Greetings and thank you for joining us for Dayspring Evangelism Presents. I'm Larry Wessels, Director of Dayspring Evangelism, and I want to thank you for this time you're going to share with us, hopefully for the next hour. We have a very special program today, and it features my guest, who is the editor of this outstanding book, in my opinion, The Agony of Deceit, What Some TV Preachers Are Really Teaching. And it's not only a book by this gentleman, but it's got a host of other writers who have contributed to different chapters in the book. Writers such as R.C. Sproul, C. Everett Koop, the former Surgeon General, Joel Niederhood, Walter Martin, and a host of others. And without further ado, I want to Thank my guest for being here and the editor of this book, Michael Horton. Thanks, Larry. Good to be back. Great to have you here, brother. And if our viewers have been paying attention to our series lately, this is really the third installment of a series we've been doing on this subject pertaining to the subject, I might say, of this book, The Agony of Deceit, covering what we consider to be numerous serious heresies which are taking place. Now if you haven't seen the other episodes that have already transpired, I urge you to somehow hopefully catch a rerun or maybe contact our ministry or something because the material that's already been presented is quite informative and I think well documented. And we're going to continue in this series to pick up pretty much where we left off last time. Just to recap briefly, I want to say that the Agony of Deceit covers the things that are being taught by many of the most popular quote, evangelical, end quote, TV preachers that are on today, mainly on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Would you like to elaborate on that a little bit, Fred? No, the group is actually called either the Prosperity Evangelists or the Faith Teachers, the Faith Movement, the Word of Faith Movement. If you know them by any of these titles, it's roses are roses are rose. And not only are they on Trinity Broadcasting Network, but they are really dominating much of the popular media ministry of a number of evangelical organizations besides TBN. Now, you mentioned these. Do you have any specific names to let our viewers know who exactly we're talking about? Who is mentioned in this book? Really, Kenneth Copeland is the main person. Kenneth Hagen, Daddy Hagen, as he's called by the faith teachers, is one of the chief proponents of the movement, although Ken Copeland has done more than anyone else to popularize it. Fred Price, Frederick K. Price, out in California, also Charles Capps, Daisy and Teal Osborne, Oral Roberts, a whole host of people. Yeah, like Earl Polk? Earl Polk in Atlanta, absolutely. How about the president of TVN? Paul Crouch himself, yes. A man that runs a mighty empire. That's right. I think we'll show, we're not just naming names and throwing them out, but unfortunately there's plenty of documentation to support the notion that these people are operating outside of the historic Christian consensus. In fact, if you missed our other two programs, we went into quite a bit of in-depth detail and documentation of quotes. We even played audio statements by the people themselves, from their broadcasts, by Paul and Jan Crouch, who said that they are little gods, and a host of other things. I urge you, if you miss those shows, it'll be worth your time to somehow get back on it. But due to limitations in time and much material to cover, we'll just have to let the viewers out there wonder about what we sell. We did get on to the historical roots of this movement, where it comes from. And I think one thing I will mention is that Hagen, who's considered the father of the faith movement, really had plagiarized his Many of his books are straight plagiarisms from a mind science, metaphysical type cultist named E.W. Kenyon who lived about a generation before him and written many books. Hagen simply stole his works and writings, copied it into his own books, and taught the same things. And now it's been popularized, as you just said, by Copeland and the others. Well, we're going to continue now in this series to work our way through the agony of deceit. At this juncture, I want to also mention there's other excellent books on the subjects we're talking about. I might as well take this opportunity to mention them. If you've seen the other shows, we used D.R. McConnell's outstanding book, A Different Gospel, quite a bit. And he's got outstanding documentation here on the origins of the positive confession and faith teacher teachings, stuff of this nature. So we urge you to get this book if you don't have it already, A Different Gospel by D.R. McConnell from Hendrickson Publishers. Other excellent books are... Healing Does God Always Heal by Elliot Miller. I think he is the chief editor or something of the Christian Research Institute Journal. And he deals a lot with these issues here in this little pamphlet. And another outstanding one is The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospels by Gordon D. Fee. Excellent, excellent publication. You hardly recommend it. Absolutely. So our viewers are encouraged to get a hold of copies of these books to get even more well documented evidence, because you know in these little TV shows you... You can only say so much and do so much when you get the backup research, then you have time to check the scriptures out, read the documentation, and go into far more detail than we can possibly cover in these television broadcasts. So anyway, with that said, let's move on into the agony of deceit as we were from the previous shows. What we're coming up on here, I think, is the viewers will now turn their attention to our chart here. We have a blow-up from Michael's book, starting with chapter 5. Ye shall be as gods, written by Walter Martin himself. And brother, what I'd like you to do is maybe mention some of these biblical passages that relate to this, and then start analyzing for our viewers what we're seeing on the screen here. Well, the first comes from the lie of Satan in the Garden of Eden, which he seems to continue propagating throughout the ages. You surely will not die, the serpent said to the woman, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God. That was the promise Satan made. And you remember Jesus Christ, the second Adam, when He is taken by Satan to a high mountaintop and tempted, He says, I will give you all the kingdoms of this world. All you'll have to do, Jesus, is name it and claim it. And Jesus says, no, man shall not live by bread alone, in other words, material prosperity, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. He quoted scripture back to him. And what we need to do when false teachers, representatives of Satan, come to us again today and tell us, you will be like God, we need to tell them, no, the scriptures say there is only one God and his son, Jesus Christ. And how about these other passages here Isaiah 2 6 and 7 6 and 11 you have abandoned your people the house of Jacob the prophet tells the the children of Israel Because he says they are full of superstitions from the east They practice divination like the Philistines, and clasp hands with pagans. The eyes of the arrogant man will be humbled, and the pride of men brought low. The Lord alone will be exalted in that day." You see, the essence of pagan religion is that you can become like God. That's the essence of pagan religion. Very prideful. Absolutely. I will raise myself up. You remember that's how Satan rebelled, that's how he got the human race to rebel, and that's how he's gotten the human race to rebel ever since. The religion of self-divination, of self-exaltation. And when the children of Israel clasped hands with pagans, God abandoned his people. And once again we see in the church today, people say, where's the power, where's the sense of God's presence among us? Well, we've clasped hands with pagans. We've turned to secular cults, to secular psychology, to secular anthropology, doctrine of man, understanding of man. And the faith teachers have turned to cults such as Christian science, religious science, unity, school of religion, those types of teachings to create their faith doctrine. As we mentioned before, Hagen, of course, getting his stuff a lot from E.W. Kenyon, who is in that kind of league. Absolutely. That you're mentioning about the unity school and all that kind of stuff. That's right. Ezekiel 28 2, in the pride of your heart, you say, I am a God. We'll see in a second here, that's exactly what these people are telling us. You don't, Ken Copeland says, you don't have a God in you, you are one. In the pride of your heart you say, I am a God. That sounds also like Paul Crouch. Absolutely. Paul Crouch said, I am a little God. Critics be gone. We've played actual audio tapes of him saying that along with many of these other faith teachers. And yet Ezekiel doesn't say, in the goodness of your heart. He says, in the pride of your heart you say, I am a God. I sit on the throne of a God in the heart of the seas. Now who is this saying this? It's the, it's a person. Ezekiel is quoting the devil. Ah, yes. In the pride of your heart, Ezekiel says, speaking of Satan, you say, you Satan say, I am a God, I sit on the throne of a God in the heart of the seas. But, says Ezekiel, says God through Ezekiel, you are a man and not a God, though you think you are as wise as a God. And that can easily be applied to the positive confessionists who are going around saying that They're a little god, or as Morris Morello says, he's a little miniature god. Absolutely. And all the rest of them. Absolutely. Here's the scripture, and this is just a tiny sampling of scriptures that can be brought against these kind of little gods' teachings. A false king, and as a type of the false king of the kingdom of darkness, Satan himself. Well, let's move on into what Walter Martin was saying there. Ye shall be as gods is his chapter now. Would you like to expound anything there? Well, yeah. Walter Martin's chapter really is alerting us to this major teaching, this central teaching of the faith teachers. You shall be as gods. Now, yes, the Bible does tell us somewhere you shall be as gods, but where does it tell us? In Genesis, where it's a warning, where the devil is telling the first couple, you shall be as gods. But was the devil right? No. When they bought that lie the first time, they plunged the entire human race into sin and misery. Now, you'd think that we'd learn that that was a lie. But we haven't. We're still letting people come and tell us, even in the name of Christ. that we can become gods. This is true. And so, with that, let's move on into the next page here. I'll just kind of turn this, take this on down. I think you have some outstanding quotes. I might say that for paganism, the way of salvation is exaltation. For Christians, the way of salvation is humiliation, the humiliation of Christ, who for our sakes, though he was rich, became poor. And a lot of this stuff about gods, and you even have it here in your book, in Walter Martin's section, he mentions the Mormons, who teach the same doctrine, that everyone can become a god. I remember it was very interesting, Walter Martin went on, sometime before his death, he went on Trinity Broadcasting Network, and was talking to one of the hosts, And he quoted Joseph Smith about our being gods and becoming gods. And the person interviewing him said, well, obviously that's heresy. And he gave two or three quotes from Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and so forth. He gave another quote, and once again the host said, yes, oh gosh, that's even worse than the others. That's total heresy. He said, yeah, that's from Kenneth Copeland, Voice of Victory, and gave the total reference for the quote, and the whole place erupted into a frenzy, of course. And you see, if you say it's Joseph Smith or the Mormons, it's out there. But if the same thing is propagated by people within the church, they're off-limits because you're touching the Lord's anointed. Well, was Joseph Smith the Lord's anointed? As we went into that in detail in an earlier show, so anyone that has questions about the Lord's anointed, try to get a hold of one of the earlier shows and we'll answer that, I think, to most people's satisfaction. Some people won't listen no matter what you say, so you're just not able to deal with that. Now, we get down here. Now, he starts mentioning a whole bunch of names, and we start getting some quotes. So, brother, could you expand on that? Sure. Earl Paul, here are some of the names. He christened himself Bishop. You usually can't do that, but he has. He might as well have christened himself Pope. I mean, if you're going to make yourself something, you might as well make yourself a Pope. Bishop Earl Polk in Atlanta, Georgia. Charles Capps, who's a writer more than he is a TV or radio broadcaster. Robert Tilton, many of you know him from his Success in Life telecast. By the way, Inside Edition had a remarkable treatment of Robert Tilton where he, on hidden camera, recognized that he was a prosperity evangelist, and when he was found out that he had done some deceitful things for his telecast, when the hidden camera found him out on it, they asked him on Inside Edition, now what are you going to do? He said, I'm just going to go make some more money for your Jews in New York. That's the kind of wicked, vicious personality he is. Now, what was the deceitful things he got caught on Inside Edition? Explain to our viewers, what is Inside Edition? Inside Edition is a secular program on basically behind-the-scenes sort of entertainment. Is it a regular TV show? A regular TV show, right, like a small 60 Minutes. Oh, okay. And essentially what they noticed was that he was living an extravagant lifestyle. Such as? Such as driving, you know, limousines and he has a three and a half million dollar estate in the Beverly Hills of San Diego, California. Well he's probably so busy he never gets a chance to go there. Well he flies there every weekend. He has a home and his church in Texas. He doesn't own his own jet, does he? I'm not sure whether he owns his own jet, but he flies first class. That's where they found him, was in first class, and they asked him what... He had brought in, Tilton had brought in some people living on the street, had given them clothes and shelter for the TV cameras, and then after the TV show, put them back on a bus, took away their clothes, and sent them back to the shelter. Took their clothes away. That's right. So he gave them nice clothes instead of the crummy clothes they had, because they were street people that he brought in. And then he took their nice clothes away that he had given them, because the TV show was over. Sent them back. This is all on Inside Edition? That's right. Inside Edition was interviewing one of these people. And they're based in California, Inside Edition? No, they're based in New York. New York, OK. Just for any viewers that doubt this story, they can try to check New York. And they were interviewing one of the people, one of the homeless people. And this reporter for Inside Edition showed Robert Tilton, who was sitting in first class, this video. And Robert Tilton didn't know who this person was. And the person was going on talking about, yes they brought us here to this church and they took our clothes and so forth. And the reporter said, well what do you think about this? And Tilton says, well obviously someone who did something like that should go to prison. That's theft. That's fraud. He should go to jail. He says that person was you. So it's absolutely amazing what these people are doing. I never cease to be amazed that people continue sending money and keep supporting these people when they're crooks. They're absolute frauds. If people would just stop sending money to these, I would think charlatans. They'd dry up. They'd dry up. And we wouldn't have to deal with this. That's right. Kenneth Copeland, really, as I said, the popularizer of this movement. And Kenneth Hagen, also known as Daddy Hagen, is really the father of the modern faith movement. I see. Now you get into some... quotes here, you got Earl Polk, the bishop, the quote-unquote bishop, Earl Polk writes, Adam and Eve were placed in the world as the seed and expression of God, just as dogs have puppies and cats have kittens, so God has little gods. But he says we have trouble comprehending this truth. Until we comprehend that we are little gods and we begin to act like little gods, we cannot manifest the kingdom of God. So he's teaching little gods, and it takes us right back to what Satan said in Genesis 3, as we mentioned already. That's right. And now Tilton adds, you are a god kind of creature. Originally you were designed to be as a god in this world. And to finish that quote, Man was created and designed by God to be the God of this world. Of course, man forfeited this dominion to Satan, who became the God of this world. Kenneth Copeland adds that man had total authority to rule as God over every living creature on Earth, and he was to rule by speaking words. His words would carry the power and anointing of God that was in him from the time he was first created. See, that's the point that you speak, you rule by speaking words. As God said, let there be light, and there was light. We are now gods, and so we can do the same thing. We can speak things into existence. Or command things into existence. Pat Robertson, in fact, makes that very comment when he tells us exactly how we're to call things into existence. He says, many Christians believe and teach that you have to pray for things to happen. Robertson says, no, you don't pray for things to happen. You command things. It's the spoken word. He says, therefore, you must command the money to come to you. You know we've got an audio quote that we'll play later in hopefully this broadcast or if not this one, the next one, of him saying something almost exactly like that. And we'll get into some more detail on that. You've got one other person here on this page, and I want to talk a little more about Tilton here, something he said. This Casey Treat, now I haven't heard of him myself, but can you explain about him and what is he saying here? Sure, Casey Treat, pastor of Seattle's Christian Faith Center, is in that Trinity Broadcasting Network orbit. He tells us in his tape series, Believing in Yourself, which I think is a remarkable title in itself, to come to the point where we feel comfortable claiming our Godhood. Now before I read this, Do you remember when Shirley MacLaine came out with the made-for-television movie, Out on a Limb? Yes. And the Hindu guru came to her, and they're on the beach, and this is all new to her, this Hinduism of you becoming a God. But finally, she starts giving in, and she starts believing it. He says, now repeat after me, I am a God, I am a God, I am a God, I am a God. Tentatively at first, she said, well, I don't know. OK, I am a god. I am a god. Finally, at the height of the scene, the climax of the scene, she's yelling out to the ocean, I am a god. I am a god. Well, the evangelicals go nuts. How dare she? How can they do that? Now, before you go on with that story, I just want to interject that one of my favorite theologians, Dr. Robert A. Morey, has written almost 30 books now. He's been on this show many times. He says, when Shirley MacLaine is proclaiming to be, I am God, I am a God by the seashore, to prove it, Dr. Morey says that she ought to walk on the water like Jesus does. If she's really God, then keep on going, Shirley. Walk on out there on the water. That's right. But it doesn't transpire. But now continue with it. Okay, we find it very easy to criticize that and to fly into a rage that how could a network, a self-respecting network, push Hinduism down everybody's throat, and yet Christianity to get short shrift so much by the networks. Well, here we have someone who is not a Hindu, at least in terms of his denominational affiliation. What is that? A Hindu? No, no. What is Casey Treat's denomination? I believe it's independent. An independent faith church. Now what happens when he says exactly the same thing as Shirley MacLaine, and even people within the evangelical ranks say, well, he's not really a heretic. Okay, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost had a conference, and they said, Let us make man an exact duplicate of us. Oh, I don't know about you, but that does turn my crank. An exact duplicate of God. Say it out loud. I'm an exact duplicate of God. The audience repeats it tentatively and uncertainly. Come on, say it. He leads them in unison. I am an exact duplicate of God. Say it again. I am an exact duplicate of God. The congregation's getting into it, louder and bolder, with more enthusiasm each time. Say it like you mean it. He's yelling now. I am an exact duplicate of God. Yell it out loud. Shout it. They follow as he leads. I'm an exact duplicate of God. I'm an exact duplicate of God. Repeatedly. When God looks in the mirror, says treat, he sees me. When I look in the mirror, I see God. Oh, hallelujah. You know, sometimes people say to me, when they're mad and they want to put me down, you just think you're a little God. Thank you, hallelujah. You got that right. Who do you think you are, Jesus? Yep. Are you listening to me? Are you kids running around here acting like gods? Why not? God told me to. Since I'm an exact duplicate of God, I'm going to act like God. Yeah, does Shirley MacLaine. Well, absolutely. I mean, the thing is, we've got to be consistent. I don't care if you're Billy Graham. I don't care if you are the Pope, Jerry Falwell, whoever. If you are teaching This, you are outside of the Christian family. You are closer to Hinduism, or Buddhism, or Taoism, or Sufism, one of the Eastern religions. But you certainly are not a Christian. I don't care what church you go to, whether you say hallelujah, use the same phrases, have the same experiences. If you teach this, you are not a Christian. A heretic is a heretic is a heretic, whether he's green, purple, or brown. It doesn't matter. Absolutely. This is outright blasphemy. You shall be as gods. This is right out of the Garden of Eden. Yes, and what's incredible here is you'd mentioned a story about Tilton back here, and we got that quote about how he says that man was designed or created by God to be a god of this world, and of course he teaches these positive confession and prosperity On previous shows we've played a tape where he's saying that if you're poor you're in sin and you're supposed to have prosperity and all this kind of stuff. Well with that said I want to show the audience something about Mr. Tilton. And we'll talk a little bit about this. First I want to play an audio tape of Mr. Tilton. on one of his numerous broadcasts, and you can expound after we take a quick listen to this. Here's Mr. Robert Tilton speaking, if I cue the tape up in the right place. Let's see what we get here. Oh, we got to take it off pause. If you'll listen closely, if you'll make a vow right now of a thousand dollars. So Bob, I can't pay it now, I know that. But you need to make a vow of faith. You've got to be willing to let go of trusting in what you can see. God will not only open the fish's mouth and pay your bills, but it will pay the vow. He will give you seed to sow and bread, fish to eat. That's the Bible. Now, you have a choice. To believe it or to doubt it. You have a problem. Any kind of housing, transportation, situation in a marriage, you can release the creative, see this all works by faith, the creative force of God into existence. Release the creative force of God into existence, but it all seems to be predicated on making that vow. A vow of $1,000, the work of God. It's clear from Robert Tilton's own theology that he is on a course to make money. And he will invent a theology of greed to endorse the lifestyle he wants to live. Yes, as we discussed already. Now, I want to show the audience here some of the typical mail-outs that Robert Tilton I don't know which camera we got it on right now, but I'll just hold up to this one. It's coming from the Word of Faith, World Outreach Center Church Incorporated, Robert Tilton Ministries, Dallas, Texas. Now here's a typical envelope that goes out to, I guess, a lot of his supporters that are giving him money. And you'll see it's got a picture of Robert Tilton. Now I'm going to put it on the board here and we'll kind of analyze a little bit more here. Let's set it up here so it'll be nice and stationary so maybe the camera can zoom in on it. This is This is Robert Tilton right here, and he likes to put his face on a lot of his envelopes. And he's got a saying here, it says, start remembering, God woke me up at four o'clock in the morning. What he told me in an audible voice will change your life on March the 17th." Now this letter was sent out in the year 1991, same time we're producing this video series. And he says that God woke him up and talked to him in an audible voice. I've noticed a lot of these faith teachers seem to have a personal communication with Jesus. Kenneth Hagen says he's been visited by Jesus eight times. And the different faith healers say, oh, God told me this, and God told me that. And here he is saying that God woke him up and told him that something's going to happen on March the 17th. Sounds like a faith healer's version of a horoscope, doesn't it? Yes. Now, what I want to do is bring out a lot of the stuff he's got in this envelope. I guess that's good enough here. I'm going to show the viewers what this man is sending out, and we'll kind of go into somewhat of a detail here. Let me tape this up. What he does is he puts a big poster of himself inside the... Here we go. Take a look at this. Yours. If we can bring it out. puts a big poster of himself in these envelopes he sends out. He talks about March 17th here. That's 1991, I guess, for this situation. Your Miracle Day, okay? And he's got number one, Decide Decision Week. Rush your prayer requests back to me today, so I will have them by March 17th. Your Miracle Day. And then we got number two, the Decree Week. Number three, the declare week and your miracle days got this circled off. Now, brother, you're closer to it than I am. What does he say here and what does he say? He quotes a passage of scripture. Ask for what you want or settle for what you get. And down here, he quotes Job 22, 27, and 28 from the Amplified Version, which they like to use so that they can select the word they choose. So it wouldn't read the same in other translations. That's right. It would mess up what they're trying to make that verse mean. That's right. You will make your prayer to him, and he will hear you, and you will pay your vows. You shall also decide and decree a thing, and it shall be established for you, and the light of God's favor shall shine upon your ways. So he's taking a passage of scripture which we agree with, he's twisting out a context. And then he says, get what you need or settle what you have or something like that over there. Sounds like a gospel of greed. Now let's take a look at the other side of this thing. First, while you're doing that, when we say it's a gospel of greed, we're really saying no more than exactly what Peter told us these people would be like. He says, there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies. They are experts in greed and a cursed brood. They seduce the unstable. It's absolutely amazing that false teachers and greed always go hand in hand. Exactly. Simon the magician who wanted to buy the healing power of the disciples. And what did Peter say? May your money and you both go to hell. That's right. That's Acts chapter 8. Exactly what Peter said. And then look what Elsie does here. And this is the other side of that poster. He's got his face here and Jesus right there. Your miracle date is set. what would you have me to do for you?" It's like Jesus, you know, He's like your little servant boy. You just clap your hands, snap your fingers, say, here boy, and tell Jesus what you want Him to do for you. And He's got this prophetic word from the Lord and He says, the Lord spoke to me and told me how you and I can have a miracle harvest every time. This revelation that I've shared with you in this letter will literally change your life. Here's what Jesus said to me about this revelation. Now he's got quotes here, and he quotes what Jesus told him. You know, and he goes on, these truths are things you were doing that caused your faith to... Let's see, what did it say here? These truths are things you were doing that caused your faith to bring about and to bring into existence what you were believing me for. It's that same thing. Boy, Jesus has terrible grammar. Yeah. I mean, if this is coming from Jesus, really horrible grammar. Yeah, you think he could speak better. I thought he did a better job in the scriptures. That's right. He seemed to speak pretty well there. That's right. And he's given this thing like speak into existence, the very thing we were talking about before. And he just goes on with all this stuff. You were letting the devil talk you out of what I was endeavoring to do, so apparently the devil has some power there to stop God's desires and everything. And he says in here, I shall bring to pass even the very desires of thine heart. Well, we all have evil desires sometimes. Hey, what about that beautiful secretary down there on the third floor? How about let me have her, Lord? You know, we get into some of these things that are ridiculous. A lot of times we think we know what's best for us. But God, being omnipotent and all-knowing, even though we think it's best for us, He knows better. Which actually, what we think would be good, could be a curse. But the way this comes across, it's like, whatever you think you need, God's just going to... You know, he's just going to do it for you as long as you have that faith. Well, when I see schemes like this, I just think of, again, the passage in 2 Peter, where he also adds in their greed, these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. And what does Peter say? Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping. At that juncture, I have to read... Some of our viewers for Dayspring have seen one of our frequent guests on, Bob L. Ross, and I have to just read this letter that he had sent. to doctor, or doctor by no way, Mr. Tilton. And I'm just going to read it. It's a short letter here, but I thought it was apropos to what you were just saying there. Bob L. Ross at Pilgrim Publications sent this letter dated March 15th. He said, Dear Mr. Tilton, I am looking forward to the soon coming judgment of God upon you for your false and ungodly ministry. Every time I catch a glimpse of you on TV, I'm reminded of the many passages in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel about false prophets. I phoned your headquarters and asked to speak to you, but the goon, he's got that in quotes, who answered would not let me do so. The Lord must have a whole lot more patience than I, but then he also is more exact in his record keeping and his judgments. Be sure you enjoy your ill-gotten gain now, for a day of reckoning is coming in which the Lord will let you eat the fruit of your wickedness." My message to you is this, and he quotes out of Ezekiel, Woe unto the foolish prophets that follow their own spirit and have seen nothing. Ezekiel 13, 3. And he finishes the letter by saying, Vanity and lying divination, that is your ministry. While I cannot watch you for more than a minute without spiritually vomiting, I will keep tabs on you, for I am looking forward to seeing how the Lord will bring you down. Sincerely, Bob L. Ross." I mean, it sounds rough to our viewers out there, but this is exactly the way someone like Elijah would deal with false prophets. What did Elijah do to the 400 false prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel? Laughed at them and mocked them. Absolutely. I don't know... And in the end, he killed him. Yes. We have different ways of responding to this, and I think if we simply expose what they're teaching, the viewer will be able to make up his or her mind and to come to the conclusion that these people really are false prophets. Now, I leave their judgment up to God. I do hope and pray that someone like even Robert Tilton will actually hear the gospel somewhere, or when he is actually reading the Bible and not rewriting the Bible, he will come across the gospel message clearly as it's presented in the Bible, and that he would believe and actually become a Christian. If he does not do that, however, he does face impending judgment, and those who follow this faith message will spend eternity in judgment with these people. Yes, yes. Well, I want to just say a few more things about Robert Tilton and we'll move on. He sends out this long letter that goes with these things he puts in here with this poster. You know, we don't have to look at all that, but he's got all kinds of little notes on how to give your money, and follow these little sayings that Jesus has done, and all that kind of stuff, you know. God spoke those three words, decide, decree, and you know, He's always talking about these revelations He's gotten from God, and spiritual truths, and He gives these little stories of people receiving all kinds of miracles, and whatnot. So these go in here, and then of course He always throws this in, little envelopes for each of these weeks we were saying on the other side of this poster. And in there, you're supposed to include, I think it's right here, we still left it in the envelope. You've got for each week, week number one, you know. And then he says here, you've got these little boxes for decision week one, I'm stretching my faith and I enclosed my best gift of, and the first box is $100. And if you can't give $100, then you check off this. Of course, we heard him on the audio a minute ago, getting people to vow, perverting the scripture out of the Psalms, I believe, on trying to get people to vow. People are not vowing to God when they do that, by the way. They're vowing to Robert Tilton. And they're not under any obligation to give him any money as he requests. But he's got all these things on here, and each week, When you make a request, you also are supposed to send him money. Because you command things exist. You give $100 in that letter there I just showed. It says you give $100, you can get $600. Or, you know, you give so much money and you'll get something out of it. But basically, he's asking people to send money and do vows of all kinds. But, now that brings us to an interesting point. If we want to help Robert Tilton make a lot of money, we run ministries ourselves. Why don't we ask Robert Tilton Mr. Tilton, we run ministries and we want to help you get lots of money, okay? So I would like you to make a vow to our ministry of $100,000 sounds all right. I know you can afford it. That's right. He gives us $100,000 that means he'll make a million dollars And he won't be able to ask anybody for money because if he just gives us a lot of money or a lot of his listeners out there Why don't Robert tilt? Why don't you vow to people out there to give them money so that you'll get all this money you're talking about in these miracles and I don't know, maybe we ought to help him even more. Why don't he give $200,000 to me and a couple hundred thousand to you, and then he'll make, what, $4 million out of that deal. I think that's an outstanding business proposition. So if he gets hold of this tape or viewers, send him letters, cards. Call him up. Say, well, we want to help you with the same principles that you're trying to espouse to us. Give us your money. So with that thought, that's a little thought for the viewers out there to help Robert Tilton really succeed. And the one last thing to say on him, I want to just show this other thing. We'll tear down this poster. The next month after the Miracle Day, I never really heard anything about March 17th being some big day. I didn't see or read anything in the news about it being so incredible. But the next month, I'll just put this here for a second for the camera mic to look at it. He sent this out, I have sent you your seeds to succeed. Handle with care, live miracle seeds enclosed. Now I know that Robert Tilton sent out a vial of holy water. prayer cloths and everything you know one of these latest mail outs he had a picture of himself on the envelope drawing an outline of his hand on a sheet of paper so apparently you can put your hand in contact with him or something like that. Of course it says here on the bottom important keep out of water so we don't we don't want your you know this to fall into some water or something because then the miracle seeds may you know you might get a miracle at the wrong time I guess or something like that but once again for the viewers to say, we're just going to breeze through this quickly. But once again, he puts these envelopes in a sequence so you can keep sending him money on a regular basis. Once again, he encloses, in this case, it's another month, March 17th's passed, so he needs some more money. You need a special miracle seed request. It's got them here throwing seeds out. If you need a harvest of special miracles, let me pray for your special request and then place a prophet's anointing on your seed. Okay, and then you check off what you need and everything. And of course down here, You've got to check off if you want to give $100, $25, $50, $500, or some other amount. Like he often asked for a $1,000 valve or whatever. And you send these back with your envelopes on a regular basis to keep that money flowing in. Okay and of course here you know special miracle seed requests and you know with these seeds you'll get cars, houses, I don't know if that's a boat or a ship or something or business success. Here's one of all this money that you can get by sending these things. Just to show you what's going on here but here it is folks. Here's your miracle seeds right here. This is what he puts in those envelopes. Miracle seeds. Well, you got to be careful. We don't want to get water on them like it says on the envelope or we might get a miracle we don't want or something like that. But I know that if I were to plant these back here and these plants we have behind us here, maybe that would cause the studio to have all kinds of financial success. Maybe someone will give us a boat or a house or something like that. Who knows? This might be the most successful television ministry in all history because there's a lot of little... Do you see this, folks? Look in here. There's a lot of little seeds in there. That's a lot of miracles. I mean, I don't know what I can do now. I guess we're doomed to be millionaires. I've got enough seeds here to last me quite a while. And so I'm excited about that. And you know, like these guys say, they're always anointed. Well, I guess since we consider ourselves, maybe you're a pastor of a church, and I'm an evangelist for a ministry, we're anointed of God. We can anoint these and really make them I mean, we can agree with Mr. Tilton and get even bigger miracles. So it's exciting. But we'll keep these miracle seeds up here just to anoint our charts that we're going to be doing in the rest of this show. But as I was saying here, one last little thing at Mr. Tilton here. Here's, of course, I'm just going to hold this up here for a second. He puts these posters up himself. He's got the seeds here. There's this thing I was showing here. There he is praying over these letters and everything. Take these seeds, plant them in faith, reap your harvest of miracles. And he gets into all this stuff. Begin to sow now. God has a miracle harvest for you. This is powerful anointing. And on the other side, of course, there he is. throwing out the seeds. Miracles grew from their seeds. And he talks about all these people getting all these different incredible things. So, I mean, we're really blessed now, brother. We got all those seeds, and with this guy's seed, and look it, he seems pretty excited about it all. So, I think we're in real good shape here, folks, to accomplish a lot. But now, if I sound like I'm being a little What's the term? Maybe mocking or things of this nature. I'm trying to show the audience that, listen, don't be a sucker. What did B.T. Barnum say? There's a sucker born every minute. Why doesn't this guy give you money? As I said before, if these principles work, why is he always asking for money? He should need, he should be, well you just said he lives in a multi-million dollar estate and he's got big cars and everything. Why does he keep needing to ask for money? I want to get to the, I don't care if there's water down there or not. My miracle seeds can be put on hold, but I want to show the audience here on our chart something. I think this is a passage of scripture that applies to people like Mr. Tilton. Would you agree, brother? Oh, absolutely. It's 2 Peter 2, 3. Would you care to read that for us, brother? And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you, whose judgment now of a long time malingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not. Okay, so what do we have going on here? Do you think by looking through some of Mr. Tilton's stuff that he sends out on a regular basis to get money, shows big pictures of himself and everything, get people to send, and the first choice is always $100, you want to check that off? I believe that the viewers out there, this man is making merchandise. He's making a fast buck off the people that are, I believe, foolish enough to believe in what he's doing, in sending him money. And of course, false prophets like this, as you were quoting those other passages before, will lead to damnation, or damnation slumbereth not. And with that said, I want to move to this next chart, which goes back to Michael Horton's book. And I think this is apropos, and we're going to continue to move through the agony of deceit. Would you care to read that from Jeremiah 23? If a prophet or a priest or anyone else claims this is the word of the Lord, I will punish that man and his household. This is what each of you keep saying to his friend or relative. What's the Lord's answer? What has the Lord spoken? But you must not mention the oracle of the Lord again, because every man's own word becomes his oracle. And so you distort the words of the living God, the Lord Almighty, our God. Jeremiah 23, 34 through 36. And I think a key here is the oracle of the Lord. It says, every man's own word becomes his oracle. And by him doing his own word to be his oracle, he distorts the word of the living God. And all these faith teachers and positive professionals saying, the Lord told me this, the Lord told me that, and Jesus appeared here and did this. I think this verse applies aptly to them. Now with that, there is something I wanted to show at this point, and I forgot to get it lined up here for the show, but do you have that Believer's Guide magazine that you were looking through? Is it over there somewhere, brother? Yes. Ah, thank you. I want to show some of our people lists as we move back into the book here in a second. I used to write for this magazine years ago. It's called the Believer's Guide, Edifying the Body of Christ. This is from June 1984 and of course it gets into several things here. This is what you might say one of those positive confession magazines. I think you were really getting the kick out of this and you want a copy of this after you get ready to go back to California. In here it has different stories and everything like that. I'm going to put this up on a board now and hopefully it will hold together. Okay, it looks like it will. We can get a shot of this here. I thought this was fairly interesting. The people that ran this magazine years ago, this magazine has since gone out of business, Because I believe the people that ran it were too greedy and it ended up with two churches in a lawsuit against each other. Typical stuff I guess when you get into positive confession things because it never seems to work out. If these people were confessing everything they were teaching, why did it go out of business and why did they have to end up in a lawsuit? But that's a whole other story. Here's the editor. I'm over here, if we can get a shot of these two pages. My article appeared here, and I did this for a couple of years, just writing a cult section for this magazine, called The Two-Edged Sword. That's me, Larry Wessels. This particular article is on the Unity School of Christianity, which, as we were saying before, E.W. Kenyon, Christian science, mind science, metaphysical cults, the mystical type of stuff that Hagen plagiarized from. Do you agree with that? Okay, I'm writing this article on these metaphysical type mind science cultists. In this case, the Unity School of Christianity. And I think I covered them fairly well for such short space. Of course, that article did continue on another page. Now, here's the editor who's into the positive confession stuff that we've been talking about. His pastor and a host of others that were writing for this article. but this magazine. Now over here he's writing, I don't know if you can zoom in on this or not or if it even matters, but he's writing about the mastermind principle over here. And he says the positive mental attitude, number one. Sound mental health, number two. Harmony in human relations. And he goes right down all these lists. You know, things you got to do and how to get financial security and I found it was interesting. He's got these mastermind principles that you're supposed to accomplish to ordain your destiny. You know, direct your thoughts, control your emotions, mastermind allegiance to define active allegiance of two or more minds working together in perfect harmony towards a common goal or objective. But he got a lot of his stuff I think from C. Everett Clement Stone or something like that. Have you heard of him? But he's one of these guys that's influenced with the positive. He's influenced, I think, Norman Vincent Peale and people of his line. But what happened was, in this particular issue, was the Unity School people who are into this mind science stuff, they call up and complain. They said, we don't understand your magazine. On one side of the page, you're blasting us, which is my article here. But on the other side of the page, you're saying exactly what we say, which is the positive confessionist type of attitude about things. And it was very interesting that here's the cultists themselves calling up to complain to the editor. It says, on one side of the page, you agree with this. On the other side of the page, you're blasting us. And I wanted to bring this out as an example of what we're talking about here. You made the statement earlier that we're starting to put these men into Although they say they're in a church, we're putting them outside of the church because of the heretical teachings they're teaching. And it's interesting to note that a lot of these people... that wrote for this magazine. I know one writer in here is now apostatized into Hinduism. He was a pastor writing for this magazine back then in 84. And now he's a teacher of Hindu philosophy and yoga techniques. And I could mention a few other apostates out of this thing. But they followed these techniques and it's led to a shipwreck of their faith. But with that said, let's move on into Continuing in your book, I'll put up the next page here, which is going into some things that were said by some of these other prophets. And as our time runs out in this show, we'll complete this series in the final show and complete pages in your book. Time left. Go ahead and put that up there. Okay, and this is continuing in Walter Martin's article before we went off on Robert Tilton, but I figured that needed to be shown to the folks out there who can't believe some of the stuff that's actually transpiring. But brother, if you'll pick up now from Walter Martin's article here in your book, and we'll continue until the time runs out. Well, first of all, Walter Martin appeals to Exodus 3, the great revelation God gave to Moses of his name. His name was and is I Am, capital I, capital A, capital M. When Jesus said that he was the great I am of Exodus 3, the Jews sought to stone him claiming blasphemy as their ground. They understood what apparently escaped Kenneth Copeland, i.e. that Jesus claimed divinity because Kenneth Copeland says Jesus never claimed to be divine. Copeland says he only claimed that he walked with God and that he was in him. Jesus never claimed to be divine. But if a Jehovah's Witness says that, then we say they're a cult. Prophecies such as Copeland's do not originate with Christ or the Holy Spirit, and scripture flatly rejects them as false. We are therefore warned to fear false prophets, Deuteronomy 18.22. The born-again Jesus concept perverts, says Martin. On the other hand, the doctrine of Christ's finished work on the cross, as demonstrated in the following quotations. This comes from Bilheimer's book, Destined for the Throne, which, by the way, was even endorsed by a representative of the Billy Graham Association. So this is getting this spreading. That's right. A cancer. Yes. And Bilheimer was not in the word of faith movement. And yet he's very much influenced by the teaching of Kenyon and company. It was not sufficient, says Bilheimer, for Christ to offer up only his physical life on the cross. His human spirit had to descend into hell. While Christ was identified with sin, Satan and the hosts of hell ruled over him as over any lost sinner. During that seemingly endless age in the nether abyss of death, Satan did with him as he would, and all hell was in carnival. Jesus is the first person ever to be born again, says Bilheimer. Why did his spirit need to be born again? Because it was estranged from God. What is spiritual death? The opposite of spiritual life. Spiritual death means something more than separation from God. Spiritual death means having Satan's nature. When one is born again, he takes upon himself the nature of God. Jesus tasted death, spiritual death, for every man. Sin is more than a physical act, it is a spiritual act. He became what we were, that we might become what he is. His spirit was separated from God, and he went down into hell in our place. Having Satan's nature to say that Jesus Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity, possess the nature of Satan is the height of blasphemy and is absolutely unconscionable. It's unfathomable that a person would state that in print and still consider himself a Christian. I would like to interject now at this point. I want to play a couple of audio clips that bring this into play. Of course, I should have played this one just a minute ago when we were still talking about Tilton, so we'll play Fred Price talking about that kind of carnality of greed, of obtaining things. Then we'll get into two quotes by Kenneth Copeland that link into this Satan's nature that you're just talking about and Jesus going to hell. So if our viewers in the time we've got left will listen in, they ought to hear some pretty shocking stuff. The first one here will be Fred Price as time runs out. The man said, and shall, you'll say unto this mountain, be thou removed, and be cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, not in his head, his mind, but in his spirit, shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith. He won't even have what he believes. What he says ought to be based on what he believes, but Jesus placed the emphasis on he will have what he says, but back up a step, provided he believes it in his heart, back up a step without doubt. Now those are the parameters that control this law. Jesus said he shall have whatsoever he says. I mean, what does whatsoever mean? Whatsoever means house, car, Rolls Royce, airplane, health, healing, financial prosperity, clothes, furniture, churches, Bibles, television sets, television stations, television channels, television cameras. He said whatsoever, he's saying. Well, I can see our time is about out, so we won't be able to get to the quotes by Copeland that relate in with what we just said here about Satan's nature, but if you want to hear those, then watch the next episode to get those and the rest of our discourse on this particular subject. As we heard Fred Price say, the same greed that we were talking about, the merchandising and all of that. We can have, if we just have enough faith, we can have television sets, cars, houses, TV stations, I guess, you know, with those miracle seeds. And what he's saying, we can really, I mean, we can do all kinds of stuff here. It looks like we're in for some big times here, brother. But with our time running out, unfortunately, we'll get into Satan's nature. We've got about a minute left. Brother, I'd like you to, with your time, Spend about 40 seconds, say what you like to the viewing audience, and then we'll sign on. The Apostle Paul said that even if these super apostles, in 2 Corinthians he refers to the super apostles, come to you and preach with miracles, even stringing along miracles behind them. Another gospel, another Christ, another message, another hope, another salvation. that you are not to believe them. He says you put up with them easily enough and I think he'd say the same to the 20th century church in America. We mustn't put up with them because they're bringing to us the same lie that Satan tried to pass off in the Garden of Eden. Adam believed that lie and because he did the entire human race was plunged into its present misery. Jesus Christ came as the second Adam, and he resisted the lie and forced that lie to deal with Scripture as he quoted Scripture to the devil. You and I need to do that again today. Well, thank you, brothers. Good to have you. I hope you all tune in for the next show. This is Dayspring Evangelium. I'm Larry Wessels with author Michael Horton. God bless you.