Dangerous Doctrines – Is Tony Miano in a Cult? – Part 3 with Ken Cook

This is Apologetics Live, to answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

Opening the Discussion of Grace Fellowship Church and Landmarkism

Okay, and we are live. And this is not Pastor Andrew Rappaport. This is not Andrew. This is Justin Pierce, Pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church. And we have been having some incredible shows here lately.

I tell you, this has been some very, very eye-opening, and very large, very incredible shows that we've been having. It's been, some of it has been very heartbreaking, in my opinion. I have been just in, to be honest, I've been in tears at times, as we've been going through some of these discussions.

And it has been a lot to take in, and a lot to deal with, as we have just had the many different people on that have given their accounts of all the things that have gone on with the church that, I can't remember the name of the church, Grace Fellowship Church.

I'm probably getting the name wrong. But we have a show tonight, where we're gonna try to sit down, and we're gonna try to discuss what we heard last week. We heard some very disturbing things, and some heartbreaking issues that we have, we just felt like we wanted to talk to everybody about.

I wanna introduce, just before we start out, I wanna take a moment, and I want to have you listen to something from Pastor Andrew Rappaport. I tell you, it was heartbreaking, but I do think that everyone needs to hear this.

And it is a bombshell of an issue, it's a bombshell of the discussion, and we want to open this up so everyone can hear this. Give me just a second here. Well, apparently we can't hear that, so I'm gonna change up and do something a little different.

I apologize for that, give me just a second. I am illiterate when it comes to doing a lot of this stuff. I thought I had it set up for everybody. Let's see. Tell you what, what I'm gonna do is we'll back up and punt.

I'll pull that one out in just a moment. I'm gonna back up and punt just a little bit, because I do have some questions. I have, Kevin has been gracious enough, Kevin John, he has been gracious enough to write out a list of questions that I believe that Mike Reed needs to answer.

He hasn't answered these questions yet, and we have some questions that I do believe that he needs to answer and to bring to light. And if he wants to come on the show, if he wants to do whatever, to come on, it would be a great thing if he would come on and just give a discussion of this and give an answer.

So without further ado, the questions go like this. Talking to Mike Reed, do you meet with women alone on a regular basis? Do you ask for details about spousal intimacy? Have you ever said to not trust the elder is to not trust God?

Have you ever said whatever the elder would counsel you to your life is perfect? Have you ever said that GFC is the only true church in the Quad Cities? Do you believe the elders have nearly unlimited authority in the lives of their congregations or the congregants?

Have you ever said if someone owns a gun, is in the military or police, they have premeditated murder in their hearts? That's a big one, that's rough. Do you share details about counseling sessions with other members?

Did you ever imply that men and women should be able to kiss someone on the lips that is not his or her own spouse? That's another, that's incredible. Have you ever shared details of your own sexual intimacy with any of the people in your counseling sessions with members of the opposite sex?

Do you believe you are infallible against sexual immorality? Have you ever said that? By name, what specific pastors, theologians, and or teachers have condemned alone in counseling sessions? And I have added a question, number 13, to this.

Mike Reed, have you ever said there are only five churches in the United States that are capable of authorizing and sending evangelists out in the streets? So with that, I am going to ask Brother Ken, Brother Ken Cook, how are you doing, brother?

I'm doing very well. I'm sorry that you have to be here. And I wanted to introduce everybody to Brother Ken Cook. He's, I'll tell you that he and I have had some discussions here in just past a day or so.

And I mean, this is really the first time Ken and I have ever really had discussions about anything. And I think I have a brother that is like-minded with me. And Brother Ken, I'll just introduce yourself if you would.

And as you do, one thing I wanna say to everyone is that the reason that we're dealing with this is there is something going on in the body of Christ that we need to talk about. And it permeates in so many different ways.

It's the landmarkism, the landmark idea. It's a doctrine that Ken's gonna explain to you for those that don't know. And the reason why it's so important is it can be a minor issue or it can be a cultic issue.

I mean, it can go from one to another. It can be so overwhelming and so all-consuming that everything about what you believe is incorporated and mixed into your entire doctrinal and philosophical, psychological and theological belief system that you are the exclusive and only one that has the truth.

And that's that landmark idea. And it can go from one to another. And I'm gonna have Brother Ken talk about it from karm .org and introduce himself. Go ahead, brother.

Yeah, so my name's Ken Cook. I think a lot of y 'all know me. I worked at Karm for more than a decade. I tell people I went to the seminary of Matt Slick. And so I've grown up really for the past 15 years doing apologetics with Matt and learning apologetics from Matt and others, but mostly from Matt.

So as I started listening to this issue of Grace Church, Grace Fellowship Church there in Davenport, the first thing that hit me was this idea of landmarkism. Now, landmarkism is a relatively novel Baptist idea.

It started around the 1850s, 1851, 52, 53, that timeframe is the typical attribution. And the idea is that each church is kind of its own island, if you will. And each church has its own authority and there is not interconnectedness of authority.

There is not a denominational structure. A lot of what you see from non-denominationalism is a result of many things in the mid 1800s, but landmarkism certainly plays a part in that as does the restoration movement and some other things as well.

And so when we hear some of this teaching and some of these things that are coming out of Grace Church, I can't help but notice the parallel to some of the ideas of landmarkism. Now, one of the big things is landmarkism was created primarily to stem the tide of liberalism.

They wanted to prevent Baptists from being preached to by Presbyterians and Lutherans, really, at the end of the day. And they wanted to have the local church be the authority because as we now see in our world, the nominations can often go off the rails, PC USA, PCA, right?

Even Southern Baptist, right? Which this movement came from. The Southern Baptist Convention is not the Southern Baptist Convention from when I was a child. And so landmarkism seeks to provide protection by bringing authority solely to the local church and to the local body of elders.

In and of itself, that's not necessarily bad, but some of the doctrines that came out of this are bad. When I was first introduced to landmarkism, it was actually by a brother that a lot of y 'all may know.

I won't mention his name because he believes it. And he said to me, yeah, if the Apostle Paul came to my church, I wouldn't serve him communion. He's gotta go to his own church for that. And it's this isolationist idea.

And I think that that is one of the aspects that may be in play here, is that we have a Baptist church that is kind of a rule unto itself. And that's, I think, one of the big things, Justin, that I see at play and that I've heard very similar things out of the landmark movement over and over and over that we're now hearing from Grace Fellowship Church.

Yeah.

Assessing Motives, Witnesses, and the Charge Against Mike Reed

You know, one thing I wanna point out for everybody that's gonna ask the question, what kind of skin do you have in this game? What kind of knit do you have to pick when it comes to this issue? Are you just going after them because it's Tony or because you got something against Mike Reed or maybe you have something against one of the other people here?

That's gonna be asked. And that's a legitimate question. It's a fair question.

So It is, you know, and it is and it isn't. And so let me start off with this. How many times have we heard people who deal with apologetics and Mormonism maligned.

Because they're an ex-Mormon, right? It's an easy attack.

It's a cheap attack. It's a genetic fallacy and it's utterly meaningless. That said, let me tell you my background with Grace Fellowship Church. I have no background. That's right. I've never met Mike Reed.

Outside of Tony Miano, I know no one who attends the church. That said, I know Tony Miano very well. Okay. CARM and Living Waters used to do a lot of work together. They would pass folks back and forth constantly.

They would work together on projects, et cetera. That's where I first met Tony. When Tony left Living Waters, I worked to actively recruit him to come work at CARM and to kind of join the team there because one, he was a great evangelist.

And CARM, as many of you know, is an evangelistic ministry to this day, right? We're not ivory tower academics, if you will. Now, my role at CARM has significantly changed over the past couple of years.

I do a little bit of consulting occasionally now and again, but I'm not on staff anymore like I used to. I'm not on the board any longer like I once was, but I still have a lot of love in my heart for them.

When Tony first started Crossing Counters Ministries, it was I who built that website. It was I who purchased that domain. It was, to this day, the logos that he has are the logos that my company, my staff, I paid them to put together, right?

It was I, along with Chris Harnholz and Richard Story who were on his radio show, his podcast, right? Yeah. It was I who connected him to Matt. It was I who went to Tony and said, hey, Tony, Reuben Israel shows up first on Google when someone searches for street preaching.

We gotta do something about that, man. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Right? We had a lot of good times together, working in ministry, preaching together. There's a video out there from Boise State where I'm filming and Tony's talking to this guy and he asked him, if you had three minutes left to live, what would you say?

And the guy bursts out the Shahada, okay? Because he's Muslim. And Tony looks at the guy and he goes, so I guess you're a Muslim then, right? It was hilarious. It was one of those moments where you just, you went to see, you got caught off guard.

I was the one who came to Tony and said, hey, why don't we enter you in the contest to win the mustached man of the year award? We came in second place. He has a good mustache, right? All this to say, up until October of this year, when he asked me to give it to him, and I did, I paid for the domain, Cross Encounters Men.

Dot com. I've said this to him recently via text. I have no malice that I am aware of. I have no issue. I have no contention with Tony as a man. There's no issue that I am aware of between he and I. In fact, when Andrew first came to me and said, hey, I want you to look at this, I said, no.

And I said, I don't think so, Andrew. I can't believe it. I can't believe there could be an issue there. We all know Tony. We know his manner of life. And he asked that I would just look at the facts.

Doing apologetics for basically my entire adult life, I can go look at the facts. And I think what you'll see, and I think what's been put together, especially by Anthony, is meeting the biblical standard of witnesses.

Yeah. We're not relying. I've not, the show that was done last week, we're not relying upon hearsay. We're not relying upon second and third hand testimony. We're not looking at or requesting myths and legends.

We're talking to real people who are really there, who really saw these things, who really participated in these things. And the Bible says we're not to submit a charge against Nelder without two or three witnesses.

Exactly. And I take that very seriously. Last week, we had six witnesses. Exactly. Six. And so I know that there's brothers out there who don't want to touch this issue with a 10 foot pole. I have nothing to gain by touching this issue.

I have everything to lose. Yeah. Except how many of us who are apologists, who are evangelists, who are pastors, owe the truth that God calls us to, to examine a charge against Nelder. And that's what we're levering.

Make no mistake. There is a leveled charge that Mike Reed is unfit to be a pastor. That is what we're saying. I agree. And that's the evidence from witnesses that we are seeing. Because I want to be really clear on one other thing.

At no point in any of my research, have I heard a denial of the essentials, right? Of the essentials of the faith. We have at no point that I can recognize, and I've not listened to everything, but I've listened to a lot of things.

I've looked at a lot of sermons and a lot of sermon notes. I at no point have seen a denial of the essentials. And I want y 'all to know that we're not, I got no ax to grind. If anything, I have a lot of reason to be suspicious.

And just to be as clear as possible, that's what I am. I'm suspicious, but the witnesses have led me to a conclusion.

You know, I've heard a few people say, you have an ax to grind, not you, but talking Anthony or Andrew or myself or Kevin or anyone else. And what I want everybody to understand is personally, the reason I've tried to stay as much out of this is because I don't have an ax to grind and I wanted to hear the details.

I wanted to hear the information, okay? It was my heart not to label a charge, because as a pastor, I take this very seriously. I take it so seriously that it makes me break down and cry. And I'm gonna try every bit as much as I can not to break down.

I mean, I'm just gonna tell you the offense is not against me, it's against our Lord Jesus Christ and his church and against his bride. And what I wanna make clear is, I don't know that I've heard anyone say, and if they did, I missed it, that anyone there is not saved.

I can't pronounce from this distance, not knowing them personally and seeing them, their salvation or not, even though we have seen a lot that causes a lot of trouble. But it's like I've told people before, if Paul the apostle can call the Corinthian church his brothers, there's a lot that we need to be very careful of shouting out anathemas and calling people unsaved.

We have to be very careful of that. And I'll leave that for God and for his bride and for the people at the church. What I will say is this, everything we heard last week is, there's no question in my mind that we're dealing with a cult.

We're dealing with cultic teaching. And that's why we're talking about this. People can get pulled into cultic doctrines, culture and teaching, cult leaders so quickly. I tell you, I've talked to you guys about David Koresh.

I've talked to you about Jim Jones. And what you don't understand or probably don't, you might, but if you look it up, these guys were very charismatic and they were able to pull people in to get them to do things they would never do, like drink Kool-Aid.

That's where we get the term from, don't drink the Kool-Aid. Right, that's where we get this term from. And it's because the doctrine sounds so good, but there's another way that it happens. It happens because these men know how to prey on strong militant leadership, on people that are able to stand, weather the storm, that are very strong, very boisterous and militant military type personalities.

And it is my belief that Jim Jones and that David Koresh, if you'll go look at their, look at their, what they did, they brought in military, fire, EMS, militant type people from all kinds of different walks of life, even police officers and whatnot.

They brought them in and gave them kind of a mandate to be the warriors and they were to protect and they were to lead the charge and lead the way. And this is what cult leaders do, is they surround themselves with militant men and women who will fight the fight for them and will hold everyone accountable.

Jim Jones had it locked down so well that the people that were going out to Jonestown that tried to run away, these militant men were surrounding the camps and they killed them all. They shot everyone, there was only a few that got away.

David Koresh, he had so indoctrinated and trained the people that when you see the fight coming, you will know that I am the Messiah and you will know the truth and you will be ready to fight. And there was some that were skeptical right up until ATF and FBI and they started raiding in.

And he said, see, it's happening, see, it's happening. And they jumped in full bore, guns blazing, willing to die for this cult. And I'll tell you what we're trying to do and this is not call anybody unsaved.

We're trying to say, get out from underneath this. This is false, this is terrible, this is wicked, it's bad and it's going to hurt people. It's going to hurt people. And it already has. It has, it has a lot, we've been talking about it.

Yeah, we definitely have been talking about it. I wanna try one more time if I can to pull up Anthony, Andrew Rappaport, because he has something that he wanted to say that he wanted to point out. And I wanna try to pull this up one more time if I can.

So Ken, while I'm doing that, maybe you could discuss a little bit about the cultic things that are going with the landmarkism.

Yeah, so one of the other big pieces that we saw the landmark movement, which by and large, I would say is largely dead nowadays. It's certainly not what it was, was the tendency to isolate and the tendency to put all of one's trust in a specific set of local leadership.

And I think that's a piece that as I've seen what's gone on here, that's a piece that concerns me. And again, that's not to say that this is un-Christian per se, it's not to say that... Yeah, one of the questions I was talking with Matt about this about a lot of people know this, but maybe I'll do.

Matt pulled all of Tony's articles off of Karm. And one of the stances of Karm is, you only have trustworthy teachers on there. And so he pulled all of Tony's stuff off. And one of the questions that as I was explaining some of my conclusions to him, that he asked me was, is this a Christian or a non-Christian cult?

And I said, Matt, once again, there's no evidence that any of the essentials of the faith are being rejected, right? At least, I mean, down to their website where they've got the book, they've got the London Baptist Confession.

Now, I don't think they meaningfully hold to the London Baptist Confession, but they have it there. And that's one of those interesting pieces. And so at least my current conclusion is this, is that we have the social aspects of a cult.

We have the social controls of a cult. We do not have the non-Christian cultic aspects in play today, or more specifically, we don't have evidence of that. There may be private things occurring that we're unaware of, but the things that we are aware of, I think firmly, and we're gonna go through some of the audio today, firmly put this into the camp of a cult from a social perspective.

Still not, audio's still not working for you, is it?

I'm trying to get there, I hate this. Oh, that's awful. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you have to give me just a second. I'm letting you ramble for a minute, I apologize for that, but it's, I'm trying to get there.

And so I was thinking maybe we could bring Kevin in. Yes, Kevin, come in, brother.

If I hit play and you guys can hear this, let me know, and we'll just keep going. Okay. Okay. How are you doing tonight, Kevin?

I'm good, Ken, thanks. I'd like to say it's great to be here again. It's good to see you guys. I appreciate all you've done. I appreciate your concern for those that have left GFC, and I appreciate your concern for the universal church a lot, you know, abroad as these things should be exposed because, you know, you articulated that well.

Ken, you were very quick to respond. They have hurt people. You know, the six witnesses were a small sampling of the numbers of people that have been hurt by Grace Fellowship Church under Mike Reed's leadership and ministry.

And, you know, there's a lot more, and there's so many that have, down through the years, they've put it behind them. I couldn't get them on here because they've buried those memories. They don't want to stir that stuff up anymore.

And, you know, we're able to get a lot of people that are willing to come forward. There's so many more. And, you know, it's a dirty track record. It's a long 12-year track record of hurt.

Well, let's go ahead and try this. Let me try real quick and I'll see if, everybody just let me know. If it doesn't work, we'll stop and I'll do something else. No? Nope. I apologize. It's all right. Yeah, I'm awful at it there.

That's all right. There we go. I gave it a shot, so we'll see.

I wanted to maybe just share one of the books that, you know, I know we've talked about here and it's been very meaningful in my life. I'm just about finished with recovering from churches that abuse.

It took me a long time. I also, I'm just going to back up a little bit. You know, we left Grace Fellowship in February, early February. I think it was the 7th or 8th of February, 2018. That was our last Sunday.

That was our last Sunday there. So I never spoke out and named them until over two years later, nearly two years and some months. The reason I didn't speak out earlier was because for one, we were trying to get our heads straight.

We wanted to understand what we had been through. We wanted to educate ourselves. And one of the books that really helped me see a lot, and I just, I'm going to read it. I just had to write blog posts on it.

And I wrote a five series posts on the book, Churches That Abuse, not Recovering From, which I'm reading now, but Churches That Abuse. And it was so phenomenal. It was, it hit every element of the church.

And can I just read just a tiny little bit of this introduction? Because I think it's, it really speaks to what we're here to talk about tonight. As long as you pay them the royalties. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

This is, he says this, the perversion of power that we see in abusive churches disrupts and divides families, fosters an unhealthy dependence of members on the leadership and creates ultimately spiritual confusion in the lives of victims.

That's so succinctly describes what happens there. If you ask any family that has a family member inside of there, if it has disrupted and divided their family, 100 will say they have. Does it foster an unhealthy relationship on Mike Reed himself?

100%, absolutely it does. And does it create a spiritual confusion? Absolutely, 100 it does. And there's just more here. I'll maybe share more of this later on, but I just wanted to start with that to say, this is what this place does.

It hurts people. And the last time I read my Bible, I thought shepherds were supposed to help people.

Church Discipline, Control, and the Burden of Hebrews 10:26

Yeah, amen, I'll agree with that. It's definitely a concern, something that we definitely need to consider. So as we're diving into the issues, let's see, I want to try to play some of these clips from last week, because we had a marathon event last week of just incredible proportions.

What was it, three hours and 35 minutes or 45 minutes of people coming on and giving attestation of things that had gone on within the church that affected them. And we had so many people talking about these issues.

The one thing that I want to start out with and Ken, maybe you can jump in with this as well. The one thing I want to start out with before we get into any of the clips is Kevin, you were there for nine years.

You were there and what was your capacity within the church, if you don't mind?

Yes, my last four years there, I served in the role as a deacon in the church. Okay. I left, when we left, I was actively serving as a deacon in good standing. I had never been in under any kind of church discipline, never had any issues.

So that's where I was. Okay, so you agreed to the doctrines, to the teachings, to the things that were going on at the church. And so I want to make it clear to everyone so that we have the foundation.

You're not walking out saying, look, and you and I have talked about this. I'm as pure as the wind driven snow. I did nothing wrong. As soon as I saw the bad stuff, I saw the bad stuff and I jumped ship.

You're not saying that. You're saying that you had been so convinced. And if I'm putting words in your mouth, please tell me to shut up. But you were so convinced that this was the right church and the right way.

This was the correct doctrine. These were the things that were supposed to be happening inside of a biblical church that you had aligned with it and were part of it.

Am I right? Yeah, that's pretty accurate. I think the way to say it, the way that I tell people is, I grew up in a church. My mom and dad were faithful members and continue to be faithful attenders of church and active in their faith.

So we grew up in the church. It was more of a freewill denominational type situation. When Mike Reed came to Grace Fellowship Church, we began to hear preaching that was different than what we'd heard.

It more stressed sin and it was very, well, maybe from my perspective at that time, it was very exegetical. I wouldn't call it that now. I think that there's a lot of issues with how he exegetes scripture.

But I've learned that over the last number of years. And as we heard this kind of stuff, we became convinced. And I would say that I actually came to salvation and faith there. I don't think it's just because of him.

I think it's that the word of God convicted me of my sin that I was living in. So there's that. And as we, it took me several years to really kind of know if I could trust him or buy into it all the way.

And then eventually I said, yeah, okay. And then we were really faithful for quite a number of years. And then before I really began seeing the issues, my wife had begun seeing some of the issues that were going on in the church.

And so as my eyes began to be opened, and it's interesting because churches that abuse talk about that too, how one day we start getting these senses, these things that come up and the Holy Spirit guides us and helps us discern things.

And as I grew in these discernments and certain things happened along the way, books I was reading, people that I was encountering or people that would come to the church, these things began to open my eyes.

And as my eyes began to be opened, I began to go to Mike and have discussions with him about some of the issues and the concerns that I had. And I mean, I think he wouldn't be, he wouldn't pat me on the head and say, you're doing good, Kev, move along.

I mean, he'd listen to me, but yet I never really sensed there was gonna ever be any change. And then it came to that point. I just knew there wasn't based on some discussions, some things that had happened, some things that he was saying from the pulpit that were addressing my conversations with him to the whole congregation without them really knowing it.

And of course I knew it. And so when we did leave, we were really convicted how we knew that we had been a part of this. And the same thing that happened to us after leaving, we had done to countless people that left before us.

And so what should a Christian do in those situations? Well, a Christian should go to those people, talk to them, seek their forgiveness and reconcile to them. And that's what we did. My wife and I set out to do that.

There were some things that were grievous that we were very ashamed of and are still today ashamed of doing those things that we went to them. I mean, Matthew 6, if you know that your brother has sinned, lay your gift at the altar and go be reconciled to your brother.

I even use that verse with Mike when we left and he kind of reached out sort of trying to reconcile, but really what he was trying to do in my opinion was draw me back in, do enough to get me back so it would be an okay relationship.

But we did it. I mean, I'm not putting myself on a pedestal by any means. We were ashamed of ourself. We're still ashamed of ourselves for participating in so many of those things for so many years, but we sought out as best we could.

I went to my parents and I asked them to forgive me for the way that I had treated them. So many people we did that with because that's what Christians should do, I believe, right? And it's just what we ought to do.

Yeah, exactly. And you think that's the,.

That's one thing I wanted to make sure that we're talking about and addressing. This is not you coming out saying, I've got a vendetta. This is many people coming out and some were victimizers and some were victims and all were victims.

Let's say it that way, you and everyone else, but some had part in victimizing others. I actually heard some other testimonies about ladies and other gentlemen going to one another. And I saw it personally on the after show, ladies and gentlemen going to one another and seeking reconciliation and forgiveness.

And that's the whole heart of this. For those people that wanna say you're just trying to bludgeon somebody. I wanna make it clear. This is all about reconciliation. When you bring somebody under church discipline or you excommunicate them, the entire purpose when you treat them as a Gentile, the scripture says, and you cast them out, how do you treat Gentiles, Ken, when you get undrinking that?

I treat them well. Yeah, you treat them very well. What do you do to them? What do you do to them? If you think they're Gentiles and not saved, what do you do?

You're kind and you share the gospel with them.

You go to them and you gospel them. You love them. You show them grace and mercy. You show them humility. You show them their sin. You show them their sin and you talk to them about these things. And you're graceful with them.

And you want to love them back to repentance, to be reconciled first with God. And then with man. And that's what the scripture tells us. That's what we are called to do as the body of Christ. And we plead with you.

We beg you be reconciled with God. The scripture tells us. That's what we're to do is to beg others to be reconciled with God. And that reconciliation by necessity brings out peace and reconciliation with one another.

And that's the call.

That's what we're trying to do. And I think that's the big thing here, right? Is we're not looking to, I'm not looking. I don't think any of our conversation that you and I have had, we're not looking to hurt anybody.

We're not looking to damage reputations. Rather we're trying to say, look, I think there's a problem here that needs to be addressed. And this is a very serious issue. And how is it that we can protect the young ones in the faith who might go to this church?

One of the things that I heard last week that surprisingly just killed my spirit was listening to Chris say, well, I had some red flags, but because Tony was there, I just let him go.

Yeah, and that's the danger.

Yeah, I mean, I just want to say something to some of my brothers here. Realize that if you're allowing our brother Tony to use his reputation to further the damage here, your reputation is what's enabling that.

Yeah. And Tony's stuff off of calm, that's it, right there.

Yeah, that's good, Ken. I've heard some, read some, been made aware of certain things that have been said that Tony is being slandered or whatever the case may be, or some people have really thought it kind of a joke.

And my response to those people is, come and talk to some of these people that have gone through this, and then you tell me how much of a joke this is. Absolutely. If it was your wife or if it was your children, and they were being put into these situations and they were being treated like this, would you still think it's a joke?

Because you think Tony's got some kind of a name that people recognize? And maybe you know Tony or maybe you don't. Maybe you're just aware of him or his reputation or whatever the case may be. Call yourself a Christian, you owe yourself a little bit more than to just make a comment like that.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that. We're dealing with souls. We're dealing with people's souls. We're dealing with, not only that, but we're dealing with the life of biblical Christians, of the body of Christ.

And that's something we don't mess with lightly. That's something we don't play around with lightly. And the reason is, is we can so damage and harm, even believing Christians, that they can become ineffective to the glory of God, ineffective to the body of Christ.

They can become so distraught and so hurt that they can even turn away and blame God for the things that we have done as Christians, as pastors, as elders, as leaders. That's why we are called, ladies and gentlemen, as the body of Christ, especially for you, the elders, you pastors, that's why you're called to be above reproach and gracious and gentle, and the things we're gonna talk about tonight.