MESSED UP CHURCH: Encounter Evangelism Exposé

Welcome to the Messed Up Church. We're going to 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. We're going to 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 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.

You cranky, huh? A little cranky, yeah. I'm just on my first serious cup of coffee here, so that should help.

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, 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.

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 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, 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.

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.

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 an invitation to have an encounter in the sense that you have to personally experience some supernatural thing that's happening to you directly.

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. 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. 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, 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. 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

Cozart guy or that crazy Roseboro guy was talking about. 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. This is how

I summarized it, and it's a little snarky. 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 royalty of God.

A lot of people use 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 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. 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 of these things, and what that forced me to have to do was to realize that I knew nothing about church history or theology, 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 another way of saying theology.

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 going to 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 going to 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 going to 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 cave 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.

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 know 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 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 have 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. He's, 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 going to 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 I'm going to, we're at Acts chapter 17, and I'll start at verse 16 for the context.

And we're going to 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 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 the content of 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, 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. Yeah, 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 as 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, the

Apostle Paul. And so you're going to 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, people 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 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. 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.

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 it? 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. 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.

Your mother's name was Mary. 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. This is fortune -telling, or it's sorcery. There's other words for it. 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.

I think that there are times when it's nothing more than that. 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.

He would say things that were uncanny. They were exactly like a psychic. He would preface his little deal by saying,

I'm not a psychic. This is not what a psychic does, or something to that effect.

Then he would go on and do the very thing that a psychic does, but he would be doing it as a Christian. 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.

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. 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.

I hope that it doesn't sound like, 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. Have an open

Bible. That would maybe be more difficult because you'd have a lot of people that would just ignore you.

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. Then we have to use these 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. Ask Jesus in my heart.

I don't know because they never explain it thoroughly. No, they don't. 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.

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, I know what it is. I know that it's a new kind of evangelism.

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 wear a clerical collar or only do it in a certain environment.

This whole idea of 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. 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 has not promised to give pagans an encounter.

If we were to really have an encounter with the Holy Spirit, it probably wouldn't go well. 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.

When the unholy comes in contact with the holy, it's not generally a good thing.

Let's keep listening to Jen here, because this is just jaw -droppingly ignorant.

She is not talking in any biblical categories, and she's clearly a disciple of John Wimber and the

Bethel Church. But let's keep listening. 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.

But we could keep going here. 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. It doesn't sound like it's a salvation that equals penitent faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins.

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 going to 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. 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 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 like 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, funny that you'd say that.

Darren Wilson, the producer of the Holy Ghost movie, and by the way, 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 review

John Wimber's Power Evangelism. I think it'll be helpful if anyone wants to further do homework on this.

Darren Wilson does a segment on YouTube called Questions with God, and they are talking about preaching love instead of hell, and listen to this hot mess.

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 aren't we 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 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 strangest thing. It's 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, well, does that mean we're bound by that?

Can't 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, none of the movies I do. It's all about power evangelism and people having encounters with the

Holy Spirit, and we've never told anyone to repent. And I have to say, 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, our other brothers and sisters who 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 going to go to, to kind of, you know, it's unbelievable what he's going to end up doing because, you know, he's going to reference the book of Romans chapter two with like, without even, no consideration at all regarding the context and what that passage says in its fuller context.

Let me spin this out. Go ahead, giving them the full picture. Yeah, that, though, that version of repentance does not make sense to me.

When I think of repentance, it's like the joy of my salvation. Yeah, see, when

I think of it, what repentance means to me is... Yeah, repentance.

I don't think of, man, I am so horrible. I could never, ever do anything to please

God. Oh God, what a wretched person that I am. That doesn't, that does not bring any kind of help to me personally.

This guy has no concept of his own sin. But let's listen a little more.

You have so much of that in today's society. Like you are not enough. You are not enough. And that kind of repentance,

I think, gets no one anywhere. That's more penance than repentance. He doesn't even have a proper definition of anything at all at this point.

He's just showing his complete ignorance here. Well, and they would actually frown upon proper definitions because they don't,

I don't really think they believe that such things exist, that everything is constantly changing and morphing and everything's based on your experience.

So if they have decided, based on their experience, that repentance means something other than what the

Bible clearly teaches, they are okay with that. Yeah. This is a smokescreen.

Let's keep listening just a little bit more. For me to sit here and hit my back over and over with a whip and say,

I am not good enough. I'll never measure up. This guy was about to go to Romans 2 .4. Why don't you get that? Romans 2 .4.

Because it says what leads to repentance. It says the kindness of God leads to repentance.

Peter in Luke 5. Yeah, it is God's kindness that leads to repentance. He was quoting

Romans. Let's take a look at Romans, by the way, because I think this will help us out a little bit here. Romans chapter 1.

In chapter 1, Paul begins an extended argument that finds its resolution in chapter 3, or at least a mini -conclusion in part.

And here's what he says. Romans 1 .16, I am not ashamed of the gospel.

It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, then also to the

Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

And now begins the foundation work for the wrath of God. Romans 1 .18, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

For what can be known about God is plain to them because he's shown it to them. And he goes on to talk about how they reject

God and God turns them over to their dishonorable passions. And it says, here's what it says, 1 .24,

therefore God gave them up to the lust of their hearts, to impurity, dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations with those that are contrary to nature.

And men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, their gossip, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Though they know that God's righteous decree to those who practice such things, they deserve to die.

They do not only do them, but they give approval to those who practice them. And then you kind of get that, that's like the foundation of his argument.

And he then goes on to say to the Jews that are Christians, you have no excuse, every one of you who judge because you do the same things.

And then he says, it is God's kindness and forbearance and patience that leads us to repentance.

But this then requires a proper distinction of law and gospel. Paul then concludes his argument in Romans chapter three, starting at verse nine.

He says, well, what then are we Jews any better off? He says, no, not at all. We've already charged that all everybody, both

Jews and Greeks, they're under sin. As it is written, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands.

No one seeks for God. All have turned aside together. They have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.

Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood and in their paths are ruin and misery in the way of peace they have not known.

There is no fear of God before their eyes. You're going to note that Romans two is an extension of Romans one.

It's concluding here in Romans three, and it paints this horrible picture of humanity as sinful and incapable of saving themselves.

And that's kind of the whole point of God's law. Now it says then, so we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law.

And here's the reason why God gave the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

For by works of the law, no human being will be justified. Big Greek word there, dikaiao, means to be declared righteous in God's sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets they bear witness to it.

The righteousness of God that is through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there is no distinction. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

God put forward as a propitiation, you could say atoning sacrifice, by his blood to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness, because in his forbearance he had passed over the former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Yes, indeed, truly it is God's kindness that leads us to repentance. It's the kindness of God in the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.

The gospel message is that Christ died for our sins.

Romans chapter 1, 2, and 3 all work together as a unit to show us that we have fallen short, there's nothing we can do, we are unrighteous, unrighteousness, and the kindness that leads us to repentance is the good news that Jesus died for our sins.

This is what the apostles preached, this is what, you know, this is the message that Christianity expanded on, and the people there at Bethel and the

NAR that are into this encounter evangelism, they are utterly clueless, and they're not proclaiming repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

In other words, they're not making Christians, you know? I know, it sounds so harsh to say that, but I don't know what else to say, because they're not just giving a slightly different angle of the same thing, they're taking the very core of what it means to be a

Christian and removing it. I heard that verse used by the pastor at the church here that I had an issue with before I left, and it caused me to do all this research, because he used that same verse.

It's the kindness of God that leads to repentance, and they take that to mean that when we go and we personally give somebody a prophetic word, or we tell them their future, or we get their aching back to feel better, whatever it is we do for them, that kindness is what causes people to say, wow, well,

I guess I want to be a Christian after all, because now that I know God is so nice, and He wants to help me out, and God wants to do nice stuff for me, that's really what it is.

God wants to give you nice things. He wants to make you feel better about stuff.

He wants you to know your identity. What does that mean? You just don't know how good you are. I mean, listen to Todd White when he's talking to people.

He's constantly telling people, hey, dude, hey, brother, you're awesome. God wants you to know you're amazing.

Yeah. Well, I could do that if I wanted to make friends with everybody on earth.

He's a really nice guy. He comes across as incredibly warm and incredibly genuine, but he never gives people, like he was just saying in that video, he's not giving them the whole picture at all.

He's leaving out the very core. Now, we can start an interaction with people by being warm and friendly and maybe complimenting them on something.

That's fine. We're not saying that you've got to be mean to people. That's not the issue. The issue is, if you're going to proclaim the gospel, you have to actually proclaim the gospel.

You have to proclaim what the Bible describes as the actual gospel message. Right. In the

Holy Ghost movie, Todd White's in it. He was at a Korn concert. Prior to the concert, he's out working the crowd while they're waiting to get into the venue.

He literally is demonstrating how this encounter evangelism works, where he takes a guy and says, let me take a look at your legs.

One leg is longer than the other. Watch this. He's going to miraculously lengthen one leg.

How do you feel? The guy says, oh, I feel better. The idea then is that now, see, you've had an encounter with Jesus.

You've seen the miraculous. Do you want to make a decision to have a personal relationship with Jesus? That's not evangelism, and that's not the, quote, kindness that leads us to repentance.

The kindness that leads us to repentance, according to Scripture, is the good news that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself because God made

Jesus to be sin who knew no sin. Or, as Isaiah said, God has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He's the propitiation for our sins. They think that somehow lengthening somebody's leg and giving them a

God encounter using destiny cards and stuff like that and helping them to bliss out and have some carpet time with the

Holy Spirit is somehow the kindness that's going to lead them to repentance. This is delusional, and what's missing is a proclamation of repentance and the forgiveness of sins, which

Jesus said would be how evangelism takes place, and this is the Gospel of Luke's version of the

Great Commission found in Luke 24. You know, it concerns me so much, not because I have this thing of, like,

I want everyone to go to my kind of church, and it bothers me that other kind of churches are growing. It bothers me because these are people who have a temporary experience that they are absolutely convinced is the true

Christian message, and it doesn't last, because these people have based all of their faith on a experience which may have been genuine, or it may have been psychosomatic, but whatever the case, that is not what you build your faith on.

Faith, number one, is a gift you get from God anyway, and it's based on God's Word. The Holy Spirit uses

God's Word to explain the Gospel message, and if it's not built on that, it's going to eventually trickle and fade away.

Now, maybe some of these people who make this kind of sort of acceptance of Jesus thing, they actually, almost by God's grace, in spite of everything, they wind up going to a

Bible -based church, and then they actually do hear the Gospel message, and I know that sort of thing does happen. So, if you're listening to this message, and you're like, hey,

I know the Gospel message. Okay, fine, we get it. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to the people who, really, all this stuff we're saying is kind of new and peculiar, and that you haven't heard this message before.

It's because you haven't been taught the true Gospel message, and I do believe that God works in people's lives in spite of bad teaching, and that happens all the time, but that doesn't mean that we should just ignore bad teaching, because bad teaching also does a great deal of harm, and I've said this before on your show,

Chris, how my own kids and most of their friends have left the faith after going to a million youth group meetings with emotional encounters with God, where the worship team was really going crazy, and people were speaking in tongues, and prophetic words were being uttered, and people were literally hearing things that were supernatural.

They saw supernatural things. They heard supernatural, prophetic words, and they rejected the faith.

They actually think it's a joke. They look at it like the Jesus Camp movie. It was scary. It was weird.

These people, in many cases, these are kids talking about their own parents. They're saying, I'm embarrassed by what

I went through. I'm embarrassed by what my parents still believe. It's not working. This thing's been going on, like you said, since John Wimber.

They've been proclaiming that we're just taking over the world. This is the greatest thing ever, and it's actually more of a movement that has little blips of growth, but what they don't show you is at the tail end of that blip is a lot of people falling away, but it keeps moving forward and finding new people, and those people eventually move away, but that's okay, because we keep moving forward and finding other new people, but they're not really being disciplined in biblical truth.

They're not finding good church homes in many cases, so that's our concern here. I've seen it firsthand.

You've seen it firsthand. We get emails all the time from people that they're saying, man, I was trapped in this thing for 20 years.

Thank you so much for telling me the truth. Yeah, and it's trapped in bondage. I mean, it's absolute darkness and confusion, and I'm just going to be blunt.

If you had a destiny card reading and had a blissful encounter with God, and as a result of it decided, hey,

I need to invite Jesus into my heart, and you haven't heard anything about your need to repent,

Christ and him crucified for your sins, repentance, and the forgiveness, you're not a

Christian. I'm sorry, but you making a decision to have a better encounter and have a personal relationship with the spirit or thingy that you've had an encounter with, you're not a

Christian. I'm sorry. You are a false convert, and there's nothing that you can point me to that would make me believe you're a

Christian. You are utterly ignorant of the gospel itself. In fact, you're probably bristling at this idea, well,

I'm a sinner. Yeah, you are, and you need to repent, and the only solution is a crucified and risen

Savior. And you saying that, Chris, is not you being a mean person.

No. That's the thing that this dichotomy, again, a false dichotomy between two false choices.

One is the nice loving people over here who represent Jesus in a loving, kind way. They're not judgmental.

They just love you where you're at, and then the mean people over here who are going to force you to admit that you're a sinner so that you can do it the biblical way.

They're going to focus on your sin. You want to know something? If you don't actually repent of your sin and you go along with this

NAR -style encounter gospel, it's going to get worse.

It's not going to get better, and here's how it's going to get worse, because what you're going to hear is a bunch of law -based preaching from here on in, because you never heard the gospel message.

You're told how wonderful you are, and now most of the messages are all about the stuff that you have to do, and you've got to do more and more and more and more.

And frankly, Jesus might be a little disappointed if you're not doing as much as Todd White or some of these other guys. Right. You've got to have the baptism of the

Holy Spirit. You've got to start speaking in tongues. You need to learn how to hear God's voice so that he can reveal to you your specific, unique dream destiny thingy.

You need to learn how to ignore the haters who are warning you that this is not from God. The whole laundry list of things that you're now supposed to be doing, and it changes every five years, because they kind of reinvent themselves and come up with new emphases and new catchphrases.

You know, like this encounter thing is fairly new. The specific phrasing of giving people an encounter with God has been popularized mostly by Bill Johnson.

I don't know if he invented it, but that's what he talks about all the time. We owe people an encounter with God. And if you're a real

Christian who grew up in a Christian home, or you have a biblical Christian experience, when you hear that, you might give him the benefit of the doubt, and you might think what he's saying is, we need to give people a good biblical understanding of what the gospel message is.

But he's not saying that, folks. We've listened to hours and hours and hours. We've read his stuff. He's not teaching that.

I tell you what. In fact, I did this podcast when I first started trying to do podcasting.

It wasn't my best one, but the interview itself was great. I talked to Bart McCurdy, who lives in Bethel, I mean in Reading, and his family was part of the original

Bethel church before it was taken over. And he has a ministry as a layperson to preach the gospel to Bethel people.

And one of the stories that he told me was about a young man who, I don't think he had a family yet, but he was married, if I remember the story, whatever the case.

He and his wife, maybe his kids, I don't remember, they moved from someplace far away. He quit his job.

They found some kind of work in Reading because they wanted to be part of the Bethel church thing. Because Bethel tells you, every time they talk about themselves, that we have miracles every day.

This is the church where the miraculous is everyday normal Christianity. And so people are going, wow, my church isn't like that.

My church just preaches Bible messages and stuff. I want to go there. So people are literally pulling up stakes and moving to this town.

And this one man was ready to completely abandon his Christian faith. Because after a year and a half of being at Bethel, he said,

I have not seen one actual miracle. Not in the past week and a half, the past year and a half.

And Bart actually shared the gospel message to him, this simple gospel message like we've been saying. And the guy was brought back to his faith.

Maybe he never had faith to begin with, that's another issue. But the reality is that people who are hearing this message only are not getting the real gospel message.

And maybe they're saved because of something that came later that helped them. But in general, this is not what it means to be a

Christian. And that's always been the case. Doesn't matter what denomination you're talking about. We're talking about a really core issue here.

Anyway, I went on a tangent there, like I often do. In fact, that podcast was terrible because I talked more than Bart talked.

Here, I'm interviewing him. Because I get so worked up about this stuff. I have a hard time not being animated and passionate.

And it's not because I'm personally angry at people. It really isn't. I mean, I guess I could say I'm angry at this bad teaching.

And I'm angry that, frankly, Bill Johnson is a multimillionaire. Folks, he is a multimillionaire.

He won't disclose his income. But the last time it was disclosed was, I believe, in 2008.

And he was, even back then when the church was much smaller, was getting over $400 ,000 a year in salary.

And that wasn't including book sales and speaking fees. I'm doing the wrong thing. I mean, yes. Todd White, I did the article about his,

I know how to find the form 990. It's really easy. Anybody, this is public information for ministries, not churches, but ministries.

So Lifestyle Christianity paid Todd White over $600 ,000 in,

I think it was either 2013, I think it was 2014. How much money is he making today? Probably a lot more, because he's a lot more famous now than he was just two years ago.

So these people are getting rich. They are. Yeah, they're teaching for shameful gain, things that they ought not to teach.

And the thing is, they're not making Christians. And they're confusing people who are. And they're effectively, these are weeds that are cutting off and choking off wheat so that it's not being able to bear fruit.

I mean, what these people are doing is, this is a counterfeit Christianity with counterfeit miracles, counterfeit signs, counterfeit wonders, a counterfeit

Holy Spirit. And they're not, in fact, they openly talk about the fact, this isn't about repentance and salvation.

It's about, you're just the bee's knees to God and he's just, oh, you're the apple of his eye, man.

And let me lengthen your leg and prove it to you. And here you could have a destiny reading here.

We can't talk about the future because that would be fortune telling. But let me give you, and you can have an encounter with the

Holy Spirit right here. This is demonic. And they do talk about their cards being predictive and having high predictive accuracy.

Well, okay, what are you predicting? The past? Anybody can do that.

They have to be predicting the future. And there are articles about how

Christ Alignment actually went onto their website and frantically changed some of the language. They took out the word tarot cards.

But folks, please just do a side -by -side comparison. What does a tarot card reader do? What does

Christ Alignment do? It's the same thing. It doesn't matter if they're using tarot cards or destiny cards, it's still fortune telling.

It's unbelievable. Well, Steve, thank you for your time to come on and kind of unload these things that you were...

How's your anxiety levels and crankiness levels now that you've been having coffee?

You know what? We're going to finish this and the rest of the day I'm going to think about all the stuff I wish I would have said because I could go on and on.

I know, I know. And I've done my homework. I'm not talking about, I saw this one video, this one time with this one minute quote.

I've done hours and hours and hundreds of hours of research. I've read, I've studied. I'm not talking about something based on an angry vendetta against one person.

I'm talking about a whole theological framework that is patently false, patently unbiblical and it's hurting people.

And if you want to go ahead and believe it, I can't stop you. There are people who are going to hear us and think we're cranky and that's fine.

We're trying to speak to the people who have this, maybe in the back of their mind, they're saying, I don't know, something seems wrong.

Whenever I hear these guys quote the Bible, they only use one verse and then they go on and on about what God told them and about this prophecy they heard from brother so -and -so three years ago.

They're always going off into this mystical breadcrumb trail of evidence to back up what they say.

Let's do this. Let's issue the God encounter challenge.

Okay. And here's how the challenge works. Okay. Those of you who believe that Christians can lead pagans into encounters with God so that they can make decisions for Jesus.

This is real simple. Give us in context, an example of this from the

New Testament. Just show us the text where one of the disciples or apostles led a pagan into an encounter with God, which led to them making a decision to ask

Jesus into their heart. That's, we'll call it the God encounter challenge. The challenge has been issued.

Show us the texts. And if you can show us where Christians have the ability to lead people into God encounters who aren't believers, then we'll repent.

And Kozar and I will film ourselves having some appropriate carpet time as we bliss out and have

God encounters ourselves. Well, and another challenge would be, can you find the concept in scripture where repentance has absolutely nothing to do with the forgiveness of sins?

Because that's another claim that they're making. If they use the word repentance, they've changed the meaning entirely.

In fact, Bill Johnson wrote in one of his books, either that or maybe it was a sermon.

It's in the Bill Johnson cornucopia. He said that re means to do again.

And pent, I kid you not, is a penthouse. A penthouse is at the very top of a building.

I'm calling the flag on the play here, Kozar. I've got to see that. No way. I'm not accepting it until I see it.

This is a real quote. Okay. Let's put a link to that. Yeah. So we're going to put that, how do they do it in the corporate?

We're going to put this concept of yours. We're going to put it over in the parking lot right now, Steve. And until you are in the parking lot, until you can provide document,

I want primary source material where he said that. Because the Greek word is metanoia, which is a change of mind.

Hold on. All right. All right. Hang on. I'm holding. I just had it up the other day.

There's a website called Crosswise. And the guy has done some really in -depth writing about the actual meaning of the

Greek and the Hebrew. And there's an article called Kenosis Christology and Bill Johnson Part One, which is way back in 2011.

And this is the article where he quotes Bill Johnson as saying that re and pent means to go up to the glory of God or something.

Go back up to the penthouse. Are you kidding me? No. And I told this to the pastors at this

NAR church, which the senior pastor was a big Bill Johnson fan. He was actually preaching

Bill Johnson style messages from the pulpit. And I said, you got to stop this. And I gave him this example and he didn't care. It was like a satire piece, the fact that Bill Johnson said this.

So I think this is the article. If not, it's another article from the same guy. They're really long, in -depth articles.

So I don't know if I can find it right this second. We'll put it down in the description.

I'll say, Kozar was telling the truth. Here's the link is how I'll flag it.

But Steve, thank you for your time. And let me encourage people.

If you've ever been pressured to ask Jesus into your heart because of a God encounter that somebody was trying to pressure you into having, go ahead and hit the subscribe button below.

And a reminder that Fighting for the Faith, The Messed Up Church, Pirate Christian, this is all supported by the people that we serve.

If you don't already support us, you can do so by clicking on the Join Our Crew link below, or you can support us on Patreon.

Information is all there. But make sure to hit the subscribe button so that you can be made aware of future episodes and content that we make available as we try to get the word out regarding false teachers and people who are masquerading as sheep who are really wolves in sheep's clothing.

And again, remember the challenge here. Show us in Scripture where Christians have the ability and authority to lead somebody into a

God encounter, which will then cause them to want to make a decision for Jesus. I want to see those passages in context.

I'm 100 % positive nobody nowhere is going to be able to provide that for us.

But thank you again, Stephen, for your time. Those of you watching online, thank you for your time as well.