WEBVTT 1 00:00:01.000 --> 00:02:35.000 All right, this is the last stream for this year, at least as far as Q&As go. And we have an interesting topic to cover today at, uh, least to start it off with because I will be going to your guys questions in the live chat. What did Marvin Winans do? That's the question. I mean really, is it biblical? But there's been some confusion and some drama over this. So I'm going to unpack it and try to have a reasonable, thoughtful Christian response to it. Use it as a teaching moment. And the reason why it's coming up is because, um, giving is something that every church does and needs. Like your church needs your support for them to continue. It's healthy to give. We should be giving self sacrificially as Christians. We should give with our whole hearts. We should give willingly, not by compulsion, nobody forcing us, no one trying to push us around to give. But we joyfully offer self sacrificially to the work of the Lord. That includes in your local church. That includes helping out the widow next door. That includes helping out the poor, uh, and the people around you. That includes helping out your loved ones, your family as they get older or as they're unable to take care of themselves. All of this is very true. So I'm not opposed to giving. Giving is a good thing. But question number one, Did Marvin Winans in his giving day, did he break scripture? Was he unbiblical in this? And I want to also let you guys know this. It could feel like that I'm chasing drama or something like that. I'm really not. Uh, I like to use things as teaching moments. I realize it will be effective and help people learn and grow. But his ministry, um, they reach out to people all over the world for giving. They're asking for people online to give. They've asked their church members to fundraise to, to friends and family and people that they may be able to reach on social media to fundraise in order to then give to the local church. So they're very big on giving. They're doing it publicly, they're doing it in a large way. And so it's appropriate for us to publicly examine that and to think about it and to do so graciously. Um, but not like people who can't call balls and strikes, you know what I mean? Like you want to call it like it is. So was it biblical? Was Marvin Winans giving biblical? Now let me play for you the clip that got everyone's attention and then I'll be Going to your guys questions after we do this, but here it is. This is the clip that got everybody's attention. I even made a video response to this, a short that I just removed from the Internet. I will explain why. Okay, let's walk through it all, full Transparency. 2 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:50.000 I, Roberta McCoy, given faith and stand in unity with the vision of perfecting Church of Saint sowing this seed of a thousand dollars plus $235 and receiving the blessings to come to all that participated. 3 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:52.000 Now that. That's only twelve hundred dollars. 4 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:54.000 Yes. 5 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:59.000 Y' all not listening to what I'm saying. If you have a thousand plus a thousand. 6 00:02:59.000 --> 00:03:02.000 Okay, well, I'm gonna work on the other 800. 7 00:03:02.000 --> 00:05:26.000 Well, that ain't what I asked you to do. That's what happened. And what looks obvious when you first watch the video is that this woman came and he wants her to bring $2,000. She only brings $1,235, I think she said. And that he says he still takes her money, he still keeps the money. But he goes, that's not what I asked. It sounds like what he's saying is, I didn't ask you to bring 1200. I asked you to bring 2000. You didn't shake my head. People. People laugh and so people, this went viral, right? There was articles written about it. And then recently it got a lot more traction and attention. You know, the way things are. This happened in October. And so a couple months later, um, there we go. It's suddenly everywhere. I also did a response to this and responded to what it looked like then. Then their church actually made a video that looked like a. A news, uh, broadcast. And maybe it was, I don't know. But there was a video that came out where him and this woman were explaining what really happened. And he was saying it wasn't what they thought. It wasn't that. I was telling her, you should have brought more money, and you didn't. It was actually that I was telling her she just came out of order. He had asked for the people who were giving to line up in a particular order, and she didn't line up in that order. And so he was merely saying nothing. There's something wrong with the amount you gave. But simply, you came at the wrong time. You guys aren't here listening to my instructions, which is a very different kind of correction. Um, and so, yeah, that got my attention. And then I asked, because someone sent this to me and they're like, mike, we think you should pull your video down. Um, and I'm Always open to that if I got something wrong. Uh, and I still thought what he did was bad for other reasons. I'll explain in a moment, but I wanted to see the original. So what I'm actually playing for you this on your screen right now. This is the original footage. You can kind of see how long it is. It's like a three hour sermon. Ah, or three hour, uh, service. There is no sermon, really. And for three hours, I watched this whole video for three hours. They, uh, do some music. And by the way, their music's amazing and Marvin Winans has an amazing voice, very gifted singer. Um, but this service is just one person. See the line of people? It's just one person after another after another coming up to give money. Like, I'll just click to a random spot. Okay, all that participate. Amen. Now you just did that today. 8 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:28.000 Okay, that's fine. 9 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:34.000 I don't need it. Yeah. So they walk up, they read something, listen to what they praise the Lord. 10 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:52.000 I, uh, minister Dante Davis and wife Andrea Davis and family, giving faith and stand in unity with the vision of perfecting church, of sowing the seed of a thousand dollars plus another thousand dollars, uh, and receiving the blessings to come to all that participate. 11 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:53.000 Amen. 12 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:54.000 Amen. 13 00:05:54.000 --> 00:07:03.000 They do this for hours. Uh, a couple hours of the sermon is just the line. So if you look at the bottom of your screen there, you'll see the giving starts around. Right around there. Okay. Around 38 minutes in. And it goes on until about. I'm scanning here to find it. Okay, here's the end of the giving right there. And then he wanders on stage and starts singing really beautiful voice. Uh, two hours and 36 minutes in. So it's about two hours of just a line of people giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. When they give, they come up and they announce the amount that they're going to give. And then they make a proclamation of faith that they are going to participate in the blessing, which in the context of this church and of this ministry, means they're going to be financially blessed by God. Among other things. They, they're giving and they're also going to get. And they're believing they're going to get that. Now, if you're doubting that at all, I just want us to understand the full context. Here's a little clip that will help establish that. From the same sermon. Sorry, not a sermon from the same giving day. Come on, sweetie. All right. 14 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:19.000 I, Sister Anitha Blackman, give in faith and stand in unity with the vision of perfecting church. Sowing this seed of $2,050 plus one, plus one, and receiving the blessings to come and all that. Participate. 15 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:23.000 Now, if you think you're going to get a blessing because of what you've given, I need you to praise God. 16 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:25.000 Like you got it. 17 00:07:25.000 --> 00:14:38.000 There we go. Okay. This is where there's a tricky middle in the issue of the prosperity gospel versus, like, biblical giving and self sacrifice. What we don't want to say is, uh, I will give and the Lord will do nothing for me. Um, I don't want to say that. That's not like a rule. That's not like a theological statement or belief that Christians are supposed to have that those who give God will certainly for sure not bless you in any way, shape or form. That is not true. There will always be a blessing. In a sense. The problem with the prosperity message, and this is where I want to bring scripture into this, is that they act as though the blessing is current right now. Physical prosperity in this life, it is financial blessings. They quote Micah, uh, I will open the windows of heaven. Where God is not talking to Christians under the new covenant. He's talking to those under the old covenant. Because that's part of the old covenant is the tithes. That's old covenant and all this stuff. It's the muddling and the mixing of the Old and New Testament in a way that doesn't distinguish and, you know, God's redemption plan. Basically, you're lacking good theology of Scripture. That happens constantly in prosperity preaching. They are always quoting the Old Testament, they sometimes quote the New, but they tend to avoid it when it comes to the topic of giving and receiving, because the new says some stuff that they don't actually believe. So let me give you an example. Um, let's examine if this is biblical. In Matthew, chapter 6, Jesus gives His sermon on the mount. And now we're here in the New Testament and we're looking at something specific that Jesus teaches that relates to giving. Is the giving going to bring a financial blessing in this life? That is the question. So Jesus says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. Now, the blessing that Marvin Winans is talking about is significantly intended to be treasures on earth which moth and rust destroy. That's what's intended by that. That's the nature of the prosperity message. That is the nature of the prosperity preaching. It is, you Want to lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. That's the agenda. But Jesus has a different agenda. No, lay up treasures in heaven, right? For where your treasure is, there your heart will be. Also that where your treasure is, there your heart will be. So this is like the radical difference with Jesus talking to us about these issues. He's saying, hey, I want you to care so much about eternal things that you are living your life with a view towards investments or blessings that have eternal value, not temporal value. This is a really significant issue. This is why Paul the Apostle is willing to lay his life down, why Peter is willing to go and die and be killed for his faith in Christ, because he knows he has eternal rewards, eternal treasures. And he talks about this in one Peter and Paul talks about this. This is really consistent New Testament teaching. We have an eternal thing that's the real true value. The temporal, um, blessings are nice, but they don't even remotely compare to that which is eternal. And the temporal blessings are not promised in that way. They're just not only verses you can take out of context. Jesus himself was poor. He has nowhere to lay his head. When Jesus, uh, his family gave the offering in the temple, there was two kinds of offerings you could give for your newborn son and the purification that happened. One was for normal people and one was for poor people. Two, birds. If you were poor, you gave the birds gave. Guess what? Mary brought birds because they were poor. And it's just simply not some guarantee of God. Oh, but what about the gold, frankincense and myrrh? Well, that probably just paid for their sudden flight over to Egypt for a time before they came back to Nazareth because they wouldn't have had the money to fund that trip. So that they probably spent it all on that. Um, so at any rate, this is really significant to understand this. This is biblically true. Um, so the reaction to the video saying, oh, he's rebuking her for not bringing enough money, that was partly true, but only in an implication sense. He's rebuking her for getting out of order. But it drew attention to this ministry and to this method of fundraising, which I like to analyze. Scripture tells us not to be like the Pharisees when you give. And it's exactly, oh, man, tell me if you don't see. If you don't see exactly what Marvin Winans is doing, and as a pastor, he's telling his people to do is the opposite of what Jesus told us to do. Let me find the passage here real quick. Um, Matthew, chapter six still and it says here, therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Now here's the order in which the events happened. In Marvin Winans church, they first had. This is why she got rebuked. They first had the people who brought $2,000 or more dollars, they were to line up initially. Then people who brought $1,000 were, uh, between 1 and 2,000, were to line up and give. That's when she was supposed to give. Then the people who got less than a thousand, whatever amount, then they can all line up and give. And every person announced their amount. And whenever they had a lot, like they brought four grand, they brought 28 grand. Whenever they had a lot, Winans goes, wow, wow, wow. So they're getting glory from men. And when they had a little, it was like, that's nice. This is the opposite of what Jesus taught. Assuredly, I say to you that they have their reward. You want reward? You already got it. It was all those claps. It was all the people thinking highly of you. It was the applause and appreciation that they got. I mean, uh, look at here. Let me see if I can find another quick example for you guys. This would be interesting, I think, to you, if I can find it. Towards the beginning, uh, let me see, not towards the very beginning, but a little bit further on. There's a moment where two of the ministers come up and they're called up by name specifically because he really wants to highlight them. He wants them to be like a center point of view, uh, discussion. And this is them right here. Okay, here we go. Let's watch this part and see if this is not getting glory from man for your giving. Um, this is being discussed by me openly because they broadcast this to the world on YouTube and wherever else. And it ends up being an example, because here's what happens. Money grubbing ministers, they will use these same methods. They will learn from Marvin. Let me get you guys on the right screen there. They'll use, uh, the same methods that Marvin Winans is using because they work. This is an incredibly effective way of fundraising. It's just unbiblical. It's unchristlike. It's something that Christians shouldn't do. And I'm going to try to make that clear biblically today, to think biblically about everything. But here's an example of it exactly not what Christ wants us to do. Come on. Come on, Cindy. 18 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:44.000 He telling me it Was good while it lasted. 19 00:14:44.000 --> 00:15:03.000 This is a couple, and they're a married couple. And they both separately fundraise using their influence because they're spiritual leaders in their communities to get other people outside the church to donate. So they're fundraising outside their church for. Reportedly for a building fund, although I'm not sure if it really is for that. I'll explain why in a minute. 20 00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:19.000 I, Andre Healy, give in faith and stand in unity with a vision of perfecting church, of sowing this seed of $1,000 and 81. Uh, $8,130. 21 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:25.000 And how did that happen? How did that other 8,000 happen? It happened. Did you hear all the wows? 22 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:27.000 Wow. 23 00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:31.000 Glory, Glory. You get your glory from men. That's all you get. 24 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:34.000 Because I start, uh, reaching out to my friends. 25 00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:37.000 There you go. Uh, we had the platform. 26 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:39.000 I can't I just thank some of my friends? 27 00:15:39.000 --> 00:15:46.000 Yeah. Now he wants to read the name of every person that's giving so that everyone can give them credit. They can have full credit publicly for all their donations. 28 00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:58.000 I want to thank Tanya Williams. She sold a seat of $25. Teresa G, $100. Tracy Gordon, $100. Deon Hanker, $25,000. $100. Praise the Lord. 29 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:18.000 Okay. Then the wife comes up, and she raised even more money than the husband. And he said he wanted her to go second because she raised more money. Um, so here is. This is a big highlight, big glory to man moment. 30 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:25.000 Praise the Lord. It was not a competition. I just told the Lord I just wanted to beat Elder Healy. 31 00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:26.000 Amen. 32 00:16:26.000 --> 00:17:01.000 That's all. My prayer was, I send you flowers, give in faith and stand in unity with the vision of perfecting church, of sowing my seed of $2,000 and receiving the blessings to come. And I also want to announce my contributors through my giving campaign. Amelia Doling, $50. Angela Haddon, $50. Dr. Shelley McIntosh, $50. Leandra's Holmes, $50. Elder Charles Clifton, 50. 33 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:10.000 She goes on for quite a while. Okay, let me see if I could skip to where she gives you the total. 34 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:19.000 He's here today. Brother Garrett. Buddy C. Wright, 500 Williams 1000 Tools. Can you stand, Brother Dan? So my giving platform raised 17. 35 00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:23.000 117. 36 00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:27.000 That's not all. Oh, that's not all. I have. 37 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:29.000 She's got even more credit coming. 38 00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:57.000 I, uh, have checks today with me that I went and picked up. I have a thousand dollars from royalty cleaners and Reverend Horace Sheffield sold $5,000. So my total contributions was $23,150 min. My seat of 2,000, I am giving today $25,150. 39 00:17:57.000 --> 01:37:50.000 Wow. He says, wow. Oh, glory. Standing in here for a lot of the crow. Yeah. Uh, back to what Jesus actually said. When you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be done in secret, and your father, who sees in secret, will himself reward you openly. So that's the biblical idea, right? Um, don't be like the Pharisees. Don't let your left hand know what your right hand's doing. Jesus says, you cannot serve God and money. You can't serve both. Your money will serve God, or your God will serve your money, and your money will actually be your God. And that's the fear with this kind of giving. This is why in my short video, I responded very strongly to Marvin Winans, and I suggested leave his church, get out of there. This is not a healthy environment. There's a money idolatry going on. I would actually say that's still true. I just misunderstood the video I was watching. So, as most of us did, um, because of the clip, the way it was presented. So I did my diligence, watched it now I removed my short. I'm making a longer video now to explain it in more detail because I don't want to let go of the actual important bit, which is that this is, uh, not healthy, not Christian. It is opposed to Jesus the way that they're doing this now. What is happening here is, um, Marvin Winans is actually. Think about this. He's actually, as a pastor, he's changing every year. They do this giving day at least once a year. At least they have the past few years. I found several videos from 2024, one from 2023. Um, at least in the previous years, they do it for multiple services. I don't know if this was one joint service or if there was a whole other service afterwards. The amount of money that they gave was a lot. Okay. I listened four for, um, a while. I stopped when there was still a full hour left of giving. So it was about two hours of giving. I stopped listening when there was another hour of people in line who were going to give. But I tallied the totals. So in that time, he announced a total of over $400,000. That were given on that one day, then there was still a lot of people in line. Now granted, those people in line were now giving $1,000. Well, less than 2,000 each. Uh, maybe there was a couple exceptions, but they were giving less than $2,000 each for the rest of the video. So it wouldn't have been like another 400k, but it would have been some significant amount. This is supposed to be for a building fund. But the way that he. And I'll come back to that in a second. But the way that he talks about this and the way he does this. Okay, I'll just shoot straight with you guys. These leaders like Marvin Winans, they sit around and think of ways to get people to give more money. They think of how they can construct the service, how, how they can order the events. They think about, uh, when they're guest speakers at a church, they look and they go, if that pastor's poor, if he doesn't look like he's well off financially, then I want to do my own offering request because I just don't trust he's not going to get enough money out of the people. If he could get money out of the people, well, he wouldn't be poor. So they think about this stuff when they go to churches. They think about how to get the most out of people financially. They plan things with each other. They will go to each other's churches. Right? Then when I visit your church, say, I'm one of these, uh, money focused pastors and I go to your church and then you give me a big old offering. You give me $30,000 for one day, for one Sunday service, 10 grand. It's like some significant amount, $80,000. And then what happens is you come to my church and I return the favor and you get a similar offering. Why is that? Why not just keep. Because this won't get reported on any tax forms, on any 990s or anything. This will not show up on my income. Nobody will know that I made this money. Ah, ah. Or they'll grab. Sometimes they'll grab and they'll separate the cash out from the checks because they don't want to report everything to the government. I'm not saying Marvin Winans does all this. I'm saying that happens in these circles. And so you have to be aware of that when you're evaluating this type of thing. Um, speaking of which, when you do this kind of thing, this sort of engineered, thoughtfully created giving moment where you think, let's have them stand up and announce how much they give. See, a couple years ago, two or three years ago, Marvin Winans would just have them walk up to the pulpit, and they would just hand over the checks, and he would still do the thing like, if you're going to give a thousand or more, come up. Okay. Now, if you're going to give less, come up. And he would still order them, but they would just drop the check in. Then last year, 2024, they decided for the first time they were going to have people actually announce the amounts they were giving. And then they added this thing they read where they're like, sort of ritualistically invoking a blessing from God, like, I'm giving you this money, God, and I'm expecting return on it. And they added that into it so that it seemed to me, blew up the giving and got their giving to go a lot bigger. Which corresponds to their 990forms, their tax forms. So Marvin Winan's tax forms show that in 2024, he made more money than any other year. The first year they did this giving, where they would announce the giving, that was the first year they made more money than ever before. Allow me to show you on your screen 2024 here. I'll do 2023 first. So 2023, this is what they. Now, they very well may have more money coming in than this. There may be other sources of income as well, like when he guest speaks and things like that. I don't know. But, um, executive compensation was uh, all. To him, $340,000. To Marvin Winans, that total $344,000 represented 43% of total expenses, meaning that of all the money that was spent by the church, if you give a dollar and they spend your dollar, 43 cents of it went to his paycheck. Um, that's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on the context. Um, so if you have a pastor who is making $70,000 a year for his career, and yet that is 80% of the giving that comes into the church, I would not critique or criticize that pastor at all. It's a smaller church. The giving that comes in, it needs to substantially go to pay for the ministers. Um, and I would say, uh, that's important. He should be doing that. Depending on where he lives, that may not be nearly enough money for him to survive. I'm not here saying pastors shouldn't be paid or they shouldn't be paid well. They should be paid well. Scripture says, let those who serve well as elders be counted worthy of double honor, which, which implies more Pay, Um, so they should be taken care of. But I just want it to be known, uh, this huge giving day where tons and tons of money comes in. It's supposed to be for building fund. And it seems like at least as far as the reported expenses go, the majority of it, or 43% of it in 2023 went right to him. But in 2024, they did something different. That's when they added people announcing their giving. People actually saying, my name's so and so. I'm giving this much money and I'm going to get a blessing from God because of it. In 2024, his compensation jumped up to $444,000, still equaling 44% of the income or the gross expenses of the church, whatever the term for that is. Um, the contributions go up, his amount goes up. Percentage wise, it seems. And every year that they file, as far as I could see, he's always made around 40% of the income. I wonder what 2025 would look like because they made a lot of money for this day of giving. There's more interaction. This is the first time in 2020, um, five, where he actually asked people, I want you to fundraise outside the church. Call your friends, call your family, go on social media, do a fundraising campaign. Every member of the church fundraise campaign for the church, for their building project. What is their building project? Well, it's a church building that has been in Progress for almost 20 years. They've been trying to build it. It's installed for various reasons I don't understand in the courts, for who knows what reasons. I didn't look into it. But if you're doing this fundraising campaign, and if the 990s, which they may not, if the 990s are actually reflecting the giving. First off, those numbers seem small and I'm confused by. It seems like there's something missing on the 990s, but I could be completely wrong. Okay. I don't want to, I don't want to make a judgment call for what it seems. That's not, that's not safe or fair or wise. I, uh, just want, I do want us to realize, don't draw too many conclusions from the 990s, because there's probably more to know about them. That's really what I'm trying to say here. Um, but based upon the information we have from the 990s, it just looks like a lot of money is going into the pocket of the leader. Um, I doubt they'll file a 990 in 2025, after I've made this video. They might, um, but they probably won't. We'll see. We'll see. But there's lots of ways if you just want to hide how the money's moving around. There's a lot of ways to do that. There's just not the kind of controls you think there are for nonprofit ministries. It just isn't. Um, I don't think his church would be bothered to know he made $444,000 last year that they're aware of. I'm sure he did. Speaking engagements. He has a musical business, does that. He probably gets money from. From that. Who knows what else. Um, but I don't think they'd be bothered. And here's the reason why. Because prosperity preachers have already figured this out a long time ago. What they do is they tell the people, of course I'm doing well. Of course I'm well off. And God wants you to be well off, too. Now give me some money, and God will bless you. And they're buying into this thing. They're being lured by their desire for money. The prosperity preacher will lure you by your desire for prosperity. They're not selling themselves as a rich person. They're selling you as a rich person and themselves as an example that it works. So the pastor being rich, the pastor having, uh, a $2,000 suit, uh, or a Rolex, um, or driving some crazy expensive car or shoes that cost, like, 1500 bucks. This is seen as proof of concept to them. This is something that I think a lot of people don't understand, a lot of evangelicals don't get is it's not considered a bad thing. When you find out that your pastor is filthy rich. In the prosperity movement, it's considered proof that it works. But it's a pyramid scheme because the money is all being funneled to them, but they're not giving to you. God will somehow promise you financial blessings. And then they put on stage. Whenever somebody does well in the congregation, they get up and they go, I started tithing, no matter how much it hurt, and God has blessed me. This year, we made more money than ever. And they put up only the affirming testimonies, right? And it just becomes this sort of feedback loop. It's just there. Now, scripture says we're not to give by compulsion. That's a teaching in scripture. When you give, don't give by compulsion, meaning you're not to be compelled to give. Um, like that we're being Sort of pushed or pressured in a negative way. And yet that's what's being set up. Marvin Winans church says we're going to have free first. Whoever has $2,000 or more, they're all going to give. Get up in front. Everybody gives you clap. Now, if you have only 20 bucks, you can give, but you got to give two hours from now at the end of the service, sit in the back. Let me tell the. This is exactly what James says. How dare you say to the rich man, come, sit here in the front. Let me take you. Oh, man, let me take you to the passage. Because, um. Um, It's just. It's too relevant. It's too relevant to what we're talking about right now. Um, sorry, just a second as I find what I'm looking for. So in James, chapter two, we read this. My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes, and you say to him, you sit here in a good place. And to the poor man, you stand there or sit here at my footstool. Have you not shown partiality among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Marvin Winan says, hey, if you're going to give 2000 or more, come stand here in the good place. Get up in front. Everybody right here, full of energy, beginning of the service. Everyone's still here. Everyone's still paying attention. You give first. If you have 20 bucks to give, you got to wait a couple hours. You go and wait, okay, I still want your money. I'm not trying to insult you, but you could have done better. That is the implication. Now, is this being compelled to give? Is this giving by compulsion? I mean, I would think it's something along these lines. It certainly violates the heart of what Scripture communicates about giving and money. He asks for people in his. Also imagine the pressure. If you're a minister at his church, he has a separate section of people where he goes, okay, now I'm going to call up, uh, just the ministers who are going to give 2,000 or more. Now, if you're a minister on staff at his church, you know you want to be in that line. You do not want to be there the next time there's a staff meeting when you're sitting there going, I only gave a thousand. You do not want to be that guy. This is absolutely pressure, giving pressure and creating a sense of, um, compulsion. Now you might think, I don't think, you know. In fact, he says in the video, he goes, we're not given by compulsion. He announces that to the church. But Marvin Winans was sued actually in court over this. He had fired a housekeeper, uh, because she wouldn't tithe to his church. He was paying her paid employee and he was demanding that she pay, uh, 10% of her income to his church. That is illegal, of course, but it's also exactly what he says he doesn't do. We don't give by compulsion. He was forcing her to do this lest he fire her. And based upon their 990 forms, that meant 10% of her income went back to the church and 44% of that went back to his pocket. So he's basically getting a discount, uh, uh, a little discount off services. Craziness, craziness. So how much money is really going into it and how much is, I mean you could do the math. They got videos for three, three or four years up on their YouTube channel. You could find them. They're called Giving Day. And you could sit and do the math and you can add everything up and you can ask yourself what is really going on here? They're building. Maybe it's going to be done. I don't know. All I know is this violates scripture over and over again. If we're going to think biblically about giving, then we have to realize you will not be as effective of a fundraiser if you do it Jesus way. It's just not going to work. You will not be the ministries that raise the most money. Generally speaking. Now this is always exceptions because maybe God's just doing a great work, maybe something special is happening. It's the work of the Holy Spirit. But generally speaking, the ministers and ministries that raise the most money, the best fundraisers, raisers out there are going to are violating what Jesus commanded and that's why they're so good. But money talks so people keep doing what they're doing. All right, we're going to go to your guys questions. This is the last livestream of last Q and A, I should say. I don't have a live stream planned for the rest of the year, but you know, maybe I'll suddenly change my mind and do one randomly. But, um, I'm going to go to your guys questions from the live chat. My name is Mike Winger. My goal is to help you learn to think biblically about everything. And that includes giving, finances and all this we want to be generous givers, not selfish. We want to be looking to God to provide for us when we give, but not expecting financial outpourings. That's different than God providing for you. All right, question number two. Um, okay. Deity says, hi, Mike, in your view, does ethnic Israel have a divine right to the Holy Land today, according to scripture? Um, so there's a couple things I'll mention on this. One of them is, um, the level of heat versus light. Light meaning understanding and clarity, and heat meaning, like people being angry or passionate or, you know, overreacting. Um, is way out of balance when it comes to Israel. And people often don't hear what you say. They hear you say things you're not saying. So let me say what I'm not saying first. Um, I'm not saying, uh, Israel is always the good guy in every situation. Israel is faithful to God, and they're the people of God in this sort of faithful sense. Um, I'm not saying that modern, uh, Israel, um, doesn't do sometimes horrible things. I'm just not saying any of those things. Um, but I am going to try to answer your question. Biblically speaking, does ethnic Israel have a divine right to the Holy Land today, according to scripture? Now, the way that I understand this is that there's a difference between a conditional promise from God and an unconditional promise from God. And very simplistically, as I understand the Old Testament, the promises of God to Abraham regarding the land of Israel, the physical land, is that it's perpetual and ongoing, and that promise is never taken away. It's also not conditioned on anything. So what you can do is you can compare God's promises to Abraham earlier in Genesis with the. With God's teachings through Moses in Deuteronomy. And when they're. So let me for a counterpoint. In Deuteronomy, they walk through the valley as people cry out from the left and right on the mountainsides, and they're calling out blessings and curses. And he goes, if you do well, it'll be well with you in the land. Right? If you do this, I'll bless you. I'll provide for you. You'll have crops, and you will have honor amongst your, uh, your neighbors, and you guys will be pleased. Everything will be wonderful. There will be actual prosperity. This is where you get prosperity. Preaching in the Old Testament is Israel, if you obey me, I will prosper you. And then on the other side, it's, if you disobey, if you disobey me, I will curse you. Uh, you will suffer, you will experience pestilence, you'll experience famine, you will experience your enemies coming and taking you out of the land. Now, some people take that and they go, well, that's what happened. God took them out of the land. They lost the land. But when you look at this in the context of underneath Abraham's promise, right, Because Abraham and Moses are two different situations. Abraham had promises that were not conditional at all. And it's frequently where the Old Testament, when they lose their land or lose things, that they cry out about the promise of Abraham. Oh, Lord, remember Abraham, remember your promise to Abraham, and restore us on the basis of grace, on the basis of promise. A picture of the Gospel itself. Because they could never enter the land because of their works and their goodness. They could never enter the prosperity and fully experience it because of their goodness. But there still remains this promise that's unconditional to Abraham. So read through Genesis specifically. Let me start in 12. Read through the story of Abraham and all of the promises God makes to Abraham and ask yourself, are these unconditional promises about the land, of the physical land, to his physical descendants? Now, at this point, some are getting a little derailed in their mind on this topic because they're going to say, mike, the current Jews aren't really Jews. They're not really Abraham's descendants. Now, I don't believe that, but my point doesn't depend on that. Okay? My point would be, well, whoever the Jews are, if you think it's not really them for some reason, there's still a promise to Abraham about his descendants inheriting the land. That's still a promise that it will be theirs and theirs perpetually. So that's number one. Now there's the second issue, number two, which is that in the New Testament there is a prophecy about a bunch of Jews coming back to God religiously, spiritually, returning to the Messiah, getting saved and having a great revival. And I'll read it to you guys now it's Romans 11. Now, you combine these two together. Oh, there's a promise of perpetual. But then there's also this promise of a bunch of Jews basically being Messianic, being true Jews, where they're saved. Um, so let's read Romans 11 together. I say, then has God cast away his people? Certainly not. For I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away his people whom he foreknew. Or do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? Saying, lord, they've killed your prophets and torn down your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life. But what does the divine response say to him? I've reserved for myself 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Even so, then, at this present time, there is a remnant according to the election of grace. And if by grace, then it is no longer of works, otherwise, grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace, otherwise, work is no longer work. This is actually one of my key verses when I deal with either, uh, Catholicism or Orthodoxy. Spend all day thinking about that. This is the big deal anyway. So, um, this present time, there's a remnant according to election of grace. Okay, so what does he mean by that? He's like, it's not like God has said, forget Israel. I just want. I'll just do Gentiles now. I don't care about the people of Israel. No, no, no. Verse 7. What then? Israel has not obtained what it seeks. What is happening? If God doesn't cast them off, what is it? Israel has not obtained what it seeks, but the elect have obtained it. And the rest were blinded, just as it is written. So a significant number of them are blinded. God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see, ears that they should not hear to this very day. And David says, let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a recompense to them. Let their eyes be darkened so that they do not see and bow down their back always. I say, then have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not. Now he shifts in verse 11, as I understand Romans. Now he shifts to ask the question about, like. What about like? Okay, so there's a remnant. There's like a number, some smaller number of Jewish believers in Jesus. And they're the ones whose eyes are opened and they're the elect. It says, and then you've got the rest of the Israelites, the rest of the descendants of Abraham. What about them? Is it just over for them? And God's only activity is now primarily just within the Gentiles and a minority of Jews. I say, then have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not. But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. Why? Because we're supposed to be evangelists to them. M. Now, if their fall is riches for the world and their failure, riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness. In Acts, it was the rejection of Jesus by The Jews that caused the Gospel to go out that much more into the Gentiles. So it was riches for the Gentiles. Um, but how much more? Their fullness. What is their fullness? Well, their fall is them rejecting Jesus. Their fullness is them what receiving Jesus. So now he's hypothesizing, he's discussing what it would be like if the Jews, a bunch of them, got saved. If they enlarge, not just a remnant, but enlarge. Jews, turn to the Messiah. For I speak to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I'm an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry. If by any means I may provoke to jealousy those who are of my flesh and save some of them. Ah, uh. He wants them saved. They're of his flesh. It still matters. Now, in Christ, there's neither Jew nor Greek. What we mean here is that you get to be saved without becoming Jewish. You get to be saved without having to give up your Jewishness. It doesn't matter in Christ, Jewish or not, you're saved. But that doesn't mean that Jewish doesn't mean anything or that God doesn't care about the fact that Abraham has actual descendants, right? There's still those of his flesh. It's still a category. Jew is still a category. It's just not something that impacts how you can be saved because you simply are saved by believing in Jesus. Jew, Gentiles, all the same. For if they're being cast away as the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? Think of Ezekiel's dry bones, Israel as a large, not remnant, right? In a large scale, their acceptance would be life from the dead, the rejuvenation of the people. For if the first fruit is holy, the lump is also holy. And if the root is holy, so are the branches, right? The root being, you know, Abraham, or you could refer to Christ. But the branches are the Jews. And if some of the branches were broken off, those are the unbelieving ones. And you being grafted, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them and with them became partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree. We join in with Israel. Do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you. See, I'm the one who is a gentile grafted in. I'm not a natural branch, okay? I'm not a Jew. Jews are the natural branches. There's still a Distinction, or a difference rather, between them. But there's no distinction as far as how they can be saved. It's only through Christ. Um, so do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say, then branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. Okay, this is kind of like a boasting thing, right? Oh, yeah. God got rid of those Jews so he could stick me into Christ. He could put me into this salvation thing. That's why he got rid of them. Like, he likes me better. Um, and he's like, well, you're making a point, sure. Uh, but it was because of unbelief, they were broken off. Not because of their unrighteousness, not because of their. See, you weren't plugged into Jesus because you were more righteous or better. You just trusted Christ. You can take no credit for that. You can't boast against them. All you did was believe you both had sins. The Jew, the non Jew, the saved, the unsaved, they all have sins that need to be covered by the blood. Uh, because of unbelief, they were broken off. And you stand by faith. Do not be haughty, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he may not spare you either. This is an ominous thing. Since he's talking large scale. He could be saying God could move where he's not actually working that much among Gentiles anymore. And it could reverse where he's working amongst the Jews and not the Gentiles as much. And then you. Then you might, um, have some humility thinking about that. Doesn't say that that will happen, but he says he may not, as in, God could do that too. Therefore, consider the goodness and severity of God on those who fell. Severity, but towards you. Goodness, if you continue in his goodness, otherwise you also will be cut off. So there's a threat that's there. And they also, if they do not continue in unbelief, will be grafted in. For God is able to graft him in. Again, we're not talking about a remnant or a few Jews. He's talking about a significant number. But because there was already a remnant of Jews that were grafted in, or they were not grafted, they were natural branches who received the Messiah when he came. For if you were cut out of the olive tree, which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree. He's going to do more. Now. It's not just hypothetical. He'll talk about how it's actually something that's going to happen. For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion. That blindness, in part has happened to Israel until the fullness, until. Meaning that it's temporary, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come. And so all Israel will be saved. As it is written, the deliverer will come out of Zion and he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. So there's many verses that talk about how Israel fails and they get rejected by God. But there's also these constant, like, affirmations that there will be this eventual time where they will be serving God, walking with God, knowing God. So there's a land promise and there's a salvation future prophetic promise. So that's my answer to you. And you're like, but the Talmud. I wouldn't be surprised if we already had Talmud comments in the live chat. But the Talmud, it says evil things about Jesus. It does. And they're evil things. And if you're a Jew who gets saved, you have to reject the Talmud, or at least a lot of it, right? Uh, significant parts of it. Um, there's some things that are great in the Talmud. There's things that were actually Christian teachings that seems like, it really looks like messianic Jews who were believing Jesus, that their teachings entered into the Talmud in certain places, too. It's a complicated book. And there's also some stuff in it that's evil. Um, and there's a lot of stuff in it that you're just going to be like, I don't know. This is really very important. There's other stuff in it that's really wise and very good. It's a complicated book work, I might say. So you might think, well, there are enemies. There are enemies. Israel, they reject, you cannot. You know, when I went to Israel, uh, we did trips there. Uh, I did a little Bible study on the Temple Mount. And our tour guide told us who was Jewish and a believer in Jesus. He told us, hey, Mike, you know, when you do your Bible study, he goes, try to make it look like you're a tour guide. Like, pointed buildings. And, like, point over here at this building or that building. And he goes, don't, like, hold up your Bible and make it look like you're preaching uh, because then things can get kind of ugly. This was what he's taught me. Because of whether it was the Jews doing it or the Muslims or both. Who would have been upset with me thinking that's a Christian pastor in the Holy Land? Trying to be, you know, because you've got. You have the Jewish building there, you've got the Temple Mount for. I'm sorry, the Muslim building there. Um, which is like their way of trying to mark their territory anyways. So it was like trying to be careful about how we did that. Yeah, there's some even sometimes hostility there. Um, because as verse 28 says, concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. What do you mean by, uh, just all Jews are enemies for your sake or Israel, the nation is enemies for your. No, it's saying that in relation to the Gospel, they're currently rejecting it and fighting against it, turning away from their Messiah and denying their Savior. And so, yeah, in relation to the gospel, they're enemies. But of course, Jesus dies for his enemies, and we're told to love our enemies. So this is a verse that's often taken part of this verse out of context by, uh, people who just want you to hate Jews. Uh, that's not what's being taught. Look at the whole verse. Concerning the gospel, they're enemies for your sake, but concerning the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. Now, who. Who is this group that's beloved for the sake of the fathers? Unbelieving Jews. Unbelieving Jews whose branches that have been broken off, they are still considered beloved, and it's still for the sake of the fathers. Meaning that even though the grace of Christ will only be upon those who receive Jesus, God still has a plan and he still has a special relationship with the people of Israel. That's what scripture is teaching concerning the election. They unbelieving Jews are beloved for the sake of the fathers. Why? Because God made unbreakable promises to Abraham, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, right before, long before the law showed up and said, if you disobey, you lose it. There is something else that can fall back on an older truth, the promise. Read galatians, read Romans 4. The promise that God made, that was unconditional, that is still, excuse me, still hanging over their heads, still available to them for the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable, right, unconditional. For as you were once disobedient to God and yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so, these also have now been disobedient. That through the mercy shown you, they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all to disobedience, that he might have mercy on all. And it goes on. So this is God's plan for Israel. I think that Romans 11, whatever you're. Now you might say, but I'm post male, or I'm pre mill, or I'm, um, on mill. I don't think that's relevant. Okay. I mean, it matters. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't matter, but I think that what I just read in Romans 11, you should slot that into whatever your eschatology is, because this is God's. He's just saying this is what's going to happen. This is the plan. Those two things. Genesis, Romans 11. That's my answer to your question. I do think that we have good reason to. I mean, more than just good reason. I'm being, uh, um, as I sometimes do, I'm being very, uh, gentle in my terminology here. It's like really solid, really solid, uh, biblical support for the fact that Israel has a land claim and a prophetic future. Now, that being said, um, that being said, when I say Israel has a land claim, does that mean Israel at any given year, pick a year in history, they're supposed to be in the land. That's actually not true. Right? So this is where it gets complicated. Only because I want to take all of scripture. There are times in the Word of God where God removes Israel from the land, right? Babylon comes and takes them away. And he has, uh, Jeremiah telling the people, don't resist, just go, God is removing you from the land. Now perpetually, the land is going to belong to them, but for now, they're out of it. He goes, In 70 years, you get to come back. But for now, just go and submit. There will be a whole generation of Jewish people who live outside the land. Live, born, die outside the land. And then you can come back. In that interim, when Babylon carried them away, they were not supposed to be in the land, even though the land belonged to them. So it can be complicated. In scripture, it's complicated. Sometimes God uses the enemies to come in and take over Israel for a time. And I don't know in modern day what God is doing with all that stuff. I don't have some spiritual discernment where I can tell you. Um, this is when Israel is supposed to be in the land. This is when they're not. This is when this, like, is Gaza supposed to be part of Israel right at this exact moment, prophetically. And I'm like, I mean this is more of a political discussion, uh, about the actual true history of the whole Gaza Israel thing. And I just haven't spent a lot of time on that. So I'm not going to try to weigh in on that. I'm not afraid to, um, but I'm afraid to mislead people because I don't know the answers and I pretend to. So it can be complicated. But I think we have those two pillars. The land. Yes. Perpetual promise through Abraham. That's perpetual. Uh, the timing, that's in God's hands. But there will be a great revival amongst the people of Israel grafted in receiving their Messiah. And it looks like there will then be like the future of Israel as this Jesus loving nation in the land. Will it happen in my lifetime or 10,000 years from now? I have no clue. All right, question number three. This comes in from, uh, Andrea who says, how do we serve the Lord biblically? Sometimes I feel like I don't know how to serve the Lord. Um, interesting. So I think that, um, if you want to serve the Lord biblically, I think that I recommend reading the book of Acts and thinking about the way that they're serving the Lord in the book of Acts. And you have a variety of ways of doing it. Um, you can even read, um, the Gospels too. And so like let's say you're reading Matthew and you read about how or Luke and you read about how Jesus is traveling and he's teaching and he's teaching them to then teach others the things he teaches them. So you learn what Jesus says and you communicate it to others. That's one thing. But he's also being supported by notice this kind of stuff in Scripture. He's being supported financially by women. Uh, there's a group of women who are financial supporters for Jesus to help him. And now he's not rich, he's not getting $444,000 a year. Um, but he is being provided for and helped, uh, on his mission by women. So there's sponsoring those who are doing great ministry work is a way to serve God. Um, in the book of Acts we read about Stephen who he's helping distribute food to the widows. We read about them saying, don't forget to take care of the poor and the widows among you. So that's a significant part of serving the Lord is taking care of the weakness and those who are in need around you, visiting those who are in prison, not forgetting, uh, fellow believers, excuse me, Hebrews talks about this. Not forgetting those who are Persecuted. Um, and so there's so many ways to serve God, but you serve God by having godly character. Um, in Galatians, it talks about the fruit of the Spirit just walking in those things. In First Corinthians, it talks about not only the fruit of the spirit, but doing spiritual things for the purpose of love and grace to others, not a performance thing or to get attention on yourself. Like, all of these things are ways of serving God. And I just say, go for it. So read Scripture and go for it. That may seem like a simplistic answer, but I think it's the best one I can give you. All right, number four. Um, JR says, and YouTube changed the way it does your guys usernames. It no longer shows the name you chose. It shows your sign. So if you hear me read a weird name, it's just because YouTube changed the way they're doing it. Uh, so R says, can you explain the trend about finding our true identity? Jamie Winship and others talk about knowing your true identity. Is it more specific than who we are in Christ, in the sense, like, we're redeemed? Um, okay. I don't know who Jamie Winship is, so I'm a little bit in the dark on the context of your question, so I'm going to guess. Forgive me if I'm guessing wrong, but there is in the charismatic church, especially like the Bethel, um, morning, uh, Star Jesus image, Todd White. Um, these guys, people don't notice this, but these guys have a really, really strong emphasis on teaching identity. Like, you'll get up and you think, oh, now they're going to teach me about spiritual healings and miracles. And then they get up and they do a whole lecture on identity. Identity is the core. Identity is the center of their theological focus. But what do they teach about identity? Um, sometimes they teach some weird stuff. Sometimes it's good stuff. There's some real health in knowing that you are a child of God and this is healthy. Like, it brings peace into the heart of a Christian to know that in your identity. When you said redeemed as an example, like, think about this. Like, I am redeemed. We used to sing a song when I was like a teenager, and it just said, I am redeemed. Washed and clean, I am redeemed. And I remember loving that song, even though it's super simplistic and repetitive. But I loved it because I really believed it. Like, I am redeemed. I am washed and clean. I am forgiven. And when you say that and you actually believe it, that's an identity thing that's valuable. You think, I am a child of God. I am an actual adopted son of God. And the girls can say biblically, they're sons of God too, not because they've become male, but rather positionally, you get a full inheritance. That's the idea of we're all sons, uh, in God. We're saying you get a full inheritance. That we will rule the heavens and the earth with Jesus for all eternity. That God will wipe away every tear from my eye, uh, because of who I am in Christ, that I've been clothed in his righteousness. These are identity things that are so powerful in your life. This is what makes you evangelized, because you know who you are in Christ, right? This is what makes you courageous to go through hardship because you know who you are in Christ. So, yes, I love the idea of identity and teaching it. Sometimes it can get a little bit skewed and identity can turn into, like, an ego pump where I'm just getting puffed up in myself, like, I'm royalty. I'm royalty. And, well, it does say we're kingdom of priests, uh, kings and priests. But it's a little different when you, uh, you know what I mean? It's just different when you're, um, I'm royalty, and you start feeling a little bit too much of that sense of entitlement, um, of that sense of I deserve. And that can be part of the identity thing. Um, so we have to be careful, we have to be thoughtful. Because I also know that I am utterly dependent upon God's grace. That it is nothing in and of myself that I offer to God. My sonship is not because of my DNA and because of who I was. It was because of my adoption in Christ. My righteousness that I carry with me is not because I did anything to earn it. It's because Christ clothed me in his righteousness and he took off the filthy rags of my sin and my fake righteousness, and he suffered and died for it. My promise of eternity is because of nothing I've earned. So when you couple this with total gratitude and dependence upon God and a sense of just, not superiority, but just thankfulness, that's healthy. But the identity stuff can turn into an ego pump. And that's where I think it becomes dangerous. Um, and it can also do things like it can be important in these identity teaching circles to deny that you sin as a Christian. This is a tricky one. I'll try to unpack it really quickly here to move on to the next Question. But I want to know I'm forgiven, and I want to know that I don't identify. I'm no longer. My identity is not someone who is in rebellion against God. And in that sense, I'm not a sinner, in that I'm not living, uh, a life of ongoing, active rebellion against God. Okay, that's fair to say that. But I sometimes hear them teach, like, you're not a sinner anymore. You're not a sinner anymore. And what it sounds like they mean is you don't sin anymore. Like, you just don't sin now. This is kind of Todd White's thing, right? Uh, I have a video coming out about Todd White. As soon as I actually, I got it ready to record, finally, I'll record it. Then I have to submit it to a lawyer. First video I've ever had to send to a lawyer. You'll see why, and make sure that everything's gonna work. Um, that I'm not foolishly opening things up to, like, a lawsuit or something. Um, and I have to show it to the witnesses, and I'd like to get their, uh, feedback on it before it goes public. But Todd White, he, uh, seems to teach that, like, from the second he got saved, he was just like. Or shortly thereafter, totally sanctified, right? Like, no sin never gets bitter at anybody, never gets overcome by anger, nothing. Um, which is, of course, not true, but that's part of the identity teaching, because he goes and teaches that identity to others. And he goes, when you know who you are in Christ, you can never get mad. And he goes, I've lived 16 years without ever looking with lust. And I've never lied in my entire Christian life, and I've never done da, da, da. And he's presenting this as, like, a standard for others based upon his view of identity, which is that he doesn't really sin. That's a weird wrong identity Christian sin. Read the New Testament. There's tons of talk about Christians who sin and the sin that they have to confront and deal with. So identity, that tries to hide the fact that I sinned. That's not real identity. That's delusion. And we'll go to question number five. Reflection says, what is the minimum one? Uh, must be. Okay, what's the minimum? One must believe in order to be saved. Romans 10, 9. But anything else? What about polytheists who believe it? Or if someone said, yes, Lord Jesus died and rose, but his death wasn't for our sin. All right, let's look at Romans 10, 9. It Says if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Okay, um, that's true, but was it meant to be interpreted in a minimalistic fashion? I think no. I think that Paul has. For instance, if I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and I believe that God raised him from the dead, but I have zero repentance or remorse over my sins, like none, I go, I like my sins. I, uh, love them. I'm going to keep doing them. But I do confess Jesus as Lord and that God raised him from the dead. Is that what Paul meant? Paul meant you could do that. What if I am, um, a Mormon? Ah. What if I'm Jehovah's Witness? Although actually they don't believe God raised him from the dead. Well, no, they do. I mean, okay, they don't believe he physically raised from the dead, so they believe he raised, but not physically. And so they could actually say this, Jesus is Lord. God raised him from the dead, just not physically. Obviously, Paul defends the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus, and anybody who denies that is denying the resurrection. So there's theological weight that's behind these. So when you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, that has to be a true confession. And if I'm truly confessing Jesus as Lord, then that means I'm not living in continual rebellion against God. Okay, so repentance is actually implied in here. Right. Because when I confess Christ is my Lord, if it's a true confession, then that means he is actually the Lord of my life. So I have my heart yielded to Christ, not just a, uh, statement from my mouth. And if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, well, we mean the him that is Jesus, who is God Almighty in the flesh, who died on the cross for my sins, even though that cross isn't mentioned here, but that's what's implied there. And God raised him from the dead, we mean the bodily resurrection. So even in a tiny little statement like Romans 10, 9, there's elements that reveal there's more theology going on here than you might first notice. So if you're confessing Jesus, but you got the wrong Jesus, or you say Lord Jesus, but he's not really your Lord, that's not a true confession, that's a deception. If you say you believe God raised him, but you don't believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ, then no, you can't be saved. But what's the minimum one must be. You could believe that and be saved. I think somebody could even be confused. I'm going to be, please hear me carefully. Someone's going to grab a clip and make a video about this. But I believe that somebody could be confused where they don't even know that Jesus is God. They don't know that Jesus is God, but they also don't reject that Jesus is God. They simply are so new to Christianity that they just don't know that much. But they did hear that God sent his Son, so they know he's the Son of God, but I don't know what that means yet. And Jesus died on the cross for my sins, and he rose from the dead. And they're like, receiving the Holy Spirit's working in their life. And they go, I believe it, I confess. I submit to the Lord Jesus. I'm like, that guy's saved. He will find out Jesus is God over time and he'll accept it and embrace it. And if he rejects it, then I would doubt that his salvation was genuine in the first place. Right. But so, I mean, what's the minimal you could know? It feels like a little bit of a scary question to ask because people could take what I describe as the minimum you could know, and they'll take it as prescriptive, a prescription for. Here's the minimum you should know. And that's dangerous. You want to know everything you can about Jesus, everything you can about God. You want to be adding knowledge. You know, Peter talks about adding knowledge to our faith, and we do need to continue doing that. Um, but the basic, basic, basic minimum is that, like, ah, there's a God and I'm a sinner, and that Jesus died for my sins and rose again, like that basic thing. And I receive that, truly, I'm saved. I think that that is enough, um, based upon what I read in Scripture, um, because belief in Christ is the thing. So there's a lot more theological content you want to have and that should be in place. But I'm not going to make all those things like requirements for salvation, because that's, uh, not true. I don't believe. All right, let's go to the next question. Joseph Bayes says, hi, Mike, could you help me understand impassibility? I've heard that God doesn't have emotions, meaning we can't move God to feel. What about Deuteronomy 32, 21, which sounds like we can move God to feel things? Yeah, this is complicated. And I admit going into this discussion here, it goes a little over my head as well. Okay, so I know I have more to learn about this and there may be something I share right now that is like it wasn't 100% right because I just know I don't have the full knowledge on this. But as I understand it, divine, uh, impassibility, this idea that God does not feel emotions effectively, um, or he doesn't have changing emotions, you might put it that way, um, it connects to divine simplicity. That is a, ah, philosophical doctrine about God's nature. It says God is not composed of parts. I know that all this language sounds so weird and it feels very foreign to us. It's not how we normally think about things. But when they say God's not composed of parts, what they mean is that God is just one thing. And then they draw that out logically and they go, and because God is only one thing, this sort of divine simplicity, because of that, God doesn't have emotions the way that you do as a human. So he's not like, I feel angry now or I feel love now. There's something else going on there. And how they describe it is where it goes over my head. Because when they try to describe the emotions God does feel, I feel like they're describing non emotions and things that don't make sense to my brain. However, this doctrine of divine simplicity is considered a core doctrine by many Christians. I don't agree with that. I hope I'm right. I don't agree with that. And at least it hasn't been demonstrated to, um, me that it's a core doctrine. It's one of those things where someone goes, well, if you deny this, then you have to deny this other thing and this other thing is core doctrine. And I'm like, even if you're right, that logically the denial of divine simplicity equals would logically entail the denial of some core doctrine. It doesn't mean that. It does entail it. Because people are often not logical. They just hold together truths that aren't necessarily logical. So if there was a Christian who said, um, I believe Jesus died and rose and you need him for salvation, and then they also believed in karma, I'd be like, you're wrong about karma. But I don't think it means you're not Christian. I think it means you're being illogical and irrational and you're having thoughts that conflict with each other, um, that would not make any sense. Or if they said, uh, Jesus is the only way, he's the only way. And he goes, but, you know, um, Buddha was kind of a prophet from God. Too. I'd be like, whoa, red alert, red alert. That's a very dangerous thing you said. But it doesn't mean you're not saved. Like, I'm not going to heresy label you that quickly. I'm going to say, this is a serious problem with the thing that you just said. Um, anyway, so you got divine simplicity that leads to a view of God's emotions that he doesn't have in. He doesn't change states, he doesn't have emotional states. Which then leads to the question of, um, what about times where he's angry or loving or whatever? He's feeling things in the Old Testament and they go, oh, that's just anthropomorphism. God is being described in human terms to help us understand him better. And we'll go to the example you mentioned here. It says about the Jews, they have provoked me to jealousy by what is not God. They have moved me to anger by their foolish idols. But I will provoke them to jealousy by those who are not a nation. I will move them to anger by a foolish nation. So this is a really good verse you've picked out because it doesn't just say that God has emotional states or something like that. God has a changing emotional state. That's what the verse is implying. He was not provoked to jealousy, and now he is provoked to jealousy. He was not angry, and now he has been moved to anger, and he's been moved to anger by the actions and activities of humans. This would imply that divine impassibility is misunderstood, um, or misunderstanding. Um, let me think how else to explain this. The next thing I'd say is, um, the way that I've heard this answered from those who, who hold to divine impassibility is that this is merely language being used to describe things that are not the way that they sound. Um, and here I think I'm going to put back on your screen. I think that I need a better answer than that for me to adopt this view of impossibility personally. And if I'm wrong, I want to be corrected on this. I want to learn and grow. But I can't just hold to a doctrine because I feel like theological pressure from people around me who disapprove me strongly if I don't hold to it. I'm like, the simplest understanding of Scripture here implies that God actually has emotions. And you'd have to have a pretty strong argument to tell me that over and over again in the Old Testament. I have to go, well, that doesn't mean what it sounds like. It Means there's a pretty strong argument for that. So I don't think that that's the case. I think God has emotions. And, um, yet I do not deny any core doctrine, of course, of who God is. I just know I'm going to be accused of being a heretic again for this, but I'll share the truth and be transparent with you guys. Um, yeah, so that I hope I've answered. Let me just reread your question. Make sure I did. Um, help me understand divine impassibility. Uh, I heard that God doesn't have emotions, meaning we can't move God to feel. What about Deuteronomy? Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you on that. I don't. I want help understanding it too. Uh, if that's a doctrine I have to hold. Here's what I actually think happened. My theory about divine impassibility is that it comes from deep philosophical considerations about God that became enshrined as doctrinal commitments when they, Biblically speaking, they don't have to be doctrinal commitments. All right, I'll move on to something less convoluted. Number six. Uh, number seven. Yeah. Amy Mosteller says, my son is bothered by free will because it causes so much pain and suffering and that God foreknew we would sin. How can I encourage him? Thanks for your ministry. Um, Amy. I wish I knew how old he was. I would handle it differently depending on the age of the person. Um, one way you can address this is you can highlight certain elements that you don't take away. This idea of free will or that it does introduce pain and suffering into the world, because it absolutely does. Um, but you can highlight, you can zoom out and you can go, let's look at God's larger picture for creation. Because here's what happens, especially when you're young. You look at the snapshot of your life, and in your mind, you instantly treat it like that's eternity, like what you see happening right now, that that's how things always will be. And biblically, that's not true. This is a very temporary season of time that we're in where there's free will and people are choosing. I mean, that will be free will, uh, in a sense, in heaven as well. But there's free will, and people are choosing, uh, God or rejecting God. They're sinning, they're causing harms. They're also doing great things. But first step, I'd say, is tell them about eternity in heaven. There will be a group of people who have freely chosen to love God and serve God. They will live out joy and glory in that freedom that with the Lord for all eternity there will be no more suffering. And all the comforts we receive in heaven will help us to overcome all the pains we've experienced on earth, where he will wipe away every tear from our eye because it's so wonderful that we're okay with what happened before. That's easier to say than to accomplish, but God's going to accomplish it for real. So that's one thing I'd say. Another thing I would mention is talk to him about the cost of losing free will. So, for instance, um, say, son, do you know that I love you? Right? And he's going to say, yes, mom, of course I know you love me. Or, dad, it's Amy. So probably mom, um, yes, Mom, I know you love me. And she says, what if I was a robot? What if you found out that I was a robot and I was programmed, everything I did was pre programmed into me and that I didn't actually have any. I never could make a choice to love you. Anytime I did something for you, I couldn't do otherwise. I never made a sacrifice where I thought, I'm going to love my son and take care of him, even if it cost me. I never once did that. I always just follow my programming. Would that affect the way you feel about my love? Let him work on that for a little bit. Because free will is a necessary condition for genuine love. It just is. God doesn't want robots and I don't want a robot. If my wife was programmed to love me, it wouldn't be real, it'd be fake. I'd be constantly trying to pretend that it mattered that she loved me, but it was just like ones and zeros that programmed her to do that. So you look at the idea of free will, or imagine a great hero who makes a great sacrifice. He sacrifices himself to save others, and you're like, well, he was just programmed to do that. He had no free will. He couldn't choose whether to do that or not. It was automatic. If you don't have free will, if you really get rid of free will entirely, are we even souls? Are we even alive? Or are we just automatons? I think that would be some things I would present him with. Um, but the choice to be a hero or the choice to love, that comes alongside with the choice to be a villain and the choice to hate. And they go together. And the way that God reconciles, I think the problems that come is that this is a temporary time where people make their choices. And then there's an eternal joy that's coming for those who choose Christ. And there is punishment for those who reject him based upon their free choices. And it will be perfect justice. So there's a few thoughts that you can share with him that, uh, I hope you will find helpful. I think in Scripture, we see free will exercised all the time from the garden on. And imagine, maybe you can give another analogy. So in the garden, Adam and Eve are there in the garden, right? And she says, and they are told not to eat of the tree, but they do it anyways. That's pretty messed up, right? But they get the consequences of their sin. And your son's like, where are you taking me with this? I feel there's a catch. And there is a catch. And here's the catch. Imagine if we took away free will, as you would like. Adam and Eve get put in the garden. Adam and Eve are forced by God's choice without their consent, without their free will, because they have no will. There's no power to consent to anything. They eat of the tree in order to fall, because God just programmed them to. And then he punishes them for it. And he might say, but no, Mom, I want them to not eat of the tree. And we only live in glory, and we only live in perfect harmony. Except his perfect harmony is fake. It's all fake. Free will is a precondition for genuineness, for realness in relationships. So something, um, to think about. All right, um, number whatever. We're on. Let's look at how do I develop a belief? Oh, this is from Araba. How do I develop a belief in Christianity? It feels very difficult as an analytic person. Been looking into apologetics, but still can't develop faith. And I strongly want to live righteously. First off, uh, I love you. That's wonderful. I'm grateful to have your question. And I know what it can feel like looking around and seeing all of the stuff that goes on and thinking like, ah, how do I figure this out? One of the things I counsel you with first is patience. Like, it's okay to be patient with yourself, patient with the process, to just take your time. There are certain things that you can do to help develop a belief in Christianity. And it might sound weird. I just talked about free will. Um, and I believe that that's true even of your beliefs, that I influence my own beliefs with my free will. For instance, if I want to. If I think, how do I develop? I'LL give an analogy. How do I develop more conspiratorial beliefs? The answer is easy, isn't it? It's obvious. I'm going to go listen to Candace Owens. I'm going to go listen to which I recommend you guys stop listening to her, uh, for your own spiritual health. Um, but I'm going to go listen to a bunch of people who promote conspiracy type stuff because if I expose myself to more of it, I am more likely to believe it. So you can make choices in your life that will affect your beliefs and that's a positive thing. How do you develop more belief in Christianity? Well, you said you're delving into somewhat into apologetics. I think that's a fantastic beginning. Um, I have a video series called Evidence for the Bible. I'll recommend you check out Just type Michael in youn Evidence for the Bible Playlist. Just Google it. It'll come right up. Um, there's other stuff as well. Uh, there's all kinds of things you can find. But analytic people are welcome in Christianity. Christianity stands up great to analytic people. Christians don't always do so. So I would counsel you with this. When you are talking to a believer and you ask your analytical questions and you sense they have never thought about this before. I've had this happen many times in my own life, especially when I was younger and I was going through my own doubts about God, about Christianity, about the Bible, about Jesus. And I started asking hard questions to Christians around me, not to challenge them, but to ask them for help. How do you know this? Or how do we know that? And I found that almost none of the ones around me had a clue how to answer my questions. They never even thought of them. And so they make up these answers off the spot. That just made them look bad. And I just thought, I won't talk to them. They don't know. I don't want to mess them up with my challenging questions. I'll just leave them alone. But I did find some resources that helped. So one of them, especially at a much younger age for me, was Lee Strobel's the Case for Christ. Got a hold of that book, saw it on a discount table and got it, or was it free? I don't remember now. And I got it and read it. And it was like that opened the door to a new way of thinking about apologetics and stuff like that for me. Um, I also looked into other stuff like Evidence for the resurrection, things like that. That really helped me a lot. And I recommend you check those things out. Those are good avenues to look into. Um, and I have looked into things like supposed contradictions. I have a few videos on that. If you just type my name and Bible contradictions into a search engine, you'll see some videos. Um, those, to me, are usually smoke and mirrors. And they don't. They don't. But they also. It doesn't get to the heart of the issue. Like, I want to know that Jesus rose, that God exists. Okay? These are the things I need to know. God exists. Jesus rose from the dead. The Bible's reliable and trustworthy. There's, like, evidence, uh, of divine inspiration in scripture. And all those things are abundantly demonstrated if you do the work and dig. So don't get discouraged when you talk to a Christian who doesn't know how to answer your questions, that's fine. They never struggled with it, so they haven't thought about it. So they don't have an answer for it. Find the ones that can't dig deeper on those types of issues. I hope you find that helpful, but I'd encourage other stuff, too. Go to church. Just start attending. Start attending and realize that you're not going to church to be like, okay, show me how perfect all this is. You're surrounded by a bunch of people just like you or like me who are just like, you know, we all have our issues, but you're making an effort to draw near to God, and God says, draw near to me and I'll draw near to you. So pray, go to church. Start engaging in those things and start asking God, reveal yourself to me and be patient. It may take time, and that's okay. I pray that God would open your heart and open your eyes to see the truth of Jesus so that your analytical mind will not have you resisting Christ, but pushing you to Christ. Last piece of advice I give you is be aware of our own sin nature. When I went through doubts, um, I was in my twenties, major doubts about Christianity. This whole season I went through. When I went through that, I found myself radically tempted to do things I normally would never do. It was weird. And it was as though this sense of removing, um, that confidence in the truthfulness of Christianity was replaced by just temptation to do stuff I normally would, would not do because I'm Christian, even though I'm tempted to do them those things. Beware the drive of temptation, because lots of things drive our beliefs. One of the things that drives our beliefs is what we want. We often believe what we want to be true. And there can be desires for Christianity to not be true or for me to remain agnostic. It can be that I feel that way because I don't want to give up this sin or I want to start committing this sin. And so it becomes a thing where I'm actually desiring. Well, um, part of me desires God and part of me desires sin. You know, be aware of those things and um, fight that spiritual battle. Because if Christianity is true, if all I'm saying is right, then you are in an actual spiritual battle for your soul. And the enemy, Satan as well as your own flesh will pull you away from Christ, even as truth may draw you to Christ. And the Holy Spirit is going to pull you and the truth is there for you to find. Be aware of that tug of war. So God bless you. All right, question number nine. Clara Izz. I cannot read these names. Some of them I keep thinking I'll trust God easier if I get more questions about God answered. But I'm sad about things like unmet godly desires. Remembering God's promises doesn't help. How do I fix this? Okay, this is such a good question. Um, I'm m going to reread that first part. I want you guys to think how many of you guys have felt the same way. Um, I keep thinking I'll trust God easier if I get more questions about God answered. I already told you guys, I went through this like season of doubt. I've mentioned it in the past, but um, I remember getting, I had major intellectual questions, right? How do I know the Bible was handed down reliably? How do I know that we even have the right books in our Bible? How do I know that the verification of these things is true? Is this really fulfilled prophecy? Was it even written before the thing happened? How do I know that? And I started answering all these questions. This is what uh, affected my ministry and why I do apologetics too, is because I had to do it. For me, um, what was weird is I came to firm belief in God's uh, existence, which I never really fell off the wagon on that in any way. Um, it seems abundantly obvious that God exists and there's no better explanation for the existence of everything else. Um, but firm belief in God's existence, firm belief in the resurrection of Jesus, that it was historically substantiated like that the evidence pointed you in the direction that Jesus did in fact rise. Um, that the Bible has been preserved, that there haven't been any great conspiracies and switching our books around and stuff like that. That um, there aren't a bunch of contradictions. And even that there is prophecy in the scripture that has been fulfilled. And I don't mean like thousands and thousands. I mean, there are some really good examples that evidentially can be supported to show prophecy in the Bible having been fulfilled. It was written ahead of time, happened after. And it wasn't fulfilled by a conspiracy, but by natural human events. But I didn't feel any better. I didn't feel better. I still felt the same as when I was like, in this major faith crisis and I wasn't in it anymore. And that was the weirdest thing to me, because I like you. I kept thinking, I'll trust God easier if I get more questions about God answered. And I didn't. Um, in some respects, I didn't. I remember just deciding, I'm just going to trust you no matter what. Um, I was thinking all this evidence would make my heart feel better. Intellectually I trusted more, but not emotionally. That's what I mean by in some respects. Intellectually I was like, this seems m solid. I could defend this. I now hear atheists and they give an accusation against Christianity. And I was like, that's a bad claim. And I actually have better arguments against Christianity that I also think are proven wrong. So I'm just not intimidated by anymore. Um, but I didn't feel better. I saw that psychological doubt that I just didn't know how to put my finger on. And I remember one incident, I'll tell you guys. I drove, uh, to the beach with my guitar and went out and I was feeling like total spiritual turmoil, total spiritual warfare, like, nasty. And I drove out to the beach and I sat down alone at the beach and playing my guitar. And I sang worship songs. And I thought, somehow in my mind I felt like this is like an act that was going to like, sort of help me out. It was like me putting my foot in the ground saying, I'm going to trust in Christ. I've got all the intellectual reasons, but I'm just dealing with all this emotional stuff. I'm going to just trust in Christ. Um, and I play worship for a little while and sang and I did not feel anything. I didn't feel any better at all. Not in any way, shape or form. Then I got my guitar and I walked back to my car and I remember praying, well, I don't feel any better, Lord, I'm just going to trust you anyways. I'm just going to choose to trust you no matter what. Period. End of story. That's it. I'll just trust you. And I drove away, and I still didn't feel better. And I got home, and I still didn't feel better. But I did what I said I would do. I would trust the Lord with all my heart, lean not on my own understanding, acknowledge him in all my ways, and he'll direct my paths. That is an act of intellectually substantiated evidence, informed faith. Yes, I have the support. Yes, I've got the apologetics. I've got all that. But I still had to make a decision that I was just going to choose to trust God with all my heart. Not against my intellect, but sometimes against my heart. I made that choice. I don't regret it. And that muscle of faith or that muscle, that strength of conviction, grew and grew and grew and grew. Eventually, I felt better. I feel better now. I feel great. So I would encourage you with that. Um, sometimes. So questions, answer problems. They don't always fix your heart. And your heart needs to just focus on God. Trust in God, no matter what. And after you hear me say this, you may be like, I trust you, Lord. And you're like, I still don't feel any better. All I want to tell you is, that's okay. That's okay. Give it time. Seek the Lord. Wait on the Lord, and He will renew your strength. Wait on the Lord. Okay, let's look at number two. 10. I have difficulty knowing what the Bible this is, Jaser. I have difficulty knowing what the Bible means when it says that someone who sins after being saved was never saved. I know that's a very simplistic version, but it has always caused me anxiety. Um, yeah, well. So, Jaser, I'm not sure if I actually teach the thing that you're having a difficulty with. The idea that someone who sins after being saved was never saved. I've never taught that. Um, and I don't think people should teach that. I think that Christians do sin. In the letters to the churches, Jesus warns several groups of Christians about the sin that they have in their camp. Uh, in First John 2, it says, if anyone says he has no sin, he's a liar and the truth is not in him. Um, if anyone says he does not sin, right, he's not telling the truth. So Christians do sin. Um, so be encouraged by that. From what you wrote, what you have a hard time with, you should have a hard time with, because that's not what scripture says. Now, you said never saved. So I'm going to venture a guess that maybe there's just a little bit of a disjoint in me understanding what you were trying to explain and that you're saying, I have a hard time with people who say that if somebody abandons Christ that they were never really a Christian. Maybe that's the part that you're having a hard time with. And I'm a little bit on the fence on that one. And so I never say that ever. Um. Oh, but you were never really a Christian. I just don't make that claim. I don't think that's helpful. I think we do that because it makes us feel good about our faith, but it doesn't do much for evangelizing anybody, and it doesn't make a lot of sense, especially to non believers. So there's a sense in which you can say for sure, um, an atheist, for instance, was never a Christian. Um, or that he doesn't believe he was. I had a conversation once, I'll share this with you guys. I had a conversation once with an atheist, and he was committing himself that he used to be a Christian, he was a worship leader. And he was like, I used to be a Christian. I did all the Christian things. I was very Christian. And, um, I said to him, you mean you used to pretend to be a Christian? And he got kind of offended by that. And I understand why, but I explained to him what I meant. And this is, you're going to think I'm disagreeing with what I just said a minute ago, but I'm not. Let me explain. Um, I said, you used to pretend you were a Christian. And he says, what do you mean? I said, well, Christianity. What does it mean to be a Christian? According to Christians, it means that you are born again, you are filled with the Holy Spirit of God, your sins have been forgiven by Jesus, and you are now walking in the light, right? Do you believe that? That was your experience. And he's like. It took like 20 minutes to get him to say it, but finally he goes, no, I don't believe that because I'm an atheist. I don't believe there is a Holy Spirit or there is a God or that Jesus does anything to anybody. Nobody's forgiven. None of that's real. So I said, in your worldview, you think you were faking being a Christian, you were faking being born again, you were pretending you were forgiven. You were acting like you were filled with the spirit. Took a long time, but he finally got to the point where he agreed with me. Um, because logically speaking, if you are a former Christian and you actually reject God's existence or you reject Jesus, or you reject the Holy Spirit or you reject the Gospel itself. Now you think it's not even true. You think you are faking. That's your worldview, not mine. You believe you were faking. You have to, or else you're not logically consistent. I thought maybe I was going to make some real ground with him because, uh, here's what I wanted him to do. Here's my hope that he would look back at his life and he would go, I had some experiences that I can't explain on atheism. Maybe God is real. I can't really abandon everything. I can say that I'm not a Christian now, but I don't know how to abandon everything I ever experienced. There maybe there is something to it. That was my hope that I was leading into that place. Instead, he just got offended and later was like, he said, I was never a Christian and I was faking it. And I was like, oh, you didn't. I just got reinterpreted. Um, now in my view, he may have been a real Christian. He may have had a real Christian faith, really been saved, and lost his salvation. Or. Or he may have been someone who was faking the whole time and they were never really saved. Because I just honestly don't have an answer to the question of once saved, always saved. I will add one thing, because every time I say this, there's videos made about it. If you want to make a video about it, you're welcome to. I'm not above criticism, and I'm sure there's times I get things wrong. And it's fair for me to be publicly critiqued for getting things wrong. But I'll just add this for the detail. My understanding of Scripture is if a person loses their salvation, it is not because they sinned too much and God couldn't forgive them. It is not because they weren't good enough and didn't do enough good works. It is because they left the faith, they abandoned Christ, they turned away from Jesus. That's the real question. Now, am I saying people can do that? I don't know. I'm saying I don't know. And so I have to be open on that topic either way. Um, so, yeah, probably some of the most criticism I get is for this view. One of these days I like to be able to answer this question better. I want to say, once saved, always saved. Um, there are some warning passages in Scripture that I don't know how to interpret with that perspective. Uh, in Ephesians, on the other hand, this is Just wrestling with. Think biblically about everything. You want to make sure that your interpretation is consistent with all of the relevant passages of Scripture, not just one of them. Well, one of the relevant passages is Ephesians where it talks about what it means to be in Christ. You are sealed by the Holy Spirit, guarantee of your inheritance. Ephesians says you are holy and without blame before him in love. This description in Ephesians seems like a once saved, always saved description to me. It really does. Then you go over to Hebrews and you look at the passage and you go, these seem like legitimate warnings about people actually losing their salvation. They really do. And I've heard lots of interpretations. I'm not new to this and I don't yet have an interpretation of those that works with once saved, always saved. That I agree with. Maybe I will whenever I get back to the book of Hebrews and we go verse by verse through the book. And maybe I can give you guys an update and a more official teaching on this. So, um, that's what I have to say about that. You say you have difficulty trusting, uh, excuse me, difficulty knowing what the Bible means when it says someone who sins after being saved was never saved. Uh, again, so this is not something I say depending on, uh, what you're meaning by it, but this is the final Q and A for the year of 2025. I don't plan on doing another, but I do have some video stuff coming out as soon as I can get it cleared by an attorney. Um, it's just weird. I'm just, I'm laughing. It's not. The whole situation is just crazy to think about this. But, um, but I have a video coming out for announcement sakes about Todd White. And it's going to be showing the people behind the scenes who've been covering up for Todd White. There's a number of them. I have a lot of information. It'll be a long video. I've got emails and I've got recordings and voice recordings of different people. I can't tell you all the people because I'm afraid that they will take action to stop this video somehow. Um, so it's just going to have to drop when it drops. But I will say it's not just Todd White. It's the people behind the scenes, including significant charismatic leaders who've been covering up for each other for a long, long time. Because I want to expose, not just to expose, not just for the fun of it. It's not fun at all. But I think if I shine a light on the problems that cause bad leaders to never be accountable. We can actually change that problem and bring some reformation into churches, the Charismatic Church in particular. But obviously this applies to other churches as well. There's plenty of churches that have the same kinds of issues, and there's plenty of churches that are not. They're great. They have real accountability. They have leaders who, when they fail, there are other leaders around them who will not just let them get away. They will lovingly seek for their restoration whenever possible. But they will, uh, hold them accountable because they agree that they have to protect the sheep, protect the people, and hold up the standards of Christian truth, even if it's hard. And we need more of that and less of COVID up. So the Todd White video is coming out, um, when it comes out. Okay. And then, um, I have a little bonus question. This is from, uh, one of our mods who says, what's Mike's favorite Christmas tradition or memory? Favorite. What is a good Christmas tradition? Um, So I'm laughing. I often laugh when I'm not supposed to, so forgive me. That's just a character trait of mine. Um, uh, I had not had a great childhood. And so, um, Christmas traditions and stuff like that, they're all mixed in with some stuff that is not pleasant. Um, so my favorite Christmas memories are, um, when I was a kid, probably just when you first walk out, because I'm a kid, this is what kids are. And you see the presence under the tree, and you're like, I gotta open this stuff, you know, um, just to get stuff. Um, uh, we would hang out, and then our family would all get together later in the day, and then everybody would just get drunk. Um, my favorite Christmas tradition as an adult was just, um, the time I spent with my wife, uh, just opening each other's cards and gifts. And it's special. It's special. And it's a counterpoint to a lot of stuff I saw as a kid. I'm not saying my life was terrible, but it's just hard for me to find a favorite, to be honest. So sorry to mean to get all dark on you there, but just, yeah, sit with my wife and open our cards and, uh, looking at each other's gifts. We don't usually get a lot of big stuff for each other for Christmas, but little things there. It just seems real special to me, you know, that's it. All right. So God bless you guys. Merry early Christmas. Christmas is not pagan. Go ahead and enjoy it. Just don't treat Christmas as if you're a Pagan. And you'll be good. Um, that's it, I guess. Man, I feel like there's something more I should tell you guys, but I'm just stalling, I guess, for time. So. Lord, bless you guys. Keep you. Make his face to shine upon you. May God give you courage. If you're dealing with difficulty and hardship where you are, like, I don't feel better. God, no matter what, I don't feel better. In some cases, you just say, okay, I'll trust you. Even if I don't feel better, I'll just choose to trust you, man. That is a stalwart faith. That is a faith that can test, get tested by fire and still last. So I pray that you guys, you guys are doing good. Whatever struggles you have. You're, uh, looking to Jesus for them. All right, let's pray. Father, we ask for your blessings upon everybody here, uh, all the people watching or who will watch, that they would grow in Christ, that they would know Jesus more. That if they're, uh, unbelievers who are, like, they're thinking about it, they're considering it. Lord, show them how brilliant you are, how brilliant your word is and how truthful Jesus is, and then help them to overcome and really put their faith and trust in you. God, we ask that you remind us now that we are called to be children of God and ambassadors in this world, that we're on a mission. We're not just waiting and occupying here, um, but rather we're evangelizing and witnessing and everything we do matters in Christ. In Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Mhm. Sa.