Inside the Prosperity Gospel Movement with Costi Hinn | Conference | Session 3-5

Well, good morning, and hopefully everybody had something to eat. We're going to get started with our conference today.

Would you please stand as we sing, Come Thou Fount? Come Thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing

Thy praise. Streams of mercy never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above.

Praise the mount, I'm fixed upon it, mount of Thy redeeming love.

Hither to Thy love has blessed me, Thou hast brought me to this place.

And I know Thy hand will bring me safely home by Thy good grace.

Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God.

He to rescue me from danger, bought me with His precious blood.

Oh to grace how great a debtor, daily

I'm constrained to be. Let Thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the

God I love. Here's my heart, oh take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.

Oh that day when freed from sinning, I shall see

Thy lovely face. Full arrayed in blood -washed linen, how

I'll sing Thy sovereign grace. Come my Lord, no longer tarry, bring

Thy promises to pass. For I know

Thy power will keep me, till I'm home with Thee at last.

How deep the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure.

That He should give His only Son, to make a wretch his tread of searing loss.

And yet I will be joyful, as wounds which mar the

Chosen One. My sin upon His shoulders, ashamed

I hear my mocking voice. Call out among the scoffers, it was my sin that held

Him there. Until it was accomplished,

His dying breath has brought me life. I know

His face, I will not boast in anything.

No gifts, no power, no wisdom. But I will boast in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection.

Why should I gain from His reward?

I cannot give an answer. But this

I know with all my heart, His wounds have paid my ransom.

Amen. You may be seated. Well, I hope you were well fed last night and enjoyed last night's sessions.

And Kosti is going to come up and open us in prayer here in just a moment. But I wanted to make you aware of just a couple of announcements.

First, we're having pulled pork sandwiches for lunch. That's why there's a big smoker out on the lawn out there preparing our lunch for us.

And second, I wanted to make you aware of next year's conference. You've seen the slide up here and you see the page in your booklet that is devoted to next year.

How many of you have heard of or know Owen Strand? Okay, good. Then you know that you're in for a treat next year.

Not that Kosti isn't a treat or Daryl and Virgil weren't a treat. We try to make it a treat every year, but next year is going to deal with a very pertinent issue.

And that is gender confusion, human sexuality, God's creation, ordinance, egalitarianism, complementarianism, and all of those things that are assaulting the church today.

And Owen is uniquely qualified to address some of those issues. He wrote the book Christianity and Wokeness or Wokeness and Christianity.

I forget which one it is. And Kosti knows Owen far better than I do because Kosti has taken a class from Owen.

Is that correct? So Kosti can tell you a little bit about what is entailed for that next year.

So with that, I will turn it over to Kosti and he has the rest of our time here together until lunch.

Thanks, Kosti. Well, good morning.

Good to see you all again. And thanks again for the wonderful hospitality and for digging in last night.

A word on Owen. Yeah, he's been a good friend for a while. When I was at Midwestern, obviously he was a professor there and doing some significant work.

And he is a passionate brother. I just talked to him last week. Faithful, faithful. And you are in for a better treat than any of us when he comes.

He is a man's man and a godly brother at that. This session is titled Heretical Heroes.

That would be a simple way to put it. I'm going to take you through three and help us understand the roots of the prosperity gospel movement.

And a lot of the branches today, this is where things get conflated and sometimes confusing, is like anything that the devil concocts, it will have many different faces.

Like a tree, you can imagine all the different branches or a river system with all of its tributaries.

That is in a way, visually, what the prosperity gospel, the charismatic movement, what is now the new apostolic reformation, and the third wave, and a lot of these historical branches have become or have turned into.

And we'll go into that. Let me pray, and then we'll jump in together. Father, as we walk through some elements of history and the roots of the prosperity gospel movement, we know very well that even though some players have come along in the last hundred years to muddy the waters and to confuse and lead people astray, that the prosperity gospel and every lie from hell goes all the way back to the garden when the serpent said to Eve, in effect, did you really say?

Your word was clear. Your commands were clear for Adam, for Eve, and the serpent sought to undermine

You in that. And that is where all this goes back to. We pray and ask that You would help us in our weaknesses, even our anxieties or our personal concerns, while we know we have a mandate to speak the truth and to be, in a way,

Your mouthpieces or Your hands and feet as Your body, Lord Jesus. But we also know that You've got a good handle on all of this.

We know that none of it is surprising to You. None of it's original. And while we may see something that appears new, there is an adversary who from the beginning has sought to tear down Your Word and replace it with lies.

Help us to discern, to understand, to use history, to help us be more faithful, more discerning, more vigilant, and even more hopeful in the present and the future, according to Your will.

In Jesus' name, amen. Modern proponents of the prosperity gospel and what has now morphed into a number of other movements, including the

New Apostolic Reformation, will trace their roots to some historical heroes.

Now, they'll use the Bible and teaching and twisted hermeneutics and interpreting the Bible a certain way to prop up their belief system.

But ultimately, the prosperity gospel is rooted in people, what they would affectionately call their hall of generals or the generals of the faith.

And they will use their ancestral ties, these heroes or these pillars of their faith to support their modern day beliefs or their modern day teaching and that they are representing

God just now in a new generation. From Bethel, praying down the spirit of William Branham, which is something that they've done before, to others like my uncle or even me growing up, heralding

Smith Wigglesworth as a general in the faith. Smith Wigglesworth was an old player who used to punch people and beat on people and say that he was really just knocking the devil out of them.

And he wasn't really trying to be rough with them, he was trying to be rough with their sickness or what the devil had put on them by way of infirmity.

And he was a hero of mine. I used to think, wow, he is so aggressive and bold and courageous in his faith.

I want to be just like Smith Wigglesworth. There was a photo frame in my house growing up.

It started in the office at the church and ended up in our home office. And on it were photos of all of these historical heroes.

There was A .A. Allen. There was Amy Semple McPherson. There was Catherine Coleman. There was Smith Wigglesworth.

There was William Branham. And it was a photo frame that we thought was the hall of fame of preachers.

And you picture today in various offices I've been in or some of the artwork currently we're concocting for our new offices at the church plant, and we think of the church fathers.

We think of the reformers. We think of Martin Lloyd -Jones or Sproul or others. And when

MacArthur goes into glory, him and others as godly men die and they land the plane well, we think of them in that way.

Well, it was exactly the opposite growing up. And these historical heroes gave us a foundation to stand upon.

William Branham thought he was Elijah. His followers ended up keeping his body around expecting a resurrection.

And Wigglesworth, of course, beating on people and becoming infamous as the inspiration for Todd Bentley, who in today's world was banned from going to country.

He's been pushed out of ministry in a lot of ways and keeps trying to come back. And he told grand stories of beating on old ladies and others to heal them.

And so in this session, I want to walk you through three particular historical heroes of my former faith.

And this will help you and I quantify where these things come from.

It'll also take you on a few mental rabbit trails as you think, hey, I've heard of that.

Or doesn't Osteen teach that? Or that's what Benny Hinn does. Or that sounds a lot like Bethel nowadays.

That's where that came from. And what this does is it helps us all not be shocked or even worried that all of this is new.

And well, this is novel. And well, what are we going to do? The simple truth is these are just new dogs, new faces with old tricks.

And every generation, Satan just cycles through another crop of his agents.

Do I think that they're all demon -possessed? No. Do I think that they're all possessed or taken captive by the devil?

No. Some of them well -intentioned perhaps in the beginning and then veer off course. But others most certainly,

I would say, are under the control of darkness. That would not be too far -fetched to say.

One being Kenneth Copeland, who I think is incredibly dark and even could be considered demonic or demon -possessed in the way that he operates so flagrantly.

And you could just look at the eyes if you wanted to be subjective and say that doesn't look very normal.

But then you can match the teaching and the bravado of it all and say that looks awfully close to what would be somebody under the control of darkness.

The prosperity gospel has garnered unparalleled popularity. To give you an idea of this, and I'm sorry it's not on the screen, but visually

I have a chart in front of me, and this is in the book Defining Deception that we had written a number of years ago.

If I were to just take you through quick numbers from the year 1900 to the year 2000, in Africa, there were 900 ,000 charismatics.

Around the year 1900. In Asia, the demographic numbers at the time, and these are from good studies done, and Bruce Shelley has all of this in his book,

Church History in Plain Language. That was another book that changed my life, by the way. When I read that for the first time,

I thought, wow, okay, this is not new. Like everybody knows this stuff. If you read a book on church history, got it.

Okay, there's a whole bunch of people that have done research and come along before me. This is really helpful.

Okay, so there's millions of people and good Christians that are aware of where this all comes from. I had never read a book on church history before.

In Europe, none. Latin America, none. In North America, 0 .1 % of the population, and in the

Oceania region, none. In the year 2000, 126 million adherents to the prosperity gospel in Africa.

134 .9 million in Asia. 37 .6 million in Europe. Latin America, 141 .4

million. The highest. North America, 79 .6 million.

The Oceania region, 4 .3 million. What does that tell you? That tells you that over the course of 100 years, major influencers propagated the prosperity gospel both here in North America and around the world.

Making it, if not one of, the most dominant or fastest growing type of belief system.

I mean, obviously, Roman Catholicism boasts over a billion. Islam, of course. But if you were to say in the quote -unquote evangelical space, nothing has grown faster or more aggressively globally like the prosperity gospel.

In a significant way, that's vastly different than what

Jesus promises. He tells us it's going to be a narrow road, a narrow gate.

Few will find it. And apparently over about a 100 year span, hundreds of millions are finding it, whatever it is.

Jesus said that if you want to follow Him, you'll suffer. He promises that to His disciples.

Paul then comes along in the epistles and makes it clear to Timothy and his faithful protégés in the faith that all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus are going to be persecuted.

So the explosion has to be accounted for by something.

And what that is, is the selling of what every fleshly, carnal mind wants.

Health, wealth, and happiness. The good life. What has become known as the

American dream. It's the result of ear -tickling, people wanting teachers like this.

It's also the result of biblical illiteracy and people not knowing their Bible and leadership failures as men of God don't stand up and don't rightly teach and preach and popularity is sought.

All of this was pioneered in many ways by certain characters. The first I want to take you through is

Catherine Coleman. She's the first. And I've chosen these three because they were near and dear to the influence in the way that we did ministry.

And I would say, if you went to the root of every one of their ministries, you'd see everything today is tied back to some level of what they did.

In some way, shape, or form, they've influenced. But of all the generals of the faith and the charismatic movement and the prosperity gospel, none are more shrouded in mystery and confusion than Catherine Coleman.

People aren't really sure what to do with her. Her father became the mayor of a small town and he achieved his success in the community through old -fashioned hard work.

She was born to Joe and Emma Coleman in Concordia, Missouri. And her father was the mayor.

Interesting tie -in. She was obviously the most influential figure in the life of my uncle who actually sold some story that wasn't true, that my grandfather was the mayor of Jaffa.

He was not. I can assure you that. And good men did research and even called city officials in Jaffa.

And they said, nope, Costandi Hinn was not the mayor of this town ever in our records. But her dad really was the mayor of a small town.

He was a blue -collar guy. And ironically enough, he despised preachers. He used to say, ah, they're just all in it for the money.

And he wasn't going to church, but the Coleman girls were. And eventually, they made their way to the altar, made a confession of faith, and soon they entered the spotlights of ministry.

Through a series of events, she was offered the opportunity to preach her first sermon in a small town.

And from this simple beginning, she launched her ministry. And before long, she was holding large services.

And eventually in 1935, Catherine Coleman pitched her revival tent, if you will, in Denver, Colorado.

After a few years of success there, she ended up making a critical mistake in her personal life and spent the next three decades reinventing her public image.

She had a bit of a blip on the radar of her life with a marriage issue, in addition to some of the antics that she begun to propagate.

She developed a ministry partnership, and that was both in the tabernacle there in Denver and then on the road with Burroughs Waltrip, a guy who she ended up getting involved with.

He was a married pastor, and there was a lot of suspicion revolving around a potential affair. He divorced his wife, left his two sons in Texas, and he asked

Catherine Coleman to marry him not long after, which she did in 1938.

And as they attempted to forge a life together, Coleman soon realized that her power and fame were jeopardized by the public scrutiny over the marriage.

And basically, people weren't comfortable with what had come of this alleged affair and that it was tied to an alleged affair.

It was bad for the PR. So eventually, she left Burroughs and released a public statement that spiritualized her decision.

There's a Missouri State historian, Amy Collier Artman. She did an in -depth biography on Catherine Coleman and on her use of PR and the public image of a faith healer.

And this provides a glimpse for us in the sort of tactics that we see today. Very interesting.

She writes, in a masterful reinterpretation of her life, Coleman chose instead to present in speech and print her decision to leave

Waltrip as a difficult moment of submission, the yielding of a strong -willed woman to the relentless call of God on her life.

In one particularly emotional message given towards the end of her life and captured on the recording titled

An Hour with Catherine Coleman, she recounted her decision to leave Burroughs -Waltrip.

I can remember the day, she says. I remember the hour. At 4 p .m. on that Saturday afternoon on a dead -end street,

I surrendered everything. It was all settled. The Holy Spirit and I made each other promises.

I spoke in an unknown tongue and He took every part of me. I surrendered everything.

Then for the first time, I realized what it meant to have power. Coleman ended her story with the words,

That afternoon, Catherine Coleman died. Her presentation of her death to self was simultaneously a powerful image of sacrificial submission and brilliant manipulation of her identity.

She had spun the PR and done so spiritually. If the divorced Catherine Coleman was dead, the critics had nothing to work with.

As she told it, she was no longer the disgraced divorcee, but a chastened and sanctified and consecrated vessel for God's Holy Spirit.

With this reinterpretation of her persona, she was able to move beyond what should have been a career -ending mistake and even turn it out for her own benefit.

Does any of this sound familiar yet? This is exactly the tactics that my uncle, in particular, uses through marriage failures, through alleged affairs, which there were no photographers taking iPhone pictures of Catherine Coleman, but now we have those.

And so there's more of that in the wild stories surrounding him and Paula White and others.

All of it spiritualized and spun as now both of them stand on stages and say, we're just friends going to Rome, visiting the

Vatican. We would never do something impure. We would never do such a thing.

And people today buy it hook, line, and sinker They're biblically illiterate and they've bought into it, but two, when decisions are spiritualized, even people who are discerning think, well, we want to believe the best.

Perhaps it's true. And perhaps we've all just been a little uptight.

Few in Coleman's day could pack a stadium like she could. She provided entertaining music, displays of the miraculous, and kept the audience in balance with the right mixture of laughter and old hymns and entertainers and brilliant stories.

It was laughter. It was tears. It was heartstrings. And to her credit,

I will say that she didn't preach some of the heretical doctrines that were embraced by others in her time, but rather she opted for the picture of a more feminist entrepreneur type, the faith healer, who had this insider relationship with the

Holy Spirit. She was in a way a product of her day and age at a time when women were fighting for equality.

Her ministry primarily put on a show, taught an over -exaggerated view on healing, and sprinkled in basic gospel presentations with an altar call.

Beyond all of those elements, the climax was always the offering. Her crusades were designed to make money.

She did teach and present that if people would give to God, He would give them what they wanted.

Coleman loved expensive things. She would often spend thousands of dollars shopping on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills.

This area in Southern California became one of my favorite places to shop when I was working with my uncle.

We would drive on a Monday, usually, and go to Beverly Hills. We would valet park.

We'd go to see Monsieur Bichon. We would go see Leon's, Mr. Leon, the jewelry store. And on the walls back then when she was famous, you'd have

Jessica Simpson and all of these other types that would be on the walls with their jewelry for the

Grammys or some other awards show. And of course, in Monsieur Bichon's store, you'd add everyone from older presidents to president.

I remember seeing Bill Clinton on a picture with him getting one of his suits tailored. And the whole place was like going to a fashion show.

He had hired models who would come and offer you orange juice or sparkling water while you got your clothes fitted.

And I enjoyed that life. Who wouldn't? You would go and eat at the best restaurants.

Go enjoy food. Everybody just waits on you. And it's just next level.

Well, Kathryn Kuhlman would shop down there in the same way. And I didn't know that at the time.

But the irony of driving from southern Orange County on the beach where my uncle lived and where we had a home to Beverly Hills would be ballpark an hour plus drive with some traffic mixed in and we would listen to Kathryn Kuhlman tapes or CDs that at the time, my uncle's media team had redone so that he could listen to them.

And then when the birth of the MP3 at that time became really popular before podcasts, we would listen to her the whole way there.

And I was a driver also with my uncle. And so I would drive his G -Wagon Benz and we'd go to Beverly Hills. And I didn't understand all this at the time, but you can imagine how fascinated

I was as I read through Kathryn Kuhlman's biographies for the first time and did research and said, wow, this all sounds eerily familiar.

She fit the Hollywood scene quite well. And she was very much in her public ministry not fully trusted by many charismatic leaders and holiness

Pentecostals because she never publicly demonstrated her ability to speak in tongues.

And she actually refused to allow some tongue speaking in her services. A very odd mixture for her being in that world.

Beyond all the controversy surrounding her personal life and her particular service structures, which my uncle copied verbatim, nothing raised more concerns than the documented research on her healing ministry.

This is where it really comes to bear. Controversy erupted when a well -meaning doctor conducted a study to verify some of the healings that Kuhlman claimed had occurred in her meetings.

Dr. William Nolan studied 25 people who had been declared healed at one of her services in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

And the results did not verify her claims at all. Two specific examples best illustrate the common embellishments and exaggerations that had become a mainstay in the modern healing movement and the prosperity gospel.

One woman in Dr. Nolan's study was announced by Kuhlman as having been healed of lung cancer. But later it was confirmed the woman actually had

Hodgkin's disease and was not healed at all. Another woman with a cancerous vertebrae tossed aside her braces and ran across the stage much like they had done in my uncle's services on Kuhlman's command.

The old, do something you could never do before. Show the people how God has healed you. The crowds roared and she gushed with joy.

The following day, the woman's vertebrae collapsed and four months later, sadly, she was dead.

And still, the question has to be asked, how could a woman who claimed to have had personal, audible, verbal communication from God be so unclear when it came to accuracy regarding healing?

Well, it's simple, because none of it was real. Could God have healed someone?

Sure. Could Jesus save people in these services? Of course. They don't belong to Katharine Kuhlman or anybody else for that matter.

The sheep belong to Christ. He can save open eyes. He can draw whomever, however.

But the truly saved don't stay in these places. And the truly healed are healed and you'll know it.

In the years that went on, it appears that Kuhlman distracted her audience from dwelling on her moral failures and her unconfirmed healings and her financial scandals by entertaining them with elaborate stories about her traveling adventures and other unusual and unverifiable healings.

If you were to google YouTube footage of her crusade

May 3, 1975 in Las Vegas, you will find the perfect illustration of the

PR tactics and the presentation and the aura and the hype surrounding her ministry in the same way you would see that with my uncle

Benny Hinn. They are nearly an exact match. Her ministry was a ladder for fame and power.

She climbed it high during her time when women were desperate for equality at the very best to be fair.

She was a woman who was disillusioned and wanted to make a name for herself and found that in Philippians 1's pretense in ministry.

But I'm of the mind that she fits into a completely different category of a woman who capitalized on feminism, used the

Bible for her own gain, and took advantage of desperate people. If anything, she was delusional, speaking to a spirit that was not the

Holy Spirit and entertaining truths that weren't true at all. The next figure is

Oral Roberts. Oral Roberts lived from 1918 to 2009.

Granville Oral Roberts pioneered the prosperity gospel and seed faith theology as it's known today.

I call him a pioneer because he used tactics and strategies that very few had ever used including media in new and unique ways.

He obviously got into the education world as well launching Oral Roberts University to the degree that now, even as we speak,

Oral Roberts' baseball team is in the Stillwater Regional playing

Oklahoma State, Washington, my alma mater, Dallas Baptist University.

The idea that a faith healer of his caliber and that's not a compliment would have a university that the

NCAA would now even take seriously and that has established itself as evidence that generally speaking, if you can get the money to roll in, no one really cares what you're teaching.

Unlike his predecessors, the facts surrounding his life and ministry are not filled with moral failures and his teachings were crystal clear to everyone.

Meaning, people aren't confused about Oral Roberts. It's all there. Whereas, Catherine Coleman and people prior weren't as well documented, though some have done good research today,

Oral Roberts, it was obvious. He was born in humble circumstances. He was the son of a preacher and young Oral suffered from tuberculosis.

At age 17, he claimed that God spoke to him personally and healed him. His own biography documents this life -changing moment this way.

God said to him, He says, Son, I'm going to heal you and you're going to take my healing power to your generation.

You are to build me a university based on my authority and on the Holy Spirit. Roberts was miraculously healed that night, he says, of both tuberculosis and lifelong stuttering.

His call from God and supernatural healing marked the beginning of a miracle ministry.

Not long after his dramatic claim of healing, he married Evelyn Luttman.

Fun is stock on Christmas Day, 1938.

He found his wife. And together, they developed the theology that bankrolled the family business.

History scholar Christopher Reed captures this moment in the obituary of Oral Roberts after his death in 2009.

He says at the age of 29, he was a struggling part -time preacher with church pastorates in Oklahoma and his college studies had not brought him a degree.

He told the story of how he picked up his Bible and it fell open to the epistle of 3 John. His eye caught verse 2 which read,

I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health even as thy soul prospereth.

He had not heard this verse before and neither had his school teacher wife, Evelyn, though both were the offspring of preachers.

Roberts decided immediately that it was all right to be rich. The next day, he bought a

Buick and God appeared, he said, telling him to heal people. Roberts then added this aspect to his tent revival meetings and months later in Enid, Oklahoma, he cured, he said, a woman the use of whose hand had been impaired for 38 years.

Do you notice the pattern of many of these characters as they have an experience that no one can verify.

They talk to a deity that we're not sure of at all.

Well, we would be, I would say, but others not. And they're told to do something that no one else is to do, just them.

And they're going to do this special thing and have this special calling. Roberts didn't mince words when it came to his version of Jesus or the gospel.

He boldly taught and defended his belief. That Jesus' highest wish was for every believer to prosper materially in their health as well and to have happiness and perfect peace and power in the soul.

He twisted the Bible to make his point. And he, in one of his books, tells his readers that Jesus said in 3

John 1 -2, Beloved, I wish above all things that thou may prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

When in fact, it was just the Apostle John's loving way of greeting his readers at the time. There's a best -selling book in his era,

If You Need Healing, Do These Things, that Oral Roberts wrote. The Miracle of Seed Faith, A Daily Guide to Miracles, and Successful Living Through Seed Faith.

The desperate crowds could not get enough of his promises. They were unaware at the time and unconcerned, his followers at least, as he mishandled the gospel of Jesus Christ in every single way.

And Roberts didn't just use Scripture -twisting tactics to build his prosperity gospel empire into a multi -million dollar machine.

He was incredibly innovative. In 1963, he was able to leverage his

Native American heritage to obtain a U .S. land grant for the property that he now built the university on.

He built a 500 -acre campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I've already made mention of that.

He also built a faith -healing hospital or faith -based healing hospital in 1981 called

City of Faith. And his stated goal was to merge the power of prayer with science and medicine.

The towering structure was built and through the giving of ministry partners who donated $120 million in four years.

Roberts told his partners about a face -to -face conversion or conversation, rather, he had with Jesus where he was told that the ministry partners would give the money.

This is very convenient. It would be as though Pastor Jim gets up here and says, God told me that y 'all are going to give the money to renovate the building.

And that's what he told me. So today we're going to give and you all assume that God has obviously mandated that.

According to the letter that was forwarded by someone else, Roberts says he encountered

Jesus at 7 p .m. as he stood in front of the City of Faith in South Tulsa.

He said it was the second time he had met him. And in the letter, Roberts told his partners, I felt an overwhelmingly holy presence all around me.

When I opened my eyes, there he stood some 900 feet tall. It's hard to say.

Because it's lunacy. Looking at me, his eyes, oh, his eyes it says.

He stood a full 300 feet taller than the 600 foot tall

City of Faith. There I was face to face with Jesus, the Son of the Living God. Roberts continued on,

I have only seen Jesus once before. He stared at me without saying a word.

Oh, I will never forget those eyes. He then reached down, put his hand under the

City of Faith, lifted it and said to me, see how easy it is for me to lift it?

Roberts told his partners that he told Jesus he had taken City of Faith as far as he could.

Jesus's reply, according to Oral Roberts, was I told you at the beginning that you would not be able to build it yourself.

I told you that I would speak to your partners and through them, I would build it. Roberts said that Jesus assured him that through the partners, the

City of Faith would be finished. Very convenient. Whatever version of Jesus that Roberts saw that day, the 900 foot figure had no power to sustain the supposedly divinely inspired hospital.

The City of Faith only lasted eight years. And every year it was a financial disaster. At one point, he tried to recover the whole thing, claiming

God said to him he would end his life if $8 million wasn't raised between January and March of 1987.

The worried followers that their beloved leader would die began to send in money, and the money was raised.

And despite his ability to manipulate the giving of his partners in the short term, the City of Faith then was sold to various investors.

As multipurpose office space. And today it is called. The City Plex Towers.

Roberts teaching and outlandish claims created a legacy built on false teachings.

False motives. And false. Information. He did not teach about God as described in the

Bible. Instead, he developed his own definition of God. And it was based on his theology of healing.

He wrote at one point of his healing theology, if God has ever healed one person,

He will heal two. If He heals two, He will heal four. And if four, then eight. And if eight, He will heal all who believe.

It's interesting math. Else you make Him have healing compassion for one and not the other.

Should that be done, He would not be God, but a man. No, you will not be able to say it is

God's will to heal one and not His will to heal another. He is either a God of love, perfect love, or He is not

God at all. Isn't that right? He wrote in his book,

If You Need Healing, Do These Things. It's on page 23 of that old book. I have a copy of it. I had to search far and wide for it.

Thankfully, it's not in strong circulation today. Roberts rejected the sovereignty of God in his healing theology and really in his overall general theology.

He dismissed God as not being a God of perfect love if He didn't heal everyone. And that's blasphemy.

Roberts claims to have raised dozens from the dead, including a baby in the middle of a service.

And this claim was in the Associated Press as he tells a conference that he's raised people from the dead.

And his son, Richard Roberts, is quoted saying, right in the middle of my dad's sermon, a woman came running up to the platform with her baby in her arms screaming, my baby has just died.

My baby has just died. That child that died during the service. My dad had to stop in the middle of his sermon and lay hands on that child and that child came back to life again.

Richard Roberts speculated that there were probably dozens and dozens, this is a quote, and dozens of documented instances of people who have been raised from the dead.

And that was all proclaimed by Richard in 1987 on June 27th.

That article was out in the New York Times. And to this day, the ministry provides no evidence of anyone being raised from the dead.

But, it sells. And it raises the money and the attention that he was after.

By the time his empire grew to its peak, he was making millions of dollars annually.

He was upholding a lifestyle that prosperity preachers of today would seek to emulate.

And aside from the obvious conclusions that one can draw concerning Roberts' credentials as a healer, it may be his lesser known teachings that inspired much of today's charismatic chaos.

He taught seven rules of faith that will bring you what you want. Two of them are, go where the power is, and lose yourself.

He teaches that as well in his book, If You Need Healing, Do These Things. And what do people do today? They move to the revivals.

So many people I talk to who have come out of this movement, at one point or another, had moved to Reading to be at Bethel, or moved to Sacramento to be at Jesus Culture, or they've moved to somewhere in the

South to be with some other faith healer. You go where the power is, and that is really the impetus for Bethel's Supernatural School of Ministry where they tell people, come to us and receive what we have.

Finally, Kenneth Hagan. He lived 1917 to 2003.

Kenneth Hagan is widely known as the father of the Word of Faith movement. He's influenced today's richest preachers in countless ways.

And Hagan, like every other general, claimed his teachings came directly from God as divine revelation.

He is the inspiration for Kenneth Copeland. If I had to trace back today's prosperity preachers to each one of these characters,

Catherine Coleman would be your obvious model for every kind of faith healer in their theatrics, including my uncle spawning others.

Oral Roberts, your prosperity gospel preachers, your big high dollar, high wealth, high influence, high society types.

And Kenneth Hagan, your crazy Word of Faith types that make you wonder, how in the world do people buy into this stuff?

And all you need to do is drive by Kenneth Copeland's giant cattle ranch in Fort Worth or wherever he is out there in the boonies, and you will see this stuff works.

Kenneth Hagan, in part, a product of a predecessor

E .W. Kenyon, who long before televangelists were filling the airwaves with expensive suits and money -making promises,

E .W. Kenyon developed a new cultish hybrid theology at the turn of the 20th century. The phrase he had coined was, what

I confess, I can possess. He mixed the beliefs of Phineas Quimby and his hypnotizing new thought teachings with Christian teachings.

Quimby's metaphysical philosophy taught that humans can use their mind to alter their reality through the power of confession.

This is where all of this comes from. The problem with Kenyon's theology was that he changed biblical confession and its focus on sin and faith and the right belief about Christ.

Romans 10, 9, if you believe in your heart, confess with your mouth. First John 1, 9, confessing sin results in Christ washing you clean of your sin.

And instead, he taught people to confess their desire for temporal comforts like healing and material prosperity. According to E .W.

Kenyon, God never planned that we should live in poverty, either physical, mental, or spiritual. He made Israel the head of the nations financially.

When we go into partnership with him, meaning God, and we learn his way of doing business, we cannot be failures.

He will give you the ability to make your life a success. If I said that in a Joel Osteen voice, you'd be certain it was

Joel. Much of what Kenyon taught sounds like a transcript of a

Joel Osteen sermon. And this similarity is probably because Osteen was indirectly influenced by Kenyon's teaching as he grew up in the word of faith movement under his father,

John Osteen, who was the pastor of the church, that now Joel leads. The following quote by E .W.

Kenyon sounds like one of Osteen's television sermons. E .W. said, You will seldom rise above your words.

If you talk sickness, you will go to the level of your conversation. If you talk weakness and failure, you will act it.

You keep saying, I can't get work. I can't do this. And your words react to your body.

Kenyon also taught confession always goes ahead of healing. Don't watch symptoms. Watch the word and be sure that your confession is bold and vigorous.

That is where a lot of this comes from. Kenneth Hagen comes from this family tree of theology to build his platform of power.

He used a dramatic conversion story filled with fantastical claims of supernatural experience.

At the age of 15, he was dying of heart problems. And after a supernatural visit to hell on three separate occasions and one trip into glory,

Hagen returned to his body and recovered from his disease. This is explained in one of his sermon resources titled,

I Went to Hell from 1982. Quite a sermon title.

Perhaps prophetic. He claimed that Jesus personally appeared to him eight times after his trip to hell over the course of several years.

After several unsuccessful attempts to pastoring a local church, he left the pastorate and began his itinerant ministry.

Then launched his own radio program in 1967. By 1968, he had started his first magazine titled,

The Word of Faith, which is still in circulation. He also founded Rhema Bible Training College in 1974.

Just met a woman this past week. Her and her husband are at our church. They came to membership class. She is a graduate of Rhema Bible School.

She grew up under Hagen's influence and the Lord saved her. His teachings were spreading like wildfire and he used all sorts of chaotic teaching and antics to draw people in.

There's a helpful video posted on YouTube titled, Kenneth Hagen Pretends He is About to Preach, Acts Demon Possessed Instead.

And it was put on YouTube by none other than Phil Johnson. So we thank you,

Phil. Being drunk in the spirit, so -called, causing people to shake and convulse and act demon possessed,

Kenneth Hagen put on a spectacle. He taught that Jesus was born again.

That He had to be, among other things. All false teaching is deadly, but perhaps nothing was more openly blasphemous than his little god theology.

This heresy teaches people to elevate their view of themselves and that they too will be and are a god.

A little god. Hagen wrote, The believer is as much an incarnation as was

Jesus of Nazareth. He taught that each person was created on terms of equality with God and he could stand in God's presence without any consciousness of inferiority.

God has made us as much like Himself as possible. He made us the same class of being that He is

Himself. On and on it goes.

His work of plagiarism was exposed by D .R. McConnell in his book on Hagen and on this false gospel and the

Word of Faith movement. As D .R. McConnell, the book's titled A Different Gospel, he puts next to each other

Hagen's writing and E .W. Kenyon's writing and they are verbatim. Hagen being the original plagiarizer.

His life and ministry were built on a foundation of sand and unfortunately many preachers were influenced by his ministry and happy to copy his theology because it worked.

I remember years, years later having a conversation with my own father who

I love very much and actively have good conversations with now. And we had launched a school in the 80's he had,

I was a kid, titled the Signs and Wonders School of Ministry. People would pay tuition and be taught how to do miracles.

This was the original before Bethel was Bethel. My dad and uncle both had Signs and Wonders Schools of Ministry.

And I remember curating the material years ago when I was working for my dad and my uncle.

And I had the files and we're printing them. We were launching a new semester and I remember seeing all of the material.

Years later after researching all of this, I said to my father, did you study?

Did you do this kind of thing actively? Make it up yourself.

Look at the Bible. See it there. Or did you read their books? How did you come to the place of teaching these things?

And he said, Cost, I'll be honest with you. I'm an uneducated man. I love the

Lord. I think I obviously made some mistakes, but you just did what they did.

And I bought their books and I bought the studies and I bought the curriculum and then I packaged it myself and presented and it worked.

That's what everybody wanted. They wanted Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagan. They love this stuff. And that's what essentially people came to us for.

I never thought, well, I'm a heretic or this stuff is wrong. I thought everybody else was wrong and everyone was crazy.

I just had never studied. I didn't go to some Baptist school like you. This is his exact words.

He said now, I don't know what was true and what wasn't. I just know that's what a lot of us did.

And interestingly enough, you can see the pattern and I'm not excusing anyone here.

Just helping you understand the links. Of even Joel Osteen using positive confession as the foundational piece to his ministry as it was for his dad,

John Osteen. John was a proud partner with Kenneth Hagan in making positive confession theology a formative part of the

Osteen legacy. John Osteen is quoted saying,

I think brother Hagan is chosen of God and stands in the forefront of the message of faith.

And that was a taped interview on February 24th, 1982. These are the players that are now long gone, but still reign as influential.

These were my heroes. They inspired the legacy that has continued unfortunately through my family and into the next generation.

And all of that should fill us with two particular thoughts or feelings.

Number one, gratitude. That the Lord would save any of us from where we were.

That He would snatch us like a brand snatched from the burning and pull us out of what seems to pull so many in.

And then it should also fill us with fear. A fear of the Lord and a fear for their souls should they continue down this path unrepentant, rejecting the truth because hell is the destination and has been the destination of those who have taught these things without repentance.

An important piece of the prosperity gospel and its history that helps us understand there's nothing new under the sun.

Thank God we're saved. Let me pray for us and then we'll do a break and do a seven minute break and jump in.

Father, thank You for saving us. Thank You also for faithful church historians. Thank You for public record even perhaps in Your common grace allowing that there be ways in which

Your people can go and do research, use discernment, and while media can be so useful to the enemy in spreading false teaching, we can also use it to our advantage to pull quotes and to prop up Your truth and show how weak, how blasphemous, and how empty these teachings truly are when compared to the glorious truth in Your Word and Your Gospel.

Bless our time as we shift gears in the next session. And thank You for Your kindness and mercy upon us.

In Jesus' name, Amen. Well, go ahead and grab your last snacks and coffee and waters.

So this session, we'll probably run it right up. I'll probably be 45 minutes solid on this one.

And then the next one, we're going to get more and more. The one after that right before lunch will be a turn in your

Bible session. We'll start getting more and more as I said, digging into the Word and building up from the depths of which we've gone now, which if you're not depressed yet, you are quite the hopeful person.

Oh, good. All right. You're encouraged. Yes, that is true. We ought to be.

And so we'll do that. This session is titled 10

Ways Prosperity Theology Maligns the Gospel. It's a long title. If you want to just short form, you can just put 10 blasphemies.

10 heresies. These are my 10 theses. This session will help us understand conversation points, talking points, text message points,

DM points, whatever you want to call them. These are anchors for you theologically. If someone were to say, okay, what's the big deal about the prosperity gospel?

Is it really an issue? Are you just mad? Who says that people can't be rich?

And be wealthy. And of course, we know that wealth is not a sin. It's a responsibility.

We're to use it well, use it faithfully. We know all those things, but this is kind of the why. Why is the prosperity gospel so dangerous?

What are the tenants of it that are blasphemous? And then in the next session before lunch, we'll look at what it means to be a church who stands firm.

And we'll talk through some of that. Let me pray and we'll jump in. Lord, as we walk through these ten marks of why the prosperity gospel is so dangerous, would

You hold high in our minds Your truth, Your Word, Your glory, the beauty of what

You are building in Your church, and use these talking points in our lives.

Let them be tools in our toolboxes or tool belts of evangelism and dialogue when we're trying to reach people, when we're asked a question that we could go quickly to these truths.

We could break down what Your Word truly says and then tear down every thought, every ideology that raises itself up against Your knowledge.

Let this be a session that equips us for trench work in evangelism and discipleship.

In Jesus' name, Amen. So one of the reasons that people will be blind to the prosperity gospel outside of biblical literacy, outside of them wanting these things, but in general, just the people that say, come on, what's the big deal?

Is how blissfully, perhaps not blissfully, but you understand what I'm saying, unaware they are of just how anti -Christian the prosperity gospel is.

And if we truly understand how evil it is, then it's not difficult to see the satanic nature of it.

And the reason why every church, every pastor, and every Christian should be standing against this false gospel and of course being loud for the true gospel.

Volumes have been written about this, and so I'm going to do my best to boil it all down into 10 concise truths of how or why the prosperity gospel maligns the true gospel.

1. The prosperity gospel distorts the biblical gospel.

If this were Paul the Apostle talking in Galatians 1, he would say, and he does write, it's really not a gospel at all.

A false gospel isn't. It's a so -called gospel. It's so -called good news, but it's not, which is why more and more,

I would opt to just call it prosperity theology or the so -called prosperity gospel.

2. The biblical gospel can be properly understood by looking at biblical passages on the gospel.

You know these if you took Awana as a kid. Romans 5, 8 -10,

Paul declares, But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him, in Christ.

For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we will be saved by His life.

This is the true gospel and what the gospel is about. In Romans 3, 23 -25, we read that sin is something we've all committed, that all fall short of the glory of God.

And Paul writes that and then says, Being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, whom

God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate

His righteousness because in the forbearance of God, He passed over the sins previously committed.

That is the gospel. Finally, in what is perhaps the most comprehensive passage about the gospel and one of my personal favorites, if you were to just go to Ephesians 2 and live in verses 1 -10, you would see it all right there.

It's plain as day. By the time you get to verse 4 and you've understood that we were all dead in trespasses and sins,

Paul writes, But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, and then he says, by grace you've been saved, and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come,

He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith and not of yourselves.

It's the gift of God, not as the result of works, so that no one may boast. All of these things are so clear when it comes to the gospel.

Paul going on to say, For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so we should walk in them.

When you look at passages about the gospel in the Bible, what do you notice? The gospel is all about who you were.

Dead. Sinner. Lost. Damned.

Condemned. What Christ did, and now who you are.

That's what it's about. The gospel is not about what we receive materially, but rather what we've received spiritually.

The gospel is about redemption. About salvation. Not just from sin, but from the wrath of God.

That's what the gospel is about. It's not about the gifts. It's about the giver. It's not even about the redeemed, but really about the

Redeemer. It's all about Him. In a way, we're a byproduct. A gift from the

Father to the Son. A people bought, redeemed, loved, called. All of that is wrapped up in what is good news.

Why is it good news? Well, because there is bad news. You're a sinner. You are condemned.

You have the wrath of God pointed at you. I had the wrath of God pointed at me.

And because of Christ, there is propitiation, a substitute.

That's the gospel. The prosperity gospel distorts all of that by making the good news about what you can get out of God materially.

That if you follow Jesus, the John 10 verse 10 abundant life is not a full, peaceful, joyful life.

Even if you died young as a martyr. Even if you suffered in trial here on earth, you know that great joy awaits you.

Blessing in heaven awaits you because you have Christ. No, they make John 10 verse 10 all about stuff.

That the abundant life is Bentleys and mansions and job promotions and guaranteed healing and great relationships and a promotion at this job and the next job and a legacy in your children.

All of it. You enjoying the good life. That's not at all what the abundant life is about.

When Jesus says in John 10 10, the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, but I have come that you may have life and life more abundantly.

It is about the security of your soul for all eternity, the joy, treasure and riches of heaven.

Ultimately the greatest treasure of all the great reward himself being Christ and being with him for all of eternity.

This is the abundant life. It's not about a comfortable 70 years and a little retirement on some lazy green acres and playing lots of golf and driving nice cars.

It's about being saved from the wrath of God.

The prosperity gospel distorts the biblical gospel. Number two, the prosperity gospel insults

God's nature. Insults God's nature. God is divinely infinite.

He's beyond our human comprehension. One of the most important truths that you could ever study.

And if you haven't, this is a great opportunity for you to do that after this conference and to spend great time jumping into the attributes of God that you would know him and comprehend whatever level you're able to.

By his revelation, you can see who he is and understand who he is and know what he's revealed.

Of course, he's infinite and not even fully knowable on this side of heaven, but you can know enough about God to see his nature and all of his attributes.

He's made himself known. And when you get to know him, you find he's not some formula.

He's not some magic genie. If you give enough money and make a confession of faith and say the right things and get under the right anointed leader who can unlock the blessings of God on your life that you'd have it all.

Not at all. He's not that. He is eternal. Time cannot hold him.

He cannot be manipulated. He does not tolerate sin and licentiousness and deception.

He is holy. The definition of perfection. And he's sovereign. He's the majestic ruler over the entire universe in every single way, shape, and form.

Psalm 115 .3 One of my favorite passages after I was saved. But our God is in the heavens.

He does whatever he pleases. God is sovereign over all things. Job said this, naked

I came from my mother's womb and naked I will return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the

Lord. In Job 1 .21. John 4 .24 means there's no words.

Jesus says, God is spirit. Those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. You think about the conversation with the woman there at the well.

Worship no longer about a place, but about a person. It's all about God. All about Christ.

All about His glory. We've got to realize that God in His nature, in His holiness, in His majesty, it's not something we manipulate.

Not something we ever talk about in the ways that prosperity preachers do. The truth about God is something we submit to.

In stark contrast, the prosperity gospel teaches that God is essentially a puppet on your string.

You can manipulate Him and make Him do whatever it is you want Him to do or would like Him to do that will grant your wishes if you do these things.

That's a works -based reward system, no doubt. But I would even go further to say it's a works -based gospel.

It turns God into nothing more than a cosmic banker. And He is a transactional being who just gives you what you want and what you're after.

That is dangerous. It is abusive. It does not introduce people to their Creator in the right way, in the biblical way.

It leads people to come to know a God who is not God at all.

He's a God of their own imagination. That, if anything, is what you should take away from the last session in the historical heretics who basically made up a version of God that is not at all the biblical

God. And so the prosperity gospel insults His nature.

We are called to be ambassadors who represent precisely who He is according to Scripture. 3.

The prosperity gospel confuses the atonement. The atonement can be defined simply as what

Jesus did when He went to the cross and He bore our sins and He conquered death by rising from the grave.

To atone for something means that you have paid for it. You've made amends. You've made it right.

And Jesus provided redemption and atonement for us as lost sinners. He was the atonement

Lamb. He paid the penalty for our sins. He bore the wrath of God that you and I would not now as His people.

The benefits of the atonement are eternal. In most of what the

Bible describes, there is an eternal picture when it comes to the atonement. Are there side benefits, if you will, here on earth?

Of course. You and I are sitting here right now. This is a side benefit. It's a temporal benefit because of the atonement.

Yes. Is there a promise of what's to come? Of course. Did you wake up this morning with great peace, joy in your heart, assurance of salvation, a confidence?

I hope so. If you're truly saved and you know you're saved, then you did. And while in this area,

I could say that I woke up with a great deal of peace because there was a rabbit eating outside of the cabin

I'm staying in and there was green everywhere and I had my instrumental hymns playing and the coffee was on and as a dad of five kids, in a way,

I do miss them. But in other ways, I briefly enjoyed the silence of the morning and there wasn't a soul around.

And then I did text my wife and say, I love you. I miss you. I'm sure it was a long night for you.

Missing you and wishing you were here. And I sent her a photo of the little bunny eating in the grass right outside the forest that surrounds my accommodations.

There's a lot of reasons to feel peace. There's a lot of common grace benefits. But ultimately, the great benefit of the atonement is that your soul is secure.

You are bought, saved, justified, free from the condemnation that would be yours if you were not in Christ.

This is what we're promised. And are there other benefits to come because of the atonement?

Yes, in heaven, there will be no more sickness. In heaven, there will be no war.

There will be no death. There will be no pain. There will be no divorce. There will be no broken relationships.

There will be no wayward, prodigal children. There will be none of those things.

Why? Because Christ has bought and paid for everything, and what awaits us is the perfection of heaven.

Entrance into that perfection to enjoy the doxa glory of God in eternity.

Why? Because He bought you. That is a benefit.

But no, you will not experience on earth wealth, guaranteed health, guaranteed perfection, guaranteed healing, guaranteed salvation for every single person that is in your family, or guaranteed ease and comfort simply because of the atonement.

What a lot of prosperity preachers do is they write checks with their mouths that the Bible doesn't cash.

They say Jesus not only died and atoned for your salvation, but He also died to atone for sickness.

And if you are sick, it's because you've not received what He's already freely given.

They make it all about salvation and sickness as a package deal, or salvation and healing.

They will say that Jesus' death on the cross didn't just provide for you the riches of eternal life, but also earthly riches here in this life.

All you have to do by faith is tap into those things He's already paid for.

This is damaging. It's a lie that makes people feel as though they don't have enough faith.

And it takes the beautiful work of the atonement and it demeans it so much that it's simply a cheap transaction that makes it all about you and your fleeting pleasures.

In that, number four, the prosperity gospel then demeans

Jesus Christ. It demeans Jesus Christ. Paul says to live is

Christ, to die is gain in Philippians 1 .21. John the Baptist says in John 3 .30, He must increase,

I must decrease. Over and over, the Bible explains the glory of Jesus Christ as the be -all, end -all.

You look at Hebrews 1. You just walk through those first 10 verses and you see He's the radiance of His glory.

He's everything. Jesus is wholly other, set apart, different.

He is the sustainer of all things. Whoever has Jesus has life, 1

John 5 .12 says. He's the only way to heaven, John 14 .6 says. Without Jesus, even heaven would be hell.

People often think about heaven and say, I want to be with my loved ones. I can't wait to reunite. And other pagan people at these funerals

I've been at before or heard, you know, they get up there and they act like God is their homeboy in heaven.

They say these things. I was at a funeral not long ago. A guy got up and said, hey man, crack one with the big guy upstairs and have one ready for me.

I'll be there soon. And I just thought, what a way to view God. What a blasphemous picture.

Recently, talking with another person who's outside of the Christian faith about a loved one they had lost.

And the entire conversation was about how they can't wait to hang out with their loved ones again in heaven.

It's all about hanging out in heaven. I begin to obviously unpack the Gospel and there won't be any hanging out in heaven for you.

Unless you repent and turn to Christ. So often Jesus is sort of the cherry on top of our

American dream. And that's what gets a lot of people into these churches and into these troubles in which they spend 15 to 20 years in some seeker -driven mega church because they walked an aisle, they prayed a prayer, and they thought they were good.

And Jesus is so good. God is so good. Why? Because my kid's on the honor roll and my kid got a scholarship and he's so good at sports and we have a beautiful home and everything's so good in our life.

God is so good. Jesus is awesome. And then they go through trials and they get mad at God and they lose their faith.

Well, it wasn't a faith in the first place. And that wasn't Jesus. That was an American dream version.

This is what the prosperity Gospel sells. All the health and wealth this world can offer will never compare with the vast riches of Christ and eternity with Him.

Jesus is everything to the believer. The prosperity

Gospel makes human satisfaction and material in Jesus to be just sort of the cherry on top of our already great life.

I remember hearing Kenneth Copeland say something to this degree that I know there's treasure in heaven, but who says we can't have that now?

It's as though faith is like swiping your debit card, punching in the code, and raining down from heaven is the real treasures and the riches.

This delivers a Gospel that is no Gospel at all and a version of Jesus that is not our

Lord at all. It demeans Jesus Christ. Number five, the prosperity Gospel then of course, twists

Scripture To get these things, you've got to twist

God's Word. The Bible is a big book and it can seem really intimidating for people, but upon investigation, you can find out how simple it is still to approach

God's Word the right way. The Bible is a compilation of Spirit -inspired writings through human authors carried along by the

Spirit of God. To various audiences with various applications.

It's not that hard to approach the Gospels or the epistles for what they are.

We complicate it, prosperity preachers do, when they do what is typically called eisegesis, which is simply to pull out some random thing from the

Bible and then make it mean whatever you want or to simply read yourself into the text.

And this is where we get funny one -liners like, hey, you're not

David. You know, people will preach David and Goliath. They'll preach the story and they'll say, I wonder what giants you're facing in your life right now.

Maybe that Goliath of debt needs the stone of faith to bring it down.

You think, how about you just stop overspending? Maybe go to Proverbs and see some principles from wisdom literature.

Proverbs 6 in particular will be really helpful for not racking the credit card and then having to use the narrative about David and Goliath as some get out of debt story.

There's a whole lot of others I could go on. You could preach entire sermons on this type of lunacy and then beeline to sound hermeneutics.

And there's a place for that. If you're looking for a book that will help you, Nate Pickowitz, real dear brother of ours, wrote a book called

How to Eat Your Bible. Anybody heard of that book? Awesome. OK, some of you, the rest of you, you need to buy that book.

It's short. It's a little blue book. It's cheap. And he's done a great job giving you a very palatable way to approach the

Bible. It's not hard. We just need to give ourselves to proper hermeneutics and the understanding of Scripture.

We also need to be careful if we're going to teach God's Word. James 3 says, "...let

not many of you become teachers, lest you incur a stricter judgment."

There's a weightiness to teaching. The prosperity gospel takes the age -old, time -tested interpretive strategies that Bible scholars have used for generations and turns them upside down.

They throw the rules for hermeneutics out the window. However you feel about a passage, that's what you preach.

As long as it'll preach. Of course, this leads now to characters like Stephen Furtick and the latest player who's eclipsed them all it seems,

Michael Todd, the pastor of Transformation Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to say and preach things that are barely fit to even quote in the pulpit.

If their strategy was to be so blasphemous and so outlandish that not even Justin Peters would quote them in a seminar, they're accomplishing their goal like an evil imposter taking a heartfelt letter from a king to his royal subjects and twisting it for self -serving purposes that it was never intended to be.

Prosperity preachers take the Bible and they twist it into a tool for their own abusive purposes.

Number six, the prosperity gospel then is motivated by a love for money. Motivated by a love for money.

And money is like a microscope. It magnifies what's really going on inside of the heart.

God knowing that money would be no small issue for human beings, gave instructions in the

Bible for using it well, making it the right ways. It's again, not a sin to be wealthy. Hardworking people, wise and prudent people will amass for themselves some level of wealth in whatever

God would providentially allow. And the Proverbs are full of wisdom that will save you a lot of health and wealth gospel headaches.

Wisdom is better than riches, Proverbs 3 .13 says. Trusting in riches will do you little good,

Proverbs 11 .28 says. Money gained by deception doesn't last, Proverbs 10 .2.

If somebody were to ask me, what happened to all the houses? What happened to all the money? How are these people living now?

Even in our family. I'll tell you this, that whether before they die or just shortly after, like the

Proverbs say, ill -gotten gains don't last. You watch, and over the course of just a couple of decades, the decline of these ministries is so clear.

I think it's in a way, a kindness of sorts when it happens during their lifetime because perhaps, maybe

God will grant repentance, there'll be a wake -up call. But for many of these people, the fear and the crushing weight of brokenheartedness is for their children and their churches.

When after these men and women die, their legacy leaves a body count that only heaven will fully tell the story of.

It doesn't last. The damage wreaks havoc.

Beyond Proverbs, the Bible says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil in 1

Timothy 6 .10. And so where you have the love of money in ministry, you will have wickedness and evil.

The prosperity gospel is obsessed with money and material gain. We need to understand, nothing comes from the love of money that honors the

Lord. Number seven, the prosperity gospel produces false converts.

It produces false converts. If the prosperity gospel is not the real gospel, if Jesus is not the real

Jesus, if the Word preached is not the actual Word preached faithfully, then many people chasing the prosperity gospel and believing in this gospel aren't actually saved.

And without broad brushing every human soul that's involved in these movements to say that they're just all hell bound, it is no stretch to say that there are millions of false converts in these movements.

We have to say that. They think they're saved, but they're deceived. And so that's why our mission becomes so vital.

This isn't fun. It's fun to think about how God has saved us, but it's not fun to think about how many millions of people are deceived.

If anything, you think, wow, there's work to be done. The work of evangelism, the work of discipleship, the work of pleading with souls, and God will do it.

There's many people in those movements that will be saved. Many sheep will come home. I think of 15 years ago, there were many of you who were saved.

There were many faithful people in ministry, and I was lost. And thankfully, they didn't stop putting out resources and proclaiming the truth.

And so you have to understand that God will still do what He does. But there are so many false converts in these movements.

And they are in bondage. The confusion that they're under is not the mark of the

Spirit's work. The Holy Spirit they claim to know and represent is not the

Holy Spirit of the Bible. And what the Holy Spirit does and what His resume shows to be true is what

Jesus says in John 16. He guides the disciples into truth. And you could say, by secondary benefit and extension, the

Holy Spirit will also guide us into the truth. Now, those men were being guided into the truth of writing

Scripture. But is the Holy Spirit going to ever guide us into error?

No. Is that His ministry? Is that consistent? Like He was able to help the biblical authors with their accuracy and write the truth and to recall the truth.

But then for us, well, He'll lead you into verdicts ministry because there's some good in it.

Or, well, everybody's human, so everybody makes mistakes.

But as long as you just claim Jesus. This is what we see on these interviews when whether it's

Joel Osteen or somebody else who goes on Larry King and essentially, you know, I don't know.

I don't know. If somebody claims Jesus, though, that's faith. You know, that's a

Jesus and we're on the same team. No, we're not. What you have is mass false conversion because of a false gospel.

Number eight, the prosperity gospel overcomplicates faith. It makes it so complicated.

You talk to people in these movements and some of you perhaps remember when you were in these movements and the bondage and the spiritual abuse, the feelings like you're never good enough.

You're never doing enough. Why? Well, you just don't have enough faith. If only

I had more faith. When it comes to our salvation, faith is a monumentally important thing to understand.

It's also very simple. The idea, the Greek word pistis is to throw oneself upon something, to trust fully, to believe, to have faith.

That's faith. Simple. That you would believe on Jesus Christ. That He would be your only hope.

Your only trust for salvation. That is faith that saves.

Jesus promises in Matthew 11 .30 that His yoke is easy. His burden is light.

He did not make it complicated. In fact, it was so simple that the Judaizers were really mad at Paul because he was preaching the free gift of salvation.

Well, what do you do? Nothing. Okay, but we should still be circumcised and keep the law, right?

No, no. Just believe. Okay, you're preaching a people -pleasing gospel now,

Paul. You're just trying to make it too easy. Faith is simple. Faith is not giving money to get

God's love. It's not paying a fee for His saving grace. Faith isn't going broke to get healed.

Although some will say, you just need to have faith. Take a step of faith. Give that seed of faith.

Nope. It's not traveling to a special service to get healing or get the anointing.

Faith is repenting of your sin, no longer trusting in yourself and your own ways to be saved or to live your life, but to trust fully on Jesus Christ alone to be saved from the wrath of God.

That's faith. Simple. Any religion that says you need to do good works, give enough money, speak enough positive declarations, or do anything to unlock

God's saving grace or His blessings upon you is a false religion.

The prosperity gospel turns faith on its head.

Making it some other heretical version that isn't true faith at all. If anything, while we'll be accused of being

Pharisees because we call this stuff out, the Pharisees by definition added things to the law, keeped burdens on people they couldn't carry, and put rules and regulations on people they themselves did not even keep.

They took advantage of widows. They were corrupt when it came to money. The Pharisees are not those who call out error and proclaim the truth.

The real Pharisees are the heretics and the blasphemers who preach the prosperity gospel.

They are the ones heaping burdens on people that they can never carry, manipulating, and exploiting.

The words we see in Luke 11 .46 are not true of men like your pastor or others who are faithful, but rather, false teachers.

Ninth, the prosperity gospel ruins Christianity's witness. Jesus says in Luke 14 .33,

So then none of you can be my disciple who does not give up all of his possessions. So when you preach a gospel that says following Jesus will get you more possessions, you have, in fact, trampled a foot on our witness.

Our actual purpose. Prosperity preachers misrepresent us. Now, numbering in the hundreds of millions around the world, prosperity gospel followers have bought into a version of Christianity that isn't

Christianity at all. The prosperity gospel worships material goods. And men and women who preach the prosperity gospel are laughing their way to the bank.

The world looks on as it makes a mockery of this as well.

It's not just the people that are false converts buying into it. You can do some Googling or YouTubing of Comedy Central and all the other spoofs that comedians have put out, because prosperity preachers are one of their favorite punchlines.

You think people say, well, all preachers want is your money. Why? Because the most popular preachers today really do.

And so we have work to do to be faithful. Christian leaders are expected to be free from the love of money.

1 Timothy 3 .3 We don't obsess over how to raid the offering buckets. We're expected to care for people as loving, humble, exemplary shepherds.

1 Peter 5 .2 is so clear about that. We're not manipulative salesmen. We're expected to use our

God -given authority to protect people and care for them. Not to exploit them.

We steer the church into the truth. Hebrews 13 .17 tells the people of God to be submissive to their leaders and then says, for they keep watch over your soul as ones who will give an account.

If leaders operated the way the New Testament calls us to, more in mass, our witness would be more accurately and more biblically presented.

The prosperity gospel is a stain. On the name of Christ. Finally, the prosperity gospel abuses vulnerable people.

Vulnerable people are abused by the prosperity gospel. Yes, there are many who raise up these teachers in accordance with their own desires, but there are many, like a brother just came up at the end of the last session to tell me about his father who was a faithful man, a dear pastor, and at one point, just desperate for healing.

Hoping to just maybe discover that this particular faith healer that said he could heal, maybe he can do it.

And he went to one of his services. You think about a

Justin Peters who went as a young child to a supposed healer.

Parents that are just hopeful that maybe, maybe, out of all the liars, maybe just one of them is telling the truth.

Or maybe God would just kindly make an exception. Because we have good intentions.

The prosperity gospel attracts people, yes, who are looking to get rich. But it attracts many others who are desperate and who are vulnerable and who need a pastor who will love them and protect them and give them real hope through the hope of the real gospel.

So many churches are overrun by charlatans. So, faithful churches have to say enough is enough.

We're not going to play the game. We're going to do it the right way. We're going to be faithful. We're going to make the hard decisions, preach the hard truths.

Why? Because we love Christ and we love His bride. We do not want to abuse or exploit vulnerable people.

People should come to our churches and experience healing. And more often than not, that should be a restorative, spiritual healing.

It is good and right. We should be hearing people say, you know what's just so amazing about this church?

What? It just is so refreshing. I feel loved.

I feel cared for. I feel like I'm healing from so many of the things that have tormented me spiritually.

It's so simple. I wish I knew this sooner. I wish I had a pastor like you sooner.

I wish I had friends and family like this sooner. The prosperity gospel is abusing vulnerable people.

This ought to motivate us. That we would stand firm and we would trust the

Lord, preach the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it would be, knowing that true healing begins when we've got the right diagnosis and we can say accurately, biblically, faithfully, that the prosperity gospel is a disease.

But the true gospel and faithfulness to God's Word is the solution. That's ten ways in which the prosperity gospel maligns the true gospel and hopefully, helpful talking points and things for you to consider and study.

We are going to take a ten minute break and then we're going to talk about a church standing firm and then we are going to have, well, it's normal for you, but for me, some of the best barbecue that I get to enjoy.

Enjoy your break. All right, well, we are going to get started in this session that precedes our little taste of heaven called lunch via the smoker that's outside.

And this particular session is titled A Church Standing Firm. Now some of the aspects of the reckless doctrines we'll cover are repetitive, not in that I've quoted these things yet, but in general when we talk about what the prosperity gospel does to the gospel, we've already covered the main issues and here and now, we'll talk a little bit about reckless doctrines and we'll give you some quotes.

But then we'll shift to what the church is supposed to do, which is your relentless devotion.

So, if you will, turn in your Bibles to Acts 20. We're going to spend a couple of minutes in verses 28 to 30.

And looking at Paul's charge to the elders there, and that'll jettison us into the rest of the session.

Acts 20, verses 28 to 30. And we'll read the text together and then pray and jump in.

Paul writes, well, Luke writes, Paul says, Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock among which the

Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.

I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

And from among your own selves, men will arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them.

Let's keep reading a little longer. Therefore, be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years, they did not cease to admonish each one with tears.

Now I commend you to God and to the Word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

I have coveted no one's silver or gold or clothes. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my own needs and to the men who were with me.

In everything, I showed you that by working hard in this manner, you must help the weak and remember the words of the

Lord Jesus that He Himself said it is more blessed to give than to receive. When He had said these things,

He knelt down and prayed with them, and they began to weep aloud, and they embraced Paul. That's the smoker.

Repeatedly kissed him, grieving especially over the word which he had spoken, and they would not see his face again, and they were accompanying him to the ship.

Let's pray, and if the fire department's on the way, they can join us for the

Word. Father, thank You for the words in Scripture which guide us, which teach us, which correct us and inspire us to fulfill our role.

In this session titled, The Church Standing Firm, would

You both affirm and guide and teach us that there are certainly those here who are doing these things, they would be encouraged all the more and affirmed, and there are those who are in churches that are not doing these things, and they are in need of guidance and direction.

Help us to be faithful. In Jesus' name, Amen. So, if you want a healthy church, if you want a healthy home, you need to get two things right.

We're talking spiritually here. You've got to get Christ right, and you've got to get the Gospel right. Both of these essentials impact the ordinances, church leadership, regenerate church membership, our assembly for worship, the preaching of God's Word, singing, spiritual gifts, care for the hurting, discipleship, evangelism, everything in the church, everything in your home, drives out of a proper understanding of Christ and the

Gospel. The purpose of the church especially, which is to glorify Christ ultimately, is impacted by your view of Christ and the

Gospel. But Satan does not want this. He doesn't at all take a vacation from assaulting the church's purpose.

He works hard to distort the person of Christ and the message of the

Gospel. He knows that the best way to bring the house down, if you will, is to undercut the legs of the church by attacking the head of it.

And so he does that relentlessly. Satan's not neutral. He aims to wreak havoc in the church and on the church because ultimately he hates the church because the church's purpose.

I love what Martin Luther once said, where God builds a church, the devil builds a chapel next door.

The primary means for the assault on the church is leadership. And so if you're going to be a church standing firm, and if we're going to attend the right churches and be the right church leaders with all of the heresy and blasphemy and undermining theology that we've walked through, then we need to ensure that our leadership and our view of these things is biblical.

Today, one of the primary ways in which Satan undermines the church is by getting imposters into pulpits and into church leadership.

There are what Jude describes as wild waves of the sea and clouds without water.

Professing to be wise. They're proving to be fools. And yet many professing

Christians are blind to the fact that our greatest threat in the church is not from the outside.

As crazy as the world is, as dark as things can be, the greatest threat to the church is on the inside.

And we are in need of leadership reformation at all times. In Acts 20 where we started,

Paul has called the elders from Ephesus down to meet him at Miletus for final instructions.

He predicts the days that are ahead so that there'd be no confusion on their part. And he's explained to them that savage wolves will come.

And men will rise up. And they'll be coming from within. And they'll speak perverse things to draw away the disciples after them.

Basically, an assault on the Gospel and on the church is coming. And the church needs to be aware and warned in a similar way that Paul has warned other churches.

He tells Corinth in 2 Corinthians 11, 13 -15, for such men are false apostles.

He's talking about these men that are undermining the church and undermining Paul's reputation and attacking the church there.

Deceitful workers. He says they're disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

He says, no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore, it's not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness whose end will be according to their deeds.

J .C. Ryle writes this, inside the church, Satan is ever laboring to sow heresies, to propagate errors, to foster departures from faith.

If he cannot prevent the waters from flowing from the fountain of life, he tries hard to poison them.

If he cannot destroy the medicine of the Gospel, he tries to adulterate and corrupt it.

No wonder he is called Apollyon the Destroyer. It's so true.

This is what Satan does. So if you're going to be a church standing firm, you need to be wise to his strategies.

There's two particular headings if you want to write these down in this session. We're going to look at their reckless doctrines, and then we're going to look at your relentless devotion.

So we'll look briefly at those guys, the bad guys out there. And we've spent a good deal of time dealing with that, so I won't spend as much time.

And then we'll look at your relentless devotion. What you and I should be doing and looking for.

Like those in Ephesus and in Corinth, and throughout history, we're facing an onslaught of deception.

And basically, you need to know at least some of what is being taught and propagate the truth.

Interestingly enough, I was in India the last time I canceled on this conference.

I was supposed to come a number of years ago. And I needed to go on a trip to India.

I say I needed to because I hadn't been back yet since being there on a heretical ministry trip years prior.

And I wanted to go. I had the opportunity to go and minister and preach a number of times. And I had a meeting with a group of pastors.

And they were Baptist, Lutheran, non -denominational, there was even

Pentecostal preachers there. And nearly all of them were preaching prosperity theology.

It was fascinating to me. I had shared my heart with them and asked them some questions.

And one of them in particular, who was not a Pentecostal prosperity preacher, he was a conservative young brother.

He said, if I didn't preach the prosperity gospel here, people would leave my church.

I have to preach it. It's the only thing that works. So I have to mix it in a little bit with preaching the truth.

Our brother, Conrad Mbiwi, has been clear for decades on Africa's battle against prosperity theology.

We're no better here in America. In Latin America, I spoke with a brother not long ago, he said that we're really the number one hub for the prosperity gospel around the world.

A lot of people make a big deal about Africa, but here in Latin America, prosperity gospel is king, he said.

What you have is reckless doctrine being propagated all over the world.

I'll offer you some quotes that I haven't been able to in other sessions, but Paula White, in her book

Living the Abundant Life, wrote about what God told her while sitting in her luxurious backyard.

He said to her, and I quote from her, Paula, it has nothing to do with what you deserve because it's not of your works.

Okay. It sounds almost like the real gospel. It is because of the provision included in the blood covenant that you can sit here today.

Oh, got it. She was sitting in her luxurious backyard looking at all her wealth, and she's wondering just, wow,

God. And it's explained to her from God Himself that it's because of the covenant.

Well, if the covenant gets me an infinity pool and Bentleys and million plus dollar penthouses in New York, then, you know, sign you up, most people would think.

But she would say, the abundant life and the covenant guarantees you wealth.

It's a mockery. At one point, my uncle on TBN said, and I quote, make a pledge, make a gift because that's the only way you're going to get a miracle.

Miracles happen when you do something. As you give, the miracle will happen. All right, so get to the phones and get busy, end quote.

This is what people are listening to around the world. Joel Osteen says, our words have creative power.

And so you just speak into existence whatever you want. I remember growing up, I used to put this into practice all the time.

At one point, I wanted so badly a Ferrari. And no joke, one day we got one.

We had a Ferrari F430. And it was used as this symbol that God had provided.

In fact, the story of the F430 Ferrari, and it was red, was so infamous that I, at Shepard's conference this year, ran into a dear, dear brother who works for Living Waters now with Ray Comfort.

And I looked at him and said, what are you doing here? He's like, me? What are you doing here?

That is the second time that's happened at a Shepard's conference. I ran into another brother from my past, a few years prior.

And he looked at me, and before I could even ask him what he's doing here, he said, what happened?

You know where you are? He's one of my baseball teammates. And the hilarious thing about the brother from Living Waters is, he said, do you remember the last time

I saw you? I said, no. He said, we were racing. I said, what?

Doing what? We were racing. And he said, you remember my, he had a BMW, like M3 or M5.

And he said, you had the Ferrari. And I'm like, wow, you know this, you, yes.

People will know I'm not lying now. Because of you. Like, we really did have a Ferrari. The problem was that it was through a shady business deal that involved church people's money and someone even did jail time because of it.

The idea that you're just going to live the blessed life and not suffer is so attractive to people all over the world.

But it is reckless doctrine. Paul the Apostle in Philippians 1 .29,

in that passage, even tells the church at Philippi, it has been granted to you the privilege of suffering.

It's a privilege. That you would suffer for Christ's sake. John the

Baptist was beheaded. Jesus crucified. Stephen stoned. Paul beaten, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and killed.

All 11 disciples martyred. But for John, historically argued, who basically withered away on Patmos, Polycarp, one of John's disciples, burnt and then pierced.

Tyndale was strangled to death, then burnt. On and on, history shows, faithful Christians martyred, suffering for the gospel, being killed.

Where is their best life now? Where was their riches? Where was their 80 years in health and wealth?

It's not there. Many of these propagators teach a sort of my -will -be -done gospel.

And what we come to know, when we study the Word of God, is that the safest prayer we can pray is much like Jesus in Luke 22, 42, when

He's in the garden of Gethsemane, and He says, if possible, Father, let this cup pass for me. Then He says, but not my will, but yours be done.

Many faith healers and prosperity gospel preachers it's a prayer of unbelief. In particular,

Bill Johnson from Bethel will say, it's a prayer of unbelief to say, if it be Your will.

It's always His will. It's not true at all. So, what do we see from others?

What you have is a fake version of God. Bill Johnson from Bethel, in a book that now has been edited to not have this quote, and he speaks out the side of his mouth on this issue a great deal because so many people have made noise about it, but has never repented of this teaching or even changed some major portion of his theology with a clear announcement, wrote on page 29 of his book,

When Heaven Invades Earth, I have the original version. They just quietly released a new version that doesn't have this in there as though that will quiet the noise.

He said, He, meaning Jesus, performed miracles, wonders, and signs as a man in right relationship to God, not as God.

If He performed miracles because He was God, then they would be unattainable for us.

Bill Johnson's reckless teaching is that you should be and can be doing signs and wonders.

You can and should be calling heaven down to earth. Why? Because Jesus was just a man when

He did all these things. Not God. So you can do them too. Bill Johnson also on page 50 of Supernatural Power of the

Transformed Mind said Jesus had no ability to heal the sick. He couldn't cast out devils and He had no ability to raise the dead.

He said of Himself in John 5 .19, The Son can do nothing of Himself. That's not at all what He meant. He had set aside

His divinity, He says. He goes on to explain, This was to show us that we could do it too.

See, all the versions of Jesus and God are not the Jesus and God of the

Bible at all. But they all use Scripture. Others who propagate these sort of beliefs include

Kenneth Copeland, Todd White, Todd Bentley, Lou Engle, Heidi Baker, Michael Koulianos, who's my

Uncle Benny's son -in -law, his brother married my sister. They have schools, armies of students traveling around the world.

They're planting churches. They're invading communities. And they're targeting young people.

It's one of their greatest target zones is Gen Z and millennials. All of it.

A different presentation of the same old heresies.

And they're careful. They're very careful. They use great branding, great marketing. They use great music.

Because they know if it looks good, sounds good, feels good, then a lot of undiscerning folks are going to say, hey, it must be good.

Unfortunately, it all leads to the same place their heretical forefathers have led people.

The only solution is to move away from reckless doctrine and preach the truth about Christ and the

Gospel. This is drawing the next generation in droves, but we know what works, don't we?

The Gospel. The Word of God. It always works. It may not be filled with fanfare and it may seem like an extra narrow road these days, but it's a faithful road.

And so while you have a lot of reckless doctrine being propagated, and you have many from within the professing church saying and teaching and caring about in these ways, what we have, number two, and more importantly, is your relentless devotion.

This is what we must be committed to. If we're going to take by way of application

Paul's exhortation to the elders from Ephesus, we can see there's certain things that the church is supposed to do if it's going to stand firm.

If we're going to determine to be faithful in our calling. And so what I did is took some things from Paul's pastoral letters and boiled down a list.

And the first thing that we ought to do is number one, pray for the lost. You and I should be people of prayer, a church of prayer for the lost.

In 1 Timothy 2, 1, Paul says, first of all then, I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men.

You and I are never to be too far from praying for both these people to repent and for those who follow them to have their eyes opened and come out.

In a way, an imprecatory prayer perhaps is appropriate at various times. Those are the prayers that David would pray that would even pray the calamity of God's judgment and justice to fall upon the wicked.

You might even pray, Lord, either save the leader that is preaching false doctrine in the pulpit that my dear loved one sits under so that you would also open the eyes of my loved one or open the eyes of my loved one to the heretic that he or she is sitting under.

Expose them for what they are and call out from among them this precious soul that I love.

Yes, it is good to pray that the Lord would shut down certain churches.

Yes, it is also good to pray that those pastors in those churches be changed. I at times am sensitive to that in my own prayer life mainly because of the experience at the church plant

I was a part of. I'm glad that perhaps somebody was praying, either

Lord, shut them down or save them all. And He chose to save us all by His grace.

But we are to pray. I know it's hard to stay hopeful. I know it's hard at times to pray for these people who either are deceived themselves or they're doing the deceiving, but a wise mentor once told me, you've got to have in ministry the heart of a child and the hide of a rhino was the way he described it.

The heart of a child and the hide of a rhino. You've got to be tough and tender. You've got to pray and preach with wet eyes, he said.

Tearful, hopeful. You've got to see souls when you're praying and when you're preaching this stuff.

So we ought to. And you see that reflected in Paul's ministry. Even for his kinsmen, his fellow brethren.

You remember what he says? If basically it meant that I wasn't saved, just save them,

I'll give whatever. He said, I'll become all things to all men. There's this ethic about Paul with his evangelism.

And he's praying constantly, so should we. Number two, you protect the standard for elders.

So these are all Ps, by the way. They're alliterated. Pray for the lost. Number two, protect the standard for elders.

You need to be under qualified men. 1 Timothy 3, 1 through 7, when

Paul is establishing order for the church and the background, by the way, to 1 Timothy is

Ephesus. So contextually, I want to make sure that's clear. We have the elders that he addresses in Acts 20.

Then you have Timothy stationed to do work there. It's a trustworthy statement.

If any man aspires to the office of overseer, it's a fine work he desires to do. An overseer then must be, and he begins to list all the qualifications, starting with above reproach.

And many linguists would say that's the overarching umbrella, if you will.

Above reproach looks like all of these other things. The first one being the husband of one wife.

Now, I don't even need to go further because false teachers barely make it past number one. And if they do, they're quickly nullified by number two.

Their filthy lives. Their licentiousness behind the scenes.

Their practices of adultery and theft and homosexuality.

In fact, my first trip ever doing any type of ministry was with Justin.

I was invited to go and speak and record some videos with him in Tennessee. And I was picked up by a gentleman and was told this gentleman's going to pick you up.

He wants to talk to you. I said, okay. And I said yes to everything back then. I was just happy to be saved.

Like, great. Pick me up, whatever. Don't know the guy. And he proceeds to tell me that he was saved out of this church in which to make it up the rungs of leadership, he had to share his wife and sleep with men.

True story. And I got to the recording and I told Justin, he said, brother, I know. That's why

I had him pick you up. I'm telling you, this stuff is crazy. I'm like, I know. But by the grace of God, He's saving people.

Like, what in the world? You don't have a lot of what goes on today if you protect the standard for elders.

Leadership is, I'm going to say it hyperbolically, but you get it. It's everything. Meaning, the church rises and falls on leadership.

You say, wow, it just really puts a lot of stock. Doesn't that sort of put leaders on a pedestal? Isn't that unhealthy? No, no, that's not what

I'm saying. Rises and falls, not on the personality, not on their great ingenuity and their growth strategies and how cool they are.

No, rises and falls on leadership because Satan operates that way.

Like a Trojan horse, he would rather infiltrate the leadership than anything else because leadership is influence.

So the church has to protect that. At our church, we would say, the men sitting in the room, we think of that in terms of deacon meetings or elder meetings.

It's a very weighty thing. It's important. Now, if you go here, you're blessed.

You know that. If you're elsewhere, you may be at a great church, but maybe you're not sure.

I think a lot of American Christians should do a double take. Not causing grief and chaos for good, faithful leaders.

How do I know you're qualified? You know, every week. But yes, you should look under the hood at the very least.

Because if you protect the standard for elders, you've got a fighting chance. Number three, pay attention to sound doctrine.

What does Paul say to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4 .16? Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching.

Persevere in these things. Word means to take pains. Agonize over it. That's the work of ministry.

For as you do, what's the benefit? He says it will ensure salvation both for yourself and those who hear you.

You've got to pay attention to sound doctrine in a church. A lot of people like programs. They like fellowship.

I'm all for it. It is what we're going to do at lunch is worship. It's koinonia. It's fellowship. We ought to.

Certainly, serving, helping, outreach, community, the people running the sound right now.

Praise God. There's a lot of different programmatic elements to the church. But what should undergird what the church does and why it's gathered is to preach the

Word, to receive sound doctrine, and that all our worship would be guided by sound doctrine.

You have the church for the unchurched today. You have the

LGBTQ inclusive church now. You've got a lot of this stuff that has nothing to do with sound doctrine.

But the church is cool, or I like the music, or what other reason? My kids like the youth group. It's really fun.

Church can be fun. You can like the music. That's okay. And you can enjoy going somewhere that is a happy place.

But in the end, sound doctrine is what you need. That guards your life and it guards your soul.

If you are not in a church that is preaching sound doctrine, if the driving engine of where you are being cared for spiritually is not a doctrine -driven church, you are not going to be spiritually strong.

You're not going to be spiritually healthy. And you're not built to last in your Christian walk by way of your health.

People say, ah, doctrine is so divisive. Just love people. We're a loving church. We're the love people church.

You love people best by giving them what they need. They need sound doctrine.

Number four, provide care for the hurting. Provide care for the hurting.

In contrast to false teachers who prey upon the weak and they exploit people. Paul actually exhorts

Timothy to care for the hurting in 1 Timothy 5, 1 -16.

There's this whole section on orphans, widows who are poor and they're qualified. They're without protection.

These people in need of care and faithful shepherds. Actually, false teachers at one point,

Paul says they prey on weak women. They're always going after the vulnerable and the weak. And isn't it remarkable that Paul still has a theology of justice and protection for the hurting?

There is this role that the church is to play because we love sound doctrine and because we love the truth.

And we actually love people in which you say, hey, we're going to protect the vulnerable. We're going to welcome them.

We're going to care for them. And we're going to feed their soul and care for their needs. Why? That is the exact opposite of what false teachers do.

While they appear so loving like a mother hen just gathering everyone in, it's all for the purpose of exploiting people who are desperate and who are needy.

I remember at one point in my young childhood, there was a woman named

Marina and she was the first person to ever give a million dollars to our ministry.

It's a remarkable donation. And she was worked over for some time.

And she was a widow. And her husband had a fortune. And I remember the goal was to get her to give a massive portion of that fortune to our ministry.

And that goal was accomplished. And the effort lasted for what

I remember to be hours as I sat there as a child in her home while our church leaders worked every angle.

I don't remember her being around our ministry long. I don't remember her being around the church long after.

But we got what we needed out of her. Out of this widow. And there's so many others who as I mentioned in the testimony portion and in the

Q &A had come to us for prayer for their children, for a sick loved one. And instead of simply ministering, as Paul says,

I have coveted no one's silver or gold. I've sought to only give, not take.

I didn't want anything from you. I just wanted something for you. When we just minister to people and we want to love on them, if you will, and we do that by caring for their needs and proclaiming to them the truth, then we would even say,

I don't want anything from you. I want something for you. I want you to thrive in your walk with the

Lord. I want you to see what the church is really like. I want you to hear and experience the glory of the

Gospel and the truth. You know that God has that for you. He has that for His church.

That you can experience that because of His goodness and His Word. When we operate that way, people now begin to see the exact opposite of what so many of these abusive leaders propagate.

Number five, put an emphasis on the eternal. You know, it's good for a leader to be free from the love of money because then he can be without hypocrisy when he preaches to the rich.

Paul tells Timothy, instruct the rich to be rich in good works.

Not to be conceited or fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.

In verse 18 of 1 Timothy 6, instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, ready to share.

Why? Storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future so they may take hold of that which is life indeed.

Such a great phrase. I'm glad it's in the Bible because wealthy people will think that life indeed is their stuff.

And even Christians who are wealthy can get into a mindset of bigger barns.

Like I've built it all. I've got my hedge of protection around me.

And it's good to be prudent. It's good to plan. All of that is right and good. It's biblical. But our relentless devotion is to put an emphasis on that which is eternal.

There is no U -Haul behind the hearse. You're not taking anything with you. You are blessed to be a blessing to gospel work, to the local church, to the advancement of Christ's mission and purpose.

False teachers love themselves. They love their wealth. They love their stuff. They build their ministries to feed their ego and feed their materialistic greed and faithful shepherds model what it looks like to have eternal perspective and faithful churches what it looks like to have eternal perspective.

So if you want to be faithful in a church that stands firm, then by all means, have a congregation that works hard, that is wise with money.

Have a church that is stable in these things as God provides and then leverage it all for what

God would have the church do and what God would have the church be about.

There is a freedom that comes when we're free from the love of money because we can simply preach the truth and without apology, without tiptoeing around and being fearful of what wealthy people might say, you can look a rich person in the eye who's a

Christian and say, so how are you using all of your wealth to advance the mission of the gospel?

Because you are taking none of it with you and of all people on the earth, you as one of His saints, you know that.

So what are you doing to advance the gospel? I remember meeting with a very generous person one time and because I came out of what

I came out of, at times, I'm not a good fundraiser. I just ask people questions.

And I remember asking this gentleman, you're very wealthy. He said, okay. And I said, what do you do with all that Jesus said about how hard it is for rich people to get into heaven?

He said, wow, that's a very blunt question. I said, yes, it is.

I've sat on private planes like you. Driven cars like you have. So I'm not down on wealth and enjoy your stuff, but what do you do?

Because you love the Lord. I remember him saying, I assess my heart every day. I have to keep assessing what

I'm putting my trust in. And where we're putting our treasure. It's a daily struggle.

And I remember them saying, when it's attached to your spiritual gift, the gift of generosity, it's what you love to do and what you want to do, but you also have to be so careful because the heart is so deceitful and riches, they just pull at you.

And I remember thinking, what a great example that is of how the Christian can have much, but I think

I heard Steve Lawson say this once, there's nothing wrong with having stuff. The problem is when the stuff has you.

Put an emphasis on the eternal. Number six, prepare to suffer for the gospel. You've got to accept suffering is inevitable.

It's even useful. When suffering comes, we don't say, God, why are you doing this to me?

We would rather say of suffering, I knew you were coming.

I've been waiting for you. I'm ready for you. I've been preparing for you for a long time.

They say in life, expectation breeds frustration, right? When you think everything's going to go smooth, you're going to get to work on time, then there's traffic.

Now, this morning I'm driving in, I took Kootenai Road because I wanted to see some more sights. I saw turkeys.

I saw a deer. I was loving it. But then I realized that there is a very long train.

And I don't know if anyone else was stuck at a train this morning, but I was stuck at the train.

And I was going to be late. And what expected to be a wonderful scenic drive turned into me thinking of Pastor Jim saying, you are late for the conference.

It gets more serious though, and more weighty though, when you think life's going to be great. Everything's going to be awesome. I followed

Jesus. It's all going to be perfect. Now, no. Paul says to Timothy in 2

Timothy 1 .8, join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God.

You want to be a church that stands firm? Expect suffering. In fact, if your life is perfect and everything's peachy, you should wonder what you're doing wrong.

When's the last time you shared the gospel with somebody and your form of suffering, not in a way of asceticism and, oh,

I'm just trying to suffer now. No, not that. But by just being faithful, you endure some challenges.

There's some sandpaper moments, if you will, in your life. Because you are just living for the gospel and trying to honor the

Lord in your faithfulness. That's normal. And it's good. Let's do 7, 8, 9, and then eat some barbecue.

Number 7, point out dangers. Point out dangers. You want to be a faithful church?

Don't avoid calling things what they are. It doesn't mean a tangent every

Sunday when the text doesn't call for it, but there needs to be an unapologetic gear in every faithful church leader that is shifted to when that speed is needed.

On multiple occasions in these letters, Paul is pointing out dangers and dangerous people.

He names names unapologetically. That's an example to us.

And then it all culminates with 2 Timothy 4, 2, where Paul says, Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with patience and instruction.

There's a corrective nature to ministry. If you're in a church that doesn't make you uncomfortable regularly with hard truth, you have a problem.

Either you're not listening, and they are, or you're under the wrong preaching.

Like a trainer who never makes the clients sore after their workouts.

Like a coach who never tells a player, Hey, you're slow.

Get better. Here's how. Let's train. You would fire a gym trainer that came to the gym and said,

Hey, we're going to eat some snacks today. Have some fun. You know, you're fine.

You look great. You look great. Doing well. I put on 12 pounds from eating nachos.

Ah, it's okay. You're loved. That is an enabler who should be fired.

Coaches who tell your kid every... He's going to go to the big leagues. No, he's not. Why then would we ever tolerate a pastor who looks at us and goes,

Hey, you're good. You're loved. It's okay. We all sin. It's all right.

We don't want to make people uncomfortable now. No, you want to be told the truth, given the problems, given the solutions.

Number eight, preach the Word. Movements die. Associations get old. Even seminaries fade and denominations waver.

What doesn't? God's Word. You preach the Word. When there's spiritual famine in the land, you give hungry hearts the only thing that will satisfy them.

Why does Paul say preach the Word? Because that's what will work best.

He says to Timothy, preach the Word. There's a time coming when people will not endure sound doctrine.

They want their ears tickled. They want their own kind of teachers. They'll turn away from the truth to the myths.

You though, you be sober in all things. You endure hardship. You do the work of an evangelist, he says.

Fulfill your ministry. And so in that, we have the answers for suffering, for sickness, for sin, and the like.

We preach the Word. And number nine, pass the torch. There needs to be a raising up of leaders and people in a church that stands firm.

You listen to the language and phrases that Paul uses in his pastoral letters. To Timothy, my true child in the faith, who are you raising up?

Entrust these truths to faithful men who in turn will teach others. 2 Timothy 2 .2. Who is being taught and then trusted.

There's a clear effort in Paul's ministry to raise up the next generation of leaders.

Go to 2 Timothy 4, and I'm going to read to you something and we'll close in prayer. This will speak for itself by way of illustration.

Go to 2 Timothy 4 after the preach the Word exhortation and all the imperatives.

Just look at verse 9 with me. And you tell me, is there not a model here in which people are raised up?

And you're passing the baton of ministry. It's not the paid pastor's job to do it all. He equips the saints for the work of service.

The church body does the work of service. The men of God pray and prepare to preach and feed the flock to equip them to go do that and look at the result.

Make every effort to come to me soon for Demas having loved this present world has deserted me. So we've got Demas the deserter.

He's gone though. Forget him. Creations has gone to Galatia.

Titus to Dalmatia. Luke is with me. Pick up Mark and bring him with you.

He's useful to me for service. No time to get into this, but you remember that Paul had a little issue with Mark. Kind of thought

Mark was wimpy. Obviously, Mark circled back. Maybe Barnabas discipled him and said, hey, you've got to man up if you're going to hang with Paul.

Tychicus I've sent to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak which I left at Troas with Carpus and the books, especially the parchments.

Obviously, Carpus was trusted because that was Paul's writing instruments. Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm.

The Lord will repay him. Be on guard against him yourself. He's vigorously opposed to our teaching.

At my first defense, no one supported me, but all deserted me. May it be not counted against them the graciousness of Paul.

Some people are learning. They're growing. They're not sure. Maybe they're scared. Watch out for this guy. The Lord stood with me and strengthened me so that through me, the proclamation might be fully accomplished and that all the

Gentiles might hear. And I was rescued out of the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into His heavenly

Kingdom to Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Greet Prisca and Achilla, the household of Onesiphorus.

Erastus remained at Corinth, but Trophimus I left sick at Miletus. Make every effort to come before winter.

Eubulus greets you. Also Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brethren. If you add

Timothy, you've got conservatively about 16 folks just listed there.

But if you go to Romans 16 on your own time, you'll find a bunch of more names. What does a faithful church do?

Raises people up who are doing the work of ministry and the church is then protected, secure, and thrives because it's believed that we are all in the ministry together.

It's not one man's job to do it all. Call out the error. It's not like Justin Peters has the monopoly on discernment.

We are all supposed to be wise to error and witnesses with the truth.

Faithful in our duty because we are God's people and this is

His church. Amen? Let's pray together. Father, thank You for Your Word.

The exhortations that come from it. The model we have in it. The example to see the descriptive nature in the book of Acts and then the prescriptive nature of the epistles and to receive these exhortations as Timothy would have and the church would have is a gift.

Thank You for doing that for us, to us, and now, if it would be by Your grace, through us as Your people.

May we be faithful in these things. Bless the food. Thank You for those who have faithfully prepared it, laboring even as early as midnight this morning as our one brother is sleeping in a tent to make sure the temperature was just right.

Bless our fellowship in these things. Thank You for the gift of good food from You, our good

God. In Jesus' name, Amen. The Amber Alert that went off in the middle of Kosti's session there was reminiscent of Shepherd's Conference this last

March during Mike Riccardi's session while he was in the middle of preaching. The Amber Alert was sent out and so you had about 5 ,000 men's phones in this massive sanctuary that all did that exact same thing.

You were there for that? You remember that? It was funny. Phil Johnson tweeted out that that brought him a certain sense of delight that that happened during Mike's message.