One of our listeners sent us a video and asked that I review it.
In the video, the preacher quotes from Psalm 23, Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
He then picks out a couple of men from the audience to follow him around.
Supposedly, one represents goodness and the other mercy.
He proceeds to walk around the auditorium, pretending to speak in tongues and yelling at the top of his lungs, working the congregation into a frenzy as he plays on their emotions.
But hang on, it gets better.
He then tells of he and his sons having recently gone to a Tennessee Vol football game in Knoxville.
Before the game, they stopped to eat at the Brazilian Steakhouse, but it was closed.
As chance would have it, I mean God, as God would have it, according to this preacher, next door was P.F. Chang's, so they decided to go there.
As he and his boys, dressed in their game day attire, went in and sat down, he claims that goodness and mercy followed them.
How does he prove it?
How does he prove that God's goodness and mercy followed them into the Chinese restaurant?
Well, his proof was that a lady there approached his table and asked if he were going to the football game.
He said, Yes, and she then handed him a parking pass that would put them right next to the stadium.
Well, at this point of the video, the crowd goes wild.
They come unglued and begin to shout.
Then he asks, why was the steakhouse closed?
Because the woman with the parking pass went to P.F. Chang's, and in order for me to get my blessing, God had to send me there.
It's times like this when I'm almost ashamed to admit my faith.
But I press on, because I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation.
And sadly, this sort of preaching is common these days.
People close their Bibles and open their minds.
They empty their frontal lobe and sit in awe and amazement while listening to these types of sensational stories.
All of the on stage shenanigans may be sensational, may be entertaining, but in the end, the result is always meaningless.
Listen, you saying God gave you parking passes to a football game is about as ludicrous as claiming that God caused you to wreck.
I know a preacher who had a bad car accident and afterwards, some had asked him, why did God do that to you?
To which he replied, God didn't make me wreck.
It happened because Firestone made a bad tire.
Whatever happened to common sense?
Religion teaches that God is responsible for everything.
He's responsible for everything that happens to you.
However, the Bible says there are things that happen by chance, Luke 10:31.
Today's religious leaders, it's insiders, aren't teaching much from scripture anymore.
God's word has taken a backseat to superstition.
We've all heard it said, everything happens for a reason.
Well duh, of course everything happens for a reason.
I walk out in front of truck, I get hit by truck.
I don't walk out, I don't get hit.
Everything happens for a reason.
If I got hit, the reason was I walked out in front of a truck.
If I didn't get hit, the reason was, I didn't walk out in front of truck.
But you see, this is not what the religious world would have us believe.
This is not what they're insinuating when they say everything happens for a reason.
They're using brainwashing techniques to convince us that we're all puppets.
We're all puppets and God is the puppeteer pulling the strings.
Yeah, you know, since he has nothing better to do, no, he just sits around in the third heaven, manipulating our day-to-day circumstances.
To put it plainly, that's just bad doctrine.
It's rotten to the core, you shouldn't let anyone put rotten doctrine in your spirit.
When food goes bad, what do you do?
You don't put it in your body, you throw it out.
Yet some will allow bad doctrine to enter their spirit man on a regular basis.
The apostle Paul nailed it when he wrote, For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lust shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
But listen, there's good news.
The good news is there's hope, light at the end of the tunnel.
While watching this video, one thing I did notice, one glimmer of hope that caught my eye, not everyone was shouting.
Not everyone had the groupthink mentality.
Some were sitting there just like I used to do when I heard these absurdities being preached.
They had the same look on their face I had.
Some of you know the look I'm talking about.
The one that says, I know something is wrong here.
Something is just not right.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but something here is just not quite lining up.
This man is honestly telling me that he thinks God was so interested in him getting the best parking spot at a football game, that he sent goodness and mercy to close down a steakhouse and choreograph a meeting with the lady next door.
I'm reminded of comedian, Aaron Wilburn.
He tells about a time when he was on a diet and he drove through Mobile, Alabama and saw the hot sign flashing at the Krispy Kreme.
He could see that the parking lot was full and there was nowhere to park.
He said it was then that he had a spiritual thought.
What if the Lord put this Krispy Kreme here just for me?
What if this is my reward for eating good lately?
So he prayed, Lord if it's your will, if it's your will that I stop and have a donut, let a parking space open up when I drive by.
And then he told the audience, you're not going to believe this, but the fifth time around the block there was an open space.
Now Aaron is a comedian who was joking of course, but this pulpit magician claiming football stadium parking favor, was not.
In these perilous times we're living in, there's certainly no shortage of those who teach this new age look at me, look at me doctrine.
But hey, we're thankful that there are still some who are refusing to drink the Kool-Aid.
There's a remnant who are awakening to the truth, they're tired of having their intelligence insulted and beginning to question some things.
We're hearing from them daily.
Well like the ones in attendance who were not fooled, they just sat there and didn't encourage this guy, and like the Truth Time listener who sent us this video, we're very thankful for them.
But with that said, we do realize that there's always going to be those who will never dare question the preacher.
They're lazy minded and they'll never check to see if he's staying within the parameter of God's rightly divided Word of Truth.
How can they?
Most don't crack open a Bible anyway.
Listen to Luke in the book of Acts chapter 17 verse 11.
Here we're told that, Those in Berea receive the Word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures, how often?
What's that word?
Daily.
They searched the scriptures daily.
They tested Paul by searching the scriptures daily to prove that his preaching was correct.
Did anyone in the video do that?
It lasted almost an hour and I never seen the preacher or anyone in attendance searching the scriptures.
It was just an emotional roller coaster ride with the conductor preacher pushing buttons and pulling levers.
He accelerated to gain speed, did a couple of loop-de-loops, and even had a little fun with them by making it go backwards.
You know, some just get so caught up and entangled in a web of emotions that, the truth becomes
obscured.
While watching this preacher, I thought to myself, wonder why it never occurred to him that the lady who gave him the passes may have just been a nice lady.
How about that?
I mean, after all, she sees a man and his boys dressed in Tennessee hats and jackets eating a meal in Knoxville on game day.
Nah, it couldn't just be a nice lady with extra parking passes.
Are you kidding me, Trey?
Where's the sensationalism in that?
That won't preach.
I'll close with this.
Listen to me.
It is truly sad when preachers get up and preach for numbers' sake.
At the end of the day, all the money and warm bodies on the pew still won't do it for you.
None of that will ever fill that void that we all have deep within us, the void that
can only be filled with God's love and truth.
This guy may mean well, but good intentions and well-meanings will never take precedence over God's pure, unadulterated, unperverted word of truth.
If religion has fried your brain and you've joined the herd that believes this sort of teaching, you're in serious need of a reality check.
It's my prayer that you'll get a good dose of sound biblical teaching that will stabilize you and put you on a new course.
Perhaps today is the day.
Perhaps today is the day you decide to get real.
If not, maybe tomorrow, or maybe it'll take a few years.
But if you live long enough, I bet one day you will.
One day you'll want to get serious with God's word.
One day you'll tire of waiting for your magic ship to come in, that one the preacher keeps promising you.
You'll finally decide to get off the performance treadmill and plant yourself firmly in the truth.
The hit and miss program that you're currently involved in will no longer satisfy.
God didn't send the tornado to hit your house any more than he made it miss mine.
And God is not giving out stadium passes.
TruthTimeRadio.com, that's the website.
And remember, you only get two educations, the one you're given and the one you give
yourself.
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