What do Ted Haggard, Todd Bentley, and Roberts Liardon all have in common?
- All either compromised with false doctrine or preached it even before their public falls from grace.
As we have warned repeatedly, like morally discredited false teachers from Jim Bakker to Paul Cain and Bob Jones, when someone goes off doctrinally it is a symptom that they have gone off morally. And when someone goes off morally, it is almost inevitable they will also go off doctrinally.
- All have an exposed history of homosexuality while claiming to oppose homosexuality.
- All have constructed bogus doctrinal justifications for returning to the ministry.
Such tragic figures always employ the same arguments to justify their return to Christian leadership after publicly discrediting the body of Christ and openly dishonoring the name of Jesus. While I myself have no propensity towards homosexuality, I am not without my own proclivities and can only prayerfully trust Jesus to prevent me from transgressing in a manner no less serious and depraved. As Paul says, “Let he who thinks he stands take care lest he fall”. This consideration should be foremost in all of our minds when we observe the debauchery and hypocrisy of men like Bentley, Haggard, and Liardon.
However, God’s standard remains fixed. In the New Testament someone cannot be in ministry unless they have a good name with those outside of the church where the world cannot bring a discrediting indictment against them. [1] We are warned specifically that those being in ministry whose witness and testimony to the unsaved world is not good that for such men to remain or return to ministry, or to be in ministry at all, is a snare of the devil that will trap them, according to Paul. And that they will fall into reproach. Yet we repeatedly see the likes of Haggard, Bentley, and Liardon throwing themselves into that trap when in fact they can never have a good reputation with those outside of the church.
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Haggard, Bentley, Liardon and Company
“Is God’s Word No Longer The Standard?”
by James Jacob Prasch
Quite correct. I recall Ted Haggard’s bizarre company and doctrines years before the failing that brought him down. He should have been thrown out of his church when he had Rodney Howard Brown come in to deceive his flock. Might have caused Haggard to pause and reflect – and, perhaps, repent.