OH! The Confusion!

Post 313

As I am finalizing the details of my next Post, I came across a very timely confusing issue that is growing in complexity every day:
Some years back, and again just today, I ran across some FaceBook Christians who were/are all excited about the story of a boy who died in a car accident, and while dead, supposedly went to heaven where he met Jesus, the Father, lots of people-- (specifically children and babies), and was given a grand tour of heaven and hell by Jesus himself, before being sent back to earth with a message.
Right from the start I am a strong skeptic and this just smells wrong! But instead of running with my gut reaction and rattling off a bunch of scriptures that refute such things, the first time it came up I refrained from more than expressing caution and let it drop, but this time I decided to investigate the information in order to have proof for my argument. Besides, another person already left the obligatory cautionary comment so I didn’t need to, and he included that the New Age claims Mrs. McPherson as one of their own. This shouldn’t be a tough one to resolve.

So I watched the FaceBook attached Youtube presentation of the Sid Roth; Its Supernatural program with Mrs. McPherson that sparked the excitement (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8w5rF6UPxI). Additionally, let me express that I already find Mr. Roth’s TV program “highly suspect” because he seems to have little discernment in the miracles he promotes as “of God,” or even authenticated as genuine. I am greatly concerned that his program glorifies the miracles and not the God of the miracles, though this focus is not exclusive to him, and seems to be the focus of some of my FaceBook friends as well.

I have to confess that what I heard Mrs. McPherson say was not what I expected. I intentionally overlooked the whole un-provable “trip to heaven,” and the slightly more provable miracle of “providing dead children’s parent’s home addresses to deliver a message,” and focused instead on the message itself that she was presenting to the viewer. I found no scriptural flaw and in fact my spirit confirmed her message. This surprised me. But remembering Mark 13:22, I was still skeptical and began a more serious research looking for the DNA of the devil in the miracles as well as in the details of both the message and means that she didn’t provide in the program,

“For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect” Mark 13:22.

To seduce the elect, one would need a very convincing argument that goes with the signs and wonders. The elect are simply not blind sheep but diligent and watchful Christians full of the Holy Ghost. Therefore, that has got to be some very good deception in order to begin to draw them into a state of risk!

So after a raised eyebrow of favorable surprise over the Youtube presentation on Its Supernatural, I went to her website (http://www.rethamcpherson.com/) to do some more investigation, and read nearly all the pages of her son’s journal letters (http://www.rethamcpherson.com/Letters/AldosLetters/tabid/117/Default.aspx) on that site.
Again, being skeptical and looking for false doctrine that usually accompanies such “trips to heaven,” I was surprised to read letter after letter of nothing but the accurate message of Jesus Christ found in the Holy Scriptures but written by a child. Forget for a moment the miraculous means by which the messages were apparently coming, the messages themselves are of the DNA of Christ Jesus the Messiah. Again, this surprised me as I didn’t find what I was expecting to find. I still struggled with the whole “trip to heaven” and “messages from God” bit, but the messages themselves are scripturally flawless in content and intent (i.e. spirit).

Having not read any of their books and knowing nothing more about their ministry to evaluate, I had a few small concerns and only one serious; It’s the whole “mother and child” thing that bothered me. Where is the dad in all this? This seems strongly to Type the Pagan Nimrod and his mother, and also the Catholic Jesus and his Mother, where the mother becomes the star focus feeding off the son who gets pushed to the back.
So not having yet read their books myself, I thought I would investigate the evaluation of her opposers to see what they have come up with.
* * *

The Opposition:
I found a link that seems to spend a great deal of earnest Christian effort to scrutinize false doctrine and expose false ministries, and from the first page I loaded it addressed the false doctrines of several well known deceivers and demonic “angels of light” that are today deceiving many Christians who think they are of God. That’s a good beginning from which to expect sound thinking, and the web author has written a two-part examination on Retah McPherson and her son Aldo, and their book A Message From God: (http://www.discerningtheworld.com/2013/05/22/retha-mcphersons-message-from-another-god-part-1/). I expected to find the research I was looking for and the evidence of demonic activity, but, while it doesn’t automatically validate Mrs. McPherson’s claims, what I found was a Pharisee’s very detailed evaluation of Jesus according to the Torah, in a modern application. Allow me to explain:

Jesus came to earth in the fulfillment of scripture, but in a way that was not expected by the Jews who seriously studied the scriptures. One of their main arguments was that he made a practice of healing people on the Sabbath: Clearly such a person could not be from God, who ordained the Sabbath rest as a Law! What is alarming in their very earnest evaluation of trying not be deceived by an impostor, is that in their focus of the Sabbath issue they completely overlooked the prophesied miracles that he did in their sight!

“OK fine, so you healed a man crippled from birth, so what; You did it on the Sabbath, so it’s more probable that you’re a demonic deceiver!”

Let’s review one example of this, as written in scripture for our education, that begins with this response to the accusation:

“For the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day” Matthew 12:8.

and ends with a miracle of healing on the Sabbath that concluded with:

“Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him” Matthew 12:14.

The concept Jesus was trying to get them to see was this:

“If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him” John 10:37-38.

To the ignorant gentile Christians who do not know their Old Testament, such an argument holds little value, but his meaning to the Jews was obvious: the specific miracles Jesus did was the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies that validated the Messiah from God (John 9:30-33). This is what Jesus was revealing in answer to John’s query if he was indeed the Messiah even though he didn’t seem to be fulfilling what was expected of him:

“Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them” Matthew 11:4-5.

These were the specific things prophesied that the Messiah would do when he came (Isaiah 35:4-6), but even more; was the visual fulfillment of establishing the unseen kingdom he brought (John 18:36-37). The way Jesus came and the means Jesus used were obviously going to rub the Pharisees wrong, this was the intent, as evidenced by the way it was hidden in the prophecies (John 12:34). And with a pre-conception of what was right and wrong they simply rejected what seemed wrong... just as our critical website author has done in this case on many examples such as this one:

“We do not know all the kinds of New Age teachings Retha was getting involved in before the accident, mostly she does not mention all of it, but one thing is for sure, she was sure into something occult orientated because what happened to her the night of the car accident did not come from the God the bible.”

That’s quite a weight of factless accusations that then become proof that this is not of God, because it is presupposed, without scriptural support, that God would never do such a thing… like sending the Messiah as a human child, do miracles on the Sabbath, or some other such ridiculous suggestion~.
With the very detailed review by the accuser on many such spurious foundations that include scriptures as support, where is the scriptural evidence that the things that happened that night are not of the bible’s God? This is nothing more than an emotional statement that then validates the baseless claim that she had to have been involved in the occult.

Look, I’m not casting stones here, I was pretty much thinking the same thing when I started this investigation. But presupposing without valid evidence is very dangerous! And the website author does a lot of presupposing. Are you really going to tell God that he can’t do what they claim happened that night? I read the very long and detailed 2-part contending article but never saw the scriptures that show God can’t or won’t do that.

Here is just one more of a significantly long list of error on the part of the webpage author whose critical emotions seem to run faster than reason:

“and again Retha thinks that we lay our lives down as a living sacrifice to Jesus, she says[:]
'Jesus is coming for a spotless Bride: those who will lay down their lives as a living sacrifice to Him.' pg 6
This is totally unbiblical, nowhere in the bible are you to ‘sacrifice yourself or our children to Jesus Christ in order to get saved. Jesus Christ is our sacrifice, He laid down His life for us, His blood washes away our sins."

Wow, really? The author has in a single breath combined two different concepts between “This is totally unbiblical” and the irrelevant rabbit trail regarding salvation that followed this declaration as proof that Retah is wrong. But staying on track with the actual topic, may I suggest: Romans 12:1 “Living Sacrifice,” or II Timothy 2:3-7 “Be a good soldier,” or Luke 6:22-23 “Rejoice as outcasts,” or I Peter 4:1-2 “Suffer with Christ,” or II Peter 2:20 “Maintain or fail,” and a plethora of others that demand a living sacrifice as a condition of salvation (Hebrews 12:14):

“…If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it” Luke 9:23-24.

How then does the apparently well-read web author make such a bold statement? I wonder what the author does with all three Johns, for they are literally stuffed with this concept. Dare I ask him/her to read my previous Post? If we are not to sacrifice to the Lord please explain the continued Tithe of our first fruits.
Again let me confirm that I am not casting off this earnest author, and I can imagine that due to past confusions and life experiences, his/her present view is importantly based on the very foundational truth that indeed Jesus did pay it all on the cross with nothing left to be paid. But salvation is not the discussion here, and the zealous defender of the faith has missed the point in the effort to decisively put down corruption of what is so cherished. Can this be the seduction warned about that may almost succeed in seducing the very elect?

Likewise the Pharisees had long missed the whole point of the faith, the scriptures, the Promised Land, and the Kingdom of Heaven. They were so familiar and comfortable with their massive knowlege of the scriptures and law, that Jesus needed to shock their perceptions in order to quicken their dead faith steeped in the religion of scrutinizing the scriptures to death and missing the spirit of those same scriptures as they did it. As Matthew 5:17 says; Jesus didn’t destroy the law but rather fulfilled the law; it was only the religion of the Jewish rulers, who held the law, that Jesus came to destroy! But by thinking they were one in the same they rejected him for it, as the website author has done with the blatant attack of misapplication and emotionally willful misunderstanding.
Again, the reason the web author can so misunderstand Retah’s very biblical statement is because he/she has already determined God cannot bring a child back from the dead to deliver the scriptures in an unusual way, or speak to people today, or download the scriptures into a child while in heaven. With this rock solid belief in protection of the faith as perceived, all that is left is to shred the false teacher, just as the Pharisees did to Jesus, who didn’t actually breach the scriptures at all, but did breach their understanding of it.

The Spiritless pharisaical portion of the Christian church today is again utterly failing to comprehend Christ’s message because in fear of being deceived they are scrutinizing to death the strange and unexpected activity of the Holy Spirit that the scriptures already told us He will do in the last days (Acts 2:17-18, Luke 8:17, 10:22, etc. etc.). And indeed there are many demonic imitations that need to be scrutinized and exposed, the amazement is that without the Holy Spirit to distinguish one from the other, the wrong ones are accepted and the right ones are rejected…but not always! Oh! The confusion in who to trust as the Church devours itself!(Galatians 5:10-15).
The critical spirit of the web author has in this way done a great job of completely missing the point, and by using the scriptures themselves, has added presupposition onto erroneous application on many fronts because of a pre-determined judgment that is so confident of what God wouldn’t do, that the author doesn’t need to find scriptural validation for the accusatory claim but finds lots of scripture to rabbit trial that makes it seem like it has been addressed. And while professing to be of the Spirit of God exposing a false prophet, the website author is the one in error with a spirit of criticism that is blind to Christ’s message in both Jephthah’s prophetic vow and Romans 12:1,

“I Beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” Romans 12:1.

But, as the contender has stated above: “This is totally unbiblical…”~
* * *

A woman’s Word Now:
In continuing my analysis, I watched the first McPherson Youtube video below, and the first 1/4 of the second video below, and I discovered the answer to my “mother and son” concern.
Satan’s religions always corrupt Christ’s true practices and typologies of faith in the effort to make that truth vilified, or at least confusing, to God’s people. And as I watched this mother lovingly interpreting the words of her son that we cannot understand-- both written and spoken-- I saw clearly the Typology of Christians teaching the Word of God to those who cannot understand Jesus Christ in his written word or Spirit. Take the time to watch the first video, and even the first 1/4 of the second and see this for yourself:

Son and Mother (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aBbPK03eF4).
Nephilim (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j66tiHkHme0).

Of course I am not suggesting that this boy is Christ, and neither are they--(as has been suggested by the critical web review); Rather it is but another typology, like Moses, like Samuel, that Christ has given to us in these last days to help us comprehend our Gender Typology jobs as his Matthew 12:48-50 “mother and brothers.” If you can accept it, this is as in Matthew 25:14-15, Christ has gone to heaven and left the bride Church “mother” to listen to him through his written word and the speech of his difficult-to-hear Spirit, and then teach what they comprehend to the world, and thereby increase the Lord’s kingdom for when he returns. If the Typology holds consistent, the dad is probably in the background providing for their lives so that they can minister.

Then as we watch other of her videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUVwfEKH9f4) we see that she has since been filled by the Holy Spirit herself, exercised to proper use, and now, although not departing from her son’s written scriptural messages that he gets from the Spirit of God, she has her own personal Holy Spirit instructed ministry as a part of it that agrees with that of her son who makes no apology for getting it from the Lord Jesus, which message we can confirm in the written scriptures as valid, regardless of how strange it comes. That message:
Repent! Come Clean for Jesus’ Sake! Be ready, because I’m coming soon!
Hardly a demonic message.

And as “unbelievable” as the delivery is, I don’t see that it violates the boundaries laid down by God in his word:

• Jesus raised the dead (John 11:43-44) and he is still Jesus today. So why not now?
• Jesus “downloads” the Holy Spirit of wisdom into us even while we yet live (John 20:22), teaching us all things (John 14:26), and specifically whatever we need to know at the moment (Luke 12:12), but not as frequently freely as in the Early Church days because of Satan’s activity that “disrupts communication” (John 14:30). So why not the Spirit and scriptures while he was free of this "disrupted" domain?
• Even now, we, as momentarily earthbound Christians, are seated in/with Christ Jesus in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6), and having the Holy Spirit within us, it’s hard not to see our unlimited access to wisdom if we would but let Him give it. This boy apparently did.
• Though completely healed and in his eternal glorified body, Jesus still bears the scars of his death. So...
• Jesus Spoke audibly to Paul while still a sinner. So...

All these and more are the scriptural points of possible validation rejected in the contending website that seems to feel free to discredit them as irrelevant in evaluating this case. “Jesus did it then but not now” is the general argument that is simply presupposed as fact and then used to discredit the events claimed as “unbiblical.”
But the bride of Christ has been glorified and given the authority to speak on Christ’s behalf as he spoke on behalf of his Father (John 14:26+15:15-16+Mark 16:15):

“Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” Mathew 18:18.

“Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my father which is in heaven” Matthew 18:19.

“Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained” John 20:23.

But this, only after receiving the Holy Ghost (v.22), and so only applicable to those who have the Holy Ghost, and herein lies the argument with those who think they do but don’t, and those, like the Pope and Catholic priests, who claim this authority to themselves and thereby do great damage to the belief and practice of the scriptures that makes all believers who are full of the Holy Ghost, priests and kings (Revelation 1:5-6, 5:10) with all authority to pass such consequential righteous judgments. It takes the Holy Spirit's nature to handle that much power wisely!

Satan has simply corrupted this Gender Typology concept of “human authority of God” to be interpreted that women should abandon their husband’s male authority in the establishment of their own, which is why many errant women pastors have indeed usurped that of both their husbands and Christ in promoting their own emotional gospel. Mrs. McPherson shows no spirit of this independent err, while she applies her Galatians 3:28 liberty rightly. She is the very example of what God actually meant (Jeremiah 31:22b) as Christ raises up his bride in glory (John 5:20-21), but knew that this last days gift of heart in the ministry of the Gospel would be corrupted by many “double life” harlot brides (Jeremiah 31:22a) doing great damage in the family.

In addition to my wonderful and surprising discovery of the pure message that confirms the McPhersons are valid-- as long as they remain faithful to Christ Jesus and his written word (Galatians 1:8-9)-- I am delighted to also discover (as in the second half of the Nephilim video as one example of many) that our messages are even using the same terms and ideas: “DNA, harlot bride/whore, Nephil activity, etc.,” in our same message to the Bride of Christ:
Be clean before God, in the anticipation of his soon return! Christ has washed you, now stay out of the mud in your bridal gown!
How is this a gospel of demons when Christ himself made the concept clear?

“…And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” John 8:11.

I would simply gently instruct the very zealous web author to realize that God’s methods and ways are far more complex than you could possibly know (Romans 11:33), so be careful about making scripturally unbased accusations of unbiblical activity like; who it is that actually healed his eye (in a way that doesn't make sense to you), or, rejecting an angel because he has a name you don’t recognize, or that God very well may have downloaded the scriptures into this boy while in heaven. And instead I would recommend spending a lot more time analyzing the actual message and comparing it to the whole scripture as a solid means of judging the rest.
And lest you think I am a holly-roller spiritist that always supports such claims like Sid Roth, I stand pretty strong on the side of John MacArthur’s Strange Fire and have never before seen a scriptural message from someone who “came back from the dead,” so I am still skeptical of the whole “trip to heaven” bit, but am willing to let it play out because the message appears to be true (Acts 5:34-39).
Don’t you suppose that this confusion and rejection of what might be real, could be why Satan has produced so many counterfeit “trips to heaven” to nullify a true message from God?
* * *

Retah’s one page sum of her ministry: (http://rethamcpherson.wowinteractive6.co.za/AboutUs/OurStory/tabid/97/Default.aspx).
It is my limited conclusion that there is little doubt, that in spite of all the “questionable” miraculous events and "possible" dark secret meanings and sources of the very unusual presentations of their message that we might imagine, the very simple and clear message of both her and her son as I have read it on their website and seen in all of her videos that I have watched, is the true gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God and his call to his bride to be truly ready by turning away from the “harlot bride” of a double life. The Devil simply cannot give this spiritual message (Mark 3:22-26):

“Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:” I John 4:2.

So, as Jesus himself indicated: if you can’t believe the method, believe the message, and the spirit of the message: Jesus Christ came to die for your sin (the message), and is Risen Alive to make you new! (the spirit of the message).
And to that we say; AMEN!
* * *

[February 19,2014]
Wow! My remaining skepticism was vanquished as I watched these videos:

Walking in the Spirit pt.1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VjlK1YzuWM),
Walking in the Spirit pt.2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMWucHdxG-o),
Walking in the Spirit pt.3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am8ePnbadBw).

And it just keeps going!
Works without faith (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR_WaPnApxM)...
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