Beth Moore’s latest study: critique and review
By Elizabeth Prata
Beth Moore is a self-identifying Bible teacher, who writes and publishes material based on the Bible. She also is President of her corporation Living Proof Ministries, in which Moore goes from city to city teaching material she says is related to the Bible. In addition, she has a TV show on TBN, Youtube, and other outlets. She has written a novel and recently published her autobiography.
She is 67 years old and has been teaching woman AND men – and eventually preaching – since about 1983.
She has always been false. She did not start well and go off the rails. Nor did she recently turn soft or errant. She has been false since the beginning. There are sheep and there are goats, one marked for blessing and eternal life and one marked for condemnation. Moore is the latter. I discussed that fact here:
and here-
I’ve been tracking Moore since 2011 when I was taken to a Live Living Proof event, and later a simulcast retreat weekend. I’ve written many critiques about both Moore’s doctrine, her teaching style, and her lifestyle. Last week, I checked in to see how Beth Moore’s teaching is going, with viewing her latest Bible series, “When is He Present?”, a study looking at what it means to truly seek the Lord’s presence. Key Scriptures: 1 Samuel 2:12-18, Jeremiah 7:12-15, Jeremiah 2:1-8, 1 Samuel 3:1-10, Proverbs 3:5-6.
Conclusion: Beth is still false.
Let’s take a look at why. This isn’t just about marking a teacher, it’s about leading the reader through WHY Beth Moore is false, so the reader can develop her own discernment and be on the alert for true and false teachers. That act alone glorifies the Lord. Rightly dividing the truth glorifies Him. Submitting to and learning about the actual God as revealed in scripture glorifies Him. Alternately, following a false teacher or believing wrong doctrine does not glorify God. This is why we critique teachers- to glorify God and to aid sisters in developing discernment.
But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to distinguish between good and evil. (Hebrews 5:14)
Moore began part 1 of her new series with a focus on 1 Samuel. We read at Grace To You the predominant themes of 1 & 2 Samuel:
-The first is the Davidic Covenant,
-A second theme is the sovereignty of God,
-Third, the work of the Holy Spirit in empowering men for divinely appointed tasks is evident,
-Fourth, the books of Samuel demonstrate the personal and national effects of sin.
Ligonier’s overview of 1 Samuel teaches three truths, that God always intended for Israel to have a king; God selected David to be king and promised him an eternal dynasty, God selected Jerusalem to be the place where He would provide a substitute for His people.
Knowing now the devastation of Israel’s national and personal sin, and how they were at a low and weak point because of persistent sin, how does Beth Moore introduce the theme and background of 1 Samuel? Let’s take a look.
Moore opens the lesson thus:
A paradox of being completely self-absorbed is that the more we fold into ourselves the more we try to just give ourselves to every craving every yearning anything we want regardless of what it does to anybody else that the more we do that the more and more Barren we become. ~Moore
Moore uses the word barren 9X in this lesson but the word sin only once. It seems that Moore is inserting her gynocentric focus here, in making these chapters be about women, barrenness, and birth. She opens with a focus on women- not sin, not kings, not Israel. Women and their child-birthing capabilities, or lack thereof. Moore knows her audience likely knows about barren Hannah, so Moore seems to have latched onto the birthing issue and barrenness and extrapolated it into the theme.
First, she uses the word barren when saying that when we give in to cravings, (carefully avoiding the word sin) it makes us “barren”. If that was all she said, one might surmise from the scant context, that Moore meant spiritually dry. But then she confuses things in the next moment by using the word barren to mean Hannah’s physical inability to have children.
Moore conflated the word barren and then goes on in the ‘lesson’ to overuse the word without clarifying. Moore matches the spiritual dryness of disobedience to one woman’s inability to have children.
This lack of clarity and the cobbling together of cherry-picked words is the usual MO of how Moore has publicly said she crafts her lessons. She prays and waits to hear a literal word from the Spirit, then she goes through books of the Bible and picks out that word and makes a lesson out of it. Here, she seems to have ‘heard’ the Spirit say “barren”. You notice above how many books of the Bible and how many verses she intends to teach through. She is always all over the place.
I’m just a few minutes into Moore’s lesson and it is incorrect and confusing already.
In fact, the next statement Moore gives is that Moore claims the entire theme of the book of 1 Samuel is about barrenness. She said,
So the book unfolds 1st Samuel chapter 1 and goes into to chapter 2 and then we see it in chapter 3 the book unfolds with a whole theme of barrenness. It’s showing us the idea of barrenness in the woman by the name of Hannah…
This is incorrect. The theme of 1 Samuel is the installation of a King over the people, the beginning of the monarchy. Not barrenness.
She goes on to say,
it puts us on the page of Hannah’s barrenness but that is not where it stops. Because what it immediately shows us is that this particular people of God has become Barren. That spiritually they are completely Barren.
So are the people unable to have children? Or are they barren spiritually? Because Moore has used the word in both senses in rapid order by now. And what exactly IS spiritual barrenness? How can an entire people be ‘barren’? The men too? She never defines it.
This is a tactic politicians use, when they use words that are commonly understood but that each person can attach their own individual interpretation to what it exactly means. Words like peace, liberty, freedom. Politicians do this so they can appeal to the widest possible audience (voters).
In faith-based organizations like Living Proof that twist the word, the speakers first rip out the context, then they use words that make sense on the surface but are in fact nebulous, so they can appeal to the widest audience possible (consumers).
Barrenness makes sense, but what IS it, really? The people at this juncture were SINNING. They were DISOBEDIENT. Moore doesn’t use the more specific and appropriate words of sin and disobedience. Only ‘barrenness’.
there’s nothing like barrenness to make God want to birth something… ~Moore
What?! Sometimes barrenness, if we interpret it as disobedience, causes God to punish, not birth something. See: Sodom, The Disapora, Intertestamental 400 years of silence…
Moore goes on to reference Sarah who was barren and in the NT Elizabeth who was past child bearing years. Moore again cobbling together a false doctrine out of her cherry picked word. Now it is true that God used barren women for His plan. In fact, He was the One who MADE the women barren in the first place. He didn’t look down on these poor women who could not give birth and decide out of compassion to give them a child. It is the Lord who opens and closes wombs and decides whether or not he gives a woman a child. He uses them as part of His plan.
Next, Moore says,
Elizabeth a woman past the years of childbearing there’s just nothing like a time of barrenness …
What does that mean??
Anna wasn’t mentioned as having children, and her life was rich a teaching ministry in the Temple. Lydia is not mentioned as having children yet her ministry of hospitality was thriving. What does that mean, “there’s nothing like a time of barrenness”?
so I want to say to you if you come here this weekend in your life your soul your heart just feels Barren you may be in exactly the right place because it may be that God is just about to birth something brand new in you.
Or it might mean you’ve been disobedient and need to repent.
The above sounds like Joel Osteen doesn’t it? Moore uses nebulous words in order to emotionally connect with her audience, rather than teach the plain meaning of scripture and allow the Spirit to connect in transforming their mind.
Beth, just stoppppp with the ping-ponging back and forth between the spiritual barrenness and gestational barrenness!
Moore refers to Hannah’s promise to dedicate the child to the LORD when he is old enough, and for laughs, Moore says she’d renege on that promise to YAHWEH:
I’m going to tell you something, if it were me, He just never would get old enough, isn’t that the truth…[laughter]
I’ve often remarked that Beth Moore lacks gravitas. Not that we moon about and wear a long face, but her frequent quips and pause for laughter moments chip away at the foundation of the seriousness of the topic on which she is speaking, and eats away at the due seriousness of the Bible itself. Should we joke about abandoning a promise to God?
Again, you have heard that the ancients were told, ‘YOU SHALL NOT [ab]MAKE FALSE VOWS, BUT SHALL FULFILL YOUR VOWS TO THE LORD.’ (Matthew 5:33)
Moore admits a bit further on that she changes translations frequently and when she does she reads the verse a bit differently and it “captures my fresh attention.“
This is rather a sad confession, but one that to my mind confirms once again that Moore is an unsaved person and looking for ways to liven her Bible reading (which is always dry as dust to a pagan). The Holy Spirit livens the reading of God’s word to us as He uses it as the mechanism to transform our mind and melt our heart and grow our soul. But not for a heathen. Heathens need tricks to make the Bible interesting and keep one’s attention. So Moore changes translations often.
Moore continues with reading a passage from Jeremiah where God is speaking to the people about their lack of awareness and failure even to ask “where is the Lord?” never noticing that He is not present among them. Moore extrapolates that to a lamentation for our day, that,
we should really be seeing the Lord move in our midst and moving some obstacles and making some ways in the wilderness and this is a God that does wonders for his people and where where is the Lord?
Is she saying that we should be expecting visible proof that the Lord is moving? Miracles and wonders? Seems so. If the Lord feels far from you, what are you called to do? REPENT. That word does not appear at all in the transcript of Moore’s 30-minute teaching. We seek the Lord’s presence through seeking His forgiveness for our sin through our repentance. This is not a mention in the transcript nor is it the theme in this lesson.
Moore went on like that for a while. Her teaching was not 100% devoid of truth. False teachers always include some truth which they mix with a heaping cup of confusion and a dollop of emotion. But her teaching was human centered, not God-centered.
What descriptions are used for false teachers? Spies, masquerade, creep in, secretly… If you could immediately detect their falsity then we would not need so many warnings in the Bible about training in discernment so we cold detect them.
Moore’s error in identifying the theme of 1 Samuel, her incorrect use of barrenness, and her ripping out of context the story of Sarah and other childless women are clues that her teaching that is not healthy.
Further Resources
