Cheryl

Charis,

I now think I can understand where you are coming from. I have little time this morning as we ready to leave on our week trip, but I do want to tell you that I almost lost my daughter because of Rick Joyner’s books and I would warn you to be very careful. For most people I would just tell them to stay away from the books but for you I think you can learn from the things that I learned that saved my daughter. Rick Joyner’s main problem is that he gets these visions where the people in his visions (angels, Jesus, dead saints and OT saints) reinterpret scripture. The dead speak to him in his visions and actually contradict scripture. My daughter was deeply involved in this and so was a former youth pastor at our old church. He had prayed to have his own visions and like Rick Joyner he too found himself talking with the dead who spoke things that contradicted scripture. My daughter had come to the place where she believed that it was fine to talk to the dead because she was an avid reader of Rick Joyner’s books.

The problem that complicates the matter is that Rick Joyner advocates an internal war in the church between those who are “spiritual” (are they the “blues”?) and those who are not (my memory fails me but I think they are the “grays” or something like that) and anyone who doesn’t follow Rick Joyner and accept his interpretations is the enemy. The enemy has demons on them peeing and defecating on them. When one points out the errors of the visions of Rick Joyner, they are considered the enemy and are considered on Satan’s side. This is where we just about lost our daughter. The former youth pastor ended up leaving our old church and took much of the youth with him. He had written his own book about his own visions of talking with the dead and my daughter was editor of that book. It is a long story but a sad one where we fought hard to save the young people who had become followers of the youth pastor and his visions. We were successful with our daughter and she is safe but we lost most of our youth. As a result of our working with the elders of our church, (we had educated them concerning all the deviation from scripture that the dead people in our youth pastors visions were teaching) our church banned the youth pastor’s book from the church and that particular pastor ended up leaving the church because he refused to come under discipline because of the unscriptural nature of his book and he pretty much took the youth group with him. They went where they could all experience the supernatural without having to test these experiences by the word of God.

It was personally a very scary time for us but one that solidified in our hearts the warning about testing all things. It doesn’t matter where the teaching is coming from, we must test all things by God’s word or any of us can fall into deception.

I hope that you are still open to hear what I have to say and that I am not now considered the enemy. My job in the body of Christ is to (lovingly) point out error and to expose false doctrine and to lead people back into the solid foundation of truth found in God’s word. This is why I am always saying on Matt’s board that we need to test all things and to hold fast to what is good. Nothing (including tradition) is to be beyond that test. Tradition and experience can be good and wonderful things, but when they refuse to tested by scripture the alarm bells start going off in my head. I never want to be one who is led astray so I am constantly checking the inspired words and the inspired grammar so I can know that I have a solid foundation for my belief. It is this strong conviction and the amount of work that I put into understanding scripture in context that allows me to speak out with such confidence. I have done my homework and I am able to challenge faulty tradition without fear.

Respectfully and with much Christian love,
Cheryl