“I’ve come to realize what is also very dangerous. In this last hour, the Lord Jesus warned about false teachers. In the last days we are not to be misled. This is a very subtle deception to be aware of, and I believe it to be a worldwide religion as much as is Islam and other deceptions are. It’s called psychology and ‘the self agenda’. I knew it was not for believers, I knew of its source but, until sadly our daughter got into it, I had no idea how utterly evil it is. She’s been snared by this ‘self agenda’ as that’s where she’s coming from: self, self, self.”
Testimony
Good morning friends, good to see you all. We are going to have a talk today on the subject of ‘self’ and the Spirit.
Let’s just have a word of prayer.
Lord, we thank you that we can come to you in the Name of Jesus. We pray you guide me as I share, and help those who hear to hear. May your Word guard and accomplish your purposes. In Jesus’ Name, amen. Amen.
There’s a verse in the book of Proverbs which says,
12 There is a way that seems right to a man,
But its end is the way of death. Proverbs 14:12
Jesus said in John 14:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:6
We need to know the Way, the way to the truth because we live in very difficult times, perilous times. The Bible says in the last days there are going to be perilous times, all kinds of dangers are going to be facing us. I spoke about some of them last week in the prophecy talk.
A lot of physical dangers are taking place. The danger of what’s happening in the Middle East for example.
I don’t know if you know but Mr Trump gave Iran two months to come to the table and sort out its nuclear program. He said that ‘if they don’t then, he could take military action against them’. Right now they’ve got bombers in Diego Garcia which is in the Chagos Islands, ready to attack Iran. I hope it won’t happen but, if it does, that could cause another outbreak of conflict.
In the Ukraine no peace seems forthcoming. There’s a threat of war coming elsewhere as well (China/Taiwan, India/Pakistan, various ongoing African conflicts, Haiti, etc.). And we have all the stuff with the tariffs and all that could actually undermine and wreck the world economy.
We live in difficult times, don’t we?
We also live in times of spiritual deception. And I spoke about that two weeks ago spoke about the strong delusion which is prophesied to come in the last days in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. God says He’ll stem a strong delusion upon people and they’ll believe the lie. They’ll believe things which are not true, deceptions. We spoke about some of the deceptions which are coming upon us. Particularly, in this land, we see the rise of Islam dominating more and more country They’ve been celebrating Eid and Ramadan much more than they seem to celebrate anything to do with Jesus and Christianity.
And we’ve seen all kinds of other delusions coming in: the New Age, the occult, the woke agenda, LGBT and all that stuff which is being pushed upon us, which is part of the new the strong delusion.
And, in America, we see a movement in the opposite direction with Mr Trump. I suggested that even his agenda is under an alternative form of strong delusion. You’re seeing all kinds of things which are coming upon the world which are untrue and destabilizing.
As mentioned last time I spoke, we need to have the mind of Christ so that we can discern and know what is of God and what is not of God.
Now, I had an email after my talk on 2 Thessalonians from one of our friends who listens to our talks and I’ll read what she says.
She says that ‘selfism and psychology’ is a bigger deception in the Western mindset, especially and including the church. She said,
“Thank you for your latest update in your church and in the magazine.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to share something I’ve come to realize is also very dangerous in this last hour.
The Lord Jesus warned about false teachers in the last days and not to be misled.
This is a very subtle deception to be aware of and I believe a worldwide religion as much as is Islam and other deceptions. It’s called psychology and ‘the self agenda’.
I knew it was not for believers. I knew of its source but until sadly our daughter got into it, I had no idea how utterly evil it is.
She’s been snared by this self agenda as that’s where she’s coming from: self, self, self. Satan’s snared her and it’s absolutely heart-breaking. She’s been helped by a therapist and trained to be one herself, but she can’t help herself.
Some said therapists add to the problem, God solves the problem. She says she’s a Christian even though she’s made some kind of commitment years ago but she has not shown much fruit and her church got swallowed up by the Toronto blessing (if you know what that is – or the Toronto curse) which I think influenced her with hands laid on her and who knows what spirit may have touched her.
I told her Freud and Jung were the founders of psychology and were involved in the occult. I told her this and other things and she no longer speaks to me.
I only tell this because I’m reading an excellent book called ‘Psychology and the Church‘ by Dave Hunt and TA McMahon. I’ve had the scripture: There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death. (Proverbs 14:12) a few times and it scares me that so many people are beguiled by such lies. Jesus Christ was right to warn us of deceptions in the last days.”
I haven’t read this book but they’re good writers. They wrote many years ago, and they warn about how of the wickedness and the evil of psychology, how pastors and churches allow their sheep to be influenced by it. That really concerns me.
I know what she’s talking about. Behind this delusion there’s a whole raft of philosophers basically calling for self-help, saying that we are basically ‘good’ but that, somehow, it’s the environment which makes us bad. They say we have a ‘divine spark’ even within ourselves which we have to discover, to then discover our own godhood. And you have yogis and Marxism, and humanism all producing some kind of a self-centred humanistic idea which eliminates the God of the Bible and creates an illusory God who actually cannot save us.
if you trust in this illusory God, you end up in the camp of the strong delusion, rejecting the truth as revealed in the Bible.
I got this book written by Martyn Iles who has taken over from Ken Ham as the Director of Answers in Genesis and he asked the question “Who am I?” I’m just going to read a few pages from the beginning of the book. It says,
“Who am I? It’s a question most people above a certain age never asked and never felt the need to answer. Most recently however, it’s a concern that seems to be gripping an entire generation. It even comes in its own word ‘identity’. This once slightly obscure word is now the staple of everything from elementary school curriculum to political creeds across the Western world, prompting young minds to preoccupy themselves with this pressing question: who am I?
Martyn Iles – Who Am I?: Solving the Identity Puzzle
The question invites us to do something. Indeed, by the time the words have left our mouth, we are almost instinctively doing it, namely, we’re looking at ourselves. I asked a group of primary school children what identity meant and the surprisingly articulate answers came thick and fast. Your sense of who you are, your understanding of yourself, your personal story, self-perception, how you feel, your passion, self-definition, life experiences, any formal discussion of the word will make liberal use of the prefix self.
Actually, I didn’t realize you could use it as a prefix quite so much until I started my research: self-ideation, self-love, self-discovery, self-definition, self-perception, self-determination, self-narrative, self-image, self-concept, self-esteem. All of these, I’ve encountered in contemporary works on identity. The word has brought about with it the age of ‘the inward term’, the looking at the self to see how deeply this has affected our children.
We need only to consider the many, often subtle, ways the inward look at self has become integrated into the way we think and live. Consider popular notions like ‘loving yourself’, ‘living true to yourself’, ‘being your best self’, ‘following your heart’, ‘believing in yourself’, ‘living your truth’, or phrases like ‘you do you’, ‘you are enough’, ‘you’re worth it’, ‘you’re beautiful’, ‘just as you are’. Such ideals are inescapable in our day, teaching us that the good foundation for one’s attitudes and actions is looking at ourselves.”
I’m sure you can think of plenty of other examples. The ‘self talk’ has also started to change the kind of things we hold up as virtues. Authenticity is a big one. The word authentic finds its root in the Greek word for self ‘auto’. If your actions are true to you then, they’re good for you. Therefore, they are considered justifiable. The same thought is expressed in the idea of doing ‘what’s right for me’. It’s the same idea that makes it possible ‘to say my truth’ and ‘your truth’ but not God’s truth. Notice how we justify ourselves, define what is right, and sometimes even what is true based on how we feel, who we are rather than appealing to higher foundations, Since when were we our own inventors of truth and righteousness? This is the most basic form of humanism, seeing ourselves as the ultimate authority instead of God.”
And I see one or two of you nodding your heads, recognizing that that is one of the issues which is before us and it comes into a lot of Christianity, Christian teaching that we have got to meet people’s felt needs, ‘affirm my rights’, ‘my value’. God’s verdict is that ‘in myself there dwells no good thing’.
18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. Romans 7:18
We have this whole idea of ‘self-esteem’ and a lot of temporary teaching is trying to make people feel good about themselves, building up their self-esteem.
You have mega churches in America that seek to find out what are ‘people’s felt needs’, what they want, and then provide for those needs to be met. Most people want to be well thought of, they ought to feel comfortable, and want to be happy. So, the aim of such churches is to make them feel good about themselves, make the services entertaining and friendly as possible with a great emphasis on God’s love and saying that God’s love is unconditional and that human value is great while removing any idea of God’s wrath and God’s judgment upon sin.
They promote their churches with statements like: “You are precious”, “You’re beautiful in God’s sight”, “You are made for more”, “You’re worth it”, “God loves you”, “God is pleased with you”, “God’s love is unconditional”, “Find a way to belong, to connect, to be known, and find community”.
We must earn the right to share the Gospel by showing people love and care, by appealing to people’s needs so that those who are lonely can find a place of fellowship and those who are hurt can find a place of healing.
Now, the church should be all of those things, but there has to be something that comes before it. Because, unless you have the primary reason for the church’s existence, which is to preach the Gospel as delivered by the apostles in the New Testament and to provide an answer to the problem of human sin and the issue of God’s judgment, to warn people against the consequences of living in sin which is, essentially, to be eternally separated from God in hell, and unless the church prepares people for heaven and makes people know that the only solution to the sin problem is repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, unless you have these priorities in church, then the rest cannot, will not remove God’s judgment from our lives.
If you miss this out, you’re missing out the primary reason for Jesus coming to the earth which was to die as the final sacrifice for the sin of the world, to be buried and to rise again on the third day as our justification before God that we might receive forgiveness, reconciliation to God and eternal life.
That message is in radical conflict with all the delusions I’ve mentioned before, with Freudian psychology, with New Age mysticism, with Marxism, with humanism, and with all the other ‘isms’ you can think of. What you have is the danger of the church actually incorporating these things into its philosophy and ending up denying the heart of the Gospel.
Some of you may have heard of a very successful preacher from the United States called Joel Osteen. Has anyone heard of Joel Osteen? Yeah? He wrote a book called Your Best Life Now which incorporates all the self-help psychology into Christianity.
Here are some quotes from it:
“You will produce what you’re continually seeing in your mind. If you foster an image of defeat and failure then, you’re going to live that kind of life. If you develop an image of victory, success, health, abundance, joy, peace and happiness, nothing on earth will be able to hold those things from you.”
Joel Osteen – Your Best Life Now
In other words, if you think it, it’s going to come into being. If you think good things about yourself, you will live, you’ll have a successful life. If you think bad things about yourself then, you’ll fail.
But Jesus actually said
18 “But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. 19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. 20 These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.” Matthew 15:18-20
But Paul also said,
For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells Romans 7:18
So, I would suggest that, if you spend your whole time looking at yourself, you’re looking at the problem not the solution.
And, if you try to develop an image of health, success, joy and happiness, and nothing will be able to hold those things from you, you’re actually going to be disappointed because everyone’s life is a mixture of good things and bad things happening to us, even as Christians.
Several years ago, my first wife Nikki was taken seriously ill. We found out how serious it was because just a month later she died. Do you think I was happy about that? Do you think it made me feel good? No, I was really sad and really upset. Did I find that God helped me through it as I turned to Him? Yes, certainly.
A few years ago, I was taken ill with colon cancer. It was quite serious and I spent two months in hospital after the operation. At the time, I thought I was going to die. Did I feel healthy about that? Did I feel good about it? No, I didn’t. Did I find that God helped me through it and answered prayer? Absolutely.
If you tell people they have got to feel good and healthy and happy all the time, and successful, it can actually be bring them real condemnation and make them feel totally miserable because it’s not their actual experience of life, it’s not real.
We all go through good times and bad times. I know many of you here have had some really painful things happen to you, and the only thing which we can offer you is the grace and the mercy of God and to turn to God, and that He will help you through those times.
This won’t necessarily stop you from having them (these problems), but all this kind of you’ve got to be happy and healthy and successful all the time can actually bring people into a state of condemnation and distress.
Osteen goes on to say,
“You must conceive it in your heart and mind before you can receive it. You must look through the eyes of faith and start seeing yourself as happy, healthy and whole. What you receive is directly connected to how you believe God sees you as a champion. He believes in you even more than you believe in yourself. God has confidence in you.”
Joel Osteen – Your Best Life Now
Brandon Hogue comments on this. He says
“Osteen does not provide a single Bible verse to back up these statements because there are none. Nowhere in the Bible do we read that God believes or has confidence in us. He loves us, but He does not believe in us. On the contrary, He knows all too well how unbelievably fickle and untrustworthy we humans actually are. It’s not like Joel describes on page 57: ‘Believe it or not, this is how God sees you. He regards you as a strong, courageous, successful, overcoming person.'”
Brandon Hogue
God sees us as sinners, separated from Him, and in need of redemption through Jesus Christ in order to escape from the fires of hell. God does not define our success in materialistic terms either. God’s interested in our obedience above all.
Osteen writes:
“As long as you’re pressing forward, you can hold your head up high knowing that you’re a work in progress and God is in the process of changing you. He’s looking at your last two good moves.”
Joel Osteen – Your Best Life Now
What if God is looking at your last two bad moves? Do you hope that your last two good moves are going to cancel those out because they’re not? Your bad moves are only going to be cancelled out by repenting and believing in Jesus, that He took the punishment for your sins.
Allied to this is the whole prosperity teaching which I also wrote about (I’ve actually quoted here from the booklet I wrote here which you can take afterwards), about losing your salvation. And I asked the question: have you found salvation? As an answer, I said that some of these preachers are offering you things which are not going to give you salvation (what I just read from Joel Osteen is taken from there).
I also did a section there on the prosperity teaching explaining that, if you believe that giving to the Lord you’re going to get prosperous and wealthy, you’ll find that, if it doesn’t work out (and it doesn’t work, it only works for the preachers who get the money, but it doesn’t work for the people who give it) it’s another deception because it’s feeding on the self delusion and the lie that you have got to be rich and successful, and healthy, and wealthy, and that all these things are part of your right as a Christian, which is a delusion and a deception.
The Bible teaching is that you have to deny yourself. Jesus said,
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. Matthew 16:24
The greatest commandment Jesus said is,
“The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. 31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:29-31
In that little verse, Jesus gives the order of priorities in your life: God, love God first, love your neighbour second, and last of all, yourself. It doesn’t say hate yourself, but He doesn’t say ‘put the self first’.
This whole delusional thinking which I’m speaking about today really is about putting ‘self’ first, your neighbour second, and God last if at all. That’s the wrong order. God first, neighbour second, self last, and then it all comes into focus.
