Part 1: Kip McKean & the International Church of Christ | Cultish @ExposingtheCults

Apologia Studios

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Hey, what's up, everyone? This is Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co -hosts here at Cultish. And it's the Super Sleuth right here with him.

00:05

Since we started five years ago, our goal and mission here at Cultish is to be able to bless and equip you to be able to use the

00:12

Gospel Proclamation to counter the kingdom of the cults. It's also been a goal of ours to make this a 100 % crowdfunded ministry.

00:21

And as we are redirecting our focuses on that, we ask that you prayerfully consider supporting our ministry.

00:27

We currently, as you've noticed, we haven't been able to drop episodes as much as we'd like to. We've maybe been doing a once a month.

00:34

One of the primary reasons being is that right now we are only around 10 to 15 % of monthly support of what we need to operate as a ministry.

00:45

This is very important. It's near and dear to Andrew and I's heart. So we'd ask that if you have been blessed by the content the last five years, if you want to support

00:52

Cultish, that we can continue this very, very important ministry. Please prayerfully consider partnering with us.

00:58

And we ask that you'd also would consider giving generously to the cultishshow .com. There is a donate tab where you can make sure that everything we do will be 100 % crowdfunded.

01:08

And that way we can avoid a paywall to make sure that you and everyone else, and especially those who are cult survivors, can get these necessary resources for free.

01:18

So please go to the cultishshow .com and please prayerfully consider partnering with us. Enjoy the podcast.

01:27

All right. Welcome back to Cultish, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co -hosts here flying solo today with Steve Matthews, who's come out from California, been on a couple of times.

01:36

And we've always covered a broad variety of topics today. We're going to be talking about the International Church of Christ.

01:43

We've had a couple episodes where we've talked about the mainline Church of Christ with our good friends Trey and with Jeremiah.

01:48

But we're talking specifically about the International Church of Christ. And the International Christian Church. Yes. So, yeah, let's just jump into it.

01:55

Where's the best place to start in this conversation? Well, we're going to start off by explaining the history and beliefs of the movement.

02:02

And we're going to, you know, discussing today. And then we're going to get really deep into the biblical verses they use to show baptism necessary for salvation.

02:10

We're going to go through every verse that they use and show how they're really twisting it to say we got to be baptized in order to be saved.

02:16

And this group is real. I'm really glad we're doing this because this group has heard a lot of people.

02:23

You know, there's a lot of people looking for information on them, but they're just like just want nothing out on the International Christian Church.

02:29

So we're really hoping these estimates, you know, these episodes going to help a lot of people. There's a lot of parents are going to be finding this through a

02:35

Google search. And they're hurting right now because they have a son or daughter who went away to a university.

02:41

And they're going to be just nodding when they're hearing these words and saying, that's my child. They went away to university.

02:46

They were invited to a Bible study. Now they're going to this church and they think now that their disciple and that nobody else in the family saved, that I was wrong in my life and that you need to start coming to this church and experience salvation in this one true church.

03:01

And we're going to walk through the history. We're going to explain, you know, a lot of things about this group and some of the problems in it and hopefully provide a really solid

03:09

Christian response to this group across the board. So tune in. It's going to be an interesting episode.

03:16

Awesome, man. I'm pumped about it. So these movements that we're talking about today, there's a bunch of them.

03:21

They're all founded by one guy called Kip McKean. And the Boston Church of Christ or the

03:26

Boston Movement was huge in the 80s and the 90s. Other names associated with these groups are the

03:32

Crossroads Church of Christ, the ICOC, which is the International Church of Christ, the ICC, which is the modern incarnation we're going to cover, the

03:39

International Christian Church. And there's other names also like Multiplying Ministries, the Discipling Movement, the

03:45

City of Angels International Christian Church, God's Modern Day Movement or the Movement. I've actually got some notes on my iPad here because there's just so much stuff

03:53

I don't want to miss. And I want to make sure I mention it all. It's going to just guide me to kind of get as much as well as a lot of the quotes we'll be doing today.

03:59

So this has been an extremely controversial group in the media and among countercult ministries.

04:07

They've been a campus ministry mainly, and they target students between the age of 25, 20 to 35.

04:14

And when people go into colleges, they're away from home. They're in a new city. They don't have any friends. They don't have the family. They're in a real state of transition.

04:20

And you know how cults do that. They like to go after people in this kind of thing, become a new family. And, you know, you're on the campus and you can do it.

04:28

But it's interesting is not only is this group the number one of all cults that are on campuses in the country, probably around the world, they target students.

04:36

They're a campus ministry. They're the number one group to be on campus, but they're also the number one group to be banned from campuses.

04:43

They've been banned from a lot of the major universities and colleges around the country. And there's a saying where there's smoke, there's fire.

04:51

So it's a very controversial group. There was – I've heard actually that in the 90s, there was more people seeing counselors and psychologists and therapists after coming out of this group than all the cult groups put together because they do such an amazing number on your head as they try to remake you in the image of leadership.

05:09

And when you just – I don't want to be jumping ahead, but when you say banned from campus, was that because of the behavior on campus or the recruitment methods?

05:17

Recruiting tactics. Yeah, a lot of that stuff there. I mean I'll tell you, you know, I have studied a lot of different groups.

05:24

This and the World Mission Society Church of God, the group I'm most worried about, are the two most hardcore groups out there of all cults put together.

05:32

I mean you think – you met a lot of Ta -Nehisi Coates witnesses or Christian science. You want to talk about a hardcore group?

05:38

This group is very, very, very committed. In fact, they're called the sold -out discipling movement.

05:46

Originally, the International Church of Christ, they told themselves the total commitment movement. This is the sold -out discipling movement.

05:53

If you have family or friends in there, you know about that. Because, you know, a lot of Christians are lukewarm or carnal, not 100 % committed.

06:00

We hang on to our sins. This group, they give everything, everything to God.

06:06

The whole point of this group is they hold back no sin, no area. If their leadership said go to the Philippines tomorrow to plant a church, they're going to go.

06:14

I mean we're talking fully committed. They talk about counting the cost. This group is hardcore.

06:21

So just to drive it home, it's not like talking to these people. So when they go to campus, what they do is they'll, in different places where they send out members to establish a new community, first thing they do is they'll probably get their

06:33

Excel spreadsheet out. Okay, here's all the local campus, all the universities around. We're going to send people that have campus devos here and outreach over here.

06:41

They'll go onto the campuses. They're not even like students at the school, but they want to fit in.

06:46

So they're going to put backpacks on and they're going to try to walk, put some fake books in there. They're going to try to look like they belong on campus.

06:53

And they don't like, you know, the cults on campus, like we're much like Church of God or Shin Chan Ji.

06:59

You know, those are the other two groups. They won't use their real name. And they'll say, oh, we're part of a group and we'll tell you later.

07:06

But these guys will sometimes do it. They don't have church buildings. They always rent and they meet in space like, you know, hotels.

07:15

They meet home churches or, you know, sometimes rent a group, a room on a campus to meet like, you know, a certain place.

07:24

Well, it's deceptive recruiting tax. I mean, it's no different than what happened to Steve Hansen. We're talking more about the way they want to save money from buying a church building to use it for missions.

07:32

Right. This group is all about expansion missions. And what's interesting about this group, see, when we talk about other groups like Mormons or World Mission Society, Church of God or any of these different groups,

07:42

Baha 'i, this group, these are mainly Christians in this group. The problem is they don't think we're

07:47

Christians and they're very divisive, but they can say the Apostles Creed. You know, they believe in the Trinity, the bodily resurrection of Jesus and the incarnation and the bodily second coming and everything where the cults don't.

07:59

These guys are, you know, they can say the creeds. They're mainly Christian. They don't have additional scriptures. They use the

08:04

NIV Bible and they make Christianity really fun. I mean, you know, their service.

08:10

I mean, a lot of ways they really beat us at our own game. They're very loving and inclusive when you go there.

08:16

They'll greet you with love. They have great music. They integrate relationship, really creative ideas.

08:24

And their founder, Kip, he came out of the mainline Church of Christ like you've done on the previous episodes.

08:30

But this is like the new, young, hip campus ministry version of the old Churches of Christ.

08:35

A lot of Churches of Christ, it's a dying movement in a lot of ways. They'll admit that themselves in their stats. They're just fading out.

08:42

There's less and less Churches of Christ. A lot of them are closing the doors. But this movement is expanding worldwide and they want to evangelize the world in one generation.

08:49

So Kip is just—Kip McKean, who founded these movements, is an amazing, dynamic, and talented preacher.

08:56

His sermons, I mean, he just—he knows how to speak and just to lay it down. And he calls for a total commitment from his followers.

09:04

I mean, a complete—you're not holding any sins. You're giving it all to God and the idea of real evangelism and reaching the world in one generation.

09:12

Again, like a lot of these newer high -demand groups, they are a high -demand group. They're not like Mormons. You know, when you leave

09:17

Mormonism, you don't get PTSD. You don't have like a sense of loss of those years that you're in the group.

09:23

But this group, they're much more high -demand, high -control. The BITE model, the Stephen Hassan stuff, that's this group.

09:30

So, you know, they're very aggressive. The older ICOC movement, they're in about 150 countries.

09:38

The ICC are over 40 countries and they're growing. And they want to be in every country in the world. They're very exclusive and divisive.

09:45

They look at Christians needing to be saved. Like I said, we're lukewarm. They're the ones who are fired up disciples. And they've really affected a lot of people.

09:53

They've done a lot of damage out there. So that's why we're giving a good Christian response to them today. Awesome. And so you want to jump into the history for starters?

10:00

Well, history is going to go through a couple of steps. So I call them an offshoot, an offshoot, an offshoot because like, you know, they came out of regular

10:08

Christianity. The Church of Christ came out of regular Christianity. And then the Boston ICOC came out of the mainline

10:15

Churches of Christ. And now the ICC has come out of the ICOC. So there's a lot of offshoot stuff coming out.

10:21

We're going to go through the history, but we're going to talk about it in two levels. So we'll talk first about the Restoration Movement, the history since that is the background.

10:27

They're big in the South, but they're declining a lot. They're not big in like California where I'm from. And within the

10:33

Restoration Movement, you have the Churches of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, and the Christian Church.

10:39

And the Church of Christ will have the instrumentalists, non -instrumentalists. There's a lot of interfering there.

10:44

They have a number of colleges and universities like Harding University, Abilene Christian University, Pepperdine.

10:50

So those are examples of universities and publishing houses they have. This group claims to be the restoration of true

10:57

Christianity. But isn't there like a lot of restorations, right? Like Joseph Smith is said to restore the gospel.

11:03

Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh -day Adventists, Herbert Armstrong, the World Missions High Church of God. You know, they all say the same thing, right?

11:09

That the early church was created. Then a few years after, whether Council of Nicaea or in the first couple, pick of the belt, the true church disappeared.

11:17

And then someone had to come along in the 1800s and restore the group. They emulate the Gnostic movements of the first century.

11:22

Hey, the truth has been lost. We're the ones who've uncovered the secret gnosis of Christianity. Yeah, we got to bring it back to earth.

11:27

So this is the same thing that kind of happened in a different way with the Restoration Movement. We're not talking about a reformation.

11:33

So if we have people who get irritated hearing this in the mainline churches of Christ, hey, your movement started by your founding fathers wasn't a reformation of Christianity.

11:43

It's one thing like Walter Martin. We've got to mention Al -Gawali. So Walter Martin would say in reference to Mormonism, it's one thing to talk about reforming

11:52

Christianity. It's another thing to talk about restoration. When you're talking about restoration, it's like it's got to be brought back.

11:58

Now the ICC, they'll definitely talk about a restoration of Christianity. I never go into that history.

12:04

But the very terms within the mainline churches of Christ of the restoration. So you have like the four leading figures, the founding fathers will call them of restorationism.

12:14

You have Thomas and Alexander Campbell. You have Barton W. Stone and Walter Scott. And it claimed originally to be a non -denominational movement.

12:24

They'll sometimes say that too. But it really is a denomination. People will say, well, hey, you have so many divisions in Christianity.

12:31

We don't want to be part of it. So what they can do, they can start a new denomination. It's actually a denomination. Where does the word denomination come from?

12:38

It comes from Latin like a denominator, like a division. Well, guess what? Church of Christ, they won't admit it.

12:43

But in a sense, you're very much a denomination. They'll try to say they're not. So it kind of started when

12:50

Thomas and Alexander Campbell, they were Presbyterians who came to America from Ireland. Thomas came over in 1807.

12:58

Alexander came with the rest of the family in 1809. And they saw the churches in America. And they saw like all these different things.

13:05

They say, oh, look at all those denominations. And he goes, we don't want to have all these creeds. So we're gonna start our own church.

13:12

And we say no creed but Christ. And they have all these sayings within restorationism where the

13:17

Bible speaks, we speak. Where the Bible is silent, we are silent. They wanted to kind of originally go back to the

13:23

Bible as kind of a unity movement. And they ended up actually being divisive because they introduced the doctrine that you gotta be baptized to be saved.

13:31

So not only are divisive among the Christian groups, but they were very divisive among themselves because they believed in like, you know, the instrumentalists, the non -instrumentalists, the standards and the sitters, the one cup or the many cups.

13:44

You're smiling. Tell me why you're smiling. The reason why I'm smiling is because I think I've told you the high school

13:49

I went to was this high school that's 90 % Mormon. But Andre. Yeah, my friend

13:54

Andre. I think I've told you the story. You've said it on the air. Yeah, this is my friend Andre. Like I was next to him and he was alongside me arguing with my

14:02

Mormon friends. And all of a sudden baptism came up, like John three verse five. And I started arguing with them.

14:07

And all of a sudden Andre started arguing with me like, wait, you're on their team? Like what's going on here? But it was just very interesting.

14:13

And I found out he was church of Christ. And then he talked about how we are the church of Christ because of the name of our title.

14:20

And he approved text Romans 16 verse 16, which says, greet one another with the holiest kiss. All the churches of Christ send greeting.

14:28

It's a self -fulfilling prophecy. It's like, hey, the true church is called the church of Christ. So let's call ourselves the church of Christ. Ah, see, there we are in the

14:34

Bible. Yeah, so as you're saying this, in my mind's eye I'm seeing an influx of memory of my old friend Andre during high school. He had that smile.

14:39

I knew something was going on there. Back in the late 90s. Absolutely. 2024, we're getting old here, man. So they're very divisive among themselves.

14:47

They're very divisive among the Christians. And they have this divisive elitist spirit that's often really hardcore in the church of the

14:54

Christ. And this is part of the problem. So this has continued now with the

15:00

International Churches of Christ, the Boston Movement, you know, and then the International Christian Church. So Thomas and Alexander Campbell at a point, even though their

15:09

Presbyterian background, they became convinced that baptism should be by immersion. So in 1812, they went to a

15:16

Baptist minister, Matthias Luce, and they did a baptism by immersion. And it wasn't for a baptism of sins.

15:24

It was more in line with believers' baptism. So they took the first step. That was to come later, the baptism for the remission of sins.

15:31

But they took the first step, say, hey, we're going to start baptized by immersion instead of doing it the Presbyterian way. So it wasn't until 1823 and his preparation for, like one thing is this group was really into public debates.

15:43

They would do, they'd call for debate with two ministers. Let's debate baptism for salvation and we're going to have it at a church. Well, he had a debate with W .L.

15:50

McCullough. Thomas was the debater, or sorry, Alexander the son was the debater of the two.

15:56

And W .L. McCullough in 1823 is preparing, and that's when he finally figured out that baptism is for the remission of sins.

16:02

So at this point, they were never Baptist. They were associating with the Baptist. They had the Redstone Baptist Association and stuff.

16:09

But they were, the Campbells never became Baptist. But at this point when he, he had the

16:15

Baptist Association in 1823, when there was no Church of Christ yet, they started realizing, oh, now baptism's for the remission of sins.

16:24

So the big moment comes here. This is the real point in the history restoration movement. Walter Scott in 1827, he finally claims that he restored the ancient gospel on November 18th when he baptized

16:36

William Ammon in New Lisbon, Ohio. And Scott himself was never baptized for remission of sins, but this is the first time he kind of ushers in this restoration age when he finally baptizes this one person for their remission of sins.

16:50

So Campbell kind of was figuring it out. He got it in preparation for that debate. But now Walter Scott, one of the other founding fathers, he said, now

16:58

I've actually done the restoration of that ancient gospel because now we're gonna baptize for remission of sins.

17:05

That's so fascinating. So instead of a story, for example, like Joseph Smith, who goes out to the woods and has a private revelation by way of praying to see what church is true.

17:14

They're figuring it out by studying the scripture. Yeah, this guy has it by way of discovery of baptizing this one other individual.

17:20

And by that way, he comes to discover that he's rediscovered the true church. Well, the ancient order of the gospel, that baptism is necessary for remission of sins.

17:28

So that's why, again, Mainline Church of Christ, when you talk about a restoration, that says a lot to us.

17:35

It makes us think that like we think Mormonism and those other groups, it had to be restored. I mean, a lot of restorationists, some of them will say that we're true believers, but why pick a name like the

17:45

Restoration Movement if you're not trying to restore something that was missing? Like, get a dictionary. Right, so he rediscovered the rite of baptism as how, from his perspective, it should be.

17:53

Well, the four founding fathers. So Alexander Campbell figured out 1823, but it wasn't practiced until 1827 by Walter Scott, when that's when now the gospel's been restored and now we can start the

18:08

Churches of Christ. So, and it's funny because with Kip McKean, he kind of takes a different perspective.

18:14

He kind of goes with not figuring it out because he kind of took a lot of this from the Church of Christ we're talking about now, but he's actually saying,

18:20

God showed me, we're gonna get to that. So one more important player in the history of restorationism definitely needs to be mentioned because this really affected the

18:28

ICOC and the ICC, the International Christian Church, and that was Austin McGarry. Austin McGarry, in 1884, founded a periodical which is really big called

18:38

The Firm Foundation. The two biggest publications in the mainline Church of Christ are The Gospel Advocate and The Firm Foundation.

18:45

The big, for a hundred years, I mean, they were like the top two and now in 2008, Firm Foundation's gone, but The Gospel Advocate's still around.

18:53

McGarry did teach something really different than the Campbells or the founding fathers. And Austin McGarry taught that unless you know that you're being saved for the remission of sins while you're being baptized, it doesn't count.

19:06

It's not a valid baptism. So a lot of people in the Churches of Christ now, you kind of have two kind of ways of thinking in the mainline

19:13

Church of Christ. Some people think, well, you're my fellow Baptist. As long as you followed God and you were sincere and you got baptized,

19:20

God will honor that baptism. But others who are McGarryites, influenced by the Austin McGarry thinking, you're gonna say, oh, that baptism doesn't even count because you didn't know why you're taking, you just took a bath or you just got wet.

19:32

You didn't know that you were being baptized for remission of sins, so therefore it's not a valid baptism. Well, when we get to Kip McKean, he's a hardcore, not only he's a

19:40

Campbellite, but Kip is a McGarryite. Yeah, well, I remember when I was in Iraq with my friend

19:45

Andre and even when I visited his church on several occasions and went to the Bible studies, they specifically said that any other baptism outside of their church does not count because you have to be specifically baptized into their church.

19:57

And this was just them, so I don't know that. He probably, he might've been in a McGarryite tradition instead of just the regular

20:03

Campbellite tradition. Like, I mean, there's a lot of significant people in the

20:09

Church of Christ, like Dave Lipscomb, Jimmy Allen. These are main, I have the 1992 book by Jimmy Allen who's a very prominent, hearting writer and theologian for the

20:20

Church of Christ and he argues against the McGarryite position. So there's, it is a split in thinking.

20:25

It was probably someone who said in Andre's church that unless you know why you're being baptized for remission of sins, it doesn't count.

20:32

So that's my guess. But bottom line is the mainline Church of Christ is a bad choice for anyone because they have the false teaching.

20:41

Well, first off, they had to restore the gospel because everyone else was wrong about the purpose of baptism. They denied doctrine of original sin and it's just a bad choice for denomination to find yourself a healthy, regular church with better doctrine.

20:54

But Kit McKean came from this background. So now we're gonna transition to where did the International Churches of Christ come from?

21:00

What about the International Christian Church that we're looking at today? So Kit McKean was raised a

21:05

Methodist, but then he ran into the Church of Christ and that kind of did a number on him.

21:12

So we're talking about the rise and fall and the rise and big fall of Kit McKean because he's had two rise and falls in these movements.

21:18

So Kit likes to tell the story about the 30 would -be disciples and they met in the living room of Bob and Pat Gemple over in Boston and this is how his story begins.

21:29

So the campus minister at the 14th Street Church of Christ in Gainesville, Florida was a guy called

21:37

Chuck Lucas and he started a controversial program called Campus Advance. And he did outreach to university students and the controversial practice was the idea of having a discipler and a discipleship relationship with that student when you brought him out.

21:51

So Kit McKean at this time was in the early 70s. He was a student, a freshman at the

21:57

University of Florida, Gainesville and he was evangelized and baptized into this

22:02

Crossroads Church of Chuck Lucas and Chuck discipled Kit for three years and he got a lot of his controversial thinking and discipling into Kit's head at that point.

22:11

And then Kit, he graduates and then he becomes a campus minister at Northeastern College in Philadelphia.

22:19

And when he was over there, he just saw how lukewarm like regular mainstream denominational

22:24

Christians are. And that really had a profound effect on Kit. He wanted to be more committed to the

22:30

Lord. And the following year in 1976, Kit took another campus ministry job with the

22:36

Heritage Chapel Church of Christ in Charleston, Illinois. So he went out there to do campus ministry in Eastern Illinois University and Kit was somehow amazing at being very successful at growing the number of students in his campus outreach.

22:50

But some of the practice that Kit employed on the campus hit the local newspapers and then it was like bad publicity for what was going on there.

22:59

So this caused one of the churches that funded them and it was the letter that they wrote.

23:09

They supported the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston. There was another Church of Christ. They supported the

23:15

Heritage Chapel and they terminated support for Kit. They wrote a letter saying, we believe that Brother McKean has brought unbiblical practice, peculiar language, subtle deceitful doctrines to Charleston from the

23:25

Crossroads Church at Gainesville, Florida. And then they listed 14 points of concern among this, unbiblical method of confession of sins, peer pressure to conform to human judgmental standards, intimidation, the judgment of humans, that mature knowledge must be gained before one is allowed to be baptized in elitism.

23:42

So they kind of freaked out and they said something's going on over here with the way Kit's doing his evangelism.

23:47

So Kit was successful there. So Kit was there for two more years until he was invited in 1979. This is a big moment, 1979, when he's invited to become a campus and pulpit minister at the

23:57

Lexington Church of Christ in Massachusetts. And this is where the Boston Church of Christ gets born. Yeah, so prior to that, there were internal conflicts against him.

24:08

Well, danger signals. They recognized that what he was doing is unorthodox and he had picked up some really weird teachings and practices from the

24:15

Crossroads Church in Gainesville, Florida that he was using in his ministry. And then that was starting to hit the media like this guy is doing some stuff, but he's starting to get into some interesting ways.

24:26

Did he kind of like then disappear and reappear? Confessing his sins and stuff. We're going to get into that a little bit. Disappear and reappear, yeah. So that kind of happened like that.

24:33

So the big moment that Kit talks about, and this is where the Boston movement really starts. On June 1st, 1979, it's the day after Kit's 25th birthday, he meets with the 30 would -be disciples in the living room of Bob and Pat Gemple in Boston.

24:49

And this is that Lexington Church he was called to. It was a small church. It had 30 members. It wasn't going anywhere.

24:55

And Kit comes in there and he wants to implement the discipleship practices that he learned with Chuck Lucas at Crossroads.

25:03

So he basically, he talks to each member and he makes them promise they're going to count the costs and give a total commitment.

25:09

And if we do this, their church is going to take off. Well, what happened is the next year he writes First Principles.

25:16

Now First Principles, I got two copies here. This is the booklet they use all the time in evangelism.

25:21

This is a copy from the International Churches of Christ. This is a copy from the group that came out of it we're doing today, the

25:27

International Christian Church. And there's different versions. You know, now they're selling this one on Amazon and they tweak them a little over the years.

25:34

The International Churches of Christ still use the First Principles. They've modified it a bit, but this all was used and this is a powerful book.

25:42

We're going to get into it. So under Kit's leadership at the Lexington Church of Christ, it experienced an explosive growth.

25:50

One thing about this group, remember I said there, one of the names are called Multiplying Ministries. They're so incredible that they would go into a dying church of a few dozen people.

25:58

And a few months later, there's a, you know, hundreds of people or a couple of years later, they were able, I mean, other churches, church growth programs looked at this group and said, how the heck are they able to, what program are they doing where they can come into a small church and have hundreds and it was consistent, they're able to replicate it.

26:14

They had this amazing model to grow a church from a few people. So they did in this church. So they took this dying

26:20

Lexington Church of Christ church, which had 30 people, the boom, it's a thousand people. And they were there, that's why they're called

26:26

Multiplying Ministries. So by 1983, with the congregation outgrown the building, they went to the

26:32

Boston Opera House, which now became the Boston Gardens. And they're holding church service in the

26:37

Boston Gardens. Wow, so as they're multiplying these ministries, is there a subtle undue influence with the doctrine?

26:45

The doctrine stayed the same. We're gonna hit doctrine, but they're implementing this discipleship partnering thing and a lot of other controversial things that he picked up from Chuck Lucas.

26:55

So the same way Kip had his bad press, earlier that got him in trouble with his donors, what happened is now as the church is starting to grow, in 83, they took on the name, the

27:07

Boston Church of Christ. That's when they took the name. So they were Lexington Church, now they're growing and they're growing like huge, the Boston Opera House.

27:12

And people are watching, how the heck is a church being there? So they took it from 30 people, they're exploding. They have these things.

27:19

So now that they're starting to grow, what they did is they started saying missionaries out all over the US and other countries. And then the media started getting hold of it again.

27:27

So the controversial practices that they started doing with discipling and their hardcore controlling people, that started hitting the media and then it became fire for like the counter -cult ministries, family foundations, everybody just started saying, this is a super controversial.

27:43

So then the growth, there's just stuff that's stuck in the fine print, kind of like any sort of legislation that gets passed by our government.

27:49

There's always that pork within the bill. You mean in the sense that they join the group, but there's some bad news to it too?

27:55

Yeah. I don't think it's, it's not even hidden. It's not even fine print, it's large print. Because when you become a disciple, we're going to talk about their beliefs, but when you become a disciple, you've got to be totally committed.

28:06

You got to evangelize, be fishermen, but you got to get into making disciples and having discipleship partners.

28:12

And this is where a lot of it went wrong. So that was day -to -day in the life of disciples. So when you get baptized in this group for the mission of sins, you get assigned a discipleship partner and you got to meet with them.

28:23

We'll go into that. And you got to confess everything and you got to follow them. And sometimes there was bad Apple discipleship partners who got really micromanaging, give you bad advice and controlling and the media got hold of that.

28:34

So during this explosive growth period that became known as the multiplying ministries and the media was starting to know and they would even do a reconstruction program where they would go into mainline churches of Christ and then turn them into this new

28:47

Boston movement. So for a bunch of years, it became known as the Boston Church of Christ, the Boston movement until 1990 when

28:55

Kip and his wife, Elena McCain, moved to Los Angeles and they were kind of relocating the headquarters.

29:01

So they said, hey, we've already done really big in Boston. They're being very strategic with missionary work. We're going to LA and we're going to plant the church there.

29:08

So that becomes the new hub. So we looked at the restorationism. We looked at the

29:13

Boston movement. Now we're looking at the next phases, two more phases, the International Churches of Christ and the National Christian Church.

29:19

So by 1993, they had congregations all over the world and they broke away from any affiliation they had with the mainline

29:26

Church of Christ. And now they said, we're going to change the name of the movement, the International Churches of Christ. They were all

29:32

Boston Church of Christ. So you could be in St. Louis or somewhere, we're part of the Boston movement.

29:37

Now they're the International Churches of Christ. Kip's leadership style started becoming a concern to the elders at the

29:44

International Church of Christ. And one thing he did, it came back to haunt him, is he taught that if your child ever leaves the faith, you're not eligible to be in ministry anymore.

29:54

Well, his daughter, Olivia, she wanted nothing to do with the movement. She left. And then that came to back,

30:01

Kip now, like what am I supposed to do? I mean, I used to preach that if your kid leaves, you can't be a leader.

30:07

So now my kid's left, I'm in trouble. And what happened is he got confronted in late 2001 by the elders, and he stepped down to take a sabbatical and he handed his leadership over to the world sector leaders.

30:20

So a year later, Kip ends up resigning from the movement, the International Church of Christ, the movement that he started.

30:27

And he basically said, he confessed, he said, I've had personal shortcomings and sensitivity.

30:33

I've been arrogant. And he said, I need to take time off to work for myself. The next bombshell hit in 2003, when the

30:43

Crete letter came out, K -R -I -E -T -E, it's Henry Crete. He was an evangelist with the London International Church of Christ.

30:50

It was a 39 page open letter that documented many of the abuses in the

30:55

International Church of Christ. And now with the internet, it basically went viral for members of the church and it caused a max exodus of members.

31:03

In this letter, he basically talks about our abuses of authority and we have an arrogant exclusivism and we have an obsession with numbers.

31:13

So this became a huge thing and the church went kind of crazy over it. With Kip was no longer at the helm anymore because he resigned or stepped back.

31:23

They went on a major overhaul of the Church of Christ and they kind of dissolved this idea of Kip being at the top of the pyramid as the world mission evangelist.

31:31

And they had to restructure it to more of an autonomous church model where the churches were autonomous, independently led, but they're still affiliated, but they weren't like under the pyramid with Kip at the top over all the churches.

31:42

And what they did is they got rid of that, but they also got rid of the heavy handed discipling model. There's some still discipling goes on at the

31:50

ICOC, but the heavy handedness that led to the abuses for the media that we're gonna cover in a bit, that kind of got blown away.

31:58

So Kip and his wife ended up moving in 2003 to Portland, Oregon. And Kip, of course, he couldn't help himself.

32:05

He had to begin to start trying to call people out from the ICOC and come back under his authority.

32:10

And this decisive action with other things made the elders of the ICOC, they published a public rebuke to Kip McKean in November 2005 called the brother's letter to Kip McKean.

32:22

And then he ended up getting disfellowshipped the next year. So the last phase of history is the birth of the

32:29

International Christian Church. So under Kip's leadership, he's at the Portland International Church of Christ.

32:35

Once again, Kip goes in there, amazing growth. He takes it from like 25 members to 489 members quickly.

32:42

And then in 2006, late 2006, he announces we're gonna now start a new movement.

32:48

God's new movement is gonna be the International Christian Church. So in 2007, Kip with 40 disciples, they moved over to Los Angeles and they started the

32:58

City of Angels International Christian Church. So this is like the rebirth. So Kip was like not liking the fact that they got rid of him as the leader and the discipleship.

33:09

They thought, you know, you guys are being, the one of the expressions they use, weak sauce. They thought they're being weak.

33:15

Oh, they've got all these expressions. You know, it's a fun movement. So Kip, whatever Kip says, people wanna imitate.

33:21

We're gonna talk about that. And Kip, everything is awesome and it's cranking and fire it up and fire it on up and all this.

33:28

So they basically, the people listening to this right now and the former members of IOCOC are laughing because they know, they've lived it.

33:37

So they basically a year after Kip moves to Los Angeles would start the

33:43

City of Angels International Church of Christ. The Portland church goes back and joins the ICOC.

33:48

Kind of adding some insult to injury. So the rest is history. Kip had to start all over again. He had to press to spread his new church around the world.

33:56

They had to rebuild the new church, evangelize the world in one generation. The ICOC got huge.

34:01

I told you 150 countries. Well, now we gotta do the same kind of thing and rebuild the ICC. And he recreated the whole church structure with the world mission evangelists and the world sector leaders, just like he had in ICOC, he did that in ICC.

34:16

And, you know, his incredible preaching and talent, you know, he produced a whole new generation of disciples now as Christians.

34:22

We got to contend with, and they're on the campuses going after, you know, our kids. So on another note, not everything was good in the kingdom lately.

34:30

In the last little while, a group of women came out and their former members, and they've been suing the

34:36

ICC for covering up sexual child abuse, exerting financial pressure on members to the extent that some have killed themselves.

34:45

So McKean was named the defendant, but apparently this has been dropped now with Kip's name and allegations are circling about the constant pressures of anxiety on members through this high -pressure discipleship program that's led people to get depressed and sometimes even commit suicide.

34:59

So things got bad again in April 2004 when Kip was removed from his own movement a second time.

35:08

Now he's been, sorry, he's removed from ministry in April 2004 for the movement he created and forced into retirement for spiritual faltering where the world sector leaders have basically, you know, came down on him for moral shortcomings.

35:23

Raul Moreno was a world sector leader. Now he's the new world missions evangelist for the International Christian Church. A lot of times

35:29

I'm going to talk about Kip, Kip, Kip in our critique, but Kip's now, as of just a few days ago, finally reported being disfellowshipped entirely from the

35:40

International Christian Church and at the time of this recording. So maybe when this gets aired, there'll be some time it'll have passed.

35:46

But now people are speculating on the reasons why was Kip kicked out of the church. We don't know yet.

35:52

You know, I'm not too worried about why, but that might become apparent later. There's actually even now an offshoot of the

35:58

ICC. So the ICC came out of the ICOC, the International Church of Christ. Now there's a guy called

36:04

Matthew Wurgler. He's got the awesome church. Awesome with no E's. Yeah, there always seems to be fragmentation that's perfectly in conjunction with their leaders, whether they leave a group or they join a different group.

36:16

That seems to always be the case. That's the case. It's the way they roll. So we've finished the history.

36:22

So now you have a big picture that this International Christian Church came out of the mainline churches of Christ and Kip McKean came out and started the

36:31

Boston Movement that he renamed as the International Church of Christ. And now when Kip left that, he started another movement, the

36:38

International Christian Church, and that's the one that's heavy duty on the campuses that your kids might be getting pulled into.

36:43

So now we're going to move into some more doctrinal stuff. Well, yeah, and even just to maybe sum it up, I think of the phrase wisdom is justified by her children.

36:50

And you mentioned at the very beginning about all the different chaos and manipulation going on on college campuses and parents losing contact with their children and stuff like that.

36:58

Well, now what you're probably seeing throughout the entire of the history and the falling out, at least in those two different places, about just now being a third, is that you're seeing a lot of those sort of characteristics from that one person that you've seen articulated on those college campuses.

37:11

So that's the conclusion I would come to and maybe in summary. Yeah. One thing I do want to mention,

37:16

I didn't mention, it's kind of an important point about the mainline churches of Christ.

37:23

I think they've got a bit of a problem to explain, right? Because the Campbells, they were never baptized for the mission of sins.

37:32

They were, you know, they got baptized by a Baptist minister and same with Walter Scott and Martin Stone.

37:40

Martin Stone, who was one of the founders in the restoration movement, he denied the

37:45

Trinity. He wasn't a Christian. He was like a cultist. He denied the Trinity. He denied the substitutionary atonement of Christ.

37:51

So you have the very founders of this restoration movement. They're not even Christians at all because they weren't baptized right.

37:57

They didn't have valid baptisms. So was it a real restoration? I would challenge that to mainline church of Christ people that say these founding fathers,

38:06

Alexander and Thomas Campbell were baptized probably for mission of sins. Neither was Walter Scott. They got baptized by a

38:12

Baptist and then Walter Scott did the first baptism, the restoration of the ancient gospel, but they weren't baptized for mission of sins.

38:18

So you have non -Christian unbelievers, unbelievers according to you guys, according to Kip and the whole

38:24

ICC and ICOC, the unbelievers of the restoration movement started the movement that you came from.

38:30

Right. Because as a cultic movement, a cultist movement progresses, there always seems to be changes and variants of doctrine because the primary source tends to be the current leader's autonomy, which is then replaced by another autonomy.

38:43

And sometimes those tend to clash a little bit. So that's perfectly understandable. So to get a little insight into Kip's thinking about these churches, this will really say a lot.

38:54

So he was questioned in an interview years ago when he started the ICC out of the

39:00

ICOC. The interviewer, it's on YouTube, asked him, why start a new movement?

39:06

And Kip's response, it wasn't really me who started it. I mean, you've got to understand my conviction.

39:11

This is the movement of God. This is Kip talking about the International Christian Church. This is the movement of God. It wasn't really me who started it.

39:20

Okay, you talked to before how these people are kind of putting together a puzzle piece to figure out baptism is essential for salvation.

39:26

Well, Kip here says, it wasn't really me who started it. So, you know, guess who did, right? I mean, you got to understand my conviction.

39:32

This is the movement of God when a group of people come together with convictions about the word of God, it's going to build the same

39:37

Bible convictions that built the Boston movement, which became the ICOC and are exactly the same convictions that built, quote, the new movement, the

39:44

ICC. I think Elaine and I are pictured as departing or dividing off where Elaine is and my convictions have been exactly the same for the years.

39:52

It's really the ICC that departed and changed their convictions. So now you're seeing that Kip is kind of upset at the

40:00

ICOC because they kind of, when he left, they kind of got rid of some of his teachings. So the ICC will call the

40:07

ICOC the old movement or the former movement. They're like the new movement and the God's very movement, the very movement of God, Kip preaches all the time.

40:15

So they say the ICC has fixed the three big problems in the ICOC. And the three big problems in the

40:22

ICOC is they got rid of the idea of a central leadership, i .e. Kip. The disciples need discipling partners and they lost the vision in the

40:33

ICOC to evangelize the world in one generation. So now that the ICC is back over the ICOC, they can start to implement these things back.

40:40

We can fix the problems by bringing back central leadership, by getting back with discipling partners and then get the vision back to win this world in one generation.

40:51

Wow, that sounds very visionary. Yeah, that's what they're trying to do. So as we've seen,

40:56

Kip has drawn from a bunch of sources to create this very movement of God.

41:03

He's taken from the campus ministry of Crossroads Church with Chuck Lucas and the whole idea of this commitment and discipling,

41:11

Austin McGarry, his idea of baptism for knowingly for remission of sins and then a lot of his own ideas of central leadership.

41:18

It's like a bunch of stuff all stuck together that's kind of created the International Christian Church. So while in the

41:24

ICOC, Kip wrote, in Boston on the evening of June 1st, 1979, 30 would -be disciples gathered in the living room of Bob and Pat Gempel, unknown to all but the

41:34

Holy Spirit that night had been, that night had been destined as the beginning of God's modern day movement.

41:41

So the beginning of God's modern day movement, you know, for Walter Scott, he restored the gospel when he baptized

41:49

William Ammon in 1827, but here's Kip restoring it in June 1st, 1979.

41:56

That's the day. It's almost like Joseph Smith's Sacred Grove vision. You know, that's the date that the whole thing started. So that is, this is the date had been destined as the beginning of God's modern day movement.

42:05

We came together, bonded by the commonplace of the Bible, of the inspired, inerrant word of God that the true believer would wholeheartedly obey every word.

42:13

This is the total commitment. Over the ensuing months, the Holy Spirit, so now this God's intervention again, the

42:19

Holy Spirit took away our doctrinal blindness, which had been created by the centuries of Catholic and Protestant denomination traditions, revealed two radical revolutionary doctrines of the first century church.

42:29

First of all, a true Christian is a person who makes the decision to become a disciple and is baptized for the remission of sins.

42:35

Secondly, the true church is composed of only baptized disciples who remain faithful. So in the forward page, this is from a book called

42:44

Hope for the Hurting World, where Kip writes the intro and Kip's points here we can take from this is

42:51

God has a modern day movement. That's Kip's church. That movement started, modern day movement started in June 1979, which went on to become the

42:59

Boston Movement, the International Church of Christ and the International Christian Church. The Holy Spirit took away the blindness and revealed these to a group of 30 disciples led by Kip.

43:09

The Catholic and Protestant churches have been in spiritual blindness for centuries and he speaks of true

43:15

Christians and the true church and that's what Kip's talking about now. True Christians are disciples, according to his definition, are baptized for remission of sins and the true church is

43:24

Kip's church, where his definition of disciples is what is baptized his way. So he's really implied a lot in that little comment.

43:31

Just as the Campbells tried to restore true Christianity, Kip has now done this with the Boston Movement and the

43:37

ICOC. Now he's having to do it again with the International Christian Church. So that's kind of how he really sees this movement.

43:44

He thinks it's the movement of God, started by the Holy Spirit and he's really making a lot of implications on that.

43:50

Well, it's always interesting too, and I know we're going to jump into doctrine, but just one thing we've always noticed is that a lot of times we look at the cults.

43:59

People are fascinated by the psychological and the sociological manipulation, both within, not just the leader, but a lot of times just within the organizational structure, how people are always kind of looking after one another and we all know about that, but a lot of times those specific behaviors are heavily influenced primarily by their theology and doctrine.

44:22

For example, just real quickly before you jump in, it's like Jehovah's Witnesses where you're dealing with something like blood transfusion.

44:28

At the end of the day, everything you know about all the manipulation and all of that and then the collateral damages comes out and even the scores of people who have died, just heartbreaking conversations

44:36

I've had personally, that fundamentally from their theology, from their perspective, is revelation from Jehovah.

44:45

So in the same way, where you're dealing with this case with Kip, he's dealing with a level of self -revelation.

44:51

The very movement of God that started in Jehovah. The very movement of God and thus then you're seeing all that behavior and now you're seeing that flowing from their doctrine which we're going to talk about.

44:58

Amazing. So I identify four main beliefs and they're erroneous beliefs of the

45:06

ICC, going back to the ICOC. Right. Number one, baptism is necessary for salvation.

45:11

That's an adult believer's baptism for remission of sins. Salvation comes by faith in Jesus plus baptism, not by praying

45:19

Jesus into your heart or receiving Christ as the denominational world says. I always talk about with the cults, you have

45:27

Jesus plus. You know with the Seventh -day Adventists, it's Jesus plus keeping the Sabbath. Some people say

45:33

Jesus plus speaking in tongues. Jesus plus keeping the Passover. Jesus plus, there's so many good works like Mormons or Catholics, right?

45:43

There's like always Jesus plus when it's really faith in Christ but that's what these erroneous groups come on.

45:48

They do a Jesus plus model. So Kip will call us the denominations of tradition, the denominational church that he kind of talks about.

45:56

It's in a kind of negative way. So basically in this movement, you go under the waters of non -Christian, you come up a

46:04

Christian and if you don't believe that you're being saved through your baptism like the Magyariites influence says, then you don't have a valid baptism.

46:11

You gotta know why you're being baptized for sin. So you go underwater. Unbeliever, you come up a believer. Second point here, followers of Jesus are properly called disciples.

46:21

They're not called Christians. You know the word Christian only appears in the New Testament three times and the word disciple appears 270 times.

46:28

Therefore, that is the correct way you're supposed to call somebody. We're not supposed to call each other Christians. Kip has in first principles, he talks about saved equals

46:36

Christian equals disciple. This is the right way to think about it. You know, we should not refer ourselves as Christians. We call ourselves disciples.

46:42

So you talk in the International Christian Church, you know, I'm a disciple. We gotta make disciples.

46:49

Yeah, it's interesting too. I mean, it sounds like, even like the language might be being blurred where they're not, maybe not even necessarily saying work salvation.

46:55

It's just, it's discipleship. You're a disciple. But here's the thing. What is a disciple in this movement?

47:01

A disciple is someone who's totally committed and sold out. They look at Luke 14, 33. It says, unless you give up all that you have, everything, then you cannot be my disciple.

47:12

So their definition, they've actually, they say, don't call yourself a Christian. That's not a New Testament word.

47:18

Call yourself a disciple. And a disciple is one who's like totally committed. They're very critical of us in the denominational world.

47:25

They say we're lukewarm. We're not fishers of men. They'll say, where are your disciples? You know, are you a fisher of men?

47:33

They'll really, you know, who's discipling you? They'll get really in your face as a Christian in this movement. And in a lot of ways they're kind of right.

47:39

But in other ways they go wrong. So, you know, it's well -intended, but each member, like I said, is assigned a discipling partner.

47:46

And they talk to their discipleship partner regularly, often daily, at least once a week, they'll get together in person.

47:53

And they confess their deepest and darkest sins with them. You'll talk to them like, you know, if you want a new job or buy a new, you know, if you want to get a certain car or get in a relationship, you know, you're going to get the advice.

48:05

It's really often coercion, but you get your advice of your discipleship partner. Human nature is dark and sinful. And it was just, this has caused so many problems.

48:14

So there's a lot of bad apples. There's different, some discipleship partners have been okay. But the problem is this model that Kip brought has caused a lot of like micromanaging your life.

48:23

No, you can't date that person. You're not allowed, because I said so as your discipler. Or you can't move or you can't get this job.

48:29

And that's where the media got hold of it. I think it's unbiblical. I mean, Christians talk about how we got it by the

48:36

Holy Spirit. You know, that's our sanctification. That's our discipleship in our lives, right? That's a healthy theological way of looking at it.

48:42

But these guys go hardcore all about your discipleship partner. Third point, so baptism for remission of sins.

48:52

You need to have, Christians are really disciples and you need discipleship partners. Third, they deny original sin.

48:59

You've covered that on your previous broadcasts. We'll do it a little bit. We're going to focus a lot on baptism for salvation.

49:06

They're full Pelagians. And they usually, they just basically use one proof text to prove

49:11

Pelagianism. And we'll get into that. So Pelagianism is the idea that when you're born, you're basically born perfect and you don't have a sinful, you know, you're not born in sin.

49:24

You basically learn to sin by watching other people sin. So that's the bad thing. Basically the problem,

49:30

Augustine dealt with this and he basically refuted it saying, hey, if you could teach yourself how to sin, you could teach yourself how not to sin, you don't need

49:36

Jesus. You know, but that's Pelagianism is a heresy. Four point, the kingdom of God is the church and the church is the kingdom of God.

49:43

So this definitely implies that they are the one true church. If you're going to be part of God's kingdom because the church is the kingdom, then you got to be that.

49:50

So they also teach that the church started on Pentecost, which is also a debated point among Christians.

49:57

But they say like the Campbellites, the church of Christ, the Campbellites we'll call them, the church started at Pentecost.

50:03

So here are four other teachings that they teach. So those are the big four. Kip McKean restored the church because the way of salvation was lost for 1 ,500 years.

50:14

Kip likes to say, you know, he'll say this is the one church, this is the movement of God. And he'll say, well, the

50:22

ICC is the only true church, but there are two other disciples out there. If you've been a member, you know, they say that you've been programmed to be saying that yourself.

50:32

Members often say, I'm sure there's other Christians outside the ICC, but I never met one.

50:39

That's a really common line. Well, that's funny because I remember I was interacting with someone from a cult that we were covering years ago and I was privately dialoguing with them and they were saying, well,

50:50

I'm not saying that we're not the only true church. I'm just saying I've never, I just haven't found a church yet that has the truth.

50:57

But I'm not saying we're the only. But they take it a step further. They say, I haven't even met another real Christian because we're the true church.

51:03

I know there's other disciples out there. And I mean, Kip says it. So therefore the common member, the common disciple says it.

51:09

Have your cake and eat it too. So I watched Kip speaking one time when he was with the ICOC and I watched him say these words.

51:16

He said, this is the true church. If you've heard Kip preach, he's very dynamic. This is the true church and you better believe it.

51:24

And if it's the true church, it's the only church. And if it's the only church, we're the only ones with the message.

51:30

If we're the only ones with the message, if you don't get out there, the world's gonna remain lost.

51:35

The burden's on you. So there's that heavy pressure. But the point is, I watch him say how he's really the one true church.

51:43

They'll like to soft pedal it because it's what people want to hear. And that's how he really talks.

51:49

That's how he really preaches. Oh. Yeah, he's very dynamic. Maybe we'll parse a video. Yeah, well, he'll like, if you've been a member of the church and, you know, are you with me, church?

52:00

Amen. You know, I mean, this is a Kipism and you're laughing now because this is exactly what he does.

52:05

I'm seeing like a blur Brady run split screen of all these fundamentalist pastors. Well, the great part, which I'm gonna get into later, is that everything's about trying to imitate

52:13

Kip in the movement. When you become, when you preach to the church, the moment you get behind the pulpit, are you with me, church?

52:21

You know, you become a little Kip. You talk like him. You use his expressions. You try to act like a

52:26

Kip. It's bizarre. You don't find that at Calvary Chapel. You don't find that at Saddleback Church.

52:31

People try to imitate, you know, Chuck Smith or Brian Roderson. So it's like an improv contest trying to see who can improv

52:37

Kip best. Everything is about trying to, they imitate, like they all say, it's awesome, it's cranking, like Kip does.

52:44

They all try to be like little Kips, which has led to some psychological problems at a bigger scale. We'll get to that.

52:50

We'll get to that. So it's basically like an Elvis convention. Who can do the best Elvis impression? Who can do the best Kip? I love it.

52:55

Love it. Glad you brought it up. Point number three, that these other beliefs, churches should not be run autonomously, but they should operate under a central leadership.

53:06

And guess who that is? Kip. Well, it was until last week, so. Yeah. So he's a very strong personality.

53:13

Raul Moreno might govern different by the time this comes out. But, you know, but the whole ways of acting like Kip and imitating

53:19

Kip, I'm sure that's going to remain in the ICC. He's going to leave a lasting impact. So it's a lot of people criticize the, these movements,

53:30

Boston Movement, International Church of Christ, International Christian Church, is a kind of a pyramid group where Kip is like the

53:35

Pope at the top of the pyramid. So Kip's gone now. He was the world mission evangelist.

53:41

So the structure of the church, you have like the world mission evangelist at the top. Then you have world sector leaders. You have other sector leaders, region leaders, super region leaders, evangelists or pastors, basically the church.

53:52

So like he's the local evangelist of the sector. And then you'll have disciples or just like the rank and file members.

53:59

They also create these pillar churches, which are strategically placed churches for missionary purpose in different parts of the world so that you can evangelize, you know, everything comes out.

54:08

So they kind of map out the world and how to best reach the world. It's kind of a kind of missiology. It's kind of a smart way to do it.

54:15

And the last of these points is we can and we need to evangelize this world in one generation.

54:20

It's possible if you use the multiplication methods that can teach us. So in order to be a disciple, you have to share your faith and be a fisher of men.

54:28

So let me say that again. In order to be a disciple, being a member, it's like Christian saved disciple, it all goes together. In order to be a real disciple, you have to be sharing your faith.

54:35

You have to be a fisher of men. I don't know if I'm jumping ahead here, but when it comes to their salvation, their teleology and the actions that they take, is there a certain way that their eschatology plays into that?

54:46

Not so much. They're all millennialists because Church of Christ are all millennialists. But there's no way about that seriologically, no.

54:53

I'm gonna just touch on that really quick, some of those other little things. But as far as you have to share your faith, evangelism is always to be done with the first principles book.

55:03

Well, in this case, ICC today, that's how you evangelize. And basically campuses, according to Kip, are a very important place to evangelize.

55:13

Disciples on campus, boy, Kip McKean lays that out. Following the mandate of Acts chapter one, in these movements,

55:21

Los Angeles is seen as a type of spiritual Jerusalem and the city is Las Vegas, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco are modern day

55:30

Judea. So Acts chapter one, it says, take the gospel of Jerusalem, Judea, the uttermost parts of the earth, they spiritualize it.

55:36

So right now we're in Phoenix, we're in Judea. I go back to LA area, that's spiritual

55:43

Jerusalem. And then the uttermost parts of the earth, that's kind of like, well,

55:48

Samaria, they would say that'd be the rest of the United States and Canada, like Boston, Chicago, New York City, Washington DC, Portland, Toronto.

55:56

That's the model they look at that. Just a few more really fast other teachings so you understand what they believe.

56:03

They like to sing acapella. They have some great and catchy songs. Great Among the Nations is one of the songs, the theology is not so good.

56:11

Jesus Will Fix It's a little bit better, but it's not their song. They're, as I said, they're all millennialists. They're Arminian and they're cessationists.

56:19

They're very much against the gifts, spiritual gifts. And they also believe that you, sometimes you have to be restored.

56:27

So they talk about being baptisms. They'll give numbers like, we did this many baptisms and this many restorations. So if you stop going to church, or if you sin and fall away, they tell you you're a fall away.

56:37

You stop going to church, then you get restored to the church. You have to be brought through a bunch of steps to be mentored and then you get restored. And lastly, they'll talk about being marked.

56:45

So in Romans chapter 16, it says mark those who cause division. If you're speaking out against ICC as a member or did something bad, you're gonna be marked.

56:54

And then there's a type of shunning where they basically dissociate from you and they ignore you kind of. So that's kind of a lot of their beliefs.

57:02

First Principles is their booklet. It's about 30 some pages written by Kit McKean, 1980, was leading the

57:08

Boston Church of Christ. As I said, it's still used by the International Church of Christ, but big time by the

57:14

ICOC. The ICC, the International Christian Church. So if your kid is getting evangelized on a campus, trust me, this is what they're using to get them in.

57:22

There's been a few different changes, but it's pretty much the same. It's really, really important to the members.

57:27

So what they do is they actually have classes. They teach you how to teach the First Principles book.

57:34

And it's kind of weird. Like, why would you, like, think about it. And from our perspective, of course, in the ICC, it makes sense, but from our perspective, why do you always have to use a book to evangelize?

57:44

You can't just open the Bible or teach Jesus to them. 100 % of the time, it has to be formula. It has to go through this book.

57:50

Now, this book obviously has been super successful because look at the explosive growth they've had in the multiplying ministries. This book,

57:56

I'll explain, is pretty much a master class in conversion and reception.

58:03

We'll get to that in a little bit. But just like the Mormons, see, a lot of groups, what they do, they have these carefully structured design studies that are designed to follow you step by step to make you a member.

58:15

So Mormons have their five missionary lessons. The World Missionary Church of God have their 50 sermon preaching lessons.

58:21

A lot of these groups, they take you through the steps to undermine your own faith, why your faith is wrong, why you have to replace it with what they teach.

58:28

That's what this book is. This is how you've been deceived your whole life in First Baptist Church, and how now that you're gonna,

58:35

Polygamy Church, how that you have to understand that baptism is a remission of sins, you have to become a disciple, and all this.

58:41

That's all in the First Principles. You're just Cat, wait, I wanna hear this. Even just, I'll just mention this, I was curious last night as I was skimming through the

58:48

First Principles, and I know how they start. You start off with the very basic doctrines.

58:55

It isn't until the later lessons that you get into the deeper stuff. One of my favorite examples is when Uncle Wally and Ed Decker are doing the fake dialogue between the -

59:03

Yeah, dialogue at the doorstep. Yeah, dialogue at the doorstep with the Mormon, and there's a moment where Walter asks them this really heavy question, and then

59:09

Ed Decker replies and goes, you're in Lesson 5, and he jumps back. Lesson 5 is huge,

59:17

Aaron. Yeah, it is. We're gonna get to that. It is, but - But with the ICC, Lesson 5 is a huge guy.

59:22

Yeah, but when you scroll down, I was very curious, and I scrolled down to the very, very bottom, and it's one of the appendix to the lessons you can give, and that's where they say, oh, by the way, some people have said that they're a cult, but that's just because they don't really understand, just paraphrasing, and I'm like, oh, well, that's funny because you didn't mention it at the very beginning when you're just introducing people in.

59:40

That's in the very post -title sub -credits. When I first went to a Zion of the World Mission Society at Church of God, it was just odd that one of their teachers over there said, now, don't look this up on the internet.

59:55

You know, the very fact that he said that, it's kind of like you're driving your car down the street, and I'm a cop, and you say to me, officer, everything's good, but just don't look at my trunk.

01:00:05

But everything's fine, but don't look in my trunk. You're gonna want to look there. Like, you know, keep on passing by the forest, right?

01:00:13

There's nothing, everything looks good here. So basically, yeah, so basically, don't look us up. So normally when you have a

01:00:20

Bible, so they'll come with you on campus. They're very campus ministry. They'll say, would you like to come study the Bible with me?

01:00:25

Normally when you study the Bible, what is studying the Bible with someone? You're gonna open the book of John, the book of Romans.

01:00:31

You're gonna start studying the Bible. When an ICC person says, let's study, you know, we're not gonna study the past scripture.

01:00:37

What do they say? When they study the Bible? 100 % time, when they say, let's study the Bible, it means through this, the memorized lessons that you've learned to teach in the first principles, that is studying the

01:00:46

Bible with somebody. So first principles, like I said, is a master class in high power conversion and thought control.

01:00:53

It's a master class in deception. There's a bunch of studies in the first principles. The seeking

01:01:00

God study, the word of God, discipleship study, the coming of the kingdom, light and darkness, New Testament, the cross.

01:01:05

These are all things that ex -members of, who are watching this have taught again and again, what they tried to recruit, but this is their main recruitment tool.

01:01:13

We'll be looking at that. We've definitely covered a lot of the history. We've covered their doctrines, first principles.

01:01:19

This is their conversion tool. No, this is really good, especially when you look at any sort of recruitment tool that a cult will use.

01:01:25

In this case, the first principles, what I want to do is we wrap up here is actually, as we conclude this episode, is read the last paragraph in first principles, which is actually appropriate to our conclusion.

01:01:38

And it says the international Christian churches are a controversial Christian movement. Some call us a cult and accuses of both brainwashing and mind control.

01:01:47

Many false rumors and half -truths have been spread. News articles, television shows, and especially the internet have slandered the

01:01:54

ICC yet. The facts are that lives have been radically changed and marriages have been healed. Drug addicts have been freed.

01:02:01

The poor have been fed for and cared for in this rapidly growing movement. The sold -out movement is spreading around the world in this generation, just like the first century.

01:02:10

So what you see, that just so happens that's the very last paragraph versus the first paragraph. Imagine my shock to that.

01:02:17

But it just goes to show that movements like these are a diamond dozen and there's no shortage of these movements, so it's important to have these resources out here so those who actually have been affected can have answers for that.

01:02:28

And that's what we're going to cover more in depth in the next episode. We're going to go critical. We're going to take a look. Join us again on the next one because we're going to go into baptism for salvation.

01:02:36

There's not a lot of material out there on the verse they use. We're going to go through that. We're going to talk about a lot of the crazy stuff of how

01:02:43

Kip is overly revered in the movement and hope to give some real answers and structure on how to respond.

01:02:51

Absolutely. All right, all that being said, we'll talk to you all next time on part two. Talk to you all later. Hey guys, thank you for listening to this episode.

01:02:58

If you want more content just like this on a weekly basis, please go to thecultistshow .com and consider partnering with us.

01:03:05

We need your support in order to create this consistent content, guys.

01:03:11

Please, again, go to thecultistshow .com and click partner with us and donate and help us to continue this ministry.