Part 2: Kip McKean & the International Church of Christ | Cultish @ExposingtheCults

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And we thank you so much for your consideration. Enjoy the next episode. All right. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Cultish. My name is Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co-hosts here. Back here with Steve Matthews.

Good to have you back for the final act. Good to be back here from California. So we wrapped up talking about the first principles, which is the sort of be all end all with how to proselytize if you are in the ICC or in this case, the International Christian Church.

So let's just go ahead and continue where we wrapped up from last time. So we're going to be kind of getting into the lion's den, the nitty gritty when it comes to the actual critique of their doctrine, chapter by chapter, verse by verse of where they go to, because ultimately this is where Walter Martin shined.

And this is if you listen to all his lectures, when it was really any cult, he and if you read the outline of every chapter of Kingdom of the Cults, it was always here's what they say as far as their doctrine.

And here's the response. So in that case, we're going to go ahead and get into the lion's den and just go full full ham on this. I'm excited, man.

Yeah, no, it's it's important because I know that there's very little resources out there, National Christian Church. So and thanks for doing this, because it's you, as usual, we're providing ways for Christians to answer.

And as people are going to come across this, whose children are into the group, you familiarize yourself in part one of who they are, what they believe, where they came from, and now how to talk to them and what's going on.

So to have a balanced view, we have to understand that it's hard to get somebody out of this group. Why is it hard? Because they do so many things right. I mean, you go to the churches, they're a lot of fun, they're loving, they build amazing relationships.

They put us to shame in so many ways because the disciples in the ICC are so committed. They just will give all of their life to God. And, you know, they said most people in the International Christian Church are Christians, but, you know, they don't think we're Christians.

And they can say the Apostles' Creed and they can, you know, confess to Trinity and a lot of things that other groups don't. They have some doctrinal errors, not flunk line stuff like on the Trinity so bad, but definitely behaviorally, they got some big issues.

And a lot of these abuses, we're going to go into a lot of detail on that and on baptism for salvation. So they do a lot of things right to make church fun. And our church is very cold, often by comparison, because you go to the church, you'll have people come up and greet you and ask for your phone or whatever they want to get you in.

That's why. And they'll do a lot of that stuff. They're very loving and friendly people. They're big, loving family. They're a community. If you like, for example, if you're a student, you want to move your apartment, you'll have 30 disciples, 20 disciples there on Saturday.

Hey, brother, let's let's help you move. And they're very they're good like that. You know, our church won't do that. So they're the real commitment. They they're obedient. They count the cost. Bad news is that they teach the baptism of salvation and they're very, you know, elitist and divisive there.

Also bad is that if you leave like a lot of groups while you're in the group, they basically say you shouldn't be spending time with all your non-Christian friends. You should be a fisherman and use your time.

And that means you've basically lost all your buddies and you're pulled away from your family because this group's become your everything. And then when you leave and get shunned, you've got nobody. Then you get PTSD and you have a hard time.

So that's it's hard to leave for a lot of those reasons.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I just heard I've heard that story so many times and just it never gets old.

And that's characteristic of these high demand groups. And this group is definitely high demand. So I want to call them out and critique them on what I call deliberate deception. You know, they claim to be part of a non-denominational church often when they're on a campus trying to recruit you and say, come to one of our Bible studies or Bible talks.

And they try to get you to lower your guard because, you know, you might be selfie in a non-denominational church. But in reality, they don't like non-denominational churches. They they basically rant all the time against the non-denominational world and the church is a tradition kind of thing.

But they're trying to recruit you. So they go around saying they're non-denominational. But in essence, they really don't like the non-denominational churches, which is kind of hypocritical, I think.

Yeah. So they'll say, you know, come study the Bible. That means like we saw last week, come study first principles. And, you know, they that book is carefully designed to undermine your faith and replace it with Kip McKean's vision and the teachings of the ICC.

They don't disclose right off the bat either that Kip is he claims to be this, you know, the sole restorer of Christianity and that they're the only church. So they're not upfront about their objectives and goals.

They're pretty dishonest. How would you like to join a group when they come right up to you and say, hey, Christianity has been lost for 1500 years until a guy from Boston, like a modern day Moses or Paul came along in 1979 to restore the church.

You're not really a Christian. Everything you've been taught is false. And when you study first principles booklet by God's man for today, Kip McKean, you'll understand that the ICC is the only true church and you need to be part of it to be saved.

You're not going to join a church or they say that out of the bat. They got, you know, if you come and say, oh, he restored in Boston, 1979, you're going to want to hear something different. So they kind of get you in slowly.

They don't give you full disclosure of what they're really teaching you up front when they first meet you. You're not ready to hear that. They're going to kind of wean you in. So, you know, let's talk about some problems in first principles since this is their main guide.

Every member uses the evangelize people, you know, at the often midweek men's and women's groups. They'll do, you know, like classes on how to study first principles and how to teach it and stuff. And you got to do it just right until you get it right.

And they'll, they take these courses again and again and again, often in their meetings. The crazy, one of the crazy things in this, you know, part about this is that there's not even a hint about the gospel until the fifth lesson, light and darkness.

It's not like, you know, lesson one, lesson two, lesson three. They're kind of building that foundation, but there's no mention about Jesus dying for your cross or on the cross for your sins. There's none of that in there.

They're kind of like, you know, delaying that whole thing, right?

There's a lot of talking discipleship and obedience. It seems like when I skim through it.

Yes. And, you know, two of the studies that are really important is the third one, which is called the discipleship study. And that's when you find out that you're not really a Christian at all. This study is so powerful.

They can take someone who's been a Christian for 20 years and in a half an hour, 45 minutes, have you doubting the fact of your salvation, that your family and your church are all going to hell, that they're all lost, that everything you believe, that everybody you know you thought were Christian are wrong because, you know, you've been deceiving yourself your whole life and you're going to hell and you haven't been taught the Bible correctly.

That's how powerful, a total masterclass this lesson in deception. I mean, I've seen a lot of groups, the Mormons don't do it in that level. When you do the third level, they can often just blow you out of the water and think, holy cow, I didn't know.

So they have to keep, they kind of anticipate when they teach this lesson, you're going to get a pushback from the person. And then they kind of want to overcome it in their ways. So a lot of, you know, they keep a lot of things, they'll spend a lot of time with you, you know, like they're suddenly your new best friends.

If you go to the church for weeks and they talk to you every day and you hang out with other disciples and, you know, you hear from, you know, the person teaching you every day. But they're keeping the big secret from you until the third lesson because you're not ready.

So now they're your new buddies. You're spending all this time, you like them and, you know, they think you're like the greatest guy in the world. They laugh too much at your jokes. You know, they, they want to hang out with you and they think you're so great and wonderful.

They love bomb you to death. And all of a sudden, bam, they lay it on you hard. Like you're not even a disciple because are you sharing your faith daily? Are you making a fisher, being a fisherman? Like the Bible tells you, are you counting the cost?

You know, are you committed? Are you like really committed? Are you having impure thoughts in your life? Are you involved in pornography? Do you have anything wrong in your life? They really call you out hard and, you know, they really laid on you.

And then it's like, holy cow, I'm not even like a believer. That's pretty wild.

It's almost like they're doing their own auditing session.

Yeah, yeah.

Minus the canisters.

Hardcore group, hardcore group over here. So you're not even a real believer. You're not making disciples. Who are you discipling? They really just, you know, come at you. So the light and darkness lesson is lesson number, the fifth study in the studies.

And this is the big one. This is when you really learn how you have to be baptized for salvation, which is a big moment too. And they, you know, they've already created the doubt about your salvation through the discipleship study.

And then you learn at this moment, like the baptism that you did, even if you got baptized in a Baptist church is not valid. You got to have that valid baptism knowing why you were baptized for the remission of sins.

Oh yeah.

Like an infant baptism is good, but oh yeah, like original sin is also a false teaching and it's unbiblical. One of the things that's really heavy in this, one of the powerful things in this one is, and it's very controversial, is they have a thing called sin lists and you're invited to write down all your deepest, darkest failures, all your life.

It's a really, you know, come to grips with your sinfulness. And I get what they're trying to do. They're trying to show, yeah, you got to, you know, take accountability and they try to create this conversion.

But I mean, these are guys that you might've just known like for a few days or a few weeks and things you wouldn't even tell your best friend. And they really push you hard to do it. And you know, they'll often have like one of the other members of your group said, well, I can tell you my sins.

You know, they have saying openness breeds openness. That's a big saying in ICC. They're going to try, they have this down and how to work on you to get you to do the sin list. And this has been really, and there's been stories about auditing how they can use your things.

Maybe you're already going there, right? How they can use, keep record and use that against you. In the newer editions of first principles, there's a thing like, you know, this is not to be used against you anytime.

So maybe it makes you wonder because there's allegations that when people told some dirty little secrets, maybe it was being used against people. But right now that's not the case.

The vulnerability was weaponized.

Yeah.

And they're, they're, they're trying to do it circumspectly now and do it right. So that's not an issue, but definitely a high demand group, classic bite model.

Hmm.

Yeah.

So, uh, and then you mentioned, uh, claims since that was a claims of abuse.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, the, it's a lot of stuff about, you know, the, the guilt manipulation by, you know, you could never be doing enough for this group.

You're always,.

You could do more, you give more, you spend more time.

Um,.

They want to remake you an image of Kit McKean.

Um,.

There's a,.

There was a study by a church growth scholar. His name was fabulously called the deciphering dilemma.

Yeah.

And they had a whole bunch of people in the Boston movement, voluntary take what they call the Meyer Briggs type indicator test. And this is a test where they check your personality type to see if you're an extrovert or you're introvert, you're a feeler or you're more logical, all these different things.

Well,.

In this study, Kit was what they call an ESFJ, an extrovert, a sensor, a feeler, and a judger. And they're just different ways we process information, relate to outside worlds. It was a respected study by a lot of psychologists.

Yeah.

But it does, some people thought it could be a new way of actually determining cults because it's fascinating that Kit was clearly an ESFJ personality type, but not everybody's an extrovert. And when they did the study in the, in the Boston movement, most of the people were like ESFJs, which doesn't make sense because,.

You know,.

There's a distribution of personality types. Some people are introverts, some people are more feelings oriented, but this shows that people are all trying to copy Kit McKean. And the, and it's like,.

You know,.

If God made you introvert, praise God, that's fine. You don't have to try to be an extrovert and say,.

Hey brother,.

How you doing?

And all this enthusiasm like you have in the McKean movements. And it was causing people to have psychological breakdown.

Yeah.

Because you're trying to be forced to be who you're not. You're trying to be this extrovert when God didn't make it that way. You try to have that,.

You know,.

Feeler. When you're more illogical and you're trying to rewrite your personality type, create yourself in the image of Kit McKean. And people were having emotional breakdowns of crisis. It was really, it was an incredible study, but it had a sad side to it too.

Yeah.

And I,.

And I get that.

I mean,.

Just seeing you on a small micro level, there's been people I've looked up to and admired and kind of wanted to be like them by ended up sort of emulating them to the extent of like, of my true self and sort of being someone that I'm not.

And we all know that,.

You know,.

There's times it's unhealthy, the way they do it, the way they look at Kip. We're going to talk in a moment about how they overstate his importance.

You know,.

Kip,.

Kip.

I mean, they have PTSD when you leave often because they kind of pull away from you. But one of the crazy things, like we've talked about, like on the Shin Chan G episode, we did how, when you look on the internet, you're eating the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And you're not, that's the world mission. I church, God word for word, use that same thing. You're not allowed to go on the internet.

You know,.

Jehovah's witnesses go to JW .org. Kip McKean says, looking that stuff up is spiritual pornography. Don't get on the internet and look us up. So it's basically the way I've said is when you're in these high demand cults, you're allowed to,.

You know,.

Think a little bit for yourself as you're joining. But once you join no more fact checking, it's a sin.

You know,.

If you do fact, when did fact checking become a sin? So you can't look up your group. You can't Google.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

It's a sin. It's spiritual pornography. It's eating the tree. It's like, this is how the ICC is too. And that's unhealthy too.

You know,.

As Christians, I always say we don't do that in our church. When some, you know, people who don't have good knowledge, I say Christians are just like all this,.

You know,.

Christians, it's like, bring it on. Let us check out the other side. Let us fact check it. But the cults, it's a whole different animal.

So,.

And they say, if you challenge their beliefs of the church, if you challenge your discipleship partner, oh, you're prideful, you're weak, you lack humility. They always try to beat you down with that.

And that's, it's definitely a lot of control too. So when you've, like we said last week, a lot of discipleship goes wrong and they try to overly control you, manipulate you, not healthy stuff. Everything is hard line in the ICC.

So the preaching is hard line, the commitment's hard line, the giving's hard line, the evangelism efforts is hard line, the friendliness and loving each other, the singing, everything is hard line, hard line, hard line.

It's a super intense group. And this is why a lot of people eventually burn up from being in there. If someone leaves, they become a fall away. That's the term they use. And they say, oh, they were just weak or uncommitted.

They couldn't keep up under the constant pressure. Well, I mean, they would say like, we're just weak, but it's, they can't keep up. And a lot of people leave, it's really sad. A lot of people leave. There's some wonderful, beautiful people in these groups.

A lot of people, when they leave the ICC or groups like the WMSCOG or Shinshanji or a lot of them, they become really bitter agnostics because they've been so burned. You can only hold up this pressure for so long and deny yourself.

I mean, one of the things in the cults is like, if you have any natural talent, unless you're using it for the cult, that's evil. You always have to be using it for the kingdom or it's just like bad. Like it's just a way to spend extra time you should be spending, we should be evangelizing for the organization.

Yeah, that's also for me, like that's always been one of the most hardest part of watching any like HBO or Netflix cult documentary and seeing those who left the cult. Cause like you've seen the story told so many, we both have seen the story.

It was so many times through the lens of so many different cults and cultists both in the cults and out of the cults, but just watching those who have been spit out the other end and, but still don't have Christ and just have that sort of, that sort of nihilism.

It's very hard to watch. My heart breaks for that.

It is so many ways. It's a great group with such great people. And they're really causing, calling you to commitment and call you to evangelize. They get a lot of things right. And if someone's listening, they say, well, look at the great things we do.

And you can look for, I get it. But the bad stuff they do with the constant pressure, like you're not allowed to miss a church service. I mean, if you miss church services, like some of these Korean groups, they'll be show up at your doorstep.

Like, why weren't you at this service brother? I mean, it's like, you might not feel good or having a bad day. It's like, you should have a bit of freedom and grace in the Lord to, but nope, for them, you know, they'll be at your door, check it up on you.

You know, everybody's got to hug each other. Some people are not wired that way to hug.

You know what I mean?

It's a hugger. But it's like that constant pressure, pressure, pressure. You know, they meet you for two minutes. They want your phone number. And it's just like a lot of crazy stuff. So it's like, just like example, also sucking away all your time, like in these groups.

Sunday, you have a Sunday morning service. You'll often have like a midweek, like men's and women's group meetings. And then you have Bible talks. You have D times, there's discipleship times. You have campus devos, campus devotions.

You'll have on the campus on Friday nights and sharing your faith every day and studying the first principles of people. And that first principles class training, you have retreats and fundraisers. They call them tagging in the church.

Your whole life becomes consumed with the church like day after day and day. We've heard this with, you know, Shin Chan Ji, World Mission Society, a lot of these high demand groups where they fill up your schedule.

And then you feel bad if you're not doing anything for your life, but they're just packing in, meeting after meeting and D times. And it's just so much stuff you have to do. And as you can imagine, like, as I said, like it makes you fall apart, your friends and family.

And then if you, you know, when you, those relationships get weakened, you don't spend time with them, you know, then you have to be doing evangelism all the time. And then you leave, there's nobody there for you.

So you get pushed a lot. You get motivated a lot by pressure. It's a lot of like, you know, push, push, push. You're never doing enough. You're never giving enough. You need more fundraising. I mean, the fundraising, we'll talk about that right now.

So the people have been criticized a lot for giving under compulsion. God loves a cheerful giver, amen? These guys, that sounds like an ICC thing, amen? Amen, you say something, you have to put an amen on the end.

So many, if not many, most of the members are college students or people are young and they're not making a lot of money yet. That comes later in life. And they just get pushed and pushed, you know, with that low income.

And, you know, you're not giving enough in your control, brother. You gotta give more, sister. And, you know, they have like special missions contribute beside your regular tithing, and you have to give every service.

A special missions fundraiser might be like, you know, 15 or 20 times your normal contribution. And a lot of people, this is super painful, and the pressure to give, give, give. I mean, and there's a lot of pressure to give in these groups, you know?

People sell stuff and sometimes they're really creative in the way they wanna sell money, but there's just like the time, the money, it's just not healthy Christianity. And it kind of messes with a lot of people.

Another thing, it's a real problem, is their unhealthy views of leadership. So believe it or not, there is a second principles book, not used as much. It was used with the ICOC. It was more of like an Old Testament thing.

But one of the lines, one of the themes in lecture three is to grumble against God's leaders is to grumble against God. Now you can see how that goes wrong, especially in an authoritarian pyramid style top-down group like this.

It's definitely, even though it was an ICOC book, it definitely shows Kip's mindset in how you can't grumble against God is grumbling against, you know, the leaders. It's pretty bad. And the whole thing about Kip being, now Kip is apparently gone from the movement, but this shows you the mentality of the movement and how they overly revere Kip.

I mean, Kip is everything in this group. People act like Kip. We talked about that last week. They want to preach with like Kip and they want to talk like Kip. And the little intonations at the end of the words that Kip will do, you know, if you've been a former member, you know all this stuff.

And Kip is basically seen as the restorer of Christianity. Now the Campbells, yeah, they were restorers of Christianity, apparently along with, you know, the Walter Scott and Bart W. Stone, Trinity Denier.

But I mean, you know, it's kind of funny also. I never mentioned that last week about, you know, why would the Campbells want to even fellowship with Barton Stone who denies the Trinity and substituted to him in Christ, but they're going to pick on those Baptists who don't have baptism right.

But they're going to let it slide on who God is, like on that flunk line issue. Like restorationists, what are you thinking? Like, how can Barton Stone get a pass on denying the Trinity, but your fellow Baptists, oh, well, he's not doing baptism right.

It's just, it's mind boggling. You know, but the way they over, you know, Kip is the restorer today of Christianity. He is God's man for today. That's how they look at Kip. So this like God would work at that time to Moses or King David or Apostle Paul in their time, God's man for today is Kip McKean.

That's how they really look at it. Now they don't say he's an apostle or prophet like Mormonism or different groups or second coming Christ, but they got to revere him in this really unhealthy role. So he's like the one who restored the church.

Now he's restored the church twice, once with the ICC, once again with ICC, he's like a double restorer, each year higher out Alexander, right? So he leads the establishment of the church around the world.

He picks where the pillar church is going to take the next phase of evangelism, which countries are going to go to. And it's like a big deal. Like, where's the gospel going to go to? That's all Kip. Well, now he's of course, he's Dr. Kip McKean because the International College of Christian Ministry, you know, it's basically his own rules.

He became a doctor. So like a lot of the leaders in the ICC now are doctors like Dr. Kip McKean or doctors, so many Dr. Tim Kernan. And you know, it's, I think it's a lightweight degree that they do. It's almost like more, I'd think more like a term paper than a doctoral dissertation, not learning the Greek and the Hebrew and all the intense church history.

They might be learning a little restoration history with this little paper. It's more of a practical thing. But so if I say Dr. Kip McKean, if that slips, you know, but that's how they like talk to him again.

Kip is often referred to with titles like preacher, missionary, reformer, theologian, humanitarian. That was on his website and other sites. And John Kazi, he was easily an evangelist of the Chicago International Christian Church.

He's a very popular in the ICC circuit. He says, today I see that the new movement is the movement of God. And Kip is God's man for this generation.

As always has been.

World sector, Tim Curran. I consider Kip the greatest theologian and ministry practitioner of our time. Kip, Tim also heaps praise on Kip. I believe unreservedly that Kip is the greatest restoration movement preacher and probably the greatest Christian leader since Paul.

So what are your

Some early accolades.

Yeah, some huge ones.

So they love piling it on.

Sam Lang in Discipleship Magazine gushed, Kip McKean is the greatest living treasure that God has given the kingdom of kingdom on the face of the earth today. You know, it's like, could you imagine someone saying that about John MacArthur or Rick Warren?

I mean, in the Christian church. I mean, this is just like my path. It's just, it's insane, right?

Yeah, it feels like a very much like a WWE, like a monologue.

It's amazing. So Marty Wood in Discipleship Magazine also said several years ago, there are brothers among us who are known for the humility or their passion or their creativity or their faith. Kip is leading us because he is known for all of these virtues and many more.

Can we say this about Dr. White? You know, in fact, I cannot think of any virtue that Kip is not known for. He goes, there is no greater discipler, disciple, brother, husband, father, leader, and friend than Kip McKean.

Some say it is dangerous to respect any one man this much, that much. I believe it is more dangerous not to. You getting a picture? Like, you know, I say he's overly revered. He's a central leader of the church, but who's the real leader of the church?

It's Christ. But the way, I mean, you're laughing, because this is new and you haven't heard,.

But it's like

I've heard it all before.

Yeah, but in different cult groups. But if you're a member of the International Christian Church, you're watching this, hopefully you are. You know, is this really what you wanna be known for, like talking about this sinful guy?

And I mean, now, if Kip's been removed from the church and we're looking at him in a new light, this is how, you know.

Just so you know, too, when you're doing all that, I'm visualizing the documentary, Going Clear, where it's showing Tom Cruise, like saluting L. Ron Hubbard with that giant Frisbee medal. And him, and he's also introducing David Miscavige, like that same sort of accolades.

Like, he's a million times as humble as you, you know? So it's like, wait a second. But yeah.

So those are some real problems. You know, we'll get into some more, but I mean, even that I think speaks volumes. So I think we need to turn our eyes on some theology now.

Baptismal Regeneration and Proof-Texting

Yeah.

Yeah. Baptismal regeneration.

Well, I often call it baptismal remission.

Yes.

Because it's kind of, that's the way they look at it. To kind of distinguish it a little bit from the Lutherans and some of the covenantal stuff, the way they look at it a little differently. Part of that, you're becoming part of that covenant community like in some of the Presbyterians.

But baptismal remission, you know, that's that Jesus plus I talked about last week. So you got Jesus plus keeping the Sabbath, Jesus plus speaking in tongues, Jesus plus good works or Jesus plus Passover or whatever.

So you use Jesus plus baptism. And, you know, like we said last week, Kip is a hardcore Campbellite who took all of his doctrines, mostly from the mainline Church of Christ, added some stuff to it. And then he added the Austin McGarry stuff.

He's a McGarryite Campbellite who teaches that you gotta be saved for the knowledge of baptism. So one of their pet verses, and it's often used in first principles when you look at it, it's a really weak verse to try to prove baptism for salvation.

They have their seven favorite verses in the mainline Church of Christ and the International Christian Church. And it's like, you know, as Christians, we would say there's hundreds of verses showing that salvation by faith in Christ.

You got a handful of verses, your seven twisted out of context verses that they're trying to make fit to say, oh, well, these are the verses that show that you gotta be baptized. So, you know, he explained the main things by the plain things.

Yeah, there's some tricky passages in the Bible. We're gonna look at some of these. Some of these verses are complex, like a lot of verses, but the plain things, salvation, God so loved the world, it's super clear, you know, that was Nicodemus he was talking about, by the way, that we're gonna look at John 3, 5, the same one.

And it's like, to build all this doctrine of salvation by baptism, you know, let the clear verses explain the unclear verses, but they're not doing that. So John 3, 5, let's look at that one first. Okay, Jesus answered and said, barely, barely, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they're born of water and the spirit.

Ah, they see the word water, and automatically it's gotta mean baptism. Now, that's what these cults do. They'll see a word like, oh, like about King Cyrus, like in, you know, Iglesia Ni Cristo or World Missionary Church of God.

Ah, the man from the East. Ah, it's automatically Felix Manalo with Iglesia Ni Cristo or that's like, you know, Anzal Han. So they gotta see the word, they automatically, it's up, that's what it is. Well, I'll tell you, there's nothing, this verse has nothing to do with baptism.