NOTES ON FALSE TEACHERS IN OUR MIDST IN THESE LAST DAYS II: A CASE STUDY & EXPOSÉ OF WOLVES IN THE SHEEPFOLD – (WITH VIDEO)

THEOLOGY

SCRIPTURE. “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad and easy to travel is the path that leads the way to destruction and eternal loss, and there are many who enter through it.But small is the gate and narrow and difficult to travel is the path that leads the way to [everlasting] life, and there are few who find it. Beware of the false prophets, [teachers] who come to you dressed as sheep [appearing gentle and innocent], but inwardly are ravenous wolves.By their fruit you will recognize them [that is, by their contrived doctrine and self-focus]. – JESUS OF NAZARETH, MATTHEW 7:13-16A

KEY TERM: “FALSE PROPHETS.” ‘Pseudoprophétés’ [ψευδοπροφητῶν]: “A spurious prophet; a pretended foreteller or religious imposter; ‘one who in God’s name teaches what is false.’” NOTE:”The term ‘pseudoprophétés’ refers to an individual who falsely claims to speak on behalf of God or to possess Divine inspiration. In the New Testament, it is used to describe those who deceive others by pretending to deliver messages from God, often leading people away from the truth of the Gospel.”

QUOTATION. “The greatest danger to the Church today is not Humanism, Paganism, Atheism or Agnosticism. The greatest danger is not increasing hostility against our Faith from the Culture. ‘Our greatest danger is Apostasy on the inside, arising from false teachers’– Theological Liberals [and Hyper-Conservatives] who deny and distort Biblical Doctrine and lead others down the same path.” ― MARK HITCHCOCK & JEFF KINLEY, The Coming Apostasy: Exposing the Sabotage of Christianity from Within, 2017; edited

COMMENTARY. “‘Enter ye in at the strait gate’ – Christ here compares the Way to Life to an entrance through ‘a Gate.’ The words ‘straight’ and ‘strait’ have very different meanings. The former means ‘not crooked;’ the latter, ‘pent up, narrow, difficult to be entered.’ This is the word used here, and it means that: ‘The Way to Heaven is pent up, narrow, close, and not obviously entered. The Way to Death is open, broad, and thronged’ …

‘False prophets’ – “‘The word “prophet” originally means one who foretells future events.’ As prophets, however, were commonly regarded as ‘public instructors’ on the subject of Religion, the word came to denote all who were religious teachers. See the notes at Romans 12:6. In this sense it is probably used here. ‘A False Prophet is a teacher of incorrect doctrine, or one falsely and unjustly laying claims to Divine inspiration.’ It probably had reference to the false teachers then among the Jews.

‘Who come in sheep’s clothing’ – The sheep is an emblem of innocence, sincerity, and harmlessness. To come in sheep’s clothing is to assume the appearance of sanctity and innocence, when the heart is evil. ‘Ravening wolves – Rapacious; voraciously devouring; hungry even to rage.’ Applied to the false teachers, it means that they assumed the appearance of holiness in order that they might the more readily get the property of the people. ‘They were full of extortion and excess.’ SeeMatthew 23:25.” – ALBERT BARNES, Notes on the Old and New Testament, 1834; edited

II. TEACHING

CASE STUDY. It was sometime in the Year of our Lord 2019 when I was struggling to get the Circuit Ride Enterprise off the ground (the Peloton Confessing Fellowship wasn’t even a Vision yet), when I ran into a married couple online who at first seemed like ‘One of us.’

They were by most accounts intelligent, educated, and appeared at least to be well versed in essential Christian doctrine. Though I cannot recall the details of a modest disagreement about Trump or theology or whatever, their response to me was alarming, to put it mildly. While on the surface things seemed okay, though a bit strained, what they did behind my back was best summed up in allegorical military jargon as:

“A Kill Shot.”

I started hearing from some Facebook friends that there was a scurrilous chat group that was viciously maligning, falsely accusing, and slandering my name left and right, as the saying goes. I made some attempt to confront the husband but with little or no effect – though again the details escape me since it’s been five years or so since all this took place.

FALSE DOCTRINES. While I was comparatively new at the online, sometimes ferocious, even brutal infighting that takes place these days, I eventually gave it to the Lord and just walked away. After a time, I forgot about it entirely and watched the Lord begin to assemble my Facebook page and later on, a YouTube channel that carried my gradually improving Commentaries to larger audiences.

Then recently I stumbled upon the husband’s Teaching Video and I confess a revived curiosity about what he had to say. What I heard was, well, very nearly abominable. He was ‘prophesying’ about current and future events in such convoluted, inconsistent, illogical detail that it was essentially a pile of verbal mush.

What follows are direct quotes, unedited, from his January 7, 2025 Video on the Church at Philadelphia – REVELATION 3:7-13 – that Jesus uniquely commended as “The Faithful Church” that “kept His Word” undefiled and refused to “deny His name.”

Please carefully note the ‘Nuances.’

PRELUDE. “We don’t gather with our local body of believers because they do everything right. ‘We don’t gather with only those who have perfect doctrine (there are none).’ We don’t gather with other believers because we want to change the world any faster than Jesus does. We gather with other believers because it’s HIS body. It isn’t perfect, it isn’t right, it isn’t powerful … It’s His.”

TEACHING. “‘Jesus didn’t tell everyone how they were wrong.’ He lived right, even in the presence of people that wanted to kill him for it. Sometimes living right shines a light on other people’s wrong behavior and ideas. Jesus’ body grows in light. Darkness hates the light. The Pharisees were experts at telling everyone else how they were wrong. No one wanted to kill them. Jesus is way different. Some saw it and followed Him. Few. Narrow.”

DK’S TAKE. I don’t know if you caught the towering internal contradictions in their interpretation of the Scriptures under examination. So just in case, here is my response to what I heard them teach.

The False Claim that Jesus Christ never tells us of errors in Doctrine is beyond a lie, it borders on outright heresy and blasphemy.

The Internal Contradiction of that claim in the face of using the Church at Philadelphia, renown for keeping sound doctrines, is breathtaking and damnable.

The Conclusion that Jesus is, in childish vernacular, “way different,” is the preaching of “Another Gospel and another Jesus.” The Great Apostle warned that whoever does such an abominable thing shall become, “Anathema,” and thereby condemned to utter destruction! (cf. 2 Corinthians 11:4; Galatians 1:8).

Needless to say all this left me in both shock and great indignation, since a number of my former Christian friends apparently still listen to this Sedition of God’s Truth. But there was one Final Discovery that sealed their treachery while at the same time explaining it.

III. THE TAP ROOT

Now for the Great Uncovering that I had not realized all these years: They are both writing under the heading, “LightHOP – Lighthouse of Prayer.”TRANSLATION: They are root-deep into the Heretical Cults of the International House of Prayer (IHOP) which is tethered to the NAR – New Apostolic Reformation.

Their names are: TOM AND SAMANTHA STOLZ. I counsel you before our King to have nothing to do with them or their False Doctrines.

Now then, I simply don’t have the time or the space to dive into the cesspools of the two organizations they are supporters of, but it just so happens that a newly published article from The Atlantic was just released with the title, “The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows” (January 9, 2025; edited).

This muscular analysis comes to us from the pen of STEPHANIE MCCRUMMEN, staff writer at Atlantic, 2018 Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for investigative reporting for her coverage of controversial Judge Roy Moore’s candidacy for the U.S. Senate, and a host of other outstanding recognitions.

Here she headlines her essay with this: “Tens of millions of American Christians are embracing a Charismatic Movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, which seeks to destroy the secular state.”

What could be a more Timely, indeed Prophetic piece of journalism for our present conversation? As always, I will condense and summarize her MAJOR POINTS in the following bullet point review.

PRELUDE. On the Thursday night after Donald Trump won the presidential election, an obscure but telling celebration unfolded inside a converted barn off a highway stretching through the cornfields of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The place was called GATEWAY HOUSE OF PRAYER, and it was not exactly a church, and did not exactly fit into the paradigms of what American Christianity has typically been. Inside, there were no hymnals, no images of Jesus Christ, no parables fixed in stained glass. Strings of lights hung from the rafters. A huge map of the world covered one wall. On the others were seven framed bulletin boards, each representing a theater of battle between the forces of God and Satan—government, business, education, family, arts, media, and religion itself. Gateway House of Prayer, it turned out, was a kind of War Room.And if its patrons are to be believed, at least one person, and at peak times dozens, had been praying every single minute of every single day for more than 15 years for the victory that now seemed at hand. God was winning! The Kingdom was coming!”

MAINSTREAM. “‘What was happening in the barn in Lancaster County did not represent some fringe of American Christianity, but rather what much of the Faith is becoming. A SHIFT IS UNDER WAY, one that scholars have been tracking for years and that has become startlingly visible with the RISE OF TRUMPISM.’ At this point, tens of millions of believers—about 40 percent of American Christians, including Catholics, according to a recent Denison University survey—are embracing an alluring, Charismatic Movement that has little use for religious pluralism, individual rights, or constitutional democracy. It is mystical, emotional, and, in its way, wildly Utopian. It is transnational, multiracial, and unapologetically political. ‘Early leaders called it the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR,’ although some of those same leaders are now engaged in a rebranding effort as the ‘Antidemocratic Character of the Movement’ has come to light. And people who have never heard the name are nonetheless adopting the Movement’s Central Ideas. These include the belief that God speaks through modern-day Apostles and Prophets. That demonic forces can control not only individuals, but entire territories and institutions. That the Church is not so much a place as an active “Army of God,” one with a holy mission to claim the Earth for the Kingdom as humanity barrels ever deeper into the End Times.

TRUMP. “‘How all of this came to be is a story with many starting points, the most immediate of which is Trump himself.’ In the lead-up to the 2016 election, establishment leaders on the Christian Right were backing candidates with more pious pedigrees than Trump’s. He needed a way to rally Evangelicals, so he turned to some of the most influential ‘Apostles and Prophets’ of the NAR, a wilder world where he was cast as God’s “wrecking ball” and embraced by a fresh pool of so-called Prophecy Voters, people long regarded as the embarrassing riffraff of Evangelical Christianity. But the DNA of that moment goes back further, to the Cold War, Latin America, and an iconoclastic seminary professor named C. PETER WAGNER.”

DOMINIONISM. “‘Wagner also became captivated by a concept called Dominionism, a major Conceptual Shift that had been emerging in Conservative theological circles.’ At the time, the prevailing view was that God’s Mandate for Christians was Simple Evangelism, person by person; the Kingdom would come later, after the Return of Jesus Christ, and meanwhile, the business of politics was, as the Bible verse goes, rendered unto Caesar. ‘The New Way of Thinking was that God was calling his people to establish the Kingdom Now.’ To put it another way, Christians had marching orders—a Mandate for aggressive social and institutional transformation. ‘The Idea had deep roots in a movement called Christian Reconstructionism, whose serious thinkers—most prominently a Hyper-Calvinist theologian named R. J. RUSHDOONY’—were spending their lives working out the details of what a government grounded in biblical laws would look like: A Model for a Christian Theocracy.”

N.A.R. “By 1996, Wagner and a group of like-minded colleagues were rolling these ideas into what they were calling the New Apostolic Reformation, a term meant to evoke their conviction that a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit was moving around the globe, endowing believers with supernatural power and the authority to battle demonic forces and establish God’s Kingdom on Earth. ‘The NAR Vision was not technically Conservative but Radical: Constructing the Kingdom meant destroying the secular state with equal rights for all, and replacing it with a system in which Christianity is supreme.’ As a practical matter, the Movement put the full force of God on the side of free-market Capitalism. In that sense, Wagner and his colleagues had found the answer to Liberation Theology that they’d been seeking for decades.”

MANDATE. “Wagner, who died in 2016, wrote dozens of additional books with titles such as Dominion! and Churchquake! The Movement allowed Christianity to be Changed and Updated! Embracing the idea that God was raising New Apostles and Prophets who could not only interpret Ancient Scripture but deliver ‘fresh words and dreams from Heaven’ on a rolling, even daily basis. One of Wagner’s most talented acolytes, a preacher named LANCE WALLNAU, repackaged the concept of Dominionism into what he popularized as the “7 Mountain Mandate,” essentially an action plan for how Christians could dominate the Seven Spheres of life—Government, Education, Media, and the four others posted on the walls like targets at Gateway House of Prayer.”

METASTATIZATON. “The Ideas have seeped into Trumpworld, influencing the agenda known as Project 2025, as well as proposals set forth by the America First Policy Institute. A new book called ‘Unhumans’ (War Room Books, 2024), co-authored by the Far-Right Conspiracy theorist JACK POSOBIEC and endorsed by J. D. VANCE, describes political opponents as ‘Unhumans’ who want to ‘undo Civilization itself.’ And who currently‘run operations in media, government, education, economy, family, religion, and arts and entertainment’—the Seven Mountains. ‘The book argues that these ‘Unhumans’ must be “crushed!’”

DESTINATION. “Which leaves THE QUESTION of what happens now … MATTHEW TAYLOR [scholar and author of The Violent Take it by Force, 2024] told me he sees the movement merging seamlessly into ‘The MAGA Blob,’ with the ‘Prophets’ and ‘Apostles’ casting whatever Trump does as part of God’s Plan, and rebuking any dissent. It’s the Synchronization with Trump that is most alarming. ‘THE AGENDA IS NOW TRUMP!’ And that’s how Populist Authoritarianism works. It starts out as a Coalition, as a Shotgun Marriage, and eventually the Populism and Authoritarianism takes over.”

SUBJUGATION! “In another sense, the Movement has never been about policies or changes to the law; it’s always been about the larger goal of dismantling the institutions of secular government to clear the way for ‘The Kingdom.’ It is about God’s total victory. ‘Buckle up, buttercup!’ Wallnau said on his podcast shortly after the Election. ‘Because you’re going to be watching a whole New Redefinition of what the Reformation looks like as Christians engage every sector of society. Christ is not quarantined any longer. WE’RE GOING INTO ALL THE WORLD!’”

SELAH. About here it would be highly advantageous for all our readers and viewers to take a few moments to prayerfully consider what has been presented to you. All documented thoroughly. All true so far as we can responsibly say. All toward a ‘Political and Spiritual Fait Accomplis.’

Commencing on January 20, 2025, when everything is going to change, beloved. Everything.

IV. LAST THOUGHTS

SIGNS. In what may be indisputably ‘An Ill Omen’ to the United States, the ongoing (at this writing on January 11, 2025) Los Angeles Fires are an unprecedented, indeed, “Apocalytpic” Signature that does not bode well for our tortured Republic. I cannot help but propose that God is yelling at us now, beloved, and most pointedly and profoundly, to THE SHEPHERDS OF HIS CHURCH – particularly those in the California Fire Zones!

What must they be thinking now in the shadows of the eerie orange-black light of The Inferno. How will they explain this to their congregation members, so many of whom have lost everything at this point: “Jesus loves us this we know, for the Bible tells us so”?

PRAYER: DEAR AMERICAN CHRISTIANS: What we critically need this very minute in the present American Moment is for thousands of Pastors, Teachers and Leaders to rend their terribly soiled garments and fall on their knees, to cry out to God for Forgiveness!

That is our Last and only Hope, beloved. If not, I tell you true: Disintegration and Destruction awaits the entire American Order. And then, the whole of the Earth.

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/8K4OftMCaUA