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Featured Product
Occult Practices in the Churches How the occult has been fully integrated into many Christian lives and fellowships by Sandy Simpson
This DVD is a message based on
The Bible is quite clear about occult practices.Neither Israel nor the Church is to have anything to do with the way the world tries to gain secret knowledge.The Gnostics were and are known for promoting new revelation that is either loosely tied to Scripture taken out of context or not at all.The Israelites seeking information from the dead or in omens were judged harshly by the Lord who had warned them numerous times to stay away from that stuff. Yet due to the influences of heretical teachers in the New Apostolic Reformation, Word of Faith, Emergent Church, and the New Age many have been successful in getting lots of churches and denominations into occult practices that have been thinly disguised as "Christian".Many of those who follow these people, I'm sure, have no idea how far they have strayed into the occult. First I want to give the dictionary definitions and then Biblical warnings against these practices.Then I will give examples in the churches taken mainly from the ElijahList e-newsletter. List of Practices Detestable To God Deuteronomy 18:9-12 "When you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord; and because of these detestable things the Lord your God will drive them out before you.
Isaiah 8:19 When they say to you, "Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter," should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living?
Using the above list from Deuteronomy and Isaiah, let's take a look at each individual practice.
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DITC e-Newsletter
Volume 71, Issue 9 |
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Dear Friends,
2 Cor. 5:18-21 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
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| Check out the new ACT TV YouTube Channel! |
by ACT 
I am uploading DVDs every day. Some you may have seen, others you may not. Among the new stuff are a couple of DVDs by my friend Mike Oppenheimer of Let Us Reason Ministries on the subjects of Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyers.
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| The Use of Invective in Apologetics |
by Sandy Simpson, 10/16/18 
This article is about the use of invective while attempting to do apologetics or teaching discernment. Invective is defined as a noun: insulting, abusive, or highly critical language ie. "he let out a stream of invective". I admit to using invective at times in the past. My goal is to stop that practice and focus on the facts, not attack an individual's ability to comprehend.
In the case of Christians, the first thing to consider when doing apologetics is our mandate to reconcile people to Christ, no matter who they are.
2 Cor. 5:18-21 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
We must always be cognizant of our duty to not just "demolish arguments" for the sake of demolishing them but to do so with the hope and prayers that the person teaching falsely will repent and return to Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (NIV)
We do need to demolish arguments but while taking every thought captive to "make it obedient to Christ". I believe that we must pray for repentance and a return to orthodoxy for the heretic realizing full well, both from the Scriptures and from personal experience, that many false teachers are so invested in their false teaching that there is no way they will turn back. But true believers will continue to pray for them in any case.
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| China Trying to 'Rewrite the Bible,' Force Churches to Sing Communist Anthems |
at Understand the Times, 10/15/18 
The Chinese government is supervising a five-year plan to make Christianity more compatible with socialism in which there will be a "rewrite" of the Bible, a prominent religious freedom activist has told Congress. The Rev. Bob Fu, a former Chinese house church leader who immigrated to the United States in 1997 and founded the persecution watchdog organization China Aid, provided great detail during a House hearing Thursday about a plan enacted by leading state-sanctioned denominations in China to "Sincize" Christianity. As China's crackdown on religion has seen many house churches demolished and thousands of crosses removed from churches nationwide, Fu warned upfront that what is happening right now in China represents the highest degree of persecution for independent faith groups the country has seen in decades. "Religious freedom in China has really reached to the worst level that has not been seen since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution by Chairman Mao [Zedong] in the 1960s," he told members of the House Foreign Affairs' Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations.
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| 'Eat the meat and spit out the bones': A proper response to NAR teaching? |
by Holly Pivec, 10/16/18 
"Eat the meat and spit out the bones" is a common refrain in NAR. Typically, it means that if you hear a teacher give a questionable teaching - something that you don't understand or that seems off somehow - ignore that particular teaching. But don't stop listening to his other teachings. Bill Johnson, one of the movement's most influential "apostles," delivered an entire sermon promoting this idea. It's titled "Don't Eat the Bones." In context, Johnson is speaking about men, including the "prophet" William Branham and the "healing evangelist" Todd Bentley, who claimed to operate in miraculous power and led major revivals. Yet they fell into heresy or sinful lifestyles. Critics of NAR have argued that the heretical teachings and immoral lifestyles of these men - and of other influential NAR prophets, such as Bob Jones and Paul Cain - raise the question of whether these individuals actually may have been false prophets. Their unsavory behavior challenges the validity of the revivals led by them - or so the critics say. But Johnson argues that it's a mistake to write off these "prophets" and the "moves of God" they pioneered, or their other teachings, simply because of their failures. He prays that Christians will be able to discern how God sometimes works through "unusual tools," including individuals with lifestyles of secret, hidden sin.
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Bradford Pear Christianity
The Lord's Prayer - Our Prayer
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May the Lord bless you as you continue to be a Berean!
In His hands,
Sandy Simpson
Apologetics Coordination Team
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