Rick Warren Crossed the Line...

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Let's talk about whether Rick Warren, Jeff Durbin, Jesse Duplantis, David Platt, and Hillsong are false teachers.

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We'll talk about notable aspects of each of these teachers, and then we'll share what we think about them.

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Teacher number one, Rick Warren. Warren was the founder and pastor of Saddleback Church, one of the largest churches in the

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United States. Warren is the author of the popular book, The Purpose Driven Life.

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Let's take a look at five things concerning Warren. In May of 2021,

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Warren's church, Saddleback Church, ordained three women pastors. On Facebook, it posted,

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Yesterday was a historic night for Saddleback Church in many ways. We ordained our first three women pastors,

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Liz Puffer, Cynthia Petty, and Katie Edwards. By ordaining women to be pastors,

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Warren and Saddleback demonstrate unfaithfulness to what the scripture clearly teaches.

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Warren teaches that Roman Catholicism is right about the big issues, so they're on the same team as Christians.

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We have far more in common than what divides us. When you talk about Pentecostals, Charismatics, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Catholics, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and on and on and on.

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Well, they would all say, we believe in the Trinity. We believe in the Bible. We believe in the resurrection. We believe salvation is through Jesus Christ.

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These are the issues. And when you understand what they mean by what they're saying, there's a whole lot more commonality.

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Now, there's still real differences. No doubt about that. But the most important thing is, if you love

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Jesus, we're on the same team. The problem is that Roman Catholicism is also wrong about several non -negotiable issues, such as justification through faith alone.

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Go to our Catholic friends. Listen to this. The Council of Trent, Session 6, Canon 9.

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If anyone says that by faith alone, the sinner is justified, so as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, let him be anathema.

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They do not preach the same gospel. Instead of interpreting the most accurate translation of the

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Bible and determining what the original author intended to communicate, Warren uses many different Bible translations to draw out interpretations that the original author did not at all intend to communicate.

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For example, Warren uses a translation of Job 7 .6 that says,

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My life drags by, day after hopeless day. And Warren applies this in The Purpose Driven Life to mean that Job was unhappy about lacking purpose in his life.

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But of course, this is not at all what the passage is saying. Similarly, Warren uses

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Genesis 4 .12 where God says that Cain will be a restless wanderer on the earth and likewise applies this to his message in The Purpose Driven Life, which is just silly.

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Also, in The Purpose Driven Life, Warren teaches that if you pray this simple prayer,

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Jesus, I believe in you and I receive you, then you are in the family of God.

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Jesus, I believe in you and I receive you. If you sincerely meant that prayer, congratulations, welcome to the family of God.

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That's the gospel presentation in the Bible. Life or the excuse for a gospel presentation in The Purpose Driven Life.

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No repentance, no gospel, no sin, no wrath of God, no nothing.

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Just believe God loves you. He made you for a purpose. Jesus died for you.

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That's it. Really? Just like that? No, not just like that. You are a wretched, miserable, sinful creature who deserves to die and go to hell.

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And unless you repent of your sin, unless you are aware of the fact that you deserve to die and be crushed under the weight of the holiness and majesty of God, you don't get it.

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Of course, simply saying that prayer is absolutely not a guarantee of salvation.

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Warren teaches that it's almost impossible to go to hell. To go to hell, you have to do almost the impossible.

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You have to reject the love of God. You have to reject the grace of God. You have to reject the forgiveness of God.

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You have to reject God himself. Why in the world would anybody do that? Pride. Pride.

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That's why. Because I want to be my own God. I don't want anybody telling me what I should be doing with my life.

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I don't want anybody telling me But of course, this isn't what the Bible teaches. What's our conclusion about Rick Warren?

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Is Rick Warren a false teacher? Maybe. He hasn't explicitly said anything that is completely heretical.

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At the same time, whether or not we would actually put him in the category of false teacher, we would warn people to stay far away from his teachings.

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Warren's interpretation of scripture is terrible. And his gospel presentation is terrible.

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Teacher number two, Jeff Durbin. Durbin is the pastor of Apologia Church and the founder of End Abortion Now.

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Let's talk about three things concerning Durbin. Here is someone who criticizes

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Durbin regarding Durbin's soteriology or theology of salvation. Jeff Durbin is a pastor in Arizona.

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How many of you have heard of this guy? Yeah, the Apostasia Church. I want to read you a quote from his website about salvation.

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Under the tab of what we believe, you go to salvation. It says, we believe that God in his sovereign grace and mercy regenerates sinful men by the power of the

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Holy Spirit, not by any action of their own, bringing them into new life.

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So what's he saying? God is the one that regenerates you before you get saved. That's the opposite of what the

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Bible teaches. This is exactly what the Bible teaches. In John 3, 3,

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Jesus taught, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. He says

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God grants to them the gifts of faith and repentance.

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How do you change your mind about the gospel? You have to hear the gospel. Once you believe it and you repent, you turn in your mind, then you can be saved and have faith.

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He says God gave you the gift of faith. You can't have faith on your own. God forced it on you. But Calvinists like Durbin don't teach that God forces people to have faith.

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We teach that God changes our hearts. So we want to have faith, he says, which they then exercise by believing in Christ.

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So God gives you faith and then you exercise it by believing in Christ and turning from their sins in love for God.

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How do you get saved, Jeff Durbin? Well, the Holy Spirit regenerates you. He forces you to become a

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Calvinist. You turn from all your sins and then you can believe the gospel. Then you can believe on Jesus Christ.

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As a result of this faith, based upon the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, God justifies or makes righteous the one who believes

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God's gift of faith. And the continuing work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the elect, listen, will result in good works.

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These good works flow from true saving faith.

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They are a necessity. They are a necessary result of faith. It's more accurate to say that salvation is a complete package that includes both repentance and faith.

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True saving faith is always accompanied by repentance and turning from sin.

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It's not at all that we need to turn from our sin and then have faith. And when somebody says, yeah, but do you have saving faith?

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What are they trying to say? Well, you can't just believe. It has to be faith plus works.

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Well, how do you get? You repent, you do the works, and then you believe. They literally turn it all the way around.

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Except, as we've already said, that's not at all what Durbin and Calvinism teach.

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These criticisms are against the complete straw man, not against what Durbin actually believes and teaches.

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So, Durbin has been critiqued for his views on theonomy.

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Theonomy involves a Christian form of government in which society is ruled by divine law.

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Theonomists hold that divine law, particularly the judicial laws of the Old Testament, should be observed by modern societies.

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James White addresses the issue of theonomy pretty well in this YouTube video titled Autonomy vs.

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Theonomy. So, you've got theonomy and you obviously have a lot of varieties.

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I mean, most American evangelicals in our culture today would view the view of the law found in Reformed confessions as theonomic because we're not under law, we're under grace.

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And therefore, if you even talk about uses of the law, the third use of the law, anything like that, to them, that's theonomy.

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It was presented as people seeking to take the entire

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Mosaic Code without interpretation, without context, without recognition of fulfillment motifs, ceremonial laws, and the whole concept of Israel at that time, now

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Western culture this time, taking all of that lock, stock, and barrel and bringing it into the modern context so that you're...

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and I saw people yesterday, the critics of theonomy, doing this, uh, so that you are to stone your five -year -old when they throw a fit when they don't get their toy.

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Basically, I think that some attacks on theonomy are straw men and there are probably some legitimate concerns about theonomy.

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I haven't studied the topic in depth, but I haven't heard anything from Durbin about the subject that would make me very concerned.

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There have been several other criticisms against Durbin, such as worldliness, acting like a cult leader, and recording conversations.

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My personal position is that most of these criticisms aren't legitimate. Durbin and Apologia Church explain their position regarding a controversy involving publicly releasing a recording of a particular conversation, and I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt regarding that messy situation.

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What's our conclusion about Jeff Durbin? I'm inclined to give Durbin the benefit of the doubt regarding the controversies about him that I think are relatively minor.

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In general, I consider Durbin to be a great example of someone who boldly and unashamedly preaches the full gospel of Jesus Christ and engages the culture with biblical truths.

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Durbin holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, which is the confession that I believe most faithfully represents what the

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Bible teaches. I would highly recommend Durbin as a solid Bible teacher.

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Just be aware of the issues that we mention and you can come to your own conclusions about them.

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3. Jesse Duplantis Duplantis is a preacher and the founder of Jesse Duplantis Ministries.

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Let's talk about three things concerning Duplantis. Duplantis teaches the prosperity gospel.

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He teaches that if you sow a seed by tithing, God will give you the wealth you want. He even teaches that giving a return on your giving doesn't work if you give it to the poor, that you need to give it to a church like his church.

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They took their tithe, they took their first print in the seed, they made it honest, because you see they went to a church like this one.

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Jews get a shot of this whole church, get a shot of the all this stuff in there, and people say they come in, they say boy that Jesse Duplantis, he's doing good, and we ain't used to give our tithe over there.

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We went to a church and they need it more. And I'm not against giving to the poor, listen, oh you just changed the rate of exchange on the tithe.

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Yeah, but I gave it a tithe. Yeah, but you turned it into alms. Of course, this kind of teaching draws people to the wrong gospel, and it draws people to Christianity for the wrong reasons.

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Wealth is a big part of Duplantis' ministry. Duplantis had already bought three private jets, and he said he needed to buy an even more expensive one.

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Let me just say this, we're believing God for a brand new Falcon 7X, so we can go anywhere in the world one stop.

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We've asked the Lord Jesus Christ, and we're believing God. In fact, he told me, Jesse, it was one of the greatest statements the

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Lord ever told me. He said, Jesse, you want to come up where I'm at? And I said, what do you mean? He said that before you ask,

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I'll answer Isaiah 65, 24. I said, yes, Lord. He said, I want you to believe me for a

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Falcon 7X. So I said, okay. But the first thing I thought about how I'm going to pay for it, and then that great statement that he told me in 1978 flooded into my mind and said,

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Jesse, I didn't ask you to pay for it. I asked you to believe for it. Duplantis goes far beyond just hearing

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God's voice. According to Duplantis, God actually asks him for his opinion.

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Friends have frank and open conversations with each other. I've done that with the Lord. I've had the Lord say,

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Jesse, I've had God come tell me, he said, this is what I'm going to do. I've had the Lord, he said, what do you think about this? God has asked me for my opinion.

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I said, well, Lord, since you asked, maybe I'm doing it. He said, no, we can talk frankly. What do you think? I said, well,

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I don't think you ought to do that. He said, why you don't think I'll do that? I said, well, you know, I know, you know, people more than I do, but you know,

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Lord, if you just let me, let me do a little bit more work on this individual. I think we can get them to you. It's just, okay, go ahead.

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Do what you have to do. And I tell you what the Bible said, he who wins souls is wise. Duplantis also teaches unbelievable things like this.

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I'm going to say something, I'm going to knock your lights off. God has the power to take life, but he can't.

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He got the power to do it, but he won't. He's bound. He can't.

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He says death and life is in the power of whose tongue? Yours. Are you ready for this?

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You want something to knock your lights off? You choose when you live. You choose when you die. Death and life's in the power of your tongue.

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What's our conclusion about Jesse Duplantis? We would say that Duplantis is clearly in the category of false teacher.

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His teachings on all kinds of topics are egregiously bad. We would recommend staying far away from Jesse Duplantis' teachings.

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Teacher number four, David Platt. Platt is the pastor of McLean Bible Church and the author of the popular book,

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Radical. Let's talk about three things concerning Platt. In general,

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Platt has some very good teachings. This clip of Platt talking about people who have never heard about Jesus is one of my favorites.

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Someone will ask, pastor, what happens to the innocent man or woman or child in this remote part of the world who's never heard the gospel when they die?

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And if you were to ask me that question, I would say, without question, based on the

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Bible, those people go to heaven. Even though they've never heard the gospel.

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Without question, that innocent man, woman, child would go to heaven without ever hearing the gospel.

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Because they have no need to hear the gospel. If they are innocent of sin, they don't need to hear about Jesus died to save them from sin.

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If they're innocent of sin, they'll go straight to heaven. Of course they'll go to heaven. The only problem is those people do not exist.

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Do you see how we bias the question from the start? Like toward us and our goodness and away from God.

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Like God is unjustly sentencing people to eternal judgment who are innocent.

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That's not true. There are no innocent people in the world just waiting to hear the gospel.

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There are guilty people all over the world. That's why they need to hear the gospel. Platt correctly teaches that nobody is innocent and everyone needs to hear the gospel to be saved.

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Also, Platt rightly says this about the sinner's prayer. We never see once where a person has said, well, repeat these words after me.

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Pray this prayer after me. And we don't see the words, ask Jesus into your heart or invite

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Christ into your life. There are certainly images that scripture uses that lean toward those things. But instead we see clear calls all throughout

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Jesus' ministry, even John the Baptist before him and in the New Testament to repent and believe.

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Salvation involves crying out to God for salvation. Platt has come under a lot of criticism for what he has taught about race.

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For example, Platt says that he's part of the problem because he is a white pastor.

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If you want to draw a crowd of white people or black people or this type of person, that type of person, then stay away from saying any one of those types of people is part of the problem on racial issues.

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And I know as a white pastor, I have blind spots. So I am part of the problem. I need friends and fellow pastors around me from different ethnicities who help me see those blind spots.

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By saying this, Platt is implying that there is something inherently problematic with being white, which is a serious concern because the real problem is sin, not skin color.

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Platt has said numerous other similar things about race that are unbiblical and concerning.

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And for this reason, we must look at the reality of race. When I use that term,

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I'm not just referring to the extremes that we often think of. Extremes that help us, particularly those of us who are white, distance ourselves from race.

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When I'm using that term, I'm referring to, so here's the definition I'm using. A system, could be individual, could be institutional, could be societal.

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A system in which race, and specifically as we're talking tonight, black or white skin color, profoundly affects people's economic, political, and social experiences.

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A system in which race is significant enough to be regularly acknowledged and mentioned.

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A system of thought, practice, that is ever subtly present among us, in me.

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Because when people say race, they could mean you are being accused of being an individual who has racist, prejudicial ideas toward other individuals.

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Or they could just be saying that you are a person who is part of the cultural hegemony, which, by the way, is inherently racist against people who are not.

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Which means that now, you have racism without a race. Before the 2020 election,

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Platt wrote a book titled Before You Vote, in which he wrote, yes, abortion is abhorrent.

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That's clear in the Bible. But is that the only issue at stake in an election?

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What about the scores of Christians, including overwhelming percentages of African -American

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Christians who constantly vote for Democrats because of the party's other issues that they also deem biblically important?

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In response to this, Bode Backham writes in his book Fault Lines, My big problem with this entire line of argumentation is that single -issue voting is a straw man.

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I am not, nor have I ever met a single -issue voter. Issues like same -sex marriage, school choice, and religious freedom, to name a few, are all very serious issues to Christian voters.

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And these voters are more than narrow -minded fundamentalists being led around by the nose for the sake of a single issue.

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Moreover, this line of argumentation makes light of the vast chasm between the platforms of the two parties on major moral issues, while extolling the virtues of sophisticated black voters who carefully weigh important, yet unnamed, issues that white voters apparently do not comprehend.

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However, even if abortion were an example of single -issue voting, I reject the idea that murdering the unborn can be subjugated in favor of social issues that are being promoted through the lens of critical social justice.

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In other words, if I were going to be a single -issue voter, that single issue would be the murder of the unborn.

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What's our conclusion about David Platt? In general, Platt has a lot of solid teachings that you can learn a lot from.

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At the same time, Platt's willingness to be influenced by unbiblical ideas about race and injustice is quite concerning.

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If you choose to learn from Platt, we would recommend exercising a lot of caution and discernment.

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Teacher Number 5 Hillsong Hillsong Church is a large church that began in Australia and now has several campuses across the world.

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Hillsong Worship is a popular praise and worship group. Let's talk about four things concerning Hillsong.

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Brian Houston, the founder and senior pastor of Hillsong, explained why he doesn't really teach people that they're sinners.

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And you'll hear people say, you don't preach enough about sin. You don't preach enough about repentance.

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But you know, I actually think what they're saying is you don't beat people up enough. You don't have to remind people they're sinners.

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They know. You don't have to remind people they fall short not only of God, but of who they would want to be themselves.

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You don't have to beat people up. The problem with that is that people don't actually believe they are sinners who deserve

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God's wrath. They think they've made some mistakes, but they also don't think they're that bad.

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They look at the guy on the news who hacks somebody up and they say, that's a sinner, not me.

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They don't sin. They make mistakes. Carl Lentz was the pastor of Hillsong in New York City until he was fired for adultery.

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But Lentz was never criticized or fired by Hillsong for many extremely unbiblical things that he taught.

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Lentz refused to call destroying babies in the womb a sin. So it's not a sin in your church to have an abortion?

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Um, that's the kind of conversation we would have. Finding out your story, where you're from, what you believe.

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Yeah. I mean, God's the judge. People have to live with their own convictions. And I think if I have to tell you.

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When Oprah asked Lentz, do you believe that only Christians can be in a relationship with God?

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Lentz said no. Do you believe that only Christians can be in relationship with God? No.

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I believe that when Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life in the way I read that, Jesus said, he is the, he's the road marker.

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He's the map. So I think God loves people so much that whether they accept or reject him, he's still gracious and he's still moving.

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And he's still giving you massive red blinking lights for chances to take a right turn where maybe you would take a left.

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But I believe God loves people. And that's what this whole gospel is based on. It's love. You take the love out of it.

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We've got a moral book. Lentz says he doesn't say anything about homosexuality because Jesus rarely talked about morality or social issues.

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But, but do you feel like, you know, there, you have a moral imperative to, to speak publicly about some of these more controversial issues?

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No, because we try to be like Jesus. Very rarely did Jesus ever talk about morality or social issues.

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Brian Houston has been criticized for teaching the prosperity gospel, or at least some version of the prosperity gospel.

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Houston wrote a book titled, you need more money. There's not one person in this building who doesn't need more money.

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And if you say, well, I don't need more money. Then I would say you have a very poor outlook on life.

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You'll learn why you need more money. Houston denies teaching the prosperity gospel, but being blessed by God is certainly a large part of what

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Houston teaches. Even if Houston teaches that God blesses people for a purpose.

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Hillsong promotes and endorses problematic teachers such as Joel Osteen, Bill Johnson of Bethel church.

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It's so fun to be here. This is like the largest family reunion on the planet. Steven Furtick.

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Firstly, thanks for being at conference. It's a, it's huge. Fourth time. Fourth time.

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And man, your life and your ministry is exploding. And TD Jakes. What's our conclusion about Hillsong church is

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Hillsong church in the category of false teacher. Maybe it's kind of a close call while we might not say that Hillsong church is clearly in the category of false teacher.

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It supports and endorses several teachers. We would say are false teachers.

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We know that Hillsong songs are very popular and that most of its songs are relatively

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Orthodox. Even if they are relatively shallow in theology. However, because of Hillsong endorsements of teachers, we consider extremely dangerous and because of numerous problems with the theology and teachings of Hillsong, we would highly recommend staying away from both