The Need to Address Alternative and New Religious Movements

It is unfortunate that many Faith leaders are poor readers and interpreters of the Bible. For example they will take portions of a Bible verse or passage at the exclusion of the text as a whole so as to ignore both previous and preceding biblical context of scripture (2 Pet. 3:16). A good prime example in "how" that many Faith leaders interpret 3 John 2 where it says, "Beloved I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in good health even as you prospers." Many Faith leaders will take this particular Bible passage to mean something else than what God's Word warranted. First, the student of the Bible must seek to understand the history of the text of scripture under study. The rich history of the Bible is very much important in understanding the books of the Bible, the text of scripture, paragraphs and sentence within each verse of the Bible. Also when it comes to important words or "key" words at it relates to the passage/s of scripture that...

The source by which the prosperity gospel came from is from a Gnostic source: that of falsely so-called knowledge (1 Tim. 6:20).  The "unique" or supposed knowledge by which many Faith leaders claim to receive "directly" from God is in the form of such Revelation Knowledge. The quality and quantity of such knowledge or " gnosis " are beyond the mere words of the Bible or that is revealed within a person's human spirit outside the boundaries of scripture (2 Pet. 1:20).  The "knowledge" by which many Faith leaders claim to possess is what are exclusive; not what is inclusive as if they have a corner on the truth (Jude 8-10).  The truth of the matter is that God's Word is accessible to the Church as a whole; not those who claim to such "inward" voice of the spirit so as to receive such spiritual "revelation"  as a "direct" pipeline from God (Deut. 29:29).    The Late Oral Roberts of The Oral Roberts Universi...