We read in Scripture that Jesus was tempted of the devil .  One of the temptations set before Jesus in the wilderness was to bow down to Satan so that he would receive the power and wealth of the kingdoms of the earth.  According to teaching within many churches in the West today we would say that this offer was a blessing and that we should reach out and accept it.  This is because we would be receiving what we had been asking for from God.  Riches, wealth, and power.  Instead Jesus said to Satan, ‘it is written that we must worship God alone’.  The devil made this offer, but there were conditions and strings attached.

Jesus did not accept this offer because it was circumventing what God intended for him.  Jesus was to receive the kingdoms of the earth, but it was to be had through the cross and his subsequent resurrection from the dead.   What this teaches us is that the method matters, the motive matters, and the way scripture is taught matters.  It is the difference between truth and error.

The current methods of the Positive Faith Movement are incorrect.  They are using new age and occultist methods to teach believers how to receive the blessings of God.  The  method of confessing what you want so that it will come into existence is the same method used within non-Christian spiritual movements in the West today.

There is a story told in the Bible about trying to enter the sheep pen by another way.  John 10:1 “Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. ² The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.”

Jesus is talking to the teachers of the law in the above quote from scripture. He is saying to them that you have to enter into the things of God in the right way or you are a thief and a robber.  I believe that many teachers in our day have taken the scriptures and taught them by ‘climbing’  into them in an incorrect way.   These teachers often claim either outwardly or subtly that there is no need for obedience,  sacrifice, or self-denial in the Christian life.  The scriptures teach otherwise.  We need to pay attention to the “ifs” when we read the New Testament.  “If you overcome you will receive….

1 John 2: 18, Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. ¹⁹ They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.  

This passage of scripture in I John is about those who left the teachings of the Apostles after they had gone out from the church at Jerusalem and began to teach and preach a message that was classified later as antichrist by the Apostle John.