Discerning if SHE is a False Teacher: What Does She Believe About Scripture?

The Church’s Loss of Confidence in the Word of God

We have lost our confidence in the authority, the sufficiency, and the power of the Word of God. That is what ails the church in the West. We have lost our confidence in the authority, the sufficiency, and the power of the Word of God.

The church in our age is characterized by a lack of confidence in those things. The way in which the Word of God takes a backseat in the worship service, the preaching, the ministry, and the life of most churches in our land.

The Word of God is put on the back burner, the back shelf.

You can exegete and your heart can be totally removed from that. And I'm not knocking next to Jesus. I love studying the Word of God and having context. But I can give you a Greek verb tense and not give you any of my heart.

But if I go, let me tell you where I was dying and God pulled me out of a pit. I dug myself and rescued me. Let me tell you about the God who set my clumsy, mistake-prone feet on solid ground. Then you go, dang, that dog will hunt.

That carries weight.

And so it's not that they don't quote Scripture. It's they do. It's just that they don't spend as much time exegeting Scripture and explaining Scripture as they do explaining the context of the movie clip they're about to play, or the music video they're about to play, or a song lyric, or a life lesson from the life of the pastor, or something, anything other than Scripture.

My journey with forgiveness. You know, it's kind of ironic that I'm preaching a sermon today on forgiveness when this very week I have struggled to forgive something hard that has happened.

It's that the Word of God just doesn't take center stage in all that it has done. It's just not there because they have a confidence in almost anything other than Scripture.

Well, what I want to do is I want to take you a little bit on a journey through my life because as I was praying about what to bring tonight and I had the freedom because it was in the middle of the summer and they're just giving me free reign tonight to talk about what I want to talk about what's on my heart.

I thought the best place to start would be the most life-changing moment of my life.

I've said this through the years to so many men. I can hear you preach, and I can look at your church and how you do ministry, and I will tell you your view of Scripture. I'll tell you what it is. I'll tell you whether you believe in the inerrancy and authority of Scripture.

I'll tell you whether you believe in the sufficiency of Scripture for everything. I'll tell you that by what I see. Your confession that you believe in the authority of Scripture, the single authority of Scripture, is only valid if that's what I see in your life and in your ministry manifest.

If we only believe that the Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, we would never give our time to all of this other silliness and the chicanery and the gimmicks and the themes and the entertainment and the drama and the skits and the giveaways and the props and the themes and the sermon series and all of the other nonsense.

If we only believe that the Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword.

Thoroughly Equipped and the Goal of Reforming Women’s Ministry

Welcome to the Thoroughly Equipped podcast where we compare the teachings from popular women's ministry books, conferences, Bible studies, etc. to Scripture. Our focus is 2 Timothy 3, 16 -17 that all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so the man or woman of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

I'm your host, Melba Toast. May this episode bless you and bring glory to God. Hey, ladies. Welcome to Thoroughly Equipped. If you are new to this channel, welcome. I just want to first off say to all of you who have subscribed to the channel, thank you.

Went on there again to find... be so incredibly surprised to go from 150 subscribers to now I'm at 323 subscribers, I think, this morning. And I was just like, okay, wow. No pressure. But anyway, I just... I'm finding myself really enjoying this.

I love talking about Scripture. I love talking about... to women. And especially my goal in all of this, of course, is to reform women's ministry. I see that there's a failure, obviously. You probably joined the channel from that actual episode.

And so you probably agree with me. And so I want to bring Scripture back to being the central authority for women's ministry and just help you guys grow in Scripture as much as I can. So thank you guys for liking the channel, subscribing the channel.

Especially thank you those who have been listening to the podcast for a while, who have been faithful to listen on a regular basis. Thank you so much. It blesses my heart. Alright, but if you are new...

So I'm going to get into the kind of context of what we've been doing the last couple episodes. I have been, after I presented to you guys where I thought women's ministry was failing, I began to realize I wanted to help you guys learn discernment, bring discernment back to women's ministry, and been slowly and very thoroughly deep diving into discernment and how we can discern women, female teachers, in women's ministry.

And so that was the last episode. We looked at the very first question. So I'm presenting to you guys these questions in which, when we observed their teachings and their ministry, to answer these questions.

And the first one was what does she submit herself to the authority of Scripture? Today, however, I want to show you how you can determine what a teacher believes about Scripture. In the last episode, like I said, I showed you how we can determine what a female teacher believes about the authority of Scripture by basically asking if she obeys to one of the clearest instructions to the church about women in ministry.

Today, I want to present to you how we can discern what she believes about the other qualities of Scripture. See, there's this doctrine that I knew very little about when I was involved in the Seeker Sensitive Church.

It was never talked about. And so surprisingly, when I started to listen to more Reformed preachers and learn more Reformed theology, this was a doctrine that just was everywhere. And I was learning about this, going, why did I not learn this in all the work that I did, all the ministry work that I was involved in?

This should have been a central doctrine that came right in, even when being... they put you through membership and stuff like that. This is so far removed in the typical evangelical church. And that doctrine is the doctrine of sola scriptura.

Now, if she holds to this doctrine, you can pretty much be sure that she's a trustworthy teacher. And it will be displayed in how she teaches and even what she teaches. And so this is what I want to help you learn how to discern today.

We're going to ask the question, does she hold to sola scriptura? But first, what is the doctrine of sola scriptura? Well, sola scriptura is a Latin term meaning scripture alone. In essence, scripture is a sole, infallible, inerrant authority that guides us into all righteousness, salvation, sanctification, and it thoroughly equips us for every good work, right?

Now, this is not a claim that there's no other authority. This doesn't mean you cannot read other books or listen to others who hold knowledge. But it does mean that all other books and all other teachers, philosophies, ideas, worldviews are going to be compared to scripture because scripture is our ultimate sufficient authority.

It also does not mean that only scripture holds all truth. We don't learn about cells and their function in scripture, but we do learn about the one who created those cells, and we learn even through the observation of creation that it proclaims the glory of God.

Scripture itself says that we can know about God by observing creation, but even the facts and truths we learn in creation are going to be limited. Scripture reveals to us God's nature, His Son and His work, the Holy Spirit and His work.

This means that scripture is unique, being God-breathed, God-inspired instructions and revelations to which we compare all other authoritative information to. The Westminster Confession of Faith claims that scripture is the whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory.

Man's salvation, faith, and life is either expressly set down in scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture, onto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men.

Now, there are five things that the Holy Spirit has laid out for us about God's word of scripture. We can take these five teachings about scripture and use them to judge what a teacher believes about scripture because if she believes them, she will show that she believes them in her ministry.

Now, why do I know this? Because one who believes these things about scripture, they will actually produce a certain type of fruit. It's the fruit that we want to look for, not what they claim, because they can claim to hold to scripture, but their actions, what they teach, the way they teach and do ministry, well, these things will reveal what they truly believe about scripture.

For each of these teachings, as I'm going through this episode, I will lay out for you what the Holy Spirit, through scripture, reveals about scripture, and then I will show you how false teachers actually undermine the teaching in their ministry.

Alright, so let's get started. What does the Holy Spirit say about scripture? Well, number one, the Holy Spirit says that the scriptures are breathed out by God, making it, therefore, authoritative. The scriptures have a lot to say about itself.

2 Timothy 3 .16, my favorite verse, says that scriptures are theophanoustos. I hope I pronounced that right. Theophanoustos. This word, in some Bibles, is translated as the word inspired. This word inspired does not mean what we typically use it today.

It doesn't mean an author of scripture received some kind of mental stimulation to do or feel something or be encouraged to write. In this case, it's not meaning that the author was encouraged or motivated to write what he's writing.

Though, there is motivation, absolutely, but it's not reserved only to that. The better translation for this word is breathed out. What this means is that the scriptures are the words that are breathed out by God written through the prophets and the apostles.

We see this in 2 Peter 1 .20 -21 where he explains this very clearly. It says, This is the uniqueness of scripture. This uniqueness sets it completely apart from any other authoritative book or teaching.

How do we discern if she believes scripture is authoritative? That was what I did in the last episode. Basically, we dived into, first,.

Explaining what is authoritative.

Explaining the authority behind scripture and the authority given to the writers of scripture by God to instruct His church. This is the most easiest way to discern if a female teacher is a false teacher or at least to assess if scripture is her authority by asking if she preaches over men in the church gathering.

This reveals where she falls on the authority of scripture. If you've missed that episode, feel free to check it out. I will try to do these... I don't know how they do them. The connection link is up at the top.

Hopefully, there's a connection link up there. You can click on it if you've missed that episode. The second thing that the Holy Spirit teaches us through the scriptures about the scripture is that the scriptures are true.

Because the scriptures are authored by God, the Bible has to be true. God's character is true. He cannot lie, Numbers 23, 19. You can see also 1 Samuel 15, 29. Hebrews 6, 18. Therefore, what is written cannot be a lie.

Scripture claims that it is perfect, Psalm 19, 7 -9. See also 1 John 19, 1 -60. Proverbs 30, 5 -6. John 10, 35. 17, 17. Scripture claims that it is flawless, Psalm 12, 6. Proverbs 35. The Holy Spirit claims through scripture that it is eternal, Psalm 1, 19, 89.

See also Isaiah 48 and Matthew 24, 35. That it is unbreakable, John 10, 35. Boundless in perfection, Psalm 1, 19, 96. And completely confirmed, 2 Peter 1, 19. Scripture being breathed out by God is therefore authoritative.

And the Holy Spirit through the Holy Spirit is also authoritative. And the Holy Spirit also writes in James 1, 22 for us to be doers of the word and not hearers only. So God is our creator and he is the ultimate authority and he's laid out his authority in his word and those words are to be obeyed.

So how do we discern if she believes that the scriptures are true? Now, discerning this can be a little tricky. One would think, and many, many people in the evangelical world I think assume this, that teachers who enter into Christian culture naturally confess or just right away confess and believe that scripture is inerrant.

But this is the thing. They can be deceptive. Surprisingly, teachers who don't believe scripture is true are all over the place. Especially the colleges and seminaries. So how? How do teachers who believe that scripture is not true actually enter into Christian culture and these authoritative educational spheres of life?

Basically, they claim on one side of their mouth that scripture is without error and then on the other side teach the opposite. So how is this done? They claim that the scripture and its original manuscripts is where there is no error.

But then they challenge the truth of what we have now by basically asking, did God really say? Or was that what the authors really meant? This is deconstructionism and it's prevalent in popular seminaries.

It is a strategy used by teachers in the progressive liberal church today. And it is readily inching its way, slowly but surely, maybe faster than even what I'd like to admit. It's entering the secret sensitive churches and it's entering it through certain theologies, certain philosophies and ideologies that are entering the church.

Correction. Philosophies and ideologies. But that is something for a totally different episode. Anyway, it doesn't start with teachers just coming out and saying, I no longer believe that scripture is God's very words and therefore can have errors.

It basically starts with asking these questions and then using scholarly articles, revised history, cultural and societal norms from the past, etc. etc. to come to scripture to basically make the claim that what scripture clearly states now is not so clear and is not really true.

We see these arguments surrounding scripture crop up everywhere on topics of women and the pastorate and homosexuality. And if you are familiar with TikTok, you have probably more than likely come across these questions like is it really true that it's a sin to be a woman pastor?

Is it really true that homosexuality is a sin? Is it really true that the Son of God had to die for his people's sins? Is it really true that God is wrathful and wants to punish people in hell? You know, etc. etc.

Questions like these. If a female teacher starts asking these questions or presenting these type of questions, you can know that one, she doesn't believe that scripture is true. And two, she doesn't believe that scripture is clear, which is the third teaching from Sola Scriptura.

So the Holy Spirit explains to us that scripture is clear. Even though it's an ancient document and can be confusing at times, the Bible is clear enough that the unfolding of God's words gives light. It imparts understanding to the simple.

Psalm 119 130. It's clear enough that God commands even parents to teach the Bible to children. Deuteronomy 6 .6 -7 because the Bible is clear and gives understanding that it's important that a woman handle it correctly.

And here is how we're going to discern if she believes that the Bible is clear. This is another one of those harder ones to discern because you have to really be listening to a teacher for a while and see the way she uses scripture to present a teaching.

So we ask these questions. Does she exegete the passage she's teaching on? Does she use words correctly and in context? Or does she mesh all sorts of meanings into biblical words? Does she do her best to present herself to God as one approved, rightly handling the word of truth?

Now, this is quite common for charismatic teachers to sprout off verses by the boatload. And Beth Moore is a good example of this. While this may make the teacher look like they know their scripture, what ends up happening is it makes verses say what they do not actually mean in context.

Now, check out this clip. So this is an old clip from way back when for Beth Moore's popular story about brushing a man's hair. But notice what she says before because the teaching is about that she's going to present it from this.

The whole teaching was about the fullness of Christ and she uses the hairbrush story to talk about what the fullness of Christ means here. I want to tell you a story.

That I told many, many years ago that remains dear to me, particularly because people bring it back up to me over and over again. It's probably the thing I've been asked about as much as anything regarding stories and Bible studies along the years.

But it's such a statement in my own life and such a memory of God overtaking me and enabling me to do something I couldn't do. You have no idea how dangerous you would be if you would live filled to the measure with the fullness of Christ.

You have no idea how dangerous you would be if you would live filled to the measure with the fullness of Christ. A hostess that is pushing up a man in a wheelchair right to the end of my row and there's nobody between us.

And this place is packed. So I want you to know that Jesus went to a significant amount of trouble to make sure that I saw this man. So I wait until everybody else gets more polite and then I go. And when I look over at him, he was the oddest sight.

He looked like he was not one iota less than about 129 and I'm not kidding. His head was just hanging down like this and his hair was in strings like this high. This is how much God thinks of us just memorizing Scripture but not do anything with it.

Because the Lord begins to compel my heart. Overwhelms me. Overwhelms me. Well, I have learned. I've walked with him a long time. I knew by now that is scary. God is up to something when he is overwhelming your heart like that.

And I just thought, oh, please God, no. Oh, please. Please, God, no. Because I'm already knowing he wants me to witness to this man. And so I say to myself in my spirit, and I'm not talking out loud, but in my spirit, I'm talking to God silently and I'm sure my mouth is going because I say to him, do not make me witness to that man.

And now I'm going to tell you as clear as I'm talking to you now, the Lord spoke to my heart been very few times I've ever heard God be this articulate with me. And I'm telling you word for word, these words came into my heart.

I'm not asking you to witness to him. I'm asking you to brush his hair. Lord, that man needs witnessing to.

Okay, so she is connecting the fullness of Christ to an incident where the Holy Spirit led her to brush a man's hair, describing it as a time God used her to do something that she wouldn't normally do.

Right? Okay, sure. The Spirit can empower us to do things we couldn't normally do on our own like overcome sin, enlighten scripture, be sanctified, and even endure suffering. But it's empowering us to do things we are uncomfortable doing or these things that are out of the ordinary.

Is that what scripture means by fullness of Christ in Ephesians 4 .13? The scripture that she blurted out so easily. If the fullness of Christ means that we will be led by the Spirit to do extraordinary things, then Ephesians should explain it because several times Paul uses this phrase the fullness of Christ.

Let's take a quick look at this. Alright, so the first place that we see this phrase being used is Ephesians 1 .23. I'm just going to read this whole thing in context. So Paul writes Having the eyes of your heart enlightened that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.

What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come and he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church which is his body the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Here Paul is relaying that he prays that the Ephesians know all the wisdom and revelation that is found in Christ to understand the power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand of the father is that work to help us know the hope that we have been called to in Christ Jesus.

This power put all things under the authority of Christ who was given as head over all things to the church. This church is his body and his body has the fullness of him who fills all in all so one who has the wisdom and revelation of Christ is filled with Christ and who has this wisdom and revelation but Christ's people Christ's church.

Now the next passage that talks about fullness is Ephesians 3 19 and I'm going to read from verses 14 to 19 for this reason I bow my knees before the father for whom every family in heaven and on earth is named that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now here we see another prayer where we see that Paul asked God to strengthen the Ephesians with power through his spirit so that we may accomplish extraordinary things that the Holy Spirit revealed to us through personal revelations.

No but that Christ dwell in their hearts richly so that we can comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge.

This is what it means to be filled with all the fullness of God. Okay now the third passage is Ephesians 4 13 and this is a passage that Beth Moore really is referring to when she said it stated the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

As I read this passage ask yourself if it even refers to anything about receiving personal instruction from the Holy Spirit to do extraordinary or even uncomfortable things. Or ask yourself if the fullness of Christ here means receiving and understanding the knowledge wisdom and revelation of Christ like we've been reading in the previous passages.

I'm going to read from 11 verse 11 to 16 and he gave the apostles the prophets the evangelists the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ until we attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine by human cunning by craftiness in deceitful schemes rather speaking the truth in love we are to grow up in every way unto him who is the head unto Christ from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped.

When each part is working properly makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Notice two consistent themes here related to the fullness of Christ. One the church. In this context the church is given apostles prophets evangelists and shepherds to equip them for the work of ministry.

The fullness of Christ is given to the church which is his body. We saw that in Ephesians 1 23. And the second theme that it's connected with wisdom and revelation that brings the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God.

And what does this fullness produce in us extraordinary acts. No they produce mature children that are not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine and I would even say every whim that comes to our heart as well.

So as you can see the slight hand of teachings like this which Beth more consistently does eventually lead to misunderstandings of scripture that undermine what is clear in the passages. Doing this confuses Christian women and confuses what is meant by those phrases ultimately making scripture unclear.

An easy way to discern this is to ask does she teach about the passage or does she use passages to support her topic. This is not always bad but it will require that we dive into the passage and look into the context to see if the author is stating the same thing.

Misrepresenting and misusing verses to support a topic brings confusion not clarity. It leads to false doctrine many times. 2nd Peter 314 18 here states this. Therefore beloved since you are waiting for these be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish and at peace and count the patience of our Lord as salvation just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters there are some things in them that are hard to understand which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures.

You therefore beloved knowing this beforehand take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.

Amen. So Peter relays here there's some things that Paul writes regarding the wisdom of God that are hard to understand. They are clear like Paul says himself can be foolish to the Gentiles and a stumbling block to the Jews making it hard for them to understand them but for us.

But the Holy Spirit and the mind of Christ are to know beforehand that they find it hard to understand and therefore they will twist the clear teachings to their own destruction. We are not to be carried away by their error but are to rest in the promises the clear promises of God and grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ which the scriptures testify of.

Therefore a female teacher who understands how to rightly interpret and handle scripture supports the fact that it is clear when teaching it in context. Alright. So the fourth thing that the Holy Spirit teaches about the scriptures is that it is powerful since the Bible is God's very authoritative words that are without error and are clear because its author is God himself they are also powerful or what it is active and alive sharper than any double-edged sword.

It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart Hebrews 4 12. Basically the Bible is effective. It's living and it's active. It has power.

The Holy Spirit accomplishes his plans by it Isaiah 55. How do we discern if she believes that the scripture is powerful or efficacious. Okay ask these questions. Does she believe the Holy Spirit will sanctify women through the teaching and expounding upon his word or through her testimony and funny moving or even miraculous life stories.

Now a teacher is not going to outright express that scripture is not powerful but the bulk of what she gives in a presentation will does she present more moving stories or more of exegeting the word. If you have ever listened to Lisa Harper speak you know she is a terrific storyteller.

I'm going to present to you a clip where you will see what she believes about scripture. But take note most importantly here what she believes or where she believes the power to bring people to God resonates from.

I listen sometimes to younger communicators they're so excited to share all their verses and their things and their rhyming outline. I think sometimes they tend to forget the power of the richness of just a simple.

Story. And I love being a lifelong learner whatever it is. Yeah you know whether it's learning how to change so I'll have that little thing. And I know you with all your stuff. You are constantly learning and it's fun to me.

You know it's. And if all truth is God's truth I don't care what you're studying. If you get to the truth of the matter there's going to be a divine kernel. Yeah. But when I'm looking at something to teach like for instance one of the last big curriculums I did was on the book of Job and I did not want to study Job.

I was like oh Lord you're kidding me. This is going to be like sticking my hand in a blender.

See that right there rich.

Illustrations. I spent a year just sitting in Job just sitting in the narrative sitting in the story. But I just sit in the story because I do think when it comes to the gospel we forget they're real stories and that's what our heart connects with.

I think that's why he says the enemy is defeated by the blood of the lamb.

And our story is the word of our testimony.

Because if I told you Jenny I was just studying the Hebrew term for you'd be like well cool. I mean that's good for context. But when you say Lisa here's how I put one foot in front of the other after we lost Linya.

Here's how I saw God when I wasn't sure I could pick my heart off the pavement. I go tell me more. Because the authenticity in that actually lends credibility to the compassion of God in your life. You can exegete and your heart can be totally removed from that.

And I'm not not going to exegesis. I love studying the word of God and having context. But I can give you you know a Greek verb tense and not give you any of my heart. And it's because I'm trying to be self protective or at some point.

But if I go let me tell you where I was dying and God pulled me out of a pit I dug myself and rescued me. Let me tell you about the God who set my clumsy mistake prone feet on solid ground. Then you go dang that carries weight.

Alright so she basically believes that our testimonies she quotes Revelation 12 11 here to say that it is our testimonies that in essence bring people to Christ and this is where a lot of female speakers fall.

We are as females relational beings that we think that if we can just bring people to understand our stories they too will come to Christ. But this is a faulty belief because the power of God unto salvation is not what God has done for us individually.

God works in all people's lives providentially. This is the common grace of God. Besides that many non Christians can attribute what God gives here to other things other than God such as fate higher power or even some man made deity.

The power of God is simply what Christ has done. Period. What God has done for us is many many different things God provides for me and works providentially in my life. And this is usually what people in the secret sensitive movement mean by their testimony as Lisa Harper here describes.

But what God has done in these areas is not the testimony that is meant by scripture especially in the verse she references here Revelations 12 11. And you can do more study on your own looking into what it means to those who testify of Christ.

But I'm just going to kind of give you a bird's eye view. I'm just going to give you the quick understanding here of Revelation 12 11. Revelation 12 11 is apocalyptic literature describing the persecution of the Saints and in this context the casting down of Satan and the overcoming of him by the Saints because of the blood of the lamb there these Saints are basically holding fast to Christ who shed that blood and cleanse them from all their sin.