In the last post, we talked about discerning true and false accusations. In many situations, the church should have easily discerned that a leader was walking in the flesh even before the scandal. I thought I was just going to write about that, but the Lord reminded me that we will also encounter slanderous and false accusations and we must learn to discern them as well.

There was a formatting problem and the paragraphs were stuck together in my last email, so I apologize if it was difficult to read! I had both positive and negative feedback when I shared how the accusations against T.B. Joshua keep getting proven false. However, this has continued, and the agenda behind the documentary has become clear. After my last post, I learned that Open Democracy, the L.G.B.T.Q. agenda-promoting, George Soros-funded organization that produced the T.B. Joshua documentary in conjunction with BBC, is the same organization that previously got the YouTube channel of T.B. Joshua’s church removed from YouTube. They kept sending complaints of “hate speech” because Emmanuel TV was showing homosexuals receiving deliverance and testifying that they were free!

False accusations used to persecute Christians are nothing new! Quoting from an online article about the rumors spreading to foment the persecution of early Christians: As they became more distinct, Christians became the subject of many lurid rumors. Christians customarily referred to partaking in The Lord’s Supper as “eating his flesh” and “drinking his blood,” which they did at gatherings they called “loves feasts.” The Romans heard rumblings of flesh-eating and love feasts which led to accusations of cannibalism and orgies. These “abominations” and others, aided in stirring up public emotion against Christians.

Since Christians worshiped no visible idols and rejected the vast pantheon of other gods they were accused of “Atheism.” As Roman culture was so rooted in polytheism that all events, theater, races, politics, etc. were inseparably tied to worship of the gods, Christians were forced by their faith to abstain from all such events. It seemed as though Christians were repulsed by the very fundamental institutions of Rome and disdained its highest cultural achievements. Because of this, they incurred further condemnation that they were “haters of mankind.”¹

I found an African brother, Evangelist Nelson, who spent 12 years with Joshua and is doing a great job replying to accusations on his Light of Hope TV channel. I see the light of the Lord in his eyes as he speaks. One of the accusations was that T.B. Joshua said he hated white people and wanted to enslave them because they enslaved his ancestors. I see darkness in the eyes of the person making this accusation in the documentary, and a little investigation shows the accusation to be absurd! As Evangelist Nelson points out, it’s easy to verify that the majority of the people T.B. Joshua ordained as prophets were foreigners, not Nigerians! Why would so many of the people T.B. Joshua ordained as prophets be white foreigners if he “hated white people and wanted to enslave them?” Why does the testimony of so many white people who knew T.B. Joshua disagree with this accusation?

And why do so many Christians continue to give weight to accusations that are convincingly refuted one after another? I ask “Is there no fear of the Lord that the church doesn’t hesitate so as not to participate in slander when these accusations keep getting exposed as false?” On the other hand, I see situations of obvious abuse and carnality and ask “Is there no fear of the Lord that the church doesn’t confront this?”

I’d like to continue today by sharing my thoughts on spiritual sight and having our senses trained to discern good and evil.

Two Surgeries Canceled in One Day!

The Lord has been doing so many miracles. One of these Saturdays, I went to the pool with my daughters. A family arrived, and as I felt the Lord’s love for the people, I saw a vision of a dark spot in the grandmother’s knee. They got in the pool with us and I asked the lady “Hey, does your knee hurt?”

She said “Yes. Why?”

I replied “I had a vision of a cyst in your knee, but now I’m going to pray for you and Jesus will remove it.”

She started crying and said “It has been hurting for over a year and they say I need surgery.” We prayed, and when she got out of the pool, all the pain was gone!

Then that night we were at Casa da Paz, the recovery house I’m most involved in. We were praying for each man during worship, and I got to one guy who was new and yelled “You have a stone in your body!” I yelled because the music was loud. It came to me that he had a stone when I got near him, but I didn’t know where it was. He said “Yes, I have a stone in my gallbladder and they say it’s so serious that it could kill me, and I need to have a surgery.”

I asked “Who told me about the stone?” He didn’t know. I said “You didn’t tell me. You just confirmed it, but Jesus told me because he’s removing it right now!” We prayed, the pain left, and he testified. We also saw the Lord do other miracles.

When I say “two surgeries were canceled in one day,” I don’t mean that these people had dates for surgeries marked on the calender and the doctor took them off of the calender on that day. I just mean that two people needed surgeries, and now they won’t need them anymore! They were canceled in heaven!

I have been having so many experiences like this of seeing into people’s bodies and they are healed. It’s exciting! Spiritual sight enables us to see what God is doing and agree with Him, and that releases His power! It’s important that we agree with God!

What does this have to do with my previous post and both real scandals and false accusations? Just as I saw darkness in that lady’s knee and she confirmed it when I asked, I’ve seen darkness in the bellies of guys who were in sexual sin. They confirmed it when I asked, and received deliverance as others have received healing. In the same way, I saw darkness in the life of the local pastor and I told my wife he was living in rebellion against Jesus weeks before the scandal. In the same way, I see darkness in the eyes of Agromah Paul when he makes the accusations that T.B. Joshua “hated white people,” but I see light in the eyes of Evangelist Nelson as he responds to the accusation.

How Is Spiritual Sight Developed?

Hebrews 5:14 (NIV) But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

It’s hard to explain how I so often see the condition in the body of a stranger, but this has been developed. Spending a lot of time praying for people and feeling God’s love for them has a lot to do with it. As I pray for people and often “see” the darkness or problem in their body, I also often “see” when the condition has changed and I’ll keep praying until I “see” that it’s better. Don’t ask me to explain, but it’s like light or darkness! We understand from Hebrews 5:14 that our senses can be trained to distinguish good from evil, or light from darkness.

Discernment comes by knowing God, who is light, and discernment grows by walking in communion with Him! Worship, praise and thanksgiving, praying in tongues, and filling our hearts with God’s word, form a familiarity with light. We become familiar with what God is like and who He is. Knowing who He is enables us to recognize when a spirit is not from Him. It also enables us to recognize when a person is walking in God’s Spirit.

The person with God’s Spirit makes judgements about all things, discerning between good and evil, light and darkness.

1 Corinthians 2:12-15 (NIV) What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for,

“Who has known the mind of the Lord
    so as to instruct him?”

But we have the mind of Christ.

What Can Hinder Discernment?

 John 9:39-41 (NIV) Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.

Matthew 15:10-14 (NIV) Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”

He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

The Pharisees were blind because of their pride, and it would have been better to admit they were blind so Jesus could open their eyes than to claim that they could see! They cared about the outward things, but not about the heart. Unfortunately, many Christians today are still following blind guides. They follow pastors who claim that they can see, call themselves “spiritual fathers,” and want the church to serve them, but they are living in bondage to sin. In the local church here, I can barely believe how many people still want to follow the pastor who has repeatedly betrayed every wife he’s had and been involved in one affair after another. But they still call him their pastor and want him back! And he is still calling himself their “father” instead of humbling himself and admitting his blindness!

Just as our discernment grows by communion with the Holy Spirit, walking in communion with darkness will blind us.

2nd Peter 2:7-8 (NIV) …he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)

A person who is walking in communion with God is bothered by wickedness. A person walking in communion with God isn’t entertained by violence and sexual immorality. They don’t enjoy it. Yet many church people have normalized wickedness. In the local church here, the responses of many people to the pastor’s immoral conduct is “don’t judge,” or “we’re all sinners, we’re human, and we all make mistakes.”

They don’t understand the gospel or God’s grace. Of course, we believe in God’s radical grace to transform the worst of people. But that’s just it. God’s grace changes people. God’s grace saves us from sin, takes us out of darkness, and puts us in the new Man, Jesus, who is righteous. God’s grace teaches us to deny ungodliness. We have all sinned, yes, but our identity is no longer “sinners expected to sin” if we’re in Christ. By taking the words “don’t judge” out of their Biblical context, they fail to discern between light and darkness and continue to be blind people following blind guides. To the contrary, the Bible says that those with the Spirit of God judge all things. We discern between light and darkness, good and evil.

1 John 3:7-10 (NIV) Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

Communion with the Holy Spirit enables spiritual sight. Communion with any other spirit blinds us. Spiritual blindness not only makes people unable to discern darkness, but it causes people to be unable to recognize the Spirit of God when they see it. Bitterness, unforgiveness, and self-righteousness can cause people to fall into the trap of participating in slander and false accusations. Thinking influenced by Greek Philosophy, Stoicism, and Gnosticism often causes people to see God’s work and think it is the devil! The Pharisees thought they saw, but they were so blind that when God himself came to them in the flesh, they said Jesus was from the devil!

Discerning the Spirit People Are Walking In

Of course, we develop and grow in discernment, so we test our discernment. I tested my discernment of seeing a dark spot in a lady’s knee by asking her about her knee. She confirmed it. When I had a vision of God ripping the spirit of lust out of a brother’s belly, I asked if he was struggling with porn and he confirmed it. In the case of the local pastor, his evil deeds soon became evident and were exposed. In the case of T.B. Joshua, there is much evidence contrary to the accusations to confirm the discernment that they are slander.

I don’t have any great personal reason to defend T.B. Joshua, he’s no longer alive, and he’s not above criticism. However, the spirit I saw in his life was so contrary to the spirit I see in those who abuse the church. Humility, not arrogance. Serving rather than wanting everyone to serve him. Associating with lowly people. Why does it matter if the BBC documentary is true or not? A shadow is being cast on other ministers, still alive, who learned from T.B. Joshua.

For example, negative things are circulating about Pastor Vlad Savchuk and the Hungry Gen church he leads, because he was influenced by T.B. Joshua. I’ve seen some videos of their church on YouTube. It’s not even my thing, too institutional for me. I don’t have all the same theology. But I still think it’s important to recognize that the Holy Spirit is working there, that the healing and deliverance happening there is the work of the Holy Spirit, and I honor Him and what He is doing.

It’s extremely important to receive those the Lord sends, and to refuse to receive the wicked. Many who receive the wicked fail to receive those who Jesus sends. Those who want a serial adulterer back as their pastor often fail to receive someone who comes with a servant heart and in the power of the Spirit. But when we receive those who Jesus sends, we receive Jesus.

I’m not part of the religious culture of Vlad and the Hungry Gen church, and not even so much of T.B. Joshua’s church. I don’t have to adapt to their culture, but I do recognize the Holy Spirit working in both places. And what matters isn’t what I think. What matters is the Holy Spirit’s perspective on things, and I want my perspective to be aligned with His perspective. That often takes looking past mere appearances and yielding our feelings and prejudices to the Holy Spirit.

John 7:24 (NIV) Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.

Appearances can deceive us. I see in the spirit that a person has a cyst in the knee, but if I don’t see them limping it’s tempting to look at appearances rather than what I see in the spirit and so hesitate to ask them about that knee. I’ve often had my natural mind protest when I received a word of knowledge for healing!

What happens when you see a spirit of lust in a person’s belly, but your natural minds says “It can’t be! He’s a respected pastor!” It may seem to many that a certain person is a man of God, blessed by the Lord and prospering in ministry, but the reality is that he is living in rebellion against Jesus. On the other hand, it may appear that so many accusations against a person may be true, as it appeared to many that Mary the mother of Jesus cheated on Joseph, or that Joseph in the Old Testament sexually assaulted Potiphar’s wife. But don’t look at mere appearances. Test the spirits, and let the Lord bring to light the things that are hidden in darkness. Good discernment takes humility and care so as not to be presumptuous. I don’t want to receive the wicked, and neither do I want to be found opposing someone who is a servant of Christ!

2nd John verses 9-11 warns us that he who receives a wicked man who does not continue in the teaching of Christ participates in his wicked work. On the other hand, the epistle of 3rd John warns us that refusing to welcome other believers is also wicked. To receive those who Jesus sends is to receive Jesus! This is why it is important to discern both light and darkness in relation to the spirit that a person is walking in!