Hyper-Grace the Great Deception of the 21st Century by Michael L. Brown — Micheal L. Brown

Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your grace and goodness. Thank you for your kindness towards us, for your abundant truth. Lord, we want to embrace your grace. We want to revel in your grace. We want to dive into your grace and experience it in full.

We never want to denigrate your grace, but we want to rightly understand your grace. So give us ears to hear, give us hearts to understand, help us to be faithful to you in your word, in Jesus name. Amen.

Defining Hyper-Grace and Its Dangers

I'm speaking tonight on hyper grace. It's it's a name I've used to describe some current teaching that is spreading through the body. Others have used the same term. I was speaking at a men's meeting, men coming from different parts of America that gathered together in Charlotte once a year, seeking God, really wanting to live their lives in a radical God-pleasing way, people out on the street winning the lost.

And before I got there this year to speak, I live in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, I felt I was supposed to teach on hyper grace. And when I got there, they said, oh, we've been having some significant prayer before you came.

And when I finished the message, they wanted me to know that they had been praying against false teaching in the body and began specifically to get burdened by what they called hyper grace, not knowing that's the same word I was using in the word I was bringing that night.

I'm not referring to it as counterfeit grace, which to me would mean something that claims to be God's grace and isn't, and rather than saving people, damns people. In other words, that would give people a false impression of salvation and they hear this message and they are ultimately hell-bound.

But Charles Spurgeon did make this comment. Spurgeon said this, and I quote him, not just because he was a greatly respected preacher in the 1800s, but because he was a grace preacher. One of his books is just an all of grace book and and he poured forth a message of God's grace.

Spurgeon said this, the grace that does not make a man better than others is a worthless counterfeit. Christ saves his people not in their sins, but from their sins and then quoting from Hebrews 12 14, without holiness, no one will see the Lord.

I'm using though the title hyper grace. It is an exaggerated teaching that is spreading through the body today and it's spreading in such a way that I didn't go looking for this. It started running into me.

I do a lot of posting Facebook or things like that. If I'm speaking somewhere, I let people know or talking about something on the radio, post it. And if I just would post something about holiness or purity or even a scripture, I'd be having many friends weighing in, amen, agreeing, good quote.

And then suddenly somebody, that's just legalism. I'm thinking, hang on, all I did was quote a scripture. All I did was point to a beautiful truth in scripture and next thing I'm getting blasted, that's legalism.

That's be, that's sin management. That's behavior modification. I'm seeing some of the same terms thrown around thinking, where's this coming from? Now, this is not something new in terms of something unheard of in church history.

These things keep repeating themselves. I look at writings from from 20 years ago where I'm dealing with similar things. But it's coming in such a way that it is claiming to be the new reformation. An important reformation that is sweeping the body that is going to revolutionize the body.

And although I'm sure some have been liberated and helped, some who've been caught up in legalism and dead works and just a human striving to somehow be accepted by God, they've been helped by this message.

The message is so extreme and unbalanced that is producing dangerous fruit and along with that giving people false assurance who are living in willful, unrepentant sin. So I want to read some scriptures first to lay a foundation.

Then I want to describe in short what I mean by hyper grace. And then give you some of the key points of it to show the serious error in that. All right, and then when we're done with this after we share a little bit about our ministry, we'll have a time for a Q &A as well.

Scripture as the Standard for Evaluating Teaching

Let's go to 2nd Timothy. 2nd Timothy chapter 3. It's often been said that the problem with deception is that it's so deceiving. And the fact is that no one is willingly deceived. There are many different denominations and church groups, but none of them are called the first church of the deceived.

Or the congregation of the misled. So it's kind of ludicrous for me to get up and say I'm gonna teach it right and someone else is teaching error when they're down the block saying they're teaching it right and I'm teaching error.

So I want to ask some fundamental questions and say are there ways by which we can evaluate any teaching? Are there principles in scripture? It's one thing if people aren't using the Bible at all that's easy enough to critique.

Or if they're just taking one verse and basing everything on one verse that's easy enough to critique. But when people are throwing a lot of scripture at you and are making some true points and when all of us want to appreciate God's grace, I mean I live by grace 24 -7 just like you do.

We don't want to denigrate a truth and get caught up with a negative reaction. So how do we assess this? Well look at what Paul wrote to Timothy in 2nd Timothy chapter 3 16. He's talking about how Timothy has been made wise for salvation through faith in Messiah Jesus.

Since he knew the scriptures from his childhood and the scripture was the Old Testament, the Hebrew scripture. That's the only Bible that they had at that time. The rest of the New Testament had either not been written or not recognized yet as scripture.

And Paul says this, all scripture is breathed out by God or inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

Just a simple principle to start with. First, since Paul said all scripture is God-breathed and he was speaking about the Old Testament because that was the Bible of that day, anything that throws out the Old Testament is highly questionable.

Anything that denigrates the Old Testament or doesn't appreciate God's purposes in it or just uses it to preach negatively, something's sadly wrong there. But notice that he says scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

And it's only if you have teaching, reproof, correction, and training that we'll be thoroughly equipped in ministry and that a leader will be thoroughly equipped to do ministry. That tells me that anything that does not bring correction and reproof as a regular part of spiritual diet is missing something.

And anything that is constantly resistant to correction and reproof is missing something. And correction and reproof only come to set right that which is wrong. And if we're never allowed to address that which is wrong because grace has dealt with it all, something's fundamentally wrong and missing.

He then goes on to give Timothy an awesome charge in the fear of God. In very strong words, I charge you in the presence of God and of Messiah Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season.

And what's his counsel to Timothy? Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. This is his commission to Timothy, to preach the word. And an essential part of preaching the word is to do what?

It is to reprove, rebuke, and exhort. It is not just to comfort, encourage, and comfort. And it is not pep talk Christianity, motivational speaking to help you get through another week. Yes, we want to encourage people.

But in point of fact, Paul says there is to be a steady diet of what? Reproving, rebuking, and exhorting with complete patience and teaching. Why? For the time is coming, it was in Timothy's day, it's in our day, when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, will turn away from listening to the truth, and wander off into myths.

The Cross, Self-Denial, and the Cost of Discipleship

You have to ask yourself, what appeals to the flesh? What pleases the flesh? And what does the flesh not like to hear? Now, it doesn't mean that God doesn't say good things to us. He says many wonderful and kind and encouraging things, and bathes us in his love and goodness day and night as we walk with him.

At the same time, he calls us to go against the grain and swim against the tide, and take up our cross and follow Jesus. And that begins with saying no to self. Denial of the self is right at the beginning.

A .W. Tozer, over 50 years ago, made the comment that, whereas the old cross kills the sinner, the new cross redirects him. I thought about that and thought we could update that to say that, the new cross of American preaching does not redirect the sinner, it empowers the sinner.

We preach a gospel of empowerment to the lost that Jesus died to make you a bigger and better you. That's pretty much the American version of the gospel, and God is here to fulfill your dreams and make you a success.

It's a very different message than the message of scripture, which is that we die, die to our dreams, goals, life, to say, Lord, I'm here to do your will, and in doing his will, we find a real purpose and meaning of life.

And we find dreams beyond anything we could possibly imagine. Today's gospel promises everything and requires and asks for nothing. It's very different than the gospel of the New Testament. So when I speak of hyper-grace, what am I speaking of?

Hyper-Grace and the Denial of Ongoing Sin

I'm speaking of a message that basically says this. Because Jesus has died for us and made us righteous, and we are now fully accepted in Jesus, that not only have we already been justified so that God puts us in the righteous column, not only have we already been justified, but we have already been sanctified and made perfectly holy in God's sight, so God only sees us as holy.

It's not even that he sees us through his son, but he sees us as holy. He doesn't see our sins. And because Jesus died for all of our sins, past, present, and future, that means that all of your sins have already been considered forgiven by God.

God's already forgiven your future sins, therefore you never need to confess sin because it's already forgiven and doesn't exist in God's sight. You never need to repent of sin because it's already been forgiven and doesn't exist in God's sight.

And any human effort that you put into trying to please God is a denial of grace and a denial of the cross. Now you can see the truth of that mixed with error, and you can see the tremendous danger in that when you're not even allowed to address sin anymore, and you're not allowed to call for repentance.

And I even wonder just on a relational level, what kind of relationship you could have with God that does not call for confession of sin. I don't mean making a list every day and going through it or looking back at the end of the day to think, okay, where did I sin?

What can I confess? But come on, think of a husband and wife where you do something insensitive to your spouse and you realize, I hurt my spouse. The first thing you want to do is get with that person and say, I'm so sorry.

I don't know what I was thinking. Obviously, I wasn't thinking. That was so insensitive to me. Forgive me. You couldn't just imagine, just come home with a smile on your face and ignore what happened.

What kind of relationship is that? I was driving on Wednesday to meet with some of the scholars at Reasons to Believe, Christian Ministry of Science in the Bible, and I had about an hour and a half to drive and just having some beautiful time commuting with the Lord.

But something rose up in my heart that I was convicted of, and it was such a beautiful, life-giving thing to say, Father, I realize I've acted in this way and confess it to Him, and just in communion with Him, it was beautiful and life-giving.

The idea that that's somehow negative or wrong or denying the cross or denying the blood is absolutely perverse. What about this idea that all future sins have already been forgiven and God doesn't see them?

Let's take a look at a passage that's used to emphasize this. Go with me to the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 8. Hebrews chapter 8. Boy, it's so interesting. After decades of preaching, started preaching in 1973 in August, so going on 40 years, you get used to certain things like the turning of pages of Bibles, and now you don't hear it so much as people are just finding the verse on their phone or their tablet.

It's interesting. Some haven't memorized it. All right, look at me and quote it. Hebrews 8, verses 8 through 12, quote in full the new covenant prophecy of Jeremiah chapter 31, verses 31 to 34. And what does God say at the culmination of that?

Hebrews 8, 12, for I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. And then Hebrews chapter 10, it's quoted again. Verse 17. Then he adds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.

Where there's forgiveness of these, there's no longer any offering for sin, so you don't need to go back to the temple and have sin offerings and sacrifices because they've already been paid for through the blood of Jesus.

God says I'll remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. Therefore, if you as a pastor or teacher or leader confront someone about sin in their lives, they can say you're being a legalist and you're being judgmental and you're condemning me.

God doesn't see my sins. He doesn't even remember them. And if I go to confess a sin to God, he'll say what sin are you talking about? I don't even see it. I don't remember it. Now, we should just ask the logical question before we look at more scriptures.

When we got saved, when we came to faith, 1971 for me, the end of 71, 16 years old, heroin shooting, LSD using, rebellious, proud, wicked kid, convicted of my sin, now I get saved. All I was conscious of and thinking of was the fact I'm guilty in God's sight.

I've sinned against him. And when he forgave me, he forgave the sins I had committed, the ugly things I had done. And I remember that conviction of sin, which I just knew as guilt before I was saved. I didn't understand what it was, but I knew it was guilt those last few months as people were praying for me before I got saved.

When I got saved, it disappeared. I remember trying to find it and I couldn't find it. It was gone. But the last thing in my mind was that all my future sins were already forgiven. I mean, who ever thought that thought when you got saved?

Who ever thought when God forgave us and washed us and cleansed us to say, and God, that means everything I'm going to do for the rest of my life is already forgiven? No one even thinks like that. To make a theology out of it is even stranger.

But it's interesting that this very word that's given here in Hebrews 10 .17 proceeds by a few verses, Hebrews 10 .26, a warning to the very same people. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.

Anyone who set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has spurned the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified?

This is a saved person and has outraged the spirit of grace. Outraged the spirit of grace. What a phrase. Outraged the spirit of grace. Let's think of it. But the very chapter that's reiterated that God remembers our sins and lawless deeds no more says that if you keep on sinning deliberately, don't think you can go back to Judaism or go back to sacrifices.

There's no more sacrifice that remains if you reject the cross. Only thing you can look forward to is fearful judgment. Strange if future sins have already been forgiven. Take a look with me at Jacob, James, chapter 5.

I am continuing to encourage Bible scholars and translators to translate this properly as Jacob as it is in the Greek. Jacob, James, chapter 5, writing to believers. Verse 13. Is anyone among you suffering?

Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the congregation and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

In the prayer of faith, we'll save the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he'll be forgiven. What do you know? Maybe he sinned and because of his sin and willful violation of God's will, he's become sick.

No problem. As you turn to the Lord and ask for his mercy, he'll heal and he'll forgive. It looks like God still sees that sins are there. Otherwise, why are you again forgiving the sins of a believer?

And then, of course, the next verse, therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. Why are we confessing our sins one to another if they've already been forgiven and God doesn't even see them?

But just James 5, 15 is enough to put to rest the idea that all future sins are already forgiven. You say, but I don't get it. Didn't Jesus pay for all my sins? Yes. Yes, he did. And the transaction of that, the transaction of us receiving forgiveness is when we have sinned.

In other words, you didn't receive forgiveness before you were sinned. Before you sinned, we're born now in the 20th century. Unless you're a little kid here in the 21st century. Jesus died for us in the 1st century.

Was forgiveness transacted to us before we were born? No. Was it transacted to us when we were in the womb? No. Was it transacted to us when we were in sin? No. When was it transacted? When we turned to God in repentance and faith and asked him to wash us clean and forgive us.

And what sins were forgiven at that point? Everything we had committed. And God took us into his family and now treats us as righteous, treats us as his sons and daughters who belong to him. And in an ongoing basis, if we sin and turn to him, we receive forgiveness.

We don't get saved again. We don't get born again once again. When we lived in Pensacola in the south in the Bible Belt, I found out that getting saved in many people's minds meant going to the altar.

I remember some young lady getting baptized. She had been marvelously touched but was still using her old Bible Belt terminology. And she said, I came here last week. I was in sin. I was doing this and that.

And I heard the message on Wednesday and God showed me I was a sinner. I went up. I got saved. And she said, I liked it so much. I came the next night and I got saved again. Saved again. Oh, you went back to the altar.

You responded to the altar call. That's your church terminology. We don't need to get saved again and again and again and again. There's the lesson of John chapter 15, or John chapter 13, excuse me, where Jesus washes the disciples' feet.

And Peter says, you're not going to wash my feet. And Jesus says, then I have no part in you. And he says, oh, then wash everything. Wash me head to toe. And Jesus said, no, no, the one who's had a bath doesn't need to be washed all over again.

Just his feet. Why? Because when you walk home from the river or from the public bathhouse, they didn't have running water in their homes. When you walk home, your feet get dirty. Oh, my feet are dirty.

I need to go back to the river. No, you don't need to go back to the river. You can go back to the river and wash. By the time you get home, your feet will be dirty again. What do you need? You need your feet washed.

So on a daily basis, there's washing and cleansing. We're not getting saved again and again. We're not getting born again every day. I'm saved today. I'm lost the next day. I'm saved. I'm lost, and back and forth.

And God writes your name in the book of life with a pencil, and he's constantly erasing it. And because you backslid four times last week, he's going to wait a day before he writes it back in. No, as children of God, we receive forgiveness on a daily basis.

That's how it's transacted to us. Not the forgiveness of salvation, but relational forgiveness. You say, can I prove that in Scripture? No, I just made it up. How about the pattern of prayer that Jesus taught us in Matthew 6 and Luke 11, which includes prayer on a daily basis for what?

Forgive us our sins, our debts, as we forgive those who sin against us. What do you do if you're a hyper-grace teacher? Throw out the words of Jesus. They're not relevant for today. I'll come back to that in a moment.

Jesus teaches it in the context of prayer. For example, mark the 11th chapter. When you stand praying, forgive those who've sinned against you so your heavenly Father will forgive you. He gives a parable in Matthew 18, which ends with a strong warning that if we don't forgive others, our heavenly Father won't forgive us.

He's not talking about being born again once again then or going from the category of righteous to wicked. He's talking about on a relational level, there's going to be something wrong and blocking between us and God.

If we don't forgive others, there's going to be something unforgiving between us and God. Obviously, all our future sins have already not been paid for in the sense that they've been transacted for us and God doesn't see them.

Otherwise, there wouldn't be these verses talking about it. And why, pray tell, does most every letter in the New Testament deal with the issue of sin in the lives of believers if God doesn't see it? How about 1 Corinthians 11?

Sometimes I'll be talking with Nancy, my bride of almost 37 years, and I'll be talking about some new teaching that's circulating and people are now getting into this or that, and I'll share it with her.

And more than once, her response to me has been, What do they do with the Bible? In other words, she's like me. The moment we hear it, we're thinking, What about this verse, this verse, this verse, this verse, this verse?

And I've read the hyper-grace books, and when I've read them, I've said, Lord, speak to me, show me anything I'm missing. Show me anything in my heart that's not fully embraced in your grace. Show me what I can learn from my brother.

In other words, I'm not reading it that I'm God's man to tear this stuff up. I'm open to receive whatever I can, whatever truth is there. And as I'm reading, it's like, okay, you just said this, this, this, this.

What are you going to do with these verses, these verses, these verses, these verses, and these verses? And I get to the end of the book, and I never deal with them. 1 Corinthians 11, writing to believers, and he's talking about how the believers in Corinth are coming to the table of the Lord in an unworthy manner.

And he says in verse 28, let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. He says in 2 Corinthians 13 as well, examine yourselves to see whether you're in the faith. I do not believe that in hyper-grace churches that the text examine yourselves is quoted too much.

Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That would seem to indicate that God sees something wrong and acts on it.

That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

God disciplines us when we sin, not to hurt us, but to help us so that we can avoid condemnation and future judgment. Throughout the New Testament, sin is looked at as a reality and something in the lives of believers that must be dealt with.

Jesus' Words, Revelation, and the Continuing Authority of the Gospels

And even though there are many hyper-grace teachers that try to eliminate the Gospels. I'll give you a representative quote or two in a moment. They try to eliminate the Gospels, and they say, okay, the teaching that Jesus gave was for the Jews of his day, but it doesn't apply to us because we're under grace, and Jesus did his teaching before the cross.

We're under grace, so we have to listen to Paul. Well, throughout Paul's letters, he's talking about sin and dealing with sin and calling on people to live differently. And then what do you do with the fact that Jesus is still speaking after the Gospels as in the book of Revelation?

What do you do with Revelation chapters 2 and 3 where Jesus rebukes five out of the seven congregations in Asia Minor? And he says, I see your works, I see your deeds, I know who you are. I mean, could anything be more explicit that he looks at us and sees who we are as beloved children, not as hateful enemies, but as beloved children, and he sees what's wrong.

He says to Laodicea, you say, I'm rich, increased in wealth, and I'm in need of nothing. Jesus says, you don't realize you're wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. Sounds like he's looking at them.

He doesn't say, I look at you and see you as perfectly righteous, perfectly clothed. He said, no, you're wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked, and you're self-deceived to think you're rich and have need of nothing.

And to Ephesus, you've left your first love, and if you don't repent and do what you did at first, I'll remove your candlestick from your place. You won't even be anymore. And to Sardis, you have a reputation for being alive and yet you're dead.

And for Thyatira, if you don't repent, I'll kill your children. This is Jesus speaking. There was some guy on my Facebook page and began to espouse all of the hyper-grace teaching. And I said, hey, look, look, I'm trying to help you.

I'm a father. I'm speaking to you. You're a young man. I want to help you. I'm speaking to you as a father. You've got some real serious error. And he comes back with all of his stuff, and I said, okay, what do you do with the words of Jesus in Revelation 2 and 3 because they completely contradict your theology?

And he said, if you base your theology on Revelation, you get in a mess. In other words, we'll throw it out. Now, aside from the fact that Revelation 2 and 3 are not like the opening of the seals and the trumpets and all that, I mean, this is pretty straightforward stuff, just like the epistles, just like the letters.

That's how far it gets, throwing out the very words of Jesus. In fact, let me just go to that point for a moment, and then I want to come to some further errors of hyper-grace teaching. I don't want to mention this young man's name.

He's a hyper-grace author, but I haven't reached out to him to contact him yet and to offer input to see if he'll receive it. And in his book, he refers to the fact that it's only a few years ago that he's been transformed through hyper-grace teaching.

Now, again, a lot of the transformation in his life is very positive and good, and I'm thrilled to hear it and see it. But the only reason I quote him is because major hyper-grace teachers and leaders have endorsed his book enthusiastically and say it's wonderful.

Listen to what he says. It is these preachers of law that love to quote scriptures from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John out of context, forgetting that the crowds who Jesus was preaching to were Jews.

So first, if you quote the words of Jesus from the Gospels, you're a preacher of law. And if you quote them to apply them to us today, you're taking them out of context. I'm the vine, you are the branches.

If a man abides in me, he'll bear much fruit. I'm taking that out of context to apply that? I'm the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never hunger. Whoever leaves me will never thirst. I'm taking that out of context by applying that to me.

How about some of the favorite words of Jesus in the mouths of televangelists? Give, and it shall be given to you. Is that a promise for Jews only before the cross? I'm being facetious. He says these Jews had been polluted with hundreds of years of preaching of the Old Testament law.

By the way, the Old Testament law is a good thing. Paul wrote in Romans 7 that the law is holy and just and good. Paul wrote in Romans 8 that the righteous requirements of the law are now written on our hearts as believers.

The psalmist said in Psalm 119, Great peace have those who love your law. Nothing will make them stumble. Psalm 1, the man is blessed, truly blessed, who meditates on God's law day and night. God's law is wonderful and perfect.

The problem is us. We fall short. Hyper-graced teachers reject God's law itself as being negative as opposed to God's law revealing what's sinful and wrong in us. These Jews, this author says, had been polluted with hundreds of years of preaching of the Old Testament law, hearing day after day that it is their obedience to the law that will cause them to become righteous and that their level of morality and good performance will earn them God's acceptance and blessing.

Well, that's what God said in the law. That's what he required. Israel fell short. That revealed our need for mercy in the Savior. But God said this is your righteousness if you live by them. Choose blessing or curse.

Obedience will bring blessing. Disobedience will bring curse. It was all good. People fell short. He makes it as if the whole system was sinful. If you want to hear one of the most bizarre, ridiculous quotes you could possibly hear, at the risk of sounding critical, it remains a sad reality that the Bible society chose to combine the Old and New Testaments into one single book.

This is in a highly praised hyper-grace book. Aside from the completely idiotic notion that there was some Bible society that decided to do this. Come on. What we call the Old Testament, that was the Bible of Jesus.

That was the Bible of Paul and Peter and the apostles, the early believers. The single decision has caused widespread confusion within the ranks of believers throughout the world. Many of the writings in the Bible before the cross portrayed God to be a harsh, cruel being set on destroying and punishing people if they dared to disobey the set of moral standards represented by the Ten Commandments and the other laws.

Rejection of the Old Testament and the God of the Old Testament. Rejection of the Heavenly Father of Jesus, whom Jesus loved, and whom Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. It's really quite extreme.

The Great Commission and the Relevance of Jesus' Teaching

Well, how do we reply to that notion that the words of Jesus are not for today? Well, my gut level replies, what a stupid statement. I mean, what follower of Jesus, disciple of Jesus, doesn't want to drink in his words and take in his words, however challenging they are?

But just to say it's stupid does not help those who actually believe this and who are caught up in this error. So let's actually think this through together. What's the Great Commission? The Great Commission, Matthew 28, verses 18 to 20.