More spiritual snakeoil

Via Facebook, a past acquaintance of mine invited me to an event with American televangelist, Jesse Duplantis. I strongly but politely declined the invitation. There's no way known I'm going to see him. Let me explain why.

Firstly, I have a big problem with his hyper spirituality. These evangelists who claim to have special teaching or extra-biblical revelations trouble me. Duplantis claims that he was caught up in the Spirit and visited heaven, where he met Abraham, King David, Jesus himself, and the apostle Paul. It's interesting that he should meet Paul, because Paul also had a vision of heaven. Does Duplantis see himself as being a modern day version of Paul? Unlike Duplantis, Paul didn't share his vision of heaven to make himself look good. When he described his apostolic credentials in his letters, it wasn't to impress people, but to defend himself against his opponents, the so called super apostles, who undermined him.

Secondly, Duplantis is a well known prosperity preacher. He lives in a lavish mansion, and earlier in the year, made headlines when he allegedly asked his supporters to help him buy a private jet, to be used for ministry purposes. Again, he says that God wanted him to have it, but on the face of it, it looks like he's manipulating people, and that he thinks that travelling around on commercial flights is beneath him.

That Duplantis has such a huge following shows a lack of discernment amongst Christians. I'm disappointed that an Australian church is directly supporting his work. Count me out. So many of these celebrity pastors eventually fall off the pedestals their followers put them on.

Reflections on Psalm 7

Each day at Kingsley College begins with spiritual focus, where a staff member or student leads us in prayer and devotional reading of a passage from Scripture. Occasionally this task falls upon me, as it did last Wednesday.

Today’s reading came from Psalm 7, written by King David, the greatest of all ancient Israel's kings. To do something a bit different, I used Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase, The Message. The language is somewhat lurid in places, but does a good job on conveying the meaning of the words of this Psalm to contemporary readers.

APPLICATION

What we see here is that David was threatened by his enemies, as often happened during his life. This time he mentions Cush. Cush was from the tribe of Benjamin, which means that he probably followed Saul. As I’m sure you all know, Saul considered David to be his enemy.

We see him once again pouring out his heart or even complaining before God. He’s asking God for help and deliverance, but he knows that he can’t expect it if he is as guilty before God as his enemies are. He may not have sinned in the same way his enemies have, but he's still a sinner.

David knows that compared to his enemies, he’s done no wrong, but in the end, as we read elsewhere in Scripture, none of us are righteous in God’s eyes. None of us are without sin. God’s justice applies equally to all of us. Those of us who have faith in Jesus can trust and rejoice in God’s mercy. We have righteousness imputed to us through Christ.

It’s very humbling to read these words coming from a great man of God like David. Despite his failings, he was described as a man after God’s own heart. This is a reminder to us all, and certainly to me, to keep a short account with God.

You’ll never get me standing here and telling you to do things that I’m not prepared to do myself. If nothing else, this is a reminder to all of us of how important it to use your prayer time to confess your sins to Him. It’s a good thing to trust in His justice, but all of us need to trust in His mercy as well. I’ll leave you to ponder that.

PRAYER

Heavenly Father, how grateful we are for your justice; that one day you will defeat all evil forever. We, as your children, are also grateful for your mercy towards us. But help us all not to take this for granted.

We ask this in Your Name.

Amen.