Essential Christianity and Ecumenism-- Francis Chan, Hank Hanegraaff & KP Yohannan (Hank Unplugged)

it's not just about their personal relationship with christ okay good you as an individual are saved we're telling them to be saved into this family of god i want to talk about something you you brought up earlier and you say yeah maybe we'll get to that about um but it has to do with this issue of uh the tribes versus the tribalism um okay so lately i've been reading books by eastern orthodox writers and if i'm honest sometimes it feels like a tribalism there of those who are outside of the church um and so for me who i've been outside of the eastern orthodox church it's a bit offensive you know when you read of it i almost understand it like if i understand okay if i lived in the first thousand years i could understand that type of thinking because there was basically one church and everyone outside of that you would quote first john and say well they left us because they're not really of us um but now here we are in you know in the year 2020 and there are as you mentioned tons of tribes and god's people you you even call them god's people are all over the place and yet i read some of this stuff and it feels like no you know the eastern orthodox church almost feels like no those are all outsiders we're the true church and um so even when you mention uh you know here's what the roman catholics did and here's what the protestants did and it feels a little bit um it's going to be offensive even the statements you know making those statements um i'm just trying to figure out what to do with it because like last night we prayed and and i just confessed like okay i i've been so focused on truth truth truth like let's tomorrow get together and figure out you know i got to figure this thing out and then as we were praying together it was awesome just this picture of okay first let's get back to love and god wants his family and i read john 17 i read you know philippians i read romans i i see this i read ephesians and and god just wanting to make us one and yet all these different tribes and and and the attacks on you the attacks on you you know have made me go wait wait no these are brothers of mine don't say that about him don't say that about him don't call him a heretic you know there's this part in me that i believe is a part of the heart of god where i see the spirit of god in your life i see you dedicated to the scriptures dedicated to walking like jesus did same as you seeing christ in you especially now and i go i can't i'm not just gonna ditch them um because i may not agree completely right now with some of the things they believe and and god's heart for that unity in light of some of these differences or being in different places of what we believe about the eucharist and what we believe because i'm even trying to understand you know i look at uh the believer's eastern church and um you know just to backtrack a little bit but even like the way you're dressed right now you know the wooden cross around you you know you grew out all this crazy hair you know and but all of this stuff from my background immediately it's like okay get away you're both of you were making the sign of the cross um all of this in the past for me has been stay away um and and now that i'm investigating more i'm going gosh okay i'm starting to make it's it's it's almost like before when i was a cessationist i would look at anyone that was charismatic and just go idiots idiots you know just how could they be that way but then the more i got to know them and understand their reasoning from scripture i'm going oh you're not as dumb as i thought you were i'm actually very intrigued by this i guess the same is true i used to just look at anyone with with uh icons or whatever and just label them as roman catholics which again now that i'm talking to more roman catholics that seem to really know the lord and love the lord jesus christ i'm going okay maybe they're not as dumb maybe you're not as dumb maybe you know as some of this dialogue i guess i'm just trying to understand when i read the scriptures i see christ just wanting us to be one with him perfectly one with him perfectly one with each other and and i'm just trying i'm hoping that somehow in this conversation we can move towards that uh you know even people with my background that look at that is so strange um i'm starting to go no you are my brothers uh even those orthodox believers that were beheaded people told me oh those weren't really christians and now i'm going oh i i believe they deeply were i think um but i just don't like this you're not a believer you're not a believer stay away from hank stay with kp and now they're doing it to me and this is not oh i need all my friends back it's just it's more this heart of god because francis in the flesh wants to say i got more than enough friends i go ahead hate me do whatever and i can i'm genuinely okay with that uh i'm just looking at scripture and going oh god doesn't want these factions he doesn't want these divisions and i'm trying to understand as i'm trying to understand more of what you believe and you two probably have your differences as well i'm trying to understand how to hold fast the word of god um so i yeah i i think it can boil down to something that i've communicated throughout the duration of my ministry not original to me but it's in essentials unity non-essentials liberty and in all things charity the essentials of the historic christian faith the very things that were hammered out christological trinitarian truths hammered out in the seven ecumenical councils of the church those are non-negotiables if if kp were to say i don't believe that jesus christ is god he would have violated an essential of the historic christian faith and then it becomes mandatory to break fellowship now that doesn't mean i couldn't love kp hang around with k p and and enjoy his his wonderful personality but it means that we are no longer unified in the faith once for all delivered to the saints in terms of orthodoxy being exclusivistic the the orthodox believe that we ought to adhere to what the early church adhered to and there are good reasons for that and and kp so beautifully articulated something that i didn't articulate at the very beginning because i started out with jesus and the apostles but he took it back to the old testament and he's absolutely right in doing that because what uh i have said to you before and and i think we discussed this over dinner last night the church has never the authentic church has never been innovative it's always trying to perpetuate something and that goes back to the old covenant so what happened in the old covenant what did the old covenant priest do and why was this a preston what about the incense and the sounds and all of the things that we can get our five senses around why was that important in the old covenant well the new covenant christians tried to take what they saw in temple worship and now they want to perpetuate that they don't want to innovate they want to perpetuate why because god has given us a template for how to do things and far be it from us on the part of us in the 21st century to say well i got a new way of doing this so we're perpetuating the faith once for all delivered to the saints now in the orthodox church certainly the orthodox belief that what we're doing in terms of the sacrament being the center of the universe within the church that that is right because that is a perpetuation of the temple and the old testament it is a perpetuation of what happened in the early church and carried on to every eucharistic assembly throughout the land until it was changed so as orthodox we say yeah we want to go back and say how did the early church do it that's how we want to do it because again there's a perpetuation from the old covenant to the new covenant to the progression and to the eucharistic assemblies but the orthodox say we can tell you where the church is but we cannot tell you where the church is not so it's not as though uh i who have become orthodox i was chrismated uh on palm sunday april 9 2017 and i was diagnosed with stage four cancer six days later but that was the time that i was was chrisman when i was chris made in the orthodox church i didn't suddenly think that my friend francis chan was no longer a believer my mother and dad had gone home to be with the lord they were deeply in love with one another you have a love affair with your wife and it's obvious as you do with your wife as i do with my wife but the love affair that my mom and dad manifested during their earthly sojourn was unbelievable my dad was a reformed pastor two of my brother-in-laws are reformed pastors their families my parents were such examples to me i don't for a moment doubt that they are in that great cloud of witnesses that paul talks about in hebrews chapter 12. therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses let us throw off everything that hinders in the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out before us looking under jesus christ the author and the perfecter of our faith as i said yesterday when we were praying together with some of your elders and some of the brothers late at night if we look at jesus christ we are going to be humble because we're going to see our lives in light of the crystal christ the paragon of virtue if we turn our back on the lord jesus christ then i'm going to see i'm going to look at francis and say you know francis you're behind me on this path you know i've progressed on this path and i'm going to start judging you and that kind of fracture that kind of fissure is absolutely outside the bounds of what christ calls us to do this is the story you know we're leading up four weeks to the celebration of posca you know and and and and and this is the great celebration because it envelops the resurrection of jesus christ which is the capstone the arch of christianity well what is the first week that prepares us for that well it is the publican and the pharisee the pharisee if he's facing jesus christ sees his own inadequacies the moment he turns around he starts looking at the publican then he says he's got his back now towards jesus by the way and now he's facing the publican and he says boy what a wretch that publican is he's starting to judge the other person so i think in humility we have to continue facing the lord jesus christ and then through these kinds of discussions and i i appreciate that so much about you francis you're willing to discuss you are you're not pompous or prideful um i've never seen you in in that light at all i've seen you as a humble christian that wants to learn i hope that i can exemplify those traits as well i'm often labeled as the bible answer man truthfully i took over a a ministry and a program uh that had a bible answer man broadcast and i then became the host of the bible answer man problem but people see me sort of as the authority but i'm not the authority there's so many things that i go back now and look at and say i wish i would have answered that question in light of how the fathers answered that question you know 15 years ago when i when i was in crisis of the dark night of my soul when uh you know somebody not from the united states from my own you know community said well we advise you to read the life of sadhus nursing was one of the greatest saints that you know lived in india indian um sikh you know with the turban people who had a vision of christ just half hour before he would put his head on the running train and because he was crying out as a young man saying god if you are real please real yourself to me i'm desperate i don't have any peace to live and jesus appeared to him in his room and i was in that village in the very house that he saw christ and jesus spoke and said i am the way the truth and the life and and this young non-christian young man turned his life to christ and made a wow that the rest of his life he'll live alone without getting married and follow christ and he sometimes spent three four years alone in a cave um in the forest and all that and it's amazing the more i began to read this thing remember i had six years of theological seminary in the united states and had my degrees and i said this is demon possession this guy is completely off the wall but that's when i began to read the ancient fathers the desert fathers the said mothers and the fathers of the faith and and i was totally shaken by the fact that god was not an imagination but he was real and and this is where the hunger started but then i began to read many of these orthodox writers i said this is crazy they think i'm going to hell and i went through the same experience in some ways when i read some of these books and said this is weird because i just couldn't relate to this thing and now i realize what happened when i wrote my first book in in the united states in a revolutionary world missions i had tons of people attacked me and when i was even somebody said you couldn't get murdered for this thing because i was calling for a change in war missions and it was george warwick that you know i dedicated my book to he said kp you you created my life so difficult i said why did i do yours he said you dedicated this book to me i don't believe in this thing he said kp here's a problem your book is perfect but you left out what you should have said about the americans the canadians the europeans the william carries and the jesuits and the western missionaries who went by thousands and tens of thousands and died on the mission field and gave their life and your book make it so that only nationals are the real missionaries your book looked like your war is an outcast you know i just cried and cried i said george you are the one who spoke that night in bangalore when i was 17 i gave my life to the lord my mentors were all americans and europeans eight years of my life and i didn't mean that he said go back and edit that book and put stuff in it it's not that kp you should change what you said it is what you are not saying i think hank heineger so beautifully said it it's it's it's again a mystery in mystery that somebody can be not even in a christian family or belong to a certain denomination yet have this incredible revelation of god like sadhus nursing and god responds to them so my place in life as hank said is no more even think judgmental toward other people and i think the christianity that hate other christians or anyone for a matter of fact and judge and use biblical doctrines to to to you know i mean how much writings against me was done because they found out you know i embrace the the ancient church uh faith and practices while i never said unless you believe the way i believe you are no good anything like that but the the fundamental problem is many others orthodox writers maybe some of them they don't say like hank hanograph the other side of the story and so we feel like unless i'm you're part of me you are no you don't know god and so i think that's the reason i said love is the greatest of all doctrine once that is violated we become pharisees and while you know um you know knowing god is like climbing a mountain you know you you climb thousand feet and then you look down and see a whole bunch of people crawling down this water stupid people don't they understand then i look up and see i got a million miles to go and i i realize i'm in desperate need for god's mercy and i think that you know um that is that is the most important thing i think christian today especially when you're 58 000 denominations all fighting each other and and when will it end and that's the reason why i think you know if i didn't have to argue about how to interpret these bible verses well the seven councils of the church the fathers of faith you know explained it and i don't have to worry about it and and and follow the church and that's all my problem at least but i'm going to tell you you're sorry i got to tell you your your emphasis i don't want to short circuit what you just said but your emphasis on bringing the body back together is an emphasis that cannot be minimized the reason is is this is directly in concert with the high priestly prayer of our lord and savior jesus christ that we all may be as one so jesus is praying for the twelfth and for all who will believe because of their word and he's praying that they may be in one accord just as i father am in you and you are in me and then jesus says so that the world might believe that you sent me so your emphasis francis and i've seen this as being a big part of your heart is to bring unity within the body of christ now that doesn't mean uniformity meaning that you know it may be that you become orthodox it may not be that you become orthodox i don't know that's god's that's god's providence but my my responsibility and my great pleasure is to love you and i find that in loving you i can learn a lot from you last night when you spoke for the prayer gathering at saint peter's um you you may have been speaking to other people you spoke to me um what you are now doing uh with your life going to hong kong and then going to places like myanmar which i spent some time in myself and you've got a great work there um what your passion for reaching people that have never heard before the gospel of jesus christ and you're willingness to spend out to cash out your life for that uh yesterday uh for everybody kind of listening in uh francis focused in on those words of the apostle paul his farewell address the ephesian elders and now compelled by the spirit i'm going to jerusalem not knowing what will happen to me there i only know that in every city the holy spirit warns me that prison and hardship are facing me however and this is where you focused however i consider my life worth nothing to me if only i may finish the race and complete the task the lord jesus christ has given me the task of testifying to the gospel of god's grace paul knew that he was headed for trouble he knew that he was going to die in jerusalem the holy spirit had warned him about that and yet he wanted to continue on and the ephesian elders with tears were trying to stop him from continuing on but he wanted to leave it all on the field as they say in football vernacular he wanted to leave it all on the field and that's precisely what you're talking about and i think about my own life and you have so many oh i've got so many kids i've got so many grandkids i've got to make sure that they're taking and so often as we get older we don't cling less to those earthly things which should grow strangely again but more and you were speaking about that i thought oh boy i'm so glad that i'm here i'm glad i came i wanted to see kp and i want to spend time with you but boy one needed to hear this message again you know i i never really made any comments about my brother francis chan going to hong kong i i think i share these feelings of millions of people that is wherever you are you you are not going to america or england or germany or hong kong you you are here on earth for a long time to speak on his behalf so your obedience to the lord is amazing that you are willing to go to hong kong which i kind of want to think a few months or something like that because now i mean do you believe i tell you some of your messages without you knowing are translated into several languages and it is on television and all kind of places in so many countries that we serve in and so you know you're going to hong kong is in this journey i don't even think about it going there i think you are here there everywhere and um um i i knew this from the day i met you as a matter of fact you know deep down my heart and i think um you know this this your obedience to the lord even to do something he said you know like i'm sure when lazarus was sick when martha and mary sent the word they didn't say oh jesus please come and heal my our brother or speak a word they only said the one you love is sick that means they knew jesus would immediately respond by healing him but remaining a man not borrowing from the eternal powers the almighty god he was he said father what should i do father said no you don't go and i want to imagine as a man and i would say father that's not reasonable this one family that loves me i son don't go father you will be done and the disciples are confused they say he's not going he said no my time has not had come but then after he's dead and buried and starts stinking then the father says son go and jesus says so that the name of the father be glorified and you're hearing god telling you to go to hong kong knowing the the church the mission worldwide the way i know it humanly speaking i didn't want to go to hong kong i want i want you to stay in a world where you speak for 10 minutes it is heard all over the world instantaneously i want i want to hold you back but this again is an amazing mystery about it said you hear the lord and even if it's for two days or one week or one month you're willing to do it that your obedience is a shockwave i must tell you that you don't know this this is they're saying he's called crazy or mid-life crisis or whatever you're going through yeah no no thank you i it's it's the interesting thing to me though is here i am just loving being with unreached people and telling them about jesus for the first time hearing that name it's just it's blowing my mind and i just love it and yet there's this other part of me that's that's going oh but there's this other work of unity um that god's placed on my heart through reading the scriptures going gosh he wants his family to gather as a father if my kids were divided that would drive me crazy and and yet i want to be with the unreached people and yet i still care about these incredible factions in in the church in america that it's like gosh we're just picking little things and anyone says any mistake he makes and and we're just putting one guy against another and i'm going this isn't good that we can't do this and and it's it's it's like when a person gets saved so i want to go out and share the gospel but when they're getting saved it's not just about their personal relationship with christ okay good you as an individual are saved we're telling them to be saved into this family of god but it be like me and my wife and my seven children all at war with each other and then going to a foster home and saying i want you to join our family while we're all screaming at each other and they're going i think we're okay in this group home right now you know what i mean so it's it's more than just the singular message that high priestly prayer has to do with they're going to believe it when they see this perfect oneness in the church and so i'm kind of going nuts here going lord i i feel this pull towards going to these people who've never heard of you and yet i also don't want to neglect the fact that it looks like this family is in shambles and who would want to join this if you go on the internet and just look at the christian church and these christian leaders just screaming at each of us and each other and there's like who wha what does anyone believe why would i want to join that i don't think anyone's not many people are thinking about that even when i read about you know even the the coptic or oriental orthodox church and and when it kind of there was like this this breaking when i read about the the great schism i'm like where the voices are going no no don't do this what god wants is he's always wanted us to be one we can't okay let's figure this out but dad wants his family together like where are those voices and yet i've seen in in church splits all over our country it's it's like no we're right no they're right well where's that voice going no no no let's let's figure this out i haven't been that voice but i'm reading the scriptures and and wanting that and how that happens i i don't know i don't think any of us has that answer i guess my heart is just i just want people to think about that to think about the heart of god to think about that high priestly prayer and going this is what christ prayed before he went to the cross it was real he wanted it and it's it's for another time and another discussion but i think maybe we end right now with that just agreeing like that's a lot of our heart right now is many many lovers of christ that are a part of his true church are misunderstood we're always going to misunderstand each other and all of us know in part and see in a mirror dimly and so now it's not talk like oh you see in a mirror dimly but i see face to face in full you know just the attitude you said of that you know just the pharisee versus the public and going okay i'm so grateful i'm not like you francis with your little you know md i have a phd and i'm glad that you know you're stuck in church history now finally i've known him forever you know or or now this this this it's just can we all come humbly and go god i know there's holes in my theology i want to know you i want to know you i don't want to believe anything that's not true i want to be one with you i want to love my brothers and pursue this love and truth at the same time so i want to understand help me understand why do you make the sign of the cross why do you where you know maybe we don't end up in the same place but how do we become perfectly one amidst some of these differences like you said that are not the essentials and how can we have unity and charity and forget the other words you used but you know how do we get there and um and just join in this desire for a fusion there's there's church splits every day there's new blogs every day of the one guy that's figured out everyone else who's wrong how do we start bringing it back so you you bring up this and i know this is probably a good time to wrap but you bring up the cross and i do think it should be mentioned um uh metropolitan johannan is wearing a cross i'm wearing a cross this cross is not just jewelry it's very special to me and there are reasons for that but it's not just making the sign of the cross but it's you know in in in our tradition we make the sign of the cross like this francis so god always uses physical objects to point to spiritual realities so when i make the cross like this this represents the triune god the trinity the triadic one these two fingers have to do and are a reminder perpetually to me that christ descended in incarnation and he's one person with two natures so these are physical ways of remembering spiritual realities wearing the cross says as brother johannan is wearing the cross is an indication that he believes very strongly and this is just a part of what this would mean to brother johanna but he feels very very strongly that he's in the midst of a spiritual battle their foot therefore put on the full armor of god because our battle is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers of darkness so he has a weapon and that weapon is the cross the cross is also an indication to everyone that sees us that we are servants of our lord and savior jesus christ that the cross is the way forward the cross is the way forward and that in baptism we as paul says in romans chapter 6 we're buried to our old life we're raised to newness of life through his resurrection power and then we take up our cross we daily follow him humbly within the fellowship of the saints and i think the answer to the lord's high priestly prayer starts with humility it starts with not wanting to win battles protecting our own turf it starts with humbly coming to one another with prayer and thanksgiving listening to the other person learning from the other person i have learned so much from you again on this the time that we're together and from you brother i've learned so much from you as well so by being together by communicating rather than taking shots over our rather substantial platforms at one another learning from one another is a far better way to go [Music] amen [Music] you

Channel: Bible Answer Man

Views: 32,339

Keywords: Apologetics, Bible Answer Man, Bible, Christian Research Institute, CRI, Hank Hanegraaff, Christian, Christianity, God, Jesus, Francis Chan, Metropolitan Yohan, KP Yohannan, Eastern Orthodoxy, Unity, The Lord's High Priestly Prayer

Id: 8Au66qVArRE

Length: 37min 19sec (2239 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020