April 11, 2017 Show with Paul Flynn on “Lies William Paul Young Believes About God (A Critique of Young’s ‘Lies We Believe About God'”

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April 12, 2017

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’

00:01: Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister
00:06: George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,
00:16: Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:23: Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:32: Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
00:46: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:56: Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,
01:05: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet
01:11: Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 11th day of April 2017.
01:22: 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
01:33: 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.
01:47: Thank you so much, Chris, for having me on the program. Yes, if any book title begged an answer, speak for yourself when
01:58: 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,
02:11: Lies We Believe About God, and of course many of our listeners will recognize the name
02:17: 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.
02:28: Sure, well William Paul Young rose to prominence back in, what was it, about 2007 with the book
02:35: The Shack, which started off a couple copies. Originally it was a book written for 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
02:55: 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
03:07: The Shack, but unfortunately it's not. What really is in this book is really just confirming,
03:14: I would say, a lot of, sometimes maybe things are hinted towards in The Shack, and also doctrines that I think were pretty explicit in The Shack, such as universalism.
03:26: William Paul Young has, ever since he's become a full -time author, ever since The Shack was massively,
03:34: 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.
03:42: The other books he released prior to this were called Eve Crossroads, so he's released three novels prior to this, and this is his first non -fiction.
03:53: 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.
04:23: And what can you say about the man? The man grew up in, he was raised in a
04:29: Christian home, he knows Christian lingo, but the thing is, you have to be very, very careful with William Paul Young.
04:36: 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.
04:50: 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.
05:03: Yeah, and you actually thought that his previous book, The Shack, was so disturbing that you actually produced a documentary film on it.
05:14: Tell us something about that documentary film and where our listeners can view that. Sure, the movie can be viewed at megiddofilms .org,
05:25: that's m -e -g -i -d -d -o -films .org, and the movie can watch for free.
05:31: 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.
05:46: So that can be viewed for free on YouTube, and the movie, the full title is
05:52: 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.
06:01: The last time I checked, it was seen about 276 ,000 times, something like that. If you even type in the word
06:07: The Shack, it's one of the first few YouTube videos to pop up, which I was the most delighted that that was the case.
06:14: Oh yeah, praise God for that. I know, I was really, I was like, praise the
06:20: Lord, it was an answer to prayer, and when I remember, I kind of, I'd heard things about the movie coming out,
06:27: 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, seemed to be having a lot of trouble for years coming to the big screen, but eventually, it was
06:45: 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
06:58: 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 mass of quotations from The Shack, also from what would be called a companion work to The Shack, a book called
07:26: The Shack Revisited by a man by the name of C. Baxter Kruger, 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 systematic theology, accompanying the book, it's called
08:00: 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,
08:15: I think I'd been emailing you or something like that, and I don't know, I kind of,
08:21: I felt like the Lord really wanted me to work on it, and 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 the, you know,
08:34: Lionsgate released their trailers, and hopefully it can be one of the first ones to pop up in the
08:40: 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
09:07: Trinity, am I correct? Yeah, there's, it's one of those books that, you almost, it's like, where do you start?
09:17: There's just so many problems, there's 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,
09:29: I was listening to a Christian radio program, at least a professor to be a Christian radio program, a couple of months ago, and it said, you know, the host was saying, oh well,
09:38: 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,
09:59: 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
10:12: Pilgrim's Progress or something like that, that they're worlds apart. Now, just to deal with the
10:19: Trinity, yeah? Well, one of the things they have in common is that William Paul Young should be in prison for writing his book.
10:27: 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.
10:37: They got the wrong guy. So, yeah, some of the problems in the shack, just to go back, just by kind of, and there was, how would
10:51: I put it, there was kind of what I call, at least what I call a semi -modalism. Modalism is where you kind of, you don't make a distinction between the three members of the
11:00: Trinity. Pure modalism would be, in one place, you've got the
11:06: Father, that he puts on different hats, basically. One time he's got the Father, then he manifests himself as God the
11:13: 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 persons of the
11:23: 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
11:37: Father was on the cross as well. Yeah, that's the heresy of patri -passionism. Exactly, yeah, and you just have this kind of,
11:46: I, you know, like, there's just, there's so many areas you go into that I don't even know what people like about this.
11:54: I keep hearing time and time again from Christian, famous Christians, well -known people who profess the
12:02: Christian faith, and they say, this is, okay, it's not perfect. They keep saying that it's not perfect, and then they say, what is?
12:09: 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
12:16: God of love. Will the Universalists say the same thing? And according to the shack, God cannot act apart from love.
12:24: 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
12:33: Trinity, which is something that some people claim is a strength. Another part, it talks about the
12:41: Incarnation, and this is on page 99 of the shack, it said, when we three spoke ourselves into existence as the
12:49: Son of God, we became fully human. So, not
12:54: God the Son becoming human, but we became human.
13:01: So, again, you know, and that's why I had to make a movie. Normally, I would do a quick radio show, and okay, that issue's dealt with, but I couldn't, in full breadth, show exactly how bad this is.
13:15: 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 Liza Lee Bogart, just the quotations about it, and William Paul Young's false gospel.
13:28: 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
13:36: God a cosmic abuser, the God of the Bible, that's why he says he rejects sin.
13:44: He's a clear universalist, and his view of hell is more akin to purgatory.
13:52: Yes, I think that people, I think Christians or professing
13:57: Christians or a combination of the both, they sigh with relief when
14:03: Hollywood produces anything that has any kind of hat tipped in a positive way to God in general and, you know, some general basic proverbial truths of life and things that we could pick here and there from the
14:21: 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 theological heretical flick, theologically heretical flick.
14:48: Yeah. And by the way, when you did the documentary, who were the participants who examined the shack?
14:56: 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?
15:06: How'd you mean, like, from a point of view? Well, like, did I interview people in the documentary, you mean?
15:12: Yes, yeah, you had some different folks critiquing it, did you not? Well, no, actually, just, well, what
15:18: 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.
15:25: 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
15:39: I had a kind of audio clip from, for example, Jeff Pollard, and he was talking some part of his sermon about feminism and how we want to relate to God and how we call the
15:53: Holy Spirit, he or her, and it fit, you know, it fit really well in, but you see, like,
15:59: I mean, like, it's actually pretty hard. Like, most, most, if I talk to most theologically sound people, they've never heard of the shack.
16:11: As soon as I mention it, they're like, what, 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...
16:19: No, they don't. I have too much time on my hands, I think. Yeah, I mean, like, the thing is, yeah, like, like, they're, like, the only, the only major critique that I've been able to find that has been written was a book by the,
16:37: James B. DeYoung, and it's called Burning Down the Shack. It was released a number of years ago, and James B.
16:46: 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
16:57: Christian think -tank together, and at that time, William Paul Young embraced what was called, what he called universal reconciliation.
17:07: This was years before the shack was even released, and so, it, you know,
17:13: I read that one about 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, he wrote a book in critiquing as he is, whereas, you know, he's a seminary professor,
17:29: I think, at the moment, but he knew him years ago, and he says that William Paul Young produced a 103 -page, let's get the page here in front of me,
17:40: I have the book in front of me, a 103 -page single -spaced, and then he said, Paul surprisingly presented his embrace of universal reconciliation.
17:49: It is the Christian form of universalism, and this was back around 2003, 2004, about four years before the shack was even written.
17:58: Well, I'll give our email address for anybody interested in writing in a question for our guest
18:04: Paul Flynn. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,
18:11: 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.
18:26: 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 magiddofilms .org,
18:48: and it's a good way, I think, to evangelize loved ones who may be interested in going to the shack.
18:56: 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 magiddofilms .org,
19:25: m -e -g -i -d -d -o -films .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.
19:42: But just when you thought it was bad enough with the shack, now this new book,
19:48: Lies We Believe About God, has come out, and you were very eager to expose this book as being dangerous.
19:56: Who does, or what does, I should say, William Paul Young mean by the word we?
20:04: Lies we believe about God? Is he speaking about the church in general, people in general, whether they're
20:09: Christians or not? Who is he speaking about? Well, I think it's, I don't know if he's being 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,
20:30: 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, we've got a kind of a section called
20:42: Akatina, which is a list of lots of verses that he thinks proves universalism.
20:48: 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.
20:58: And I also have to kind of ask the question, does that include the devil? He's not clear on that, but anyway.
21:05: 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.
21:21: There's 28 of them, and a lot of what
21:27: I would call is called a kind of therapeutic deism, where you can shape
21:33: God after your own image, who's going to make you feel better, where you're not a bad person anymore.
21:41: 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.
21:56: 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, 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.
22:10: 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.
22:28: God has no standards. God is never displeased with us, this kind of idea, just kind of always bringing
22:33: 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.
22:49: 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.
22:59: That very good creation is the form or origin of you. The truth of who you are in your being.
23:07: Sin, then, is anything that negates or diminishes or misrepresents the truth of who you are.
23:16: 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.
23:23: 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
23:28: Satan is. And then he said, he presented the end of the page, and what does the truth of your being look like?
23:35: 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.
23:49: Basically, you are, his argument is, you're creating the image of God, and therefore you must be good.
23:56: So you, one wonders what he thinks about the most despicable, unrepentant serial killers and rapists and child molesters who get a hold of this book.
24:10: What does he, you know, what does he, and those like him, what do they think about those people?
24:18: When, I mean, do they actually, are they actually trying to convey the message to every single person, without question?
24:25: I mean, if Hitler was still alive, could he be reading this and say, wow, I am good after all? Of course, in a
24:30: German accent, but I mean, this just seems mind -boggling to me.
24:37: Yeah, and it is, and to be honest, it takes a lot of kind of just sitting down and really thinking about, like,
24:42: William Paul Young is, he's an intellectual of sorts, and to be honest, he's very,
24:49: 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.
25:00: You know, one place, you know, the shack isn't theology, and another place, it is theology.
25:06: But, I mean, the interesting thing that you brought up serial killers, because C.
25:11: Baxter Kerger wrote the book The Shack Revisited, which is basically the companion theology of the shack, writes about Mrs.
25:19: Killer, Mrs. Killer, Mrs., the little girl who was killed in the book. Right, right.
25:25: 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,
25:38: I'm just trying to get the quote in front of me here, C. Baxter Kerger says, Mrs. Murder is not going to skip through the pearly gates playing with ladybugs.
25:46: To begin with, heaven is where the holy trinity dwells, and evil has hijacked and so horribly twists and misuses this man, avoids the light at all costs.
25:56: 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.
26:11: He belongs to the Father, Son, and Spirit, always has, always will, but he has given himself to participate in darkness.
26:21: He acts out of the light of the evil one and the grotesque meaninglessness, wreaking havoc in the lives of all around.
26:28: And it can continue. That's C. Baxter Kerger now. Now, but it's very much the same idea that people can get saved in hell.
26:40: Um, William Paul Young came out and basically said it, uh, where is it, uh, which, page 181, let's try and get in front of me, uh, and I won't go through all of it here, but there's a chapter called
26:52: 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
27:15: God, basically, as he, as he puts it in the very Arminian way, but, um, after you die, um, and then his friend,
27:23: I was like, he said, you see, my friend loves me, truly loves me. Since what I was proposing could not possibly be right,
27:30: 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, um, how to put it, he says, personally,
27:42: 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, um, saying that it's a lie, because he's saying
28:10: God has preserved our ability to choose right up until death, so why wouldn't he preserve our ability to choose afterwards?
28:19: And he ultimately believes, well, everybody's accepted, loved, and embraced, and eventually, kind of like what, you know,
28:25: Rob Bell said, love wins. Love's going to win them over, and you'll eventually see how fond
28:31: God is of this person. It's interesting, you know, you wonder how they would exegete
28:38: Jesus's own words when he said about Judas, it would be, it would have been better for him never to have been born.
28:48: 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,
28:59: 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.
29:09: Sadly, I've kind of, it kind of gets kind of predictable after a while, because anything that talks about hell, and the way
29:17: 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.
29:33: When William Paul Young was at a, I can't remember the name of Nicky, you know,
29:39: 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.
29:46: Yeah, he was at his church anyway, it's on YouTube, and he was describing, basically, he says,
29:54: I believe in a God of fury. But he says he believes that that fury is that a kind of God's relentless affection seeking out every single one of us.
30:05: 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,
30:20: I'm going to try to eradicate that, you know, cancer or that addiction, and I'm going to seek to eradicate that.
30:29: 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 ourselves, because that's what sin is, according to him, that you don't see how special and amazing you are.
30:47: It's like listening to Joelstein, to be honest. Yeah, and it reminds me of something
30:53: Robert Shuler wrote years ago when, 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.
31:20: It's absolutely absurd. But before we go to the break, I am going to read a question for you.
31:28: 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.
31:42: This is Joe in Slovenia. He says, My question about this topic has to do with those pastors, theologians, apologists, etc.,
31:50: who equate the Shaq book and movie with works like Pilgrim's Progress, Chronicles of Narnia, etc.
31:58: They seem to fail to understand that while the genre may be the same or similar, those works and others don't present
32:06: 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?
32:18: 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.
32:34: 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.
32:43: 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
32:54: USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.
33:00: 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.
33:15: And by the way, we welcome questions from those who actually love
33:21: 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
33:36: 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
33:52: The Shack. But we're going to be back, God willing, right after these messages, so don't go away.
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38:45: Or go to batterydepot .com. That's batterydepot .com. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the
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39:45: Long Island Youth for Christ staff and volunteers meet with young people who need Jesus. We are rural and urban, and we are always about the message of Jesus.
39:54: Our mission is to have a noticeable spiritual impact on Long Island, New York by engaging young people in the lifelong journey of following Christ.
40:02: Long Island Youth for Christ has been a stalwart bedrock ministry since 1959. We have a world -class staff and a proven track record of bringing consistent love and encouragement to youths in need all over the country and around the world.
40:16: Help honor our history by becoming a part of our future. Volunteer, donate, pray, or all of the above.
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40:39: That's liyfc .org. Welcome back.
40:45: 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
40:51: Paul Flynn, founder of Megiddo Films, Megiddo Radio, and Megiddo TV. We are discussing
40:58: Lies William Paul Young Believes About God, a critique of Young's Lies We Believe About God, his latest book.
41:07: If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,
41:13: chrisarnson at gmail .com. And before the break, I read a question to you by our guest
41:18: Joe in Slovenia. And Joe asked, my question about the topic has to do with those pastors, theologians, apologists, etc.
41:26: who equate the shack, book and movie, with words, with works like Pilgrim's Progress and Chronicles of Narnia.
41:34: They seem to fail to understand that while the genre may be the same or similar, those works and others don't present
41:40: 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,
41:52: 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
42:09: Arian doctrine that Jesus was not God. And then we had the Church of Rome dominating
42:15: Christendom for centuries. So this is nothing new, really, that there's a lack of discernment.
42:20: But if you could comment specifically about our modern era. Sure. I wouldn't, like, for example,
42:28: 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 I don't really kind of, it's not the area
42:40: I kind of go to as much. But there is some amazing parts of Pilgrim's Progress, some of the pictures of it.
42:46: But it's all using biblical illustrations, every single place. I mean, if you go down the side of a typical
42:53: 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.
43:08: He's not using his imagination. This is John Bunyan talking about. He's not using his imagination on how to present
43:16: God. He's using similitude as represented in the Bible to show the journey of somebody and different types of people in their
43:26: Christian walk, and using biblical similitudes that have already been used, like an arrow gaze and things like that, in order to illustrate the difficulties and different paths.
43:39: We can use similitudes and analogies like that because it's based on scripture. Pilgrim's Progress is completely different.
43:46: I don't know if it'll ever be repeated again. I know people bring up C .S. Lewis a lot.
43:51: 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.
44:05: 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.
44:13: 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...
44:24: 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
44:30: 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.
44:42: C .S. Lewis wasn't even part of the evangelical wing of the Church of England, of which he was a part of.
44:48: He was very much part of the Anglo -Catholic wing, and he had some very heterodox views.
44:54: 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...
45:01: 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
45:10: 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 noted another part of the article, this is in Christianity today, by ordinary 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 had left this world as unbelievers, or as non -believers, or weaknesses.
45:58: 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
46:08: Christian at all. Now, not to get into that, because I've spent a little bit of time studying
46:14: Lewis a couple years ago, there's a number of Catholics who believe that he would have been a on the
46:21: Pope, and there was one other thing, I think it was on Mary. He was very much 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.
46:40: That's what I would just recommend. Look, Pilgrim's Progress is not the standard, and one of the reasons
46:46: I think it is biblical, what I can see, gone through it, everything, it adheres to scriptural standards and usabilities where it's appropriate to do so.
46:57: Chronicles of Narnia, not too sure. Completely different work, if you ask me. And then when you come to the shack, it's presenting
47:05: God. Here's God, and putting words and theology in the mouth of God. So you're talking about things that,
47:13: I'm astonished when people do it, because I'm just wondering, have they read
47:18: Pilgrim's Progress, or, and I think Chronicles of Narnia is another place, you know, it's not even comparable.
47:26: I think they're all three completely different works. Does that make sense? Yeah, and thank you very much,
47:33: 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.
47:41: What other lies does William Paul Young bring to light that he believes we, the
47:51: Church, are being deceived by? Well, again,
47:57: 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.
48:11: 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.
48:19: 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
48:29: 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.
48:40: 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.
48:49: So, basically he's saying, we're good. You know, we're not evil. He completely rejects that.
48:56: And another lie that he teaches is that God has no expectations. 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,
49:11: I can't remember the exact page, where, um, I'm going to find it if I look it up there, but that the...
49:19: I think it was Papa in the shack says, I don't need to punish sin.
49:25: Sin is its own punishment, because God in the shack does not have any expectations.
49:30: He does not have a law that is to be obeyed. In page 214 of Lies We Believe About God, he says,
49:39: 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.
49:48: 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.
49:56: 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?
50:05: 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.
50:15: 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.
50:28: We demanded the cross, apparently, because of our brokenness, because of the lie that we bought into.
50:34: And then, to add insult to injury, he said that Jesus submitted to our delusion.
50:43: Like, that's the quote in front of it. I know, and it's just, I don't know how to even...
50:48: You need about 10 hours to go through. There's a problem in every page of this book,
50:53: 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.
51:13: This is pretty pathetic, and I can hear the sighs of relief of death row inmates everywhere in the world as they hear these kinds of promises of nothing to be afraid of.
51:29: It's really pathetic. In fact, I don't want to break you, or interrupt you,
51:37: 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.
51:50: chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state of your country of residence, if you live outside the good old
52:00: USA, and please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.
52:06: 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,
52:20: Lies William Paul Young Believes About God, a Critique of Young's Lies We Believe About God, his latest book.
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58:00: Long Island Youth for Christ staff and volunteers meet with young people who need Jesus. We are rural and urban and we are always about the message of Jesus.
58:10: Our mission is to have a noticeable spiritual impact on Long Island, New York by engaging young people in the lifelong journey of following Christ.
58:18: Long Island Youth for Christ has been a stalwart bedrock ministry since 1959. We have a world -class staff and a proven track record of bringing consistent love and encouragement to youths in need all over the country and around the world.
58:32: Help honor our history by becoming a part of our future. Volunteer, donate, pray, or all of the above.
58:38: For details, call Long Island Youth for Christ at 631 -385 -8333.
58:45: That's 631 -385 -8333. Or visit liyfc .org.
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59:24: We're a diverse family of all ages enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ in fellowship, play, and together.
59:31: Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman and I invite you to come and join us here at Lindbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.
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59:44: Or visit lindbrookbaptist .org. That's lindbrookbaptist .org. One sure way all
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01:01:20: Or go to batterydepot .com. That's batterydepot .com. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am
01:01:30: I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,
01:01:37: I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, Pastor of Providence Baptist Church. We are a
01:01:43: Reformed Baptist Church and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.
01:01:50: We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.
01:01:58: That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostle's priority, it must not be ours either.
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01:04:56: 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
01:05:03: 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.
01:05:15: 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.
01:05:22: Before I return to our discussion with Paul Flynn, I want to remind you that the
01:05:28: Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology coming up very soon,
01:05:35: April 28th through the 30th at Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
01:05:42: I hope you join me there. I will have an exhibitors booth there, God willing, and speakers include
01:05:48: Richard Phillips and Carl Truman and others. For more details, go to alliancenet .org,
01:05:57: alliancenet .org, and you will find out more about this event by clicking on Events and just look up the
01:06:05: Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology 2017. And also, among the other many events that we'll be promoting over the weeks to come, there is a
01:06:16: Banner of Truth Pastors Conference that I hope that you join me at if you are indeed a minister.
01:06:24: They are giving me the honor of attending, even though I'm not a minister, because I am promoting their event for them.
01:06:31: And that's the 2017 U .S. Ministers' Conference featuring Dr. Joel Beeky, Dr.
01:06:37: Jeff Thomas, William Vandewaard, Mark Johnson, Jonathan Master, Carlton Wynn, and Ian Hamilton.
01:06:46: The theme of the conference is the Living and Enduring Word, and that's Tuesday, May 30th through Thursday, June 1st, and that is being held here in Pennsylvania.
01:06:58: And for more details on that event, go to banneroftruth .org,
01:07:05: banneroftruth .org, click on Events, and then click on 2017
01:07:10: U .S. Ministers' Conference, and you'll have all the information that you need on how to register for this event in Pennsylvania.
01:07:20: And I eagerly look forward to meeting many of you there. Please make sure you introduce yourself to me if you happen to, by God's grace, be able to attend.
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01:08:44: And that's also the address where you can send in a question for our guest, Paul Flynn, on our subject at hand, lies that William Paul Young believes about God.
01:08:58: And if you'd like to join us with a question, it's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.
01:09:05: Paul, what other lies does William Paul Young believe about God that we should be aware of?
01:09:13: I'm just, just in case anybody's listening, because I was talking there just for the break about just his belief about the cross.
01:09:22: And I just tried to just, I'll just give a quotation quickly, just in case anybody thinks I'm misrepresenting.
01:09:29: He says that there's nothing good about the crosses on page 149 of the book. And he says, then who originated the cross?
01:09:38: 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.
01:09:48: Frankly, it is often this cruel and monstrous God that the atheist refused to acknowledge or grant credibility in any sense.
01:09:57: 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.
01:10:05: And then he says in the next page, he said, and how did God respond to this profound brokenness?
01:10:11: Basically the brokenness that we demanded. You know, we raised our fist against God.
01:10:19: We demanded justice. He says God submitted to it.
01:10:24: So denial of God's sovereignty there. Basically man is sovereign in William Paul Young's estimation.
01:10:31: 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.
01:10:40: 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.
01:10:52: And one of those lies we found out at the later part of the book, we don't believe how special we are.
01:10:58: So, and then he does actually, he does look at Isaiah 53.
01:11:04: He mentions briefly part of Isaiah 53. Not looking at, no attention is paid into any exegesis of Isaiah 53 verse 10, which literally says, and it pleased the
01:11:21: 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.
01:11:33: 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,
01:11:43: 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 father poured out his wrath upon God the son.
01:11:55: God the son satisfied justice. Obviously, this is not an isolated view that he's holding.
01:12:02: 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.
01:12:11: Sadly, or probably maybe not churches at all, but synagogues of Satan. He said, another part, just one more quote, and it's on page 152.
01:12:20: This is Jesus, God submitting to our torture device and transforming it into an icon and monument of grace.
01:12:27: So the wrath of the cross is man's wrath. Now, you might say, okay, well, what is the good news?
01:12:33: 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.
01:12:48: 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.
01:12:57: 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.
01:13:07: 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.
01:13:18: So before that, he talks about kind of, he presents a kind of an Armenian, a hyper -Armenian decisionism straw man of the gospel.
01:13:29: 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.
01:13:37: 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
01:13:45: 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
01:13:55: 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.
01:14:07: Now he skips on a bit and he probably anticipates what will people say here.
01:14:13: And he said, are you suggesting that everyone is saved? That is, that you believe in universal salvation.
01:14:23: The next part he says, that is exactly what I am saying. Wow. So on page 118, if you want the proof that he's universalist, but he's taught this for years.
01:14:34: He's taught this for years, but page 118, he comes out and tells everybody. Wow. We have
01:14:40: Scott in Bryan, Ohio, who says, while reading the shack, I was very surprised to learn how many
01:14:48: 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?
01:15:03: Well, is the seeker -sensitive movement poised to answer any problem in the Christian faith?
01:15:09: I don't know. What's your comment on that? Yeah, I think, I remember when
01:15:15: I was studying Christian history and recent movements in Christianity, when
01:15:20: I was first up for a couple of years, I was very much focused on movements and kind of like seeing church history as kind of like this current being carried along.
01:15:31: 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.
01:15:46: Unbelief. That's the problem. Unbelief and rebellion from God. Hardness of heart.
01:15:53: And it starts at the fundamental level, you know, what are the marks of a true church?
01:15:58: 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.
01:16:07: And that keeps the church healthy, as in, you know, an unbeliever generally is not going to want to have biblical church discipline.
01:16:16: Unfortunately, if you remove biblical church discipline, you make it very comfortable for the false professor.
01:16:23: And not, you know, the church is always subject to mixture and error. False. And we, you know, we see that it just becomes filled with goats because there's no church discipline.
01:16:33: There's no call to live godly Christian life.
01:16:40: Now, coming up now to recent times, the secret sensitive movement, what's it doing?
01:16:46: It's sensitive, not to God. It's not in all of God's word.
01:16:52: 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.
01:17:05: 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.
01:17:15: I've heard him use it a lot. It's, what you win them with, you will win them too.
01:17:22: And if you use garbage, if you use watered down theology or doctrinal, doctrineless spirituality, feel good
01:17:34: 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 too.
01:17:44: That's what they're going to believe. I mean, it's as if the secret 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.
01:18:06: I mean, it is a bit like that, actually, because before they know it, they're dead.
01:18:14: Unfortunately, many of the frogs are spiritually dead when they depart this earth as well.
01:18:20: And the secret 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.
01:18:36: There are Reformed churches on paper that are buying into secret sensitive methodology, which is very strange because it's really an
01:18:44: Arminian mindset that you're not relying on the Holy Spirit to draw his people to the house of God and into salvation, most of all.
01:18:55: 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
01:19:08: 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.
01:19:19: So you have to add inventions of men to get people in there. It usually takes about a generation of ignorance about, say, the
01:19:29: Westminster Confession of Faith or in a Baptist church in 1689 on the Baptist Confession of Faith to what people can say,
01:19:35: I'm a Calvinist, I'm Reformed. But to be honest, what do those things even mean? To most people, it's just like a crest or a badge just for the globe
01:19:46: I belong to. But to explain to somebody, would they really understand it? Then you have to ask yourself, are you really
01:19:52: 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.
01:20:09: 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
01:20:24: 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
01:20:40: Calvinistic theology or the Reformed doctrine. 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?
01:21:00: Well, this would kind of, again, continue on with the same point, but just to look at universalism just for a second.
01:21:08: Kruger, C. Baxter Kruger, who wrote that book I mentioned earlier in the show called
01:21:15: The Shack Revisited, and again, Paul Young gives a recommendation, even on the front of the book.
01:21:22: He says, I'll just remind myself there, if you want to understand better the perspectives of theology, the frame
01:21:27: The Shack, this book is for you, and that's on the front cover of his book. And then in the foreword, as I would have called it, in the foreword of the book is written by C.
01:21:39: Baxter Kruger. C. Baxter Kruger is also a universalist, and it's very, very clear if you read
01:21:44: The Shack Revisited which was published back in 2012, that he was a universalist.
01:21:50: But Kruger gives his universalism, you know, that God is in relationship with the whole and unique community, with the whole human race, on page 1011.
01:22:02: I'm just going to read Paul Young's own words, which show that he's universalist, page 54.
01:22:10: So he says, right, he talks about separation. He says, you know, but our religions assume separation.
01:22:18: Talking about, you know, there's different types of religions and things like that being apart. He says, so when we hear the word
01:22:24: 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.
01:22:34: And I don't know if that's kind of a straw man false gospel, if that's either a straw man or that's just what he was taught.
01:22:44: Or he's ignorant of what the biblical gospel is. I'm not too sure.
01:22:49: 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,
01:23:00: Jesus challenges every religious category. If we take Jesus seriously, then we're not dealing with outsiders and insiders.
01:23:09: We are dealing with those who are seeing and those who are not seeing, trusting and not trusting.
01:23:16: So he's saying you're not dealing with outsiders and insiders. And it's very similar to like kind of,
01:23:21: 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 in their judgment that it's complete new age or whatever it is.
01:23:39: 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, ways of thinking as outsiders until they pray a prayer to quote, get in, unquote, then of course not.
01:23:53: If you are asking, does God relate to all of us beloved insiders who are completely ignorant and miserable, does
01:24:00: God love us and incessantly find ways to lead us to discover Jesus in our only way, truth and life, then of course.
01:24:08: 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.
01:24:19: And the thing is, the gospel is to realize who we are, realize how special we are, and to enjoy this relationship.
01:24:26: It's to rely, and it's very similar to new age because the new age will try to tell you self -actualization, self -discovery, discovering who you are.
01:24:37: It's all about you, really. And yeah, and it becomes kind of, it does become a worship of self.
01:24:44: And on page, I don't know, and that's universalism. Then you have to kind of wonder, well, what does he teach about hell?
01:24:52: Because it's a massive problem. Christ spoke about hell quite a lot in order for it not to be spoken about.
01:25:00: Again, we talked about it there earlier in the show. I'll just give one quote really briefly.
01:25:12: He quotes from Romans 8, 38 to 39, which says,
01:25:18: 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
01:25:30: Lord. He thinks that is, that us is everyone.
01:25:37: Not the elect, not for whom He foreknowned, then He also justified, then
01:25:43: He justified, then He also glorified. Very, very clear if you read previous verses of the
01:25:49: Golden Chain of Redemption earlier in the chapter. But according to Paul Young, this is every single human being and possibly even the devil.
01:26:00: If you look at, you know, yeah, I mean, he never mentions the devil in any of his writings that I've seen.
01:26:08: And it becomes, yeah, complete universalism. And the other thing, apart from that, like, hell to him is an age of redemptive purification.
01:26:21: Basically purgatory. Yeah, exactly. We have
01:26:28: 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.
01:26:34: RJ in White Plains, New York wants to know, I know that you are from the Republic of Ireland.
01:26:41: 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
01:26:52: 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?
01:27:02: And we'll take your answer when we come back from our final break. This will be a much briefer break.
01:27:09: And if you'd like to join us on the air, now's your time to send in the email, chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.
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01:32:41: And I want to thank Tom in West Islip, Long Island, New York, for complimenting the
01:32:46: Battery Depot ad and making a promise that he is going to be using Battery Depot for all of his battery needs from now on.
01:32:54: Thanks a lot, Tom. And by the way, it's kind of interesting to have the Chariots of Fire melody in the background.
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01:33:09: Anyway, thanks a lot, Tom. Before the break, Paul, we had RJ in White Plains, New York, who said, is most of the heresy infiltrating the church there in the
01:33:22: Republic of Ireland coming from homegrown sources or from the United States?
01:33:28: And of course, we could include the UK because you're right on the borderline of the UK. Oh, well, when it comes to the
01:33:35: Republic of Ireland, like the Republic of Ireland's very different to Northern Ireland. In the
01:33:41: Republic of Ireland, we've never... There's been various times when there's has been lots of gospel preaching.
01:33:51: You know, there's been different Reformed churches at different times in different parts of the country. But for the last,
01:33:57: I don't know, 50, 100 years, there hasn't been much. And I think at one point that there was maybe 5, 10 % of this, or what we would call the
01:34:06: South, was Protestant. But there are like,
01:34:13: I mean, there's a lot of, you know, maybe in every town there might be a Presbyterian church, or what we would call
01:34:18: 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...
01:34:29: They don't seem to believe the gospel at all to there are some faithful ministers within their ranks, you know, to female ministers and everything else.
01:34:39: It's a complete mixed bag. It depends, like for the South, you go to, you know, where I'm originally from, which is
01:34:45: 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
01:34:55: Christians. There's still very few. There are pockets of Christian churches in places like Cork.
01:35:05: You might find, there might be a couple of fellowships almost in every street. But I think that's probably part of the problem.
01:35:11: It's very, at least my experience of the few churches I attended while I was there, and I was saved for a while before I left
01:35:20: Cork and eventually moved to Italy, and was kind of a very, it didn't seem to take church membership extremely seriously.
01:35:31: 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 it should be, should have the opposite effectiveness.
01:35:44: But yeah, I wouldn't like, it's been incredibly weak. There's very little
01:35:50: Reformed presence in the, I think I, to where I'm originally from, Cork, and there's probably a couple hundred thousand who live in that city, there's no
01:36:00: Reformed church to my knowledge there at all. And there's been attempts to plan churches there.
01:36:05: There's a, in Galway, there's a Reformed Presbyterian church, which is in the west of the country. In Dublin, there's a
01:36:12: 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
01:36:20: Reformed Baptist church. And in the north of the city, not exactly sure where, there's a Reformed Presbyterian fellowship.
01:36:27: It's not a constituted church as such, but it is a fellowship, a kind of preaching station where ministers from the
01:36:34: Reformed Presbyterian church of Ireland, my denomination, go there and preach in the north of Dublin.
01:36:40: There's bits, there's a lot of problems. If you go to a typical,
01:36:46: 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.
01:36:54: There's an unwillingness to be, you know, like, oh, well, I'm Armenian, I'm Calvinist, we'll all get together.
01:37:00: 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 the sermon back then to realize that they believed incredibly heretical things, incredibly, maybe even, you know, then not having a confession of faith, something that I wouldn't have seen until much, much later.
01:37:22: There are not many good churches. Then you go to Northern Ireland and there's a lot more.
01:37:28: I mean, there's a lot more good churches in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is in decline and by any stretch of the imagination.
01:37:36: 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 want to give them a gospel tract,
01:37:45: I'm fine, I've got that sorted, thank you very much, that kind of an answer that you might get in like something similar to the southern states of America.
01:37:53: And there's kind of an influx, but at least from what I'm seeing, or maybe kind of,
01:37:59: 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
01:38:07: 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.
01:38:27: That's kind of where Northern Ireland is at the moment and it's a drastic decline. There's a drastic decline in state government.
01:38:36: There's a huge change in the last couple of years. Basically, the liberals have completely taken over the
01:38:44: Northern Ireland Assembly recently. So Northern Ireland is, while it used to be very conservative, meaning that necessarily of all this is in Christian in parts, has gone very liberal and it's moving incredibly quickly in that direction.
01:38:58: Now, obviously for centuries, the Southern part of Ireland was dominated by the darkness of Roman Catholicism, but would
01:39:06: Roman Catholicism today be really just a nominal,
01:39:14: I'm talking about predominantly in the Southern part of Ireland. Is it just really that the typical
01:39:19: Catholic is a nominal believer, probably only goes to church on Christmas and Easter and weddings and funerals or are there still a lot of very religious, active churchgoing
01:39:31: Catholics going to mass and so on? Yeah, for the attendance,
01:39:39: I think has gone down a lot, but it depends on the part of the country. And I think around here,
01:39:44: I see a lot of people when I drive church 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.
01:39:57: The average Roman Catholic, this isn't really anything new, as you get with a lot of places, doesn't really, wouldn't really understand transubstantiation, wouldn't really understand anything about really what they believe.
01:40:11: Really, even transubstantiation, because that was like a given even as a little kid,
01:40:16: I understood that, I wrongly understood that that wafer was becoming the body of Christ, of course,
01:40:25: I was heretically wrong, but that was something that was pretty well understood by most even children,
01:40:32: I think, when I was going to school in the 60s and 70s. I think that's probably where it stopped though.
01:40:38: 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
01:40:46: I've met over the years, but they're usually the very zealous ones who join orders and would be very much involved in, say, evangelism for the
01:40:56: Roman Catholic Church. Those kind of people who would be, you know, potentially future priests and stuff like that, possibly even leaning towards catechism, you know, like rejections or somewhat rejection of Vatican II or the direction of Vatican II.
01:41:13: So you get pockets like that, but the mainstream, average churchgoer would really not be interested in even talking about religion.
01:41:22: They'll say, I go, but that's it. But it's changed a lot because look, I felt fairly religious years ago.
01:41:30: I was 18, 19, still going to mass, still kind of believing.
01:41:36: I, 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,
01:41:45: I would still be reeking of drink from the night before. And that was seen as like funny. That's Ireland for you.
01:41:51: I mean, we have, you know, it's an underestimation of the century, but we have a massive drink problem.
01:41:58: It's seen as funny. And, you know, you just, yeah, this, it's just everywhere.
01:42:06: This kind of love affair with alcohol and with sin. And it's just like, just enough religion just to kind of go,
01:42:14: I'm a bit religious while just living just like the rest of the world. That's kind of what's gone at the moment.
01:42:20: Well, obviously, since you did a documentary on the shack, going back to the listener's specific question, obviously
01:42:29: American heresies are infiltrating the church in the Republic of Ireland and the
01:42:34: UK. These things are having some kind of a negative influence there. Yeah, and I think it's more,
01:42:41: I don't think it's necessarily, like, yeah, it's true. And look, there's different, there's different,
01:42:47: 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
01:43:01: United States or somewhere like that will come over and speak, he'd fill the church.
01:43:07: If you have just as able of a preacher who's known the road or from Scotland or from Wales or from whatever, you get half the crowd.
01:43:16: I think there's a bit of, you know, the kind of constant looking towards, you know, rightly and wrongly, probably.
01:43:26: I think we just too much maybe over here constantly look towards the
01:43:32: United States and there's 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.
01:43:46: I mean, we shouldn't be putting any preachers on pedestals that sometimes people will get frustrated with their own preacher.
01:43:55: Golly, 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.
01:44:07: Often we kind of have it, we can have a checklist of all the things that your church is supposed to provide us with rather than serving in the body of Christ.
01:44:15: But is there infiltration? Sure, there is. The internet, things like that.
01:44:22: But, you know, I suppose it's like if America gets a cold, we'll catch it.
01:44:31: 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.
01:44:45: Okay. So I'm going to just focus, well, like, this book attacks the gospel.
01:44:51: So let's, you know, maybe every page seems to have an issue in this book.
01:44:57: But I really want to focus on the gospel here. He attacks the notion of sin.
01:45:03: It is not realizing how good you are, how special you are, how it's basically, it's like a therapy session that you would get in a psychoanalyst, that you have to have high self -esteem.
01:45:14: That's sin in this, in William Paul Young's mind, that you are good and that you, almost repentance is seeing how that you are fundamentally good and not believing a lie about your being.
01:45:28: He even believes that, he mentioned about a guy named Matt in the book, on page 204 to 208, and he said
01:45:34: Matt is good, even though he's an atheist and unbeliever and that he's accepted in the beloved and talks about,
01:45:41: God has no expectations. There is no law. The only thing that's been submitted to in the wrath of God is the wrath of man.
01:45:50: The gospel, what is the good news according to William Paul Young? The gospel is that you realize how amazing you are.
01:45:58: 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 Norman's Appeal and all this kind of thing back in the 1960s, 1970s.
01:46:15: It's not anything new. It's focusing on man, what makes man happy. That is the good news.
01:46:21: Apparently, you're already saved. What you have to just realize is who you are and how great you have us.
01:46:28: That's kind of, that's the gospel according to William Paul Young. And it makes grace not amazing at all.
01:46:36: I mean, what's so amazing about that grace? What's so, what is redemptive about that?
01:46:42: What is even conjuring up the thought of rescue or salvation?
01:46:52: Why did Christ die a torturous death? I mean, by the way, does
01:46:57: Young even believe in the perpetuatory sacrifice of Christ at all?
01:47:03: Was the wrath of the Father poured upon him in Young's understanding of Calvary?
01:47:12: No. He was on a radio interview. I don't have the original. The only thing I've ever been able to find was
01:47:17: 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.
01:47:34: 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
01:47:40: Christian. Right. End of story. And so that's the thing. He doesn't believe the gospel in any way, shape, or form.
01:47:49: What was satisfied of the cross was our wrath and an appeasing, you know, it's like if a child throws a tantrum and we let, you know, like we let the child go crazy and,
01:48:05: 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.
01:48:13: You know, it's just, it's absurd, but it's kind of like the idea of therapy.
01:48:21: You get it out of your system. I remember we were talking about probably the last time I was on your show, you know, about 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.
01:48:33: It's almost a bit like that. And, you know, Jesus submitted, according to William Paul Young, to our wrath, not the wrath of the
01:48:42: 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 is that God is presented by the historic church, by the creed of the
01:48:57: Reformation, et cetera, and so on, the God of the Bible, he called him, blasphemously, a cosmic abuser.
01:49:04: 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.
01:49:13: So that's the cross. Universalism, William Paul Young is, without a shadow of a doubt, a universalist.
01:49:20: You may try to weave around that when that was a couple years ago. He tried to weave around it. He can't do it anymore. But he is undoubtedly universalist.
01:49:27: He, in an interview a couple years ago, when I think he was still trying to avoid the label, you know, gave an interview,
01:49:36: I can't remember what, it was kind of like a short video podcast, about six minutes long. It's on YouTube. I think it's called
01:49:42: On the Road or something like that. And he gave about six definitions of universalism. And he said, yes, if that's your definition, universalism, yes,
01:49:50: I'm 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...
01:50:02: 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.
01:50:14: Hell has given a new definition. The gospel has given a new definition. Sin has given a new definition. Hell has given a new definition.
01:50:21: He uses all the lingo, but he redefined everything. That's universalism.
01:50:26: And then hell... In hell, right? On page 182, I'll just give you one more quote.
01:50:35: Just, he believes it's a significant lie. I don't know,
01:50:41: I might have quoted this earlier. But that you cannot be saved after you die. So you can be saved after you die.
01:50:50: And to be honest, if it's, as he says at the end of the book, that God, Papa, and all -consuming fire of relentless affection...
01:51:00: Hell doesn't exactly sound that terrifying. Hell is all -consuming fire of relentless affection.
01:51:08: It sounds wonderful, doesn't it? It makes a mockery of the
01:51:14: 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, they call it a hackatina,
01:51:31: 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.
01:51:39: 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.
01:51:51: Well, what is the 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.
01:52:03: If you look at some of the arguments, some of the arguments wouldn't be too similar to some Armenian arguments, sadly.
01:52:09: 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?
01:52:24: But number two, I mean, is there, does Christ himself evangelize those in hell, or what's going on there?
01:52:31: 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.
01:52:42: So he's saying, I think what he's saying, Ray, is like, if you go into hell, you're just saying no to relationship with God. And he said
01:52:49: God, with utmost respect and reverence, submits to our choice, even while utterly opposing it.
01:52:55: God, who is love, not only allows our choice, but joins us in our humanity in order to rescue us from our choices.
01:53:04: 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.
01:53:12: Two of them he categorically rejects and leaves only one left over. He says there's eternal damnation.
01:53:18: He doesn't believe that. He shows in many, many different places. Number two, annihilation.
01:53:24: He 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.
01:53:36: Yeah, that's what we mentioned before. It seems like some kind of a new age version of purgatory or something.
01:53:44: 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,
01:53:59: I'm good. I'll just stay here. It doesn't make any sense. Well, we do have, let's see, we have
01:54:11: Bibi in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. She says,
01:54:17: I'm not certain, but I seem to remember that William Paul Young may have been influenced by Quakers.
01:54:28: Is this correct or am I misremembering something? Do you know anything about a
01:54:34: Quaker mystic connection there? Possible. I think he claims to be influenced from a lot of different things.
01:54:43: And yeah, he sees himself as kind of a thinker outside the box, but yeah, nothing comes to mind at the moment.
01:54:52: 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,
01:55:13: The Shack, of correcting them without being too much of a bully to turn them away from your opinions altogether?
01:55:21: 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?
01:55:38: I would ask them how they got saved, honestly. You know, because I would want to...
01:55:44: I would just kind of go, you know, when we converted, what is sin?
01:55:51: I would go back to the basics. You're dealing with somebody who doesn't understand some simple...
01:55:58: 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
01:56:04: Lord, that's for sure. But you've got two possibilities. They're either very immature in the
01:56:10: Lord, and they're baby Christians, and they cannot discern what would be fairly, fairly fundamental things if God has revealed himself in the scriptures or doesn't know the
01:56:23: Lord at all and has a God of their own imagination. This is why I kind of made the movie the way
01:56:29: I made it. It's kind of like a gospel track. It's a big red flag to me if somebody loves the book.
01:56:38: 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
01:56:46: Berean. But if somebody is born again, a new creature in Christ, all things are passed away.
01:56:54: All things become new. They will be different. And if they hate the biblical instruction you're trying to give them, obviously be gentle about it.
01:57:03: 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
01:57:17: Lord? What did they believe about God? What did they believe about sin? And what did they believe about their condition before or after they were saved?
01:57:26: You know, were they lost? Were they in bondage to sin? What did God save them from, et cetera? 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?
01:57:55: Yeah, it's his first nonfiction book. And I would suspect it won't be his last.
01:58:03: 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.
01:58:16: Yeah, he kind of like, he's very much about telling stories. It's very much about anecdotes.
01:58:22: It's very much about using philosophy and reason. He doesn't use the scriptures.
01:58:28: 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 T.
01:58:36: Baxter Kruger, you know, the shack revisited, done lectures with him, things like that, and talked about these issues and to a receptive audience, an audience that has no problem with him and doesn't really, maybe you could say, ask any challenging questions.
01:58:53: And so he's all, he's been teaching theology for years. It's just now that he knows he's going to have a bigger audience.
01:58:59: He knows after the movie's come out through Lionsgate and grossed something like, I think it was $3 or $4 million in the box office.
01:59:08: So that, 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.
01:59:19: 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.
01:59:26: We're out of time, actually, and Megiddofilms .org is your website, Megiddofilms .org,
01:59:33: 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.
01:59:41: 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.