Pastor Joel Webben and guests dissect Costi Hinn's controversy, defending Michael O'Fallon's warnings against medical tyranny while criticizing Hinn for avoiding state heresy regarding vaccines and transgender rights. The discussion clarifies that Doug Wilson is not a heretic but holds differing views on the third use of the law, contrasting Hinn's weak response with the church's necessary cultural engagement. Ultimately, the episode argues that true repentance requires confronting government mandates and polarization, rejecting superficial apologies in favor of applying biblical principles to civil tyranny. [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
Mark Driscoll's Legitimacy Questioned00:10:27
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 live QA on Mondays at 12 p.m. Central Time.
Live QA with myself, Pastor Joel Webben, host of Right Response Ministries.
About, it seems like every other one of these, At this point, it is a QA, the entire thing taking questions from you guys.
And then it seems like the other half of the time, there's some kind of topic that I feel strongly needs to be discussed, whether it's something that you're interested in or not.
It's something that I feel like needs to be discussed.
Today is one of those days, although I am going to get to some questions at the end.
But what I want to discuss is the recent kerfuffle, if you want to use that term, with Kosti Hen on Twitter.
As well as his podcast, which is called For the Gospel.
For the Gospel.
So, Kosti Hinn, if you're not familiar with him, he has launched into the stratosphere over the last few years within evangelical Christianity, particularly within the Reformed camp, Calvinistic, Gospel centered camp.
And a lot of that has to do with his gifting and his heart for the Lord and his character.
And a lot of it also has to do with his last name.
He is the nephew of the notorious.
Faith healer, word of faith healer, Benny Hinn.
And so Costi kind of came out of the word of faith movement and the heretical doctrines of his uncle began to shed light on the false teaching of the prosperity gospel, began to go on other people's podcasts, eventually got into vocational ministry in a supportive pastoral role.
He is now church planting, I believe, in the state of Arizona as a teaching pastor, a lead pastor.
And the church there is growing by leaps and bounds.
He's had speaking engagements all over, including.
At Grace Community Church, where John MacArthur pastors in Southern California.
And so Costi Hinn has been kind of a rising star, and I don't mean that necessarily as an inherently bad thing.
There are people who lead in the evangelical movement, and having some kind of notoriety, some kind of platform, does not inherently mean that that person is doing something wrong.
So I think God has used Costi because he's been faithful.
I think God has used Costi because he does have some measure of gifting, theological aptitude.
And gifting to preach.
He preached at my church in Southern California when I was pastoring there.
I'm now in Central Texas planting a new church.
But when I was in Southern California, that's when I first met Costi, and he came and preached at my church.
He also forwarded the first book that I wrote called Am I Truly Saved?
It's a study through 1 John, dealing primarily with the topic of assurance of salvation.
And Costi wrote the forward for that book, which is interesting because I have a new book that I've been working on that has been forwarded by Doug Wilson.
And so I only have two books, one forwarded by Kosti Hinn and one forwarded by Doug Wilson, which is a little bit funny because Doug Wilson is one of the names that Kosti kind of threw into this royal rumble ring of criticisms online on Twitter.
And he also mentioned him in the podcast that he put out.
So, anyways, that gives you a background with Kosti Hinn.
I've had the pleasure of spending a little bit of time with him.
And yeah, I think that he's gifted and I think he has notoriety, and the Lord has exalted him because of his gifting.
Because of his faithfulness, but also in terms of just practical providence, a big part of it also happens to be his last name.
If he was not the nephew of Benny Hinn, I think he would probably be in vocational ministry and probably be faithfully shepherding a flock, a local church, and probably doing some podcasting and writing and all those different things, but probably would not have the level of notoriety and name recognition that he currently does.
And the only reason why I mention that is to say that I think that that's part of the issue.
Sometimes there are guys who just launch into the stratosphere because of some kind of practical, providential element that is aside from or other than their personal character and gifting.
And it gets them into situations that they're just not quite ready for.
It puts them into certain arenas and certain platforms before.
Their character or before their theological understanding can actually sustain that level of notoriety.
And I think there might be some element of that with Kosti Hen.
But as I've said several times, I'll give the disclaimer again I do believe that he has genuine character.
I do believe that he is genuinely faithful.
I believe that he genuinely loves the Lord.
And I do believe that he has some measure of theological aptitude and pastoral gifting and gifting to preach.
Again, he preached at my church when I was in Southern California and he did a wonderful job.
So, all that being said, I think that Costi is legit, but I also think that he is recognized perhaps as being a little bit more legit than he is.
So that's not to say that he has no legitimacy whatsoever, but I think that he has been launched beyond his own capacity due to the fact of his last name.
Another example that would be Mark Driscoll.
Mark Driscoll didn't have a notorious last name, an infamous last name like Costi Hen with his uncle Benny Hen, but Mark.
Was business savvy.
He had just a general, you know, practical knack for business and those kinds of things.
And it was with the big dot com push and social media coming on the scene and those kinds of things.
And Mark was right there on the cutting edge of, you know, recording videos and taking clips of sermons and podcasting was just really becoming a thing.
And he was right there on the cutting edge of that with Apple iTunes and those kinds of things.
And I think Mark Driscoll would be an example of a guy that because of some of his practical.
Knowledge and optimizing his ministry online as much as possible, his ministry grew bigger than he was really ready to be able to handle.
And there are other problems with Mark Driscoll, and for the record, to be fair to Mark Driscoll, because it's always fun to beat up on Mark Driscoll, there are other problems with Driscoll, and there are also other strengths with Driscoll.
The Lord used Driscoll in many wonderful ways, for which I am personally grateful.
And so I don't want to just beat up on Driscoll.
But I do think that there were some objective problems.
So, anyways, all that being said, Costi was on Twitter.
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, well, you're not going to find out because it's all been deleted.
And for the record, I don't think that it's, again, I don't think that's something that's inherently wrong to delete a tweet.
I've deleted a tweet.
Some of you guys may have even seen it.
I talked about how no one at my local church that I pastor votes Democrat.
And I stand by it.
But I deleted the tweet, not because it's wrong.
Not because I shouldn't have said it, but because it got picked up by a bunch of progressive liberal idiots, and I was getting about 20 comments per minute, maybe even within 30 seconds, and I just couldn't keep up with it.
And I didn't want just a string of foolish, blasphemous, progressive, liberal, transing kids comments on my Twitter account that I wasn't able to respond.
Respond to.
And so it wasn't that I deleted the tweet because I tweeted it out through fallenness, meaning immaturity or foolishness or sinfulness, but through my finitude, simply being one man, a human being, I just can't keep up with the response.
And so that's just the easiest way to undo it.
So I don't think it's always wrong to delete a tweet.
Brian Sauvay has deleted some of his tweets that go viral that are good for the church, that are theologically sound.
It's a good tweet.
But, you know, he's the guy, if you're not Familiar with him, he pastors Refuge Church.
He's on the Kings Hall podcast, which is a great, great podcast.
We've had those guys on our show, Theology Applied, in the past.
But Brian, he's a guy who I think he got like 30 million, million impressions within like 48 hours when he tweeted about modesty.
And he said that there's no excuse to be immodest, whether you're in a hospital bed because you just had your first baby or whatever it might be, we don't need to see private parts of your body.
And I remember Beth Moore picked it up and said, like, this is none of your business.
We don't need modesty tips from you.
Mind your unders, right?
Trying to be cute and snarky.
And of course, Beth Moore would be on the side of defending immodesty with women and feminism because that's Beth Moore.
But eventually he deleted that tweet because he's getting phone calls from raging feminists, you know, threatening him.
And it's just, it gets out of control.
So it's not always wrong to delete a tweet.
Costi would be an example, I think, again, a different angle, but an example of.
This is one of the times when you should delete a tweet.
And in his case, it wasn't deleting it because the tweet got out of hand, although he's still standing by the content of what he tweeted.
But no, he actually deleted the tweet because he actually changed his mind.
He realized that what he tweeted was foolish, and it was.
And he tweeted something else out in its place, namely an apology.
And so I want to start with that disclaimer and say that Kosti Hen, as it currently stands, we'll see.
How things unfold, but as it currently stands, he sent out two tweets where he apologized in conjunction.
Repentance vs PR Stunts00:06:03
He also put out a letter, an official statement in conjunction with G3 Ministries, which he's partnered with and spoken at their conferences in the past and those things.
So he put out a letter with G3 Ministries and he also put out personally with his Twitter account two tweets basically saying, I'm sorry, I allowed personal grievances to be dealt with in a public form.
That was foolish.
And then he ended with what I believe is a Charles Spurgeon quote where he says, If I don't play by the rules or if I don't fight by God's rules, then I forfeit the right to fight.
And so good on him for that.
That was a visible sign of repentance, whether it's genuine repentance, that has to do with the heart.
And only God knows that.
We're able to detect the degree of authenticity when it comes to someone's repentance.
Over time.
And ironically, that's something that Costi has said as well regarding his uncle.
There was a time when Benny Hinn, I think it was like maybe two years ago, where he allegedly repented for the prosperity gospel and trying to make money off of preaching the gospel and saying, you know, if you give this amount, then God's going to heal you or he's going to do this or you're going to get a raise at work.
And so Benny Hinn had this clip that went viral where he was repenting.
And Costi, this is the irony, Costi himself said, when people were asking him, you know, do you think your uncle really repented?
He said, time will tell.
And so, you know, so it takes time with these things.
But him putting out a statement with G3 Ministries, him deleting the old tweets that were contentious and foolish, and I'll get into that in a moment, and him also tweeting out that he was sorry and that he shouldn't have done it, all those are good signs.
And the difference between Costi Hinn and Benny Hinn, as far as I can tell, is that one of those guys seems like a bona fide Christian.
I'll let you guess which one.
So I think that there's a good chance that the repentance is genuine because that's one of the clear signs of a Christian is that Christians repent.
All right.
So, all that being said, I have, you know, I have respect for Costi, appreciation for him, especially the fact that he actually did apologize because that's kind of sets Costi apart from your typical Big Eva.
Because one of the things that Big Eva doesn't do is apologize.
What Big Eva will do is just memory hole everything, right?
They, you know, they put out some article, you know, about, I don't know, something where they get a ton of pushback.
You know, like Roe gets overturned, and, you know, the Gospel Coalition is saying, you know, let's not beat our chests, you know, and celebrate or whatever.
You know, those kinds of things.
Let's be winsome.
Like, yeah, baby murder is going to happen less objectively at a numerical scale in the United States of America after 49 years.
And you might think, Christian, who loves God and loves the image of God as you see it in man and wants to defend the sanctity of life for the unborn child, you might think that this is a good thing.
And you might think that we should celebrate and even publicly celebrate, but you'd be wrong, biblical Christian.
You instead should be more sensitive, you know, and it's not the time to grandstand and beat our chest.
Right.
So Big Eva does those kinds of things, Gospel Coalition does those kinds of things.
And when they do those things and they get called on it by faithful guys like John Harris or A.D. Robles or whoever, you know, enough people come out against them, then what they'll do is apologize, just like Costi Hint.
Nope.
What they'll do is they'll just memory hole everything.
It all goes down the memory hole.
They delete it.
They just change topics, put out a bunch of articles and speeches and podcasts on some other subject, and people forget.
Like, that is a good strategy.
It's not a godly strategy.
It's not what the Bible tells us to do when we actually do something wrong and sin.
We should repent, and repentance is both in deed and word.
You've heard me talk about this before.
When somebody repents, there is indeed, there's actually a change in about face in terms of their actions.
They were going one direction, doing one thing, and now they're going to do another.
But repentance is not merely in deed, it's also in word, meaning that there is some kind of verbal acknowledgement of wrong.
If you sinned privately against one individual, then all that requires is your word to that one individual where you acknowledge that you sinned against them and you apologize and ask for forgiveness.
But it can't just be that you were sinning against an individual and now you're going to stop sinning against that individual in your actions.
But you never actually say with words to that individual, I wronged you and I'm sorry.
You can't just change your actions.
You actually need to repent in deed and in word, meaning an acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
And the level, the size of that word, the audience, the size of the audience that you are repenting in word toward should match the same size of audience that you sinned against.
So if you did something wrong publicly, then you should repent, not just in deed, but in word publicly.
And Big Eva does not do that.
They just count on you forgetting, right?
It's the same playbook.
It's the same strategy that the Democrat Party would use.
And for that matter, the Republican Party as well.
Pretty much just about any politician, right?
When they get caught in something, they don't actually retract it.
They don't actually, you know, apologize for it.
They don't actually repent.
They just do PR.
There's a difference between, you know, repentance and just a PR stunt where you memory hole everything and you just wait for people to forget because people will forget.
And part of the reason people forget is because we're finite.
But part of the reason people forget also is because of just the nature of the internet.
Political Compromise and Silence00:11:32
We are just bombarded and flooded with so many events and so much data and so much information and so many stories and so much entertainment and so much this and that and the other.
Every single second of every minute, of every hour, of every day, that things get buried over time.
And it doesn't even take that much time for things to get buried and people just move on.
Right?
They just move on.
And so, yeah, so good on Costi for actually repenting, at least from what we can tell visibly, externally, not just in his actions, but also in his words.
All right.
So you can't go and see the tweets because he deleted him.
And as I've already said, I think he deleted them for the right reasons.
There are times to delete a tweet.
This was one of them.
He did the right thing in that regard.
But what did he actually say?
We talked about Michael O'Fallon and he talked about Doug Wilson.
There were other things that were wrapped up into it.
He didn't publicly through.
Twitter talks about G3 Ministries, but he did talk about G3 Ministries on the podcast that he put out.
And, you know, he deleted that podcast that same day.
Now, I got to listen to the whole podcast because I was being proactive about this because I had an interest in it and I wanted to see what was going on and what he was going to say.
But basically, the plan was which the plan has now changed and good because it was a bad plan, it needed to change.
But the plan was to do a four part series on his podcast for the gospel.
And to release that, I'm assuming weekly.
And, you know, he ended up, you know, the first episode got such backlash that he ended up deleting it that day.
And it seems like the plan has been, you know, for the indefinite future, the plan has been canned.
But part of the reason that he got backlash was because in the podcast, not just the tweets, but in the podcast, he wrapped G3 Ministries into his grievance.
And the way that that works with Michael O'Fallon and Doug Wilson, because those were the main two names.
In the Twitter verse, which all those tweets have been deleted and the podcast has been deleted, it's all been deleted.
But the way that G3 got in there was because Michael O'Fallon, according to Kosti Hen, I can't verify these things.
I don't know a whole lot about G3 Ministries.
I've got some measure of friendship with Virgil Walker, and we've talked and been friendly in the past.
And I like Josh Beiss.
G3 Ministries is good in my book.
But I'm not intimately involved.
So I don't know.
But the podcast that Costi Hen did, he said that basically Michael O'Fallon is a board member of G3 Ministries and that he is rich.
And he actually said it.
He said, Well, he's just rich.
And if we're going to be faithful to the cause of Christ and these kinds of things, yeah, we need to fight the culture war and we need to fight against the woke and these kinds of things.
But we can't make ungodly, wicked alliances and partnerships in order to win this fight.
Basically, Kosti's basic premise was this He said, I don't want to win.
I'm paraphrasing, but he said, I don't want to win.
A political slash cultural war that really does need to be won and really does exist.
For anybody who says that the culture war doesn't exist, or, well, you're dumb, you're wrong.
And for anyone who says Christians shouldn't be involved in the culture war, you're a radical two kingdom pietist who is also dumb and wrong.
And so Costi didn't take either of those approaches.
God bless him.
He's saying there really is a culture war, culture and political issues, and Christians really do need to be involved, but we can't form.
Unholy alliances in our quest to win.
So, in a nutshell, he's saying, I don't want to win the culture war, but in the process, lose the doctrine war, the doctrinal war.
That's, I think, fair to his position.
And what he was saying is, like, I don't want to see us align with false teachers just because they agree that abortion is murder.
Right?
So, we don't need, you know, and that was kind of his initial tweet that started all this was like, we don't need James Lindsay to fight against CRT.
And James Lindsay, if you're not familiar with him, he's a friend of Michael O'Fallon.
Michael O'Fallon was the first guy who really introduced James Lindsay to the evangelical church when it came to some of these issues of social justice, CRT, intersectionality, because nobody understood what was going on.
Nobody, right?
And we forget, right?
You talk about the internet and everything just piles up every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
We forget it was not that long ago.
We're talking like, we're not talking 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
We're talking like three years ago.
The guys who are speaking out about this stuff, including me, To be fair, we were not well versed in some of this ideology.
We were not experts in Marxism.
We didn't know a whole lot about the Frankfurt School.
I remember James White being honest and being humble, saying that his daughter, Summer, had to explain to him, to her father, what critical race theory and intersectionality was.
And this was not a conversation that they had 30 years ago.
This was a conversation they had.
In the past few years, because a lot of us were kind of getting caught up to speed.
And so I say that to say we should give honor where honor is due.
And Michael O'Fallon really was, in many ways, one of the very first.
I'm not saying no one, but he, I mean, there was just a handful of people, and he was one of the very first individuals who was like, guys, pastors, theologians, seminary professors, we've got a huge problem that is arising.
And as soon as it's going to be in full force, please listen to me.
Please listen to me.
So, Costi Hen, you know, his first kind of notorious tweet that started this whole quarrel online was, We don't need James Lindsay.
And this is what I would say, you know, and if Costi listens to this, I don't assume that he will, but if he listens to this, I guess I would just say, But we did need James Lindsay.
We did.
Because you, Costi, and me, and 99.999% of every other pastor who's now decrying wokeness.
We didn't know what the heck was going on back then.
We didn't.
And so I understand that James Lindsay is an atheist.
He was a part of the New Atheist Movement, which is incredibly blasphemous and hates the church.
And by James Lindsay's own admission, he said, Yeah, I was young and arrogant and foolish.
And now I think he would describe himself as agnostic, but he's still not a Christian.
He's still not a Christian.
And that brings into question who can Christians actually partner with?
Right?
Like, can we partner with James Lindsay when he's seen something that all these pastors in the church are not?
Can we partner with him to try to take down wokeness?
And I would say, yeah, we can.
And I'll come back to that because that's a big idea that needs to be fleshed out, some explanation and doctrinal explanation for why.
But the first thing that I want to say is.
The fact that James Lindsay became a regular speaker with Sovereign Nations and Michael O'Fallon and other contexts, evangelical church contexts on this topic, I think it speaks far less, far less in regards to the evangelical church's compromise on faithfulness to doctrine.
And it speaks far more of an indictment to the evangelical church in being politically and culturally and ideologically.
Clueless, right?
The reason why James Lindsay, Michael O'Fallon, involved James Lindsay is because no one was listening to Michael O'Fallon.
No one, no one in the church, he was being written off by everyone.
He was going to seminaries and he was going to big conferences and he was going in those back rooms, you know, with trust, you know, board members and all these kinds of things and having these conversations and saying, We are in trouble, sound the alarm, right?
He was blowing the trumpet on the wall, the city's under attack, and no one listened to.
No one listened.
And so he brought in James Lindsay and made some partnerships with some other people who had expertise in this area who could make more convincing arguments about the danger of these things.
Now, James Lindsay doesn't have a solution.
He doesn't have a solution because he's not a Christian, because the solution is God's word.
The solution to lawlessness is God's law, not libertarianism, not classic liberalism, not.
A mere return to the American Constitution, which I think is a beautiful document that I love, but a return ultimately to Scripture, which is what forged, I believe, and influenced the writing of the Constitution.
But it's got to be all the way back.
We can't just get back to the 1700s.
We got to get all the way back to the Bible.
And so, all that being said, Michael O'Fallon deserves honor because he was sounding the alarm when nobody else would listen.
Now, the reason why this became a problem with Costi is.
Because you know, Costi's saying, Well, we don't need uh James Lindsay, and he's pinpointing out you know Michael O'Fallon.
And then in his podcast, which was only up for a few hours, but if you had the great misfortune of listening to it like I did, um, in his podcast, the first episode, he said in the second one he was going to get to Doug Wilson, and so we never got that far.
Um, but in the first one, he just blasted Michael O'Fallon.
And I don't know Michael O'Fallon personally, and so I'm not going to sit here and say that all of Costi's accusations were false, I'm also not going to say that any of them were true.
Because I don't know.
I'm not going to speak to things that I was not an eyewitness of.
But I do know that in general, Michael O'Fallon was blacklisted by a lot of people and sent out to pasture and ignored.
I don't think that it was wrong for him to bring James Lindsay into some of these conversations, not saying, here's the biblical solution, but here are some of the problems and here's what these guys say, right?
James Lindsay has read the literature, right?
He's even said himself, my superpower when it comes to fighting wokeism and Marxism and these guys, my superpower is.
Is that I've read their literature and I believe them.
That's what James Lindsay has said.
His words, my superpower, the reason why I've launched into the stratosphere on this subject and people deem me to be a credible authority on this matter is simply all I've done is read their material and I believe them.
Gnosticism in Evangelical Thought00:02:45
I believe that they really are this wicked, that they actually want to do these things.
And the reality is that at the time in 2017 and 2018 and 2019, There weren't a lot of solid evangelical pastors who could say that.
I've read their material.
I am incredibly familiar with the Frankfurt School.
I am familiar with this and familiar with that.
And I understand what they're saying.
I understand what this means.
There just weren't a lot of guys.
Vody Bacham would be one of the earlier guys.
I remember him talking about ethnic Gnosticism.
Ethnic Gnosticism.
And that was years ago, before this became this.
Nationwide, and now it's just common knowledge.
But there was a time where you couldn't say these things.
And Votie Bakum said some of these things, saying that standpoint epistemology, this idea that based off of your intersections and your race and your sexual proclivities and your gender and all these kinds of things, you will be higher or lower on the scale of oppression.
And based on how many oppression points you can garnish, then.
Then you're able to see things more clearly, right?
It's epistemology is, you know, how do we know what we know?
How do we learn?
How do we come by knowledge, right?
And standpoint epistemology is basically just saying that there is no transcendent universal truth.
We all, it's individual standpoints.
Who am I and what is my lived experience?
What's my truth, right?
And then Vodi just coined that and said, you know, instead of standpoint epistemology, he just put it in terms of ethnic Gnosticism.
Gnosticism being that, again, it's just this mystical, personal, spiritual, ethereal.
I had this revelation, or I've been enlightened.
That knowledge is gnosis, it's secret knowledge.
That's what Gnosticism is it's the secret knowledge that some people have and other people don't have access to based off of whether or not you've been enlightened.
And so Vodi was just saying, yeah, it's a Gnostic epistemology and it's based off of ethnicity.
Ethnic Gnosticism or standpoint epistemology.
And Vody, again, he was one of the first guys talking about this, but a lot of guys weren't listening.
They weren't listening.
So I would say, you know, to Costi, the first thing I would say, you know, to his comment, we don't need James Lindsay, is I would say we shouldn't.
I almost agree with you, Costi.
We shouldn't have needed James Lindsay.
I agree with that.
We shouldn't have needed James Lindsay, but we did.
The Need for True Unity00:14:54
And I think what that says about the evangelical church is far less about our willingness to compromise.
In our doctrinal alliances, but it says far more about the evangelical church in terms of an indictment with our naivety.
That we were naive and uninformed and uninvolved when it comes to the culture and politics.
Part of the reason that we were so uninformed is because of our poor theology in terms of radical two kingdom theology and pietism, and that, you know, well, Christian faith just doesn't, you know, have anything in common with.
Politics.
We just need to stay out of the political sphere.
You know, we're just sojourners passing through, you know, and this is not our home.
And Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world.
And we, what Jesus meant is that my kingdom's not even in this world.
And so Christians shouldn't work towards that.
You know, all these kinds of things.
That was just the air that evangelicals were breathing for the most part.
That was, you know, that's just what we believed.
Most evangelicals would have been, in terms of eschatology, they would have been.
Pre millennial, dispensational premillennialism, so not a historic premillennialism, but dispensational premillennialism, aka if you don't know what that means, to some degree or another, it's basically the Left Behind series, right?
So our view of the world was, and our lens, our hermeneutic for reading scripture, for the most part, not everybody, but for the most part, speaking of the majority of evangelicalism, was Jesus is coming back soon, and God has ordained and determined that everything's going to get worse until he does come back.
And this world is not our home, and we really shouldn't have much of a vested interest in society and politics and legislation.
And we just kind of need to stay pure from being defiled by the world and kind of do our own Christian thing.
And the only thing that we do with culture at all is just at an individual one to one ratio personal evangelism.
Personal evangelism.
And it's just like, well, man, but that's the mantra.
That was the mantra of the evangelical boomers, right?
Let's forget the institutions.
We don't really need Christian art.
We don't really need to fight the culture war.
All we need to do is personal evangelism and reach the lost.
Jesus is going to come back in about 15 minutes, and everything's going to get worse no matter what we do, because that's what God's decided to try to stop this downward spiral is just to polish brass on a sinking ship.
What we really need to do, if anything, is speed up Christ's return.
If there's any way to do that, it's to make sure that all the nations have heard the gospel.
And so we need to devote ourselves to global missions.
So, not really building institutions, not really being involved in politics and culture and building culture, but instead, we're going to send missionaries around the world.
We're going to do global missions.
And one of the ways that we're going to be able to afford to fund these global missions is that we're not going to pay for our own children to go to a Christian school or forfeit that double income that we've grown accustomed to.
By mom no longer working out of the home because now she has to homeschool.
So, what we're going to do is we're going to put our kids in state schools that teach public atheism.
And we're all going to console ourselves by saying, well, yeah, public school is not great, but our public school is not bad, right?
Every single person.
Do you know that every single Christian at every single public school in the entire country says that their public school is the one public school that's not that bad?
So, you do that, and then you devote yourself to global missions, and then all your kids grow up and apostatize and leave the faith.
So, yeah, that was a bad plan.
This dispensational, pre millennial, radical two kingdom distinction between the church, the sacred, and the common, this did not work very well for us.
Did not work very well for us.
And so, as these things, these forces, demonic forces, began to come to a head, a lot of evangelicals missed it.
A lot of them.
And some of them saw it.
And so, as it pertains again to Costi and Michael O'Fallon, it's like, well, why is Costi?
You know, upset about it.
Well, I think, you know, like he said, there's some personal grievances.
So some of this is speculation.
Okay.
But I think it wasn't entirely clear.
And I'll just speak for myself.
It wasn't entirely clear even to me what side of this culture war Costi was on.
Right.
I mean, what have we seen over the last two years, especially?
Over the last two years is we've seen this great divide.
Right.
Votie Bakum, he came out with his book, Fault Lines, and saying, you know, we know the old fault lines.
The old fault lines of, you know, are you Reformed or are you Arminian?
Are you Baptist or Presbyterian?
Are you, you know, so it's the Credo Baptist versus Pado Baptism.
It's continuationism versus cessationism, you know, and we had all these different theological doctrinal fault lines.
And we were willing to put some of those things aside as secondary issues.
And that's where you see the emergence of big ministries like Together for the Gospel, right, with Mark Dever and Al Moeller and, you know, Lig Duncan and those kinds of things.
And that was kind of the vibe for a while.
For a good 15, 20 years.
But then all of a sudden, we realize under the surface there are some other fault lines, some new fault lines that we weren't aware even existed.
Like maybe people are going to care in the near future more about abortion than they care about baptism.
Or maybe people are going to care more about critical race theory than they care about Calvinism.
Right?
And Vodie Bakken was right.
And these things became the big dividing lines.
And guys that we thought were on our side, all of a sudden, we realize we're not on the same team.
Timothy Keller is not on our team.
Russell Moore is not on our team at all.
He always punches to the right and is always assuaging the conscience of the left.
He's not on our team.
He's working against the cause of Christ.
And so there were guys that we thought we were all together for the gospel, right?
And we would all go and sing hymns together at the conference.
And it turns out we're not on the same team.
We're not.
And so these things matter.
And a lot of us were late to the game.
And during this great divide, right?
So it's like the fault lines finally, it's like we're all waiting for the big one, right?
The big earthquake where these fault lines are going to go off and you're going to have these tectonic plates shifting.
And all of a sudden, somebody that we thought was a foot away from us and we're on the same team.
Is now on the other side of the world.
And the divide is massive, right?
And that's what's been happening.
These things have been under the surface for a very long time.
But over the last two years, because of COVID, because of the mostly peaceful riots in the streets, you know, with Black Lives Matter, because of Roe being over, I mean, we've had some significant things because of the 2020 election, right?
Like we've had some significant things that have taken these fault lines, and then all of a sudden, they're not just tremors, but earthquakes, and the divide is starting to happen.
And In Michael Fallon's defense, I think he was just saying, Costi, where are you at on this?
Where are you at?
And it's not because Costi was super duper woke, but he just, I don't know, he was kind of quiet.
And by 2019, 2019 is when I preached my first public sermon against critical race theory.
But my point is by 2020, the summer of 2020 when BLM's going down and all these different things, by that time, pastors needed to pick a side.
They needed to have made up their minds by that point.
Of what the Bible says about these things.
And by 2020, if you were a pastor, you know, I led my church.
I was an Acts 29 pastor.
And I led my church out of Acts 29 when I was still in Southern California at the end of 2018.
So by 2018, 2019, just a few months later, preaching against critical race theory.
And here's the sad thing I feel very strongly that I was late to the game.
And that I was naive and that I should have been wiser.
But most guys would say that I was a forerunner, that I was one of the guys who's the tip of the spear.
And Sally, by comparison, that's true.
By comparison, I was early.
By comparison to the vast majority of evangelical pastors, people, we were just really, really late.
And so once it's 2020 and then 2021, if we still can't tell where you're at on these issues, then yeah, then it's like.
If you're not being too woke, you're at least at minimum being too quiet.
You're just being too quiet.
And I think that's how Michael O'Fallon felt about Costi.
And Costi felt like this isn't fair.
Costi, in his defense, would say, No, I have been outspoken about these things and I don't have to do it exactly your way.
And so this is what's under the surface.
It's this personal vendetta, this personal conflict where Michael O'Fallon was, you know, Calling out Costi and saying, I feel like Costi is a double agent.
I feel like he's playing the field.
I feel like he's, you know, not choosing this day whom he will serve.
And so we need to be a little bit wary about Costi.
And then Costi on his side is saying, this is slander and this isn't fair.
And I feel like the truth is probably somewhere in between.
I think Costi could have been, and I like Costi, but I think he could have been a lot more outspoken about some of these issues.
I remember after COVID, churches were locked down, and this wasn't just, you know, like five days after.
Churches get locked down, but this was a few weeks into it.
It may have been even a couple months.
I can't remember exactly, but he wrote an article, Costi Hen, about how, you know, the need of the hour is courage.
Nope.
The need of the hour is truth.
Nope.
The need of the hour is unity.
Classic.
And, you know, some people are going to stay home.
They're not going to go to church and physically gather because they're scared.
And some people are going to physically gather, and we don't need to divide over this.
We need to have grace for one another.
And it's an issue of, you know, Christian liberty and conscience.
And I remember reading that and being angry.
I remember being really angry.
I was like, this is not what we need.
No, we need someone to lead.
We need someone with spine.
We need someone to, no, this is not relative, right?
Like if he had said, if you're 85 years old and extra vulnerable to this particular virus and for a while in prudence and safety, but that wasn't the article.
The article wasn't making provisions for certain types of People based off of their maybe they have an autoimmune deficiency or they're elderly.
No, no, it was just an article saying that somebody could be 25 and perfectly healthy, and their conscience, they're just not going to go to church right now.
And we just need to be, we don't need to push on them.
We don't need to convict them.
We don't need to address that error because that is error.
Instead, we just need to be charitable and united.
Yeah, that was not the need of the hour.
So I don't follow Kosti Hinn and everything that he puts out.
So I can't speak as an expert to Kosti Hinn, every facet of his ministry over the last two years.
But I can say just by that article alone, that showed me something that here we are, we're in the heat of it.
2020 is where all of a sudden these fault lines are starting to go off.
And Costi's kind of straddling the middle, right?
The tectonic plates are spreading and he's doing the splits instead of just picking a side, namely God's side, and speaking the truth and saying, hey, this virus is real.
I'm not a corona denier, but this is not the bubonic plague.
Churches are essential and should never have been shut down.
And if you're young and healthy, you need to get your butt in church.
And if that bothers you, that's not a lack of charity.
That's just the presence of truth.
You need to repent.
The church, Christians were being fearful.
It was sin.
It was sin.
Why can't we say that?
I said it then and people didn't like it, and I'll say it now.
No, the church sinned over COVID.
We did.
It's not subjective, it's not relative, it's not just an issue of Christian liberty and conscience.
No, it's not.
Part of the reason the government was able to get away with as much tyranny as it did is because Christians, that are supposed to be the salt of the earth, kept complying.
And that was not loving our neighbor because our neighbor lost his business.
Our neighbor couldn't visit his grandparents in the hospital when they died alone with Andrew Cuomo.
Our neighbor was not being loved by us because the club of the state in its civil tyranny that was.
Beating our neighbor over the head, part of what was giving that club its momentum and force was our cowardly Christian compliance.
And that was sin.
And we need to repent.
And like I said earlier, repentance is twofold it's changing our action, but it's not just changing our action and expecting that nobody will notice the contradiction between what we're doing now and what we did before.
No, you change in your action and you also repent, not just in deed, but in word.
You say, you verbally say, I was wrong.
And a ton of people still haven't repented.
I'm talking about Christians, pastors, and just Christians.
They still haven't come out and just said, I was wrong.
Everybody's acting like COVID doesn't matter now.
But very few are saying, Yeah, but I was wiping down packages with Lysol.
And not two days after, when no one knew what it was, but two months, three months, four months.
I didn't go to church for five months.
And now, yeah, because now the tides have turned.
Verbal Repentance Matters Most00:05:20
Right now, we have critical mass.
So, yeah, I'm acting like this was silly, like everyone else is acting like it was silly, but it was silly because all of us were being silly.
And I was one of the silly people.
Own it.
Own it.
That's the beauty of the gospel.
The beauty of the gospel is that it's free grace, it's free forgiveness.
But the thing is, you have to ask.
You have to ask.
Jesus doesn't forgive people who don't need forgiveness.
Now, of course, objectively, there is no one who doesn't need forgiveness.
That part of receiving Christ's forgiveness is acknowledging that you actually need his forgiveness.
And you acknowledge that through repentance, faith and repentance, two sides of the same coin.
Faith and repentance, faith turning to Christ, and repentance turning from sin.
And when we turn from sin, we turn from it in our deed.
We stop doing those things.
We start doing these things.
And we turn from our sin in our word.
We acknowledge what we did.
We acknowledge that it's wrong.
We acknowledge why it's wrong.
And we begin to sing a different tune.
And a lot of Christians did not do that.
A lot of Christians still have not done that.
A lot of Christians still have not admitted that it was wrong for them to go to BLM rallies.
A lot of Christians, and they were there, but they, right?
The black square is no longer on their Instagram or their Facebook page.
And maybe some of those posts have been deleted and it's all gone down the memory hole, but they haven't actually come out and said, I was on this side.
That was wrong.
Now I'm on this side.
It's not in word.
There's change in actions, hoping that nobody will notice, but not repentance in word.
And so I'm not saying that Kossi was the most woke of the woke.
But I am saying that, yeah, there was a minute there where I was a little bit confused.
I didn't know what side he was on.
And I don't know what Michael O'Fallon said, right?
All this is alleged.
I wasn't a fly on the wall.
I'm not an eyewitness.
And so I can't testify to maybe Michael O'Fallon took it too far.
Maybe he was gossiping.
Maybe he did slander Costi.
Those are the accusations that Costi made in his podcast.
Maybe that's true, but I don't know if that's true.
What I do know that is true, though, is that Costi was too weak.
On some of these things.
And can I just say one more little ditty?
It's easy to call out the prosperity gospel.
Let's just be honest.
Like, Kossi, bro, it's easy to call out your uncle.
Now, I understand it's harder for you in the sense that this is your family, but in terms of just doctrine, in general, I could, my YouTube page could have four times the followers.
And four times the views, and never be in any threat or any danger of being kicked off of a social media platform or receiving some kind of penalty or anything like that.
If I devoted the entirety of my ministry to calling out the prosperity gospel, to calling out heretics in terms of Joyce Myers, Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Hagee, you know, these kinds of guys.
If that's what I was doing, and that's all I was doing.
I would have a bigger following.
I know I would.
Because I do some of that, and those are the videos that have the most views.
I would have a bigger following and less danger.
But when you start calling out the heresy, not just of Benny Hinn and prosperity hucksters, but you start calling out the heresy of the state, and you start talking about vaccines, the things you're not allowed to say that now are proven true, right?
Right?
Hey, can I borrow some of your conspiracies because all mine came true?
Right?
The difference between the conspiracy and the truth is what, three to six months?
Right?
Like the vaccines actually affect, they actually transmit.
The mRNA actually gets through to an infant that's nursing if the mother has been vaccinated in the breast milk.
That was said, you were kicked off of YouTube.
You were kicked off of Twitter if you said those things.
And now it is a proven fact.
Right?
And so, yeah, we need to call out prosperity teachers because believing a False gospel is an eternal matter.
So I'm not saying it's insignificant.
It is an eternal matter.
It will send someone to hell.
But we also need to talk about medical tyranny.
And we need to talk about civil tyranny.
And we need to talk about mutilating and transing kids.
And we need to talk about Governor Gavin Newsom.
And we need to talk about abortion.
And we need to talk about abolition.
And we need to talk about how, if abortion really is murder and Christians are going to be consistent, then the mother who chooses to abort her child is not a victim, but rather should be penalized under the law as a murderer.
See, those are the things that get your videos banned.
Those are the things where instead of having an audience of 100 people, it dwindles immediately down to 10.
Because everybody agrees with you about the prosperity gospel, right?
Quarrels Over Content Not Tone00:05:10
You started calling out your uncle and you got accolades.
But you start calling out critical race theory, and especially now it's starting to be a little bit cool.
But you do that back in 2018, 2019.
And you're accused of being quarrelsome.
You're accused of being arrogant.
You're accused the same way you, Costi, accused Doug Wilson.
One of the things that Costi tweeted for more context is that he said, because Eric Kahn was addressing him with this, Eric Kahn, part of Kings Hall podcast and Hard Man podcast, and we've had him on our podcast.
But Eric Kahn said, Are you saying that Doug Wilson is a heretic?
Are you saying he's a false teacher?
I just want to know.
For clarification.
And Costi said, No, I don't think he's a heretic.
I just don't think he should be a pastor.
He should be in politics, not in the pulpit.
Why?
Costi's beef was not federal vision.
It wasn't doctrinal.
It wasn't a claim that Doug Wilson denies or doesn't deny sola fide.
No, Costi's claim was that Doug Wilson uses bad words sometimes.
And the particular bad word that Costi referenced.
Is a bad word that Doug Wilson used in an article when he was quoting someone else who used that word.
And for that reason, according to Costi, Doug is not a heretic, but Doug is disqualified from ministry.
And the reality is that, you know, I don't know if you guys remember Jeff Durbin when he preached at Fight Laugh Feast Conference, the first conference they ever did, right?
And he used strong language, likened to the language, this was his primary text that he used to expose it.
Likened to the language of Ezekiel, where Ezekiel talks about Israel whoring herself out, and that harlots typically get paid for the oldest profession of prostitution.
But in the case of Israel, Ezekiel the prophet says, guided by God, God is telling Ezekiel to say this you don't get paid for whoring yourself around, but you'll actually pay your lovers, you'll pay them.
To whore around and to be an adulterer towards your husband, the Lord.
And Jeff Durbin took that language and that text and applied it to the woke, progressive, insane Christianity.
And it was a good sermon.
It was.
And he got a ton of flack.
And that's the very same thing that Costi is.
So is Jeff Durbin disqualified from ministry?
I just, I want to know.
Because you would have to, by that standard, right?
By what standard, Kosti?
You would have to say that, you know, well, I don't think Doug's a heretic, but he's not qualified to be a minister.
He should be a politician and not a pastor.
Will you also have to say that about Jeff Durbin?
And then my question is is this really coming from a biblical standard?
Are we actually biblically defining what it means to be quarrelsome?
Because notice, the Apostle Paul, he indicts a ton of people for being quarrelsome, upsetting whole households, causing division, introducing division, and the same group that he describes as that, the authors, the source of quarrels and division that upsets whole households and splits the church, are the same guys.
Paul says that their speech is smooth.
He doesn't say they're divisive because they use the C word.
No, they're divisive despite the fact that they have the smoothest speech around.
What makes them quarrelsome is not their tone, but their content.
What makes them quarrelsome is so Paul would use strong language defending the faith, and he was deemed by many as one who stirs up riots.
I understand that one of the qualifications for an elder is that he should have a good reputation with outsiders.
But how do we define it, Kosti?
Because the same Paul who wrote that qualification underneath the inspiration of the Spirit that an elder in God's church should have a good reputation with outsiders, outsiders called Paul one who stirs up riots, and he was often thrown in prison for disturbing the peace.
He did not have a good reputation.
So, whatever Paul means by having a good reputation with outsiders as a qualification for elders, it can't mean that everybody thinks he's a nice guy.
And when you start citing, examining Moscow as evidence that somebody is quarrelsome or somebody's rhetoric is off or that they're not qualified to be a pastor, but rather should just be a politician, then you're just, you're way off.
You're way off.
And so, yeah, Michael O'Fallon, I don't know him, right?
Law Gospel Distinction Debate00:13:10
But what I can say is that he was right.
I don't know if every way he handled things and every way he conducted himself and every conversation he had behind closed doors is right.
I'm not speaking to that because I wasn't there.
But his position and his overarching general position of this is bad and sounding the alarm before anyone else, he was right.
Why can't we say it?
Why can't we just say that?
Why can't we honor those whom honor is due?
He was right.
And the Lord used him.
And Kosti, I'm not saying you were on the left, but you were suspiciously quiet.
And you have courage when it comes to the prosperity gospel.
But we needed courage with some of these issues.
And not now, once the tide is already turning.
We don't need opportunists to come and run out in front of the conservative parade and act like they engineered it.
No, we needed guys when the parade wasn't happening.
When everyone was scared and when everyone was confused, and when there was no army, we needed guys then to sound the alarm and to rally the troops.
And Michael O'Fallon did that.
And whatever he did after that, I don't know.
But for what I do know, that he saw things and he sounded the alarm and he began to call people's attention to something that matters.
It matters in scripture, it matters in this world, it matters to our nation, it matters to the church.
Yeah, he deserves hats off to you, Michael O'Fallon.
And in terms of saying we don't need James Lindsay, I wish that that had been true.
Again, I would agree with that statement if we just altered it slightly.
We shouldn't have needed.
The evangelical church shouldn't have needed James Lindsay.
But we did.
And that's an indictment not on the church for its unholy alliances.
That's an indictment on the church for its foolishness and naivety.
And we don't need Doug Wilson with the culture war.
Apparently we do.
Apparently we do.
And instead of making statements about who we don't need and why you don't like them, why don't you just prove that we don't need them by having a spine yourself?
And take a tenth of the courage that you have with Joyce Myers and Benny Hinn and apply it to the area where there actually are consequences, where your accounts can get shut down, where you can get fined.
Take a tenth of your courage against Benny Hinn and apply it to courage against Gavin Newsom, against Joe Biden, against Nancy Pelosi, and call out big tech.
While you're at it, and call out their shadow banning, call out their unequal weights and measures.
That's the fight.
The prosperity gospel is a heresy.
It takes millions to hell.
Yes, that's true.
We got to keep saying that.
But we can't only say that.
We can't only say that when there's this other fight that wants to take your kids away.
They do.
That's not extreme hyperbole.
They do.
In Canada, we've seen fathers separated from their children because the father won't use the preferred pronouns of a 14 year old.
That's coming.
That's here.
That's being taught in our schools.
It's drag queen story hour.
My God.
God, we need you.
We need your help.
And one of the things we need from God is courage in men, not just to fight against prosperity gospel preachers.
But to fight against people who actually hold real institutional power, to fight against guys who can punch back.
It's one thing to fight against these guys over here that they don't do anything.
You can call out Benny Hinn, you can call out Joel Osteen, and there's no repercussions.
There's not.
The videos get thousands of views and there's no practical threat.
But you start calling out things like vaccines.
And that it affects women's menstrual cycles because it does.
And you start saying those things before you're told you're allowed to say it by the New York Times.
Man, that's a fight.
There's repercussions there.
That one, that takes courage, takes a lot of courage, but it's so needed.
And so, yeah, we did need James Lindsay.
I wish we didn't.
And when it comes to partnering with someone, there's just, we got to understand this, guys.
We got to be able to do theological triage.
We have to be able to understand this.
It's just way too simplistic to say we cannot partner with someone unless they hold to all of our doctrine.
No, the question is what are we partnering with them in and what are we partnering with them to do?
You can partner, you can partner with someone to abolish abortion.
Who is not a Calvinist?
And you can partner with someone to abolish abortion who is not a Christian.
You can.
And that doesn't mean that you've given up the gospel.
That does not necessarily, it could, but it does not necessarily prove that you've compromised on the gospel.
So, yes, I'm with you.
I think Kossi's general heart was I don't want to win the cultural and political war, but in the process, forfeit and lose the doctrinal war.
I agree.
I agree.
But that's not what's happening.
Again, it's just, it's gaslighting.
It's just this, that's not what's happening.
The big issue right now is not that you've got a bunch of gospel centered reformed guys compromising the gospel.
Right?
That's what a few guys want to make it sound like.
I know R. Scott Clark thinks that.
He wants to say everybody's following Doug Wilson and not on his cultural rhetoric, but on his federal vision and they're denying solely feeding.
That's just not what's happening.
That's what the left does.
That's what Democrats do.
That's their playbook.
That's their rhetoric, right?
They take 1% of what's actually going on and make it the headline, right?
That's what the Pharisees did.
Jesus literally indicted the Pharisees and said, You strain out gnats but swallow camels.
No, no, the big pervasive epidemic in the evangelical church today is not that a ton of people are getting on board with federal vision.
No, no, what's happening is that a ton of people are holding fast to the gospel by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.
And for the first time, they're actually applying the scripture, not just to their privatized quiet time or the home in the church, but to the civil arena.
And they're listening to guys who have been leading that charge for decades because they actually have some wisdom.
And everybody else who's still a pietist and just wants to call out the prosperity gospel and talk about, you know, sola grazia and sola fide and doesn't.
Ever want to talk about any cultural or political issue whatsoever, that they want to be pietists and radical two kingdom guys, they're losing their audience and they're just jealous.
R. Scott Clark is jealous.
That's what's going on.
That's what's going on.
A bunch of guys are finally starting to wake up and say, We want all of Christ for all of life.
We want to apply the whole counsel of God to the whole of human society.
We want to follow Jesus like the Puritans, full obedience.
To God in everything.
Can you overdo it?
Are there ditches that you can fall into?
Sure, but that is the general direction that we want to go because Christ is calling us there.
And we're not going there as a substitute for the gospel.
We're not giving up the gospel to start applying God's law.
No, we can do both law and gospel.
And guys are in droves hopping onto that.
That's why guys listen to this podcast.
That's why guys listen to Doug Wilson.
And if you don't like it, why don't you just start doing it?
Why don't you join us?
Why don't you take a stand?
I'm not federal vision.
There's things with Doug's doctrine I don't like, but I don't think he's a heretic.
I don't think he denies sola fide.
Guys will say, well, he never retracted federal vision, he just stops using the language.
But he said, I believe all the things I used to believe, and I just don't use the language.
One thing you need to understand about federal vision, and I've looked into it somewhat extensively, there is a sliding scale.
Not everybody who adhered to federal vision and wore the hat was to the same degree.
Doug was federal vision light.
He always was.
And so when he says, I'm not using the language, but I still believe these things, he's not denying sola fide.
I understand John Moffat.
I understand Theo Cass.
And I understand why they would go against Doug Wilson because they're notorious antinomians.
And I do want to say that publicly.
Theocast completely denies, I don't know about recently, but I used to listen to them.
They completely deny the third use of God's law.
And that's why they only understand God's law as bad news.
So I would disagree with Doug in terms of I hold to a law gospel distinction in the text, not just in the heart, not just the person that's reading it.
I actually believe in a law gospel hermeneutic.
I do hold to that.
However, I disagree with John Moffat and the Theocast guys in terms of I'm not going to say that the law is exclusively bad news.
The law is bad news in its first use.
This is just basic Reformed theology.
In its first use, the law reveals to us the holiness of God by way of contrast, by way of consequence, it reveals to us our sinfulness and therefore our need for a Savior.
So the law reveals that there's a holy God, I'm a sinful man, and that I'm under the wrath of God, that I stand condemned apart from.
A substitute.
And the law then, in that sense, drives me to Christ.
The bad news of the law drives me to the good news of the gospel.
Yes, and amen.
But that's speaking of the law exclusively in only one of its uses, namely its first use.
But the third use of the law is that it's a lamp unto my feet.
David didn't just acknowledge the moral rightness of God's law, but he delighted in its practical usefulness and goodness, its tangible goodness, that it leads to life, it revives the soul.
And David says, Thy law is a lamp unto my feet.
Okay, so what's the alternative?
If there's a lamp unto your feet, light, light, it lights the path.
Okay, what's the alternative?
The absence of God's law, darkness.
Okay, is a lamp good news in the context of pitch black darkness?
Yeah, the lamp is good.
It's good.
It's not gospel good news, it's not saving in terms of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.
But the law of God is good.
David says that it is holy and good and right.
So, the law of God is distinct from gospel.
I do want to hold a distinction between law and gospel.
I don't think the distinction is only in the ears of the hearer or the heart, but I believe there actually is a law gospel hermeneutic in the text.
But all that being said, that doesn't mean that all law is only ever bad news and gospel is the only good news.
No, the gospel is the good news, capital T, the good news.
But the law is bad news insofar as its first use that drives us.
To Christ and the gospel, revealing the holiness of God, our sinfulness, and need of a Savior.
But the law then for the Christian becomes good news in its third use because it shows us not the path to salvation, but the path from salvation into sanctification, which ordinarily, not 100% of the time, prosperity gospel, but ordinarily, obedience brings not only eternal blessing, but tangible blessings in this life as well.
And that lamp unto my feet, as an alternative to pitch black darkness, is good news in its third use.
That's where I'm at theologically.
Personal Reconciliation Efforts00:10:24
And I think Doug, in very many ways, that's where he's at.
Now, the only thing that Doug would disagree with is the law gospel distinction in the text.
He would say, yes, law gospel distinction, 100%.
But he wouldn't hold to it in the text.
And there I would disagree with him.
And I do think there are some problems with that.
But I don't think hearing him, and I've read a ton of Doug Wilson, listened to a ton of his sermons, he's not denying salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for justification alone.
Doug Wilson is orthodox.
He is not a false teacher.
I don't like all of his doctrine.
He's not a false teacher.
So, Costi, in that sense, was right to at least not go the federal vision false teacher heretic route, but still wrong to say, Yeah, but you know, I know you've been fighting this dragon alone because nobody else will join you, but I don't like your sword technique.
I think your sword technique was a little harsh, a little harsh sword fighting there.
You got your hands dirty.
What's that on your, you know, like we need to fight, but.
But you can't get your hands dirty.
What is that on your hands?
Oh, that's the blood of dragons that I've been slaying.
That's why my hands are dirty.
I'm sorry.
Let me go to the washroom real quick, the little boys' room, and then I'll come back and we can have a civilized conversation.
There's problems with this.
There are problems.
And like I said at the very beginning, I gave a long and healthy disclaimer.
Costi, from what we can tell, has repented.
He repented from wrapping up G3 ministries in this.
Because Michael O'Fallon sits on the board.
Sounds like he's going to handle Michael O'Fallon personally, which is what it always was a personal grievance.
It needs to be personal, one on one, and not public.
And with Doug, Costi is supposed to be talking to Doug Wilson today.
I'm talking to him about some of his critiques with Doug Wilson, and hopefully they can get some kind of unity, some kind of reconciliation with that.
I really hope so.
But the reason why I bring this whole thing up is not just to pick on Costi.
If you're tuning in just now, I said a lot of positive things about Costi for the first 25 minutes.
The reason why I'm bringing it up is because Kossi represents a lot of people.
There are a bunch of people who are like, man, Doug Wilson has something to say, and we should have been listening to him.
Michael LaFalle has something to say.
We should have been listening to him.
These things matter.
We need to get involved.
And there are guys who are actually leading the way and guys who are actually articulating how to apply all of Christ to all of life, a Christian ethic, right?
The first thousand years of church history, we're nailing out doctrine of God, hypostatic union, two natures of Christ.
And the next thousand years of church history, we're nailing out justification.
Right?
Justification by grace alone through faith.
But we don't ever need to drift past the gospel, forget the gospel, or substitute something else for the gospel.
All that's heresy.
But for the next thousand years of church history, maybe we could talk about ethics.
Maybe we could talk about ethics in the civil realm, in the public sphere.
Maybe we could talk about not just the doctrine of God and Christ and his two natures, and then the gospel, what Christ has done, person of Jesus, work of Jesus.
That gets you 2,000 years of church history.
Now, maybe we could talk about the kingdom.
Of Jesus, the kingdom of Jesus.
And there are a few guys who are talking about that.
And so, yeah, a bunch of people are coming out of the woodworks and saying maybe they've got something to say and they want to learn from them.
And because of that, a bunch of other people are coming out and saying, well, he's got a potty mouth or, well, federal vision.
Well, no, I think Big Eva is just falling apart.
I think the gatekeepers are losing their credibility and their control.
And I think a lot of people just are jealous.
I think that's what it is.
I really do.
And so I hope that by God's grace that this pattern continues.
I hope that we don't lose anything in the process.
I agree, we don't want to win a political cultural war at the expense of a doctrinal war.
But I do think there's a way to partner with people that we don't agree with on everything, but to partner with them specifically in one thing for a cause of Christ, even if we disagree on the person and work of Jesus and still being.
And holding fidelity with our gospel witness, I think there's a way to do that.
I think the church historically has done that and is doing that now.
And from time to time, we're going to need some loving pastoral warnings to call us back to first things, to main things.
But we need sola scriptura and tota scriptura only the scripture, but all of the scripture.
And when we look at all of the scripture, all of Christ for all of life, the whole counsel of God for the whole of human society, there's a lot of things that the church has just been impotent in.
There's a lot of things that the scripture speaks to that we just haven't applied.
We just haven't applied.
So, all right.
Let me tell you real quick.
I do have some more details about the church planting workshop that I'm going to be doing.
Let's go ahead and put that up.
Church planting workshop.
Long title, but I thought it was funny.
How to plant a church since your last church went woke, right?
This is probably the most common email that I get from people saying, look, I don't know what to do, Pastor Joel.
I can't find a faithful church within a two hour driving radius of my house.
The church that I'm not a chronic, dissatisfied church hopper, I was going to this church for 18 years.
The pastor went woke.
He shut down the church.
We can't meet on the Lord's day as a church, but I see his Instagram account and he's at BLM rallies and the Summer of Love 2020.
What do I do?
And so this workshop is primarily going to be for individuals how to plant a church in their home that's biblical, how to have a small church, albeit, but a church with a few other like minded families, right?
Maybe it's like we can't find a church, but I've got three or four other families that we agree about what is biblical doctrine.
And we agree, like the sons of Issachar, we know the times, we know what time it is.
We love Christ.
We love his gospel.
We want to be a faithful church.
This is going to be a workshop that tells you how do I plant a church with just a few families in my living room?
That would be a small church, but a thoroughly biblical church that meets every biblical criteria there is.
So I'm going to do this in four weeks.
It's going to be an hour and a half each session, 45 minutes on the front end of a lecture, and then 45 minutes on the back end of QA.
45 minutes on the front end is going to be a lecture, 45 minutes on the back end.
It's going to be QA.
I think it'll be helpful for all kinds of different doctrinal distinctions that you might have.
I think it'll be helpful for Presbyterians.
But that said, I want to give this disclaimer.
I'm going to be doing this from the perspective and the church polity of the 1689.
I'm a Reformed Baptist, a particular Baptist.
That is going to be the viewpoint doctrinally that I'm going to be presenting how to plant a Reformed Baptist church.
A lot of the principles have far reaching implications and are broad enough that they would encompass.
Other, you know, Lutheran or Presbyterian, but I am going to be doing this from a Reformed Baptist angle.
Okay, so this is going to be on Monday nights.
It's going to be four Mondays in a row at 8 p.m. Central Time.
It's going to start November 28th, then it'll be December 5th, the 12th, and the 19th.
And we are officially ready.
I've been talking about it for a couple weeks now, but we're officially ready for people to register online.
So if you're interested in taking this course, it's going to be a closed course, only a few people, it's not going to be public.
It's something that you're going to register for.
There's only going to be a few people that are actually signed up.
It's going to be in a closed room, and I'm going to be addressing your questions and speaking to you.
Okay, so it's a closed group.
It's rightresponseministries.com forward slash church plant.
If you want to sign up, it's rightresponseministries.com forward slash church plant.
Again, our first session is going to be Monday, November 28th, an hour and a half on Mondays at 8 p.m. to 9 30 p.m.
I'm also going to be emailing all the people who participate in this and sign up for the course.
I'm going to be emailing you my church's bylaws and constitution, our membership.
Covenant, our general statement of faith.
I'm going to be giving you as many documents as possible for you to actually covenant, formally covenant your local church body together.
So that's what that is.
Last thing I just want to mention also is the conference.
Nathan, let's go ahead and pull that up.
We've got our conference coming up.
I'm really excited.
We've already got over 100 people registered, but I said this recently.
I'm going to say it again.
The price is about to go up.
We are charging $100 for an adult, which is nothing.
That is nothing.
Most conferences of this caliber, three day conference, would be $180 all the way up to $180 to $250.
It's $100 right now if you're an adult.
If you're a teenager or older, you know, big kid from 11 years old through 17 years old coming with your parents, it's $50.
And if you're a kid, 10 and under, it's zero.
That price is going to go up though.
We are going to raise the price from $100 to $130, and the price is going to go up starting November 1st.
So, The month of October this month is your very last month to register at this price 50 bucks for a teenager, $100 for an adult.
It's James White, it's Gary DeMar, it's Joe Boot, and it's yours truly.
The whole conference focusing on theonomy and post millennialism.
Again, that's theonomy and post millennialism.
The dates of the conference are May 5th, 6th, and 7th.
That's a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of 2023, the year of our Lord 2023, next year.
I would love to see you guys there.
I'm sorry that I was not able to take any questions today.
Next week, my plan is to be able to do just QA, but this costy thing has been just all over Twitter, and a lot of people have asked me about it.
I know that I didn't take questions in part because everything that I'm talking about was actually answering a lot of questions I've already received.
I've gotten a lot of emails, and there's been a lot of people just saying, What do we do with this?
Erosion of the Middle Ground00:03:19
Is Doug really scary?
Should we stay away from Doug Wilson?
What's costy Hen doing?
What's up with that?
And what about Michael O'Fallon?
What about G3 Ministries?
What's going on?
And I think, you know, I'll leave it with this in conclusion.
In a nutshell, what's going on is we're seeing all those Votie Bacham fault lines that he told us about.
We're seeing the tectonic plates continue to shift.
And guys in the middle, I think Costi, his frustration is I really think he was trying to do the splits.
I'm not saying that he was actually woke, but I think at least relationally and in terms of partnerships and those kinds of things, he just, and basically we're living in a time, a cultural moment, where you're just not allowed to be quiet.
Everyone's going to have to pick a side.
Every pastor, every theologian, every politician.
What's happening in our nation, in the evangelical church, in the realm of politics, in the realm of news media, what's happening in a nutshell is this the middle is falling out.
No more middle.
Everything is polarized.
And that's not necessarily bad.
Yeah, it's divisive.
Yeah, it's intense.
Yeah, it's uncomfortable.
But the reason why things are polarized is because finally, in God's providence and his mercy, I might add, we're finally seeing sin for what it really is.
We're finally seeing wickedness for what it really is.
We're actually seeing that our battle's not with flesh and blood, but principalities.
This stuff is demonic, demonic ideology, demonic policies, demonic doctrines, demonic ministries.
And as these things just become increasingly visible with every new news cycle, Something comes out and people take a side.
With all this stuff going on, what's happening is that the middle ground is eroding.
There is no more middle ground.
If you're in the middle ground, the earth is going to open up and swallow you alive.
You're going to have to pick a side.
And I think what we're seeing with all this kind of stuff is guys are starting to pick a side.
And then there's bickering and there's fighting and there's slander and there's accusations being hurled by this side to that side and vice versa.
But a lot of guys are just mad because they're still trying to hold the middle.
They're still trying to hold the middle.
And it's just not going to work.
They're getting mad at Doug Wilson because he's just been visibly and unapologetically.
On one side, namely, I believe Christ's side, the biblical side.
And guys are gravitating towards him and losing interest.
They're losing interest as they guys gravitate towards Doug.
They're losing interest in the opportunists and the guys who are just trying to play the field.
And those guys who are losing followers to Doug Wilson are getting mad about it.
I think that's a lot of what's going on.
And I hope it continues.
All right.
Thanks for tuning in.
And I look forward to seeing you guys next week.
God bless.
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.