BETH EZRA TEACHING

............................ he that has ears to hear, let him hear................................

Volume Four , Issue 2~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Summer 2000

God Chasers by John MacLeod

The Body of Christ has been stirred up of late by a self-published book by Tommy Tenney entitled The God Chasers. Churches, Bible studies and Christian groups of all sorts are buzzing about this latest proof of God's weighty presence coming into the midst of a meeting.

To say the book is controversial is an understatement; to say it is the most needed, most recent word from God to our generation is quite popular; to throw up cautionary warnings, or (gasp) dare to denounce Tenney's writings as dangerous heresy is to risk becoming as rejected as Jeremiah in his day.

As of 1999, Tenney's book is in its fourteenth printing. That, by any publishing standard, is a successful book, especially since the book was copyrighted in 1998. To be in its fourteenth printing inside of two years is phenonmenal. Not a few feel that God Himself is behind the mercurial rise of Tenney's noteriety. Tenney's manuscript is intended to prepare God's dry-as-dust churches to get ready for anything when He shows up by surprise in a meeting.

What is the message of The God Chasers?

Tenney pinpoints what he sees as the Church's present, pitiful condition. He says that it is listless, not very hungry for God, stuck in moldy, man-made tradtions, and out of touch with His personal presence. In fact, Tenney indicates that God's people are not even expecting Him actively in their meetings. He indicates that worshippers leaving church are uninspired, unmotivated and still spiritually dull. And aching for a manifestation of God.

In the first chapter Tenney relates an event that awed him and all who beheld it. During a service he was invited to assist the regular pastor as a guest pastor, the "sleepy crowd with their low key worship" was gathered for the early service, but Tenney and the pastor sensed "more of God pouring into the sanctuary" than was usual. He likened it to Isaiah 6 where the prophet beheld the throne of the Almighty. He used phrases such as "...air was so thick. You could scarcely breathe..." and "At times the air was so rarified that it became unbreathable...."

The pastor read 2 Chronicles 7:14 (If My people...), then gripped the high tech, acrylic pulpit with "trembling hands" and said something to the effect that God's people were not to be seeking His benefits, but to seek Him. "We are not to seek His hands any longer, but seek His face."

At that moment the sound of a thunderclap reverberated throughout the building, the pastor was thrown 10 feet backwards (where he remained unconscious for some hours) and the pulpit fell forward, knocking over the flower arrangement in front of it, falling in two pieces before (emphasis Tenney's) it hit the floor. According to Tenney, that was a visitation from God, calling the people to repentance. He makes quite a to do over the length of time (hours in most cases) people lay on the floor repenting their sins and attitudes. Tenney gave seven altar calls that Sunday (throughout various service times), so great was the repentance.

Tenney's assessment of the situation was that God will only come to those who are hungry for Him. "Hunger means you're disatisfied with the way it has been because it forced you to live without Him (emphasis Tenney's) in His fullness," he writes.

While it is possible that something of the miraculous did occur in that Houston church service (engineers have reportedly said the acrylic pulpit was able to withstand tens of thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch), and repentance seemed to be the outcome, along with a "weightier" sense of God's presence, Tenney's interpretation and subsequent message of that event ought to be carefully weighed in the context of Scripture.

Rather than interpreting the "sign" as a demonstration of God's power to his people, as Tenney does, the pages of Scripture reveal another, less blessed, interpretation of a similar event in I Kings 13:1-5. Here the altar is rent as a sign of God's displeasure and rebuke. To understand why the prophet was sent to rebuke Jeroboam (God's chosen king for Israel), it must be remembered that the kingdom of Israel was divided into Judah and Israel. Jeroboam was fearful of losing his constituancy when the faithful made their obligatory pilgrimages to Jerusalem (in Judah) for the feasts. So Jeroboam set up his own brand of worship, namely that he provided idols (replete with an altar for sacrifices) at Beth-el. He also let anyone who wanted become priests, requiring no special Levitical heritage. Jeroboamism (covered in more detail in an earlier BET) seduced the people away from the true worship of God which He took pains to announce through Moses.

God had specifically given detailed instructions to Moses about sacrifices, the priesthood, and where sacrifices would only be accepted -- the Temple in Jerusalem. Jeroboam, because of his own fear of losing control over his people, disobeyed God. That is why the prophet was sent to rebuke the king and call down destruction on the altar he'd had constructed.

Tenney makes some good points throughout his book about churches not experiencing the presence of God as they ought, likening them to bakeries without bread. "We talk grandly about where He has been and what He has done, but we can say very little about what He is doing among us today," Tenney writes. And he is right. Just as the true worship given at Jerusalem in the Temple was undermined by Jeroboam with his conveniently placed altar and his "anybody who wants it" priesthood, the churches of today are following their own man-made plans and programs instead of allowing people to come into the presence of the Living God.

Tenney sees the problem, alright. But the solution Tenney offers is as bad as, if not worse than the problem.

Tenney's premise is faulty from the very first sentence of his introduction. "As long as there has been God, there have been God Chasers," Tenney writes. He goes on to say the Bible and history are full of people who have been so enamored of God that they were intent on finding Him. The Bible tells us something quite the opposite:

Romans 3:9 What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;

10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:

11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.

12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

Paul makes the case that all humans, Jews and Gentiles, are lumped under the class of sinner; that there is not even one who seeks to know God! Yet Tenney, in his premise, acts as if the Bible is untrue in this assessment of mankind, and that there are people who love God and chase after the knowledge of Him, of whom, he admits, he is one.

Tenney does make an endnote on page 33 to amend his stance on chasing God as meaning after salvation, not in order to be saved. This habit of rectifying brash statements by using endnotes still leaves the reader with the original concept he teaches, for endnotes are removed from the point, and are often overlooked. Indeed, some of his endnotes seem like hasty corrections to serious doctrinal errors which were pointed out by friends and editors.

One might be inclined to give Tenney the benefit of the doubt were it not for other reckless statements he makes. Still in the introduction, Tenney writes: "The difference between the truth of God and revelation is very simple. Truth is where God's been. Revelation is where God is (emphasis Tenney's)." Tenney describes a hunter on the spoor of his quarry. The hunter knows the gender, age, even its weight and how long since the animal passed by. Then he relates that the problem with believers is that they are only interested in how long ago... "A true God Chaser is not happy with just past truth; he must have present truth (empahsis Tenney's)."

One must ask, "Is truth divisible into past and present?" If it is, then Jesus Christ is not the same yesterday, today, and forever. If it is, the commands of Scripture no longer apply to believers, indeed the very Gospel is no longer dependable. If truth is divisible into past and present, there is no safe, absolute standard we can rely upon to evaluate and contrast our spiritual discoveries and experiences against.

Tenney's teaching brings believers into a brave new world without check and balance safeguards. He writes: "There is a vast difference between present truth and past truth. I'm afraid that most of what the Church has studied is past truth, and very little of what we know is present truth."

Tenney's definition of present truth can be described as unscriptural manifestations which he claims to be from the Spirit of God. Checking the present truth experiences against past truth Bible stories becomes, for Tenney, a futile exercise because there is no relevance between the Bible and what is happening in churches today. Tenney uses words such as "dusty", "moldy" and "old" to describe the Bible, then, realizing how it must sound, puts in a chapter endnote that his statements are not intended to imply he feels the Bible is unimportant, but that believers shouldn't live in a state of the past when they read it. In effect, he is telling us that the Bible is "past truth", where God has been but no longer is, and that whatever "free radical thing" God chooses to do now is "revelation" and where God is presently.

Such a stand is perilous. Ignoring the ability of demons to act as angels of light, Tenney's teachings open the undiscerning, unsuspecting believer to a flood of emotional experiences that don't have their origin in the Divine, but in the devilish. Jesse Penn Lewis' War On the Saints and Watchman Nee's The Spiritual Man, Volume 3 depict the sensual attacks demons will subtly try to inflict on believers who do not take precautions against their nefarious deceptions. Assuming that just because a meeting is "in the name of Jesus" it cannot be invaded by demonic hordes is naive. Judas was full of Satan himself as he sat at the last supper receiving the sop from the Lord. Satanic spirits are not at all afraid of mingling with the saints, especially if they can get them to accept their activities as being from the Holy Spirit. When Tenney suggests that the Bible is no longer the criteria we should use to analyze our experiences, he disarms the believer, making him vulnerable to more and more bizarre antics that are designed to make him look the fool.

Using the story of Uzzah in the Old Testament, when God broke forth against the man who steadied the ark from toppling off the cart, Tenney warns that "... God's glory, His manifest presence, can literally split local church bodies like the 'split' body of Uzzah," he writes. His advice to any pastors who are "God Chasers" is to warn their congregations: "If you're not serious about seeking God's face, then you might want to find another place. If you're uncomfortable about waiting on the presence of God and experiencing the weightiness of God's glory; if you're uncomfortable with the strange and unusual manifestations (emphasis mine) that sometimes accompany His coming, then you need to find someplace less hungry to stay. We've had church our way long enough. If you want to keep having church 'the way Saul did it' yesterday, if you are content to put God in His familiar box and strap it to your own man-made programs and procedures, then you might need to go someplace else. I must warn you that the 'bump in the road' just told us that we are not going to do it that way anymore (pg. 93)."

The potential for doctrinal heresy and deception to enter a believer and/or a church in the above statement in unparalleled. One might as well go to a seance or fortuneteller, for Tenney's advice is like advertising for demons to come and occupy. The Lord already supplied an answer to Tenney's suggestion, in Eph. 4:3 Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace( not advise believers to go elsewhere)...

13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge (is this is past truth knowledge or present truth knowledge?) of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:

14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive;

15 But speaking the truth (is this is past truth or present truth?) in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:

This Scripture blows Tenney's premise and thesis out of the water! But of course, comparing present experiences to Scripture is the way 'Saul did it'; this is old, moldy truth, not present truth. Is it any wonder Tenny wants us to respect the Bible (according to his footnote on page 81) as the inspired, inerrant word of God, but not use it for discerning satanic lies?

Just what strange and unusual manifestations accompany God's coming to a meeting? Does Tenney mention speaking in other languages, supernatural handwriting on the wall, a still small voice, a burning bush or other scriptural signs of God's activity? Or are the manifestations such as can be easily pretended or self-induced?

He does mention repentance, but the intensity and degree of repentance challenges credulity. He mentions people laying for hours (not one or two hours, mind you, but most of the day) on a hard floor, a young man leaning against a porous wall, after four hours of which his tears flowed down to the ground, and after six hours, found him standing in a puddle of his own tears. Even Peter's copious weeping after denying Christ was not described to this degree.

There seems to be a premium in some forms of Romanism, Judaism and Pentecostalism that exhibits extremes as being more spiritual, as if the more extreme and bizarre the activity, the more God loves the performer. This is religious superstition, pure and simple. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.... God simply can't love us any more than He already has. But to Tenney, this love is dusty, old, moldy ... God Chasers want something more, even if they have to make it up, or persuade themselves that the demonic is divine.

Tenney also mentions prophesying (pg.96). But again, it is not the "decently and in order" format Christ gave his apostles to give to the Church, but " ... prophesying away ...(pg.96)" as if the message of prophecy isn't important to the church, but just lying on the floor prophesying away while others are shaking, and full grown men go prancing like ballerinas, and people generally are running amok, doing anything except paying attention to the words of the prophecy. Exercising any gift-- or repenting-- to extremes for the mere purpose of drawing attention to oneself and how God is blessing is from the realm of darkness, not light.

Tenney does not go into great detail about these "strange and unusual manifestations" he supposes are of the Spirit of God, other than to warn against judging them by the standards of the Bible. But it may be assumed, as with other "Holy Laughter" advocates, that uncontrollable shaking, slurred or stuttering speech, roaring, growling, barking, running about flapping one's arms as if they were wings, hysterical fits of laughter, rolling on the floor, leaping pews, various forms of prancing and dancing that are incongruous to any message to the church, etc. are what Tenney is referring to. These would come under the classification of "present truth" or what God has graduated to in our day. If the proponents and participants even suspect that these sort of activities are the very forms of ungodly worship God warned the Israelites, and later Christians, to avoid as they lived among the heathen, they seem to care very little.These "strange and unusual manifestations" are indeed the very practices of voodoo, shamanism, whirling dervishism, Tibetan mystics and other "New Age" occultists. Yet Tenney claims these activities are of God, and that we should not heed the pages of scripture that warn us against what God wants to do now. Nor should we expect to find God's limitations he put upon Himself for how He said He'd act in our meetings from the Bible. Tenney offers a veiled invitation, however, by speaking for saints in past moves of God: "Don't come in here looking for sensationalism. Come looking for God and you will find Him." Implied is the finding of sensationalism in conjunction with the finding of God.

The one statement of Tenney's this writer would whole-heartedly agree with is: "We've had church our way long enough (pg. 93)." But again, Tenney, though he has stumbled on a true statement, doesn't grasp the significance of what he has said. He rightly blames man-made programs, hyped up emotinalism, mood elevating music-- all the things inserted when men sensed God wasn't moving in the Church any more. Wrongly thinking the Bible is outdated, and instead of seeing how believers have removed themselves from the simplicity of worship the Lord gave us in its holy pages, men have moved the church away from the pages of Scripture to theologies, experiences and man-made traditions. The problem is not that man has clung to Biblical traditions too long, it is that he has abandoned them too soon! It is because we are not obeying the commands and traditions the Lord gave the apostles to give the Church that God seems remote and our meetings dull, dry and lifeless.

As early as the end of the first century we find Diotrophes setting himself up as pre-eminent among equal brethren, creating a clergy and laity. As early as the second century the Church departed from the simple I Cor. 14:26 "hatha" meeting where one hath a tongue, one hath a prophecy, one hath a word of knowledge, one hath a teaching .... As early as the 3rd century the Church was embraced by the world political system under Constantine, and immediately became mired in ignorance and superstition. The consequences to the Body of Christ were that, except for a remnant who clung tenaciously to the apostolic format of I Cor. 14:26, the people ceased expecting the Holy Spirit to use them in the meetings, allowing a priesthood class of clergymen to have the spiritual knowledge and do the work of the Church. Believers settled back, quit searching for the Lord's presence in their daily lives, and let the clergy entertain and control them. This is why church services are spiritually dull and unsatisfying.

We have taken the leadership of the meeting away from the Holy Spirit. We have replaced Him with a program (it's in the bulletin), with voting, with hiring a professional pastor and staff, electing deacons and elders by popular vote. In addition, we have taken away prohibitions the Lord gave us, such as: women in teaching and leadership roles; letting unrepentant, brazen sinners attend meetings without rebuke; watering down vital doctrines and traditions until they are meaningless; and disuse, misuse or abuse of the gifts of the Spirit. All of this violence and more has been done to the Church, yet God Chasers blame the lack of God's active presence on living in the past truth of the Bible!

The truth of the matter is that God Chasers are trying to prove to themselves one of two things: 1. that God really exists, or 2. that God loves them. The mature believer is to walk in obedience to Christ's commands by faith, not seeking thrills and feelings that only are "beneficial" to the recipient. The Lord has placed His children in a body so that whatever He gives to them may be shared by all to the mutual edification of the body. Lying on the floor in "Holy Ghost Glue", unable to get up, unable to utter an intelligible word, if even from God, has no edification for the others present. And unbelievers observing all this chaos will say "Are they not mad?" ( I Cor. 14:23).

Since God will not honor such antics because He hasn't called for them, even if they are done in His name, there is a void in the seeker that religious, satanic spirits will be only too delighted to fill. These evil imitators of the holy specialize in goose bumps and spiritual thrills, seducing the unwary into thinking they have a special relationship with God, when in fact they have admitted something into their souls (not their spirit where Christ dwells) which will, in time, lead them away from truth and holiness into increasing error and defilement.

Defenders of the God Chaser/Holy Laughter movement claim Luke 11:11 If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?

12 Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

13 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

This is their supposed protection against deception. They fail to perceive however, that bread, fish and egg are important dietary ingredients. They are necessary for life and growth. Candy is not on the list because it is not necessary, only fun. What God Chasers are asking for is not muscle and bone building grain and meat, but sweet, exciting candy. They want to feel good, all the time. They run from one place to another seeking this special, sweet blessing, often doubting that what they encounter is of God, which forces them to continue seeking another experience which will hopefully ease their doubts.

Or else, they accept some malfunction in their body, such as uncontrollable shaking, or stuttering as proof that God loves them and has touched them. When it is shown from the Bible that Jesus never caused "strange and unusual manifestations" of this type during His ministry, but rather cast them out, the argument of "past truth" vs "revelation" is used. God didn't do that then, but He does now.

The eventual consequences of falling for this thrill-seeking Christianity is outlined in: 2 Thess. 2:9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Though this is the worst case scenario, every person who allows themselves to be convinced that the Bible doesn't contain the same truth for every generation doesn't have a love of the truth, and would rather be drawn away by their delicious delusions, and will end up in bad way. Tenney is close to violating this line between truth and the lie with his "past truth/present truth" revelation, if he hasn't already.

The apostle whom Jesus loved, John the Revelator, wrote in 1 John 2:24 Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father.

25 And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.

26 These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you.

The apostle John wrote words of warning to every generation of believer, and they are still vital, living words for us today. Tenney would have us disregard this warning, but Tenney is one of those John wrote about.

The Beth Ezra Teachings are a desktop publication sent free to any who ask to be put on our mailing list. The BET's are dedicated to rebuilding the Church upon the principles of Scripture, calling all believers to return to Original Christianity, as given to the apostles and prophets in the pages of the New Testament.

The BET's are NOT non-profit, and therefore any gifts are NOT tax deductible.

For those wishing to obtain back issues of the BET's, there is a web page maintained at the following site: www.geocities.com/Heartland/Park/9793/ along with some other articles on prophecy and some short stories for downloading. Replies can be made by e-mail to skyeman7@juno.com