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PAUL FLYNN, founder of Megiddo Films, Megiddo Radio & Megiddo TV of Ireland, on:
“LIES WM. PAUL YOUNG Believes About God (A Critique of Young’s ‘Lies We Believe About God’
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Our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 11th day of April 2017.
I am delighted to have back on the program Paul Flynn, founder of Megiddo Films, Megiddo Radio and Megiddo TV of Ireland and we are discussing Lies William Paul Young Believes About God, a critique of William Paul Young's Lies We Believe About God and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Paul Flynn.
Thank you so much Chris for having me on the program. Yes, if any book title begged an answer, speak for yourself when Paul Young titles his book Lies We Believe About God, but if you could tell us something about this author before we even go into his book Lies We Believe About God and of course many of our listeners will recognize the name William Paul Young from the book and movie that is currently in theaters, The Shack, but if you could explain something about William Paul Young.
Sure, well.
William Paul Young rose to prominence back in, what was it, about 2007 with the book The Shack, which started off a couple copies. Originally it was a family and friends and then kind of a lot of people know the story how it became an international bestseller, but a lot of people aren't really aware of the theology that underlines The Shack.
Now some of the things that would be discussed in the book that we're going to critique in this program, Lies We Believe About God, might seem like a departure from the novel The Shack, but unfortunately it's not.
What really is in this book is really just confirming, I would say, a lot of sometimes maybe things that were hinted towards in The Shack and also doctrines that I think were pretty explicit in The Shack, such as universalism.
William Paul Young has, ever since he's become a full-time author, ever since The Shack was massively, I think he's like, you know, it seems like he's been waiting for this opportunity for the movie to come out to release his first non-fiction book.
The other books he released prior, called Eve, Crossroads, so he's released three novels prior to this and this is his first non-fiction. Now it's interesting that he seems, I don't know if he's breaking ranks within people who would have worked on The Shack, like Brad Cummings and Wayne Cummings, and I can't remember the other publisher and author, but you have kind of, they didn't seem to want to say, hey we're universalists, or William Paul Young is universalist, but it's explicitly clear in this book.
There's no kind of denying it any longer. What can you say about the man the man grew up in? He was raised in a Christian home, he knows Christian lingo, but the thing is you have to be very, very careful with William Paul Young.
He knows how to speak to Christians, he knows how to say certain buzzwords that will kind of make most audiences happy that he's orthodox, and he wants to convince everybody that he's orthodox. He's desperate to do that, but the thing about it is he also now seems to be more and more desperate to share his own theology more and more, and I think he's probably going to do more as time.
Goes on. Yeah, and you actually thought that his previous book, The Shack, was so disturbing that you actually produced a documentary film on it. Tell us something about that documentary film and.
Where our listeners can view that. Sure, the movie can be viewed at megiddofilms .org, that's m-e-g-i-d-d-o-films .org, and the movie can watch for free. I made a decision a number of years ago that I wasn't going to charge any money for the movie, so it can be watched for free, it can be copied if people want to do that, it can be borne to DVDs, people can do whatever they like with it, just as long as they don't charge money for it.
So that can be viewed for free on YouTube, and the movie, the full title is The Shack, It's Dangerous Theology and Error, and I don't know, it's been seen, it kind of shot up recently, the amount of views.
The last time I checked, it was seen about 276 ,000 times, something like that. If you even type in the word The Shack, it's one of the first few YouTube videos to pop up, which I was most delighted that that was the case.
Oh yeah, praise God for that. I know, I was like, I was really, I was like, praise the Lord, it was an answer to prayer, and when I remember, I kind of, I'd heard things about the movie coming out, I'd heard so many actors who were working on it, talking about it, and it seemed to be finally in the works, and I was hoping for a long, long time that it would never reach the light of day.
It seemed to be having a lot of trouble for years coming to the big screen, but eventually, it was Tim McGraw, it was actually a video of Tim McGraw, he was talking, I think it was two years ago, and he was talking about The Shack and saying that he's going off filming it, so I was like, okay, they're filming it now, and that's when I kind of went, okay, I've read this, I've seen some prominent Christian leaders, if you could use those terms, promote the book and endorse the book, and I talked about it on the radio show, and it got to the point where, I don't think people had seen how heretical it was, so it just became a massive, quotations from The Shack, also from what would be called a companion work to The Shack, a book called The Shack Revisited, by a man by the name of C. Baxter Kruger, and he basically wrote a book that was endorsed by Paul Young himself, saying that if you want to understand the theology of The Shack, this book is for you.
So he endorsed it, he wrote a foreword to it, and he basically put a seal of approval upon it, you know, like saying in one sense, oh, the book is fiction, but this is the kind of system, if you call it a systematic theology, accompanying the book, it's called The Shack Revisited, and it's explicitly clear that C. Baxter Kruger is universalist as well, so it's much clearer than the book, that book was released back in 2012, and I just knew, it was back, it was about last year, I think I'd been emailing you or something like that, and I don't know, I kind of, I felt like the Lord really wanted me to work on it, I felt really burdened to get it out as quickly as possible, because I knew the movie was coming out, and I said, okay, let's give it some legs before, you know, Lionsgate released their trailers, and hopefully it can be one of the first ones to pop up in the YouTube.
Search. Now, the main problems with The Shack, as you've already mentioned, the previous book, were the aberrant teaching, heretical teaching of universalism, universal salvation, there is no warning of eternal damnation, and so on, and also a very aberrant view of the Trinity,.
Am I correct? Yeah, there's, it's one of those books that you almost, it's like, where do you start? There's just so many problems and so many errors. I've been listening to some Christian radio recently, just to kind of, maybe just to, you know, interact with other ideas and arguments people are putting forward, I was listening to a Christian radio program, at least a professor of the Christian radio program a couple of months ago, and it said, you know, the host was saying, oh, well, I watched the entire movie, this was kind of a pre-screening of the movie, and he heard about the controversy about this, and then he said at the end of it, that he couldn't understand what all the fuss was about.
And it says a lot about the Church now, that a large section of it, I don't want to say the majority or whatever, but a large section of the professing Church doesn't understand enough theology to understand what's wrong with this, and to see the difference between this and a Pilgrim's Progress, or something like that, that they're worlds apart.
Now, just to deal with the trend, yeah?
One of the things they have in common is that William Paul Young should be in prison for writing his book. I'm only kidding. What's that? I said William Paul Young should be in prison for writing his book, unlike Bunyan, who went to prison unjustly.
They got the wrong guy. Yeah, some of the problems in the shack, just to go back, just by kind of, there was what I call, at least what I call a kind of semi-modalism. Modalism is where you kind of, you don't make a distinction between the three members of the Trinity.
Pure modalism would be, in one place, you've got the Father, that he puts on different hats, basically. One time he's got the Father, then he manifests himself as God the Son, and another time he manifests himself as the Holy Spirit.
Now, people might not see that in the book, because, yes, they have been, you know, the Trinity, the persons of the Trinity have been separated, but I'll just give you one example where this is seen. For example, there's nail scars in Papa's wrists, and that basically is telling us that God the Father was on the cross as well.
Yeah, that's the heresy of patraipassionism.
Exactly, yeah, and you just have this kind of, you know, like, there's just, there's so many areas you could go into that I don't even know what people like about this. I keep hearing time and time again from Christian, famous Christians, well-known people who profess the Christian faith, and they say, they say, okay, it's not perfect, they keep saying that, it's not perfect, and then they say, what is?
And then they say, there's great truths being told. I'm curious to know what these truths are. You know, that God is a God of love, well, the Universalists say the same thing, and according to the shack, God cannot act apart from love.
He cannot act in wrath, he cannot act in judgment, that is basically the implication of this. There's a lot of, there's a lot of errors, even in the Trinity, which is something that some people claim is a strength.
Another part, it talks about the Incarnation, and this is on page 99 of the shack, it said, when we three spoke ourselves into existence as the Son of God, we became fully human. So, not God the Son becoming human, but we became human.
So, again, you know, and that's why I had to make a movie. Normally, I would do a quick radio show, and okay, bad issues dealt with, but I couldn't, in full breadth, show exactly how bad this is, and I actually, I might even do a quick video showing, you know, maybe, you know, maybe a 10 -15 minute video in the future, on lies we believe about God, just the quotations about it, and William Paul Young's false gospel, and Lord willing, we can go through that and show exactly what he believes about sin, exactly what he believes about the gospel, how he calls God a cosmic abuser, the God of the Bible, that's why he says he rejects sin, he's a clear universalist, and his view of hell is more akin to purgatory.
Yes, I think that people, I think Christians,.
Or professing Christians, or a combination of the both, they sigh with relief when Hollywood produces anything that has any kind of hat tipped, in a positive way, to God in general, and, and, you know, some general basic proverbial truths of life, and things that we could pick here and there from the Bible.
They're just so happy that it's not another slasher flick, or some kind of very perverse pornographic film, so they go overboard in giving accolades to nonsense that, in some ways, you wonder what is more harmful to the viewer, the slasher flick, or the, or the theological heretical flick, theologically heretical flick.
Yeah. And by the way, when you did the documentary, who were the participants who examined the shack? Sorry, what'd you say there, sir? Who were the participants that you had examining the shack and critiquing it, other than yourself, in your documentary?
How'd you mean, like, from a point of view? Well,.
Like, did I interview people in the documentary, you mean?
Yes, yeah, you had some different folks critiquing it, did you not?
Well, no, actually, just, well, what I had was, I was playing clips from different sermons, clips from people I, you know, have a lot of respect for, and things like that.
Yeah, that's basically what I meant, that's what I meant.
Yeah, they weren't directly talking about the shack itself, but basically aspects that were, say, problematic, and the feminization of the church, and at the start, audio clip from, for example, Jeff Pollard, and he was talking in some part of his sermon about feminism, and how we want to relate to God, and how we call the Holy Spirit, East, or Her, and it fit really well in, but you see, like, I mean, like, it's actually pretty hard.
Like, most, if I talk to most theologically sound people, they've never heard of the shack. As soon as I mentioned, like, what's that?
Yeah, they have too much time on their, they don't have enough time to read things like that, to add to their...
No, they don't. I have too much time on my hands, I think. Yeah, I mean, like, the thing is, yeah, like, like, the only major critique that I've been able to find that has been written was a book by James B. DeYoung, and it's called Burning Down the Shack, it was released a number of years ago, and James B. DeYoung claims he knew William Paul Young years ago, while he, years before the book was released, even, and that they were in a kind of a Christian think-tank together, and at that time, William Paul Young embraced what he called universal reconciliation.
This was years before the shack was even released. Now, I know, but a year ago, you know, a year and a half ago, so James B. DeYoung has, I've been unable to find an email from him, but he wrote a book and in critiquing it, he is, whereas, you know, he's a seminary professor, I think, at the moment, but he knew him years ago, and he says that William Paul Young produced 103 page, just get the page here in front of me, you have the book in front of me, 103 page single-spaced, and then he said, Paul surprisingly presented his embrace of universal reconciliation.
It is the Christian form of universalism, and this was back around 2003, 2004, about four years before the shack was even written.
Well, I'll give our email address for anybody interested in writing in a question for our guest, Paul Flynn. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and if you go to the Iron Sharpens Iron website after the program, you can also hear other interviews that we've done with Paul Flynn, including our interview critiquing the shack, and of course, you want to watch that documentary.
By the way, I did see the documentary. It was excellent. I was just describing the contributors in an improper way, that they weren't critiquing the shack, but you had them included in the documentary, the other speakers that you had there, and it was a really powerful documentary, and I strongly urge everybody to go to megiddofilms .org, and it's a good way, I think, to evangelize loved ones who may be interested in the shack.
Some people who are not Christians like to have some kind of a religious experience by going to things like this, and they pat themselves on the back that they've done their good deed for the day by going to a film that has some kind of religious or spiritual underpinnings, and this would be a good way to watch the documentary by Paul Flynn on the shack with them, if you can, or at least tell them to go to megiddofilms .org and have them watch it, and then you could use that as an icebreaker to evangelize them with the truth by exposing the error in this, or having them witness the error being exposed by Paul Flynn.
But just when you thought it was bad enough with the shack, now this new book, Lies We Believe About God, has come out, and you were very eager to expose this book as being dangerous. Who does, or what does, I should say, William Paul Young mean by the word we?
Why is we believe about God? Is he speaking about the church in general, people in general, whether they're Christians or not? Who is he speaking about?
Well, I think it's, I don't know if he's being very, very specific, probably more we as the church, we in general, or people, it's really just generally held belief that people have about God, that he wants to philosophize, like, I mean, there's no exposition really going on here in the entire book.
The only thing that kind of approaches it is at the very, very end of the book, and we've got a kind of a section called Akatina, which is a list of lots of verses that he thinks proves universalism. Anything that talks about chosen before the foundation of the world, that we have been chosen him, and he thinks that is every single human being, or everybody's ever been created.
And I also have to kind of ask the question, does that include the devil? He's not clear on that. But anyway, and he doesn't even mention the devil, actually, at any single point. But if you look at William Paul Young, when you read through his book, he's got, like, every single chapter is called a, quote-unquote, lie that we believe about God.
There's 28 of them, and a lot of what we call is called a kind of therapeutic deism, where you can shape God after your own image, who's going to make you feel better, where you're not a bad person anymore.
Every single point you see, William Paul Young can use the term sin, he can use the term gospel, he can use the term the cross, he can use the term hell, but he has redefined all these terms. And it takes a long time.
He gives you a little piece of information here, a little piece of information there. For example, it's not until probably near the end of, well, he's pretty clear at the beginning of the book as well, but at the end of the book he's explicitly here what he believes is sin.
I'll just give you a little, this is near the end of the book, page 229, and he says, right, he refutes the, or at least claims to refute the idea that God is looking for any moral perfection. God has no standards.
God is never displeased with us, this kind of idea. Just kind of always bringing God down to a human level, just as if, you know, like a father is never, you know, a child messes up, well, it's okay, there's no problem, we love you anyway, and you're always going to be our child.
And these anecdotes are kind of all the way throughout the book. But he says here, he says, there is a truth about who you are. God's proclamation about a, quote, very good creation, unquote, is the truest about you.
That very good creation is the form or origin of you. The truth of who you are in your being. Sin, then, is anything that negates or diminishes or misrepresents the truth of who you are. It's all about you.
It's, you know, it's kind of like, you know, Rick Warren or something, saying it's not about you, but it is. No matter how pretty or ugly it is. So he's saying, right, if you don't see how amazing you are, if you don't see how special you are, that's what Satan is.
And then he says, he presents at the end of the page, and what does the truth of your being look like? And he gives a big long list. He says, you are patient, you are kind, you are good, you are humble, you are forgiving, you are a truth teller, you are trustworthy, and on and on.
And I think people can get the idea there. Basically, you are, his argument is, you're creating the image of God, and therefore you must be good. So you, one wonders what he thinks.
About the most despicable, unrepentant serial killers and rapists and child molesters who get hold of this book. What does he, you know, what does he, and those like him, what do they think about those people?
I mean, do they actually, are they actually trying to convey the message to every single person without question? I mean, if Hitler was still alive, could he be reading this and say, wow, I am good after all?
Of course, in the German accent. I mean, this just seems.
Mind-boggling to me. Yeah, and it is. And to be honest, it takes a lot of kind of just sitting down and really thinking about, like, William Paul Young is, he's an intellectual of sorts. And to be honest, he's very, I don't know what you call it, a form of sophistry, kind of, the arguments sound great, but they don't really support anything.
And he kind of argues out both ways. So you can almost say anything, you know, one place, you know, the shack isn't theology, another place, it is theology. But I mean, the interesting that you brought up serial killers, because C. Baxter Kruger wrote the book, The Shack Revisited, which is basically a companion theology of the shack, writes about Mrs. Killer.
Mrs. Killer, this is the little girl who was killed in the book. Right, right. I even, I forgot about that connection, actually, when I said serial killers. So he deals with that. He deals with the most, the vilest people.
And yes, they're all included. And the thing about it is, I'm just trying to get the quote in front of me here. C. Baxter Kruger says, Missy's murder is not going to skip through the pearly gates, playing with ladybugs.
To begin with, heaven is where the whole trinity dwells. An evil has hijacked and so horribly twists and misuses this man, avoids the light at all costs. While the murder is forgiven, loved, and accepted, he is embraced and included.
He does not know it by any stretch of the imagination. And such unknowing leaves him reeling in pain and trapped in the clutches of darkness. He belongs to the father, son, and spirit, always has, always will.
But he has given himself to participate in darkness. He acts out of the light of the evil one and the grotesque meaninglessness, wreaking havoc in the lives of all around. And it can continue. That's C. Baxter Kruger now.
Now, but it's very much the same idea that people can get saved in hell. William Paul Young came out and basically said it, where is it, which, page 181, just trying to get in front of me, and I won't go through all of it here, but there's a chapter called Death is More Powerful Than God, and that is this idea of a lie that we believe about God, and he includes a conversation he has with a friend of his, who then, he says, and this is what he says about his friend after he has this conversation, and he's, his friend is basically saying, no, you can't get saved after, or choose, choose God, basically, as he puts it in the very Armenian way, but after you die.
And then his friend, he said, you see, my friend loves me, truly loves me. Since what I was proposing could not possibly be right, I was potentially a danger, not only to myself, but to many others as well.
You may feel the same way. And that's what he says about it. But basically, how would I put it? He says, personally, I do believe that the idea that we lose our ability to choose at the event of physical death is a significant lie.
And then he goes on and explains it a bit further, but basically, he's saying, and this is in case anyone wants to check out this, the quotations, page 185, page 186, and page 187 of Lies We Believe About God, he is saying that it's a lie, because he's saying God has preserved our ability to choose right up until death, so why wouldn't he preserve our ability to choose afterwards?
And he ultimately believes, well, everybody's accepted love and embrace, and eventually, kind of like what, you know, Rob Bell said, love wins. Love's going to win them over, and you'll eventually see how fond God is of this person.
It's interesting how you wonder how they would exegete Jesus' own words when he said about Judas. It would have been better for him never to have been born. So where does that come into.
Play with that kind of theology? I'm not saying that they would do this, and they would probably run a million miles away from such a verse, but if I was to hazard a guess, I would say that they would say that this is psychological pain, that he would go through such psychological pain, it would be, it's so horrible he's using hyperbole.
Sadly, I've kind of, he kind of gets kind of predictable after a while, because anything that talks about hell, and the way William Paul Young and others like him view hell is not in the wrath of God.
It is, he describes it as God's relentless affection that is seeking to eradicate any lie we believe about ourself. When William Paul Young was at a, I can't remember the name of Nicky, you know Nicky Gumbel?
He was part of the Alpha Course a number of years ago.
I don't know him, but that name sounds vaguely familiar.
Yeah, he was at his church anyways, it's on YouTube, and he was describing, basically he says, I believe in a God of fury. But he says he believes that that fury is that kind of God's relentless affection seeking out every single one of us.
And then he gave the example of, say, if his daughter was a methamphetamine addict or something like that, and that if he loves his daughter, and he gave a very kind of emotional plea, then saying, if I love my daughter, I'm going to try to eradicate that, you know, cancer or that addiction, and I'm going to seek to eradicate that.
That's the way he views God. He sees God as any reference to fire or fury or anything like that is seen in such a way that it is to eradicate any lie we believe about ourself. Because that's what sin is, according to him, that you don't see how special and amazing you are.
It's like listening to Joel Stein, to be honest.
Yeah, and it reminds me of something Robert Shuler wrote years ago, and I'm paraphrasing, but it was something to the effect of that the worst sin that Christians commit is to inform other people of their lost and sinful condition, when obviously they're not going to cry out for forgiveness if they don't understand what kind of condition they're in.
It's absolutely absurd. But before we go to the break, I am going to read a question for you. It's actually very lengthy and contains a couple of parts. I'm not only going to read it to you, but I'm going to email you this listener's series of questions, and then when we come back from the break, you could go through it.
This is Joe in Slovenia. He says, My question about this topic has to do with those pastors, theologians, apologists, etc., who equate the Shaq book and movie with works like Pilgrim's Progress, Chronicles of Narnia, etc.
They seem to fail to understand that while the genre may be the same or similar, those works and others don't present God in heretical ways. They don't teach heterodox doctrines. Why is it that we have such a low level of discernment among the visible church on these types of questions?
Thanks for sharpening our focus today. And you can answer that when we return from the break, and I will also email you this question, question slash comment, so you could look it over during the break.
If anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old USA, and please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.
Perhaps you disagree with your own pastor or someone that you care about on this book or on this subject or some other subject that's related to our discussion, and you'd rather not identify yourself, that's completely fine.
And by the way, we welcome questions from those who actually love The Shack, love the movie, and you want to explain why. Whatever your opinion is on this or if you are just totally unfamiliar with the subject, and of course we're not only talking about The Shack, we're primarily talking about the book Lies We Believe About God now.
We've already addressed The Shack on another interview with Paul Flynn, but The Lies We Believe About God is the latest book by William Paul Young, who also authored The Shack. But we're going to be back, God willing, right after these messages, so don't go away.
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Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than 90 minutes to go is Paul Flynn, founder of Megiddo Films, Megiddo Radio, and Megiddo TV.
We are discussing Lies William Paul Young Believes About God, a critique of Young's Lies We Believe About God, his latest book. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.
And before the break, I read a question to you by our guest Joe in Slovenia. And Joe asked, my question about the topic has to do with those pastors, theologians, apologists, etc., who equate the shack, book and movie, with words, with works like Pilgrim's Progress and Chronicles of Narnia.
They seem to fail to understand that while the genre may be the same or similar, those works and others don't present God in heretical ways. They don't teach heterodox doctrine. Why is it that we have such a low level of discernment among the visible church on these types of questions?
Which is interesting, Paul, because throughout history, there seems to be a low level of discernment. Let us not forget that Athanasius was battling the majority of the leaders in the church at one time who believed in the doctrine of the Arian doctrine, that Jesus was not God.
And then we had the Church of Rome dominating Christendom for centuries. So this is nothing new, really, that there's a lack of.
Discernment. But if you could comment specifically about our modern era. Sure. I wouldn't, like, for example, Pilgrim's Progress, I think it's really, really different. Now, I've read through Pilgrim's Progress once, and Christian fiction is not really my area, and it's not the area I kind of go to as much.
But there is some amazing parts of Pilgrim's Progress, some of the pictures of it. But it's all using biblical illustrations, every single place. I mean, if you go down the side of a typical Pilgrim's Progress I have in front of me, there's quotations, there's scripture references, constantly, all the way up and down the side margins, and he's constantly using biblical similitudes when it is biblical to do so.
He's not using his imagination and how to present God. He's using similitude, as represented in the Bible, to show the journey of somebody and different types of people in their Christian walk, and using biblical similitudes that have already been used, like the narrow gaze and things like that, in order to illustrate the difficulties and different paths.
We can use similitudes and analogies like that because it's based on scripture. Pilgrim's Progress is completely different. I don't know if I'll ever repeat it again. I know people bring up C .S. Lewis.
I'm not really an expert on C .S. Lewis, to be honest. I've only ever seen the movie of The Chronicles of Narnia, and I kind of struggle to see where the theology is in the whole thing. I know people say it's there, but you have to be told it's there, if I'm being honest, for me to even see it.
If people want to say it's kind of, you know, just a bit of entertainment, fine, but if you want to say it's kind of theology, because it goes way off into fantasy. And to be honest, like, if you, I don't think, like, you can't compare, and like, I'm probably going to step on a few toes here, but you can't compare C .S. Lewis to John Bunyan.
The reason is, C .S. Lewis, John Bunyan was a godly man, you know, was incredible intellect, things like that. C .S. Lewis wasn't even part of the evangelical wing of the Church of England, of which he was a part of.
He was very much part of the Anglo-Catholic wing, and he had some very heterodox views. Not to get off on that tangent with C .S. Lewis, it's been a while since I've studied about him, but if people are kind of, even like a guy who's a big fan of him, Jay Packer, I think he's a fan of him at least, he wrote an article a couple years ago, well, not a couple years ago, back in 1998, called Still Surprised by Lewis, where he said, what was it, like, that he did not attend an evangelical place of worship, nor fraternize with evangelical organizations.
And then he notes in another part of the article, this is in Christianity Today, by already evangelical standards, his idea about the atonement archetypal penitence rather than penal substitution, and his failure ever to mention justification by faith when speaking of the forgiveness of sins, and his apparent hospitality to baptismal regeneration, and his non-inheritance view of biblical inspiration, plus his quiet affirmation of purgatory, and of the possible final salvation of somebody who might left this world as unbelievers, or as non-believers, or weaknesses.
Now, and the thing is, like, even, he mentions here great Martin Lee Jones, for whom evangelical orthodoxy was mandatory to doubt whether Lewis was a Christian at all. Now, not to get into that, because I've, I spent a little bit of time studying Lewis a couple years ago, there's a number of Catholics who believe that he would have been a Roman Catholic had he had different views on the Pope, and there was one other thing, I think it was on Mary, um, he was very much, uh, Anglo-Catholic, so not to get, you know, down that dovetail, but I think we have to just not make previously well-accepted works of the genre to be the standard.
That's what I would just recommend. Look, Pilgrim's Progress is not the standard, and one of the reasons I think it is biblical, what I can see, gone through with everything, is standards and usabilities where it's appropriate to do so.
Chronicles of Narnia, not too sure. Completely different work, if you ask me. And then when you come to the shack, it's presenting God. Here's God, and putting words and theology in the mouth of God. So you're talking about things that, I'm astonished when people do it, because I'm just wondering, have they read Pilgrim's Progress, or, and I think Chronicles of Narnia is another place off in another place, you know, it's not even comparable.
I think they're all three completely different works. Does that make sense? Yeah. And, uh, thank you very much,.
Joe, for contributing your question, and we always look forward to hearing from you, and keep spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in Slovenia and beyond. What other lies does William Paul Young bring to light that he believes we, the Church, are being deceived by?
Well, again, I'll just start off with just sin, because I talked about this on my radio show about a week ago, and I kind of really wanted to focus on his gospel message, because that is the most important thing, because it's unequivocal, it's not just my opinion, it's not just, um, I'm kind of going, he's a bit funny in a few areas.
William Paul Young categorically, undeniably teaches a false gospel. First of all, his definition of sin, we just dealt with that a minute ago, um, another place I could just look, with that is page 35 in the book, when he says, I am fundamentally good, because I am created, quote, in Christ as an expression of God.
So, and then he says a little bit later, this identity and goodness is truer about us than any of the damage that was done to us, or by us. So, basically he's saying, we're good. That is, you know, we're not evil.
He completely rejects that. And another lie that he teaches is that God has no expectations. It's, it's like, there's no law, there's no demands of the law, and the fallen nature of the world, it brings me back to the quotation, I can't remember the exact page, where, um, I'm going to find it if I look it up there, but that the, I think it was Papa in the shack says, I don't need to punish sin.
Sin is its own punishment, because God in the shack does not have any expectations. He does not have a law that is to be obeyed. In page 214 of Lies We Believe About God, he says, God is never disappointed in you.
God has no expectations. And he spends a lot of time explaining that in different anecdotes and things like that. Not scriptural arguments, but just anecdotes of conversations that he's had. He said, God delights in you as you delight in your own children.
So there's no wrath of God, there's no expectation. And then you kind of wonder, well, where does the wrath of the cross come from? And I hope people are sitting down for this, because it's ridiculous.
I found it very hard to deal with this last week, because the wrath spoken about according to William Paul Young and C. Baxter Kruger and other people like him, it comes from man. The wrath of the cross is not the wrath of God poured upon his son, it's the wrath of the people.
We demanded the cross, apparently, because of our brokenness, because of the lie that we bought into. And then, to add insult to injury, he said that Jesus submitted to our delusion. The quote in front I know, and it's just, I don't know how to even, we need about 10 hours to go through.
There's a problem in every page of this book, I think.
Yeah, it reminds me of Jeremiah chapter 6, 14, speaking of the false prophets, and they have healed the brokenness of my people, superficially saying, peace, peace, but there is no peace. This is pretty pathetic, and I can hear the size of relief of death row inmates everywhere in the world as they hear these kinds of promises of nothing to be afraid of.
It's really pathetic. In fact, I don't want to break you or interrupt you, I should say, in mid-sentence, so I'm going to take our mid-break right now, and if anybody would like to join us right now with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the good old USA, and please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.
That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we will be right back with Paul Flynn of Megiddo Films, Megiddo Radio, and Megiddo TV on our subject at hand, Lies William Paul Young Believes About God, a Critique of Young's Lies We Believe About God, his latest book.
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Welcome back. This is Chris Arms. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than an hour to go is Paul Flynn of Megiddo Films, Megiddo Radio, and Megiddo TV.
We are discussing Lies William Paul Young Believes About God, a critique of Young's Lies We Believe About God, which is his latest book. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Before I return to our discussion with Paul Flynn, I want to remind you that the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology coming up very soon, April 28th through the 30th at Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
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And if you'd like to join us with a question, it's chrisarnsen at gmail dot com. Chrisarnsen at gmail dot com. Paul, what other lies does William Paul Young believe about God that we should be aware.
Of?
Just in case anybody's listening, I was talking there just for the break about just his belief about the cross. And I just tried to just give a quotation quickly, just in case anybody thinks I'm misrepresenting.
And he says there's nothing good about the crosses on page 149 of the book. And he says, then who originated the cross? If God did, then we worship a cosmic abuser who in divine wisdom created a means to torture human beings in the most painful and abhorrent manner.
Frankly, it is often this cruel and monstrous God that the atheist refused to acknowledge or grant credibility in any sense. And rightly so, he says. Better know God at all than this one. That was one of the one of the most horrendous things he said in the book.
And then he says in the next page, he said, and how did God respond to this profound brokenness, basically the brokenness that we we demanded? You know, we raised our fist against God. We demanded justice.
He says God submitted to it. So denial of God's sovereignty there. Basically, man is sovereign in in William Paul Young's estimation. And it's just everywhere you see it, it's just God submitting to man's decisions, man's delusions and all this kind of stuff.
And he says God climbed willingly onto our torture device and met us at the deepest and darkest place of our diabolical imprisonment to our own lies. And one of those lies we found out at the later part of the book, we don't believe how special we are.
So, and then he does actually, he does look at Isaiah 53, he mentions briefly part of Isaiah 53, not looking at, no attention is paid to any exegesis of Isaiah 53 verse 10, which literally says, and it pleased the Lord to bruise him, or literally in the Hebrew to crush him.
God the Father poured out his wrath upon the Son is rejected, not just by William Paul Young. I mean, I remember listening to Paul Washer one time, and he was talking about a sermon that he was brought up on heresy charges that he wouldn't, I think it was he wasn't allowed to preach anymore.
And the heresy, according to the church he was at, was that he believed that God the Son, that God the Son satisfied justice. So obviously this is not an isolated view that he's holding, and sadly a lot of professing churches, or at least they look like churches on the outside, and they might seem like churches on the outside without much examination.
Sadly, or probably maybe not churches at all, but synagogues of Satan. And he said, another part, just one more quote, and it's on page 152, this is Jesus, God submitting to our torture device and transforming it into an icon and monument of grace.
So the wrath of the cross is man's wrath. Now you might say, okay, well what is the good news? And William Paul Young tells us, now again, I believe that all of these doctrines are either explicitly stated, all the heresies he has in this book, or are at least hinted at in the shack.
And I think maybe some editing work was done by Brad Cummings and Wayne Jacobson, who are the editors of the book, close friends of him, well, close friends of him at the time. I'm not sure since, because they've been in court suing each other, but that's another issue.
And so, what is the good news? What is the gospel? This is on page 117. The good news is not that Jesus has opened up the possibility of salvation. So before that, he talks about kind of, he presents a kind of an Armenian, a hyper-Armenian decisionism, straw man of the gospel.
Okay? He probably encountered it when he was in, when he was a missionary kid, I think it was in Papua New Guinea he was in. And he says that it's not that, and you have been invited to receive, and that you, it's not that you've been invited to receive Jesus into your life.
The gospel is that Jesus has already included you into his life, into his relationship with God, and into his anointing in the Holy Spirit. The good news is that Jesus did this without your vote. And whether you believe it or not, won't make it any or more, any less or more true.
Now, he skips on a bit, and he probably anticipates, and what will people say here? And he said, are you suggesting that everyone is saved? That is, that you believe in universal salvation. The next part he says, that is exactly what I am saying.
Wow.
So on page, page 118, if you want the proof that he's a universalist, but he's taught this for years. He's taught this for years, but page 118, he comes out and tells everybody.
We have Scott in Bryan, Ohio, who says, while reading the shack, I was very surprised to learn how many Christians think it is overall a good book. Do you believe that the seeker-sensitive movement is poised to answer the universalism that is touted as real faith?
Well, is the seeker-sensitive movement poised to answer any problem in the Christian faith?
I don't know.
Well, what's your comment on that?
Yeah, I think, I remember when I was studying Christian history and recent movements in Christianity, when I was first there for the first couple years, I was very much focused on movements and kind of like seeing church history as kind of like this current being carried along, and I think we give these movements too much credit.
What I'm saying is this, the emerging church, seeker-sensitive movement, liberalism, all these movements are just a fruit of the underlying problem, unbelief. That's the problem. Unbelief and rebellion from God, hardness of heart, and it starts at the fundamental level, you know, what are the marks of a true church?
The gospel is preached, the sacraments are administered, and, you know, some of the reformers would have included at times, you know, biblical church discipline, and that keeps the church healthy, as in, you know, an unbeliever generally is not going to want to have biblical church discipline.
Unfortunately, if you remove biblical church discipline, you make it very comfortable for the false professor, and not, you know, the church is always subject to mixture and error, but we, you know, we see that it just becomes filled with goats, because there's no church discipline, there's no call to live godly Christian life.
Now, coming up now to recent times, the seeker-sensitive movement, what's it doing? It's sensitive not to God, it's not in all of God's Word, it's in all of man and his needs, and again, it's the same problem, unbelief, and hardness of heart, and a lack of concern for the holiness of God.
Yeah, my dear friend Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, I don't know if he coined this phrase, but he has certainly used the phrase a lot, I've heard him use it a lot, it's, what you win them with, you will win them too.
And if you use garbage, if you use watered-down theology, or doctrinalist spirituality, feel-good Christianity, if you're using that to woo people, the lost, into your houses of worship, that is what they're going to be one to, that's what they're going to believe.
I mean, it's as if the seeker-sensitive movement believes in the frog and kettle theory, that the frogs are going to jump in the kettle, and as the water slowly boils, they won't realize that they're being surrounded by Christianity, and then they'll eventually be saved before they die or something, I don't know.
I mean, it's like, it is a bit like that actually, because, you know, but before they know it, they're dead.
And unfortunately, many of the frogs are spiritually dead when they depart this earth as well. And the seeker-sensitive movement, of course, is something that has infiltrated churches across the theological spectrum, because there are denominations and congregations that I would fully agree with their confessional statements, there are Reformed churches on paper that are buying into seeker-sensitive methodology, which is very strange, because it's really an Arminian mindset, that you're not relying on the Holy Spirit to draw his people into the house of God and into salvation, most of all, you are using the cleverness of men and the tastes and appetites of the world to lure people, because you don't believe that what the Bible has prescribed in the regulative principle of worship and in the canon of Scripture, you don't believe that that's going to be sufficient, so you have to add inventions of men to get people in there.
It usually takes about a generation of, you know, ignorance about, you know, like, say, the Westminster Confession of Faith, or in a Baptist church in 1689 on the Baptist Confession of Faith, to what, you know, people can say, I'm a Calvinist, I'm Reformed, but to be honest, what do those things even mean?
To most people, it's just kind of, it's like a crest or a badge, this is the globe I belong to, but to explain to somebody, would they really understand it? And then you have to ask yourself, are you really Reformed or Calvinistic at all?
Right, I think that some who are bordering these days in the 21st century, bordering on liberalism, perhaps not, they haven't leaped that line yet, but they're coming dangerously close to it. They are using Calvinism as some kind of a badge of intellect, because they know that it seems that the greatest minds within Christendom are theologically Reformed, and they want to somehow be connected with that academic atmosphere, but many of them are actually either consciously or unconsciously militating against the core beliefs of the Calvinistic theology or the Reformed doctrine.
And what would be another one of the lies that we have to be aware of that William Paul Young believes, or one of the lies that he believes that we are being, by which we are being duped?
Well, just to, this would kind of again continue on with the same point, but just to look at universalism just for a second, Kruger, C. Baxter Kruger, who wrote that book I mentioned earlier in the show called The Shack Revisited, and again, Paul Young gives a recommendation, even on the front of the book, he says, I'll just remind myself there, if you want to understand better the perspectives of theology, the frame of the shack, this book is for you, and that's on the front cover of his book.
And so, and then, in the foreword, is that what it's called, in the foreword of the book, is written by C. Baxter Kruger. C. Baxter Kruger is also a universalist, and it's very, very clear if you read The Shack Revisited, which was published back in 2012, that he was a universalist.
But he, Kruger gives his universalism, you know, that it, that God is in relationship with the whole, in unique communion with the whole human race, on page 1011. I'm just going to read Paul Young's own words, which show that he's universalist, page 54.
He says, right, he talks about separation. He says our, you know, but our religions assume separation, talking about, you know, there's different types of religions and things like that, being apart. He says, so when we hear the word Christian, we think of someone who started on the outside, but then prayed a prayer or did something special that moved him or her from the outside into inside.
And I don't know if he, if that is the, if that's a kind of a strawman false gospel, if that's a, he's erecting a strawman, or that's just what he was taught, or he's ignorant of what the biblical gospel is.
I'm not too sure. He then goes on to say, however, as the creator, and this is on page 55, as the creator and redeemer and sustainer of all things, and this includes every single human being, Jesus challenges every religious category.
If we take Jesus seriously, then we're not dealing with outsiders and insiders. We are dealing with those who are seeing and those who are not seeing, trusting and not trusting. So he's saying you're not dealing with outsiders and insiders.
And it's very similar to, like, kind of, I don't want to say it's complete new ageism, because I think sometimes people, or often people in some of the critiques that I've seen, have jumped way too far, you know, in their judgment that it's complete new age or whatever it is.
So he says then, so is God a Christian? If you're asking if God is about separation and treats people of different denominations, faiths, and ways of thinking as outsiders, until they pray a prayer to, quote, get in, unquote, then of course not.
If you are asking, does God relate to all of us beloved insiders who are completely ignorant and miserable, does God love us and incessantly find ways to lead us to discover Jesus in our only way, truth, and life?
Then of course. So he's very much not insiders and outsiders, because we're all beloved, we're all accepted, we're all forgiven, regardless of whether we know it or not. And the thing is, the gospel is to realize who we are, realize how special we are, and to enjoy this relationship.
It's to rely, and it's very similar to new age, because the new age will try to tell you, you know, self-actualization, self-discovery, discovering who you are. It's all about you, really. And yeah, and it becomes kind of, it does become a worship of self.
And on page, that's universalism. Then you have to kind of wonder, well, what does he teach about hell? Because it's a massive problem. Christ spoke about hell quite a lot in order for it not to be spoken about.
Again, we talked about it there earlier in the show. I'll just give one quote, really briefly. He quotes from Romans 8, 38 to 39, which says, I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor death, nor depth, nor any created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He thinks that, that us is everyone. Not the elect, not whom he foreknowned, then he also justified, then he also glorified. Very, very clear if you read previous verses of the Golden Chain of Redemption earlier in the chapter.
But according to Paul Young, this is every single human being, and possibly even the devil, if you look at, you know, yeah, I mean, he never mentions the devil in any of his writings that I've seen. And it becomes, yeah, complete universalism.
And the other thing, apart from that, like, hell to him is an age of redemptive purification.
Basically purgatory.
Yeah, exactly.
We have RJ in White Plains, New York. In fact, I'll ask the question and you can answer it when we come back from the final break. RJ in White Plains, New York wants to know, I know that you are from the Republic of Ireland.
Are most of the heretical problems facing, or should I say infiltrating, the church in your area homegrown, or are they coming from here in the United States? And in fact, since you're on the borderline of the UK there, you're on the borderline of Northern Ireland, why don't you include just that whole area?
And we'll take your answer when we come back from our final break. This will be a much briefer break, and if you'd like to join us on the air, now's your time to send in the email, chrisarnson at gmail dot com.
Chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Don't go away. We'll be right back, God willing, after these messages.
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Before the break, Paul, we had RJ in White Plains, New York, who said, is most of the infiltrating the church there in the Republic of Ireland coming from homegrown sources or from the United States? And, of course, we could include the UK because you're right on the borderline of the UK.
Well, when it comes to the Republic of Ireland, the Republic of Ireland is very different to Northern Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland, there's been various times when there has been lots of gospel preaching, there's been different Reformed churches at different times in different parts of the country.
I don't know, 50, 100 years, there hasn't been much. I think at one point that there was maybe 5, 10 of what we would call the South. There are like, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, maybe in every town there might be a Presbyterian church, what we call PCI, which is Presbyterian Church of Ireland.
But the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, for example, is a massively mixed bag from all the way from, they don't seem to believe the gospel at all, to there are some faithful ministers within the ranks, you know, to female ministers and everything else, it's a complete mixed bag.
It depends, like, the further south you go, you know, where I'm originally from, which is Cork, it tends to be more apostate and less Reformed. And the further north you go, towards Northern Ireland, it tends to be, not always, but it tends to be more Christians.
There's still very few. There are pockets of Christian churches in places like Cork, you might find, there might be a couple of fellowships almost in every street, but I think that's probably part of the problem.
It's very, at least my experience of the few churches I attended while I was there, I was saved for a while before I left Cork and eventually moved to Italy, was kind of a very, it didn't seem to take church membership extremely seriously.
Not all the churches, there are some churches that did take church membership really seriously, and I don't want to make this as, sometimes people might use this as an excuse not to attend church, which should have the opposite effect on us.
But yeah, it's been incredibly weak, there's very little Reformed presence in, where I'm originally from, Cork, and there's probably a couple hundred thousand who live in that city, there's no Reformed church, to my knowledge, there at all.
There's been attempts to plant churches there, there's a, in Galway, there's a Reformed Presbyterian church which is in the west of the country, in Dublin there's a Reformed Baptist church, and to my knowledge it's the only, to my knowledge, oh and there's also a, in the south of the city there's a Reformed Baptist church, and in the north of the city, not exactly sure where, there's a Reformed Presbyterian fellowship, it's not a constituted church as such, but it is a fellowship, a kind of preaching station where ministers from the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland, my denomination, go there and preach in north of Dublin.
There's bits, there's a lot of problems, I'm talking about a typical, I'm not talking about all Irish churches, but there's kind of, there's an unwillingness to have a confession of faith, there's an unwillingness to be, you know, like, oh well, I'm Armenian, I'm Calvinist, we'll all get together, and you look back and a lot of them believe heretical things, and I would have been in those churches at the beginning, and not having to do the believe incredibly heretical things, maybe even, you know, something that I wouldn't have seen until much, much later.
There's, there are not many good churches. Then you go to Northern Ireland, and there's a lot more, I mean, there's a lot more good churches in Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland is in decline, by any stretch of the imagination, and there's a lot of people who will tell you in certain parts of Northern Ireland that I'm a Protestant, or I'm fine, you know, when you give them a gospel tract, I'm fine, I've got that sorted, thank you very much, that kind of an answer that you might get in something like something similar to the southern states of America, and there's kind of a, kind of an influx, what I, at least from what I am seeing, oh, maybe kind of, I talked to one guy who was in a vineyard church, didn't seem too interested in talking to me, looked more like a punk rocker or something like that than a Christian, he didn't seem that bothered, but he said, oh, he went to this church, so Northern Ireland is going through a massive transition at the moment, where you've got this generation rebelling against the, you could say, the religion of their parents, and they're still kind of going to church, but they're not going to a biblical church, that's kind of where Northern Ireland is at the moment, and it's, there's a drastic decline, there's a drastic decline in state government, there's a huge change in the last couple of years, basically, the Liberals have completely taken over the Northern Ireland Assembly recently, so Northern Ireland is, while it used to be very conservative, I mean, they're necessarily involved in Christian in part, it's gone very liberal, and it's moving incredibly quickly in that direction.
Now, obviously, for centuries, the southern part of Ireland was dominated by the darkness of Roman Catholicism, but would Roman Catholicism today be really just a nominal, I'm talking about predominantly in the southern part of Ireland, is it just really that the typical Catholic is a nominal believer who probably only goes to church on Christmas and Easter and weddings and funerals, or is, are there still a lot of very religious, active church-going Catholics going to Mass and so on?
Yeah, for the, you know, the attendance, I think, has gone down a lot, but it depends on the part of the country, and I think around here I see a lot of people when I drive church on, around this part of the country, there seems to be a lot of people who go to Roman Catholic Mass, and I think it depends what's on, whether it's a funeral or something like that, and the average Roman Catholic, this isn't really anything new, would, as you get with a lot of places, doesn't really, you know, wouldn't really understand transubstantiation, wouldn't really understand anything about really what they believe.
Really, even transubstantiation, because.
That was like a given, even as a little kid, I understood that, I wrongly understood that that wafer was becoming the body of Christ. Of course, I was heretically wrong, but that's, that was something that was pretty well understood by most even children, I think, when I was going to school.
In the 60s and 70s. I think that's probably where it stopped, though. I think at that point it kind of, it kind of, you know, there are, don't get me wrong, there are young people who I've met over the years, but they're usually the very zealous ones who join, you know, orders and would be very much involved in, say, evangelism for the Roman Catholic Church.
Those kind of people who would be, you know, potentially future priests and stuff like that, and possibly even leaning towards catechism, you know, like rejections, or somewhat rejection of Vatican II, or the direction of Vatican II.
So, you would get pockets like that, but the mainstream, average churchgoer would really not be interested in even talking about religion. They'll say, oh, I go, but that's it. But it's changed a lot, because, look, I felt fairly religious years ago.
I was 18, 19, still going to mass, still kind of believing, you know, became a professing atheist for a number of years after that. But, I mean, I would, and nobody would bat an eyelid at it, that I was still, I would still be reeking of drink from the night before, and that was seen as, like, funny.
That's Ireland for you. I mean, we have, you know, it's an underestimation of the century, but we have a massive drink problem. It's seen as funny, and, you know, you just, yeah, this, it's just everywhere, this kind of love affair with alcohol and with sin, and it's just, like, just enough religion just to kind of go, I'm a bit religious, while just living just like the rest of the world, and that's kind of.
Where it's gone at the moment. Well, obviously, since you did a documentary on the shack, going back to the listener's specific question, obviously, American heresies are infiltrating the church in the Republic of Ireland and the U .K.
These things are having some kind of a negative influence.
There. Yeah, and I think it's more, I don't think it's necessarily, like, yeah, it's true, and look, there's this different, there's different, I mean, American Christianity, look, if there's a conference on, and a certain person, you know, a big-name speaker from, say, you know, the United States or somewhere like that will come over and speak, it'd fill the church.
If you have just as able of a preacher who's, you know, on the road, or from Scotland, or from Wales, or from whatever, you get half the crowd. I think there's a bit of, you know, rightly and wrongly, probably, I think we just too much, maybe, overhear, constantly look towards the United States, under some great godly pastors on that side of the Atlantic, but I mean, we have, and I would just urge people in Northern Ireland, there's so many good, you know, people you can listen to on sermon audio.
I mean, we shouldn't be putting any preachers on pedestals that sometimes people will get frustrated with their own preacher, go, oh, he's not as good in this area, and all this kind of silliness. Look, I mean, you get into the most, you plant yourself in a godly church, you stay there, and you be a blessing.
Often we kind of have a checklist of all the things that your church is supposed to provide us with, rather than serving in the body of Christ. But is there infiltration? Sure there is. The internet, things like that.
But, you know, I suppose it's like, if America gets a cold, we'll catch it.
Well, I guess we should make sure, since we've only got a little less than 15 minutes left, that you really summarize the things that you most want our listeners to remember about today's topic before we run out of time.
Okay, so I'm going to just focus mainly, well, it attacks the gospel. So maybe, every page seems to have an issue, and it works on the gospel here. He attacks the notion of sin, it is not realizing how good you are, especially, it's basically, it's like a therapy session that you would get in a psychoanalyst, that you know, to rely, you have to have high self-esteem.
That's sin in this, in William Paul Young's mind, and that you, almost repentance is seeing how, that you are fundamentally good and not believing a lie about your being. He even believes that, he mentioned about a guy named Matt in the book, page 204208, and he said Matt is good, even though he's an atheist and unbeliever, and that he's accepted in the beloved, and talks about it.
The only thing that's been submitted to in the wrath of God is the wrath of man. The gospel, what is the good news according to William Paul Young? The gospel is that you realize how amazing you are. Seriously.
And that is, it's psychology. It's modern, warmed-up psychology akin to, you know, the power of positive thinking and all this kind of thing that came out with Norm Vincent Peale and all this kind of thing, back in the 1960s, 1970s.
It's not anything new, but it's focusing on man, what makes man happy. That is the good news. Apparently, you're already saved. What you have to just realize is who you are and how great you have us. That's the gospel according to William Paul Young.
Darrell Bock. And it makes grace not amazing at all. I mean, what's so amazing about that grace? What is redemptive about that? What is even conjuring up the thought of rescue or salvation? Why did Christ die a torturous death?
I mean, by the way, does Young even believe in the perpetuatory sacrifice of Christ at all? Was the wrath of the Father poured upon him in Young's understanding of Calvary?
No. He was on a radio interview. I don't have the original. The only thing I've been able to find was Todd Friel on his Richard TV program a number of years ago played a clip from William Paul Young where basically in the clip he said when he was pressed by the host that he was not a penal substitution kind of guy.
And then Todd just stopped the video and he just said, well, whoa, whoa, whoa. If you're not a penal substitution kind of guy, you're not a Christian. End of story. And so that's the thing. He doesn't believe the gospel in any way, shape, or form.
What was satisfied of the cross was our wrath and appeasing. It's like if a child throws a tantrum and we let the child go crazy and, I don't know, beat up his little brother or something like that and say, oh, well, that appeased the wrath and your brother submitted to it.
It's absurd. It's kind of like the idea of therapy. You get it out of your system. I remember we were talking about, probably in the last time I was on your show, metal music, and I believe that it was kind of like therapy for me and I was expressing myself and it was helping me and all this.
It's almost a bit like that. And Jesus submitted, according to William Paul Young, to our wrath, not the wrath of the Father being satisfied. So, no, he doesn't believe in penal substitution at all. And to be honest, what he, like, and I quoted earlier, what he believes, that that God that's presented by the historic church, by the Creed of the Reformation, etc., and so on, the God of the Bible, he called him blasphemously a cosmic abuser.
Now, I think even Brian McCarran made a similar comment like that a number of years ago. So, it's very much in line with the emerging church. So, that's the cross. Universalism, William Paul Young is, without a shadow of a doubt, a universalist.
He may try to weave around that. Well, that was a couple years ago, he tried to weave around it. He can't do it anymore, but he is undoubtedly a universalist. He, in an interview a couple years ago, when he, I think he was still trying to avoid the label, you know, gave an interview, I can't remember, it was kind of like a short video podcast, about six minutes long, it's on YouTube, I think it's called On the Road or something like that, and he gave about six definitions of universalism.
And he said, yes, if that's your definition of universalism, yes, I'm a universalist. If that's your definition, no, I'm not. And basically, it came down to is, at the end of it, he says, is there a doctrine that says that everybody is saved and everybody will be brought in?
You see, you have to be very careful with his language, because what he's done is taken evangelical terminology, which he's grown up with, hollowed it out, and given them new definitions. Hell has given a new definition, the gospel has given a new definition, sin has given a new definition, and hell has given a new definition.
He uses all the lingo, but he redefined everything. That's universalism. And then hell, in hell, right? On page 182, I might just leave with, just give you one more quote, just, he believes it's a significant lie, I don't know, I might have quoted this earlier, but that you cannot be saved after you die.
So you can be saved after you die. And to be honest, if it's, as he says at the end of the book, that God, Papa, an all-consuming fire of relentless affection, hell doesn't exactly sound that terrifying.
Hell is, you know, all-consuming fire of relentless affection. It sounds wonderful, doesn't it? So, you know, it makes a mockery of the Bible, but the thing about it is, he's not in any way trying to exegete anything.
The only time in the entire book he kind of makes an attempt to show a bunch of scripture, he does use scripture sparingly at times, but it's at the very end, we call it Akatina, God's drama of redemption, which shows all the verses like, and then all flesh shall see the king and salvation of God, Luke 3 .6.
So he, and, you know, italicizing all, you know, and if you just read that, don't read the context or anything else like that, you might just think it's every single human being. Well, what is he all referring to?
And it's a bit scary because it sounds like some of the Armenian Calvinist debates that kind of go on, because this is, you know, unfortunately, it's a slippery slope towards this. If you look at some of the arguments, some of the arguments wouldn't be too similar to some Armenian arguments, sadly, but anyway.
Now, this idea of.
Salvation after death, or this opportunity for it, is there, number one, why is that even necessary if he's a universalist, number one? But number two, I mean, is there, does Christ himself evangelize.
Those in hell, or what's going on there? Well, he doesn't really go into massive detail. He just says, page 186, I think evil exists because of our turning from face-to-face relationship with God, and because we choose to say no to God.
So he's saying, I think what he's saying, right, is like, if you go into hell, you're just saying no to relationship with God. And he said God, with utmost respect and reverence, submits to our choice even while utterly opposing it.
God, who is love, not only allows our choice, but joins us in our humanity in order to rescue us from our choices. So he's saying, okay, there is hell, but eventually you'll come out of it. Because in page 131, he gives three options of hell.
Two of them he categorically rejects and leaves only one left over. He says there's eternal damnation, doesn't believe that. He shows in many, many different places. Number two, annihilation, doesn't believe that either.
And then the third option, which is the only one he could possibly believe in, which is called an age of redemption,.
Purification. Yeah, that's what we mentioned before. It seems like some kind of a new age version of purgatory or something. And yeah, it's absurd to think that if you are in any kind of state of discomfort in the afterlife, and you're being given the opportunity to leave it, well, yeah, I'm good.
I'll just stay here. It doesn't make any sense. Well, we do have, let's see, we have Bibi in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. She says, I'm not certain, but I seem to remember that William Paul Young may have been influenced by Quakers.
Is this correct, or am I misremembering something? Do you know anything about a Quaker mystic connection there?
Possible. I think he claims to be influenced from a lot of different things. Yeah, he sees himself as kind of a thinker outside the box, but.
Yeah, nothing comes to mind at the moment. And let's see, we have Christian in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, what is your suggestion when someone says that they are really enjoying the book or have enjoyed the movie, The Shack, of correcting them without being too much of a bully to turn them away from your opinions altogether?
Somebody actually asked that question the other day on a similar issue. But how do you approach this situation without beating up on the person and just having them not wanting to listen to anything you're.
Saying? I would ask them how they got saved, honestly. Because I would just kind of go, when were you converted? What is sin? I would go back to the basics. You're dealing with somebody who doesn't understand some simple...
I'm not saying if somebody likes the book or likes the movie that they're definitely lost. They're definitely not mature in the Lord, that's for sure. But you've got two possibilities. They're either very immature in the Lord, they're baby Christians, they cannot discern what would be fairly, fairly fundamental things.
You know, as God has revealed himself in the scriptures, or doesn't know the Lord at all, and as a God of their own imagination. And this is why I kind of made the movie the way I made it. It's kind of a gospel track.
It's a big red flag to me if somebody loves the book. Now, if you kind of go point out something and they kind of go, oh, I didn't think of that. And they search the scriptures and be like a Berean. But if somebody is born again, a new creature in Christ, all things are passed away, all things become new.
They will be different. And if they hate the biblical instruction you're trying to give them, they'll obviously be gentle about it. But if they're not interested in what the Word of God says, and they're more interested in the God of William Paul Young's imagination, surely is that not a red flag that we need to kind of ask this person how they came to know the Lord?
What do they believe about God? What do they believe about sin? And what do they believe about their condition before or after they were saved? You know, were they lost? Were they in bondage to sin? What did God save them from, etc.?
So am I getting this straight that Young has gone from the fantasy allegory entertainment realm of the shack, and now he's doing more of a doctrinal, you know, a more systematized doctrinal book. In this lies we believe about God?
Yeah, it's his first non-fiction book, and I would suspect it won't be his last.
It may, who knows, it may be, you know, be a big dud though, because it seems like a very different genre from something that is more conducive to entertainment.
Yeah, he kind of like, he's very much about telling stories, it's very much about anecdotes, it's very much about using philosophy and reason. He doesn't use the scriptures. The scriptures are kind of an afterthought, and look, if you watch many of these interviews, he's gone on a speaking tour as well with C. Baxter Kruger, you know, the shack revisited, done lectures with him, things like that, and talked about these issues to a receptive audience, an audience that has no problem with him, and doesn't really, maybe you could say, ask any challenging questions.
So he's been teaching theology for years, it's just now that he knows he's going to have a bigger audience, he knows after the movie's come out through Lionsgate and grossed something like, I think it was three or four million dollars in the box office, so that he, like, he brought it out, you know, it's no coincidence that he brought it out last month, you know, to coincide with the release of the movie, and to capitalize, you know, he sees, you know, he sees himself as very much kind of an evangelist, you could say, of the, maybe the universal movement.
And we're out of time, actually, and.
MegiddoFilms .org is your website, MegiddoFilms .org, M-E-G-I-D-D-O Films .org. Thank you so much, Paul, for being on the program. I look forward to you returning to Iron Trumpet's Iron Radio, and I want to thank everybody who joined us today, especially those who took the time to write questions.
I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.