Discerning False Teachers with Justin Peters

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On this edition of the WRAP Report, we have something special for you. This is from the Snatch Them From the Flames Home Edition. And this is Justin Peters on providing for you some skills and tools on discerning false teachers.

You do not want to miss this. If you want to get the full conference that we did free, online, just go to strivingforeternity .org, go to the online events, and check out the full Snatch Them From the Flames Edition that we offered for free, online.

Check it out. And now, for Justin Peters on the WRAP Report.

One, two, three!

Welcome to the WRAP Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

So, Justin. Yes. Let's see. Before we start, I think we want to have some announcements here, like some giveaways.

Okay.

We have, you know, we now have 11 pages of questions here, Justin.

Wow. That's a lot of questions.

Yeah. All right. So, let me give out some folks who are going to need to contact us so that we know how to get you your books. But people who are asking questions get entered into receiving different books.

And so, basically, if you hear your name, you're going to need to get in touch with us. Just contact info at strivingforeternity .org. And if I was really smart and quick, I could probably put that up as a banner at the bottom for you.

Let me do that. Add banner. And boom, there we go. See? See how quick that is? Just, as Justin likes to say, click the link down there. But there's not a, you can't click it. But look at the email down there.

And just contact us at info at strivingforeternity .org. If you hear your name called, then we'll ship you out your book. Cindy Brown from Facebook. You have come in your way. What do we believe? So, Cindy Brown, what do we believe?

Ryan Leach. Don't know where he was at, whether it was YouTube or Twitter or Facebook. But Ryan Leach, what do we believe? So, Ryan Leach, if you could get a hold of us. And I'll announce these later on as well.

Deb Raymond on YouTube. You got a Do Not Hinder Them. So, Deb Raymond, please reach out to us at info at strivingforeternity .org. David Ross. David Ross gets a What Do They Believe? So, he gets that.

Stephanie Montgomery gets What Do They Believe? So, Stephanie was from YouTube. So, Stephanie, if you could reach out to us. And lastly for this round is Les. And I'm not sure I'm going to pronounce the last name right.

But Generous, R-E-G-N-E-R-U-S. Get a hold of us at info at strivingforeternity .org. He gets a copy of On the Origin of Kinds. So, congratulations to those folks. We'll mention that later on. Excuse me while I clear my throat.

All right.

So, congratulations to those folks. As we come back from break, I'm just going to say that I'm glad that during the break, I discovered that I dodged a bullet. Justin told me that I agreed with him. I mean, the worst thing that could happen is I end up in the next Cloud Without Water seminar.

That's one thing I want to avoid.

You already are. You just don't know it yet.

You're about to see.

Yeah, now I got to come to the next seminar to see what you say about me. I got to sneak in unannounced.

Oh, wait.

We're going to talk about what that was, false teachers. And so, I just saw congratulations. Someone said they're here from Montana. I didn't get to see all the comments of where everyone was from. Justin and I kind of talked at the break and said we wish we asked where everyone was from.

But I saw UK. I just saw Montana. But we've had about 500 people watching on the different platforms and with people coming and going. So, Delaware is there. Someone's saying no sound, but I'm hearing it.

If others of you can hear, just let me know. That would be bad. So, let's see. We got now they're popping in so fast I can't see. Colorado Springs. India. Maryland. Newport Beach. Philippines. Massachusetts.

North Carolina. Lapia from Philippines.

Oklahoma.

You like that one. Oklahoma. Wisconsin. Ligonier, PA. We got British Columbia. Canada. Florida here. Texas. Michigan. Finland.

Ohio.

Brazil.

That's the first one I saw in Brazil. Welcome, David. California. The UK. Jacksonville, Florida. Okay, so we're going to we all end up keep going forever if we do that. We got to get back on. So, but we appreciate everyone of you who are here, who are we hope this is helpful to you.

We hope that this is something that is really helping to enrich your spiritual well-being. Let me just go over a couple of announcements real quick just as we go. Again, we're doing a moving sale for Striving Fraternity.

Oh, I just saw Kenya, South Africa. Wow, okay. Even New Jersey. The communist state of New Jersey is represented by Brian.

Welcome, Brian.

He's in the same communist state as I'm in. So, let's see. So, we're having a moving sale. So, if you guys want to get any all books and syllabuses are 50 off. For folks that are overseas, you may have to contact us for just email info at strivingfraternity .org if you have trouble.

We don't have all the shipping set up for all the countries and know that the shipping that we have for some of the countries, they up the rates. So, it doesn't really cover the shipping if you're asking for things overseas.

It just it becomes very expensive. I'm still amazed, Justin, when people order my books that are like $15 each, and they pay like $30 to $36 to get them to Australia. I'm like, really? My book is not worth $45.

We ship internationally. International shipping is expensive. I wish there was some way around it. There's just not, but we do ship internationally.

Yeah.

So, the other thing is your new website. Again, we want to promote that. Be hitting that website. Check out everything that's there because there's a lot there. And you know what this means, actually.

Wait a minute. I just got a word, Justin. I just got a word.

Yeah.

It was a word from you a long time ago. You were waiting for the new website to start podcasting again. Folks, let's start expecting it. Go subscribe to Didache with Justin Peters. It is one of the podcasts of the Christian Podcast Community.

So, you're going to start that soon now, right?

I am.

Yes, I am.

I argue you just take all the YouTube videos that you already have and put those up. So, Justin is with, as well as my podcast, are with the Christian Podcast Community. You can subscribe to the Christian Podcast Community on any app.

Or just go to ChristianPodcastCommunity .org. And if you go there, you can listen to all. You can subscribe to that one, listen to all. We have like 30 podcasts now in the Christian Podcast Community.

More coming. You can look at which ones we have there, which ones you might want to listen to. I have a couple of them. I have my Andrew Rapaport's Rap Report, and I also have a daily Rap Report. The daily is Monday through Friday, two minutes long.

It's more of a quick answers to apologetic questions type of thing. But my longer one, I'm going to have, Justin, a friend of yours, someone that you introduced me to for tomorrow's episode, Susan Heck.

We're going to talk about women's ministry in the church, the problems of it, how to find solutions. And, yes, we're going to mention Beth Moore.

Get your body armor on.

Yeah.

Actually, we're going to talk about why people don't mention her, how divisive her audience could be. Apologetics Live is another podcast that I do. It's live Thursday nights, 8 o 'clock, 8 to 10 Eastern Time.

And so if you ever have questions, you can come in there. But Justin and I were talking during the break. We have 10, I think now 11 pages of questions. We're not going to get through all of those questions during Q &A.

And so what we're thinking, we still have questions. Justin, we were talking from last year at the Philippines. We said we were going to do. So I think what we're going to do is we're going to have Justin come on to Apologetics Live maybe for a couple of weeks and work through all the questions that we have from both the Philippines and from this one.

And so if you subscribe to Apologetics Live, you could just go to ApologeticsLive .com. There's always the information there and what that show is going to be for that week. And so again, Justin Peters has his as well.

And again, I'm just going to, I'm going to mention, I know Justin doesn't like me mentioning this one, but I don't like mentioning the next one. So consider supporting Justin Peters Ministries. JustinPeters .org is where to go to donate.

And also if you want to do Striving for Eternity, we're putting this on, you could do it, strivingforeturning .org slash donate. So we're putting these on really because we, we don't want to see people being stuck at home and not having, having money be an issue to good teaching.

We didn't have to travel. So there really wasn't much expenses. It was just our time, but we want to maybe be able to do more things like this and, and maybe get better technology. So it works, you know, Oh wait, I got to put this comment up here.

Justin, look at this from, from Chris Hanholds, AKA. He's also known as Captain America, Beth Moore, Danger Will Robinson, Danger.

That's hilarious. I remember watching that kid, that, that, that show when I was a kid, that, that robot scared me. Danger indeed.

So, well, we will, we will get started now with, with your next talk, which is going to be on. Oops, I got to put Justin Peters one up there. And so your, your next talk is going to be on identifying or sorry, on discerning false teachers.

I should mention, I don't, I don't think I have a slide on this, Justin. Oh no. For the next time we do it, I will try to get a slide up for the clouds without waters. But if you go to justinpeters .org, you can schedule Justin to do his clouds without water seminar, which this is part of that seminar.

And so with that, Justin, take it away. Oh wait, you got it. We've got to make sure we get you to share your, your screen.

That's right.

Your screen is down now.

Application. PowerPoint slideshow. I'm getting the hang of this.

Yeah.

No, I see it there. It's up. I have your, your website there, but it's covering clouds without water. Do you want me to leave the. Do you want me to leave the website up for folks?

Oh, it doesn't matter. Whatever you want to do. It doesn't matter. It's it's okay.

Okay. You, you guys, you heard him say whatever I want to do. Okay. Just for the record, whatever I want to do. Here we go. There we go. I just changed the website. Look at that. That's the proper website.

Justin I win .com is the website to help donate to, to Justin's ministry. He knew I was coming somewhere. All right. I'll be back in, in, in an hour or so.

I said, cheating, whatever you want to do.

Only when it's convenient.

Okay. All right, dear ones. Well, thank you so very much for joining us. This thrills my soul. I just, I wish I could see you, but I'm so grateful that we have this technology to connect with one another all around the world.

It's really encouraging to hear that we have people watching from Germany and Brazil and Finland and the Philippines and so many places around the world. So I'm grateful for this technology. Okay. So let us begin.

This session is basically how to tell a false prophet, the biblical criterion of a criteria of a false prophet. And I'm going to have 11 marks of false teachers, 11 ways that we can spot a false teacher.

Some things that characterize the lives and the teachings of false prophets and or false teachers. So, so if you have notes, I would encourage you to take notes. We're going to run through these real quickly, list them for you, and then we'll go back one by one.

So one of the ways you can tell a false prophet is if he rules on his own authority, rather than scripture, false prophets peddle the word of God for personal financial gain, false prophets deify man while diminishing the glory of God, Christ and the Holy Spirit.

They habitually display questionable moral character. They offer prophecies that do not come to pass. One of the easiest ways to spot spot a false teacher and false prophet when their prophecies don't come true.

They please men rather than God. They emphasize peripheral issues and not the gospel itself. They have truth mixed with heresy. They exploit their followers. They partner with or endorse false teachers and they have a lack of accountability.

So we're going to run through these one by one and I'll give you scriptural support for each. And for some of them, I have some video clips scattered here and there, not for every point, but let's begin.

Let's go down through this list. Number one, one of the ways that you can tell a false prophet is if he or she rules on his or her own authority rather than scripture. So if a person appeals in their teaching for, uh, for any source other than scripture as their authority, then you know you are dealing with a false teacher.

Let's look at Jeremiah chapter five, 30 through 31. This is God speaking an appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely and the priest rule on their own authority.

Okay. Notice that phrase, the priest rule on their own authority. And look at this and my people love it. So, but what will you do at the end of it? Boy, there's a lot to unpack here and won't have time to do it justice.

But this is God speaking and he says an appalling and a horrible thing has happened in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely. God does not take false prophecies lightly. And this is one of the issues I have with the modern charismatic movement is that they have denigrated the office of the prophet in the, the, the prophetic gift.

They have denigrated it. Uh, they would, uh, they would admit at least most of them that Old Testament prophets were held to a very, very, very high standard. But somehow they say now the, the prophetic gift is it's still authoritative, but not as much.

And they're not held to modern day. Prophets aren't held to the same standard as Old Testament or even New Testament prophets were. They'll say that even the New Testament gift of prophecy has denigrated and it's just not, uh, it's not held to the same standard as Old Testament prophets.

You can't make an argument for that. Uh, that's a, that's a random insertion that you were, you're putting into the text that just is not found in the text. You're, you're reading your own, uh, theology into it, your own preferences into the Bible.

It just are not supported by the Bible. Uh, but look at what he says, the priests rule on their own authority. The charismatic movement does this by saying, well, God spoke to me. This is what I was talking about in my first session.

God spoke to me and he told me to tell you such and such. Uh, you'll hear them appeal to their own dreams, their own visions as the authority. And they'll say, well, if you can't find what I'm teaching you in scripture, uh, don't worry about it.

You see, because I have it from the highest authority. Jesus himself came and gave me these teachings. So if you don't, if you can't find what I'm teaching you in the Bible, it's okay. Don't worry about it.

I got it from Jesus. Well, if you hear somebody say anything like that, you know you're dealing with a false prophet, a false teacher. They are appealing to a source of authority outside of scripture.

And notice what God says here. My people love it. So my people love it. So, um, this recent pandemic COVID -19 has been an absolute wrecking ball to the word faith movement, prophetic movement, charismatic movement in general.

It is utterly exposed the bankruptcy of this movement on every conceivable level, on the prophetic level, on the theological level, on the integrity level, it's just exposed it for being the complete bankrupt system that it is.

And I've had a few people say, well, do you think this will be the end of the word of faith movement, the end of the prosperity gospel? And I said, no, not at all because my people love it. So even though these false teachers have been exposed as a false prophets and charlatans that they are, my people love it.

So false teachers are in and of themselves, part of God's judgment on people say that again, false prophets are in and of themselves, part of God's judgment on people. I have compassion on people in this movement that are deceived and they just don't know any better.

But the fact of the matter is, is that the majority of people in the word faith, new apostolic reformation movement, the majority of them are there because they want to be there. They don't want sound doctrine.

They want to, they want to have some source of authority outside of scripture. That's what they want. They want a Benny Hinn. They want a Kenneth Copeland. My people love it.

So,.

So no matter how many times these false prophets are proven to be false.

Prophets,.

They're going to continue to have an audience because my people love it.

So,.

All right,.

They rule on their own authority. And I want to deviate a little bit and talk just a little bit about Roman Catholicism and show you how Roman Catholicism also fits into this criterion of false prophets.

A little bit about the papacy, Roman Catholic papacy. You see there, Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic church has three titles for their popes. Holy father, head of the church and the vicar of Christ. Holy father, head of the church and the vicar of Christ.

Holy father, who is the holy father?

God,.

Who is the true head of the church?

Jesus,.

Vicar of Christ. The word vicar means substitute. So substitute of Christ, who is the true substitute of Christ on the, on the earth? The Holy spirit. What did Jesus say? It is to your advantage that I go away because when Jesus ascends, who came the Pentecost, Holy spirit came.

So God, the father,.

God,.

The son,.

God,.

The Holy spirit, each of these three titles, they ascribe to the Pope. So the Roman Catholic church is just as much a theological cult as is the word.

Faith movement.

And you have solid reformation and the Pope. Also the Roman Catholic church appeals to sources of authority outside of.

Scripture,.

Just like the word faith movement does. They have papal bulls, whatever the Pope says, ex cathedra, that is authoritative. So they have the papal bulls. They have church tradition. They elevate church tradition to the same authoritative level, if not above the authoritative level as that of scripture, they elevate church tradition.

So that is a source of authority. Interestingly, the word faith movement and the new apostolic reformation and Roman Catholicism, there's a lot of commonalities. They also, both of the, all of these movements have an emphasis on signs and wonders for the word faith.

Movement.

It's leg lengthening, it's gold dust in the atmosphere. We'll talk about that in a little bit.

And,.

You know, the signs and wonders for the Roman Catholic church, it's weeping statutes. It's finding the image of Mary burned in your toast or something like that. So they, they all have this emphasis on signs and wonders.

So there's a lot of commonality between word of faith, new apostolic reformation and Roman Catholic church. They have a source of authority outside of scripture.

Okay,.

Now let's move to our number two. If a person peddles the word of God for personal financial gain, you know, you are dealing with a false teacher. Second Peter chapter two, verse 14. Peter is talking about false teachers.

The context of this, having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed. One of the primary motivating factors for false teachers and false prophets is that of greed.

They are all greedy. They peddle the word of God for personal financial gain. This is just one example. Jesse Duplantis, well-known word of faith preacher. This is his home in De Strahan,.

Louisiana.

This is right outside of New Orleans and that's his home. This is his parsonage. The ministry pays for this.

This is,.

In fact,.

I took that picture. That's my side. That's my side view mirror there in the corner of the picture. I took that from a van a number of years ago. This home is, is 35 ,000 square feet, not 3 ,500, 35 ,000 square feet.

It is the largest private residence in the state of Louisiana. And so owned by a word of faith preacher, prosperity preacher. All of the false teachers are marked by greed. They are very greedy. They exploit their followers.

Kenneth Copeland has, Kenneth Copeland, by his own admission, is almost a billionaire, not a millionaire,.

But a billionaire. His,.

His personal wealth, I'm assuming now is somewhere around $1 billion. He has multiple private jets, as does Jesse Duplantis. So they live lives of opulence. Their lives are marked by greed. Now I want to address a passage in Philippians because this is a text that I'm somehow, sometimes get pushback on.

Some people will cite what Paul said in, in Philippians chapter one as a little bit of pushback. And let me read this for us. So Philippians chapter one, verses 12 through 18, I want us to deal with this because you'll probably hear this objection.

Paul writes, now I want you to know brethren that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the whole Praetorian garden to everyone else.

And that most of the brethren trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear. And here it comes to verse 15. Some to be sure are preaching Christ, even from envy and strife, but some also from goodwill.

The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment.

What then?

Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed.

And in this,.

I rejoice. So some of the defenders of the prosperity preachers, they'll say,.

Well look,.

You know,.

Paul said this in Philippians one and he acknowledged that there were some people out there preaching in the name of Jesus and they weren't doing it for right motives either. And yet Paul said that he still rejoiced that the gospel was being preached.

So what do you do with that? Well, here's what I do with that because these people to whom Paul was referring that were preaching Christ from envy and strife and preaching Christ from impure.

Motives,.

Selfish ambitions, they were at least preaching Christ. In other words, even though they weren't doing it with the right motives, they were still preaching the real Christ. They were still preaching the real gospel, even though their motives weren't right.

Their message was still doctrinally sound. And Paul says in that, I rejoice. The people that we're talking about, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Jesse Duplantis, Joseph Prince, Joyce Meyer, all these other Joel Osteen, they're preaching something that they call Christianity.

They're preaching a person to, that they refer to as Jesus, but it is not the real Jesus. It is not the real gospel. They have a different God, a different Jesus, and a different gospel. We're not talking here in this movement about minor theological error, minor points of differences.

They have a different gospel. And I go into much more depth in that in my full seminar, Clouds Without Water, when we talk about the little God's doctrine and the positive confession doctrine and the Arianism.

We'll get to that a little bit more of that in just a second.

And here we go.

So number three, the third way to tell a false prophet is if a prophet deifies man while diminishing the glory of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. So if they deify man, and at the same time, diminish the glory of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, you know that you are dealing with a false teacher and they absolutely do.

This.

They deify man. How do they deify man?

Well,.

Those of you who have seen my seminar, you know that I deal with the positive confession doctrine. They deal that they teach that we can speak things into existence just like God did. They have what's called the little God's doctrine.

They teach that if you are a Christian, you are in fact a little God, which is very similar to what Mormonism teaches.

By the way,.

There's a lot of overlap between word,.

Faith,.

New Apostolic Reformation, and Mormonism. So they deify man. They teach that we are gods. And they also diminish God,.

The real God.

They diminish him. They diminish Christ, and they diminish the Holy Spirit. And they, this is just irrefutable that they do that. Just a couple of quick examples. Watch this from Kenneth Copeland. This is a very recent clip, but watch this from Kenneth Copeland.

Listen to what he says here about Jesus.

For the coming high priest of the heavenly, holy of holies, was hanging on that cross. He went before and stood in the heavenly courts of justice. A sin free, born again man. God called him righteous.

Did you hear that? He's talking about Jesus. And he said that Jesus went before the courts of heaven, and stood there a sin free, born again man. Blasphemy. Blasphemy. Jesus was not born again. They teach that Jesus, when he died on the cross, then he went to hell, died spiritually, ceased to be God, had to be reborn.

That he actually got saved in hell. That is blasphemy. He may talk about Jesus. He may use the name Jesus. And you'll even hear Kenneth Copeland, he ends all of his broadcast by saying this, Jesus is Lord.

But the Jesus that he's preaching is not the Jesus of the Bible. It's a different Jesus. Watch this from Kenneth Copeland.

Take the time to read the first chapter of the book of Eden. All of it is in there. The very words that he said to him.

Again,.

I will be a father to him. And again, he'll be my son.

He's asserting here that Jesus ceased to be the son of God on the cross, and down in hell where he died spiritually. He had to be reborn. So he had to become again the son of God. And this is just utter blasphemy.

And yes, Kenneth Copeland, I have taken the time to read the first chapter of Hebrews, and I don't have time to get into the exegesis of it now. Just want to give you an example of how they diminish Christ.

This is a different Jesus than the Jesus of the Bible. And this is not unique to Kenneth Copeland. Watch this video from Todd White. Probably have seen Todd White. He's the dreadlock guy. The guy that wears dreadlocks and looks like the predator,.

You know,.

That movie,.

Old 80s movie, I guess it was. And he is a predator. Todd White is. He's a spiritual predator. But watch this again. Very recent video just from a few months ago. Watch this from Todd White.

So what he's saying is he's so limited himself. And he was, he was just like you and I became the son of man, born of the Virgin Mary, fully God and fully man, but laid his divinity aside.

Well,.

He was on this earth so that he can model what a Christian life would look like when you're fully possessed by God.

Oh, boy,.

That's dangerous. He says that Jesus was just like you and I fully God and fully man.

Well,.

Put the brakes on right there, partner. I'm fully man. I'm not fully God.

That,.

That is,.

That is blasphemy, but they demote Christ. They make him out to be just a man filled with the Holy Spirit. You and I are men and women, and we can be filled with the Holy Spirit. And they say that Jesus laid his divinity aside, laid his divinity aside.

And when he was on earth,.

He,.

He did what he did. He taught what he taught. He performed signs and wonders that he performed. He did that all as just a man, because he literally like divested himself,.

His deity.

That is heresy. That is heresy. Hebrews 13,.

Eight,.

Speaking of Jesus, he is the same yesterday,.

Today,.

And forever. He does not change. We refer to the immutability of Christ. He does not. Not only does he not change, he cannot change. If there was ever a time when Jesus was not God, then he never was God to begin with.

So you see how false teachers, they deify man and they demote God and they demote Christ. This from Bill Johnson in his book, When Heaven Invades Earth, just like Todd White. Jesus laid aside his divinity as he sought to fulfill the assignment given to him by the father.

He laid aside his divinity.

No, no,.

No.

A thousand times,.

No.

In him, all the fullness of deity dwells, says the apostle Paul.