In this sermon, the speaker criticizes the use of motivational psychology in churches, referring to it as "pop psychology" and "masturbating as biblical doctrine." He specifically mentions instances where people imitate animals or act drunk in the name of spirituality, warning against the mixing of psychology and spirituality. The speaker also discusses the unethical nature of hypnotic induction used by certain religious figures, citing examples of Rodney Howard Brown and Benny Hinn. Additionally, the sermon touches on the theological beliefs of E.W. Kenyon and his followers, who claim that Jesus died spiritually and was tortured in hell before being born again and rising from the dead.

Hello, dear friends, this is Jacob Platt. Turn with me, please, if you have your Bible, to the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians. Thessalonians, Chapter 2. I'm going to look at the subject, Understanding the Mixture. Understanding the Mixture from 1 Thessalonians, and I'm reading from Chapter 2. Paul begins by telling us about the opposition he had in Philippi. But he had boldness in God to speak the Gospel amidst much opposition. He then continues, in verse 3, talking about his exhortation. The Cambridge theologian, C. H. Dodd, identified from the Greek text of the Bible three kinds of teaching that the New Testament shows us existed in the early church. Three kinds of teaching. Didacian, Hamelia, and Kerygma. Didacian, Hamelia, and Kerygma. Didacian is expounding doctrine. Expounding doctrine. Kerygma is preaching the Gospel to the unsaved. But then there is Hamelia, where we get the word homily. That is encouraging. That is exhortation. Now, when Paul exhorted young believers in this passage, in verse 7, he proved to be gentle among you, as the nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. The Greek text here carries the idea of a professional, I suppose you'd say, nursery school teacher, or a professional nursemaid. Someone who, by profession, looked after other people's children. But the person with that profession, how they would care for their own biological baby or child. So it's somebody who's a professional at looking after children, but the care by which they would look after their own biological child. When Paul exhorted new believers, he was very gentle. But when he proclaimed doctrine, and when he proclaimed the Gospel, he would be as forceful as is necessary. In other words, bold, forthright. Look at the preaching of Jesus or the Hebrew prophets. At times they were bold and forthright. At other times they were gentle. There are some people today who say, well, we should always be bold. There are people who can't handle that. If you don't talk to a small child in unnecessarily strong tones, and you don't use unnecessarily strong terms with a small child, neither do you talk to newly-faith people that way. You speak to them as spiritual children, in order to see them grow unharmed. Protective? Yes. But heavy-handed with new believers? No, Paul was not like that. But in presenting the Gospel in the face of opposition, both from his fellow rabbis and from the pagan priesthood, he was quite, quite bold. So, too, in opposing ever and those who misled and deceived the Church, he could be vociferously aggressive in protecting that flock. Think what Paul is saying here. I'm like a nursing mother, tenderly caring for her own children. How does a mother protect her children? A baby. Very gentle and kind with the baby. But when someone comes to threaten that baby, even a bear, an elephant, a rhinoceros, will protect that baby aggressively. An elephant, a bear, or a rhinoceros, a lioness, any animal in Africa, as Africans know better than I do, will be very, very aggressive when something threatens their baby. So, too, when young believers are going to be hurt or misled or deceived, Paul would become very, very bold. And when people were being pointed away from the true gospel by opposition, he would become very bold. There are times for aggression, boldness, and there are times for gentleness. Those who say, well, we should never speak strongly, no, no, no. They say this from ignorance or pride. They're not saying it from God's wisdom. That's man's wisdom, man's foolishness. What we read in the Scripture is God's wisdom. Let's understand this idea of the mixture. I'll begin now in verse 3. Paul says here, For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit, but we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. So we speak not of pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts. For we never came with a flattering speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed. God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or from others, even though as apostles of Christ we might have asserted our authority. Our exhortation doesn't come from error, impurity, or by way of deceit. In verse 1 of chapter 1 of this epistle, Paul writes on behalf of himself and Silvanus and Timothy to the church in Thessalonica. And he begins with his introduction. In his Hebrew thinking, it would have been, Chesed l'chem v'her shalom, mi'et elohim madinu v'ha'adon Yeshua ha'mashiach Grace and peace to you from God our Father and Jesus the Messiah. Translated into Greek. Now understand what Paul is saying here. He's comparing the ministry of his own mission team, his own church planting team, his own evangelistic team of Silvanus, Timothy, and himself with con artists, with phonies, with false apostles, with men who had other motives. What were their motives? Their motives were greed and seeking their own glory. Greed and seeking their own glory. And how did they do it? Flattery speech. And what we will see in a moment is the mixture. They do it with mixture. Let's look now at verse 3. Our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit. Notice the sequence. First comes error. Then comes impurity. Then comes deception. The sequence is important. Error means doctrinal error. We are dealing in verse 2 with kerygma. But in verse 3 we are dealing with didactin. Doctrinal error is the first thing. Doctrinal error is followed by impurity. The Greek word for impurity is a catharsis. A catharsis, the opposite of catharsis. What does a catharsis mean? It's not pure. It means a mixture. Something that has not been cleansed. There is impurity mixed with what is right and what is good. A catharsis is a mixture of truth and error. A mixture of flesh and spirit. A mixture of what is good and what is bad. But it begins with error. A little leaven leavens the entire lump of dough. Jesus said beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. Notice the characteristics of leaven in 1 Corinthians 5. The Jews could not celebrate the Passover until the leaven was removed from the house and the bread could have no leaven in it. Leaven has to do with sin. Especially the sin of pride. As Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 5 your boasting is not good. Leaven puffs up. It contributes nothing nutritionally to the value of the bread. It just puffs up. Paul does. This is the way pride works. Your boasting is not good. The first sin was pride. Satan's first sin was pride. He wanted to be God. Man's first sin was pride. The lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life, Adam and Eve wanted to be God. Pride is the kind of sin that other lies under sin. You see a person with a problem with greed under that greed is pride. You see a person with a problem with uncontrolled lust under that lust is pride. You see a person with a problem with unholy unrighteous anger under that anger is pride. Pride is the kind of sin that begets other sin. But false doctrine is also leaven because false doctrine is also sin and involves spiritual pride. When you see people teaching false doctrines like the money preachers, Lord Faith people, these people are undergirded by spiritual pride. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and a little leaven looms the whole lump. First comes error and then impurity. Error is mixed with truth. Peter covers this subject from a slightly different aspect. Turn with me very briefly to 2 Peter chapter 2 verse 1. But false prophets also arose among the people just as there will be false teachers among you. Notice that Paul uses false prophets and false teachers interchangeably. Why? Why is a false prophet held as synonymous with a false teacher? Well, to understand this, we have to understand the background of Jeremiah 23. Again, the false prophets give straw, the true prophets give grain, the Word of God. However, the reason Paul uses false prophets and, I'm sorry, Peter uses false prophets and false teachers interchangeably is because if someone's doctrine is wrong, their prophecies will be wrong. Why do men like Gerald Coates in Great Britain and Rick Joyner in the United States make so many false prophecies? Why has Benny Hinn made so many false prophecies that have not happened in the name of the Lord? Deuteronomy 18, Jeremiah 28 tells us that makes them what we call in Hebrew a nebeshek of a false prophet who is forbidden to pay attention to such men. And those who will pay attention to such men are in rebellion against the Word of God because we can prove they prophesied things that haven't happened. Why are their prophecies wrong? Because their doctrines are wrong. But then it says in verse 1 of chapter 2 in 2 Peter, There will be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. What does this mean? Introduce destructive heresies is man's best effort is to translate a Greek term parasogzusin parasogzusin Para means next to and sogzusin is what follows it. Para is the prefix. What parasogzusin means is they put truth next to error. They put truth next to error. What did the devil do when he tempted Adam and Eve? He took something God actually said that was true and put it next to error. In the temptation of Jesus in Matthew chapter 4 in the temptation narrative what did Satan do? Same thing he did with Adam and Eve. He tried on the second Adam what he tried on the first. He put truth next to error. Twisted biblical passages out of context suddenly. Parasogzusin is always laying truth next to error. Whatever is true is only camouflage. It's only to package what is false. Again, it is like a drop of poison inside a delicious meal. But that arsenic will kill you. Whatever is true and nutritious is only there to deceive you. Some people will say well there's some truth in Toronto I know it was not all of God but some of it was. By virtue of the fact it is a mixture that tells you it was a deception. Satan is much too clever to tell you an out and out lie. Look how he tempted Jesus. Look how he tempted Adam and Eve. He subtly perverts truth. Parasogzusin. Error is followed by impurity. A mixture of truth and error in 1 Thessalonians. Well we have to chew the meat and spit out the bones. That is garbage. That is the silly, silly argument of men who are following their own reason instead of God. If you hear a pastor telling you that he's unfit to be a pastor because he doesn't know how to protect his sheep from the wolves. You would not eat a meal if you knew it was laced with arsenic no matter how good the rest of it was. You wouldn't eat an omelet with three eggs and one was rotten just because the other two were good. Once you ingest it as a meal, you cannot biochemically the enzymes in our bodies cannot separate the toxins from what's healthy. You can't spit it out when it's a homogeneous solution. It's like saying I'm going to put sugar in my tea but someone who's a diabetic will say, well I shouldn't have the sugar so I'll spit out the sugar. No, you don't put the sugar in the tea to begin with if you're a diabetic. That's the mentality of it. It's a foolish, silly argument by men who are at best ignorant but more often who are compromising this wickedness. Parasolutions! And it leads people, Peter says, to ultimately deny the master who bought them. This is an open-stated fact. We have taped, we have documentation what the word-based people believe. The beliefs of E.W. Kenyon passed down through Kenneth Hagen and Kenneth Copeland have come into countries like South Africa. And there are people in this country who were groomed in this school of thinking. And it's no lie. Watch it on television. Ray McCauley comes from this school of thinking. We have a local color pastor in Port Elizabeth from this particular background. His name is, they come from this background. What is the background? What are the theological presuppositions of E.W. Kenyon that were brought to South Africa by the influences of Hagen and Copeland that men like him and McCauley believe? Well, let's look. E.W. Kenyon said, Jesus died spiritually. Now we have videotapes, television reels of Copeland saying this, even one recently. The Bible says that when Jesus died on the cross, he got the victory. On the cross, Jesus said, it is finished. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. Copeland, Hagen, and their disciples say, no, no. Satan got the victory on the cross. When Jesus died on the cross, he died spiritually. Meaning, he became a satanic being in hell of one nature with Satan. And he was tortured three days and three nights in hell. Then he had to be born again in hell. Then he rose from the dead. Copeland actually said that he could have died on the cross instead of Jesus Christ, because he's a born-again man. What did they do? They put truth next to error. They parasubduced him, even denying the master who bought them. Why did they do it? It is a pretext for greed. These are the men who are the money preachers. Because the cross of Jesus is not central to their view of salvation, because they believe Satan got the victory on the cross, neither is the cross of Jesus central to their view of the Christian life. Instead of pick up your cross and follow me, and exchange it one day for a crown, clinging to the old rugged cross, it becomes, you don't have to suffer, you're a king's kid. God wants you rich. Grab it and grab it. They have a crossless Christian walk, because they have a crossless gospel. A different gospel. Even a different Christ very often. They deny the master who bought them. Because the parasubducing, they put truth next to error. Well, there's some truth in what? Kenneth Copeland and Kenneth Hagin said. Dear friends, I have nothing against Mormons, but Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Brigham Young had 23 wives. When a Mormon knocks on my door, much of what he says I'll agree with. But I certainly don't agree with Brigham Young's statement that black people were ugly, mischievous, depraved, descendants of fallen angels, and that any Mormon who marries a black person has to be killed, because they're ugly, mischievous, and stupid. I don't think that's true of black people, but that's what the founders of Mormonism said. Now, there's some truth in what Mormons say. Well, of course there's some truth in what Mormonism says. The latter-day saints. There's always some truth. To camouflage the lie. Always. We have to keep what's good, and throw out what's bad. No. By virtue of the fact there's a mixture, we keep away from the whole thing. That's what God says. Now, let's look at what Paul tells us further in 1 Thessalonians 2. First comes error, in verse 3. Then impurity. This a catharsis. This mixture of truth and error. What's the third thing? Deceit. Deception. How does deception come? Error leading to impurity. A mixture of truth and error. A mixture of what is of the flesh and of the spirit. Then comes the deception. And deception multiplies in the last days. The men who do it, in verse 5, come off with flattering speech. Notice how the con-artist money preachers always tell people what they want to hear and butter them up. And you know what's the sad, tragic thing in this country? The black folk and the colored folk have had a bad enough time for too long. It's bad enough to take money from the haves. But when you pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ to take it from the have-nots, when you take it from poor colored people, when you take it from black folk in the townships, when you take it from single parents, families and the unemployed, when you con and manipulate poor people by perverting the Bible out of context, by taking error, mixing it with truth in order to deceive, to get money out of them, that's what's happening to the colored people in South Africa. That's what's happening to the black folk in South Africa. That's what's happening to many of the less financially privileged white people in South Africa. To the Asian folk in South Africa. They're being financially exploited by men who teach deception by putting error and mixing it with truth. They catharsis the mixture. And it's a pretext for greed. And there are pastors who go along with this and who don't protect them from these wolves are a disgrace to the name of Jesus Christ. They don't love God and they don't even love their own people. Otherwise, they'd stop their own people from being milked and exploited by these television con artists from the States. That's how it works. But Paul says his missionary team didn't flatter people. They told them straight up the truth. There was no pretext for greed and they didn't seek the glory of men. When you see these other men who Paul is comparing his ministry to, they're always seeking their own glory. So you have Paul, Sorbanus and Timothy up against men who were out with the pretext for greed. Introducing error into the church. Mixing truth with error to deceive people to get money out of them. And then they seek their own glory. But let's go further in understanding this mixture. Turn with me, please, to the end of this chapter. Chapter 2, verse 18. Paul says, I wanted it to come to you. And that's the one I got. He actually says, I want it to come to you more than once. I, Paul, want it to come. Yet Satan thwarted us. For who was our hope or joy or crown of exaltation? Is it not even you in the presence of our Lord Jesus at his coming? For you are our holy joy. The only thing Paul cared about was the one stage under his ministry and being ready to meet Jesus. That's all he cared about. He didn't need another Mercedes paid for by the poor and unemployed colored people or black people in the townships who ride on a crowded bus to work if they can get one. We want it to come to you, but Satan thwarted us. One of the lies being propagated today is we can speak, we can bind, we can loose, we can take kingdom dominion. Satan can't thwart us, we're king's kids. If Satan tries to oppose us, we just bind him in the name of Jesus. What did they know that Paul didn't? When you understand Matthew 18, binding and loosing has nothing whatsoever to do with what these silly con artists are telling you. Binding and loosing means two things that come from the Hebrew terms keter and asor, with their Greek equivalents of glual and derel. It's first of all the authority that Jesus gave the apostles to define doctrine. You're free from this, but you must do that as in Acts 15 when doctrine was defined. The second thing it means is dealing with sin in the church. Whatever you bound in heaven will be bound on earth. It means people who won't repent of their sin in the church. All the so-called binding demons and speaking into the heavenlies and binding and loosing, it's all nonsense. Look at the book of Acts chapter 17 when Paul was standing in the shadow of the Acropolis. Other gods are demons, he tells us the Monoi and Corinth, but when he's standing in the very shadow of the demonic temples in Athens, it says the idol vexed him in Acts 17. What did Paul do when the idol vexed him? We take authority over this demon of Athena, worship we bind this spirit? No, he didn't do that. This is what the Syngornis do. It's not what the apostles of Jesus Christ did. You have a big, big problem today in Africa and the black folk and the colored folk are being taken in by some of their own ministers. Now I thank God for those black ministers and those colored ministers who love Jesus. I've met some wonderful black and colored ministers who really do believe the Bible and protect their flock. But something has happened. The black African is culturally predisposed and the colored folk are culturally predisposed to exploitation. What used to be the Syngorna is now the preacher. What used to be the Muti is now giving money to this guy. Some of them actually sell omelets and Holy Ghost miracle cloths to take away death. This is just Muti calling itself Christianity. This is just a Syngorna standing in a pulpit. That's all it is. And the fear of the Syngorna, the fear of the witch doctor, now becomes fear of the preacher. Touch not my anointed. Not even knowing what that means. No, David wouldn't touch Saul because he was God's anointed but David told the truth about Saul but he was a backslider and a murderer. That's not what touch not my anointed means. What they're teaching you is superstition. These men are not preachers. They behave like witch doctors. They're exploiting the poor. They're exploiting the black and colored folk of this continent. And again, I think the black and colored folk have suffered enough. They don't need to be exploited further by preachers. Not only white ones, but even among their own. Satan thwarted them. Now Satan can only do what God allows him to do. And even when Satan has a victory God turns it around. For sure. But don't think he does not have his victories along the way. He wins certain battles. But those victories he has backfire on him. And ultimately he loses the war. Satan thought he won on Calvary when Jesus was crucified. Only Jesus rose from the dead. Even when God allows Satan a victory, it backfires on Satan. The cross and resurrection are the greatest example. And there's a further example to come in the last days. But let's understand this. It's like a gambit in a chess game. You lose a rook and your opponent is thrilled. Except when he realizes you set him up to take his queen and put his king in check. When Satan has a victory God allows it to bring an even bigger victory to himself and his people. Nonetheless, in chapter 3 verse 1, Paul says, when we could endure it no longer we thought it best to be left in Athens alone. We couldn't take it anymore. Paul, Silvanus, Timothy, we couldn't take it anymore. They reached the end of their emotional rope. Today the con artist money preachers will tell you, you need to have faith. Just confess. Just believe. Don't look at the facts. Don't look at reality. That's not faith. That's rubbish. Paul, Timothy, Silvanus, they reached the end of their rope. They couldn't go anymore. Do not let people tell you that you don't have faith when you've just about had it. When they say you don't have any faith, you don't have the victory, who's telling you that? Some con artist preacher riding around in a BMW where you live in a township? Easy for him to say. That's some gormless standing in the pulpit calling himself a preacher when he isn't? Taking your money, lying to you, deceiving you, one of your own kind? Imitating some white guy on television? That's a disgrace. Paul understood. What do these people know that Paul didn't? The answer is nothing. But what happened? Verse 5 For this reason, when I could endure it no longer, Paul now gets personal. I sent to find out about your faith for fear that the tempter, that is the devil, might have tempted you and our labor should be in vain. But now that Timothy has come to us from you and has brought us good news of your faith and love and that you always think kindly of us, longing to see us just as we long to see you, for this reason, brethren, in all our distress and affliction, we were confident about you through your faith. When we are weak, the Lord undertakes for us. And the way the Lord encouraged Paul was he saw the fruit of his ministry. He saw disciples, people who continued on with Jesus. Now pay attention. Look at the word good news, where that term appears in verse 6. The Greek word for good news is evangelion. It is also the word for gospel. But he's talking here about believers, that he brought us evangelion from you, brought us gospel from you, that you were continuing in your faith. In other words, the gospel is this. It is not making converts. It's making disciples. I had a rather biblically ignorant pastor from the northern suburbs last night of Port Elizabeth come to me and tell me how many thousands of people were saved at a tent meeting. I wasn't impressed. I'd rarely met a more arrogant and biblically ignorant man than him. He had nothing to say from Scripture. What were those people saved into? They may have had decisions, but they're not going to have disciples. How can you be a disciple when the pastor himself is ignorant of the word of God? The good news is not people making decisions. I don't care if it's 16,000 or 60. The good news is people continuing in their faith, discipleship. Jesus never said to make converts. He said, make disciples. That's the real gospel. How many people are going to be committed to Jesus and follow him on the basis of Scripture long-term? You know, I've seen so many decisions in Africa. I know many black Africans who've made decisions at that kind of meeting that this colored pastor told me about last night. Then they go back to the township and buy some muti. They sleep on bricks because they're afraid of the takalash, but they've all made decisions. Were they converted? I don't know, but I know this. They're not disciples. Jesus comes to set us free of muti, of sanguamas. These people are using the gospel to put you back in bondage to sanguamas and muti. Only the sanguamas stand in pulpits. This is a tragedy. This is a terrible, terrible tragedy. But the good news is whether it's a disciple. There's always a mixture. Now, we'll look on further at this subject of the mixture and what's happening today in the church as opposed to what the Bible tells us should be happening in the church. God bless you and thank you. Hello, dear friends. Greetings in Jesus. This is Jacob Plath speaking to you from 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. We're looking at verse 23. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 23, and we're continuing to focus on the subject of understanding the mixture. Understanding the mixture. In our last broadcast in this series, we looked at two Greek words. Parasoxus was one, and ekatharsis was the other. A mixture of truth and error, or putting truth next to error. But let's go even further. I'm reading now verse 23 of 1 Thessalonians 5, where under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul writes, Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete without flames at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ. We often point out that when the Bible says Christ Jesus, it means Him in eternity, His exalted face. But when it says Jesus Christ, it's Him coming down to earth in some way. Whenever the Bible speaks of the return of Christ, it's always as the Son of Man. In heaven and in eternity, it's the Son of God. Yet it's all Jesus. May God sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete. Notice there is three. Spirit, soul, and body. In the original Greek, the word for spirit is pneuma. The word for soul is psuche. Or we get psychology. And the third for body is soma. Pneuma, psuche, soma. In Hebrew, again, we have three distinct words. The Hebrew word for spirit is ruach. Ruach. The Hebrew word for soul is nefesh. Nefesh. And the Hebrew word for body is guf. Notice it puts spirit first. Sanctification takes place in the spirit. God changes people from the inside out. Spiritual sanctification, spiritual change, spiritual renewal begets psychological, emotional, intellectual renewal of the soul. Then comes renewal of the body, which is ultimately recognized in the resurrection of the coming of the Lord Jesus, which Paul points us to in this verse. Religion tries to change man from the outside. Dress this way, think that way, change your thinking, change your outward appearance, your outward life. No, no, no. That doesn't work. Man must be born again. God changes our spirit. Once the spirit is changed, then comes the changes of the soul. And from there comes the changes of, ultimately, the body. God changes man from the inside out. The world and religion tries to change man from the outside in, which just doesn't work. Now let's notice these are distinct. Our body, our soul, and our spirit are absolutely separate entities. Interrelated, but separate. The reason we have a body, a soul, and a spirit is because we are tripartite beings. God is triune, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And therefore, there are certain things, because we are made in His image and likeness, because we are imagio dei, made in the image of God, because we are theopomorphic men and women, made in the image of God, because God is triune, He makes us in His image and likeness. There are at least two major things that teach us about how we are made in God's image and likeness in the Bible. The first begins in the book of Genesis, where Adam and Eve were told to be one. The word for one in Hebrew, echad, sh'mar Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad. Here at Israel, the Lord, our God, is oneness. Not the number one, that would be yachid, but a plural one, echad. It says Adam and Eve were told to be one flesh. The oneness that takes place in a marriage, in which a baby is procreated, reflects the trinity, the trinity of the Godhead. The Old Testament usually describes sexual intercourse in the Hebrew text as niknas bah, to go into her. One person going inside of another becoming one, and then a third person is procreated. A pregnant woman, pregnant mother. Are they one or are they three? One's inside of another. This is one of the things that teaches about God. We're made in His image and likeness. But another is what we see here in the New Testament, that we are tripartite beings. We have a body, we have a soul, and we have a spirit. In biblical psychology, the soul and spirit are distinct. Man is three-dimensional. Biblical psychology is based largely in the book of Proverbs. If you want to know why people behave why they do, read Proverbs. It's the best psychology book ever written. However, in secular psychology, man is only a bipartite being. Instead of three-dimensional men and women made in the image of God, as the Bible teaches, secular psychology makes us bi-dimensional, two-dimensional men and women. We simply become advanced apes, higher primates on the phylogenetic scale. We're simply nothing more than advanced models of monkeys, as Darwinism has tried to argue. The Bible says we are three-dimensional. Secular psychology says we are two-dimensional, because the spirit and the soul become confused and mixed into one. The soul is our mind, our emotions, our intellect. That's the mind. But the spirit is the innermost man. It's what communes with God. It is metaphorically represented in the Old Testament by kleos, kidney, in the New Testament by the cardio, the heart, in Greek. Paul says we are temples of the Holy Spirit. The temple had an outer court, a holy place, and a holy of holies. Our physical bodies, the gus, the soma, the body, corresponds to the outer court of the temple. Everyone could see it and come in contact with it. But then there was the holy place. That corresponds to our mind, our soul, our emotions, our intellect. Keep your mind holy. But then there's the innermost man. That corresponds to the holy of holies, what the Hebrews call the kodesh kodeshin, what in Latin is referred to as the sanctum sanctorum, our spirit. That is where God's spirit dwelt in the temple. It's the innermost man. It's what communes with God. Our spirit is different from our soul, the same as the holy of holies is different than the holy place. In the Bible, we have three dimensions. In the world of secular psychology, we only have two dimensions. We have a problem. Biblical psychology understands our behavior results from a combination of what we are spiritually with what we are physically. Secular psychology doesn't. Secular psychology is completely and utterly flawed because it does not understand the spiritual tripartite nature of man. Behavior is simply a product of the electro-biochemical functions of neural metabolism of the brain. And then is what you are psychologically that results from it. The Bible says something different. It's that combined with what we are spiritually. The innermost man or woman. Now let's understand this. There are two primary schools of secular psychology. Two. The first is what we call the Freudians. Named after Sigmund Freud. Freudianism basically would not see any spiritual property to man. They would see metaphysical beliefs religious beliefs of any kind as a groundless superstition. Possibly even a form of mental illness. Then there is the Jungian school of secular psychology. Named after Carl Jung. Jungian psychology would in a sense see a spiritual dimension of man. Called the collective unconscious. But this is more metaphysical in nature than spiritual. And it is essentially a cult. Thus Freudianism would reject the spiritual nature of man. But Jungianism would mix the spiritual nature with the psychological nature. It all becomes psychology. That is secular psychology. We are bipartite. Two dimensional. Physical psychology. We are tripartite. Three dimensional. That is one of the reasons secular psychology doesn't work. Never heal people's problems. Certainly won't save their soul. God changes people from the inside out. If somebody is dysfunctional they may need psychiatric help because there is something biochemically wrong with them that is causing abnormal behavior. Hormonal diseases. Hypoglycemia. We know these things have metabolic origins. And sometimes by treating the organic disorder you'll see an improvement in psychological health. But otherwise it's useless to try to heal people psychologically. Unless there's an organic cause. Unless they're born again. They must be changed from the inside. Then we have what the New Testament calls the renewal of the mind. Unless somebody is born again the mind cannot be renewed. So when you see a behavioral disorder. When you see mental illness. The cause is either chemical or spiritual or some combination of the two. It is impossible for it to be purely psychological. Because the only thing the soul is is a combination of what we are physically with a combination of what we are spiritually. When God breathed into man in Genesis he became a living soul. The Hebrew word for soul, again, nefesh. It is onomatopoeia. Sounds like breathing. Nefesh. Nefesh. Nefesh. When God breathed into man he breathed what we call ruach. Ruach is the Hebrew word for breath. It's also the Hebrew word for spirit. Greek to say pneuma, the word is for wind breath and also for spirit. By breathing into an organic man, man becomes a living soul. What we are psychologically and emotionally is simply, simply a combination of what we are physiologically and metabolically with what we are spiritually. The futility of secular psychology. It is where soul meets body. And unless you understand that you're not going to be able to help anyone in any real or ultimate sense. If there's a metabolic disorder causing behavioral abnormality, hyperthyroidism or something like this, yes medicine can help by treating what's wrong physically. But only God can change what's wrong spiritually. Bringing about the real renewal of the mind. Now we have another problem. Similar to secular psychology, Eastern religion and Eastern religious philosophy also sees man as two-dimensional, as bi-dimensional. Hinduism, Buddhism, Shamanism, African traditional religion, all of these things confuse the soul and spirit. They place tremendous importance on things like dreams, feelings, imagination. Now God does speak through dreams. So does the devil. But very often it's just our soul. When God does it, it's simply a vehicle to express something spiritual. But in Eastern religion or in Shamanism, there's no distinction between the soul and the spirit any more than there is in secular psychology. The problem is this. Eastern religion and African traditional religion is a natural bedfellow for secular psychology. Secular psychology and Eastern religious superstition are natural partners because they both see man as bi-dimensional, as two-dimensional. Only biblical psychology sees us as three-dimensional. Now let's understand the implications of this. Something terrible has happened in recent years. This mixture of soul and spirit, the failure to distinguish the two in secular psychology, and this mixture of soul and spirit that for centuries has existed in Sangama religion, in Hinduism, in Buddhism, in Oriental Shamanism, are getting into the church. Top psychology, psychobabble, is being packaged in biblical jargon, is being put in Christian terms, and being misrepresented and presented as doctrine. At the same time, although I myself am a moderate Pentecostal, in hyper-Pentecostalism and in the extreme access of the charismatic movement, what we see happening is Eastern religious influences and New Age influences coming into the church. Again, Eastern religion has us as two-dimensional, so does top psychology. And so these two things, which are natural partners, become natural bedfellows in the Christian church. The origins of this in the Western world came from a 33rd degree Freemason, the late Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, who had been the minister at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan in New York City in the States. He believed in the power of positive thinking. This became his emphasis. His ideas were picked up by Robert Shuler of the Crystal Cathedral in Orange Grove, California, near Los Angeles. It becomes speaking into being, thinking, being positive. And somehow, this idea of positive thinking, this top psychology, this motivational speaking was practiced in Christian jargon, was mixed with Biblical doctrine and presented as Christian truth. But it wasn't. through things like the Vineyard Movement, Eastern religious influences are coming into the church. In England, there's a man named Patrick Dixon who wrote a book arguing that altered states of consciousness are manifestations of the Holy Ghost. The ten kinds of altered states of consciousness we see induced with hallucinogenic drugs, taking place in Hinduism and Yoga, and taking place in Shamanism, taking place in various Eastern religions, he says these things are manifestations of the Holy Ghost. And he said irrational behavior is a proof that God is working. He wrote this in order to justify what he saw as irrational behavior in Toronto and in Pensacola, in these so-called revivals that have come into the extreme access of the charismatic movement. So to justify the irrational behavior, he tries to argue with an altered state of consciousness, which is exactly what Hinduism teaches, or New Age teaches. In fact, the Bible says the fruit of the Spirit is self-control. Ek-re-te. With the renewal of your mind will come self-control. It is really of God's Spirit. Being in self-control is the fruit of the Spirit. That proves it's God's Spirit. Being out of it proves it's something either psychologically wrong, or possibly spiritually wrong. In other words, demonic. So you have this infiltration of both Eastern religion, making man two-dimensional, and Western pop-psychology, making man two-dimensional, coming into the church. Both of them amount to Gnosticism. Man as God. Some secret revelation knowledge where you become God yourself. You can do this. Paul Young-Yee Chow, who sometimes calls himself David Young-Yee Chow, the Korean Pentecostal preacher, impresses many people in the Western world because they think his church is big. Now, of course, if you have been to Korea, or to Bangkok, or to Singapore, you realize that by the standards of Asia, where he comes from, his church is not big at all in terms of visualization cults. In Singapore, right on the street corner, you can buy incense, pay some money, visualize what you want, and march around a statue of Buddha, and walk away believing you've spoken into being. In his book, The Fourth Dimension, Young-Yee Chow actually wrote that your subconscious imagination is your spirit. Now, this is not so. Our spirit is distinct from the imagination. The imagination is the function of the soul. What does he do? He mixes soul and spirit, or the Word of God says they're separate. And then you visualize what you want in your imagination and speak it into being. What is this? This mystical revelation is Gnosticism. Man is God. He goes on to write in his book that Hindus and Buddhists have known this for centuries. But now Jesus Christ has shown it to him. Whether or not Young-Yee Chow is a saved Christian, I don't know. I'm not his judge. But I know as a preacher, he is a Buddhist. What he teaches is Buddhism and Hinduism. He is teaching Eastern Shamanism, and calling it Biblical Christianity, which it is not. Our subconscious imagination is not our spirit. Our spirit is totally and radically different. This is simply Shamanism. Yet, people let him get away with it because they're ignorant of the Word of God. The man teaches Buddhism. People in the West are so impressed by this, there are far bigger visualization cults than his in Asia. You know, when the Toronto Phenomena was happening in the Western world, with the laughing and the hysterics and the drunken revival, I watched videos of the followers of Bhagwan Rajesh in India, millions of them doing the same thing. Practitioners of Chinese mysticism, there were estimated between 40 and 50 million of them doing the same thing at the same time in Asia. Only people in the West are sucked in by this. We've shown videos of Rodney Howard Brown and Kenneth Copeland and John Arnott from Toronto and of Pensacola, Florida. Michael Brown and John Kilpatrick. We showed these videos to some Hindu brethren who'd gotten saved. Christians from India who were in the Hindu and Sikh religion. And they told us this is Kundalini Yoga. It's what we did before we were born again. All they're doing is practicing Kundalini Yoga with the serpent spirit and calling it Christianity. This is what Hindus told us. We showed these videos to some Romani gypsy pastors. There's a tremendous move of God among the gypsies. They said this is duckering, a term in their Romani language which was related to Sanskrit. And I asked them, well, what's duckering? And they told us, well, they're using the occult to get money out of people. That's what they thought this was. All this is is psychology. If you were to go to a motivational sales seminar staged by a corporation, they'd bring you to a hotel, give you a business lunch, and bring you into an auditorium. And somebody, usually an American, with a very expensive suit and a Benny Hinn hairstyle, would come in and pick up a microphone and begin dancing around. And he would say something like this. We all want growth and expansion. We want to make more money. You have to visualize your dream. You have to visualize your sales quota that you want to reach. You have to believe and picture it in your mind and believe it already exists. And once you believe it yourself, you will be able to persuade others to invest in your dream and your dream will become a reality. You have to believe. This is called motivational psychology. So what happens? It gets into the church. You'll get some teacher who says, God has given me a vision for a church that holds 5,000 people but it's going to cost us 26 million rands. God wants you to invest in my vision. All this is is pop psychology. Motivational psychology. Masquerading as biblical doctrine. Because they mix the soul and spirit. When somebody comes back from Florida and Pensacola or Toronto and they're falling on the floor even imitating animals sometimes or getting as it were drunk. The Bible warns us three times in Peter's first epistle. Be sober in spirit. They're saying be drunk in spirit. Either Rodney Howard Brown was a deceiver or Peter is a deceiver. And you tell them, wait a minute, the Bible says be sober in spirit. The fruit of the spirit is self control. You know what the most frequent response is? I was blessed. Don't tell me that. I was blessed. But wait a minute. The objective truth of God's word says you were deceived. I was blessed. They weren't blessed. What are they doing? They're confusing their spirit with their soul. They're going by feeling and emotion. And because they get a temporary charge they think they were blessed. This is like being slain in spirit. In the Bible, that phenomenon is totally different to what you see now. John was in the spirit in the Lord's day and he fell as if flamed. What happened when he fell as if flamed? He was terrified. He fell on his face and he got up totally different than when he went down. When the young man who was demon possessed was being thrown into the fire by the demon, he fell into the power of Jesus. They thought he was dead. But when he got up, he was a new person. Don't tell me what happens when somebody goes down. Tell me what happens when they get up. Daniel was terrified. John was terrified. In both cases Jesus had to send angels to encourage them. In the Bible, they always went forward. Only one place in the Bible did they go backwards. That is when they came to arrest Jesus and it was a judgment from God. How come at Rodney Brown's meetings people are always going backward instead of forward? Why do they have professional catches? In the Bible, they went forward. More than that, in the Bible, it was a once in a lifetime life-changing event. They were terrified. These guys get back in line to go down again. They get addicted to it. Why? Because it's not spiritual change. It's truly psychological. They need another fix. It's compulsion. But they think it's spiritual because they are mixing soul and spirit. Most deliverance ministry is like this. Oh, there's real demon possession and there is real exorcism. But the Greek word ekbalo, cast out, is never used in connection with the sage Christian. When a Christian is oppressed by a demon, it is not possession, it is oppression. The word there is seteteo. Forget the word therapy. They're healed. But the cast out? Not one place in the Bible does a demon ever cast out of a sage Christian. So the question becomes, well, why are they manifesting? Why do these demons begin screaming when they come out? Because of the mixture of soul and spirit. It is known as hypnotic induction. The Bible says, you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth. That's how you get saved. When you begin to believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, you have a demon. You're giving Satan an open door he doesn't have to come in and oppress you. So because they think it happens, it begins to happen. It's the same as what you see with the Toronto phenomena. This is hypnotic induction. I've yet to see Rodney Howard Brown or Benny Hinn do something that a sage hypnotist cannot do. In England, a vicar in Cambridge University showed videos to the president of the Royal Sage Hypnotist Society of Rodney Howard Brown and John Arnott. And they said, this is unethical. The vicar asked them why at Cambridge, and he said, because we don't allow our members to do this. They're doing three things that we don't allow. One, they're doing it in the name of religion. Two, they're doing it to children. And three, they're leading people in a trance. If any one of our people did that, he'd never work again. This is simply hypnotic induction. It comes from mixing psychology with spirituality, confusing the soul and spirit. The only thing these people are doing, what you see is a mixture of hypnotic induction, post-hypnotic suggestion, being mixed with demonic deception and heresy. That's all it is. The soul becomes mixed with the spirit. Deliverance ministry is largely based on this. The apostles never taught it. Here's the question. We interpret the teaching of Jesus in light of the teaching of the apostles. Why is it that in all the instructions the apostles gave about what Jesus meant, and how to deal with the world, the flesh, and the devil, not once did they teach deliverance. They taught about picking up your cross, resisting the devil, he'll flee from you. They talked about all that, but never deliverance. What do they know? The apostles didn't. If that was the way to deal with the devil, why did Paul and Peter and John and James never do it? Deliverance ministry has become another racket, another con game. People get addicted to it. They speak more about the devil in some of these churches than they do the Lord Jesus. As C.F. Lewis warns, the devil has two tricks. One is to get you to ignore him. The other is to get you to focus on him. What you see happening today in the inner healing movement, that is not biblical. Past hurts, people who've been abused, sexually abused, their children scorned. How do you deal with those hurts? The Bible gives us two ways. One is this. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. No matter what anybody did to you or to I, we did more to Jesus. And if we want God to forgive us, he's perfect. We're not. He says, I'll forgive you, providing you ask me for the grace to forgive others. We should be condemned, but Jesus forgives us if we ask him for the grace and power to forgive others. That's the basis of dealing with past hurts. But the second is this. Wrecking yourself dead. That abused child, that sexually abused little girl, that sexually abused little boy, they are dead. Wrecking yourself dead. What the devil tries to do through the deliverance ministers and through the inner healing con men is to get you to get a shovel out and dig up the corpse of the old creation and get back in it. You have to go back and relive your past hurts and past experiences and bring Jesus into it. No. That abused child, that hurt person is dead. This is simply pop psychology. It is known as primal therapy, formulated by Dr. Arthur John of Los Angeles, which is masquerading as Christian doctrine. It gained popularity through a silly book written by Bruce Carter Stapleton, the sister of the former American president Jimmy Carter. But it has no biblical basis. Inner healing has no biblical basis as a ministry. That's not how the word of God says to deal with past hurts. Deliverance? Do what I do when they tell you to have a deliverance service. Pick up the phone and tell them to send over two cheeseburgers with raw onions. Don't forget the coleslaw. This is nonsense. People get addicted to it, the same as they get addicted to falling down. Why? Because it's all psychological. They're mixing the soul with spirit. They're making you two-dimensional. They're reducing you to monkeys. That's what Eastern religion does. That's what pop psychology does. But the word of God is different. Very different. Examine everything carefully, we're told in verse 21. Hold fast only to what is good. That's not pop psychology. Abstain from every form of evil. Stage hypnotism, calling itself ministry, is evil. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely. May your spirit, soul, and body be preserved. It is three. You are not a Hindu if you are a Christian. You are not a shamanist. You are not a Sangama. You are not a Buddhist. You are not a two-dimensional person. You are a three-dimensional person made in the image and likeness of an eternal God who loves you. This is Jacob Plath. God bless you and thank you.