Provoked: Evangelizing the Pews

The Purpose of Provoked and the Call to Evangelize the Church

Hey, what's going on everybody and welcome to another show of Provoked. It's been a while. Yeah. I think the last time we were together was in December. Was it? Christmas. Yeah. And I got a kind of cool update about that.

But we are the show that's just about provoking Christians really to preach the gospel, go out and biblically evangelize, rescue babies. Innocent developing human babies are being murdered. And so we think it's a good thing to try to provoke, wake the church up to go out to rescue those babies and destroy idols in your life because God hates idolatry.

It's all throughout the scripture. So that's the purpose of the show. And we're glad to be back. What you could do, and we say it every single time because we're so thankful for Apologia Studios, they provide this opportunity that we can hopefully glorify God with this podcast.

But what you can do as you kind of consume from Apologia, which we are so glad that you do, we're so thankful that you come on here and listen and kind of partake, but also contribute. And that's how you go to Apologia all access, or sorry, go to Apologia Studios and become an all access member.

And on that all access member account, you get tons and tons of awesome teachings from massive different or so many different awesome teachers in their field of expertise. You'd be able to educate your family.

And of course you give back to us so we can keep these bright lights going and we can continue to get the gospel out and rescue babies and do all that we can do. So what are we going to do today? Well, we thought we'd talk about false prophets, lukewarm Christians, things that have kind of been on our heart.

False prophets kind of focused in on many of these guys and gals that prophesied Donald Trump would be our next president. And what do you know? He's not. So I think what the scriptures tell us to do and what even Jesus did was beware of false teachers, beware of false prophets.

We actually have to mark these individuals because they're so destructive and detrimental towards the sheep. So that's why we do it. It's not something personal, but when somebody says, thus sayeth the Lord, they prophesy, they foretell some future event that doesn't occur, then we have to mark that person and say, Hey, you have nothing to do with them.

And then we're also going to talk about lukewarm Christianity, false Christianity, and really how, you know, really false prophets and lukewarm Christians, false Christians, the segments of society around us and within the church are incredibly destructive for the church.

That's why we want to kind of expose these certain segments of society or these people groups and then warn the church, stay away and have nothing to do with them. But I thought we would start out with kind of in the news, just what's been going on.

It's kind of a bittersweet day today because something cool happened and something kind of stinky. Oklahoma, we're actually going to Oklahoma on Monday and we're there to support Free the States and other ministries because they just presented a bill of abolition, SB -495, and it just got killed.

Abolitionist Frustration Over Oklahoma's Defeat of SB-495

Yeah.

Yeah. 10 to zero, right?

Yeah. 10 to zero. So it got assigned to a committee and that it received a hearing and they have not received a hearing for any of their bills of abolition. They've been putting them in for six years and then it got killed at the hearing by a predominantly pro-life legislator.

Right. So zero pro-life legislators voted on it when they had an opportunity to put forward a bill that would abolish abortion and they killed it.

Yeah. So what did they do? So these pro-life legislators, they voted to keep the murder of babies legal within the state of Oklahoma.

So there's really no difference between a pro-choice person and a pro-life person at this point. I mean, when you're looking at it from that angle, right? I mean, if you're an abolitionist, you want to abolish it, but the pro-life movement has failed us for the last 50 years.

Yeah, they have. And I think because all they do is they take the pre-born and they use the pre-born like a political football and they just kick the ball and wherever they want to just for their own political ends.

Right. So it's only pro-life because they want to appeal to a certain constituents to get their votes, to get them into office. Right. I mean, and you can't not say that you're not like that when you vote this way.

Right. Now you've actually, and it's a horrible thing that they killed the bill.

Zachary Clint Morgan.

Yeah, I thought I'd turn it off. It's a horrible thing that they killed the bill, of course. But it's a kind of a good thing that they're exposed now, that they can't hide behind the pro-life banner and continue just to feed lies into the, well, the pro-life movement we know is not abolitionists.

We're trying to actually win the pro-life movement, which is for incrementalism, regulationism, minuscule means, horrible bills that do nothing to save babies, right? They have saved babies. It does not put an end to it all.

So the good thing is you can expose these guys and so the voters can attack them and we can get them out of office. We could say, do the right thing, do the noble thing, do the God honoring thing, be truly pro-life, support a bill that would criminalize abortion in the womb, or you're out of here.

Let's do everything that we can. So even though it's horrible, it's still Oklahoma is making progress and we're going to actually be there on Monday to help with their rally and help with their abolition now.

So that's, it stings. I'm glad there's process here. I mean, this legislative effort to end abortion is not something that just happens overnight. I mean, it's a years long marathon rather than just a sprint, but I feel for the guys.

These guys are putting so much work and I appreciate them so much, but it's just another phase in this whole process of ending child murder. So I thought, you got anything you want to talk about as far as news or?

Oh, I don't know. We're kind of just still not reeling. It's not super surprising about Biden. It's just kind of coming in like we're in the aftermath. What are we like February 2nd or February 3rd? So it was just January 20th.

I just feel like there was just that huge, you know, lead up to the election and everything that crazy that happened or inauguration and all that. And now we're kind of coming down and you know, all of the, what was all the stuff he signed.

Off on, on day one? Yeah. 15 executive orders. He's done more than that. It's just, I don't know.

I just, I, I feel like so many people right now are just kind of bracing themselves to see what happens next, you know, in our country. And there's so many things kind of on the horizon. Of course, we're not to fear, but I'm, I'm curious to see how all of this plays out.

Obviously God is sovereign. And like I said, we don't have to be afraid, but it, you know, these times are uncertain. It's kind of, it's kind of a weird time to be alive, you know, just even just going out and just like all the masks and it's just super weird.

Yeah. But, you know, Christians in the.

Past have dealt with this. Oh, right. And worse. And much, much worse. I like somebody said like,.

If you think this is the worst time to be a Christian, you obviously haven't read any church.

History at all. You just went through Fox's Book of Martyrs, of course. We always talk about the Covenanters and the Huguenots. These people were under immense persecution and, and pain, but yeah, you don't, you just don't know what's going to happen, I guess.

You know, they've, you know, the democratic party has consolidated all the power and they're wielding that power now. But we just say, okay, Lord, you know, we're going to stay faithful. We're going to stay true to you.

We're going to operate according to principle and we're going to take it as it comes, but never compromise what we know to be true and just continue expanding, continue pushing ahead. And as Jeff always says so rightly, we're just continue to build.

Right. Yeah. The church is going to grow. Yeah. It says the, you know, the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. So it's always a forward moving force the church has to be, but you're going to take this type of mentality of a forward moving force or it's, oh, woe is me.

Look at the darkness on the horizon. And I get it. I mean, if you were to look at it, it's bleak, you know, it's daunting, it's depressing, but we are never called or commanded to be a, you know, a retreatist type of a body of people.

It's about moving forward with the gospel, with the expansion of the kingdom. But I think when it comes to Biden, we should pray for him. Of course. Yeah. We should. I was just thinking, man, if, you know, the only separates, the only thing that separates me from him is grace, you know, and I could string a sentence together pretty well.

I know what you meant. And it's a good thing.

To be reminded of because I've been struggling with just frustration and kind of anger towards either the false convert Christian that voted for Biden and has linked arms with unbelievers to put this man in office, or they're either false converts or they're the bride who is not being faithful.

And so I'm, you know, I just want to be like, Hey, you know, look at, look what you've done. You know, this is, you've linked up with unbelievers. Not that of course we've always say a republicanism and Democrat, you know, it's not, this is not Christianity.

Being a Republican is not Christianity, of course, but if you're a Christian, you're going to act and do things more in a manner that God would please God. Right? So you're going to vote in a way that is going to be more in line with what God's law says.

So anyways, I just, I'm so frustrated with just Christians that are people that say they're Christians that support child murder. I'm just to the point where I'm like, you're supporting child murder. You're voting for a platform that supports child murder.

What are you doing? How, how are you even calling yourself a Christian? So that's kind of where I've been. So I need to pray more.

Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Just because, you know, I've been kind of reeling from that and wondering what the main cause, and you know, it is the voters who are voting this guy into power. And I think it's, you know, it's just astounding that somebody who claims the name of Christ could vote a guy in who now is working to codify or make Roe into law with the full knowledge.

The Bible even says, we know these things are happening. So I think our response, I mean, initially is anger and frustration, admonition as they're rebuking is all a part of the process in this, but I think it's just evangelizing these types of people.

That's what I've been putting kind of on my social media and my Facebook is it's time to evangelize the pews, you know? And I think now we've talked about this in past episodes, but it's so important that we make our frustration more tactical or more productive in the sense that, okay, I'm just not going to like rail into these people.

I'm going to bring the gospel to them. And as we talked about before in our evangelistic encounters conversationally, when somebody says, I'm good, I'm a Christian, we'll just dig a little deeper. You know, are you a Christian?

I mean, you're in, we're in an American environment. You know, the American evangelical church is so compromised in so many areas and they're not preaching a true gospel. So it's just good to kind of take that frustration and let's just, you know, spend time with people who claim to be a Christian and unravel, are you a Christian?

You know, I think we need to be preaching about regeneration, what it really means to be born again. What are the fruits like all through 1 John, what is a fruit of being a Christian? It's not some nominal classification.

It's not some badge I wear. I'm not a Christian just by proxy or because my mom and dad are one. So these are the type of things that we really need to hone.

In on. Yeah. And I think for me, confronting somebody that says that they're a Christian, even in a loving way, which we should always be doing in a loving way is one of the most intimidating. I remember when I got saved like 10 years ago, I had shortly after I had like my first experience doing that.

And so I was saved, started going to church, you know, and then I had a friend, met a friend that started coming to church and she said she had been a Christian for a long time, but that she had stopped coming to church.

So she started coming to our church again. And so we started hanging out and I was like, encouraged and encouraged that she was coming back to church. And then as we, you know, hung out more, she started saying some weird things.

And I'm a brand new Christian. I'm like, maybe been a Christian for six months to a year. So I've still in like this naivety of like, if you say you're a Christian, you're Christian. I just, I didn't understand.

And so then she starts saying weird stuff like, you know, about aliens and just not believing in scripture and just off the wall on biblical things. And so not knowing like how this would be taken, I just kind of said it and I was a brand new Christian and I'm like, just understanding just the, you know, foundations of the faith, the fundamentals of the faith.

I just, I wasn't trying to be mean or harsh, but I just said, maybe you're not a Christian. And that was super offensive. Like she was really mad about that. And I was like, oh, and then she went through all the judge, not who are you to judge?

You can't, you don't see my heart. You don't do this. But even as a very brand new baby Christian, I was like, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's probably a duck, right? Because we're not fruit inspectors, but if you're saying you're a Christian, there's some just basic things that people are going to see in your life that's fruit, right?

Yeah. I mean, the Bible says a good tree bears good fruit, a bad tree bears bad fruit. And so we're saying 2 Corinthians 13, 5, you know, we're saying examine yourself to see if you're right. Here's the gospel.

This is all, you know, this is the gospel in totality with all of its non-negotiable essential components that you can't be removed. This is the gospel. And this is what it means to actually be a Christian.

A Christian is somebody that God has sovereignly placed a new heart in. He's taken away the stony heart that's just totally disposed to sinning only, and he's placed in sovereignly by grace and mercy.

Right.

Mono, mono, sure.

Mono, monogistically, I can't say it either.

It just, let's not even go there.

So he's taking this. Mono, mono, I can't think of it.

I can't even think of the word right now.

Monogistic?

Yeah, monogistic.

Yeah.

Monogistically, right? So salvation comes by grace and faith. God is, you know, salvation is the Lord. He transplants a new spiritual heart within you.

Yeah.

And now this, it's awesome, this heart that once just only sinned and only wanted to disobey.

Right.

Had nothing to do with worship of self, worship of any other God. Now this heart all of a sudden loves God.

Right.

You know, loves his word, loves his people, wants to obey, wants to, you know, get away from sin. So it's an increasing hatred towards sin.

Right.

An increasing love for righteousness. So yeah, it's

They're a new creature.

They're a new creature in Christ.

Right.

The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. And so if we had a corpse on this table and the corpse came alive, we would know.

Right.

So there's signs of life.

Right.

So what we would say, yeah, to the family member or to the Christian who claims, to the quote unquote Christian who claims Christ but doesn't have these fruits of life.

Right.

And the fruits of life are fruits of repentance, really.

Right.

It's like Jesus said, bear fruit in repenting.

Right.

You know, it's an ongoing process. Keeping with repentance.

Yeah.

So it's an ongoing process. So we would just say, hey, you know, I love you. And the most loving thing I can tell you is that I would really examine your faith and your profession of Christ. Examine yourself and your own heart to see if you really are in the faith.

Now, people hate that.

No, they hate it so bad.

Yeah, people respond, how dare you judge me? How dare you bring into question my Christianity? But for a Christian, regardless of their response, whether it be vitriolic or hurtful, it's the loving thing we gotta do.

And so many people take it for granted. They're like, okay, you're a Christian because they don't wanna confront.

Right.

You know, because actually it's a love for self.

Yeah.

I don't feel comfortable with this confrontation.

Right.

You know, thing I gotta do. And so I'm just not gonna do it because I'm really loving me and loving my own comfort and my own ease.

And I don't want you to be ticked off at me. And it's like also kind of the cultural climate right now is a lot of what I would say a liberal Christian or the unconverted Christian is writing off of. Is, and this is a whole another topic that we're not gonna go into right now, is just all this critical race theory and the cultural Marxism.

They wanna be on the side that's helping the oppressed. They don't wanna be on the side of the oppressor.

Right.

And so they're twisting terminology. And of course, that's what we wanna do. Micah 6 ,8, of course we wanna do justice, but they've taken and redefined who's the oppressor, who's the oppressed. They're not looking at God's law to come up with these definitions and not to look at God's law for justice.

And how do you do justice? They've come up with their own religion.

Yeah.

Critical race theory is its own religion.

Yeah, with its own gospel, false gospel.

And so in their mind, they're thinking that they're doing justice, but it's not according to God's standards.

No.

So it's just hard because then you confront them and all of a sudden it's, no, no, I'm the one, I'm doing the Christian thing by being on the side, but turning a blind eye to the things that God hates, the abomination of homosexuality, abortion, stealing, we could just go down the list, but that's just kind of what we're facing as Christians today, going out to evangelize is we're dealing with a ton of false converts.

And so that's kind of the disease of the nation. That's the real pandemic, right?

Yeah, it is. I think it's the most destructive pandemic.

Yeah.

And it's sad too, because so many people are gonna stand before God, Matthew chapter seven, Lord, Lord, haven't we done all these things? Presenting their righteousness. It's really a presentation of their works as a means of justification is looking towards the judgment.

And he said, I've never known you. Depart from me, you worker of iniquity. Now these people that claim Christ, but actually they're just in dead in their sin. So we do it because it's such a destructive element.

And I think the fruit of that is this, I'm a Christian, I'm gonna vote for Biden. It's so destructive in that sense, but it's also destructive. And these people just gonna stand before God naked, thinking that they're right with him, but all along they were lost.

Unfortunately, they had a pastor who told them, yeah, you just pray this prayer. Just kneel right here, come down to this altar and I'm sorry for your sins. You wanna go to heaven? Well, say this prayer, you'll be saved.

Not talking about any of the essential components of the gospel. So those guys are charlatans and hucksters and false prophets. So we have to point out.

We have to be willing to really die to ourselves to do it. Cause I mean, it like makes me choke up just thinking about it. Cause we do, we love these people and it's not only are we sad for them, but also they're bringing reproach on the name of Christ when they go out into the public and say that they're Christians and then they go promote this false gospel.

Yeah, they are.

And they promote these things that God hates.

Exactly right, yeah. And so you're right, it does take a lot of death to self, but it's something that we just gotta do. And I think everybody listening to us right now has family members, has friends.

We all kind of deal with that cause it's just a massive populace inside of America and America's churches. But we have to do the right thing and lovingly. And we could do it the wrong way. We could just be very harsh or very curt, but I think we can be winsome.

We could be loving and we could be gracious about it, gentle about it, just like the scripture calls to be. The church has to look at some situation like this when it comes to future persecution, just the plight of the nation, degradation, the state of the nation.

We have to look at it and say, okay, we need to repent. That was great about in the eighties, the late eighties, in the early nineties, the church was so awakened to the Holocaust and abortion. And it was, they were just a massive focus on it.

I think 10 to 15 ,000 babies were saved in that period of time.

Wow.

And their tactics, I don't want to really get into the tactics right now, but it was this huge repent with us. I mean, that's how the church was awakened to the situation because they were no longer pointing the finger out there.

They were pointing the finger within themselves and say, let's repent, let's turn from our negligence or the command that calls us to go rescue babies. So I think we gotta look at it like that and look at him like that rather than just rail against the guy.

He's a wicked, evil man, of course. He's a wicked, evil man.

But so were we.

So were we, yeah, so were we. But the church is preparing for persecution. How do you think persecution's gonna happen?

Well, I think we're seeing it kind of roll out. This Equality Act that's coming, I think that's gonna kind of be the precursor to persecution in a way that we haven't seen it yet in America. I think that's gonna open the door to define what hate speech is.

I mean, I believe we really could be coming up on an era where our Bibles are gonna become outlawed because they can constitute that as hate speech.

Right.

Right, so.

I think we're gonna have a hard time with enforceability just because there's a lot of people that are just not gonna put up with that, hopefully. I mean, that's what we did, right? The War of Independence, we just said, we're not gonna put up with this.

Yeah.

And we're gonna do whatever we can to make this not happen. And it's just a collective of people who say, we're not gonna let the government overstep its boundaries.

Right.

They're actually public servants, so they work for us. It's, we try to get away from a totalitarian government in Britain.

Right.

And so we're not gonna put up with that if we're good Americans, so.

Preparing for Persecution and Remaining Faithful

Yeah, we should be storing up God's word in our heart, though, and doing the same for our kids. And though, in case there's a day that we don't have access to Bibles.

Yeah.

Wouldn't that be crazy?

Exactly, yeah, that could be.

But it's happened.

Oh, it's happened all through our church.

To China.

You know, in the history of the Scottish people and the Scottish church in the 1500s, I mean, if you even had a Bible in your pocket, and they got to a place that they suspected you had a Bible, they're like, you know what?

Your pocket looks like a shape of the Bible. It didn't even matter. And then they would just kill you.

Wow.

Or they suspected you were at an outside worship meeting. So yeah, it can get bad. That's, I'm definitely not negating it.

Afraid.

Yeah, I'm just hoping if that thing rolls out, that Americans would look at their history and say, no, this is actually the government that we have with all of its checks and balances and everything was put in place primarily to ward off a tyrannical government and let's rise up and be the type of people that God has called us to be.

But you're right. We have to prepare for it all. Persecution, though, is, and I think we've said it before, is good in its refining aspect. I mean, some of the greatest preachers and examples of faith come out of persecution.

It's something that God just uses to cleanse and to refine. It's a painful period. But really, the church brings it on itself. And the church and her negligence, the church and her just outright disobedience, rebellion brings persecution.

We point, again, we point the finger at the government. Oh, the government's gonna be the hand of persecution as if the government were sovereign over us. But we never, the church really is reluctant just to point the finger back at themselves like we just talked about and said, no, I think we need to get to repenting.

I think judgment begins in the house of the Lord. I think we as pastors and we as national leaders and even within our homes, Lord, help us to pursue righteousness. Help us to pursue holiness, Lord. Look into our lives, like the scriptures say, examine me to see if there is sin within me.

Really paraphrase that verse right there. Examine me to see if there's any sin within me. These are the type of actions the church has to take. Repentance, and of course, internally and then externally just going out and getting the gospel.

That's what changes nations.

That's right, yeah, exactly.

Exactly, so.

False Prophets, Trump Predictions, and the Authority of Scripture

You gonna play some of those clips?

Yeah, so we're gonna get in and just talk about false prophets. As I said before, when we talk about false prophets, we call them out by name. It's not anything personal, but it's something that you have to do because false prophets are wolves in sheep's clothing.

They are the worst on the planet. So what I wanna do is just kind of play for you some clips of some false prophets, focusing on those who prophesied that Trump would be president. So listen to a couple of these right now.

Yeah, I gotta watch myself and not laugh because it makes me laugh because it's so crazy, but it's actually very serious, so.

Yeah, so listen here. To what's coming up in January 20th. And so I've said this many times before, but please reserve throwing your stones at me until January 20th.

First of all, I wanna say without question, Trump is going to win the election. And that doesn't mean you sit home and don't vote. That means you get up and do everything you can to work, but he's going to win.

That's, I think, a given.

Because I am speaking from the future.

Yes, you are.

In this moment.

Right, this moment.

And I am going to proclaim that President Trump will be president of the United States.

Hallelujah.

In Jesus' name.

Will it be an eight-year presidency? Absolutely. Absolutely, we will. You're sure about that? Yeah, I'm sure about that.

Hey, everyone.

Yeah, so there you go. Yeah, so this is.

So you're saying, thus saith the Lord, and you're wrong.

Yeah, so what is the penalty for a prophet who is incorrect in his foretelling?

Death.

Yeah, it's death.

Yeah.

So I've been following these prophets, and it's enraging. But the number one thing I think that's so enraging about it is how many subscribers they have. Or they will flat out say a false prophecy. Donald Trump, he's going to be the president.

It's not going to be in 2024. It's going to be in 2020, 2021. And all of you, you look at the comments. I mean, there's like 50 ,000 likes. One of these guys has 150 ,000 subscribers or more. And then he gives a false prophecy, and he's got 50 ,000 likes on it.

So the Christians know that it was a false prophecy, but they still subscribe, and they still give, and they still support.

Because it's rotten fruit. And so that's what a person that's not regenerate most likely will crave, right? They're not going to crave biblical truth if they're not actually born again in a new creation.

They're going to crave worldly things, right?

Yeah, no, I agree. So it could be indicative that these people are just not saved. And that's what Jesus said in John chapter eight, when he was talking about really the effects of sin. He said, if I were to tell you the truth, or tell you a lie, you would believe me.

So he's talking about what sin has done to the mind of the unregenerate, the pagan person, is that we gravitate towards lies. I totally agree. But I do think it's also like maybe a mixture of people who are unsaved, who don't care, but they also just don't understand.

And they grew up maybe in a charismatic environment or a Pentecostal environment, not broad brushing those groups of people too much. But I've had my experiences with false prophets, just the dark side of this stuff.

You know, when I was 20, Jessica and I came to Arizona, that's where we actually have the connections and why ultimately we're here, is because we came out in 2020 when I was 21. And I was an assistant pastor at a church.

You came out. What, 2002, you mean?

2000, oh, did I say 2020? Yeah, no, 2002. Yeah, 2001, actually it was 2001. So we come out, don't wanna get into the story too much. And we're an assistant pastor at a church called Bible Fellowship Church.

And it's funny, you walk through the door, it's like walking into 1960.

No, really?

Red shag carpets, but the people were sweet.

Oh, yeah.

You know, one of my best friends, Kibbe, I met there. And, you know, some good times there, even though, you know, it was kind of a dysfunctional church. So we poured our hearts into it. We wanted to see this church turn around.

I remember one time I worked over 110 hours remodeling the church sanctuary. So our hearts were into it and we wanted to, you know, really serve God there and just see what happens. We were making peanuts, nothing.

Yeah.

And all of a sudden this guy was just starting to let, the pastor was starting to let false prophets in the church from Nigeria. And so this guy would come into the church and he'd be like, you know what?