Dreamers and Deceivers

“ Dreamers and Deceivers” J.W. Sims

As you know I have been concerned with the type of things that are being presented to and within the church. We live in a day when spiritual discernment is so needed and yet so neglected, when we need to walk in light but we walk in darkness. It seems the enemy has brought people to the place where they have accepted that we have come into a newer and deeper truth than we have ever had before, that he has convinced people that there is a new way of building the church and a new way of getting what God wants us to have from life.

As you know I have presented some material concerning the Purpose Driven Church a method of building the church that is designed by man and not by God, a method that leaves out the work of the Holy Spirit. The openness of the church to this modern day method is what I believe is leading us rapidly into allowing entrance of the New Age movement. As I have studied the falseness of this method I have been blessed by the book Deceived on Purpose by Warren Smith and have learned how saturated all of this is with Satanic deception and an evil darkness that is so subtle that few in the modern church discern its danger. As I have studied this book I have also learned how wrong and off center Bruce Wilkinson has been in his books the Prayer of Jabez and the Dream Giver. Now you need to remember that the book the Prayer of Jabez has been widely distributed and accepted in Christian circles and yet it is saturated with New Age and evil possibilities, so I ask, “What is happening to the church today? Where is our discernment? Why do the supposed Christian people not understand what is right and what is wrong when it comes to spiritual things? Though I have never read the book I knew in my spirit it was not from the Lord and should not be accepted into my mind.

The book that I want to dwell upon however is the second book that Bruce wrote and that is the book The Dream Giver. If you have not read this book great; don’t read it for it will take you into paths that are off center, that are full of New Age thinking and that will cause you to be deceived. This book is all about the “Big Dream” and how you have to connect to God’s big dream so that you can go from being an ordinary person to being a person who is somebody.

According to Bruce our dream will evolve and it will grow into a bigger dream. He sets himself up as a dream coach who will guide you into your dream. As Bruce has spoken to the Saddleback church he has told them how they need to open their hearts and prepare for the dream that is coming a dream in my opinion that is simply setting us up for a one world religion as well as the entrance of the antichrist. Now you need to understand that there is a oneness between Neale Walsch a person who writes material that connects people to evil spirits, Jerry Jampolsky who has written a course entitled “A course in miracles” that is totally New Age and sets us up for deception, and Robert Schuller, and Rick Warren and finally Bruce Wilkinson. What I am trying to say is that we have gone from a foundation of satanic forces, to a new age message in Schuller to a modern day acceptance of the Purpose Driven Church. Therefore, no matter how you look at it, evil deception has been watered down, and watered down until it has been made acceptable within the church. And guess what? All over this country however are the Lord’s children who have discernment and will not be deceived. There are the Lord’s children who because they sense this kind of material is off base are rising up and not accepting and even rebuking where this is being brought. There are others however, who sense something is wrong but are not sure what it is and though they are unhappy they accept what is being presented and remain where they should not. It is time for the children to take a stand or to remove themselves from wherever this falseness has come.

Now just in case you think Robert Schuller has a nice ministry, allow me to quote from his book entitled: Self-Esteem the New Reformation:

“I am not fully forgiven until I allow God to write his new dream for my life on the blackboard of my mind and I dare to believe I am therefore I can” Do you realize how close this is to calling yourself the “I am”? The name that only belongs to God, the “I am” the Yahweh.

“God’s forgiving grace is incomplete until he gives me, and I accept a new kingdom building dream and opportunity.”

“I must accept the dream God gives me and develop its inherent possibilities.”

It is my purpose by this lesson to encourage you as the Lord’s children to be on your guard, to be alert, to use the discernment that God has given to you. We were told by our Lord to remember that there would be those who would work to deceive us, that there would be false christs deceiving even the very elect if it were possible. Yes, deception is real and in these latter days deception will be a real and intense work of the enemy. We need to evaluate every book in the Christian bookstore and every message that is presented to us as the Bereans did in regard to Paul. Every message by a popular pastor who has thousands of people following him must not simply be accepted as from God, every book that has sold thousands of copies does not make it a spiritual book from God. Therefore, I want you to be careful to slow down, to observe, to pray and to rely upon the Holy Spirit and the Word of God when it comes to your acceptance of what is being presented. We will in these coming days see a great deal that is religious presented to us and we will perhaps live to see the day when coming into this one world religion is the entrance of the antichrist.

As I now take you to the Word it my purpose to share with you that the Bible has a great deal to say about how God will present to us spiritual truth by the use of dreams. He did it in the Old Testament and it is clear from His Word that He will do it in these latter days. In Acts 2:17 “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh and your sons, and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” So we know that dreams are not bad and can truly be of God.

The dreams we are having presented in modern day books however, are not of this kind, they are not dreams from God but dreams from men, they are dreams that will cause us to go the way of the enemy and to be caught up in the coming of the antichrist and therefore I say, be careful, watch, and be on your guard, test the spirits and know whether or not they are from God. The kind of dreams that are being presented to us today and the kinds that on occasion the Father spoke of in the Old Testament are not the same.

Turn with me to Jeremiah 27:9 “Therefore, hearken not ye to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreamers, not to your enchanters, nor to your sorcerers, which speak unto you saying, ye shall not serve the King of Babylon.” As you know God had told Israel that they would be in bondage to Babylon, and yet there were spiritual leaders who were telling them they would not be. Men who were preaching the opposite of what God was saying. Now these men were preaching a popular and an accepted message but it was not the message of God. Notice the kind of things we see in this passage: divination, enchanters, sorcerers and dreamers. Notice the kind of things that go with these dreamers for they are sorcerers, diviners and enchanters. These are all forbidden things by God; they depend upon the stars as well as the enemy to give forth their message. We cannot receive a message that is from the enemy for if we do it will destroy us. Today, I ask you where do you think these messages on dreaming the dream of God and connecting to God’s dream come from? They are of course from the minds of men as the enemy controls them. It is very interesting to note that this word dreamer means to dream or to cause to dream, because dreamers cause other people to dream. It is also interesting to point out that it means to bind; amazing isn’t it, that these dreamers are binders, for they bind people up with their dreams? Finally, there is the indication that this word means a “sense of dumbness.” What a terrible indication of our world today that the receiving of these kind of dreams may very well come from a sense of dumbness, that in fact they probably create a spiritual dumbness within the body.

Jeremiah 23:28 is a wonderful passage concerning the spiritual problems that shepherds were having in Israel and gives us wonderful light concerning how we should be as shepherds. In verse 28 however, we read: “The prophet that hath a dream let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat: saith the Lord.” Our Father says in this passage to those who say they have a dream, go a head and give that dream, and those who have my Word, go a head and give my Word. What is the chaff, what is the outer shell compared to the inner shell, compared to the wheat? God knows that these false empty dreams that men want us to accept are nothing, and cannot compare to His Word, for His Word is meat, His Word is truth and richness and those who are His will always know the difference between the dreams of men and His Word. So I express to you go a head allow them to preach from their dreams for through out our country, through out our nation those who are the true children will not be deceived for they will know His Word and will run from these dreams. Wherever these New Age methods are coming into the church, wherever men are expressing that we need to connect to the dream, wherever they are teaching we must follow the dream these false messages are dividing the true children from the false. Today in churches around the country where these things are entering the church true children are raising up against it and so causing turmoil or they are simply leaving and finding a solid Christ centered and Word centered ministry. As I close, I urge you not to be deceived but to rest in the discernment that has been given by Christ and if you find yourself being caught up by the things that are being presented, then I pray that God will give you light that you might know true salvation and not simply religion.