Jim Bakker Show - 5 Ways the Devil Turns Christianity Upside Down - Larry Sparks on The Jim Bakker Show
Aired: 2019-10-22
Duration: 05:13


=== Resisting Twisted Faith (03:41) ===

[00:00:00]  Larry, you recently, you were asked by a key leader, what is the Lord speaking to you right now?
[00:00:06]  Do you remember that?
[00:00:07]  I do.
[00:00:07]  I do.
[00:00:09]  I want you to tell us what you said.
[00:00:13]  What is God speaking to you right now?
[00:00:16]  And I wrote it down here.
[00:00:17]  He said this.
[00:00:18]  There's five ways that the devil is actually trying to turn Christianity upside down.
[00:00:23]  And these are things societally, but also in Christianity we need to be aware of.
[00:00:28]  And these are the five things.
[00:00:29]  And I want to encourage you, just be aware of this.
[00:00:31]  Like, aware of it so we can resist it, fight against it.
[00:00:35]  Number one is a doctrine called universalism.
[00:00:38]  This is the belief that you don't need to do anything.
[00:00:41]  Jesus died on the cross, which he did.
[00:00:43]  His blood was shed for the sins of the world, which it was.
[00:00:46]  But you don't need to actually receive or accept the Lord.
[00:00:49]  By default of what he has done, you're in.
[00:00:51]  So we don't need to preach to anybody.
[00:00:53]  I mean, and to me, as a result, that's producing this kind of watered down, false Christianity where I'm just in.
[00:01:02]  I can live however I want because Jesus already paid the price.
[00:01:05]  So I see that.
[00:01:06]  Number two, I'm seeing this language is called, I'm reconstructing my faith.
[00:01:11]  We're seeing that, we're seeing, sadly, a lot of people my age.
[00:01:14]  I mean, I'm 36.
[00:01:15]  I'm seeing a lot of young leaders renouncing their faith and turning away from the faith.
[00:01:20]  That's right.
[00:01:21]  And it's scary.
[00:01:22]  But what I'm seeing that's troubling me even more, like, there is a healthy version of reconstructing our faith when we have a lot of religion in our past and a lot of false views about God.
[00:01:32]  And we need to adjust what we believe to agree with the Bible.
[00:01:35]  That's good.
[00:01:37]  What I'm seeing is people want to adjust the Bible to agree with how culture is doing things.
[00:01:43]  They want to adjust the Bible because, well, this is acceptable now.
[00:01:46]  Culture says this is okay.
[00:01:48]  Politicians say this is okay.
[00:01:50]  Hollywood says this is okay.
[00:01:51]  So we've got to change the Bible to say that that which is sin is actually acceptable.
[00:01:56]  And that's how we are reconstructing our faith.
[00:01:59]  And that's dangerous.
[00:02:00]  Yeah, God has been dealing with that same subject in my heart that we have just twisted the Bible.
[00:02:07]  And God won't tolerate.
[00:02:08]  His word is, he is the word.
[00:02:10]  Did you know that?
[00:02:11]  When you're twisting the word, you're twisting Jesus.
[00:02:14]  You are.
[00:02:15]  He is the word.
[00:02:16]  And that's where we are.
[00:02:17]  Our country's doing it.
[00:02:19]  We're saying, oh, grace gives you abortion.
[00:02:23]  You can kill your baby because it's a nice thing to do because it's so hard for a woman to have a baby and all that.
[00:02:30]  You know, it's just twisting what God has said.
[00:02:33]  It is.
[00:02:33]  It is.
[00:02:33]  And you know what?
[00:02:34]  That goes to the third thing is there is a lack of holy fear.
[00:02:38]  Back in the day, they would call Christians, what, God-fearing people.
[00:02:43]  And I was mentioning earlier about the fear of the Lord.
[00:02:46]  John Bevere wrote this amazing book, The Fear of the Lord.
[00:02:48]  I'm like, God, this is something I need to go back to because we've gotten too comfortable with God.
[00:02:54]  He is our Father.
[00:02:55]  He is our friend.
[00:02:56]  He is the lover of our soul, 100%.
[00:02:58]  He's also the King of glory.
[00:03:00]  He is also God that I know many people who say, yes, sir, to him.
[00:03:04]  So it's one of those things where we tremble before God.
[00:03:07]  And actually in Isaiah 66, there's a blessing for those who tremble at the word of God, which means when he says something, I do it out of holy fear.
[00:03:18]  And then the last two things were this.
[00:03:20]  A different gospel and a disunified church.
[00:03:23]  A different gospel like this is what it kind of sounds like.

=== Talking Greater Glory (01:46) ===

[00:03:26]  Jesus died to kind of improve your life.
[00:03:29]  Jesus died to give you the biggest and best version of you.
[00:03:33]  Now, listen, we can talk maturely.
[00:03:35]  He did come to give us abundant life.
[00:03:37]  He came to bless us.
[00:03:38]  He came to prosper us.
[00:03:39]  He came to heal us.
[00:03:40]  100% true.
[00:03:42]  But when I'm having a bad day and when the enemy comes against me and I'm struggling and fighting, at the end of the day, I need to remember, it's healthy to remember where I was before Jesus.
[00:03:52]  Because then there's a weightiness to my faith.
[00:03:56]  He didn't just, you know, bring me out of like, well, I was kind of living a bad life, and now it's kind of good and it's better.
[00:04:03]  I was dead in my sin.
[00:04:04]  The Bible says dead in my sin.
[00:04:06]  I was a dead person incapable of doing anything.
[00:04:08]  God reached in, turned my life around, and it says in Romans 12, 1, in view of his mercy, we offer up our lives as a living sacrifice.
[00:04:18]  People try to preach, well, just give your life to God.
[00:04:21]  It says, in view. of his mercy.
[00:04:23]  We respond to his mercy.
[00:04:25]  And then the last thing is a disunified church.
[00:04:27]  We're all angry at each other.
[00:04:29]  I mean, listen, we believe about 90 to 95% of the same thing.
[00:04:33]  You know, all of us.
[00:04:34]  I understand.
[00:04:34]  We do.
[00:04:35]  Presbyterian, Methodist, but sometimes it's that 5%.
[00:04:40]  And there's such little things.
[00:04:42]  But we don't just disagree over them.
[00:04:44]  And there's healthy disagreement.
[00:04:45]  There's healthy debate.
[00:04:46]  We're a family.
[00:04:47]  We should be able to disagree as a healthy family does.
[00:04:50]  We don't.
[00:04:50]  We demonize one another.
[00:04:52]  And as a result, the world looks in and it's like, what's going on in the church?
[00:04:57]  And what did Jesus say in John 17?
[00:04:59]  We're talking about greater glory.
[00:05:01]  One of the key things that will release the greater glory of God is a unified church.
[00:05:06]  Even when we disagree on certain things, we agree that Jesus is Lord.
[00:05:10]  We agree that he died for our sins, shed his blood for us.