Perry Noble's Subordinates Abuse and Harass a Critic

It's time for another edition of Fighting for the

Faith. Monday, December 7th, 2009. Strap your helmets on, get your seatbelts ready, we are off on a ride today.

If you've been following me on Twitter and Facebook, then you know that over the weekend, I tweeted a story and put a post up on my wall regarding the, literally, the attempt to assassinate the character of Dr.

James Duncan, a fine Christian man who was also a critic of Perry Noble, and this character assassination occurred at the hands of, literally, employees of Perry Noble's church,

New Spring Church there in Anderson, South Carolina, and we've got the first radio interview with Dr.

James Duncan regarding this, and we're going to dive right into that shortly, and then once we're done with that, we're going to take a quick break and we're going to turn around and we're going to review a

Perry Noble lecture that he gave at the Unleashed Conference, and we'll talk about Scripture twisting extraordinaire.

Perry Noble is in rare form, and, I mean, just to kind of give you an idea of what it is that you're looking forward to hearing in this edition of Fighting for the

Faith, this is Perry Noble. ...investigate the obvious. This next one, now you're going to have to give me a minute,

I need to explain it. So let me say it, let me explain it. The second I is ignore the jackass.

In Greek, jackass is translated blogger. That's just a teaser of what you're going to be hearing on today's edition of Fighting for the

Faith. If you're not up to speed on the story, you will become up to speed on the story, and it's going to be a long edition of Fighting for the

Faith. With that in mind, I don't even think we're going to do a Marty Python. We'll have brief breaks today as we do the program.

So with that, here is my interview recorded earlier today with Dr. James Duncan of Anderson University, and him telling us the story of how employees of New Spring, known to the leadership, assassinated his character in the most unchristian, unsanctified, ridiculous ways you could possibly imagine.

It's a harrowing story, so here we go. Alright, on the line I have Dr. James Duncan, who is the

Associate Professor of Communication at Anderson University. He has a master's degree and a

Ph .D. from Regent University, one in radio and the other in communication.

Dr. Duncan, thank you for coming on Fighting for the Faith. You're welcome. Alright, the occasion for you coming on Fighting for the

Faith is a little bit interesting, and you have a blog that you write called

Pajamapages .com, and it's a blog that's critical of Pastor Perry Noble and some of the things that he teaches and does at New Spring Church, and apparently being a critic of Pastor Noble has caused a very interesting story to occur in your life, and I want to give you the opportunity to talk about that.

But before we dive into the story proper, I want to ask a couple of questions to kind of frame this so that people understand where you're coming from, and maybe even where I'm coming from.

First of all, do you hate the people that attend New Spring Church? No, no, no, no. Actually, I rub shoulders with New Springers every day.

Being a professor here in Anderson, probably, I don't know, exactly a third, half, perhaps, of the students in my own classes are

New Spring students. Some of my best students in the last couple of years have actually recommended for jobs at New Spring.

I have close friends who have taken jobs there, so no.

Generally, the people, and if you go way, way back on my blog, I have said this, but generally, from my experience, people who attend

New Spring are zealous for the Lord. They have a heart for reaching out to people, a heart for ministry.

You know, one of the special emphases of the Church is personal evangelism, and you meet anybody who goes to that church, and you see it worked out in their life.

So yeah, absolutely not. What I focus on is the teaching coming from the man or a few of the men at the top, but no problem at all with people who go there.

Alright, then let me just get this one out. Do you hate Perry Noble? Do you have some personal acts to grind against him?

No, no. Perry is often a topic of my attention because of what he says.

I've never met the man, you know, that's part of the story, but I've never met the man. I have no reason to have any personal beef against him.

The reason that he is worthy of attention is he's a very important leader.

Obviously, he leads the largest church in our city, perhaps, I don't know, enough of the churches in our state, and I'm guessing probably in our state.

He's on the verge, I think, of becoming in the top echelon of national Christian leaders.

He's just announced he's going to be doing a conference with Rick Warren next

February, I think, and I think the three headliners were Rick Warren, Mark Driscoll, and Perry Noble.

So, you know, I've started paying attention to him a few years ago, but he is certainly somebody who warrants a little bit of extra scrutiny.

When you have a church, he started this church ten years ago, actually, at our university, and you're not endorsed by the university.

He rented our facilities. A lot of students went, but when you grow a church from your back living room into,

I think they're around about 15 ,000 members right now, in that short a period, I think you're allowed to pay a little bit of attention to how that might have happened and what might be going on there.

You know, the other thing that Perry is often deliberately controversial in what he says and attracting attention and buzz.

You know, that if you try to be controversial and somebody pays attention to you because of your controversy and maybe has a problem with that controversy,

I think that should come with the territory. It should not really be a surprise if that's the game you want to play.

Right. So let me throw this out on the table right off the bat. I mean, Perry makes it clear that he claims lives are being changed at New Spring and that people are giving their heart to Jesus, and he seems to think that should exempt him from scrutiny and accountability.

What do you think about that claim? Well, it's great. Lives are being changed. There's no question of that.

But anybody can point to that. Oprah changes lives. Dr. Phil changes lives. The Mormon Church changes lives.

Heck, my life was changed by his church. So, you know, it's a good thing to point to, and we rejoice in lives that have been changed.

But, you know, anybody, any secular person can point to lives being changed.

Heretics can do the same thing. To say that is not saying

Perry's a heretic. It's to say, right, what you're saying is no, it doesn't exempt him. What matters is what he says.

And, you know, often any kind of teaching can result in life being changed. What is he teaching?

That's what's important. And I'll rejoice whether Oprah makes you wealthy or Perry Noble makes you wealthy.

I'm happy that you're wealthy. But what's the message that got you there? That's my concern.

Okay. Now, on your blog, pajamapages .com, which, by the way, is a brilliant name.

I've been following your website now probably since the beginning of the summer. And you have a blog post called

Holy Rage at the Spring. And in that post, you tell your story of how insiders at New Spring, that would include leadership, staff, employees, and volunteers, have attempted to corrupt your family, sabotage an adoption, destroy your career, and ruin your reputation.

And this entire thing became the subject of a police investigation. And you claim it was conducted with the knowledge and encouragement of New Spring's senior leadership.

Walk us through this. Oh, you got six hours? We'll try and condense it.

Yeah, please. This is radio, not an audiobook. There's 10 ,000 words there.

We're not going to get there. I guess people could go and read it if they've got time themselves. Yeah, it started...

Well, I started to notice a lot of trouble back in June. This is when

Gary Lamb, he's a person a lot of your listeners probably are familiar with.

Yeah, we've covered Gary Lamb. I bet you have.

He announced that he'd had an affair. And it was no great surprise, obviously disappointing, but no great surprise.

And I just arrived in New Zealand for... I spent three weeks with my father who was battling cancer, and thankfully he's doing very well now.

But I just arrived there, woke up the day after I arrived, and here's this post by Gary Lamb.

So I posted a kind of an observation on it and showed how he had been talking about this woman that he had had the affair with six weeks earlier and kind of had seemed to treat her as his own property and made that observation.

I think at the same time, Perry had mentioned it on his blog perhaps during his service, but not

I think a lot of details. He just said a good friend. And I think what happened hearing the accounts from some of the people who ended up getting involved in this problem that occurred later is they started

Googling for Gary Lamb and came across my article about him and were all of a sudden exposed to this fact.

Hey, there's a blog here that's criticizing Perry. I don't publicize the blog. I don't invite people to go and read it.

So a few people read it, but not have a large audience. And then within a couple of days, some really strange things started happening.

I first noticed my email inbox got filled up with all kinds of acknowledgments of solicitations that I'd apparently made for life insurance and auto insurance and financial advice.

And then it got a little worse. I got an email from somebody with a link to a picture of homosexual hardcore porn.

A little bit after that, perhaps the next day, I got an email that actually included those pictures in the email.

Now, they were sent by fake addresses. It was not obvious who it was from.

At the same time, my wife, who was back here by herself and with our son, emailed me and said, we're getting all of these calls from insurance companies.

What's happening? And I kind of figured out what was going on. And to try and not worry her,

I said, it was probably just some spammers. And I was replying to everybody as quickly as I could.

I didn't do the please don't call again. I got in the middle of all of that,

I got a notice that I'd been subscribed to a gay magazine. And I, you know, from New Zealand, trying to match up time zones and calling

New York to contact that magazine to make sure I was taken off their list before they put something in the mail, so that, you know, my son doesn't go out.

My son, who generally collects their mail, doesn't go out. And what is this magazine doing here? Right. Then within, this was all happening within a couple of days,

I woke up and opened my computer to check my mail. And there's a message from the provost at the university, regretting the fact that I had resigned.

Now, I'm happy to know that he actually regretted it, that would have been sad if it had been rejoicing.

But yeah, he regrets the fact that I'm resigned. And he asked a couple of questions about how things will pan out once I leave.

And like, wow, we know this would have this happen. So I call his home and his office and email and say, this was certainly not me.

It turned out, oh, and then a friend emailed, emailed me and said, somebody started a Twitter account in your name.

And it was a, it was called jduncan .com, D -O -T -K -C -O -N was spelled out.

And I went and checked it and had my photograph on it. It was, it mentioned my street name.

It mentioned my son and my wife. It mentioned the president of the university in a derogatory manner.

And I figured this is probably the same people who are doing this other things. Now, at this point, I didn't have any idea who this was, but it appeared to be connected to the

Gary Lamb post that I'd done just a few days ago. And if you look at some of the comments that are in that post, you'll see there's some people get very, very angry about that.

And there's somebody who comes in there who calls himself Burning P, and also identifies himself as Satan.

They are the ones who actually were behind these things that were going on. Twitter closed that down for me within a couple of hours.

They're very good about that. But then within a day, somebody had started up another one calling this one

James Duncan AU, AU standing for Anderson University, and had put a note up in the top says, this is a parody site.

Now, under Twitter rules, it meant I couldn't ask them to shut that down. It was not a parody.

There was nothing... A parody takes what you're doing and turns it a little bit to make it humorous.

You could certainly do that with me. I wouldn't have a problem with somebody doing a parody of me, but this was not parody.

The person who ends up, I can tell you a little bit more what was in it, but the person who ends up doing this was a gentleman by the name of Josh Maxwell, who turns out that he was at the time a full -time employee of the church.

He was a security guard. He had actually been made aware of my blog back in May, and this is actually a very important little step here.

I had been making the case over a couple of posts that one of the characteristics of churches are leaders.

I don't want to tag the whole church, but leaders like Perry Noble and Stephen Furtick and Gary Lamb, they are the three main pastors that I kind of tracked, was that they really can't handle dissent, and they are paranoid of dissent.

Part of why they can't handle folk like me, but within their ranks, people who volunteer or people who work for them always have to be investigated and monitored in case they move out of line.

I quoted some things that Furtick had said, and to kind of demonstrate how this was really a mindset that filtered through the entire organization,

I'd found, I'd read this maybe, I don't know how long ago, but weeks or months earlier, and this came to mind, and I had to go and search for it.

It was a post by a pastor of the church, I think he's the creative arts pastor, his name's

Shane Duffy, and he had this account of how he had, somebody had been questioned, one of his volunteers had been asking him about something, and he said something about his expression made me question his buy -in into the vision.

Now, you know, if you read these, the vision is everything. You've got to buy the vision. But it was his non -verbals had made him question, he said, and I strongly questioned him to just determine the level of his buy -in on this.

And so I quoted Duffy as, you know, this guy gets the enhanced interrogation techniques because of a facial expression.

Well, a couple of days later, Duffy gets the track back, you know, his blogs work, and realizes that I have linked to him, and puts out on his

Twitter account, the esteemed Professor James Duncan has linked to me.

He had a couple of other people who responded to him, but one was Maxwell.

His Twitter handle at that point was Mr. Mouth. And Maxwell said, seriously, how much would you pay to get rid of that problem?

Duffy says, oh, don't worry, I'm not really worried about the professor. Maxwell then goes, starts tweeting himself, and says, sends a tweet to Gary Lamb.

Now, Gary Lamb doesn't reply to it, I'm not saying Gary Lamb ever saw this, but he says, Gary Lamb, I need to get a gang of rednecks together, and we need to organize a gangland beating.

And then a few minutes later, Maxwell tweets, okay,

I'm off to BTFOJD, just those letters. Well, I won't say it, but beat the out of James Duncan, you can fill in the blanks.

Right after that, and obviously in reply to that, Duffy says,

Mr. Mouth is one of my favorite people. He's got lots of rage, and I like that.

So, here you have a pastor of the church who has just watched somebody go into a violent orbit.

He's going crazy. I'm recruiting people for a gangland beating, that's the word he used, and I'm on my way to BTFOJD.

And you would expect that if you're seeing somebody who is an employee of your organization start to act this way.

And one of the other things about Josh Maxwell and his friends who get involved a little bit later is that they are fans of,

I guess, mixed martial arts, ultimate fighting. I don't know if they're two different things or the same thing. But anyway, they like violence.

They like, yeah, in terms of entertainment and violence. It's big in the South. It is.

And these are, you know, people talking about gangland beatings. I'm assuming

Maxwell probably knows what he's talking about. And Duffy would have known this.

And rather than saying, calm down, guy, you know, you're going way too far, to actually come along and endorse it and pat him on the back.

Now, I didn't know, at the time, somebody pointed out to me that Duffy was tweeting about this. I could see what

Duffy was saying, but Maxwell had his Twitter account blocked off. So, you know, you had to be one of his followers.

So, I didn't know what Duffy was replying to. Just, you know, it's curious who's in a rage now.

I didn't know what he was responding to. Otherwise, I might not have, you know, gone back home. We might have got a hotel that night.

It was a little bit later that I, you know, for some reason, Maxwell made his tweets publicly available and I could piece that conversation together, which was kind of chilling when you read it in its context.

Now, Maxwell did not come and beat me up that day. Maybe he was goofing off. Maybe he had intentions to do it.

I don't know. But I'm still here. So, that never actually happened. Now, I want to pause for a second.

I want to pause for a second. I think people need to just reflect on the fact that we're talking about church staff.

Right. We are talking about people who are given the task of discipling people in the doctrines of Christianity and the

Gospel of Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ himself basically says, if you save your brother,

Rachah, you've already committed murder in your heart. These guys have already murdered you according to Jesus' definition of murder out on Twitter, and these are pastors.

They didn't stop him. Right. Not only did they not stop him, they green -lighted him.

And, you know, when we get to the end of the story, the church's position is that this guy acted alone.

He was a loose cannon. Duffy's comment ties them into everything that he did.

Because here's a low man on the totem pole. That was there when I had a meeting, eventually, with their attorney.

He said, this is our argument. We have 109 full -time employees, and Perry Noble can't be aware of what everybody's doing.

And this guy, he works second shift. Nobody knows what he does. And you can't hold us responsible.

Well, first of all, just in terms of corporate responsibility, that's not how it works in the real world.

If you are employed by a business and you mess up and the CEO doesn't endorse it, the

CEO doesn't know about it, but the CEO is on the hook for it. That's a part of management. That's why you get paid the big bucks, because you have to take responsibility for the little guys.

So first of all, he's an employee of the institution of the church. You have a responsibility right there.

Even if you said, we condemn everything we have condemned, we kept telling them not to. But they didn't. The senior leadership, not

Perry, but Duffy, says, this is the kind of action that I like. This is the kind of action that gets you in my good books.

So what does a low -level employee want to do? You want promotion. You want the big guys to like you.

So how do I get the big guys to like me? Destroy people like James Duncan.

So he didn't act at that point, but he's got the message that he can do it.

Let me just make a little aside, especially from somebody who kind of looks at communication and media.

The fact that these people conducted this conversation on Twitter is really insane.

This is the kind of conversation that you have on the telephone or that you have in person. The fact that they would do this,

I mean, I'm not a great fan of Twitter. I don't have a Twitter account myself. But for anyone who

Twitters, anything you say is a public record. And that you have these really loose conversations and threats.

It's a public record. It's evidence that ends up getting investigated by the local police.

There's a carelessness that is a part of these conversations that they even exist.

Not everybody puts it together, but you see on my blog, I put that together and you can see the timestamps and you see as if you were sitting in the room of this conversation.

Right now, so far, at this point, you've talked about the fact that you've been mysteriously getting gay pornographic email, a subscription to a gay pornography magazine.

You got these really frightening Twitter things being mentioned about you.

And then you've got this fake Twitter account that's gone up. I mean, this is a complete invasion of your privacy.

Yeah, I'm not sure I had much privacy for them to invade, but whatever I had, they did. At least of my peace of mind and security, they invaded.

The Twitter account that ends up running from beginning of June through to,

I think it starts posting sometime in August and eventually got deleted in September.

But this was a sustained effort. I had, and on my blog,

I'll quote some things which I won't mention for you, but some very vile material.

There's all kinds of accounts, probably most of the accounts focus on homosexual activities, homosexual affairs that I have with acquaintances of mine, homosexual fantasies

I have of relationships with pastors at New Spring Church. There are accounts of me being abducted and the idea that this is abducted for homosexual rape.

So there's a lot about me, but there was also a lot about my family.

The Twitter mentioned my wife by her name, my son by his name and his age, and his school.

It correctly, and only the correct, correctly identified his age, name, and school.

It mentioned my vehicles, make and model, describes trips that my wife took in our car.

It mentioned my address, at one point it actually gave my address in an invitation for people to come to a sex party at my house.

Now, I know that there's not going to be a party at my house that night, but the thing with Twitter is you can search.

If somebody's looking for, you know, types and sex party Anderson, bam, mine comes up and there's nothing to indicate.

If you do a Twitter search, there's nothing to indicate this is a parody. I mean, there's nothing about that that is a parody anyway.

And this is all being conducted, put on Twitter by an employee of New Spring. Right. It ended up, the person who was doing this ended up being

Maxwell, the Mr. Melf, who was Love the Rage, the Love the

Rage guy from May. So yes, Maxwell is doing this. The other little wrinkle is that from very early on, you know, there are a lot of people started to follow this account.

Some of them were your regular Twitter spammers, but one very interesting follower was somebody who went by the handle of Jay Sizzle, J -A -Y -S -I -Z -Z -L -E.

I didn't know who it was at first, but, you know, clicking on his link, it appears to be somebody who is associated with the church.

There's a lot of complimentary things about Perry Noble. Perry Noble has these Twitter chats to and from Jay Sizzle.

And so I did a Google search and eventually find out that it's somebody by the name of Jason Moorhead.

Now, Google is telling me that this will be important later, but Google tells me that he's the executive pastor of the church.

And I'm not sure how long he was the executive pastor. Okay, so for June, I'm seeing – now

I didn't know it was Maxwell doing it, but somebody's doing this, and it's being followed by the executive pastor of the church.

That's a fairly scary thing just right there in itself. Now, in terms of Moorhead, I don't know exactly what he read.

I'm sure he's going to say he never read it. He was never aware of it. But a couple of things he probably needs to account for.

One, how did he hear about it? He only followed about 70 people. That might sound a lot to uninitiated, but in Twitter, that's not a lot.

Go ahead. Yeah, here's the deal. I mean, personally, I only mostly follow heretics on my

Twitter account. Some of my friends are really sad because I don't follow them on Twitter. It's like – you don't understand.

I use it for research. It's like if I'm following you, it's generally a bad thing. But if you insist on it,

I'll call ahead and follow you on Twitter. You know, here's the deal is that if you're familiar with Twitter, when you follow somebody, everything they say shows up on your

Twitter page. Right. So why did he – how did he decide – first of all, why did he decide to follow?

And if you follow people without reading it, what's the point of following? If you follow people without reading it,

I'd expect to see that he follows 20 ,000 people. And he was the executive pastor at the time that he was following this guy.

No, not at the time. It's just formally he was. He was the – at the time, he was the chief operations officer, which he still is today.

Got it. And there were a couple of other news springers who I identified who were following it as well, but he's the most important one.

I might have expected or anybody might have expected that, especially when you see the content, and they know my name because a couple years before I published an article in our local paper that caused a little bit of a stir.

And they know I have a blog, and that's the reason that he followed it, perhaps.

You know, James Duncan has a Twitter. Or did he know that there was a fake Twitter and he followed it because it's a fake

Twitter? Even if he says that he never read it, the other part – the other problem with that is

Maxwell, every time he logs into this fake account in my name, sees – you know, when you log into Twitter, you've got – they have,

I guess, 64 little icons over on the right, 481 or something like that, where you can see who's following you.

Jay Sizzle is right there. So for every day – and it wasn't every day. Maxwell would do five, sometimes 20 a day on my account.

It wasn't an occasional thing. It was incessant. Every time he logs in, he sees that Jay Sizzle is still following.

Every day that Jay Sizzle doesn't say, shut this thing down, you have an invitation to do a little bit more and a little bit more.

And kind of over time, it seemed to me that the content got wilder and wilder, and I think part of that is

Maxwell is kind of thinking, okay, if I put my toe over the line this far, are you going to jump? No.

This far, no. And there are kind of implied death threats that come a little bit later, threats of vandalism against my house and property, that there's an implicit endorsement of him being there.

The other angle on this is that anybody going into Jay Sizzle's – there's Moorhead's Twitter page – sees that I'm on it.

On his little stack of icons, down in the bottom right, there's a big JD, which was the icon that Maxwell used for this account.

Now, if I'm looking at Jay Sizzle's account, which was open to the public, the reason that they're there is

Twitter says, if you're interested in this guy, you might be also interested in his friends. Mm -hmm.

All right, we're going to pause the interview right there, and we are going to take a quick, quick break, and when we come back, we're going to continue with our interview with Dr.

James Duncan. If you'd like to email me regarding anything you've heard so far on this edition or any previous editions of Fighting for the

Faith, you can do so, TomFack at FightingForTheFaith .com, or you can ask to be my friend on Facebook.

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All right, we're back.

A lot of ground left to cover today. I just want to let you know that I did invite

Pastor Noble to come on Fighting for the Faith this time, to present his side of the story, and to basically say whatever he wanted to say in his own defense, and to lay out

New Spring's position regarding this incident. And they respectfully declined my invitation, and so just wanted to let you all know that.

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Let's continue with my interview earlier with Dr. James Duncan of Anderson University.

Perhaps people are clicking on that. One of the things that the, you know, kind of jumping to the end, but these,

Maxwell and his three other friends, accomplices, were interviewed by a local detective, and Maxwell, what the detective told me is

Maxwell said that there were multiple people within the church as an organization.

I want to be careful here and not say, you know, the 15 ,000 people who go to the church knew about it. I'm assuming most of them, 99 .9

% of them didn't. But within the offices of the church, there were people that Maxwell was aware of who were reading it.

I think that's what Maxwell kept, that's part of why Maxwell kept going. To me, it seems it became a, it became a source of entertainment.

Near the end of his run, Maxwell actually starts asking for ideas, you know, because he's run through all of the gay abduction and all of the rest of it, and he says, okay, next thing

I'm going to do is maybe I can turn, I can turn James Duncan into a transsexual. But if any of you have any other ideas, and he said, those of you, he said,

I know there are many of you who read this but don't follow. Okay, so we know there's an audience for it.

I never let, I never let on that I was reading it. I never let on that I was storing this stuff, partly because I needed to let him kind of create enough rope that eventually

I'd be able to figure out who was behind it. So he acknowledged there are people in the church who knew it was there, although he said they didn't know that it was him doing it.

Okay, but people did know that it was there. Well, here's the question I have for those people, and I don't know their names except for Morehead and one or two others, but why did nobody put up a red flag and say, this is not good?

There are Twitters, there are Twitter posts on there that very evidently, very obviously come from inside New Springs Services.

If you look at the date stamps and the content, he's in the service, or he's perhaps watching online, but he's tweeting about Perry's sermon.

And these are all the same kind of things as my homosexual fantasies about Perry, but they match exactly what he's saying in the service.

So somebody who's obviously a supporter of the church, a member of the church, and somebody who's saying all of these vile things about me, that nobody, and I don't know whether it's five or 50 people, but that nobody thought, this is really not good.

Even if you think I'm worth destroying, this is probably not the best way for the church to do it in such a public way.

All it would have taken is for somebody to alert Noble, or maybe one of the executive, the executive pastor, for example, to say, somebody needs to send this guy a private tweet.

You don't need to know who he is. He could be a 12 -year -old sitting in a basement somewhere.

You don't need to know who it is, but it's obviously somebody who respects Noble, who says, please, you must stop this.

Well, and this kind of begs the question, and that is, is that anytime somebody mentions my

Twitter account using the at sign on Twitter, I can see it.

I can see when I'm mentioned, and you document the fact that this bogus account in your name on several occasions mentions

Perry Noble, his Twitter account, which means that he's going to see these things.

Exactly, right. There are a lot of messages that are sent, and as you said, I listed them on my blog, and if you read them, none of them are innocuous.

They are all off -center, and you're not going to read that and think there's a sane person behind these.

My question I ask on my blog is, what did he do with these that Perry Noble and Brad Cooper, the youth pastor, both get inundated with these posts?

Now, they can't say that they never saw them, or that they don't read what people tweet to them, because they do.

If you scan through Noble and Cooper, you'll see that they'll make all kinds of little replies to people who have dropped their at sign in the message, you know, thanks for the love, or I'm looking forward to being there, or really happy for what you're saying.

Well, they monitored these things. Right. Perry's even responded to one of my tweets to him once.

Well, congratulations. You got more out of him than I ever have. Well, I've actually met the guy. He's actually pretty nice in person.

Well, yeah, but the options are, did they read them and not notice anything wrong with them, which seems unthinkable when you see them?

Did they read them and think they were just funny, which I think should be unthinkable as well? Right.

Did they read them and, you know, you can block somebody from sending these to you.

Did they block it? Well, that seems like a reasonable answer. How many tweets did it take for them to do that, and why?

Why did they block it? My name's on it, and it's got this vile content. If you're blocking it because it's vile content, either it comes from me, and if they really think it comes from me, they should save that and use it to destroy me or destroy my reputation.

Or if it's not from me, then they have to know it's from somebody who's appropriated my identity.

Blocking that in that case seems like a pretty weak thing to do, especially if this is somebody who's stolen a critic's identity and is doing it in a way that is reflecting poorly on the church.

Blocking it seems to be not a terribly good answer. Well, it all comes down to who knew what when, but again, here's the deal.

I've been a CEO. I have a master's degree in business administration from Pepperdine University.

My emphasis happens to be leadership, and you're actually painting a picture here using my education in business.

You're painting a picture of a good old boy's almost mafia -like insular management team that rewards unquestioning loyalty and attacking of foes, especially anybody who would dare to attack

Perry Noble and his vision, and demonizes those who dare to question his ideas, methods, and teaching, and whether or not they're anointed of God.

I mean, you're basically describing a very toxic insular culture here, and I can tell you this as somebody who studied leadership and actually experienced it out in the trenches in the corporate world.

Organizations always take on the attributes of the person on the top, and it sounds to me like this culture that allowed this to happen was inculcated by Perry Noble himself.

That's my argument. I don't claim that Perry knew exactly what was happening. I do have a question about what he did with these tweets that came by him.

I have a question about how his senior leadership didn't do anything about what they apparently knew, but I'm not saying Perry knew.

He's got a lot going on, and the argument that there's 109 employees that he can't know about what's happening with everyone is fine.

Actually, that's a bogus argument. At the level that they basically insulate him from everybody, I don't expect that he knows everything that Josh Maxwell's doing.

Actually, here's the deal. I say that's a bogus argument. As somebody who's worked in large corporations, when you have a

CEO, he can really be effective and know what's going on, all the way down to the individual employee level, what's going on in their life, up to about 150 employees.

That's about the point where he starts losing track, and he's well within that 150. That's just some leadership stats that comes out of the business world.

That I would disagree with, but I think that the church is run differently than a business like that.

There's this huge emphasis on the leader, on the visionary, that you basically protect the visionary from all distractions.

I know a couple of times that I've tried to send messages into the church that there are so many gatekeepers before anybody ever gets to Perry that an underling can't go directly to Perry.

It has to go through various stages. Even so, Perry appears to have a social relationship with Maxwell.

You can see that in some of the way they talk to each other on their... Maxwell's continuing his personal

Twitter account while all of this is happening. There is a level at which they do draw the line.

When they found out, or when I think they feared that Maxwell was about to be arrested, they fired him. Maxwell ends up getting found out to police.

By the end of July, I was starting to really get concerned that what was happening was going to result in real physical violence.

I went to the police with what I had. People will look at what's on there, and they might think, well, you're just overreacting.

They're just putting this on. You underreact, and then you end up in a coffin.

Right about the same time, and I don't remember the details of it, but there was a shooting at a mall in Illinois somewhere,

I think, or Michigan. I don't remember how many people died, but I know the aftermath of the story was people went and looked at this guy's blog, and here he's making all of these threats about things he's going to do, and no one took him seriously.

That was a wake -up call to me. People are going to come back and look at this the day after my funeral and think,

Duncan really should have seen this coming. Why didn't he do anything about it? I had real concerns, and not just for me, for my family as well because he's talking about my son.

I think the day or two before I went to the police, there's this message about you can't protect your son forever.

That'll put the wind up you when people are talking like that. The Anderson County Sheriff's Department was very, they were understanding.

They took it seriously as well, and because it was a fairly complex case, they took it straight into the detective's office.

It took a couple months to investigate it, but eventually, Maxwell gets found out.

When the detective interviews him, I think that day or the next day,

Maxwell gave a signed statement. Maxwell confessed to everything that we knew he was doing.

He confessed, and then he goes back to the church and says,

I don't know his words, but basically says, I've been found out. The police are investigating me. I got a message from, the way

I found out is that the executive pastor emailed me and said, whom I had emailed back in July to say something is going on in your church, but he emailed me and said, what you emailed me back in July, it turns out to be true, but we've terminated this employee.

Now, I don't think they know really why they terminated him because the very next Sunday, Perry Noble stands up in church, and you can see this video on my blog as well, stands up in church and he says, he's coaching his church on how to deal with critics.

He starts out by giving an example of overhearing some young women at a local

Chick -fil -A, and they're talking about entertainment in church. They're not even talking about Perry Noble, they're just talking about something that he has some interest in.

And he says, I wanted to stand up and he said, God, she's a girl, but I can take her down.

He said, but God told me not to. So he starts off, the lesson about critics is we'll start off by prefacing this with the pastor fantasizing about beating up,

Perry Noble's a big man, I don't know, six foot or more, and you wouldn't want to cross him.

He's beating up a college -aged woman. So it starts here, and then he says, but through it all,

God taught me an important lesson, and that is we don't fight critics. We don't fight these so -called

Christians. And there's an important point here. Every time, and this is my main argument, every time that Perry talks about critics, it's always to present them as being on the enemy side.

We are agents of the devil. You couldn't have somebody who could possibly criticize Perry, like me, and be saved.

So we are not Christians, we are so -called Christians. And then he says, we don't read their blogs, we don't comment on their blogs.

In fact, we had to let somebody go just the other day. Somebody on our staff who said some things, went over a line, crossed a line, and we had to let him go.

But he didn't blow up anybody. He wasn't the Unabomber. He didn't blow up anybody's house, so don't worry.

Don't worry. I know what he's talking about. He knows what he's talking about.

You don't say don't worry about what has happened. So apparently Maxwell hasn't told him everything that happened.

Then he finishes his example by saying, after overhearing this young woman,

God told him not to beat her up. He was lucky for her that day. Another young woman walks in and says,

I came to Christ through your church. And he says, ha!

He said, I want her to turn around and point at the girl and go, ha! There you go, that's what it's all about. And then he acts as if he picks up a pickle and throws it at her and goes, here's your pickle.

So to boil all that down, he's coaching the church on how to deal with critics. Beat up a young woman.

Critics are not saved. Whatever this guy did was not really much. And we'll finish this by beating up the young woman again or throwing stuff.

Right. Now, I didn't tell you about this, but I have a soundbite from this year's

Unleashed conference that I want to play for you. It's a little less than two minutes long, and I think it helps reiterate your point about how he handles critics.

And I apologize. He uses the word jackass in here. And since it's internet radio, I'm not going to bleep it out.

It's fairly mild. Yeah. Yeah. So here's Perry Noble. And when he's done with his little thing,

I'll let you comment on it. So here's Perry Noble from the Unleashed conference from like March of this year.

In fact, let's go there. The first I is investigate the obvious. This next one, you're going to have to give me a minute. I need to explain it.

So let me say it. Let me explain it. The second I is ignore the jackass. In Greek, jackass is translated blogger.

When I was in Kenya, let me tell you where I got this. The Lord gave it to me. Lord didn't give you that. Yes, he did.

I was in Kenya. We were in a village called Kendaria, and we were having a village meeting, and they asked us all to go under the tree.

It was just the tree, the big tree in the village. They called it the big tree. So that's where we went. We just, the big tree. So we're all sitting under this tree and a team there, five of us, and we're going to all these villages.

And there's this guy up in front of us sitting in front of like the team of elders in the village.

And he's like the spokesman and he's casting vision as to what they wanted to see happen in their village.

And he's casting vision and we're all into it. And all of a sudden, this donkey about 15 feet away freaks out.

I mean, it went, it was like, and it's kicking and stuff. This guy never acknowledged the jackass.

He kept casting vision. And I felt the Lord tell me that's the problem in the church.

Too many pastors are paying attention to the jackasses and not casting vision. And when you pay attention to a jackass and you don't cast vision, you will miss it.

Every time the bloggers that'll go online, that'll take shots at you, that copy parts of your sermon and like cut a little bit and cut a little bit and cut a little bit and cut a little bit and splice.

And then they, they go and they get, listen to this guy's sermon. They listen to this guy's sermon though. This listen, like who has time for that?

The jackass you're watching right now. There's a reason you have time to do that.

You have no friends. The reason you have no friends is you're a jackass.

And I will say that to you. Everybody in this room have wanted to say it to you. And unless they're jackasses, we're going to get to that in just a second.

I want, that's your problem that you're either demon possessed or oppressed, because when a move of God is working and people are getting saved and lives are getting changed, who would criticize that God or Satan?

Ask yourself that question. I hadn't heard that one before.

We don't listen to everything, I guess. No. So what do you think of that? Does that help make your case that he demonizes those who critique him?

Oh, it's so over and over, you know, and at the end he comes back to you're demon possessed as well.

You have no, the ad hominem attacks, you have no friends. Another one he goes for is that you're sexually impotent.

The only reason that you're blogging is that you run out of Viagra. He goes below the belt, so you're either below the belt or you're crazy or you're demon possessed.

I have never seen him address a critic honorably.

Every critic basically is dismissed as having the very worst motives.

If you look at the comments that are on my blog, and I love them because they make my argument for me. You know,

James Duncan, you are a psychopath. You are a wreck of a human being. You are Satan himself.

You know, they're fairly serious charges to make. I think one of the problems, one of the things that has led to this reaction, that the

Maxwell violent, you know, rage reaction is, and in Perry's response to his church or coaching to the church, it was, don't read them.

Okay, the censoring of it. So that the best way to deal with this is just not have any of you read it.

Then I don't have to answer the questions. Well, Maxwell took it a step further and tried to get it to, you know, not just have it read it, but let's destroy it entirely.

Back in April, I had a meeting. The only time I've actually met with somebody in leadership at the church,

I had a meeting at Brad Cooper's invitation. And we met maybe for about two hours and just talked about a lot of things, including, you know, the basic relationship between critics and the church.

And one of the things I suggested to him, and I'm so much more convinced of it now, is people like Perry would do themselves such a service by spending a little bit of time and actually answering the questions.

If you take all of the time that he spends demonizing, I mean, just that little riff you gave there.

If you spent all of the time that you spend demonizing the critics, making fun of the critics, you're not going to answer the 10 most common objections to the church.

I even offered to Cooper that day for people who say, I hate Perry Noble. I offered to Cooper in a serious manner, and he understood it seriously.

I said, look, I'll come in and I'll ghost -write a book with Perry. And, you know, go straight and put my name on it if he wants to give it some credibility, okay, as a well -known critic of his, with 10 chapters, and we'll do just that.

That'll be a service to everybody in your church. Now, I'm not going to be writing in that, you know, if we did that, the idea is

I'm not going to be writing things that I endorse, okay, but I know how to make an argument, and I know what the issues are.

You make your own argument, but we'll make sure that, you know, have you addressed this as a strong argument. And I deal with arguments all the time.

I assess the strength of it, not, you know, as a professor, the strength of your argument, not the actual direction of your argument.

A 10 -chapter book, you give that to everybody in your church. People, here's what we believe.

Here's why we play ACDC in our services. Here's why I use cuss words when

I preach. Here's why this, this, and this. And then you give it to your critics. When the bloggers come along and say,

I can't believe that you do that. Oh, good. I had a book that I published last year. How about you go and read that?

It would take so much of this tension out if they actually answered it. I offered to help them do it, obviously, you know, nothing ever came of that, but that would, it's kind of like this pressure is built up, and that critics aren't going to go away.

The objections that we have on things like Revelation, the sufficiency of Scripture, the propriety in worship, they are centuries -old objections.

We didn't just make these up. Right. We're the ones who are living in this generation, and we're the ones who think it's important to keep bringing these up.

But they're not new objections. They're not going away, and ignoring it won't make it go away.

And ignoring it, and then making, you know, making us into the jackasses, into the demon -possessed people, and into, you know, and that's where, in a way,

I have some sympathy for Maxwell. I don't enjoy any of what he did to me, but it seems to me terribly unfair that he got fired, or he's the only one who got fired.

He was doing his job. You know, if anybody's going to sue anybody here, he should lead off and sue for wrongful termination.

Right. He's doing his job. He was being rewarded. His supervisor has said, this is what we want you to do, and he did it.

Right. He was being rewarded, even tacitly rewarded, for his efforts at at completely demonizing and wrecking your life and your privacy.

I had, as we were going through this, I had a couple of close friends who, you know, obviously I wasn't going to advertise this account to many people, but I had a couple of close friends who also monitored it with me, and together we figured out, we figured out it was

Maxwell, actually, at the time I went to the detective. But there were, you know, you look at some of the tweets, and there'll be something like,

Max will be saying on his, you know, really love Jesus or something like that. And then a minute later, he's got this vile, you know, homosexual abduction kind of content.

And one of my friends emailed me at one point and said, this drives me crazy. These people are so hypocritical. And I emailed back and I said, no, no, no, no.

There is no hypocrisy here. Loving Jesus and hating James Duncan are the same thing.

There's no disconnect here. You support the church, you love Jesus, and you destroy

Duncan's life because it is the same thing. There's no hypocrisy. I'm not calling them hypocrites.

It is totally consistent with the belief system that Perry Noble preaches. Well, it's actually consistent with the culture that he's created through how he demonizes his critics.

Funny enough, Perry would actually do well to learn a lesson from Rick Warren. I'm an outspoken critic of Rick Warren, and Rick Warren actually invited me as his guest to come to a

Purpose Driven Community Conference. And he met with me and another critic of his,

Bob DeWay. We had an hour and a half face -to -face meeting with him and really got to talk about the issues at stake as to why we're critiquing him, you know, the biblical basis for what we're saying.

And I wouldn't say much came of it. But the thing is, is that rather than demonizing his critics,

Rick Warren has a very interesting way of basically saying, I see that you're critiquing me.

Let's have a conversation. Let's talk. Right. If you have the truth on your side, there's nothing to worry about.

And, you know, since we have an internet audience here, I'm assuming most people probably know blog etiquette, but you kind of see it in just the structure of how people like Noble and Furtick, and I don't read

Warren's blog, but there are no comments, and there are never any links.

It's a self -contained, kind of sterile environment. You know,

Perry, like he did in his sermon, he'll talk about this unnamed critic, or he'll refer to churches or refer to bloggers, but never the link.

If these bloggers are saying the most outrageous things about you, how about you link in so that we can see how crazy these people really are.

And there's this blocking off suggests a little bit of weakness, kind of intellectual weakness that I can't handle you being, having been exposed to my argument, being exposed to somebody else's.

Well, listen, he's anointed. He's anointed from God. You just need to just shut up and toe the line.

He's anointed. How dare you talk to him like that? Well, I'm not going to disagree that he's anointed. I think he's unwise, but I'm not going to.

One of the great delights I take in my own blog is the debate that we have there. I love it.

If you click on, for most of you, click on the comments, they're always much more of a riot and much more fun than what you see in my posts.

And there are people there, you know, long -time readers, there's a kind of cast of characters who keep on coming back.

And we kind of know each other, at least by name. And sometimes we agree with each other. Sometimes we disagree with each other.

And we have at it. And it's great. I love that. And it's kind of what my blog is all about.

And I'm not asking you to come in and agree with me. You know, it's part of what comes out of this academic environment.

And let me just kind of as an aside say, you introduced me as a professor at the university and nothing

I do represents the university. I need to make sure people understand that. That a lot of students here love and go to New Spring.

The university has a great relationship with the church. We, they're our backup source for graduation.

So, you know, yes, it's true that I'm a professor here. What I'm saying to you now and what I say on my blog is not as a professor.

It says, I mean, it's not really even my content area. I'm not a theologian. You know, I have a love for the word.

And I have a kind of professional interest in what they do, because there's a lot of media stuff going on.

And there's a lot of culture in there. But I want to make sure that that's clear that this is not,

I don't represent the university. I don't know, you know, the university has never talked to me about what they think about what

I do. I assume at this point, at least, that they know that I have a blog. But, you know, the whole idea of a

Protestant, or Baptist university, of a Protestant university, you know, going back to Luther, is debate.

Now, Luther wasn't a blogger, but he had 95 pretty good posts. And, you know, there's a, you know, why do we do this?

Well, as Protestants, it's in our DNA that there's no preacher that can't be questioned.

Think about the Bereans. The Bereans questioned Paul. You know,

Paul speaking the very words of God, and they questioned him. If you can question Paul, I think you can question

Perry Noble. Yeah, I completely agree. In fact, it's funny. It's in that debate. It's in that back and forth rigor that I think that that's really at the heart of what

Scripture means when it says that iron sharpens iron. And it's through dissent. It's through basically saying, you know,

I'm not so sure that that's really biblical. That people shore up their positions, are driven back to the

Scriptures, and driven back to seeing what God's Word teaches and says. And so the Christian church has nothing to fear from debate and critics or anything of the sort.

In fact, we should welcome them and answer them. Give them a ready answer, a strong defense of the faith based on the

Scriptures. I think there's a lot of discussion about the so -called discernment blogs, and I guess mine counts that way, though I never set out for it to be it.

I set out as a political blog. But one of the

New Spring pastors made some comment at one point, you know, if these discernment people would read their

Bible as much as they read their blogs, it would be so much better. And I spent a little bit of time kind of reflecting on that.

And from a personal point of view, and I don't know how many people care about my personal spiritual walk, but this year has been the most vibrant spiritual walk

I've ever had, because what I have to do is keep going back to the

Word. My favorite post out of all the posts that are on there, my favorite post is one about Simeon.

It was a YouTube clip that a student of mine had drawn my attention to, and as a part of it,

Perry's talking about Simeon consecrating Jesus, and makes Simeon out to be this crazy old man.

You know, this crazy old man walks in and takes the baby out of Mary's hands, and they're like, hey, what are you doing, crazy old man?

Interesting, Simeon is my brother, and the brother's name is Simeon. So I've grown up all my life with some familiarity, at least with the name, but I've never really investigated who he was.

Right. But that just doesn't sound right. And I spent, I don't know, maybe a couple of days looking at Simeon and discovered that Simeon had to be a priest, and unless Simeon was a priest,

Jesus' whole priestly ministry would not have been possible. That to me was, wow, the beauty of Scripture, when you look at it, when you put together, when you just don't take a single verse, but you put it together with the

Old Testament, with the whole sweep of Scripture, there's a... You know, and I think you understand what

I'm talking about, and most of your listeners probably do. When you see Scripture just for what it is, you don't have to add the anecdotes.

You don't have to add the jokes. Just look at what's there. You don't need to fix this up. Right. Look at it in its context.

It is a beautiful, beautiful thing. And I have so enjoyed that, and there's a lot on there that criticizes

Perry, but there's a lot of theology on there. There's a lot of reflection pieces that I've done that have forced me to go into it.

You know, every time I get to quote the Westminster Confession on my blog, I love it, because the basic message is, okay, all these modern churches, all these new ways of doing things, people much, much smarter than us figured this out a long time ago.

Yeah. And there's no need to reinvent the Church. There's no need to reinvent everything. It's pretty much settled.

Now, you don't have to buy everything in Westminster. There are the creeds and confessions that you can subscribe to, but it's pretty much settled.

And there's a beauty in that settled system and that confidence in the sufficiency of Scripture and that we don't need exciting, sexy pastors to spruce it up.

That, you know, if there's one message on my blog, that's it. Let the

Bible be the Bible, and let Scripture and God speak for Himself. Right.

I have loved it. That's, you know, I don't intend to keep this going forever, and I'll miss it when

I stop. I'm going to miss it for that. I'll have to find some other way to get me to do that. But I recommend everybody start a

Discernment blog. You know, people will say, you know, why do you keep critiquing

Perry? Because Perry keeps saying stuff that I disagree with. I critique my pastor.

Every time I walk into church, I critique him. Right. Now, my pastor doesn't say as many, you know, doesn't preach as many falsehoods and as many mischaracterizations as Perry does.

Yeah, I don't listen to every Perry sermon. I don't have enough time or patience to really do that.

But we should all test everybody. We should all discern everybody, not just the churches we don't go to.

You start by discerning. The reason I go to my church is that I discern, you know, I test my pastor, and he passes the test consistently.

That's why I'm still there. You know, it's not that we're playing favorites. It's just some people pass the test.

Right. Well, my big beef with Perry Noble and with Rick Warren is a basic thesis.

And, you know, if you would, the thesis of my main argument with him is that you can't correctly teach sound doctrine by twisting

God's Word. And I think that that's a sound thesis. Yes.

And so, you know, one of the reasons why I critique these guys is because they regularly treat

God's Word as a wax nose. Now, listen, we've run out of time,

Dr. Duncan, and I want to thank you so much for coming on the program. There's so much more to this story, including a really tragic outcome of all of this, and that is that, you know, a failed adoption.

Right. And so the personal story goes a lot deeper. And so I want to point my listeners to pajamapages .com.

And the name of the story to read is Holy Rage at the Spring.

And it outlines, it's 28 pages when you print it out without the comments. I'm sorry.

You had to kill a tree for me. It's 28 pages. It's 10 ,000 words. I started writing,

New Spring basically put out a statement Friday afternoon, took me unprepared. I started writing at three o 'clock that afternoon and finished at six o 'clock

Saturday morning. There was a lot of sweat that went into that, but yeah, I'm sorry it took so many pages, but yeah, there's a lot there to read.

Wow. But you don't sound like the Unabomber to me, so... Well, thank you.

That's the nicest thing somebody said about me today. Yeah, that's okay. It'll be the last thing. But again,

Dr. Duncan, thank you so much for coming on Fighting for the Faith.

Expect to get some traffic from the Fighting for the Faith listeners. Well, I hope they dive into the comments and leave some.

It's a great little forum in there, so when they come, leave their fingerprints there.

We're looking forward to them. Right. And we have nothing to worry about when somebody critiques us or debates us.

And here's the deal. When you find that you are wrong and what you've said doesn't comport with Scripture, there's a real simple solution.

Repent and receive the forgiveness of sins won by Christ. And comport with Scripture. And let

God's Word transform your thinking, and let your thoughts be

God's thoughts as they are laid out in His Word. So thank you so much for coming on the program, and Lord's blessings to you, and hope that you get some rest between the semesters, and hopefully some of this will blow over.

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate the time with you. All right. Well, thank you, Dr. Duncan. Okay, bye. Bye -bye.

All right. That was my interview with Dr. James Anderson. Doesn't seem like a blathering demoniac to me.

It's not like he's running around the tombs naked in chains or anything like that.

Anyway, that's kind of worth noting. So what do you think? We've got a lot of ground left to cover.

When we get back from this break, we're going to be listening to Perry Noble. And I'm going to tell you, this is a major scripture -twisting endeavor on his part.

And the reason why I've chosen this particular thing that we're going to review is because this is him teaching 2 ,000 other pastors how to think and do the way

Pastor Noble thinks and does. So Pastor Noble is a rock star in this group, and his influence is very much felt.

And the culture that he's inculcated there at New Spring, he's trying to inculcate at other churches as well, which is one of the reasons why

I say the Seeker -Driven Movement is believer hostile. Anyway, you don't want to miss that.

That'll be right after this break. So if you'd like to email me, you can at TalkBackAtFightingForTheFaith .com

or you can ask to be my friend on Facebook. That's Facebook .com forward slash PirateChristian.

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All right, we're back. Our, well, we're well into our number two of fighting for the faith. I told you

I had a lot of ground to cover. In this next segment, this is all about listening to how Perry Nova uses

God's word. Man, does he twist it like a pretzel. The only person that I know of that's better than him is, well,

Rick Warren. But I tell you,

Dr. Duncan really just sounded like the nicest guy in the world. Not a raving maniac, not a, not a, how did, uh,

Perry Noble, not a jackass. Anyway, the good, the bad, the ugly, we review it all here at fighting for the faith.

Switching gears now, in light of what we just heard, it's imperative that we listen to what

Perry Noble is teaching other pastors. In light of the abuse, in light of the persecution that really,

I lay at the feet of Perry Noble. Why? Because the buck always stops at the top.

Organizations take on the characteristics of those in the top. And here's the deal.

Perry Noble is a rock star in the seeker driven, purpose driven movement.

He is a headliner conference speaker and he holds a conference himself every spring at new spring.

And thousands of pastors from all across North America show up to learn how to do what

Perry Noble does. Therefore, think of this as a sermon, if you would, because you really can't tell the difference between his sermons and what you're going to hear, except for this time, he's preaching to pastors and the, you need to listen really carefully.

I'll point it out along the way. He's going to do this with an open Bible. And yet the conclusions he's drawing are not taught in the scriptures.

And I want you to listen for the abusive attitude he had towards those who would dare biblically critique what it is that he's doing.

You see, Perry Noble likes to think that I just need to do what Christ has told me to do. The problem there,

Perry, is that Christ has told you what to do. It's in his word and Jesus Christ would never, ever contradict himself by telling you something personally that contradicts what's already recorded in his word.

Anyway, with that in mind, we're going to dive into our sermon review. This is the, uh, the opening, uh, segment from the 2009

Unleash Conference held at New Spring Church. Here is Pastor Perry Noble.

How's it going, man? We are, we're honored that you're here.

Um, people coming all the way from Canada to Anderson. Uh, wow.

Hope this isn't your first trip to America because right now we have, um, people next door in the youth facility.

Uh, and, uh, we just opened that last night had 800 middle or middle school or high school to show up.

Brad, how many, how many kids gave their life to Christ last night? Huh? 40, 40 kids gave their life to Christ last night.

Um, yeah, we're pumped. And then, uh, we're doing this on the internet live and there's, there's over 500 people right now on the internet.

So I want to say, Hey, to all the people on the internet. And we're so pumped. And we know most of you, um, want to, to log in and watch, but we know there's some haters out there and I've got some for you in the middle of the sermon.

I hope you hang out. Um, and, or you can log off. So for all you people on the internet. Okay. Notice, uh, anyone who would dare disagree with him, he just cast them aside as haters.

No Perry, those who critique you critique you content wise.

It's not that they hate you. It's that they love you too much to continue to let you continue in your error.

Unchecked. God has given you critics. Not to harm you, but to benefit you.

Just want to point that out. So those people who are critics like myself of Perry noble and his

Bible twisting and his basically, uh, destroying the church by playing hell's bells and things like that in church and calling it church.

Um, it's real simple. We're not out here because we hate you. We're out here because we love Christ and we love the truth.

And we can't let you go unchecked and unchallenged because what you're doing actually, actually defames

Christ. And it, like I said, I hope Perry noble personally responsible for what happened to Dr.

James Duncan. Why? Because he's the one who sets the tone. He's the one who sets the culture.

And already one minute in, he's made it clear that there's haters who listen into him.

So that apparently is all of you listening to this program. You're all haters too, because you know, we continue.

You can't clap, but you can like space bar or something like that. And that'd be awesome. If you brought a

Bible with you, which I hope you did, uh, second Kings chapters, uh, chapter seven is where we're going to hang out this morning.

And, uh, it's going to be a lot of fun. Let me just say, let me just say one more time. We're honored that you're here.

And I hope that you understand that there's nothing awesome about new spring, except the

God we serve. Um, and the same God that's at work here is at work in your church. And, uh, and I just believe that God wants to do great things for the church.

And so I'm pumped. So I'm going to, I'm going to pray and then we're going to jump right in. And let me say this before I go any further.

Um, I really do believe, I really do believe that people, um, you're going to be tempted to get up and walk out in this session, because I believe that God has set me free to say some things that a lot of pastors

I know have wanted to say, say for a really long time. In fact, you might be here with your deacons. If you're Baptist and you're like, so apparently

God has set him free to say things that other people have been dying to say, but for whatever Christian conscience said, the

Holy spirit sins of the flesh have kept them from saying it. So, well, listen in carefully, uh, by the way,

I got to tell you this. Um, this is a PG 13 sermon warning you ahead of time.

If you have small kids, uh, there's stuff that may not be appropriate for them. Hey man, I've been wanting to say that for a long time, but you didn't have the guts.

And so I'm going to say it for you. Um, and that's fine. Um, but be selective where you get up and walk out. I just want everybody to know, because you, if you get up and walk out when everybody's like, oh, he's dealing with that, like several weeks in Greenville, I was pre several weeks ago,

I was preaching a sermon on sexual sin. And I talked about masturbation and I said, it's wrong to masturbate. And two guys got up and walked out.

And I'm like, I don't believe I'd have walked out there. So anyway, you know what

I'm saying? Cause everybody's like, so anyway, um, did he say mass anyway, so I'm going to pray and, um, and then we're going to have fun.

Father, you're good to us. We love you. And, uh, God, I think you've, I thank you so much for every one of these church leaders that are here.

Um, everyone that's watching on the internet right now. Uh, God, I just, I'm blown away and incredibly humbled.

God that, um, that, that people would come, uh, just to see what you're doing. And so father, this morning,

I just pray that, um, that, that men and women would receive encouragement and father that more than anything else in the world, that we could hear your voice.

And we ask this Jesus in your name. Amen. For those of you, not from the

South, from up North. Um, how many people do we have, uh, here North of the Mason Dixon line?

Anybody, anybody say, we're glad you're here. We're glad you're here because we can teach you some things. Uh, we really can.

We can teach you how to put sugar in your tea, uh, because many of you don't do that. And we, we can teach,

I mean, we, we can teach you to how I like to pour deer pee all over you and go climb into a stand and kill

Bambi and his mother. We can teach you stuff like that. But one of the things I discovered is there's a language barrier many times between the

North and the South. And there's some words that mean something in the North that don't necessarily mean something in the

South. And so, because of misunderstandings and miscommunication, serious issues can take place.

For example, when we hired Tony Morgan, how many of you read tonymorganlive .com? It changed my life, the

Bible and tonymorganlive .com every day. So anyway, we love Tony around here, but when we first hired him, him and his wife, and he's got four kids,

I mean, him and his wife obviously read the song of Solomon. They do that well. So they have four kids and they relocated to South Carolina and, and Tony was asking me, he said, what do you do for fun down here?

And I was like, well, we're in Anderson. So you can go to the jockey lot. And if you don't know what a jockey lot is, you just need, it's kind of like snipe hunting.

You need to go just to say you went and, and, and I was telling him all this thing. And I said, and we love to shag now shagging in the

South, specifically South Carolina means dancing.

It's, it's the state dance. That's it's, it's a dance, but shagging shagging where Tony's from.

Doesn't mean that can mean dancing. It doesn't mean dancing. You know what I'm saying? Shagging means.

It means that. So, so that's Tony's definition of shagging and he doesn't know what

I'm talking about. And I think he knows what I'm talking about. And so he goes, what do you do? What do you do down here in South Carolina for fun?

I was like, well, we did that anyway. And I said, all of us love to shag. He just let him keep in mind.

This is a sermon preached to other pastors. I want to remind you all biblically what the requirements are.

The biblical job requirements, not job requirements. Let's say qualifications for somebody who is to be a pastor.

We find them in two places in the new Testament. Specifically. We look at first Timothy chapter three, verses two through four.

Therefore an overseer that would be a pastor must be above reproach.

Husband of one wife, sober -minded, self -controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach.

Not a drunkard, not violent, a gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

He must manage his household well and with all dignity, keep his children submissive. Let me read its complimentary passage here, which is found in Titus.

Chapter one, verse seven. For an overseer as God's steward must be above reproach.

It must not be arrogant or quick -tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of the good, self -controlled, upright, wholly and disciplined.

He must hold firmly to the trustworthy word as taught, so they may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradicted.

Now you're going to hear Pastor Perry Noble rebuking, but right now these stories kind of, well, we've got some problems here.

Titus chapter one, verse nine, makes it clear that a pastor must be able to give instruction in sound doctrine, which you're going to hear is him with an open

Bible, teaching things that are not in the Bible. That does not qualify as sound doctrine.

In fact, that qualifies as Bible twisting, which is what leads people to hell, which is actually false doctrine.

So you got to listen carefully. But of course, I will be pointing these things out along the way. Just wanted to remind you all, as we're listening to these interesting stories, what the requirements are biblically for a pastor, an under shepherd of the great shepherd,

Jesus Christ. I was like, yeah,

I said, now some people are better at it than others. And a lot of shagging goes on at the beach.

Like if you want to shag, go to the beach because they shag all the time down there. And he's looking at me and literally

I said, I said, I'm not that good at it. But Lucretia, my wife, she shagged a lot in college and she's awesome.

And he's looking at me like, what have I done? I've really collodicated. I'm working for a freak. And I'm like, oh,

Tony shagging is a dance. He's like, I know. I was like, no. And I kind of explained it to him. And we had a breakdown of communication that caused some serious issues.

I believe in the church today. There's been a major breakdown in communication between Jesus and his people.

Okay, now I'm going to agree with Pastor Perry here. Yeah, absolutely. There's been a major breakdown between communication between Jesus and his people.

And I lay this breakdown directly at the foot of seeker driven pastors who continually rip

God's word out of context and make it say things that it doesn't say. Draws conclusions from it that are not in the text.

That would be a major breakdown in communication, specifically because Christ has given us a sure and certain word in the scriptures, in the

Bible. It is God's word. And if a pastor would open it up and correctly preach it, there wouldn't be a breakdown in communication between Jesus Christ and his people.

Okay, you're going to listen to as we listen here. You're going to hear a prime example of the breakdown between communication from Jesus Christ to his people, specifically pastors, as Pastor Perry completely mangles and rips

God's word out of context and make it say things that it does not say. So I completely agree with him.

The problem is, is that Pastor Perry is the problem. And I want to talk about that. Matthew chapter 16.

And I'm just going to read this verse. I promise you, I'm getting the second Kings later. But Matthew chapter 16, verse 18. If you're a pastor, you've preached on this verse.

You've memorized this verse. You've talked about this verse. The Bible says this, this is Jesus talking. And I tell you that you are

Peter. And on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

Jesus said when he's talking about that would be Hades, the church he's communicating very clearly in his word.

I will build my church to pronouns in this verse right here, describe the church as belonging to Jesus.

And I believe the communication breakdown. Now, Pastor Perry is right. It's Christ's church, not our church.

That exists in the church in America today, is instead of trying to build his church, we're asking him to build our church.

Now, I agree with him. But see, that's the thing. That's exactly what the Seeker Driven Movement is doing.

Rather than actually building the body of Christ and Christ's church, these Seeker Driven mega church pastors are focused on building their own individual church empires.

And they assassinate anybody who would dare critique them and threaten their personal empire churches.

And that's a problem. The church in America, for the most part, have stripped the bride of Christ of her wedding gown and stuck cheap lingerie on her to make.

Yeah, like, you know, cheap lingerie, would that be like playing Hell's Bells at an

Easter service, Pastor Perry? Don't you think that playing Hell's Bells in church is equivalent to stripping the bride of Christ and putting cheap lingerie on her?

Make her look like a slut in order that she might make us feel good about who we are.

When in actuality, we are called to lift up the name of Jesus Christ. It's his church.

This is just irony of the highest order. It does not belong to a board of deacons.

Notice he's attacking boards of deacons here. In the Seeker Driven Movement, the pastor is

CEO and he is not accountable to nobody. He calls the shots. And if you're not on board with him, you are gone.

Or assassinated like James Duncan. It's his church. It does not belong to a board of elders.

It's his church. It does not belong to anyone except for Jesus. Now, the funny thing is, is that Christ himself has instituted elders in the church.

And yet the Seeker Driven, Purpose Driven model gets rid of them so that the pastor can be the

CEO and chief executive of the church without any accountability to God's word or to the people that they flocked.

It's his church. That's why I told our church this past Sunday, if you'll notice as you walk around our campus, we don't have plaques and monuments dedicated to people.

But isn't New Spring Church, the entire campus there, a monument to Perry Noble? Because Perry Noble has flown all over the country to speak at conferences and what's the sole criteria for his coming?

He is built a huge church. Oh, hold on.

Hold on now. Hold on. Hold on. Because some of y 'all got this, don't you? You go to your church and the window was bought by Mr.

and Mrs. Smith. You know what I'm saying? Mr. and Mrs. Tommy Smith bought that window. You know what

I call plaques like that all over the church? It's modern day bell worship. It's Asherah poles. They need to be torn down because Mr.

and Mrs. Smith didn't buy that church. Jesus bought that church. He paid for that church with his blood. It's his church.

That stuff needs to be torn down. That didn't even, I didn't even plan on saying that. That didn't even cost anything.

So if we're going to get back, it's 49 bucks. So if we're going to get back to the church that Jesus wants,

I think we've got to be willing to wrestle with three questions. Three questions today for the church.

There's going to be four questions this afternoon for the leader. But mainly I want to talk to the church as a whole today.

These are questions that I'm wrestling with as a leader. We do not have the corner on this market. But there are three questions that I believe that we've got to be willing to wrestle with out of second

Kings chapter seven. And the first one is this. Are we willing to embrace change? Okay.

Now, hang on. Second Kings chapter seven. Okay. He says the first question he wants to deal with is, are we willing to embrace change?

Second Kings chapter seven is not written to the church. To teach them to embrace change straight up.

If he's using this text for that, he's lying to you about what this text says. This text does not teach that the church must embrace change.

The first question that the church has got to be willing to wrestle to the ground is are we willing to embrace change?

Now, if the answer is no, just say it's no. No, I won't embrace change. Not change in doctrine, not change in practice and either.

For the sake of the church, no way. But the thing we've got to face is the church has got to change in order to reach more people.

The gospel doesn't change. Now, this is a lie. The church does not need to change in order to meet more people.

It doesn't. The church just needs to faithfully do what Christ told it to do.

And that's proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus name to all nations.

Remember, the gospel in a nutshell is Jesus Christ died for sinners and you qualify.

It's through the preaching of the gospel. Romans chapter 10 verse 17 says, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

God is the one who grants faith. God is the one who grants repentance. God is the one who grants regeneration.

And he grants this as a fruit of the preaching of the gospel, not through our method.

So no, already we've got a problem. Remember what the real definition of a liberal is?

Somebody who thinks that you have to change the message in order to meet the culture. And Pastor Perry, he says, oh, we don't change the gospel.

Well, quite frankly, he preaches a false gospel. He preaches a works righteousness based gospel decision, theology, gospel, and it's not biblical.

So no, he has already changed it. And the thing is, is that his methods are conducive to his false gospel.

But the church has to, let me kind of set this up before we get into second Kings chapter seven and second

Kings chapter six. There's a city called Samaria and it's being oppressed by the enemy. The Assyrians are coming in and they're trying to take over the city and they're building sage ramps and people are dying.

In fact, it got so bad in second Kings chapter six. And I'm not going to read it for you. You just got to take my word for it.

In second Kings chapter six, it got so bad inside the walls of Samaria that people were killing children and eating them.

That's bad. It got that bad in Samaria, but nobody was willing to admit that a problem was going on and change needed to take place.

By the way, can I say this before I read? Okay, hold on a second here. No one was willing to admit that there was a problem going on and that change needed to take place.

That is a completely ridiculous reading of this passage.

Okay, let's go into second Kings. And we're going to start in chapter six, just because he says that, you know, he wanted to give a little bit of, you know, context here and context, context, context are the three primary rules that we need to apply when understanding

God's word. Remember when somebody is twisting God's word, just read the passage in context.

And nearly 90 % of all Bible twisting will become so apparent as to make the person making the claim and twisting the

Bible look ridiculous. Same here in this particular example.

Second Kings chapter six. Where do I want to start here?

All right. Now remember, Pastor Perry has said that there was a problem and things had to change in order for it to be fixed.

Okay, so we begin at second Kings chapter six, verse 24. Afterward, Ben -Hadad king of Syria mustered his entire army and went up and besieged

Samaria. And there was a great famine in Samaria as they besieged it until a donkey's head was sold for eight shekels of silver and the fourth part of a cob of doves dung for five shekels of silver.

Now, as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him saying, help my

Lord, O king. And he said, if the Lord will not help you, how shall I help you? From the threshing floor or from the wine press and from the king.

And then the king asked her, what is your trouble? She answered, this woman said to me, give your son that we may eat him today.

And we will eat my son tomorrow. So we boiled my son and ate him. And on the next day,

I said to her, give your son that we may eat him, but she has hidden her son. And when the king heard the words of the woman, he tore his clothes.

Now he was passing by on the wall and the people looked and behold, he had sackcloth beneath his body.

And he said, may God do to me and more. Also, if the heads of Elisha, the son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today.

So Elisha is not doing so well here with the king. So we continue 2nd Kings chapter 7.

But Elisha said, hear the word of the Lord. Okay, this is what the great

God, the one true God said, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says Yahweh, tomorrow about this time, a seah of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.

Then the captain on whose hand the king lean said to the man of God, if the Lord himself should make windows in heaven, could this thing be?

But he said, you shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat of it. Who's the one who's going to rescue

Samaria at this point? Is it people who've realized that they've got to do something different in order to make things change?

No, the word of the Lord came to Elisha and said, this is what God said and God's going to do it miraculously.

Now there were four men who were lepers at the entrance to the gate.

And they said to one another, why are we sitting here until we die? If we say, let us enter the city, the famine is in the city.

And we shall die there. And if we sit here, we die also. So now come, let us go over to the camp of the

Syrians. If they spare our lives, we shall live. If they kill us, we shall but die. So they arose at twilight to go down to the camp of the

Syrians. But when they came to the edge of the camp of the Syrians, behold, there was no one there.

For the Lord had made the army of the Syrians hear the sound of chariots and of horses, the sound of a great army, so that they said to one another, behold, the king of Israel is hired against us, the kings of the

Hittites and the kings of Egypt to come against us. So they fled in the twilight and abandoned their tents, their horses and their donkeys, leaving the camp as it was and fled for their lives.

And when these lepers came to the edge of the camp, they went into a tent and ate and drank and carried off silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them.

Then they came back and entered another tent and carried off things from it and went and hid them.

This is the story that Perry is going to be telling to us. Apparently, the first thing we as a church need to learn from this passage is that we have to be willing to embrace change.

Now I'm going to point something out here. The lepers of this story, okay, they kind of figured, what have we got to lose?

We're going to die anyways. Let's just get it over with. If they don't kill us, we'll live. That was their thinking. It's not like they had anything to do with the great miracle that took place.

The deliverance that was brought to Syria, to Samaria as a result of the working of the

Lord, because the text says in verse six of second Kings chapter seven, the Lord had made the army of the

Syrians, hear the sound of chariots and horses, the sound of a great army so that they said to one another, behold, the king of Israel has hired against us.

The Kings of the Hittites and the Kings of the Egyptians to come against us. The lepers had nothing to do with it.

This happened long before the lepers made up their mind to go and turn themselves over to the

Syrians. By the time they got there, this had long taken place and the

Syrians were long gone. So this text does not in any way, shape or form teach that the church has to embrace change or die.

What you're going to hear Perry teaching from this text isn't in there. He's lying to you.

We continue. Really get into the text.

The church in America better wake up and smell the Starbucks because it's getting bad.

I don't know if you saw Fox news and cnn .com this week, but the number of Christians in America is declining.

Why? Why? Because people are not preaching Christ and him crucified and calling sinners to repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus name.

They're preaching the false gospel of self -help pop psychology, the false gospel of prosperity and wealth.

It's not in the scriptures, the false gospel of purpose. They're not preaching the biblical gospel of Christ and him crucified for our sins and calling sinners to repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus name.

Plain and simple. That's why the church isn't growing. I personally blame the church.

I don't blame you. I blame us because is God not still sovereign? Is he still not powerful?

Can he not still save people? Is Jesus Christ still out of the tomb? If all those things are true, then the church has no excuse other than we weren't willing to change.

No, I'm sorry, Perry. The Bible does not say we have to change or die.

The Bible says Christ himself says to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus name to all nations.

That includes 21st century America. Also, Jesus said, go and make disciples.

By the way, seeker driven churches are believer hostile churches. I think that's become painfully clear here.

This is what the scripture says. 2nd Kings chapter seven, verse three. Now there were four men with leprosy.

Let me get into this this afternoon, but let me just say this. These four men with leprosy are eventually gonna lead a movement that changes the city.

No, they're not. They are not going to lead a movement that changes the city.

They just happen to be the first people to wander into the camp after the Lord God, Yahweh himself performed a miracle and delivered the city.

Isn't it funny how God always picks men and women who are completely falling apart to do his best work? Like if you're here and you're perfect and you think like your poop don't stink,

God can't use you. Like he can't, oh yeah, he can make fun of you and he will get glory out of you one day, but he is not gonna use you to do anything significant.

You're kind of like Pharaoh. You'll be used for his glory. Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate.

Look at this. They said to each other, why stay here until we die? Because you got leprosy, you're dying, right?

You're dying. It's death by inches. You're just falling apart. Why stay here until we die? If we say we'll go into the city.

If you would read the passage in context, the reason why the lepers think they need to just leave it because they're gonna die is because everyone's dying.

Everyone's starving. There was a siege. The famine is there and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die.

So let's go over to the camp of the Aramaeans, which is risky because they're the enemy.

So let's go over to the camp of the Aramaeans and surrender. If they spare us, we live.

If they kill us, then we die. Here's the deal. There were four lepers, four men who were falling apart at the entrance of the city gate.

And they're like, things are bad. And they're bad here and they're bad in our city.

So why don't we take a risk? Why don't we lay it all on the line? Because we're gonna die anyway.

So let's die trying instead of sitting. Let's try something bold.

Let's try something risky. Because at the end of the day, we don't want to sit here and say, we died doing nothing.

We've got to be willing to embrace change. The text does not teach this at all.

He's completely reading it in and then telling the church that this passage, that the reason why the

Holy Spirit has inspired this to be penned and written for us and to be carried down through history is so that the church must realize that it has to embrace change or die.

That is not what this text says at all. This is a complete lie and a twisting of God's word.

I believe that every church in America is one or two changes away from doubling in size and seeing a move of God like they've never seen.

It's just hard to embrace change. And yet the passage doesn't teach us that we have to embrace change.

We're supposed to embrace sound doctrine and the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins won by Christ and Christ will grow his church.

You want evidence, look at denominations. They hold on to things that are dead and have been dead for years because they're not willing to change.

For example, please, what have the denominations held onto that are dead?

The preaching of God's word, expository Bible teaching, repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

What exactly are you referring to? What's at the core of this dramatic loss in the denominations?

Maybe it's just the rise of a bunch of pagan mega churches that think that they can invent their own religions.

And how wildly popular that has been since people like you are preaching to scratch itching ears. As you denominational guys here, glad you're here.

Every denomination in America for the past 30 years has been declining. That's a problem.

If it was your money, you would do something about it. Come on now.

Like you freaked out when the stock market failed, didn't you? Because it's valuable to you. When the church becomes as valuable to us as the stock market is, we will wake up, smell the

Starbucks and do something about it. The first thing we gotta do is be willing to change. And yet the text doesn't teach that.

I've had pastors tell me, Perry, I'm desperate to hear the voice of God. Then open your

Bible. And for the most part, I believe those pastors. But pastors,

I want you to understand something. This is from my own personal life. You will never be comfortable hearing the voice of God if you're not comfortable with change.

Cause he's always - Really, where does it say that in the Bible, Perry? You will never be comfortable hearing the voice of God unless you're comfortable with change.

The scriptures don't teach this. God's written voice nowhere says such a thing.

Going to lead you to do something different because if you could do it the way you've always done it, then there would be no need for him to speak to us.

We've got to be - He's already spoken to us in his word. We've got to be willing to embrace change.

And yet nowhere does God's word say that. Now, here's the deal.

When you plant a church, how many church planters do I have here? How many church? Okay, my hands up. I planted a church. Isn't it easy to change when you plant a church?

Cause you know everything everybody's doing wrong. Come on now. When I started the church, man,

I was like, we're doing it all different. We ain't doing pews. We're not doing pews. Because who sits in a pew?

Who wants to sit in a pew? I mean, nobody wants to sit in a pew. No organs. No organs.

I know you're probably an organist here. Glad you're here. We have nothing for you, all right?

But no - Notice the slap. If there was an organist there, we got nothing for you.

He's setting the tone of the culture for the entire purpose -driven movement. Cause seriously, when's the last time you went and bought an organ

CD and stuck it in your car? I did it very recently, thank you. It was amazing.

Was driving in Wisconsin and Minnesota, listening to some of the most amazing organ and hymn music that I've heard in a long time.

And it was probably the most amazing experience I've ever had because the worship was based upon actual biblical content that was being sung.

So yeah, I do it. Yeah, Perry, there's other people besides you.

So that didn't happen. We've got to be willing to embrace change. And we know everything we should do. We know everything that we should change.

When we first started the church, I knew we should change. And I used to make fun of the fifties. And I used to say, if we could just get out of the fifties, you know, the change the church needs to make today, we got to get out of the eighties.

It's not the fifties anymore. It's the eighties. You know what I'm saying? The pastor's wife with the big hair, you know, that's got to stop.

Fine, you're right. We've got to get rid of pastor's wives with big hair. You just talked about my wife.

We can see her. You know what I'm saying? So here's the problem.

Everybody, everybody here can look at another church and call the change that they need to make.

But can you look at your church and call the change? Because here's the problem. Really?

So apparently we all just know intuitively the things that got to go. They include big hair, organs, and what else again needs to go?

Well, pews. Yeah, those got to go. You've been at the church for about five or 10 years.

You've got to start changing things that you at one time thought was a good idea. And the only really, you just need to change because you've got to keep changing.

The Bible doesn't teach this. The reason people are not willing to change is because they're married to an idea and they're not married to Jesus.

And Jesus said it had its day. You got to let it go. How many of you know, Jesus did not say anything of the sort.

I want you to hear what he just said. It is a lie. He put words into the mouth of our great

God and savior, Jesus Christ that Jesus never uttered. And it's not taught in his word.

Let me back the tape up. You have to hear this very carefully. Listen to who he's blaming this on.

Listen carefully. This is blasphemy, by the way. There's no other word for it. And they're not married to Jesus.

And Jesus said it had its day. You got to let it go. How many of you have grandchildren? No, Jesus never said it had its day.

You got to let it go. Jesus never said anything of the sort. This man is lying about what

Jesus said. Raise your hand. Grandchildren, grandchildren. Look at this. Lot of grandparents.

I've just got a kid. I don't care if he's 20 months old. Now, how many of you that raised your hand at grandchildren, seriously, you'd be willing to give your life today to see your grandchild come to Christ?

Would you raise your hand? Pretty much everyone of y 'all. Don't raise your hand on this next question. How many would, how many of you would be willing to give up your style of music?

See, the problem in the church today is you got a lot of grandparents, but they would give their lives for their kids and their grandkids.

They just won't give up their style of music. So basically, this is about style. By the way, listen,

I don't have a problem if a church wants to use musicians that play modern instruments.

Don't have a problem with it at all. I attended a church that had a service where the musicians and the music was not organ music.

It included an acoustical classical guitar, an oboe, one of those

Irish tin flutes, a drummer, an electric guitar, and a bass player and a keyboardist.

And here's the deal. They were all in the back of the church because church is not a show.

And they were leading worship and the songs that were being sung were hymns that had been set to a contemporary setting.

I don't have a problem with that at all. Style's not the issue,

Perry. Content is. And the content of today's praise music is a bunch of airy fairy,

Jesus is my girlfriend, 7 -Eleven songs that have no biblical content to them whatsoever.

They're ridiculous at best and heretical at worst. That's why the church is dying.

No, the style of music has nothing to do with it. By the way, I've attended

Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod congregations that have over 800 members.

The church that I was in in San Clemente, Faith Lutheran Church in Capistrano Beach, California, in the couple of years that I was there, the growth there was so ridiculously accelerated they had to call a second pastor.

They were growing like crazy, like a weed. And they had pews, and they had hymns, and they had organ music, and they had candles.

And you know what? That's exactly why people came because they were tired of the rock and roll shows and the shallow preaching and the

Bible twisting and being starved to death as Christians. They haven't been willing to embrace change.

You say, Perry, what about the dying churches? What do you do? You know what? This is where my mercy gift really kicks in.

Some churches need to die. Before God could take the children of Israel to the promised land, he had to kill off an entire generation of people that didn't believe he could do it in the first place.

So apparently if you attend a church where you have pews and hymns and an organ and you do things old school and you actually have exegetical preaching, you do word and sacrament, your church needs to die because you ain't going into the promised land with that thing.

The only thing that's going to get us into the promised land are churches that do entertainment, play hell's bells, during their

Easter services, by the way, which is exactly what Perry did, play hell's bells, entertain people to death because those are the ones that are going to lead us in the promised land and sing songs that have absolutely zero biblical content to it and make it sound like Jesus is your bearded girlfriend.

I don't think so, Perry. Some churches got to die.

Listen, church has a choice, change or die. The scripture teaches nothing of the sort.

We are told to be faithful to the proclamation of Christ and him crucified and to preach and teach

God's word and to disciple the nations. The church does not need to change or die unless of course what you mean by that is to repent of these purpose -driven, seeker -driven methodologies and get back to proclaiming

God's word and proclaiming repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus' name. And my prayer for us at New Spring is that one day we don't become the new traditional church that we're always willing to embrace change.

Now, people have asked me, where do you get this idea of change? I get it from the book of Acts. Listen carefully. He's going to basically rip a whole bunch of verses out of context, tell a story about them that isn't in the text and draw conclusions that are not taught in the text, just like you did in second

Kings. Listen carefully. The book of, if you read through the book of Acts and most of you have, most of you probably haven't memorized, you read it way more than me.

You know that the church continually changed all through the book of Acts. I just want to read several verses of scripture. They grew, but they didn't change.

They were dedicated to the apostles teaching, the prayers, the breaking of bread and the fellowship. That stayed the same.

Scripture out of the book of Acts and we'll put it on the screen for you. It'd be a lot of fun. This is how the church started. Look at this.

Acts chapter one, verse 14 and 15. This is the church in Acts chapter one. Now watch the eisegesis here. Reading, eisegesis means reading into the text.

Watch this. They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, which is cool.

I'll talk about that in a minute. And with his brothers. In those days, Peter stood up among the believers, a group numbering about 120.

Now 120, that's good, right? Isn't that a cool church? Can you imagine the church in Acts chapter one? He's eisegesis.

How awesome that was. Mary, the mother of Jesus. She probably led the women's ministry.

You know, he's eisegesis. I mean, we got Beth Moore, but they had Mary, mother of Jesus.

That's awesome. Thomas led a skeptics class for doubters. And we had Peter taught how to cuss and be a

Christian. I mean, oh, I teach that here, but all kinds of people. I mean, the church was crazy.

It had 120 people and it was manageable. Listen, if your church, if what's going on in your church is manageable,

God's not there because you lie. Let me hear it again. You got to hear it.

It's what he just said is a lie. Here we go. If what's going on in your church is manageable,

God's not there, but if what's going on in your church is manageable, then God's not there.

That is a lie. It is not taught in scripture. Nowhere does it say that in scripture whatsoever.

Already he's twisted second Kings. Drawing conclusions from it that are not in the text that the church has to change or die.

He's put words in the mouth of Jesus. And now he said that if things are manageable in your church, it's not from God.

Another bald face lie. The scriptures teach nothing of the sort.

And here's the sad part about it. This, his church at this moment is filled with thousands of pastors who are taking copious notes, and they think that what they're being taught is biblical and true.

And it isn't. Because you can't manage a move of God. You can't orchestrate a move of God.

You can't plan a move of God. A move of God just happens, which, by the way, bothers me.

When, like people, does it, it's always wiggled me out that people plan revivals. Hey, the week of September 17th, you can move.

Now, Tuesday is Pack a Pew night. And we're bringing in people from other church to do it because we can't do it ourselves.

And if you could just move then, that'd be awesome. The problem is people try to plan a move of God, and you can't plan a move of God.

A movement of God is messy. And if you don't want messiness in your church, you don't want to move of God. Because when a move of God starts happening, people with stuff in their life start like sinners.

Like somebody said that about our church one day. I was over here in a conversation. They said, New Spring, that's the church where sinners go.

Now, I've got to say something in Noble's defense here. Okay, if you understand the

Bible Belt culture, one of the things he's reacting against is stifling legalistic pietism.

The problem is, is that he hasn't remedied that heretical error with biblical

Christianity. Some of his observations are correct.

For instance, planning for a revival, whatever. It's a valid complaint.

Should the church be full of sinners? You bet your bippy it should be. And the church has been called to engage the world with the message of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus' name.

The church ought to be a place full of sinners hearing the good news of Christ and Him crucified for our sins.

It's not just enough. It's not enough to have a church full of sinners. The church is those who gather around God's Word and the

Lord's Supper to receive from God His gifts, namely, His Word and the forgiveness of sins.

So the visible church should be made up of visibly repentant sinners receiving the forgiveness of sins from God.

That's the primary thing going on at church. I wore that with a badge of honor, man.

I'm like, dang straight. They're all on staff. Yes, they were.

No, seriously. How comfortable are you with people like that showing up at your church? We walked out in the parking lot one day and there's a kid about four years old freaking out.

You know why the kid's freaking out? He wanted to go back to church. You know what he looked at his parents and said? His parents like, we got to go.

And this little kid, four years old in the parking lot, said, I want to go back to the damn church.

And the parents looked at me and I went, that's passion. We hired him on the spot.

So you can't manage. He's half joking, though. What's he looking for in people on staff?

Sinners with a lot of passion. What about those who display the fruits of the Holy Spirit and bear fruit in keeping with that repentance?

How comfortable? How comfortable are you with that happening? Like, would you call the deacons?

Got to get the kid and the parent. You got to me. You can't, you can't say the word. You can't. I mean, you know what I'm saying? How comfortable are you with things like that happening in your church?

How comfortable are you with people showing up to your church drunk and high? Happens here every week.

Every week. And that's what we want. Because you can't manage the move of God. If you're trying to manage the people coming into your church.

Listen, I don't care if people who are drunk and high show up to church. But when they show up, they're going to hear of their sins.

And they're going to hear of their great God and Savior who died on the cross. In their place to take to pay the punishment for their sins.

Even the sin of showing up to church drunk and high. Is that what they're hearing? We've reviewed enough

Perry Noble sermons to know that he doesn't do law and gospel correctly. Church, if you're trying to tell people who can and can't come to your church, you've basically told

God he can't come. Let's keep reading. Acts 2 .41. It gets crazy. Those who accept.

So Peter. More exegeting going on here. And he's not exegeting the text. He's going to read a text out of context.

Tell a story about it and put something into it that wasn't there. It's called eisegesis.

Preaches, right? He preaches the word of God all through. And then it said the Bible says those who accepted his message were baptized.

And about 3000 were added to their number that day. Do you think the church changed?

Yeah, it grew. But the job of the apostles didn't. Nowhere in the book of Acts do we have the apostles playing pagan music to pagans to attract them to attract a crowd so that they can give them the gospel.

Instead, every single instance of the preaching that goes on, especially the evangelistic preaching that goes on in the book of Acts, focuses in on Christ being the promised

Messiah of Israel, sinners crucifying the king of glory, being guilty of putting him on the cross and calling men to repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus name and away from false worship, false idols, false religion, and calling sinners to repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus name.

That is the constant. The size of the church.

God had his way, by the way, with the church in Jerusalem. They went, they underwent persecution and we call it the dispersion of the despot.

I forget the Latin term for it. But anyway, they got dispersed. And as a result of their dispersion, the gospel was sent to the far reaches of the

Roman Empire. 120 to 3120. I mean, the women's ministry.

I mean, Mary showed up the next week and there's women all over the place. You know what I'm saying? I said cheating. I mean, the skeptics class.

I mean, I mean, I'm talking to the church. I said, cheating changed and it changed like that because it had to, if they would have said, listen, listen, this, we, we kind of know everybody and my grandma bought that chair.

And so if you would get up and notice what he's reacting to is the legalistic, pietistic

Bible belt churches that are pretty much like family country clubs. Being a member of that church is something you do because you're part of the family.

And you buy into the moralistic club that you attend. That's what he's reacting against.

You're not really dressed for this. I remember one time I was in a church.

I was a youth pastor and this kid got saved. Like he got saved. Like when I'm talking, he got saved.

Like, like he got saved and he was given this. Hey, I'm pointing something out here. Listen carefully how he sets the story up.

This kid that he's describing, he got saved if he was truly regenerate. Truly was contrite and sorrowful for his sins and repented and trusted in Christ alone for the forgiveness of his sins.

Then the conclusion of this story would not have happened because if he had truly been regenerated by the preaching of the gospel and given faith and repentance, this, the end of the story wouldn't happen.

The story doesn't make any sense. Testimony one night, Sunday night service, traditional church.

And he got up wearing a hat and all the next week people talk about the hat, talk about the hat, talk about the hat.

So I got up the next week. It was just happened to be my week to preach. And I just said, if you would have spent more time listening to his heart than looking at his hat, you might've got a blessing.

And we went back and forth and these people attack this boy after he had just gotten saved and told him you can't wear your hat in church.

And you know what? The kid was like, you know what? That's fine. I won't wear my hat in church. And he walked out of church and he still has never been back to a church till this day.

If he has truly been saved, he would be going to a church and would be driven to hear

God's word preached for him. Now in a situation as ugly as that, two things should have taken place.

Number one, the law should have been cranked up for those church ladies who were being judgmental and thought they were holier than thou to show that they were sinners so that they can hear again the gospel for them, for the forgiveness of their sins.

And that kid needed to be reached out to so that he understood that the gospel is what comes to bear here.

Because people tried to manage a move of God and you can't do it. You know what?

Actually, Perry, it might actually be that they are trying to be faithful to the word of God. The Bible does discuss head coverings in the church.

It is a biblical New Testament concept. So the church changed.

The church changed. Listen, we got to be on. We've got to be on. We got to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

It goes on. Acts chapter four, verse four on the Bible says, but many who heard the message believed in the number of men grew to about 5000.

I mean, so it went from 3000 to 5000. Did they have to make changes? Yes. Changes had to be made.

Yeah. And the message and their mission never changed. Discipling the nations and proclaiming repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus name.

The nuts and bolts mechanics of managing a congregation that size had to be adjusted.

And if you read the book of Acts, you can see that there are adjustments that are made due to the logistics involved.

But the discipling never stopped. The proclamation of the forgiveness of sins and repentance in Jesus name never stopped.

And the disciples, all they ever talked about was Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And they taught his word and taught his deeds and taught what he had done and what he had said.

And they preached him crucified and risen. Not self -help, not seeker driven, felt needs, not pop psychology, none of that.

Let's keep reading. Acts four, 32 to 37. I love this because it talks about money. And every one of y 'all are wondering about money right now.

How do you get your church to give? I got to preach on it. People will leave just the people aren't given.

I mean, the only people when you preach on adultery, they get mad. Acts four, 32.

The Bible says that all the believers were in one heart and one mind. No one claimed any of his possessions his own, but they shared with everything they had with great power.

And the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And much grace was on them all. What did the apostles do?

Oh, they testified to the resurrection of Jesus. Their message was core Jesus.

Verse 34. There were no needy persons among them from time to time. Those who own lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet.

And it was distributed to anyone as he had need. Joseph and Levi from Cyprus, who was the apostles called

Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, sold a field, sold a field. He owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles feet.

Think about the financial changes that took place in the church. When you got 120 people coming, you don't really have that many money problems, do you?

Here's the problem. We don't have any money. That's the only problem you have when you have 120 people coming. Now they got people buying lands, selling fields, bringing money to him.

They had to make changes, financial changes. And you know who has the hardest time with a church changing as it grows?

The staff. Again, this does not touch on seeker -driven methods, which is exactly what he's calling for.

The passages he's exegeting and ripping out of context do not support his earlier contention that we have to get rid of pews, get rid of hymns, stop playing organ music, stop exegeting the scriptures, teaching, doing sound exegesis and in -depth

Bible study, which are all the things that go in a seeker -driven church and all the things that are not present in Perry Noble's church.

I remember when we first started doing POs here at New Spring Church, we had staff running around going, we didn't used to have to do

POs. We didn't used to have to do POs. And I got them all in a room. I was like, it's because we used to not have any freaking money.

That's why we didn't have to do POs. Seriously.

See, I remember being in a closet in the fine arts or in the Sullivan building of Anderson University counting money.

I was back there every week. And you say, why? Because I wanted to get paid. That's why. And I would be like, all right, there's

Mr. Thompson. And I know he's going to bring $75. And that's what he ties. If somebody, if a toddler missed church,

I called them. Hey, I missed you this week. You're going to double up. I mean, I didn't even ask if they were sick.

See, here's what I know. There's a lot of guys and there's a lot of gals out there. When it comes to your church and it growing, you use money as an excuse.

And you'll come to a facility like this and you'll go, if I had all this, I could grow. Let me ask you a question. You think this dropped out of the freaking sky?

You think that youth building, we just went out there and prayed about it. Dear God, we'd love a youth building.

Dang. I mean, do you think that's how it happened? You got to be willing to make all kinds of changes in your church, including financial changes, financial changes.

Seriously. And folks, listen, for those of you that, for those of you church planners, for those of you church planners, listen, listen, listen, listen.

Don't ever, don't ever let the money drive the decision. Let the voice of God drive the decision because if it's

God's will, it's God's bill. And if he said to do it, he will pay for it. No matter what the economy looks like.

In fact, I think he gets more glory in a bad economy than he does a good economy. So why not do what

God called you to do? So apparently, uh, these guys are hearing the voice of God telling them to, uh, not preach the word to preach the felt needs to not actually have in -depth

Bible study to not disciple. Yeah. God would never give you speak to you to do that.

None of the CFOs clapped. Here we go. Verse six, another change, another change.

They're changing. I mean, they're growing except for six. In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the

Hebraic Jews because their widows are being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. Now notice something here.

The changes he's calling for are not the kinds of changes quote, even discussed here in the passage at all.

They experienced growth as a result of God. Those who were chosen, those whom

God turned, those whom God added, God was adding daily to those who were, who were being saved.

God was doing the adding and they had the day -to -day manage of it. And there were, there were, they had growth pains in that, but the message never changed.

Perry noble preaches a different message because he twists God's word. This was an argument that's going on.

You know, I didn't get any food and you got an extra role and I didn't get any role. I mean, you know, I'm making fun of it, but it's literally a problem that could have like split the church.

So let's keep reading a verse two. So the 12 gathered all the disciples together and said, look at this.

It would not be right. That's huge. It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.

Notice that the apostles would not refuse to neglect the ministry of the word of God. Actually teaching the full counsel of the word of God.

Seeker driven guys. Don't do that at all. You get a sprinkling of out of context versus woven together in a tapestry of deceit designed to help you find life strategies to make your life better.

In other words, it's important that that gets done, but we can't do that.

This kind of blows the myth out of the water. We'll talk more about this this afternoon, that the pastor is supposed to do everything in the church. If you're here and you're with your pastor and the pastor is supposed to do everything, it's probably because you're doing nothing.

I agree with him here. Pastors are not called to do everything in the church. Their focus should be on God's word in the ministry of the word and sacrament.

All the pastors were like, do you hear that? Anyway, verse three brothers choose seven men from among you.

In other words, here's the apostles. They're standing in front of the whole church. They're like, y 'all are going to solve the problem. We got a problem. Y 'all are going to solve the problem to seven men from among you who are known to be full of the spirit and wisdom.

We will turn this responsibility over to them, and we will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word. This proposal pleased the whole group, which is the only time that's ever happened in the church.

They, they chose Stephen, a man full of the faith and Holy spirit and died at our six.

They presented these men to the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them. Verse seven. So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.

Here's the deal. Verse seven is key to this text because they were willing to change and because they got to the place where they said, all right, we can't hire a staff member.

Every time we have a need, we've got to get volunteers involved in ministry. And they began to get volunteers involved in ministry and Peter and James and John, the people who were in charge of preaching the word and teaching the word and leading the thing.

They were allowed to preach and teach and lead. And they had volunteers over here, making sure all the ministries in the church happened.

And when that took place, the Bible says that more and more and more people received Jesus. That's where we've got to get to as a church.

The pastor can't do everything. The staff can't do everything. And by the way, let me push down on this a little bit.

Pastors, you, if you want to see your church really take off, then you've got to get out of the day to day operations of every ministry in your church.

For example, some of you pastors, you're too involved in the youth ministry. No, seriously.

And you were a youth minister 20 years ago. And so you think you're still cool. No, I'm serious.

Come on now. All the youth ministers. You're getting excited now. Just calm down. All right. So I'm serious.

And so you, I mean, you listen, dude, let me tell you something, bro. DC talk, Eddie DeGarmo and, and, and Steven Curtis Chapman aren't doing it for the youth anymore.

You know what I'm saying? Oh, come on now.

People ask me all the time. What did you do? I like your youth ministries growing. Our youth ministry has gone from 250 kids to 800 kids last night.

How'd that happen? I hired a godly anointed youth minister. I let him hire a team and I got the heck out of his way. And they do stuff.

I don't get, they'll be like, this song is awesome. And I'll go over there and be like, and I'll be like,

I gotta go throw up now. I don't even like that. But I look and there's kids on the front row going, and I'm like, okay, well that's great.

Let me push on this a little harder pastors. You know what your job is when it comes to youth ministry, make sure it has enough money.

Your job is to fund it. And the problem, the reason a lot of youth ministries aren't growing is because with some of our churches, there's more money in our cemetery fund than there is the youth budget.

And why are you taking care of those people? Half of them probably aren't in heaven anyway. Come on now, come on.

Cause you get buried in a church graveyard. Have you ever been to a funeral where the pastor went? He went to hell.

I mean, that's never happened. Your kids want to go to camp and you stick them in front of Walmart with Krispy Kreme donuts.

You senior adults want to go pick apples and you pay for that. Some of you pastors, the godliest thing you could do in your church is go back and triple your youth budget.

People ask me all the time. Why does so many kids show up to your church? We spend money on them. The world's spending money on them.

That might be what you need to change. That might be worth the price of the conference. That was awesome.

Here we go. Chapter eight, verse one.

The Bible says on that day, a great persecution broke out against the church of Jerusalem and all except the apostles were scattered throughout

Judea and Samaria. In verse four, it says those who had been scattered, preached the word wherever they went. Acts chapter eight, multi -site church.

Multi -site church took place. That is not what that text teaches.

The text does not teach seeker driven multi -site churches there. Unbelievable.

Absolutely unbelievable. Complete eisegesis. People got dispersed to the four corners of the entire world in the empire.

And they brought the gospel with them wherever they went. That's not multi -site church. They established churches.

And each church had overseers and deacons and elders. Multi -site church took place.

Isn't that awesome? You got multi -site. Where do you get the idea for multi -site? Acts eight. No, Acts eight does not teach that at all.

Now, I know a lot of people are nervous about the multi -site movement. I've had people ask me this question.

It's one of my favorite questions now. What about all them preachers out there that are called to preach the word of God and churches like y 'all, y 'all go in, put up a screen, you're preaching, you're not giving them a chance.

Do you actually think that a video screen can stop the anointing of God on a man to preach the word of God?

If you do, your God is too small. Let me tell you why a lot of people have a problem with multi -site church.

You probably played basketball for a team in a league that didn't keep any score because everybody was a winner and you think life should treat you fairly.

Actually, my problem is, is that it just multiplies heresy. So then rather than containing the seeker -driven heresy to one particular mega church, now it's like a weed popping up all over the place, like gopher holes.

Tougher to control those rodents when they're popping up all over the place. Come on now,

I was the fat kid on the team that I thought I deserved a trophy, even though I didn't play. And you think life should treat you fairly.

And what's really going on when you begin to criticize the multi -site movement is you're an insecure pastor and the insecurities coming out.

I'm telling you. No, I'm not insecure at all. And I'm not a pastor. I'm a theologian and an apologist.

And what it does is it just increases the heresy. And people are not really being shepherded and being taught and discipled

God's word. Something, bro. You stand on your church. You preach the word of God under the anointing of God.

And it doesn't matter what's going on down the street. Because in actuality, if everybody in your town and my town and our town showed up to every one of our churches

Sunday morning, they would all be full. And we'd need about 100 more to accommodate the people. We've got to get out of the business business of competing with one another and start completing one another.

Listen, if if you're. Yeah, the thing is,

I'm not interested in completing you until you repent of your false doctrine, your Bible twisting and get back to preaching

Christ and crucified and correctly exegeting God's word. A pastor that actually walks out on stage and take shots at another pastor in your community or another church in your community.

You need to repent before God. You say, why would a pastor do that? Either because you're insecure or the anointing of God is leaving you and you know it.

So they changed. They went multisite. No, Acts chapter eight does not teach anything about multisite.

Wrong. That is complete eisegesis and a twisting of God's word. And I'm so glad that we didn't approach the

Bible that way that people are criticized. Well, you know, all these other pastors out there. They should be able to preach to all these other pastors that they should be.

Aren't you glad they didn't approach the Bible that way? There's this guy, Paul. He keeps writing all this stuff. There's other writers out there.

Why does Paul got to get all this stuff? Look at Judas. Question number two, are we willing to work?

Are we willing to change? Second question is, are we willing to work? Because if you want to change, you've got to be willing to work.

Oh, my gosh. I wish I could do a whole talk on this. I, uh, I used to weigh over 300 pounds.

Yeah. See? Yeah. You used to weigh over 300 pounds. Yeah. I wore a size 50 in the waist.

26, 52, 54, anyway. So I wore a size 50 in the waist and I lost weight.

Lost down to a size 36. I weighed 215. People ask me, how'd you lose weight? I'm like, you don't want to know.

No, really? I want to know. You don't want to know. No. How'd you lose weight? All right. Here's the deal. I came home one day.

I said, I'm tired of being fat. That's the, unless you're tired of it, you're never going to do it.

I put on running shoes and orange jogging pants. The astronauts in the space shuttle saw this.

I mean, it was, I went out on the road. I ran as far as I could, 10 feet.

Then I walked, caught my breath, started running again. I ran, you know what? I got up to a mile, got up to two miles.

I got up to three miles. I got up to four miles. And by the way, I pushed away from the table. That's not very popular in the

Baptist church. They'll criticize beer, but they won't say a thing about the buffets. You need to put down the beer.

You need to put down the Twinkie. You got to give it to him.

He tells a great story. He's able to spin a good yarn. He said he's a gifted speaker. That's just funny right there.

That pissed some people off. Here we go. Second Kings. A little rough around the edges there.

I feel like I'm listening to Larry, the cable guy. See, here's the deal.

When it came to weigh, I didn't look for a formula. I didn't look for a pill. I didn't go to the doctor and say, do something for me.

I said, something's got to be done here. And I'm going to, I'm going to do the work. I'm going to, I'm willing to do the work.

I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make the change that I don't like happen. If you want change in your church, you've got to do more than pray about it.

I believe Christians for far too long have used prayer as an excuse for inactivity.

We say, we're going to pray about it, but we're not willing to do anything about it. And we want God to do his part, but we're not willing to do our part.

And our posture before God should be God. You do what you're going to do. And you tell me what you want me to do.

And I'm going to go do it. God, I'll turn over tables. I'll do whatever you. God's already told you pastors what he wants you to do.

He's already explained the job of a pastor. It's found in the Bible.

And he's not going to tell you to do something that contradicts it. Remember, Jesus Christ said, go into all the world, making disciples of all nations.

So we're supposed to make disciples. Christ in Luke 24 says, proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in his name to all nations.

That's an important thing. And then we get to the pastoral epistles. And God himself makes it clear what the job of a pastor is.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge, the living and the dead. Second Timothy chapter four, verse one, by the way, and by his appearing and his kingdom to preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

In other words, second Timothy chapter four, verse three warns us against the seeker driven movement of which

Perry Noble is one of the prime pied pipers of that particular purpose driven movement.

You want me to do, you just instruct me. That's the way these lepers reacted. Look at this verse five at dusk.

We're back to the lepers. The lepers had nothing to do with the miracle that God performed there in second Kings chapter seven.

Nothing whatsoever. If there were no lepers, God still did the miracle without them.

They got up. Oh, wow. They said, it's time to stop talking about this.

They didn't say, dear God, we don't want to die. Help us in the name of Jesus.

Amen. Y 'all want to sing? I mean, they didn't do that. This is a complete continuing of the mangling of second

Kings chapter seven. It says the Lord caused them, the Syrians to hear what sounded like a great army and they got scared and fled.

It had nothing to do with the lepers. They were just the first people to actually wander into the

Syrian camp after they had been driven away by God. I said, nobody over there is moving.

Nobody's doing it. We got to do something. So the Bible says they got up and went to the camp of the Aramaeans. When they reached the edge of the camp, not a man was there for the

Lord. That's huge for the Lord, for the

Lord. All these people are over in Samaria under sage. Things are going bad, begging

God to work. And God was already at work outside their city, doing something that if they would have just focused on him, would have blown their mind.

But nobody was willing to change. Nobody was what they were too busy asking God to do something for us.

And God was like, I'm doing something for you. But you got to get out of the city if you want to see what I'm doing for you. No, that's not what

God said at all. Remember the prophet Elisha? He actually told them what

God had told him to say. Let's go back to the text. Second Kings chapter seven, verse one.

But Elisha said, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord tomorrow about this time, a seah of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.

Then the captain on whose hand the king leaned said to the man of God, if the

Lord himself should make windows in heaven, could this thing be? But he said, you shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat of it.

Why? Because he didn't believe it in that faith. So no, the

Lord didn't say you got to get up and get out of the city. Nope, that's not in the text at all.

Perry here again is lying to you about what God's word teaches.

Second Kings chapter seven does not teach the church these two things that we have to be willing to embrace change and have to be willing to quote work to make that change come about.

The change in the circumstances there in Samaria were all wrought by God, despite the lack of faith and obedience of the

Samaritans. We continue.

The Bible says for the Lord, look at this, this is so cool. I don't know how he did this, but he did it. For the Lord had caused the

Aramaeans to hear the sounds, sound of chariots and horses and a great army.

God, massive CD player, CD and bam, done iPod. We don't know. So that they look, so they said to one another, look, the

King of Israel has hired the Hittite Egyptian Kings to attack us. So they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys.

They left the camp as it was and ran for their lives. Probably one of the funniest scenes in the

Bible. Yeah, and it didn't have anything to do with the lepers. It happened before the lepers even had their little conversation.

God's like, Hey, watch this. And all the people say is like, that's awesome.

Maybe God was playing. Maybe it's a PlayStation. I don't even know what God was doing, but God made this happen. Here's the deal.

If these lepers hadn't been willing to change and take a risk, they never would have gotten in on what

God was doing. Our talk. This is just an abuse of God's word.

This is not a valid conclusion. This is not a valid interpretation. This isn't a valid reading of this text at all.

Problem. And this is, I'm so guilty of this. I keep asking God for permission to do something in the church when

I should actually place myself in submission to the work he's already done. And if we will stop seeking permission and start placing ourself in submission, we will discover that God's already doing things that are blowing our minds.

If we would just focus on him and quit trying to get him to buy into our agenda. The story tells us that the people there didn't even buy into what

God had revealed to the prophet Elisha. And just Perry real quick.

Do you think if those poor lepers hadn't gone outside the city that the, you know, you know, the king of Israel would still be holed up inside of the gates there wondering what had happened to the army?

Probably not. If you're going to, if you're going to work for change in your church, you've got two things

I see. You got to get your eyes focused. This will be fun. The first eye is you got to investigate the obvious.

You got to investigate the obvious. Let me ask you this question as a staff, and there are many staff members here.

Staff members, is there anything in your church right now going on that if you weren't on staff, you wouldn't be excited about it?

Like what happened to Dr. James Duncan. Hard to believe that Perry was completely in the dark about this, considering the fact that he was receiving tweets from the perps within his own staff.

Like I remember as the youth pastor, I used to have to get up and make announcements. Y 'all want to be to this thing Tuesday night. It's going to be awesome.

The ladies are making dishes and we're going to talk about quilts and missionaries and stuff. And y 'all need to be here.

And I'm thinking the whole time, if I wasn't getting paid, I wouldn't be here. That's the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. Are you manufacturing energy for anything in your church?

Seriously, Sunday school. Come on now. I worked in a traditional church for 10 years.

Pastor didn't go to Sunday school. The Sunday school director didn't go to Sunday school. None of the deacons went to Sunday school.

They're all out back smoking or sobering up.

So therefore we should dump Sunday school. Yeah, that's some real backwoods logic.

And then they all get on stage going, you need to go to Sunday school. And everybody's like, it's something that you manufacture energy for.

Is there anything in your church? And here's the, well, we don't want to kill it because so -and -so they love it.

Well, okay. So you're going to kill your entire church because you don't want to hurt two people's feelings. Is there anything you're manufacturing energy for?

Is there a staff member or a volunteer that's not getting the job done? And they need, you need to have a conversation.

I don't want to hurt their feelings. God called you to hurt somebody's feelings. Jesus hurt feelings. Read Matthew 23.

When he called the Pharisees, sons of the devil, snakes, vipers, stuff like that. That was, that hurt their feelings.

They blogged about that. You know what I'm saying? Notice the swipe at the bloggers there.

Those people who are holding him accountable and pointing out his false doctrine, Bible twisting and bad methods.

That's the only internet that's coming. Just wait. I'm almost there. Notice he's taking this culture that he's inculcated in, at New Spring and trying to infuse it into other people's churches.

I went to visit my wife's church one time. It's the church she grew up in. And I remember I walked in and I told her, we had just planted our church.

And I was like, all right, here's the deal. I'm going to walk in. I'm going to enjoy the service. I'm not going to evaluate anything. I'm not going to say anything. I'm just going to walk into the church and enjoy the service.

She looked at me, she went. So I walk in and there's this guy and he, like the greeter.

Have you ever been to the church with the rude greeter? And I walk in, he don't say a word.

He just holds out a bulletin. I'm like, what am I supposed to do? I was like, and I held it until he said something to me.

Cause he wasn't talking. He's a greeter. Some of y 'all like, well, he loves to greet. Well, he sucks at it.

I tell people, Judas loved to take up the money. I went in the church.

I sat down on a pew next to a guy. I walked in. I promise you, this is back when I used to shave my head bald. I sat down.

I looked at the guy and smiled. Guy next to me. He got up and moved three pews down. Guess they don't want, you know what

I'm saying? Call stuff like that out. Do you have somebody on your stage that sings?

They can't sing. Oh, come on now. You've all been there. She or he gets up there and they go,

God laid this on my heart. Two minutes into it. You're like, you laid this on her heart. I know

I'm not supposed to question you, but could you kill her or me? Because I mean, but she has a good heart.

Yeah. But her voice is horrible and we're not listening to her heart. I remember the first time

I, I, I was saved in a, in a, in a traditional church. And man, but let me tell you something about this church. The pastor preached the word of God and everything was known.

I mean, the choir was awesome. If you wanted to sing a solo, you had to audition to, to sing the solo. And I was spoiled.

And I went to my first church and a guy got up to sing. I never will forget this. I never will forget this as long as I live.

I'm on the second row sitting with the youth group. I got them all, you know, four of them to sit on the front row with me. And this guy gets up and he starts singing the song by Don Francisco.

He's alive. You remember that one? Longest song in the world. Only song longer is watch the lamb.

It actually took longer to kill Jesus than it does to sing that song. You know what I'm saying? I know some of y 'all did that in your

Easter cantata. So I'm really sorry, but I'm sitting there listening to him and he starts singing.

And I didn't know, cause I didn't grow up in church. He starts singing. I started laughing because I thought it was a skit pastors.

Let me encourage you to get, let me encourage you to get a group around you that investigates the obvious. I've got a group of men and women around me that behind closed doors, they can say anything they need to say to me anytime they need to say it.

Then why didn't they tell you about what was happening to James Duncan? There were people on your staff that knew about it.

I want their feedback. I want them to tell me if a sermon is bad. I want them to tell me if an illustration didn't work.

I want them to tell me if my idea is bad. I don't want a bunch of yes, boss. That's a good idea, boss. I like you, boss. I don't want that.

You know why? I care more about Jesus and his church than I do my pride. And I've invited other people to investigate the obvious in my life.

Really? That's funny because that's what I've been doing with you for a while now, Perry, investigating the obvious regarding your false doctrine and your false theology and your

Bible twisting in your sermons. Just like in this one, I'm investigating the obvious.

And yet you won't allow me to speak into your life because I'm a quote, blogger and critic. Where are the people holding you accountable to your doctrine and to the fruit of your teaching in your own church?

Now, I don't invite everybody. I'm coming.

I'm coming. Hold on. In fact, let's go there. The first is investigate the obvious.

This next one that you're going to have to give me a minute. I need to explain it. So let me say it. Let me explain it.

The second is ignore the jackass. I'm almost there.

So anybody who's a critic, you are to ignore him because he's quote the jackass.

This is the attitude that he's that caused the problem in the first place at New Spring with James Duncan.

He just automatically put him in the category of the jackass and then ignored him.

Listen carefully. Ignore the jackass. In Greek, jackass is translated blogger.

Yeah, that includes me. That includes Dr. James Duncan. Anybody who would dare to criticize, dare to criticize

Perry Noble is to be ignored. And they're automatically a jackass. It doesn't matter what they say.

It's automatically to be ignored. When I was in Kenya, let's see where I got this.

The Lord gave it to me. Lord didn't give you that. Yes, he did. I was in Kenya. We were in a village called

Kendaria. And we were having a like a village meeting.

And they asked us all to go under the tree. It was just the tree, the big tree in the village. They called it the big tree. So that's where we went.

We just the big tree. So we're all sitting under this tree and a team there, five of us.

And we're going to all these villages. And there's this guy up in front of us sitting in front of like the team of elders in the village.

And he's like the spokesman. And he's casting vision as to what they wanted to see happen in their village.

And he's casting vision. And we're all into it. And all of a sudden, this donkey about 15 feet away freaks out.

I mean, it went, it was like, ah, and it's kicking and stuff. This guy never acknowledged the jackass.

He kept casting vision. And I felt the Lord tell me that's the problem in the church.

Too many pastors are paying attention to the jackasses and not casting vision. And when you pay attention to a jackass and you don't cast vision, you will miss it every time.

So you're blaming this on the Lord. So this is now the new

Perry Noble Bible. You need to cast vision in the north. Jackass, Jesus said should be read letters to it.

Let me talk about two types of jackasses really quick. The first one is the person that takes shots at you that have never been to your church.

Pastors, let me tell you something. God called you to cruise at the altitude of 30 ,000 feet. God called his church to soar above the problems.

Why in the world would you let a boy with his BB gun in his backyard intimidate you? The bloggers that'll go online, that'll take shots at you, that copy parts of your sermon and like cut a little bit and cut a little bit and cut a little bit and cut a little bit and splice.

And then they go and they get, listen to this guy's sermon. They listen to this guy's sermon. They listen, like who has time for that?

The jackass you're watching, right? That's a reference to me right now.

There's a reason you have time to do that. You have no friends. The reason you have no friends is you're a jackass.

And I will say that to you. Everybody in this room have wanted to say it to you. And unless they're jackasses, we're going to get to that in just a second.

I want that's your problem. So notice the ad hominem argument there.

You're just a jackass and you have no friends. That's why you do that. Yeah, that's not even close to the truth.

That you're either demon possessed or oppressed. Oh, or you're demon possessed or oppressed. What if, what's the other option?

Perry Noble twists God's word. And the person pointing it out is doing the work of God.

Compare what people say in the name of God to the word of God. That's what the

Bereans did. In Perry Noble's universe, anybody who would critique him is automatically a jackass, somebody who doesn't have any friends or is demon possessed.

Right. Because when a move of God is working and people are getting saved and lives are getting changed, who would criticize that?

God or Satan? Ask yourself that question. Again, Perry, I just asked a question.

Is it God or Satan that teaches false doctrine and twists God's word? How can it be a move of God when you're twisting

God's word? I'm going to blog about you.

I don't read it. I don't. If we ran out of toilet paper,

I'd have somebody copy and paste it. And we'd use it for that. But that's about it. That's what I think of your blog.

Now, if somebody's liking that. He said, Perry, what about the jackass in the church? The jackass in the church is the person that always screams,

I want to go deeper. So the jackass in the church is the person who says, I want to go deeper.

If you want to go deeper in God's word, you're a jackass, according to Perry Noble. You know what

I tell people that say that around here? You're only as deep as the last person you served. You want to talk deep?

Let's go check your tithing record and see how deep you are. So it's not possible that he's that he is actually has a biblical mandate to preach

God's word, the full counsel of the word of God. The person who's complaining and say, you're not really handling

God's word. And I want to go deeper. What's he doing? He flips the table on that person and say, it's your fault.

Who? How dare you do that to me? Whoa, deep, deep.

Most Christians are John Maxwell said it. Most Christians are educated way beyond their level of obedience. Anyway, what you're.

Wow. Really saying is you want me to stand on the stage and confuse the heck out of you so you don't have to apply what I teach on Sundays.

I could do that. Complete lie. Your job is to preach the word,

Perry, and to go deep and to preach the full counsel of the word of God. And how dare you condemn somebody who is rightfully pointing out from the scriptures that that's your job.

I want more worship. You got six other days.

Yeah. Don't come to church expecting to have that here. No way. We're too busy playing hell's bells on Easter.

Or was it highway to hell? Maybe they've done both. If you were full of Jesus, when you walked in here, it wouldn't matter to you how much we saying.

If you were full of Jesus, it wouldn't matter how much we saying. These are lies of the devil.

And I mean that literally. These contradict the teaching of the word of God. The purpose of a pastor is to feed

God's sheep to feed Christ sheep. The scripture is clear on this. And when the sheep is complaining that they're starving to death, it's it.

And they do at Perry Noble's church. So what's happened? He's creating this culture and sending it out to thousands of other pastors.

Don't come to church expecting to be fed. Don't come to church expecting to have deep worship. We don't do that here.

And you wouldn't be complaining about it if you actually love Jesus. We've had people say, can't go to that church.

Why? Well, if you die, who's going to preach your funeral? Does it freaking matter?

Do you really think when Jesus was dying on the cross, he said, now my people have someone to preach their funeral.

Jesus doesn't care about the funeral. He conquered death on the cross. Are you willing to work?

The third question, are we serious about reaching the world? I got to hurry.

I just looked at the clock. I'm so sorry. I got hung up on that jackass thing and I couldn't stop. So this is the part that I was the most nervous about, to be honest with you.

But I feel like I've got to say this. I think a lot of churches aren't serious about reaching the world.

And so because of that, we get more obsessed with terminology than we do Jesus. And instead of identifying ourselves as the church, we identify ourselves as something else.

I wrote down four terms that I think are really overplayed in the church today. Um, this will get me in some trouble, but I'm fine.

First term is contemporary. We're a contemporary church and I've got definitions for you.

Contemporary means our pastor wears a sweater vest and we sing songs to Jesus that make him seem like he shops for his undergarments at Victoria's secrets.

And we treat him like our boyfriend rather than our King, our Lord, our savior, and our God. Blended, blended, blended church.

I'm talking about no one. Our church actually possesses a set and we'll proclaim where we stand.

Do I need to comment? So in an effort to reach our, in an effort to keep everyone happy, we reach no one.

Missional most overplayed term in the church.

It drives me up the freaking wall. When a church says we're missional, duh, you should be freaking missional.

That's like a fish going. I like water. I like water. I like water. Let me tell you what missional means in most churches, nobody's showing up.

So we sought out a term to affirm our dysfunction and affirm the fact that the mission that we are carrying out is not the great commission.

The one that Jesus said, apparently the only way that's a valid way to do church is the way he does it.

No in -depth Bible study, no deep worship, no deep biblical preaching beat the sheep who dare to point it out, call them jackasses, run them down, persecute them and assassinate them their lives.

Yeah. Folks, when the mission of the church, because I've heard,

I've heard all, well, we just go out and we serve people and we just give them coffee. Okay, great. You gave them a cup of coffee. They're going to hell without Jesus.

When are you going to tell them about Jesus? When are you going to bring Jesus in the whole mix? Because Jesus didn't die so that we could form holy huddles in the church and get obsessed about terminology and have meetings and theories and ideas while a world around us goes to hell.

The church should be missional. It's called the great commission. Go into all the world and make disciples.

That should be our mission. Well, really, how are you going to pull that off?

Make disciples without in -depth Bible study, without Sunday school, without anything that is deep in the scriptures at all.

Unbelievable. Here, he reads the text that tells him what he should be doing, and then he turns around and beats people over their head.

If they point out that he's not doing it missional, the last one emergent,

I doubt he even understands the term. All these guys watch on the internet.

We're a bunch of spoiled former church kids who have a problem with authority, not a bad description, including the authority of scripture.

Perry, you are not one to talk about the authority of scripture since you twist it and mangle it so badly. This will be a valid criticism once you stop twisting

God's word. So we have sided with Satan and questioning the word of God.

And because of our movement, hell will be more crowded. I said,

I mean, come get me. Most of those guys are going to sober up before they do anything to me.

Right. Or get saved. Second Kings chapter seven, verse eight.

Here we go. More Bible twisting. Second Kings chapter seven has nothing to do with anything that he said here.

The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp and entered one of the tents.

They ate and drank and carried away silver and gold and clothes and went off and hid them. Then they, they returned and entered another tent and took some of the things from it and hid them also stop.

This is the church. We make a change. God starts moving.

We discover something great and the church wants to hide it for themselves. I remember one time preaching in a church and that text doesn't say that evangelistic message about people coming to know

Christ and a woman coming after, after me going, you don't understand. We don't want more people at this church.

Like you don't want more people at the church. Jesus died so that we could reach people.

So these guys were like, let's hide this to ourselves. We go here and get the holy huddle. We're in a small group and we kind of discuss, you know, you know, the text doesn't say anything of the sort.

The text does not condemn a church where the pastor preaches God's word and makes disciples using in -depth

Bible study, exegetical and proclamational preaching, focusing on God's word and the

Lord's supper. Wow.

All this other stuff that don't mean anything that had me have a belly button. I mean, I don't even know. I mean, I don't even know what they look like.

So anyway, here we go. Verse nine, then they said to each other, we're not doing right.

We're not doing right. This is a day of good news, gospel, good news. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves.

If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let's go at once and report this to the royal palace.

So they went and called out to the city gatekeepers and told them we went to the airman camp and not a man was there.

Not a sound of anyone, only tethered horses and donkeys and the tents that left that were just left there.

Verse 11, the gatekeepers shouted the news and it was reported within the palace and eventually because four crazy lepers, because four men whose lives were completely fallen apart, were willing to make a change.

No, because the one true God performed a miracle, despite the lack of faith of the king and his captains and willing to walk forward and willing to embrace the work that God was doing.

He set an entire city free. No, they were set free even before the lepers stepped foot in the camp of the

Arameans. Twisting God's word,

Perry, don't tell me about the emergence, denying the authority of the word of God.

When you do the same thing through your twisting of God's word, God didn't call your church to condemn the city.

He called it to reach the city and set it free. There are people that are dying and going to hell in our cities.

And if we don't wake up and smell the coffee, if it's always got to be about us,

I'm all for evangelism. The church must be engaging the culture and proclaiming repentance and the forgiveness of sins to the lost and dying in our communities.

But you don't do that at the expense of making disciples. We're not called to just proclaim the good news.

We're called to make disciples. That requires in -depth catechesis, Bible study, sound expositional preaching, expository preaching, proclamational preaching that preaches the full counsel of the word of God, not life tips stripped to help meet the felt needs of seekers.

Then we don't do what God called us to do. I've had people say, well, Perry, New Spring's just into numbers.

Cheers. I am guilty.

By the way, the only church that says y 'all are just into numbers are the churches that have no numbers. So I started reading through the book of Acts because I was curious about the numbers.

And I was like, God, am I wrong for wanting numbers of people to meet Jesus? Because see, because I remember what it was like being lost.

I remember what it was like to work in a restaurant on Sundays when Christians came in. And I almost didn't give my life to Christ because of the way

I was treated on Sundays by the people that had just left church. I remember what it was like to go to a high school where all the

Christians had a click and nobody ever invited me to church. And I was the biggest pagan there. See, I haven't forgot where I was when

Jesus saved me. Because a guy that most people don't even know named David invited me to a

Bible study and told me there were hot girls there. And that's, that's works.

The reason I'm obsessed with the numbers is because I was one of those numbers. Jesus saved me.

So the church can sit around and go, y 'all, listen, I want more people to meet Jesus. Keep in mind, he was saved in a traditional church.

They must've been doing something right. Don't you think Perry? Jesus, who would be angry at that?

God or Satan? So I went to the book of Acts. I was like,

God, this numbers thing. God, am I wrong? Because if I'm wrong, I want to repent. And it's amazing.

What do you do when once they get saved? Isn't it amazing how the church will trust the Holy spirit for salvation, but won't trust him after salvation.

Holy spirit, you did your job. We'll take over. Seriously, I went to God.

I asked him. And so here's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to read several verses of scripture consecutively.

And every time you see the word number and I get to the word number, I just want you to yell it out here on the internet.

Do this. You might be in Starbucks right now. Just make a freak out of yourself. Just do it, man. Every time

I get to the word number, I just want you to yell that word. But when I get to it, like when it comes up on the screen, don't go number, because that'd be wrong.

Acts 2 41. Those who accepted his message were baptized. And about 3000 were added to their number that day number.

Acts 2 47, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily.

Those who are being saved. Acts chapter four, verse four. But many who heard the message believed and the number of men grew to about 5000.

Acts chapter five, verse 14. Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.

Acts chapter six, verse one. In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, which is not a problem.

Acts chapter six, verse seven. So the word of God spread rapidly. The disciples in Jerusalem increased.

Perry, just let me point something out to you here, buddy. Here's the deal. Nobody is arguing that God's church growing is a bad thing.

The thing is, is God's church is not growing when you draw a crowd. God's church only grows.

Through the proclamation of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus name. And when

God increases the number through the preaching of the biblical gospel.

The problem is not that you're focused on numbers. The problem is, is that the methods that you're employing and the gospel you're preaching isn't the biblical gospel.

And you're not calling people to repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus name. You're preaching a works, righteousness, decision, theology -based gospel.

That is Pelagianism at best. And Pelagianism is a heresy.

You're preaching to felt needs rather than proclaiming repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus name and making disciples, which is what you're called to do.

Rapidly. Acts 9 31. Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace.

It was strengthened and encouraged by the Holy spirit. It grew in numbers. Why? Because they living in fear of the

Lord. Acts 11 21. The Lord's hand was on them. And with great of people believed and turned to the

Lord. Acts 14 1. At Iconium, Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue.

There they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Gentiles believe.

Acts 14 21. They preached the good news in that city and won a large of disciples.

Acts 16 verse five. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in.

If numbers aren't important, then why are they all over the book of acts?

And who was the one bringing the numbers? God was. God was granting people repentance unto faith for the forgiveness of sins, one by Christ through the preaching of the gospel.

Not felt needs. The only churches that numbers are important to are the churches that aren't willing to change.

And the church again, that's a lie is that aren't willing to work. And the churches that are lie aren't willing to embrace the fact that we're called to reach the world lies again.

I swear we've got a purpose driven Pope on our hands here in the Carolinas. Let me close with this.

I was in Thomasville, Georgia over Christmas. South Georgia.

Somebody from South Georgia here. Really? These people will kill you.

Be nice to them. So I was going to drive down to Tallahassee to drink some coffee.

They got a Starbucks down there. They don't have one in Anderson. I'm not bitter. My mother -in -law, my mother -in -law.

How cool is it to say this? How cool is it to say this? My mother -in -law has a Mustang. That's just awesome.

You might be a redneck. Yes. So my mother -in -law has a Mustang. And I borrowed it to drive it down to Tallahassee.

That's a new Mustang. It's like a it's got the I don't even know. Because some of you are what kind of engine you're what kind of engines in that car?

Big one. I mean, that's all I know. I don't even I don't know numbers or anything. So I got her and got her Mustang. I drove it down to Tallahassee.

And I kind of and actually I met with some church planters. It's kind of fun. And I drove back and I got on a road in Thomasville.

It's called Metcalf Road. And it's really it's really straight. And like you could just open a car up. And I've been driving this

Mustang all day. And I've been driving around Tallahassee with it. And I just had this thought.

I wonder what this thing's got. Now it just rained. And the road was wet.

And so I literally I didn't ease into it. I'm an adrenaline junkie. I stomped it.

And that car started doing this. I don't even know my mother -in -law might be watching right now on the internet.

And I'm probably never going to drive your Mustang again. But it was awesome. I stomped it.

And the car started doing this right here. And I and then when it finally caught, it was like, boom, and my hand went.

And I was like, this is awesome. I got back in my,

I got back to the house that night. And I'm sitting, I'm kind of writing some stuff in my journal. I felt the Lord tell me, Perry, that's my church.

The church for years has just been cruising around. And they've got so much power under the hood.

If they would just stomp it. They would experience things that they've never seen or experienced before.

Now, notice this is a direct revelation from Jesus Christ. In the new forthcoming gospel of Perry.

This will be in the red letters. He's exegeting what he believes

Jesus told him directly. And proclaiming it to all these people as if it's a direct word from the Lord that they are now beholden to.

And their churches need to pay attention because Jesus told it to him. And now he's telling it to them. And this is a word of Jesus.

You have any problems with that? I do. For every one of you at Unleash.

I'm praying that you would go back to your church and you would stomp it. Because I believe

God wants to do things in your church that would blow your mind. You look at this church and say, well, this is a big church.

Hey, why would you limit the size of what God wants to do in your church to this church? He probably wants to do more.

Please, for the love of God, stomp it and watch what he can do.

Let's pray. All right, there we go. Any wonder how the events that unfolded in James Duncan's life,

Dr. James Duncan. You heard it for yourself. You heard him speak about it.

And the experience that he went through. And how by being a critic, he was treated in the most un -Christian of ways.

It's a fruit, a direct fruit of Perry Noble's preaching and teaching.

Not only at his church, not only at his church, but to other pastors. It is not only at his church, but to other pastors.

The seeker driven movement is Christian believer hostile. It's not interested in doing what

God has commanded in his word. The pastors do feed God's sheep, preach the word, preach sound doctrine, go in depth.

They're not interested in that because they're all about bringing numbers in. And so what goes?

The gospel itself. That's the problem. And the believers who rightfully standing on God's word or critiquing what's going on are being crucified and having their characters assassinated by men like Perry Noble.

This must not be allowed to continue. Perry Noble needs to be called to repentance for his false teaching, his false doctrine, his

Bible twisting and the fruit of his ministry. Which is now so evident for everyone to see in the actions of his employees, whom he's responsible for, who he set the tone for and created the culture for, for them to do what they did to Dr.

James Duncan. It is reprehensible. It is not in accord with sound doctrine.

It what happened is not a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is the fruit of false doctrine and false teaching and a false emphasis by a completely bankrupt, biblically bankrupt, seeker -driven, purpose -driven way of doing, quote, church.

And it isn't. What do you think?

Would love to get your feedback. By the way, I have invited Perry onto the program to give him equal time to respond and give his side of the story.

But since I'm a jackass and I'm of the devil, I'm sure he won't.

Come on. What do you think? We'd love to get your feedback. Email me, talkbackatfightingforthefaith .com.

Well, we're rapidly approaching the end of another edition of fighting for the faith. And I need to remind you, this radio program is listener supported, which means we depend upon you in order to pay our bills so that we can continue bringing fighting for the faith to you.

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Time for you to chime in. Let me know what you think. Unlike Perry, I read my critics emails.

So if you completely disagree with me, please feel free to email me. I will read the email.

I might even respond because I do respond to my critics. All right.

Well, folks, we're at the end of another edition here. Again, if you'd like to email me, you can it's talk back at fightingforthefaith .com

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My name there again, pirate Christian till tomorrow. May God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and his vicarious death on the cross for your sins.