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Furtick's Heretical "Church"
 
By Vince and Lori Williams
www.vinceandloriministries.blogspot.com
 
 
 
On Resurrection Sunday, April 8, 2012, popular young "pastor" Steven Furtick of the extremely seeker-friendly Elevation "church" in North Carolina, brought a message entitled Seven Mile Miracle, based on the events that transpired on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13). Elevation also has added a new element of emotional manipulation to their "experiences" by playing soft earthy music during the entire experience. The majority of the message was a huge mess, but we won't go into all of it now. Steven has been doing a LOT of traveling this year so far, and one of those excursions was to Israel. So he began his easter sermon with video footage of himself walking on a dusty road just outside Emmaus, in Israel, reading from Luke 24.
 
He started his "sermon" by misinterpreting the text in verse 14 when it talks about the disciples being kept from recognizing Jesus. He interpreted this verse by using details from a report he saw regarding a condition called Face Blindness. Apparently this condition specifically keeps people from recognizing/remembering faces. He said the disciples in this verse were experiencing face-blindness.........then he seems to contradict himself reading verse 31 later which says that their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus. Furtick goes on the say that "we each in our own way have a sort of face blindness when it comes to recognizing God. God has been walking with us all of our lives......and all along the journey He's been right there........we can miss the miracle that's standing right in front of our eyes." So Jesus walks with people, anyone, ALL their lives, but they just don't see Him? Biblically, that's not possible. Steven also explained the "Seven sayings of Jesus on the cross" and the  "Seven Mile Journey that God takes us on." Huh?
 
Last, but certainly not least, when the invitation was given, Steven not only led everyone in a "simple prayer" to be saved, but also prefaced that prayer by saying "The Lord instructed me specifically when we put this worship experience together, that when we got to this part that I needed to boldly stand up and hold the microphone, and lead people who are far away from God who are being drawn closer to His presence, in a time of response........" (bold emphasis ours) So the Lord instructed him specifically and gave him extra-biblical revelation?
 
The following week, on April 15, Steven did something that disqualified Elevation from being called a church......he allowed his wife, Holly, to take the pulpit (for the 2nd time) to kick off their series Waiting Room. We won't spend much time on this one because a female should not be in the pulpit (Titus 1:6, 1 Tim 2:11-12), so we'll briefly show the error. Waiting Room was supposedly based on the idea that Christians should wait on the Lord during trials or times of life that are hard to understand, and not complain. Steven was still in Israel, and so he introduces his wife from a recorded video of himself in Jerusalem. The message was based on Acts 16:22-40 (which was barely mentioned in the "sermon"), and Holly explained that we have to change our waiting room into a work room because that's what Paul and Silas did while in prison. She said you have to "resist the urge to complain, and fill your situation with praise" and goes on to quote from The Message. She said she now has a habit of saying "three things that I'm thankful for, and as I began to do that I could feel my whole mood just lift and change."  She also said "God is just saying 'Just enjoy the journey that you're on with Me' ".
 
 
Last, but not in any way least, on April 22, 2012, during Furtick's second Waiting Room installment, he invited word-of faith/modalist heretic TD Jakes to preach from his pulpit. Apparently this is becoming a habitual pattern for Furtick, since he had Jakes preach from the Elevation pulpit already once before on January 20, 2012 during their Code Orange Revival.  Furtick started off his "preaching" time on  April 22  reminding his congregants of their previous encounter with Jakes (during Code Orange), and then jokingly said to them and Jakes "I'm still trying to get people used to my level of preaching anointing after you [Jakes] came in here and jacked it up and set their expectations so high that I never want to play ball again."
 
In his beginning remarks, Jakes made an indirect reference to his new book Let It Go (and extensive recent travel to promote it) by saying "I have been traveling here and there and everywhere under what I really believe is a mandate from the Lord to share with the body of Christ, in all of it's facets, a message that is so simple..........just a message on forgiveness." So God has given Jakes a specific mandate for the Body? We think not.
 
Jakes continued by take several scriptures out of context (nothing unusual for him), one of which was Matt. 18:20. In a passage describing church discipline, Jakes said that this describes a "system of fellowship". He continued by doing some icogesis (adding to the biblical text) and saying "He's [God] saying, 'you don't have to have a building, you don't have to have a choir, you don't have to have a stage.......an organ........a tambourine, or anything..........if just two or three are....' God says 'I will step into your fellowship. I will manifest myself.' "  Jakes continues even further, "Peter understood the deeper meaning of that, that Christ had put a system in place, that His vertical presence, His glory coming down, was predicated upon our ability to have horizontal relationships..........and God was smart because if we could go to heaven without getting along with anybody, we probably would." (emphasis ours)  Is Jakes trying to say that eternal salvation is dependent on getting along with everyone? Sure sounds like it. 
His final remarks?  "My prayer, my anointing, my calling, my passion, my mission is to go around the country, and to deliver a spiritual maneuver that releases you so that you can walk into another dimension."
 
In summary, Steven Furtick has become, and is rapidly progressing, into one of the world most popular "pastors" in the seeker-friendly movement and also this year the word-of-faith/prosperity movement. He is quickly beginning to heavily mix the word-of-faith heresy with his already established, and growing, multi-site seeker-friendly church. Furtick has fully risen to heretic status by having TD Jakes preach twice in his pulpit (forbidden by scripture, 2 John 1:9-11), as well as have his wife preach (twice), and having other heretics fill his pulpit earlier this year. What's next for Furtick? In July he will be joining Joyce Meyer, Joseph Prince, and others at Hillsong for their 2012 conference. We'll keep you updated as the year goes on. Steven Furtick has infiltrated the evangelical world at full speed, and he's not stopping.
 
 
www.vinceandloriministries.blogspot.com
vinceandloriministries@gmail.com