My Trip to LifeWay as a Member of #the15

For those of you who have seen my social media, be it Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, you probably know that I, like many others, support #the15. I believe that it is wrong for LifeWay to support and sell heresy for a profit. I recently entered in to a LifeWay store, and I took pictures of each bad book I found in there.I must note that there were sound teachers in that store. I saw John MacArthur, David Platt, and Ray Comfort. I also know that store sells Ron Rhodes, R.C. Sproul, James White, and a number of others. That is not the issue. The issue is that they also sell much heresy and make money off of it. They have John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress on the same shelf as Mark Batterson’s The Circle Maker. Hear that? That is the sound of my fellow reformed Baptist (Bunyan) rolling in his grave. His book, which proclaims Biblical Truth, on the same shelf as mystic false doctrine. It isn’t just that Bunyan wouldn’t want it, but God would not want this. He commands,

“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” – 2 Corinthians 6:14 (ESV)

Futhermore, when the people in the temple were profiting wrongly from false religion in Matthew 21:12-16, Jesus drove them from the place and rebuked them. I would dare to say that he would do the same to each LifeWay bookstore who sells a Bible on the same shelf as the Passion “Translation”.Without any more delay, here are the pictures from my trip.

The first books I noticed were Jesus Calling and Jesus Today by Sarah Young. Both of these books are written by a Mystic False Prophetess. She claims to have spoken directly to God. She even claimed these Books were divinely inspired. That would make them on par with the Bible, which they obviously aren’t. Within Jesus Calling, the more popular of the two, she claims God said,

“Communicate with me continually and I will put My thoughts in your mind.”

Really? What of those faithful believers who pray daily and don’t receive these thoughts? Why are these thoughts necessary? Is the Bible not enough?God did not say this. If this came from anyone other than Sarah Young, this came from the enemy. It is very well possible that it is demonic. She said in the book,

“My last recorded promise to My followers was: ‘Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'”

God is infallible. He can not make a mistake. If you don’t believe that, you aren’t a Christian. You may ask, how is this relevant to the quote? That was not the last promise he made to his followers. His last promise to his followers was, “Surely I am coming soon.” (Revelation 22:20 ESV).This book may very well be the worst that LifeWay sells. If anything can combat it, it is the next duo.

The Circle Maker and Draw the Circle by Mark Batterson are two books written by yet another mystic detailing the life of a Jewish Mystic and drawing lessons from it. Honi ha-M’agel was a Jewish Mystic. He once drew a circle and said he would not leave until God sent rain. When rain eventually did come, he still didn’t leave because it was not enough. This is blasphemy, plain and simple. He is certainly not a man we should be concerning ourselves with. Mark Batterson writes,

“God does not answer vague prayers. The more specific your prayers are, the more glory God receives.”

I think Jesus would disagree. In Matthew 6:7-8 (ESV) he said,

“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”

Not only does Jesus specifically say not to do what Mark Batterson said, but he said this is what the Gentiles do. In some translations it says “Pagans”. Pagan means unbeliever. At that time they encountered three main groups of Gentiles on a common basis, Romans who believed in the Roman Pantheon; Greeks who believed in the Greek Pantheon; and Samaritans, who believed many heresies concerning the God of Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham. We are not to pray like them, who try to be ultra specific, but instead pray remembering that God knows our needs before we even ask.

Ben Carson is a good politician. However, he holds to heretical theology. I have already gone over these in a recent blog, and the SBC has already recognized these. He is a Seventh Day Adventist. He believes William Miller and Ellen G. White were prophets. He believes that Hell isn’t eternal, but just destroys one’s soul. Personally, he believes that Muslims and Jews worship our God. He believes we are obligated to follow Old Testament Ceremonial Law in a legalistic way. More so, this book is more political than Christian. While it is no issue that a Christian may read it, it is an issue that it is being sold as a Christian book.

Andy Stanley, not to be confused with his father, Charles Stanley, is an emergent leader. He has recently bashed expository preaching and spoke in favor homosexuality. The very subtext on the cover should be an issue. If the Unchurched, which is an unnecessary euphemism for unsaved, love to come to your Church, there is an issue. The Bible makes it clear that they hate God. So, if God is being preached, then the unconverted will hate the preaching. He is most accurately referred to by someone I know as “The Brian McLaren of the 2010s”.

An entire shelf dedicated to Beth Moore. Beth Moore is not a safe teacher to listen to. I know of many people who think she is sound, and I know of many people who like her. But read this quote,

“And tonight I am gonna do my absolute best to illustrate to you something that God showed me sitting out on the back porch. He put a picture I’ve explained to you before I’m a very visual person. So he speaks to me very often in putting a picture in my head and it was as if I was raised up, looking down on a community as I saw the church in that particular dimension.”

She claims that she gets visions. Literal Visions. When taken to its logical conclusion, believing in literal visions in modern times must mean that you either believe Scripture is not complete or not enough. It isn’t enough that she claims to get such Extra-Biblical and Un-Biblical revelation. She claims it is on the same level as scripture,

“As we study we may see several examples of Him [Christ] posing a question that only He could answer. Christ certainly uses that teaching method with me. Sometimes He’ll cause me to dig through Scripture for a question He seemed to initiate. Other times the question may come as a personalized whisper in my heart: ‘Beth, why are you acting that way?’ Often my answer is ‘I don’t know, Lord! Can you tell me why?’ If I really search His heart, sooner or later He’ll give me insight into my reactions.”

Rick Warren is another SBC favorite. This is in spite of the fact that he proposes Chrislam. That means he believes the Christian God and the Muslim Idol, Allah, is the same God. He has also said the Pope is the leader of all Christians, not just Catholics, falsely asserting that the Pope is even a Christian. He once opposed homosexuality, but has since then publicly apologized. He is also very likely an emergent leader.In this particular book, he takes a passage from Daniel and yanks it out of context.

“But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs.” – Daniel 1:8-9 (ESV)

He uses it to set up a diet. That is plainly not what the text was intended for. He refused the food because the food was, in modern terms, Non-Kosher. It did not follow the Mosaic Law, which Daniel was intended to follow. It would be a sin for Daniel to eat these foods, and he was honoring God by not doing so. Gotquestions.com wrote plainly,

“The Bible nowhere commands believers to observe a Daniel fast.”

There are many other books and I could go on for days. I will put a gallery below of the other pictures I took. In the end, we should not be selling this stuff in a Christian bookstore. It is easier for me to shop at the secular bookstore, because, even though they sell Bart Erhman and Matt Chandler’s The Explicit Gospel is right next to Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, they don’t masquerade these books as accurate, claim loyalty to God (Which LifeWay clearly has shown they don’t have), or fool baby Christians into thinking these are good. We must stand with God’s word and keep heresy off of our shelves. As for these books, there is one shelf I think they belong on: