This Pastor Is DECEIVING You...

Fight For Truth

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Hey guys, Colin here, and welcome back to Fight for Truth. In this video, we're going to talk about Pastor Andy Stanley of North Point Church.

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In the past few years, Andy has become infamous for his bizarre sermon statements, like this one for example.

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Peter, James, Paul elected to unhitch the Christian faith from their

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Jewish scriptures. And my friends, we must as well.

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A statement like this should have pretty much damaged all of Andy's credibility with evangelical

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Christians, but he has unfortunately maintained some of his influence. And he's up to his old tricks again.

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Watch this example. All authority in heaven and earth has been given by my father to me.

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This statement has been reduced to simply another statement or another verse in the

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Bible, equated with every other statement or verse in the Bible. And that is tragic, because Jesus said this 300 plus years before the first Bible was ever assembled.

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When I say assembled, the Bible was assembled. They took the Hebrew text and a version of the Hebrew text.

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They took the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, they took the letters of Paul and others, and they put them all together in one book and somebody named it the

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Bible. We don't know when, or we don't know who did it, which means the books is all it meant.

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It's like, let's just call it the books. Not very creative, but it stuck. The Bibliaus, the Bible. 300 and something years after Jesus made the statement, when

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Jesus made the statement and Matthew wrote it down, Matthew wasn't writing the Bible. He's documenting an event. So once again,

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Andy Stanley is offering weird, convoluted teaching on scripture that our Christian forefathers would be appalled by.

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He highlights the great commission passage of Matthew 28, which says, quote, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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And he notes a few things. First, that this statement was made before the Bible as we know it was assembled.

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But that is irrelevant. The book of Genesis, for example, was written before the entire Christian Bible was assembled too.

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But this book still was authoritative scripture when it was written. This is something that Andy loves to do.

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He loves to use the Bible against the Bible. And he likes to use these strange, nonsensical statements in the process that don't help anyone.

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Second, he says that humans put these books together and called them the Bible. And the way that he says this is so flippant and dismissive.

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It honestly makes me question whether or not Andy has a high view of scripture at all. Humans didn't just slap the books of the

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Bible together and call it something random. No, the original writers of scripture wrote these words under the inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit, second Peter 121. And because God inspired these words, he also led his church in history to compile them into a central book and to honor that book as his inspired word.

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This isn't rocket science. It's basic Christian doctrine, the kind of thing you'd expect a so -called pastor to be teaching.

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And third, Andy says something truly astounding that Matthew wasn't writing the

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Bible when Jesus first said these things. This is again a distinction without a good difference.

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Jesus is God, John 10 30. And therefore every word out of his mouth was authoritative, eternal scripture,

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Matthew 24 45. If this is true, and it is, then why would it matter when

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Matthew wrote it down? This was 100 % scripture when Matthew was writing it and to suggest otherwise is confusing at best and frankly dangerous at worst.

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But of course, Andy continues the sermon and doubles down on his point. Watch this.

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And your savior, my savior for a Christian claim to be the ultimate authority or to put it another way.

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If you use this language, the Bible says that Jesus is our ultimate authority, not the

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Bible. The Bible infers. If you just take the Bible as if the Bible had a voice, the vibe, the

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Bible proclaims that Jesus, your savior and King is your ultimately thought ultimate authority.

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More importantly, Jesus said that Jesus is our ultimate authority. And in ignoring the implications of this statement is how church leaders have gotten by with so much harmful nonsense century after century after century.

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So now Andy says that Jesus is our ultimate authority, not the Bible. This is yet another trademark ridiculous statement that has little to no meaning at all, but that Andy Stanley somehow things is blowing everyone's mind.

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Jesus himself says, quote, for truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

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Matthew 518 Jesus says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

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The fact is, Jesus did not seem to think that he wanted to separate his authority from the law and word of God.

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So why exactly is Andy Stanley trying so hard to do that? And why exactly should we trust his teaching given that his view of scripture is this bad?

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It's a fair question. But Andy goes on to say that ignoring these truths that he's talking about has led to church leaders pushing all sorts of harmful nonsense.

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This is perhaps the least self -aware statement I think I've ever seen. The only person in that video who's pushing harmful nonsense is

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Andy Stanley himself. And I wish I could say it gets better, but in the next clip, he calls Rick Warren a modern day church reformer.

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Watch this. Before he wrote the purpose driven life, he wrote the purpose driven church. That book sold millions of copies to pastors.

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And it was a book about how to create a church that's for outsiders, for unchurched people. I mean, he, he inspired so many of us, right?

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To, to, to get help, get the church back on mission. He is a modern church reformer. There's no way about, around it.

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Last year, some of you know about this. Last year, his denomination kicked him out of the denomination for something immoral.

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No, something illegal. No, something that had to do with money. No, because he's had some addiction. No, none of that, you know, glamorous stuff, right?

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They kicked him out because he had the nerve to ordain three female staff members who were functioning as pastors.

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He ordained them as pastors, which is actually a legal status. It gave them a tax benefit.

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They're doing the work of all the other male pastors. He's like, well, why in the world would we not make them pastors? They're pastors.

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And they weren't going to go out and lead a church. They were working on his staff. He ordained three women and they kicked him out of the church.

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You don't get any more insider focused than that. So Andy sings the praises of Rick Warren, pastor and author of the purpose driven life.

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And it's clear that Andy really looks up to Rick Warren, which would explain a lot of his problematic teaching, actually.

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But specifically, Andy's upset that the Southern Baptist Convention kicked Rick and his church out of the denomination because they ordained women at Saddleback Church.

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And Andy gives a series of arguments, if you can call them that, in favor of what Rick did.

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First, he says it's OK to ordain female pastors because Rick was just doing it to help them obtain a legal status.

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But this doesn't justify the decision at all. For example, being married is a legal status that comes with tax benefits.

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But helping two people of the same gender obtain that legal status is biblically wrong. Marriage is between one man and one woman.

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This is the historical teaching of the Bible and of the church. Second, he says that these women were not leading any churches.

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No, they were just working on staff at Saddleback Church. This, too, does not justify the decision at all.

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If they were not leading or shepherding the church, this is also a good reason why they should not be ordained as pastors.

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Historically, the position of pastor or elder has always been seen as a leadership position.

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And the word pastor in scripture literally means shepherd. So if you're not shepherding anything, why would you need to be called a pastor?

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And by the way, the Bible clearly and directly says that women should not be pastors in First Timothy 2 .12.

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And historically, they haven't been pastors until the rise of the modern feminist movement. And third,

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Andy laments at the fact that this move from the SBC to kick Rick Warren out was too insider focused.

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And this is really the core of the argument here. Andy believes, similar to Rick Warren, that our main goal should always be getting people in the door and getting them saved.

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And therefore, any idea, any practice that might potentially offend an unbeliever needs to be removed from the church atmosphere.

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So don't talk about sin or hell too much. Unbelievers don't like that. Instead, use replacement words like making mistakes or not living your best life.

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Don't offer biblical deep exposition. No. Instead, offer shallow, emotional pep talks with a few scriptures sprinkled in every

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Sunday. Unbelievers like quick, easy sermons like that. Don't sing theologically rich songs.

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No. Instead, sing songs about how Jesus is your buddy and or your boyfriend. And when you practice this ministry model for decades at a time, what you ultimately get is

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Andy Stanley, a man who cares more about making people feel good and getting them saved than he does about being fully tethered to the truth of God's word as someone who's supposed to be teaching it.

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But here's the secret he's not telling you. These things actually aren't mutually exclusive. You can promote the full, unedited truth of God's word and worship him reverently every

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Sunday and also care about those who are lost and helping them be saved. The irony here is that without the scriptures, we wouldn't have any good news to give the unbeliever at all.

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So when you skip over scripture to make the unbeliever feel good, you're putting the cart before the horse. You're completely failing before you get off the runway.

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And you don't have to draw weird distinctions, by the way, between God and his word. You can actually follow

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God through his word, which is what he told us to do. So please, if you're a Christian, stop listening to people like Andy Stanley.

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There are thousands by God's grace of great pastors out there who have good, solid teaching that you can learn from for God's glory.

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Please pray for this channel and for anyone mentioned in the video. Check out the ministries linked in the description, like, subscribe, hit the bell, and subscribe to our

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