Over a year ago Apprising Ministries began warning you that Word Faith Heretics Like Creflo Dollar Draw Nearer To Evangelical Acceptance. I’m sure many thought, “Silva, you’ve lost what’s left of your mind.” But since then we’ve had the Elephant Room 2 try and tell us that T.D. Jakes Is Not A Word Faith Prosperity Preacher.

It seems the inmates are running the evangelical asylum now as postmodernism’s influence wraps itself around the sappy sentimentality produced by corrupt Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism and slithers its syncretism deeper into the weak heart of the mainstream of the church visible. I wish I had better news; but, I don’t.

Here’s another example of an evangelical odd couple; and I do admit I was a bit surprised to discover this. As you can see below, popular Southern Baptist pastor David Jeremiah was a featured speaker for the March 5 2012 spring version of Praise-A-Thon for the nefarious haven of heretics known as Trinity Broadcasting Network:

(source)

If you didn’t know, Mark Chironna and “Bishop” Clarence McClendon are typical TBN Word Faith (WF) heretical snake oil salesmen along the order of Paul Crouch himself. While Jeremiah doesn’t appear with them, he was the first featured speaker during this time TBN uses as a main vehicle to fleece their flock each year.

Rather odd that David Jeremiah, an ostensibly conservative evangelical, would wish to rub shoulders with WF prosperity preachers. Yet here he is below where you’ll see Jeremiah lavish his praise upon Paul Crouch as well as TBN itself. In this first clip Crouch touches upon the classic sow a seed (money) so God is obligated to bless you.

Then he introduces David Jeremiah as “one of my dearest brothers in the whole world” while putting his arm around him:

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In this next clip Paul Crouch is telling the faithful they should support TBN because of it’s continued expansion with new networks, which he says he can’t even name because there are so many. Crouch informs us that God is behind their having to continue to grow and introduces David Jeremiah, who discloses an interesting tidbit.

Jeremiah says, “I’ve been involved with this organization over these last few years” and tells us it’s “an incredible thing” TBN is doing:

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Before going any further it’s important that you understand a couple of core doctrines of WF heretics like Paul Crouch. In his helpful Understanding Word-Faith Teaching Christian apologist Rob Bowman explains:

The distinctive ideas about God and man in Word-Faith theology are the basis for its views on faith and prayer. Faith is not only believing what God says but also believing that we have whatever we say. Prayer is not only speaking to God but also speaking to things and circumstances and commanding them to do as we say. This is the basis for the concept of positive and negative confession, the idea that what we believe and say, whether good or bad, will happen for us…

On the basis of a positive confession – itself based on faith that we are divine spirits created and redeemed to rule our circumstances by speaking words of faith – Word-Faith theology says we are to obtain health and wealth. Since Christ died to free us from the curse of the law, reason the Word-Faith teachers, this must mean that Christians need no longer accept sickness or poverty in their lives. Christians ought to live in divine health and wealth as testimony to the power of God and as evidence that they are children of God… (source)

One of the ways WF teachers tell us that we acquire this wealth is their twisted “law of sowing and reaping.” You often hear them tell their flocks to “sow a seed” into their ministry in order that God will then return them more than they gave as a “blessing.” For example, here’s TBN favorite Paula White at the “church” of T.D. Jakes:

Considering where he is, David Jeremiah appears to be trying to straddle the fence in his Praise-A-Thon sermon at TBN. It seems, at best, an attempt to blur the lines between orthodoxy and and heretical WF teaching. You’ll see Jeremiah expressing praise for Paul Crouch below so his discernment certainly leaves much too be desired.

In this next clip, Jeremiah also reveals a real misunderstanding concerning the sovereignty of God. While elaborating on how people say, “if we give to God, He’ll give a lot back to us,” Jeremiah tells us we often misunderstand how this happens. So, at 1:44 he muses:

Here’s how it works. The Bible says that if we’re faithful over a few things, God will make us ruler over many. So, here’s how it works. God sits in heaven and He gives to us a stewardship. When He watches us manage that, in His behalf—and we do it effectively—He says, “I think I can trust that person with some more.”

So He gives us more to manage. And, as long as we manage what He gives us effectively, God can trust us with even more resources.

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What Jeremiah has just said would be true of the fictitious WF god, who is at the beck and call of mankind; but the one true and living God of the Bible is completely sovereign. He already knows before He gives us anything what we’ll do with it; and the LORD God almighty already knows that He can’t trust any of us—period.

Apart from what Jesus Christ has done for us, and is now doing in us, we have no ability on our own to do anything “effectively” by God’s perfect standards. After using the law of gravity as an example of how God’s laws work, whether we believe them or not, Jeremiah begins to shares laws that “go along with stewardship.”

Right on the line between WF and orthodoxy he tells us, “God says, whatever we invest, that’s what we get back,” which is a principle Jeremiah assures us works “across the whole link and breadth of life.” Using the desire to be loved as an example, he tells us that if we want to be loved by more people, we need to invest love in more people.

The reason, Jeremiah explains, is “because that’s what you’re gonna get back.” Later he turns the topic of sowing and reaping specifically to TBN and offers that some in the audience may be saying, “Well, I’ve been giving to TBN and I don’t see anything going on in my life.” To that person at 2:09 in Jeremiah says:

Well, you probably have a big harvest coming because God’s saving the best… You only reap what you sow. Let me ask you this: Do you get blessed by this network [TBN]; by watching the teaching programs and the music and the things that come to your life?… Do you get blessed by this ministry?…

If you wanna get blessed by TBN, then the problem you have to solve is, “how am I investing in TBN?” Let me tell you something, we have this incredible network today because people before us—for many, many years before us—have invested their dollars, their time, their effort, in this network so that it could be what it is today.

So, I wanna stop right now and ask you to do this; if you’ve been blessed by TBN this year—and you haven’t called to say, “I wanna be a part of TBN going forward”—I want you to go to your phone and find out how you can help make this network even more successful than ever before.

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In this next clip David Jeremiah continues his pitch for people to send money to TBN and then gets to his third principle; “the principle of increase.” Jeremiah explains:

If you don’t call, if you don’t go to the phone, if you don’t help, then this ministry can go no further than the people who join with it, and become part of the team… I want you to go do it [call to pledge money]; because it depends upon all of us together.

If I get up in my church and I don’t take an offering, then the church is gonna be out of business in a short time, amen? So, this [Praise-A-Thon] is how TBN takes the offering; and you have to participate., if it’s gonna work…

“What is the principle of increase?” Watch. [reviews his principles] You only get what you sow; you get later than you sow; and you get more than you sow, amen?… The Bible says that God works, in His plan for us, men and women, by the principle of sowing and reaping.

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Now at 1:49 of this next clip you’ll see David Jeremiah teaching us that God Himself even believes in this principle of sowing and reaping; so much does He live by this principle that He even “sowed His own Son into the world” for the harvest of men’s souls. So, apparently this principle is actually more powerful than God Himself:

Let me tell you something that’s real special about what we do here at TBN… Do you know the Bible said that God believed in this principle [sowing and reaping]; did you know that?… Did you know that God believes in the sowing principle? How does He believe in it?

He believes in it because He sowed His own Son into this world. Did you know that? One day God sent His own Son into this world. He sowed His Son into the world. Why? Hebrews says He did it so that He might reap many sons to glory. Isn’t that how it works?…

So tonight, I wanna encourage you, with all of my heart, to understand your part in the ministry of TBN… Everybody needs to do it [send money], and especially now… It’s really encouraging to hear Paul talk about how God has sustained [TBN], and it hasn’t gone backwards.

But unless everybody who’s involved in this ministry gets underneath it and says, “This is part of my life”—I mean, if you sit and watch this program [Praise The Lord] at home—if you use this to grow spiritually, then the Bible says you should be involved with it. You should invest in it.

You should make it part of what you do for almighty God.

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Finally, David Jeremiah concludes his pitching for pledges for TBN and lauds the vision of Paul Crouch, which Jeremiah offers came from God. I’ll spare you his closing prayer where Jeremiah calls TBN an “incredible delivery system” for the Gospel and how thankful he is that God gave this vision to Crouch:

We can do this together. These 14 networks aren’t gonna just keep going because we started them. They’re gonna keep going because we have a part in financing them and working to make them happen. So tonight I wanna ask you, help us do this. Help Paul do this.

I’m so amazed at the vision God has given to this man… I want to be a part of helping him continue… I hope you will do that, too. Be a part of what’s happening at TBN. And let’s pray together that God will enable you to do more than you even thought… [A]fter you support the [local] church, you need to support the ministries that feed your soul [like TBN].

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See also:

TRINITY BROADCASTING NETWORK FIRES BACK REGARDING FINANCIAL FRAUD ALLEGATION

ELEPHANT ROOM 2′S T.D. JAKES SAYS TBN’S PAUL CROUCH LED BY GOD TO LAUNCH JAKES’ MINISTRY

EMERGING ECUMENICAL EVANGELEPHANTS AND THE WORD FAITH MOVEMENT