By Pam Sheppard

Since preachers take scripture out of their natural context to preach a sermon, we do the same thing when we read, study and apply various texts to our particular situation, like occultist and new agers use astrology and other forms of divination. For example, some use psalm 37 in the wrong way, particularly where it comes to dealing with enemies when Jesus told us to love our enemies in the 4 gospels.

Paul wrote to the Galatians that anyone who adds to or detracts from the word of God brings a curse or in other words, “a plague” on both the culprits and the victims they teach.  Paul declared it THIS way: If any man preach any other gospel, other than what i have preached, LET HIM BE CURSED.” (Gal 1:9)

Two thousand years have passed since Paul’s rather serious proclamation.  I am not a historian, but I would imagine that any church or religion professing to be Christian that either subtracts from or adds to  the gospel of Jesus Christ has reaped the fruit of this curse, from one generation to another. Today, there are countless people who are being oppressed and tormented by demons because they are listening to those who are preaching “another gospel.”

In this generation, there are more false doctrines that have been created by  preachin and teachin folk who  either added to or took away  from the gospel of Jesus Christ,  than most people could count.  Even in things that seem insignificant.  Take for example, the verse in Luke 13, when Jesus healed a woman who had been  crippled—bowed down by the devil for 18 years.  After the Lord cast that demon of infirmity  from her by healing her, He said “Woman, thou are loosed!”

Yet TD Jakes –an intelligent, well learned preacher— took the Lord’s words, and turned it into “somethin else.”  In other words, he added to it a meaning that the Lord did not mean and he created a “Christian woman’s liberation movement out of it,” even made a movie—called it “Woman Thou Art Loosed,” a movie  where a woman takes a gun while in church, and shoots a man who had raped her when she was a child,— at the very moment the man was touched and moving toward the altar to be saved.  Now, that is adding to and detracting from the Lord’s own words  to the max, and making millions of dollars out of the words that are written in the gospels concerning the Lord’s ministry of deliverance. What did the Lord mean by those words?  He meant “woman you are no longer bound by a demon because I have just set you free from your arthritic condition.  What does deliverance of a physically crippled woman  from demons  have to do with women’s liberation and shooting rapists in church?

These are the kinds of things professing Christians are doing EVERYDAY.  They are adding to and detracting from the bible and wondering why they are in the devil’s hands.

We have a deliverance training course called SEW that you might be interested in.  If so, give us a call at 518-477-5759.