Dangerous Church Doctrines? You Decide!

Mr. Smalley, do you believe that abortion is moral?

Oh boy. I'm glad I'm debating him instead of you. This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

Show Introduction and Conference Announcement

All right, well, welcome to another edition of Apologetics Live. Now, tonight we have something different. Just so you know, we usually try to have a time of open Q &A where we take any of your questions.

However, this is something a little bit different, and for that reason, we're not going to do any open Q &A. But on most Thursday nights, you can come to ApologeticsLive .com, join and participate, and therefore get your questions answered.

Now, before we get into the show, we're going to be talking about some dangerous doctrines. Well, we'll let you decide if they're dangerous or not. But some possibly dangerous church doctrines that we've become aware of.

Now, I'm going to end up having someone else running the show tonight, and he ended up getting a guest that came in to help him out. But we're going to basically go through dealing with a specific church.

Before we get to that, though, we want to hear something from someone who has a message for us. And so, let me start with a little guy and his doggie. Ray, we would like to know... Hold on, I've got to make sure that the audio is going to the right place.

But we're going to want to hear what Ray has to say.

Ray Comfort Promo and Home Edition Conference

Ray, take it away. Ray Comfort here. I want to encourage you to attend Andrew Rappaport and Justin Peter's upcoming conference on evangelism. Both these men don't just talk about it, they do it. And that's why I'm honored to call them both friends.

So, don't miss the upcoming conference. Andrew Rappaport and Justin Peter's. God bless you guys.

Okay, so someone's got to get Ray some driving lessons there if you didn't see. So, here is the conference he's referring to. Let's play this. Hey, this is Andrew from Striving for Eternity Ministries.

And, well, there's been, if you haven't noticed, this global pandemic and everyone's shut at home. Well, that kind of affects being able to go out and do conferences and get some good teaching. I was talking with Justin Peter's about this and all of our schedule got cleared off.

What do we do? Well, we thought we would do something for you guys. We decided we would do the Snatch Them by the Flames seminar, but we're going to do the home edition. That's right, May 30th, we're going to come into your home, well, by way of the internet, and give a conference to you, the Snatch Them from the Flames conference, the same seminar that we do, that we've done in the Philippines, elsewhere.

We're going to be coming to you for this conference. This conference is for anyone who wants to understand God's Word and how to use it to discern truth from error. We're going to have the first session to start us off 10 o 'clock Eastern Time on May 30th.

It's going to be Justin Peter's. He's going to start with the topic of the sufficiency of scriptures. Have you heard all these people that say they hear from God? Some people that want to hear from God?

He's going to tell you how to hear from God and whether the scriptures are actually sufficient for all of our needs as a Christian. Second session, I'm going to give you a background in handling God's Word.

It's going to be interpreting the scriptures. So not only will we learn about the sufficiency of scripture, but we're also going to learn about the interpretation of scripture. Give you guys some tools and principles on how to rightly handle God's Word.

Then we'll take a lunch break. After lunch, we're going to come back for two longer sessions. The first, Justin Peter's will deal with the issue of dealing with discerning false teachers. So you're going to have people who are out there and how do we discern the truth from God's Word with what they're saying.

Then after that, the fourth session, I will address the issue of identifying false teachers right from the book of Jude. We'll give you examples of how to identify if someone is a false teacher. And then afterwards, the fifth session, before we close out, we're going to have a Q &A.

So throughout the day on May 30th, we're going to be taking your questions. As you have questions, you pipe them in to the comments. We're going to take them and be able to get you the answers. Now, all of this is free of charge.

We realize that many people are hurting and many people are not knowing how they're going to handle things financially. Because this costs us nothing to travel, we decided why would we want to charge people for this?

So we're doing it free of charge. May 30th, snatch them from the flames, home edition. Again, this conference is great for anyone who wants to understand God's Word and how to use it to discern truth from error.

If that sounds like you, you're going to want to make sure that you attend this conference. Because it sounds like the conference may be for you. May 30th, where do you get the details? The details can be found at strivingforeternity .org.

We'll have the details there. To register so that you can know when we're going live, how to hear about it. Tell your friends, share this on social media so everyone knows about the snatch them from the flames, home edition.

Because this may be the only time that we do this free and in your home. All right. Well, so with that, we want to encourage you because this is something we're going to do. Go to strivingforeternity .org.

The link is there. There's also a link for the Israel trip. But the Israel trip is full. We have sold out. However, we do anticipate there may be some people who cancel. So if you still want to do the Israel trip, you won't have to pay money now.

But you can get on the waiting list. And so go to the link that's there. That'll take you to 2021israeltrip .com. You can register, but you'll end up being on a waiting list there. So before I get to Dr. Silvestro, I'll bring him in now.

But he's going to be running the show tonight because he's the one that has done the research on the topics that is going to be discussed. However, there's a couple of things. Anthony and I did a show last week.

We referred to a blog article from a Todd. And I forget his last name. Wilhelm. Thank you. Thou art the man. Todd literally called Anthony. What was it, like 30 seconds after we went off air. So he went to the website, got the number, called.

He wanted to correct me. Well, not correct me. It was really to give me more information. We pointed out the fact that he said he made a comment. And if you go back to last week's show on why Matt Chandler, his failures are now Cedarville's problems.

He wrote an article. He said that in his article, he said that he was asking the question why Cedarville didn't call Dr. Moore a professor or faculty. He did not know at the time that he was not faculty.

He was in the administrative role. So he said he may correct that on his blog. He also wanted to tell me that he's not a social justice warrior. So I asked him the question, what's your position on the women's role in the church?

And he described himself as a soft complementarian. I quickly corrected him and said, no, you're a soft egalitarian. You see, the reality is if you're trying to say you're going soft on complementarianism, it's really you've already given into egalitarian.

It's just how soft you are on that. So you don't go soft on complementarian. You could be a hard complementarian. You could take it to an extreme, but you can't go soft on that one. So with that, Anthony, I'm going to hand the show over to you.

So you can because you're the one and for folks to realize the reason that I'm handing this over to Anthony is because he has been doing research into something that I have not. I'm not knowledgeable.

There's been a couple things back and forth that have gone on this issue. I've read very little of it. And for that reason, well, this is going to give him a big head. He's the expert. Anthony, take it away.

Wow. You know what? When I get a compliment from you, I'm just going to take it on with it. I guess I'll eat the comment I was going to make about the thing. Hold on. Something's with your mic. Something's with my mic now?

No, now you sound fine. Okay. Okay. All right. Let's keep going. I don't know what it was. I just didn't want you to, I guess, mention that you got complimented. Okay. That would be it. Yeah.

Yeah. I was also going to mention that the best looking person in those two promo videos was the dog. But, you know, that's okay. Most people would probably agree with that anyway. So on a serious note, there's a reason why we are doing this show tonight and in God's grace, we're planning on doing several follow-ups as well.

Background on Grace Fellowship Church and the Research Behind the Claims

And for those of you who have been following this, this has been an ongoing issue for about four and a half, somewhere five years now, give or take. And this is an issue that is in regards to a Pastor Mike Reed and Davenport Bible Fellowship.

So it's his church out in Davenport, Iowa. And in this church, there have been claims made about the church and about the Pastor Mike Reed in dangerous doctrines. Grace Fellowship Church, thank you for that.

I thought I said that backwards. So Grace Fellowship Church in Davenport, Iowa. And so there's a number of claims out there. And this started about five years ago with a Pastor, Chuck O 'Neill. And there's been some blog articles written.

There's basically been a lot of charges levied against Mike Reed and the way he practices doctrine in his church and the way that it comes out. So how did I get involved? Because I don't really like to get involved in things so much.

Well, this is what happened. Pastor Andrew and I do a lot of traveling, speaking in churches, especially on evangelism. Once people find out that not only do we teach on evangelism and go out and do a but that we also know right comfort.

One of the first questions we get asked is, oh, so do you know a certain street evangelist? And of course we do. And I will tell you with this street evangelist, every time I've interacted with him, he's been a very stand up guy, nice guy.

And he made a call a couple of years ago out on Facebook to say that, hey, I want to write encouraging letters to brothers and sisters in the Lord. If anybody wants an encouraging letter, just PM me and I will mail you one.

And I said, who doesn't want an encouraging letter, right? And so I did. I sent him a PM and I had a beautifully worded, wonderful letter that was sent to me in the mail. And I still have that letter to this day.

A letter I really enjoyed reading and I've seen multiple times since. A guy that certainly cares for the lost, cares for Christ's bride. Very nice guy, right? But I get asked this question, Pastor Mike Reed, who has these dangerous doctrines, why is so and so famous evangelist going to his church?

And this has been really the source of the blog articles, not the only source, but one of the sources of the blog articles being written, certainly by Pastor Chuck O 'Neill's blogs that have been written.

And so this has been a situation out there. Now, what really has interested me in this is that we know a lot of mutual people. So I know a lot of the guys that made up the Herald Society, Jeremiah Cry Ministries back in the day.

I'm forever thankful for some of those Herald Society conferences I went to years ago. And thankful for a number of the friendships that have come out of those conferences. Tony's probably the least, or one of the least, in terms of guys that I've gotten to know over the years, but still have the utmost respect for him.

And so in terms of this, what I notice is that all these street evangelists have, and not all of them, most of them, have kind of distanced themselves from the street evangelist that goes to Mike Reed's church.

And I thought that was kind of interesting. I had actually asked several of them why. And they said it's because of the issues of these dangerous doctrines that are here. And they felt that their friend evangelist that goes to the church ignored some of these worries.

And so it seems like some relationships, not all, some of the relationships have diminished. But one of them in particular has not. And that is of a good friend of mine, another street evangelist, who is also probably best friends with the street evangelist that goes to Mike Reed's church.

And so I approached him at G3. And I asked him a few questions about this whole situation. What is it about these dangerous doctrines that you're not seeing? Because everybody else seems to see them. To which he responded to me that what's out there has been just lots of blatant lies.

It's been cut and paste of phone conversations and YouTube videos. And so this person, whom I love, when my wife goes to G3 the last couple of years, she beelines. His family is one of the first families she goes to to say hi, give her hugs, and talk for a while.

This is a family that stayed in my house multiple times. They're a wonderful family. So I was able to have this conversation with him. And he had told me that, he goes, look brother, I'm not saying that what Mike Reed does is great.

He used the word actually weird. Distinctly, that was one of the words I remembered. He said, look, some of this stuff is weird. I wouldn't bring my family to go to church there. Or I wouldn't become members there.

But, you know, I can't say that it's sinful behavior. So basically he's saying that he acknowledges where his friend goes to church, that there's weird doctrines, weird practices as a result of those doctrines.

But he's not concerned enough because he says they're not sinful in and of themselves. So if his friend really wants to go there, his best friend really wants to go there, then his best friend can go there.

And then he furthermore said, look, if you have any concern about this, because of how many times people ask you about Tony, then why don't you just go ask him yourself? Because he's actually here at G3.

And I just realized, I think for the second time I slipped up on the name. So I apologize for that. But in terms of why don't you just go talk to the pastor yourself? He's here. And I said, you know what?

Let me pray about this. Let me think about this. I'm not so sure I want to do it right off the bat just from what I've heard. And after praying about this, talking to a few people about this, talking to Bobby again about this, I said, sure, I'm willing to talk to him.

So he set up the meeting between Pastor Mike and I. And we met on Saturday morning. And I will say, look, Mike was a very nice guy. We had an overall, a nice, it was a respectful conversation. But it was a conversation that ended with, he asked me, you know, how do you, so what do you think?

Am I really the cult that everyone calls me to be? The same thing that Bobby said, we shouldn't be calling people. So you're calling his church. And so there I go, I think I slipped another name. I apologize again.

But in terms of our conversation, I said, okay, look, I don't know, I have to know both sides to get a real understanding of what's going on at your church in terms of the doctrines and how they get played out.

I can tell you just from what you are telling me here about how you are a close pastor, you admit to close pastoring or close shepherding techniques, which we're going to get into tonight. I wouldn't bring my family to your church.

You know, so I disagree with your doctrines. And I'll take some time to actually look into these things. To which the evangelist who set up the meeting said, you need to look into this, which I not only did that day, but I've spent the last several months doing.

And Pastor Mike Reed himself told me the same thing, to look into these doctrines, do your research. And so as we had left, we had exchanged phone numbers and Pastor Mike Reed had actually texted me his holy kissing sermon.

So the infamous sermon that talks about holy kissing at the end of Romans 16 and his 20 minutes of how he worked through that passage of scripture and what its practical application is in the church. So I listened to it.

I didn't agree with it. I didn't call him back right away. In fact, I didn't call him back for a few months. And the reason why is because I spent some time researching. And so this is what I have done.

I have literally taken, at what I can count easily, somewhere between 50 and 60 hours of research time. And so this means I have listened to all of the videos and recorded phone calls that are out there publicly.

These are things that anybody here can go listen to. I have read all the blog articles that have been written. I have even furthermore gone to those blog articles. And in Kevin Yount's second blog article of three written on the church, there is a number of testimonies in there.

I spoke personally with every one of those people behind those testimonies. So when it's been claimed by some people who have said they've done all the research that they can do and they found nothing wrong or whatever, and I'm not here to judge.

I'm not here to make any inferences tonight. My job is literally to present information based off the research. What I can tell you is that not one of those people that were anonymous received a phone call.

Every one of them offered up their phone numbers, offered to be called, expected to be called by the people that were doing the supposed research back in the fall. And they never received a phone call.

The phone calls that they received from me over the last six to eight weeks were literally the first phone calls they have received. And so I spent over 13 hours on just six phone calls, for the initial phone calls.

I spent at least 20 hours pouring through the videos and cataloging the videos for when things were said where. There's been an allegation that the videos are all cut and pasted and put together to make Mike Reed look bad.

That's not true. There are some that are cut and pasted to condense things so people can watch the Dangerous Doctrines in a short period of time or what are called Dangerous Doctrines. But the reality is that the full unedited versions of the phone call as well as the sermon links and the other audios are all on Pastor Chuck O 'Neill's website.

You can listen to the full unedited audio for any one of those things. And so I did that multiple times. I've read all the blogs and I've conducted, again, a lot of my own interviews. And that's what's gone into literally 50 to 60 hours of research.

Now, people may also ask why am I bringing this up? And here's the bottom line with it. I mean, this is not about me. This is not about Andrew in terms of getting asked questions. We're big boys. We can handle questions, right?

When people ask us about a certain evangelist, we can just say, you know, nothing to say, whatever it is, you know, nice guy, good evangelist. We can say those things and we can just dismiss questions like that without getting into any type of gossip.

But here's the reality is that two reasons. Number one, one of the things that we have noticed is that Pastor Mike Reed has used the names of well-known pastors and the attendance at certain conferences, especially G3 and in the past Shepherds Conference, to validate his ministry.

So I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with his ministry per se right now. All I'm saying is that he defends his ministry because he would admit to you, as he asked to me in very respectful conversations, that yes, some of his doctrines are uncomfortable for a lot of Christians, that his close pastoring or close shepherding techniques are uncomfortable for a lot of Christians.

So no doubt. But he does use those conferences and he also uses people by name. There's a number of pastors by name. People like Voddie Bachman, Josh Bice, Phil Johnson and others that I have heard recordings of or know people who have heard firsthand that those names are used to validate his ministry.

Again, not saying there's anything wrong with his ministry or not right now, but just that that's out there. Number two, on this evangelist's website, his funding changed from where it was previously being stored at to being under the auspices of his church, now Pastor Mike Reed's Grace Fellowship Church.

And so in this post that he put out on Facebook, it says this, it has been written that any support given to one of his congregates, you're supporting Grace Fellowship Church and by proxy it's dangerous doctrines and practices for people who have added that back into it.

Basically what it's saying, the reason why we have gotten into this issue is because these doctrines, if they are true, if what is being levied, the charges being levied against Mike Reed and his church, if they're true and his elders, these would be dangerous doctrines, cult-like in behavior.

Or is it possible that people who have left the church have been very, they were spurned in some way and these are people who just, like the jaded or jilted girlfriend or whatever, and they just leave and have all kinds of bad things to say, right?

I mean, these are possibilities, so we have to look into what the actual truth is here. But the reality is that the ministry is literally being supported by and validated by the people that he speaks about and the conferences that he speaks about and that anybody who donates money to this evangelist is literally supporting the doctrines of the church and the practices of the church.

And so when it comes to Pastor Mike Reed, and we're going to be getting into this in a moment, he is a pastor in Davenport, Iowa, who has a number of close shepherding techniques in terms of the type of control that they have over the congregation, in terms of the meeting with women alone, so married women alone as part of the shepherding process.

We talked about the issue of holy kissing earlier. So these are all things that are out there. And as we get into this, I realize not everybody here knows who Mike Reed is, but it's going to come out here over the rest of the show because, again, if you don't know who he is now, you will, because there is a very famous evangelist that goes to his church.

And so having said all that, we have done the research, I have done the research, and I know from Proverbs 18, 17, the one who states, this case first seems right until the other comes and examines him.

Most of what I had read out there and have witnessed has been from the other side, so the side that is opposing Pastor Mike Reed and his dangerous doctrines. And so I reached out to multiple people. You already know people that I talked to.

I also reached out to Pastor Mike Reed to come on the show. And specifically for the last month, I have asked him to come on the show at some point. All along, I had planned this week to do it. And I let him know this morning, as he, for a month, has had a lot going on, I get it, hasn't wanted to come on, I let him know this morning that I'm planning on doing a show tonight anyway, and that I've got a number of them lined up.

So I would love for you to be on. I'd love for you to be able to have the first opportunity to come on and speak about what people call dangerous doctrines. And if not, I'm going to proceed with the show anyway, and I'll try to find another guest, which I actually did towards the last minute.

I'm going to have another guest on. Somebody I was planning already on having in a few weeks is now going to be on tonight since Mike decided not to. I do pray that Mike decides to come on and give his side of it.

Otherwise, we're going to continue to proceed with what is already out there based off of what Mike has already said in podcasts, sermon audio, phone calls, and everything else. And so on that note, I would like us to bring in our guest tonight.

And so our guest is Kevin Yount. And so Kevin, I first of all want to say thank you for coming on tonight. I know I was very long-winded in this opening, but I wanted to really try to be careful in how I laid everything out.

As I told you and as I told others that my goal is to make this show as a show that is me asking you questions, and you giving your answers, right? I'm not giving biased opinions. I just want you to kind of lay it out on this.

Yeah.

Thank you, Anthony. Appreciate you having me on. It's a pleasure to be able to do this. I know that you wanted to ask questions. And if you want me to start and give some opinions on some things, I can.

If you just want to jump into questions, I mean, this is your show. You tell me what you would like me to do.

Testimony, Salvation, and the Church Plant

Yeah, so let me walk into just some questions with you, okay? And in these questions, you've seen these ahead of time. I actually also sent Mike the questions I would ask him ahead of time as well. And so I do pray that he comes on in this show.

So I have invited him as well, Kevin. So I'm going to jump right into this. So Kevin, what is your brief testimony? I know in speaking with me, you had told me you and your wife were both false converts.

And so what happened there and the teaching that you had heard.

That God finally used to open your eyes? Yeah, so the church in question, Grace Fellowship Church in Davenport, Iowa, my wife and I were members there for nine years, starting in 2009 is when we became members.

We left the church in February of 2018. I served as a deacon there for four plus years. And we came to salvation in 2019, in or around July for me, my wife a little bit earlier. Did you say 2019? I thought it was 2000.

I'm sorry. My apologies. 2009. 2009 through 2018 is when we were at Grace Fellowship. We were saved around 2009. July is the year for me, or the month and the year. So we were at this place from the very beginning when the church first started there.

It was part of a church plant from a United Methodist church that began around 2007 and never quite got off the ground right. And then, I think it was around 2008, Mike Reed became the pastor there. Okay.

And so, what years did you actually attend Grace Fellowship Church? Yeah, we were there from the very beginning of the plant, which I want to say was around the summer of 2007. So, we and a number of families initially planted the church, if you will, in 2007.

So, we were there all that time until 2018 when we left.

Okay. And then, so you had said Mike Reed was not there as the planting pastor, right, but he had come on. Was that early in the process of you guys in this church plant? Yeah, what happened was.

The gentleman that was originally planting the church, there were some personal problems in his life. He never became the pastor, ended up resigning and the church kind of floundered for a little while, not really sure what to do.

Eventually, there became an interim pastor and then there became, fairly quickly, the need was recognized to actually have a permanent pastor and so they tried out for two different men and Mike ended up getting the job.

I think it was around the summer of 2008. So, it didn't go on too long without a permanent pastor and Mike became that permanent pastor and has been there ever since.

Why It Took So Long to Speak Out

Okay. And now, okay, so I'm going to turn the corner a little bit, right? So this is your background. But the reason why I'm having you on this show, as I'm sure you know, you've got a trio of blogs that you've you and others that you've quoted in there have made a lot of allegations against against this church that, by the way it sounds, you faithfully attended for a long time, right?

And then you left. So, I guess I'll ask you the question first, what took you so long? I mean, again, lots of allegations over a long period of time.

Yeah, I mean, that's a good and legitimate question to say why would you be there so long and now you're speaking out against it or writing about this place, talking with others about it. Why would you do that?

You know, number one, we were infant Christians at this time in 2009. We were just newly saved or we had come to deeper knowledge of salvation, if I can in a reformed group, if I can say it that way. But let's just say, you know, my wife and I would attest to be saved in around at the time at this church.

So, what would possibly, you know, what would happen? Well, again, we were infants in Christ. We didn't have deep doctrinal understandings. We didn't really understand what was going on. Everything that was taught there, we believed.

We thought that things that were being done was normal in terms of orthodoxy. We thought that the things that the elders presented were correct. We had no reason to really doubt that kind of a thing. So, we continued on at that church for a long time, believing that what we were doing was the right thing.

We were trying to be sincere and to grow in knowledge of the Lord and to serve Him with pure hearts. But what, you know, began to happen for us, you know, it began with my wife, and there are some reasons why I was a little slow to catch on, if you will.

But what happened is my wife began to recognize some things or to ask some questions and be concerned about some of the teaching and stuff like that. So, in some of the women's Bible studies, there was always a big emphasis placed upon wives' submission to the husbands, submission to the authority of the church, and it was never really, asking questions was never really a thing that was encouraged very much.

They would say we would encourage questions, but they were often kind of put down. So, my wife began to have these concerns, but one of the things that she will testify to is that she didn't want to give them, you know, sort of try to make a direct influence on me.

She wanted me to come to knowledge on my own, so she just lived with it, if you will, for a year and a half or so before I kind of started seeing some of these things that were happening. For myself, you know, maybe these were sort of legitimate desires to be involved in church leadership and to grow in terms of that kind of a thing.

I was serving as a deacon, as I said earlier. But I began to have some concerns. I was reading some books that kind of got my head spinning a little bit. I traveled a lot for my business, so I would go to other churches.

I would see the conduct of other pastors and how they were doing things. And then a couple of real big things happened, whereas I had some friends that came to the church, and they didn't stick around, and it really started making me wonder, what is going on?

What are these guys seeing that I'm not seeing? So that's kind of where it all began. And it was just really a process of the Lord sort of beginning to open my eyes to that, although it sort of looks orthodox on the surface, there are some practices that are concerning.

So that's kind of the short version of it, if you will. Okay.

And we're going to get into all those topics here tonight. Now, I'm going to ask you a point-blank question. Is there anything that is not truthful in terms of what you spoke about the church and your blog or to buy people by phone or in person?

Because that's an accusation that's out there against you and your wife.

Truthfulness of the Testimonies

Yeah, that's an accusation I've heard. It's been repeated by more than one person. I've caught wind of that more than once. I mean, listen, you know, I'm a Christian. I strive and I desire to serve the Lord with a pure heart, with integrity and with honesty.

I would not intentionally tell lies. I wouldn't intentionally tell lies about my worst enemy. These are people that we were with for nine years. They're our friends. They're people we love, used to love, still love.

Now, they don't view it the same way that we do, but for me to intentionally distort, to tell truths, half-truths or partial truths, or tell lies or whatever, no. I have no desire to do that. It's, yeah, again, it's certainly an accusation, but I mean, I am willing to look at anything if somebody says, Kevin, that's not true.

Okay, show it to me. I'm more than happy to review that and to talk about that, but intentionally to lie about this place or the people that are there, I would not do that.

Okay. So, now, I will say, you know, I have spoken to each one of the families that are in your blog article. I think I spoke to every one of them. And every one of their stories seems to be in line with what you wrote.

So, from my firsthand knowledge and, again, from what they told me, I'm the only person who actually had contacted them to get their side. So, yeah, what I heard certainly jives with it. But, you know, again, it's a question I have to ask you and have record of, right?

Yeah, I want you to ask me those things. I mean, you know, if anything would come out in this, it's a desire for us to know the truth, and I believe that that is our job as Christians, is to be truth-tellers, but to be truth-seekers.

And, you know, I commend you for the desire to actually dig into this thing. It's been talked about, like you said, for a long time, but nobody's actually ever desired to, you know, I don't think really dig in.

I mean, Chuck O 'Neill has done that. You know, he's been excoriated for it. But, you know, Chuck was the first one to really dive in, and at that point in time, I was a defender of Mike as may come up later.

You know, I've come to sort of be I'm not trying to be Mike's accuser. I mean, Mike was a close friend and my pastor, and a man that I respected, admired, and loved for many years, but you know, my desire to be on this show is to call him to turn from these things that he's doing.