Heretics! What Divides Christians? With Francis Chan, Hank Hanegraaff & Metropolitan Yohan

in the u.s right now everyone creates their own parameters what would your answer have been of here are the essentials well here's a problem only five percent of the world population live in america yeah and we think we are the church and we had to sit on the top of the mountain and lead the whole world it's a dumb mistake to make okay we've been talking about unity because of some of this criticism lately it which which blows my mind it breaks my heart because the eucharist was the thing that was supposed to bring the body together and yet it's been the most divisive uh which you can just see that's exactly what satan wants um and you have people everywhere going you know i have this opinion this opinion this opinion this opinion is like how do we come together and yet at the same time we're not saying hey let's just everyone get along and we're all one there are things that should separate us from one another but what are those things what would you say like this is what we must agree on you know as it pertains to the eucharist maybe um i mean what are those essentials because i don't want to be a guy that just you know oh everyone is right in the sight of god that's not what i see in the scripture there ought to be divisions but nowadays we have people that are creating their own divisions and saying no everyone is wretched except for people with my theology on this issue of this issue you know what what are those things that you would say are essential well let me give them to you in uh in a memorable fashion let's use the word doctrine um so maybe in a listicle sense give you uh eight uh essentials of the historic christian faith with the umbrella statement that virtually every single theological heresy begins with a misconception of the nature of god and that's why if you look at the seven ecumenical councils of the church particularly the first four what was hammered out was christological and trinitarian truth and there's a reason for that for example if you do not believe that jesus christ is god then you yourself cannot be deified you cannot as peter put it become a partaker of the divine nature but having said that we start then with the essential of the deity of jesus christ that is an essential of the historic christian faith that jesus christ partakes of the very essence of god and of course in the incarnation takes on an additional nature so he's one person with two natures eternally distinct the second thing i would say uh would be the fact that all of us are born with a broken gene a propensity towards sin now there's differences within the christian faith as to where not we inherit the sin of of adam uh the orthodox would say no uh there are consequences to adam's sin we're all born with a broken gene but we're all culpable for our own sins very much like ezekiel chapter 16 puts it the third thing i would say is the doctrine of the church that the church is the ground and the pillar of truth uh and and so there's no such thing in christianity as lone ranger christians we're never saved in isolation we're always saved within a community of faith which is to say when we're baptized we're buried to our old life raised to newness of life through his resurrection power we become part of the body of christ we take up the cross of christ within the community of christ so we are as romans chapter 12 foot puts it just as each of us has one body with many members and these members do not all have the same function so in christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others i could explicate that further but i don't think the idea right now is to give more information but to give the distilled essence so so far i talked about three the deity of jesus christ the doctrine of original sin the doctrine of the church then i would say after those three the trinity and this is not necessarily an order of priority uh it's a way of remembering it the doctor of the trinity that god is one in essence three in person so there are three planks the trinitarian platform as it were there is only one god the hebrew shema only one god before we there was no god after me there is no god formed there's only one god yet throughout the scriptures we see that the father's god the son is god the holy spirit is god and that father son and holy spirit are eternally distinct that in essence is what we believe as as trinitarian believers and i will take one short diversion here because this is so important if you believe in a unitarian god you believe in a god that is morally defective so the god of islam is a morally defective god why because absent the universe a unitarian god would have no one to love a trinitarian god however has always lived within love relationships the father loving the son the son loving the spirit the son and the spirit loving the father so a god who is trinitarian is a god of love a god who's unitarian is not a god of love that could be cashed out but let's leave that at that the next essential is the resurrection of jesus christ that is the capstone in the arch of christianity if christ died but was not resurrected our hope is in vain we are among all men most miserable but christ is risen he has risen indeed and he is the first fruit of our own resurrection so christ rose we too will rise in immortal glorified and perish from bodies and that isn't essential the christian faith the incarnation that jesus christ came in flesh and again that's important because as christ came in flesh christ is allowing us to ascend to the very nature of god his kenosis becomes our theosis so we say god became man so that man might become god or as luther put it word became flesh so that flesh might become god again now distinctions have to be made between the essence of god and the energies of god we can never attain uh to the essence of god but we can experience the s the energies of god and those energies will empower us to not only live not by might nor by power but empower us to turn the world upside down the n in doctrine i think we're at the seventh of this listicle uh of uh of essentials of the historic christian faith reminds me of new creation if we are in christ paul says we are new creations the old is gone the new has come so we're new creations in christ the oldest god we have now embraced something altogether new and that newness is that christ lives within me the hope of glory that i had been chrismated i had been anointed by the holy spirit the holy spirit is dwelling within me and because the holy spirit has empowered me for service i have the ability by god's grace to be a transformational agent in the world and the last is eschatology and this is very interesting because eschatology is essential and it is non-essential we can debate many many aspects of of eschatology we don't have to make those secondary matters an acid test for orthodoxy but that jesus will return again is an essential of the historic christian faith when he does he will put all things to right in the meantime we're co-consummators of the kingdom that he initiated so those eight things the deity of jesus christ the doctrine of sin the doctrine of the church the trinity the resurrection the incarnation new creations in christ in eschatology which is the thread that weaves the whole of scripture into a harmonious tapestry okay when i hear that though i go okay who are you to say these are the eight like where do you get that from i like that it spells out doctrine it's easy to remember but you know anyone listening to this is going okay that's your view here's my view and then everyone and their mother has their view of here's what's essential sure but you're right to ask that question because it's not my prerogative to determine what is essential and what is not and that's why i prefaced my remarks by saying it was the early church that hammered out christological and trinitarian truth and so rather than me in the 21st century saying let me come up with a list for you i go back to what did the early church consider essential so where would someone find that list well it the list is given in christian theology going back to tomes that have been written but those lists vary i mean sometimes uh some of the issues that i'm talking about are collapsed into the two are collapsed into one okay they're both discussed but they're they're collapsed into one so i'm giving a list that's memorable because i think it's helpful in an age of in information overload so often you have to be able to put your finger on things to be able to remember those things so you can discuss those things so you can internalize the things so that those things can become transformative not only for you but for those to whom you're communicating so that's the only reason i break them up that way but yeah this is what the church has taught throughout its history but these are the main and plain things that are taught in scripture yeah there there there are uh there are other things that are taught the scripture is given to us by the church and the church fathers also give us a right interpretation of scripture okay i want to stop you on that because okay for all my christian life i don't know that i've believed that sea and doctrine of the church i was saved in i believe i was saved you know in the united states america you know where it's about an independent your personal relationship with jesus and so i had no thought of being saved into the church or the church saving me it was about me seeing a message from the scripture about how i could go to heaven and so so being saved in that believing that christ died on the cross for my sins and the spirit would enter into me and i could have this personal relationship with jesus so then because i didn't see the church as an essential and because i didn't have the view of church that you do now and maybe maybe not the same as the early church fathers did then am i now outside of the body well i don't think that you feel as though you can operate outside of the body of christ uh within the body of christ you receive the body of christ it is within the body of christ that you receive the graces that transform you uh so the the christian faith as i i've said in our previous conversations is not punctilior it's not a point in time it's a progression from one glory to another that progression doesn't happen in isolation it always happens in community christ is building his body and the gates of hell will not prevail upon it christ is ultimately taking a perfected bride carrying that bride over the threshold of jordan into the new jerusalem i totally i i get that yeah i but what we're talking about here is what divides us you know when do we divide and i'm saying francis chan as a high school student and for years believed that it really had nothing to do with the church um that it was about my personal relationship with jesus i have the word of god now i alone with the word of god i don't need everyone else i can go in an office and study this by myself and i get it and i have this personal relationship with jesus so should you based upon that uh looked at me and divide because that's one of the essentials if if i could if i could add something here francis in the bible in picture in shadows and prophetical voice speaks of one subject the seed of the woman the lord jesus christ and the four gospels explains about this god now became flesh the incarnation of christ and then the gospels ends with russian christ saying go and preach this gospel and those who believe baptized them in the name of the father son of the holy spirit there is no full stop and teach them to obey everything i commanded so starting the book of acts is the 30th history of what they did with the commander christ and when you come to acts 2 you will find their preaching and the leader of the apostle gang saint peter he stands up and talks about it now all of them stands with him and the church is born and then you find how the church functioned when they were persecuted it was not catching francis chan and beating him up it was a whole church was abused and they were scattered all over and they carried this new life with them and then you read on you'll find everything happens 30 years in the context of the church not individuals in some high school and then you come to the chapter 13 you'll find the church in and york they were here together and then god said send these two guys as my missionaries and then they go and do what they do they plant churches it was not evangelist for mission work but then all of a sudden the church is born and church sending missionaries then starting romans every letter that is written it is not individuals it is to the church in your home or the church in rome or in corinth in ephesus and all that so when you know it's a sad thing that people say well catholic people teach you cannot be saved except through the church but this is from the catholic who said that the early church fathers taught not to individual but to the body and then book of revelation ends not with individuals it is the body of christ i absolutely agree with you guys now i'm just trying to understand like when when you know do we separate for example let me ask you this what hank just spelled out those eight if i if you didn't hear that and i said okay when because i know you're not just this universalist everyone saved everyone's good you have some parameters and i'm just saying that in in the us right now everyone creates their own parameters and and it's it's splintering the church more and more and more what would your answer have been if here are the essentials well here's a problem francis the whole world six point five billion people or something like that only five percent of the world population live in america yeah and we think we are the church and we had to sit on the top of the mountain and lead the whole world it's a dumb mistake to make another thing is the church is split in history into 58 000 denominations not by the people it is by leaders like you and me and it is individuals who are drawing disciples after themselves saint paul said some after paul some after this and bar the bus and all that but the body of christ is not divided it is the two factors one structure and finance in america if you study the church you'll find just as up in europe many countries individuals rising up drawing disciples after themselves how did they do that like islamic or muslim or religious countries the world individuals now interpret the scripture and say i have the truth every cult was born in some bible study by some smart individual who focused on their personality and their interpretation rather than the historical church and came up with their own revelation yeah exactly and so the answer practical answer is i'm telling you if all these powerful charismatic i didn't mean charismatic in the sense leaders they walk away from the wealth and the riches and live a simple people i tell you it will make the world a difference and when when i was abused and criticized as making money and rich and millionaire and all those things for time i was angry but then i went to google and found out these leaders at large they are basically the cause of all these divisions and who who is fighting on an american scene against each other it is the leaders the people at large really are sheep without godly leaders and pastors to lead these people in the ways of christ and why they don't want to abandon to the eucharist they don't abandon themselves to the biblical faith that is handed down to us by the apostles and fathers well i i agree with you to an extent but i also look at my own life like i really believed coming out of seminary that i was fighting for god uh okay first i believe i loved him i i believe as a high school student i really fell in love with jesus and i was on my campus telling everyone about him then i go to seminary and i just i you know learn what how everyone is off you know all these other theologies and so in my heart i'm like i am going to speak against them and against them and against them and and all the while believing i was doing that for god that's why when i hear all these other people doing it i don't i don't necessarily get angry at them i go they could be in their mind believing they are doing this for god let me say something about that i mean it it's when you were young when you were six years of age you already had the spirit of the lord in you you had a fire burning in your bosom you had the death early of your mother and then your stepfather stepmother and then your father so you saw death you saw the brevity of life and you had a passion to communicate biblical truth but you were a grasshopper and and all of us to some degree or grasshoppers or maybe use another metaphor where pygmies standing on the shoulders of giants in other words talking about the ancient church when you were in that state six years old eight years old a fervent faith would i have the temerity the reckless boldness now to point back at you as i said well if you died back then francis uh if you you died when your your mother or your father your stepmother died you would have gone straight to hell absolutely no one because i will say something that may sound controversial probably not to your ears but to a lot of people listening in it's not the absence of truth that dams it's the despising of truth that dams once you came to reading the whole counsel of god and began to recognize what so he has said so so so fantastically yeah once you once you come to hear that and now you despise it that's a different story altogether this is the very thing i mean all people have the light of creation all people have the light of conscience we have an outward light we have an inward light do we respond to that light or do we reject that light well if we respond to light we'll be given more light we'll be given and and paul talks about in romans one two and three right he talks about the light of of creation the heavens declaring the glory of god his eternal power divine nature being clearly understood through what has been made so that men are without excuse so we have this outer light but he also talks in romans chapter 2 about the knowledge of god written on the canvas of our consciousness and then we reject that well if we reject that then we are not guiltless we are guilty says paul and then in romans chapter 3 you begin to see the light of christ so if we respond to light we'll be given more light but we cannot go back to someone and say because that person is only partially on the journey that i have taken that that person is not a believer i leave that person in the hands of an infinitely just and infinitely merciful god and i not as the pharisee i don't look at the publican behind me i look at christ and say i am so far in my journey and i have so far to go lord jesus christ son of god have mercy on me a sinner i i want to hear from you guys with the topic of the eucharist when would you divide from someone i mean or would you use a person's views like there are some who take the view that it's just a memory there's there's there's that's that's all there is there's no real substance there's others that would take uh know the real presence of christ but it's a mystery and i can't define it and there's others who define it and say no it's the literal body and blood of christ and it turns into that and you know there's several different views of that is that something that should divide the body and to what extent well i think it did divide the body it did yeah so it divided the body in in 1529 in in z wingley make swingley saying this is uh this is just bread and this is just wine and this is a memorial it is nothing more than that and to make it more than that is bread so the division did not come from the church the division came from people who decided that they were going to submit the church to their own theology the church has always believed in the real presence of jesus christ and that that presence was transformational and so that presence was always the center of the church it was called the medicine of immortality the medicine that changes us from one glory to another this was what the church taught so i i think the division comes when people say let me now change that theology and by the way it was not just changing the eucharist it was changing many other things baptism no longer became a sacrament it was no longer what god did for us but rather became something that we do for god so all of these things started fracturing the church as people in their own little enclaves came up with their own interpretations of scripture and i'm guilty of that i look back at my ministry over 40 years and i think you know what i would have been far better served if i had known better to answer this question that i answered on the bible answer man broadcast by first going back and saying what did the father say about this yeah i mean that's that's that's all i knew uh in the beginning was to find truth i get alone with the word of god and i study and i taught it was taught a hermeneutics that was just basically foolproof and but after a while you start going okay so who arrives at truth is it the guy that's most intelligent is it the person that's closest to god because everyone's getting alone in their office and coming to different views and so i think i'm with so many people going okay who do we listen to do i listen to hank do i listen to kp do i listen to francis i listen to my own pastor do i and now you know after speaking with you you're going gosh really you don't listen to any of us go back there was a time when the i you use a big word use the word hermeneutics yeah hermeneutics is the art and science of biblical interpretation right i'm not disparaging hermeneutics i'm not disparaging the literal principle of biblical interpretation or the illumination principle or the grammatical principle or the historical principle or typology or scriptural synergy i'm not depreciating any of that what i am saying is yes i need to know how to rightly read the word of god and so to be alone with my bible is not insignificant however i cannot come up with interpretation that stands in opposition to that which god has mediated through his body by the precious holy spirit yeah and so that was a new thought to me believe it or not i i mean i always just looked at well that's trusting in tradition rather than the scriptures um but i think what both of you has pointed out to me was no here are these early church fathers who studied the scriptures and had this relationship with the lord and they come to these conclusions together so here i am two thousand years later going yeah but i went in the office and i figured out this interpretation it felt it started to make me for the first time go well that feels kind of arrogant that i by myself now and it's kind of like in in our church we've had several individuals that leave the church going okay i used to respect all of these elders and we're going wait all eight of us agree on the sin in your life and we've prayed about we love you and look at our lives and we're trying to be these these elder qualified and now together we're saying here's the truth and you're going no my individual view trumps all of your collective thought and i would tell my wife that's so arrogant how could someone do that but then it hit me as i was talking the two of you oh do i do that with the early church fathers they together come to this council and come to an agreement on some of these things that they say are essential and here i am 2000 years later 1900 years later 1800 years going yeah but i got in my office and uh i came to this interpretation that but this was an academic view to me yeah what you're saying is so powerful i mean this is not academic for me uh th this is coming to a place where i see the winds and waves of doctrine sweeping through the church one of the biggest waves that has been sweeping through the evangelical church through apologetics communities from all over the world i mean there are leaders in singapore and and and other places in the world in america major leaders who are now saying you cannot confess your sin because if you confess your sin then you were spitting in the face of god he's already forgiven you and therefore you shouldn't ask for forgiveness he's forgiven you you're denying his forgiveness by asking for forgiveness i saw that wind and waves sweep through the church and i finally said to my wife i've had it you know everyone hangs up another shingle and everyone has a new permutation of how we ought to do church i gotta go exploring that's what ultimately took me back to the ancient church now when i talk about the eucharist i'm not talking about this in academic terms i'm talking about the eucharist in passionate terms i remember when i had studied the early church history and realized that for 1600 years of church history everyone unanimously believed in the real presence of christ some may have tried to explain it others called it a mystery but everybody believed in the church unanimously that this is the real presence of christ well that was not just an academic recognition on my part it was a visceral part of me now saying if this is really the real presence of christ and if christ is really distributed throughout my limbs if i can in truth be a participant of the divine nature or a partaker of the divine nature as blessed peter put it well if that is true i want to do it and i remember before i wrote my book truth matters life matters more i told kathy my wife i said honey i got to finish my book before we're chrismated before we join uh unorthodox church because if i do not finish this book the book and and i'm chrismated i'm going to get hammered people are going to say what did he do he just fell off the rails he went off the deep end and so what but you know what my wife and i talked about it and we said we cannot wait any longer we want to partake of the real presence of christ we i remember uh seeing a 104 year old woman walking down the aisle of the church with her with her little what do you call those little carts a little walker and she's uh she's walking 104 years old and i remember nudging my wife and saying that's going to be us and to this day when i partake i take this is a sign of humility when i partake of the the eucharist i i'm a partaking of the real presence of christ it is an emotional uh precious experience to me and i can't wait to do it again i can't wait to partake of the real presence of christ because now i know i'm not living by might nor by power but by his spirit it is doing something to change me it's one of those graces that god has provided through his precious church that can transform me but give me transformational power in the word world as well i had another question and i totally lost it i got it wrapped up in what you're saying um well there's so many graces that are dispensed through the church and i think the big thing that uh kp has made so clear is that the church has i love the way you gave that prescription i want to listen to this video again i can hear you say it a few more times with that progression in terms of how we see the church manifested through the book of acts and into the book of revelation itself but you know in revelation chapter 22 we see the eucharistic bounty we say john being confronted with an angel who shows him the river of the water of life as clear as crystal flowing from the throne of god and of the lamb down the middle of the great street of the city on each side of the river stands the tree of life bearing 12 crops of fruit yielding its fruit every month and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations no longer will there be any curse so the tree of life that we see in the edenic garden is a tree of life that we encounter again in the eternal garden and in the meantime there is the prince of life on the tree of life on golgotha who sheds his precious blood whose body is broken for the complete remission of our sins that is not nothing that is the very thing that ties all of history together it ties the grand meta narrative scripture together i didn't list it as essentially the christian uh the the christian faith why because it is subsumed in the very nature of the church it's the epicenter of the church okay i want to ask something because i feel like i'm in a place that's similar to a lot of people where i've been a part of a tradition that basically allows every individual to go in his office or his basement and just kind of come up with an interpretation and then get as many followers as they can and so it's almost a popularity contest right of hey i am so intelligent so follow me or i have this supernatural power in doing these miracles so follow me or i just have charismatic personality or i'm just a gifted leader and so and and based upon that you have so many different theologies that when you walk into a church you don't know their view of sexuality you don't know their view of marriage and divorce you know it's just because everyone just preaches something different and so some of us are just going okay i've been a part of that it feels like a circus you know and i am fighting for these things and now i'm seeing some of the wisdom of okay i get why people say wait you don't just everyone goes alone and figures it out for themselves and then gathers as many followers as possible we go back to the ancient church and try to figure out what did those early church fathers agree on what did those councils agree on and part of that feels very good to me that it's not like i've got to be that beacon of truth because everyone and their mother is starting their own podcast you know out of their basement and going hey follow me these guys are out these guys are you know and and and it's just going this is ridiculous this can't be the way and so there's something attractive going oh there was a time when everyone agreed i want to go back to that so that i can say look this isn't an idea that i just made up 1500 years they all agreed this is your view of sexuality this is the view of whatever whether it's a eucharist how you dress or whatever but i'm just going gosh i don't know if i i want to surrender to that there's a part of me that would go oh that would be nice um i don't have to feel like i'm the savior of the world and my theology is right and i got to fight all these other guys who think their theology is right i'd like to be able to say you know what i believe is historical this is what everyone believed for this many years now again i don't know what to do at this point i'm not where you guys are at where you've tied yourself completely um and i i guess i feel a little bit lost like i'm starting to see the value in that i mean really see the value in that and see that makes sense and going gosh that does make more sense than being out here rebellious i feel a bit arrogant for the way i've lived my life and the way that i've taught because it had a lot to do with me and my personal interpretation and i do want to learn what is you know this collective interpretation they talk about in these councils what would be your advice to me in taking this next step let me talk about this whole thing for a different perspective that is what made the greatest of all angels lucifer becomes satan it was independent spirit and inside his heart he said i'm better i can do it i know better and god then cast him out with all the other angels joined him what made the fallen man to experience the divine nature 2nd peter chapter 1 verse 4 it was this god the creator of the billions of galaxies and stars became a human being humbling himself philippians 2 and became the least and the last in every way by choosing to lay aside his almighty power and through his death on the cross and humility we are given the chance to be reconciled with god asks his children for which we were made what is the core problem you know in my reading through the bible friends like you do i don't know how many hundreds and hundreds of times i have done it and and one day i said god please help me understand is there a key to this whole bible and all i could hear like the bell going of the alarm going of one word humility humility humility and i i'm not charismatic and i honestly i'm not a spooky person and i said where is coming from yeah and it's one of those few experiences i had in my journey with god that i said and shut this off but then the voice fades off and then it looked like i learned spirit reading the whole bible turned into one word humility and this is where one of those stone or steps i i said i need to i need to learn understand this that is the real place of learning the mysteries of god is becoming nothing where our mind our logic and other people's influence or fear of finances being lost or friends being lost we will delay the process and one of the questions the lord asked me in my journey knowing him are you willing to die to your reputation and i didn't know what he was talking about and this is when i was going through this crisis of two years when the church that i'm metropolitan of asked if i would be the bishop consecrated after the eastern faith and tradition and i didn't want to do it i didn't want to do it because i had a reputation that milnam is bigger than i was you know trying to get into this and finally i fell on my face and said lord here i am whatever you want to do with my life and francis that was one of the beginning of god opening my inner eyes to understand the mysteries of god and i think to you to anyone who is hearing us i think what changed me is i came to the place of fearing god hmm and i i became no more afraid of losing everyone all money and my health and all dreams i have and everything but standing before him yes and that fear of god struck so deep inside me i said i this is where i read then colossians chapter 3 is a mysterious experience for me which is strange too it looked like i walked out of my body i was looking at my body walking on earth and living and i finally understood my goodness i'm supposed to live on earth as though i know what living here and that freed me so amazingly to follow the lord and then the question was i don't know what to do and this is where i began to go back to the ancient fathers of and desert mothers the set fathers and the early church and i began to read and cry out to god to have mercy on me to understand it so this is where all spirituality starts with humility and brokenness can i tie that together in a personal anecdote i actually started my own journey with respect to going back and looking at the ancient church as a result of being president of the christian research institute and being a leader of an organization that believed a particular group it was known as the recovery was cultic and we we had position papers on them when someone would contact us we'd give them those position papers so that's this group's cultic well without getting in the details i met with the leading ones in that in in that move of the holy spirit and and the very things that we said they denied they affirmed in that meeting so i pulled all of the statements we had about that organization uh out of circulation and we started a six-year primary research we didn't know it'd take that long but a six year primary research project on this group and that took me to many different places in asia where the group is largest particularly china and many other places in asia indonesia and singapore and cambodia and vietnam and myanmar and all over the place and at the end of that research project we came to the conclusion that we were wrong yeah i talked about the humility that kp is talking about could we sweep that under the rock or did we have to say publicly we were wrong well we splashed in large letters across our flagship magazine christian research journal we were wrong and we told the story of how we were wrong what we said before was wrong through that we became not separated brethren we became united so we have differences to this day significant differences perhaps on secondary issues but i have no doubt that these are brothers in the lord and that their whole move of the holy spirit is a move of recovery it's called the recovery it's called the local churches in some places but it's called the recovery why because they're seeking to recover the truths that were taught historically in the ancient church and then to apply them today and one of the great truths that they have uncovered as part of the recovery is deification and that was the very thing that was foremost in our minds in the minds of many cult experts that made them a cult they say we can become god well they do say that but they don't ever say that like a mormon would say they they say that in that we can become a god but not as god is in the godhead meaning we can we can partake of the energies of god we can't partake of the essence of god for god is a noble in his essence and and so they're recovering truths well that started me they're looking back uh throughout history at the church and recovering truths that have been lost maybe there's some truths that i'm missing as well and that really became not only a point of unification instead of carping from the fringes and saying that's a cultic group we met together and it changed our perception in fact it was people in that move of the spirit that i saw in far-flung places around the world that gave me a hunger for life i knew about the lord and i knew doctrinal truth but i did not experience the life that some of these people who may have had less intellectual or or spiritual or theological acumen than i have but they had a living vibrant relationship with the lord which i pined after and that opened the floodgates for me well i you know i think this has been a lot of good discussion and i know the heart that the three of us have as we've talked is uh you know we want to see unity in the body of christ but the truth is is even this discussion that we've had will be taken and will cause disunity and what i mean by that is individuals will get a hold of this grab a sound bite and then explain why all of us are heretics and and gather their followers and go that direction and it's it's this weird cycle because for example i was saved into a baptist church the baptist church is where i heard the gospel and so it was discipled by a youth pastor there and i was taught it was this individual relationship with god i guess i always thought well they're the ones that led me to jesus so i'm going to stay loyal to them and and you end up just taking on this theology and so whenever i hear something different i'll go back to my people and go hey tell me why they're wrong right and so this is what tons of people will do with this they'll go to their leaders and say hey franz is teaching some weird stuff and kps he's dressed really weird and hank you know we all know went off the deep end and he used to be the bible answer man now we don't know what he is you you know and and you're going to go back to your people and then their people are going to you know you know what i mean and it and sometimes you just feel like gosh whatever we do isn't going to bring unity it it seems like it's just going to bring more division um that gets back to what kp said right kp was talking about humility i mean the people that are out there that are going to slice and dice what we're saying or take it out of context or or even disagree with something that we said in context are are dividers within the body of christ they are dividing the body of christ and they're drawing away disciples after themselves so be on your guard paul says remember for three years i never stopped warning each one of you day and night with tears that's part of that farewell address the ephesian elders that you talked about in your message last night so these are people that are dividers and the dividers will always be among us what we're looking for is people who are humble who who who are humbly looking at jesus christ not looking at others down their nose but really like the spirit that you exude my dear brother a spirit of humility i mean you could be as pompous as anyone because you're the impact of your life has been dramatic but i've never seen a spirit of pride and you have seen a spirit of humility and i think if we have that spirit of humility we start listening to other people um we're gonna grow you said you're saved into a baptist church well we're in dallas and and uh right now that's where as we're you know filming and and one of the great pastors here with the mega church jack graham here he is a icon in the baptist church in many ways he's been a past president of the southern baptist convention jack graham i have never seen anything but humility in him even though he has ascended to great heights and been used in many ways by the lord i see humility in him i remember at one particular pastor's conference i was there and i'd written a book called the apocalypse code find out what the bible really says about the end times and why it matters today and there was a story in the dallas morning news about my book and you know some of the pastors have taken that and they're waving the newspaper and jack quieted the whole event down he said look we've known hank for what 30 years 25 years have we ever known him to go off half cocked let's give him a hearing now that was a that was a great example of humility and i think that's what we have to beg for in ourselves and in others let's get together and talk let's be more humble let's not shoot at each other from the edge from the edge i mean today you have people in a trailer park somewhere with a microphone that can define this man of god who has been used of god not only to proclaim the gospel all over the world to plant tens of thousands of churches all over the world but has taken care of the downtrodden the poor he's given the cup of water the piece of bread he has been used to the lord in that and now there's a there are people in the back of a trailer with a with a microphone and the internet that can define his life based on complete inaccuracies i was so grateful that rather than you piling on what you did is you came and you put together a video that i watched which said i want to know about this you asked the questions and the questions were answered to your satisfaction by the way you talked about writing in his lamborghini uh well turns out that as you pointed out in that video it wasn't a lamborghini it was a little volkswagen bug and i i mean it does have a great air conditioning system i had to say that because i wrote in it yesterday through the rain and there are gaps in the doors and the wind is coming in and so i was uh i was kept uh reasonably cool but i mean this is an example of you not shooting at a brother that's down but having his back coming not just uncritically but checking it out and what you have done i think is going to uh resonate with people all over the world and reignite uh this this incredible ministry that has has has met the needs of the downtrodden no i i i love the answer you gave first i want to say thank you for what you've said you know i know my own wrestle with pride so it's hard for me to accept some of those things but you know when i asked you the question like what do we do next both of you point to humility and that wasn't the answer i was expecting but it it makes all the sense in the world to me um and i think it's a great next step for people because you know god says he gives grace to the humble and he resists the proud he opposes it and so when i see some of these things on the internet of people just so sure that they're right everyone else is wrong uh there's part of me that just you know maybe they're brilliant maybe they're this this this but my logic goes wait if god opposes the proud can i believe that that's the guy that he would grace with real truth right there and i hadn't really thought about just searching for humility and inviting people to first like you said humble yourself and understand who you are in the presence of god and understand he possesses all truth his thoughts are so far beyond us and we see this mirror dimly and then let me look for other humble people that just go gosh i have that same posture how do i know truth because i've been begging god i really do just regularly i've been asking god please show me truth show me truth show me truth you're my only hope i used to think that i i had this mind that was above someone else or i had this heart that was beyond everyone's else i give up on that lord i want to know truth i want to know truth and to start with that and say god i get it i get it i'm fallen and and let me find humble you know leaders of god you know who have walked this path and and let me evaluate those those even in history that have humbly walked with him and looked is there something that they had in common and believed in common rather than me finding truth in isolation because there is an arrogance to that and so i praise god for that and i thank you you both for just just pointing that out um because uh in my background i just tend to just go towards give me an answer i thought you were both going to tell me to read a certain creed or a book or everything else and yet you both point to humility and i think that's a great starting [Music] point you

Channel: Bible Answer Man

Views: 93,832

Rating: 4.8007264 out of 5

Keywords: Apologetics, Bible Answer Man, Bible, Christian Research Institute, CRI, Hank Hanegraaff, Christ, Christian, Christianity, God, Gospel, Jesus, Scripture, Truth, Francis Chan, Gospel for Asia, GFA, Crazy Love

Id: PDm251gA6Lw

Length: 57min 47sec (3467 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/chewblacca681]

Who is the Roman Catholic here?