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Well, there's a lot going on. A whole lot is going on. And it's been a while since I've given you guys an update. But I have a big update today. I'm not going to go deep, I'm going to go broad. I'm going to talk about a whole bunch of different people that are involved in what I would call cover up culture that's not only bad actors, but those who protect them and cover up for them. And sometimes it's actually a mixed bag. Somebody is both of those things. I share this for the sake of accountability for the body of Christ, according to 1 Timothy, or where it says that we should rebuke such in the presence of all that the rest also may fear. And the problem is that rebuke should be coming from these guys, but it has to go to them because they won't do their job according to scripture and they still won't do it. I'm sorry to say, for the most part. Not that there's nobody, because there are some. I've had. Hold on, I'll give you the update, but first I need to clear up something. This is before. Well, okay, I'll just do it now before I get into that. Before I get into question number one and then I'll go to your questions later. There was some controversy about this cup over the past few months. And I held it up in a photo I put online saying, you know, I've been drinking my coffee black and you know, I like it, actually like it that way. Makes me feel manly, even though it's not a manly thing to do, but it makes you feel like it. Anyways, people responded and they said, mike, that's a teacup. And they thought it was very small because in the picture, I don't know, the way that it was held in the picture, it like looked like it was a little cup, you know, something like that. And it's actually bigger than a typical like coffee shop cup. So I made a video explaining how my cup is actually a good sized cup. It holds more than the average cup and it's a coffee cup. I told my wife about all this afterwards and she let me know and I just need to clear the air. She let me know. I actually bought that cup as part of a tea set, Which made me not feel manly. But I'm tell you something, I don't care. I like my big teacup and drinking out of it. So whatever. Question number what is going on with COVID up culture in the charismatic church? Are they actually getting better? And the answer is it's a mixed bag. I'm going to go through a bunch of specific details. We're going to walk through individuals like Sean Bowles, Mike Bickle, Bethel, Todd White, Chris Reed, Bob Hartley, Bob Jones, Balke, Patricia King, Chae on, Micah Turnbo, Steve Coco, Benny Hinn. Going to mention those names right now, but I'm going to do it quickly. This is not going to be, well, my version of quickly. It won't be three hours of me doing this. So first, let's look at Sean Bowles. Sean Bowles was like my guy taking me down the rabbit hole. When I heard about him and about what he had done, I wanted to warn people about him and that desire to warn people about this fake prophet who I later then found out he was disrobing and doing very shocking things to others in what I would call trapped conditions. To people who worked for him, who were under his leadership, pastorally and spiritual leadership, as well as his being their boss, causing them great suffering and pain and trauma and all this stuff he did all this stuff. What blew me away was realizing that Bethel knew all about it. And they did and they knew about it. And the truth is they knew about it before they admit they knew about it. Which is part of the problem here is that I basically made a video, I think it was close to six hours, where I talked not just about Sean Bowles. This is so important to realize this. That video was not just about Sean Bowles. Sean Bowles was the white rabbit. The video was about the wonderland that he led me to, which was cover up culture inside the charismatic church. And I mentioned name after name after name after name, situation after situation, far, far, far beyond Sean Bowles. And for the most part, those things have not been addressed and talked about. But Sean Bowles, here's the update. His website is down. His social media is gone. He is not speaking anywhere visible that I've seen or even heard of. He has taken, however, zero responsibility. He has not had any reconciliation with victims to my knowledge, and I am in contact with multiple of them. He has no confession of wrongdoing that is anywhere near what he's actually done. And he has said publicly, the only thing that I've seen is that he's taking a sabbatical, which implies he's coming back later, he's preparing to stage his comeback. He's most likely. Now, here's. I'm going to go into conjecture, but I think it's very, very, very, very, very likely true. He is most likely networking Privately behind the scenes, trying to see who will still be on his side, who can he spin his story to? Who can he make himself look like a victim for this person? And he's still trying to do this because the guy has no other skills that I' other than grifting and lying to people in God's name to try to give himself a name. It's disgusting and evil, and he's not being stopped. And part of the reason he's not being stopped. How can you say he's not being stopped, Mike? His website's down. His social media's gone. Unless other leaders will collectively say, like, whatever church he's at right now, he should be excommunicated out of that church. That's the godly thing to do. Everybody should be loud about this guy. But instead, what's happening is people are reacting to what is already public. What me and others have made public, we forced into light, and they're responding to it. They're not shining the light forward more. And that is a problem. Let's look at Mike Bickle. Mike Bickle. And I rejoice that his stuff is down. That's a proper good thing. But the thing is, if he could put it up today and make it work, I'm sure he would, because there's been zero repentance, zero evidence, zero fruit of a humble heart. Hold on. I need a drink from my teacup. And it's ultimately not honoring God. You'll see. You'll see. My prediction is he'll come back and maybe he'll try to avoid social media, but he's got to get his grift on somehow. And what happens is when these guys get exposed, they tend to cluster together. So I wouldn't be surprised if his comeback was with another guy that was also exposed. And then they kind of, like, worked together as part of a comeback. Like, maybe he'll show up at Bickle's church. Speaking of which, let me talk about Mike Bickle. Mike Bickle is trying to stage a comeback. Mike Bickle, who? 17, according to the testimony of many, many, many witnesses, 17 victims of his perverse predations. He would tell young ladies, and sometimes as young as 14 or 15, he'd use prophecy to manipulate them. So he's lying in the name of God now, again, Mike Bickle, he was bigger than life, this guy. He was the most godly man anybody knew, ever knew, according to the people who would support him and all that. And he had been sort of mainstreamed by Vineyard and John Wimber. Although Wimber regretted that later on. And I've got the tapes right here. I'm listening to these tapes from back in the day where Bickle's talking about Vineyard and talking about what their future is. And his guy Bob Jones is prophesying. Here, I'll let you listen to a little. And so there's been a sword that went over Vineyard, and it wasn't the enemy sword, it was the Lord's sword. And it removed those that were standing up in the way of the sword. And now that first sword is gone, there's another sword on the way to Vineyard and to us, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is Bob Jones. He's just prophetically blathering. And yes, I would absolutely believe that's the case. I'm going to do. I'll do a video on Bob Jones at some point. I've got things to share with you guys on that. And he's on stage with Mike Bickle, and they're prophesying to Vineyard and they're telling their story, a bunch of fake prophecy to try to ingratiate themselves to Vineyard. Because that's how they got mainstreamed. It was through the John Wimber connection and through Vineyard. And that's when it happened in like late 1980s, 1989 or something is when this is happening. And it was a few years later, they started getting exposed. And then eventually Vineyard was like, we don't really want to connect to you anymore. You guys are weird in a bad way. But Mike Bickle start the whole IHOP movement. International House of Prayer. Not the pancakes. The Superior Pancake Shop. But no, I mean superior to Bickle. They don't make Superior. They're decent pancakes. I like some IHOP here and there. But Bickle has this movement, whole movement of people. The 24 hour prayer rooms, they're all over the place, their locations all over in other churches who aren't officially part of them. But they're connected, you know. And Bickle's the center of it all. He is, whether they admit it or not, he's absolutely the center of it all. And there he is doing his thing while he's prophesying to women. He's getting them in bedrooms. He's doing inappropriate stuff. He's giving them liquid courage, you know, young ladies. He's hiding and lying. And he has 17 confirmed victims, according to the investigative report that went forward with. Which caused Bickle to be removed. And then it exposed other actors in ihop, some who were just covering for Bickle and oppressing people. And it was just. It was all worse than you thought it was at first. Basically, Bickle's doing his comeback now. His sister came out this big prophetic proclamation that God is calling him to come back. It doesn't matter if the accusations are true. She says this in the name of God as prophecy. Doesn't matter if the accusations are true. I don't even want to listen to them. I'm not even going to think about them. And he's doing his comeback. Right. I already knew. He started a weekly church meeting, Mike Bickle. Yeah, it's been going on for a little while now, guys. And. But just now, just like this last month, they issued a week long prayer call to prayer and fasting. We're going to fast for seven days and pray for seven days and all of our prayers and they want this. Worldwide will be focused on Mike Bickle because he needs to be restored. He needs to have his comeback. Yet he has not repented, he has not confessed, he has only spun and continued to lie in God's name as far as I can tell. And he's just doing his comeback. This is where Bethel Church in Redding, California. You guys have to say something about this. How have you not, how have you not. You promoted Mike Bickle, you encouraged. Bill Johnson says that Mike Bickle is, I think he called him the most important guy on the planet. He may have said he was one of the two most important people on the planet. It was like Mike Bickle and somebody else. Memory does not serve me at the moment, but I think there was another guy in that list as well. But yeah, Bickle, most important guy on the planet. According to Bill Johnson, when he first gets exposed, Chris Valentin, the one time he gets up and talks about it publicly, he just says, whatever happens, I love Mike Bickle, he's my friend. And everybody claps and applauds, creating the posture that allowed Bickle to get away with it in the first place. And now he's trying to get going again. And you guys should say something. Why am I saying something? Because you're not. I would much rather you guys say something. But they're not. And by say something I mean they should put out, with whatever respect they have left in people's lives, a call that says, this man is disqualified. He's rebelling against Christ and God. He's abusing people in God's name. Him and his sister are delusional and dangerous. You guys need to be warned because you guys matter. Because those people that are meeting with you, you matter. You need to be rescued from this deception. At least if we can do so by speaking up. That's what's going on with Mike Bickle right now. Supposedly in their cultish environment. I wouldn't just call it a cult, but there's cultish elements, according to Bickle and his teaching and all the supposed fake prophets around him. Israel needs Bickle. God ultimately needs Bickle for his end times plans. Now they'll talk out of two sides and they'll say, well, he doesn't need him at all. He's nobody. But at the same time, he's also the guy that rode in the chariot. He's God's end time apostle. He's going to change the shape of the church around the world. His prayer movement is going to usher in the return of Christ. That also is what they say. So yeah, and turns out he's a fraud. Just get away. Just throw it all away. Get away from those guys, please, for your own safety sake. Okay, next up, let's talk more about Bethel. Bethel's response initially to the COVID up stuff. And I put my big shambles video again, it's not just about sembulls. That's just the entrance point. But I put that video down in the description. If you haven't seen it. What I'm saying now won't make a whole lot of sense if you, if you just jump in right now. But it's a mixed bag. Bethel is not doing just pure cover up. Okay? It's not. I don't believe that it is. I'm going to get flack for saying that I do not believe it is. I think there are many. And I of course could be wrong. But I believe that there are many good actors inside of Bethel, but they're not at the top. They're somewhere below the very highest level of leadership. And those good actors are people who are like, hey, I just found out this other thing in our church because when my video came out, it sort of opened the floodgates. Well, maybe what really opened it was them publicly acknowledging the video first. Chris Valentin's despicable, despicable sermon, which he never even apologized. He said he misled people about me, impugning my motives and basically suggesting that I was in this for money, that I'm literally not made. They're not even monetized. Everybody knows that. But he suggests that that was happening. Never even publicly apologized, even though he publicly slandered me. And I have not been able to talk to Chris Valatin. I've asked to do so, and I've not been granted that opportunity. I've asked for months. I've asked since like early last year. Can we please talk? So I've never been able to talk to him. I've asked recently as well. Okay. I believe in transparency here. I think you guys are intelligent. I think that accountability is something that you do. You're accountable to the church as a whole. You're not just accountable to the leaders, to the individual leaders who like tell everybody what to think and do and then you ask no questions. Although leaders have power and have authority. But I don't think it's just all the power, all the authority and that's it. So I'm sharing these things with you. I think they're important. Chris Valentin's initial message after my video came out was terrible, despicable, wicked even. It was proof of COVID up culture. It was as though he got up to say, without intending to, mike's totally right about us. We're completely doing everything that he said. But then the next week they said, I repent, I'm sorry, we've really blown it. And that's where it turned into a mixed bag. There was what looked like a genuine, like broken heart, especially from Chris, maybe embarrassment from Bill, not maybe brokenness or broken hearted, but at least embarrassment, I think. But anyway, there was like this seemingly genuine. And I talked to multiple people who know him. Even though he won't talk to me, they've talked to him and they're like, mike, this is real. I've known Chris for years. I've never seen him like this. This is like he's really, really sorry. And I am not going to say that's not true. But I want to add in why I see that as a mixed bag, because Chris went on to say publicly, and other people from Bethel too, saying publicly that they had contacted people, victims that they never contacted. Multiple times, multiple individuals they claimed they reached out to. And then I would call those individuals and I'd say, hey, I just heard a recorded meeting where Chris says this or Bill says that. Did they call you? Did they contact you? No, I've never talked to them. They didn't call me. So that sounds like damage control, not like actual repentance. So you might have a broken heart, but then your actions may not be consistent, consistent with dealing with the problems in the right measure. Instead it's like dealing partway with it. So I think Bethel sees there's a Chambol's problem and they see there's a cultural issue. Our Values. Why did we allow this to happen? But I don't think they see the whole picture. And my theory, I'm going to put this out there, because this is all so public, and it should be, is that internally, inside of Bethel, there are those who want to push for the right thing. And. And there are those who are resisting the right thing. And I think those who are resisting the right thing are at the very top. And those who want to push for the right thing are further down the ladder. And it's going to be. It's an impossible task. Because let me tell you this. If Bill Johnson wanted to help expose the frauds, the bad guys, the absolute bad guys that are taking advantage of people, that are blaspheming God's name and they're shaming the church around the world, he could do it in 10 minutes. He could pull up his cell phone and say, I should let you guys know we shouldn't be supporting the ministry of this person. This person, this person, this person. Danny Silk. He knows all about it. He could just say, this person, this person, this person. Chris Valatin. They know about it. These guys know about it. Even the leaders who are pushing for the right thing for Bethel, they could just, on their own, just go public with what they know about Shoit, for instance, which Bethel has still, to my knowledge, just been completely silent about. They know about John Voight. They know about these guys, and they're letting them continue to defraud the people of God. The same people who look to them and trust them, the same people that call them a leader and will look up to them and say, that's my apostle. That's my prophet. And they're not warning them about the people that are vultures to them. And that is unconscionable. So it is a mixed bag. They also, in their public statement, their timeline was wrong. I have confirmed this through multiple witnesses that when they say, we didn't know about Sean Bowles till 2019, that is not remotely true. Not remotely true. They knew far before that. And Bill had been warned before even that. According to witnesses I've spoken to In 2016, Bill had received warnings. I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't come earlier. And Bob Hartley. We'll talk. Actually, I'll come back to Bob Hartley. But Bethel also dropped the ball on him and still hasn't dealt with it. In recent, more sort of recent times, a video has been released or audio has been released where there was an internal discussion where Bill Johnson is talking to a group of people in the church and they're asking questions. And he says he's asked a question about what would you say to those who feel as though their lives were damaged, they were hurt because of the misuse of prophecy? And Bill Johnson's response was, it was worth it. I want you to let that sink in. You may have already seen this. It kind of went viral. It was released through Julie Royce, through her on YouTube channel. Her YouTube channel. I'm the one that gave it to Julie Royce because I received it from somebody who wants to remain anonymous. I sent it to her because that's kind of their thing. Like, hey, can you release this now? I don't approve of everything Julie does. I know comments will be filled with people who disagree with her on different things. And like, I'm able to agree with someone on one thing and disagree on another. And so I move forward like that. But that was released because I had the entire audio and I was like, what would be the right way to do this? Well, she's like the journalist and she releases these long audios of people. That's kind of what they do anyway. It seemed like the right fit. I knew people would take it from there, but that part had to be heard. In this private meeting, Bill says something that reveals that what they said on stage that Sunday when they repented, it was either not true or it was not enough. Okay? Those are the only options available to us. It was either not true is a no follow through, no like, you know, consistency, or it was not enough in that what he was actually apologizing for was different than what you think he was apologizing for. Right. He meant it, but he got you to think it was a lot more meaningful than it was. And this audio where he says it was worth it, that to me, in a nutshell, that's cover up culture. You come to Bethel because someone prophesied there was going to be a housing boom. Right? Because you got that prophecy. You heard Bill read it from the stage. There's going to be a housing boom. There's going to be jobs, there's going to be all kinds of prophets coming to people at Bethel. So you move your family, you come to the church there, and nope, it doesn't happen. In fact, Bethel grows, their housing prices increase at a slower rate than the rest of the country. Then they have a big crazy fire that hurts all kinds of things. Businesses are destroyed, the job market is not doing well. And you're like, man, I really banked myself on this. I banked my Life on this. Then you find out this prophecy failed miserably. And your leaders will never be accountable for it. They'll never even publicly talk about it. It will never be addressed. I talked about this prophecy in my video. They've never mentioned it publicly to their own people, to my knowledge. And then you hear someone say, hey, Bill, we heard this. You know, what about me, who was manipulated effectively by a prophecy. I see God using everything in my life, but I came here because of a prophecy that wasn't real. And he looks at you and goes, it was worth it. What's worth it? Bill's thing forever has been revival at any price. Revival or we die. And that is exciting to people until they realize that it also means allowing the fake because it's worth it. And that has been standard operating procedure in Bethel from day one, I believe. And that is the thing that has to be rooted out in the Charismatic Church is thinking that the fake is okay because it is worth it. Because you leave a trail of hurt people and victims, but you create an environment of hype. And then you have to suppress the stories and the testimonies of people who are hurt because they will ruin the whole thing. Personally, I believe that if Bethel had knowledge that the gold dust that blew them up all over the Internet years ago, that put them on the map, the glory cloud, if that was fake and they knew it, that Bill would think it was worth it. That if you had been hurt in your life through fake prophecy and you got into a marriage because someone prophesied you to get married, and then it messed up your life, and you were like, I only did this because of this prophecy coming from a Bethel guy, that Bill would think it was worth it. Because, look, we have this empire. Look, we have this massive reach. We have what we wanted. But what they wanted was how much of it is even real? How much of it's real? Is it real? Revival? Is revival just mean big, or does revival mean an actual authentic work of the Holy Spirit? So it's a mixed bag now since then, my video and that and other videos, other people who contributed to this stuff before I even did. More information has come out about Bethel. And there's one guy in particular. His name is Ben Armstrong. He is the overseer of the prophetic at Bethel. That's kind of a big job to have. You're overseeing the prophetic at this church and in this movement. In this movement. Right. It's worldwide. And no charismatic pastor, I think, has more impact in charismatic churches in the world than Bill Johnson. And no group has more impact in the way that charismatics handle things prophetically than Bethel. And this guy oversees it. His name's Ben Armstrong. So a victim comes forward. Her name's Sarah. She comes forward, and she says, look, when I was at Bethel and I was a teenager, I think she was in her teens. I don't remember her exact age right now. She was groomed by this guy, Ben Armstrong. She gave specific examples of grooming behaviors that are textbook grooming, combined with prophetic grooming, like God's showing me that we need to do this. He pushes intimacy on her. He grooms her, got her drinking. There's a moment where she says, I remember saying no. And then it's publicly reported as an affair, and he is restored, and he's put back into ministry. Others corroborate her story and others saying, oh, yeah, he tried grooming behaviors on me as well. He said, I had intimacy issues, not that I was aware of, and that he had to sit next to me and our thighs had to touch, and he put his arm around me. He started getting closer and closer and closer. And then this other person says, I didn't feel comfortable with that, so I just kind of got out of that situation. But this works. This is how groomers are. You keep fishing until you catch one, then it works on them. It turns out that this wasn't the only time he had done something, at least that looks like this in ministry. Ben Armstrong. He had done it, and they were aware that he had previously had sexual stuff with someone under his pastoral care. This is how I understand the story, and I'll correct anything if I have to. Anyways, I talked to this victim. I heard her story, and I was like, this sounds all the hallmarks of someone telling their true story. All the hallmarks. Then that goes public. Bethel has just. There's a lot more story that can go on there. There's a whole lot more. Him stealing people's prophetic words. Ben Armstrong. Someone would give a prophetic word, and he would then give it as his own. And so he was. This makes him look extra prophetic, which may be how he ended up as the prophetic overseer was through fraud. Through prophetic fraud. Nobody's really talking much about that, but that's a huge, huge issue, because when you have an environment where the fake is allowed in order to get to the real, you always end up with fakers at the very tippy top, because nobody can compete with the guy who will just fake it. The authentic ministry, the authentic spiritual Gift guy can never compete with a guy who can just make stuff up. I just healed a man. Oh, I healed 12 people last week. How do I. I can't compete with that. Whatever I've done, you could just say you did more. You can't compete with these guys. Oh, I got a word from the Lord for you. Oh, well, I got one too. I got one too, because I can just make stuff up. Well, anyways, Ben Armstrong. It's been announced that an independent investigation is being launched into him and into the situation. And at first that was kind of hopeful, but now it's not hopeful to me because Jen Johnson did an interview and I linked down below where you can see some of this clip. She does an interview. Jen Johnson, for those who don't know, this is inside baseball a bit. Maybe skip this video if you're not part of it. If it doesn't affect you in your life in some specific way, maybe just skip this video. It's not really relevant to you. It's not going to edify you that much except by way of irritating you and maybe opening your eyes to realizing that there are bad actors and they can't exist in the church. And we should have strict treatment of people like that so that we can root it out. That's something you should be aware of. Okay? All this to say Jen Johnson, she is one of the royalty at Bethel, okay? She is Bill Johnson's daughter in law. She's married to Brian Johnson, Bill's son. He's the one who's like kind of deaf. He has an implant or something, which I'm glad he's. Hopefully he can hear well with that Anyway. And they're songwriters and she's a singer and her husband's a songwriter and they've written with Phil Wickham and stuff like that. And actually him and Phil wrote a really great song, actually. Really, really beautiful song about the resurrection of Jesus. It kind of follows this hymn style. That particular song is great. But they're also the head of Bethel Music. Okay? Bethel Music is run by these guys. They run Bethel Music. It's them. The Johnson family runs Bethel Music. And she does an interview because Bethel Music is scrambling right now. This is my perception of things. They're scrambling right now because of all the bad press they're going to. There's lots of churches that are like, you know what? We're done with Bethel songs. This stuff is. It's not just that you guys are accused of random things or people don't agree with you on all Your theology. This goes deeply to the character of your whole movement. And we're out. And so there's a lot of people abandoning Bethel Music songs, which means they're like $20 million a year. Business is being impacted. That's a lot of money. That's the cash cow of Bethel, as I understand it, is Bethel Music. So they've been. From fairly early on, they've been trying to separate. Bethel's been trying to separate Bethel Music from this controversy. That's what their actions look like. When they did their repentance sermon, I almost didn't notice at first because there was so much going on that they said about Bethel Music. They weren't really updated on Sean Bowles and what was going on there. They're just trying to separate Bethel Music. Now, I think that's a lie. I think that they're actually. I'm being honest with you guys. I'm transparent. I don't want to go. I find that hard to believe. No, it's worse than that. I think that's an actual lie. This was a huge controversy that was ongoing. And to think that Jen Johnson, the daughter in law of Bill, and they're at Bethel all the time, they're at the church there. Like, to think they weren't given any updates. They didn't know what was going on with it. That's very unbelievable. That's very unrealistic. Why would you say this about. Why would you include in this repentance thing that these people at the head of your cash cow, they didn't get updates on what was going on yet? I know a witness who says that after Sean was confronted, he came to Bethel and wanted to visit and hang out. And there he saw Shambles go up to Brian Johnson to go, hey, give him a hug. Be buddy, buddy. And Brian was oddly cold to him. And this witness was like. Notice that they're like, whoa, what is going on there? What's. What's the tension and weirdness between these guys? And then later, in hindsight, they go, oh, because Brian knew what was going on? Because why would you not tell your son about this sexual predator who might target your son? Why would you not tell your very family about the guy that you don't want your grandkids around because he's a perv and he does things to people. And of course you would want them to know. How would you not update them? I don't believe you guys. I think that that was deceptive. I think it was misleading. Now, you may not have had official updates Bethel Music. Here's an official update, but I can show you the text. In fact, I already did show you the text messages in my original video on all this stuff. Chris Valatin told one of the victims, and I have the messages, one of the victims of Scham Bowles, he told him that they had told Bethel Music leadership about Sembulls. This is after they tried to correct Sean, after Sean refused correction and they said, we're not going to go any further with this. He's not under our authority. He's not our responsibility. Then it was after all this that Chris says, we've told Bethel Music not to have anything to do with him and to stay away from him. So how is that not an update? But they're working hard to try to distance Bethel Music, the Cha Ching cash cow of Bethel, from the. The consequences of the COVID up of Sean Bowles, which I consider to be ongoing cover up. Is Bethel Music upset? Yes. Are the leaders upset? Yes. Are they in trouble? Are they struggling? Yes. I know I don't have. I didn't get permission to share the story, but maybe I'll share it some other time. I know that Bethel Music is not, it's not what you heard from one of the pastors at Bethel that day where they were like, thank you, Mike Winger, for your video. I believe you're a godly man. That was one guy, not the church. That was not what the church thinks as a collective about me. I don't know what they all think. It's a mixed bag. I don't think Chris Valentin was saying that. He won't even talk to me. Bill Johnson won't even talk to me. I like to talk to these guys. They still can't talk to me. But I'm going to confront him. I'm not going to play any games. And I won't be like, let's pretend everything's okay. It's not okay. It's not okay. I want you guys, Bill, Chris, here's how it would go. I would say, Bill, Chris, who else do you know about that you haven't exposed that you know is defrauding the people of God? They're harmful, they're hurtful. Who else? Because if, unless you're willing to expose the other people, I will consider it only damage control for what we've exposed, not you actually dealing with the stuff. And, and maybe they'll, maybe they'll do more in the future. But I'm telling you guys, you know how easy it would be for them to expose Benny. Hinn. Easy. They're the insiders. They've got the info, they've got the contacts. It wouldn't be hard at all. Not at all. All right, that being said, this is a long first question. This is a long first question, but it's just gonna be that way. It won't be three hours though. So Ben Armstrong, he gets exposed, there's more ongoing investigations gonna happen. That looks good. Here's why I brought up Jim Johnson and Bethel Music. Bethel's music is, I think, suffering financially because of this stuff. There's a lot of turmoil, a lot of people are upset with them and they're now behind the scenes trying to patch things up and fix things. And it seems as though the line, the untrue rhetoric that they're giving about Bethel Music is, oh, they were separate from all this stuff. Then you've got Jen Johnson, who does an interview recently. She has an interview with a guy whose YouTube channel just focuses on worship stuff. And he had said publicly, maybe we should stop using Basel music, you know, with all the stuff that's going on. And Jen Johnson goes, I'll do an interview with you. So the interview was revealing. And there's a section of the interview, it's around 12 minutes, that actually got deleted after the fact because Jen Johnson spilled what she was really thinking, here's my opinion, what she was really thinking about the exposures and about Sean Bowles and about Ben Armstrong and about these things. And it backfired very quickly. And they were like, this isn't what we tell the public, guys. This is what we may. Here's my theory, right? I think this makes a lot of sense. There's what we privately think and there's what we say to the public, which is the nature of COVID up culture, right? Jean Johnson, she said stuff that made it sound like they were perhaps going to sue. Legal recourse against the victims of Ben Armstrong. That's what it sounded like. And she also. So I actually called the victim up of Ben Armstrong, who's obviously not currently a victim, but she was a victim at the time. And I was like, do you have attorney? Do you need help? I will help and support you. You will have the support of so many thousands of thousands of thousands of people. If they come after you in any way, I want you to know that as long as what you share is true and there's integrity there, you will have us behind you 100%. And that reaction was. A lot of people were feeling that, okay, and we will support you. Sarah, you have so much support. If they come after you for this stuff, it makes you angry. So Jen Johnson shares that. She also shares about. She does the same old shtick about like, well, there's. You've only heard one side of the story that's absolutely not true. Absolutely not true. The Sean Bulls story that's been told publicly has been false. The Ben Armstrong public story that Danny Silk, pastor of Bethel, put into a book at the time he was there and wrote this book unpunishable and made Ben Armstrong's story like a key example of restoring a fallen leader. But I'm saying his book is full of two key examples of COVID up culture perpetrated by Danny Silk of Bethel. And then he ships that out, this book, unpunishable to all people around the world. Because Bethel hasn't just done cover up culture, they've created it in churches where it wouldn't have existed, I'm sad to say. And they've had a window of time to step up and deal with it and deal with it fully. And maybe behind the scenes they're like, we're going to get there, Mike. It's just going to take another two years. It would take 10 minutes if Bill Johnson was on board, but he's not. It would take 10 minutes. Just say what you know, just say the truth. So Jen Johnson then had that interview edited so that that 12 minutes or so was deleted off the Internet. I have a copy of it and there's a YouTube link where I'll put down below where there's a decent amount of it. I think it's Ruslan reacting to it before they deleted it. Yeah. So I'd say Bethel, the short update is they're trying to admit to what they have to show that they're working really hard to fix the problems of the past, but not actually admitting to the full problems so that we're all in a weird situation where it's like either I pat you on the back, good job repenting, you guys have been humble, I want to reward you for that. But I then participate in ignoring that the problems are actually far, far bigger and more widespread than what you've acknowledged and you know about leaders right now that you could help to protect people from, or I actually expose you more, in which case now you're the victim. Now you're the victim of people who just. How much is enough for you, Mike? How much is enough for you? It's a good PR strategy, right? How much is enough? We've publicly apologized, we've gotten on our Knees. We've cried. We've met with people. Yet they didn't call the victims. They said they called. When they claimed that they had, multiple times, they said things like, it was worth it. I've heard them behind the scenes because people keep sending me stuff privately. I've heard them behind the scenes saying different stories than what they say publicly. So, yeah, that's true. And then you've got Bill Johnson's Instagram post. Here's the last thing I'll say. That's just about Bethel. Bill Johnson shares an Instagram post someone else made, but he shared it. And the Instagram post is Bill, Dan Fairley, another of their pastors, and Chris Valatin standing humble with their heads bowed at the stage of their church and a crowd throwing stones at them. And I thought, this is how Bill sees himself. He's the victim. That is, we offered you some very transparent repentance of like 7% of the issues that have been brought up. Isn't that enough? Isn't that enough? Now you're trying to kill us. And that makes me the guy with the stone throwing stones trying to kill him. I don't want to kill you guys. This is just calm down, dude. This is just accountability. This is just accountability. Just say truth. Just say true things. When did you really know about Bob Hartley? I mean, he'll never tell you. You'll never know. He'll only acknowledge what you know. If I come up with three witnesses that go, we warned Bill that Bob Hartley was faking prophecy and taking advantage of people and kind of a perv. We warned him in 2016, 2018, 2014. If I brought witnesses that said that, then the response would be, oh, I did hear it. And here's the explanation of why I didn't do anything. But that was the first I heard of it, and I didn't really believe it at the time. And then 2012, I get two more witnesses, and then they'll push it back to 2012. It's only being accountable for what you absolutely have to be accountable for. And that is, you know, it's not real. Okay, let's talk about Todd White. Todd White. All right, here's the 32nd version of Todd White stuff. I made a video with multiple witnesses exposing Todd White for all kinds of disqualifying behaviors, ungodly, blasphemous, even stuff. And he exploded. He exploded publicly and privately. He chops his hair off and he acts all this. And that. That didn't work out well for him, right when he blew up and he tried to handle things in that aggressive fashion where he was like, telling people, get off the Internet. Da, da, da, get off YouTube. You can't listen to these YouTube preachers and people are offended. And it was just clearly him spiritually abusing everybody in the room. That didn't work well for him as far as his PR strategy goes. So when my recent video came out about Todd White, where I shared witnesses on the record, former CEO, former best friends of Todd White, people who were deeply embedded in his ministry, giving specific testimonies, all kinds of evidence, I shared tons of stuff in that video. His response was silence, don't say a word. Mike might make a video if I say a word. People will react if I say a word. Instead, quiet and hunker down. The only thing they've publicly done is continue with business as usual and talk about how God's doing great things in their ministry. I think things are worse off than they're saying, but this is probably the smarter strategy for them to be honest. However, it shouldn't work because people like Bethel should call it out. Guess who knows all about Todd White? Danny Silk, who knows all about him? Chris Valatin, Bill Johnson, Ken, Countless other leaders in the Charismatic church they know all about. They know it's true. They know it's true, and they say nothing. And so Todd White can quietly continue. And it's just, we have to convince the people that they're safer if they're not around the guy, but that you won't convince them because a lot of them are just going to think Mike's just a stone thrower, he's a heresy hunter, he's a sin sniffer, He's. What else can. What other names can I call him while pretending that he's the one that's being judgmental and I'm the one with no evidence making harsh judgments against him. And I haven't even watched the content. I'm not aware of any of the victims. I have no concerns about any of that stuff. I'm just like, I don't like that guy. Or maybe he's right, but he did it the wrong way. It's always the protocol. Objection. Right. So he's going to continue. Now he hides the only two board members I'm aware of because I offered $100,000 my ministry. This is not something we normally do. I had to get approval from my board because I can't just offer that to do an independent third party investigation into Todd White. I would not control the investigation. The investigators would. They would present Their results. And if it exonerated Todd, I would publicly repent. And if it proved that all of it was true, Todd would have to deal with that. They refused. They not only refused that free offer. So all they have to do is say, yes, we approve. A reliable good reputation like say Grace Investigations is going to do this investigation. They'll interview witnesses and then the truth will come out and then nobody will give one side of the story. And if Mike is misrepresented, he'll be exposed. I'm putting myself on the line. They refused. We would pay for it. They refused. Who's the they? Well, I tried to find out who's on Todd's board. They're secret about everything. They've turned into a gnostic group. Now everything's a secret. All I know is to the best of my knowledge and my informants and some stuff I've been sent, Gary York and Paul Allen are on his board, is the only ones I know of. Probably Todd and his wife are on his board because they were previously, which is conflict of interest. Right? Like my wife is not a voting member on the board of Bible Thinker for that very reason. So she has no, she can't cast votes because there's too much conflict of interest that could be there. So Gary York and Paul Allen, Gary York and Paul Allen, both guys I've exposed as being cover up goons like absolutely covering up for people who are, they know are bad. And I've got proof of that. They're bad guys. So Todd White's ministry, please abandon ship, you guys, if you're part of it, please run for the hills. Stop thinking I can redeem it and fix it from within. It's just way beyond that point. It's way beyond that point. And you might be mad at me. You can go ahead, you can be mad at me. You can think I'm ungodly. But that doesn't change the fact that Todd White's ministry is fraudulent and the man himself is unhinged. And it is certainly not something God is blessing. And it's not a move of God. It's not. Maybe I'll do more on Ty. I don't want to do any more on any of these guys. But they won't be accountable. But easy for it to be fixed. If respected leaders in the Charismatic church would just speak up. But they won't because this starts the dominoes falling. You say what you know about Tawhi, Tawhi says what he knows about you, and it just, it just ruins everything. For everybody. Let's talk about Chris Reed briefly. Chris Reed. Here's the big update. He was exposed, exposed, exposed. He then sought to do a PR campaign against those exposing him that backfired. This is the guy that would make, like, notes in his cell phone where he would hold them up on screen, and it was, like, dated to, like, before an event happened. But I'm not saying that every note was from before a date happened. But it's easy, very easy, to create a note and change the date on your cell phone. It takes, like, one minute. Change the day on your phone, make a note, and then it's dated before the event. So I showed all this. I dealt with Chris Reed in a video. Just type Mike Winger, Chris Reed, R E, E D, and it'll pop right up. We met together. He lied to my face, and I exposed him as well. For that, he's continuing in his church. It shrunk. It immediately shrunk in size. A number of people took the warning and got out of Dodge. And Chris immediately ramped up. You know, look at this amazing miracle. Look, God gave me a vision. Look, I have another word. Look at my phone. It's totally. You know, it was written before. And he started really pushing, and he's really trying to recruit people to move and come to his church and get people over there. He's trying to rebuild the church. And over time, he will. He absolutely will do it. You can't stop these guys. You can only shrink the harm that they cause. That's the reality. You can't. Unless they go to prison, you can't stop them. And even then, they're just. It's just until they come back, right? But you can radically shrink the harm that they cause. Now let's talk about Bob Hartley. Bob Hartley, perverse sexualist, offering people money. He was soliciting prostitution of women who are not prostitutes. That's what the video evidence shows. Bethel was warned long before they say they were about Bob Hartley. And nothing has happened with Bob, as far as I know. No public anything that is beyond what had already happened in response to it being exposed more publicly. Nothing, to my knowledge, has happened. It's like the ball just got dropped. And again, this is the thing. It's how much do we have to be accountable for? That's how much we'll be accountable for. Can we just ignore the Bob stuff? Can we come up with reasons why it doesn't need to be dealt with? Bob Jones, Paul Kane, exposing those guys. I've additionally talked about them. Bethel has not Responded to them at all has not. They still seem to be having the same line with Bob Jones and Paul Kane and those kinds of guys. It's like, oh, they had some mistakes, but they were great, powerful men of God. They say, we've got Bob Jones anointing at Bethel. So again, if you talk about him being a liar who made up stuff and prophesied fake stuff all the time and who manipulated women so he could molest them with prophecy, it ruins your own reputation. The cost is too high. Maybe Bethel will do more in the future, but will it just be as much as they have to do to try to recover from things that what I'm saying right now? Patricia King. Patricia King, who is well known in the charismatic movement for many, many, many years. He's much older now. She was positioned to be like someone who's helping others with holding people accountable. Like she's going to hold them accountable. She did cover up for Todd White. I addressed that in my Todd White video. And she was later seemingly exposed for mishandling sexual abuse from her husband to a young lady under their leadership. And others have come to start corroborating some of that as well. And she just said, I'm stepping back from ministry. So she pulled back. She didn't confess to what they're suggesting, but she says it's not true what they're saying about her. But she did pull back and she's like, just quit for a while. I think that they're planning on suing me. We'll see if that happens. I think if they do, I'm going to work hard to make them regret it. Jeremiah Johnson. I didn't expose Jeremiah Johnson, except for maybe mentioning him casually here and there. Anyway, that guy that's coming, some of his own leaders have asked him to step down. He's not going to step down. He's going to keep going no matter what. You have to understand, these guys are. They're. They're. They're on a suicide mission. It's. They won't stop because there's no conscience to stop. They have to be. The people have to be. That's why people have to be warned, because you have to just tell the people so the people can get away from them, because they're never going to stop. Chaeyeon. Chaeyon, he lied to the people about Sean Bowles and his involvement. This is the guy who's running for governor of California, sort of. I'll explain that. There was going to be a situation where I met with Chaeyon and he wanted to deal with the accusations I made publicly that Chayan had lied to everyone about Shambols. And we met, and Cheon lied to me in that very meeting. I had the proof. I read it to him. It was as though the lord was just in the meeting to expose this man for what he is. I then made an update video. Cheon lied to me. And you. I stand by that. Now, you have to understand, guys, when I say this, I am putting myself at legal risk. I mean, that's a strong. I could say, as I've been encouraged to do so. You know, some people would say, john lied to me. Or, you know, he said things that were inconsistent with, like, no, I'm like, any reasonable person would be like, that was a lie. You lied. You just lied. And anyway, I made a video about that. You can type Mike Winger. Cha on. You'll find it. And he said to his congregation, I'm going to meet with Mike Winger and Ron Cantor, another guy who's doing kind of the same thing as me, and I'm going to then update you guys. To my knowledge, there was never an update, except they said there will be a third party investigation. They announced it. They never said who's doing it, what they're investigating, what the parameters of it was, what the reporting of it is, who's going to get to hear what they report, how to contact the investigators. I have not been contacted by the investigators when I'm making these public allegations. They've not reached out to me. I think it's a farce. Okay. I think it's a farce. Chayon also his. He has known about a number of people in the past. He has known about them, and he has not cared. He's exhibited actions that betray that. He probably doesn't care about people doing these things, even though he'll say it's blasphemy to do that. But then his actions are inconsistent with that claim. So Chingon's governor run. It seems like it's pretty much over. I didn't think he had a chance of winning. He doesn't have that. He just doesn't have that. I don't think I could win. Couldn't win governor in California. I'm not that wired that way for politics, and my politics are not California politics. So I didn't think he had a chance of winning. The amount of money he had raised was small compared. It's a lot of money, but small compared to other people running. But he did not make it onto the ballot in time because they did not submit their tax returns not to the irs, but to the government. You have to submit them to the people who are running the ballot, you know, and he didn't give five years of tax returns to them by the deadline. So he's not on the ballot. So now he's encouraging people to write in. He's still raising money for a doomed governor campaign. Absolutely doomed. And they're still raising funds for it. And he's encouraging people to write his name in. It's not going to happen. It's not. He's getting older. He's not going to be able to leverage that for future run. I don't believe so. I don't know why they're doing this. Maybe they're going through the motions because he made such a big deal about it, said that God told him to do it. I don't know. But that's the update on Cheon Cha on has had no accountability, has had no one in his own church hold him accountable. He is absolutely part of COVID up culture and cover up culture is his best friend. And he is best friends with Bill Johnson. Let's remind ourselves that's the reality. I know I'm seen as unspiritual for saying these things, but these things are true. These things are true. If I'm wrong about anything, I'd be happy to publicly apologize. Absolutely happy to. I hope I'm wrong. I would love to be wrong about all this stuff. Micah Turnbow. Micah Turnbow. You guys remember this is the guy who kisses Jesus. Like, kisses. Kisses Jesus like his mouth is wet and stuff. That's his description. Okay. He's got some sick stuff. I think that in his imagination he's done much, much worse stuff with Jesus. In fact, he said so in a post that wasn't too old. I've done much more than that with Jesus. Fake prophecy, lying about things. I caught him in it and he was exposed. Here's what I want you guys to know. He's part of a Vineyard church called Vineyard Northwest. And he's no longer at that church to my knowledge. Leaders of that church started trying to have accountability with him and they were like, oh, there's some things here we need to talk about, you know? And he decided, I don't want to be accountable. I'm out. He left the church. He just bailed. There's more to the story, I'm sure. I don't have all the details. I've confirmed this with Vineyard leadership. He is no longer a Vineyard pastor. He is not a pastor at Vineyard anymore, but he is still continuing his ministry. He has kicked things back up again with more and more TikTok videos, talking about demons climbing out of your television set and all kinds of other creepy things he makes up in his depraved imagination. He is going to ruin people's lives. He's going to cause people psychosis. He's going to send people into psychiatric institutions with all of his visions and craziness. It's not healthy. And I pray God delivers him from the stuff he's got going on. But he's done as far as his influence, has moved off of local and has now moved mostly just online. The board of his own ministry, corporate, all gone now. Behold, Wonders is ministry. And they're like, no, dude, you're done. And so I want to applaud to Vineyard Northwest. I am proud of you guys. That's a very, very hard stand to take because you guys are a family. You're not just some public ministry thing. And that was hard to do. And I'm glad you guys took some stands there. And I hope that you continue to have courage to do the right thing. And I'm glad for his board. Micah Turnbo's board, who abandoned him, tried to shut him down, were like, you need to stop. You need to get help. And I'm proud of you guys. Good for you. Thank you so much for doing that. And Mica Turnbo is going to continue, though, because he's propped up by people like Taylor Welch and that podcast and those who unwisely, maybe they just. There's something wrong that people enjoy this guy and his depraved imaginations. There's something disturbing there. And anyway, it always is the case. So Steve Coco. I'm almost done, guys. Steve Coco is a predator of Panama, and he is still going, but he is trying to be incognito. And he continues. Because what they do is the damage control. And they try to couch things as, this is Satan. Satan's attacking me. And forget the victims, Satan's attacking me. And these women are just bitter because of this and that. I didn't want to marry them, so they got mad at me and made stuff up. Or I did commit a lot of sins, let's admit, say, half of it. I have a lot of sins, but the Lord showed me. He forgave me. And Steve Coco made a creepy video he put on YouTube about a song he wrote that he had AI do that. It was all about attacked by the enemy. And God says they won't forgive you. But I will. And they're gonna fall. And it was disturbing stuff, man. That guy's got some. He's cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs in there, guy. No pun intended, Steve. Coco Puffs. But he's still going. Did a creepy video. He's saying he's a victim of a great persecution. And in reality, it's his victims that have not yet had justice. And I hope that at some point, Koko faces real justice for the crimes that he has committed against people. And I am disappointed in a lot of the pastors in Panama and other countries who, after Coco's been exposed. You don't care. I don't know what else to say. Let me talk about Benny Hinn. He's the last one. Might be like, Mike, Benny Hinn. That was years ago. He did that years ago. You haven't really. That was years ago, Mike. You're right. But Benny Hinn, to most Americans, they think he's old news, man. This guy's like. He's like, halfway in the casket, right? He's done. No, he's not. You really don't understand because he's not doing a lot in America. But, man, Benny Hinn has a far bigger ministry than I do, than you do, than probably John MacArthur did. Than, like, you name these names, and it'd be, like, hard to find someone who had a big. Has had a bigger impact, in particular in Africa. And a lot of these guys in Argentina, believe it or not, they have huge, huge followings. And Todd White's bigger in Argentina than he is in the US And Brazil, massive. So I think it was Brazil that I'm thinking of. But Benny Hinn, massive, massive, huge events. Crusades, you might call them. Going to Africa, going to Ghana and Uganda and various countries having, like. His stuff is so big there that, like, the president of the country comes out to meet him when he comes so they can do photo shoots together. Like, it's. You have no idea. Biny Hinn is still infecting Africa with his bad theology and his fakery. And African churches are in so much trouble because of uncontrolled charismatic insanity. Again, I am not opposed to charismatic sanity, where you're actually following the real work of the spirit. I'm talking about the stuff that's bad, right? What some call. We call Calvary Chapel guys would call Charismania, right? And Africa's been so hurt by this stuff. So hurt by this stuff. There's a video of him being treated as royalty. Benny Hinn being carted in on this, like this cart with another one of these, an African pastor who's just like, head is bigger than the planet being brought in, his ego being brought in as royalty, like golden royalty being carried into whatever event they were doing. It's just really disturbing, the stuff they have going on there. And Benny Hinn is deeply connected to Jesus Image. You may have heard of their music, Jesus Image. They're kind of like Bethel 2.0, and they're in Florida, not in California. And Michael Kulianos, Jessica Kulianos. See, Jessica is Benny Hinn's daughter, married to Michael Kuliano. So it's his son and daughter, his son in law and daughter. And they are there at Benny Hinn's old church in Florida. And they've turned it into this Jesus Image movement. Benny Hinn, when I did my video exposing him, they pulled him out of their events publicly. And that way they could tell people, oh, we've had to sit. This is reality. This is how they lie. We had to sit Benny down because there's some issues that we need to deal with and address. And he's growing and he's really learning and it's good. But privately, he would speak to their people in the local church and in their School of supernatural Ministry. Just like a Bethel 2.0, Benny would be speaking to the students there. And they would just tell the students, like, don't record this. Don't have videos of this. You can't have. You know, they would keep. So that they could play the game. You play the game, you don't have real. Pull someone down, really address their issues. No, you just do it for PR reasons. Hey, you're pulled down. Just keep it quiet. You can do this and that. You can still lead all these people spiritually. It was just a game that's being played. And Jesus Image is very much part of that. Any church that can tolerate Benny Hinn, that can tolerate Kenneth Copeland, is deeply, deeply spiritually in darkness. I know there's a lot of people at Jesus Image who love Jesus and who believe that everything you see on stage and all the stuff that you're experiencing is all sincere and of the Lord. And it's a really hard pill to swallow to realize that it's actually a mixed bag. Some of that was you're seeking God and God's blessing you. And some of it was just fake. Was just fake. And then you felt like you experienced something wonderful, but it was because it was being prompted by fakery. Anyway, that's more on Jesus Image in the future. That's the Update. That's all I wanted to mention. There might be other names I could talk about, but I've gone on for quite a while. Ultimately, those are the leaders. The leaders. Almost none of the charismatic leaders are bringing real accountability. And this is the last thing I'll say from the leaders. Real accountability looks like this. You deal with what you know about, not just what we know about. That's what real leadership looks like now. You deal with what you know about, not just what we know about, dealing with only what we know about. That's cover up culture. That's damage control. Dealing with what you know about, that's you taking the reins as a leader and saying, this is going to hurt, but we need to get the scalpel out and we need to remove the cancer. That's generally not happening. And there are some who try, Ron. Cancer is trying. But the thing is that their voices like mine don't carry the same authority inside those circles as someone like Bill Johnson. But the thing is, I mean, these guys have been doing this forever. It's not changing. The COVID up culture is like telling them. It's like telling the mob, you just need to quit the crime that you guys have going on. You have some legitimate businesses just get rid of the crime. And they're like, that may be a bigger task than what you think it is. Mike, as my honest thoughts guys, it would be unfair for me to treat it like it's less of a problem than it is. I will say though, before I go to your questions in the longest intro I think I've ever done, longest first question I've ever done, I think I could easily be wrong there all kind of questions. But the people, the charismatic people, I'm proud of you guys, so many of you guys. I'm just genuinely proud of you guys in a godly way because you have stepped up and stood up and you've said, I don't want to be part of fakery and cover up. I just don't want to be part of any of that stuff. And so many of you are taking a stand, whether that means you've left an unhealthy church environment that was like kind of a revival culture thing that wasn't real, or if it means that you've decided to tell a story that you've been holding back but now you realize, no, no, no, it's right to hold this person accountable. Some of them have been pastors. I've had pastors thank me, Mike. They're not big worldwide leaders, but pastors thank me for the work that's going on and for the things that are happening as a result. So I see a lot of good happening in the Charismatic Church right now. The leaders, it's dismal. Amongst the leaders I've mentioned, there's a lot of dismal stuff that's going on there. But among the individuals, there's a lot of courage and there's a lot of people stepping up and putting their foot down and saying unpopular things to their friends and. And I'm proud of you guys for that. So. All right, let's go to your guys. Questions from the live chat. And I am just. Oh, hold on, hold on. I thought I just clicked on it and I actually clicked the wrong thing. Nice little pause here. While I'm pausing, I'll tell you, I am approaching a million subscribers on YouTube and that's amazing to me. It's amazing to me. I can't believe this ministry reach is so far. I wrote a little thing about it just earlier today. You guys can catch on YouTube community tab or wherever it posts where it says posts on my YouTube channel or on Facebook or on Twitter. I put it in those three places. But yeah, the current count here, I'll tell you because I can't help but watch because I'm excited about this. It's a milestone. It's a cool milestone. It's ministry. So we're at 998,799. That's kind of exciting to think that this ministry is not about numbers. Those are people. Those are real people who have been benefited and blessed by the ministry. I'm amazed, and praise God for it. All right, question number two. This comes in from the Unger family saying, hi, Mike. I have great admiration for believers like Gavin Ortland and Elisa Childers. The two come down on different sides on the idea of third Wayism, both for very different, very biblically compelling reasons. It's actually a bit frustrating. What are your thoughts on these competing postures? Can you offer up a fourth way? Gosh, that's a big question. I'm going to be kind of racing through these. I'm going to answer every question we've got, but I'm going to kind of move quickly because of how late it is and I can't go forever. So I'll try to answer this in, like, the summary fashion. I have not looked at any interchange between Gavin and Elisa. Now I like, like on a kind. I mean, we don't know each other really well, me or me and Gavin or me and Elisa. But we do know each other and we have talked numerous times. And I like Gavin and I like Elisa and I appreciate both of them very much. And I genuinely mean that. Right. And I probably closer to Alisa on this topic as I, as I understand her position. As far as I understand it, I think we're pretty close on this issue. And, and I think I would be more critical of Third Wayism than Gavin is, but I don't fully understand Gavin. Gavin is a guy who always has a thoughtful, nuanced position. So I don't know. His position's probably not. Third Wayism is great, end of story. That's probably not his position. I'd actually have to listen to that as it is practiced. Here's my criticism and here's what I'll land on. My criticism of Third Wayism is that in principle it sounds good. In practicality it seems to always end bad or frequently end bad. And so when you critique Third Wayism and you're critiquing, look what it did, that's valid critiques. And then people can respond by saying, but look what it is, it's not that, it's this. And then you go, oh, well, I mean, I would agree with a lot of that in principle, but look what it does. And so then that ends up being this. Like we're talking about two different things. To me, the test of the Third Wayism thing is the look what it does thing. But I do agree with some of the principles of it. Okay, in principle I agree with some of the Third Wayism things. But maybe the problem with Third Wayism, and this is a political thing, right? This is the thing that puts your pastor on the fence where he feels like he is conservative, but he doesn't want to be too strongly conservative because he's associated with things that he doesn't agree with. And so he tends to try to put himself in the middle on every issue. And this is what it does. In reality, I'm in the middle on almost every issue. I'm somewhere in the. Well, my view is complicated. I'm in the middle and that means that I have to cozy up to the left who I have the most disagreement with, and I have to distance from the right, who I have the most agreement with in order to maintain this middle thing. So I end up punching right and pandering left. That's what tends to happen. Now that doesn't mean you become like a full on leftist or something. It just means it tends to go in that direction. You tend to be further left than you should be based upon your biblical commitments. So all that to say, maybe a different approach. If there's a fourth wayism, is I spend the time and energy to really wrap my head around the biblical way of dealing with these topics. This is something I'm working on and it's going to take me years. Don't expect me to have all this great insights into politics right away because it's going to take me years. I'm way too uninformed on some of these issues. But what I do is I try to get my head wrapped around my biblical commitments, politically speaking, and then I just go from that and I just openly share it without any protections. I'm just like, this is where we're at. That's different than. Because third wayism feels like to me, what it boils down to is I'm posturing myself for public perception, and then that causes me to make compromises I didn't realize I was going to make. There's a short critique. All right, let's go to the next one. Number four. Three, three. Will you please address recent issues surrounding the President of the US and blasphemous statements. Yes, let's talk about it. So we've got President Donald Trump. I'm just trying to remember the details here. There was a moment on Easter where Paula White, who is the head of the White House Faith Office, crazily. And I couldn't work with her. I could not work with her. I could speak at an event she's at, but then I may not be invited back. So I don't think I could work with her. I don't think I could. I don't think I could, in conscience, in good conscience, if she's the head of an organization, If I was invited, which I have not been, if I was invited to be part of that, I don't think I could. I don't see how I morally could do that. Which is sad, because you want to have an impact everywhere you can. And if you impact the office of the President, you impact the country for Christ. So it's a strong appeal to be part of that. That has nothing to do with ego, has everything to do with the kingdom. There's also strong appeals that have everything to do with ego. Yeah, Sorry, I'm just processing something. I was thinking about if I was part of it, I'd have to actively work to get her out of it. That's the only way I could be part of it, is if I could openly and actively work to oust her, which would never work. Right. They would never let you be part of it if that's your agenda. That would be my expressed agenda. So, that being said, she gets up on Easter and she compares Trump to Jesus, and so she's acting like Trump is Jesus. He was persecuted and he was brought before courts wrongly. And just like you, Mr. President, it was just embarrassing. That was what she did, not what Trump did. Okay, but people have been doing this to Trump for a while. You know, it's one thing to say I'm going to support the Trump, the Trump. Support the Trump when I think that what he's doing is good. And I can offer criticism if I think what he's doing is bad. And I think he's far better than Kamala Harris as far as when we were voting for president, which I think that all those things are true. But you have to retain your ability to criticize your own side or else you don't stand for. You don't stand for what you say you stand for. As a Christian. When Herod's sleeping with someone he shouldn't, John the Baptist says something. Even though Herod is the closest thing they have to someone who will represent the Jewish people before Rome and help them out, and he's still willing to be that opposition. Jesus calls him a fox. Isn't that right? Anyways, so, yeah, you got to be able to do that now after this. Trump posted. Was it on Easter? I'm trying to remember the timeline, but Trump posted this thing that you guys probably saw where it's an image where he's a Jesus like figure. He's got, like, the sash that's red. He's kind of like in this sort of like spiritual, exalted position, usually preserve for saints or for Jesus. And he's healing somebody who's on a hospital bed. And it looks like the image behind him are like angelic type beings, and he looks like Jesus. The way he's presented. That is classically how Jesus is presented in artwork. That is classically how it's done because of the angelic host. It's like the second coming of Christ to come and heal the world is Trump. That's how the image looked. People blew up. People. Even Sean Foight said this was wrong. Even Sean Feucht said this was wrong. So, yeah, and there's eventually a video coming on Sean Foyt, but that guy Trump says this, and then he comes out later, after there's tons of criticism, they pull the video, and he says to a reporter, like, I Just, I didn't see it as me being Jesus. I thought I was like a Red Cross doctor. And I sat with that for a while, and I posted some thoughts on Twitter about what I thought about that. I think it's very plausible. I don't know if it's true. I think it's plausible that Trump thought. Didn't think that this was him as Jesus, but the more I think about it, it's hard to believe he thought it was him as a doctor because of the look. He says red Cross doctor, but come on, man. You're wearing spiritual robes and the red to the sashes that come down, you know, like clergy wear and stuff. Certain clergy. I think that this, maybe Trump saw himself as a spiritual presence, as like, sort of like God is using me. I would totally think that's consistent with Trump and what he said in the past. It's actually not consistent with what he said in the past to think that he thought he was Jesus. I think it's okay to go. Bottom line, what Trump did with this was it was actually blasphemous to present yourself as Jesus like that. That is, I believe that the image itself was blasphemous. That doesn't mean that that was the intention. I do find it unlikely he thought he was a doctor in the image. That seems silly. And I don't think he's always honest, so I don't just take him at his word, but plausible. He saw himself as simply a spiritual leader, and he's simply that unfamiliar with Christian stuff that he didn't realize that everyone's going to think this is Jesus. That's plausible to me. I think that he doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about that stuff and engaged in that stuff. His discussions. When he talks about, oh, he says he's a Christian, right? But when he was asked, have you ever asked God for forgiveness? I mean, this is Christianity 101. If you don't know how to answer this question, you know nothing about the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Nothing. Trump says, no, not really. I'd rather just do better next time. So it's very plausible to me that Trump would not be familiar enough with religious iconography and images that he would then think that this was not him as Jesus, but as him as some sort of, like, I'm healing America and the Lord has called me to do this. And that's not blasphemous to say that. So his intent was maybe not blasphemous, but the image was. That was my view on that if people think I can't criticize Trump, you're funny. And that's the reason why I say it. That's my view, the deification, almost. I shouldn't say that. That's an exaggeration. But the treatment of Donald Trump by many, especially charismatic evangelicals has been way, way over the top and despicable. And Trump as a politician looks to get support wherever he can get it. And I'll tell you what, the charismatics offered it when a lot of events. This is what I heard someone else say as a critique, and I thought it was a very wise analysis. They said Trump because of who he is and the way he talks and all that. Evangelicals pulled away from Trump, but the charismatics flooded into that space and they offered him unquestioning support. And it was wild and wacky. Charismatics sometimes, like Kenneth Copeland when, when. When he was commenting that Trump did win the election and that Biden wouldn't be in office, and all these charismatic prophets were like, biden won't be in office. Trump will be in office. And Kenneth Copeland is this, like, video where he's cackling and laughing like a maniac about, like an actual maniac about how Trump would never be in office and stuff. Or, sorry, how Trump would be in office, not Biden. And, you know, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha. Because they thought they had all these prophecies. So, yeah, it's not wrong to criticize Trump. Yes, there's issues with evangelical, or maybe charismatic and evangelical overly supporting Trump because of the alternative thing. Then they can't even look at the flaws, or they can't talk about them or can't address them. And I can't do that personally. And I think most Christians would feel the same way. They'd be like, oh, yeah, I voted for him, but only because I didn't have a better choice. And he's done many great things, but that doesn't mean everything he did was great. So, anyways, that's all I'll say about that, lest I get too far into area that I don't know that well. So number four, this is from Artyom Prodi, who says the Lord talked about building up treasures in heaven in Matthew 6, 1921. What does that matter? Why does that matter? Isn't being able to stay in heaven enough? Yeah, So I remember feeling the same way. The heaven experience. There's something that the old theologians would call the beatific vision. The beatific vision, or like, the beautiful vision. And what it means is, like, we will see God as he is. We will know him as we are known. We will dwell in light from the glory of God's constant presence. And that is so amazing and overwhelming that it's easy to look at the idea of treasures in heaven and be like, I don't deserve any of that. I don't need any of that, Lord. And it's almost like it makes me feel like I'm saying, there's something lacking in the glory of God, that I would even have this. And I think that what you can do is you can pause, you can go look. If the Lord's saying, I'm going to give you treasures in heaven and it's something I should store up and I should look for, then probably I have the wrong answer, something I'm misunderstanding here. And I should probably appreciate this more and look forward to it and even store up treasures in heaven. But then you combine it with this idea of these, in revelation, of these elders who cast their crowns down before the Lord, and Paul saying, there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness. And it seems connected to this idea of treasures in heaven and running with endurance, the race set before you, and stuff. So this picture has helped some people because they go, well, whatever treasures I get in heaven, it's almost like I can present it to God as an act of worship. There's some sense in which I'm like, lord, all for you, all for you, and cast the crowns down before him. And. And then it's exciting because you're like, it's just more of my worshipful offering to the Lord for his goodness and kindness. And that helps some people to think of it that way. I don't know what the treasures in heaven will be like, but I will say there's one other thing that's really helped me a lot with this, and that is Paul the Apostle talking to some of his disciples. And he was saying, you're my crown of rejoicing. And then Paul in 1 Corinthians talking about how the thing that gets tested, that gets tested, and if it passes the test of fire, it gets brought with you into heaven. It's the work of God you put into other people's lives. So some pilled with gold, hay, stubble, some with precious stones, and it'll be tested by fire. But the building is not just things I do. It's how I've poured into people's lives and the blessings that I've brought from Christ as I've ministered to them and how it's impacted their lives. That's the thing that's tested. And the gold is that which comes through and was from the Lord and was good ministry. And imagine for a second that your treasure in heaven is that guy you prayed for at the grocery store and it changed his life. And he's like, hey, I'm part of your treasure in heaven. It's me. And you go, oh, yeah, I want that. What if my treasures in heaven are very deeply connected to the people I've blessed and ministered to on earth, and that when what they've carried forward isn't like, I'm holding this thing that's valuable to me? No, it's like, here's a guy whose sanctification continued in a beautiful way because of the work God did through my ministry or my life. I prayed for them. I led that person to Christ, and here's my treasure in heaven. They're in Christ, they're in heaven. I mean, Jesus saved them, but I led them to Christ, you know, so that kind of treasure is very exciting. All right, let's look at the next one. Number five. Does John 1:9 mean that literally everyone ever born has witnessed the light, as in Jesus? And is this light perhaps the same thing referenced by Paul in Romans 1:20? All right, it's going to take me and probably others a second to wrap our heads around your question, so let's do that. All right. Just make sure I got everything. Okay. John 1:19, it says, and this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who are you? And he confessed. Did you mean First John? I think because you're referring to light. I think what you meant was First John 1:19. So I'm going to go to First John, because there is no 19. Let me read your question again. Is there something I misunderstood? Oh, 1 9. I'm the one that changed it from 9 to 19 for some reason. So 1 9. We both made a mistake. Oh, no. That's as if we confess our sins. Ah, no, I apologize, guys. It was probably always. Yeah, it was always John 1:9. Because this is the light. Yeah, this is the true light. Yeah, I just made it 19 and then thought I was in the wrong book. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. So your first question is on this John 1:9, does it mean that literally everyone ever born has witnessed the light? Not this particular light, because so in the context John1 is saying, before Christ came into the world, the true light was not in the world. So obviously Abraham did not witness. Right? Moses did not. Now they had glimpses of personal, special revelation God gave them. But the people of Israel in general say as they're wandering the wilderness somewhere in the. Or maybe they're in the middle of the Book of Judges, right? Gideon just showed up on the scene. That group of people, did they witness the light? Well, they had a light. There's certain light from God or knowledge from God and from creation and from revelation of Scripture that they had present. But they didn't witness Jesus. The true light they hadn't yet experienced Jesus, who says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. So that chronologically had not happened yet. So John 1:9, the true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. So that's a future thing. Christ is the light of the world. And so that's uniquely Jesus. Now, there's elements of that truth of Christ that get testified to us through creation or other sources. But I think that exact passage is referring to Jesus as the light which not everybody has directly seen Christ or been exposed to the truth of Christ in those details. And Romans 2:10. Hold on. Oh, I jumped to someone else's question there. Romans 1:20. Or I just mixed up the letter. Why am I mixing up numbers today? It's Lysdexia. Romans 1:20. This is a different issue, but it isn't totally unrelated, but let's look at it together. Romans 1:20 says. I'll start at verse 19. Actually, I'll back up more. Verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, as I have also been guilty of. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. What has God shown them? What is it that they can know about God? His invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world. How is it that God's eternal power and divine nature, that there is a God and that he's all powerful, that he exists. How is that known since the creation? Well, it says in the things that have been made so creation itself declares the glory of God. Psalm 19. We see through creation. In fact, the best argument for God's existence is to go take a walk in nature, is to have a baby with your wife and go, there's a God. It's creation itself that's just drawing us towards this belief in God, this understanding of there being a Creator who made us all. And so creation says this all day long. And. And so it doesn't mean everybody believes in God. It means everybody should and has the knowledge of God revealed to them, but you can suppress this. And is that related to John 1:9? I think it's only tangentially related in that Jesus. John 1:9 talks about Jesus almost like. Let me show you. When you look at verse 10, the true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world, and he was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. This is clearly here talking about Jesus and his incarnation. He came to his own people, they didn't receive him. So this is about the incarnation. The Word became flesh. But that doesn't mean that there wasn't other things that were light that people knew. So it's related, in a sense to God's always been revealing himself, but he ultimately reveals himself in Jesus. That's. I guess, what I'd say. My opinion on the scripture there. Number six, Brother Burt's lice. I'm reading it slow in case it's. In case it's a trick. Anyway, he says, my friend asked, what is the significance of a physical body, especially in the resurrection? No marriage. I know there's more to having a body than reproduction, but. Curious of your thoughts. God bless you, Mike. Yeah, so there's no marriage in heaven, which you're. Then. Okay, so if you're not. Let me say this in a slightly crude way just to make it very clear. What I think this question is getting at is what's the point in having a body if you're not going to be physically intimate with people? And I think if you put it that way, the answer becomes pretty obvious. You go, yeah. So that's like saying a person who's celibate doesn't have a reason to exist or something like that. There's still all kinds of good affection. Like, imagine a father and his son, and the son comes up and he cuddles up with his dad, you know, and there's obviously nothing sensual going, but it's beautiful familial affection that is wonderful and is good. You know, two friends, they see each other after a while and they give each other a big hug and they shake hands. Or maybe you just go to lunch and you eat food or just pause for a minute and just feel if you haven't Ever done this? The nice sensation of just breathing. That wouldn't be possible without a physical body. We're embodied beings. We've always been embodied beings. And the Bible treats lack of a body as a lesser condition than having a body. And so Paul, when he talks about dying and he says, I want to go be with the Lord, and he says, I don't want to be unclothed. It's not that I want to be without a body in the presence of God, waiting on that resurrected body. He goes, I don't want to be without a. But I do want to be with the Lord in his presence. And because of God's presence, that's a better condition. But the body thing, it's better to have a body than not. So God's designed us this way. And think Christ in his incarnation, he was never physically intimate with anybody, and he was incarnate, and that was valuable. And he remains incarnate in the future. He continues to be both God and man for all eternity. He's the God man, and that has value too. So there's so many values and goods that come now. My guesswork is that we will not have. It makes a lot of sense to think if there's not going to be marriage and marrying. I think the reason is partly because we will actually be closer, not further apart, in heaven. Marriage is an exclusive relationship. I'm married to this one woman and I actually distance myself from other women. I actively do this. And Right. I don't have all these texting conversations with women. I don't just get on the phone and chat with them for no reason. I only have reasons for it. And it's never just for personal connection. And I need to do that. You've got to have, like, the fact marriage makes it so that male and female relationships are more exclusive. And then you cannot and should not have, generally speaking, deep, close, personal friends of the opposite sex. Not that nobody can do it, guys, but let's say it's more problematic. It's problematic more often than not. And that's a reality of the nature of marriage. I think that my theory would be that because of the closeness, we're united in Christ, we're one in Him. And I think that oneness will grow as we get exalted. And I think that we'll be closer, not further apart, more intimate, not sexually intimate, but more intimate. Like the same way I have some friends I'm more intimate with. We're more close as friends. We'll be closer, not further apart, but also that we would not obviously have desires. It's not like we will have desires for physical interactions of those kinds, like marital stuff, but be unable to fulfill them. That's obviously not the case. We will be. All of our pleasures will be fulfilled. Our cup runneth over. And so there's some thoughts on that. But many pleasures, many good, wonderful things that come with having a body. Your body's not a bad thing. All right, question number seven. All right, this is from Bear down, who says, I would love to hear a simple explanation of the Tower of Babel. I've never once heard a pastor teach it. Could you briefly explain what is going on there? Is it meant to be a historic. Be historically accurate? Okay, so let me do that in order to the best of my ability, off the top of my head. The Tower of Babel is this story of people gathering together apart from God. That's the summary of the story. You gather together apart from God, and then God divides them so that they cannot successfully all work together to their own ends, which are ungodly. So that's the Tower of Babel. Now it comes after the Flood, where the Flood's like, I'm going to deal with all, but I'll never do that again. So God's next solution to the sin of man is to divide them so that they cannot join forces to do great evil. Isn't that interesting? If we were all. The implication is if the world was all unified, it could actually be a problem. And that is actually what Revelation describes in the end times, which I think are still future, is a unified world where it's actually a problem. Unified against the Lord, against God. And that's the environment wherein Christ returns. This doesn't mean I oppose every element of unification. That would be unwise and unhelpful. So that's the Tower of Babel in a nutshell. We can do whatever we want. We're gathered together, they're building a tower. It seems as though it's a religious tower to do some sort of self exaltation, maybe like teaching that they are gods, they're trying to become gods, that kind of thing. Because they're going to climb this tower and they're sort of exalting themselves. Then God splits them up and divides the languages. Now you ask a really, really deep question or controversial question that connects to a whole bunch of things. When you say, is it meant to be historical? I'll say this. You said, is it meant to be historically accurate? It seems so on the surface that it's meant to be historically accurate. And that would be my default position. Reading the text. Be like this looks like it's just trying to tell you what happened. So that's what happened. There are some who try to put forward the idea that. And this is not a. To my knowledge, not widely accepted as true, but I would be open to it. Could I be persuaded of it? Have I been persuaded of it? No, I have not. But they try to put forward other thoughts here. So let me offer one guy who you may have heard of, Michael Heiser. You might have heard of him. Michael Heiser. Put forward, like, it's just not actually about whether it's historically perfectly accurate. It's about the theological meaning of these things, not how perfectly accurately they're being told. Now, I'm very uncomfortable with that kind of language. Okay, I'm not on board with that. I think that is very reckless kind of language. But that is actually kind of like what I think the Bible Project, their approach to this is they're very influenced by Michael Heiser. And so while there's much to appreciate in the Bible Project, you know, that's an area where I would be like, yeah, I'm not really comfortable with that. Then there's others who take an approach like, say, William Lane Craig has pushed for this a lot, where he did what he calls a genre analysis of. Or how does he say it, Gendra? Genre. He tries to say it with, like, an accent that I can't do a genre analysis of Genesis 1 through 11, which includes the Tower of Babel. And in that analysis, he concludes that this is. And he uses a term that will throw everybody off. So let me. Before I tell you the term, let me explain what he means by it. Then I'll tell you the term. Because if I tell you the term, you won't hear me explaining what he means by it. What I think he means by it is this. These are rooted in history, but the stories are being told in a symbolic fashion, like to create archetypes, to teach lessons. So we're trying to take what really happened and explain it in a way that's teaching. This is my simplification of what he's saying. He probably would not say it this way. He'd probably tweak it and even disagree with me a little bit. Okay, this is Mike Winger's version of William Lind Craig's approach. But they're like, take the story of, say, Adam and Eve and you go, in the big picture. Yes, there was a real Adam and Eve. They were real historical Figures. We are really descended from them in history. But was it a literal tree? You know, did he really put Adam to sleep and physically create Eve in that exact fashion? Or is there some of this. That's more like archetypal and symbolic. And so that's where he's like, so it's both historical and I'll say archetypal. Like there's archetypes being used here. Now, the term he uses for this, which I think is a very unfortunate term, which I would not use, is mytho history. Now, when people hear the word mytho history, they think, so you're saying it's a myth. And there's two problems with that, which is, one, he's using the term myth in a technic. Not in the common way people use it in normal English, but in a technical way that scholars of folklore use the term myth, which just means something different than what you think when you hear myth. And the other issue is, then he says, mytho what? History. It's not just myth, it's mytho history. So there's an element of it that is this folkloric. We're building archetypes here, and we're telling stories in a fashion to communicate theological truth. And then there's the element that's historical. And this is a fishy area to get into. Let's acknowledge it, right? Because you're like, well, so which elements are real and which are not? Which are archetype and which are history? And then it's like, do I even have tools to figure? I don't even think we have tools to figure out, even if he's right, what are the tools? I have to figure out what really happened versus what was archetypal. But I don't know. I don't know. I wish I did know. I'm unsettled on this issue. I'm not unsettled on the authority of the word of God. I'm not unsettled on the truthfulness of Genesis. I believe it. What I am currently not settled on is what? How do I answer all the questions I have about some of the elements in Genesis, not because of unbelief in my heart, but because I go, hey, he made a case that this is consistent with other literature of ancient times that fits a certain genre. And I don't know the answer to that question, because if it is consistent. So let me give an example. Exaggeration or hyperbole as a figure of speech. If you don't recognize when people are using it, you'll misinterpret their meaning. Now, somebody else would go, you're saying Jesus was using hyperbole there? And I'm going, well, yeah, I mean, sometimes he did use hyperbole, but if you don't identify the hyperbole, you're going to go physically cut your hand off. And that's not good for you. You have to understand that he's trying to get a point across. So he uses an extreme example to get the point across. Not a literal example, an extreme hyperbolic one. And so some would say, well, Mike thinks Jesus is lying. He doesn't want you to cut your hand off. And I'm like, no, no, no, he's not lying. You have incorrectly understood the figure of speech or the way of speaking. And in the same way, have we misunderstood at all Genesis and the genre analysis of ancient, ancient material that we have in the text? Possibly. I'm not sold on it. I'm open personally, so there's my thoughts on that. However you answer that question, though, I think the messaging, the theological meaning behind the Tower of Babel is still there. You have mankind, who is still uniting together in ungodliness. And God splits them up in order to subvert what will and even delay what will eventually be the rise of the Antichrist and all that kind of stuff. I think that that's what's happening there. And then later, God calls one nation out of all the nations who are not honoring God to be the one that would honor God. And it just leads down that salvation path to Jesus. Let's go to the next question. Number eight. Anonymous question here. He says, I'm unsure of how to raise a concern. My pastor's sermon points, while not unbiblical, don't seem to reflect the passage's plain meaning. And he's the only pastor. Elder, what should I do? Well, that's complicated. Allow me to drink from my teacup for a second. But it's black coffee, so that counteracts the teacup. Now, I love this tea. This is the best teacup in the world. So your pastor, you know, he brings these talking points, like, you know, in the bulletins printed out, and you're looking at the things that he's sharing, and you're going, I'm not saying he's wrong. But this is not consistent. Like, that's not what this passage is about. And it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks in that sense. If you have a pastor who's been doing this for years, if you're going to approach him on this topic, you'll probably have to approach him with a lot of thought and care into how you're going to go about it. And if it was me, how would I do it? I think I would start the conversation by telling him in sincerity the things I'm truly grateful for. Not by finding things to compliment, because that's transparently fake when we do that, but by telling them the things I'm truly grateful for. You know, I'm grateful for this. I'm grateful for this. And in pastoral ministry, and I know there's a lot of struggles, I want you to know I'm coming to you as someone who supports you and loves you and believes in this church and in you. But there's something I want to bring up to you that could be uncomfortable. And I just want you to know I'm coming to you as someone who's in support of you. Is it okay if I broach a sensitive topic now? And I would try to set the conversation up like that personally, because I think it might create the environment where you can have that conversation. Then you would need to give, not just. I think that you offer points that are not consistent with the passage's plain meaning. I think that you would actually have to give them many details, like specific points. So for a few weeks, like two or next two or three weeks, write down, you know, specifically, there's this. You said this that was not consistent with the point in the passage. This, this, this. Make sure those examples are good. Make sure that you're like, this is really worth saying. It's a big enough issue that I should bring it up. And then if it is, you go forward and you actually offer samples of examples. This is the thing that people need. When people have an issue they don't see, and you just tell them, I see your issue. It just doesn't compute to them. You've got to give specific examples so that they can understand. Oh, you have to help them see what you're seeing. So if you come with that and then you come to him first, you personally go to him first, and that will help you with credibility there. The fallout of that conversation can be unpleasant. I have done this myself, and it caused a rift in a ministry I was part of. That never really was fixed because I was just seen as being in opposition and I made a mistake. And here's why I give you that counsel of not bringing enough examples because I thought, well, I won't get into that whole story because there's some other stuff going on there. But basically, it would have helped had I had specific examples. Like two weeks ago, this last week, this. A month ago, this two months ago, I would have helped. I think it would have helped. I don't know. It might have made things worse, actually, now that I think about it. But I gotta warn you, this might make things even worse. This might make you be seen in that church as unsupportive, as someone that can't be trusted, as someone that should be sort of excluded. We don't want to trust them with information. We don't want to let them know things. If that happens, I'm sorry. That happens sometimes. Doesn't mean it's wrong for you to go forward, though. I don't regret what I shared. When I tried to bring correction where I thought it was necessary for the sake of the body of Christ and for the sake of the pastor, it just didn't work, and it just gave me a headache afterwards. But that's sometimes how it goes. So pray. All right, this question is number nine. Number nine, saucy, saucy. 123 says, hey, Mike, could you help me to. Sorry. Could you help me to better reconcile Acts 15, 28 and 29 with 1 Corinthians 8, 10? Acts makes it seem like a necessary command from the spirit, but later it seems a conscience issue. Thanks, brother. Yeah, I think I know what you're talking about. This is like meat sacrifice to idols, right? Let's go to. Let's start with the First Corinthians passage. First Corinthians 8, 10. And let's look at the ruling here. I'm going to back up because we always want to get context. I'm just going to back up to verse one. So First Corinthians, chapter eight, verse one. On your screen, it says, now, concerning food offered to idols. Okay, he begins a new subject. Should I eat food that's offered to idols? Now, food offered to idols could be food that was in a marketplace, that was being sold in the market that had been behind the scenes offered to idols. Or. Or it could be feasts that happened inside of an idol's temple where you're invited to a feast and you want to eat food and good food and hang out with people, but it's in an idol's temple, and it's like a. More expressly. You're engaging in an idolatrous activity. So you have kind of like, did they secretly offer this to idols? Does this meat I'm going to eat? Or you have like, am I going to go to the temple and engage in that. Now he says concerning food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. So he's directing people towards. Don't just worry about what you know about the truth of the reality of idols and meat and all that he says, but also concern yourself with love. Is what I'm doing actually helping my neighbor. If anyone imagines that he knows something he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. That's Paul. The apostle was brilliant by the way. A genius was Anthony Flew, when he was still an atheist philosopher. He said that Christianity had in Paul a first rate philosopher. This is as an atheist he says this and he says, but if anyone loves God, he is known by God. So I don't think his knowledge puffed him up at all. Verse 4. Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know here's what where knowledge is. An idol has no real existence and that there is no God but one. For although there may be so called gods, gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. However, not all possess this knowledge, but some through former association with idols, eat food. Okay, so what knowledge do some not possess? Well, they don't possess the knowledge that these idols are nothing and that there is only truly one God. And whatever spiritual beings are out there and that some people call gods, like Thor. There's no real Thor out there, but there are spiritual forces that you know are behind. The demonic, the demon behind it kind of thing or whatever's behind it, whatever spiritual beings behind it, and those are not gods, but whatever they are, they have nothing to do with us. We are gods, we belong to God. We are God. Apostrophe s. We are gods. Possessive. Don't think I'm saying that. So he goes, but not everybody knows this meaning that the meat's like meat, shmeet, whatever. Who cares what you've sacrificed it to? You could say that because not all possess this knowledge, but some through former association with idols eat food and as really offered to an idol. And their conscience, being weak, is defiled. The concern here is the conscience of the person. I know that for some people they can eat that they can go to the market and buy meat that was offered to an idol and yet they can never eat it because to them, in their conscience, every bite, they're like, I'm eating idolatrous meat. And someone else goes, dude, idols are nothing. I got nothing to do with whatever this person did with meat. Whatever it came from a lamb, it was put in the market. They waved it in front of an idol because they're ignorant. I know the truth of that idol. I can eat this thing. So we have these two kinds of people. Then it says, food will not commit us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do. But take care that this right of yours to eat does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak, because knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. I don't want to hurt my brother. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? It's like, what if some of you are so bold and so knowledgeable that you're like, I could eat this meat wherever and whenever. It doesn't matter to me. But what if someone sees you and it hurts their life? And then they're encouraged to eat what they can't because their conscience is not okay with it? And so, by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed the brother for whom Christ died. Man, that is heavy to think about that as people when we hurt Christians or hurting our brother who Christ died for, thus sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience, when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble. So this is a reason not to eat in an idol's temple. This doesn't constitute. This is where we might go a little too far. It doesn't, I think, constitute permission to go eat in an idol's temple for some other reason. Paul elsewhere addresses that we have no fellowship with the works of darkness. And there's an implication there that what ultimately he gets to is if you buy it in the market, he says, you know, don't ask. Don't ask where it came from. Don't have knowledge of whether they sacrificed it or not. Just buy the meat and go eat it. There's nothing to it because he's worried about the conscience of the person, not the meat itself. And so he goes, don't even ask. But if someone hands you the meat, I sacrifice this to an idol and they hand it to you. They're making it about that. Don't touch the stuff, right? Because it's the principle that's in place here. And they also suggest you don't go into a feast that's all about some idolatrous thing and enjoy it. As a Christian, I don't think you do that. So now we go to the other passage that you brought up in this extra long edition of our Q and A. Let me pull it up. Hold on a second here. There it is. Okay, so the other verse that you had was in Acts 15, verses 28 and 29. And the Acts passage is when they had a ruling about. And this is important to understand the official ruling was about whether Gentiles have to get circumcised and follow the law of Moses in order to be called Christians. Like in order to be saved, you have to do these things. Now the Jews, this is also very. People don't notice this, Gentiles when they read Acts, they don't notice this. Oftentimes the Jews in the book of Acts, when they got saved, they did not stop. They did not become uncircumcised. They did not stop participating in temple stuff. They did not quit enjoying the feasts and celebrating the feasts. They didn't stop being externally Jewish. They didn't necessarily stop being kosher with their eating. For the most part, they stayed kosher. Peter for an extended time stayed kosher with his eating and probably only made occasional exceptions when he was around Gentiles and thought, I'm not going to let this get between fellowship, even though I usually eat this way. So that's something people often miss. But then when that Jewish, mostly Jewish church full of just Jews for the most part, who were Christians, now they were Messianic. A Jew can be a Christian, a Jew can be Messianic and follow the Christ, the Messiah. And they're participating in all this stuff, typically normally engaging in it, going to sacrifices, do sacrifices in the temple after the resurrection of Christ. And yet Gentiles get saved. And it naturally brings up the question, we're going to show them the Bible, we're going to show them the law of Moses, we're going to show them all this stuff. And there's people going, they got to obey it all, they got to get circumcised, they have to become Jewish if they want to follow Jesus. And ironically, modern Judaism says you have to become Gentile to follow Jesus because they will write you off the rolls. You're not a Jew anymore if you follow Jesus. So it's like the flip of it has happened. But you can worship, you can not worship but you can follow other messiahs and you're not considered un Jewish. But not Jesus. Specifically not Jesus. So modern Judaism is in direct rebellion against the Messiah, unfortunately. But the. Sorry, I'm thinking now about how what I just said will be used by people who are like, followers of, like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes to say a lot more than what I'm actually saying. I have videos on this stuff. Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson would both consider me a Zionist. So just keep that in mind. Whether I would consider myself that or not is a different issue, but they certainly would. And so I definitely don't. Don't want my words to feed into their Kookiness. So sorry. I know I turned off a lot of you just now because a lot of you are like, mike, I love Tucker Carlson. I know what you're talking about. You can disagree with me on that particular point, guys, but I just want to make sure that you're clear on where I stand so that I'm not saying one thing and then getting roped into something I don't agree with because that happens very quickly. Anyhow, in this ruling, they do mention eating meat sacrificed to idols. And so mostly it's about other stuff, but they do mention it. And here it is, verse 28. It says, it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements. So you don't have to become Jewish, you don't have to follow the law, blah, blah blah, you have to do all that. But here's the things we want you to do, verse 29, that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what has been strangled and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourself from these, you will do well. Farewell now. This is a you will do well. This is not a do this or you're not saved, but one of them is definitely you're not going to. If you continue in sexual immorality, we actually kick you out of the church. So that's like a pretty uncontroversial reality. But things that have been strangled, that's part of keeping from blood. This is the Jewish rule about don't just consume blood, don't consume blood. And they suggest the Gentiles do this too. Is that required? Like, if you're Filipino, there's a dish called dunaguan. And I know this because I have Filipino family. Until a divorce shifted things around as often does, but they had duna guan and pancet and lumpia and all Kinds of other yummy stuff, very greasy stuff. And duna guan is a traditional dish in Philippine cuisine and it's cooked with pig blood. You just get like a brick of frozen pig blood and you're gonna cook, you're gonna cook in makes this very dark sauce. So am I sinning if I consume that? That raises up a whole other question. I've got videos on this stuff and I think that Christians would do well to avoid that. I still think that this is good advice, pretty much all of it. But you can nuance it and say, ah, yes, they're saying you can put acts together with 1 Corinthians. We suggest, please guys, stay away from what's sacrificed to idols. And then what does Paul say? Paul says, I will not eat what's sacrificed to idols if it will stumble my brother. And guess who would get stumbled as they're writing? The Gentiles. Every Jew is going to get stumbled if they know that you're eating food that's sacrificed to idols. So again, the issue is fellowship. I don't want to cause disruption in the family of God. I don't want to cause more rifts than there already are between Jews and Gentiles, even Christian ones by doing that. So if I went to my Jewish friend's house, I'm going to eat different at his house because I'm not trying to create a rift between us because I love them and care for them, right? So that it's kind of like that. That's my understanding. I feel like I was a little more long waited than necessary. So not that anyone's surprised about that. So number 10, last question, anonymous question says, is it wise to go into a relationship with a person who is godly, a really good Christian, and logically looks like a good idea, but there's a lack of feelings, emotions towards them, that person. This is a difficult question to answer because I want you to understand that I don't know the particulars. And my answer goes out to a lot of people. And in some cases it's perfectly good and fine, you will develop emotions as you go. And in other cases that lack of emotions is probably a red flag that there's something that you haven't realized yet that you're sort of subconsciously you realize about this individual. But I also am convinced that a marriage can work and still be beautiful. Even if you enter into a marriage that is actually pretty tough. And there's not, there's a lot of like, why on earth are these two people together? I still think that marriage can have a lot of hope and end up being beautiful. And you just work at it. And if you both work at it, especially if your eyes on Jesus, truly on Jesus, not just, you know, surfacey, like moral, therapeutic Christianity. That's not what I mean. I mean, your eyes are on Jesus. So all that to say if it was me assessing it, if I was helping a friend. Let me just talk like it was a friend. And this is purely my opinion, guys, this is not. I don't have a scripture here. Well, no, let me share a scripture with you first. Okay. Scripture does not indicate that you have to have special emotional feelings in order to get married. That is definitely more of a modern view. It doesn't mean they're bad, they're good. And I want those, but it's not a necessity. So biblically speaking, God made Eve and Adam looks, and it's like, this is your girl. Like, that was an arranged marriage, if there ever was one. And then you've got Abraham sending his servant to go find a wife for his son Isaac, and he finds Rebekah, and Rebecca agrees, and they've never met. There's no feelings at all. There's literally no emotions at all. They've never even met. And they. They get married. And Dolor was totally in it. So that's all that to say, like, it's stressful to get married. It's stressful to worry about, like, is it going to work out? And we tend to think, if I get the right person, then I'm going to have a good marriage. Which is actually kind of, in my opinion, as a guy who's done marriage counseling and stuff, is that's a dangerous mentality to have. Don't think if I get the right person, I'll have a good marriage. Because what that does is that puts the responsibility of the health of your marriage on the other person. And then if it doesn't work, you just blame them and you don't take personal responsibility. And if both people go in thinking it'll work because I married the right person, then it actually makes it even harder for them to get along because they expect the other person to do all the work, although they're not saying that that's what happens. So I think that marriage can work in a variety of circumstances, including arranged marriages, which are not my favorite thing. But that doesn't mean that they aren't something God uses beautifully. And those people can't have wonderful marriage if a person is committed to. I'm going to love my wife as Christ loved the church. And that'll be the direction I always push towards from now till the end of time. And if the wife says, I'm going to be respectful and even submit in a godly way to my husband because Scripture calls me to do this, then I'm going to be selfless and loving. Just the way that Jesus calls me to, calls every Christian to. If they say this, they can probably make their marriage work. They can probably make a beautiful marriage. And maybe you don't have as much in common or maybe the feelings. Now, the feelings tend to come more down the road. But what I would counsel you to do is if you marry somebody and you're thinking, I lack certain emotional feelings towards this person, don't marry them in your head, in the back of your head, there's a condition like you're conditioned upon the idea that I will eventually feel all the things I want to feel. That is unfair because now you are. You're waging your own commitment to this person based upon your future emotions that you can't control. So I would not recommend doing that. Yeah, those are some thoughts. Those feelings can often be stirred up just because you find someone physically attractive, not just that you think they're pretty or handsome, but you personally are attracted to them. And then that can facilitate a lot of feelings. And proverbs kind of warns about this. It says, it says that beauty is fleeting. It's here today, gone tomorrow, you know, But a woman who fears the Lord, she's greatly to be praised. That charm is deceitful. And a lot of our feelings we initially have for people because they were charming in some way, and that will fade. There's a time where your husband doesn't seem charming anymore. And it happens pretty quick because you're used to it all, you've heard it all before and you don't like his charm. But it's not going to sustain your marriage and your wife's beauty will not sustain your marriage because she's not going to stay that age. So, yeah, there's some real world thoughts for you guys. I hope there's something helpful in that. There's some biblical stuff wrapped in there as well as my own wisdom. Feel free to accept and reject according to those things, but those are my thoughts. So, again, I'm excited. The YouTube channel, which is my primary platform for reaching people for free in ministry, it's a little over a thousand subscribers away from a million. And I can't believe it. I honestly never thought we would. I didn't think it would ever get that. I thought I'd plateau a long time ago. I know YouTube well. And the life cycle of YouTube channels is that there's a point at which you kind of. It's not that you stagnate. I mean you're still reaching people, doing great stuff, but you're not in a. You're no longer growing, you're like, you've kind of hit your cap where however many new people come in, you have people going out at the same rate. And there's nothing wrong with that. And I'll eventually hit there. If I continue on for years and years, it'll eventually hit that point. And that's fine. I'm more than content. But I'm blown away that it's even reaching that many people because every one of those people is real people. And it's your guys lives. And I get your messages all the time. I try not to talk about it too much because it feels like it's braggadocious or it's weird. But you guys send me messages all the time through the website about just how your life has been impacted or in comments on videos like this one where you'll just say, hey Mike, this is what was going on in my marriage. And then we saw your videos on husbands and wives and this happened. And I give God all the glory. But I am personally thrilled that I have been able to be used by him to minister to people in places I would never been, people I would never meet. I'd be perfectly happy to do this local church level and minister in that way. And it's just that much more amazing to be able to reach so many people, so all to the glory of God. And that milestone does matter to me. Some people be like, well, numbers don't matter. Well, I mean numbers don't matter for the sake of them being numbers, but people matter. And surely if you're like, I saved someone's life, that would not that I'm saving people's lives. There's times where people use that language. But let's say that you dive into an ocean, you save someone from drowning, and then you, over the course of your life, you do that 50 times and you go, I'm so amazed. There's 50 people that are married and have kids. And it was because I was in the right spot and God used me to save them. And someone goes, numbers don't matter. You'd be like, what's wrong with you, man? Saving 50 people is obviously amazing and beautiful compared to saving one, which is also amazing. And Beautiful. They're all worthwhile. But I'm not going to disregard the last 49 because I'm trying to fight against the idea that numbers matter. No, it's a beautiful, wonderful thing. Every person that gets ministered to. The one caveat I have is if only one person was affected, it was all worth it. Because each person is that valuable and they're made in God's image and ministering to them is treasures in heaven that last forever. That's beautiful. So I'm grateful for you guys and I appreciate your prayers. I don't often ask, but I will ask. Please pray for me to have wisdom and energy. My energy's been pretty in the dumps for a little bit now recently, and that's something I go through sometimes and it's just like a bit of a struggle. So I appreciate if you guys would please do that for me. Pray for me that I'd have energy, focus and be able to push through and get a lot done in a short period of time because I have so much on my plate. And if I can just push through it, it'll, I think, help change the world and then I can move on to the next thing to help change the world. So. Lord willing. Lord willing. So anyways, God bless you guys. It's been good. I'll. Maybe I'll do a million subscriber video for fun, just. Just to chat and hang out. We'll see, we'll see. But let's pray. Father God, we lift up your name. We exalt your name. You are holy and righteous. You're the king of kings. You're the creator of the world. And just even saying that, it's so easy to say it and not think about what it means. You're the creator of creation. You've made our souls. Lord, we love you. We bless your name. We pray for your glory in our lives. We ask for your grace for our sins. We ask for your to guide and direct us according to your glory. Help us to be those who are truly having an impact in others lives, in anybody's life for Christ, and also taking heed to ourselves, to walk in holiness and sanctification and to continually put off sin. We just ask for your help in all those things. In Jesus name, amen.