Pastor Joel Webbin and Justin Peters critique the Discovery Plus documentary on Hillsong, arguing secular outlets mishandle ecclesiastical judgments while ignoring deeper theological failures like false prophecy. They condemn leaders such as Brian Houston and Carl Lentz for linking sexual immorality to bad doctrine and vanity, contrasting this with biblical calls to mortify the flesh. Emphasizing Matthew 18, they insist true churches must enforce fair discipline rather than hiding sins or relying on aesthetic distractions. Ultimately, those leaving weak congregations like Hillsong should not attempt internal reform but seek local churches with plural elders for proper shepherding and Word-centered worship. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
Text
Theological Problems Exposed00:15:20
Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
If you've been blessed by our content and you like this show, would you take just a brief moment and leave us a five star review?
This is quite possibly the most effective thing that you can do to ensure that this content gets out to as many people as possible.
Thanks.
All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
In this episode, I was very privileged to have Justin Peters from Justin Peters Ministries, and we talk about the continued implosion at Hillsong.
Many of you are aware that a very popular documentary has dropped, it's gotten a lot of attention called Hillsong, a megachurch exposed.
But the reality is, there's a lot more that needs to be exposed.
And it needs to be exposed by those who are fit to expose it.
And I know that sounds self serving.
Maybe I'll put more of that on Justin.
He's the one who's fit.
But I think by God's grace, I'm fit to expose these things too.
And what I primarily mean about that is not that Justin and I are the only Christians fit, but Christians fit.
Are fit.
We don't need pagans to render judgments about spiritual matters.
We don't.
So Discovery Plus is a secular organization.
It's a secular group.
And I'm sure that they got many things correct, that many things are accurate in their documentary.
But this is the very thing that Paul condemns in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, where he says, You guys are going to court, taking one another to court.
And Paul's not just condemning.
Their fleshly carnal desires that they're not willing to, you know, just why not rather be wronged and just allow your brother to, you know, be the bigger man, right?
So Paul condemns their selfishness, their vanity, their carnality.
But it's not just that.
Paul condemns that they are taking spiritual matters before the courts of pagans.
He says, Is there no one wise among you to judge these matters?
Do you not know that you will one day judge angels, meaning you Christians, the church?
We kind of want to focus in this episode.
What are some of the things that this documentary missed?
And we would both argue that the spiritual matters, the most important matters, were in large part missed.
And those are the things that need to be talked about.
So, without further ado, let's welcome to the show, Justin Peters.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries, and I am privileged to have, once again, returning, I believe now for the third or fourth time to our show, Justin Peters.
Justin, thanks for coming on the show.
Thank you for the invitation, Joel.
It's good to be with you again, brother.
Great.
Good to see you.
It looks like you're doing well.
You live in Wyoming, right?
Or Montana.
Montana.
Yep, Montana.
One state north.
That sounds like a good place to be.
It is.
It is.
It's a beautiful place.
We actually got a little bit of snow yesterday.
Cool.
Parts east of here got a lot of snow.
We were just kind of on the edge of it.
Cool.
So you're getting snow in Texas where I am.
We've been getting tornadoes.
That's what I hear.
Snow sounds pretty good compared to.
But I say that, but a year ago we had the infamous Texas freeze.
And we're not prepared for that.
Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to Kenneth Copeland's ministry.
Oh, did it?
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
Which is interesting because, of course, he claims to be able to control the weather.
Yeah, that's a bit of divine irony there.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, that doesn't surprise me at all.
Okay, so the reason I wanted to have you on me and you, we talked offline a little bit about this, but there was recently Discovery Plus did a three part series, I believe it is, but a three part series called Hillsong, a mega church exposed.
And I wanted to talk about it a little bit with you because not even so much to intricately pick apart the documentary or anything like that, but you've been talking about Hillsong a lot longer before it ever became cool.
And you and I both, you know, we're first and foremost Christians.
And when it comes to judging these kinds of things, I just am skeptical.
I heard that the documentary did a good job in many regards, but I am always skeptical of non Christians, of pagans rendering judgments about spiritual things, right?
Same kind of thing.
Now, this might offend some of my listeners, but Christianity today, you know, they did the rise and fall of Mars Hill.
And I'll make my statement again.
I'm skeptical when pagans render judgments about spiritual things.
I would prefer for a biblically orthodox, sound, courageous group of Christians to give a fair shake.
I think Mark Driscoll made some real mistakes, but I don't want the feminist at Christianity today talking about how Mark Driscoll has toxic masculinity.
You know what I mean?
It's just like, who are you to.
So the basis for all of this that I'm thinking about is 1 Corinthians 6, verse 4.
Says, when one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?
Or do you know that the saints will judge the world?
And if the world is to be judged by you, the saints, are you incompetent to try these smaller, trivial cases?
Do you not know that we are to judge angels?
How much more than matters pertaining to this life?
So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church?
And so, all that being said, I'm going to give it to you, but my point is.
You know, Paul, he certainly condemns the carnal, fleshly desire of lawsuits and always being about who's right and who's wrong.
So he has that judgment to render to the Corinthians saying, why not rather just drop it?
Why not rather be wronged?
But that's not the only thing that he condemns the fleshly, carnal desire for the self.
He also condemns going before the unbeliever to render judgments about spiritual things.
And so it's not that he's just universally against courts.
He's against pagan courts.
We believe in ecclesiastical courts.
We believe in church discipline being rendered by an ecclesiastical court, exercising the keys of the kingdom and rendering righteous judgments.
And so, all that back to the Hillsong, a mega church exposed.
This documentary series has been getting a lot of attention done by Discovery Plus.
I'm sure in God's common grace, there were many good things.
But I think there are other things that we could address as well.
What are your thoughts?
Yeah, absolutely, Joel.
Well, it's really sad.
It's a sad commentary that it took something like Discovery Plus, which is purely secular, to wake professing Christians up to the reality of Hillsong.
You're right.
I mean, I typically don't care much what a secular organization has to say about any church unless it just deals with flat out provable fraud.
But even secular people know enough about Christianity to know that.
Adultery is sinful according to the Bible, and that's what we as Christians teach, rightly so.
And they know enough to know that.
And so when there's a sex scandal involving the quote unquote church, you know, they're all in.
They jump in with both feet and they're, you know, they're fully committed to it.
Not because they don't, Discovery Plus doesn't care, nor do they even understand the nuances of Hillsong's theology as far as them being word of faith and prosperity gospel and, you know, positive confession and, you know, secret sensitive and all that.
They don't, they don't know any of that.
They don't understand it.
And they, I don't care to hear anything they have to say about those issues.
But they know enough to know that Christians believe that adultery is sinful.
And so, and they love to expose Christians as hypocrites.
So, there was nothing altruistic about Discovery Plus doing this.
They just wanted to paint Christians in general in a bad light.
But as I said, it's just, it's really unfortunate it took something like this to get so many professing Christians to wake up to Hillsong.
I mean, the theological problems have been there.
Ever since its inception.
And it is a truly sad commentary on the church, especially churches in our theological circles, Joel, that claim to be conservative and have a high view of the sovereignty of God, high view of scripture, that have been singing Hillsong music for years and they know who they are and they sing their music anyway.
That's the real tragedy here.
I agree.
Yep.
A lot of people probably have some.
Some egg on their face in this moment.
Yeah.
I mean, I can't tell you the kind of blowback I got when I did that interview with Todd Friel a few years ago at the G3 conference.
We did a little interview on Bethlehem Hill song, and somehow it just went viral.
And I haven't looked recently, but I know it's gotten, yeah, somewhere between, I think somewhere between two and three million views.
And so it really went out there and made a lot of.
Made the rounds, made a, you know, threw a big rock in the pond, I guess you could say.
But the blowback I got was just astonishing.
And even from some people who claimed to be, you know, Calvinists to use that term.
And so I guess now they're finally seeing that, oh, well, maybe there is a problem with Hillsong.
Yeah.
Sad commentary that it takes a secular news organization to bring Christians to that understanding when it should have been just.
Obvious to anyone.
Right.
And that principle, that reality that you're espousing is not unique to the particular issue of Hillsong or biblical churches singing Hillsong music.
What you're describing is really just the reality of being a leader, right?
So Jesus says, Your forefathers always killed the prophets.
Was there ever a prophet they didn't kill?
But what happens though is, the next generation.
They all claim to, you know, we love Moses.
We love Abraham.
We love Jeremiah.
We love Isaiah.
Those are our guys.
It's like, those aren't your guys.
Hindsight is a luxury.
Hindsight is 20 20, right?
Everybody's so concerned about being on the right side of history.
Well, it's really easy to just read off the script once the history is already written and everyone's already decided who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.
And then you just paint yourself, of course, I'm one of the good guys.
But what Jesus is saying is, no, no, you're not, because here I am, the capital P prophet.
The prophet of all prophets.
I'm standing before you.
And you want to do with me exactly what your fathers did with Jeremiah and what your fathers did with, you know, just go down the list.
And so, my point is, you know, you getting blowback and pushback with Todd Friel when you did that, you know, that little piece on Hillsong and not singing their music.
I think a lot of people these days, and it's kind of what you were saying, but a lot of people, at least in our camp, they would say that as though it's common knowledge, absolutely common knowledge.
You know, like nobody would really take offense at that.
I mean, maybe a few people, but most people listening to us right now, most of the people in my audience and your audience, they're going to be, oh, yeah, of course.
But But I do think it's important that we honor leaders, you know, prophets, leaders, you know, lowercase p, but those who actually lead the way.
Part of the reason why it's common knowledge today, and I can say something like that today and not get a lot of blowback, is because you, three, four years ago, whenever it was, got a lot of blowback.
Same with critical race theory, right?
I mean, now, like, even the world, aside from Christians, even the world is like, this is madness.
This is insane.
Like, people are talking, there's probably going to be a red tidal wave, you know, come November, you know.
In the voting booths and all these kinds of things.
And I believe it.
I think that's probably because people are just completely fed up.
And everyone, you know, says CRT, just rattling off that phrase CRT and intersectionality and wokeology as though we've been studying, you know, all this stuff for years.
When the reality is, no, no, no, nobody had a clue what any of this was.
A few people led the way and got, they didn't get cheers and applause.
Nobody was throwing parades.
Everybody, they were having to fight on both sides, right?
So they're fighting the enemy.
And then they're fighting Christians behind them, stabbing them in the back, accusing them of being harsh, you know, and all these kinds of things and divisive.
And then finally, the Lord in his mercy and providence, you know, but that's always how it is.
It's extreme.
You're harsh.
You're intolerant.
And then it becomes, oh, well, maybe there's something to that.
And then it's like, oh, this is common knowledge.
We all knew it all along.
Yeah.
And that just seems to be the way it goes.
It absolutely is.
Yeah, it absolutely is.
You know, the issues with Bethel and Hillsong, this is not high level discernment kind of stuff here.
I mean, this is, I mean, they've got a multiple decades long track record of bad theology, of bad ecclesiology, bad pneumatology, I mean, bad everythingology related to anything to the church.
They've got a long track record of this.
They're notorious false prophets, they endorse false teachers.
Have known false teachers speak at their conferences.
They cross pollinate with one another.
This is not high level discernment here.
So, this should be so it's astonishing.
You know, I'm not surprised when a typical kind of mealy mouth, wishy washy, like a Southern Baptist church is very Arminian and has 20 minute sermons and, you know, no church discipline.
I'm not surprised when that kind of a genre of a church.
Plays Bethlehem Hillsong doesn't surprise me at all.
What did surprise me was quite disheartening to see so many people in our circles defend Bethlehem Hillsong.
And, like, really?
You know?
Sheep vs Goats Motives00:08:53
So, and I don't, let me say this I take absolutely no joy in what has happened.
Well, I actually can't say, I started to say I take no joy in what's happened to Hillsong.
That's not entirely true.
I do in this sense that a false church has been.
Finally exposed for being what it is, a false church.
So I guess I do take joy in that.
I don't rejoice in sin, which their whole leadership is just rife with and eaten up with.
I don't take joy in that.
But I guess I do take joy that it's people are finally starting to see what this movement is, what this structure is.
It's not a church.
It's not a church.
It's a goat farm.
It's not a church.
Yep.
Yep.
It's a goat farm.
Yes.
I completely agree.
And it's important, I think, you know, well, even that gets into, you know, we're constantly, everything that we talk about, if it has any serious importance, it deals with theology.
We have to deal with theology.
And it's important for people to recognize that when it comes to conversion, conversion is not in biblical terms.
It is not a goat becoming a sheep.
That's right.
Goats are always goats and sheep are always sheep.
And there's another piece of the puzzle.
There are goats, there are sheep, there are also shepherds and there are wolves.
And so there's only a few players in the game, but it's important to know the pieces on the board and to understand their function, right?
If you're going to play chess and you're going to play it well, you need to know what a bishop does, you need to know what a pawn does.
And goats are always goats.
So conversion is not a goat becoming a sheep.
Jesus says, I have sheep that are not of this fold or not of this pen.
And he's talking about, you know, the lost sheep of Israel, but then there are lost Gentile sheep.
And he said, I must go and find them also, you know, or leaving the 99 for the one.
So when somebody comes to salvation, they're not a goat becoming a sheep.
When someone comes to Christ, it is a lost sheep who is now being found, a dead sheep that is now made alive.
And so when you say a goat farm, what you're saying is there might actually be some sheep there, unconverted sheep, that need to be found.
But a lot of them may just be straight up goats.
Oh, yeah.
And we don't determine that.
We don't know that.
But go ahead.
Sorry.
No, no, no.
You're fine.
No, you're exactly right.
The vast majority are goats.
The only sheep you would find there would be either lost sheep who have not yet been called to the shepherd, and that's what an unconverted person is.
That's what a lost person who, let me say it this way a lost person who will later one day get saved.
Right.
That's what the unconverted elect person.
An unconverted elect person is a sheep.
They're just a lost sheep who have not yet been called to the shepherd.
But the vast majority of people in Bethlehem Hillsong and any of these other similar churches, they're goats.
The only sheep you would find would be either lost sheep who have not yet been called to the shepherd or very young, immature sheep who maybe have gotten saved, but they're young.
They're baby sheep, they're baby Christians, and they don't yet have their theological legs under them.
But the thing about babies is that babies don't stay babies.
Babies grow up, babies mature.
And so you would find zero mature sheep in these false churches.
None.
Because by definition, if they were mature, they wouldn't be in a false church.
That's right.
Maturity would call them out of that church.
And if they stayed there, they either would be, again, unconverted, or if they are converted, they would be stunted in their spiritual maturity.
They would not be able to mature, or greatly hindered.
In their spiritual sanctification.
So let's talk about real quick.
So there's just been pastor after pastor after pastor resigning since the stuff with Brian Houston has come out.
So the big two, the big hitters, the two big hitters are Brian Houston, the founder in Australia, and then Carl Lenz, who was the pastor up in New York City.
And a lot of this thing have come out.
This didn't happen last week.
So it's been headline after headline.
So it's kind of an unfolding story.
So we're not saying, oh man, this bomb just dropped.
So some of our listeners might be, did something new come out?
About Hillsong?
And the answer is not really.
You know, but you could probably wait three or four days.
And, you know, it's like every couple weeks, something.
So it's kind of this unfolding saga of the demise, the implosion of Hillsong.
And so, my point is, it's not just the two big hitters, but what there's been as kind of all the residual, you know, like there'll be a big earthquake, you know, if we were speaking in earthquake terms.
And then there's aftershocks.
And there continues, like for a year, it's just aftershock, aftershock, aftershock.
And part of those aftershocks are all these other pastors resigning.
Without necessarily being caught in a known scandal in terms of an egregious, clear moral failure.
And then there's tons of people who are leaving.
And I guess what I'm getting at is I think there's some more takeaways, some more pieces of the puzzle that Christians need to be aware of.
And even mature believers are like, well, I wasn't singing Hillsong, I wasn't going to Hillsong, that we still can learn from this by God's grace.
And one of those things is.
I just keep thinking about some of the common denominators the fear of man, the approval of man, wanting to be cool.
So, why is everybody jumping ship?
I think everyone's jumping ship because there's repentance in their heart.
Probably not.
Maybe.
I'm not God.
I don't know.
Maybe in some individuals, like we already discussed, there may be a few.
But by and large, there's a ton of people jumping ship.
And I don't think it's just because they have a conviction, such a strong conviction for purity in marriage.
Because all of a sudden they just became spiritually mature and realized that, you know, Hillsong is a goat farm.
I think it's a Hillsong's not that cool anymore.
What do you think about that?
Yeah, I think you're right.
I think you're right.
Absolutely.
Because there's been so much bad press on Hillsong now.
I think people have finally gotten to the point where they realize, yeah, maybe we shouldn't be associated with them.
And it's kind of reached critical mass, I guess.
And I mean, there's no denying it now.
And so, um, Yeah, I don't.
Unfortunately, my educated guess is that most of the people that are jumping from the Hillsong ship are not doing so with the best of motives or the right motives, I'll say, not with the biblical motives.
They've just kind of been shamed into it.
They've just been shamed into it, which it shouldn't take that.
I mean, it should not take that.
If you're not going to sing Hillsong anymore simply because you're embarrassed by the bad press, Then you've stopped singing their music for the wrong reasons.
So, yeah, it's a sad testimony to the lack of discernment amongst so many professing Christians.
But this is exactly what we should expect with Bethel and Hillsong.
And I guarantee you, Bethel is the same way.
And I'm not saying this, I know this necessarily because I don't about Bill Johnson.
I'm not saying that.
But false teachers, And Bill Johnson is a false teacher.
But one of the things that marks the life of a false teacher is sexual immorality.
That is kind of common.
That's typical of a false teacher because a false teacher is not indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
And there is no internal restraint on their flesh.
And Peter tells us this.
He says in 2 Peter 2, he says, But false prophets also arose among the people.
Just as there will be false teachers among you, not maybe, but will be.
And he says that they will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.
And then he says this and many will follow their sensuality.
Many will follow their sensuality because of them, the way of truth will be maligned.
False teachers are marked by sexual immorality.
So, to see that Carl Lentz was having multiple affairs and to see the same thing was going on with Brian Houston, I mean, that surprised me about as much as I'm going to be surprised tomorrow morning when the sun rises in the east.
Life and Doctrine Tied00:09:26
That's about my level of surprise.
Surprisement?
Surprisement sounds good, yeah.
Oh, no, it would just surprise my level of surprise.
Yeah, my level of surprise.
Yeah, it took two minds to figure that out.
We got it though, we nailed that surprise.
But no, I hear you, and that's so important.
I wanted our listeners to hear that.
I was hoping you would talk about that because I've heard you talk about that in the past, and you're absolutely right.
Because I just think of Paul's warnings to Timothy, right?
Guard your life and doctrine closely.
And of course, you know, you could just read that and execute and say, okay, there are two things that are very important to guard, right?
Life and doctrine, life speaking to character, morality.
And doctrine, what do you believe, your convictions?
And we can say, oh, these are two important categories.
And that's fine.
But I think that we could, you know, maybe not explicitly in that given text, but when we survey the whole of Scripture and later things that Paul says to Timothy, we see that it's not just that these are two important categories, but these are two categories that are intrinsically tied to one another.
There is an unbreakable correlation between that, the life is dictated by the doctrine.
And the doctrine will be ultimately shaped and compromised, ultimately by a sinful life.
And part of that is because of God's design that, even despite the fall, the vestige of the image of God remains.
We're created in the image of God.
God made man in his image, male and female, he created them.
And even though creation, including human beings, are under a curse, And that image has been marred.
The vestige of the imago de, the image still remains.
And part of that speaks to, you know, it's like, well, what does it mean to be made in the image of God?
Well, one of those things is that the law of God has been written on the heart, even for the unbeliever.
That's why they're condemned.
Romans 1, natural revelation, these things about God are clearly displayed.
And not just things about God, namely his attributes of his eternal power and divine nature, clearly displayed, clearly perceived, but also the law of God is written.
On your heart, to where you know, Paul says, You know, Gentiles, you are a law unto yourself because you say, 'You know, you say, 'Do not do this,' and then you do it, meaning you're breaking your own standard, and that standard is flawed, but it does ultimately trickle down from God's standard.
As human beings made in the image of God, you have a moral compass, you have my point is, you have a conscience, and so even the false teacher who is unconverted, even the false teacher, still made in the image of God, has a conscience, and so his life.
If he has a sinful life, it will not, at least indefinitely, maybe for a time, but indefinitely, his sinful life will not allow him to preach a.
I'll say it like this his perverted life will not allow indefinitely for a pure gospel.
His perverted life won't allow for a pure gospel because his conscience will burn and burn and burn.
So eventually, what he's going to have to do is make his life and doctrine align.
And so he'll stop preaching against sexual immorality.
He'll just, at best, instead of introducing, well, sexual immorality is okay, instead of teaching that it's good, in a best case scenario, he just won't talk about sexual immorality.
That'll just be absent from his preaching.
You got any thoughts about that?
Yeah.
No, I agree with that.
I agree.
Even though they're lost, they do have a conscience.
You don't have to teach them that it's wrong to lie, wrong to steal.
They instinctively know these things, just like everybody on the planet does.
We know those things are wrong.
That's why we try to cover them up when we commit them.
So, yeah, it's been my observation, Joel, that.
That generally speaking, when in such a situation as you described, a preacher who is unconverted, a false teacher, he will either never talk about sexual immorality, just never, or I've seen some cases, I've seen this a few times in my ministry, in my travels.
It's something he always teaches on.
I've seen that too.
And it's almost like a, You know, me thinketh thou doth protest a bit too much, you know, one of those kind of things.
So they either never talk about it or it's a hobby horse for them.
And it's almost like a way of trying to distance themselves from doing something that they know full well they are themselves doing.
And they just, it's like, you know, they're trying to.
Like a cover.
Yeah, cover.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
I've seen that too.
I've seen that too.
I'm glad you pointed that out.
Go ahead, sir.
Yeah, no, that's okay.
I'm thinking of one man in particular that I knew many years ago as a pastor.
And there were two things that he was always harping on.
Always.
I mean, almost every sermon he preached, these two things would come up in one way or another, no matter what text he was in.
In all fairness, he was not an expositor at all.
He was just kind of a topical preacher.
But anyway, two things.
Fidelity to your wife and alcohol.
He was always harping men, be faithful to your wife, be faithful to your wife, and don't you touch alcohol.
Don't let that stuff ever touch your lips.
Turns out he was having an affair with the head deacon's wife, actually, and he was an alcoholic.
He was a drunk.
Yep.
And I'm glad you used the word he was a drunk, the biblical word.
Yeah.
You're right.
You know what?
Now that I think about it, I can think of a couple stories myself.
Yeah, I think it's the cover fire.
You know, it's the, yeah, but yeah, you're right.
So don't touch it at all.
They just don't even talk about this particular topic.
It's not in their ministry or preaching at all, or in order to try to somehow cover their tracks.
That's all they're ever addressing.
On that note, shifting gears, but just barely, you know, one of the things that I noticed with Carl Lentz in particular, You know, he would always wear that, you know, the deep V t shirts, you know, and almost, you know, I can't prove it, but man, it seems like he was getting a spray tan from time to time.
You know, I mean, it just seemed very, very, very concerning.
And you see this with a lot of guys, Steven Ferdix, same kind of, you know, like $10,000 sneakers, you know, and stuff like that.
But it's not just the money, right?
It's not just the money, but it's.
It's vanity.
It's just so vain.
I mean, such an emphasis.
And I guess my point is I think that's a good warning to Christians, too, that, you know, sometimes we think we can manage sin instead of mortifying the flesh, right?
That we're supposed to put sin to death.
But a lot of times, what we do is instead of killing it, we subdue it.
I always think of Batman as an illustration.
It's like at some point, it's just like, Batman, I just, I think you should just kill Joker, right?
You know, you just, you keep, you keep, you know, tying him up and subduing him or knocking him out or handing him over to the police.
And, you know, and I mean, theologically, Batman is a vigilante, all right?
So he would need to be Caesar.
But, but Caesar still, use the sword, by golly.
Don't, don't just, you know, it's not that God gave the handcuffs to Caesar, you know, but, but he gave the sword to Caesar.
And there are things according to God's law that, um, And so, changing that from issues of social, you know, societal justice, not social justice, but justice in society, changing it from that to sin in individuals, it's the same mentality.
It's not a physical sword, but the sword of the spirit.
We're called to mortify the flesh, not just manage it.
And I think sometimes we need to realize these things are connected.
There's a sliding scale when it comes to sexual immorality and perversion and vanity, and constantly, you know, each tuft of hair being exactly, you know, placed and, and, There's a certain level of caring so much about physical appearance that I think you're kidding yourself.
You're kidding yourself to say, well, I just really care about my physical appearance and just want to be healthy, have healthy practices.
And to think that that's not flowing at all into lust.
What do you think?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I agree 100%.
And you're talking about guys like Steven Furtick and Carl Lentz.
When you look at them, you're exactly right.
They wore the, The tight tee, or in Furtick's case, he still does, but the real tight shirts, and you know, they obviously work out.
And Stephen Furtick, when you look at a picture of Stephen Furtick from, I don't know, like 10 years ago, I mean, he was this scrawny guy.
Now he is, he's like Lou Ferrigno now.
Lust and Church Discipline00:14:44
And you can tell he's got, I mean, he's just, he's arrogant.
He shouts, he rages.
He's clearly bringing attention to himself.
Carl Lentz, same way, brings attention to himself, wearing these tight shirts and showing his muscles and all that.
I'll tell you kind of, I guess this is anecdotal, but it's pretty interesting in a sad sort of way.
You remember Tully and Chavidgin?
You remember Tully and Chavidgin?
So he was vaguely familiar.
Can you brief me?
So he is like Billy Graham's, one of Billy Graham's.
Grandsons.
Oh, okay.
And he was a pastor in somewhere in Florida.
And he claimed to be, you know, reformed ish, I suppose.
But Telangivision was one of the, he had the like bleach blonde hair and short and spiked and really, you know, muscular and cut, I guess you would say.
And every time you would see him preach, he was in these tight shirts and button open, you know, halfway down his chest.
And, And just, you know, really showing himself off.
Well, I guess it was about six, seven years ago, five, six, seven years ago.
Anyway, Kathy and I were at the kitchen table having breakfast one morning, and TBN was on when we turned TBN on.
And they had Tolly and Chavidgin on TBN.
And we were just watching him, and I was just looking at him the way he was kind of sauntered back in a seat and these tight shirts and his muscles bulging and all that.
And he was actually known for being kind of.
Antinomian, in a sense, kind of an easy to believe is on you know, that's kind of what he was known for.
Real quick, just for our listeners, anti nominee, just being against law.
Yeah, yeah.
Grace, grace, grace, but no law.
Right.
Yeah.
Greasy grace, cheek grace, whatever, you know, easy believe ism, that kind of thing.
And I was just looking at him and how he carried himself and how he dressed.
And I said to Kathy, and I can remember I kind of pointed my finger at the TV.
I said, He's going to be the next one to fall.
I kid you not, Joel.
I'm not a prophet.
I'm not claiming to be a prophet.
One week later, one week later.
It's when the story came out, made a big news that Tully and Javidian was having affairs on his wife.
And he disappeared for a while, but now he's back, kind of revamped and doing his own thing.
And, you know, I mean, of course, biblically, he's disqualified from being in ministry, but, I mean, you just get a sense.
And anytime you see a preacher that is intentionally and obviously trying to bring attention to himself and how he looks, that's a big red flag.
That's a huge red flag.
I agree.
Yeah.
So I just, yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned all that because I wanted to bring that up and just say that, again, you know, like you said, you know, I'm no more surprised, you know, when Brian Houston and Carl Lentz, these things come out about, you know, these leaders with Hillsong, no more surprised than, you know, when the sun rises from the east the next morning.
And, you know, there's a lot of reasons for that.
And, like we said, one of the reasons is their doctrine, right?
That there's a correlation between life and doctrine, but then also just in their physical appearance.
It's, you know, there's just, There is a clear infatuation with worldliness, with vanity, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life.
And that doesn't mean that you can't be a worldly prude, because that's possible too.
There are different forms of worldliness, there are different forms of pride.
But some of them, I think of maybe you can help me with the reference for this, but I think of the verse, I think it's in 1 Timothy, but it says, Some sins.
Are more conspicuous.
And it talks about some sins go ahead of them before judgment.
Do you know what I'm referencing?
I do.
I do.
I remember the exact.
Let me see if I can Google it real quick.
Go ahead, though.
Do you have any thoughts while I'm looking this up?
Yeah, no, with some, it is pretty obvious.
I mean, you can just tell.
As I said, that's a huge red flag when you see someone bringing attention to himself or herself for that matter.
Our job as preachers, Joel, is to make much of Christ, not much of ourselves.
We should be doing everything in our power to take attention off of ourselves and put it on to Christ.
Amen.
And I think that gets into ecclesiology also.
That's part of the reason why we have the ordinary means of grace.
We preach the word, we pray the word, we sing the word, and then I would say we see, S E E, see the word in the sacrament or the ordinance of baptism and the Lord's Supper.
And that's the only image that we have that's prescribed for.
For corporate worship is the image of Christ, his burial, his death, and burial and resurrection in baptism.
And that's one of the reasons why I'm a Baptist.
I'm about as close as you can get as a Presbyterian in every regard, except for polity and baptism.
And part of it is because I think the word baptismo is immersion.
And I think part of that is the symbolism of being buried with Christ and raised with Him to walk in newness of life.
So that's all that we can see, though.
Those are the images.
Aside from that, we don't walk by sight, we walk by faith, and faith cometh by hearing, and hearing.
By the word of Christ, the word of God.
And so we are word centric people.
On the Lord's Day, when we gather together with the saints for corporate worship, everything we do is centered on the word.
It's not aesthetics.
It's not images.
It's not the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh and the boastful pride of life.
It's not the laser shows.
It's not the smoke machines.
It's not all those kinds of things.
It's simple worship.
And people say, oh, you know, and I'm mentioning this because I think this is important.
Right now, I mean, we have like a global game of musical chairs in churches going on right now because the Lord, in his mercy, has providentially just.
Rip the veil off of every major institution in our society.
And sadly, the evangelical church was no exception.
So, legacy media, politics, you know, the whole nine yards and the church.
And so, a lot of people, and we're not talking about just chronic, dissatisfied church hoppers, you know, three months here, six months there, but people who have been faithful members for 10 years, 20 years, and they're like, oh my goodness, my pastor's a tyrant, whether it be, you know, tyranny with COVID stuff or woke.
My pastor's either a tyrant or he's woke.
Those are two of the big issues, you know.
And so, people are checking out new churches.
And so, I want to say this to say, As you are visiting churches, if you're one of those people and you're trying to find a good church, do not chalk this up into the personal preference category.
Simple church is because of biblical reasons.
There are biblical reasons for what we do.
And there can be a sliding scale.
We don't want to be unnecessarily strict about these things.
But there is a reason for the type of music that we use.
And more important, the lyrics that we sing and the length.
Of sermons.
Even that, these are not just personal preferences.
I would make an argument for sermons being 45 minutes to an hour, and I would make a biblical argument for it.
One of my arguments would be the book of Hebrews, at an average reading pace, takes approximately 60 minutes to read.
And I believe I look at the book of Hebrews as a sermon.
I think that that was a, and most biblical scholars would agree that it was one sermon meant to be delivered and then later chopped up in terms of each portion exposited.
But first, initially delivered, presented as one sermon.
And how long does it take?
60 minutes.
So there's my biblical argument for, you know, and I'm not going to hold that so loose, you know, or so tightly that if a guy's preaching for 35 minutes, then he's being unfaithful.
That's not my point.
But my point is, I think we have taken so much of the methods of church and put them over into this stylistic personal preference category, not realizing that the Bible doesn't just dictate what, it dictates how.
You got any thoughts on that?
Yeah, no, I agree 100%.
It dictates what and it dictates how.
The Bible has not left us uninformed, Joel, on how to do worship.
God is spirit, must be worshiped in spirit and in truth.
Worship is our most sacred, solemn, and quite honestly, our most joyful responsibility as Christians is to worship God.
And He has not left us uninformed in how He is to be worshiped.
There is, there is, the Bible is full, old and New Testament life, and especially the new, since we're obviously new covenant, about how church is to be done.
It's Christ's church, it's his church.
We're not at liberty to decide how we want to do church.
Christ has told us how to do church.
We have a model for it in the book of Acts.
We see a plurality of elders, we see the widows being cared for, we see deacons, we see, um, You know, we see preaching, we see worship, we see singing throughout the New Testament and how all those things are to be done.
We see how conflicts are supposed to be resolved.
Right?
Church discipline.
Church discipline, absolutely.
And as a little tangent, I tell people if you want to get an idea of just how seriously a church actually does take the word of God, ask the leadership, what do you do with Matthew chapter 18?
What do you do with church discipline?
Because every evangelical church is going to say, oh, yes, we believe the Bible.
The Bible is our authority, it's inspired and errant word of God, blah, You know, most of these statements of faith are just cut and pasted from other statements of faith.
Right.
But they would all say that.
But if you want to get an idea of how seriously they really take the word of God, ask them what they do with Matthew 18, verses 15 through 20.
Do you do this?
Yep.
And most of the reformers and Puritans and John Calvin especially would add that as one of the chief marks of a church, right?
Wherever the word is rightly taught and the sacraments rightly administered, and many added to that, and church discipline being practiced, there a church of God exists, even if it swarms with many faults.
Go ahead.
Church discipline is the first command that Jesus gave to his church.
It's the first command that Jesus gave to his church.
And it is just as much a command as is the Lord's Supper and believers' baptism.
Just as much a command as those two things.
So, yeah, and I agree.
Any church that does not do Matthew 18, then I would say that is not a real church.
It's not a true church, not as the Bible defines it.
Yep.
Amen.
I completely agree.
And what I would ask is, you know, so look at the statement of faith, but, you know, so our church, we have, you know, so we are.
Confessionally Reformed Baptist.
So, we actually have two documents.
We have our general statement of faith that is intentionally narrow enough to where no non Christian could affirm that statement of faith.
No Muslim, no atheist, no Buddhist.
So, it's that narrow, but it is intentionally broad enough to where Christians who disagree on secondary and tertiary matters could, where we would not be denying a Christian membership in our church.
I have Presbyterians in my church.
I even have a few Arminians in my church.
And the Arminians are happy to be there.
They're like, so this church isn't going to make me wear a mask?
And shut down every six months when there's a new, they're like, yeah, I don't always like when you talk about the Calvinism stuff, but you have a spine.
And we're just, we're kind of just looking for a pastor who will preach the Bible.
And you know what?
I kind of think, I think God's going to win them over.
So I think, you know, so I'm happy to have them, you know.
So, but my point is so our general statement of faith is narrow enough to exclude any non Christian, but not so narrow that it would exclude a Christian, a brother or a sister.
That said, we also have in our Bible, and all this is in our Bible, we have a specific statement.
Of doctrine.
So, a general statement of faith, and we call it our specific statement of doctrine that has to be affirmed by the officers of the church, elders and deacons, and should be recognized.
It says it must be recognized by the members of the church.
And then we define that word recognized to say that you expect that this is the position of the officer of the church.
This is what you can expect in the public teaching, and you're not going to be divisive about it.
But the members must affirm our general statement of faith.
They must recognize our specific statement of doctrine.
And our specific statement of doctrine is.
Is exactly the 1689, and we don't take any exceptions.
So we are Sabbatarian, and we would, the whole nine yards, and including the Pope being an Antichrist.
And I don't think he was the Antichrist, but there's those kinds of things.
And so all that is right there.
And obviously, not every member in the church agrees with that.
Not everybody's Sabbatarian.
Not everybody agrees on all these different positions, but that would be the offices of the church.
That would be our position.
And my point is, in the 1689 is included things about church discipline.
And in our bylaws as a church, It's step by step how someone is excommunicated from the church.
And my point is with a lot of churches, you wouldn't even find that.
You wouldn't even be able to find that written down, right?
You'd have a very general, anemic statement of faith, right?
The Trinity, you know, and the Bible is the Word of God, like what you said earlier.
But you wouldn't find anything in writing, and certainly not anything in writing that would be actually binding, you know, on the church that would talk about clear, practical steps, bylaws that must be followed out for how to remove someone from the Lord's table, for instance.
Our church has that.
And the reason why it's clear is because our church intends to do that.
Most churches don't have it because when the rubber meets the rubber, they don't plan on ever doing it.
And what I always tell people is this that's not because we're mean.
Every church, one, it's because we're trying to be obedient, but every church kicks people out.
The question is how?
Most churches, I guarantee you, Hillsong was kicking people out.
But most churches kick people out the way a casino would kick out someone for counting cards.
They take them in a back room, nobody sees, they break their kneecaps, they send them away, and you never hear from Fred again.
Conspicuous Sins Revealed00:15:30
Where's Fred?
And then you find a bloated corpse floating in the river.
Which means, so Matthew 18 is not just Jesus' commands to protect the church from the defiled sinner, but it's also Jesus' process of church discipline to protect an alleged sinner from the potential of an abusive church.
There need to be witnesses.
There's a judicial, there's a jury here.
And so this isn't to be mean.
Oh, to the contrary.
This is to be biblical, to be obedient, and to be merciful because every church, it's not whether but which.
Every church is kicking people out.
The question is, how are they doing it?
Do these people get a fair trial?
Do you got any thoughts on that?
Church discipline is a great thing for us to talk about.
Yeah, no, it is.
And it is one of the definitive marks of a healthy church, a church that does church discipline.
When I grew up, Joel, I grew up Southern Baptist, very typical Southern Baptist church.
And I can't tell you how many times we had, of course, Sunday morning, Sunday night services, and we had Wednesday night prayer meetings.
And I can't tell you how many times I heard growing up the preacher say, Well, we're two or three are gathered together in my name.
I'm there in their midst.
And we have more than two or three here tonight.
We know Jesus is with us.
I can't tell you how many times I heard that.
And it always made me wonder, you know, like, what if I'm by myself?
You know, is Jesus not there then?
If I'm by myself, do I have to have two or three gathered together?
You know, and the reason that always puzzled me, because that was, you know, that's in reference to church discipline, not.
To Wednesday night prayer meeting.
And so it's not an easy thing to do, but yet we are commanded to do it.
And the goal of it is not to, you know, you don't start down that path of church discipline with someone with the hopes or the intent of, I'm going to use this to get this person out of my church.
No, you want the goal, the prayer, the hope is that it will bring that person to a place of genuine repentance and that person is restored.
To a right place of fellowship within the body, there.
That's what you want.
That's right.
And that's what it's designed to do.
And a true Christian, that's what will happen with a true Christian.
They will be brought to a place of repentance and restoration there to the church.
That's what you hope for.
But if it doesn't happen, then you know you're dealing with a tear among the wheat.
Yep.
You're absolutely right.
So I did find the verse we were talking about earlier about some sins being conspicuous.
So it was 1 Timothy 5.
I was right about 1 Timothy, but.
I couldn't remember the chapter of the verse.
It's chapter 5, verse 24.
1 Timothy 5 24 says, The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later.
And so, what the apostle is saying is that there are some sins that, in God's providence, the nature of the particular type of sin, and then, of course, just in God's providence, he allows this individual with this particular sin to be ousted in this life.
And there are other people who.
Seemingly, at least in the view of men, right?
Men look at the outward appearance, God sees the heart, and one day every thought will be laid bare before him.
But there are some men that, at least in the perception of their fellow man, they fly under the radar their entire lives.
A great, not in a good sense, but a great and prominent example of that would be Ravi Zacharias.
Mm hmm.
Um, you are, yeah, he didn't quite make it to the end of his life, but he went his and right up to the end of his entire ministry.
And people loved him, they thought he was great, he's a great, wonderful apologist and uh, love the Lord and blah blah blah.
You know, and he was running in our some of our circles.
You know, he was um, yeah, speaking at some of the conferences that you and I appreciate and attend.
Um, but there at the end.
The truth came out and he was leading a double life.
That's a great example.
I have absolutely no confidence from what I've seen of what was going on with Robin, what he was doing, what he was engaged in.
I have absolutely no confidence in that man's regeneration.
None.
Where is the discipline in his life?
Where is the discipline of the Holy Spirit?
Where's the growth, the sanctification?
Where's the holiness?
There was no holiness.
Robbie Zacharias didn't just stumble into sin, he was swimming in it.
He had a scuba suit on, and yet, you know, as I said, for so many years, people thought he was great.
Yeah, and with that, it's not even there may have been some, you know, you and I weren't close enough to the situation if there were any clues to pick up on.
But for most people, you know, at a distance thinking that he was great, just to clarify, I don't think you're even saying that that's particularly wrong.
That's exactly what this verse is saying some sins are conspicuous, you know, that they come out, but then others appear later.
There are some sins that we miss and we should have seen.
And then there are other things that we weren't able to see that only God sees.
And I guess to bring it back to the hills, my point is to say people should have seen that one coming, right?
When you're wearing a t shirt, you know, and in the V is your belly button almost.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's like, yeah, I think that guy is probably.
There's a problem there.
Yeah, like, he's sexual.
He's sexual, period.
I don't care how you slice it.
He, yeah, that's going on.
And so, you know, and then again, life and doctrine following suit.
All right, if the doctrine is bad and bad and bad and bad and bad, there are going to be character issues.
And what you said in the very beginning of this video, and this is Bible, not just experience, you know, you do have a lot of experience with false teachers, but.
This is you, you got this from scripture.
It's if the doctrine is bad, the life is going to be bad, and um, and and not just in a general sense, but usually, particularly in the area of sexual immorality.
And the Bible speaks to that.
Go ahead.
You were going to say something.
Oh, yeah.
No, it's, yeah, it was no surprise when we learned what we learned about Carl Lentz and Tully and Chavidian that, you know, that came as no surprise.
But the same kind of sins were going on with Ravi Zacharias and maybe even on a far greater scale, apparently.
Who knows?
But same sins were going on with Ravi Zacharias.
And yet Ravi Zacharias was this, you know, he was always in a suit and tie or, you know, he didn't have that look that Carl Lentz and Tully and Chavidian did.
It was the same sin.
Good point.
And a lot of that, again, goes to the fear of man, right?
Because for us, and I want to clarify this for our listeners too, because we don't want to unnecessarily scare anyone.
We want to scare people as far as God scares people.
With the word of God, there is a fear and trembling, but we don't want to use any manipulation, man's tactics for scaring people.
The people in hell, this was so helpful for me just growing in assurance of salvation.
The people in hell are not people who didn't have enough faith.
People who had a little bit of faith or a moderate amount of faith, or people who had some repentance but not sufficient repentance.
The people in hell had no faith.
People in hell are people who have no faith, people who have no repentance, which means that if Ravi is in hell, and I don't know what happened at the very end of his life, but like you said earlier, there's not a lot of confidence from the outside looking in.
So if he is in hell, It won't be because he had some faith in Jesus, but not enough, or he had some repentance, but not enough.
It means that everything we saw in that man's life was none of it was an ounce of repentance, not true repentance, and none of it was an ounce of faith, which means that there are ulterior motives.
There are other motives besides godly motives, there are worldly motives for wearing a suit and tie.
Like, you know, I'm not wearing a tie, but a jacket, right?
For dressing the part, literally dressing the part and walking the walk and talking.
And so, my point is that was his circle.
That's our circle.
And depending on who you're around, your sphere, there are certain codes and certain standards.
And those standards, if you're linked up with godly men, hopefully those standards aren't arbitrary and there's reasons for those, at least biblical implications.
But there are standards nonetheless.
And there will be.
False converts in these circles, even the best of circles, with the best of theology and the godliest of men, there will be some false converts, and God forbid, even some false teachers.
And guess what?
If it turns out, you know, we find out when we stand before God that one of the keynote speakers from a shepherd's conference is unregenerate, was unregenerate, never born again, well, then that person, it's not that they had some faith or some repentance, they had no faith, no repentance, which means that they did everything they did.
Walk the way they walked, talk the way they talked, dress the way they dressed, all those kinds of things, not for God, but for men.
And the particular men that they happened to be surrounded by were godly men.
Therefore, they walked and talked a godly part.
And that's important for us to remember.
Yeah, yeah, it is.
It is.
And John MacArthur himself has said that there will be many theologians in hell, there will be preachers in hell.
I will say with Ravi, just as I was listening to you talk, I was in full disclosure.
I was never a fan of Robbie Zacharias.
I never particularly cared for him.
He was way too philosophical.
Two things that I noticed.
He rarely ever dealt with a text.
It was more philosophy, logic.
He was very ecumenical.
And I picked up on that.
I actually wondered a lot why do so many people like this guy?
I don't find him intriguing at all.
Well, he never dealt with a text, really.
And then he was Arminian, right?
Yeah, he was Arminian.
And he was very ecumenical.
I actually am kind of astonished that he did have such.
With so many in our circles, Joel, because there were, quite honestly, there were, it's not that there were no red flags.
There were red flags with him for the person who cared to look.
He was Arminian.
He was very ecumenical.
You know, a number of years ago, he made some news and caused some waves when he went to a Mormon temple and made some really ecumenical kind of comments to Mormons and raised some eyebrows.
And it, Rightly so.
I mean, it should have raised a lot more eyebrows on what it did.
And here's another thing little, if any, church involvement.
I didn't know that.
Little, if any, church involvement.
Well, there's your problem.
Always on the road.
Always on the road.
No church accountability, really.
Nothing meaningful.
And so.
Yeah.
And I'm an evangelist, Joel.
That's what I do.
I travel and I preach and teach.
But I intentionally, and I know I'm kind of going off on a chasing a rabbit here.
No, it's good.
I intentionally limit my traveling to about a third of the Sundays.
So that you can go to church.
So I can go to church.
So I can be fed.
Right.
So I can have accountability.
Yeah, it's just healthy.
That's what I do.
And I do this because I want to do it.
I want to be in church.
I want to be fed.
I want to have that tie.
So, I intentionally limit it.
And it's always a big red flag with me when I see an evangelist, whatever theological persuasion he is, whatever circles he runs in.
But when I see an evangelist who is never at his home church, that's a big red flag with me.
Big red flag.
Yep, I completely agree.
So, I intentionally limit.
And I say this, I don't mean it's going to sound arrogant.
I don't mean it that way.
I promise I don't.
I could be on the road a lot more than what I am.
I've gotten more than enough invitations to go, but I intentionally limit it to about a third of the Sundays.
Yep.
Good.
I think that's a great practice.
Yep.
So, yeah.
So there are guys like Robbie who seemingly flew under the radar, at least under the radar for most of us.
He flew under my radar.
Now, I wasn't watching his ministry very closely.
I knew who he was, but I listened to some of his arguments, and the same as you, I just felt like.
It's just, you know, it's logic, it's philosophy, you know, it's stories, analogies, you know, but it's just, I'm just like.
There's no exposition.
Yeah, I'm a presuppositionalist.
I'm just like, give me a text or sit down, you know, so, you know, I don't really care what you have to say.
You know, Sproul did a lot of philosophy stuff too, but he would always have a text.
Now, and even Sproul was a little bit more philosophical than I personally like, although I am incredibly grateful for Sproul, you know, so I don't mean that in a negative way, but even then, it's like sometimes, you know, he would.
You know, you know, and right now, I'm sure you're aware, like some of the debate about Aquinas, you know, and uh, Spro, I think some of his philosophical tenets, um, makes him a little bit more affectionate towards Aquinas than I personally would be, you know, and and so anyway, so but the point is, you got to have a text, you got to have a text.
So, um, yep, so all that being said, Hillsong, you know, Ravi was under the radar, um, Carl Lentz was not under the radar, never was under the radar, um, Brian Hewson never under the radar, and Bill Johnson.
That doesn't mean that he's cheating on his wife, but he might be.
But the point is, I'm not making any claim there, but the point is, he is teaching false doctrine, and life and doctrine, it's still one root.
It's one man.
Life and doctrine are both, they're two parts, but both contained in one person.
And the person is the tree.
Leave Your Bad Church00:02:54
When Jesus gives this parable of a tree bearing bad fruit, and for us to think that it's possible that we could have a tree with poisoned roots.
But somehow is able to consolidate all of its poisonous fruit in one branch while keeping all the other branches healthy.
That's just ridiculous.
But that's kind of how we, you know, maybe we've never put into words like that, but that's what we're assuming.
That's the assumption.
And that's a ridiculous assumption.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It is.
It is.
Any final thoughts?
I'll give you the last word, but any final thoughts on just the Hillsong thing?
And maybe you could give a message to if anybody happens to listen to this who is.
Coming out of Hillsong and probably heartbroken and disenchanted, and probably feels embarrassed.
Any message of hope for them?
Yeah, Joel, I would say, and I guess I'll look at the camera because I have to address folks.
If you're in one of those churches, whether it's Hillsong kind of a church or a Bethlehem kind of a church, whatever kind of a church you're in, and you realize now that you're in a weak church, in a bad church, or a very weak church, because you're seeing these things.
You're seeing the Not only the inerrancy of scripture, but the sufficiency of scripture, and you're seeing the holiness of God, and you're seeing, yeah, Matthew 18 actually is in the Bible and it is a thing, and we need to be doing this in plurality of elders.
You know, our church doesn't have that.
Then I would really encourage you to leave your church.
You're not going to change it.
You're not going to change it from the inside out, from the ground up.
A church congregation is not going to rise to a level of spiritual maturity.
Above that of its leadership.
It's just not going to happen.
And you're not going to change the church.
A lot of people email me and talk to me and say, well, I know there's a lot of problems.
I know it's a bad church, but I want to be a source of truth, source of light.
No, you need to be in a real church where you can worship in spirit and truth, where you can be shepherded, where you can be fed the word of God, because it's only in a true church where you'll be able to grow, where you'll be able to use your spiritual gifts for the edification of the saints.
So don't try to change your bad church.
You won't be able to.
You will not be successful, I promise.
Leave, find a good church, join it.
And that's when you'll begin to really grow in Christ.
Amen.
Justin, thank you so much for coming on the show.
I appreciate it.
You're welcome.
You're welcome, Joel.
Thanks for the invitation to come, brother.
Cool.
Thanks so much for listening.
But, real quick, before you go, do us a small favor take a moment and leave us a five star review if you enjoyed the show.
This is undoubtedly the best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content to as many people as possible.