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The author
Micael Grenholm, a Swedish charismactivist, apologist and author.
A Witch Set Free by Jesus
Originally posted on Jesus Army’s website.
Swedish speaker and author Désirée Kjellin used to be a witch involved with occultism, but a powerful encounter with Jesus transformed her completely.
“IT’S great that yoga suits you”, the psychologist told Désirée. “I think meditation would be the perfect next step.”
He recommended these practices with good intentions, wanting to promote Désirée’s mental health, but little did he know that he indirectly put her on a very dangerous path.
Désirée’s yoga teacher was a passionate believer in new age, and before long she taught Désirée not just the practices of eastern meditation, but also shamanism, Reiki healing and Kundalini.
Désirée joined her at secret pagan meetings in Swedish forests where people worshipped the moon, as well as interacting with “spiritual guides” who for Désirée were a deceased Native American chief and a Samurai. During deep meditation, they became so real to her that she could physically touch them and speak to them. (more…)
How do We Know Which Religion is True?
With so many religions in the world, how can we know which one is correct even if we’re convinced that God exists? Here I show why the most common arguments within Christian apologetics point to the Christian God specifically, and so if they work other religions have to be false. From the Spiritual Q&A class at Holy Treasure, Kettering.
10 Self-defeating Statements You Should Stop Using
As a culture that despises logic, Western society is filled with self-defeating ideas and ideologies that people throw out into discussions and debates as self-evident truths. While there can be doubts and question marks concerning many things, we know that these self-defeating statements are false because logically incoherent concepts cannot exist. These statements are as non-existing as square circles, finite eternities and married bachelors.
An example of a self-defeating statement that is, thankfully, less commonly used is “This statement is false”. It cannot be true on its own standards, and therefore it’s meaningless and there’s no point in taking it seriously. Another example is “No words that I write have any meaning”. If it was true, then nobody needs to care about what I just wrote.
The following 10 statements are much more commonly used, especially in discussions about God, religion, metaphysics and philosophy. You may very well find that you have used some of them yourself, and has taken for granted that it is an obvious fact even though on closer inspection, it does not meet its own standards. If so I highly recommend that you simply stop using them. (more…)
A Defence for the Miraculous Argument
Since I first presented my formulation of the miraculous a argument for God’s existence I’ve made a slight adjustment. The content is the same but I’ve added an extra premise (2), and because of that an extra conclusion (4), to clarify why the argument is valid even if it isn’t God himself that’s responsible for a certain miracle. This is how I nowadays formulate the argument:
- If miracles occur, a supernatural reality exists
- If a supernatural reality exists, God exists
- Miracles occur
- Therefore, a supernatural reality exists
- Therefore, God exists
As this is a deductive argument, the conclusions (4 and 5) are necessarily true if it can be shown that the premises (1-3) are true. So let me briefly defend each one of them.
1. If miracles occur, a supernatural reality exists
This premise is fairly non-controversial as long as one gets the definition of “miracle” straight. The definition I have suggested is a supernatural act impacting nature as demanded by human beings. However, if one uses a definition that doesn’t mention the supernatural cause, for example an event requested by humans which is scientifically and naturally inexplicable, then one needs to defend the first premise by showing why it is more plausible than not that such events have a supernatural cause rather than an unknown natural cause. If the supernatural cause is integrated into the definition of miracles on the other hand, such a defence belong to premise 3.
Idolatry isn’t About Distracting Hobbies – It’s Far Worse
Idols – worship highly discouraged
“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” – 1 Jn 5:21
Reading the prophetic books of the Old Testament for the first time, I was almost a bit annoyed by the constant warnings against idolatry. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea and others constantly bring up how bad idolatry is and how silly idol-worshippers are, bowing down for statues they themselves have made.
I was like, yeah yeah, I get it. Idols are bad, move on please. I thought that not worshipping other gods than God was lesson one of Christianity, the most fundamental ethic of them all, and so constantly repeating it throughout Scripture felt unnecessary. In my view it was as if the driving instructor would constantly remind you to sit behind the wheel when driving an electric car.
Others must have felt the same way, because when the topic of idolatry came up in my church, people started to forcingly convince themselves that they were idolaters somehow. We’ve all stolen, been jealous or murdered sometime, at least if you define the latter as being angry which Jesus seems to do in Mt 5, and so to make sure that idolatry wasn’t something we could just say that we happily avoid, our youth pastor told us that an idol is “everything that you put higher than God”. It could be money, sex, power or Pokèmon. And you didn’t have to worship it, just immerse yourself into it. (more…)
Biblical Discernment, New Age and Jason Westerfield
Former Christian evangelist Jason Westerfield has become a new age preacher, and sadly some Christians still think that he’s preaching the Gospel. In this video, me and my American friend Zane Welton discuss what the Bible says, what Jason is preaching, and how the two collide. If you’d like to join a Google Hangout on miracles, evangelism, activism or some other topic covered on this blog sometime, just let me know.
In this video, I explain why I don’t just let false teaching pass and remain silent, but apologetically rebukes it:
Update on What Jason Preached on the November 28 Web Conference
As you can see in the commentary section of my previous blog post, some people still aren’t convinced that Jason has abandoned Christianity and preaches new age – they think that what he says in the video is completely compatible with following Jesus. Apparently, several Christians attended Jason’s web conference on November 28th either because they thought he was OK or because they wanted to know what was going on. The following is a statement by some of these Christians, where they describe in detail some of the stuff that Jason was saying: (more…)
It’s Official: Jason Westerfield Preaches New Age
One of the most popular and controversial blog posts on this site is Does Bill Johnson rebuking Jason Westerfield prove that Bethel is New Age? In it, I commented on how Bethel Church pastor Bill Johnson warned against the false teachings of a friend and student of his, Jason Westerfield. I pointed to some indications that Jason is preaching astrological new age, and therefore I thought that Bill had done the right thing.
However, no public comment on this from Jason himself could be found online. Because of this many people questioned whether we should take the claims of Bill Johnson, along with film producer Darren Wilson who knows both these guys and affirmed that he had heard Jason talk about aliens, at face value. What if they’re wrong?
Well, they weren’t. Now there’s official proof that Jason is, in fact, a new age consultant, as I explain here:
Fundamentalist Non-Religion and the Limits of Apologetics
Church Outreach at a Come In, Go Out-meeting
At least one Sunday a month we have “Come in, go out”-meetings in my house church, where we firstly gather in my living room for some worship, prayer and Bible study, and then we go out on the streets of Uppsala to hand out coffee and evangelize. Yesterday, we had two remarkable encounters during the outreach phase.
A Kurdish man came, received a cup of coffee and then loudly announced “I don’t believe in religion! Not in Islam, Christianity or anything else!” Thinking that this was an atheist, I started to bring up some apologetic arguments for God’s existence, but they fell flat to the ground. “I do believe in a creator! But not in religion! It is impossible for humans to understand God and to have contact with him!”
Oh, so it’s a deist then, I thought. My friend Tryggve and I then started to question him on how the Creator is able to create an entire universe without being able to cure a disease or talk to those that He has created, but our attempts were unsuccesful as the man repeatedly just stated “It’s impossible! It’s impossible! You don’t understand!” I then started to testify about miracles that I have witnessed and how Jesus revealed Himself to me, but I could hardly finish a sentence before the man shouted “No! Those are just illusions! You don’t understand the truth!”
The man furthermore claimed that we all believe what we believe because of our upbringing, whereas I told him about the amazing church growth in Nepal, where millions have converted to Christianity during the last 30 years mainly due to visions, healings, signs and wonders. Again, his response was that it was impossible. I asked him how he knew that it was impossible, and he claimed that “everybody” knew miracles are impossible. When I pointed out that this was a lie since we Christians know that miracles exist, he again said that miracles are impossible and that God does not reveal Himself to people. (more…)
Does Bill Johnson rebuking Jason Westerfield prove that Bethel is New Age?
Two weeks ago something quite unusal happened: Bill Johnson, pastor in Bethel Church, Redding, which is one of the most influential charismatic churches in the US, opened his Sunday sermon with publicly warning against prophetic evangelist Jason Westerfield. Westerfield has been a student at Bethel, and both he and Johnson were filmed in the amazing charismatic documentaries Finger of God and Furious Love, that covers miraculous stuff that God is doing around the globe.
Now, Johnson said, “There has actually been a spiritual deception welcomed in his life to such a degree that it’s absolutely frightening. In over 40 years of ministry, I’ve never seen one individual being able to spiritually contaminate so many in one night…. The deception is crazy, there’s a real insanity involved.”
Darren Wilson, who has made the documentaries mentioned above, comments this on his Charisma blog (which I really recommend). He says that since Furious Love he hadn’t met Jason until a brief meeting two years ago, which perplexed him:
…the longer we talked, the more my heart sank. This wasn’t the same guy I had known. In fact, he was hardly recognizable to me anymore.
I won’t get into the particulars of our meeting or what we talked about, but suffice to say that Jason steered it into very odd and bizarre territory (aliens, interplanetary travel, etc.) and the whole time I just kept thinking, “What does any of this have to do with the gospel?“
True False Prophets
Bill Johnson, Randy Clark and Heidi Baker aren’t false prophets, as some wrongfully claim, but who then are true false prophets? About a month ago I argued in a Youtube video that several charismatic leaders are falsely accused if being false prophets by primarily Christian internet warriors; many of them are even accused of being driven by false, demonic spirit.
A popular theory is that Kundalini spirits from India have infected large parts if the Christian, charismatic movement, but as I showed one month ago this Kundalini myth has neither biblical nor empirical support, and so saying that influential charismatic leaders are Hindus in disguise is quite similar to the claim that the pope and US president are alien lizards in disguise.
I received some feedback on my Kundalini Myth video that I want to address today. My friend Robert Martin wondered if it isn’t so that “weird manifestations” may be the result of demonic activity, even if the person has not any connection to a Kundalini sect. He mentions dog barking and laughter.
When the Prophets Are Silent, People Turn to the Mayans
The Mayans – nice people, bad prophets
Musician and prophetic evangelist Simon Adahl once shared on Facebook how he had met a man who, after listening to Simon’s numerous miracle stories, exclaimed: “I had no idea that the church had something to do with the supernatural!” Simon was both surprised and sad when he heard this. Is the Western church so bad at representing God that people don’t realize He is a supernatural being?
I think we are. Even Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in the West often lack the abundance of signs and wonders we read about in the book of Acts. Other churches don’t even believe in it, or they are extremely careful, fearing that they would scare people away if they became “too” miraculous. They view signs and wonders as a danger and a temptation, and thus healers, prophets and wonder-workers are rare among them.
The New Age movement, on the other hand, loves miracles. And I believe that many turn to New Age because they are not satisfied with unmiraculous cultural Christendom that is being offered them in the church. Today, the Maya Calender has recieved massive attention around the world because it ends today, which according to some means that the world is doing the same. And this is not a marginal phenomenon. Around 10% of the global population thinks that there is a possibility that the world end this year because of the Mayan Calendar.
Why are all these people viewing the Mayans as a prophetic authority? Most of them do not worship Mayan gods. Most of them do not live according to Mayan culture. Still, for many the simple statement “the Mayans said so” is a sufficient argument for thinking that the apocalypse may come today, even though they have no plans about starting sacrificing animals to the serpent god Kukulkan. Thus, in order to debunk the theory, Mayan scholars have to argue why the Mayan calender did not predict the end of the world but just an epoch shift, rather than questioning why people view the calender as prophetic in the first place.
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