The waters of the entire deliverance, inner healing and so-called prophetic movement have been severely muddied.
Much of the church also has a skewed mindset concerning Israel, the rapture and eschatology, in general, as well as a misdefined understanding of love and grace.
The reason for these muddied waters and skewed mindsets on these themes is because of our associations. We have followed false prophets and false teachers.
“Be not deceived.” Jesus warned us repeatedly.
We can’t follow the sensational and the spectacular or the strange doctrines that sometimes surround these weird manifestations. There are a good number of scholarly ministers who, like the Pharisees, can quote Scripture, but few of them really know God. I’d venture to say that quite a number of these so-called prophetic ministers don’t even know the Holy Ghost.
Breaking news, Spirit-filled stories. Subscribe to Charisma on YouTube now!
The late Lester Sumrall, Kenneth E. Hagin and Oral Roberts were not particularly educated men, but they knew God. They each came out of their deathbeds to change their generation. Today many come out of their waterbeds and teach us how to serve mammon. The apostle Paul was educated, yet it was Barnabas, probably uneducated according to history, who brought him from Jerusalem and the Jews to Antioch in order to preserve his future calling to the Gentiles.
Yet it was Paul who penned these words by the Holy Ghost: “And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Cor. 2:4-5).
And again these words: “These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual” (1 Cor. 2:13)
And Paul had little regard for his education.
“But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:7-8).
Remember those who had been with Jesus. They caused the scribes and religious leaders to marvel.
“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13)
The scribes and Pharisees could quote the Scriptures, but Peter and John knew Jesus.
Make it your quest to know Him. You will advance more quickly in God and stay undefiled by muddy waters and strange doctrines that are prevalent today.
There is a greater distinction coming between those who seem to be religious and those who truly know God.
Join Charisma Magazine Online to follow everything the Holy Spirit is doing around the world!
Bert Farias’ books are forerunners to personal holiness, the move of God and the return of the Lord. They also combat the departure from the faith and the turning away from the truth we are seeing in our day. His recent five-book bundle, written under a fresh anointing, is a forerunner of what the Lord is doing in His church today. His newest release, Turning Your Trials Into Gold, is a powerful testimony of how God raised him and his wife, Carolyn, from a sick bed and near death.
