Detecting Emergent Churches Soteriology
Detecting if your church is an Emergent Church
By David Cox
This is our continuing examination of the Emergent Church movement, looking at what are the signs of the Emergent Church, so that we can detect if our church is going emergent.
The Fruit of a False Prophet repentance part 6
By David Cox
Summary: This study will investigate what the fruit (life and ministry) of a false prophet. Part 6 of this series is simply an introduction and begins by contrasting a man of God’s fruit (piety and holiness) with the false prophet’s fruit (sin, not doing God’s will).
For an overview, see
False Prophets and Teachers Overview
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What do false prophets want? These are reflective, meditative thoughts about false prophets in our churches. What is it that a false teacher seeks when he or she takes the place of a real pastor?
We need to begin with the positive. First of all, a true man of God is called by God to be a minister and serve God. It is assumed that God will provide for him and his family, but that most probably will not “get rich” in the ministry. Anybody that goes into the ministry to get rich is just wrong and misguided.
There is the divine calling, and then there is the satisfaction that a true man of God is blessing others in his labors. A true man of God is not self-centered and concerned always and foremost with his own benefits and blessing back to him. This is very distinctive. A man of God really likes blessings back to him but from blessing others. A false prophet is concerned not with “spiritual type” blessings but with other things, like cold hard cash, fame and glory, and an unhealthy zeal for power and control.
For the vast majority of these False prophets what they want is money. They dream of riches. You can tell that the preacher is a false prophet because he is always talking and preaching and teaching about money and riches and well-being.
Christians are not given to glory in pleasure and luxuries in this life, but to use everything God gives us to work for heaven. Their working premise is “I am a beloved child of God, therefore God wants to give me all my desires.” What happened to suffer with Christ as a child of God, so that we can reign in glory (heaven) with Him? No, they don’t like to accept the thought that we are here to suffer, and much more than just what happens to us, that is God’s will for our lives! The idea that God would send poverty to one of his children like Lazarus and the rich man is beyond their abilities to capture. They defend their line of thought with, “Well Lazarus didn’t take opportunities that God offered to him obviously.”
We turn to the story of Ruth or Job, and the suffering and poverty in both cases were parts of God’s plans for those people. The false prophet cannot understand that. He is blinded to all such things in God’s will, and he can only see riches and health. This “blindness” is because of a single factor, the false prophet wants to use God to advance the false prophet’s will and desires, and not God’s.
But just survey what you hear typically from your preacher in a year. Men of God do preach on money and possessions. They should. That is of God. But the underlying idea is not to make you rich but to correctly, biblically steward what you have from God. The preacher should receive something for his labors. But to make him wealthy is unwise. Consider, would you think God would be happier if you gave your preacher a liveable salary and then $250,000 more? or Would God be happier if you paid 5 more ministers to come in as evangelists? or missionaries? or pastors to minister to the needs of your own church (like old folks pastor, teens, or even Christian school teachers)?
A false prophet will press the church on giving that money to him instead of more workers.
A second driving force in false prophets is to look or after the money to power and glory. I say after money because once a false prophet gets a salary that will make him rich, he is not satisfied with “just” that, but he also wants total control of the lives of those in his power (congregation).
This actually begins in the pulpit. The false prophet tells other people what the Bible says they should do, but very subtly that changes to his own interpretation of the Bible as becoming infallible. No one can countermand his positions and commandments. To do so is to oppose God himself. (The false prophet stepping aside at this moment telling you that he is just God’s mouthpiece, and your opposition is to God.)
But the point here is how does God speak to us (his children), to the church? It probably is not by the visions of the pastor. This is how the false prophet wants God’s people to believe, it is through his vision alone.
God first of all speaks to us through the Scriptures. If there is a commandment of God to do something for us in the New Testament age, then it is legitimate to press the church to do it. We should pray, read our Bibles, and study our Bibles, witness, be holy, etc. There is nothing wrong with a pastor or preacher emphasizing these things. But when the preacher starts to press the church people for things that are not exactly for us, then we see where the congregation begins to be used by God. If the preacher can convince the congregation to give “in goodwill”, then maybe it is of God. But so many times there are voices of descent and opposition. Wise leaders go very slowly when a goodly portion of people “are not onboard.”
If the pastor cannot pay for a new building project out of his own pocket, both from a money standpoint and willingness to sacrifice standpoint, then he must depend on his church to shoulder the burden across all of them. So if they don’t see why, he should go very slow or just put it off. His “power” is actually shared with the other church leaders and pillars. Convince your people then see if they want to go down that road.
I have personally seen the destruction of unwise pastors over the years. They have gotten churches into million-dollar building programs, and the majority of the church tithers left, and those who didn’t leave had to shoulder the financial chaos. Without a doubt, the foolish pastor that got the church into this situation also leaves. The name of the Lord is drug through the mud. Why all of this? Very simply. The false prophet wanted people to see his name associated with a huge building with lots of people and more, for that pastor’s personal glory.
So what happens to evangelism, to Bible teaching, to prayer in these churches. 1) People leave, and often innocent good laborers for the Lord leave the church. 2) Prayer changes from prayer for salvation, prayer for healing, prayer for missionaries, to pray that we make the monthly payment on the new building. 3) Finances go from missions and staff to mortgage payments. In other words, they effectively destroyed the ministry of that church. Short of putting all the key members into jail, how else can you destroy a church so well?
There are cases of false prophets taking advantage of women in their churches. When the pastor gets ideas of authority, and by that, I mean “HIS” authority over the other members of the church, then they entertain ideas of pleasure with other men’s wives or daughters.
What is incredible here is that there are actually churches, and people in these churches that defend these false prophets after it comes to light that they had sex with other women.
It is not difficult to evaluate and see what are the main points of focus of a pastor. Some pray and want their congregations to also pray with them. Others want to back missions. Others want to evangelize their communities. All of these focuses are valid and perhaps they are all wrong if they do not at least partially focus on the others. But when a pastor focuses on money, his authority, or the greatness of he and his church instead of Christ and God’s people, then something is wrong. Distance is the only good solution here.
False prophets worship other gods
By David Cox
This article establishes that false prophets seek to worship other gods, and they teach and arrange things for the same within their church. Although this is not apparent, it is very true.
First of all, the worship of the true God of heaven is focused in an identification, an understanding, and an imitation of the divine character. This is essentially holiness. This character of God is discerned through studying the Scriptures, and once discerned and understood, then the believer would apply this divine character to their own life. Continue reading
Using Scripture or Following Scripture?
By David Cox
Isa 55:6 Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:
In this installation of our ongoing study of the false prophet, we look at how the false prophet understands and treats (mistreats) Scripture. We look at the distinct different of view from the true man of God towards Scripture, and the false prophet’s view towards Scripture. Note that a true man of God esteems “time is short” to obey what God teaches because there is a point in which God will “cut us off” as he cut off Israel if we blatantly refuse to obey his Word and Will.
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It is very difficult to “identify a false prophet.” Simply put, for most people, if you are different from me, you are a false prophet. This is simply unacceptable. We need criteria by which to judge what is false and what is true, and we cannot use anything except Scripture itself. If I could emphasize anything here, it is that we must use Scripture correctly exegeted (interpreted, explained, and understood).
In my book on False Prophets, I identify three methods or forms that we can use to identify a false prophet, and I will repeat them here (these posts were basically taken from my book in Spanish on the matter).
We can say that such and such doctrine is the true doctrine, and anything else is false. Actually, that would be the fundamentals of the faith. In part that is true. But unfortunately as evidenced today by so many examples, many false prophets have adopted these “fundamentals” or these core doctrines as their own, but they are still false prophets. The problem comes in they refute the Bible axiom that sound doctrine produces correct conduct. They have sound doctrine but don’t believe in it because their life is still filled with sin, and sin which contaminates whole churches because they are leaders.
The issue is that people lie. Unfortunately, ministers lie. And when a good pastor tells you the truth, or when a liar pastor tells you something that likewise looks like the truth, it is hard to discern.
It is unfortunate that there are bad churches with bad pastors and preachers in them. But God has his purpose in allowing even these things to happen to his people. God’s purpose is to make clear those Christians who are faithful to Jesus versus those who only give lip service to him. Many Christians will follow Satan himself into the pit of hell. They don’t care as long as it looks good to them at the moment.
But if a normal Christian, a new believer, is really wanting to follow his Savior, how does he do it? The problem is that if he knows doctrine really well, then he can discern the good pastor from the hireling and the wolf in sheep clothes. But most new believers and Christians who are not experienced do not know their Bible well. So if we by-pass doctrine for a moment (and we understand we are doing this until the individual believer KNOWS his Bible well, that all. This is a secondary way to discern a wolf in sheep’s clothing.) then we can look at the trail of disaster the wolf leaves behind him. By his effect on the sheep, by his methodology of working, the wolf is clearly seen and identified.
These studies are basically for God’s people that are having problems with their church and/or pastor. These are Bible expositions so that we can understand clearly what is going on, and identify and get away from a false prophet, even if he tries to identify himself as a really good man of God.
For an overview of this, see
False Prophets and Teachers Overview
Finally, we will look at our defense against false prophets.
The rest of these posts (beginning with “FP:”) will explore many characteristics of the false prophet.
Please, please do not give up hope. This is the objective of Satan in throwing these firebrands at the church to destroy it. God’s men are not abusive. If you are in a church with an abusive pastor or minister, then you MAY BE in a church with a false prophet. Do not be discouraged by this. Learn from it, leave and find a good church, and throw the entire weight of your life and ministry and resources behind a good church with men of God over it. This is what we need to take away from bad experiences.
The church is not broken. The men of God are not broken. These things work, and they work very well. The entire genius of God’s eternal wisdom is put behind God’s creation of the church. He did it right the first time, and there is no need to change anything or “fix” anything broken with the church or preachers. The only thing we need to do is to study and heed what God has done, understand it, and obey what God has told us.
If we would have taken the time to study and truly verify the spirituality, yea, even the salvation of our preachers and pastors BEFORE they entered into their offices, we would not have these problems today. Man is lazy, so the layman’s laziness caused these men to get into church office. Do not throw off all the responsibility on “the pastor”. When churches lose their pastor, and they are in the process of selecting a new pastor, or when a Christian move into a new area and is looking for a church home, these are layman problems that nobody wants. They take the first thing that “looks okay,” and then they think they can put up with things if a few things are out of order. They don’t go to Scriptures and insist on their church and pastor being biblical.
Here enters your faith. If you insist with God that the pastor and church where you are going to attend is biblical, not perfect in every sense, but a group and individuals highly following God’s Word, and you do not give up the faith that God can provide you that, then you will be rewarded. Settling for trash usually ends poorly for anybody who does so. Just look at man’s poor statistics with marrying each other, and you will see this born out.
Posts that mention false Prophets in them
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This post and the other posts here are taken from my book in Spanish “False Prophets and Teachers”
Here I am just going to list each of the points, and gradually, I will make a separate post for each of these points. Note that a lot of the points here are themes that I take up regularly in my writings against false prophets. Some of those things will also appear under each point.
1Pet 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:
Eph 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Everything Satan touches leaves “his mark” on it. This is very distinctive. It is not the will of God, although Satan tries to make it look like what God does, and look like the will of God.
Definition: False Prophet – Somebody who perverts, twists, or manipulates the message of God for his own personal purposes. In this, he does not give the message of God such as God gives and commands us to give it, but he puts his own “touch” on it slightly or greatly changing it. (David Cox)
2Pet 1:21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake [as they were] moved by the Holy Ghost.
God has to be behind every true presentation of truth and the gospel, and Satan perverts or changes it for his own purposes. What those purposes may be is not so important as that it is not God’s will.
1Pet 1:10 Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace [that should come] unto you: 1Pet 1:11 Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. 1Pet 1:12 Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.
One of the great overpowering elements of a true minister of God is that they feel a great compulsion to be exact and in agreement completely with what God’s Word says. Over and over again we find this great respect for authority is the core difference between a true man of God and a false prophet.
1Pet 3:15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:
Col 4:6 Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.
For a true man of God, the Word of God validates or convicts his ministry and message. He falls or stands by how well he stands with and presents the Word of God, Scripture. It is as if every encounter that the man of God has with another person, he will give account to God for that encounter. He must present in action, attitude, and speech correctly what God wants him to show that person. As a minister of the Gospel, he understands that he personally is an example of Jesus Christ (1Pet 5:3 “being ensamples to the flock“; Heb 13:7 “which have the rule over you… whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation“). No true minister of God will take any of this lightly. False prophets often give a pretense of being serious, but so often they are not really serious in obeying or uplighting this great office of spokesman for God.
Note: If something shows up as a link here, the connection may not be obvious in the title, but a section of that post will deal with the issue. Continue reading
The Problem of Calvinism is a commentary from Pastor David Cox on the problems of Calvinism.
This text is from a commentary on Haldane’s work The Doctrine of the Atonment. I created a theWord module from this text by Haldane, and I added a commentary on Calvinism in general present in this web page.
Cox – What are the Marks of a Christian? is a study of what are the marks of a born again believer so we know how we should act and be, and so that we can deal with other Christians. As a Christian, we deal with other people very differently if they are our “brother in Christ“, or an unsave person pretending to be saved.
Why should we be focusing on this? Firstly, because we need the reassurance of God’s Word as to whether we are saved or not, and within this, we need to know what elements in our lives identify us as a child of God or a child of the devil. Secondly, part of being a Christian absolutely is relating to other Christians. We must edify and serve them as well as they serving us. God gives spiritual gifts to His children, and these people exercise their spiritual gifts and talents in the local church. It is extremely important to realize that Satan also “gifts” the Christian with false prophet to disrupt and cause damage to them, and these people are excellent “actors” acting and pretending that they are saved and serving God when in reality they are the enemy, secret agents for Satan. We must insist on those who claim to be saved to act like a child of God. Realizing what defines a true Christian and what is not in line with that is imperative for every Christian.
This post is an Appendix that Pastor David Cox is working on the Holy Spirit. It is Appendix #38. The larger work is in theWord at the moment. If you would like a peak at more chapters, see
David Cox Anthology on the Antichrist is a sample topic (chapter) out of a compiled work in theWord Free Bible program on the Antichrist, and also antichrists (plural). Note that this work is free on twmodules.com (https://twmodules.com/co-cz-tw-authors/), and this is one of 87 topics (chapters) in the work. I cite many other books, sermons, and articles from the Internal for studying this topic all in one place. A complete listing of topics is after this article below. Most of the complete works (books) on the Antichrist are separate from this work, except Gritter’s.
Please note that I am both a missionary and pastor of a local church. I also am a Christian writer. I am using both the Internet (my websites) as well as varius formats to publish what I writer, because this is much cheaper than paper and ink printing, and I can make revisions and add new material at no cost to me. (donate to my ministry at https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/davidcoxmex) I do not sell my works, so they are free for as long as I am able to pay for Internet hosting fees, and I have health to keep my sites free from hackers. This post is a capture of this topic in this theWord module as of September 6, 2024. Version 2.o. I work on expanding these notes over time.
Download this Internet page here: Cox Anthology on the Antichrist.pdf
Microsoft Docx format: Cox Anthology on the Antichrist
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Brown The Devil's Mission of Amusement 7 page article from 1889. Hollywood in the church and her ministries. Brown was a student of C.H Spurgeon.
Excerpts:
Different days demand their own special testimony. The watchman who would be faithful to his Lord and to the city of his God needs to carefully note the signs of the times and to emphasize his witness accordingly. Concerning the testimony needed now, there can be little if any doubt. An evil is in the professed camp of the Lord, that is so gross, so brazen in its impudence, that the most shortsighted of spiritual men can hardly fail to notice it.... Amusement for the people is the leading article advertised by each... until the hideous fact has been proved up to the hilt, that "amusement" is ousting "the preaching of the Gospel" as the great attraction... The Concert is fast becoming as much a recognized part of church life as the Prayer Meeting; and it is already, in most places, far better attended.
"Providing recreation for the people" will soon be looked upon as a necessary part of Christian work, and as binding upon the Church of God, as though it were a Divine command, unless some strong voices are raised which will make themselves heard.
Read the 7-page article: Brown, The Devil's Mission of Amusement.
davidcoxmex.com Missionary Problems: spirit fruit takes time Missionary Problems: "I wish I had known how difficult long-term fruit really is." This article explores the fact that seeing spiritual fruit in a person's life is a long term affair. This short post explores the frustration in missions and the ministry in general of actually seeing abundant, consistent spiritual fruit in the people you are working with. The last point is that prayer is the solution to nonexistent fruit, or the lack of seeing fruit appear in its time.
Read the Article: Missionary Problems: spiritual fruit takes time
pc01 Should a Christian celebrate Halloween? We expose Halloween (and Day of the Dead) as Catholic conventions intended to bring people into the Catholic traditions, customs, and finally beliefs.
Topics: Satanic Roots of Halloween | Dead human beings cannot return to the earth except as God commands them. | Are these things real? | Why Good Christians don’t Celebrate Halloween | God commands us to stay far away from the occult.
Excerpt from the Tract: There is no reason why any Christian should celebrate this pagan holiday based on witchcraft, demonism, and other satanic roots which Catholicism has incorporated into its structure.
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Matthew 18:6 For the unsaved, they will be in the torments of hell until the judgment when they will be cast into the lake of fire, even though they would greatly like to leave their torture.
In Luke 16:19-31 , God presents us with the reality of these things. The rich man died without Christ and for as much as he wanted to come back even for a moment to the land of the living, the story is clear that that is totally impossible and there is no escape from where they have nor peace for their souls, much less a return to earth.
2 Cor 5:8 teaches us that for the believer, there is an absence from the body at death which immediately places us with the Lord. The true believer will never leave the presence of God from that point on, and he will not return to earth until Jesus comes for his saints in the rapture.
Read the Tract: pc01 Should a Christian celebrate Halloween?.
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Job 13:15 Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.
There is an attitude within much of Christianity that sickness in any form is bad, and God does not have anything to do with it. For these Christans, they ask God to take the sickness away, and sometimes (as though it was their right to be health) that they demand God to remove their sickness. The reality of life is that they continue ill, and many have a crisis of faith over this. For them, God is impotent, or God does not love them. In other words, their confidence, faith, and love of God depends on God always sending them good things. But this is not how the Bible indicates life is. God uses calamity and sickness for His own purposes and we have to understand this (and accept it).Please support our tract ministry by donating on the tract website (see sidebar). Because of your donations we can offer these tracts online, and for free. Read the Tract CH34
Scofield Plain Papers on the Holy Spirit is a work of 5 chapters by the editor of the Scofield Bible, C.I. Scofield. He was a great biblical scholar. I am presenting this work in various formats.
PDF: Scofield Plain Papers on the Holy Spirit
theWord: Scofield Plain Papers on the Holy Spirit
eSword: Scofield Plain Papers on the Holy Spirit
MySword: Scofield Plain Papers on the Holy Spirit
Cox The Reality of Demons is a simple fact of life. We should not focus on demons, but they are real and around us and fighting against us. A Bible study by Pastor Cox.
