Hold Fast
To Sound Doctrine
by Kathleen Morgan
I want to start this article with a video. I found this video this morning and I thank God that this man has articulated such a concise and sound message. Please watch….
I found this advertisement for a Bethel seminar:
"The School's sessions involve teaching, impartation and activation of the healing gifts where participants will grow in understanding of how to carry the anointing and create an atmosphere of faith. Joaquin preaches and teaches at many churches both here and abroad, releasing and imparting Bethel’s culture of Revival. He has a heart for missions and leads teams around the world that see God move in miracles, signs and wonders. Joaquin’s desire is to see God displayed in love and power and to see His Bride developed, so that Jesus gets His full reward."
“SO THAT JESUS GETS HIS FULL REWARD” What kind of a statement is that?
This new revelation and the impartations for the “Church Today” bypass the depth of knowledge gained through the exhortations of the Apostle Paul. Paul’s vision from God, his life experience and the exhortations to the church through his personal letters are the sound guides for Christianity.
Bill Johnson, through his “revelations” is changing the Christian message...
Bill and those who follow the Global Revival are methodically conditioning new believers as well as long time Christians with their new message. They are creating an organization, not a Christian Church. They preach a new message along with a new process by which the church can acquire the “power of God”. If you follow their theory and embrace their lessons, you will receive an impartation.
The idea is that this will empower you with the skill to practice the power of prophecy and healings and to help heaven invade the earth!
Those who are a part of this "perfect plan" will supposedly allow the Body of Christ to be realized on earth. This is a practical and applied knowledge to one's actions upon the world in order to transform it. It has meaning in political, educational, and spiritual realms. A "heavenly invasion" along with its supernatural signs and wonders is what Bill Johnson and his followers and colleagues expect and promote. Awe-inspiring wonders like the gold, feathers, oil, and wind are considered to be angelic signs of God's impartations...
This is not a concept found within the scriptures of the Holy Bible. This is a revelation that has been given to these Global Revival leaders. But by whom or what?
How can anyone read the Bible and embrace the Scriptures about power and signs and wonders and ignore the heartfelt warnings about wolves in sheep’s clothing who constantly preach a "new" experience, all the while insisting they are preaching the old Gospel of Jesus?
Let me say this about this next video…I’ll say it three times, false, False, FALSE!
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"Who among you is wise and understanding?" James 3:13
I believe that the Christians who are preaching and supporting the new “Global revival” would agree with the following statement:
Wisdom is always taste -- in both Latin and Hebrew, the word for wisdom comes from the word for taste -- so it's something to taste, not something to theorize about. "Taste and see that God is good," the psalm says; and that's wisdom: tasting life. No one can do it for us. It is about tasting and trusting experience, before institution or dogma.
According to Strong's Hebrew dictionary, the Hebrew word, ta‛am, is; properly a taste, that is, (figuratively) perception; by implication intelligence; transitively a mandate: - advice, behavior, decree, discretion, judgment, reason, taste, understanding.
That being said, whom do you trust? Do you trust a new revelation, one that has a very different flavor than the one found in scripture?
I trust the taste or wisdom which is found within the pages of the Holy Bible. The wisdom which was expressed through Christ himself and the life of the Apostle Paul. Paul laid the foundation for Christian life through his example.
Paul was uniquely qualified for the task he was given by God. He knew the history of the Jewish people; he was one of them. He knew their suffering as well as their self pride and stiff-necked nature. Before his conversion, he knew the word and laws of God and was regarded as the most qualified of all the Jews. He was Saul, superior in everyway!
What changed Paul was the grace of God. Paul knew the law; it was written in his mind. When he was given the revelation from God that salvation had come not only to the Jew, but to the Gentile, he understood that all have sinned, Jew and Gentile alike. As a man he could no longer look at himself as superior to any man, not even a Gentile. He now understood through God’s Spirit, that God had so loved the world that he himself had come into the world in the form of a man, Jesus Christ. He understood that the world had hated and rejected Christ and crucified him. He understood that God himself had borne our sins in his body on the cross and had become the sacrifice for the sins of all people.
Paul exhorted all who preach this message of salvation to guard it. He warned against those who would come along with another message. He preached the good news of salvation to the Gentiles. He preached Christ crucified, many abandoned him, and he said many even abandoned the faith altogether, because the task was too hard for them and the sacrifice too great. Just as Jesus was rejected, so was Paul.
His message to the lost was that salvation had come to them through Christ, and his message to the Church was to guard this message. His life was a constant battle against those who would pervert the pure gospel message. 1 Thess 5:21 he wrote, ”But examine everything, holdfast to that which is good.”
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The Asbury revival
Following is an interesting account of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I believe this to be authentic. The flavor of this matches what I believe the Bible teaches. The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin and the message of salvation is received through faith by those who are called by God. The Asbury Revival is in sharp contrast to Bill Johnson’s “Culture of Revival.”
At Asbury, the emphasis was not on the gifts of the Holy Spirit but on cleansing from sin. Relying on signs and wonders to denote one as a child of God misses the point of what Jesus came to do. Jesus came as our sin-bearer that we might be set free from its bondage. Hallelujah!
Read (and watch) previous articles by Kathleen Morgan on this subject:
When Bethel invades your church!
The global revival is here whether we like it or not!
