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Quick Update on Cover-up Culture and 10 Qs with Mike Winger (Ep 69)
01:37:35
Taking questions from the live chat. Today's Time Stamps: 0:00 - Intro1. 0:21 [Cover-Up Culture Update} Do you have an update on the cover-up culture exposure project? 2. 15:42 {Un-Learning Without Deconstructing} For those who used to be a part of Bethel, what advice would you give to those who are deconstructing things learned there without losing faith? I attended their ministry school years ago.3. 22:22 {Inter-Faith Marital Conflicts} My wife is Catholic, but I have an issue with our kids going to mass due to it being a propitiatory sacrifice. Am I doing more harm (by causing strife in the marriage) than good by not exposing them?4. 24:55 {Who Was Theudas?} Who was Theudas in Acts 5? Is it a contradiction?5. 31:20 {God’s Will & Our Choices} Some people pray for God to remove a potential partner from their life if they aren’t the right fit. I’ve tried this, too, but God doesn’t always remove the partner in question. Why is that?6. 34:35 {One of Mike’s Favorite Verses} What is yo...
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Well, a lot is going on right now, guys. I'm going to give you an update on what's going on with the COVID up culture stuff. And I believe as I move forward with these videos and with the stuff I'm doing that this is not entertainment. This is about bringing reformation into the church. And I'll be taking your questions today as well. So I'm going to be transparent. I'm going to be very open and transparent with you guys on the things that are going on behind the scenes. Because cover up culture never is. And a solution is light, man. Light disinfects light exposes light. That analogy of scripture exposes things that are done in darkness. So, okay, here's the update. I've made several videos so far in my series on cover up culture. I've done some stuff in the past, like on Benny Hinn, quite a long time ago I did a video on Benny Hinn. I It's crazy. He still has a ministry. Not because my video should stop. It should have been stopped 30 years ago. It's crazy. But I've done a number of videos recently, one in particular on Bethel. Maybe a couple on Bethel that really struck a nerve with people and they just went, oh my goodness, Bethel came out and apologized. I didn't say they repented. It remains to be seen if that's repentance. It also remains to be seen if that apology is legit and if it is, maybe I should say sufficient. I don't doubt that there was a sense of sorrow and remorse. But it remains to be seen. And there is a small. Here's where we're at right now. From my perspective, Bethel doesn't answer to me. I think they answer to you. I think they answer to the body of Christ and the people they influence. And I'm merely giving you guys the tools for you to ask them to be responsible. But as I see it, Bethel has a small little window of opportunity to be really, really transparent and open. And the temptation will be to share as much as they have to instead of what's real. So we're waiting to see. That's kind of where it's at right now. Okay. I believe there are some good actors at Bethel and I also believe there are some bad actors there even in the leadership. Good and bad. But life is actually more complicated than just saying good and bad. The truth is relationships are complicated. But here's the thing. The charismatic cover up culture stuff that I started looking into a year ago and I've known about certain things here and there for years and years. But when I saw how bad it was and how far spread it was, I mean, widespread and how it was generational. It's crazy. It's crazy. You guys don't. You don't understand how nuts the whole thing is. You've got. Let's follow Mike Bickle for a second here. Mike Bickle, who goes to Kansas City and he starts this whole movement called ihop, International House of Prayer. Not the Pancakes, which I have no complaints about, but the International House of Prayer. This is an end times, like doomsday movement that's about. They have to pray in the Kingdom of Christ and Jesus will return when this group prays enough. And Mike Bickle is seen as an End Times apostle. The guy is seen as an apostle. He's had visions about himself on a chariot. He's had all these revelations. And he brings alongside him several men who are called the Kansas City Prophets. Right? You've got Augustine, Acala, Paul Kane, Bob Jones. Not the only ones. Those are some chief guys. All of them have issues that would disturb you and would require me warning you about having children. Leave the room before I could talk about them. These guys join up with the Vineyard in the late 80s, early 90s. Bob Jones gets exposed for all kinds of stuff. He prophesies the destruction of la. He's mad at John Wimber. Still gets platformed at Bethel. Years later, Paul Kane gets exposed for predatory, horrible evil behaviors still connected to the movement, still able to be in the movement, even when he's confessed to some of it. He confessed. He later denied. He confessed. He denied. Still has a foot. Foothold in the movement. How on earth is this a thing? How on earth could Bethel allow it? How on earth could these. How on earth today can Jesus image support Benny Hinn? If that alone is not disqualification for the leadership there, I don't know what is. But here's my concern, and I can go on and on and on. I could share more and more and more names and stories and histories. I had a friend tell me a while ago, and I was very skeptical of this. He said, mike, I think that these charismatic leaders, the sort of. I'll call them Tier one leaders, he goes, I think they all just have dirt on each other. And that that's part of what preserves these weird relationships they have. I don't think that's so ridiculous anymore. Paul Kane had dirt on a lot of people. He secretly recorded conversations. I've read the transcript of one he had with Chuck Smith, of all people, where he, in the conversation he calls what he did to Chuck Smith spiritual blackmail. I'm not making this up. You want to see it? I'll put a link in the description below to where I gave the transcript over to the guy who does the William Branham stuff online, John Collins, and I sent it to him, and I was like, go ahead and share this, because I think transparency is needed. Even though I love Chuck and sat under his teaching and listened to all seven years of his Chuck tapes and was ordained through Calvary Chapel and was on staff as a pastor at Calvary chapel church for 14 years. I was volunteering and doing ministry for many years before that. So all that's true, and it's not meant to be an indictment against Chuck. Exactly. Because Chuck tried to distance himself from these guys. Pastor Chuck, he saw the writing on the wall. He tried to warn John Wimber. So it's just the reality that this guy has tapes. He records these tapes of all sorts of private conversations, and then he can use this as blackmail. He comes to you, and he's like, oh, tell me your troubles, and I'll pray for you, and I'll prophetically minister to you. So you confess your sins, and then he can use that as leverage against you. And this is what he did routinely. And I think this has been done routinely in the movement for a very long time from a lot of different people. I'll give an example today. I am under the impression, I will say, that Chris Reed does this. Chris Reed, the pastor who faked speaking in Russian tongues and later made a video prophesying that God was going to judge Mike Winger and. And pretending that he prophesied that I'd make a video about him. It's the most embarrassing, shallow, obviously fake thing in the world. And scripture tells me, Chris Reed, not to fear you. So I have no fear of you. So suck it. I have no fear of you, Chris Reed. And this guy is reportedly in possession of Paul Kane's tapes, which means he has leverage over a lot of different leaders in the movement. And perhaps this is why none of the major leaders will call him out, even though he's abusing and manipulating and deceiving his people in the name of Christ. It just goes deeper and deeper and gets worse and worse. Even right now, there's people reaching out, saying, hey, we're trying to expose Chris Reed. Now he's attacking us. And this is. To me, it's such a tangled snake pit and mess that I don't know how to get through it. But I still believe. Here's Honest transparency here, guys. I still believe there are genuine, wonderful, godly Christians inside these movements and that they just see the face that is presented by some of the leaders. And yes, they're being damaged by it, damaged by some of the teachings, damaged by some of the theology, damaged by the practices. But their sincere hearts for Jesus are there intact for now at least. And they need to be helped and given the truth so that they can hold their leaders accountable. I even believe there are junior leaders in these movements that don't know a lot of the garbage and a lot of the stuff. And they're sitting here trying to figure it out and their heads are spinning right now and they're saying, did my leader make one really big mistake or is my leader one really big mistake? And is it somewhere in between? Is there some spectrum here? I don't know where the truth is. That's what's happening in the movement. Then there's people who are seeing how messed up some of these guys have been in Morningstar and Bethel. And I want you guys, Bethel, I want you guys to change. I want you guys to reform, and I want you guys to have health and wholeness. But any pretend reform or pretend health or wholeness is the enemy of the true health and wholeness. And it's ultimately more cover up culture. And so you have your window. You could bring radical reform and then you wouldn't need me to say anything else about what I know about the people I've talked to. You wouldn't need me to say any of it. But so far, some of the public statements have been true and some of the public statements have been false, and that is not acceptable. So there's a little, very small window of time you have right now, as far as I'm concerned. I don't have the authority to do anything. I'm just telling you what I'm gonna do. That sounds so horrible. I don't mean it to sound horrible like that. The church needs integrity and honesty and we need to be unafraid. Scripture specifically tells us two things about perpetrators of serious issues, serious crimes and abuses and stuff. It tells you not to have pity on them. Can you believe that? Don't let your eye pity them. God says this over and over in Scripture because when there is an extreme penalty for an extreme crime, the tendency for us is to want to soften that and to kill justice in the name of mercy. But that is an ungodly mercy. And so sometimes you can't do that. You cannot offer mercy when it's unwarranted by the grace of God, by the conditions of forgiveness and repentance and proper handling of a situation. So it says, your eye shall not pity them. God tells them over and over, your eye will not pity them. Your eye will not pity them. There's a time where you can't let your emotions pity the person so much that you don't take proper actions because you become an enabler. The other thing that scripture tells us about fake prophets, fake prophecy, and people who teach falsely is you shall not fear them. That's the other term we get repeatedly in the Bible. Do not fear them. Do not be intimidated by them. Those of you who are still part of the movement and you're thinking, like, I'm afraid to even find out what really has gone on. Because I feel like even researching it is exposing me to spiritual dangers. The Bible tells you, do not fear these guys. If they are in fact like that, have no fear of them. Right now I had Greg Locke on X spiritually threatening me earlier today. I had Malachi run on X doing the same thing. Sean Foyt calling me names and saying, go, Greg. You know, good job. And I'm just like, dude, all you guys are suspect. That's just the reality. Like, if I had all the time in the world and I had the desire to really do it, I could just devote videos to every one of these guys. And I don't want to. I have no desire to do that. But it could easily be done because their issues are out in the open, they're obvious and they're well known if people care about truth and integrity and justice and righteousness. But the spiritual abuse that guys like Greg Locke were throwing at me or guys like Landon Schott have been throwing at everybody, right? Mercy culture, Landon. I'm calling out names because they have to be named because these people are the propagators of COVID up culture. Which is another way of saying they're dishonoring Christ and they're shaming anybody who tries to stop them and they're keeping the church imprisoned by their cruelty, that's it. In the name of Christ, with, with the authority, supposed authority of Christ, all these things I've tried confronting people, other people have tried confronting them. This stuff is. We're way down the road past all that. So all that to say, I'm not done and I still don't like it, but for the sake of the people under their influence who listen to me, I'm going to continue speaking on these issues and I'm trying as Best I can to have as much grace as possible. I say things and I think maybe I should have been harsher there. I keep thinking that maybe I should have been harsher in that video. My response to Bethel I did last week, I'm like, I can always dial it up, but I want to give them every opportunity to see transformation and change. I want to be there supporting that stuff. But the second that those opportunities become enabling further cover up and harm, then the moral thing to do is to ratchet up the harshness so that it is appropriate. So that's the direction it's heading. That's my update. So that's where the COVID up culture stuff is. Right now. We are in a bit of a lull that I want to let happen, at least on my end. Other people free to make videos and stuff, but we're in a bit of a lull, waiting to see if something good goes on. And if not, then, you know, then it'll be the hard way instead of the easy way. Oh, man. I do all this believing in the church and believing in the gifts and believing in charismatics because I just think if you guys know what's going on, you're not going to stand for it. I hope that that belief is rewarded. I hope that belief is true. I think that when Greg Locke comes out attacking me just recently, and I don't care that he attacks me, I'm not personally offended at all. And if anybody has a real error I've got, then show me demonstrate it and I'll apologize publicly. Like Todd White. I would defend Todd White's character. Show me that these testimonies are not true, that there's some extreme distortion that invalidates the testimonies that I've brought. I will publicly come out and defend Todd White's stellar character and godliness. Happy to do that because I want to do what's true. But I think that, I think that most of the onlookers, even within these people's ministries, that their eyes are opening up and they're seeing what's really going on. And I think that when Landon shot, takes cheap shots, pun intended, at everybody who tries to challenge the fact that they endorsed, not just endorsed, but they defended Michael Brown against valid accusations and they slandered and attacked everybody who came against them for doing that. Everybody who said, hey, this wasn't integrity, this wasn't righteous. Look at the evidence, guys. There's a mountain of evidence and testimony, many witnesses, a whole investigation that has taken place and they just dismissed it all. And we're like, God showed us he's innocent. When they came out and they said about Todd White, let's give him a standing ovation at our church right after my video comes out, because they're part of the COVID up culture. That's the reason why when he then gets up and he goes, we've seen this many people saved in our ministry. How many people did you guys seen saved? And he tries to use this kind of spiritual bullying and spiritual abuse stuff. I think his own people see through it. I think they see through it. I think people on his staff know that he's told them that Todd White has a demon. And then he brings Todd White on stage and has the people who don't know the truth, who don't even know what Landon shot says behind closed doors about Todd White, he puts them on stage and has everybody give him a standing ovation because something deep and dark and evil is going on inside the hearts of these guys. All right, that's the end of this video's update part. I'm just going to go to your guys questions and you're free to ask what you want. I do not do this stuff always. I'm in a season right now targeting a specific issue. I believe the Lord's guiding this, and I know it's ugly and I wish it wasn't, but because of that, I'll take questions that are related to these issues. Oh, let me plug in my thing. See my new chair. All right, question number one. Okay. All right, I'll consider the update. Question number one. We'll call that what is going on with the COVID up cultures stuff. Number two. Annalisa Gilbert says, Mike, for those who used to be a part of Bethel, what advice would you give to those deconstructing things learned there without losing faith? I attended their ministry school years ago, and this is one of the things I'm deeply concerned about. Annalisa, I'm so glad you asked this question. One thing that might help. So what I want to tell you is, and you may be watching this thinking like, I'm a little skeptical of you, Mike, too, you know, what if. And I go, hey, that's okay. That's completely understandable and respectable. If I had experienced being under that kind of leadership, I understand what that does to you. And the skepticism is earned. But that skepticism then flows onto a lot of things, onto scripture itself, onto a whole bunch of things. And your walls come down where it can actually feel. Sometimes it can feel emotionally and spiritually safe to take a posture of disbelief because you have emotionally and spiritually endangered yourself for a long time by taking a posture of gullible belief, right? Just way too quick to believe anything and everything. And that was hinged on these leaders that you called fathers and mothers. And now you don't trust them. And now you see that they weren't who you thought. And so it can really distort and make things difficult. So you can swing the pendulum to where you have that incredible sense of safety, but you've cut off something beautiful. And I'll give you an example. Sometimes women have experienced or men have experienced a really, really unhealthy marriage, like a deeply evil relationship. And it can be tempting to simply cut off the idea of marriage. And sometimes people go extreme and they'll be like, marriage is pointless. What's the purpose of marriage? And what they're doing is, I think they're expressing. I have been so wounded in marriage that whatever goods are there, I just don't care. I'm safer by just staying away from it entirely. When it comes to God, it's easy to do the same thing. And people experience this all the time. If you came out of the Jehovah's Witnesses cult or the Mother of God cult or Islam, if you find out how incredibly easy it is to disprove Islam and how false it is, it's very easy to then just be like, atheism. Atheism is the safe route. I will never be religiously manipulated because I will never have religious beliefs. Over time, you can realize that that cynicism was an overreaction. And so sometimes people come out of a thing like that, they become atheist or gnostic or whatever for a season. Agnostic, excuse me. And then maybe they open the doors up and they come around to maybe some sort of faith, some sort of belief later on, or at least they soften that atheism. I give all that as an analogy to say this. You were taught the Bible. The Bible was used. Spirituality was used all the time. But in every instance there was a distortion that was there. I haven't talked about this in a long time, but Bethel has specific distortions in the way that they handle the word of God. We saw in Chris's Sunday message the day after my video came out. There was a number of mishandlings of scripture, and scripture becomes a launch pad to achieve the agenda of the teacher. Frequently the prosperity preaching is not biblical. I'm not saying God doesn't never prosper like it's. I get accused of doing poverty preaching like I'm preaching poverty. No, I never have, I never will. But the prosperity preaching stuff that I've seen in these circles, it's not biblical, it's not accurate, which means that there's like a lot to untangle. So maybe this would be encouragement and Elisa, to you or others, is to just be open to the idea that the Christianity you were taught and many of the experiences you have were a really unique and strange version of Christianity that wasn't biblically grounded, that it was based upon some stuff that has developed over time that is not based on Scripture. This is why I like the word Reformation, because the concept behind the Reformation was like, let's get back to original Christianity. Let's get back to Scripture. Let's get deep, including this. They got deep in church history to see if the claims of the church today were matching what they actually developed, really in the first century and first few centuries. And this led them to cast off all kinds of things. But they were able, through this, to make a distinguishing difference between my church experience and traditions versus biblical Christianity. And they reformed. I think we need to reform. The charismatic church needs to reform, not deconstruct. Yes, you need to disentangle. There's a good word for you. Disentangle your experiences from scripture and from authentic Christianity. But you would find that if you would survey throughout church history, especially first century, if you grabbed the 12 apostles and you plopped them into the middle of, let's say, Morningstar Church or Jesus image or Bethel or something, they would walk around and be like, what is exactly going on here? I've never seen something like this before. That's what I think they would do. And your church should be healthy enough and wise enough to know that this is the case and go, hey, there's things that my church does that I think that are just simply not deriving from scripture or the first century Christian experience. Go back to the Word. Start reading and studying the Bible on your own, chapter by chapter, verse by verse. Read whole passages, don't read verses. Ask good questions. Maybe get a study Bible, a reputable study Bible, and start learning that. Get into a church. I hope you will get into a church. You can find one where they actually teach the Word and start digging in. You know what I would recommend? If you are already coming out of Bethel, you're already coming out of those types of things, you're on your way out, or maybe you're still in, but you're wanting to clear your mind, I'd recommend check out my series going through the Book of Romans. That would be a fantastic, like, verse by verse plotting through what does the word say? That would be a fantastic thing that you would find refreshing. And you will find that the Bible is actually simpler than your leaders made it sound. Because what they ended up doing was they had a, I'll use a fancy term, a gnostic kind of interpretation of the Bible that was based upon their private spiritual revelations instead of this is what the text says. It's actually much simpler. There's a few thoughts for you. Don't lose hope. I have been through personally, the. I doubt everything. I doubt everyone. I don't trust in you. I've been through that phase myself. And. And it was when I found that there was strong, supportive evidence to believe the word of God, to believe the Bible, to know the resurrection of Christ is real evidence for God. Those things grounded me. So I don't depend upon those other people for me to know the Christian faith is true. Anyway. All right, let's look at number three. Question number three. This is coming in from. Just curious. Who says, my wife is Catholic, but I have an issue with our kids going to Mass due to it being a propitiatory sacrifice. Am I doing more harm by causing strife in the marriage than good, not exposing them? I'm not in your marriage. I don't know all the ins and outs and specifics, but as far as I can tell, this seems pretty clear to me as a husband and a father. It's going to cause marital strife. But you cannot let your kids participate in something that is theologically as off base as that. I don't think that I could. I don't see how you could. Even though it will cause strife. This is why getting into a marriage between a. I always have said this to people. They think I'm going to marry this Catholic. And they go, well, our relationship's great and we agree on so many issues. Sure, we have some differences and I always say the same thing. I say, wait till you have kids. And all of a sudden you're going to find that there are some conflicts you did not anticipate that are really, really important conflicts. Yeah, I'm sorry. I would suggest you get some counsel from a godly man, you know, doesn't have to be a pastor, a godly man, you know, who has a good marriage. Go to meet with that guy, tell him more and more of the details. Don't just take my advice and run with it, but those are my thoughts for you on that. And the reason is this, is that the, the Nature of the Mass and you understand it well, is a propitiatory sacrifice. It is a representing of the sacrifice of Christ in that you are actually being made right with God. It's considered essential for salvation. There's the doctrine of transubstantiation that's wrapped up into that. There is the doctrine of the priest involvement in the sacrifice that they have to pronounce the words of annunciation. And then you have the accidents and substance that become the body, the body and blood of Christ with the appearance of bread and wine. And it's an affirmation of Catholic Church authority to attend to Mass. It's a deeply theological thing that really does matter. Now, your kids may not be fully aware of those things, but you are. So. Yeah, all right, man. God give you wisdom and courage and. Yeah, okay. Number four, Number four. This is from or oral, I think. So you guys know, just so you know the way that YouTube does your usernames now, they don't put your channel name, they put your actual symbol. So that's why I don't get to read your fun little channel names anymore. Who was Thaddeus theudis in Acts 5? Is it a contradiction? Oh, that's an interesting question. Acts 5. What would about this would make it a contradiction? It would help if you had given us a verse so I don't have to like look through the chapter trying to find where this person's name pops up, which I'm doing right now. I mean, we have Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter five. We've got many signs and wonders done by the apostles. Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't think that this is going to be time effective for me to scroll through, which is a bummer because I'm sure you would have. Oh, wait, no, there's a thudas verse 36. Okay, okay, I'm going to back up a bit here. Let's look at. We'll start in. Is there a chapter break I could find here? Okay, so they're preaching in the temple and here it says in Acts 5, partway through 21, it says now when the high priest came and those who were with him, they called together the council all. All the synod of the people of Israel and sent to the prison. Sent to the prison to have them brought. Okay, so the apostles are getting like cross examined now because hey, they're preaching in Jesus name and these guys don't like it. Then it says when the officers came, they did not find them in the prison. So they returned and Reported we found the prison securely locked and the guards standing at the doors. But when we opened them, we found no one inside. Now, when the captain of the temple heard and the chief priests heard these words, they were greatly perplexed about them wondering what this would come to. Then. Verse 25. And someone came and told them, look, the men who you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people. So, so exciting, like what God is doing here. He delivers them out of the prison. And they have such courage. Remember in Acts 4, they prayed for courage. They have such courage that they go out and they go right back to preaching and teaching, knowing that they're just going to get in trouble again. They knew that God had not delivered them so that they would not suffer, but he delivered them so that they might preach. Beautiful thing. He says, look, the men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people. Then the captain with the officers went and brought them, but not by force, for they were afraid of being stoned by the people. This is a reality that I think was happening with Jesus and his ministry. I think we miss it when we read the Gospels, is that there's times where they wanted to take Jesus, but they didn't because they were afraid of the crowds. They're like, if we grab him, the crowds might rally against us. So that favor from the Lord is upon them as well. Now, verse 27. And when they had brought them, they set them before the council and the high priests questioned them, saying, we strictly charged you not to teach in this name. Yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching. What a great backhanded compliment. And you intend to bring this man's blood upon us. Okay, so they're personally embarrassed because as they continue preaching Jesus, it makes them look bad. So they're upset about this. But Peter and the apostles answered, we must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. It doesn't just say to judge Israel. Even after the crucifixion of Jesus. The desire is repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. You catch that? That's important for those who have politically popular but errant theology about God's attitude towards Israel right now. And we are witnesses to these things. And so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them. But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, held in honor by all the people, stood up and gave orders to put the men outside for a little while. Now we're going to get to the speech and this is where your question comes up. And I don't know if I can answer it, but let's get the context. And he said to them, men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men. For before these days, theudas rose up claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about 400 joined him. He was killed and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing after him. Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered. So we have two examples of messiahs that rose up and when they were taken out, their followings died. So you get where he's going with this because Jesus was killed. Now they're saying he's risen and his following is growing. He's like, normally it would just die. So he says, so in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone. For if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail. But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God. So they took his advice. And when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go. Okay, so you're asking, is the existence of theudas on this list? Is that a contradiction? Theudas rose up. I'm not sure where. I guess the thing is, maybe I'm just forgetting. I remember looking at this passage at one point asking the same questions, a similar question about this. I don't know all that to say, I don't know. We had a great little jaunt into the scriptures there. I don't know what the supposed contradiction is, and so I'm not able to resolve it for you. I will say this, that if the concern is that there are multiple messiah like figures coming up and then failing, that has happened numerous times around the time of Jesus. There was a bunch of them. If there's a concern about theudists having like some specific supposed contradiction because there's another parallel passage, I mean, if you'd share the parallel passage, I would know that. I just, I apologize. I don't know off the top of my head where that is. So I'll Go to the next question. Number five. This is live, guys. I do not get these questions ahead of time, so I have to do my best with what I read. And here's the next one I also have not read yet from Clara Aziz. Some people pray for God to remove a potential partner from their life if they aren't for them. I've tried this, too, but God doesn't always remove the man in question. Why is that. The. I'll call this the I grew up chat because I used to pray similar things. You know, there's a number of prayers that we can sometimes offer to God because we don't want to be responsible for making a decision, and we only want a good outcome. Now, I'm speaking for myself here, okay? I know that when it came to, like, big decisions in life, like whether it was career or marriage or moving from here to there, I want God to show me what the right option is, not only so I can please him, but partly so I can have a good experience. Because if he picks my spouse, I'll probably have a great marriage. That's the idea. I think that God is interested in us, generally speaking, making a lot more decisions than we would like to make when it comes to the big issues of our lives. And that growing up is realizing that, A, I do actually have to make a decision, and B, it's not guaranteed to work out. I'm going to. God will work it all toward good. It doesn't mean it will all be good. And so what I recommend is when you're like, lord, if this person's not good, remove them from my life. Maybe a better question to ask is, is this a healthy relationship? Would this relationship serve the glory of God? Are there red flags? Should I maybe talk to an older couple who knows me and ask them their opinion of this relationship? What if I treated this like it was a really important decision that took a lot of wisdom to make a right call on, and I would have to live with it the rest of my life if it's a relationship like marriage. And so I want to get some counsel. I want to think about it. I want to examine our relationship and not just go off the butterflies. That's great wisdom. I want to think about what it'll be like to raise kids with this person, what it will be like to grow old with this person. And I want to put the relationship not entirely on them. This is something, a mistake we often make. We think, if I find the right person, it'll be a great relationship. Most of us, we're not the right person. You know, it just takes a lot of work. You're going to bring your baggage, they're going to bring theirs. There is no formula of if only person perfect meets person also perfect, then marriage will be perfect because just two people don't exist. So for this I recommend get counsel, be thoughtful and intelligent and patient. And also read the book of Proverbs, the book of wisdom, because that book teaches you how to make good choices with a variety of situations we have in life. Read the book of Proverbs, ask God for wisdom, but don't always expect him to tell you do exactly this. Or to think, if God doesn't want me to do this job, then they won't offer it to me. No, you don't control the universe like that. You got to put our big boy pants on and make choices and live with the consequences and know that life is just not safe. And that's okay. God will work it all together for good. But we got to make choices. So that's my thoughts on that number six question from an eight year old named Arabella. Hi Arabella. I'm glad you're watching. What is your favorite Bible verse and why? P.S. i liked your cat video. Oh, nice. If you guys saw my cat, which I don't know where, we have two cats. I was having a conversation with my friend the other day about this. Today, actually, about this. I'm not that much of a cat person. Sorry to disappoint you guys. I like cats. I like pets in general. I actually like dogs more than cats, but we happen to have cats. And he said, but Mike, you have all the cat shirts. I was like, yeah, well, my wife buys the shirts, so she likes the cats, she likes the cat shirts. So I'm a good cat person. I mean, I take care of my cats, but I actually, we went to the pound to get a dog and we ended up coming home with a cat because my wife fell in love. That's the true story of my life. Husbands layer, lay your dogs down for your wives. So the answer to your question. Favorite verse. Sometimes this changes over time. One of my favorite verses is Psalm 62. 8 and I'll put it on screen for you guys. I love this passage. It says, trust in him at all times, O people. Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. I love this for so many reasons. I love that we're being told not just to trust in God, but to trust in God at all times. Because there are temptations, especially when you're younger in the Lord. But of course, when you're older, too, where you're like, this scenario is hard to trust the Lord. This situation is hard to trust God. And I love the encouragement. Trust in him at all times. And then it tells us why, what we can do. We pour out our heart before him. I don't just trust God. I dump out all of my fears or worries or struggles and I pour my heart out before the Lord. Lord, here's what's in my heart. I'm pouring it before you. Why? Because God is a refuge for us. God is what He Himself is. Where I hide in, I rest in Him. I don't rest in the situation I'm in. I rest in God. I don't rest in the circumstances. I'm not at peace with all the stuff that's happening. I'm at peace because he is my peace. So God's my refuge. And it's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. And the psalm is very serious about the hardships of life. He says, those of low estate are but a breath. Those of high estate are a delusion. Those of high estate are a delusion. Keep that in mind when you look at heroes, when you look at people who are way up in the stratosphere of the world. Powerful, rich, influential, great reputation, they're a delusion. They're the same as the ones of low estate. There's just no difference. We're all just like grass that withers. They're lighter than the breath altogether. It says, but in all of that hardship of life, you can fully and completely trust in God and rest in Him. And that is a beautiful passage. I love that verse. Psalm 62. 8. So there's. There's your answer. Hope that that's a verse that you can know and count on now, Arabella. And I'm glad you watched. Number nine. Seven, eight. I went the wrong way. I do that sometimes. Number seven. Okay. Yeah. James Mills says, first time questioner. Good. Glad to have your question. Hi, Pastor Mike. Your ministry has really blessed my walk. I'm very grateful, James. I'm super grateful to hear that you're my brother. Like we're on here. We are. Same exact level. Lighter than air before God. But I'm grateful that it has blessed you. Do you think God used a lamb to clothe Adam and eve? In Genesis 3, Paul says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and he's the lamb. So I think God could have used a lamb. We don't know. We look at the passage and it, we don't have much to go on there, right? We just have a little bit of information. The one thing that stands out is that when he clothed them, he didn't clothe them with fur. I mean, I'm sorry, with, with, with figs or with leaves or with some other plant based thing. So they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths to cover themselves. And God confronts them and the curse happens and it says, and the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. So that would, it seems, involve death. It would seem like it did. I mean, God could obviously the term ex nihilo meaning out of nothing, he could simply create skin out of nothing and it's already in a garment form and he's like, here, poof, there it is. Or it could also be that what happened here was you're cursed. The day you eat of it, you will die. And then the only thing that died in that 24 hour period, I mean the day, I think the term day here can mean in the day you eat of it, you will die is like, as a consequence, the day you eat of it is the death sentence upon you. And I've talked about this in other videos. I think that people thinking that they had to die within 24 hours is a clumsy way to read the passage. But it's cool to think about this parallel death sentence on you. These animals die and you are covered and your shame, your nakedness, which isn't inherently shameful, but the revelation of their sinful state is. Right? So their nakedness, which is an idea of revealing their sin, that they have sinned, that is covered by some other animals that died, skins, what kind? Was it lambs? I don't know. Was it lions? I don't know. Was it otters? I don't know. So it would be great cool parallelism if it was a lamb, because Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That could be the case. This could be a picture of the idea of the sacrifice of Christ. And I like that idea. But I don't want to presume too much about the text and I'll just say, here's a way which you can approach scripture. You could say, hey, here's I'll call safe conjecture where I don't rely upon it. But I'm also, I'm not building any new doctrine on it. I'm taking established, clear Christian doctrine, the sacrifice of Jesus and how that covers and deals with our sin. And I'm showing a similarity, like a literary parallel with the Old Testament. And we know God does this all the time where he's these literary parallels to the Gospel throughout the Old Testament. So that's a very safe kind of conjecture. But I wouldn't personally go beyond that and say I have confidence about what kind of animal it was. All right, we'll go to the next question. This one comes from Carissa. And let's see, you said first Thessalonians 5, 1921 says to test all things, but gives no context as to what the testing looks like. I'm a Bethel alumni who doesn't want to throw away prophecy. I need to know how to test all things. You know, there's one YouTube channel that's trying to do this now. We don't agree on everything. Okay? I feel like I shouldn't have to say that because obviously if I was to say, like, oh, here's a book I read, I liked it doesn't mean I agree with every single thing in it. But we don't agree on every. They don't agree with me on everything. But I think that they have in recent years been talking more and more about testing things. So the Remnant radio is one channel you could talk to. You could look at about that. But let's look at the passage because what we really want is want Scripture to give us some understanding on these things. So let's just look at the verse itself and then we'll talk more about it. I'm going to back up a bit for context because it's always good to do that. He talks about work. Actually, I'm going to read that too, because that's such good instruction for us. We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. In love. I love that. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idol, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all, admonish the idol. As people who aren't, they are not laboring, they're not working in life. It's good to admonish them. You should get a job, see that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. Rejoice, always pray without ceasing. By the way, in the Greek, this is the shortest verse in the Bible. In the Greek, not Jesus wept. I never counted. I had a teacher who counted the letters. He was like, technically So I don't know, random trivia for you. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. That's putting out the work of the Spirit. I'm ending it. Do not despise prophecies. Okay, so I could actually be quenching the Spirit by despising prophecies. And that's good encouragement. I don't want. This is one reason I'm not a cessationist. I have a direct teaching in the New Testament that I think seems to apply to me today, to not despise prophecies. Now, some cessationists and some continuationists actually have really similar beliefs. They just call themselves different things. But let's say the more far or more extreme or more strict cessationist, this is where I would say I disagree with that. I'm like, I can't just assume if someone prophesies to me it's automatically false. That would be despising prophecies as a category categorically. I despise prophecy as opposed to what I'm called to do. And this is what I believe has not happened in the Bethel stream is the testing of everything. So don't dispute. Don't quench the Spirit. That involves more than one step. Yeah, don't despise prophecies, but test everything and hold fast what is good. Now, Bethel's way of testing things, it seems to me they've taught people things like prophecy should be encouraging, so you want to call out the gold in people. That is not a biblical teaching. Sometimes prophecy is not. Frequently prophecy is not encouraging at all. Sometimes it's the revealing of hearts and it's embarrassing stuff, and it's things you wish nobody knew. And sometimes that's what prophetically can get revealed. And to call it the goal thing, okay, that's not how you test it. So in Bethel's streams, it seems to me the testing of prophecy often comes with how you feel about the word that was just given. But I think that the testing of prophecy has to do with testing whether it was real and from God, not whether or not it fits a certain sort of vibe that we like. So I could come up to to a lot of charismatic churches and I can give a fake prophecy that I know is fake, but if I just make it encouraging and uplifting, nobody will call it out. That is a danger, and it exposes you to prophetic manipulation. So you test prophecies. How do you test it? Well, you provide accountability in the form of if you prophesy something, let's find out, was that real? Did it actually happen? If it didn't happen, we confront and we talk to the person and we say, hey, this didn't happen. This actually matters. Those are ways of testing prophecy. One way in which Bethel tends to test prophecies and the charismatic movement often does. Not always. Not always. There's some that don't do this at all is they will privately test prophecies that are given publicly. I think that's a huge mistake. I think that prophecy should be tested when it is given, not sometime in private. So if somebody's on stage and they give a prophecy, it should be tested right then and there, not later on. Now. How do you test it? So there's theological tests of prophecy. Is what they're saying consistent with what God has revealed in Scripture? This is an easy pass or fail. Okay? You say something and you're like, that is not consistent. For instance, Sean Bowles talked about having a prophetic experience where he saw and conversed with people who were dead. And I think that that is. He's already failing the test because we're explicitly told not to do those types of things. So already failed the test. I don't care what he says next. Already failed the test. So that's one test of prophecy. Is it biblical? Is it according to scripture? Another one is, does it come to pass? The Old Testament talks about this as if a prophet prophesies. I think it's Deuteronomy 18. And the thing they're saying doesn't come to pass. Don't fear them. They're a fake prophet. They're not from the Lord. Or if the prophet. Maybe everything they say is great and it even looks like it's really happening, but they're leading you astray. Where is this guy leading me? That's actually a test of a prophet. Is, where is he leading me? Is he leading me truly closer to biblical faithfulness, closer to Jesus in reality, not just the feelings, but closer to the true, authentic teaching of Christ and following of Christ. That's a good thing. If he's not, that's a bad thing, and it's a failure of a test. You can also test the prophet's life. That's a big one. Because I'll tell you what, Bob Jones's life, and if you're Bethel, you know who I'm talking about. Bob Jones's life didn't pass the test. Paul Kane's life didn't pass. The test. Shaun Bowles life didn't pass the test. Bob Hartley's life didn't pass the test. And who knows how many others, their lives didn't pass the test. And so if you're going to be in a position of, I am, prophetically speaking to you, your life has to pass the test. And what Bethel has done is they've made excuses where it's like kind of, okay, well, we're not going to kick David out. His life didn't pass the test. That's kind of the dialogue that's given. But I think what they're taking is examples of someone God called like David, and they're acting like this is permission for people to act like David and stay in ministry. And that's not the case. That's not what the Bible says. So there's a few tests that you can do. Sometimes you can't test it very well because it was vague, you know, and there I say, you can compile. How many times does this person bring vague, untestable claims when it comes to prophecy? And if it's all the time, I consider that a failure of a test. Now, all of this is not because I despise prophecy. It's because I do not despise prophecy. Because if I despise prophecy, I don't need a test. I just know you're prophesying, you're done. I ignore you. But if I love prophecy, true, authentic, real prophecy, then I want only what's true and authentic and real. If you've been part of this stream for a while, I would encourage you to get out of it, to step away. And it's going to take time to untangle some of the stuff that you've experienced and been taught and absorbed that you don't even realize it's there. It would just take time to untangle it. That's what I would counsel you for your own good, for your own benefit. Now, if there's radical reform inside of a charismatic church, it's going to take them time as well. And maybe you want to go on that journey with them, but for a lot of people, it might be the best thing to just create space and disentangle by going to someone who is safer to help you, guide you through it. All right, next question. This is coming from heavy stuff. Yeah. There's so many issues. The theological stuff, this comes from. Shalom, McManus. Okay, for third temple prophecy, third temple prophecy, is the location specified. Does it have to be the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, or can it be built Somewhere else in Israel. Okay, so I am pre millennial. I believe, I think this is true, that the things that the Bible talks about happening prophetically do entail a future temple in Israel. And you could say the question of, okay, this temple is going to be like where the Antichrist declares himself God, where sacrifice is cut off and all that. I could be wrong about that view of eschatology. In times I could be wrong. I hold that with awareness that I could be wrong and that plenty of people have misunderstood God's prophetic future plan in details. I know Jesus returns bodily. We know that that's non negotiable. But I could be wrong about some other details. So that is my view though. So I'll stick to it and I'll say it with some humility if that's the case. And the temple will be rebuilt. I'm not even sure it's a good temple. Okay. This doesn't make it something I'm super excited about. It just means it's going to happen. This temple is built and it doesn't appear that it's being engaged in with some sort of like Christian aware the way that the apostles in the book of Acts when they still went to the temple and they participated in sacrifices or Paul goes to Passover in Jerusalem, they did this with the awareness of Christ and they did it to honor Christ. And so their participation in those things was honoring to the Lord. To participate in those things while you're rejecting Jesus would be dishonoring to God. So that that may well be the case. I'm not sure about that. But I'm just saying the temple itself is not exciting. What's exciting would be massive revival in Israel where a bunch of Jews give their lives to the Messiah and they believe in Yeshua, the one who came and who was prophesied. That would be the thing to watch for. But would it have to be on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem? It seems strongly implied that it is. I mean, I haven't like combed through all the texts to examine if there's any hint in a frame phrase, you know, to make it more clear. But when here's the strong implications. When God has them traveling into the land of Israel, he predicts prophesies like, I'm going to show you the place where my name will dwell perpetually. And he shows them Jerusalem and that's where they go right then because they're there because they know this is a permanent dwelling for God. Solomon builds a physical temple and he's like, let your name Be here perpetually here, Jerusalem. This is it. This is God's chosen location for the Temple. Oh, I see. I have some notifications. 5:36. So that was probably too late for that. Okay, all right. So that's one indication God said it'll be perpetually be there. Solomon built it there. Then when they. The temple was destroyed and it was rebuilt, it was obviously very important that it was rebuilt. Where same location. Then when Herod wanted to expand it years and years later, it was where same location. And all of the prophecies and promises and prayers are directed to this. Not just this building, but this place, this location. All of that really strongly implies like this has to be here. It has to be at this exact location. So I think that's a good reason to think that it will take place in that exact location. There's my thoughts on that. We also know the Temple in Jerusalem is even prophetically in the future, if my memory serves, is referred to as the Temple in Jerusalem. So it'd just be weird to think he's not speaking about the same location. And I know we have the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount. And in God's sovereignty, they couldn't if they tried for now. And maybe this is part of God's holding back the things that are coming in the future. And it would be pretty startling and amazing if suddenly they were able to build the temple there. But it would also stir up a whole lot of speculation about future prophecy. But, you know, I don't know. For all we know, the temple could be built, torn down, another one built, another one torn down. It's a thousand years later when Jesus is going to come back. I do not have enough chutzpah to say that I know when the return of Christ is going to be. And seeing as how everybody who has said it so far has been wrong. D Disc says. What is your opinion on whether or not the spike in mental illness in this world could potentially be a demon possession? This is way above my pay grade disc. It's above my pay grade, man. I don't know. I personally feel as though it's reckless to have a sweeping. Now, I'm sure there's truth out there about this, but I feel as though it's reckless for someone like me to just casually throw out there. I am spiritually analyzing the demonic influence of people I've never met, talked to, and know nothing about. That seems reckless on my part. And I also think that there's people with mental illness who might listen and think I'm diagnosing them in a way that could then exacerbate their mental illness problems. So my thought is, if you don't know whether something's demonic or not, just keep your mouth shut for the sake of the people that you might harm by suggesting it is. Yeah. Could it be? I mean, obviously could be, but we just don't know. We just don't know. And all this charismatic stuff I've dug into over the past year, in particular, I have seen so many people casually and callously diagnose spiritual stuff. In fact, this has just happened. Landon shot with his video on Twitter. He went up and so he went to Robert Morris. And nobody cares that he visited him in prison. Nobody cares about that. Landon, I don't think. But the concern was that he was setting him up for a ministry comeback. That's the concern. Okay. The man who had hid and lied about his sin, his horrible sin where he had done bad stuff to a young lady who was underage was years ago. What else happened beyond that? We don't know. I mean, would he be honest? No. Then his church, some of the leadership in the church lied about whether they knew about it when they really didn't know about it. Then he sued his church for money after all this stuff came out and revealed even more dirt. And you're like, this guy's supposed to go back into ministry now. And Landon's like, go, Robert. It was setting people up for ministry. People responded understandably, saying, landon, you're doing it again. You're doing it with Todd White. He did it with all these guys. And he responded by saying that the crowd of people disagreeing with them were manifesting demons. You can look it up. It's a video that just went up within the last few days that the crowd who was coming against this was manifesting demons and they were revealing the Jezebel spirit and this other garbage that is. Dumb, along with being spiritually abusive as a leader to people. But you know what? You touched his anointed one, so the fangs come out. And that is the elitism. That is exactly the elitism that I want to come against. So I hope that he repents, but I'm not holding my breath. Okay, look, I'm going to do more than 10 questions today. I didn't tell you guys that, did I? More than 10 questions, because I knew a lot were going to come in that had to do with some of the stuff that's going on today. And I want to do more. So the Methodist perspective says I do a lot of evangelism in an older tradition that has not focused on evangelism for a long time. How do I evangelize without it feeling like a competition with newer, trendier churches? Ignore the churches and focus on the mission field. That's all I could say about that. Just ignore them completely. Focus on the mission field. You can learn from people. You can do that as well. Make sure your evangelism is grounded in the word. But competition does not belong in evangelism or ministry at all, because you will take people who are your partners in ministry or who are serving the king alongside you, and you will see them as somebody who you dislike for no good reason. So the competition thing is about self interest. Whereas, for instance, like when I talk about landing, which I don't want to, but when I talk about this publicly, it's about my interests are for the sake of the body of Christ. He just called thousands and thousands of people demonically manifesting, and he abused them spiritually. Like I care about those people. That's different than, say, a competition thing. So if you look and you go, hey, guys, your evangelism practices have some unhealth in them. You know, you're not actually preaching repentance in the cross. You're just, I'm going to pray for you and then invite you to church. And you think that's evangelism. And you're like, well, I mean, you could do that, but that's not. You didn't preach the gospel. Those things you want to cover but avoid all competition. I've seen competition divide local churches to the point where they're not really able to. Work together very well. Pastors on staff together can't work together well. And then the people start dividing. So then one, you know, there's a group that follows this pastor around and a group that follows that pastor around. And it all derived from a competitive attitude that the pastors started having with one another. Then it messed up the body, and it's very ugly stuff. Number 12, Aiden has a question for parents of adult kids. How should you respond to your son or daughter's sinful lifestyle? If your daughter lives with her boyfriend, should you have them over for dinner together? I have not been confronted with the situation, and it's easier to answer without having to think about the actual consequences that happen in someone's lives. I'm just going to answer this with the following. And I do mean this. I'm not evading the answer at all. I want to get to the principle at the heart of it, which is I cannot do anything with my family members that is understandably interpreted as minimizing sin or as embracing something sinful as being okay. That doesn't mean I have to mention the sin at every time we see each other. But I just can't take actions that minimize the sin, that, like, suggest that the sinful thing they're doing that's harming them, that's harming their partner they're sleeping with. I can't behave in such a way that I send a signal that this thing is okay and don't worry about it. That doesn't mean you have to bring it up at every family gathering. You have to constantly acknowledge it over and over again. I'm not saying that. So for whatever wisdom that there is there, we're to be lights in the world. And part of Christians being a light in the world is that we're public on our stances on righteousness. And I want to make sure I don't compromise that. As a believer, at the same time, you have. As a parent, you have a sacred duty and responsibility to show love and care and loyalty to your family. That has to be in place. Holding those both in place at the same time can feel like it's impossible. I don't think it is. I think it can feel impossible. Because what you're really struggling with is, how do I convince them that I love and care for them and I disapprove? Like, not just I disapprove, but and what they're doing is actually wrong. How do I convince them that both of those realities can coexist, that I love you, and also this is wrong. And there is a very difficult task. You may not convince them, but it doesn't mean you didn't do it. Doesn't mean you didn't do it right. Number 13, Herring651 says, hey, Mike, I love the ministry. Thank you. You helped me transition from oneness Pentecostal to Trinitarian. So thanks. That's awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome. I'll say it three times. How do I go from trying to earn God's love to just receiving it? You laugh at yourself when you realize the thing you're doing to try to earn God's love is really pathetic. So Isaiah puts it this way, all our righteousness is as filthy rags. And if you look at the thing you're presenting to God, like, look, Lord, I did this. I'm trying to. Are you happy? Are you proud of me now? I did this thing. If you look at this and think this is actually the thing that my heart is telling me is earning God's love right now. Like, that's silly. That's silly. And you laugh and you go, lord, you just love. You love me. While we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. Scripture says, while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. It says that we did not love him first, he loved us first. Meaning that before you thought, I wonder how I can get God to love me, he was already loving you. Now you might think, but when I sin, I feel as though God isn't loving me. But let me ask you, maybe reflect on your relationship with your parents and stuff like that, but when you do something wrong, did you feel like your parents stopped loving you or were you just being disciplined? Or maybe the relationship was somehow harmed because you were pulling away. That may be the case, but God's love isn't going to stop. But that doesn't mean that he's okay with the thing we're doing, that maybe something we're doing, sinful or wrong. But yeah, I'm going to read your question one more time. And I hope for your sake, for spiritual well being, I hope it lands. You said, how do I go from trying to earn God's love to just receiving it? You look at the thing you're doing to earn God's love and you laugh and you go, I can't believe I thought that was going to earn God's love. When I saw the cross where God already showed me how much he loved me, even while I was still a sinner. And you remember that. You remember that the basis of God's love for you is God's incredible love. Not anything you have done. All right, next question. Number 15, 14. I'm bad at counting today, huh? Let's see. Melanie says, I know that as believers, we live life through the Holy Spirit. He gives us strength to obey God. But how do you depend on the Holy Spirit's strength? What does that look like lived out? That's a really interesting question. So some of the things that occur to me in scripture on this is the apostles pray for the strength that God provides. I mentioned this earlier in Acts, chapter four, they're like beaten. They're told, don't speak in the name of Jesus anymore. And they pray and they say, lord, give us boldness. Grant us boldness that we can, you know, preach the gospel and be courageous, be fearless. And the Holy Spirit empowered them in that moment. So there's a sense in which you go, oh, okay, I Will pray. One way to walk in the strength of the Holy Spirit is to cry out for the strength of the Holy Spirit to pray. Lord, empower me, strengthen me, help me through this. I don't mean you're going to hear a physical sound every time you do this or if you ever hear it. I don't know. But I think that's one step of appealing to God's empowerment is to do that. Another thing is if you walk in the Spirit, you will tend to walk in the power of the Spirit. And I don't mean signs and wonders and miracles when I say power of the Spirit. But Galatians talks about this and says, walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. That is, the power here is to walk in holiness and godliness and righteousness. And so you depend on the Spirit by simply taking the actions and steps that are inspired by the Holy Spirit. What do you mean, Mike? It's so esoteric. I get that, but it's actually not. Somebody cuts you off and you think, I'm going to go on a cussing tirade in my car and you think, that is not me being controlled by the Spirit. I want to walk in the strength of the Holy Spirit. So how about I don't feed my flesh so that the Spirit can have the steering wheel in all these things? And so you go, I'm not going to say that. I was going to say a thing. I'm not going to say it now. And you do that because you're walking in the Spirit. You then don't fulfill the lust of the flesh. Primarily, walking in the Spirit is about character and godliness. That's the primary thing. And down the road, there's things where it's like maybe signs or gifts or those types of things. But number one, read Galatians, the fruit of the Spirit and the works of the flesh. Read through that and consider those things. I know that may seem as though I've made it less mystical to you, but I think that's a healthy thing. I think that's a good thing. Number 15, Minel Solson. Sorry, I can't pronounce that. Hi, Pastor Mike. I feel spiritually empty. Despite recent financial blessings, I'm not lacking yet. Discontent. What gives life meaning? And would serve or evangelizing? Would serving or evangelizing help fulfill me? This is probably a deeper question that I think you should maybe take to local Christians. And when I say that, I want to be clear. I'm not saying local pastors. You can Talk to a local pastor. But there's many gifted people in a local fellowship. And you might just look at somebody and go, look, that guy seems like he's got his life together in the sense of meaning. Maybe I'll ask him, hey, I'm struggling in this area. What advice do you have for me? What gives life meaning? Well, Jesus says one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses. So financial blessings, of course, they leave you discontent. And if your heart was starting to think the financial blessing was going to bring you happiness, it will actually backfire because not only did it not bring you happiness, but now you actually are actively disappointed because you got the thing and it didn't do the thing you thought it would do. So I know financial blessings provide opportunities. They are blessings, appreciate finances, but they will not fulfill me. It will not fulfill me because it's just money. It's just not going to do the job. And I think that you knowing that is good too. So what will fulfill me? Well, what is the actual meaning of my life? What's going to give my life meaning would have to be something connected to the actual meaning of my life and the purpose of my life. I was made in God's image that I might have relationship with him, that I might know him and that I might glorify Him. He also made me in a community of human beings who he wants to unite me to ultimately in the Bride of Christ. But the idea is relationship is a very important key to life. And one of the worst things you can do is just be utterly alone. Utterly alone. You could be in. There's a great analogy for this. You could be in a prison, in a prison full of other prisoners, guys that you don't necessarily like, that you don't necessarily want to be around. And they throw you in the hole for a couple days, and you're thinking, please let me just get out of this place and talk to somebody. And you're so hungry for human connection that even if the options of who you talk to aren't very good, it's still better than this. So what I'm saying is that humans from the garden on were made for relationship. And you will find meaning in the context of relationship. Not just great deeds, but great relationships and great relationships is what Christianity ultimately means in a lot of ways, is about my relationship with God. He dwells in me. He makes his home in me. I have the Lord with me at all times. I have this intercessor, Jesus. I have this indwelling of The Holy Spirit. I have this prayer life, and I speak to God the Father. Not that you can only pray to the Father, but what I'm saying here is that there's this incredible relationship I have with God that gives meaning to your life. We have to find that relationship valuable in and of itself. The relationship you have with other people, also extremely valuable. Even non believers, okay? Those relationships matter. Feed into those relationships and walk in godliness and health. In that you're considering others more than yourself, you're esteeming others higher than yourself, you're blessing others and you're pouring out. One of the advices that people give is when your life's really bad, go find someone who's worse off and help them. And they give this not as like, that would be good for the world advice. They give this as, like, mental health advice. Because there's something inherently meaningful and valuable about blessing and helping others. I think as Christians, I want to be plugged into a local fellowship in a healthy and real way. Because it has to be a real relationship. Not just I show up and leave. I want to be serving the Lord and I'll be serving my family and blessing others. And let your life find meaning in those things, because that's an emulation of Jesus. Jesus lived the meaningful life. I hope some of those thoughts help you out. I really do. Number 16. Close. Summerfield something. Oh, Chloe is what it is. It's Chloe. My question is, if Jesus was always God's plan A, why did he wait? Why not reveal Jesus sooner? As a charismatic, your ministry has helped strengthen me in the Word. Keep going. Thank you. Very happy to hear that, Chloe. And I got, I think, a good answer for you on this. Consider the following. Okay, if Jesus had come sooner, we would have a different situation in history right now. So the actual population of humans has dramatically increased. The actual number of people alive when Jesus came was relatively small compared to now. The number of people that have lived since then, not as many as you might think, because there's so many people on earth right now. But also, he came at this incredible opportune time. He came after Alexander the Great had come through and helped popularize Koine Greek, a very useful language for the New Testament. After the Roman roads had all been constructed and were continuing to be built so that he came at an opportune time where shortly after the death of Christ and his resurrection, they were able to get the gospel out to massive swathes of people in a very short period of time in languages that they shared. Interesting. That was a Very useful thing for getting the Gospel out very early on. It was also just pivotal in a number of other ways. So that if the Gospel had come out, for instance, say a thousand years prior, we would have almost no real evidence of Jesus. We might still have the New Testament. Now. You could say, well, God can miraculously keep it. Well, he could. He could miraculously just like have everybody born with the knowledge of Jesus. We could live in the fantasy land of couldn't God just do this and then second guess the Creator on how he does things? But I want to appreciate in the way that he does do things, he lets the natural world play out most of the time. If Jesus had come back a thousand years before, we would have almost zero evidence for his existence, right, his existence, let alone his death and resurrection. But because it happened when it did, we have amazing evidence for not only the existence of Jesus, but his death under Pontius Pilate and his resurrection. Here's a cool little example. The graves inside of Jerusalem at the time, at Jerusalem, there is a particular style of grave they have there that they don't have in other locations. And so the description of the grave is there that we have. And historical evidence suggests that we can actually affirm, hey, that's a realistic grave. That's a little checkbox in the historical, you know, accuracy mark. Or that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, members of the Sanhedrin, these guys come to pick up Jesus body. And we have historical records that show that, guess whose job it was to clean up the body if there was a crucifixion in Israel at the time. Well, it wasn't the Romans, it was the Sanhedrin Jewish body. You guys clean it up, you deal with it. So the Sanhedrin picks up Jesus's body. We wouldn't have these historical confirmations if it wasn't for the timing of Jesus. Or Luke when he talks about the governors and the different roles and positions in the Book of Acts. There's all this evidential stuff in Acts showing that Luke was a really good historian. He's a very accurate history recorder, you might call him. And we wouldn't have that evidence if it was a thousand years prior. We would just be looking at Luke going, ah, maybe this stuff happened, maybe it didn't. So there's a ton of evidential confirmation to the New Testament that only exists because Jesus came when he did and not earlier. We also have prophecy. So what we do have from before the time of Christ is these other books of the Old Testament. And then we have this long period of years before Jesus shows up. Those old books have prophecy about Jesus. This blows my mind all the time. Psalm 22 sat there for like around a thousand years before Jesus shows up and fulfills it in great detail. That is incredible evidence for the divine inspiration of Scripture and the divine validation of Jesus identity. He really is God with us because of prophecy being fulfilled by Christ. So if Jesus goes back really far, what you have is you have either the books are just lost because they're so, so far back, we don't have anything, or you have prophecies that happen right before the fulfillment and generations later we look back and we go, I see there's, you know, from our perspective, there's no gap. How do I know this prophecy wasn't written after the fact? So just some of the things that have, that have worked out by the genius of God, of having Jesus come just when he did. Really, really good stuff. All right, question number 17. I'm gonna do 20 today. This one comes in from Ioinduyu. Sorry, bro, I cannot. Can you explain the latter rain in Joel 2, 23, 29 from a biblical perspective? Because this seems to be root of a lot of this cover up culture. Yeah. Okay, let's look at Joel too. I hope I can do a good job at this. If not, I'll make a separate video on it. Because it's been a long time since I've looked at the passage with the latter rain stuff. It's been years since I've looked at it specifically thinking about latter rain. So I may not remember enough about the different teachings. But I will say this, you guys, latter rain theology is what Bethel and the current sort of big dogs in the charismatic movement, a lot of them, not all of them, a lot of them are part of. And this latter rain theology has to do with the idea that before the second coming of Jesus, there will be an incredible outpouring and it will be like there's early rains and later rains, or latter rains. Let me explain this. As I understand it, early rain is like Pentecost, okay? Pentecost. We had like this flood of the work of the Holy Spirit, people speaking in tongues all over the place, miracles happening, this great active work. And then the latter rain theology is that there's also a second reign that comes just before the return of Christ. And that reign started not long ago with the revival of apostles and prophets. This is the narc Peter Wagner, but it's bigger than those who call themselves nar. And this revival of apostles and Prophets is a revival moving to the latter rain, which they think will be like a Pentecost 2.0. It'll be like Pentecost, but on a much larger scale. The latter rain is going to be massive outpouring of miracles, massive outpouring of visions. Brian Simmons believes this latter rain stuff. He doesn't. They don't. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they all use the terminology latter rain. And if they come back. I never said latter rain. They're playing games with you. What they believe is the substance, whether or not they use the terminology. So Brian Simmons believes this. He thinks Pentecost 2.0 is coming. That's his phrase he likes to use. And that Christians will soon. This was years ago, he said this Christians will soon. The author of the Passion translation, by the way, that's Brian Simmons, the guy that wrote the Passion translation, this bad translation that Bill Johnson endorsed and still sells. And Brian Simmons is not a qualified translator and he deceived people about so many things along the way. So he thinks that Pentecost 2.0 is coming and people will be able to teleport around. That'll be something that's happening near you. People will be levitating off the ground. This will be a regular practice. It's coming. He thinks that people will have. There'll be hubs where God's glory is so present that for like 25, 50 miles around there will be this, like this overwhelming weight of glory where people will just be walking down the street and they'll fall down and get saved. Those all sound nice and cool, but that's not biblical. That's latter rain teaching. And this is why Bethel is always talking about how they're going to march toward more miracles and soon enough nobody will be dying there and it will be a death free zone and a sickness free zone and stuff, because they think this is coming. So what's the biblical basis for it? Joel 2, 23. Now, Peter quotes Joel in the book of Acts, and here it says, be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given from the early rain. He has given the early rain for your vindication. He has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the latter rain as before. What is early and latter rain? These are farming terms. You need rain at two different points during the crop cycle and God is giving you rain, but both of the rains. Now farmers understand what it's like to get the first rain and not the second one or the second one and not the first one, because your crops die and you lose a lot of your crop. So God's like, I'm going to give you both. But let's read on. You said through verse 29, the threshing floors shall be full of grain. The vats shall overflow with wine and oil. I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army which I sent among you. He's talking about locusts. As an army, you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be to be put to shame. You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and I am the Lord your God, and there is none else. And my people shall never again be put to shame. And it shall come to pass. Now, this is where we have Peter quoting Joel. He quotes this passage in. In the book of Acts, and it's during, like Acts 2, when they speak in tongues and all that. And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions, even on the male and female servants. In those days I will pour out my spirit and I will show. I'm going to read a little bit more. Wonders in the earth and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes, and it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And it goes on. So this latter rain teaching, this idea of, yeah, the first rain was Pentecost, and the second one is before the Second Coming. This great outpouring. You're reading a lot into the text, and this is the key. A lot of the apostolic teaching is grabbing a phrase from the text, adding a whole understanding to it with a bunch of detail that is not established in the passage. Where in the passage is it established? It's not. Let's look at it again. I'm going to back up actually a bit more too. Maybe a lot more. Let's look at this. I'll do verse 18. Then the Lord became jealous for his land and had pity on his people. And the Lord answered, said to his people, behold, I'm sending to you grain, wine and oil, and you will be satisfied, and I will no more make you A reproach among the nations. I will remove the northerner far from you and drive him into a parched and desolate land, his vanguard into the eastern sea and his rear guard into the western sea. The stench and foul smell of him will rise, for he has done great things. The foreigner among them, right. They get invaded by foreign armies. God's going to drive them out. He's going to bring them wine and oil, crops and well being. And he says, fear not, O land, be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things. Fear not, you beasts of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green. In other words, they'll be grazing, they'll be able to graze, the beasts of the field. The tree bears its fruit, the fig and vine give their full yield. Be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given the early rain for your vindication. He has poured down for you abundant rain. The early and the latter rain, as before, it is reading so much into the passage. So the early rain is taken as a metaphor for the Pentecost miracles, and the latter rain is taken as a metaphor for the recent reawakening of apostles and prophets, which I don't think is biblical, and the movement towards another incredible Pentecost 2.0 experience. And it's taken that way why? Because they say so. Do they grab, for instance, the beasts of the field and the pastures are green? Do they grab that and metaphorize that? What about the tree bears its fruit and the fig and vine give their full yield? Well, I mean, if you do grab that, you probably have to grab that as being about Israel. In fact, can I point out, the whole thing seems to be about Israel, not about American churches. This seems to be about Israel. So if you did take it and turn it into a first coming, second coming analogy, which the closest justification you have for that is later on in the passage, you have things that may be future still, which is why I read those extra verses, this seems like it may still be future, maybe talking about the second coming. But if that's the case, then the latter rain that you have in this passage, it's just a general statement about the crops will be successful. Like you have two rains for one round of crops. The analogy that they're doing is you have one rain for one round of crops, then you have a latter rain for a second round of crops. That is not the analogy in Joel. That is a latter rain analogy. They're breaking the farming analogy. So there's Hints that their view is, in a word, fabricated. You've got the grabbing of the concept of early latter rain, and they take it out of the farming culture. They don't understand there's about one harvest, not two. They take a passage that seems like it's primarily about Israel and they make it primarily about Gentiles then. But. But, I mean, Mike Bickle tried to rescue this by making it somehow about Israel too, but he's just making stuff up. Sorry. There's a whole other laundry list of things that Mike Bickle did on his eschatology that wasn't necessarily shared by others. But I won't get into it. But what you have is a vague, maybe difficult to decipher phrase in the Old Testament that is given highly detailed, very intense, specific application that ties into the prophetic stuff that they're doing at the current time. Promising. But to make you feel a little better about this, they've been promising this latter rain for generations. Remember Bob Jones? He prophesied that a billion soul harvest would come. Dude, that time came and passed. Did you guys know Bob? Still celebrated as a prophet inside of the charismatic church, Bob Jones prophesied that he would live to see the billion soul harvest come in. He died. After he died, charismatic leaders are still getting up talking about his billion soul harvest. That's unbiblical to do that. The man was wrong. And that should be known because we're supposed to test all things. Number 18. All right, Courtney Johnson says, how should injustice, unethical actions in the workplace be handled in comparison to how we handle sin in the church? Thank you. In my view, they're handled relatively the same, with one significant difference. In the church, there's a relational disconnect that can happen because of sin that should take place. You fire someone from a workplace, you excommunicate someone from a church. Which means. I don't mean the Catholic version. You take them out of communication, out of relationship. That's what you do with someone in the church when there is this ongoing, unrepentant, serious sin and you try to get them to repent and you go to them, even multiple times if possible. But that's like a deep relational thing. And the other difference is that the church is expected to have stricter standards than what you would normally see in the world. A guy may be a bad father who mooches off people and doesn't pay back his debts, and he may not lose his job for that, but church discipline should take place if he's doing those things. So There's a couple differences that are there. All right, number 19. Was the fig tree cursed? Because it was fig leaves that Adam and Eve covered themselves with. Okay, so Jesus cursed a fig tree in the New Testament, and he says, you'll never have fruit again. And the next day they come back and it's like, withered and dead. So he actually cursed it. Right. Is it because of the they used fig leaves in the Old Testament? I don't personally lean on that. And the reason is because I think there's a more close parallel. So that could be true, but there's a more close parallel, which is the fig tree representing Israel. God does use fig, the fig tree, or the vine to represent Israel multiple times in Scripture. And so Jesus here is judging Jerusalem, and just like he overthrow the money changers temples, and he's showing judgment upon Jerusalem in doing that. Now, after this, scripture still prophesies a revival happening in Israel's future. Romans, chapter 14. Excuse me, chapter 11 in Romans. So that's significant to know that this, like, you will never bear fruit again. Yeah, the tree never bore fruit again. But I'm not saying there's a direct parallel. No Jew will ever get saved again or something like that, because many did get saved. Even after this, plenty of them did. So let's not be weird about that. All right, last question. The bearded doctor says many preachers use Romans 13 to promote supporting our current government leadership, yet those same preachers were anti Biden or anti Democrat when he was in office. How do we walk that out rightly? I think you're right. I think that what we need is a better theology of what it means to interact with government as Christians. And I'm hoping to do a series as I talk more about this. But what I've seen is there's a kind of, like, awareness that if I criticize my own side or the side that most closely aligns with me, that I'm making things easier for the even worse people to take control. And so then they don't want to criticize or be cynical about it. Don't want to speak negatively about Trump or about something like that, even though there's times where you should. You should acknowledge like, that was wrong. And as Christians, I think that what we. How we walk this out rightly is that we hold standards that are so consistent that we can call out our friends as well as those we normally disagree with. We can call out the people who we want to vote alongside and vote with. Because I'm. I think Christians have to vote conservative in a lot of ways, if we're going to be consistent with our biblical worldview. But I cannot just agree with conservatives all the time, because I have an actual. See, I have a worldview. I don't just have a political party now. It affects. It enters into the political realm with pushing me against things like abortion and trans stuff and against gay marriage as a thing, as a category. Gay marriage should be rejected categorically. That's not a marriage. I have to say this, no matter how unpopular it is. And when you see, let's say, for instance, one of the complaints I would have about Donald Trump would be, oh, they're compromising. And he has on abortion and on homosexuality and on the trans issues, he's compromising those issues for sure. And then we watch as the Republican Party shifts towards him, because that's the way the tide's going, basically. And I say, okay, well, I'm going to plant my feet here. And I'm not okay with that now. I mean, that's not the answer that I think a lot of people want to hear, because the answer, maybe that they want to hear is more criticisms of Trump's, maybe his character. And some of those criticisms I've labeled before, and I would agree with them. I guess the realization for me has always been, or has been the past few years. I just don't think that the character of the other people is any better. So we're going to choose the lesser of two weevils, you know what I mean? Or the greater good, I like to call it. But, yeah. So there's a thought. How do we rightly walk that out? I don't have all the answers. My thought is the thing that shocked me the most, just as a human being, as a Christian, is seeing when Christian leaders were confronted by actual wrongness. Everyone's always saying everybody's wrong. But actual moral wrongness, wrongness, that came against our Christian worldview. And they had different standards when applying that to Democrats than Republicans. And I saw this with Trump. I remember specifically there's a pastor who I looked up to and respected. And when Clinton was in office and it was found out, Monica Lewinsky stuff was found out. You guys remember that? Some of you remember that. I'm old enough to remember, even though I was young, I promise I was young. But when Clinton was found out with Monica Lewinsky, I remember hearing this pastor saying, he's disqualified. He should step down. And then he had a good reason for it. And he said, the actions of the president of our country in relation to the sanctity of his marriage matter because it trickles down and affects the country as well. And I thought that makes a lot of sense. I think you're right. And then when Trump ran for office, I asked him, what about his character. Man, the guy fed into not only adulterous stuff, but publicly companies and stuff like money going towards things that are pornographic and stuff like that. And he said to me, I'm not voting for a pastor, I'm voting for a president. And I thought, where did that new rule come from? Because that's not what you thought before. And I realized what happened was Clinton had a different set of rules to be evaluated by because he disagreed with him on political grounds. I disagree with him on a lot of political grounds, too. And then his Christian values suddenly shifted. Shifted when it came to Trump. So, as you guys know, many of you know, I voted for Trump. I encouraged other Christians to vote for Trump. And I did not think he was had great character. I just thought these are the choices available. I think this is the best one. To me, that's a more honest take than saying the character doesn't matter. But I also don't believe that any of the guys I've ever voted for had stellar character. I'm a little bit cynical about this nowadays, I guess. So you vote for the options provided you pick one. It's like if you are starving and you go to a vending machine and you could you pick the best option available. And it may not be the healthiest thing to eat, but that's kind of the political realm. And maybe long term we can see better candidates coming in because Christians vote and get involved and take action instead of just most of us just ignoring everything and not getting involved. That's my personal opinion about it. You cannot. Here's what I understand. You cannot accomplish much in this world in the realm of politics and government, which is important to do if you don't have some measure of compromise. And I don't mean moral compromise, I mean compromising. I want this. I'll take this action and it will involve good, good and bad. And I'm going to take the action because my inaction and me abstaining means that it's only other people that will decide what actions we take instead of Christian voices. And I think that that's harmful. So there's a few thoughts that. Romans 13 does talk about government has an authority and responsibility, but there are times you do rebel against government. We see that in Scripture, and I have a video on that. And I will link it down below. When to rebel against government to answer your question in more detail. Otherwise let's pray. And I appreciate your guys prayers for next steps. Pray for the Charismatic movement, pray for the leaders. And I pray even just one single one of them coming out and being real and saying exactly what they really know about the COVID up that's gone on about the ongoing misuse of scripture, manipulation of people, mishandling of funds, personal enrichment. If they just said what they knew, it would be a lot more than anything I could put in a video. Just even one of them had that kind of courage. It cost him a lot, it cost him everything. But there'd be treasures in heaven for the guy, for the sake of their own people, they need to do it anyway. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the work you're doing right now in the Charismatic world as so many agree that this is. It's not not. It's not just videos and drama, it's people being stirred up within churches, within congregations, within even some leaders being stirred up to say okay, we need to take seriously these problems and address them. We pray for reformation and good things to happen inside the Charismatic church. We pray for awareness, for clarity, for a filtering out of bad teaching and bad theology and for care for those who have to go through that very hard process. Lord, we ask for safety for whistleblowers and safety for people who are standing for them. In Jesus name, Amen. Amen. All right guys, I will see you, probably will not see you next Friday. I have an appointment I have to be at next Friday. I couldn't get it any other time. Just a doctor thing, nothing big but. So I probably can't do next Friday so don't panic or anything if I'm not there so we'll have more stuff coming out. I'm given a little bit more time. I don't know how much more time I can tell you this. Chaeyon has again responded and shared some things that were simply not true. He's a hrock guy, the him guy, the apostle, the nar guy. He again made a video and shared some things that I am convinced are deceptive and untrue and that further makes things look worse. He's doing more cover up is what I would say. And those things I will call out. It's just a matter of time. So please let me be patient with that. Thank you so much. God bless you guys.