How Pastor Mike Todd RIPS Scripture Out Of Context!

Fight For Truth

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Hey guys, Colin here, and welcome back to the channel where the Bible and critical thinking meet to give you real

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Christian commentary about the things that matter. Thanks so much for watching, let's get into the video. So Mike Todd is the pastor of Transformation Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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I recently made a video about Mike, link in description, in which I reviewed his appearance on the Today Show. On this show, he preached nothing that resembled the

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Biblical Gospel at all. Instead, he spent his time helping people figure out how to use God in order to accomplish their wildest dreams.

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Of course, that's pretty much the message Mike Todd always preaches. But in any case, there is another section of the

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Today Show appearance wherein he rips a passage out of context to defend his prosperity gospel and name it and claim it theology.

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This mishandling of Scripture was so totally ridiculous, so totally insane, that I just had to show it to you.

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So let's talk about this using three Biblical points. Number one, let me show you the video of Mike Todd wherein he actually quotes the

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Scripture at hand. Here it is. I have seen what has happened when

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I took a vision and I wrote it down and I made it plain. And there's a Scripture that says, write the vision down, make it plain so it can be read on the run.

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That means something is going to happen and you're expecting it to happen. So he just quoted Scripture, but let's keep watching to see his application of that Scripture.

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And one of the craziest moments that happened for me is, I'm 37 days into being a pastor of a church in the hood of Tulsa.

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I take over from another guy. After 16 years, people don't really want to come to the church.

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They don't think I can actually do this. I'm 28 years old. And as I'm up in my quiet time,

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I write down what I feel so impressed on my heart is coming out of me. And it said, this

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Spirit Bank Event Center will be Transformation Church. And that's this huge arena that was built for $54 million.

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We were in a converted grocery store at the time. But I wrote it down. I went to Google. I got an image of it.

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I actually have it right here. And I wrote this down. I spelled transformation wrong because that was the name of our church.

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I said, Transformation. I don't even know what I was doing. It was early. And I was in my daughter's room, and I wrote the vision, and I made it plain.

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And five years later, I held the keys to that building. And we paid it off in six months.

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Now for those of you who don't know, this passage comes from the book of Habakkuk. Specifically, he quotes

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Habakkuk 2 .2, which says, And the Lord answered me, Write the vision, make it plain on tablets, so that he may run who reads it.

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Mike Todd's understanding of this verse is so utterly flawed, it's almost difficult to know where to start.

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In this text, Habakkuk is receiving direct revelation from the Lord to him personally to convey to the rest of Israel.

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To apply this message to Mike Todd and all his followers would be asinine, but Mike Todd, he does it anyways.

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Additionally, Mike talks about writing down one's personal vision for their life, and making that vision plain.

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He is completely wrong and inaccurate in the way he uses both the words vision and plain in the text.

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The word vision is referring to the actual vision from the Lord that Habakkuk receives. It is not referring to your vision for your life, or your subjective goals and desires.

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It is referring to a specific revelation from God to his people in a specific time and place in the

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Old Testament. Then Mike uses the word plain to mean making your personal goal or vision simple and easy to comprehend.

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But in the passage, when God tells Habakkuk to write the vision plainly, he is telling him to write the vision in large, legible letters.

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That's why he follows this up with the phrase, quote, so that he may run who reads it. In order to read something while you run, it must be written with large, clear print.

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That's what the verse means. So just to recap, the actual meaning of the passage is God telling

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Habakkuk specifically to write down a personal vision from the Lord to his people in large print that is easy to read.

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Mike Todd takes this text and manipulates it completely to mean that God is telling him and his entire audience to write down their personal goals and desires to make them easy to understand.

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This is absolute nonsense, and it brings me to point number two. There is a specific reason that Mike Todd has taken this verse out of context, and when you understand that, you'll be able to understand the motivations behind this whole charade.

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The reason Mike uses this verse the way that he does is because it lends credibility to his prosperity gospel message.

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In other words, he is using Habakkuk so that he can get his audience excited about his content, about his overall message.

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He's telling people that all they have to do in order to accomplish their wildest dreams is write down their vision and make it plain.

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Do you want a car? Write it down. Do you want a house? Write it down. Do you want to grow your small church into a massive global megachurch with an expensive building?

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Just write it down. In Mike Todd's view, when you write down your goals, you are guaranteed to have them accomplished.

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And this is a message that is sure to get the attention of all the people who are trying to achieve more success in life. That's pretty much everybody.

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But there's a downside to all this. There always is. When Mike Todd says these things, he is not only misrepresenting the

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Bible. He's misrepresenting God. In fact, he's making God responsible to fulfill a promise that God never made.

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Mike Todd says that, according to Habakkuk 2 -2, if you write down your goals, make them plain and understandable, then

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God is bound by His very Word to give you your every wish. I, for one, pray that Mike Todd repents of all this and corrects his mistake as soon as possible, because offering oaths and promises on behalf of God which he did not make is not a good thing to do at all.

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In fact, it's seriously sinful. 2 Timothy 2 -15 says this, quote, Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

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It is important and essential that those who preach the Word of God do so while rightly handling it.

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Pastors like Joel Osteen, Stephen Furtick, and Mike Todd are constantly doing the exact opposite thing, though.

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They take Scriptures out of context whenever those Scriptures seem to fit their prosperity gospel agenda. They have all the theological depth and understanding of a kiddie pool, and all the accuracy of a blind man playing darts.

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Let me make this clear. I'm not saying that pastors can never make a mistake in their preaching, and if they do, then they're a false teacher.

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Every pastor I've ever listened to has at some point said something that I did not believe was entirely biblically accurate.

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The problem here is when this becomes a habit that is part and parcel of their ministry. That is what makes someone go from imperfect to irresponsible.

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There's an important distinction to be made there. And this brings me to point number three. We know that the heart of one's teaching is what we ought to be analyzing.

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In Luke 6 -45, Jesus says, quote, For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. What you'll find is that teachers like Mike Todd show the heart of their ministry in their preaching.

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They have a distinct and noticeable bend to their teaching, and it really shows. Notice how when Mike Todd tells you to write down your vision, he gave you a great example of his.

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I think we can all agree that if you believe, as Mike Todd does, that you can write down a vision, and God will bring that vision into reality like a genie giving you three wishes, what you write down on that paper shows a lot about your priorities.

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It is, by definition, an indication of what you prioritize most, because if you prioritize anything else more, that's what you would have written down.

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But what does Mike Todd write down? What did he want so badly that he was willing to write it down and make it plain, as he says?

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Well, his central vision was not for his church to be holy, not for his church to be unified, not for his church to be well -instructed in God's Word, not even for his church to have a passion for the unsaved.

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He may want those things deep down somewhere, but ultimately, it's not what he wrote. He wrote down what he actually wanted, and what he wanted was a big church in a fancy, expensive building.

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Now, I'm not saying it's a sin to have a large church or an expensive building. What I'm saying is this. If that is your highest priority, then you should not be a pastor.

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Your heart is not in the right place. The number one wish you should have as a pastor, it ought to be spiritual in nature.

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But again, that's not what Mike Todd wrote down on the paper, folks, and that tells you a lot about what his central goal is.

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Let this be a warning to all of us, that Christ is not Lord of just a few things, He's Lord of all things.

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Revelation 19 .16 says Christ is, quote, King of kings and Lord of lords. We owe

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Jesus our whole heart. All of our being should be brought into submission to Christ. Our goal is not finances or a big church or success or the admiration of men.

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Our goal is to glorify God. That's what we should write down on the paper, if such a thing was even necessary.

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So Mike Todd, if you're watching this, just know that you can be forgiven of all this false teaching.

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Just confess your sin to Jesus, repent, and ask for forgiveness. And let's all pray for Mike that he would repent and turn to the truth of God's Word.

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Thank you so much for watching. If you liked that video, please like, comment, share, subscribe, and hit the notification bell so that you never miss another one.

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If you didn't like that video for any reason, then I invite you to watch my Frequently Asked Questions video, link in description, where I deal with common objections and define the purpose and goal of my channel using

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Scripture. This channel is funded by generous donations from my amazing patrons. If you'd like to help us put out more videos just like this one, hit the link in the description or go to patreon .com

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slash Colin A. Miller. You can donate to my ministry there and earn tons of rewards just like these.

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And until next time, fight for truth, never surrender, and keep your eyes open. Thank you and God bless.