I actually think it can be both literal and figurative here — as someone who does say “let’s follow a false god” would be a false prophet. It will probably be a little more subtle than that, but I do think it’s possible for it to be literal, too. (Like someone might say, “I heard about this great healing service done by pagans, let’s see if we can get healed there.) (Or, there is power in wicca — maybe we should follow that religion, too, and be Christian witches….)

Or even something like, “you know…..at my church people get healed all the time, there are a lot of prophecies that come true, and God’s moving in a mighty way here. People see angels, there is gold dust, gems, gold teeth, people get drunk, and we also hear great testimonies of what God is doing. Our pastors don’t even have to preach from the Bible anymore or really give sermons. God just shows up and people love it.”

A discerning individual would know that none of these gods are the real God. The last example would be the most subtle, as it sounds Christian on the surface, but the doctrine is unsound, so it isn’t our God that is being promoted.

And yes, there are also also false gods like power and money and so forth that these false teachers preach.

And, yeah, divination under any name is still divination. “Reading” tattoos and whatnot….that is still divination. People in these hyper-charismatic churches think it is okay because the people there talk about God and use the name Jesus and whatever….deception.

While I do believe that God sometimes does warn people about the future, or might give someone a word — the purpose of these things is different from what goes on in hyper-charsmatic churches, and I think these things occur a lot less frequently than those in these churches would like.

Some of the problem is that people want God to be always “doing” something that they can see. So some of it could be attributed to reading things that aren’t there, but in those cases, it still serves Satan. It still takes people’s eyes off of God and the real gospel, and puts it on signs and wonders and power and excitement and whatever. In that kind of environment, Satan could introduce the demonic readily, because people want to see stuff happen.

There seems to be this expectation that if we pray for healing, then we are saying that God HAS to do something, and then when that person doesn’t get better, or dies, then it hurts people’s faith in God. They can become disillusioned. All of these things also serve Satan. People get confused, and just try all the harder to see signs and wonders and miracles happen. It’s almost like that is what some of these individuals live for.

When I left the Vineyard in my hometown, one of the comments that someone had made to me went something like this, “Without the stuff from Bethel, things aren’t happening here. At Bethel they do. People get healed all the time, there are all kinds of signs and wonders. We’re going to have to get what they have there, because they have it.”

It’s this idea that we need more, that we need to see more, that we need to experience more…..sigh…..and to think that the only place to “get it” is from “power stations” like Bethel and whatever.

Many who are hungry for power don’t seem to care about doctrine. All the seem to care about is results. They want spiritual experiences and they want to see God doing things. They want to feel all caught up in something.

A church doesn’t even have to be Word Of Faith to get wrapped up in all this. I think a person slowly moves in the WOF direction by listening to the most popular hyper-charismatic teachers — but just thinking that God has to do what we pray because we ask, or expecting power to happen because we are Christians, etc…all of that gets people into trouble.

When people become obsessed with this stuff then they are already under deception. Any sign or wonder or prophetic word that seems to suggest that God is “doing something” puts people in more and more bondage. It all serve Satan’s scheme. People are so thirsty for something to happen that they will tolerate many “words” that don’t come true just to find the one that seems to. Then they call that person a prophet of God, and someone to be respected.

But prophecy isn’t only about speaking words that come true. Prophecy also involves just speaking God’s truth, which includes convicting words — things that point people back to God. But it seems that these hyper-charismatics generally ignore that part of prophecy, as they are so wrapped up in divination and reading signs and visions and things…..and they don’t even realize that they are the very definition of a false prophet.

11 If a liar and deceiver comes and says,
‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,’
that would be just the prophet for this people!

Here is an excerpt of Sandy Simpson’s comments on Hagin’s death:

…Notice that it propagates the old story of Hagin being healed of a “deformed heart” and blood disease, yet he died in a “cardiac intensive care unit” where he stuggled for life from 9/14 to 9/23/2003. If he had been truly healed of heart problems, why did he die of them? Does God take back divine healing? The fact is these false healers who claim to have a special healing anointings and such an abundance of faith that they can heal multitudes always run to the emergency room of the local hospital the minute they get sick…

http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/hagandies.html

This is where the health and wealth gospel falls into logical fallacy: If one believes in the “all with enough faith will be healed” then it should follow that there’d be individuals well over 100 years old in excellent health, who should continue and not actually ever die. Even if they should die, they should be “healed” from death.

I know a woman who was “healed” by a Word-of-Faith pastor a few years back. This woman was able to successfully stop taking medication for a very serious illness. Her story was held up in the church as the glowing example of the results of “positive confession” and “faith”. Flash forward a couple of years…she is dead. I don’t know the details, but I know that she has died at a very young age. You won’t EVER hear that part of the story in that church. Where is this long life that they promised her if she would only have faith? Where was her health and wealth? What happened to her healing? Did she not have strong enough faith, so the healing didn’t stick…even though they taught her that it was God’s will for her life?

God is Sovereign. Period. It is in His Hands and He will used it for His purpose. I often do not understand these things, but I trust that He has it in His Hands. Do we love Him with all our heart and soul? Then we love His Word with the same passion and commitment, and we will make every effort to continue in His teachings and mature in Him.

I believe that Kenneth Hagin died in a cardiac intensive care unit in his early 80′s. William Branham died in his mid-60s after lingering for days with injuries suffered in a car wreck. You can make a very long list of false teachers and their bad fruit/misfortunes/untimely deaths. And yet people keep following them. When I was in the Word-of-Faith church, they loved to share the story of Hagin’s great healing as a young man (from a diseased heart). They NEVER share with you the story of where or how he died. It doesn’t fit the narrative, does it?

Jesus Christ is the Word of God made flesh. If a person does not hold fast to the very Words of God, love those Words, and seek to obey them; they do not love Him….

God made it simple, so the least of us could grasp it (and $79 to learn how to do a “prophetic reading” of a tattoo isn’t even close).

13 If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a sign or wonder, 2 and if the sign or wonder spoken of takes place, and the prophet says, “Let us follow other gods” (gods you have not known) “and let us worship them,” 3 you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The Lord your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 It is the Lord your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. [NIV]

Here we mustn’t think that these guys will literally state, “Let’s follow other gods”; this is an example of figurative language.

Well, we know differently. Of course some of these guys also peddle around false prophecy, claiming they knew something only after the fact. Unless they give their “word” before, we don’t know which it is. Both are equally deceptive — one comes directly from demons, and the other is human deception.

I live in Ohio…and I don’t want anything big happening in the hyper-charismatic movement. This very well could be just a false prophecy, and nothing happens. However, if it’s a demonic prophecy, then that will mean that a lot of prayer will be needed. Anytime anything “big” happens with hyper-charismatics, deception always follows.

I should point out that predicting the future isn’t always something done by the power of the Holy Spirit. I may have shared this story before — but during my freshmen year in college several students who were into wicca “knew” something would happen right before 9/11, and they didn’t just say this after the event. Rather, it was before…these individuals were terrified of what would happen on Tuesday (and this was several days before 9/11). I remember the conversation that I had with them well because of how scared these girls were. They didn’t know what it would be, but they just kept on saying something bad would happen.

I’m of the opinion that the only way they were able to “know” about this was because demons had planned it, and demons revealed that something bad would happen in order to make them scared, and even more scared when something bad DID happen.

http://www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word.html?ID=12149

Maybe the next conference will be “One New Green Man”…..