(Deuteronomy 22:9-11) “You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited, the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard. You shall not plough with an ox and a donkey together. You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.”
The Trinity Broadcasting Network is one of the largest Christian broadcasting networks in the world. It is a household name within Charismatic and Evangelical Christendom within the western democracies. According to statistics TBN broadcasts in over 175 nations on 30 networks in 17 languages. In addition to the main TBN network, TBN owns TBN Inspire, Smile, Enlace, TBN Salsa and Positiv TV Movie Channel. It also owns several other religious networks outside the United States, including international versions of its five U.S. networks. By the numbers: TBN’s main network reaches roughly 95 million households across over-the-air, cable and satellite providers. One just has to look at the array of preachers that have their programmes aired on this network to realise that it entertains a mixture of spiritual truth with spiritual deception and doctrinal error.
The hyper faith, hyper grace prosperity have it good in this world preachers, with their health and wealth doctrines that feed the appetites of the fallen fleshly nature, are intermixed with ministries that do honour the Word of God and whose preachers rightly divide the Word of Truth. It is a mixture of truth and error. The apostle Peter wrote that just as there were false prophets in Israel down through its long and troubled history so in the last days there would be false teachers within the wider Body of the Messiah. These teachers Peter tells us will secretly introduce destructive heresies and through these heresies denying the real Lord Jesus revealed in the Bible. They are doing this by preaching their own brand of Jesus that is denying the Biblical Jesus the sovereign Lord who purchased them with His own blood. Because of this denial of His true character they are bringing swift destruction upon themselves and upon those who listen to them (2 Peter 2:1).
By stealth these false teachers slip in under the radar of spiritual discernment by occult power to lay truth and error side by side. It is much like having a beautiful gourmet sandwich with all kinds of nutritious ingredients but laced with a small amount of arsenic a slow acting poison undetectable to the human taste. Over time eating the mixture will bring on death. Such is the nature of false and spiritually deceptive doctrines. When you see the wide display of true and false teachers side by side on the TBN Network in reality God calls it The Tuberculosis Network spiritually speaking! Peter also goes on to write that many will follow the shameless ways of these false teachers bringing the way of truth into dispute. (2 Peter 2:2).
The apostle Paul writing to his young protégé Timothy clearly commanded him to preach the Word in season and out of season and be prepared at all times to rebuke, to encourage-with great patience and careful instruction, because the time would come when those within the local assemblies would not put up with sound doctrine. Instead they would gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear, turning their ears away from the truth and turning aside to myths or stories these false teachers had spewed up out of the evil imaginations of their own evil hearts and mindset.
Many of these so called ‘prophets’ on TBN are into all kinds of subjective dreams and visions. Some of them tell stories about themselves and their ‘revelations’ that they believe but in reality are a figment of their vivid imaginations (Jude 1:8). In such a situation Paul encouraged Timothy to keep his head in all situations knowing the seductive nature of spiritual deception and doctrinal error and to keep working hard unflinchingly to keep evangelising and discharging faithfully with singleness of mind and heart the duties of his call and gifting from God (2 Timothy 2:2-5).
When you look at the wide array of preachers on TBN and the money going into the coffers of this Network you know that professing believers by the millions are sending in their money because they have itching ears to hear what they want to hear. These greedy shepherds, if you can even call them shepherds, are lining their own pockets and preaching their brand of the gospel as a mask for greed and covetousness, being “experts in greed-an accursed brood” as Peter describes them in his second epistle (2 Peter 2:15). Both Peter and Jude in their epistles pull no punches when describing the insidiousness of these greedy shepherds who are experts at feeding themselves!
One asks how can those who rightly divide the Word of Truth stand side by side with those who pervert the Word of Truth? Do in fact those who claim to preach the truth in some way remain undiscerning about those who are not preaching the truth, or just choose to ignore it for the sake of promoting their own ministries? The Torah is clear that God hates the mixture so why should those who claim to be His servants jump into bed with those who pervert the truth for their own aggrandisement and greedy appetites for money? Where is the gift of discernment today? Is the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Truth or error? Of course He is the Spirit of Truth and will never endorse false doctrine, and those who compromise the truth will not have God’s favour in the long term on their ministries no matter how many adherents and followers they acquire along the way.
A little leaven spreads through the whole lump of dough puffing it up? Leaven in the Bible represents sin, hypocrisy and false doctrine. Just as leaven puffs up the dough so false doctrine produces pride. The money changers are well and truly entrenched within Charismatic and evangelical circles by and large if the truth be known and that on a global scale if the statistics are right related to TBN globally. It is clear that God hates the mixture. Lets’ very briefly look at our text.
(Vs.9) “You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited, the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard.”
The vineyard represents the local assembly of believers wherever they are located in the world, being the Body of the Messiah. The seed that is being sown is mixed seed. One is the pure spiritually nutritious seed of God’s Word but the other the tares of false doctrine which have no spiritually nutritious value whatsoever. From a distance the tares look the same as the wheat and the difference between them can only be discerned when examined close up. Sowing mixed seed will result in spiritual defilement of the harvest. God hates the mixture! Then we read
(Vs.10) “You shall not plough with an ox and a donkey together.
The ox represents those ministers and ministries of the Word of God who tread out the nutritious grain to rightly feed the souls of those desiring to be spiritually fed. These oxen are strong and resilient as the Word of God but they must not be yoked together with the donkey which represents one who has no sense of discernment but is yoked with the one who does. The work of treading out the grain will be hindered by such a yoke. If a ministry is to be successful by God’s standards then it must not be compromised by standing side by side with those ministries that are spiritually defiled. We need to be able to distinguish between the power of the Holy Spirit from the latent power of the soul which is corrupted by the sinful nature.
A ministry may have a supposedly anointed preacher and myriads of followers and great success in the eyes of man, but if there is a mixture in the pot then one must ask the question what kind of anointing is it that rests upon them? There are only three types of anointing. One is by the power of the Holy Spirit. One is by the latent power of the soul and the other one is by demonic power. All of these can move the minds and the emotions of man! And then we read…
(Vs. 10) “You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.”
Miracles, signs and wonders are no indication or proof of the spiritual health of the one exercising them in the name of Jesus. (Matthew 7:21-23).The apostle Paul had to write to the Corinthian Assembly about their misuse of the gifts. He did not condemn them or discourage them from using the gifts correctly and Biblically, on the contrary he recognised their gifting and encouraged them in it and to use them in the right way. However, there were personal sins and problems of a spiritual nature that was causing spiritual defilement and affecting the process of God’s sanctifying work in their daily lives. It was a mixture in the pot of their lives and activities in the assembly.
The woollen cloth mentioned in our text in the Torah represents that which is of the fleshly fallen nature with its sinful appetites and desires that wage war in the soul and militate against the desires of the Holy Spirit within every believer. Darkness and light have nothing in common just as Satan and the Lord Jesus have nothing in common. When there is sin in the camp defeat is inevitable as we saw when Achan took for himself that thing from Jericho which was devoted to destruction. He chose to serve his fleshly fallen nature over choosing to remain faithful to God even though his human fallen nature craved for what God had forbidden and he reaped what he had sown. One cannot sow to the things of the Spirit while at the same time sowing to the things of the flesh.
As Paul writes; “Do not be deceived: God is not to be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return. The one who sows to please his flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; but the one who sows to please the Spirit; from the Spirit will reap eternal life” (Galatians 6:7-9).
Cain had that same choice when contemplating killing his brother. God tried to restrain Cain by telling him that sin crouched at the door of his heart and that its desire was to take hold of him but that he should master it and not give into it. God was there to help him if only Cain changed his mind, however, his course was set and in his unrighteousness he killed Abel who was righteous in God’s sight through faith in Him which Cain did not have in his own heart.
Now linen represents the righteous nature of God which is bestowed upon all who in repentance decide to turn from unrighteousness and to turn to God to receive his righteousness that is bestowed by faith on all who believe in the Lord Jesus to save them out of this present evil age according to God’s will and from the power and penalty of sin, and ultimately from the very presence of sin itself (Romans 3:21-24). A salvation that does not save a sinner from their sins is not Biblical salvation but a counterfeit. If anyone is in the Messiah having exercised saving faith in Him, they are a new creation deep down on the inside and in their outward actions (2 Corinthians 5:17). They no longer continue living a life of continuous habitual sin (1 John 3:7-9; 5:18-19).
On TBN there are preachers who are preaching a different gospel, a woollen, earthly and devilish gospel that does not produce a truly righteous and holy lifestyle as taught in God’s Word that has nothing to do with money and everything to do with producing a crucifixion to the world with its fallen passions and desires that afflict the soul. As the apostle Paul writes; “Those who belong to the Messiah Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). This is only possible of course by living and by keeping in step with the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:25). In every born again, blood washed, blood redeemed saint there is the constant battle between what the Spirit desires from what the flesh desires (Galatians 5:16-18).
In TBN you have the mixture. You do have those who really have the blessed Holy Spirit in them and are seeking to rightly divide the Word of truth labouring alongside those who do not have the Spirit of truth in them but the spirit of error. This is a mixture which God does not approve of in any shape or form. TBN in effect are mixing the grain, treading out that mixed grain and seeking to weave the linen with the wool together, the mixture which God hates! It is all the mixture! God is saying to those of His servants linked to TBN; “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you!” (2 Corinthians 6:17).
