Taking The DEVIL to Court

In 2006, a Texas preacher heard God say to him, "Bring him to my courts." And that one sentence cracked open some of the strangest imagery in the entire Bible. A day when the sons of God assembled before the throne and Satan himself walks in with them. A high priest standing trial in filthy garments while the devil accuses him a courtroom with a river of fire where the court was seated and the books were opened. Books with your name in them. Yes, blood that testifies. An accuser reading charges against you day and night. Millions of Christians now believe this courtroom isn't just ancient biblical metaphor. They believe it is real. They believe it's in session right now in that you can walk in, stand before the judge of the universe and make your case all through prayer. But if that's true, it raises some uncomfortable questions. Why would God need a courtroom? Why would He listen to the devil? And if there are any legal charges filed against you in heaven, who filed them? Well, today we are breaking down this entire religious theory, the preacher who says he found the door, the step-by-step protocol for pleading your case. And of course, the critics who call this entire thing a beautiful and dangerous illusion. Courtrooms in heaven, books being opened, Satan himself standing up like opposing counsel and the theologians who say this movement has put God himself in handcuffs. This is a fascinating episode deep diving on a very specific and very controversial theory within Christian philosophy. So sit back, relax, and welcome to Religion Camp. (chanting) What's up people and welcome back to Religion Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single Sunday we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from every religion from around the world from all time forever. Yes, that is why I do this show is two reasons. One, I wanna know what everybody believes. There are so many people on this planet who orient themselves around their version of God. And for me to be a better human being, I wanna know who their God is. What do they believe? Why do they practice the way they practice? Why do they eat what they eat? Why do they dress how they dress? And secondly, I like to find all the good things from every religion that I study and apply them to my own life, you know, prayer, devotion, ritualism. All these things are found in so many religions and they're all beautiful in their own way. So that is the purpose of this show. Now before we go any further on the courts of heaven, I wanna say thanks to you. Yeah, you listen to this right now, driving to work, doing chores, maybe just hanging out, you know, not doing work. I wanna thank you for clicking on this episode 'cause every time you tune in and you click on an episode, you comment, you like, you interact with our content, you tell the algorithm that we're doing a good job, you like what's going on at the campsite and you keep the lights on in the tent and you keep the fire burning here at Religion Camp. I also wanna give a big thanks to my pal, Christos Papadopados, the Greek freak himself, the Orthodox baddie, how are you my friend? Doing great, Mark? Christos, don't have time, I'm sorry. Because we're talking about the courts of heaven. Now, this is not a super well-known term, to be honest, because unless you're deeply involved in a certain specific corner of the Christian world, you will probably never come across this. And that is why I'm here at Religion Camp to bring these things into the light. So here's the quick idea of what the courts of heaven is, okay, it is a modern Christian movement. This is a whole way of redefining prayer built on one core belief that heaven isn't just a throne room with God the Father and Jesus, the Holy Spirit, it is a courtroom. Now, let me just be clear for anyone that is not Christian. This is not mainstream Christian theology. This is not dogma that I was raised with as a Catholic. And to be honest with you, even going to a Presbyterian high school, this was not brought up at all in the more Protestant evangelical Christian world. So this is something that comes completely out of a very specific world and from a very specific preacher, which we will get to. So yes, this is the belief that there is an actual functioning court in session right now with a judge, an accuser, lawyers and real life cases, including yours. Yeah, and millions of Christians today believe you can enter that courtroom through prayer, present your case, and then walk out with a verdict. So today, we're going to walk through the whole thing from beginning to end where this comes from, who started how it's actually done, and whether it is substantiated by the Bible at all. And every movement has a founding story, and this one starts with a dad who was trying to fix his son. So let me introduce you to Robert Henderson. Henderson has been in ministry basically his whole life. By his own account, he trained for eight years under an apostle named James Walker in East Texas. Then you spent the next 22 years being a pastor and planting churches. His main one, Waco Christian Fellowship, was founded in the early 1990s, and it grew into a massive like spiritual campus, basically. It's like a network of churches, a Bible school, a K through 12 Academy, and even his own TV program. But did you catch the word that I just use a apostle? Because that's not just like a quirky little title. Henderson doesn't call himself a pastor. He calls himself an apostle. They all do. It's a part of the entire movement. It's called the new Apostolic Reformation, also known as the NAR. And here's the main points you need to know. The term was coined by a former Fuller Seminary professor named C. Peter Wagner, who taught that God is restoring real living apostles and prophets to the church today. Not just giving pastors like upgraded titles, like no, restoring actual apostles with real apostolic authority and receiving real revelations from God. Similar to what you would read about in the New Testament. Churches would no longer be organized into Christian denominations, but into networks under apostolic leaders. So Wagner called it the most radical change in how churches operate since the Protestant Reformation. And Henderson is not just NAR adjacent. He is NAR royalty. He is deep in the movement. His doctorate is from Wagner University. Yes, the same Wagner. He was commissioned as an apostle by C. Peter Wagner himself. Literally, the same guy who actually brought back this whole term and idea of like apostolic authority. He convenes a yearly gathering called the global roundtable of apostles. And his ministry's state admission is to make the church quote, "the government that God intended." Now, keep all of this kind of in the back of your mind, and we will come back to it later and tie it all up. But here's why it matters right now. The NAR world that Henderson came up and spent the 1990s obsessed with one thing, and that is spiritual warfare. Now, if you're not familiar with that term, spiritual warfare is the idea that angels and demons are battling it out at all times, sort of behind the scenes in the spiritual world and that their battles in the spiritual world affect us in this world as human beings. Spiritual warfare also includes the idea that demons and by extent, the devil are constantly trying to screw with humanity, like distract you from God's will, make you do bad things, stuff like that. And in this movement, they combat spiritual warfare through actual warfare style prayer. So this term of spiritual warfare is something that you'll find in a lot of Protestant evangelical circles. It's something that's talked about a lot. And it's, I would say, probably more mainstream in the American Christian sense, a lot of people talk about spiritual warfare. But what this movement has done is it has given in their terms and in their opinion, an actual tool to go against it. So they call it strategic level spiritual warfare. The idea is that there are territorial demons ruling over entire cities and nations and that intercessors are called to identify them, map them, and then fight them. So literally like battlefield prayer, which makes this story with Henderson super interesting because Henderson had a big revelation. In it, he discovered that the battlefield is the wrong place to fight. So here's a story and Henderson has told this himself on camera, you can go look it up, but here are the beats. On October of 2006, he left the pastorate to go independent. And somewhere in those years, he at this point is a 30 year prayer veteran. He hit a wall. His prayers stopped working. His connection with God started to dissolve a little and his life was coming apart. And at the center of all of it was his own son. You see, his son had sunk into a depression, a very heavy one and it lasted two years and it wouldn't let up. No matter how hard his father would fight for him in prayer. And remember, this is a man whose entire world is prayer warfare. Like he knew how to fight the devil through prayer. Yet no matter how hard he prayed and no matter how hard he fought, there was nothing no response and no result. His son was still depressed. Until one day, Henderson says that God whispered a single sentence to him. According to Henderson, God said, bring him to my courts. Not to the battlefield, but to the courtroom. So Henderson tried it. He presented his son's case before God. Not as a father, not as a friend, but as a judge feeling his way through a process that no one has ever taught him. 'Cause it wasn't really taught before. He was sort of discovering this in his own terms. So we'll get into what that process actually looks like in a minute, but a week and a half later, after he starts bringing his son's case into the courtroom of God, his phone rang. It was his son and his son told him that the depression that he was dealing with was gone. Now, whatever you personally make of this story, that phone call is the big bang of this entire movement. Because in 2014, Henderson turned that entire revelation into a book. The book is called Operating in the Courts of Heaven. It's publisher calls it an international bestseller and full honesty, nobody audits claims like that. So here's what we can verify. The movement that grew around it was pretty powerful. An entire official series, Courts for healing, courts for finances, courts for breaking generational curses, ready made courtroom prayers, a 365 day devotional of daily activations. And then other teachers started building new wings onto this courthouse idea, one mapped out six different types of heavenly courts, another wrote about a court staffed entirely by angels, another teacher's believers to file. And I'm not kidding, divine restraining orders against the devil. And today there are ministries that will book you a private court of heaven session with even a seer that sits in to identify the accusations being made against you. So let's look at what just happened. One sentence comes in, bring into my courts and a phone call from his son and now a global industry in about a decade, which leaves us with a very obvious question. If you're one of the millions of people who've picked this teaching up, what are you actually supposed to do? Now, how does a person go into the courtroom that they can't see and they make their case in front of a judge that they can't really touch? Well, you know, what happens when the accuser starts reading your file? Like what does the whole courtroom sequence actually look like? So Henderson's whole philosophy is hinging on this idea that the battlefield is not where things are won, right? Like you don't win a lawsuit in the battlefield in the sort of modern world that we live in. Typically, these things are litigated in court and you are victorious in front of a judge. So Henderson teaches that there are three dimensions of prayer. You can approach God as father. That is the intimacy of the Lord's Prayer. You can approach God as a friend. That's the friend at midnight, you know, basically just, you know, talking and reaching out to God until he answers as just someone you can vent to. And then you can approach God as a judge. That third dimension is the whole teaching of the movement is based on because in this system, unanswered prayer usually isn't a mystery of divine timing. I mean, you know, God's not ignoring your prayers. It's a legal problem. So in the courts of heaven, the devil isn't primarily a warrior. He is a prosecutor. Henderson points to 1 Peter, chapter five, verse eight, where Satan is called our adversary. He probably heard that word before, the adversary. But the original Greek word here in Christos, help me with this, is antiracus. How do I do? Hi, David. Adiracus. It literally, it's like, it carries the sense of like a legal opponent, like the one who brings a lawsuit. And what does this prosecutor do all day? Well, in the book of Revelation, chapter 12, verse 10, it says he accuses day and night. He stands in the court of God and he presents cases against believers, evidence of your sin, your unforgiveness, even stuff from your bloodline going all the way back through your grandparents and their grandparents all the way back in time. And in this framework, every single one of those charges is a legal right, a legal right that is blocking your breakthrough in prayer. Now, here's the line that I told you to listen to and it's not buried in a footnote. It's on the cover of the book. The full subtitle of operating in the courts of heaven is granting God the legal rights to fulfill his passion and answer our prayers, granting God legal rights. So what does that mean? Like how do you grant God legal rights? He's literally God. I personally never heard anything about that before. And we'll come back to that in a second. Like how do you give God the legal right? He has an explanation for it. And for now, back to the courtroom. The devil presents God with evidence against you. Then what do you actually do in the courtroom? Well, practitioners describe a consistent protocol. You enter by faith and prayer, usually with thanksgiving and you deliberately address God as judge. You say, God, almighty judge. And then you ask the court to reveal what the accuser is using against you. And then those accusations come up. You don't respond by arguing that you're innocent because, you know, according to basically all Christian theology, none of us are innocent. And instead you repent and in the system, repentance works almost like removing evidence from the record. You repent for your own sins and this is a big one. You repent for the sins of your ancestors, which is an interesting thing. This is these are the bloodline cases. And then you, according to them, plead the blood because in the courts of heaven, the blood of Jesus doesn't just cleanse you, it testifies on behalf of you. And Henderson builds this idea from the book of Hebrews in chapter 12 from a passage describing the heavenly Mount Zion, which ends with, and I quote, the blood that speaks better things than that of Abel. So think about that contrast. The Bible says Abel's blood cried out from the ground for justice because he was murdered by his brother Cain, right? But Jesus's blood speaks in the courtroom for mercy for acquittal. And according to Henderson, his blood speaks for you. And practitioners literally pray like a legal motion asking the blood of Jesus directly to speak on their behalf. And then of course, there are the books. So drawing on the book of Daniel, chapter 7, verse 10, it says, quote, the court was seated and the books were opened. So based on that, Henderson teaches that heaven contains books of destiny, like God's written purpose for every single human being has ever existed and not even just people of like churches and cities and entire nations. So presenting your case at the highest level means praying from your book, asking for the destiny that's written about you to be released or fulfilled, and arguing that the accuser's cases are blocking what God himself has already written. And some teachers in this movement will take it even further into books that are hidden, books that require prophetic gifting to access. So the massive question over all of this, of course, is, does it work? Well from within the movement, there are tons of testimonies of people who swear by it. There are stories of people who prayed the same prayer for 30 years. And then they adopted this different framework and they saw transformations, like within a week. And stories of families who say bloodline sessions ended chronic illness and financial collapse amongst their loved ones. And honestly, if you scroll through the comment section on like court of heaven teaching sites and YouTube videos, you'll find some genuinely moving stories of ordinary people in enormous pain, like one that I saw was a woman 9 years into a legal battle or a man tormented by like accusing voices or desperate parents. And they're all kind of filing into this heavenly courtroom because it's the first framework that ever made their suffering feel actually addressable. Like there's finally a procedure like an actual like protocol that they can actually do. But of course, in those very same comment threads, you will find other voices skeptical, just enchanted and even frustrated ones. You'll come across a former practitioner who concluded after years inside the movement that all of it was just visualization, basically like imagination and mistaking that kind of illusion for revelation. And you'll find others who will claim that it's just straight up unbiblical, which brings us to the next part of the story, right? So far, we have one courtroom and two completely different verdicts as to whether it is legit or not. On a personal basis, I've never tried it, so I can't speak from any type of anecdotal legitimacy. But this is what people have said. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I got to tell you something. I had one of those days recently where I woke up super tired. I drank coffee and then I drank more coffee because I was tired. I trained badly because I had too much coffee and then I couldn't sleep because I had too much coffee. And the frustrating part is I'm doing all the things. I'm lifting, I'm eating protein, I'm taking creatine, I'm trying to sleep. I'm occasionally fasting because someone on YouTube told me it was good. But sometimes I'm still walking around feeling like I'm only charged to 60%. 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The accuser, the books, the blood testifying, the verdicts is any of this in the Bible. And you're probably not going to be surprised by the answer. Yes, and no. Now if you grew up thinking that the heavens is like just clouds and harps, well, the next part is going to feel very different because scattered across the Bible and in the Old Testament and the new, there are these movements where the curtain kind of gets pulled back on what heaven really is. And what we see isn't really what I expected. It actually describes something that is in some ways more like a courtroom that is in session. So let's start with the Old Testament. The oldest story that uses this description is the book of Job. You are probably familiar with Job's story in the Bible. He's the one man who suffered a lot. He lost his family and his friends and all of his money. And even though he was a man of God, all of this stuff went away and he didn't really deserve any of it. Now, before Job loses anything, before the boils, before the whirlwind, the story actually opens up in heaven. And the text says, "There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord." So a picture of divine beings assembling before the throne, taking their places, kind of like in a roll call. And the next text says this pretty plainly, "And Satan also came among them." So real quick, by the way, in Hebrew, the name Satan is actually a title. It's not really a name. It reads like the Satan translating as the adversary, or once again, the accuser. So that's not just an interesting little tidbit that helps paint the picture, but it's also interesting to keep in mind anytime you read about Satan in the Bible in the future. So in this story, the famous accuser, right, Satan himself, he walks into the assembly. And what happens next in this text reads kind of like a legal proceeding. God commands his servant Job, blameless, upright, great guy, everyone loves him, and then Satan stands up and challenges the testimony. He basically says, "Yeah, of course, Job's like your boy, he's faithful, but you pay him to be." He's super wealthy. Of course, he's going to love you. And if you remove the hedge of protection around him and you remove all those blessings, he's going to curse you to your face. Job actually doesn't ride for you. He's just rich. Satan says that to God, like paraphrase, and made you get the vibes. And here he's presenting a challenge to the evidence. And God, and this is the part that confuses and frustrates a lot of people, he actually entertains the motion, right? Like the terms are set, limits are imposed, and there's kind of like a bet that goes on in the courts adjorn, and Job's life is about to become the trial. Now, whatever you end up believing about the courts of heaven or this entire movement, understand this, they didn't invent that scene. Like that whole moment comes directly from the Bible, and of course, biblical scholars and different religious sects within Christianity have debated ultimately what this means. But that's not the only instance. So in the book of Zachariah and chapter three, Zachariah, who is a prophet, is shown a vision that is unmistakably a courtroom, right? Joshua, the high priest, is standing before the angel of the Lord, and standing at his right hand is Satan, which is weirdly the accuser's traditional position. And there the text says he's there to accuse him. And Joshua was just standing there in like these filthy garments and the guilt it said in the text is very visible like it's literally on his clothes. The sin was made wearable in the vision. So everyone around can see the Joshua looks guilty and then the judge speaks. And the entire case collapses in one sentence. It says the Lord rebuke you Satan. And then suddenly the filthy clothes get stripped off and he gets put in robes and like a clean turban and the defendant walks out re-closed, re-commissioned, and ultimately forgiven. Now Satan raised an accusation, but the accusation got silenced and then the verdict was rendered. Joshua is all good. Then in the book of Daniel chapter seven, it describes the throne room at full scale. It says there are thrown set in place the ancient of days. This is another term for God is taking his seat. There's a river of fire and thousands upon thousands ministering to him. And then the sentence that Henderson built the entire framework on the court was seated and the books were opened. Then Isaiah six famously describes the Lord high and lifted up and the temple filled with just the train of his robe. And even in the centuries between the old and the New Testament, ancient Jewish literature like outside the biblical canon is full of scenes of heavenly courtrooms. And one of the most elaborate ones ever written shows up actually in the book of Enoch. And yes, we did an entire episode on this very strange and influential book and why it's, you know, so interesting and controversial. So if you want to go deeper into Enoch, you should absolutely check it out. So that's a bunch of the Old Testament courtroom stuff kind of stitched together. And then this is where the New Testament comes in. And there's still even more imagery that Henderson and the rest of this movement will draw on in the New Testament. And you can argue that there's even more legal language. Jesus told a parable in the book of Luke that is explicitly about prayer. And interestingly, it's a courtroom story. So there's a widow hounding this judge who is unjust and demanding in her exact words, justice against my adversary. There's that old like Satan title, like that same word used for a legal opponent again. And then in the book of first John, chapter two, verse one, it describes Jesus as our advocate in Greek. Once again, Christos, I'm going to help with the Greek. The Greek to my understanding is paracletos. It's pretty good, right? Paracletos. Paracletos. Where would I be without you? Now paracletos is translated as one called alongside to plead your cause, like kind of like a lawyer, right? And plus Paul's whole doctrine of justification described in books like Galatians and Romans is all sort of courtroom vocabulary, a verdict of righteous declared over the guilty stuff like that. But here's the thing, the New Testament doesn't just use courtroom language about the past, even the present. It puts an actual court date on the calendar. And you're probably familiar with this. It's called the day of judgment. And Jesus himself describes it. So Matthew 25, he paints the whole scene, which is supposed to be prophetic, of course, telling about the future. The son of man coming in his glory, sitting on his throne, all the nations will be gathered before him and then a separation. Sheeps on his right, goats on his left, the believers on one side, the unbelievers on the other side, and a verdict rendered over every single person. And Jesus brings this day up kind of a lot. He says people will give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they've ever spoken. The book of John says that the father has entrusted all judgment to the son. And Paul writes that quote, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. So you can see how this stuff kind of gets drawn into the movement, right? According to the New Testament, the ultimate courtroom scene isn't just in the past. It is a hearing that is coming in the future. And there's a lot of, you know, language about judgment and God being a judge and these courts and all the people kind of lined up. And that's kind of where they're drawing from. Now, full honesty, what that day actually looks like has been debated by Christians for literally thousands and thousands of years. It's a big one, right? Universal judgment, or is it going to be like several separate judgments, or is it just going to be individual judgments every time we die, our believers even judge it all. Since Jesus also says that whoever believes shall come without judgment. I think the exact quote is shall not come into judgment. So is the sheep and goat seen about faith? Or is it about works? There are entire theological systems built around each one of these answers. And we can't go down each one of those rabbit holes today. So we'll stay focused just on this specific movement that we're covering. Now, the day of judgment absolutely deserves its own episode. So maybe we'll do something specifically on that. But for now, just keep this, right? Even the future in the Bible seems to be a courtroom according to Henderson's interpretation. And finally, the last book of the Bible, Revelation, of course, has some pretty interesting scenes. Revelation 4 and 5 describes the throne. The 24 elders and a sealed scroll that no one in heaven or earth is worthy to open until the Lamb steps forward. And Revelation 12 hands the courts of heaven movement. It's whole charter. It describes the accuser of the brethren accusing them before God day and night, overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. So did you catch that? Pay attention to the words that are being used across all of these passages, right? Accuser, advocate, testimony, verdict, books. It's all legal language that's used again and again. Now, those are some of the main passages across the Bible to talk about the courtrooms and/or like the throne room and how it can be interpreted as a court. But I want to visit a couple passages real quick that do have to do with biblical justice and ruling. And it kind of goes in an unexpected direction. So in the book of 1 Kings chapter 22, a prophet named Mikeia says he saw the Lord on his throne with, quote, all the host of heaven standing on his right and on his left. And then something wild happens, a deliberation. God actually asks the assembly how they think King Ahab should fall and proposals get floated around and a spirit steps forward with the plan. And then the verdict gets dispatched. Another key text here is Saul 82, which literally opens, quote, God has taken his place in the divine council in the midst of the God's he holds judgment. And of course, Deuteronomy 32 verses 89, which in its oldest manuscript reading says the most high divided up the nations according to the number of the sons of God. Now, whatever this number actually means, it according to them describes a heavenly council, God governing with an assembly around him. So the guy who brought all this to a mass audience was a scholar named Michael Heiser, a symmetric language expert whose book the unseen realm argued that the biblical authors just assumed this worldview, God presiding over a council of lesser spiritual beings called Elohim in Hebrew, who participate in running the cosmos, who can be judged for doing it unjustly. So according to him, it seems like God isn't the only one that's able to make some type of decisions about the universe. And he's got this whole council who's in charge of running things under God. And what are they in charge of? And who are these Elohim? Well, we'll have to explore the Elohim in a different episode. So for now, it seems like if you're Christian, it's kind of hard to simply dismiss like the heavenly courts. Right? Like there's a lot of biblical reference to court-like imagery. Like you can't just say like, "Oh, there's no heavenly courtrooms because there's very much something like that in the old and the New Testament that's described pretty frequently." And maybe you can interpret it differently. And, you know, many Christians I will say do accept that there is some type of courtroom imagery and there's definitely God as a judge as, you know, at least a metaphor, right? That's pretty mainstream Christian scholarship. However, it is the interpretation of those texts that people will continue to argue about. Like some scholars argue that the gods, notice plural gods of Psalm 82, might be corrupt human rulers and that the Deuteronomy 32 text is, you know, genuinely contested. And even the bedrock has cracks in it. And anyone who tells you that the stuff is settled, it's just it's not. At least not in the broader community of Christian scholarships. So as far as I could find as well as my friend Sophia who did a lot of research on this, Heiser himself, the scholar who published on the ancient heavenly courts texts, he passed away in 2023. And he never actually publicly weighed in on the court of heaven movement. So his work describes what he thinks the ancient texts are saying and what he'd argue about the ancient authors and what they believed. But as to whether or not that licenses a modern prayer technique, like what Henderson is teaching, well, he never really answers that question for us. So we've looked all across the Old Testament and the New Testament. We've looked at Job, Revelation, parables, prophecies, even visions describing court-like imagery and how the Satan, the adversary is our accuser and how the blood of Jesus testifies on behalf of us and how God is a judge and how there's a mysterious counsel, whatever that means, who also seem to have some type of say in making decisions. And based on all this, does Henderson have enough evidence about the throne room and enough biblical text supporting the court system for prayer is the case officially closed? Well, of course, with all these types of things, the case isn't closed because there's one more verse that we need to talk about before I think anyone can make a decision. And it's the one that critics believe unravels this entire movement. And it's in the book of Hebrews chapter 4, verse 16, where the New Testament extends its great invitation to prayer. It says, "Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy." It doesn't say, "Come to the bench of litigation, the throne of grace." That's what it says. And that is the biggest piece of evidence against the courtroom framework and what many scholars will point to when trying to dismiss this entire idea. And ultimately, kind of poke holes in Henderson's movements. And I'll explain how. Now, before I explain how this verse allegedly takes apart the movement, let me explain who is making it. There is a whole camp of Christians who reject all modern miracles. They're called cessationists. And they believe that miraculous gifts just completely stopped after the original apostles. And because courts of heaven, like the movement, argues that you could receive miracles from God, like if you approach him as a judge in the correct way. And because it argues for modern apostles, cessationists are against both of those things. And some of the pushback against the courts of heaven comes from them. But of course, not all of it. The most devastating critiques come from inside the charismatic house itself. So for example, there's a pastor and a theologian named Sam Storms. And Storms identifies himself in print as a practicing charismatic Christian, a guy who believes in and actively preserves all spiritual gifts, like prophecy and healing, and all these miraculous things you might see like on Twitter or whatever. Now, in other words, there's not a man who's skeptical of the supernatural or of modern day miracles. But yet Storms wrote a two part verse by verse review of Henderson's book, which by his own account completely disassembles the movement. He even says it grieves him to write it precisely because he actually shares Henderson's world. And his core argument is pretty simple. He says every single passage that we just talked about, everything we just walked through from Job, Zachariah, Daniel, Mikeia is a vision. He says this is a scene that was revealed. It was shown. They are descriptions of a heavenly reality, but none of it is an instruction. No where not once in either the New Testament or the Old Testament is any believer taught to enter into a heavenly courtroom and to address God as a judge and to litigate against the devil. The scenes are real, right? Like these visions, according to Storms, are legitimate revelations. But the technique of how to deal with these revelations is invented by man. And then Storms makes his biggest point. It's from Luke chapter 11. One of Jesus's own disciples comes to him and asks directly and explicitly, Lord teaches how to pray. So think about this moment. If answered prayer really depended on courtroom procedure, on legal protocols, on clearing the accuser's evidence before you petition, Jesus would just say so, right? He would just come out and say, okay, here's how you pray. You go to God, you say judge, what are my charges? Like I repent and then God would forgive you of all your charges, right? A disciple literally asked for the manual point blank, and what did Jesus tell him? Well, he didn't say anything about a courtroom. Instead, Jesus said, our father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done. Give us our daily bread, forgive us, deliver us from sin, etc., etc. You know the verse, right? It's the Lord's prayer. Every Christian, whether you're Protestant, Catholic, charismatic, whatever you are, you know this prayer. There's no courtroom. There's no case file. There's no protocols. It is just a child talking to their heavenly father, which you might notice is the first of Henderson's three dimensions that we talked about, right? Henderson doesn't disregard this, but according to Jesus, this dimension of prayer is apparently enough and storms being a, you know, a very scripturally pure sort of Christian who looks only at the Bible, or maybe I should say mostly at the Bible, he warns that building doctrines and protocols based off of things that scripture doesn't teach is not just a mistake. He calls it deeply dangerous, but the theological objections go even deeper. So for example, Romans chapter 8 verse 1, it says, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ. And Colossians chapter 2 says, the record of legal debt against us was nailed to the cross. So the critics will ask the obvious question, if that's true, if that's what the Bible explicitly says, that the legal debt against us was nailed to the cross, then what exactly is happening in a courts of heaven's session? Why is a believer relitigating a case whose verdict was rendered when Jesus died on the cross for all of humanity? One commenter on a Christian form actually put it this way. And I'll, this is the exact quote, in Christ, the judge, the defeated prosecutor, the defense attorney, and the acquitted defendant. It's all resolved into the same person. Christ crucified and risen. So in this view, the court isn't in session for you at all. It's already adjorned two thousand years ago with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And remember Hebrews chapter 4 verse 16, the New Testament's actual invitation to prayer come boldly to the throne of grace to obtain mercy. That's the one I was talking about before. The critics point is right there. You're being invited to a throne of mercy to a seat of grace, not scheduled for a hearing, not needing to litigate and listen to the devil's accusations, but just given mercy when you come to the Lord. Now, let's revisit Henderson's book subtitle from earlier. That text, right? Granting God the legal rights to answer our prayers. This is where in my opinion, it kind of falls apart. Mainstream evangelical outlets like God questions zero in on exactly that phrase. They take issue with it because of what it implies that God is somehow legally constrained that God is barred from acting until human beings do the paperwork to free his hand, right? They classify the whole court system as a brand of prosperity theology with a very mechanistic and legalistic view of prayer that puts you in control instead of God. Like if you file it correctly, if you approach the judge in the right way, you will get the results that you want. And you notice what that does to a person pastorally. If breakthrough follows this correct procedure, then unanswered prayer means that you are filing it incorrectly, right? If you're trying to get like your passport done and you file it through the wrong office, you have the wrong information, you're not getting your passport. It's ultimately in your control and the passport office can't do anything. But of course, God is not a passport office. He is an omniscient and all-powerful God. So your suffering all of a sudden becomes your clerical error. And the teaching that promised desperate people become a procedure has, according to the critics, handed them a treadmill of trying to file correctly and file correctly. There's actually a Christian author named Joe Helen Cox who pushes it to the max. She argues Henderson has flipped the entire biblical order upside down. She says that this system put God inside a legal system of Henderson's own constructing, elevating the human into a like a load-bearing role. To the point where God can't act, he can't even show mercy without the human properly filing a petition, which in my opinion is kind of limiting of God in the way that I and many other Christians see God. And it puts way too much control on behalf of the humans. And remember those hidden books of destiny that I mentioned, the ones that the, you know, only the prophetic seers can actually access. Well, again, that's according to the courts of heaven movement. Cox calls it back to the Old Testament. She says, retrieving secret spiritual knowledge through special practitioners is divination. She's not alone on calling them out on that either. Like other scholars have likened this secret prophetic book that only certain people can see. They compare it to a nostic practice, which is considered heresy across most mainstream Christianity. Now, finally, if we zoom out one more layer. And we look at the big picture, we can look at the movement scale critique. Researchers like Holly Pivic and R. Douglas Geivit, they wrote the standard critiques of the new Apostolic Reformation. And they argue that this is what the new Apostolic Revelation produces. They see it as a doctrine that's based on a modern Apostles' private revelation validated by his credentials instead of by the scripture or by the Bible spread through his network of connections and monetize through its conference and book economy. Now, on this reading, the courts of heaven isn't an anomaly. It's not a protocol for how to access or talk to God or get prayers answered. According to them, it's a business model. And that critique isn't just coming from reform circles. It's also coming from inside the classical Pentecostal circles where the movement ultimately started. So those are the biggest critiques against the courts movement. And Henderson has heard all of this and, you know, what does he say back? Well, in 2021, he released a revised and expanded edition of operating the courts of heaven with a whole new section answering common questions and objections. And full transparency here, we were not able to access the full contents of that section for this specific episode. So rather than guess at his rebuttals, we will give you the strongest version of the defense, the way his own materials and his defenders frame it. It goes like this, the courts of heaven doesn't relitigate the cross. It applies it. So the verdict is already one, right? The death of Christ has already settled that. The resurrection has already put that to bed. But there's a difference. Defenders argue between a verdict rendered and a verdict that is enforced. A person can hold a legal judgment in their favor and still have to show up and basically execute it against a bad faith opponent. The accuser on this view is a defeated prosecutor who keeps filing like frivolous cases. And the courts of heaven prayer is just showing up with the finished work of Christ and hand and getting those cases once and for all dismissed. Henderson's own published framing points the same way. The goal he says is to apply the verdict of the finished work of the cross, not to try to win the case. It's not like the cases up in the air, but to enforce the verdict with a win. And the most generous critique that we found from a theologian well outside Henderson's camp actually grants the movement more than most. He says that the courts of heaven are real biblical imagery and praying with biblical imagery is good and it is ancient. The danger, however, comes at the exact moment that the imagery gets literalized and turned into legal technology like a actual formula of how to pray because a formula quietly converts God from a father who delights to answer his children his creation into a system that is to be operated and sort of filed with. And then he can see something that might be the most disarming possibility in the whole debate. This kind of prayer he admits often works. Not he suggests because the technique is real, but because God in his kindness will honor any good faith prayer that is laid honestly before him, which would mean the testimonies are potentially real, but the courtroom still isn't. Do you have a friend that buys gold instead of crypto because he doesn't trust the internet? That's a power move. 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So the best case scenario, this flawed system developed by Henderson might just be encouraging people to earnestly pray and to reconsider their devotion to God and reconsider their relationship with God and they seek solutions from God for their problems. And at the end of the day, maybe that's not so bad. So there it is. That is the whole case, both sides, the pros and the cons, the biblical imagery, the interpretation and that brings us back one last time to where we began. Here's the thing. God's judgment is a whole episode in and of itself. So we talk specifically about how the Bible sort of talks about courtroom and uses courtroom imagery and the throne room and how it uses pretty explicit legal language and how Satan is legitimately our accuser and stuff like that. But to be honest, there is so much more in the Bible that's adjacent to the courts of heaven imagery, including stories about God's justice in general. Like there's a story with Abraham, how God was going to wipe out an entire city, but Abraham actually talked to God about it and God changed his mind. His punishment of the city got completely turned around because of Abraham's advocacy. How did God change his mind and can that still happen? And what about the whole story of the great flood that was supposedly God's justice wiping out all the sin and humanity? How does that work? And how does God actually define sin like all those rules and the Old Testament to those still apply? I mean, there's so much that we could explore on the topic of God's justice in the Bible and on the topic of prayer. I mean, interestingly, I'm pretty sure it's Albert Einstein who told one of his students when they were talking about what topics were left for dissertation research. He said, find out about prayer. Somebody must find out about prayer. So the courts of heaven movement have made a near impossible attempt to systemize two of the most confusing and misunderstood and ancient questions about God. And of course, that is justice and prayer. So is the courts of heaven idea a lost biblical reality? Is it a modern invention? Well, I think we can say the courtroom is in the Bible in some way. The accuser is in the Bible, the books, the advocate, the testimony, the verdict, all of that kind of stuff and that language is in there generally in the terms of visions and revelations. And there are some of the strangest and like most vivid scenes that scripture contains. And it is equally true that no one in the Bible is ever taught to do with this movement teaches. And if anything, they Christ himself says, "Hey, pray to God as the Father." And he never mentions anything about a judge. So between those two certainties, right, a real courtroom and kind of an absent instruction from Christ, 2,000 years of Christians have to decide what prayer actually isn't if this is the right way. And maybe the reason this teaching has spread across the world in a single decade has less to do with Daniel 7 or any of the courtroom imagery. And more to do is something that is much closer to home, right? Remember the whole story, this whole movement, started with just one father desperately trying to help his son. And when things happen in life that we can't explain and that we don't understand and when the suffering is just too much to bear for anyone individual, we will do everything that we can to try to make all of this chaos and pain that makes sense. And we will do anything we can to push for results and any type of prayer that will help fix the people around us. And whether it's praying for the healing of a loved one or for understanding, you know, a painful situation or a natural disaster or a death, so many religious people and non-religious people will wind up praying to God in desperate prayer asking why and for help. And born out of that desperation, the courts of heaven movement has attempted to offer a protocol. And just like Henderson, as a loving father who prayed earnestly for his son, Christianity teaches that God, the Heavenly Father listens is also with his children in the suffering. But why doesn't prayer just always solve it? Why doesn't he always answer all of our prayers? If God isn't a judge that we can make our case to like the courts of heaven movement will teach, then why does it feel like our prayers aren't being heard and how are we supposed to pray? Well, that topic is an episode that we will do sometime later. But my friend, that is a brief overview of the courts of heaven movement. I mean, it's a fascinating topic, right? It is one of those things that I haven't really heard about before doing research on this. It makes sense that it kind of comes out of the pentacostal like charismatic movement because I would generally define like pentacostal Christians as people that are trying to have mystical and miraculous experiences with God while we're here. I think Catholics don't really do this. They're kind of happy with like ritual. They're kind of happy with communicating with God through like ancient lens of how Catholics have done it for two thousand years. And the pentacostal movement is a branch within Protestant Christianity, see great reformation, Martin Luther, etc. And they are very much trying to communicate with God in a very direct and vivid way. They want to experience God in this reality in like a very concrete and, you know, electric kind of relationship. So it makes sense that they're trying to come up with a protocol and that people from this movement would find a protocol to how to talk with God. For me, I like the Lord's prayer. The apostle goes, Jesus says, "Hey, how do we pray?" He says, "Say this." That's what I say. Right? Like to me, I'm like, that makes absolutely the most sense. And it says, "Our Father, who are in heaven, how would be that name?" That's all I need to do. That's the way I do it. I mean, Steve's their own. But I kind of agree with like the one biblical scholars kind of thing, where it's like, look, the imagery of the courtroom, that's legitimate. My interpretation on a personal basis, I don't think you need to go to God as a judge. I think God is a judge. I think God operates with, you know, like extreme justice, as well as extreme mercy simultaneously, he's God. So you don't have to plead your case to a judge. You can plead your God, you can plead your case to God the Father, and he can. adjudicated, you know, if that's the term you want to use, or he can, you know, see to your prayer or not depending on what his, you know, divine knowledge says, but with that being said, if this is a type of thing that helps people pray or maybe motivates them to pray then perhaps it has some positive side effects, but for me personally, I'm just going to keep on saying Lord's Prayer. I'm going to keep on talking to Dad and talking to God as a daddy. And that's the thing that makes me feel good. And so far it's been working. Shout out to God. Alright, Christ is King. But that's just my interpretation. What do you guys think? If you're in the courts of heaven movement, or you're from, you know, the Pentecostal sort of, you know, religious philosophy, is there anything that I missed? I really tried to attempt to explain this in good faith and try to show the pros and the cons, the biblical sort of backing, as well as the, you know, other biblical claims that this is not biblical. So I would love to know what your thoughts are. If there's anything I missed, my bad, please correct me in the comments. Just be nice about it. We have a nice little enclave. Where no one really knows about us. And I like to keep it that way. So be civil. I might not respond every comment, but I do read all of them. And I'm sure someone else will respond and your contribution will be beneficial to the community at large. Now, I also want to tell you guys we have history camp. If you like crazy historical deep dives, you should check that out. If you like crazy mysteries and all sorts of ongoing like, you know, unsolved stuff, conspiracy stuff, all sorts of crazy things and rabbit holes. Well, that's going to be camp gagged on the main channel where I do interviews with people waste more than me. Think goodness. And if you just like to rock with a religious viable greatness, we do these episodes every single Sunday. Also, if you want to join our secret society, patreon.com/campgaggedon. You are going to get every episode of this show, as well as all the other shows on the camp web. All ad free. No more ads for you. And you're going to get bonus episodes that never go to the public. You're going to get early releases of certain episodes before they ever go out. And you're going to get, I mean, like merch stuff, zooms every single month. All that is yours for just $5 every single month about the price of like a cup of coffee with a little tip, you know. So thank you guys so much for tuning into another episode. God bless you. Have an amazing Sunday. And I'll see you guys next week. Be with you. 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