October 27, 2025 Show with Daniel Jones on “One Word of Faith Evangelist’s Journey out of Heresy & Into the Doctrines of the Sovereign Grace of God”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 27th day of October 2025.

My dear friend, Jerry Johnson, who many of you have heard me interview here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, he is a theologically

Reformed Christian apologist and documentarian, most well -known for his documentary

Amazing Grace, the History and Theology of Calvinism, and also for his webcast, his former webcast,

Against the World. Well, Jerry recently said to me, you've really got to get, as a guest on your program, my friend

Daniel Jones. Daniel is a fellow member with me at Drapers Valley Presbyterian Church, a congregation in the

Presbyterian Church in America in Draper, Virginia. And he said if you'd like to hear his testimony and interview him on his testimony of having been an evangelist in the

Word of Faith movement and having come to abandon and repent from that heresy and embrace the doctrines of Reformed theology, well,

I think that you'd be fascinated by it, and so would your guests. So, I have a very high regard, high esteem for my dear brother

Jerry Johnson, who is also a very generous supporter of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I have nothing but the uttermost trust in his discernment, so I contacted

Daniel, and we have him as our guest today. And we are going to be discussing one

Word of Faith evangelist's journey out from heresy and into the doctrines of the sovereign grace of God.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Daniel Jones.

Thank you so much for having me, Chris. The pleasure is all mine, brother. Well, first of all, since you are a first -time guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, as we do with all of our first -time guests, we have them give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised and any kind of providential circumstances our sovereign

Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them, and I would love to hear your story.

Yes, sir. Well, I grew up mostly in Georgia, moved around a lot of places, but Georgia is where I would call home, although I now live in Virginia.

Really, religion was very nominal in our home growing up. You might say we were kind of culturally

Christian to a point, but at the end of the day, if you had to sum up the religion in our home, it was liberalism.

We would go to church often on here and there. We would often go to different churches. Really, for no other reason, really kind of to surmise, that I can surmise is that it's just kind of what you were supposed to do,

I guess. I mean, we lived in the South, but not a lot of strong Christians in my family.

But we had, and often it's kind of interesting because the churches we would often stay at were those like the

Unity Church, which was part of the Unity School of Christianity, which I like to say is one hair short of Unitarian Universalism, but close to the same thing.

Sadly, I had a member of my family who joined that cult or at least was dabbling on joining that cult.

She was the late wife of my nephew, one of my nephews, and she lived in upstate

New York and was dabbling and was being courted by that cult.

And it's not 100 % clear where she wound up because there was a solid

Orthodox Presbyterian church up that way in Schenectady that I put her in contact with and the pastor's wife befriended her.

But unfortunately, there seemed to be like a spiritual tug of war going on between the

Unity cult and the OPC church. And she sadly passed from an incurable, inoperable brain tumor.

As a very young woman, she was only in her, I think in her late 20s, mid to late 20s.

But it is uncertain where she wound up in that spiritual struggle.

But anyway, that's just a side point there about my own experience with that cult.

Yes, sir. I think they're probably far more prominent up north, but I mean, they still do exist in the south.

What was kind of interesting is, you know, when I, growing up, I even went to Christian school from like kindergarten to the beginning of third grade.

It was like an independent fundamental Baptist type school, really just because the education quality was better, probably, if for any reason.

And it was a good education from what I remember of it. I was a young child at the time, but throughout my life,

I'd had different people who would share the gospel with me. I had different babysitters and nannies and whatnot growing up.

Many of them were Christian people and some were actually very rough on me with the gospel and I'm forever grateful and I'm forever indebted to them,

I would say, in many respects to this day. But I never.

So it was kind of an interesting thing. So I believed, I kind of would, I would give lip service to the

Bible to a point up until I was about 17. And when I was 17, I just kind of outright rebelled.

Started, excuse me, getting into drinking a lot, doing not serious drugs, but smoking a lot of pot.

And they even gotten into some new age type religions like Wicca and things like that. But those seeds that were planted for the gospel in me when

I was very young by a lot of these different people, it could never escape the back of my mind.

And looking back, I think it was the Holy Spirit kind of just wouldn't let me go. And I've heard a theologian in church history past have called the

Holy Spirit the hound of heaven. And I would have to, I can fully understand what they mean, because one thing that could not escape my mind was if hell is real and the

Bible is true, where am I going to spend eternity? Because if I die, I'm going straight to hell if there is a hell.

And it's interesting because today in today's modern evangelical culture, as I like to call it in the church, there's a lot of, we don't need to talk about hell.

We just need to preach the love of Jesus. I'm like, well, look, I'm glad people told me about hell. I'm glad people scared me with the reality of hell because I needed to know,

I needed to hear about it. And it did. I mean, it was the love of Christ that drew me to repentance. Sure. But part of that love was warning me of the consequences of rejecting

Christ, which I'm forever grateful for. What ended up happening was

I eventually kind of to give the very short Reader's Digest version,

I eventually realized like, okay, if Christianity, I finally had to settle the question for myself. If Christianity is true,

I need to, I basically, I need to get on board, so to speak. So I was not really,

I knew I kind of had a surface level knowledge of certain scriptures. I wouldn't say

I knew the Bible well. So at the time I pulled out the yellow pages, which is what we mostly had still at the time.

And I started looking up churches like, okay, what church can I go to? Because I was, I was really, I was in a very dark place spiritually.

Like I said, with being, I got to where I was starting to have a real problem with alcohol and some of the

Wicca and New Age type religions I'd gotten into were really, really dark. I would say

I was experiencing some very dark things at the time. You mean in like in the areas of the occult or Satanism?

Yeah, it was the, it was, it really was, it was the occult. It was, it was mostly Wicca. Which is a form of witchcraft, correct?

Yes, sir, it is. I, it's kind of a long story, but I had a,

I'd gotten pretty hard in that. I think just out of rebellion, because partially I was mad at the church. I was mad at Christians at the time.

And really I was just unconverted. I had an evil heart that hated God. I often say that an unconverted man or woman hates

God. Now some are more overt about it than others. I happen to be more overt about it. But after getting to a very dark place,

I started saying, okay, well, maybe I need to explore Christianity.

So I contacted a local church, which in the phone book was listed under charismatic. I honestly didn't really even know what that was.

I'd heard of Pentecostal and I'd heard of different things, but I didn't really know what that was. And I, so I go to this church and long story short, the

Lord saves me. Now, what I did not realize about that church was that church was part of the word of faith movement.

Now there was enough of the true gospel for one to hear the gospel, believe, and be saved, I would say, but it's not a church

I would recommend. And some of the people from there, I'm still friendly with to this day. They understand that we have very real differences theologically, and I'm very open about that fact.

But I still try to, I still, I still love them, but I cannot agree with what they're doing or what they're preaching.

But the Lord did save me that day, but the day it happened, they immediately hand me books by Kenneth Hagan, Norval Hayes, just different word of faith preachers at the time.

Some who I'd heard of probably in passing on TBN or something, and some who I hadn't. And so I like to say the

Lord saved me, but the discipleship I got was wrong. And it led me down a path of really serious error for about 10 years before the

Lord brought me out. Before we have you continue, I just wanted to have something clarified for our listeners, especially those listeners who are not yet born -again believers.

You basically said anyone who is not, and I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember your exact wording, but you said everyone who is not a believer in Jesus Christ hates

God. And I believe what you probably mean by that, you could correct me if I'm wrong, is that if they do not believe in and love the

Jesus Christ of the Scriptures, they hate God, whether they recognize that or not, because there are many people who might think wrongly,

I don't hate God. I love God. It's just not your God. So am

I correct in my clarification? Yes, sir. You would be correct. That's exactly what

I meant. So you, for about 10 years, were caught up in this

Word of Faith movement church. Well, first of all, I think it'd be very wise for us to have you define that, and just so our listeners know, we have had former

Word of Faith movement Christians or professing

Christians on the program before. I've had Kosti Hinn on the program. In fact,

Kosti Hinn, of all the Christian media outlets available to him, he chose

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for his very first public confession that he was leaving the charismatic movement in the

Word of Faith movement. Of all the places, he chose Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And if anybody listening wants to listen to that interview with Kosti Hinn later on,

I've done a number of interviews with Kosti, but the very first one that I interviewed involved his testimony.

You can just go to ironsharpensironradio .com and in the search engine, type in Kosti, C -O -S -T -I, and Hinn, H -I -N -N.

And you will see our interview from September 8th, 2017. So it was almost eight years ago to the day.

The theme was From Word of Faith Heresy to Sovereign Grace Truth. The testimony of an apple that did fall very far away from the tree.

That is referring to the fact that Kosti's uncle is the notorious and infamous

Benny Hinn. But I've also interviewed John Sampson, who was not only a

Word of Faith evangelist and pastor, he was a

Word of Faith TV host. And he is now the pastor of a

Reformed Baptist church in Arizona, King's Church of Peoria, Arizona.

And you can look up his interview as well, just type in John Sampson, S -A -M -S -O -N.

But I interrupted you there, I just wanted our listeners to know that there are other interviews that I've done that go into the theology and practice of the

Word of Faith. But in your own words, tell us. Well, and kind of as a side note,

I'd had a conversation with Kosti Hinn early on when I was questioning, and he really was a real blessing.

That's kind of a side note. And John Sampson and I also have had many conversations, and he helped me when

I was on the road to wrestling between continuationism and cessationism, and of which

I ended up in the latter camp of where I am today. Word of Faith really is... It's really hard to kind of...

Word of Faith is different than most other cultic movements. So when you have things like the Mormons, the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, they're headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. You've got the

Jehovah's Witnesses in Brooklyn, New York, or used to be in Brooklyn, I don't know if they still are. It's different because Word of Faith is not like a centralized cult in that sense, but it is a theological movement.

So what really separates Word of Faith from biblical Christianity is that, and I say that intentionally because it is not biblical

Christianity, is they would define certain... On the surface, if you were to look at most

Word of Faith churches, their statement of faith would read like a pretty generic assemblies of God statement of faith, that they would affirm things like the

Trinity, salvation by grace through faith, the deity of Christ, and things like that. Where they differ is how they define some of those things.

So on the surface, they look orthodox. Their statements of faith often look orthodox on the surface, but underneath you have some very damnable doctrines.

So Word of Faith, basically, if you could sum it up in two words, it's dethroning God. They have a very low, if any of you at all, of the sovereignty of God.

As a matter of fact, one of the things you will often hear from Word of Faith preachers is that God is not in control. God has done everything he's gonna do, so now we have to take the authority that he's given us.

So they would teach that we are little gods. Now, they may not say it in exactly those words, but they essentially are teaching, some do, but they wouldn't teach it in those words.

They think that when Christ went to the cross, he not only bought salvation for us, but he bought healing for us, and prosperity, and things like that.

So what we need to do is claim it. So they basically believe that because God spoke things into existence, we can do the same thing because we are little gods.

Where they take that from is a couple of different places. One of the main scriptures they will often go to is

Mark 11, 22 through 24. It was one of Kenneth Hagin's favorite passages, and it's a have faith in God.

What they'll try to say is that in the Greek, that should say have the faith of God or have the

God kind of faith. And they take that to mean that God spoke the world into existence by faith so we can speak things into existence by faith.

Now, where they get that, that's kind of if you wanna boil it down to the surface, it's we have the authority that God had, that Christ died on the cross.

He gave us that authority to command things to happen. And as such, they generally discourage people from praying things like Lord, let thy will be done.

Kenneth Hagin himself would say, the only time you were supposed to pray Lord, let thy will be done is if you are praying a prayer of consecration.

So meaning like what job to take or things like that. Yeah, I can remember.

I'm trying to remember if I was even a Christian at this point in my life. I know that I was exploring

Christianity or perhaps it was in the early days of my being a born again believer.

But I remember hearing Kenneth Hagin on a Christian radio station on the way to work, a car radio.

And he was mocking Christians who were on their knees begging

God to answer prayers for this reason or that reason. And he said, you stand up on your feet like a man and you boldly storm the throne and you demand what is rightfully yours as a child of God.

I was shocked listening to that, knowing instinctively that is blasphemous.

Boy, it is. And you know, it's kind of interesting because even most non -Christians would run from guys like Hagin or Benny Hinn or Kenneth Copeland.

They realize they're charlatans. They know that. But oftentimes it's evangelicals who are sucked into this type thing.

I mean, I was a non -Christian who got sucked in because I was totally ignorant of that mess. But honestly,

I knew the names Benny Hinn or Kenneth Hagin. I'd heard them in passing or I might have seen them on TV here or there, but I didn't really know what they taught.

But it's kind of interesting how oftentimes it's non -Christians who can see these guys for what they are than many professing

Christians. I just find that interesting. Yeah, well, obviously there's also the added factor when you're talking about non -believers.

They look for reasons to mock Christianity and to avoid approaching

God in humility and awe and reverence and to repent and truly put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

They look for reasons to avoid that and mock it. So when people like that come around who are clownish caricatures of the charismatic movement, that they're easy targets for a lot of people that aren't regenerate.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's kind of interesting. So in my particular situation,

I like to say the Lord did save me, but I got a lot of bad discipleship. One of the things, and it's kind of one of the reasons,

I guess, and I don't like to go by experience, but it really does fit into what I now understand as Reformed theology and what

I confess and affirm. The Lord did keep me from a lot of many of the more serious damnable errors of that movement.

One of the things that they will teach, and this is, and I actually had not, it was not until I had gone to what's often seen as the premier word of faith

Bible college, Ramah, Ramah Bible Training College in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or in Broken Arrow right outside of Tulsa, which was

Kenneth Hagin's school, which is what he founded. It wasn't until a few years in that I actually started realizing what it was they were teaching.

And really these have to go, and what I'm really referring to is, and this is the stuff that if you truly embrace, you are not a

Christian, period. These are things like Jesus died spiritually. So they believe that after the cross,

Jesus went and suffered in the flames of hell. And as such, he died spiritually in hell and then rose again and became the first born again man.

Well, the implication, whether they would say it or not, is that Jesus would have had to cease to be God because God doesn't need to be born again.

God can't be born again. He's God. And some of them will outright say, well, yeah, not only did he cease to be

God, some would actually go so far as to say that when Jesus walked the earth, he did not walk the earth as God.

He walked the earth as a man anointed by God. Right. And in fact, I'm hoping this is one of the most wicked, diabolical, satanic heresies that they teach or that many of them teach.

In fact, I don't believe John Sampson ever swallowed this lie from the pit of hell.

But many of the Word of Faith movement advocates, as you likely well know, teach that Jesus Christ, after his death on the cross, entered into hell, was tortured by Satan and his demons in hell, and became the first born -again man in hell.

So Christ Jesus himself required a rebirth, according to them, and it happened in hell.

And Chris, you absolutely hit the nail on the head. And it's one of the things that when

I first began to start questioning the Word of Faith was when I discovered, to be honest with you,

I'd listened to Kenneth Copeland some when I was in that world, but he just, something never really sat right with me with him.

So I was never really into Copeland. But I had found out about a statement he had made. I want to say it was in the 80s sometime.

I think it was in one of his magazines, The Believer's Voice of Victory. Excuse me. And he had made the statement that Jesus went into hell as a demon -possessed mortal man and rose again as a born -again resurrected man.

And he specifically said when his blood poured out, it did not atone. And when

I found that out, I'm like, I immediately was thinking that is the most, if not the most, one of the most blasphemous things

I have ever heard. And I've been in the Word of Faith movement for 10 years. Now, did you hear Copeland when he said that God told him,

Kenneth Copeland, that he could have died for the sins of humanity? I had not heard that in my 10 years in the

Word of Faith. I actually had not first heard that statement until after I'd been out of the

Word of Faith for a few years. When I heard that, I'm thinking, what in the world? Because the thing is, nobody really talks, nobody really talked about that.

So, and one thing I seem to notice on some of those, just some of the most blasphemous things

Kenneth Copeland has said, and they are many, seems like he has toned down over the past,

I would assume he's toned down over the past 15 years or so, because he probably got a lot of heat for it, and rightly so.

Because I admit, so a lot of those things, when he said, a lot of the things that I'd heard of the more blasphemous things that he had said seemed like they were more in the late 80s and into the 90s.

But I did hear that, and I remember thinking, how could I have ever gotten caught up in this mess for as long as I did?

And Copeland also taught that God the Father had a physical body, and ironically, approximately

Kenneth Copeland's height and build. Which is kind of interesting, because it sounds a lot more to me like Mormonism.

Exactly. So it's kind of an interesting, yeah, it is kind of interesting,

Chris, because our mutual friend Jason Wallace, and I was talking to him about this one day, and it's interesting to see the eerie similarities between much of the word of faith movement and Mormonism.

One of the things you will often hear word of faith preachers say, and even just word of faith people in general say, is not to read things that will harm your faith.

Now what they mean by that is guys like John MacArthur, guys like Justin Peters, or anybody that speaks against them, they do not like criticism, they don't want you reading anything critical of them.

What's interesting, because you'll hear Latter -day Saints say things like, well, don't read anti -Mormon literature.

And then you'll hear them often say things like, touch not the Lord's anointed, and that it's wrong to criticize a man of God.

Benny Hintz said this very blatantly, that it's wrong to criticize a man of God, aka them, and let even if that man of God be a living devil.

And then you hear the Mormon church leaders say things like, it's wrong to criticize leaders of the church, even if such criticism is true.

And I'm thinking, and I remember I'd been out of the word of faith for several years. This was a conversation he and I had, probably a couple of years ago now.

And I'm like, it's crazy how I did not see how similar, how cultish this was in all the years

I was in it, and in the years I taught it. It's just insane,

Chris. There's so much, I think hindsight is very much 2020, because I mean, it's crazy how much you don't see when you're caught up in that movement.

In fact, even though I hate doing this, because I know that a lot of people are very blessed by the sight and sound theater here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

And I'm sure most of what they do is biblically faithful and God honoring.

And the production value is extraordinary.

The sets that they have on their plays that they put on, their theatrical performances, the stages are

Broadway quality, and the costumes and all that.

But the one time that I went with my late wife, there was a edition of the sight and sound theater plays that they did on The Crucifixion and Resurrection.

I can't remember the title they gave that play. It may have been The Resurrection.

And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that they put the play on near Easter.

But they, in the play, revealed that whoever wrote the script for this must have believed in the

Word of Faith teaching that Jesus Christ was tortured in hell by Satan and his demons.

And they actually portrayed Jesus after he died on the cross, tied to a chair and blindfolded as demons dance around him and whipped him, and as Satan watched on laughing.

And the thing that was really bizarre, on top of the heresy there, for some weird reason, while everything else looked very realistic, and the costumes and so forth looked like first century costumes, or should

I say biblical era costumes? Not that I'm an expert on how they look, but it was just very realistic looking.

For some weird reason, they made the character of Satan comedy relief during this entire play.

And Satan was portrayed by a very morbidly obese man who somewhat resembled

John Candy. And he was wearing a very goofy, comical, cheap -looking devil

Halloween costume, the kind that a child would wear, with the really fake -looking horns and the pitchfork and the cape.

So it was really bizarre that they would have portrayed Satan in that way, because there's nothing funny about Satan, there's nothing funny about hell, there's nothing for us to be amused by that.

But I just thought I'd throw that out there, because a lot of people, even folks from my

Reformed background, love sight and sound theater, and perhaps rightfully so, depending upon what plays they see, which editions they see.

But I'm just warning you that you never know when something like that might be introduced into another play.

I just don't know. I'm not an expert on who writes these plays and so on.

But we have to go to our first commercial break. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.

chrisarnsen at gmail dot com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away.

We are going to be right back after these messages. I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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Lord's Day, we'd love to have you come and join us in worship. For details, visit lynnbrookbaptist .org.

That's l -y -n -brookbaptist .org. This is Pastor Keith Allen of Lynnbrook Baptist Church reminding you that by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast of the

Lord's blessing and knowledge of himself. Welcome back. If you just tuned us in, we have a very fascinating guest today.

This brother spent a decade as an evangelist in the

Word of Faith heresy, and by God's grace and mercy and kindness was delivered out from that heresy and into the doctrines of the sovereign grace of God.

This dear brother of whom I speak is a very dear friend of Jerry Johnson, who has been a guest on this program, who is an apologist and a documentarian, and he is also a very generous financial supporter of Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, and he said to me that you got to have

Daniel Jones on the program to talk about his testimony being delivered out from the

Word of Faith movement. And it just so happens that we have a question from Jerry Johnson.

I usually don't give the full names of our listeners when they submit questions, but since he is a frequent guest on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, I thought

I'd announce his full name. Jerry Johnson of Dublin, Virginia, and he has two questions for you,

Daniel. He says, Daniel's soul depends on his answer.

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? But then he says, no, seriously, ask him to explain kenosis theory.

Well, Jerry, all I can say is to the first question is the world may never know. So if my soul depends on it,

I hope I got that one right, brother. Kenosis is, I prefer the term kenoticism because the term kenosis in and of itself is not a bad word.

The term kenosis refers to, I want to say, Chris, you'll have to forgive me if I get this wrong,

I want to say Philippians 2 where it says that Christ being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself with no reputation.

Speaking of Christ coming to earth as a man, I prefer the term kenoticism and talking about what the word of faith and much of what's been called the

New Apostolic Reformation believes about that. What they believe is totally different. We as biblical

Christians would confess and affirm that Christ became man, but he was fully

God, fully man, and walked the earth as fully God and fully man. So really,

I like the term I've heard that I like is subtraction by addition. So Christ came to earth, he added humanity, but his deity never changed, obviously.

God can't cease to be God. Where the word of faith movement and much of the

New Apostolic Reformation gets it wrong, and this is a very, not just gets it wrong, but is a very serious error, and I would say a damnable heresy, is they would say that Christ came to the earth, emptied himself of his deity, and they walked the earth as a man anointed by God.

They'll quote scriptures like he was full of the spirit, the Holy Spirit without measure, and that actually leads into a lot of what they believe, because they believe

Christ walked the earth not as God, but as a man anointed by God, and therefore did all these miracles as a man anointed by God.

And by implication, we as Christians who are full of the Holy Spirit can also do the works that Christ did.

And they'll often quote the scripture that says that even greater works shall you do. When Christ talked about we'll do greater works.

Of course, they completely twist that scripture, but that's the implication. That's where that leads. That's where much of their theology comes from around miracles and Christians being able to do miracles.

I hope that answers the question. So this was basically a bastardization of Philippians 2, 5 through 11, which you alluded to earlier.

Yes, sir. That's actually a great word for it. Absolutely. Well, thank you,

Jerry. I'm glad you're listening today. And thank you again for the recommendation of Daniel Jones to be in my program today.

Well, I believe when you were going through the major heresies before the commercial break, the major heresies of the

Word of Faith movement, we stopped at the blasphemous idea that when

Jesus Christ died on the cross, he was tortured by Satan and his demons in hell and became the firstborn again man in hell.

In fact, to go further, as you already mentioned, I believe you're quoting

Kenneth Copeland Warhagan, that he became a demon -possessed man.

And I've even heard that he became a demonic creature by Word of Faith teachers.

And they use as one of their proofs of this the fact that Moses commanded the creation of a bronze serpent to be formed on a pole so that the

Israelites could be healed of their diseases and so forth.

And they actually tried to insinuate or not even insinuate to teach that that was a picture of Jesus being a demonic being on the cross.

Have you heard that specifically? Yes, sir, I sure have. And Chris, I want to backtrack for a minute.

I know you said I was a Word of Faith evangelist for 10 years. I was in the Word of Faith movement for 10 years. I wasn't an evangelist for 10 years.

Just wanted to clarify that. I apologize. But no, I have heard that.

And that's actually, and they actually take that, they'll take that along with the scripture.

This is from Numbers, by the way. It's 21, eight to nine. Right. And that's, they take that and they take it in combination with the scripture where it says, he that knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God.

They take that to mean, and they further take the idea of the brazen serpent being a picture of Jesus being demon possessed.

And they'll take, Chris, you'll have to forgive me where the scripture is. I can quote it, but I often don't remember the reference where he that knew no sin became sin for us.

They take that to mean that he literally became sin. Not that he became our sin bearer or even offering as we would believe.

So they do believe that. So they believe that Jesus literally became sin. And that's, and they take that and they believe that that's so as such, he became sin.

So therefore he had to go to hell and suffer in hell as someone who literally became sin.

They like to point to creeds that, you know, you and I would confess. And I'm sure most of our, your listeners would confess as well of the

Nicene Creed and the Apostle's Creed where it says that he went into hell, he descended into hell.

Well, we do that. That is a historic part of that confession. And we do confess that. However, we have to quantify what hell means.

Hell in the, of course, in the Greek is can also be referring to the grave.

It doesn't necessarily have to mean hell in the Hades or in Hebrew shield. It can mean the grave.

So hell can have like many words in scripture, it can have more than one meaning. So, but they tend to try to take that and say, and say, see the

Nicene Creed even says he descended into hell, but they're not quantifying what hell meant in that particular instance.

So it's really, when I was, when I was in the word of faith, I believed,

I did not believe that Jesus suffered in hell having literally become sin. I did hold that he became a sin bearer or a sin offering as I still hold now.

I did believe he went to hell and suffered in hell for our sins, but I believed he went there as God. I never believed him.

And I was unaware for many years of the teaching that he had literally, he had died spiritually or that he didn't walk the earth as God, but as man.

And the first time I heard the term Jesus died spiritually, I honestly did not even really think too much into it.

I didn't even really know what they meant by it. Cause the furthest thing I would have thought at the time was what they, what

I found out later that they did mean by it. And it was when I did find that out that I said, whoa, hang on a second, that's heresy.

One of the things, when I first become a Christian, I immediately jumped into apologetics.

I was, I was listening and reading. I was listening to audio books and reading Josh McDowell early on and others like him.

I had also really, I enjoyed Francis Schaeffer and at the time

Robbie Zacharias, which of course we, none of us knew at the time what about what

Robbie had been doing, of course, all those years. But I mean, Robbie all the same was a, was very, very brilliant in articulating apologetics.

So I was, I tried to be a fairly critical thinker early on. And one of the things that, that was one of the things that really made me start questioning the word of faith.

The other one was, Chris, to be honest with you, when I was at Rhema at the premier word of faith

Bible school, much of what I saw there, I couldn't put a finger on it and say it was the wrong for this reason, but I would, much of what

I saw there, I knew the fruit that I could just, I could see clearly the fruit wasn't good. Much of what

I heard and what I, what I was taught and what I sadly later taught much of myself was that, was, it sounded a lot more like what

I like to call spiritual entitlement or even spiritual narcissism. It was, you would hear about me, myself, and I, I'm believing

God. I claim, you know, a Mercedes Benz or sometimes it wasn't even necessarily anything extravagant. It was like, I'm believing

God for this. I'm believing God for that. And what I began to notice a lot was I would hear the words

Rhema or Kenneth Hagen or those words more than I would hear the word Jesus Christ. And I just like, the fruit of this just doesn't seem right.

Word of faith is very me -centered. It's very, I mean, I don't know what else to call it other than spiritual entitlement.

And it's, it takes the focus. I mean, and again, I kind of go back to what

I was saying, what I said earlier, the two words I would use to describe word of faith are dethroning God because they literally, it's like taking

God off the throne and it's all about me. In fact, pick up where you left off there because we have to go to our midway break right now.

If anybody else wants to join us, the email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Please don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages. Hello, my name is Anthony Uvino and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Ovinio, and thanks for listening. Truly grateful for many things that the

Trump administration has ushered in. But here's something that seriously concerns me.

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Again, call or text 623 -640 -5911.

Tell them Chris from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio sent you. This program is sponsored by Hope PR Ministry.

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Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnzen and the

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I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jansen and Christopher McDowell.

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Corham who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word and to enthusiastically proclaim

Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island and beyond.

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have.

For more information on Hope Reformed Baptist Church go to hopereformedli .net

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Tell the folks at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio

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Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Heritage is a thoroughly Biblical church unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards and Dr.

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Hanover Presbytery built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great

Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Heritage maintains and follows the

Biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the Reformers Scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone,

Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the Triune God that continues in eternity.

For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia visit HeritagePresbyterianChurch .com

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today, mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Before we return to my fascinating conversation with Daniel Jones, and before we continue with his testimony featuring one man's journey out from the

Word of Faith heresy and into the doctrines of the sovereign grace of God, we just have some important reminders.

Folks, those of you who listen to my show regularly know that we have lost two of our largest advertisers on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

A third might be following them that we are losing. The one that will immediately pop into your minds if you listen to this show regularly is one of our most faithful sponsors of the program,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com, who not only sponsored advertising on this program, but they would pay for the shipment of free

Bibles and books to our listeners when they won Bibles and books by virtue of submitting questions to our guests.

Well, all of that wonderful financial blessing from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service is gone now because they have, sadly, after 50 years of business, permanently closed their doors.

So we really need your help, folks, to financially replace and replenish that lost income.

If you love this show and you don't want it to go off the air, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

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Keep in mind, folks, as urgently and as desperately as we need your financial help,

I never want anybody in my audience to give your own church, where you're a member, less money than you normally give your church on the

Lord's Day in order to bless us with a financial gift. In other words, please never cut into the financial resources that you have specifically set aside for your own church in order to bless us.

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And last but not least, if you are not the member or a member of a

Christ -honoring, biblically faithful, theologically sound, doctrinally solid church, like Draper's Valley Presbyterian Church in Draper, Virginia, well, no matter where you live in the world,

I have extensive lists spanning the entire globe of biblically faithful churches, and I've helped many people in our audience find churches in all parts of the planet

Earth, sometimes within just a couple of minutes from where they live, that are biblically faithful churches.

And that could be you too. So, no matter where you live in the world, if you are without a biblically faithful church home, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and put, I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Daniel Jones, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

Only remain anonymous. If your question involves a personal and private matter, let's say you are still in a

Word of Faith church, and you're starting to reconsider whether you should be there, or you have a family friend or a loved one in a

Word of Faith church, and you don't want to identify yourself publicly at this point.

Those are good reasons to remain anonymous, but if it's a general question, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

We have Lila in Westchester, New York, who asks, can you explain a bit more about how the

Word of Faith teachers believe that you can speak things into existence? It sounds very occultic to me.

Absolutely, Lila, and it's a great question, and you're absolutely spot on that it's occultic.

There's kind of the short answer to that is Kenneth Hagin, who's considered the father of the modern -day

Word of Faith movement, which he's not really. It's a guy named E .W. Kenyon, whom Hagin plagiarized heavily, but that's kind of a story for another day, said one of the things he had said was every

Christian is as much an incarnation as was Jesus of Nazareth. So this goes back to their belief that we are little gods.

As a Christian, we are little gods. Now, what they do with this, and I'm trying to give the shortest answer

I can to it, they believe that in, they'll often quote in Romans chapter 10 that if you confess with your mouth,

Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. Now, they'll take that and say, well, if we can confess, if we can believe in our heart and confess

Christ for our salvation, we should be able to confess Christ, believe in our heart and confess Christ for other things.

And to take it back to something I alluded earlier in Mark 11, Mark chapter 11, verse 22, where it says have faith in God, there's a twisting of that.

They take that and say in the Greek, that should say have the faith of God or even have the God kind of faith.

Now, there is a half -truth there. I like to say they go with the wrong half. In the Greek, it's ekate piston theo.

So ekate is the possessive, it's the half part. And then piston is faith, which is also the root of where we get the word epistemology, the epistemology part of it.

So, which is, and piston is, pistis is the word for faith, piston is the conjugation of that.

And then theo, of course, which is God where we get the word theology from. Now, they'll take that and say, if you literally translate that, it should say have the faith of God.

Well, the issue there is something called the genitive, which is a grammatical rule in Greek. And the best way

I can describe it is, you know, in English, we typically have our sentences constructed like subject, object, verb.

So it's kind of similar to that. The question is, is piston the subjective genitive of theo or is it the objective?

In other words, is piston the subject of theo or the object of? So if it were the subjective, then you could say, yeah, have the faith of God.

You could translate it that way. But there's a problem too because it still wouldn't fit that narrative because nowhere else in the

Bible does it say God had faith. But it just so happens that it's not the subjective, it's the objective genitive.

So therefore, it being the objective genitive, so piston being the object of theo, and I'm hoping

I'm not going too deep into the weeds here, but not the subjective. Have faith in God is the correct translation.

So that's part of where they twist that. And they'll say in Mark 11, 20, 23, and 24, that if you say to this mountain, be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea and built out in your heart, but believe that whatever you say can come to pass, you'll have whatsoever you say.

So they'll say that because we have the God kind of faith, and I'm kind of paraphrasing here what a lot of them will say, we can command a mountain and the mountain could be anything.

It could be prosperity. It could be finances. It could be healing for a sick body or anything like that, that you can speak to that and you can speak a healing into existence.

You can speak money into existence. And it really, it's kind of interesting because new age teachers often say similar things.

They'll talk about, be careful what you speak because you can speak things into existence. New age teachers who don't even claim to be

Christian say this very thing. So your observation that this is a cultic is absolutely spot on. So that's kind of the, again, it's such a lengthy subject that would take a while to fully explain, but I hope that helps.

Thank you, Lila. And we have Morgan in Bryant, Arkansas.

And Morgan says, how do word of faith teachers explain the fact that they themselves eventually die physically like Kenneth Hagin did?

Great question as well. So they like to go to Psalms chapter 91, where it says with long life, will

I satisfy him and show him my salvation? And even Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland, Copeland actually just rather recently said this back after the flood where God told,

I believe this is where God told Noah that a man's day shall be 120 years. So they'll say we can live to be 120 years.

And so what they like to say is that we basically have control over when we die. So it's crazy as that sounds, that's essentially what they teach.

And some of them actually teach that very verbatim that they believe that everyone is entitled to 70 or 80 years, but we can live as long as 120.

But it's never God's will for us to die before age 70. And it's kind of interesting because when somebody in the

Word of Faith movement dies, they'll talk about, well, they were just sick and tired, so I guess they just chose to go on and be with the Lord rather than stay here and suffer.

But they will say you have the right to believe for healing as long as you're in this body and as long as you basically have lived out this lifespan that God promised you.

Of course, he didn't promise that, but that's how they take that scripture and twist it. They believe that you have the right to believe for healing and you have the right to live as long as you want to live.

And it's even interesting because when many of these faith teachers died, they'll come up with great stories about how they said, well,

I'm ready to go, I'm going to go, I'm choosing to go to heaven. And they'll say they weren't sick and they'll tell all these stories.

But later you find out many of them either died from heart failure or something else. I mean, Kenneth Hagin, classic example.

They said that he wasn't sick, nothing like that. He just decided to go and be with the Lord. Well, come to find out later, he died in the cardiac intensive care unit in a hospital in Tulsa.

So it's kind of ridiculous how much they embellish these stories.

But that's the long and short of it. Basically, we have the right to choose when we die, more or less, and we have the right to believe for healing as long as we have enough faith, of course.

Yeah. Now, let me ask you a question. I remember a brother who is,

I believe, a fellow cessationist. He's not charismatic or Pentecostal.

But he was gently rebuking me, saying

I was in error when I claimed that many

Pentecostal people and charismatic people who are not specifically in the

Word of Faith movement, they're more in your traditional branches of Pentecostal and charismatic teaching.

Nonetheless, many of them still teach that if your faith is strong enough, you will certainly be healed.

He told me that I was in error, and that was exclusively the heresy of the Word of Faith movement.

Was I wrong on that? Not necessarily. So, I mean, the

Word of Faith movement every Word of Faith person is a charismatic on some level.

Not every charismatic is Word of Faith. However, you will even find people in non -Pentecostal, don't even claim to be charismatic churches, who will talk about, who will say things like that.

The Word of Faith movement has had an extensive influence. And I think a lot of that goes back to the charismatic renewal in the 1970s, where a lot of the charismatic type teachings became part of many mainline churches, including our churches, including many churches that would claim to be confessional and reformed.

So, it's not only Pentecostals you'll hear say that, say things like that. You'll hear people that don't even claim to be charismatic at all say that.

So, no, I don't think you were wrong at all. Let's see here.

We have... I was just looking at a question from a listener named

Kathy. Oh, Kathy in Rochester, New York.

She says, on the occasions when I have watched Word of Faith preachers on television,

I've never heard any of them actually preach the gospel. Do they ever do that?

Well, we have to define the gospel, and that's an excellent question, Kathy. What is the gospel? If... I mean, now,

I will say this. You can watch Joel Osteen, and at the end of every one of his programs, he'll say, we'd like to invite you to accept

Jesus as the Lord of your life if you've never done that. Will you pray with me? And he'll basically lead people in what's commonly called the sinner's prayer, kind of a generic version.

And he'll say, if you prayed that prayer, we believe you got born again and get in a good church and all that. Well, here's the problem with that. The Bible says that, and the apostle

Paul talks about in Galatians how the law was our schoolmaster to lead us to Christ and how we would not even know what sin was apart from the law.

So it's something... So, yeah, they can tell people to get saved, but they don't even know they're lost. And it goes...

And they never... One thing they'll say is, you can get saved, but they never... One thing you will rarely, if ever, hear them preach on, and if you do, it's a very soft version of it.

You never hear them talk about repentance. So what you often have, and you'll see this in Word of Faith, and not just Word of Faith, many modern -day evangelical -type churches, modern evangelical, not historically evangelical, will say, will have people come down and say a prayer, think they got saved, quote -unquote, but there's no life change.

There's no fruits of repentance. There's no evidence of salvation. So I like to go back to the fact that you can't have the law without the gospel.

So the law is, we're sinners. If you look at the Ten Commandments, they're condemned to death every one of us. None of them ever talk about that.

So if the gospel is simply say a prayer and come to know Jesus, well, I guess they do, but that's not the gospel.

The Bible doesn't say that. The Bible doesn't teach that. It teaches that all men everywhere are to repent and to place their faith in Christ.

It doesn't say come up to an altar and say a prayer. So excellent question, Kathy. So I would say no, because the gospel they preach is not the biblical gospel.

Do they have all of the elements of the gospel that, like, for instance, oh, you already mentioned that you don't hear them preaching repentance, so that would be one they don't.

But do they teach that humanity has all inherited the sin of Adam, and the only way that they can have peace with God eternally is to repent of their sin and to trust in the once -and -for -all finished work of Jesus Christ as their only remedy for sin, their only hope of salvation, and trusting in his bodily resurrection from the dead on the third day and his ascension into heaven at the right hand of the

Father? Do they teach those essential elements? And are those elements ever heard in sermons?

I mean, I know I keep repeating myself. You already said that you never hear them teaching on repentance. Are the other elements heard?

Yeah, and to be fair, they do. Now, all the ones I know do, they do believe in original sin.

They do believe that all mankind is dead in Adam. They do teach that, to be fair. Most would.

They will say that Jesus is the only way to eternal life. And some of them will talk.

Some of them you will even openly hear say things like, without Christ, you're going to hell.

They will even talk about that. Most would not hit on that very much. The problem is,

I don't know, I've never heard a Word of Faith preacher that I can remember, myself included, when

I was one, who ever really defined why we need the gospel.

I mean, they kind of would hint at it, but it was never, you know, looking at the

Ten Commandments, you're a lying, thieving, murderous, adulterate heart. If God judges you by that standard, you're going to die in your sins and you're going to go to hell.

They don't really articulate it. And it's always a misquotation.

Usually, I don't want to say always, but the majority of times what I hear and what I used to say myself was a misquotation of Jeremiah 29, 11, that God loves you and has a great plan for your life, which is, of course, taken out of context.

But come to Jesus and, you know, you can have a better life. Not only will you get an eternal life, you'll get health, wealth, and you can have all those things.

And the Bible says those are yours. So even the elements of the true gospel they preach are so watered down with so much other nonsense that,

I mean, you wonder, you wonder how if you, it's almost, it's almost,

I wouldn't say completely, but it's almost as if they might as well not be preaching the gospel, any element of the gospel at all because it's so watered down with this other garbage.

Yes, and well, tell us about if they teach that the reason why any of them are, or their congregants, that is, are sick or not achieving prosperity financially, wouldn't they teach that they need to repent because those are signs that there is sin, unconfessed sin in their lives?

Well, actually, you will hear them teach on repentance when it comes to giving tithes and offerings, I will say that.

They don't use the word repentance necessarily, but they will say if you're not giving tithes and offerings, you're robbing

God. And it's even, you'll even hear, and it's interesting because you'll even hear people come up and talk about, well, the

Lord told me to give my last dime of my paycheck and he was going to bless me with a better, you know, with this, that, or the other.

And oh, I'm telling you, the Lord blessed me so much. I mean, well, first of all, those stories are either fabricated or there's a whole lot more to them than what they're telling you.

I mean, because it's, I mean, can God, can and does God bless his people with finances?

Yes, he can, and he does as he wills. But they also, they will teach on repentance for that.

And when it comes to sickness, and again, they don't use the word repent, but in a certain sense they do, they'll talk about, well, what have you been speaking?

Have you been saying, I'm sick? Have you been, if you have a headache, are you saying I have a headache? Don't say you have a headache, say

I'm healed by the stripes of Jesus. Right, there you go. In fact, I remember that personally years ago, for 15 years,

I worked for a major Christian radio station in New York, WMCA 570

AM, which is an affiliate of the largest Christian radio network in the world,

Salem Media. And my manager passed on a client to me who was a financial investor, because the advertising salesperson who formerly had that particular financial investment firm as a client left the company for some reason, and I can't remember why, but I was supposed to have a meeting with one of these financial investment, it was a husband and wife couple who were a team in this financial firm.

And I called up the office there, the wife answered, and I said that I had to postpone our meeting because I had pneumonia.

And she said, oh my goodness, let me pray for you. And she prayed for healing of my pneumonia.

In fact, I can remember her demanding that a demon of pneumonia leave my body.

So after that prayer, which was really a horrible example of a prayer, there was no humility in it that I can remember, a humbleness before God.

The woman said, so are we still meeting as planned?

I said, no, don't you remember I told you I had pneumonia? She says, no, you don't.

I said, excuse me. She says, you don't have pneumonia, didn't you hear me pray? I said, well,

I can tell you one thing, I am not even physically capable of getting out of bed right now because of the physical agony that I'm in.

My symptoms have not disappeared. I have pneumonia. And she said, no, you don't.

You're just sinning right now because you're denying the power of God. I said, no,

I'm not denying the power of God. I'm trusting in Him and waiting upon Him to heal me. It hasn't happened yet.

So I've got to go now. Goodbye. And I never pursued this client because I didn't want any of my listeners to be subject to this kind of heretical nonsense from the pit of hell.

And brother, I'm sitting here laughing as you're describing that story because it's so familiar.

I mean, it really is. It's kind of one of the things that I thought of as you were talking about that story, how she would say, well, no, you don't.

Even though your body's screaming, yeah, I still do. When you hear, oftentimes you will hear these big time

Word of Faith creatures like Benny Hinn, like Kenneth Copeland and others who will say things like, well, we had this many healings in this crusade or in this past year or things like that.

One of the things you never really hear is verifications of those healings. Because one of the things they believe is that when we prayed, we took authority over that sickness, which some will say it.

There's some that will say all sickness is a demon. Others will not necessarily say that, but they will say all sickness is of the devil.

But what they believe is that we prayed and we took authority over it, so it happened right then. So you were healed then. So essentially what they mean is, and I believe what it's like, and I've never asked

Benny Hinn or Kenneth Copeland or any of them this personally, but my guess would be what they mean by that is not that they've verified those healings, but that we prayed and it was healed, we took authority, so it was done right then.

So I would venture to say that's how they would likely manipulate a lot of those numbers, which really

I don't think is much of a manipulation because I question if there's not really any healings happening other than psychosomatic ones typically.

We have Drew in Oskaloosa, or Oskaloosa, I don't know how to pronounce it.

And that's in Iowa. And Drew says, I understand that people who are leaders in the

Word of Faith movement are not necessarily even members of Pentecostal denominations.

For instance, correct me if I'm wrong, but was not the late Pat Robertson technically a member of the

Southern Baptist Convention until the day he died? And aren't there others who are well -known who are also in more mainstream denominations, but were nonetheless simultaneously

Word of Faith heretics? Right. And actually, if Pat Robertson was a member of the

Southern Baptist Convention, I'm not aware of whether he was or not. But one of the things that happens, and I think church government obviously is a debate we can have as brothers and sisters in Christ.

But one of the things that often is concerning with many churches that have autonomy, that are autonomously, like congregationally governed, and there's not really any real cohesion with other churches, is with the

Southern Baptist Convention in particular, you can, and again, there's been many good brothers and sisters in the

Southern Baptist Convention, so it's certainly not a denomination I'm going to speak against, although I would have secondary differences with, but many of my closest friends are

Baptists. But one of the things that'll happen is you'll get a leader who gets in a church like that, and they could be preaching outright heresy, but the

Southern Baptist Convention in and of itself doesn't really seem to have a mechanism, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, but they don't really seem to have a mechanism to really bring discipline against those leaders other than outside their particular local church.

So that's why you will have guys that are part of mainline churches like the SBC who will be teaching many false doctrines and even heresies, but if you're talking about the big name guys like Kenneth Copeland and Jesse Duplantis and others, they're really largely independent, but there are loose fellowships, one of which

I was a member of at one time called Rhema Ministerial Association International, which was the ministerial credentialing branch of Kenneth Hagin Ministries of whom

I was once affiliated. They will have kind of loose fellowships, but it's not really considered a denomination.

Another one would be Faith Christian Fellowship or the Internet. That's kind of the short name of it, and I believe, if I'm not mistaken,

I think Benny Hinn is part of that. I know there are several that are, but there's no real accountability in these fellowships, and that's one of the reasons

I think they can get by with so much of what they do. I'm hoping I'm answering the question. Yes.

And just to throw in a few words in defense of my own personal view of local autonomous independent church government outside of the hierarchy of a denomination or presbytery, a lot of this depends on if a local church is practicing discipline the way they should be.

I know that Reformed Baptists are well known for conducting church discipline.

I myself was under church discipline over a decade ago when

I backslid into the wickedness of habitual drunkenness, and I was put under church discipline, and it saved my life.

Thank God it was used of God to bring me to repentance. But I don't think that you need a denominational structure or a presbytery to enforce discipline on anybody.

To be fair, I would agree with you there, brother, because that's one of the problems is many of the churches that this particular sister was describing, many of them don't practice church discipline, and in 1689

Reformed Baptist churches, that's what you usually will. Church discipline will be practiced. And so that's why

I would defend my Reformed Baptist brothers on that one because you don't see that nearly as often in a

Reformed Baptist church. And another person, and you could correct me if I'm wrong if you are aware,

I believe Oral Roberts was always a member of the United Methodist denomination.

I know he was at one time. I don't know if he was to his dying day, but I do know that he was a member of the

UMC for a lot of years. Chris, to be honest,

I'm not clear on whether that he remained affiliated with them when he told the day he died though.

Yeah, I remember that I was concerned years ago when

I had some hope for conservative evangelical members of the

United Methodist church before their more recent big split where many who were biblically faithful on sexual morality and things like that entered into a new denomination called the

Global Methodist Church. In fact, I interviewed one of their leading figures. But I remember years ago reading a magazine that was a publication from within the

United Methodist church that was promoting conservative evangelicalism within that denomination.

But I remember that most of what I was seeing in the magazine was

Word of Faith based charismatic stuff. And I think honestly, and this is pure speculation,

Chris, but I think one of the weaknesses of the United Methodist church, even on a historical level, is

Arminianism. I mean, I don't really know how else to say it. Because, I mean, it's no disrespect to the many

Methodist brothers and sisters that are genuine Christians. But part of the problem is

Word of Faith is really Arminianism taken to a real extreme. It's kind of Arminianism almost taken to a logical conclusion because it really, and they even like to quote

John Wesley. And to be fair, I don't know whether John Wesley actually said this or not, but they would often quote

John Wesley as saying that it appears that God can't do anything unless one asks him first.

And they like to, they love to quote John Wesley on that and other things. And again, like I said, to be fair,

I haven't verified if John Wesley actually said that. But it really makes sense if you take

Word of Faith to its logical conclusion. I mean, it goes, you really have, if you have a low view of the sovereignty of God, I mean, it wouldn't surprise me that it would be easy for a

Methodist to make that error. And it just reminded me that I was at a Bible conference on Saturday at a

Reformed church, Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

And they had a Banner of Truth book table in the basement. And one of the books,

Banner of Truth, which is a thoroughly Reformed publisher. Absolutely.

One of the books was a biography of John Wesley by Ian Murray. So I was very interested upon seeing it to pick that up eventually and read it because perhaps that will give a more unbiased approach to Wesley.

And I know that Ian Murray is a faithful, honest man of integrity. So I don't think that he would distort the facts about Wesley, even though he is not himself

Wesleyan. But anyway, I just thought I'd mention that in case you want to look it up yourself.

But we have to go to our final break. If you have a question, submit it immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Well, we are now back with my guest, Daniel Jones, for the final portion of today's interview on his testimony of how he left the

Word of Faith movement. If you could, this is the most important part of the discussion, that you discovered the truth, the doctrines of sovereign grace, and you wound up being transformed by this new and biblical theology, and you wound up joining

Draper's Valley Presbyterian Church, a Presbyterian Church in America congregation in Draper, Virginia.

So tell us about that specific element of your story, the most important part of all. Well, it's really an incredible story.

I actually told a friend the other day, if you told me 10 years ago I was going to be a Calvinist and a Cessationist, I would have told you you were nuts.

I mean, but honestly, brother, I wasn't looking to be

Reformed, but it's just kind of where it led, as I studied Scripture and studied what those that have gone before us have said.

I saw a great quote by John MacArthur, where he said, he became a

Calvinist because the Bible left him no choice. Absolutely.

Really, I mean, one of the things that really pushed me towards that was, I mean,

I discovered some good brothers like Justin Peters and even John MacArthur, but it was actually a mutual friend of ours,

Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah. I discovered his YouTube channel and began watching it.

And I contacted him one day, and I just told him, I really appreciate your work, and I told him kind of a little bit about my background.

And I told him at the time, I'm not a Calvinist, but I figured he was being a Presbyterian, but I respect

John Calvin because I did. I mean, thought he was a great part of church history and always had a high respect for him. Matter of fact,

I named my son Calvin for that reason. But he and I began to have discussions, and over many discussions, and he pointed me to some resources, and as I began to study

Scripture and church history, I began to lean that way.

What finally I would say, if you want, I don't know the best word for it is put the final nail in the coffin, but I watched the documentary

Amazing Grace, the History and Theology of Calvinism. That was co -created by our dear friend

Jerry Johnson, who we mentioned earlier. Absolutely. And Jerry and their whole team just did an incredible job with it.

But I can tell you the moment that the switch flipped, so to speak, was there was a scene in the documentary where they were sitting at a grave—they were talking about the difference between being—we're not spiritually sick needing a physician, we're spiritually dead needing a resurrection, as D.

James Kennedy so well articulated in the documentary. There was a scene where they were sitting at a graveyard offering free resurrections to all the people in the graves.

Well, as you might imagine, they didn't have any takers, because they can't—there's no way that the people in the graves that are dead can accept that offer.

And finally, it was when I saw that that it just clicked with me, that we're born dead in trespasses and sins.

Our wills aren't really all that free. We're free to make decisions, but we're free to sin, really.

I mean, our decisions are sinful. Even our good works are tainted with sin. And all of it just kind of clicked for me. Everything I'd kind of been reading up to that point, and actually at that point,

I called Jason up, and I said, Brother, I guess I'm a reluctant Reformed Baptist, because at the time, that's kind of how

I became Reformed, was as a Reformed Baptist. Of course, now I'm Presbyterian, but it just— that was the moment it clicked, and it was over a lot of research, because when

I first left the Word of Faith, my mindset at the time was, the Bible's true, Jesus is Lord, but I'm not really sure how to read the

Bible. But I didn't question it was God's Word. And as I began to understand how those who have gone before us and many of the faithful Bible teachers and scholars today, as they exposited

Scripture, I don't think I could have really come to any other conclusion other than the historic

Reformed faith. So that's kind of the short answer of it. Praise God.

How did you even— well, I guess you found the

Drapers Presbyterian Church through the documentary that Jerry was involved in.

No, actually, I just recently—we moved to Hillsville, Virginia, and we started attending Drapers Valley, but it was actually a local

Reformed Baptist pastor that told me about Drapers Valley. And so I'm like,

I didn't even know there was a PCA church in the area, because I'm like, we need a Reformed church. So we'd attended that church a little bit.

Somebody at that church had told me about Drapers Valley, so we visited and I'd actually met Jerry, although I'd known who he was for many years, going back to when

I watched their documentary, The Marks of a Cult, back many years ago. And he and I just started talking.

I told him, you know, your film Amazing Grace really helped me to embrace Reformed theology, and he kind of jokingly said, oh,

I'm so sorry. Well, do you have any words that could fit in a minute that you'd like to conclude the program to have most etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners?

Yeah, if you're in the Word of Faith movement right now, I would encourage you to start listening to people who disagree with you.

I know that oftentimes you're hesitant to read things, as I was, that contradict that. But one thing to bear in mind is truth can be verified.

And nobody, as a dear friend of mine, our friend Jason Wallace likes to say, nobody has anything to fear from the truth but liars.

So, if Word of Faith is true, it'll stand up to scrutiny. Amen. Well, if anybody wants to get a hold of my guest

Daniel Jones, they can send an email to me and I can pass it on.

My email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Do you have any other contact information that you care to share?

I mean, they can get a hold of me on my Facebook page. If you send me a message, I'm oftentimes very late in responding, so forgive me, but I will do everything

I can to get back to you. Okay. Well, thank you so much for being such an exquisite guest today.

I want to thank Jerry Johnson again for recommending Daniel to me. I want to remind our listeners that we are in urgent need of your financial help, so please go to irontrepansironradio .com

and click support, and then click to donate now to help us out. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater