My Response to Faith on Fire's Attack on Susan Heck

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Justin Peters. I hope that this finds you and your family doing well today. I want to thank you so much for joining me for this podcast. So you might notice I have a bit of a different background today.

That is because I am recording this in Madagascar. I just finished preaching a conference here in the capital city, Tananariva, Tana for.

Short.

That's what all the locals call it. So I had a wonderful, wonderful time here in Madagascar. I was one of several other speakers here at this conference and just a wonderful time. Precious, precious, sweet people here.

And there's, in fact, I may do a video in the future telling you a little bit more about this trip because there's a really good work going on here and I was very, very encouraged by it as were the other speakers.

So at any rate, that's not the purpose of this particular video. So the way the flight schedule worked for us, we had to wait a couple of days in Madagascar after the conference was over to get our needed flight back home.

And so we had a couple of days here to kind of relax a little bit. And so last night, right as I was going to bed, right before I went to bed, I pulled up YouTube and I saw this thumbnail of a video that a guy named Brian put up.

Brian is, he has a YouTube channel entitled Faith on Fire and he's one of my frequent critics. And, in fact, I just a few minutes ago kind of scrolled through his YouTube channel, all the videos listed, and it seems like roughly, I think it's safe to say over half of his videos either are devoted to attacking me, John MacArthur, or Calvinism, or some combination of all of that.

In fact, he has some videos on there attacking me that I haven't even seen. I've watched some of his videos, not all of them. But at any rate, he is one of my frequent critics. But this particular thumbnail struck me because the title of it is When MacArthur's Men Defy Him, Justin Peters Defies MacArthur, Women Preaching in Church.

And you know how when a dog kind of cocks his head at you and goes, you know, hmm? That's honestly what I did when I saw that, like, what? And so I just had to watch this one, and I did. And I thought this video, I've not done a video directly responding to anything that Brian has said, I've referenced him in a couple of them, but this one I am totally devoting to him because this is so utterly absurd and sloppy and careless and intentional.

I mean, the ignorance you're about to see is almost insurmountable ignorance, but it's willful ignorance. And I'm not so much wanting an apology, I don't care if he apologizes to me, but he does owe someone else a big apology.

But I want to show you some clips from this. So basically, to set this up, the argument he's making is that it's a well-known commodity,.

Right?

That John MacArthur does not believe a woman should preach in church or teach men publicly in church. That is his theology. That is my theology. But he sees that I'm speaking at a conference in Orlando, Florida, at Beulah Baptist Church, Winter Garden, Florida.

So it's kind of a suburb of Orlando. This conference is in December. So I am speaking at it. Phil Johnson is speaking at it. So is Susan Heck. Oh, the scandal. And so apparently he thinks that I am defying John MacArthur, and apparently so is Phil Johnson, defying John MacArthur because we now are apparently comfortable with lady preachers.

And he's going to use a comment that I left in the comment section of one of his videos attacking me to try to make his case, and we'll get to that in just a little bit. So before we do, though, he shows a clip from John MacArthur, a sermon that he preached back in 2019, dealing with the role of women in the church.

So I want you to watch this and watch his commentary, and then we'll progress through the important sections of his video, and I will offer my commentary.

So Justin Peters, I thought, was outspoken against women preachers, just like John MacArthur. And here's Phil Johnson, co-host with Justin Peters and Susan Heck, who's going to be preaching in a church, as you can see, or to a family-integrated gathering in the church.

So she's going to be preaching to a mixed audience of children, men, women, everybody. And I could have sworn that John MacArthur prohibited that.

John MacArthur prohibits it because Scripture prohibits it. But here he's going to show a clip of John MacArthur to try to make his case. Watch this.

What we read then in verse 35 is, it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church, it is shameful. That is a recognized judgment on all such behavior. The same as teaching for sordid gain in Titus 111, disgraceful, shameful gain.

It's sort of like false prophets doing what they do for money. And this unmistakable divine law and command is so absolute that we go back to verse 34, and the section actually begins, as you will note if you have an ESV, as in all the churches of the saints, the women are to keep silent in the churches.

There you go.

So here we have Phil Johnson, John MacArthur's right-hand man, and ministry partner with a woman who will be preaching in a church. That I find, that sounds a little hypocritical to me. Family integrated.

Now she's billed as a woman's Bible teacher. But let's face facts, if you're teaching the Bible in a church and it's in front of everyone that would be there at a regular church service, the whole family, I mean, I don't know how you, and there's worship going on because there's a worship service integrated with the conference.

And that's what they're saying is going to happen three days in a row and each of these three speakers, now these people pictured here are just part of Beulah Baptist Church, but these are the hosts, three hosts of the conference.

These are the three main speakers, Phil Johnson, Justin Peters, Susan Heck. So let me show you a little bit about Susan Heck in terms of Bible teaching.

Oh, the scandal. Phil Johnson, yours truly, speaking at a conference where Susan Heck will also be speaking, and because it says it's a family integrated free conference, free by the way, for families, then that means Susan Heck is obviously going to be preaching to a mixed audience from the pulpit, teaching men in clear violation of, well, he wouldn't say of scripture, but in clear violation of John MacArthur and there's Phil Johnson, you know, John MacArthur's right hand man speaking at this conference.

So, wow, what a scandal, my goodness. Well, dear friends, the conference is family integrated in that this is not like the Shepherds Conference, okay? This is for everyone, anyone and everyone who wants to come.

Families are invited to come, but just because the conference is integrated does not mean that Susan Heck will be speaking to men at all, and we'll see that. He's about to go to Susan Heck's website to tell you more about Susan Heck, and this is where, this is why I felt so compelled to respond to this particular video because it's so egregious, but I'm also getting ahead of myself, but anyway, so I digress.

Let's just watch Brian.

And we'll get to Justin Peter's comment afterwards.

Here we go.

Here's Susan Heck's speaking schedule for 2022, 23, 24, we're not going to look at those. We're just going to look at this year because I have it up handy. First Baptist Church in Oklahoma, Heritage Baptist Church, New York, West Macomb Baptist Church, Missouri, then there's another church in Kentucky, a church in Iowa, a church in Colorado.

You get the impression this woman's preaching in a church? Now just like the Bela Baptist Church one, which if we could scroll down, you can see this woman gets around. She preaches at a lot of churches.

Yep, she does speak at a lot of churches. So this tells us two things. Number one, he is on her website, which is perfectly fine, but he's on her website so he has full access to who Susan is, what she believes, what she's about, what she does, all of her contact information and the contact information of all of these churches.

So he's scrolling through her calendar, showing you all these churches that she's speaking.

At.

He could have contacted any of these dozens upon dozens upon dozens of churches, called them and said, hey, when Susan Heck came and spoke at your church here a while back, did she speak to a mixed audience or was it just to women?

He could have done that.

Did he? Oh no.

No.

Why bother? Why bother actually finding out the truth when you can just disparage someone? He also could have contacted Susan Heck because her contact information is also on her website right there in plain view for anyone to see and she's very accessible, by the way.

Did he do that?

Oh no.

No.

Why do that when you can just disparage someone?

And I'm sure a lot of them aren't mixed audience teaching, preaching to men. Susan is able to speak on many scriptures and topics.

She is indeed, because she has the entire New Testament memorized, at least two books of the Old Testament working on more, the entire New Testament memorized. So yeah, she is indeed able to speak on a lot of scriptures and a lot of topics.

She's written several books, Bible studies for ladies. But does Brian bother to check any of this out?

Oh no.

Now you can't see it, can you? I can't even scroll down further. You're not going to see this, but on the bottom of this right here, she has a mention about what her requirements are at church when she speaks there and she needs a table set up.

She's got a companion that comes with her and runs the table where she has her books. And she's requesting the churches give her at least an eight foot long table so she can lay out her books and resources.

Now it doesn't say right there that she sells them. But I don't think it's likely she's bringing all these books and resources to give away for free. But I don't know. I could be wrong. But I'm going to assume she's selling them to make money.

She's selling them to make money. An obvious dig at her character and motivation for doing what she does. So he is on her website, of course, and you see here that he is under, he went to speaking schedule and he's under the heading speaking subjects and topics.

You see that he even highlighted that line there under that heading. But look at the heading just below that, speaking requirements. So he's obviously read through that entire paragraph. He obviously has because of the things he said, as you'll see here in just a second.

So I want to show you a larger section, a larger screenshot of that exact same section on Susan's website. So let's take a look at this, shall we? And I have the pertinent parts highlighted here. Okay, so here it is.

I want to bring your attention first to the hot pink highlighted section here. It says, if the church could set up, could please set up an eight foot or longer table for her books and materials, that would be helpful.

So he's clearly read that part. He's clearly read this section. So go back now to the first underlined, red underlined section. So let's look at this. So they're beginning with that first red underline.

Regarding speaking fees, Susan leaves the amount of the honorarium up to each individual church or group. So Susan has the same policy as do I. She does not require a minimum fee or she doesn't say, tell churches I won't come unless you guarantee me X number of dollars.

She doesn't do that. I don't do that. So clearly, her motivation here is not money, but not according to Brian. She's doing it for money. Back to the screenshot. Look at the second underlined, red underlined.

Susan travels with a companion who runs the book table, but does not expect for that individual's airfare to be covered. So Susan's traveling companion is a lady named Deb Pendergraf, a friend of ours, of mine and Kathy, and Deb does indeed travel with her to help her run the table and do things like that.

But Susan doesn't require the church to pay for her airfare. It would certainly be a blessing, as the website says, but Susan does not require it. So are you getting the sense that Susan's main motivating factor here is money?

Well, according to Brian it is, but when you just read Susan's website, it's very clear that it is not. But if Brian had any questions about this, look at the yellow highlighted sections. Please contact her, Susan, at, there's the phone number or there's her email address.

Look at the second yellow highlighted section. Her email address is repeated there again. So there's her contact information. In fact, this picture of Susan and Deb is right under the contact us section, and you can see there right below the picture.

To place an order, contact Deb Pendergraf at, there's her email address and there's the phone number again. Phone number, email address. If Susan doesn't reply, Deb Pendergraf will. He could have simply called Susan or emailed Susan, and either Susan or Deb would have responded.

Well, no, Brian, no, Susan does not speak to men. That's well known. In fact, every church that has ever had Susan will attest to this fact that Susan does not preach to or teach men.

And I sort of remember a story in the Bible where in the temple Jesus overturned the tables because people were trying to use it as a place to make money. And I don't know, is that being nitpicky or does it seem like maybe that's, if that's what you're doing, that may not be appropriate.

So Brian sarcastically compares Susan selling her books at a conference at a church to Jesus overturning the tables in the temple. The purpose of this video is not to go into a full theological explanation of why Jesus did what he did.

Jesus, for one thing, he quoted Isaiah 56 and alluded to Jeremiah chapter 7. But for Brian to compare Susan selling her books at a church conference to Jesus overturning the tables at the temple because these charlatans basically had turned God's house of prayer into a robber's den.

So he's really going to compare Susan to robbers. Susan is not exploiting anyone like the money changers were at the temple. Susan is not trying to prevent anyone from coming to worship like the money changers were at the temple.

She's not doing any of those things. What an egregious twisting of Scripture from Brian and an egregious insult to Susan to compare her to that. That is just, that is unbelievable to me. You know, as far as selling resources, well, here's the funny thing about resources.

They don't produce themselves. They don't make themselves. Yes, Susan sells her books to those people who can afford to buy them. I sell my resources to people who can afford to buy them because they don't make themselves.

But I also have a policy of giving my resources away free to people who cannot afford them. And anybody who has been at any of my conferences, you know that to be true. And it's true of Susan as well.

And so it is just absolutely appalling.

I think John MacArthur put it this way.

The same as teaching for sordid gain in Titus 1 .11.

Yeah, sordid gain. In other words, another version calls it filthy lucre. In other words, you know, you're doing it for monetary gain.

That is a sinful and slanderous accusation you made against Susan Heck, Brian, and you ought to apologize.

And so with that, let's jump back and let's now go over to the comment from Justin Peters. All right, so I'll put that on the screen for you to read with me. Now, he's on my channel in one of my videos, but he's not commenting to me.

He's commenting to this guy named Scott. And he says, Scott, I simply do not have the time to answer all your questions. I do, however, have a detailed doctrinal statement on my website. Women are biblically prohibited from being pastors and elders.

They are not prohibited to teach men in a corporate gathering of believers.

So Brian is reading a comment that I left on one of his videos. I can't remember which one it was now. I don't even know how to find it. But I said that I inadvertently typed that women are not prohibited from teaching men in corporate worship.

That was a typo on my part. That word not, should not have been there. But at any rate, so that was an error on my part, but it was a typo. So more on that in just a second.

They can witness or teach a man in private settings, per Akila and Priscilla, but not when the church is gathered for corporate worship. Well, Beulah Baptist Church is going to have corporate worship, and it's a corporate.

I'm not really sure what the difference is he's making between churches gathered for corporate worship versus when there's men in a corporate gathering of believers and women being able to teach them.

Do you think that Justin maybe made a typo and didn't mean to write, they are not prohibited to teach men in a corporate gathering of believers, but meant to write, they are prohibited to teach men in a corporate gathering of believers?

Yeah, Brian, go with that. Doesn't that make the most sense? I mean, anyone who knows anything about my theology knows that I'm an enthusiastic complementarian. I reject egalitarianism. I reject that a woman can preach, can be a pastor, can be an elder, and can preach to men in a corporate worship setting.

I mean, anyone who knows anything about my theology knows that.

When I look at this thing here where he says they are not prohibited to teach men in a corporate gathering of believers, I can only assume that that's not a typo, that he really means that. As a matter of fact, he does not mean this part, but not when the church is gathered for corporate worship.

I'm thinking that's the mistake he made. In fact, he does believe that it's okay for women to teach in a corporate setting. Because after all, if we go back to this, that's what's going to be happening there.

There's going to be a corporate gathering of believers where there's men present. They say that there's going to be worship and the teachings in the conference.

So Brian is just absolutely convinced that Susan Heck is going to be up behind the pulpit in the plenary sessions preaching and speaking and teaching to men and women, boys and girls, all alike. And the first of many clues, actually, I shouldn't even say the first clue because the first clue is, as I said a minute ago, everybody knows my theology on this.

Everybody knows Phil Johnson's theology on this. Everybody knows John MacArthur's theology on this. But aside from all that, just look at the description under Susan's picture. And I've highlighted this here.

I don't know if you can see it, but it says, speaker and author for what's that? Oh, women's ministry. How about that? Speaker and author for women's ministry.

Non-men, women.

Now, let me show you a little bit more from Susan's website, which Brian, of course, is very familiar with. Look at this under the About Susan section. Susan has been involved with women's ministries for about 40 years.

This included teaching Bible studies, counseling, and heading up Ladies with the Master Women's Ministry at Grace Community Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She's been involved with women's ministry for 40 years, heading up Ladies with the Master.

Not men with the master, not men and ladies with the master, ladies with the master, women's ministry for 40 years. So, look at this just a little bit further down, same section. Susan Heck has two grown children and seven grandchildren.

Both children and their spouses are in full-time ministry. Speaks very well, by the way, of Susan and Doug. More on that in just a minute. Continues, because of the enthusiastic ladies who attend the Bible studies that Susan teaches and because of the life changes, Susan has been invited to speak to a number of ladies groups, both nationally and internationally.

Susan loves to minister her gift of teaching to women. Do you need her to paint a picture? I mean, how much more obvious could it be? I'll answer my own question. All you have to do is go and look at the titles of the books that she's written.

She's written at least 10 of them, I think, and many of them begin this way, the titles, A Lady's Bible Study on Prayer, A Lady's Bible Study on the Sermon on the Mount, Lady's Bible Study on Ephesians, Lady's Bible Study on Philippians, 1 John, the Epistle of James, 1 Timothy, Colossians, A Lady's Bible Study on fill-in-the-blank for ladies.

So Susan's not going to be preaching to the men. She's not going to be behind the pulpit in plenary sessions preaching to men and women, she's going to be doing breakout sessions for ladies. Same thing that she'll be doing next year at the G3 conference, breakout sessions for ladies.

When Susan goes to all of these churches, any one of which Brian could have contacted and asked, she teaches only and exclusively ladies. It is insurmountable obstinate, intentional ignorance to make the accusations that Brian made, just absolutely inexcusable.

And so for those of you who may have watched his channel some, I mean, this is the level of homework that he does. It's absolutely embarrassing. And the only reason I'm doing this video, not that he's attacked me again, whatever, but he went after Phil Johnson, went after Casey Butner, a good faithful pastor, but he went after Susan Heck.

And it's just, it is absolutely inexcusable, and it's absolutely pathetic. One other comment about Brian's snark of Susan selling her books at that eight foot long table, something else that Brian should have noticed on Susan's website, with which he is so familiar, is the very first line under the About Susan section says this, Susan Heck was married for 46 years to her beloved husband and pastor, Doug Heck, who was a faithful shepherd for 50 years, until the Lord took him to glory in August of 2021.

Doug was a dear friend of me and Kathy. We love Doug, we love Doug and Susan both. Doug is one of the finest men I've ever met. I just cannot say enough good things about Doug Heck. He was a precious man, a faithful pastor, a faithful shepherd, and a faithful husband to Susan.

He died one month after he had pastored for, he reached the 50-year mark of pastoring, one month after that, and the Lord took him home. So, perish the thought that Susan would have the audacity to sell any of her books, especially given that her husband, Doug, who, of course, was the primary breadwinner, is gone, is in heaven now.

Perish the thought that Susan would be so greedy and so selfish to sell any of her books, despite the fact that it cost her to produce them. That doesn't matter, she should give them all away and just go in the hole.

Just unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable. Shame on you, Brian, shame on you. I don't care if you apologize to me, but you sure should apologize to Susan Heck. You should repent for the sinful slander that you have levied against Susan Heck.

Takes a real man to go after a widow, and ignorance is not an excuse. You're on her website, you're all over her website, it's right there.

And if you're in the Orlando, not to promote a bunch of Calvinists here, but if you're in the Orlando area and you want to see Justin Peters at this thing, but let them know, because it's not a big place.

They may be standing room only, it's pretty small. I would think that Phil Johnson and Justin Peters and Susan Heck are gonna draw quite a few people. So once again, should I go? You think I should go to the event, it's free.

Yeah, it's free. So we're obviously motivated by filthy lucre.

How do you think Justin would feel about that if I showed up? Or Casey Butner, you think I might make him a little bit uncomfortable since I've been very outspoken against their treatment and gospel of another local Orlando church?

I don't care if you come, Brian. Come, you're welcome to. Maybe you'll learn something. That other local Orlando church that he references, that he accuses Casey Butner and myself of slandering and lying about is First Baptist Orlando.

Casey Butner and I have done several videos on First Baptist Orlando and their shocking capitulation to homosexuality, baptizing homosexuals, having a homosexual in their own baptistry, baptizing someone else with a current staff member of the church in the baptistry as well at the same time with full knowledge of what is going on, teaching the posture shift curriculum that is designed to be more inclusive to LGBTQXYZ, whatever.

And so we've done several videos on that. It's exhaustively documented. Casey has heard from well in excess of 100 individuals, former members, current members, even staff members of First Baptist Orlando, that affirm that all of what we have said is true and then some.

There's tons of information that has been given to Casey that just for privacy sake, he's not divulged publicly. I mean, it's undeniable. And yet, Brian says that we're lying about it. So given all that and given everything that I've shown you in this video about Susan Heck, information that is so widely known about her and is so readily available on her own website, a website that he himself was all over, keep that in mind in much the same way that Brian focuses on a couple of statements that were made by First Baptist Orlando and some services, at least one service that was done after the videos that Casey and I were doing started coming out.

And these comments from First Baptist Orlando that seemed to be orthodox, biblical in their view on homosexuality, but that was clearly an obvious damage control because of the videos that we were releasing, obvious damage control.

So he focuses on that and ignores the mountains of evidence that Casey Buttner and I have presented in multiple videos, and there's far more that we haven't presented and haven't done so just out of integrity sake, out of concern for privacy for those who have shared the information with us, so he ignores all that.

And so in much the same way, he focuses on one word, three-letter word, not, that I inadvertently inserted into a sentence that was even made clear that it's not what I intended by reading the next sentence.

So he focuses on that and ignores the mountains of evidence from my own theology, from my own teaching, and especially what is on Susan Hecht's website. It is all over her website, readily available, and he was all over her website, and he should have known it, and I don't see how it's possible that he could not have.

But if he was that negligent in his responsibility to do his due diligence before coming out and publicly attacking someone, then that should give you real pause before you take at face value anything that he says.

And again, it doesn't matter to me if he apologizes to me. I'm not looking for a pound of flesh to feed my own ego here or whatever. What prompted me to finally do a video in real response to this Faith on Fire Brian guy is just the deplorable things that he has said about Susan Hecht.

You know, also Phil Johnson and John MacArthur, but primarily what he has said about Susan Hecht. This is just absolutely appalling. It is beyond the pale. It's inexcusable. And so I wanted you to know the truth.

Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Peters has been kicked out of at least one Word of Faith conference that I'm aware of that he talked about on his channel, and that's kind of interesting and unfortunate. I'm sure he was there respectful, but I'm at least encouraged to know that we're making some progress here.

Justin Peters is perfectly fine with a woman preaching in a church.

Hallelujah.

That's at least a good step in the right direction.

Nope, never have been and never will be. All right, dear ones. Thank you very much for watching. I hope that this has cleared up any confusion that Brian's. If it were not so injurious to Susan and so mean spirited, honestly, towards Susan Hecht, I would have honestly just kind of laughed off, but I felt this deserved a response.

So if you are in the Orlando area and would like to join us for the conference, we would love to have you, even you, Brian, December 10th through the 12th at Beulah Baptist Church, Winter Garden, Florida, outside of Orlando.

I'll put the link to the conference down below in the description. And thank you very much for watching, dear ones. I'm about to get on a flying machine and head north to Paris. And we've got a 24 hour layover in Paris and then fly westward back home to the good old US of A.

But I've really enjoyed my time here in Madagascar. It's good work going on here and on a happy note.

All right.

Thank you very much, dear ones. Until our next time together, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all.