Cultish: The Secret: Exposing the Cult of Toxic Positivity, Pt. 2

Called to Freedom Conference Announcement and Registration

Hey what's up everyone, we are super excited to announce that we will be making our first appearance on the road in Simpsonville, Kentucky July 28th and 29th at the Called to Freedom Conference. If you are disentangling your faith after experience in a hyper-fundamentalistic or legalistic church group, this event is for you.

There will be panel discussions, table discussions, inspiring testimonies, all from Christians who have rebuilt their faith, and even a game night guys. It's a weekend of rebuilding theology, rebuilding community, and rebuilding faith through God's.

Words.

So definitely check that out. Also Jerry and I, we're going to be speaking there and we're also super excited to meet you in person. You can register for the conference today at bereanholiness .com forward slash conference.

That's B-E-R-E-A-N holiness .com forward slash conference. Also until May 31st, you can use the promo code CULTISH in all caps at checkout for $50 off the purchase price. We hope to see you there.

Now back to the episode.

Introductions and the Law of Attraction in the Church

All right.

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Cultish. My name is Jeremiah Roberts. I am one of the co-hosts here. Andrew, the superstar of the show, is not alongside me. As I mentioned, during the time of this recording, he has taken some time off as he had a brand new healthy baby boy, him and his lovely wife, and the kids are doing well.

They're just taking some time off to adjust to their now four children, family of six now, including them. So shout out to Andrew, and he'll be back on the podcast soon. Joined back again by John Clash.

Make sure it is spelled correctly, as I said. And just a friendly reminder, if you download Clash of Clans, nothing wrong with playing the game, but also if you do, it means that you probably typed in the wrong keyword, and now you're down a totally different rabbit trail.

Speaking of rabbit trails, we've gone down quite a few of them, but we definitely have unpacked quite a bit. One area that we did want to get into specifically was talking about the Law of Attraction and how it has infiltrated the Christian church.

Let's talk about that. How has it done? Let's give us some...

Let's go.

Yeah.

So it infiltrates in the way anything infiltrates the church. It starts small.

Yeah.

So we're talking about how the New Age has infiltrated the church. We have had guests on, like Steven Bancroft, when he was on the podcast, talked a little bit about it. He also talked about it in his book, Second Coming of the New Age.

But yeah, you have written a book about it yourself, speaking about the Law of Attraction. What areas do you see it really kind of infiltrating the church? People are saying, oh, this is harmless. I can incorporate this into Christian living.

Yeah.

So it infiltrates different churches in different ways, right? So I would say a church that is not necessarily a Law of Attraction church, which we'll get into what that is in a bit, they could be a real Bible-believing church and real Bible-believing Christians.

And then you have a few people who stumble upon the secret and just start introducing it to different church members. And because it's presented in a way, or, you know, the Law of Attraction is presented in a way as it being neutral, now you start having people participating in practicing it and then going to, you know, certain scriptures that they will use to justify that it is biblical, that they can be practicing the Law of Attraction.

And so that's one way that it can infiltrate a church is just through like members that are participating in it. Also, you know, churches bring a whole bunch of people from different walks of life that bring their baggage with them.

So that's one way. But then you have churches who the Law of Attraction is built into their theology, right? And it's just not called the Law of Attraction. So one of the things that the Law of Attraction says is that you can speak things into existence,.

Right?

And in speaking things into existence, it's, you know, because your words have vibrations and you know, they activate the frequencies of the universe. And then it's, you know, on that frequency, it's bringing it back to you.

Well, there are churches that are considered under the Word of Faith umbrella, right? And you'll recognize people like Kenneth Copeland, you know, Benny Hinn, you know, people like that who actually teach this stuff.

And it's not just like, so the other day, Mike Todd, who's a pastor in Oklahoma, he tweeted something saying like, oh, be careful what you say, because, you know, your words go into the atmosphere and that shapes your life or something like that.

And I'm, you know, giving grace and thinking that he probably just said that in like trying to sound profound or whatever. So I don't think that that's necessarily a part of maybe that church's theology, but an actual Word of Faith church teaches in their theology that when we put our faith in Christ, we not only, you know, get forgiveness for our sins and everything, but prior to the fall of man, Adam and Eve were able to speak things into existence.

And when we put our faith in Christ and we now become born again believers, we now have access to speaking things into existence again.

Right?

So we kind of like re-get that back and that's in their theology, right? And then they say that your thoughts and what you say, uh, activate the faith force, right? So, and when you're thinking positive things and speaking positive things, you're activating that faith force and that faith force is bringing the blessings of God to you.

And these blessings are obviously material. Um, and so it sounds very similar to the law of attraction because it is, because everything is the same. There's nothing new under the sun. Everything is the same.

It's just repackaged differently. The Word of Faith movement is the law of attraction, just repackaged as Christianity, you know, instead of after everything that they say in the new age, they say things like, and so it is well in, in the Word of Faith, they say in Jesus name, you know, you'll, you'll see, um, everybody for the most part has seen that clip of Kenneth Copeland, you know, grabbing his head saying, hair grow, you know, speaking to your hair to grow.

Right.

And I wish that that worked.

I really do.

But this is, this is the kookiness that it leads you to believing this stuff because you can speak these things into existence. Right. Now it also filters its way in through the prosperity gospel, right?

Because the prosperity gospel, it's similar to the Word of Faith movement, which actually before we jump into the prosperity, the Word of Faith movement, um, was created by, um, or influenced by,. I'm going to ruin his name, but I think it's like EK something, but that guy totally, no, no, no.

So that guy was, we're talking about the Word of Faith.

So that guy was actually influenced by Phineas Quimby, who is the father of new thought.

Right.

So here you have, uh, and then also Phineas Quimby, um, was involved in the law of attraction and S and stuff like that. So if you, um, like just trace it all the way back, it goes back to the new thought and the new age movement.

Right.

So here you have people like Kenneth Copeland, like Benny Hinn, like some of these Word of Faith preachers that are really just preaching new age spirituality, except in Jesus form, if you could call it that.

Right.

Yeah.

Um, and then you have the prosperity gospel, which is more subtle.

Right.

So I'll give you a prime example of how, um, the prosperity gospel kind of creeps in as.

Well.

I was going to, um, a church in Connecticut, not the good church I was telling you on the last episode, but there was another church that was by my mom's house and they taught a bunch of biblical stuff that was, that was real.

I still know to be true today, but they, um, there was this Thanksgiving service, right? And this, the Word of Faith and Law of Attraction also goes into, you reap what you sow. They twist that scripture right into being, um, you know, if you sow good words into the universe, you, you know, you reap good back.

And also if you sow seeds into the ministry, you're going to reap that back and seeds being financial seeds, you reap that back, um, financially. So I was, I went to their Thanksgiving, um, service and in the Thanksgiving service they had a whole bunch of testimonies on stage.

Um, and as I'm listening to the testimonies, I was expecting to hear, you know, how God renewed a marriage and God saved someone from addiction. But this was apparently their fundraising, um, their fundraising season, right?

And which I'm cool with fundraising. I'm 100 cool with it. I think that anything that is ran on donations needs some fundraising.

Exactly.

And so tell me about it.

Yeah.

So by the way, guys, make sure you donate to Coltage. They do a lot of good here, um, of course. But so I'm sitting there listening to them speak like all these different church members that they brought on stage and they're saying, yeah, you know, I, I never, I never knew, you know, how good God could be until I decided to sow a seed and you know, I thought that I couldn't afford it, but I was like, you know what, I'm just going to give it anyway.

And then I was blessed with 20 times more than what I gave. And it was story after story after story of that. And I'm sitting here like, what is going on? And I'm a baby Christian at this point.

Right.

And so the, the, um, the, the feeling that I got after sitting through that was of disgust. I'm like, this is, this is not right. Something just is not right here. And then little did I know was that this was a church that is under the branch of Joel.

Osteen. Right.

So I had no idea. And how does this tie back to the law of attraction? Joel Osteen has a book called the power of I am right. And in that book, he teaches, you know, these affirmations that when you, when you say, I am whatever follows it is shaping your life.

So if you say I am fat, you'll get more fat. If I am broke, you'll get more broke. But on the flip side, if you say, I am wealthy, I am healthy, I am living in abundance, and you just start saying these affirmations, now you're, you're activating God's blessings by speaking well of yourself.

And that goes back to activating the faith for us. And that goes back to speaking it into existence. It all ties back. And then it also goes into little God theology. You know, Kenneth Copeland teaches that we are little gods, right?

Who else teaches this? Creflo Dollar teaches that we are little gods, meaning we are actual gods, right? Not gods with apostrophe S. Yeah.

God's no apostrophe. S. Like, yeah, we jumped into some of that stuff with the, when we did our episode actually with Van Kars and the word of faith movement back in 2020. Speaking of Kenneth Copeland, I think it's interesting.

I was trying to find the, I was Googling here for a second ago, is that I was trying to find the transcript of everything that Kenneth Copeland is known for, his executing judgment on COVID -19.

Yeah, yeah.

COVID -19.

Like if 2020, like everything that happened in there, like this was one of the cherries on tops. Like the world is, the world is getting stranger, but you know, with all the, you know, there's like the remixes and people are doing all the different.

That was a fun time for that.

There was, yeah, there's a couple, you know, silver linings in 2020, like that and Tiger King was kind of interesting. But anyways, you know, but when you look at even like a lot of what he said, you know, it came from this worldview of like the word of faith or the law of attraction where he's saying like, you know, I execute judgment upon you.

Like somehow he had the power to, like he literally, like he meant that, like it wasn't a joke to him. He thought that this virus at that time, like literally no one, no one knew what it was. We just knew something was weird was going on in China.

Stuff was starting to shut down. It's working his way over here. Stuff is starting to shut down over here and here he is believing that this 80 year old man is saying he has the authority to execute judgment on something that came out of somewhere out of China.

And like he meant that, like, and then of course he went over and did the dramatic blowing.

And yeah.

Yeah.

And like, but, but even though the joke when he's like, I blow the wind of God and all those things, like it's, it's all meaningful for sure. But like, there's real, there's a real tangible like worldview that came behind that.

So even when you're saying like, I blow the wind of God, like he's literally saying that he, he has the power to like take the force of God to like push back against this. And he literally thinks he was doing the right thing, like to help people, I guess.

Like who knows?

I don't know what we're going on. I don't know what he's thinking.

But you understand the worldview that was coming behind that quote.

So it's interesting because, um, you know, this, this is another way that it bleeds into the church as well. Kenneth Copeland is, uh, you know, he believes in deliverance as well. You know, as far as deliverance ministry, he has these mass deliverance things where he walks around and he touches people and they fall to the ground and all of this stuff.

Right.

Let's, let's, let's go, go ahead with what you're going to say and we'll play the clip.

Actually.

What, um, what I was getting to is that in that world as well, um, there's, there's one teacher I remember when I was going down the, the, the path of trying to deliver myself from demonic strongholds, uh, there was a book that I read where it said you, you should not pray your fears out loud.

You should say them in, in your head because if you say them out loud, demons and the devil can hear you saying it. And if they hear what you're afraid of, then they'll use that against you. So it's kind of a twisted way of saying like, Hey, don't, don't say anything negative because then you're activating negative forces that will come back.

So it's just interesting how Kenneth Copeland believes in all this like deliverance and you know, word of faith stuff. And then you have other deliverance ministers that are telling you to not even pray your fears to God out loud.

Imagine that, you know, and uh, so it's just, it all ties back. The law of attraction infiltrates in, there's people who are promoting it without even realizing that they're promoting it.

Yeah.

Kenneth Copeland and Positive Confession

Uh, so let, let's, let's just give an example and then we're going to, uh, I want to challenge you on a couple of different verses, but here's, here's a clip from Kenneth Copeland, uh, talking about, uh, we're going to decipher this language.

Uh, let's go ahead and play this and uh, yeah, here we go.

Times like this through victory thon that you made all of this available to start with. And that's the reason that Gloria and I pray for you. Uh, we pray for you every meal. I mean, we hold you up before the Lord all the time.

We think about you and we pray about you and pray for you. And in the name of Jesus, I declare the power of the Lord is on you now. I declare you well, I declare you, I declare you strong, not just heal.

I declare you well, divine health from now until Jesus comes or the time of your departure, long well life. So be healed and be well and understand this, that God loves you and we love you and Jesus is Lord.

I agree with him on that last part.

Yeah.

Right.

So there's a couple of things. He makes a distinction between, uh, between, uh, is well and what else he differentiated between he said strong, not just, well, yeah, strong, not just well, but he specifically declared it.

Yeah.

He's the one declaring it. I declare you this, I declare you that he's, he's not asking God for an answered prayer. He's, he's saying it as if he has the power to tell God what to do.

Right.

You know, and that's, that's the difficulty when it comes to declaring, because this is also law of attraction stuff too. You declare the things that you want to be as if they are, you have to live in that.

You have to live in that, that mental state. Cause part of the law of attraction is, um, you know, you, you not only say it, but you have to feel like you already have it. So to say things like, I declare this, you know, over you, all right, well, what if that doesn't happen?

You know, what, what if, what if you declare me, you know, not, not only well, but strong and then I'm, I'm, I'm unwell and weak.

Yeah.

What's that say about your power?

Right.

Another question too, is that, I mean, one of the things he says is that I declare you well until your departure or until Jesus comes. So in other words, you are to be the best place as a Christian should be, um, that God wants you to be according to Kenneth Copeland, at least from my understanding.

Yeah.

Um, I mean, if Kenneth Copeland watches this and wants to send me this to reclarify, I'd be more than happy to hear from him, but I doubt that'll happen, but declarify if you can declarify.

Right.

Um, well, yeah. So in other words, you know, are you supposed to be perfectly well, uh, without any sniffles or anything like that until all of a sudden one day you just dropped dead out of the blue. Like, and if you have anything else, I mean, there's one, like, uh, I think Walter Martin during LA, he had this one lecture, he said, Hey, there's one thing he's talking about the errors of positive confession, which is actually a great, great message.

You should check it out. But he said, there's one, there's one disease none of us will ever be cured from. That's your last one.

Right.

So all of us, you, most people when they die, they usually come down with someone like a Mike Kaiser right now. He's, yeah. He just made that post, which is heartbreaking. You know, he's going to be the Lord soon and it is, it is not, you know, his, his, a cancer is not in remission anymore.

And so like what's going on with someone like him, like, is that because of, he wasn't faithful enough, like didn't pray enough.

He wasn't declaring it over him, uh, over himself enough, or maybe he didn't have Kenneth Copeland come lay hands on him or he wasn't delivered from the cancer demon or something like that. You know?

Yeah.

And that's, and that's what's like destructive is that there's tons. And this is why I like imagine we'd say bad theology hurts people is that like, I believe that like if God wanted to, he could heal Dr. Heiser and I've seen times where the Lord does heal like, uh, pastor Jeff, like their adopted son, like August, his son, they had, when they adopted him, he was a spine that he was going to be, uh, the mom initially wanted to do an abortion and then she chose not to.

And all the documents, all the medical documentation, all the things show that he had spina bifida and there was going to be like a real challenge. I mean, anyone who knows who's raised a child with the, with that symptom knows that's a real, real challenging thing to do.

And when August was born, it was a miracle. Like he had no symptoms whatsoever and they were like in tears and it was like this amazing area in which God moved. So sometimes God will move in that area where that's amazing.

You get glory to him. But there's a lot of times where like God will put us on the best way for us to learn is to be put on our back.

Yeah.

Right.

That's where I learned the most.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so even like an example, when you look at it, even stories like in the old Testament, like Nebuchadnezzar, when he gives his whole story, like there are some times where it's like God has to sort of put you on your hands and your knees and eat grass to be humbled,.

You know?

And, and like, that's such an amazing passage of scripture. And so like the idea that somehow, you know, this is, you have to be this particular way. It's so, it's so destructive. It's such a distortion.

It's also what, you know, what do we consider well, you know, to be well, I would say that I would much rather have everything falling apart in my life and a real connection with God, you know, a real relationship with Jesus Christ, you know, that.

So prime example of, of when, you know, you're saying how sometimes God takes you low. When I had the rug swept out from under me and my business fell apart, relationship fell apart, all of that stuff.

That's when God brought me to him in a real relationship, not just me putting my faith in Christ as, as my, you know, Lord and Savior and getting into heaven.

Right.

But really digging into a relationship and me understanding who our father in heaven actually is and what his nature is like and in the ways he loves us, because it's not real love if he just gives us every single thing that we want in, in our, in our lives, you know, that's not love that's spoiling somebody, you ruin them.

And we also have to keep our eyes on eternity. You know, if, if our lives are perfect in this one, right. We go to the next one, what do we have to compare? You know what I mean? Like struggle in this life, I believe can, can help, help us understand how blessed we are to have Christ, you know, for an eternity.

Misusing Matthew 21:22 and Romans 12:2

Yeah, no, no, for sure. So let's, let's do this because a lot of times, you know, people will look, I mean, you think about all the different ways the new age has infiltrated the church and like I said, whenever we make a post about the Enneagram, the, you know, there's, that seems to be like a hot.

Topic.

But again, that's something where, you know, like I said, you look at the origins of that, like we're not doing the genetic fallacy, like the people who put it together, we're literally doing automatic writing a spirit contact.

It's when you get into it, it's, you are playing all sorts of gymnastics to try and get around.

It's like Jesus calling that, uh, that devotional Jesus calling like that, that woman did automatic writing and she admitted it. It's like, she, she said, this is what I did to write the book. So this is, this is an entity either pretending to be Jesus that's writing this book or,.

Well, so it's crazy is that, um, I had no idea what Jesus calling even was. And I was part of this thread where just a couple of people in this one girl who's part of the thread would send Jesus calling.

And all of a sudden I just saw every single devotional. If I remember it would like wrap up where it's like, Hey, I just want you to bring you into the peace of my presence.

Yeah.

Seek my face.

Right.

But it was all, it was all kind of like into this like esoteric, like out of like woo woo.

Sort of thing.

Go to the Zen garden.

Yeah.

It's like, but there's nothing really about sin, repentance, understanding the cross of.

Christ.

That's what they want, man.

You compare that to something like Oswald Chambers, like my utmost for his highest, which is just like rich, like this guy only lived a short amount of time and like, I like walked with God.

Yeah.

But you could, but anyways, like the, so you could see, um, with like Jesus calling, man, it's just one, it's so out there and woo woo. It's definitely another Jesus, another spirit for sure. Not only that, when you talk about like a moneymaker, there's been like 15 versions.

Of it.

I was just at Costco the other day and there, and there's like the latest version of it. And I'm like, there it is again.

Yep.

And this is just like lapped up because of the thing is too, is that people are attracted to that because there's nothing in there that talks about their sin or the holiness of God. The fact that we're going to stand before a Holy God, it's all me, me, me, me, me.

Like that.

Those prayers are so they're not God focus. It's all Jesus calling the me.

Yeah.

I mean, this is not, this is for me.

No.

Well, he cares about his me and how I feel. And that's, that's why these secret friendly churches and I, I'm not saying that it's a complete net negative with, um, you know, with that stuff. But if you, uh, um, you know, if you get into like the Stephen Furtick and stuff like that, it's like when I was going to those types of churches and into that stuff, I was never really told about my sin in the way I was needed to be told.

That was, you know, they, they spoke about it, but they didn't go into like specifics, you know, and, and really holding up a mirror of how bad you are.

Yeah.

All right.

Big time.

All right.

Yep.

We're going to put a couple of, uh, uh, versus proof texts that people might use to prove the law of attraction in the mirror drum roll. So we're going to do a drum roll and see what you answer. Let's, let's take a look here.

Um, all right, let's just have some fun with it. Uh, so this is also an example too, is that Colts and both the new age, the sortation, they'll take the Bible, they'll take versus out of context because it's all about, you know, you're a conversation, they're hearing what they want to hear.

I mean, people never do that online, do they ever like a YouTube comment session? People, people read what they want to like your comment, your, your comment made me feel.

This way.

It's not about what you said. It's how it made me feel.

Yeah. Yeah.

So just drama. You open a Facebook now, just drum. That's the thing too. Like since I've been married, I've been hardly even on the Facebook grid. It's been nice.

Anyways.

Uh, so let's take a look here. So here's a proof text, Matthew 21, 22 and I'm like, but hold on, John, it says, but you said, and all things, whatever you ask in prayer, believing you shall receive.

Yeah.

Like that's, that's a law of attraction. That's biblical, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Of course. Read, read the next verse, you know, read the verse before it. Whenever, whenever somebody, um, just pulls something out of the middle, you have to read before and read after, you know, one of the stipulations is forgiveness.

He goes on to talk about forgiveness and you also have to take, take into context. You have to, you have to take into the, into consideration the context. Who is he speaking to, right? He's speaking to the people who are following him right then and there.

Right. So if we're going to take this and give it a blanket statement over, yeah, look, if you just ask and believe you'll receive, right, you have to ask, well, who's Jesus talking.

To?

This isn't talking to non-Christians. This isn't talking to new agers. This isn't talking to everybody. You have the before and after.

Yeah.

So, uh, let's take a look here. So when the disciples say, yeah, um, when the disciples saw it means that there's a previous context. They marveled saying, how did the fig tree wither at once? Then Jesus said, truly I say to you, if you do not have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what you would has been done to the fig tree.

And even if you, uh, and even if you say to this mountain, be taken up and be thrown into.

The sea.

And if it happened and it will happen, but whatever you ask in prayer, you shall receive if you have faith. So there's a little bit more context there.

Yep.

Keep reading.

Yeah.

Oh.

And then verse 23. And then when he entered the temple and the chief priest and the elders and people came up to him and he was teaching and he said, by what authority do you do these things? And who gave you this authority?

Jesus said, I will ask you one question. And if you tell me the answer, then I'll tell you by what authority do you do these things? Well, I always love that. Jesus always does that.

He's not. So this wasn't a Kenneth Copeland declaring.

No.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

But anyway, so whenever, whenever we, we have a text like that, that just, I always tell people read before and read after, because you're going to gather some context, you know, in this one, you, you have the before of like, these were, this was his disciples asking him a specific question, you know, and he's talking to his disciples.

Whenever new agers take that whole, you know, uh, what you ask and you believe you'll receive, they'll say, see, look, the Bible teaches it. That is not a blanket statement for every person in existence.

He's not talking about activating the faith force and, and, and, uh, getting on the frequency of the universe. He is talking to his disciples. So let's just say that Jesus is, you know, not just specifically talking to those disciples right there, but he's talking to all followers of Christ after that would still mean that if the, this does prove the law of attraction, that it is a limited to us Christians.

So sorry, buddy, you're not on the team.

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