Inside the Prosperity Gospel Movement with Costi Hinn | Conference | Sessions 6-8/Q&A

We didn't even have to start the organ playing, we just turned the lights on and everybody got quiet. All right, we're going to start our second half of this afternoon's session, so would you please stand as we sing,

All Creatures of Our God and King. Creatures of our

God and King, lift up your voice and with us sing, oh praise

Him, hallelujah. Thou burning sun with golden beam,

Thou silver moon with softer gleam, oh praise

Him, oh praise Him, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

Let all things their

Creator bless, and worship Him in humbleness, oh praise

Him, hallelujah. Praise, praise the

Father, praise the Son, and praise the

Spirit three in one, oh praise Him, oh praise

Him, hallelujah, hallelujah.

All the redeemed washed by His blood, come and rejoice in His great love, oh praise

Him, hallelujah. Christ has defeated every sin, cast all your burdens now on Him, oh praise

Him, oh praise Him, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

He shall return in power to reign, heaven and earth will join to sing, oh praise

Him, hallelujah. Then who shall fall on bended knee, all creatures of our

God and King, oh praise Him, oh praise

Him, hallelujah, hallelujah, oh praise

Him, oh praise Him, hallelujah, hallelujah.

The church's one foundation is

Jesus Christ her Lord. She is

His new creation by water and the

Word. From heaven He came and sought her to be

His holy bride. With His own blood

He bought her and for her life He died.

He lept from every nation, yet one o 'er all the earth.

Her charter of salvation, one

Lord, one faith, one birth. One holy name she blesses, partakes one holy food.

And to one hope she presses, with every grace endured.

With toil and tribulation and tumult of her war, she waits the consummation of peace forevermore.

Till with the vision glorious, her longing eyes are blessed, and the great church victorious shall be the church at rest.

She on earth hath union with God the three in one, and mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is one.

O happy ones and holy, Lord give us grace that we, like them the meek and lowly on high may dwell with You.

You may be seated. I hope all of you had a wonderful lunch.

I know I did, and I was behaving myself. I could have gone for another round, but I would have made a very sluggish preacher for all of you.

This session is titled, Reaching Those Caught in Deception, and we will become more practical and more applicable with our evangelism in this particular session.

I don't know what session number it is. To be honest, I have no idea. I've lost count.

I just know the notes are all in order, and I'm just going to keep on preaching, whichever one is next, which is exciting.

It's all Bible. If you will, turn in your Bibles to Jude, verses 17 to 23.

Jude 17 to 23.

Jude really only has a chapter. So we'll look at it together in verses 17 to 23.

We'll read the text together, and then let's pray and study God's Word.

Jude writes, But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our

Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, In the last time there will be mockers following after their own ungodly lusts.

These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly -minded, devoid of the Spirit.

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the

Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our

Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. And have mercy on some who are doubting.

Save others, snatching them out of the fire. And on some, have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.

Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Father, we come now to a text which presses upon us the importance of our role in both holding fast to the truth and sharing that truth with others.

There is a warning and yet an exhortation to be a faithful witness.

Help us to do that. I know there are many here who have loved ones or friends, maybe even neighbors or people they regularly work with who are caught up in deception.

We want to be useful to you. We know that you will save, that you can save. And we want to be obedient vessels for you to use in that.

Help us to be sensitive and yet courageous.

Help us to speak the truth and yet with a heart of love. Help us to be very careful where you'd want us to be and very eager and even faithfully aggressive to go in, share the gospel, and seek to snatch people out of the burning.

We pray all of this in Christ's name. Amen. You have in church life what we would call outreach, right?

You do an event or go somewhere, conduct some aspect of evangelism.

We think of outreach in terms of doing something out in the community or in the world seeking to evangelize.

But if I were to give this particular session a practical nickname,

I'd say this is inreach. It's inreach. It's seeking to reach people who think they're in.

They're caught up in deception. They're caught up in something. And while by definition you and I would say, well, they're out.

They're not in the faith. They're not under sound teaching. In their own minds, they're in. They're a part of the church.

They're reached. They're good. I was talking to a sister earlier. She was sharing how difficult it is and even frustrating it can be to talk to certain people that she cares deeply about because they're just so certain that what they're in is the true church and what they're hearing is the true gospel.

It can be very difficult to remain in that tension, if you will, of dealing with a blind person spiritually but knowing that you need to be a faithful evangelist.

We have a tall task in front of us. Apostasy is everywhere. There are people who seem to make genuine confessions of faith, and yet they're being carried away by false doctrines.

And in the midst of all that, we have this calling on our lives, all of us do, to be ambassadors.

We carry the message of the king to people who need it. And we know that he's sovereign, and we know that he'll save.

And so we need to be faithful and yet also be patient and be prudent based on who we're dealing with.

And that's where Jude gets to, and he gives us a clear roadmap, if you will, for reaching people who are caught in deception and how you and I are to operate.

I want to walk you through a few key application points here as we walk through the text. The first is, number one, you need to remember the truth.

You need to remember the truth. He starts in verse 17, he says, but you, beloved.

And there's a transition there that is happening where he's opened the eyes of his readers to the deception, the apostasy, what's going on around them, and then signals this contrast, but you, beloved.

So you who are saved, you who are blood -bought, you who are confident in the truth, you're different.

And what does different do? Well, you, he says, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our

Lord Jesus Christ. You need to remember the truth. Prior instruction gives us peace of mind.

You know why you don't need to freak out and have anxiety attacks and lose your minds over all of the darkness and the apostasy going on in the church today?

Because you're not Christ. You're not the Savior. You're an ambassador. Also, you're not without the truth.

You already know the solution. You know the answers. The hardest part, what might make you go grayer than you already are, if you are like me, you're getting grayer, is the difficult tension of being patient while people drive you a little up the wall with what they're buying into.

But in general, you're not wondering, what are we going to believe? What are we going to do? No, you already know.

You need to remember the truth. You have peace of mind. Also, it's not a shock that there's apostasy.

You remember the truth that they were saying to you, he writes, in the last time there shall be mockers following after their own ungodly lusts.

This is to remember the clear writings of the prophets and those who have come before that predicted there would be apostasy in the last days.

There would be those who are lovers of self and they are haters of God. People are going to wander from sound doctrine.

They're going to chase the wind. They're going to get lost in all of this. And there's a war on truth.

And your adversary takes no days off. He doesn't do vacation days like you do. Satan doesn't do sick days.

He doesn't have holidays. He's on all the time doing what he does. And he uses apostates and false teachers to deceive.

Scripture has no shortage of warnings on this. And so this helps to prepare our hearts for our daily task.

That we are a people who are very confident, very hopeful, very joyful.

We know who is on the throne, that is our king. Yes, but we also know we are in the midst of war.

Ongoing war. Spiritual war. 2 Corinthians 11, verses 13 -15.

A passage that we already talked about briefly. Reminds us that Satan is ever disguising himself as an angel of light.

2 Peter 2, verses 1 -3. A very interesting passage. One that would be helpful for you to keep in your memory bank.

Where Peter writes, But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you.

And they'll secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them.

Notice it's not always overt. It will be covert, subtle, secretly.

And they're destructive. They bring swift destruction upon themselves.

And many, Peter says, not some, many will follow after their, and he lists some words here, sensuality.

There's this personality cult, if you will, about them. And because of them, the way of truth will be maligned.

And in their greed, they will exploit you with false word. Their judgment from long ago is not idle.

Their destruction is not asleep. Peter is predicting all of this apostasy that is to come.

Of course, we already spent last session reflecting on Acts 20 and Paul's exhortation to the elders that there will be those who come from the inside.

In 1 Timothy 4, verse 1, But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.

There will be apostasy. You need to remember the truth. In 2

Timothy 3, 1 -5, Paul says, But realize this, as if to help

Timothy remember, Hey, please don't forget. Please don't look shocked.

There's an influence and a power, if you will, in a good way, of non -anxious leadership.

You know the moment where maybe mom is freaking out and the kids are freaking out, but dad is stable.

That makes everybody feel a little more comfortable when dad's not pulling his hair out, acting like, you know.

In church leadership, when people are insecure or sheep are skittish and the leaders say,

We know. The Bible gives church leaders and the church at large the ability to see the tide turning and see the plays that the defense or the offense is going to run.

Think like football. A smart quarterback, stepping back from the line, calling audibles, reading the defense, makes everybody feel secure.

And we would even say, Wow, he knows something's coming. We would say that that's the mark of great leadership or a smart quarterback.

Well, so it is for the Christian and the Christian leader to simply look at the scriptures and say, Yeah, in the last days, difficult times will come.

We knew this would happen. Men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self -control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power, avoid such men of these.

And so the church never has to say, I can't believe this is happening. Or can you believe this?

Yes, we can. Today's evangelical landscape preaches a tolerance narrative.

It would be viewed as unloving to say many of the things that we've had to say during this conference or you would maybe even hear on a

Sunday or in a Sunday school class. But nearly every book in the New Testament deals with false teaching and exposes false teaching and exalts what's true.

You need to remember the truth. And then Jude says, these are the ones who cause divisions, worldly -minded and devoid of the

Spirit. One of the more helpful, perhaps overlooked passages when we talk about division, where you may be called divisive because you say truthful things to people.

Let's say you're being divisive. You're causing division. You're throwing stones at the body of Christ.

You're being an agent of division. Well, Jude says these are the ones who cause divisions, and they're worldly -minded.

They're devoid of the Spirit. You'll hear that all the time. Doctrine and Dovides just love people.

Don't talk about what's false. It just drags people down. Don't talk about sin. Just talk about hope. We're all on a journey.

No way is the right way. The Pharisees pointed the finger. Christians should open their arms.

Look at how the world has changed. The church should adapt. But I want you to think for just a moment about all of the ways in which false teachers and apostates are actually dividing the church.

They'll say if you're not hearing from God like I am, you don't have the second blessing, the anointing, or the

Holy Spirit like me. That's divisive. You think about those who would teach tongues as an essential evidence of having the

Holy Spirit. That's divisive. There's no second -class citizens in God's kingdom.

But they'll make it as though there is. You'll hear our church is a signs and wonders church.

We've got real power. I've been told that by family members, younger family members, who are currently next generation in ministry, saying, you know,

Costi, it's great. You preach the Bible. You've got the Word. You've got a solid Word. But we've got the

Word, if you know what we mean. We've got the power. If you're sick, your lack of faith is the problem.

Divisive. All of the man -made doctrines that are preached by these false teachers, they are worldly, not godly.

And this is what often causes churches to split and causes division within the body. And often, you'll speak with church leaders or people who have had churches divide over this, and one side typically seems to believe they have special revelation from God.

They've got a bigger, deeper, more powerful in with Christ. They think they can do whatever they want, teach whatever they want, and that God is speaking to them.

So they have no need to submit to Scripture. They believe that they're receiving direct revelation from God. This is divisive.

This is worldly -minded. This is devoid of the Spirit. Romans 16, verses 17 to 18 says,

Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye, literally mark, those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you've learned, and turn from them.

There is a good division that is to happen when you remember the truth. You veer away from, you avoid, and even mark.

The Greek word he uses there is skopeo. You can hear the word scope in it. You're to put the crosshairs, so to speak, on those who are causing division.

Why? They're teaching things that are contrary to what you learn. Paul says, For such men are slaves, not to our

Lord Jesus Christ, but of their own appetites. And by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting.

It is amazing to me how accurate the Bible is to predict exactly what we see today.

There's no need to be confused. The Bible says doctrine matters, and division comes through those who pervert the gospel and who malign sound doctrine.

That's the goal of every false teacher. They seek to separate the body of Christ and thus conquer it.

It's a divide and conquer strategy. Division doesn't come through believers who are standing for the truth.

You're not being divisive when you're standing for the truth. It brings unity. Division doesn't come when a pulpit will unapologetically preach the word.

Unity comes. Church health, spiritual growth comes. And so Jude first and foremost highlights, but you beloved, you need to remember the words that were spoken before.

You need to remember the truth and understand the context that you're in and what you're dealing with.

Number two, you need to grow in the truth. You need to grow in the truth. Look at verse 20 there at the beginning.

But you beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith.

So if the ones who are devoid of the spirit divide and tear apart, the ones who are rooted in the spirit, growing in their faith, are building up and bonding together.

But you beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith is a picture of those who take

Hebrews 12, 1 and 2 to heart where the author of Hebrews says, therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter or finisher of our faith.

The idea there, I have a friend of mine who preached this one time and he said, have you ever run a marathon with a parka?

I remember just thinking of the visuals, rather humorous. And he said, you could, but you'll be a lot faster and a lot more efficient if you lose the parka.

You need to grow up. You need to look at your sin and want to deal with it. You need to understand the truth and grow in that truth.

You need to nourish your life on the words of sound doctrine. You need to feast on God's word.

You cannot be effective in standing firm and reaching people if you don't remember the truth and also if you are not growing in the truth.

You need to be being built up on your most holy faith. Ephesians 4, 14.

As the result of faithful church leaders, Paul writes, we are no longer to be children tossed to and fro, here and there, by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine and by the trickery of men and the craftiness and deceitful scheming.

He goes on to say, building yourself up in your most holy faith, praying in the Spirit. Praying in the

Holy Spirit. This building up of ourselves in the faith, it's not a solo effort.

The Spirit of God is working in us. We're praying in the Holy Spirit. When you pray in something, you pray in Jesus' name, or you pray in the

Holy Spirit, the name of someone or something, biblically speaking, would be an identity, it would be a label, it would be reputation and character.

So to pray in the name of Jesus is not some magic phrase, in Jesus' name I pray, and you get whatever you want because you said the little phrase at the end and now he'll do it.

It's to pray in line with the character and the reputation of Christ. To pray in the

Holy Spirit is to pray in the reputation and the will and the purpose and the role and the character of the

Spirit of God. And so you're praying that which is in line with his role and his goal. What's his role and his goal?

John 16, Jesus says, He will glorify Me. So your effort in growing in the truth is to bring glory to Christ.

Your prayers are that you would glorify Christ. A believer that is truly praying in the Spirit and walking by the

Spirit, the word there that Paul uses in Galatians 5, to walk by the Spirit, the

Greek word peripateo means to go about, to be preoccupied with, to constantly be obsessed with, busy with, the things of the

Spirit of God. This is how you grow in the truth and then how you can be an effective witness with the truth.

You would think of it like this. If your life is a pool and you're filled up with the Spirit of God and the pursuits that revolve around the

Holy Spirit and what He would have you do and what He calls you to do, then there really is not a lot of room for anything else.

When you live your life that way, you will grow exponentially. Why? Well, because there's no encumbrances.

There's no wasted time, no wasted effort. You're absolutely all wrapped up in what the

Spirit of God would have you do. Then in verse 21 he says, keep yourselves in the love of God waiting anxiously for the mercy of our

Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. The word keep there, the idea of guarding and preserving.

One of the biggest factors in our spiritual growth is keeping obedience and sound doctrine and a love for God pumping in and keeping the things that stunt our growth out.

What was pure truth in Jude's day was being defiled.

There was apostasy everywhere. And so, growth, spiritually speaking, keeping yourself in the love of God, waiting anxiously in a good way for the return of the

Lord, looking forward to His coming again is the key to your spiritual protection.

A love for God, a life devoted to Him, being rooted in Him, all things that benefit you spiritually and make you an effective witness.

The old adage is true, and they say you can't take people where you haven't been. Everybody can be an evangelist.

Everybody can share the gospel, but you will be most effective when you are busy about the

Father's business and growing in the truth so then you can share the truth with others.

You're making the most of your time because the days are evil. Why? Well, because, as Calvin said, men are not the authors of salvation, but they are the ministers of it.

You are supposed to be reaching people. You are supposed to be the minister of salvation wherever the

Lord would have you. Every single day. In any sphere that God puts you in. He's the author, but you're the minister of it.

And so thirdly, you don't just need to remember the truth. You don't just need to be growing in the truth.

But third, you need to share the truth. You need to share the truth. This is where we look at verse 22.

Jude gets practical. He says, And have mercy on some who are doubting.

I'll give you three categories here. The doubters, the deceived, and the dangerous.

The doubters, the deceived, and the dangerous. By way of application, we can look at how we should be dealing with certain people.

And this would be for you who have questions, and I know we all do in some way, shape, or form. How should I be operating with a certain person in any given moment?

How can I walk with wisdom towards outsiders? Making the most of every single moment. He says,

Have mercy on some who are doubting. The word literally means somebody who's wavering on the line.

They're partial to one side, but uncertain. They're in the middle, but hesitant to fully cross over.

You can imagine the people that drive you a little bit crazy, because in one conversation, you start thinking,

I'm getting through to them. And then in the next conversation, you think,

Is anything I'm saying making it into your ears at all?

These are confused individuals. They're vulnerable. They're manipulated by clever false teachers.

They're often biblically illiterate. They're untaught. They've been in a context or a setting that hasn't helped them spiritually.

You want to keep the door open for them. You want to keep a tender heart. As much as they'll drive you crazy, because you just want them to make a decision, and see what you're saying.

You do well to take your shoes off, and stay a while with them, so to speak. Walk with them.

Be patient with them. These are the people, like one man that I met, I'll never forget it.

He said, Joel Osteen is one of my favorite preachers. I said,

You're holding a John MacArthur study Bible. He said, I know.

I feel like I'm getting the best of both worlds. Like one brother.

I think he's a brother. I'm going to call him that until he proves otherwise. He's a little squirrely at times, but he told me once, my two favorite preachers,

Costey Hinn and Stephen Furtick. We had a conversation after that.

He said, Furtick just fires me up. Gets me all pumped. And you, it's like,

I got doctrine. You know, I'm ready to go. He said, there's this little problem.

You're getting pumped up. You're filling up on heresy. You don't go cage stage on these kind of people.

You know what cage stage is? Cage stage is when you come into contact with the doctrines of grace or some truth for the first time.

Some of you probably are in or went through at some point cage stage. You came here maybe for the first time. You hear doctrine, you go, wow.

And then all of a sudden you're pretty fired up because what you were in was crazy and you want to go after all of them.

And it's best that you be caged for a little while lest you do something or say something foolish that you'll regret later.

Cage stage is when you come into contact with truth. And in some cases you think the whole world is a heretic now except Jim Osmond.

And in other cases, you're coming out of Sunday's hot. You're driving down the street to the church you used to go to and beating down the door.

Cage stage is just going off on folks a little bit too hard.

You want to be patient with the doubters. They're in your life for a reason. You're in their life for a reason.

How many of you by show of hands took maybe months or even years to come around on some things?

How many? People are even raising hands in the lobby. Yeah. Aren't you glad somebody was patient with you?

Aren't you glad that someone said, hey, have mercy on some who are doubting. They get a little weird on you.

And then you think you got them, but just wait. You're going to need coffee again next week with them because they're starting to waver again.

Have mercy on some who are doubting. Then he says, save others.

Snatching them out of the fire. Look at the words that he used. Save others.

Snatching them out of the fire. This is the deceived person. They're not wavering around. They're not having a lot of conversations with you.

Okay, and I see what you mean. These are people who are fully convinced they have the real truth.

And like the Coast Guard, you're going to fly in on your spirit -filled helicopter, so to speak.

You're going to drop the life raft down and say, grab on. You're going to hell.

This is not good. I've told you already. I'm telling you again. But right now, the day of salvation is at your door.

Would you please stop? Would you repent? Would you come to Christ?

Would you come home? You're basically talking to them as though they're a sheep. Saying, come on.

Come to the truth. Prayerful that they are. Hopeful. Loving them.

Like 1 Corinthians 13. Love, hopes, bears, believes, endures all things. You're looking at them with evangelistic eyes.

Knowing the Lord can save them. You're confronting their error. You're pleading with them.

Like Paul says, we plead with all men. Be reconciled to God. That's the pleading.

And if they grab onto that rope, you pull like you've never pulled before. You stay up late.

You fly them wherever they need to be flown. You show up at their door every day if you're local and you can.

You go and sit. You pray. You weep. You plead. You beg. You find a way.

For some of you, that's going to be the deathbed evangelism of a loved one. For some of you, it's going to be the continual visit to somebody each and every day.

For some of you in the church, it's going to be the trench work labor of dealing with the convert who has come, but they are incredibly messy.

There's a lot of damage that's been done. And your ministry is a messy one.

You are saving others. Snatching them out of the fire. Snatching here.

The word harpazo. It's the same word used in John 10 -12 of the wolf snatching the sheep away from the hireling shepherd.

And in John 10 -28 of no one being able to snatch Jesus' sheep from His hand.

And what Jude has here in mind is this alert state of readiness to rescue people.

It's quick. You don't go, well, I'm going to pray about that and maybe I'll go talk to them next week.

No, it's now. It's the moment that you've been praying for, waiting for.

There's not kind of an opt -out clause. Well, I want to pray and see what the Lord's will is.

The Lord's will is for you to go and tell them the truth and plead with them to be saved.

A true Christian is patiently, prayerfully, but relentlessly looking for opportunities to snatch brands out of the burning.

They are deceived. You're coming in hot and praying for the best result. But there is another category and this would be the dangerous.

In Jude 23 there at the second half, and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.

Ever wonder what that means? Jude makes it really clear.

Have mercy on some with fear. There's a hesitancy.

There's a wisdom. There's a prudence. There's a careful distance even. Why? Well, because you hate even the garment that's polluted by the flesh.

There's a proximity thing going on here. The dangerous are those whose garments have been soiled by Satan.

They're those who fly the flag of false doctrine with pride. They love what they teach.

They're in it deep. And you want to be very careful with them. Why? Because just like Peter wrote, they're smooth talkers.

They're flattery. They infiltrate the highest levels of the church.

They undermine Christ. They are so slippery.

They're bold loyalists to apostasy. They're enemies of the truth. And yet, they'll appear like gentle lambs in conversation.

With these, we are called still to be merciful, but with a fearsome devotion to our own morality.

I ran into a false teacher not long ago.

And we had a conversation that I'd been wanting to have for a long time.

And I couldn't get through to him by phone. And so I happened to see him in the airport.

And I looked over and said, hey. And he looked and said, hi.

Pretended he didn't really know me. And I said, I know we don't agree on a lot, but I always told myself if I get to see you again,

I'm going to tell you everything I'd want to tell you. So first of all, I just want to say

I love you, and that is why I've said the things about you that I've said. I love you.

You're a soul. I want you to be right with the Lord. I want you to preach the true gospel. I just went off. And the response was very meek, very humble.

There was tears. He hugged me. It was interesting, to say the least.

And I was living in the tension of this passage, thinking

I'm going to take what you're saying seriously. And I'm going to listen.

But I'm also aware that there's smooth talk and flattery, and that there can be a false humility and a tenderness and even false tears and emotions, because we're in person now.

You can't screen a call. You can't block on socials. I'm here.

And this passage in particular is a reminder for us that we are to still have mercy.

We plead with them. In the end of that conversation, I said, just repent.

Preach the true gospel. Look, if you have things to say or things to explain or things have changed, you should call my friends.

And you should go do an interview with American gospel producer Brandon Kimber, and you should go sit down with me.

If you're for real, you just should do it. No, it's not my thing. That's more of a Michael Brown thing.

There's other guys. I'm just an evangelist, man. I'm just an evangelist. I said, well, whatever you decide to do, we want you so badly to preach the truth.

You need to preach the true gospel. And we left it there.

And now you just pray for them. But in those moments, there's a carefulness.

I think of other brothers who have sat at round tables or sat with other men just trying to plead with them and trying to understand them and trying to discern and trying to figure out, okay, what are you?

Are you a false teacher? Are you just a marketing guy who platforms this and you just want to sell books?

Are you a heretic or are you misled? Are you just kind of emotionally pulled into this movement?

Are you just not wanting to get in fights with your friends? Are you a burnt out, hurt pastor, and it was the false teachers that welcomed you in and showed you grace?

I mean, we see a lot of that today. We need to use so much wisdom. Have mercy. With fear.

But understand, until they fully, truly, bluntly repent, until there is a metanoia, a changing of the mind, they have not yet come to true saving faith.

They've not yet walked away from the false doctrines they've propagated, and that is your pleading with them.

And that is my pleading with them. We're not going for steak dinners. We're not having barbecues. We're not saying, hey, it's all good.

Thanks for trying. No, you're actively still leading people astray.

And you need to stop. And you need to come to Christ and bow before His feet and repent fully and preach the truth.

There is a very, very slippery slope. One commentator writes, mercy takes into account moral distinctions.

It does not treat evil as of no consequence.

Christians have mercy with fear, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.

And so we're acutely aware of where they're still heading, wincing with agony for their soul, and yet pleading with them.

We know that they are those who have defiled the gospel, and we call them to repentance, but from a healthy distance.

There was recently a dinner just a few years ago. One of my boys asked me a big question.

And I usually now bring one of my kids with me to travel, and I'm sometimes careful.

And so a conference like this, I didn't, not that they don't know it, but my one son has heard plenty of this, and it only makes for too many conversations about too many details.

And so we're careful in our home of what we say and how often we say it, and we walk a fine line.

And one day, one of my sons said, Dad, I said, yeah, son, he said, is

Uncle Benny going to hell? It was during dinner.

And I looked at my wife, and she looked at me, and kind of just got the nod, like, go for it.

I said, all right. Always check with Mom. And I said, well, bud, right now, yeah, he's heading that direction.

But he's still alive. So because he's still alive, there's still hope, meaning we would hope that he would repent.

And we pray for him, and if we get the chance to send him messages or go over there and tell him to repent, we might.

Daddy's not getting in the gated community anytime soon, because security has me on the list, so somebody else can go.

But yeah, yeah, he's on his way to hell. And so we want him to repent, though.

That's not something that's fun. It's not fun to go to hell. You know that, right? It's not good for someone to go to hell, even if they're wrong, and that's what's right if they don't repent.

And I remember him saying, well, we better pray for him right now.

I said, yeah, we should. And so right there at dinner, I prayed a prayer with my kiddos, and we asked that the

Lord would save Uncle Benny and not let him go to hell, and that we would do our job and preach the

Bible, and we prayed. And even in our home, this third category is such a fine line with family members and friends.

You run into people. You run into old friends, old, old friends. And they'll say things like, we understand why you're doing what you're doing, or really appreciate some of what you're doing, man, or we think you're right.

You're actually right. The what? You're spot on, man. We need to clean up. It's like Jesus turning the tables over, one guy told me.

It's time. It's just how you do it, though. Like, I wouldn't say stuff publicly like that, you know?

Why? Because you'd lose money? Constantly in conversations.

You're going to constantly be in conversations. Your job is to do your best through prayer and care to discern.

Am I dealing with a doubter? Well, that can be an ongoing, even close relational effort where you're constantly using the relational equity and that bridge you have to pull them in to the truth.

Are they the deceived? Get in there. Offer them the gospel.

Throw the rope. Extend the olive branch. Call them to repentance. Tell them the hard things.

They may never talk to you again, but do your job. And the third category, be careful.

Have mercy, have a tender heart. Fear the Lord for them, but also fear the deceptive nature in which false prophets will present themselves still as workers of righteousness on the same team.

Don't second -guess your role. Don't second -guess the need for true, full repentance.

Pray for salvation and do all you can to rescue people out of deception while being vigilant to guard your own heart.

Let's pray. Father, there is a humbling nature to all of this because you are the

God of salvation. We, and I include myself in this, can be guilty of having a write -off mentality where because someone is a doubter or because they're deceived or because they're dangerous, we're quick to write them off.

And it's hard for us because we want to be protective, we want to be wise, we want to be prudent, and yet we know that you are the

God who saves and there's more sheep, Jesus. You said you will bring them. You must bring them.

So help us to walk that fine line of grace and truth as best as we can.

Correct us and convict us when we have shut ourselves off from faithful evangelism.

When we have given up on people. And help us to be cautious when we begin to lower the bar.

Help us to take care in dealing with each category prudently. Thank you for godly examples.

Thank you for Pastor Jim and his example. The way that he and some of our dear brothers really believe this stuff.

They go and they meet with people. They'll go and do whatever it takes to get a brief audience even with one of these false teachers just to call them to repentance.

Pleading, doing the work of an evangelist. Warning, cautioning men who would entertain such teachers.

And then faithfully, kindly, graciously working it out with your sheep and those that we're just not sure about as they try to work it out.

Help us to all be that way as much as we can by your grace and your strength that work within us in Jesus name.

Amen. Ten minute break. We'll jump into our final preaching session.

And then finish up with Q &A. And then just as a reminder, if you would like to submit a question, you can just do that by filling out those index cards that are in the middle of your table.

Fill those out and pass them up to the table here. And Pastor Jim and I will jump on those in the final session.

This session is titled, Thankfully, the Gospel Is. We're going to talk about the real gospel.

And I believe that I have exhausted all of us with what is false. And it is time to relish in the truth.

If you want to turn in your Bibles to Romans 1, that's where we'll start. Romans 1, verse 16.

We'll meditate on three particular truths. That the gospel is powerful.

The gospel is propitiation. And that the gospel is then proclaimed.

Those three things will send us off with our charge of duty and relishing in the gospel.

What could be better? Paul writes in Romans 1, verse 16, beginning there, we'll read through 17, "'For

I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith.'"

That is God's Word to us. Let's go to Him together in prayer and then reflect on the power of the gospel.

Father, thank You for Your Son Jesus, for saving us, for calling us, for Your Word, and for our time together.

I pray that in this last session we would relish in Your gospel. We would be reminded and even perhaps taught about the power and what propitiation means.

And then, why we proclaim it and the need for it. Perhaps there are those in this room that would say, oh,

I believe the gospel. Yeah, I know the gospel, but if they were charged with the task of sharing it, they wouldn't be as sharp as they wished they would be.

Use this session to equip and to strengthen their gospel understanding and their gospel delivery.

And we pray that we would be convicted so strongly should we ever think that we have graduated from the gospel, that we've heard it enough.

It is so good. It is so perfect. And You are so gracious in it to save us through it.

We pray all this and ask in the name of Christ Jesus, Amen. Amen. In a seminary missions class,

Herbert Jackson told how as a new missionary, he was assigned a car that would not start without a push.

And after pondering his problem, he devised a plan. He went to the school near his home.

He got permission to take some children out of class and he had them push his car off. As he made his rounds, he would either park on a hill or he would leave the engine running.

He used this ingenious procedure for two years on the mission field.

Ill health forced the Jackson family to leave and a new missionary came to that station.

When Jackson proudly began to explain his arrangement for getting the car started and to keep it running, the new missionary began looking under the hood.

Before the explanation was complete, the new missionary interrupted, Dr. Jackson, I believe the only trouble is this loose cable.

He gave the cable a twist, stepped into the car, pushed the switch, and to Jackson's astonishment, the engine roared to life.

For two years, needless trouble became routine. The power was there all along, but a loose connection was the culprit.

The loose connection kept Jackson from putting that power to work. I think there's a lot of people in the body of Christ today that are not using the

Gospel and its power the way they ought to. There's a loose connection with it. Oh, I know the

Gospel. I've heard the Gospel. Oh yeah, the Gospel. Sure, the Gospel. But the loose connection is costing them.

They don't appreciate the Gospel for all it's worth. Perhaps this is why many people sit in churches for decades with little to no change.

You have students or young people that are raised in churches where they have a great time in youth ministry.

They play lots of games. They enjoy friends. They listen to loud music or whatever else they do to come up with ways to get kids to show up.

But they're not really plugged into the power source. And then they quote -unquote lose their faith or go prodigal in the college years, which is really just the

American experiment for hey, go away from home and away from your church. Live alone.

Do whatever you want for four years and find yourself and then come home and then start being an adult.

That experiment's not working by the way. But it's a byproduct of delayed adolescence.

And so many people in the church today are operating with delayed adolescence when it comes to the

Gospel. They've never really understood it fully or walked in its power fully.

They went to the 30 -minute TED talk on Sunday. They drank their snobby latte that they got in the lobby.

They enjoyed the music, but nothing changed. The true

Gospel is the power of God to change people for His glory. It works.

So we should use it and understand it and appreciate it. Three particular truths. Number one, the Gospel is powerful.

You should trust it to do the job that God intends it to do. Paul says, For I am not ashamed of the

Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation. The Greek word dunamis used in the New Testament for miraculous power and strength and ability and force and mighty deeds.

So here it's the miraculous power of God through His mighty deed of salvation.

His ability to save. The power of God for salvation. The word soteria means to ransom, to rescue.

It's deliverance. It's safety. So you could say, I'm not ashamed of the

Gospel for it is the miraculous and mighty ability of God to ransom people. From what? From the damnation of sin.

From the wrath of God. You are held hostage by sin. And the

Gospel sets you free. Believing in Christ for salvation. You were sinning.

Couldn't stop sinning. You were dead in that sin. Couldn't raise your own dead heart to life. But the

Gospel was preached. Literally the good news. That sin is powerful.

But Christ, a more powerful Savior. That living for yourself is a dead end road.

But life in Christ leads to life eternal. The Gospel is powerful.

Ephesians 2 .10 is the result. Yes, where is workmanship? Creating Christ Jesus for good works.

That we would walk in them. But what started that process or led to it? That you were dead, and now you are alive.

The Gospel works. This is why Paul, who could have preached philosophy, he could have stuck with Judaism.

He was a smart man. He preached the Gospel. He chose that which the world would consider foolishness.

Why? Because. While the cross is foolishness to the perishing, it is the power of God.

To us who believe. The Gospel takes you from spiritual death to spiritual life.

From aimless wandering and empty sin to thriving in your purpose on this planet.

As a worshipper. And a witness for the glory of God. The Apostle Paul was a walking example of the power of the

Gospel. He went from breathing threats and murderous agendas towards Christians in Acts 9 .1

-2 to proclaiming Jesus Christ as the Son of God in Acts 9 .19 -22.

In Iconium, Paul spoke in such a manner that a multitude believed.

Acts 14 .1 tells us. He proclaimed in Philippi. The Gospel.

And it opened Lydia's heart. And the church at Philippi, the Philippian church was birthed.

Why? Because of the Gospel. In Athens, Gospel power shattered the thinking of ignorant people.

The Bible says, some believed. In Ephesus, one of my favorite stories of Gospel power.

The idol makers were going out of business. Because nobody needed their idols anymore. In Acts 19 .18

-27 tells the story. They really got together and said, hey, this isn't good for business. This isn't going well.

We need to get rid of this guy. Why? Gospel power. Over and over and over again,

Paul relied on one thing. This is why he says in 1 Corinthians 2 .1 -2. I am determined to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified.

Why? Because the Gospel works every time. In ways that no pragmatic church growth strategy will work.

In ways that no personality will ever work. This is why often, some of our favorite preachers or favorite ministries is just a simple man opening a simple book to preach a simple message and amazing things happen.

And people say, Him? How? Why? Because the

Gospel is powerful. Paul didn't come with clever words and all his physical stature.

History tells us that Paul was short, balding down the middle, with a bit of a hooked nose.

The Gospel is powerful. He was not a clever man.

No, he was smart. He wasn't the tallest and best looking man. It wasn't because he was athletic or relatable.

It wasn't because he was an influencer and cool. It was because the

Gospel was powerful and he was willing to be poured out as a drink offering and lay down his life for the

Gospel. So many professing Christians wonder, why is my life not changing? Why am I still enslaved to sin?

There doesn't seem to be spiritual vitality in my life. Perhaps because the

Gospel is not an altar call at the end of VBS in 5th grade.

It's not just attending a church, working your job, having your ticket punched to heaven, and then getting on with it.

No, the Gospel is powerful. It is a daily thing.

Every day you need the Gospel. Every day you ought to be reminded of the Gospel. When you sin as a saint, you're reminded of how thankful we are because of the

Gospel. You don't play games with the Gospel. You don't graduate from the Gospel. It is powerful.

And I'll tell you, it's easy and we can do it. Pick on prosperity preachers and people who preach a false

Gospel, but we do well to flip the script on ourselves and ask, are we using the greatest tool available at our disposal?

God has given us the message of reconciliation to preach to all.

And He will save. Only the Gospel will change the world, if you will, by changing the lives of God's people.

Is it a narrow way still? Yeah. Will only few find it? Yeah. Are we ever going to win the popularity contest?

No. But that doesn't change our mission and our purpose.

The target is clear. The marching orders are clear. And the weapons of our warfare, they work just fine.

The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. If you turn a couple of pages over with me to Romans chapter 3, we'll keep on marching down the

Romans road, if you will. The Gospel is propitiation.

The good news, the Gospel is there in Romans 3, 23 -25, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

So we have a problem. Sin is rampant. All of us are stained by the sin of Adam.

Babies are born cute, but they are reprobate, sinful.

They are. I know, they're cute. But, if they could mobilize against you, they would.

The things they would do to you when you don't give them their milk fast enough. God made them clumsy, and floppy, and weak, so that, perhaps, they would not be able to grab weapons or any other sharp object when you don't feed them on time.

We've all sinned. We come out sinners with a bent towards rebellion.

Being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith.

This was to demonstrate His righteousness because in the forbearance of God, He passed over the sins previously committed.

You need a Savior. You need to be justified. There needs to be a substitute propitiation for the sin that stains all mankind.

And God, in His mercy, has justified the believer.

Before the foundation of the earth, He called for new.

He justified. He predestined you to adoption as sons and daughters. He knew you.

And how would He solve the problem of your sin?

How would He, a perfect and holy God, allow you to be in fellowship with Him, to be reconciled to Him, and to spend eternity with Him one day?

Through the sacrifice of His Son, who was the perfect substitute, the propitiation for our sins.

He took the wrath that would be yours and put it on His Son to the fullest extent so that you would be justified.

Declared in the courtroom of heaven, if you will. Not guilty. Not condemned.

Why? Because Christ paid the penalty for your sin.

Propitiation is a word that also translates in your Bible, atonement. The word atonement is defined as that which appeases anger and brings reconciliation with someone who has a right to be angry.

God has a right to punish sin and sinners. He has a right to pour out wrath on you and me.

Doctrinally, what occurred on our behalf is called penal substitutionary atonement.

And what is likely, with Jim Osmond as your pastor, you know what

I've just said, but let's review. Jesus paid the penalty for sin as our substitute.

And He atoned for our sins. His blood and death appeased the anger of God.

Satisfying His wrath. Taking upon Himself the full punishment in our place which allows us then to be reconciled to God in relationship with Him.

The thing that Adam once ruined, now once again made possible through the second

Adam. That's why we sing, See the true and better Adam come to save the hellbound man.

Now fellowship, restoration, relationship, healing between a holy

God and sinful men. This demonstrates that Jesus was righteous.

He was perfect. Why? Because only a perfect righteous substitute could satisfy the wrath of God.

And so, Christ is and was our perfect substitute.

Which demonstrates God's mercy towards undeserving sinners. And His grace which literally is defined as unmerited favor has been poured out now upon you and me because of Christ.

So every day is a day to give praise to God for salvation and the gospel.

Why? Because every day is grace for you. Unmerited favor. That God would bless you with salvation.

Give you eternal life and glory with Him. Unmerited favor. That He would choose you and call you.

That's unmerited favor. You did nothing to earn it. Nothing to deserve it.

There's no arguing with that truth. No one deserved to be saved.

And yet, God in His loving kindness and tender mercy chose to save a people and atone for their sin by the sacrifice of His Son.

2 Corinthians 5 .21 tells us, For our sake He made

Him to be sin who knew no sin so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Propitiation is what has caused God to look upon you and I now and ultimately see the righteousness of Christ.

What a beautiful reality. And what a reason to give glory and honor to Christ.

There are many today who hate this doctrine. They would say that what I've just described to you is cosmic child abuse. For God to pour out

His wrath and punish His Son is unloving. That the God that the Bible teaches about would never do such a thing.

That He's more of a bloodthirsty, angry, loveless

God. The God that I've just described. When in fact, that's the God that the Bible describes. Why?

Because He's just. It is only an unjust God who would wink at sin. Making His Son only a moral example as some have described

Christ as. Falsely, might I add. That He was just so loving and His model of love is what we all need to follow.

And that counteracts sin and we get into God's favor by just being loving. Or the idea of Christus Victor which is that He died and then rose again to defeat death.

And it wasn't so much a sacrificial death that took the wrath of God in our place but more or less an exclamation of Hey, look what

I can do. Believe in me and you'll be saved. No. While there is some truth to Christ's morality and His example to us.

And there is a reality of His exclamation point of the resurrection being an announcement of I have power over the grave because how else could you give eternal life unless you could conquer death?

Yes. Still, that's not how sin was atoned for. Sin is not solved because Jesus was a loving person when

He was on earth. Sin is not solved because He rose from the dead.

No. Sin is dealt with through wrath and judgment.

That is justice. And so we see the gospel and we have to preach the gospel as propitiation and atonement.

This is why we repent.

We change our mind. Our sin, our deeds, our way were a way of damnation.

He died because of sin. Therefore, sin is not a light thing.

We repent, we turn from our ways, we admit we're spiritually bankrupt and we look to Jesus and we declare

You are God. Your way is better. Your way is true. Thank You for Your sacrifice on my behalf.

I bow to You as my King. I put my trust and my faith in You as my

Savior and my Lord. I want to obey You and follow You. My life belongs to You.

Why? Because You laid down Your life for me. Repentance is a total change of mind in light of who

Christ is and what He has done. You are here to bring

God glory because you're saved. You are here to do one thing that you'll never do in heaven.

You know you'll sing better in heaven. Some of you are really excited about that because you really sing off key.

But we're thankful for you. And you will, in my eschatological view, you will eat better in heaven.

I believe there will be a literal marriage supper of the Lamb. I'm not post -meal. Or all -meal.

I believe you'll have better relationships in heaven, obviously. I think there'll be better enjoyment in the fellowship of the glory of heaven.

Of course there will be. There's one thing you will not do in heaven.

You will never evangelize again in heaven. That is something you only get to do here.

And so, while the Gospel most certainly is powerful, and you should relish in that, and it is propitiation, and that has been applied to you, and you can praise

God for that, the Gospel is proclaimed. It's proclaimed.

Why? Because that's why we're here. In Romans 10, if you want to turn a few more pages over and see what happens, and on your way, if you want to just pit stop and stare at verse 1 of chapter 8 for two seconds, therefore there's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

It's a beautiful truth. Picture it as a little stop on your way over to chapter 10 here on the

Romans road. You get to chapter 10, and you look at verses 13 -17, and you see what you're supposed to do now with the good news.

For whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on Him in whom they've not believed?

How will they believe in Him who they've not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? And how will they preach unless they are sent?

Just as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news.

However, they did not all heed the good news, for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report? So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ.

This needs so little exposition. You should just revel in it.

As ones who believe in the sovereignty of God and salvation, we ought to be the most unapologetically and courageously evangelistic.

Why? Because we aren't the ones who save people. We just go out and proclaim the message. And He's going to do it. And how is

He going to do it? Well, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. So you are going to preach the gospel with words because they are necessary.

There is nothing more unbiblical by way of that type of sentiment than when people say, preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.

As though giving people food who are hungry is the gospel. It's not.

It's good to do. 1 John has some things to say about seeing your brother in need.

Yeah. But in the end, you can give somebody a full meal.

People need water. You can give them a cup of water in Jesus' name, people say. I'm giving a cup of water in Jesus' name.

But if you do not give Jesus' message, people are still on their way to hell.

They're just on a full stomach and now hydrated. You've got to give them the gospel.

You must. I must. Why? Because that's how men will be saved.

And news is news because it's broadcasted. It's proclaimed. It's printed.

It's pushed out into the airwaves. And we have the best news of all. Some of you, maybe, don't proclaim the gospel because you've not practiced knowing it or delivering it.

But maybe some of you don't proclaim the gospel because you're selfish and disobedient. You've got your eyes on yourself.

Maybe you're worried about what people will think. Maybe you're worried about your job. Maybe you are enjoying the gospel so much and you're so thankful that you're saved, you have forgotten that you are also to be an agent of salvation, if you will, as the

Lord uses you to speak the truth and then He opens eyes and ears and changes hearts because you are faithful.

It's a bit inconvenient as well to bring up the gospel, isn't it? Because then you're that person. Here you go again.

I already heard you the first time. I already know. Or you know how

I feel about religion. Give people what they need the most.

Give them the gospel. In Acts 16, the Apostle Paul is imprisoned with Silas for preaching the gospel.

One of my favorite New Testament stories. It's a dark prison.

You just picture it in your mind. The lights are out. They didn't have switches. It's cold.

It's wet. The stench of human waste is searing their nostrils undoubtedly.

There's rotting food. You've got bloodstains, unclean prisoners. You study what prison culture was like in the early church.

It is not like what you see on some of these prison shows. Not even close.

You picture the hard stone floor and maybe some slivers from the wooden stocks.

And if that's not going to keep you up all night, then the back pain from being seated in that position all night will.

And whenever you seem to get a moment to sleep, maybe the clanking chains of another prisoner wake you up again.

As they shift, trying to get comfortable. It's miserable.

It's the worst. And then you're beaten prior. So you're in pain.

And in the midst of that, in Acts 16, verse 25, this is what happens.

But around midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God. And the prisoners were listening to them.

And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone's chains were unfastened.

When the jailer awoke and saw the prison doors opened, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, thinking the prisoners had escaped.

In those days, if you lost the prisoners who were under your dutiful control, you would be killed.

So you would kill yourself because you were already a dead man. But Paul called with a loud voice, saying,

Do not harm yourself. We're all here. And the jailer asked for lights. And rushed in and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas.

And after he brought them out, he said, What must I do to be saved?

They said, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.

Now I am sure that most of us will not be in prison.

And because we sang, Come behold the wondrous mystery, the prison doors blew open.

But I am sure that all of us, no matter what we face, no matter what circumstances of difficulty or fear we find ourselves in, we can all be praying and singing praises to God, faithfully trusting

Him, pouring out our hearts to Him. Why? Because we believe the same gospel and preach the same gospel that they did and they had.

This is our example. This is what Christians for millennia have done. They and we have never stood alone in proclaiming the gospel.

So even though you might feel alone at times when you share the gospel, you are not alone. You stand on the shoulders of Christians throughout all of church history who faithfully preached the gospel.

Prison can't stop it. Persecution can't stop it. Politics can't stop it. Culture can't stop it.

Hell can't stop it. The devil himself cannot stop the gospel, which is why

Paul says in Romans 1 16, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation.

And even in a world where few believe what I've just told you, Jesus is building

His church. Amen. He's drawing His remnant. He's doing what He promised to do.

And the day draws near when His kingdom will come and be established on earth forever.

So let's be faithful to prepare the way by proclaiming the gospel. Let me pray for us.

We'll take a short break and do Q &A. Father, thank You for the gospel. Thank You for its power, and thank

You how it makes a mockery of this world in its attempts to save itself.

I think of lost people thinking climate change is the way to save the planet.

I think of those who think if we just had this politician or that politician, we'd save the world.

I think of those who compromise the gospel and the truth, thinking we just need to make the church likable.

We just need to get them in. We just need to lighten up. We just need to love everyone.

Be more inclusive. All these things, they're foolishness. Why? Because Your gospel is everything.

It is what saves. Your wisdom is the wisdom above all wisdoms. Thank You, Lord Jesus, for being our substitute.

And thank You for empowering us and employing us as Your servants.

And Holy Spirit, we thank You for Your filling work,

Your equipping work, how You gift us to do one thing, to glorify

Jesus Christ. Help us to honor Your ministry in a world that makes a mockery of You, respecting

You and honoring You as the third and equal member of the Godhead, knowing that You are in us and we are

Your temple. Help us, please, to fulfill our mandate here on earth.

We look forward, mighty King, to Your kingdom to come. In Your name we pray.

Jesus. Amen. All right,

I think we're ready to get started. Final session. And after this, I'll have a couple of announcements, and then we'll close in prayer.

So first up for our Q &A, do you have any church recommendations in Tucson? Oh, that's a good question.

We have people who drive to our church from Tucson, but I don't recommend driving an hour and a half every week one way.

I don't yet. I should, but I haven't found, and this doesn't mean there isn't a good one there, but I have not found a church that would be similar to this or ours in Tucson yet.

But I talked to her earlier, and I'll look a few up and send them your way.

How many here have heard of Mark Driscoll? There we go. How far away is

Mark Driscoll from you? 20 minutes. How much influence does he have in your area?

Lots. Mainly over pastors. He does coaching. So he coaches them on how to do multi -site and how to grow and all this stuff.

Does he coach you? No. Maybe I should sign up for one session.

I'm blocked on all his social media outlets. I've said my piece. Could you explain briefly what the apostolic word is?

Yeah, as far as I know or am familiar with that phrase or that term, the apostolic word would be the apostle in the church now, claiming to be an apostle, who's getting direct revelation from God and then delivering that to the people.

So there are some weird phrases that you'll hear. One of them is breakthrough.

If you listen to enough of that stuff with Bethel and all that, you'll hear, you know, we're really pressing in for breakthrough.

You're like, what does that mean? It's one of their phrases. The apostolic word is the man who claims to be an apostle.

And they're women apostles now. And there's actually a website I found. We don't have probably time to go through all this research.

But there is a website that does, they'll sell you apostleship and you can get a couple's discount if you're both signing up to be part of the apostolic network they have.

It's kind of cool. A couple's, cool in a heretical way. But yeah, there you go.

So the apostolic word is you're getting direct revelation from God for those that are under you.

And it's completely false. It's false authority. We have apostles. They're all dead.

And they were the foundation. They were foundational in the church. And now we have their writings and we're thankful for them and their role.

Now the church is being built up. Do you see any decline in the strength of the prosperity gospel's influence?

Are people starting to have their eyes open? No. Here's why.

The players are changing. So my uncle, his ministry is in steep decline beyond.

When you talk about steep decline, you're talking about financial giving to that ministry? Totally. Dive bombing. Like not at all.

Can't fill a stadium. Kenneth Copeland, we laugh at him. He's on the, not

ESPN, Inside Edition. And Lisa Guerrero catches him at his airstrip and all that.

These guys are laughable in that sense. But, like another one. Bill Johnson, Benny, and I don't relish in this.

His wife, Benny, dies of cancer. And that just kind of like slides under the radar.

No one fixes COVID. Chris Vallotton falsely prophesies however many he's said are going to happen.

From presidential stuff with Trump. Or his prophets have prophesied very falsely. He'll say that was his main first one and he repented of it.

Like, all right. Yeah, there's a cast of characters that are in decline. But the prosperity gospel is very much alive.

Because for every Benny Hinn that's in decline, Kenneth Copeland that's some old weirdo that's laughable now, a

Bill Johnson who's kind of like, well, your wife died. This stuff doesn't work, man. And Todd Bentley who's pretty much not even taken seriously at all.

You have Michael Todd who is bigger than ever. And Furtick.

And you have Tim Ross. If you haven't heard of him, look him up.

These guys are way more famous than people realize. You have Judah Smith. You have

Chad Veach. You had Carl Lance. But he's back. He's on staff at Michael Todd's church.

And so you have this new wave of guys. And they don't wave white jackets. They don't have pink hair.

And they don't have TBN. But they are massively influential. They preach the prosperity gospel.

They are reaching our young people in massive ways. We did a video for the gospel.

We did a series that we release a video every once in a while. It's called False Teachers. And Michael Todd was the first one

I picked. And we got hammered by a lot of people for that video.

And that lot of people were mostly young youth pastors and young adult pastors.

And one of them was actually on the comments was Mark Driscoll's son, Calvin. And I didn't know that.

Somebody had told me that, you know, Calvin Drizzy? I'm like, yeah. They're like, that's Driscoll's son. I'm like, oh, wow.

And they were very angry with us, a lot of those young guys, saying, how dare you throw stones at a brother.

At the young people who are having false teachers? Yeah. How dare you throw stones at a brother just because he's influential?

You're just jealous. He's been such an inspiration. We should be praying for him to keep being used by the

Lord. You're like, what delusional spirit has come over them all? And then you look at 2 Thessalonians 2 and you're like, oh, yeah, pretty much a delusional influence, a deluding influence will take over.

And I think that in many ways, this is and again, I know that everyone shares my eschatology, but I'll share it.

And then, you know, I'm gone. So it's fine. It's not unwelcome here.

It's the same. Yeah, I believe that you can't have widespread delusion and you can't have an antichrist and you can't have these things happen without delusion.

And we're seeing it. When you go, how in the, are you people serious? How do you, like the

R .C. Sproul short video, everyone's like, what's wrong with you people? You know, Sproul doing that. You have to have that to set the stage for the kind of chaos that will ensue.

And so that's what we're watching. But the church is being strengthened. I don't like when people say that, you know, the premillennial view or whatever is pessimistic.

I'm not pessimistic. The church is being built, man. Jesus is saving. There's the remnant. We're strong.

The sheep are coming. But around us, yeah, the world is growing darker. The church's light is growing brighter.

So in that, I don't see the decline. I see strong delusion. A next generation wave.

I mean, T .D. Jakes' kids are in ministry. A whole wave of next generation guys are in.

My brother -in -law's brother, Michael Koulianos, and Jessica, Uncle Benny's daughter, lead Jesus Image Ministry.

You go to their thing in Orlando, there's like 5 ,000 people at that church. Their conferences are massive.

I was at a coffee shop the other day where I live in Phoenix. A woman was wearing a Jesus Image shirt.

They're doing tours. There's no decline. They're just grabbing a whole new generation.

And Benny Hinn's the weirdo with the white coat on YouTube. So that... Is your uncle's ministry declined due to the fact that he's getting older or due to the fact that the hunger for the show is changing?

Somebody else has to push the envelope, become more sensational, more edgy, more grandiose, and so you have the new generations doing that.

Or is it just that the old people who used to watch TBN and see Benny and Kenneth Copeland, they're dying off.

They've given their seed faith, and now these people are being buried, and so that whole generation is dying out. I think both.

He's getting old. And you look at that whole support system, it's older.

And then also, Bethel sort of branded in a way, and so did like Judah Smith and some of these guys, a new brand of...

And Satan's really smart. You've got kind of cool music, skinny jeans, vibes, young people, the arts.

You look at Bethel Supernatural School of Ministry and their School for the Arts, they've got like ballet and all this. They're targeting young people and skills and the arts and all that, and it looks really cool.

My uncle, if someone came again and was like him, it would not sell the same.

Why? Because we're over the massive stadium, the detached faith healer, we're entertained by it, it's laughable, but it doesn't work.

What works now is Bill Johnson, super authentic, real calm, almost like, yeah, they're just signs that make you wonder.

He said he would cover you with his feathers. I don't know what's going on here, just miracles everywhere. And letting his, that vibe works.

And then letting his kids, Jen Johnson, Brian Johnson, letting the next generation thrive.

Where my uncle was like the single showman, and it was the traveling show and circus. Some of these guys now, it's about empowerment, because Gen Z wants to be involved.

Millennials like to be in and authentic. So it is, he's aged, but also the game has changed.

It's gone from a spectator sport to a participation sport. Totally. What kind of money comes in at Crusade?

You mentioned the lady, the first one to give a million dollars to your ministry in one of your sessions.

What kind of money comes in at a Crusade? Were you ever backstage when you counted the money that came in in the offering buckets?

What was it like? Half a million dollar offerings like that, just easy, easy money. In one night?

Yeah, easily. And that's a marginal number. In terms of the money that came in, comes into those ministries, is most of it large gifts from the celebrities, the athletes, the influencers, or is it a little grandma who's hoping for a miracle for her cancer cure, giving 25 bucks a week to Benny Hinn?

What does the majority of that income look like? Yeah, by way of numbers, certainly the smaller gifts are massive.

It's a lot of people giving smaller amounts, but you have your ways of getting the larger gifts.

Like, God's telling me right now, there are 70 people that can give $7 ,000, and right now

He is going to give you a breakthrough. And some of you, you can only give $7. And some of you, you can, but some of you, you can give an uncommon gift of faith, $17 ,000 and 70 ,000.

They do all the tears and stuff. And so what you end up with is this conglomerate of numbers that are large and small, but you get your big, your big heavy hitters, and there are a lot of them, and it drives me nuts,

I think. Oh, if these people would get saved and just give to real ministries, then we...

But I know it's a narrow way. I get it. But sometimes I'm like, Lord, just steer a few of them over and finish

Jim's building. Like, it's just... Like that. It's easy.

They don't even need a tax write -off for it. They're like, nah, we already hit our max. We can just give you more.

All right. But, you know, the hype and the show of all that stuff. Yeah. As a cessationist, how do you support a phrase like clear -thinking charismatic?

Does one not negate the other? Good question. That's a good question. First, I would say,

I want to say clear -thinking continuationist is a phrase we can use. If we didn't, then you're calling a lot of people crazy and not clear -thinking.

I think clear -thinking charismatic, I think I'd hold to, even if it were a small number, clear -thinking

Pentecostal or clear -thinking charismatic. I have a buddy of mine.

Local. Another pastor. We have different kinds of churches. He listens to the

Gospel stuff. We dialogue and interact. We started out not getting along.

He didn't like me and I didn't know who he was and was like, why are you angry at me? We had good interactions and he says amen to stuff we post and is pretty much on board.

He methodologically is different. They're more multi -site type. And then he considers himself charismatic with a seatbelt or whatever.

He got one of those phrases from Matt Chandler. I don't agree.

He's trying to reach people. We've talked about things. He goes, I know, but these people, they're not well -taught.

I think you've got to leave some things open because the Bible doesn't say this, this, and that.

I said, well, that's a continuationist position. You use the word charismatic. He goes, it's all the same, whatever.

I go, well, kind of, but not really. We have these dialogues. And I would consider him a clear -thinking man.

He is logical. He is theological. He doesn't buy into the word faith.

No way. I wouldn't be so chummy with him behind the scenes if it was true. We don't agree on a few things.

We're clear on those. But he's clear -thinking. And a few people have come over to our church from his church.

He's like, it's good for them. They love your ministry. They'll do better and cause less trouble here if they're with you.

Because these people have strong convictions. And so, is Justin or other buddies of ours right to say, yeah, that phrase,

I don't know if I'll use it that much anymore because there's not a lot of them. Like, totally.

But I would still say clear -thinking, continuationist. And I guess I wonder, aren't continuationists charismatics with seatbelts on?

Sort of, technically. But there's such a spectrum. John Piper is, like I said before, and I think

I've joked about where him with all his stack of books and his continuationism, the church at the time when he was there, if you went and attended a service there and then went to Grace Community Church the next week, the services look similar.

And for all the, yeah, I don't know. I just can't say if this is not ceased or not.

The practical outworking is pretty similar looking. So yeah,

I think some of them, of course, some of them are clear -headed, but some of them are very confusing to me. I'm wondering about their hermeneutics.

But again, I'm still 38. And I'm young. So I've got to be careful. I can't say stuff about older men and be cheeky because that's arrogant.

You can. No, you're older. Not much. You have dialogue. You can say things.

I still have to behave and ride your coattails. I just say things and then I'll say, I got that from Kosti. Is there any correlation between the prosperity gospel and the sacrifices required of the

Jewish nation in the Old Testament, in particular in supporting the priesthood and temple?

I think maybe, correct me if I'm wrong, whoever submitted this question, but it was required that people gave in order to support the priesthood.

Totally. Mandatory sacrifices and giving in the nation was a prerequisite for blessing.

So you get the Malachi references often where you're robbing God if you're not giving to the ministry. Yeah, I would say that all of that is classified under lazy hermeneutics, which is

I just approach the Bible and I look at it and go, yeah, I'm going to preach that for me today and doing no work.

It's really easy. And there's similarity there between that structure and the way that the prosperity gospel leverages that for their purposes.

And people will go, come on, preach. Amen. You go, you need to take care of the man of God, the priesthood in the

Old Testament. The people brought the tithes into the storehouse and all this stuff. And some of you get PTSD when

I preach that way. I get it. But you know, and these people today try to keep the man of God down.

They don't honor the man. You realize the reason why the church is in the state that it's in is because people don't honor the man of God. You honor the man of God, God will honor the church.

People are like, come on, preach. And the preachers are like, preach. Love it. All that stuff, that's lazy hermeneutics.

You've not rightly divided the word. You've taken Old Testament, Levitical laws. You've taken things and just superimposed them on New Testament churches.

But man, it preaches and it sells. So yeah, it's very, and then God will bless you. And if you, honestly, if you tie a little bit of America in there too, which the right patriotic attitude is, we love our country, we want to vote.

But you wrap that up into an American thing. You want God to heal this nation?

You want him to turn it around? The reason he's not blessed, you want him to bless America? I'll pour out my spirit on all flesh.

And no one even knows what he's saying. They're like, amen. Like, what? Your sons and daughters will prophesy.

America started as a Christian nation and God wants to bless this nation. And we've been killing babies. You're like, I know, but what?

Hold on. Some of this is true and some of it's not. What is happening? And that is what we're seeing right now with Turning Point USA Faith.

Have you seen some of that? Oh, we're doing a video about it for the gospel. This will get us in some trouble, but it's good. So Charlie Kirk and the boys,

I know them. Super helpful on some things. Gone down the wrong path when

Aspery started their thing. Some of you have been seeing this. You've got their revival now. They're going around America.

And I told some guys about this. I told guys about this.

I'm like, I've seen this stuff before. They're like, ah, be quiet, Kosti. You're just jaded. I'm like, no, I'm telling you. They're doing the thing they always do.

And the political and the stuff gets squirrely. And when it's not led by pastors who are sound doctrine driven, it won't be pure.

You'll get everyone else with their weird little agenda. And so now you have Sean Foyt, you know, long curly hair,

Bethel guy. He's the leader of it. TPUSA has contracted him. TPUSA Faith has contracted him.

And they're doing revivals everywhere. So we have one of my good buddies. He just posted, he got fired yesterday because he's speaking up.

He posted this publicly. It's all, it's there. Johnny Root. And he loves Verge. The guys from G3, they're all in tight.

Good dude. Lives locally. And they are wrapping up all this revival stuff and the seven mountain mandate into a political

American vibe. So people are like, yeah, I love my country. I'm sick of Biden and this whole political chaotic thing they're doing.

And I don't like this at all. And then TPUSA is like, well, yeah, let's take over America again.

And it's this woman the other day at the revival was shouting, we declare, I decree, the seven mountain mandate is ours.

And the seven mountain mandate is the NAR. That is all merging in. And so what you have is bad hermeneutics.

And you have a lot of things read into this. And then they're cheap shot artists.

They're grabbing American vernacular which grabs onto all of our heart strings because I don't want

Titus growing up in America like it has been. Of course not. I love my country. And we should be involved.

But when you grab that and you have people that are untaught and you stamp it with false teachers and then

TPUSA with their platform says we're going to do it. We're going to save America. You have all these people caught up in it and they're giving money to it and their time and their energy and the local churches nowhere to be found.

And this is the issue with the Asbury revival. Again, anything happening detached from a local church that's not what

Jesus does. It's manufactured. So a lot of that is you could go down a lot of different illustrative roads and say that's a weird hermeneutical issue.

That doesn't even make sense. That's just taking some Old Testament thing and slapping it on.

And so people, it's lazy. And some of it I think just Satan is so he's so smart.

It's so crafty and scheming and deceitful. I'm reading through the Bible in one year using

YouVersion Bible app. Is YouVersion bad? I don't know.

I don't use YouVersion. I don't even know. I probably should. YouVersion seems old to me now.

It's like YouVersion, great Bible app. Well, I seem old. That doesn't mean it's... No. People thought

I was old. Your ability to discern age is... Older, wiser.

There's YouVersion in... Isn't it just, it's a Bible app. And then aren't there some devotionals and weird reading plans though too?

In memory serves it has multiple translations in YouVersion, correct? Yeah, so NASB, ESB, LSB.

Yeah, use your NASB, your LSB, Bible on there. Us young guys know how to use that.

Yeah, do that. But don't click on like the... There's still a Shire women's devotional.

If they have those, I don't... Or Beth Moore or Andy Stanley or anyone else that you've mentioned. Luke 18 .42,

your faith has healed you. Why are there Bible Scriptures crediting faith for healing? Does faith heal?

Oh yeah, sorry. I didn't do a great job of this when I preached that yesterday in my testimony.

I talked about John 5. And I said, you know, it wasn't faith that saved the man in...

Or sorry, that healed the man in John 5. What I've often said or what I would say is you can't turn faith into a formula where if I have enough faith,

God will heal me. You have the woman with the issue of blood. And I think you've got some interesting both ends there where Jesus says, so power left me.

Who touched me? And the disciples... Or he says, who touched me? The disciples are like, everyone touched you. Look where we are. There's no power left me.

It's different. And then he ends up healing her. And he goes, daughter, your faith has saved you.

And I always think it's very interesting that he uses a familial term and it's translated that way. And I think, did he kind of saved her and healed her?

That's interesting. And then just like other times he heals someone and says, don't tell anyone.

And other times, apparently he doesn't care if they tell everyone. The whole point when you look at the

Gospels is Jesus is a sovereign healer. And he does as he wills and as he pleases.

And he has purposes in what he's doing and why he does it. You can't turn any of it into a formula.

Then you can't say, well, yeah, just, if you don't have faith, God will heal you.

So everyone who doesn't have faith come forward for healing today. That doesn't make any sense. And then you can't say, if you have enough faith,

God will heal you. Just believe and he'll heal you. You cannot turn his healing power into a formula.

That's what I would say to that. There's beautiful instances in which he's moved with compassion, the

Bible says. And that word compassion is translated directly, if you were to just do a literal translation,

I believe it's good bowels. You know the word. And it's that stirring up in the stomach.

It's your stomach is turning in knots. You feel compassion. That's the word that's used in the Gospels of Jesus feeling compassion.

He feels compassion for people. Why? They're in need. Others, the buddies who lower their friend through the roof.

Jesus is obviously impressed with that. And heals the man. So there's a lot of instances in which what

Christ is impressed with is their faith. It pleases him that they know who he is.

Like with the disciples. Who do you say that I am? You are Christ, son of the living God. They say you're Elijah. They say you're this.

They say you're that. So faith does please the Lord, but you cannot turn his healing ministry into a formula.

And John 5 is a really humbling and helpful example of that. In the Gospel of John, I'll just add to this real quick.

In the Gospel of John, there are seven signs. And only in one of those miracles could it be argued that faith was involved in that.

So you have the turning of water into wine. Was there faith involved with that? Well, Mary just said, look, whatever he tells you to do, do it.

So was that faith? That's a little ambiguous whether she was just saying this was the first of Jesus' signs.

So it's not like she had seen him do miracles and thought to herself, oh, water, wine, just do whatever he tells you to do.

He'll take care of it. It doesn't even sound like that is really an expression of faith on Mary's part. The second miracle is the healing of the nobleman's son in chapter 4.

In that instance, there is faith because the nobleman's son said, if you just say the word, come and heal my son.

And Jesus says the word. And it says the man believed the word that Jesus said and he went his way and found out the way that his son was healed.

Then there is in chapter 5 the healing of the man at the pool. That man's faith was not involved with that.

So the healing of the nobleman's son so far is the only sign where you could say that faith is present. The fourth sign is the feeding of the 5 ,000.

And it's not like the disciples say, hey, why don't you just multiply some bread and fish? Jesus said, have them sit down in groups and we'll feed them.

And the disciples say, where are we going to get food for these people? They had no idea what was coming. The next miracle is Jesus walking on water.

There's no faith. That's in John chapter 6. There's no faith involved in that. Then you got John chapter 9, the healing of the man born blind.

That man didn't even know who it was or who Jesus was. Jesus encountered him and healed him. And the man didn't even know who it was who had done that.

And it was not until later when he confronts Jesus, or Jesus confronts him, that that man understands that Jesus is the

Messiah, makes that confession, and is born again, saved then. And then you have the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

There's no faith involved in that because when Jesus says to her, I'm the resurrection, says to Mary and Martha, I'm the resurrection and the life, they say, well, we know that we'll all rise on the last day.

Yeah, they don't get it. Yeah, so they don't get it. They don't even, they're not understanding that right then he's saying, I have the ability to raise him from the dead. So out of the seven signs in John's gospel, there's only one of them where faith could be said to be instrumental in the miracle itself.

And that's the healing of the nobleman. And the evidence there is that he is not even, that guy is not even a

Jew. And really, he had just heard what Jesus was able to do. And so his faith, obviously, he's not somebody traveling around with Jesus who sees this and has known this.

He has heard the word, and he believes that Jesus can do this, and he takes a pitch at it. So no faith, obviously, is not,

I made this point to Michael Brown, Sam Storms, when we were having our roundtable discussion, because they brought up faith is necessary, and if faith is there, then

God can heal. And I made the same presentation to them, basically, in real short. What'd they say? Not much.

Can you talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit? Why do Pentecostal churches emphasize this? Is this something that releases more power to the believer as they would think?

Such a loaded, I should have done, well, this is prosperity gospel, but I could have done a session on some of that.

Can I change Sunday school tomorrow? From sanctification to baptism and filling? I just preached on sanctification, so you could do that.

Oh, so good. Thank you. Why didn't you tell me that? I thought, well, we'll see if what he says is true.

I have my laptop with me on the trip. I'll teach on that tomorrow at Sunday school. Yeah, are you guys good at that?

Is that okay? Yeah. And basically, what we'll find, quite quickly, maybe I'll stay up late tonight and do some

PowerPoints for it too. It'll be fun. I have charts in the book, the spirit book coming out in September. I love charts.

You like Venn diagrams? Totally. Visually, I'm like, I need that. You and the, you know where I was going with that.

The vice president loves Venn diagrams. Go ahead. If you could do a Venn diagram for us. This is great.

You will find so quickly just cursory overview of the book of Acts in the instances where tongues are pouring out and there's the baptism of the

Holy Spirit. There's a specific purpose in it. There's a sign that's happening. And in those, the

Jews who thought they were it are like, oh, the Gentiles are getting it too. It's all purposeful.

It's not an explosion of baptism of fire everywhere. Pentecost had come.

So there's instances and God is using it as a clear sign. You got unbelieving Jews. You have the word going out.

You have the church being birthed. It's very unique in particular. What Pentecostals and Charismatics do is they latch onto that as the normative experience.

And what they're often doing is taking the book of Acts, which is mostly descriptive, telling us the narrative of what was happening and how the church was birthed and making it prescriptive.

Like you must now have Pentecost. All of you who want to be baptized in the Holy Spirit filled speaking in tongues and they're using terms like baptism, filling.

They've conflated a number of different things that the Holy Spirit does. So tomorrow we'll have some fun in Sunday school.

That sounds good. Mark 9, 38 -41, whoever's not against us is for us. There's a common argument against calling out false teachers.

What are your thoughts on this? Well, they are against us because they're false teachers. So they're not for us.

They're against us. They're against God because they teach false things. So that is a bad argument and you should read a book on logical fallacies.

All right. From online, in your opinion, is it okay to stay in a church where a handful of the congregants display hyper -charismatic behaviors but the rest don't?

So imagine that scenario. We're in a church we've got hyper -charismatics. Behavior. You'd have to define. Are we talking hand -raising, swaying, this stuff?

I don't know. I sit up front so I don't know if we have hand -raising here but I wouldn't consider that hyper -charismatic.

There could be six or seven hand -raisers in your church and you don't know. I know. I should be guarding the flock.

I should be up here looking out at everybody. It's true. It's true. We have a number in our church.

Hand -raisers? Yeah. I give the fist pump too. How do you sing some of these hymns and songs without like, in Christ alone, like, sorry everyone,

I'm not going back. I'm fired up about Jesus. Like, let's go.

You know? Let's do it. I'll allow it. Yeah. You come preach. Justin was there.

You know? Yep. Sometimes I see him stand up when he's singing. Justin, we love you.

You should be here. So, hyper -charismatic behaviors.

I don't know who asked the question or what the context but let's do a small spectrum. Okay. You have what we just described.

Please stay in the church. I'm sure there's a hand -raiser or two here just excited about Jesus or they haven't caught on yet and they're not allowed to raise their hands in Jim Osmond's church and so they're just singing to Jesus.

I joked with Scott Anial, you know, from G3. He had those articles about hand -raising and I joked with him at, we were at Shepherd's Conference and I said something and we were laughing, like, in stitches about it and I just said to him, look,

I'll be willing to get, like, I can give up some hand -raising or if you want to compromise, you want to do a little hand -raising. I think we can work that we're joking about something and we're laughing and having a great time.

I think you've got a lot of good, broad fences there, generally, with, like, how someone just gets excited in worship.

Austin Duncan sometimes raises his hand, you know, John MacArthur, Austin Duncan. They haven't run him out of town yet.

And there's always, like, two or three guys out of the 6 ,000 at ShepCon that raise their hands and we let them keep coming.

But then hyper -charismatic behaviors. If you've got someone over in the corner doing the, like, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, all this stuff, like, no.

That needs to be dealt with. You shouldn't stay there, per se. And here's what we have to be asking.

This would be prudence. Do I have children who are observing these behaviors? If they are, am

I prepared to raise my children in a church where every single week while Daddy has explained that that's actually not

Biblical, but they continue to do it, then it's like telling my kids it's not okay to speed, but then

I just always speed. They're like, okay, so we don't follow. Is this a general rule of thumb or this is something you're serious about?

Does God say it or does He not? Is that true tongues or not? And so I think you have to gauge that.

Also with teaching. Like, are we talking second blessing stuff? Are we talking, you know, healing service stuff?

This comes down to the leadership. Is the behavior being, is the behavior demonstrated on behalf of the leadership, the worship team, and people there?

So you have people in the congregation maybe who are not on board with that, but then you have the tongues talking and praying in the

Spirit and apostolic words coming from the platform. That would be different than little old ladies who sit in the back who spins a ribbon every

Sunday. Yeah, the flag, you know, the flag wavers. I remember going to a vineyard. It's a ribbon ministry. It is. Yeah, I remember.

We have two or three here. You do? Yeah, it's really good. Do you? No. Oh. How's that?

I remember going to a church in Texas, went and visited and preached the gospel. It was a sweet Sunday. And I looked in the bulletin and it said, please reserve all flag waving and dancing in the

Spirit for the northeast corner of the sanctuary. True story. And I was just looking at the bulletin and I looked over.

Sure enough. There they all were. You know, there's some different strokes for different folks there.

But yeah, you want to gauge the spectrum and I'd be careful.

But no, we're not talking about someone singing loud, raising their hands, excited about the

Lord, people in the church that are new or that are older Christians and just, they love

Jesus and they're like, I ain't no charismatic, I'm just singing loud. Get over it.

And you're great. Yeah, be careful. But yeah, if there's a pocket of it, you may just want to worship somewhere else and say, love you guys.

I'm going to just kind of go over here without the ribbons. For us, the northeast section of the sanctuary would be right over here so we couldn't do that.

All right, how might I approach communicating with friends who have left truth behind and gone to Bethel School of Ministry when arguing is pointless?

Case by case. Do they want to talk when they get into town and hang out? Great. Are they a

Bethel apologist? Like where they say, hey, I know we've talked before, but now that I'm back

I want to tell you, you're still completely wrong. They're amazing. And you're like, we need to keep talking.

Or versus someone else that has been flagrantly clear about where they stand and they don't really want to have a relationship or a friendship.

I find it increasingly challenging, and I'm not trying to be narrow -minded when I say this, but I'm finding it increasingly challenging to get past a simple, shallow lunch, talking about sports, and that's kind of it, or whatever, the weather, with someone who is an ardent defender of Bethel and their theology.

There's just nothing left to talk about. Not that we can't enjoy common grace and just enjoy life.

I have family members. I love you, and it's good to see you. But if you're going to defend an active heretic,

I just have less to say. There's no active fellowship, grounds for fellowship. No, and that's what levels up fellowship and levels down fellowship.

So if we're, hey, Kost, Uncle Benny, he's so different. I'm telling you, he's changed, and I'm going, great.

When are we going to talk about this publicly and make sure everybody knows in the body of Christ that he's different? Well, that's not how it works.

All right. Fellowship goes down. What do you do with that? You can't just look over and go, oh, well, you're my lining

Christ, my Lord, my Savior. No big deal. So case -by -case basis, you've got to try and share truth with them as best as you can, find out and gauge them as far as what their commitment level is and what their receptiveness and openness is.

Yeah. Yeah. What did the process of grief look like for you and your wife as you lost community?

Because you certainly did. And what were some of the main comforts and counsels that you were given? Yes. I went through a stage where I was very angry internally.

I had a lot of anger, a lot of frustration. And, you know, sometimes she would just say, like, are you all right?

I'm like, I'm fine. And she's like, no, you're not. I'm like, no, I am fine. You know, she's like, okay.

I'm like, this is crazy. It's ridiculous. She's like, what? I'm like, I have no money. I'm just sitting here, broke.

Like, no family. I don't even know what my life is. And she's like, all right.

I mean, you have me. Like, we have each other. I'm like, I know, but it's just, it's not the same. And I was going through, that's when

I went and got biblical counseling. And, you know, seriously, went and met with this older gentleman who was helping me, you know, quantify what it means to lose your whole identity, what

I thought was my identity. Because it was. I'm a hen. My family, like, we're top of the world, king of the hill.

There's strength in that. Even, you could understand, we all can, the strength of your own family, even now.

Like, if you have siblings or if you are one, and you're like, we're the so -and -so brothers.

Like, my kids already have that. Like, the hen girls, there's three of them. And my boys, like my sons. Like, I have that now.

We have a family. When you lose all that, you lose a sense of security, stability, a sense of care.

Like, I don't know these people at the church at that time. Like, who are they? They would, how do I trust them? They'll leave me in a heartbeat.

I don't know what's what. And I'm newlywed. So I'm going, okay, I know,

I love her. I know her. But like, here we are in this apartment. Everything that I've known for 27 years is done.

And all I have is, I met this gal in 2009. Now I'm married to her.

So my longest lasting relationship or friendship with the person closest to me is two years, my own wife.

And then the longest friend I had would have been about six or seven years, one of my baseball buddies. But that wasn't, like, deeply rooted in theology.

Everything else, gone. And then all these new people that, you know, my family's heretics and we're all crazy.

And they're right, but there's no level of relationship. So I went through that. And it's hard.

The grieving process. How long was it? I would say I was in biblical counseling for a solid year straight.

And I remember Tony, Pastor Tony said to me once a few months in, he's like, you meet with someone?

I was like, yeah. He's like, keep it up. I was like, really?

What's going on? He's like, I don't know. You just seem like clear headed. Things are getting stable? You feel good? I said, yeah,

I do. I'm kind of figuring out who I am and who he is and how this all works. He's like, yeah, you'll be all right.

Keep going. And I would talk to him. We had a lot of talks. But at some point, he was like, man, I think you need to go sit with a biblical counselor.

Like, life, leadership, emotions, all of it. And sift through.

You got to sift through the rubble. You got to kind of deconstruct and reconstruct all of it. And I'll be here.

I'll disciple you. But you need to go see an older man. And at the time, I'll tell you who else was really helpful is

I mentioned them in my testimony with Travis Allen and Jay Flowers from Grace to You. Those guys were so helpful.

And I would call them for wisdom. I was spinning. And it's just an example of how young converts need discipleship.

They need to sit with their pastors. Maybe they came out of something crazy and need to get some counsel. And have some good older brothers in the faith that you go to, you call once in a while.

They tell you, nope, you're crazy. That's weird. Nope, you're wrong. Yep, that's true.

Here's what to do about that. And remember what God says. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then fourth, alright, back, go serve.

Truth in time. Alright. You hang up the phone. You're like, okay, I got to grow up and figure this out. I would say in total to be at a place where I felt spiritually healthy and in my right mind, so to speak, like renewed in the mind and could quantify everything, about three to four years total from 2012, 2013 to where it was 2015 and I was in seminary and most everything made sense.

It was just now the tension of figuring out how to coexist with family members. And we've talked a ton about that, or how do you deal with grace and truth.

But yeah, and then after that, a year later, I started writing and that I'd never really written a lot and it became a way to sift through things.

I'd think about a topic and go, well, let me write a paper. So I used to give Tony papers that he never asked me to do.

And I wrote blog articles for no one, that no one read except my wife. And it was because I was sitting in my office day after day thinking about a topic, looking at the

Bible, looking at commentaries, studying a ton and going, so that's what that means.

Man, these guys are nuts. Okay. And then Tony would say, hey, why don't you teach that in a small group?

Okay. So I would teach it. So it was really like that. Does that make sense?

How do you personally teach rightly about conviction and illumination while rejecting language like God told me?

Well, God did tell me through His Word. And the Holy Spirit illumined my mind to see what

God had written and told me in His Word. And now I can rightly see it and rightly understand it.

So, obviously, I'm using the same language, but I know what the person means. Illumination, the

Holy Spirit's work, opening up our mind or our eyes, the light bulb moment, if you will, and then, well,

God told me. Typically, we would see illumination as God opening your eyes or your mind, let's just say it like that, to the reality of what has already been revealed.

So you're looking at Scripture and it's the, has that always been there?

Moment. There it is. God told me is special revelation, that God is directly speaking to you.

And I would create very clean categories between the two. So, I can easily say that I'm letting the

Word of Christ dwell within me richly, that I have the 1 Corinthians 2 mind of Christ, that I'm filled with the

Holy Spirit, that I am devoting myself to prayer, and I'm illumined by the

Spirit of God, studying the Scriptures, and I'm not receiving any type of special revelation.

I want to be filled, though, with conviction. Like some of you, who's our

Ministry Gamer evangelist, getting super fired up the last session. So was

I. Why? Gospel. All the evangelists in the room are like, yeah, let's go. Shouting amen.

So, what is that? Man, the Lord really stirred my heart with conviction.

It's His Word. So, you're being filled. So we would use different language. I feel such a strong conviction.

Pastor, just Jim. You said just call you Jim. Okay, Jim. I feel such a strong conviction to go share the

Gospel with my neighbor today. I had meant to the other day and I chickened out, but today I'm going to do it.

Why? Well, I'm just stirred with conviction. I'm reminded again that that's my...

Someone else would say, I just feel like God told me I need to share the Gospel with my neighbor. Well, no, you don't feel like God told you.

He did tell you through His Word. And now you're filled with conviction. Or we might say,

I have such a strong desire to love my wife more sensitively and more thoughtfully after reading 1

Peter 3. And that was so clear to me when I read today.

Just say that. Why? Well, because you read God's Word, you renewed your mind, you want to do it, and so you go do it.

Our vernacular is often like, I feel like God spoke to my heart. When you feel with your feelings, your emotions, your heart beats, and well,

I feel like God told me. You do? Because if God told you like He did tell people in the Bible, you'd feel fear.

And you would definitely not feel like He spoke to your heart or feel like He told you. You'd say, God told me to do this.

Or like, I'm just really listening in contemplative prayer right now,

Jim, and I'm just listening for that still, small voice. What?

As Justin Peters loses his mind. Still, small voice. Like, what is that?

How do you know which voice, which small voice was the Spirit of God? So stick with God's Word.

God did tell you. And when you sense a strong conviction or you're filled with zeal or impulse to do something in line with God's Word, just give the

Holy Spirit credit. The Spirit of God is going to stir you with conviction unto obedience.

He will. When you read God's Word. When Paul says, let the Word, in Colossians 3 .16, let the Word of Christ dwell within you richly.

And then he goes on to say what's going to happen. You're going to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. You've got all this fellowship and worship that explodes.

You have this thankfulness in your heart and this obedience. You go over to Ephesians in the parallel passage. What in the world is going to happen?

You've got the Holy Spirit in you. So we need to change our language. God's Word is

God's Word. We just need to be more clear. Would you, you obviously, you wrote the book, God Doesn't Whisper.

So you've been so kind as an older brother. Yeah. Do you want to just school us for...

I would just say use biblical language to communicate biblical concepts. Boom. So concise.

I wrote the book on it. Do you think most of these prosperity preachers genuinely believe what they preach?

That the Holy Spirit really heals and prospers us or do they just play this story just for the money?

Oh, that's such a good question. 2 Timothy 3 .13 says, in the last days, evil men and imposters go from bad to worse.

Deceiving and being deceived. That, to me, is one of the more helpful explanations for a question like that.

Deceiving and being deceived. Yes, there were times where we really thought the stories that were told were as though we were

Elijah 2 .0. We really thought we were doing it.

And the talk was that. There were other times where you knew that something was fake and everybody in the room knew it was fake and you kind of just, well, that was...

we needed to raise some money. That was a little far -fetched. You just go on with your life.

And you shove it under the rug and suppress the truth and unrighteousness. So, the Bible does describe what was happening.

It's Romans 1 .18. But, yeah. So, would your uncle consider himself to be a deceiver?

Would he look at his ministry and think, I'm tricking people? No. No. He would say, we all make mistakes.

I've made mistakes. Nobody's perfect. But he's convinced that genuine miracles have taken place at his hands?

Yeah, for sure. Does he, has he at any of his crusades, when you've got all the people lined up in the wheelchairs, off the edge of the stage, paraplegics and all of that, does he, are there plants in there?

People that put on braces and come out in wheelchairs that they bring up out of them and they fabricate a healing to sort of prime the pump for the psychosomatic effect?

That's a really good question. So, I don't have factual knowledge. And if I did, I would tell it.

There might be some edits on the material from last night. I told everything.

I gave you guys updates from like three days ago. That I want to let cook a little bit.

But there, so I would tell you, I have no factual knowledge of planted people, fake healed people.

I don't. I definitely know that there were people who would want to get on stage or they would come up and they just wanted to get on stage at a

Benny Hinn or they wanted him to pray for them. And so they would fake a healing to get up there. And the doctors after would check them and none of that would check out.

I also have factual knowledge of actual people saying they were healed and they weren't.

And, but the ministry said they were. And that, and those people in a psychosomatic way got all the feels and all the adrenaline and they were like, yeah,

I talked to a gentleman, a young man, actually at Shepherd's Conference, after talking to him at my church, in the food truck line at ShepCon, he came up and we had a really good moment because he was mad at me when

I talked to him at my church. He had come to visit and he had said that he got healed at Bethel. But the pain came back and he thinks it's because it was his lack of faith.

And I said, no, it wasn't. You got healed on that foot. He had cerebral palsy. And he said, I said, you got healed and he had an injured foot at the same time.

So like double whammy. And I said, no, you got healed on that foot because you were all fired up. You were walking around, limping around because you got the adrenaline rush of a couple thousand people shouting your name and being excited for you.

And there's a human element there that was tapped into. And it's that rush.

It's the same reason why people lose their minds at a sporting event. They forget that they have to go to work the next day and their face is painted.

They're shirtless on ESPN waving their thing around. Their wife's like, are you nuts? It's like you lost yourself because the adrenaline.

Same reason why athletes don't feel certain levels of pain when they get hit. Why? They're just adrenaline.

So, but now you got injured and your doctor said it's worse. And it's not because of lack of faith.

It's because it was fake. And he was super upset with me. And I said, I mean that in love, brother. I want to pray for him, be his friend.

He was upset. Comes to me at a Shepherd's conference a couple years later.

And in the food truck line it says, hey, I said, hey, you're here. Yes, you're here. That's awesome.

And he said, yeah, I got to say, man, I'm sorry. I didn't, it was just hard what you had said. And I kind of knew it was true, but I didn't want it to be true.

So I started watching Justin Peters. I started watching YouTube and blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, a typical story.

And he said, and I realized that it was very adrenaline based, psychosomatic. And so stuff like that all the time.

I will also say that all the, you know, you can't have that many rented or that many stadium wheelchairs, that many rented wheelchairs, not many wheelchairs that look identical.

People who come to Crusades have their own wheelchairs. And when you line them all up on the platform and most of them look like airport wheelchairs, maybe that's a red flag because that many people don't use airport wheelchairs.

In all your time in that movement, did you ever see any legitimate healings or miracles that you can say,

I saw this, I was there, and everything else was fake. This one time. No. Not once?

No. I saw the opposite. I saw moments that shook me to my core, made me cry, made me wonder why

God wouldn't heal them. Yeah, no. No genuine healings.

You want to know an interesting story? Really interesting. And I say this with respect to God's will and what could happen.

But when Timothy got diagnosed with cancer, we went through a few months and the elders, really kind, the elders at Grace Community Church, I was there for a meeting, and Pastor John was really kind.

He said, hey, come to the elder meeting and we'll pray for Timothy tonight.

I was like, really? He said, yeah, we'll pray for him and you be encouraged.

I was like, okay. So I'm sitting there and the elders had their whole meeting and you can go to the first half and I was able to sit.

And they prayed for Timothy. And I remember Pastor John saying,

Lord, if it be your will, sustain him, heal him, sustain his days, extend his days.

If it be your will, he prayed both sides. And since then, like if I have one instance where a situation has either turned around or just completely gone a different direction.

So since then, Christine and I both, we have it written down, the date in like a little journal she had. There was never a single incident more with Timothy after the elders of Grace Community Church and John MacArthur prayed for his cancer.

So... Timothy is thick. It is. It's so thick. So here's what we have to do.

Here's what we have to do. You have to look at the course of Timothy's life and one day we'll basically all be dead.

And the proof would be if Timothy keeps living, and he has a great life, then there's been one particular person that I know of who was quote -unquote healed or that didn't succumb to cancer who had it.

And it's Timothy and it's because John MacArthur prayed for his healing. The cessationist.

People say they don't believe in spiritual gifts. So I say that all true. That's all true.

But I do say that to say that so many people give a bad rap to you or Justin or Pastor John or other people and you know, cessationists don't believe in healing.

They just go, just suffer and die. You know, if you go to that church. It is fascinating to me and I'm thankful.

And yet other people, you know, his cancer could come back. I'm aware. So it's the...

We are at the mercy of God and His sovereignty. And so even in that, like for all the hooting and hollering, cancer won't touch this house and yelling in Jesus name and laying hands on people and blowing on them and throwing jackets at them and putting olive oil on people and all the stuff that we would do.

Not one actual healing. My own mother had a tumor on her pituitary gland.

My uncle has a heart condition. This is not unknown. People died in the ministry.

Actual people on the team. There were drug overdoses. There was sickness. There was divorces.

There was adultery. You think about that and it should humble us to go, even in circles of sound doctrine, just to go,

Lord, keep us pure. Keep us faithful. Keep us humble. If you would, by your will and power and your mercy, allow the sustaining of life for others, if you would heal, if you would protect, okay.

If you would allow trial and suffering, okay. Whatever God says, whatever my God ordains is good.

That, just stay there. And so all that to say, that's our mentality.

Not one single healing ever. Two last questions that will wrap this up and kind of bring us back to your conversion story and testimony that we started with last night.

What other faith teachers have you met? Obviously your uncle, you mentioned Oral Roberts. What are the other ones that you have personally met with and interacted with?

Paula White was one. We had an interesting Christmas with her one year. That's all I'll say about that.

Crouches? Oh, all of them. So I live, my roommate in Dallas, one of them was

Brandon Crouch, their grandson. Good friend of mine. All the way through that era.

Did he come out of that movement? He did. So Brandon is definitely out of there and a little more jaded, not in ministry.

He's not preaching at this point. He's in media. This is the grandson of the founders of TBN, Paul and John Crouch.

And his dad, to give you kind of an idea of our relationship now, I love hockey, big hockey fan.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are my favorite team. They're in the playoffs and they won. They beat, they got out of the first round for the first time in 20 years, the playoffs.

And so like Dallas Cowboys fans can feel my pain as far as like, yeah. And when they won, this overtime winner just several weeks ago,

I got a FaceTime and it was Brandon and it was Paul Jr., his dad, who I love them both dearly. They both got

X from that whole world and they had FaceTimed me and they were like, yeah, yelling at my phone and I was like, yeah, my wife's like, cool, like Brandon.

She's like, what? You know, it's been years since we've really talked, but hockey was our bond. He loved hockey.

Them, we used to have, he and I, before all the fallout unfortunately for them because they got cut off because his sister was in the accounting department and dealing with money and went after, she's kind of a blue collar straight shooter and didn't like the shenanigans and went after her grandfather and started saying, there's things we're doing wrong.

I'm not signing these checks. And that was the end of her. That's Brandon's sister.

So, lots of drama, all that stuff, but in the end, we used to go to, we'd show up to a restaurant, particular restaurant in Orange County with our board shorts straight from the beach and go eat with Paul, senior and new

Jan. My, my mom was cooking for Oral Roberts as her, my, my mom loves to cook.

She's a very gifted cook. She was driving down Pacific Coast Highway, PCH in California to Oral Roberts his house in Newport before he died and cooking for him once a week and talking with him like this is just before he died.

So, the whole family like TBN uncle or Roberts that orbit pretty heavy went to praise the

Lord. They saw that he met Kenneth Copeland. Yes, met

Kenneth Copeland once. Do you remember Carmen? Yeah. Yeah. You remember Carlton Pearson? I remember those names.

All of them as well. Kenneth Copeland was my hero growing up because he had these shows.

One of them was called, he had Covenant Rider. Did you know he was an actor?

I know he did a movie recently. Oh, no, no. He, he like acted. When I was a kid, he was a cowboy.

He was Wichita Slim. That's his name and these, these, so, Gospel Bill, no?

Any of that? No. All right. You should have called it False Gospel Bill. But, they were so good at, you know,

I just remembered, they were so good at media. So good at media and using media to leverage and to get into homes and to get into people's.

His daughter, Kelly, so Commander Kelly and the Super Kids was one of their shows they produced.

Like high dollar, high value, high creativity. So, they were all, like, to meet them and see them and use their stuff, all heroes.

I'm trying to think of any others, but, that was, never met Joyce Meyer, never met

Osteen. Do you know of anybody else, final question, do you know of anybody else who is like you and that they've come out of that movement, being close to it as you were, been saved and now are sound in doctrine, whether or not they're in ministry or not is irrelevant, but they're sound in doctrine now, clear thinking and trying to reach people inside that movement.

Do you know anybody else? One, Morris Cirillo's grandson, Michael Cirillo, he's a dear brother, met him, he's in, like, marketing or something like that.

He came out, he was going to a reform church in San Diego and then working for Michael Horton doing graphics and media and I met him, we did some podcasts with Michael, Dr.

Horton and, and Michael talked about his story,

Michael Cirillo and, and shared some of his story. He's one and I would say he's saved and solid, not just, like, jaded and spat out.

That's kind of, that's kind of it, which kind of stinks because I, I don't want to be the only one, right?

There's lots of people and that's what I would delineate is I'm one of just many, like, there's many, many, many people who've come out of the movement.

Come out of the movement. That's all I am is I'm just another convert, but to be in those families and things like that, that's what

I say is kind of what stinks is I wish, I wish more would, and what, the issue is this, your whole, not saying it's harder for God to save anyone,

He can save anyone, but your whole life is wrapped up in that. Your livelihood, your identity, there's something just deep about it that you almost have to have like a process in your church that's like a missions program that says, like, if you leave, we'll, we'll, like, give you housing and pay your bills for three years and rehabilitate, like, you need a rehab center.

I say that, like, it's funny, but you do. If it wasn't for that church being willing to let me come out and be a part, like, the

Lord did it perfectly. So, that's the part, I sometimes wonder, I don't know all the answers to it, but I sometimes wonder in my own life, like,

Lord, am I being open enough to, if someone really needed help, would they reach out to me? Would I be able to help?

Would I, could I ask people in my church to say, hey, we need to, like, rehab this person. They need to get away from this.

Could I, because that's the issue with people who don't leave Scientology too and these other cults. Well, if I leave,

I'll have no family, I'll have no money, I'll have no food, I'll have no friends, I'll have, can't pay rent. And so, now you leave, you forsake all for Christ, but I still, like, people, there was a safety net to, like, move out here.

We'll help you. Like, okay. But even then, it wasn't like, hey, we'll save you from heresy.

It was like, whatever. It's costly. It's cool. Like, it only came out after. So, I don't know anyone else who did it, but I bet they're out there and I bet they're wondering.

There's gotta be someone going, I'm done. Maybe one day they'll call you, but can

I move to Sandpoint? Yeah. Live in somebody's front yard or I'll pitch a tent. They're likely to call me, for sure.

I called Justin. I knew stability when I saw it. That guy.

You haven't seen him walk then, have you? That is the definition of lack of stability.

And you're allowed to say that. He tells me I should write

Hallmark cards. So, let's give

Kosti a round of applause for his time. So, we do have

Sunday school here tomorrow. If you come from another church, we're not asking you to stick around to be here for that.

We welcome you if you want to stick around for that Sunday school and church tomorrow. Kosti is speaking for the main service as well as adult

Sunday school class, which starts at 930. And again, if you have a chance to say thanks to one of the many volunteers, here's the dirty little secret.

Some of these volunteers pay the registration to come to the conference and then they spend the time in the kitchen working and serving you and still sitting in on some of the sessions as they can.

So, we wouldn't be able to do this without them. And then speaking of volunteers, if you are here and you know how to set up chairs afterwards when you set this up for the church service tomorrow.

So, those of you who have helped set up chairs before, you know the drill. You know what the markings are at and what to do. We appreciate a hand doing that.

It'd take us 15 or 20 minutes. And Kosti will probably be hanging out in the foyer at the back of the sanctuary if you want to talk to people and take pictures and sign autographs.

What's that? Signed Bibles. Signed Bibles. That's right. All right. Blasphemy. As the elder brother,

I will close in prayer. Father, we are grateful for this weekend that we've been able to have together for bringing

Kosti here, that this has worked out. And again, we thank you that you have saved him, that you have sanctified him, that you have put him in ministry.

We thank you for his heart and his sound doctrine and the way that your Spirit works through him and has spoken in and through your word to us today through Kosti as your mouthpiece.

And we pray your continued blessing upon him and his ministry and reach to his family, that you would be pleased to save them and draw them to your son so that they may have true salvation and experience genuine repentance and the forgiveness and begin to produce the fruits that bear evidence of repentance.

And so we would ask your blessing upon our time. We pray that the things that have been said here and what we have learned may serve to equip us and edify us and encourage us in the truth and give us the tools that we need to reach out to others who are lost in error and share the gospel, the true and living gospel with them.

And we thank you for these things and pray these things in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen. All right, we are dismissed.