F4F | The Fall of JD Hall

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough. I am your servant in Jesus Christ.

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This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God. Now, you may have heard the news.

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If you haven't heard the news, then we'll break it here for you, but it's been out in the public domain.

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And that is that J .D. Hall, a very famous discernment fellow, the author of Pulpit and Pen, and then the

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Polemics Report, and then the Protestia website, the guy behind that, he has been removed from the pastoral office and for grounds.

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And his church has revealed that he was removed for a pretty severe drug addiction.

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And I thought it would behoove us to actually have on the program Phil Johnson and Justin Peters for the purpose of discussing this, as well as discussing what are the biblical qualifications for the pastor?

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What is the purpose of discipline when it comes to, you know, when it's exercised in the church?

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What has Jordan's church done right? And how can we continue to pray for this ongoing situation and things like that?

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So gentlemen, thank you for coming on Fighting for the Faith. Good to have you both back on the program.

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I wish it was for a better topic, though. So let me kind of start off,

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I'll pitch this one to you, Phil. When a pastor or a Christian falls,

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I don't think there really should be a distinction, and the church has to exercise discipline.

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What is the purpose of discipline biblically? And what is its real goal and intent?

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Well, it's twofold. One is to keep the church pure, obviously, to get rid of any kind of gross sin in the midst, and it keeps the church purged of negative influences and things like that.

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But with regard to the person who's sinning, the goal is restoration. There are several steps along the way, and the goal in each case is for the person who has fallen into sin to repent and turn around and return to the

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Lord. The goal is not excommunication. If a church discipline case ends in excommunication, that's the worst possible outcome.

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The goal with regard to the person who's sinning is to see him repent and purge his life of sin as well.

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Yeah, I've seen excommunication actually done in the church before. One of the churches that I attended early on after becoming a

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Lutheran, there was a couple where the wife was committing adultery, and the church went through all of the steps of Matthew 18 with her, and she refused to repent.

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And at some point, they basically said, well, if you refuse to repent of your adultery, we're going to excommunicate you.

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And they did. They actually began the church service with what's called the rite of excommunication.

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And it's very clear that even in excommunication, the goal of that was the person's repentance.

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And although they were not welcome to have the Lord's Supper, they were welcome to come to church to hear the Word, but with the understanding that they need to actually be a

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Christian, because they're not. They're not behaving in a Christian manner. So it's always tragic then when somebody, a pastor, a leader, a friend, a family member falls into sin and needs to be called to repentance, but the church's call for them to repent is out of love, not for the purpose of damning them and sending them out and just being washing their hands of these things.

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So Justin, let me ask you a question. If restoration is always the goal, then when we practice discipline,

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I think we need to make a distinction here that when a pastor falls into gross and really over -the -top sins, we're not talking then about that pastor being restored to the biblical office of pastor, are we?

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No, no, Chris, we're not. The pastor elders are held to a higher standard, and it is not to say that a pastor cannot be restored to fellowship with a local body of believers, which if they repent, they certainly can be.

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But as far as getting back into that office and being behind the pulpit, no, that is, in our theological circles, that is not something that would be in view here.

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If you disqualify yourself in clear, egregious sin as a pastor, then that is an office that you'll never hold again or should never hold again.

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Right, right. So when we talk about Fellowship Baptist Church in Sydney, Montana, one of the things

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I noticed is that they actually held J .D. accountable, which in our day and age, that almost seems like an anomaly, whereas it should be the norm.

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They stepped him down. They publicly acknowledged that he had been disqualified, put out a statement with the hope of his repentance.

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And whereas I kind of compare how things happen in a lot of megachurches, oftentimes the vision casting leader, if he's committed an egregious sin, just disappears and things get swept under the carpet.

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Or in some circumstances, you think of Tabner Smith, whose wife divorced him for adultery.

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That's actually in the public record in the court documents. And the leaders of his church found his girlfriend at his house, and they were not wearing the proper amount of attire and things like this.

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And despite all of that, Tabner is still the vision casting leader of Venue Church.

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And it's clear that there is zero accountability. Thoughts on that,

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Phil? Yeah, I mean, that's an abomination. And that kind of thing has plagued

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American evangelicalism for more than 100 years. Just this weekend, I did a lecture on the influence of the

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Beecher family, Henry Ward Beecher and his father, Lyman Beecher. Henry Ward Beecher, similarly, this was in the 1800s, around 1875, it came to light that he was engaged in an affair with the wife of a man in his church.

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And he was actually in those days that you could be put on trial, literally a civil trial over this.

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And the trial of Henry Ward Beecher was as big a deal as the O .J. Simpson trial in our lifetime and ultimately ended in a hung jury.

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But it was clear from the testimony that he was guilty and he more or less confessed that he had committed adultery with this woman.

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But he took the hung jury as a vindication and just simply continued in ministry.

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And he's been lionized by popular evangelical history as one of the greatest preachers

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America ever produced. And yet the influence of not only his morality or I should say his immorality and his bad theology left a mark on the evangelical movement that the movement, big movement evangelicalism, still has not quite recovered from.

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And in the wake of that, there's been a strain of men who have disqualified themselves in one way or another who've continued or tried to continue in ministry.

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And depending on the severity of the scandal, sometimes they can't come back. But it seems to me that there's a pretty clear pattern where they always try to almost always they try to come back and pretend that nothing ever happened, which is a it's just a flagrant abuse of Scripture, because Scripture is very clear that the first requirement of an elder is he must be above reproach.

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Yeah. It doesn't mean he's sinless, but it means there's no reproach that's attached to his name that's going to hinder his ministry or his effectiveness.

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And once a sin becomes a public scandal, it's pretty hard to get rid of that reproach.

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Right. Indeed. And, you know, obviously, in some cases, it depends upon how long the sin's been going on.

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Some of these circumstances come into play there. What is the nature of the sin? And when confronted, does the person repent or do they, you know, they run the opposite way and just kind of go squirrelly?

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I think of Mark Driscoll when it was clear that Mars Hill was going to exercise some type of of accountability for him, especially in relation to the fact that he had spent a huge amount of church funds for the purpose of of rigging his

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New York Times bestselling status for one of his books. And then also with all the plagiarism allegations that actually turned out to be true, that were swirling around, that his church was going to hold him accountable.

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He claimed that he had a direct revelation from God that he had been released from ministry and just kind of disappeared for a few years and then reemerged, you know, reemerged in in Arizona, you know, with a church where he has zero accountability yet again.

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But the number of people listening to Mark Driscoll nowadays is very few compared to how many were listening to him at the height of his ministry.

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But the biblical qualifications you mentioned are found in Titus chapter one, and this is one of three of the pastoral epistles.

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And it really it makes us very clear that anybody who's going to be in the pastoral office, that that there are moral qualifications and there are also doctrinal qualifications.

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And unfortunately, you know, a few churches take the doctrinal qualifications seriously at all in any meaningful way.

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But when when there are clear moral failings, then they at least will spring into action.

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But here's what Paul writes to Titus. This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained in order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.

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If anyone is above reproach, husband of one wife, his children are believers, not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination for an overseer as God's steward must be above reproach.

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He must not be arrogant or quick tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain.

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I mean, this would disqualify all of TBN hospitable, a lover of good, self controlled, upright, holy, disciplined.

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He must hold firm to the trustworthy word is taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

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So one of my big laments over the past decade and a half of doing fighting for the faith and either podcast or video podcast has been that the huge number of very popular pastors and preachers, they don't rightly handle

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God's word at all. And a notable number of them over the over the decade and a half have had a spectacular ministry ending moral failings, which is not surprising.

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But nobody took the the doctrinal issues seriously at all.

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And and despite the fact that it was easy to demonstrate that they were twisting God's word and they were not rightly handling it, nobody cared.

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But come to find out if they were sleeping with their secretary or something like that, then all of a sudden it becomes an issue.

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But with JD, you know, as far as I can tell,

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I mean, he was he was a Baptist preacher who was teaching Baptist doctrine. Now, as a

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Lutheran, we would we would take issue on several secondary issues. But all that being said, he you know, for from what

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I can see and what I had heard and with my own eyes and in my own ears is that JD was a fellow who preached the scriptures, did a good attempt at rightly dividing law and gospel and proclaiming

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Christ in his sermons. And so as far as Baptist doctrine is concerned, he wasn't standing out as aberrant.

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But when somebody is falling into big sins like this, oftentimes there are red flags or indicators where hindsight being 2020, you can see that there were problems.

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Anything like that with you, with JD? You're asking me or Justin?

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Whoever wants to jump in. Justin, what do you think? Well, as far as the as far as the sexual sins, no,

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I don't have any indication that that that was in play with Jordan. But some of the other qualifications, when you just read the text from Titus, first Timothy three is the same thing.

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An overseer must be above reproach. Husband of one wife. Temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, considerate, peaceable.

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It's those being temperate, being considerate, peaceable. Those are some of the issues that that I saw and Phil saw and Chris, you saw as well.

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And all three of us talked with Jordan and implored him on multiple occasions behind the scenes.

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You know, it's not that, as you said, Chris, it's not that Jordan was teaching doctrinal heresy or anything like that.

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But it's it is the the combativeness, the caustic nature of so much of what he wrote.

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It's not that the content of what he wrote was wrong. It for the vast majority of it was was spot on his concerns.

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The concerns that he had are concerns that all three of us have as well. And we saw the same things.

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But it's the it was the caustic nature, the over the top, verbose nature of what he wrote and how.

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Yeah. One of the other one of the other one of the other one of the clear qualifications to be an elder is he's not supposed to be pugnacious.

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That is, he's not someone who picks fights. It doesn't mean that he doesn't fight because we're also commanded to earnestly contend for the faith.

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But there's something disqualifying if someone just likes to provoke people.

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And that, I think, was a tendency that some of us had confronted Jordan about that. He seemed pugnacious in an in an unrighteous way.

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And one of the one of the commands that Paul gives to Timothy and Second Timothy, too, is that the

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Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

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And, you know, there are times when even Jesus isn't necessarily what we would call gentle by postmodern standards with with the adversaries of truth.

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But he was he was overall his reputation was he was gentle with Jordan.

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There seemed to be almost a contempt for that command that he he would not under any circumstances be gentle or kind with an opponent.

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He was, you know, sort of like General Sherman in in the

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Civil War. He has burned everything down. Yeah. And this is, yeah, several of us had admonished him.

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I'd stopped publicly quoting Jordan three or four years ago. And he asked me why.

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And I told him, frankly, it's because the the the way you attack people and try to humiliate all of your opponents, that's your first response to every everything you disagree with.

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And Jordan would even do that at times with people who he said he regarded as friends. And those were danger signals.

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Those are signals that something wasn't quite right. And and if he didn't if he didn't turn around, he was headed for disaster.

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And as Justin said, several of us did privately try to warn him. Yeah. About that.

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Yeah, I he he actually came to my home two weeks before he was arrested for his

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DUI. And and the the presenting issue as to why he he wanted to come visit me, it didn't add up.

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And in fact, I had noticed that in some of my private conversations that I'd had with him over the past year, things weren't connecting correctly.

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Stories weren't making any sense. And and he ended up saying something in my presence that was so over the top and so wrong that I ended up having to privately rebuke him.

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And I and that was the best what that's the best term I could use. I literally told told Jordan to his face that he sounded just like the devil in the way he was in the way he was talking.

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And what I was shocked at was that he didn't immediately apologize or back down or say

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I'm sorry. And we left on a really awkward note because I'm not used to confronting somebody privately and then them just not really acknowledging the obviousness of what

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I was saying. And so we and we didn't really talk at all.

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After that. And then and then I heard that he was arrested for a DUI. But what was what I did notice about Jordan is over the past year and a half, two years, he's aged like by 10 years.

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And I noted that to him. I said, you don't look healthy. And and then he told me this story about having a vitamin

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D deficiency and that he was it was having problems. But I'm beginning to think that that's not really how that was going down.

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And that's the issue is, is that as a pastor, I've I've had to deal with people who have chemical addictions.

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And the one thing I've learned about people who have chemical addictions and they haven't actually gone through rehab, they haven't been treated for it.

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You can't trust them. They don't tell the truth. And unfortunately, I think we saw some of that.

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And yeah, but I never suspected that he had an addiction to Xanax or anything else.

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That was that was it never dawned on me, even though now maybe I could have put it together if I had some better training on, you know, on finding these things.

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But it just again, it was really tragic. Yeah, I saw him on a podcast a couple of months before he was arrested.

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And my thought was he is really overworked or overstressed or something because he was slow and lethargic and sleepy.

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And, you know, in retrospect, I think he was probably on this on this

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Xanax and it showed. I also think that he knew that he was headed for disaster.

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He sort of sensed that I wrote him almost exactly a year to the day before he was arrested.

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I sent him a long three page letter outlining some of my concerns about him. And one of the things

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I said was, I while I agree with most of your theological positions and and all that,

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I think there's a spirit of contentiousness in you that is reminiscent of and I named a bunch of fundamentalists and provocateurs who had discredited themselves in the church.

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One of the people I named was Frank Norris, who was a Baptist preacher in the first part of the 20th century, who was extremely contentious and very famous in his time, actually shot a man to death in his office.

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And he was acquitted. They called it self -defense. But most people who knew him and knew the circumstances really questioned whether it was a case of murder.

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And his name was in the list of people that I named and said, you know, I don't want you to wind up like Frank Norris.

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And he didn't really respond directly to me on about anything in that letter until about a month before he was arrested.

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And I didn't hear from him much over the last three or four years. But occasionally he would text me.

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He had my cell phone number and he sent me a text and said, I've been I've been reading up on Frank Norris.

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And he said, why did you why did you compare me to him? He said, it kind of scares me.

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I thought it was an interesting bit of feedback. And then the next thing I heard from him was that he had been arrested.

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So I think he saw it coming. Yeah. You know, that that is so tragic.

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And I talked with Jordan and saw him just a few weeks myself before this arrest.

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And I agree, Phil, he looked he was very almost detached, kind of aloof and did not look well.

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And I, same as Phil, I for the last several years, I have not publicly connected myself with Jordan.

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I've not promoted any of his teaching. And it's been a difficult thing for me personally, because he has always been kind to me.

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He has defended me against some of the various people that have attacked me.

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You know, Brandon House and Service Christie, and he's come to my defense. And I've appreciated that.

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But because of the way that he's presented himself and been combative, like Phil was just talking about,

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I couldn't I couldn't endorse that either. And so it's been a difficult thing for me.

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But apparently he has been lying to a lot of us about a lot of things for quite a long time.

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And it's now coming out. And I take no joy in it at all. Yeah, I'm reminded of the fact that when

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Christ has the Apostle John writing letters to the different churches, you know, to the church at Ephesus, to the

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Church of Philadelphia and Sardis and Laodicea, that in many of these little many epistles that Christ has issues with things that are happening in these congregations.

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And one of the major themes is, you see, that Christ is patient and wants these people in these churches to repent.

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And he actually gives them time to do so. But at some point, things run out.

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And I think about the letter to the church at Ephesus, which is the one that I think impacts you and I, Justin, the most because of the type of work that we do.

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And then, Phil, you do this work as well, but you have a respectable day job.

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We don't, you know, but it says to the angel of the church at Ephesus, right, the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.

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I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance, how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not.

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And you found them to be false. I know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary.

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But I have this against you. You have abandoned the love that you had at first. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen and repent and do the works as you did at first.

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If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

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And then Christ commends him. He says, but this you have, you hate the work of the Nicolaitans, which

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I also hate. So he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

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And so you'll note then when it comes to listening to heresy, to bringing it to the attention of the wider body of Christ and warning people.

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Jordan did, you know, he oftentimes he was the first to report on, you know, major things that should have that needed to get out.

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But what was missing was any of the love of Christ in in many of the ways he presented it.

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In fact, Phil, I remember it was may have been four or five years ago. I had seen you use the term yellow journalism.

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And I thought, yeah, that kind of fits with with this. Is it ever right or for for people who are doing discerning work to engage in yellow journalism or does do they run afoul of the command to love here as Christ has commanded us?

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Yeah. And also the the command not to bear false witness to slant a story deliberately is bearing false witness.

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There were a lot of things in in the style of how

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Jordan wrote and dealt with his enemies publicly that I think just could have been so much better.

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He needed an editor. His theological instincts were sound. But I think he did more damage to the truth than some of the liberals he opposed because he made he managed by by treating things the way he did to make the truth just seem odious.

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And yeah, that's a temptation and a tendency that all of us who are passionate about defending the truth against, you know, error and lies and so on, we need to be careful to safeguard that as well.

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Yeah. So and then and of course, you know, J .D. ended up having to retract a statement that he had made about somebody on his

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Montana, you know, website and and it ended up costing him a couple hundred thousand dollars because it was tied to a defamation lawsuit.

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And and unfortunately, when something like that happens, it calls into question the entire body of a person's work.

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If if this person defended himself and effectively won a court case and Jordan had to admit that he didn't he spoke lies and he had to put issue a retraction, you know, it's one thing when a publisher does it, but it's a it's a whole other thing when the publisher is also a pastor.

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Yeah. Yeah, it's easy in the heat of a polemical battle to to exaggerate or oversell the the evils of whatever lie you're trying to expose are correct.

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Right. And again, it's it's an easy tendency to fall into. Jordan seemed not to have any brakes on that, though.

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You know, he couldn't he couldn't put the brakes on. He couldn't stop the because I admonished him about it several times.

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And, you know, I was the target of some of his censures at times because he he he took pride in the fact that he would publicly attack his friends as well as his enemies.

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Yeah. And he and in one in particular, it was an article that he attacked both

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Justin and me and got the facts wrong. And but even after his facts were corrected, he left the article up with a misleading headline and added an editorial note, a footnote at the very bottom of the article where it really would hardly have been noticed by anybody and claimed that that was all the correction he needed.

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So so he was loath to correct his errors publicly. I think he understood that if he ever had to admit he got it wrong, it was going to undermine his whole body of work.

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So, yeah, the point you're making is, I think, exactly right. Justin, you had something you wanted to say to that.

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Yeah, yeah, sure do. One of the one of the guiding texts that I really try to keep in the forefront of my mind in this aspect of my ministry in the in the polemical stuff and engaging false teachers, which

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I do other stuff as well, but that's what I'm known for is Jude 3. Jude writes, beloved brothers,

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I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, but I felt it necessary to write to you, exhorting you that you contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all handed down the saints for certain men have crept in unnoticed.

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So in other words, what what Jude is saying is, brothers, I wanted to write to you about the gospel.

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I wanted to write to you about our common salvation. That was my heartbeat. That's what I wanted to do.

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But I felt it necessary to write to you, to warn you about these false teachers, men who have crept in unnoticed.

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So even though warning about false teachers is a command from scripture, in fact, 26 of the 27 books in the

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New Testament directly warn about false doctrine and or false teachers. Only Philemon does it.

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So, yes, we must do it, but it is a task that at some level should grieve us that it is necessary to do in the first place, if that makes sense.

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So I would I would love nothing more than to wake up tomorrow morning and see where Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland and Joyce Meyer, you know, all these all these evangelical and false teachers repent.

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I would love, of course, their repentance would be evidenced by them shutting down their ministries. I would love nothing.

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I want that for them. I don't I don't want Benny Hinn or Kenneth Copeland to go to hell.

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I don't want that. I've made personal, direct pleas to them on my YouTube channel, pleading to them directly to repent.

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So there's there's two different ditches. There's one ditch where you think everything is just sunshine lollipops and you never have to engage false doctrine at all.

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And then there's the other ditch where sometimes you get the sense from some people that if there's not somebody to go after, that they would be disappointed.

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And that's that's another ditch. And that's a dangerous place to be as well.

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So I try to keep Jude three through four there in the forefront of my mind as as we all should, as we do this necessary work of engaging false doctrine.

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But it should be a task that deep down should grieve us that it's necessary to do in the first place.

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I completely agree. And I would note people who are close to me, my friends and family and even members of my church, they they they will tell you that that the job

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I'd hate doing is this job, fighting for the faith. I you know, when it comes time to actually filling my research pipeline and start looking at and I have to spend hours watching heresy in order to in order to begin to produce videos,

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I I'm losing my mind. I used to do a daily podcast two hours a day, you know, where we would cover this stuff and I can't do it anymore.

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I legitimately it grieves me so much that that for me, the thing that saved my life and maybe that's overstating it, but it may be really close to the truth is is the fact that I'm a pastor and I get to positively teach the word of God.

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And if you were to kind of look over the body of my work, what I used to do and what I'm currently doing,

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I pretty much have a general rule with one exception.

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And that is, is that I'm not going to comment on a false teacher unless I can spend some really good time teaching the word of God so that that so that somebody leaves with a better understanding of Scripture, not just a warning against a false teacher.

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And so I've kind of really intentionally modified my format so that the heavy emphasis is on positively teaching what

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God's word says, because the Bible is so much better than what these false teachers make it out to be.

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And then the only exception is Prophecy Bingo, which I yeah, so it's it's it is it's a labor of hate to put together.

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I loathe having to listen to these all this blasphemous stuff all in the name of God.

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It grieves me to the core that these people have no fear of God. And I and I and I fear for their for their eternal souls because I see the very stern warnings in Scripture.

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But all of that being said, I'm not out there trying to put together clickbait and be provocative.

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And and and I care less how many people subscribe to my channel, too. You know, when

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I've noticed that when people are kind of paying attention to those numbers, they're really paying attention to the wrong thing.

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I've told people that if I put a video out and two people watch it and they benefit from it, it was worth it, that that that's that that's what really matters.

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And unfortunately, I fear that that JD really fell into some very, very obvious temptations that we all face in the work that we do.

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And one has to wonder when you have a drug addiction, you know, to a prescription drug like Xanax, which

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I think is an antidepressant, one has to wonder how how much that then impacts your ability to think rationally and to and to have the thoughts of the

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Holy Spirit. You know, when when you talk about having those types of addictions, the fruit of the

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Spirit seemed to disappear quickly. Yeah, let me go on record, though,

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Chris, and say I miss your podcast you used to listen to and critique all those bad sermons so that the rest of us didn't have to.

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So you saved me a lot of grief. But at the same time, I understand why it is a grief for you to do it.

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I can also understand why someone who focuses on that all the time would would become addicted to Xanax.

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You'd almost need an antidepressant if if that's all you were ever doing. And it's it's it's a danger that we have to watch out for.

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The danger lies on both sides. You know, there are people who who just never want to even contend faithfully for the truth.

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And that worries me that that's a bigger problem, I think, in the large evangelical movement.

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But then there have also always been people for whom that's all they ever do. And and I think that is probably an even more dangerous position to be in.

36:55

Right. So, yeah, they end up rather than doing discernment work, they end up becoming revilers.

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And yeah, and and that that's that's a dangerous spot. That's a very dangerous spot.

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And, you know, and that's a temptation that we all that we all face. But I remember having a conversation with one of my pastoral mentors and and was kind of walking through with him the difficulty that I had, you know, continuing imbibing on copious amounts of heresy.

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And he said, that's evil stuff. You can't listen to it without it impacting you negatively.

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You know, evil is is is something that is actually palpable. There's a substance to it.

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It it tweaks you. It messes you up. He said and he said that it was a good thing that I pulled back a little bit because he could see that had

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I continued at the imbibing it in the amounts that I was that I was I was heading for a mental breakdown.

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You know, I in fact, in 2017, I don't talk about this much, but in 2017, summer of 2017 on into 2018,

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I had a major bout with with clinical depression. And it took a long time to kind of work my way out of it.

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And and the pastoral office is a difficult office. It's I think it's really the front line of Christianity, not polemics.

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And and and so coming out of that, that's where I began to make some changes in my life, because, like you said, you can't you can't be doing this stuff day in and day out without without it sending you into depression because it's so dark.

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And the thing is, is that on in this life, especially the kind of cycle we're in an apostasy, it feels like the more you talk against it, the less effective anything gets.

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I mean, how many people are out there really turning away from this false these false teachers that, you know, they're doing also well and we're not.

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So, you know. Yeah. But happily, by God's grace, Chris and Phil, I think you would both amend this that we hear from people all the time, all the time, on a daily basis that that that have heard the truth and responded to it.

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And God is using the truth to deliver them out of the deception. And so that encourages me.

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God's not obligated to give us to let us see any of that fruit, but but he graciously does.

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And it keeps me encouraged to continue on doing what I'm doing. Yeah, I there's a there's a standard email that I get and I get it on a very regular basis.

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And the email begins with, I used to think you were the biggest jerk in the whole world. This is the kind of standard template.

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And you kept talking about how, you know, don't listen to me with an open mind, listen with an open Bible. So I open up my

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Bible and wouldn't you know it, I found out you were right. I left the church that I was going to and I wanted to let you know that you can rejoice with me and my family because we just became members of such and such a church.

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And our pastor is faithful and they send me photos and things like this. And so that that makes it that makes it all worth it.

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But on the other end of it, though, it still is dark. It still is dark and it needs to be handled humbly and in the strength of the

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Lord and handled according to the love and mercy of Christ, with the hope, with the real hope and appeal for people to come out from these false teachers and to be set free by Christ.

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So where do we go from here, Phil? You know, I don't really want to talk about where JD is right now, but how best can people help

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JD? And if anyone thinks that we're throwing JD under the bus, we're not. My biggest hope for JD is that he gets the help that he needs, that he is reconciled to his church, that he's reconciled to the body of Christ, those whom he sinned against and that and that he find a godly vocation to work with his hands and make a contribution in society for the remainder of the days that he has here on earth as a forgiven sinner like all of us.

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But what what what can people be doing right now in hope and help for JD and his family,

41:16

Phil? Yeah, I think for the vast majority of your listeners, pray for him. Pray for him.

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That's not a fruitless exercise. The, you know, earnest prayer of a righteous man avails much,

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Scripture says. And I think it's it's the right thing to pray for him.

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When I wrote to him a year ago, the very first sentence of my letter was, I love you like a brother. I still love him like a brother.

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And so my response to him, even knowing him, is I don't want to lose touch with him.

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I want to do anything I can to help and encourage him. I don't want to see him return to public ministry.

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I think that would be bad for him and bad for the the cause of truth.

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But obviously, he has is the need to support his family and get his life together. And it's going to be a long, tough road for him and for his family.

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So anyone close to them, I would urge you to do all you can to help and encourage them.

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Don't don't treat them as enemies, but implore them to take all the steps they need to recover from this and and find a way to serve the

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Lord. That's still possible. Yeah, it's still possible for him to to honor

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God with his life as long as he is, as long as he responds in the right way.

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And so that's my hope for him. Yeah, I think one of the things that I was really disappointed with is that when all of this went down,

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JD cut off all communication. I have no way to actually get a hold of him to to appeal.

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Nor do I. And that's the sad part. He's isolated himself from those who, you know, who care about him the most.

43:04

It's it's it's actually tragic. But what were you going to say, Justin? Yeah, no,

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I'm glad you brought that up, Chris, because you're right, we don't have any way of contacting him. I echo what

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Phil said. We need to pray for Phil, pray for his family, pray for Phil, sorry, pray for Jordan, pray for his family.

43:25

Jordan can absolutely if he repents, he can absolutely be restored to fellowship with Christ, fellowship to a local body of believers.

43:33

I agree with Phil. He should never be back behind the pulpit. He is he has forfeited that.

43:41

But let me also say something real quickly is, I guess, is a bit of a rebuke to I've seen a lot of the the people who do not like Jordan, some of his enemies really spiking the football over this and they take joy in what has happened to Jordan.

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I think that is reprehensible. I think it it betrays a very un -Christlike attitude on their part.

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They need to do some examination of themselves. Per 2 Corinthians 13, 5, to see if they're in the faith, because taking joy in anyone's hardships, even though those hardships have been brought upon themselves, that that is a very un -Christlike attitude.

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I would take no joy if something bad happened to Benny Hinn or Kenneth Copeland. I take no would take no joy in that at all.

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So, yeah, that's a that's a bit of a rebuke, I guess, to those people who seem to be gloating over this.

44:39

Yeah, they should they should be just as concerned about the state of their soul as they claim to be about Jordan's.

44:46

Yeah. So people have accused me of spiking the football when when like Perry Noble or Driscoll or others have fallen.

44:55

And that's absolutely false. I've never publicly spiked the football in any kind of joy when somebody has had a spectacular sin and fallen in such a way.

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And and I can prove it, too. I've reached out to every one of these fallen megachurch pastors.

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And and and a lot of people do not know that I had a I want to say a cordial friendship ish with Carl Lentz.

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And when the news broke about Carl Lentz's affair, I was one of the first people he was texting with.

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And I was calling him to repentance and assuring him that in Christ there is forgiveness even for these things.

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And the conversation didn't last more than a few days before he disappeared. But if anyone thinks that somehow, you know, myself or Justin or others have spiked the football when when megachurch pastors have fallen, that's just not that's just not true.

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There is no evidence of that because it never happened. And I can actually provide evidence that with each and every one of these big megachurch pastors who've fallen,

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I have reached out to them privately in, you know, and I think that should stand out that somebody who is such a vocal critic is is there reaching out to them to to hopefully preach the gospel to them should they repent, but showing some care for them, because at the end of the day, we're all sinful human beings.

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And the solution to our sin is a crucified savior who bled and died so that you and I can be forgiven and reconciled to God.

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So, you know, if we if we're not operating with that kind of love, then

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I think you're right, Justin, we need we need to examine ourselves and say, really, do we understand the gospel and who

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Christ is and what he stood for? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

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So, gentlemen, thank you for coming on to discuss this lamentable topic necessary to talk about it, though, and to provide some clarification and and our impassioned appeal for for Jordan is that he that he repents, that he be reconciled to his family, that he make restitution for the wrongs that he's done and that he get his life together and find meaningful work for the remainder of his days so that we can enjoy eternity together as forgiven sinners in the world to come.

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That's what Christ has bled and died for to give us that. So, again, thank you for your time, gentlemen.

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Peace. And yeah, we will all keep JD in our prayers. So if you found this helpful, all the information on how you can share the video is down below.

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Again, continue to pray for JD and his family and for his church for the right things to happen.

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And until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.