DISTRUSTING MIRACULOUS CLAIMS

 

 

I believe in miracles. I have experienced many, but can we allow ourselves to be influenced by the miraculous claims of the Word of Faith (WoF) and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movements, and should we allow their claims to influence our beliefs? Certainly not! There are demonic miracles and the power of suggestion. Also, an unbiblical understanding of the Scriptures encourages false reports about miracles. The WoF ministers believe that their words have the power to bring about miracles. Therefore, they might falsely claim that they have already been healed, convinced that their false claims will bring about a miracle. Consequently, Joel Osteen had taught:

 

·       It's not enough to just think it, something happens when we speak. You have to prophesy your future. You can personalize yours. But let me give you some generic things that should be on your decree. I am strong. I am healthy. I am in shape. I weigh what I'm supposed to weigh. I am full of energy. I am passionate. I am talented. I am secure. I am valuable. I am confident. I have a good personality. People like me. I am fun to be around. I am happy. I enjoy my life. I am a person of excellence. I am full of integrity. I am successful. I am prosperous. My future is bright. My children are mighty in the land. My legacy will live on to inspire future generations. I run with purpose in every step. I am blessed. I am victorious. https://sermons.love/joel-osteen/81-joel-osteen-your-words-become-your-reality.html

 

According to WoF Minister Osteen, it doesn’t matter if these affirmations are true. Instead, such affirmations will make these claims true:

 

·       “Our words are vital in bringing our dreams to pass. It’s not enough to simply see it by faith or in your imagination. You have to begin speaking words of faith over your life. Your words have enormous creative power. The moment you speak something out, you give birth to it.”  “Just look in the mirror and say ‘I am strong, I am healthy. I’m rising to new levels, I’m excited about my future.’ When you say that, it may not be true. You may not be very healthy today, or maybe you don’t have a lot of things to look forward to, but Scripture tells us in Romans we have to call the things that are not as if they already were.” (Christian Research Journal (CRJ), Hunter)

 

Scripture never gives us the license to play fast-and-loose with the truth. All truth is God’s truth. It belongs to Him, and we are not at liberty to tamper with it. He tells us that He requires truth in the depths of our being:

 

·       Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. (Psalm 51:6)

 

We must speak and think accurately about ourselves:

 

·       For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment... (Romans 12:3)

 

Our Lord wants us to reside in the light. Using our tongues to distort the truth is simply not part of His program. Telling others that we don’t have cancer, when we do, is a refusal to walk in His light. It will also bring disrepute upon the church! Even pious lying will destroy friendship and fellowship if we cannot trust what our brother is telling us! Besides, it coerces everyone to wear this mask of piety.

 

Instead, our tongues must be servants of the light – the truth of God. Therefore, they must always speak the truth, as James had instructed:

 

·       Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that." But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16)

 

When we use our tongues in a presumptuous manner by claiming that we will get rich through trading or that we will obtain a certain blessing that is not Scripturally guaranteed, we speak evil and “boast in arrogance.” What we say must always conform to the truth. According to James, we are a mere “vapor.” Therefore, we are in no position to make arrogant claims about the future, as one NAR minister had declared: “No one will leave this crusade unchanged!”

 

Osteen and other Word of Faith (WoF) preachers claim that Romans 4:17 gives us the authority to speak things into existence as God had done:

 

·       God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.

 

Indeed, God has the power to speak things into existence. However, there is nothing in this verse to suggest that we are endowed with such power. Instead, James claims that we are as insubstantial as mist. Prosperity preachers also resort to Proverbs 18:21 to prove that we have been given this power:

 

·       The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

 

However, this verse falls far short of affirming that our tongues have the supernatural power to call things into existence. Yes, the tongue does have “the power of life and death,” but this is a psychological, interpersonal power. Our words can build people up or tear them down. We should instruct others in the way of truth not the way of deceit.

 

THE LIGHT, SELF-DECEIT, AND THE CONDEMNATION

 

 

She told the group, “God is love. He is also omnipotent. To send any of his children to eternal hell, when he could have done otherwise, is eternal cruelty...Jesus is the ultimate love. The idea that he will condemn anyone goes against everything he taught.”

Does it? Jesus taught a parable about a rich man who refused to give the poor and sickly Lazarus even the crumbs from his table. Even the dogs treated him better. They at least licked his open sores.

Both died. Lazarus was escorted to a place of comfort, beside Abraham. The rich man found himself in a place of torment - Hades - where he cried out:

• “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.” (Luke 16:24)

He cried for mercy. However, he didn’t ask to be forgiven or to be reconciled to God so that he too would live in a place of joy. He didn’t even pray to God. God seemed to have no place in his thinking. Instead, he was primarily interested in just a little bit of comfort.

This is reminiscent of the reaction of those who will be excluded from the Kingdom:

• “In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out.” (Luke 13:28)

According to Jesus, their suffering wouldn’t be the product of God’s proactive moves to torture them, but their eternal loss of privilege and the blessings of the Kingdom. But how and why did they lose this Kingdom?

The Luke 16 passage helps us to understand this. It seems that their loss is a matter of choice—self-condemnation. The condemned will get the very thing that they have chosen - a comfortable dwelling place in the darkness away from the scrutiny of the Light

• “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”(John 3:18-20)

How are they already condemned? According to Jesus, they are self-condemned by their refusal to come into the Light to confess their sins. The rich man also seems to have been unwilling to examine himself and confess. Even in Hades, he seems unwilling to surrender his inflated superior status. In two instances, he requested that Abraham send the lowly Lazarus to do his bidding, as if Lazarus would be eternally beneath him. Therefore, Abraham chided him about his obvious guilt so that he might confess and find mercy:

• “But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.’” (Luke 16:25)

It wasn’t that suffering had entitled Lazarus or that the rich man’s comfort and riches had dis-entitled him. After all, Abraham had also been a wealthy man, but he trusted in the Lord and came into His Light.

Instead, confession and repentance weren’t his thing. Perhaps, the invitation might pertain more to his brothers, who might have had something to confess:

• “And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him [Lazarus] to my father's house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' But Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'" (Luke 16:27-31)

The rich man recognized that his brothers needed to repent. In Jesus’ parable, Abraham answered that a lack of evidence wasn’t the problem. They already had the self-authenticating Hebrew Scriptures. Instead, the problem was an aversion to the Light and a love of the darkness. Their love of the darkness also would condemn them.

We cannot blame the Savior for our condemnation. We chose it for ourselves. Jesus had cried over His people:

• “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37)
  

The self-condemned are unwilling to abide in the Light of truth. The darkness of self-deceit is more comforting, even in a place of torment, than the scrutiny of the Savior. Scripture testifies that the fault is not God’s but ours.

 

TRUTH—THE LIGHT OF LIFE

 

 

What we think and believe is of great importance. It serves as the foundation for all else—our attitudes, relationship ships, goals, decisions, and actions.

 

To use an extreme example—If you believe that your mailman wants you dead, it will affect everything else. If instead you believe that he truly cares about you, this will have the opposite effect. Likewise, if I discovered that my wife had married me because I reminded her of her first flame, this would crush me and our relationship. Why? We all want to be loved for who we are rather than a fantasy.

 

God also cares about what we believe about Him. Jesus and Samaritan women were discussing religion. She had been convinced that the differences among religions were minor. They differed merely in a matter of geography—the places of worship. However, Jesus corrected her:

 

·       Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:21-24)

 

Worship and a relationship with God had to be based upon truth, according to the revelations given to the Jews, and upon the nature of God rather than what we wanted God to be. Instead, He must be loved for who He is.

 

However, according to Jesus, ordinarily, we are more concerned about the opinions of people than those of God:

 

·       “How can you believe [correctly], when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44)

 

We will never find stability when it depends on the validation and approval that comes from man. Instead, this pursuit will become a never-satisfied, life-controlling addiction to finding love and approval in all the wrong places.

 

Instead, we must seek the validation that only can come from the Creator. This is to build our foundation on bedrock. Without a solid foundation, the house we build upon it cannot be solid:

 

·       “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:24-27)

 

Our lives must be built upon the bedrock of truth. Everything we do requires truth, whether it is the truth about maintaining a roof, car, or a relationship, especially our enduring relationship with God.

 

Ours is not primarily a performance-based relationship, but one based upon trusting a God who loves us so that He died for us, even though we had hated Him (Romans 5:8-10). Consequently, we are safe in Him:

 

·       “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:28)

 

Jesus has promised us the very things we must believe to have peace and freedom. Why peace?

 

·       When we fail and our conscience convicts us, we find complete forgiveness in Him.

·       We belong to Him and are beloved above anything we can imagine (Ephesians 3:19).

·       We can trust in Him and are perfectly safe in the One who has become our Master and Shepherd.

·       Even if we are martyred, we go to be with Him for all eternity!

 

Why freedom?

·       We are no longer guilt- or accomplishment-driven.

·       Knowing we are beloved, we don’t need to be affirmed by others.

·       We are convinced that we have the truth and have a meaning and purpose in serving our Creator and Redeemer.

·       We have been enabled to courageously live according to the dictates of our conscience and not against them.

Without these truths, the oppressive, contradictory, and changing opinions of man fill the vacuum.