Ask the Pastors S7 E6: “How has the Word of Faith movement influenced evangelical churches today?”

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Well, welcome to ask the pastors a segment of the West Hills Podcast

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And pastoral assistance.

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Absolutely. I feel

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Like we ask the pastor, we got to change the title of the podcast for our one

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Special with special guests. With special guests. Yeah, absolutely. You can ask questions and receive physically grounded, pastorally sensitive answers from our pastoral staff and our pastoral assistant. My name is Brian. I'm your host and one of the pastors on staff, and I'm joined by Lee. Pastor Will. What's up Jeffrey? What's up? Our pastoral assistant, Jeffrey, stole your thunder. Hey, and Pastor Thad. Hey

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Everyone. So Jeffrey, why are you joining us on the podcast?

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Tha, why are you here? Yeah, we were talking about word of faith. I just got super excited. I was like,

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I got super excited. I forgot that you promoted word of faith. Would you say word of faith adjacent church or

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Yeah, I would say word of faith

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Adjacent. So not full

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On. Not full on in. Alright, we'll let you join for

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The first half of the podcast. Our resident word faith

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Expert,

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Jeffrey. Okay,

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So

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What is our topic or do you need to talk about more

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Stuff? We've got a question submitted by Nikki. Nikki, thanks for a question she wrote in two. What a woman

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Best question. We've had this season

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Hands, Dion.

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Of course we came up with the other

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Questions. We came up with the other and nobody listened to the episode. Yeah, this is our first real, go ahead, Brian. Sorry. Best topic.

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No, take it. Take it away. No. Anything

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Else? I forget. What's the topic?

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To what extent has the word faith, word of faith movement crept into faithful evangelical churches? And how do we think biblically about praying in the name and power of Jesus without assuming authority? That is not ours to wield. It's very thoughtfully written.

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It's a very thoughtfully written, and that's a great question.

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Yeah.

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So I think we should start by defining what is worth the word of faith movement. Enter Gemini. No, I did. I don't know if anybody wants to. I just Googled to see the AI overview of word of faith. See if this lines up with y'all's understanding or your research. The word of faith movement is a Christian theological movement that emphasizes the power of spoken words and faith to achieve divine health, prosperity and success, also known as a prosperity gospel or the health and wealth gospel proponents, bully believers can speak into existence, desired outcomes such as wealth and healing, often done through positive confession. That was a new term to me, not heard a positive confession. The idea of making declarations of faith to attract blessings. I just didn't know that specific term for it, but I don't know other. Does that kind of line up with what y'all's understanding of what word of faith is? And

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My one thing that I couldn't quite grasp if those who are a part of the word of faith would refer to themselves as prosperity gospel, which is what I would typically refer to them as versus word of faith. Word of

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Faith. Yeah, no, very similarly, my growing up, the people that were, again, word of faith adjacent, they would never consider themselves, consider themselves prosperity gospel just more

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Has a pejorative connotation.

• Read more

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  Yeah.

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  Word of faith certainly has more of that kind of like the Church of Jesus Christ or whatever, instead of Mormon latter-day Saints, like the whole kind of rebranding, let's make it sound more spiritual. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Although it doesn't seem like they shy away from the prosperity

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  Aspect

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  Of it aspect. I mean, so I don't know why the label would necessarily, I mean if

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  Maybe the American Gospel documentary cause them to

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  Shift more from it. I don't know. Or just because it came from opponents, I guess. I don't know. So board of Faith. Yeah. So Nikki's question specifically is about creeping into more mainstream evangelical churches. The influence there

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  Faithful. Yeah.

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  Yeah. So I don't know if we necessarily need, I mean is it still beneficial before we even get to that, to just at least real quickly kind of talk about why it's heretical, why it's a problem? Why? Because her question kind of assumes that this is a problem, but maybe we should actually talk about why address that first a problem. Jeffrey, why don't you go first? You said you grew up in a church that looking back you'd say was at least adjacent, if not full blown kind of word of faith. Sympathetic.

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  No, definitely. And even before the podcast looking at resources on it, this is from one of the more popular word of faith people out there, but on their website it says, learn how to take authority over your life with these 31 scriptures about the power of your words. Words use them and they'll move mountains, use them wrong and they can cause your entire life to go up and smoke. So very much you see the authority is being there put into words and your words and not God's sovereignty, not

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  God's

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  Word, God's word. God's word

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  Has the power to move mountains.

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  Exactly.

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  That's an interesting misrepresentation of what Jesus says when he says faith can move mountains, but then they make that step. I guess that's why it's word of faith is your faith is somehow expressed or encapsulated or manifested. I guess that's probably a concept.

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  Manifestation

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  Manifesting is in the word of faith movement. So yeah, anyway, that is because God's work has the power to create or movements. So

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  That's one aspect of it of why it's a problem. Again, this whole idea of power of words and even more so one of the tenets of the word of faith movement would be faith as a force versus faith as in trusting in God and his ability to work

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  That faith is the power to activate God's promises that if I just have enough faith, God is going to release blessings upon me. If you just believe hard enough, you'll see a miracle that there are, we were watching a Joel thing of, hey, dreams are waking up today. If you just have enough faith or even viewing faith more as transactional, I'm just going to sow this seed of faith. That's a very common language used in the word of faith, or I'm going to sow the seed of money. I'm going to sow the seed of obedience and therefore God is going to let me reap the blessings of this. So those are two other aspects of it for me of where air comes again, taking what we could say principles or verses and distorting or twisting them from their appropriate meaning or really making God the doer of our own desires versus us being the ones who submit to his doing and his blessing and his will.

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  And you can see where Siri, we're not talking to you.

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  I was like, what is playing?

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  I said, you can see where that's happened to me three times. That happened twice in the same sermon. Remember three weeks ago I was talking about Sarah, I kept saying Sarah and she kept hearing the other word. So name. So

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  The name we do not mention.

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  Yeah, exactly. Not with an open computer. I put you on do not serve. Anyway, so what was I saying? You can see where so much of it, some of it anyway comes from, I mean honestly, Jesus probably more than anybody says what seemed to us to be crazy things as far as certainly if you ask anything in my name and believe it'll be done for you. But then in other places he even says, just ask and you'll receive. And I didn't mention doing it in my name because I mean a lot of times we'll kind of take that in. My name is sort of

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  A way of, and this gets to part of Nikki's question about asking in Jesus' name. It's a lot of times we'll interpret that as asking in accordance with God's will because again, there are other passages of scripture where it makes it clear if you ask anything according to God's will that he's going to do it for you. So again, it is not like we can just change God's sovereign mind or something by praying hard enough or having enough faith or something like that. But I mean, again, you get certain things that are said and even done in scripture certain you think of a variety of Old Testament examples of Abraham negotiating with God back and forth with Sodom and Gomorrah destruction and just various things where it does make it seem like even the kind of Hebrew verb for God repenting or relenting or changing his mind is in there where it seems like, okay, we do. And again for us, we do have finish the thought, do have the power to change God's mind for us. We'd say maybe there's something different about some of these biblical examples of patriarchs and whatever else, or how do you make sense of that theologically, did God plan to change his mind all along really? And we just didn't realize it because God has the same yesterday, today, tomorrow, forever. It doesn't change.

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  But to go back to the word of faith, mean you can see, I guess what I'm trying to say is it's kind of like they say what is a lie is really just a half truth and there's that grain of truth. Otherwise it's not like everyone who is in a ward of faith church or what. And there's a lot, I mean frankly, some of the biggest churches out there, there's a reason it's so popular too. And I don't think it would be fair to just say that everyone there is just ignorant or unintelligent or just blindly whatever. I mean, as far as I know, they don't have a different version of the Bible than we do. I mean it's the same Bible. It's like they're going to frankly just like us. I mean we're all kind of guilty of, yeah, this set of passages I focus on more than these because for us, I mean we'd say these are clearer and these kind of fit together better and these other things where Jesus says ask and you're going to receive it. Okay, we got to filter it through a couple lenses to explain that one. Whereas they are going to take in our opinion, a small set of verses and examples from the Bible and make a whole kind of theology out of it and then just kind of ignore all the rest of, but also God is sovereign and he's not like your kind of genie that does your bidding, which is what it seems like word of faith theology does with God, doesn't it? I mean, is that a

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  Fair makes him more a genie in this guy then

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  Got into someone who does our bidding? I don't know if that's, again, I'm sure if it'd be a real interesting question if we had somebody who is currently really all bought into the word of faith theology here.

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  One of the articles read just summarized it as the word of faith movement, exalts man to God's status and reduces God man status. I thought it was a really simple way to say it.

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  And I even find it interesting that even in the same article that I mentioned earlier, a lot of the scriptures that he uses are coming out of Proverbs, which is again a wisdom literature book. So again, even to your point will that it's like a small section of scripture that we're going to amplify to make a whole theology of how to read all of scripture. Because a very popularly one that's used is Proverbs 1821. The first half of that verse, the tongue has the power of life and death. So magnifying that and taking out of context to mean that, oh, I have power over life and death in my own life and the words that I speak are the things that are going to affect that manifesting. Yeah,

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  Yeah. I was going to say, and to piggyback a little bit off what Will was saying about those who are parishioners at Word of Faith churches, I would say that they are being deceived, but I also understand it. What they're looking for is health. They're looking for wealth, they're looking for prosperity, power, a power, and they're hearing what I would categorize as you yourself can be like a lowercase G God,

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  Where you can will these things into existence. And so again, I word of faith, I deceitful, dangerous, and those who are deceived into believing, I can rationalize what it is that they're looking for and what it is that they're seeking after. And it makes me sorrowful for them because what they actually find in reading the whole of scripture something so far better and they're not being deceived or blinded behind, but that's all word of faith. We probably need to address some of the question about how has it seeped into the church? What's the leakage? Probably a way to think about it that unintentionally most likely we've seen it in the broader evangelical church tree, even in West Hills as a whole.

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  Yeah. So what are some of those ways, areas of

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  Seepage music, I think as a subtle way that can sneak in but not settle. I mean it's in the lyrics, but some of these bigger churches, if few come to mind are word of faith. They're health and wealth and they're the biggest. They're a publishing machine. They're releasing three albums a year and everybody's picking them up. Big names are picking 'em up. I think there's a draw to be modern and relevant

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  Bethel. I was going to say, what are some examples of that, Bethel and even lyrics of the kind of stuff that's coming

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  To mind for you guys? I mean, I think Bethel in particular, do they publicly identify as a word of faith? Church? Do we know? I don't know. I think we would all say that their actual theology is in line with that, whether or not it's officially affiliated with

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  Independent

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  Networks.

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  Nondenominational,

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  Yeah. Yeah. On a quick Google search, it safest for them, I guess. But yeah, I don't know. I mean others, like some people would put maybe in the room. I don't know what you're going to say, but would say you see some of that kind of theology. I think a lot of people increasingly, seemingly, I don't know, having issues with elevation, certainly Steven Furs teaching and preaching the music, I don't know, maybe less so. I don't know. I feel like I've seen, heard less critique of individual kind of lyrics of elevations, songs being

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  It's just in the water. It sneaks in a lot of their songs,

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  A few lyrics here and there.

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  There's not a lot that are like, man, that one song, it's terrible. But if I thought about it for five more minutes, I probably could think of a few. None pop to mind right now, but I listen to a few

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  My praise. What's that one? Yeah, my praise is the

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  Water. My enemies drowning.

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  Enemies drowning. Yes. My words, my worship is the thing that's conquering my enemies. Yeah, I'm sure you could kind camp out for a little bit on, well, where did that come

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  From? Or even just thinking behind that or even just the majority of me, language plus singing about God, more singing about us, which there's a place, the singing about our situations and God's faithfulness to us. Very good. But when it's the majority, you think that's a problem.

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  Exactly. Yeah. Other, so music is, yeah, good.

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  Yeah. I mean, outside of music, I think the biggest way that I have seen it leak into the evangelical space is through social media influencers, specifically for women. Again, that's not what I'm following on social media. This is what I hear from other people, including our question asker of this idea of manifestation language. I'm just going to manifest this. I'm going to will this into existence. I'm going to have just enough faith. I've heard people in our own church, women, again, this is not, I'm just saying the influences there through social

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  Media

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  Of I'm going to pray and this will actually happen.

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  Do you think that's interesting. I hadn't thought about that till now. You think the influence of word of faith theology is disproportionately affecting women than men?

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  Oh yeah.

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  And do we think that that's probably a couple things

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  Of Utah. That's where all the social media influences are for our women.

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  Utah.

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  Yeah,

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  Those secret lives of normal wives. Oh no. It's like the number one show on, I don't know. I've not heard of that.

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  Or Texas. Yeah, Texas and Utah were all the

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  Major. Well, I was going to say, because a couple things. First of all, from its inception, his word of faith kind of sub whatever church thing, has it always been egalitarian in nature? Do we know Kenneth, Kenneth Hagan kind of invented this in the sixties, right? So I don't know. I'd have to do a deeper dive on the history of it. Has it always been egalitarian?

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  Well, I mean one of the biggest people in it, Joyce Meyer,

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  Well, I'm thinking today we going to ask her to come on the pod. She's in

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  St. Louis,

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  Joyce Meyer. Is she in St. Louis? Yeah. Yeah, she's really close. That's headquarters. Yeah. I knew the headquarters was here. Does she live here? Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Really? Yeah, we should. Let's reach out, see if we can get special guests, Joyce Meyer to join us.

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  You imagine, Brian, can you call her up row quick,

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  See if she answers, but Paula White, isn't her name Paula White? Yeah. I always confused her with Paula Dean. She's the racist cook, but Paula White is the Beth Moore some put her Paula White. Okay. It's taking a long time. Paula White is President. Trump's number one personal advisor,

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  Faith advisor,

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  Scare quotes, if you're listening on the audio, faith advisor, whatever, head chaplain of whatever Christian nation we're claiming to be becoming one. So yeah, she's doing the leading and prayer breakfast and stuff these days. And then people are alleging Beth

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  Moore, they're alleging

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  Why?

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  Because they just don't, I don't know. They just don't like, they don't like, but outside of that, I'd put her in. She gets an asterisk in my mind of how helpful are you Now, I don't know, Victoria Osteen, Joel Osteen's wife, she is on stage with him leading all that poly fur kind of same thing, poly fur, same thing if you're going elevation route. So I would argue that it probably is partially, then I wonder

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  If in addition to it just maybe being more inherently egalitarian and so being accessible or whatever, feeling, I don't know, empowering in that regard to women. If the theology itself, again, if you have an unfortunate history of abuses, of biblical kind of complimentarian theology, male headship, those kinds of things leading to obviously an unfortunate history of a lot of misogyny and whatever, oppression for women in the history of the church and maybe again, even evangelical Christianity kind of sub branch of the church. If some of that theology itself of my words having power, anything that feels like, okay, I have more power, more control. It's like, well, my husband may wear the pants, but I've got this same access to this same manifesting kind of faithful word power that he does. So I don't know. I guess you could see where, I mean I think it's not the question, but where you see this theology spreading, I think the most rapidly like a cancer is in the developing world or what we formerly would've called Third world countries,

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  Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America. And again, you can see why the same reason liberation theology, God loves you more. You're poor, we're selfish people. I mean, give me something good for me. Oh, God loves me more. I'll take that. Oh, I have actual power. Here I am. I feel completely oppressed and I can't even, whatever, I feel completely crushed under the weight of this oppressive government and this oppressive country I live in and et cetera, et cetera. But you're telling me I have the power to move mountains with my words. Like, okay, that feels good. I'll buy that. So you see it all over the place, I think exported to those kinds of settings.

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  So certainly in terms of, I mean answering Nikki's question about to what extent has it crept into faithful evangelical churches? I guess in that case, I don't know. I couldn't answer globally if it's like there are faithful churches being planted. I would imagine this happens all the time in some of those contexts. We're talking about Latin America and Africa, where a faithful church is planted and get up off the ground, and then okay, five years later here it moves in and kind of like the Judaizers with the Galatians that we're preaching through now on Sundays where you see got off to a good start and then you got distracted by this shiny thing and you get off the rails. I'm sure that that happens, but I'm imagining that Nikki's question is probably more localized than thinking even about our own context and the states. So I mean, is this something that we since has crept into again otherwise formerly faithful evangelical churches that we would be more familiar with here, that we see an influence happening?

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  Yeah, I mean, not would even say to Thad's point earlier about social media, we more analyze the women's side of social media, but maybe even on the younger male side. Speaking for myself, I feel a lot of it you see kind of pushed in a lot of the red pill, blue pill kind of stuff. A lot of the politically being politically active, very much again, like word of faith in the way of if I do this thing, kind of the Galatians point, if I do this thing and have faith in this thing, then that will make change. And my words matter in that way. I mean even seeing, again, word of faith being a lot about self-esteem and a lot about building yourself up, that's a very easy way to build up your self-esteem by going to a very charismatic figure. Not saying that anyway, these people are doing this on purpose, but where it can happen very politically active people, maybe even Joe Rogan of listening to this guy seems very, very smart. And I was like, okay, if I add this and I have faith in the words or actions that tells me to do, then maybe I can add to the gospel in that way. So about possible ways it can seep in where we're getting our affirmation from. Who are we listening to and separating worldly wisdom from godly wisdom,

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  As I think of what, again, the imagery of its seeping and not rushing in not taking over, how can we subtly begin to embrace certain teachings of the word of faith movement? I think some of it's through Is that what you're

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  Wanting to do, by the way, because when we texted about this and we were discussing possible topics,

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  I said, let's go word of faith.

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  Brian gave us three options and Thad said, let's go word of faith. And I said, but just for the podcast. Right, exactly.

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  No,

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  I'm all in. And tha said, no, I'm all in on word of faith. Anyway,

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  All in, well, I think the ways in which it could creep in through language, this idea of manifestation, I'm going to will this in, I think through expectations of I'm going to have unbiblical expectations about how God is going to do this thing that I want. And I would also say through emotional tone of spirituality, when I think of word of faith, emotional manipulation, pushing is a big aspect

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  Of it. Maybe someone might say that's un charitable. Again, that's my limited exposure observation. But I think through those avenues, we could find in faithful evangelical churches, not that they themselves are shifting, their leadership is shifting, their elders are shifting, their staff is shifting, but I think people in those congregations are subtly receiving some of the seepage that's coming through, whether it's through social media, whether it's through what they're reading, whether it's through the podcast they're listening to, and that they are being drawn to that language. Sounds spiritual. So I'm going to start use it. That sounds like a biblical expectation. I'm going to start attaching myself to it. This gives me an emotional spirituality. So I want my spiritual life to be emotional. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but can be drawn into a unhealthy unbiblical reality.

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  Yeah, that's the thing that occurs to me in high level. Short answer to the question of to what extent is the word of faith influence creeping into the evangelical church? I would say to reiterate what you said, and even where we started with Brian summarizing or reading a line from the got questions.org about reducing God to

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  A man and exalting man to a sort of demi God and he does our bidding. Again, it might not be, certainly no one would say that even in probably the word of faith would characterize it that way. But to go back to your point about the music too, and I've done this at various times in sermons where I'll just check the billboard top 20 Christian songs on the radio right now and then pull up the lyrics for 'em and then just use it as an example in a sermon of letting the church know even the cultural waters you're swimming in, even in the Christian subculture of, and we've got a radio DJ for Joy f fm as a member of our chart. I'm not going to speak bad about any specific, I'm just saying if you actually pull up the top charting Christian songs at any given time in the last 20 years at any given time, I would be willing to bet over the last 20 years. And you just simply count, I'm my, and then count God, Jesus Holy Spirit, it is going to make more of us than it does of God if you just go numerically on how much are we talking about me and my faith? And

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  I will praise you through this storm. And it's like, is that worship? If it is, I think you're worshiping yourself your own faith anyway. So I think that's where you're right. You see it in the sort of exaltation of man and just kind of like you said, subtly getting people's eyes or it's not that you have to get people's eyes off of God because we're all sinners by nature and we're selfish. And so our eyes start on us as babies, and you have to do a lot of work to get your eyes off of yourself onto God and others. And I think the word of faith is not probably helping with that, we would say. And I think to the extent that especially mainstream stereotypical megachurch, non-denominational, like you think Willow Creek, Saddleback North Point was that Ann Stanley Stanley?

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  There's the other north Larry Osborne. That's what I thought you No, I'm not trying to, he's one of us I guess. But I'm talking about those kind of, we're going to, how do you draw big crowds? I was just reading for De Group John six this week where the crowd was getting too big. So Jesus was like, y'all are a bunch of sinners for you. I'm the bread of life without eating me. You're dead. And the dust life, what do you not see these people walking away? And he's like, y'all left yet. He is like, I just thought y'all would all leave because I'm just going to keep spitting the truth and you can leave when you want. I'm not here to draw a crowd. And I think that if you to say all that to say, I think to the extent that you see word of faith, I mean a lot of these, not all of 'em, but certainly the Paula Whites and the Benny Hens and the Kenneth Copelands and fill in the blank, Joel ote. I mean, they're drawing crowds. And so I think to the extent that you see some of the others that are just, again, not, would certainly not put themselves in that camp, but I just think you have to be so careful because you can draw a crowd

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  By tickling people's ears and by telling them just God loves you. God loves you, God loves you. I mean, there's a reason people are buying the Joel Osteen

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  Affirmation

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  Cube, affirmation cube, because they love to hear that. And again, God, it's not to say God doesn't love you, it's just to say that so many of those teachings that are pulled out coming out of that theology of the Power of You, that was actually one of his books, right?

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  Wasn't

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  That Jill Ostein the title Power of You? Maybe? I don't know. Don't quote me

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  On it. Net well versed.

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  What was it? Net Well Versed. Oh, okay. That's disappointing.

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  Come on Our book club. Anyway, I think it's Power of view, but I mean, that's kind of the underlying message, I think. And frankly, I think in a lot of those, I was trying to make the point, the megachurch non, it might not be full on here, let's back all this up and with scripture and really, but I think it's, yeah, there's enough of that kind of let's focus mostly on you in this song, in this sermon and sprinkle in enough of the Bible or get to God at certain points to make it feel Christian. But I don't know, to me is the subtle which is more dangerous, the subtle creep. Yeah, like you said, the subtle creep because

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  Yeah, you don't really know it's there until

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  It's like,

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  Oh, it's like the

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  Frog. You just turn it up a little bit. You could be in a church that maybe started out very biblical and all about God, and we're here to worship him and get our eyes off ourself onto him. But yeah, you realize the sermons you get more positive reaction to and people bring in their friends or whatever is the ones where, yeah, you tickle their ears a little bit. And I don't know,

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  You could see how, and I think we do, are seeing how that sadly gets an audience and a footing. I don't know. Beyond that, are there other ways in which y'all would say that you have seen this kind of thinking creep into? I mean, I would say even at a church like ours, I've been frightened and kind of discouraged at times with a couple of conversations that come to mind with folks that either again are listening to Joel Ostein on the side, or Hey, I've got this neighbor and he's a Christian perfectionist, just another kind of related tangential heresy that they're like, yeah, I mean, he knows a lot of the Bible. And so there are times when I can get frightened even with our own kind of church and the people in the pews so to speak, that I'm like, man, yeah, this, we're not immune to it here and need to be probably with some kind of consistency, making sure that we're reminding people that just because you call yourself a church, not all churches are preaching the same thing, are equal, are equally true to God's word,

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  As well as when you hear someone talk and it sounds very spiritual, it doesn't mean that it's in accordance with God's word at all. A lot of spirits out there, a lot of spirits out there. It's spiritual. It's not the kind you think. And even I think we can be really quick to dunk on those who would find themselves in the prosperity gospel and how could you ever fall so quickly to that as I started with, well, yeah, when Joel Olsteen's just saying, you are blessed. You are blessed. You're not going to wear out God's blessing when you're wearing God's blessing. Well, people are going to be jealous and he's just going to give you more blessing. There's a certain appeal that's there for people. And so I think for those at West Hills, I would say again, don't have the disposition of, well, people who believe the Prosperity Gospel are just idiots. But instead, I would say, Hey, can we read the Bible together and can I point you to God's word as well as our people themselves being cautious with all that they're intaking, whether it's music or podcasts or social media, like I said, because things sound really great and really biblical, but are they really, you can even think of, speaking of pop culture or stuff like that, I've got a game. It's in my back pocket sometime for youth group. Where is it a proverb or a Taylor Swift lyric?

  (39:26):

  I'm afraid our students will feel, so I've not brought it out yet. I

  (39:30):

  Loved it.

  (39:31):

  Yeah. Well, even that, I need to play that one. We can be tempted to, in small snippets, think like, oh yeah, that sounds really biblical. Sounds really spiritual, but it's not actually. And to be cautious with that test, the scriptures test what you're hearing on Sundays from the pulpit, from whoever is opening God's word and says, thus say the Lord.

  (39:56):

  Yeah, no, yeah, totally. Even to your point earlier, tha we were talking about even little Gods, which I think again, is adjacent to it, where it could just be even how it could seep in a simple comment during a Bible study where someone just not as familiar says something that sounds okay, but just isn't. I pulled it up just to make sure I wasn't misquoting anyone, but Kenneth Copeland said this. I say this with all respect so that it doesn't upset you too bad. But I say it anyway when I read the Bible where Jesus, he's referring to says, I am. I smile and say, yes, I am too. So again, these things, again, kind of turning up the temperature you don't think are going to end up at that point, but when all these things subtly keep coming up and you keep rising the temperature and keep rising the temperature and someone that's at a word of faith movement or at a church that's word of faith, that might not stick out to them. But if you were to stick any one of us in that church, we would be like, oh, wow, they just said that

  (40:57):

  Red

  (40:57):

  Flag sounds like the antichrist to me. Yeah,

  (41:01):

  Man.

  (41:04):

  Yeah, I don't know. I know that's been pinned on a lot of, but he's not important enough to be in an antichrist, but you know what I'm saying,

  (41:12):

  Whoever the spirit of the antichrist,

  (41:14):

  John, whoever the spirit of the antichrist is plural. Yeah, Christ in one John. And so yeah, I mean, he's one of 'em, I'm sure. So yeah. Oh my gosh, that is so troubling. I'm going to have trouble in this creepy interview we watch right before we

  (41:28):

  Oh, yeah, super creepy. We went places before this

  (41:30):

  Podcast. Yeah, I don't know if there's anything more we do, I guess in having talked about it. Well, no, just having talked about it now, it really has me even more convinced in thinking about the extent to which it does influence and impact the wider modern day kind of evangelical mainstream world and stuff. And I'm grateful that it not, the fact that I'm not aware of a lot of it is hopefully evidence that we're not so much one of those churches. But yeah, it is scary. And yeah, it does seem, certainly, again, when you platform the president's number one personally, I mean, it is only going to get more mainstream and just kind of mixed in with, it was interesting, even on the Gemini summary, the last bullet point was some Christians express concerns about word of faith theology, that it distorts the true biblical message or something like, it was kind of like, oh yeah, that is what AI would say about it. They would say, we're sort of the

  (43:03):

  Last

  (43:05):

  Bullet point of, yeah, all of these things make it sound like just one more kind of branch of Christianity that's just a little different than the, and we're like the weird ones that say maybe this isn't even actually Christianity at all. I don't know. Is it, I mean, maybe that is a whole nother podcast topic. Would you say that this is, because heresy I think is a sliding

  (43:34):

  Scale.

  (43:37):

  I mean, you can say yes or no. Is it heretical? But then there's like heresy that's like, yeah, you can no longer in any real sense be considered Christian if you believe that you're a different thing versus obviously there's tons of denominations. So maybe that's just a whole nother, if somebody's interested, would we characterize word of faith as a denomination? That's way off. I mean, gosh, you've got the United Church of Christ that's super progressive, all about L-G-B-T-Q, you've got Roman Catholicism. If some people want to characterize that as it one denomination, a subset of Christianity versus No, there's Catholics and then there's Christians. So there's so many, but where would we, Mormons, I mean, where would we,

  (44:28):

  Not Christian, I'm going to on record say Mormons are not

  (44:32):

  Christians, but some people. So there's a spectrum is all I'm saying. And where would you put word of faith on the Trump said

  (44:39):

  They were, unfortunately.

  (44:40):

  What's that?

  (44:41):

  Donald Trump said that they were Christians.

  (44:43):

  If there's anything,

  (44:44):

  Mormons,

  (44:45):

  If there's anything different, I'm not taking advice. I'm not surprised at all.

  (44:49):

  No, I'm just saying,

  (44:50):

  Yeah, no, when did he say that?

  (44:51):

  I don't agree. Within the last week or two,

  (44:52):

  Really. If we're getting our, there's

  (44:55):

  An attack at a Mormon temple.

  (44:58):

  At a Mormon temple Tabernacle, and he said something about, said something, Christian persecution.

  (45:03):

  Is it fair to say just general just kind of advice that we shouldn't be getting are core theological views from political podcast? That's pretty fair to say.

  (45:12):

  Well, I don't know. I'm just so re I'm sorry we're off the, but I do want, yeah,

  (45:24):

  Where do we, on the sliding

  (45:26):

  Scale, it would be a fun kind of podcast to take a lot of those and make a spectrum. We've got a whiteboard and video now if we want and say, okay, here's Orthodox Christianity.

  (45:37):

  We can use an iPad and draw it for people.

  (45:38):

  Yeah, and let's relative how far off from orthodox Christianity are you? Maybe it would make us look too much like we've got all the answers and whatever, but also we're called to have some answers and to call out. I mean, that's biblical confronting false teaching and guarding the sheep from it. I mean, it could actually be a worthwhile thing to do in terms of here's the threat level of these various, you know what I'm saying?

  (46:21):

  I hear you. I think it could be, I'd have to do a lot more prep for that podcast.

  (46:27):

  Yeah.

  (46:28):

  That is not to say we do not prep for this podcast. Podcast.

  (46:31):

  No, I think it'd be interesting. We have

  (46:32):

  To read Theological Triage by Gavin Orland. Again,

  (46:34):

  I would put word of faith I below Mormonism or whatever they want to be called now. I don't care what they want to be called. We're calling 'em a Mormon. No, that's a whole transgendered thing. No call. No, we'll call you what you are when you say you're a Mormon,

  (46:53):

  Say below Mormonism. They are.

  (46:55):

  I'm saying further

  (46:56):

  Away,

  (46:57):

  You're farther from the Bible if you're a Mormon, but I think at least you don't need a whole nother book to add on to be a word of faith person.

  (47:06):

  So their word of faith is above Mormon. If we're going up to the top, sorry, the

  (47:11):

  Top is like the opposite of Christian.

  (47:15):

  Oh, okay. I see. Because I would say Christianity at the top

  (47:20):

  Going down. No, I was thinking, I was so confused. I'm thinking in terms of the threat. We heard way different pieces. I'm thinking the threat level. The threat level. So higher critical threat, stay away. So I would put word of faith below. It's not like you've, I don't think maybe you've committ basically, can you be a word of faith proponent, but believer whatever, and still be a believer, be a born again follower of Jesus.

  (47:47):

  Probably not a leader in a word of faith.

  (47:49):

  I think not a leader. That's what I would say. So that's where, yeah, maybe we could come back to it. It'd be a fun one. It'd be a fun one. So let's just list a bunch of Roman Catholicism and some of those others. Methodist, I mean, yeah. And

  (48:05):

  We'll do it all.

  (48:06):

  I don't know. You'd have to really check your spirit before you did that and not have a sense of spiritual pride about it. Yeah, I would Anyway.

  (48:15):

  And then maybe we'll do a whole one on cults after

  (48:19):

  Which, well, I think you're cult tangential on that one. Mormonism

  (48:22):

  And word of faith.

  (48:23):

  Yeah. Perhaps

  (48:25):

  There are other fun cults out

  (48:26):

  There. There's a lot. There's a lot. Oh yeah.

  (48:28):

  Ask your questions. We want to answer 'em. We want our

  (48:30):

  Podcast to really chart in this region, or I don't know, however, you just do a cult. We'll just do a cult podcast. What was the one you were talking about before we started? This will be the after. We'll close it down and I want to hear more about,

  (48:46):

  There's still more to

  (48:47):

  What's the name of the

  (48:47):

  Podcast? Nikki has more to her question. She what we still need to answer. Seriously. There's a second half that we haven't gotten to yet. What is that? That's what I was trying to say.

  (48:56):

  Brian, you got to speak up on these things.

  (48:57):

  And how do we think biblically about praying in the name and power of Jesus without assuming authority that is not ours to wield.

  (49:03):

  Well, we're actually just talking about this over lunch, weren't we?

  (49:06):

  A little bit,

  (49:06):

  Yeah. Yeah.

  (49:08):

  What were we saying

  (49:08):

  Over lunch?

  (49:09):

  Go ahead, Jeffrey.

  (49:10):

  Oh yeah. So actually it's funny because a friend and I were talking about this back in Nashville and then we were talking about for lunch, as far as growing up in a culture where praying in Jesus' name or having authority or saying Satan, your bound, was very, very common. Throwing around and growing up and coming out of more of that word of faith type, charismatic movement. Just thinking always negatively toward it. And now trying to think of it more of like, okay, lemme just take a step back and just look at it just with a totally partial lens of trying to take out all partiality toward it. I think the main question comes to why would I bind anything when Jesus has authority over everything and just going, and I have the authority to go directly to Jesus, so why will we ever try to do anything outside of the power of Jesus alone will be more of my general question toward doing anything like that. I don't know if you have anything to add that from our conversation. And

  (50:10):

  If Jesus says in Matthew 16, I give you the power to bind and lose. Anything you bind in, heaven will be, or sorry on Earth will be bound in heaven. Heaven. So I mean there's that whole, I'm giving you this specific power. And again, that's a whole theological, what is he talking about there mean how do you apply that? But I mean that

  (50:36):

  Would equate that sort of language again to when thinking of word of faith movement. Where we're kind of landing is how we probably should think about it more is when we pray in the name of Jesus, we are not praying as kings. We are praying as servants in the power of the king in accordance to his will. Not, I'm praying this and because I've prayed this and it's going to happen. Sort of this instead on the flip side, like a reverence, a submission to his will versus a demand for, and I think that's where it comes. Decree you've declared I have the power authority versus where the authority actually lies. Lies.

  (51:31):

  That's a good,

  (51:32):

  Helpful illustration. Who'd you steal that

  (51:34):

  From?

  (51:35):

  You came up with that. I just have it in my notes.

  (51:38):

  That's really good. I don't mean to

  (51:40):

  Mark it down.

  (51:41):

  I don't need, I just assumed you read that. I just assumed you read it in one of your, the king servant. That's really good. And biblical. Too biblical. I got a good

  (51:53):

  One-liner every once in a while.

  (51:55):

  That was really

  (51:55):

  Good. I'm going to clip that out for sure.

  (51:58):

  What?

  (52:00):

  I'm just going to highlight

  (52:00):

  That. It's good. Yeah. I don't think I have anything to add. That was really well said.

  (52:05):

  Well said. I agree. Thanks for the question,

  (52:08):

  Nicole.

  (52:08):

  Thanks that you're the only one allowed to call her Nicole though. Right?

  (52:13):

  Her name is Nicole, just so everyone knows, she filled it out on a college paper that said, do you have a nickname? And she said, I guess I could put one. And then she was only called Nikki after that freshman year of college. No one else called her that until college.

  (52:30):

  Really?

  (52:31):

  Until, and then so now only her mom and I call her Nicole.

  (52:35):

  Really?

  (52:37):

  You can call her listener

  (52:38):

  Nicole. No, I feel like that's special.

  (52:40):

  You have

  (52:40):

  To be real

  (52:41):

  Close. Doesn't feel right to me.

  (52:42):

  I don't know. Something to aspire to though, listener. If you get close enough to Nikki, she could become Nicole. Don't like that.

  (52:52):

  Well, that's it for this week's episode of Ask the Pastors

  (52:55):

  Uncomfortable.

  (52:55):

  Remember that you can submit your questions by visiting the info bar at West Hills or by asking them online through our website at www.westhillsstl.org.

  (53:04):

  We're scanning the QR code in your bulletins now.

  (53:07):

  Yeah, it's not our bulletins.

  (53:08):

  Oh, that's great coming. It will be

  (53:11):

  Bulletin near you,

  (53:12):

  Bullets in jacket near you soon.

  (53:14):

  Yeah. If you enjoyed this week's episode, hit that like button, subscribe and share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening, and Lord will catch you right back here next week. Blessings upon

  (53:25):

  You.