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Code Orange: Joyce Meyer and The Sleight-of-Hand of Experientialism

Richard Haas

As the Heresy Olympics continue to rack up the medals of audaciousness at Elevation Church’s Code Orange Revival hosted by Steven Furtick, one of the speakers lined up to pontificate was Joyce Meyer.Joyce Meyer has spoken at Elevation Church in the recent past. In February of 2014, she spoke a carefully crafted sermon of erroneous proportions, called How You Finish. Not surprisingly Meyer is back again with another equally ill-fated message. This time, she is not only addressing just the Elevation Church crowd but everyone who is attending the Code Orange Revival and its various venues of dispersion.

As in customary fashion, Joyce Meyer delivered once again an inaccurate hermeneutical portrayal of the Word of God in this year’s Code Orange Revival event. Joyce Meyer spoke this past Monday, September 12th, 2016 for just over 60 minutes. It was during this “conversion” (I do not dare call what she spoke a sermon) in which I noticed several particular difficulties with her message. For a more detailed examination of the problems with Joyce Meyer’s message at this Code Orange Revival, please listen to the sermon review that I did over at The Cross†Roads Radio Show entitled “Experientialism of Joyce Meyer at The Code Orange Revival.”  In this review, I take a blow-by-blow look at the many errors plaguing Joyce Meyer’s presentation of late.

Since there are so many problems with what Joyce Meyer said at this event, I want to narrow down the scope of this blog post.  I would like to bring to your attention the overarching problematic theme of Joyce Meyer’s presentation at this year’s Code Orange Revival.  Joyce Meyer is exquisite at manipulating the crowd and playing with the enthusiasm and energy that she can stir up with her antidotal storytelling techniques.  It is this very ability that allows her to perform what I call “the heresy two-step.”

The heresy two-step is quite simple to perform and is more commonplace than most people realize.  All one needs to do to complete this sleight-of-hand is merely mix truth with a little bit of error. The formula of mixing truth with error is an essential practice among false teachers and those who want to deceive the body of Christ.

Joyce Meyer has used this two-step method in her presentation at this year’s Code Orange Revival event to gain the confidence of her audience. She achieves this sleight-of-hand by putting people at ease with the use of jokes and stories verse the use of actual Scripture to relay her message. When people’s guards are down, and they feel comfortable listening to the presenter, it is easy for that person to slip in a nugget of Scripture, usually done in an out of context fashion. For example, Meyer wait’s almost twelve minutes before quoting one line of Scripture. Then when she finally does give the audience scripture, it’s a twisted application of Matthew 21:18 from the Amplified Version of the Bible.

Meyer goes one step further in this sleight-of-hand two-step maneuver. She adds the promotion of experientialism. It is this use of experimentalism that becomes the main underlying themes in Meyer’s conversation. It’s the over-emphasis on the need for one’s experiences to dictate the validity of a person’s faith or even if they are a Christian or not.

Now, I am not saying that a person’s past experiences are not relevant in one’s walk with the Lord. Nor, do I deny that one’s experiences play an essential role in how a person comes to a proper understand of our Lord and Savior.

However, the problem comes in when an over-emphasis on experiences supersedes our identity of who we are in Christ.  This reversing of experiences over the Word of God, our identity in Christ and how we identify as Christians in the faith through Christ alone sets up a false dichotomy.  This misunderstanding of who we are in Christ by overrating our experiences verse what Scripture tells us who we are in Christ can lead to a dangerous outcome of a false conversion based on experientialism and not on Christ.  Sadly, a sleight-of-hand mixture of storytelling and experientialism that determines one’s Christianity was what those who listened to Joyce Meyer “preach” on Monday at the Code Orange Revival were forced to accept as a biblical message.

[Contributed by Richard Haas]

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