Francis Chan sat down with Bible Answer Man Hank Hanegraaff, who went off the deep end and abandoned the scriptures alone when he converted to the Greek Orthodox Church, and Founder of Gospel For Asia KP Yohannan to dive into some deep discussions on what unifies and divides Christians.
In a deeply troubling display of infantilism, Chan spends near the entire time in emotional agony, asking both men basic questions of the faith to the point where you wonder how on earth this man can be a teacher and minister when he is conflicted about so many things and doesn’t seem to understand the tenets and history of Christianity. It’s frightening, and for the ever-increasingly confused Chan, shows his drift towards some form of either charismatic Roman Catholicism or to the Greek Orthodox church itself.
He says:
I want to ask something because I feel like I’m in a place that’s similar to a lot of people, where I’ve been a part of a tradition that basically allows every individual to go in his office or his basement and just kind of come up with an interpretation and then get as many followers as they can.
And so it’s almost a popularity contest of ‘hey, I am so intelligent so follow me,’ or ‘I have this supernatural power of doing these miracles so follow me.’ Or has a charismatic personality or I’m just a gifted leader, and so based upon that you have so many different theologies that when you walk into a church, you don’t know their view of sexuality, you don’t know their view of marriage and divorce, because everyone just preaches something different.
And so some of us are just going, ‘ok, I’ve been a part of that – it feels like a circus,’ and I am fighting for these things, and now I’m seeing some of the wisdom of…ok I get why people say, ‘well you don’t just – everyone goes alone and figures it out for themselves and then gathers as many followers as possible.’
[Rather] we go back to the ancient church and try to figure out what did those early church fathers agree on? What did those councils agree on? And part of that feels very good to me, that it’s not like I’ve got to be that beacon of truth because everyone and their mother is starting their own podcast you know out of their basement and going, ‘hey, follow me. These guys are out, these guys are out!’
You know? Snd it’s just going, ‘this is ridiculous. Like this can’t be the way.’ And so there’s something attractive going, ‘oh, there was a time when everyone agreed? I want to go back to that’ so that I can say, ‘look, this isn’t an idea that I just made up.’ 1500 years, they all agreed. This is your view of sexuality. This is the view of whatever, whether it is the eucharist or how you dress, or whatever but I’m just going, ‘I want to surrender to that.’
There’s a part of me that would go, ‘oh that would be nice. I don’t have to feel like I’m the savior of the world and my theology is right and I’ve got to fight all these other guys who think their theology is right.’ I’d like to be able to say, ‘hey, you know what I believe is historical. This is what everyone believed for this many years.‘
Now again, I don’t know what to do at this point. I’m not where you guys are at, where you’ve tied yourselves completely and I guess I feel a little bit lost. Like I’m starting to see the value in that, like really see the value in that and see that makes sense, and going, ‘gosh that does make more sense than being out here rebellious.’
I feel a bit arrogant for the way I’ve lived my life and the way that I taught, because it had a lot to do with me and my personal interpretation, and I do want to learn what is this collective interpretation you talk about and these councils. What would be your advice to me in taking this next step?”
Those are interesting words for a guy who’s taken up with Bethel Church and Bill Johnson and all the beliefs they possess. All those ones that have been practiced for 1500 years like fire tunnels, holy laughing, janky prophecies, and grave sucking. But the fact that Chan believes that the Christian churches believed the same thing for the first 1500 years, and then those pesky protestant reformers came and ruined it all, is shocking. It’s incredible that he believes that. His naïveté is off the charts.
After Hannegraph and Yohannan talk about the importance of being humble, how they learned so much from the “Desert Fathers and Mothers” and ripped on discernment ministries and people who judged their words and take them out of context (It’s why you get the long transcripts exclusively here) Chan concludes:
God says he gives grace to the humble and he resists the proud. He opposes it, and so when I see some of these things on the internet of people just so sure that they’re right and everyone else is wrong, there’s part of me that says ‘maybe they’re brilliant at this, maybe they’re this, this, this.’ But my logic goes, ‘wait, if God opposes the proud, can I believe that that’s the guy that he would grace with real truth right there?‘ And I hadn’t really thought about searching for humility..
