Tag: Sermon

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Megachurch Pastor Ed Young Tortures Goldfish for ‘Edgy’ Sermon Illustration

Pastor Ed Young Jr., the senior pastor of Fellowship Church, a 30,000-member multisite megachurch spread across Texas and Florida, has done some terrible and goofy things in his time.

Three years ago, in a horrifying chain of events that treats the body of Christ like a commodity, congregants of Fellowship Church in Miami, a satellite campus of Ed Young’s church, had the shock of their lives when they were told at the end of a sermon that their building had been sold to a new megachurch looking to expand in the area, and that service would be their last. Ever. The church closed its doors and shut down its social media pages and website that day, leaving up to 200 members scrambling over where to go next; the pastor recalled back to the main campus without even saying goodbye.

Young released a music video featuring him dancing around wearing gold chains, fake tattoos on his arms, neck, knuckles, and under his eye, baggy clothes, and beanie, all the while mimicking pointing to a mouth grill and last year, he was still preaching on the 20-year-old bible-twisting fad “Prayer of Jabez.”

Lastly, he released a video on Instagram berating and characterizing believers who want to be fed God’s word from the pulpit as a bunch of ‘dirty-diaper’-wearing babies.

In a recently unearthed sermon illustration from his 2017 series ‘Hooked,’ Young can be seen doing his interpretation of the Tony Campolo/ Perry Noble schtick where they curse from the pulpit and then pronounce, “You’re more upset that I said the word “s***’ than you are at the thought of your neighbors going to hell.” 

Unlike those amateurs, however, Young came to play. 

For the illustration, Young removes a goldfish from a fish tank and places it on the pulpit, watching it as it chokes and gasps. After a short time, he picks it up and places it back in the water, admonishing his congregants:

You’re fishing with the power of God, by the power of God, make the cast, make the cast! Look at our goldfish. Wow, they’re having a good day aren’t they?  Well, a goldfish is dying, flopping, floundering around. Sorry buddy, you’re a couple of dollars but today is your last day.

I mean, I don’t want to be bad but the thing’s dying. 

I’ll rescue him. 

Some of you were more worried about that goldfish out of water and dying than you are people in your lives dying without Jesus.

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Transformation Church Pastor Mike Todd Preaches While Barber Cuts Hair From Pulpit, Sprays on Beard

Two months ago, Transformation Church in Tulsa, OK, hosted a celebration of life for the late pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ, hell-denying, Trinity-denying, Universalist, Unitarian Bishop Carlton Pearson, with lead pastor Michael Todd praising him as a “man of God” who faithfully lived out the gospel message. 

One month ago, he reiterated his contempt for the scriptures by trashing the stage and pouring syrup and whipped cream all over a bible.

One day ago, decked out in some tight pink pants which were surely begging for mercy, Todd put on a strange and strained sermon illustration, preaching nearly his entire message while his barber gave him a haircut and shaves on stage.

As his barber sprayed dye on his beard to make it look fuller, Todd compared Christ’s imputed righteousness with his barber filling in the holes and the gaps in his patchy facial hair.

Transformation Church is led by pastor Michael Todd, the fashion-obsessed leader known for crowd surfing during his church’s worship service, preaching some good old-fashioned Modalism, and giving the world perhaps the grossest illustration in church after he (twice) snorted and then hocked a loogie full of spit and snot into his hand and rubbed it in another man’s face.

He recently had a service where ballet dancers with bare butts danced around the stage and, in a recent sermon, offered a muddled, confused, contradictory, and seeming apology for what God’s word says about homosexuality. Further, one of their pastors justifies his continual cussing by confessing : ‘I have never felt a conviction of the Holy Spirit’, argued on his podcast that belief in the Trinity is a non-essential issue, and that it should NOT be considered cheating if a married man is caught dancing and twerking with another woman.

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Andy Stanley Unpublished Sermon Addresses His Gay-Affirming Conference+ We Have The Audio

Update. Our first report on the conference is up here

Here is a partial excerpt from Andy Stanley’s sermon today addressing the controversy over his gay-affirming conference. It was not streamed or publicly shared, but we have access to it, and we’re posting it in full at the end.


Because we were present at the Embracing the Journey conference, we will be giving a full report starting on Monday, but we can reveal here that this sermon sits in stark and diametric contrast to what was said at the conference. Stanley is lying, and he is speaking out of both sides of his mouth, and we’re going to expose him.

He preaches:

What do we believe? What does our church believe? In churches our size you can find individuals who believe just about anything, everything, and nothing. The better question, perhaps is this question, what do we teach? What do we teach your children, your grandchildren? What do we teach about these issues? And it’s the same thing we have taught for 28 years, nothing has changed.

As it relates to sexuality, here’s what we teach. And hopefully you notice, I feel like if you’ve been coming for a while there, there should be no question about this, but I don’t mind just putting it out there. We teach what I refer to as a New Testament Sexual Ethic...so from middle school, to high school, to college, to singles to marrieds to single again, every age and stage of life this is when we teach, whether a student is straight or gay or questioning this is what we say: Hey, if you’re gonna follow Jesus while you’re figuring this out, if you’re going to follow Jesus as you struggle with your identity, or some of the things you’re feeling, if you’re going to follow Jesus, here’s what it looks like sexually to follow Jesus. And the reason your Heavenly Father’s called you to live this way, is because He loves you. Here it is. It’s just three statements.

They are:

Number one, Honor God was your body. Because the Holy Spirit lives in you and your body is how people know what you believe and where you stand and your behavior through your body is to exemplify the goodness of God and the grace of God and the love of God. So you always honor God with your body and you always honor other people’s bodies.

Number two, Don’t be mastered by anything, not by porn, not by sexual addiction. Don’t be mastered by another person. Don’t be mastered by your infatuation. Don’t be mastered by your lust. Don’t be mastered by anything. You have a master and he’s the king. And he loves you and he created you and he knows what’s best for you.

And number three, the old fashioned one, Don’t sexualize a relationship outside of marriage. “That is so old fashioned! No sex before we’re married? If you’re not married, I mean who even teaches that anymore?” Always have, always will….we’re not going to blink on this.

Here, he reiterates a utilitarian emphasis and framework for his beliefs:

And I’ve asked, you know, people in crowds this question, I’ve asked many people, dozens of people this question: hey, has sex outside of marriage made your life better or is it made it more complicated? Has sex outside of marriage made the person you had sex with, did it make their life better or did it make their life more complicated?

And honest people say “yeah, it’s creating some complications.” Well, then what do you expect your heavenly Father to say who loves you and loves the person whose life you may have a set back? What do you think their Heavenly Father’s gonna say about sexual activity when oftentimes our sex outside of marriage makes you a liar for life? Because you’re never going to tell the truth about your past. Because you’re too ashamed. What do you what did you expect?

He gets explicit here, but it’s not what it seems:

So this message is the same for everybody: sex is for married people. Regarding marriage, and this feels weird even say this, just make sure everybody knows where we are. We talk about marriage, or we talk about and teach about marriage the same way Jesus and the apostles did. Every instruction in the Bible regarding marriage references or assumes a husband and a wife, a man or a woman.

So biblical marriage, biblical marriage is between a man and a woman. We’ve never shied away from that we don’t change the words in order not to offend people.

He continues:

Now, here’s what may surprise all of us straight people. Gay attenders in our churches, they aren’t shocked that we talk that way. They aren’t shocked by that. They expect that. They grew up on that. They hoped for that. They pray for that. They pray that God would change them so they can experience that.

I sat in small groups of gay men, 35 an up to 65, and watched them weep because they don’t have a family. They couldn’t have a family. They prayed for that and God didn’t answer their prayer, and many are convinced that traditional marriage is not an option for them. So they commit to living chaste lives. And for many men and women who put their faith in Christ, they just decide, okay, I’m just going to buckle down, I’m just going to bear down, I’m just going to be by myself, I’m not going to have family, I’m going to be sexually pure. And many, many, many, many do that for long seasons of time. And some for some, it’s their whole life.

Then finally:

But for many, that is not sustainable. So they choose a same-sex marriage. Not because they’re convinced it’s biblical- they read the same Bible we do- they chose to marry for the same reason many of us do. Love, companionship, and family. And in the end, as was the case for all of us, this is the important thing I want you to hear me say; it’s their decision.

Our decision is to decide how we respond to their decision. Our decision as a group of local churches is how are we going to respond to their decision. And we decided 28 years ago, we draw circles we don’t draw lines, we draw big circles. If someone desires to follow Jesus, regardless of their starting point, regardless of their past, regardless of their current circumstances, our message has (been) “come and see and come sit with me.” And this is not new. This is who we are, as we’ve always been.

And this is why I love our church, and this is why I’m so extraordinarily proud of you. We aren’t condoning sin. We are restoring relationships. And we are literally saving lives.

As we said, get ready for our upcoming series on the conference.

https://protestia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2023_10_01_09_10_36.mp3

For more on Stanley and North Point’s support for homosexuality, see here:

North Point Church Is Sending Children to All-LGBTQ Therapists: We Profile One of The Counselors
Celebrating Transgenderism?! North Point Church Staffers Rejoice After Man Comes Out as Woman
North Point Pastor Recommends Struggling Christians Attend ‘Queer Parent Summit’
Report: North Point Church Personnel Knew ‘Lap Dance Leader’ Was Gay-Affirming+ Andy Stanley Responds

Exclusive! Andy Stanley’s Children Ministry Overrun and Led by Pro-LBGTQ+ Activists
North Point Pastor Praises Gay Man’s Affirming Org. ‘Lord, Let Him Create More Allies for the LGBTQ Community’
North Point Church Baptizes Openly Transgender ‘Man’, After Giving Blessing to Transition?

North Point Church Staffers Found ‘Liking’ Pride Parade Celebration
Surprise Surprise, Another North Point Church Leader is Gay-Affirming and Wildly Liberal
Dr. Michael Brown Says He’s Spent 8 Years Exchanging Texts and Emails with Andy Stanley, Who Has REFUSED to Condemn Homosexuality



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Andy Stanley Protégé Clay Scroggins Promotes ChatGPT Sermon Production

Former North Point Community Church Pastor Clay Scroggins, a protégé of the ever-deconstructing Andy Stanley, stepped down from North Point in 2021 to found his own leadership marketing company. During his long tenure at various North Point Ministry positions, Scroggins turned a blind eye to Stanley’s constant Bible-twisting practices and even did some of his own.

In his various roles, Scroggins took the liberty of parading sexual deviants in front of the church to tell their ‘stories,’ baptizing them as believers while refusing to acknowledge that these unregenerate individuals desperately needed a call to repentance. Since Scroggins left the church, North Point has come out of the closet as an affirming congregation that even wants to subject its children to gender confusion and sexual deviancy.

While continually deconstructing the fundamentals of the faith, Andy and his cobelligerents at North Point have also been busy pedaling false teaching and heresy in the form of “Sermon Kits” that are marketed to lazy pastors who believe that they are too busy to take time study the Bible and write their own sermons. 

Both Andy Stanley and Clay Scroggins offer their sermon kits on the North Point website, where for a nominal fee of up to $295 the non-discerning pastor can acquire a seeker-sensitive non-offending sermon, the theological equivalent of goat feed that is all too common in churches within the orbit of North Point’s spiritual influence.

In a sign that theological drift continues in the American church and talking heads like Scroggins learned nothing from the ethical issues presented by the Docent Sermon plagiarism scandal of 2021, Clay and fellow faith and spirituality marketing guru Evan Chasteen are now hawking a two-hour online course on “how AI can revolutionize your sermon preparation and explore the hermeneutical ethics of leveraging AI for your sermon preparation.” 

While the course description doesn’t indicate that participants should use AI to write their sermons word for word, it does suggest that ChatGPT will be an integral part of leveraging AI to write a sermon, as taught in their workshop.

Scroggin’s push to convince pastors to use ChatGPT comes when the AI assistant is hemorrhaging users. As the mania surrounding ChatGPT’s initial release recently cooled, users have begun to realize that the capabilities of AI are less than expected, and errors within the system are more common than one would expect from a computer. A pastor might reasonably use study software like Logos or Biblehub to consult a wide variety of resources that would be useful, using them to help personally exegete a passage of scripture before penning an outline and writing a sermon. 

Scroggin’s course, however, seems to send pastors to the indiscriminate source material of ChatGPT, effectively creating a shortcut around the crucial steps of exegesis, Biblical discernment, and sermon outline formation. SermonPrep.AI boasts that the method can be used by sermon writers of any Christian Denomination, indicating that the resulting sermons likely lack theological precision.

 The problem with this approach is that it leaves the pastor and his congregation at the mercy of a nonsensical Biblical Hermeneutic that cannot discern between the heresy of 20th-century German Critical Scholars, Word of Faith Prosperity Gospel, Secular philosophy, and the faithful work of men like R.C. Sproul. Scroggins boasts that each participant in the two-hour workshop will leave with four nearly complete sermon outlines.

For pastors who fear that AI will replace them, Scroggins offers the reassurance that while AI will compile all of the knowledge and concepts that are necessary to complete a sermon, pastors are still crucial in the process because they provide the “unique insights or voice” that make the sermon personalized for their congregation. ChatGPT will compile the scripture references and resources and write the outline so that each pastor or goat farmer can focus on putting that special sauce on the sermon that his goats crave. 

While disappointing, the Sermonprep.AI workshop sheds light on where goat herders like Clay Scroggins and Andy Stanley get the fodder for their scripture-twisting homilies. The only greater fools than those who think AI programs like ChatGPT can replace careful study and exegesis are those lazy, unfaithful stewards of pulpits who squander their time during the week. 

Instead of putting in the necessary hours of labor, they believe they can purchase a canned sermon from Scroggins, who himself may have used AI to write the sermon outlines. 

The blind pastors from North Point Community Church are still leading the blind.

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Amid Controversy, Brian Houston Preaches at Unleashed Church, Says Stupid Things

As the full extent of Hillsong’s financial improprieties become known, former Global Senior Pastor Brian Houston has been vacationing in the United States, where he preached a sermon at Unleashed Church. Unleashed is led by Todd and Mary Bishop, and it is a church that is big on “training leaders.” Todd himself runs a life-coaching side gig where he charges people $12,000 a year to “achieve higher goals,” “attain personal success,” and help “unleash the leader” inside of you. If that’s too steep a price for access, your church can join his church network for only $1800 a year. 

During his sermon, Houston argues for the importance of acquiring and maintaining ‘the anointing’. He says that once you have it, you can’t lose it, frequently referencing his time at Hillsong and how he grew it to 47,000 people with the help of the anointing. He also engages in flagrant and ignorant bible twisting, such as his claim that 1 Samuel 10 teaches that Saul came from a hard and difficult life because his father’s name meant ‘hard’ or difficult.’

“And one of those standing there says ‘can anyone become a prophet no matter who his father is?’ So that the origin of the saying ‘is even Saul a prophet?’ 

See Kish, his father, was no prophet. He was a herdsman, a Rancher. We would say a father. But that’s what he was. And we all know that Saul, he was out looking for donkeys when he came across Samuel and suddenly his life would change incredibly. He’d become a different man, the Bible says, became a different person. God gave him a new heart. The Holy Spirit came powerfully upon him. Well, when the Holy Spirit come powerfully upon you, then we ready are Church Unleashed. That’s so true, it’s so true and so just some things about the anointing.

The first thing is this; the anointing makes hard things easy. As a matter of fact, Kish, Saul’s father Kish, his name meant ‘hard’ or ‘difficult.’ That’s what Saul came from. Hardship. Difficulty. Now I don’t know what area in your life right now you’re finding hard, that the anointing can make hard things easy.”

Two significant problems arise. First, according to the seminal Jones’ Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names, keyed to Strong’s, Kish means ‘snaring or birdcatcher.” According to the more likely source that Houston googled- SheKnows, a digital parenting lifestyle digital magazine for women- the name Kish means either “hard or difficult- or  “straw” and “for age.” 

The second issue, conflicting name meaning aside, is how foolish and infantile it is to say that because Kish’s name possibly means “hard,” that then Saul had a hard life and came from hardship. Or because Kish possibly means “difficult,” Saul had a difficult life. 

Houston is objectively a terrible preacher; this is just one more example of why he was disqualified long before the recent high-spending scandal. 

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Benny Hinn Sued: Handed Legal Paper in the Middle of His Sermon

Rank heretic Benny Hinn, who was last seen offering invitations to his birthday party for $5000 a person, found himself served with legal papers in the middle of a sermon, the result of being sued for defamation. 

Hinn, along with publicist Ron Torossian and associate Donald B. Price, were named in the lawsuit filed by Norman Quintero, the CEO of TeleAmerica Television Network and Senior Pastor of Iglesia Getsemani in California. 

Quintero is accusing Price, a close friend, confidant, and strategist for Hinn, of creating a website designed to “destroy Dr. Quintero’s personal reputation.” The since-deleted but archived website  contains a bevvy of claims, such that he “has been declared a criminal by the State Of California” and that he is a “Democrat Pastor” who has gone “bankrupt.” 

It is unclear at this time what role if any Hinn played in the fabrication of this website.

h/t Trinity Fi

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Discerning Presbyterians Vindicated After Aimee Byrd Preaches Sermon, Gives Church Benediction

Former professing complementarian Aimee Byrd has not only preached another sermon at a Presbyterian church, but she also gave the closing benediction. This is something she would have been forbidden from doing in her former denomination, highlighting the downgrade she’s been plying and vindicating many who have been warning about her drift for years.

Once part of The Mortification of Spin, a podcast she co-hosted with Carl Trueman and Todd Pruitt, she was sent packing and expunged from the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals due to dissatisfaction with her polemical publications, particularly after her views of complementarian went from hard, to soft, to non-existent, which is merely another example of how ‘soft-complementarianism’ is just another word for “egalitarianism.”

For years the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s version of Beth Moore rebuffed any notion or concerns that she was on a progressive trajectory- a claim she categorically denied and then became upset that it was even suggested in the first place, despite ample evidence to the contrary. In fact, we noted our concerns with her four years ago, after we removed her book from our recommended reading list, two years before she was relieved of her duties on the show.

Byrd used to be far more conservative in her beliefs, hiding behind her denomination until she left it last year. During her discourses and online skirmishes, she would frequently point out her membership creds in the OPC as proof positive she’s sound in her beliefs. Then five months ago, she preached a very strange sermon to a mixed crowd during the Sunday morning service – something her former denomination expressly prohibited.

Now, she has preached another sermon- this time at The Crossing church in Columbia, MO, which is associated with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. This denomination is nowhere as liberal as the heretical PCUSA is, but they have compromised on several points, particularly on their acceptance of the ordination of women, believing it to be a “non-essential matter” that is left to individual churches to decide. If the church is fine with it, they can ordain whoever they want.

To add fuel to the fire, she also gave the closing benediction, something further prohibited by her former denomination. Byrd clearly has no issue with women preaching and closing out the service, much to the vindication of discerning conservative stalwarts of the OPC, such as the Genevan Commons. The latter were blasted and excoriated for warning about Byrd’s theological drift years ago, with big names within their denomination taking them to task for their lack of kindness and charity in how they treated her. What some OPC leaders failed to realize is that those sounding the clarion call weren’t being cruel, but rather saw a threat and had to fling it out by the scruff of it’s neck, understanding the destruction a little leaven can bring. It looked mean at the time, but was in reality a mercy.

Time has proven them, and us right.

Bonus. Byrd giving the benediction.

“Now may the God of Zion bless you and keep you, and we pray that his face would shine upon you this week. Have a good day. “

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Pro-Abortion Pastrix Says Stories of Jonah and Zacchaeus are Proof We Should Subsidize Birth-Control

We’ve seen a lot of scripture twisting in our day, but nothing quite like the dark arts performed by impastor Terry Hamilton Poore, Head of Church of Birmingham, Alabama, which is part of the PCUSA denomination. Poore gained prominence when she led the fight in her state AGAINST restrictive anti-abortion laws, declaring ” The religious community needs to stand with women, work for just laws, and demonstrate respect for women’s abilities to make decisions about their own lives.”

While we typically see the story of Zacchaeus used by critical theorists and wokesters as a prooftext for reparations, Poore uses it for novel purposes. She starts off by recounting the story of Jonah and the fact that he wanted God to smite the Ninevites, comparing pro-life advocates to the mean old Jonah who just wants to see people punished, then saying Christians ought to be like Zacchaeus and give their money to women to fund their birth control and other social programs. 

“Jonah wanted judgment but God was longing to show mercy, and God’s spirit of mercy was more powerful than Jonah’s spirit of judgment. I have a hunch that those who are celebrating the overturning of Roe v. Wade might also be asking the wrong question. The real question isn’t, how do we keep people from having abortions, the real question should be how do we change the circumstances that force people to make desperate decisions?”

…Over 75% of those who seek abortions are living near or below the poverty lines. So if we’re concerned about abortion, maybe another good question is, what do we do about poverty? Jesus never mentioned abortion, but he did talk about poverty. In fact, he talked about poverty more than any other single issue. According to Jesus, dealing justly with the poor was the primary means of experiencing the realm of heaven.

Remember, when the rich man asked what to do to inherit eternal life? After loving God and neighbor Jesus urged him to sell all he had and give it to the poor. When Jesus condemned the scribes and Pharisees for hypocrisy, it was because they were using their positions to make things easy on themselves and hard on everyone else. And when Zacchaeus, a wealthy tax collector announced that he would repay anyone he cheated four times the amount and give half of his possessions to the poor. Jesus declared that that day salvation had come to him.

So how do we set our course in the direction Jesus called for? The direction that leads to salvation? How do we ensure that women and families have the health care, the contraceptive resources, the childcare, the housing, the decent jobs, the equitable pay, the equal protection, the access to transportation, the good schools, all the things that make it possible for a child and its parents to flourish?

That’s a harder question. Because it’s so much more complicated than just slamming down a law. It means changing some fundamental things about our society, how it functions, and who it favors

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More Modalism? Pastor Mike Todd Says The Father is God 1.0, Jesus is God 2.0, and the Holy Ghost is God 3.0

Three weeks ago, a new video came to light featuring Transformation Church’s Lead Pastor Michael Todd preaching modalism, using vats of water, ice, and dry ice to show that in the same way these are all “expressions” of H₂O, just in a different form, so are the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost “expressions” of God.

Todd is known for crowd surfing during his church’s worship service and spending a lot of money. In the last two years, he’s given away $3,500,000 in houses, cash, and cars, spent $65,000 to buy 168 pairs of shoes, gave $600,000 away in “reparations” and purchased a real estate complex for over $20,000,000, and then another for $35,000,000. He also gave away a million dollars in a recent sermon series.

He’s also known for frequently appearing on Preachers n Sneakers Instagram account for wearing insanely expensive clothing and for giving the world perhaps the grossest illustration in church after he snorted and then hocked a loogie full of spit and snot into his hand and rubbed it in another man’s face.

In a newly unearthed video from his April 18, 2021 sermon Why Wouldn’t You Accept The Upgrade, Todd continues in his quest to explain the Trinity in the worse way possible, likening the Holy Spirit to an upgrade you might get for your phone- why wouldn’t you trade in the iPhone 6 for an iPhone 12- and comparing the godhead to software that you might need an upgrade for, where the Father is God version 1.0, Jesus is God 2.0, and the Holy Ghost is God 3.0

Why wouldn’t you accept the upgrade? Why? Why wouldn’t I have all of this power available to me all, of this help available to me? Because somebody said it was weird? Because somebody abused that the term before? Because you were never taught about it?

I have a burden to help you experience God 3.0. See, a lot of people don’t realize that there’s three versions of God, and when you talk about an operating system, it just makes sense to me in my mind. Most of us recognize God. Most of us have loaded up the operating system of God. We say ‘You know what? I recognize him’ But it is my goal at Transformation Church, we represent God to the lost and found, for one reason- that’s transformation in Christ.

What we want you to do is not just recognize that there is a big man upstairs, we want you to recognize there’s a God, but we want you to receive God 2.0, which is Jesus. So at the end of every service, in just a moment, I’m gonna give you an opportunity to receive Jesus. And once you receive Jesus, the sad truth is, this is where most people stop. They just worry about getting to heaven. And God said, ‘but I came, that you may have life and life to the full.’ And through this series, my prayer is that you would release God 3.0. You would release the Holy Spirit.

h/t to @KriskDubtru for the link

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John MacArthur Acknowledges Online Attackers In Latest Sermon

Even as we learn about more bad behavior for Julie Roys, Pastor John Macarthur, the subject of 50 articles from Roys poorly detailing his alleged malfeasance, explained in Sunday’s sermon that he has no intention of directly responding to the allegations, choosing instead to allow himself to be attacked and saying he will not retaliate or curse her back for her misdeeds. He explains:

We don’t have the right to be angry at things that come at us. It’s very hard to be righteously angry about that because we get our own egos and self-protectiveness caught up in it. We don’t have a right to be angry, to revile back to people even when they falsely accuse us.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never repay evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all people. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all people. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written: “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:14-21.

…People have recently been saying to me “you’re getting pretty hammered on the internet, the people attacking you and assaulting you, are you going to respond?”

Yes. The only thing I can say is, I want to bless those who persecute me and not curse. I never want to pay back evil for evil to anyone. As much as is possible, as far as it depends on me, I want to be at peace with all men. So you can’t pick a fight with me, I’m not going to fight.

‘But what about the wrong they’re doing?’ Never take your own revenge beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay says the Lord’. You think God doesn’t know? You think somebody’s getting away with something?

Guess again.

God keeps those accounts. I don’t need to deal with that. I don’t need to seek revenge. I don’t need to retaliate. I don’t need to curse back. I just need to do what Jesus said and commit himself to a faithful creator.

While John MacArthur and Grace Community Church have not released a public statement regarding the recent scandal that ax-grinders and faith-bad journalists have been lobbying against them- one that started off as questioning the proprietary of the church discipline against a member 20 years ago and has since devolved into wild claims that anyone who doesn’t see the situation their way is guilty of harboring and defending child abuse,- the church has sent out a form email to anyone requesting more information about their position.

The response explains that their church is not likely to issue a public statement about it, citing the pledge of privacy and confidentiality of pastoral counseling sessions. Though other stories that Roys has written do not involve the confidentiality of pastoral counseling, it is unlikely that GCC and the elders there will respond as well.