American Gospel with Brandon Kimber

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See website for details. You know, we live in times where we have been dealing with being at home and things like that, and we did not want to miss giving you an episode.

01:10

But halfway through the recording, our guest lost internet.

01:16

And we had to switch to a phone conversation to get the rest of the recording. So you will hear an audio change about halfway through.

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However, the content is so good, we did not want you to miss it.

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So stay tuned for The Wrap Report. One, two, three. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host,

01:38

Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity in the

01:45

Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:52

All right, well, I am your host, Andrew Rapoport. Welcome to another Wrap Report.

01:57

We're glad to have you with us. Really looking forward to today, we're gonna have someone on who has produced a film that I could say literally has impacted the world.

02:09

How do I know that? Well, many of you know that I have been travel and I speak, I've traveled around the world.

02:15

But I've gone as far as the Philippines. That's about as far as you can get from where I live. It's literally the other side of the world.

02:23

And even while I was in the Philippines, I had so many people that had been impacted by this film.

02:31

And we're talking about it. So many that said they came out of charismania because of it.

02:38

They were so involved in a false gospel. And that film is

02:43

American Gospel, which kind of sounds weird. It's American Gospel, and yet, they're having this problem in Philippines, in Mexico, and everywhere else.

02:53

But I wanna welcome Brandon Kimber, who is really the director, the one that I've at least seen behind the camera all the time.

02:59

I've never seen anyone else when I've seen him filming. So I think he's a one -man shop. He says he's not, but I think it's all his brainchild.

03:06

But Brandon, welcome to the Wrap Report. Thanks for having me, Andrew. So literally, you call this

03:12

American Gospel. This has literally impacted the entire world. This issue that you presented as an

03:19

American Gospel issue has been an issue that really, we end up seeing everywhere.

03:25

You started with your first film, which was Christ Alone, which has been out since 2018.

03:30

But today, we wanna talk about your second one, the Christ Crucified, which came out just last year.

03:37

But I wanna first ask, what was your thinking? Why did you start the

03:42

American Gospel, which I guess right now is kind of a trilogy, but maybe not, because I know you're working on a third one.

03:49

So what was your thinking? Why'd you start it, and did you ever think it would have the impact that it has?

03:56

Well, this started really based on my own experience in struggling to understand the gospel here in America.

04:06

I grew up in that kind of charismatic, hyper -charismatic type of church, influenced by the word of faith doctrine.

04:16

I would say that the gospel wasn't very clear. There was a really unbalanced view of God.

04:24

I didn't really understand how grace and justice and righteousness kind of worked together in the gospel message, in the cross.

04:32

I think my old pastor was very focused on grace. He would be the kind of guy that would say the

04:40

God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New. He'd say things like, I'm a New Testament preacher, not an

04:46

Old Testament preacher. But I was aware and heard about the reality of hell.

04:52

I think at a young age, my parents took us to this play called Heaven's Gates and Hell's Flames, where it's kind of like you see stories of people dying and then standing before God, and they either go to heaven or hell.

05:08

I think that was pretty terrifying for me. But it led me into this idea that you needed to ask

05:14

Jesus into your heart to become a Christian. And I was very confused by that, probably said that prayer hundreds of times.

05:22

And it wasn't until I was in college where I was introduced to the clear gospel through the internet and just discovering sermons online.

05:34

And it was just a journey of hearing the gospel that way and slowly realizing that the church that I was in was preaching moralism, basically, like moralistic preaching.

05:49

Eventually, I left that church. Even at the end of creating that first film, we left that church just through this whole process.

05:59

But yeah, like you said, the impact has been incredible. It's in about 16 languages right now.

06:07

People all over the world are reaching out, volunteering to do translation for subtitles.

06:14

It's just been, by God's grace, I did not expect this at all, but it's had a huge impact.

06:20

Well, let's start with just briefly, because maybe someone's listening and they haven't watched the first one.

06:27

The first one, you actually started with a project where you kind of put out a trailer, you interviewed some people, get some folks, and put that out for kind of a concept,

06:38

I guess, for people like who you ended up getting in there, because you got some pretty big names in the first and the second one.

06:46

I think the second one maybe even more so, but just for folks who may not know, just for a background really quick, what was the background of how you put that together?

06:54

How did you end up landing some of the interviews you did? Were people just like, oh, I want to be in that?

07:00

Or were they a little bit fearful? Because I think there's at least one person who's a little bit fearful. Yeah, the process was pretty difficult,

07:12

I think over the course of three or four years. And I started in 2015 and started doing research and reaching out to people.

07:22

And I started interviewing people, pastors, and friends of mine kind of locally in my area.

07:29

And I created a concept trailer using those interviews along with like clips of some of the bigger named people.

07:37

And I put that out there as just kind of a way to show people the direction of the project.

07:44

The problem I encountered was when a complete stranger, a nobody contacts you to do an interview about the gospel,

07:52

I don't blame, I wouldn't blame a person for not trusting me because this is a topic about eternity and you don't want someone to take your words out of context, make you look like a heretic.

08:04

So I had some difficulty in getting people to participate. The one example would be maybe

08:11

Paul Washer. I think he had some negative experience in being involved in a film before where the producer of that film turned out to be a cult leader or something and they wanted to get him out of that film and were having some legal issues with that.

08:27

So he didn't wanna deal with the trouble of being in another film. So he declined at first.

08:34

But I ended up going and visiting his church which was nearby my in -laws in Virginia and I talked with them in person.

08:45

And eventually we made an agreement that he would do an interview, but he would hold off on signing his appearance release until after he saw the completed film and approved.

08:56

And so I kind of used that as a way to get people, anyone who maybe was having trust issues,

09:04

I just offered, you don't have to sign your appearance release until after you see how

09:10

I use your footage. So that really helps, especially with the second film where I interviewed people who were in the progressive camp.

09:17

Yeah, well, you're a pretty intimidating guy. I've been around you, you're very intimidating. You know, one of the things is that you did this one that we wanna talk about, the

09:31

Christ crucified. One of the things that I saw in this when

09:37

I saw the film and you and I have talked about privately was the fact that you did allow these guys to explain their view.

09:46

I mean, I would say a good portion, maybe quarter of the film is actually the progressive Christians making their case and then clearly being completely shot down by the likes of every solid, you had

10:00

Paul Washer, you had Phil Johnson, you had Justin Peters, there's even

10:05

MacArthur in there. I mean, you got the heavy hitters to just like, okay, let's demolish what they said.

10:12

But I think one of the things that you did so well is let them speak, is to let them be able to say in their own words and you gave enough to give that they have the context.

10:23

I mean, this is one of the things that I hear about my book, What Do They Believe, is I know that most people don't have a

10:30

Quran or a Book of Mormon or things like that, so when I would quote these things, I didn't just give a small quote,

10:35

I gave a lengthy quote so people saw the context. And I've had a lot of people tell me that was helpful because when they do share the gospel with a

10:43

Jehovah Witness or a Mormon or someone like that, they're not just grabbing one quote, they saw the context, so they were able to understand that and that helped in sharing the gospel.

10:52

I think one of the things that you did that was just brilliant is that you let them speak.

10:58

Did you get pushback on that? Not everyone likes that, yes. Yeah, because that's,

11:05

I mean, I'm sitting there and I'm sure going, okay, I bet there's a lot of people that went, no, this is, you're letting them evangelize.

11:13

So go through why you chose to do that and what was some of the pushback you got?

11:18

Well, for one, I kind of understand when you're listening to people speak falsely about the truth, you're gonna wanna pull your hair out if you have any hair.

11:30

The reason I decided to let them speak was I really feel like it's a good apologetic tool to be able to understand the progressive argument because when you have a conversation with a friend who identifies as a progressive

11:51

Christian, you wanna know and understand their thinking and I really thought that having the film kind of like a debate format would really help people understand the full, the differences between each side and their understanding of the cross, the attributes of God.

12:10

And like you said, some people thought I gave them too much time.

12:16

I feel like every time I allow them to speak something false that I have someone come in and counter it with the truth.

12:25

A lot of this disagreement focuses on the attributes of God. So when we talk about the cross, the atonement, penal substitution, it really comes down to the attributes of God's love versus his justice or you could say love and grace versus justice, righteousness or wrath.

12:47

And one of the guys I interviewed, his name is Tony Jones. He's kind of a leader in the emergent church, progressive

12:54

Christian movement. He is against the doctrine of penal substitution and he throughout the film will say that God doesn't need, he can be loving without his justice or he can forgive without demonstrating his justice.

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So he's trying to kind of pit one attribute against the other. And he goes so far as to say that God doesn't need to be beholden to any attributes at all, that he can just be love.

13:27

He doesn't have to be justice or have just justice. The problem with this is that when we get to the end of the film,

13:35

Tony says, the reason he hates the doctrine of penal substitution is because it makes

13:40

God the author of a terribly unjust system. Well, Tony, you just said that God didn't need to be just.

13:48

So why is it a problem? And you just allowed God to not be beholden to any attribute so he could be unjust if he wants to, but you're complaining that this doctrine makes

14:01

God look unjust. Like you're contradicting yourself right there. So with that, there may be some people who don't even know what progressive

14:10

Christianity is because this may be new for some people, which means they definitely should go out right now and get the film because if you don't know what it is, then you definitely should be checking it out.

14:21

And I should mention that if you want to get the film, you can go to AmericanGospelFilm .com to buy a copy, whether DVD or you could download it from Vimeo or things like that.

14:33

But let's discuss what is progressive Christianity because this is having an effect on more

14:40

Christians than they're aware. Many people don't even know they're in a church that's a progressive

14:45

Christian church because it's such a gradual, deceptive movement.

14:51

So can you give the really kind of just as a broad brush of what people can expect when you say progressive

15:00

Christianity, what exactly is that? And then maybe if like, how do people lead into it?

15:06

Like how do people stumble into slowly getting into progressive Christianity with maybe not even realizing it?

15:13

Yeah, well, progressive Christianity, I think at the core has a different view of the

15:20

Bible. A lot of these guys in this movement will not, they don't believe that the

15:25

Bible is the word of God. They'll say it's written by men and that's it.

15:31

Their view of the Bible is that this is man's view of God that has progressed over time.

15:39

So you go back to the Old Testament and you see difficult things in there where maybe

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God is commanding Israel to use violence against a sinful wicked nation.

15:52

And they're gonna view that as a genocidal God. And they'll think that that's just Israel's understanding of what

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God told them at the time, but that was wrong. They were wrong about that. Now our understanding of God now in the present is much more evolved in a higher and wiser view of God.

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So they'll even get even Paul's view and say that their view has evolved beyond his.

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It's really looking at the Bible as a human book. You might hear,

16:26

I disagree with Paul here and there's this emphasis on the red letters of Jesus that his words are somehow more important than the rest of the

16:37

Bible. The Bible is not the word of God. It's just man's thoughts about God. And really what this comes down to is that the progressive has no objective authority on what is truth.

16:52

It's really just based on their feelings. So all the essential gospel doctrines are really open to be questioned and reinterpreted.

17:05

In this case, in the film, we're talking about the doctrines of hell. We're talking about penal substitution.

17:11

And I would just say that a progressive Christian really denies a lot of these core gospel doctrines.

17:18

If you deny that Christ objectively accomplished an atonement on the cross for your sin, you're left with the cross just being like a moral influence where this is just an example of how

17:32

Jesus was really loving and now you should just be loving. Well, you don't need the cross for that.

17:38

Like any religion can provide a moral example. So the religion of progressive

17:44

Christianity just becomes just love God, love people. That's the law, not the gospel.

17:50

Yeah, you see this in your film. So much of it is that the one word they seem to focus on more than any other, love.

17:58

It's all about love. And yet the thing that I think was shown by you allowing them to speak is the fact that their definition of love is wrong.

18:06

Their definition of penal substitution is wrong. It was good that you let them speak because even though, yes, it is frustrating to listen to these guys, over and over again,

18:18

I'm just wanting to yell at the TV because they're wrong.

18:25

They don't even use proper definitions. Yeah, reinterpreting words and definitions is another problem too.

18:34

And it is frustrating because they're sitting there and saying, well, I think it was either

18:39

Tony or Brett that said at one point, he's like, well, I'm just,

18:45

I don't accept the God like that. And I was just like, you're not God. I mean, they sound exactly like atheists because they're not believers like atheists, some of these guys.

18:57

I can't say all fit into category of unbelievers, but some of the guys you interviewed, I can't believe they're saved because they're fundamentally talking about a very different God.

19:08

When they talk about God's justice and they're saying that that's just, that's bad, like God shouldn't be punishing people.

19:15

What should he do with criminals? Like, I think the real thing with the progressive Christians and tell me if you think

19:22

I'm wrong, but it sure seems like for all of them, the big thing is that they focus on man and not

19:30

God. Do you agree? Yeah, I'd agree. When it comes to their understanding of the nature of man, the attributes of God, they're interpreting the attributes of God, again, through their feelings.

19:48

When it comes to, let me think, the nature of man, a lot of them like Tony Jones will deny the doctrine of original sin.

19:58

So, I mean, if you're generally, if mankind is generally good to begin with, why do we need a savior?

20:06

We don't, we just need a moral influence, right? You could be a Jehovah Witness or a Mormon for that.

20:11

Yeah, and most of them are universalists. So, everyone's going to heaven.

20:17

A lot of them are influenced by a guy named Richard Rohr, who I cover in this film.

20:22

I did not know him before watching the film. And when I was listening to him, and he seems to be the father of all these guys in this movement.

20:33

And I'm just like, man, anyone listening to him that knows the Bible should be able to quickly go, okay, you're just wrong.

20:40

I mean, there's one where you show, you explain, okay, this is what he does. He says, Jesus, he just goes, well, that's not really

20:48

Jesus because he has a different view of Jesus and this universal Christ. So, all he does is when it's convenient for him, it says

20:55

Jesus, but this is really the universal Christ and just replaces it with two different Jesuses.

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If you needed a clear example that he has a different Christ, there it is.

21:08

You can't get much clearer. He splits Christ and Jesus in like a very new age type of way where Christ is kind of this universal,

21:19

I don't know, it's bigger than Jesus. Well, one of the things that I thought was so interesting when I'm sitting there and listening to him talk about the universal

21:29

Christ versus Jesus, the thing that was going through my mind over and over is has he read

21:36

Galatians 1, 9, and 10? If you come with another gospel, another

21:41

Jesus, you're cursed. I mean, it just kept going through my head over and over and over.

21:47

Like, he's actually making it really clear of doing that.

21:52

I mean, that is a perfect example of it. Roar has said his religion is not dependent on the

21:59

Bible. So he's very clear about that. When it comes to his view of Jesus and Christ, listen to this quote on his website.

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He says, if Christ is the kite, Jesus is the person flying the kite and keeping it from escaping away into invisibility.

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If Jesus is the person holding the string, Christ is the great banner in the sky from whom all can draw life, even if they do not recognize the one flying the kite.

22:27

So essentially he's saying you can be in Christ and understand the

22:33

Christ without recognizing who Jesus is. So he's divided the two so much that you can be in any religion.

22:42

He's a perennialist. Basically, like all religions share a single divine truth.

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Even though they might have differences externally, but they all share some type of core divine truth.

22:55

And so you can find the Christ in whatever religion you practice.

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He's also what's called a panentheist, which it's not pantheism.

23:08

Like pantheism is everything is God. So panentheism would be all in God.

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So he says Christ is another name for every thing. So any physical object that you see in this universe is

23:25

Christ. Every person is Christ. So his view is like, everyone's already in Christ.

23:32

We don't need an atonement. And that's a different gospel. Yeah, I would say so.

23:38

After this break, what I wanna do is hone in on something that you said about the attributes of God, because that is central.

23:47

And for folks that need to be able to spot this stuff or any false theology, it is always gonna be found in the attributes of God.

23:55

So let's pick that up right after this break. Ding dong, Jehovah's Witnesses.

24:00

Ding dong, Mormons. Christian, are you ready to defend the faith when false religions ring your doorbell?

24:08

Do you know what your Muslim and Jewish friends believe? You will if you get Andrew Rappaport's book,

24:15

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24:22

And you will get Andrew Rappaport's book at whatdotheybelieve .com. Can you answer the following questions for your children or for the person to whom you are witnessing?

24:33

Number one, is the New Testament reliable? Two, can you explain the Trinity to me?

24:38

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24:51

Get your copy at whatdowebelievebook .com, whatdowebelievebook .com.

24:57

All right, thank you, Todd. So let's get to this. When we look at, I've always said, when we look at any theological system, you look at any theological discussion, debate, you wanna look at Calvinism, Arminianism, you wanna look at charismatic, non -charismatic, any of it.

25:16

I always teach people, when I teach systematic theology, is to go back to the attributes of God. You're always going to find that false theologies have a problem somewhere in the attributes of God.

25:30

You know, when I look at people that'll say, oh, God looked down the tunnels of time and saw who was gonna be saved and who wasn't, and he elected that person based on what they were gonna do.

25:41

Well, when I hear that, I just go, okay, so is God bound by time? Is he a being that's outside of time or is he bound by time, that he's gotta look down the tunnels of time?

25:50

That means he's no longer eternal. And then the second question is, is he not omniscient?

25:57

Like, he had to see what you would do to know what he was gonna do. So he had to learn something.

26:03

Even if he had to look down time to learn it, omniscience says God doesn't learn things, he knows things.

26:09

So right there, when people say that, I go, you got a different God than the God of the Bible because you have a God that's not eternal and not omniscient.

26:17

And so I can always break things down that way. It's like, go to the attributes of God and you can see where there's problems.

26:24

You've brought this up a couple of times with progressive Christianity and the attributes of God. We already discussed one major one that they have an issue with, which actually works into a second.

26:35

One is God's love. They view that God is love, God is love. They also can't see

26:41

God is wrathful. So when you speak of them and the attributes of God, it's an essential thing because this is really how to identify the problems within progressive

26:51

Christianity. What are the attributes that they have issues with? And both, which ones do they overemphasize?

26:59

Which ones do they ignore? Well, wrath is one of the big ones. I don't think they would deny that there's, that Israel experienced

27:08

God's wrath in the Old Testament. But again, it comes down to their understanding of the

27:15

Bible and because they just think maybe Israel was mistaken in their understanding of God, then they have the freedom to kind of ignore that.

27:27

And I mean, they had this view that somehow the God who had wrath against sin in the

27:33

Old Testament is not the same in the New Testament. Well, I mean, you look at the cross in Romans three, it says that the cross is a demonstration of God's righteousness.

27:48

It's a propitiation, like a sacrifice of atonement that demonstrates that God is righteous.

27:55

Well, why did God need to demonstrate that he was a righteous or just God in the cross?

28:01

Well, it says right there that in his divine forbearance, he passed over the sins previously committed.

28:09

So he forgave all the Old Testament saints prior to the cross because he passed over their sins based on the future payment he was going to make at the cross in the person of Christ.

28:23

So he demonstrates that he's a just God because he's punishing those sins in the person of Christ.

28:31

God is absorbing his own righteous requirements. So wrath, yeah, it's a big thing.

28:38

And you'll see in guys like William Paul Young, who is the author of The Shack, if you've ever seen the film or read the novel, he's denying that God has wrath.

28:52

He's kind of promoting universalism. And he, in a later book called

28:58

Lies We Believe About God, kind of agrees with the progressive view of penal substitution and they call it cosmic child abuse.

29:07

So he will say that if we view the cross as God punishing

29:14

Jesus for our sins, that that is viewing God as a cosmic abuser.

29:21

And really that understanding is based on a lot of, it's a straw man. They're ignoring a lot of things like the

29:27

Trinity and stuff like that. But going back to other attributes of God, I think holiness is a big one.

29:34

They kind of reinterpret. There's a Lutheran theologian named Nadia Boltz Weber, who in her book,

29:41

Shameless, defines holiness as unity and goes as far as to say that like a one night stand because that is the union between two people can be considered holy.

29:57

Whereas the biblical definition of holiness is the opposite.

30:03

God is separate from sin. He's other, transcendent. So they really, by inverting or changing the definitions are just creating a completely different understanding of God.

30:18

It's interesting because you mentioned Young in his book, The Shack, and then his later book. The interesting thing with him, and this really

30:25

I see with a lot of these guys, progressive Christianity is really a good title for their movement because they are in progression.

30:34

They're never staying where they're at. They're always moving further and further liberal.

30:40

And Paul Young is a good example because when he came out with The Shack, there was the teaching of universalism in that book.

30:47

And when the book came out, he denied it. People were challenging him on it. He was trying to sound like he was still conservative.

30:55

And people were saying, no, your book teaches this. You have a different view of the Trinity. You have a different view of salvation.

31:01

You have a different view of redemption. And at the time The Shack came out, he was still trying to deny that, walk this tightrope.

31:09

But you see the progression now in his second book because now he's dropped the facade.

31:17

Now he's endorsing universalism. And all the things that everyone said, it was in his first book, we now see he's clearly promoting in the second book.

31:27

And these guys never stop. I mean, it goes from denying these areas. I do find that so many in this movement want to embrace homosexuality.

31:37

I don't know what the fascination is there other than the fact that they just love to sound like they're

31:42

Christian and make it sound like, really they're a tool of demons because they're trying to be wolves among the sheep.

31:52

They wanna say they're Christian. And yet what they wanna do is get everyone away from the

31:58

Bible and the gospel. They - It's really kind of like trying to mirror the culture.

32:04

They want culture to accept them. So they have to be like the culture.

32:09

And if the gospel is offensive, you can't adjust it to make it sound nicer to people.

32:18

That's not how they're gonna come to Christ. No, it's not. But so many people, this is what they think.

32:25

And you're right. I mean, the quote that I'm very well known for is a quote that I had said at a conference many years ago.

32:32

But people don't water down the gospel because they care about people's souls. They do it because they wanna be liked.

32:40

Exactly. And this is the thing. They want people to like them and not to like Christ.

32:47

So their view is so different. It's wrong. You're right about them wanting to fit in with the culture.

32:54

Is the culture really accepting of them though? Well, if your version of Christianity, if in that version of Christianity, you deny the stumbling block of the cross and your religion just becomes love

33:07

God, love people, obey the law, that, I mean, you just made Christianity like every other religion in the world, a works -based religion.

33:16

And so I think, yes, it would be accepted by the world because you removed the offense and you've made it like everyone else's religion.

33:24

And this is what I think guys like Joel Osteen have tried to do, tried to make it more acceptable, tried to make it more palatable.

33:32

And they've shown that they can get large crowds with that. But I tend to think that it's palatable.

33:39

But when I look at, I'll look at, for example, whether it be by a logos, when it comes to people trying to merge evolution and the

33:47

Bible, or if I look at progressive Christianity, where they're trying to argue that homosexuality can fit with the

33:54

Bible. I think there's a culture that is willing to utilize them to attack

33:59

Christianity. But I don't think the culture is actually accepting of them. I think it's palatable and it serves their purpose.

34:08

Do you think that the ultimate goal for progressive Christians is to, in their mind, do you think their goal is to eradicate biblical

34:20

Christianity? Or is that just, in your interviews, do you think it's just they actually have good intentions?

34:25

They think this is what the Bible actually believes? And they just think that if everyone believes like them, they would, all of Christianity would be better.

34:33

I mean, are they, so I guess the question is, are they so deceived into believing what they say?

34:39

Or do you think that there really is, for some of them, there really is the knowledge, like we would say this when we talk about word of faith.

34:46

There's some that are really deceived into thinking this is the gospel, that you should be healthy, wealthy, and prosperous, wise, all that stuff.

34:54

But there's those that clearly know they're just ripping people off. Do you think with the progressive

35:00

Christians that they know or that they're deceived? Oh, that's a tough question.

35:07

I mean, the Bible talks about being, you know, deceiving and being deceived. So there could be a combination of both.

35:14

I really see a lot of progressives really have like an animosity toward the

35:19

Bible and just fundamentalism. It's tough to say.

35:25

I mean, I think if you look at Bart Campolo, for example, I think Bart shows that the pathway of progressive

35:33

Christianity leads to atheism. And Bart maybe was deceived into thinking that his version of Christianity was, like it was still okay to call himself a

35:44

Christian. But at some point he realized that, look, I'm denying all these doctrines.

35:50

I've kind of crafted my own version of God. Why should I continue this?

35:57

Why not be honest and just call myself an atheist or a secular humanist? And that's really why

36:02

I used him in the film is to call progressive Christians to kind of make a choice.

36:09

And in the film he says, why don't you come over and join me? Like there's all these people trying to reform the church by making it more progressive, but really you're just crafting this

36:21

God based on your imagination who looks just like you. You might as well just be an atheist.

36:27

I mean, if you don't have this objective definition or standard of what

36:32

Christianity is, you've just made your own religion. And I think that's why Bart's story is helpful in seeing that.

36:41

And it's better to be honest like he has than to remain in the

36:47

Christian world, calling yourself a Christian, writing books as if you're a Christian and deceiving the church from within.

36:54

But it's hard to say, like I guess it maybe depends on the person, whether they know what they're doing or if they're deceived themselves.

37:04

And I think that's really the key. Bart is that good example. They are progressing from typically a conservative

37:11

Christianity to atheism. Now in Bart's case, I think he was already started down the road of liberalism with his father, who's not a solid

37:21

Christian. Not now for sure. Tony Campillo, we've done episodes here on The Wrap Report on red letter

37:27

Christianity, which is something he focuses on. But even that you can kind of see where Bart would get some of this stuff where his father would be like, well, we only look at the red, somehow the red letters of the

37:38

Bible are more important. Like forgetting the fact that God wrote the whole thing. It's all red letters.

37:43

Yeah. So I could see why kind of Bart is further along the path than some of these other guys, but you've showed

37:52

Rob Bell, who people, it's so funny that you even put in there the comment from John Piper saying goodbye to Rob Bell.

38:03

And people were so upset. How could you write him off? Because John Piper saw where he was headed and guess who was right?

38:10

It was John Piper. Because now Rob Bell, he just denies everything. It was just hell at first, but now it's, but again, what was the name of his book?

38:19

Love Wins. And so it's all about love. Love Wins, hey, it's great. And the deception in that book, when

38:28

John Piper tweeted that farewell Rob Bell, a lot of the pushback from the progressives were like, well, you didn't read the book.

38:38

You just saw the trailer. And then they argued that the book never really had a conclusion about how it was just asking questions.

38:46

But I mean, again, what's the title of the book? Love Wins, back to the whole love versus justice thing.

38:53

There's your first clue. And if you watch the trailer of his Love Wins book trailer, he's essentially denying the doctrine of penal substitution in there in the form of questions.

39:06

So he's questioning things, but there's an obvious answer. He is saying this view of God is wrong and unhelpful.

39:14

I mean, he gives his conclusion in that trailer. You didn't need to read the book to see that he was departing from a biblical understanding of the gospel.

39:24

Yeah, and you can see this over and over and over again. I refer to this, when

39:29

I'm on the streets, as you know, I do the open air. And when I am out there, I talk about the false gospel of God is love, because that's really what it is.

39:40

It is a false gospel where they overemphasize the love of God to say,

39:46

God will treat me like a spoiled brat. God will give me everything I want because I'm so deserving.

39:53

I'm so wonderful. I'm so loving. God should do everything for me because God created the entire universe with me in mind.

40:01

He was on the cross with me in mind. Everything he does is for me. And then they say, but we shouldn't be selfish.

40:09

You know, you've redefined everything by you. You listen to the songs they sing.

40:16

Listen to the messages they proclaim. It's all about me. And that's exactly anathema to the gospel.

40:25

That's mutually exclusive to the gospel. The gospel is dying to self, not lifting up of self.

40:32

And this is at its core, the problem I have with progressive

40:38

Christianity because it sounds good. It sounds so caring. It sounds so loving.

40:43

It's, oh, look at this great God that he is. And yet it's a different God than the

40:49

God of the Bible, but it's deceptively so in such a way that people don't recognize that they've just been given poison.

40:58

It is, I was gonna say we could use the example if I give you a drink of water, but I added a little cyanide, would you do it?

41:04

But I guess nowadays, it would be, if I gave you a little coronavirus, would you take it? But right,

41:11

I mean, it doesn't matter how much, even if it's just a little, if you know it's poison, you're not taking it.

41:18

This is what it is. Satan comes as an angel of light. He's never gonna come dressed in a red suit with horns and a pitchfork.

41:28

He always comes as an angel of light, looking good, having a message that sounds so good, and yet it is poison.

41:37

And that's what progressive Christianity is. It's a poison. It progresses you from a biblical message to a message that's gonna condemn someone to hell.

41:46

That's why I think it's so important. That's why this film is so important. And let me just, I'll just say again, for folks who, if you haven't gone out yet, go to AmericanGospelFilm .com,

41:59

AmericanGospelFilm .com. You can get the first film,

42:07

Christ Alone, or the second one, Christ Crucified. I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend that you go there.

42:14

There's setups where you can do group viewings, so you could view it in your church. There's all that set up there.

42:19

You definitely wanna make sure you watch this. But I do think, though, that at its core, you've interviewed a lot of these guys.

42:26

Do you find that to be the core issue, that they have a message of self and not a message of Christ?

42:31

Yeah, I think that is the foundational error, man trying to be his own

42:41

God, create his own God. One of the chapters in the second film kind of reminding me what you were just talking about, the last chapter about the glory of God alone.

42:53

And I would say that this problem is not just in progressive Christianity, but you find it in more

43:00

Word of Faith, charismatic churches, more conservative. There's this idea that God's motivation for saving man was because of how valuable man was, that he thought we were worth saving.

43:16

And you just see the opposite in scripture. If you teach that the cross is a revelation of your value, like Todd White does, it becomes all about worshiping yourself.

43:29

You're glorifying man's value rather than God for Christ's value and what he did for you.

43:36

If you look, I think it's in Deuteronomy 7 .7, God tells Israel the reason he saved

43:42

Israel was not because they're more valuable, or greater in number, or that they were worth saving.

43:48

It was just because he loved them. He loves because he loves them. And that makes

43:55

God's love look so much more greater and glorious when his motivation for saving is based on him and not us.

44:02

Because if it's based on us and our merit or our value, that destroys grace because now we've earned his love somehow.

44:10

And again, it's denying original sin. A lot of these guys like William Paul Young, Todd White, they really refuse to acknowledge that man has become worthless, like Romans 3 says.

44:28

No one's good, not even one. All have turned aside together, they have become worthless. Yes, we were created in the image of God, but it's like they're denying that there was a fall and William Paul Young will say that really we don't need to be born again in the sense that our core nature needs to be transformed.

44:50

But he views sin more as like, we're good on the inside, but we have all this external sin covering us up.

44:58

So what we really need is an unveiling of who we already are. So he's viewing man's nature as good and it just needs to be unveiled or we just need to realize who we already are.

45:13

And Todd White will say that same phrase. You just need to know who you are. He'll even say that to non -Christians.

45:20

You just don't know who you are. You're already a son and you just don't know it. But no, Jesus says that those who are not in Christ they're not sons of God, they're sons of the devil.

45:32

And he describes man's nature as being a heart issue.

45:38

The sins flow out of a corrupted heart. Sin is not this external thing to us.

45:43

It's flowing out of our being. Yeah, Dick, for some people listening to this,

45:50

I hope, I hope most of you are going, what? Right?

45:55

Because it just sounds so foreign and it should, because it is. Here's what I want to do. Because I do want to give some time.

46:01

I want to talk about the film you're currently working on for the third film.

46:06

But I want to do that after we play a game. And I want to let you know, no pressure on you. The game, the pressure is on me.

46:13

So let's play a game. It's time now to start the spiritual transition game.

46:22

Okay, Brandon, this is how we play this game. You're going to give me something, whatever it is. And I have to transition from whatever you give me to the gospel.

46:31

And the reason we play this game and we do this on this show is so people realize that there's so many

46:36

Christians that say, oh, I just pray God gives me an opportunity to share the gospel. And then someone walks up to them and goes, so what is it you believe about what happens after we die?

46:42

And they sit there and go, Lord, please give me an opportunity to share the gospel. So the reality is people sit and they wait for opportunities.

46:51

And I argue, you don't have to wait. You can make an opportunity. Every conversation can be a gospel conversation if you practice transitioning from the natural world to the spiritual world and just look to create those opportunities.

47:02

And there's people who think they can't do that. But the more you practice, the better you get at transitioning from the natural world to the spiritual world so that every conversation can be a gospel conversation.

47:14

And so for that reason, we play this game. We make it into a game so it's fun and people like to try to stump me, but I've been doing it for 30 years.

47:22

So I guess I'm getting better at it. So you got to give me anything, anything at all. And I got to try to get from whatever you give me to the gospel.

47:28

And I do not cut this part. There's no editing here. So if you stump me, you stump me. So give me something.

47:36

Anything, let's see, summer vacation. Well, summer vacations right now at the time of this recording, as we're, you know, hunkered down in our homes, not a lot out of our house, they seem like a foreign thing.

47:52

But there are people still hoping and planning. They've made their plans and there's kind of unease with a lot of people right now because they have those plans.

48:02

I had the plan to go to the Grand Canyon and we haven't booked flights because we don't know.

48:08

It's this unknown. We have hope, we have anticipation, but we really don't know for sure.

48:15

And a lot of people actually walk through major things in life that way. There's some things that people, they'll be overconfident.

48:23

People who will sit there and they go to school and they know exactly what job they're going to do when they get out of school.

48:29

They know exactly who they're going to marry. Those are things they really don't know, but they think they do and they try to make those things happen.

48:36

But the one thing that people most often treat with this hope that isn't rational is what happens a second after we die.

48:46

Most people don't even think about that. They plan for their schooling, they plan for career, they plan for marriage, they plan for kids, they plan for retirement, and they don't plan for what happens a second after they die.

48:58

And after we die, it's too late to plan then. We have to plan beforehand. And it's really easy to figure out what happens a second after we die.

49:07

Every single one of us, we lie, we steal, we break God's laws. That would make us a criminal in his sight.

49:14

And because of that, every one of us, me included, would be guilty by God. But God made a way of escape.

49:21

God himself came to earth, died in our place. He took the punishment we owe upon himself that we could be set free.

49:29

We have to turn from trusting ourself as a good person or trusting our good works and trust what Jesus Christ did as the payment of sin on the cross 2 ,000 years ago because he's almighty

49:38

God. He can pay an eternal fine. Because he became a man, he could pay the fine of men. That's what makes him unique.

49:44

And he proved that he was God and that he can offer us the forgiveness of sins by not just dying, but raising himself from the dead three days later.

49:53

So that's how I would go from summer vacations to the gospel.

50:00

Nice. So let's talk about the, in a couple minutes we have left, let's talk about the film you're working on now.

50:06

I've gotten the privilege of seeing a little bit of it because I was standing kind of behind you or off to the side of you trying to see if I can make

50:14

Justin Peters laugh while you ask him serious questions. It was probably why he didn't look at me at all, but.

50:23

But, you know, I get to see you do some of the filming. So I got to see some of the questions that you're asking folks.

50:30

And just from the little bit I saw, I'm really getting, I'm excited to see this one come out. What's the one you're working on now?

50:36

What's the theme of it? Who have you interviewed? I already got the cat out of the bag with one. But, you know, what do you seem to do different with this one?

50:45

Well, the theme is going to be about the Holy Spirit, kind of comparing and contrasting the biblical

50:53

Holy Spirit, true Holy Spirit to the Holy Spirit we see in the

50:59

NAR or the New Apostolic Reformation. So I'm kind of heading back again toward a similar topic of the first film because the

51:08

Word of Faith Movement and the NAR are kind of like, there's some overlap there. Some call it a sister movement.

51:16

So the NAR is kind of the belief in the modern day office of apostle and prophet.

51:23

And within that there are shared beliefs with the Word of Faith Movement.

51:29

So this isn't really, again, it's not really a matter of the debate over the gifts of the

51:37

Spirit and whether they continue or not, or if they cease. These are issues that a lot of them deal directly with the person of Christ.

51:46

And I kind of touched a little bit of that in the first film, but there's an overemphasis on miracles, how miracles relate to Christ and us.

52:00

So for example, you might ask the question, what was the purpose of Christ's miracles?

52:05

So I'd say the biblical answer is these were signs pointing to Christ's deity to prove that he had the authority to forgive sins so that you might believe that he's the son of God.

52:15

So the NAR, the people in that movement would really say the opposite. They'd say

52:21

Christ wasn't trying to prove that he was the Messiah through his miracles. He was just trying to prove what you can do by the power of the

52:28

Spirit. So he wasn't healing the sick to prove that he could, he healed the sick to prove that you could.

52:35

So it twists it to become this man -centered theology that it takes the works of Christ and turns them into how we can have power and dominion over the consequences of sin in this life.

52:48

And you see this in Bethel Church, IHOP, Todd White's Lifestyle Christianity.

52:54

You know, these people think, they take the passage in John 14 about Jesus saying, he who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also at greater works than these he will do because I go to the

53:07

Father. They think that means we can do greater miracles than Jesus. I think the biblical answer is, and you find what

53:15

Jesus means by the works in John, I think it's chapter six, there's a crowd around Jesus and they ask, you know, what should we do that we can work the works of God?

53:28

And Jesus says, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent.

53:33

So the greater works are about the gospel. We've done greater works than Christ in the sense that we've taken the gospel to the nations, whereas Christ only ministered in this local small region over a short period of time, the disciples took it to the nation.

53:50

So it's greater in scope, not greater in like miraculous power because the disciples didn't even do greater works or greater miracles than Jesus.

54:01

No one raised a dead man like Lazarus after multiple days.

54:07

It really, it comes down again to the who is Christ and I've touched this in the first Psalm, it's called

54:14

Canonic Theology. So they view, they would say that Jesus did his miracles and lived his sinless life as a man, not as God.

54:25

So if we ask the question, who did Christ's miracles? I would say the biblical answer is the three persons of the

54:31

Trinity, the father, the son and the Holy Spirit, they all work together. And within that, you could say, you know, it's biblical to say that Christ did his miracles by the power of the

54:41

Holy Spirit. The NAR would say that a born again man by the power of the

54:47

Holy Spirit, that's who Jesus was. He was just a born again man and did his miracles by the power of the

54:53

Spirit. He didn't have his own divine power because he emptied himself of all divinity in the incarnation and only did his miracles by the power of the

55:02

Spirit. So what they're misunderstanding is the Trinity. You know, it's not wrong to say that the

55:08

Holy Spirit is acting in Christ's miracles, because he is, but it's wrong to say that God the

55:13

Son isn't acting or using his own divine power. So the Holy Spirit is the

55:19

Spirit of Christ. In Romans 8, 9, we see that. So if you look at Christ's miracles, you know, when

55:26

I think the leper asked Christ if he was willing to heal him, Christ said, I am willing, be cleansed.

55:33

When he did his miracles, like walking on water, where or who received the worship in response to those miracles?

55:41

Well, it says the disciples worshiped him saying, truly you are the Son of God. So if he was just a man with the

55:48

Holy Spirit, like us or the apostles, he wouldn't, he would have rebuked the disciples and turned, you know, the worship away from himself and directed it toward God.

55:58

But no, he received that worship because he is God the Son. And prior to the incarnation and during the incarnation, he always did his works, his miracles from the

56:10

Father by the Spirit. They all, the Trinity does their works together. So really the key misunderstanding here in the

56:18

NAR is who is Christ and how is he doing his works on earth? And so then their distorted version of this makes them think that they are basically like little gods that can do the same or greater things than Jesus.

56:33

And so the focus all becomes about us trying to do miracles and healing. And it gets directed away from us proclaiming the truth about Christ.

56:42

You know, this is sounding so similar to what we just got done talking about with progressive Christianity. It's right back to all about me and a misunderstanding of the attributes of God.

56:52

And I mean, this is why when I started studying systematic theology, I came out of the charismatic movement.

56:59

From my Jewish background, I got into, got to college and the only people I knew were charismatic and word of faith.

57:05

And I thought they knew better than me. So I just was believing what they were saying. And I would just remember a conversation with two people.

57:11

I wasn't even involved in the conversation. But one guy just said, not everyone believes that tongues are for today.

57:17

And I was like, really? I didn't know there were different views on that. So I went and just read 1 Corinthians 12, 13, 14.

57:23

I went, this is wrong. Everything I was taught, like these chapters actually condemn, not support. And so it was just immediate.

57:30

I just walked away. But I said, I never wanted to be deceived. I was like, how can I know that I wouldn't be deceived anymore?

57:36

And I spent the next four years reading everything I could get my hands on on hermeneutics, how to interpret the

57:42

Bible. And one of the things that came out of it was when I started, I said, okay, I want to start studying theology because I don't want to be fooled there either.

57:50

And one of the things I ended up realizing as I started studying different theology books and systematic theologies was

57:56

I started seeing that everything goes back to the attributes of God. So I put the theology on the side for a bit and I spent six years reading every book, anything

58:05

I could get on attributes of God. Because I said, if I can understand that, then when

58:11

I enter into studying the different theological positions, I would sit there and be able to just compare it back to this attribute, this attribute, this attribute.

58:18

And that has been so invaluable to me because you're seeing it with what you're saying. This is now your third movie and the same two issues are coming up, self and attributes of God.

58:31

I mean, it's almost like saying, well, there's nothing new that you could say. It's almost like whatever system that you're presenting, it's the same thing that you go back to.

58:43

And when you go back to them, this is here, this is going to be there every time. It's the deification of man or demotion of God or demotion of Christ.

58:54

That's right. The same thing as in progressive Christianity, you know, where Richard Rohr is saying that everyone is

59:01

Christ or is in Christ. That's a deification of man. So, yeah, if we're understanding the gospel correctly, a man is in a very low place.

59:12

And it goes back to that first lie in the garden. You will be like God. Well, I'm looking forward to this next film coming out and having you back on to talk about that one.

59:21

Maybe we could get you on before it actually releases to pump it up. That would, of course, mean that I would have to get an advanced copy, just saying.

59:31

Hey, I'm trying here, folks. I'm trying. Hey, Brendan, thanks for coming on. I really, really appreciate the work that you have done on the first two films.

59:41

Looking forward to a third. And I, again, want to encourage everybody to go out to AmericanGospelFilm .com

59:50

and get your copy today of both film one and film two.

59:56

Make sure you get both of them. You do not want to miss this. You want to make sure that you watch both

01:00:02

American Gospel, Christ Alone, American Gospel, Christ Crucified. What's the third one going to be called?

01:00:08

We'll end on that. Do you know yet? Well, I do, but I don't know if I want to say it yet.

01:00:14

Okay, so that is, folks, stay tuned. Make sure you subscribe to The Wrap Report because it sounds like maybe, maybe we could try to get him on before and we'll get the title before it actually comes out.

01:00:26

We'll try desperately. We'll work on him, we'll work on him. But make sure you go out to AmericanGospelFilm .com

01:00:34

and get the two films that are out today. Hey, you're stuck at home? Download them and watch them with your family.

01:00:41

It's a great thing to do, better than anything else you're going to find on Netflix anyway. So until next time, just remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

01:00:52

And you know what, Brendan? What? That's a wrap. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry.

01:00:57

For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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What was that website again? Wedovaccines .com. Thanks, I'll check it out.

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