity called Apostolic, and it's recognized by the scholars as not being Protestant and a new stream called apostolic. Now, knowing that this Bible is produced by someone who signed onto Dominionism, I decided a few months ago that I just really wanted to check out what it says about the Judgment and the Second Coming. And so Christian scholars who are not Adventists and are not premillennial like we are, they're concerned about this movement's potential to be militant, to be violent, to be and oppressive because of that post millennial theology that they ascribe to this belief that Christ will not come back until the earth is Christianized. So I went through and I looked at what this translation teaches in terms of judgment and spoiler alert, it's actually pretty concerning. So first I'm going to look at it. This is just the NIV. So this is Matthew 24 again, and this is verses 36 to 41. And we read it in the NIV. But what about that? But about that day or hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah. So it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up until the day Noah entered the ark. And they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That that is how it will be. At the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field. One will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill, and the other one will be taken and the other left. Now the point of this passage is that we don't know when the second coming is going to come, but when Christ comes, people are going to be doing Some pretty ordinary things. So where do the people get taken to when this passage comes true? Where do they go to? They go to heaven, right? The ones that were taken are taken to heaven. And what happens to the ones that are left? Well, other parts of the Bible tell us that they're destroyed by the brightness of Christ's coming. Let's take a look at the tpt, the Passion translation, and we'll just look at the last verse. And this is what it says. At that time, two men will be working on the farm. One will be taken away in judgment, the other left. Two women will be grinding grain. One will be taken away in judgment, the other left. Now, let me ask you, is going to heaven being taken in judgment. They've reworked this to fit with. Or Simmons has reworked this to fit with post millennialism, because in his mind, the ones that are left are the ones that are Christians because they get left here to enjoy the millennium on the earth. And so the ones that are taken away, they're taken away in judgment. Now, who does the judging? Who does the judging? Going to take you to Matthew 13:38. And in the NIV, and he talks about the field is the world. The great seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one. The enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are who? The angels. What does the TPT say? The good seeds I sow are the children of the kingdom realm. Kingdom realm is their way of referring to the coming millennium. The weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest points to the end of the age because it's not the end of the age. Right? It points to the end of the age. And the harvesters are God's messengers. Now, that's an interesting translation right there. And it's true. The word angelus can be translated angels or messengers, but the New Testament almost invariably translates it as angels. So why wouldn't they? There's actually a footnote in the Bible. In the Passion translation, it says this in both Greek and Hebrew. The word angels can also refer to human messengers. So in other words, what they're saying here is, well, you know, the angels are going to come down and destroy these people and then just go back up to heaven. No, no, it's probably going to have to be done by humans. And so they've translated the Bible to actually suit that idea that humans will actually be the ones that execute judgment at this time. Now, I find this a bit concerning. You know, there's certainly these ideas are circulating on the edges of the movement, but there might have to be some sort of sacred purge or whatever in order to deal with the Christians who don't. Don't get with this. The Son of Man will send his human messengers. So this is Matthew 13:41, 42. The son of man will send his human messengers because that's what the footnote told us, right? They can be human and they will uproot everything out of his kingdom, all the lawless ones, and everything that causes sin will be removed and they will throw them into the fiery furnace where they will experience great sorrow and anguish. That's chilling when you read about it with the word messengers in there instead of. Instead of angels. You know, the Bible does actually talk about adding words. Revelation 22:18. As I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of the scroll, if anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And as I look at the beliefs of the fourth wave, I think there's several implications for us as Adventists. You know, there's a spiritual war over the second coming. There's hardly a church that's left on this planet that doesn't believe in either the secret rapture or post millennialism. There's virtually nobody that has the premillennial understanding of the Second coming that Adventists do today. Secondly, you know, sectors of Christianity have been heavily infected with spiritualism, and signs and wonders are believed to usher in a temporal millennium. And lastly, you know, when I look at this, this is what I see. The world is being groomed for a massive spiritual deception. And that onslaught includes the very scriptures themselves. You know, if you can include corrupting scripture as part of the playbook, then what hope have Christians got? And that's what's happened here. But I want to encourage you one thought, and I'm wrapping up now because I've gone over time. While the evil one is heavily invested in deceiving the world, God is just as invested in saving the world. And truth has a role in that. And so do the people who God has entrusted truth to. SPEAKER 1 This message was made available by the Watara Seventh Day Adventist Church. For more resources like this, visit waitarachurch.org. SPEAKER 3 God is the God of the impossible. Gideon was chosen by God to be the deliverer of Israel. And he was tasked with leading the armies of Israel against the Midianites. And in order to even have a chance, Gideon would had to have had a huge army. But we read this in Judges 7:7. Then the Lord said to Gideon, by the 300 men who lapped, I will save you and deliver the Midianites into your hand. Let all the other people go, every man to his place. 300 men against a massive, well armed fighting force. Utterly impossible. Except that God was with them. The same God who brought down the walls of Jericho and opened up the Red Sea would do the impossible again. Which means that God can do the impossible for you. Maybe you're married to someone who doesn't believe and you've come to the place where you realize it's just impossible for you to get through to that person about the love and goodness of God. You might be right. But remember that what's impossible for you is not impossible for God. An important test or exam. Try as you might, you can't get it figured out. But God can help you with this or. Or anything else. In the beginning, God called the world out of nothing. Now, do you know anyone else who could do that? No, you don't. But God is the God of the impossible. A challenge at work, financial difficulties. God is able. Always able. Of course, he doesn't always act in the way we think he should, but that's only because he knows best. So hang on to God. Faith won't let God. God. If a situation looks impossible, that's when God can really step in and let you see how great he is. Against the odds, Gideon led Israel to an amazing victory through God's power. And God can do the same for you. Hold on to God. Today, God is the God of the impossible. SPEAKER 1 It's been a pleasure bringing you this program here on 3 ABN Australia Radio.