John Denver: "Late Night Radio"

Here's a song many of us can relate to. I certainly love to listen to the AM band at night when all the distant stations come in. For one thing, I learn that other folks have the same sort of problems we have locally.

Check out John Denver's song here:

One feature of late night broadcasts is Christian programming on certain stations. If a church has the money, they can have their sermons aired. Unless complaints arise about the content of the messages, preachers can say whatever they want. The problem is that both true and false preachers have a say.

Scripture warns us in many verses about false prophets. Proverbs 19:5 (Bible in Basic English) speaks of all liars but false teachers are included in this condemnation. "A false witness will not go without punishment, and the breather out of deceit will not go free."

Another aspect of these misleaders is that they tangle people in fruitless controversies. As Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 1:3 and 4 (BBE), "It was my desire, when I went on into Macedonia, that you might make a stop at Ephesus, to give orders to certain men not to put forward a different teaching, Or to give attention to stories and long lists of generations, from which come questionings and doubts, in place of God's ordered way of life which is in faith;"

As Paul also pointed out in 2 Timothy 4:3 (BBE), people find lies more enticing than the unvarnished truth. "For the time will come when they will not take the true teaching; but, moved by their desires, they will get for themselves a great number of teachers for the pleasure of hearing them; And shutting their ears to what is true, will be turned away to belief in foolish stories."

We must always test preachers by a proper reading of the scriptures. God insists that his best-selling book, The Holy Bible, be read to all the people. Deuteronomy 33:11 (BBE) tells us, "When all Israel has come before the Lord your God in the place named by him, let a reading be given of this law in the hearing of all Israel." It also applies to us today."

If Christ hasn't returned by Saturday, I hope I can post about what love is.

Are We Not Gods?

As I've pointed out many times, so-called anointed prophets wrench scripture verses way out of their context. In some cases, they'll even misquote portions of scripture to fit their wicked notions.

Psalm 82:6 (KJV) is a case in point. It reads, "I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High."

Unstable teachers have misled their followers to believe that we are "little gods" who are empowered by God Almighty. Others taught, and still teach, that God was once a man who lived on another planet and eventually became a god. They even claim that we'll be gods of our own planets in the future.

As in many misreading of Bible texts, these wicked preachers pay zero attention to the context of the verse. The psalm is actually about judgement on Israel. You can easily see that fact in the preceding verses.

Immediately in the next verse, the real God puts that notion to death. The verse plainly states, "But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes." It's obvious that the declaration about being gods is a mockery of the leaders who had the power of life and death over the Israelites.

For this reason, and many others, it's imperative that every single Christian know their scriptures and learn how to read them properly. I never received such training and that gap in my education led me into a cult. Read about how God rescued me and put me right in How I Was Razed by visiting Amazon.

WHICH SORT OF PEOPLE FALL FOR CULTS?

Cults ought to be on the list of problems Christians must address. As far as I can tell, the subject is still taboo among evangelicals. We followers of Christ ought to be ashamed for our ostrich-like attitude toward false teaching and aberrant religious groups.

Throughout the Bible, God warns his people about false prophets and crooked teachers. Both biblical prophets and apostles warn us against the "wolves" among the flock.

This topic is especially dear to me because I was misled by a false teacher. The minister of a house church claimed to have advance knowledge of heavenly things. I eagerly attended his meetings so I could learn the so-called deeper things of God. When Christians contradicted the teachings of our lay minister, I tried to "correct" their thinking. Fortunately for the real gospel handed down from the apostles, nobody listened.

The reason I fell prey so easily  to the lies I was taught was because I had a desire to learn more about Christianity. People such as myself are what cultic organizations search for. Hardened atheists and steadfast believers put up too much of a fight. Both kinds of people recognize that these aberrant groups are misled so they reject advances made by these misleaders.

On the other hand, seekers of truth, particularly those who lack discernment, want to learn all they can about God. Satan knows this and intercepts them so they can be steered down the blind alley of deception.

Apologetics, knowing what we believe and why, is crucial to all followers of Christ. Since we are called to be his witnesses, we need to know the truth regarding our faith. When people are immunized against false and enticing doctrines, they can't be fooled by counterfeits.

It's for this reason that I wrote How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. I want people to learn from my mistakes and reject the sensationalistic claims of flamboyant preachers. Studying the scriptures in context is a much better method than listening to TV preachers proclaim wild ideas about their pseudo-revelations. To learn more about how God rescued me, visit Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm Publishers.

I NEED A DEEPER HEALING TOO

For most people, the arrival of a faith healer in their city, or one near them, isn't much of an occasion. To those with a permanent disability or serious ailment however, this seems like a golden opportunity to be rid of the burdensome illness.

As I blogged last year, people such as myself wouldn't be brought up onto the stage for healing. Faith healers know that they can't give new eyes to somebody whose vision has been destroyed. Neither can these hucksters re-grow amputated limbs or any other obvious malady.

Instead, they choose folks with psychosomatic complaints. The Fifth Estate, a Canadian investigative journalism TV show, exposed just how the faith healers pick and choose who will be on the stage for healing.

One of the most famous disabled persons to suffer the neglect of faith healers is Joni Ericksen Tada. She spoke at the Strange Fire conference about how she was taken to a Katherine Coolman rally. Instead of being welcomed warmly, she and other wheelchair users were shunted off to one side of the auditorium. Before the show ended, she and the others were moved out of the way so that people could leave the building easier. This sent Joni into a deep depression.

Though my disability is poor eyesight, I've fallen into a deep funk each time my eyes weren't healed. Worse yet, elders at the church I attended accused me of lacking faith, having hidden sin, lusting for sight, and having ancestral sin which blocked God from healing me. This bothered me so much that I turned my back on God for nine long years. I've recovered from much of the pain but I still feel angry at times about what those cruel people said.

Thanks to excellent Bible scholars, I know that what I had been taught was a lie. Miracles aren't normative today because God used them in three crucial periods of history to verify the words of his messengers. Moses and Joshua performed miracles as they  ushered in the law. Elijah and Elisha did the same as they ushered in the prophets. Jesus and his disciples likewise ushered in the new covenant of grace with miracles confirming it. Between the two Old Testament times of miracles, supernatural events wielded by men were rare. As any reader of The Acts of the Apostles can note, the frequency of miracles drops off by the end of Luke's apostolic account.

Though God isn't limited in what he can do, he works far more often through providence. Many people claim to have performed miracles but these are either unverified or unverifiable.

Another point that a casual Bible reader can take note of is that first-century Christians suffered persecution. Even today, being a Christian is dangerous in most countries. Christ never promised his followers prosperity in this evil age, unlike the false prophets who claim to be his messengers.

My How I Was Razed book outlines the false doctrines I was taught in more detail. It's available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm Publishers.

MINISTER CLAIMED TO HAVE RESURRECTED ANCIENT BIBLICAL PERSON

Have you heard of preachers who claimed to have raised people from the dead? The minister at an aberrant house church I once attended went one better by saying he raised Joseph, the one-time prime minister of Egypt, from the dead.

According to Brother Herald's fanciful story, he visited the Canadian province of Ontario. God showed him a cave where the bones of Joseph were hidden. Even stranger, our lay minister said he walked on the water to a chartered boat that had left him behind.

According to what Brother Herald claimed, he made flesh grow around the bones of Joseph and raised him from the dead. This supposed miracle happened so that Joseph could raise up an army of believers to fight the antichrist. Having naively placed our trust in this charismatic teacher, we believed the whole tail without question.

This resurrection supposedly occurred in July of 1975. In the thirty-eight years since then, no antichrist has risen up to control the entire world. No army of believers has been organized to fight this biblical character and his minions either. Such an army couldn't remain hidden for long. News organizations would become aware of it long before today.

How can we tell that a prophet is false? Deuteronomy 18:20-22 says, "But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him." Therefore, I'm confident that Brother Herald was a fraudulent prophet.

I wrote extensively about that lying minister in my newly-published memoir, How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity.  Please check it out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm.

FUNERAL OF A FALSE PROPHET.

Devotion is laudable but not to a liar and blasphemer. As I related in How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity, Brother Herald's death hit me hard. Here's an excerpt from my upcoming memoir that shows just how I felt when I heard the news of his passing.

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As I lay on the couch after supper the next evening, listening to a New Testament cassette, the phone rang. I fought a stab of abdominal pain as I staggered to the phone in the kitchen.

"I have some bad news to tell you," Sister Eileen said without preamble. "Brother Herald passed away today."

I felt like somebody trapped in a plummeting elevator. "What are we going to do now that he's gone?"

"I don't know." She sounded as bewildered as I felt. "We'll carry on somehow."

"I feel kind of lost, you know?"

"I do too. I've known Brother Herald all my life and now he's gone."

"Who'll teach us now?"

"We still have all his teachings which Mother transcribed. God might also give one of us a prophetic ministry."

"I hope so."

Following a prolonged silence, I remembered to ask, "When's the funeral?"

"I'll let you know. I don't know at the moment."

During the service in the chapel of the funeral home three days later, Sister Roberta sang a hymn as she stood in front of the assembled mourners. During one verse, her voice shook with emotion.

I likewise struggled to keep my own tears back while she sang. The fact that our special teacher would no longer pass on revelations to us struck home.

Following the service, we gathered at the cemetery. As per Brother Herald's instructions, the funeral home covered his coffin with a regulation-sized Union Jack. Once we assembled, the chaplain said a final prayer. Then the attendants lowered our leader's remains into the hole as we filed out of the cemetery.

At Brother Herald's home, a considerable crowd of mourners gathered for a mid-afternoon backyard lunch. All of the church members attended, as did our deceased minister's two sons. Even Emmo and Bessie, who hadn't come to Thee Church for several years, made an appearance. I engaged some of the folks in small talk, but my mind remained occupied with the loss of our remarkable teacher.

During subsequent mid week meetings, Sister Roberta allowed no one to sit in Brother Herald's chair. "In case his spirit comes to the meetings, we must keep it ready for him," she warned us. Throughout my remaining years at Thee Church, this peculiar custom continued.

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God willing, I should have How I Was Razed in print in print and e-book form by the end of this year. As for my previous paperbacks, please click on the Bruce Atchison's books link for information about them

DEATH OF A FALSE TEACHER.

Previously, I wrote about the false teacher that misled me when I attended his church. I believed he was sent from God and had direct communication with him and his "holy spirits." In fact, he convinced me that the spirits of departed Christians would sometimes use his body to preach their messages to us.

When he had skin cancer and passed away on this date in 1981, I felt deeply devastated. From my upcoming How I Was Razed memoir, here is an excerpt that shows how devoted I was to this phony prophet.

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Following one Sunday service near the end of August, Sister Roberta informed her daughter, "Brother Herald is very ill and isn't expected to live for much longer. Would you like to come with me and visit him in hospital?"

When Sister Eileen agreed, I asked, "Could I come along with you?"

"He doesn't want a lot of people crowding around him," Sister Roberta warned. "You better not come along. You'll only upset him."

"Please let me come," I begged. "I don't think Brother Herald will be upset. I've been coming to this church for years so I have a right to visit him, don't I?"

"Well, all right but don't you dare do anything to upset him."

The three of us arrived at the hospital on Wednesday afternoon.

"Which room is he in?" Sister Eileen asked. "I forgot to ask the desk nurse."

As I was about to reply, I heard Brother Herald's distinctive cough. "He's over there," I pointed toward a doorway in a hall adjacent to the elevators.

When I caught sight of our teacher, his appearance startled me. An intern had shaved his head, exposing purple splotches all over his scalp.

"They had to cut off my hair to treat the cancer," Brother Herald explained as I stared.

I fidgeted and shuffled my feet as I stood by his bed. "I sure miss you at church," I mumbled after an awkward silence.

"I'm glad you came to visit," he croaked. "I miss being with you too. I've been through a lot of pain."

The two women took over, chatting with him until we left.

I sat lost in thought an hour later as Sister Eileen drove her mother and me home. Brother Herald often said, "I guess I won't be around much longer." All of a sudden, his impending death loomed.

"The hospital just phoned," Sister Roberta notified her daughter as we walked down the front porch steps after the next Sunday service. "He's very weak and they say he's not likely to last the night."

I halted and stared at Sister Roberta, the worried tone in her voice sending a chill of fear through me. "Can I see him too?" I blurted.

Sister Roberta glared. "No, you may not. You won't want to see him. He's very week and can hardly talk."

I stifled an angry retort as my mind filled with memories of previous slights. That woman always seemed to stand between Brother Herald and me whenever I wanted to see him.

As I lay on the couch after supper the next evening, listening to a New Testament cassette, the phone rang. I fought a stab of abdominal pain as I staggered to the phone in the kitchen.

"I have some bad news to tell you," Sister Eileen said without preamble. "Brother Herald passed away today."

I felt like somebody trapped in a plummeting elevator. "What are we going to do now that he's gone?"

"I don't know." She sounded as bewildered as I felt. "We'll carry on somehow."

"I feel kind of lost, you know?"

"I do too. I've known Brother Herald all my life and now he's gone."

"Who'll teach us now?"

"We still have all his teachings which Mother transcribed. God might also give one of us a prophetic ministry."

"I hope so."

Following a prolonged silence, I remembered to ask, "When's the funeral?"

"I'll let you know. I don't know at the moment."

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In my How I Was Razed memoir, I relate many more vignettes of my house church experience as well as how I eventually learned the truth. God willing, it will be in print by the end of the year.

HOW TO SPOT A FALSE PROPHET.

With all the preachers claiming to have prophetic powers or some sort of special anointing, how can we tell who is real and who is faking it? Deuteronomy 18:21 and 22 states, " And if you say in your hearts, 'How are we to be certain that the word does not come from the Lord?' When a prophet makes a statement in the name of the Lord, if what he says does not take place and his words do not come true, then his word is not the word of the Lord: the words of the prophet were said in the pride of his heart, and you are to have no fear of him."

Oh, how I wish I had known this in the seventies. I would never fallen for a false prophet and teacher in a house church if I knew this test of a prophet. I wrote of my naivety in my upcoming memoir, How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. This excerpt shows how easily I was fooled by a man I call Brother Herald and his assistant, Sister Roberta.

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Once I returned to Edmonton after summer vacation ended, I resumed attending Thee Church. "That's a cool painting," I said to Sister Roberta as I strolled into the sanctuary. On the wall above the baptismal tank, someone had painted a crude landscape consisting of a river in the foreground and steep green hills rising behind it.

"Brother Herald had a vision," Sister Roberta crowed. "He saw the place in the Nahanni valley where the City of Refuge will be. The plaster swirls on the walls matched what he saw exactly so we painted in the colours."

I stared at the wall, amazed that the brush strokes of the plaster lined up perfectly with his vision. It must be from God for it to work out so well, I marveled. I'm glad I'm part of such a spiritually-advanced congregation.

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God willing, I'll have How I Was Razed published later this year. Please check my previous books at the Bruce Atchison's books link.

HOW TO TELL IF A PROPHET IS A PHONY.

Many TV preachers claim to know what will happen in the future. How can a person tell if those prognosticators are right or wrong? The Bible states that if what they predict doesn't come to pass, those prophets have spoken presumptuously and we need not fear them. In fact, one passage even calls for false prophets to be stoned to death.

Though I didn't know it at the time, I whole-heartedly believed the predictions of a false prophet. In my upcoming How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity memoir, I wrote about this man's many prognostications. None of them came to pass as he predicted they would. Here is one outrageous example of his phony prophecies.

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In addition to receiving revelations, prophesying, and teaching, Brother Herald claimed he received divine messages in dreams. "A great earthquake will cause Vancouver Island to sink on the thirtieth of June," he declared one Wednesday. "I dreamt that I was sitting at my kitchen table with The Edmonton Journal in my hand. Across the front page were the words, 'VANCOUVER ISLAND SUNK!' in large type. It was dated June the thirtieth. I tried to read the year but it was smudged. God didn't permit me to read it because he doesn't want me to reveal the entire date. People would use the information to place bets and enrich themselves if they knew it."

Though I understood God's need to withhold the year from us, I still frowned. "It would be fun to tell the sceptics what was going to happen and then to say, 'I told you so,' when it did," I mused as he taught.

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How I Was Razed is the testimony of how God revealed his true character to me after charismatic house church elders misled me for more than fifteen years. You're welcome to contact me directly for more information about this upcoming paperback.

A NEW YEAR BUT SO WHAT?

The way people act on New Year's Eve, a casual observer would assume that something absolutely awe-inspiring had happened. Somebody from another planet, if there are such beings, would be puzzled at the eruption of joy around the world since nothing but the date changes from year to year. The annual Times Square ritual is the most striking example of this.

I blogged before about one New Years Eve when Mom taught me that years have numbers when I was eight. The novelty of this discovery wore off soon when I found that the snow was just as deep and the air was just as cold outside my bedroom window on the first day of January as it had been the previous day.

A few years after I gave my life to Christ, I attended a house church that observed something called Watch Night Service. The leader often made predictions, much to the delight of his handful of loyal congregants. When the spell of this pseudo-prophet eventually wore off, I realized that his "revelations" were invariably wrong.

When I discarded my Christian beliefs for nine years, each first of January was like any other. I felt no reason to celebrate something as artificial as the changing of calendars. The only pleasant aspect for me was having a day off work.

My attitude about this passing of the years didn't change when I returned to Christ's fold in 1996. I still had the same problems and opportunities as always. All that changed for me was that I brought my concerns to the Lord in prayer rather than fuming about them to myself.

I still don't bother getting all excited about New Year's Day. I have my hopes, such as publishing How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity, and perhaps they won't be thwarted.

Even so, I've learned that I must find work-arounds for the difficulties I face. Like Christ admonished, I'll take things one day at a time since there's enough trouble at present. I'll let tomorrow worry about itself. This is good stress-busting advice for us all.