Is John Mark Comer a Heretic?

Conversations, That Matter Podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. How's everyone doing? Jimmy Starfish just commented, let's go.

That's right, let's go. I posted yesterday on Facebook and on X that John Mark Comer is a heretic and now

I got to back it up. And I don't obviously normally do that. I think

I have a few times. It's rare that I do that, but I had just finished reading his book. I had just finished after reading his book, composing the slideshow that I'm about to share with you.

And that was my conclusion. So I wrote it and I got a lot of people after me.

Put it that way. I think it's the main thing. People are usually upset at me for something because I'm weighing in on controversial matters as a part of the job,

I suppose, right? I podcast about political and spiritual things and there's a lot of different opinions about those things.

And right now this is the one that people seem to be the most upset at me for. And anyway, they'll just have to watch the podcast or read the article.

I wrote an article as well on my sub stack. Hopefully it'll be republished at TruthScript as well.

But all the links are in the info section for this video. If you wanna check all that stuff out, you can go to my sub stack.

You can go to Patreon, patreon .com forward slash John Harris podcast if you wanna get the slideshow that I'm about to share with you.

And we're just gonna jump into it and talk about John Mark Comer and why he's important enough for me to talk about on the podcast and why

I believe he's a threat, spiritually speaking. One really quick thing I wanna let you know about, and this is not a paid advertiser or anything like that.

This is just something I actually believe in. I really am optimistic about this particular project.

And I want you to know about it because I think we need more of this kind of thing. Michael Belch, Pastor Michael Belch has put out a podcast series.

It's on iTunes. It is probably on other places like Spotify. I know it's also on YouTube and it's called

New American Mythos. New American Mythos, Reviving the Old Stories. It's well -produced.

It's got the sound effects and everything. It's great for your kids. If you're listening in the car or something, you can put on a great story.

And these are our American stories. And he starts with the haunted

Northeast. And of course, living close to the Northeast, some would consider where I live in the

Northeast. I don't know if it's quite in the, I guess it would be just because the legends along the Hudson River are some of the legends he talks about.

So that is part of the Northeast. But he starts off with the legend of Sleepy Hollow and then gets into Nathaniel Hawthorne pieces.

And actually I haven't even read Algernon Blackwood. See, I haven't read, if I'm pronouncing that right,

Algernon Blackwood, the Wendigo though. I've heard of the Wendigo. So I need to catch up myself on this, but just a recommendation out there.

If you're looking for good content to consume that's entertaining, there's a lot of podcasts like that out there.

This is one that I would really recommend. This is something that I believe in. It's up my alley because I like the history of it, but it's also part of the identity we have as Americans.

We have to rebuild that. And I don't see a lot of podcasters doing that. I don't see a lot of anyone really doing that.

There's a lot of talk about politics and so forth, but we have to get back to the foundational things in regards to our religion,

Christianity, Protestant Christianity in the United States. And in regards to, and even if you're not a

Protestant, by the way, that is part of the identity of this country. And so knowing something about it is really good. And also in regards to our legends, our lore, our history, the things that happened and the things that were written about and the things people believed and the symbols they represented for those who came before us, our ancestors.

It's super important. Without that, we don't have a people. We don't, we're homeless essentially.

We've lost our bearings, so to speak. And we're certainly in that time. So all hands on deck, let's do it.

New American Mythos. All right, let's talk about John Mark Comer. So John Mark Comer is a pastor.

I'm actually not clear on whether or not he is still a pastor. I know he was a pastor for,

I believe, 20 years in the Northwest. And he wrote this book.

This is his last book. He was written a few of them. This is the only one I've read, okay? Called Practicing the

Way, Be With Jesus, Become Like Him, Do As He Did. That's the subtitle. Pretty simple.

It's just like a profile of a guy. It's pretty simple covered there on the book. But I wrote an article about this for my sub stack.

You can go check that out if you want some compact kind of opinion and also just sourcing.

I'm gonna give you a lot more detail in this particular podcast, which is why we're doing it.

And so we'll start off here. John Mark Comer, I think he got big.

I think he's been big, but I think this last book made him go really big. John Mark Comer was a name that I heard from a patron.

And I try to do things my patrons want me to do. If someone contributes to my podcast and they want me to do something that is within the purview of what

I do, it is one of the perks. And it is something that I put on my list. I said, okay, I'll check into it.

I don't know who this guy is, but I'll check into it. That was a few months ago, maybe more than a few. I think it was probably like six or seven months ago.

And the reason it went to the top of my list though, and I thought I really need to do this, is I was reading J .D. Greer.

And Greer's new book, Everyday Revolutionary, has some quotations from John Mark Comer in it.

And not just one. And I just thought, well, that's curious. I didn't think Comer was even a

Baptist. Not that Greer has to quote Baptists, but I just thought that's a mixing of worlds.

I just don't hear about Comer much. And so I looked him up online. And okay, he's been on the Who's Who of Christian podcasts in the institutional evangelical world, at least.

And most of them, I would say, the more left -leaning, not all of them, but certainly like Russell Moore and, excuse me, still getting over this cold.

Who's that guy? Man, I'm trying to remember the, so names escaping me of the other podcast

I saw that he was on now. It's gonna come to me here in a minute. It's the guy who advocates for basically side

B and he crafted a lot of cruise curriculum. Someone in the channel, tell me who that is. I don't know why my brain is not working correctly right now.

Preston Sprinkle, that's it. I think it's Preston Sprinkle. He was on Preston Sprinkle's podcast. And Christianity Today did a glowing review of John Mark Comer's book.

And along the lines of, he's the one, he's the guy just like Tim Keller was,

I suppose, that's showing us the path forward in this secularized age. He comes from the

Northwest where it's like coming from the future, Christianity Today said. I mean, he's coming from the future and he's making

Christianity work there. We gotta listen. We gotta do what he does, I guess. And so that's,

I think, what makes him popular. There's two things. There's elites, there's the people who run the

Christian institutions and they really are interested in, hey, Christianity seems like,

I know there's been a bit of a bump. It seems like the people have bought Bibles and the Charlie Kirk reaction seemed big, but the overall trend has been, especially younger people leaving the church.

Gen Z is more secularized than any other generation.

And there's not a way to approach this that seems to work because evangelicals, neo -evangelicals is who

I'm talking about. They have tried so many different strategies and it just seems like none of them really work.

Some of them look like they work in the short term and then we still have this bleeding going on. What's going on?

So I think there's an interest there. I think there's also an interest among just, and this is why the book did well and is a

New York Times bestseller, among ordinary people. They feel like the world does not have the stability that it used to have.

They're looking for transcendence. They're looking for meaning. They want significance.

And the reflection, contemplation, spiritual life that used to be more commonly accessible is no longer as accessible, either because of our own choices that we make.

We have so many choices open to us. And so we choose to be distracted. We choose to scroll on screens and that kind of thing.

And we develop addictions or because it's just the demands of modern life. It's hard to get by and you're strapped, you're stressed.

Where's there time to be alone with the Lord? Where's there time to contemplate, reflect? And John Mark Kummer, I think really taps into that dissatisfaction.

He really does. And so there's some things in the book that I would say

I agree with as far as like spiritual disciplines. I don't think I would agree with like contemplative prayer, some of the things that John Mark Kummer seems to want to do.

But the idea that we should be contemplative, the idea that we should be in prayer, the idea that we should be loving others, of course, those are good things for Christians to do.

And I think it does make our lives more peaceful. I think we do live in a chaotic age. I think there's actually some points to be made there.

However, there's a lot of bad theology smuggled into this. Theology on hell, on sin, on the gospel, and not even just that, the church, sanctification, justification.

There's a lot of really bad basic things. And it's just a little surprising. Maybe it shouldn't be.

It shouldn't be to me at this point. But how do people who otherwise should know better, how do they allow this to happen?

I haven't watched or listened to any other critiques. I've just noticed that John Mark Kummer is on a lot of different podcasts and he's platformed in different places.

And it's like, I know there's some right -leaning evangelicals who've critiqued things. So I saw that there was,

I just saw titles. I have not actually listened, but I know that there was some critiques about penal substitutionary atonement. I know even

Gavin Ortlin, I think, it looked like did an episode. I have not watched it. I saw a thumbnail. It's about the extent of it.

But there's obviously a lot more than penal substitutionary atonement that is a problem with John Mark Kummer.

And I think what he does is he offers a salvation for lack of a better term.

I guess he offers a way out of the modern rat race, allegedly, and it is a hyper kind of,

I mean, from today's perspective. So people living in the modern life who aren't very spiritual, from their perspective, it is a hyper -spiritual kind of mystical thing.

Radical, you might even say, that he's putting out there that we can participate in and enjoy this uncultivated life that we've been deprived of.

I didn't find anything revolutionary in that. I just thought, well, this sounds like a lot of books.

Honestly, most of the Christian pop books that seem to get pitched are along these lines of there's just this big thing you're missing out on.

And if you really wanna go deeper, you gotta do this thing. And it's not the ordinary Christianity you're used to, it's this thing over here.

And that's what John Mark Kummer, I think, taps into. And he's a good pop

Christian writer, I suppose you could say. Anyway, some of you are saying you never heard of him. Some of you have.

John Mark Kummer is just a repeat of early Rob Bell. He does feel like early Rob Bell, I'll be honest.

He does feel like that. Anyone remember back to Rob Bell's bullhorn? That was like his breakout.

Remember that Rob Bell? It was like early 2000s, maybe. Bullhorn guy.

It's funny because in the book, John Mark Kummer has this same scenario of the bullhorn guy.

The guy at the street corner is preaching the gospel, talking about how it's really awkward and uncomfortable because, well, that makes people squirm and we don't want that.

Makes Christians look bad, we don't want that. Well, John Mark Kummer frowns on it,

Rob Bell frowns on it. And they almost look a little bit similar. So I totally see that.

I hadn't made that connection, but now I'm definitely making that connection. John MacArthur, let's see, is, oh,

JMC, that must, John Mark Kummer, sorry. Oh my goodness, don't confuse those two. John Mark Kummer is buddies with the

Bible Project's Tim Mackey. Well, that's not good. He also rejects penal substitutionary atonement. Well, that would make sense.

It feels like a Tim Mackey type thing. Okay, well, let's actually get into the substance of this.

Okay, shall we? The problem, according to John Mark Kummer, the great problem that we have is individualism, okay?

Individualism distorts the Christian life. It's an open secret, he says, that the U .S. in general and my home state of California in particular are built on what sociologists call the myth of the rugged individual.

Dr. Robert Bella called it radical individualism, said it's a defining trait of America. Now, Dr.

Robert Bella is someone that I've written about before because in my book, Social Justice Goes to Church, he was influential on many of the early new left evangelicals, quote unquote.

And they also saw a problem with this radical individualism. I pointed out before in the show, there's a great Richard Weaver essay on individualism.

I would recommend all of you. There's two types of American individualism. That's the name of the essay. There is one that's basically autonomous, comes out of the

Northeast, comes out of the transcendentalists. There's also one that comes more out of the South that is, it is individualism, but it is a community -derived individualism.

In other words, you have responsibilities to the world in which you were born. And as such, you need to have the freedom, the liberty, the rights to fulfill those responsibilities.

And these two things have existed for a long time in our country, since the foundation, really,

I suppose you could say, or about near there. And the individualism that Robert Bella critiques is this individualism that sees itself as self -governing, responsible, apart from the community, that sees, in Robert Bella's mind, the community is like the corporate structure that Robert Bella was, he was a socialist.

Now, I think, actually, he was a Communist Party member, I think, early on. And then I think he later renounced or went away from that somehow, but on the left.

Okay, and from his critique and from the new left critique, more broadly, the individualism that they went after was an inhibition to the social projects they wanted to do.

People just can't be out on their own thinking that they can make their own decisions with their own property, because if they do that, we can't actually get them all together for a cumulative effort of the revolution we want.

And so that's bad, right? Conservatives, when they critique individualism, they are more talking about an autonomous individualism that doesn't see itself as responsible to the past, to the community that it was born into, and especially to God.

Now, here's the interesting thing, and I'm gonna show you from the book, but Comer, essentially, he says he's against individualism and all this stuff, but he actually brings you right back into it.

He's like, we're gonna get rid of all the self -help stuff, I'm gonna give you like substance. And he brings you right back to a state of self -help.

I'm gonna show you that as we get into the book. I don't think he transcends this really at all. I think he points out some problems.

Yeah, okay, if you're autonomous, I suppose, if you really see yourself as an island, then that is a problem and you're not gonna be fulfilled.

There's truth in that. I don't think Andrew Tate is happy, okay? I don't know, I picked him out of the bucket because I had a guy going after me on Twitter saying

Andrew Tate is the model and Christians are weak. And I'm like, Andrew Tate, really? That guy's, you know, broken family situation.

And last Christmas, he's like filming himself on Christmas Eve, lifting weights. You're really, really great model to just be like,

I'm gonna be about me and my pleasure and that kind of thing. Obviously we agree that that's wrong, that's bad. And insofar as John Mark Homer might be doing that, agreed.

But he doesn't really give you a solution away from this. And that's my concern. But individualism is the big bad guy, okay?

And our Christianity is infused with this. It's created a false gospel. It's created a false, well, a less than optimal church.

He says, without this crucial element of helping others, formation will inevitably devolve into a private therapeutic self -help spirituality that is honestly just a

Christianized version of radical individualism, not a crucible to burn our souls, clean and forge us into people to love like Jesus.

He says, but we simply are not meant to follow Jesus alone. The radical individualism of Western culture is not only a mental health crisis and growing social catastrophe, it's a death blow to any kind of serious formation in a

Christ -like love, because it's in relationships that we are formed and forged. Now, I think people feel like we're on the precipice of something bad, that there's a lot of angst in the air.

It's not gone away. I think it's still like, we're waiting for 2020 to happen again. We're also very concerned about like really out there conspiracies and ideas.

And I mean, this is coming from all directions. Like everything's a level 10 threat all the time. And into this,

I think he's speaking like, he's saying, look, of course there's a crisis.

There's a mental health crisis. I have a solution for you. And I think people want that. They want a solution to this.

They feel that there's something. I don't know if I agree with that particular attribution that it's just, it's individualism that's doing all this, but fair enough.

Our communities are broken up. I don't think individualism is like the sole cause of this, but he is right that we are in a fractured society.

Now, one of the things, this is sort of a side note that I noticed immediately was how left -coded this book is.

He says, as I will describe in the pages to come, appreciating Jesus is a solution to the problem of the so -called human condition.

Name your malaise. Okay, so name your malaise. Political polarization, climate change, looming global war, the mental health epidemic, addiction,

Christian nationalism, widespread hypocrisy among Christian leaders, our simple inability to be kind.

Okay, so these are, this is a list. It's like a vice list of like, these are the problems. Here's another list he has.

This is on page 34. The greatest issue facing the world today is not climate change, surveillance capitalism, human rights, or the specter of nuclear war, as utterly crucial as all these are.

Okay. Now, what does he not mention? Anything that's left -coded.

He doesn't mention unlimited immigration. He doesn't mention homosexuality or any of that. He doesn't mention the abortion.

It's this stuff. With, you know, Christian nationalism is the big issue. Climate change is the big issue.

Like, this is certainly a left -coded book. He says an increasing number of Christians don't agree with him on crucial matters of human flourishing.

They would rather trust a politician, celebrity, or pastor gone rogue than Jesus. Okay, sorry. The him is

Jesus. Then Jesus, the teacher and the disciples who studied directly under him.

They would even, they never even think to consult Jesus on the pressing matters of our time.

Ready? Politics, racial justice, sexuality, gender, mental health, and so on. Here's the funny thing.

John Mark Comer doesn't get into any of that. I think it's funny a little. Maybe you don't, but I do. Like, so Jesus has a position on this stuff, apparently.

Right? They're not even bothering to consult Jesus. So what does Jesus think about that? Well, he doesn't say.

I'm kind of curious. Maybe he said in other places and I'm not aware. What does Jesus say on sexuality?

I think it's pretty clear, right? Racial justice, it's kind of a modern category. He also says this.

It's a great tragedy that the word justice has been caught up in the culture wars and the polarizing vitriol between left and right.

For some, justice is the ultimate good. For others, a pariah. Of course, justice means different things to different people.

Think of how it's used in Isaiah versus on Twitter versus in a Clinton Eastwood Western. But this is not a word we can let secularism define to my friends on the left, nor is it a practice we can abandon to my friends on the right because it's central to the heart of God.

What's the thing that sticks out there? This is the way that every leftist evangelical or evangelical who can veers left.

This is how they all, as far as I can see, I don't know if there's an exception to this. This is how they view it.

Social justice is a Christian thing. And it doesn't really belong to the right or left.

And the reason it doesn't belong to the left is because the left is secular. So it's like the left's project is correct.

Christians should be involved in that. It's just the foundation for it needs to be Christian. They need to just like attribute and acknowledge, hey,

Jesus is the source of this. For Christians who are on the right, social justice is wrong because they actually disagree with it ethically.

And so leftist, quote unquote, evangelicals look at that and they say, well, I transcend this.

I think the foundation needs to be Christian for those on the left and for those on the right, you're also wrong because you don't actually agree with the conclusions of it and the rectification of disparities and so forth.

And I just, I caught that. And all I'm saying is that John Mark Homer, the way he talks, the way he frames things, the few things he says that are political, he is veering left.

And there's no question about that in my mind. This is not written by a political conservative, at least not someone who is trying to appeal.

He's trying to appeal, I think, to progressives. There's also some instances in this of some sloppy interpretation.

And I don't think this is exhaustive, but I just happened to notice. He says things like the sign hanging over Jesus's head when he was crucified said,

King of the Jews, not guru. It tells you a lot about Jesus that his enemies perceived him as a political threat. And I was thinking like, well, the sign over Jesus's head was put there by the

Romans, put there by Pilate. It was meant, it was really in mockery of the

Jewish leaders. Like it wasn't, they weren't putting it there. They were putting it there because of political threats.

It was against the Jewish leaders, right? And of course it was prophetic and so forth, but his interpretation here is all off.

Jesus ended the Sermon on the Mount, it says, with this famous climax, everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice, note the word practice, is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.

The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew, and it fell with a great crash.

Can you imagine Jesus to stave off any soteriological anxiety immediately adding, but don't worry,

I'm about to do it all for you. You don't need to do a thing because that would be workspace righteousness and it's bad.

It's unimaginable that Jesus would ever say something like that. Sadly, this tragic misunderstanding of salvation, that's pretty drastic, a misunderstanding of salvation, tends to produce consumers of Jesus' merit rather than disciples of Jesus' way.

So the Sermon on the Mount, which he is quoting from here, is in his mind, his interpretation, is that there's some element,

I guess, of, I don't know, works merit. And I mean, really what it is, when you see the analogy, and I put the picture there of the house on the sand that's crumbling down when the,

I guess that's a hurricane probably, comes in. Really what's going on is Jesus is saying that there are those who understand, follow my word, and there are those who don't.

There are those who are false, because this is right after he's talking about the false prophets, false teachers. So there are those who have false teaching who say to me,

Lord, Lord, so they're not converted, they're deceived, self -deceived maybe, they will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

But who are the people that'll enter the kingdom of heaven? It's those who do the will of my father, and those are the people who build their house on the rock versus those who build their house on the sand.

So you can't be deceived into thinking you're on the right foundation, you actually have to build on the right foundation.

And yes, the Christian life does include works, but the question is, did those merit you

God's favor? Did those actually get you into a state of justification? And the answer, of course, is no.

And so this is kind of a confusion, a conflation that, well, like Jesus is talking here about,

I guess, the fact that you need to work, and it's like, if there was soteriological anxiety, this verse doesn't clear it up or something.

Like, if you just read the passage in a plain reading, you would understand what's being said there, and it wouldn't confuse you, because of what comes before it.

And he does this kind of stuff, he does this again, to contemplate the Lord's glory is to direct the inner gaze of your heart to the

Trinitarian community of love. I noticed this a few times with the Trinitarian community, which I don't know if it's a tip of the hat to Tim Keller, because Keller has this view as the

Trinity is this like dance of love, and that love is the animating feature, and not holiness, not other, it's like love, love is the thing.

And it's like, you look at this, and you look at the passage here, actually, what passage is that?

I'm gonna read it for you. Look it up here, it is 2 Corinthians 3, 18, says, we all with unveiled faces, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the

Lord, we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the spirit of the

Lord. And so he comes into that, and it's like, this is about you directing your inner gaze at the

Trinitarian community of love. It's like, weird, what are you getting at?

Now, these are all minor things, I suppose. These are quibbles more than anything else. These are quibbles. These aren't the central problem that I have with the book, but I think they're significant enough to let you know.

I don't know that this guy is a serious student of the Bible, doesn't seem that way from the way he writes.

And the other thing is, he is coming from a progressive political outlook, and it seems like he's writing more to progressive political people.

So just so you're aware of those things, let's get into the main body of the issue here.

The issues are numerous theologically, but I'm gonna start with this one, conversion, conversion.

Contrary to what many assume, Jesus did not invite people to convert to Christianity. Really? He didn't invite them to convert.

He didn't even call people to become Christians. Keep reading. He invited people to apprentice under him into a whole new way of living, to be transformed.

So he's trying to create a division between these things, to follow Jesus on the one hand, and then to convert to Christianity, as if they're like two different things.

You see, Jesus is not looking for converts to Christianity. He says again on page 34, he's looking for apprentices in the kingdom of God.

Okay? Page 207. Our role isn't to convert anyone, but it is to preach, to tell others the good news of Jesus through the practice of witness.

So, I mean, I guess you could say, I don't convert anyone, Jesus does, but we don't have a role in that.

It's not to convert anyone. It's just to tell, it's a practice witness. Like, it's confusing, right?

Jesus' invitation, he says, as I've repeated, ad nauseum. So this is a big emphasis in the book, was not to convert to a new religion called

Christianity, but to apprentice under him into life in the kingdom of God.

So there's apprenticeship on the one hand, and there's conversion on the other. And apparently they're very different things.

Now, whenever you follow someone, this is whether it's Jesus or someone else, whatever, like my daughter follows me around, right?

There is an initial step you have to take, right? There's an initial phase, like your attention is first focused on that person you're following, the mission you're following, whatever.

From whatever you're doing, whether it's resting or going in the opposite direction or whatever it is, another activity, you have to go from that activity to the new activity.

And then there's a process. That initial change of mind, change of direction, we think of as repentance.

And then going in that direction is the Christian life. It's sanctification.

It's becoming more like Christ. It's following God's law. For John Mark Homer, he wants to say, he wants to like say, when

Jesus says, follow me, that Jesus isn't asking for a conversion apparently there, and I think the implication is like, well, it's so much deeper.

Okay, well, if you're converted though, here's the thing, like you're gonna follow Jesus. That's the point.

When Jesus in John three is sitting and talking to Nicodemus, and Nicodemus says, I don't understand. How can a man be born again when he's old?

And Jesus says, well, and Nicodemus says, you can't go back into the mother's womb.

And Jesus then says, except a man be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

You have to be born again. And he gives the famous John 3, 16 verse there that God loved the world, gave his son, whoever believes in him shall not perish.

God didn't send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be safe through him. And the whole point is that the spirit who you don't see, it's like the wind, you see the effects of the spirit.

The spirit has to produce this conversion. There is a conversion experience.

Jesus talks about it. You have to be born again. If you're not born again, then you won't enter the kingdom of heaven.

So, what is this like? Oh, you don't have to convert. We have to be born again. So what is that?

It's conversion. This is so insane to me that he thinks this is even profound, but I guess there's

Christians out there who think like, oh, that's like so great. That no, no, no, this isn't so great. This isn't actually like rest and peace and solitude.

This is actually like stressful. This actually is like, like think about it this way.

If the role isn't to convert, it's just to make witnesses, people who follow.

And our theology, the biblical theology, is that there is this

Holy Spirit who empowers you, who you become born again. There's this punctiliar movement.

You become born again. You become a different kind of person than you are as a sinner. And you are empowered to do these things.

Or would you rather have that? Or would you rather have like, hey, you gotta get busy following Jesus right now.

And like, not conversion though, not that. It's like, now you might say, well,

John Mark Comer doesn't mean that. Okay, but that's what he's saying. And if he doesn't mean it,

I think the problem is, this is a pop -level Christian book. You can't play with theology.

And it's not profound. It is confusing, if anything. It is confusing.

The best you could say is like Peter, you were not being clear about the gospel here. So let's just say conversion.

That's important. You gotta have justification to get into the situation where you are being sanctified.

But so he has got a bad view of conversion. He doesn't like it, it seems like. And then he thinks that evangelicals today, and these are evangelicals who just preach repentance and faith in Christ, that they have the false gospel.

That's a strong word, but he keeps saying it. So I'll give you a number of quotes that imply all this.

From at least World War II on, in many circles, the gospel was preached in such a way that a person could become a Christian without becoming an apprentice of Jesus, he says.

He says, a generation of people disillusioned with the faith with a million millennials leaving the church each year and then even giving up on following Jesus entirely, looking ahead to quasi -scientific therapeutic strategies of self -help or Eastern religions as more promising options for salvation.

Many who quietly ache for more of God and his transformation but feel stuck on their spiritual journeys and blocked in their growth.

This isn't to critique, judge, or indict anyone. It's to name what is. Many of us simply have not been taught a

Jesus -based model of change, an effective pathway to transformation, a way of life, or worse, we have been taught but poorly.

Okay, so here's the deal. From those two quotes, World War II on, we've got a gospel that's being preached, but that gospel is making people

Christians but not apprentices of Jesus. And we just found out, that's the whole point. You gotta be an apprentice of Jesus. And we got all these people leaving the church, but they're leaving because, not because, like,

I guess they were Christians. Like, they were converted, but they somehow, they missed out on the whole being an apprentice.

They didn't start following him. They didn't do the works necessary. He said, a lot of churches operate on the assumption that as a person's knowledge of the

Bible increases, their maturity will increase with it. I've been around Bible -teaching churches for my entire life, and I can assure you this, at best, wildly, they're insufficient.

Protestants rightly, I think, emphasize the formative power of Scripture to shape us into the mold of Jesus. All Scripture is

God -breathed. It's useful. Jesus was a rabbi. His teaching was saturated in Scripture to the ninth degree.

But we Protestants are easily blinded by other Western assumptions, such as Rene Descartes' famous claim,

I think, therefore I am. We can easily fall into a thoroughly unbiblical view of the human soul as a kind of brain on legs.

As Thomas Edison once said, the chief function of the body is to carry the brain around. So, Protestants got it wrong,

I guess, as far as, like, you gotta be converted, and then they also got it wrong as far as the way sanctification works.

Like, it's not just about Bible knowledge. It's not just about knowledge increasing. You have to, there's more to it.

Well, what is that, right? He says, well, he goes on in the book.

I don't think I have the quote here. Yeah, I don't think I have the quote here. So, he goes on after that, though, essentially to say that what you're missing out on is this deep contemplative life of prayer.

And it's like this meditative thing. It's not, and the Holy Spirit comes in and uses this.

And so, it's not just about your knowledge. Well, he's, technically, he's right about it's not just about your knowledge. But I think the thing is, and this is what

I caught, if you are converted, right, he who began a good work in you, right, he's gonna be faithful to complete it.

So, if you're converted, if you're justified, you are going to be in the process of sanctification.

And in that process, the Bible, the word of God, is the tool, the word of Christ, which we're told in Colossians, we're supposed to let it dwell in us richly, and it produces godly living.

The word of God is what the Holy Spirit illuminates so that we can live rightly. It is the words of Christ that the

Holy Spirit brings to our minds when we need those things. It is the word of God that the faithful man becomes mature in, and is able to refute those who contradict.

It's all based on the truth that God has revealed in his word. The Holy Spirit uses that.

That's what you should be meditating on. And he talks about this inner meditation of just focusing on the love between the

Trinity and stuff. And it's like, well, where are you gonna know about anything related to the Trinity?

Or it's from the word of God. So, of course, it's not just intellectual Bible knowledge.

It must be Bible knowledge that actually makes its way into application. It must be an experiential type of knowledge as well.

It can't just be I have facts in my mind. And there's lots of unconverted people with facts. But if you're a converted person, and you know the

Bible, and you get to know it more and more, and you're doing it because you have a desire to know God, guess what's gonna happen?

You draw near to him, he's gonna draw near to you. That's how it works. Sorry, trust and obey. There's no other way.

It's just, it's simple. It's not actually that complicated. But he wants to make you feel like there's something insufficient.

And I think unconverted people will likely look at this and think, well, I was in church and it didn't seem to do anything for me.

And maybe this, maybe John Mark Comer has something here. Maybe there's something I'm missing out on.

And they'll, but what they need is conversion. That's the problem. They need to be convicted of their sins, turn to Christ, and he can change their heart.

It doesn't mean they won't ever have struggles again, but they will be on a process of becoming more like Christ. But that's not good enough for John.

He's gotta have a different message than the one that we've been passed down.

He says, when Jesus said he came to seek and save the lost, is this the salvation he had in mind? A cursory reading of the gospels would indicate we're wildly underestimating all that Jesus intends for us.

For Jesus, salvation is less about getting into you. Sorry, let me start that over. For salvation, salvation is less about getting you into heaven and more about getting heaven into you.

Now, come on. You wanna hear something profound? Salvation, less about getting you into heaven, more about getting heaven into you.

Oh man. It's not just about him becoming like us, but also about us becoming like him.

It's less of a transaction and more of a transformation. It's not just about what he has done for us, but also about what he has done, is doing, and will do in us.

Because that's sanctification, glorification. We apprentice under him, if we apprentice under him.

We gotta apprentice, guys. You don't apprentice under him, right? Stuff doesn't happen. It's, and again, he's talking about the gospel here.

It's about being a person who not only is loved by God, but also is pervaded by the love of God.

It's not just accepting the merit of his death, but also receiving the power of his resurrection. And it's not just about you and me as individuals, but also the formation of a whole new community and the healing of the cosmos.

Again, the main problem with this gospel is that it simply does not sound anything like the gospel

Jesus preached. Listen to Mark's summary of Jesus's gospel. He says, the time has come, he said, the kingdom of God has come near.

Repent and believe the good news. Jesus's gospel was that Israel's long story had reached its climax in him, and that he had come to reunite heaven and earth and usher in the kingdom of God, a

God -saturated society of peace and justice and love. Jesus's central message was that this is in -breaking kingdom is available now to all, that anyone, no matter who you are, where you come from, or what your station of life is, can enter this kingdom and be blessed or happy with God.

You can have this new kind of life if you will put your trust and confidence in Jesus for the whole of your life.

So here's the good news, right? Ready? The good news is that if you follow

Jesus as his apprentice, you'll get a lot of these blessings. It'll happen. You'll get to become part of this big thing that's going on out there in the cosmos.

Now, is there some truth to any of this? Obviously, yes. There is some truth to creation cries out.

God is making all things new. There is an eternal state. We are heading towards a consummation of all things.

The saints will judge the world. There's some truth to this. But what's the point that John Mark Comer is trying to make in this passage?

What's he trying to communicate to you? He's trying to say to you that there's actually a false gospel out there. There's a gospel that you've been told that includes sin,

Christ's death and atonement for that sin, which is nowhere found in this description. I mean, you can say that the

Mark passage includes this idea and the understanding that the Hebrews would have brought to it would have included that God must make a way for salvation.

But John Mark Comer though is not fleshing any of that out. John Mark Comer is saying basically that the gospel is the kingdom of God, okay?

Something that Jim Wallace does, as liberation theologians do, that the gospel of the kingdom is not, it's not the good news, right?

That belongs to this kingdom. The gospel is the kingdom. The kingdom is all of, and this is, leftists love this, but it's like, it's all this peace and all the, everything that is gonna happen.

You're in the eternal state. You're gonna, there's gonna be peace among everyone.

No tears, all of that kind of stuff, right? And oftentimes they'll smuggle leftist things into this, like rectification of social disparities.

That's all coming. And that is the good news. And that's what you gotta put your eyes on, is that kingdom that's coming.

Now, the gospel or good news, as there's a few ways, there's a sort of like an expansive way and a more of a theologically more, more, you know, narrow way to look at this.

But when Paul talks about the gospel being the power of God of salvation for those who believe, it's all about the works of Christ.

He's saying that Christ's sufficient work on the cross, the good news is that Christ has done something for you.

It's not good news if you gotta go earn it because you can't earn it, right? It's not good news when John Mark Coomer says, hey, you just gotta be an apprentice of Jesus.

That's not really good news. And if you do that, then this will happen. The good news is God has done something for you.

Remember in Galatians, the whole issue was adding the work of circumcision to the gospel and then corrupting the gospel as a result, adding things to it.

Gospel is what Christ has done. Now you can say there's the gospels, there's teaching that is the gospel, right?

And it's sort of like broadly speaking, the things that Jesus taught, but as good news, the euangelion, it is about the work of God.

It is not about what you can do that would not be good news. And so when we talk about the gospel of the kingdom,

I think it's real simple to me. It's not about all these works you gotta participate in to make the kingdom happen.

It's about that you will participate in good works, but it's in response to the good news.

The good news belongs to this certain kingdom, this economy, this domain of God.

He has won it for you. The kingdom of light over the kingdom of darkness.

But it's not about like you have to do something, focus on the kingdom, make something happen yourself.

This is something that is inevitable. It's something God's making, God's made happen.

And the good news is that you get to be part of it, not because of anything you did, not because of any of your efforts, not because of any of your sincerity that you were able to drum up from within yourself, but because of the graciousness of God.

That's it. That's it. I've written more about this. I'm trying to think.

I think I made a Facebook post about it a while ago. I don't know if I could pull it up right now.

It might be a good time to pull it up. I'm gonna do a quick search, and if it doesn't come up, then

I'll skip it. I just thought of it now though, and it doesn't look like it's coming up, so I may have to skip it.

I did a video though. I see the video has come up here that I made from April 15th, 2022.

So if you wanna go back, it's called The Gospel of the Kingdom Isn't in Conflict with the Gospel of Grace.

So I did do a video about this. If you are interested in that sort of thing. Okay. Let's keep going here because we have a lot more to cover here.

I know, we're just getting started. Actually, I think we're almost halfway. We're almost halfway. What gospel are you preaching?

John Mark Comer says. The gospel of third wave anti -racism or LGBTQI plus pride or democratic socialism or American nationalism or free market capitalism or cold water therapy or intermittent fasting or the keto diet or mindfulness or new wave psychedelics.

And those are all gospels. All of these are gospels. Now think about this for a minute. If all of those are gospels, what do all those require?

Tremendous amounts of your effort. That's what they require. The good news is that you will reach utopia if you do

A, B, and C for democratic socialism. I mean, that's a gospel, apparently. Now, he's gonna say that these are false gospels.

These aren't the true gospel, obviously. There are messages about where our hope lies, where human history is going, where the dangers are, where salvation is to be found, where we can find community and how to live a good life and become a good person.

Everyone is preaching a gospel. Apprentices of Jesus are those who preach his gospel. Now, when we say preach the gospel, all we mean is to tell people about Jesus, announce the good news of Jesus and the availability of life with him in the kingdom of God.

Now, what do you see you're missing from that? I mean, that's all good if you have packed into that, I guess, sin and repentance, right?

And Jesus being a substitutionary at home and satisfying the wrath of God on your behalf. I got news for you, though.

He doesn't ever talk about that in the book. The closest he comes is he talks about, like, in the midst of all the times he says, you gotta bear, you gotta daily take up your own cross, which he talks about constantly.

There's one time in the book where he mentions that Jesus took up his own cross for you, so you need to do the same thing he did.

And it's like, but he doesn't flesh it out. There's no talk of any of that. So if you were reading this book and you were a

Christian and this is all you had and you didn't know anything about sin, you would still not know anything about substitutionary atonement.

You wouldn't know about how any of this really works. Jesus is just an example for you to follow, basically.

Like, he's a good teacher who got killed. He was, according to John Mark Homer, the sign above him was because he was a political threat and you gotta go be like him.

Now, when we say preach the gospel, okay, I already read that. They talk about what they love the most, fashion, music, sports,

TV. We love Jesus, so we talk about Jesus. The gospel is not if you believe in Jesus, you can go to a good place when you die.

Mark summarizes gospel as the kingdom of God has come near. Now, I will admit,

I am a little confused here. Like, if you talk about sports or TV or fashion, are you somehow preaching a different gospel because you're not talking about Jesus?

Like, the gospel now is so watered down. It's just, it's like, we have

Jesus, they have sports. It's just, it's a little weird, right? It's like, how is, how are they comparable?

Mark summarizes the gospel as the kingdom of God has come near. I don't think that's a summation of the gospel.

I mean, I, I, I mean, I gotta think about this. Summation of the gospel? Like, it's not, okay, so it's not a, you could say the gospel is packed into that.

A summation though, it's certainly not a comprehensive, like, definition of what the gospel is, if that's what he means by that.

Paul's one -line summary is Jesus is Lord. Oh, that's not true. That's not a one -line summary of the gospel. Another way of saying the same thing.

Jesus is Lord is not good news to people who are going to hell, is it? No, Jesus is

Lord is a statement about, the universal statement that applies to everyone and everything, even those who are gonna be in hell.

Jesus is Lord is not the gospel. Those are not the same thing. Yeah, they, they do relate. They're not the same thing though.

The gospel is that Jesus is the ultimate power in the universe and that life with him is now available to all through his birth, life, teachings, miracles, death, resurrection.

It's available, okay. In what, what mechanism? How is it available? He doesn't say.

And through apprenticeship to Jesus, we can enter into the kingdom, because through apprenticeship, through the good news now, the good news of the gospel, according to Jerry Mark Comer, isn't grace through faith.

It's apprenticeship. It's available. You just gotta be an apprentice. You know what apprentices do?

Apprentices have to learn a trade. They have to thoroughly learn a way of life, do it well, so that they're able to go do it on their own.

That happens inevitably in the process of sanctification. You become more like Christ, but he's asking you to do something a dead man can't do because he's not converted.

That's why this is deadly, in my opinion. Setting people up for failure.

Through his birth, life, teachings, miracles, okay, ascension, the gift of the spirit, Jesus has saved, is saving, and will save all creation.

And through apprenticeship to Jesus, we can enter into his kingdom, into the inner life of God himself. We can receive and give, share in the love, loving.

We can be part of the community of Jesus. And he goes on. All right. That's all really good news, that we can do these things.

We can, you can. You can do it. I can do it. We can do it. And it's through apprenticeship.

It's like, so yeah, that's, that's a great, great hope there.

That's a great good news, that my sinful self can pull myself up to do this.

Now, what does he say about sin, right? This is, if you thought all this was bad, it gets worse.

I'm, I saved the worst for last, I know. His concept of sin and hell are terrible.

They are heterodox. And I'm going to prove it to you right now. Much has been said in the Western church about the forgiveness of sins, which is good.

Sin, as we'll explore in the pages to come, is the major obstacle on the path to becoming a person of love. But what is sin?

We're regularly told that the word is harmatia, which means to miss the mark. True. But this begs the question, what is the mark?

Is it moral perfection? Is it the full ledger between the court of heaven? Is it not breaking any of the commands laid down in the

Bible? What if the mark is union with God? Now, let me stop there. What do you notice about those three things?

They're all standards that have to do with God. So you have moral perfection. That's good. So God has moral perfection.

The court of heaven. So God, where God reigns, his court, breaking of commands that are in the Bible. That's exactly what sin is.

Sin is lawlessness. That's what the Bible says. Lawlessness is breaking the law.

That's what sin is. Sin is missing the mark. It is committing an act, in thought, word, or deed that is against the intended will of the creator, against his law.

John Mark Comer enters and says, is it really those things? It's like the snake whispering in your ear.

Has God really said that? He says, what if it's the mark, the mark is union with God?

What if it's the healing of your soul through participation in the inner life of the Trinity? What if it's the adoption into the father's new multi -ethnic family through the saving work of the son,

Jesus? What if it's becoming the kind of person who is so pervaded by love, wisdom, and strength that we have developed the capacity to eventually rule with Jesus over the cosmos itself?

If so, this gospel is an inadequate foundation on which to build a life of apprenticeship that is conducive to deep inner healing and overall transformation of the body of soul.

There it is. It's an inadequate gospel. You know, that gospel that actually, it's funny because he's talking about sin here.

So not only does he have a wrong definition of sin, now he like imposes that into a wrong definition of the gospel.

If you believe that sin is missing the mark, disobeying God's commandments, it's inadequate.

That's inadequate. Not apparently, it's not even just an inadequate view of the law. It's an inadequate view of the gospel itself.

Oh my goodness. Because we need to instead look at it this way.

What if it's missing out on, and I'm gonna summarize the other three things he said, God's best for you.

One definition of sin is centered on God. God gets to determine what sin is.

It is a violation of his standards. Sin puts you in a bad relationship with God that needs to be rectified through Christ.

The other definition that John Mark Comer is giving you is a different definition. Sin in his definition is a failure of you to live up to your potential.

I'll put it this way. It is preventing yourself from achieving something spiritually that you should be achieving.

Now, here's the thing. If you violate God's law, you will inevitably not be achieving what you should be achieving spiritually.

But that is a consequence of sin. That is not sin itself. John Mark Comer is conflating two things.

He's conflating a consequence of sin in the person who sins and sin itself.

And it's only one consequence because there's a greater consequence that separation from God in hell. So he takes the one consequence that is you doing something that's unhealthy for yourself.

And he swaps out the definition of sin and puts that in its place. Now, does anyone still think that I was way off ahead of myself when

I said John Mark Comer is a heretic yesterday? It's actually very similar to something Tim Keller has done.

And Tim Keller has actually done, I'm comfortable saying basically the same thing. That sin is this failure to live up to our potential.

That's very soothing and great for people who are, oh, I don't know, individualists who are autonomous.

That's the funny part of the whole thing. John Mark Comer is like, you know, the problem is individualism. You don't have community.

Well, to have community, you need standards. You need some transcendent standard that is over everything.

Some basis on which to operate and to tell you that you have obligations to people. And if now sin is just, it's about us and like us failing to meet our potential somehow, we're right back into that individualism stuff.

Like he hasn't transcended it at all. He just tells you that he did. Sin, much has been said in the, did

I already go over this? Yes, okay, we just read this. All right, grace. Much has been said about the rise of consumer

Christianity in recent decades. Let's fast forward. The relationship of some Western Christians to the gospel is passive.

Oh no, not only is we have an inadequate gospel, we have a passive one because we're in the West. We are so often told, it's not about what you do.

It's about what Jesus has done for you, but that's a false dichotomy. And that language is never used by any of the

New Testament writers. I don't know, maybe Romans chapter three. It is not of works that we have done.

I mean, I don't even understand how, how does he say this? If we're talking about justification, then of course it's about what

Jesus has done for you. Maybe, maybe we're talking about something else. It seems the Western church has at times been more careful to avoid works righteousness than to avoid sin.

Don't get me wrong, the gospel are full of stories about compassion in Jesus's parables. We have stories of deaths being forgiven.

We have fathers forgiving their sons. Okay, skip that. It's always been grace, pure grace, but Jesus didn't go around beating up on self -effort.

As the saying goes, grace is not opposed to effort. It is opposed to earning. Okay, so,

I'll get this straight. I'm trying to make sense of this in my own head.

What John Mark Kummer is saying here is that Western Christians have been passive because we're not participating in good works.

And we've created a false dichotomy because we think that Jesus does everything for us.

So I guess we just live like the devil, right? We never do anything right. I don't know, we just expect Jesus to do everything for us. We expect Jesus to do it all. Okay, for justification, yes,

Jesus is the one who pays our debts. We can't do it ourselves. But then he goes on and he's like, he muddles the whole thing up by saying, well, of course, it's all about grace.

But at the same time, I guess we can't earn it because it's not opposed to earning.

Grace is not opposed to earning. But we have to put an effort. In what,

John Mark Kummer? In living the Christian life? In what are we talking about here? If it's living the

Christian life, then yes, we do put in effort. We do, I mean, it is something that God is still doing within us.

It is his work in us. But from a human perspective, we are getting up every day and we are participating in activities and obeying

God's commands. I don't know of, is there any, is it prevalent out there?

Is there Christians that are saying, I mean, I know there's cults and things, but like, is it prevalent to say that Jesus, he will do all the good works for you during the course of your day?

You don't have to really do anything for your kids or your family or any, like Jesus, like I don't, like no one's saying that.

When people say that, it's about justification. It's like, you can't gain God's favor through your good works because they're filthy rags.

And so you need Christ who has the perfect merit to stand in your place and give you an alien righteousness.

That's what that means. That's why people say that. It's not about your works, it's about Christ's. But then

John Mark Comer is like, oh no, that's wrong. So if it's wrong, then

I'm having trouble seeing how our works don't contribute then to a justification. So he's saying things that seem contradictory to me.

He's saying, well, you don't earn it, but you better be putting in some work here. It's muddled, it's not clear.

And I mean, this is his idea of grace here.

It's like grace accompanies, is accompanied by these works somehow. Your prayer,

I grew up, and this is one of the things people focus on a lot with John Mark Comer. I grew up praying in a mode that was wordy, fast -paced, demanding.

Prayer to me meant asking God for things, mostly good things. There's a place for that, yet contemplative prayer isn't looking to get anything from God.

It's just looking at God. I look at him, he looks at me, and we are happy. That's a little weird.

A few of us even realize the type of prayer is a possibility. It's a deeper level of prayer that I find both most challenging and most rewarding.

Challenging, not because it's unpleasant. The opposite, in fact, but because it requires the very capacity of which our world schemes to rob me, attention.

Now, I haven't looked into contemplative prayer deeply. I know there's people who say there's new age connections and that kind of thing.

I will say this, this is the key in his mind. This is the main thing I think he thinks is gonna give you this deep spirituality, this contemplative prayer where you're just looking at God and he's looking at you.

When you meditate on God, I'm looking at the Psalms for this, okay? When you meditate on God, you're mulling over his attributes, his actions in the past, how he's revealed himself in scripture.

How he's manifested himself in your own life, in circumstance, in answer to prayer, these kinds of things, protection.

Him looking at you and you're both smiling, you can conjure up an image like that,

I suppose, but no man has seen

God and lived. I mean, people have seen Christ Jesus in that form, but I'm curious about this.

How is he looking at God? What does he see? Does he see God's smile at him? How? What's the image that is there?

I'm just gonna say weird. I'm not gonna say heretical yet. I'm sure other people would say that.

I mean, there's other things I think are heretical, but it's weird. Yeah, I'll leave it there.

Maybe somebody else has a thought on that that I can read in the comments, which I will be getting to here soon. Hell. Oh man, this is one of the worst things.

I saved the worst for last. He talks about hell a few times in the book and it's in the negative.

Like it's as if hell is not something Christians should be talking about. And then he, the only reality he gives to hell is a lie.

And I'll show you that. The following is a character, he says, designed to sharpen my point, but that is, this is the gospel as it is presented in many circles.

You are a sinner going to hell. God loves you. Jesus died on the cross for your sins. If you believe him, you can go to heaven when you die. Okay, I mean, you could add to that that you will be his child and do things that please him and become more like him.

But sure, that's, I would say, yeah, that's the gospel. Good news, saved from your sin, put in a right relationship with God, sounds good.

But he says, much could be said about this gospel, namely that it doesn't sound anything at all like the gospel

Jesus himself preached. Now I read that, I know it has a lot about the gospel, but it has something about hell.

He mentions hell in this stereotypical gospel that he wants to knock down as a straw man, in his mind.

Jesus famously said, he says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. People misread this as a statement about who's in and out and who's going to hell and who's en route to heaven, but that's not likely what

Jesus meant. Okay, there you go again. Like hell's brought up, but hell's brought up as, well, it's not really important.

Writing about hell, C .S. Lewis claimed that all of us are on a trajectory to either life or death and the farther we follow that trajectory, the more profound its effect on us becomes.

He said, we are either becoming immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. Dallas Willard argued that death just sets us, seals the trajectory of the road or the way we chose in life.

It's clear that people are living in hell now while others are living in a kind of heaven on earth. Well, that's interesting. So hell is something that we have now on earth now.

It's not, so God judging people in a place called hell, that's always frowned upon in this, but if you want to frame hell as, oh, it's something people choose through like a bunch of choices they make during the choice, the course of their life, a direction they set, then sure.

And again, what do you notice in that? It's this cumulative choice thing. It's this, it's not conversion that keeps you out and it's not lack of conversion that ensures you go there.

It's a cumulative choices you make during the course of your life that determine where you go and where you go will be where you are now, essentially.

You, when you, at this hell, hell, that heaven earth, he tells the story, and this is to those like, he tells the bullhorn guy story.

He says his son was out with some friends, these guys, and he says, it's been, that this guy,

Jesus loves you and a dire warning to fire hell. That's bizarre.

That's just Bible. So Jesus loves you.

So the dire warnings of hell, get you to Jesus loves you the way that you need to go there. But he says, that's bizarre.

Either the track passed out, the friend was walking with, his son was walking with a friend, wasn't a follower, or Jesus.

All right, I'm putting this back on. People are saying the audio is malfunctioning. So I hear robot

John. Audio is off for me too. Okay, let's make sure. Is audio back on yet?

Can you hear me at all? Something happened weird to my screen. I'm not sure what it was.

I did restart the audio. I did restart the audio. Let me give it a minute.

Make sure that people are coming in. John Mark Comer, man, he's trying to subvert my podcast.

He sent in people to hack me during the middle of the podcast. So the people are saying it's good now. I don't know what happened there, but we're gonna continue on.

I might have to edit that out later. All right, where were we before? So rudely interrupted here.

Okay, Bullhorn guy. So his teenager is out there in public with a friend who's not a

Christian and is embarrassed by this guy because this guy's talking about hell basically.

And John Mark Comer says, well, you know, that's tone deaf. That's out of touch. These old methods feel, they're terrible.

They're manipulative. They're cruel. They rarely result in people discovering life through apprenticeships to Jesus. Well, if we abandon this message and we abandon talking about judgment and a

God who judges and sin, then there is no reason essentially to even come to sinners.

They're okay, right? They're already, I mean, what's the best thing that you can do? Hey, you're right and life's gonna be a little better.

You know what you wanna have in here instead of hell? Well, if someone says, yeah, I'm good. You have nothing to say.

There's no reason to tell them to become a Christian really. So this gets me to my last slide here, which is ecumenicism, ecumenicism.

And I'll just, I guess I'll cap off this because I wanna just finish the hell thing because I just thought of it. Here's the main problem with the hell and the sin with John Mark Comer.

With sin, John Mark Comer thinks that we are the ones who are violating ourselves.

So we become violations of our own wellbeing become the standard for what sin is. It's not a violation of God's law.

It's not centered on God, it's centered on you. When it comes to hell, you become the master of your fate.

Hell is what you make. It's something you create here on earth because of the cumulative choices you make.

It's not the jail that's waiting for you because you've broken God's law. It's not, he takes it right out of God's dominion and he banks you

God. He puts you in the place of God. You're the one. Now, true sinful choices are going to land you in hell but it's because God has made a place for justice.

That's why. Because this character has been violated through his law being violated. It's not because you, it's not that you suffer hell on this earth because you've just decided to go on a path and you keep going on that path that is bad and you have the choice to go on a different path.

You have to be converted to be able to be on the other path and Jesus has to pay for those sins, those crimes that you've committed against God.

The law must be satisfied. So essentially, hell becomes something of your creation.

You become the God of hell. You become the one who's violated in sin and it's a man -centered thing.

And for a guy who's saying, oh, I'm gonna get away from individualism, that's what I'm trying to do. It's like, good luck because you just landed everyone back in self -help therapeutic individualism land.

All right, last slide, ecumenicism. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time here. I just wanna point out something and there's probably more to it.

I just noticed this though, as I was reading because I didn't recognize all the names.

So there might be more, but he has Roman Catholics, Quakers, affirming LGBT Christians and Eastern Orthodox.

And he quotes them all favorably as people who really understand what it is to follow Jesus as an apprentice.

And I just thought, there's limitations. There's ways to quote people of different faith traditions on different subjects.

But he's quoting them on the subject of essentially the gospel in his mind.

People who really have it down with knowing how to follow Jesus. As he excoriates

Western Christians, as he excoriates Protestants for getting it wrong, look at these other people.

And I'm just thinking like with all the enchantment people want right now and like go into Eastern Orthodoxy, I don't know how prevalent that is, but it's prevalent enough and so forth.

Like you really think this guy is gonna be the one to be like rah -rah for Protestantism? I think he's the off -ramp,

I really do. And I mean, I was thinking of the concept in Eastern Orthodoxy of theosis when

I was reading this before I even got to an Eastern Orthodox quote, I was like, this guy sounds like he's talking about theosis or something. Like it's this whole process, the whole, it's just this way of life.

There's not the separation between justification and sanctification, the whole thing is just a theosis. And now

I'm like, yeah, that might be, that could be very well. So with that, don't listen to John Park Comer.

I believe he's a heretic. He's certainly not in line with Protestant teaching and biblical teaching on these things.

And these are some fundamental doctrines and I'll take whatever heat, I don't really care. But let's get to some of the questions here.

How do you find a church free of this type of stuff? Well, I tell people if they're searching for a church, go to the

TruthScript church locator, go to the, I mean, these are all different features you can use, it doesn't mean you're gonna get the right church, but they help.

Sermon Audio Church Finder, try the Grace, well, if you're in this tradition, try the

Master Seminary Alumni List. You could try the, if you're a fundamentalist type, the

IFCAs Church Finder. There's a number of these tools out there and you can see what's in your area.

I found that a lot of people have been benefited by Sermon Audio when they're doing that. So that's my answer to that.

All right, a new way of living, apprentice rather than repentance says

Angel P. Yes, I believe that's a good way to put it. Apprentice rather than repentance.

That would sum up John Mark Comer. Let's see.

I Am Guardian says, in an interview, Comer gave an interpretation that the left are the Sadducees and the right were the

Pharisees and that Jesus was the centrist. This is crazy, Christ was beyond that. Yeah, I've heard that too,

J .D. Greer talks about that. Like, oh, the left were the, you could say that on the religious scale, you could say that the

Pharisees were, like they believed in the books of Moses, whereas the Sadducees didn't, they didn't believe in angels and things like that.

So liberal, conservative in a theological sense. Not in a political sense, though.

I mean, you could see the sort of the instinct, the more revolutionary instinct that the Zealots had.

I mean, there's a political angle to it, I guess, there, and the Pharisees did function.

You even saw the interplay with Pilate, that they're functioning as kind of like subsidiaries of Herod and more or less trying to gain a benefit from the

Roman state and not necessarily with the Zealots. I mean, so there's obviously political positions in there, but I think when people normally say that, they're talking about theological convictions.

1 John 5, 17 says, all unrighteousness is sin. All unrighteousness is sin.

I don't know this person, but apparently Marcia Montenegro has done a lot of stuff on contemplative prayer.

So that is a recommendation I'm seeing in the chat for people curious about that. And can two walk together unless they're in agreement?

Do not even give a greeting to such a one. Approving of non -Christians as a Christian is definitive proof of being false, says

Cosmic Treason. Question, if you believe you have to work for your salvation, can you lose your salvation, says

Beautifully Berserk. Yeah. I mean, what gets you in can get you out, right?

I mean, if you have to, you'd have to keep up a level of works. I mean, that's what I think John Mark Comer's book, honestly, he doesn't say that outright, but that's the impression

I get after it. It's a burden. It's you gotta keep in this apprenticeship and there's no guarantee in any of this that he gives.

So anyway, well, I hope that was helpful to all of you who are considering John Mark Comer.

You can go to my sub stack. Like I said, I have a more tight article about it there. God bless and have a good

Thanksgiving. Hopefully I'll have another chance to podcast, but if not have a good Thanksgiving. See you on the other side.