Welcome to another “potpourri” edition of The Mailbag, where I give short(er) answers to several questions rather than a long answer to one question.
I like to take the opportunity in these potpourri editions to let new readers know about my comments/e-mail/messages policy. I’m not able to respond individually to most e-mails and messages, so here are some helpful hints for getting your questions answered more quickly. Remember, the search bar (at the very bottom of each page) can be a helpful tool!
Or maybe I answered your question already? Check out my article The Mailbag: Top 10 FAQs to see if your question has been answered and to get some helpful resources.
This comment was left on my article Guest Post: Lauren Daigle and the Fruit of “Losing her Religion”.*
The depth of faith in Jesus that Lauren Daigle conveys through her music has helped me to worship and pray on my knees through some very difficult times. God has spoken to me time and again through the words of her songs. God is using her in a beautiful way. Every time I hear her sing, I am pointed to God who is the supplier of all my needs. I did a Google search to find her testimony of when she was 15 to share with my 15 year old daughter and found this article. I am surprised to hear such a different view.
That’s because this “view” is telling you the truth according to Scripture instead of scratching your itching ears like all the others, and unfortunately, that’s a rarity. God is using Lauren, all right. He’s using her as judgment against those who fall for the unbiblical things she puts out there. She and her music are just stroking your fleshly feelings, not bringing you closer to God. Nothing you’ve said in this comment has any basis in Scripture. It’s all fleshly desires which are not from God, but from the world. And you definitely shouldn’t be infecting your daughter with this garbage.
Now, I know your feelings are probably all shaken up after reading that. Good. Use that. Let it motivate you to stop being led around by the nose by your feelings, grow up in Christ, engage the beautiful brain God gave you, pick up your Bible, and start studying it in a serious, systematic way so you can learn the truth of God’s Word instead of the lies you’re being fed by someone masquerading as an angel of light. You don’t have time to mess around with this junk any more. Your daughter is already 15. She’ll be out on her own before you know it. You’ve got to be a spiritually mature woman of God so you can train her to be a spiritually mature woman of God before it’s too late. (And for any readers who are fooling around with any other false teachers, all of this goes for you, too.)
Homework assignment:
- Carefully and prayerfully study through the Scriptures and materials at the What Must I Do to be Saved? tab in the blue menu bar at the top of this page, and make sure you’ve repented and believed the biblical gospel. I’m not saying you’re definitely not saved, I’m saying sometimes the reason someone is deceived into thinking the ungodly is godly is because she’s not saved (see also John 10 and 1 Corinthians 2:14). I have no idea whether or not you’re saved, and I don’t need to know, but you need to know for sure.
- If you’re not a faithful, invested member of a doctrinally sound local church, go to the Searching for a new church? tab in the blue menu bar at the top of this page, and start scouring the church search engines for a good church near you. If you’re a member of a church you think is doctrinally sound, go to that same tab, scroll down to the “What to look for in a church” section and start comparing your church to the items there. If your church doesn’t match up, scroll back up to the search engines and start looking for a new church. You need to be in a solid church sitting under pastors and teachers who rightly handle God’s Word and feed you copious amounts of it.
(For any readers who already have your undies in a bunch about the tone of this answer not being “loving” enough, I will be glad to hear your comments after you’ve memorized Ephesians 4:11-16 and meditated on it every day for a month.)
*It just occurs to me that we haven’t had a good guest post in a while. If your theology pretty much matches up with mine (as outlined in the “Welcome” and “Statement of Faith” tabs in the blue menu bar at the top of this page) and you’d like to contribute a guest post, drop me an e-mail at MichelleLesley1@yahoo.com, and let’s chat about it. (Two things, just to save you a little time: a) email me before writing the article, b) it will have to be an original article, not a re-post of something you’ve written for your own blog.)
When I click on [a link in a particular article on Michelle’s blog] it takes me some place that looks dangerous. I’m leaving this here because I couldn’t find where to email you. Thanks!
No, thank you! I am always so grateful when readers let me know that a link is broken or that they’ve found a typo or some other grammatical error. If you find something like that, please let me know – I want to fix it!
In the case of broken links, often what has happened is that, at some point after I posted the link, whoever wrote the article I linked to deleted the article or the entire website. Or maybe she started a new blog or website and moved the article there, and I didn’t know about it. The transient nature of the internet – gotta love it. Or not.
My email address can be found at the Contact & Social Media tab (let’s all say it together! :0) “in the blue menu bar at the top of this page”. All I ask is that anyone who’s considering emailing me please read the information under the heading Important information. Please read before e-mailing. before emailing me.
I’m not sure if [Priscilla Shirer] has always harbored unbiblical doctrine or has in the more recent past had a fall. If the latter is the case (not knowing the timeline), my question is: are books she’s previously written alright to read or should I avoid all teachings, even ones from the past? This has been a recurring theme for my husband and I (sic) as we’ve had a few conversations with friends who have been deceived by false teachers.
It’s really great that you want to be discerning about the materials you consume. Way to go!
I’m asked this question fairly regularly, most often about Priscilla Shirer and Beth Moore. “Has she always been a false teacher or did she start off biblical and later went off the rails?”
I can’t say definitively, but my best guess is that Beth Moore has never been doctrinally sound because Beth Moore’s continual trajectory away from holiness and sound doctrine indicates that she is not a Believer. (I mean, if you’re a Believer, with the Holy Spirit living inside you and sanctifying you, you grow more like Christ and in alignment with Scripture over the years, not less.) And if you’re not a Believer, well, a broken clock might be right twice a day, but that does not a qualified Bible teacher make at any point in her career.
I’m slightly less familiar with Priscilla Shirer’s doings over the last few decades, but her trajectory away from sound doctrine seems similar. I participated in a group study of her book, He Speaks to Me, shortly after it came out in 2005, and (as you can surmise from the title) she was already teaching extra-biblical revelation at that point. And that was almost 20 years ago when her career was just starting to take off.
There’s also another issue at play here. You may think there was nothing unbiblical in a false teacher’s older works, but – think about it – if you’re a genuinely regenerated Christian, that means God has been growing you in all aspects of Christlikeness over the years, including discernment. Was that teacher actually doctrinally sound back then, or were you just less discerning and less knowledgeable of Scripture? If you go back and re-read those books now, you might be surprised at what jumps out at you!
My advice? Why go dumpster diving in search of a diamond which might turn out to be a dirty piece of plastic when you can go into a nice clean, reputable jewelry store and buy what you know is a diamond? In other words, stop fooling around with people who have proved themselves to be false teachers. If you’re looking for a Bible study, go straight to the source and study directly from the text of Scripture. If you’re looking for a theology or “Christian living” type of book, go to trustworthy, tried and true pastors and authors who have stayed faithful to Christ and His Word for decades.
Do you know why some Christians leave out the article “the” when speaking about the Holy Spirit and the Father? Do you know what the original Scriptures say…”the” or no “the” when referring to them? I understand leaving the article out when addressing them directly in prayer, but it just sounds strange to me when speaking “about” them. I’m wondering if either way is fine.
So, if it’s been a while since you’ve studied grammar, basically what this reader is saying is that some evangelicals have developed the practice of using “Holy Spirit” (and apparently “Father” now, too) like they’re God’s first name or nickname. Like, “Father answered one of my prayers!” or “Holy Spirit really blessed me today!”. I don’t know, to me it sounds like you’re calling these members of the Trinity “Bob” or something. It just hits my ear, and this reader’s ear, and maybe your ear funny. English speakers have been saying “the Father” and “the Holy Spirit” for hundreds of years now and old habits die hard.
It’s not sinful or unbiblical to talk this way if you’re a doctrinally sound Christian who’s speaking reverently and not regarding the Godhead as your homeboys, it’s just weird.
If you find yourself speaking this way, I would just suggest you ask yourself a couple of questions: “Why did I start doing this?” and “From whom did I learn this?”
If you started doing this because, as the reader suggested, the original Greek does not use “the article ‘the’,” that’s fine, assuming the original Greek is what you speak on a daily basis. But I suspect it’s not. I suspect you speak 21st century English, or the reader would not have picked up on this little quirk of yours. You speak English, so use the rules of English grammar.
In Spanish, the adjective comes after the noun, so you would say, “I have a car blue,” whereas, in English the adjective comes before the noun, and that’s why we say, “I have a blue car.” You don’t apply Greek grammar when speaking English any more than you would apply Spanish grammar when speaking English because that doesn’t make any sense. Every language has its own grammatical rules.
Greek – even the Greek the Bible was written in – isn’t some magical heavenly language. It was just the common language of the time that most literate people could read. That’s why God chose that language. If He were writing the Bible today, He’d probably write it in English for the same reason. So there’s no need to import bits and pieces of Greek grammar into our English conversations as pretense to greater holiness
The only issue with omitting “the” in front of “Father” and “Holy Spirit” is that this is typically a practice of some of the deepest, darkest corners of the New Apostolic Reformation. You hear that omitted “the,” and you’re probably about to hear some off the wall “prophecies,” speaking in “tongues,” decreeing/declaring, and more, close on its heels. Even if the person dropping the “the” is someone you know to be doctrinally sound, unless that person is new to the English language, she probably picked it up from somebody in, or influenced by, the NAR. I noted this way back in 2014 in my article Top 10 NAR* and Seeker-Driven Buzzwords (see #7).
Omitting “the”? It’s not sinful, just weird.
If you have a question about: a Bible passage, an aspect of theology, a current issue in Christianity, or how to biblically handle a family, life, or church situation, comment below (I’ll hold all questions in queue {unpublished} for a future edition of The Mailbag) or send me an e-mail or private message. If your question is chosen for publication, your anonymity will be protected.
Michelle Lesley 
Excellent mailbag! On the note of omitting “the”, it always makes me think of Mormons, as they seem to do that. I didn’t know that the NAR people do it, too!
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I would also add re:false teacher materials-even if something earlier were more biblical, each time you purchase their resources, you are supporting them financially TODAY.
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Very true.
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