Witches in the Church! A Response to Greg Locke

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What do you do when you got witches in the church? Find out today on Conversations with a Calvinist, which begins right now.
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Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.
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Today we're going to be talking about a video that was sent in to me by a listener.
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Thank you, Steven, for this video.
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And the video is of Pastor Greg Locke of the, let me see here, I wanna double check.
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This is Pastor Greg Locke of the Global Vision Bible Church.
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And Pastor Locke recently made headlines because he announced to his congregation that there were six witches in his congregation.
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I'd like to listen to what he has to say, go through the video and allow you to hear what he has to say.
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It's just a short video clip.
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And then we're gonna respond to this video.
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We got first and last names of six witches that are in our church.
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And you know what's strange? Three of you are in this room right now.
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Three of you in the room right now.
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You better look in my eyeballs.
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We ain't afraid of you, you stinking witch.
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You devil-worshiping Satanist witch.
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We cast you out in the name of Jesus Christ.
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We break your spells, we break your curse.
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We got your first name, we got your last name.
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We even got an address for one of you.
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Yeah, you so much as cough wrong and I'll expose you in front of everybody in this tent, you stinking witch.
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You spell-casting pharmakeia devil-worshiping mongrel, you.
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All right, we've seen the video.
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Now let's talk about it.
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Right away, a lot of people are very upset because this man said there were witches in the church and it automatically, to many, seems to reek of things like Salem witch trials and calling out witches, calling people witches, things that are reminiscent of a time gone by.
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And a lot of people are taking issue with Greg Locke because of that.
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But I wanna take a more serious approach because I do think that there are a few things that we could consider from this video and really learn from because I think there's a lot here that we need to consider when we think about the idea of witchcraft and demons and things like that.
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Because if we're believers in the supernatural, which as Christians, we are by nature, believers in the supernatural, then we don't deny things like demons, we don't deny things like spiritual warfare.
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And in fact, I was looking at an article that came out after this video and it's Pastor Locke and he's addressing and he says the message of deliverance is dangerous because it exposes the enemy for who he is, but like nothing else, it also exposes the lukewarm condition of the church in America.
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So what he's saying is, if we don't address these things, then we are lukewarm.
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And if we are not addressing them the way he does, then we are lukewarm.
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Well, I don't think that that's necessarily a fair assessment on his behalf.
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And I think that what we need to consider, and like I said, I wanna take it seriously for just a moment.
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But let's say for instance, and this is just a thought, let's say for instance, there really are women in Greg Locke's church who are practicing witchcraft.
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And according to him, he knows this by some form of divine revelation.
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I don't think that this came to him by way of someone simply saying, hey, there's women here who are practicing some form of witchcraft.
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I think that he believes he received this in a supernatural way, which again, I would have some issues with that, but that's not really the point right now.
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The point is, is when we consider this idea of witchcraft, let's just go ahead and grant the possibility that there are six women in Greg Locke's church who are practicing witchcraft.
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And again, I'm not saying that there are or that there aren't, but it is certainly possible.
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In fact, I'll give you a quick story.
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When I got saved, I was working for America Online.
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Now, for those of you who are much younger than me, America Online was one of the first internet companies that really went mainstream and everybody had AOL.
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In fact, there was a time when everybody's email address was at aol.com, and AOL made their name by sending out CDs.
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I know you might not know what that is, but a CD was a little round disc that went in your computer and gave you 50 hours, 70 hours, 100 hours of free internet for one month, and that was how they got people hooked in.
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And my job was actually to save people from canceling their account.
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When people would call in, I would try to keep people from canceling their accounts.
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Oh, that time gone by, that's a long time ago.
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But when I worked for America Online, America Online was a very revolutionary company at the time.
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One of the things that kind of put them on the map as a company was that they sort of had a, they were sort of countercultural when it came to the business, where like in many offices, businessmen wore business suits, businesswomen wore outfits that were commensurate with working in an office.
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But at AOL, you could, that was out the window.
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You could wear whatever you wanted to.
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You could come in.
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I remember seeing people in bathrobes and slippers coming to work with their coffee mugs, look like they just rolled out of bed, and that was sort of encouraged because it added to the atmosphere of AOL as a young company.
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It's a fun company.
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It's a company that's new and hip and growing.
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And again, this is the late 90s.
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So this is not like a modern Silicon Valley type company.
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This was new.
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This was different.
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This was so interesting to see that.
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Well, one of the things that was very prominent at America Online was there were people there who practiced many strange religions, and one of them was witchcraft.
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And on Halloween, and I don't remember what year it was.
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It was when I worked there, but on Halloween, I worked there for a while, there were a group of witches who, in the parking lot of America Online, had a little celebration of their witchcraft.
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And if I remember correctly, they had like a cauldron.
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They had like circled around this thing, and they were chanting, and they were giving out these witch chants and these words and these seance type words.
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And so when I say that there are people out there who truly do try to practice witchcraft, I believe that, and I've seen it, and I've seen it for real.
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So I am not denying the fact that Greg Locke might have six women in his church who are practicing witchcraft.
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So that is a, right away, something I wanna make a point.
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And I noticed something.
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I saw a video by Pastor Locke, and he said since this has come out, he has had hundreds of thousands of messages and phone calls.
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Not hundreds of thousands, let me go back.
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Hundreds and up to thousands of calls.
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So not hundreds of thousands, but hundreds and up to thousands of calls that were sort of defaming him.
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He said one guy threatened to come in and cut his throat.
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That's terrible.
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Obviously, as a proponent of free speech, I think Greg Locke, as a pastor, should be able to say what he wants to say.
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But at the same time, as a pastor to another man who is professing to be a pastor, and again, I don't know Pastor Locke.
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I don't know his theology or anything.
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I only saw this video, and I can't speak to his theology, so I can't really address him in that regard.
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But to say to a man who claims to be a pastor, I wanna speak in this way.
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I wanna say, okay, here you are, sir.
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You're saying you're a pastor, and you're claiming you know that there are witches in your church.
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And I'm saying to you, I'll grant you the possibility.
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There are people in your church practicing witchcraft.
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And when I say this, I don't mean there's people with pointy hats and black cats and broomsticks that are walking around this church, but people who are literally trying to practice sinful things within the church.
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And the Bible does tell us that witchcraft is sinful.
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The Bible does tell us that practicing witchcraft is opposed to Christianity.
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So if there are people in his church who are engaged in witchcraft, then they are engaging in sinful activity, and they are right to be called out on that, first of all.
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But here's where I would counter Pastor Locke, and I would propose to him another idea.
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Because there is a way, the Bible tells us, that we are to address sin within the church.
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And the way that we are to do it, according to the Bible, is that we are to go to the offending party privately first, and recognize and call out their sin.
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For those of you who are unfamiliar, Matthew chapter 18, beginning in verse 15, gives us the process of what is called church discipline.
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This is something that should be practiced by all new covenant churches.
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All believers in the Lord Jesus Christ should practice this because the Lord Jesus Christ gives us this as his method.
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In fact, the word church is only used twice in the Gospels.
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Both of them are in the book of Matthew.
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One is when Jesus says, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
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And the second time is when Jesus talks about the word church and he uses it in the process of discipline.
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He says we are to bring the offending party before the church.
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And the steps of discipline, according to Matthew 18, are very, very well spelled out.
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The first is that you are to go to the person privately, and you are to call them out privately.
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And if they repent, that's the end of it.
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You don't threaten them, you don't create a fearful environment for them, or tell people you're gonna put their name out for people to know.
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You go to them privately, you call them to repentance.
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And then, according to Jesus, our captain, the one who demands and commands our lives, he says, then, if that doesn't work, you take two or three witnesses, and you go to that person, and you call them to repentance in the presence of two or three witnesses.
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Because, as the text says, all truth is established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
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We see this from the Old Testament.
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This is an Old Testament principle being brought into the New Testament, and that is that no one was guilty if they didn't have the witnesses to prove the guilt.
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And so, if you were to go to the person, let's say a person was in my church, and it came to be known that this person was practicing witchcraft.
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The first thing that would need to be done is the person who found out about it would need to go to that person privately, and discuss this with them, find out if it's actually true, and then call them to repentance.
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The next thing would be to go with two or three witnesses.
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And I would say that the wisest course of action at that point would be to get the church elders involved, the pastors, get them involved in going to that person, because they are called to be the men who lead and teach the church, and guard against this sort of thing.
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So, going to them.
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And then the third step, according to Matthew 18, is that they be brought before the church.
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That is, if they don't repent.
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They've already been called to repentance by a single individual.
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They've already been called to repentance by witnesses.
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Now, the next step, according to Matthew 18, is that they be brought before the church.
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So, in a sense, Pastor Locke is threatening the third step based upon the video without going through steps one and two, because he's saying, we know who you are, and we know that you're here.
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In fact, three of you are here right now, which, in a way, is, again, how do you know, and how did you find out? We even have the address.
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Okay, you know who these people are.
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If you have the address, why haven't you gone to them? Why aren't you talking to them? Why aren't you calling them to repentance? This is the issue.
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You see, Jesus gives us a method for things like this, and we don't use the biblical method.
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We use the worldly method.
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We use the fleshly method, and this is why things like this happen, because it goes on to say the fourth step, by the way, there are four steps.
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The first step is the single, going to the person, calling to repentance.
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If they repent, it's over.
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The second step is going with two or three witnesses, calling them to repentance.
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If they repent, it's over.
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The third step is to bring them before the church and allow the weight of the church to speak to the issue, and if they repent, it's over.
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If they go before the church and the church calls them to repentance, they recognize their sin and they repent, it is over.
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No threatening, no giving out the address, no saying we're gonna put your name out on the internet or anything, no, it's over.
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The fourth step, there is a fourth step, and that step is what we call excommunication.
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That is the step where a person, according to Jesus, is to be treated like a Gentile or a tax collector, two people who were not allowed in the temple.
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The tax collectors, because they had sided with Rome and were ultimately excommunicated because of that, and the Gentiles who were not allowed in the temple anyway because they were not Jewish.
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So Jesus is saying those people are to be put out, and excommunication is the last step.
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It is a step of, it's a grievous step because it's not something we want to do.
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Our desire is not to put people out of the church, but our desire is to see people restored to the body, and so this is where I think the biggest issue is here.
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It doesn't seem like the desire is repentance and restoration.
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It seems like the desire is, one, a show of strength.
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We're not afraid of you.
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He uses the Greek word pharmakia, which addresses the issue of witchcraft and things like that, and he's throwing that out there, again, to sound very bold and very strong, and he's making himself the, you don't want to mess with us because you don't know what we'll do to you, and here's what we'll do.
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We will publish your name publicly.
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We'll call you out publicly.
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Well, again, there's a method.
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There's a biblical method.
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That method is not being followed here, and that's, again, the problem with what we're seeing in a situation like this.
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We're seeing a unbiblical methodology being used against a, really, a biblical issue.
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Sin in the camp is a biblical issue.
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Sin in the camp needs to be dealt with, but there's a way to do it.
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There's a way not to do it, and this video, I think, is an example of how not to do it.
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So that's my thoughts for today.
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Very short episode for today.
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This is one of our theology shorts that I've been talking about, just putting up a short video every once in a while, speaking to a particular cultural issue, speaking to a specific theological issue, so that's what I did today.
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I hope you found this useful.
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Hope you found it interesting, and I hope you'll be with us next week as we continue on with Conversations with a Calvinist.
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If you have any questions, send me an email at calvinistpodcast at gmail.com.
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Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.
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May God bless you.