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

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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 their 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 on a

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 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. And 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. I mean, 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 so be 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 churches, the 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 fifteen hundred 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 that 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 or 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 often 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 the 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. But mine is 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 five, 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.

And 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.

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 gotta, 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 a 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 real. And, and there's been stories. These are 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. 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. Yeah. So, and then you mentioned claims since that was the 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. They want to remake you an image of Kit McKean.

There's a, there was a study by a church growth scholar. His name is Flavel Akeley called the deciphering dilemma.

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, 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.

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 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 you that way. You try to have that, you know, feeler when you're more illogical.

And you try to rewrite your personality type, create yourself in the image of Kit McKean and people are 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 in 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 Shinshanji 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 is that same thing. You're not allowed to go on the internet. You know, Jehovah's witnesses go to JW .org.

Kit 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. It's a sin. It's spiritual pornography. It's eating the tree of knowledge. 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 churches.

When some, you know, people who don't have good knowledge, try to say Christians are like cultists, 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 like their beliefs of the church, if you challenge your discipleship partner, oh, you're prideful.

You know, 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, you know, they say, oh, they were just weak or uncommitted. They couldn't keep up under, you know, 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 shouldn't 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.

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 night, that sort of nihilism. It's very hard to watch my heart breaks for that.

And it's so many ways. It's a great group with six 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 to 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, there'll be 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. Not everyone's a hugger, but it's like that constant pressure, pressure, pressure, you know, they beat 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, 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 you, 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 did you do, you had to be doing evangelism all the time and then you leave this, 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 a 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 contra brother, you got to 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 want to sell money, but there's just like, like the time and the money, it's just not healthy

Christianity. And it kind of messes with a lot of people. Yeah. 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 use 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 grumble against God is grumbling against the leaders.

It's pretty bad. And the whole thing about Kip, you know,

Kip is apparently gone from the movement, but this shows you the mentality of the movement and how the 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 is, you know, if you've been a former member, you know, all this stuff at 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 Barton W.

Stone, Trinity denier. But I mean, you know, it's kind of funny also, but 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 he, 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. Yeah. You know, but, 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 through 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, 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, 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 Kernan.

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. Some early accolades.

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. And 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. 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. Yeah. 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 want to be known for?

Like talking about this sinful guy. And I mean, now if, if Kip's been removed from the church and we're looking at 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 he'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. Yeah. And 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 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 yes, 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 awesome McGarry stuff. He's a McGarryite Campbellite who teaches that you got to be saved for the knowledge of baptism.

So one of their pet verses, and it's, it's often used in first principles.

I think it's, it's, 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 got to be baptized. So, you know, the explain the main things by the plain things.

Yeah. There's some tricky passages in the Bible. We're going to 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 to, by the way, that we're going to look at John three, five, the same one.

And it's like to build all this doctrine on, of salvation by baptism, you know, let the clear verses explain the unclear verses, but they're not doing that.

So John three, five, let's look at that one first. Okay. Jesus answered and said, verily, verily, 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 got to 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, unsung hung. So they got to see the word.

They automatically it's up. That's what it is. Well, I'll tell you what, there's nothing, this verse has nothing to do with baptism.

And it's like, it's really easy to prove, you know, this is definitely called, this is what you call an anachronism.

When you're reading back a future doctrine back into the old Testament like that. The same thing happens with the

Catholics, the world missionary church of God in John chapter six, when they say, unless you eat of this, eat of this bread and drink, you have no life in you.

And aha, see this is the mass or this is Passover. Well, guess what? The Lord's supper wasn't even given yet at that point.

And the mass, it wasn't even given. You're reading back into the text. It just has nothing to do with it. So is this cannot be

Christian baptism in John chapter three. And the reason it's real easy, what was the only baptism around in the time of John chapter three?

It was a baptism of John the Baptist. There was no Christian baptism yet. Christian baptism wasn't given until the great commission, you know, when it was given in name of the father, the son, the

Holy ghost, which was not John the Baptist baptism, obviously. Right. It wasn't in relation to the death, burial, resurrection of Christ.

Like John, like Romans chapter six says, the DBR, it says, we're baptized in relation to his death, burial, resurrection.

The baptism of John was not in the name of the Trinity. It wasn't in relation to death, burial, resurrection. It had nothing to do with Christian baptism like that.

And they're trying to say that, you know, the Jews would never have understood. Nicodemus would never understood it.

Because John's baptism, the baptism of repentance that had nothing to do with the death, burial, resurrection, which hadn't even happened yet.

It's an anachronism. So Jesus is rebuking Nicodemus at this point for not understanding.

And he's saying, Hey, I'm telling you about earthly things you don't understand. You're the teacher of Israel. You don't know. What nobody says.

He says, Hey, Nicodemus, I'm telling you about earthly things. You don't get it. What if I was trying to tell you about heavenly things?

We didn't even get that either. He's rebuking Nicodemus for something that's not even given yet. Right. So it doesn't make any sense.

This verse has nothing to do with it. According to even to the restorationist, the gospel wasn't even given until Acts chapter two.

How could this even mean anything then? And if it was, then you're saying that the baptism of John was what you needed at that point.

It's totally written. It had no meaning to them. This verse just falls.

It has nothing to do with it. Do you have any comments on that or just kind of make sense? Well, yeah, I think when it comes,

John 3, 5 was the very first verse. My friend, Andre, who I keep on mentioning back, he's the one who first kind of threw that wrench in my tire spokes.

I remember it kind of threw me off. I was like, wait, what's this? It has nothing to do with Christian baptism. As soon as it was like water, it was like, ah, gotcha.

So seven verses, boom, that one goes, now we're down to six. It just, it doesn't hold water.

Pardon the pun. Yeah. Neither does Romans six where they love to use that verse. Now I've been in a lot of services and they'll say, you know, we're going to be baptizing

Shelly today who was baptized into Christ today. Right. And, you know, it has nothing to do with, you know, that.

So the verse in Romans six is, or don't you know that all of us who are baptized into Christ were baptized into his death.

Yes. See, you're baptized into Christ. You get a bit baptized, you get into Christ. That's what he's saying here.

It has nothing to do with it. You know, the word ace, we're going to look at next to 38 is a preposition that can be meaning in relation to, and, you know, we're united with Christ through the ceremony of baptism.

We're not baptized into his person. And that's really easy to see. Right. If you go to first Corinthians chapter 10 verse two, where it talks about the

Jews of the red sea were baptized into Moses. Really? Were they baptized into his person?

Were they baptized to get into Moses? The same were baptized into Christ. No, it's talking about identification.

They were baptized in relation to Moses. It says right there, they all ate the same spiritual food.

They all ate, drank the same spiritual drink. They all drank from the spiritual same spiritual rock, the same, the same it's identification with Moses.

They all did the same, the same way the children of Israel baptized in relation to Moses identification.

We're identifying with Christ by going under the water and coming out in the newness of life has nothing to do with Christian baptism.

So it's all about baptism. You know, in the life of the life of the Christian baptism is our identification with Christ publicly with a death, brother resurrection of Christ as we enter into a new life and leave our old life behind.

Yeah. I love it. And even he mentioned like the, the anachronism is that their take, they're ignoring one through five and everything when it talks about the establishment of the gospel, when the reality is that the context of very beginning of Roman six is talking about the applicability of the gospel, which has already been established as like the framework has already been set.

And this case, they're trying to act like, and I've had conversations with those in the traditional church of Christ is that they, they almost, they try and just keep on going to Roman six and annoying everything that's set beforehand.

And he just, because the, the reality is that for, for justified by faith, apart from the deeds of the law, then the, the objection is, well, are, should we didn't, are we saved by grace?

So we just, they'd be lawless then, is that, is that what you're saying? And that's where, and he always sets up rhetorical questions.

And then he, he sets up rhetorical and then he answers it, which is exactly what Paul's doing there. Exactly. Yeah.

So of your seven verses, now two of them are gone. Now you're down to five. So the way it works is like I said, it's like the mindset of restorationist, mainline church of Christ, mainline church of Christ, international

Christian church, you know, international churches of Christ. They're like a lot of groups.

They're about proof texting. It's like they're proof texting these seven verses that can be seen in more than one way.

So we've just shown how these verses can be understood more than one way. It doesn't have to be that way.

Born of water does not have to mean baptism. We've already shown that. Yes. It wouldn't make sense to Nicodemus.

And I didn't even mention, like I said, well, I did kind of in passing when he says to Nicodemus, he's given the requirements for salvation to see the kingdom of heaven.

Guess what? It was also Nicodemus. He was talking to in John 3, 15, when he goes, it was by belief.

It was the same Nicodemus. And then he goes, then John summarizes it himself. Not Jesus, what he says in 316,

God so loved the world, but it's, it's just really clear. You have to force these verses to make it safe.

So it's, they're very much a proof texting group. They're not understanding the big picture theology of it, where it's really clear.

The new Testament message, even back to the old Testament in Genesis chapter 15, verse six, where Abraham believed

God, it was counted in righteousness. Like circumcision in Colossians 2, 12 is almost like a, a counterpart to baptism in the new

Testament. And Abraham before any circumcision or before anything, all the way back before, when

God alone could see his heart, he looked at his heart by faith and he was saved by faith before anything else happened.

The same with baptism, it's faith saves first. Oh, for sure. And one of the things as we kind of go through these verses, and this is really good so far, is that.

So far? Yeah. So far, so good. I know, a lot of high standards there. We came here to really share because there's just not a lot of material out there done.

And we hope that if you have, like some people would even say, sorry to interrupt, but I'll say that a lot of times people say, when you talk to someone in the international

Christian church, don't dwell on baptism. Why wouldn't you? Yeah. This is the big differentiator on the way of salvation.

And it's like, if you could show, you know, you have to look critically at a context and everything. If you could show like John 3, 5, they're, they're forcing it to mean baptism.

There's nothing contextually. It's anachronism. It's only John the Baptist baptism. It doesn't make sense.

Nicodemus is not making sense to us. If you could challenge your, your kid who was at college, who's deceived, let's take a second.

Look, does John 3, 5 really mean that? Or are you kind of reading that in a text? You know, I mean,

I think it's really important we go there. Yeah. But so far, hopefully we're doing okay. No, that's good. And just one of the things too, when you think about even how, when you're interacting with cults, reasoning from the scriptures with the cults, and this is not, this is a political far beyond this particular group, is that one of the things that Walter Martin would talk about is not only scaling the language barrier, but also in which, how you'd interact.

A lot of times they are given like random verses to memorize, taken out of context, approved texts, and not, they're not taught to read chapter by chapter.

That can be understood in more than one way. Chapter by chapter, verse by verse. One of the things that Uncle Wally back in the day, what he said he would love to do when he'd interact with Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, anybody, he would have them, he would show them a

Bible verse, but then he would have them read it. You'd always say, have the cultists read this verse. And there's so many times where he could actually see them all of a sudden, like their paradigms get broken down because many times when it ends up happening is like you're talking with them and their brain is automatically just ciphering through to the very next verse they're going to go to.

When you actually are having them read the verse, if you just hand their Bible to them, I've done it multiple times, you'll see their programming like break.

And it's a beautiful thing to see. yeah, there's that silence because they don't want, because they don't want to disbelieve the

Bible at the same time, they don't want to contradict their organization, but that's what you've got to make a decision.

Like when I got into counterculture stuff, when I almost became a Mormon, I've had the burning of the bosom, the whole thing, and I had a

Christian witness to me. So apologetics doesn't work. It's don't get discouraged. You definitely have to take time, talk to people.

I was being torn in half and it's like, well, I don't want to contradict what I've been learning, but I see the Bible says it. And then you gotta, you gotta, you gotta side with God, even if your group is telling you otherwise.

And these verses just don't hold up for 2000 years. Awesome. What do we got next? Okay. Acts two 38 favorite verse.

Oh, it's classic. Yeah. So it's an oldie. So again, pardon the pun, doesn't hold water.

Peter replied, repent, be baptized. Every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the

Holy ghost. Aha. So you got to be repent and be baptized for the mission of your sins.

Boy, we could be a while on this one. Well, there's a few problems with the overall understanding of this verse.

First off, biblically, like we said in the context of the new Testament overall, it doesn't make sense with their few isolated out of context versus the big picture is hundreds of verses at talk about, you know, salvation is by faith alone in the

Lord. So explain this verse. A lot of people have really focused it on the word

ACE, which is E I S Epsilon, Yoda, Sigma, and Greek, which is the preposition.

It can be, it has a wide variety of possible meanings. And it's often what they call a dynamic equivalent is determined by context, how's the proper way to read it.

So, you know, they understand it. It means in order to be baptized in order to get their mission of sins, but there's another meaning of ACE.

And a lot of people in the church of Christ have argued with me about this, but when I show them, it's like they get quiet like this and ACE sometimes means because of now, when you read it in English, it's another story than reading in Greek.

And a lot of people will say in these, you know, Southern members will say, well, look, it says right here, be baptized for the mission of sins.

Well, that's an English understanding. It's much more nuanced than the Greek. Even in English, you could say, okay, if I'm, if I get a ticket for speeding, what does the word for mean?

It's used in a different way. Is it mean I'm getting a ticket in order to get speeding? No, it's a ticket because I've already done speeding or you take an aspirin for a headache.

I might take an aspirin in order to get a headache or because I already have one same with in this context, baptism, you get baptized, not in order to get forgiven, but he's already have it.

And it's church of Christ. People say, no, no, it never means that ever. No, it's a hundred percent of the time. It always means, you know, it's, it's causative to get it.

Really? Have you read Matthew 1241 recently? And that's where in the Greek, it says that the

Ninevites repented at the preaching of Jonah. Well, they didn't obviously repent in order to get the preaching of Jonah.

They repented because they already had the preaching of Jonah. See, it can be used more than one way.

So one of the things about Greek, it's very different than English that there is no sentence order.

Like there's English, you determine the order of words by the endings. So whether it's an accusative or a generative or a nominative, it's all determined by, you know, the subject or object is determined by the ending.

And then, you know, in English, you don't always get that nuance. The principle of agreement is very important in Greek.

When you break up the Greek, I think the strength of this argument is not so much in the ace.

I think it's how the Greek grammar is used in a sense of agreement. So in the Greek, basically you have in any language, you have first, singular, second person, singular, second person, plural.

You can say you or y 'all, you know, like thee and thou, right? So I'm going to explain, you know, how the word in Greek is used.

So the word repent, it says y 'all repent. Okay. And let each one of you be baptized.

Okay. Be baptized. Each one of you be baptized for the remission of sins of y 'all.

So there's an agreement here, really clear in the Greek that you don't get in English. You know,

Peter or Luca wrote it. He could have said, y 'all be baptized. Y 'all repent.

And y 'all be baptized for remission of y 'all sins. Yeah, but he didn't do that.

He could have church of Christ. People could say, but, but, but it doesn't matter. He could have done it.

If baptism was that important that you're going to really want to drive home the point he would have said, y 'all, y 'all repent.

Y 'all get baptized for remission. Y 'all says he did. He said, let each one. So basically the bottom line is baptism goes with the remission of sins.

Sorry. Repentance goes to remission of sins. Baptism is what each one of you do.

There's no correspondence. A lot of people in the church of Christ get really hung up with that and say, well, they had this five finger exercise of repentance in different ways.

You know, it's explaining it, Walter Scott and the way they confuse repentance for us as Christians, faith and repentance are two sides of the same coin, but they try to break it up.

And that's where you get yourself in problems. You don't have the theological knowledge, faith and repentance are two sides of the same coin.

So you can basically communicate the idea of faith by just using repent. Acts 3 .19, it says repent to get salvation.

It doesn't even mention faith there. It doesn't mention baptism there, but that's how you say it. So faith is the two sides of one coin.

You speak of one for the other, but they had this way they split it up. It just doesn't work for it. It says our sins are forgiven by repentance.

Acts 3 .19. Let's talk about Acts chapter 10. You know it very well. You have a great knowledge of church of Christ from your background.

I've heard the other shows. This is the baptism with Cornelius where it says in church,

Christ people always, of course they know it's in there just like any group that try to have an explanation, but read the clear meaning of it. It says the, you know, the, the spirit fell at Cornelius, they spoke in tongues.

It says now that they have the spirit as we have. So if the apostles don't have the spirit, we're all in trouble.

So now what now they should get baptized afterwards. Yeah. So basically the household

Cornelius, they speak in tongues, they receive the spirit. And then after they're already, you know, had the spirit, that's when they go and get baptized.

Yeah. We shall not restrict the waters of baptism for those who are received the Holy spirit, such as we have.

So they didn't get salvation after baptism. They had salvation before baptism. Right.

Super clear. And not only that, I mean, just even outside of the proof texts and acts, you have statements like, for example, from the apostle

Paul, who says, I was sent not to baptize. Oh, we're going to get there. that's when we're going to go on the offense right now.

We're doing the defense on those, the verses, this, the seven proof texts. I mean, against the hundreds of verses.

Yeah. That's one of my favorites, but yeah, I like, we're going to go even a little deeper on that normal understanding. But the fact is we need offensive defense.

So we're taking down this. So, um, act 1631, where the, the jailer, what shall

I do? To be saved? Well, be baptized and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

You should be. He didn't say that. If baptism was really essential for salvation. Don't you think he would have said, write that passage, be baptized for remission.

He didn't. He said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You should be saved. You and your family. It's really clear. You know, it's really funny.

I was thinking about this. You got your seven proof texts, your main seven proof texts from, you know, restorationists on this idea of salvation by baptism.

Well, two of them are in the book of Acts, right? So now you have like six different books where these things occur.

Well, does that mean if you're not reading like Philippians, ah, you can't know salvation because I'll mention a baptism of salvation there.

Um, if you're not reading Ephesians, oh, but there's plenty of verse to talk about salvation by faith there. 8, 2, 8, 9, and other places.

You didn't get one of the right books, you know, in the early in the new Testament church, but they didn't get like a bound volume of 66 books.

Did they? They got, you know, individual epistles, right? A lot of the epistles, Thessalonians up, you can't know

Jesus. It doesn't mention baptism for salvation. It's not one of your seven proof texts in the restoration movement, guys. You know, how does that make any sense?

You know, it's, it's, they're very selective. They've handpicked the verses. The verse could be shown in different ways.

And you know, yes, there are some complicated verses. Acts 22, 16 has some complicated nuance over there.

We can discuss that. They love that one. Acts, like I said, it's two in Acts, Acts 22, 16. And now what are you waiting for?

Get up, be baptized, wash away your sins, calling on his name. Aha. You see, you need to be baptized to wash away your sins.

Well, you know, let's look at the verse a little more carefully there. The very language of the verse does not show that baptism is necessary for salvation.

It says be baptized and wash away your sins. It doesn't say be baptized, wash away your sins and, and then call upon the name of the

Lord. It says, call upon the name of the Lord, wash away your sins. So it kind of shows more that it's connected with the calling of the

Lord. Again, Luke could have just as simply said, call upon the name of the Lord and be baptized, wash away your sins.

It's not the way the passage reads. You have to kind of do again, gymnastics to make it fit that way.

As a new, as a bigger picture, New Testament theology, even Old Testament, it talks about calling upon the name of the

Lord. You know, in Acts 2 .21, it talks, everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Again, in Romans 10 .13. Now, some in the churches of Christ will try to say, well,

Paul actually believed when he had his counter on the Emmaus road with the risen Christ. And then three days later, he received the forgiveness of sins when he was baptized.

So he actually had his, you know, if you're going to be consented, Mr. Denominational Christian, and they try to push this, but this is actually making an assumption.

If you go to Acts 9 .17, Ananias says, he came to Paul to, for one of the things is to, so that he could receive the

Holy Spirit. Now, as a given, there is a, Acts was a transitional book.

It's hard to follow all the patterns in Acts for salvation, because in Acts 19, there was a laying on of hands for the spirit.

And there's, there's a laying on of hands over here again for the spirit. So, the reason

I'm thinking that, the way I look at this is that when Paul had his encounter with Christ and he went blind for three days,

Ananias laid his hands on him. He received the sight, you know, it felt like scales. Paul had to go through a real process of understanding what happened to him on that Emmaus road.

And, you know, I read a theologian, I think it was Herman Ritterbos, a theologian who said this point where, you know, he had this whole upshifting of his whole worldview because he thought as a

Pharisee, you know, all the people that as a Pharisee, well, he came to the realization when he realized that, you know,

Jesus was who he said he was when he saw the risen Christ. he says, now I have to understand that all the people

I thought my Pharisee friends who I thought were going to heaven now they're really the ones going to hell. But all the

Christians who I was trying to kill and I thought they were going to hell really, they're the ones who are going to make it all along. So Paul had to, for three days,

I think process this in his head. And they come to the point when he got it. But the point is here with Ananias is he says, the reason when he said,

I'm going to give you the spirit at this point, he says, you're going to have your sins remitted. I think that, remember I said the repentance and baptism, sorry, repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin.

Paul had to process it for a couple of days. And it was at that moment that he kind of made things click because he said, now you're going to receive the spirit.

Well, after Pentecost, as soon as you become a believer, you receive the spirit. The reason that Paul had to receive that spirit yet is now he's just starting to come to faith.

And that's when he's going to call upon the name of the Lord and then have his sins washed away. Yeah. And also, no, it's really good.

And just one thing, just real quickly is that the book of Acts is really, when you look at it, it's, it was written by Luke and he, it's really just an

ESPN sort of highlights version of the early church accumulated by multiple witnesses. So what you're actually looking at throughout the chapter, that's

Luke's summary of going around doing investigative journalism, journalism saying, Hey, what happened? What happened with Paul?

What happened with the sentences? What happened with this? And so he's really just accounting that. So while there are doctrinal truths contained obviously within the book of Acts, you shouldn't base your entire soteriology around that given what it's for.

This isn't a doctrinal exegesis. Where does that come? That comes in the epistles. Right. That is the main theology of the

Bible. So, you know, if you're looking at the seven proof texts, you got Mark 16, 16, which we're going to look at next, or we'll, we'll do first Peter 3, 21.

You got Mark 16, 16. That's in the gospels. You got John three, five, which is in the gospels.

You got these two in Acts. Well, that's four of the seven proof texts are like not in the theology of Paul and right.

And like I said, not all of the epistles, even, even talk about baptism. Yeah. So if baptism was so front and center, you know, how are you, you, that means like in the early church, a lot of people would have died and never supposedly gotten saved.

They just got into one of those, you know, 27 books. But remember, it's only read up through six books.

Right. It's like, again, there's, there's complex parts in the test, but the, in acts, it was transitionary.

There was some complicated stuff, the timing, this whole thing of Paul and I a little complicated, but yeah, again, you interpret the unclear by the clear, the big picture, new

Testament again and again, we're going to see it a little bit. There's a lot of verses showing salvation comes through faith by, for baptism.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So go ahead. What's what's next on the menu. So first Peter three 21, another verse that looks like on its face, but then again, you got to read it.

And this water symbolizes baptism. Now also saves you. So they'd love to stop there full stop, but it doesn't say it's not, but he continues not the removal of dirt from the body, but a pledge of the clear conscience, but to our

God, it sees by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It kind of reminds me of how the world mission site, church of God misread

Galatians chapter four about, it says we have four 28 says we have the new

Jerusalem above that's heavenly mother. But they kind of ignored the part where it says, this is like a parable, you know, or it's like, sorry, it's like a metaphor.

It's not really, it's an allegory. He says kind of like an allegory and it's like, what's not to be taken literally. It's kind of what

Peter does here. He doesn't want you to take it all literally. He's saying, well, hold on just to let you know, not the removal.

He's kind of, how could it be more clear? But they, they want it so bad in the church of Christ that they're going to just like want to stop.

And they're going to try to explain away this clear intent of Peter, where he goes, not the removal of the dirt.

So Peter's quick to qualify that, you know, it's, it's not the physical of the baptism, but it's the spiritual state that saves you.

It's the clear conscience before God. It's, it's like a wedding ring is an outward sign of being married, you know, but this is like the case of this verse.

Baptism is the outward sign of the clear conscience before God. That's the thing that saves you here.

Again, I'll read it to you. I know church crisis doesn't like it, but this, this water symbolizes baptism.

You gotta be honest. I know you're restorationists and everything. You just taught you this, but it's time to be honest with the verse and just go with where the

Bible tells you on this. And this water symbolizes baptism. Now also saves you also.

Not the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a clear conscience to God. That's the pledge that saves.

It's not the baptism. So two more to knock out and then we'll, we'll go on the offensive.

Mark 16, 16, whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

They love that one too. They say, ah, says baptism says again, the problem is there's not a negation of it.

In the second part of the verse, whoever does not believe will not be saved. It doesn't say those who are not baptized will be saved because the main thing that you need to be saved is the belief part.

And that's the part. I mean, it's, it doesn't need a long explanation.

You know, those who are saved are who? Those who believe and are baptized. Because there is a very strong connection between faith and baptism.

In the great commission, which is the ending of Matthew. You know, we're going to talk, I'll say right now, a lot of the earliest manuscripts are missing the end of Mark 16, nine to 20, because it's a very abrupt ending.

And this is kind of like probably an ambitious author who possibly wrote this, you know, a hundred years or so afterwards because it's not in a lot of the early manuscripts.

Yeah. There's some other interesting too in the, in the end of Mark 16. I'm going to mention that in two seconds, but it's, it's like the idea of, he almost wanted to put like his version of a great commission in the end because Jesus did say, you know, go into all nations, teaching baptism.

So here, like we say in Mark 16, 16, whoever believes in his baptized will be saved.

But whoever does not believe will be condemned. So who are those who are saved? Those who believe and are baptized.

Who are those who are condemned? Those who are not believing. It's not about the baptism thing.

There's a connection between faith and baptism. Like we see in the great commission. And that's why faith and baptism, this ambitious scribe, like you mentioned, there's a lot of the manuscripts don't have it.

There's other passages are not there in the earlier texts that don't have certain portions. And we've identified that through proper textual criticism, but there's three doctrines that are problematic in the end of Mark.

One is the way this is word in baptism is, doesn't seem in normal keeping with new

Testament teaching. Secondly is when it talks about snake handling, you have these snake handling cults and you know, that's not advised.

So they might've got that from the book of acts where, you know, some of that is a miraculous sign, but it's not to be practiced on your

Sunday at church. Please don't do that. And then, you know, it's like you should not tempt God as a verse, right?

And then it also says that Jesus appeared in another form. Walter Martin would talk about that too. Uncle Wally. And he would say,

Jesus did not appear in another form. He appeared in the same resurrected body that he was crucified on the cross with. It was not another form.

That's a theological error again too. So there's three issues that are problematic in the Mark. Again, this verse doesn't cut the muster.

It doesn't work. They have one more verse sometimes not as popular. They'll sometimes look at Galatians 3 .27, very similar to Romans chapter six and explain the same way for all of you who are baptized in the

Christ to clothe yourself with Christ. So, well, duh, it's like all of your received

Christian baptism have also baptized, you know, clothe yourself with Christ. That's the whole point.

That's why we do baptism. We get baptized because we already have faith in Christ. And it's the same thing.

The word ace again in Romans six, three and four, you're baptized in relation to. So for all those who are baptized into Christ, the same

Romans talks about baptism. You're baptized in relation to, we already looked at how baptism Moses is the same thing.

You're baptized in relation. It's identification. That's the whole point. When Christians baptize, we're baptizing in relation, identifying with Christ death, brother resurrection, the very context

Romans says that. And that's the same thing going on here. Same thing about those wearing a wedding ring.

It's those who are baptized have done so because of their faith in Christ. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I was going to mention the stake handling thing, but that immediately came to mind, especially if you've seen, you know, you have the phrase like bad theology hurts people.

If you've, if anyone's actually seen those videos where it goes bad and they got a call emergency, it's bad. It's bad.

So it goes to say it just clumped up with a bunch of nuance, especially there's a lot of nuance on the, in Mark 16 and pastor

James and Dr. White, you know, and for me as pastor James, but I've known for a long time, but he's done some great work really explaining some of the areas of Mark 16 and stuff like that.

But yeah, really good stuff. So now, let me comment. It's very unfortunate that Kit McKean has brought the erroneous teachings of the church of Christ, where they took a few of these out of context, versus from his background, the mainline church of Christ, just to let you know, if you're a member of the

ICC or if you have relative there, this is not from Kip. Kip took this from this existing aberrational movement and he took the worst form of it, we discussed it last week, the

Megarite tradition of it. It's not even mainstream among a lot of the main Church of Christ restorationist writers and teachers.

The overall, like we've been saying, there's the seven verses and even the textual one, that's six, but then we've shown how they don't make sense.

The clear teaching, the overall teaching in the New Testament is that salvation is by faith alone.

John 3 .16, for God's to love the world, you gotta be baptized, no. Acts 16 .31,

be baptized, no, it says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, be saved. Romans 5 .1, having been justified then by faith.

First John 20 verse 31, it goes on and on. Cornelius, first, it's like circumcision in the

Old Testament it's just definitely not a means. So I wanna look at that verse that you gave but give a couple of other cool ideas out of First Corinthians of this.

So Apostle Paul clearly says in First Corinthians 1 .17, for Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel.

He did not send me to do this, but to do this. That means baptism is not part of the gospel.

You can try to make it, he did not send me, he's holding in contrast, he did not send me to do this, instead he sent me to do this.

And then Apostle Paul, you know, he said in First Corinthians 4 .15,

this is a pretty cool connection. He said, the apostle told him that he had begotten them through the gospel.

He says, I have begotten you guys in Corinth through the gospel. Yet he did this without baptizing them and he thanked

God for it. He said, well, Paul only baptized a very small handful of Christians. It says in First Corinthians 4 .14

and 16, he says, I thank God that I did not baptize many of you, oh yeah,

I baptized you too, oh yeah, but not too many. He said, I begot you Corinthians through the gospel, but I did it without baptism.

Therefore he begot them without baptism. Kip McKean in his training class on the first principles, it's an audio.

He basically says, he completely twists Apostle Paul's words. It's funny how far he takes it.

He says, he makes it the exact opposite of what Paul's trying to say, and he goes, this is incredible.

Paul is baptizing. I always go into that Kip voice mode because that's literally how he talks. He goes, this is incredible.

Paul is baptizing so many people that he didn't even remember if he baptized them. The opposite of what he said.

He said, I actually baptized so few of you, but in order to twist this point, he says he's baptizing so many he couldn't.

I mean, McKean has to do this to get around what Paul does because he was actually teaching the opposite of this.

I just want to say too, I love this because this is almost like, think of one of those true crime memoirs where the detective who's investigating that serial killer, he almost sort of like, he's lived in his head so much.

He wants to know everything about him. He almost sort of like taking over him. He's living his head rent -free, emulates him.

Go watch any of the churches of Christ where the London Church of Christ had, are you with me, church?

It's funny. It could be like, we joked last time, a drinking game of shot glass. It's bad.

It's like the way they take it. Oh, I'll probably look up videos later on and text you. It's a game. Oh, absolutely.

Well, anyone who's been a member knows how you go behind the pulpit, you become Kip at an

ICC church. So a lot of the times it's a funny thing where Christians will say, well, what about the thief on the cross?

Well, you know, ICC people have got an answer for that. And they'll go right away to Hebrews 9, 17, and they'll say, well,

Christian, you think the thief on the cross doesn't say it because it says, the law does not go into effect until the death of the testator.

Gotcha, and all that. Well, what's kind of funny in that is when they went to break the legs of Jesus, you know, they were going to the different people, he was already dead.

So when the guy, he said, you're going to be saved, the thief on the cross, he died under the new covenant because Jesus was already dead that the testator had already died.

So thief on the cross kind of does work. Not that I recommend using it, but they always say, you know, oh, you can't use that.

You can't use the thief on the cross argument because it has to be death of the testator. Well, he was already dead at the time when the

Romans went out to break the legs and the thief on the cross died under the new covenant. So he was saved by faith.

But not a point, a giant problem. It just, it's kind of ironic when they try to say it doesn't work. So overall,

New Testament, again, we've looked at that, about baptism. So if you're like in a Chinese prison camp and you can't get to water, are you automatically lost?

If you're on a deathbed where they can't lift you out, or if you're like a deathbed, like, you know, two minutes to die and you can't get baptized like that, alone, you know, alone on a desert island, so nobody else can do the baptism, you can't baptize yourself, right?

If you're hit by a car and you got 30 seconds to live, thank God that God told us, you know, believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ, you should be saved. You cry out like the thief on the cross at the last moment, or even like I said, Acts 16 .31,

not using thief in the argument in context. The point is, you can be saved without baptism like that. It's super clear.

So, you know, I think we've really shown, you know, again and again, it's the overall theme. So many of the books don't even mention baptism.

The few that do are completely twisted or, you know, it's questionable it's even if the verse is there, like Mark 16.

Any other comments on that? I think we can move on from that. No, I think this is really good. I just want to just reciprocate, if anyone is listening in that is part of the

ICC and maybe you're having objections, you're hearing this for the first time, don't take our word for it. We are not saying because you said so.

We want to say, be a Berean in Acts 17 verse 11 saying, you want to receive this, but examine the scriptures daily to see if these things are so.

Don't just read the verses that we're saying, read the verse before and after, like look through these things, investigate these things.

In fact, one of my favorite scriptures is in Proverbs where it talks about, it's the glory of kings to seek out a matter.

So seek out that matter. And so, yeah, but don't take our word for it, test it. Test all things and hold fast to that, which is good.

Yeah, and this is a salvation issue and you're condemning, you know, a lot of Christianity.

A lot of people in the ICC don't, you know, really understand how they really blew away 1500 years of Christians by this because they don't believe this version of Campbellism.

Even the Campbellites aren't even saved according to ICC definition. You know, it's just mind boggling stuff.

So let's move on to discipling. One of the great verses, it just screams against the whole restoration.

Kit McKean's view is Matthew 28, 19, the Great Commission. And it says, therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptizing in the name of the

Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So DC, we're supposed to make disciples.

But disciple, have you ever asked yourself and looked a little closer at this verse? It says, go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them.

Well, who's the them in this verse? It's disciples, you baptize disciples. You don't baptize just anyone.

You're not just like becoming a disciple after you get baptized. That's what they would say. You really become saved after baptism.

Exact opposite of what this verse says. This verse says, make a disciple and baptize them. You baptize the disciple.

So he's already a disciple before he gets baptized. You know, it's exact opposite. The Bible doesn't have a concept of like, you know, someone's not saved in that context.

It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense. So what does the word disciple means? It means a student learner.

They've redefined it with a whole theological meaning. And they try to say that, you know, you have to have that complete commitment.

You have to be baptized according to them, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, the word disciples used many times in the

New Testament as a student learner. John the Baptist and the Pharisees had disciples. Mark 2, 18,

Luke 5, 33. The Pharisees said in John 9, 28, they're disciples of Moses. And here's the point.

The word disciple is only used in acts, but never afterwards.

So, you know, you like to point out, say, oh, but you, it's like, cults like to shock people.

Like Seventh -day Adventists say, well, have you ever thought about the fact that the Sabbath is not really Sunday, but it's really

Saturday? And it's like, oh yeah, that makes sense. And then you're a Seventh -day Adventist. Well, they like to shock you and say, hey, you never thought about it, but the word disciples used 270 times.

Christians only use three times. You're using it wrong. Well, if that's the case, then why doesn't Paul ever use the word disciple?

You know, he wrote the theological treatise. Yes, the disciples use, excuse me, in Acts and in the

Gospels, Paul never uses it. And there's a theologian, Paul Beasley Murray.

He gives a really good explanation of this. I like it. So he basically says that the apostles abandoned the word disciple later because it says too little in regard to our horizontal relationships.

So Paul would prefer the words like brother or saint because it expresses more of that horizontal relationship in the body.

Paul never used the word disciple. So if he's not using it, like then why do we have to insist that it has to be that way?

You know, and the idea of saying that you have to be 100 % committed to be disciple. Well, Judas is called the disciple.

In John 6, 66, as many of the disciples walked away from him. It just means a follower. It's not this magical thing that way they kind of say in the

ICC. Joseph Amorthea in John 19, 38 is called the secret disciple.

Would this fly in the ICC? Basically this idea of being a disciple, it's an ideal like kind of like Matthew 5, 48 where it says be perfect as your father in heaven's perfect.

It doesn't mean it's a formula for that. Just like we see

Baptist as a work, they've kind of invented the definition of disciple. And if you're not following their rules, obviously you're not saved.

Now that's a lot there. And I think this is really good to understand. Like I said, there's usually an emphasis on a particular word.

And again, you're talking about anachronism. They're making also these claims in the English, not looking back at what they actually meant when it was actually like written in Greek.

Exactly. We see that many a times. They're not super deep scholars. I mean, it's so funny.

They sing a lot of our hymns. They use a lot of our books and stuff and their commentaries and stuff.

But if we're unsaved people, it's just, it's amazing. And all calls to that. Yeah. A lot of width. It seems to be a lot of width, but not too much depth once you start actually deciphering.

There are a lot of beautiful people. They call for a commitment, but as far as scholarship, they're just taken right off the restorationists.

Yeah. So we're going to hit on original sin real quick. I know you've done that earlier with your earlier guests on the

Church of Christ. Yeah, just touching that. I want to spend more time on baptism because that's not covered as much. So like those in the restoration movement before him,

Kit McKean denies the doctrine of original sin and goes with more of a heretical full

Pelagian view. So they're semi -Pelagians, but they would say that there's different aspects of the fall and your passions, your mind, your body, your spirit.

But semi -Pelagians say you still have free will, but they still believe in original sin.

But a full Pelagian, he doesn't even believe in original sin. You got to start teaching yourself how to sin by watching other people sin. So the people in the

ICC love this one verse. They kind of build this whole thing on this one verse they typically use, and that's in Ezekiel, well, a couple of verses.

It's Ezekiel 18, 20, 21, there's one passage. The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share in the guilt of his parent, nor the parent will share in the guilt of the child.

Well, no original sin. So that's the proof text they use to show there's no original sin. I'll read it again.

The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share in the guilt of the parent, nor the parent share in the guilt of the child.

This is completely misunderstood. There's no, it's because it's been completely ripped, run out of the context, with no regard to try to read something in context, just the proof text again.

And it makes sense for a minute, but you actually read the verse. You can hit rewind and go back and play it and look up the verses.

But basically, the gist of the passage is, is speaking about the guilt of an individual where the father is responsible for his own life in verses five to nine.

You can go back and look them up and pause or replay. And the son is responsible for his life in verses 10 to 13.

That's all it's saying. We find the same thing in Deuteronomy 24, 16, where it says, parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their parents.

Each will die for their own sin. Ezekiel 18 has nothing to do with original sin.

It's speaking of individual guilt as it relates to capital punishment. And you have to wonder, I mean, if the disciples who read these verses are just basically taking

Kip's word for this, what it really means, or are they gonna actually, you know, do a little bit of homework and see what it says.

You know, they, a few verses, it kind of, you've been over it before, showing how original sin is a true biblical doctrine.

Romans 5, 12, and 19. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death came through sin, in this way, death came to all people because all sinned.

And through the beingness of one man, many were made sinners. Okay. Psalm 51 .5.

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Ephesians 2 .3.

We were by nature children of wrath. It's our nature, our nature. And a verse that a lot of people don't use,

I think it's a good one. Psalm 58 .3. Even from birth the wicked go astray, from the womb their wayward spreading lies.

From the womb. I mean, it's pretty clear. Plagiarism has been condemned throughout church history as heretical belief, but it returned with the

Restorationists. And then since Kip is a Campbellite, he took it and gave it to the movement that you might have someone in, or you might be a member of the

ICC, I -C -L -C. So, that's pretty much that part. I think we're getting close to the end as far as stuff to cover.

We've looked at, you know, over -reverence for Kip. We've talked about baptism. We've talked about control, high demand, bite model stuff.

Baptism. The idea that this stuff is built on is the idea that true

Christianity fell away. This is an amazing quote by world sector leader, Tim Kernan.

Ron Harding is the ICC historian, and in the preface to his book, The Chronicles of Modern -Day

Christianity, I didn't bring it to hold it up, but on page seven, Tim Kernan, world sector leader, says, one of the most shocking,

I'm not gonna do the Kip voice, this is too, okay. So, one of the most shocking facts about Christianity is that the very way to become a

Christian was lost for the greater part of 1 ,500 years. I mean, literally, when you have something that's juice, you gotta read it twice.

One of the most shocking facts about Christianity is that the very way to become a Christian was lost for the greater part of 1 ,500 years.

For generations, the simple yet powerful truths of how to become a Christian had been carefully hidden and confused by Satan.

Now, who are you gonna believe here? Tim Kernan and Kip, who say that the truth is gone for 1 ,500 years, or Jesus, who said, in Matthew 16, 18, the gates of hell would not prevail.

I will build my church, and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. The story with Joseph Smith, the gates of hell prevailed against the church.

The priesthood was lost, the authority was lost from the earth, the temples are gone. He had to restore the church.

Aung San Huung had to come, and a second coming Christ had to return to Passover and reveal mother in these last days.

I mean, every group, Jehovah's faithful and wise servant, the truth had gone, and I was thinking, it's kind of funny,

Jude 3 is a great verse. They even beat Shincheonji at this, because it says that the faith would be delivered, the faith was delivered once to the saints.

Well, in Shincheonji, it was delivered once to the original church with Jesus, but that fell away, and then

Tabernacle Temple had to come along, had to be restored, and then Lee Man -Hee, promised pastor, had to come along, last three times.

Well, with these guys, this is kind of last of the points here, they had to restore the church four times.

I mean, it's real clear. It says in Jude, the faith was delivered once to the saints. Well, apparently it had fallen away for 1 ,500 years originally, so it had to be restored again, but it was given by Jesus, that was the faith given to the saints.

Then it had to be given to the Campbells and the founding fathers of Campbellism, because they had the restoration movement, but they had to bring the faith again.

Then it had to be given again, when Kip had to, in the June 1st, 1979, with the 30 would -be disciples in the

Campbells living room in Boston, it had to be restored a third time, and then when Kip had to leave the

ICOC with the new movement over the former movement, he had to restore it a fourth time.

So I mean, I think this is my record. I mean, we've seen like world records for how many false prophecies you could do, like, you know, witnesses 1914, 15, 18, 25, 41, this is a record of how many times would you have to actually restore a church.

It's mind -boggling. Oh yeah, and just one thing I'll throw in as we wrap up here, and this is gonna be my last thing, when it comes to restoration things, one of the best verses is what

James White taught me years ago when I was actually in his living room as a 15 -year -old kid learning about how to witness the

Mormons. Yeah, I go way back. I know James pre -Twitter, for all you Twitter followers out there.

Before those fancy sweaters? Oh yeah, I actually have one. Coogee. I have a coogee. James White gave me a coogee.

I'm part of the coogee club, so. One day. There might be a picture on Instagram out there somewhere.

But the verse that he taught me when I was 15 -years -old learning how to witness to Mormons, and this is years ago, but Ephesians 3 .21

says, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever, amen.

Ephesians, I love that. Let's do that verse as well. It specifically says that the church is gonna be throughout all generations.

There's not gonna be, hey, this is gonna be yes, yes, gap, back, oh, guess what?

We're back. Four times. Yeah, I was gonna include that verse. Actually, that's a beautiful verse. I'm glad you brought it up. Yeah, so that's one of my favorites.

So give me your final conclusions, thoughts, as we wrap up here. This is really good. I really appreciate you making this. I think this is gonna be a real big blessing to people who listen in.

I want this to be a digitally archived resource, and that's why we're doing it, for family members who've got kids.

There's so many people out there looking for information on the International Christian Church and Astro Jesus Christ, because their kids are getting confused.

And it's such a blessing to be able to be here today to actually get something out there online that really dissects a lot of this and looks at it doctrinally and historically the whole works.

So in conclusion, I'm gonna say that for the most part, they're

Christians in this movement, and they're really committed Christians. The thing is that we can accept their salvation, but for the most part, they cannot accept ours.

They're very well -intentioned, what they're trying to do to win the world, the one generation, and to get out there and have counter, even their discipleship, even though we've seen how it's unbiblical and how it can be abused.

They want an accountability through discipleship, but it goes wrong. It doesn't involve the Holy Spirit. Senator, be senators, right?

The idea of not missing church, they take it too far. These are very well -intentioned things, but it just doesn't work out well.

And there's so many horror stories, smoke, fire, we talked about that. There's a lot of cult -like tendencies in this group, even though they have some okay theology in certain areas, on the

Godhead of certain things that the Mormons and stuff get wrong, but there's a very intense, unhealthy pressure.

They're a divisive group. They're gonna come up to us and say, we're not real believers. They're gonna right away say, let's study Bible. They're not even gonna give us a shot.

If we're not part of their church, they'll assume we're not saved. They twist scripture, and they often do it in a way that abuses people.

Unfortunately, the legacy of this group is not just about creating disciples, but it's gonna be about a group that has shipwrecked the faith of many people and really separated a lot of families, which is really hard, is destroy the faith of many.

And they're really unique with their track record among different groups like this, that they've destroyed the faith of so many people and turn them into bitter agnostics because the exploitation, the cracking under the weight.

Jesus, he said, my burden is light. Well, it's really heavy for these groups of having to keep jumping through these hoops.

I'm glad we could bring this up today. The constant pressure makes you crack, and it is heartbreaking. And we wanna say, if you're a former member and you've actually gotten through it to this point, remember why you wanted to study in the first place, because you had that spiritual need, that thing that made you come in the very first place to look for God.

That's why you became a disciple. Yeah, you left because of Kit McKean's interpretation of his

Bible and practices, he got from Chuck Lucas, the unhealthy stuff. But it's time again to come back to God and trust in him.

God is a God of grace and he's not law. He still loves you. You were deeply wounded by men. And for anyone who's had a bad experience, there definitely is life after the

ICC and any other cults out there. Yeah, the reason why you came in the first place is still there, and that needs to be filled with grace.

That's why I wanted to. I made a long trip to come here. We wanted to talk about Burning Man. You said, I said,

ICC, there's nothing much on them. And we wanted to give resources and do it in a good spirit like this. And we're not trying to be mean -spirited with the restorationists and everything.

We wanna point, give good biblical answers the right way, show how this makes sense. There's just so little out there on this.

There is a few resources I'm gonna mention real quick. Reveal .org is really, really good.

It's like your one -stop shop on this movement. So Reveal .org, hopefully we could put an article of mine in the show notes or put a link there.

Yep, absolutely. On there, it's one of the few things out there. There's a few other sites from the

London church, T -O -L -C .org, T -O -L -C .org, X -I -C -C .org.

We're working on creating a powerful site in our brand under exposingthecults .com.

We're doing exposing the WMSCOG, exposing the New Age, all these different ones we're gonna be putting out, the

Hebrew Israelites. We're gonna be also doing exposing the ICC, exposing the

ICOC. We registered both, but to point to the same site, we're gonna go more in depth on baptism, more depth on discipleship, more examples of abuse, and hopefully give some better answers.

As far as the other things in print, Bob L. Ross was a great Baptist preacher, did a lot of debates, some of them on YouTube.

He put out some really good books, but they're hard to get, and they're going for a lot of money on eBay. Hope to make these available on our site.

And Cal Beisner's got a fantastic book. You can Google it for a PDF. Is Baptism Necessary for Salvation?

Hopefully within our brand, we'll have interviews with a lot of these people, and talk to former members, and give answers.

But whether you're sitting on the fence and not understanding things, hopefully we've shown you to dig a little deeper on baptism, and look at your leadership, the over -reverence of leaders.

Yes, Kip is gone now, but holy cow, the movement to put him on that pedestal of best father, the best leader, it's like, maybe watch this again, and honestly, there's life after this.

Absolutely, awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming out here, and making the trip to come out here. This has been awesome. We'll do more.

We will do more. There's more groups. Definitely more. There's no shortage of this. Like I said, when we first started out, back in 2018, oh my gosh,

I can't believe it's been that long. It was like, man, we might last for like a year or two years. We'll probably cover everything, and we're like, we have just barely scratched the surface.

So the fact now that we have this huge, huge archive that is just still doing that. I mean, even the messages and the comments we got, just from Shin Chan Ji that we did years ago, had just been like such a huge blessing to see how that's impacting people.

So yeah, this is awesome, and I can't wait until next time. All right, as we see you next week, as we once again, let me say this.

Yeah, yeah, I gotta wrap it up. Oh, it's such an honor. As we return next week, as we look at the

Kingdom of the Cults. Talk to you all soon. Hey, what's up, everyone? Hope you enjoyed this episode.

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