MESSED UP CHURCH: Encounter Evangelism Exposé

Encounter Evangelism and the Gospel Message

Welcome to the Messed Up Church. We're gonna be doing a Messed Up Church interview with none other than Stephen Kozar, blogger for the Messed Up Church, the curator of the Museum of Idolatry, and we're gonna be talking today about his latest article on the Messed Up Church blog about encounter evangelism, what that is, what it is, is it biblical, and you know stuff like that.

We'll even be talking about Christ Alignment and Darren Wilson and the Holy Ghost movie guys, but let me whirl this up real quick here. Hey Steve, how you doing? Good.

I'm actually kind of frustrated because I had computer problems, so I'm a little crankier than normal, but I always enjoy talking to you, and hopefully we'll give people some really, really helpful information, but we'll have some fun along the way as we usually do.

All right, you cranky, huh? A little cranky, yeah. I'm just on my first serious cup of coffee here, so that should help. All right. There should be a noticeable difference between when we begin and when we end based on how much of this is missing.

Right on. Okay, okay, so the.

Crankiness level will decrease as the coffee inside of you increases. Got it. Okay, let me pull this up real quick here, and we need to take a look at your blog post, and I've made it so you're in camera here, but you're a little smaller.

The Encounter Gospel Versus Biblical Evangelism

Recent blog post put up on January 8th, the fortune-telling encounter gospel of Bethel and the NAR explained. Now, what was fascinating is that when we did the Dumpster Fire episode, where we really kind of played for everybody to see what goes on in a destiny card reading from Christ's alignment, they were talking about having these pagans, these New Agers, have an encounter with God or with Jesus and stuff like that, and this doesn't sound anything like evangelism to me.

This just sounds really goofy, but the reality is this has a historical antecedent, and the historical antecedent in what we're calling the encounter gospel, which you've called the encounter gospel, goes all the way back to John Wimber and his concept known as power evangelism.

This belief that somehow people aren't going to want to make decisions to become Christians, you know, invite Jesus into their heart, unless they experience the power of God. This is also wrapped up in their concept of the gospel of the kingdom, that somehow the gospel of the kingdom has to be demonstrated with signs and wonders and miracles and things like this, and then once that happens, people will have an encounter with God.

They'll make a decision for Jesus and stuff like that. That's kind of the idea. And so I really think that's what you're getting at the heart of, but walk us through your fortune-telling encounter gospel blog post.

Well, okay, so I hear.

Certain phrases being used over and over again, and I know that a lot of people who are solid Christians might hear those phrases and insert a correct orthodox biblical meaning into those phrases, because that's what they are assuming.

You know, it's not a bad thing to think well of another teacher or pastor. It's not a bad thing to give people the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of the doubt. But I think when we hear people like the Christ Alignment folks, Chris Vallotton, Bill Johnson, a lot of people associated with the NAR, when they say people need to have an encounter with Jesus, they're not talking about what has historically been Christian evangelism or Christian church building.

You explain the gospel message. It's primarily about a gospel message. The gospel is good news. It's not a invitation to have an encounter in the sense that, you know, you have to personally experience some supernatural thing that's happening to you directly.

The gospel is—and this is the wonderful thing about the gospel, it means that anybody can share it. It's not about us and our ability to somehow do it correctly with enough miraculous goings-on. It's about us simply proclaiming the historical message of Jesus, who was God in flesh, came to earth, died on the cross for our sins.

And when we repent of our sins, we can be absolutely free from our sins. We can be free from the wrath of God. It's a wonderful message, and there's a lot of different Christians throughout Christian history who have explained it slightly differently.

They've structured their churches differently. They've had different theological leanings. But when we start talking about this encounter gospel, you keep digging beneath the surface trying to find, well, where's that message of sin?

Where's that message of we need to repent from our sins so that we can be forgiven of our sins? It's not there. I've not found it. And that was the thing that caused me to want to write some kind of a somewhat snarky article and create this really obvious catchphrase so that when people hear this in the future from somebody like Bill Johnson, they'll say, oh, that's that thing that crazy angry Kozar guy or that crazy Roseboro guy was talking about.

And it's not that we're angry. It's that we're really concerned that people aren't hearing the gospel message, which is so simple. You're a sinner. Your sins have separated you from God. And Jesus came to die on the cross to pay the penalty that you should have paid.

And he did it on your behalf. That simple message is just not there. So it's been replaced with this. And this is how I summarized it. And it's a little snarky. It's a little—obviously when you summarize something, you're leaving out whatever nuance might be there.

But I said, number one, people aren't really that bad. They just need to be convinced of how special they are. They need to understand their true identity. That's a really big catchphrase. You'll even hear people talk about how you're a royal prince or princess, or you're part of the the royalty of God.

A lot of people use the the symbolism of kingdom, swords, lions, all this stuff about royalty. And they always combine it with your true identity. And then the next one is, religion is the real source of people's problems, not rebellion against God or sin.

And this is a serious issue. If we think that all religion is the problem—we could do a whole podcast on just that topic, because, well, you haven't even defined religion. And what these people tend to do is they say religion, and everybody is kind of supposed to know what they mean, but it's never really clarified.

It's always the people, basically like us, who think that you should be more attuned to what the Scripture says, and you should actually be discipled by a pastor in an actual church. Those things are kind of just tossed aside by calling them religion.

So the next one is, number three, God is desperately trying to get people to accept him, but he's been hindered by the historic Christian Church with its specific biblical teaching about salvation, heaven and hell, the atonement of Jesus Christ, and all other forms of unnecessary head knowledge found in the.

Bible. Yeah, that's a big one, and I think some would accuse you of misrepresenting their position, but I think you've accurately summed up what they're basically saying. It's as if, listen, historic biblical Christianity and sound doctrine has gotten in the way of people experiencing these Jesus encounters, and they don't need to hear anything biblical, they just need to experience Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, or whatever.

Acts 13 and Acts 17 as Models of Evangelism

Yeah, and I think, you.

Know, like I grew up as a kind of a mainstream evangelical for most of my adult life, and when I saw all the weird stuff in the church, it did a lot of things, and one of them was to do a ton of research, and I was in an NAR-style church, so it really kind of shocked me, and it caused me to do just ridiculous amounts of research on Bill Johnson, and Rick Joyner, and Mike Bickle, and all these things.

And what that forced me to have to do was to realize that I knew nothing about church history or theology. Yeah. And the two are really almost the same, because history and theology are a thing that has developed over time, and all of our ideas come from someplace, you know, and when you pretend that your ideas are simply coming from the Bible, you're just either being delusional or you're being dishonest, because like you said, even the things that people like Todd White teaches, he's getting those ideas from other people who got them from other people who got them from other people.

And so everything can be traced back to theology, good or bad, it goes back to somebody's got a version of how they view their faith, and that's just a another way of saying theology. As soon as you start talking about God, or Christ, or Jesus, or the Bible, or anything, you're talking about theology.

So this idea that theology is bad and you're just gonna have an experience with God is a real overly simplified false dichotomy. Yeah, but it begs the question, where in.

Scripture, number one, is it modeled for us, and number two, is it taught that as far as evangelism is concerned, you know, you need to go and facilitate encounters. You know, it's not in the book of Acts.

I mean, none of the Apostles did this, you know, and so we've got a problem. In fact, let me kind of pull this out, and that is, I'm gonna pull up my Bible real quick here. I mean, if we look at a biblical example, the Apostle Paul, on one of his missionary journeys, he goes to Antioch, Pisidia, and you can find this in Acts chapter 13, and you're gonna note there's no facilitation of Jesus' encounters at all.

Instead, there's the delivering of good news, and the categories of law, and gospel, of sin, and grace, and what Christ has done for us on the cross, and the miracle that Paul points to is not a miracle that he's performing there in the synagogue, but the miracle he's pointing to is Jesus' bodily resurrection from the grave.

Now, let me grab the context here. Acts 13, 13 is where I'll start. It says this, Paul and his companions, they set sail from Paphos, came to Perga and Pamphylia. John left them, returned to Jerusalem.

They went on from Perga and came to Antioch and Pisidia, and on the Sabbath day, so it's a Saturday, they went into the synagogue and they sat down. After the reading from the Torah and the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent a message to them saying, brothers, if you have any word of encouragement for the people, say it.

So Paul stood up, and motioning with his hand, he said, men of Israel, now listen to what he does here, no encounter, no, he doesn't facilitate any encounters, does no fortune-telling, doesn't lengthen anybody's legs or anything like that.

He says, men of Israel, and you who fear God, listen. The God of this people Israel chose our fathers, made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt. With uplifted arm, he led them out of it, and for about 40 years, he put up with them in the wilderness, and after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance.

All of this took about 450 years. After that, he gave them judges until Samuel the Prophet. Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for 40 years.

So you note that here he's just giving a summary of salvation history from the Old Testament, kind of giving a quick thumbnail sketch of the overarching story of the Old Testament. Verse 22, when he had removed him, that's Saul, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, I have found in David the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, who will do all of my will.

Of this man's offspring, God has brought to Israel, listen, a Savior, this is what we need by the way, Jesus, as he has promised. Before his coming, John had proclaimed a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel, and as John was finishing his course, he said, What do you suppose that I am?

I am not he. No, but behold after me one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie. Brothers, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to us has been sent the message of this salvation.

You can summarize that as the gospel, because that's what gospel means, good news. For those who live in Jerusalem and the rulers, because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, and they fulfilled them by condemning him, and though they found in him no guilt worthy of death, they asked Pilate to have him executed.

And when they had carried out all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, laid him in the tomb, but God raised him from the dead. And for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people.

And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, he has fulfilled to us, their children, by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second psalm, you are my son today, I begotten you.

And as for the fact that he raised him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken in this way, I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David. Therefore, he said also in another psalm, you will not let your holy one see corruption.

For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, he fell asleep, was laid with his fathers, and he saw corruption. But he whom God raised up did not see corruption. So let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.

So you know, he's preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins. The miracle he's pointing to is the resurrection of Christ, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.

And then he doesn't have an altar call, watch what he does. He says, beware therefore, lest what is said in the prophets should come about. Look you scoffers, be astounded and perish, for I am doing a work in your days, a work that you will not believe even if one tells it to you.

So you're gonna note here that no signs, no wonders, no God encounters, and I want to give another cross-reference because this was a text that was referenced by Bethel Church in their official response regarding Christ's alignment.

And they referenced this, and it's just duplicitous what they ended up doing. But we're at Acts chapter 17, and I'll start at verse 16 for the context, and we're gonna note this is evangelism going on in the part of the Apostle Paul.

No signs, no wonders, he didn't set up a fortune-telling tent, he'd used no destiny cards or anything like that, he did not facilitate encounters, he preached Christ. And we'll see what he does here.

Acts 17, 16, now while Paul was waiting with them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. So yeah, ancient Athens was known for its idolatry, so he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplaces every day with those who happened to be there.

Notice, he's engaging in reasoning, right? And some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with Paul, and some said, what does this babbler wish to say? Others say, well he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities, because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.

So now we know that the content of the preaching Jesus and the resurrection, same thing he was preaching at Antioch Pisidia in Acts 13. And so they took him, brought him to the Areopagus, saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting, for you bring some strange things to our ears.

We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean. Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious, for as I pass along and observe the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, to the unknown God.

What therefore you worship as unknown, this now I proclaim to you. And this is an important move here, because Paul doesn't point to Zeus and say, you know, God is a lot like Zeus, or anything like that.

He goes with the blank slate, because these idolaters had kind of hedged their bets. If we had forgotten any deity, you know, the one we forgot or don't know about, you know, that we've set up this altar to that one.

So Paul is saying, yeah, this was them going, we hope we didn't miss anybody, if you're up there. Exactly. And this is not Paul somehow starting off, you know, like the way Christ Alignment does, basically, you know, engaging in idolatry for the purpose of them recognizing that.

No, it's just a reference. It's a rhetorical tool to say, okay, the unknown deity, let me reveal him to you, because yeah, you recognize you may have left one out, well let me tell you about him. That's what he's doing.

So what therefore you worship as unknown, this deity I now proclaim to you, the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands.

So right out of the chute, he blasts idolatry. He doesn't engage it, he doesn't engage in it, he blasts it, okay? So God does not, he's not served by human hands as though he's needed anything, since he himself gives to all of mankind, life and breath and everything.

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.

Yet he is not actually far from each one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being. Even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. So being then God's offspring, we ought not to think the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, or an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

The times of ignorance God has overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

I mean, that's pretty straightforward. You want to know what evangelism looks like? We have two salient examples from probably one of the most prolific and successful missionaries of the ancient Church, you know, the Apostle Paul.

And so you're gonna know, he didn't facilitate encounters, he preached repentance, forgiveness of sins, and the miracle he kept pointing to over and again was the miracle of the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

And he didn't pull any punches, and he even condemned idolatry explicitly in his gospel proclamations, which this makes perfect sense, because, well, you know, idolatry is a breaking of the first commandment.

Yeah, it's kind of a problem. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of an issue. Kind of an issue. Yep, and so over and again, but people, you know, like Bethel and some of the seeker-driven guys, they look at Acts 17 and basically say, that proves anything goes!

You can contextualize... Paul wasn't doing what they're claiming. I mean, they're actually twisting that. Now I want to play a little bit of audio for you. I hope you're sitting down. Jen Hodge from Christ Alignment put a video together, and I want you to hear her own explanation for what it is that they do.

They even have like a standing marketplace destiny card reading booth out there in Australia, but I want you to hear what she has to say, and we'll try to interact a little bit with her.

Christ Alignment and Prophetic Evangelism

Hi guys, here we are today at Dandenong Market. I'm sitting here waiting for the team to arrive. They're going to arrive in about half an hour, and I just wanted to share this today to encourage people to get out there in any way that you can into the marketplace.

We have a permanent stand here at Dandenong Market, and because we've done this by faith, we've been here a year now, four days a week.

Done this by faith? Yeah, it sounds like maybe she got a dream destiny thingy revelation, and she's done this by faith, you know? We're able to actually give.

People massive God encounters and spend an hour with them. They come to us, we.

Don't... Let me back that up. Did you hear? She says they give people massive God encounters. Yeah. I have no idea what that is. Well, I mean, she's kind of, from.

Their website and from their videos, we get the basic gist of it. They are what they would call prophecy, but it's not prophecy that it's ever been practiced by the Church, or it's not the prophecy that we see practiced in Scripture, except in really rare cases like in the Old Testament when God was specifically giving a specific message.

But when we talk about prophecy, we're talking about speaking the words of God. What they're doing is saying, I don't know how else to say this, but it is a form of fortune-telling. Yeah, no, it really is.

If you line up what are the aspects of fortune-telling, what are all the aspects of what these people do, they would be almost exactly the same. The only difference is not the thing itself, but it's where they claim they're getting their information from.

Right. They would say a fortune-teller is getting information from the demonic realm. We're getting even more accurate information from, I guess they would say, from the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit never has given us permission to tell people's fortunes.

Now, if we change the language, it's still the same thing. If we say, I want to give you a massive God encounter, I want to tell you something about yourself that proves that God loves you, I want to give you some secret information that's impossible for me, as a complete stranger, to have known otherwise, that's really another form of fortune-telling.

You know, your mother's name was Mary. Oh, that's right, my mother's name was Mary. How did you know that? The Holy Spirit told me. That's not the function of the Holy Spirit. Yeah. This is fortune-telling, or it's so serene there's other words for it.

But the reality is.

That they don't say your mother's name was Mary. They say something like, there's a member of your family, her name begins with an M. They're basically engaging in the same parlor tricks that astrologers and so-called mind-reading magicians engage in.

And I think that.

There are times when it's nothing more than that, and I also think there are times when they're getting accurate messages. I used to go to a guy who did this stuff. It really messed up my family, it messed up my financial situation, and he would say things that were uncanny.

They were exactly like a psychic. And he would preface his little deal by saying, I'm not a psychic, ha ha ha ha ha. This is, you know, this is not what a psychic does, or something to that effect. And then he would go on and do the very thing that a psychic does, but he would be doing it as a Christian.

Yeah. It's what, I don't know how else to call it, it's Christian fortune-telling, it's a Christian psychic, it's a Christian reading. We can relabel it, but it's the same thing. Yeah. If you want to give somebody an encounter with God that's actually the gospel, you would sit down with them and you would just talk to them about the gospel message.

You would show them what Scripture says. It's wonderful, and this is something I want to make really clear. I really appreciate the fact that these people want to evangelize. None of us are against evangelizing.

We want to see people come to Jesus. We want to see people come to church, obviously. That's something we all agree about. So I hope that it doesn't sound like, you know, what are you doing out there in the marketplace?

You know what, set up a tent at a New Age fair, but please share the actual gospel. Yeah. Have an open Bible. You know, that would maybe be more difficult, because you'd have a lot of people that would just ignore you, but I'm sorry, this idea that we're going to rebrand Christianity so that no one even knows that it's Christianity, that's basically being ashamed of the gospel.

That's saying we have to cover up Jesus, we have to cover up the gospel message so that people like it enough, and then we have to use these kind of sorcery, fortune telling, psychic methods in order to get people to like God.

I think what people end up saying is, wow, that supernatural thing that I just felt, or just had an experience of, proves that God is real, so now I want to make a decision to do whatever it is they're telling me to do.

You know, ask Jesus in my heart. I don't know, because they never explain it thoroughly. No, they don't, and.

What's missing is repentance and the forgiveness of sins. Let me back this up just a little bit. Listen again.

A permanent stand here at Dandenong Market, and because we've done this by faith, we've been here a year now, four days a week, we're able to actually give people massive God-encounters and spend an hour with them.

They come to us, we don't go to them. We're doing this, as you know, with Christ's Alignment, and we do have a huge team of over 50 people who are all trained, now trained evangelists in prophetic evangelism.

Not evangelism, prophetic evangelism. 50 of them running around the Australian countryside there, trained in prophetic evangelism. I have no idea what that is.

Well, it's not—I know what it is. I know that it's a new kind of evangelism. It's, again, it's not proclaiming the gospel message, and there's a million ways you can proclaim the gospel message. We're not saying that everybody has to, you know, wear a clerical collar or, you know, only do it in a certain environment.

You know, this whole idea of, you know, these people are too religious, that's not what this is about, people. This is not about people who are too religious. Please don't call us Pharisees. That is intellectually lazy.

Yeah, it's.

Overblown. Plus, we'll just throw a link to the Pharisee card. It's an ad hominem attack.

But if you're only able to share the encounter gospel, then you're not actually sharing the biblical gospel. Right, and these people.

Are not having encounters with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not promised to give pagans an encounter, you know, and if we were to really have an encounter with the Holy Spirit, it probably wouldn't go well.

You know, when the Apostle Paul, before he was the Apostle Paul, when he was Saul of Tarsus, he had an encounter with Jesus, and it blinded him and knocked him off his horse, you know? Right. You know, when the unholy comes in contact with the holy, it's not generally a good thing.

So let's keep listening to Jen here, because, I mean, this is just jaw-droppingly ignorant. She is not talking in any biblical categories, and she's clearly a disciple of, you know, John Wimber and the Bethel Church.

Yeah. You know, but let's keep listening.

And they use their giftings to really give people mind-blowing encounters with.

Jesus. Yeah, mind-blowing encounters with Jesus. I'm sorry, this is a mind-blowing encounter with the demonic, or with their own psyche, but it's not an encounter with Jesus. Nowhere does Jesus say, we have the authority to have pagans have encounters with him.

Yeah, but we can keep going here. And the.

Encounters are increasing here at Dandenong Market. We see about, on an average, ten people a day, and those ten people we had on Tuesday, two.

Salvations. Define salvation, Jen. Right. You know, it doesn't sound like it's a salvation that equals penitent faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins. You.

Know, it sounds like something very different. It isn't actually salvation, but the aim is to get them into a brand new relationship with God. I'm gonna back.

This up. I want you to hear it again. Listen to what she just said. It's not.

About salvations. And on Tuesday, two salvations. So the aim isn't actually salvation, but the aim is to get them into a brand new relationship with God,.

Because... The aim is not salvation. So prophetic evangelism is not about.

Salvation. It's about... Well, and I think I know what she's trying to say there, and that is something that's become really big, not just from the NAR, but from a lot of kind of deviations from traditional biblical Christianity.

That is, you know, when you die, whether or not you go to heaven, who knows? What's the big deal? That's not what Jesus was all about. Jesus was all about creating disciples on earth who would build the kingdom of God.

This is that kingdom now theology, or the gospel of the kingdom. And the whole emphasis is, now that you've had this God encounter, now that you've accepted Jesus, now it's your job to go and give people encounters as well, and it's all based on what happens on earth.

Now, do Christians do good things with their lives on earth? Absolutely. Everybody agrees. No Christian has ever historically said that Christians should never do anything good while they're on earth.

They should never share their faith. That's not what we're saying. But the emphasis is almost entirely removed from the issue of our salvation as it pertains to heaven and hell. That issue is just set aside as if it doesn't matter.

Right, and Christ and Him, you know, crucified and risen from the grave for our sins and for our justification, that's all gone. I mean, and there's no... it doesn't sound like there's any substantive look at somebody's state as a sinner and their need for a Savior in Jesus Christ.

Instead, Jesus is basically the ultimate spiritual buzz encounter, so much better than the buzz encounters that you can get from the pagan world. Yeah, and this.

Actually goes to my next point on my little article. People would believe in God if they could just see some proof for themselves. That's the underlying premise. It's not that people are sinful and that they are at war with God.

That's not even something they believe. They believe that everybody's this close to believing in God. They just need somebody to show them this new version of God, this new happy, God loves you, God's crazy about you version.

Of Christianity. Yeah, now funny that you'd say that. Darren Wilson, the producer of the Holy Ghost movie, and by the way, in the links in the comment... in the description section of this YouTube video, we'll put links to my critique of the Holy Ghost movie, as well as links to my sermon reviews from where I reviewed John Wimber's Power Evangelism.

I think it'll be helpful if anyone wants to further do homework on this. But Darren Wilson does a segment on YouTube called Questions with God, and they are talking about preaching love instead of hell.

And I mean, listen to this hot mess. I mean, this shows their complete lack of understanding of what Scripture actually teaches, but let's let them spin.

This out first. So if Jesus is our example, though, doesn't Jesus preach repentance? So don't we then therefore bound to have to preach repentance as.

Well? Well, Jesus actually said that in Luke 24 that repentance and the forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning in Jerusalem. It's in Luke 24. So he asked the right question.

I mean, well, Jesus was a preacher of repentance. Yes, he was. And how was the way prepared for Jesus before Jesus arrived on the scene? John the Baptist. What was his message? Repent, right? And his messages were quite brutal and in people's faces, and many people were repenting and being baptized by him.

And the Apostle Paul, preacher of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. It's the not just Jesus. It's John the Baptist. It's Jesus. It's even the prophets of the Old Testament. They all were preachers of repentance.

So here, Darren is kind of scratching his head going, yeah, you know, well, does that mean we're bound by that?

Can we get around that? Engaging with somebody? Because what I film a lot is, I don't know if we've ever filmed, like, you need to repent. I don't think anybody has ever said that in any of my movies, which is why I get.

Picketers outside of myself. That is quite the confession. I've never seen this with none of the movies I do. It's all about, you know, power, evangelism, and people having encounters with the Holy Spirit, and we've never.

Told anyone to repent. And you know, I have to say, I really, I guess I would say I appreciate his honesty, because I tell you, if this was brought to the attention of Bill Johnson, he would say, well, of course we teach repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

He would use the right phraseology to satisfy.

His critics. He couldn't point you to it, though. He couldn't point you, well, in this sermon, here's where I say it. He just says, yeah, we do that, but you can't.

Actually find it. But he would at least try to cover his tracks a bit. I think that this guy and this group of men are all being honest and saying, we don't really understand why anybody would do that.

Well, go ahead, play some more of it.

All right, listen. It's like, what we present is, Jesus loves you, like you're saying, but what the other, like our other brothers and sisters who were kind of get upset with us, will say, but you're not giving them the whole picture.

You're showing them a small, you're showing them one part of God's love, and you're not showing them the wrath that he has, and how much he hates their sin. And so you're not, and that's why they get angry and frustrated with us, because.

Now watch the passage he's gonna go to, to kind of, you know, it's unbelievable what he's gonna end up doing, because, you know, he's going to reference the book of Romans, chapter 2, with like, without even, no consideration at all regarding the context and what that passage says in its fuller context.