Unveiling the TRUTH From Gospel LIES with @thebeatagp

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So let's get into some trouble now. Let's go ahead and talk about some tongues. And what are some ways that Christians are getting the gift of tongues wrong?

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Hey, come in as a homosexual and you can stay that way because we affirm your lifestyle. We affirm your transsexual lifestyle.

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We affirm your abortion. We're going to help you get more. Do we as a church have a plan for discipleship?

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I would argue that many churches don't have a plan. That's right. That's measurable. That's what we're looking for in discipleship.

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We're looking for the fruits of the spirit. I mean, Jesus also didn't talk about whether you should have sex with a cat or a dog or a horse, right?

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So I guess I was influenced and raised by the more reformed side of things and then getting to know Demartin Lloyd -Jones and understanding his arguments.

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So I've even shifted, Alan. So five years from now, 10 years from now, what will be the next big threat, you think?

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Probably where this is headed is I think more and more churches and individuals are going to start.

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Alan Parr. So Alan, I met you, we were just talking about this. I met you in a very cold part of Dallas back in January.

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You were giving a talk at an event. Man, but you've been absolutely killing it on YouTube.

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So I was wondering if you don't mind talking about that. I could have sworn in January, the first time

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I saw you, when you left, I was thinking to myself, he's not going to make it back. There's no way. There's ice all over the ground.

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It was insane. Yeah, it really was. It was. And it's so interesting because we have about one of those days per year that the weather gets to be crazy here.

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I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where we're used to that kind of weather. The city is equipped to deal with ice and snow and bad roads.

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But here in Dallas, it doesn't happen that often. So when we get that ice, the whole city kind of shuts down.

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And it just so happened to be on the day where this great conference that we were both at, people weren't able to get in.

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They weren't able to fly in. And unfortunately, a lot of leaders weren't able to make it, but it was a great event and it was good to meet you and just crazy how that happened.

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Yeah, no, it was really great. Tony Evans was there. That was a really refreshing time for me personally.

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The Lord did a lot with me there, even through your teaching. So again, thank you so much for doing that.

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But man, you've been killing it on YouTube and God has blessed your endeavors there. And it's just been a—I've been proud to watch this.

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I'm sure a lot of my brothers and sisters in Christ, we're sort of watching you just go. We're like, go! Keep going,

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Alan! Keep going, you know? And it now has led to you writing this book called Seven Lies that Distort the

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Gospel. So maybe we can start there. What caused you to want to write this book?

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Where did the idea come from? Yeah, so I tell people that this book has kind of been writing itself in my life for really the past 25 years.

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And really, at the beginning part of the book, in the introduction, I really talk about my experience with false teachings in the church and kind of how

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I got sucked into just a really bad, toxic church environment whenever I was in college, and kind of how that led me down a path for a few years where I was just confused about doctrine, confused about practices in the church, and just didn't quite understand what was truth, what was error.

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And as a result, I was believing things and praying for things and trusting God for things that really God had never promised because I wasn't biblically literate.

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I wasn't really able to discern truth from error. And as a result, I really just kind of went down a path that I'm thankful for now because it produced in me a desire to help other people come out of those types of false teachings and deceptions and things of that nature.

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And so as I began my ministry about 25 years ago, I just started to observe people and started looking at how all these false teachings started creeping up in the church.

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But more importantly than just intellectually people believing them, it really affects how they live their lives, how they view

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God, what they expect from God, what they think is a promise from God, all these different things. And that just led me to just really want to write a book that hopefully helps people discern truth from error, hopefully encourage them to come out of some of the false teachings that are going on.

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But if nothing more, to really spark conversation and just get people thinking about whether what they're hearing from the pulpit is actually true or whether they really need to be more discerning about it.

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Yeah, I hear you. Would you say that what you experienced is very common for Christians across this country?

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How big of an issue is this, being misled by false teaching?

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Well, I think it's huge. It's huge. And specifically, as we talk about one of the false teachings that I bring up in the book is this idea of the

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Word of Faith movement and just the prosperity theology, prosperity gospel. That is really probably one of the fastest growing, sadly, false teachings that are being promoted.

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Because as I say in the book, it kind of preys upon every human being's two greatest desires, right?

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Who does not want to be rich and who does not want to be healthy? We all want those two things in life.

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If we could guarantee that we'd be healthy and wealthy, life would be easy, at least what we believe it is.

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And so for a lot of younger Christians kind of coming in, and a lot of times they kind of lure you in with the worship that's really, really emotional and highly kind of energetic.

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And so as a younger Christian, you're kind of attached to that. You're kind of just kind of taken in the moment of everything. And then they kind of weave their theology into that.

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And before you know it, you have a younger Christian and they're being taught, hey, just trust God. Speak it into existence.

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God will do this for you. God will do that. And unfortunately, sometimes it can take kind of a heartache or something negative happening in their life where they realize, wow, man, maybe the things that I've been taught are really not true.

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So I think it's a huge issue. Yeah, I agree. Boy, so we have a viewer question.

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So when I realized that you were going to join me for this, I put it out to our community at Wise Disciple.

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And somebody asked a question I thought was very interesting, which is, is there a moment in time?

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Can we put our finger on a specific moment in time where false teaching started creeping into the church?

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Or has this just always been a facet going maybe all the way back to the book of Acts or something like that?

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Yeah, well, it's funny. I would actually take it back a little further than that. When we look at the Old Testament, the

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Old Testament has all sorts of examples of people who were false prophets.

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And we look at the book of Jeremiah, chapter 23, where God uses the prophet Jeremiah to encourage the people to steer clear of these false prophets.

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So even back in the Old Testament, you have people who claim to be standing for God, and yet they were leading people astray, saying they were having dreams, and God says, hey,

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I've never sent these people. Their dreams are not from me. So you have this concept of people in authority deceiving people who are trusting these people.

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And then you fast forward to the New Testament, and you open up the book of really all of the gospels, and you can see that Jesus even predicted that there would be false teachings and false prophets and false

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Christ who would come. And also, even during that time, the Jewish people were under quite a bit of false teachings as well, the

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Pharisees and some other people who were just kind of teaching people false doctrine. And then after Jesus ascended, you have the church.

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And at that time, you had a lot of people who were false teachers in the church promoting doctrine, faith plus works.

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In other words, hey, yes, you have to have faith in Jesus Christ, but you also have to obey the Old Testament Mosaic law perfectly.

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And if you get circumcised and you place your faith in Jesus Christ and you put those two together, then and only then will you be able to be saved.

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And then even after that, you had things like Gnosticism and Docetism and Asceticism and Antinomianism and all these different false teachings that are just permeating the church.

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And so I just think that it's always been an issue, and the day in which we live in now is no different.

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It's just coming in a different form. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as you're saying that, the thing that comes to mind immediately for me is the

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Apostle Paul, you know, to the Galatians, oh foolish Galatians who has bewitched you, you know. Yeah, so I agree.

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It makes me wonder, and so this is probably a question a little bit later on in this discussion, but if it's always going to be a feature, then where is this headed?

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What's the next big sort of misleading false doctrine that we can anticipate?

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But I'll ask that another time. So let's get into some trouble now. Let's go ahead and talk about some tongues, and let's see.

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So what are some ways that Christians have been getting the tongue issue, the gift of tongues, all wrong?

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And I ask that question because I've shifted my own view on tongues. Just sort of, you know, starting out very,

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I guess I was influenced and raised by the more Reformed side of things, and then getting to know D. Martin Lloyd -Jones and understanding his arguments.

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So I've even shifted, Alan. So what are some ways that Christians are getting the gift of tongues wrong?

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Yeah, well, let me just first acknowledge this, because I always want to be very careful when we talk about this, because, you know,

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I have good friends who, you know, maybe see things differently, and I just want to say that there are some different views on this, and we want to respect people who have different views, and we don't want to make this a non -negotiable break fellowship with people who see things differently than we do.

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This is not an essential aspect of the Christian faith, so I want to make sure we're clear on that.

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I also want to say that, you know, as it relates to the gift of tongues, what

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I really talk about, excuse me, in the book is not so much making an argument as to whether the gift of tongues is still a valid gift for today or whether it has ceased.

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I am personally not a cessationist. I'm not one of those people that believes that the gift has ceased.

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I don't see enough scriptural evidence for that, but I think that it is significantly being misused in the church in a lot of different ways.

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You know, one of the ways which is not as popular anymore is this idea that if you don't speak in tongues, then you're not a

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Christian, because this is the sign that you're a Christian. You have to speak in tongues or you're not a Christian, but people have kind of moved away from that to some degree, but the next idea is that, hey, speaking in tongues is the initial evidence of the

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Holy Spirit, so if you want to give proof, if you want to give evidence that you have the Holy Spirit inside of you, you have to speak in tongues, and if you don't, that means that you really haven't received the

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Holy Spirit, which really is a false doctrine because now you're introducing the possibility that somebody could place their faith in Jesus Christ, they could be a genuine

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Christian, and they could be exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit, being empowered by the

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Spirit, experiencing the conviction of the Holy Spirit, being led by the Spirit, but then because they don't speak in tongues, they don't possess the

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Holy Spirit, and so this is really a false doctrine that creates this two -class type of Christianity where you have the haves and the have -nots, and then that creates even more division because now the people who are the haves tend to kind of see themselves as a little bit more superior because, hey, we have this ability to communicate with God in this private prayer language, and you need to do that, so much so that they try to push it onto people who don't.

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You have even churches that have classes that teach people, try to teach them how to speak in tongues, and it creates, if I'm being honest, it creates a lot of anxiety in people who don't have this gift because they feel like they're kind of a

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JV Christian. They kind of feel like they're kind of less than, and they're not going to be all that God has for them until they actually speak in tongues.

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And then the last one, there's several, but another big one is just this concept of speaking in tongues in a church environment without an interpreter present, and quite frankly to me, this is the easiest one to debunk because when you look at 1

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Corinthians chapter 14, Paul is so clear that if an unbeliever or an uninformed

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Christian comes into your church, and they're not familiar with tongues, and you have all these Christians using their spiritual freedom, and they're just speaking in tongues because they want to do that, but there's no one there to interpret it.

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Just from a logical perspective, think about the type of confusion that would cause in a church environment, but also from the standpoint of a non -Christian, they'd be like, okay,

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I'm going to leave this church because this is craziness. So that's just a few issues that I have with how the gift of tongues is being used in today's church.

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JG Yeah, my concern has been that focusing on the gift of tongues, in terms of the corporate body of Christ, the brothers and sisters in Christ, it turns the arrow of direction in the wrong direction.

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And what I mean by that is, you know, with the gift of tongues, it's very personal, or at least that's usually how it's expressed today, is this is a very personal private language between you and the

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Lord. When you bring that into a corporate environment, which is where I see Paul being primarily concerned with order, you know, don't get out of hand, don't make people who are brand new who are walking into the church for the first time think you're all crazy.

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That ends up not equipping the saints for the work of the gospel, right?

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Ephesians 4. So that's always been my concern. I mean, is that what you see too, that it's almost, you're focused on the wrong things instead of focusing on equipping your brothers and sisters?

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AC Right, and that's what Paul said. He said, hey, you know what, I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you, but in church,

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I would rather speak, you know, five intelligible words, I believe that's what his number was, instead of 10 ,000 words in a tongue.

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So he's like, hey, in church, let me kind of make sure that the words that I'm speaking in church are edifying people, because if I speak in my native tongue, you can understand what

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I'm saying, and the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14, people will be convicted by what

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I'm saying, right? If I say, hey, you know, you need to be a better husband, you need to love your wife, you need to sacrifice for your wife, an unbeliever could come into that church and say, wow, you know what,

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I'm not a Christian, I don't believe in the Bible, but this sounds like something I probably need to do, because my wife's been telling me this, so you know what, man,

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I'm convicted. But if I'm in church and I'm just speaking in tongues, and there's no interpreter, how is anybody going to be edified by that?

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JG Right. Yeah, that's right. That's really good. Do you have advice?

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Because I mean, you started off by saying that there are brothers and sisters all around us who are sort of on two positions on this side.

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Either you believe that the gift of tongues is active, and they belong to churches that participate in the exercising of those gifts, or you're kind of more in the circles that I run in where they tend to lean more cessationist.

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Like, how can we love each other well, Alan? Because it seems like we're all looking down our noses on each other.

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Yeah, well, I've got a couple of friends that are heavily, very highly charismatic, and I genuinely believe that they're

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Christian, and I consider them friends, because I look at the overall work that they're trying to do, which is to bring people to the

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Lord and bring people to faith. And while we disagree theologically, the core tenets of the

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Christian faith we agree on, the deity of Christ, the bodily resurrection of Christ, the inerrancy of Scripture, you know, the triune nature of God, and the basics.

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And so I try to celebrate those things and try to leave room for there being some disagreement or different aspects about the

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Christian faith that we might see differently on. But that doesn't mean that we can't have healthy conversations about our differences.

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It just means that I don't think that we should allow those differences to cause us to break fellowship with people who might see things differently than we do.

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Yeah. I think it just begins with spending more time with people who don't think like you, and getting used to that, and getting used to hearing things that you disagree with, but learning to love anyway, you know?

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I think that's really good. So, you know, progressive Christianity is something that you tackle in the book, and I was really grateful to see that, because, boy, that just seems to be a hot -button issue with a lot of Christians.

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I know on this channel, I didn't start off a wise disciple going, let's look at woke theology or progressive

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Christianity, but man, that, whenever I do something related to it, it really blows up.

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So this is still such a big issue. I remember coming to Christ and hearing about the Emergent Church, and that was the big thing to be worried about, and, you know, now it seems to have morphed into progressive

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Christianity. But this is a question that I asked Elisa Childers, actually, and so I think it's just beneficial we keep talking about this.

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How did progressive Christianity get started, and what are some of its fundamental teachings?

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Because it's very unclear for a lot of us. Yeah. Well, I'll first of all say that, you know, progressive

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Christianity is not necessarily monolithic, you know, which, you know, for those who don't know what that means, it's not necessarily where they believe this one thing every single member of who claims to be a progressive

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Christian believes the exact same thing. There are some, you know, leeway in terms of people who claim to be a progressive

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Christian in terms of what they believe. But there are some, what I call in my book, tendencies of what they believe, but before we get into those, kind of, how did it get its roots?

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Well, it really has its roots in what's called postmodernism, and postmodernism is really a reaction against, or in response to, modernism.

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And modernism was the idea that truth can be understood, truth is available for everyone, and that there's this overarching story that, you know, kind of permeates culture and time and different things like that, whereas postmodernism kind of came and said, well,

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I don't think so. I think every culture can really write their own story. I don't think there's an overarching story or theme that every culture has to, kind of, adhere by, or some sort of code that everybody has to go by, or also this idea that truth can be discovered.

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Postmodernism would come against that and say, well, I don't know about that. I don't know if truth can really be discovered, and if it can, you know, what might be true for you may not be true for me, because, you know, your truth is your truth, and my truth is my truth, and there's no such thing as, kind of, absolute truth, and truth is kind of relative.

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And so, you know, you have this kind of thing happening in the culture, and then over time, you know, it started creeping into the church, these type of ideologies.

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And as you mentioned, the emergent church back in the early 2000s, somewhere around that time frame, you kind of have this group, which there were some good things that they were up to, but, you know, unfortunately there were some issues where it's like, okay, now we're going to start to question some of the traditional

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Christian views, and it's okay to start doubting these different things, or is this really true?

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Should we look at Scripture a different way? Should we maybe view Jesus a different way? Things like that. And so it created a lot of deconstruction.

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People started deconstructing their faith, and ultimately causing doubt, and then kind of leaving their faith, and things like that.

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And then so the Progressive Christianity kind of got its roots in that, and basically many of the views that we have held near and dear to our faith for two millennia are starting to be kind of watered down and questioned.

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And so when you look at Progressive Christianity, there's really, you know, several tendencies.

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You know, one of them is a, you know, a relaxed view of moral issues.

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And this is a huge one, where essentially, you know, someone who claims to be a

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Progressive Christian will kind of use the idea that, well, God's view on certain things has progressed.

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And so as culture progresses, therefore Christians need to progress along with the culture.

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Like, the idea that homosexuality is, you know, taboo, and that's kind of off -limits is kind of old school, right?

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The culture has progressed, and therefore Christians, you need to get on board with this. It's here, it's part of life, and we need to be able to accept that.

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Or a woman's right to be able to, you know, do whatever she wants with her body in terms of abortion, and things like that.

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Hey, you know, maybe back in the 1920s that was kind of shunned upon, but the culture has changed. Women have rights now.

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Women have more power now. So therefore, church, you all need to progress along with this.

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So Progressive Christianity. So these moral issues, but a bigger issue is just the low view of the work of Christ, the atonement of Christ, or even the person of Christ, right?

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Many, many Progressive churches, they see Christ as more of kind of an example for us to follow.

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Like, he's an example for us to follow, but that's really kind of all he was.

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Whereas in Christianity, we believe, no, he is the Son of God. He's the Savior of the world who came to die for our sins and take away the sins of the world.

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Another tendency that we need to be careful with, with regards to Progressive Christianity, is a low view of Scripture.

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This is super, super important because, you know, when you look at Scripture for us as Christians, you know, it is the foundation by which we base every single decision, every moral issue, we filter it through Scripture.

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Whereas Progressive Christianity would look at Scripture differently. And even on several websites, as I point out in the book, they say that, well,

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Scripture, the Bible is really more of a guide. It's kind of our guide to experiencing a greater life and things of that nature.

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The Bible is more than a guide. It's not a handbook. It's not sort of guide that we just go through. And so there's a lot of, it's more so taking the parts of the

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Bible and primarily the New Testament because many Progressive Christians kind of shun the

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Old Testament. Why? Because in the Old Testament, where you have a lot of those clear teachings on homosexuality and, you know, morality and things like that.

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So, you know, they'll take bits and pieces of the New Testament, things that maybe highlight like Jesus' love for groups that are different, right?

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They'll highlight those types of things. Well, Jesus loved the outcasts. Jesus loved the lepers. Jesus loved all these groups.

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And so therefore we should, which brings me into another point. I could talk about this all day, but it brings me to another point, which is the idea of inclusivism.

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That's another tendency where they essentially like to redefine, I say they, they'll be careful.

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Many Progressive Christians like to redefine the idea of what love is. It's like, well, love means to include everyone, which means, hey, even if they believe differently, we want to include them.

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And it's okay to include them. But many Progressive Christians are what's called

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O -N -A or excuse me, many Progressive churches are what's called O -N -A, open and affirming, right?

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Open meaning, hey, come on in. That's great. I think every church needs to be open. All people need to be able to be open to come in, but open and affirming means, hey, come in as a homosexual and you can stay that way because we affirm your lifestyle.

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We affirm your transsexual lifestyle. We affirm your abortion. We're going to help you get more. And so these are just some of the issues that we see in many churches who claim to be

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Christian, but they're really—I hesitate to use Christian when

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I talk about a Progressive Christian church. Right. No, I hear you. Particularly because of the sorts of—I mean, if I can use this word, because there's all kind of buzz around it—but presuppositions that are brought to the table when you're a

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Progressive. I mean, you talked about a very low view of the Scripture. You know, I've noticed that usually the language or the way that they talk about this is, well, the

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Bible was written by men who were very ignorant in the Bronze Age, who had an experience of God, but did their very best—they tried really hard, guys, to sort of communicate that, but in their flawed, patriarchal sorts of ways.

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Which then, if you extrapolate that out, leads to Brandon Robertson saying something like, Jesus was racist, you know, to the

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Canaanite woman, because he talked about dogs or something. So, yeah, I hear you.

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It's hard, because I feel like a lot of Christians that I talk to, they don't even know—you've barely scratched the surface,

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Alan—they don't even know how to approach talking to a Progressive Christian. So maybe I can ask you that. How can a

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Christian, a traditional Christian, talk to a Progressive Christian, when many seem to begin with this postmodern philosophy that seems weaved inside everything that they teach about their faith?

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And the rejection of absolute truth being one of them. Well, that's a great question, and I think, you know, one of the first things we have to do is we have to be able to understand where they're coming from, and that's why, you know, in my really kind of drill down these five tendencies and really, really kind of give solid examples.

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So that way, as we're talking to someone who says, oh, yes, I'm a Christian, and then you start asking them questions in conversation, you can start to listen out for these five tendencies.

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And whenever you start to see these things and hear these things, you say, oh, okay, this person is more of a Progressive—someone who claims to be a

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Progressive Christian. And so then, you know, I think we need to be able to first be loving towards this person, but also we need to make sure that we understand from a biblical perspective how to debunk some of these views so that if this person claims to believe in the

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Bible, we can take them to the Bible and show them, hey, you know what? Yeah, the

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Bible does teach love, but if love means to affirm someone's desire to be who they want to be, what would that look like in the world?

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What if somebody says, well, I'm a pedophile, and that's who God has created me to be, so can you just accept me the way

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I am? Or I'm a murderer, right? Or I'm a racist, and that's just how I was raised, and that's how

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I am, and so you need to affirm me because that's what love looks like. Love means just accepting people the way they are and not asking them to change who they are, right?

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And so we try to show people how to debunk some of these frameworks or foundations, if you will, of what progressive

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Christianity claims to believe, and we kind of break those things down. Yeah, I hear you.

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It poses a problem, because now that I'm hearing you talk, Paul does say that love rejoices in truth, but then wait a second, if progressive

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Christians, they reject the idea that you can know absolute truth. That seems problematic, you know, when talking about love.

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Exactly. Well, oh man, I have so many questions about that.

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So what I'm trying to do with the listener, and by the way, so we're going to go ahead and make the recommendation right now that everyone go out and get misled, and not only that, but get a couple of copies, you know, one for mom and dad, for neighbor, brother, co -worker, all that stuff, because it really is a great book.

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It's very concise. The problem with pastors, so I'm a former pastor, Alan, you're a pastor, like, the problem with pastors is concision, so I understand that, but this book is really great, and there's a lot of heft behind it.

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There's a lot of punch to it, and I really appreciate that. Let me do this. I'm going to read you something from chapter 7 of your book.

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I thought this was really great. Maybe we can talk about this for a minute. So in chapter 7, you say, some of the responsibility for why we have so many professing

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Christians lies with churches, which have largely failed in their most important mission, which is making disciples.

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I was a discipleship pastor at my local church for years. I've always struggled with other churches, as now my role is to travel around and sort of pastor pastors, and I see this breakdown, this lack of understanding with discipleship.

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So my radar went up when you said that, but can you explain what you meant there, Alan? Yeah. Let me once again say that I think that there's many, many churches out here that are doing just some phenomenal things, and I think that the job of being a pastor can be very, very difficult.

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There's a lot of things to navigate, as we both know, and so I want to commend all the pastors out here who are really just doing their best to try to keep it together and teach the

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Word of God as faithfully as they can from week to week. With that being said, I see what

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I would consider to be a sad trend that is happening in our churches, right?

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We wonder why we have so many Christians who are confused about life and confused about what it means to be a

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Christian, what it means to be a follower of Christ, and we have to ask ourselves the question, do we as a church have a plan for discipleship?

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Is there a clear plan to take every single person in that church from being a baby

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Christian to a spiritual Christian, as Paul would delineate in 1 Corinthians chapters 2 and 3?

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I would argue that many churches don't have a plan. What's so interesting for that is that we have a plan for our small groups.

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We want to get people into our small groups, our life groups or family groups or whatever you want to call it, and we have a specific plan.

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We train up small group leaders. We encourage them to join. We make announcements from the pulpit.

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Hey, join a small group if you're not in one. We do that, right? We have building fund campaigns.

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We have all sorts of other things. We have a plan to get people to volunteer their time and to serve.

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We even have services where we will have people after church and will come and learn about how you can serve and get involved at the church and things like that.

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But I'll be honest with you, and I don't know, maybe you can chime in on this, but I don't see a lot of churches, unfortunately, have a clear plan for discipleship where when somebody gets baptized, we say, okay, you know what?

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We want to get you right away into our one -year -long discipleship program, where in this time, we're going to teach you how to pray.

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We're going to teach you about worship. We're going to teach you how to intercede for other people. We're going to teach you how to study the

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Bible. We're going to teach you about the importance of fasting. We're going to teach you about the importance of giving and being a good steward of your money.

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We're going to teach you the importance of Sabbath rest in your life. We're going to teach you what it means to be a loving husband and a godly father or whatever it is.

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By the time you go through this program, we're going to teach you theology so that you have a foundation for truth and error.

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I don't see a lot of churches focusing on that. And then we wonder why a couple of years down the road, people are deconstructing their faith or they're not coming to church anymore or they're so disillusioned when things come into their lives that they're not ready to handle.

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We've got to get people into the Word. We've got to get people knowing what they believe and why they believe it.

32:30

Yeah, I hear you. I have so many thoughts on this, Alan. I'd love to continue the conversation.

32:37

This is probably another context, another episode of something or other. But a couple of ideas that I want to maybe just toss the ball back your way and see what you think about it.

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One is that I was just talking to a pastor about this literally last week, but activities are conflated to be outcomes.

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And so I think what you're describing, right? So we have small groups and a lot of us have starting point classes, right?

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This is how you get up involved in the church and serving. Those are all activities. But that's not the outcome.

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The outcome, according to Jesus Christ for a disciple, is in John 15. The evidence of a disciple is fruit.

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And now we're talking about measurable things. I've said it this way.

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This is an urban myth. I don't think this actually happened, but it's an urban myth. There's a famous old seminary professor who would teach teaching.

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He would teach young up -and -coming pastors to teach. And what the professor did famously was he brought everybody in, and he said,

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I'm going to show you everything I know. I'm going to teach you all things, but I'm not going to give you a test. I'm going to have you go and teach what

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I'm teaching you in this class. I want you to go and teach it to somebody else week by week.

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And then by the end of the semester, I want you to bring that person in, and I'm going to test them, and that's your grade.

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That's right. That's measurable. That's what we're looking for in discipleship. We're looking for the fruits of the

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Spirit. What do you think about that? No, I definitely think that's true. I mean, at the end of the day,

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I mean, that's really, if I'm being honest, that's kind of what the gist of that seventh chapter that you read about, or you quoted from, is all about.

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As a matter of fact, the title of the chapter is, Can I Be a Christian and Not Grow? Or, Can I Be a

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Christian and Not Be a Disciple? You know, and I think, unfortunately, we have a lot of people who profess to be

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Christians, but they're not showing any fruit in their lives. They're not growing spiritually. And if you look at their lives, not just maybe for the week or month or year, but maybe over the lifespan of their

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Christian walk, maybe let's look at their life for 20, 30 years. There are a lot of people who claim to be

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Christian, maybe because they had an encounter with God whenever they were young, and they walked the aisle and said, hey,

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I want to be a Christian. But since that day, if they're honest with themselves, there's been little to no fruit.

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There's been no desire to want to do anything spiritual. There's been no desire to want to read the

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Bible, to have a relationship with Jesus. When I look at Luke 14, where Jesus talks about, if any man come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

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He's talking to an audience of people who did not know him, and it says, hey, this is what

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I'm expecting. This is what I'm requiring of anyone who wants to be my disciple, a relationship, a relationship.

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And as a matter of fact, even in Matthew chapter 7, when we come to that famous chapter and passage where Jesus says, hey, depart from me, evil workers of iniquity, because what?

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I never knew you. I never had a relationship with you. Yes, you were prophesying in my name and casting out demons in my name, and you even said to me,

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Lord, Lord. So saying the right things and doing the right things isn't going to make you a

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Christian. It's about relationship. We have to have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. And I think a lot of people, sadly, think that they have that, but there's no fruit, like you mentioned in John 15.

36:16

– That's good. Well, I mean, so I'm trying to think through how a viewer or a listener, they're hearing this, and they're clapping as they hear you talk about this.

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Now they're motivated. How do they approach church leadership with this right, correct information in mind?

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Because again, a lot of church leadership, they just think discipleship is something that it's not.

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They think it's a class or something like that. So what is the best way that a congregant can approach church leadership in your opinion?

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– Yeah, I think that's a great question. I mean, I think it starts with going to your church and asking them a very serious question.

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What is our discipleship plan? What do we have in place here at the church?

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And maybe even go to them with the perspective of, yeah, because I would like to go along that journey, right? I would like to make sure that I am a disciple of Christ so that I can turn around and help someone else become a disciple of Christ.

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Because at the end of the day, what we're after is not just for me to be a disciple, but for me to be a disciple maker, which is a big difference.

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I want to be trained to be able to make disciples as well. And so I think that I would start going to the church and saying, hey, what is your plan to help people grow spiritually?

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And just listen to see what they have to say. And you might be surprised to know that they might throw a few things out, but many churches, they don't have a clear plan.

37:45

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And then, of course, prayer too, right? The questions are received in a great way.

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But I love that. You begin with a question because you're really trying to do what the pastor is doing too.

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Like, we're all trying to do the same thing, which is fulfill the Great Commission, which entails discipleship. That's really great.

38:03

We're almost done. I can't believe it. It's going by super quick. I got a couple more questions for you. We're talking about the book

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Misled, Seven Lies that Distort the Gospel. So in terms of lies and the distortion of the gospel, now

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I'm going to ask you to put on your prophetic hat, so I don't know if this makes you comfortable or not. But what – so this is a two -part question.

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In your opinion, Alan, what is the biggest threat to the church right now? And then maybe as you look down the corridors of time, maybe five years from now, ten years from now, what will be the next big threat, you think?

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Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that the biggest threat to Christianity right now is biblical illiteracy.

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I really do, because I think that the more biblically literate we are as a faith, that it affects every area of our lives.

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First and foremost, it affects our ability to discern truth from error. But second of all, it affects the way we live practically, right?

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The more Bible that we know, the more the Holy Spirit is able to convict us about or bring back to our remembrance, or it affects our relationships, right?

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It affects how I treat my wife, because I'm taking the Word of God in, and I'm looking at, okay, wow,

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I need to be patient. I need to be loving. I need to be gentle. I need to exercise self -control.

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And so I just think that biblical illiteracy is a huge problem, because there's also not a solid foundation for making decisions in life, and what is true and what is not.

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Who is God, and what am I expecting from God, and is this a promise from God? It's not. And not only that, from an apologetic perspective, there's a lot of Christians who just don't know what they believe and why they believe it, and it's very sad, because we have the truth.

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Out of all religions in the world, we have the truth, and yet you see people from different cults or different religions, and they are trained almost from birth to know what they believe and why they believe it, and they can defend it.

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And yet you have Christians who, unfortunately, and this isn't meant to make anyone who's listening feel bad. We want to be sensitive to that, but it's a reality that there's a lot of Christians that don't really know if they're being honest what they believe and why they believe it, and they're not able to defend what they believe.

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I'm not saying we have to have every answer for every question, but we do need to be biblically literate enough and theologically sound enough to be able to have a good foundation for what we believe and why we believe.

40:42

I think that's one of the biggest things that's affecting the Church today. And will be, probably, moving forward.

40:48

Absolutely. Once again, considering the progressive Christian Church, it's so attractive because it's like, hey, you mean to tell me

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I don't have to adhere to that Old Testament stuff that's in the Bible that goes against whatever

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I want to do in my flesh? You mean I can still be a Christian? And that leads to my next, to answer your last other question.

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I think the biggest, probably, where this is headed is I think more and more churches and individuals are going to start leaning towards being progressive because it almost promises the best of both worlds.

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You can be a Christian. You can go to heaven. You can have your little fire insurance and not worry about going to hell, but you can also have your best life here, and we're not going to encourage you to change.

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We're not going to even ask you to change who you are. You can live together. You can sleep together. You can be in a same -sex relationship.

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You can do whatever you want with your body. It almost is going to present this picture to many people that they can have their best life now and go to heaven and have an even greater life, and that's contrary to what the

41:58

Word of God teaches. Yeah, I hear you. Everything is filtered through self and self -expression and self being at the top of the totem pole in terms of the hierarchy of how we find meaning and purpose and what we submit to.

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Self is at the very top. This is something that I've offered in terms of a response with people who are more taken with woke theology, quote -unquote woke theology, progressive

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Christianity, because you'll find that—or maybe you can speak to this in a moment—but you'll find a lot of Christians struggling because it appears that Jesus did not talk about LGBTQ issues, and so they're like, what do

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I do? Well, my general response is, yeah, but He talked about self all the time. He talked about dying to self.

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He talked about denying self. You mentioned this earlier. Take up your cross and follow after me.

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Deny yourself. Jesus says that all the time, and that is something that we can say to the progressive

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Christian. What do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, this is such a sad argument.

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I mean, the argument from silence is just a horrible, horrible way to interpret the

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Bible. I mean, Jesus also didn't talk about whether you should have sex with a cat or a dog or a horse, right?

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So are we supposed to say that because Jesus didn't talk about it, it's okay? Jesus didn't talk about texting and driving, but does that mean because Jesus didn't talk about it, it's okay?

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Jesus didn't talk about a million different things. Jesus probably didn't talk about whether it's right to abuse your wife or whatever, but just because He did talk about anger, that's fine, but specifically that case.

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So the argument from silence is just a really, really poor and easily debunked argument as it relates.

43:50

Well, Jesus never talked about that. Well, okay, there's another bigger problem here. So now what you're doing is you're saying that Jesus' words carry more weight than Paul's words, and that's a huge problem.

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As much as we love Jesus and He is the Savior of the world, but even

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Jesus co -signed and put His stamp of approval on the law of Moses in the

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Old Testament and the Old Testament, and He quoted from those books. So these books, whether they're words in red, we don't want to be red -letter

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Christians where it's like, oh, if Jesus said it, I'm going to believe it.

44:32

It's like, no, Apostle Paul's words are just as inspired as Jesus' words are, and so we have to be careful that we don't separate that.

44:43

Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. That's so good. Well, so respecting your time, Alan, I got one final question for you, and then, of course, anything that you want to let our viewers know about, anything that you want to plug,

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I want you to have that time to let everybody know about that. But what is the ultimate takeaway?

45:02

What is your hope? You sat down, which the worst part about this is starting with a blank screen, right?

45:08

That's the worst part of writing anything, is the blank screen. But you put pen to paper, figuratively speaking, what are you hoping that the reader is going to take away from Misled?

45:18

Yeah, so I'm really hoping that people will, first and foremost, question whatever they've been taught in the past.

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And I use a lot of scripture in the book, and I hope and pray that they would, first and foremost, start to ask questions, like, wow, what

45:35

Alan is teaching in this book is a little different than what I've heard from my pastor or from the people

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I follow online or my favorite YouTubers and things like that. So I hope and pray that it just generates questions.

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Second of all, I hope and pray that it generates conversations, right, for people to start having conversations. Hey, I was reading this in this book.

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What are your thoughts about this? Hey, read this page here. What are your thoughts about this? Because it's through conversation that I think that we can get understanding.

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And then finally, my last takeaway is just discernment. I hope and pray that people, through reading this book, that their ears will be trained, their senses will be trained, as the writer of Hebrews says in chapter 5, verse 14, through practice to discern good from evil, truth from error.

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And so I pray that as people read this book, when they're in any environment whatsoever, whether it's church, whether it's a podcast, whether it is a

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YouTuber, that when they hear one of these seven lies, they'll be able to quickly discern, wait a second, that's not true, right, and be able to kind of adjust accordingly.

46:42

Amen. Well, that is my prayer as well. That's why I wanted to talk to you and have you on.

46:49

It really is a really nice book. Thank you, by the way. Please pass it on to your team for allowing me to take a look at the book and read it.

46:57

And man, it's been such a useful tool to begin conversations. I like that.

47:03

So we encourage everyone to go out and get misled. Alan, what's upcoming for you?

47:09

Any news that you want to share with our viewers? Yeah, yeah. Well, speaking of biblical literacy, we do have a program that we just launched this year.

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It's called The Bible Accelerator, and it's just a course that really helps people learn how to study the Bible from an inductive standpoint.

47:29

Really, for those of you familiar with the fancy word hermeneutics, right, just Bible study methods course.

47:35

It's a great program that we have going on, and I'm sure we can link below to people to find that.

47:42

But it's usually when people ask me this question, I normally rattle off a whole bunch of different things that I've got going on.

47:50

But outside of my speaking, that I've got some travel in terms of conferences and things like that,

47:56

I am really actually, Nate, in a season where I'm taking a step back and I'm trying to focus more on rest, trying to focus on reconnecting with my family, because writing this book has taken a lot of time away from my family.

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It's taken a lot of time away from just me getting back to some of the things that I like to do in terms of rest and refuel and recreation and things of that nature, traveling, and just kind of taking a step back.

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So I'm in a season now where I'm just kind of continuing to create content. I've got another book to write, but I won't start on that right now, but I'll probably get started on that another six months from now.

48:36

So that's kind of what's kind of on the horizon for me, just continuing to create content for people. Good for you, man.

48:42

Good for you that you make that a priority in your life. That's wonderful. I'm glad to hear that.

48:49

You don't, by chance, want to hint at what the next book might be about. It's funny.

48:55

I would if I knew. That's actually... I would if I knew.

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I don't know right now, and so therefore, I have to figure that out because I'm going to be writing another book over the next couple years.

49:13

I wonder. So just take it with a grain of salt. This is the first lengthy conversation that we've had, and I thank you for joining me today.

49:21

I wonder if it has something to do with Bible study, Bible study principles, learning to read the Bible as Alan Parr does because you are a good

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Bible reader and a Bible teacher, and I'm sure that's what people would want to see. Oh, man. I appreciate that.

49:34

That would be a joy. That would be a lot of fun. Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

49:39

That's awesome. Well, Alan Parr, Bible teacher, speaker, and the author of Misled, Seven Lies That Distort the

49:46

Gospel. For more from Alan, check out his YouTube channel, The Beat, or just go to alanparr .com.

49:53

Alan, thank you so much for joining me today. Absolutely, Nate. It's a privilege and an honor, and it's great to have met you earlier this year, and just thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you and your audience, and just blessings on you, your family, and your ministry.