My Trip to Cult Country

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Episode # 91 of the Testing the Spirits Podcast -Also listen on Spotify

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Hello, and thank you for listening to the
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Testing the Spirits podcast. In this episode, I'm going to talk to you about my trip to cult country.
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That's right, I took a trip to what I'm calling cult country. I'll explain in a moment, but let's first start with the definition of a cult.
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What am I talking about here? A lot of interest in cults. I think it's my most popular, well, it is my most popular video on YouTube, Kingdom of the
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Cults, with over 1 million views, and some of my other videos on the cults have gotten quite a few views.
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So this is a subject that people care about, people are interested in the cults.
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And in this video, or this podcast, depending on how you're listening on YouTube or Spotify, but we're not talking about the
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Mormons, although one of these groups affirms the Mormons. Not talking about the
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Jehovah's Witnesses, not talking about Christian science, but there are churches where the pastor is set up, he's given way too much authority.
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In some cases, these guys are totally unaccountable, because in one case, they went to prison and they came back and jumped right back into ministry, and it's like none of it ever happened.
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So the definition I'm working on is when a man is propped up and he has too much authority, he's unaccountable, but more specifically, when a man claims to have direct revelation from God.
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Or a woman. Anytime there's a person who, now in the 21st century, they are claiming to hear the voice of God, they're giving prophecies,
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God is talking to them all the time, they're constantly hearing the voice, they have a direct pipeline to God.
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My friends, that's a cult. These people are not hearing from God, and we could go through the list of the false prophecies given by Bethel Church and Benny Hinn and all the rest, people who claim to hear the voice of God, and it's either
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God's wrong, or they're not hearing God's voice, which obviously they're not. But they say they do, and that's why
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I'm labeling them a cult. Anyways, I took a trip to Missouri, and if you want to disagree with that, well,
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I don't think this group is a cult, that's fine, you can disagree if you want, but I'm going to show you why this is dangerous.
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It's not biblical at all. And if it is, we should add their writings, tack them onto the Bible. But I took a trip to Missouri, Branson, Missouri, specifically, and on the way to Branson, driving down the interstate, and I see this massive building, it looks like headquarters for a
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Fortune 500 company, and I look at the side of the building and it says James River Church.
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I'm like, hey, I've heard of that place. A few months ago there was that debacle where the pastor there, John Lindell, who claims to hear directly from God, invited something like a male stripper to a men's conference, and then
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Mark Driscoll rebuked, and then there's this whole, like I said, it's a total debacle.
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John Lindell, if he's receiving guidance from the Holy Spirit and direct messages from God, God is leading him astray, which that's how we know it's not actually from God.
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But let's just play the video or play the audio if you're listening on Spotify. This guy claims to hear the voice of God, and he's telling you how you can hear
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God's voice too. And I'm going to show you the problem with this. And listen, if someone claims to hear God's voice and they're claiming to speak for God and they're not, that makes them a false prophet.
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And you know, the line between false prophet and cult leader, I mean, at this point, what's the difference? But listen to what
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John Lindell has to say. I want to give you some tips on hearing the
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Spirit's voice in our life. The first thing is, if you and I are going to hear the voice of the
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Spirit, we have to believe what God has already spoken. In other words, if we're not going to pay attention to the word of God and the revealed will of God, why is
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God going to tell us things that aren't revealed in His word if we don't care about the things that are revealed in His word?
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Wow, that's good. You know, God's not going to tell us something new if we haven't believed what
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He's already said. So God is going to give you new revelations.
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God is going to speak to you, and He's going to reveal things. That's why I say revelation, because He said
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God is going to reveal things to you that are not in Scripture. So if you pay attention to the
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Bible, which these guys rip the Bible out of context and twist the Scripture all the time, but they say if you just pay attention to the
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Bible, then God will reveal more to you. Well, wait a minute. If God is speaking to you, if this is really
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God's voice, and God is revealing more new revelation, then why wouldn't you add that to the word of God?
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Why not add John Lindell's writings to the Bible? He's going to talk about writing them down.
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Listen to what he says now. Where is the voice of the Lord? Where it really is the voice, and we are hearing
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His voice. In that sense, I mean, one of the things that I think is very helpful when you feel that you've gotten a very definite word from the
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Lord, write it down. See what happens. If it doesn't come true, and it's time sensitive, then you have to conclude, huh, either
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I didn't hear God or I misinterpreted, and over time, you watch how that plays out in your life, and you look at different things, and over time, you learn to understand and interpret
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God's voice. Okay, so if you hear God's voice, you should write it down, and then if it's time sensitive and it doesn't come to pass, well, then you just misinterpreted what
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God had to say, or maybe God didn't speak to you, which obviously is what happened, but he says, maybe you just misinterpreted it.
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Do you ever see that in the Bible? When God spoke to the prophet Elijah, Elijah wrote it down, and then it turned out to be a false prophecy, and Elijah's like, sorry,
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God, I just misinterpreted what you had to say. That never happened a single time.
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As a matter of fact, Moses said, and Moses received this from God in the book of Deuteronomy, if a man makes a false prophecy, if he presumes to speak in the name of the
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Lord, and that thing does not come to pass, what are you supposed to do with false prophets who claim to speak for God when clearly
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God has not spoken to them? Even Moses said, God said, God told Moses they should be stoned, and obviously we're living under the new covenant.
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This isn't ancient Israel, so we don't do that today. I mean, who would do it, right? Although the
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Catholic church did torture people and kill people for stuff similar to that, but of course they killed a lot of innocent people too, but the point is
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John Lindell is not hearing from God. He's not getting new revelations.
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The people in his church that he's trying to get, hey, you can hear from God too. No, you can't.
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You can hear from God when you open his word and you rightly handle
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God's word, right? What does the Bible say? Present yourself approved unto God, a workman who needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing or rightly handling the word of truth.
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We need to understand, rightly handle God's word, and these guys are not doing that.
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They're claiming, on top of that, they're claiming, so they're mishandling scripture and then they're claiming new revelations and it's simply not of God.
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So that's why I'm calling James River Church, you know, at least cultic in the sense that their leader,
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John Lindell, he claims to hear God's voice and then when it's time sensitive and he writes it down and it turned out not to be true, oh, imagine that.
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So this is very, very dangerous. Anyone who says God spoke to me, this is, today the term is
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NAR, New Apostolic Reformation. So these are people who claim that God is still speaking.
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If God is talking to you, like directly, and really giving you new revelations, that makes you a prophet or an apostle, because that's who the apostles and prophets were.
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They were people who had that relationship with God, that God spoke to them and they relayed
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God's message. This is the idea of the New Apostolic Reformation. There are modern day prophets and apostles.
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And here is another guy, Joiner, he's talking to Jim Baker, I'm going to play this clip.
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These guys claim to hear from God too. But as I was traveling through Missouri, in and around Branson, I saw
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James River Church and then I was driving just outside of Branson and we passed a big billboard with Jim Baker's face on it and it says,
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Home of the Jim Baker Show. And I realized, this is Jim Baker's compound. All of his followers, or his cult, lives on this compound and Jim Baker is their leader and he hosts a
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TV show and he sells these doomsday food buckets, like freeze dried food that lasts for a long time.
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I guess if you're going to survive the tribulation or you're going to survive Armageddon, you need this bucket of food and you need to prep so you can live through the tribulation or whatever he teaches.
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So this is sort of like a doomsday cult to some degree. But Jim Baker, I mean this guy. So if you don't think
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James River Church is a cult, Jim Baker and his followers, this is definitely a cult.
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And I'm going to prove, just this short clip, to prove how bad Jim Baker's theology is.
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Well, let's just watch and then I think you'll see the problem. I mean, look at the response.
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Now I know one of the big issues that we have in the presidential election is Romney is a
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Mormon. In Scripture, the people who had a mixture, who were the
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Samaritans, were the most responsive to the gospel. The woman at the well?
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Here's one woman living in adultery, had five divorces, goes out and preaches, the entire city comes out.
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Okay, Philip goes to Samaria. What happens? I mean, here are the people who are the most responsive to the gospel.
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Now I do believe Mormonism is a mixture. I mean, many of them are solid believers in Jesus Christ as their atonement.
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I know one of my dear Mormon friends, I said, what about Jesus? He said,
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I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, He died on the cross for us, and He's my Savior. I said, man, that's good enough for me, you know, and I know we all want to fight because church people love to fight.
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I don't want to fight. I want to find out where we can agree together. Okay, so Mormons are true
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Christians. Obviously, Mormonism, if there's any group that's a cult, it's Mormonism.
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The Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons are the two most clear cults, them and Christian science, the most obvious cult groups.
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But according to Jim Baker, no, no, they really love Jesus. They're true Christians. Now this
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NAR false prophet, Joyner here, or is it Rick Joyner? I don't, I should have checked.
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I was thinking Wally Joyner, but I think that was a baseball player. I think his name is Rick Joyner. Don't quote me on that though.
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But anyways, he's talking to Jim Baker, and Jim Baker is like, yeah,
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I mean, the Mormons are saying, they say they believe in Jesus. That's good enough for me. That's the exact same thing
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Joel Osteen said. And I've talked about this before. All these new evangelical quote -unquote leaders who affirm
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Mormonism. Well you saw that Jim Baker affirms Mormonism. Well, as one cult leader to another, they defend each other because Jim Baker is a cult leader.
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Jim Baker claims to hear from God. And here's the thing about Jim Baker, his theology is so bad that he thinks
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Mormons are true Christians. I mean, that says it all. But Jim Baker, here's the thing about him.
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Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggard, back in the 1980s, they were like the poster children for corrupt televangelists.
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As far as televangelists who committed crimes, went to prison. In the case of Jim Baker, he actually went to prison.
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He was embezzling money. He was accused of rape. Him and his buddy were accused of drugging a woman and raping her.
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And then they paid her $300 ,000 or almost that to keep her quiet, which seems like an admission of guilt to me.
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And yeah, basically, Jimmy Swaggard, who again, he solicited a prostitute, got busted, did his tearful apology, and then he got busted again, and I think the second or third time he got busted, he didn't apologize and he said this is nobody's business.
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But these guys just continue on in the ministry after embezzling money, caught in scandal after scandal.
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Jim Baker was accused of homosexuality, all this stuff. He goes to prison, and then he gets out of jail, gets out of prison, and then he starts right back up with his ministry, and you're like, how do people follow this guy?
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Because they're in a cult. This is what you have to realize. As soon as the followers here, whether it's 30 people or 300 people or 18 million or however many of the
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Mormons have, as soon as you believe that your leader hears directly from God, if he goes to prison, well, he's just being persecuted like Jesus was.
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He's really innocent, didn't you know? I mean, basically, he can get away with anything, and his followers will believe him no matter what.
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So he goes to prison, comes out, and he lives on a compound now with his cult followers, and they think because Jim Baker's the anointed man of God, he hears directly from God.
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Once you buy into that, these men become unaccountable. I mean, Robert Morris, another guy,
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I'm pretty sure he claims to hear from God too. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a few years from now,
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Robert Morris made a comeback. There will always be people who follow these men because they have too much authority.
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In the end, the evidence shows that there's little accountability, sometimes no accountability, and they just come right back into men.
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They're like a cockroach. You just can't kill these guys. Not like kill them literally, but they just keep coming back.
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You can't get rid of them. Jimmy Swaggart, as bad as he was, he said about Jim Baker, he is a cancer in the body of Christ.
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I mean, when you have Jimmy Swaggart saying that about you, I mean, that's pretty bad. Jerry Falwell said that Jim Baker is the greatest scab and cancer that the
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Christian church has seen in 2 ,000 years. So according to Jerry Falwell, Jim Baker is the biggest dirtball the church has ever seen.
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I mean, that says something. This is cult country. Again, Missouri is a great place in the sense that I didn't see a single rainbow flag.
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There's tons of Christians, a lot of good churches, but you have to take the good with the bad. There's a lot of cults. There's a lot of religious fervor, so people end up in the good churches, but they also end up in these bad churches, which you really can't even call them churches.
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And then the final cult, so we talked about James River, and if you don't consider James River a cult, that's fine, but their leader claims to have a direct pipeline to God.
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I think that's cultic. Jim Baker, that's definitely a cult. No question in my mind about that.
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And then I passed another church, now this is a smaller church, but there is a sign out front that said, we have the full gospel.
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We're a full gospel church, and I thought, what's that? I was not certain about that label, and I was talking to a pastor last night who reminded me, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
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I guess I have heard of this. So basically, this is a Pentecostal church that says that they preach the full gospel.
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Well, if you pay attention to discernment and the news that gets reported by outlets like the
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Center and Protestia, you heard what Bethel Church's pastor, Bill Johnson, said.
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If you don't preach, if you're not operating in signs and wonders, you don't have the full gospel.
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So this Pentecostal group, what are they doing? They're adding to the gospel. And this is a sure sign of a cult, where they think we're the only group that's saved.
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If you're not part of our group, you're not saved. Because my friends, if you don't have the full gospel, you're not saved.
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If you have a false gospel or a deficient gospel, he only has half the gospel.
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You're saying these people are not saved. So the Pentecostals, this is common. The early Pentecostals said, you can't be saved unless you speak in tongues.
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Well, that's adding to the gospel. But these guys, the full gospel churches, Bill Johnson, Bethel, if you're not operating in signs and wonders, then you don't have the full gospel.
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What are they doing? They're adding something to the gospel, which is simply faith and trust in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And as death, burial, and resurrection, you repent and trust fully in Jesus for the remission of your sin.
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That's the simplicity of the gospel. But these guys say, no, you need to be operating in signs and wonders.
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They add that to the gospel. And that's a corruption of the gospel. Because here's the thing, none of these guys are actually performing miracles.
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They'll claim that they are. Benny Hinn says that he's raised the dead. There's no evidence because he hasn't actually done it.
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Just like these guys aren't actually hearing from God. But they tell people these things, these sensational stories, because that's how they, quite frankly, that's how they deceive the simple -minded.
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So these people out there, they're searching for something. And then this guy comes along and says,
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God is speaking to me. God told me this. God told me that. By the way, I raised the dead last week, so you want to follow me.
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I bet you attend a Baptist church. Has your pastor ever raised the dead? Come and follow me. And that's the kind of stuff that some of these, you know, the more extreme
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Pentecostals will do this, the more extreme Charismatics. But a church like this, we have the full gospel because we're operating in signs and wonders.
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What does that mean? Every Christian who has never seen a miracle, I guess you don't have the true gospel. You have like half a gospel.
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I guess you're not even a true Christian. I mean, this is cultic. So adding to Scripture, twisting
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Scripture, claiming new, fresh revelations, a direct pipeline to God. We have the full gospel because we have signs and wonders.
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Then you look at their signs and wonders and their false signs and wonders is what they are. And my friends, this is why
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I'm calling it cult country. So listen, if you live in Missouri and in and around Branson, I'm sure you probably, there's people who attend good churches and there's tons of faithful saints out there.
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I have no doubt. But there's a lot of bad cults and these are some of the ones to avoid.
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And going forward, if you listen to a guy on YouTube and he claims to receive direct revelations from God, that's just a non -starter.
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Don't listen to these people. We know what God's word is. It's in the Bible. Stick to the Bible. And all
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God's people said, Amen. Thanks for listening. And until next time, may the Lord be with you and have a great day.