Problems at Passion 2013 - Louie Giglio Session One

Okay, this is going to be a long segment that we're going to do here, but I don't have any music for this either, but Louis Giglio, he's a pastor in the

Atlanta area, and for quite a while he's been putting on a conference every year during the first of the year called

Passion, and because we're now in 2013, it's now Passion 2013, and I've been running signal ops on this particular year of Passion at 2013, and folks, there's reasons to be concerned.

We'll start with kind of the tip of the iceberg. If you're not familiar with Erin Benziger's blog, Do Not Be Surprised, then go to donotbesurprised .com,

and on January 1st yesterday, she posted a blog post entitled Jesus Culture and Judah Smith to John Piper, Moore, Chan, and others at Louis Giglio's Passion 2013, and in this particular blog post,

Erin Benziger just does a yeoman's work of journalism of basically asking the tough questions, who are these people who

Louis Giglio is having teach and preach at his Passion conference, and are they really qualified?

Are these people who are sound biblical teachers? Well, Judah Smith ain't, okay?

Judah Smith ain't a sound biblical exegete. He is a twister of God's Word and close friend and associate of Perry Noble and Stephen Furtick and folks like that, and he claims to be pastoring with his wife, who also is supposed to be a pastrix apparently at his city church out there in Seattle, but the

Bible forbids women to be pastrixes. This is not a issue, by the way, folks. It is a major issue, and then

Erin Benziger points out the fact that one of the major groups that's going to be leading worship at Passion 2013 is a group called

Jesus Culture, who they're associated with, well, Bill Johnson of Bethel Church in Redding, California.

Bill Johnson is anything but a sound exegete and right handler of God's Word. He is in the same vein as Patricia King of Rick Joyner, Todd Bentley, and others, okay?

And so, I mean, why on earth would you want to be led in worship by a group of kids who basically have been fed and believe in heresy, okay?

And they believe in direct visions and stuff like that coming from Kim Walker Smith of Jesus Culture.

What Erin did, she put an entire YouTube video of this girl going on and on and on about how she had a personal encounter with Jesus.

This is not minor stuff, folks. This is majorly off track.

How did this become the center and substance of mainstream

American evangelicalism? There's enough red flags here to basically put on a party, all right?

And then, of course, Erin pointed out what happened at the Passion 2012 conference, where John Piper and Beth Moore led the folks there in kind of a

Lectio Divina type thing, where they read from God's Word and then said, let us listen to what

God is saying, and then had silence by which we were supposed to hear directly from God.

Well, that type of stuff has already been happening again at Passion 2013, and we'll talk about that in future episodes of Fighting for the

Faith. But folks, as I listen to what's being taught, what's being said at Passion 2013, not only would

I not want my college -aged children there, if they were attending,

I would want them to be salt and light and try to preach sense and the truth to the people who were being, well, deceived by what's going on at Passion 2013.

Remember, Jesus Himself said that the

Holy Spirit is not the Spirit of lies, and God wants people who will worship Him in spirit and in truth.

And we've got a major problem when major heretics and false teachers are being featured at a prominent

Christian evangelical conference as if they are mainstream, sound, solid people that we should be listening to when they're not.

And Louie Giglio, based upon his handling of God's Word at session one of Passion 2013, this is somebody who, as far as I'm concerned, is a very skilled and subtle twister of God's Word, but he's a twister nonetheless.

And what I thought we would do, I'm not going to review the entire thing, but I'm going to let you listen to kind of the opening portion of this, and then we'll fast forward a little bit to about midway through, and then listen to the end.

And if you have access, you can go online and listen to this online at the Passion 2013 website.

It's still available until tomorrow if you would like to listen to it for yourself and listen to it in context. There's something really, really, really, really, really off and wrong here, enough that it warrants warning our youth that this is not the type of event that they should be attending at all.

Here's Louie Giglio from last night's session one of Passion 2013, and I'll point out kind of the penalties along the way.

Here we go. Mr. Crowder, incredible. Yeah, that's right,

John Crowder leading in worship. Man, you know,

I was just saying to Brad, this is really happening. I'm just looking around thinking this is not like a dream.

This is really happening. It's crazy. You guys actually do look pretty good down here on this end,

I have to say. You know, all through these few days, we're going to open the

Word of God together, and I hope you're ready for that. We're all about the anthems.

We're all about songs. We're all about lifting up a shout of praise. We're all about getting involved, and we're all about justice.

But I'm telling you, everything we're doing is coming out of the living Word of God.

We are rooted in it, and everything of Passion comes up from it.

It's not enough to say that you're rooted in the Word of God. You must be rooted in what it says in context.

In every session, we're going to get around and get in it, let it get in us. We even want to begin there tonight, and if you have

Scripture, we're going to begin in the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel. So I'll give you a few minutes to sort of get to that place.

Shelley, my wife, myself, our team, just blown away by the reality of this night.

We believe in the God who does immeasurably more. Do you believe in that God? Not the God who does a little bit more.

Okay, now stop. I'm going to back this up. You need to hear this. This is kind of the major theme, the primary thesis for Louis Giglio's first session at Passion 2013, this idea we believe in the

God who is capable of doing infinitely more. This is from kind of the doxology in Ephesians chapter 3 verse 20, taken out of context too, but watch what he does with this.

I'm going to back this up so that you can hear it. Listen again. We believe in the God who does immeasurably more.

Do you believe in that God? Not the God who does a little bit more or just barely more, but the scripture says that our

God does immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine.

Okay, now weird setup. Okay, when somebody takes that verse out of context, and I've heard word of faith heretics do this.

I've heard, you know, prosperity folks and, you know, feel good, you know, people do this.

Oh yeah. And see, here's the setup. It's kind of a bad setup. Okay. We're going to read Ephesians 3 .20

out of context and say, we believe in the God who does immeasurably more. And then you're going, okay.

And then they go, well, does this happen to you? Well, if not, it should be. I mean, well, look at my life.

See, and then they start talking about themselves and how they, God has done immeasurably more than they ever thought or imagined.

And then the, basically, the challenge is to you. Well, why isn't God doing immeasurably more in your life?

You see, what happens is, is that this is a passage that teaches a very true gospel promise.

And the way it gets twisted is it gets turned into something that's law. Well, if you're not having

God doing immeasurably more in your life, then obviously you're doing something wrong.

So you need to do something in order to get God to do immeasurably more in your life, like he has in mine or somebody else's.

You see what I'm talking about here? It takes a doxological verse.

Okay. And turns it into a law principle whereby you have to judge your life based upon whether God is doing immeasurably more for you.

Because if he isn't, then you are doing something wrong and you've got to change something in your life so that God can do immeasurably more.

This is moralism. This isn't the gospel. That that's what God is about.

And I know when I say that it goes two ways because you're thinking, well,

I want to believe that, but I don't know if I'm seeing immeasurably more in my life.

And I, I get that. We all fully understand that, that all of us didn't come through the door with God doing the immeasurably more in us.

He has done for all of us who put our faith in Jesus, immeasurably more than we're ever going to comprehend.

But he promises to continue to do that because he says it's more than you could ask or even imagine.

So here's the seed before we jump into the word tonight, God wants to do immeasurably more in your life and through your life than you could even ask him.

And he wants to do immeasurably more in your life and through your life than you could even imagine.

Well, well, then why doesn't he do it? That, see, that's immediately, that's the question that comes to mind.

Well, then why does he just get busy with it? He's God. He could do that, can't he? Now listen carefully because shortly he's going to basically claim he's received a direct revelation from God with this particular same message embedded in it.

We continue. And I, I'm proof of that. Shelley, myself, our team, we are proof of that right now.

In 1996, the Olympics came to Atlanta, Georgia. Spotlight of the world was on our city for the summer and leading up to the

Olympic summer, a lot of other big events came to the city of Atlanta. It's like we want to be in the nexus of sort of that focal point.

And one of them was a conference of youth leaders that happened in this building. I don't remember how many youth leaders were here, but I want to say it was something in the neighborhood of maybe five, 10, 15 ,000 youth leaders.

The stage was on the other end of the building down there facing that end. But if you can just flip that around in your imagination with me for a second, since I'm down here, stage was maybe about right here somewhere, kind of facing out to this group of people right here.

And I came to that conference in the spring of 1996. And I came in for one session.

And the session I came in, I sat in this 100 level right where you guys, where this door holder is going up the stairs right now, right about there, three rows up and about four seats in.

Now I was over there, but you know what we're talking about. We flipped it around, right? So over there, over there.

And I'm sitting there in this session. And just a year before God has birthed this vision, this idea called passion.

You have to remember. Okay. Did you hear that? God birthed the vision inside of Louis Giglio's heart called passion.

So he's receiving direct revelation from God the same way that Patricia King is receiving direct revelation.

Like all vision casting leaders are receiving direct revelation from God.

We got a problem. Remember, we had no idea what that meant. We just knew that God was on the move, that God had a heartbeat for 18 to 25 year olds, specifically the 18 to 20 million university students in this nation, the vast majority of whom do not have a clue tonight why they're on this planet.

And God said, I want to set you in motion. I've got to back this up because I don't want you to miss something. Let me back this up.

Listen again to this statement. 18 to 20 million university students in this nation. The vast majority of whom do not have a clue tonight why they're on this planet.

Okay. The vast majority of them don't have a clue as to why they're on this planet. Okay. Weird.

And the reason that's weird is because back when I grew up before we had all these vision casting leaders, evangelicals would actually preach the gospel and they would talk about those who were dead and trespasses and sins who need to repent and believe in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, things like that.

Okay. That they were blinded to their sin by the God of this age, things like that.

But here, the major problem is that we've got all these young kids running around who don't know why they're on this planet, to which

I'm going to say, huh? That's their big problem. They're purposeless.

That's way off, way, way off. It might seem like a small thing to you, but it's like a huge thing to me.

The reason why is, well, you'll hear it in our sermon review later in this episode of Fighting for the

Faith. You're going to hear a Christmas sermon that completely botches the Christmas story because it goes into a purpose -driven gospel, but finding your purpose is not the gospel.

We continue. And God said, I want to set you in motion towards this idea called passion.

All we had... So God spoke to Louis Giglio, and God wants to set in motion this thing for passion.

...was the confirmation that we wanted it to be about Jesus. We wanted it to be solely focused on the person and the fame and the glory of Jesus Christ.

Now, if that were true, then why are you preaching about yourself? We wanted to inspire a generation to cash in little dreams and to make the focus of their life's goal, to make

Jesus known in their generation. Isaiah... What does that mean to make Jesus known in your generation or my generation?

The church is under strict orders from Jesus Christ. See the gospel of Luke chapter 24, like verse 47, 48, somewhere like there, where it says, go into all the world and make disciples, you know, and then it says, and proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus' name to all nations.

Listen, our job isn't to get a bunch of people out there on Jesus' Facebook and have them, you know, sign up to be a fan of Jesus.

No, we're given a message to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus' name to all nations.

Why? Because every human being on the planet is born dead in trespasses and sins.

And the solution to that is not them finding their purpose. The solution to that is them being brought to repentance and contrition for their rebellion against God and all of the sins that they've committed against him and to receive from God a full and complete pardon won by Jesus Christ's death on the cross.

That is way different than making Jesus famous.

And by the way, words really mean things. This is weird to me. And the reason it's weird to me is because the language doesn't actually square with scripture.

And yeah, he's saying, well, you just understand he's talking to youth here and he's just trying to be contextual and, you know, talk their language.

He ain't, well, the thing is, is that that's one thing, but he ain't talking their language and the language he's speaking can't be squared with scripture.

26 was in the mix. Yes, Lord. We're walking in the way of your truth for your name and your renown or the desire of our souls.

That scripture was burst in 1996 on this journey to our very first passion conference.

That scripture was birthed in 1996. What are you talking about?

That happened on these same dates, January 1st through 4th, 1997

Austin convention center, Austin, Texas. And we're about halfway into the planning in the spring of 1996.

And Shelley and me and our small team, our team at that point was four people. Cheryl, our director of events now,

Jeff Lewis, who's breathing into the vision with us, our board who's still with us and many of them in the building right now.

That was the team. And as we're leaning in, we're, we're sensing

God saying, I want to do something in this generation.

That's beyond what you would ask right now, or. So you were sensing that God was saying he wants to do something more than you can think or imagine.

How'd you sense that? What did it feel like when you sensed it? Did you use the force?

Did you hear a voice? So the word of the Lord came to you and God said,

I think I want to do more than you can think or imagine. See already there's way big problems here.

Imagine now, remember just a year before I had been a college pastor on a local campus,

Shelley and I'd invested 10 years at Baylor university in Waco, Texas on that campus.

And we'd moved to Atlanta because of my father's failing health and his eventual deaths.

And now we're in Atlanta and this little bitty vision is born and we don't know what it means, but what we'd seen at Baylor, we thought was big.

A campus at that time of 10 ,000 students on any given Monday night, this Bible study that happened over these 10 years that Crowder would be sitting in as a college student.

Some of our door holders here were sitting in as college students. Some of your parents for crying out loud were sitting in that Bible study as college students.

I met somebody's mom and dad in the hotel lobby today. They said, we were with you at choice Bible study back at Baylor university.

And we, some Monday nights there would be a thousand students there. And we thought that was big. And we didn't know the little seed was going to be born at Texas A &M university down the road through a guy named

Greg Mott with this young worship leader named Chris Tomlin, starting to meet an apartment complex.

And before long that thing was going to explode. And now all these years later from that moment,

I just spoke at breakaway a few Tuesday nights ago. There were like, I don't know, eight or 10 ,000 people in the football stadium on a

Tuesday night in rainy weather. Okay. And we're thinking, okay, that's big.

We didn't know, you know, we we'd seen a thousand students on Monday night and that was huge.

That wasn't happening anywhere else across the country. I'd go and speak at places.

There'd be conferences and there'd be 1500 college students or a couple thousand college students. And that was amazing, but we didn't know what to ask or really imagine.

God just said, go. So fast forward a few months, I'm sitting in this building,

I'm sitting right over there. And in the middle of this session, they showed a video that was just documenting some of what

God was doing in 1996 in America and in the world. They showed stories of a student movement in Wichita, Kansas, and how a prayer movement had been born.

They showed other little clips of things that God was doing. And then they showed the clip I'm going to show you right now.

No, no. Remember this is, you know, we're talking about VHS and it's 1995 what you're going to see.

So apparently him seeing this video is confirmation of the big vision that he claims that God gave him.

How is this making Jesus famous? My question is that he's not talking about Jesus.

He hasn't told us a single thing that Jesus has done yet, but he sure is going on and on about, oh, look at all these coincidences, the stars aligned and he received a direct vision from God for this passion 2013 thing.

Well, actually, it's not just 2013, but every year, it's Seoul, Korea. Okay, that was pretty loud for Korea.

That was that was weird. And I'll just let you see just a little short clip doesn't have a lot of setup and a lot of ending.

I just want you to see what I saw sitting right over there in this building. Are you with me?

In 1996? Before the first passion conference ever happened.

Sitting in this building over there, they showed this and this little clip came on. Let's show it to you. On May 20th, 1995, 60 ,000

Korean students signed a declaration committing at least one year of their lives to establish the church in a foreign land and to mobilize students throughout the world to fulfill the great commission.

God is building a global. You got to imagine that I'm sitting over there and I'm, I'm just like,

I mean, you had to see the context. There's a little bit more, but we just cut that little section for you.

And I'm thinking, okay, we're, we're going toward passion. I think God wants to do something extraordinary in this generation of university age young people, but we're just trying to get to the

Austin convention center. We don't know if a hundred people are coming or 500 people or, or whatever. And I see on that screen, a stadium filled with young university age people in Seoul, Korea, the

Olympic stadium of Seoul, Korea. And my heart blows up inside me. I was just paralyzed with amazement sitting in that seat right there, staring at that screen.

And I thought, God, are you kidding me? We, we, we have this vision called passion. We have this dream called passion.

We're just trying to get to the first conference. And he says in his own language to me,

I am the God of immeasurably more. And I took the little clip right back to Shelley and to our team and to our board.

We actually showed that little clip at passion 97 to the 2000 students that came to the very first passion conference.

Okay. Like I pointed out earlier in the program, because Louie Giglio claims to be receiving direct revelation from God.

He now is in a category where he must be quarantined and everything he's said and taught all of his doctrine must be scrutinized down to the iota.

And the reason being is because he now falls into the category of either he's a true prophet or he's a false prophet.

This is really a vision from God, or this vision doesn't have its origin in the mind of God, but somebody else.

And we said, this is what God is doing around the world. And we want to pray that God would do that in our generation, in our nation.

And as we were in here a month or so ago, praying for you, our community group leaders, those men who are going to lead you in this amazing community group time, we're in the dome by ourselves on the field, up in the stands, just praying over this building and praying for you.

Greg Mott, that breakaway founder, he walks up to me up in the 300 level up there.

He says, you remember that clip that you showed at passion 97 at the very first conference?

And I went, oh wow. Yeah, I was sitting right over there when I saw it the first time.

And here we are. My mind's not working good. However many years later,

I would tell you, but I don't know right now. How many years later is it from 1996 to here?

Thank you. 16 years later. I'm looking at another stadium full of 60 ,000 people.

And I believe that God is the God of immeasurably more than what you can ask or imagine.

Not just in the context of a conference or a movement, but in the context of your life.

When we're foolish, and we are foolish. God intervenes.

Okay, I'm going to stop here for just a second kind of set this up. I'm not going to play this entire message by Louie Giglio.

But I want you to understand what it is he did here. This is now where he transitions from telling his story about the vision that God laid on his heart to now trying to deliver something that looks like a biblical message, but doesn't ever achieve it.

And the wording matters. He goes then to talk about foolishness and captivity, and how when we're foolish, then

God sends a voice. And this is the kinds of things that he says.

And during his delivery, he talks about, you know,

Ezekiel and the passage where God takes a heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh.

And then talks about the valley of the dry bones and things like that. But here's the deal. All of this talk is euphemistic.

And it's not just euphemistic, it's ambiguous. And what

I mean by that is that it's difficult to pin down exactly what it is that he's talking about.

When he talks about foolishness, is he talking about sin? When he's talking about foolishness, is he talking about a bad decision that I've made that's landed me in a job that I'm not happy with?

What exactly is he referring to when he talks about foolishness? Now, I think after listening to this thing twice, that Louis Giglio was intentional in creating ambiguity on these things because he wanted to stretch the message in such a way that what anybody listening would feel like that he was talking about something in their life.

But the problem is, it's kind of like a palm reading or a horoscope.

And what I mean by that is this, is that when, if you were to look through the horoscope section of the newspaper, you know, it always talks in these vague and ambiguous ways so that if something happens in your life, you go,

I think that was what my horoscope was talking about. But you couldn't draw the connection until you have the two in line.

Does that make sense? I think that's Louis Giglio is doing here. He's not speaking in biblically precise language.

He's being ambiguous. And the reason why he's being ambiguous is so that this message can have a broad appeal.

Here's the problem. The gospel isn't ambiguous. The gospel is very, very precise.

See, each and every one of us has a problem. And that's not just that we're foolish.

The problem that we have is that we are born in rebellion to God, born dead in trespasses and sins and under the wrath of God.

And if something doesn't give, then we're going to die and stand before a holy and just God and hear

God pronounce sentence on us. And that sentence is an eternity in hell because that's what each and every one of us has earned and deserved by our sin and rebellion against God.

Now, this is not to say that Louis Giglio doesn't have a good, a couple of good applause lines in here.

The problem is, is that he's very ambiguous and only for a tiny little section when he seems to get a little bit of wind under his feet, a little bit more sure that what's going on.

Does he break out the sin word, but then he hides it again quickly. And in the process, he ends up allegorizing the story of the valley of the dry bones and keeps coming back to this theme, the

God who can do immeasurably more. What does that mean? Immeasurably more than what?

Because he never really preaches Ephesians chapter three in context. He just keeps going back to this doxological statement made by the apostle

Paul there in the center of Ephesians chapter three, completely out of context and claims that this was the verse that God was birthing in 1996 and all the strange stuff going on.

But the problem is, is that it turns out to be a manipulative sermon message given by Louis Giglio.

And I'm going to play part of it where he narcogets a section from the gospel of Mark chapter eight.

And then I'm going to play for you the last part of it where during the prayer portion of his message, he kind of lays out these things by which we're being foolish.

And again, the whole thing is very fuzzy and ambiguous. And the problem is this, if you were an unbeliever, okay, let's say you were a college age, young pup that, you know, you still have your full life ahead of you.

As far as you know, you're healthy, you're skinny, you just finished college. You know, you got the, the whole world is just right there before you to go and explore.

And you find yourself wandering into passion 2013, because your Christian friends said, you got to come to this thing and experience

Jesus, right? Well, here's the problem. Never once during Louis Giglio's message was this pagan college pup confronted with his sin, confronted and told what

God's verdict is for sin, but then told that Christ bled and died for the forgiveness of those sins, and therefore, come and be forgiven or repent and believe the gospel.

Any of the things like that would have been more than appropriate. I mean, it's clear that Louis Giglio, part of the reason why he's putting on the

Passion 2013 conference is for evangelistic purposes. But here's the thing.

Euangelion, where we get the word evangel from, means good news. That requires him to, if you're going to be evangelistic, you must preach the

Euangelion, the good news. And the good news is that Christ died for our sins and was raised again bodily from the grave on the third day for our justification.

Repent, therefore, of your sin and your wickedness and your rebellion against God, and be forgiven.

Those are the imperatives of the gospel. But those imperatives were all missing from night one of Passion 2013.

We heard a lot about this so -called vision that God placed on Louis Giglio's heart. And then we got a lot of verses out of context, allegorized, and in some cases narcissistically eisegeted.

And then you got this weird thing at the end. I'll play a little bit more for you so that you can kind of get a flavor for it. But folks, if you know any college students that were at this thing, ask them to go back, listen again with an open

Bible, and sharpen their pencils, because here's the deal. They spent the opening portion of Passion 2013 with more than an hour of so -called worship and praise time with people, you know, lights and music and rock and roll show.

And that stuff has a tendency to turn the brain and discernment skills off rather than turn them on.

And if they go back and get rid of all of that praise and worship time and listen biblically, listen critically to test, and the reason why they must test is because Louis Giglio claims to be receiving direct revelation from God.

That makes him a prophet. That means everything he says must be held to very tight scrutiny to determine whether or not he's telling the truth or whether or not he's telling a lie.

Whether or not he's really receiving direct revelation from God or if he's receiving direct revelation from a different source.

You see what I'm saying? There is a lot that's at stake here. And the fact that he's going after the youth, well, that's all the more reason why we must have more discernment, because the youth are the future of the church, the future leaders of the church, and we don't want them to come under the influence and deceptions of the devil now, do we?

We continue. He always enters into our foolishness with a voice.

In this case, it's the voice of Ezekiel the prophet. And he says things like in verse 24 of chapter 36, speaking over a people who are the people of God, but who are scattered into captivity because of their own foolishness.

So see, that's how we get into captivity. It's not because of somebody else's decision or somebody else's choice or what somebody else did to us.

It is because of our own foolishness. Can we just say, yeah, um, yeah, again, it's just ambiguous.

It's as if he's soft peddling God's law. Say that together, maybe with a right on or something.

When we get into captivity, it's because of our foolishness. And we are more foolish than we want to admit.

Anybody? I don't think I heard any right on there. Yeah, I'm not even sure I understand exactly what you're talking about.

So when we get in captivity. So when we get in captivity, notice the allegorizing now of the story of the of the

Babylonian captivity of the Israelites as a result of their idolatry and rebellion against God.

And let's just be honest tonight. Many of us came in the door in captivity.

Okay. Oh, we got to the dome, but we didn't come in free and clear.

Something has a grip on us. When you trace that back, there could be events and circumstances for sure.

Yeah. And there could be, you know, in your future, somebody tall, dark and handsome. It's ambiguous.

It's not specific. Are we talking about sin here?

What exactly are we talking about? But at the end of the day, it's because of our foolishness.

Do you mean sin? That we forget who God is. And that's what his people did.

And they'd been dragged off into captivity in foreign lands.

But even then, God intervened. And he sent a voice.

It's promised in verse 24, what I want to speak over us tonight. He says, for I will take you out of the nations.

I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land.

I will sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean.

I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.

I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

That's what God does. When God sends a voice, that voice announces that God wants to come.

And when God wants to come, God wants to breathe. And when God breathes, he breathes on hard -hearted people, on stone -hearted people.

And he takes out of us the hardness and he puts into us beating living life. And that's the gospel.

That's what we're going to celebrate over these four days. It's not about... No, the gospel is the good news that Christ died for our sins and was raised again on the third day.

See 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 1 through 7. The gospel is clearly defined as that.

I don't know what this is. You know, improving our lives. It's not about somehow, you know, measuring up to whatever we can do for God.

It is simply and totally and utterly about God coming to us and intervening when we have been foolish.

And in our sinfulness, our hearts are like... So there is the word sinfulness. Back it up. I mean, it's so quick you would have missed it.

Intervening when we have been foolish. And in our sinfulness, our hearts are like stone. And he taking our heart of stone out of our chest and putting his beating heart in our chest and bringing us to everlasting life.

And that's what God is speaking through the prophet Ezekiel tonight. And for some of you, that's immeasurably more.

Okay. Again, it's fuzzy. It's ambiguous.

It's ponderous. It almost doesn't make sense.

If you're not a Christian, how would you make sense of this language knowing nothing about the

Bible? You're thinking, I want to believe that. I know that's in the Bible. What do I want to believe again?

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to believe after listening to this. I know you're reading out of the scripture right now, and I really do want to buy into what you're saying.

But that for me is the immeasurable more beyond all I could ask or even imagine right now, because I can't imagine

God taking what's inside my chest out and putting his heart inside of me.

Again, weird that this is the evangelistic message because it's so hard to nail down.

It's all, it's like having an emergent conversation. It's ambiguous and fuzzy and definitions are elusive and hard to hang on to.

It has the consistency of jello. And if you listen to the whole thing, that's what you find.

Again, I don't have the ability to play it all right now. So I'm going to fast forward. I'm going to fast forward to the part where he engages in a little bit of narcissistic eisegesis with the story of a demoniac kid from the gospel of Mark.

Here we go. That's like Mark 9. I love that story. Mark chapter 9, Jesus rolls up on confusion with the disciples again.

That was not a once a week thing. That was kind of like an everyday thing.

And he rocks into the moment and the disciples are all in a wad. It says in verse 14 of Mark 9, listen to this story.

When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law arguing with them.

And as soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him.

Jesus said, what are you arguing with them about? And then they answered him. A man in the crowd answered, teacher,

I brought you my son who is possessed by a spirit that's robbed him of speech. Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground.

He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. Ask your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they couldn't.

Okay, we got somebody in captivity now. And a desperate father who's come to these followers of the king of kings and said, can you help me?

And they can't help him. So Jesus, verse 19, he says, oh, unbelieving generation, how long shall

I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.

Now I don't want to presuppose that I know the tone of Jesus' voice or what was going through his mind in this moment.

I'm just looking at the text and the text seems to imply to me that Jesus and his humanity is sort of like, ah, you know,

I think we always have him going, oh, don't worry. God bless everyone. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you.

Bring the child up to the, to the son of God. I think he's just kind of, he is engaging in a form of speculation, even though he's flagged it as that.

Got to see it for what it is. He's speculating. Really?

He's looking at him like, really? Seriously? Bring the boy to me, please.

So they brought him. And when the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion.

And one last stand. Anybody have an unusual amount of opposition getting into the seat you're sitting in right now?

What kind of question is that? So here he's telling the story of this kid is being attacked by a demon thrown into a convulsion.

And any of you here have a hard time getting, that was probably a demon, you know, see, that's proof of something weird that this manipulation is the word that comes to mind.

Anybody just barely make it because some circumstances that were just so crazy, they ended up just being ridiculous, came into your life and you thought,

I'm not going to make it to passion. I don't know, but it could have been one last stand.

Yeah, Satan was apparently keeping you from getting to passion. It could have been a defeated enemy going,

Oh no, Jesus is in the midst. The son of God is in the house.

And immeasurably more is possible for everybody in the building. Jesus is in the house and immeasurably more as possible.

Just off. All I can say it's off. I got to make one last stand and he makes one last stand.

He throws the boy to the ground and the boy's rolling around and foaming at the mouth. And while this is going on, and I'm not making light of this, but while this is happening, the boy is rolling around on the ground and foaming at the mouth.

And you and I would have been like, Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, what do I do? Jesus decides he'll talk to the father now.

And I'm thinking he looks at the father and he said, how long has he been like this?

Just a small insight there. Things can be going crazy. And Jesus has an amazing ability to focus in that moment.

I'm telling you, when this boy went down on the ground, started rolling around and foaming, people start screaming and shrieking and backing up and some running forward.

And there was this pandemonium and Jesus is just so laser focused. How long has he been like this?

Meaning that it doesn't matter what's going on around the Metro Atlanta area tonight. Jesus can still be laser focused into your world.

Just strange to me to have somebody read me a text of something that happened in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ in the

Judean countryside 2000 years ago. And then in literally the next breath mentioned the

Metro Atlanta area in the year 2013. Something ain't going right with this handling of the texts, nor with this message.

But that fact becomes more clear about the ambiguity about what's going on when we get to the close.

See, here's the deal. Much of evangelicalism is all about salesmanship, selling you on Jesus, selling you on something that Jesus wants you to do, selling you on you listening to hear

Jesus's voice or something to that effect. So there's a sale going on.

And if you want to get down to the bottom line, it's hard to figure out what they're selling you when they're being ambiguous.

But they become perfectly clear when it comes prayer time, because that's the time when business is supposed to be happening.

Well, thankfully, all of this ambiguity that I was suspecting there was something wrong going on becomes crystal clear when

Louie Giglio finally gets to close time to make the sale.

And when he makes the sale, all of the weird stuff that I had flagged along the way starts coming out in spades.

And you can hear his theology, and you can see how far off it is here. Listen in.

And it all has to do with the voice saying,

I want to breathe into you the spirit of life. The voice,

I heard a voice intervening into the foolishness came a voice into the valley, came a voice into the darkness, came a voice.

And that voice is coming now. And Jesus, we thank you that you are the living word of God.

We thank you that you are immortal, invisible, yet word made flesh.

And because you are the word of God, the living word of God, you speak the word of God.

And so we ask that you would come and that you would speak, that your voice would ring out, and that everybody in this building, we ask by mercy, would hear the voice from heaven, would hear the voice of Jesus by the power of your spirit.

Now notice there, you're supposed to hear the voice of Jesus by the power, not in the written word.

You're supposed to be listening now for a voice. And I just want to ask you, just eyes closed, just head bound right where you are.

Could you make that prayer? You say, Louis, I've only got 1 % belief, or I've got 0 % belief.

Well, I think if you're honest with God and you say, God, I have zero belief, will you help my 100 % of unbelief?

God will help you. Cue sappy music. This is to create the misperception that God the

Holy Spirit is now descending on the crowd to do business with people and give them direct revelations, apparently.

But listen to what comes next. God, I got 20 % of belief, but help my unbelief.

I got some belief, but help the rest of my unbelief. And I mean, this doesn't even make any sense.

In that honesty, could you say to Jesus tonight, I want to ask you to speak your words and speak your voice and break into my life, intervene in my life with your voice.

Now we're praying for God to speak directly to me without his written word.

And if you want to, if you're there already, just stretch out your hands to him and say,

God, I'm asking you to do the immeasurably more than I could just Yeah, God do the immeasurably more whatever that is.

I don't know to ask for or even imagine in this moment. You ask him you tell him.

Did you hear him tonight? Anybody saying to you? Do you think these bones can live? Do you think your dreams can live?

Do you think your dreams could live?

Ah, now we're starting to see his theology. It's not Christian, it's something else.

Do you think your heart can live again? Do you think that big stone in your chest can be replaced with a beating heart?

Without any solid explanation as to what that even means regarding the doctrine of regeneration.

So you got high this morning? Do you think you can live free all the days of your life?

Can you believe in the fact that God believes in you? Can you believe in the fact that God believes in you?

Do you know of any passages that say that God believes in you? I thought we were called to believe in Christ.

But I can't think of a single passage, not one that says that God believes in me.

We continue. Can you be healed of the wounds that have been inflicted on you?

Can your memories be restored and dreams appear? Memories be restored and dreams appear, huh?

I just say back to him, you're, you're God. And only you know what you can do.

But you are God Almighty. And you did speak and brood over the waters by your

Spirit. That same Spirit that, that Ruah, that breathed into those dry bones.

That same Spirit that Jesus breathed out on the disciples after his resurrection.

That same Spirit that he's given us now. And so come Holy Spirit and speak.

Come Jesus and speak. So come and speak. Come and speak. We're not going to open up our Bibles and hear what's written in the

Word. No, come and speak to me directly. Folks, it's patently clear if you take the time to listen with discernment to what's going on at Passion 2013, that what these kids are being exposed to, well, it ain't biblically sound.

It ain't doctrinally precise. It's very fuzzy, extremely ambiguous, highly subjective.

And as a result of that, well, extremely, extremely dangerous, seductive, and deceptive.

Pray for those kids at Passion 2013. I don't think they're being taught the truth. In fact,

I'm very concerned that they're being deceived and led away to listen to voices that are not, that isn't the voice of the

Holy Spirit. How do I know where I can go to hear the Spirit's voice? Well, all Scripture is theonoustos.

It's God breathed. I can trust the Scripture. I don't trust anybody who's trying to lead me in some guided contemplative mysticism to hear a direct revelation from God.

And since Louis Giglio claims to have direct revelation from God, that makes him a prophet. And somebody we must scrutinize severely to determine whether or not he's truly hearing from God or not.

Based on his Bible twisting and his ambiguity, those are not the signs of somebody who has come under the influence of the

Spirit of truth. Sadly, it sounds more like somebody who's come under the spirit, well, of deception.

All right, we're up on our second break. Long episode of Fighting for the Faith today. Sermon review on the other side of the break.

You don't want to miss it because it actually fits with this thing that we just did from Passion 2013. A completely clueless

Christmas sermon from Lynn Winters in Chandler, Arizona. Don't want to miss it.

We'll be right back. If you think

God is a black woman named Papa, then you need to get out of the shack and read your Bible. You're listening to Fighting for the

Faith. Pirate Christian Radio Theater presents Death of a

Salesman. Are you a salesman? Why, yes, I am. Can I interest you in some...

You're listening to Pirate Christian Radio.