Church History & Function #13 - Counterfeit Revival

Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.

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   foreign welcome the students this morning fire and Grace School of Ministry of course some of you may be watching this in the evening but uh depending on where you are in the world and what time you're doing your studies this morning but we want to welcome you we are in our first semester we're getting close to the end of the first semester here we are in our block number three church history and function class and we are in class number 13 week number 13. are we 16 weeks this time or 15 we're 16 16. I added one that's right so we're 13 weeks of 16 this semester so we're getting toward the end today we're going to talk about I've entitled this counterfeit Revival and really most of this information is in my book The polluted Church from Rome to Kansas City that I wrote In 2011 and published in 2012. uh but I've just entitled underneath this the invasion of Buddhist Roman Catholic contemplative mysticism in the church we're going to talk about counterfeit Revival counterfeit signs and wonders but first we want to define the real thing and we'll get to that in just a second we'll see what the great evangelist Charles Finney said about all of this um but let's go to Second Timothy 3 first we're going to read um oh we're going to read probably down through most of the chapter here again I have I have focused on this a lot in the last few years I just can't seem to get away from this chapter but I want you to see I want to bring out that there's two things that you're going to see in this chapter and you don't want to fall into either trap or either side so let's let's read second Timothy chapter three uh this snow also that in the last days perilous times shall come for men shall be lovers of their own selves Covetous boastus boasters rather proud blasphemers disobedient to parents unthankful Unholy without natural affection truce Breakers false accusers incontinent Fierce despisers of those that are good traitors heady high-minded lovers of Pleasures more than lovers of God here's the verse I want to focus in on having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof from such turn away the word power there in the Greek is dunamis means the miraculous Supernatural power of the Holy Spirit the power of God that is manifested in through Jesus name and what Jesus did on the cross and the stripes he took on his back and all of that his resurrection and the fact that he still heals and the

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   gifts of the Holy Spirit are part of that as well but he says that the these last days there would be people would have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof from such turn away for of this sort are they which creep into houses and Lead captive silly women Laden with sins LED away with divers lust ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth now verse 8 now as Janice and jambres withstood or fought against or resisted Moses so do these also resist the truth men of corrupt Minds reprobate concerning the faith but they shall proceed no further for their Folly shall be manifest unto all men as theirs also was now before we read any further I want to say this about these two things we see two things here because what most people just read over verse 8 about Jane is and jambres and how they withstood Moses well who are they well we know that when you do a little research you find out that those were the magician Egyptian the Egyptian magicians sorcerers that basically mimicked uh the miracle or the sign and wonder that God gave Moses remember God gave Moses the sign throw your rod down it's going to turn into a serpent well these two Egyptian magicians Janice and jambres are the ones who threw their rods down and they turned into a serpent too and this is what convinced pharaoh to harden his heart so what I'm saying is The Faults Are The Satanic the Demonic Supernatural is there to fight against the true Supernatural of God and the men of God and the women of God that are God calls to stand up so this is something I want you to get a hold of this because we're going to be talking about this you can fall into the Trap of being the Christian who says you know there's no more gifts of the holy spirit anymore there's no more signs and wonders There's No more healing the gift of tongues is not necessary somebody put on my Facebook the other day the gift of tongues is obsolete really wow you're a genius um you know you you you hear stuff like this all the time and so these are people who want to deny the power the miraculous power the gifts of the holy spirit healing Miracles things of that nature they want to just throw all that out and say God doesn't do that anymore and then uh there are people that are within the church and we're going to talk about this they're within the church some of them are enemies in the camp and they're disguising themselves as Christians some of them are just ignorant Christians you've gotten into occult practices and we're going to cover that but there is the false Supernatural but remember when Moses was

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   in the court of pharaoh that was the power of God his Rod turning into a serpent and you had the power of Satan the Demonic power of the Egyptian magicians Supernatural confronting one another all right now of course Moses rod devoured the Egyptian magicians wrong all right the power of God is always greater than the power of Satan but that doesn't mean there's not going to be this conflict going on when God is doing something okay now we're here to talk about Revival and particularly I'm going to talk about counterfeit Revival but just remember this every time there is a move of God a Revival God starts doing something there is always a counter Revival there is you know in fact during the Reformation we're going to talk about that today too uh the when the Reformation began shortly thereafter the Roman Catholic Church formed the Counter Reformation this is when Ignatius Loyola formed the Jesuit order to fight the revival going on of people pulling away from the Roman Catholic church and getting uh back into true biblical Christianity so let's go back to this verse and let's read some stuff I want to I want to read a little bit what Paul said because he said you're going to have these people who deny the power claim to have godliness the form of godliness they have an outward appearance of Christianity but they reject the power of the Holy Spirit he said and then you have these people that are going to be confronting or trying to hinder the work of God by bringing in the satanic power and demonic power to oppose the true men and women of God and so you see that but what Paul said here verse 9 he goes on to say but they shall proceed no further for their folly or their foolishness shall be manifest unto all men as theirs also was so basically what that means is God's going to reveal the difference between the two and as time goes on in the story with Moses and the Egyptian magicians remember they even mimic some of the plagues which I thought was funny because God was bringing plagues upon Egypt to punish them for their wickedness and Rebellion and evil and the Egyptian magicians would mimic some of the plagues they brought some they made it worse they brought upon themselves but again it convinced Pharaoh well Moses is you know Moses God is no different than our God so Pharaoh continued to harden his heart but then of course there reached a point where the Egyptian magicians if you go read this in Exodus finally they couldn't mimic anymore all right um and there's things that the devil

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   just can't do all right and he won't do there's a limit to his Supernatural false miracle deceptions but let's keep going this is what Paul said Paul was telling Timothy one of the things that you need to pay attention to how how do we distinguish especially within the church we got wolves in sheep's clothing how do we distinguish when okay if you've got a wolf in sheep's clothing how do you distinguish and and then you have a true Prophet or a true Pastor or a true you know evangelist or Apostle or whatever you have them doing Miracles and then you have over here one claiming to be that dressed up like a sheep doing Miracles how do you determine well one of the ways and one of the main things you're going to have to look at Paul wrote here in verse 10 he says but thou has fully known my Doctrine okay you need to know what someone teaches okay and that's what we're going to look at today some of the some of the people that have been in Revival movements prophetic movements in the Pentecostal charismatic realm over the last hundred years or so yes we must examine their Doctrine do what do they teach do they teach biblical sound Doctrine do they have a Biblical sound understanding of Salvation repentance faith uh demonology do they have sound Doctrine or not or are or have they gotten over and mixed in Eastern religions okay this is very important Hinduism Buddhism has that infiltrated their Doctrine and their beliefs then he says this he says you have fully know my Doctrine and then he says manner of life this is very important as we're going to see if you find out that you've got a minister over here who's praying for the sick and they're getting healed and you got another one over here is praying for the sick and they're getting healed but one of them's manner of life is to practice yoga or visualization or repetitive Mantra chanting prayer or he worships Mary then what you're finding out is is Doctrine in his manner of life is not matching up to what the Bible says so if it's Doctrine and manner of life is not matching up to what the Bible says then I can tell you that the Miracles or the apparent gifts or signs or wonders that he's doing uh probably not from God they're probably not miracles from the Lord Jesus okay and this is what Jesus warned us of this in Matthew 24 he said there's going to rise false Christ and false prophets and they're going to show great

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