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The Most Important Decision you Will Ever Make. A Complete and Thorough Understanding of what it Means to be born Again
Many people are only concerned with what happens today or perhaps a few months down the road. At best, they may be concerned with what happens after retirement. But what about life after death? Are you prepared for it? Although your physical body will die someday,your spirit will continue to live for eternity. Whether your spirit resides in heaven or in hell depends on the choices you have made. In this book, best-selling author Joyce Meyer outlines God's plan for salvation so you can make the right decision.
61 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1998
About the author
Joyce Meyer
1,736 books3,940 followersJoyce Meyer is a New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's leading Bible teachers. Through Joyce Meyer Ministries, she teaches practically and candidly, openly sharing her experiences and helping millions of people to apply biblical principles to their situations and ultimately find hope and restoration through Jesus Christ. Her book Battlefield of the Mind has been a perennial bestseller, teaching people how to win the war in their minds and “think about what they think about.”
Joyce’s Enjoying Everyday Life program is broadcast to millions worldwide in 114 languages. She has also authored over 150 books, which have been translated into over 170 combined languages, including Battlefield of the Mind, which has sold over 7 million copies across the globe. We’ve also distributed over 43.5 million books around the world.
A survivor of childhood sexual abuse, Joyce discovered how to overcome the emotional pain of her troubled past and experience true joy, hope, and healing by applying God’s Word to her life. Her passion is to help others do the same. For more than 40 years, Joyce has held conferences across the United States and around the world, teaching God’s Word and sharing the message of Christ with millions. Joyce also encourages millions each day through social media and online efforts and resources at joycemeyer.org
Joyce’s passion to help people who are hurting is the foundation of Hand of Hope, the missions arm of Joyce Meyer Ministries. Each year, Hand of Hope provides millions of meals for the hungry and malnourished, installs freshwater wells in poor and remote areas, provides critical relief after natural disasters, and offers free medical and dental care to thousands through their hospitals and clinics worldwide. Through their Project GRL initiative, they rescue women and children from human trafficking, provide safe places where they can receive an education and nutritious meals, and seek to let all girls everywhere know they are loved and valued by God.
In 2023, Joyce founded Hope Mountain Ranch, an 800-acre refuge in Mount Pleasant, Utah. Inspired by her own personal journey, Hope Mountain Ranch is a place where people can experience the transformative power of God and find hope and healing. It also serves as the hub for Joyce Meyer Ministries’ outreaches across the United States.
Joyce’s Enjoying Everyday Life program is broadcast to millions worldwide in 114 languages. She has also authored over 150 books, which have been translated into over 170 combined languages, including Battlefield of the Mind, which has sold over 7 million copies across the globe. We’ve also distributed over 43.5 million books around the world.
A survivor of childhood sexual abuse, Joyce discovered how to overcome the emotional pain of her troubled past and experience true joy, hope, and healing by applying God’s Word to her life. Her passion is to help others do the same. For more than 40 years, Joyce has held conferences across the United States and around the world, teaching God’s Word and sharing the message of Christ with millions. Joyce also encourages millions each day through social media and online efforts and resources at joycemeyer.org
Joyce’s passion to help people who are hurting is the foundation of Hand of Hope, the missions arm of Joyce Meyer Ministries. Each year, Hand of Hope provides millions of meals for the hungry and malnourished, installs freshwater wells in poor and remote areas, provides critical relief after natural disasters, and offers free medical and dental care to thousands through their hospitals and clinics worldwide. Through their Project GRL initiative, they rescue women and children from human trafficking, provide safe places where they can receive an education and nutritious meals, and seek to let all girls everywhere know they are loved and valued by God.
In 2023, Joyce founded Hope Mountain Ranch, an 800-acre refuge in Mount Pleasant, Utah. Inspired by her own personal journey, Hope Mountain Ranch is a place where people can experience the transformative power of God and find hope and healing. It also serves as the hub for Joyce Meyer Ministries’ outreaches across the United States.
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June 12, 2024
“There is no hope of anyone going to heaven unless they believe this truth” (Meyer 40, emp. added).
Here’s a small summary of the things Joyce Meyer claims you must believe to get to Heaven but are not biblically accurate nor biblically sound:
Adam was holy. “There were things about Adam that were like God. He had God’s breath. He had God’s nature and character. He was holy and good like God” (18). Adam was innocent and righteous, but he was still born with free will and the ability to choose to sin or not to sin. Implying that God’s creating Adam with His breath made him godlike—or, as the Word of Faith speakers like to say, a “little god”—is literal heresy.
God is Bound. “[M]an, through deception, gave [what God wanted man to have] to the Devil. It would be illegal for God to take it away from the Devil and give it back to man” (27, emp. added). This argument makes no sense; if Meyer is correct in saying that Adam was holy and “godlike”, then the laws and commandments would have been known by him innately. Exodus 20:15 says: “Thou shalt not steal” (KJV). The only difference between theft—stealing someone’s property—and fraud—duping someone out of property—is that fraud is only punishable once the person realizes they have been deceived. In Genesis 3, when “the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked”, they understood that they had been deceived by Satan. Using Meyer’s logic, the illegal act here was Satan’s “intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right” (Merriam Webster). Saying that it would have been illegal for God to return Adam’s “property” that he had been duped out of would be equivalent to saying that it would have been illegal for the Manhattan federal court to order mandatory restitution to the victims of Bernie Madoff’s schemes.
She then goes on to say: “What God is doing and has been doing since the garden and will keep doing until the job is done is this: He is equipping man with the ability to regain what Satan stole from him” (Meyer 27). What does this even mean? God is giving Man the skillset to regain eternal life? That implies that salvation and redemption is through Man’s achievements. To equip with an ability literally means “to supply with the means or skill to do something.” Man does not have the means nor the skill to repent for the sins of Adam, hence why God had to send His Son to repent on our behalf. Exodus 20:24 says that “an altar of earth thou shalt make unto Me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen” (KJV). If Man had the ability to regain eternal life himself, all he had to do was, as Meyer says, follow the laws that God bound both Himself and Man to and he would be able to get back his lost property. But this obviously did not work—the only sacrifice that was good enough, perfect enough, and holy enough to cover the sin of disobeying God was Jesus. If God “equipped” us with the skills to “regain what Satan stole”, then why would Jesus have to be born and sacrificed? Meyer is literally stating that we have the ability to undo Adam and Eve’s decisions, which is heresy.
Did you notice the subtle verb change? Originally, she states that it would have been illegal for God to give Adam and Eve back their innocent state and eternal life because they gave it to Satan. Two sentences later, she says Satan stole it. If, as Meyer says, that God were bound by the laws He gave Man, then God would have been acting illegally by not stepping in. When outlining responsibility for property, God says in Exodus 22:3 that a thief “should make full restitution; if he have nothing, then he shall be sold for this theft.” Since what Satan stole could not be replaced, then he would need to pay Adam and Eve back restitution for their loss. Following this train of logic, does it not imply that, if God were to refrain from behaving illegally, then Satan would need to be the one sacrificed to repay Adam and Eve’s lost righteousness?
At a cursory glance, Meyer’s position doesn’t appear too far off from the truth; that doesn’t change the fact that it is not biblically sound and doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Here’s the truth: God didn’t not intervene because it was against the law; He didn’t intervene because He gave Adam and Eve free choice, and it was only just that they faced the consequences of the actions they consented to.
You Gain Sin at Birth. Meyer says that we all have a sin nature, which is true—but then adds this odd sentence in: “We get it at birth” (29). It may simply be that she misspoke, but that’s no excuse for publishing a statement that implies you are only a sinner at “the start of life as a physically separate being” from your mother (Oxford English Dictionary). Psalm 51:5 plainly states that we are “shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (KJV). By saying that we “gain” our sinful nature at birth is a confusing sentiment, because it quite literally means that fetal death, miscarriage, and abortion prevent sin from tainting or affecting the child; if that were the case, then fetal death, miscarriage, and abortion could never happen. God’s punishment for Adam and Eve was this: “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:19, KJV). Because of their sin, they were literally sentenced to death. Paul says in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” If death is the cost of being sinful, yet we do not gain our sinful nature until birth, then the death of children in utero would mean that either the Word of God is lying about our being conceived in sin or Joyce Meyer is lying about our being born in sin.
It’s very clearly outlined throughout the Bible that, because of Adam and Eve’s choices, Man is sinful and can only be saved through Jesus’ sacrifice—and Meyer does say that. But while I do agree with her that “we become accountable to God as we become aware of our sin” (29), it is not biblically sound to say that that the very sinful nature that God cursed Man with is only obtained postnatally. In fact, that seems to align with her belief that people are “little gods.”
God’s Laws are For Our Friendship. This one is honestly just a very stupid sentence that should have been edited out before it was even sent to the publishers. “God devised the law, a system of written rules and regulations that man had to live by if he wanted to be holy enough, right enough to be God’s friend” (Meyer 29-30). When God spoke the laws to the Israelites, He began by saying “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2, KJV). Nowhere in the Bible does it state that the reason God created the laws for Man was because He wanted them to be His friend; He did so because Man needed God’s instruction and guidance. He very clearly states that He is “the Lord thy God”; meaning, our Creator and “source of all moral authority” (Oxford English Dictionary). He did not say that He is “the Lord thy Friend”; by saying that God created the laws so that we could be His friend implies that the relationship between God and Man is one of attachment, affection, and companionship. That implies God needed something and was missing something, which means that God was incomplete without Man. That is not biblically accurate. To love someone is not to need someone. If God never created Man, He would still remain unchanged—that is, unless Meyer is correct that God wants to be our friend. Friendship is a mutually beneficial form of socializing. If God wants to be our friend, then that means God wants or needs something from us, whether that be learning social skills, receiving assistance, sharing resources, learning new information, or moving to a higher socioeconomical class. If that’s the case, God was lying when He spoke through Malachi: “For I am the Lord, I change not” (Malachi 3:6, KJV).
Jesus Didn’t Exist Before His Birth? Again with Meyer’s problematic phrasing, she says that “Jesus was alive to God inside” (35, emp. added). Grammatically speaking, the preposition “to” after an adjective connects “people’s behaviour and feelings” (Cambridge Dictionary). This means that Jesus’ existence was a truth that God Himself believed, yet does not indicate factuality. By saying that Jesus was alive to God means that to someone else—Satan or Man, for example—Jesus was not alive. If Jesus’ existence within the Trinity is only qualified by whether or not He is alive to you, then there is no certainty of the Trinity. That’s heresy.
Jesus Went to Hell as Punishment. This is a huge issue and is absolutely heretical, if not blasphemous. Meyer is correct that Jesus “took man’s sin on Himself. … He was in the grave three days” (39). But then she says this: “During that time, He entered hell and defeated Satan” (emp. added). Yes, Jesus’ sacrifice was the only thing that could perfectly atone for the sins of Man. By doing so, Jesus did defeat Satan—that is, He defeated death and sin. Her statement alone isn’t too suspicious, until she says that Jesus “went to hell in our place.”
That is absolutely not true. Jesus did not go to Hell in our place. Having been the perfect sacrifice that would allow Man to enter Heaven, Jesus went and brought salvation to those who had died prior to His crucifixion. Jesus did not go to Hell because He carried our sins. He went to Hell because He freed us of our sins. Meyer is literally telling new believers in Christ that He who was 100% God and 100% Man was subjected to the full punishment of sinners. Jesus was not a sinner, which Meyer agrees to: “He … had a fleshly body and a natural soul, was tempted in all points just like we are, yet without sin” (35). If Jesus is without sin, then why would He be punished in Hell? If Jesus carried our burdens of sin to the cross and died, then why would He then have to go to Hell to face three days of torment? She goes on to say that “His spirit went to hell because that is where we deserved to go” (40). As sinners, we do deserve punishment—but Jesus did that when He went to the cross. John 19:30 says this: “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost” (KJV). If It—that is, “all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled” (John 19:28, KJV)—was finished on the cross, then there would be no reason for Jesus to go to Hell “in our place.” Either Jesus was lying when He said that it was finished, God was purposefully lying through the prophets when they spoke of Jesus’ death, or Joyce Meyer is lying.
Baptism Makes You Sinless. “First Peter 3:21 says baptism is a figure of deliverance. That means it cuts you off from the enemy, Satan” (Meyer 50). This is a purposeful misrepresentation of what 1 Peter 3:21 actually says: “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (KJV). Peter never stated that baptism keeps us away from Satan’s presence or influence. Peter is saying that appealing to God through Jesus’ resurrection is what saves us—and that the physical act of baptism symbolically and outwardly represents the way God has washed and renewed us.
You Can Speak in Tongues Through Meditation. Meyer’s whole beliefs surrounding speaking in tongues is weird, but the instructions she gives to do so are strangely akin to mysticism or occultism.
Zechariah 4:6 says, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” and Acts 2:4 says, “And as they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (KJV). Speaking in tongues is not the issue here, and neither is Meyer’s passion for it. The issue here is that she claims you must first meditate, open yourself up, and you will then be able to speak things that you do not understand. That is not speaking in tongues; that is being a medium. Speaking in tongues, as outlined clearly in the Bible, is something that happens in conjunction with the Holy Spirit. Meyer contradicts this, saying it comes from “your inner man.” But we know that Man is sinful in nature and irredeemable except through the blood of Jesus; if your true nature is evil, then how can you trust the unintelligible, untranslatable language you have allowed your mind and body to be open to speaking? Either God is lying about the gift of tongues or Joyce Meyer is.
I can’t comment on Meyer’s salvation or state of her heart. She could simply be a Jesus-loving woman who is passionate about salvation and misspoke a time or two in her haste to preach the word. But there is a difference between a wrong word choice and a complete deception.
We are told in Matthew to “beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (7:15, KJV). It is all too easy to fall victim to Joyce Meyer’s enticing theology of sinlessness and earthly riches for believing in such. But that is not biblically sound. It isn’t now and it wasn’t then. If we were to accept Joyce Meyer’s teaching, we would be in direct violation of Proverbs 3:5: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding” (KJV).
I’m going to leave this with the rest of Matthew 7:
“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”
Let’s just say Joyce Meyer has a lot of fruit flies.
Here’s a small summary of the things Joyce Meyer claims you must believe to get to Heaven but are not biblically accurate nor biblically sound:
Adam was holy. “There were things about Adam that were like God. He had God’s breath. He had God’s nature and character. He was holy and good like God” (18). Adam was innocent and righteous, but he was still born with free will and the ability to choose to sin or not to sin. Implying that God’s creating Adam with His breath made him godlike—or, as the Word of Faith speakers like to say, a “little god”—is literal heresy.
God is Bound. “[M]an, through deception, gave [what God wanted man to have] to the Devil. It would be illegal for God to take it away from the Devil and give it back to man” (27, emp. added). This argument makes no sense; if Meyer is correct in saying that Adam was holy and “godlike”, then the laws and commandments would have been known by him innately. Exodus 20:15 says: “Thou shalt not steal” (KJV). The only difference between theft—stealing someone’s property—and fraud—duping someone out of property—is that fraud is only punishable once the person realizes they have been deceived. In Genesis 3, when “the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked”, they understood that they had been deceived by Satan. Using Meyer’s logic, the illegal act here was Satan’s “intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right” (Merriam Webster). Saying that it would have been illegal for God to return Adam’s “property” that he had been duped out of would be equivalent to saying that it would have been illegal for the Manhattan federal court to order mandatory restitution to the victims of Bernie Madoff’s schemes.
She then goes on to say: “What God is doing and has been doing since the garden and will keep doing until the job is done is this: He is equipping man with the ability to regain what Satan stole from him” (Meyer 27). What does this even mean? God is giving Man the skillset to regain eternal life? That implies that salvation and redemption is through Man’s achievements. To equip with an ability literally means “to supply with the means or skill to do something.” Man does not have the means nor the skill to repent for the sins of Adam, hence why God had to send His Son to repent on our behalf. Exodus 20:24 says that “an altar of earth thou shalt make unto Me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen” (KJV). If Man had the ability to regain eternal life himself, all he had to do was, as Meyer says, follow the laws that God bound both Himself and Man to and he would be able to get back his lost property. But this obviously did not work—the only sacrifice that was good enough, perfect enough, and holy enough to cover the sin of disobeying God was Jesus. If God “equipped” us with the skills to “regain what Satan stole”, then why would Jesus have to be born and sacrificed? Meyer is literally stating that we have the ability to undo Adam and Eve’s decisions, which is heresy.
Did you notice the subtle verb change? Originally, she states that it would have been illegal for God to give Adam and Eve back their innocent state and eternal life because they gave it to Satan. Two sentences later, she says Satan stole it. If, as Meyer says, that God were bound by the laws He gave Man, then God would have been acting illegally by not stepping in. When outlining responsibility for property, God says in Exodus 22:3 that a thief “should make full restitution; if he have nothing, then he shall be sold for this theft.” Since what Satan stole could not be replaced, then he would need to pay Adam and Eve back restitution for their loss. Following this train of logic, does it not imply that, if God were to refrain from behaving illegally, then Satan would need to be the one sacrificed to repay Adam and Eve’s lost righteousness?
At a cursory glance, Meyer’s position doesn’t appear too far off from the truth; that doesn’t change the fact that it is not biblically sound and doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Here’s the truth: God didn’t not intervene because it was against the law; He didn’t intervene because He gave Adam and Eve free choice, and it was only just that they faced the consequences of the actions they consented to.
You Gain Sin at Birth. Meyer says that we all have a sin nature, which is true—but then adds this odd sentence in: “We get it at birth” (29). It may simply be that she misspoke, but that’s no excuse for publishing a statement that implies you are only a sinner at “the start of life as a physically separate being” from your mother (Oxford English Dictionary). Psalm 51:5 plainly states that we are “shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (KJV). By saying that we “gain” our sinful nature at birth is a confusing sentiment, because it quite literally means that fetal death, miscarriage, and abortion prevent sin from tainting or affecting the child; if that were the case, then fetal death, miscarriage, and abortion could never happen. God’s punishment for Adam and Eve was this: “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:19, KJV). Because of their sin, they were literally sentenced to death. Paul says in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” If death is the cost of being sinful, yet we do not gain our sinful nature until birth, then the death of children in utero would mean that either the Word of God is lying about our being conceived in sin or Joyce Meyer is lying about our being born in sin.
It’s very clearly outlined throughout the Bible that, because of Adam and Eve’s choices, Man is sinful and can only be saved through Jesus’ sacrifice—and Meyer does say that. But while I do agree with her that “we become accountable to God as we become aware of our sin” (29), it is not biblically sound to say that that the very sinful nature that God cursed Man with is only obtained postnatally. In fact, that seems to align with her belief that people are “little gods.”
God’s Laws are For Our Friendship. This one is honestly just a very stupid sentence that should have been edited out before it was even sent to the publishers. “God devised the law, a system of written rules and regulations that man had to live by if he wanted to be holy enough, right enough to be God’s friend” (Meyer 29-30). When God spoke the laws to the Israelites, He began by saying “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2, KJV). Nowhere in the Bible does it state that the reason God created the laws for Man was because He wanted them to be His friend; He did so because Man needed God’s instruction and guidance. He very clearly states that He is “the Lord thy God”; meaning, our Creator and “source of all moral authority” (Oxford English Dictionary). He did not say that He is “the Lord thy Friend”; by saying that God created the laws so that we could be His friend implies that the relationship between God and Man is one of attachment, affection, and companionship. That implies God needed something and was missing something, which means that God was incomplete without Man. That is not biblically accurate. To love someone is not to need someone. If God never created Man, He would still remain unchanged—that is, unless Meyer is correct that God wants to be our friend. Friendship is a mutually beneficial form of socializing. If God wants to be our friend, then that means God wants or needs something from us, whether that be learning social skills, receiving assistance, sharing resources, learning new information, or moving to a higher socioeconomical class. If that’s the case, God was lying when He spoke through Malachi: “For I am the Lord, I change not” (Malachi 3:6, KJV).
Jesus Didn’t Exist Before His Birth? Again with Meyer’s problematic phrasing, she says that “Jesus was alive to God inside” (35, emp. added). Grammatically speaking, the preposition “to” after an adjective connects “people’s behaviour and feelings” (Cambridge Dictionary). This means that Jesus’ existence was a truth that God Himself believed, yet does not indicate factuality. By saying that Jesus was alive to God means that to someone else—Satan or Man, for example—Jesus was not alive. If Jesus’ existence within the Trinity is only qualified by whether or not He is alive to you, then there is no certainty of the Trinity. That’s heresy.
Jesus Went to Hell as Punishment. This is a huge issue and is absolutely heretical, if not blasphemous. Meyer is correct that Jesus “took man’s sin on Himself. … He was in the grave three days” (39). But then she says this: “During that time, He entered hell and defeated Satan” (emp. added). Yes, Jesus’ sacrifice was the only thing that could perfectly atone for the sins of Man. By doing so, Jesus did defeat Satan—that is, He defeated death and sin. Her statement alone isn’t too suspicious, until she says that Jesus “went to hell in our place.”
That is absolutely not true. Jesus did not go to Hell in our place. Having been the perfect sacrifice that would allow Man to enter Heaven, Jesus went and brought salvation to those who had died prior to His crucifixion. Jesus did not go to Hell because He carried our sins. He went to Hell because He freed us of our sins. Meyer is literally telling new believers in Christ that He who was 100% God and 100% Man was subjected to the full punishment of sinners. Jesus was not a sinner, which Meyer agrees to: “He … had a fleshly body and a natural soul, was tempted in all points just like we are, yet without sin” (35). If Jesus is without sin, then why would He be punished in Hell? If Jesus carried our burdens of sin to the cross and died, then why would He then have to go to Hell to face three days of torment? She goes on to say that “His spirit went to hell because that is where we deserved to go” (40). As sinners, we do deserve punishment—but Jesus did that when He went to the cross. John 19:30 says this: “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost” (KJV). If It—that is, “all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled” (John 19:28, KJV)—was finished on the cross, then there would be no reason for Jesus to go to Hell “in our place.” Either Jesus was lying when He said that it was finished, God was purposefully lying through the prophets when they spoke of Jesus’ death, or Joyce Meyer is lying.
Baptism Makes You Sinless. “First Peter 3:21 says baptism is a figure of deliverance. That means it cuts you off from the enemy, Satan” (Meyer 50). This is a purposeful misrepresentation of what 1 Peter 3:21 actually says: “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (KJV). Peter never stated that baptism keeps us away from Satan’s presence or influence. Peter is saying that appealing to God through Jesus’ resurrection is what saves us—and that the physical act of baptism symbolically and outwardly represents the way God has washed and renewed us.
You Can Speak in Tongues Through Meditation. Meyer’s whole beliefs surrounding speaking in tongues is weird, but the instructions she gives to do so are strangely akin to mysticism or occultism.
Be relaxed and at ease in God’s presence. He loves you and wants you to have His best. Wait on Him quietly and believe you are receiving. Believe before you feel any change. You may feel a change taking place, but you may not. Do not be led by your feelings; be led by God’s promises.
To speak in tongues, open your mouth, and as the Spirit gives you utterance, speak forth what you hear coming up out of your inner man. This will not come out of your head. Remember, your mind does not understand this. (63)
Zechariah 4:6 says, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts” and Acts 2:4 says, “And as they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (KJV). Speaking in tongues is not the issue here, and neither is Meyer’s passion for it. The issue here is that she claims you must first meditate, open yourself up, and you will then be able to speak things that you do not understand. That is not speaking in tongues; that is being a medium. Speaking in tongues, as outlined clearly in the Bible, is something that happens in conjunction with the Holy Spirit. Meyer contradicts this, saying it comes from “your inner man.” But we know that Man is sinful in nature and irredeemable except through the blood of Jesus; if your true nature is evil, then how can you trust the unintelligible, untranslatable language you have allowed your mind and body to be open to speaking? Either God is lying about the gift of tongues or Joyce Meyer is.
I can’t comment on Meyer’s salvation or state of her heart. She could simply be a Jesus-loving woman who is passionate about salvation and misspoke a time or two in her haste to preach the word. But there is a difference between a wrong word choice and a complete deception.
We are told in Matthew to “beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (7:15, KJV). It is all too easy to fall victim to Joyce Meyer’s enticing theology of sinlessness and earthly riches for believing in such. But that is not biblically sound. It isn’t now and it wasn’t then. If we were to accept Joyce Meyer’s teaching, we would be in direct violation of Proverbs 3:5: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding” (KJV).
I’m going to leave this with the rest of Matthew 7:
“Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”
Let’s just say Joyce Meyer has a lot of fruit flies.
June 29, 2022
I read this a book a long time ago and revisited the with new eyes. I enjoyed the way Joyce explains things in simple terms I can understand. The book helps you to understand what the decision you are making means.
March 28, 2007
Although I've considered myself a Christian for most of my life this book helped to crystalise the role of sin in my life and how it separated me from God and the wonderful gift of salvation thru Christ Jesus
January 15, 2010
This book CHANGED MY LIFE when I read it five years ago. It could change your life too.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
June 5, 2012
EXCELLENT READ
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews