This is diabolical!
This has no founding in the holy scriptures and not Christological sound. It is dangerous.
Favor is the grace of God. It is WITHOUT MERIT! In other words there is NOTHING you can do attract God to ‘favor’ you except to believe in what His son, the Christ has DONE.
There is no amount of praying, giving (sowing as they call it), worshipping (in most cases it’s actually appeasing), studying of His word or good deeds to others that will have you GAIN God’s favor. It is a complete lie!
We HAVE already GAINED His favor in Christ. We pray, worship, give and may show good deeds because we have Christ (the very personification of favor) in us who works THROUGH US. Studying of the Word is that we MAY KNOW HIM.
When one KNOWS HIM they are confident of who they are. It’s not so that a car, a house, a job or a visa can show up so that we say we are FAVORED! That is an abomination. Don’t be fooled to believing that THINGS are what justifies God’s favor on a believe’s life. It’s Christ and Him alone.
EVERYTHING you DO NOW as a believer is not FOR favor with God now but because YOU ALREADY have it.
Interestingly, the more you know and live out God’s favor or grace in this world the less ‘favor’ you have with man.
@martindmwanza@ChibweDouglas We don’t humble ourselves because you are begging us. We are humble because we have Christ in us. We do not relent from declaring the truth because certain cultic figures have pulpits. We speak the truth in and out of season. May salvation come to your house in Christ Jesus.
@martindmwanza@ChibweDouglas We don’t declare the word of God to be right. We declare it because IT IS RIGHT. Man’s opinions and insults do not pursuade us to do otherwise. May salvation that is in Christ find you.
Just begin with reading Ephesians 2 8-9, Romans 5 20-21 and 2 Cor 12 9-10 to know what the grace of God is. Beyond salvation and even unto sanctification there is NO FLESH that can appear before God unto righteousness but only faith in Christ. Learn to read all those verses you referenced within the context of resurrected Christ and not just proof text with the hope that it meets your narrative. Learn to rightly divide (2 Tim 2:15) scriptures (if you know what that is) and not waste time in ignorance.
I respect your view my brother but what I disagree with is promoting inhumane and violent behavior under the guise of “it’s our country”. We can’t calling these people banned but describing them by their irrational actions. All foreigners who are illegal should go back but where is the order and humanity in it all? I don’t even live in SA and never have but human beings are human beings.
@ChibweDouglas@martindmwanza And will not stop as long as there are false doctrines and false teachers about. We don’t get phased by people who we know speak from ignorance and are willing garbage cans. We are not!
Part 2
Here is what unforgiveness actually produces in a human soul when it's allowed to run its full course without the restraining and softening influence of Grace: thats torment. The bitterness that keeps replaying the wound, the resentment that poisons every relationship it touches or the chronic low level rage that exhausts the person carrying it. There are physical consequences just as there is spiritual blindness that comes from a heart sealed off from the flow of Grace, the isolation of a soul that can't give what it's refused to receive. That's the torment of the unmerciful servant not a future judicial punishment that's imposed by an angry God. It's the present and ongoing experience of a person who's been given over to the full consequences of what unforgiveness produces when love is refused and Grace is withheld from others.
So the Father stepping back and allowing that isn't cruelty. It's actually a profound expression of his respect for human freedom and his commitment to allowing people to experience the full reality of what they choose because sometimes the only thing that's going to finally open a heart to receiving what it's been refusing is the experience of what the refusal actually costs.
The prodigal son came to himself in the pig pen, and it wasn't because the Father imposed consequences on him from the outside. It was because the Father let him go and allowed him to experience the full consequences of the direction he chose and it was in the middle of those consequences that he came to himself, woke up and then he turned toward home. That's what being handed over to the torturers is, and that's what it's pointing to in Matthew 18, not divine retribution. It's the giving over to consequences that are always ready and already present in the choice to withhold what was freely given. The natural and inevitable fruit of a heart that has refused to receive and refused to give and, the invitation embedded in those consequences is always the same.
Come to yourself, wake up, turn toward home.
Now apply that same framework to Matthew 6. When Jesus says the Father won't forgive you if you don't forgive, he's describing the same ‘giving over’ dynamic for the person who insists on operating within the law and the reciprocity framework, who insists on a God who measures and weighs and rewards and withholds.
God gives them over to the full experience of that framework and what that framework actually produces, not because that's who he actually is, it's because that's who they insist he is. The person who relates to God through the reciprocity of the law will experience the relentless and impossible demands of the law, including the demand to forgive perfectly in order to be forgiven, including the torment of never knowing whether their forgiveness has been thorough enough or sincere enough or complete enough to qualify. That's the giving over. That's the wrath. It's not God punishing from the outside. It's God stepping back and allowing the full consequences of the chosen framework to be experienced without interference and those consequences are real.
Those consequences are designed to do exactly what the pig pen did for the prodigal son, to bring people to themselves, to make the impossibility of the system that they're trusting in so undeniable that they finally stopped trusting in it and they turned towards something different, toward a Father who was never ‘the God of the reciprocity’ framework, who was never counting trespasses against anyone, who was never withholding forgiveness as retribution for insufficient performance, who's always been running toward the ones who are finally willing to turn toward home.
You are blessed!
God angry or full of wrath to punish you?
Part 1
The wrath of God is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the Bible. Most people understand the ‘wrath of God’ like God is actively and directly punishing people from the outside, like divine retribution or the offended holiness of a perfectly just God striking down those who've transgressed. This picture of divine wrath is so deeply embedded in Pentecostal charismatic theology that most people have never stopped to ask whether it's actually what scripture is really describing.
Romans chapter 1, Paul opens his most systematic theological letter by describing the wrath of God and what he's describing is not God actively striking people down from the outside. Paul is explaining something different three times in Romans 1. Paul uses the same phrase, “God gave them over” (24, 26 and v28). God gave them over to a debased mind”.
‘The wrath of God’ in Romans 1 isn't divine punishment from the outside: “ITS THE GIVING OVER”. In other words, it’s God stepping back from his restraining influence and allowing people to experience the full and unhindered consequences of the direction that they chose.
‘The wrath’ isn't something God does to people from the outside but it’s what happens when God removes the restraint and then the natural consequences of the self chosen patterns are allowed to run their full course without interference. Isn’t that a completely different picture of divine wrath than the one that most people hold? When you understand it correctly it even has enormous implications for how you read Matthew 6 and Matthew 18.
If you read the parable of the unmerciful servant again through that lens, the servant who was forgiven the unpayable debt and refused to forgive his fellow servant was handed over to the torturers until he should pay all his debt. Most people read that as God is imposing a judicial punishment from the outside on somebody who failed to perform forgiveness correctly like God, the angry judge, sentencing the unforgiving servant to torment as retribution for his failure. No!
What if it's something else entirely? What if being handed over to the torturers isn't God imposing punishment from the outside, but it's rather God stepping back and allowing the servant to experience the full consequences of what he insisted on.
Are Pentecostals serious?
How does one honestly sit in a church or service to hear this witchcraft that is veiled by a church name and pulpit? Which bible? Which verse? This is utter nonsense that even a non-believer can tell you how ridiculous this is. Vanhu vanombo verengawo bible here aumana? Chii ichi?
Why we have witches in church.
Part 3
A final example, Luke 16, the rich man and Lazarus. (You have probably heard this one preached like a little roadmap of hell: Eternal flames, torment, great chasm, no escape). Is what you have heard what Jesus was doing here? He wasn't building a doctrine of the afterlife. He was telling a satirical parable based on a well known Jewish folk story at the time. It was a rebuke. It was a warning to religious elites who hoarded wealth while the poor suffered at their gates. It was about justice, not geography. (Read it in context). Ask who he's talking to and why but when eisegesis enters the picture, we make it about fire and brimstone and we turn a symbolic story into a weaponized theology then we lose the point entirely.
Eisegesis distorts scripture and builds doctrine out of isolation. It lifts Verses from their time and forces them into ours. It reinforces the power structures we already believe in, our church leaders want you to believe in, while ignoring the voices scripture was meant to lift up. On the contrary, exegesis humbles you. It asks you to sit down, to slow down, to enter into someone else's world before you force the text into yours. It doesn't mean you'll always get it right, because that's not how it works but it means that you're willing to try. It means the Bible stops being a mirror for your opinions and becomes a window into something bigger than you.
So let me break it down one last time. Eisegesis says, ‘here's what I believe’ now let me find a verse that supports it. Exegesis says, here's a verse, now let me discover what it actually meant. Eisegesis creates certainty that backs up confirmation bias. Exegesis cultivates curiosity. It honours the Bible as a living, breathing word. Eisegesis defends your camp while Exegesis invites you to grow. If you've spent your whole life hearing sermons that skip the questions, if no one ever told you to ask who wrote it or when or why, it's not your fault. Now that you know, you don't have to settle for second hand theology anymore. You can ask better questions. You honor the text on its own terms, and you can learn to hear the Bible without the static of inherited assumptions that Have been placed on you because sometimes the first step towards truth is realising how many times we've been taught to read it wrong.
You are blessed!
Why we have witches in churches.
Part 1
Why does the Bible seem to say completely opposite things depending on who's preaching? One pastor will promise riches, another doesn't while one insists on endless spiritual warfare yet another dismisses that.
So how can one sacred book be used to defend so many conflicting beliefs?
Let’s try to briefly explain this …
There are two primary ways people approach scripture: exegesis and eisegesis. If you've never heard those terms before, do not worry, most people have not because churches rarely teach these things for a reason.
These two approaches shape everything, what gets preached, what gets ignored, what becomes doctrine and what becomes dogma. So how you read determines what you will see, and what you see determines what you will believe.
In the first year of nearly every decent ministry school, students are taught to use exegesis and avoid eisegesis as much as possible. It's foundational and if you want to rightly handle scripture and not become a witch, this is not optional.
Sadly, after graduation, in pulpits all over the world, eisegesis creeps back in, sometimes not so subtly, and eventually it will reshape entire church cultures, particularly in the Pentecostal charismatic movement.
So exegesis comes from a word that means ‘to draw out’. How it works when you approach scripture is that you ask: who wrote this? Who were they writing to? When was it written? What was happening at the time? Where were they? And why did this message matter? You're not trying to make the text say something but you’re listening to what it already said. You're learning, discovering, letting the text speak on its own terms. If we really honour the Bible as much as we say we do, this is what we use.
On the other hand, eisegesis is a little bit different. Eisegesis means ‘to read into’ and is when you bring your own beliefs, your biases and your assumptions to the text and squeeze it into your existing world view (normally influenced by so called MoGs). It's not reading to understand but it is reading to confirm.
Eisegesis skips historical questions, the context and the culture. That’s when things fall apart because you can make it say whatever you want to say.
Why we have witches in church.
Part 2
Let’s start with an example.
If you were taught the story of the widow's mite is about the beauty of sacrificial giving to the church, that's not exegesis. That's eisegesis. Jesus was not praising the widow but was exposing the system that exploited her. Go back and read it again. Mark 12 does not stand alone. It's part of a larger temple critique that spans several chapters. In Mark 11, Jesus flips tables, in Mark 12 he calls out the who devours widows’ houses and then literally right after he says that, he points to this widow giving her last two coins and says, ‘see, there you go’, not to applaud the widow but to indict the temple system that would take her last and call it ‘holy’.
This was not a lesson in generosity. It was a prophetic judgment based on a system built on appearances, greed and religious performance. Just like he said a few sentences later, with the indictment of this temple system, the whole temple would come crashing down in that generation.
Exegesis honors the Bible as a living, breathing story. It listens, it questions, it lets the text speak from within its own world while eisegesis does not do that. It treats scripture like a mirror, only ever reflecting what you already believe OR what you want others to do. Sadly, that's how sacred text get weaponized. That's how systems stay unchallenged and that’s how the widow becomes a sermon illustration on sacrificial giving instead of what it's really about: a victim who was failed by the very system meant to protect her. The widow’s story wasn’t about how much you should give. It's a warning about what happens when religion stops protecting the vulnerable and starts feeding on them.
Another example, 1st Timothy 2:12, “I don't permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man”. This verse has been used to silence women for centuries but Paul was not writing a universal rule. He was writing to Timothy in Ephesus, a city dominated by the temple of Artemis, led by female priests who held spiritual control. The Greek word Paul uses here, ‘authetien’ doesn't mean healthy authority. It implies domineering or abusive control and it only appears once in the entire Bible. So Paul's addressing a specific issue in a specific church, in a specific city with a specific problem with women in dominating positions of leadership. However, if that gets ignored while denominations use one verse ripped from its contextual world to deny women their voice. It's not biblical faithfulness. It’s eisegesis.
@MillionaireShel If you are in Christ He has already WON for you. However, out of your own generosity, you are welcome to send me to ‘see Victor’ zvako. 😊
Someone told you a fact but may not have told you the full story because he may not know it. I will reply you this way brethren …
Galatians 1:13 …
In this ref, Paul is establishing his credibility by reminding the believers of his radical transformation. He recounts how, before his conversion on the road to Damascus, he was a fiercely zealous Pharisee who violently attacked the early Christian community. He uses this "former life" to highlight that the Gospel he preaches is a divine revelation from Jesus Christ, not something he learned from other humans.
I know you get me.