Provoked: Exposing False Teachers - Mike Todd

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Hey, what's going on, everybody. You have tuned into another show of provoked. We hope you're having a fantastic day today.

00:06

And we're just super glad that you clicked on your YouTube little thing there, and now you're looking at us.

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This is Desi to my left. Hello. Or listening to us through their favorite podcasts.

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Yeah. They either clicked on Spotify or YouTube or that's not a podcast, but well, I mean, they could listen on you to see a podcast go through, it's like iTunes.

00:28

That's what I said. You did. And then you said YouTube. I don't think I said Spotify today. Yeah, no, you did.

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I did just now. You did. I just said it. But she's the one that said, go to Spotify. Right. And tune in.

00:39

I said, uh, iTunes. Oh, yeah. I think she said iTunes. Yeah. She's confused today.

00:45

This is what happens after you turn 40. I'm just totally messing with you. Jake, the Jake, the bull who could be the new

00:52

Superman in a Marvel movie. The bull. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I am also here. Uh, that's cool.

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I'm I'm, I haven't gotten any adjectives yet, but you know, with time, maybe that'll come. Yeah. Jake, the genius.

01:06

That's a good one. Yes. I like that one. Jake, Mr. Good looking. It's a good one. Becca. Now everybody's going to switch from iTunes to YouTube to verify that.

01:17

Well, anyway, um, who are we? If you've never tuned in, we're a podcast on the Apology Studios platform.

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So we're super thankful to have been doing all the shows that we've been doing. I think we've done like 53 or something like that.

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So please go ahead and do that now. Wait a second. I just want to give a shout out to our good friend at ICA.

02:05

Bye buzz. John, look at this beautiful, beautiful Bible that was sent.

02:11

It's my favorite color teal. It says that Greek word is. Uh, Theionistos.

02:18

Theionistos. I should know that. We should know that Dean. Whenever we don't know anything, we just look over to Jake. Yeah. We're like,

02:23

Jake, tell us, you know what it is is that my, I'm just getting older and I couldn't read it, but, uh, it's absolutely beautiful.

02:30

It smells. I was going to say, yeah, it looks good, but you just got to trust us.

02:35

Yeah. It smells glorious. The smell is amazing. Look at this Bible. So that comes from in Christ alone, uh,

02:42

Bible rebinders and that's Jonathan holiday, right? And so, Hey man, thanks so much for the

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Bibles that you sent us. And if you want to get a awesome Bible like this, please visit his, uh,

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Facebook site and you can go to it's ICA Bibles, ICA Bibles and go ahead and get one.

02:59

It's beautiful. Thank you, brother. Right on. So we are going to get into our segment. We're going to answer a question from one of our, um, viewers that sent us in a question, but we're going to get into exposing false teachers in just a second.

03:12

Um, not the funnest thing to do, but the necessary thing to do, right? I mean, it'd be wrong if we were like, just, you know, really loved to do something like this, which we don't, but it's absolutely essential to, um, not only our calling as just the people of God, but especially as a shepherd, we got to protect the sheep, but let's get into, um, the question that was sent to this, sent to us a couple of days ago.

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Right. Um, it was actually this morning, I think. Um, or it might've been a couple of days ago.

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I might not have seen it. Um, but here's the question. Hi there. I came across your podcast this morning as I was specifically searching for those covering the seeker sensitive movement thus far, it's been very informative with the biblical references to help me build a framework of what the

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Bible says the church is ought to be. I have only ever gone to one church in my life.

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I didn't come to a personal belief in Christ until I was about 21. I know I have, uh,

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I I'm sorry. I, I have worked at this church for seven years as a student minister. I am in the process of leaving and sharing with my brothers and sisters and church leadership, why we feel this community is not truly a biblical church.

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With that being said on our very own website, where we list our beliefs under the heading of the church, there is one sentence that seems to be very troubling for me, and I believe it's hard to discern the truth because as you, uh, all outlined the seeker sensitive movement as being, has warped the minds of believers for decades now, our website states the church, the church exists for those who are apart from it.

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Can you help me talk through this phrase and how I can address it with our leadership? So she wants to talk through this phrase, the church exists for those who are apart from it.

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What do you think, Jake? Well, first of all, just want to reiterate like the heaviness and the weight of what she is probably dealing with, her family's probably dealing with, to like have to be plugged into a place for so long, it sounds like beyond staff there, and then come under these convictions and make a decision to walk away.

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So totally, um, can resonate with that personally, but then also just like, that's a really heavy thing.

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These are relationships you build with people. So, um, one of the things that's coming to my mind initially is to really, and it sounds like hopefully what some of what we talked about in that episode was helpful for her in, in terms of like finding scriptures that would really be pertinent to the situation.

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So that would be my first suggestion is to, um, really nail down what are those texts, what are those scriptures that speak to why

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I'm feeling an issue? Because if you don't do that, you know, if we don't have, we talk about this a lot, if you don't have the, this reference point of God's word, it just becomes, he said, she said, it becomes my opinion versus their opinion.

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And we can just go back and forth with our opinions. Um, so I think finding those texts that really speak to, uh, why you feel the way that you feel, why you're feeling these convictions and then in love, bringing those to the elders, to the leaders at this church and saying,

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I'm wrestling with this. I see this text in scripture. I see how we're operating and those don't seem to jive really well.

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So can you help me understand this? Is there a place, you know, is there a place of repentance? Like there's, is there an opportunity for repentance here?

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And specifically that phrase of the church is, um, like you said, the church is for whoever wants to be a part of it.

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The church exists for those who are apart from it. Yeah. The church exists for those who are apart from it.

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Um, this is kind of exactly what we talked about, uh, in that episode, the church exists, the church is made up of believers and the church is made up to give glory and worship and praise to God.

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And we ought to do the work of evangelism, which is reaching those who are apart from the church, but the church doesn't exist for those who are apart from it.

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The church exists for God and for God's glory. Um, you know, first Peter, uh, chapter five,

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Peter tells the, um, pastors to shepherd the flock of God that is among you.

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It's the flock of God. It's not the flock of unbelievers. So God's church is filled with God's people and we hope and desire for more to come and be a part of God's church.

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But the church does not exist for those who are outside of, of Christ. The church exists to bring glory to God.

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And it's made up of those who are in Christ. And if that's your foundation as a church, then I would say there's, um, real need for self -examination there.

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So I applaud her for having this strong conviction, but also just to know there's probably going to be some pushback, some opposition, there's probably going to be some people who are like, are you kidding me?

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Why don't you want, why, why do you want everyone to be a part of this? That type of, basically you're not being nice about it.

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Talked about that too. So those are some thoughts. Yeah. Sometimes all you do is you break down the words and then you, you load those words with biblical definitions, right?

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Cause people think the church is a place that you go, right? It's a, it's a location. It's a massive, whatever the church is.

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The people called the church is the people of God, the called out ones. So the people of God exists for those who are apart from it.

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Right. That's how you would, you know, kind of break that down with biblical language or definition of what's going on there.

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And we don't, like you said, we exist for the glory of God, Isaiah 43, right? You were created for my glory or created for his namesake.

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But all that they're saying, and not so many words is that, Hey guys, this is all about reaching the lost, which yeah, that's part of it.

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But the church is primarily for the worship of the Lord for, you know, internal ministry that's happening to God, for God and the people and evangelism should be external to the location on a, it's not about really

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Sunday, right? It's the church going out, being prepared by the elders, Ephesians four to do the works of the ministry, right?

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Yeah. Edify the saints, discipleship, shepherding. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

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That's a great question. Yeah. Thank you. No, I didn't ask her. So let's just leave her anonymous because I didn't ask permission.

09:19

So yeah, I could give her a fake name, but that'd be kind of weird. Let's call her Desi. Yeah. Another Desi.

09:26

Thank you, Desi. All right. So we are going to continue on in our segment of exposing false teachers, false pastors, false preachers, and immediately, you know, based upon people's spiritual background, the way that they've been taught, people will immediately just turn this off because it's not nice.

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It's not tolerable. Why don't you just do what you guys are doing and let them do what they're doing type of a thing.

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So I know that we have talked about this, but just to briefly talk on it before we get into the two tods that we're going to be speaking on, what about not touching the

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Lord's anointed, you know, are we doing that by exposing false teachers? Yeah.

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I think part of it is fun to understand is what's the definition of the

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Lord's anointed, you know? I mean, I think a phrase like that is pretty loaded, but if you break it down biblically, what's the

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Lord's anointed? Well, in my eyes, it's someone who's pastoring a church. It's someone who carries the office of an elder.

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I don't know that I would use the term, even use the term anointed. But if you're using that phrase to try to say that a human being is untouchable or is not able to receive criticism or critique at all because they're anointed by God, then you're really just opening a wide door for that person to go off the rails if they want and never receive any correction.

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So when we see elders in scripture, when we see the outlines, these are men of high character, but they're not men who are like, they're higher than reproof or they're higher than correction.

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These are, if anything, men who should be under the highest level of scrutiny and openness to correction.

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Yeah. I think too, if they're like not demonstrably showing the fruits of regeneration, in fact, they're on the other side where they're demonstrably showing that they are un -regenerate and they're going against God's word, then we can safely say, they're not

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God's anointed or they've fallen away from the faith. Exactly. So they're not falling into that category.

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David spoke about Solomon, right? Yeah. And I'll get to that, but you are talking about Matthew chapter seven and that's in the context of false teachers, right?

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Where Jesus says a good tree will bear good fruit and a bad tree will bear bad fruit. You will know them by their fruit.

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So Jesus is like, you better do some examining of these types of teachers because their fruit is going to show whether or not they're legitimate.

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And then you're like, no, what's fruit. Oh, they've got a lot of money coming in. Maybe that's the fruit where they got a lot of people, you know, singing their praises or reading their books.

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No fruit always has to do. And you go immediately to Galatians chapter five. It's the character of a man or a woman that professes to be some type of spiritual leader.

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Their character is what is going to demonstrate whether or not they're actually genuine or not.

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You know, when David's talking about not touching the Lord's anointed, because remember David and I, it might've been a, by a shire.

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I can't remember one of David's mighty men. They were like, can you just please let us kill Saul? Yeah. Right.

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I mean, they were so sick and tired of running from him. He's throwing spears at David and he's hunting him down in Gaza, right?

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Philistine cities. And the soldiers are like, just give us the word and we'll take him out.

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Of course he was in a cave relieving himself. David could have killed him. And he says, touch not the Lord's anointed. But Saul was the anointed to be king.

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Right? Right. It's really, I think we're stretching it that particular scripture or the multiple scriptures, it does talk about don't touch the

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Lord's anointed by saying it refers to some, you know, pastoral individual or some man of God it's

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David saying, Hey, we can't kill the king. He was anointed to be our, our leader and he can't do that.

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So we can't stretch that too far in its application and its interpretation. I think, you know what I mean?

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But like you said, if they're not bearing the fruits of regeneration in their characters is, and we'll get into it and their characters really demonstrating that, then they're not the

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Lord's anointed. Yeah. So, and you know, if we don't expose the wolf and sheep's clothing, they're just going to devour the sheep.

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Why do we do this? Why do we expose false teachers? It's because we care about God's people, right? We care about the people that are being victimized.

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The naive, the simple, you know, the people that are like, Hey, I, everybody's pointing, there's so many credential people or seemingly credible people.

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That's pointing to these people that saying, Hey, these are men of God. And I really believe it. And they're kind of locked in that because you know, they're not utilizing discernment.

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They don't understand what a man of God should be. It's really biblically illiterate, but I think, and like, you know, our sister says, and we're going to get into that.

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They're really loving, well -meaning people. They're just at a place of ignorance and they're being unknowingly victimized by these types of individuals.

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They're wolves trying to devour. So what we're going to do today is expose two different Todd's. Michael Todd, Pastor Michael Todd from Transformation Church and then

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Todd Bentley. So let's get into Michael Todd. He is an up and coming kind of a powerhouse of a false teacher.

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He's, he's starting to become kind of take the place of maybe some other really notable, dynamic, more charismatic.

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I put pastors in here quotes there on the scene. He's kind of overtaken.

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And even you think about someone like Steven Furtick, he's kind of putting himself into the spotlight and really, really, really gaining popularity.

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So I think it's worth talking about and it's worth talking through, not just him or we're not trying to slam character or anything like that, but we want to give hard evidences for why we're making the claims we're making and in love call

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Mike Todd to repentance, but also to warn those who follow his teaching or who may not see an issue with it.

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So just right off the bat, a couple of notes, Transformation Church in Tulsa and their website,

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I came across this. I thought it'd be just right off the bat. You want to like look at a church's website and maybe some flags.

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It says they aspire to reach their community city in the world with the gospel presented in a relevant and progressive way.

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You know, so just right there, I read that. I'm like, okay, there are some alarms going off in my, in my mind here. Yeah. Relevant and progressive way.

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That means we can shape and form the gospel, whatever that is, in the ways we need to reach the community is one flag.

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And then another one that comes to mind, if you go on their website, you look at their executive team. They have a total of six, again, air quote pastors.

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One is Mike Todd, another one is a guy named Charles Metcalf, and then four of them are women, you know?

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And like, okay, so you have four females being called executive pastors. You have Mike Todd, and then you have this other guy right off the bat of just from a leadership standpoint, like, okay, these are concerning to me, just even right off the bat, not even listening to one word, you know, this is concerning.

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Yeah. Just that word progressive. Yeah. That means we're departing from the scriptures as being our sole authority, right?

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Or we could say, they could say, no, we believe in the Bible. Were you departing from a historical orthodox interpretation of those scriptures and you're uploading, you know, when it comes to sexuality, which we'll get into your own definition, a really culturally inspired definition.

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That's when, and that's what you got to do. If you're looking for a church, you got to go to the website and you have to look at what they believe you have to, you know, pick up on these tells or these red flags that are, that are there for you so you can get away and not even become a part of this church.

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That's going to victimize you and your family, you know? Yeah. One thing I would like to note too, just for the listener that is on here, that's not reformed, this isn't about theology as far as like, you know, a bunch of Calvinists that are up here saying, you know, this is about Arminianism and Calvinism.

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These two individuals do come from the word of faith movement and they are charismatic, but they even have people in their own camp that have denounced them.

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So this isn't about the gifts of the spirit and all of that. Yes, we have some differences there and we love our

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Arminian brothers and sisters in the faith, even though we think you're wrong, but we love you.

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But this isn't about that. This is about false teaching and taking advantage of other people and heretical views, not just a squibble between Calvinists and Arminians.

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And that's a good thing to say, because in our critiques of false teachers, we're not trying to be tribal is what you're saying.

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We're not just trying to war against other denominations or other theological systems out there.

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That's not what it's about. I think as we go on, we'll expose IFBs, we'll expose

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Calvinists, there's Calvinist heretics, you know, neo -Calvinists and things like that. So it has nothing to do with being tribal and hey, if you're not in our camp, then you're a false teacher.

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Right. Right. It's a good thing to say. Good, good point. Yeah. So get right into it here with, with Mike Todd, um, two really big evidences, two examples of, of false teaching that I wanted to touch on.

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One of them's a little bit more popular. So maybe some people who have seen this, this first clip, he's talking about sexuality, homosexuality, transgenderism.

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Um, we'll watch this clip here of what he says and, and, uh, and interact with it. Uh, second one's not as well known, and then

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I want to get in even for just a talk about what, what I think is the root of this, of all this, but let's, let's start here with, uh, taking a peek at these two, these two teachings to start with this one on sexuality.

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How do you know you're serving the King? It's usually the opposite of what you naturally want to do.

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I'm trying to give you, I serve the King. No, you do what you want to do. You, you value your opinion of it more than you devout value.

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God's not just opinion, his decision on it. God's already decided some stuff that we think we haven't can have an opinion on.

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I I'm trying to decide right now,

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Cordell, how much I'm gonna get him to try to. God decided male and female.

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No, no, no. I'm not, this is not a bad, I need y 'all to hear my heart on this. This is not a bashing.

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This is not, he, if I was there, maybe I would have told him, is there something in the middle you could do?

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Like kind of a, like a little, maybe if somebody, well, I was born like this.

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I don't know how I feel that I feel you. And I wish that there was an option of other in the kingdom in culture, you can make up whatever you want to in culture.

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You can build whatever you want to. But the truth of the matter is that if we are going to submit under what the

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King says, I'm going to have to wrestle with what

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I don't even fully understand. Oh God, pastors don't say this.

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Cause they want to be absolute. Well, why did that? I don't freaking know. I know. I honestly,

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I wish God would have made it so much simpler. And it was like a, B, C or D like Frick.

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No, I'm serious as a pastor. Like, so what do you think about gay men? I don't know.

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All right. So that's the, that's the more popular clip that's been going around a little bit.

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So maybe some people have seen that, but there's a lot obviously to deal with there.

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So, because there's a lot of places to start, but I want to, I want to just kind of use as a response to this,

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I want to use their own words here, Transformation Church's own words. If you go to their, again, you go to their website this is how they describe the church.

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So they describe the church in general, like the big C church of which they believe transformation is a part.

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Their site says the church is a local community of baptized believers unified through faith in Christ.

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It is committed to the teachings of Christ and obeying all of his commands, and it seeks to bring the gospel to the world.

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Okay. So apparently Transformation Church is committed to the teachings of Christ and to obeying all that Christ commands.

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So then we just ask the question, what, okay, what did Christ command? What did he teach? We go to Matthew chapter 19 verses four through six.

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Jesus is answering the Pharisees here a question on divorce. He says, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?

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And, and then Jesus quotes Genesis 2 24, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

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So there are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

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So there it is clear, plain as day in God's word, what Jesus taught, what Transformation Church says that they submit to male and female and marriage being between one male, one female period.

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And you have all this kind of hemming and hawing up here on this, from the stage. And if you notice, like if you kind of watch it even broader than that, because I watched more than just this clip, but he starts off saying something that sounds true, he says, we have

23:34

God's design or God's decision, and we need to submit our opinions to God's decision. And I hear that.

23:39

I think, yeah, amen. I agree with that. And that's, but that's the frustrating thing with false teaching is because there are elements of truth in it.

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And it gets so insidious that you, you start to hear things that aren't quite true and you say, oh, okay, well maybe that must be true too, because the thing before was true and it's not.

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He starts posturing himself where he's saying things like, hey guys, and when he's meaning like LGBT, transgenderism, hey, everyone in that community,

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I am on your side here. Now that's really what he's saying. I'm on your side. God is kind of like, he's,

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Mike Todd's painting God as the bad guy who's over here in this corner who made it this way. And I really wish it was different, but God's kind of the one who said, so I guess we have to do what he says.

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And what he's doing there is he's posturing himself to be friends with what God's word so clearly condemns and therefore kind of isn't even apologizing for God, he's kind of demonizing

24:37

God and saying, God's the bad guy here. I wish it was different, but I guess I can't do anything about it. Yeah. Yeah.

24:44

He was an apologist. He should have been an apologist, like he started out to be, and then he turned into an apologizer, right?

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And more than an apologizer, like, hey, I wish there was A, B, C, and D, but God made it this way. So, you know, gay marriage,

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I don't know. It's just, you know, it's a complete contradiction of what he's first stated within the same couple of paragraphs.

25:09

Right. Right. One thing that is just blatant, especially there at the end, is just the lack of the fear of God.

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You know, just the way he's flippantly talking about if he were to have an interaction with God and, you know, oh, frick, and like, you realize who you're talking about, you know, there's no fear of God before his eyes.

25:31

Yeah. Yeah. No fear of God. And, and he's, again, he's siding with the world here.

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So another text that comes to mind is James 4 .4. James says, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

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If you're trying to be friends with the world here and say, listen, I wish you could have all these different kinds of genders, I wish, but God unfortunately made it in such a way where we can't have that, sorry guys.

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You know, why is that false teaching? Well, it's false teaching because he's clearly defying what God's word teaches.

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And as someone who's supposedly supposed to be preaching God's word, he's back there apologizing for it, making it seem like this, it's some big, bad thing.

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And he's really becoming friends with the world here with that. And therefore not, not me, not us, but scripture says, if you're doing that, you're at enmity with God.

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You know? So this is an example here. This two minute clip is an example of being at enmity with God.

26:23

I absolutely agree. And I think about Galatians chapter one about pleasing people, right?

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It's all to placate. It's all to please. It's all to, you know what? This is what

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God's word says, but I have to apologize for it. I'm sorry. It's just what we have. You know, you're really showing, you're playing, you're, you're showing your cards as far as what side of the fence you're on, right?

26:45

Right. You're like you said, you're at enmity with God in this. You're not standing for truth or standing for righteousness or going to scripture and say,

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Hey, let's look at first Corinthians six or the verses that you stated, this is what it says now.

26:59

It's well, sorry guys. I mean, that's the hallmark of a false teacher. Yep. Yep.

27:05

Yeah. That's the first one. Second one, shorter clip here. I thought this one was interesting.

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This is from a series that he did on money called the series is called easy money.

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And in this particular clip, he's talking about the prosperity gospel, which

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I thought was interesting because he brings up the prosperity gospel. And if, again, if you go on their site, they, you can see verbiage on there about how

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God wants you to be abundant and he wants you to prosper. And so there's some, there's some prosperity gospel elements to, to what transformation church is about, but he kind of decries the prosperity gospel itself, like he says, it's a bad thing, but then he kind of creates this weird like gospel spectrum.

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So we'll, we'll watch the clip here and, and, uh, and talk about it. The reason that God is giving me more is because I have a purpose and so we're not going prosperity gospel and we show ain't going poverty gas gospel.

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We are going the purpose. Gosh, when my finances have a purpose,

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God can trust me with more than enough. So write this down. This is just a thought to be able to get this thing rolling paper without purpose is pointless.

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Having money resources, finances, influence without a purpose from heaven.

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It's pointless. That's why the Bible says stuff like this. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but lose his very soul?

28:39

He said, it's pointless for you to have Ms in the bank, making it rain more cars than you can drive in a week, taking vacations everywhere, and he says, you can still have no peace and have all the paper think about, think about what's being said here in this, in this clip and it's,

28:56

I think it's important to talk about guys like this because we've seen other teachers in the past put forward the prosperity gospel and it's always

29:06

God's will for you to be healthy, wealthy, and happy. And we've, we've heard this over again. We've heard these, you know, these

29:11

TD Jake's and Creflo dollar and even Joel Osteen, we've heard this. So I think overall believers have kind of a greater sense of discernment, but there's this kind of like new repackaging of it that we hear with people, with people like Mike Todd.

29:24

And I think that's why it's important to dissect some of the stuff. So the first thing right off the bat is he says, we're not going prosperity gospel.

29:31

And if you listen to again, the broader context of the sermon, he defines prosperity gospel as like, name it and claim it.

29:37

God is a jackpot God. So he kind of characterizes the prosperity gospel, but then he says, we're also not going poverty gospel.

29:45

And the way he defines poverty gospel is people who just don't think they should have anything. And I'm just going to suffer and be a martyr for God.

29:52

So he makes a caricature of the poverty gospel. And then he tells you to meet him in the middle with the purpose gospel.

29:59

So again, because he's such a, and he is, I will absolutely give him this. He is a very dynamic, gifted communicator.

30:07

Like he would be great as a Ted talk speaker, you know, just don't call yourself a pastor, but he is so dynamic and engaging that people hear what he says and they're like, yeah, that's, he must be right on there.

30:18

So even the spectrum of gospel, the gospel spectrum that he creates, not poverty, not prosperity, but purpose, even that is false.

30:28

Like if you put a word in front of the word gospel, you're off. So him saying purpose gospel is right in the middle and that's where we should be.

30:36

No, it's not. Like the gospel is where we should be. It has nothing to do with purpose, nothing to do with prosperity, nothing to do with poverty.

30:43

It's just the gospel. We don't get to change it, you know? And for him to put a word in front of it right off the bat, it's like, you don't get to do that.

30:51

You know, you don't get to make that spectrum. Um, any other thoughts here? And we'll talk about the text you said.

30:58

No, I think that's crucial. And I, and I'm so glad you pulled out that clip because, um, that will fly over the radar of so many people.

31:06

They're like, wow, that really sounds good. But like you're saying, people just maybe unwittingly don't understand that he's adding to the gospel, right?

31:14

You're saying if you put anything in the front backside, you're adding to it, which the book of Revelation says you can't do that, can't add to these words.

31:22

Of course, we create a false gospel when we add or we subtract anything from it. So I'm absolutely,

31:29

I'm super glad you brought that up because, um, we, you know, Satan is so masterful at deceiving.

31:36

And so we can totally understand as history goes on that these false teachers and false teachings are going to become cloaked in, you know, something that's credible, something that's believable, something that's from God's word.

31:48

And I think that you're seeing that in this, these, this new generation of false teachers here. Yeah. Crafty.

31:54

It's crafty and it's repackaging because he does preface it with, this is not the prosperity gospel.

32:00

So people then go, oh, oh, good. He knows what the prosperity gospel is. We're safe. We're good.

32:06

And what he's saying, I hear some truth in there. Like you said, it's insidious because there's little truth sprinkled in there.

32:12

Um, but he's younger and he's kind of revamping this movement.

32:18

And so I think, yeah, absolutely. You'll see that. Sorry to interrupt you. Oh yeah. I was just saying,

32:23

I think it's a good thing. But that's what I caught on to too, in that clip that he said, Hey, it's not the prosperity gospel.

32:29

And you know what you'll see with false teachers who are highly charismatic is they're always trying to credential themselves.

32:36

They're always tying, trying to substantiate their credibility, their believability.

32:42

It's always, you know, stuff like that. And the things that they teach or the things that they do, you know, especially when we'll get into it with Todd Bentley.

32:49

It's like, look at all these healings, look at all these healings, look at all these healings. And it's always trying to get you to believe them based upon some, something that they're saying or something that they're doing.

32:59

Now the text here, just quick before we move on to the last one, the text here that he quotes, because you can ask the question, where's the false teaching in this?

33:09

Well, the false teaching in this is he's adding onto the gospel. He's calling it the whatever gospel. Again, if you already do that, you're off.

33:16

Right. But the verse he uses to justify his claim. So he says that we need to have purpose with our money.

33:23

You know, if we, if we put purpose behind our dollars, that's really what God wants. That's the, that's the purpose gospel.

33:29

And then to substantiate, as you said, that claim, he quotes Mark 8 36, for what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and yet loses or forfeits himself?

33:39

And that right there, that's false teaching. And again, it's insidious because he's speaking authoritatively.

33:47

He's speaking confidently and to just someone listening to think, oh, that sounds right.

33:52

You know, we need to have purpose with our money. What does it profit a man? Even the word prophet is in there. So he just says that like those two things go together.

34:01

Well, in Mark chapter eight, the crowds are starting to come to Jesus because they're seeing his miracles and he starts giving this call to discipleship.

34:10

We see this in another call to discipleship in Luke 14, parallel text in Matthew 16 and Luke 9, but in Mark 8, all these crowds are coming to him.

34:18

And he says, he starts preaching almost against the crowds. Like, cause he knows, Jesus knows there are people coming because they see me doing these miracles and that's it.

34:28

They saw me feed the 4 ,000. They saw me heal the blind man of Bethsaida. They saw me do all these things. So then he gives this call to discipleship in Mark 8 and he says, for whoever would save his life would lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake in the gospels will save it, for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul, for what can a man give in return for his soul, for whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him, will the son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels.

35:01

First thing to note, this text is not about money. This is not about money in the slightest.

35:08

It's a text about eternity. It's Christ calling his true disciples out of the crowds and says, if you, if you really belong to me, you'll die to yourself.

35:18

If you really belong to me, you'll give up every single, whatever pursuit you think is going to profit you in life.

35:26

You will give all of that up, deny yourself, and you'll cry out to me as savior and as king, and you'll be brought into my kingdom as my disciple.

35:33

And that's what it costs is for you to die. If you give up your life here in this world and all the material possessions and everything, whatever else you were chasing, whatever idolatry looked like for you, give that up and submit to me as Lord, you'll actually find your life for eternity.

35:49

That's what the text is talking about. It's not saying a word about personal finances, but yet, because Mike Todd conflates these with his confident delivery, everybody thinks that it's, that's what it's talking about.

36:00

They're like, oh wait, he quoted scripture. He must know what he's talking about. He said a verse, you know, and it's like, we got to be more discerning than that.

36:07

But it's funny. I was listening to him and I'm like, I wonder if he's going to say, we'll forfeit his soul, but he didn't.

36:13

He cut himself off. He said forfeits and then he went away from it. But I think what's super interesting is that in that previous clip that he was talking about sexuality, right?

36:24

He was doing this for whoever's ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation.

36:31

I mean, that was a textbook being ashamed of the clear teachings in position of God on sexuality.

36:38

Absolutely. Um, last piece here on Mike Todd, we'll move on to Todd Bentley after this, but this is something near and dear to my heart.

36:46

Um, it is so critical. It, I don't want to give it away here, but it's, it's really critical.

36:52

I think this last piece to really get at the root of this, cause we looked at a couple of examples here from Mike Todd and we can see these and I hope we can encourage people who listen in and who watch, uh, wherever you listen or watch that, uh, to grow in discernment and ability to see these types of things in light of scripture.

37:08

But I think it's important to ask too, what's the root? What is the root problem of this? Why do we see

37:14

Mike Todd's, uh, out on the huge, big stage in the world? You know, what's the root of this?

37:20

And, uh, to give you some context here, and this will be the last clip on, on Mike Todd, he, his parents in 2008 started a church in Tulsa.

37:29

Uh, he got brought onto the church to start, um, helping. He was actually doing some music ministry stuff before that.

37:36

Uh, and then he got brought on, uh, to his parents' church. And then we get to this clip here.

37:42

We'll play and just listen for, um, just, just understand that this person who you're listening to right now, this is, this, this is

37:50

Mike Todd's start in Like this is how he got onto the scene. And then think about now how many people he influences and then think about this beginning.

38:00

So we'll play this clip. And I had never studied. I'd never preached a message. I'd never been in front of anybody.

38:06

We just, I would go in there and I would be myself. I would use Bible stories that I learned from like McGee and me.

38:13

And like, I am not, I am straight expectations, bro. Like the odyssey, like I was just using things that raised us.

38:24

Yeah. I was using things that were stuck in my heart. What was what I think is critical to hang on to.

38:30

And that clip is just representative of the larger story here. He gets brought on, he helps the youth ministry at his parents' church.

38:37

And what you hear at the beginning, I never studied. I never preached a message.

38:42

I just got put into the youth ministry and I just started telling stories that I remember from when I was a kid.

38:49

That's, that is the extent of Mike Todd's training and qualification as an elder.

38:55

And again, as you mentioned, no fear of God before your eyes. It is such a fearful thing to be an elder, to be a pastor, to lead

39:03

God's church. And it's even more of a fearful thing to teach. You know, that's one of the qualifications of an elder is being able to teach, but also to understand

39:12

James 3 .1, not many people should become teachers. For those who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

39:20

That's a sobering passage. And then you have Mike Todd who says, yeah, I didn't really know what

39:25

I was doing. I just kind of got up there and started saying stuff. And if you listen to the clip we took from is from a, actually it's documentary on YouTube about Transformation Church.

39:34

It's really helpful. But he went on like that for months and the youth ministry blew up because he's a dynamic communicator.

39:45

Like it was built around him, you know, and this is a classic megachurch now. It's huge swaths of people gathered around one charismatic personality, and that's what's going on with Mike Todd.

39:54

So you look at his preparation. There is no preparation. There's no second Timothy 2 .2.

39:59

There's no elder qualified man pouring into him to then become an elder qualified man to then be a shepherd of a church.

40:07

No reverence for the office of pastor. It's just, I'm really good at communicating. And I think we've done that in our ages.

40:13

We've conflated pastor with good communicator, not pastor with first Timothy three,

40:20

Titus one character qualifications. So because Mike's really good at speaking, he has the title pastor come up under him when he starts his sermons.

40:28

And it's like, I don't even think you know what that means. And I don't think a lot of people know what that means nowadays.

40:33

You know, it's just equated with, I can speak well and that's it. You think minus his communicative capabilities and his charisma that anybody would want anything to do with them?

40:45

Well, I think the reason why there's such a large following is because he's, he is, he's so good at speaking.

40:51

Right. And I listen, I mean, I'm, I listened to more than just these clips on him. Like, like I can understand why people go to his,

40:57

I don't even hesitate to even call why people go to his building on Sunday and listen to him because he is engaging and he, he preaches for like 90 minutes.

41:07

He's like Jeff Durbin length preaching, you know, like, and people sit there and they listen to it because he's, he's got all these crazy illustrations.

41:14

And he's like at one sermon, he got in a boat on stage. Like he's just doing this crazy stuff. And it's, it's, it's just because he's, he's so engaging of a personality.

41:25

I don't know that there are other. And again, I'm not trying to make assertions about his character, but I just wonder, like, if he wasn't that engaging of a speaker, what would it be?

41:36

Yeah. Me too. You have something to say? Yeah. Just to get it. If you go back, if you haven't listened to our episode on the

41:42

Seeker Sensitive Movement, it's like, he is like a cookie cutter display of like the fruit of that.

41:51

Like, okay, just, and I don't, I don't know his background with his parents and what their, their stances or anything like that.

41:58

I would just say, you know, you, you put a kid in, throw a kid into ministry that has had no formal training, like you said, no seminary, no man pouring into him, no qualifications that are biblically laid out for the office of elder, and you just throw somebody in there cause they're fun and they're charismatic.

42:17

Well, then there's going to be problems. There's going to be problems. And you see that. I remember at the mega church

42:22

I was going to, man, there were a lot of people called pastor, they're youth pastor, pastor of evangelism, pastor of finances.

42:30

You know, there's this like, you're like, wow. Oh, okay. And it's just like, hey, you're good at that. Throw you in there.

42:36

And there's no oversight and no like sobering, like you said, like this is a serious call.

42:42

Not everybody's called to do it. Not everybody should do it. This is a very sobering thing.

42:48

And so, but it, when it's handled so, you know, flippantly and loosely, then you've got bad fruit to display.

42:58

And that's what you see. And we see the fruit of it. And it's not a argument for, like, we're not like making an argument for, you got to go to this seminary and get this program.

43:07

Like I'm making an argument for, Psychativity 2 too, I'm making an argument for elder qualified men who are already doing it, training and discipling other men to then themselves become elders.

43:19

That's what we see in scripture. And, and seminary can be a great supplement for that, but elders training, those who aspire to be elders is what the model is in the

43:29

Bible. And from what I see, again, there's not really a trace of that with Mike Todd.

43:34

It's just, I'm really good at speaking. So here I am. And now it's grown to what it is. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of things.

43:41

The most loving thing his father could have done, whoever put him in position,

43:47

I think his parents did start that church. When they heard that, just immediately remove him from any leadership because he disqualified himself.

43:55

He pretty much said, I do not, I will publicly profess the fact that I do not fall in line with biblical qualifications for an elder.

44:03

So the most loving thing, because you just said, we'll be judged with a stricter judgment, right?

44:09

So a dad hearing that should have been a son. We made a colossal decision in putting you in spiritual leadership.

44:16

You just professed or confess the fact that you're not qualified to be here. But nepotism reigns in the

44:23

American evangelical church. And I think a lot of it, and I don't want to make too, you know, paint with too broad of a brush or say things about particular individuals, but just from what

44:33

I've experienced, a lot of it is based upon people starting churches.

44:38

I'm just going to go start a church. So they're really there. Maybe there was an internal call, not necessarily an external call.

44:45

They're self -appointed leaders who start non -denom churches, independent churches. And then they, you know, it starts to be their source of income and they gain a huge amount of control.

44:58

It's typically top -down leadership, pyramid leadership with the senior pastor. Right. He wrote, he, you know, runs the roost.

45:05

Is that the right term? And then number one, he wants, he needs to get paid.

45:14

So even when he retires, he'll make sure he has some semblance of control and he'll put his child in a position so he can have control and continue to get paid.

45:24

Right. I think that's it. But I think what we have to, you know, immediately discern from that is that you would never go to a doctor, right?

45:34

Trust your life with a doctor is like, Hey, you know what guys, I didn't go to medical school, I didn't go to medical school at all.

45:41

I just, you know, my dad was a doctor and I kind of understood some stories about medicine and here

45:48

I am. I mean, you would have run as far away as you could. I mean, you would be sued for malpractice or something like that.

45:55

But we don't do that when it comes to evaluating spiritual leaders. It's like, Oh, he's saying this.

46:01

Oh, I'm going to entrust my soul to this guy and I'm going to bring my kids to sit under this type of a leader and it does even more damage than just going to a doctor who doesn't know what he's talking about.

46:12

Yeah. But think about it. If it's built around one man, right? And this guy's aging out, then you put in his replacement, which would be, he's probably going to be like his dad.

46:24

He's probably going to have some similarities as far as the teaching. And they've come to worship this one person.

46:31

I'm not saying all churches. I'm just saying if your church is built around the personality of one person and you're really looking to them instead of the scriptures and you're just idolizing them, then it would seem like the natural thing is to come for the junior to come in and then they're just like him.

46:49

So then he could just replace. So I don't know. It just seems like it kind of makes sense in that model of why they would do that.

46:57

Yeah. So even though it's damaging. So, wow. Good stuff. Thank you,

47:03

Jake. Any more stuff on Mike? Yeah. Nothing on Mike. Like, we'll talk about this with Todd, like we don't have hatred for these guys.

47:13

We want people to be warned of the false teaching and we want to rebuke the false teachers.

47:19

But our desire is for repentance. Mike Todd has been given such a huge platform.

47:25

There's such an opportunity to faithfully preach God's word and not build your own little kingdom in Tulsa. Right.

47:31

And, uh, that, that would be my plea is to truly look at, look at what scripture teaches in turn, submit yourself to what it says, uh, and begin to be used mightily by the

47:45

Lord. I think about that gifting and submission truly to God's word, how mightily that could be used.

47:51

Yeah. And we'll, we'll watch a video on Justin Peters because he confronts Todd Bentley, but the most loving thing that you can do, and I thought this a long time ago,

47:59

I'm like, what if I was ever able to talk to like Joel Osteen or I would confront him, brother, you know, you were facing

48:07

God in judgment. Right. Um, the most loving thing that I can do is stand in your face and say, you need to put the brakes on all of this.

48:15

Stop. Step down. You know, I think that we're loving Mike by, um, confronting this.

48:22

I mean, he speaks for himself. We've showed clips. I mean, he, he told us all that he's unqualified.

48:29

He told us all that he's ashamed of the God that he serves and the, uh, you know, all we're doing is kind of telling people what he's already saying.

48:37

But what he's doing is he's saying he shouldn't be in the position that he is. And so many people are suffering because of it.

48:43

Yeah. I would say if you, if you know someone that is under the teaching of Pastor Mike Todd, share this with them.

48:50

If for some reason Mike Todd is sent this, Pastor Mike Todd, we are just calling for your repentance in that.

48:57

This is out of love. It's not out of, uh, hate or bashing. It's out of concern for your soul, which

49:03

I think has already been expressed. But, um, yeah, that's what I wanted to do, but I'm getting old and I forgot, but that's what

49:09

I wanted to say is, you know, you know, Mike, we, this is all because we care about you.

49:15

We love you. Um, you're going to face God in judgment. And if you'd like to come on and talk with us about this, we would be more than welcome to invite you on the show and talk all through this with anybody that we kind of expose.

49:28

Absolutely. We would love to do that. All right. So yeah, like we said, we love Mike Todd and, uh, brother, we're just calling you to repentance.

49:36

So turning from your sin, step down from your position, um, get under some good guys that are actually going to lead you according to God's word and not put you in a platform or in a position that you're not qualified to be at.

49:47

And brother, you're not qualified in those words came out of your own mouth. So we're here for you.

49:53

We'd love to speak with you. So that's it for this episode. Yeah. Next episode, we are going to talk about, like we had talked about Mr.

50:01

Todd Bentley and, um, man, I hope that guy listens to this as well. But thanks for tuning in.

50:08

And, uh, we appreciate you so much. Like we had said in the beginning of the show, please go to, uh, ICA Bibles, go get a great, go get a great

50:15

Bible rebind from our friend, uh, John Holiday. And, uh, yeah, we love you.