Micah Wilder: The Making of a Cult Leader // Cultish W/@MormonismResearchMinistry & @GLM

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Welcome back to Cultish Everybody, where we enter into the Kingdom of the Cults. We have an episode today where we're dealing with something that is...

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It's sad. It's disappointing. So, the nature of this episode is where we're exposing darkness, right?

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So, we're going to be talking about things that are hard to hear, but they are necessary for the body of Christ, and the body of Christ ought to call out the atrocities that we're speaking about today.

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And, I know you're looking at me right now, and you probably recognize Bradley Campbell from God Loves Mormons.

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We're doing a God Loves Mormons -Cultish crossover right now. And you also recognize this fellow over here.

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This is Aaron Shafualov, and he is from MRM, Mormon Research Ministries, and we are going to be talking today about Michael Wilder.

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And, yeah, it's a sad situation. But first, Bradley, tell everyone where they can find all of your content today.

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God Loves Mormons stuff is mostly on YouTube. You go to YouTube and just search God Loves Mormons. You'll find our stuff, and you can also go to godlovesmormons .com.

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Perfect. And, Aaron, tell everyone about yourself, just in case they haven't seen you before. I'm an associate with Mormonism Research Ministry.

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You can figure out more information about MRM at mrm .org. And I've been working in various capacities, mostly as a volunteer with them since,

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I think, 2006, 2007. Wow. Perfect. So we're going to be speaking about Adams Road, Michael Wilder.

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I'm not sure if you guys remember, but we interviewed him back, I think it was in 2021, with his book,

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Passport to Heaven. You interviewed him as well, right? Yeah, same thing, yeah. Right around the same time. Yeah, right around the same time,

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Frank, so that's when that book was coming out. And so we, I don't know, if you've been listening to Cultish for a while, you've probably listened to that episode.

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But if you go back now, once we got wind of what was happening, we deleted that episode and we took it off of YouTube, had to get it off of Spotify, every single channel where you could listen to it, because some pretty egregious things and claims were made and bad things happened.

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And so we're going to talk about that today. And we have a timeline that we're using. Actually, Aaron is the one who put together this timeline.

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I know when we made the post about Michael Wilder, many people commented on the post referring to the very timeline that Aaron made, right?

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So, Aaron, if we go back in time, where, in order to get the best snapshot of what happened, where do we start at?

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Well, there's a hotel in Winter Garden, Florida called Edgewater Hotel, which was purchased by a few men, one of which was

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Max Eric Blanchard. And the idea was to renovate the hotel and restore it.

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It's a historic hotel. Fast forward to about 2004. Micah Wilder is on his mission in Florida.

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And Max or Eric... His LDS mission, just to clarify, if you're not familiar with Micah Wilder, he was a former

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Latter -day Saint. He was going on his two -year mission at the due right after a high school, beginning of college age.

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And that's what Aaron's referring to. Yeah, sorry, I'm assuming too much background knowledge, but he went on his

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LDS mission, Micah, to Florida. And Max had, I think, a position as a ward mission leader.

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And he had a reputation for hosting, I think, really feeding LDS missionaries for free at the hotel.

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There is an account of a Latter -day Saint named Fernando. Can't pronounce his last name.

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Gartner. And he writes, I went on my mission in Orlando, Florida. In my second area, Micah was my roommate.

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He goes on. That was the area where I met Max. I knew his last name was

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Blanchard, but I never knew Eric was his middle name. So if you fast forward, Micah in his book,

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Passport to Heaven, mentions an Eric, which we later learn is Max outside the book.

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This is Max. He goes on. But the time Micah's book came out,

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I assumed Eric was just an alias he had made up. Max used to say that he was the most active, inactive member.

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At the time, I had the mission to reactivate him. I'm not sure at what point he's a ward mission leader.

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I'm not sure in what capacity or if that's informal at this point. He would always feed the missionaries for free.

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We hung out there some nights. We stayed at his hotel during the hurricanes, and we did our service hours helping his kitchen line pulling pork and stuff.

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Every missionary that was in Max's circle kind of revered him as a prophet. This is really important.

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Missionaries in our area that felt super sick used to go to Max for healing. Max used to have a lot of secret meetings with Micah.

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Missionaries that stayed with the church used to refer to Joseph and Micah as Maxites.

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Take us into, real quick, the worldview, Bradley, if you can, of the LDS individuals.

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What we're hearing here is there's one individual. His name is Max. He owns a hotel, and he's recognized as a prophet, and people go to him for healings.

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Why is that something that is kind of unique within the Mormon framework? Very odd, because the essential claim of Mormonism is that the authority to perform ordinances and have the keys here on earth that Christ initially had given to Peter was restored by Joseph Smith in the early 1800s, and that rests very much so with the institutional hierarchy of the

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LDS church. And so those with authority to speak on behalf of God to his people, those with the proper keys, are the

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LDS leaders, the prophet, first presidency, and then the 12 apostles.

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And so it's very odd, just from the outset here, that there is an individual claiming to be a prophet, because you would not really expect that, at least

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I wouldn't expect that, if what they mean by that is someone who is kind of a mouthpiece for God, receives revelation that is relevant for a kind of a group of people.

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A very odd, unique claim, at least in my experience, interacting with Mormonism. Yeah, yeah,

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I find it interesting, like, the LDS people are peculiar people in the sense of feeling, of connection to spirit, essentially, having this relationship, quote -unquote, with God through even private revelations, like things like the patriarchal blessing.

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It's just kind of woven into their relationship with the world and what they would view as God, in a sense.

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So I find it very enamoring. You know, like, they're on this mission, but there's a man that could be a prophet.

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You know, like, these things have happened before, under the banner of heaven, the Hulu documentary that came out with the people who were following a prophet over there by the

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Salem mine. The man ended up actually killing his niece and his sister -in -law, because he was like a self -proclaimed prophet.

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Like, these things happen, you know, they practice blood atonement. So I'm not trying to put Micah and them on the same level as that, but in terms of the type of people the

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LDS individuals are, is they're people who are, in one sense, they have one foot in the world, but another foot in this other realm, which is never really talked about,

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I don't think, very much. I really want to also point out that the lack of accountability for LDS church prophets,

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I think, paves the way for this kind of thing, because Latter -day Saints often don't have a paradigm for testing or evaluating the genuineness of prophets.

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If someone claims to be a prophet and they're a part of the LDS church and they don't immediately seem problematic, because there's not a really great paradigm for testing,

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I think it's not that inconceivable that someone like that could kind of be a part of a

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Latter -day Saint framework. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes absolute sense. So like Max, we would say he was someone who was, what was it in the document, he's actively inactive?

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Yeah, he's abnormal. I mean, typically within the LDS culture, someone's charismata, their prophetic revelations are only to be particular to the sphere of jurisdiction that they have, say a patriarch over his family, a bishop over the ward, that kind of thing.

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So he is operating outside of the normal patterns of the LDS culture, to be clear. But he's a gripping character.

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He's a charismatic guy. And I think he seems really interested in starting a band.

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I don't understand the background of that. So there seems at some point in the summer of 2005 to be a band that already existed prior to Adams Road.

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This consisted of Steve K., Matt Wilder, Jay Graham, and then two guys both named

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David. And the band was called Adam Ondi Amen.

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Now I'm told not to take this too seriously in some sense because it's like a boy band. It hasn't really solidified or cemented into something super serious.

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But this was the precursor to Adams Road. I'm not necessarily saying there was a clean handoff from one to the other, but there was already a band with some of the initial members.

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And Max was the leader of this band? You could call him a patron or a manager, a host, an encourager.

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I think we learn more later that he had a more prophetic background. He is at this point prophesying that there's going to be a band.

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He later goes on to say that the band will be bigger than the Beatles and that it's going to help usher in the second coming.

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So this band, Adam Ondi Amen, was that a

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Mormon band at that time? Yes, a Mormon boy band I'm told.

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I'm not sure how serious that was. Well, that's what I find interesting because at first it's a Mormon boy band and then later it becomes a former

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LDS band. Right. Yeah, so a lot happened between 2005 and 2006.

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People were leaving the LDS church. Obviously Micah's story is that he exits the

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LDS church, spiritually exits first as the story goes. So by the summer of 2006, there was a new band called

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Adam's Road and the Davids had left. Micah Wilder and Joseph Warren had joined and Adam's Road forms.

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So now the band consists of Micah, Matt Wilder, Jay Graham, Joseph Warren, and Steve K.

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And just to give you a preview, there are some innocent parties here that we're going to talk about. So please don't attribute poor reputation to every name you hear.

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Listen as the story unfolds. Yeah, absolutely. So do we know how

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Max got out of the LDS organization? Because within two years we find that Micah gets out,

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Max somehow gets out. Is there any information on that or no? I don't remember.

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I know that he had a stint as a Muslim. I know that he became a Latter -day Saint and then he became a purported evangelical.

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Right. It was certainly right around the same time as Micah's departure from the LDS church. Yeah. It seems pragmatic to me in nature.

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Generally speaking. Okay. So what happens? We have Adam's Road. That's a band.

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Let's talk about this real quick. So let's say we have people who have come to Christ. They're forming a band, and this band is to go preach the gospel and their testimonies of coming out of Mormonism to local churches.

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So it seems like we have a parachurch ministry. With a parachurch ministry, what ought to be done for accountability?

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And let's then say what wasn't done or what was claimed was done but wasn't done with Adam's Road.

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Let's talk about that. Well, pretty quickly when you have a parachurch ministry, you want to make sure, one, that the members of that parachurch ministry are prioritizing the life of the local church.

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So when you have new believers especially, you want to become grounded and rooted in the faith, in community with other believers, in a particular gathered local church.

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And here we're speaking about the particularity of a local church as a visible expression of the universal church.

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So there's a tendency in some of these groups to flatten out the term church to just the universal category and to make light of the particular real identifiable expressions of a local church.

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But it doesn't look like they're being blessed by a church or that they're necessarily consisting of members who belong to a local church.

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And just to be fair, these are very fresh ex -Mormon Christians who don't necessarily have a lot of ecclesiology on their belt.

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And this isn't to be super hypercritical or judgmental, but a lot of people that come to faith, they need some years of enculturating into mature

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Christianity and sort of learning about the nature of God and what the Christian life looks like and discipleship and the fruits of the

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Spirit. And God has set up the local church to be a safe place to grow.

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And there's no silver bullet. It's not like the perfect church structure is going to solve all of your problems, but it certainly helps give you...

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A context for accountability and for sanctification and growth. I mean, there's so many even just strictly doctrinal.

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There's so many elements of Mormonism, which are in some sense very insidious. They sound a lot like biblical, historic

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Christian teaching. And it takes a while to unwind those things and unravel those things. And in the context of a local church, you can have qualified elders who help shepherd and guide and instruct.

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And you have the accountability of other members who will keep watch over yourselves. If you read the New Testament, you have a ton of statements about one another.

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Bear one another's burdens, love one another, encourage one another, pray for one another. And those are meaningful commands.

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The Christian life is designed to be lived in the context of other believers who we have this community with each other.

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We keep each other accountable. And there's this real sense in which one who is new to the faith learns what it means to be a

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Christian in the context of living amongst other Christians. And so when that's lacking, when you don't have that, it's like driving without a seatbelt.

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If you crash the car, there's no safety net. There's no accountability. There's nothing to help you or keep you safe.

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And I think that's exactly what happened in this scenario. Yeah, yeah. Let me do a little... This is what's interesting too,

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Aaron. You said imagine people that are fresh out of the LDS organization. So let's say Max is fresh out of it, quote -unquote.

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Then we have Micah and a few other individuals. And listen to this. This is Max prophesying over Micah.

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So I just want to read this for everyone here to understand, I think, personally, a form of manipulation that could be occurring, which cult leaders often do.

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And when we're giving a prophecy here, this is like words of God to Micah. And so listen to this.

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This is from the book. I believe it's from pages 168 to 172 of Passport from Heaven.

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And I quote right here. It says, Micah, this is your true purpose. You have a specific responsibility in life.

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By the time your mission is over, you will be on the path to fulfilling your calling by recognizing your namesake and knowing what it's like to be made in the likeness of God.

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You, through a band of ministers of the gospel, must help bring God's word to the world and by doing so, work to unite the body of Christ in preparation for the second coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. In this letter, you will learn more when the time is right. Don't open it until your mission is complete.

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Then you will see and understand that your true mission is just beginning. But first, God must release you from bondage.

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So he gives him a letter to open, reads the letter, and there's more information to come.

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I mean, to me, this just mimics a patriarchal blessing that happens within the LDS organization.

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Could you really quickly just describe what a patriarchal blessing is? So a patriarchal blessing is given by a local so -called patriarch in a local

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LDS ward, and it's given as a special blessing to someone, and it typically involves talking about what tribe they belong to, and it gives promises of how their life can unfold if they obey

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God's commandments. It's personalized. It's individualized. Max's prophecy over Micah might share some features there, but I do think this has a different flavor to it.

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There's a kind of hyper -charismatic flavor to Max that I don't actually see often in the local

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LDS church. This really is different. This does seem substantially different from normal LDS culture.

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So he really is not your typical Latter -day Saint leader. Early Mormonism was built on the promise of restoring the charismatic spiritual gifts.

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The whole idea was that the restoration was needed because modern

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Christianity had stopped being so charismatic. So, I mean, when you're a LDS missionary, this is pretty exciting to have somebody actually speaking

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God's word to you. It's not hard to imagine how he could be revered with such kind of influence amongst young missionaries who would have been excited about that.

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And it seems like he exercised quite a bit of influence over Micah in particular, especially as the story goes on.

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It looks like he's in the background of a lot of what went on with Adam's road over the course of this timeline.

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I truly believe that Max ends up being a nefarious character who calculated.

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He brought about situations where he could spend isolated time with Micah, which is pretty rare for young men on their mission.

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They're typically paired up with others so that they don't have these sorts of situations. And then there's this infatuation in Micah's book,

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Passport to Heaven. And when we reread these excerpts, knowing what we know now, it's screaming, it's awkward, it's awful.

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A lot of us are asking, how do we not catch this? This is terrible. I think there was a lot of benefit of doubt people were giving, even if it was cringing, weird, odd.

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As a Christian, I mean, even as you probably speak to this, people who platformed

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Micah in his book when it first came out, there's a kind of excitement about this. You have someone who's coming out of Mormonism in a seemingly dramatic fashion on his mission by just reading the

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Bible, goes on to make this ban. It seems like they're doing great things for the gospel and there's an excitement.

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And so when you read things in the book and they're just off -putting in our minds, we're like, well, we want to give benefit of the doubt.

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We trust that the host of people who have platformed them, we trust each other.

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They're an established name within Christian circles. There's not just coming on the scene. So there was reason in our minds to kind of give benefit of the doubt.

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But now when there's just a little bit of a crack there in the facade, we see the language of that.

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And we can even read some of these excerpts if we wanted here. I'll pick a shorter one here. There's this one from page 166.

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As I looked at Eric, this is Micah speaking of Max, time itself seemed to stop and something in my heart caused it to skip a beat.

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I was certain that God had firmly planted my feet on a road that was leading me to the fullness of his love.

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However, I was conflicted by the fact that this hurricane marked the conclusion of my four -month tenure in Winter Garden.

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In two days time, I was to be transferred to a new home on the Florida coast. I had been promoted to be a zone leader, the youngest one in the mission, where I would be accountable for the spiritual and temporal oversight of 20 missionaries.

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As much as I coveted the leadership responsibilities, I did not want to leave my lakeside home. Eric finally returned to the bedroom, he goes on, and held up the scrunched tie which he had retrieved in this hurricane situation.

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With a broad grin on his face, I could only smile as I dropped all decorum and hugged him, sopping wet as he was, even amid a 500 -mile -wide vortex and 100 -mile -per -hour gusts of wind that made us microscopic in proportion for some reason in this place,

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I felt safer than anywhere else in the world. Actually, that's not one of the more awkward ones. I picked a pretty milquetoast one, but I'll keep reading.

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Page 168. These were exhilarating times because Eric and I were just now developing the friendship

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I had yearned for since I had ever met him, but this hadn't come without complications. From our initial awkward encounter in the hotel restaurant nearly three months ago, it appeared that we were destined to face relational obstacles.

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After intentionally keeping my distance for a time, here's where it gets awkward, I found myself drawn to Eric, even yearning for his favor.

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Cautiously, I began to instigate an alliance with him, but there was a problem. Eric had been avoiding me at every turn.

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I didn't notice this at first because I'd essentially been doing the same thing to him, but once I started shadowing him, I found it almost impossible to gain his attention, and this discouraged me.

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Observing his interactions with other missionaries only led to frustration and even jealousy. In the few exchanges we had, he would make seemingly offhand spiritual comments that for some reason wedged themselves in my heart.

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You know that God rejoices more in one's sheep who is lost and found than the 99 who are never lost, right?

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He once said. He would impart random nuggets of wisdom that abandoned me. It was almost as if he was preparing me for something by testing me, but my patience was running thin.

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Yeah, I actually picked some of the less awkward ones to read. I'm sorry, I've been looking for shorter ones, but there's clearly, if you look at the

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MRM timeline for Adam's Road, there's clearly an infatuation that Mike has with Max, and it's pretty easy to see that Eric has a personality where he's able to manipulate

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Micah, and yeah, that's what I got. I think he was manipulating him from the beginning, when he saw him walk in the door, where he gave him just a little bit of attention, but just enough to make him curious,

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Micah, for example, and that's what I think he's doing in using specific methods of manipulation, specifically with forms of prophecy.

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Though it may not be specifically the patriarchal blessing, he knows what Micah grew up in. He knows exactly how to manipulate him to get him to think in a certain direction, and I think the book accurately reflects that with the relationship

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Micah longs with infatuation to develop with Max, where he gets to the point where I believe he says on one of the pages,

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I just want him to write Andy on the bottom of my foot. Really, really interesting.

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Eric's odd behavior left me bewildered. When he first looked at me, I wanted to sink into the floor on my belly and scurry away, but after this inexplicable reaction to me, all

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I wanted was for him to flip me over and write Andy on the bottom of my foot. I mean, where have we met before?

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Where did that mean? I tried to get Eric's attention again, but he rather rudely ignored me, and he goes on, anyway, just, I won't belabor this point, but if you wanted to read some excerpts, he's prophesying over Micah, there's some weird relational infatuation happening, there's some isolation happening, and I think an important point here is, we were all really excited about Micah in the band, because they were ex -Mormon, ex -LDS missionary, born -again

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Christians, who were singing scripture, and who, when they were sharing their testimony, there was no weird stuff that we could tell typically,

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I mean, it was just quoting scripture. Nobody knew about Max. Max was a pivotal figure to the band, and we were not given an upfront portrayal of just how charismatic and prophetic and integral he was, nor did we know about the sexual misconduct happening, which we'll talk about.

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Yeah, so it's like the Wizard of Oz, there's someone behind the curtain, and we had no idea about this individual behind the curtain who was puppeteering, in a sense, and we find that very nefarious character.

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So this is all happening while Micah's on his mission. Do you want to tell a little bit about what happens, and just briefly, perhaps the cliff -note version of Micah leaving

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LDS Church, the end of his mission, and some of that story? The end of his mission, what

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I remember is, he had a very dramatic zone conference where he talked about the pillars of his testimony, and it was very dramatic, and it sounded like he was talking about the sufficiency of Jesus over and against LDS prophetic tradition,

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Revelation, leadership, Book of Mormon, and the theme was Jesus was enough, and this sounded great to us.

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Jesus is sufficient, Jesus is enough, all I need is a testimony of Jesus. Now, there's a teaching of grace that comes along with that.

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All I need is faith in Jesus to be right with God, to which Christians say, Amen, Amen, Amen, and there is a suspicion that sometimes people have, are you saying that you can just live however you want, and it doesn't really matter, it has no bearing on your assurance, on your credibility, on your sense of authenticity?

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Are you saying that sanctification is not necessarily inevitable for the Christian life? A lot of us

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Christians are like, No, no, no, that's not what we mean, and I have to wonder, actually, I think that's what some people actually were meaning by the slogan,

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Jesus is enough. That slogan is a beautiful slogan, if we mean by it that Christ's work alone is sufficient to save people by faith only and not by works, and that it has transforming power apart from our merit, that kind of thing.

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But if what we mean by that is we can have this secret life of iniquity, of rebellion, then that's insidious.

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It gives Christ a bad name. I don't think I was answering your question fully. What happened, I remember being in Utah and meeting the band, and I remember being in Bill McKeever's driveway and them singing a song for us, and I was just mesmerized.

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I was excited that these guys had come to know the Lord, and I think they're really easy to publicize.

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They're a good -looking group of guys. They speak well. They sing well. They're quoting scripture. They've got great personalities.

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They're really hard not to love. They're easy to be enamored with and excited about, and I remember helping record testimonies.

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We went down to Temple Square at the North Gate along the street, and I recorded individual testimonies of the band members, and I put most of those up on YouTube, and I helped platform them.

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So our so -called countercult ministries and churches in Utah, you have to understand how personal this is for us.

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We helped endorse and push and platform and promote this band, and so we're not just pointing fingers at them.

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We're also reflecting at this point about the structures that God has put in place in the

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New Testament to help mitigate what happened, and we're thinking, how could

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I have better kept my eyes open to some of the flags that we look back and say, oh, it was right there, and I also feel a responsibility to put this timeline together because Christians have genuine questions about what happened and because a lot of believers who left

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Mormonism were genuinely encouraged by the content of their songs and their testimonies, which were largely just quoting scripture.

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So people are just, they're baffled. They're bewildered by what happened, and I feel like I've got to help tell the story about what happened to Adams Road because I helped,

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I was a part of the Christian community that was helping promote this band. Yeah, just to restate that point a little bit of how helpful

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Adams Road was for many exiting Latter -day Saints coming into Christianity. They were maybe one of the most, if not the most public ex -Mormon

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Christian groups that there was. And so I can't tell you the number of ex -Mormons that I've talked to who said,

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I was so helped by Adams Road. I've been so encouraged by their music.

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I'm so thankful for them. And so for us, part of the reason that we think it's important to do things like this episode or the timeline is because we want to deal straightforwardly with the issues here for the sake of not trying to sweep it under the rug.

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And we want to be upfront with those who have been aided by Adams Road, those ex -Latter -day

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Saints, and be very clear about what happened and even admit our own failings in not having the discernment or the wisdom in the past to look at some of the flags that were present.

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And so that's part of the impulse of wanting to do this. It's not for the sake of attacking with this kind of anger or vitriol just because we want something that's very clickable online.

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That's not the point. We want to help people and with dignity deal with difficult issues. I think this is an opportunity to do that.

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Yeah, I think this is a good point too. Aaron, what would you say to the individuals who are watching this that were negatively affected by Adams Road after hearing what came out, that their faith was shaken?

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What could you say to them? Well, I think about other bands in Christianity that have apostatized.

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I'm thinking especially of Gungor. Jars of Clay. There's a number

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I could list who are now progressive, LGBTQ affirming, or Derek Webb who is completely apostate now has rejected the gospel.

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And I'll tell you how I personally try to encourage myself when sometimes

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I just want to listen to some of the old songs that really encouraged me and blessed my heart when

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I was a new believer. And it's this principle. That music isn't owned by the musician.

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There's a spiritual ownership there. I think about this as the Hebrews leaving Egypt and taking all the gold of the

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Egyptians. There's a spiritual heritage we have and there's a spiritual ownership we have.

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God used the word in that music to bless you. And it wasn't ultimately from those apostate musicians.

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It was ultimately a gift from God. Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of Lights.

32:08

So, it might be hard such that I can't do it, but in moments where I can,

32:14

I can with a clean conscience go back and listen to the music that blessed me and say, thank you

32:21

Lord. Thank you for using Jars of Clay and early albums of Gungor and early songs of Derek Webb.

32:28

Thank you Lord Jesus for blessing me with your word, with that music. And I receive that as a gift from you.

32:35

And in a sense, there's a spiritual copyright and Derek Webb doesn't own it anymore. And that's my music now.

32:42

That music belongs to the church. It doesn't belong to the apostates. It belongs to God's people.

32:47

So, all of the good Adams Road music doesn't belong to Adams Road anymore. It belongs to God's people. Yeah. Perhaps we want to continue on with some of the story.

32:57

They leave the... No, no, no, no, that's good. They leave their mission. They start doing Adams Road. There's the

33:02

Edgewater Hotel, half of this. And then there's the Adams Road band, half of this.

33:07

And they're very melded together. It seems like the touring of Adams Road is distinct from what was going on at the hotel.

33:14

Yeah, a lot of us just saw the public tour in there. So, they're going to hundreds of churches. They're having events at public parks.

33:19

Across the country. Across the country and they're taking an RV around the country and there's a bus driver.

33:25

That bus driver is Max. And a lot of us only see the tour.

33:32

All we see is the songs and the testimonies. But what a lot of us didn't know is the home base for this band was

33:41

Winter Garden Hotel. Sorry, Edgewater Hotel in Winter Garden. And what we didn't know is that there was communal living there.

33:51

They called themselves the Axe II Community. And they were volunteers and people who lived at the hotel working, maintain, clean, service the hotel.

34:02

And there was a social isolation forming. There was some financial isolation.

34:09

I'm not sure. Control, you might call it. So, some of the band members were volunteers who were helping then or later at the hotel.

34:21

Steve, Kay, and then we just posted the testimony of Hannah Randall.

34:32

They were not paying any of their volunteers. They weren't paying those who worked the hotel.

34:39

The idea was if you needed something they would use the band credit card. So if you needed anything, say over 50 bucks, you had to get permission and there was only one card and you took it.

34:49

And so it was very awkward. Even someone, one of the band members talks about wanting to buy a gift for his wife and he had to get permission to use the band card.

34:59

So there was just strange financial singular control over people living there.

35:07

And Hannah, her testimony talks about how, now she arrives in 2019 so this is a bit of a fast forward but the way this situation develops, she was discouraged from having relationships outside the

35:23

Acts 2 community. And they were discouraged from becoming members at any other church.

35:29

So they were really locked down socially, financially. This was becoming more and more of a cult.

35:38

It started sharing features that we would typically assign to cultic features, cultish features.

35:45

I know there's different like theological, historical, sociological, and psychological features of a cult you can talk about.

35:52

But this was starting to have more of the social isolation control features. And at this point,

35:57

Micah is very much so the public figurehead of Adams Road. Even though there's still that background influence from Max who's now the bus driver, it does seem like Micah is from everyone's perception of things, the one who's calling the shots on most things.

36:14

Would you say that that's the case? Yeah. Yeah, he was head figure. And then you had

36:19

Max in the background. I don't think people understood yet just how important he was. Probably the most important event we could talk about next would be,

36:27

I think it's 2013. This is in the account of Steve K.

36:32

By the way, I really appreciate the brave, the courage, the bravery of these victims of telling their story.

36:40

It's one thing to hear someone use hearsay or scandalous gossip about what happened.

36:47

It's another thing to be able to look at the actual documented testimony of these people that they provided that's really helpful.

36:55

So, Steve K. does talk about, just to reiterate one point, he says, no member of the band had their own money.

37:02

None of us got paid. Max and or Micah had one bank account which they claimed was the band, one credit card which we all had to use if we wanted anything.

37:12

If I wanted a date with my wife, I had to ask permission to use the card. If I wanted to buy a gift for my daughter's birthday,

37:21

I had to ask permission to use the card. You get the idea. And when tax season came around, I was specifically instructed how to fill out my taxes to get the maximum payout on the return, all of which went back into Max or Micah's bank account.

37:36

Max enlisted all of the members of the band to help him renovate a home he had owned outweigh in the boonies.

37:44

So we're going to skip over this paragraph, maybe come back to it. On a tour of Southern Florida in the spring of 2013, we had parked our bus in the parking lot of a church in Fort Myers with a scheduled performance in the morning during the church's regular

38:01

Sunday service. I was up late in my bunk playing a video game on my laptop when suddenly I got a text from Max. He asked me to come to his bunk just down the short hall of the bus to talk.

38:11

I got out of my bunk and walked over to Max's where I discovered him shirtless. He asked me to lean in so he could whisper in my ear.

38:18

He pulled me close in a tight embrace, which I felt very uncomfortable with and I'm redacting details here that are unnecessary to specify publicly.

38:28

At some point, details just aren't, yeah, helpful. So there's essentially a...

38:37

Like a sexual proposition. A homosexual sexual proposition from Max that is grotesque and insidious.

38:45

It's awful. At this point, a light turned on in my head, sorry, my brain and I realized that this was not okay so I told him frankly that I did not feel comfortable doing that.

38:55

He then said that he understood and begged me not to tell anyone. I assured him I wouldn't do anything rash even though I didn't mean it.

39:01

I was just desperate to get away from him in that moment. I went back to the bunk, stunned and immediately grabbed my laptop and started typing my resignation letter from the band because I knew

39:10

I could not stay with them after what had just happened. Max probably heard me typing furiously and texted me again.

39:18

He asked me to talk one more time. When I came back to his bunk, he asked me to go out to talk in the 16 passenger van we had towed behind the bus.

39:27

He goes on to say in the van, I told him exactly how I felt about what had just happened, about my intention of leaving the band.

39:34

I'll just summarize at this point. Max prophesies to Steve that he wouldn't stay away from the band forever and that he would eventually come back.

39:48

He begs him just to keep quiet and not discuss what had happened to anyone. I think there was some manipulation here.

39:56

If you expose what just happened, this could harm the ministry and you don't want anything bad to happen to the ministry.

40:04

This is helping people. It's very manipulative. He comes up with a way to help bless his exit and to help financially secure a vehicle for them.

40:17

They had a vehicle that the band had in its possession. They told me they would find a car for me to drive back to Seattle and give me monthly payments of financial support.

40:29

This happens more than once in this story where someone who comes into contact with sexual misconduct in the group, they're not specifically told we're giving you these payments to keep you quiet.

40:47

I'm connecting dots. There's a kind of gracious exit, so -called exit, and then there's monthly payments.

40:55

Then when a person exposes or threatens to expose, the payments stop.

41:02

This is especially notable given the fact that they didn't have their own money when they were there.

41:08

They're not even getting paid when they're working there, but then when something happens and they leave, that's when they get the money.

41:15

That's like red flags all over the place. Yeah, that's like a settlement deal, really, just a settlement.

41:21

It shows the power of influence that Max truly does have over the band, though he's a bus driver, though he's behind the curtain.

41:27

Micah may be the front man. Look who really controls it. He's the one who controls it. Do you think, at this time,

41:34

Micah had any awareness of what Max was doing with the sexual advances on individuals? Yes.

41:40

As far as we can tell from the timeline, so this incident with Steve K and Max happens in 2016, and it's certain that prior to that, there's already a,

41:54

I'm not sure what to call it, a sexual arrangement between Max and Micah.

42:02

You said, when did it happen with Steve K? 2013, you mean, right? I'm sorry, 2013. 2013, okay.

42:07

That's the incident with Steve K. Right, right, right. But the homosexual, sexual,

42:14

I'll call it an arrangement between Max and Micah, and then later between Max and Joseph, that's happening years prior.

42:26

That's, to be clear, that's happening from the beginning of the band. That's part of what makes this whole thing so bad.

42:34

It's not just a one -off awful thing. It's a couple decades long.

42:40

From the very foundation and beginning of the band with the false prophet who has financial control, sexual arrangements, anyway.

42:51

We're talking 2006 to 2024. So the point is that in 2013, this is the first time that there's any kind of broader exposure of what's going on here.

43:02

Prior to this, everything had been private between Max and either Micah or I don't know the timeline on Joseph, Max and Joseph.

43:11

But here with Max and Steve, Steve, when he writes this, he actually reaches out, eventually, tells people about that.

43:19

Three years later. Three years later, so 2016, that's where you got that date from earlier. Yeah, it's either 2016,

43:25

I think 2017, Steve has the courage to reach out to the band.

43:35

Now I have to stop here and one thing I've learned walking away from this situation, learning about it, is

43:41

I am, I'm astonished and wow,

43:49

I'll just say this. It's surprisingly really hard for people who are victims of this to talk about it.

43:57

It costs them a lot to come forward. So when someone comes forward, now

44:05

I don't subscribe to the worldly evidentiary standard of it's conclusively true if someone comes forward.

44:12

I don't think that's true always. I don't think that's a biblical standard of evidence. But it's at least worthy of investigation.

44:20

It's at least, there's a level of credibility, there's a costly nature to coming forward with such accusations and it's really hard for a second or third person to corroborate if the first person doesn't have the courage to come forward and sort of eat the cost and the sacrifice of being the first person to come forward.

44:40

So I think it's in 2017, maybe 2016, Steve K writes a group, a set of messages or maybe a group message to members of Adams Road explaining what happened.

44:52

Gotcha, gotcha. So going back in time a little bit here according to the timeline, we find in April 29th, 2013,

44:57

Max is no longer listed on the board of the Book of Life Fellowship, Inc. It sounds like there's almost like a plan for some sense of maybe damage control if anything were to get out if this was after Steve's leaving, right?

45:11

And then we find in February 18th, 2014, Micah begins an email thread titled Accountability with those in ministry to Mormons.

45:19

Thanks for catching that. Yeah, not to push too far ahead. I think this is important right here. The replies that Micah has in terms of the accountability because not all of the information is actually true that he gives in this thread with people who are interested in finding out who their accountability is.

45:37

Can you explain that? A little context should help. Yeah. In the countercult ministry community, the only drama

45:47

I've ever substantially had, and it's just a few occasions, I've always discovered that the person who is causing problems either doesn't belong to a local church or won't tell you where they go to church.

46:05

And so it's not clear whether they have one or not. So it's only happened a handful of times. And so by 2014,

46:13

I don't know if this is a direct result of what I'm doing, but I'm starting to sound the alarm. If we're going to work together with people across parachurch ministries, even on the streets of Temple Square and then later

46:28

Provo, if people want to understand why do I ring this bell so loudly, I don't want to work with people who have alienated themselves from attachment to a local church where they're sort of the humdrum, normal, invisible.

46:45

We talk about accountability, but part of it's just the natural influence of living in community with other believers, the maturation.

46:52

The people we started realizing were problematic didn't have a healthy relationship with the local church. So that was starting to become a part of the discussion.

47:00

And I think that Micah caught wind of that and was like, oh, I need to establish my credibility in the countercult

47:06

Christian community. And so he writes this email. There's a group.

47:12

It's like a Google email group list called countercult cohorts.

47:17

And Micah sends a message saying that they have an accountability system. And so we're like, okay, what is this accountability system?

47:27

And he goes on to say, well, we have a network of 300 churches that we're accountable to.

47:33

And it kind of signaled, you squint at that and you're like, I don't think he understands the kind of accountability we're primarily talking about.

47:43

People who know you, who know you individually, not just your public ministry persona, but a local church who can hold the person accountable.

47:53

Yeah. I also think it's worth noting that at this point, there's no, as I understand it, no suspicion of anything going on.

48:00

There's no, no one has any questions about issues. And yet the issue of accountability is still very relevant and important.

48:09

I think that's important to note that even apart from visible issues, there was a desire for us to make sure that there's accountability.

48:17

Can I read an excerpt from some of this email here? And then maybe you can elaborate on it a little bit. I think this is very telling.

48:24

Eric Johnson, who we've had on before, you wrote an awesome book. Eric Johnson's great.

48:30

He's out here in Utah as well. Anyways, this is him and his response to Micah in this chain.

48:35

He says, a very appropriate response. First things first, the church elders should be involved in perhaps the parachurch organizations as a secondary resource since elders are supposed to be the spiritually mature of the church.

48:47

This is the right place to start. That's February 19th. So Micah responds the next day. Eric, to clarify, this process has already gone through the local leadership and body.

48:54

We are now expanding our biblical accountability to our partner ministries. That was February 20th. Next. Can I pause you? Yes, please.

48:59

There is an earlier email and there's a brother named Rob Savulka, who I love. And he was talking to a local pastor named

49:06

Brian. And Brian sniffed this out. I just have to give him credit. He was like, something's not right.

49:13

And so he asks a question, which Rob relays in the thread. He says, are they connected to a local church?

49:22

Are there elders that they submit to and are shepherded by? Are there families plugged into a local church with qualified shepherds while they are on the road?

49:32

And that just dropped heavy in the thread. And that's when you're... Oh, perfect. What you just read follows that.

49:38

Oh, perfect context. Thank you, brother. So Micah responds the 21st. He says, Rob...

49:44

Yeah, because Rob replies. He says, so what local church are you guys a part of? So he's asking again. Micah the 21st says,

49:50

Rob, Book of Life Fellowship located in Winter Garden, Florida. We are drafting a lengthy and thoughtful response to you about our ministry accountability.

49:56

Then Rob, who are the pastors and elders there? There he goes, asking again. Same day actually, February 21st.

50:02

And then we got Chip on here. He goes, does your church have a website? I looked and couldn't find one. Now here, this is really telling, guys.

50:08

Listen, Micah, we do not currently have a website. We are actually in the process of building one as we speak. However, we have outlined the basic structure of the church below.

50:16

Three of the members of our ministry, Joseph, Micah, and Matt are overseers and ministers of a local congregation of believers called

50:23

Book of Life Fellowship. This is by the state of Florida a legally recognized tax -exempt church. There is no pulpit preaching or sermonizing, just the teaching, exhorting, and reasoning of the word of God among believers.

50:35

Now there's a lot going on in that statement. Yeah. First of all, 1 Timothy 3,

50:42

I think it's the first paragraph, Paul says about elder qualifications.

50:48

They need to manage their own home well. They need to be above reproach. They can't be a recent convert.

50:57

And so, you know, there's not an absolute standard that I would point to to say someone has to have kids or they have to be

51:04

X years old, but there's a heuristic here. There's a really helpful guideline that bends us sharply in the direction of looking for older men, older men in the church when they're available.

51:15

There's different contexts and missionary contexts and sometimes the church has to just take the men that are available in the church, but the regular pattern is to look for older men who are vetted.

51:30

And so anyway, Mike is like, hey, us three young, you know, somewhat fresh ex -Mormon

51:36

Christian guys who are, you know, in the band, Micah, Matt, and Joseph.

51:42

And it's not even clear whether Joseph or Matt really see themselves as pastors. I mean, he's just throwing these categories around, but it's not, and he's like, oh, yeah, we have a 501c3 in Florida.

51:53

That is, you know, that's helpful at some legal level, but that's kind of irrelevant to this discussion. And what we learned later from members who were actually in the band and were in the hotel is they didn't really go to a, they didn't really have a church service on Sundays.

52:12

You know, they work in the hotel, and what they're doing is they're sometimes visiting a local church on Sunday evenings, but they're instructed not to join the church.

52:23

They're instructed not to become members, and they don't socially integrate into the church. And the way

52:29

Hannah describes it is Micah describes their visiting a local church on Sunday evenings as a blessing to the church.

52:38

Not that they're doing this for spiritual, their own spiritual health. This is because, like, they're the blessing, right?

52:44

Their presence is helping the church, you know, have some vibrant life.

52:51

But really what they're doing is they're having a Bible study on Wednesday nights. And they don't really have a, they don't really have a qualified pastor at this point.

53:03

And so, well, certainly Micah and Joseph weren't qualified. Certainly. Well, I mean, this just screams out loud.

53:12

1 Timothy 3 talks about how an elder has to be a man of one wife, a man of one woman.

53:20

One woman, man. One woman, man. These guys are not qualified. I'm not even convinced that if I had set them down at this moment.

53:27

Yep. Are you a pastor? I'm not even sure that that would be an affirmative. In the accountability, in the highest standard that he replies in the email is himself and two others.

53:37

Yeah. Yeah. But guess what? We are part of that church and we're the church, but we don't preach on Sundays. Well, he does say a little bit further down this thread.

53:44

This is important. Yeah. Go to it. He says, our church does have a head pastor that oversees our congregation, Pastor Rick.

53:51

And then later on, it seems that that claim is actually disputed that he was ever meaningfully involved in a pastoral oversight.

53:59

Maybe he attended a couple of times. It sounds like. He occasionally visited the Bible study. This was a lie.

54:04

This was deception on the part of Micah. This was a broadcasted lie.

54:10

There was no church governance here. There was no expectation of submitting to these four elders.

54:17

Whatever this he is playing fast and loose with categories and his story is changing as the thread goes on.

54:24

Now, I'm pointing my finger, but, you know, it's like, oh, why was

54:31

I so easily pleased? By how this thread ended. That's on me. Yeah.

54:37

I mean, Chip goes on to say, thanks. It wasn't clear on what you were saying.

54:42

Does your church have a head elder then like a pastor? And that's when he talks about Pastor Rick. So, I mean, we're kind of left with that, that, oh, we have a head pastor, it's

54:52

Pastor Rick and we just take his word for it. Now, again, to Bradley's point, we're trying to be super gracious here.

54:58

We're trying not to be super hypercritical. But, I mean, knowing what I know now going forward with similar situations,

55:05

I've got to be more vigilant. Yeah. Part of the value of having a local church is it's a particular expression.

55:15

It's a regular gathering. You participate in the ordinances or sacraments together.

55:24

You have membership at least informally. There's a sense in the New Testament where if someone bears the name of brother but is, say, sexually immoral, unrepentant, you are to,

55:37

Paul uses stern language, you are to purge this person. He says we don't judge those on the outside.

55:44

We take care of this on the inside. So, the whole idea is that we know who's on the outside. We know who's on the inside.

55:49

We know which people the pastors are responsible to shepherd. There's a mutual accountability between members in a local church.

55:57

So, there's a very particular, there's a particularity to a local church here. So, anyway, Micah's starting with, we've got accountability with 300 churches to, there's just three pastors.

56:08

He doesn't even mention Rick and then he goes on to, well, we've got Pastor Rick. He's our head pastor. And this, we shouldn't have been so easily pleased by this strange shifting story.

56:17

Yeah, so do we find that some of the power within Adams Road now has shifted from Max into Micah because we see

56:25

Micah actually sending messages that are lies? Or is Max still behind the scenes orchestrating maybe helping

56:33

Micah craft messages? What do you think is going on? I don't know to what degree. Yeah. I know that he's involved.

56:39

Okay. I know there's a relational connection there. I know there's an influence there. I mean, from what

56:45

I've learned, it's very clear that Max has an ongoing influence over the key players. Gotcha.

56:51

All right, well, let's continue on. So, yeah, he lies and then it just continues on.

56:57

Right? Right. And then we have, as of February 23rd, 2015, AdamsRoadMinistry .com boasts of 19 pastoral endorsements, 6 ministry endorsements, 49

57:05

Utah, those churches and many others. And then August 18th of 2015, they have a new member join,

57:13

Lila. Yeah, this is sad. Lila LeBaron comes from a fundamentalist

57:18

Mormon group that celebrates polygamy. And if you're a young lady coming out of a group like that, you've had a bad set of examples of how women are treated, of the exclusive beauty of monogamy hasn't been well modeled.

57:38

And so Lila seems to have a great story here. She's been rescued out of this fundamentalist

57:43

Mormon cult. And now she's going to live in the hotel with the

57:50

Adams Road, the Acts II Fellowship community. So, I mean, you have to understand she comes from a polygamous background.

57:59

And so, man, these guys have a special responsibility, especially if they're going to claim to be pastors at any level, to be a good shepherd, a good influence, a good big brother in Christ, a good, you know, maybe you could say a spiritual father in some ways, but there's an injunction in the

58:15

New Testament to treat younger ladies with all purity. Younger sisters in the

58:20

Lord. Isn't that 1 Timothy 5, I think? To treat these younger ladies with all purity. So there's a power dynamic here.

58:28

There's this younger lady who's fresh out of a cult, and she's now in this very vulnerable position, socially isolated, financially controlled at some level, and she's very impressionable, and now she's under the influence of these men in the band.

58:50

Well, it seems like after that, we have Steve sends his message to expose what happened.

59:00

We kind of briefly touched on that, but that's really the first indication that there's something sexually amiss outside of the personal knowledge of those involved.

59:14

And that after that, I don't know that there's really that much that happens on the timeline until Micah's book comes out, and then the beginning of 2024, maybe end of 2023.

59:26

I should mention that there's Richard Dutcher, who is an ex -Mormon Christian film director who's famous in Utah.

59:35

He did Singles Ward, and his project in 2019 is planning to do a very expensive movie with Micah.

59:46

I mean, he's trying to fundraise big money, billions project, and the idea is that it's going to take a lot of money to do this right.

59:56

And so I know about people in Utah who were really interested in giving a lot of money to this.

01:00:01

I don't know how much was given, but it kind of gives you a sense of just how much money and fame and reputation and attention

01:00:10

Micah was getting here at this point. He's going to be in this big, we call it a feature film. I'm not sure what you call it, but he's going to get the screen treatment.

01:00:22

In 2021, in May, Micah even, he begins to be listed as a pastor of Book of Life Fellowship.

01:00:32

Book of Life Fellowship is like the legal name. It's got a church charter. I looked up the articles of incorporation.

01:00:39

It's supposed to be a church, but this is essentially the legal entity behind the Acts 2

01:00:44

Fellowship. Right. No preaching on Sundays, just some Bible studies on some Wednesdays. Yeah. Man.

01:00:50

Okay. And then in June 1st, 2021, Harvest House Publishers publishes Micah's autobiography, Passport to Heaven, in which we both did interviews with him.

01:00:59

One thing I want to note is even when doing those interviews, everything Micah said, I mean, it's exactly the way

01:01:08

I would expect an evangelical to word things. The language, the story, it was very compelling.

01:01:16

You're very interested. It seemed, yeah, totally credible. There was,

01:01:22

I don't remember in the interview or in anything like that, any flags going up of there being problems.

01:01:29

And so just to reiterate that this really was totally out of left field, all the things that we'll get to in just a moment.

01:01:36

We're unaware of this. There are other people even involved with Adam's Road who were unaware of this.

01:01:42

So it was very much kept under wraps, kept secret until all of this came out just in the last few months. Yeah, I should stop to speak well of Matt Wilder.

01:01:52

He early on was able to exit the hotel and lived offsite with his wife and went to, was attached to a local church.

01:02:01

And it sounds like that set him up for success and that he was able to spiritually grow and mature and have a healthy relationship with his local church.

01:02:10

And he wasn't a part of anything we're about to explicate.

01:02:16

Okay, so after the book is published, something changes. In July 2nd of 2021, it appears that there was a

01:02:24

Kentucky property purchased. Can you explain that? Yeah, there's a really big plan by Micah and Max to purchase this land and to build this property out in Kentucky, in Stanford, Kentucky.

01:02:41

And the idea is that they're going to be, approximate this as like a meeting center, retreat center, a camp, a place for people to go to and be influenced by the band.

01:02:57

And they, I mean, they had big dreams. I think Max had a more apocalyptic spin on it.

01:03:03

You know, sort of his ideas were preparing for the second coming. And there's an excitement among the volunteers at the hotel to go and help build up this property.

01:03:17

And so it was a sort of a privilege if you got to go over to this property. And, you know,

01:03:24

Hannah talks about being really excited about being a part of this big vision that Micah was casting.

01:03:29

But there were some strange things like Micah insisted that they build one big house for all the families and volunteers.

01:03:39

And someone spoke up and said, why if we have the money, and they did, why don't we just create different houses for different families?

01:03:49

And Micah insisted that they all have this communal lifestyle in the same house.

01:03:56

And there was even plans for Lila to be on the same, I think, floor as Micah and his wife

01:04:03

Alicia. So they purchased this property. People donated big time to make this possible.

01:04:12

So, I mean, one of the tragedies here among others, is people who really believed in the mission of Adams Road, even at times put their big chunks of their retirement into this.

01:04:25

Did they have the full awareness of exactly what was going to be going on there at Kentucky with the one house with all of the people?

01:04:33

Like, were they putting on a face to Christian organizations? Are you talking about the people? Did the people who were donating know that?

01:04:39

Yes. Yeah. Did the people who were donating know that? Or you don't think all that information was given? I think the vision was clear.

01:04:45

Yeah, I think it was overt. I don't think anything was hidden about the basic functions. Yeah, I mean, so they purchased the property.

01:04:54

And some of the families are, I think Stephan announces in December of 2023, plans to move to Kentucky.

01:05:06

Let's see here. By God's grace and provision, our ministry has obtained a sizable plot of land about an hour south of Lexington, Kentucky, which will be utilized for a threefold mission and purpose, training and equipping the saints for the work of ministry, preaching the gospel to the lost, supporting a community of ministry team members and volunteers.

01:05:28

Many of our team have gone to the land over the past two years and invested several months of labor to turn this vision into a reality.

01:05:36

Our initial primary focus has been building living quarters for the team of ministry volunteers that will be relocating to Kentucky.

01:05:43

Now, Hannah talks about some of the band members being shot down harshly when they proposed having different properties built for different families.

01:05:56

That was really interesting. Do we want to move up now to Joseph's confession?

01:06:02

Yeah. So in March 2024, if I have my details right, Joseph Warren, praise

01:06:10

God, is convicted by the Holy Spirit, evidently, with the weight of sin.

01:06:18

He doesn't feel like he can keep a secret anymore about what's been going on. So he confesses to his wife what's been going on.

01:06:27

And I think I can share this much according to the documentation on this timeline. This is on mrm .org

01:06:34

forward slash Adams dash road. There had been not only a homosexual arrangement between Max and Micah, there had also been a similar arrangement between Max and Joseph.

01:06:51

And I don't even want to really talk about the details there. They aren't really helpful. But there also had been what we might call, those of us in the

01:07:04

Ministry of Mormons community, what we might call spiritual wifery component to this, where Micah had taken

01:07:13

Lila as a second wife, spiritually justified, spiritually explained, condoned.

01:07:28

Very obviously with the influence of Max, the false prophet. This isn't just adultery.

01:07:33

This is ongoing polyamory, maybe is a better term for it.

01:07:39

Right. Because he can't legally get married to another individual, most likely in the state of Florida. Right.

01:07:45

Or Kentucky. It's not de facto polygamy. Right. Legally speaking, it's polyamory.

01:07:51

It's bigamy by another standard. And this is all really messed up because some of the volunteers, they're single ladies and they don't have any dating relationships while they're working for years with the hotel.

01:08:10

And Lila is playing along about the benefits of and the spiritual superiority of the lifestyle of a single life.

01:08:21

But all the while, she had been essentially functioning as a polyamorous partner to Micah.

01:08:30

And then... The one who came out of polygamy. Right. That young lady.

01:08:36

How old was she again when she joined Adam's Road? I don't know. She was young though. She was young. Okay. And then Joseph was having polyamorous relationship with Micah's wife.

01:08:51

So there's an ugly web here of false prophet arranging homosexual acts with these two men.

01:09:03

And then Micah's wife shared with Joseph. And then

01:09:09

Lila, who had come from a polygamous background, was in an arrangement with Micah.

01:09:20

Tried to be real careful with my words here. Yeah. So this is an ugly multiplied sin of polyamory, homosexuality, false prophecy, and misusing

01:09:34

God's word to justify all of this, by the way. So that this is sort of in the spirit of the abuse of Acts 2.

01:09:40

This is love. It's all about love. And love is what justifies this being doable.

01:09:49

And there's also a sense that the outside world can't handle this.

01:09:55

There's secret teaching. There's something we can do that the outside world can't. We're special.

01:10:01

We're helping usher in the second coming. We have a special communal living. Hannah talks about a disparaging of normal Christians and normal local churches.

01:10:14

They do that, but we live the Acts 2 communal lifestyle. And then this bled over into the sexual misconduct.

01:10:23

I want to point out that the theological justification of this is what, in my mind, puts it in an especially egregious category.

01:10:32

Because I understand, I'm not condoning it, but I understand a Christian who is led astray by their lusts and temptations into sin.

01:10:41

That happens. It's terrible. Requires repentance. And you have to deal with that if it's a public ministry figure.

01:10:47

But the thing that makes this especially cultish is the theological justification for it.

01:10:56

To me, that puts it in another category. And it's a holy arrangement that God condones it.

01:11:01

God approves of it. It helps express unconditional love. When there's, at times, concern expressed about seeming inappropriateness between Micah and Lila, the person expressing concern is told that they're just envious.

01:11:20

I mean, it's all terrible. And I'll add one more factor here, is that Lila is a younger lady.

01:11:29

Micah, relatively, is an older man. Relatively. And, I mean, that's,

01:11:37

I don't know what to call that. Exploitative. There's a power dynamic. There's a spiritual...

01:11:44

Authority. Authority. Fatherhood. Maybe that's terrible. He's the figurehead of Adams Road.

01:11:51

In all reality, there is a power dynamic there. The New Testament doesn't have nice terms for this stuff.

01:11:56

This is... It's a second Peter. I mean, it is...

01:12:02

This is satanic. This is demonic. This is not normal. This is multiplied depravity.

01:12:09

It reminds me of Hebrews chapter 12, in terms of trying to justify something that is so actually horrible.

01:12:18

In a sense, Micah is trying to be like, he's part of the house of Jacob. He's part of the children of God.

01:12:24

But what the Bible says, I think he's more like Esau than he is ever like Jacob. Because in Hebrews chapter 12, it states this.

01:12:32

It says, starting in verse 14, it says, And by it may become defiled.

01:12:47

I'm not saying Micah had any form of root of bitterness, but listen to this. And I think that has a lot to do with when all of this comes to light from Joseph's testimony, even how

01:13:09

Micah replies with what happened. There was no true seeming repentance with his reply.

01:13:16

Sexual immorality initially did look like he was repentant. Okay. Well, I think it's important to give, to back up just a little bit before that.

01:13:26

So Joseph confesses this to his wife, and news starts spreading.

01:13:33

And on May 1st of 2024, there was a meeting of ministry leaders and pastors in Utah.

01:13:41

And at that meeting, Jim Catlin, who's a pastor up in Brigham City, Main Street Church of Brigham City, who, did

01:13:51

Joseph reach out to him? Yes. Joseph reached out to him. He presented a statement that was the first public exposure of these things.

01:14:01

It was the first time that this had been heard and understood. And I should note that Jim, poor guy, this guy helped also platform

01:14:14

Adams Road with the really well done set of testimony videos back in the day called, I think,

01:14:19

Sacred Groves. And for relational reasons and for historic reasons, he found himself at the center of needing to help with the situation.

01:14:30

So he flies all the way out to Florida, and either flies or drives up to Kentucky, and with another pastor, they sit down and confront

01:14:41

Micah. Micah is initially not all forthcoming.

01:14:47

He's not entirely, so he's not entirely repentant. He denies it initially, as I understand it. He denies his relationship with Lila, initially.

01:14:55

And so there has to be some follow -up phone calls, and he initially comes clean. He does initially come clean.

01:15:02

Oh, sorry. Not initially, but subsequently. After prodding, yeah. But I just want to speak well of Jim here.

01:15:07

Jim is pausing his own pastoral ministry, at least local to Brigham City, and just,

01:15:16

I mean, he's doing what he can to sit down with people and sit down with victims, and he's going out of his way to try to help people repent, try to help people process, try to help people come up with a plan for repentance, not for restoration.

01:15:36

And so, I mean, Joseph, he's clear. This is not a path to restoration of ministry.

01:15:43

He's done. I am done, and he seems completely clear about that. There's no hope of coming back to ministry.

01:15:50

And there's a plan given to Micah for what he needs to do next. Go ahead. Well, I'll keep going.

01:15:57

Go for it. Yeah. So by the time this May 1st event happens, what you have is the summit, and it's a meeting of ministry leaders throughout

01:16:06

Utah who are encouraging each other, really from different philosophies of ministry, different churches.

01:16:14

We were both present. We were both there, and I didn't anticipate this drop in it when it came, but,

01:16:20

I mean, it was just a time of mutual encouragement, and it seemed like the best way to help promulgate an announcement of what had just happened with a level of detail that we could then take and sort of process as a community on how to disseminate this to interested parties.

01:16:40

So, for example, ex -Mormon Christians who then hear about Adub's Road and need to process, and we want pastors to be informed, ministry leaders to be informed.

01:16:50

At this time, though, it really did look like there was a promising path forward for Micah in terms of repentance, and so we were all, there's a lot going on here.

01:17:03

We're trying to give them a little bit of space to repent. We were also trying to share the basics of what had happened, and then there were victims involved, and this is really complicated, and then there were multiple guilty parties who were drafting their own confessional documents.

01:17:23

They were explaining what their participation was in it, and so this was unfolding really fast, and some of us at this time were like,

01:17:31

I think this is being addressed. I think the right people are writing their own documents detailing what their participation was, but after May 1st, it was kind of frustrating because was it happening as fast as we thought it would happen?

01:17:50

The documents weren't coming as fast as we thought they would come. There was this kind of awkwardness in this time period because at this point, people knew that something was up because Adams Road had shut down.

01:18:00

They had acknowledged that they were closing their doors. They were no longer going to be touring and whatnot, and they even had plans that summer to tour around, and they had canceled all those, and so people initially were just overwhelming gratitude and thanksgiving towards them, but then after May 1st, there was...

01:18:20

Can we talk about the Adams Road announcement? Oh, yes, please. You want to read that, Andrew? Yeah, I'll go ahead and read that.

01:18:26

So the Adams Road announcement, this was April 22nd of 2024.

01:18:32

It states, After nearly 18 years of ministry, Adams Road has closed its doors. We praise God for what

01:18:37

He has done through this ministry. We have been greatly blessed by the overwhelming love we have continually received from the body of Christ for nearly two decades.

01:18:44

Our prayer is that God will continue to use each one of us in the next chapter of our lives to glorify His name and proclaim the saving gospel of Christ to all the earth.

01:18:51

Thank you for your support. Grace and peace to you. This is before the May 1st meeting. I want to acknowledge... Like a week before.

01:18:57

Right. And now that we know what we know, this statement is absurd. This is terrible because it gives the impression of a positive chapter ending to their ministry.

01:19:11

The book is closed. I even posted on Facebook, Well done and good and faithful servants.

01:19:17

You have finished the race well in this ministry. I'm really proud of y 'all brothers. You guys did great.

01:19:24

Because you were ignorant to the news. So proud of y 'all. And I got a private message from somebody that said, there's way more to this story.

01:19:30

And I ended up having to take that down. And Hannah, who was a volunteer at the Edgewater Hotel, she writes concerning this statement,

01:19:38

I was confused by the direction that we were going in at that point. If such a horrible sin had occurred and if Adams Road was such a public ministry, pause, the degree of influence you have, the categorically public nature of ministry you have, et cetera, informs the kind of specificity and publicity of the confession you need to give.

01:20:03

Right? So if this is, you can imagine occasions where something could be done more privately. In this scenario, this needed more.

01:20:11

This needed more. So Hannah writes, if Adams Road was such a public ministry that never had any true oversight or accountability, why were we posting such a pithy statement?

01:20:23

Didn't we owe it to the public to share the truth? Stephan explained that it would be hurtful to those involved to make information public.

01:20:32

It would not allow them to heal properly, but only plunge them further into disgrace. So there's this sense, well, maybe we should avoid,

01:20:40

I mean, there's no mention of sexual misconduct. There's nothing. There's nothing negative about that.

01:20:45

And so this is legitimately sweeping things under the rug at this point. By the band, by their over posture, they look good.

01:20:53

They look great. Now, this is probably Micah who's making that, right? That statement.

01:20:59

At least him. At least him, yeah. We might not know for sure. But at this time, Joseph is repenting of this, exposing this.

01:21:11

It's just worth noting that. So then a week later, then that event happens, that May 1st event.

01:21:17

And then there's confusion as people say, well, what's really going on?

01:21:23

But there was no official statement yet that there had been a problem from Adams Road or anyone involved with Adams Road.

01:21:30

The only statement that had been given was by Jim Catlin at this point at that meeting.

01:21:36

And so there's this time period of, I don't know what it is, a few weeks, a month maybe, where.

01:21:42

Yeah. If you wanted to point a finger at the community and say, y 'all should have posted something more specific and more public.

01:21:49

We were waiting. I think May was the time period you could look at and say, y 'all should have done more. And maybe you're right.

01:21:55

I mean, I'm learning a lot through this. Maybe. I mean, but we're all waiting for people to release their own statements.

01:22:04

We don't want to leak details. It's kind of like, I might have to give details at some point, but I would rather you tell your own story.

01:22:14

I would rather you specify in your own words. This is the sort of thing where I don't want people to trust my hearsay, my words.

01:22:25

This starts to look like terrible gossip that goes through a chain of people. It's so much more helpful if we can get people to write things down in a document that I can point to.

01:22:35

And so during the month of May, though, things are not happening as fast as they should. Yeah, I mean, the heart of Christians is when we hear something like this, people who claim to know

01:22:43

Christ have a relationship with Jesus, is that they repent. Right? So you're hoping that the individuals that are part of this would be like Joseph would be.

01:22:52

And it does initially look like they are. Right. Kind of. Kind of. So May 25th, near the end of the month, nearly a month later, is when, as I understand it, circa

01:23:02

May 25th, Micah releases a confession on passporttoheavenbook .com

01:23:09

and also initially on Adams Road, was it Adams Road Band or just AdamsRoad .com? Something like that, yeah.

01:23:15

And it's on both of those. And it is essentially a acknowledgement of sexual misconduct and then a lengthy gospel presentation, an acknowledgement that those who trust in Christ and repent will be forgiven.

01:23:32

But I want to read for you the language that he uses here. It says,

01:23:40

I confess with unbearable shame and embarrassment that I have been involved in reprehensible sexual misconduct and moral failing during the time in ministry.

01:23:50

During my time in ministry. Now, for those who had been at that May 1st meeting, and that statement felt woefully ambiguous as to the seriousness and significance of what had been going on for the past couple decades.

01:24:07

Yeah, I probably should rewind and help people understand what we understood in early May. So the statement that was released

01:24:15

May 1st said the following. In his confession to us, Joseph alleged that with the approval and direction of Micah, a sexually polyamorous group within the band had been active for a decade.

01:24:28

Micah's wife willingly participated in this polyamory. And when a new female lead vocalist joined the band, she was included as well.

01:24:37

In Joseph's experience, these four were the only participants in the polyamory. While there is a caveat to that statement,

01:24:45

I will share in a moment. Even those closest to the ministry were completely unaware of this resident immorality.

01:24:53

So that's like Matt Wilder, completely unaware of what's going on here. They simply had no idea whatsoever.

01:25:00

According to Joseph's allegations, it was able to be sustained for such a long time because of the controlling use of the false doctrines of, quote, spiritual wifery.

01:25:12

Those devilishly twisted rationales, which had been so useful in the 19th century to serve

01:25:19

Joseph Smith's libido. So there's a connection here to Joseph Smith that's undeniable. A really unfortunate...

01:25:25

There's multiple threads we could point to later. Speaking of polygamy, and more specifically the wives, I should add at this point that while the two women in this mess willingly chose to participate, the persuasiveness of this falsehood was not insignificant.

01:25:41

While these four were complicit in this regular sexual immorality, there is another person

01:25:46

I must make mention because of the diluting influence that he injected in the band.

01:25:52

From its inception, from its inception, from the very beginning, in 2006, there existed in the ministry an insider,

01:25:59

I should pause here. This is Max. Max Blanchard. So many people are afraid to say his name at this point.

01:26:10

Why? Legal threats. Initially, Max had threatened to sue people, and he had a lot of money.

01:26:21

He's a lawyers on retainer, ready to trigger, pull the trigger.

01:26:28

So people were legitimate... People threatened legally.

01:26:34

And so people are trying to get their ducks in a row. One of the reasons why I wanted to be so careful with this document, this

01:26:43

MRM timeline, I wanted to make sure we could document the connection to Max by name.

01:26:51

And we were able to do that with that early testimony of that Latter -day Saint who was involved in the early

01:26:57

LDS mission that knew of Max. So the question is, is the Eric of Passport to Heaven the

01:27:05

Max who is the bus driver? And so we were able to find documentation about his purchase of the hotel, its renovation.

01:27:14

We were able to get more testimony from Steve, Hannah. And so the connection is very clear, very documented now.

01:27:23

And if Max wants to legally go after anyone, I think it'd be really difficult for him at this point.

01:27:29

So I think part of what makes this timeline so helpful is it's helping people...

01:27:34

When I published an initial version of the timeline, someone came forward and said, I feel like I can talk now because it's documented now.

01:27:45

And so just to explain here why Max isn't being named in this particular document, sorry. From its inception in 2006, there existed within the ministry an insider, this is

01:27:55

Max, who, according to Joseph's firsthand testimony, repeatedly propositioned male band members for homosexual favors.

01:28:02

I personally talked with the previous band member, Steve, who left the band in 2013 solely because of this person's homosexual propositioning.

01:28:10

More disturbingly, this insider also considered himself sufficiently spiritual to portray himself as a prophet to the band.

01:28:18

And to a degree, some members respected him as such. It is an understatement to say that his influence was toxic.

01:28:25

I'll stop there. So that's the statement, again, on May 1st that the ministry leaders and pastors in Utah heard.

01:28:33

And then the statement I read by Micah, you know, almost a month later, says sexual, what do you say here?

01:28:41

Reprehensible sexual misconduct. That's right. And so for our knowledge base, we're saying that there's an impulse here amongst

01:28:49

Christians. We want to see repentance. We're eager for genuine repentance.

01:28:55

And so we get that and there's a kind of internal conflictedness because on one hand, yes, praise

01:29:02

God that there's been an overt statement that there was sexual misconduct. That's a little bit awkward because the degree and the duration of that had been so extreme that that line was so ambiguous.

01:29:16

Does that mean pornography? Does that mean one -off affair?

01:29:22

What does that mean? In either case, worthwhile to shut the ministry down, but it was so ambiguous that it raised more questions than I think it actually answered.

01:29:33

And so things developed even further after that. And it was interesting. I've read

01:29:38

Joseph's confession and then I've read Micah's confession. Micah's confession is drenched with the rhetorical flourish of religiosity.

01:29:50

Joseph's confession was just more straightforward, mea culpa. It did not dress itself up.

01:29:57

It was very overt and I appreciated that. But at some point, Lila moves.

01:30:05

So she's in rehab at a place in, I think, California. And she, circa

01:30:13

July 22nd, Lila returns back to Edgewater Hotel.

01:30:20

This is just baffling. This is just mind -boggling. And she writes, and this has become public, that returning to Micah is, quote,

01:30:31

I know that this is, I know that, I'm sorry. I know this is God's will over my life.

01:30:37

As the angel of the Lord said to Hagar, so God has commanded me go back and to submit.

01:30:43

So just for the listeners here, Micah's already made a testimony saying sexual misconduct, moral failure.

01:30:50

And then after that, yes, she returns to who? Micah. Micah. She goes back to the hotel and what we learn later is that Micah starts to spiritually justify, doctrinally, biblically, he attempts to justify some form of polyamory or polygamy, taking care of Lila in a marital kind of way with an ongoing relationship.

01:31:17

And so I think that's what triggered or accelerated

01:31:22

Main Street Church's release of this statement called The End of Adam's Road. And then you have a statement that comes later from,

01:31:32

I think it's a church in Arizona that had a connection to Lila sounding the alarm about her return to the

01:31:39

Edgewater Hotel. And I can say that this was, they did this with the spirit of secrecy,

01:31:49

Edgewater Hotel. So the idea is they wanted her to return, but they didn't want people to know it.

01:31:55

And when people found out, they were pressured to keep quiet. And when people were going to talk about it, they were threatened with legal action.

01:32:05

This is the last few months we're talking here. Yeah, I mean, so this, when this drops,

01:32:11

Micah's returning back to polygamy, polyamory, whatever you want to call it. Lila, this poor young lady,

01:32:17

I mean she's an adult, she's a consenting adult in some level, she's choosing to reenter this, but I do see her as a victim under the influence and authority and in a situation where she was vulnerable, she was absolutely taken advantage of.

01:32:33

Yeah. You take a lady out of a fundamentalist, polygamist cult into your commune, you isolate her, and then you take sexual advantage of her.

01:32:45

While you're publicly posturing yourself as a public figure, a spokesperson for the gospel, enjoying a great reputation, and you're going to have this great big movie made about you.

01:33:01

So she returns back to the hotel, and there's pressure on people to keep this quiet. There's even legal threats.

01:33:09

And this is when it was like, okay, we're done. I mean, this is, we're, we're going to get stuff documented as fast as we can.

01:33:19

We're not waiting for any more confessions. We're putting this on the timeline on MRM. That's what triggered me.

01:33:26

That's what, that was the, that was the, in some sense, it's like, I'm not at the center of this.

01:33:31

I don't, you know, I don't have all these relational connections with the band members at the same level that others do, but I thought, you know,

01:33:40

I can do a timeline. I've got friends who can help me look up historic data that links

01:33:48

Max Blanchard to the Eric of the book. I know people who are afraid to talk publicly about this.

01:33:56

I'm not afraid. I can do this, and I can do this in a way that's documented, and that maybe this will help other people talk about this publicly.

01:34:03

So that's why the timeline, the engine started going, and there was some help.

01:34:08

I have a friend named Craig. You know Craig. He was tremendously helpful. He was a sleuth, just helping find documentation, legal documentation, on Book of Life Fellowship, on Adams related

01:34:22

Max Blanchard stuff. Super helpful. So we just started putting this timeline together, and this was with the full support, by the way.

01:34:29

Nobody in the community, we're in, nobody's objecting to this. Please, Jim Catlin, please, yes, do it.

01:34:36

Thank you, and so we do get an addendum from Michael Wilder.

01:34:41

He goes on to say, hey, I'm not stepping back into public ministry. Okay, I guess that's something, but he basically says,

01:34:50

I want to live a quiet, private life now, which basically says, I want to live polygamy. Don't give me a hard time about it.

01:34:57

I don't want to be a public figure anymore. So, I mean, what was really helpful is, after initially publishing this timeline, people started contributing more information.

01:35:12

We're volunteers, we're band members. I was able to get more statements. If this didn't happen fast enough, and I'm sorry, maybe

01:35:22

I could have done something more. Initially, I wanted people to tell their own stories, but at some point we just had to pull the trigger. This is a public ministry of public influence with public import.

01:35:32

It's a living document then, still being stories added if people are coming forward, this timeline.

01:35:40

Yeah, I've added just recently some excerpts from Hannah Randall. Very helpful.

01:35:46

She's brave. I've added a testimony of Steve K. Very helpful.

01:35:52

I've added a bunch from Matt Wilder. Innocent, especially innocent victim of this. Steve K is innocent.

01:35:59

Matt Wilder is innocent. There's a bunch of innocent parties here. And I encourage you to read their own words.

01:36:06

It's a story people will be telling in 50 to 100 years, and it's best, it's almost like an act of love and service to future

01:36:14

Christians to give them something they could point to and quote, and not just the hearsay and reckless gossip of a

01:36:28

YouTuber. So what's the conclusive thoughts that we have, not about the specifics, but about the categories here, about how

01:36:41

Micah has functioned, about its relationship to biblical standards for church leadership, church governance, ministries.

01:36:49

Curious your guys' thoughts on that. Yeah, my initial thoughts right now in terms of his last amendment that he stated, it's those who isolate themselves seek their own desires, right?

01:37:00

We have somebody who claims Christ, but it appears that the very foundation of their relationship with Christ, they were practicing things that are antithetical to the

01:37:11

Christian life. Like it says in 1 Corinthians 6, it says, or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

01:37:17

Do not be deceived. Do not be deceived. If Micah's listening to this, I believe in the application of this text right here,

01:37:23

Paul would be speaking directly to you, looking at you dead in the eyes. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

01:37:37

Straight up. And I think you fit many of those categories. Unfortunately, sexually immoral, adulterer, idolater, and one who practices homosexuality, thievery, you've stolen from churches with lies.

01:37:50

I mean, unfortunately, that's the truth. My hope for you, where if you were to hear this section of scripture right there, that God through the power of the

01:37:59

Holy Spirit would convict your heart. I honestly, I'm going to say this. I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think you never knew

01:38:05

Jesus to begin with. By their fruits, you shall know them. And right now, at least in your life, from what we know of the fruit that you've been given to people, that this is a rotten, nasty fruit.

01:38:15

And you've taken advantage of many, many, many people. In the long run, my hope is this. In such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

01:38:24

Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. You need to repent. You need to repent, man. I mean, that's where my mind is at right now.

01:38:32

I know you guys know a lot more information than I do, but... You are no David. Yeah.

01:38:37

But if God can forgive David, he can forgive you. Yeah. Amen, man. Like, God has a list, a record of all of our wrongs.

01:38:44

Colossians states that it's a record of debts that stands against us with its legal demands. And Micah, the only way for that to be put aside is for it to be nailed to the cross.

01:38:54

It has to be nailed to the cross. And you've got to understand, the day you die, the year before, the white throne of judgment, and God lays this record out before you, it's going to be so long.

01:39:04

You read the prophecies from the major prophets, minor prophets, and their records they have against the nations. Yours is going to be much longer before the living

01:39:11

God. And those are spoken in mostly in the prophetic perfect. God will make those things happen.

01:39:17

And if you are not in the house of Jacob and you are part of Edom, I'm sorry, my friend.

01:39:24

That's a place you don't want to stand. You don't want to stand there. The great irony in some of this is how often

01:39:31

James 2, faith without works is dead, is used as a weapon against some of the beautiful doctrines of Christianity, a justification by faith.

01:39:41

The irony is that the misuse, the conversation is pushed away from what James is actually saying with that text.

01:39:48

He does mean the faith without deeds is dead. Our deeds are an outward external evidence of the genuine change of our hearts, of the real regeneration, the new birth that we're given.

01:40:01

And so when you look at the lifestyle and the works and the fruit of someone and they're rotten and they're bad, we have reason to not think optimistically about the genuineness of faith.

01:40:15

And that's exactly what you're talking about. What we fear is that there's no genuine faith.

01:40:20

And that's why to call to repentance and faith and trust in Christ. Christ really will forgive and cleanse even the most heinous, awful, wicked sins imaginable on the day in which you repent and turn in faith to Christ.

01:40:36

But when we look at the works and the deeds, they're not good fruit, bad fruit. Faith without works really is dead.

01:40:43

And that means something. Yeah, just to echo exactly what you said there, Andrew.

01:40:49

Amen, brother. We don't want early converts, recent converts who have come to faith to be put in a position of ongoing public influence where they're unusually tempted by Satan to go down a path of pride.

01:41:07

So we do our brothers and sisters in Christ a service. Say, you know, they convert, they share their story, great.

01:41:14

I'm not trying to be legalistic about what you can and cannot do in a situation like that. But we do our brothers and sisters a service when we encourage them to marinate and to mature and to just sit and heal and grow in a local church.

01:41:32

And we do them a service when we refuse to give them an ongoing position of public influence and leadership when they're too early in their walk with Christ.

01:41:41

We're doing that because we love them in the body of Christ. I've had someone come to faith in Idaho, and he called me, he said,

01:41:50

I want to be on your YouTube channel. And I was like, seems kind of an unstable situation.

01:41:57

Why don't you just camp out at a local church for some years? And it seemed to him so legalistic and mean and hyperjudgmental and hypercritical.

01:42:09

But I just, after years and years and years of watching a number of occasions of people being unstable,

01:42:16

I mean, let's think 100 years out. We want the next generations to value the life of the local church and discipleship over and against YouTube clicks, over and against clickbait.

01:42:35

And there's a kind of intrigue to exit narratives. You cannot be saved, you could not have the

01:42:41

Holy Spirit and find exit narratives really fascinating. That does not necessarily mean it's of God.

01:42:46

So what we're looking for is an exit narrative that really ultimately points to Christ and trusts his word, not merely trust him for salvation, not merely trust him for who he is in his nature, but trust him for how he has prescribed the life and body of the local church to best function for the discipleship of his people.

01:43:04

Yeah, Christ is alive. He's ruling and reigning today. And he watches over his church and individuals who look to deceive

01:43:14

God's church God will find you out. He will make it known.

01:43:19

He will expose the lies. That's a dangerous thing to fall into the hands of a living God. And right now life may be very difficult for Micah, but in all honesty, there's so many people that have been hurt from Max and Micah that there is no restitution available for them in this life from the things that have been done to them.

01:43:38

And if you think it's hard now, if you don't come before the Lord and true repentance, it's going to be much harder when you look

01:43:47

God in the face. And that's a terrifying, that'd be a terrifying sight to behold, unfortunately.

01:43:54

Anything else you guys might want to say before we... Police our own community. I mean, we prize justification by faith only so much that we want to hold the line on faith without works is dead.

01:44:07

Right. So we love grace. Therefore we trust its power to transform people.

01:44:12

Therefore we police the boundaries of our community with respect to the credibility of a repentant confession of faith.

01:44:20

That's, you know, there's a theme in the gospel of Matthew of binding and loosing. When the church gathers, it has the authority to express unity in the binding and loosing relationship that a believer has with the body of Christ.

01:44:37

And there's an expressed unity with what's in heaven and what's on earth. Why is a local church so spiritually, jaw -droppingly significant?

01:44:45

It has a responsibility to guard the table and to define who is in and who is out.

01:44:54

That progressive Christianity can't handle that. But the New Testament teaches that the body of Christ, there's a purity that's kept.

01:45:03

When someone is unrepentant in their sin, there's a casting out, not for the sake of ultimate judgment, for the sake of their own good, for their own restoration eventually.

01:45:13

Boundary maintenance is not an enemy to love. Boundary maintenance is not an enemy to evangelism. It draws a clear line in the sand and says, you're over there, please, for your own sake, for the gospel, come over that line, show the credibility of your confession of faith and your repentance and join the community of those who come to the table equally before the

01:45:36

Lord forgiven. But if you're going to call yourself a brother, and live a life of sexual morality or greed or swindling, reviling the church, according to 1

01:45:45

Corinthians 5, has a responsibility to do boundary maintenance. And I know it's tough, because that's local church stuff.

01:45:51

In the para -church context, we've got to ask ourselves, okay, what does that look like? Because para -church organizations don't have church authority.

01:46:00

We depend on the cooperation of believers who are living in submission and accountability to their local church.

01:46:06

That's why it's so important for para -church ministries to require that you're either in a local church or you're in a quick transition to a local church for some providential reason.

01:46:17

It's not a legalistic standard. It's a, we want to make sure that this sort of stuff doesn't needlessly happen.

01:46:23

It's not a silver bullet, but we want to make sure we put up the guardrails that God has given us for responsible cooperation between believers in para -church ministries who themselves are submitted to the local church.

01:46:37

I think that's well said. Absolutely. We got to learn from this. We have to learn. We have that line in the sand and we have to make sure we're policing para -church ministries in that way.

01:46:46

And of course, trying to get them at a local church under the authority of local elders.

01:46:53

Absolutely, brother. I couldn't agree more. Thank you for your work on this, by the way. Thank you for your transparency even with this conversation.

01:47:01

Is there anything else you might want to say, Bradley? No, nothing specific. All right, guys. Well, thank you for joining us now.

01:47:09

Again, this is a solemn episode, but continue to pray for all those that have been involved.

01:47:15

Read this timeline. Bring your petitions before the Lord and let's pray that our hearts will be positioned in such a way that we're praying for repentance.