False Apostles are Smacked Down by Hurricane Irma!

Companion essay: “Why would a hurricane hit Texas and Florida and not, for example, Alabama?”

As Hurricane Irma approached Florida in September 2017, Latin America awoke to hear a number of its anointed prophets and apostles shouting, “You, Irma, go away!”

This is a manifestation of the doctrine known as the Prosperity Gospel, the Rhema Doctrine, the Word of Faith, and more recently, “Decreeing” = I decree such and such to be so, and it will come to pass.

Decreeing a thing and asking God to intervene in a thing sometimes sound alike, but they couldn’t be more opposite.

  • The prayer of faith is humbly asking God for help. Prayer is based on our trust in God’s power and grace.
  • The decree is telling nature (or money or property or health) that you yourself have the authority over them. Sure, the name of Christ is tossed in for good measure, likewise some prayers to God, but by definition it is not prayer. It is Prayer’s Evil Twin, Magic.

I have seen videos of a half dozen of these “apostles” commanding Irma to go away, but perhaps Miami pastor Guillermo Maldonado is the best example, and it’s in both Spanish and English. He ordered Irma not to cross the shores of Florida and told it: “as an apostle with authority over this territory…I command to the winds of the east, I command the hurricane Irma…I command you disintegrate, dissolve.”

CLICK HERE TO VIEW. He gets to the meat of it around 2:00

Now, what happens if Irma turns away from making landfall?

  • If God answered your prayers? Thank him, show him gratitude!
  • But if Maldonado made the hurricane go away? Thank him, by whipping out your credit card.

Let’s add one thing: people have posted these videos, after Irma hit, in the forlorn hope that at long last God’s people will see through this charade and stop giving these fakes the attention they crave. Or maybe these leaders will repent, go on TV, admit to being stymied, and give back your money.

I think I know human nature enough to guess that that will not happen.

What will the false prophets claim now? Some version of, “I, your anointed prophet, was right all along! So don’t blame me!” Perhaps one of the following:

  1. “Hurricane Irma would have been a lot worse, but my decree seriously weakened it.”
  2. “Hurricane Irma was in fact stopped, but, you know, on the spiritual plane, not on the meteorological one.”
  3. “I think the Christian attitude would be to help the victims, not assign blame to a godly leader. So, if you question why Hurricane Irma hit despite my decree, you are a bad, bad person.”
  4. “God told me afterward that Hurricane Irma was punishment on us for some thing or another, and so it couldn’t be stopped.” (Probably the sin will be a lack of faith. Which you can now rectify by whipping out your credit card, and operators are standing by to receive your donation.)

Of course, some people will combine many or all of the above. Ruddy Gracia hit 3, maybe 4 of them, now that I look at his post-Irma post, as does Ana Mendez. And people who point out the failure of their prophecies are hypocrites, liars, apostates. As in my prediction #3, above.

When a hurricane hits, it does a lot of erosion. But no storm, not even a Category 5, can erode the arrogance of the human heart.

“False Apostles are Smacked Down by Hurricane Irma!” by Gary S. Shogren, Professor of New Testament, Seminario ESEPA, San José, Costa Rica

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Published in: on September 15, 2017 at 5:32 pm  Comments (3)  
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Why Would a Hurricane Hit Texas and Florida, and not, for example, Alabama?

Related essay: “False Apostles are Smacked Down by Hurricane Irma!“

I offer the following difficult theme with, I hope, all respect to those who suffer and with prayer God’s blessings on the residents of Texas as they pull their lives back from the flood and the Caribbean and Florida post-Irma. And we will close with an appeal for donations.

Hurricane Harvey, 2017

Human beings are wired to look for cause and effect. The car won’t start; that means the battery must be dead! That bell keeps ringing; there must be someone at the front door!

But we don’t always get it right.

My favorite “false cause” story comes from the great Northeast Blackout of 1965. Millions from Ontario through Pennsylvania went without power for hours. When it hit, a Conway, New Hampshire, boy was on his way home from school. As boys will do, he was hitting stuff with a stick. He swung with all his might at a telephone pole, and just as he connected, the lights went off all over town! He ran home distraught, telling his mother that the blackout was all his fault! (more…)

Published in: on September 6, 2017 at 4:19 pm  Comments (1)  
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One of my “Other Ministries” in Costa Rica

Let’s label this ministry as: “Hi homeless friend! Would you like some breakfast?”

On Saturday, I go to the grocer and buy a kilo of local farmer’s cheese, a couple of loaves of bread, and big bottles of iced tea. Then I make up sandwiches for 25 or so people, gather paper cups, 2-3 New Testaments in a simplified version, maybe some second-hand clothes.

On the streets of San José, Sunday around 7am, I leave the car in a parking lot and head out with a jammed-full backpack. I take basic safety precautions, such as keeping all the people in my field of vision – but since I go out early, most of my contacts are still docile after their Saturday night. The street people migrate from one spot to another, so they aren’t necessarily where I last left them.

Then suddenly, there they are. It takes a second for the brain to register, That pile of rags is actually a man; that cardboard box is someone’s house.

Homeless man in San José, file photo

Wherever I see a cluster of people I stop and ask, Would you like some breakfast? I used to ask, “Are you hungry?”, but I switched my phrasing (more…)

Published in: on August 22, 2017 at 3:33 pm  Leave a Comment  
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It’s easy to preach against sins your people don’t commit

One of those, “Wish I had said this, in this way, but there’s no way I could have improved on this statement by Russell Moore –

I think sometimes pastors and leaders simply take whatever they find objectionable in the culture and rail against it. They sometimes use the language of decline, where we’re in the worst situation we’ve ever been in before, and these very dire terms—which is not true. If you look at every generation of the Church you see older people complaining that the next generation is just going to pieces. That’s always been the case in every history of the Church. It’s fear-mongering. It’s easy to stand up and rail against other people’s sins in a way that can cause your congregation, or your Bible study group, or whatever it is that you have responsibility over, to think “Man he is really hard against sin,” when in reality, we’re just hard against other people’s sins, and we don’t have the courage to address the sins that are going on right in front of us. (emphasis added)

Gary again: preaching about THEIR sins is always going to be easier and less likely to get you fired than preaching about OUR sins. This may be why I have heard:

  • plenty of warnings against gay marriage, but little about the abuse that happens in Christian marriages;
  • a lot of denunciations of hateful Islamists, but little condemnation of Christians who hate the haters;
  • a lot about those lazy people on welfare, but little about Christians who spend every spare minute and dollar on their own recreation.

The Bible is a sharp sword, and meant to slice into Our consciences as well as Theirs.

Full article “Engaging the Culture in the New Year,” HERE. Russell Moore was for a while in the news, because he spoke harshly against Christian supporters of Donald Trump, but he is consistently one of the best evangelical spokespersons out there on public ethics.

Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

 

Published in: on January 9, 2017 at 10:44 am  Leave a Comment  
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Act now!

Last month I was waiting my turn at the barber shop, and a homeless woman stuck her head in and said she was hungry. I didn’t want to lose my place, but I told the barber, “Uh…hold my spot, be right back!” I popped over to the bakery right next door and got her some food and drink. As usual, I told her in Spanish, “This is in the name of Jesus, ¿sí?” pointing upward to heaven. She smiled and nodded, she understood, said thank you, and walked off.

Last week I went back to the barber, who told me, “Did you hear about the accident at our corner here, how some woman got mowed down and killed in the street a few weeks back? Well, I need to tell you, she was that same woman you bought the food for.”

It took a while for that to sink in: I was one of the last people to speak to her.

For me, the lesson is: If you’re aiming to do something for the Lord Jesus, or put in a good word for him, well, you’d better do it right away.

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An afterthought: yesterday I read a short biography of Francis of Assisi, who purportedly once said, “Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.” I get his meaning, but suggest it’s better to say, Preach the gospel, lean heavily on action, but don’t forget to say the words that connect that action to Jesus.

In the above case, one of the worst outcomes I can imagine is if the señora had concluded, “Gee, isn’t he a nice guy!”

 

“…words are not dispensable. Jesus himself preached and commanded his apostles to preach. We deceive ourselves (but nobody else) if we imagine that our mere presence is sufficient to do the whole work of Jesus. Certainly there are times when words are not appropriate, yet – even in these circumstances – our presence will be a witness to Christ only because we are known to represent a Church which does preach the gospel. And there are also times when silence is betrayal.”

Lesslie Newbigin, `Religious Pluralism: a Missiological Approach’ (1993)

“Act now!” by Gary S. Shogren, Ph. D., Professor of New Testament at Seminario ESEPA, San José, Costa Rica

Published in: on October 6, 2016 at 11:01 am  Comments (3)  
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The Pharisee and the Tax Collector, Part Two [Humor]

Capture

Published in: on October 20, 2015 at 2:56 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Heresy = Bible verses twisted just a couple of degrees off center

If someone desires to give the church a certain percentage of their net or gross income, I honor that as their right and privilege. As for me, I promote that all Christians should give generously and cheerfully.

But first, a full disclosure – I believe that tithing was an Old Covenant rite by which about 23% of goods, usually agricultural products, were given to God for the maintenance of the priests, for the poor. I see no comparable requirement for the church, which is supposed to “honor” its leaders (1 Tim 5:17) and make voluntary pledges to special projects (Paul’s Jerusalem Fund). [1]

I have no argument with tithers so long as they have no argument with me. And I’m not speaking here about legalistic tithing or carnal non-tithing.

But in the past few weeks I have found people preaching what must be held up and labeled perversions of the gospel and of the practice of tithing. I’m not even talking about the protection racketeers like Benny Hinn (more…)

Published in: on January 30, 2015 at 6:26 pm  Comments (6)  
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Why Do People Go to Heaven?

Notice that I didn’t say how they get there, I mean why they have traveled there and then returned to tell us all about it. For the past few decades, people have dived into writing up their experiences of heaven – and a few times, of hell – published bestselling books and hit movies.

For my part I am highly doubtful about books on “afterlife tourism”.

One prominent title features The Boy Who Came Back from
content (1) Heaven: A Remarkable Account of Miracles, Angels, and Life beyond This World. It is marketed as “A true story”. Yet last week that bestseller was unceremoniously yanked off the shelves when Alex Malarkey, the “boy” of this title, publicly announced that the story of his journey was untrue. In fact, he had been trying to get a hearing for his confession for two years, but that was hard to do when books kept flying off the shelves – it has sold over a million copies and been made into a TV movie. [1] Thanks Alex, for owning up and bucking the authority of the grownups in your life.

What does the Bible say about these trips? (more…)

Published in: on January 19, 2015 at 5:05 pm  Comments (26)  
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Two of my essays included in a new collection!

They have just published a pair if my essays in Strangers to Fire: When Tradition Trumps Scripture. It’s now available on Amazon. You might recognize the title as a response to John MacArthur’s book, Strange Fire: The Danger of Offending the Holy Spirit with Counterfeit Worship.

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The contributors of these 35 essays are not the sort of televangelists I usually object to, but top Pentecostal scholars who are taking a stand against abuses such as faux apostles, the Prosperity Gospel, and Onenness Pentecostalism. They are exactly the guys who (more…)

Published in: on August 29, 2014 at 4:49 pm  Comments (6)  
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The Proverbs 31 Woman: Have we made her something she was never meant to be?

“Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.” (Prov. 31:10 KJV) J1746

Is it ever safe – or sane? – for a man to meddle in a passage beloved by Christian women? Am I grabbing hold of a live wire? For I hear a lot of sisters referring to Proverbs 31:10-31 as the pattern they want to follow. Google “Proverbs 31 woman” and there will be a landslide of hits, book ads, even “Proverbs 31 Ministries.” People seem completely intimidated by “Miss/Mrs./Ms. Perfect” in Proverbs 31, for example: “She was someone who had it all together. She actually enjoyed cooking and cleaning. She raised flawless children who never had outbursts. She never had issues with her friends. She stayed balanced with her finances. And she never had hormonal responses with her husband.” [1] Others reported that it took them a long time to get up the nerve even to open and read Proverbs 31! (more…)

Published in: on May 8, 2014 at 4:47 pm  Comments (6)  
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