Doctrinetalk.com

Below is an article written by Cameron.  He was an intern a few years ago and asked me to post this letter that talks about his conclusions of Generation Interns.  I would love it if current or past interns would post their opinions on the article in the comments section.

I have never been an intern at the City Church, but I am married to one.  I think I speak for Cameron, but our goal is not that the leaders at The City Church are slandered, harmed, or evil spoken of.  We just earnestly desire that God be exalted and to see Him worshiped in Spirit and Truth.

<Cameron’s Article>

I want to give an objective critique of the The City Church’s internship program known as Generation Interns. My remarks are not personal. I have nothing personal or bad to say about anybody. On the contrary, I have only great things to say about TCC pastors and teachers. They have poured blood, sweat, and tears into seeing me, along with others, mature into better Christians. In fact, from 2003-2004 Interns did help me in many ways. Yet, the ways in which it didn’t help me, I believe it should have. James 3:1-2 says “Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways.” My goal is to hold the Intern leaders up to the standard of Scripture. This is for the sake of edification and truth in love.

Continue Reading »

Judah was on the TBN “Praise the Lord” show from TBN with Pastor Steve Munsey as the host at 7:00 PM PST.  I found a few  clip of Steve Munsey on You Tube in the fall “Praise-A-Thon” for TBN promising people if the give $$$ to TBN all their problems will be solved.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9QKYmxYcrGg
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NuydWziggVM&feature=related

The scripture is very clear about these teachers, and the compiler of the first video puts some of the scriptures on the screen as he preaches.  It sickens me because they prey on those who are broke, and become wealthy off of their giving with outlandish and unbiblical promises.

I hear the argument that the city church preaches a “balanced” view of prosperity, but they keep the company of the people who cause people to speak evil of the way of truth.   All you have to do is turn on the TBN “praise-a-thon” to see the length they will go to twist scripture for money.

As for pastor Judah, it was pretty cool seeing him up there talking about his new book “Dating Delilah”.  Even though I disagree with him on the teachings of the city church, I have always liked Judah.  If only he could take his speaking skills and passion and be taught by good biblical teachers who are not hyper-faith and hyper-prosperity he could make great gains for Christ.  I often wonder how one could come out of a cloud of such teaching when so much of your life is invested in a specific false teaching.

My neice was watching with me, who is unsaved.  She made the comment that Judah seemed sincere and passionate.  I agree.  But I asked her if the suicide bombers who blow themselves up are sincere and passionate.  I think she got my point.

It reminded me of a time I was witnessing on the streets when I met a girl who said she was a Christian, so I shared the gospel with her anyway.  After I was done, I asked her if she had ever heard the gospel before, and she said no.  I then asked her if she still thought she had been born again, but she said no.  I asked her where she went to church, she said Generation Church in the University District (under Pastor Judah).  I asked if it caused her concern that she was never presented the true gospel and she said yes.   I didn’t ask, but I bet she could quote Malachi 3:10 for me though.

What a shame.

The question isn’t if we are passionate, the question is what are we passionate about. We can be sincere, and we can be sincerely wrong.  If people aren’t learning about the true gospel when they go to church, what are they learning?

1 Timothy 4:16
Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.

I heard Judah Smith (and his wife Chelsae) will be on the National TBN broadcast at 6:30 PM (not sure if that is Pacific or Eastern time).  It was announced by Wendell yesterday before the service.

Anyway, I hope someone gets to watch it at 3:30 and let us know if they are on at that point.  If they are, it would be great to get a report of what they are doing, since that is scheduled to be the “praise-a-thon” (view the TBN schedule for today).    The 6:30 PST show is Jesse Duplantis, and I doubt they will appear at that point.

I was sitting in my living room visiting with a friend who is a member of the City Church when we got to talking about prosperity and healing in the Bible.  I would bring up scripture showing a biblical view of money and the sovereignty of God in healing, but the response I got was that God is a good God and wants to take care of us like an earthly father takes care of his children.  I realized this is the theology of Pastor Wendell, Pastor Judah and the City Church.  I coined this theology the “Earthly Father Paradigm”.  They read the Bible and view God with their “Earthly Father Paradigm” glasses on.

During pastor Wendell’s sermons he often says things like “what earthly father would put sickness on his children to teach them a lesson” or “what earthly father wouldn’t buy good gifts for their children”.   He says this in support of their view that God wants to please us.

I have a few questions for the prosperity idea of the “Earthly Father Paradigm”…what earthly father would allow:

• Satan to take away all of Jobs things, put boils on him, kill his children and then torment him with some lippy friends? 
• What earthly father would send snakes to bite and kill his children who disobey in the desert, or open the earth to swallow them up? 
• What earthly father would tell the neighbor boy to come beat up his kid, destroy all his toys and take him captive for a while to learn a lesson (Isreal in Babylon)? 
• What earthly father would kill 2 of his children for lying to him about money? 
• What earthly father would curse his children to die for only disobeying once (garden of eden)? 
• What earthly father would send his own son to die and take unimaginable wrath for deserved criminals (Jesus Christ)?
• What earthly father would stand by and watch 11 of his son’s 12 friends get killed for being a friend of his son?

God did all these things.  God’s goal in our life is not to please us and make us healthy and rich, His purpose in our life is to shape and mold us in the image of His Son and to present to His Son a spotless bride.  The “Earthly Father Paradigm” shapes and molds God in the image of man and displays a god who is serving mankind…not vice-versa.

As even earthly parents send their kids to chicken-pox parties so their kids will get sick, I believe God allows sicknss, poverty and other bad things in our lives to build up our immunization against sin and our flesh.  God is not sadistic, but all things work for good for those who love God and are called according to His purposes.  The more trouble and sin there is in this would, the more we should have our eyes on eternity and the return of Christ.  Unfortunately, the “Earthly Father Paradigm” puts our eyes on ourselves and this life.  How can I get blesses, how can I get healed, how can I…

I think the “Earthly Father Paradigm” is a self-serving representation of what some wish God would be for them.  God has our eternal best interest in mind, not necessarily our temporal best intrest.

I am thankful to God for taking me out of the atmosphere of scurrying around looking to “position myself for blessing”  or looking for “the next breakthrough” and rummaging through the bible looking for promises I can lay hold of.  I can finally rest in the salvation given to me freely by God through Jesus Christ.  The only promise I really care about, I pray God help me to fix my gaze to heaven and not earth.

It causes me to wonder what ways I have tried to mold God in my own image, or to my own liking…I pray for humility to recognize and love God as He has revealed Himself, not how I want Him to be.

I’ll be honest. Doing a blog that challenges the doctrines of a large and popular church in the area is a daunting task. I don’t want to be disobedient to the Lord and I don’t want to be doing it with the wrong motives. After the prosperity with a purpose conference I kind of thought of when Jesus said “let the blind lead the blind”, then I get an email like the one below. I asked Nathan for permission before posting the email, so don’t think just because you send me an email I will post it (although I might).

Also, thank you to others how have also sent emails of encouragement during my time of inactivity - your emails and prayers are very appreciated!  I think Nathan’s story is like many out there who see the emptiness of false doctrine and a self-serving form of religion that only puts our eyes on what we can gain in this life, when all we need to gain is Christ.

Hi Craig

I just wanted to share with you some of my story over the past year. I’m an 18-year old living in Ontario, Canada. I was involved with the Pentecostal church for a few years through a local youth group and then their church. I left the Pentecostal church last March after much emotional and some psychological pain and stress.

I was at a youth convention in 2005 where Judah Smith was the speaker, and I found what he had to say really connected with me. Over the next couple years, I began downloading and listening to his podcast sermons, at first only once in a while, but eventually on a weekly basis. I built up a library of Judah’s and other TCC and guest pastors’ messages that was well over 100.

Through these messages, I effectively became a part of Generation Church despite being thousands of miles away. I loved listening to Judah and Jude Fouquier preach; I enjoyed their elaborate and funny stories, and I always felt that I got some life changing out of each message. Listening to those messages, I believe, brought me a lot closer to God, and made me a lot more enthusiastic about studying my Bible than if I hadn’t heard them.

At the same time, I would sometimes get that little twinge when listening to Judah preach that he seemed to be going off in a weird direction, or might be just a little too arrogant. I’m Anglican-raised, so I guess I have a built in aversion to over-the-top spiritual emotionalism. Anyway, the power of whatever altar call being given at the time was strong enough to convince those doubts to quietly go away. After all, nobody’s perfect, right?

As I mentioned earlier, I went through a long and painful breakup with my local Pentecostal church, which I won’t detail here except to say that it was an extremely difficult time, and a necessary one that brought me closer to God. It was very soon after I left in March 2007 that I stumbled onto your blog. Even thought I had left the Pentecostal church, I was still a loyal disciple of GC, and reading your blog gave me quite the shock. I read the exchange between you and Wendell Smith and had my TCC world rather rocked by it. I didn’t want to accept what you were saying, or I tried to find some kind of explanation for it that would also exonerate TCC and GC. But I kept going back to your blog to read more and more, and the more I read, and the more accounts I was exposed to, the more I saw that TCC was falling deeper and deeper into false teachings…teachings that I was eagerly lapping up through the podcasts.

Sometime after starting to read the blog, about two months after I started, I just stopped listening to GC messages. It was like a mechanism flipped inside and I just didn’t desire them anymore, where before I craved them like a drug. That’s the best analogy I can come up with; being addicted to Judah’s preaching. While my desire for Judah’s preaching died, the disciplines of Bible study and prayer he helped inspire in me stayed on, ironically. I’ve since gone back and listened to a couple old messages and heard things there I missed before, indications of false teachings and unbiblical doctrines that I was too blinded by to see until later. Having now seen where they’ve gone, I am deeply thankful that God opened my eyes when he did, as it seems things have gone from bad to worse.

I write all this to encourage you, Craig. I enjoy reading your site very much, and I’ve been a bit worried at the lack of posting. I understand we all lead busy lives that take priority, but in case you were feeling really down or discouraged, I want to remind you that you are reaching lives not just in Seattle, but across a continent. The influence of TCC is larger than the city, thanks to the Internet, but so is the reach of your blog I thank God for putting me onto your site. I love the truth, and God used that love, anchored onto your site, to bring me out of my TCC-fueled fantasies and false doctrines. Your open, honest, and humble words, along with many of the loyal commentators, have helped me in my own walk with God. Keep fighting the good fight, keep doing it the way you have been doing it, with humility and truth. Be encouraged, and know that you are being used by God, even when it’s just something as lowly as typing on a keyboard. I’m praying for you Craig. God bless you.

Nathan

I have listened to several sermons by Pastor Wendell and their doctrine on healing has been pretty well laid out in the healing series. I agree with them that healing is for today and that God can miraculously heal today just as Jesus during His earthly ministry. I believe all healing comes from the Lord.

In listening to their sermons and it seems they feel a need to give God a PR job regarding healing. While giving their sermons they say God is a good God, and because He is good he wants to heal everyone in this life and because He is good He will never put sickness on anyone. It seems to me that they have said if God makes people sick, then He is not good. Also, if God does not desire to heal everyone in the here and now, then He is not good. Below are the reasons I think their definition of good needs to be conformed to the bible.

STATEMENT ONE: God will never, ever put sickness on anyone.

To see this is false, all we need to do is read a little bit of the Bible.

1. What did God say the punishment for Israel was for not carefully observing His words?
   “If you do not carefully observe all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, THE LORD YOUR GOD, then the LORD will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary plagues—great and prolonged plagues—and serious and prolonged sicknesses. Moreover He will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you.” Deuteronomy 28:58-60
   It sounds like God will make them sick…
2. In Numbers, God sent a plague that killed 14,700 of the Israelites for complaining against Moses and Aaron.
3. In 2 Samuel 24 God sent a plague on Israel because David performed a census of the people that killed 70,000 people.
4. God struck Uzziah with leprosy for burning incense in the temple in 2 Chronicles 26:19-21.
5. In the New Testament we find Christians becoming sick because of the judgment of the Lord regarding communion. See 1 Corinthians 11:29-31. Paul says if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. The only judge I know of is God.
6. In Acts 5 we read of Ananias and Sapphira (Christians) who are killed by the Lord for lying to the Spirit. I would rather catch a cold that be killed.
7. In Acts 13:7-11 Paul struck blindness (through the power of the Holy Spirit) on a sorcerer.

It does not take much time to see that God does put sickness on people in His sovereignty. His ways are higher than our ways, and if we don’t like an attribute of God we should not make up things contrary to how God has revealed Himself to us. I think the 2nd commandment says something about making a god in another likeness.

One analogy they use is that ‘good earthly father’ analogy that goes something like this - “what father would put sickness on their children to teach them a lesson”. The obvious answer to this is - none. But if we think about it a little further, we see that God’s main purpose isn’t to make us comfortable, but to conform us to the image of His Son. Just as parents send their children to chicken pox parties to make them immune so later in life they won’t get the disease and perhaps die, why wouldn’t God let us get sick or injured if the end result is that we are more sanctified and made closer to the likeness of His Son? What is our main goal here? To live a pain-free life or to be more like Christ?

STATEMENT TWO: It is God’s will that everyone be healed.

The main contention I have with this is that the Bible does not say this plainly anywhere. Yes, God is the God who heals us, and yes God does heal today. The problem with the idea that it is God’s will to heal everyone is that not everyone is healed. Many Christians die of sickness and disease, so does that mean God is not powerful enough to heal them? That is absolutely not the case. The only other option we have then is that we are not doing something right to get healed (lack of faith).

I think the statement above is a sad one to make at a church. They do not think through the true ramifications of their doctrine and the faith of many become shipwrecked. Those who are not healed think they do not have enough faith to be healed…do they have enough faith to be saved?

I think the City Church answer to this is comical. They quote Deuteronomy 29:29

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.

They are saying that when Christians die of sickness that since we know it is God’s will to heal everyone that when God does not heal a Christian who is praying for healing that God made a “secret things” decision.

Let me translate what they are saying “IT IS NOT GODS WILL TO HEAL EVERYONE”. They just don’t want to say it. They want a feel good God who is looking out for our health and wealth, so they make contradictory statements to keep the god who pleases them. If God decides in the “secret things” to not heal someone…it is not His will to heal them.

What is our hope then?

Our hope is in the resurrection of the dead. This world is filled with sin, and sickness and death is the result of a sin filled world. There is not condemnation on the sick, they are just dealing with the outcome of sin in our world (disease and death). If we are sick or healthy we need to continually examine our life in the light of scripture to see if we are in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5). If we are sick, we should pray for healing and go to the elders for prayer (James 5:14).

Jesus Christ will come again and abolish all sickness and death. We will have a new resurrected body not tainted by sin, disease and death. We should have our eyes on the prize, eternal life. I think Paul said it well:

Philippians 3:10-12
That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.

Peaching that God wants to heal everyone is a good way to fill the pews and get people riled up, but it is not true to scripture.

I think Cameron did a good job explaining the healing verses used by the pastors of the City Church in the following article, it debunks their use of 1 Peter 2:24 and it explains why healing is not guaranteed with communion.

Read The Lord’s Supper at Cameron’s Blog.

To end, I would like to say I do believe God still heals today and there are many miracles done by His hand.  That is a statement to refute the claim Pastor Wendell makes that I am an “unbelieving believer”.

I have changed my position over the past few years from being a pre-tribulation view to being a post-tribulation and even flirting Amillenialism. To be honest, I haven’t spent much time on the subject lately and I am a bit rusty…so I thought I would try and stir up the hornet’s nest with a good article about the post-tribulation rapture.

I personally enjoyed this quote (relevant to the comments from people defending the prosperity gospel)…

Those who are not disciples think of blessing only in terms of God giving them things. Those who are disciples recognise that it is just as much blessing - perhaps even more - when God takes them away. Thus we can know whether we are disciples or not.

The Church and The Tribulation — Zac Poonen

We are told in Eph. 3:10 that in the new covenant, God desires to manifest His wisdom through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. From Eph. 6:12, we know that these rulers and authorities in the heavenly places are Satan and his hosts of wickedness who dwell in the second heaven (where they dwell ever since being cast down out of the third heaven, where God dwells - 2 Cor. 12:2)

We know that we are to be Christ’s witnesses unto all men. But here we are told that we have to have a testimony to the evil spirits too. What testimony is this? It is a testimony to the wisdom of God (Eph. 3:10). It is the joyful confession of our spirits that God has ordered everything in our lives according to His perfect wisdom. It is the testimony of lives that have partaken of the wisdom that is from above.

Continue Reading »

It is now 2008 “The year of new beginnings”. I figured I should change the template of the web site and after a prolonged period without writing any articles, being writing again.

Let me know what you think about the theme, and also let me know some topics we should discuss. Here are a few things that I have been pondering:

1. Once saved always saved
2. Prosperity with a purpose 2007
3. Divorce and remarriage (Judah just did a 2 part sermon on this)
4. Witnessing to people who attend The City Church. I have met several people who attend GC while doing street witnessing.

Let me know your thoughts…on what discussions we should start and what you think about the web site change.

Watch this on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J471VobaZks

I am not surprised by what Joel Osteen said in an interview with Chris Wallance on Fox News. Here is an article by Steve Camp about the interview. The Steve Camp article has video of the interview and a complete transcript. Below is a small portion of the transcript.

WALLACE: And what about Mitt Romney? And I’ve got to ask you the question, because it is a question whether it should be or not in this campaign, is a Mormon a true Christian?

OSTEEN: Well, in my mind they are. Mitt Romney has said that he believes in Christ as his savior, and that’s what I believe, so, you know, I’m not the one to judge the little details of it. So I believe they are. (emphasis mine).

And so, you know, Mitt Romney seems like a man of character and integrity to me, and I don’t think he would — anything would stop me from voting for him if that’s what I felt like.

WALLACE: So, for instance, when people start talking about Joseph Smith, the founder of the church, and the golden tablets in upstate New York, and God assumes the shape of a man, do you not get hung up in those theological issues?

OSTEEN: I probably don’t get hung up in them because I haven’t really studied them or thought about them. And you know, I just try to let God be the judge of that. I mean, I don’t know.

I certainly can’t say that I agree with everything that I’ve heard about it, but from what I’ve heard from Mitt, when he says that Christ is his savior, to me that’s a common bond.