How do you classify this experience?

I want to share something with the group and get your opinion on it. I have had one 'camp' take issue with me on it and I am learning that that camp may be out in left field

2 years ago I was out running. I usually listen go my ipod touch and usually to a podcast. 3/4 of the way through I heard the word 'Seduction' within me and I heard it over my ipod touch. I startled me. I prayed about it and I was led to scripture in reference to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons and there were 2 areas that came to mind during this. The church is being attacked by doctrines of demons and many are being seduced by it. Guard your heart and guard your mind and learn to discern. The other one was about groups outside of the church that have a form of Christianity but are far from it.

What happened after this is that I crossed paths with a couple of podcasts that critique sermons. From it I learned what to look for in sermons and how subtle some things are but I also learned on my own to things to watch out for. 6 months after this happened I was visited by JW's. Hence I think I just saw my last pair this weekend based on how the conversation went. 18 months worth of conversations with 2 groups.

I also found myself jumping to a few other churches because I recognized what I was hearing was not a very good Gospel message. One church was a cross between Rick warren and Joel Osteen. Closer to RIck Warren. Another church...Baptist mega church...said that we had to plead the Blood of Jesus against Satan and take the war to satan. Well. the Blood is how we are forgiven. We don't plead it against Satan like a sword. Also, doesn't the bible say to resist the devil and he must flee? draw near to God and He will draw near to you? The battle is God's. So I Found myself in a confessional Reformed church. I love the preaching but I don't care for everything that is reformed but the message from the pulpit is why I attend.

I have also been helping a friend who is bound up in the Word of Faith movement. He sees it for what it is but his wife doesn't now. She also takes a feminist attitude in that men don't hear from God very well but men do hence women are more 'spiritual'. Danger zone so I have been exhorting him on what things he should do.

Now I ask you........is this a revelation of God to me? How do you discern this according to the bible?

I had a very interesting experience with "seducing spirits and doctrines of devils." A few years back I became so disillusioned with the evangelical church that I threw orthodoxy out the window, embarked on a quest to rediscover the pure apostolic doctrine, and went pretty far afield in my reading and thinking. Heretical ideas would spring into my mind, sometimes in a flash of seeming "inspiration." This happened five or six times. I would develop a new doctrine, start to write it out, but then reject it because it was incompatible with scripture.

Now get this...within the next two years each one of these doctrines popped up in the emergent church movement! They popped up in places where they had not been taught before. New doctrines.

I believe that, because I am a small group Bible teacher, seducing spirits were trying to recruit me to error. What kept me safe was the conviction that the writings of apostles and prophets carry more authority than my own ruminations. Many emergent preachers do not ascribe to that standard, and so...

Another conclusion we can draw from this experience is that strange newdoctrines do not appear haphazardly. They appear at specific times for specific purposes. Lying spirits are not solo operaters, they are foot soldiers in a well-organized army, and everythng they do is part of a grand design.

"Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things." - 1 John 2:18-20 NKJV

Here is my blog which tells the story of this incident.
http://jw-thoughts.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-revelation-voice-of-god-what-happened.html

Quite an intriguing story you have here.

Know what I did? I didn't put it in the blog but I went out and got a book about church history to read how the church grew after the Apostles died but because I don't know much about church history. Cults love to use church history to show that the Gospel was lost and they are restoring it.

Do you think the emergent pastors are doing what they are doing in order to be relevant? I certainly think so. I often wonder if the Nazarene church I attended is going in that direction.

Please share more about your experience. I would like to know even more.

Hi john-

We hear the term "emergent church" tossed around a lot.

I was curious how you personally would define "emergent church" without looking it up on Wikipedia or headhunter websites.

I think emergent church would be defined something to the effect of being more mainstream friendly against the orderly 'old' church of Orthodoxy. Make everything pop culture friendly and that means taking away the message of sin, repentance and redemption of Jesus and redefining it as weakness and probably making church into a kind of self help meeting on Sunday's. This eventually ends in using the bible for what you can get out of it but not promoting it as the Absolute Word of God.

Emergent because it comes out of church and seeks make it 'fan' friendly.

What do you think? I gauge this simply because of what it sounds like against what the Church is about. It only seems logical. I don't know who the pastors are of the Emergent church though.

We could define the emergent church as "hipster church." The pastor dresses casual-chic and has a Mac on the pulpit (I mean podium). The worship team is a rock ensemble with an ear-splitting sound system, fog machine, light show, multimedia extravaganza, dancing ladies, etc. Most importantly, the Message must be intellectually respectable, in-touch and "relevant."

We know from 1 Corinthians 1-2 that if we preach "Christ and Him crucified" we will not be relevant and respectable in the eyes of the world. That is the fatal flaw of the McChurch: if we want to be perceived as hip, educated and culturally with-it, we have to avoid preaching "Christ and Him crucified," "for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing."

Which brings me back to my story. One of the "heretical ideas" I had was to challenge the doctrine of atonement. The usual objections: It is unjust to punish the just for the sins of the unjust...What kind of God requires human sacrifice?...Why can't God just pardon sinners like a president pardons criminals?...etc. I came out of this blasphemous thought-experiment with the conviction that the mystery of salvation is far deeper than I ever imagined; so deep that only the Spirit Himself can reveal it to us. Human reasoning is powerless in the shadow of the Cross.

Well, less than a year later, big-name emergent preachers started denouncing the doctrine of the atonement. They called it "a vile doctrine" and "an obstacle to moving forward."

What a perfect example of the wisdom of man: "Let's subtract the sacrifice of Christ from the gospel so we can make Christianity relevant!"

I should clarify that for the purposes of this discussion I am talking about the very worst elements of the emergent church and am not trying to paint the whole movement with one brush stroke. But this self-consciousness about appearing smart and cool and not-stodgy could be the downfall of the whole movement. We should not care too much about what the world thinks of us.

I find this a worthwhile discussion. I found that I had similar experiences with false doctrine being piped into my mind when I tried to unshackle myself from the dead orthodoxy I was familiar with.

Thank you for fleshing this out.

Now the biggest pentacostal church Aog ,have also become an emergent church ...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=am41xpM3Rps

John: Jesus told us that the Holy Spirit would guide us in all truth and show us things to come (John 16:13). So, I don't think it strange that the Holy Spirit would speak something to your spirit about "seduction", and then follow it up by revealing some things to you...especially if you are truly seeking God and His ways in your life.

A quick note about some denominations and movements. I have floated in and out of several of these movements for a number of years, watching and listening. Here is what I have found. There are those in the WoF movement who are really off and, in my opinion, deceived. However, I have seen the opposite as well. I have seen people in that movement who are solid as a rock and do not see things quite the same as those who are in left field. I think that is true of most denominational movements.

I do believe that we are approaching a pivotal moment in church history. It will be a time when there is a purifying and separation of the true church from the false. The gray will disappear and there will be clearly drawn lines of black and white that emerge. It is not that the false church will not continue to exist nor will they lose their "form of Godlineess", but they will deny the power. The true church will be refined and will come forth being led of and empowered by the Holy Spirit. God will, I believe, reveal to us the error that we are to avoid.

So, I think what you are hearing is from God. It certainly passes the Biblical test in my eyes.

twayneb

I believe I heard from God in this as well. I have some who are trying to tell me God doesn't do that and they are falling in the Calvinist camp but online. I don't get it. Sometimes I think some of those people are die hard in saying that God does not use anything like that to speak to people. There are many times I wonder if they are doing more harm then good but I find the term 'Providence of God' come up alot on this circles. Is that scriptural? The providence of God?

I attend a reformed church solely for the preaching at the moment. They baptize infants but are careful to point out that it does not save them. It only seals them until the day they fulfill that calling of God to be born again.

WOF is very dangerous. I had a friend who passed away after using that theology to believe herself healed. She died of cancer.

I have also seen them used leavened bread for communion. Some of them have told it is not a big deal but in reality, shouldn't it be?

I think in these days there is a mass delusion with Christians in America that is happening. Praying for revival will not come to pass in the sense of American repenting. It is obvious to me that America is being given up by God to sin all she wants. It is the Christians responsible to seek God and preach the Gospel despite the cost of that. It is a part of taking up the cross. A deep delusion is that homosexuals are born that way and it is no sin as a result and in some instances it seems as if it is a part of their natural lives but therein is the delusion. Is God's Word true? Then homosexuality is sin.

We must love people and call people to repent but we must also not react harshly to those who respond harshly to us all the time. It serves only to provoke us and cause us to strive in the flesh and forget the Spirit of God within us. It is satan seeking to slap us into the flesh in order to cause those who need Jesus to laugh at us and push us off into the distance while they fall off a cliff.

There are so many false doctrines and wildfire movements today that it is tempting to get paranoid and lock ourselves away in a fortress of orthodoxy and fire arrows at everyone who comes within bowshot. There are (at a rough estimate) 800,000,000 discernment websites which label anyone who claims a living relationship with God "a Gnostic" and insist that God only speaks thru the scriptures (an unscriptural proposition, to say the least!). So there are two perils: one is to fall prey to deceiving spirits; the other is to lock down in a dead orthodoxy to escape deception!

The only safe course is to be taught by the Spirit of truth Himself (John 16:13; 1 John 2:27). We recognize deception by being acquainted with truth; we recognize counterfeits by knowing the real.