The Promise Keepers Movement is Dangerous. Watch Out For It!

New Ecumenical Mens Group Promise Keepers and Its Various Deviates

A note from JohnChingford. Please Note that the information given here is still applicable as the 7 promises of a Promise Keeper are still foremost in their mission statement as at 2010. See their website: http://www.promisekeepers.org/about/7promises

We do not hesitate to give the strongest possible warning now concerning the dangers of the Promise Keepers movement. Our reasons will be clearly stated and properly documented from original sources so that God's people may be able to see for themselves how this new movement is mixing truth and error. If for no other reason, the Promise Keepers movement is dangerous because it promotes an unscriptural agenda of forging a religious ecumenical unity which is absolutely forbidden in God's Word (2 Cor. 6:14-7:1; Eph. 5:11).  This full article can be found in  

http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/pk/pk-fea.htm

and below (in blue), But first, I would like to show clear evidence of the ecumenism of Promise Keepers, as follows:

Renovare, Promise Keepers. Dangerous New Ecumenical, New Age Movements Coming To Our Churches

You may have heard about Emerging Church with its New Age, Dark Ages Christianity based on experiential Christianity, rather than on what the scriptures reveal. See my link on the emerging church by Roger Oakland,  for an outstanding presentation of what the emerging church is and how it is operating. Well .... here we see other things also emerging.  Renovare and Promise Keepers. Also I have something to show you about the new paraphrase of the Bible "the message"

Truth and Origins Behind Being Slain In The Spirit

I found this article on the Moriel Ministries website.  Please take time to read this, as I am sure that most of you may not realise that the experience of being slain in the spirit has its origins in something other than God. Baptism in The Holy Spirit and being slain are not the same thing, as explained below. I  believe in the baptism of The Holy Spirit but have always been suspicious of what is actually happening when people fall backwards. Please read this article which explains the origins behind this phenomena  more clearly.


Slain in the Spirit

If you have had some sort of sensual experience like falling on your back due to some kind of "impartation" - a term the Bible does not use nor promote nor teach by example as a normal Christian experience; or exhibited some kind of "manifestation" - a term used only once in the Bible with regards to the gifts of the Spirit which are clearly listed (1 Cor. 12:7-11); been in an induced trance state, found yourself pinned to the floor, laughed uncontrollably, made animal noises, exhibited signs of "drunkenness in the spirit", or other such phenomena  ... if  you have "experienced" these things,   has the urge to pass along those experiences taken on more importance than preaching the gospel? 


Have the experiences begun to overshadow the Word of God and its sound doctrines and their application to your life?  Have they taken on more significance than the sanctifying ethical work of the Holy Spirit in your life?  Have they begun to eclipse the work of the cross in your relationship with Jesus Christ of Nazareth, to whom the Holy Spirit always points our worship and obedience? 


Are you now a zealous proponent of something you have not really investigated fully but only "experienced"?  Examine yourself and others in your congregation to see if phenomena such as "slain in the spirit" have taken on far more importance in your life than they should.

If you are caught up in these modern mystic/gnostic paths that end up leading away from the truth, please take the time to read this article carefully.

Difference Between Joy And Happiness

What I write here can be summarised in 1 Peter 1 v 3-9. (I have copied and pasted this passage at the very bottom of this post, please read it after reading this post). 

Difference Between Joy and Happiness.

Happiness  is a superficial "feel good" emotion based on circumstances in life.  You can be happy one moment because things are good around you and the next feel sad because something has "happened" to disturb your happy feeling. ie a "happening" has happened to cause un"happiness".  God wants us to be blessed - not happy.  Of course if we are blessed we will "feel" happy also, but not ALL the time and we should not be seeking happiness anyway, but seeking first God's Kingdom!

The sermon on the mount was full of instructions on how to be blessed.  The secret of blessedness and/or joy is not dependant on the circumstances but on being in the condition and position of being in God's Will and submitted to God.

It is God's Will that we be full of joy unspeakable full of Glory. Another place it says that the Spirit of Glory and of Jesus will rest upon you.  It is always at the time of hardship for the Christian that he/she experiences the fullness of that joy.  Jesus said that "my food is to do the Will of Him who sent me" In other words, Jesus did not need to be sustained by the things of this earth. What sustained Jesus and gave Him joy was to be in the centre of God's Will and do what His Father wanted.  

Are Our Experiences More Important In Our Christian Faith Than knowing Him through His Word?

Based on conversations I have had, I had a real burden that I needed to respond to what was said. In fact it is such an important matter I felt I needed to share it with you all. It was said: "your faith is all knowledge, but no power (ie no experiences)"


I am not against experiences and do emphasise that certain experiences are necessary to follow Jesus. I in fact have had wonderful experiences of God, but we need to get things the right way round!


If we focus too much on our experiences, we tend to build our theology, interpretation of scripture on those experiences and have tendency to make the Word Of God say what "WE think" because of our experiences. The experience becomes the guideline to interpreting scripture which means we are already prejudiced before we even check the Bible. This usually leads us to ignore scripture verses which oppose our experiences and instead only follow the verses (many times out of context) we think back-up our experience. This is selective reading and making the bible say what we want it to say, ie we make God after our own image rather than be changed into His image. The scripture says:

Is It Sin To Touch The Lord's Anointed? What Does Bible Say?

Whenever a criticism is made against any recognised Christian leader the cry goes out "do not touch the Lord's anointed"! They quote from 1 Chron 16:22  and from 1 Samuel 26:9. Both passages are taken in isolation, well out of context (ie, they are not read in conjunction with the surrounding verses, passage, chapter, book and whole bible).


For example if we look at the above verses in context: 1 Chron 16:20-22 says "they wandered from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another. He allowed no man to oppress them; for their sake he rebuked kings: "Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm."


The whole passage and chapter is referring to the nation ISRAEL: ALL the people of that Nation as the anointed ones!


Then 1 Sam 26 (whole chapter) and subsequent chapters show the context was about David having a chance to kill King Saul and so free himself from his greatest enemy. David's decision not to kill King Saul was because God had anointed Saul to be king, so killing him would be to kill the king God had chosen. It is not referring to God's prophets (as the Lord's anointed) in this case.


There are no specific verses in the whole Bible that teach that prophets could not be challenged. In fact God told the people (through Moses) to check whether a prophet is true or false, ie to challenge them. Can we use the last isolated example (about King Saul) to allow any so-called Christian leader to say and do whatever they want to do, unchallenged?  Should we really use the example of King David to let them do this?  I will now answer those questions as follows:

Why We Should Expose The Tares of False Teaching In Our Churches

Based on a conversation I had with someone about false and deceptive teaching hitting our churches in these days and why it is important to expose it. They said that Jesus told us to not worry about it because tares and wheat should grow together. However, was Jesus saying that? Scripture teaches otherwise!. I felt so concerned about the implications of what this person was saying, that I felt I needed to search the scriptures. I would like to share with you what I found. It can be put into 2 sections where scripture covers "Preaching to the spirits in prison" and "tares and wheat". Preaching To The Spirits In Prison Before we ever make a doctrine from scripture we MUST compare scripture with scripture and never take a text out of context. If a scripture seems to be saying something but the rest of scripture teaches something completely different, then our interpretation of that text MUST be wrong.  Scripture teaches the following (which contradicts what Kenneth Copeland of Word Faith teaches):