Joyce Meyer

[guest]

After your comment about Joyce Meyer, could you expand on why you consider her a heretic, and also give us a general explanation concerning what are heretical teachings?

[Mike Miller]

I'm glad to. For one thing, she preaches the Word-Faith message, which is one of the most dangerous false teachings the church has ever seen. She believes that our words actually contain power, and that what we speak comes to pass. Therefore, she and others like her promote the concept of humans having supernatural powers that the Bible never speaks about. Further along those lines, she teaches that we are "little gods." That is simply blasphemy. She teaches prosperity and health, which are also unbiblical. She actually teaches that the only reason you get sick is if you speak it or allow someone to speak it about you. You don't ever have to get sick if you will just stay on the offensive against the devil. Of course, one of her problems is that she uses the Amplified Bible, which is not the Bible. Oh, and she denies that our sins were atoned for on the cross. She said Jesus had to go to hell to atone for our sins.

Heresy is false teaching. Heresy is teaching things that contradict the Bible. Joyce Meyer clearly contradicts the Bible over and over again. Therefore, she is a heretic.

Check out these two articles:

www.letusreason.org/Popteac17.htm

www.pfo.org/wan-star.htm

[Guest]

I'm still chewing on the info about Joyce Meyer, but would like to question further the statement about the Amplified Bible. It seems a bit strong to label it "not the Bible." Why do you say this? From what I can tell, the Amp. was meant to be a true translation, as well as to include some other possible meanings for words used in the original languages. They seem to be well-differentiated in the actual Amp. by their system of brackets and parentheses, one type for actual translations and one for what I guess they'd call "amplifications." It's not my favorite necessarily, I just wondered why your statement about it is so strong? How might it be different from comparing verses in the NIV, ESV, NKJV, NASB, etc.? To say it is not the Bible is to, in my mind, put it on the level of The Book of Mormon, or other such documents. I'm not wanting to argue, just interested in your choice of words. Thanks!

[Mike Miller]

The Bible in English is a translation based on the best use of linguistic, cultural, and historical tools. The Amplified Bible provides some translation and a bunch of completely irrelevant suggestions which only lead to confusion and bad interpretation. Providing numerous meanings of a word is largely unhelpful, falling into the trap of what we call the fallacy of the totality of meaning. This fallacy assumes that any and every given meaning of a word is possible in any context, but that isn't true. Does the Amplified Bible contain the Bible? Yes. But it contains so much extraneous material that I don't think it can be called a Bible in its entirety. For example, I own commentaries on numerous books of the Bible. If a commentary on John contains the entire text of the book of John and then makes comment on the text, we would not call the commentary the book of John. It is a commentary. In a sense, the Amplified Bible is a commentary (and not a very good one in my opinion).

[guest]

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions; I know you're very busy! The commentary analogy really helps in looking at the Amp. version. It makes more sense to me now.