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This website has been developed to help you understand the Word of God, the Holy Bible. We believe that the Word of God holds the keys to a peaceful, fruitful, joyful life. Jesus said that the "truth shall make you free." As you walk with Jesus and learn what the Word of God teaches you will find a new found freedom in your life.

Some of the teachings on this website may be unlike any you have ever heard. Let me encourage you to keep an open mind and also to search out what is being taught here to see if it lines up with the Bible or not. If you have problems with any of the lessons and don't agree. Send me scriptures and we can discuss your differences. Many of the lessons contained in this website will step on the toes of traditional Christianity. Jesus said that the "tradition of man makes the commandment of God of no effect." It is time to get rid of tradition and believe what the Word of God really says!

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Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you. 1 Timothy 4:16

 

A Fine Line

In the four churches I pastored, I found it extremely difficult to talk about giving. People in my churches, especially the first two gave more than they could afford to give and our little church still barely made ends meet. We had a huge mortgage on the church building and bless his heart, the man that the previous pastor had bought the church from, was more than gracious in trying to make our payments affordable. Unfortunately, the pastor before me had run up a lot of debt. He felt like all of his sermons should be recorded and he left a huge debt to the company from which they bought their cassette tapes. He hired a local firm to install the heater and air conditioning unit and hadn’t paid them a dime. He bought a grand piano even though no one in the church played piano. There were numerous other things like this also. Not only did that pastor get the church into financial trouble, he also had an affair with a married woman in the church and beat his wife up and left her for dead when he decided to leave the church and the town of Lamar, Colorado. About thirty people tried to hang on to the church even though they were left with several thousand dollars of debt. The previous pastor was ordained through a large group out of Tulsa. The leader of this group was a well known minister. Before the first pastor left, he tried to find a way out of the financial mess he had made and the leader from Tulsa flew out and went with the pastor to the local banks to borrow enough money to pay off their debt. Of course, the banks said, “No!” It is a good thing they did or the pastor would have left with that much extra money in his pocket.

I almost can’t bear to watch TV preachers because most of them have one message and that is, if you give your money to them, all of your needs will be met. I could tell you of dozens of ministers like that, which have fallen from grace; Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Marvin Gorman, Larry Leigh, Bob Tilton and the list goes on and on. Last week, Richard Roberts, the son of evangelist Oral Roberts was arrested for speeding and driving under the influence. A.A. Allen, noted as one of the greatest faith healers to ever live was found dead in a motel room and his autopsy showed that he died of cirrhosis of the liver from too much drinking. Benny Hinn sold his church in Orlando, Florida before moving to California. Churches aren’t supposed to be sold. The church is not a business but in some of these crooked people’s minds, they are.

Even though I found it hard to teach on giving, there is a very solid Biblical basis to giving. A lot of Christians think the “prosperity message” is wrong. They refer to it as “blab it and grab it” or “name it and claim it”. I can show you several scriptures that tell us, as Christians, that we should give and if we do, we will be blessed. Let’s look at a few:

Malachi 3:8-12
 8 “Will a man [m]rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed You?’ In tithes and [n]offerings. 9 You are cursed with a curse, for you are [o]robbing Me, the whole nation of you! 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be [p]food in My house, and test Me now in this,” says the LORD of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until [q]it overflows. 11 Then I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not [r]destroy the fruits of the ground; nor will your vine in the field cast its grapes,” says the LORD of hosts. 12 “All the nations will call you blessed, for you shall be a delightful land,” says the LORD of hosts.

Luke 6:38
"Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure-- pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return."

Matthew 19:29
And everyone that has forsaken houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

I have a cousin who has been in the ministry for thirty plus years and he asked me once if I believed in the prosperity doctrine. I really didn’t know how to answer him but I said no, because I don’t believe it, the way he thinks.

I do, however, believe that believers will prosper.

3 John 1:2
Beloved, I pray that in all things thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

What has happened is some preachers like Kenneth Copeland have said if you give $10 today, you will have $100 or maybe even $1000 tomorrow. If God tells you to give $10 today, then you should do that and you have a right to expect God to bless that $10. If you give your tithe, in accordance to the command in the Bible, you can expect God to open up the windows of Heaven and pour you out such a blessing you can’t contain it! But, where should that tithe go? It should go to the storehouse, where you are being fed. If you are being fed at a local church, you should give to that local church. It really is God’s plan that you belong to and get involved in a local church.

With people ordering so many goods off of the Internet, we are seeing a rash of businesses close. They simply don’t have the business they once had and can’t make ends meet. Where will we go when we need something in a pinch when all the local stores are closed? If you are supporting a TV ministry and not a local church, where will you go when you need a pastor or the fellowship of a local congregation? I can promise you that Jimmy Swaggart is not going to fly to your town to perform your wedding or to perform your funeral ceremony.

For years, I have heard the story of Marjoe Gortner. Marjoe was billed as the “world’s youngest ordained minister” when he was four years old. His parents made him spend hours memorizing sermons and scriptures and teaching him how to move on stage. Through all of this, according to Marjoe, his family made more than $3 million dollars before he was in high school. He admits that he never even believed in God but when you see film of him preaching, he preached all the right things. He knew exactly what to say and how to say it to convince people to give their money to him. You’d better believe that still goes on today. Even after serving time in prison for defrauding people out of their money, Jim Bakker is right back on the airwaves and is taking people’s money again. He has been selling a silver solution that is “guaranteed” to heal anything that is wrong with you and now he is selling dried food for the “coming apocalypse”.

Matthew 6:34
Be not therefore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Bob Tilton has been back on television claiming that if people will send him money, all of their needs will be met! He even speaks in tongues and prophesies on those shows just like he did on his old TV show. Most people don’t know his shows are recorded and the phones ringing in the background are all fake.

I’m going to say something here that I don’t mean to sound mean but it is very true. Many Christians are dumb. They are tricked into so many things just because someone “comes in the name of Jesus”.

Luke 16:8
And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.

Allow me to use Benny Hinn as an example. Benny will only have meetings in huge auditoriums. Have you ever seen him have an evangelical meeting in a small church or in a small place where, say, only one hundred people will show up? No, and you won’t ever because there isn’t enough money to be made in those small meetings. Have you ever seen Benny go to a hospital and use his gift of healing to clean out a hospital? No, and you won’t see it because Benny doesn’t have such a gift. When Benny holds a meeting, it is larger cities, in very large facilities that usually hold tens of thousands of people. What kind of people go to a Benny Hinn meeting? Is it unbelievers or is it believers? It is probably a mix but I can guarantee you that mix is made up of a majority of believers. Why do those believers go to Hinn’s meetings? They want to “see the Holy Spirit move”!

Matthew 16:4
An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of Jonah. And he left them, and departed.

So many Christians are looking for something spectacular. Let me share with you one of the wisest things I’ve ever heard, “The supernatural is not always spectacular!” Read that again and again and again until you get it! Once, Smith Wigglesworth was traveling by train and the train had a layover in a certain English city. Wigglesworth decided to find a local church and attend services since he had time to do so before catching his next train. Wigglesworth walked into a church and had a seat. No one was on the platform and everyone sat very quietly. After several minutes, Wigglesworth asked the man next to him what was going on. The man explained that in their denomination, they didn’t have a designated person to preach but would rather, wait on the Holy Spirit to move on someone and they would go forward and preach. Wigglesworth, upon hearing this, jumped right up and went to the pulpit and preached and there were a few people who got saved. Wigglesworth later explained that you don’t have to wait on the Holy Spirit to move, He is already moving!

So, when believers go to Hinn’s rallies, they are there to see the spectacular. Hinn always hires the very best musicians and singers for his rallies. He knows the power of music in swaying people. As the music goes on and on, it rises in pitch and in beat and then it slows down, all of this is just a mass hypnotism. That may shock some of you but you have to understand what hypnotism really is. When someone is hypnotized, they are not put into a trance or anything like it. They are under the power of suggestion because they allow themselves to be under that power. If a person does not want to be hypnotized, not even the best hypnotist in the world can hypnotize them. Watch any hypnotist that puts on shows at comedy clubs or night clubs, they always start out by having everyone in the audience do something. That hypnotist watches to see who is subject to this power of subjection. After he runs his tests, he will invite those that easily suggestible to the stage and then the hilarity ensues.  Benny Hinn is no different. At the end of his shows, he has a healing line. He has people on his staff that watch for those that seem to be “touched by the Holy Spirit” or those that say they were healed. Those people are immediately brought on stage to tell their story. Then Benny does his “supernatural” things like blowing on those people or waving at them and then they fall down. It is a fact that when people are put in a spotlight, they won’t say anything that will embarrass the person that put them in that spotlight. Let me give you another example of what I mean by that. W.V. Grant, Jr., is another TV preacher that has done time in prison and is known to be a con man. One of his favorite tricks in his meetings was to see a person in a pew with a cane. Grant would run over to the person with the cane and grab the person next to the person with the cane and grab the cane too. He would shake the cane in the air, declaring that the person had just been healed. Many times, he would throw the cane to the front of the auditorium and have that person, who was already well, run around the auditorium. It just never happens that the person that had the cane would say anything or the person that Grant had stand up and run around would say anything either.

Some television news shows like 20/20 and Prime Time Live did stories on Hinn. They asked him if they could follow his ministry for one year and he agreed. They showed thousands of purported miracles during that year. After the year was over, they asked Hinn if he would give them a list of people’s names and their contact information that had been healed in his meetings. Several months later, Hinn’s association sent the producers a list of eight people. They tried to contact those eight people. Seven of them had died of their sickness within a month of two of the meeting they attended and the one that had lived said he had been healed of back trouble. He was still having the back trouble but he believed he was healed regardless of the facts.

Let me be very honest, I believe God still heals today. I’ve seen it. I’ve even been miraculously healed. BUT, I’ve seen people not get healed too. Oral Roberts, who used to hold massive meetings in tents in the 1940’s and 1950’s, used to pray for the sick, hundreds every night. He once said, “I have probably seen more people get healed than any man on the face of the earth but, I’ve probably seen more people not get healed than any man on earth.” I like that Roberts was honest. After all, we can’t heal anyone, that is all God’s business.

So there is a fine line between what is true and scriptural and what is a hoax. Jesus said we would know these people by their fruits. I’ve always been a proponent of ministers making a good living but just how good of a living are they living? What is their life like outside of what they look like on stage? The Bible says we are to know those who labor among us.

1 Thessalonians 5:12
But we beseech you, brethren, to know them that labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you;

How can you possibly know someone who preaches on TV and lives hundreds, maybe thousands of miles from you? I even wonder how we can know our pastors in the world’s mega churches.

Let me also ask, what is it you are seeking? Are you seeking the supernatural? Satan can give you all the supernatural you want. Are you seeking God’s Word or are you seeking some kind of sign or some kind of miraculous thing? Let me encourage you to stay in the Word. We are in the last days and we are told that these things are going to get worse and become more frequent in these last days, even to the point that even the “very elect” will be deceived if possible. Don’t be deceived, listen to the Holy Spirit, let him guide you with spiritual discernment.

 

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