The Christian Sentinel
January 2005 E-update
Joyce
Meyer Leads a Philadelphia Area Audience into Holy
Laughter, Misuses Scripture in Defense
(posted Jan.
1, 2005)
ã
2005 Christian Sentinel
Editor's note: The following two articles first appeared a decade ago in two issues of The Christian Sentinel. We have placed them on line for the first time due to our growing concern of the false teachings of Joyce Meyer. For more information on this topic follow the articles and links on Meyer outlined in the January 2005 E-update.
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Laughter
is Contagious Several EChO volunteers stumbled upon a hysterical crowd at a recent rally in the Philadelphia area held by radio teacher Joyce Meyer. Her show, "Life in the Word," can be heard on many radio stations across the country and now her television program is in syndication and can be seen on the BET network. We attended the meeting for the sole purpose of edification since we where impressed with Meyer’s gifts. But, we were startled to find that Mrs. Meyer is promoting the "holy laughter" nonsense in her meetings. We came expecting to be uplifted by the Word, but left horribly disappointed with a woman we credited with more discerning skills than she displayed. I attended an earlier afternoon session, and though the laughter didn’t manifest while I was there, Meyer was definitely getting the crowd prepared. She said that when she first saw this "wave of the spirit" she was suspicious, but now she thinks that God is trying to tell the church to "lighten up." To do that she exhorted the audience to purposely start laughing. "It starts with a ha-ha-ha," She said. "And a hee-hee-hee." The crowd was getting excited but she closed that session and invited everyone back to the evening meeting promising them a great night in the spirit. It seems that when the crowd shuffled back in, they where ready for "joy." As Joyce was preaching, the song leader, still seated on the platform, began to quietly laugh. As Mrs. Meyer drew the audience’s attention to him with some light banter, others began a low chuckle. Mrs. Meyer than leaned like a drunkard on the side of her podium on her elbow, asking the people if they’d ever been drunk in the flesh, chiding them for not being willing to admit they had, and explaining that she just simply had nothing to say anymore. She implied that she just couldn’t preach the Word, although she herself was barely laughing. She said she couldn't help herself, implying that she was drunk from this occurrence, and that all should experience it, and that it was God at work. She lost only a tiny part of her audience. As one couple left Meyer said "I don’t have anything to do with this. Don’t blame me." When questioned why he left, one young man said "We came to hear a sermon. I’m not hearing any of the Word of God so I’m leaving." A young woman in fear for an EChO volunteer’s spiritual safety asked, "Why are you staying? Do you have a family member stuck in there?" When she heard that our staff member and her husband had to stay to reasearch she said, "Go get your husband and get him out of there!" When the holy ha-has were going on our staff member sought refuge in the hall. While there she felt concerned with a handsome couple who where returning to the meeting with their Bibles under their arms. She expressed danger to them. They responded acidly with "What religion are you?" They could not even perceive that a Christian would do anything but go along with the flow of things and were in full acceptance of it, looking with disdain at those not going along with the laughter. Mrs. Meyer discovered the formula for strange fire: The power of suggestion, plus peer pressure plus the itching ears of experience-driven followers. One EChO volunteer walked to the front and handed Mrs. Meyer a note saying ‘I adjure you since you said God gave you nothing to say to read II Timothy 4:2-5 "…Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; reproved, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry" We are all familiar with the parable of the sower of the seed in Matthew 13, but it occurred to me after considering the rise of "holy laughter" that the devil is using this to cause new believers to reject Christianity and unbelievers to stay far away. The seed that falls along the path refers to those who hear the message about the kingdom and do not understand it and the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in the heart. Since this phenomenon causes such confusion and is so offensive to the thinking, rational person, it is a stumbling block to a person’s understanding of the gospel. It does not further the gospel, it clouds it with an appearance of insanity and many will fall away because they think "if this is from God I want no part in it." Church leaders who are promoting this are putting up stumbling blocks that need not be there because this is not holy and adds nothing to a Christian’s walk with God. Our prayer is that Joyce Meyer and others will test experience by Scripture and obey the Lord Jesus Christ when he warns us to "stay sober."
Joyce
Meyer’s misuse of Scripture Radio teacher Joyce Meyer didn’t like our last issue of the Christian Sentinel. She lambasted us in a taped message delivered at a gathering in the Midwest and wound up misusing the Bible in the process. "It aggravates me," she complained. "These people who think they have a ministry of exposing what’s wrong with everybody else’s ministry. "Man, I just got written up in a newspaper in Philadelphia…telling how I came to the city and manipulated the people and I did this and that something else, oh garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage!" She’s right about one thing. This magazine did indeed write a column on Meyer coming to the Valley Forge Convention Center near Philadelphia, and manipulated her listeners into accepting the latest strange fire of the so-called laughing revival movement, even abandoning the preaching of God’s Word. "Mrs. Meyer then leaned like a drunkard on the side of her podium on her elbow," we reported, "asking the people if they’d ever been drunk in the flesh, chiding them for not being willing to admit they had, and explaining that she just simply had nothing to say anymore." Our article went on to say that she lost some of her audience due to her behavior, combined with "holy laughter" coming from others at that gathering. Meyer continued in her tirade against the Christian Sentinel: "Why is it that people think that it’s their calling to go around and find out what’s wrong with everybody else and print it? "Do you know when people were trying to stop Jesus finally some very wise man said, ‘Why don’t you just leave this alone, if it’s of God you’re not going to stop it and if it’s not of God it won’t last too long anyway,’ Meyer continued. "Hallelujah, I mean that’s just the way I feel about it. If this thing’s of God ain’t nobody gonna stop it, but if it’s not God it will fade off…hype and manipulation can only last just so long." Meyer was freely quoting Acts. 5:38-39 in which Gamaliel, a member of the Sanhedrin, cautioned the body to be careful what they did with Peter and the apostles who were preaching the gospel after being told not to. But is it valid for Meyer to quote this passage in this manner? No! It is not a biblical principle that if things are not of God they won’t last too long. First, Gamaliel was an unbeliever, a member of the Sanhedrin, was apparently involved in the decision to crucify Christ just weeks earlier! The Bible here is simply factually reporting what Gamaliel said in the same way the Bible reports numerous other false statements and lies others have made throughout God’s Word. The Bible never reports that Gamaliel’s opinion was correct. Second, under this criteria, many false religions must be of God because they continue to flourish. Are we to assume that Islam, one of the world’s fastest growing religions, is of God? What about Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses? Both are flourishing. The Bible tells us to rightly divide the Word of Truth (2 Tim. 2:15), which is something Meyer didn’t do in this case. It also tells us to "contend earnestly for the Faith that was wonce for all delivered unto the saints" (Jude 3). We are constantly told to test all things and to hold fast to that which is true, and this includes any false teachings being brought into the church by any teachers, whether they be Pope John Paul II, Billy Graham, Charles Stanley, -- or Joyce Meyer. It is an awesome responsibility to be a teacher in God’s flock. The Bible declares that teachers are to be held to to an even higer standard. By the way, in the same message, Joyce Meyer strongly implied outright heresy in declaring that Jesus won’t return to planet earth in his fleshly body. "He wasn’t coming back to the earth in that fleshly body that he was here in," she said. "He comes back to get us we’ll see his glorified body I’m sure." |
